YouSaid · the spoken record

Scott Horton

lines on the record: 802
first: 2025-08-24
most recent: 2025-08-24
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

“Going to make matters worse, but you can't fix it with a B2. Even if you kill the Ayatollah and ten of his best guys, you still didn't overthrow the government there. They got twenty more guys. What are you talking about? They just make a new guy the Ayatollah and pull the old president out of retirement, put him up there. You know, so if you're insisting on regime change, it's going to take the 3rd Infantry Division. Anybody signing up for that?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So yeah, of course diplomacy is the answer when he's sitting there saying, Look, man, I have a civilian program, and that's going to have to be good enough for you. Of course, violence and threats are what has made it far more likely that they're now going to make nukes, because the Israelis say for them to have nuclear technology at all is equivalent to them having an advanced weapons program, which is just really not true. And again, it's a problem that we can't solve for them without committing to a serious war effort that no war planners have talked about in this whole time. But again, that's the unreality, the whole thing. You can't solve it from the air, so don't start it.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and especially considering, I'm not saying that's like the magic trick of all foreign policy or whatever, although I'm just a non interventionist anyway, but I'm just saying as far as solving this problem. The Ayatollah wasn't making nukes. Wasn't an emergency that we had to preempt.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whatever and what is happening now essentially undercover darkness. So if they invite the inspectors back in and say, see our civilian program, at that point they very well could have a secret parallel weapons program that we don't know about. Now, that has not been the case this whole time. It very well could be the case going forward from the summer of 2025.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Israel and America just gave them cause to kick the inspectors out of the country. They think the inspectors were spies past intelligence to the planners for the war. So they kicked the inspectors out. So now we lost track of every last atom. We had it where I could sit here and tell you, man, the IAEA for all their complaints about, oh, we found this little thing and we found that little thing. Explain this, explain that. For all of their little nitpicking, they always continued to verify the non-diversion of nuclear material in Iran to any military or other special purpose, meaning they knew where it all was. They had their scales, they had their sensors, they had their seals and their cameras, and they knew this much uranium is here today. It's there tomorrow and whatever. They tracked it all around, and they could verify the non-diversion. That's the IAEA's job. Now that chain of evidence is broken. Now, like, we don't know exactly what they're enriching. We don't know how much exactly they've been able to convert and where they diverted it to.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you know, like I talk with Trita Parsi, and he's a great expert on this and has been preaching more or less the dove side of the case here for a very long time. He told me on the show the other day, he's like, I fully expect them to break out and make a nuke now. Hell, they kicked the inspectors out.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ye ain't over yet, man. That's the problem. Could have solved it at the table. They probably still could, but you have to recognize.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he shoots his 14 little measly missiles as essentially a show only. And so we're relying on that. This thing could have escalated, right? This war that Israel's dragging us into. It could, what if they had shot 5,000 missiles at our bases in the Gulf? We'd be in the middle of an ugly as hell war right now. They'd have had to quote unquote had. They'd have talked themselves into probably sending in ground troops to complete the regime change once it gets that bad. So that is a risk that they were taken. And thank goodness that cooler heads prevail, but it's kind of nuts that America has to rely on the supposedly mad molas to be cool while we're bombing them, right, in a way where if they escalate at all, we could escalate and the thing could get way out of control very quickly with America attempting to occupy a land.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're not the aggressive power that they're portrayed to be oftentimes. You know, even again, look at this current war where they fired all these rockets at an empty corner of a base again and cutter. They called Donald Trump beforehand and let him know the rockets are coming. They fired exactly as many rockets as bombs America dropped fourteen and remembered Trump tweeted, thanks for the heads up that you're shooting the rockets so we can shoot them all down. In other words, even after America hit them with our biggest conventional bombs, they still struck back only in a symbolic way. An absolutely signal they did not want to tangle with the USA at all. This is after Trump warned them to evacuate Tehran, right? Which could have been a threat of a nuclear strike or at least a carpet bombing campaign or at least a very heavy bombing campaign against government targets, civilian government and military government targets in the city that is a pretty major threat and the ayatollah still is like, come on, man, I want to fight you.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that is a good question, but hang on. Let's do Somalia real quick. Yeah, no, I'm sure it would suck to live in Tehran. You know what I mean? Or in Iran. I don't know. I'm sure it's a police state. It's on the face of it. It's an extremely flawed republic the same as ours, only different in different ways. I mean, the very worst things you can say about them in international diplomacy or international action lately is they keep opening up America's Christmas gifts. They keep accepting, I mean, if you want to blame them for sending Chalabi to lie to Pearl, you can. But I mean, essentially, they stay home and let America do their dirty work for them. You know, we fought three wars for them, two Iraq wars in Afghanistan. And hell helped empower their friends in Yemen accidentally in reaction form, but still. And so, um,”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to get along with everybody. Let's all just get along and make money for the rest of the century. Yeah, dude, that is, you know, the lack of special interests talking, right? That's what Trump thinks before everybody gets to get in there and have their say about, no, sir, we got to do this, that, and the other thing. But why have major power competition at all? Why have any of this stuff? Maybe we can just be a world of people owning property and exchanging it freely to greater enhance our standard of living.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, could have tried harder and better and not hired John Bolton to help. You know what I mean? These are decisions that men made. They could have gone the other way and they still could. You know, if you remember when Trump first came in, he was saying a lot of really cool stuff about, yeah, I'm going to sign a big new nuke treaty. I want to slash the military budget. I want to have a new treaty with Russia and China where we all slash our military budgets. He said, I don't want to pivot from the Middle East to great power competition.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and especially the care thing. That's my thing with North Korea. It's like, do we have everything to give and nothing to lose? Like even when I described the Bill Clinton deal, we give them some fuel oil and some welfare. You know what? Like I'm a libertarian. I'm against all taxation. But all other things being equal What's it to you, Lex? We pay em a little bit of welfare to keep them from turning their heavy water reactor back on and harvesting plutonium out of the SOB, okay? Now they're sitting on a couple of dozen nukes, and it's all America's fault. So”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You got to appreciate the fact that the Republicans probably still, even though there's obviously a lot of resentment and a lot of bad feelings over all these years, but comes down to it of Republican president really says, come on, everybody, we got to go fight them radical Islams. He could probably get a lot of Republicans to go ahead. Oh man, terrorism's a problem again. Remember Islam from before the thing? And like, yeah, and go along with that. I think they could. And I think Donald Trump could simply just run on I kill Muslims dead and I'm a big, tough right winger. But he does not. He runs on I'm the peace president. I'm the one who's trying to solve all this. I'm the one who's going to make all this go away for you. He knows that's what we want to hear. And I think it's his basic bias, except of course he has, you know, Israel, the devil on his shoulder making him or, you know, strongly influencing him to choose the wrong thing a hell of a lot of the time.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could imagine it going terribly, right? In a way totally different than having Reagan and his successor Bush handling it from the GOP side. And then same thing here, man. If Donald Trump just gets up there and goes, as he always does, right? I'm the tallest, richest, most handsome, most successful diplomat in the history of the world. Watch me and then go out and make that the standard being. Being a good diplomat is the measure of a man. I say so, and then go out there and act that way, then it is what he says it is, right? What the hell?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go in and do diplomacy. And that's Trump's whole thing. And look, you know, they say only Nixon can go to China. Well, why is that? Because if a Democrat did it, Nixon would call him a comi, right? Like you can't, it would be Nixon to stop it. But if Nixon goes, well, you know it's not that he's a commie. Here's shaking hands with Mao Tsi Tung. Why would Henry, I mean, yeah, why would Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon of all people shake hands with Mao? They did because they're smart, right? Not because they're communists, but because they were making what they thought was a wise move to benefit America's national interests at the expense of the Soviet Union. And if that means shaking the bloodiest hand in the history of the world, then business is business, right? Same thing as Ronald Reagan can end the Cold War with Mikhail Gorbachev. Imagine if Mondale had won in 84 and it was Walter Mondale that was trying to negotiate the end of the Cold War in front of the Republicans.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's got to be a way. And even if that's the hardest one, I think we could absolutely put away our problems with Iran and North Korea, no question. I don't really know exactly what we have outstanding with China other than the potential of conflict over Taiwan. They're not really threatening our allies in Korea, Japan, or Australia, or anybody else. I don't really worry about that. That's not been their history. They've got their own problems. It's a very poor country in the West and all that. Not so worried about the rise of China as some are.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. I absolutely think that Donald Trump could go straight to Tehran and then Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang and come home and be Trump the Great. Said before, I'll say it again. And even with the Russia situations we talked about before, but I don't want to spoil it.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To a regime change were only incentivizing them to arm themselves up worse. So now we're counting on like the cool, patient wisdom of the Ayatollah Khamenei to not be that crazy when the whole point supposedly of this is that he's so crazy that you can't trust him with any nuclear technology at all, right? You can't trust him with the ability to enrich uranium up to weapons gray, whether he is or not. But now we got to just rely on him and hope he doesn't because now he could. You just dig a deeper hole under a bigger mountain and try again.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First and denuclearization later. That was always obviously the poison pill of the Bush and Obama people. First, give up all your nukes, then we'll begin to talk to you. Yeah, right. And so Stephen Began, who worked for Trump, was saying, nah, we don't have to do it like that. We can work with them. He gave a speech like that. But then if you look at the pictures, Began's in the chair in the back by the wall and doesn't get to sit at the table say nothing, or he's down further on the table, whatever it was, and didn't get to have his say. And so it was Bolton help. It was the same guy, John Bolton. who Sheldon Adelson picked to be Donald Trump's National Security Advisor was the one who ruined that. Anyway, on Iran, me and every other Don't Bomb Iran activist in America for two decades have been saying, if we attack them, then they're more likely to break out and make a nuke. So I have to stand on that, that yes, they are now more likely to break out and make a nuke than they were before because of the completely foreseeable fact that we can't.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the Ayatollahs said, Lo, no man, hands up, don't shoot. Here's my books Yes, I'm enriching your anium, and I know you don't want me to. He bought some equipment to do it off the black market, but only because Bill Clinton denied the Chinese the right to just sell them a light water reactor, prevented them from doing so, when that would have been fine. Do you just let the Chinese sell them a light water reactor? They would have never had a heavy water one, you know? Well, in fact, one more thing about North Korea. Donald Trump proved that diplomacy works. He completely broke the ice with Kim the last time he was the president. It was John Bolton that sabotaged the thing. He brought John Bolton with him to, I forgot if it was Vietnam or Singapore, which meeting it was were Bolton sabotaged thing. On the second meeting, he literally sent Bolton to outer Mongolia to keep him out of the way, but it wasn't enough. But if he had let Stephen Began, he was the guy who said, hey, we could take denuclearization off the table first and just work on normalization.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was only then that Kim Jong-ilf said, fine, screw you guys, and announced he was going to withdraw from the treaty, kick the inspectors out of the country, and they started making nuclear weapons. Now, you might ask, what the hell were they doing? And I think the answer is they thought they would have a chance to go to war with North Korea before they were able to complete their bombs. Problem is, Iraq didn't go like Ahmed Chalabi promised it would go, and so they were in no position whatsoever to go to North Korea. So they forced them out of the deal, pushed, pushed to nukes. That was the great, the last article that the great Gordon Prater wrote for us at antiwar.com was called How Bush pushed North Korea to nukes. And it tells this whole story. Rest in peace, my friend Gordon. He was a great one, man.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Admitting, supposedly, although not on camera or on audio anywhere, but supposedly a guy admitted at a cocktail party that they had a secret uranium enrichment program. Well, if they did, that's not necessarily a violation of the NPT or their safeguards agreement or of the agreed framework. Again, a civilian enrichment program is protected under the NPT as long as you're not making weapons out of it in violation of the deal, right? So even if they were doing that, that's a cause to sit back down at a table. That's not a cause to break the deal. But what did Bush do? him and Bolton, they tore up the agreed framework, officially announced that it's dead. Then they added new sanctions. Then they announced something called the proliferation security initiative, which was their claim to have the right to seize any North Korean ship on the high seas in order to prevent proliferation, which is nothing in international law allowing that. They just claim it unilaterally. And then in December of 2002, they put them in the nuclear posture review on the short list for a potential nuclear first strike.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They delivered some of the fuel oil, but very little of it. But still, the North Koreans stayed in their side of the deal until W. Bush came to town, and W. Bush first of all put him in the axis of evil, and then in the fall of 2002, John Bolton accused them of.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This whole time they have not broken out to make a nuclear weapon. Now, the North Koreans did. George Wish, well, I'll tell you real quick, was this quick little thing. In 2002, George Bush put him in the Axis. Well, first of all, Bill Clinton had an agreement with them. It's called the agreed framework of 1994 that said that if you leave your heavy water reactor off at Yongbyong, that the Soviets had built for them, you leave it off, we will build you two light water reactors that cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium as waste. And we'll give you a bunch of fuel oil and a bunch of welfare. If you stay in the NPT, don't enrich an enrichment program at all. Stay in the NPT, keep the inspectors in the country, leave your reactor off, and we'll do these things for you. Now, America never lived up to their end of the deal. Newt Gingrich wouldn't let Bill Clinton live up to his end of the deal in the 90s. It was actually Donald Rumsfeld's company that got the contract to build the light water reactors and never delivered them.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Keep enriching to a higher and higher degree. If you want us to stop doing that, you need to engage in diplomacy instead of murder and sabotage. That was the message that they're sending. And then, of course, They're just going to ship all the uranium to Russia or to France. Probably, I guess the Russians, to dilute it down back into a lower grade to burn in their civilian reactor. And so”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over there, Fakrisada, in a machine gun ambushed thing. And then in April of 21, they did a sabotage attack at Natant's, which they took credit for. And it was in reaction to that was when the Iranians started enriching up to 60%. Now at this point in the story, Mike Baker goes something, something, yada, yada, yada, and can't finish the statement. What does it mean that they have 60% uranium? What are they doing with it? Yes, it's true that If they turned it back into a gas and enriched it all the way up to 90%, then they would have enriched weapons-grade uranium, but they're not doing that. And they weren't doing that. And so why try to frame it as a dangerous threat? The only reason they were enriching it up is because, of course, it is closer to weapons grade. They're demonstrating that like, hey guys, you keep assassinating our guys and sabotaging our plants. We keep it is counterproductive for you, isn't it?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You see, they don't go anywhere with it. It's all just a non circular. It doesn't mean anything. Marco Rubio goes, the only countries with 60% enriched uranium-235 are countries with nuclear weapons. You see how that doesn't mean anything? You can't make a nuclear weapon with 60% enriched uranium. So what was the point of them making 60% enriched uranium? It was so they had leverage in the negotiations that they were in the middle in. So they could negotiate it away. They did the same thing in the Obama years when they were working on getting into the JCPOA. And it was America that broke the deal, not them. And then it says in the deal that if America starts breaking the deal, then Iran can stop abiding by some of the stipulations in it without actually leaving the deal and without being in violation of the deal. They'd just be stop abiding by some stipulations. In December of 2020, Israelis killed the top nuclear scientists.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It means don't trust, it means be polite and verify. That's what it means, right? It means pretend like you're trusting because that's how you get along in the world. But you verify. You send your inspectors to make sure that's all, and you have an agreement to do so, and it's fine. And quite honestly, like, look, man, the ayatollah, if he wanted to secretly try to break out and enrich up to weapons great and make a nuclear weapon, he could have. You know, I'm sure you've heard this propaganda numerous places on TV. Marco Rubius said this numerous times. Mike Baker is a regular podcast guest around here somewhere and was saying this kind of thing A week ago or so that look, Iran had 60% enriched geranium. Like, that's on its way to weapons grade. That would be easier to enrich to weapons grade.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that we can move forward? Yes, they should. That was a stupid thing that some idiots did, but that was a long time ago. And we have to live on this planet together. So what are we going to do? You put those things behind us and you move on. This is business, man. And so that's what you do. You just ignore the Israel lobby and you just put Trump on a plane to Tehran. Look here, Ayatollah. I was talking with my guys and we figured out this is what we could probably agree on and here are the issue's still outstanding and let's figure it out. And by the way, this is how Nixon and Kissinger did Mao. They went over there and they agreed to be friends first. Then they worked on all the stipulations.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's just the attitude. All you have to say is this is a USA. We're number one. I ain't afraid to know Ayatollah. Like, we have all the power. So you tell me even though we have all the power, we hold all the cards. There's nothing we can do to work it out with these people. Come on. We still hold a grudge over because they supported the groups that did the Beirut attack in 1983. Get out of here. Ronald Reagan was selling the missiles a year or two years after that through the Israelis. So come on. You know, you can't, you're not allowed to, look, we help Saddam Hussein gass their cities. Our aircraft carrier shot down one of their civilian airliners with almost 300 people on board. So should they forgive us for that?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rappro Send whoever is the secretary to stay, oh God, Marco Rubio, send somebody over there and just be cool diplomacy. Yeah, we had, look, as I said before. Zabin and Brzezinski and Alexander Hague, they wanted to normalize relations with Iran in 1993. He said, we didn't do business with these people. Dick Cheney said, we do business with these people.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I forgot his brother's name. And Frida's his daughter and McAllister is his wife, the nun. And these guys They go to prison all the time. Daniel and Philip, that's right. They're a peace activist, you know. Frida is their daughter. She's a great one. And so I have, you know, all that kind of stuff. As I say, Hiroshima Nagasaki, why North Korea's nuclear weapons program is all George W. Bush's fault, which you don't want to get me on that topic probably. Although I could do it pretty quick, but we should do it round first at least before we forget.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the title of the book, you know, I had already done my first two books, Are Time to End, the War in Afghanistan and Time to End the War on Terrorism. So this one's called Time to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which I think really puts people off and makes it sound like, oh, just unilateral surrender to the ChICOMs or whatever kind of thing, you know. But that's not really what the book is about, right? The book is essentially about all aspects of nuclear weapons. America and Russia's nuclear arsenals, past and present, North Korea, Israel, Iran, India, and Pakistan, and all their different nuclear weapons programs, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all the anti-nuclear activists, including like the nuns who break into naval bases and bang on ICBMs with a hammer and then go to prison for 10 years. And there's a whole very proud tradition of essentially socialists, like the Catholic workers who, the Berrigan family, you've probably heard of Father Berrigan, Daniel Berrigan.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I mean, the funny story about that is a friend of mine just came to me and goes, Look what I did, and he sends me a PDF of transcripts of all these interviews I've done about nuclear weapons over 20 years. I didn't even ask him to do it or anything. He just came to me. And then so I was like, okay, well, I'm going to delete a couple of these and I want to add a couple more. And then we just kind of ship shaped it. I stopped writing provoked for a minute to get this out in 22.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I did have a fun conversation one time of Lyle Goldstein, who's this brilliant all kinds of nuclear war planner and defense analyst. He used to be at the Naval War College. And I was saying, but come on, Lil, like, what if we just got him down to a few low kiloton type bombs or whatever? And he's going, yeah, no, we don't want to do that because that makes him really much more thinkable and usable. What you want to do is have at least a certain minimum number of multi-megaton city killer bombs so that the capital cities remain in jeopardy because that is the counter incentive to the politicians going that far. You need forget the tactical. You need the strategic nukes to prevent war, right? And so all that makes sense if you're a certain kind of egghead, but I'm just saying, man, I don't know. The bombs that they hit Japan with are nothing compared to the super, as they called it then, the hydrogen fusion.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the worry, right? And from all the war games, once the nuke starts going off, they keep going off. We can't let them nuke us without nuking them back. We have to do something, sir. And then it just keeps going and going. The Americans claimed that the Russians, and I don't know the truth of this could be true, that the Russians have a doctrine of escalate to de-escalate. I think they denied it. But in other words, they'll go ahead and drop a nuke first and say, see, that's how angry we are. You guys better back down. And the Americans immediately ran a war game and publicly leaked it and said, if the Russians ever try to do that escalate to de-escalate stuff, no, we will nuke Belarus. And we will say, oh, no, we're the ones who are loco. Don't you mess with us? We are escalating to de-escalate. Now you back down. So you see, then we all die by seven thirty, right?”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Conclusion that William Perry and Henry Kissinger too at the end of their lives. They formed a group called Global Zero, George Schultz as well, Reagan Secretary of State, formed a group called Global Zero about saying we have to got to get rid of these weapons. And William Perry, he had been Clinton's Secretary of Defense, who had opposed NATO expansion, almost resigned over it and should have. But he wrote a book about my life at the nuclear brink, and he wrote about like, you just don't understand about these machines, okay? Right, talking about a hydrogen bomb? Like you just can't imagine what it would be like to have Dallas wiped off the face of the earth. That level of devastation and what that would mean for the survivors and the rest and having all of our cities wiped off the face of the earth in an afternoon like that, everything our ancestors have built for three thousand years destroyed. Over nothing could possibly be worth it. Nothing could be.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Missiles, then you don't need one anyway, so it's okay. And then, by the way, they were not counting on a magic wish to implement it either. The plan always was going to be America and the Soviet Union would try to get our nuclear stockpiles down to rough parody with the other nuclear weapon states at that time, France, Britain, Israel, and China in the impact stand didn't have nukes yet. South Africa only had a few before they gave them up. And then once we got down to about 200 or 300 each, then we see if we get down to 100 each. Then we see if we get down to 50 each. Then we see if we get down to 10, right? So it was not like, oh, Ronald Reagan turned into Jane Fonda, the commi hippie, sellout trader who wanted to just give away the store to the enemy and all of a sudden became, you know, a naive believer in fantasies coming true. It was all like a hard-headed realism that these machines are too dangerous to let politicians hold on to them over the long term.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They didn't know. Ronald Reagan didn't know this is the end of the Soviet Union. He knew it was the end of the Cold War. Him and Gorbachev were in the Cold War. And Reagan believed at that point, to some degree or another, I can't speak exactly, but they reportedly believed he was on a mission from God that he had the destiny granted to him, mandated to him to abolish nuclear weapons from the face of the earth, and he was a hair away from making that deal with Mikhail Gorbachev, and the tragedy of it is that the deal fell apart because of the completely fantastic and ridiculous promise of the Star Wars Shield program where they were going to have lasers in space to shoot down all incoming ICBMs and all this. And we're talking 1986 technology, right? This is a joke. There's no way in the world they're going to do that. It would have cost, you know, however many trillions we didn't have and never worked anyway. And Reagan said, well, I promised the American people that I would build one. But the whole thing is, man, if we're getting rid of all the nuclear...”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan went to Reykjavik in 86 and he was a hair away from making a deal with Mikhail Gorbachev. This three years before the wall came down in Berlin, okay? They didn't know that the Soviet Union was about to cease. And hell, the Soviet Union didn't cease to exist again until the end in 1991.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. Yeah, there's no. There's no real base of statistics to measure from, right? It's been a few decades. Think of it like this. If I say to you, look, man, here's how international security is going to work for the next 275 years, okay? All the major powers are going to have hydrogen bombs, and they're all going to hold them at each other's capital cities, heads, and a Mexican standoff permanently. It's going to be great. And that's how we're going to go forward for the next 10 generations. No? It couldn't possibly work, could it? We're all going to die at some point if that's the setup. And I'm not advocating for a global state here. I'm perfectly against that better than anybody. But I am advocating for multilateral disarmament. And Ronald Reagan thought we could.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I don't want anybody having nuke because I hate to see the proliferation. I mean, in a way, nuclear weapons seem to make states more responsible a lot of times, but you can't really count on that, right? You can say... They keep the peace. They do keep the peace. Major powers don't want to fight with hydrogen bombs. Come on, it's insane. It's beyond insane. It's unthinkable. On the other hand, it's a great bluff until it fails, and if it fails, then you're talking about devastation beyond imagination.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, then, if they keep enriching, then we keep bombing. And Trump has explicitly threatened that, right? So we're just on this ladder. They're not going to give up enrichment and Trump is apparently so far never going to back down on enrichment, which W. Bush and Obama had done. Like, what are you going to do? They're never going to give up enrichment. If we're going to be reasonable and get a deal, we are going to have to recognize their right to enrich, which is actually in the nonproliferation treaty, which they have signed, which is America's treaty.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that could be that just because America inflicted so much damage on their thing that it's going to take them a while to get up and running enough to even make a credible breakout. I don't know. It could also be that the ayatollah has just said no. The principle of our sovereign right to enrich uranium and have a nuclear program for peaceful purposes is the only thing that we're insisting on, and we really, just like we always said, don't want nukes anyway. Now that Trump, one more thing. Now that Trump has accepted Netanyahu's definition of any nuclear program is a nuclear weapons program.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or if you have a bunch of gas, you can't convert it back into metal. So without that facility, they have a setback. But I don't think all their facilities are destroyed, and they've already announced that they're not and that they still reserve the right to enrich uranium and that they're going to, and that they're not even going to talk with us anymore until we recognize their right to enrich uranium, although they do. And I'm not saying that this is true. I don't know that this is true, but I'm saying it is true that they've said this, that they are still bound by the Ayatollahs, Fatwa of 2003 that bans reiterating the previous Ayatollah's fatwa, that bans the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. So they're declaring that they have not broken out to a nuke, are calling their bluff, which again, it was always an implied bluff. They never explicitly said, don't you bomb us or we'll make nukes, but that seemed to be the implied threat. They're a threshold state. They have a latent deterrent. Well, what happens if you bomb them? Well, now we'll make nukes, was always the implied threat. Well, now they're saying, no.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Andornutants, although there are conflicting reports, and some say that Natance was less damaged than might have been, they did destroy importantly the conversion facility at Isfahan, and that's where you can take uranium metal after you refine the ore, then you convert that to uranium hexafluoride gas. That's what you spin in the centrifuge cascades. Then you convert it back into metal. So without that facility, either have a bunch of gas or you have a bunch of metal that you can't enrich to another state, you know, to a higher state.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think he threatened them, but I think they also put out a story saying that he told the Israelis not to kill him. But I think both things are right there. But then the point being that to get a real regime change in Tehran means a real war in Iran. And air dominance is one thing, but boots on the ground standing around in Tehran telling mullahs that they cannot convene anymore or whatever is a whole different ballgame, right? And it's a thing that for all the talk of war with Iran over all of these last two decades at least, nobody's talked about we're going to send in some kind of occupation force or do anything like that. That's always been a big part of the argument against the war is that you start the war, you don't really have a way to finish it, right? Because facts, as we've already seen, contrary to Trump's claims, they did not completely obliterate their centrifuge capacity. Now they seem to have inflicted some pretty heavy damage on Fordo.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, full scale regime change, they knew we know that they knew, of course, that they would need America to finish the war against the nuclear program, which they actually didn't, but at least it would take America to hit Nats and Fordo, these deeply buried nuclear centrifuge facilities. So whether they really hoped that they could get the United States to go all the way and follow through with a regime change, hunt down and kill the Ayatollah, I mean, there was a news story that Donald Trump told the Israelis don't kill the Ayatollah. Like, we all know where he is, but don't do it. They claimed that. I don't know that that's true, but that was one of the stories that they put out anyway, was that America had made his explicit choice to preserve the regime. Although if you just kill the Ayatollah, that doesn't necessarily destroy the government, right? Somebody killed our president. That doesn't mean the whole government falls, right? The Congress is still going to convene and they're going to, whatever, have a new guy, whatever.”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was the defense minister of Israel tweeted out a picture of him with the son of the Shah Reza Pallabi or the grandson of the older Shah Reza Pallavi there as though like the plan was we're going to parachute this guy in when we launch this war. It's going to be regime change war and the Washington Post had a piece that said the Israelis sent messages to all the leading generals and told them if you don't rise up and overthrow the Ayatollah right now, we're going to kill your families. then they are hitting all these regime targets, including police stations and all this kind of stuff, command and control systems in the military, where the idea apparently was they hoped to get a regime change. You know, telling them that things like parachuting a monarch back in a Persia could possibly work to be”
2025-08-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #478 – Scott Horton: The Case Against War and the Military Industrial Complex · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source