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- [00:00]
Ashley Frawley
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- [00:53]
Matthew Schmitz
Welcome to the Compact Podcast. Today we'll discuss the conflict between the American Pope and the American President. Viktor Orban's loss in Hungary and the attempt on Sam Altman's life. I'm joined by Ashley Frawley and Jeff Schulenberger. And I'm Matthew Schmitz. Donald Trump took to Truth Social and denounced Pope Leo xiv. We have the queen's boy against the Chicago kid. It's quite the battle. I'm the one Catholic American on the podcast, so that gives me a leg up over Ashley, also a Catholic, but not a citizen of this blessed land. And I think Trump's attack on Leo is, you know, embarrassing. I think it bothers me more as an American than as a Catholic because it's not fitting. I mean, if somebody denounces the Pope, you know, the Pope can take it. It's not, it's not a problem. I don't think it's really helpful to engage in, you know, histrionics about how, you know, my, my faith group has to be respected in a certain way. But I think, you know, as an American, it's not, not how the leader of the country, not only our head of government, but our head of state ought to be acting. It's also classic Trump. So it's by no means unexpected. What I find a little more interesting and notable here is that this is the first crisis in which we're really seeing Leo's sense of how to respond under pressure in a very unanticipated situation. And I think Leo has misstepped, and I think he's misstepped in a very interesting and revealing way. I think we are seeing that he is very much an American Pope and that his response has been excessively American and insufficiently popish. What I mean by that is this Leo, since taking office, has given kind of casual interviews with media, just who are whatever lined up near where he's getting in or out of a car. And he's spoken in casual and off the cuff ways. And I think that's eminently American and in keeping with our democratic culture and our kind of casual nature. But it creates certain risks or pitfalls when one is not only a head of state, as the Pope is, but the leader of a massive religious body. So that's one way in which you see the Pope's Americanness. He's rather casual with the media and maybe not as formal as a kind of Pius IX would have been with his three tiered tiara and all the pomp and circumstance of the old papacy. But another way in which I think he's very American is this. He has urged Americans to contact their congressmen to oppose the Iran war. And I think that's a very righteous declaration for any, any American to make. To say, look, work through our political process to oppose an idea that you feel is wrong. That's exactly how our system is supposed to work. However, when that encouragement is given by a foreign head of state, it will. Maybe it's fitting, maybe it's not in an abstract sense. I think that'll often come down to your view of the underlying question, your view of the war with Iran. But I think it creates diplomatic risks that Leo maybe didn't fully think through because he, I believe, still thinks very much as an American when he's considering American politics. And it comes a little less readily to him to think as pope and to understand that he's speaking not just as an American citizen, which he is, to the rest of my knowledge. I don't believe there's been any kind of renunciation of that citizenship. He's not just speaking as an American citizen, he's speaking as a foreign head of state. And that's where I think he opens himself up to some of the evidently Trumpian mudslinging. And so he would do well while treasuring his American formation, which I think serves him well in many ways, and remain an ardent White Sox fan. He would do well to lean a little more into the office, into being Pope, and a little bit away from regarding American politics and regarding the American president, as you know, in, in American terms and the American terms that come very naturally to him. So that's my, that's my thought. Trump ought to be more, more respectful of the Pope. And clearly Trump cares a great deal about what the Pope says because it seems to be angering him. And Pope Leo, our American pope, needs to be more pope and less pope. American.
- [06:35]
Jeff Schulenberger
And strong. Tougher on crime as well. He needs to be tougher on crime.
- [06:40]
Matthew Schmitz
Yes, we weak on crime.
- [06:43]
Jeff Schulenberger
Vatican City is a hell Hole. You know, it's, it's just you get mugged as you, as you sort of, you know, navigate through those sort of secret labyrinths beneath there. You just get mugged all the time.
- [06:54]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah, and I, I, I do, I think some people are getting out over their skis. There are, I think, clear. The papacy has a long history of being slow to cotton to new political developments. It was very slow to show any sympathy for rising democratic and republican forms of government in Europe, really clung to monarchy and reaction, and then it really had to reverse itself on that and it slowly and kind of painfully caught up. So if the Vatican is very politically inept in various ways, I don't think that would be surprising in the least. I don't know that what we desperately need is an incredibly based pope who is, you know, always shouting hang em high. I think, you know, maybe, maybe some of the, you know, a tough, a tough on crime pope. That's maybe just a slightly absurd ask from, from President Trump.
- [08:09]
Ashley Frawley
You mentioned that he's acting more like an American. He's acting like a pastor, you know, like, sort of like giving a speech, not realizing the, you know, international context that he, in which he finds himself and the importance of what he says. So he wants to make these kinds of statements, you know, from his position as a kind of universalist authority. But it's quite clear that, you know, the effect is targeted at the United States and, and American policy. So this is, I agree, I think this is a mistake and a misreading of his role. But I find it kind of interesting as well this way that the, well, actually I should say Trump's weird, escalating response to like, post this picture of himself where, which he disavowed and said, well, I, I thought I was a doctor, you know, this, this picture of himself as Jesus. And you just have to wonder for somebody who's supposedly so media savvy, I mean, has been in the past, how he makes these kinds of weird mistakes. He reminds me of like a Facebook old person. You know, like you'd see that picture shared by your, a, your great aunt or something on Facebook and you'd be like, oh, Aunt Sally, that's weird. Don't do that. And it's just actually the President of the United States and it's just so incredibly surreal. And, and you know, like he's trolling and people are like, oh, you know, it's for the lulls kind of thing. But, you know, Catholics are swing voters, are they not? And you don't want to he's just recently won them to his side. And you don't want to alienate this constituency. And he seems to have done that in this very stupid kind of way. You know, that said, it's not like, you know, anyone's going to get shot up like Charlie Hebdo. So that's something to be said for, for Catholics. But I think, I don't know. That was also a stupid move on the part of, of Trump. But I don't know. It's kind of interesting, the clash between these two. You have like, the Vatican, which stands for this kind of, this universal, this, you know, you can make these kinds of statements rooted in principle and so on, but Trump stands for the particular where he actually has to make decisions, the concrete, like, rooted in borders and people. And this, you know, it's not something that is so easily reducible to big kinds of statements, which is kind of why Trump is in the White House. Like, history handed him a task that was greater than the words. You know, I'm not saying that it's like that what he's doing is correct, but he's, I don't know. History throws up these kinds of crazy figures who are willing to do the things that in ideologically are mad, that don't make any sense and that people are struggling to put words to that I think represent a kind of deeper need in our. I'm trying to say this in a value free way because I don't want people to misunderstand me. I'm not saying, like, Trump is handed like a divine thing from God and this is great. I'm trying to say, is that the way that our, our economic system is and the current impasse in which we find ourselves, the kind of stalemate and the, the stagnation calls for somebody who's willing to do crazy things and that that is what Trump has done and he's not really able to put words to it. And no one's really. Everyone's sort of struggling to understand why the heck is he doing this. And it's like, well, it's kind of like economic necessity to cross borders and, and cross lines that no one else would. And I just feel like that kind of, that, that this whole controversy throws that up, that kind of deep theoretical juncture. I'm overstating what is like a really silly spat between the Pope and Donald Trump. But it's interesting how it kind of throws up this rupture between the universal and the particular. The way that you can make all these statements about peace and so on. But at the end of the day, someone has to make decisions about the everyday workings of an economy, how borders work, the national interest, and that has to be embodied in particular people. It's not floating above humanity in general like the Pope kind of is. That makes sense. It's probably too esoteric, but that's kind of what I found interesting about this juncture, this juxtaposition of the two.
- [12:23]
Jeff Schulenberger
Wasn't there some reference in some sort of diplomatic encounter to the Avignon papacy and this kind of medieval history of conflicts between great powers and Rome and these kind of moments when the papacy was split because of these conflicts coming to a head? I think I saw that somewhere, but I don't remember the details.
- [12:51]
Matthew Schmitz
Yes, so there was a meeting early in the year between the Vatican Ambassador, so to speak, or nuncio to the United States and Elbridge Colby at the Department of Defense. And there was, according to reporting, a discussion of just war. And according to one report, there was a mention of the Avignon Papacy, which alarmed officials in the Vatican. The reporting is somewhat murky with different how it's coming from journalists who, you know, are real professionals and to be taken seriously. So I can't really speak to what went on there. I do know Bridge, you know, have for a number of years. He is a quite serious Catholic and comes from a kind of old American. You know, he's descended from American wasps who. Who turned Catholic and identified with the Church and its struggle for civil rights and social justice in the United States. And then his most famous ancestor became director of the CIA and would have been really fighting the same battle against Soviet communism that John Paul II was. So I think Bridge is a serious Catholic figure. And whatever happened there, I would tend to think that there may be some differences of opinion, but there's almost a kind of interesting kind of intergenerational story here, maybe of the Church's struggle for human dignity and a kind of American mission for freedom and how those align and don't align and how in the moment with various policy priorities and, you know, basically the attempt to make them work together. I mean, Pope Leo is now in Africa. He's visited Algeria. He's speaking in warm terms about the Algerian polity, and he's going to tour other countries in Africa. And I think one thing that bothers some American Catholics is a simian asymmetry where the Pope kind of speak truth to power to America. But then there are various Tim Pot dictators, or there's Iran, and there's really no similar criticism of Those things. And I think in part, that just reflects how large America looms in the public mind, certainly in the Latin American mind, where Pope Leo has spent much of his career in the European mind. You know, America's kind of seen as the. Seen as the bully. And with the Iran war specifically, so much. I think so much of this could have been kind of tamped down if the Trump administration had made really any attempt to make a case for the war in moral terms and not just in kind of. We had an opportunity, we decided to do this way. You know, you can say, look, Trump has laid out the case. The case is clear. You know, Iran poses a threat. You know, all that's true. But there. There was so little effort to build a public consensus or to convince people that this was being carefully thought through. And that's really going to turn off of institutionalists, such as you find in the Catholic Church, and people who think this has to be done carefully and with deliberation. It's not enough just to say after the fact, well, we did take care. We did deliberate. That case was not made, and that's on Trump and the people around him. And the response from Leo and from others is very predictable, given that they could have done a lot to defang this.
- [17:07]
Jeff Schulenberger
I just thought the Avignon reference was interesting in terms of some kind of sense of a neo medieval moment or something like that. Part of what we're seeing is the slow breakdown of a sort of broader imperial order and then the emergence of these different centers of power.
- [17:27]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah. What I'll say is, you know, the Church does tend to align. It does try to find sort of secular powers it can have a certain relation with. And you obviously, you see that in its massive diplomatic core. But I'd say, you know, broadly, the Church tends to align with kind of European sort of slash NGO complex of, you know, people who are. And that alignment makes a lot of sense. Right. The European Union was started to a great extent by Catholics, and it aspires to embody certain principles of peace and international law and order that are appealing to the Catholic Church. But that system is very much in crisis. It faces populous challenges. Its economy is stagnating and falling behind the United States. Mass immigration has really changed the nature of the European nation and unleashed huge debates about what these policies really are, what they mean. So it's a modeling crisis, and maybe the Church hasn't really fully come to terms with that, and nor is it ready to look to the American imperium as its main point of contact. And so, yeah, Zavignon mentioned possibly. I do think there is this question of if we see through kind of doge and whatnot, that the kind of USAID complexes or various sort of NGO sort of establish the NGO establishment is in crisis, where will the church find its kind of secular counterparts? I don't know that it's not going to be very comfortable finding them in. And populist figures who are very unpredictable and prone to challenge the church. But really in terms of, I mean, it's been a great week for the revival of medieval stuff. I mean, Trump's image where he's kind of healing a cancer patient or something, a guy who maybe looks vaguely like Ben Sasse, possibly. So we have our kind of baby Christian Norman Vincent Peale President, healing our very much born again Lutheran former Senator Ben Sasse. I mean, is this a revival of the medieval tradition of the royal touch, once a very serious tradition in England and France, the royal touch, you know, Christians believe Christ is king. As Trump was he showing that earthly kingship is properly an image of Christ? I don't think I've seen that take anywhere on the kind of more tradcath corners of the Internet yet, which is disappointing because you think the Internet would have that kind of fecundity, that kind of mimetic and intellectual fecundity, but I haven't really seen people saying it. Yeah, it's, it's been, it's been just an incredible, an incredible week.
- [20:56]
Jeff Schulenberger
People need to return to Kentorovich's the King's Two Bodies.
- [21:03]
Matthew Schmitz
After, after Trump, after Trump deleted his truth, I, I messaged some friends of mine and said I just had to junk my 3, 500 word essay on Kent Horowitz's two bodies. You know, Trump's two bodies, that there was no such essay. But yeah, that's, that's clearly what the theory cell wants to reach for.
- [21:24]
Jeff Schulenberger
Yeah. Yeah. Well, Kantorovich, a sort of member of the Gay Orga circle, which is sort of the, the, you know, Bronze Age pervert sort of world intellectual sphere of its, of its era.
- [21:41]
Matthew Schmitz
That's gay orga, not gay orgy, which I think is what you said, Jeff. Okay. So elsewhere, Viktor Orban has lost little. Surprising that the authoritarian who was rigging the election lost the election. I guess he's a very ineffective authoritarian or less effective than I was given to believe after reading many American publications over many, many years on him.
- [22:16]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, and he had a very weird way of contesting the election by calling to congratulate his opponent quite early. On in the reading of the results. But anyway, yeah, so it's such an interesting situation and I've been reading so many takes, I've been sort of drowning on takes last couple of days. But I think probably the best explanation for anybody, if you're only kind of vaguely familiar with Victor Orban and just kind of heard like, oh, this is a bad dude, he's like fascist, isn't he? I really recommend and the piece that we had in compact yesterday, Monday, Orban is Gone. His Style of Politics Isn't by Christopher Caldwell, which really puts, puts the Orban years in perspective and I think pushes back quite helpfully against a lot of the caricature of Orban. But yeah, just I was in Budapest a couple of times this year and end of last year and it was interesting how quickly the mood turned. As late as I must have been there about November when I went speaking to people at Danube Institute, MCC Brussels and MCC generally, they were quite sure that Fidej was going to win.
- [23:33]
Matthew Schmitz
All those institutions, Ashley, are kind of part of the Orban aligned sort of intellectual ecosystem, right?
- [23:41]
Ashley Frawley
That's right. Yeah. And you know, full disclosure, I'm a research fellow at MCC Brussels, though I don't know Orban personally and I have no connect. We have editorial control in, in Brussels, so don't have to follow any line or anything like that. But anyways, you know, talking to people just a couple weeks ago, the, the mood turned very quickly and it was, it was, they were still cautiously up, they were still optimistic, but I could tell that they knew that it was, that they were going to lose. And that turn was interesting because I think it was, I think that they realized very late in the day just how much of a threat the opposition was, how much of a threat Magyar was. Because for those who don't know, Magyar had actually been an associate of Orban very recently. I think it was only two years ago, if I'm not mistaken, that he kind of broke off and started his own party. And he was sort of underestimated as a political figure. He was seen as kind of unstable and a bit silly, not serious intellectually. And when he began to develop steam and it be the threat became real, it was too late. Fidej was always reacting, was constantly reacting. But the interesting thing about Magyar and the sort of incoming government is that they are, they're kind of, they're, they're continuing urbanism but with a like a new kind of face. Like it's, it's, it's not a defeat of Populism, they promise to be just as populous. They are conservative. On the other hand, though, they promise to play nice with Brussels. And that's. That's. That's quite serious, I think, because I think Hungary was probably the last country in Europe that was seriously presenting a challenge to policies made at the EU level. And the trajectory that the EU was going, for instance, in relation to Ukraine, in relation to lgbtiq, in relation to immigration, they had.
- [25:54]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah, well, I'm curious about that. So the. Certainly we're going to see a change on Ukraine. Right. And so there will be an alignment with the EU on that front. Do you. I mean, maybe no one knows, but do you expect a similar shift on immigration and lgbtq? I guess. And then kind of connected with that is this question, did you see Magyar as a kind of Hungarian, Georgia Maloney? Because my understanding is that Maloney is, I don't, at least rhetorically opposed to immigration. I don't know exactly what policy she's taking. She's also, at least rhetorically, some kind of defender of the traditional family, but she is pro Ukraine and aligned with the EU on that front. So is he going to be kind of like her or not? And what exactly do you. How do you think his politics will cash out on immigration and then those kind of cultural war questions?
- [26:57]
Ashley Frawley
Yeah, that's actually a really good analogy because Maloney is the type of. The kind of poster child for talking a big populist talk, and then out the other side of her mouse, she's on the line to Brussels saying, don't worry, you know, I'll toe the line. I'll do what needs to be done. So playing nice with Brussels at the same time as trying to play nice with the. The sort of tenets of, I guess, populism at home. And I think that's. That's. That might happen. It's hard to say because they didn't actually contest a lot of what Orban had stood for and so stayed as far away as they could from things like LGBTIQ issues. So it's difficult, but in the first couple of. It's difficult to say, but in the first couple of statements, it's become clearer that they want to play. They want to sort of play by the EU rulebook, and that might mean that they will be forced to liberate, not be forced. I mean, maybe they don't. Maybe. Maybe they're just pretending to be drag, kicking and screaming toward a more liberal immigration policy, for instance. Um, and. And perhaps on lgbtiq, and just perhaps more quietly go along with some of these agendas, as a lot of countries have done. You know, a lot of people in Greece, for instance, don't know that their country is one of the test cases for a lot of LGBTIQ policies and projects at the, that are funded at the EU level. They have no idea. So because that, you know, it's not a big talking point, so if they just kind of shy away from it, then people don't notice until many, many years later. And then it's really for the population to really contest a lot of these things, which is what we've seen in Spain and Portugal and Malta, interestingly, being like the, the kind of ground zero for this, even though they've got an extremely otherwise traditional population anyway. So it's difficult to say. I think probably they will be more friendly to the eu. Certainly the EU thought that, and you could kind of see that they were the, the discourse that was kind of being constructed around the election, where they had like, a Plan A and a Plan B. That's not to say that the EU were decisive in this. I'm just saying what they were doing. I do think that the Hungarian people voted fair and square and nothing to do with EU meddling and this sort of thing. But you could kind of see what they were trying to do where they were, like, setting up a narrative where, like, definitely pushing the Magyar government as the, as the favorite kind of contender, but kind of preparing a back, a kind of a backup method where they would say, like, oh, he's probably going to contest the election, where they could kind of cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election should Orban have won, and then use that to delegitimize the government moving forward. So it's, if it's any indication of what they might do, it's clear that the EU definitely wanted them in government and wanted Orban out.
- [29:51]
Jeff Schulenberger
So the thing that strikes me here is I'll make a perhaps surprising analogy. Maybe we could argue that Magyar is the Dowsey Rodriguez of Europe, in other words, represents a kind of regime continuity, while at the same time a greater compliance with the regional hegemon. In other words, in this case, Brussels rather than Washington. So, you know, this is. I'm, I'm making this analogy in part because I've, I've sort of been thinking about ever since it happened, the fact that Orban quickly announced his support of the operation of the US operation in Venezuela. And this is interesting in part because if you went back a couple years, there were a couple of diplomatic visits by Venezuelan and Hungarian representatives between two countries. Additionally, Orban's government seems to have blocked an EU resolution condemning Maduro's fraud in 2024. So it. This, there was a logic to this. And if you go back, you know, a number of decades to the, the Chavez regime, which I'd say you could characterize in similar terms to, To Orban's regime, it was, you know, it was. It was still a regime that enjoyed genuine democratic legitimacy, although within the US Quarters of power is generally denounced as a dictatorship. Back, you know, I'm talking about in the 22 thousands, early 2000s. So I've always thought, you know, the way these governments that, that are, you know, clearly at odds with and challenge the power of the regional hegemon and, and do enjoy a great deal of popular support and then use that support to, let's say, solidify their, their power and sure, I mean, tilt the scales in favor of their own regime continuity, tend to be denounced as dictatorships. And this happened in Venezuela. It happened with Hungary. So the thing that strikes me here is the fact that again, despite proclaiming himself and kind of defining the agenda of his regime and those of allied entities within the, within the European Union, such as Slovakia, as sovereignty. So this is the term that was widely used by defenders of Orban's regime, by Orban himself and by his allies in Europe, that they were sovereignties. They wanted to preserve sovereignty with it, you know, without leaving the eu. They wanted to preserve national sovereignty within it. Okay, fair enough. The thing that struck me was, okay, then they immediately go along with a clear violation of Venezuela's national sovereignty in, in. In a way that's quite interesting in part because there previously was at least a small degree of kind of allyship and coordination between these two countries, both of which were pariahs in their respective regions. And so that, that, that sort of struck me because I think at least, I mean, everything's become much more confused now. But at the beginning of this year, after the Venezuelan operation, the sort of MAGA line was, oh, this is amazing. It's this new world order in which, you know, regional hegemons get to decide everything. We don't get involved in all kinds of crazy stuff abroad. We don't do all this democracy promotion. We just make sure our neighborhood is, you know, is kept in order and is kept aligned with us. And of course, you know, this is actually a pretty bad vision if you're hungry, because if you're, if you're trying to reassert sovereignty over and against your regional hegemons. Meanwhile, of course, you know, Trump is also saying, well, you know, Germany and, and France should have bigger armies, should contribute more to NATO, should pay, you know, spend more of their budgets on defense. So there's, he's saying these European, these large European countries should be more powerful militarily. You know, this, this doesn't necessarily seem like a very good deal if you're a country of 10 million, which is never going to be a, be a major powerhouse in, in European politics. As, as I understand it, the Hungarian approach has been to attempt to maintain good relations with Brussels, maintain good relations with Washington and also, you know, with Moscow and Beijing. Right. And to, you know, attempt to create a kind of, you know, somewhat neutral stance in relation to these various powers that are increasingly in conflict. It seems like that's becoming a much more delicate situation and it is probably not surprising that we're now seeing a government come into power in Hungary which is going to hue to the demands of the regional hegemon, just because I think they don't. I mean, there's no particular strong American interest in, other than, you know, Trump sort of liking having Alex allies there. There isn't really a hugely important long term interest in Hungary and there is from the perspective of, of Brussels and, you know, Berlin and Paris. So in other words, it just, you know, according to the logic of the world as it's currently unfolding, it seems to me in its, in its final months, the Orban regime was basically saying, we just want to be part of this global, this new global American empire with Trump characteristics. We want the protection of these kind of ideologically aligned people in Washington. I don't think it makes sense. I mean, it certainly doesn't make sense in the terms that the MAGA ideologues themselves are otherwise claiming the world should be ordered according to. So it seems to me it was ultimately a kind of unsustainable position given the way things are shaking out more broadly.
- [36:13]
Matthew Schmitz
Yeah, I mean, Orban's achievement, I think can be put in perspective by realizing that Hungary's GDP is smaller than Alabama's. I mean, it's, it's not the strongest hand to play. Jeff, you are the House expert on all things tech. You're writing a book on the tech rights for, for Henry Holt eagerly anticip in this House. And you've been following the growing anti a sentiment in American life. What's the significance of the recent attack on Sam Altman? And can you kind of explain his significance?
- [37:02]
Jeff Schulenberger
Sure. So Sam Altman is at this point, still probably the most prominent figure in the industry. And, you know, he really, he brings together a lot of important kind of connections and relationships within Silicon Valley. And he also embodies this combination of a kind of philosopher and a sort of philosopher of artificial intelligence and an entrepreneur, which, you know, I think kind of embodies the, the spirit of Silicon Valley going back for decades, where you had this idea that the project that these companies were undertaking, whether it was Google kind of at its heyday, in its heyday in the 2000s, early 2010s, or Facebook or any of these companies, there was a sense that what was really at stake here was a new philosophy that was being introduced into the world through these technological tools. And so, you know, Sam Altman, I think, is the figure who most fully embodies the most recent phase of this. And obviously, you know, it's significant that he was early on a kind of ally and collaborator of Elon Musk, who shared many of Musk's at least earlier phase of concerns about, you know, sort of ensuring the future of humanity. And this concern about existential risk, which interestingly, is often framed as a reason to be wary of AI, but is also something that's deeply informed the actions of the people building AI, largely on the grounds that they see this as an inevitable set of developments that was set in motion by the simple fact of Moore's Law, basically ensuring this kind of constant increase of computational power, which would necessarily, in their view, lead to the explosion of machine intelligence at some point in the future. And so that's where a figure like Sam Altman, who imagines himself, you know, again, both as a, as an entrepreneur, but more fundamentally as a kind of philosopher and a kind of humanitarian figure who's attempting to use his superior wisdom to usher in this era of machine intelligence, which again, is regarded as simply inevitable based on the. Develop the intrinsic properties of the technology itself and how it will develop. So Altman, you know, if. I suppose if you're an assassin who has been radicalized against this entire industry and sees it as, as a, as a threat to the future of humanity, which again, what, what, what part of what's strange here is the figures like Altman themselves will talk this way. Figures like, in fact, even in response to this assassination attempt, he said something to this effect. He said that he was, I believe, empathetic to, or, sorry, I'm going to quote exactly what he said in response to, again, someone tossing a Molotov cocktail at his house. I empathize with anti technology sentiments. And clearly technology isn't always good for everyone. While we have that debate, we should de, escalate the rhetoric and tactics. So in other words, you know, he's, he's really even acknowledging here that, that he's not entirely distant from the worldview of the assassin. And this is part of what's so strange about this industry, that it's, it's largely helmed by people who actually share this basic concern with existential risk and simply believe that they should be the ones in charge, they should be the ones who are entrusted to oversee this inevitable phase of, of technological and human evolution. So, you know, a few precedents come to mind and, and again, it seems that there was this one Molotov cocktail attack followed by another attempted attack a couple days late or a day or two later. So presumably some kind of copycat phenomenon. So obviously one precedent that comes to mind here is the Unabomber who carried out a series of bomb, you know, mail bomb attacks on various computer scientists and figures involved in various advanced technological projects. And you know, the Unabomber was also a philosopher of technology who had this extremely, extremely pessimistic view of its effect on humanity. And again, I think what's, what's striking here is that this critique is not something that the, the people within the, at the heights of the AI industry would find necessarily unfamiliar or, or shocking. In fact, many of them would be sympathetic even to aspects of a sort of Unabomber type critique. So that's, so that's kind of fascinating as a precedent. And then the others are, you know, obviously this more recent Luigi Mangione attack on the, or assassination of the CEO of United Healthcare and Mangioni himself seems to have been somebody who dabbled in some of these effective altruist and you know, sort of Reddit rationalist communities. And so there is something kind of fascinating about that, that this, this area is actually what's radicalizing people. You know, we heard for many years about the threats posed by various kinds of far right, far right incel type ideologies, misogyny and so on, which obviously did generate some acts of violence. But it's interesting to see this, you know, this kind of strange realm of online rationalism generating more recent acts of violence, including also the strange phenomenon of the Zizians, this cult that emerged out of the Bay Area rationalist tech world scene and went on to commit a number of murders in various parts of the country. So there is something very strange about this, but it's also not surprising again, because the entire worldview held both by the people deep within this technological world and, you know, many of these people who participate in these communities online, who may in many ways sort of dabble with and potentially get involved with the technology itself, but also might come to it as deeply threatening. You know, these are the people who are at least one faction of people who are being radicalized into violence today. And again, I would say it's not entirely surprising because these are sort of apocalyptic worldviews. And I do think, you know, an. Another interesting point here is that the Silicon Valley view, and perhaps something that makes it vulnerable in particular to tactics like this, is that the Silicon Valley view, again, is that the way you deal with these kind of dangers is to get the smart, the geniuses, the smart people in charge, give them the power, let them do stuff. And so the Silicon Valley view itself is sort of that there's only a relatively small number of people in the world who have these exceptional intellectual gifts. And so if you were to become radicalized in a Unabomber sort of way, and you accepted this premise, it would actually make quite a bit of sense. More so than for a sort of. If we go back to the anarchist Alexander Berkman, famously assassinating Henry Clay Frick at the height of the Gilded Age, a notable kind of CEO assassin, major sort of CEO assassination in American history, you know, in some sense that that sort of theoretical perspective is maybe a little less coherent. Because if you, you know, if you want some kind of vast workers revolution, okay, maybe this assassination will trigger it. But you wouldn't necessarily think that Henry Clay Frick has any particular properties that by getting rid of him you would make the world a better place and more hospitable to socialism because some new, some new CEO would come and replace him. If you accept the Silicon Valley worldview, it actually does make sense. If you just killed all these people, if there are just this small breed of unique geniuses, I guess if you just assassinated all of them, then maybe you could actually free the world of this dangerous AI. Now, of course, the counterpoint that Altman and people like him would say is, well, if you get rid of him, then it's just going to be dumber and more malevolent people in charge of this technology, so everything will actually be worse. But in any case, I think it is a fascinating phenomenon and it does not, you know, it does not seem surprising, given the. The rhetoric that is deep within this industry as well as in all of the discourse about it, that it is radicalizing people and you know, infusing this kind of apocalyptic foreboding in, in people leading them to attempt acts like this.
- [46:15]
Ashley Frawley
It's a bit like the, the way that they talk about his reaction to this, I guess, assassination attempt, this act of violence against him, attempt to kill him, I guess. Yeah. However ineffective. That's what I'm trying to get at here. His response reminds me of the way that he talks about the end of the world where they're like, they're all like kind of expecting it and in a way he's kind of expect himself to be killed at some point. It's, it's exactly as you say. He knows the underlying thought process and so he must be certain that oh yeah, someone's going to try to do this for sure. And I wonder if he feels an odd sense of relief like ah, there it was, there was the attempt perhaps, hopefully there won't be another one. So that's, that's, it's quite interesting but, but also just so awful that this is the kind of ideology that is driving some of the arguably, I mean they have to find their proper place. You know, everybody, all the, all the hype runs quite far ahead of the actual usage. And the same thing, we've talked about this before with like the dot com boom and bubble and bust where indeed the Internet was extraordinary, extraordinarily revolutionizing but we just didn't know how yet. So we're there right now. We have some kind of important technology on our hands but its place in society hasn't quite been decided. But these people are basically, they have decided its place, that it will solve the problem of humanity. And they know that. They know that this or they think that because our economy as it's currently structured is simply the air we breathe. It's the way things are and there's no alternative. Their ability to end that or their ability to seriously undermine the core tenets of the economic system is like the end of the world for them. And, and it's like a self fulfilling prophecy, you know, then, then it, then it darn well might be and he darn well might get taken out, but it's not, this is not the necessary, only inevitable consequence of technology or great minds or whatever it might be.
- [48:26]
Matthew Schmitz
Thanks to Ashley, thanks to Jeff and thank you listeners. For more go to compactmag.com subscribe Sam.