Iran War Expert: If This Escalation Continues, 2027 Will Be Devastating! | Prof Robert Pape

As a founder building a business when I was in my early 20s, I think I always had a deep sense of imposter syndrome because there was something that I wasn't good at and that thing was finances. Finance and understanding your financial position as a small business is the great enabler of all of your dreams. I was running from it until I discovered a platform called Xero. Xero is an accounting and financial management platform specifically for small businesses and it brings accounting, payments, payroll and analytics all into one place even for people that don't love doing finances. Xero wants to do the financial work for you but its core ambition is to go beyond keeping the financial record because Xero wants to help you understand what's happening in your business and increasingly, and this is maybe the most important thing, is help you make decisions. Finally we have a partner who can enable us in a simple way for those people that are both left brain or right brain and enable our dreams. You can learn more about Xero by going to xero.com. Thank you to Xero. Thank you for sponsoring this podcast but also thank you for helping me to scale my business as somebody that quite frankly has never loved finances that much. We are about to enter the eight most dangerous weeks in our lives because the U.S. midterms will determine the fate of President Trump's administration and the most dangerous time is the transition of power and we saw this with January 6th and so what happens in this transition period could also easily dovetail in the Iran war because President Trump has promised over and over again that he will escalate after the elections. Well now we're after the elections so let me show you what's really going to happen. But first I've studied political violence around the world for 30 years and I've advised every White House since 9-11. What do you think is going to happen then over these eight weeks? So let's start with the beginning. Will President Trump accept the election results but also a plan that's on his desk is a plan to hit targets in Iran over a three-day period and as the Iran war is escalating now we have the issue of this is a likely possible time when Putin is going to start to realize he can't get Ukrainian territory from Trump so he moves to his next plan and I'll show you what that might look like. What happens next? There's going to be enormous pressure on Europe to retaliate and when Europe does that that's what World War III looks like. President Trump will be able to start declaring more and more emergency powers and this will lead into a devastating 2027. What can we do and what about the general public and do you think we should be stockpiling? Number one incredibly important which is... Guys I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm if you follow a show will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed so when we have our best episodes on this show the most shared episodes the most rated episodes I would love you to know and the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button but also it's the simple easy free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so so so much. Robert Pape, every time I speak to you I feel like I start with the same question but it is the question that is front of mind for me which is what the hell is going on in the world at the moment? What's going on is we are getting deeper and deeper into an escalation trap and we are moving up rungs in escalation where risk is growing and we are about to enter the eight most dangerous weeks since this war began and they may become the eight most dangerous weeks in our lives. We are going to see the coming together of three fundamentally dangerous issues. We're about to see the U.S. midterms where the voting has now stopped but we are now in the process of counting the vote certifying the vote and in two months and it will take two months exceeding the victors. That's the transfer of power where the real danger zone of political violence what I call violent populism is starting now. It began the moment the voting stopped and the counting began because that's the transfer of power. Okay so most of my audiences around the world probably won't know including myself what a midterm is. In the presidential system in the United States we have four-year terms for our U.S. presidents then for our congress we hold an election every two years and we have two houses in our congress. Sometimes it dovetails with the election of the president in which case we just call it the general election but when the president is not up for re-election we call it a midterm meaning midterm of the president's term. So let me explain this to you and you tell me if I've got this. There is this house of representatives and then there's the senate. That's right. And both of them work to vote laws into power. That's right. And as we stand here right now the republicans trump's party has a majority in both so it's quite easy for them to pass new laws. What you're saying is in these midterms that are coming up there's a prospect that trump might lose his power in the senate and in the house which would mean he wouldn't be able to get his laws passed very easily. It's not just about passing laws Stephen. It's about a system of check and balance. The way the constitution was set up is that the congress and the president and then also the supreme court which is not an elected body they check each other. So what's supposed to moderate the policies in the United States where we don't go to the extremes is when different parties control the congress and the president. When you have the same party controlling both houses of congress and the president by definition there's very little check and balance on the president. The president can pretty much do what the president wants especially in international affairs but also very heavily in domestic. That's why the president's power is going to be severely checked if republicans no longer control the house and the senate. So why is this the eight most dangerous weeks? It's the eight most dangerous weeks because political violence especially in the era of violent populism when tens of millions of Americans support political violence on both sides of the aisle. The most dangerous time is the transition of power and we saw this six years ago with January 6th. It's important to remember that in November 2020 president Biden was elected however that did not prevent president Trump from taking steps to prevent that transfer of power. We saw it come to a head on January 6th and that occurred over a two-month process. It was when the voting stopped and the counting began and then the certification of the votes began and then the transfer of power. That was the most dangerous moment that we have seen in American domestic politics since the civil war. We are heading to a very similar situation again and it's worse now. How do you know? For 30 years I've studied political violence around the world but for the last five years Stephen I have devoted myself to understanding what's happened in the United States. We are seeing a transition of power in the context of literally this fact. What does that fact say? That fact is that today as of a month ago over 40 million Americans support the use of the U.S. military to suppress democratic protesters against the Trump agenda. Think of this as 40 million Americans who support political violence for Trump and 60 million Americans, over 60 million, support the use of force to prevent Trump from being president. I've been doing these national representative surveys for five years. These numbers are double what they were in September 2024, two years ago. And two years ago you'll recall we had multiple assassination attempts against President Trump. You remember a year ago we had the assassination of Charlie Kirk. So these numbers are worse than that and we are coming into the most volatile election in our lifetimes really because this really will determine the fate of President Trump's administration for the final two years. If it turns out that at the end of these two months that the Democrats control one or especially if they control both the House and the Senate this is going to mean the virtual political destruction of the Trump presidency. The Democrats in control of both houses of Congress they will not only have the power of subpoenas to be able to compel on penalty of going to jail and prison testimony from members of the Trump administration, they will have the power of impeachment. And it's not just impeaching President Trump, it's impeaching the members of his cabinet. Think Secretary Hegseth, think the Attorney General, think the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. And if in fact they also control the Senate, now with just a few more Republican votes and there are many disgruntled Republicans already and many Republicans that have moved away from President Trump in recent months, they have the possibility of literally removing them from office. That would create a spiral down. There's no political bottom there Stephen. This is not like oh it's just once you get rid of one cabinet secretary everybody calms down. What we are witnessing is a true watershed period for the political power of President Trump and that means also the power of the MAGA agenda whether or not there will be mass deportations in the country. How would that be impacted by the midterms? If starting in January there are months and months of turmoil in the Trump administration where literally the heads of the cabinet offices including the Department of Homeland Security are on the block to be removed, the idea that you're going to have consistent operations within the departments, very very very difficult Stephen. What do you think is going to happen then over these eight weeks? It starts with the midterms. It starts with the issue of violent populism. It starts with the issue of the consequences of President Trump's presidency but it doesn't stop there because you see this is not happening in isolation. It's happening during the Iran war and so what happens in this midterm transition period could also easily dovetail with more escalation in the Iran war and in fact President Trump has promised over and over and over again that he will escalate after the elections. Well now we're after the elections and at the same time as if that was not dangerous enough we have a third issue which is that President Putin in Russia is threatening to escalate strongly against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine to target electric power in Kyiv, in Kharkiv, and in Odessa in a dramatic way. I thought they were doing a deal. President Putin has done nothing to say that this is off the table and there's every sign and in fact growing signs by European governments that they are extremely worried about what's coming in the Ukraine war that there will be as the phrasing is now called a dark winter in Ukraine. So these eight weeks yes took me through them week by week. Let's start with the beginning which is the election results and now the question is will President Trump accept the election results or if they ultimately go against the Democrats will the Democrats who are built up this giant set of hopes expectations of victory would they accept not taking control of Congress. This is really step one and this is coming right on the heels of another step. President Trump has promised that the United States and Israel will conduct strikes against Iran heavy strikes right after the midterms. When did he say that? I was looking for his quotes on this and he seems to be pretty cryptic in saying that Trump described it as decision time stating he faces a choice between reaching a deal or taking action to finish them off. Yes. Directly by reporters where the strikes would resume, he remarked that anything is possible and declined to take options off the table. As he is putting on the table the distinct possibility of him deciding to do these strikes, he's taking serious steps with his administration to literally prepare for the strikes. Step number one, that's a costly step, is to remove embassy personnel, the families of the embassy, from the region. This has happened in Saudi Arabia. This has happened in multiple of the frontline Gulf states. The second big thing that's happened is he has asked the military for a detailed set of attack plans. These detailed plans, we have the leaks of them. He has not just had the plans drawn up, but he's given the orders for CENTCOM that within a maximum 96 hours of his go-code, they are to execute the plan. I've got your book here, Bombing to Win, Air Power and Coercion in War, and you actually spent a long time modeling what would happen if the US decided to bomb Iran before they did. That's right, 20 years. What you said to me in these previous conversations we've had has played out in a really very interesting but very accurate way. Actually when we first met, and you first told me about this idea of an escalation trap and that the US might be stuck, I didn't really understand that idea. The US military is so big, of course they would just go in there and they'd win, but you were right. I ask you now, we're now, I don't know, five, six months into the war, how does this end? An escalation trap, Stephen, is when a strong country, like the United States and Israel, attacks a weaker country and they have tactical success. The bombs hit targets, the bombs kill leaders, but the weaker country gains power. In this case, that happened almost immediately as Iran gained heavy control of the Strait of Hormuz and with it, heavy control of 20% of the world's oil. What happens next? What happens next is humiliation for the side that started that attack. This might be a good time, Stephen, to let me explain what a lot of people think is strategy. A lot of people think that what strategy is, Stephen, is a chess game, but let's play that out and show you what the escalation trap looks like in a chess game. This is white and white plays an opening move. Is that America in this analogy? This is America. This is President Trump. White plays an opening move and red then makes a move and what does white do? Takes a pawn. Now it looks like white is ahead. Now red makes another move and let's just say red brings out a knight, of course, threatening the pawn and now white makes another move, putting the bishop here, thinking threatening the queen, but as we know in chess, the queen, the red queen, can now just simply take the bishop. The opening has opened. There was an initial gain, but what happened very quickly is red is now more powerful than it was before. At this point in a chess game, Stephen, what happens is white offers red a draw. Trump and Israel started this, Iran got ahead, and so everybody's been saying for months and months and months, President Trump, just take a deal. Well, that would make perfect sense if what we were doing is we were playing a chess game. International politics, especially when a strong power is ahead, is not a chess game. Let me explain what I mean by that. A better analogy for international politics is roulette. You see, what happens in a game of roulette, and anybody who's been to the casino will know this, you can go and you see that, oh my goodness gracious, the odds of me winning here if I bet on a number, they're not very good, but the odds if I just decide I'm going to bet on, say, red, I'm just going to put a bet down, and what happens is it's not quite 50-50. The house still has an advantage, but nonetheless, a lot of roulette players think, well, I'm going to start out there, but what happens, Stephen, when they lose? Now you're the house, you've just won there. Now what happens is a lot of gamblers will suddenly dig in deeper. I'm going to double down, or in this case, I'm even more than doubling down, and I'm going to bet even more on red, because since I lost on red before, surely it'll come up red again, but now the wheel spins, and guess what happens? It comes up black again. Now the house has taken even more chips. Now I'm way behind, and you know what I also did here, and a lot of gamblers do that? They made a deal with a bookie, and they said, you know what, let me borrow some of the chips here, because I'm going to get it back, and what are they going to do? They're going to bet an even bigger pile of chips. They're going to bet all those chips on red 36, because see, now the odds are riskier, but if they win, and again, they're betting on red, they're hoping, their numbers finally come and do, they're going to make back the money they lost, and even more money. At each rung, President Trump has made a bet. He's bet that if he attacks the Supreme Leader, kills the Supreme Leader, this will weaken Iran. It didn't work. He lost the chips. So he bet on a six-week air campaign, and then he thought, okay, I'm going to go not just for two or three days of bombing, I'm going to go for six weeks of bombing. He lost on red again. How did he lose that? Because Iran did not concede and kept control of the Strait of Hormuz. That is what is wrecking and putting the gas prices up high. So as time has gone on, it's literally the chips that he is risking here are American gas prices. And so in American lives and American interest rates, all of that is the equivalent of the chips that we are losing. And now he's bet again on the blockade. And guess what? It's been six solid months, Stephen, and he's lost again. Because what's happened after six months? Iran has not caved. It's not collapsed. Those gas prices are going up. This is why he's in so much pressure in the midterms, but it gets worse than that. So now, Stephen, he's lost again. Take these. Now you're the house. You've got all those chips. Now he's way behind and he's got a deadline because in the gambler's deadline, all these chips that I've just been playing with, I've borrowed them. I borrowed them from the bookies. Are you saying that he's borrowed the chips from somewhere? He's borrowing the chips. And in this case, the chips are the political support of his party, MAGA, and the control of the party. In order to win back everything, because come January 3rd, there's going to be a new Congress. That's the equivalent of the bookies wanting all those chips back in your hand. So you're saying with this last bet that he's making, because he started the war in Iran, sentiment towards the Republicans and Trump has gone down, as we've seen. Hugely down. Lost all those chips in your hand. And now senators and congresspeople are going to potentially lose their jobs on the Republican side to Democrats. That's right. And they're going to lose their jobs. And as they lose their jobs, they're not going to want to support him in the future. They're pulling, they will pull away from him more and more and more. Why doesn't he just, he's got two years then, is it not conceivable that he just decides to relax for two years? Okay, I can't get laws passed and I can't get things done, but you know, I could just chill at the White House. Yes. So there's two big problems with that idea, Stephen. Problem number one is presidents don't just abandon their party, their agenda and their legacy. We see this not just with President Trump and MAGA, but we saw this with Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War. Lyndon Johnson went through a very similar game of roulette where he kept doubling down as each rung of the escalation ladder cost him more and more support as the American people were turning against the war. He kept going up the ladder. Chasing his losses. He's chasing his losses, hoping, even though each risk is riskier, each bet is riskier, he sees it as the only way to dig out of this doom loop that he is in. And there are deadlines. The equivalent of the bookie wanting their money back in two weeks is the election. And it's not just the day of the election, it's the election's mean transfer of power where the whole legacy comes unglued and the legacy of the losing president is the worst of all. And so this would mean President Trump, when you say, shouldn't he just go to St. Andrews to play golf? He becomes Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson combined. The worst president that we've ever had in anything, any of our lifetimes. This is a huge problem for any president to just simply absorb. So that was the first point. The second point is the crypto. So President Trump has made enormous money for himself and his family on various investments and a lot of it is in crypto. And crypto is ultimate confidence investment. So that what you have with crypto, the final gold piece here, is this can go up poof when President Trump's power goes up. So the problem with crypto and his money in crypto is that this is heavily dependent on President Trump's power. And when President Trump's power goes poof, a lot of crypto, not all of it, but a lot of it will go poof. And that will be true not just for him personally, he's 80 years old, but for his family, for his friends, those people that have made enormous fortunes on this. So when President Trump looks at this, this isn't just ego humiliation. This is massive loss in history. And this is also massive personal financial loss for his family. His family are quite involved in the gambling laws and prediction markets in the United States as well. I think his son is actually on the board of two of the big prediction market companies. And as they sort of like held back the laws and regulations so that prediction markets can exist. So I understand it from that perspective as well, that they do have financial interests that could be at risk. And what happens with the gambler here? They keep going until what? They lose it all. So they lose it all in Iran. So let's go back to the board. Now that we understand the escalation trap that President Trump is in, what we can see is there's reality to why he wants to escalate and double down again, because he is looking for a way to turn around this pessimistic view of President Trump as he can't win the war. This is now critical because if he doesn't find a way to hold on to the final set of chips of MAGA support, which depends on him being the winner, he's going to lose those chips going forward. So this is the big pressure, the pressure I call the pressure of humiliation for the loser to keep doubling down. And this is why this step is a serious, is a serious risk as we go forward. He hasn't given the go code yet to actually strike Iran. And we're going to play out the rest of this because once we see where this could all head, it's important to understand that I've advised every White House since 9-11, and I've seen that in the White Houses, even though there are heavy commitments to policies, until the final go order is given, it is possible to reverse course. Like I'm pretty sure he's learned that now, that just dropping more bombs doesn't work. This is the mistake that many folks are making in the media because they have become, gone from being white belts to green belts with their strategy, but they haven't gone to brown belt and black belt. So the leaks that are coming out about the three-day plan are consistent. The three-day plan is what President Trump is describing here. The plan that's on his desk is a plan to hit targets in Iran over a three-day period. And as soon as the media, I believe, saw the word three in the three-day, this can't be anything. This must be a truly minor issue. But what we're talking about in the target sets that are coming out are a whole new level of leadership targeting, a level of economic targeting, hitting refineries, economic power, and bridges. And this looks to me an awful lot like what was instant thunder. The three-day, it was supposed to only be a three-day plan that opened the war against Iraq in 1991, that was targeting 84 leadership and infrastructure targets where it was meant to paralyze Saddam Hussein's regime. This is exactly the air campaign that has been at the heart of many air strategists since the 1991 war. This is when I am debating air strategy. I am literally debating the people who came up with that plan originally and are still pushing that plan. It says the three-day plan is a Pentagon military contingency for a rapid high-intensity aerial campaign against Iran if post-election negotiations break down, presumably the midterm elections. It is designed to hit missile sites, drone launch hubs, IRGC command centers, and energy infrastructure over 72 hours to force capitulation without triggering a prolonged ground war. Trump paused major strikes until after the November 3rd midterms, but he has explicitly characterized the post-election window as a final choice to either strike a diplomatic deal with him or initiate these strikes to finish it off. That's right. This is much more than the word three days would communicate. What you just read there is exactly the full set of instant thunder target sets. If he does this three-day plan thing, does it fail? It fails, and then what happens is we go to stage three, which is a three-day bombing campaign becomes a much longer bombing campaign. The three-day bombing campaign drags on. This is exactly what happened with instant thunder. It was planned as three days with an extra three days of backup strikes, but it went on for 43 days. It never did succeed in paralyzing the military of Iraq. The hope here, the success as far as Trump would see it, would be that they come to the table to make a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and to vouch never to have nuclear weapons. No, not only that. That's part of the deal. Once you do this, there's nobody to come to the table. You are destroying so much of the leadership stratum that the idea of coming to the table, President Trump has occasionally said he's not sure who to negotiate with now. Once you're in day six or seven of this, you're really not going to know who to negotiate with because the whole point of this plan, Stephen, is to paralyze the government so it cannot function. Their goal of the plan is not to tilt the balance of hawks and doves inside of the government the way a lot of people, again, who just kind of generally know about bombing but don't know the full details of the way the strategies work. This is a plan, Stephen, that is meant to completely paralyze the body of the military. Then the problem here is because you've paralyzed it, who are you going to negotiate with? No, that's not likely the next set of steps. You see, once you do this, now, if you haven't fully paralyzed the military, and that's what I'm telling you is very likely, what's going to happen is the Iranian military that is left, and there's going to be quite a bit of it left with a lot of power to strike back, they're going to start lashing back. They can lash back in a whole variety of ways, including attacks against airports in the region. This is the time when Saddam Hussein, after we did this, this is when he bombed our sites in Riyadh. This is when U.S. personnel were killed in Riyadh. In fact, we could never stop the Scud missiles of Iraq. What happened is we've seen the breaking of this threshold. This is why this is credible. It's because we've seen the beginning of this with Iran's ally, the Houthis, which is the group in Yemen. What happened is as the escalation between Saudi Arabia and the group in Yemen called the Houthis was escalating, the Houthis directly with missiles struck Terminals 3 and Terminals 4 on separate days in the Riyadh International Airport, killing over a dozen people and wounding over 300 people. This is the first time in this war that we saw the direct targeting of civilians, intentional targeting of civilians, and it wasn't just one day. It was multiple days. What I'm pointing out is this is the pattern that you would expect as this progresses, so that what you're doing is you're getting deeper in. Who are you going to communicate with to tell them to stop? What's number six? Now we need to understand that what's happened, Stephen, is look how deep we've gone. We started with what was supposed to be just another limited strike. This time, however, it's building its own momentum, and as it builds its own momentum, now we have that decentralized structure in Iran striking back in ways it decides on its own, but there's another problem. That other problem is these attacks, Stephen, are likely going to kill thousands and thousands of civilians in Iran. Which attacks? The three-day and the six-day and the continued attacks here on these instant-thunder-style air plan is exactly the air plan we executed against Saddam Hussein in 1991, but it was against his regime. It was against the economic infrastructure. We hit his oil refineries. We hit his electric power, and we killed somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 civilians in doing this plan. This is not a plan where no civilians die. This is a plan— Lots of people are going to die through this period. Lots of people are going to die here. And that leads to inspired attacks. What an inspired attack is, is a terrorist attack that is not command-directed by a government. It is not coming from the Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader may even be dead as a result of all this. An inspired attack is what we saw in the Tel Aviv plane incident. So we just literally saw—the last time I was on your show, I was warning you that we will likely see civilian attacks. It could well be inspired attacks. It's because in the aftermath of the 10 million-plus who came out to support the Supreme Leader, they called for revenge. That is exactly the pool of sentiments that is likely to inspire individuals on their own—I don't mean command-directed by Iran—on their own to carry out terrorist attacks or suicide terrorist attacks. Well, what happened in the Tel Aviv incident, this was the co-pilot who the plane took off from the airport in Dubai, and it had about 170 civilians on the airplane. About 100 of those civilians were Israelis. And after two and a half hours, that co-pilot took a hatchet that was in the cockpit—most people didn't even know there was a hatchet in the cockpit—and he tried to take control of the plane. He tried to kill the pilot, and he was only 30 minutes from Tel Aviv. So I've studied 8,000 suicide attacks in detail. We've read a book about it. Two. You've got two there. Yeah. Cutting the fuse as well. And so studying all those attacks, once I saw exactly the location of where the co-pilot tried to take control of the plane, that told me very heavily this was likely a suicide attack. Because if he just wanted to kill himself, the co-pilot, he likely would have done that almost immediately after the plane had taken off. He wouldn't wait to just get so close to Tel Aviv that then he could have the possibility of driving it into a target in Tel Aviv, killing people on the plane and people on the ground in Tel Aviv. And looking at some of the reports here from CBS News, they say various sort of Israeli officials have linked it to Iran. But Trump also said, based on what I'm hearing, the co-pilot had direct links to Iran, warning that any state actor behind the incident would face devastation. Well, so we don't know for sure it wasn't command-directed, Stephen. I'm telling you that it wouldn't need to be command-directed. Some of the best information we have has come from the pilot himself. So now that he's healing, he's giving interviews here, and he is describing a situation where everything is fine in the flight. There's no sign whatsoever that he's sitting with a mentally disturbed individual looking to somehow off himself or so forth. And then suddenly he feels a club on his head. Then he realizes and starts to put two and two together. And that's when he makes every effort to keep the door open. And essentially, what you saw here was, we can't say it's 100% certain it was a suicide terrorist attack, but my estimate is that it's gone from being, say, 75% certain to 90% certain that this is an individual who wanted to not just kill himself, but to kill everybody on that plane and to take control of the plane just in time to be able to ram it into Tel Aviv. The pilot said the morning started very normally. The first officer asked to pray, then struck him from behind with the clash axe. Yep. And notice the prey. So this is a very common religious suicide attacker. They commonly will go through a certain ritual before they do their suicide attack. The pilot thought that a heavy piece of equipment had fallen on his head before realizing he was under assault. As his vision tunneled from blood loss, his sole focus was releasing his seatbelt and crawling towards the cockpit door release. He explained that each burst of physical effort caused him to fade in and out of consciousness. He noted the terrifying sensation of feeling the aircraft plunge violently nose down while he was on the floor. Believing he would not survive, he pushed through to unlock the reinforced door before collapsing face down, which allowed other passengers to see him and rush in. And then I think from what I heard in the reports, passengers rushed through the door, restrained the co-pilot. And I don't know who landed the plane was the pilot. No, there was actually somebody on board who was a pilot, had the knowledge to land the plane. This was an unintentional backup pilot that just happened to be there. And that was extremely fortuitous. But what you see here, Stephen, are the telltale signs, because if it was suicide, then you would have expected it to happen right away. And if it was a suicide attacker, the first thing that would come to their mind is if they took control of the plane two and a half hours from Tel Aviv. Remember, it's a three hour flight to Tel Aviv from Dubai. If they took control of the plane too far out, well, then that would create the opportunity for Israel to scramble jets to prevent it from striking Tel Aviv. So you thought you think that they were trying to crash the plane into Israel? Yes, I think it's very strong. And this is what what I mean by inspired attacks. We saw the first command directed attack. That's the Houthis on civilians. We've seen an actual inspired terrorist attack that has already happened. What comes next? Well, let's keep going. The biggest unfair advantage in business right now is having people who genuinely understand AI. And big businesses are hiring them very, very quickly. AI job postings in the US have roughly doubled since 2023, while postings for VP of AI roles are around 600% up. If you're running a small business, you can't just build an entire AI team, but you still want the same advantage that these big businesses have. This is where our sponsor Fiverr comes in. 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We need to see the interactions of this is a crisis that's unfolding. See, what you are seeing here is that the election results are creating incentives to go down this road, but this doesn't just stay on its own path, it starts to play a role and come back up and start to affect events here, because as this is occurring, we need to expect gas prices are going up, we need to expect diesel prices are going up, we need to expect the housing market, which is already frozen up, is going to freeze up even more. So as we start to see the interaction here, or the effects, the effects are not simply what's happening in Iran, or even what's happening in in the economy, and this will be in the world economy, it's going to be what people think. And we just got a big lesson in what people think in France, and what happened in France wasn't just a one-day problem, and it wasn't just a one-off, it started to spread to other parts of Europe. The riots. The riots. And a big part of the riots, not the only reason for the riots, so we have some actual opinion poll data on this, so I'm not just speaking generally, but a big part of the reason for the riots are the rising prices due to the Iran war. Well, this is exactly recreating and making those dynamics worse. So now we're back over to the possibility here of protesters and federal agents starting to clash. This is a moment when they're still counting ballots, so now there's more and more protests occurring, but it's also at a point where the ballots have not been certified yet. So notice where we are. We have moved through November, and we have nowhere near come to the end of transfer of power to the new Congress. So we have this whole very contentious election, we have the process here where we still have the counting and the certification of the ballots, we have that occurring not in isolation, but in addition to an international set of events that are just... And also the Russia. And also the Russia. So we've skipped over Putin. And so what's happened here also... In week four? In week... Well, roughly week four. This would be around Thanksgiving, possibly. Can't really polymarket it to the day, Stephen, but we're just giving the sequence. So as the Iran war is escalating, now we have the issue of, will there be an actual deal with Trump and Putin that prevents Putin from escalating on Ukraine? Putin isn't just interested in some sort of photo op with President Trump. What he wants out of President Trump is he wants there to be real pressure on Ukraine to cave to Putin's demands. What do you think Putin wants from Ukraine? What do you think he wants generally? Well, let's look at some of the maps. I've got a map. Yeah. So a really good way to understand this, what you see is in this map, which is August of 2022, four months after Putin invaded Ukraine, you can see that the lines here have settled down into Eastern Ukraine. You can see there's no longer Russian forces around Kiev. It's all on the edges of the south of Ukraine and the east of Ukraine. And what you can see is, this is Donetsk. These are some of the areas that Putin has already annexed, he's officially annexed them. And also this is Crimea. What you see is that Putin is still wanting to gain at least the rest of this territory right around here. These are the pieces of these four oblasts that he has not conquered yet. He has officially annexed them into Russia. He's actually passed laws in Russia, but he has not physically taken control of them. So at a minimum, he's interested in controlling this bit of white around here and here. And notice at this point, he's pretty far away from that. Now he may also, and he's talked about an area called Novorossiya, which is, this would be the next set of oblasts just behind the first four. And that is this area called Novorossiya, which is also where vast numbers of Russian speakers also live in Ukraine. So the debate here is whether Putin only wants this white territory around here, or does he also want this? But let's look where he is four years later. After four solid years and the loss at a minimum of 250,000 dead Russians. This is the minimum, Stephen. There's a count to go far higher than that, but these are the counts based on obituary so that we're really sure by name that at least that number of Russians have died. Look at how far he is away. Look at the white. He's gained a little bit of territory, about 1% of Ukraine territory, but look how far away he still is from that white area I just pointed out. And this is July, 2026. And he of course is nowhere near the second four. So when we say that Putin wants a deal, this is not Putin settling for some sort of a signed piece of paper where he's just going to have a photo op with Trump. What he wants Trump to do is deliver the territory that he wants in Ukraine. What do you think is going to happen? I don't think Putin is going to get... Trump is not going to be able to deliver. Trump can say that he'll deliver it, but he can't do that on his own. If only Ukraine could deliver that territory, for Zelensky to truly surrender that territory, there's a good chance he'll be killed by his own people, his own military, his own... Would kill him if he gave it up. Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. Yes. So what people don't know about international politics, I mean, smart people don't know, people even know a lot of history, is leaders take dramatic risks when they're losers. I just explained to you the risks that Trump was taking here. For someone in Putin's position or Zelensky's position, where they're literally talking about whether or not they will gain or surrender pieces of territory, for Zelensky to actually surrender not just the territory Putin currently has, but even more, this is taking his life in his hands and his family's life in his hands. What's number seven? So let's keep looking. This is when Putin, because he doesn't get the territory, this is when Putin escalates. This is the most likely time after Putin is sure that Trump can't deliver any more territory. This is right around Thanksgiving. This is a likely possible time when Putin is going to start to realize he can't get territory from Trump, Ukrainian territory from Trump. So he moves to his next plan, which is the winter attacking the electric power stations in Kiev, Kharkiv, Odessa, that is the capital city of Ukraine, and two of the major cities in Ukraine near the areas he wants to control. And by attacking those electric power areas, he's not looking to just cause a couple of days of brownout where you don't have your air conditioning or your heating for a couple of days. The plan is to knock out 90% of the power in those cities. And that would keep that out. If you truly knock that out for that amount, this is probably going to last a month or two. This is very much his own escalation trap. Very much. Putin is in an escalation trap because Putin started this by launching almost 200,000 Russian troops in order to not just take the southern part of Ukraine and eastern part of Ukraine. Remember, they were surrounding Kiev. The idea here was to take Kiev. So this was to take almost half of the country. And he lost. So he is in his own escalation trap, Putin is, because if he accepts surrender, if he accepts capitulation, now he has his own military to deal with. And he faces not just humiliation and a horrible legacy in history, but he really faces the fate of a lot of authoritarian leaders do when they lose major wars, which is being killed. What do you think is going to happen with both of these wars? I think they're going to happen at the same time. What this chart is doing, what we're really showing here on this chart is all three of these dynamics are occurring at literally over literally the same eight weeks. And what happens next? What happens next is they start to interact with each other. So now, as we see that we're starting to see the escalation here of violent populism starting in a small way for real. And when you say violent populism, what does violent populism mean? Violent populism is when political violence moves from the fringe to the mainstream, where you have not just small numbers of violent actors, but large numbers of violent actors. You don't just have an isolated political assassination attempt. You have strings of them over a period of years, and you don't just have a protest that's a localized protest over, say, a police beating. Rodney King would be the classic example of a localized protest, where in L.A. there were four days of riots, but only in L.A. That was in the early 1990s. With violent populism, this starts to spread. It starts to spread and become much, much more significant. Isn't that kind of like the Black Lives Matter protests, which spread across the world? Exactly. What happened was a single focal point event, and I'm going to show you how these actually occur in just a moment, can spread like wildfire, because with violent populism, political violence takes on a whole new dimension, Stephen. Let me explain what I mean. I like to use the analogy for violent populism of a wildfire. The part of the reason for that is because a lot of people know about wildfires, and they know that why we have a wildfire is we have this combustible material. It's often dry wood that's been sitting there, and maybe with global warming, we've gotten more of it. This is predictable. We can actually predict the size of the combustible material in a wildfire season, but what we can't do in wildfire season is predict the spark. What is the spark that's going to set this off? These are always unpredictable, and the sparks can be a cigarette butt that's thrown in. Let me just show you what that might look like. Just in this analogy, what is the combustible material? In this analogy, the combustible material with violent populism are the millions of Americans on both sides of the political spectrum who support political violence for their goals. Today, we have over 40 million Americans who support political violence for Trump's goals. We have over 60 million Americans who support political violence against Trump's goals. They are the combustible material that can be set off. So you're saying with that pretext, with this sort of anger, and with people being more supportive of violence to achieve their political goals, all it's going to take is a spark. All it's going to take is a spark. And imagine, let's use also, because we already mentioned George Floyd, let's use January 6th as an example. What happened on January 6th is President Trump used his rhetoric, a tweet on December 19th, 2020, to call a MAGA to Washington to listen to him at the Ellipse. Then when they were there at the Ellipse, he told them to march on the Capitol, still kind of channeling where all the dry combustible material were. Then what happened is there was the true spark. And what was that true spark that set off January 6th? It was another tweet by Trump where he told them Mike Pence had let them down. At that moment, that's when the crowd burst through into the Capitol in multiple places in response to that tweet. And that's when you can hear the chants, hang Mike Pence, hang Mike Pence. That's violent populism in action. And notice what we need is just like what you did, which is we need a fire break. And we don't want to wait until the next fire. If we wait until the next wildfires to occur, it may happen and spread so quickly, Stephen, that we may be in a situation like France. So notice in France that this wasn't just a localized event where there was a protest that got out of hand against one government building. This was a series of protests that got out of hand, and they got out of hand not just in Paris, but in multiple cities in France. And then a week later, that happened again and wasn't just limited to Paris and cities in France. It spread beyond France itself. So this is what I mean by violent populism starting to emerge. And these clashes between the federal agents and protesters over, say, possibly ballot counting, this is what I mean by a focal point of that. It's literally an event here that can act as a spark, and it can touch off those sentiments. And that is violent populism in action. So now we have, notice, we have actual major problems starting to happen inside the United States. We have major problems in Iran that are just getting worse, and these are feeding each other. We have major problems. that are happening in the Russian-Ukraine war, and this too is going to increase energy prices. These are not disconnected events anymore. Is that why, I think it was Wes Streeting that said we in the UK need to stock up on this stuff? That is exactly why I think they are asking the public to stock up on batteries so that in case the internet goes down, why would you stock up on batteries? Because there's more problems down the road here. You're the one that told me he said this, I actually missed that piece of news. Yes. You're saying the UK government has asked people in the UK to stock up on batteries? On batteries, beans, flashlights, water, because what can happen as this pattern, as this escalation gets worse and worse is you can start to see that Ukraine will start to lash back here against Russia, and then Russia may start to punish the supporters of Ukraine in Europe, including right here in London, right here in Britain. And that's why the defense minister is calling for preparations, not saying there's a tactical intelligence that there is a threat coming tomorrow, but I believe looking at something like this board that we are outlining, Stephen, and looking at this and saying, well, wait a second, wait a second, the risk here of this starting to get out of control, starting to become real, and rather than wait for a panic to ensue after there would be a cyber attack that would say knock out the internet for several days or knock out electric power in Britain for several days, go ahead, stock up on some stuff now so you can ride out some of those issues. So the UK government has officially told households to prepare for national emergencies, launching the Be Ready campaign, which advises every family to stockpile at least three days worth of essential supplies to survive potential hostile state attacks, cyber warfare, or major infrastructure collapse. Britons are being asked to store three litres of bottled water per person per day, a three-day cache of non-perishable tinned food alongside battery-powered wind-up torches, radios, and that's why this, yep, no Britney Spears radio, battery-powered radios, power banks, first aid kits, and physical cash. And the reason for physical cash, Stephen, is because ATMs won't work. Pointing directly to the reality of modern conflict and state-sponsored sabotage, the stark question being put to the public is how ordinary people would cope in a moment where electronic payment systems or local supermarket supply chains suddenly collapsed, a warning that has already driven panic buying, stripping supermarket shelves of bottled water and canned goods, while sparking a massive run on emergency supplies across the entire country. That is fucking crazy. It is, and it's showing, Stephen, that governments are already paying attention to the risks that we're laying out here. So when we see the United States pulling back its personnel and families from embassies around the Middle East, when we see the British government initiating a Be Ready three-day preparation campaign, what you are seeing is governments are understanding the risks that are starting to emerge. What I'm about to say is an ad, but there's something quite different about this particular ad. 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So, as we keep going, now... The US water system is forced to manual. Yeah. So, this is where the real danger starts to come in once we see cyberattacks. We need to understand that this summer in Minnesota and in a number of other states in the United States, in July, the power and the water went out. So, we had a water problem. And the New York Times was the only paper to cover this, and the New York Times quoted directly from US intelligence that said this was most likely Iran doing a cyberattack inside the United States. That story was never followed up again. That story was not repeated by other agencies. That has all the hard marks of US intelligence telling the papers not to cover the story. Now, what happened in the case is we know is a fact. You think that's what happened? Well, I've spent a lot of time with the US intelligence community. So, in the 90s, I had a clearance, but in the last 20, 30 years, I've spent an enormous amount of time with our intelligence community. And the quotes, the language in that article, if people will go back to the article, you'll see that the article is quoting specific people and saying that it has Iran's fingerprints for cyberattack. Now, that's important. That phrasing is very important, Stephen, because that's exactly the phrasing, the unclassified phrasing that is used to understand the cyber capabilities of different actors, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. Do you think the water went out in Minnesota because Iran did an attack? I think it's most likely Iran, yes. We can't say for certain, but I would not put it forward if I didn't think that was a credible report. And then you think the US government might have had a word with some journalists and said, listen... Yeah, take it off the table. Don't talk about it. Do they do that? They do. They do. In the Gulf War in 1991, there was a big effort by the Pentagon to work with CNN, ABC, others in the news to, in fact, control some of the news that was coming out. And in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, this continued. And one of the times I was on the set, so I was on the set. I don't want to embarrass the journalists, but I was on the set in CNN and they flew me into New York and I was literally on a set somewhere like your team. I was just talking about how great your team is compared to theirs. And we were sitting around the table and the reporter, who's a famous reporter, had me on with certain generals. And before the cameras rolled, she said, so let's start with the ground rules. What should we not say? What should we not ask you? What should we not talk about with the public? Just imagine that, Stephen. Imagine that. So they would ask you to tell them what they can't share with the public? They asked the people from the administration who were, this was the Bush administration, where the normal role of the journalist is to do the opposite. In fact, CNN very, very famously got started by interviewing Saddam Hussein in the 19, or not got started, but one of the big things that they got a lot of prominence was interviewing Saddam Hussein when the U.S. military went apoplectic when they did. So this is what I mean by when you ask me, would it be possible for the U.S., for intelligence, U.S. government to ask the media to, for the good, they would say for the good of national security, to cool it on a story? And the fact is, I've seen it myself. Wow. What's next? So now this is the big problem we worry about. I can't tell you this is certain to come. Would not want to do that. I'm telling you this is the pathway. And if we get all the way down to this part of the pathway, and that's an if, then we have to worry about real troops in the streets when? In the weeks just before the Congress would be seated. So American troops in American streets? American troops in American streets. Has that happened before? Not since the 50s and the 60s, when in the 50s, this was in a completely different environment. So President Trump, just to say why this is even credible at all, on October 1st in Time Magazine, he was interviewed about would he declare the Insurrection Act? And he said specifically that he might, and he wouldn't take it off the table. Well, the Insurrection Act would be the use of U.S. military, or it could be the National Guard or the Reserves. It wouldn't have to be exactly the serving military. But the use of the military in American cities. And that is a huge step that's rarely been used. And that's a step which, under the circumstances of the environment I am explaining, you can see that, first of all, there would be an ongoing escalation in not just one war, but we now have two wars. And this could be building and building at this point in time. That would create the environment in which there is an actual international emergency that's occurring. So the Insurrection Act is... And what does that mean, the Insurrection Act? The Insurrection Act is where the president has emergency powers to use the U.S. military, or as I said, the National Guard or the Reserves, within the borders of the United States against the citizens of the United States. So normally, we have a policy called Posse Comitatus, where the president is not using the U.S. military inside of our own borders. It's for obvious reasons, Stephen, which is anybody who just takes a moment in history knows that authoritarian states have routinely used their military to suppress their own population. So the United States, the leading democracy in the world, has gone way out of its way to not go down that road. That's why it's particularly striking when President Trump will not take that option off the table. And if there was not a war, one could look at the courts and one could think, well, if President Trump tried to invoke the Insurrection Act, he could be taken to court and the courts would oppose that act and it wouldn't come into being. What happens next in Iran? What happens next is now we've pushed all the way to look at how much danger there is that's occurring here, how much economic pressure that's occurring, but also notice that the Iranian military, although it's still able to do some strikes, they probably are pretty significantly paralyzed. They're not 100% paralyzed by any stretch. They're able to still launch drone strikes, probably missile strikes, probably even cyber attacks, but that doesn't mean it's the same military as exists today before the three-day war, the three-day air war. So you think there'll be U.S. ground troops in Iran? I think there's, yes, I think this is why the Marines are moving, because under the circumstances of the sequence I've just laid out for you, a lot of people think that when President Trump is talking about moving U.S. Marines for limited ground operations, this would be necessarily a suicide mission. Now, it could be a suicide mission, but this is very unlikely. Much more likely would be the way this played out with instant thunder, which is you would paralyze as much as you could of the Iranian military. The Iranian military would still have remnants that are able to attack us pretty severely. Now you have the ground force option to go in to try to deal with localized areas of those remnants, and you have a real reason to do it. And once we go down this road, Steve, and in fact, I'm quite concerned that once we start the three-day bombing campaign, this sequence is going to be almost impossible to stop. Because once you start the three-day bombing campaign, this is going to unleash responses by the remaining elements of the Iran military that can fire at us, and they will be maximally incentivized to fire at the Gulf states, infrastructure in the Gulf states. But once you go all the way down this far, now you're in the true forever war. Now you're in the forever war that we can't really get out of, and we are now into a world where this is a true emergency. President Trump will be able to start declaring more and more emergency powers because this will be a true emergency, and it won't be over by Christmas. These eight weeks are the most dangerous eight weeks, but if we go all the way through this trajectory, Stephen, this will lead into a devastating 2027. And lastly, what happens in Russia? Russia, we see that if in fact what the defense minister in London is worried about happens. If those cyberattacks happen, there's going to be enormous pressure on Europe to retaliate directly against Moscow. This is not a situation where cyberattacks see people haven't really experienced cyberwarfare. They've heard about it. They've read books about it. There's science fiction books written about it, but they haven't experienced it. So what they, what I think many people think is, well, the internet goes out for 30 minutes and it just pops right back in, right? So what's the big deal? This isn't the real set of cyberattacks our government has been worrying about for decades. The real set of cyberattacks are much, much more costly on the publics, the American public, the European public. And under those circumstances, those publics are going to demand payback. And that's when you actually have Europe retaliating against Moscow. And you know what that means? You know what that word, the word is for that. When Europe does that, Stephen, World War Three, that's what World War Three looks like. Many people for months have been discussing, are we in World War Three? The answer is no, we're not in World War Three. We have war happening around the world and in major parts of the world. What World War Three means is when the world's largest powers attack each other's homelands and their militaries kill each other, directly engage each other. That is not the situation today. And we've been nowhere near that, even with all of the escalations that have happened in the Ukraine war. But aren't we doing that by proxy? Britain just announced yesterday they're going to give another 10 billion to the Ukraine. Presumably that money is going to be spent on killing Russians indirectly or directly. So aren't we in these proxy wars already? We were in proxy wars during the Cold War almost every year from 1947 until 1989. We were in proxy wars in Africa. We were in proxy wars in Latin America. We were in proxy wars in Afghanistan. So remember the Soviets went into Afghanistan. We sent in the Mujahideen. The difference is when they attack each other directly. Exactly. So proxy wars, we have faced proxy wars almost every year during the Cold War since 1947 and after the Cold War. That is not a world war. If we're going to use the phrase we're in World War Three, then it should have some semblance to World War One and World War Two. Do you think that's likely? I hope everything we're doing here, Stephen, will prevent it. So I believe that what we're starting down now, I don't mean eight weeks from now, I mean literally from today forward, we are living through the eight most dangerous weeks in our lives. I believe that if we allow this momentum to carry on on its own, that it's going to lead to very, very bad outcomes at this part of the calendar. And we can do a lot. What can we do? Number one is every member of Congress who's still in the lame duck Congress now and who's just been elected to Congress can say one thing. No escalation by the Trump administration in Iran until the new Congress is seated unless Iran strikes first. Very simple declaration. This is the core firebreak. The core firebreak is no escalation on Iran by the Trump administration called for by every member of Congress sitting now who's in the lame duck Congress and who's just won election to the new Congress. That's step one. Step number two is now that we're actually in counting season and certification season, there should be every governor and every mayor should call on President Trump to hold a two-month moratorium on all federally armed agents in their cities unless the governors and mayors call for it. A two-month moratorium so we take off the table the possibility of violent populism getting out of control, the key sparks. We can't take every spark off, but we can take the key sparks. Is there a third one? The third one, incredibly important, which is that in all of the conflicts we have just laid out, we have the United States in the middle of them, we have Iran in the middle of them, we have Putin, Russia in the middle of them, we have Iran very central of course, we now have Saudi Arabia. We should have the core countries that are calling themselves mediators and who are those countries? Pakistan, Qatar, and increasingly India. India has been playing a quiet role behind the scenes with Russia and Ukraine. Those three countries that have played this role as mediator should call on all of the countries to do one thing, hands off civilians. No direct targeting of civilian infrastructure or civilian residential areas by states. If we do those three things, what we're doing is we are establishing fire brakes on that momentum of the eight most dangerous weeks in our lives. We do not have to simply watch as those eight weeks unfold, Stephen. What about the general public? What should they be doing? Do you take the advice of West Street and do you think we should be stockpiling? No, I'm personally not doing that because what will happen is, can you just bring that back up for a moment? Let me show you what's really going to happen. So now we're at day one and let's say day one, we still have a lot of water in our bodies. So day one, we use one bottle of water. Now we go through day two. Day two of the outage, we have to go through both bottles of water because we're now starting to run out of water. Now we're at day three. That's what he's told us to do. Now we're at day three and we're definitely going through our bottles of water. Here's the fundamental problem, Stephen. The attacks can happen again. So you're saying there's no point? What I'm saying is there's no point and what I'm saying is everybody will come to that realization on day one that this is not going to prevent the panic. This is not going to truly buy time those three days. The way the governments can buy time are those three fire bricks and what can every ordinary person do? They can email, they can text, and they can call their favorite political leader, whoever that is, and tell them to adopt those three fire bricks. That is how we can navigate this journey and do something about it. Otherwise, we're just letting the events control us. I was going to ask you the question in the book, and the question in the book is basically, what can people do now to prepare for the next five years? But I think you might have just answered it. I think I did. You have this wonderful book that's out now, Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. You're someone that's so incredibly well-read. Decades and decades and decades of the most interesting experience. So if anybody is interested in these subjects that we've talked about today, this is the definitive book on the subject matter. It is evidence-based. There's lots of stats and graphs and figures in here, but also it's so deeply read on history, as you are, Robert. Thank you for coming here and thank you for continually keeping the lights on for me, because I remember the first time you came and I thought, what's he talking about escalation trap? There's no chance. But it's completely changed my mind on what's going on in the world, and it's actually helped me to understand the reality and the complex, messy reality of war and incentives and ego and humans and the human cost on the other end of it. Again, we always talk about Ukraine and Iran, but I think it's worth also remembering that there are millions, tens and tens and tens of millions of people, probably, what, 130 million people combined, 40 million in Ukraine, 90 million in Iran, that are right in the heart of all of this. And it's all well and good me sat here in our big office and studio lamenting about what's going to happen to them, but there are very real people that are living there, trying to live their lives amidst all of this absolute craziness and chaos, and my heart goes out to them. And Stephen, I just want to say one of the most important things that's happening is social media is not just a problem, but you're seeing with your show, social media can be a tremendous help. On the times I've come on your show, we have really laid out some pretty dark scenarios. And after the show, because of so many people, what happens is the questions come to the key leaders. One of the key things when I was on just the last time in July, we talked about, we were just about to unleash a whole series of attacks with CENTCOM to go after Iran's drone network. This would have been a disaster. This would not have ended in improving matters here. And there was tremendous momentum building for that. And this was with generals, others in the military, ex-military. And I know, because what happened after our show is this changed. And suddenly, what was the reality, the real issues came to the floor. And that's one of the big reasons, I believe, we didn't go down that dark road. I think it's because of the diary. I think it's because of the diary. And I think it's not just the diary. I think it's because on social media, what we're able to do today that we could not do 20 years ago, when we went into Iraq and Afghanistan, is we're able to have serious, substantive conversations where we lay out the actual risks and consequences, the true worst cases that could come. Have you been contacted by anybody at the White House? I've advised every White House. Are you advising this one? I've advised every White House. You've been coined, Robert. I've advised every White House. Have you been contacted by the White House? I've advised every White House since 9-11. And if there's any contact I have— You think I'm letting you off the hook. Nice try. Any contact I have, I can't—I could never, ever—and let me just simply— I could sit here all day, Robert. Have you been contacted by the White House? You don't have to tell me who, but since you've come on this show, have they contacted you for advice? So, I've been—I've advised chief staff of the Air Force, and I've advised every White House since 9-11. I'm incredibly proud of that. And the fact of the matter is your show, and your show, among other shows, but your show is a leading show, raises the profile of the consequences. And that is incredibly important as we go forward. I'm not going to ask you about the White House, but have people contacted you in positions of power? Yes. Okay. Because I remember last time you were on the show, I remember I asked you, I said, would you advise this White House? Have they reached out? And you said no to me when we first met. So, subsequently, you've been contacted by people in positions of power. Anytime somebody in a position of power reaches out, and that can be in America and outside of America, it is an incredible honor for me to give the best advice I possibly can. And I will continue to do that every day. Are you advising the White House? I'm just telling you, Stephen, that I... No, I'm not telling you I'm doing that. I'm telling you that I am incredibly honored when people of power reach out. And the fact of the matter is, Stephen, that the best way to influence the world is not always behind closed doors. It does happen sometimes. I'm really trying to tell you that what happens when we explain the actual consequences or the danger zone we're moving into... I get it. I get it, Robert. This is how it raises... I'm saying, so, are you advising people in power in the United States? I'm just telling you, people in power have contacted me. It's been a tremendous honor, and I'm very glad to do that. I'm glad they're listening. Are they listening? These people in power? Stephen, at some point... At some point, we're going to be able to look back on this. We're going to be able to say, how did we get through this period of time? And we're going to have those conversations. But the way we're going to do this is... Listen, I'm asking, are they listening? I'm not asking who they are or what they're asking you about. I'm saying, are they listening? So, the people in power who have contacted me, I do believe are listening, whether they're in the United States or around the world. And I do believe that, again, I just want to point out that one of the big issues here is communicating the true risks that we're running in powerful ways. Robert, thank you. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for turning the lights on for so many of us and simplifying complexity. It's also complex because there's so much rhetoric and propaganda and stuff. So, it's nice to sit with lots of different people that have lots of different perspectives and have the wealth of experience that you have and have it laid out to me in a way that I can really comprehend. So, hopefully, we avoid this escalation. you're going to avoid it. I'm an optimist and that's why I'm excited to be on your show. Not because I want to see the doom loop, but because I want to see us come to a better world. I'm glad the white house reached out. Thank you. Robert. As a founder building a business, when I was in my early twenties, I think I always had a deep sense of imposter syndrome because there was something that I wasn't good at. And that thing was finances, finance, and understanding your financial position as a small business is the great enabler of all of your dreams. I was running from it until I discovered a platform called zero zero is an accounting and financial management platform specifically for small businesses. 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