Episode 1672 Scott Adams: We Can Probably Predict How Ukraine Turns Out At This Point
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Content:
Wisconsin, something illegal happened?
Lindsey Graham's tweet, mistake?
Will Ukraine bankrupt Russia?
NATO rejects air cover for Ukraine
Losing in Ukraine, not an option for Putin
Things we didn't know about Ukraine
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Go. Ashland, Oregon, says hi.
Well, hello, Ashland. That was so good of you.
Well, today I lost all respect for myself.
And I know, I know, you were already there.
I'm just catching up with the rest of you.
But I have to say, as recently as last week, I still maintain a shred of respect for myself.
May not have been warranted, but it was there.
As of today, I can confess that I've lost all respect for myself, and I welcome you to join me if you're not already there.
And here's the reason.
I feel like we're all monetizing the misery of the Ukrainian people, as well as the Russian people at this point.
And... You know, it starts out, you're just talking about it because it's the important thing to talk about.
Am I right? Like, in the beginning, it makes complete sense.
It's morally and ethically appropriate.
People want to be informed.
But then it kind of quickly morphs into just merging with your business model.
You know, because my...
Part of what I do here is monetized by ads on YouTube.
And I'm thinking, you know, I got here innocently, but I think I drifted into this situation where I, like billions of people around the earth already, are sort of dehumanizing the Ukrainians.
Almost looking at it like it's a movie or it's an entertainment or something.
And I'm not joking...
I feel actually disgusted with myself.
And I'm not joking.
If you want to feel the same way about me, I can't talk you out of it, because here we are.
But what do we do about it?
Do I just stop talking about it?
I mean, I'm not sure that's really a solution.
So we press on, and I guess I'll try to be helpful.
I don't know. If I can find some way to be helpful to somebody, I guess I'll flail around for that.
But I just want you to know I'm terribly uncomfortable talking about something so horrible, like in the form of entertainment.
I don't know what to do about it, honestly.
Because I don't think you want me to stop, or you wouldn't be here.
And I don't feel like stopping.
But it's terribly wrong.
So if somebody comes up with a better way to handle this, please let me know.
Alright? Here's a little news bubble test.
I gave people on Twitter.
I think many of you passed it, but I was wondering what people outside of your bubbles would say.
And here's what I said.
Now, because I don't want to get banned from YouTube, I don't have to worry about locals, of course, but I don't want to be banned by YouTube, so I'm going to say it this way.
This week, we heard reports...
I'm not saying it's true...
But we heard reports that there were election irregularities in Wisconsin, and if those turned out to be true, then Trump was probably right about the 2020 election.
Now, we also heard about the Zuckerberg money that went into the battleground states, we heard about recently, that some of that looks like it was illegal.
Which actually would look like a rigged election in some people's definition of what that would mean.
So in the last week, Trump has been, we can't say for sure, but certainly the reporting has turned to more like he's right than he's wrong.
The biggest thing in the country for the last year and a half, and the entire narrative turned directions, and I don't think most people heard about it.
Do you? How many Democrats do you think know that Wisconsin has got a lot of questions to answer, and that Zuckerberg is being accused, or at least the money, whatever happened, I don't know the individuals, but At least how the money was used looks like a crime at this point.
Hasn't been proven in court, but the reporting is just sort of, I don't know, it's kind of weird, isn't it?
Now, we also see that there was more reporting in the past week that Trump was right about climate change being a hoax.
Now, not in the sense that the science is necessarily wrong, because I think the science probably gets at least the part about humans warming the planet.
I think they probably get that right, just so you know where I'm at in this conversation, right?
I think they get that right.
I don't think they get right how bad it will be because they can't predict Technological changes and all kinds of stuff like that.
So I think they'll be terribly wrong about the outcome of it.
But I think the world is getting warmer.
That's just background for this conversation.
But we learned that a lot of the opinion about nuclear power was driven by Russian propaganda.
So a lot of the fear of nuclear power literally was funded by Russians so that they could sell more energy and we wouldn't become energy independent with nuclear energy.
So indeed...
I'm not going to say Trump was right when he said it was a Chinese hoax because who knows what he was including in that.
But I think the reporting should at least acknowledge...
That the way the country is responding to climate change is literally based on a hoax, a Russian hoax about the dangers of nuclear, and that the Russians were pushing everybody to go green, Because if you went green, you still needed a lot of oil and gas.
So the greeter they could make you, the more dependent you would be on gas and oil, which is so cynical and so right at the same time.
Anyway, and I didn't see much of that in the general news.
And certainly Trump was completely right about energy policy.
We do see that in the news on the right, but I don't think the people on the left are hearing it.
Do you think Democrats are hearing?
You know, if Trump had gotten what he wanted, which was energy independence from, you know, the Russian oil, we'd at least be moving in that direction a lot faster.
But you don't see him getting credit for that.
So the number of things that Trump was completely right about We're so right that you need to at least update the story, right?
He's not completely right about some of this stuff yet.
Who knows? But he's right enough that you do need to update, I think, if you're being honest about it.
But the news bubbles will keep that from happening.
And of course, we all like to play WWTHD, which is what would Trump have done?
What would Trump have done with this Ukraine situation?
Well, we don't know.
But definitely Putin and Trump had a different relationship.
And Trump was definitely a dealmaker and a practical person and an anti-war person.
I feel like we would have been in a different place.
Maybe worse. Right?
You can't really predict these things.
But I feel like Trump would have said something like, if the only issue is you don't want NATO in Ukraine, if that's the only issue, I'm going to call your bluff.
I'll call your bluff and say, yeah, we won't put NATO in Ukraine.
And then see if Putin withdraws his forces.
Because that was the obvious play.
The obvious play was to just call his bluff and say, yeah, actually, now that we're surrounded by your entire military, okay, we will sign a document that says that Ukraine will never be in NATO. And it wouldn't mean anything, because you could always just tear it up if you change your mind later.
Do you think that Trump would not have thought of the idea of giving Putin nothing but a piece of paper...
Just to see if it calls his bluff and that he withdraws his military.
He might. I mean, it was the obvious play.
So obvious. And, you know, I think Trump would have done it.
But, of course, when you're playing, what would Trump have done?
It's just guessing.
Nobody knows that. Now, the other possibility is that Trump would have used the same trick that Putin is using.
Which is fear persuasion.
You know, I've got some nukes.
Maybe you better not be helping Ukraine because I've got these Russian nukes.
Have I mentioned that I have nukes?
So Putin is doing a really good job of persuading, and so far our response to that has been what is being called the adult response, where we're confirming that we're not escalating any of our nuclear alerts.
So instead of beating him, you know, nuclear tit-for-tat, we're like, oh, no, you don't have to worry about that.
We're not even playing that game.
That might be exactly the right way to play this.
It might be. I don't know that Trump would have played it this way.
I think because Trump always does whatever you think he's going to do, he ends up doing something different, which is part of why he was effective at a lot of stuff.
I think Trump would have offered to annihilate the entire Russian army and he would have sold the threat.
I think he would have sold it.
And he would have sold it because you're never quite sure what Trump would do.
Now, I feel safe that he wouldn't do crazy war-like things because that was so opposite his personality.
He was very anti-war.
But I definitely think he could have convinced Russia that he would have done it.
And I think there's still plenty of, you know, let's say, plenty of runway to back off from the nuclear war.
You know, if the threat didn't work, you still had, you know, it wasn't like Putin was going to launch.
So, I don't know.
I think a dealmaker could have made this work.
A better persuader could have made something work.
Somebody who had shown more respect to Putin in the past might have come in handy.
This might have been exactly the time that somebody had more of a, let's say, an ego-free relationship with Putin.
It might have been exactly the right person in the right time.
You never know. You never know.
I'm not going to claim that Trump would have done a better job.
We don't know that. But it would have looked different.
I think we could say that for sure.
And since what we're doing now doesn't seem to be working, I don't know that doing it differently would have been worse.
Maybe it just would have been another thing that didn't work.
You never know. So there's some fake news about Lindsey Graham today.
So Lindsey Graham, I guess, called for the Russian people to take out their own leader, presumably through assassination.
Some in the social media sphere are framing that as Lindsey Graham calling for outside powers to maybe assassinate Putin, which would be a big problem.
But he didn't say that, which would be crazy.
He did say that the Russian people might have to take care of it and it's the only way out.
Which is actually just a statement of fact.
It's persuasion.
Because you can tell that he's trying to put that idea in their heads.
So I think anybody who...
I don't know, I didn't have the same bad reaction to this that a lot of people did.
Did you? Did you? How many of you think that Lindsey Graham, if you judge this only from a persuasion perspective, that he just wants to put that seed of a thought in the Russian public?
Mistake or not a mistake?
What do you think? Mistake or not a mistake?
I think most people are saying mistake, right?
I'm going to say unclear.
I'm going to give this one a fog of war, gray area mark.
Because, first of all, I know you don't like everything that Lindsey Graham's ever done.
But can we agree he's reasonably smart?
He understands persuasion, for example.
I think he does.
But I don't think that this costs anything.
And it might have produced something.
So I think that if he says, hey, we should put this little idea in the Russian public's mind, it does at least make the strategy of the United States make a little bit more sense, keeping the pressure on the Russian people until the Russian people take care of it.
So at least that would be an integrated, coherent strategy.
If you take out the part...
Where the Russian people have to change their own government to get out of their own pain?
Then what we're doing doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?
You almost have to complete the whole picture to be honest about it.
So in one sense I think Lindsey Graham was just being honest.
The sanctions are not about changing Putin's mind.
The sanctions are about changing the public's mind.
And the public will change Putin's mind one way or another.
I don't think that's likely to happen, frankly.
Do you? Oh, damn it, you derailed me.
I just saw a question on YouTube.
What if Trump and Putin agreed to meet?
Best idea I've ever heard.
Not a chance. As long as Biden's president, that's not going to happen.
But it would be, I think it could work.
Am I crazy?
Well, yeah, I am.
Crazy and uninformed.
But the thing that Trump brings to every situation is shaking the box.
No matter where he goes, you start thinking about the whole situation differently as soon as you add that variable, the Trump variable.
So if our situation is that we're stuck, everybody's trapped, and the only logical outcome of everybody being trapped in their position is that lots of Ukrainian citizens get killed...
That's sort of where we are.
What is the best strategy when everybody is locked in their positions of doom?
Shake the box. Shake the box.
You don't know what you'll get, so that's dangerous.
But it might be better than doing nothing if you know that you're locked into a position of doom.
Yeah, maybe you don't shake it so hard.
But I'm going to say that Lindsey Graham's call for the Russian people to take care of their own government is really just a statement of the obvious, that that's really the point of the sanctions.
Because nobody thinks that Putin himself is going to change things, do they?
Do they think Putin's going to say, oh, look at my suffering country.
I think I'll help them out.
I mean, I do think he probably has empathy for his own country.
Like, I'm not so brainwashed that I think Putin doesn't love his own country or the people in it.
I think he does. All right.
So I'm going to give Lindsey Graham a passing grade on this.
I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think he didn't say anything that isn't obvious.
He did complete the strategy from why the sanctions could work.
I don't think they will, but at least it gives you a path that they might.
It might make things worse.
I'm not even saying it's a good strategy to change leadership.
You get somebody worse, maybe the nuclear weapons become unstable.
I mean, it could be really, really bad.
But at least it's consistent.
So the law of unintentional consequences is at play again.
Elon Musk issued a warning on Twitter that Starlink, the system that he has provided to the Ukrainians so that they could have some communication, is now the only non-Russian communication system that's still working in some parts of Ukraine.
Not all of it, but in some parts.
And he warns that if that's the only communication system being used, it can be identified digitally and targeted.
And he's literally saying, don't stand near one.
Did you hear that?
Elon Musk, who provided these Starlink, the ground-based components, he says, don't let people stand near them because they're probably going to attract missiles.
I didn't see that coming.
Did you? So then the other thing that I would worry about is I don't know how hackable it is, but even Musk seemed to think that everything's hackable, I guess.
So what happens if all of the vital communication that the Ukrainian military is doing, what if it's over one network where all of the hackers can concentrate all of their hacking, And do you think Russia already can hear every communication of the Ukrainian resistance?
If the only thing they have to use is Starlink, doesn't Russia know exactly what they're saying by now?
Or is it not hackable in that fashion?
Maybe it's hackable if you want to take it down, but I don't know if it's hackable in the encryption sense.
I don't know. So that's the law of unintentional consequences.
It could be the Starlink...
I'm not saying this will happen, but the Starlink could be the thing that finishes the resistance.
It could be the thing that saves them.
But even Musk is saying, watch out, this could work the other way.
I take that pretty seriously.
All right, Rasmussen did a poll asking American adults...
If they think the Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely to hurt the American economy, and three-quarters of American adults think it would, what do you think?
Let's do short-term and long-term.
Short-term is easy. Short-term, it hurts the American economy.
Everybody agrees with that, right?
Basically, everybody's economy is going to hurt.
There will be individual companies that maybe make money, but everybody's economy is going to hurt.
You can't be a good economist if you only look at the short term.
What about the long term?
What if the outcome of this is that Russia gets bled dry economically by trying to hold and control Ukraine, which looks almost impossible at this point?
I mean, they can conquer it, but to really keep it pacified is going to be so expensive, I don't know how they'll do it.
Now, at the same time, they've got the sanctions, but they've got the workarounds.
We don't know if the workarounds will beat the sanctions or if new sanctions will beat the workaround.
It's sort of a case of good pitching beats good hitting and vice versa.
So probably that's going to be a back and forth for a while.
But in the long run, what if what happens in the long run is it makes Russia less competitive?
That could happen. What if it makes Russia just a smaller country, smaller economy, because they just can't break out of the sanctions enough to grow?
They might survive, but maybe they can't grow.
Well, that would defund their military eventually, and they would become less of a threat over time.
Right? So, could it be that our...
Our people in, let's say, the CIA, I'm sure they've done every kind of prediction and estimate about this.
Do you think our CIA's, whoever does their economic predictions, because they must have somebody doing that, do you think the CIA's economists believe that this is a good long-term investment?
To basically make sure that Russia gets bled dry in the war instead of just letting them win easily.
Because we could have gotten out of the way.
NATO could have not let weapons in, could have not supported it, and it would have probably been a quicker job and, I don't know, worse for the Ukrainian people.
Maybe not worse.
I don't know. Can't tell.
But... I'm not so sure.
If I had to guess, and I would remind any new people here, I do have a degree in economics.
I've got an MBA from a top school.
But, you know, your qualifications aren't going to be really too helpful in doing this kind of analysis because there's no data you can rely on.
None at all. So you're really just guessing based on general kinds of You know, truths.
A general truth. If you're at war, you're probably not going to prosper as much.
You know, it's sort of a general truth.
I feel, in general, that this could cripple Russia for decades, economically.
And maybe the U.S. gets some advantage from that.
Maybe our energy company is something.
I don't know. But I don't think it would have been a good idea as a purely economic investment, but it's unknown how that's going to go for us.
But let me give you an update on Ukraine.
Here's what's new, and I'm going to prime you for my predictions to come.
Because I think we know enough that we can make a reasonable prediction about the endgame.
What do you think? Before I get to my predictions, do you think we know enough now where we can kind of reasonably assume what the endgame looks like?
Most of you say no?
Okay, good. I want to change your mind.
Well, some of you say yes, actually.
No, it's a mix. We'll see how we do.
I'm going to prime you first.
So I guess Putin is securing land bridges and ocean access, which is sort of a war talk way of saying that Putin's military is sort of surrounding and enveloping everything that matters.
So while he's not crushing everything in Ukraine right away, he is basically almost already surrounded everything that matters.
So That's not good.
There was an attack on a nuclear plant.
The fire was not part of the...
It was a related building, but it wasn't critical.
It sounded worse than it was, but the Russians have control of that now.
Apparently, that's a war crime.
Attacking a nuclear facility is literally a war crime.
And could have been really, really bad, depending on what happened there.
But it wasn't so far.
Let's see. What else is due?
We've got...
Here's the persuasion war update.
Would you say that Zelensky is still winning the persuasion war?
I'd say so.
I mean, he's doing a great job.
I don't think anything we're seeing out of Ukraine is real.
Like, it's... All of the anecdotes are just not real.
And everything you think about Zelensky, he's starting to look like a hero, angel kind of a creature.
You know what that's making me think?
I'm starting to suspect the opposite.
Isn't Ukraine supposed to be the most corrupt government?
Or one of them. It's like one of the most corrupt governments.
Now, Zelensky was probably an anti-corruption guy, right?
But are there any reports that Zelensky himself is dirty?
Because I've never seen one, have you?
I've never seen any suggestion that he personally was corrupt.
But there always is.
I guess every leader gets that.
Um... Okay, I'm seeing some people say yes.
What are the odds that it's just two corrupt regimes fighting each other and we should just get out of the way?
That's one way to look at it.
That's not my opinion, but that's one way to look at it.
All right. So Zelensky, I don't know that he's the angel hero that he's made out to be, but he's definitely winning the persuasion war.
Just on the basis of persuasion, he's totally selling the story.
He seems to be rallying the country to put up a fight, so I guess he's completely succeeding there.
Interestingly... The biggest push against at least the U.S. provoking any escalation of a war, especially with U.S. assets or people, are the independence on social media.
You know all the names.
You follow a lot of the same people.
But there are some big voices on social media who are pushing very hard To not be dragged into war by stupid narratives and fake news and every other provocation.
Yeah. So those are the ones you're seeing the most.
Somebody says Jesse Kelly, Jimmy Dore, Barnes.
Yeah. Colonel McGregor.
Yeah, so you've seen lots of people pushing for no war, and I think that's pretty healthy.
But here's one way to look at it.
If Putin is right that, historically speaking, Ukraine and Russia are the same country, did we just provoke or trick Putin into attacking his own country?
Because he thinks Ukraine is his own country.
He's actually at war with his own country.
And I think, I mean, that's obviously not what the Ukrainians believe or the United Nations.
So there's a lot of people on the other side of that conversation, like almost everybody.
But it is an absurd situation that he actually is at war with his own country.
And I believe that the West provoked him to do that, which is, I don't know, you have to wonder how much of that was intentional.
So we hear that NATO rejected air cover.
One way to look at that is, hey, NATO definitely doesn't want any part of this war with Russia.
That's not how I interpret it.
Here's how I interpret NATO rejects providing air cover.
I do think that's real, and that they will continue to reject air cover.
But I think their public pronouncement of it Is air cover for the fact that they're already way too involved, if you know what I mean?
For some reason, Russia and the United States have evolved this idea that you can do anything to each other if you can lie about it successfully and fool at least somebody.
Like, it doesn't even have to be a good lie.
It's like, cyberattacks?
I don't know what you're talking about.
What's cyberattacks?
I'd like to see that proof.
Right? So then the cyberattacks are going full strength probably both directions, right?
How about spies?
Spies? What?
You think the US has spies in our embassy in Russia?
What? You think the Russians have spies?
What? So we just do this stupid thing Where if you can lie about it successfully, it doesn't count as war somehow.
Like, how did we drift into that stupid situation?
But, so here's something that nobody could sell, which is if NATO provided air cover for Ukraine.
You couldn't sell that as anything else, am I right?
It can't be sold as something else.
It would 100% be reported by all...
All observers that NATO had provided air cover if it happened.
So that's one they can't sell.
So they say that one publicly.
That's our position.
And it sort of draws attention away from the fact that somebody's providing all this material support and intelligence and weapons, logistics, transport, sales.
I don't think those...
I haven't heard anybody else say this, but I don't think Ukrainians are operating all those drones.
I'm sorry. I just don't believe it.
I believe that however many Ukrainian drone pilots there ever have been, that the number of drones has now increased beyond the number of trained Ukrainian drone pilots.
What do they do?
Wait until they're trained?
I don't think so. I think that on paper they just say, okay, you're resigning from NATO and now you're Ukrainian for a week.
And then the same guy who was sitting in the chair working for NATO is just a Ukrainian volunteer for a week and he's just doing the same job.
Now I have no evidence of that.
No evidence of that whatsoever.
But it falls into the category of things which you could successfully lie about.
So it's fair. We think NATO is secretly running those drones.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Show me the evidence.
Sure, there are drones, but it's all Ukrainians.
Ukrainians all the way down.
No evidence otherwise.
So if you can sell the lie, I think you do it.
So there's really two wars going on.
One is all the stuff we're doing and mutually lying about, and then there's the stuff on the surface that you can't lie about, so you don't lie as much.
Although Putin did a pretty good job of, I'm not going to invade.
You know what? You know what I wonder about in terms of how to treat Russia after this is done?
It's almost as if the real punishment should be the lying of Have you ever had this standard for anything?
It's like, okay, I don't mind that you broke something in my house.
I really hate that you lied about it.
You know what I mean? Like, countries go to war, and it's, of course, the biggest human tragedy.
But if you're going to hold somebody responsible for something forever, you should hold Putin responsible for saying he wasn't going to attack.
Right? And you should use that justification, and that only, to ban Russia from all business and commerce.
Because business and commerce requires that you do what the fuck you say you're going to do.
And the first time you don't do it, you get a bad Yelp review.
You know what I mean? And I think that in addition to...
The way we talk about it is that we're sanctioning Russia...
For their military aggression, which is literally what we're doing.
A more productive, persuasive way to do it is to say that Russia is no longer suitable for business.
And you just say, look, these are separate issues.
There's a war. We have to deal with that.
We've got to get people safe, etc.
But separately, You have people in place who will say the exact opposite of what they're going to do, and you can't do business with anybody under those conditions.
So Russia, we're not at war with you, but if you can find a way to become credible in the future, which might require a regime change, Well, we'll wait.
No rush. You don't have to go all Lindsey Graham about it.
If you'd like to wait 30 years and just wait until Putin's gone and try again and get a trustworthy government, we're waiting for you.
We'll be happy to work with you.
We would like to work with you, Russia.
So remember how Trump treated North Korea?
We want to do business with you.
We would love to help you rebuild.
We'll invest. We can get people to invest in your country.
Just stop pointing rockets at us.
That's a way more productive way to negotiate.
Just say, look, you've got a business problem.
Your business problem is that you can't be trusted for anything.
We'll help you fix it.
We can help you fix that.
We'll give you a series of steps that would rebuild your credibility.
Don't think you're going to do them, but you could.
At least we'll give you a path out.
So I always look for ways to take the emotions out of these things, if you think you'll ever need to negotiate anything, and just say, look, you got a bad Yelp review, and that's separate from the fact that we got a war going on.
So here is my...
Ukraine prediction. NATO rejecting air cover is a very clear signal that NATO is not going to play to win.
Am I right? If NATO ever meant to play to win, they would be considering NATO air cover.
So now NATO has said, we do not plan to win.
Who thinks that the Ukrainian resistance can just flat-out win?
I don't think anybody, right?
There are definitely lots of people who think they could hang on indefinitely, you know, in an Afghanistan potential way.
I don't think so, actually.
Afghanistan at least had, you know, all this spread out territory and it was hard to know where anybody was and who was with who and all that.
I feel like in a modern society, as soon as Russia has control over all the communications, I think they can control the country.
I've heard a lot of people saying, no, there's no way they can ever control them because the resistance will just be well-armed and fight to the last person.
Until the only way to communicate is through Russian technology.
At which point, I think Russia can actually know who's doing what everywhere and crush the resistance over time.
But it will take time.
So I think that at this point, the money, if you follow the money, and you follow, let's say, the psychology of it, we have put Putin in a position where he can't lose in Ukraine.
In other words, we've guaranteed that there will be nothing to stop him militarily, and we've decided he's a war criminal.
That's a trap. The trap is that he has no other option but to conquer Ukraine and somehow try to make it work.
That's it. Because he can't be a war criminal, follow along, he can't be a war criminal and lose in Ukraine.
Can't do both.
I mean, that would guarantee his end, or it would feel like it would guarantee it, which would be bad enough.
He could probably survive being called a war criminal by everybody except China and his good friends and everybody in Russia, who wants to say it out loud anyway.
He could survive that.
But I don't know if he could survive starting a war in Ukraine, losing a war in Ukraine, also being a war criminal, having his entire economy destroyed in the process, I mean, I don't think he could survive that.
So he basically has one path, which is to destroy as much of Ukraine as it takes, whatever it takes, as long as it takes.
And it looks like that's exactly what he plans to do.
Now, here's your second economic prediction question.
In the short run, it's terrible for Russia, economically.
No debate there.
In the long run...
Could this work out for Putin?
Maybe not Putin, but let's say maybe the leader after that.
Could it be an actual rational investment as evil as it is and tragic?
Because here are the things I'm learning about Ukraine that I didn't know until today in some cases.
Apparently they have vast natural resources including rare minerals.
And their vast natural resources have not been exploited as much as they could.
So if Russia took over Ukraine with its superior energy production facilities, it would secure its pipelines, it would have way more resources, it would have demonstrated its resolve, which probably helps it In other future things, because people would be like, okay, we don't want to mess with Russia.
They pulled out all the stops and always do.
Yeah, they would get rid of the launch base in Ukraine.
They would feel safer.
If you add a ton of people to Russia, which also had a population problem, It would be one way for Russia to grow its population, which is actually really healthy.
The more people you have, as long as they have jobs, the more power your country has.
Because bigger tax base, blah, blah, blah.
So, Scott, are you pivoting to a Russian win?
Let me get to...
That's the right question.
So, let's say win in the context of economics...
In the context of economics, because that would allow two possibilities.
One is there's a forever resistance, but it doesn't stop Ukraine from being a country that...
or being a region of Russia that produces good economies.
So here's...
So give me your prediction.
Is taking Ukraine at any human cost, because that's part of the economics, is what the public thinks about it forever, because you don't want to destroy a part of your own country and then have to live with that.
That's going to be pretty dangerous.
But in the long run, would Russia come out ahead economically if they got full control of Ukraine?
Your answers are?
I'm seeing yeses, noes, yeses, yeses.
I'm seeing most yeses.
Now, do you think that the United States and the West could make that not the case?
In some way, could we make it so expensive that it would never be economical?
Meaning that Ukraine just would always have armed resistance, and every time you tried to build anything in Ukraine, somebody in the West funded somebody to blow it up.
Yeah. My guess is that all of the bad feelings about Russia can last no more than...
I'm going to put a number on it.
With or without Putin in power.
Now, if he were to leave power sooner, then I think Russia's reputation could improve, depending on who goes in there, sooner.
But let's say Putin stays alive, lives a long life.
I feel like it's a 15-year at the most, could be 10 years, could be 5.
Before people who need to buy their stuff just say, you know, we just need to buy your stuff because we just need energy.
And the Ukraine thing is over.
There wasn't anything we could do then.
There's nothing we could do now.
We're just going to buy your energy because it's the cheapest, most available.
We don't have options. Yeah.
So I think it's very likely that in 10 years...
Russia will look like it made a good investment.
What do you think?
In 10 years, will it look like it was a good investment from Russia's perspective?
I'm seeing yeses and noes, but a lot of yeses.
More yeses. I'm seeing mostly, well, okay, a mix on YouTube.
Yeses and noes.
Now, let's take uncertainty as one of our variables.
Would you make this investment?
Let's say you didn't care about human tragedy because you're a monster.
As an economic investment, would you make this investment, given the uncertainty?
Here's what I think.
I feel like in the long run...
However long that long run is, having control of Ukraine has to be economically positive for Russia.
Maybe not in 10 years.
Maybe not in 20.
Maybe not in 50.
But in 100 years?
Yeah. I mean, if they can hold it for 100 years, yeah.
Yeah, it's a good investment.
Unfortunately. So...
If we assume that Putin doesn't seem to care about the human loss we see examples that make that case then he's just making a good investment and he's also trapped into completing his investment at this point.
While I did predict that Russia would have way more trouble than they thought, and I think that's been the case, because of the quality of the weapons that the Ukrainians would have access to.
Now, I don't know if there were any secret weapons, but I'll bet there were.
What do you think? Secret in the sense that the Russians didn't see it coming.
What do you think? I think maybe.
Or maybe elements of existing weapons and known weapon systems were better than we thought or had more features than we thought or something like that.
So I think Russia got some surprises by the weapons themselves.
Just guessing. Don't know.
But I would say at this point, Ukraine doesn't really have a chance of staying independent.
And... You know, I don't even know what to say about that.
I mean, it's so awful.
I guess it's literally beyond words because I don't lose the ability to talk about things very often.
But as soon as it came out of my mouth, I didn't even know what to say about it.
It's just so awful.
But all of the outcomes look awful at this point.
We're choosing among awful outcomes.
So I don't even know if I should wish for a speedy or a slow victory by Russia, because it kind of looks inevitable at this point.
And the inevitability is based entirely on the fact that Putin wants it more.
He wants it more than NATO wants to stop it, and only NATO can stop it.
Is that fair? Could you break it down to just that?
Putin wants it more than NATO, and that's it.
NATO is not even going to put up a proper fight.
So if one side's fighting like it's the most important thing ever, which Putin is at this point, we force him to do that.
Where he is at this point, I mean, it's by his own actions, plus our actions.
But the combination of his actions plus our actions force him to win.
He's forced to win.
I don't know if he has a choice.
Now, I do think that the Russian army...
It's going to have insane losses.
I do think that that column...
Well, let me give you another variable that's possible.
Do you think the Ukrainians have ever asked for some kind of warthogs or whatever the aircraft are that strafe and destroy entire columns of enemy stuff?
A-10? Is it the A-10?
Do you think the Ukrainians have requested those?
Because you'd only need five of them to take out the entire Russian column.
Am I wrong? I think you'd only need five of them.
Because let's say you lose three.
The other two can just finish the job.
They might have to reload a few times.
So here's my question.
If NATO said they're rejecting air cover...
But at some point, I think there was discussion of extra aircraft being provided, but I don't know by whom.
So, here's my question.
Could somebody, I guess it would be the United States, or if somebody had used ones, I suppose some other country could sell the ones that they bought from the United States, but could somebody provide in the next few days...
Aircraft that would take out entire Russian columns.
I feel like NATO saying that they wouldn't provide air cover is kind of saying that they're not going to fight like that.
In other words, they're not going to fight to win.
So what would be the point of taking out the Russian column?
There wouldn't be a military or economic benefit, would there?
I don't see one.
So I think NATO's already tapped out, frankly.
And that predicts the end.
Now... And the best bet that the United States has, and Europe, I suppose, is to make sure that it's a Pyrrhic victory.
How many of you are so well-educated that when I say it will be a Pyrrhic victory, you say to yourself, I know exactly what that means, you cartoonist, you?
Right? Typically, I like to speak at a sixth grade level, because that's actually just good communication style.
As soon as you get above sixth grade, a third of your audience, at least, is going to miss a word and not know what you said.
A pyrrhic victory means you won the battle, but you were so degraded in the fight that you're worse off than if you hadn't won the battle, or if you hadn't had the battle, I guess.
So it's possible that Russia will take Ukraine, but the United States and the West will keep the sanctions on so extraordinarily hard that they lose in the long run.
But I don't think they can lose in the 20- to 50-year range if they're thinking that long.
Probably not. All right.
And the most...
Here's what the people on Twitter who I polled, so this is unscientific Twitter poll, I asked, what are the odds of Russia's move into Ukraine being economical?
Now here's why I think this poll might be the only useful one ever on Twitter, because a non-scientific poll probably misleads as much as it informs.
That's why you have good polls, so you don't do that.
But if you're asking the question of what would the average person think about a situation, a poll could be actually kind of handy because you might surprise yourself.
So I asked, what are the odds that Russia will find it economical in the long run to go into Ukraine?
Or what are the odds of it being economical?
And your answers were, if you answered it, only 29% thought it was a high chance of being economical.
23% thought medium, but 54% thought it had low odds of being economical.
54% is roughly the number of people who don't understand economics at any level whatsoever.
Because I'm pretty sure it's economical.
You just have to wait for it.
In the short run, it could be, like, horrible.
I mean, the Russian economy could really be taking a crap for 10 years.
It's possible. But in the long run, unfortunately, I think it's just guaranteed to be profitable.
And then the most important thing I heard is that Ben Shapiro watched the new Batman movie and said it's bad.
That is the least surprising tweet of the year because, if you haven't noticed, all movies are bad now.
All movies are bad.
There's just no such thing as a good movie anymore.
Documentaries are still good.
I still like some of the ones based on real-life things, like the Elton John movie, the one about Queen.
Those are great. But as soon as a movie has to be fiction, then I don't know if it's egos or contractual, who has the edit rights, I don't know what's wrong.
But today, movies are nothing but Two or three hours of discomfort and boredom.
I can barely remember when movies were good.
Now, there are a number of factors making this true.
One is that other things cater to short attention spans.
So we've been trained to have short attention spans.
That's one. The other thing is that people have gravitated away from big screens toward little ones, which changes the whole nature of movie watching in a negative way.
And we also watch movies individually.
I used to like watching a movie even if I didn't like the movie.
Because I'd watch it with other people.
And I liked the popcorn and the experience.
And then you would talk about it afterwards about how bad the movie was and you'd have some drinks and it was all fun.
But if everybody's just watching it on their own while they're, you know, doing something else, You don't have any kind of a shared experience and you don't even get the popcorn.
You don't even get it out of the house.
So, a lot about the movie business is bad, but one of the worst things is that the CGI is so good.
I have to tell you, some of you are not old enough to know what this felt like, but I'll bet most of you are.
Do you remember how you felt when you saw the first Star Wars movie?
In the comments, tell me how that felt.
Like when you saw the first one, it just blew your head off, didn't it?
Now, if you were to watch that first one by today's standards, it would be, you know, lame, and you could see strings on the ships, and, I mean, it just looks pretty lame.
By today's standards.
But now, let's say you watch the most, you know, excellently done CGI sci-fi, or like one of the Marvel movies.
Are you still blown away by the special effects?
Nope. The special effects are so good that they eliminated the oh-wow factor.
Because any well-funded movie is going to have the same perfect-looking effects.
So one of the biggest reasons to be amazed by the movies was you would see something on the screen that you would say, that had to be hard to do.
Like, wow. Why can't everybody do that?
If you take even Gone with the Wind.
Gone with the Wind, for its time, was cinematically beautiful.
Big screen and whatever movie technology they were using to make the color.
It was all great. Was it black and white originally?
And then got colorized?
I forget. But...
So a lot of what made movies good is gone.
Our attention spans are shorter.
And the movies, I think, are shittier.
I don't think I'm wrong about that.
I think that the movies are too long.
Maybe there's a reason for that.
Maybe you can sell more advertisements, or maybe it fits into streaming better or something.
I don't know. They're way too long compared to older movies.
They're poorly written. They're predictable.
There's always a chase scene.
There's always somebody tied to a chair and tortured.
It's just the same movie over and over again.
I think it's a dead art.
What do you think? Do you think movies are dead?
I literally think they just don't have a future in their current form.
I mean, if they changed quite a bit, then yes.
You know what? Maybe virtual reality is the next.
Because you should get to the point where you can be in the movie.
I've described this before, but imagine taking a history lesson where you're actually on the battlefield.
Like the soldiers are just running past you.
Or you actually want to replay January 6th, so in American history.
What if you could actually be in the Capitol Rotunda when the guy with the horns walks through?
Because we have enough video that you could actually create an entire virtual reality that you would feel you were there.
Now, of course, you have too much subjectivity about who was being violent where, but you could recreate that entire event and you could learn about it in school by walking around the rotunda and fast-forwarding it and seeing the people go by, seeing the battles with the police, maybe at the same time seeing news reports or the president's speech.
How about this? Imagine a VR environment...
In which you can simultaneously fast forward and reverse the actual events while you're in them.
Like they're actually walking, people are walking around you.
You're following the crowd into the Capitol.
And at the same time, you can call up a TV screen that'll float in front of you that shows President Trump's speech in real time.
Like, matched to the actual goings-on in front of the Capitol.
So you can see when the fence went down.
You can see when the security seemed to lapse.
You can see when people got more violent, if that happened.
I don't know if it did. And then time it to the outside events.
I mean, that's what learning will be in just a few years.
I told you that a few years ago, I already...
I did a tour inside the Hindenburg...
You know, the airship that caught on fire was a disaster.
There's a virtual reality program where you can go inside the crew quarters and walk around.
It had a smoking room.
It had a cigarette smoking room.
A little ashtrays there.
You can walk into the control room to see how they flew it.
Look down at the controls.
You can go into the infrastructure within the balloon and see, like, the framing and everything.
That's what education looks like in a few years.
Imagine learning to be a car mechanic in 10 years.
You're going to walk into the virtual reality.
You'll see the car engine in front of you floating.
And then while you're watching it, it will dissemble into each of its component parts, will be described, and then each one will be, you know, brought back.
You can see how it acts.
And you'll see each part, you know, rotated and why it does what it does.
You would learn everything about an engine in about seven minutes.
And you could be like a trained mechanic.
Eh, seven minutes.
Because if you saw a problem, You could just put that problem into your computer and be in the virtual reality and say, ah, that problem is this component usually, but sometimes this component.
And stick your monitor into this hole.
It'll just be easy.
I mean, you could learn an entire skill in a few minutes with the ongoing boost.
All right, so much for that.
Um... My prediction, unfortunately, is not the happiest one.
But I think...
Anyway, how many agreed with my general prediction that at this point, Putin has to take all of Ukraine?
