0:00

Howdy, this is Jim Rut and

0:02

this is the Jim Rut Show.

0:04

Listeners have asked us to

0:06

provide pointers to some of

0:08

the resources we talk about

0:11

on the show. We now

0:13

have links to books

0:15

and articles referenced in

0:17

recent podcasts that are

0:19

available on our website.

0:21

We also offer full

0:23

transcripts. Go to Jim

0:25

Rut Show.com. That's Jim

0:28

Rut Show.com. Today's

0:32

guest is John Rob. John is

0:34

a leading thinker in military, political,

0:36

and geopolitical strategy. He's a

0:38

former Air Force pilot and

0:41

special ops guy and one

0:43

of the first analysts for

0:45

that new fangled internet thing

0:47

back at Forrester research. He's

0:49

an entrepreneur, a writer, and

0:52

a thinker. Today he has

0:54

a great substak that I

0:56

subscribe to. John Rob at

0:58

substak.com. Welcome! Thanks for having me

1:01

back. Yeah, John's been on too

1:03

many times the county's one of

1:05

our go-to guys and we're thinking

1:07

about strategy and interesting ways of

1:09

looking at the world. He most

1:11

recently was on an EP 254.

1:13

We talked about one of his

1:15

sub-stack essays. What went wrong with

1:17

America? Well worth reading. Today we're

1:19

going to talk about his substack

1:21

essay, Blitzing DC, where we're going

1:23

to talk about the idea of

1:25

network organizations taking control. So John,

1:27

I'm going to jump around a

1:29

little bit, change the orders, a tad

1:31

in your essay. Why don't we start

1:34

with the early roots of network warfare

1:36

from the Iraq insurgency? Okay, if I

1:38

could back up even a little bit

1:40

more. I mean, what we're seeing is the

1:43

emergence of a way of

1:45

making decisions with networks. and

1:47

doing that within an organizational

1:49

structure. And that's being driven

1:51

by networking, changing the way we

1:54

think and the way we organize

1:56

society. It's kind of McLuhan-esque, you

1:58

know, the medium. is the message it's

2:01

rewiring us, just like the printing press

2:03

rewired us and changed society as a

2:05

result. You know, constitutional government, everything else,

2:08

those printed documents that we use as

2:10

the basis for organizing society. So what

2:12

I saw in Iraq, you know, being

2:15

special ops and having my experience as

2:17

internet analyst is that the way the

2:19

insurgency was operating was different than the

2:21

analysis that was coming out of DC,

2:24

coming out of the DOD, coming out

2:26

of the NSA and CIA, and it

2:28

was operating differently, and it was making

2:31

it very hard to run a counterinsurgency.

2:33

And some of the core dynamics was,

2:35

you know, some of the differences for

2:38

instance were instead of like one large

2:40

insurgent organization, maybe two that mirrored the

2:42

nation state, you know, with the political

2:45

arm and a military arm, etc. That

2:47

you could roll up, you know, a

2:49

big pyramid organization that you could roll

2:51

up by taking the... people at the

2:54

bottom flipping them and going up to

2:56

the top. We saw 70 different groups.

2:58

I mean, each of these groups had

3:01

a motivation for fighting. Some were jihadi,

3:03

all sorts of different flavors of jihadi.

3:05

Some were prosodom, some were anti-sidam, nationalists.

3:08

They were criminal organizations, tribal organizations. Each

3:10

group was paper thin. So you could

3:12

roll them up very quickly, but somehow

3:15

they were coordinating to take on the

3:17

US military and keep it at bay.

3:19

So I started piecing together how it

3:22

was working and that was my first

3:24

insight into the networked organization as an

3:26

emergent organizational structure. That makes sense. It

3:28

was quite interesting. Here we are the

3:31

most powerful country on earth with some

3:33

powerful allies and we couldn't really cleanly

3:35

defeat, you know, a bunch of ragtag

3:38

dudes. It was, as you say, it

3:40

was a swarm. You'd smack this one.

3:42

Another one would pop up and the

3:45

survivors from this would join with that

3:47

one. And they could coordinate even though

3:49

they were enemies, right? And of course,

3:52

this is a famous Middle Eastern saying,

3:54

the enemy of my enemy is my

3:56

friend, right? Exactly. At least operation. And

3:58

so the next time we saw this

4:01

really pop up or more or less

4:03

simultaneously with the Arab Spring and Occupy.

4:05

Well the organizational type that I identified

4:08

in Iraq and we saw it also

4:10

in Nigeria was a kind of open

4:12

source dynamic is that there wasn't a

4:15

hierarchy that these groups were all united

4:17

based on a single what I call

4:19

plausible promise was the name from open

4:22

source software, a single unifying goal. It's

4:24

usually a very general, very simple goal

4:26

that everyone can agree with, you know,

4:29

70, 80% of the people, given country

4:31

or whatever, could agree with that one

4:33

goal. And they all worked together to

4:35

try to realize that goal. And each

4:38

had a different reason why they were

4:40

trying to achieve it and different ideas,

4:42

what that actually meant when they did

4:45

achieve it, what to do afterwards. That

4:47

allowed them to coordinate and they used

4:49

a kind of very sloppy kind of

4:52

throw it against the wall, see what

4:54

works. If it works, it's reported by

4:56

the press and other things and it

4:59

starts propagating very quickly. Everyone just copies

5:01

the success. Innovated the US. US had

5:03

a $3 billion counter IED program and

5:06

these guys were running circles around it.

5:08

They'd have fixes within two weeks. I

5:10

think 30 times faster in terms of

5:12

their innovation rate than the IRA. So

5:15

this was like, wow. And then I

5:17

wrote up a New York Times op-ed

5:19

on this and saying, you know, here's

5:22

how you defeat it is you hit

5:24

it in different directions and by using

5:26

the Shia militias as a kind of

5:29

anvil. And that worked, that kind of

5:31

died down after the Iraq war kind

5:33

of subsided. And then we saw it

5:36

again in the Arab Spring, the same

5:38

open source dynamic in this case in,

5:40

you know, the best example that was

5:42

getting rid of Numbaric in Egypt and

5:45

that unifying goal united a huge protest

5:47

moment. and it was done largely online

5:49

and they kicked it off and no

5:52

matter what they did they couldn't unravel

5:54

it because there were so many people

5:56

that wanted that similar goal even though

5:59

that every single person that protest probably

6:01

had a different idea as to what

6:03

removing Mubarak did. The leadership, there wasn't

6:06

really any leadership, and anytime they had

6:08

an influential figure come in and try

6:10

to take control of it and say,

6:13

okay, we should be talking about constitutional

6:15

reform or this is what we have

6:17

to do, they were kind of pushed

6:19

aside. No one really wanted to talk

6:22

about all that stuff. Really, they wanted

6:24

to follow anybody who was leading them

6:26

towards removing Mubarak. We saw a little

6:29

bit of that in the US with

6:31

the Occupy movement and the Tea Party,

6:33

like similar open source dynamic and protest

6:36

structure. So we find with all of

6:38

these is that, you know, they can

6:40

create massive crowds, they can swarm the

6:43

streets, and that it just is all

6:45

the typical ways that you would use

6:47

to unravel a protest, like negotiating with

6:49

them, giving them a couple concessions, didn't

6:52

work because you couldn't give enough concessions

6:54

to everybody. to unwind it. You might

6:56

take out a teeny piece of it,

6:59

but you wouldn't be able to take

7:01

out the entire group. Yeah, let me

7:03

respond a little bit on Arab Spring

7:06

and Occupy in particular. What are the

7:08

things you emphasized is empathy triggers. You

7:10

know, famously the Arab Spring was triggered

7:13

when a merchant who had been treated

7:15

unfairly by the police, I think, burned

7:17

himself to death in Tunisia and then

7:20

at one of these high... emotional valence

7:22

things, occupying it was less a significant

7:24

event, but the trauma of the first

7:26

really devastating financial crisis in the lifetimes

7:29

of most of the people that were

7:31

participating with the Great Recession, which is

7:33

now already receded into the rearview mirror,

7:36

but it was pretty scary at the

7:38

time. There was two weeks there where

7:40

it looked like the whole house of

7:43

cards was coming down. But this is

7:45

an interesting thing, is that both of

7:47

those basically failed. You know, the Arab

7:50

Spring, yeah, they threw out Mubarak, but

7:52

they got CECI, an even worse dictator.

7:54

And I did throw at Gaddafi in

7:56

Libya, but now they got chaos, right?

7:59

They might, you know, hard to say

8:01

if they wouldn't have been better off

8:03

with Gaddafi. Occupied, fizzled out, basically. One

8:06

thing to the memetic stage was the

8:08

99 versus the 1. So that was

8:10

their one victory. But it didn't really,

8:13

it didn't last. So, you know, this

8:15

shows the weakness in some sense of

8:17

the networks of network warfare, at least

8:20

in terms of long-term staying power against

8:22

an entrenched power. Yeah, I mean, it

8:24

swarms have had a spotty record of

8:27

success, you know, these warm protests. empathy

8:29

triggers played a big part. I mean,

8:31

the opportunity triggers come out of, you

8:33

know, I dug into empathy and tried

8:36

to figure out exactly what it was,

8:38

and I found out it isn't sympathy,

8:40

it isn't what we think it is.

8:43

It's really just a mental modeling of

8:45

a victim. And it's a high information

8:47

flow event. When you have empathy for

8:50

somebody being victimized in front of you,

8:52

like George Floyd or the man burning

8:54

in that, you know, street peddler that

8:57

was immoleated himself in Tunisia. You feel

8:59

like you're then and you mentally modeled

9:01

them and their enemies are your enemies

9:03

for that moment onward and that other

9:06

people who do the same thing are

9:08

united together. It forms a kind of

9:10

a loose tribalism that serves as the

9:13

basis for swarm developing. You know, empathy

9:15

works particularly well online is that we

9:17

don't have a lot of the filters

9:20

that we would have in real life

9:22

for empathy. I mean, in order to

9:24

function you can't be empathetic to everything

9:27

that's going on with everybody else because

9:29

you're you'll be totally incapacitated. Imagine a

9:31

doctor or nurse trying to get through

9:34

their own day if they had to

9:36

empathize with every single patient to the

9:38

extreme levels that would be necessary to

9:40

do it. So we have filters in

9:43

real life but online we see it

9:45

like it hits us viscerally when we

9:47

see a video or a picture or

9:50

something else coming in on our feed

9:52

and we feel it at a deep

9:54

level and it connects us and we

9:57

we can't filter it out or it's

9:59

hard. So yeah, empathy triggers is one

10:01

of the mechanisms that can, you know,

10:04

create a swarm. We saw, you know,

10:06

saw that at work with the swarm

10:08

in response to the invasion of Ukraine,

10:11

and that kicked off. In that regard,

10:13

you know, escalated the conflict, you know,

10:15

from a regional war to a new

10:17

Cold War. And so now swarms are

10:20

starting to get like dangerous because we

10:22

weren't in control of that. That was

10:24

just a kind of a group mind,

10:27

you know, reframing the conflict as a

10:29

new struggle against an emergent Hitler or,

10:31

you know, a threat to the world

10:34

and we had to go back to

10:36

Cold War thinking. We disconnected them all

10:38

at once and isolated and pushed them

10:41

towards China. So. At a strategic level

10:43

for the United States, that was a

10:45

terrible thing, but we didn't really want

10:47

Russia with China together, but the swarm

10:50

pushed it. We'll talk about Ukraine later,

10:52

because I think we have quite a

10:54

different point of view on Ukraine, but

10:57

that's all right. So let's move through

10:59

the historic timeline here. The next big

11:01

example that you give, and this is

11:04

where it becomes, I'm called hybrid swarm,

11:06

maybe. You don't use that term, but

11:08

I'm going to throw it out there.

11:11

And that's the Trump 2016 campaign. Our

11:13

mutual friend Jordan Hall did a really

11:15

interesting deep dive on the red religion

11:18

versus the blue church. Tell us a

11:20

little bit about your take on the

11:22

2026 campaign and how that was a

11:24

new variant on network insurgency. Yeah, Jordan

11:27

took a, yeah, it's classic because he

11:29

did a reformation kind of framework for

11:31

this where you have the wild Protestants,

11:34

you know, fiery Protestants, each with their

11:36

own Bible, each with their own little

11:38

variations on the church versus the kind

11:41

of universal Catholic church, which was sparked

11:43

by, you know, the printing press. Martin

11:45

Luther did. spark it off because he

11:48

posted his thesis is because it was

11:50

printed afterwards and spread out, right? So

11:52

we have the same thing with this

11:54

is that, you know, the networking is

11:57

that what we saw with the Trump

11:59

campaign is that we took this kind

12:01

of open source dynamic and applied it

12:04

to politics. And there were a lot

12:06

of people who were not happy with

12:08

the way things were going and how

12:11

things were this globalization of the United

12:13

States. was a playing out and this

12:15

kind of globalized perspective was not yielding

12:18

the kind of prosperity, but they saw

12:20

a lot of fraud. They saw it

12:22

a lot of corruption. They didn't feel

12:25

like they're making progress and all sorts

12:27

of other reasons. And that Trump represented

12:29

a kind of possible promise, a unifying

12:31

goal. He was a grenade, a political

12:34

grenade that could stick in the White

12:36

House to disrupt stuff. And in that

12:38

regard, he really wasn't a candidate in

12:41

the traditional sense. He was an idea,

12:43

bomb disruption. insurgency formed around them to

12:45

get them into office. And they pushed

12:48

them and pushed them into innovative, constantly

12:50

adopted a form of political maneuver. It

12:52

was maneuver-based operations where they were constantly

12:55

shifting topics. Trump's natural style, our natural

12:57

style, kind of fed into that. He'd

12:59

switch topics constantly, be disruptive, make big

13:01

bold claims, in one direction or another,

13:04

or faint, went in one direction another.

13:06

drawing the opposition off, he confused her

13:08

psychology, disrupted the establishment, and it was

13:11

successful. Got him into office. But he

13:13

didn't have any staying power. So as

13:15

soon as he got into office, the

13:18

objective was complete, the insurgency kind of

13:20

melted away, and he was there alone,

13:22

just, you know, throwing punches, and it

13:25

was crushing him, and he wasn't really

13:27

able to do as much disruption as

13:29

he possibly could. But they, you know,

13:32

achieved what they wanted. Yeah, it is

13:34

interesting that the Trump administration really achieved

13:36

very little. The only really substantive thing

13:38

it did for the perspective, at least

13:41

some of its backers, was the big

13:43

tax cut. And of course, that was

13:45

not very populist. You know, what was

13:48

the most favored group in the tax

13:50

cut? Real estate developers. There's a real

13:52

shock for you. And, you know, it

13:55

wasn't horrible for average Joe's, but it

13:57

was certainly waited towards the fat cats.

13:59

And so, you know, you know, not

14:02

populist in the slight. Yeah, no, its

14:04

policies really didn't matter. I mean, there

14:06

were a lot of, you know, things

14:08

like, remember the Access Hollywood video and

14:11

stuff like that. that other stuff. I

14:13

mean, everybody came to be able to

14:15

like would say, oh, he's gone, he's

14:18

dead, he's like, by all conventional measure,

14:20

he's gone. He's finished. For about the

14:22

20th time, right? Yeah, but this one

14:25

was like, had to be it. I

14:27

go, this has to be it, he's

14:29

done, right? And I was like, no,

14:32

he's not a candidate. He's a weapon,

14:34

he's a grenade. I mean, they don't

14:36

judge him based on this, you know,

14:39

you know, they want him, to be

14:41

disruptive, to be disruptive, to be disruptive,

14:43

like that, like that, like that, like

14:45

that, like that, like that in there.

14:48

Let's say they. Now this is interesting

14:50

because there is no they. It's not

14:52

like there's like four guys sitting in

14:55

a room saying we're going to stir

14:57

this shit up do you think or

14:59

is this a true populist network vibration

15:02

that forms these this particular network? Yeah

15:04

I mean it was open source there

15:06

was lots of different people with lots

15:09

of different motivations for joining it. And

15:11

you can see it on read it,

15:13

you can see it on other places

15:16

I did that whole, you know, the

15:18

most popular group that was promoting Trump

15:20

on read it. They did an interview

15:22

with me the week after they did

15:25

Trump. because I was the Donald was

15:27

that what it was yeah I was

15:29

doing a statistical analysis on the Donald

15:32

in real time and I calculate what

15:34

was the name of their their little

15:36

god that they produced I would calculate

15:39

the the ratio of phrases versus their

15:41

little god and to show the rise

15:43

and fall memes in the Donald it

15:46

was very interesting it was an idea

15:48

factory it was it was a it

15:50

was a clearinghouse for beams and other

15:52

ideas and it was completely outside of

15:55

the control of the campaign the fact

15:57

actually Actually, this is an interesting thing.

15:59

This is the insight I had from

16:02

Jordan's insight and some research I did.

16:04

It wasn't quite the meme factory, it

16:06

was the beam amplifier. The memes were

16:09

coming out of 4-10. And then they

16:11

would get stuck into the Donald. Some

16:13

would get upregulated and improved. And then

16:16

those would catch the eye of somebody

16:18

in the Trump administration or Fox News,

16:20

and then they'd get broadcast out, and

16:23

then they'd get recycled into a new

16:25

generation. So it was like, exactly. It

16:27

was really a wild emergent system for

16:29

metic propagation. That didn't really get recreated

16:32

in 2020. or 2024, it seemed like

16:34

it was a one-time thing, this unintentional

16:36

emergent meme cyclone that got going there

16:39

in 2016. Yeah, I mean it had

16:41

to do with the fact that we

16:43

were moving towards, you know, Packatized media.

16:46

And the Packatized media broke everything down

16:48

all, you know, little videos, little pictures,

16:50

little takes on stuff, you know, little

16:53

posts that encapsulated various parts of a

16:55

description of an event. that packetized flow

16:57

is massive. I mean, it's torrential. What

16:59

they were doing, using this mechanism, was

17:02

that they were easing together into patterns,

17:04

patterns of understanding, sense making, and those

17:06

patterns are basically those memes and then

17:09

and other things, and they put them

17:11

into a, you know, up regulation system,

17:13

they were, you know, they were voted

17:16

up or voted down or, you know,

17:18

modified, and it was kind of a

17:20

little more formalized than what we see

17:23

in the open social media. Then it

17:25

ended up at the top where they

17:27

were being used by Fox and Trump

17:30

and others as weapons. And it was

17:32

an amazing thing to see from the,

17:34

you know, the ground, you know, seeing

17:36

it from, you know, my interviews with

17:39

them. I mean, I wasn't fully, you

17:41

know, pro-pro, everything Trump does as a

17:43

god. And then my interview on the

17:46

top, but I talked about the dynamics

17:48

and they were exactly, you know, following

17:50

this pattern. Yeah, I was watching it

17:53

with great interest as a student of

17:55

network dynamics, though also, but in my

17:57

particular case, a foe of Trump. But

18:00

nonetheless, I had to admire the ad

18:02

hoc creation of this engine, and I

18:04

thought it fairly likely that it would

18:06

work, and it did. So Trump gets

18:09

in, and Red has made a move,

18:11

right? learned how to or has discovered

18:13

accidentally or something network warfare was okay

18:16

at it, you know, unprecedented actually in

18:18

American politics, but now Blue strikes back

18:20

with their counter network. Let's tell us

18:23

about that. The Red Insurgency rolled over

18:25

the Republican Party, rolled over the Democratic

18:27

Party, got him into office. The blue

18:30

network started to form and in response

18:32

to Trump, and it took on a

18:34

different dynamic, a different way of actually

18:37

organizing it based itself on a kind

18:39

of moral standard, a common moral standard.

18:41

It was a collective kind of sense-making,

18:43

very different than the kind of chaotic

18:46

maneuver-based. sensemaking we saw in the Red

18:48

Network. And the Blue Network grounded a

18:50

lot of their moral standards-based approach on

18:53

being against something evil, like against racism,

18:55

against sexism, against colonialism, against, you know,

18:57

something that everyone agrees on is evil.

19:00

And then they started to use that...

19:02

moralism, that kind of moral standard as

19:04

a weapon against everything that Trump did

19:07

and everything that the red network did.

19:09

They started convincing very quickly that, you

19:11

know, the people running the social networks

19:13

that these, you know, people in the

19:16

red insurgency were evil. They're doing something

19:18

morally reprehensible, were a threat, an existential

19:20

threat to everybody. And the social networks

19:23

started banning them, started censoring, started squeezing

19:25

them to the side. That was really

19:27

the big play in 2020, is that

19:30

Biden didn't even run a campaign. By

19:32

all measures, he just sat there, did

19:34

nothing. What did happen is this network

19:37

squeezed the red network down to almost

19:39

nothing, censoring it, and I was worried

19:41

that we were headed towards an era

19:44

of universal censorship and control, particularly as

19:46

AI was jending up to make it

19:48

even easier to do. which I called

19:50

the long night, you know, one orthodox

19:53

way of looking at the world that

19:55

would prevent anyone from having any new

19:57

ideas or challenging the the Orthodox. And

20:00

that control of the social networks, if

20:02

you remember looking back at 2016, Trump

20:04

was everywhere on Facebook and Twitter and

20:07

everywhere else and there was, but in

20:09

2020. He was gone. You know, there

20:11

was barely any kind of flow and

20:14

people were banned and censored and that

20:16

led to the victory of the Blue

20:18

Network. But interestingly, let's talk a little

20:20

bit about the governance of the Blue

20:23

Network and also at about the same

20:25

time just before the emergence of the

20:27

Victory of the Blue Network, the very

20:30

curious George Floyd thing. You know, I've

20:32

researched the George Floyd situation and there

20:34

actually is zero excess... Killings by police

20:37

of black men. It's exactly proportionate to

20:39

the crime rate of black men, as

20:41

it is for white men, as it

20:44

is for Hispanic men, as it is

20:46

for Asian men. It's exact. Two, one

20:48

percent. Roland Fryer's much more detailed work

20:51

with the Houston police also says that

20:53

per encounter with police, if anything, less.

20:55

black men are killed by police than

20:57

you'd estimate based on the number of

21:00

encounters. There's a completely fallacious argument, but

21:02

talk about the empathy. It was a

21:04

horrific act and a horrific video of

21:07

George Floyd being suffocated by a road

21:09

cop and it somehow... resonated with people

21:11

to get them to believe something that

21:14

was just manifestly not true and yet

21:16

it swept the country killed 20 people

21:18

billions of dollars of damage very very

21:21

very interesting and curious movement you know

21:23

based on false premises basically correct yeah

21:25

and the numbers are very very small

21:28

you know we're talking like 20 is

21:30

a delta even if you don't correct

21:32

it for a crime rate or socioeconomic

21:34

status poor neighborhoods tend to have more

21:37

crime. Yeah, no, there wasn't a factual

21:39

basis, but there was a kind of

21:41

a sense with the kind of emerging

21:44

or growing lack better placid. They were

21:46

tired of it, you know, being treated

21:48

like, you know, criminals and getting stopped

21:51

and pulled over. That might have played

21:53

a factor, but frankly, it was the

21:55

empathy trigger that kicked it off, and

21:58

it was a way to oppose. Trump

22:00

as well. And the Blue Network framed

22:02

it that way and it zoomed. We

22:04

had a swarm in the streets,

22:07

billions of damage, a dozen people

22:09

killed, 2,000 cops in the hospital,

22:11

and they didn't even aggregate

22:13

the stats on this. I mean

22:16

there was a resistance within the

22:18

establishment to kind of hide everything

22:20

and bury it. It wasn't any

22:22

coverage of the kind of violence

22:25

in the protests by the major

22:27

media. And they saw as a necessary...

22:29

You know, they, they, you know, mostly peaceful,

22:31

that kind of language. And

22:34

that kind of excess was overlooked

22:36

once with this, and then, you

22:38

know, the problem with a kind

22:40

of a moral framework that's a,

22:42

if you don't agree with this,

22:44

you're evil, your enemy, your

22:47

existential threat, is that it

22:49

can lead to excesses. And

22:51

the Blue Network was incapable

22:53

of policing the excesses of

22:56

the excesses of the framework. particularly

22:59

once they won and they started applying

23:01

it. So, you know, they were able to pull

23:03

in the overreach of that. So just like

23:05

a tiny example, more, you know, kind

23:08

of an example of it is that, you

23:10

know, the blue networks approach to trans

23:12

and going all the way down to

23:14

sports and kids and other things

23:16

and not being able to police

23:18

that and saying, okay, this is

23:20

a mix. You know, what you're

23:22

talking about nine-year-olds. You know, it's,

23:24

of course, generated a countera counter

23:26

reaction. Yeah, that was quite interesting. I

23:29

was actually part of that. The, uh,

23:31

helped form the MIT Free Speech Alliance,

23:33

which is part of the alumni free

23:36

speech alliance quite early on. I'm trying

23:38

to remember quite when that was, I

23:40

think it was, uh, 2021, when the,

23:42

when. We just thought this had gone

23:45

too far. I mean, certainly there is

23:47

still injustice in America, which needs to

23:49

be remediated. Black citizens still don't get

23:52

a fully fair deal in our society.

23:54

It's a hell of a lot better

23:56

than it was when I grew up,

23:58

and I still remember. seeing a

24:00

white's only water fountain when

24:03

I was a kid, which

24:05

was pretty disturbing. But there's

24:07

still a little bit left,

24:09

but it's nothing like the

24:11

screaming that you got. And

24:13

then to insist on censorship,

24:16

and in particular, Dorian Abbott

24:18

came to MIT, was invited

24:20

to a endowed speech on

24:22

exoplanet atmospheres, very esoteric topic,

24:24

but he had written with

24:27

another scholar up. public popular

24:29

piece in Newsweek, basically criticizing

24:31

DEAI, and suggesting replacing DEA

24:33

with MFE, merit, fairness, and

24:35

equality. It was a very

24:37

level-headed piece, but he had

24:39

violated the taboo of the

24:41

time that you can't criticize

24:43

DEA. And so a bunch

24:45

of people, MIT graduate students,

24:48

swarmed on Twitter. We can't

24:50

have this guy give me

24:52

this speech at MIT. And

24:54

unfortunately, the head of the

24:56

department that had invited him

24:58

with the support we believe

25:00

of the administration succumbed and disinvited

25:02

him. And we all thought that

25:04

was gone too far. You can't

25:06

criticize something. So we launched the

25:08

MIT Free Speech Alliance, and it

25:11

quickly got lots of members and

25:13

got lots of influence. And there's

25:15

now hundreds of these free speech

25:17

alliance all under the American. alumni

25:19

free speech alliance umbrella and I

25:21

felt that we were right at

25:23

the tide turning and I told

25:25

people that at the time. It feels

25:28

to me that they have overreached and

25:30

now the tide is starting to flow

25:32

the other way. Yeah, no, it wasn't

25:34

just, you know, universities. I

25:36

mean, you know, corporations got pulled

25:38

into it. I mean, you saw

25:41

what happened after January 6th. I

25:43

mean, they came together to disconnect

25:45

Trump from social media in

25:47

all at once. and you

25:49

know, kind of a corporate

25:51

takeover of all media and

25:53

that anyone who was promoting

25:56

ideas that were counter

25:58

to this kind of. blew a

26:00

narrative structure were being disconnected and marginalized

26:03

and pushed out and the resistance grew.

26:05

I mean, you know, because it is

26:07

excessive. I mean, to go after everything

26:09

and everybody and in the stifle free

26:12

speech at that kind of level, you

26:14

know, edging towards what I thought was

26:16

a long night. And I can tell

26:19

you personally listeners to the show know

26:21

I've been involved with the game B

26:23

effort for a long time and we

26:26

had a we still have a very

26:28

popular group on Facebook and the day

26:30

after Biden was inaugurated the Facebook algorithm

26:33

killed the three admins of our Facebook

26:35

group including me with death penalty unappealable

26:37

the lesions of our account. And for

26:39

no reason at all. If you go

26:42

to the Game B group, Game B

26:44

on Facebook, you'll find it's a very

26:46

benign, good citizen, nice kind of thing,

26:49

and the people are very well behaved.

26:51

There's absolutely no reason for it to

26:53

do so. But they had obviously turned

26:56

the knob on their algorithm up the

26:58

day that Biden got inaugurated. and they

27:00

whacked us and fortunately we had we

27:03

had some noisy friends including Joe Rogan

27:05

who put up quite a loud yell.

27:07

I think we got seven million views

27:10

of our announcement of this. thing and

27:12

we knew some people who knew people

27:14

and Facebook and 12 hours later they

27:16

reversed it. But for a quite, you

27:19

know, yes, maybe we're a bunch of,

27:21

you know, Blue Sky, utopian, quasi-utopian, hippie

27:23

thinkers, but we're certainly not anything bad,

27:26

but they were so anti-heterodoxy of any

27:28

sort at that point that that convinced

27:30

me that this now had to be

27:33

fought full on. Yeah, no, the only

27:35

way you could, I mean, you don't

27:37

know, it was one of these situations

27:40

where people would get banned and they

27:42

didn't even know why they were banned

27:44

and the groups would be banned and

27:46

they didn't know what triggered it. The

27:49

ones we were hit with was no

27:51

appeal. The same happened to Brett Weinstein.

27:53

No appeal, and if you try to

27:56

appeal, it says, no appeal, you're dead.

27:58

I go, what the fuck kind of

28:00

sick Kafka-ass bullshit is this, right? Yeah,

28:03

no, this way, you know, when I

28:05

was talking about the long night stuff,

28:07

I was saying, okay, how we guard

28:10

against this years ago, you get some

28:12

kind of digital rights to kind of

28:14

make your version of yourself, your digital

28:16

self, protected, right? Make it more real.

28:19

And that you could be banned for

28:21

excessive kind of threats of threats and

28:23

personal stalking and that kind of stuff.

28:26

Anything that would cause you to be

28:28

muted or some kind of charge against

28:30

you you had to be informed of

28:33

it and there had to be a

28:35

process I laid all this out in

28:37

great detail in a article I wrote

28:40

for Quillit called Musk in Moderation where

28:42

I even allowed a marketplace. You'll love

28:44

this. If they had to ban you

28:47

based on a rule, a regulation in

28:49

their legislation, they had to quote what

28:51

you said and the relevant section of

28:53

their legislation. And if you wanted to

28:56

challenge it, you could, you'd take it

28:58

to an American Arbitration Association arbitrator, and

29:00

you could put up a steak. And

29:03

if they lost, they had to pay

29:05

you 10X. So if you thought you

29:07

had been, your post, that they said

29:10

violated section 1.3.7.1, the arbitrator's rule did

29:12

not violate 1.3.7.1, then you put up

29:14

1,000 bucks, then they had to pay

29:17

you 10,000. And even better, you could

29:19

syndicate your bets. So you could say,

29:21

all right, here is a marketplace for.

29:23

bets against Facebook's censorship, I put a

29:26

limit of a million dollars so that

29:28

you could syndicate your claim with the,

29:30

with the complainant getting 20% and the

29:33

betters getting 80% of the win. So

29:35

even if you had no money at

29:37

all, you could still put together a

29:40

big war chest for a particularly weak

29:42

claim. And I thought that'd be a

29:44

great self-policing system, because, you know, Facebook

29:47

doesn't want to lose 10 million dollars.

29:49

I had making a wrong decision on

29:51

something like this. Well, I mean, it

29:54

was going towards that kind of long

29:56

night scenario to pretty rapid clip until

29:58

2022. It's getting worse and worse and

30:00

worse, more oppressive. You know, we saw

30:03

the terms of service replace the bill

30:05

of rights and, you know, those terms

30:07

of service could change any moment that

30:10

Zuckerberg or anyone else wanted to kind

30:12

of flip them, tweak them. And that

30:14

was the key part of the term

30:17

of service. We can change this at

30:19

any time with or without your permission.

30:21

Yeah, I imagine a bill of rights

30:24

based like that, right? The president could

30:26

change the bill of rights any time

30:28

you, you know, you know, saw a

30:30

need. And the people that they had

30:33

selected to kind of moderate or kind

30:35

of arbitrate. changes to that term of

30:37

service were all from activist groups and

30:40

it was just nutty and it was

30:42

getting it's getting more more restrictive the

30:44

you can't talk in the major in

30:47

the major media was supporting it and

30:49

and social networking was suppressing it everything

30:51

turned around I mean any kind of

30:54

turnaround you thought was coming at the

30:56

grassroots level was going to get squashed

30:58

eventually as he's especially as you know

31:00

If it progressed, then AI would arrive

31:03

and then it would be employed to

31:05

kind of make, moderate all those billions

31:07

of people on Facebook and others at

31:10

a very deep level simultaneously. So the

31:12

change happened with Musk acquiring Twitter. I

31:14

would say it happened a little earlier.

31:17

It happened with a strong sense across

31:19

society that this had overreached by that

31:21

summer of 2021. And I would say

31:24

that Musk was then the next step.

31:26

Yeah, I mean, I think there was

31:28

a lot of people, there was a

31:31

lot of like brewing discontent with it,

31:33

but I do think that the system

31:35

as it was set up, the kind

31:37

of the way that the networks were

31:40

operating, was that it was going to

31:42

crush that, and it could well have,

31:44

without some big change, that any kind

31:47

of discontent would eventually have been squeezed

31:49

out and anyone who expressed this content

31:51

would become evil by definition and existential

31:54

threat. But I think the thing with

31:56

Musk was that the trigger for him

31:58

was watching that swarm response to Ukraine.

32:01

And my first response is, holy shit,

32:03

this is dangerous shit. It's bringing us

32:05

up to global war and pushing us

32:07

up. People were like, this swarm. thinking

32:10

was that we have to win at

32:12

all costs, we have to defeat Russia,

32:14

we have to depose Putin, Putin was

32:17

tied to Trump, he's evil, and therefore

32:19

Putin is the ultimate evil, just like

32:21

Trump is, therefore we have to completely

32:24

cause a regime change in Russia, and

32:26

you know nuclear war doesn't matter anymore,

32:28

it's just threats, it just bluffs, you

32:31

know, all the additional, you know, the

32:33

way we handled that in the Cold

32:35

War, and prevented a World War III

32:37

with nuclear weapons, it doesn't matter anymore,

32:40

and... I was like, holy, just step

32:42

back a little bit here, let's get

32:44

a little bit more rational in our

32:47

approach. Must saw that, and he said

32:49

in an interview, that was the reason

32:51

that he decided to make the bid.

32:54

There's no circuit breakers. There's no way

32:56

of controlling, and it's frustration that being

32:58

kind of edited and censored, but that

33:01

was the thing that kicked it over,

33:03

and once Twitter was acquired, everything changed.

33:05

In November of 2022, right. Let's go

33:08

back to Ukraine, though, for a moment.

33:10

I didn't necessarily see it as a

33:12

swarm. I know you did at the

33:14

time, a pro-Ukraine support. I thought of

33:17

it more of an elite action from

33:19

the traditional internationalist parts of both parties.

33:21

There was the Neicons that kind of

33:24

had seized control of the aimless United

33:26

States and brought us into wars in

33:28

the Middle East and then started expanding

33:31

NATO with the intent of completely encircling

33:33

Russia. And as we got closer and

33:35

closer to the borders, they started to

33:38

be... more reactive, just like, you know,

33:40

Ken and wrote in the late 90s

33:42

that, you know, this would eventually turn

33:44

a Democratic capitalist society. It was just

33:47

emerging into an enemy. It was an

33:49

inevitable kind of freight train, and it

33:51

did. You know, as we hit their,

33:54

you know, got right to their critical,

33:56

right around their border, they started to

33:58

have more resistance and more military response.

34:01

But those Neicons were in charge of

34:03

things and had us on this kind

34:05

of pathway that was inexorable, towards a

34:08

conflict with Russia. The swarm response was

34:10

different for me is that it was

34:12

based on Putin's connection to... Trump and

34:15

a lot of the kind of hostility

34:17

and attempt to kind of punish Putin

34:19

for getting Trump into office, you know,

34:21

they came to office, said, you know,

34:24

we're going to really make it tough

34:26

for Putin because he got Trump in.

34:28

They sparked it, but the swarm response

34:31

to it was so much bigger. It

34:33

was, I mean, all these little companies,

34:35

I mean, everybody, disconnecting simultaneously in just

34:38

weeks. And the whole framing of it

34:40

turning from, you know, we're opposed to

34:42

Russian invasion, which happened before, and we

34:45

didn't respond like this, it turned into

34:47

a new Cold War. I think that's

34:49

overstated. You know, I make this point

34:51

regularly. Russia has the GDP of Spain

34:54

or Canada. It's not a... giant country

34:56

anymore. It no longer has the whole

34:58

eastern block as its allies, right? It

35:01

no longer has the rest of the

35:03

USSR. This idea of painting Russia as

35:05

this amazing threat is basically bogus. Which

35:08

actually then says it's perfectly reasonable to

35:10

stop Putin and Ukraine because he is

35:12

stopable and he doesn't really have a

35:15

credible threat to do anything else. He's

35:17

not going to invade the Baltics. And

35:19

he does. We'd whip his ass and

35:21

heartbeat. And the Ukraine war is shown

35:24

the Russian army. He's a paper tiger.

35:26

Couldn't beat the 22nd rated military in

35:28

the world in a flat-out fight. Ridiculous.

35:31

So I don't buy a new Cold

35:33

war. I think the issue. is that

35:35

it's a huge mistake to let Putin

35:38

win a war of territorial aggression in

35:40

the 21st century. And that he needs

35:42

to be stopped for that reason. But

35:45

we provoked it. I mean, we offered

35:47

them, we offered them NATO membership, pushed

35:49

it, the name of membership to kind

35:52

of, you know, punish Putin for support

35:54

of Trump. And they said it was

35:56

a red line, any more than we

35:58

would say it was a red line

36:01

if China's decided to make ally with

36:03

Mexico and start putting troops and weapons

36:05

there. We wouldn't. Remember, the USSR did

36:08

the same thing in Cuba, and we

36:10

managed to avoid war there. You know,

36:12

by the Nick. By the Nick. Yeah.

36:15

A lot of mistakes that were kind

36:17

of, wow, I don't want to, I

36:19

just don't want to see a repeat

36:22

of that. I mean, they still have

36:24

more nukes than we do. And as

36:26

much as there are paper tiger and

36:28

everything else, even if half those nukes

36:31

don't work. It's still not something to

36:33

do. They're not going to use their

36:35

nukes though. It's insane. It's not a

36:38

credible threat. Well, it depends on whether

36:40

they see it as an existential threat.

36:42

I mean, having Ukraine in NATO, they

36:45

considered existential. I doubt it. I think

36:47

it's geopolitical chess playing. They lose some

36:49

ground if Ukraine becomes EU and NATO.

36:52

But it's not an existential threat. NATO's

36:54

never attacked anybody. put troops and nuclear

36:56

weapons in Mexico, we consider an existential

36:58

threat. We would be pissed off, but

37:01

we wouldn't consider an existential threat. Oh

37:03

yeah, we would. We would not nuke

37:05

China over that. We would build up

37:08

one hell of a big defensive army

37:10

down there, and we'd probably try to

37:12

invade them in a second. And probably

37:15

try to cut the sea lines, that's

37:17

what we'd probably do. So they cut

37:19

the sea lanes, and then invade. Anyway,

37:22

regime change and all this stuff. Anyway,

37:24

we could we could probably just we're

37:26

just going to fundamentally disagree about your

37:29

create. So let's move on to the

37:31

the red network reconfiguration after you know,

37:33

and I will say that one thing

37:35

that I'd like to add that it

37:38

really wasn't in this piece is it

37:40

wasn't just Twitter. The other thing that

37:42

was happening the same time was the

37:45

emergence of lots of other independent media

37:47

on from the team red perspective. Somebody

37:49

recently published this bubble graph that shows

37:52

the sizes of various podcasters, for instance.

37:54

The poor Jim Rutte show was too

37:56

small to show up on the graph

37:59

besides they wouldn't have any idea where

38:01

to put it. We're not either blue

38:03

or red, or we're silver, but it

38:05

was clear that the red-oriented podcasters. totally

38:08

outnumbered the Blue ones. And you know,

38:10

you talk about Fox News. Fox News

38:12

at its best draws four and a

38:15

half million viewers to its prime time

38:17

shows. Joe Rogan's interview with Trump, 57

38:19

million. His interview with J.D. Vance, 25

38:22

million. Right. And so under appreciated part

38:24

of this new red network reconfiguration is

38:26

this grassroots, entrepreneurially driven, right? People are

38:29

doing this because it's a business, but

38:31

they're also ideologically informed, you know, Bannon's

38:33

war room is very classic example, has

38:36

also fundamentally changed the media battlefield along

38:38

with. Twitter and also the alternative mostly

38:40

red networks as well. Yeah, no, that

38:42

was the red network's response to the

38:45

problem with persistence. I mean, the blue

38:47

network solved the persistence problem with these

38:49

networked organizations that they usually fall apart

38:52

once they achieve some goal or fail

38:54

it achieving a goal. And by creating

38:56

this kind of moral framework, they had

38:59

this enemy, they had a narrative that

39:01

created a sense of tribalism and unity.

39:03

that allowed them to operate as a

39:06

cohesive whole, you know, for a long

39:08

periods of time. And so the Red

39:10

Network didn't have it. It was more

39:12

loose. And what it came up with,

39:15

what it evolved into, what it merged

39:17

into, was these large accounts, these large

39:19

kind of digital ledgers, kind of a

39:22

view of the world that kind of

39:24

sense-making perspective based on individual personalities. that

39:26

were, became very popular, like Elon's Musk,

39:29

you know, 200 million plus flowers on

39:31

X. And these digital ledgers were highly

39:33

evolved. I mean, they changed, tweaked, and

39:36

improved the perspectives over time based on

39:38

user, you know, follow our feedback, pushback.

39:40

And they got really good, and they

39:42

post a ton, and they're all kind

39:45

of truth seekers. you know taking on

39:47

establishment narratives and taking on you know

39:49

what's being dictated through the media and

39:52

challenging it and coming up with alternative

39:54

sense-making perspectives and so there are a

39:56

ton of these counts and they're all

39:59

dominated by the red network I mean

40:01

there's right a little push right now

40:03

for the blue network to try to

40:06

do that they're Michelle Obama and others

40:08

but they're all fizzling because it's they're

40:10

not challenging the kind of any official

40:13

narrative and they're just not the same

40:15

dynamic so you had these big accounts

40:17

And they took the war to the

40:19

Democratic Party in the 2024 election when

40:22

Musk supported Trump in the summer. He

40:24

eliminated any kind of stigma associated with

40:26

supporting Trump, you know, which was still

40:29

there, that kind of shame, that kind

40:31

of disconnection, that kind of moral kind

40:33

of framework that the blue was using

40:36

to kind of keep people out. And

40:38

all these accounts started falling. Like, Rogan

40:40

officially came in and all these others

40:43

started to kind of give their... explicit

40:45

support for Trump and they put him

40:47

in office. You know, Trump wasn't really

40:49

running much of a campaign. I mean,

40:52

you know, the traditional sense, I don't

40:54

even think the campaign was even worth

40:56

it. It was really these accounts that

40:59

were driving. They came up in the

41:01

narratives, they ran the maneuver warfare, they

41:03

were constantly changing subjects, they were throwing

41:06

ideas out, amplifying things that Trump picked

41:08

up and ran, and that carried over,

41:10

that victory. Those big accounts didn't just

41:13

go away at the end. They were

41:15

still there and they started to take

41:17

over the positions in the government. I

41:19

mean, you know, you have a Tulsi

41:22

Cabard, you know, who has a big

41:24

account, is a true secret, podcast, constantly,

41:26

you know, it has your own ledger,

41:29

you know, it's put into, you know,

41:31

position of power, and, you know, the

41:33

same thing with all the other major

41:36

agencies for the most part. These gray

41:38

suited, unknowns, you know, you know, these

41:40

insiders that you used to use that

41:43

you used to use to use to

41:45

use to use to use to use

41:47

to use to put in use to

41:50

put in use to put in there.

41:52

vetted by the establishment as the kind

41:54

of people that would do the kind

41:56

of things that that throw money this

41:59

way and do this and maintain these

42:01

programs. Well, they were replaced by people

42:03

who are known. You know, had a

42:06

position that people, you know, they were,

42:08

they had some kind of public visibility.

42:10

And, you know, the most famous of

42:13

that is, of course, Elon Musk is

42:15

Doge, coming in with a, you know,

42:17

trying to act the system. And he

42:20

was, you know, that's how much to

42:22

disrupt it in the, I'm going to

42:24

break you sense, is finding the kind

42:26

of, what I call, system books, the

42:29

points inside the target network that will

42:31

allow you to exercise the greatest control

42:33

and influence. And he found that in

42:36

the kind of treasury data. I found

42:38

that in the OPM records, in the

42:40

communication records of the various agencies, the

42:43

email logs, and that data allowed him

42:45

to. Yep. It's happened something you mentioned,

42:47

and this is, you know, along the

42:50

lines, you're talking about these big ledgers.

42:52

the red digital warriors became more professionalized

42:54

essentially. Right, right. We're talking about 2016.

42:57

This was all hobbyists and, you know,

42:59

people in their mother's basements, you know,

43:01

typing away at three o'clock in the

43:03

morning. But now we have actually an

43:06

analog to mainstream media. You know, mainstream

43:08

media used to put people into administrations,

43:10

right? And now what we're seeing is

43:13

that it's called professionalized. You use professionalized

43:15

digital warriors. are now candidates to be

43:17

members of administrations. And many of them

43:20

are now more powerful than any mainstream

43:22

media voices. I'm sure far, far more

43:24

people listen to Steve Bannon than read

43:27

one of the. columnists in the New

43:29

York Times. This is quite interesting and

43:31

new. And Team Red has gotten their

43:33

first. To your point, Team Blue is

43:36

trying to figure out what to do

43:38

about it, but they kind of have

43:40

a hard problem. And this is something

43:43

else you talked about. So I think

43:45

it's worth surfacing. Blue, the way it

43:47

has defined itself in kind of rigid

43:50

moralistic terms, has a very hard time

43:52

adapting. As soon as you make any

43:54

change, one of the factions goes. woke

43:57

violated in some way or other. And

43:59

so that makes you very vulnerable to

44:01

maneuver warfare. And someone like the red

44:03

team having a faster oodle loop is

44:06

they can change and you can't adapt,

44:08

you get left behind. Yeah, I mean,

44:10

the red has its own problems. I

44:13

mean, it's not a unified view of

44:15

the truth or of reality. I mean,

44:17

each account has a sound kind of

44:20

unique approach. So it's kind of a

44:22

disparate in that regard. and that may

44:24

end up being what you know limits

44:27

the power of red is that because

44:29

there are very different factions you know

44:31

you have the You have the silicone

44:34

valley boys who, to my mind, are

44:36

aiming at neofutilism, probably, and then you

44:38

have the, you know, the bannonites and

44:40

the Christian nationalists are looking for theocracy,

44:43

and then you have a big chunk

44:45

in the middle of normal Republicans looking

44:47

for lower taxes and less regulation, but

44:50

basic sanity, and how those three totally

44:52

incompatible factions work things out is still

44:54

very much to be determined. Well, it's

44:57

less the factions, it's just accounts. So

44:59

you really want to kind of parse

45:01

it up is, you know, who's following

45:04

who? There is a certain amount of

45:06

influence that these big accounts have over

45:08

their followers is that they can take

45:10

them into new areas of sense making

45:13

pattern matching and then override the ledgers

45:15

of their followers. They push them and

45:17

they do it. They do it, you

45:20

know, unless they face massive resistance, they

45:22

usually goes through. So they can actually

45:24

change and shift the faction that's, you

45:27

know. Not so much faction on their

45:29

own, but people who follow them. The

45:31

blue is like interesting. I've been trying

45:34

to figure out how they're going to

45:36

oppose this. Their biggest flaw in their

45:38

kind of moral warfare. A moral warfare

45:41

usually works by constantly pointing out how

45:43

evil the opposition is and forcing them

45:45

to break into non-cooperative centers of gravity

45:47

where people say, oh, I can't be

45:50

associated with that people and start to

45:52

divide out. The problem with the blue

45:54

network was it had a maximus moral

45:57

framework. what it really needs and what

45:59

we need generally I think in a

46:01

to get a you know if we

46:04

look at the longer view of this

46:06

is we want a network decision-making at

46:08

a societal level in terms of our

46:11

politics, in terms of our culture, in

46:13

terms of society, that has a set

46:15

of standards, basic standards, both for us

46:17

and potentially what we could globalize, that

46:20

represent our values, but it's not maximistic.

46:22

So it's like, I always think of

46:24

the internet, you know, going with the

46:27

very simple TSPIP protocols that if you

46:29

do that little thing, you can connect

46:31

to us. And it spread, right? If

46:34

they went out with this kind of

46:36

maximalist kind of vision of the way

46:38

things work, and not HTML, but as

46:41

you know, with extras, and it's like,

46:43

you have to do this, people just,

46:45

oh, you know, they'll stick to their

46:47

guns, not fully connect, not fully integrate.

46:50

So we need kind of a simple

46:52

standard, and we use the kind of

46:54

red network for new ideas, new sense

46:57

making. Networks great for solving complex problems,

46:59

you know, which are. more and more

47:01

prevalent in this kind of wild system

47:04

that we're in because you need to

47:06

be able to come up with those

47:08

wild ideas that may solve the problem

47:11

where you're planning and your expertise may

47:13

prove fruitless. So we need to mix

47:15

the two. So what the blue network

47:18

probably going to have to do is

47:20

come up with a minimalist standard space,

47:22

you know, standard system. And not quite

47:24

sure how they're going to pull off.

47:27

Right now they're a disarray. I mean,

47:29

popularity that the Democratic Party is way

47:31

below the Republican's aisle, lowest has ever

47:34

been in history. There's no clear leadership

47:36

because they don't really work on a

47:38

leadership basis. Their moral frameworks are disarray

47:41

they're not on, and they've left, just

47:43

like a lot of the work I

47:45

had to leave to parlor and stuff

47:48

they're off on a stump network or

47:50

collection of networks, and they're not having

47:52

the influence that they should have, or

47:54

they need to have, actually, in order

47:57

to kind of, revive themselves. They have

47:59

to go on X and X is

48:01

the biggest one and play that kind

48:04

of wild environment. and build themselves up.

48:06

So I still haven't seen what they're

48:08

going to do to kind of create

48:11

that kind of new approach to kind

48:13

of revive themselves. Just like, you know,

48:15

it wasn't really apparent in 2020 what

48:18

the red network would do to revive

48:20

itself. And it emerged naturally. All of

48:22

a sudden, the robot's like huge and

48:24

Musk is huge and all those other

48:27

multi-million person accounts and 10 million, 20

48:29

million tuckers and all these others get

48:31

massive. It wasn't apparent in 2020 with

48:34

that response. I do think we're going

48:36

to get it. It's just it's coming.

48:38

These networks evolve. They improve that decision-making

48:41

system that they're using to kind of

48:43

improve their capabilities, tribalize better, create more

48:45

cohesion, is on its way, but I

48:48

haven't seen a lot of evidence as

48:50

to what it will be yet. And

48:52

I will say the... Trump administration has

48:55

been making the job more difficult by

48:57

operating at an amazing tempo once they

48:59

got into office. I mean I'm an

49:01

amateur military scholar you're a more serious

49:04

one. You know we know that in

49:06

war tempo is hugely important and I've

49:08

never seen tempo exercised in the political

49:11

realm like the current administration is doing.

49:13

Yeah, they're doing a lot of delaying

49:15

tactics for anything with the legal or

49:18

the law fair and other things like

49:20

that to try to slow it down.

49:22

I'm delay it. I mean, of course,

49:25

some things have to be done. I

49:27

mean, running a $2 trillion a year

49:29

deficit is not sustainable. Yeah, so we're

49:31

going to end up in bankruptcy before

49:34

you know it at that kind of

49:36

clip. So there has to be stuff

49:38

cut. So yeah, now what I, you

49:41

know, That tempo, of course, maneuver warfare,

49:43

you constantly are shifting topics, you're constantly,

49:45

it's very decentralized now because they have

49:48

all these different agency heads that have

49:50

their own kind of true-seeking agendas, and

49:52

they're going off and changing things. The

49:55

only thing really stopping them or slowing

49:57

them at this point is the legal

49:59

and regulatory structures that bind this, what

50:02

I call a hollow state, together. Because

50:04

the nation state dies. 20 years ago

50:06

when we started to go globalization and

50:08

globalize and focus outward and it's turned

50:11

kind of into a hollow state where

50:13

there's all these it's really a mechanism

50:15

for looting what's left of the nation-state

50:18

and they built a lot of defenses

50:20

a lot of influence networks a lot

50:22

of legal regulations and you know if

50:25

you've ever done any government contracting you

50:27

know how absolutely corrupt it is. I'll

50:29

pay If I pay $200,000, I mean

50:32

$200,000, I can get disinserted to a

50:34

bill and it will specifically be specific

50:36

enough that it will address me in

50:38

particular. You know, my company, I'll make

50:41

two or three million or ten million

50:43

or twenty million because I can sell,

50:45

I'm the only one selling this. It's

50:48

awful. I certainly hope that. Elon digs

50:50

into the procurement process, particularly the defense

50:52

procurement process, which is like the rottenest

50:55

pile of sludge. ever. I had a

50:57

narrow, intentionally my business career avoided government

50:59

contract. I remember once one of our

51:02

companies, the SEC wanted to use one

51:04

of our online financial products, and would

51:06

we go on the GSA register? We

51:08

said no. You can use it with

51:11

your credit card, because I'll be god

51:13

damned, I'm going to get immersed in

51:15

their horseshit. But I did have some

51:18

encounters later, and I'll tell you. Very

51:20

unpleasant very bad. They could probably find

51:22

their trillion dollars in defense procurement alone

51:25

If they dug deep enough, you know

51:27

over a ten year over ten years.

51:29

Oh, yeah, and you have these all

51:32

these fraudsters Yeah, my brother just retired.

51:34

He was like a he ran all

51:36

of the NSA's hardware Real a little

51:39

bit of it. He had all these

51:41

different ways to actually improve it. You

51:43

know, how you approved the contracting and

51:45

a lot of had to do with

51:48

holding people accountable for results and it

51:50

a lot of times it, you know

51:52

It dies, you know, if you try

51:55

to hold somebody accountable, it's just a

51:57

corporate shell that gets punished, but not

51:59

the people who are... you know, actually

52:02

running it. And they, as soon as

52:04

they fail, they transfer over to another

52:06

shell, right? And then they keep on

52:09

going. It's a serial fraud. It's a

52:11

serial kind of disaster. And even the

52:13

big guys will do the, you know,

52:15

billion dollar, you know, the IRS renovation

52:18

project, the big SAIC, information spy architecture

52:20

that rode off because the big, even

52:22

big boys, you know, fuck this shit

52:25

up. And of course, partially it's the

52:27

government's own fault, because what they really

52:29

should be doing is like, you know,

52:32

think about SpaceX versus... the defense contractor

52:34

method. Space X just said, what's the

52:36

problem, getting weight into orbit safely and

52:39

economically, rather than some fucking 2,000-page specification

52:41

that NASA writes and puts out the

52:43

bid between Boeing and Lockheed, right? And

52:45

when you try to tell people how

52:48

to do things, particularly if you're relatively,

52:50

you know... lower level bureaucrat, you're very

52:52

likely to grossly over specify, make wrong

52:55

assumptions about the best way to do

52:57

it. You know, if I were the

52:59

dictator, it's probably not a bad idea,

53:02

I would put, you know, defense stuff,

53:04

okay, I want air supremacy, I don't

53:06

give a fuck how we have air

53:09

supremacy, I want air supremacy, and we're

53:11

willing to pay blah for air supremacy,

53:13

and let people figure out how to

53:16

do air supremacy, what's the mixture of

53:18

man versus drone? Maybe it's all drone,

53:20

maybe it's a mix, maybe it's very

53:22

close satellite drone plus man, but let

53:25

there be some mission-solving orientation to these

53:27

bids rather than specification-based bids. Yeah, first

53:29

principle is kind of analysis. It's not

53:32

done nearly enough. People don't go back

53:34

to the basics and try to look

53:36

at what, you know, we're way downstream

53:39

of what that was, you know, that

53:41

first principle is kind of a development

53:43

cycle, and we're like... We have so

53:46

many baked in assumptions to what we

53:48

do now, and they're hidden in programs

53:50

and layers of thinking, and a lot

53:52

of them. run, right? I mean, you

53:55

know, stay in Afghanistan because we have

53:57

to be there, you know, they should

53:59

building two and a half trillion dollars

54:02

later in a failure in an evacuation.

54:04

I mean, these things just persist. No

54:06

one goes back to kind of dig

54:09

those suckers, you know, dig those vault

54:11

assumptions out, those rotten ones that are

54:13

locking us into things. You try to

54:16

talk about it about it with people.

54:18

They'll go, you can't even address it

54:20

because, you know, you try to get

54:23

into a serious form, they go, You

54:25

know, we can't talk about that. That's

54:27

too complex. That's never going to happen.

54:29

It's never going to, you know, it's

54:32

not even worthy of consideration because it's

54:34

so outside the realm of possibility that

54:36

that could be changed and they avoid

54:39

it. Rather than, you know, they'll want

54:41

to talk about the edges and, you

54:43

know, little tweaks and things like that.

54:46

And it's like, you can't fix it

54:48

until we do this. We'll end up

54:50

being a net positive for our countries.

54:53

There'll no doubt break some things, but

54:55

there is so much rot there that

54:57

needs to be shoveled out that it's

54:59

worth the occasional break. I mean, there's

55:02

a reason why the counties around the

55:04

beltway are the wealthiest counties in the

55:06

United States. I mean, those folks... and

55:09

their kids. Yeah, I pointed that out

55:11

more than one. I grew up in

55:13

the DC Burbs and they were not

55:16

the richest counties in the 50s and

55:18

60s, right? One of them was Montgomery

55:20

County, but none of the rest. But

55:23

by today, most of all the richest

55:25

counties in United States around DC's, feeding

55:27

at the trough. Yeah, I mean, I

55:29

can understand like I live in Middlesex

55:32

and we have all the, you know.

55:34

software and finance there and all that

55:36

other stuff and I can understand the

55:39

wealth that was created but the DC

55:41

area it doesn't you know you have

55:43

and then you start seeing these like

55:46

USAID and other things you see these

55:48

people you know like the head of

55:50

USAID is government employee and goes from

55:53

a million dollars that worth the 20

55:55

million dollar that worth in three years

55:57

of actually running it how do you

56:00

How is that even possible? And you

56:02

see these again and again and again

56:04

and again and the kids of the

56:06

connected inside there are making multi-hundred thousand

56:09

multi-million dollar deals doing basically nothing or

56:11

advancing an agenda that is contrary to

56:13

the interests of the United States. I

56:16

mean I think we did this on

56:18

the last podcast of what went wrong

56:20

with America is that we have to

56:23

become slightly more nationalistic, I mean more

56:25

Washingtonian. and lead more by example, you

56:27

know, just trying to improve the prosperity

56:30

of Americans, coming up with ways to

56:32

use all this new technology that we're

56:34

developing for the most part in a

56:36

way that's positive and, you know, something

56:39

everybody else wants to emulate, just like

56:41

we do with electricity, just like we

56:43

did with indoor plumbing, just like we

56:46

did with all these other things that

56:48

we pushed out into the general society

56:50

and everyone else copied us. So I

56:53

want to see that. You know, appliances,

56:55

everything. All. all these things I want

56:57

to see this. So I don't know

57:00

how we get there from here with

57:02

these kind of network organizations, but I

57:04

hope we can find a way to

57:06

turn network decision-making into something that can

57:09

solve the kind of breakdown in hierarchical

57:11

and market-based decision-making that got us to

57:13

this point. It's kind of dysfunction, this

57:16

kind of holliness. Low cohesion, low trust,

57:18

dysfunction, corruption, inability to solve complex problems,

57:20

and more. So as chaotic it is

57:23

on the network front, it's... Something we

57:25

have to go through it in order

57:27

to solve these bigger problems that we

57:30

have with the way we have been

57:32

making decisions in the past. A hopeful

57:34

future with some question marks around it.

57:37

Want to thank John Rob for yet

57:39

another very interesting conversation here on the

57:41

Jim Rutcho and or check out the

57:43

episode page at Jim Rutcho.com to links

57:46

to many of the things we talked

57:48

about. All right, thanks Jim. Audio

57:53

production and editing by Andrew

57:55

Blevins Productions Music by Tom

57:58

Mueller at Modern Space music.com