Vulnerabilities in Space + Updates on the Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East— with David Ignatius
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Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my 100th Mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I mean, honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much?

I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com slash save whenever you're ready. $45 upfront payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speeds lower above 40 gigabytes. See details. Episode 301. 301 is the area code belonging to the western part of Maryland. In 1901, the College Board introduced its first standardized test, which later became...

the SAT. True story. I have failed almost every standardized test I have taken. During my prostate exam, my doctor told me it's perfectly normal to become aroused and even ejaculate. That being said, I still wish he hadn't. ♪

Welcome to the 301st episode of The Prof G Pod. In today's episode, we speak with David Ignatius, a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post who's been covering the Middle East and the CIA for more than four decades. He's also a prolific author with a new novel called Phantom Orbit, a Thriller. We discuss with David themes from his latest books, such as space warfare and the state of global security. We also get updates on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. I really enjoyed this conversation. David is a

You know, he's sort of a breath of fresh air because he's this reasonable guy who makes very thoughtful, measured points, acknowledges other points, is not afraid to say, I don't know. I really I think we sort of whatever that tone is, a mix of intelligence and humility. I think we need more of it in our discourse. OK, what's happening?

The dog is off to Vegas and New York this week. That's right, ladies. Hello. 1999, all you can eat, golden nugget buffet. True story. True story. I used to go with my friend occasionally on Friday night, me and my friend Lee Lotus.

would get ridiculously fucking high on a Friday afternoon. And we would decide that we should absolutely get in his ruby red Volkswagen Jetta and head to Las Vegas. And we'd take, I think I would go to the emergency student loan window at UCLA, where all you had to do was show them your ID and they'd give you 50 bucks, which you had to pay back, I think, within seven days. By the way, by the way, hate speech is okay. It needs nuance. But if I was one day late on my $50 loan, I would get suspended.

Anyways, I see that as a little bit inconsistent. Anyways, I get 50 bucks and we would head to Vegas. And about three hours into the five-hour drive, it was like that scene from, was it Singles? What was that scene? Ballers? I forget what it was. One that made...

that made the tall guy, the really tall guy, famous in Jon Favreau. I've got $300, but I'm only betting with $100. I can't afford any more than that. All right? I figure if we buy a lot of chips, though, the pit boss will see us, he'll comp us all sorts of free shit. That's how it works over there, all right? But you've got to be cool with that. I'm cool, baby. I'm cool. They're going to give Daddy a room, some breakfast, maybe Bennett's singing. I know just the place, Mike. What the hell are you wearing? I thought you said we were going to wear suits.

Oh, God, I literally what part of my brain is dying? Every part of my brain is dying. That's why I shouldn't run for president in 30 fucking years. You weirdos drop out of the race. Anyways, about two, three hours into the road trip to Vegas, we would realize we had made a terrible mistake. But by the time we got to the Golden Nugget, which was operated by Stephen Wynn, kind of his first big casino and their big draw was their all you can eat buffet was either nine ninety nine or nineteen ninety nine.

But I would literally just load up. And it was actually a great buffet. And then we'd play blackjack. And I remember I wore my, I remember this so distinctly, my mom's boyfriend, Terry,

had the most beautiful clothes and he gave me a cardigan that was too small for him and it was I don't wear cardigans but it was so beautiful it was cashmere and had these really great original buttons and I remember it was the first really nice piece of clothing I had it was the first time when you're a kid and you feel sensations or emotions for the first time I remember I

looking at my dad speaking to a strange woman, and she was just giggling and laughing and touching his arm. And I remember for the first time thinking, what is charm? Like, what is...

What is kind of appeal? Because what my father was saying didn't seem that interesting, but she just found it fascinating. And I started figuring out it's my father's accent and strong jawline. Anyways, one of the first emotions I remember registering was just how beautiful this cardigan was. And I used to wear it everywhere. And I remember wearing it at the blackjack table. And if I ever got up to $20, I would have them cash in for two $10 chips and I'd slip it in the pockets forever.

Of the cardigans such that I would know we would have at least gas money home. We each needed five bucks. Lee was more responsible than me, but I was worried one of us was going to end up with zero. And then we would bomb back. Sometimes we wouldn't even spend the night. We'd just go gamble for four or five hours, eat at the Golden Nugget, and then head back. And obviously Steve Wynn went on to much bigger and better things. Anyways, Vegas, absolutely amazing.

Absolutely love it. All right. Where on earth was I going with this? That's right. I'm off to Vegas. I'm speaking at the Financial Brand Conference, which I'm excited. Favorite show. Favorite show. I used to see every Cirque du Soleil, see above edibles. Actually, it's not true. I wouldn't usually get high before going to see Cirque du Soleil, but absolutely love that. And now my kind of fail-safe recommendation for anyone going to Vegas is,

go to the sphere. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what's playing. Go to the sphere. The best description of my ketamine experience would be the sphere. So if you don't want to do ketamine and you want to see what it's kind of like visually, experience something at the sphere. I absolutely loved it. Saw you two there. And it's a shame because I went to a Taylor Swift concert at the SoFi Stadium. I'm all about the venue now. Isn't that weird? I go to the venue more than I go to

the artist. And so far, I'd never been, really wanted to go, had an opportunity to go see Taylor Swift, thought it was wonderful. This 15-year-old girl came up to me and gave me one of those bracelets, and it was really nice. That was a nice moment for me, and said that her and her mom listened to the pod, which was both disturbing yet inspiring at the same time. Anyways, we left early, but the nicest moment was as we were driving out, the driver said, look over there, and there was this huge cement platform, you

You know, kind of this big terrace. And there were all these 30 and 40-something-year-old dudes in cargo pants sitting there on their phones. And he said, it's all the dads who bring their daughters to the concert but don't want to pay $1,500 for the tickets, so they just wait outside for three hours. And I thought, that's a nice moment. And then...

And then I thought, oh, my God, where are all the parents of these 15-year-olds? And I found out that some of them are outside waiting for them, but the rest of them go to the sphere to see U2. It was literally the land of 50-something white people. I felt like I probably my entire freshman class from UCLA was at this concert. And

And it made me feel kind of old because Bono is sort of, I don't want to say losing his voice, but just doesn't have the voice he used to, which is understandable. I think he's probably early 60s. And on the high notes, he would do that trick where he put the mic towards the audience and have them sing, but still was amazing. And then Lady Gaga came out and sang two or three songs. Oh, my God.

Oh my God, that young woman can sing. Well, she's not that young anymore, is she? Anyways, she's a talent. Jesus Christ, she brought the house down. But if you have a chance...

Go to the sphere. All right, enough of that. Onto some news. Our markets pod has officially launched on its own feed. That's right. I'm not even sure what that means. I sort of know what that means, but I'm sure you need to actually subscribe if you want to get our markets segment of Prof G. We're going to try and go deeper and unpacks around specific companies, valuations or sectors.

go a little deeper. That's right. We're jumping in the deep end a little bit. By the way, this really weird image has popped in my mind. When my son was like two or three, when you live in Florida, all you can think about is keeping your kid away from a body of water. The largest source of death in my kids is not guns in Florida.

It's pools. So we'd put a fence around the pool and we would put these weird alarms on our kids' shirt that if it got near water, the alarm would go off. And every once in a while, the thing would go off and we'd start freaking out. You know, where's Alec? Where's Nolan? And it would end up the shirt was in the washer. The alarm went off. Anyways, I was out watching my son and he jumped in the water. You know, he got brave. He went to the deep end. He jumped in and he came up and there's a look of panic. And I immediately jumped in and grabbed him. And I remember thinking,

It just could happen so fast. Kind of a macabre thought, but it jumped in my mind. Anyways, dads and moms, anytime a little kid is near water, here's my public service announcement. You are correct to be wildly, wildly paranoid. Seriously, that shit can end really poorly really fast. Anyways, back to the feed. Where am I going with this?

So we have our new PropG Markets episode. We're going to go much deeper. Please rate and review us so we can reign supreme in the podcast world. By the way, first launch, first episode. And for a brief time, we were the 21st most downloaded podcast in the world and number one in business. So thank you for that.

The support and the great launch. All right. What else is happening? OpenAI is going through more management shakeups. The firm's chief scientist resigned, and then so did their head of alignment, who then posted on Twitter condemning OpenAI's leadership.

The thread or the I think it's Twitter. Is it Twitter? Is anyone still on Twitter? Anyways, Jan Leakey, Leakey, Leakey, Jan Leakey. That's my nickname for my penis. Jan Leakey. I just made that up. That's why you come here. That's why you come here for the for the crisp stuff.

ad hominem humor here. He said, I joined because I thought OpenAI would be the best place in the world to do this research. However, I have been disagreeing with OpenAI leadership about the company's core priorities for quite some time. And so we finally reached a breaking point. And then he went on, Jan went on to write, over the past few months, my team has been sailing against the wind.

Sometimes we were struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done. Okay. So Sam Altman, who, if you recall, was fired and then quickly rehired, and OpenAI's co-founder and president, Greg Brockman. By the way, Greg Brockman, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That is the anchor for...

a local news station in the 70s in California. From the desert to the sea, this is Greg Brockman. Anyways, he tweeted a lengthy response essentially saying they are committed to safety, but it's not an easy task. That's a whole lot of nothing. And then open quote, there's no proven playbook for how to navigate the path to AGI. We think that empirical understanding can help inform the way forward. We believe both in delivering on the tremendous upside and working to mitigate the serious risks.

We take our role here very seriously and carefully weigh feedback on our actions. It sounds like Shel Sandberg could have said that. Okay. So open quote, I'm going to say a whole lot of fucking nothing, close quote. All right. So this shakeup here is essentially them stopping or when they come to the realization and stop pretending that they're anything but a for-profit company. And to a certain extent, I think that's what they're supposed to do. I

I think for-profit companies in America are the best in the world at what they do and should be trusted to do nothing else. What we need is actual regulation, not Senator Schumer's roadmap to regulations claiming that it's moving too fast. Well, fucking figure it out, Chuck.

Anyways, this is the whole jazz hand Sandbergian or reminiscent of Sheryl Sandberg of hushed tones and all these AI experts talking about its dangers as they make tens of millions or worried they've created a monster after they've vested their tens of millions. I don't think that's helpful, and I'm not even sure it's their responsibility. I think companies should be good citizens. I think they should be mindful.

But at the end of the day, they will all make incremental decisions such that they can become loved. And to be a billionaire in the United States is to be worshipped. And so I think people will make a series of incremental decisions and ignore and cherry pick information such that they become billionaires, even when deep down they probably know this is bad for the Commonwealth. But I think once I become a billionaire, I'll make up for it and I'll do good things and I'll build hospitals and people will love me. And it's

our elected representatives' job to get in the way of that, to prevent a tragedy of the commons. And we keep hoping the better angels of these folks are going to show up. The scariest thing about AI that I've thought about recently, I mean, there's been a couple of things that just totally fucking freaked me out as I think about this thing and start to sort of wrap my head around it or it begins to wrap its head around mine, is that one,

I think this could be, it's not going to be the death of media companies, but it's going to give them more pneumonia or it's going to, they're going to slip and break another hip here and be even more disabled. Why? Because when you think about why do you go to a media company?

When I go to a media company, I go for news, right? But it's very hard to differentiate on news because unless you have a global news force or you get a scoop, everyone's going to have the same news. You know, I started getting alerts from every media company I follow about the president of Iran dying in a helicopter crash. So why do you go to certain media companies over others? You go for voice. You like the voice of Fox, which tends to be, we hate Biden and all Democrats are libtards and President Trump is a victim and whatever.

You know, he's not he's misunderstood. He's not a rapist. He's misunderstood and being unfairly persecuted. And then you go to MSNBC and they've decided that.

You know, President Joe Biden is incredibly sharp and with it and has total command of the room, except, you know, when he's on when he's on actual videotape, you go for voice. And I wonder if we're getting to a point where I'm going to be able to say in the morning, hey, Reuters, give me this morning's news in the voice of Jake Tapper with a with a tone of Reuters. And there'll be no reason to ever leave Gemini. Right.

and they will create their walled garden will become a walled fortress. It won't be a garden you can get in and out of and go to other places. You're just never gonna leave. In addition, what really scared the shit out of me was that, okay, Reddit is providing a lot of data. Reddit's a media company. The New York Times has a lot of data, and they're sort of thinking, well, our data will be able to monetize that because at some point, we're gonna be able to hopefully put our own IP ring fence around our data,

and be able to charge these LLMs to access this great, rich, positive data. And then I heard that there are now LLMs being created to produce fake data that other LLMs can crawl. It's like when cows can produce their own meat, I guess, or like my youngest dog that eats the big dog's shit. I call him our zero emissions dog. Anyways, think about that. It's pretty disgusting. And then he runs into the house and immediately wants to kiss us.

But anyways, these LLMs are now creating data for other LLMs to crawl. But the thing that really frightens me is that if you think about the tone, OpenAI can't crawl our conversations. I always have banter with my staff before the pod. We have Drew, we have Jennifer, we have Caroline. And the reason we have banter is we like each other or I like them. I won't say each other. I like them.

And I feel affection for them. And we're funny. And I think we're nice to each other. And I think we're complimentary. And we're generally civil with each other. That is not the case when people interact on these platforms.

A, there's a lot of fake bots that are there just to sow division and chaos. And B, people decide, well, I'm angry. I'm going to start shitposting someone or immediately go from zero to vile in like zero seconds flat. And what if AI, the primary tone of AI, is based on the tone and the discourse of online discourse? And if you think about what's happened over the last 10 years, arguably,

The most dangerous thing in the world, I would argue, it's not Hamas, it's not Putin, it's that there is extremism across every nation right now. The far left and the far right, because of an attempt by current...

Current incumbents to hold on to their positions. They make every district far left or far right. And so we send fucking crazies to Congress who hate each other. They can't even relate to each other. And the result is we get nothing done. And we have extremism and almost every nation now on the far left and the far right and extremism in the U.S.,

is bad because we get nothing done, but when it gets worse is when they kind of meet around certain issues. So I think the far left and the far right have become very anti-Semitic, and that's very dangerous when extremist crazies actually come together to agree on something. But what's going to hurt extremism, what's going to make our discourse even more coarse is if the key input to other media and documents and essays for kids and informing decisions is

becomes the tone of what the tone is online. Now, it's somewhat anodyne. The research or the, not the research, the returns I get on LLM so far, and I've used most of them. Is that true? I've used a lot of them, is anodyne and polite. So it does appear that the people in charge are

are attempting to make it more civil and put in some safeguards and some guardrails so it doesn't go really hateful really soon. But here's the scary thing. Are we going to have a small number of

of sort of super beings known as AI, where no one goes out for another opinion, where all of these media companies, basically, that bring diversity, a lot of jobs, a lot of nuance, a lot of interesting views on things, they basically die a slow death because, quite frankly, they might as well be a taco truck on Mars. Like, no one cares. No one even knows they're there because everyone can just stay and find the voice they want internally, too.

The coarseness has become so ugly in our discourse. And I worry that these self-feeding, self-repairing, self-healing, self-hating LLMs that crawl data that is really vile is going to begin to inform our society. And pretty soon we're going to end up like those bucked up nations in Korea where they break into fistfights about every 12 or 18 months in parliament.

We need to bring the temperature down. I do hope that there is some sort of legislation or some sort of innovation that does a better job of informing our digital world with our offline world. Because here's the good news, folks. The majority of people in our offline world are civil, they're empathetic, and most of the time, they're lovely. We'll be right back for our conversation with David Ignatius.

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Welcome back. Here's our conversation with David Ignatius, a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and author of several books, including his latest, Phantom Orbit, a Thriller. David, where does this podcast find you? I am in my home in Northwest Washington. This is the place where I write many of my columns and all of my fiction. So let's bust right into it. Your new book, Phantom Orbit, is a thriller about an invisible enemy that can disrupt a satellite signal central to our daily lives. So let's start there.

Give us an overview of what this novel is trying to tell us or what it illuminates about the current state of play in technology and geopolitics. So this is a novel about the way in which space weapons, space warfare are coming to dominate space.

warfare more broadly. I've become convinced in four visits to Ukraine that Ukraine is really the first space war. I can explain that in a minute. But the book opens with a Russian astrophysicist, not a defector, not a traitor, but somebody who's come to believe that Russia and China developed the ability to

to essentially have a kill switch that can disable the GPS system on which American communications everywhere, our cell phone calls, our air travel, our

travel of every sort depend and he tries to communicate that to the united states thinking as a responsibility to do so and the ci doesn't want to respond doesn't get back to him and through the book one of the mysteries is why the ci isn't dealing with this warning that he's making but more broadly it's a book about about what i think is the future of

warfare, maybe the future of commerce as well, which is systems in space. So I immediately go to, there's one person who doesn't report to any government, who doesn't work for the government, I would argue hasn't shown a lot or a great deal of fidelity to any specific commonwealth, who I believe owns and controls 51% of the satellites in orbit. Do you see that as a risk?

So I assume you're talking about Elon Musk. Correct. Let's just talk for a minute about Musk. I do think there's a risk there, but I also want to underline why he and the systems he runs are so important.

So as you say, Starlink today has roughly 5,000 satellites in low earth orbit. They're able to provide broadband internet coverage for pretty much the whole world. Specifically, they're able to provide broadband internet coverage for the Ukrainian military in its forward positions without which I don't think they could operate. So he and his system are crucial for Ukraine's survival.

He could decide tomorrow that he's sick of this forever war in Ukraine. He wants to sell Teslas, make Teslas in China and pull out. There are some limits on his ability to do that because he has a contract with the Pentagon. But as the United States grows more and more dependent on

our tech ecosystem to provide low-cost satellite launch, incredibly interesting new systems that do what our spy agencies could once do only now for everybody. Those private sector business people have much more leverage over our

national security policy, and I do worry what happens if one day they change their minds. We're putting a lot of eggs in their basket. So talk a little bit about the underlying technology. Phones and, I mean, there's some technologies that have just advanced incredibly, you know, at a rapid pace, others not so rapid. Describe the technology around satellites and has the cadence of innovation there matched the

underwhelmed, superseded advances in other types of technology. And what does that mean practically? Why are the satellites now, what are they capable of that they weren't capable of, say, 10 or 20 years ago?

So I think the most important aspect of this is the way in which costs have lowered because of competition, because of our entrepreneurial ecosystem. So just briefly reviewing in our minds the history of space. I grew up in a world where Russia, when I was seven years old, launched the first satellite and then had the first cosmonaut in space. We were behind. You

The United States had an incredible catch-up effort. We put men on the moon. Nobody has equaled that to this day. There was the air and the space shuttle. We were totally dominant. But then, for some reason, the United States lost interest in space to the point that we had to buy launch capability for satellites from other countries. We just didn't have the rockets to put big satellites in orbit. Russia supplied that for a time.

And then along came commercial space, along came Elon Musk. And with SpaceX, the history of trying and trying and trying and finally getting it right, he has

extraordinary low-cost launch capability, and that's been matched by others in the industry. So the things you can do in space cheaply, it's a much broader array. The communication satellites that are beaming brought that internet down to Earth, I don't think were imagined 10, 15 years ago.

5,000 satellites is a lot. Amazon's about to put 2,000 at least of its own in space to do its business. There are other companies around the world that are jumping into this as well. So the cost advantage is significant. All this stuff is in low-earth orbit. It's very vulnerable. The Russians have just...

our intelligence community says, have been thinking about the mismatch between all that we have and the little that they have and saying, if we needed to take out those low-Earth orbit satellites, we could use a nuclear weapon. We could just create a debris field in low-Earth orbit so nothing could pass.

really for a generation. So that's the vulnerability. But on the basic question you're asking, GPS was a brilliant idea that was developed initially for national security purposes and just got better and more refined year by year.

Russia tried to copy it from the beginning. It was very, very poor. It had nothing like the resolution fidelity the US had. China has a system called Beidou that they've been working on very hard. It's pretty good, but it's not as good as GPS. Europe has its own system. India has a system. Japan has a system. Everybody knows this is the backbone of everything that you do.

um but it's vulnerable it's vulnerable to attack it's vulnerable to spoofing uh other mischief that can be done to interfere with the salad so i think one thing i want to do in this book is get people thinking about the technologies that are part of everyday life i mean

Who doesn't go a moment without a cell phone? But without a GPS to locate where that phone is and allow it to work and exchange signals, the system would be untenable, wouldn't work. So a couple of thoughts listening to you talk about this. One, they're vulnerable, but so are civilian populations. Isn't part of this...

process to communicate to adversaries that an attack on our satellites would be like an attack on a civilian population that would be an act of war? Or do you think it's more realistic to develop technologies that make these things stealthy and more difficult to take out?

So I think our vulnerability is greater because our dependence on these systems is greater. It's asymmetric in that sense. That's why Russia thinks if we obliterated everything in low Earth orbit, we'd suffer, but the Americans and the West would suffer more. So that's why the balance of terror is

in nuclear weapons may not be as applicable. I think hardening satellites, I think developing redundancy, I think finding ways to avoid the

vulnerable communications from satellites to Earth through the kind of thing that Starlink uses, mesh networks in the space. You've got 5,000 satellites spinning around. They're creating their own internet as it were in space using mesh networks up there to exchange signals so that they can download them to Earth at the most appropriate opportune time. Technologies like that are really helpful. We now have a space force that's

First job is to figure out what's up there. What among the hundreds and hundreds of satellites might have attack capability by monitoring, not just from Earth, but close up,

to take a look. And they've seen some extraordinary things, which I try to describe in the book. The very cleverly configured Chinese seemingly attack satellites, Russian satellites that are structured like Matryoshka dolls, where a little satellite pops out of a big satellite and then goes toward the target. So then the Space Force will think, "How

how do we harden the system so they're less vulnerable? Another thing we haven't talked about is the ability to use high-powered microwaves or lasers to beam

malware into satellites from a distance without people on Earth necessarily being aware that that malware had been implanted, that it could be activated in a time of crisis. So you want to harden satellites against that kind of risk. And then finally, inevitably, the U.S. will want its own offensive capability in space. I have no idea what that's going to be. This is the most classified area I've ever encountered as a

journalists as a writer to try to penetrate. You just don't get answers when you ask, okay, like what weapons are you developing? But I'm sure they're developing some. I had one of those aha moments in technology. I remember the first time I bought something on my BlackBerry or took a picture of a check and it automatically showed up in my checking account. I had one of those moments, I think about a month or two months ago, I was on a plane and I used Starlink.

And within two minutes of connecting to Starlink, I got a call on my phone and the quality, it was FaceTime, and the FaceTime call was perfect on a plane. I mean, it really is powerful. It's amazingly good technology. Yeah, it's intoxicating. And a few days before, I had flown over the...

of west coast or excuse me the east coast of florida and saw a starlink or a spacex rocket flying into space i'm like you just got to give it to this guy i mean he's a he's you know he's not doing a photo sharing app he's putting satellites into space but wouldn't the rest of the world pray for our problems in the sense that our vulnerabilities and our problems are a function of the fact that we're dominating this final frontier you know we're 25 percent of global gdp

We're, you know, we have the biggest military in the world, but I think we're maybe 40 or 50 percent of the world's military, maybe a little bit more than that. But it feels like we just dominate space. Isn't this an example of how America is leapfrogging ahead? So this is an example of the continuing dynamism of the American technology sector, as is the creation of large language models. Most things in technology, we're not as far behind as we are.

worried we were. I think my response would be in a characteristically American way, we end up sharing the technology that we create

with the world and enhances the world's ability to do the things that we do. The internet was created in the United States initially for very limited purposes to share defense information among different labs. We ended up sharing that with the world and encouraging a governance system through ICANN that was not controlled by government, but was controlled by people who were technically competent and knew how to protect the system. We made it open

In that, I think, sadly to me, what paradox the modern world is that that super open communication system that we created and gave the world ends up empowering closed societies that can control it and adding a degree of instability to open societies that can't control it. Who could have predicted that? But that's the way it turned out. But we continue to

As with GPS, a perfect example. This was an American idea. It was developed initially in secret. We share the technology with the whole world. Everybody's got one. Everybody's better off for having one. We don't say boo about it. I think the main thing that the U.S. tries to do is get some order and...

regulation for space so things don't bump into each other. That whole command and control system for space, the U.S. runs, we're trying to spin off parts of it. But again, I think our problem is we create these fantastic technologies and then become vulnerable to them

look at internet hacking, look at the vulnerability of everything we do in the United States to the assaults on the technology that we created. What do we do about that? We don't stop creating the technology, but we do need to think more about how to protect it. You said it's sort of the intersection of these technological developments and geopolitics. What do you see as the biggest threat? Maybe it's more than one. Is it some sort of malware? Is it

A cyber attack? Is it a war in space? Is it AI becoming sentient and super weapons? If you were to try and guess what are the most frightening potential headlines we might read in the next two or three years and involve technology, what is your best guess?

So on the purely technological front, I think I do worry about the speed of warfare as AI systems increasingly make decisions because with hypersonic missiles, the decision time for human beings isn't there. So I'd liken it to what DeepMind does

or AlphaGo did to playing chess or Go. So as I understand it, AlphaGo understands every move that any human being ever made on a Go board and then can think of any move that could be made that no human being ever thought of. Same thing with chess. It's not just a compendium of every move in the past that was made. It's something much more creative than that.

So applied to warfare, a system with that power could think of strategies, vulnerabilities, ways to exploit weakness that even the most aggressive military planners couldn't think of. And I know the person who's worried most about this before he died was Henry Kissinger. I talked to Kissinger at length. Kissinger wrote a couple of books about it.

That AI presented enormous opportunities in ways we all know, but from his perspective as somebody who'd spent really his whole career thinking about arms control, the real threat now wasn't the weapons, but the AI systems that would drive use of the weapons. And as he died, that was the thing topmost in his mind, and he was right.

So give us, you cover these conflicts. Give us your sense of the state of play of Ukraine or the war in Ukraine right now. It feels like we've been distracted with a bunch of other things and haven't spent that much time thinking about it. So just to briefly describe Ukraine as it seemed to me just over a month ago when I was last there, I visited with President Zelensky. It's always inspiring. In this case, it was inspiring and depressing.

He described a situation where he was still then waiting for congressional approval of the weapons. And he said, if we don't get them, we have no choice but to retreat. And he drew me a little map of the battlefield and said, we have 2,000 rounds a day. The Russians have 8,000. We just can't hold these lines. We have to reduce strength and we have to...

take some of our positions out. So that was happening. I fear it's happening now. If you read the news, the Russians are advancing in the east while they wait for the weapons to arrive.

uh when the ukrainians get the weapons that we're sending them i think the wisest course for them is to consolidate their positions to make sure the russians don't gain any more territory and prepare for next year offensive operations that could begin to push the russians back the russians are in it for the long haul too they just put in place a

team in their defense ministry that's going to be about a war economy for as far ahead as we can imagine. Putin isn't giving up. So for me, the thing, sadly, that people need to focus on is giving Ukraine the resources to keep fighting as long as it's willing to pay that cost until it can get to the point where it has the leverage to push the Russians and the Chinese to

toward negotiations for a just negotiated settlement. I can't describe what that would look like. But let me tell you one other thing about what you see in Ukraine, which is interesting, I think, to your listeners. Ukraine has developed an incredible entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ukrainians are making their own drones now.

that can reach far into Russia. They have attacked 200 miles east of Russia in one case I read about recently. They've taken out roughly 15% of Russia's refining capacity. They're building drones because Russia's gotten better at EW, electronic warfare, that can jam the signals that allow guidance and

successful targeting by drones. They're putting AI at the edge in their drones, the cheap little drones. They make them in furniture stores. They're just kind of cheap little wood.

but they fly and then they're putting very sophisticated AI systems that can map the terrain and even if they're cut off from any communications with satellite guidance or with their home base, can still get to their targets. They're doing that on their own largely,

Some American entrepreneurs. The Ukrainian war has become, if you remember from your history of the Spanish Civil War, the International Brigade. In Kiev now, there are entrepreneurs from all over the world. I mean, Australians, Portuguese, lots of Americans. And they're just coming there to help the Ukrainians think of ways to survive. It's a fascinating little world. It deserves more good journalism to describe it.

So, you know, with technology, their technology is really good, and they have stayed ahead of the Russians. I think they can stay in the field, to come back to my point, until they have enough power to negotiate with Russia from a position of strength. Now talk a little bit about your sense of the war in Gaza and how technology is playing out there. So, technology's failures in Gaza...

Israel's technology superpower, Israel's technology, it appears from the New York Times reporting, was sufficient that they captured plans for what Hamas would do on October 7th.

But human failure, the inability of senior intelligence officers to take seriously what junior intelligence officers had seen in the collection is part of the tragedy. October 7, Israel just didn't see it coming. Israel didn't see the trench system, the underground, the metro as they call it, the tunnels.

It turns out in this tiny area, Gaza's like 25 miles long and seven miles wide. In that tiny area, there are 350 miles of tunnels. Imagine that, you know, just crisscrossing at every level. Israel didn't really have an adequate sense of that. And I'm writing a column today about Israel beginning to think about

an endgame that doesn't obliterate Hamas, that may not be possible, but begins to develop alternative non-Hamas governance in Gaza, which means turning to the people Netanyahu hates, or the Palestinian Authority. But there are a lot of Israelis, especially in the IDF, who think that's the only way to go. I share that view. How do you think this thing, if you were to try and play it out, and you've written...

about, okay, what about the day after? How, if you had to speculate, this plays out, and then what does it look like after there's some sort of resolution? So I think the first thing is to realize that Rapha, in a sense, has been overplayed by both sides. Israel does not at present

have the military forces for an all-out assault on Rafah. This is more noise than it is an actual attack plan. Every time the U.S. says, we don't think you should attack Rafah, Netanyahu seems to think, Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to think he has to say, I'm going to attack Rafah. But there aren't those plans at present. And people in the IDF agree that

with people in the U.S. government that doing this carefully, not necessarily in a rush, makes sense. And they understand more to the point that unless you've thought clearly about how you're going to maintain order once you've cleared Rafah, you're not going to kill every Hamas fighter in Rafah just as they didn't kill every Hamas fighter in Gaza City or Khan Yunus. There's still there a lot of them. But there's...

they're not strong enough to threaten Israel. And if you create an alternative security presence, they're probably not strong enough to dominate Gaza going forward. A lot of Gaza Palestinians, I know from my reporting, do not like Hamas. So I think people are finally beginning to think about the day after issues, like what does stability look like in the long run in a way that is better for Israel, is better for the Palestinians?

And that's, turning the page to that point has taken seven months, but that's where things ought to be. So to say one final personal thing, I've been covering the Middle East a long time. I think Hamas has done enormous damage to the Palestinians. I think having sympathy for Hamas just doesn't make sense to me, given how they've operated. I think having sympathy for the Palestinian people and their suffering or aspirations for peace

statehood and dignity is entirely appropriate. But Israel's goal of making sure that Hamas never governs Gaza again, I think that's something that makes sense for everybody, especially the Palestinians.

Well, just a couple of a couple of theses you respond to them. One, I don't think a two state solution, which I think most people agree is a decent goal, is possible with either Netanyahu or Hamas in charge. Do you agree with that? Yes. And you said about having empathy and sympathy for the residents of Gaza. I mean, right now it's got the greatest concentration of child amputees in the world. I mean, it's it's horrific.

And a lot of people, I've talked a lot about this issue, and a lot of people say, Scott, you need to differentiate between anti-Semitism and being, you know, being anti-Israel and being anti-Semitic. And I think that's a fair statement because my understanding is about Netanyahu is about 30% support. So there's a lot of people in Israel that are kind of anti the current Israeli leadership, where I don't think there's as much sharp relief as people say you can have a lot of empathy and

for Palestinians and be anti-Hamas. Because my understanding is, I don't want to be clear, people, children, people under the age of 18, victims, humanitarian aid should absolutely, we need to protect it and make sure it gets there. But my understanding is Hamas actually has still a great deal of support among the Palestinian people. And that a lot of these houses that the IDF goes into have connections to tunnels, weapons, pictures of Hamas leaders that

you know, just as we held the German people accountable for the Third Reich, is there really that much light in between the Palestinian people and Hamas? So I think there's enough light and distance that equating the two and essentially imposing collective punishment on the Palestinians is wrong morally and it's also wrong strategically. It's a guarantee for unending conflict.

You're just not gonna kill all the Palestinians. They may hate you, but you've gotta find a way for them to have stable governance and gradually over time things change. The US in fact held the Nazi party responsible for what happened in Germany, held the Japanese war machine responsible for their war, but didn't hold the people of those two countries responsible.

and indeed tried to help from a very early moment when the war ended, help those people begin to develop prosperity, democratic political systems. And today, to me, Japan and Germany are among the most successful democratic countries I know, precisely because we didn't impose collective punishment on the people.

And, you know, I've spent-- I've been covering this, Scott, for way too long. Since 1980, almost 45 years, I've lived in a Palestinian village. I went back to visit that village in December just to see the people who'd taken me in. And I'll say a couple things about them. One interesting thing about the West Bank is it hasn't blown up during this nightmare war. Everybody was afraid it would, but it hasn't. Why?

Well, partly Palestinians, you know, Israel's sitting on them hard. But they don't want the disaster that Hamas brought to Gaza to happen to them. I may be naive in thinking that there's a way

to a successful two-state solution. I know it'll take years. I know that both countries are really far from it. But I also know that if you don't start now, you're just going to be stuck. I've watched Israel and the Palestinians stuck in this misery for too long. I want it to move to a different place. And I try to explain in my journalism how you do that.

and spend the time going village to village in the West Bank just to make sure I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy to think that you could get to something better. So that's what my reporting tells me. For the purposes of pushback and also not to prove a point, but to learn here, I have a tremendous respect for your domain expertise and I am trying to keep an open mind about this.

But when you say that we didn't hold the German and the Japanese people accountable, I would push back. We killed three and a half million Japanese, including 100,000 in one night. Five and a half million Germans were killed by the Allies, including we continued to bomb in Hamburg and Dresden well beyond when it had strategic objective other than convincing them that they needed to know that they lost. And then holding the Palestinian people, the way you're framing it is that the Israelis are taking a more what I call inhuman approach,

to the Palestinians than the allies did in World War II. And I disagree with that. And they're dropping leaflets, they're leaving voicemails. My sense is that they are doing their best to try and root out the combatants who, Hamas, you know, are using civilians as ammunition. Why is it you think that Israel is holding Palestinians to greater account than the allies held the Germans or the Japanese? I don't see the data to support that.

So I take your point that during that all-out fight in World War II, the United States killed a lot of German and Japanese civilians.

The United States' position nominally was to reduce, to limit civilian casualties, unlike the British that were conducting strategic bombing of Germany, meaning hitting cities. The U.S. position was, let's hit military facilities. But that got blurred, and I don't disagree in any way that the killing was horrific. There's evidence, Evan Thomas' new book about the road to surrender,

In Hell with Japan, it makes clear that Truman and Stimson thought that they were choosing a military target in Hiroshima. It wasn't. The aim point was right in the middle of town, killing civilians. But they thought, they convinced themselves that they had ruled out what the military wanted to do, which was bomb Kyoto and shatter the symbol of Japanese independence.

and the civilians there, and they avoided that. So are we holding Israel to a different standard than we followed ourselves? Maybe. We live in a different time. When you see war on your TV every day in a way you didn't during World War II, it's immediate and present and visceral.

I've talked a lot to people in the IDF. I've known, covered Israel for all these decades. I have very good, long-standing contacts in the IDF. And I asked them,

What accounts for the high level of civilian to Hamas casualties? And by most estimates, I know these Israelis are pushing back on this, but by estimates of US intelligence, the ratio is unusually high and well beyond what we imposed in after some time in Iraq and Afghanistan. So what accounts for that? What's going on? And when I asked that question,

IDF, IAF, Israeli Air Force officers tell me about their rules of engagement, about the algorithms they use to try to reduce civilian casualties. But then they also tell me about the overrides that exist. I just, I look at these numbers, Scott, and I think too many civilians have died relative to the number of fighters, more than was necessary. That's not to say that Israel is

unique in that, doing things different from what the U.S. did during World War II. I'm not taking issue with that. But could they have done this differently? Could they do it differently right now as they plan the RAFA operation? Could they think carefully about how to reduce civilian suffering and death in this next phase? That's what the U.S. has been saying. And I think that that's the right question to ask.

I don't think that's a double standard at all. It's a standard. So things are being done that I just find abhorrent. Israelis were blocking quarters of humanitarian assistance. They are not the IDF. The IDF is opening them up. There were police units reporting to right-wing members of this governing coalition who closed those quarters, and the IDF came in and opened them.

Because they know it's not in Israel's strategic interest to do this. The IDF hate you. Settler violence in the West Bank. You know who the biggest enemy of that is? The IDF. Because they've got to keep the lid on. And these crazy settlers who blow down from the mountaintops and, you know, go on wearing masks and kill people and what they say are revenge attacks. That drives the IDF crazy.

And tell me if you think this is an unfair question, but I want to pose it anyways, because you really do sit at the intersection of warfare in D.C. and geopolitics. But the scenario I was imagining is a jihadist or radical cartel is elected to lead Mexico. And they incur into Texas under the auspices of, you have been demonic to migrants. You've been putting our kids in cages here.

And it's based on this flawed, blasphemous ideology called evangelical Christianity. And we have an obligation to our God to come in. And we've gotten aid and we've spent years building tunnels underneath the Texas-Mexican border. We come in and this might be fair or unfair, but on a per capita basis, kill about 30,000 Americans and then take 5,000 back and hide them in tunnels under Mexico.

And the question I was asked is, what would we do? And I believe our response would make Israel's response look gentle. Is that fair? I don't think it is entirely fair. I'm just thinking about the wars that I've watched. There was a nightmarish problem of ISIS violence that was sweeping across the Middle East, just truly horrific, pornographic violence, just crazy ways of killing people and

you know, subjugating women in particular to beastly conditions. And the US decided to fight back. So how did we do that? Well, the first thing we did was to get an ally, a local ally. The one thing we didn't do adequately in Iraq or Afghanistan, but we got people who were prepared to fight and die to do the operations on the ground.

The first thing you think about with Mexico is there'd be a lot of people who would be potential allies and you'd want to work with them.

And then we thought about the need to move slowly and carefully so that the shaping of the operations against ISIS took months. People wonder what the heck is the US doing? Why is it taking so long? I remember I was able to go into Syria with the Special Operations Command repeatedly. I kept thinking, why are we going faster?

And the reason was to shape it carefully so that when you went in, it'd be quick and decisive. So they went in, the capital of ISIS was Raqqa. They didn't take Raqqa. They got all around it. They began recruiting tribes

that had roots in Raqqa. They took the town next to Raqqa called Tabqa. They staged operations to squeeze, like, to get the civilians out of Raqqa so that the people in Raqqa mostly were the fighters. So when we say there's a better way to do this than the way you're doing it, we have some authority in making that claim. So how would we deal with Mexico? I mean, I don't know, but...

I mean, the right answer surely is we ought to find a way in that nightmare, hypothetical scenario you described, to do a better job than Israel, tragically, with the greatest sympathy for the dilemmas they faced than they did, because too many people died. We might be forced into that same situation. We might kill an equivalent number of people, but

I hope we wouldn't have to, that we'd be smarter, and I hope Israel would be smarter. David Ignatius is a prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and has been covering the Middle East and the CIA for more than four decades. He's also written several New York Times bestsellers, including The Increment, Body of Lies, and Blood Money. His latest novel, Phantom Orbit, a thriller, is out now. He joins us from his home in northwest Washington. David, I could have gone two hours here.

And I really do appreciate your measured, thoughtful view on these things and the way that you add texture. I found this really interesting and I learned from it. Appreciate your time. I enjoyed the conversation too. They were tough questions. We'll be right back. Algebra of happiness. I think a lot about drinking and alcohol.

I love alcohol. And I've said I'm good at it. It makes me, you know, I'm a slightly better version or actually probably a tangibly better version of me a little bit fucked up. I'm more emotive. I'm more affectionate. I'm funnier. I'm more engaged under the influence of alcohol. And I know how terrible that sounds.

I have decided to start reducing my intake of alcohol because whenever I do a physical and they ask me how many drinks a week I have, I figured out I'm drinking about a bottle of Maker's Mark every one and a half to two weeks, which just can't be good for you. And then after listening to about 10 minutes of Peter Atty or Andrew Huberman, it's

It's clear I might as well be, I don't know, guzzling a gallon of Clorox bleach the way they describe it. So I'm trying to take down my alcohol intake for selfish reasons for my own health. Well, here's another reason I want all of us dads to think about reducing our alcohol intake. I went out Friday night with a friend. I went to the premiere of Mad Max Furiosa.

I went afterwards to Chiltern Firehouse, which is the coolest room in London. When I say cool, great lighting, hot people, great drinks, great service. I just absolutely love it there. And I went with my friend and I had two makers in Ginger. I've been trying to limit my alcohol intake. As a matter of fact, right after doing ketamine, I didn't like the smell of alcohol and I tried to lean into that.

And started ordering grapefruit juice and soda and really liked that. But now I'm toddling back and starting to drink again. See above Charming Scott. And then at two, I thought, okay, I'm going to get my wheelie and get out of here. But I had a third. And then, so I'm feeling really good. And I am watching my sons this weekend. And my oldest is staying at boarding school, my youngest is

And so I'm fucked up. Okay, fine. I go home, go to sleep. I get up. I sleep in an hour or two hours later than I would because see above, I'm fucked up and I'm hung over. I get up. I just want to have greasy food. I take another nap. I want to take my son and the dogs out for a walk. My son is being not difficult. He's being what a 13-year-old is. He's being a 13-year-old. So I don't get them out for a walk. I let the dogs out in the backyard. And basically we

We go the whole day without doing anything. The bottom line is, shitty dad. Shitty dad. And what I'm going to do and I want dads to think about is I'm not saying stop drinking. What I'm saying is at some point,

Does it make sense to stop chasing it? That's what I do when I drink. I think, wow, I love the way this makes me feel. I love this atmosphere. I'm going to do number three, maybe number four. And I start chasing that feeling.

And real maturity, I think, comes from the notion of, okay, I love the idea. I love the idea and the concept, and I've tried to always do this, of leaving a little too early. A little too early. I love that. I've done that in businesses. I've started businesses, and when they're jamming, I sell them or I leave. I think it's okay to leave the stage while everyone is applauding. I like that.

So modulate. Leave a little early from social environments and, and don't have the third drink. Don't have the fourth drink. Wake up at a reasonable hour the next morning. Don't be fucked up. Don't be hung over. Be the dad you want to be. We're not going to chase it.

We're going to think about what would it require, would it really take that much discipline to leave an hour earlier, to have one or two fewer drinks, and then be up an hour, two hours earlier, and be totally engaged in what you're supposed to be engaged in on the weekends. The weekends are no longer about nursing your hangovers and recovering from the shitty health impacts of alcohol. It's about nourishing your relationship with your son. ♪

This episode was produced by Caroline Chagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer. And Jude Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prof G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show. A lot of riffing, a lot of humor, a lot of insight, a lot of daddy, a lot of papa dog, a lot of markets.

Even the non sequiturs were elegant, yet generous, yet moving. Oh, my God. What did I eat today? How do I recreate this? How do we bottle a little daddy? How do we bottle today's daddy? Put a label on it and become billionaires. Billionaires, Jennifer. You need a jet. How do we bottle this? How do we bottle this? Let's start a podcast. Oh, wait.