#465 — More From Sam: Iran, Jihadism, Conspiracism, AI Disruption, the Manosphere, and More

0:06Sam Harris:Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you're not currently on our subscriber feed, and we'll only be hearing the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at samharris.org. We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one.

0:58Jaron Lanier:time. One, you thinking it was right to get rid of the Iranian regime, and two, that you were worried that we were being led by an incompetent administration.

1:06Sam Harris:How are you feeling at this moment? Well, I think that sort of twofold impression has only solidified. I mean, certainly the incompetence has been on display and the consequences of the initial incompetence. I mean, the initial incompetence was to have done absolutely nothing to prepare the American people or Congress for this war, to have lurched into it in an authoritarian way, to have given fuel and even seeming evidence to conspiracy theorists who think we were dragged into it by Israel. I'll acknowledge that Israel and America don't have precisely the same set of concerns and incentives in this war, right?

1:42Sam Harris:So it's rational to differentiate between Israel's needs and America's. I mean, I think that's, to some degree, that's true. So we could talk about that. And yeah, so there's no clear rationale for the war. I mean, Trump has said all manner of thing as a reason for us doing this and has been totally unpersuasive. Strangely, he has a communication problem that's almost at the level of Biden's during his presence. I mean, Biden's massive failing as a president, you know, among his many minor failings, is that he couldn't communicate at a certain point. He couldn't communicate at all about anything, and he just simply had to hide from the public for, you know, obviously neurological reasons.

2:23Sam Harris:Well, I don't know what Trump's reasons are, but Trump is totally ineffective in communicating about this because he either doesn't know anything, you know, or he's content to be completely incoherent or doesn't notice that he's incoherent. But he's just, the messaging has been terrible. And in the run-up to this, we've done nothing but alienate our allies with tariffs and threats and bullying and, you know, authoritarian nonsense. And now that we see we need allies, surprisingly, right, to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. Apparently, we want our allies to help us do that. That comes as a surprise to many people.

2:58Sam Harris:I'm not sure it should have, but it seems to have come as a surprise to Trump because at one point, Keir Starmer offered a British ship, I believe, or two or three, and Trump said, no, no thanks. We don't need someone who's coming in late to a war that's already been won. And now he's bullying Starmer to give the ships that he actually needs, right? So it's just, it is the most unprofessional, slipshod, shambolic messaging around this. And so one can only hope that the actual dropping of bombs is being executed with real precision and, you know, impressive competence. I have no reason to believe it isn't.

3:36Sam Harris:But so it's just, it's totally reasonable to be worried that we could screw this up. I don't have, you know, I'm not confident we will screwed this up. I mean, I think I will be unsurprised if this turns out to be a success, despite all of these malapropisms. I think it could be a success, right? We could wake up one day to realize that there's a, you know, a secular democracy being born in Iran because we destroyed this evil regime, and it's what the bulk of the Iranian people really wanted all the while, right? And so we could stumble into real success here, and that's certainly to be hoped for, but it could also be a ghastly failure about we could produce something like a failed state in Iran and that will seem to vindicate all the people who were against this war in the first place.

4:23Sam Harris:And then the one other thing I would point out is that most of the people who are against this war are not making the most basic acknowledgement of the evil of the Iranian regime and the needless misery of the Iranian people, right? So they're not connecting the humanitarian dots that they really should connect to be sane critics of this war. I mean, the first thing you have to say if you're going to criticize this war is to acknowledge that this is an evil regime that would be better if it didn't exist, and your heart goes out to the Iranian people who don't want to live under this miserable theocracy, but you have these further reasons to worry that this adventure is a very bad idea.

4:59Sam Harris:And there's an argument to be had there. I mean, Damon Linker just published a Substack article that made that case, and I thought fairly persuasively, but still, most critics of this war don't do that, and they sound completely delusional to me.

5:13Jaron Lanier:Yeah, well, I mean, you did point out that Trump went to war without NATO, and now he's telling them, you know, hey, you guys are the one that needs the oil. So you, you know, get in here to the straight-up moves.

5:22Sam Harris:Yeah, but worse than that, he's also saying that we need the help, right? Like, we actually couldn't do this on our own, it seems, right? I mean, now it remains to be seen whether that's going to be true. But there is this perception that we have already gotten in over our heads, despite how much we have pulverized the regime, right? I mean, the evidence of that is pretty remarkable. But the fact that, I mean, we either appeared not to have anticipated how easy it is and how asymmetrical the threat is in the Strait of Hormuz and how it's like, well, you know, one guy in a fishing boat with a suicide vest could close the whole thing down, you know, or just was one...

5:58Sam Harris:I think it's a little bit more... One person laying mines. No, I mean, it's very, it's totally asymmetrical, apparently. I mean, you really need, you can't let one person with one mine have access to the water. Otherwise, no one's going to send a ship through, right? And now we're in this awful position of watching the Iranians dictate who can come through the strait, right? So, you know, Iranian oil and Chinese ships are happily passing through the strait, apparently, and we're letting that happen because we don't have control. So it is, that part appears to be a humiliating failure in the making.

6:33Sam Harris:I think I would also add that if at the end of all of this, there hasn't been regime change, and the Iranian people are still under the boot of theocrats, and we're now left to try to negotiate with some religious fanatic who perhaps is pretending not to be a fanatic about their, you know, the existing, you know, 400 kilograms of partially enriched uranium that they still have, and their aspirations to spin up more, I think that will be just an objective failure, right? It would be better not to have, as much as we have degraded the regime, that would be bad for the U.S. I'm not so sure it would be bad for Israel in the same way.

7:14Sam Harris:Maybe everything from here forward, no matter what happens, is a success from Israel's point of view. Again, we don't have quite the same interests there, but simply because Iran, you know, a nuclear Iran is an existential threat to Israel, there's no question. So pulverizing the regime, degrading their capacity, killing their ballistic missile regime, if only that, right? That's a good.

7:38Jaron Lanier:Has that been confirmed? That's been confirmed that the nuclear facilities have been pulverized? I mean, I know they claimed that last time.

7:46Sam Harris:No, but the ballistic missiles, the conventional missiles have been either eradicated or they've shot their last one, it seems. I mean, it really seems that they don't have much capacity left. All of that's good for Israel. That's neither here nor there, really, for the U.S. I'm just saying that the way we went into this and the incompetence that surrounded so many features of this from our side, not Israel's side, if at the end of the day there really is no fundamental reset in Iran and we're just left still trying to negotiate on some level around their nuclear aspirations, I think that's a terrible outcome.

8:22Sam Harris:So that's worth worrying about. Yeah.

8:25Jaron Lanier:You've said you don't want Iran to get a nuke, but you've also said that you don't want American boots on the ground. If push comes to shove, which are you willing to let go of?

8:33Sam Harris:The boots on the ground part. I just know that we can't have jihadists with nukes. I mean, that's just, you can boil down the core of a sane foreign policy on this topic to that sentence, right? If it's a jihadist regime that is within reach of nukes, send in the troops, right? Do whatever you have to do to stop that from happening, right? So how we do that, I mean, again, we should have allies, we should have gone to Congress, we should have made the case for this. And I think, you know, I've always said, and I think I first got this idea from the Atlantic writer Mark Bowden, I think, you know, maybe 20 years ago.

9:10Sam Harris:It seems to me that much of this should be covert, right? I don't know why we ever have to take credit for anything. I think we're at war with jihadism, full stop, we will be for the rest of our lives. Anyone who doesn't understand how jihadism is different from any other enemy we have, or really have ever had, doesn't understand jihadism. So, I mean, it makes an absolute mockery of any negotiation, any notion of deterrence, I mean, to say nothing of nuclear deterrence. You're dealing with avowedly suicidal people who are not bluffing. And they're not only, it's not only that they're willing to die, the crucial quorum of them want to die, right?

9:46Sam Harris:And if you don't believe that, again, you're simply ignorant about jihadism and haven't been paying attention to the last 25 years, at least, of what's been happening in the world. So it's a total deal breaker. Nukes with jihadists, just that cannot happen, right? So wherever it seems to be happening, we need to send in the troops, whatever that looks like, whether that's robots in the end or special forces or some combination of, many things that seem different from our old misadventures that were just boots on the ground. That's fine. But we need a relentlessly intrusive policy with respect to jihadism and nuclear projects.

10:24Sam Harris:Okay.

10:24Jaron Lanier:I'm trying to read this chat here that just came in. He says, people in the chat are pushing back on Sam earlier saying that he has no reason to believe the bombs aren't being dropped accurately, even though the Trump admin is leading the war.

10:35Sam Harris:How about the girls' school getting bombed? Well, obviously, I'm not talking about the girls' school. So yes, that was a catastrophe and obviously a mistake, right? I mean, anyone who thinks we did that on purpose is a moron. So I mean, you literally need not listen to another word out of the mouth of anyone who's speaking as though that was intentional, right? That harms our interests as colossally as anything we could possibly do. And the same is true of Israel. So the idea that that's somehow part of our policy to kill schoolgirls by the hundreds, that's insane. But it's awful that that happened and it was clearly based on some error of, you know, intelligence or targeting or both.

11:16Sam Harris:But generally speaking, I mean, we and the Israelis have killed so much of the leadership of the regime. I mean, that part sounds like it's out of some unbelievable movie. And it sounds like we are successfully degrading their capacity in all kinds of ways, but not sufficient to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, right? So that part, if that was surprising to us, that's another sign of our incompetence. Yeah.

11:42Jaron Lanier:I just think that the real issue there is, I don't think most people really believe we did it on purpose. I think it's the mismanagement and just why it was so difficult just to say, yeah, yeah, we, of course we, what you just said, we would never have done that on purpose. It was accidental. We, you know, this is tragic.

11:57Sam Harris:Well, yeah, the messaging around this, we're in the hands of amoral, truly awful human beings who are running our country, right? And that has a consequence, right? Trump can't credibly step in front of a microphone and say anything compassionate about anything for any purpose, right? Because everyone knows that he's simply, he's at minimum neurologically injured in some way so as not to be a normal person in that regard. And so it is with, you know, Pete Hegseth and the other cartoon characters who are in our government. So all of that's terrible. I mean, there's no, I mean, you're not going to get to the back of me in feeling that these are the wrong people to be doing this very important and risky job.

12:40Sam Harris:But that doesn't suggest that destroying this regime wouldn't be a good thing. And the other thing to point out about critics of this war is they never seem to reckon with the widespread Iranian support for the war. What can you say to all the Iranians who are urging us onward in destroying this regime? What about their interests? What about the compassion for their loved ones who don't want to live in a theocracy, right? Which you, the critic of this war, wouldn't want to live under either. People are acting as though we attacked a sovereign country. They're acting as though we attacked Greenland, right?

13:22Sam Harris:Like that's the perception of the ethics here. I mean, this is just a totally unjustifiable, unethical, imperialist adventure by a, you know, country that is now governed by a sociopath, right? Now, we may be governed by a sociopath, but all of the previous statements are wrong, right? This is nothing like Russia's invasion of Ukraine. This is nothing like our taking Greenland through use of force. The Iranian regime was a terrorist regime for as long as most of us have been alive. And some feedback from the chat. Isn't the war just creating more jihadists? No, I've never bought that. I mean, yes, I'm sure there are some specific individuals who could tell that story of their radicalization.

14:05Sam Harris:I mean, I'm not saying that's an impossible way for the dominoes to fall. But generally speaking, that's not how you get jihadism, right? You get jihadism by the indoctrination into specific religious beliefs, and those beliefs spread, right? People find those beliefs compelling for a variety of reasons. And if no other reason that they get drummed into the heads of kids since the moment they can speak, right? So this is what's happened among the Palestinians, right? I mean, the Palestinians are a highly radicalized culture because they have taught more than one generation of kids that this is the way the world is, right?

14:43Sam Harris:I mean, you literally have four-year-olds being raised to aspire to be martyrs. You know, this is in the curriculum in UN-funded schools in the Palestinian territory. So it's just, it's a cultural problem. It's a religious problem. It's a theological problem. It's a problem that the Muslim world has to sort out. I mean, because the real problem is jihadism is not a distortion of the faith. It's just, it's at the core of the faith. I'm not saying that all Muslims are jihadists, but they're, it is hard to do the rhetorical work to disavow jihadism and pull it up by its roots and still sound like you are an orthodox Muslim.

15:19Sam Harris:I mean, it's very, it's not, it's not an easy project. I'm not even sure it's a viable project in the end. So I'm not, I'm definitely worried about this slow-moving collision we're going to keep having with Islamic orthodoxy. But we should point out that fairly doctrinaire Muslims are still trying to do it, even in states that are not at all democratic or open. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, they're disavowing their hardline clerics, and I believe ceasing to export jihadism the way they were. Saudi was funding jihadist-inspired mosques all over the world for the longest time. I believe they have reined that in, or at least that's been reported.

16:01Sam Harris:All of those changes are good, and those changes are possible. And it's pretty clear that the UAE doesn't want to become an ISIS-like society. and all of that's good. But the problem is there's a very obvious place to stand within Islam to look at the UAE project and say, well, this is all just worldliness and corruption and apostasy. And the real Islam teaches exactly what the Islamic State has been saying all along. And we have to deal with that.

16:28Jaron Lanier:Speaking of that, is that true information? Is it the UAE that no longer is funding college education to the UK for fear of radicalization?

16:36Sam Harris:Yeah, they're afraid that their students will be radicalized by the Muslims at Oxford and Cambridge and the London School of Economics, which tells you just how far this problem has spread. So, you know, convict the UAE of Islamophobia, if you like. That will be amusing.

16:52Jaron Lanier:Yeah. It seems many on the right and left are united against this war for different reasons, obviously, but which side's reasons were you more?

16:59Sam Harris:I think the left's, frankly. I mean, the rights, the America first dogmatism of the right and the anti-Semitism, the anti-Israel position of the right, it is what it is. I mean, it's easier for me to take the measure of. What's on the left is just fundamental moral confusion about everything I just said, right? I mean, they won't acknowledge that jihadism is even a problem. I mean, everything I just said is just pure Islamophobia and racism, as though that charge made any sense. I mean, the left has been gulled by Islamists. The left has, I mean, we've got people who jihadists would actually massacre, if they had a chance, essentially championing the cause of jihadists, right, on our most elite university campuses, you know, in a wide variety of organizations, you know, left of center in the West.

17:53Sam Harris:But the level of moral confusion is just astounding. So these are, the useful idiots are on the left. I guess there's some useful idiots on the right for other reasons, but I don't know, just again, the asymmetry here is worth noting. On the right, you know, the cultural capture on the left has been of our most elite institutions, right? I mean, the moral confusion you see is in places like the New York Times and at Harvard University and, you know, foundations and, you know, it's just the employees of, you know, all high-status companies. I mean, this is, it's not, we're not talking about Breitbart and Fox News and organs of culture that advertise their confusion with every breath.

18:37Sam Harris:These are our best institutions that have been vitiated by this form of anti-Semitism, this form of moral confusion, this form of apology for a theocracy and atrocity. I mean, if you walk through the front door of a mainstream liberal organization and start arguing for the rights of women and girls in the Muslim world, you are immediately painted as a racist Islamophobe, right? That's the center of gravity, left of center in, again, our most elite institution. So that's just, that's God-awful. How do you explain that?

19:09Jaron Lanier:I mean, what do you think they would say if you just pointed that out to them and said, let me just explain to you what life is like under that rule? Does that bother you?