Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 9/30/26: Trump Sham AI Deal, Nvidia Stock Buyback, Flight To Israel Hijacked, Minab School Bombing Horrors

Transcript

9/30/26: Trump Sham AI Deal, Nvidia Stock Buyback, Flight To Israel Hijacked, Minab School Bombing Horrors · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we
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  Speaker 2: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, you'll like this.
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: I would was at a Dave Chappelle show here in Washington, D.C.
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  Speaker 4: I love that.
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  Speaker 3: So in real life, actual people are doing it. Sager
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  Speaker 4: And it's kind of a gift to us too, because
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  Speaker 3: I met somebody recently also who had said, Apologetically, he said,
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  Speaker 3: We'll actually put up a tally because it's so funny
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: at this point. It really is hilariously lopsided. Can we
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  Speaker 3: put up a tally?
• 1:38
  Speaker 6: Is that right?
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: It's almost too mean.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Also, Sagar is so torn because he loves when the
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: business grows and is doing well.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: He's a little capitalistic.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: But he doesn't know how to feel about it. He's
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: very torn.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: I feel like actually now this was your grand plan
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: all along.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: This was it.
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: To insert a wedge between Sager and his love of capitalism.
• 1:57
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: Well, here we are, and I promised that I would
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: ramble less if people started signing up for the free trial.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I broke that promise. So flagrant. Let's stop the rambling.
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: There was a huge meeting between a bunch of AI
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: juggernauts and the president, sorry, super intelligence, SI, and the president,
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: the White House will We'll break down some of that.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: There was an attempt by an Emirati pilot to take
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: a flight bound for Tel Aviv out of the sky.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: That attempt was foiled by another pilot. It was an
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Omani pilot, actually, who was trying to take the plane down.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: An Emirati pilot and others fought the Omani pilot. We'll
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: get into some of the details on that. My colleague
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Jeremy Scahill from Dropsite has been working for I guess,
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: months now on an investigation into the massacre at Minab,
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: talking to parents, survivors, first responders, prosecutors. And it's put
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: together the most comprehensive look yet of what that day
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: was like in the city of Minab. We're going to
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: talk to him in a little bit. We're also going
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: to have updates on the midterms. Emily, out with a
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: new profile of independent candidate Dan Osborne over at UnHerd.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: The economy continues to completely collapse. We'll be getting inflation
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: data this morning. Emily spoke to a whole bunch of
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: callers in the Megyn Kelly network who are not so
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: happy with their choices.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: Every day I get these calls now. They're pissed. They're pissed.
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: They are mad.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: So we'll hear from some of those folks. And Jack Smith.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: So Emily's got some actual news. on what Jack Smith
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: has been up to, which she'll get into, and we'll
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: have a lot of fun at the expense of Eric Schmidt, who, oh,
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: my God. So Hank Johnson famously at a hearing. said
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: that he was worried that Guam was going to tip over.
• 4:03
  Speaker 7: I forgot about that.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: And at the hearing, people were like, you mean like
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: tip over population wise into like some other chaos? He's like, no, no, no.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: I mean, tip over. Like, what if there are too
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: many people and the island tips over?
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: This is worse than that.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: This is Eric Schmidt's performance yesterday puts Hank Johnson to rest.
• 4:22
  Speaker 6: Brutal.
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: It's brutal.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: You're going to you're going to want to stick around
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: for that. This is going to be a very long
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: show where we're going to try not to have to
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: cut that episode.
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: Oh, and my car got towed this morning, so if
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: it's late, it's because I went to get in my car.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: And the city had moved it for.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: No good reason.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: So Mark Wayne Mullen could get to the.
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Oh, well, that was also.
• 4:39
  Speaker 5: I did get behind a Mark Wayne Mullen security detail
• 4:43
  Speaker 5: and watched him walk out with his dry cleaning at
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: 8 in the morning.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: Mark Wayne Mullen, dude, have someone else do that for you.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you should be at work by then, buddy.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: 8 a.m., be in the office.
• 4:52
  Speaker 8: All right.
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: Ryan was at the office at 8am. He had no
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: problems with it. All right, let's get into the show.
• 4:57
  Speaker 5: Big news on the AI front yesterday because Donald Trump
• 5:00
  Speaker 5: has secured a massive voluntary AI safety agreement. I know
• 5:04
  Speaker 5: it's exactly what you all wanted to see from this
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: meeting with Donald Trump and all of the AI leaders. Basically,
• 5:10
  Speaker 5: everybody except for Sam Altman was there and OpenAI representative
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: Brockman was there. But let's put the first hair sheet
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: up on the screen. Trump, top AI leaders agree to
• 5:18
  Speaker 5: voluntary AI standards. There was a lot of hype about
• 5:21
  Speaker 5: what was going to happen at this meeting yesterday. Trump
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: himself released this seeding chart. He has basically all the
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: major leaders in the room. Look at Brockman's signature, by
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: the way. If you're watching this, you can see on
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: the screen all these different signatures. And then Greg Brockman,
• 5:35
  Speaker 5: it's impossible to say.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: He's the main funder of that Lead the Future super PAC, right?
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: The AI super PAC.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: That guy's signature right there. My uncle does handwriting analysis.
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: I'll ask him to look at that one. I don't
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: even know if you need an expert. to tell you
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: that is not the kind of guy you want ruling
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: the world.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: No, that tells you everything that you need to know.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: This is for itself. But basically the contours of this, it,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: as Axios reports, quote.
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: Puts AI companies at the center of policing their own
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: technology as pressure grows for software safeguards.
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: And basically, yes, it's Zuckerberg told people.
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: Some of the steps are going to involve internal risk reviews,
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: outside audits, board oversight. Quote, Zuckerberg said the leaders drafted
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: a list of principles that include reviewing internal controls and
• 6:23
  Speaker 5: detecting issues with the technology, which could include multiple layers
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: of auditing controls. So you have all the major companies.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: Agreeing to this.
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: Better than nothing, I suppose, Ryan, but not nearly as
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: good as actually prosecuting some of these people for the
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: dangers their products pose. have been already doing and putting
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: in place. I mean, I think Stoller.
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: Makes a great argument. There already are laws in the
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: books that you can prosecute people for. But if you're.
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: Gathering all the AI leaders in the room, I think
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: what most people would like to see is, well, here's
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: the laws that you may have violated and that we
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: may be investigating you for and that you should not
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: break going forward because we're going to enforce them.
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: And so act accordingly.
• 7:03
  Speaker 9: Yes.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: A late friend of mine, Aaron Schwartz, was prosecuted for
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: he had legal access to MIT through his MIT fellowship
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: to JSTOR's database of kind of academic papers. He downloaded
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: them or he downloaded many thousands of them. That's all
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: he did. They tried to put him in prison for
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: 60 years. He ended his life amid the prosecution as
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: they were resistant to any type of plea deal. Like
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: they were trying to put him like in, prison for
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: like decades. These AI companies have done far worse when
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: it comes to hacking through paywalls to extract the exact
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: Same type of thing that he was downloading that he
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: had legal access to. They don't have legal access to it.
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: They're downloading it.
• 7:58
  Speaker 9: Yes.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Then they're repackaging it and they're selling it to people.
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: He wasn't even trying to make any money on it.
• 8:03
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: It's at least.
• 8:04
  Speaker 5: Dubious that they have legal access to it. They just
• 8:06
  Speaker 5: decided to plow through.
• 8:07
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: He had full legal access to it.
• 8:09
  Speaker 10: Right.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: And we have all the text messages of them and
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: their Slack messages saying, oh, we managed to get through
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: the paywall and we're extracting everything. It's like, sick, awesome, dude.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: Great job. We're hacking them.
• 8:21
  Speaker 11: Great.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Anyway, so yes, prosecute a few of these guys. I
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: think the guys that replaced them would have a bit
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: more concern about safety. Trump, obviously, not prosecuting anybody powerful.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: He's certainly not going there. And he doesn't think there's
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: anything remotely dangerous about this. It's kind of amazing to
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: have him in there.
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: But at the same time, he said one of them
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: assuaged his concerns about possible safety issues. It's the same
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: thing with all of them. It's like they all know.
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: That there are concerns about possible safety issues. They're telling
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: it to us constantly. And yet they think the solution
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: here is Internal review. And you had the FTC chairman,
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: Andrew Ferguson, standing out there with them yesterday, grinning alongside
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: the people he's supposed to regulate.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: So that's lovely.
• 9:02
  Speaker 5: We have some audio from Trump who went to the
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: White House driveway outside of the West Wing and yucked
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: it up with the CEOs and reporters.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: So let's go ahead and take a listen to this
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: next thought.
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: Mr.
• 9:15
  Speaker 12: President, tell us why the world should not be concerned
• 9:20
  Speaker 12: about AI, why there shouldn't be guardrails.
• 9:23
  Speaker 9: Because we have people that love our country and love
• 9:26
  Speaker 9: the world.
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: But it requires more than love, doesn't it, sir?
• 9:28
  Speaker 9: No, it requires this. And they're the smartest people in
• 9:31
  Speaker 9: the world. And we had a great meeting today, every
• 9:33
  Speaker 9: one of them. We had a great, really a great,
• 9:35
  Speaker 9: great meeting. It was something very, very special. We had
• 9:38
  Speaker 9: the top I'd say it looked like a group of
• 9:41
  Speaker 9: about 40, but whatever it was, here's one of them
• 9:43
  Speaker 9: right here, Jensen and Navidya. And they love our country
• 9:50
  Speaker 9: and they love the world. And they came together and
• 9:51
  Speaker 9: they did something that few people really— it's almost like
• 9:55
  Speaker 9: a constitution, in a way.
• 9:58
  Speaker 5: Sorry, who should be held accountable when the AI agents
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: committed a crime?
• 10:02
  Speaker 9: It's not AI. It's SI. That's the other thing. We've
• 10:05
  Speaker 9: changed the name officially today. We've changed the name, Steve,
• 10:10
  Speaker 9: officially to SI, okay? SI, like SI, SI, instead of AI.
• 10:16
  Speaker 9: You know what that means? Superintelligence.
• 10:19
  Speaker 13: Superintelligence.
• 10:20
  Speaker 9: So the name, I guess that's really quite an announcement because,
• 10:24
  Speaker 9: but the name has been officially changed by the biggest,
• 10:28
  Speaker 9: the smartest, the greatest people anywhere in the world at this.
• 10:32
  Speaker 9: And I was with President Xi a few days ago
• 10:34
  Speaker 9: and he would admit, he said, these are the smartest
• 10:37
  Speaker 9: people in the world at what they do. And it's
• 10:39
  Speaker 9: a big, it's a big thing, but it's been officially
• 10:42
  Speaker 9: changed to super intelligence or SI.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, great.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: Um, Brian, any reaction to that or should we go
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: straight to Dario?
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Well, I suppose it's all relative intelligence. So, yeah, let's
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: go with A3.
• 10:56
  Speaker 9: But even in America, there are so many people that
• 10:58
  Speaker 9: want data centers. You know, the areas with data centers
• 11:01
  Speaker 9: have become very rich. People have become very rich. Their
• 11:04
  Speaker 9: taxes have gone down, not up. And a lot of
• 11:06
  Speaker 9: good things have happened. But these people and others having
• 11:10
  Speaker 9: to do with the data centers that you've been reading
• 11:12
  Speaker 9: so much about, I think they're going to do things
• 11:16
  Speaker 9: for the community that will be really financially beneficial and
• 11:20
  Speaker 9: otherwise beneficial. Mr.
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: President, on commonality.
• 11:23
  Speaker 14: There's a belief of everybody that you're meeting with today
• 11:26
  Speaker 14: that no guardrails, no regulation of AI, superintelligence, as you
• 11:31
  Speaker 14: call it, is necessary.
• 11:33
  Speaker 9: Well, there's a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation.
• 11:37
  Speaker 9: And we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice,
• 11:40
  Speaker 9: the FBI, all of that. But the self-regulation is very important.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody feeling at ease?
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: That was him at the meeting, actually, yes.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Right, that was him at the meeting. Dario, his reaction outside,
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: his kind of inability to kind of control himself or
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: appear normal for any considerable stretch of time, I think
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: also had people concerned. But here is Dario Amadei of
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: Claude fame talking about how he can work with Trump.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Let's go to A4.
• 12:12
  Speaker 15: Look, I mean, I will say what I've always said,
• 12:15
  Speaker 15: which is that AI has incredible benefits. I've talked about
• 12:19
  Speaker 15: the medical benefits of the technology. As the president has said,
• 12:22
  Speaker 15: you know, whoever wins AI wins. I think that's very important.
• 12:26
  Speaker 15: But I think the technology has very real risks. And,
• 12:29
  Speaker 15: you know, the mechanism, how we address those risks is
• 12:32
  Speaker 15: still under discussion.
• 12:34
  Speaker 14: But we all need to work. We all need to
• 12:36
  Speaker 14: work together to make sure that we can win and
• 12:39
  Speaker 14: we can win safely if we if we do this right.
• 12:41
  Speaker 14: If we work with the president and everyone here, we
• 12:44
  Speaker 14: can win safe.
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: And Elon Musk talked about a few of the things
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: that they agreed to. Let's roll A5. This is Elon.
• 12:50
  Speaker 6: Running up on time, but maybe if you guys could share,
• 12:53
  Speaker 6: you spent a lot of time at the White House.
• 12:55
  Speaker 6: Is there anything that you can share with the world
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: about what came out of what was evidently a long
• 13:03
  Speaker 6: and productive lunch?
• 13:04
  Speaker 8: We did good.
• 13:05
  Speaker 16: Yeah.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: We signed a joint declaration regarding SI safety.
• 13:13
  Speaker 16: And I think that'll be published by the White House soon.
• 13:16
  Speaker 11: If it hasn't been already.
• 13:18
  Speaker 16: But we agreed to a number of things that include
• 13:22
  Speaker 16: joint monitoring, board special committees, and just generally grading each
• 13:29
  Speaker 16: other's homework, which is a lot better than if people
• 13:31
  Speaker 16: just grade their own homework, for obvious reasons.
• 13:34
  Speaker 6: Elon, how do we win? How do we keep winning?
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: Well.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: We need a lot of power, a lot of energy generation.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: So scaling energy, I think, is one of the biggest things.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: You've got to scale energy, you've got to scale chip production.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: And I think we're winning on software, on anything intellectual
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: or digital. But in the long run, we need to
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: be able to generate enough power to compete with I
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: think essentially China is the biggest competitor and China has
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: about three times the electricity production of the United States.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: And I think we'll figure out how to make ships.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: So really the central challenge I think is long-term is
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: gonna be how do you generate enough power and how
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: do you ensure that we have enough logic and memory
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: fabrication capacity in the United States or in a safe region.
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: Well, we need the Wright brothers on the job.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 14:42
  Speaker 6: Well, it turns out the Wright brothers are on the job.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: And he's right in the sense that China now produces,
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: when it comes to just solar energy, roughly a third
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: of what it would take to run the entire U.S.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: electrical grid. And they are adding huge amounts every month
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: to their grid through clean energy, solar, other renewables. The
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Trump administration came in and blew up the IRA, which
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: was the most aggressive attempt to expand energy production in
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: many decades. And yes, now the SI barons, Sports Illustrated barons,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: are upset that they don't have enough energy after kneecapping
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: the energy production policy that was put into place. Shame
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: for them.
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: Also, when Elon says it's better than them grading their
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: own homework, I mean, technically based on what they released yesterday,
• 15:38
  Speaker 5: they're still grading their own homework. They're supposed to hire
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: outside auditors and that sort of thing. But there's not
• 15:43
  Speaker 5: a government safeguard built into this to make sure that
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: they're not manipulating the outside auditor in one way or
• 15:48
  Speaker 5: the other.
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: And that's a stretch, of course, because it's supposed to
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: be an external auditor.
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: But it's not what most people want to see, which
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: is government legal oversight of whether or not this is
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: all compliant.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: And maybe we'll talk about this more tomorrow. But Ezra
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Klein had an interesting interview with Bill Gates yesterday. who
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: was making the point that you're kind of looking in
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: the wrong place. Like, yes, the risk that robots kill
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: us all is a problem. The risk that a person
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: with access to these tools causes immense damage that kills
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: millions of people or brings down the financial system is
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: a present-day risk that needs to be thought about right now.
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: Sam Altman, though, who has at times made some pretty
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: dire warnings about what his technology might do to humanity,
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: was sounding a slightly different tune. Let's roll A7.
• 16:41
  Speaker 13: There's plenty of things I was wrong about, too. I
• 16:45
  Speaker 13: try to leave the wrong predictions up, obviously. But I
• 16:49
  Speaker 13: think the important point is you get some things right,
• 16:51
  Speaker 13: some things wrong. I think we'll be very right about
• 16:53
  Speaker 13: some things. I think we'll be very right that intelligence continues.
• 16:56
  Speaker 13: I think we'll be very right about the rate of
• 16:58
  Speaker 13: scientific discovery. I think we'll be very right about how
• 17:01
  Speaker 13: people kind of are going to have the same things
• 17:05
  Speaker 13: that they care about and drives in their lives 10
• 17:08
  Speaker 13: years from now, they have from today. And even with
• 17:09
  Speaker 13: this like amazing intelligence, a lot of parts of life
• 17:12
  Speaker 13: are going to stay the same. But then a lot
• 17:14
  Speaker 13: of the details and kind of what order science goes
• 17:16
  Speaker 13: in or whether it's, you know, haircuts or hugging face
• 17:18
  Speaker 13: or Navier-Stokes first, I'm sure we'll be wrong about.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure exactly what to make of that. This
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: comes as the New York Times is reporting, we can
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: put up this next element, that a bunch of OpenAI
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: employees were warning that the company wasn't doing enough to
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: respond to the risks that its own product was producing,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: that its agents were busting out, going all over the world,
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: hacking into everything from Australia to Hugging Face and in between.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: And their warnings were ignored.
• 17:56
  Speaker 14: Right.
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: And it's just, there are ways to pursue investigations into
• 18:03
  Speaker 5: whether or not that's illegal, whether or not what's happened
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: from open AI is illegal, because we keep getting information
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: about these sandbox breakouts that actually do are like hacking
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: websites and potentially stealing information. And because they're like, well,
• 18:18
  Speaker 5: we're sorry, we're trying to figure out what went wrong.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: And it's maybe because it's digital. We just all shrug.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, the public isn't. And I think that's clearly.
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: The danger for Trump here so much so that you
• 18:28
  Speaker 5: see some Republicans, Ron DeSantis and Republicans in Florida, for example,
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: trying to carve out a different path because they recognize
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: the raw public anger over all of this.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: But Trump is just going with a bear hug.
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's in for a dime, in for a dollar,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: whatever the phrase is. Yeah, he's not turning around on this.
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: That's for sure. Meanwhile, NVIDIA is just cashing out. They're like,
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: all right, let's get out of this casino. We put
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: up A9 here. The biggest corporate stock buyback in history
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: was confirmed by NVIDIA's board. $ 150 billion that they're taking
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: of money that is of uncertain origin, I think it
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: would be fair to say. In other words, the money
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: that NVIDIA has invested in its kind of cash pile
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: that it is using for this stock buyback, which is
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: now over 200 some billion dollars total, comes from these
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: really exotic, you could call them, arrangements that they have
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: with these other AI companies that are exchanging stakes in
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: their companies in order and using kind of future projected
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: revenue to produce higher valuations. Then they take those higher
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: valuations and then do kind of stock or share transfers
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: over to NVIDIA and say, okay, now we're covered.
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: Because they need each other.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: NVIDIA is a functional monopoly. It's a very circular thing.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: And then both their stocks pop on the announcement of
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: the deal, and you notice that in that transaction, nobody
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: bought or sold anything. You just moved things around, did
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: some financial engineering. And then, now obviously they do sell
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: a lot of things as well, but instead of letting
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: the kind of market guide their stock price, they're juicing
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: it by buying $ 150 billion worth of it. So if
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: you owned video stock, you just got sent $ 150 billion.
• 20:40
  Speaker 5: And we're going to get into some of what makes
• 20:42
  Speaker 5: that extra ridiculous, but Ryan, let's just pause on this point.
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: Is it your sense?
• 20:49
  Speaker 5: So Jensen Wong said, this is from yesterday, we all
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: need hope it's an engineering problem. If it's not an
• 20:54
  Speaker 5: engineering problem, it's not solvable.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: In reference, well, why don't we just roll the clip?
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: This is A-10.
• 21:01
  Speaker 10: The problems that we've seen to this point, where open AI, anthropic,
• 21:06
  Speaker 10: Google and others have had agents that have escaped and
• 21:08
  Speaker 10: have gotten out and done mischievous things, maybe illegal things.
• 21:12
  Speaker 10: The problems we've seen to this point, you think is
• 21:14
  Speaker 10: simply an engineering problem and a fault of those companies,
• 21:17
  Speaker 10: maybe not putting in the right restrictions?
• 21:19
  Speaker 17: Well, I think the answer is we hope it's an
• 21:22
  Speaker 17: engineering problem. I believe it's an engineering problem.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: I know it's an engineering problem.
• 21:26
  Speaker 17: And we all need to hope that it's an engineering problem.
• 21:27
  Speaker 17: If it's not an engineering.
• 21:28
  Speaker 18: Problem, it's not solvable.
• 21:30
  Speaker 17: And so the fact that all of these companies still
• 21:32
  Speaker 17: are advancing the state of the art is because they
• 21:35
  Speaker 17: also believe it's solvable. These are some of the brightest
• 21:38
  Speaker 17: engineers in the world. I work with, you know, all
• 21:41
  Speaker 17: of them. And, and these are, this is a, this
• 21:43
  Speaker 17: is a technically solvable problem. And so the way to
• 21:46
  Speaker 17: think about that is if you look at, go back
• 21:48
  Speaker 17: to the days of the internet, you access a website,
• 21:52
  Speaker 17: it downloads application, maybe it's Java application. All of a
• 21:55
  Speaker 17: sudden this application comes into your PC has access to
• 22:00
  Speaker 17: files and resources and maybe the applications and tools, and
• 22:05
  Speaker 17: it gets onto your network. Well, in the beginning, we
• 22:08
  Speaker 17: had all kinds of viruses. But we realized that the
• 22:12
  Speaker 17: web browser itself has to be a containment system. The
• 22:15
  Speaker 17: web browser has to provide that application with minimal rights,
• 22:20
  Speaker 17: only the rights it needs in order to do its job.
• 22:23
  Speaker 17: And it has access, basically access to nothing unless the
• 22:27
  Speaker 17: browser gives it access. Essentially what we're doing here, we're
• 22:30
  Speaker 17: creating basically the modern browser.
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: It's a browser for agents.
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: Okay, so Ryan, what's interesting about that is combined with
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: this buyback news, I'm curious if you're reading into this
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: potential bubble pop warnings.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, everybody understands that this is a bubble.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Nobody knows anything. when it's going to pop. And nobody
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: knows exactly what will be left behind when it does pop.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: This is, you know, you can look at history, whether it's,
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: you know, railroad or radio or whatever.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: Or dot com.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Or dot com. But this is different in both size
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: and scale, but also in type and kind. It's a
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: different kind of reinvention of what our economy is. It's
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: the way that Bill Gates was talking about it. He
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: didn't mean it exactly like this, but he was talking
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: about it as if it is the culminating battle between
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: capital and labor. Right. And that people, and actually it
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: turns out our labor.
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: It's interesting you read into how he was describing it.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: Do you hear it that way too?
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: It's sort of dialectic.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Except the AI has planned to break the dialectic by
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: a final triumph of capital over labor, and labor turns
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: out to be Everybody, including the oligarchs, which would be...
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Nobody saw that one coming.
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: So shocking.
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: Well, it's also worth mentioning here, we can put this
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: next hit or shoot A12 up on the screen. While
• 24:05
  Speaker 5: NVIDIA is doing buybacks, just remember that this is a
• 24:07
  Speaker 5: May 1st headline in the Dallas Morning News. NVIDIA, the
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: world's largest company, gets at least $ 23 million in incentives
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: from Irving. That's hardly the only community that's given NVIDIA.
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: Incentives in recent years. And in fact, the federal government
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: gave incentives to companies like NVIDIA and the one big,
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: beautiful bill. We can put the next tariff sheet up
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: on the screen. They avoided $ 6. 8 billion in federal income
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: taxes last year, according to the Institute on Taxation and
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: Economic Policy, using, quote, what is the, that's such a
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: great word, quote, pretty pedestrian tax strategies.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: So that's $ 4.
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: 2 billion for the foreign derived deduction, eligible income deduction,
• 24:45
  Speaker 5: $ 1. 9 billion in unspecified tax credits, $ 1. 4 billion from executive
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: stock options and $ 800 million from the new R &
• 24:52
  Speaker 5: D expensing provision that was created by Congress last summer.
• 24:55
  Speaker 5: NVIDIA obviously did not need $ 800 million from the new
• 24:58
  Speaker 5: R & D expensing provision created by Congress last summer,
• 25:01
  Speaker 5: but hey, they've got enough to do the buybacks now, Ryan.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Right, but the scale is wild. It's like what they
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: owe to the government, they ended up paying $ 19 billion
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: in what they give to their shareholders, $ 150 billion. And
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: you can just, just in that right there, you can
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: see this, this yawning gap between private wealth of the
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: top 0.1% and the public's, you know, growing, you know,
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: the public's continuing collapse, basically.
• 25:34
  Speaker 17: Right.
• 25:34
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, even that, what was it?
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Even if they paid what they owed.
• 25:37
  Speaker 10: Right.
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: It's like a drop in the bucket compared to what
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: they're giving out to shareholders.
• 25:41
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: That's a really good point.
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: It's all, the scale of their wealth is just, I
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: can't think of any precedent, can you, in human history
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: for this scale?
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're in new territory.
• 25:53
  Speaker 17: Right.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: All right, Ryan, well, let's move to the Middle East.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: There was an attempted hijacking of a flight from Dubai
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: to Tel Aviv. You can put this New York Times
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: element up on the screen. An Omani pilot is alleged
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: to have attacked his co-pilot, the Emirati pilot. Reports are
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: only now surfacing of the altercation that ensued. The Omani
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: pilot allegedly stabbed the Emirati pilot in an attempt to
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: take over the plane and presumably crash it. Reports are
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: that passengers on the plane and crew basically rushed into
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: the cockpit and tried in an attempt to restrain the
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Omani pilot and effectively regained control of the plane despite
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: it descending some 18,000 feet. We can put up this
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: VO here. Well, okay, this is an image of the
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: pilot who was the victim, the Emirati pilot who was
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: the victim of the stabbing. The Omani pilot, the Israelis
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: are now registering a complaint that the Omani pilot should
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: not have been on board the plane because Israel, as
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: part of the kind of Abraham Accords and the deal
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: that they have with the UAE, says that only pilots
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: with permission to fly into Israel should be allowed to
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: pilot these planes, and Oman does not have such permission
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: as what they're saying, so this would be a violation
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: of the deal to begin with. I can put up
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: the next element. This is footage that's circulating now of
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: the passengers dealing with this 18,000-foot plunge as there's a
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: struggle going on in the cockpit for control of the
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: plane before it crashes. It sent out two separate squawk signals,
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: one of them an alert of a hijacking, and it
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: ended up landing then in an emergency fashion in Saudi Arabia.
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: Horrifying situation.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: There was a report of another flight being diverted. We
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: don't have any details on that or whether that's, whether
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: that's even real or a rumor, the, you know, after
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: incidents like this, you get an absolute kind of flurry of,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: of rumors and, and kind of false information that isn't
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: necessarily put out with the intent of misleading people, but
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: it's just, you know, the, the kind of fog of war, uh,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: sets in. Um, and so this averted what would have been, uh,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: the deaths of everybody on board and, and presumably were mostly, uh,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Israeli passengers. And so the assumption is that this was
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: a hijacking aimed at targeting kind of these, the Israelis
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: who were flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv.
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: And I mean, this is coming at like the video
• 29:04
  Speaker 5: of this is just that people just saw on the screen.
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: It's just absolutely horrifying, uh, to imagine that, um, plane,
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: but it's coming. I guess, Ryan, I'm curious what the
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: geopolitical significance of what Israel possibly does after this.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Well, there's an election in Israel on October 27th, and
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: you've actually already seen some supporters of Netanyahu capitalizing on this.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: They even made this bizarre AI video of Netanyahu being
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: the pilot who saves the day. Yeah. And the opposition,
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu's opposition figures trying to hijack the plane. So trying
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: to create this metaphor that.
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: And we're like 24 hours into this.
• 29:51
  Speaker 12: If that.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And producing this metaphor that Netanyahu is the, is
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: the only one that can pilot Israel to safety and that,
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: everyone else is effectively in league with terrorists. That's kind
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: of Netanyahu's argument, Netanyahu and his coalition's argument. And so
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: I think maybe they'll move on now from attacking this documentary, Nasa,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: which has been Netanyahu's election tactic of the past several
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: weeks to say that he's going to strip the citizenship
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: of these documentary filmmakers who had interviewed 24 IDF soldiers
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: confessing to serious war crimes and laying out the way
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: that they were using AI to produce targets and disregarding
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: or just accepting extraordinary numbers of civilian casualties per strike,
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: up to 500 in one strike. Netanyahu was making his
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: campaign all about, I'm the guy that's going to go
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: after them. That was it. With the backdrop of all
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: of these leaks... about what Netanyahu knew about October 7th
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: and how many different people had warned him, Egyptian intelligence,
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Mohammed bin Zayed of the UAE, all the other warnings,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: with his opponents trying to relitigate his abject failure on
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: October 7th to keep Israel safe, which is what he
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: wants to run on. So now, with his supporters putting
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: him in the position of the kind of pilot who
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: saves the day here, I think he's You'll probably see
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: that this reflected in Israeli politics. And you're already, as
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: you said, you're already seeing criticism of the Emiratis for
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: allowing the Omani pilot on the plane at all.
• 31:43
  Speaker 11: Right.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: And so we'll see how, you know, what geopolitically, you know,
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: how this unfolds.
• 31:50
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: And let's get to this next tear sheet about Iranian currency.
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: So Iran. Speaking of things that Netanyahu is probably clinging to,
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: Iran's currency has hit another record low with traders in Tehran,
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: according to NewsNation, now exchanging 2.5 million riyals for one U.S.
• 32:08
  Speaker 6: Dollar.
• 32:09
  Speaker 5: For comparison, NewsNation says five years ago it took about
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: 42,000 for one dollar, meaning it takes about 600 times
• 32:15
  Speaker 5: the Iranian currency to have the same value today. You
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: can bet that's getting straight onto Donald Trump's desk at
• 32:21
  Speaker 5: the White House, and Netanyahu is assuring him victory.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Is just around the corner.
• 32:26
  Speaker 5: Meanwhile, the Financial Times is reporting that mediators are trying
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: to break a deadlock. But Ryan, when Trump's getting information
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: like this that I'm sure is being pushed hard on him,
• 32:38
  Speaker 5: how likely is it for any deadlock to be broken
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: as mediators this week meet and try to do something
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: or anything on that front?
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't seem like Trump is capable of reaching
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: an agreement to end this war. And it He's also
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: getting told at the same time that oil flows through
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: the Strait of Hormuz are approaching pre-war levels. Not there yet,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: but getting closer than people thought was, that critics of
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: the U.S. thought was possible, that the U.S. has been
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: able to actually usher through significant amounts. So they're seeing
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: those two things. The problem is that those two things
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily line up with a strategy to win the war. First,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: take the currency collapse. What does that do to the
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: Iranian consumer? It forces them to consume less. In other words,
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: it brings about rationing. Every government that is in a
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: war of attrition, and certainly a war for survival, when
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: they're facing a blockade, throughout history has always rationed supplies. food,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: energy to their civilian population. It's a central war strategy.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: People don't like it, but people understand it when the
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: situation is existential. What helps Iran here is they get
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: to ration to their civilian population and they get to
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: blame the enemy for doing it because it literally is
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: the enemy that is doing it. So you can kind
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: of take that one off the board as a data
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: point that is getting the United States and Israel closer
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: to quote unquote winning because there's no government. We're tired
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: of rationing. I think we're just going to surrender. No,
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: you ration so you can outlast your adversary. And then
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: the second one, yes, there is oil getting through. Oil
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: prices are still in the $ 100 range. And we'll talk
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: about this in the economy block later. FT was reporting
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: this morning that there is now a very tight correlation,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: just as there was during the Gulf War back in 1991,
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: with a clamping down of oil supply with interest rates.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: And so, and Muhammad Ghalibaf, the Speaker of the Parliament,
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: had laid this out in his own kind of strategic formula,
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: you know, many weeks ago, where he said, where he
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: was basically doing one of these finance bro posts, and
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: he One of the arguments was he was.
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: Going full Ackman.
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Like the price of WTI crude is correlated to
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: interest rates because as interest rates go up, I mean,
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: because as energy prices go up, that feeds into the
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: economy as inflation bond investors then inspect, uh, expect the
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: federal reserve to raise rates. And so they preemptively drive
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: up the cost of of debt and interest rates. And
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: so the yields rise and the bond prices crash. And
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: so the idea here is that Iran isn't able to
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: stop all the oil flow. That's true. But they're keeping
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: oil prices very high, which is keeping the cost of
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: borrowing very high and the cost of living extremely high
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: for the West. But it's allowing China to continue to function.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: Like China is the one that could really pull the
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: leash on Iran here. And if they completely did cut
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: down the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: that could actually backfire on them because then China would say,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: all right, enough of this. Time to capitulate. So the
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: success points, to me, are not connected to a strategy
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: to actually win. And nobody has explained why getting oil,
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: 18 million barrels a day, let's say, through the Strait
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: of Hormuz and harming the Iranian economy is going to
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: lead to the Iranian government surrendering.
• 36:49
  Speaker 9: Right.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: Nobody has explained that, the.
• 36:52
  Speaker 11: A to B there.
• 36:53
  Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Because it's not there.
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: And maybe weakening the dollar in the meantime.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: And just smashing, yes, smashing the American economy to the
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: point where you end up with 54 or 5 Democratic senators.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: It's like, so that, you know, plus, apparently Iran, unconfirmed reports,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Iran just struck a An LNG tanker would be the
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: first LNG tanker that they've hit in a very, very
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: long time. Iran still maintains agency to upend the status quo.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: That's the third thing that people aren't really considering.
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: And, Ryan, you added here to this rundown the Senate
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: coalition looking for answers in the West Bank.
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: Tell us about what's going on with B4 here.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: So last last night in the Senate, there was a
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: watershed vote and put up before ahead of the vote.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: There was this coalition of anti-war groups who urged a
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: yes vote on a measure by Chris Van Hollen that
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: would basically require the State Department to launch an investigation
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: into settler violence in the West Bank. And upon completion
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: of that 30-day investigation, stop weapons transfers to Israel connected
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: to that. So it's complicated. It's a privileged resolution. Anybody
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: can bring it to the floor. In the past, when
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: these have come to the floor, either this coalition has
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: found nobody willing to bring one of these to the floor,
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: or when they did, Bernie Sanders brought one to the
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: floor in 2024. My recollection, people can fact check this,
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: is it got 11 votes. So this one put up B5.
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: got 46 Democrats and one Republican, Rand Paul. John Fetterman,
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: of course, you know, voted with Israel and the rest
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: of the Republicans. But so 47 senators voted effectively against
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: Israel on this question of West Bank settler violence. AIPAC,
• 38:59
  Speaker 3: I'm told by Hill sources, was whipping this vote quite hard.
• 39:02
  Speaker 4: They must have been because.
• 39:04
  Speaker 5: I don't expect more than like five or 10 Republicans
• 39:07
  Speaker 5: to vote with Rand Paul, but when it's only Rand Paul,
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: you know the.
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: Pressure was hard.
• 39:10
  Speaker 9: Exactly.
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: Especially because what we've heard from Republican senators about their concerns.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: Every once in a while, it percolates.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Very good point from Emily there that if Republicans are
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: allowed to just vote whichever way they think is politically
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: beneficial to them, right, you're going to get a handful
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: of them who are like, look, this is killing me.
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: Well, there's been a drumbeat in places like in serious
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: corners of conservative media that are significant, like Tucker Carlson's
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: show about violations of Christians' human rights in the West Bank,
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: which is obviously something that Republican senators have been hearing about.
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: And would, because their constituents are telling them about it,
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: have some political concern at the very least. And so
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: I think the fact that it's just Rand tells you
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: that there was a real pressure campaign. Yeah.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: And to even get for Democrats, even to get, uh,
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: Senator Rosen from Nevada is very strong supporter of Israel
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: means that once the new Senate class comes in, let's
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: say if Troy Jackson wins Elsaid, Peggy Flanagan and, uh,
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: Minnesota right there, you're at 50. Um, And that's before
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: you've potentially gotten other wins across the US. So what
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: is left for AIPAC and for Israel? Well, to try
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: to sever the link between voters and policy. And one
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: way to do that is to merge the militaries of
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: the United States and Israel. They're trying to do that
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: now through the NDAA, which is getting debated in the
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Senate as we speak. Israeli commentators are being much more
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: public about how important it is to them to merge
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: the two militaries because they see the backlash coming and
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: they want to preempt the ability of voters to do
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: anything about it. So let's roll B6 and then do
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: what's at B7.
• 41:03
  Speaker 7: Even if we, God forbid, have, let's say, a more
• 41:07
  Speaker 7: hostile administration, in a, after Trump's administration, it will still
• 41:13
  Speaker 7: need to report to Congress how it's advancing the mandate
• 41:17
  Speaker 7: that Congress gave the department of defense.
• 41:21
  Speaker 11: So even if we have a hostile president at the
• 41:25
  Speaker 11: end of the day, this is congressionally controlled and it's a,
• 41:29
  Speaker 11: it's actually passed into law. So the department of defense
• 41:33
  Speaker 11: has to move forward with this type of cooperation.
• 41:36
  Speaker 9: Exactly.
• 41:36
  Speaker 18: Section 224 is part of the NDAA for 2027. So
• 41:45
  Speaker 18: it's part of the mandate and it's attached to the
• 41:49
  Speaker 18: funding that Congress gives to the Department of Defense. It's
• 41:53
  Speaker 18: exactly that it's a Congress and Congress mandate, and it's
• 41:57
  Speaker 18: going to be overseen by Congress. And it's not linked
• 42:01
  Speaker 18: in any way to the white house. Now, the challenge
• 42:05
  Speaker 18: that is going to be for both the Trump administration
• 42:08
  Speaker 18: and the Israeli government is to try and push forward
• 42:12
  Speaker 18: as much project as you can up to the end
• 42:17
  Speaker 18: of 2028. so that any new administration will first inherit
• 42:22
  Speaker 18: those activities and if it tries to slow them down,
• 42:26
  Speaker 18: Congress is going to know about it. And secondly, you
• 42:31
  Speaker 18: want to already insert Israeli technology into future projects so
• 42:35
  Speaker 18: that any more hostile administration will need to explain to
• 42:40
  Speaker 18: the American public why is it threatening or hurting American
• 42:45
  Speaker 18: technological supremacy you know, just to hurt Israel.
• 42:49
  Speaker 13: All right.
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: So that was the IDF spokesperson, Doron Spielman. We also
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: have Mark Dubowitz, who is the, with the Foundation for
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Defense of Democracies, which is a leading pro-Israel think tank here,
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: probably the leading pro-Israel think tank here in the United States.
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: Let's roll Dubowitz.
• 43:05
  Speaker 12: This same financial system that the US has, it gives
• 43:08
  Speaker 12: us enormous leverage against our adversaries like Iran or Russia
• 43:11
  Speaker 12: or China, and certainly non-state terrorist organizations. is now going
• 43:17
  Speaker 12: to give, theoretically, a future American administration enormous leverage against
• 43:21
  Speaker 12: our ally Israel. And I think that's the lesson I
• 43:24
  Speaker 12: want Israelis to understand. So this is not an argument
• 43:27
  Speaker 12: for Israelis to decouple from America. It's exactly the opposite.
• 43:32
  Speaker 12: It's what you said earlier. I mean, you've got to
• 43:34
  Speaker 12: make the relationship deeper, integrate our defense industries, integrate technology, intelligence, finance, research,
• 43:41
  Speaker 12: supply chains. You've got to make Israel's so valuable that
• 43:45
  Speaker 12: American strategic interests, that weaponizing that financial relationship against Israel
• 43:51
  Speaker 12: is going to impose costs on the United States itself.
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: So that is an American analyst saying that the best
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: thing to happen would be for a foreign country to
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: impose costs on his country.
• 44:08
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: I mean, that's, unpatriotic.
• 44:13
  Speaker 5: That's unpatriotic because it assumes that the interests of the
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: United States and Israel will always be like this is
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: if we take his most charitable case, then it assumes
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: either way, even at its most charitable, it is predicated
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: on an assumption that the interests of the United States
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: and Israel will always be harmonious, that there will never
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: be significant tensions in the the interests of the United
• 44:36
  Speaker 5: States and Israel. You have to buy into that presumption
• 44:39
  Speaker 5: in order for that to not be anything but unpatriotic.
• 44:41
  Speaker 5: And that's just obviously a flawed assumption. I mean, I
• 44:44
  Speaker 5: think you could even get some of the staunchest defenders
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: of Israel to admit that's not always the case.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: Yep, I think so. Well, as we learn more about
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: the hijacking, we'll keep you updated. I'm sure we'll have
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: more tomorrow on that as well.
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, much to discuss, certainly. Let's, Ryan, move on to
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: our next block. Let's bring Jeremy in.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: So on the morning of February 28th, the United States
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: and Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran in the
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: middle of nuclear talks that were planned to move towards
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: a technical phase just days away. Infamously, the strikes included
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: an attack on a school building in the southern town
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: of Minab. Those attacks killed at least 156 people, 120
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: of the victims were children and 26 were teachers. It
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: is arguably the worst U.S. war crime committed by the
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: United States since Vietnam. My Dropsite colleague, Jeremy Scahill, spent
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: the last several months, in fact, speaking with survivors, teachers,
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: first responders, and put his Dropsite article up on the
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: screen here. You know, I can't recommend this piece enough.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: You can find it over at our site. It's a
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: very hard read. But it's important to remind ourselves, I think,
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: of the human cost of our aggression, which in all
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: of the talk about the chess games and the economy
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: and the oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, it
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: can get lost. But it's very real, and it is
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: by far the most important element. I want to start
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: actually by putting up, before we go to you, Jeremy,
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: put up this first element on the screen. This is,
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: you write, this is Yagub Yazdapanana on his six-year-old daughter Fatima.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Fatima's mother and I had noticed Fatima's overflowing intelligence, he
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: told Jeremy. I'm a poet myself. When I would write poetry,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: edit poetry, I would repeat the poem. After hearing the
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: poem once or twice, Fatima would immediately memorize it. When
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: we would tell her a story, she would never forget
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: the story and she would recite the story moment by moment.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: word for word. I wanted to find a school that
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: would address Fatima's needs and her active mind. I visited
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: several schools myself. Certainly you would do the same thing.
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: Any parent would take their child to a good school
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: for a brighter future. Thank God, he recalled thinking, I
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: found Shajara Tayeva school. That morning, Yagub kissed Fatima goodbye
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: before walking to the local school in Gurzang where he taught. So, Jeremy,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: can you talk to us a little bit about, you know, how,
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: you know, what you found as you spoke to people
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: who were, uh, the, either the victims or survivors of this,
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: of this strike.
• 47:44
  Speaker 8: You know, Ryan, I have to say, you know, for
• 47:46
  Speaker 8: more than 25 years, I've been a reporter and a
• 47:50
  Speaker 8: lot of the work that I've done has been in
• 47:51
  Speaker 8: war zones. And, you know, I reported on us massacres
• 47:55
  Speaker 8: and torture in Iraq. Um, you know, on President Obama's
• 47:59
  Speaker 8: expansion of drone strikes, including drone strikes that killed large
• 48:04
  Speaker 8: groups of civilians, including children. So, you know, I'm no
• 48:09
  Speaker 8: stranger to reporting on U.S. war crimes or the killing
• 48:12
  Speaker 8: of children, but I don't think that in my entire
• 48:16
  Speaker 8: life as a journalist I've ever reported on a more
• 48:20
  Speaker 8: heinous crime than this. You know, and the people who
• 48:26
  Speaker 8: agreed to tell their stories. Doctors, parents, teachers, you know,
• 48:33
  Speaker 8: 26 teachers were killed in those airstrikes. All of them
• 48:36
  Speaker 8: were women. One of the teachers was six months pregnant.
• 48:42
  Speaker 8: You know, it's a shock to the heart. I still
• 48:48
  Speaker 8: can't get over the depth of the horrors that people
• 48:53
  Speaker 8: experience that day. And, you know, I think about it
• 48:55
  Speaker 8: in the context of when there's school shootings in America,
• 49:00
  Speaker 8: you know, some of the best journalism ends up happening
• 49:03
  Speaker 8: where they tell the stories of the kids who've been
• 49:06
  Speaker 8: killed and the dreams that they had and the wishes
• 49:09
  Speaker 8: for the future that they had. And you hear about
• 49:11
  Speaker 8: their lives and how they excelled in sports or what
• 49:14
  Speaker 8: they wanted to do in life. And we come in
• 49:18
  Speaker 8: direct contact with the humanity of the lives that have
• 49:23
  Speaker 8: been stolen, have been taken. And when it's our bombs
• 49:27
  Speaker 8: that are dropped on children across the world, we know
• 49:33
  Speaker 8: almost nothing about who was killed in these strikes. And
• 49:36
  Speaker 8: so part of what we set out to do was
• 49:39
  Speaker 8: to approach this story and say, let's hear what happened
• 49:44
  Speaker 8: that day through the lens and perspective of the people
• 49:48
  Speaker 8: who survived it and those who lost their loved ones
• 49:51
  Speaker 8: that day. And we have to remember that on the
• 49:54
  Speaker 8: morning of February 28th, when Iranians woke up, the last
• 49:57
  Speaker 8: thing they had heard the night before was the Omani
• 50:00
  Speaker 8: foreign minister had been meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance
• 50:03
  Speaker 8: in Washington and came out and said, I think we're
• 50:07
  Speaker 8: on the verge of a deal. And, you know, there
• 50:09
  Speaker 8: were talks scheduled for, you know, a few days down
• 50:12
  Speaker 8: the road in Vienna, Austria to have technical talks about
• 50:15
  Speaker 8: the nuclear negotiations. I mean, our sources in Tehran from
• 50:18
  Speaker 8: the Iranian government were saying to us, you know, all
• 50:21
  Speaker 8: the indications we're receiving from the mediators is that we're
• 50:24
  Speaker 8: going to have this technical round of talks in Vienna
• 50:27
  Speaker 8: and we'll see what happens there. And so Iranians wake up,
• 50:30
  Speaker 8: they're going to school, they're going to work. This was
• 50:32
  Speaker 8: a Saturday, but it's the equivalent of our Monday morning.
• 50:34
  Speaker 8: You know, Saturday is the beginning of the work and
• 50:36
  Speaker 8: school week. So people all across the country in Iran
• 50:39
  Speaker 8: got up. They knew that war was possible, but they
• 50:42
  Speaker 8: didn't believe that it was going to happen like that morning.
• 50:45
  Speaker 8: People are stuck in traffic jams. They're rushing to get
• 50:47
  Speaker 8: their kids out the door. It also was Ramadan. So
• 50:52
  Speaker 8: most adults and basically any children who were third grade
• 50:56
  Speaker 8: and up were fasting during this period. So it's already
• 50:59
  Speaker 8: a kind of trying stressful period for people on some level.
• 51:03
  Speaker 8: And then airstrikes start happening in Tehran and other cities.
• 51:07
  Speaker 8: And the first target that was hit that day, we
• 51:10
  Speaker 8: now know, was the residence of the supreme leader of Iran,
• 51:14
  Speaker 8: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And it killed Khamenei and several members
• 51:19
  Speaker 8: of his family. So the news coverage that morning, a
• 51:21
  Speaker 8: lot of it was on this speculation that Khamenei had
• 51:25
  Speaker 8: actually been assassinated. There were now emerging reports that various
• 51:29
  Speaker 8: IRGC military sites had been hit. And meanwhile, in the
• 51:35
  Speaker 8: southern city of Minab, which is just north of Oman
• 51:40
  Speaker 8: in the Strait of Hormuz, Marco Polo wrote about Minab
• 51:46
  Speaker 8: in his diaries and had gone through there. It's a
• 51:48
  Speaker 8: very strategically important place. It's also an agricultural heartland, the
• 51:52
  Speaker 8: home of the mango industry in Iran, big fishing industry
• 51:56
  Speaker 8: from both the Minab River and the Persian Gulf. People
• 52:00
  Speaker 8: had also sent their kids to school that morning. And
• 52:03
  Speaker 8: then word spreads like the war has started. And so
• 52:05
  Speaker 8: at this school in Minab, the teachers start getting directives
• 52:10
  Speaker 8: from the principal that the provincial authorities have said, you
• 52:12
  Speaker 8: got to call all the parents and tell them to
• 52:14
  Speaker 8: come pick up their kids because another war is starting
• 52:16
  Speaker 8: and you got to bring them home and there's going
• 52:17
  Speaker 8: to be a shelter in place order. And so, you know,
• 52:20
  Speaker 8: one of the teachers at the school, Ms. Salem told me,
• 52:23
  Speaker 8: and her son, by the way, was a fifth grader
• 52:25
  Speaker 8: at this same school. There was a girl's school, a
• 52:26
  Speaker 8: boy's school and a preschool. And she was a preschool
• 52:28
  Speaker 8: teacher there. She said, you know, we, we, we didn't
• 52:31
  Speaker 8: think we weren't in a panic. You know, we started
• 52:33
  Speaker 8: calling parents. We said, okay, the war has actually started.
• 52:36
  Speaker 8: You got to come and pick up your kids. So
• 52:38
  Speaker 8: parents start to arrive at the school that morning. And
• 52:42
  Speaker 8: then as they're kind of getting the backpacks on the
• 52:44
  Speaker 8: kids and parents are pulling up to the front gate,
• 52:47
  Speaker 8: they hear a massive explosion nearby. Now this strike didn't
• 52:52
  Speaker 8: hit the school, but it was close to the school.
• 52:54
  Speaker 8: So people are like, oh my God, you know, what's happening?
• 52:58
  Speaker 8: So the first instinct of the teachers was, We need
• 53:02
  Speaker 8: to get everybody back into the school. And what they
• 53:04
  Speaker 8: were thinking was they'll never hit a school. So they
• 53:07
  Speaker 8: bring the kids back into the school. And while they
• 53:11
  Speaker 8: do that, some children gathered in a prayer hall with
• 53:15
  Speaker 8: one of the teachers.
• 53:17
  Speaker 5: Ms.
• 53:17
  Speaker 8: Salem, the teacher I talked to, ran back up to
• 53:19
  Speaker 8: her classroom because some of the kids whose parents hadn't
• 53:21
  Speaker 8: arrived yet were just waiting there in the classroom with
• 53:24
  Speaker 8: their backpacks on. And she goes in, and the kids
• 53:27
  Speaker 8: are saying, Miss, Miss, what's happening? And she says, oh,
• 53:31
  Speaker 8: everything is going to be fine. And that moment, she
• 53:34
  Speaker 8: hears a sound that she said she would never be
• 53:38
  Speaker 8: able to replicate it. It was just like a whoosh, boom.
• 53:41
  Speaker 8: And she said, and all of a sudden, everything shook.
• 53:44
  Speaker 8: The windows blasted out. Smoke starts to appear. And then immediately,
• 53:48
  Speaker 8: another massive bang. And she said she realized that we've
• 53:52
  Speaker 8: been bombed, that the school has been hit. And she
• 53:54
  Speaker 8: thinks she's dying in a moment. She thinks everything is
• 53:57
  Speaker 8: going to collapse around her. And then she says there
• 54:00
  Speaker 8: was just silence for a moment. And she looks around
• 54:03
  Speaker 8: and she sees the children. And she just starts running
• 54:06
  Speaker 8: to get them outside. And when she gets outside, she
• 54:09
  Speaker 8: steps into the apocalypse, as she describes it. Children shrieking,
• 54:13
  Speaker 8: bloodied faces, limbs on the ground, panic everywhere. And she
• 54:20
  Speaker 8: turns around and she sees that the entire school is
• 54:22
  Speaker 8: in flames and smoke. And she's saying to the kids,
• 54:26
  Speaker 8: don't turn around, don't turn around. And she runs them
• 54:28
  Speaker 8: out to the gate. And meanwhile, firemen had started to
• 54:32
  Speaker 8: come in and she recalls yelling to the firemen, there's
• 54:35
  Speaker 8: children trapped under the rubble. You have to go in there.
• 54:38
  Speaker 8: And so what, what had happened is that the, the
• 54:42
  Speaker 8: U S directly hit the school with at least two
• 54:46
  Speaker 8: Tomahawk cruise missiles. And we obtained high definition or high
• 54:50
  Speaker 8: resolution photos showing that the parts for the missiles were
• 54:53
  Speaker 8: manufactured by the Raytheon corporation, the leading manufacturer of Tomahawk
• 54:58
  Speaker 8: cruise missiles. And, and, and so remember parents had been
• 55:02
  Speaker 8: coming also to pick up their children. So among the
• 55:07
  Speaker 8: 156 people that died in these strikes were 120 children
• 55:11
  Speaker 8: from both the girls, the boys' school and the preschool,
• 55:14
  Speaker 8: 26 teachers. and then parents who had left work to
• 55:18
  Speaker 8: come and get their children and bring them out. And
• 55:21
  Speaker 8: so what then unfolded over the course of the next
• 55:24
  Speaker 8: few hours was that roughly a thousand people descended on
• 55:28
  Speaker 8: the school, firemen, Red Crescent, but also ordinary people, parents,
• 55:32
  Speaker 8: and they were all digging. And some of the first
• 55:35
  Speaker 8: responders described to us how when they first arrived, they
• 55:39
  Speaker 8: were wearing gloves and masks. And when they realized that
• 55:42
  Speaker 8: it was children that they were trying to recover, they
• 55:46
  Speaker 8: dispensed with the gloves and masks and they were digging.
• 55:48
  Speaker 8: And one of the first responders said that at the
• 55:52
  Speaker 8: end of that first day, he realized that he had
• 55:56
  Speaker 8: the flesh of the children and the teachers stuck to
• 55:59
  Speaker 8: his shirt, that he had brain matter under his fingernails
• 56:03
  Speaker 8: from digging. And he said he couldn't get it out.
• 56:06
  Speaker 8: And eventually that night he had to just obsessively cut
• 56:09
  Speaker 8: his fingernails because he couldn't shake the fact that he
• 56:12
  Speaker 8: had probably a child's brain matter under his fingernails. And,
• 56:17
  Speaker 8: you know, you, you, you showed the image of Yagoob
• 56:19
  Speaker 8: and his daughter Fatima, and, you know, they had fought
• 56:22
  Speaker 8: to get their daughter into this school. And, um, you know,
• 56:26
  Speaker 8: he also arrived on, on, on that scene. And he
• 56:28
  Speaker 8: said that, you know, at the end of that first day,
• 56:31
  Speaker 8: you just knew you, you knew no one else was,
• 56:34
  Speaker 8: was coming out. And, and he and his other family
• 56:37
  Speaker 8: members split up and he went to the hospital and
• 56:40
  Speaker 8: some of his family members stayed at the recovery scene.
• 56:42
  Speaker 8: And then late that night, like 1030, um, An ambulance came,
• 56:46
  Speaker 8: and he said he just knew in his heart that
• 56:49
  Speaker 8: Fatima was going to be in it. And it turned
• 56:51
  Speaker 8: out that his six-year-old daughter had died with her cousin,
• 56:58
  Speaker 8: who also went to the school. And they were in
• 56:59
  Speaker 8: the arms of a teacher that had shielded them from
• 57:02
  Speaker 8: the bombing. And the reason the first responders knew that,
• 57:06
  Speaker 8: these girls had their backpacks with them. Their bodies were
• 57:09
  Speaker 8: completely intact. And the teacher had suffered massive wounds all
• 57:13
  Speaker 8: over her body. And so the first responders determined that.
• 57:17
  Speaker 8: And what I'll say is that there's a whole narrative
• 57:20
  Speaker 8: about where was this school? Was it on a military base,
• 57:23
  Speaker 8: et cetera? And I'm going to get to that. But
• 57:25
  Speaker 8: I just want to say this before we get into
• 57:27
  Speaker 8: those details. Every single person that we spoke to, whether
• 57:32
  Speaker 8: it was the director of the hospital or it was
• 57:35
  Speaker 8: the firemen or it was the Red Crescent first responders
• 57:39
  Speaker 8: or it was the parents, any American that would hear
• 57:44
  Speaker 8: this story, any American, especially that has a child, um,
• 57:49
  Speaker 8: your heart can't help but bleed for what they've gone through.
• 57:53
  Speaker 8: And every single person we talked to, as we started
• 57:56
  Speaker 8: to finish our interview, um, they all made a point
• 58:01
  Speaker 8: of saying, we know that there's many people in America
• 58:03
  Speaker 8: who's empath, who have empathized with us or sympathized with us. And, um,
• 58:09
  Speaker 8: And they also were aware that we were speaking at
• 58:10
  Speaker 8: a time when Americans were getting their kids ready for
• 58:12
  Speaker 8: school and they were saying, how can we send our
• 58:15
  Speaker 8: children to school? How can we go school shopping for them?
• 58:19
  Speaker 8: This impacted, it pierced the heart of Iranian society across
• 58:22
  Speaker 8: the political, cultural, ethnic spectrum. And the response of the
• 58:28
  Speaker 8: United States to this was so indescribably callous.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: The very first.
• 58:35
  Speaker 8: Things that were said, you know, CENTCOM released the boilerplate thing.
• 58:38
  Speaker 8: We understand there are reports of civilian casualties. We always
• 58:42
  Speaker 8: investigate it. But the first narrative that really was put
• 58:45
  Speaker 8: out by the president of the United States was Iran
• 58:48
  Speaker 8: did this. He went so far as to lie and
• 58:51
  Speaker 8: say Iran also has cruise missiles. They're generic. Only five
• 58:55
  Speaker 8: countries in the world have cruise missiles. This is a
• 58:57
  Speaker 8: highly sensitive American technology. He said, oh, Iran's missiles are inaccurate. Oh,
• 59:02
  Speaker 8: the IRGC must have done it. And then the dominant narrative,
• 59:05
  Speaker 8: which is the one that is sort of at the
• 59:07
  Speaker 8: center of what the emerging Pentagon story is about. this,
• 59:10
  Speaker 8: is that the school was actually embedded on a military base.
• 59:15
  Speaker 8: And in fact, the head of U.S. Central Command, General
• 59:20
  Speaker 8: Brad Cooper, told Congress that it was on an active
• 59:23
  Speaker 8: IRGC missile base. Now, we investigated this quite thoroughly. And
• 59:29
  Speaker 8: the story is this. that up until 2014, there was
• 59:33
  Speaker 8: an IRGC Navy barracks that was on this swath of
• 59:37
  Speaker 8: land where this school now is. In 2014, the IRGC
• 59:44
  Speaker 8: essentially donated the land to the province, and they began
• 59:48
  Speaker 8: a redevelopment and redistricting of that land. And the IRGC
• 59:53
  Speaker 8: vacated most of that land, They maintained one administrative office
• 59:59
  Speaker 8: for the IRGC Navy, but they moved about two kilometers
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 8: away from the site of this school. And by the way,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 8: the place that they moved to, I learned this morning,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 8: wasn't even hit. An active, open, publicly identified IRGC facility
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 8: that was roughly a mile and a half away wasn't
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 8: even hit that morning. And so we got the permits
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 8: showing from the Iranian officials showing when the school was registered,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 8: a boys' school, a girls' school under this banner. And
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 8: so what happened there is that this land was redistributed.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 8: They built a huge walled compound that the school was in.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 8: There was only one entry and exit. It had no
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 8: connection whatsoever to this remaining IRGC administrative office. There was
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 8: a medical clinic nearby that used to be on the
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 8: property of the IRGC that was a public health clinic.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 8: It did have an insurance contract to provide health care
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 8: to military families, but it was not an official IRGC
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 8: health clinic. There was a co-op store that was run
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 8: by essentially like a teacher syndicate for low-cost supplies and
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 8: other financial assistance to educators. There was a car wash
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 8: and then what we would call in America a strip mall.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 8: And so the school was hit. And what we understand
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 8: now from the emerging details on this so-called investigation is
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 8: is that what the Pentagon essentially is heading toward is saying, oops,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 8: we had outdated satellite photos. We didn't realize that it
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 8: still wasn't this sprawling IRGC base. We didn't know that
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 8: this was a school that was there. And the maven
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 8: system of Palantir failed to pick it up, artificial intelligence,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 8: et cetera. But the military veterans that I spoke to
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 8: who worked at high levels at the Pentagon on targeting
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 8: said that regardless of if that's true, that AI missed this,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 8: that they were relying on outdated satellite maps, none of
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 8: it should have happened. Because if you're going to select
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 8: targets like this, there are mandated processes that you have
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 8: to go through to validate the most current intelligence you
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 8: have on a site before you launch it. And so
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 8: what essentially is happening right now, I think, is a
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 8: kind of cover up within a cover up that we're
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 8: witnessing from the you know, from the Pentagon. Many Iranians
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 8: believe this was a deliberate strike. I talked to a
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 8: former senior State Department official who also says she can't,
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 8: who served under Trump, under Bush, under Biden. She said
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 8: she can't make peace with the idea that this was
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 8: just some error, knowing what she knows about how carefully
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 8: you're supposed to vet these targets. And the last thing
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 8: I'll say on this is we have to remember, this
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 8: wasn't like the school got indirectly hit when they hit
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 8: something else. This was a direct strike, multiple direct strikes
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 8: on this school. And it was in the opening hours
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 8: of the war, meaning this was a tier one target
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 8: that they had selected. to be hit really, really early on.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 8: So at the end of the day, what we have
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 8: is a direct strike with multiple, at minimum of two
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 8: Tomahawk cruise missiles, killing 120 children, killing 26 teachers, including
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 8: one who was pregnant. The United States trying to put
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 8: out a nonsense story that it was Iran that bombed
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 8: the school themselves, denying that it was American cruise missiles,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 8: saying the Iranians also have Tomahawk cruise missiles. That was false.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 8: We now have clear evidence that these were Raytheon-manufactured U.S.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 8: cruise missiles. And if it wasn't enough that they bombed
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 8: the school directly, a couple of hours after they bombed
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 8: the school, when all of the first responders are there,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 8: when all of the parents are there, when they're trying
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 8: to recover the kids and their bodies, the United States
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 8: then launches another series of strikes, multiple missiles. They hit
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 8: the clinic. They hit the car wash. They hit the
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 8: small businesses that are there. If that wall hadn't been
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 8: built around the school, multiple witnesses who were there when
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 8: this happened told us a thousand people probably would have
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 8: been killed from those follow-up attacks. Iran's justice minister, in
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 8: an exclusive interview with us, said, we don't call this
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 8: a double tap, we call this a triple tap, because
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 8: they hit the school multiple times, and then they launched
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 8: another strike directly in the vicinity of the school. So
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 8: they're saying that it's a triple tap strike.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: Jeremy, I heard Tucker Carlson recently comparing this to an
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 5: Oklahoma City bombing type effect if To make it maybe
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 5: more approachable from an American perspective, in our country, this
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: has really been an afterthought. And I think that's part
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: of what's sad to see your great detailed, horrific reporting
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 5: on this. But can you tell us about how politically
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 5: this played out in Iran? And not even just politically,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 5: but culturally, socially, how this played out for the Iranian
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: public and is still playing. And it's still obviously a
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: very big question at the forefront of their minds.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, I also want to say that, like,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 8: there has been some really good journalism on this in
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 8: two basic categories. I mean, one, you know, in the U.S.,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 8: in Britain, Iranian filmmakers like Helya Dutaghi, she made a
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 8: great series about the Minab bombing that no one probably
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 8: has seen in the West because, you know, it was
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 8: produced in Iran, but it's in English and people can
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 8: see it. It's called Still Minab. You know, so it's
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 8: not that there hasn't been journalism or an attempt to
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 8: sort of tell the human story. It's that it's overwhelmingly
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 8: been kind of shorter news stories. You quote a couple
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 8: of the parents, you talk about the pain, and of
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 8: course that's very important. But in terms of really humanizing
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 8: the people who experienced this in the way we would with,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 8: for instance, the Oklahoma City bombing, or with a school shooting,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 8: or in the aftermath of 9-11, the stories that were
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 8: done about the people who died in the Twin Towers
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 8: or at the Pentagon, or at the plane that went
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 8: down in Pennsylvania. You know, that kind of journalism is
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 8: ultimately what cuts to the heart of all of us.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 8: And so, you know, when we're looking at this, I
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 8: think it's important to not say, well, this is something
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 8: that happened over there because we're actually not allowed to
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 8: do that. This happened because of orders given at the
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 8: highest levels of power in the United States. And, you know,
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 8: multiple Iranians I talked to, like the chief psychologist that
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 8: I spoke to who's treating the children and the families,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 8: you know, she's from Minab herself. And she said that
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 8: that morning, people were calling her and saying, can this
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 8: actually be true that America bombed a school, bombed a
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 8: school in Minab? I think that even the way that Iranians,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 8: many Iranians have come to view the United States and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 8: the sort of way in which they think there are
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 8: no boundaries, especially after the Gaza genocide and the indiscriminate
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 8: attacks on civilian infrastructure. I think there was disbelief at
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 8: the beginning that how could this be real. And, you know, one,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 8: this leading international law expert that I interviewed, I was
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 8: interviewing him about, he's an Iranian, I was interviewing him
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 8: about sort of Iran's options for how they're going to
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 8: pursue this legally. And he even got very emotional when
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 8: he started talking. And he, and this answers your question, Emily,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 8: he said, you know, Iranians love poetry, and we love literature,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 8: and we love stories of sorrow, and we love stories
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 8: of the underdog and the forgotten. Um, and he said,
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 8: you know, and the job of a, of a great
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 8: Iranian writer is to cut to the heart, you know, and, and,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 8: and it's to inspire those kinds of deep emotions in people.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 8: And he said, the way that this Mina bombing has
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 8: impacted every level of our society goes beyond even the
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 8: most epic, tragic poems and literature of our history. Um,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 8: you know, and, uh, you know, people are saying they'll
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 8: never be the same. And, um, And I also, like,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 8: I interviewed the Minister of Justice and I asked everybody
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 8: that I talked to, like, what do you want to
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 8: see happen here? And, you know, even the Minister of Justice,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 8: he talks about the complexities of international justice. You know,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 8: neither the United States nor Iran are signatories to the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 8: International Criminal Court. But at the same time, also, even
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 8: if they did manage to get something at the International
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 8: Criminal Court, Trump is now going after trying to destroy
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 8: the court, sanctioning it. You know, there was bipartisan legislation
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 8: passed under George W. Bush that came to be known
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 8: as the Hague Invasion Act that says that if any U.S.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 8: personnel are ever brought to any proceedings at the Hague,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 8: that the U.S. military can go in and actually rescue them.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 8: And so, you know, what options are there for Iran?
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 8: You know, there may be a possibility of setting up
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 8: a special tribunal with prosecutorial powers based on a precedent
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 8: recently set by a tribunal set up to prosecute Russia
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 8: for crimes in Ukraine. So, you know, you talk about
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 8: this and we get into all of these details, but
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 8: at the end of the day, when you talk to
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 8: an ordinary Iranian that was impacted by this, they're saying
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 8: that justice means that we take action to ensure that
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 8: this never happens again. And so, you know, some people
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 8: say this is why it's important for Iran to reinstall
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 8: deterrence against the United States, because we can't depend on
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 8: internet institutions. Remember that what was happening prior to the
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 8: start of this war, there were these huge protests in Iran.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 8: The narrative in January was Trump saying, this is a
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 8: regime that's murdering its own people, help is on the way.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 8: You know, there were huge protests that were happening from
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 8: the bazaaris, the small business owners. You know, the narrative
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 8: just before the February 28th war began was very different.
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 8: And I think the fact that they killed Ali Khamenei
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 8: right off the bat, who was not just the political
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 8: leader of the country, but was also a deeply revered
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 8: religious leader in Shia Islam in Iran and beyond. That
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 8: was something I think that in some ways cut across
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 8: any political divides in Iran. But also, they killed 120 kids,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 8: including directly hitting the girls' school part of this building.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 8: And I think that in some ways, it served as
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 8: a unifying incident because of the heinous nature of it.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 8: that whatever you think about the government in your own country,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 8: someone would come from afar and launch their most sophisticated
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 8: missiles on our children and shred them into pieces. You know,
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 8: the description from the director of the hospital, who, by
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 8: the way, he said he had never spoken to Iranian
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 8: or foreign journalists before speaking to me, and he said
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 8: that he had never been able to do it, to
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 8: get the composure to be able to speak about the
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 8: events of that day, but he agreed to talk to me.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 8: And when we were done with our, with the interview
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 8: and he did a good job of keeping it together, given,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 8: I mean, you know, this is a guy who was
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 8: seeing children's hands brought in, um, kids who were being
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 8: identified because they, their dad had put a brand new
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 8: pair of SpongeBob square pants socks on him that morning.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 8: You know, he's, he's witnessing this throughout the day. And
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 8: at the end of our interview, um, he's, he doesn't
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 8: realize that we're still recording. And he says to a colleague,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 8: I injured my hand. because I was poking my pen
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 8: so deep into my thumb because I didn't want to cry.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 8: And this is the director of the hospital. He said
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 8: they had room in their morgue for six bodies, and
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 8: then they become overflown with casualties and injuries. And he
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 8: said at first, they were expecting that they were going
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 8: to be treating people from the bombing, but he said
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 8: that it quickly occurred to him, these are children's body
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 8: parts coming to the hospital. Imagine this too, nurses and
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 8: doctors in that hospital had children who were killed in
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 8: that bombing. And yet they stayed in the hospital to
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 8: treat the wounded while also having to look for, is
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 8: my child here? Is their arm here? Is their leg here?
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 8: Do I recognize the clothing still on it? On a
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 8: human level, it doesn't matter if you're Iranian or American,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 8: think about that just as a human being, what that
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 8: was like. The morgue filled up so quickly that they
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 8: had to start using the kitchen facilities in the hospital
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 8: to store body parts of children. They had to start
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 8: using the coolers in the hospital. Then those filled up.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 8: And then they had to call fishermen and shrimp farmers
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 8: and ask them to bring their frozen fish trucks. And
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 8: they started putting the body parts of children in the
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: fish trucks. And then parents have descended on the hospital.
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 8: And while they're there, the word of that third round
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 8: of strikes or that second wave of strikes, people start
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 8: to hear that that has happened and that a clinic
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 8: has been hit. And then a rumor starts, the Americans
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 8: are going to bomb the hospital next. And so the
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 8: director of the hospital says, Most people then fled the
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 8: hospital because they believed that we were going to be bombed.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 8: And he said, not a single one of my nurses
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 8: or doctors left the hospital. We all accepted that we
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 8: may be martyred and we would rather die trying to
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 8: save our people's lives than flee because of the possibility
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 8: that America or Israel might bomb our hospital. A little
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 8: girl who's the niece of the teacher at the school,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 8: she also went there, told her aunt that, She has
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 8: nightmares and believes that the U.S. and Israel are still
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 8: hunting the surviving children of the school and that the
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 8: war won't end until they've killed all of them. You know,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 8: the drawings that we published of what children remembered that
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 8: day of what happened, children running out and calling for
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 8: their friends, children who remember being trapped under the rubble
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 8: and hearing their friends screaming and then having to live
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 8: with the fact that those friends aren't alive anymore and feeling,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: as the psychologist told us, They feel like they're bad people,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 8: these little kids. They're afraid to tell their parents, I
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 8: saw Ali's hand, because they think they did something wrong
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 8: because they saw the severed body parts of their friends.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 8: These are 7, 8, 9, 10-year-old kids.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: I wanted to highlight that part, actually, because it felt like,
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: reading through your story, that there's a deeper sense of
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: guilt among the survivors of this attack then among the
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: American officials who actually carried it out. We can put
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: up the quote card five here. This is Dr. Darvish
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: who talked about earlier. He said, I had a talk
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: with a mother who told me that she was to
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: blame for her child's martyrdom because, quote, my son told
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: me that morning that he had a stomach ache and
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: didn't want to go to school. I killed my son.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: I was the one who caused my son's death. And
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: then Ms. Salem, the teacher that you mentioned, She said
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: the night of the bombing, she was calling as many
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: of the parents of her students as she could, as
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: well as those of her former students. She recalls how
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: the parent of one of her students confronted her. Didn't
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: you say my child was your child? You saved Yasin.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: You couldn't save my child. Salem remembered. I said, I
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: swear he wasn't with me. She paused. It's very hard.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: Now to the actual guilt. We can put up quote
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: card three here. You you write. Early in his tenure
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: as war secretary in 2025, Pete Hegseth dissolved the Civilian
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: Protection Center at the Pentagon, where an official that you
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: interviewed worked, and announced a policy of, quote, maximum lethality,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: not tepid legality, unquote. The Trump administration has staked out
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: a public and internal posture. It has dramatically loosened restrictions
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: on the killing of civilians. And Trump has repeatedly stated U.S.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: intent to bomb civilian sites. Quote, I think these are
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: all sinking together. And then, of course, the rhetoric from
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: not just Hegseth, but especially Trump himself about destroying an
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: entire civilization. All of that filters into the culture, said Bryant.
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: These factors, he charged, combined with the drive to strike
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: an unprecedented number of sites in Iran in a short
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: amount of time, created the conditions for the Minab strike.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: And so, uh, what, what, can you talk a little
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: bit about the, the, the, the sense of, of survivors of,
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: of the guilt that they're going through and, and where it,
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: where it actually lies?
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 9: Yeah.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 8: You know, there's another story, you know, a lot of,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 8: a lot of the kids, they, and, and the, you know,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 8: the surviving teachers, they go to the cemetery, um, you know,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 8: to sit at the graves of, you know, their friends
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 8: and others. And, you know, I, I mean, again, think
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 8: about it on a parental level. You know, your kid
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 8: has survived something unspeakable, you know, where their classmates have
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 8: been slaughtered and their school has been bombed. And, you know, Ms.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 8: Salem told us that when she was crying that day,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 8: some of the students came up to her and they said, we.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 8: We have money. We can, we can help you rebuild
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 8: your school. They thought she was crying because the school
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 8: was destroyed. You know, like the minds of children can
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 8: pierce your heart in a way that no one else, uh,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 8: you know, can, but also they feel like the parents
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 8: and others have told them, you know, your friends and
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 8: your teachers are all in a better place. You know,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 8: they're in heaven. And then the children say, well, why
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 8: aren't I in that better place? You know, what did
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 8: I do to have to stay here? You know, and, and, um,
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: Why did, why did you rescue me was what the Yasin,
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 8: the son of Ms. Salem said, why did you come
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 8: so early to get me? You know, when, when any
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 8: starts naming his friends, when they're all in heaven now,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 8: you know, there are reports from the psychologist that there
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 8: are children that have been burning them themselves with lighters
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 8: or matches because they want to feel what it felt
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 8: like when their friends were burned alive. Um, you know,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 8: so it's like, yeah, I, I, the, every story embedded
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 8: within this as a horror story. Um, you know, and,
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 8: and the dignity of the parents and others who took
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 8: the time to speak about it. Like, I don't know
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 8: that I would be capable of doing that if it
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 8: was my own, um, my own child that I'm talking about.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 8: And then the, you know, the humanity. And, you know,
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 8: I think, I think that in our broader narratives, and
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: this is true about Palestinians in Gaza, it's certainly true
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 8: about Iran. There's somehow is this really kind of, um, demeaning,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 8: dehumanizing set of sins of omission about their humanity or
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 8: their intelligence. Iran is a highly educated, advanced society in
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: so many ways. That one father, Yaghoub, who we're talking about,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 8: was such a fascinating guy whose daughter Fatima was killed.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 8: He had been an accountant at a fishing business in Manab.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 8: And when his daughter was born, he said that he
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 8: He felt that it was like a challenge from God
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 8: that he wanted to do something more with his life.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 8: and he went back and he got his certification to
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 8: teach and he became a teacher of persian literature and
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 8: um and felt like that his it was because of
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 8: his daughter that he had been set on that path
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 8: and so then when he's reading his own poetry or
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 8: reciting his own poetry to her and realizes that like
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 8: this little tiny toddler can actually memorize these poems, including
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 8: my poems, not to mention poems from Iranian history, that
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 8: he felt like I have a child who has a
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 8: gift and she gave me the gift of, of giving
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 8: me new direction in my life. I need to give
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 8: her a gift. And that's how he ended up finding
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 8: the school. So it's like, you know, you're, you, you
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 8: talk to, to each, each, uh, sock that they found
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 8: each shoe that they found each hand that they found,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 8: they all had a story behind them. You know, this
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 8: school wasn't hidden somewhere. They had a social media presence.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 8: They were posting videos that look like anyone else's videos
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 8: from any school in any country. Kids playing hula hoops,
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 8: bake sales, school performances, singing, the celebration of kids' birthday
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 8: parties where the parents come and then they bring baked
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 8: goods from home. This school from satellite imagery just a
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 8: few weeks before the US directly struck this school, you
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 8: could see kids on the soccer field. You could see
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 8: the murals on the wall. This had been a school
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 8: for more than 10 years when the United States bombed it.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 8: And so, you know, there isn't any concrete evidence to say, oh, well,
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 8: the United States deliberately bombed the school full of children.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 8: But what's the response to this then? How could you
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 8: not understand that that's what you were doing? Tomahawk cruise
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 8: missiles also have photographic capability on them. They can loiter.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 8: They can be steered. They want us to believe that
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 8: no one bothered to check at all, that no one
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 8: looked at more recent satellite imagery, that the missiles didn't
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 8: pick up photos of any of this.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's really stunning.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 8: And the fact that there was an active IRGC facility,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 8: not on that compound, but not that far away, and
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 8: somehow that doesn't get hit. And they directly strike with
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 8: at least two Tomahawk cruise missiles, a school full of children.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 8: You know, Congress, a few Congress members have raised a
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 8: ruckus about this. This should be a total scandal. This
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 8: is one of the gravest war crimes that I'm aware
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 8: of since the Vietnam War in terms of single episodes,
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 8: one of the single most grave war crimes. The only
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 8: comparable single strike that I could think of that I
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 8: think is in the same category was in the 1991
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 8: Gulf War when George H.W. Bush defended the bombing of
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 8: the Amuraya bomb shelter in Baghdad, where the United States
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 8: dropped a bunker buster bomb. It ripped a hole open
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 8: where there was a bomb shelter with hundreds of Iraqis
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 8: in it. And then they dropped another bunker buster bomb
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 8: directly inside of the bomb shelter and killed more than
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 8: 400 Iraqis. I visited that shelter in Baghdad because it's
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 8: now a memorial. And it was the same narrative afterwards. Oh,
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 8: the Iraqis were using them as human shields. Oh, this
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 8: was actually a military facility. It's the same story they
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 8: roll out every single time. When the other side kills civilians,
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 8: they're intentionally killing civilians. When the United States does it,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 8: it's oops, we tortured some folks, as Obama said, or oops,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 8: we didn't do it on purpose. They directly hit a
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 8: school and killed 120 kids and they killed 26 teachers,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 8: one of whom was pregnant. And they killed parents who
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 8: had come up to pick their kids up that day.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: This can't just be swept under the rug, and Congress
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 8: needs to be as aggressive as possible, and it should
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 8: cut across party lines.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: Well, this story is titled Massacre at Minab, the School
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: That Became a Grave. We'll put the link below. Obviously,
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 3: you can find it at Dropside. Jeremy, thanks so much
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: for this reporting and for joining us today.
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 5: Thanks, Jeremy.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 8: Thanks for putting a focus on this. Appreciate it.