YouSaid · the spoken record

Sarah C. M. Paine

lines on the record: 162
first: 2023-10-04
most recent: 2023-10-04
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

“It is hard. It is hard, but the people you're talking about who are your prime audience are the bright people have some insights into it. And I think about, well, what do you want to do in your life? I would think one of the pieces would be contributing in some way that makes things a little better, however you're going to define better.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's also a charity part of it. Maybe my charity work is to be thinking about these other things. So in my line of work, what do I do for charity? I talk to anyone for free.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So you're well educated and you're in the growing part of the United States where you talk to each other at all of these meetings, et cetera. Think about organizing things. I look at, for instance, we have tremendous problems with refugees or illegal immigrants coming over our borders because we have basically failing states to the south of us. Is there anything that foreign investment or anything could do to help over a 20 or 30 year period to alleviate this? Because it will improve our own national security if instead of refugees pouring over our borders, you have people making good t-shirts or eventually putting phones together, etc. But that's the sort of thing that people who are in your world, who you meet each other at these business meetings and talk to each other and think about, okay, I got the here and now.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of these technologies and continues to be at the forefront of it. Think very deeply about whether you're going to ultimately privilege dictatorships over democracies. Because the reason tech has been able to be so vibrant, think about it, is you live within the castle walls of this maritime order that people follow the rules and then you're protected on the outside. You have military things, et cetera. If those walls are breached by dictatorship or by really stupid grand strategy, our country's come perilously close in the last few years. Perilously close if Trump had been president at the time Ukraine was invaded Ukraine would be no more. We would have Russian armies right up to the Polish border now. And these things are terribly consequential. And then another piece.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think what I want them on history and strategy is going to be a well-informed person and read broadly. But I think for them, technology, they need to think broadly of these technologies about which they have deep expertise. Do these technologies privilege dictatorships or democracies? I do not know the answer to these things. And when you're creating architectures for things like the internet, etc. Think about these things. Think about consequences. I suspect, and I don't know this, that when China does its belt road initiative, I would presume it's also selling nice little IT package to keep the dictator in power that if you want to keep track of your population here, this is the IT thing you need to do to firewall this, that, and the other thing. So since the West is the part of the world that is developing”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Books, how did this happen to me? But it's actually a fast way of learning about what the maritime instrument can and can't do for you. The strategy course was absolutely essential from what I know about strategy. I have done my best in books to put what I have learned there. The one I'm working on in the Cold War is going to be organized around these strategic concepts of how did each side try to manipulate the other and how did the medium powers try to weigh in on the game and what are the strategies that they're using, the paradigms, et cetera. So I'm going to try and pour as much of this in there because this is what education is, it's passing the baton from one generation to other saying this is what I've learned over the course of my career. You're off and running.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Mexico's our biggest trade partner, and Canada must be not far behind. When there are wars that are important to our national security, we decide, like in World War I and World War II, do we get in? When do we get in? And that is real in Afghanistan, in Iraq. Do we get in? Do we not get in? We could have avoided Iraq altogether if we'd wanted to. And I'm not a Middle Eastern expert, so you'd have to talk to those people about pros and cons. Afghanistan, since we had been attacked, the chances were we were going to be in on that one because of a direct attack on us. It is incredibly important to understand this maritime position. That's why I've co-edited all these books with my husband and the ones I mentioned to you about maritime things, which for us took us years to do. But if you want a short course, so you get half a dozen of these books, I realize half a dozen books.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Learned all these concepts, and I've given you some of them, and they're tremendously useful for studying wars, and I never would have learned about maritime powers without being the Naval War College. It is the only institution of higher education in the United States that focuses on the strategic prerequisites for and possibilities of being a maritime power. It is essential to know this to practice U.S. foreign policy. Why? Because unlike Ukraine, if you have a continental position, if someone threatens you and invades on a given day, you have a choice on that given day the day they chose. Either you're going to capitulate or you're going to fight. So they determine when the war is going to begin. In our insulated position, unless we start doing terrible things to the Mexicans and the Canadians.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let's do history. History is one thing. I think about my education at Columbia. I had the most absentee landlord professors. They just didn't waste their time on me. I just did a tremendous amount of reading. And while I was there, I took twice the courses to, I did the equivalent of two PhDs of”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, they have so many talented people. But the Russians don't see it that way. They see it in this continental view. And they're the ones who have to come to terms with what they think. In the meantime, this is why containment's brilliant, is in the meantime, those of us who joined the maritime order need to work with each other, and then we contain the problem by saying you cannot join us on equal footing till you behave yourselves. You get a timeout, right? You get a timeout from the global order, but we would welcome you back in. The problem with Putin is he's done so much damage to Ukraine. There are going to be reparations involved, and the Russians won't want to pay those.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing what they're doing is all going to depress growth. They could join the maritime order any day. That is what at the end of the Cold War everyone wanted them to do. Everyone wanted Putin to join it. The Russians, if you think about all the money Putin has spent on his crazy military stuff, imagine what would have happened if he'd spent all that on the Russian road system because their road system's deplorable. And imagine if he had devoted his attention to trying to have a better legal system so that people could start small businesses get bigger without having someone then come in on them for protection money. I think where Russia would be now. It would be dramatically better.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they are. And who are the ones who have massively increased their standards of living since the Cold War? It was really the Third World, except now we got Wagner or whatever's left of it and also China's now got these private military things running roughshod over Africa, which all that's going to do is tank African growth rates, which for a while were going double digit. So that's one of my big career takeaways. And I tried to put it into the one lecture that I was asked to do and the one article, which is like a 20-page read.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go through international law and international institutions. And this is not a political scientist love to talk about America the hegemon, right? No other country in the world wants an American hegemon. There may be some people in the United States who thinks that looks great, but no one's going to buy into a world order in which the United States is the hegemon who pushes everyone else around. Again, we're big and we're influential. Other people are influential too. But this maritime order where, yeah, we're an important part of it, but have many other people in it. It's a win-win. And you can look, it's with Biden right now, he's doing all of these meetings with Europeans of managing of what's going to go on in Ukraine, etc. And it's based on agreement of all these different”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ukraine, and he took Crimea in 2014, but it's a negative sum because he destroys whatever businesses had been being run in Donbass, and he absolutely kills most of the tourist industry. And then he could look right today. It's so negative summon in Ukraine. He is destroying wealth at a really rapid clip. It's really a stupid way to run to, and if you go up to Taiwan, so if PRC tries to take Taiwan, it's a continental view, Morteri, sorry, somehow we think it's going to improve our security. No, they'll level it. And they'll hurt themselves. Whereas if they just ignore the Taiwan thing and say, oh, they're so annoying, let them run their own place. Who wants them anyway? And then trade with them, they'll both make money. And so when I look at this, that's my bigot career takeaway is that if we...”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Looks at the world that if I control territory, that's what makes me secure. Maritime powers, they start with Britain, which is, hey, I'm secure if I can maximize money from commerce because then I can buy Navy and buy allies with armies and stuff. And then eventually this order of organizing trade by international law and the Dutcher is instrumental in this with Hugo Grotius, who is the founding father of international law. They want to run transactions by law, etc. This is an international order that's win-win. You join it, you get security, you have input on how it evolves because it's a work in progress. Whereas this continental thing is negative sum. And you can see it in Ukraine. So Putin wants more territory. Okay, he's got a zone. He took the eastern...”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not a ha person, a gutcha person, but working at the Naval War College, I start out a career. I'm studying Russia and China. And so I'm learning about do not realize it, but I'm learning about two great continental empires, two of the greatest in human history. And it's fascinating learning about that. Then I get a job because two jobs in one place, my husband and I go to the Naval War College. And suddenly I'm teaching about British and U.S. maritime strategy. What do I know about that? That's why my husband got me to do all these co-edited books about naval topics just to learn more about it. And that's where I got the idea about maritime and continental ores. And I can't remember if I emailed you, I gave the Marshall Lecture, was published in the General Military History. And in it, I summarize my views on what the difference between a continental and maritime power. And that's one of my big career takeaways. It's a fundamentally different way of looking at the world. So Putin honestly.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, no, they cut a deal that didn't work. And that's my interpretation. And if you're a further archival evidence that I'm happy to Reassess.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and then just asking people questions when I lived there, why this, why that. And then what's funny is you come back home and it gives you a new sense of what makes one's own country special, because things that you just assume everyone does, you go, well, everyone doesn't quite do this.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“High end linguistic skills. They should. And part of it, if you learn a different language, you do kind of a mind meld. If you learn Japanese, you have to learn all of these formality things and what's called Kago. It's honorific Japanese. My Japanese is terrible, but learning as much as I've learned makes you realize how this hierarchical society, part of how it works and how get a sense of how they think about things and they categorize stuff. So we're back at the opticians where there's if you do the language, you get a few more clicks.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's one better. Do I see 2020 now? And then after a year abroad, like I'm in England for a year where I just get to think, read extensively, try to be open-minded. Try to look for the unknown unknowns. What is it uncompletely missing? What is it that I'm totally wrong about being open to reassessing, ooh, I got that wrong? So it has to do with reading extensively. If you're going to be studying other societies, you had better read the language. I'm not particularly good at any of these languages, but I do try hard. And it's taken years for me to bungle my way through them as I do. But that's really essential. And too much of U.S. graduate education, if you want to do particularly in political science, where they're asking very important questions for international relations and thanks and comparative politics, they don't require them to have...”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, on history. You have to do tremendous amounts of reading. And it's over a career. Also, publishing is really essential not only to, you hope, give people the best ideas that you've encountered, but also it forces you to really come to terms with what you do think and why. And I feel after every book, whatever I was, I'm like a one-click better or like you've probably got a good eyesight unlike me. If you go in for an eye appointment, the guy will go click, click and go, say one better or is this better? I feel like after a book.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tens of millions. No one knows how many people died in that thing. Well, I think one of the takeaways for you, so if you look at Chinese history over the course of all these different rebellions that go back hundreds of years, all these different wars they fought, and you look at it and go, wow, millions of Chinese killing each other, a mark of good strategy is not killing your own, right? So if the Chinese have been doing this for a long time, don't expect them to be great strategists, which isn't a happy thing, actually. It might mean they do crazy stupid things that are so detrimental to themselves.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe if you measure the number of locals who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then they've had the civil war on top of it, it's thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people. We go, oh, it wasn't too bad for Americans, for those who live there, it was quite bad.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, but I think the people who are worried about that are the Vietnamese and the Indians, the people who are likely to meet them. Back in 79 when the Chinese tried to work their magic in Vietnam, they had massive casualties. The Vietnamese killed more Chinese in a matter of weeks than all U.S. losses and Afghanistan and, in fact, all U.S. losses in Vietnam over however many years we were there. You think the Chinese will be good at expeditionary warfare and sending these people anywhere? I mean, think about where would you be fighting them? So it's great they got a big army. So, where are they going to deploy them?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a world class Navy and a world class army. If you think about Britain, it maintained the big navy and always had a tiny army until they ramped it up in World War I, which was the beginning of the end for them. As being the dominant power that they had been.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Continental power or having a continental location is not a choice. It's a fact of geography. So if you look at China, huge land border, that's got a huge coastline as well. But historically, where is China's national security threats come? It's the north, northwest. If you look where the passes are of people coming on in or down straight through Manchuria, et cetera, and China, in order to maintain its empire, it just dominates China itself, let alone keep these other people out, has had to have a large standing army. When it is built a large navy like Zheng Hu, it's when it's got extra pocket change and extra money than you can go do this. But if that changes and you have trouble with people on your borders, you've got to spend your money that way, it's very difficult to”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I would imagine cooperative adversaries that China has been a failed state, had been a failed state for such a long time. So it's hard for the Chinese to, they're trying to glue put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So what works in Asia versus Europe where you have developed countries with a whole cadre of experts, which is not the case in China. So there are a lot more people in the West who are going to be reassessing and they got much, they have robust institutions. Goes back to institutions, whereas China is trying to just build these the first time around. Difficult in China.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All types and allowed all kinds of private ownership. And the story on private ownership and collective ownership, you can have a lot of government planning, a lot of government ownership, and the economy works perfectly well. And you can look at different European countries, different percentages. When you go to 100% government control, you kill your economy. And so Korea, Japan, et cetera, didn't do that. And so they get educated people who then for 20 years really put themselves on the line, putting the pressure on their own governments to democratize.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps it's conceivable, but there's also another thing about human beings. Do we human beings require the absolutely scorching, horrible lesson to suddenly realize you need to do these things, you're going to be better off. And that's where the searing lesson was World War I, and that World War II generation set up institutions that have held the peace and the industrialized world, not the third world where all the proxy wars were fought, but in the industrialized world till very recently. On the authoritarian regimes, communist systems that insist upon a monopoly of power of the Communist Party are a separate problem, authoritarian regimes where you wind up, what the places you're talking about in Asia, they invested extensively in education, extensively in infrastructure, extensively industry of”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, A, if Japan hadn't gotten into World War II, who knows what would have happened if the West had not mismanaged the Great Depression.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ask Russia, primary enemy, Germany. So, no kidding, we got three, we got three aligned on primary enemy. So it's a very effective alliance. Get rid of Germany and it falls apart, which is actually predictable. When you lose the primary enemy, which is Hitler, he's gone all of a sudden we're back to communist versus capitalists and the Cold War is off and running. People act like it's a surprise. No, it's not. Primary enemy gone.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if I ask you the question for Germany to get what it wants in the world, who's its primary enemy? And the answer would be Russia, right? Because that's where it wants to do its Laban's realm and stuff. And you go, well, Italy, who's its primary enemy, to do its Roman Empire III or whatever number they're up to and the primary enemy would be Britain would get in the way of those plans. And then you go, okay, and who's the primary enemy of Japan? It's actually not us, it's China, because that's where if they win, that's the prize to be taken. So then you flip it around and go, okay, primary enemy of Britain, Germany. Primary enemy of the United States, Germany, it was never Japan. We deliberately understood that Japan would never threaten us directly in the way that Germany ultimately would if it took over all of Europe. And then you...”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I'm going to turn your question inside out. So you're thinking about I'm thinking about alliance systems. So what did one side do versus the other side do? So I'm thinking about the alliance itself, flip it around to the enemy, which is the axis powers put their enemies on death ground. That is why the war began. That is an incredibly clarifying event. And that got Britain, which really, really hated the communists to ally with them immediately, forever. Britain thought that the dangerous thing were the communists, not the fascists in Germany when the Germans worked there wonders. The German Britons go, oh, it's the communists who are the primary threat. And so if you look at it that way, that's one thing. Another thing, another concept to think about are primary enemies versus secondary enemy.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is completely buried Putin and the Information War. So it took us a while to wake up. Now we're back. And if you look at it right lately, what is it? Is it the US ambassador in Japan has some really lively tweets about the Chinese, a hilarious. You need to Google them if you haven't read them. We're back. And actually the United States is really good. Hollywood, the movies. We have so much talent in this department. So a lot of it's just based on telling the truth. But lies, as we've noticed, take a long, long time. It's very easy to tell a lie. It takes a long time to get all the facts, to prove it is a lie.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the cumulative effects will be to destroy the allegiance of people in their own governments, which is what happened. At the end of the Cold War in 1991, we just ceased funding that because we thought it's over. End of history, right? And then I remember I was on sabbatical in California at the Hoover Institution, and one of the people there was a great expert on Ukraine. And this one there was RTV on. And he said RTV is really dangerous. The Russian propaganda station, I said, oh, it's ludicrous. They're just telling nuts stories. He was right. I was wrong. He was absolutely right that those crazy stories started getting a life of their own. And then if you look at Biden when this war was just about to begin in Ukraine, he made the decision to release a lot of the intelligence about, hey, they're about to invade. Here's where they're coming.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Own information warfare, and I'll give you an example. The United States had quite a robust information warfare during the Cold War and by the later phases. And it involved Voice of America and BBC. Basically just tell people the truth. Tell people the truth about”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you think about how communists started, so if you get 1917, the Bolsheviks, they're really weak. And you think about people who are weak, what can you do? Well, words, words are key. So you're using words to cultivate loyalty so you can get cadres to come your way. And you're going to use words since you don't have the ability to threaten people militarily. You're going to use words to try to undermine them. And we've seen this happen the world over. I think wasn't the story of Al-Qaeda was pretty good at words and doing their recruiting, etc. And then it takes the great powers that are target of this for quite a while to realize that whoever these people are, like the Bolsheviks, you think they're crazy people. Ignore them. But then all of a sudden, well, gradually you see the chemo effect and go they are a threat. And then you need to get going with your.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Officers, you can't do that. And then when you get, what is it under Barack Obama? We have some military officers shooting off their mouths and they get fired instantly. To now we have full-up civilian control, but it was with Mark Arthur. He was trying to run policy. And he got himself fired, but he was tremendously popular. And it's the Joint Chiefs of Staff who actually fire him. They agree with Tuman. They don't want MacArthur having his finger on the atomic button. It scares them to death because I think he'll press it.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Military officers have a very extensive education. It's often a succession of MA degrees. So some of them in very technical things, like, I don't know if you're nuclear subs, you better know how to run the nuclear plant and engineering things. And then they come later on to places like the Naval War College to learn about strategy and other things. In terms of civil control over the military, if you go back to the American Revolution, Continental Arm, you couldn't even get funding, right? And it goes very gradually over time. And then you have MacArthur, who is just ignoring Truman, and he's making all kinds of threats. Truman thinks he's got a way of settling out the Korean War, and MacArthur says things that overturn that. So eventually you have MacArthur getting fired, which is telling military.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Contribution to the back in the Russian Revolution of how you take a bunch of white officers and veterans of World War I but keep track of them. It has to do with political and military commissars. So the military commissaries, the officer who's actually professional, the political commissar is the one who's got a connection with the secret police. Who if the military commissar doesn't do us told they'll come in and kill him. Maybe his whole family for good luck. And it's very effective in the commissar system. These paired things, China's still got the commissar system.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, the founder of the army also founded the police force, and he knew perfectly well, he knew the finance minister and had great respect for the finance minister. And then you have people not respecting each other. And I would suspect I'm making this up because I don't know the details of China, but if you think about Deng Xiaoping, he's on the long march. He's one of the younger members. You must know everybody. And I know he's in and out of prison, so he knows the people who are in. He knows the people who are out. Then when you get to Xi Jinping, they're much more stovepipe group of people. They don't have the institutions. Actually, in China, they do have institutions for party control over the government. So that's how communist governments have maintained very good control over the militaries. In fact, if you look at communists, they're really good at civilian control over militaries. So, yeah, they have. In fact, that was trying.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Japan, it's interesting. If you go back to the Meiji leaders, so there, who are they? They're the people who won a civil war against the last Tokugawa shogun. And they wound up, if you look at their career paths, is they had civil and military jobs as they swapped around, and they all knew each other. So that the head of the army and the navy and the prime ministers, they all interacted. But they didn't create an institutional mechanism. They did have a cabinet, but they didn't have a full up legal forcing together of all the civil and military parts of the government and have them operate on a rather level playing field. The army dominates. So when that generation dies, everyone gets much more stovepipe careers. So they're much better educated than their parents and grandparents have been, but their education would be strictly in the army, as opposed to”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are so many Ukrainians of different professions who are holding that thing together. So there are plenty of great people to be found there.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Valerie is illusion who runs the Ukrainian army. Think about the people you're picking. You're picking people who were part of a global war, right? A really high stakes war. And then as I pointed out, we use these generals to personify a whole group of people. So I suspect the ones you're going to find are going to be the ones in Ukraine. And the fact that they've done as well as they have done so far is incredible. And then it's not just the generals there, right? You have Zelensky, who is the public face of diplomacy. It's incredible, right? From the night with his little sound bite is, what is it? I don't want a taxi. Right. And then if you think of the people there who are running the rail system who have kept things supplied or the people who are electric power plants.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to qualify to answer that. Literally, I mean, I teach at the Naval War College, but that does not make me an expert on how the Pentagon runs its business. I think the general feeling about the federal government is their incredible inefficiencies, but it's very difficult to get rid of them. I mean, in the civilian part of it as well. Once people get a federal service job, it's very difficult to get rid of that particular job, et cetera.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is it. This is it. And you're very much part of the generation going back to your education and computer science and these technologies and apparently the printing that they're doing, 3D printing that they're doing in Ukraine. Yeah, it's going to absolutely change things. I don't know to what degree. I'm not an expert. But yeah, and the other issue with the United States is we build a lot of these very extensive platforms, these ships and things, and airplanes, and then you wonder whether you can afford to lose them. And then thinking creatively, this is where war games come into play. And planning is okay. What would be the value of these smaller things? Can they carry the water when the time comes, et cetera? And I think you're going to learn a lot from this Ukraine war. About what works and what doesn't.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Warfare has always been asymmetric. Isn't that the game? You figure out whatever they've got, and then you do something different, which is the asymmetry”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You always need to be prepared. You have to be thinking about it constantly. What are carriers of incredibly useful is going toe to toe with a peer competitor, what you're describing the vulnerabilities are absolutely there, particularly if you want to get up close and personal. On the other hand, what a carrier provides you is all over the world, it gives you a base. So if you're not going after a peer competitor, then they're incredibly useful, right? And we own them. And then the question now is going forward, do you want to build more carriers? Or do you want to build something smaller that just takes drones? Or what do you do? And that's the big decision, and I'm not qualified to answer it, but for the ones that you have, they're tremendously useful for doing these non-peer events. And again, I am not qualified to answer operational questions like these.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“None of our forces have been as tested. The Marines the most in the Army because they're doing land engagements. But if you think that Iraq or Afghanistan's a pure competitor, give me a break.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The 1930s version until after Mal was dead. It's incredible. It's a really lousy system for promoting economic growth and it matters in a poor country, right? It's going to determine your pork per capita standard of living. And the poorer you are, the more that makes a huge difference to you to have something. So communism doesn't produce wealth. It's an incredibly effective way for taking power within a failing state and putting a dictatorship in power. It's incredibly good at that. But it doesn't deliver prosperity afterwards.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source