[0:00]Last night, there was a major escalation in this war. So the Israelis have bombed the Iranian oil fields, and in response, the Iranians now are attacking the energy infrastructure of the GCC. Okay? So, let's have a look at what this attack looks like.
[0:26]This is Qatar.
[0:34]Oh my God.
[0:41]Oh, shit.
[0:46]Okay, so Qatar provides 20% of the world's LNG. Um, and this is a major escalation. And again, um, as I pointed out last class, the entire strategy of Iran is to destroy the global economy, okay? And this is how it would do so. It also attacked Tel Aviv in response for the assassination of their de facto leader, Ali Alarajani, okay? So, this is what the attack looks like. Um, as you can see from this picture, this is a cluster warhead, and it is impossible for air defense to stop this. So, Tel Aviv is getting pummeled. We don't have footage because it's being censored right now. And you would think that, um, the Israelis would want this war to end as soon as possible, because Tel Aviv and other cities are going to just destroyed in this war. And again, there's really no way for the Israelis to defend themselves against Iranian ballistic missiles. But, unfortunately, there are many Israelis who are very happy about all this destruction. All right? And so this is one of the, uh, more influential rabbis in Jerusalem.
[2:25]He's talking in Hebrew, but what he's saying is that this war of destruction it will bring about the return of the, sorry, not the return, the coming of the Messiah. And it will happen on Thursday, which is today, okay? So they are not at all saddened by what is happening. In fact, they are quite animated, very, very excited about what's happening. So again, you cannot look at this war from a geopolitical lens, you have to look at it from an etological perspective, all right? So, um, let us look at where we are in the war so far. And as you can see, it is a regional war. And both sides are seeking maximous objectives. And what this means is the United States and Israel wants to destroy Israel, especially its capacity to be a nation state. And so right now, um, the Americans and the Israelis are attacking their leadership, decapitating their leadership, as well as targeting their economy. And later on, um, as this war progresses and escalates, they will start to target in civilian critical infrastructure, including water. Okay? And it's already happening. Um, they also want to have a divide and rule strategy, where they want to provoke ethnic conflict in Iran and divide Iran up into ethnic enclaves. And this is what we callization. The Iranians on the other hand, want to destroy the entire global economy. And you do that by attacking the energy infrastructure of the GCC, because again, the entire basis of the global economy is cheap energy, okay? So, um, as this war progresses, you will notice certain things, right? So eventually, the Americans will have no choice but to launch a ground invasion. And, um, one possible attack vector is here, which is Kark Island. This is where Iran stores about 90% of its oil for export. And so the idea is that if you take Kark Island, you will, uh, destroy the Iranian economy, and thus its capacity to sustain this war. The problem Kark Island is that it's easy to take, but it's hard to defend because of the coastline, right? In which case, you have to also take the coastline. But then you deal with the Zagros Mountains, and so you have to expand outwards, okay? So this is what we call mission creep, where you cannot justify the war. So what you do is you put in some soldiers, and then the mission creep becomes just justification for the war, okay? So that's one thing to, um, spot as you read the news. Kark Island will be a flash point. Another, um, flash point will be Saudi Arabia, because right now, the Iranians are attacking Saudi Arabia. Now what Saudi Arabia can do is declare war on Iran. And this is important because Saudi Arabia has a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. So that if any are attacked, the other is obligated to come to each other's defense, okay? This is important because, as you can see, Pakistan opens up the eastern front, okay? So it's possible the Americans can attack from the east. The other the other thing that's important is that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And, um, um, it is possible nuclear weapons are used. I again, I strongly believe tactical nuclear will not be used, okay? But once Pakistan is in the war, nuclear warheads are now at play. Okay? Another thing to watch is how this war expands elsewhere, okay? Because when the time is appropriate, what will happen is that, um, the Iranians will activate their proxies, uh, the Houthis, and they will close off another critical choke point, okay? So now what's what's gonna happen is that there'll be two critical maritime choke points that are closed off, thus isolating the GCC, and thus cutting off the world's access to cheap energy. And when they do that, we're gonna expect global retaliation and other forces to have to come in to secure cheap energy. Okay? It's possible the South Koreans and the Japanese are forced into this war because they are so dependent on GCC energy. All right. Okay. So these are things that we will, um, look for in the next few weeks. Something else that is, um, creating, uh, attention online is people are speculating that Benjamin Netanyahu is dead. And the reason why is that he's he's not been seen in a public setting for many days. There have been cabinet meetings and Netanyahu usually cheers them, and he's not there, okay? The other thing is that there are fake AI videos of him giving speeches, and it's pretty blatant, these are fake. So people are speculating that he is dead and they're trying to cover it up. Uh, this is a picture of him visiting a cafe in, uh, Jerusalem to prove he's not dead. The problem is that this cafe is in a mountain, and it will take him about like 50 minutes to drive there. So, why does he go there? Why doesn't he just have a cabinet meeting or get on the phone with Donald Trump to prove he's still alive, all right? So, but I personally don't believe he is dead. He could be hiding somewhere, um, or he could be injured. What we do know is that the Iranians are killing a lot of senior Israeli officials, including the head of Mossad, their spy agency, and Netanyahu's residence was also targeted in Tel Aviv. So, that's that's a really interesting question. How are the Iranians able to target so many so many of the top leadership of the Israelis, okay? But not only that, but, um, this is Ali Larijani, and he is the head, the de facto head of the Iran war effort. And he was assassinated, um, yesterday or two days ago. And the Iranians have confirmed this, okay? So he is confirmed to be dead. And, um, people, analysts are extremely worried about this, because he is a very pragmatic person. And so you can negotiate with him, right? So once this, uh, war reaches a certain point where both sides are exhausted, then it is possible to approach him and say, you know what, let's just negotiate a cease fire. And he'll be willing to because he's very experienced. He's also very influential, so he's able to bring together the different, um, factions of the Iranian government and negotiate a cease fire. With him dead, it is now almost impossible to foresee a cease fire, okay? So, let's discuss why, um, you really don't want to do this sort of stuff. You don't really want to kill, um, other nations' leaders, okay? And so let's just use a analogy. Let's imagine in the streets, there are two gangs at war with with each other, okay? Gang A and Gang B. And if you look at gangs, they are structured as hierarchies, okay? But there's a lot of autonomy among the different sections, okay? And what holds, uh, the gangs together, of course, is the leader.
[10:41]So, when these two gangs go to war, what they try to avoid is killing each other's leader. Why? Because, um, a war is often used to achieve certain political objectives. Right? And so the point isn't to kill everyone, the point is to negotiate, uh, a treaty that is most beneficial to you. And you do that by negotiating with each other's leaders, okay? Because they have the authority to implement the treaty. That's the first reason. The second reason is if you kill the leader, then more people, there will be a competition to replace the leader, right? And during a gang war, the person who is most violent, the most extreme, will often become the new leader, okay? So by killing this leader, not only do you cause, uh, conflict among the gang, but you also cause a massive escalation in the conflict between these two gangs, and there's really no way out. That that is why, historically, you do not target other nations' leaders, because then there's no off ramp. Okay? So by targeting, um, Larijani, the Israelis and Americans have ensured that there will be no off ramp now. This war will be fought to the bitter end. And unfortunately, as we discussed previously, that is the objective here. The Israelis and Americans are interested in maximist aims, to destroy Iran permanently. Okay? And the Iranians are also maximist in that they want to destroy the global economy permanently in order to restructure reality itself. All right. Okay. So, this leaves us with three major questions that I want to look at today, okay? The first big question is how are these leaders dying? It's not that easy to kill a leader, right? Because he's protected by security. And usually we there are two ways to figure out where the leader is, okay? There's human intelligence, called Humint, and then signal intelligence, called Sigint, okay? Human intelligence, signal intelligence. Signal intelligence just means electronic eas dropping, where I listen in on your telephone calls, where I track your IP address, okay? And the Israelis and Americans are obviously very sophisticated in that, and the Americans and Israelis are saying like, we are using electronic surveillance in order to track these people down. I don't think that's convincing. I think the most, um, the most important source, the most reliable source of information is human intelligence, having spies embedded in local networks to spot for you where they are, okay? That's the most, um, that's the best way to figure out where they are. So then the this raises the question, how are the Israelis and Americans getting this human intelligence, okay? All right. That's the first question we want to look at. How are these leaders dying? Second question is like, why are they dying? Like, what's the point of killing them, right? Because once they die, they can just be replaced, and they're often replaced by a more extreme individual, okay? So that's the second question we want to look at. And the third question we want to look at is what does this mean for the war and the world, okay?
[14:35]What do these decapitation strikes ultimately mean for how this war will progress and how this will affect the world the world in general, okay? All right, so those, those are the three big questions I want to look at. So to answer these three questions, I want to introduce a new idea to you, okay? It's called a law of proximity. The idea is this, whenever you play a game, you're not just playing one game. You're playing many, many different games. And the game that you choose to play is the one that is most approximate to you, the one that is close most close to you.
[15:28]Okay? Does that make sense, okay? But this is also true for nations as well, where we think that the game is approximate between nations. But really the game is within nations. And the conflict within nations is the one conflict that determines how nations behave against each other. All right, so we, so today we'll do is we'll look at three examples of of this, okay? We will look at the civil conflicts in America, in Israel, and in Iran, to figure out why they behave the way they do, and then figure out how this war will progress. Okay, so clearly, there's a civil conflict right now in America. Okay? You have the Democrats and you have Republicans. Now what's odd is that even though these two different political parties are at war with each other, they both support the war. Because their calculus is different, okay? So why do the Democrats support this war? Well, it's because they believe that this war will be extremely unpopular in America, which will allow the Democrats to dominate in the midterms in November, and then win the presidential election in 2028. And they believe that this war will be so unpopular, it would destroy Donald Trump, and, um, allow the Democrats to win forever. It would basically destroy the Republican Party, all right? And so that is your strategy. And if you think about it, it actually makes a lot of sense. The Republicans have a different strategy, which is this war may be unpopular, and this war may, um, uh, make America lose, but it's okay. Why? Because in a time of war, the President has been called the Emergency Powers Act, okay? Emergency powers.
[17:49]Emergency powers allows the President to essentially suspend the Constitution and to suspend or delay elections. Also, um, the Republicans want to cause something called Save America Act. Okay? The Save America Act, um, which means that if you are a voter, you must present ID in order to vote. And you think that this is, um, well, reasonable. But historically, the idea of checking ID is a way to discriminate against minorities. Right? To have police officers there to scare, um, minorities. And that's traditionally how, um, racism was enforced in, in America, okay?
[18:54]So, in other words, the Republicans have many different strategies of either cheating or manipulating the elections. They can also, I had to say this, but if the war is going really badly, what they will do is call a national giraffe and cancel the elections, okay? All right. So, these are two different strategies going on. But as you can see, this is not really about America defeating Iran. This is really about the Democrats or Republicans trying to obtain power and keep it, okay?
[19:35]All right. But what's important for us to understand is that it's not just about the Democrats and Republicans at war with each other. There's actually a much deeper divide in America, okay?
[19:54]And this divide is a conflict between the, um, elite and the counter elite, okay?
[20:09]You remember how we introduce the idea of elite overproduction, right? And he argues that what leads to civil war is that you have too much, too many elite who want to be the ones in power. Power is a zero-sum game, and therefore, when you have elite overproduction, they have to go to war against each other in order to, um, have the power, okay? And so, what's going on? Who are the elite and who is the counter elite? Well, I mean, to put it very simply, the Democrats represent the elite, and the Republicans represent the counter elite, okay?
[21:07]So, um, the basically the elite is the Empire, and counter elite is Maga, which is America First. And so, they have two different, um, ideals for America. The Empire is to maintain the current global order,
[21:35]right? And Maga is to retreat back into Western Hemisphere and focus on, um, Americans' core national interest.
[21:53]Right? They're also divided into finance and AI, okay? So, in other words, Wall Street are the main backers of the counter elite, and then Silicon Valley are the main backers of the counter elite. Okay? So, these these people are interested in maintaining the status quo. They are interested in a revolution, all right? And so this is the main divide in America that will eventually lead to a civil war, like an actual civil war, okay? But right now, um, they're fighting over foreign policy. So, I will discuss this more in, um, the future, okay? But I I present to you now. So, let me give you a concrete example of why they're fighting. Why are people in finance fighting with people in AI? And there's a very good reason, because if you're able to control Washington DC, if you're able to control the levers of government, you're able to make a lot of money for yourself, okay? So, let's look at this concretely.
[23:14]Okay? What people don't really understand is that both finance and AI are bubbles that will burst. They're parasites, okay? So, finance, um, is a parasite because there's something called the private credit bubble. Right? The private credit bubble, I mean, private credit is very simple. Rather than banks issuing loans to companies, companies privately issue loans to other companies. And you would think that these companies would be very careful with who they lend to, and how much they lend to, right? That's not true, though, okay? Why? Because in 2008, these banks destroyed the global economy, and the American government bailed them out. Right? There's nothing consequences. This this idea of moral hazard. If you do not serve consequences for your stupidity, well, you're just going to be more stupid in the future, okay? So these companies believe that we control Washington DC. Therefore, we can be as risky and stupid as we want. So they're giving out lots and lots of silly loans to companies because they collect a fee for these loans, right? And then when these loans don't actually work out, meaning the companies go bankrupt, what they do is they say, oh, well, we'll lend you some more money to keep afloat, okay?
[24:53]So now this problem has reached about $2 trillion. And so they think that, okay, well, worst case scenario, the government will bail us out, if we all go bankrupt, because we're too big to fail. And all our friends are in government, okay? That's the mentality.
[25:19]And in 2008, that worked. But there's a problem today, which is there's also another group that's doing the same crap, okay? And it's called the AI bubble. Right? So if you look at AI bubble, you have you have companies like Microsoft, uh, Open AI, uh, Oracle, Nvidia, um, okay? Lots and lots and lots of different companies. And the way they operate is, they just lend money to each other, okay? It's like, I give you a billion dollars, then you give me a billion dollars, and now we have two billion dollars, okay? It's a circle jerk. And, and it's getting a lot of money from the GCC and other investors.
[26:24]The problem, of course, is what's happening in the war, right? So if the GCC can no longer put more money into this bubble, then eventually this bubble will have to burst. But they're like, that's okay. Why? Because we control Trump. We control the White House. We are the stock market. Therefore, Washington DC will bail us out, okay? So that's the war going on where you have two parasitic forces, the finance sector and the AI and the tech sector.
[27:11]And they are all looking for government bailouts when their bubble bursts. But they, they, the government doesn't have infinite money. It can only bail out one side, right? So they're gonna fight over who bails who out, okay? If the Democrats can win the House and the presidency into 2028, then the private credit people will get bailed out. But if Trump and his people stay in power in 2028, then the AI people will get bailed out, okay? So that's the civil war going on in America right now. We'll discuss this more later in the future, but I just present to you, uh, right now, okay? And then of course, you have the, um, Israelis, Israel. People don't really appreciate how divided Israel is. This is about 2020 when you have like a million people in Tel Aviv calling for the resignation, the impeachment, uh, the jailing of Prime Minister Netanyahu. Because Netanyahu, like most Israeli politicians, is very corrupt, okay? Um, and to avoid going to jail, Netanyahu proposed changing the judiciary, changing the laws. And so there's these massive protests against Netanyahu. And at this point, in Israel, um, it seemed as though Netanyahu was was gonna fall from power and go to jail for the rest of his life. But then, of course, October 7th happened, okay? October 7th happened, and then we Israel is now in permanent war that gives him emergency powers, okay? All right. So, to give you a sense of how divided Israel is, let's look at their Knesset, which is their parliament. Guys, this is a lot of political parties. And as you can see, none of them are dominant, okay? The biggest Likud, which is Netanyahu's party, it has about 30 members, but it cannot rule by itself. Therefore, it has to join with other political parties, okay? It has to be a coalition. But you look at his enemies. Well, its enemies also have a lot. So it seems as though Israel is an extremely divided society. And it is, okay? People don't really appreciate this. A lot of people talk about a Jewish global conspiracy. What people don't really understand is, the Jewish people have never, ever gotten along. So, you go back to the time of Jesus, and there were like three major factions in Jerusalem. They were the Sadducees, they were the Pharisees, and the Essenes. They all hated each other. In the year 70, the Romans sent a huge army to destroy Jerusalem, okay? And you would think at this time, the people in Jerusalem would get together and united and defend Jerusalem, because otherwise they'll all be killed. Well, they didn't get together, okay? And the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned down their second temple, and massacred a lot of Jews. So, the Jews have always had this problem where they're extremely creative and intellectual, but that just leads to massive infighting, okay? All right. So now I, I want to discuss where the where the major conflict in Israel is.
[30:56]Okay? So I would say there are like the two major conflict is represented by Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. These are two cities in Israel, and they are the two major cities of Israel. And they represent two different centers of gravity, two different visions for Israel. Uh, Tel Aviv is democratic. Jerusalem is a theocracy, meaning it's it's religious, okay? Uh, Tel Aviv is, um, open, meaning it actually has a lot of homosexuals, right? And you can imagine people in Jerusalem aren't happy about this, so they're very conservative.
[31:43]Okay? Uh, Tel Aviv is cosmopolitan. Jerusalem is traditional. All right. So, these are two vastly different, uh, visions of for Israel, where Tel Aviv is just this open, democratic, modern, progressive city. Lots of homosexuals, lots of open ideas, very secular, very outward-looking, very Western. Jerusalem is complete opposite, okay? Very religious, very conservative. And they again, they hate each other. And the fact that Tel Aviv is getting destroyed right now in this war, people in Jerusalem are actually okay with this, okay? They're not like, oh my God, they're killing Israelis. No, no, no. Tel Aviv is the great Satan. Let's just destroy it. So that we can, um, build a theocracy. Okay? All right. So, let's look closely at where the where they disagree, okay? So, Israel is the kingdom of David, okay? But Tel Aviv and Jerusalem perceive David differently, okay? So, for people in Tel Aviv, David was the king when Israel was at the height of its glory. When it was an open, cosmopolitan, creative, innovative, empire. And that's what they want Israel to be. The people in Jerusalem see this, see David as a different person. They see David as primarily a, um, poet prophet. And they see David as the exemplars as the favor of God because he redeemed himself and repented himself in the eyes of God, okay? So redemption and repentance. And what they focus on is the story of David, where David is king, and one day he wakes up and finds he's in love with Bathsheba. And so he basically has sex with Bathsheba. Bathsheba gets pregnant, and that's a problem because Bathsheba is married to someone else, Uriah the Hittite. So what does David do? David has him killed, okay? And David can do this because he's king. But God finds out and sends the prophet Nathan to tell David you've sinned. And at first David refuses to admit that he's in the wrong.
[34:20]But then there's his child with Bathsheba dies. And David falls into tremendous grief. And every day he's praying to God for forgiveness. He's asking for redemption. He is repenting. And God forgives him. And in this process, not only does David become a better person, but he becomes united with God. Because now they're best friends. Now they talk every day. And that's what the vision for that the people in Jerusalem have for Israel. A nation that engages in redemption and repentance. They don't care about this war. They don't care about Iran. They don't care about the United States. Don't care about the Israeli-Palestinian project. They care about the Jews finding God again, and being loyal to God. And that is what will bring peace to the world, okay? The Messiah will finally come.
[36:40]That's why this, uh, these crazy religious zealots have in Jerusalem, which is like, let's destroy Israel so that we can refine, rediscover, our love for God, okay?
[37:06]The destruction of Israel will lead to the redemption and repentance of the Israeli people, and therefore, peace in this world. The Messiah will finally come. That's why that the rabbi was actually talking about, um, on Thursday the Messiah will come because he feels it's so close. There's so much destruction, there's so much war. So the Messiah must come, because now the Jews recognize that only God can save them. Therefore, when you will it, when you pray for the Messiah, when you really want in your heart, that's when the Messiah will come, okay? But you need to create the conditions when people really want the Messiah, okay? So that's the civil conflict going on in Israel. And again, these people in Jerusalem, these fanatics, they don't really care if the world is destroyed. This world is fake anyway. Who cares? What matters is the divine soul, okay?
[39:34]So, um, a lot of people who religious will tell you is, we can only find redemption through suffering and through pain and through tragedy.
[39:56]All right. Okay. So, um, what I want to do next class is discuss how the world will change the next 5 to 10 years. All right. Okay. Any questions?
