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Zero Hour with James Poulos
Ep 85 | Trump's Plan to Clean Up the Middle East Mess Biden & Obama Left | Jacob Siegel
00:59:51
Jacob Siegel, senior writer at Tablet magazine, joins James Poulos to break down Israel’s shocking technological advantage in information warfare.
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- [00:00]
James Polis
Trump, Elon, Israel. How has technology upended the geopolitical table in 2024? Jacob Siegel is here to talk about it. I'm James Polis. Welcome to Zero. It's a very warm welcome to Jacob Siegel onto the show today. He's a senior writer at Tablet magazine and a host of the Manifesto podcast. Jacob, it's great to have you with us.
- [00:52]
Jacob Siegel
Glad to be here.
- [00:53]
James Polis
All right, so events are moving fast as of right now. The chessboard seems to be flipping a little bit. We've got a lot going on, and I want to jump into it. You're coming to us from Israel right now. What is the view from on the ground there? The Assad regime is toast. Assad is maybe going to have to go back to ophthalmology over there in Moscow. It's obviously a fluid situation, but just how big of an earthquake do you think all this is?
- [01:23]
Jacob Siegel
I think it's a massive earthquake, and I think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rightfully is taking some credit for setting off the earthquake. The Assad regime was entirely reliant on the backing of Iran, on the backing of Russia, and also on Hezbollah, which was really the only working deterrent force that Iran had. So Israel running through Hezbollah, which was supposed to be the fiercest army, the Israeli army in the Middle east, by reputation, running through it effectively in the course of several months and not only decapitating the leadership, but taking out its missile supplies, opening up a large security zone in southern Lebanon against really the predictions of most all of the Western pundits and even many of the Middle Eastern prognosticators. Knocking out Hezbollah in that way created an opening that Turkey then capitalized on, pushing its own kind of proxy forces deeper into Syria. And so the view from Israel is that it's good not to be encircled by Iranian proxies who are trying to destroy the country, but that the primary directive is to just maintain Israel's security. So Netanyahu's statement is, hey, there's an opportunity for the Syrian people. Now, make of that whatever you can. We're going to be here on Mount Hermon, establishing a security perimeter. What happens in Syria is the business of the Syrian people. So not so far off from what Trump said in his statement where he says, Assad is getting knocked out. This is a long time coming. Trump also, I think, significantly notes that this is a function of Russian preoccupation in Ukraine and Russian weakness, which I think is a. A smart negotiating strategy from Trump. Actually. He sees this as being connected to the ability to Negotiate a settlement to the war in Ukraine. But at the end of that statement Trump put out, he says, but the US is staying far away from this. It's not our fight. In all caps, of course.
- [03:53]
James Polis
Of course.
- [03:54]
Jacob Siegel
And in a much more muted, less Trumpian way, what Netanyahu is saying is, you know, sort of related to that. Israel can't stay quite so far away. Obviously we share a border. But he is saying very pointedly how the Syrian government reforms itself. What happens in Syria from here out is not Israel's business. Security, the security of his Israeli citizens is Israel's business.
- [04:27]
James Polis
So lots of layers here. Let's peel them away one at a time. Mount Hermon out there, I think it's, it's about nine feet, maybe a little bit more. Forty kilometers. I'm switching from imperial to magic here. I'm sorry, 40 kilometers from Damascus. That's probably well within reach of Israeli artillery. So a strategic point, high ground with a nice commanding view. One of my favorite, I guess you just call him a philosopher. Paul Virilio, although he's so much more than that, had a slim book that came out quite a while ago at this point, I guess, called War and Cinema, the Logistics of Perception. And what's really struck me about how things with Hezbollah went down is really just how Israel used its technological advantage specifically to dominate that kind of logistics of perception, where they're just their eyes on where the opportunities were to really make an outsized impact on Hezbollah without just kind of rolling tanks in there, slogging their way up to the litany, any of that kind of stuff, limited incursions, but really just using technology to, you know, blow up a relative handful of pagers, blow up a relative handful of arms caches and missile storage, and really just knock out Hezbollah's command and control capabilities. You know, this is like a really, even in the context of the Mideast, even in the context of technology, kind of a new way of waging war against a more or less non state opponent. Do you think that we're going to see more of this as Israel maybe turns, turns its view down to Yemen?
- [06:07]
Jacob Siegel
Look, the pager operation and subsequent targeted operations against Hezbollah were something like a decade in the making, right? And it's hard to recreate that level of operational ingenuity, surprise success, et cetera. And I have to say I haven't read the specific virilio book you mentioned, but I have read Vrilio on information and on information warfare and Hezbollah, let's remember the notion of hybrid warfare, which became so important after 2014 as a kind of catch all categorization that referred to these mixed conventional special operations social media campaigns that Russia in particular was running and in Ukraine and in Crimea. And this fascination with hybrid warfare, which became the cause of the NATO defense establishment after 2014 and then turned around and became almost more important in the domestic political context because Brexit and Trump were then framed as essentially hybrid warfare operations and Trump supporters were cast as being the unwitting puppets of Russian influence. All of that goes back to the Second Lebanon War in 2006. In terms of where the concept originates. It's the Second Lebanon War that really popularizes the idea that information warfare and influence operations and targeted messaging campaigns combined with conventional military operations are the wave of the future. And there's some truth to that, but it also can get wildly overblown by, let's say, informational enthusiasts. So I think what you saw in Lebanon more recently, I mean, was a combination of very targeted, highly technological clandestine operations to decapitate the command and control structure of the organization that were only so effective in operational and strategic terms because there was a conventional military component that came after them. So if you had just done this high profile Beeper operation, you could have captured the world's attention in exactly the same way as we saw happen. But if you didn't follow up with armored maneuver elements in southern Lebanon to clear out the security zone, that of course the UN forces by their own mandate were supposed to be keeping Hezbollah out of that area south of the Latani river, but the UN instead was essentially co located with Hezbollah forces. If you hadn't had that follow on Israeli maneuver operation, if you hadn't had the follow on airstrikes taking out Hezbollah missile silos, I think that the Beeper operation would have made for some great headlines. Some books would have been written about it, but what it would have actually accomplished would have been dramatically less significant. So the key determinant in what Israel does in the future, and for that matter, even what other armies in the region do in the future, is still relies on will. It still relies on who's willing to fight and to what end.
- [09:52]
James Polis
Sure. And really remarkable to see just how little will was left in the tank of the Assad regime. I mean, I don't think there was any question going in that Syria was weak. They've been through hell anyway you slice it, country really divided up into zones of influence. Very incompatible zones of influence. And so from that perspective, not shocking. I don't think anyone's really astounded that Assad just kind of curled up and went away when the going got rough again for him. But the speed, I think it was the speed with which the regime fell right up there with Afghanistan in terms of how quickly that regime, which was recognized as weak, but, you know, even just, I think days before it fell, there were still highly, you know, credible or at least respected observers in the space saying, you know, he's going to stick around. He'd proven the ability to stick around in the past, but he really did fold very fast. So Hezbollah, you know, weaker than expected, Syria, weaker than expected. You know, follow the dominoes. That brings us to Iran. Are the mullahs in a weaker position than they're being being given credit for by conventional wisdom right now?
- [11:03]
Jacob Siegel
Yeah, that's an understatement. They're thoroughly exposed right now. Their deterrence was Hezbollah. Right. The Iranian conventional military forces are really not much to speak of. They had two things going for them. They had Qasem Soleimani that had the Quds Force, which is their kind of expeditionary force, which ruled over or was the sort of coordinating headquarters of the various Shia militia groups and paramilitary groups that were connected by what had been this land bridge stretching all the way from Iran to Lebanon, the Mediterranean coast. And so there are the militia groups in Iraq. There were the various groups inside of Syria, in addition to the Assad regime itself, which was an Iranian client. And then, of course, there's Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, which in more recent years had been folded into the Iranian orbit. But the deterrent that Iran had, the thing Iran had to threaten Israel and to threaten other regional actors was Hezbollah. That was the threat. We've got this hardened military force that runs Lebanon that's now had years honing its fighting tactics inside of Syria in this brutal civil war. And, oh, by the way, you know, they have 100,000 missiles stockpiled in Lebanon, so you can come after us, but if you come after us inside of Iran, I mean, if you come after Iran directly, we'll unleash Hezbollah on you. When you take Hezbollah away, Iran has very little deterrence left. It's exposed as a kind of paper tiger. And look, you know, you mentioned Afghanistan. So I have to say, because I served in Afghanistan with the US army in 2012, it was not a surprise to me that the Taliban took over as quickly as it did. The first article I wrote for the Daily Beast when I got back From Afghanistan in 2013 was an article saying, the Afghan national security Forces, in which we have invested all of our future hopes for Afghanistan is a paper army. It doesn't really exist. Its members either don't show up, don't fight, or are cutting deals with the Taliban. And in the areas where that's not true, they have their own reasons for fighting. They don't really need the US behind them at all. But insofar as there was a thing we were calling the Afghan National Security Forces, insofar as we were pretending that there was some organization that stretched all the way from the Pakistan border in the east of Afghanistan to the Iranian border in the west, and that this was a real thing, that was pure delusion. And I could see that in 2013. And I wrote a number of pieces trying to make that point. And I said this many times, but I didn't know Syria, you don't always extend. You know, the experts are wrong about one thing, but you persist in giving them credit in other places. Right. So I was shocked by how fast Assad fell this time. But it seems that there's a real pattern here of wildly inaccurate analysis about the strength of these movements.
- [14:39]
James Polis
So you look at this kind of instability, obviously Afghanistan broadly seen as an embarrassment for the U.S. syria, a bit of an embarrassment for the Russians. I personally, I think it is a little overplayed. It might make for a good negotiating technique. But Putin took advantage of an opportunity in Syria. That opportunity starts to close and he pulls out, or, you know, it seems like as of now, Russians are going to be allowed to stick around on the coast there of Syria. Either way, you know, whether you're weighing, you know, Afghanistan, Syria, and we're talking about Iran, you got to take another look at Iraq here. I'm bracing for calls to maybe get involved in Iraq again. I don't think Americans are inclined to support that. I would be surprised if Trump himself was inclined to support that. But with the stakes rising, you know, Iraq might be looking to Iran like their last opportunity to kind of push that security envelope out away from their own borders.
- [15:37]
Jacob Siegel
Yeah, I think that might happen, you're right. But the answer to that is for the US to withdraw funding from the Iranian backed Iraqi government and to get US Troops out of these places where they just serve as targets for these Iranian backed forces. All of this is in some way directly a consequence of really strategically catastrophic decisions made by the leadership in Washington, starting with Obama deciding that Iran would be America's new strategic partner in the Middle east, which Meant that in 2013, Obama decided to invite Russia into Syria in the first place. That was Obama policy I mean, this is one of the bizarre things about the sort of current infatuation with the Assad regime on parts of the right is that this is the legacy of the Obama administration. The protection of the Assad regime was a priority for the Obama administration. And the ceding of Iraq to Iran was a deliberate policy of the U.S. as well. We pumped money into the popular militia forces, popular mobilization forces in Iraq, Iraq, which were Shia militias that we knew to be loyal to Iran. And we did that because we thought Iran could act as the regional stabilizer and could sort of protect the investments we had made in Iraq, despite the fact that these groups that we were now turning to, to shore up our investment were the same groups that were killing American soldiers in Iraq. I mean, it was just a historically misguided, delusional set of policies that attempted to erect a new kind of Iranian hegemony in the Middle east that would be now a partner to America. This was the Obama vision for the Middle east executed through people like Robert Malley. That was then continued under the Biden administration. So that's where Iraq stands now. Iraq is now functionally an extension of Iranian power that under both Obama and Biden, has been acting under the protection of the US as an extension of Iranian power and with hundreds of millions of dollars in US Funding going into what is supposed to be an independent national government. But that's a joke. Everyone knows that it's a client state of Iran. So cutting that off would be a good place to start.
- [18:23]
James Polis
Looking back at the origins of that pivot to Iran and the way that it was continued for so many years, how much do you think what was going on, motivating that ultimately had to do not just with the security situation in Iraq, but with frustrations with the Saudis and the Israelis?
- [18:42]
Jacob Siegel
A lot. I mean, I think that there was a view in the Obama administration specifically that the Saudis and the Israelis were dragging the US into wars in the Middle east and that the way for the US to extricate itself from those wars was to downgrade or throw off the Saudi and Israeli alliance, which had been the conventional alliance structure for the US in the Middle east, and to elevate Iran to use Obama's language as a regional counterweight, what Obama said was that there will be a new concert of powers in the Middle east and they'll be countervailing powers so they'll keep themselves in check. And yeah, hey, maybe Israel won't like it if we raise up this regime that holds, like, Holocaust celebration conferences every year. And Says that it's going to annihilate all the Jews the first chance it gets. But the Israelis don't have to love it. They'll see that there will be a peace dividend. The region will become more stable as a result of us lifting up Iran, which we'll also be able to moderate because by elevating the Iranian position in the region, we'll have more influence over them. So that was the sort of, on the surface, the logic. But if you peel that back a bit, what you're actually seeing is really the consequences of a chain of events that start with the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the strategic blunders that start under the Bush administration. So the Bush administration, rather than simply decapitating Saddam Hussein, let's say, which was an option, decides, no, it's going to launch this massive, grandiose nation building project to turn Iraq into a stable democracy. We all know how that turned out. But in the course of doing that, the US then had to find exit strategies to end the violence in Iraq in a way that would both allow America to claim some successes there and also allow America to get out of the region eventually. And it was this desire to look around and say, hey, who is the force capable of pacifying Iraq? Who actually can help us to pacify Iraq? So one answer to that was, we'll give money to the Sunni tribes. This was the sort of strategy of the surge. We'll empower the Sunni tribes in Iraq. There'll be a counterweight to the new Shia base of power that's ruling Iraq. That was the surge strategy putatively. But the other strategy that the Obama people picked up was the real power that can pacify Iraq is Iran. Right? Because Iran is the one who's funding the Shia insurgency in Iraq. Iraq's a majority Shia country. This is in Iran's backdoor anyway. Therefore, it makes sense for us to partner with Iran because Iran is the only power that can really get a handle on Iraq in a way that will allow us to get out and not see the place explode into wanton bloodshed that will humiliate us and potentially invite us back in. The problem with that, this sort of core delusion at the heart of that idea, actually, it's twofold. One, the Iranians had no desire to do that. It's not like a cute marketing position that their slogan is Death to America, right? So the Washington, D.C. technocratic think tank, hey, we can just incentivize these people to do anything we want with the proper behavioral Nudges. We'll get Tehran to behave the way that we want them to behave, because, after all, aren't they rational actors just like us? You know, this sort of technocratic thinking led to the idea that Iran could be a stable partner for US Interests. The other problem was Iran is actually much weaker than the Obama people believed, which is partly, you know, partly explains why they invested so much effort in propping Iran up. So the idea that Iran could be this regional stabilizer rested on the premise that it was powerful enough to offset both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and that simply wasn't the case.
- [23:15]
James Polis
So if I'm Iran and I'm feeling nervous, which, you know, I think anyone in those shoes would right now, it would be for the following specific reason. You look at Israel, you look at the Saudis right now, Israel obviously has at this point achieved, you know, really a breakout advantage in technology. Not just in the region, but they're one of the probably top five tech powers in the world right now. The Saudis are also, you know, getting involved. They. They want to play in venture capital. They want to position themselves as sort of like the, you know, if you want to go to Mars, come here first and figure out how to live in the desert. They're interested in participating in that. They want to link up with the west on tech. Iran's in a different position now. The Russians, you know, real, real good on tech, Chinese, too, but they really haven't shown, I don't think, a willingness to kind of share that wealth with the Iranians. And that leaves them kind of the odd man out in the region. Yeah, I think they probably already have the nuke. If not, they're really close. You know, maybe a turnkey kind of thing. But right now, what we're learning, I think, is that nukes aren't enough. They might be an okay insurance policy about getting totally conquered or wiped off the face of the earth, but they're just not enough to keep you in a position of strength when digital technology is really on top. Do you think that that's roughly a sound analysis? And do you think that Russia and China, if push comes to shove, are really ultimately willing to just kind of let the Iranians figure their own situation out, rather than flowing that kind of technological advantage into them that would really make a difference?
- [24:50]
Jacob Siegel
That's an interesting way of looking at it. I mean, I haven't thought about it in exactly those terms, in part because I don't think that's how Iran's partners see it, nor do I think Iran from my understanding, is particularly interested in acquiring that kind of technological infrastructure, an advantage. Iran's a more abundant society. The currency is a disaster. It has an aging population. Its fertility rate has gone continuously down. The communist theocratic Iran has been dying a slow death for a long time. The best thing that happened to Iran in recent decades was the US Invasion of Iraq. If the US had not invaded and occupied Iraq for a decade, the notion of Iran being a regional power would have seemed absurd to people. It was only because the US Invaded Iraq, provided Iran with this leverage, gave Iran this sort of kingmaker position where it could restore stability to the region, that this idea took hold of Iran as a real regional power. In that way, what Iran provides to Russia is a port in Syria, obviously, gas pipelines, access to the Middle East. What it provides to China is billions in crude oil. I mean, it's a major exporter to China. But the idea of Iran is a partner who Russia and China would be invested in building out in the way you're describing. I'm not sure they see it that way. Either Iran can play the role that it's capable of playing or it can't and it ceases to be valuable. Right. Like, it's not. It's not as if you could just drop that digital infrastructure into Tehran and the communist regime is going to employ it successfully. That's not who they are. What they can do is export terror throughout the region and pump out crude oil. I mean, they could do that now because sanctions were lifted, which is why, you know, I think they essentially doubled their. Their revenue from 200 billion to 400 billion once Biden lifted the Trump sanctions.
- [27:28]
James Polis
All right, so, you know, this all then points in the direction of some really powerful temptations for the likes of Netanyahu and Trump to really take some kind of incredibly big swing in the Middle east and fundamentally alter the geopolitics of the region. Do you think that's going to happen?
- [27:45]
Jacob Siegel
I think that's already happened. I think the essential condition of the Middle east for the past decade has been an expanding Iranian empire protected by strategic partnership with the US that began under the Obama administration, was continued under the Biden administration, was very profoundly discontinued by Trump, who instituted this maximum pressure campaign, who killed Soleimani. And look, there's an argument to be made that the real starting point to the downfall of Assad is Trump killing Soleimani. Because Soleimani was the one who had orchestrated the movement of Iranian proxy forces throughout the region. He was the one who sort of had the Foresight and the touch to know when do I need to shore up Assad with Khattab al Hezbollah forces from Iraq? When do I need to send more advisors and air controllers or whatever. And so with him gone, maybe Iran has never fully recovered. But in any event, the region is totally different now because that essential condition, which was the, the essential underlying condition of everything that has happened over the last decade, I would argue, was the American partnership with Iran. I know this runs counter to the image a lot of people have of American policy in the Middle east and the American alliance with Israel and America's role in Syria and all of that, but that all of those things, the alliance with Israel, the limited and incoherent engagement in Syria, ran a distant second to the overwhelming strategic priority, which was not only partnership with Iran, meaning the Iranian state, but with what Obama referred to as Iran's equities. So Hezbollah, for example, right. The US Spent a billion dollars. It's actually not done. Is spending a billion dollars to build the second largest embassy in the world in Beirut? Why would the US Be building the second largest embassy in the world in Lebanon? Is Lebanon some kind of key protector of US interests? How does this make any sense? Why would be spending all this money? Because it's an investment. Hopefully we can speak in the past tense. It was an investment in this partnership with Iran and with Iran's equity. Hezbollah in Lebanon, that was the region that doesn't exist anymore. Hezbollah has been exposed, Assad is out. Tehran is looking very vulnerable. Who knows what's gonna happen in the next month before Trump takes office. Trump has obviously been signaling to Israel that they should press for maximal wins. He's saying, get your victory. Now, I don't think he's talking only about Hamas and Gaza. You know, Trump wants to get American hostages, the ones who are still alive, back. He wants to get the remains of the ones who are no longer alive so they can get a proper burial. He wants an American ally, Israel, to look strong, an enemy of the United States, Hamas to look weak. But he also wants Israel to hit Iran hard. And I don't know exactly what that means from the high level Israeli strategic perspective, but I'm sure it involves the nuclear facilities, which are really the last line of defense for Tehran now that Hezbollah is gone. In a way, it actually incentivizes Iran more towards the use of nuclear weapons because they no longer have that Hezbollah deterrence. So it's all the more reason to go after them now when the strategic opportunity presents itself.
- [31:50]
James Polis
Right. So there's this question about where's the equilibrium point? You know, you say that there's already been sweeping geopolitical change that can point in two directions. One, which is if you're Trump, if you're Netanyahu, you can say, okay, let's just focus on top priorities. You know, there's a whole domestic situation that we Is demanding our attention. We should turn to. Let's not overextend ourselves. Let's not complicate the situation any further. That's door number one. Door number two is, hey, things are going our way. Let's go for broke. Let's see just how far we can push this.
- [32:22]
Jacob Siegel
Yeah. I mean, knowing what you know about Trump's disposition, does he strike you as a guy who wants to find the finely calibrated equilibrium point? Or, like, when you're up, you press your advantage, you get as much as you can so that when the bad days come, when the rainy days come, you've gotten all that you could. You squeezed what you could out of the thing. I think the idea that there exists something like an equilibrium point in the Middle East, I'm just not sure is true. The Middle east traditionally is a region that is an arena for competition between great powers. There was actually an argument made by some early, what were called cultural Zionists who opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Israel. Specifically, there was an argument made on the grounds that it would always be at the mercy of great power competition, because these are the historic trade routes. There's the importance of Jerusalem to all the Abrahamic religions. And so therefore, we shouldn't set up a state here because we'll never get out from under the thumb of the imperial powers. It was a losing argument, obviously, but it was something that people were thinking about even at the end of the 19th century, return of the 20th century. This is an area, part of the world, where equilibrium is. This is a place with sandstorms, where it's blazing hot in the day and it can be freezing cold at night, where a century happens in a year and then nothing happens for a decade. So, yeah, I mean, I just. I think that you try to win as much as you can and lose as little as possible.
- [34:23]
James Polis
Yeah. I mean, traditionally, the equilibrium point was the Ottoman Empire. And I know Erdogan's sitting out there thinking thoughts. He seems to consider himself the only real statesman in the world, aside from Vladimir Putin, based on his public remarks. God knows what he's thinking privately. But in terms of Trump, and I guess we're all sort of have to be Trump whisperers a little bit here and kind of thinking, putting ourselves in his shoes a little, but, you know, yeah, he seems to me to be a guy who loves that big win, but he also likes a clean win. He doesn't want to notch a victory and then find that he's kind of stuck with these obligations that have to be serviced and tended to over time. So, you know, I don't know exactly what that means for the Middle east, but I do think that the most likely scenario is that Trump just says to Netanyahu, like, look, this is your sandbox, so to speak, do with it what you will, as long as it doesn't make my life considerably more difficult.
- [35:21]
Jacob Siegel
That might be right. Yeah. And, you know, that will involve Netanyahu figuring out some kind of modus vivendi with Erdogan, who, as you point out, clearly has aspirations towards some restoration, neo Ottoman restoration. So we'll see exactly what that means. But Turkey is still a NATO ally, despite Erdogan's proclamations of war against the West. That being like the force that's going to undo the Western world, which he's been. He makes a lot of noises, Erdogan, but in some ways, he's proved to be a more canny geopolitical actor than other people who were given more credit in the region. So there will have to be some kind of modus vivendi between Turkey and Israel. But to your point about Trump, Trump, this is the Jacksonian Trump who's in favor of overwhelming, meting out overwhelming punishment to enemies in a way that achieves decisive outcomes so that we can end the state of war and get back to peace. And you can counterpose that with the kind of progressive, interventionist tendency toward endless, indeterminate forms of low level conflict that are less brutal, so they're more palatable to the general public and to international bodies, et cetera, because they seem like humanitarian alternatives to war, but that stretch out forever, never accomplish anything, tend to make intractable problems even more intractable. Insofar as Trump is the Jacksonian, I think what he's saying to Israel is win now, because I want this over soon. I don't want to be presiding over endless warfare in the Middle East. And Trump is. Whether he's able to do it or not is a different question. But he's looking at, I think, how can I use the situation in Syria to also end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which is a goal for him.
- [37:31]
James Polis
Yeah, I think that's right. There's at least one other complicating factor here, and that's the fact that there are still Christians in the Middle East. They always seem to be holding the short end of the stick when things get hot out there, but they're still there. The patriarchate in Antioch moved over to, to Damascus, but it's been there since the beginning. And for Donald Trump, you know, these are people that he can't just walk away from, especially if Erdogan sort of makes a, makes a dangerous choice to allow or to cause Christians in Lebanon and Syria to be oppressed more than they have been in recent decades. I mean, coming from a NATO ally, that would be really bad. On the other hand, you know, there's not a lot of pressure that Trump's going to be getting. Sadly few in America, even Christians who are willing to stick their necks out for Christians in the Mideast. He does, however, now have boulos in there who's family by marriage. Probably now, I think at this point, the most powerful or soon to be the most powerful politically orthodox guy in the US Just real quick, what do you think Christians in the Middle east have to look forward to under a Trump presidency, if anything of note, A more peaceful region.
- [38:50]
Jacob Siegel
I mean, that's the dividend that everybody, I think, in the Middle east can look forward to. You could just compare the Trump years to the Biden years. This is the most recent live example that we can contrast. So what was the Middle east like for Christians between 2016, when Trump took office in 2020 versus 2020 to 2024? It was more peaceful, it was more stable. You could appeal to sort of protectorate powers more easily. I think that if you look at the names of the people who are getting released from Syrian prisons right now, there seem to be actually a very high percentage of Christian names on that list. So the idea that Assad was a protector of the Christians, I think is a misnomer and has to do more with Assad's strategic relationship with Russia. The relationship with Russia became sort of the equivalent in, let's say, like publicity terms of Assad actually being a protector of the Christians there. But I don't think that's true. Christians in Iraq, Christians in Syria, Christians in Lebanon, Christians inside of Israel, I don't think share common sense of identity. That's going to make it easy to think about them as a unified bloc. What will be common for all of them is that if the second Trump term is anything like the first Trump term, the whole region will be more peaceful. And the actors who would, for instance, as you're pointing out, Islamists in Syria under Turkish auspices who might, for ideological, theological reasons, whatever, attack Christians. There are going to think twice if there is a credible deterrent because Trump is in office. And that'll be an advantage for all of the minorities in the Middle East.
- [41:11]
James Polis
All right, as you indicated, you've been in and around the region now for quite some time over a decade. You've seen it from the American side, you're seeing it from the Israeli side. You're at work now on really understanding in a deep way how digital technology is altering the security landscape, altering the way that, whether it's, whether it's. It's nation states or schools of thought, political factions, how they're all impacted by what's unfolding technologically. Just give us, you know, zoom out global scale view from 40,000ft. What are the big geopolitical realignments that are happening here? And as it applies to major figures like Elon Musk, what do you see coming around the bend?
- [41:58]
Jacob Siegel
I think that secularism as a kind of civilizational force is in its last days. And that doesn't mean that we're going to wake up in a decade and everyone is going to be a pious religious believer. But it means that the denial of God and the supernatural and the elevation of technocratic scientific principles as the highest principles for administrative government, that kind of world system, which has ruled arguably since the 17th century and certainly since the late 19th century one through, since the scientific principles of the 17th century, became physical realities through the Industrial Revolution. That world system is rapidly coming to an end. And what's going to replace it is going to be something more like civilizational blocks. And those civilizational blocks, Russian, Anglo, American Indian, Israeli, they're all going to be characterized in some sense by their relationship to artificial intelligence. China is the obvious one that I neglected to mention there, but is the main competitor to the US in this space. All of these civilizational blocks, which are no longer, with the possible exception of China, are no longer going to be able to constitute their own governing power, sovereignty, mandate of heaven in terms of purely rationalistic, secular terms, but are going to have to make some kind of appeal to a more deeply rooted civilizational identity that's either explicitly religious or implicitly religious. Let's say Trump might be a. An example of a more kind of implicitly religious American civilizational identity. The real test of that identity will be the relationship to AI and whether the civilizational identity is capable of mastering the AI and of asserting its own values as the determining Values that provide both the sort of teleological, purpose driven orientation for the artificial intelligence systems and even the governing structures to some extent, or whether the AI will just become a kind of pharaonic ruler over subject peoples. That'll be the question. And I don't know exactly how long that'll take, but I see the evidence in Israel of it being already underway. So the traditional Israeli secular ruling elite is in a state of crisis right now because they realize that their hold over Israeli society has slipped between their fingers. And the way they express this is in this protest movement against Benjamin Netanyahu and in appeal to. There were signs at the anti Bibi protest saying, america, come save us. By America, of course they meant the Obama Biden administration. They don't want Trump to come save them, God forbid. But the secular ruling elite in Israel has seen its hold on the country run through its fingers and now it's trying to reconstitute its power through these kind of extralegal, extra democratic, through the judicial power, through well orchestrated protest movements, et cetera, et cetera. The future of Israel is going to be as a more Jewish in the religious sense, but more Hebrew in the civilizational sense. Society that that's written into the demographic structure of the country. Who's having those children, which is what's known as the Khardau block of the country, meaning not the people who are called ultra Orthodox, but actually the people who are called national religious. So they're very religious, but they're also very nationalist. And the test for them will be can they offer a just settlement to the non Jews who live here? This will be the sort of ethical political test for them will be what can they offer to non Jews who live in Israel? You know, there's already a 20% non Jewish population in Israel, but that might expand. And that'll be the political test for them, but a secondary test for them, or let's say a parallel test for them, will be what does it mean to try and maintain Israel's power regionally, militarily, when that depends on AI without building idols out of the AI.
- [47:25]
James Polis
Yeah, so this is all very interesting. I mean, most Americans who think about Israel as a tech power, and this I think includes Silicon Valley, you know, most of them think of Israel as basically being Tel Aviv, as being a place where people like, you know, they like money, they like tech, they like power, they like to party, they're secular. They're not, you know, off in the desert on the kibbutz. And you're suggesting that you Know, as long as Tel Aviv might be around and that side of Israeli culture might be around, the people who are going to have the most influence on Israel's development as a technological power are actually going to be considerably more religious. Now, at the same time, traditionally, at least in recent decades, religious Americans, Christians predominantly, you know, Protestants, Evangelicals, Baptists, they've looked at defending Israel as almost an article of faith of their own religion. But if religion is going to become more serious and intense in Israel, that's going to point. I mean, it's just got you in a direction that is increasingly at odds with Christianity. If we're talking about rebuilding the temple and bringing back the Messiah, you know, at some point, there's got to be a break between that kind of alliance as we've seen it in the past. Right?
- [48:37]
Jacob Siegel
Right. I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, I understand the theological reasons, and I assume that if. If and when the Messiah does arrive, that he'll. He'll have his own answers to these questions. And so I'm not going to trouble myself too much trying to figure it all out. Now, there's a great saying from one of the rabbis, like, you know, we say, like from our sages, let's say. So I don't have to admit that I don't know who actually said this, but there's a saying that when the Messiah comes, he'll arrive in such a way that it fits the will of all of the nations. So, like, every nation will see the Messiah as fulfilling their own will and destiny in some way. But, you know, politically, what will it mean as Israeli society becomes more religious? I mean, it seems that for the parts of the American Christian community that were heartened by Israel's victory in 1967, because they saw the return of the Jews as a people, as a force in history, as proof that the God of the Bible is real. And I think that is the sort of deeper source of why 1967 sparked this support among evangelicals in America. It's not that they were so taken by Israel's military prowess. It's that they saw the hand of God acting in history again. And for those people, like the Jewish connection to Judea and Shomron is not an offense to them. It doesn't seem to them like some horrible injustice in the way that it does to an NGO worker or somebody like that. They see that as a fulfillment of the providential role of the Bible. They see that as the Bible being real and acting in the world. If the third temple is built, which I don't think is going to happen anytime soon. There are a whole lot of stages between now and then. Presumably I don't have. No one's given me a timeline. But if that happens, you would assume there have been incredible advances in the society that might have paved the way for it in some sense. I think that what you're really talking about in the near future is a more deeply rooted Jewish society in Israel that is less defined by this conflict between its secular Western oriented elite and its kind of religious, land oriented, heartland people who are connected to the land. Here. You're going to see some sort of reconciliation between them. And I don't see why in the immediate future that would necessarily alienate Christians in America. I think the thing that's much more likely to alienate Christians in America is what's already happening happened, which is as progressivism gets assimilated into parts of the evangelical community or other Christian communities. And maybe this will be reversed to some extent under Trump. But it had been happening over the past decade as younger Christians sort of take in progressive precepts with their mother's milk and don't even think of them as progressive necessarily, but absorb that that oppressor, oppressed view of the world absorbed the view of the world in which the Bible is not a legitimate source of history. So the Jewish connection to the land that's biblical matters less than the history of the last 150 years or whatever. That was what was really creating a serious conflict between Christians and Israel in terms of levels of support in this.
- [52:56]
James Polis
World that you describe. And I think you're definitely on the right track where you got five, maybe six core civilizations returning in some sense to their deepest or their original religious configuration in order to find a way to keep human beings in charge of the AIs. Basically in that kind of world, is the west still an identity or a construct that that has a meaning or a purpose?
- [53:25]
Jacob Siegel
I think so. I think the question will be who takes that forward? In a sense, Russia is trying to claim the mantle of a sort of Eurasian successor to the West. There's a way of seeing the Dugin strain of the Russian civilizational identity as both a return to a more authentic classical Western spirit married to the particular Russian Orthodox spirit, the American. You know, look, there's an interesting synthesis between the English and the American versions of what the west is. America is about tomorrow. America has always been about tomorrow. The past in America is what gets you to tomorrow. Now, maybe surprisingly or counterintuitively, this intensely Future focused aspect of America is actually deeply religious in its own way, in a Calvinist and Protestant sense, because it's connected to a providential view of the future that we're moving into, a future that we're destined for in some sense. But this is very, very far from the Burkean English localism and that sort of rootedness that defines English conservatism. America is just, it's a dynamo. And insofar as that's always been essential to whatever the west is, that spirit of exploration, that spirit of dynamism, of invention, of discovery, America is going to have to figure out how to simultaneously rekindle that and not be consumed by it this time, because it's rocket fuel and it'll burn up the ground that it stands on. And when you start to worship the science we've seen in the last few years and through Covid, especially what a pernicious false idol the worship of science can become. But on the other hand, when you become terrified of the future and when you shrink into this sort of timid retrenchment into some kind of rule bound safety culture, that's horrible and stultifying in its own way. And Trump seems to have landed on a particularly authentically American balance point between these two impulses. And we'll see where he can take that.
- [56:24]
James Polis
Well, I think that's very well said. I see some of that too in kind of the RKO futurism thing that's making a few waves in, in Europe and in Russia and you know, one of my favorite Trump quotes, I'm just trying to stop the world from killing itself. There's a lot of craziness and a lot of uncertainty, but I do think there is some cautiously optimistic reason for hope that the inheritors of these civilizations can ultimately find a way to get along.
- [56:55]
Jacob Siegel
Yeah, that's a good quote. I agree. I think that. I think that what Trump presents is an opportunity to restore a sensible, peace based approach to relations between the nations that understands that when it comes to geopolitics, strength is the real undergirding of peace. And unlike some of the people even sort of in the MAGA orbit, who seem to have taken from the genuinely disastrous American response to 9 11, that any show of strength is tantamount to whatever neocon interventionism or something, Trump understands that America's position requires strength, but that it's strength in service of protecting what is united, unique in America, not strength in service of transforming the rest of the world into a facsimile of Americanness. Because how insulting is that to the value of Americanness? If it can just be exported in some kind of cheap simulacra, then what's it worth in the first place? No, the point is to use what's strong military power, when necessary, economic power, whatever, to preserve good relations between the nations and to preserve the special province of America as a place that can cultivate its own values and its own future.
- [58:39]
James Polis
Jacob Siegel, finish that book so you can come back and we can talk about it.
- [58:43]
Jacob Siegel
I look forward to it.
- [58:44]
James Polis
All right, take care.
- [58:46]
Jacob Siegel
Thanks.
- [58:47]
James Polis
That's all the time we got this time around. Until then, my name is James, this is Zero Hour, and may God have mercy.