YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Smith

lines on the record: 218
first: 2025-04-09
most recent: 2025-04-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Know, if my society lost its mind after 1911, I just have a tough time judging the people who came up in this environment. But there's no question it is, I mean, it's, you know, profoundly disturbing.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I try to think to myself okay, imagine being trapped in what is, people could call it whatever they want to. I do think Pat Buchanan and these guys were right to call it a concentration camp. You're trapped in a five mile by 25 mile area where you cannot leave. You are stuck there. You don't have an airport because the Israelis bombed it. You don't have a seaport because they won't allow you. You have no access to trade with the outside world and you're not suffering through a 9-11. You're suffering through 1,000 9-11s. Your whole life has been people. The people in Gaza are their entire life has been being refugees. You know what I mean? There's generations of people have been in this status now. And so”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I also thought when Nikki Haley and other Israeli politicians are signing the bombs before they're launched into Gaza, I found that sickening. I think there's all types, I think like mission accomplished banners and flying on jet. I mean, I think all of the, I think having Bob Hope specials at the end of the Persian Gulf War was sickening. I just think all of it is like horrific. I look at it and I try to say to myself, okay, we had one 9-11 in this country and we all like collectively we lost our minds as a society. You know, we were ready to go bomb whoever the hell our politicians told us to bomb and we didn't care how many people it killed and we killed a lot more than a lot more than Israel or Hamas has killed doing it and”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's sickening and incredibly disturbing. I just, I guess the way I look at it, I always, and maybe there is a degree. A certain path because I think it leads to such dark outcomes. But I just always try to be kind of like against the government for the people, against the powerful, sympathetic to the powerless. I think that, look, it's sickening. You see big crowds cheering on people who have been with these people who have been in captivity for, I think, some of them for over a year and a half.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Argument would come back to something like, and the people kind of voted for this in 2005, and the people sure do we sure do see a lot of people cheering when Hamas is doing some pretty horrific stuff. And so, hey, you got that on one side and you have a kind of a country that's much more similar to Western societies on the other.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so if I were Steel Man Douglas Murray's case, I would say, well, I guess the case is, right, look, Hamas is a fanatical death cult, essentially, which I do think is a fair description of them. There is no question that they have pursued a path that was just devastating to their own people. And there's no question they have not spent the resources they have on their priority has not been uplifting their own people. Their priority has been, I think essentially antagonizing Israel into this overreaction so that they can turn world opinion against Israel. I think they've been very effective at doing that. And, okay, again, I think.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What Israel is going to have to concede is that it was awfully fucked up that they kicked a lot of people out of their land and that the whole land for people, for people without land was never true. That was just a slogan that felt good to avoid what you guys actually did. And the fact that it was inexcusable that you guys occupied these people for 60 years and that has to end immediately.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You gotta stop doing this to the Palestinians. So, my own people don't, you know, rise up against me. So I think as long, if the Israelis were like, fine, we'll do a two-state solution or something like that. I think Saudi Arabia couldn't wait to broker. In fact, they proposed a two-state solution just a few years ago. I mean, they would love to be a part of that and normalize relations amongst the Palestinians, which again, I think this had been accepted multiple times, at least by their leadership. It's like you're going to have to accept that you lost in 48. You're going to have to accept that you lost in 47. You're going to have to accept that the state of Israel does exist. And you're going to have to accept that the right of return is not going to literally mean that everybody can go back to where they were.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Personally, I think, and I don't know if I say this for the not necessarily like the Arab world, but at least the nation states, like their governments, I think are pretty much there. Like Saudi Arabia and UAE and Jordan and Egypt. Like if the Israelis, they're almost like, look, these are American sock puppets, you know, for the most part, right? And so their thing is that, okay, 100% of my population is completely opposed to what Israel's doing to Palestine right now. And they just hate that Israel, that the nation was created at all, that all the Arabs were kicked out of what is, you know, very important land to them religiously. And so the governments there are like, look, we want to continue to have U.S. tax dollars flooding in here. We'd love to make a deal with Israel.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I agree with you, and you're 100% right that, and even before October 7th, I think many steps had been taken away from, you know, the peace process and the feeling of that. I mean, really, I think since the second Intifada is when the appetite for peace, I think in Israel was greatly diminished. But to your point, I mean, It's going to take really painful concessions on all sides in order to get there. And I think that the...”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Early 1800s, say the first half of the 19th century, where you'd be like, okay, okay, okay, we recognize this is wrong now. But we've had these millions of people enslaved for all these years. If we let them go, they're going to fucking kill us. And what do you say and they're citizens now, meaning the Second Amendment applies to them, meaning that the guy who I enslaved now can get a gun? You know what? And so, okay, there are these, but I think in hindsight, looking back at it, we would all just go. Yeah, but you can enslave people. So, like, whatever risks come with the next phase of this, unfortunately, you know, like you're going to have to just deal with that and move, you have to start with abolishing slavery.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I mean, like, there's that's not the answer, it's just that they made a land for peace deal, and once there wasn't, you know, once that wasn't the that was solved, it was kind of easier to avoid the war. And I do like to think that there could be a solution to the Israel-Palestine question, but it's going to have to involve Israel taking their boot off of the Palestinians' neck. And I know that that's scary. And I understand that there are like legitimate concerns about that. There's, it was a great Thomas Jefferson quote about slavery, which was we have the wolf by the tail and we can neither afford to hold on to him nor risk letting him go, which is like you could see where that would have been like a real concern of people like right toward the end of slavery or or whatever.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“France and Germany are right next to each other, and Ireland and England are right next to each other, and they're just totally living in harmony right now. Like there is just no, the thought of them going to war is like inconceivable right now. Not saying it could never happen in the future, but it seems pretty hard to imagine. That being the case would have been very hard to imagine for a very long time. You know, like, I mean, there's some serious levels of brutality between those two societies. And even more directly involved, Egypt and Israel went to war four times in a couple decades. They went to war. And then in the late 70s, they made a land for peace deal. They haven't been to war since, you know? And like, I do at least try to hold out that is, you know, it's not like Egypt is, you're not going to say they don't have an issue with radical Islam in Egypt, you know.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, and like the same thing I said before, I could also very easily go if one of my kids was like at that rave or something like that and just got gunned down or kidnapped by I could understand being like level the whole goddamn place and I'm sure I would feel that way if that was one of my kids, you know So yeah No, that's exactly right. I mean there's lots of examples in the world of, you know like”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The person who has the or the party who has the power is the one who needs to make concessions. It's just indefensible that the status quo of the Palestinian people having no rights, literally no rights, being ruled by a government that they do not get to vote for or against, no right to do commerce with the outside world, no freedom of travel, no freedom of movement, no basic property rights can be kicked out of your home at any time, no right to a fair trial, no right to a lawyer, no right to a jury of your peers. I mean, the fact that that has been the status quo since 1967 is just indefensible. And then in the context that that has been the status quo, I guess I'm just not, even though I'm against it. It's kind of like when you're just lecturing about the way in which they resist this”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was almost like the major miscalculation of those Palestinian Arabs who did embrace terrorism was that this isn't the French. This isn't the French hanging out in some colony with their home country back home where maybe a few acts of violence could work enough to the liberal population back home is like, oh, I really didn't like the response to that terrorism. We killed so many people. Forget it. This is too much of a headache. Let's get out of here. The Zionist settlers were there to stay. They weren't going anywhere. They weren't going back to Eastern Europe. You know what I mean? And so it's a tragedy that this whole thing went the way it did. But you always, whenever you're talking about like a conflict like this,”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not like defending Arab terrorism. I think it's really a tragedy that the Arabs embraced terrorism. I don't think it's unique to them. And in fact, you know, I think it was the Zionist militias who introduced terrorism to that part of the world. But there was also like, look, terrorism persists because it works. And this is true with state terrorism and with non-state terrorism. You know, it's like terrorism has often worked for people. I think the thing, like early, I think early Yasser Arafat, I know was very influenced by the Algerians who, you know, successfully kicked the French out embracing terrorism.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in other words, stated differently, you're not allowed to kidnap people and lock them in your basement. But once you do, you take on a responsibility to feed those people. You know what I mean? Like, you can't, you're not allowed to keep someone and not feed them. That is a worse charge than just keeping them. And so yet, anyway, I guess my point is the solution to that if you go like, well, I'm a bad guy if I fund to Moss. I'm a bad guy if I don't let the aid in was to let the reputable international aid organizations bring aid in to the people of Gaza. Don't pressure the Qataris to send in briefcases full of cash, allow internationally recognized reputable human rights organizations who are lining up trying to do it, stop turning them away, let them in. And this is just, it's so long past due. I mean, like, it's just.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can't let that in because it's dual use. But cash to Hamas, does that not have dual usage? Is there nothing else that they keep? So yeah, it's like, yes, when you have a full blockade around the country, you take on certain responsibilities. And I think this is, you know, this is the essence of really the whole struggle here, which is very tough, I think, for the pro-Israel side to grapple with. But the bottom line is that Israel hasn't occupied Palestine for like a few months after a war or even a couple of years after a war while they're figuring out what we're going to do with them. It's been over 60 years. We're talking about a one-week long war or a day short of a week-long war in 1967. Israel's had control of them ever since. And much like in the same way that like if you kidnap someone and you lock them in your basement and you don't feed them, you murdered that person.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but the dynamic here, right, is from 2007 to Today. Israel's had a full blockade around the country. They won't let potatoes in. They won't let sugar in. And the justification is because they're dual use. They can be used to make rockets as well as they can be used to feed starving children.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Insisting that Qatar money float to them when the Qatar money dried up, sent the Masad in to insist that it gets back to him. Hundreds of millions of dollars, briefcases in catch, and he set in his own words that the reason for doing this was to keep to his words were prop up Hamas, bolster Hamas, to keep them in power so that the West Bank and the Gazans were divided and that the international community as well as the liberal Jewish community in Israel wouldn't be able to put pressure on them to make a deal”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not like a, I wouldn't even say an open secret at this point. It's just out in the open. He had this strategy of propping up Hamas for years. And so he had this strategy of propping up Hamas for a myriad of reasons, but a major part of it was that, look, man, as long as there's terrorists in power there, there's never going to be any pressure on us to give the Palestinians a state because you're telling me I got to negotiate with them?”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should have probably forever destroyed the legacy of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is, you know, I mean, this isn't like George W. Bush, you know, was, I mean, he was on the job for almost a year when 9-11 happened, but it was still kind of new, you know, like it was still kind of in his first year of being president. Benjamin Netanyahu was the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history and had explicitly been like, I'm the tough right-winger who's going to be tough on these Palestinians, who's going to move away from the idea of coming to a two-state solution because this is what we need to keep us safe, like the justification is like I'm going to be hard on these motherfuckers because that's because I know what it takes to keep us safe. And that culminates in the worst massacre in Israeli history. And then, I mean, the other big one is that, I mean,”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indictment of so many different things, you know, like October 7th happening was an indictment of the entire occupation slash siege of Gaza and the West Bank, you know, for that matter. It was, I think,”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That any of us should follow. It doesn't make any sense, and it's not true that people are responsible for the crimes of their government. I think that that same argument is used quite a bit by people on the pro-Israeli side when they say like, oh, they had an election in 2005 and Hamas won a plurality. Therefore, 20 years later, they have no rights. I think that's insane. So, okay, so Hamas had no right to go after civilians. It's horrible and you see, you know, these, you know, teenagers being killed and the people, you see the images of people who are held hostage for all this time. So it's like your heart breaks for those people. It's truly tragic. I do think. That it was. In many ways”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, like what I just said, that it was horrible and, you know, it's always by the same logic that I'm giving you now, it's always evil to target innocent civilians. I don't believe civilians can be held responsible for the crimes of their government. This was, by the way, the Osama bin Laden logic, which I think would also be the logic of like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush or Barack Obama, but Osama bin Laden very explicitly said when he was asked, like, well, are you just going to target US military sites or are you targeting U.S. civilians? It was an interview in the 90s before 9-11. And he goes, nope, civilians are fair game too, because you guys have regular elections and you guys vote for your government and therefore you're responsible for the crimes that they commit. Now, I think that's the logic of a fanatic like Osama bin Laden, and that's not the logic.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The question is, is there no other option than doing it this way? It's like, okay, like October 7th happened. We can all agree this was like a horrific tragedy and an indefensible act of terrorism. Like, okay. Is it guaranteed that another one of those is going to happen tomorrow? Or was this the biggest security failure and Israeli history? Okay, well, if it's the biggest security failure, let's just say not even going down the inside job rabbit hole or anything like that, but just saying, is it giant security failure? Okay, then put a bunch more men at that fence, first of all. And now you got to talk about how can you achieve your goal while inflicting the minimum amount of devastation on innocent people.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing will be that people as someone just recently argued with me about they'll say like, well, Hamas has to go. That's the starting point. Hamas has to go. And I'm like, no, I don't think you get to say that because the truth is that look, you can make an argument that Hamas has to go, sure. You can make an argument that the Lakudniks have to go. You can make an argument that Kim Jong-un has to go or that Ji has to go or that Putin has to go or that Zelinski has to go. Or certainly I would make an argument that Joe Biden had to go. But just because a government has to go, that doesn't mean you could just go kill all their people.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you don't ever ever ever have a right to kill innocent people. It's never self defense to be killing innocent people. I mean, short of like, you know, some type of scenario where like, you know, if you're holding a baby and coming at me shooting and I shoot back at you and, okay, I was acting in self-defense and it happened to kill a baby. But I'm talking about like what the scenarios where you're dropping bombs on cities, it's never justified and the overwhelming onus should be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely have to do it and that that should be the standard because there's so many other standards that I see thrown out that I just think make no moral sense at all that people will argue about like in Gaza they'll argue about the civilian to combat ratio like that to me doesn't really that's not what counts that's not the measure that's important and also no one knows what the numbers are they are all just kind of like pretend to and then the other”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In order to stop them, we had to go on this bombing campaign, and we only got Nazis. We only killed the bad guys, and we were able to take out the Third Reich. But one eight-year-old girl died. And you did this thing that stopped the whole world from falling into subjugation. So I think almost everybody would agree, Jesus, man, you have to do that. Okay. You have to do that because the whole world's going to be subjugated. There's nothing but good guys here. The Nazis are so evil, and there's one. I still would say that every single time World War II came up, we should all just be somber and we should all just think about that little eight-year-old girl who died. And what a horrible thing it is that we had to do that, you know? And so.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That many more people would have died had we not done this. Now, in that case, I would look at that as like number one, it's much like killing the one person to save the 20. It's still wrong. It's still an immoral thing that you were forced into doing. It's not justified. I would say that the overwhelming onus should have to be on you to demonstrate that you absolutely needed to do that. And that's how I feel about all these wars. You know, it's not like, you know, I think that like, let's just say, like, if you could make World War II, like you could reduce it down to the simplest caricature of what World War II is and say there's no Joseph Stalin. We're not even partnering with him. Like there was a good guy in Russia who we were partnering with. And the British Empire had never done anything wrong. They were just nothing but good guys. And of course, FDR was nothing but a good guy. And Hitler was even worse than the real Hitler. You know what I mean?”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They used to, you know, these crazy horror scenarios, but it's like, okay, so there's a person, you know, evil bad guy has buried a key inside this person and you have to kill that person in order to get the key in order to unlock these 20 people to let them out of a cage. Now, look, you still don't have a right to kill people. It's horrible and wrong. And what you did there was still evil. But if you were taken to trial over it, you could probably explain to a judge and a jury, be like, I know, but the situation I was in was either these 20 people were going to die or this one person was going to die. And under that situation, I chose to save the 20. So like, in other words, by perfect theory, no, you never have the right to kill innocent people. There could be a scenario where you were like, look, we had to take this military action and some innocent people did die. And it's so tragic and awful that we had to do this, but we are certain.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The American Revolution was a just war. I think there are, you know, there can be just wars. In terms of pure libertarian theory, I think I would say that, look, you never have a right to kill innocent people. That's never morally okay. Now, there could be a scenario, just like this is true in life in general, right? Like there's lots of things that you don't have the right to do, but you could come up with some scenario where you might be in a position where you have to do it because there were all of these extenuating circumstances, you know, like for, you know, you could think of something where you remember the saw movies.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would say, okay, so at least to me, in terms of like pure libertarian theory, or just in terms of like what I think is right or wrong, like there is such thing as a just war, the most obvious example of that would be like you're invaded by a military and fighting them off. So in that sense also, like even if you want to kind of isolate from everything else from all of the awful US policy toward Russia post Soviet Union to all of the NATO expansion and color-coded revolutions and all of these things, if you want to, you know, Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, I do think the Ukrainians have a right to fight and protect their land. There's an aggressive, there's an aggressor there and you have a right to defend yourself. So certainly in that sense, I think”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are a big country that is the biggest bully in the world. So we're in no position to let. But what we're kind of in the position is just like you're like, hey, we'd sure love if you don't do that. You know, you can do it and you can get away with it, but we would sure love it if you don't. And so the goal would be to do everything we can to make sure that doesn't happen. When Vladimir Putin starts talking about like, hey, if you keep pushing the idea of Ukraine joining your military alliance, I'm going to invade that country. The goal there, or the move there would be to be like, okay, we'll stop talking about that. Is there something else that we can agree on? You know, like, is there a way that you will promise you won't do anything to them? And okay, and we'll promise we won't bring them in our military. Like, that's the goal. You don't just go like, no, fuck you. We're doing it anyway, over and over and over again until they do the thing.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is but the whole point is that if you say, and this is why there is some wisdom in America accepting the One China policy, is that if you tell China that we recognize Taiwan's independence and that they're not a part of China, that might be the type of thing that would make China invade and say no, we're not accepting that. And so at least right now, it's like kind of like, okay, look, this is the reality. It's something that you kind of run up against with the war in Ukraine a lot and with the situation in China and Taiwan is that there are constraints placed on us by reality. It's not all just how would you like the world to be? How would you like it to work? Obviously, I think we would all like that bigger countries don't invade smaller countries and bigger countries don't bully smaller countries around. That is not the way of the world.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different figureheads across powerful centers in America are saying that China doesn't have the right to go into Taiwan. And then China's in the position of being like, well, hey, wait a minute. No, that's not actually the policy. We maintain this one China policy, but we allow them to kind of do what they want to do. And, you know, the most obvious example of this was when Joe Biden actually said, like, oh, we wouldn't allow that and we would militarily intervene if they went into China. And then, and this was so bizarre, then the White House, whoever that was, came out to correct the president of the United States and say, no, the policy of the White House is the one China policy, which look, I mean, again, I think the whole point of this is that the reason why whoever the hell was able to overrule Joe Biden and his administration, I don't know who that is.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, fuck them. I don't care. By the way, a lot of people speculate online, but I am not getting any of these checks, man, and I'd really like them to start coming in. But there's like, even when it's like China, you say China's asserting the one China policy, but the one”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, and it was totally destructive during the original Cold War, too, and almost led to nuclear war on a couple of different occasions. But look, I would just say, and I really, I'm no defender of the Chinese regime. I hate communism or fascism, whatever they are, some hybrid mix of the two.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If that was the concern, then the response would be we need some type of Manhattan project, and I'm not supporting a government project here, but there would be we need some type of Manhattan project to say we're going to make these things here. We can't. And look, I was running that experiment before saying like, what if we all pinky promise not to use nuclear weapons or something like that? But that's not the reality of the situation. The more reality, look, even in Ukraine, everybody, the biggest hawks, the biggest pushers of this policy in Joe Biden's policy to fund Ukraine. No one suggesting we send in the 82nd Airborne. Which is really the only thing that could repel the Russians right now and restore Ukrainian original sovereignty of the Ukrainian borders. But no one's suggesting we send in the 82nd Airborne because we all know, well, we can't have a direct war with Russia. That's the end of the world. And same thing with China. So, you know, I'm not saying microchips or whatever aren't important.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Concerned with my marriage. And the idea that imagine if there were the political will. To invade Mexico. Like if DC decided we're taking Mexico City, that's going to be part of America now. And we're taking it by force. And then China was like, we're not sure if we can allow this. I think immediately most Americans would be like, allow. Like, how the fuck do you think you're going to stop us from taking Mexico City? What are you going to do, China? You're going to send your Navy ships over here to fight off the coast of Mexico. Good luck with that. And at least from my understanding in almost all the war games that they've run, if we did militarily, even if it doesn't come to nuclear weapons being used, in which case the whole world gets blown up, but even if we go to militarily try to stop China from invading Taiwan and no one, everyone agrees to not use nukes and we just fight a conventional war, we lose that war every time.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I also think this, and I've been saying this for a while, but I do think there is this empire mentality that Americans have got to shake off. Like as if it's even a question of whether we should allow it or not. We in a position to allow or not allow that? Why do we have it? It's almost like if you were, you know, like I don't, I hope China doesn't invade Taiwan. I hope Taiwan remains as free as possible. I hope China becomes free. I root for freedom and prosperity for everyone, you know. But I also root for everybody to have a healthy marriage. But if you were talking to me and you were like, hey, the guy down the street is cheating on his wife. Like, I don't think we can allow this. I'd immediately be like, that's really not my place. And then on top of that, I also have no power. I have no authority over what they do in their marriage. Like I have to be concerned.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Essentially, I think there was the Soviet Union had just collapsed. It was what Charles Krajenhammer dubbed the unipolar moment. There was like a lot of, there was excitement, there was a feeling of invincibility. And also the neocons weren't in power after 92, really. I mean, they had a little, they were in the George H.W. Bush administration. But after 92, they really weren't. So they're just writing it these think tanks. And it just didn't seem as, you know, like they weren't as guarded. There weren't like these accusations of Euro war criminal or something like that. But what he said, what Jonah Goldberg agreed with was that every, I think the statement was every 10 years or so, America's got to find a puny little country and put them up against the wall just to let the rest of the world know that we mean business. And that was actually their mentality.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make a fair point. It's certainly true that throughout human history there's been overtire building and wars of conquest and things like that. But I guess I'm just saying at least even there you would have some type of cell of like why we're going to go take these resources and why that will be good for us. Whereas the idea that Kuwait just needed to be defended by the Americans seems so It seems so hard to convince anybody and yet they were able to do it. If you read like Neocon writing in the 90s it was very interesting because they would tell the truth a lot more and they were”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Send these boys over to Iraq to go. Like, that's not, they just from the top down were able to create this feeling that like, hey, there's a new. That was, it's really incredible when you think about it. Because I think for the most part in human history, you would have had to have some type of plausible threat, some type of plausible reality to convince people that we actually have to go to war in order to deal with this. Whereas the idea that in 1991, the United States of America would feel threatened by Iraq was just ridiculous. And yet they were able to do it.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This just didn't exist. And it was just like, oh, like for so long, it was the case that like the New York Times and NBC and CBS and ABC and the Washington Post and the Associated Press, I guess, they could just move the nation. I mean, if they wanted to be like, hey, there is the idea that, forget even like after 9-11, the idea that in 1990, 1991, that there was any organic movement from the American people going, you know, we really got to see about the Saddam Hussein guy. You know, dictator in Iraq is having a slant drilling dispute with the Emir of Kuwait. We really got to do something about that. Like, that is not something that organically came from any, that was not like a few soccer moms hanging out, you know, watching their kids game being like, I really do think, I think in a couple years we're going to have to.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the military industrial complex in America, it's so big and it's so sophisticated and it's so it's not just that there's this there's the intelligence agencies, there's the weapons manufacturers, then there's the people in the media who are either directly or indirectly just parroting, you know what I mean, all of their talking points and so it's not just that you can kind of like like you make money when there's a conflict, but you have this entire apparatus to like create the conflict and then create the public sentiment for that and then we're and it's interesting we're we're in an interesting place because we're kind of in this like new frontier of now where shows like this can happen and there's a lot of them and a lot of them are humongous like yours But for so long”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Major motivating factor for both sides of the Israel Palestine conflict. I think that's the major motivator for both sides of the war on terror conflict. And it's like, that's in a way when you look at it like that, there's something, even though it's so dark and tragic, there's something almost beautiful about it where you're like, oh, we're all caught in this same cycle.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, like, even though this guy had a suit and tie on and wearing a cable news studio and we're in a first world country, we're in the United States of America and we're having that, the basic thing that he's saying is like, what do you say? You're saying we're not going to go kill some motherfuckers? You know, like, I mean, he was just putting it as do something, but what's something? Something is dropping bombs on human beings, you know, when like, yes, innocent people are going to die, but okay, but it's the same thing. It's the same after 9-11 where like, we got to go fucking invade some countries right now. That's the same impulse. It's like they killed some of our people. You think we're not going to show them who the real killers are? You think there's a chance that you could come here and that is like the most human instinct ever. It's like some other tribe just came in here and killed some people in our tribe. So what do you want to do about that? Well, I don't know. It's not going to take me too long to figure out. We're going to go kill a bunch of people in their tribe. And I do think that like that is, I think that's the”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Personally, I think some are better than others. But there are things that unite all of us. And in a weird way, I remember one time I was arguing with a Democrat guy on a SE Cup show. I used to be a contributor on her show. And we were arguing, and it was after a terrorist attack here in New York, a fairly minor one. It was like a guy like, I think he hit someone with his car and then jumped out with a gun, and then the cops lit him up and killed him. This is like back in 2017, I think. And he claimed to be ISIS inspired. I don't remember if there was like a direct connection or not. But they were, at the time, they were like, doesn't this mean we got to step up the war in Iraq or in Syria where ISIS's stronghold is? And I remember the guy saying to me, he goes, you know, I went off on how these wars have been disasters. And he goes, yeah, yeah, but Dave, what you're saying here is we're supposed to do nothing. Like this just happened and now we're supposed to do nothing.”
2025-04-09 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #464 – Dave Smith: Israel, Ukraine, Epstein, Mossad, Conspiracies & Antisemitism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source