Game Theory #22: Twilight of the Nation-State (Transcript)

So if you smile, everyone smiles at once. If you get angry, everyone gets angry at once. And you ask yourself, what sort of society do I want to live in? Do I want to live in a society where everyone is smiling or angry, right? And then that’s the way you should behave. That’s the law of universality.

Second is the idea of free will. No one can compel you to smile. You must smile at your own free choice. Even though smiling makes you feel happy, making you smile, that goes against the good of humanity, okay?

The third is the idea of human as an end, okay? So I can never sacrifice another human being in order to achieve a better society, because we are the ultimate end, okay? So these together, the categorical imperative, is what gives us the theory of the general will. So even though we all vote to eat ice cream, we shouldn’t eat ice cream, because that’s not how we achieve enlightenment. That’s not how we achieve the ideal state, okay? We should think about Kant’s categorical imperative.

The Social Contract and the French Revolution

Now what happens is this. From the general will, this is a sovereign, okay? This is the highest law. This is God, basically. And from the sovereign, we achieve the state, the government. And the state makes us into citizens. And then we have laws, culture, education, okay? So for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this is the social contract. This is the ideal state.

The French Revolution started because there were many intellectuals, revolutionaries, who wanted to achieve the social contract. But as you can appreciate, there were many who disagreed with this theory, especially monarchs, right? Because the idea here is that the general will, the people, are the sovereign. But in a monarchy, the monarch is what’s sovereign. So it’s a debate over who’s sovereign.

And so at this time in history, most nations, most countries in Europe were monarchies. So they saw the French Revolution as a direct threat to them, and that’s why they invaded France many, many times.

Citizen Armies vs. Professional Armies

But then something really weird happened. These professional armies who go into France, and they’re fighting against these citizens, people with no military experience, who are not professional soldiers, what was happening was that they were losing to these citizen armies. And the question is, why was this happening?

And the reason why is that this theory is so powerful that it makes people willing to fight and die for this, okay? So what was happening during the French Revolution, these wars, was that you had the monarchies, and these were professional armies. And so these were basically mercenaries. And the thing about mercenaries is they didn’t want to die, right? They’re claiming a paycheck. Their point is to intimidate. Their point is to scare. It’s not to die.

But then you have the French Revolution, and they were citizens, and they were willing to fight and die, okay? And that’s why France became the most powerful nation in Europe at this time, because they could call on their citizens to fight and to die. And it was an almost unlimited amount of soldiers.

From the French Empire to the American Game

Whereas the other countries like Prussia, Russia, Austria, they had professional soldiers who were afraid to die. All they wanted was their paycheck. So over time, the French were overwhelming the Europeans. And this created the French Empire. But once these places were conquered, they developed their own theory as to how to defeat the French. And they recognized that we also need a theory of nationalism. We also need a theory of the nation state.

But they didn’t like the social contract theory. So they came up with a new theory based on nation, which was basically language, culture, and race. And so this becomes Germany, or what we call iron and blood. So now you have these theories of nationalism come out into Europe. And now they’re invisible because they can call on their citizens to fight and to die. And this is why Europe became the most powerful region of the world starting in the 19th century.

But of course, the problem of nationalism, the problem with populations that want to fight and die, is that they keep on fighting wars. And so what happens is that to solve this problem, all these nations focus on trying to grow the population as fast as possible, as much as possible. And this is what led to this massive population growth. But with more population, what was happening was that these wars were becoming deadlier and deadlier, culminating, of course, in World War II. And by World War II, Europe had exhausted itself. Too many people had died. Their civilization was destroyed. And so this allowed America to come into power.

The American Theory of the Nation-State

America had a different theory of a nation-state. So the French, their theory was the social contract. The Germans, their theory is iron and blood, race. The Americans had a different theory because America was a multicultural nation called immigrants who are trying to colonize the Western Hemisphere, North America, right? So for them, their theory is to create a game. The nation-state becomes a game. The Constitution and government are the game masters. And what they will allow is for anyone to come to America and get rich, as long as they work hard. And this will create the greatest nation in the world.

So this becomes a game where anyone can play. In fact, the more players that you have, the wealthier America becomes, right? And then after World War II, what happened was that America spread this game throughout the world, as much as it could, to Europe and to Japan. But there were still communist countries like China and Soviet Union, which did not want to participate in this game. They had their own game. And so what happened was that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this game conquered the world, right? You had globalization.

The Collapse of the Game and the Reset

The problem is this. Once this game keeps on going, eventually what happens is that only a few players achieve all the wealth, right? You have massive inequality. And everyone else falls into debt. And that’s the world that we live in today. America created this game. It was very successful in creating tremendous wealth. And they’re trying to have as many players as possible. That’s why you have the population boom. But now, only a few people have all the wealth, and everyone else is in debt. In other words, these people are useless. And therefore, we need to reset the game.

And the way to reset the game, of course, is to destroy the game in the first place. Therefore, after World War III, we’re going to bring it down and start the game over again. And that’s why we are in the situation we are in today.

The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

So now what I’m going to do is go over some of the major ideas that allowed for this system to come into being. So first, I want to look at the Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. So Ivory, can you do me a favor and read the first passage? So let me provide some context. This is from his book called The Social Contract. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau is arguing that it’s slavery.

Rousseau on Slavery and the Renunciation of Freedom

And before, it was understood that slavery is a good system because the master is nice to the slave. As long as the master is nice to the slave, the slave should be happy. And Jean-Jacques Rousseau says, no, that cannot be true. In no circumstance can a slave ever be happy, OK? And he explains why.

So Ivory, can you read, please?

“To renounce your liberty is to renounce your status as a man, your rights as a human being, and even your duties as a human being. There can’t be any way of compensating someone who gives up everything. Such a renunciation is incompatible with a man’s nature. To remove all freedom from his will is to remove all morality from his actions. Finally, an agreement to have absolute authority on one side and unlimited obedience on the other. What an empty and contradictory agreement that would have to be. Isn’t it clear that if we are entitled to take anything and everything from a person, we can’t be under any obligation to him? And isn’t that fact alone, the fact that there is no equivalent, nothing to be exchanged between the two sides, enough to nullify the agreement? What right can my slave have against me? Everything that he has is mine, his right is mine, and it doesn’t make sense to speak my right against myself.”

OK, so the argument is this. Our freedom is given to us by God. Our freedom is what connects us to God. So our freedom cannot be surrendered. If we surrender our freedom, if someone takes our freedom away from us, that is surrendering our humanity. That is breaking our connection to God. Therefore, it is better to die than be a slave.

And that was their thinking during the French Revolution, right? They had all these citizens. They had absolutely no experience with firearms, but they were running into cannon fire against professional soldiers because they were like, “Give me liberty or give me death,” because without my liberty, I am nothing. OK, so it was a really important concept.

Population Growth as the Sign of Good Government

And then you can read this below.

“I am continually astonished that such a simple sign of good government isn’t recognized, or perhaps men do recognize it but aren’t honest enough to say so. What is the purpose of any political association? The preservation and prosperity of its members. And what is the surest sign of their preservation and prosperity? Their number and their population growth. That’s the sign you’re looking for. Other things being equal, the unquestionably best government is the one under which the population increases most without external help from naturalizing foreigners or establishing colonies. The government under which the population shrinks is the worst. Over to you, calculators. Count, measure, account.”

OK, this is a really important idea. The first is liberty is the most important value. And the second idea is a good government, a good society should focus on population growth, on having as many people as possible because that’s the best sign that you’re thriving as a society.

France and the Power of the Nation-State

So because of these two ideas, population growth and then liberty, the French will become the greatest empire at this time. So this is France in the dark green. And they will colonize and conquer everything in the green. You can see how vast it is. So this shows you the power of the nation-state based on two ideas. The first idea is liberty is all that matters. Second idea is grow the population as fast as possible.

Johann Fichte and the German Theory of Nationalism

So of course, what happens, as I mentioned, is that the Germans, who are being conquered by the French, they get upset. And their intellectuals come up with a new theory of nationalism. This is Johann Fichte, who is considered the father of German nationalism. And his argument is that it is language that binds us as humans. So for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it’s liberty that we should strive for. It’s liberty that gives us value as human beings. But for Johann Fichte, it’s no, it’s language. It’s language that binds us to the past.

Iron and Blood: The Philosophy of the German Nation-State

It’s language that binds us together. It’s language that’s worth fighting for. It’s race, nation, blood. And this becomes the philosophy of the German state. At this time in history, Germany was divided into many hundreds of different kingdoms. It is Bismarck, Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, who will unify the German people into one Germany, often called the Second Reich.

And so, can you read? This is his speech, his famous iron and blood speech.

“The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism, but by its power. Prussia must concentrate its strength and hold it for the favorable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of today be decided. That was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849, but by iron and blood.”

Okay, all right. So the idea here is that, listen, we’re a German nation, okay? And as a nation-state, as a people, we must protect our freedom by going to war. It’s only through war that we can survive and thrive as a people. But how do you fight wars? Well, you fight wars, and it’s really important, by making sure your population is taken care of, okay? So can you read, Ivory?

“The real grievance of the worker is the insecurity of his existence. He is not sure that he will always have work, he is not sure that he will always be healthy, and he foresees that he will one day be old and unfit to work. If he falls into poverty, even if only through a prolonged illness, he is then completely helpless, left to his own devices, and society does not currently recognize any real obligation toward him beyond their usual help for the poor, even if he has been working all the time, ever so faithfully and diligently. The usual help for the poor, however, leaves a lot to be desired, especially in large cities, where it is very much worse than in the country.”

Bismarck’s Progressive Reforms: Building a War Machine

So, Bismarck will turn Germany into the most powerful nation in the world by recognizing that it’s not just soldiers who contribute to the war effort, it’s also your people as well. It’s your people who make the machines of war, the machine guns, the artillery, the munitions. And therefore, you have to make sure they are healthy. You don’t want to send sick soldiers to the battlefield, right? You don’t want sick workers as well.

That’s why he passed a lot of progressive worker reforms, including health insurance, accidental insurance, old age pension, workers’ protection, children’s protection, okay? It is because he recognizes that a nation-state is first and foremost about making warriors, and if you want to win, you have to make sure you have as many people as possible, and everyone has contributed to the war effort. And to do that, you need to make sure that everyone is taken care of, including your soldiers, including your workers, okay?

Mussolini and the Myth of the Nation

And it was Mussolini who basically understood that the real purpose of a nation-state is to fight wars. In fact, it is wars that give people meaning in their lives. If you have a war, if you create a nation-state around war, if you create a mythology around the beauty of war, then people will happily fight and die, okay? Can you read the speech?

“We have created our myth. The myth is a faith, a passion. It is not necessary for it to be a reality. It is a reality in the sense that it is a stimulus, is hope, is faith, is courage. Our myth is the nation. Our myth is the greatness of the nation. And to this myth, this greatness, which we want to translate into a total reality, we subordinate everything else.”

Okay? So this is the highlight or the peak of the nation-state. And so during World War II, they had to fight a war to destroy the entire society because the soldiers were not emotionally arming like they were in the past before.

The Nation-State and Total War

The soldiers were coming from the population themselves. So in World War II, the Allies won not because they were democratic or morally superior or had better strategy. It was because they could destroy the productive capacity of their enemies, but their enemies could not destroy the productive capacity of their nation-states.

Does that make sense? America, their factories were fine. Soviet Union, their factories were removed into Siberia, far away from the Germans. But Germans and the Japanese could be firebombed.

So look at this. From 1940 to 1945, the British and Americans firebombed Germany. This is Dresden. You can see the entire city of Dresden was destroyed by the firebombing. So in World War II, what they recognized is there’s no point in killing soldiers on the battlefield because they’ll just send in more soldiers with more weapons. So we need to destroy the civilian population. That’s how you win the war. And that’s how they defeated Germany.

Japan was much worse. Look at this. At least half of Japan was destroyed by the American firebombing of Japan. That’s why Japan lost the war. Otherwise, they would have kept on going. And these are huge cities. So Nagoya is a city the size of Los Angeles. 40% of it was destroyed. Tokyo is New York City. 40% of it was destroyed as well. Yokohama, 60% of it was destroyed. This is Tokyo. You can see the extent of the damage.

The nation-state idea was so powerful that in order to win a war, you need to destroy the civilian population. So as you can see, because of the rise of the nation-state, we had to kill more and more people in order to fight wars. So this is World War II, and at least 20 to 30 million people were killed. And depending on how you calculate, probably a lot more than that died.

Population Growth and the Nation-State

But what’s interesting is that even though World War II was a calamity, even though tens of millions died, look at the population growth. It never stopped. So for most of the history of human history, population growth was steady. But then, starting around the year 1600, it boomed.

Again, scientists will tell you this coincided with the rise of science and technology. But we’ve always had science and technology. What made this different was the rise of the nation-state and the recognition that to fight wars, you need more people who want to kill themselves for the nation. And to get them to do that, you have to treat them well as well. And so the nation-state wanted science and technology to grow the population. That’s why we had medicine and sanitation. These innovations happened because the nation-state willed these things to happen.

The Post-War Order and Consumer Capitalism

Now, as I mentioned, after World War II, and after all the travesty and destruction of World War II, the world got together and said, okay, America, you’re in charge now, and let’s build a world in which we don’t have to fight and kill each other anymore. And so America created this game, called capitalism, consumer capitalism, in which we live in today.

And this system is unique in human history, and for most of this history was extremely successful. It grew the population from about 2 billion to about 8 billion today. It made a lot of people more wealthy. Think of the tremendous wealth that China has generated in the past 30, 40 years because of its participation in consumer capitalism.

But unfortunately, we’ve now reached a point where the system is off balance. It’s unstable. It’s unsustainable. So now we’re going back to war. But unfortunately, because there are too many people, this means that when we go back to war, at least 50% of humanity will die off in World War III.

So this is a war in Ukraine, and already millions of people are dying in this war. But if you look at the war in Ukraine, it’s essentially a 19th century war. It’s almost like World War I.

Iran: The First 21st Century War

I know World War I happened in the 20th century, but it’s really a 19th century war where you are trying to kill as many soldiers as possible, okay? That’s what’s happening in Ukraine. What I will show you is that Iran will be the first 21st century war.

So America in round one tried to use shock and awe. Shock and awe is basically you decapitate the leadership. You destroy the military and you destroy production. That’s the idea of shock and awe. I come in, I kill your leadership, I kill your military, I kill your war factories. And you do it as soon as possible.

But this is not working against Iran because they prepared this war for 20 years so it’s decentralized. So you’ve killed the leaders but they don’t care because they’ve got new leaders coming to place. The military is hidden. They’re hidden in mountains and the factories are also hidden in mountains as well. So even though the Americans have really destroyed much of Iran’s war fighting capacity, Iran is still in this fight.

America’s Shifting Strategy: The Three Components

So what’s going to happen is that over the next few months, America is going to shift its strategy into a 21st century war strategy, which will have three components. The first component is economic triangulation. I will destroy your economy, your entire economy. Second is ethnic tension. I will try to create as much conflict as possible between the different peoples in Iran. And the third thing is destroy civilian infrastructure. Basically, I want to destroy people’s capacity to access water, electricity, and food. The basic necessities of life.

Why do I want to do that? Because if people cannot access these things, they get angry, right? Then if they get angry, I can channel this anger against the government because it’s easier for them to attack the government than it is to attack the U.S. military, which is the ones destroying all this infrastructure. So this is what a 21st century war strategy looks like. And this is what the Americans will deploy in Iran over the next few months.

Now why haven’t they done this before? Well because these were war crimes, okay? There are lots of treaties, the Geneva Convention, that prohibit you from fighting these wars. But as the Americans become much more desperate, as they continue to lose this war, they’ll be like, screw this, I’m going to win this war no matter what it takes, okay?

Targeting Civilian Infrastructure: Water, Transport, and Power

So let me show you how this war will be fought. So before, right now, they’re trying to target weapons, they’re trying to target military bases. That doesn’t get you anywhere, okay? You need to better use your weapon systems because they usually don’t have enough munitions to destroy the entire Iranian military, okay? So you have to be strategic now. And so you target things that have huge impact on the civilian population as well as the economy, right?

So the most basic thing is water, okay? Look guys, these are all dams and reservoirs around Iran, okay? And not to destroy all of them, but to strategically destroy some of them, this is going to create a lot of pressure on the civilian population. They’ll be very angry, they might protest against the government, okay?

Also, transportation networks, right? These are roads and railways. This is important because Tehran is a city of 10 million people. And they do not grow their own food. They require food to come from the countryside, from elsewhere. So if I attack the roads leading to Tehran, if I attack strategic hubs, then it’s very hard for food to move from place to place, okay? I don’t have to destroy the entire food supply, I can’t do that, I don’t have enough weapons. When I’m being strategic about it, I’m putting strain on Tehran’s capacity to feed its own population.

Power plants, okay? These are all power plants around Iran. And it’s really easy to destroy these power plants, right? So does that make sense? So the idea is, war, the rules of engagement require me to only attack soldiers and only attack weapons.

Economic Strangulation and 21st Century Warfare

But eventually, I’m going to run out of munitions if I keep on doing that. And it’s not going to destroy Iran’s capacity to fight, they won’t surrender. So now I need to be more strategic with how I use my munitions, how I use my bombs. And so I want to create as much damage as possible, and the best way to do that is by targeting key infrastructure, power plants, desalination plants, roads, railway networks, okay? I can’t destroy all of them, but I can create as much havoc as possible over time so that the civilian population gets very angry. So my best weapon in this war, and not only my planes and my aircraft carriers, my best weapon is the Iranian people themselves. And this is what a 21st century war looks like. It’s very slow, it’s very methodical, it’s pretty evil, okay?

All right, the other thing is economic strangulation, all right? So what am I trying to do here? So Iran, there are two ways for them to generate income to finance this war. The first is to sell oil, and this is Karg Island, which is their main depot, oil depot. And 90% of Iranian oil goes from Karg Island elsewhere, primarily to China. 90% of Iran’s oil exports goes to China, okay? So what the Americans have done is they’ve imposed a blockade, stopping oil exports. That’s one way you can stop Iran’s economy.

The other thing is that right now Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz, and they collect tolls on that, okay? So I basically need to destroy Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz. And the way I do that is I use ground forces, okay? So what I can do is seize Karg Island, seize the coastline, and force the Iranians to respond to my attacks, all right?

I can also position forces here and here. Why? Because these areas, okay, in the northwest of Iran are home to minorities, as well as the southeast. And when I put my soldiers here, this is going to encourage local population to rise up against the Iranian state. And now what’s going to happen is that Iran will now send forces to respond to all these ethnic insurgencies around Iran, okay? So before, Iran can just focus its resources on controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Through that, I’m going to extend the battlefield so that Iran is forced to deal with multiple threats. At the same time, I’m going to collapse their economy, all right? So this is what a 21st century war looks like. It’s slow. You focus on triangulation as opposed to a knockout punch.

Weather Warfare and Conspiracy Theories

All right. So one way to understand what’s happening is that the Americans have been doing this for a long time, but more steadily, all right? So in 2012, the Iranian president named Ahmadinejad, he accused the Americans of conducting weather warfare against Iran, mainly by creating droughts in Iran. And how do you do that? Well, it’s cloud seeding, right? It’s cloud seeding. So the idea of cloud seeding is that you shoot up a chemical called silver iodide into clouds, forcing it to rain, okay? When you do that, well, the clouds dissipate the rain elsewhere, and they don’t go to Iran, okay?

So in 2019, there’s a real fear that Iran would suffer from long-term drought. And regions like Dubai, which Iran is claiming to be the source of this weather warfare, they’ve turned droughts. Sorry, floods. So again, I don’t know how science works, and this is all rumors, but it does make sense where the Americans would use weather warfare against Iran, forcing rain to come down in Dubai to deny rain to the Iranians.

There’s a conspiracy theory that these war governments are conducting weather warfare using something called HAARP. Now, HAARP was originally designed in order to study the atmosphere, but some conspiracy theorists claim that HAARP can be used to create extreme weathers, including hurricanes, cyclones, flooding, droughts. I don’t know. I’m just pointing this out there.

Weather Warfare and the Control of Nations

What we do know is that in 1962, Lyndon Johnson, who became President of the United States, had a very famous quote at his speech, and he basically said, “He who controls the weather will control the world.” But future warfare is not about weapons, it’s about weather. So it’s not about how many weapons you make, it’s about how well you can control the weather. If you think about it, if you can create a drought in a country, that country will be destroyed. And they put a lot of resources into developing weather warfare.

We know that from 1967 to 1972, the Americans created something called Operation Popeye. So this is during the Vietnam War, and what the Americans did was they seeded the clouds so that the monsoon season would be a lot longer in Vietnam. Why do that? Because then it’s harder for the Vietnamese to resupply themselves. It makes it harder for them to fight, because the Vietnamese are living in tunnels, whereas the Americans are attacking from the air. So this is pretty well known. Operation Popeye is something that the Americans did do in Vietnam, and they do have weather manipulation technology. The question is — the debate is — how effective this technology is, and how powerful is it, and how scalable is it? That’s the debate.

21st Century Warfare: Strangulation, Scarcity, and Control

We’re already seeing elements of 21st century warfare being implemented around the world. Look at Cuba. There is now an oil embargo on Cuba, and so there are blackouts. Again, the intention is not to kill civilians, the intention is not to fight a war, the intention is to strangle a nation so that eventually the population wants to overthrow the government.

And already what we’re seeing is, these past few months, lots of accidents around the world that are destroying the world’s oil supply. But there’s one region in the world that doesn’t really care about the loss of refineries, the loss of oil supply, and that’s North America. Because North America is extremely wealthy. And so if the rest of the world is facing energy scarcity and food scarcity, it’s going to have to beg North America — the United States, Canada, Mexico — for resources. And this allows the Americans to better control the world. Again, this is what 21st century warfare looks like.

The Color Revolution Playbook

Another thing that I’ll point out is that the Americans are very good at overthrowing governments. There’s something called the Color Revolution Playbook. What the Americans do is they basically invite young people from different nations to come to America to learn about democracy and to learn how to organize protest movements, how to overthrow the government in order to promote democracy. The Americans will also finance NGOs in different countries in order to create young movements in the world. The Americans will also control social media in order to galvanize the population and foment unrest.

We saw this play out most recently last year in Nepal, when young people overthrew the government. Now, here’s the thing. In Nepal, most people don’t speak English. They don’t read English. So why are these young people holding up signs that say “Okay, boomer, time’s up”? That’s in English. Who’s it for? Also, “okay, boomer” is an American phrase, not a Nepalese phrase. In other words, they’re doing this not to have impact locally in Nepal. They’re doing this because someone’s paying them to do this. It’s being funded by Washington, and Washington’s like, “I’ll pay you this amount of money if you give me a slogan so I can show my boss that this is working.”

Also, here’s another sign: “We pay you flats enough.” Another English sign. Again, why are they doing this when the local population don’t even speak English? They’re doing it for Washington. They’re not doing it for their own country. They’re doing it for their masters in Washington. Does that make sense?

Color Revolutions and the American Playbook

And this is very common in the world today, where these protests are being orchestrated by Washington for Washington, as opposed to being organic. This was in 2010, 2012, you have these Arab Spring protests, happened all around the Middle East. Okay? These same-likes, these governments in the Middle East, and we know that social media, basically Twitter and Facebook, were instrumental in organizing people and promoting unrest in these places. All right? So these are all called color revolutions, or the color revolution playbook.

So not only does America have the capacity to strangle a nation’s economy and force the population to beg for mercy, Washington, the Americans, also have strategies on how to overthrow the government using the local population. Okay? Basically by controlling social media, by organizing young people, paying them to protest, and driving security services to not intervene. Okay? It’s a very successful playbook. They’ve tried many times, and it’s worked many times before. All right. So America can use this playbook against every country that opposes it.

Controlling the World’s Choke Points

Okay? So the main reason, again, is because America controls the world’s choke points, including Sri Lanka, Panama Canal, Gibraltar. These are the major choke points. Even though the Iranians control a certain amount, the Americans can have aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean and blockade the Iranians. Okay? This is important because a lot of people believe that what America really wants to do is destroy China. And unfortunately right now, a lot of the Chinese economy depends on exports, meaning trade. If you can’t export, your economy can suffer a great deal. When your economy suffers a great deal, you lose GDP, you have unemployment, and it’s possible that you have protests happening in China because of the collapse of the economy.

What 21st Century War Actually Looks Like

Okay? So that is what a 21st century war looks like. Okay? You don’t send troops. You don’t destroy. What you do is you strangle a people to death and force the people to rise up against the nation-state. Okay? And so the concluding message is this. Ultimately, to fight a 21st century warfare, it’s really about population management. What I mean by that is your enemy is trying to provoke your population into unrest to destroy you. So you have to respond by managing your population better.

Okay? And that can often mean culling your population. Culling your population just means killing them. Okay? Killing them could mean you deny them food. You create famine. Okay? It could mean you spread diseases. It could mean you actually do go and shoot them. Okay? And this forces you to use artificial intelligence, AI, to govern the state. The best way to control your population, the imagined population, is with an AI surveillance state. All right, so that’s the future we’re looking at, what a 21st century war looks like. And there’s no way around it. It is just the inability of history. We have too many people, we want to fight wars, and so a lot of people have to die in these wars. Does that make sense?

Q&A: How Can a Country Respond?

All right, any questions, guys? Any questions? Yeah, yeah, sorry, can you give the microphone to Alan?

AUDIENCE: I just have one small question about the 20th century war. Like, if a country has been attacked by this strategy, how can it respond? Like, how can Iran respond to American strategy right now?

PROFESSOR JIANG: Okay, that’s a great question. Okay, that’s a great question. Okay. Look, the reality is that when the Americans do this, okay, when they do three things, right? They destroy your economy, when they strangle, sorry, when they destroy your infrastructure, and when they divide and conquer, according to game theory, there’s only one response, okay? There’s only one proper response to this, and it’s the idea of eschatology. Okay, and the idea here is this. You need to create fanaticism among your people, right? Because your people are suffering. They don’t have enough to eat. They don’t have any hope in the future. So what you say to them is, “It’s all part of God’s plan. We’re meant to suffer, because when we suffer, God will make us invincible.”

Eschatology as a Counter to Modern Warfare

For our suffering, we will find the courage to commit martyrdom, okay? When we do martyrdom, we go to heaven. All right, the problem with this is that most people don’t want to do this, okay? They’re like, no, I don’t want to kill myself. I don’t want to die for God. I just want to live a normal life, okay?

But unfortunately, what history tells us is that you really don’t need that many people to commit to eschatology to win a war, maybe at most 10 to 20%. If 10 to 20% of your population commit to this eschatology, then you will survive, okay?

We have an example of this. We have an example of this is the Iran-Iraq War, which is what happened in the 1980s, okay? An eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, all right? And guys, it was a crazy war. These Iraqis were supported by both the Americans and the Soviet Union. They had tanks, they had helicopters, they had a professional army. The Iranians in the 1980s didn’t have an army. They didn’t have tanks, they didn’t have helicopters. So what they said to the Iranian people is, “The greatest glory is to be a martyr. The greatest glory is to die for your nation and for God.” So they all, these young people, went into the battle with just a rifle, okay?

Guys, imagine this, okay? You have this young guy, 16 years old. He’s running into battle against a tank and a helicopter, and he’s screaming at them, “I will kill you!” And most of them got blown up, but some of them got through, and they threw a grenade into the tank, okay?

Now you think about this, you’re like, oh my God, that’s crazy. But first of all, it galvanized the Iranian population into resisting, and eventually, they turned the tide of the war so that they were actually winning the war. And it was only because the Americans started to use chemical weapons against them that the Iranians were forced back, okay? But if left alone, the Iranians would have defeated the Iraqis, so think about that, how it galvanized the population into resistance.

The other thing is that it scared the hell out of the Iraqis, okay? You have a tank, right? The guy’s coming at you with a rifle and a grenade. He’s not afraid of you. His fearlessness makes you afraid, okay? So even though, yes, in 21st century warfare, okay, it seems invincible, but eschatology is the counter to this approach.

And that’s why we should see, over the next few years, a huge surge in eschatology and religious extremism throughout the world, because it’s really the only counter to this type of warfare. Does that make sense? Okay, great question. Any more questions, guys?

Okay, great, so there’s no class on Thursday and next Tuesday, but we’ll come back next Thursday and we’ll continue this, okay? All right, thank you.

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