Emergency Discussion #1: Spain Wins World Cup, US Plans Ground Invasion of Iran
There are two topics on the agenda. The first is the World Cup, which concluded with Spain beating Argentina 1–0. The second is the Iran war, which everyone expects to escalate.
The tempo and ferocity of the war are much greater than they were in March. What is really interesting is that the Americans are now publicizing the deaths of American soldiers and casualties in the Middle East.
They refrained from doing this in March. They said that only 13 died throughout those six weeks, which was a very suspicious number. We have only been a few days into this phase of the war, but they are already reporting three deaths and possibly dozens of casualties from Iranian strikes on American bases throughout the Middle East, primarily in Jordan.
Spain Defeats Argentina
A couple of days ago, I said there was a lot of evidence suggesting Argentina would win. I felt as though the World Cup was being rigged in favor of Argentina, but at the same time, I felt that Spain was the much stronger team. My intuition told me Spain would win, and Spain did win.
There are different possibilities.
The first possibility is that I am just paranoid, everyone is paranoid, none of this is rigged, and the world is not as deterministic as we once believed. My entire framework for understanding the world could be completely off base. That is a very strong possibility.
The second possibility is that they rigged the tournament up to a point. They wanted four teams in the semifinals because these four teams would draw the most revenue for FIFA: Spain, France, England, and Argentina. That is what they got. They did not really care what happened in the final.
The third possibility is that they did rig it, but Argentina became too arrogant. It suffered from hubris and underperformed.
Argentina became the first team in a World Cup final not to have a shot on goal in the first 90 minutes. In fact, I think Argentina got its first shot on goal around the 120-minute mark. Spain outplayed Argentina throughout.
Spain had to face Portugal and France to reach the final. It was well prepared, extremely enthusiastic, and determined to win. Argentina was basically given a very easy path to the semifinals. The first tough team it faced was England in the semifinal, so it became lazy and complacent and did not perform to the best of its ability.
These are three possibilities. I am not saying which one is correct. I am saying that all three are possibilities we should consider.
What I do is try to develop predictive models for the world. It is always important to step back and ask what our framework, assumptions, and predictions are, and then analyze in real time how those predictions turn out.
To be fair to myself, I never said Argentina would win. What I said was that if Argentina won, if it was clear that the officials were rigging the game in Argentina’s favor, and if Messi scored the winning goal, then I would predict that Messi would become president of Argentina in five to ten years and that Argentina would become a major hub of transnational capital.
I said that logically I thought Argentina would win, but intuitively I believed Spain would win.
Correcting the World Cup Analysis
I want to thank Alfred, who sent me a long email pointing out the problems with my analysis. He was absolutely right that I was making a lot of factual mistakes.
The first important thing to appreciate is that quite a few high-profile football stars represent Israeli companies. Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, represents an Israeli company.
The second thing we need to remember is that when Messi went to Israel, he did so as part of FC Barcelona’s 2013 tour. He visited both Israel and Palestine.
The last comment is that a lot of people say the FIFA World Cup is rigged in favor of certain teams, but there is very little evidence that this is the case. You can make arguments in both directions because there is a lot of information supporting both sides.
This email also made me think about my methodology. I can be very extreme at times. Sometimes I prefer the sound bite. Sometimes I want to make a bold statement that goes viral.
The email reminded me that I am now pretty influential. A lot of people pay attention to what I am doing. I need to be more nuanced, balanced, and scholarly in my approach.
Ultimately, I see myself more as an educator than as a social-media influencer. I am here to help people develop their own analytical models and critical-thinking skills. That is what I want to do for the next 50 years.
I see myself as a teacher of the world. I feel extremely privileged to be in this position, but I also appreciate that this privilege comes with a lot of responsibilities. I apologize if I misled people in the past. I will try my very best to be more nuanced, subtle, and balanced.
Signs Leading Up to the Final
Before the final, Polymarket gave Spain about a 59% chance of winning and Argentina about 41%. That was a strong bias toward Spain and an acknowledgment that Spain was a far superior team to Argentina on a variety of metrics.
The football legend Ronaldo said that Spain would beat Argentina easily because Spain would have control of the ball. He was absolutely right. Spain had the ball, demonstrated excellent ball control, and worked well together as a team. That is exactly what happened during the final and why Spain won 1–0.
A lot of people also pointed out some funny things in the lead-up to the final.
The referee appointed to the World Cup final had an altercation with the law six years ago. During an operation against a prostitution, drug-trafficking, and arms-dealing ring, police found him at the location and seized cocaine, weapons, and more than €10,000.
This happened in the middle of the COVID pandemic. The police conducted a raid, and the referee ran away and tried to flee on a boat. They arrested him, but after a few hours of interrogation, they determined that he had no direct connection to the criminal organization.
There was also a lot of superstition and divination before the final. An Argentine television show brought in a fortune teller to predict that Argentina would win the World Cup.
Javier Milei did not go to the match because he believed that his presence might jinx the team. He sat at home and performed the proper rituals to ensure that Argentina would win.
Two major celebrities, Conor McGregor and Drake, bet in favor of Argentina. Drake bet $1.5 million on Argentina to win the final. That is nothing to him, but it showed his support for Argentina.
Benjamin Netanyahu met Argentina’s ambassador to Israel, Rabbi Shimon Axel Wahnish, and expressed his support for Argentina in the final.
View Netanyahu meeting Argentina’s ambassador and receiving the national-team shirt.
Argentina and Israel have become very close over the past two years. Javier Milei is part of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. Milei’s first foreign visit as head of state was to the grave of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in Queens, New York. That grave is the most visited Jewish holy site outside Israel.
There is a very strong connection between Israel and Javier Milei.
After Argentina defeated England in the semifinal, its players unfurled a banner saying that the Malvinas belonged to Argentina.
View Argentina’s players with the “Las Malvinas Son Argentinas” banner.
This was clearly a violation of FIFA’s ban on political statements during sporting matches. The White House said Argentina had a right to free speech. That is true, but FIFA rules are clear that political statements are not allowed during sporting matches. Argentina faced possible disciplinary action, and FIFA was asked to investigate the banner.
Javier Milei himself has said:
“The Malvinas were, are, and will always be Argentine.”
I think the Falklands will become a major geopolitical issue within the next year.
The United Kingdom controls the Falklands, but the United Kingdom is very far away. There is something called the Donroe Doctrine, under which the Americans claim sovereignty over the entire Western Hemisphere.
I would not be surprised if Argentina tried to stir up national sentiment by making a claim to the Falklands and the Americans supported that claim. There is really nothing England could do about it.
Trump is trying to dislodge England from the Western Hemisphere. That means three places: the Falklands, the Caribbean, and Canada.
Trump is trying to claim imperial control over the entire Western Hemisphere, and Argentina will be his proxy for doing this. That is my guess.
Israel’s Image Problem in Argentina
There is a major problem for Israel in Argentina: no one actually likes Israel there.
According to Pew Research Center’s survey of attitudes toward Israel, 55% of people in Argentina have an unfavorable view of Israel, while 21% have a favorable view.
View Pew Research Center’s chart of favorable and unfavorable views of Israel across 36 countries.
This is consistent throughout the world. There are only four countries where Israel has a net favorable rating among the population. The largest is India, where 28% oppose Israel and 32% support it. The other three are Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana.
The elite are a different issue, but Israel is extremely unpopular among the population.
How do you fix this issue?
There are two things you can do.
First, stir up a conflict with England over the Falklands. Israel then supports Argentina’s claim. I guarantee you that if Israel did this, popular opinion in Argentina would shift radically toward Israel.
The Falklands are a huge nationalist issue in Argentina. Why else would the Argentine team unfurl that banner after the semifinal against England?
The Falklands War happened in 1982 and lasted ten weeks. Argentina does not fight many wars, so there is a lot of anger and resentment toward England.
If Israel and the United States helped Argentina reclaim the Falklands, Argentines would be very happy. I do not think there is anything in the Falklands worth preserving. I do not even know why England fought the war for the Falklands. If England gives them up, it does not matter much considering all the problems England is facing at home. A civil war may emerge in England.
The second thing that could happen—and I think it will happen—is that Messi becomes president. Messi is like a god in Argentina. If he became president, he would be the perfect puppet. Argentines would go along with whatever Messi wanted, while Javier Milei or other people might pull the strings behind the scenes.
I have two predictions for Argentina.
The first is that the Falklands will become a major issue in the next year and that Argentina will be able to reclaim them with the support of the United States.
The second is that Messi will become president of Argentina within the next ten years.
Do Predictions Change Outcomes?
Now that people are paying attention to your predictions, could making a prediction change the outcome?
In theory, making these predictions should influence the outcome, but my intuition tells me that is not the case.
I used to play a lot of Texas hold ’em poker. At a table of ten people, there might be only two people in a hand. Sometimes a hand becomes really intense and goes on for half an hour because it is the river card, a major bet has been made, and one of the players is forced to think deeply about whether to call or fold.
The other people at the table are more objective observers. They can possibly make better decisions than the people in the hand because they are neutral and can observe how both players are playing.
But never in my life have I seen an instance in which the actions or talking of the spectators influenced the decision-making of the people in the hand. The people in the hand tend to block everything else out.
In theory, if I am making these predictions, perhaps the players in the game will take them into account. But in my observation, people do not really care what observers think or want. They focus on the game itself.
If more of the world’s population becomes aware of what is happening, perhaps that awareness will eventually affect decision-makers and cause them to play the game differently. We will see.
Will capital flowing from Western Europe into North America create contention between Europe and the United States?
People prioritize the nation-state. They think the nation-state is the constituent player in this world game, and I do not know how true that is.
Transnational capital is beyond the nation-state. It controls the nation-state and warps geopolitics to its advantage.
Western Europe is a vassal state of the United States. This has been true since World War II. It is especially true now that the United States is forcing Europe to fight the war in Ukraine, which does not benefit Europe at all.
A lot of capital is flowing outward from Europe because Europe is hopeless. But this is not going to create tension between Europe and the United States because Europe is essentially an American colony.
There has been a lot of anger over Trump’s tariffs against Europe, Greenland, Canada, and possibly the Falklands. But look at what the Europeans have actually done in response. There has been a lot of rhetoric and theater, but they have done exactly what the Americans asked them to do: escalate the war in Ukraine, increase NATO defense spending, and prepare their populations for conscription.
I do not see any point at which Europe diverges from the United States.
If Europe and the United States were really in conflict, Europe’s best strategy would be to move closer to Russia and China. Germany became rich by gaining access to cheap Russian energy, converting it into expensive manufactured goods such as BMWs and Mercedes, and selling those goods to China.
What is Europe doing now? Europe has a trade war with China and a real war with Russia.
I do not see the United States and Europe as being in conflict with each other.
How Argentina Becomes a Resource Colony
If there is no military operation, how does Argentina become a resource colony? Does it happen through trade deals or preferential treatment from the IMF?
For Argentina to become a resource colony, it needs to build manufacturing capacity.
Right now, it has a population that is poor but pretty complacent. People are happy with the way things are. They do not want to exploit the environment or build factories. Those who are unhappy simply move away.
The solution is population replacement through immigration.
Many IDF soldiers go to Argentina every year on tourist visas. A billionaire whose name I forget has a ranch in Argentina and brings around 10,000 IDF soldiers there for a summer retreat every year. Milei is signing trade deals with Israel.
But the only way Argentina can reach its full potential as a resource colony is to bring in a lot of immigrants.
Who are the ideal immigrants? Indians.
Imagine a situation in which Israel provides the muscle—the IDF—and Indians provide energy and labor. India and Israel are now best friends. Modi and Netanyahu have become very close.
The logic is simple.
If India wants to become the next China, it cannot use China’s playbook. India cannot have American companies come in and build its manufacturing capacity the way they did in China during the 1980s and 1990s.
The Americans have already done that, and it did not work out well for America. India is also a democracy. It does not have China’s state capacity to create policies that move people from the countryside into factories.
China also has an excellent logistics network. That is the real key to China’s manufacturing success. China can move people from the countryside to the cities, move raw materials from around the world into China, and export manufactured goods around the world.
India cannot become the next China using that model.
At the same time, India has a major advantage over China. China is aging, whereas India has a young, vibrant population.
What you do is move that population overseas. This is already happening. Millions of Indians are flowing into Australia and Canada. Every time India signs a trade deal, it requires the other nation to open its borders to Indians.
Japan recently signed a trade deal with India. I think part of that deal is that Japan also has to welcome Indians.
This is how India plans to get rich: by exporting its young labor overseas.
Argentina makes sense because it is almost like virgin territory. It has a complacent population that does not want to work or exploit the environment. If you marry Indian energy with Zionist capital, that will be an unbeatable combination.
The plan is to force mass immigration into Argentina to create this resource colony.
Why Argentina?
Why Argentina of all countries? What is Argentina’s history, and how did Javier Milei become president?
If I am a venture capitalist, I am always looking for the best bang for my buck. I am looking for the best investment opportunity, and there are criteria it needs to meet.
The first is growth potential. Can it scale? How wealthy can it become?
I do not invest in the United States because the United States is saturated with wealth. It reached its potential a long time ago.
I do not invest in China because its population is aging, its economy is in decline, and its geopolitical prospects are not bright. China is an export economy, and if war rages around the world, that economy collapses.
I do not look where everyone else is looking. I look for potential growth possibilities.
Argentina has a low population, a lot of resources, and a largely untapped environment.
Australia is another possibility. It has a pretty advanced industrial base, but it has not reached its full potential.
Ukraine is another possibility, but there is a war in Ukraine.
Canada is another possibility, but Canada is controlled by the United States.
If I look at all these possibilities, Argentina has the best untapped growth potential.
The second criterion is security. If I put my money somewhere, I want it to be safe.
I do not put it in Ukraine because the Russians can come and steal my investment. That is what is happening to BlackRock. BlackRock gave Ukraine a lot of loans, and Ukraine gave it resources as collateral. If Russia wins the war, all of that goes to nothing.
Argentina is good because it is surrounded by two oceans and has no enemies. It has a soccer rivalry with Brazil, but the countries are not going to fight a war. They are both large, resource-rich countries and do not need to fight over resources.
There are no hostile powers in the Western Hemisphere. America controls the hemisphere, but it is far away. Extending American power down to Argentina would be a very long way.
The United States is focused on controlling the North American continent. That is enough. It plans to go down to Venezuela, but it does not want to deal with Brazil and Argentina.
The third criterion is my ability to co-opt the political system.
If I am an investor, I need to rig the game to benefit myself. Argentina is a democracy, but it is a pretty corrupt democracy. I am sure I can influence its political system.
Argentina is basically a corrupt oligarchy. I can use my capital to co-opt the oligarchy and bend it to my wishes.
Argentina fits all three categories:
- Untapped growth potential.
- Security.
- A political system that can be co-opted.
Australia has untapped markets and a lot of resources. It is surrounded by the sea, although China and Japan are nearby. The third issue is more problematic. Australia is a democracy, and I have to deal with the native population.
Australians are notorious for being hard to deal with, and I think that is a good thing.
The Argentine population would be much more complacent. Ultimately, as an investor, I want to promote mass immigration to realize the industrial potential of the place fully.
The three major investment opportunities are Canada, Australia, and Argentina. Argentina makes the most sense from the viewpoint of transnational capital. Argentina is the ripest for colonization and conquest.
Australia and Canada are still part of the Anglosphere and are basically resource colonies of the City of London. You have to deal with the City of London.
Argentina is virgin territory.
Who is Javier Milei? Was his career engineered by transnational capital, or did transnational capital attach itself to him after seeing a useful puppet?
I do not know enough about Javier Milei to comment definitively, but there is a pattern in which individuals with no political background emerge from nowhere.
Milei was an economist and television pundit known for combative behavior and outrageous comments. He was a fierce libertarian and somehow suddenly became the head of Argentina.
A lot of his appeal came from promising to be a revolutionary. He is basically the Donald Trump of Argentina.
He famously took a chainsaw and promised to cut apart the Argentine bureaucracy that was holding the country back.
The other important thing is that Milei is very close to Chabad-Lubavitch. Chabad-Lubavitch is connected to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Milei.
It is connected to Donald Trump through his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The Kushner family is heavily involved with Chabad-Lubavitch.
Milei is also associated with Chabad-Lubavitch. His first foreign visit as head of state was to the grave of Rabbi Schneerson, whom many people within Chabad-Lubavitch consider the Messiah.
I do not have enough evidence to suggest that this is all a conspiracy. It seems more like an alignment of interests.
Milei found himself in a very good position, and transnational capital saw him as a good investment.
Transnational capital has unlimited financing. It costs nothing to invest in a politician. Now that Milei has won, the relationship is becoming much more concrete.
I think the same thing will happen with Messi. He is a football star, but perhaps transnational capital sees potential in him and has invested in him.
That is also what happened with Donald Trump. During the 1980s, Donald Trump was the original reality-television star. He was in the tabloids every day. People thought he could potentially become president of the United States.
It cost them nothing to become his friend or invest in his properties, so they did it.
These people think like venture capitalists. Instead of investing in companies, they invest in individuals who might have bright political futures. If you invest in enough people, one or two might become unicorns.
Regardless of where Milei came from, he is now bought and controlled by transnational capital. He is doing exactly what Israel wants in Argentina.
A lot of libertarians are like that. Zelensky came to power promising to end the war in Ukraine. He visited the Donbas and told the Azov Battalion militants to cut the crap. They told him to get lost. Zelensky then became the biggest proponent of the war in Ukraine.
Is the AI Crash Being Manufactured?
What evidence suggests there is a plan to crash the stock market through the AI bubble? Do you still think it will happen in 2026?
My theory—and I could be wrong—is that these crashes are manufactured rather than natural.
I live in China, and we have never had a financial collapse. I find that weird because the stock market is basically a casino and the real-estate market is a bubble.
What we have in China is controlled demolition. The real-estate market has gone down, but it has not collapsed as it did in America in 2008.
Why are things controlled demolitions in China while America has financial crises all the time? I think a lot of these crises are manufactured.
If they are manufactured, the people responsible need to signal that a crisis is coming so they can cover their asses. The idea is plausible deniability: all the signs were there that this would collapse, so it was not manufactured.
There are several signs that they are planning a collapse.
First, you have influential people saying a collapse is imminent.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is probably the most famous financial journalist in America. He runs DealBook for The New York Times and wrote a book called 1929. He is talking about how we are about to face a financial crisis.
This is a guy who spends every day with the leading CEOs in America. You only get into that position if you know exactly what they want you to do.
There is also the journalist Ed Zitron. His analysis is very strong. What is interesting is how he is being promoted by major news outlets that are basically propagandists for the oligarchs, such as Bloomberg and CNBC.
He says AI is a complete bubble, OpenAI cannot make money and never will, and the collapse will happen very soon.
The first thing you have is signaling.
Then you have prestigious institutions such as the Bank for International Settlements—the central bank of central banks—publishing reports saying that the war in Iran and disruptions to global supply chains will cause the AI bubble to collapse. I think that is a very strong signal.
The third thing is that you have people like Sam Altman openly discussing whether the American government should take a stake in OpenAI.
I think they want to collapse the AI market.
The first reason is to consolidate their winnings. A lot of people investing in AI are retail investors. When you collapse the market, you can transfer money from retail investors to institutional investors.
The second thing you can do is engineer a government bailout. Then you have almost unlimited financing for your data-center rollout.
The major issue with data centers right now is local opposition. If the government runs them, then eminent domain comes into play and you can quash opposition.
These data centers consume a lot of water and electricity. You need government support and subsidies to maintain them.
The third objective is to consolidate the market. You have too many players, so you collapse the market and consolidate it.
This is exactly what happened after the dot-com crash and the subprime crash.
After the dot-com bubble burst, a few players emerged as dominant players and became monopolies, including Amazon and Google. The oligarchs consolidated their winnings.
Stock-market collapses are often manufactured to ensure that the oligarchs can consolidate their winnings.
What incentive would a journalist like Sorkin have to warn people?
Sorkin is a journalist. He is basically a running dog of the oligarchs.
What he wants is access to power. The oligarchs want to consolidate their winnings, while Sorkin wants to associate with the elite.
As long as he does what the elite want him to do, they will take him to dinner, invite him to Davos, and be his best friend.
Journalists are looking for access.
The real way to make money is to short the market. You imagine that the market will fall to a certain number, and that is how you profit.
This is what happened during the subprime crisis. Institutional investors such as John Paulson took out huge bets that the market would collapse. Paulson made $20 billion from a crash that took away the homes of millions of people.
I imagine the same thing will happen here. Some institutional investors will take out huge bets against AI and make a lot of money.
Will it happen by the end of 2026?
I cannot tell you.
It is almost like the World Cup. Logically, it should happen this year. Intuitively, I think this thing can continue much longer than we imagine.
Only seven companies are involved in this stupid game. As long as these seven companies support one another, they are fine.
The game is set up so that we will never figure out when they will do it. When they do it, it will be timed for their maximum benefit.
Argentina’s Historical Decline
Argentina used to be very rich. Could other forces have been behind its decline?
I do not think the Great Depression caused Argentina’s collapse. There was a collapse in the late nineteenth century, before the Great Depression.
If you want to be a conspiracy theorist, you can argue that capital wanted to transfer capital to Argentina, so it needed to crash the market and make land cheap for investment.
That never materialized because investors recognized that the United States was a better investment. Rather than capital flowing to Argentina, it flowed into the United States.
This was also around the beginning of Zionism. Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat, and then came the Balfour Declaration.
This was a time when transnational capital was trying to shift from Europe and the City of London to the Western Hemisphere.
My intuition—and I do not know enough about this—is that Argentina was the Japan of the world. It had too much investment and too much capital, but not enough industrial capacity or demand. The economy overheated and collapsed.
Not everything is a conspiracy. A lot of it is fundamentals.
If you have a strong government, a dynamic political system, and an energetic population, the economy will do better.
The reason I think they want population replacement in Argentina is that they recognize religious people—Hindus and Zionists—will work a lot harder to build the economy than people who are not religious.
People who are not religious tend to engage in speculative behavior: doing the least amount of work for the greatest profit. They also tend to become complacent because they are not as motivated.
If you are Hindu or Zionist, you see it as God’s will that you transform the land into a great nation-state.
This is why the United States became so powerful. It was founded by Puritans, who were religious zealots.
This also explains why Utah is one of the most prosperous regions in America. It was founded by Mormons, who are religious zealots.
If I am transnational capital, I do not necessarily have an eschatological framework, but I will invest in people who do because they will work harder than other people.
Did South Korea’s ban on short selling contribute to its stock market’s performance?
I do not know enough about South Korea to assess the situation properly, but my intuition is that stock-market bubbles are a sign of a society in decline because they reflect anxiety and desperation.
The inequality and corruption in South Korea are beyond the charts. The only option for most normal people is to gamble in the stock market.
Over the past few years, we have seen a massive surge in the Korean stock market. It is the best-performing stock market in the world right now. If you are a retail investor, you are going to bet your life savings on it.
The same thing happened in Canada. Over the past five years, there was a huge surge in real-estate prices. Everyone tried to jump into the market, believing that Canada had a limited amount of housing and all these immigrants were entering the country, so housing prices could only rise.
People engage in speculative behavior. It is a sign of a society in decline: desperation and anxiety translate into unrealistic euphoria about making money.
Rather than invest, people gamble.
We are seeing this in Canada and Australia through real-estate speculation and in South Korea through stock-market speculation.
I think it is a sign of capitalism in decline. I think we are approaching the end times.
Sport as a Substitute for War
Can transnational capital, the media, or the occult manipulate the tribalism of sport for a long-term strategy?
Soccer has become a substitute for war. That is why there is so much energy surrounding it.
People save for ten years so they can fly to the United States to attend a World Cup match. Tens of thousands of Argentines traveled to the tournament. Argentina is a poor country, and these are middle-class people spending thousands on tickets and tens of thousands on travel and hotels.
The World Cup brings out nationalist sentiment.
I think its purpose is to embed in people’s imaginations the idea that the nation-state is the constituent element of the world game.
Nationalism benefits transnational capital. If people focus on nationalism and nationalistic sentiments, transnational capital can manipulate everyone behind the scenes.
Transnational capital can invest in both China and the United States and then create a narrative that the two countries are in competition. That allows transnational capital to become a parasitic force on both nation-states and draw energy from both.
The game is not necessarily to manipulate people. It is to distract them and divert their attention from where the real action is happening.
Transnational capital wins because it has fooled people into believing that money is wealth. Money is not wealth. Wealth is attention and energy.
The point of the World Cup as a spectacle is to make people focus on the wrong things. It makes people believe that they are part of a nation-state rather than part of humanity and part of God.
If we are to thrive as a species and survive the coming crises of the next few decades, we need to remember that we all have the power to create wealth through our attention and energy.
We also need to remember that we are all connected and that we are all connected to God. There is God in us, and we are part of God.
If we recognize this, we can create a new future for humanity.
Transnational capital is desperate to keep us focused on the here and now. It is determined to make us afraid and anxious and to make us focus on rivalries and anxieties against each other.
It is determined to make us think that money is the be-all and end-all.
I think that is the real point of the World Cup.
Nazis in Argentina
Is there validity to reports that Nazis escaped to Argentina, and how does that relate to modern Argentina?
That is a historical fact. I do not think anyone denies it.
During World War II, both the Vatican and the Argentine government were supportive of the Nazis. Toward the end of the war, when it became clear that the Nazis were about to lose, they created channels to smuggle Nazis into Argentina.
A lot of countries did this.
The Soviet Union and the United States also smuggled Nazi scientists into their countries. In America, this was called Operation Paperclip.
These Nazis became responsible for the space programs of the United States and Soviet Union. The space race was not really between the United States and Soviet Union. It was between Nazi scientists working for the United States and Nazi scientists working for the Soviet Union.
The Nazis were the first to develop advanced rocket technology through the V-2.
Argentina wanted Nazis for the same reason. This was not only ideological. The Nazis had tremendous expertise in political systems, finance, economics, and business, and Argentina wanted access to that expertise.
You can argue that Nazi influence is still present in Argentina today. If you go there, you will find entire communities of blond, blue-eyed Aryans.
Argentina takes tremendous pride in being very white and Aryan and in the fact that it was sympathetic toward the Nazis during World War II.
Jews, the Catholic Church, and Medieval Europe
Why did Jews, especially rabbis, agree to be repeatedly abused and scapegoated by the Catholic Church?
The history of Judaism in Europe after Christianity is very complicated.
After the rise of Christianity and Islam, many Jews converted to both religions. The first Christians—people such as Paul, Peter, and Jesus—were Jews.
Judaism became a minority religion. Before Christianity, Jews made up around 10% of the Roman Empire. That is a lot of people. In Alexandria, around a third of the population was Jewish.
Jews were a huge cultural force during the Roman Empire. With the rise of Christianity and Islam, they became a much smaller minority.
During the Middle Ages, there were still pockets of Jews around Europe. This history is not fully appreciated.
There were many pogroms, persecutions, and instances of Jews being used as scapegoats, especially during the worst economic periods. But for much of this history, Jews were treated better than people appreciate.
There were two main powers in Europe: the feudal nobility and the Catholic Church.
For the nobility, Jews were useful because nobles had certain problems that Jews could help solve.
First, the nobility needed a captive managerial class. If you were a plantation owner, you needed managers who were loyal to you.
Jews were loyal because the noble was the only person giving them protection. They were a minority in a Catholic area where people were taught that the Jews killed Jesus.
If you provided protection, the Jews would work hard for you. They were not going to complain about pay or demand better treatment. They were loyal, obedient, and hardworking.
Second, a lot of trade was occurring, and the nobility wanted to trade with the Islamic caliphate. Jews had networks inside the Islamic caliphate and could provide access to global trade.
Third, Jews had access to financing. Unlike Christians, they were allowed to be moneylenders. The best way to make money was through usury.
A Christian lord or noble was not allowed to lend money at interest, but Jews could do it. You had the Jews act as the scapegoat.
For most of history, this relationship worked. Jews accumulated wealth and gave a huge portion of it to the nobles. They worked hard and provided access to trade in the Islamic caliphate.
From the perspective of the nobility, this was a great relationship. Jews accepted it because it allowed them to practice their religion and remain together as a community.
The Catholic Church also saw Jews as an asset.
Augustine’s point was that if you truly wanted Catholics to appreciate the privilege of being Catholic, you needed to create the other. You needed people who would show Catholics what happened when you gave up the faith.
The Jews became that alien other.
The Church created artwork and writings that chastised and insulted Jews. It promoted antisemitism, but it was controlled antisemitism.
For most of the time, this relationship worked well for the Catholic Church, the nobility, and the Jews.
Then there were moments when the nobility and Catholic Church became so corrupt that the people rose up. What did the elite do? They blamed the Jews.
They diverted popular attention toward the Jews. They planted spies and agents within peasant uprisings and directed the peasants’ anger toward Jewish communities.
If things became really bad, they expelled the Jews from the land. The Jews went to the Islamic caliphate or somewhere else, and the population felt better.
This produced an unstable relationship. Most of the time, things worked. In times of calamity, famine, or plague, Jews became scapegoats.
This is important today because the same dynamic could return.
It seems that Zionists and Jews control the world, but they only do so as long as the ruling elite tolerate them.
When things become really bad—if there is economic collapse or famine—the elite will direct popular anger toward the Jews.
This is a history that is not really discussed, but we need to appreciate it if we want to understand what might happen over the next 10 or 20 years.
Why would Jews continue accepting a second-class position if they could be disposed of at any time?
There is a simple but cynical explanation.
If Jews converted en masse, the rabbis would lose all their power. The Jewish elite would have no power.
This arrangement justified the rabbis and ensured that they retained authority.
The rabbinate is dynastic. Rabbis pass power and authority to their sons and grandsons. It stays within the family. The rabbis are basically the Jewish aristocracy.
For that aristocracy to maintain power, there have to be Jews.
They explain persecution by saying that it is God’s will. God wants the Jews to be persecuted to force them to redeem themselves, repent, recognize God as the supreme authority, and welcome God into their bosom. Then God will send the Messiah.
In any society, the elite look for ways to justify and rationalize their power over the people.
It would probably have been in the best interests of many Jews to convert to the local religion so that everyone could get along. That is what happened throughout most of human history: if you moved to a new region, you converted to the local religion.
Before Christianity, most communities were extremely tolerant because they were polytheistic. They did not care if you wanted to be Jewish, but they also expected you to welcome their gods.
Jews were distinct because they only accepted their own God as legitimate. The first commandment says not to worship false idols. They disparaged and refused to accept other gods, and that was what got them into trouble with the Romans.
The rabbis were the Jewish aristocracy.
Spirituality, Eschatology, and God
How does your understanding of eschatology connect to your view of God and absolute truth? What is your perspective on the Abrahamic religions?
I do not see myself as religious. Religion is too organized for me. I see myself as spiritual.
Rather than adhering to doctrine, I adhere to intuition.
My intuition tells me that we are all part of God and God is part of us.
I have a lot of issues with eschatology. My main theory is that we have eschatology because of Proto-Indo-European religion.
Proto-Indo-European religion is unique in human history because it was the first systematic religion to believe that violence created the universe.
Before the Proto-Indo-Europeans, most traditions subscribed to an animistic or mother-goddess understanding. They believed in the balance and harmony of the world and that we were all part of the mother goddess and part of nature.
The Proto-Indo-Europeans were imperialistic. They believed violence created the world.
The most basic Proto-Indo-European myth begins with twins. One twin has to kill the other to found the world.
This myth becomes a template for the Roman religion, in which Romulus has to kill Remus to found Rome. It also becomes foundational for many other religions, especially the Abrahamic religions.
If you believe that the world was created through violence, you also have to believe that the world must end through violence. That is why you have eschatology.
The Proto-Indo-Europeans gave us both Zoroastrianism and Judaism. Over time, both became extremely eschatological.
The world does not necessarily need to be eschatological. Unfortunately, we are controlled by people who believe in eschatology.
People who believe in eschatology tend to be violent, and people who are violent are often able to amass more power than people who are not violent.
Learning Through Seminars
Will you hold more seminar-style sessions on humanity’s great texts?
I would love to do a summer series on the Vedas, the occult, and the teachings of Manly P. Hall and Rudolf Steiner. These texts would lend themselves to great discussions.
The reason I taught the Dante seminar was that I wanted to learn. I had taught Dante before, but I had never read him fully, line by line.
Reading him line by line opened my eyes. Doing it as a seminar drove learning for everyone.
I would love to do it again. I would love to hold a seminar on the Bible, the Vedas, and texts that I would struggle to read by myself but would be much more motivated to learn in a group.
How Humanity Can Resist
Are failing authoritarian empires sensing that this is their last opportunity to pursue their colonial ambitions? What options does humanity have to resist?
The World Cup was interesting because these forces are accelerating the process and moving very fast, but the people within the movement have become arrogant, lazy, and complacent.
An example is the Zionist takeover of the American media ecosystem.
The Ellisons have bought CBS and Viacom. They plan to take over CNN and install Bari Weiss in these institutions.
The logic is: we have lost young people and the global population, but as long as we keep the boomers, we are okay.
That is a fine strategy, but look at what is actually happening. Bari Weiss is incompetent. The journalists working under her are disgusted with her management. She keeps herself locked in a room and surrounded by security. She refuses to engage with the staff.
The Zionists, transnational capital, and the empire have all the power, but they seem exhausted.
They have a script and are trying to finish it as quickly, easily, and lazily as possible.
I think it will collapse in their faces. Everything will blow up in their faces. Maybe they remain powerful for another five years, but I do not think they will achieve what they want to achieve.
What can ordinary people do?
Reclaim your attention.
Recognize that you matter and that everything you do matters. Everything has an impact on the universe.
If you reclaim your attention and focus on things you enjoy doing and that further humanity’s imagination, then you are winning the battle.
Read a lot. Teach. Go for long walks in the park. Get away from social media.
First and foremost, start teaching and start giving.
Teaching could be having a conversation with a neighbor in which you share ideas you learned. It could be helping young people start reading books again.
Acts of generosity and kindness will go a long way toward making a better world. I know they can seem insignificant, but they all add up.
We need to join our life preservers together so that we can travel as one large raft on this crazy sea.
That is why we are having these discussions. I am trying to figure out who is out there and what we can do together.
Kabbalah and the Spiritual Struggle
Is Kabbalah about correcting the ego and creating a society based on giving and unity?
I completely agree with that understanding.
The Kabbalah is a wonderful work. It draws on the greatest traditions of humanity.
I am reading Manly P. Hall right now. He shows how all these previous traditions—including the Egyptian tradition and the legend of Isis and Osiris—connect with one another. You can also look at the legends of Penelope, Orpheus, and Dionysus.
It all goes back to the ideas found in the Kabbalah. Kabbalah draws on ancient traditions that have been lost over time.
The main idea is that humanity is a whole. For a variety of reasons, we have decided to splinter ourselves into different fragments.
Humans are divine spiritual beings. Through a very long process, we descended into the material world. We turned heaven into hell.
We came down into this material world and adopted a more mineral mentality. We prioritized the body over the spirit.
If we are to redeem ourselves and achieve our full potential, we need to prioritize the soul and spirit above the body.
That is hard.
It is easy to enjoy bodily pleasures such as food, sex, and wine. It is difficult to embrace spiritual pleasures such as giving to others, teaching others, and being kind.
This is the ultimate struggle.
The battle between heaven and hell is entirely within us.
Consumerism and the End of East Asia
Is the psychological crisis in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan caused by a combination of Confucian hierarchy and soulless consumerism?
I completely agree with that assessment.
I have lived in China for more than 25 years, and I am appalled by the level of materialism in this country.
I have spent 25 years trying to get people to become more intellectual and enlightened. They think I am crazy. They think I am a troublemaker. They literally use that term.
I have been fired from a lot of schools. Even though I am popular in the West right now, I am still a pariah here in China.
People in China suspect me.
It is not just materialism. Materialism warps people’s imaginations. In China, black is white and white is black.
I make comments that people in the West may find insightful because they align with their intuitions. People in China think I am stupid. They think I am making this crap up and bullshitting everyone.
It is an upside-down, bizarre society.
It is much deeper than materialism. It is also a complete lack of faith in God. I live in China. It is a godless society.
Japan is a fun place to visit, but I would never want to live there because I am not Japanese. Japan is a very cohesive and conformist society.
These societies will not survive over the long term if they insist on a materialistic, godless worldview.
There are many issues in the West, but the issues are much starker in East Asia.
The birth rate is the greatest sign that people have absolutely no faith in their own society. Young people refuse to have children.
The fertility rate in South Korea is around 0.6. In China, it is around one. In five years, the Chinese fertility rate may be lower than South Korea’s.
My wife and I have three wonderful children. When my wife went to college in Beijing, she had seven roommates. There were eight women altogether.
My wife is now in her thirties. By now, these women might be expected to have one or two children each.
Collectively, the eight women have three children. Only my wife has had children. All her former roommates are middle-class people without financial problems, but they refuse to have children.
We are looking at the end of East Asia.
People talk about the East Asian century and the East Asian miracle. I think we are moving toward the end of East Asia.
I do not know what comes after it.
The Planned Ground Invasion of Iran
What I am observing in the Iran war is a complete clusterfuck. It is a dumpster fire.
I am really worried about what is happening because the United States appears ready to escalate rapidly, possibly within the next week. People are talking about ground forces.
This is a map of what a ground invasion of Iran might look like. I do not know who created it, but it seems accurate to me.
View the hypothetical three-axis ground-invasion map shown in the presentation.
They want to attack along three axes.
The first is from Iraq, using Kurds.
The second is from Pakistan, using Baloch forces.
The third is an American effort to wrest control of the Strait of Hormuz and the southern islands from the IRGC.
This would be the greatest clusterfuck in recent memory. It would be a dumpster fire and an absolute catastrophe for the Americans.
There is no way you are going to get the Kurds to become suicide bombers.
The Americans are basically saying to the Kurds: we will give you weapons and a lot of American dollars if you send your men to die in the mountains of Iran.
The objective is not actually to win against Iran. The objective is to draw the IRGC out so the Americans can bomb it and make themselves look better on television. They want better public relations because the current public relations are terrible.
The Kurds will take the American money and weapons, but otherwise tell the Americans to screw themselves.
The Kurds will rip off the Americans.
The same thing applies to the Baloch. Why would the Baloch go in and sacrifice themselves for the Americans? That is ridiculous.
The real issue is the Strait of Hormuz.
I think Trump has it in his mind that if the Americans capture Qeshm Island and Kharg Island, the Iranians will be forced to surrender. This is the same way he got it into his head that killing the ayatollah would cause the Iranians to surrender.
The Americans want to win the war as quickly as possible and at as little cost as possible.
If you want to win this war, you have to invest four years and two million troops. That is the only way.
This ground invasion can only become a dumpster fire.
The good news is that I do not think they can do it right now because it is too hot. They may attempt to take a couple of islands, but a full-scale ground invasion would have to wait until the weather becomes cooler, meaning November or ideally December.
Whoever is developing these plans is not factoring in Iranian topography.
How do you send forces against mountains?
Is the American military leadership completely divorced from reality? Why do they not look at a map and ask whether it is feasible to send ground forces into mountains?
It is not feasible.
This is why every attempt to invade Persia has ended in disaster.
The Americans want to do this quickly. They may want the war to end within the next year. It will not end in a year. This will become another forever war.
The Americans are publicizing the deaths of soldiers and other casualties. When that happens, it means the American military is preparing to double down on the war because it has to avenge the soldiers.
American military policy is to leave no man behind. If someone becomes trapped in Iran, as those pilots did a few months ago, you send 2,000 soldiers to get them out.
If soldiers die in this war, you have to avenge them.
The Two Chokepoints
There are two critical chokepoints.
View the map of the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb.
The Strait of Hormuz is controlled by the IRGC.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is controlled by the Houthis.
You cannot dislodge either the Houthis or the IRGC because both are secluded in mountains. It is very easy for them to choke these straits.
This will be a complete dumpster fire.
The war will escalate rapidly over the next couple of weeks. The Americans are already targeting power plants and desalination plants in Iran.
The Iranians are responding by targeting desalination plants in Kuwait.
The GCC is done for.
I do not see how the war de-escalates. I do not see how this does not become a complete clusterfuck for the entire world.
Two Eschatological Powers
Israel and the United States appear completely committed to their respective missions. How can either come down from that?
Israel has created a total enemy. Israelis see political rivals as completely evil.
There can be no de-escalation or negotiation when you see someone as evil. You feel mandated to kill your political opponents.
You can see this in the way Israelis view the Palestinian people. They jumble the Palestinians together with Hamas and Hezbollah.
Combine that with an American empire in decline. The United States is desperate to find another answer because it has a ticking debt bomb.
Then look at the political tensions inside the United States and the demographic situation. The intersection of these forces will produce a sacrifice of the youth.
You take unruly young people who are going to be upset about their country falling apart and feed them into the war machine.
The millennial generation is also connected to this. The conscription age may be raised until they are taking people in their thirties.
These are our brothers, parents, and grandparents. All the generations are connected.
Israel has the eschatological fervor to achieve Pax Judaica or the Greater Israel project. The United States is committed to maintaining its empire and controlling these chokepoints.
I do not see how either comes down from that. They will either do it or die trying, and the rest of us will become casualties of the war.
I agree completely with that analysis. I have nothing to add to it.
How do you keep learning and teaching when everything you discover is depressing?
It is a strange process.
You start learning, and your first reaction is anger at these people for their incompetence, lack of human sympathy, and callousness.
As you learn more, you become depressed. You recognize that this is the totality of the system and that there is very little you can do about it.
Then you learn even more and think: wait a minute. If I know what is happening, that is a sense of empowerment and liberation.
At least I will not die ignorant. At least I will die knowing what happened.
Then you start looking for solutions and recognize that you are not alone.
When I started my YouTube channel, I had no idea that millions of people would watch my videos. That surprised me.
All I talk about is how the world is ending. I do not always speak in clear English. I am not articulate in the way many media people are articulate. The production quality is complete crap. It is literally me turning on the computer, lecturing for 40 minutes, and turning it off.
Why are so many people watching?
The same process will happen when you start writing articles and making comments. People will come to you and ask you to tell them more.
The fact that people are interested in your ideas and willing to have a conversation means there is hope for the world. People are waking up.
I have spent the past two years talking about the most depressing things, but talking about those things has given people hope. It has also given me hope.
It means humans are capable of knowing what is right and wrong. We want better lives for ourselves, our neighbors, our friends, and our children.
We are going to work hard to achieve this.
We are only at the beginning of this process, but I think we will come out pretty well at the end.
The only real way through this is for everyone to pick a movement and support it in whatever way they can—through time, writing, money, comedy, singing, art, or whatever they are good at.
Everyone needs to stop being a spectator and express themselves through their own vantage point.
Oman and the GCC
What are the geopolitical scenarios for Oman, given its neutrality and relationship with Iran?
Oman was the mediator in the nuclear talks between Iran and the United States.
In the beginning, Iran saw Oman as a potential ally. That is why Iran was willing to share the Strait of Hormuz with Oman.
Things have developed to the point where Iran now sees everyone in the GCC as an enemy. Oman is no longer neutral in this war. Iran sees Oman as part of the American-Israeli axis.
Right now, Iran is targeting Bahrain and Kuwait, but over time Iran may decide to blow up the entire GCC.
The ceasefire and the memorandum of understanding failed. This has given a lot of power to the IRGC.
The ayatollah was opposed to the memorandum because he thought the Americans would not honor it. He nevertheless said that he would listen to his advisers and president and agree to it.
The fact that it failed has made Iranian hardliners much more determined to fight the war on an eschatological level.
As the war progresses, it becomes eschatological. That means a fight to the finish: no more compromise and no more ceasefire.
This will be a long process. It is possible that there will be another ceasefire in August lasting several weeks.
But the general trend is toward an eschatological conflict.
Israel wants to achieve the Greater Israel project.
Some people in the American military, such as Pete Hegseth, see this war as bringing about the return of Jesus.
The Iranians see it as leading to the rise of the Twelfth Imam, who will lead Iran to total victory against the Great Satan.
The prospects are not good for the GCC.
Over time, the war will expand outward to encompass the Caucasus: Azerbaijan and Armenia. It will link up with the war in Ukraine.
Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia will become involved at some point.
We are in World War III. Unfortunately, it will expand outward over time.
Oil, Market Manipulation, and Global Collapse
Will Trump prolong the war until the oil companies receive higher prices or control over Venezuelan and Middle Eastern oil?
I think they are no longer concerned about oil prices.
Perhaps they cared about oil prices a couple of months ago when they were afraid of the impact on the global economy, but the war has progressed to a point where they just want to win at all costs.
The oil price is no longer the issue.
The real issue is not a spike in oil prices. It is a collapse in oil demand.
It is possible that the global economy will suffer so much that it collapses, which would mean a collapse in demand.
That is the main reason oil prices have not risen dramatically. China has been working diligently to ensure that they do not spike.
China is completely dependent on the global economy because it is an export economy. If global demand collapses, China collapses as well.
This is an existential crisis for China in a way it is not for anyone else.
People have lost control of the situation.
There is so much emotion and anger. Trump wants to win the war at all costs. The American military wants revenge for being humiliated in the Middle East.
A lot of things will now happen naturally.
Perhaps a few months ago there were people behind the scenes manipulating events. I do not think that is true anymore. Now it is a complete dumpster fire.
We will start to feel it later in the fall.
People focus on oil, but supplies also need to go back into the Middle East. The region needs equipment for its desalination plants. Three days without water and you are dead. Three weeks without food and you are dead.
People are not discussing the food, medicine, and equipment that need to enter the region.
The chemical precursors that predominantly come from this area are also not getting out. Medicine reserves in every country will begin to be rapidly depleted.
People cannot possibly imagine the world three months from now. We are in uncharted territory, and there is no turning back.
We have crossed the Rubicon.
The war in Iran is a forever war. We cannot possibly imagine its impact on the global economy and our lives, but we will feel it very soon.
Why Iran Lacks Support From the Muslim World
Why does Iran not receive more support from the broader Muslim world?
The Shia are around 10% of the global Muslim population.
The rivalry between Shia and Sunni Muslims goes back to the time of Muhammad. There is a lot of bad blood between the two groups.
The rivalry between Arabs and Persians is another factor.
Saudi Arabia hates Iran. I have argued that Saudi Arabia was one of the major proponents of this war and wants a ground invasion of Iran.
This rivalry goes back a long time.
What would change the equation is the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
If the Al-Aqsa Mosque were destroyed, it would cause political revolutions throughout the Islamic world.
Right now, many governments throughout the Islamic world have been co-opted by the United States: Malaysia, Indonesia, the GCC, and Pakistan. They have all been co-opted by the CIA.
If the Al-Aqsa Mosque were accidentally destroyed, there would be tremendous anger in the streets. Political revolutions would erupt everywhere, and many people would look to Iran as their savior.
That would change the equation significantly.
Love Against Fear
Is the inversion of love into hate driving this crisis? Is the answer an overflow of love?
I completely agree.
The elite maintain power by spreading hatred, fear, and anxiety. That is why consumerism, materialism, and conflict are so important.
Mass culture and mass media are about igniting as much conflict as possible, especially between the left and right.
A lot of this conflict is artificial.
If you talk to any person, most people agree on 99% of issues. There is 1% that people disagree about, and the media blow it out of proportion and farm it for engagement.
Most people are anti-war. Most people are anti-empire, anti-greed, and anti-corruption.
The solution is to find unity and love.
Start believing that you can affect the world for the better. Find the common things that unite us rather than the things that divide us.
Why Mountains Defeat Empires
Why is it so difficult to invade a mountainous country such as Iran?
It is a question of logistics.
When the Germans invaded France, it was easy because France had roads on which they could drive their tanks. France had gas stations. They could drive, run low on fuel, go to a gas station, fill up, and continue.
That is why the Germans conquered Western Europe so quickly. The infrastructure was there for conquest.
Then came Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union. It became a dumpster fire because there were no roads and no gas. The war machine became bogged down everywhere.
The Soviet Union was flat.
Now imagine trying this in a desert full of mountains.
It is very hot. Electronic equipment becomes overloaded and overheated. Tanks and equipment run out of gas quickly. It is easy to get lost. It is arduous to climb mountains, and it is difficult to establish forward operating bases where troops can rest.
The idea that the Americans will simply cruise through Iran is nonsense.
The American military was not designed to fight a long, protracted war. It does blitzkrieg. It conducts quick operations.
Think about Iraq in 2003. The Americans won the initial war in about two weeks. They conducted thunder runs around Baghdad, sending Humvees into the city for a couple of hours while no one could stop them.
The American strategy has been refined over decades of warfare.
That strategy does not work against mountains.
Why does the United States still want to invade?
Because it is a dumpster fire.
These people live in bubbles in Washington, D.C. They suffer no consequences for their actions.
If America loses the war, they go home. That is it.
Look at Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. They lost all these wars, and nothing happened to the general staff. The bureaucracy is completely insulated from the consequences of war.
It can make stupid decisions without suffering any consequences.
As long as the war continues, these people benefit politically and financially. The American war machine benefits greatly.
As long as officers follow Trump’s orders, they will be promoted within the bureaucracy.
For the first time in human history, you have an empire with a military bureaucracy that can never suffer any consequences for its stupidity in war.
This has never happened before.
Corruption as a Theory of War
There is a meme that says: if you are president of the United States, you buy oil stocks and then bomb Iran. Oil goes up, and you sell your stock. You announce that peace is near, oil goes down, and you buy oil stocks again. You continue this indefinitely.
In light of Polymarket and the corruption we are seeing, that is a decent way to understand at least part of the motivation.
Whatever you once believed about government existing to protect us is no longer true. Maybe it was never true.
That meme may seem ridiculous, but it is pretty accurate given what is happening.
This is another sign of imperial decline. The elite are completely corrupt and incompetent.
Trump’s Speech Against China
Does Trump’s hostile speech toward China change how China will behave toward the Iran war?
My reading is that Trump’s comments on China were theater.
He was not serious about them.
He is looking for any pretext to interfere more in local elections and gain control over state elections.
He is building a narrative that will allow him to federalize elections and take over the midterms.
That is the real intention.
He does not really care about China. He cares about the midterms, and he cares about gaining power for a third term.
Central Asia and the New Great Game
What happens in Central Asia as the conflict expands?
There are three major powers competing for influence in Central Asia: China, Russia, and the United States.
China has the Belt and Road Initiative. Russia has military bases throughout the region. The United States also has military bases and influence throughout the region.
Countries such as Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan want to maintain neutrality. They want to navigate the great-power rivalry and benefit as much as possible from it.
The problem is that these great powers will eventually demand that they pick a side.
Over the next ten years, expect a lot of coups, political revolutions, color revolutions, and political assassinations in Central Asia as China, Russia, and the United States try to control the region for their own benefit.
The war in Iran cannot be won, so the conflict will expand outward.
Azerbaijan is a country to watch closely because it is very close to both Israel and the United States.
As the war progresses, Russia will reinforce Tehran through the Caspian Sea. The United States will try to create as much conflict in that region as possible.
Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia are also important because China will reinforce Tehran through the railway system. China will transport goods across Central Asia into Iran.
The Americans will want to disrupt this.
There will be another great game. The United States will try to create as much conflict and chaos in Central Asia as possible to blockade and isolate Iran.
What if the American Invasion Succeeds?
If everything went right for the Americans, would victory in Iran reverse the decline of the American Empire?
It would only delay the collapse.
Let us hypothetically assume that everything goes perfectly for the Americans in Iran. The Kurds fight, Azerbaijan becomes involved, the United Kingdom participates, uprisings occur, and the IRGC has to fight on every side.
The next player would be North Korea.
If I am Vladimir Putin, I cannot afford to let the United States take over Iran because that completely screws me.
The United States could then focus completely on the war in Ukraine. Russia’s entire southern flank would open up, and Central Asia would go to America.
The war would be over for Russia.
What would Putin do? He would open a new front in North Korea and force the United States to deal with it.
North Korea has nuclear weapons. It has artillery that can threaten Seoul and missiles that can strike Japan.
The United States would have no choice but to deal with North Korea.
I think this will happen naturally anyway. But if the invasion of Iran begins going too well for the United States, North Korea will take the stage.
Would Russia pull out of Ukraine?
No way.
If Russia pulled out of Ukraine, Russia would be dead within 20 years. There would be a complete embargo.
An important factor people do not appreciate is that China has not signed the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline deal.
If China signed the deal, Russia could supply all of China’s energy needs. But that would be bad for China in the long term because it would make China completely dependent on Russia.
Russia would receive infinite financing from China, and China would receive infinite energy from Russia. The destinies of the two countries would be tied together.
The fact that China has not signed the deal means Russia is alone on the world stage.
The alliance between China and Russia is theater. It is not really taking place.
If Russia retreated from Ukraine and Iran fell, Russia would be dead within 20 years. There would be no hope for it. It would be completely isolated.
Russia cannot afford for Iran to fall.
Iran is the ultimate battle—the final battle—for Russia.
That is why North Korea will have to take the stage.
Is Putin a Strategic Genius?
Are you romanticizing Russia and Vladimir Putin?
I appreciate this perspective, especially from someone who is Russian.
The war is not going well for Russia. The attacks on Russian oil refineries will cause a lot of damage to the Russian economy. I can appreciate that many Russians are unhappy about the war.
But I will still say that I think Putin is a genius.
He knows what he is doing. Of all the world leaders I have seen, only Putin seems to know what he is doing.
I am able to predict what he does because he is very strategic and thinks in the long term.
I think North Korea will come into play soon because, if I am Putin, that is the next logical step. Extending the war into East Asia would put more pressure on the American military.
I also think Putin loves his country and his people.
We may disagree about the way he expresses that love, but I think he is genuine in his love for Russia.