YouSaid · the spoken record

Tim Marshall

lines on the record: 50
first: 2024-03-04
most recent: 2024-03-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“While the young people are going to see another age of miracles and wonders, I mean, just the tech that's going to come from AI and quantum computing, we cannot imagine it because it's like trying to imagine space travel thousands of years ago. It's going to come as fast. This generation is the one that's going to see. It's going to be great. It's going to solve a lot of our problems. And create others. And the only limited advice I can say is educate yourselves. Look at the different sources. Challenge yourself with other people's arguments. Be open-minded, but not so much that your brains fall out. Just be curious about the world. Realize that you're never going to get perfection, but that doesn't absolve your responsibility as being one of us that still tries to pursue it.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like that. Thank you. Well, I meant to say this at the beginning because I was almost certain we were going to embark on 90 minutes of doom, gloom, and misery, which we subsequently have. But the world's actually always been like that at times. There's always been these peaks and troughs. And if we've had 100 peaks and troughs, we've actually climbed out of 99 of the troughs. It is possible we won't climb out of this trough, but based on the previous evidence of all recorded history, I suspect we will. But AI and climate change, which we haven't talked much about and now, are going to be exceptionally challenging. But we will climb out of this trough.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Straight in and try to connect, but they've made it very hard. But it's doable. It's doable to have the West Bank viable. You could even build a four-lane highway. It's only about 23 miles across to Gaza. So you could connect Gaza and the West Bank as one contiguous entity, but it requires a change of heart.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, if there's enough goodwill by enough people on both sides, I certainly accept that the settlements have made it extremely difficult to have contiguous land, which is why just as 8,000 settlers were pulled out of Gaza amid great violence by the settlers onto the IDF, which would be repeated much worse if they tried to pull. Tens of thousands. I mean, there's about three of thousand settlers. There are places, there are certain settlements which are basically towns which you could isolate. And again, I'm not talking about the rights and wrongs of this. You could isolate it and build.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, if you like people that have hundreds and hundreds of child soldiers to support them. If you like an organization that says death to Jews as part of its motto, you can support them. Or you can work out a way. Either kill them, which I don't think will work, or find a way of stopping the missiles, which is why the ships that are there are there, because they are the ones that can knock missiles out. Nobody's going to go ashore. Well, special forces might, but nobody's going to go to war in Yemen and invade it. We've got burnt quite badly recently this century. So, yeah, it's a problem that will be managed. which is the solution to many problems.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the moment, ships are still going up and down. At the moment, our supermarket shelves are not empty, but it has raised costs. There is a knock-on effect onto our economies, and it is an example of the globalized world and the problems of the globalized world. And yeah, they're doing a really good job, the Houthis, from their perspective and from Iran's perspective. Iran calls it the unity of arenas. They've established One arena is Gaza, another arena is the West Bank, another Hezbollah in Lebanon, and then they have militia in Iraq, and then they've planted the Republican Guard in Syria. So they have all these arenas, and they can turn the heat up and turn it down whenever they want. And obviously at the moment, they want to turn the heat up. And they've been very successful. The answer...”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, they're not a state, but they are the biggest group and control most of Yemen and have access to it. But I've been to Yemen and there's not much there, I'll be honest with you. It's one of the poorest countries in the world.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they've got cruise missiles. I wonder where they got them from. Yeah, the Hoofies have got nobody actually knows except the Iranians how many they have. And they've been used to extremely good effect. And the response. Not deterred them yet, or it is slackening. It's possible they haven't got that many and they don't want to burn them all at once. Yeah, I mean, the... The effect on trade is really quite dramatic because, you know, the geography, if you're coming up the Red Sea, oh, I better turn around, then you're going right around the bottom of Africa and right up the whole coast of Africa, and then you get towards the Med or that's several weeks, tens of thousands of dollars in petrol and time and crew costs and insurance. The insurance is rocketed. So yeah, you're absolutely right.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hadn't factored in drones. The very first thing Hamas did as they approached the fence is get the five communication towers that are dotted, you know, five miles, five miles, five, whatever it is. And they droned them, they dropped the drones right onto all the comms kit. And like that, the Israelis could not talk to each other along the line, and they could not hear each other, and they couldn't see anything. So at that point, you can't even alert the people in land. And at that point, they just stormed through. I think that is a far more logical explanation than thinking that these dastardly Jews want to die in large numbers to achieve some nefarious aim.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what? They're getting tired. And the Israelis at that point were allowing, I think it was 20,000 Gazans every day to come and work. And they obviously take the money home. It was helping the economy. The Palestinians were a lot happier about this. They didn't want their work source to be shut off again. So again, it feeds into that intelligence. So you're now in the mindset that all is quiet on the Western Front. Then... The day You always fight the last war.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's more rational and more logical to think that often when it comes to intelligence you can get into a mindset where I think this supports it, that supports it, or that doesn't support it, but that could possibly be right. This supports it, this supports it. Americans went through something similar in 9-11, but not so, as catastrophic in terms of loss of life, but not as catastrophic in quite the intelligence failure way. So there's firstly that, the intelligence mindset. Then there's the smartness of Hamas, who did really almost nothing for about a year. And the intelligence reports going into the Israelis were...”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Slightly less than zero. I think if you even go close to the idea that there are people across the Israeli establishment who are prepared to Deliberately put in false reports lie to the public in order to have the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. In the never again culture that is Israel that goes to its heart. If you even get close to that, you are off in some weird world.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This decade So as a caveat, I'm not ruling out a blockade. Which again, I mean, Americans are going to fight over a blockade, not sure about that, or taking something like the Kinman Islands. The Kinman Islands are controlled by Taiwan, but they're only about two miles off the Chinese mainland. That, I'm not sure about, but a full-on assault of Taiwan Wouldn't, and I'm in charge.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just, why am I going to risk everything? Because if I don't win Done. That's why I don't think they're going to invade Taiwan. I hope I'm right.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Chinese don't know if they're going to fight or not, and by the time they're ready to fight, there'll be five American aircraft carriers. The Philippines has just signed a basing rights for five new bases in the Philippines. They're integrating their high command with the American and the Japanese High Command. The Japanese will be there. The Australians might. And who knows, the plucky QE2 may even have got there. That's what it's for. Three months we could just about make it. So if we had the resolve and the Chinese do not know, not we, but if the Americans are actually going to take a big deep breath and fight. I put all that together. I think I'm G, and I think I'm less. likely to gamble than Putin is, because I just think he is... And I think the Chinese system is more focused and more rational.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It'll take three to four months to assemble the Amada. You'll need 400,000 people with your supply lines of 120 miles of water. In that time, the Americans, who, by the way, next month will have five carrier fleets in the Western Pacific, more than, I think ever, that's nearly half of their carrier, their 11 carrier groups. We'll have plenty of time to get there. They can quite happily go there. That doesn't mean they're going to fight if they don't fight. It's all over.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Incredibly rough seas, nearly 10 months a year. Very, very rough seas. Monsoon seasons, all sorts. You want to do an amphibious crossing of 120 miles in rough seas? I mean, amphibious assault is the hardest thing in military terms. When you get there, having been bombarded for the last 10 hours it's taken you to cross, we're talking about the English channel here. You'd be fired upon the entire way over. And the Taiwanese have got state-of-the-art kit. When you get there, you can only land on this side of the island because the other side of the island you go straight into mountains. And there's only five landing beaches. When we invaded France in In 1944. 400 miles of coastline that the Germans had to guard and they had no idea where we were coming. They've got five landing beaches. Everything will be concentrated there. The last bit.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Same in China, probably similar types of things because you do not report negative things upwards in closed societies. So there's all that going on. Right. Now, the real bit. It's 120 miles from the mainland to the main Taiwanese island, Taiwan.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This goes off to This is the lesson from COVID. Strategically about Taiwan. Then the more practical things. Russia's Clearly, incredibly corrupt. I saw some pictures of their tyres when they were trying to get to Kyiv and they had USSR written on them. They were going into battle with 30-year-old tyres on their trucks. And this was the frontline stuff. So their kit hasn't worked anywhere near as well as the American kit has worked. So she doesn't know if his kit will work. She doesn't know if his army is corrupt and they're all telling him, oh, yes, sir. Of course we bought brand new tires. Kaching. In Afghanistan, I was talking to Petraeus. Telling me there's 450,000 people in the Afghan army and we pay their wages. We think there's actually only 300,000. Somebody in the Afghan army is getting 150,000 people's wages every month.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The moment you invade Taiwan, there'll be a worldwide recession because something like 60% of traffic goes through those sea lanes and they won't be during the war if there is one. World right recession, what does China need? It needs to make things and we need to buy them. And at that point, we're going to stop buying them.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We saw the collapse of evergreen, the housing... Market has just nosedived. The interior is incredibly angry with the coastal, the riches of the coastal cities, which is something that's happened throughout Chinese history. And when they get too rich and they get too poor, they usually have a revolution. That's just the economic reasons. When you do it, well, there'll be sanctions. It's hard to sanction China. They make stuff we like. Russia, five-year plans and tractors. We got enough tractors. Now what can you offer us? Really? I mean, what do they ever make? China, they make stuff we want. So it's hard to sanction them, but it'll still be a blow to them.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“President Xi, it'd be great, wouldn't it? The one who reunited it, by the way, Taiwan has only been controlled by the mainland for 10 years over the past 5,000 years. It's been controlled by Japan, it's been controlled by the Taiwanese, the indigenous people that were most of them are no longer there. And it's been by the Taiwanese and Kansaik and all the rest of it. It's only for 10 years. But yes, it's ethnically Han Yeah, I can understand the Beijing's point of view. So, if you correct to be the bloke that actually did it, Why am I going to gamble everything? Everything on this. People don't love the Communist Party. The deal is you will make us comfortable and better off them our parents and we'll let you be in charge. So that better continue. Now they've got massive economic problems in China. They've got the middle income trap.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm moving into Chad and Congo, and because basically they get well paid, they get a slice of the gold action. So they're sitting pretty, and they are an arm of the state. They weren't at first, they were allowed to grow until they were big enough. And then the state said, come here, right, we really think you should be in this country. I mean, they still get to steal lots and stuff, but you have to do certain things in that country. For example, you prop up the Mali regime when it has a coup and they kick the French out because you're quite happy to get the French kicked out of that area so you can have more control. So the Wagner group are in their various disguises are doing absolutely fine. There isn't one reason I'll counter through as many as I can. Let me count the ways.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wagner Group get all the headlines, but there's lots of Wagner groups. They were just the one that was the most flamboyant and the leader that surfaced and was prepared to be on social media and stick his neck out so far he had it chopped off. So there's lots of Wagner groups. Now, when you join the Wagner group, you don't do it because you're a loyal Wagner true believer. You do it because they pay more. So if another group pays more, you just leave them, which is what has happened, most of them have been absorbed into other Wagner groups, types with different titles, or into the military, and they're now getting paid. So it's carry on as before. And I don't know if you noticed, but this actually was the Wagner Group a couple of months last month moved into Mali in more numbers than they were before.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All three of those. There is a strong body of opinion that only a strong man can lead, or strong woman in Catherine the Great's example, only a strong person can lead such a diverse, huge 11 time zone country. There's a lot of people who agree with that. There's a lot of Russian nationalism at play here, and of course they are listening to state media and only state media, which is telling them that story I told you earlier about the barbarians are coming like they always have. We have to defend at Mother Russia. And then there's those who are too scared. And it's hard to blame them. And then there are those few hundreds, perhaps thousands, that you see laying flowers because you don't just get nicked and then turn up at magistrates court the next day. You get a good beating.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“because they are years away from being a proper democracy. Well, we all are, but years and years and years. There's no real civil society, there's no opposition media anymore, really. There's no opposition TV, newspapers, even online. There's no genuine nationwide political, but there's nothing. There's just Putin's rule.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They plan to do something else. But the only people you can see are ultra-nationalists. I mean, worse than him, the people around him. So there's one scenario where it ends up in civil war and the Siberians, and you know there's about 193 nationalities in Russia and various bits tried to break away and parts of Siberia says, excuse me, we're bankrolling all this. How come we don't get any money? How come it all goes to Moscow? So there's that scenario which I think is less likely than there's some squabbling in private, which we'll get echoes about and then emerging, oh, here's this bloke, he's the new Putin. But what will not happen is that a so-called Democrat Will arise, hold elections and be elected.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Between who wants to take over. I don't know if you've seen that great Yanuchi film, who's an intelligence squared guest soon. Amanda Ionuchi, but the death of Stalin is just superb piece of work by Ianuchi and others about the infighting that went on after Stalin died. So you're going to see something similar when Putin goes, who's in charge? Well, I'm the deputy president. Yeah, but I'm the head of the army. Yeah, but I'm the speaker in the whatever. All that will go on. And within the security tap, somebody hopefully will emerge without civil war. And there'll be a new Putin. They might end the Ukraine war.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can you say his name, please? Pray God's name. and the march on Moscow. And it was very interesting the march on Moscow. It reminded me of when Milosevic was overthrown. On the Demos of it, that was another book I wrote, by the way, Shadow Play. On the Daimilosevich was overthrown, what is often important in days like that is who doesn't pick up the phone? It's not all of what you do, it's what you don't do. And on that day, he was ringing everybody up saying, help. And the phone was ringing Nobody came to help him. It was over. He and his wife were the only people in Serbia that day that didn't know, oh, today's the day you're getting overthrown. It was a done deal. In Russia, it'll either be a dog”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm a vodka last minute. A problem. He has no natural successor. He has not groomed anybody because the problem with grooming somebody to take over is they might kill you. Which happens throughout history. So it's a real problem because Waiting, it's nearly all the security tat. And peripheral, slightly out from the security circle, it's the military circle, with a few of the oligarchs. connected to them. There is no Navalny figure, literally. There's no Nemps. There is nobody the country's even heard of. The fella that he's just banned. No one had ever heard of him who was going to stand against him. Nobody had ever heard of him anyway. So there isn't anyone. So there's two scenarios. One, the place falls apart because you saw what happened with the Wagner group and that fella from the Wagner group.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's one of the weaknesses, isn't it? If you want to be present, you need hundreds of millions. If you want to be a senator, you need tens of millions. That's a real weakness in the system. But nevertheless, it's not an, you know, I don't think things change because of the, if you skip the generation, Russia, that's a completely different thing. Now, allegedly, well, Putin's been sort of at death's door for at least five years. The amount of photographs you see, oh, look, he's...”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So on the States. I wouldn't wish anybody. I would wish very few people dead. It might not be such a bad idea to skip the current generation. In the States. But it's not so much of an issue. The Constitution, despite all the cultural wars and everything that's going on in the States, is strong enough and will hold enough and the system will produce new multimillionaire leaders.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that will be used as the lily pad to go on. But the idea we're going to have a million people is absolute nonsense. Sorry, the other line was, because when I come across someone in a book, In research that makes me go, That's going in. So, this was a moment. I looked at the terms and conditions of Starlink when you sign up for their internet satellite service, it genuinely says in them that if you're using this service on Mars, And you have to sign this document. And there's a problem with the equipment, or you have any legal issues with it, you will not refer to any earthbound legal entity. You will only... Bring it to the SpaceX legal department on Mars, which allowed me to write, I smell a muskrat.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just not going to happen. If we have got People on Mars by 2050, I think that will be incredibly good going. I do believe we will have hundreds on the moon in the 2030s”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“E ranks a million people on Mars by 2050. We'll do the maths. Isn't it something like... There's more than 40,000 a year, I think. So 40,000. So let's say you're going to put a thousand in each spaceship.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But this is what I like about Bezos. You know, they all, I think it's an African proverb, but I think it's in most cultures. You don't plant a tree to sit in its shade. You plant a tree for your grandchildren to sit in its shade. I like that. Well, Bezos has got a little division. It's not front and center, who are working on computer modeling and plans to start the very beginnings of the research for space cities with full knowledge. They'll never see it. And in three or four hundred years' time, people might trace it all the way back, well, this is where I like that. So that's the space cities. We're talking centuries, centuries in the Lagrange points. Ask for Well, he gave me two great lines for the book. One was. His quote, I want to die on Mars just not on impact. I was warmed to him”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bezos is one is really good. I like this. There's something called the Lagrange points, L1, L2, L3, L4, L5. Two bodies that revolve around each other, celestial bodies. If they both have gravity, there's a point between them where the gravity cancels out, so you can hang a machine there, space city, for example. If you go on holiday to Earth, it'll still be there when you get back because it'll be a bit of a problem if you came back and where's my city gone if it floated off. And L5 is where they reckon the first one will be, but not for 300 or 400 years.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And they intend to have a moon base by 2032, and so do the Chinese and the Russians. And what's happening in space is what's happening here. Russia and China are going up as a block with Iran, North Korea on their coattails, and on the other side, the American-led bloc, Artemis Accords, are going up. And they're all going to the moon because that's where There are precious metals, whether it's economically viable to go and get them, that's another matter. But if it's 1910 and everybody switched to oil from coal and you found an amazing source of oil, you don't think, wow, that's why everyone's going.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's pretty hard. It's hitting a bullet with a bullet. They're both going about 30,000 miles an hour. So it's amazing tech, amazingly hard, and it's one satellite. If you've got a constellation of satellites like Starlink, which is the new way, because they're about the size of Rubik's Cube and you build about 20 of them and put them all up, well, if you knock one of them out, which would be hard because they're only that big, you've still got 19 left to work. So how could you get rid of the whole thing? Small yield nuclear weapon. And that would break the outer space treaty of 1967. So? And if I'm prepared to do that, do I really care about the 1967? No. That is simply the people that are going to the moon. Well, it's the Americans, but we're part of it. They tend to have a man and a woman on the moon 2026, which HS2 means 2027.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fun, wouldn't it blowing up your nuclear early warning system with a laser? So it could be a laser that they're planning to deploy. It could be a nuclear weapon or it could be just nonsense by the Americans. I don't know. You might ask, what's the point of having a nuclear bomb in space? You can”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The headlines are talking about a nuclear weapon the Russians are thinking about putting in space. But there's no evidence for that. I'm not saying it might be a nuclear weapon. It might be a laser. I think it's more likely the Brits and the Americans, one or two others, have got a new laser weapon that can take down a drone at about seven kilometers distance. It can't hit a satellite because of the atmosphere and the clouds and destroy it. But if you put one of those on a satellite, it could easily knock out a satellite. Remember the satellites A are watching each other and B have your nuclear early warning systems in them. So that would be quite...”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They've launched a ballistic missile from the surface of the Earth, and they've hit one of their own satellites and blown it up. Because you never know when you want to blow up another one of your own satellites. And they've done it several times, and it's created an awful lot of debris. There is the debris. And I'm going to come back to that in a minute. The weapon”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which means they can't see, and you spoof them, you send up packets of information towards their sensors, which confuses them about the information that they're going to transmit back down. And for the last two years, Putin and Musk have been playing cat and mouse. He's been moving his constellation around and the Russians have been moving. They've got them on mobile trucks as well, these things. So that, I think, is the first example of the first space war where both sides have had access to space-based assets. You might have seen this story a few days ago about the Russians might be planning some new weapon in space. The Russians have already done this.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“With his trusty shield. I've only just thought of that, his starlink dishes. They call them dishy McFlatfaces because they're not curved, they're actually flat. So enter with his dishymac flatface shield. Thousands of them. Starlink terminals were flown in, distributed, they got the internet back up and running. Excellent. But of course the Ukrainian military jumped on it. And used it to target Russian soldiers. At which point, the Russians began to dazzle Starlink's constellation satellite system. You dazzle them with laser beams of light”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What the Indians did last year landing at the lunar south pole where the water is and where it's thought the precious metals for the 21st century are, that's got rocks, boulders, caves, ravines, mountains. That's hard to land on it, which is why no one has ever landed on it before. So they did an amazing job, the Indians. This is what I want about the war. In the first few days of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russians took out a lot of the ground stations for the internet, especially in the Urpin region. Now, if you've got teenage children, you'll know how serious that is. There was no Tik Can you imagine To Elon Musk, for it is he.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Room on earth, I can hide it. So I want to hide a space spy plane, which is in an area 3,000 times bigger than Earth, I can hide it. And the Americans successfully hid a robotic space spyplane up there. Well, they say it isn't a spy plane. For two years, nobody realized it was up there until it came in. Chinese are building one as well. Geosynchronous orbit is my favorite because it turns at the same speed that the Earth turns. So if you've got a satellite above it, it's looking at the same piece of territory all the time, which is pretty useful for many, many reasons. The moon has its own geography. Sea of tranquility, where Apollo 11 and most of the other Apollo missions landed, piece of cake. Flat. Any fool could do that.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, there is geography to this. Low Earth orbit. Love it. Where the satellites are that many of the communication and TVs and a lot of the spy satellites are. There's about 8,000 of them, about 3,000 others that are not working. By the end of this decade, it's thought there'll be about 30,000 of them. That's the rate of satellites that are going up. There's about 260 rocket launches last year. So that's a very useful territory, and this is where if there is to be kinetic activity in a future space war, which has already been actually, Will take place. The bit between low Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit is actually quite valuable because it's about 3,000 times bigger than the surface of the Earth in volume of area. Now, if I want to hide a plane, the size of this...”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Once I've got past the wander, because I did go off pieced in this new book, and I went all the way back to cavemen and women when we first started measuring the stars and stuff and being in wonder of it. Then I go on to this bloke, Tiakowski, usual spelling, who actually, several years before Kitty Hawk took off 1890s, he was designing spaceships that would dock with each other. He's escape velocity. He came up with the equation of how fast for how long, with how much feel to break the barriers. Geography. I'm glad you mentioned that. Thank you.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“East to west because the earth is turning in that direction, so you get more of a boost. That's geography. The Israelis launched West East West. Sorry, you launch west to east, but the only country that doesn't is Israel, which for obvious reasons don't really want to be launching eastwards. You launch westwards into the MED of space rockets. Everyone else launches the other way because you get bigger boost. And you launch as close to the equator as you can. Cornwall, for example, in the UK, or to be less facetious, Cape Canaveral, Florida. French Guiana, and the Russians went to Kazakhstan because it was closer to the equator, because you get faster boosts. So there's all that geography.”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then, about this new frontier that you've opened up in your new book, and that's space. Is there a geography to space? Is it useful to think about space in those terms? Yes, it's a bit of a stretch, I accept it. But there is a geography to it. But also even the bits that are not geographic in the way we understand them, really here on Earth, are useful, I think, as an analogy. So I talk about oceans of distance because it gets us thinking in ways we understand. We know how long it took to venture across the oceans over here. So these oceans of distance that we will have to cross, the fact that you can slingshot around a planet, you can use its gravity to come around it and slingshot and get a boost. That's geography. You launch from Earth”
2024-03-04 · Intelligence Squared · Tim Marshall: How Geography Explains Our World, Part Two · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT