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

“Those countries that are willing to cooperate with each other, not invade, negotiate their disagreements, work through international organizations, improve international organizations. That world is what you want to protect and you want to allow people to come and join. So if Russia changes its mind, new government, et cetera, you want to bring them back into just the way Japan and Germany were brought back in. You want to protect that order forever. Our prosperity is based on it. And it involves serious defense spending, et cetera. Others who want to do, the problem with the Communist Party paradigm of we're going to have a monopoly, it's a route to poverty. Think about it. When the communists took over, they didn't restore grain harvest that had happened during the Civil War.”
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 look at North Korea. Talk about a failed place. It's amazing to me how long the Kim dynasty has maintained its power. It's just unbelievable. They're starving. So don't count on any short-term ending. Think about”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The global order, I'm going back to the circle, it's based on sovereignty. If you allow this, it doesn't mean you have to go to a nuclear war. You just never recognize whatever it is. And then you sanction China from then until kingdom come so that they are not part of the maritime trading order. And you tell them they need to cough up Taiwan.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have many diplomats who are doing their best to prevent this eventuality, but understand that we do not control the decisions of others. For instance, I'm going to make bets so you don't have children. If you ever have children and little ones, right, ones that you can pick up and put down, they will wind up doing things that you cannot, you're genetically related to these people. You love these people, and they will do stuff that you think is just wild. And you will put enormous pressure on them not to do these things, and they'll do it anyway. So the notion that we can take a country of one billion and change and make them do anything.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would be the most catastrophic error imaginable for the United States and China to have a military conflict. There will be no winners. There will be massive numbers of losers. All right, let's talk about nuclear weapons for a minute. Think about how Americans are so mad at each other about wearing a mask or not wearing a mask. Talk about something that's stupid. Talk about something that's not a big deal wearing a mask or not. If anybody nukes anybody else's city, do you think the world is going to be remotely the same way? Can you imagine, so we can't even be logical about masks? Or just letting other people do their thing about masks?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They don't want to be taken over by force. Who would be? So the problem in China is a Communist Party wants to maintain its monopoly on power. And so it used to claim the moral rectitude card. Well, they can't do that anymore. They're so corrupt. And they used to claim the economic growth card. Well, that one's going away. So they're left with one card. It's the nationalism card. And they're playing it butt hard because it's a unifying thing for Chinese, for the Han ethnic group in China, who constitute the overwhelming majority that Taiwan should be there. It's a mistake. It will be a pivotal error if they make that mistake. But guess what? Other countries cannot control what the Chinese government decides to do. It's foolish to think you can control it. It's beyond your abilities.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just because there's a conflict there does not mean the United States has to send its military in tow by toe to toe. I would think it would give China a long-lasting timeout from the international world order, right? It'll be sanctioned. Think about this is what's so tragic about China. Think about how many people have been lifted out of poverty. So many since Deng Xiaoping. Hundreds of millions. It is a great achievement of our lifetimes. It's happened since you were born. And why did that happen? It's China's reintegration into the rest of the world, of joining the maritime order, following the basic credit card rules, of paying for transactions, and then your transactions are also guaranteed. That is the win for China, the true win. And taking Taiwan, who needs it? The Taiwanese are perfectly fine doing their own thing. And they've made it clear.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you want to be ambiguous in the United States because otherwise it would enable Taiwan to autonomously do, like under Shankai Shak, if we had been unambiguous, the man might have done crazy stuff. And then all of a sudden we get pulled into a world war. Right. But if you think about a Taiwan conflict.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look at Chinese history. It is a continental empire. What is the paradigm? Territorial conquest. Take a look at it. This is it. And they're not off that paradigm. They're still on it”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, actually Vietnam. Oh, they've just been redoing their maps about what they say, what does the Uttar Pradesh's ars? That would be a detail, right?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that if you think about Taiwan, what is it? It's a country of 20 plus million people. If you look across the globe, how many countries have about 20 million plus people It's probably most countries in the world are kind of that size us. So if you say it's okay to go level a country because the People's Republic to take Taiwan, I presume it's going to begin with an artillery barrage. I presume that's going to be leveling Taiwanese cities, right? We just watch how it goes in Ukraine. I can't imagine the Chinese being less brutal. You're going to say that's okay. Think about this maritime system of international law. What is the fundamental underlying principle of it all? It's sovereignty. It's the notion that just because you're big, you can't go and destroy someone who's small. This is the fundamental basics of the whole thing.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have no idea. I think you have to prepare for it And it will best position you to deter it, even though you may fail at deterring it. And then if you fail at deterring it, it will best position you to deal if bad things happen.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's their model for development. This is a big difference between their model for development and the Meiji model. The communist model is heavy industry and largely for the military. And the Meiji, even though they wind up with the big military, it's about getting these consumer products in and light industry. And then they go on to do heavy industry. And it turns out the Meiji model is the better one. It just works better for an economy. And so the Russians aren't interested in doing consumer goods, right? It's all about the communist power having monopolizing power and then playing God in whatever region they control and dictating whether other people live or die.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We fed the Russians and we provided them all kinds of things that without it they could not have fought. So fast forward now, we're providing those things for Ukraine. The Ukrainians can feed the Ukrainians can feed themselves, et cetera, to keep them in the fight.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I think that means they've done no training And you're just wasting people. And then, can you imagine being that soldier and thinking this is how my government treats me? So World War II, the emphasis on supplying Russia is huge. So what do we supply? We supply all the things that make them move. So it's rolling stock and getting their train lines going. They produce planes, but they can't do the jet fuel. It's high octane. You may know more about it.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, apparently that thing was built on American chassis. Apparently, it's based on our technology that we weren't interested, and of course they took the chassis, et cetera. But in World War II, do not forget about Len Leese. This is another lesson of World War I. Imperial Russia fell disaster. Absolute disaster. Why did they fall? Well, no one bothered to supply them with a really focus on supplying them with adequate weapons. They had huge armies, but they're sending their young men in without rifles and saying, well, when you get there, go pick one off.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're already in the deep dark crisis. This is late in Brezhnev where the numbers are just amassed. And so in Gorbachev comes in in 1985. It's just a massive implosion. And then he tries to save the beast. And of course his cure kills the beast.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. I think they think Nazis were 55, but don't call it, I may be remembering these incorrectly, but it was horrific in Russia. And the problem for Russia. In the Soviet Union, so let's say we're running little subunits, but I'm afraid I'm not going to get enough parts in. So I lie about how few I have, even though I got lots more. And then you're busy lying. So then when we compile macroeconomic data, A, we don't really know what the price of anything is. We don't know the value of labor, of capital. And we don't know what consumers really want. And so Russia is massively misallocating capital, labor, and they don't understand computer preferences. So when you asked me earlier, are people stupid? It's more, they've got all this incorrect data. And by the time they realize that, uh-oh, something's wrong.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think what they, when we were, the United States was trying to evaluate what the load of the military was on the economy. The CIA was trying to figure it out to the best of their ability. And then because they don't have a convertible currency, it's really difficult. And then they're busy lying to each other. That's a whole other thing in communist states and dictatorships. You're incentivized to lie about everything. And think about the compounding effects of these lies. It means I can't make good decisions. Because everyone around me is lying. And then it gets worse at the top. You're going to watch as these cascading things happen to the Chinese and the Russians as a result. So it turned out at the end of the Cold War, oh gosh, I won't remember it accurately over the top of my head. But if you did the whole military industrial complex, it's well over half their economy is being devoted to this.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're so worried about it. Xi Jinping's and other guys making a series of pivotal errors. I mean, his handling COVID was just stupid, right? COVID started in China. Go investigate it and figure out where it came from. And then it would be a non-starter. But instead, they do the massive cover-up, et cetera. And then all of a sudden, instead of just being unlucky that COVID started there, it's all of a sudden, no, you're complicit. And a lot of people have died across the globe over this. And it came from you and you clearly were letting people out of the country knowing full well that they were vectors of spreading this disease. This is a problem. The rest of the world's not going to forget. There are just too many millions of people who died.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To be incredible, just all the people power you're going to have to devote to this, and then all the false positives, which will be incendiary for the people who are falsely considered disloyal. This is where they're at. And now we're doing the National Disappearing Act where, oh, we don't know where their Minister of Defense. He's suddenly, he's a non-person. And oh, by the way, what happened to the foreign minister? Give me a break. Let's do grown-ups day.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the Communist Party worries about this because what do people want at that point? It's probably some influence over political decisions. And the Communist Party said, that's off the table. Okay, if it's off the table, how do you keep it off the table? All the things that you're talking about. This 24-7 surveillance date, in fact, since you have a computer science background, you'd have better understanding this than I, think about the cost. If the United States had a 24-7 surveillance system where you're literally doing it down to who's jaywalking, who's not in order to put it into their social security score, whose kid in their classrooms rolling their eyes at their teachers, I kid you not, and putting it down as a ding on that kid's social. And also, who knows what's accurate and inaccurate on the facial recognition stuff? So they start chalking up the wrong scores for the wrong people.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I don't know. I honestly don't know. But it's again, I think a better way of looking at it, or at least the way I would look at it, is talk about looking at consequences, high consequence. It's guaranteed that if they go into Taiwan, it is a high consequence of that, without a doubt. And what the odds are, I don't know. However, if you listen to their speeches, they tell you they're going to do it, right? They're consistent. And the West learned that you read improbable speeches, right? People read on Meinconf and said, oh, this is a nutcase. No one would ever do that. Well, it quite accurately represented people, even in dictatorships, they have to transmit message to population, and they quite often very accurately tell you what they're going to do. Putin has been quite clear what he's been up to. Stalin was very clear.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Singman Ree apparently did it even earlier that it was one in the land reform they did there was the Japanese had large expropriated areas so it was easier to do that and so he Sing and Ri does landmore form immediately it's not been well studied and it'd be fascinating if someone actually did study it and it probably helps explain why tremendous loyalty within the Korean armed forces to the South Korean government”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was bloody doing land reform. The local Taiwanese did not appreciate getting expropriated and there were massacres over it.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unknown because when the nationalists came to Taiwan, they were in really deep dark trouble. And one of the ways the Taiwanese had maintained the moral high ground, which is necessary for them in order to guarantee foreign aid, Isbel being democratic, that their really exposed position put enormous pressure on them to democratize. Because the United States is sitting on them and going, you need to get democratic. And also the nationalists engaged on a real comprehensive after action report on Taiwan, and they concluded, why did we lose? Well, it was this incredible corruption and the need to do land reform. I don't think land reform was feasible for Shanghai-shek on the mainland. Why? Because that's his power base, all the landowners. And you try to reform them. You'll get a headshot. Whereas on Taiwan,”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have been instrumental, the ones built right after World War II in holding the peace. Japan, MacArthur's Constitution, and then Japan's subsequent leaders has worked on improving the institutions that they have. But institutions take a long, long time to build. I think about it, it's sort of like a spider's web so that you spin, spin, spin this thing that's like gossamer, but then you spend enough of it and then it really holds, but then there are people like Hitler who come through and they undo the work of others. Bismarck, when you ask about him, it's highly personalistic. That's not an institution. That's about a guy leveraging the king. There's a reason for getting rid of royalty, running the show. And then, yeah, there are emerging institutions in Germany, a general staff and some other things that are very important.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't pick on them because they're brilliant. It's amazing what they achieve. And to go, well, so it wasn't perfect. No one's perfect. So I wouldn't pick on that particular generation. They're brilliant as are Japan's post-war leaders. The way I look at it goes back to your initial question about grand strategy. Is institutions are really important? Institution structure decision making. Now, it's very difficult to figure out what types of institutions to build. And when you see failings in them, you go, oh, I've got to do something next time. But this again is the brilliance of this evolving maritime order in which we live, where people sign on to the things in which it's in their interest to sign on to them like you sign on to treaties and then you have provisos of the parts you don't want and you join these international organizations and then you influence how they develop, et cetera. So these organizations”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Europe, and then they're going to make it very highly defensible before it's all over. And Europeans as a group understand that it is absolutely in their interest to have an impregnable border around Ukraine. It protects them all. And Europe doesn't threaten Russia. They would love it if Russia would join the party. Join the rules-based order. You'll make money. You'll do well, except the oligarchs in question, this real minority of people who run Russia and Putin, they personally won't do as well. Well, now they're war criminals, so they're out of luck.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are talking about a death ground kind of civil war where one's in power and just ruins the other, the other gets in power, they ruin the other people. And that's what's going on in Afghanistan and Iraq. In addition, because their internal locations in the middle of continents and they're surrounded by a variety of neighbors. And if you look at those neighbors, you go, ooh, a bunch of those people are going to intervene. And they're going to intervene in very destabilizing ways. Very difficult. In Japan, it's an island. It's hard for people to intervene. Germany, we put a lot of money into it with having troops and getting the German army and other things up and running.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In both countries. There's no parallel for that in Afghanistan and Iraq, right? They've never had developed countries. Germany and Japan were developed countries. And then you think, well, how long does it take to become a developed country? Well, some people say centuries, right? And then there's a whole other piece, which is the Germans and the Japanese had a real sense of nation, right? nationalism. So you don't have to worry about nation building because they have a sense of national identity. You do worry about state building. So we were doing helping with state rebuilding. Well, in Afghanistan and Iraq, there's no sense of a nation. They have these, I'm no expert on these parts of the world, but my understanding is you have these very different ethnic groups, many of whom want to kill each other, right? You just got a civil war going on.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Women to vote, and there'd been a certain amount of land reform. He said there was no going back. It permanently changed the balance of power in Japan. Another feature is the Japanese, the Imperial Japanese Army had so disgraced itself. Their strategy had led to the fire bombing of the home islands talk about a total failure. And in Germany, the same sort of thing you have a universal elections and things. It took a while to get the western zones united because all the fighting with the Russians over there zone eventually get two Germanys, et cetera. But then you have a very competent post-war generation, both in Japan and Germany, who understood full well the horrors of the war, that they'd been put through as conscripts, and they are really intent on rebuilding their societies, and they're the miracle generation.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Japanese are hemming and hawing over what their constitution was going to be like. And so MacArthur finally got fed up and in one week he got his staff to write this constitution and they're running around Tokyo going to bombed out libraries or whatever, trying to find examples of Western constitutions so they can pull it all together as long before there's an internet where you can figure these things out. And they're figuring out what the Constitution is going to be. And so they cook it up over the week. And what the Japanese think, the ones who are dealing with, they think, well, you know, the Americans are going to leave. And so we'll go along with this constitution. But once the Americans are out, we're going to do whatever. And what Prime Minister Yoshida, he was the first post-war prime minister, he said, well, we thought we could change it back. But he realized because of the vote, universal suffrage allowing”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Easy. One is a case of rebuilding institutions, and the other one is building them from scratch. You can rebuild things rapidly. And if you think of after the war, how things were bombed out in Western Europe, and quite rapidly they repair buildings and things. So both Germany and Japan had had an extensive list of functioning institutions from local police officers, offices to educational systems, to governments that local, provincial, et cetera, governments, and running the train systems and businesses and all of this have been absolutely functional. And so finding the expertise to recreate that is easy. And of course, Germans and Japanese can be living there, so they are very interested in rebuilding. And then what the key thing the United States then did, I know more about Japan than Germany, is”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Country and one of the things you asked me in email about is whether superior finances wins wars or something, it's superior alliance systems that win wars. And it's interesting that the Europeans, particularly the Eastern Europeans, are the leaders of all this. And isn't it fascinating that the Finns and the Swedes, who forever were neutral, are now all over this? And they know. So what is it? The enemy gets a vote. The Russians have a vote, as long as the Russians are playing this game, our best bet is to support Ukrainians. Because unlike Iraq and Afghanistan, where the locals do not do the bulk of the fighting, this is when the locals are. And that's key on whether you also were emailing me and asking me about successful versus unsuccessful.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no one's marching on a Moscow The United States has done this for many years you don't recognize the territories that he's taken, which means the Russians are stuck with a sanction regime of some type forever. And you go, oh, well, that'll weaken certain people won't adhere to it. It will depress Russian growth forever, which goes back to an earlier part of this conversation of its really powerful. And it was some Russians who themselves at the very beginning said, oh, no, we are going to be like North Korea. Yeah, you will be. That's exactly where he's heading them. We don't control when the Russians reassess. We can't even predict when or whether they'll reassess. We can't predict whether there'll be some kind of incipient civil war in Russia, right? Which would be, well, destabilizing by definition, who knows how that goes. But the Ukrainians are fighting for their...”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then the question is whether all the oligarchs want to keep doubling down with him and his generals or whether they, I don't know, give him something extra in his cheerios some morning, who knows?”
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 put stupid out of it because it's not explanatory by saying, well, someone's stupid because it means you write off understanding their reasoning. So a lot of Westerners, when they think of governments, think about governments operating in interest of their population. So when their decisions don't improve standards of living, security, and things, then we say those aren't good decisions. All right, but that's not the game. In China, for instance, it's all about maintaining the monopoly of the Chinese Communist Party to rule. And if that conflicts with having higher living standards, you better believe they're choosing Communist Party. So you're watching those kind of decisions going on right now where they're most talented entrepreneurs are being relieved of their enterprises. Or Putin, as you said, he's made a”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would think, oh, well, let's try North Korea for a country that's got starvation in the 21st century. How did you do it?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the Chinese have whispered in his ear, and this is pure speculation is buddy if you do this, everybody on the planet's going to get nuclear weapons, and all of a sudden we aren't going to have this little small club of people with nuclear weapons, and the consequence is going to be rather horrendous. And also look at China. It has more nuclear-armed neighbors than anyone on the planet, and some of them are totally nuts.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what's the nuclear war going to do, Putin? The Ukrainian forces are disperused. What's the target? It's going to be Kyiv, I suppose?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That Putin's model of the basically taking over your neighbor's stuff and then whatever you haven't bombed flat bringing home is not an efficient way to make wealth. And you're killing so many people. So I don't believe that we in the West have this Denying people of Eastern Europe Saying, hey, well, actually, because the Russians have such an attitude, you get to be their serfs forever.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think what was hoped, and hope has been said not to be a strategy, the hope was that trying to get Russia to join the party. So trying to integrate their energy supplies into Europe, paying them good money for it, have them make lots of money on that, hoping that they would invest this into their road system, which is lamentable, and hoping that they would invest this to cleaning out their business laws, which are it's horrendous trying to run a business. As you watched right now as different things get nationalized and taken over and different business leaders who are successful wind up unaccountably dropping out of six floor windows and things, or old people always seem to fall downstairs. I think that's a special way of offing people. That was the hope is join the party because you will become wealthy too. Russian standards of living have been stagnating for quite a while.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, but when you talk about, oh, should we deny these things because we got some egos in Russia that want to maintain a continental empire? I cannot and you cannot change how Russians think about things, right? Russians have to how they think about the things that's their decision. But if you look at Europe as a peninsula, you're better off with more insulation from Russia than not.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is what Russia's been up to. They have been correct that Russia is going to do more terrible things. They were correct doing everything they could to get into NATO. And also be in the EU and it's incredible in my lifetime remembering what the standards of living of people in Eastern Europe that the Soviet Union had dominated and what it is now since they have been freed of Soviet domination has been massive compounding of standards of living. It's allowed people your age to travel the world have allowed to have aspirations in their lives, right?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I think you should look at the people living in the countries in question. So before we decide that we're the important people in the world, Americans or we're in Britain now or Britons, and therefore anyone in between doesn't count, I believe that's wrong. So all of the countries that joined NATO desperately wanted to join NATO, right? And they've had a whole history of Russians doing terrible things to them. I'm not making it up.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, yeah, you've got to always not use nuclear weapons, right? That Pandora, the box has been opened, that nukes are there.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Course, yeah, this is the problem. With all of this. Of course, it could, and there are many people working to prevent this from happening. You see all of these meetings where our leaders are meeting with each other. If you get into some global war with people with nuclear weapons, when the losers decide that rather than losing, they're going to go for one more roll of the die, which is a nuclear weapon, then the question is whether the people below them will actually implement the order, et cetera. You know, think about low probability but high consequence events. I don't know what the probability is, but I know the consequences are huge.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, it's pivot, what I would call pivotal error. Japan's decision to attack Pearl Harbor is a pivotal error. They are already grossly overextended in China. They want to cut out foreign aid. They think, oh, remember that Hawaii is not a US state, doesn't become a state on 59 or something. And they probably take this racist view of Hawaiians of whoever they think the Hawaiians are. And so their ideas are going to take a newspaper, thwap the dog on the snout and the dog will quit. And instead, you create great power allies all across the Pacific for the Chinese. So yeah, there are pivotal errors that you can make, at which point there is no return for the status quo ante. You have seen Putin make a pivotal error, right? He was getting away with hanging on to the Donbass and the Crimea. Now he made the pivotal error to try to take the whole enchilada.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who are poor already, and then you have a great depression, you get desperate decisions. And then once you start a war, it's very difficult to stop. So it's a great lesson. So Japan then is making an ugly decision because it's stuck. And so they go into Manchuria, which is where all their investments are to protect them. China's got this crazy civil war going on. Japan, if it had just sat in Manchuria and just sat, they probably would have been just fine because they do stabilize Manchuria. They are bringing some income back in. But the moment that they escalate big time in 37, they ruin their economy. It takes a number of years to play out fully. It's a disaster for themselves most of all.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source