Speaker 1: Have you ever felt that that deep, unsettling tension in
the air, like the world is fundamentally shifting beneath our feet,
changing at a pace that's just unprecedented. It's a collective intuition,
isn't it? A feeling that something really significant is unfolding,
And that intuitive sense, well, for many of us who
follow global affairs, it's unfortunately backed by some truly sobering statistics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the last three years alone, conflict zones
globally have skyrocketed by sixty six percent.
Speaker 2: Sixty six percent. It's staggering.
Speaker 1: And since twenty twenty three, fifty nine states have erupted
in war. That's the highest number we've seen in any
single year since nineteen forty six, since the.
Speaker 2: End of World War two, basically exactly.
Speaker 1: And if you look at world military spending, it's up
by ten percent year over year. That marks a full
decade of uninterrupted growth.
Speaker 2: It absolutely does. The data paints a well, a very
clear picture of a world in flux, where the established
rules of engagement are quite literally being rewritten in real time,
often in ways that defy our traditional and standing of conflict.
Speaker 1: And that's really our mission today, isn't it. This deep
dive is all about navigating that complex, rapidly evolving landscape,
global conflict, the changing nature of warfare. We're here to
try and extract the most important insights to help you
understand what is truly at stake and crucially, what these
developments mean for you personally and globally.
Speaker 3: Consider us your guides.
Speaker 1: I suppose here to unpack these dense topics, bring some
clarity to the chaoss, maybe even illuminate a few surprising
facts along the way.
Speaker 2: And it's particularly insightful how the very definition of war
is transforming before our eyes. You know, many strategists now
argue we're already in the early stages of a new
type of world war, but one that looks nothing like
the conflicts of the past.
Speaker 3: How so different?
Speaker 2: How well, it's a profound shift from what we might
call kinetic warfare, you know, the bombs, the missiles, the
boots on the ground, to primarily information and cyber warfare.
Speaker 1: Right that redefinition of power is fascinating. When I speak
to sources in the intelligence community, they often talk about
the dramatic asymmetry this introduces. You can now destabilize entire
governments or societies with just a server farm and maybe
what twenty people sitting in a room thousands of miles away.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's an industrialized form of warfare on the cheap,
you could say, scalable globally thanks of the Internet.
Speaker 1: Okay, but what does that actually mean for how states
engage with each other, if not through direct confrontation.
Speaker 2: That's a critical question. It means a significant part of
this new landscape is proxy warfare. This is where a
wealthier nation state funds trains and arms of conflict in
a less wealthy state, primarily to weaken a primary target.
It's prosecuting conflict by remote control, essentially.
Speaker 1: And we've certainly seen this play out repeatedly, haven't we Libya, Syria, Yemen,
even the long conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq? Right now,
you could argue Israel and Iran or a prime example,
through various non state actors, and certainly the dynamics between
Russia and Ukraine involves significant proxy elements. So from your perspective,
what makes this such an appealing strategy for the funding nation,
I mean appealing in a sort of uncomfortable way.
Speaker 2: Well, the appeal is undeniable. Unfortunately, it allows the funding
nation to conserve its own troops, its own advanced weaponry,
and critically, its own civilian lives. They effectively benefit from
a wartime environment, you know, shaping geopolitical outcomes, weakening adversaries
without incurring the direct risks and costs of traditional warfare.
It's a very uncomfortable truth about modern conflict.
Speaker 1: And this new form of engagement. It thrives in what
we now call a post truth society.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it. Yes, it absolutely does.
Speaker 3: Post truth society.
Speaker 1: It's a term we hear a lot, but maybe for
our listeners, how would you succinctly define it? And how
does it specifically fuel these new forms of conflict? Okay?
Speaker 2: At its core, a post truth society is an environment
where objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than, say,
emotional appeals, personal beliefs. It's not just that misinformation exists,
it's that with the ubiquity of information, there's no longer
a monopoly on objective fact. This leads to a constant
stream of distortion, propaganda, manipulation. The real insight here isn't
just that misinformation exists, but how rapidly algorithmic echo chambers
can crystallize fringe narratives into widespread truths within specific demographics.
It makes traditional countermessaging almost irrelevant.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you feel that tension right at that constant state
of anxiety and uncertainty where everyone thinks they know everything
or they're terrified they don't know enough. It makes people
incredibly susceptible to conspiracy theories when traditional news sources, fragment
and trusted information becomes diluted, while Western societies become incredibly
vulnerable to adversaries who.
Speaker 3: Can exploit those divisions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard a source once argue that ignorance isn't
just a byproduct, it actually forms the very foundation that
information warfare then capitalizes on. They find an audience ready
to believe, and then they just spoon feed them messaging
to get them to take specific actions.
Speaker 2: Indeed, it's about finding an audience that's already willing, perhaps
to be blind to what's happening outside their immediate world.
This also brings us to the rise of public diplomacy
via social media. Leaders are now conveying messaging to enemies, allies,
neutral audiences, all through platforms like x or TikTok.
Speaker 1: It's truly the age of the algorithm. How you articulate
a threat or rally support, whether you use all caps,
specific images, even memes, all of it plays into how
effective your message is. Absolutely we saw this unfold with
the Iran Israel conflict, which some called the twelve day
War of information warfare. My sources tell me how quickly
narratives propagated, influencing understanding even among high school kids on
platforms like TikTok.
Speaker 2: The sheer volume and speed of information dissemination are unprecedented,
and algorithms dictate what gets seen, creating a very distorted
view of what's truly happening.
Speaker 1: I heard a story it was about a war game
simulation where just two or three online trolls were able
to cause more havoc than an entire White House communications team,
just because the algorithm amplify their content more effectively.
Speaker 2: That's a stark reminder that the fog of war now
extends deeply into the digital realm. And this digital fog
of war, this rapid spread of information and misinformation you
just detailed, it becomes even more terrifying when we consider
its potential to influence or maybe even accidentally trigger a
much more terrifying reality, the nuclear threat. Yeah, and what
I learned truly terrified me. I can only imagine here's
a chilling detail that many in the public maybe don't grasp.
One expert I spoke with predicts there's a thirty percent
chance we'll see a nuclear detonation in our lifetime.
Speaker 3: Thirty percent. That's an incredibly high probability.
Speaker 1: It is, And when you think about it, we are
truly one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away, or even one AI
generated viral video from nuclear annihilation.
Speaker 2: It's terrifyingly close.
Speaker 3: It's truly a.
Speaker 1: Testament to individual judgment in the face of protocol, isn't it.
Consider that chilling moment in nineteen eighty three with the
Soviet officer Spenislav Petrov.
Speaker 2: Ah, Yes, the man who saved the world exactly.
Speaker 1: He was in a bunker, saw what appeared to be
a US missile launch, and for whatever reason, he decided
not to escalate it up the chain of command. He
assumed it was a false alarm. He quite literally saved
the world.
Speaker 2: An act of incredible personal judgment against all protocol. If
we look at the US system of nuclear commanding control.
The president has what's called the football that satchel with
predetermined strikes, and the Black Book Emergency Action Messages eam's
are sent and missile cruise need two people to turn
keys right.
Speaker 1: And the speed involved is just mind boggling. Missile cruz
have as little as sixty.
Speaker 3: Seconds to act.
Speaker 1: Sixty seconds from the first satellite signature of a launch,
you have maybe seven minutes to decide on a counter attack.
An ICBM from Pyongyang could hit Washington, DC in thirty
three minutes, and.
Speaker 2: From Russia to Washington d C twenty six minutes and
forty seconds.
Speaker 1: That's hardly any time at all. It's almost instantaneous in
strategic terms.
Speaker 2: And Rush, of course, has its own alarming system called
the dead Hand. This relies on ground sensors that would
detect an attack and automatically launch all of their nuclear
weapons even if their leaders were already dead. The chilling
what was particularly startling, maybe is that the Pentagon actually
rehearses nuclear war scenarios three times a day across three shifts.
They're constantly practicing this grim.
Speaker 3: Reality three times a day.
Speaker 1: It really underscores the constant grim calculus happening behind the scenes. So,
given all this, what is the primary strategic reason nations
even possess these weapons.
Speaker 3: It's this bizarre paradox, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is The primary reason is deterrence based on the
principle of mutual assured distraction. At at The idea is
that the catastrophic consequences for both sides are so immense
that neither would initiate a first strike. We have them,
so we never have to use them, right. The US policy,
for instance, is not to have tactical nuclear weapons, the smaller,
more contained ones, because it's understood that their use would
inevitably escalate to a strategic nuclear war. It's not a
slippery slope, it's more like a cliff.
Speaker 3: A cliff. Yeah, once you step onto that path, there's
no going back.
Speaker 2: Exactly.
Speaker 1: So, the very existence of these strategic weapons, even if
theoretically unusable, dictates a kind of global no fly zone
over certain conflicts, doesn't it. Look why nobody is directly
intervening in Ukraine on the ground, or why nations are
hesitant to incur further into Russia itself, it's because of
that lurking nuclear threat.
Speaker 2: Precisely, it's this constant global game of chicken played with
the highest possible steaks, and it leads us perfectly into
a complex regional case study Iran and the Middle East,
a region always at the heart of global tensions and
a hotbed for these shifting dynamics of conflict.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack Iran's trajectory a little. Its history up
until nineteen seventy nine was marked by a close relationship
ship with the West, particularly the United States. Under the
Shaw it experienced rapid economic.
Speaker 2: Growth, right, but that growth wasn't mashed by political development,
leading to widespread discontent. This imbalance eventually ignited the nineteen
seventy nine Revolution, which was ultimately dominated by Islamists.
Speaker 1: And what's compelling here is how the Iranian regime that
emerged from that revolution built itself on three core pillars,
each essential to its continued legitimacy.
Speaker 2: Okay, what are those?
Speaker 1: First, absolute independence from the West, vowing never to return
to the dependence.
Speaker 3: Of the Shaw's era, right, no more puppets.
Speaker 1: Second, unwavering hostility to Israel, which they view as an
outpost of American power and an obstacle to their broader ambitions.
And that third pillar, of course, is exporting the revolution
to other Shia countries, essentially becoming the leader of the
Shia world.
Speaker 2: And they believe Israel fundamentally gets in the way of
that expansion, being a non Muslim entity in a region
they envision as Islamic.
Speaker 3: That's the core of it.
Speaker 1: Yes, It's often said that if you remove any one
of these three pillars, the higher regime would lose its
credibility and likely fall diplomacy with the West. From their perspective,
would mean abandoning these core.
Speaker 2: Tenants, which brings us to Iran's status as a nuclear
threshold state.
Speaker 3: Okay, explain that nuclear threshold right.
Speaker 2: So to understand this, consider uranium enrichment. Raw uranium is
only about two three percent pure. For energy or medical uses,
it's enriched to about twenty percent. The Nuclear Non Proliferation
Treaty generally allows this. However, Uran has gone beyond that,
enriching to sixty percent now, while clean weapons grade uranium
needs to be around ninety percent pure, Iran's current sixty
percent enrichment is a critical threshold.
Speaker 3: Why sixty percent, Specifically.
Speaker 2: Because getting from sixty percent to ninety percent is much
much faster and getting from say twenty percent to sixty percent.
It means they're not just capable of a dirty bomb
or radioactive device, but not a strategic nuclear weapon. It
means they are mere weeks away from assembling a full
strategic weapon. It drastically shortens the internettional communities response times
should they choose to webinize.
Speaker 1: So being at sixty percent gives them incredible leverage, a
perceived ability to quickly break out.
Speaker 3: To a bomb if they felt sufficiently threatened.
Speaker 2: Exactly, It's a powerful bargaining chip, even if they never
build the bomb itself.
Speaker 1: Now, regarding the recent strike involving Iran, my sources question
the timing given inconsistent intelligence and internal US politics at
the time. What we learned from leak reports on Israel's
intelligence and covert actions is truly astonishing, though it is.
Speaker 2: They apparently deployed prefabricated drones within Tehran controlled by AI,
just ready to.
Speaker 3: Be activated inside Tehran.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And then there was the astonishing story of the pagers.
Speaker 1: Oh I read about that it was wild. Israel somehow
managed to get Irani enforced well. HESBA law forces their
proxy to wear pagers that they had manufactured with bombs
inside them, which then exploded.
Speaker 2: An incredible level of infiltration and operational audacity. It turned
out those were targeting Hesbola in Lebanon, a key proxy
of Iran right.
Speaker 1: And these actions they highlight Iran's own domestic crisis of
legitimacy right now, don't they. They're trying to use nationalism
as a solve for what they might perceive as a
failure to protect the homeland. And there's the looming succession
crisis of the Supreme Leader, with the IRGC, the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard core acting fiercely to protect the revolution's core.
Speaker 2: And it's particularly insightful how deeply entrenched the historical intelligence
failures concerning Iran are The CIA notoriously misread the nineteen
seventy nine revolution, a significant modern failure.
Speaker 3: A huge blind spot.
Speaker 2: And in the broader context, you have to ask how
something like the October seventh attacks in Israel happened. Sources
reveal multiple reports and officers had escalated the problem, but
bureaucratic silos and maybe a lack of complete information flow
between agencies seemingly prevented policymakers from getting the full picture.
Speaker 1: It's that classic hindsight is twenty twenty effect. But it
also highlights the concept of cognitive dissonance.
Speaker 2: Right explain that for us, well, it's.
Speaker 1: The mental dis comfort experienced by someone who holds contradictory
beliefs or values. We see leaders, particularly those in power,
often doubling down on their beliefs even when faced with
information that contradicts them, rather than admitting they might be wrong.
Speaker 2: Ah okay, So they stick to their guns even if
the evidence suggests otherwise.
Speaker 1: Exactly, and this often leads to more aggressive actions to
reinforce their position. There's also the theory, you know, that
leaders might provide selective intelligence to allies to provoke a
desired action.
Speaker 2: Which is what some suspect happened with Israel providing intelligence
to the US regarding that recent strike.
Speaker 3: It's certainly a theory being discussed. It's a cutthroat game.
Speaker 2: It really is. And speaking of new threats and global futures,
we're seeing alarming developments in autonomous warfare.
Speaker 3: Autonomous warfare like killer.
Speaker 2: Robots sort of Shahid drones for instance, manufactured by Iran
used by Russia and Ukraine. They were found with Western
AI processors and Chinese anti GPS jamming.
Speaker 1: Technology, not just remote control anymore.
Speaker 2: No, this isn't just about remote control. These drones have
autonomous capabilities. They can think for themselves, deciding when and
where to go without constant human feedback or control. It's
truly a flying computer.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, on one hand, some argue AI powered weapons could
be more precise than humans, potentially reducing civilian casualties.
Speaker 2: But what about self awareness, self preservation protocols, unforeseen consequences
once they're fully unleashed. These are huge ethical and practical questions.
Speaker 1: Right if an AI drone is programmed target an enemy,
but then is its self targeted, will it prioritize its
own preservation, even if it means deviating from its mission
or risking civilian harm?
Speaker 2: Exactly? These are the ifs that are rapidly becoming when,
and it's not just single drones. We're seeing the development
of drone swarms, including Kamakazi swarms designed to hit a
target and not return, potentially overwhelming traditional defenses.
Speaker 1: It really makes you wonder about the complacency of the world,
doesn't it. So much of the world seems to be
passively ab deserving these conflicts, almost like a giant NASCAR race,
or just watching TV.
Speaker 2: Waiting for the next crash or the next updates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just anticipating the next conflict, waiting for the next
body count update or the newest weapons system reveal.
Speaker 2: It's a concerning detachment and zooming out. Many people are
grappling with where one could even find a safe haven
in such a troubled world.
Speaker 1: It's a question my friends and I often joke about
actually in our group chat, when global tensions flare up,
we pull out maps pointing to where we are. Where
friends are debating the safest spots. Your research, I recall,
suggests specific safe zones in a nuclear war scenario.
Speaker 2: Well, my understanding is there are very few true safe zones,
but New Zealand and parts of Australia are often cited
by those who study nuclear winter.
Speaker 3: Why there specifically?
Speaker 2: The theory suggests that if a nuclear exchange causes enough
soot and dust to block out the sun, global agriculture
would fail. These specific regions are believed to have some
viability for agriculture in such a scenario due to climate
and location. I've even had fascinating, if disturbing conversations with
billionaires who have bunkers in New Zealand ready to activate
their G.
Speaker 3: Fives billionaires with bunkers in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: It highlights how some individuals are responding to these global
threats on a very personal level, doesn't.
Speaker 2: It It certainly does, And on a personal.
Speaker 1: Level, as someone grappling with these shifts, my family is
even planning to relocate out of the United States by
twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's a significant move.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: It's a profound response to what I perceive as declining
US influence globally, and honestly a desire for my children
to experience the world beyond American polarization, allowing them to
truly appreciate what it means to be an American by
seeing life outside.
Speaker 3: Of it first.
Speaker 2: That's a profound commitment to a global perspective. And what's
particularly insightful here is how that aligns with the broader
shifting global power dynamics. We're seeing an emerging collaboration.
Speaker 1: In the East between China, Russia, Iran on North Korea exactly.
Speaker 2: This isn't based on a shared ideology like the old
Cold War blocks. It's based on pragmatic interests, a collective
effort to counter the perceived dominance of the West.
Speaker 1: It's a powerful counterweight, and many speculate that a World
War III trigger might not be a kinetic invasion at all,
but rather an economic and trade war, particularly if China
were to ban the sale of rare earth minerals to
the West. These are vital for everything from lithium ion
batteries to microchips and advanced processors. We're already seeing elements
of this play out in various sectors.
Speaker 2: Indeed, China's potential moves on Taiwan, for instance, might not
be a kinetic invasion at all. They could opt for
economic isolation, blocking crucial shipping routes, restricting mineral sales, or
administrative takeovers, much like they did with Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: And while the US has a sworn promise to protect Taiwan,
the reality of global distraction and the depletion of resources
like THOD missiles being sent to Israel, for example, makes
the situation incredibly precarious.
Speaker 2: Doesn't it very precarious? The will might be there, but
the capacity and focus could be strained.
Speaker 1: And speaking of new threats as someone who deals with
this daily, the rise of misinformation and deep fakes is
a truly alarming development. My team spends a significant amount
of time fighting.
Speaker 3: Deep fake ads.
Speaker 2: I can imagine.
Speaker 1: Just this morning, I had to email Meta about a
single mother who lost three thousand pounds because she saw
a deep fake ad of me telling her to join
a group. She said, She'll never trust anything on the
internet again. It's profoundly sad and deeply personal for so many.
Speaker 2: It's awful, And one crucial element here is is that
this is a crisis we can only hope to manage,
rather than definitively defeat. It requires a fundamental shift in
media literacy education.
Speaker 3: How so what kind of shift?
Speaker 2: Well, I advocate for teaching children not just how to
consume media critically, but how to create bad content themselves.
Speaker 1: Wait, create bad content, You literally teach them how to
be trolls precisely.
Speaker 2: Not they become professional trolls, obviously, but so they understand
the mechanisms of manipula, so they can recognize them when
they're used against them. If they can simulate making a
fake political campaign, they instantly grasp how easy it is
to be manipulated. It's like leaving your home country. To
truly understand it, you have to get inside the process.
Speaker 1: That's a truly thought provoking approach to media literacy. Wow.
So as we wrap up this deep dive, then for
you listening at home, what should you take away from
all this?
Speaker 3: What can you do in your.
Speaker 1: Own life to navigate this complex reality, maybe even contribute
to a better outcome.
Speaker 2: My biggest advice is this. Promise me you will stay curious.
Promise me you will ask questions. Promise me you will
still want to learn and not become complacent. That means
being active at a civic level in your community, understanding
who you're electing, even on a small scale, because if
you become apathetic, others will make decisions for you, and
I promise you probably won't like the outcome.
Speaker 3: That's powerful.
Speaker 1: And I would add be very diligent about where and
how you consume information.
Speaker 3: We all face the challenge of filters.
Speaker 1: And echo right absolutely, and it feels almost counterintuitive to
put up barriers, but it's essential to diligently that your sources.
For me, when the information overload feels overwhelming, I often
return to my fundamental you know, Maslovian needs, connection, love, family,
simply existing.
Speaker 3: In nature, grounding yourself exactly.
Speaker 1: It's a refuge from the angst a reminder of what
truly matters at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: It's about finding that balance. Yeah, and in the broader context,
while the current global situation is complicated, yes, it's fraught
with tension driven by complex factors. Understanding these dynamics and
maintaining curiosity is your first line of defense. It makes
you more prepared, even in the face of what can
sometimes seem hopeless.
Speaker 1: Because the pathway of more wars, it's not the only way,
is it. Perhaps a complicated mix of everything we've discussed today,
from the shifting nature of warfare to the challenges of
misinformation and that terrifying paradox of nuclear deterrence. Perhaps that's
the answer to navigating this complex reality. Thank you for
diving deep with us. Two