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Fiona Hill

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2022-11-04

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2022-11-04

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1. “And I shouldn't take it personally because I don't have a personal connection with half these people who are up there saying that they want this and that to happen to me.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Circumstances, and she'd been getting raised by her grandfather, and she was just miserable. And the reason she was bullying me was to make herself feel better. And after that, she never bullied me again. I mean, we didn't even talk There was a connection mode, and suddenly she realized that her grandfather was the only person she had, knew my dad, and there was some, they were friends or they were even family, some, you know, kind of relationship there. I mean, I was related to half of North of England. I had no idea how we were related. Everybody was some relative because people have lived there for generations to get in this very small area. And that turned things around. So just remember, you might have, and that's kind of suddenly you taught to me this always a reason why somebody's doing something.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “And my tongue's very small. Remember, it's very depressed, really deprived area. And we go to this housing estate, public housing place that's not too far away from where I live. And it's really kind of one of the most rundown places and an already run-down place. My dad like knocks on the door and I said, what are we doing, Dad? And he says, we're going off to, you know, we're going to visit somebody, an old family friend. I think they were even a distant relative knocking the door. This old man answers the door and he says, oh, Alfie, my dad's name was Alf Alfie. You know, kind of, oh, fancy seeing you, he haven't seen you. Come on in, have a cup of tea. What are you doing? He said, oh, I'm just walking past my daughter. We're going for a trip. We're going for a walk. And then suddenly I see that girl. And she's in the kitchen. And I'm thinking, oh my God, bloody hell. You know, British expression. What's this? And it turns out that dad had figured out who she was. And he knew her grandfather and she was living with her grandfather and she'd been abandoned by her parents and she was living in pretty dying.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Well, I kept it into kind of perspective. Like, when I was a kid, I mean, things mentioned before, I got bullied, you know, kind of again, and I tried to understand why they're doing this. One of the most amazing things that happened early on was my dad was a pretty incredible person and he would always open my eyes to something and I was getting bullied really nastily by a girl at school. And my dad started asking me questions about her. And one day my dad said, We were going to go for a walk.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Just basically reaching out to me that snapped me out of it. And I thought, you know, here's somebody just, you know, she didn't know who I was. She just felt really bad that I was, you know, sitting, you know, crying. I can't even remember what it was about anymore. Now it just seems inconsequential at the time. I probably thought my life was at an end. Just, you know, sometimes people making eye contact with you in the street and saying something to you can kind of pull you out of something. And it's kind of a, I think you would just have to open yourself up to the prospect that not everyone's bad, just like you were saying before, that there's good in everybody, even during that really difficult period of the impeachment. I was trying to listen very carefully to people. And I thought, we always have something in common here. We need to remember that. You know, kind of when people are kind of forgetting who they are or, you know, the context in their operating, there's always something that can, you know, can pull you back again. There's always that kind of thread.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Yeah, there always were. I mean, there were lots of points where I was just despondent. But then, you know, I'd meet somebody who would just suddenly turn things around. I was this luck or was I out there looking for it? You know, sometimes, you know, you just, if you're open and receptive to, you know, kind of hearing something from someone else. I mean, you know, there are often times where I felt so despondent, you know, in such a black mood, I didn't think I'd be able to go on. And then I'd have a chance conversation with somebody. I mean, I once remember, you know, sitting on a bench, it was probably 11 or 12 just crying my eyes out, just really upset. And an old lady just came and sat next to me, put her arm around me, said, oh, it's all right, Pet. What's the matter? You know, it can't be that bad, can it? And it was just this human embrace. It's like somebody...”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Everybody can do that different ways. You can kind of write reach back. If you're 14, help somebody use seven. If you're 21, help somebody use 14. Now I'm always trying to, you know, reach back and, you know, work with younger people, listen to younger people, help them out, make connections for them. Listen to what they have to say about something, try to incorporate that in things that I'm saying as well. The main point is that we've all got a voice, we've all got agency, and it always works better when we work together with other people.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Have more impact when they're amplified. They don't have to be the voices of discord or the voices of hate. You've been trying to do this with your podcasts, you know, kind of give people a voice, give them a kind of platform. And get them to join in with other people. And one of the things I've been trying to do is, you know, kind of go and talk to just as many people as I possibly can and say, look, we can all do something here. We can all lend our voices to a cause that we care deeply about. We can be kind to each other. We can give other people a chance. We can kind of speak out while we see that, you know, something is wrong. And we can try to, you know, explain things to people. And what I'm trying to do at the moment is just sort of explain what I've learned about things. And hope that that helps people make informed judgments of their own and that, you know, kind of maybe take things further and learn something more. It's like kind of building up on, you know, the knowledge that I have to try to impart.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “We all have a voice, we all have agency, we all actually have the ability to do something. And you can start small in your local community or even in your own classroom just helping somebody else out or speaking up and advocating on behalf of things when I was about 11 years old. I got involved with other kids on Save the Worlds. We had all this, you know, kind of, we would hardly Greta Thunberg, but we, you know, we kind of got together in a kind of network writing to people and, you know, trying to raise money to, you know, help save the world. Now, actually, the whales of the world are doing somewhat better. I can't say that that was because of me and my network, but, you know, it was kind of a way of organizing and, you know, kind of joining in at a larger movement. Everybody can be part of something bigger. The thing is, it's all about working together with others and giving other people a chance as well. I think, you know, one thing is that our voices.”

   2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Things like that. Yeah, but I find it interesting. But you know, when I was, I remember when I was a little kid, I kept thinking about the year 2000 and I thought, oh my God, I'll be dead. I'll be 35. 22 years ago”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “I mean, I'm feeling a bit on the older side now, but I still feel I've got a bit of youth within me yet at 57, I'm not that old, but I'm not that young. But we have to work together with younger and older people.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Credited problems inside them, like the veto power of the permanent powers on the UN Security Council, but we can change that. You've just got to have a will. And I do think out there, there are sufficient people with a will, and we've just got to get people mobilized. I mean, I'm always amazed by how people can mobilize themselves around a crisis. Remember, Winston Churchill, I don't quote all the time because I can never remember half his quotes, but I do remember the one about never let a good crisis go to waste. And I always think that that, you know, yeah, that we shouldn't let this crisis go to waste. And something else can come out of this, just like in Ukraine, we worried before about corruption in Ukraine, the influence of the oligarchs. We've got to run oligarchs here in the US. We need to deal with as well. But this is a chance to do it differently.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “What we did on COVID or done on kind of other diseases and things. And look, there is some similarities. There's a pathology around war and conflict. Years ago in the 1990s, I worked on a lot of projects that were funded by the Carnegie Corporation of the United States under the then presidency of David Hamburg, who was a scientist, and actually did see a lot of parallels between the sort of like the pathology of disease and kind of the pestilence, you know, of conflict kind of idea. And of course, these parallels had to be very careful because they're not neat. But there was kind of like an idea in there. And how do you sort of treat this? How do you deal with this? And we did come up with all kinds of ideas. And things that are still out there. We've created institutions that have helped to keep the peace. We just have neglected them, allowed them to degrade, just like the United Nations. And, you know, we've”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Well, my hope comes into the fact that we've done things before, that we've got ourselves out of tough times, and we've overcome stuff. And in people, because I meet amazing people. You just talked about hundreds of people that you've met with in Ukraine. And people all think differently. Contextes and circumstances change, and people can evolve. Some people get stuck. Putin's got stuck. But people can evolve. And I do think that if we all pull together and we've seen this in so many contexts, we can find solutions to things. Just like we get back again to our discussion about scientists and just the kind of amazing breakthroughs of”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Now, a lot of it will require change on the part of Russia as well and Russians and really thinking about this. I mean, Gorbachev before tried to deal in the late 1980s with the black spots with Glasnos, with openness and talking about Russian history, just kind of never sort of withered on the vine as time went on.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “And he did not want me going to Germany as an exchange student. He refused to meet the German kid who came to stay at my house, for example. I mean, it takes a long time to get over that. But you do. And we have. We have in Europe. And that was the whole point of, you know, all of that kind of exercise of European unity after World War II. Now, the big challenge is what do we do with Russia? Because a lot of people are talking now we can't have European security without Russia. The people are saying we can't have a Europe, you know, kind of with Russia. You know, so how do we deal with this? We've got to basically, it's going to be like Japan and Germany after World War II, after this. Just the level of the atrocities that have been carried out. As you said, the level of hatred. But we found a way of doing it.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “While it might well take a generation, I mean, when I was a kid in the 70s, I went on exchanges to Germany. And that was like, you know, 30 years, more than 30 years after the end of the war. My grandfather, who'd fought in World War I wouldn't speak to my parents when they sent me on a, I mean, hadn't fought in World War II, we fought World War I. He hated the Germans.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Different point in history, just that, you know, Russia has not moved on from that. And we've learned some lessons late. I hope we've fully internalized them of things that we've done the United States. Ideally, are trying to do better, and most of Europe's trying to do better as well. Think about France and Algeria. Again, we can see this in many different settings. But I think for Putin right now, he hasn't taught all of us sufficient a lesson.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Yeah, it's medieval. I mean, look, we're all capable of the same things, right? There was all that destruction, and that's what Assad was like in Syria, like his father. You'd destroy because you teach him a lesson. And look, Britain did that in the colonial era. All the history of British colonialism is exactly the same. I mean, all the Mau Mau, you know, in Kenya, you know, up until recent times, brutality, teaching people, you know, teaching them a lesson. You have to suffer. The US did it. I mean, we did it with the Native Americans. We did it all over the place, you know, as well. This is kind of what big states do.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “You know, you are emphasizing your domination. And that's what Putin is doing right now. You want to go in a different direction, so be it, but I'm going to make you suffer. Remember when Hodokovsky got out of the penal colony, went Putin let him out eventually. He said he suffered enough. He suffered for 10, 11 years. I don't think Putin feels that Ukraine has suffered enough at this point, or we have suffered enough”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “And that's the challenge. Now, again, they've already won psychologically, politically, militarily, because Putin hasn't succeeded in what he wanted to do. But he has succeeded in complete and utterly devastating them. And this is the kind of the old Muscovite, old Russian imperial, old servant mentality, you know, going all the way back to when the Muscovites were the bag men for the horde for the Mongols. It was destruction. You know, you don't play with us. We'll destroy you. People talk about it as mafia, but it's older. All you have to go down is go and see Tarkovsky's Andre Rubliov. I mean, I remember seeing that film when I was first as a student in Moscow and just being, whoa, this is so brutal. I mean, this is just unremittingly brutal because the whole point is that you show people who's the boss. The destruction is the point of things as well.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “And people come and just sort of laying those terms down is not a starting position. I think Russia. Is also in a dilemma of its own making now because Putin has made it very difficult to compromise just by everything that he said Now, for Ukraine, they've already won a great moral, political, and military victory. It's just hard to see it, right? At the particular moment. They've done what the Finns did in the Winter War, which the Finns were devastated by the Winter War as well, but they pushed them back. Now, the Finns lost a lot of territory, lost Corellia and huge spheres of territory, but they got to be Finland. And now they're joining NATO, but they've been part of the EU. The question is how to Get Ukraine to be Ukraine.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Yeah, because somebody look, the thing is that for Ukraine right now, anything is a compromise at its expense, right? Vast devastation, unbelievable, casualty rates, biggest refugee crisis since World War II. Russia's just said, sorry, this is our territory, it's not just Crimea. I think there could have been a negotiation over that, but Donetsk and Lukansk. I mean, we've got all kinds of formulas we've had all the way through history of putting things under a kind of guardianship receivership of territory, the United Nations, all kinds of different ways of formulating that. We could have easily been creative. But Russia's basically saying, nope, sorry, we've taken this. Any negotiations, just you recognizing this for us not doing more destruction. I mean, that is not the basis for a negotiation.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Well, I mean, I do hope, and with a ceasefire and a negotiated solution, but it has to be with Russia compromising on something. And that's not where we are right now.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Because they're watching what happens. I mean, for president Xi Trying to consolidate his power even further after the party Congress, but he doesn't want to look like he made a mistake by backing Putin. I mean, he thought Putin was also going to be in out and Ukraine would probably be open for massive Chinese investment. China was the largest investor in Ukraine before the war. Largest single investor. I mean, the EU was bigger, of course.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Well, yeah, but I mean, look, the other thing is that we have to start preparing. I mean, we have to start thinking about this. We've got a wartime economy situation. That's where we are. We've got the home front to think about as well. Putin has declared war on us. He did that on September 30th. He's done it at other points as well. We've just not paid attention. But he was pretty explicit in September 30th. I mean, go back and watch that speech. And, you know, he is gambling that, you know, people will go back. basically taking Russian gas and oil, but it's not going to be that simple as well. And do people, and then, you know, the question has to be, do we really kind of think he's going to play a fair after that when he's kind of also shown that he can leverage that?”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Oh, he can freeze it, and then kind of figure out where it goes from there, what other pressure he can put on. I mean, I'm sure he's confident he can get rid of Zelensky and he can prevail over us. I mean, look, I mean, the UK is going through prime ministers faster than I'm changing my socks, you know. So it's like, you know, he can, you know, prevail on the basically he can have an impact on the political scene in Europe and elsewhere. I mean, again, everyone's talking about winter coming. And I know Putin's thinking, yeah, great. I've destroyed the infrastructure of Ukraine.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Factor in here, but Putin is definitely sitting around calculating with other people what can I do to turn this around? I mean, he still thinks that he can win this. Or, in other words, or he can end it on his terms, Crimea, Dunyats, Lukansk, Herson Zapadija. And capitulation. Recognized as being part of Russia”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “They're talking about joining and are on the verge of joining a nuclear alliance. See what's happening here. So we have to make it more and more difficult for Putin to even contemplate that. That's why people are saying this is reckless, this is irresponsible. Putin is actually making the world less safe for himself down the line either. But he's thinking short term here. He's thinking, what can I do? What do I actually have? You can also destroy lots of infrastructure as he's doing. You can use subversion. We're worried about all of the undersea cables, all these weird things happening, you know, off Orkney or in the Mediterranean or, you know, all these other things that are happening, Nord Stream 2, pipelines, other infrastructure. There's all kinds of other things that you can do as well here. It's not just again, there's a civilian nuclear threat of blowing up, you know, one of the reactors. Now it's going to be sure about where the wind turns and the wind blows. And there's all kinds of things to, you know.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “What about nuclear proliferation if you're South Korea, you're Japan, you know, you're any other country that's kind of worrying about your neighbours and what might happen to you, just like India and Pakistan are both like, oh, you know, we've got to kind of keep our strategic nuclear balance here. Everything is up for question. Saudis will want a nuclear weapon. The Turks already want one. They've talked about one for years. You know, why should the Iranians be the only one with an Islamic nuclear weapon? And if we know that Iran has breakout capacity now, the Saudis and all the other states that are in opposition to Iran will also want to have some nuclear capacity. In the United States before wanted to maintain everything under the nuclear umbrella, one of the reasons why Sweden and Finland are joining NATO is because of suddenly all of these nuclear threats. Sweden was actually the last country on the planet to want to have nuclear weapons. They were actually pushing for a ban on nuclear weapons in the United Nations. Now that Putin's doing the nuclear sabre rattling, you know.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “In fact, my colleagues and I back in our report and back in the USSR kind of suggest they shouldn't give them up. And that's why we had the Budapest memorandum. That's why the United States and the United Kingdom in particular have basically some responsibility and obligation going back to 1994 when they promised Ukraine that gave up the nuclear weapons, their territorial integrity and sovereignty would remain intact, some obligation to actually do something to step up. If we step back from that, this is the thing that people are not talking about.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “There's also signaling and signs of movement there. I mean, I want to be very careful about this. But the thing is, it's also very important that we do this with other nuclear powers. So the other thing that's different from how it might have been in the past, and particularly different from the Cuban missile crisis and the Euro missile crisis, we're not the only nuclear players. China, I mean, has a major nuclear arsenal now, less on the strategic side, but building it up, but very much on the intermediate range and tactical. Kim Jong-un is firing off weapons left, right and centre at the moment in North Korea. We've got other rogue states. Putin's behaving like a rogue state, just to be very clear here. And this is what we've got with Kim Jong-un in North Korea. We've also got India and Pakistan. And we've got other states.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “And as you said, the discussion of using a nuclear weapon and engendering all those fears, and he's already got an effect. Everyone's running around talking about the Cuban missile crisis and secret diplomacy and how we negotiate away Ukraine in return for Putin not blowing up a nuclear weapon. So he's got a lot of people obviously talking about that.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “For example, our shelling, the Chernobyl plant and the sarcophagus and putting it at risk. And Zaparizen, you've got the International Atomic Energy Agency running out there in utter panic and kind of also trying to intervene in the conflict. So you're putting civilian nuclear reactors at risk. I mean, that also has a great added effect of cutting off Ukraine's power supply because Zaporizhia in particular, a third of Ukraine's power generation or some really high percentage I'd have to go back and take a look at that. But that's a twofa. It's a kind of a double effect there of undermining power generation, also frightening Germans and others who've already been very worried about nuclear power and increasing your leverage on the energy front, but also scaring people from the perspective of the use of nuclear weapon. Those reactors also become a nuclear weapon.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “She's already using Chernobyl, Zaporizhia, and then usual cranes, the other nuclear reactor. So he's using civilian nuclear reactors as a dirty bomb. So, you know, it's ironic that he has Sergei Shigu, his defense minister calling people, I'm saying the Ukrainians are going to use a dirty bomb. They're already doing it. I mean, what is kind of more destructive than stirring up all the radioactive dust in Chernobyl as you send your troops through?”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “Else, which is really upon he said, We have to show him that he won't get that out of it. It's kind of less our probability, and you know, kind of the odds of it, it's just how he calculates that probability of getting what he wants.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Coming to terms of the fact that we did something like that, you know, the fire bombing, we've also looked at all the bombing in Vietnam and everywhere. And all these massive bombing campaigns are realizing they actually often had the opposite effect. Aroshman Nagasaki might have contributed and there's a lot of scholarship suggesting it did to the end of the war. But a lot of the big bombing campaigns, the destruction actually prolonged wars because they made people fight back as we're kind of seeing in the case of Ukraine. So Putin has to calculate the probability that if he uses some tactical nuclear weapon, that it'll get the desired effect, which is get us to capitulate a Ukraine to capitulate, us to capitulate, meaning the United States and Europeans, not supporting Ukraine anymore, pushing towards negotiating table and negotiating Ukraine away. And Ukraine's saying, okay, we give up like happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki or in Japan. It's his calculation, you know, as much as anything.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “Now, when you talked about the precedent that the United States set of detonating nuclear weapons in Hiroshima Nagasaki, well, you know, he obviously meant the precedent of using nuclear weapons, of course, which of course we would then say, well, we showed then how the permissibility of ever doing that again. But what he's talking about is the precedent of escalating to such an extent that you stop the war because he reads that saying, well, you know, the US dropped the bombs on Hiroshima Nagasaki. The war was brought to a quick conclusion. And of course, there's a huge debate in America about whether it was necessary to do that, whether the war was ending anyway. Did that really kind of change the minds of the Japanese high command? I mean, there's all kind of books being written about that. And of course, you know, the revulsion that people felt in the wake of that was just, you know, just the shock of what actually happened. And we've spent 70 years basically.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “We keep talking about this idea of escalate and de escalate. That's not what the Russians, how they call it, but it's the whole idea that you do something really outrageous to get everybody else to back off.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Putin Stephanie have been thinking about it, right? I mean, he's the kind of person if he's got an instrument he wants to figure out how to use it. You know, we look at polonium, we look at Novichok, you know, we look at all kinds of things that is also presided over in Syria. He has put in charge of the war in Ukraine now. General Severikin is known as General Armageddon, the kind of person who pretty much facilitated the use of chemical weapons in Syria, for example. Don't think that Putin hasn't thought about how ruthless he can possibly be. The question is really the calculation. It's his estimation of the probability that it will get the desired effect.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “And gets into a standoff of the United States that we know is the Cuban missile crisis. And eventually, you know, gets removed. We're looking at what's happening in the United Kingdom right now. They've just churned through three prime ministers and actually five prime ministers in kind of as many years. But all of those prime ministers have come out of the context of the conservative party. They're all kind of just shades of the same thing. They've all come out of the same academic and kind of privileged backgrounds. Even Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, who's the first Indian or Anglo-Indian prime minister in British history. It was a kind of phenomenal kind of child of an Indian immigrants, but also a person of great privilege from the same academic and party background as the others. So there are always differences with those human beings, but those contexts matter a lot.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “So different from Andropov and Chilenko, and others as the person. But he was also constrained by the system, and he wanted to have change, but he wanted evolutionary change. He didn't know how to do it, but he didn't want to bring the whole system down. Look at Krushov. When he came in, you know, after that whole period of... Everybody trying to figure out what to do after Stalin had died, and there was all this kind of back and forth, and eventually Krishov emerges. And, you know, he tries to make changes to the system, but he's also a creature.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “That's absolutely right. And P grew up in that same system. Now he's younger than Putin, so he's got a different generational perspective. And he's not wedded to the Soviet Union or, you know, kind of some concept of the Russian Empire. He doesn't seem to spend a lot of time. I don't know what he's doing in jail, but he's probably not sitting around, you know, reading Lominosov and, you know, the kind of the great kind of tracts of Russian history. Could be, actually. But, I mean, I think Navalny has a different worldview and a different perspective, just like Medvedev was different, you know, in his time and presidency in mid-changes and some innovations there. But don't think that they're going to be radically different. Because look, Gorbachev, I mean, he was...”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “He wants to kind of change. People who are in charge, that's what he's being basically focused on, and you know, he might have things undo things that we elsewhere might not like.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “In a particular Russian context, he's different from Putin, but he wouldn't necessarily kind of run the Russian system in ways that we will like. So it's not a kind of a criticism. It's more of a critique of the way that we look at things. You know, I think it's a mistake to always, you know, say, oh, this is pro-Western or this is a liberal. I mean, what the heck does that mean, pro-Western? I mean, he's a Russian. He's a Russian nationalist and a Russian patriot. And he's often, you know, been quite critical about immigration. He's had some negative views about one part of me said, don't feed the caucuses, you know, kind of played upon some of the, you know, the racial and ethnic tensions inside of, you know, Russia itself as well. Now he is a pluralist, and he's kind of, and he wants to have, you know, different set of political actors there, but he also isn't promoting revolution. He's not Lenin. He's not wanting to bring down the state.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Well, it hasn't really been a kind of a criticism in the way that people have implied, but more just reminding people that Navalny isn't some stooge of the West as other people have kind of depicted him in the Russian film, but saying that this kind of, you know, he's pro-Western, he's a Russian nationalist and a Russian patriot. In the past, he's articulated, you know, things are not sort of dissimilar from some of the people around Putin. And it's more just reminding people that, you know, just because you kind of see somebody as a kind of in an opposition figure or somebody who might be more palatable from your perspective looking from the West, they're not always going to be what you think they are. Alex S. Nivalni is a Russian.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Presidential election. I mean, last time around he had to invite a bit of competition with this person who's reputed to be his goddaughter, Sinia Sub Jack, you know, for a bit of kind of entertainment for people this next time around, you know, maybe he wasn't really planning on running against any other serious opposition. He was just going to have the acclaim of, you know, the kind of the great leader, like President Xi in China. Putin was basically, I think he also hoped that he would be able to devolve some authority away. So he's more like the supreme leader kind of figure, the czar-like figure, the monarch, and then, you know, other people get on with the chief executive, prime ministerial running the country. And he could kind of like step back and just enjoy this, you know, maybe there was going to be again a new union of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in some fashion. And he would preside over that.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “I mean, even kind of people who were posted putin' on some of the things. Crimea was crim nash, they kept saying, you know, this is kind of, you know, we got it back, you know, it should never have gone away. It was ours, you know, but, you know, this is more complex. And he wasn't, I don't think at the time, planning on annexing all of Ukraine when he went in this special military operation. He was going to try to turn it into what Belarus has become part of a bring back the Commonwealth of Independence or the Union, then a new union with Belarus and Ukraine and Russia over time. But certainly, you know, remove Ukraine as a major factor, independent factor on the world stage and consolidate Crimea and maybe kind of incorporate Danetsk and Lukhansk was also a possibility. But it wasn't in his intention in any case to have something on this kind of scale. He wanted to get on with then preparing for what was going to be. He would think the cakewalk, the shoe-in of the next.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “I think it was one of the reasons why Putin invaded in February 2022 because it was going to be two years. I mean, I thought it'd be over by March of 2022. And he got two years to prepare for, you know, the election and he got a big boost. He got a boost from Crimea. I mean, I didn't mention that before. I mean, one of the reasons for invading Crimea and annexing or invading Ukraine the first time annexing Crimea was, look, what happened to his ratings? They went from kind of declining, and they were still pretty good by anybody's standards to just rocketing off into the stratosphere. I mean, I didn't really meet anybody in Russia who thought that Alex in Crimea was, you know, kind of a bad thing.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “He's not doing the kind of things he used to do. Yeah, he gets out there and he goes to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan and he goes to China and he does this and that. And then to COVID, he didn't go anywhere. I mean, very few places. And so he's got stuck. And that worries me a lot because you can see before that he had a bit more flexibility of thought. And that's why nobody should be in place forever. You should always kind of get out there and go out there and learn a new skill, you know, kind of you need some different.”

    2022-11-04 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #335 – Fiona Hill: Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source