Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 4/16/26: Professor Marandi On Iran Talks, Allbirds Rebrand As AI, College Grads Screwed

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4/16/26: Professor Marandi On Iran Talks, Allbirds Rebrand As AI, College Grads Screwed · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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0:30
Speaker 2: So for more on the war from the Iranian perspective,
0:33
Speaker 2: we are glad to be joined this morning by Professor
0:36
Speaker 2: Mohammad Mirandi. He is a professor at the University of
0:39
Speaker 2: Tehran and actually was part of the delegation in Islamabad recently.
0:42
Speaker 2: So very grateful to have you this morning.
0:43
Speaker 1: Sorry, just you, sir, thank you, thank you.
0:46
Speaker 2: Of course, so I wanted to get your reaction to
0:48
Speaker 2: some comments from Secretary of War Pete Hegseth this morning.
0:52
Speaker 2: He said in a press conference, if Iran chooses poorly,
0:55
Speaker 2: then they will have a blockade and bombs dropping on infrastructure,
0:59
Speaker 2: power and energy. How are you viewing these negotiations. Do
1:03
Speaker 2: you think this is another US ruse? Do you think
1:06
Speaker 2: they are just trying to prepare for a new escalation,
1:09
Speaker 2: or do you think that they are serious about doing
1:11
Speaker 2: what it takes to achieve some sort of a deal.
1:15
Speaker 4: I think the Iranians from the very beginning believed that
1:18
Speaker 4: the US was not serious, and the United States back
1:23
Speaker 4: down from its initial position of unconditional surrender to the
1:28
Speaker 4: fifteen point Plan to ultimately accepting Iran's ten point plan
1:33
Speaker 4: as the framework for discussion. But Iran knew that the
1:36
Speaker 4: United States was never going to move in that direction
1:39
Speaker 4: and that netting Yahoo and the Zionist lobby, they would
1:44
Speaker 4: prevent that. But Iran wanted to show the world in
1:49
Speaker 4: its own people that politically the United States under Trump
1:54
Speaker 4: was floundering, and since the seas fired, the Iranians have
1:58
Speaker 4: been preparing themselves for the next round of war, and
2:03
Speaker 4: I think the Iranians believed that it could be quite soon.
2:06
Speaker 3: Interesting, So, sir one of the things that we we're
2:09
Speaker 3: curious because we're trying to decipher all of these moves
2:13
Speaker 3: from here in Washington, we've seen the Iranian enclosure of
2:17
Speaker 3: the streets of Horn moves. Now this US blockade, of
2:21
Speaker 3: the blockade of the street of Horne Mooz. We also
2:23
Speaker 3: saw yesterday a threat from Iran to close the Red Sea.
2:27
Speaker 3: I'm curious, from your view and some of the talks
2:30
Speaker 3: maybe that you observed in Islamabad, what the seriousness of
2:35
Speaker 3: the blockade is having in terms of the thought process
2:39
Speaker 3: inside Tehran.
2:42
Speaker 4: Well, the Iranians when they went to Islamabad, the negotiators
2:48
Speaker 4: had full authority. Before leaving, the Speaker of Parliament, who
2:52
Speaker 4: was the head of the delegation, spoke extensively with a
2:56
Speaker 4: too La Kamenei, the leader.
2:58
Speaker 5: But the US side was obviously very different.
3:05
Speaker 4: Vance obviously had no authority, who was constantly making photo calls,
3:09
Speaker 4: including to netting Yahoo, and later we learned that netting Na,
3:13
Speaker 4: who said the advance reported to him, which is a
3:15
Speaker 4: strange word to use, and that other officials also report
3:19
Speaker 4: to him US officials, which is also strange. But the
3:23
Speaker 4: blockade from the Iranians perspective, is intensifying the pace in
3:30
Speaker 4: which the global economy is moving towards collapse, and the
3:36
Speaker 4: belief here is that the United States, by intensifying the
3:42
Speaker 4: blockade and Israeli regimed by violating the CES fire agreement
3:47
Speaker 4: and attacking Lebanon, has is pushing for the collapse even
3:53
Speaker 4: faster than before. So basically Nettingnaho by blocking this fire
4:00
Speaker 4: and preventing Iran from allowing more ships to pass through
4:05
Speaker 4: the Strait of Hormoes, advance by failing to have authority
4:10
Speaker 4: to have an agreement because of netting Yahoo. Because of
4:15
Speaker 4: both acts of nating Yaho, the belief here is that
4:18
Speaker 4: the global economy will collapse much sooner than expected, and
4:24
Speaker 4: that Trump, out of desperation, will launch an attack.
4:29
Speaker 5: Pretty soon.
4:31
Speaker 2: Professor I was also curious for you to contrast these negotiations,
4:36
Speaker 2: especially in terms of the American technical expertise or lack thereof,
4:40
Speaker 2: brought to the table versus you were also involved in
4:42
Speaker 2: the negotiations of the JCPOA under the Obama administration, which
4:47
Speaker 2: included a lot of highly technical experts who were negotiating
4:50
Speaker 2: all of these elaborate details. If you could compare and contrast,
4:53
Speaker 2: because I think that's important too to understand whether or
4:56
Speaker 2: not they're actually serious about coming to some sort of
4:58
Speaker 2: a deal at this point.
5:01
Speaker 4: Well, I don't have the details about the American side,
5:06
Speaker 4: but the difference between the JCPOA which where I accompanied
5:11
Speaker 4: the Foreign Minister Zadif in Vienna as a media I
5:15
Speaker 4: had to help with media, just like in Islamabad. I'm
5:19
Speaker 4: not in government, but they sometimes asked me to help
5:21
Speaker 4: them with interviews. Back then, the US government was serious
5:28
Speaker 4: about a negotiated deal. Now, whether that was a good
5:32
Speaker 4: deal for Iran or a bad deal, that's a big
5:34
Speaker 4: debate has always been a big debate in Iran. But
5:37
Speaker 4: the US was serious, and so the negotiations ultimately bore
5:40
Speaker 4: fruit what we've been seeing before the Twelfth Day War
5:45
Speaker 4: and before this war where we were negotiating was that
5:49
Speaker 4: the United States was not serious. The Iranians knew that
5:52
Speaker 4: Iran knew that the US would attack before the Twelfth
5:56
Speaker 4: Day War. They knew before this war that the US
5:58
Speaker 4: would attack. But Iran was negotiating so that the international
6:01
Speaker 4: community and the Iranian people would see that Iran is
6:05
Speaker 4: there to solve the problem, so that after they launched
6:08
Speaker 4: an attack, they won't say that, well, if Iran had negotiated,
6:11
Speaker 4: maybe this would end up happened. But also to see
6:14
Speaker 4: if Trump wanted an off ramp. But Iran knew there
6:17
Speaker 4: would be an assault last year, They knew there would
6:19
Speaker 4: be an assault before this Cremadon War, the Forty Day War,
6:23
Speaker 4: and now they also believe that the United States will attack,
6:28
Speaker 4: but they're still negotiating. But here the feeling on all
6:33
Speaker 4: three occasions, before the Twelve Day War, before the Forty
6:37
Speaker 4: Day War, and now that the US intention is not
6:40
Speaker 4: a negotiated solution.
6:42
Speaker 3: So, sir, with respect, then why did the Iranian government
6:46
Speaker 3: agree to a ceasefar? Why did they agree to a
6:48
Speaker 3: cease far if they are so sure that the war
6:50
Speaker 3: is going to resume? Because from here in Washington, the
6:54
Speaker 3: consensus is is that the Iranian government agreed to a
6:56
Speaker 3: cease far because they couldn't take the pain anymore. Washing
7:00
Speaker 3: to the press, Pentagon did a press conference this morning
7:03
Speaker 3: saying that they're reloading. Why would you permit the enemy
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Speaker 3: to reload if you never believed that this was going
7:09
Speaker 3: to happen.
7:11
Speaker 4: Well, there are three reasons, and let me give you
7:13
Speaker 4: an example of First, during the Twelve Day War last year,
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Speaker 4: where the US and Israeli regime carried out an assault
7:22
Speaker 4: on the country. After about six days, the tie turned
7:26
Speaker 4: in favor of Iran, and after eight days or so
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Speaker 4: it was Netta Yahoo was seeking a ceasefire, and after
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Speaker 4: twelve days Iran agreed to halt a first cessation of hostilities.
7:40
Speaker 4: Some were saying, well, why didn't Iran continue? Then Iran
7:45
Speaker 4: saw that during that twelve day war it had major
7:48
Speaker 4: issues that it had to deal with. It had to
7:51
Speaker 4: there are shortcomings and the way in which we had
7:53
Speaker 4: planned war in which the defensive and offensive capabilities of
7:58
Speaker 4: the country were arranged, so they and they knew that
8:01
Speaker 4: if the war continued, the United States would enter, so
8:03
Speaker 4: they thought that they would use this time to improve
8:07
Speaker 4: their capabilities.
8:08
Speaker 5: And during the eight months we've seen how everything has changed.
8:12
Speaker 4: Despite the immense US firepower, which is much greater than
8:15
Speaker 4: that of this Reeley regime, which would be defeated in
8:19
Speaker 4: a fight against Iran, Iran has performed much better.
8:23
Speaker 5: So it is because of the experience of the twelve
8:25
Speaker 5: day war.
8:26
Speaker 4: Right now, the Iranians are rearming, they're preparing, but also
8:33
Speaker 4: like before, but also every single day that goes by,
8:38
Speaker 4: the Strait of Hormoes is more or less close, and
8:41
Speaker 4: that is putting more pressure on the United States under
8:46
Speaker 4: Trump and the belief in Iran is that Trump does
8:50
Speaker 4: not make the decisions. It is the Israeli lobby, the
8:54
Speaker 4: Zionis lobby, and it's in Yahoo. And so the only
8:57
Speaker 4: way to force the United States to make a decision
9:02
Speaker 4: that benefits its own people is to increase the economic
9:06
Speaker 4: pressure so much that the United States under Trump or
9:10
Speaker 4: the leadership ultimately says, well, here we have to prioritize
9:15
Speaker 4: our own interests over that of netting Yahoo. So each
9:19
Speaker 4: day that goes by, we're approaching, sadly, a global economic
9:24
Speaker 4: catastrophe which will probably lead to a world economic depression.
9:29
Speaker 4: But Iran is preparing for war. Iran is also negotiating
9:34
Speaker 4: in order to be seen by the international community as
9:38
Speaker 4: participating in negotiations. But and also Iran achieved something big
9:42
Speaker 4: in these through disease fire, and that is that everyone
9:47
Speaker 4: saw that. On day one, the United States demanded Iran
9:51
Speaker 4: to submit and accept defeat. That didn't happen, and after
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Speaker 4: forty days, the United States Iran's conditions the ten point
10:03
Speaker 4: Plan as the framework for discussion.
10:05
Speaker 5: Now, later on the.
10:07
Speaker 4: Spokes were in for the White House said we threw
10:09
Speaker 4: it in the bin, But that's not important. What is
10:11
Speaker 4: important is that everyone saw the evolution of the US
10:16
Speaker 4: demands from unconditional surrender to okay, we'll accept talking within
10:21
Speaker 4: that framework of your own. And that I think was
10:24
Speaker 4: a sea change, or created a sea change in perceptions
10:28
Speaker 4: of the war across the world.
10:30
Speaker 2: Very interesting. So this morning in this press briefing, which
10:33
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've had a chance to see,
10:34
Speaker 2: because it's just happened. We're just getting these quotes in
10:36
Speaker 2: and kind of real time at this point, but you
10:38
Speaker 2: not only had Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, you also
10:40
Speaker 2: had General Dan Kaaney's the chair of the Joint Chiefs
10:42
Speaker 2: of Staff, and he announced effectively an escalation of the
10:46
Speaker 2: US blockade tactics. He said that the US Navy in
10:51
Speaker 2: the Pacific would be called upon to intercept ships moving
10:54
Speaker 2: to resupply or run, broadening that naval blockade beyond the
10:59
Speaker 2: Middle East. Do you expect the Iranian government to respond
11:03
Speaker 2: with an escalation of their own by closing the Bob
11:05
Speaker 2: Almanda straight or other actions, Oh?
11:08
Speaker 5: Absolutely will. That will happen as quite soon.
11:14
Speaker 4: And I think that basically what Trump is doing out
11:19
Speaker 4: of desperation is that he's dragging down the entire global
11:24
Speaker 4: economy because he is incapable of pursuing policies that are
11:33
Speaker 4: in the interests of the United States. Basically, it is
11:36
Speaker 4: Nettiyahu wants this war to continue and design it lobby
11:40
Speaker 4: and since Trump is incapable for whatever reason, for whatever reason,
11:47
Speaker 4: I mean, there's speculation as to why, but for whatever reason,
11:49
Speaker 4: Trump is incapable of pursuing interests. So what is happening
11:54
Speaker 4: is that Trump is dragging down the entire global economy,
11:57
Speaker 4: including the US economy, because he is obedient to designs lobby.
12:04
Speaker 3: Sir, I'm curious for your view here on the streets
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Speaker 3: of Hormuz and what the future will look like. Can
12:08
Speaker 3: we put see three up here on the screen. Recent
12:11
Speaker 3: report here from Reuters that one possible way that this
12:15
Speaker 3: could go is that the Iran has offered a proposal
12:17
Speaker 3: allowing ships to exit the Oman's side of the Hormuz
12:21
Speaker 3: free of attack. Now, obviously that would downplay significantly one
12:25
Speaker 3: of the ten point plan proposals, which is that Iran
12:28
Speaker 3: would retain total control of the streets of Hormuz. So,
12:31
Speaker 3: since you've spoken with many of the people who are
12:33
Speaker 3: in government, do you foresee any future where Iran would
12:37
Speaker 3: agree passage to the streets of Hormuz without collecting some
12:42
Speaker 3: sort of monetary payment.
12:44
Speaker 4: No, the Iranians have made the decision that they will
12:48
Speaker 4: control the Strait of Hormones.
12:50
Speaker 5: And it didn't have to be like this.
12:52
Speaker 4: We were not controlling the Strait of Hormoes before this
12:56
Speaker 4: war was imposed upon us. The regimes, the family dictatorships
13:00
Speaker 4: in the Persian Gulf, they are complicit in this war.
13:04
Speaker 4: The US bases in these countries were used, their airspace
13:07
Speaker 4: was used, their territory was used to fire missiles.
13:10
Speaker 5: They have a lot of Iranian blood on their hands.
13:13
Speaker 4: The first wave of attacks included the slaughter of one
13:16
Speaker 4: hundred and sixty eight little school children, mostly girls, at
13:20
Speaker 4: an elementary school, which Iranians believe that it was intentional
13:24
Speaker 4: because always in war, the first wave, the first set
13:29
Speaker 4: of targets are very carefully vetted for weeks, if not months,
13:34
Speaker 4: and that school was on every app it was on
13:38
Speaker 4: every map, and it was there for many years. And
13:42
Speaker 4: the belief here is that since many of the school
13:43
Speaker 4: children were the children of military officers, of naval officers,
13:48
Speaker 4: that the US wanted to teach them a lesson. And
13:50
Speaker 4: some people may in the United States may have skepticism
13:54
Speaker 4: about this, but they've been bombing hospitals in Iran, They've
13:59
Speaker 4: been bombing school they've been bombing ambulances. Trump has said
14:03
Speaker 4: he's going to wipe out a civilization. No one in
14:06
Speaker 4: the Western media has complained. In fact, the Washington Post
14:10
Speaker 4: when we were going to Pakistan said and an opinion
14:13
Speaker 4: piece that they should slaughter the negotiators, which meant us,
14:18
Speaker 4: And on our way back to Iran, we were all
14:20
Speaker 4: expecting to be killed and our plan to be shot down,
14:24
Speaker 4: although to the credit of everyone on the delegation, no
14:27
Speaker 4: one wanted to stay behind and everyone got on the plane.
14:31
Speaker 4: But this is the mentality that exists in Washington today,
14:35
Speaker 4: and no one should be surprised about the slaughter. And
14:38
Speaker 4: we saw what happened in the genocide in Gozen. We
14:40
Speaker 4: see a genocide unfolding in Lebanon, and right now Western
14:44
Speaker 4: media is trying to portray the genocidal strikes in Lebanon
14:48
Speaker 4: as has will A targets, as will A strongholds, in
14:51
Speaker 4: order to whitewash the crime. So people should not be
14:55
Speaker 4: surprised that the Runnians believe that these strikes song children
15:01
Speaker 4: are intentional.
15:02
Speaker 2: Let me get your reaction to some recent comments from
15:05
Speaker 2: Vice President Jade Vance. This was speaking at a relatively
15:08
Speaker 2: poorly attended TPUSA Turning Points USA Conservative activist group event,
15:13
Speaker 2: where he says that what President Trump is looking for
15:16
Speaker 2: is a grand bargain with Iran. Let's take a listen
15:19
Speaker 2: to that.
15:19
Speaker 1: Now.
15:19
Speaker 6: We are negotiating to make sure that very thing happens.
15:22
Speaker 6: And here's what's interesting about this is what's interesting about
15:32
Speaker 6: this is that we have this ceasefire that's in place.
15:34
Speaker 1: I think it's six or seven days old right now.
15:36
Speaker 1: The ceasefire is holding.
15:38
Speaker 6: And what you're seeing is the president wants to make
15:42
Speaker 6: He doesn't want to make like a small deal.
15:44
Speaker 1: He wants to make the grand bargain.
15:46
Speaker 6: And what he's basically offering to a Ran is very simple,
15:49
Speaker 6: and frankly, it's something that no president.
15:51
Speaker 1: Has I think, has had the ability to offer.
15:54
Speaker 6: He said that if you're willing to act like a
15:57
Speaker 6: normal country, we are willing to treat you economically like
16:00
Speaker 6: a normal country. He doesn't want a small deal, and
16:03
Speaker 6: that's one of the reasons why I want. I'd say,
16:06
Speaker 6: in Pakistan, we made a ton of progress, but the
16:08
Speaker 6: reason why the deal is not yet done is because
16:11
Speaker 6: the President he really wants a deal where Iran doesn't
16:15
Speaker 6: have a nuclear weapon, Iran is not state sponsoring terrorism,
16:18
Speaker 6: but also the people of Iran can thrive and prosper,
16:22
Speaker 6: prosper and join the world economy. And that's the trade
16:25
Speaker 6: that he's offering. He's saying, if you guys, he said,
16:32
Speaker 6: if you guys commit to not having a nuclear weapon,
16:35
Speaker 6: we are going to make Iran thrive. We're going to
16:38
Speaker 6: make it economically prosperous, and we're going to invite the
16:40
Speaker 6: Iranian people into the world economy in a way they
16:43
Speaker 6: haven't been in my entire life. And that's the kind
16:46
Speaker 6: of Trumpian grand bargain that the President has put on
16:49
Speaker 6: the table.
16:49
Speaker 2: So the key quote there is he says, if you're
16:51
Speaker 2: willing to act like a normal country, we are willing
16:53
Speaker 2: to treat you economically like a normal country. What do
16:57
Speaker 2: you think from the US perspective it means for Iran
16:59
Speaker 2: to act like quote normal country.
17:02
Speaker 4: Well, we know from Joe Kent's resignation letter that this
17:07
Speaker 4: is nonsense and that the United States knows quite well
17:10
Speaker 4: that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon and it
17:12
Speaker 4: never was pursuing a nuclear weapon, and all of this
17:16
Speaker 4: is basically a tool to put pressure on Iran. Like
17:20
Speaker 4: the human rights issue, like the terrorism issue, all of
17:24
Speaker 4: that the violations that the West and the United States
17:27
Speaker 4: carry out with regards to human rights. All you have
17:29
Speaker 4: to do is look at Lebanon today and Gaza and
17:33
Speaker 4: the schools that were bombed in Iran and will know.
17:35
Speaker 5: Everyone knows who violates human rights.
17:37
Speaker 4: We all know who created ISIS and al Qaeda, and
17:39
Speaker 4: we know that Jake Sullivan told Hillary Clinton in an
17:42
Speaker 4: email that al Qaeda is on our side in Syria.
17:46
Speaker 4: All that is clear for everyone today. The masks have fallen.
17:49
Speaker 4: Iran's problem has always been its independence for the last
17:53
Speaker 4: forty seven years, and its opposition to ethnic cleansing, ethnic
17:58
Speaker 4: supremacism and sign and of course the crushing of the
18:03
Speaker 4: people of Cuba and so on. This is the Iran,
18:07
Speaker 4: the real sin of Iran. The United States has imposed
18:11
Speaker 4: three wars on Iran. The nineteen eighties, they supported Saddam Hussein,
18:14
Speaker 4: the Westgate and chemical weapons. I survived two chemical attacks.
18:18
Speaker 4: Never has the German government or any Western government apologized
18:23
Speaker 4: to US or paid reparations to the many victims Iranian
18:27
Speaker 4: and Iraqi and then last year in this year, what
18:31
Speaker 4: the United States wants is what Natignanhu wants, and that
18:34
Speaker 4: is to destroy our region. Remember what the US ambassador
18:39
Speaker 4: to Israeli regime said to Tucker Colson that if Israeli
18:44
Speaker 4: regime takes the entire region, that's fine. And of course
18:48
Speaker 4: they are the most moral army in the world. So
18:50
Speaker 4: that means that genocide after genocide after genocide can take place,
18:55
Speaker 4: and they can have the entire region. That is the plan.
18:59
Speaker 4: What Advances saying is just nonsense. But it didn't have
19:03
Speaker 4: to be this way. There's a very good book that
19:06
Speaker 4: I would propose that you Reid called Going to Tehran,
19:09
Speaker 4: written by Flint and Hillary Leverett. They worked in the
19:14
Speaker 4: White House under Condoleeza Rice and Flint Leverett resigned over
19:18
Speaker 4: the Iraq War. Highly educated academics, they were in government
19:23
Speaker 4: and they dealt with all the many of the myths
19:26
Speaker 4: that exists about Iran. But they also proposed a way
19:29
Speaker 4: forward that the United States, how the United States could
19:31
Speaker 4: have rapprochema with Iran, the real sort of rap rochema,
19:34
Speaker 4: not the fake rapprochema Vans and Trump. But what happened
19:40
Speaker 4: everyone in Washington antagonized them, and they chose the policies
19:47
Speaker 4: of designist regime, which I believe is an enemy of
19:50
Speaker 4: the American people, an enemy of the Jewish people, and
19:55
Speaker 4: working against US interests. If they had not chosen the
19:58
Speaker 4: Zionist route the Netiya today we would probably have ordinary
20:02
Speaker 4: relations with the United States. And one very interesting thing
20:06
Speaker 4: is just during the last days of the war, Israeli's
20:09
Speaker 4: bombed a synagogue in Tehran and completely destroyed it. Why
20:14
Speaker 4: because it wasn't a Zionist synagogue, Sir.
20:17
Speaker 3: I'm also curious you seem virtually certain that the war
20:21
Speaker 3: will restart.
20:22
Speaker 1: I saw your tweet this morning.
20:23
Speaker 3: You will attack the Persian Gulf, you will continue to escalate.
20:27
Speaker 3: You were at the negotiations, So how common is that view?
20:32
Speaker 3: Is there any dissenting view within the negotiators or within
20:36
Speaker 3: the security apparatus which does want to see some sort
20:39
Speaker 3: of successful seasepire In other words, how united are people.
20:43
Speaker 1: Inside the decision making.
20:45
Speaker 3: You have quite a bit of a view into that,
20:47
Speaker 3: into your view that the war is virtually certain to restart.
20:51
Speaker 5: Well, no one here wants war.
20:53
Speaker 4: We did not start the war with which Saddam Hussein
20:56
Speaker 4: at the pest of the within Western encouragement launched against US.
21:01
Speaker 4: I was a volunteer in that war to defend the country.
21:04
Speaker 4: We did not launch last year's war. We did not
21:07
Speaker 4: launch this the Ramadan War, the forty Day war, and
21:12
Speaker 4: we did not escalate every time we every time the
21:17
Speaker 4: United States and the Israeli regime escalated, we responded in kind.
21:22
Speaker 4: So we do not want war now. But what we're
21:25
Speaker 4: seeing is the United States building up its forces. We
21:29
Speaker 4: see that this Railey regime is slaughtering people in Lebanon
21:33
Speaker 4: against the ceasefire agreement and the Pakistani leader. Pakistani leaders
21:39
Speaker 4: have insisted that the United States accepted Lebanon as a
21:44
Speaker 4: part of the ceasefire, and Trump's denying it is just dishonesty.
21:49
Speaker 4: And if the Pakistanis are dishonest, then why is Trump
21:52
Speaker 4: still working through Pakistan. So it's clear that that was
21:55
Speaker 4: a part of the seasfire. Natiya who wants more war.
21:58
Speaker 4: He wants the globally economy. He doesn't care about the
22:01
Speaker 4: global economy, doesn't care what happens in India or Indonesia
22:07
Speaker 4: or anywhere else. Their economies can crash as far as
22:10
Speaker 4: he's concerned. He wants more war, so he destroyed the
22:15
Speaker 4: ceasefire agreement, so no move was taken by Iran to
22:21
Speaker 4: facilitate more ships leaving the straight of hormones. And in Islamabad,
22:28
Speaker 4: the US was not serious and advance it was clear
22:31
Speaker 4: that he did not have authority.
22:33
Speaker 5: So no one wants war.
22:34
Speaker 4: But we're seeing what's happening before our eyes, and that's
22:38
Speaker 4: why we're preparing, and that's why for what happens, Iran
22:41
Speaker 4: is going to have to retaliate those our family regimes
22:43
Speaker 4: in the Persian Gulf. They are complicit and so Iran
22:47
Speaker 4: will strike back. And we are approaching summer and it
22:50
Speaker 4: is going to get very hot in the next few
22:54
Speaker 4: weeks in the Persian Gulf, and if there's war, that
22:58
Speaker 4: will basically mean that these regimes will collapse because no
23:00
Speaker 4: one will be able to stay there under those circumstances.
23:04
Speaker 5: And I think that that will really be the.
23:10
Speaker 4: Tipping point where the global economy collapses in a way
23:14
Speaker 4: that will be much worse than nineteen twenty nine in
23:16
Speaker 4: my opinion, and of course the Red Sea will be
23:19
Speaker 4: shut down as well.
23:20
Speaker 5: It will be catastrophic for the world. I don't want this,
23:23
Speaker 5: No one here wants this.
23:25
Speaker 4: But Natigna, who is hell bent on moving in that direction,
23:29
Speaker 4: and he's the president of the United States.
23:32
Speaker 2: Let me put C two up on the screen. That's
23:34
Speaker 2: my last question for you. Sager may have more, But
23:37
Speaker 2: there was a Pakistani delegation that came to Tehran hoping
23:41
Speaker 2: to push for more US RAN talks. Do you think
23:44
Speaker 2: there is a possibility there will be renewed in person
23:47
Speaker 2: talks in Islamabad, very likely before the ceasefire concludes.
23:53
Speaker 4: I don't know the details. I'm not in government. I've
23:56
Speaker 4: never been in government. When I went to Islamabad, it
23:59
Speaker 4: was not or anything. I just went there as a volunteer,
24:02
Speaker 4: just like on previous occasions, and I give my opinions.
24:08
Speaker 5: I don't know what it's going to happen.
24:09
Speaker 4: I assume that the discussions are that they had are
24:13
Speaker 4: now being studied by the decision makers in Iran. But
24:20
Speaker 4: the general sense is that the United States is unable
24:26
Speaker 4: to or Trump is unable to use an off ramp.
24:29
Speaker 4: He is not being allowed to use the off ramp
24:32
Speaker 4: an off ramp, and the Trump cannot gain through negotiations
24:39
Speaker 4: what he failed to gain during the war.
24:42
Speaker 5: He lost the war. And they can say how they
24:44
Speaker 5: destroyed us.
24:45
Speaker 4: They were saying they destroyed us from day one, and
24:48
Speaker 4: they were saying that we ran out of missiles from
24:50
Speaker 4: day one. But on day during the last fifteen days
24:53
Speaker 4: of the war, iron was striking harder than ever before.
24:56
Speaker 4: So obviously this was all miscalculation, or that the United
25:00
Speaker 4: States or Trump himself believe the vake information that Mussad
25:07
Speaker 4: was feeding him in order to launch this war. But
25:10
Speaker 4: whatever it is, it was a major miscalculation. We know
25:13
Speaker 4: that the United States is a brutal regime. We know
25:16
Speaker 4: it's a very brutal regime. We know when they say
25:18
Speaker 4: they will obliterate us, and the media s calls for
25:22
Speaker 4: the assassination of negotiators that the political class in the
25:26
Speaker 4: United States, the epscene class, it has no moral compass,
25:30
Speaker 4: and that's why it likes to slander Iran and portray
25:32
Speaker 4: Iran as evil in order to legitimize its brutality. But
25:38
Speaker 4: Iran did not lose this war, and it's not going
25:40
Speaker 4: to lose the next war. It will be very painful
25:43
Speaker 4: for everyone, and I think the collapse that is coming
25:48
Speaker 4: will affect the entire world in ways that we cannot comprehend.
25:51
Speaker 4: But Iran has no option but to fight because for us,
25:55
Speaker 4: for the Iranians, this is a fight for survival, for
25:57
Speaker 4: the Axis of Resistance, This is a fight for survival.
26:01
Speaker 4: For Trump, either he's compromised or he's under heavily influenced.
26:07
Speaker 4: But this is a war of choice. And I think
26:11
Speaker 4: that the last war, the last two wars, and even
26:15
Speaker 4: the last three wars, should have been enough to show
26:19
Speaker 4: the people around Trump that this is going to end
26:23
Speaker 4: in disaster for everyone but include but the United States
26:26
Speaker 4: as well.
26:27
Speaker 3: My last question for you, Serve is on Lebanon. Why
26:30
Speaker 3: is Lebanon so critical to the Irani negotiators?
26:33
Speaker 1: Why is it that they are so adamant.
26:35
Speaker 3: I believe the Vice President said, if it's their choice
26:38
Speaker 3: to blow up the negotiations over Lebanon, that would be dumb.
26:41
Speaker 3: But you know that's their choice. Why does it seem
26:44
Speaker 3: so critical by the negotiators to securcies.
26:47
Speaker 1: Fire and Lebanon.
26:48
Speaker 4: Well, Vance does not care about the slaughter of women
26:51
Speaker 4: and children that's happening day night, because he has no
26:54
Speaker 4: moral compass. The reality is that people across the world
26:58
Speaker 4: have woken up to the the narratives on Iran. Iran
27:02
Speaker 4: is always the bad guy, but somehow it's only Iran
27:05
Speaker 4: that supports the Palestinian people against the genocidal policies of
27:09
Speaker 4: the Collective West. Iran is evil, but somehow it is
27:13
Speaker 4: only Iran that stands up for the Lebanese people despite
27:16
Speaker 4: the support of the genocidal policies of the Israeli regime
27:20
Speaker 4: by the Collective West. People are now seen through everything
27:23
Speaker 4: and the reality is now clear to all. Hezbolah and
27:26
Speaker 4: the resistance in Lebanon and those who supported, who are Christians,
27:30
Speaker 4: Muslims and drus men and women. They are fighting against
27:35
Speaker 4: Israeli regime because they wanted to draw forces, and they
27:39
Speaker 4: fought against Israeli regime because they wanted to draw forces
27:43
Speaker 4: away from Gaza.
27:44
Speaker 5: As the genocide was taking place.
27:48
Speaker 4: Remember the Palestinians were Amlik and Israeli leaders were saying,
27:52
Speaker 4: there are no innocence, and as the genocide progressed, Hesbelah
27:57
Speaker 4: fought to save these kids, to save these men and women.
28:00
Speaker 4: These are the heroes of our era, people who sacrifice themselves,
28:06
Speaker 4: their women and children to spare to save another people.
28:10
Speaker 4: And we will not relinquish the men, women and children
28:15
Speaker 4: of Lebanon in the face of an evil force. An
28:19
Speaker 4: Ethno supremacist master race force that is determined to create
28:24
Speaker 4: another gaza in Lebanon.
28:27
Speaker 2: Well, Professor Morandi, we are very grateful for your time
28:29
Speaker 2: and for your perspective this morning. Thank you for joining us.
28:32
Speaker 3: Thank you, sir, Thank you for taking the time and
28:34
Speaker 3: for sharing that you know, considering that we are currently
28:38
Speaker 3: at war with your people, we always think it's important
28:40
Speaker 3: to at least hear the perspective and to try and
28:43
Speaker 3: understand so that we can hopefully try and find some
28:46
Speaker 3: way out of this.
28:46
Speaker 1: So we appreciate that.
28:47
Speaker 5: Thank you, Thank you.
28:53
Speaker 3: All right, fun story, We had to drop Cuba. We
28:55
Speaker 3: decided an interview with somebody from Tehran a little bit
28:58
Speaker 3: more important, but we will cover Cuba on Friday. Let's
29:02
Speaker 3: go ahead and start with All Birds and put this
29:03
Speaker 3: up here on the screen. So in a sign of
29:07
Speaker 3: I don't know of something, All Birds quote the struggling
29:11
Speaker 3: shoot retailer has made a bizarre pivot to AI and
29:15
Speaker 3: added some one hundred and twenty seven million dollars in value.
29:19
Speaker 3: So as of this morning, All Birds stock is now
29:24
Speaker 3: let's see it is at one point was up nearly
29:27
Speaker 3: five hundred percent. It has actually dropped some thirty percent.
29:31
Speaker 3: As of this morning, it's overall five day gain is
29:34
Speaker 3: three hundred and seventy nine percent. Did anything change with
29:38
Speaker 3: the fundamentals?
29:39
Speaker 7: No?
29:39
Speaker 3: Actually, E two. Let's put it up there on the screen.
29:41
Speaker 3: Here's the story of all birds, truly the American dream.
29:44
Speaker 3: If you haven't, if you never wore a pair earo. Okay,
29:48
Speaker 3: Crystal is a fan. I think they're wrong.
29:50
Speaker 2: I like, like, I like the slip ons. They are
29:53
Speaker 2: very comfortable.
29:54
Speaker 3: I had one pair and I was like, really, this
29:56
Speaker 3: is the hype. And then this is when they had
29:57
Speaker 3: a store and it was like an Apple store and
30:00
Speaker 3: knows all this.
30:00
Speaker 1: I said, all right, let's go check it out. Got
30:02
Speaker 1: a pair. I think I used it for a few months.
30:04
Speaker 1: Eventually threw it away. But anyway, the Albird story Bird.
30:07
Speaker 2: Studio, right, oh yeah, looking at it, they're just they're
30:10
Speaker 2: very they're very comfy. I don't I don't think they
30:12
Speaker 2: like look all that great. Yeah, but they're very like
30:15
Speaker 2: they fit to your foot and it's also just nice
30:17
Speaker 2: to have a slip on that you can just like
30:19
Speaker 2: wear in their listen.
30:19
Speaker 1: I shouldn't hate too much, you know.
30:20
Speaker 5: Sorry.
30:21
Speaker 3: Okay, So anyway, the Albert story put that back up
30:23
Speaker 3: got sidetracked. The Albert story ipo'd in twenty twenty one
30:26
Speaker 3: and a four billion dollar valuation Silicon Valley's favorite shoe.
30:29
Speaker 3: It then lost ninety nine point five percent of its
30:31
Speaker 3: value in four years. Closed every US store sold the
30:35
Speaker 3: entire brand for thirty nine million, renamed itself New Bird AI.
30:40
Speaker 3: It is now using fifty million on hand to buy
30:42
Speaker 3: GPUs and compete with AWS. Stock is now four hundred
30:47
Speaker 3: fifty percent at the time of that eight hundred and
30:49
Speaker 3: thirty five normal volume, the most unhinged corporate pivot of
30:53
Speaker 3: the decade, the newest memestock entrant. Let's put e three
30:57
Speaker 3: up there on the screen. Tracy Alloway shout out to
31:00
Speaker 3: her over at odd lotch.
31:01
Speaker 1: She was the first.
31:02
Speaker 3: Person actually to flag this, she says. And this is
31:05
Speaker 3: from their dateline. Following its prior announcement, that has entered
31:08
Speaker 3: a definitive agreement to sell All Birds to the American
31:11
Speaker 3: Exchange Group, which continues to build on the All Birds
31:14
Speaker 3: legacy and deliver compelling products to customers. All Birds will
31:18
Speaker 3: today announce the execution of a definitive agreement with an
31:21
Speaker 3: institutional investor for a fifty million convertible financing facility. The facility,
31:25
Speaker 3: which is expected to close during the second quarter of
31:27
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, will enable a company to pivot its
31:31
Speaker 3: business to AI compute infrastructure, with a long term vision
31:35
Speaker 3: to become a fully integrated GPU as a service company
31:40
Speaker 3: and AI native cloud solutions provider. In connection with this pivot,
31:44
Speaker 3: the company anticipates changing its name to New Bird AI.
31:48
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's where we're at.
31:51
Speaker 3: A shoe company is now an AI company and stock
31:54
Speaker 3: is now forward four hundred.
31:58
Speaker 1: So it's all fake, don't you say about this?
32:00
Speaker 3: I mean, some of this is probably retail, you know,
32:03
Speaker 3: people having fun, kind of like with Game Stop.
32:05
Speaker 1: Some of it's probably real. Someone could be market manipulation.
32:08
Speaker 3: But if that's all it takes these days, and this
32:10
Speaker 3: is like a meme in Silicon vallees, just put AI
32:13
Speaker 3: next to whatever you do, even whenever you're literally a
32:15
Speaker 3: shoe company and you can just raise hundreds of millions
32:18
Speaker 3: of dollars like okay, I mean not know nothing bubbly here.
32:22
Speaker 1: Yeah.
32:23
Speaker 2: Well, and I looked too. I was like, what do
32:25
Speaker 2: you mean AI company? Because there's any number of things
32:28
Speaker 2: that could mean, And so I try to look for
32:31
Speaker 2: some details about what the plan actually is, and everything
32:34
Speaker 2: I could find was just like the most generic, totally
32:36
Speaker 2: like corporate gobbledygooks. So this is what they said. They said,
32:40
Speaker 2: the rise of AI development and adoption has created unprecedented
32:44
Speaker 2: structural demand for specialized high performance compute that the market
32:47
Speaker 2: is struggling to meet. It added, developers and research groups
32:49
Speaker 2: were struggling to secure the resources needed to build, train
32:52
Speaker 2: and run AI at scale. New Bird AI is being
32:54
Speaker 2: built to help close that gap. Just very broad, generic,
32:58
Speaker 2: totally mean, nonspecific. It's just like, you know, the shoot
33:01
Speaker 2: thing didn't work out.
33:02
Speaker 1: AI's hot.
33:03
Speaker 2: I guess we're doing AI now.
33:04
Speaker 1: We'll figure out.
33:05
Speaker 2: What that means and then to see investors whether it's
33:08
Speaker 2: retail or what's going on there and be like great,
33:10
Speaker 2: we're all in.
33:12
Speaker 5: Yeah.
33:12
Speaker 2: It demonstrates that there's a lot of fakeness in the
33:16
Speaker 2: hype for AI right now and comes at a time
33:19
Speaker 2: too where you know, the revulsion at AI and at
33:24
Speaker 2: the data center buildout is only getting larger. We can
33:27
Speaker 2: put E four up on the screen. This is the first,
33:30
Speaker 2: you know, really significant sort.
33:32
Speaker 1: Of legislative backlash.
33:33
Speaker 2: The backlash the main legislature approved a moratorium on building
33:38
Speaker 2: big data centers. That has to be signed into law
33:41
Speaker 2: still by Governor Janet Mills, who's obviously locked in this
33:44
Speaker 2: primary battle with Graham Platter, And it's gonna be very
33:46
Speaker 2: interesting to see what she does there, whether she signs
33:49
Speaker 2: it or whether she vetoes it. And then we can
33:52
Speaker 2: also put E five up on the screen. You know,
33:55
Speaker 2: Virginia is one of the national hotspots for data centers.
34:00
Speaker 2: If it doesn't have the most build out, it is
34:02
Speaker 2: in the certainly top three. And you can see back
34:06
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, they asked this question of Virginia voters,
34:10
Speaker 2: would you be comfortable or uncomfortable if a new data
34:13
Speaker 2: center were built in your community? Back in twenty twenty three,
34:16
Speaker 2: sixty nine percent, so pretty overwhelming, said we're comfortable with that.
34:20
Speaker 2: Now those numbers have completely flipped. Now thirty five percent
34:25
Speaker 2: only say they're comfortable. In fifty nine percent, a very
34:28
Speaker 2: clear majority say they are uncomfortable. That is just over
34:32
Speaker 2: the span of three years, a complete reverse of public
34:36
Speaker 2: opinion on data centers. And we saw little inklings of
34:40
Speaker 2: this in the Virginia elections. They have off your elections
34:43
Speaker 2: always that just occurred where you had a couple candidates
34:47
Speaker 2: in some of these data center hotspot areas that actually
34:50
Speaker 2: ran against data centers and were able to win on
34:53
Speaker 2: that message.
34:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I look, I think this is the hidden issue
34:56
Speaker 3: of our time. I keep trying to sound the alarm.
34:58
Speaker 3: We've seen it now for mo months and months. Virginia
35:01
Speaker 3: is typically iceberg because we have the most data centers
35:04
Speaker 3: on the planet. Apparently in the state, it should be
35:07
Speaker 3: a national scandal every video that comes out. We played
35:10
Speaker 3: one a couple of days ago here on the show.
35:11
Speaker 3: If somebody who lives near a data center, how loud
35:13
Speaker 3: it is the construction. People don't believe any of the benefits.
35:17
Speaker 3: I think that the tide has really turned. And look,
35:19
Speaker 3: it's also it's an energy problem because if we had
35:22
Speaker 3: a ton of free, abundant and cheap energy, Yeah, we
35:25
Speaker 3: would all be cool with data centers.
35:27
Speaker 1: We wouldn't care that much.
35:28
Speaker 3: It could build them out in the middle of nowhere, okay, whatever,
35:30
Speaker 3: you know, we could. Well, obviously we'll have some discussion
35:33
Speaker 3: in terms of land use.
35:34
Speaker 1: And I don't want anybody's land being taken away from them.
35:36
Speaker 3: But in the era whereas increasing power bills and gas
35:39
Speaker 3: prices are high, and there's also like zero sum, we
35:43
Speaker 3: talked about this in the tax block. When you choose
35:45
Speaker 3: between who you're financing and who you're not, and the
35:47
Speaker 3: AI companies are getting all this cap X spend, You're like,
35:50
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, this is bullshit, Like we can't be running
35:52
Speaker 3: our economy like this because there's no real tangible benefit,
35:56
Speaker 3: you know, to create lego videos for Iran, you know,
35:59
Speaker 3: I mean it's not so. I just think that the
36:02
Speaker 3: tide is really turning it correctly. And look, I mean
36:05
Speaker 3: there's all this societal dislocation that's happening.
36:07
Speaker 1: It's probably a good segue considered.
36:08
Speaker 3: We have our guests coming up who's talking about how
36:11
Speaker 3: the college educated class now feels increasingly like the proletariat,
36:15
Speaker 3: which is an inversion of how things all used to be.
36:18
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think it's all indicative of a much
36:22
Speaker 3: bigger problem.
36:22
Speaker 1: The Alberts thing will be like the game stop thing.
36:25
Speaker 3: Really, what it is is mania like, and there's there
36:28
Speaker 3: is Joe Wisenthal and I've talked about this is that
36:30
Speaker 3: whenever markets are at all time highs, it actually increases mania.
36:35
Speaker 3: Like it's one of those things where when there's all
36:37
Speaker 3: this cheaper money or froth that that's happening that's when
36:41
Speaker 3: it's more likely to see things like it's more of
36:44
Speaker 3: a it's not a reflection of the fundamentals per se.
36:47
Speaker 1: So that's where the Albers thing. Although let's not make.
36:50
Speaker 5: Too much of it.
36:50
Speaker 3: It's one hundred and twenty seven million dollars, not like
36:53
Speaker 3: a huge sign.
36:54
Speaker 2: So it's like, what, what do you have in your
36:57
Speaker 2: company that I don't know, like well positioned to be
36:59
Speaker 2: able to pull this other than some tech CEOs wear
37:02
Speaker 2: your shoes. Yeah, it's I don't know, very bizarre, very
37:06
Speaker 2: bizarre timeline that we are living in. But as you said,
37:09
Speaker 2: it's actually a good segue into our next segment, which
37:12
Speaker 2: shocks about the landscape facing college educated workers and how
37:16
Speaker 2: much dimmer their prospects are, how radicalizing that has been already,
37:20
Speaker 2: and that's before the full introduction of AI, and just
37:23
Speaker 2: how much that may transform our political landscape. Joining us
37:28
Speaker 2: now is Nome Shiber. He covers white collar workers for
37:31
Speaker 2: The New York Times and is author of a fantastic
37:34
Speaker 2: new book titled Mutiny, The Rise and Revolt of the
37:38
Speaker 2: College Educated working Class.
37:40
Speaker 7: Great to have, you know, thanks for having me.
37:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, I really have enjoyed the book. I
37:45
Speaker 2: was telling you that a few of the workers you
37:47
Speaker 2: profile we actually had interviewed here at breaking points that
37:49
Speaker 2: was neat to be able to see their full story
37:51
Speaker 2: more completely. And what you document here is really the
37:54
Speaker 2: difficulties facing college graduates and the way that that has
37:58
Speaker 2: put them more in the same boat as service sector
38:01
Speaker 2: workers and traditional blue collar workers. So just start out
38:04
Speaker 2: laying out your thesis here what has changed for the
38:07
Speaker 2: average college grad.
38:09
Speaker 8: Yeah, so my book is really about the generation of
38:12
Speaker 8: people who graduated from college after the Great Recession, all
38:16
Speaker 8: the way up through this coming May and June. And
38:19
Speaker 8: this is the generation of people that was given the
38:22
Speaker 8: hardest sell of any generation.
38:24
Speaker 7: In history about why they need to go to college.
38:27
Speaker 8: Everyone from their parents and neighbors to presidents like Bill
38:31
Speaker 8: Clinton and Barack Obama insisted that college is no longer
38:34
Speaker 8: a luxury. It's absolutely an imperative. They did more to
38:38
Speaker 8: prepare for college than any generation in history. They went
38:42
Speaker 8: to school for longer days, they did more homework, they
38:45
Speaker 8: took way more AP classes. The number of students taking
38:48
Speaker 8: AP classes between the early eighties and the twenty tenths
38:51
Speaker 8: increased tenfold, and then more of them than ever went
38:55
Speaker 8: to college. We had a huge increase in the twenty
38:57
Speaker 8: tents in the number of people who were going to
38:59
Speaker 8: college and graduating from college.
39:01
Speaker 7: But at the moment that they were doing all these things, a.
39:04
Speaker 8: College degree was becoming less valuable than ever before, and
39:08
Speaker 8: so there was this huge gap that opened up between
39:10
Speaker 8: their expectations of what their lives would be like if
39:13
Speaker 8: they did all these things that everyone from the president
39:15
Speaker 8: to their parents had told them to do, and then
39:17
Speaker 8: the reality that they encountered when they got on the
39:19
Speaker 8: job market, and the reality was, you know, kind of
39:22
Speaker 8: stagnating or declining wages, jobs that the only jobs that
39:26
Speaker 8: they were available to, many of them were jobs that
39:28
Speaker 8: they were overqualified for, jobs like retail service sector, and
39:32
Speaker 8: they just became radicalized.
39:33
Speaker 7: This was incredibly frustrating.
39:36
Speaker 8: This was not the image of their adult lives that
39:39
Speaker 8: they had been sold. They took on a huge amount
39:41
Speaker 8: of debt, and so even as wages were only declining
39:45
Speaker 8: slightly once you factored in their debt, the actual income
39:48
Speaker 8: that was left over and their paycheck was way down.
39:51
Speaker 8: And so this was very radicalizing. It was very frustrating,
39:53
Speaker 8: and then the pandemic ends up being kind of the
39:55
Speaker 8: final straw, which really sets in motion the events that
39:58
Speaker 8: I write about in my book about the unionization, the
40:01
Speaker 8: standing up to their employers, and even you know, ultimately
40:04
Speaker 8: voting for people like Azora Montani in New York City.
40:07
Speaker 8: Who are you know begin to speak to this anger
40:10
Speaker 8: and frustration among the college educated working class.
40:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is fascinating.
40:14
Speaker 3: I mean, the word college educated working class seems like
40:17
Speaker 3: an oxymoron. Your book makes the case that it's not.
40:19
Speaker 3: I read the piece in the New York Times. I
40:21
Speaker 3: was very interested by it. I do wonder, though, how much,
40:25
Speaker 3: because I confess I've only read the Times expert, how
40:28
Speaker 3: much though, of the anger is directed at the institutions themselves?
40:33
Speaker 3: Because you know, if I were to look at this
40:35
Speaker 3: split screen, a lot of the liberal energy doesn't necessarily
40:38
Speaker 3: focus on the institutions nearly as much. I spoke earlier
40:41
Speaker 3: in the show. I went to George Washington University. It
40:43
Speaker 3: is apparently now charging one hundred thousand dollars per year.
40:47
Speaker 3: I'm urging anyone, do not pay that?
40:50
Speaker 1: Do not?
40:50
Speaker 7: Yes?
40:50
Speaker 1: Let me repeat, so?
40:53
Speaker 3: How much how much responsibility do these institutions have and
40:55
Speaker 3: the government has for incentivizing this?
40:58
Speaker 7: Yeah, great question.
40:59
Speaker 8: I think a lot I have a chapter in the
41:02
Speaker 8: book where I really try to kind of call out
41:03
Speaker 8: the role of higher ed and I think you're absolutely right.
41:07
Speaker 8: There's been almost a sort of extractive quality to higher
41:10
Speaker 8: education for i'd say at least the past twenty five years.
41:12
Speaker 8: And the example give in my book, which I think
41:14
Speaker 8: is sort of interesting on its own terms, but also
41:16
Speaker 8: representative of what's been going on over the past generation,
41:19
Speaker 8: is an undergraduate degree in video game design. So, beginning
41:24
Speaker 8: in the nineties or eighties or nineties, if you wanted
41:25
Speaker 8: to make video games, you didn't go to college for that.
41:28
Speaker 8: You just you know, got on your computer and started
41:30
Speaker 8: coding the game. And if it was, you know, was
41:32
Speaker 8: something people like, they would buy it and you would succeed,
41:33
Speaker 8: and if not not. Beginning in the early two thousands,
41:37
Speaker 8: universities started offering degrees in video game design, and the
41:40
Speaker 8: way they marketed these degrees was this is like a
41:43
Speaker 8: vocational degree. You come here, almost like a computer science
41:46
Speaker 8: or a STEM degree. You come here, you learn all
41:49
Speaker 8: these practical skills for making video games. And then they
41:51
Speaker 8: would promote these degree programs on their websites saying, you know,
41:55
Speaker 8: our graduates typically go work for these you know chipa
41:57
Speaker 8: A Studios or Double A studios. You know, place is
42:00
Speaker 8: where you can make a living doing this. In fact,
42:02
Speaker 8: it was much more like a Masters of Fine Arts
42:04
Speaker 8: or a Bacheldors of Fine Arts are going to study
42:06
Speaker 8: acting or short story writing.
42:08
Speaker 7: You know.
42:08
Speaker 8: It was something that was really cool, a lot of
42:10
Speaker 8: people were really passionate about. But the number of jobs
42:12
Speaker 8: available to the people with his degree was minuscule compared
42:15
Speaker 8: to the number of people that were enrolling and graduating.
42:18
Speaker 7: With that degree.
42:19
Speaker 8: And yet the universities were just happy to admit those
42:22
Speaker 8: folks and layer on tens, if not hundreds of thousands
42:25
Speaker 8: of dollars in debt, and suddenly you get these people
42:27
Speaker 8: graduating with this degree who've wanted to be video game
42:30
Speaker 8: designers their whole lives. The university has told them, like,
42:33
Speaker 8: this degree will qualify to do that. They walk out
42:36
Speaker 8: the door. They cannot get jobs. They often can't even
42:37
Speaker 8: get interviews. I mean, there's one worker I profile in
42:40
Speaker 8: my book named Dylan Burton who was active in organizing
42:44
Speaker 8: a studio at Microsoft. He was a very accomplished game designer.
42:48
Speaker 8: He led this game design class in college which produced
42:51
Speaker 8: like an actual workable game.
42:52
Speaker 7: He barely got an interview or too.
42:53
Speaker 8: After like six months, with seventy thousand dollars in debt,
42:56
Speaker 8: he decides, I just got to get a job. So
42:58
Speaker 8: he accepts a job as a game test, which is
43:00
Speaker 8: very different from being a game designer. You know, game
43:03
Speaker 8: testers it can be incredibly tedious. You know, you can
43:05
Speaker 8: spend sixty seventy hours a week just playing the same
43:07
Speaker 8: game over and over and over again. You can kind
43:09
Speaker 8: of go out of your mind doing it, and for
43:11
Speaker 8: your troubles, you make like eighteen dollars an hour, you know.
43:13
Speaker 8: And so I think it's you know, it's telling on
43:15
Speaker 8: its own terms. But I think we've seen a version
43:17
Speaker 8: of this play out in a whole variety of universities
43:19
Speaker 8: across a whole variety of degrees. And I think you
43:22
Speaker 8: allude to this that it's it's kind of a structural
43:24
Speaker 8: problem because the universities don't have to do any due diligence.
43:28
Speaker 8: The government is subsidizing the debt, so the university are
43:31
Speaker 8: happy to charge whatever they can get away with, knowing that,
43:33
Speaker 8: you know, if someone can't repay the debt, it's not
43:35
Speaker 8: their problem. The government's going to go track them down.
43:37
Speaker 8: So I do think it's it's become this hugely extractive industry,
43:42
Speaker 8: and the higher ed industrial complex has a lot to
43:46
Speaker 8: answer for of, you know, the problems of these these
43:49
Speaker 8: graduates of the past ten fifteen years.
43:51
Speaker 2: Give us a profile of you know, one or two
43:53
Speaker 2: of the other individuals who you talk about in this book,
43:57
Speaker 2: because I want people to get a sense of you know,
43:59
Speaker 2: these aren't people who were like barely going, you know,
44:02
Speaker 2: barely getting into college, barely passing. These are people who
44:04
Speaker 2: went to good schools, got good grades, were seen as
44:08
Speaker 2: leaders in their community, graduate from college, and then you know,
44:12
Speaker 2: end up Starbucks Braisto, which they could have done without
44:14
Speaker 2: a college degree, but now they've got tons and tons
44:16
Speaker 2: of debt. So talk to us a little bit about
44:18
Speaker 2: the kind of profile of the people that you were
44:20
Speaker 2: able to dig in with.
44:22
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I think what was so striking to
44:24
Speaker 8: me about meeting these folks and telling their stories is
44:28
Speaker 8: for anyone who graduated from college, you know, over the
44:30
Speaker 8: past thirty years and who went on to do a
44:32
Speaker 8: white college job, these are folks that you would completely recognize,
44:35
Speaker 8: you know, from your freshman dorm or from your you know,
44:39
Speaker 8: you know, senior level class in advanced philosophy or history.
44:42
Speaker 8: Like they spoke the same language, they had similar experiences
44:46
Speaker 8: in college. They had similar kind of past to college,
44:49
Speaker 8: you know, ap classes and parents who really, you know,
44:52
Speaker 8: leaned on them to go to college. And yet, you know,
44:54
Speaker 8: somewhere along the way it sort of went off the rails.
44:57
Speaker 8: And one person I write about in the book is
44:59
Speaker 8: a woman named Maya Barrett. She grew up in Baltimore County.
45:03
Speaker 8: She went to a majority black high school. That high
45:06
Speaker 8: school was incredibly persistent in persuading people to go to college.
45:11
Speaker 8: They would actually have them post their college admission letters
45:14
Speaker 8: on the office wall because they really wanted to promote
45:17
Speaker 8: and celebrate people going to college. So Kaya dutifully, like
45:20
Speaker 8: everyone else, she took all these advanced placement classes.
45:24
Speaker 7: She applies to college.
45:25
Speaker 8: She ends up at Tawson University, which is a pretty
45:27
Speaker 8: good in big public university in Maryland.
45:30
Speaker 7: She studies communications.
45:31
Speaker 8: During college, she works at the Apple store that's pretty
45:34
Speaker 8: close to campus. But in her senior year, she's applying
45:37
Speaker 8: to dozens of jobs she wants to do, you know,
45:39
Speaker 8: either a marketing job or professional development. Doesn't get any traction.
45:44
Speaker 8: It eventually decides, Okay, I'm just going to stay at
45:46
Speaker 8: the Apple store. She had a job which is kind
45:48
Speaker 8: of like a you know, a high status job within
45:50
Speaker 8: Apple called a creative where you kind of teach these
45:53
Speaker 8: classes and help people sort of use their devices to
45:56
Speaker 8: do things kind of cool things, you know, at podcasts,
45:59
Speaker 8: at a film videos. So she decides, Okay, you know,
46:02
Speaker 8: this is not my first choice, but I'm going to
46:04
Speaker 8: take this job. She stays at the Apple store. But
46:06
Speaker 8: the problem is, during the same period that we're talking about,
46:10
Speaker 8: not only is sort of the economy looking worse and
46:12
Speaker 8: worse overall for college grads, but certain employers like an Apple,
46:15
Speaker 8: like a Starbucks that had traditionally been like a decent
46:18
Speaker 8: fallback option for college GUIDs, at least for a few
46:20
Speaker 8: years while they got the footing, those jobs had steadily
46:23
Speaker 8: become worse and worse within those companies too. So at Apple,
46:26
Speaker 8: for example, the creative had been this sort of high status,
46:29
Speaker 8: exalted position. People really competed for it. But over the
46:33
Speaker 8: kind of past ten fifteen years, it's been steadily degraded.
46:35
Speaker 8: So by the time she does it, it's kind of
46:37
Speaker 8: losing its luster. And then after a few years, a
46:40
Speaker 8: lot of the creatives aren't even teaching classes anymore. They're
46:43
Speaker 8: just getting pulled onto the sales floor to sell iPhones
46:46
Speaker 8: and you know Max and Apple Care Plus, which is
46:49
Speaker 8: their extended warranty, which they constantly harp on and tell people.
46:51
Speaker 8: And so she's like, you know, I took this job.
46:54
Speaker 8: It was already a compromise, but you know, it was
46:56
Speaker 8: an okay job. And then the longer I'm here, the
46:59
Speaker 8: more becomes an ordinary retail job. And so she's just
47:02
Speaker 8: getting more and more frustrated as this goes, and eventually
47:05
Speaker 8: she's one of the leaders of the organizing campaign at
47:07
Speaker 8: her store, which becomes the first Apple store in the
47:10
Speaker 8: United States to unionize.
47:12
Speaker 5: Wow.
47:12
Speaker 1: Fascinating.
47:13
Speaker 3: So no, you know, generally, I think a point I've
47:17
Speaker 3: made here before is like with the Russian Revolution, and
47:20
Speaker 3: a lot of people think is a proletariy revolution is
47:21
Speaker 3: really a revolution of the bourgeoisie. So in this case,
47:25
Speaker 3: what you're talking about is effectively an entirely disaffected educated class.
47:29
Speaker 3: So what type of politics can we expect in the
47:32
Speaker 3: future if we don't solve it or change the social contract?
47:35
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
47:37
Speaker 8: There is a famous book which you may be alluding to,
47:40
Speaker 8: called End Times and The thesis of that book is
47:42
Speaker 8: that the overproduction of elites, so you know, people with
47:45
Speaker 8: a lot of educations who don't find jobs or you know,
47:48
Speaker 8: livelihoods that can sustain them, that typically leads to revolution,
47:52
Speaker 8: social revolution, political revolution. He definitely attributes the Bolshevik Revolution
47:57
Speaker 8: to this overproduction. You know, you had a bunch of
48:00
Speaker 8: children of noble people who were highly educated but could
48:03
Speaker 8: not get the jobs in the bureaucracy of the Russian
48:05
Speaker 8: biocracy that typically sustained these folks, and eventually they were
48:08
Speaker 8: the revolutionary vanguard, you know, that took down the Czarist regime.
48:12
Speaker 7: You see this throughout history.
48:14
Speaker 8: You know, we saw this actually after the Great Recession
48:18
Speaker 8: in a whole variety of countries, in Spain and in Greece,
48:21
Speaker 8: and actually in the UK even you know the UK. Historically,
48:25
Speaker 8: college had been free in the UK. Tony Blair in
48:27
Speaker 8: the late nine he started to kind of impose a
48:29
Speaker 8: nominal fee, and then David Cameron in like twenty ten
48:31
Speaker 8: eleven actually increases the fee substantially and just tens of
48:35
Speaker 8: thousands of students pour into the streets in London and
48:37
Speaker 8: they actually ransacked the Tory Party headquarters. You know, they're
48:41
Speaker 8: really pissed off about this. So we've seen it have
48:43
Speaker 8: really destabilizing political effects across countries across time, and I
48:48
Speaker 8: do think that this is going to continue to kind
48:50
Speaker 8: of destabilize American politics. And I think, you know, the
48:53
Speaker 8: most obvious example is just pointing to Zoram Mamdani in
48:56
Speaker 8: New York City, who really, I think did speak to
48:58
Speaker 8: the anxieties of this group of people and was actually
49:01
Speaker 8: able to kind of able to assemble a broad coalition
49:04
Speaker 8: of college educated working class and you know, non college
49:07
Speaker 8: educated working class. And you know, he did that by
49:10
Speaker 8: you know, framing the campaign around for ability, around economics,
49:14
Speaker 8: around people struggling to make a living, and I think
49:16
Speaker 8: that was very effective. And just one data point that
49:18
Speaker 8: I don't think people appreciate from that election, Zoran Mamdani
49:22
Speaker 8: won eighty four percent of college educated people under thirty,
49:25
Speaker 8: So eighty four percent, like eighty four percent of people
49:28
Speaker 8: of a group of people in this country don't do anything,
49:30
Speaker 8: you know, by eighty four percent of twenty something college
49:32
Speaker 8: guys voted for Zoram Mamdani. So I really think it
49:35
Speaker 8: shows the potency of this. I would expect it to
49:37
Speaker 8: be you know, a real important dynamic in the twenty
49:40
Speaker 8: twenty eight campaign. I think you're already seeing people, you know,
49:43
Speaker 8: kind of following the Bernie Sanders mold A Zoram Mamdani mole,
49:46
Speaker 8: trying to sort of build a broad working class coalition.
49:49
Speaker 8: Bernie has talked about this, you know, not just you know,
49:51
Speaker 8: people without a degree, but everyone from you know, people
49:54
Speaker 8: with only a high school degree or who dropped out
49:56
Speaker 8: of high school, all the way up through highly educated people,
49:58
Speaker 8: you know, doctors, architect I write about them a bit
50:01
Speaker 8: in the book, who still, you know, think of themselves
50:03
Speaker 8: as workers who really get frustrated by, you know, all
50:06
Speaker 8: the bureaucracy that they have to deal with and the
50:08
Speaker 8: way they're yanked around at the job. I quoted a
50:10
Speaker 8: doctor in my book who was involved in a big
50:13
Speaker 8: union campaign at a healthcare system in Minnesota. They now
50:16
Speaker 8: have the largest union of private sector doctors in the country,
50:18
Speaker 8: about four hundred doctors unionized there in twenty twenty three.
50:22
Speaker 8: And this person told me, you know, we're basically treated
50:24
Speaker 8: like factory workers. You know, we have these these MBAs
50:26
Speaker 8: and these consultants kind of yank us around, you know,
50:29
Speaker 8: they tell us how long we can work with patients,
50:31
Speaker 8: they tell us how quickly we have to discharge them
50:33
Speaker 8: from the hospital. They give us all these dumb questions
50:35
Speaker 8: that we have to ask them instead of just like
50:37
Speaker 8: deferring to our professional judgment. So even you know, when
50:40
Speaker 8: even doctors and you know, PhDs and architects are feeling
50:43
Speaker 8: this way, I do think there is space to build
50:45
Speaker 8: this kind of broad collision, and I would expect that,
50:47
Speaker 8: you know, a Democratic candidate would try to pick up
50:50
Speaker 8: that mantle in twenty twenty eight.
50:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's somewhat of a different way for the sort
50:55
Speaker 2: of like class based left to think about things, because
50:57
Speaker 2: historically it's like, oh, we have all these there's a
50:59
Speaker 2: lot of self consciousness about the fact that there's all
51:02
Speaker 2: these college educated individuals who are the most dedicated leftists.
51:06
Speaker 2: But when you see the way that they are also
51:08
Speaker 2: increasingly their fortunes are the same as the service hecer workers,
51:11
Speaker 2: the same as the blue collar workers, it does change
51:14
Speaker 2: I think the mindset of bit. My last question for
51:16
Speaker 2: you is we cover AI and the impact of AI
51:18
Speaker 2: and the backlash against data centers. We actually did a
51:20
Speaker 2: whole block on that before your segment here, and so
51:23
Speaker 2: I'm curious from your reporting on white collar workers and
51:27
Speaker 2: labor movements. What you're seeing in terms of how AI
51:31
Speaker 2: is impacting the job prospects of college grads, and how
51:34
Speaker 2: much of the AI revolution is hype versus the you know,
51:39
Speaker 2: versus the claims that are being made by these companies
51:42
Speaker 2: that they intend to replace every white collar worker to
51:46
Speaker 2: start with, and then all human labor effectively with robots.
51:50
Speaker 7: Yeah.
51:50
Speaker 8: So, you know, I think maybe the most important high
51:53
Speaker 8: altitude point to make is most of women I'm writing
51:55
Speaker 8: about happens pre AI. So AI is not causing the
51:59
Speaker 8: job loss and the stagnation I'm talking about.
52:01
Speaker 7: You see, you know, some of it is sort of
52:03
Speaker 7: automation that's pre AI.
52:04
Speaker 8: You know, you have accounting software that makes it less
52:07
Speaker 8: necessary to hire tax preparers, and a lot of college
52:10
Speaker 8: educated people used to prepare taxes. So there's an element
52:12
Speaker 8: of automation that figures into the story. But most of
52:15
Speaker 8: it is pre jen AI, pre chat GBT that said,
52:18
Speaker 8: this is something that clearly weighs on a lot of workers.
52:20
Speaker 8: It very much figured in to say, the Hollywood Writers
52:23
Speaker 8: and Actors strike in twenty twenty three. I think the
52:26
Speaker 8: studios really bungled into a much more intense and prolonged
52:30
Speaker 8: strike because they misjudged the sort of emotional potency of
52:34
Speaker 8: AI as an issue. They kind of just ignored, you know,
52:37
Speaker 8: the screen unters that put forth a few you know,
52:39
Speaker 8: pretty reasonable demands on AI. We don't want to be
52:42
Speaker 8: required to use this, and we don't want AI to
52:44
Speaker 8: be able to get credit, you know, for writing a script.
52:46
Speaker 7: We want the writers to be humans.
52:48
Speaker 8: And the studio is basically stiff armed on on that,
52:50
Speaker 8: and that really led to this intense backlash that really
52:54
Speaker 8: propelled that strike for the five months that it lasted.
52:57
Speaker 8: So we've we've seen kind of the emotional resonance of
52:59
Speaker 8: this far, but it hasn't kind of it hasn't affected
53:02
Speaker 8: that many workers yet. I would expect that when it
53:04
Speaker 8: actually does start affecting workers on a wide scale. Certainly
53:08
Speaker 8: it's affected you know, coders and software developers, but when
53:11
Speaker 8: we start to see it by on a large scale,
53:13
Speaker 8: I would see, you know, expect to see this the
53:16
Speaker 8: sort of pattern that I've been writing about the you know,
53:18
Speaker 8: about the radicalization of white color workers really increase even
53:21
Speaker 8: more so. I think it's a very potent issue. We
53:23
Speaker 8: haven't really seen the bite of it yet, except in
53:26
Speaker 8: a few isolated circumstances, but I think it's going to
53:29
Speaker 8: be an accelerant, you know, it's really going to kind
53:31
Speaker 8: of increase the radicalization and kind of move it up
53:34
Speaker 8: the income scales. So it's not just folks who ended
53:37
Speaker 8: up working in you know, in retail or restaurants, but
53:40
Speaker 8: even you know, highly trained white collar workers, certainly software engineers,
53:44
Speaker 8: as I've spoken to them over the past year or two,
53:46
Speaker 8: are completely freaked out about this, and many of them
53:49
Speaker 8: are now speaking, you know, kind of in the language
53:51
Speaker 8: of workers and worker consciousness and solidarity language that you
53:54
Speaker 8: didn't you know, ten years ago here very much in
53:57
Speaker 8: Silicon Valley been increasingly you hear it there too.
53:59
Speaker 2: I mean, the irony could not be richer. They told
54:02
Speaker 2: us a learned to code, it'll be like your golden ticket,
54:05
Speaker 2: you'll definitely get a job. It'll be secure and stable,
54:07
Speaker 2: and then the first ones eliminated with the development of AI.
54:12
Speaker 2: The book is Mutiny, The Rise and Revolt of the
54:14
Speaker 2: college educated Working Class. Fantastic book. I recommend people also
54:19
Speaker 2: follow your reporting because I think you're following some really
54:21
Speaker 2: important trends. No, I'm great to have you.
54:23
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks.
54:24
Speaker 7: Man, Thank you guys really enjoyed it.
54:27
Speaker 3: Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it
54:29
Speaker 3: all right at Cuba. That'll be up there tomorrow on
54:32
Speaker 3: the Friday Show.
54:33
Speaker 1: See you then,