507. The Ayatollah Is Killed - REACTION

23:39Rory Stewart:push back. Okay, I mean, if Lindsey Graham wants to have this argument, they have completely missed where the real threat is in the world. Completely missed it. What Iran has demonstrated in its response over the last 36 hours is that Iran was not an imminent existential threat to the United States, to Europe, or even to the region. iran appears to have tried to release its maximal response and it ended up killing i don't know less than half a dozen people this is not a country that is an existential threat to global security yes it funded proxies yes it funded terrorism yes it did horrendous things in the past but in terms of the legal test which is is this an imminent threat and does it have the capacity to existentially threaten?

24:30Rory Stewart:No. Which country does? Russia. I mean, just try to compare for a second Trump's attitude to Russia and Trump's attitude to Iran. As I've just pointed out, Iran is an impoverished, bankrupt country that was able to fly a few ballistic missiles in and kill less and half a dozen people in this latest round of attacks. Russia has launched a war in which they've seized 20 % of a European state, has caused 1.2 million casualties, threatens the entire existence of NATO, the Baltic, and the Western Alliance. $600 billion worth of damage. And what is Trump doing in response to that? he's removed 50 billion dollars of u.s financial support for ukraine he's threatening to cut off satellite support he's weakening the nato alliance he's flattering putin if these guys actually cared about regional security if anything any of this was actually to do with making the world a safer place they would be focusing on ukraine and russia not bombing iran yeah well on the back i've

25:44Alastair Campbell:never met lindsey graham but on the back of it because we've got our interview on leading with gavin newsom coming out tomorrow i i said i whatsapped him and said um is lindsey graham as big a slime ball as he seems and he came back 200 so he's obviously got trump's double double percenting issue i'll tell you the other thing roy that is that when i mean we said at the start you know this is a kind of historic development historic event no doubt about that at all it'll be written about and and talked about for decades and right into the future and sometimes how history moves on actual at the time possibly seemingly small decisions this came from this piece by this guy nate swanson and he said that when trump said he was going to come to the aid of iran's protesters remember a few weeks ago yeah and but then he held off and he offered negotiations.

26:43Alastair Campbell:Okay. And what this guy Swanson is saying is that was a massive opening for Tehran if they could have taken it, but it squandered the opening. The idea apparently was a regional summit in Turkey between foreign ministers, which, and it was deliberately made to look a little bit like the framework that Obama had. And then he had this really interesting line. Iran simply couldn't bring itself to let Trump's safe face and score a symbolic win. In truth, this is when Khamenei is still alive. Khamenei is just as obsessed with appearances as Trump is. He's made it impossible for his negotiating team to offer even minor compromises, much less the kind of big concession Trump is demanding.

27:27Alastair Campbell:So it's interesting, you know, the negotiations, and we said on when we did the podcast yesterday, the Omani negotiator, the foreign minister, and by the way, Oman's now have been added to the list of countries that have been attacked by Iran. But the Omani negotiator, he was actually talking about confidence and progress and felt things are moving in the right direction. But what this guy seems to be saying, we've thought about Trump in terms of fake negotiation, but maybe Khamenei was doing the same.

27:52Rory Stewart:Well, listen, I mean, I think we keep circling around the same problem, which is Khamenei was a terrible man. He was a blood-soaked autocrat of posing as a cleric without much deep theological learning. He was basically a frontline revolutionary. And his regime was horrible. And tens of millions of Iranians turned deeply against this regime. It had almost no support left, and they're desperate for it to be toppled. But, but, but, anyone who believes Trump claiming that the reason he did this was for the human rights of the Iranian people, which is the Lindsey Graham argument, or that what got Netanyahu out of bed in the morning is what they really want to do is help the human rights of the Iranian people.

28:41Rory Stewart:It's for the birds, right? This is, at best, them saying, this is a nasty regime that had proxies with Hezbollah, Houthi, Hamas, and the Shia militia. and this is our opportunity this is the best chance we're ever going to get not because they're a threat but because they're weak yeah we're going to take them out actually at the moment not when they pose a threat we're going to take them out at the moment when we know that really they're not going to be able to do much damage to us they were not on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon they were not on the verge of being able to wipe other countries off the map and and why am i saying that not to whitewash them or say the iranian regime is pleasant but to say that the whole global order depends on a much higher bar than just saying this is an unpleasant regime that in the past threatened regional stability.

29:39Once you start that game, look at what's happening with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

29:44Rory Stewart:Look what's happening with Thailand and Cambodia. Look what's happening with Azerbaijan and Armenia. Look what's happening with Rwanda and the Congo. Look what's happening in the Sudan. Look what's happening in Libya. I mean, so the world is a very nasty place, but you don't make it better by the US and Israel getting out of bed in the morning, arbitrarily saying this is the number one priority in the world, ignoring much bigger problems like Russia and Ukraine and killing the leadership of Iran.

30:13Alastair Campbell:And then people like Lindsey Graham, who will then be ventilated by people like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe and all these people, basically turn on your allies because they're not 100 % echoing what you have suddenly just decided to do without any consultation with your allies whatsoever.

30:33Rory Stewart:Yeah. That's the other game changer. Boris Johnson will do this initially. I mean, this is, you know, you were teasing me about the Liberal Bedwetter article when he said Rory… There's a lefty bedwetter. Lefty bedwetter. Okay. Lefty bedwetter. And basically what he was saying there is because I am saying that Trump is engaged in illegal, reckless, immoral foreign policy, that must mean that I'm a great defender of the Iranian regime or the Chinese regime. And am I not aware of how nasty the Iranians are or how nasty the Chinese are? He said, how can somebody like Boris Johnson, who pretends to be educated, be in a world where he thinks it's enough just to say, here is a nasty regime, and therefore anything Trump does, anything he does, must be fine.

31:20Alastair Campbell:I blame the school he went to, Roy. I just don't think he got a proper education there. I really don't. But also, look, I would really like to do some terrible things to Boris Johnson, but I'm not going to go out and do them. Well, you know, depending, obviously, on how I feel. Let's hope not.

31:34Rory Stewart:But apart from you taking that example, which is a decent example, the reason also we set a much higher bar and we demand an imminent threat is also because of the unintended consequences. Because you're stepping into a dark room because we've seen in Iraq and Syria and Libya and Afghanistan what happens when these things go wrong. So, again, one of the sad things is, of course, I completely understand so many Iranians are so relieved that Hamanis died. So many of them are saying, you know, as many Venezuelans did after Maduro was, you know, why are you not celebrating? This horrible person's gone.

32:16But, of course, I remember so many educated Iraqis, Afghans, Libyans celebrating the removal of the Taliban,

32:26Rory Stewart:celebrating the removal of Gaddafi, celebrating the removal of Saddam Hussein, because they assumed that once the person at the top had gone, things would get much better. And then, of course, what they went into is a massive journey of disappointment in which the United States gets blamed. That's the other thing Trump isn't remembering, right? Either they try to do nation building, Iraq and Afghanistan, and it goes wrong, and you're told that you did the wrong kind of nation building, or you don't do nation building, which is what they did in Libya, in which case you're accused of having just toppled the person and left civil war to unlevel

32:58Alastair Campbell:yeah but you've also got a situation now where so the president uh possession he's out saying that they now have the duty the legitimate duty and right to avenge the killing of khamenei and it and then you see immediately these huge protests in pakistan uh in various parts of pakistan which have led to quite a few people being killed i'm not seeing the latest numbers but there were people being killed in these as this violence erupted you're seeing you're seeing similar protests being put down pretty violently in bangladesh and other parts of the world because what the iranians inevitably are saying is this is a declaration of war against all muslims and then particularly against shiites everywhere in the world possessing said that in in terms now then that will play in because of our, you know, nasty populist extremist politics in Europe as well, that will play into the debates around some of these issues here.

33:58Alastair Campbell:And that's the reason why politicians actually have and states people have to be a little bit more careful. This is the point my friend the diplomat said yesterday when he couldn't, he couldn't understand the hubris and the arrogance of basically saying because we're America, we're going to do this and it's going to work out exactly as we think it will and we want it to and it look Iraq Iraq Afghanistan Libya there's plenty that you've mentioned where that's been the case but in this one they haven't even spelt out really what they see the objective as being they haven't said it's about building a stable Middle East they haven't said it's about developing democracy in Iran they're basically saying we're gonna get rid of the Atolla well they've done that and now what

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37:10Rory Stewart:This episode is brought to you by Whoop.

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38:20Rory Stewart:I also think we're not thinking about what the consequences will be a long way beyond Iran. So what people can now see is an American presidency that effectively says, if we don't like you, we will come after you. if you decide to prosecute in Brazil my friend Bolsonaro I'm going to put 50 % tariffs against you if I feel a meeting in the Oval Office hasn't gone well I'm going to ask for 500 billion dollars worth of minerals if I've had an argument with you I'm going to put your tariffs up to 37 % oh and in this case if I think the negotiations aren't going very well despite the fact you don't have a nuclear weapon you haven't really got a ballistic missile threat to the region I'll come and I'll kill you all right and now and I'm not going to consult with the UN and there's not going to be any norms, it's not going to be illegal arguments, I'm just going to do it whenever I want, about almost whenever issue I want.

39:15And the result, I think, is that people who do not consider

39:22Rory Stewart:themselves the United States' closest allies, and I wonder who those people still are, but the rest of the world, the kind of global south, to quote your friend the President of Finland, is going to be thinking, wait a second, are they going to come after us like this right when an American ambassador turns up in country x and

39:42Alastair Campbell:sub-saharan Africa and that's why they're looking to China yeah that's why they're all that's why

39:46Rory Stewart:they're turning to China and by the way if you don't do it we're going to come and we're just going to assassinate you your entire cabinet or your military command you're all going to be dead now and and we're not going to do it with the UN we're not going to do it so there's um this I was thinking about uh man for all seasons and i don't even remember this this kind of great moment where thomas moore says um what would you do cut a great road through the law to get after the devil and when the last law was down and the devil turned around on you where would you hide the

40:22Alastair Campbell:laws all being flat i i ought to be able to beat you on this because i played roper oh my lord You were Roper.

40:30Rory Stewart:I was Roper in a school play. Well, that's addressed to Roper, isn't it? But I don't remember it.

40:35Alastair Campbell:You've just got a far, far better memory than I've got. I mean, I think that, I do think that one of the other things that's coming out of this, and this comes through all this, we should actually put in the newsletter some of these Foreign Affairs magazine articles. At a time like this, you know, looking through their back catalogue of the stuff they've written about Iran over the last few years is really, really interesting. But one of the points that Rob Malley made in our interview on Leading recently, Rob Malley, the former Biden advisor on Iran, he said, and he wasn't just sort of criticizing Trump on this, he basically said U.S.

41:10Alastair Campbell:administrations generally don't really understand Islamic cultures. I think Trump is imagining that their motivations are somehow the same as his. And I think they're very, very, very, very different. And I do think the more I read into this, it's very interesting. I was reading a lot of the Israeli media today because I think it's, you know, it's very interesting reading that you really get the feeling of reading the Israeli media. Netanyahu is driving this every bit as much as Trump is. And I think you even pick up little signs of the Israelis being a little bit pissed off that Trump is sort of, you know, doing all the blowhard stuff on this.

41:52Alastair Campbell:the Israelis talked about how they dropped 30 bombs on that compound in the first few minutes of this of this conflict now I don't know what the exact numbers are but you get the feeling Israelis were were driving this and I think Netanyahu is absolutely clear about what he's trying to do with Trump I think you have a you have all sorts of different a sense of different kind of motivations for what he's doing it might be a bit of wag the dog it certainly is about showing off American power. It is definitely saying, I'm not Barack Obama. I'm doing things that no other president would do. There may be financial interests at play.

42:29Alastair Campbell:He's got so many different kind of games going on at the same time. And I think that is what makes people like you and me, and I don't think we're alone in this. In fact, I know we're not alone from the sort of messages we got yesterday. And you know, we had over a million people watching and listening yesterday, Roy, through the day.

42:44Rory Stewart:I think people are genuinely alarmed by his motivations. I'm so interested in the comments and thank you guys for coming in because basically what we've got here I think is people putting pretty well so many of the different arguments here. there's a fair number of people saying Rory's a bedwetter there's Rory plays on a rug which I assume means they think I'm a Muslim quite a lot about British appeasement Brits always have the answers but never want to fight from cyber trader 246 with an American flag that's a good good American line Brits always have the answers but never want to fight that that's exactly

43:26Alastair Campbell:presumably what trump had to apologize for saying exactly when he said that the the allies will say that they sent a few people to afghanistan so maybe we need to send cyber trader 246

43:36Rory Stewart:al khan says rather good video on the fighting he did in afghanistan um uh and then all you idiots blathering about russia and ukraine nobody's going to attack russia get that stupid idea out of your head okay listen why am i talking about russia ukraine because there's some people now on social media you might have seen saying Trump is a strategic genius, that the world is in a much better, safer place today than it is a year ago. And the argument they make is this. Hezbollah have been wiped out. The Syrian regime has been toppled. The Iranian leadership has now been wiped out. And all of this is seen as a sign that Trump has made a much safer world, right?

44:23Rory Stewart:but they're missing this enormous Russian-shaped elephant in the room. The really big test on whether Trump has made a safer world is Russia and Ukraine. That's the much, much bigger issue than any of these things. It's only Russia and Ukraine that really poses an existential threat to the West. It's only Russia and Ukraine where 1.2 million people are killed, 20 % of the territory is taken, etc. And there, Trump has completely failed. And if you look at all the data since the first Trump presidency, look at the number of refugees, the number of internally displaced people, the number of civilians killed in conflict.

44:54Rory Stewart:The amount of conflict in the world is accelerating and people defending Trump and saying he's a strategic genius don't seem to be able to understand that he can get a short-term success killing an ayatollah but the medium long-term consequences you can see. You can see it in Afghanistan, Pakistan, you can see it in Thailand, Cambodia, see it in all these so-called peace deals that Trump does which are basically a list of conflicts which have been sparked under his office well i i mean the the most obvious cartoon

45:24Alastair Campbell:which virtually many many cartoonists around the world seem to have done uh yesterday was a picture of the board of peace and trump saying i'm bored of peace uh because he was as it were launched i mean this is he talks about he's brought eight wars to an end but he's bombed an awful lot of places now in our lifetime it is not unusual that american presidents use military reaction, but he does seem to be doing it quite a lot. He likes to do it in a way where he does it quickly, Venezuela. He says what the objective is. He says he's met it and he sort of gets out and then he kind of does lots of deals.

46:02Alastair Campbell:I think the point that Nate Swanson was making that in this one, it is much less straightforward because the Iranians are much more powerful and they are without their leader, they will get another one and they are much more organized. Now, we should also say, Roy, as you said earlier, I mean, I've got a friend who's Iranian, who lives in London, who has been messaging me for days, you know, is it true? Is he gone? Is he going? Is he going? Really, really excited and happy, possibly even thinking that, you know, someday they might be able to go back. Like our friend Justin Forsyth, who's working with Reza Pellavi, the son of the former Shah.

46:40Alastair Campbell:There are a lot of people to whom this is an amazing positive moment. We should acknowledge there are people on the streets in Tehran. Some people are out mourning, but other people are out waving flags saying, we love Trump. Thank you, Trump.

46:52Rory Stewart:That is going on. Can I interrupt for a second? Why? Look, Lewis James Phillips at 2.59 p.m. Don't interrupt that by the comments, Rory. His regime was horrible. I think it's a wonderful way of looking at public opinion and the way in which people frame this. His regime was horrible, nasty, killed many, many people. Rory, they've made the world a safer place and to have the front to be coming out with garbage like you, I'll get a life. Now, why is it so difficult to explain, dear Louis James Phillip, that the regime can be horrible and nasty and kill many, many people? And also, Trump doing what he's doing doesn't make the world a safer place.

47:29Rory Stewart:Doesn't necessarily. Exactly. Just think about Iraq, right? I mean, Saddam Hussein was horrible, nasty, killed many, many people. Louis James Phillips, do you think the intervention in Iraq made the world a safer place? Gaddafi was horrible, nasty, killed many, many people. Do you think what we did in Libya made the world a safer place, right?

47:47Alastair Campbell:The thing I say about Libya as well that I think is relevant to this. Libya was a very good example of when you get regime change largely using air power. this is air power that's being used here now Iraq at great cost both to the US and UK and Denmark and Australia and others was also boots on the ground and we just don't know this the other point this guy Nate Swanson makes we just don't know where this war develops whether eventually you do end up getting dragged slowly into a situation which caused this is the other strategic point for the MAGA crowd Trump was adamant that somebody was playing the clips on I think it was CNN yesterday, playing all the clips of when he said during the campaign, you won't get any new wars under me.

48:33Alastair Campbell:There will be no wars. There will be no wars with me and all these people waving Trump for peace, Trump the peacemaker. So I think there's, look, I think it's important for you and me, Rory, to try to park what Gavin Newsom, as you'll hear on the podcast tomorrow, rightfully acknowledged is my Trump derangement syndrome. I do have a little bit of that, just as I probably a bit of Johnson derangement syndrome. But what these people who are saying, why can't you see it so clearly? This makes the world a safer place. We don't know that it's going to make the world a safer place. You and I both think it probably won't in the long term.

49:10Alastair Campbell:But the truth is, none of us know, and that includes Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Well, okay, so let's say you're right.

49:19Rory Stewart:I actually disagree. I think we've got a pretty good reason to think it won't make the world a safer place because of the seconds that - I said that. No, but you said we don't know. I think we do know that it'll make the world more dangerous, because I think what we're not thinking about is almost regardless of what happens in Iran, what are the second, third order consequences? And what I was trying to get to is if you were a country that began to sense the American president could do whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted, without international things. Yes, as you say, you ally with China. You also rush to get nuclear weapons.

49:46Rory Stewart:Who are the countries that they're not doing this to, who are equally nasty and unpleasant just like the iranian regime north korea russia why because they got nuclear weapons right and also north korea's fighting them for russia against ukraine let me let me let me just suggest this imagine you were a wealthy uh gulf state at the moment right and you look at this and you think well what if a future american president got out of bed in the morning and thought suddenly decided that I was an autocratic regime and that I had locked a lot of people up or I'd chopped somebody up with a chainsaw and he was going to take action against me and try to wipe me out and my leadership out.

50:32Rory Stewart:Or let's say you were another Gulf state and you thought that Israel was going around Washington telling everybody that you were a state sponsor of terrorism and a backer of Hamas and the world would be a better place if you were wiped off the map and in fact Israel had already been firing missiles at you right are you going to feel looking at this as though you're in a situation where you can relax no you're going to be feeling you are now on a knife edge of the United States being influenced by somebody into thinking that they have the right to go after you with no UN process no international law no Alice what do you do well if you've got a lot of money you buy a nuclear weapon yeah you build a nuclear weapon Of course, he built a nuclear weapon.

51:12Rory Stewart:So I think that this is why Trump may be lucky. And look, if Iran suddenly turns out to be a liberal democratic state in a year's time, that's a wonderful thing for the Iranian people. Great. But that doesn't justify what Trump does. Right. I mean, let's say I do something completely reckless and crazy, and there's a good result at the end of it. That doesn't justify, I don't want to sound like some pompous philosopher, It doesn't justify my act, right? And if the consequences for the rest of the world are to destroy the international legal order, make everybody else get nuclear weapons, go into the shadow of China.

51:51Alastair Campbell:You know, you said we were talking yesterday about what might follow. And I said, maybe they will go for the kind of Delce Rodriguez, take off the head, but then put somebody else in. There was an interview on the radio this morning with one of Trump's Iran advisors in his first term. I think a guy called Abrahams, I think his name was. And he actually said that if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were able to show it had changed its behavior, did not want to attack its neighbors or attack its own people, then he thinks that Trump would be able to live with that. which I think would you know and so that I think is if you go through the possible various outcomes that we might get you've talked about the possible chaos civil war outcome we've talked yesterday about the outcome where basically the Iranian regime just stays as it is but I guess is the best possible option not really democracy because that's going to be such a hard road to get down maybe eventually you get there but in the short term is it not a military I a revolutionary guard corps type government that is much more pragmatic and less ideological.

53:02Rory Stewart:100%. From Israel's point of view, I think the one thing they want is to feel that Iran is not a threat to Israel. That's fundamentally what they consider. And I've had Iranian officials say about Syria, and I imagine they'd say the same about Iran, that they don't care if Syria is a weak, failed, broken state with the Druze breaking off, the Alawites breaking off. In fact, they'll continue to bomb it and wipe out the military. All that they care about is it's not a threat to Israel. So if Iran is no longer a threat to Israel, I think Netanyahu will be happy. And Trump, I guess, has no interest as far as I can see in democracy or human rights or any of this kind of stuff.

53:43Rory Stewart:What actually matters to Trump? Well, what matters is being able to declare a victory, really. I don't think he's very concerned about what kind of constitution there is, what happens there. He'll want to be able to say he's got some oil deals. And then he'll want everyone to forget it and he'll move on to someone else. Look, I doubt Trump can name three cities in Iran. He's certainly never been there. I mean, the idea that the guy, we heard this from Anthony Scaramucci, trying to brief him on the Middle East. it turned out that Trump knew so little that that Skyrim was trying to show him clips from Lawrence of Arabia to try to give him the most kind of basic information.

54:19Rory Stewart:So the idea that Trump has somehow got a geostrategic analysis. So, you know, if you were to sit down with Trump and say, how strong is the revolutionary gun? Do you think, you know, the tradition of martyrdom and Shia Islam and the tradition of Qadrbala and the Shahid is going to be important? He'd look at you and say, you've gone completely mad. He doesn't have any idea. But if it turned out that he'd struck, I don't know, some other country, he'd be perfectly happy, provided he could say, you know, aren't our missiles wonderful? Now, instantly people are saying two things which I think are worth saying.

54:52Rory Stewart:One of them is people are pointing out that three U.S. servicemen have been killed now. This has come in during our call. They said CENTCOM said it, Al Jazeera is reporting it. I think CENTCOM we can trust. Yep. So that seems to be the case.

55:08Alastair Campbell:Well, that ups the ante.

55:10Rory Stewart:And that will be interesting because, as you say, this is not popular in the United States. And the second thing is somebody saying Cuba will be next. Absolutely. Seems very likely to me Cuba will be next.

55:19Alastair Campbell:Yeah. There's also in the comments, I've not been studying the comments quite as closely as you, Roy, because, as you know, I don't really read comments on social media very much. But it's very interesting. Just when you were talking there, two came out at the same time. One was from Mr. Ploby, and it said of us too, Trump derangement syndrome on full show, no solutions, is just pathetic hand-wringing. Trump has solved Gaza, solving Iran after Biden failed on both, but no credit given. And then at Unkavili says, we can thank Trump for the demise of adherence to international law. So I'm afraid with all of these things, he's such a divisive figure that we're going to get that.

55:53Alastair Campbell:We have, as yesterday, done a few sort of polling questions of people who are watching and listening. Was the war inevitable? Yes, 37, no 63. Here's a really interesting question. Has international law ever truly been respected and adhered to in practice? Yes, 33, no 67. I get that that is a really significant question because, of course, the global South, or much of it, what used to be called the third world, has long believed that actually international law is a sort of construct for the powerful nations to keep staying powerful. so I thought that was a very good question are Trump's Iran strikes primarily motivated by a desire to distract from X-Fistain, yes 69 no 31 but Tommy Vita says that's wrong

56:40Rory Stewart:yeah well look I I am really interested in the way in which the whole political context feeds into all of this, you know your populism post-truth polarization stuff and criminality and corruption and cruelty because it's the political background that makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Things which basically you could have said comfortably for the last hundred years about the importance of due process, the constitution, the rule of law, why presidents don't just get out of bed and on a whim go and assassinate the leaders of another country you didn't need to explain for about 100 years yeah and the fact that we are now in a world where i reckon probably half the population of the united states half the population of britain uh basically thinks it's enough to say these are nasty people and if they're nasty people it's fair enough and what are we grumbling about right and and i think there's so much of this is about the sense in which social media is killing us hmm has put us into this mad polarized world it's not just trolls it's a sense that our minds are getting kind of flattened out yeah we're losing the ability to think two or three stages ahead everything has become either you're with Trump or you're a fan of the Iranian regime and yeah and if you add to that the technology point which you began with which is that we've now entered a world where these new forms of intelligence gathering technology targeting basically means that things feel pretty cost-free for Israel and the US when they launch these things then then you're in a very weird world because you're putting together polarized very superficial very instantaneous spectacle politics with an ability to pull out weapons with what feels like to these leaders very little risk or consequence well Rory at the

58:54Alastair Campbell:risk of opening up an enormous new chapter you as the rest is politics resident AI guru what are we to make of this open AI anthropic department of war fandango over the last few days where it's it's it appears to be calling a traitor somebody who didn't want to allow him to use the ai models in whatever way he wanted

59:21Rory Stewart:it's completely amazing story so maybe just something to finish on because if you really want to understand the world we're in don't just look at the way that trump gets involved in brazilian prosecutions or kills leaders in iran or kidnaps people in ferns weather look what he's doing to American business. So Anthropic is one of the most extraordinary successful AI companies in the world. Not necessarily everybody here is using Claude, but anyone who's involved in business will be very, very aware of the power of these products, and they're particularly powerful in coding. And they've been working very closely with the Department of Defense.

1:00:02Rory Stewart:But Dario Modi, who was the head of safety at OpenAI, has also been one of the leading voices, one of the few leading voices talking perpetually about the risks of AI. I talk about different types of risks, creating bioweapons all the way through to autonomous stuff. And what he said in a very respectful letter to Pete Hexas is, I'm a patriotic American. We're very proud to be working with the Pentagon. We'd love to continue to support you. There are just two things we won't do. We're not prepared to use our AI models for general surveillance of the American population. And the point he's making there is that the American law hasn't caught up with the way that the kind of data that's already available openly churned through an AI model would let the Department of Defense know so much about every American citizen in real time.

1:00:50Rory Stewart:And the second thing he said is, and we won't allow our AI to be used for autonomous weapons. In other words, the idea with autonomous weapons is because of jamming, particularly on the front line Russia-Ukraine. You want to be able to, the dream of the generals is you just fly a drone or a plane out there with no human being in it. And it doesn't even have to connect back to the base. There's no human control. There's not a fiber optic cable. There's not a radio signal. It just makes its own decisions who the hell it wants to kill. Right. And Dario Moday has said AI models are not reliable enough.

1:01:24Rory Stewart:they're just not reliable enough yet and maybe in the future but at the moment they're not reliable enough for you to release an ai autonomous weapon and just let it fly and

1:01:34Alastair Campbell:decide who it's going to kill with no human control but the violence of hex's letter to him

1:01:39Rory Stewart:was just and then hex's response is fascinating so what hex has said is not just the pentagon will no longer buy he said any american company that has any commercial dealings of any sort with anthropic going forward and anthropic as a company you know valued in hundreds of billions will not be able to do any business with the pentagon in the future so the idea is that amazon right or google or nvidia right who provide chips to the pentagon email services to the pentagon software phones the pentagon will not be able to have any commercial readings they'll have to divest all their billions of dollars of investment and anybody dealing them these are the laws designed basically to deal with suppliers from china this is what you do against an enemy not what you do against an american company now i hope this could be the beginning of europe having a very serious conversation with get him in yeah and say him 27 passports but listen absolutely saying saying look we cannot in europe not have our own foundation ai model we can't be completely dependent on trump's us or china yeah right so why don't we say okay this is horrible and it's completely illegal what hexath is trying to do to anthropic but ideally isn't the worst isn't the worst isn't the worst part of the story that

1:03:06Alastair Campbell:anthropic having been booted out of the of the negotiating room sam altman just waltzes in and

1:03:11Rory Stewart:and picks up the deal and and apparently says i've no problem with you continuing the kind of surveillance you're currently intending to do and and because i because it's currently legal in u.s law and and there will be human accountability not human control so what altman seems to be saying is if the drone flies out and starts killing a bunch of innocent people a human will be held accountable after the event oh great they won't be in control during the event

1:03:34Alastair Campbell:Fantastic. Absolutely brilliant. Well, that gives me the heebie-jeebies, the idea of these tech bros now being in charge of our armies. A lot of that is happening already. And it's been a very bad weekend for tech, Rory, because you probably saw Burnley were completely robbed by VAR and deprived one of the greatest comebacks ever. final polling question this was inspired by something you said earlier could trump name three cities in iran seven percent think yes 58 percent think no 35 say he couldn't name one i think he could name one he could definitely name one rory thanks for joining up yet again i think it's the first weekend we've ever done two emergency podcasts should also say people seem to be liking our new regular updated newsletter.

1:04:20Alastair Campbell:It's a roundup newsletter. I write in it. I think Rory might be in it. The rest is classified people. They're doing stuff. The link is in the description. You see, thank you, Callum. That's the long-suffering Callum, who wrote a very good piece in the last newsletter because he was essentially making sure that I brushed my teeth and stuff like that on the trip to Ukraine.

1:04:39Rory Stewart:Yeah, he did an amazing job getting you safely in and out of Ukraine. So I got a huge credit to come. We're glad to have you back and glad your voice is back well it's almost back almost there almost there right still feel rough but we'll get there all right love to see you and thank you listen all the members and the people who are commenting thank you for coming in whether you agreed or disagreed it's a great conversation we've got to keep having it because this is difficult stuff but it's not easy judging what kind of threat iran posed it's not easy judging what the consequences the intervention will be and it's not easy trying to explain why international law matters when there's so much nonsense around international law the last 20 years.

1:05:15Rory Stewart:So thank you all for joining the conversation. See you soon. See you soon. Bye bye. Bye.

1:05:27Rory Stewart:Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry. So Rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing, now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great. Did Vladimir Putin interfere in the US 2016 presidential election? I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst.

1:06:07Rory Stewart:And we are the hosts of The Rest is Classified. And in our latest series, we're going deep inside the 2016 election to reveal the true story of whether the Russians helped Donald Trump take the White House.

1:06:18Alastair Campbell:This is the unbelievable story of how Russian spies first hacked and then leaked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, how Julian Assange got involved with Putin's spies, and how 2016 marked the point that the world changed forever.

1:06:36Rory Stewart:Get the full insider scoop by listening to The Rest is Classified, wherever you get your podcasts.