Jeremi Suri: History of American Power
政治与社会历史与文明音乐与艺术心理与人性生物与进化
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🎙️ 完整对话（3020 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Jeremy Suri,
Lex Fridman (00:02.920)
a historian at UT Austin,
德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的历史学家，
Lex Fridman (00:05.320)
whose research interests and writing
其研究兴趣和写作
Lex Fridman (00:07.640)
are on modern American history
在现代美国历史上
Lex Fridman (00:10.000)
with an eye towards presidents
着眼于总统
Lex Fridman (00:11.760)
and in general individuals who wielded power.
以及一般掌握权力的个人。
Lex Fridman (00:15.200)
Quick mention of our sponsors,
快速提及我们的赞助商，
Jeremi Suri (00:17.000)
Element, Monk Pack, Belcampo, Four Sigmatic, and Eight Sleep.
元素、僧侣包、贝尔坎波、四西格玛和八睡眠。
Lex Fridman (00:23.000)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
在说明中查看它们以支持此播客。
Jeremi Suri (00:26.680)
As a side note, let me say that in these conversations,
作为旁注，我要说的是，在这些对话中，
Lex Fridman (00:30.100)
for better or worse, I seek understanding, not activism.
无论好坏，我寻求理解，而不是激进主义。
Jeremi Suri (00:34.480)
I'm not left nor right.
我不左也不右。
Lex Fridman (00:36.720)
I love ideas, not labels.
我喜欢想法，而不是标签。
Lex Fridman (00:39.240)
And most fascinating ideas are full of uncertainty,
最令人着迷的想法都充满不确定性，
Lex Fridman (00:41.960)
tension, and trade offs.
紧张和权衡。
Jeremi Suri (00:43.720)
Labels destroy that.
标签破坏了这一点。
Lex Fridman (00:45.520)
I try ideas out, let them breathe for a time,
我尝试一些想法，让它们喘口气，
Jeremi Suri (00:48.420)
try to challenge, explore, and analyze.
尝试挑战、探索和分析。
Lex Fridman (00:51.080)
But mostly, I trust the intelligence of you, the listener,
但最重要的是，我相信你，听众的智慧，
Jeremi Suri (00:54.840)
to think and to make up your own mind, together with me.
和我一起思考并做出自己的决定。
Lex Fridman (00:58.680)
I will try to have economists and philosophers on
Jeremi Suri (01:02.200)
from all points on the multidimensional political spectrum,
Lex Fridman (01:06.000)
including the extremes.
Jeremi Suri (01:08.040)
I will try to both have an open mind
Lex Fridman (01:10.160)
and to ask difficult questions when needed.
Jeremi Suri (01:12.600)
I'll make mistakes.
Lex Fridman (01:14.200)
Don't shoot this robot at the first sign of failure.
Jeremi Suri (01:16.920)
I'm still under development.
Lex Fridman (01:18.620)
Pre release version 0.1.
Jeremi Suri (01:21.400)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast,
Lex Fridman (01:23.480)
and here is my conversation with Jeremy Suri.
Jeremi Suri (01:27.480)
You've studied many American presidents throughout history,
Lex Fridman (01:31.000)
so who do you think was the greatest president
Lex Fridman (01:34.480)
in American history?
Lex Fridman (01:35.920)
The greatest American president was Abraham Lincoln.
Lex Fridman (01:38.780)
And Tolstoy reflected on this himself, actually,
Lex Fridman (01:42.720)
saying that when he was in the caucuses,
Jeremi Suri (01:45.120)
he asked these peasants in the caucuses
Lex Fridman (01:48.960)
who was the greatest man in the world that they had heard of,
Lex Fridman (01:51.400)
and they said Abraham Lincoln.
Lex Fridman (01:53.200)
And why?
Jeremi Suri (01:54.680)
Well, because he gave voice to people
Lex Fridman (01:57.000)
who had no voice before.
Jeremi Suri (01:58.880)
He turned politics into an art.
Lex Fridman (02:00.680)
This is what Tolstoy recounted,
Jeremi Suri (02:02.180)
the peasants in the caucuses telling him.
Lex Fridman (02:04.720)
Lincoln made politics more than about power.
Jeremi Suri (02:07.280)
He made it an art.
Lex Fridman (02:08.440)
He made it a source of liberation.
Lex Fridman (02:10.760)
And those living even far from the United States
Lex Fridman (02:13.240)
could see that model, that inspiration from Lincoln.
Jeremi Suri (02:17.880)
He was a man who had two years of education,
Lex Fridman (02:20.680)
yet he mastered the English language,
Lex Fridman (02:22.680)
and he used the language
Lex Fridman (02:24.640)
to help people imagine a different kind of world.
Jeremi Suri (02:27.760)
You see, leaders and presidents are at their best
Lex Fridman (02:30.500)
when they're doing more
Jeremi Suri (02:31.440)
than just manipulating institutions and power,
Lex Fridman (02:34.000)
when they're helping the people imagine a better world.
Lex Fridman (02:36.520)
And he did that as no other president has.
Lex Fridman (02:40.400)
And you say he gave voice to those who are voiceless.
Lex Fridman (02:43.980)
Who are you talking to about in general?
Lex Fridman (02:46.400)
Is this about African Americans,
Lex Fridman (02:47.680)
or is this about just the populace in general?
Lex Fridman (02:50.880)
Certainly part of it is about slaves, African Americans,
Lex Fridman (02:54.640)
and many immigrants,
Lex Fridman (02:56.360)
immigrants from all parts of Europe and other areas
Jeremi Suri (02:59.120)
that have come to the United States.
Lex Fridman (03:00.720)
But part of it was just for ordinary American citizens.
Jeremi Suri (03:03.240)
The Republican Party,
Lex Fridman (03:04.480)
for which Lincoln was the first president,
Jeremi Suri (03:06.520)
was a party created to give voice to poor white men,
Lex Fridman (03:11.040)
as well as slaves and others.
Lex Fridman (03:13.600)
And Lincoln was a poor white man himself,
Lex Fridman (03:15.920)
grew up without slaves and without land,
Jeremi Suri (03:17.840)
which meant you had almost nothing.
Lex Fridman (03:20.120)
What do you think about the trajectory of that man
Lex Fridman (03:22.020)
with only two years of education?
Lex Fridman (03:24.880)
Is there something to be said
Jeremi Suri (03:26.040)
about how does one come from nothing
Lex Fridman (03:28.640)
and nurture the ideals that kind of make this country great
Jeremi Suri (03:36.080)
into something where you can actually be a leader
Lex Fridman (03:38.800)
of this nation to espouse those ideas,
Lex Fridman (03:41.080)
to give the voice to the voiceless?
Lex Fridman (03:43.600)
Yes, I think you actually hit the nail on the head.
Jeremi Suri (03:46.340)
I think what he represented was the opportunity,
Lex Fridman (03:50.640)
and that was the word that mattered for him,
Jeremi Suri (03:52.160)
opportunity that came from the ability to raise yourself up,
Lex Fridman (03:57.080)
to work hard, and to be compensated for your hard work.
Lex Fridman (04:00.360)
And this is at the core of the Republican Party
Lex Fridman (04:02.360)
of the 19th century, which is the core of capitalism.
Jeremi Suri (04:05.880)
It's not about getting rich.
Lex Fridman (04:07.200)
It's about getting compensated for your work.
Jeremi Suri (04:09.400)
It's about being incentivized to do better work.
Lex Fridman (04:11.800)
And Lincoln was constantly striving.
Jeremi Suri (04:13.440)
One of his closest associates, Herndon, said,
Lex Fridman (04:17.200)
he was the little engine of ambition that couldn't stop.
Jeremi Suri (04:20.000)
He just kept going, taught himself to read,
Lex Fridman (04:23.080)
taught himself to be a lawyer.
Jeremi Suri (04:24.240)
He went through many failed businesses
Lex Fridman (04:25.620)
before he even reached that point, many failed love affairs.
Lex Fridman (04:29.640)
But he kept trying, he kept working,
Lex Fridman (04:31.400)
and what American society offered him,
Lex Fridman (04:33.440)
and what he wanted American society to offer everyone else
Lex Fridman (04:36.040)
was the opportunity to keep trying to fail
Lex Fridman (04:38.760)
and then get up and try again.
Lex Fridman (04:40.680)
What do you think was the nature of that ambition?
Lex Fridman (04:42.680)
Was there a hunger for power?
Lex Fridman (04:44.240)
I think Lincoln had a hunger for success.
Jeremi Suri (04:46.760)
I think he had a hunger to get out
Lex Fridman (04:50.320)
of the poor station he was in.
Jeremi Suri (04:52.400)
He had a hunger to be someone
Lex Fridman (04:54.040)
who had control over his life.
Jeremi Suri (04:56.040)
Freedom for him did not mean the right
Lex Fridman (04:58.620)
to do anything you wanna do,
Lex Fridman (05:00.520)
but it meant the right to be secure
Lex Fridman (05:02.480)
from being dependent upon someone else.
Lex Fridman (05:05.120)
So independence, he writes in his letters
Lex Fridman (05:08.080)
when he's very young that he hated
Jeremi Suri (05:10.320)
being dependent on his father.
Lex Fridman (05:11.680)
He grew up without a mother.
Jeremi Suri (05:13.480)
His father was a struggling farmer,
Lex Fridman (05:15.280)
and he would write in his letters
Jeremi Suri (05:16.680)
that his father treated him like a slave on the farm.
Lex Fridman (05:19.240)
Some think his hatred of slavery came from that experience.
Jeremi Suri (05:22.640)
He didn't ever wanna have to work for someone again.
Lex Fridman (05:25.240)
He wanted to be free and independent,
Lex Fridman (05:26.880)
and he wanted, again, every American,
Lex Fridman (05:28.240)
this is the kind of Jeffersonian dream,
Jeremi Suri (05:30.480)
to be the owner of themself and the owner of their future.
Lex Fridman (05:34.000)
You know, that's a really nice definition of freedom.
Jeremi Suri (05:36.100)
We often think kind of this very abstract notion
Lex Fridman (05:39.160)
of being able to do anything you want,
Lex Fridman (05:41.480)
but really, it's ultimately breaking yourself free
Lex Fridman (05:43.920)
from the constraints, like the very tight dependence
Jeremi Suri (05:48.880)
on whether it's the institutions or on your family
Lex Fridman (05:54.040)
or the expectations or the community or whatever,
Jeremi Suri (05:57.480)
being able to be, to realize yourself
Lex Fridman (06:01.320)
within the constraints of your own abilities.
Jeremi Suri (06:03.720)
It's still not true freedom,
Lex Fridman (06:05.680)
because true freedom is probably sort of
Jeremi Suri (06:08.100)
almost like designing a video game character,
Lex Fridman (06:09.880)
something like that.
Jeremi Suri (06:11.000)
I agree, I think that's exactly right.
Lex Fridman (06:13.920)
I think freedom is not that I can have any outcome I want.
Jeremi Suri (06:19.120)
I can't control outcomes.
Lex Fridman (06:20.320)
The most powerful, freest person in the world
Jeremi Suri (06:21.900)
cannot control outcomes,
Lex Fridman (06:23.480)
but it means at least I get to make choices.
Jeremi Suri (06:25.320)
Someone else doesn't make those choices for me.
Lex Fridman (06:29.040)
Is there something to be said about Lincoln
Jeremi Suri (06:32.120)
on the political game front of it,
Lex Fridman (06:36.040)
which is he's accomplished some of them?
Jeremi Suri (06:38.480)
I don't know, but it seems like
Lex Fridman (06:40.360)
there was some tricky politics going on.
Jeremi Suri (06:42.680)
We tend to not think of it in those terms
Lex Fridman (06:44.480)
because of the dark aspects of slavery.
Jeremi Suri (06:48.600)
We tend to think about it in sort of ethical and human terms,
Lex Fridman (06:51.800)
but in their time, it was probably
Jeremi Suri (06:55.740)
as much a game of politics,
Lex Fridman (06:58.540)
not just these broad questions of human nature, right?
Jeremi Suri (07:02.200)
It was a game.
Lex Fridman (07:03.280)
So is there something to be said
Jeremi Suri (07:04.440)
about being a skillful player in the game of politics
Lex Fridman (07:07.040)
that you take from Lincoln?
Jeremi Suri (07:08.320)
Absolutely, and Lincoln never read Karl von Clausewitz,
Lex Fridman (07:12.320)
the great 19th century German thinker
Jeremi Suri (07:14.200)
on strategy and politics,
Lex Fridman (07:15.440)
but he embodied the same wisdom,
Jeremi Suri (07:17.240)
which is that everything is politics.
Lex Fridman (07:18.800)
If you want to get anything done,
Lex Fridman (07:21.080)
and this includes even relationships,
Lex Fridman (07:23.760)
there's a politics to it.
Lex Fridman (07:24.840)
What does that mean?
Lex Fridman (07:25.680)
It means that you have to persuade, coerce,
Jeremi Suri (07:29.240)
encourage people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do.
Lex Fridman (07:32.280)
And Lincoln was a master at that.
Jeremi Suri (07:34.640)
He was a master at that for two reasons.
Lex Fridman (07:36.080)
He had learned through his hard life to read people,
Jeremi Suri (07:38.760)
to anticipate them, to spend a lot of time listening.
Lex Fridman (07:41.280)
One thing I often tell people
Jeremi Suri (07:43.600)
is the best leaders are the listeners, not the talkers.
Lex Fridman (07:47.560)
And then second, Lincoln was very thoughtful
Lex Fridman (07:50.640)
and planned every move out.
Lex Fridman (07:52.480)
He was thinking three or four moves,
Jeremi Suri (07:54.240)
maybe five moves down the chessboard,
Lex Fridman (07:56.520)
while others were move number one or two.
Jeremi Suri (07:59.200)
That's fascinating to think about him just listening,
Lex Fridman (08:02.600)
just studying.
Jeremi Suri (08:03.520)
They look at great fighters in this way,
Lex Fridman (08:06.720)
like the first few rounds of boxing and mixed martial arts,
Jeremi Suri (08:10.320)
you're studying the movement of your opponent
Lex Fridman (08:13.560)
in order to sort of define the holes.
Jeremi Suri (08:16.560)
That's a really interesting frame to think about it.
Lex Fridman (08:18.600)
Is there, in terms of relationships,
Jeremi Suri (08:23.680)
where do you think as president or as a politician
Lex Fridman (08:28.440)
is the most impact to be had?
Jeremi Suri (08:30.040)
I've been reading a lot about Hitler recently,
Lex Fridman (08:33.160)
and one of the things that I'm more and more starting
Jeremi Suri (08:35.520)
to wonder, what the hell did he do alone in a room
Lex Fridman (08:40.720)
with one on one with people?
Jeremi Suri (08:42.560)
Because it seems like that's where
Lex Fridman (08:44.840)
he was exceptionally effective.
Jeremi Suri (08:46.880)
When I think about certain leaders,
Lex Fridman (08:50.480)
I'm not sure Stalin was this way, I apologize.
Jeremi Suri (08:53.240)
Been very obsessed with this period of human history.
Lex Fridman (08:57.760)
It just seems like certain leaders
Jeremi Suri (08:59.480)
are extremely effective one on one.
Lex Fridman (09:01.960)
A lot of people think of Hitler in Lincoln
Jeremi Suri (09:05.000)
as a speech maker, as a great charismatic speech maker,
Lex Fridman (09:08.640)
but it seems like to me that some of these guys
Jeremi Suri (09:11.600)
were really effective inside a room.
Lex Fridman (09:14.840)
What do you think?
Lex Fridman (09:15.880)
What's more important?
Lex Fridman (09:17.360)
Your effectiveness to make a hell of a good speech,
Jeremi Suri (09:23.640)
sort of being in a room with many people,
Lex Fridman (09:25.680)
or is it all boiled down to one on one?
Jeremi Suri (09:28.280)
Well, I think in a sense, it's both.
Lex Fridman (09:31.040)
One needs to do both, and most politicians,
Jeremi Suri (09:33.560)
most leaders are better at one or the other.
Lex Fridman (09:35.480)
It's the rare leader who can do both.
Jeremi Suri (09:37.800)
I will say that if you are going to be a figure
Lex Fridman (09:41.600)
who's a president or the leader of a complex organization,
Jeremi Suri (09:45.480)
not a startup, but a complex organization
Lex Fridman (09:47.400)
where you have many different constituencies
Lex Fridman (09:49.360)
and many different interests,
Lex Fridman (09:51.440)
you have to do the one on one really well,
Jeremi Suri (09:53.440)
because a lot of what's going to happen
Lex Fridman (09:55.400)
is you're going to be meeting with people
Lex Fridman (09:56.760)
who represent different groups, right?
Lex Fridman (09:58.560)
The leader of the labor unions,
Jeremi Suri (10:00.240)
the leader of your investing board, et cetera,
Lex Fridman (10:03.160)
and you have to be able to persuade them,
Lex Fridman (10:04.960)
and it's the intangibles that often matter most.
Lex Fridman (10:07.640)
Lincoln's skill, and it's the same that FDR had,
Jeremi Suri (10:11.080)
is the ability to tell a story.
Lex Fridman (10:13.040)
I think Hitler was a little different,
Lex Fridman (10:14.640)
but what I've read of Stalin is he was a storyteller too.
Lex Fridman (10:17.960)
One on one storyteller?
Jeremi Suri (10:18.960)
Yeah, that's my understanding is that he,
Lex Fridman (10:21.800)
and what Lincoln did,
Jeremi Suri (10:22.960)
I don't want to compare Lincoln to Stalin,
Lex Fridman (10:24.400)
but what Lincoln did is he was not confrontational.
Jeremi Suri (10:30.720)
He was happy to have an argument
Lex Fridman (10:32.280)
if an argument were to be had,
Lex Fridman (10:33.520)
but actually what he would try to do
Lex Fridman (10:35.680)
is move you through telling a story
Jeremi Suri (10:38.800)
that got you to think about your position in a different way,
Lex Fridman (10:41.320)
to basically disarm you.
Lex Fridman (10:43.200)
And Franklin Roosevelt did the same thing.
Lex Fridman (10:44.800)
Ronald Reagan did the same thing.
Jeremi Suri (10:46.240)
Storytelling is a very important skill.
Lex Fridman (10:49.480)
It's almost heartbreaking that we don't get to have,
Jeremi Suri (10:53.120)
or maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong on this,
Lex Fridman (10:55.680)
but it feels like we don't have a lot of information
Lex Fridman (10:58.240)
how all of these folks were in private,
Lex Fridman (11:00.760)
one on one conversations.
Jeremi Suri (11:02.920)
Even if we get stories about it,
Lex Fridman (11:06.800)
it's like, again, sorry to bring up Hitler,
Lex Fridman (11:09.920)
but people have talked about his piercing gaze
Lex Fridman (11:15.240)
when they're one on one.
Jeremi Suri (11:16.680)
There's a feeling like he's just looking through you.
Lex Fridman (11:19.480)
I wonder, it makes me wonder,
Jeremi Suri (11:21.080)
was Lincoln somebody who was a little bit more passive,
Lex Fridman (11:24.440)
like who's more, the ego doesn't shine.
Jeremi Suri (11:27.760)
It's not like an overwhelming thing,
Lex Fridman (11:29.200)
or is it more like, again,
Jeremi Suri (11:32.320)
don't want to bring up controversial figures,
Lex Fridman (11:34.000)
but Donald Trump, where it's more menacing, right?
Jeremi Suri (11:37.600)
There's a more like physically menacing thing,
Lex Fridman (11:39.720)
where it's almost like a bullying kind of dynamic.
Lex Fridman (11:43.960)
So I wonder, I wish we knew.
Lex Fridman (11:47.280)
Because from a psychological perspective,
Jeremi Suri (11:50.520)
I wonder if there's a thread
Lex Fridman (11:52.000)
that connects most great leaders.
Jeremi Suri (11:53.600)
That's a great question.
Lex Fridman (11:55.080)
So I think the best writer on this is Max Weber, right?
Lex Fridman (11:58.120)
And he talks about the power of charisma,
Lex Fridman (12:00.560)
that the term charisma comes from Weber, right?
Lex Fridman (12:02.840)
And Weber's use of it actually to talk about profits.
Lex Fridman (12:05.960)
And I think he has a point, right?
Jeremi Suri (12:07.880)
Leaders who are effective in the way you describe
Lex Fridman (12:10.760)
are leaders who feel prophetic,
Jeremi Suri (12:12.800)
or Weber says they have a kind of magic about them.
Lex Fridman (12:15.880)
And I think that can come from different sources.
Jeremi Suri (12:17.880)
I think that can come from the way someone
Lex Fridman (12:20.600)
carries themselves.
Jeremi Suri (12:21.520)
It can come from the way they use words.
Lex Fridman (12:24.000)
So maybe there are different kinds of magic
Jeremi Suri (12:26.520)
that someone develops.
Lex Fridman (12:27.960)
But I think there are two things
Jeremi Suri (12:29.240)
that seem to be absolutely necessary.
Lex Fridman (12:31.400)
First is you have to be someone who sizes up the person
Jeremi Suri (12:33.760)
on the other side of the table.
Lex Fridman (12:35.080)
You cannot be the person who just comes in
Lex Fridman (12:36.760)
and reads your brief.
Lex Fridman (12:38.760)
And then second, I think it's interactive.
Lex Fridman (12:42.160)
And there is a quickness of thought.
Lex Fridman (12:44.280)
So you brought up Donald Trump.
Jeremi Suri (12:45.800)
I don't think Donald Trump is a deep thinker at all,
Lex Fridman (12:47.840)
but he's quick.
Lex Fridman (12:49.560)
And I think that quickness is part of,
Lex Fridman (12:51.720)
it's different from delivering a lecture
Jeremi Suri (12:53.800)
where it's the depth of your thought.
Lex Fridman (12:55.080)
Can you for 45 minutes analyze something?
Jeremi Suri (12:57.760)
Many people can't do that,
Lex Fridman (12:59.320)
but they still might be very effective
Jeremi Suri (13:01.280)
if they're able to quickly react,
Lex Fridman (13:03.480)
size up the person on the other side of the table
Lex Fridman (13:05.720)
and react in a way that moves that person
Lex Fridman (13:07.840)
in the way they wanna move them.
Jeremi Suri (13:09.920)
Yeah, and there's also just coupled with the quickness
Lex Fridman (13:13.720)
as a kind of instinct about human nature.
Jeremi Suri (13:17.360)
Sort of asking the question,
Lex Fridman (13:19.920)
what does this person worry about?
Lex Fridman (13:22.280)
What are the biggest problems?
Lex Fridman (13:24.040)
Somebody, what is this, Stephen Schwartzman, I think,
Jeremi Suri (13:27.160)
said to me, he's this businessman.
Lex Fridman (13:29.720)
I think he said like, what I've always tried to do
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is try to figure out, like ask enough questions
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to figure out what is the biggest problem
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in this person's life.
Lex Fridman (13:40.880)
Try to get a sense of what is the biggest problem
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in their life, because that's actually
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what they care about most.
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And most people don't care enough to find out.
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And so he kind of wants to sneak up on that
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and find that, and then use that to then build closeness
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in order to then probably, he doesn't put it in those words,
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but to manipulate the person into whatever,
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to do whatever the heck they want.
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And I think part of it is that,
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and part of the effect that Donald Trump has
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is how quick he's able to figure that out.
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You've written a book about how the role
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and power of the presidency has changed.
Lex Fridman (14:19.880)
So how has it changed since Lincoln's time,
Jeremi Suri (14:25.500)
the evolution of the presidency as a concept,
Lex Fridman (14:28.540)
which seems like a fascinating lens
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through which to look at American history.
Lex Fridman (14:33.280)
As a president, we seem to only be talking
Jeremi Suri (14:36.720)
about the presidents, maybe a general here and there,
Lex Fridman (14:40.020)
but it's mostly the story of America is often told
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through presidents.
Lex Fridman (14:45.160)
That's right, that's right.
Lex Fridman (14:46.680)
And one of the points I've tried to make
Lex Fridman (14:48.560)
in my writing about this and various other activities
Jeremi Suri (14:52.240)
is we use this word president as if it's something timeless,
Lex Fridman (14:55.640)
but the office has changed incredibly.
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Just from Lincoln's time to the present,
Lex Fridman (15:00.480)
which is 150 years, he wouldn't recognize the office today.
Lex Fridman (15:05.240)
And George Washington would not have recognized it
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in Lincoln, just as I think a CEO today
Jeremi Suri (15:10.780)
would be unrecognizable to a Rockefeller
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or a Carnegie of 150 years ago.
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So what are some of the ways in which the office has changed?
Lex Fridman (15:18.880)
I'll just point to three, there are a lot.
Jeremi Suri (15:21.280)
One, presidents now can communicate with the public directly.
Lex Fridman (15:25.560)
I mean, we've reached the point now
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where a president can have direct,
Lex Fridman (15:28.040)
almost one on one communication.
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President can use Twitter if he so chooses
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to circumvent all media.
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That was unthinkable.
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Lincoln, in order to get his message across,
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often wrote letters to newspapers.
Lex Fridman (15:40.560)
And waited for the newspaper for Horace Greeley
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in the New York Tribune to publish his letter.
Lex Fridman (15:44.800)
That's how he communicated with the public.
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There weren't even many speaking opportunities.
Lex Fridman (15:48.200)
So that's a big change, right?
Jeremi Suri (15:49.820)
We feel the president in our life much more.
Lex Fridman (15:52.200)
That's why we talk about him much more.
Jeremi Suri (15:55.240)
That also creates more of a burden.
Lex Fridman (15:56.280)
This is the second point.
Jeremi Suri (15:57.240)
Presidents are under a microscope.
Lex Fridman (15:59.480)
Presidents are under a microscope.
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You have to be very careful what you do and what you say.
Lex Fridman (16:02.920)
And you're judged by a lot of the elements of your behavior
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that are not policy relevant.
Lex Fridman (16:07.860)
In fact, the things we judge most
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and make most of our decisions on about individuals
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are often that.
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And then third, the power the president has.
Lex Fridman (16:17.640)
It's inhuman, actually.
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And this is one of my critiques
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of how the office has changed.
Jeremi Suri (16:21.560)
This one person has power on a scale
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that's I think dangerous in a democracy.
Lex Fridman (16:27.280)
And certainly something the founders 220 years ago
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would have had trouble conceiving.
Jeremi Suri (16:34.420)
Presidents now have the ability to deliver force
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across the world to literally assassinate people
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with a remarkable accuracy.
Lex Fridman (16:41.600)
And that's an enormous power that presidents have.
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So your sense, this is not to get conspiratorial,
Lex Fridman (16:48.240)
but do you think a president currently has the power
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to initiate the assassination of somebody,
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of a political enemy or a terrorist leader
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or that kind of thing to frame that person in a way
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where assassination is something that he alone
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or she alone could decide to do?
Lex Fridman (17:12.360)
I think it happens all the time
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and it's not to be conspiratorial.
Lex Fridman (17:14.680)
This is how we fought terrorism by targeting individuals.
Jeremi Suri (17:19.360)
Now you might say these were not elected leaders of state,
Lex Fridman (17:21.680)
but these were individuals with a large following.
Jeremi Suri (17:23.400)
I mean, the killing of Osama Bin Laden
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was an assassination operation.
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And we've taken out very successfully
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many leaders of terrorist organizations
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and we do it every day.
Lex Fridman (17:35.640)
You're saying that back in Lincoln's time
Jeremi Suri (17:37.640)
or George Washington's time,
Lex Fridman (17:39.120)
there was more of a balance of power?
Jeremi Suri (17:40.760)
Like a president could not initiate
Lex Fridman (17:42.520)
this kind of assassination?
Jeremi Suri (17:43.840)
Correct, I think presidents did not have
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the same kind of military or economic power.
Jeremi Suri (17:49.280)
We could talk about how a president can influence a market
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by saying something about where money is gonna go
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or singling out a company or critiquing a company
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in one way or another.
Jeremi Suri (18:01.220)
They didn't have that kind of power.
Lex Fridman (18:02.360)
Now, much of the power that a Lincoln or a Washington had
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was the power to mobilize people
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to then make their own decisions.
Jeremi Suri (18:09.720)
At the start of the Civil War,
Lex Fridman (18:11.540)
Lincoln doesn't even have the power
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to bring people into the army.
Lex Fridman (18:13.920)
He has to go to the governors
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and ask the governors to provide soldiers.
Lex Fridman (18:18.280)
So the governor of Wisconsin,
Jeremi Suri (18:19.640)
the governor of Massachusetts.
Lex Fridman (18:20.800)
Could you imagine that today?
Jeremi Suri (18:22.280)
So, but yeah, so they use speeches and words
Lex Fridman (18:27.280)
to mobilize versus direct action in closed door environments,
Jeremi Suri (18:32.500)
initiating wars, for example.
Lex Fridman (18:34.640)
Correct.
Jeremi Suri (18:37.160)
It's difficult to think about,
Lex Fridman (18:39.140)
if we look at Barack Obama, for example,
Jeremi Suri (18:43.200)
if you're listening to this
Lex Fridman (18:45.740)
and you're on the left or the right,
Jeremi Suri (18:47.920)
please do not make this political.
Lex Fridman (18:49.220)
In fact, if you're a political person
Lex Fridman (18:51.520)
and you're getting angry at the mention of the word Obama
Lex Fridman (18:54.240)
or Donald Trump, please turn off this podcast
Jeremi Suri (18:56.560)
that I've just described.
Lex Fridman (18:57.960)
We're not gonna get very far.
Jeremi Suri (18:59.560)
I hope we maintain a political discussion
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about even the modern presidents
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that view through the lens of history.
Lex Fridman (19:07.460)
I think there's a lot to be learned
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about the office and about human nature.
Lex Fridman (19:13.080)
Some people criticize Barack Obama
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for sort of expanding the military industrial complex,
Lex Fridman (19:19.520)
engaging in more and more wars,
Jeremi Suri (19:22.200)
as opposed to sort of the initial rhetoric
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was such that we would pull back
Jeremi Suri (19:28.560)
from sort of be more skeptical
Lex Fridman (19:30.720)
in our decisions to wage wars.
Lex Fridman (19:33.120)
So from the lens of the power of the presidency,
Lex Fridman (19:36.880)
as the modern presidency,
Jeremi Suri (19:39.600)
the fact that we continued the war in Afghanistan
Lex Fridman (19:41.920)
and different engagements in military conflicts,
Lex Fridman (19:46.740)
do you think Barack Obama could have stopped that?
Lex Fridman (19:52.320)
Do you put the responsibility on that expansion
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on him because of the implied power
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that the presidency has?
Jeremi Suri (19:59.720)
Or is this power just sits there
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by alienating an isolationist public.
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That was the reality.
Lex Fridman (1:00:04.680)
We talked about political manipulation.
Jeremi Suri (1:00:06.000)
He had to be conscious of that.
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He had to know his audience.
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And second, there were no allies willing
Lex Fridman (1:00:12.160)
to invest in this either.
Jeremi Suri (1:00:14.600)
The British were as committed to appeasement, as you know.
Lex Fridman (1:00:18.080)
You're obviously very knowledgeable about this.
Jeremi Suri (1:00:19.760)
The French were as well.
Lex Fridman (1:00:21.240)
It was very hard.
Jeremi Suri (1:00:22.080)
The Russian government, the Soviet government
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was cooperating to remilitarize Germany.
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So there weren't a lot of allies out there either.
Lex Fridman (1:00:30.000)
I think if there's a criticism to be made of FDR,
Jeremi Suri (1:00:33.520)
it's that once we're in the war,
Lex Fridman (1:00:37.400)
he didn't do enough to stop,
Jeremi Suri (1:00:39.160)
in particular, the killing of Jews.
Lex Fridman (1:00:41.280)
And there are a number of historians,
Jeremi Suri (1:00:42.920)
myself included, who have written about this,
Lex Fridman (1:00:44.520)
and it's an endless debate.
Lex Fridman (1:00:45.600)
What should he have done?
Lex Fridman (1:00:47.000)
There's no doubt by 1944,
Jeremi Suri (1:00:49.080)
the United States had air superiority
Lex Fridman (1:00:51.280)
and could have bombed the rail lines to Auschwitz
Lex Fridman (1:00:53.480)
and other camps,
Lex Fridman (1:00:54.320)
and that would have saved as many as a million Jews.
Jeremi Suri (1:00:56.160)
That's a lot of people who could have been saved.
Lex Fridman (1:00:58.680)
Why didn't FDR insist on that?
Jeremi Suri (1:01:01.680)
In part, because he wanted to use every resource possible
Lex Fridman (1:01:04.200)
to win the war.
Jeremi Suri (1:01:05.520)
He did not want to be accused of fighting the war for Jews.
Lex Fridman (1:01:08.400)
But I think it's also fair to say
Jeremi Suri (1:01:09.640)
that he probably cared less about Jews and East Europeans
Lex Fridman (1:01:13.400)
than he did about others,
Jeremi Suri (1:01:15.320)
those of his own Dutch ancestry and from Western Europe.
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And so, even their race comes in,
Jeremi Suri (1:01:20.520)
is also the explanation for the internment of Japanese
Lex Fridman (1:01:22.840)
in the United States,
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which is a horrible war crime
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committed by this heroic president.
Jeremi Suri (1:01:26.920)
120,000 Japanese American citizens
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lost their freedom unnecessarily.
Jeremi Suri (1:01:31.440)
So, he had his limitations.
Lex Fridman (1:01:33.400)
And I think he could have done more during the war
Jeremi Suri (1:01:37.440)
to save many more lives.
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And I wish he had.
Lex Fridman (1:01:39.880)
And there's something to be said about empathy
Lex Fridman (1:01:42.600)
that you spoke that FDR had empathy.
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But us, for example,
Lex Fridman (1:01:47.160)
now there's many people who describe the atrocities
Jeremi Suri (1:01:49.800)
happening in China.
Lex Fridman (1:01:51.760)
And there's a bunch of places across the world
Jeremi Suri (1:01:53.960)
where there's atrocities happening now.
Lex Fridman (1:01:55.600)
And we care.
Jeremi Suri (1:01:57.520)
We do not uniformly apply how much we care
Lex Fridman (1:02:03.300)
for the suffering of others.
Jeremi Suri (1:02:04.780)
That's correct.
Lex Fridman (1:02:05.620)
Depending on the group.
Jeremi Suri (1:02:06.660)
That's correct.
Lex Fridman (1:02:07.620)
And in some sense, the role of the president
Jeremi Suri (1:02:10.580)
is to rise above that natural human inclination
Lex Fridman (1:02:15.860)
to protect, to do the us versus them,
Jeremi Suri (1:02:18.220)
to protect the inner circle
Lex Fridman (1:02:20.660)
and empathize with the suffering of those
Jeremi Suri (1:02:22.780)
that are not like you.
Lex Fridman (1:02:24.660)
That's correct.
Jeremi Suri (1:02:25.660)
I agree with that.
Lex Fridman (1:02:26.660)
Yeah.
Jeremi Suri (1:02:29.300)
Speaking of war, you wrote a book on Henry Kissinger.
Lex Fridman (1:02:33.660)
It's not a great transition,
Lex Fridman (1:02:36.340)
but it made sense in my head.
Lex Fridman (1:02:39.140)
Who was Henry Kissinger as a man
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and as a historical figure?
Lex Fridman (1:02:43.500)
So Henry Kissinger to me is one of the most fascinating
Jeremi Suri (1:02:45.940)
figures in history,
Lex Fridman (1:02:47.380)
because he comes to the United States
Jeremi Suri (1:02:49.220)
as a German Jewish immigrant at age 15,
Lex Fridman (1:02:51.620)
speaking no English.
Lex Fridman (1:02:53.100)
And within a few years, he's a major figure
Lex Fridman (1:02:56.520)
influencing US foreign policy at the height of US power.
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But while he's doing that,
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he's never elected to office
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and he's constantly reviled by people,
Lex Fridman (1:03:06.820)
including people who are anti Semitic because he's Jewish,
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but at the same time also his exoticism
Lex Fridman (1:03:13.540)
makes him more attractive to people.
Lex Fridman (1:03:15.720)
So someone like Nelson Rockefeller wants Kissinger around.
Lex Fridman (1:03:18.800)
He's one of Kissinger's first patrons
Jeremi Suri (1:03:20.220)
because he wants a really smart Jew.
Lex Fridman (1:03:22.100)
And Kissinger is gonna be that smart Jew
Jeremi Suri (1:03:23.580)
I call Kissinger a policy Jew.
Lex Fridman (1:03:25.260)
There were these court Jews in the 16th and 17th
Lex Fridman (1:03:27.420)
and 18th centuries in Europe.
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Every king wanted the Jew to manage his banking.
Lex Fridman (1:03:31.200)
And in a sense in the United States
Lex Fridman (1:03:33.020)
in the second half of the 20th century,
Jeremi Suri (1:03:35.100)
many presidents want a Jew
Lex Fridman (1:03:36.780)
to manage their international affairs.
Lex Fridman (1:03:38.540)
And what does that really mean?
Lex Fridman (1:03:39.460)
It's not just about being Jewish,
Jeremi Suri (1:03:41.460)
it's the internationalism, it's the cosmopolitanism.
Lex Fridman (1:03:44.260)
And that's one of the things
Jeremi Suri (1:03:45.380)
I was fascinated with with Kissinger.
Lex Fridman (1:03:47.020)
Someone like Kissinger is unthinkable
Jeremi Suri (1:03:48.800)
as a powerful figure in the United States
Lex Fridman (1:03:50.780)
30 or 40 years earlier,
Jeremi Suri (1:03:52.420)
because the United States is run by WASD.
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It's run by white elites
Jeremi Suri (1:03:56.380)
who come from a certain background.
Lex Fridman (1:03:58.780)
Kissinger represents a moment when American society
Jeremi Suri (1:04:01.340)
opens up not to everyone,
Lex Fridman (1:04:03.300)
but opens up to these cosmopolitan figures
Jeremi Suri (1:04:05.900)
who have language skills, historical knowledge,
Lex Fridman (1:04:08.620)
networks that can be used for the US government
Jeremi Suri (1:04:11.620)
when after World War II, we have to rebuild Europe,
Lex Fridman (1:04:14.600)
when we have to negotiate with the Soviet Union,
Jeremi Suri (1:04:16.360)
when we need the kinds of knowledge we didn't have before.
Lex Fridman (1:04:19.360)
And Harvard where he gets his education late,
Jeremi Suri (1:04:22.020)
he started at City College actually,
Lex Fridman (1:04:23.460)
but Harvard where he gets his education late
Jeremi Suri (1:04:25.580)
is at the center of what's happening
Lex Fridman (1:04:26.980)
at all these major universities,
Jeremi Suri (1:04:28.300)
at Harvard, at Yale, at Stanford,
Lex Fridman (1:04:29.640)
at the University of Texas, everywhere,
Jeremi Suri (1:04:31.780)
where they're growing in their international affairs,
Lex Fridman (1:04:34.940)
bringing in the kinds of people
Jeremi Suri (1:04:36.400)
who never would be at the university before,
Lex Fridman (1:04:38.580)
training them and then enlisting them in Cold War activities.
Lex Fridman (1:04:42.660)
And so Kissinger is a representative of that phenomenon.
Lex Fridman (1:04:46.100)
I became interested in him
Jeremi Suri (1:04:47.580)
because I think he's a bellwether.
Lex Fridman (1:04:48.940)
He shows how power has changed in the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:04:52.820)
So he enters this whole world of politics,
Lex Fridman (1:04:57.340)
what, post World War II in the 50s?
Jeremi Suri (1:05:00.300)
Yes, so he actually, in the 40s even,
Lex Fridman (1:05:03.540)
it's an extraordinary story.
Jeremi Suri (1:05:05.060)
He comes to the United States in 1938,
Lex Fridman (1:05:07.540)
just before Kristallnacht, his family leaves.
Jeremi Suri (1:05:09.940)
He actually grew up right outside of Nuremberg.
Lex Fridman (1:05:11.920)
They leave right before Kristallnacht in fall of 38,
Jeremi Suri (1:05:16.220)
come to New York.
Lex Fridman (1:05:17.500)
He originally works in a brush factory, cleaning brushes,
Jeremi Suri (1:05:21.020)
goes to a public high school.
Lex Fridman (1:05:23.240)
And in 1942, just after Pearl Harbor, he joins the military.
Lex Fridman (1:05:27.300)
And he's very quickly in the military,
Lex Fridman (1:05:30.380)
first of all, given citizenship, which he didn't have before.
Jeremi Suri (1:05:34.340)
He's sent for the first time outside of a kosher home.
Lex Fridman (1:05:36.700)
He had been in a kosher home his entire life.
Jeremi Suri (1:05:38.220)
He's sent to South Carolina to eat ham for Uncle Sam.
Lex Fridman (1:05:42.260)
And then he is, and this is extraordinary,
Jeremi Suri (1:05:45.020)
at the age of 20, barely speaking English,
Lex Fridman (1:05:48.900)
he is sent back to Germany with the US Army
Lex Fridman (1:05:52.500)
in an elite counterintelligence role, why?
Lex Fridman (1:05:55.580)
Because they need German speakers.
Jeremi Suri (1:05:57.700)
He came when he was 15,
Lex Fridman (1:05:58.740)
so he actually understands the society.
Jeremi Suri (1:06:00.260)
They need people who have that cultural knowledge.
Lex Fridman (1:06:02.500)
And because he's Jewish,
Jeremi Suri (1:06:04.460)
they can trust that he'll be anti Nazi.
Lex Fridman (1:06:07.700)
And there's a whole group of these figures.
Jeremi Suri (1:06:10.140)
He's one of many.
Lex Fridman (1:06:11.340)
And so he's in an elite circle.
Jeremi Suri (1:06:13.540)
He's discriminated against in New York.
Lex Fridman (1:06:15.940)
When he goes to Harvard after that,
Jeremi Suri (1:06:17.300)
he can only live in a Jewish only dorm.
Lex Fridman (1:06:19.380)
But at the same time,
Jeremi Suri (1:06:20.220)
he's in an elite policy role in counterintelligence.
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.980)
He forms a network there that stays with him
Jeremi Suri (1:06:25.500)
the rest of his career.
Lex Fridman (1:06:27.780)
There's a gentleman named Fritz Kramer,
Jeremi Suri (1:06:29.260)
who becomes a sponsor of his
Lex Fridman (1:06:31.380)
in the emerging Pentagon Defense Department world.
Lex Fridman (1:06:34.780)
And as early as the early 1950s,
Lex Fridman (1:06:36.940)
he sent them to Korea to comment on affairs in Korea.
Jeremi Suri (1:06:40.260)
He becomes both an intellectual recognized
Lex Fridman (1:06:42.980)
for his connections,
Lex Fridman (1:06:44.260)
but also someone who policymakers wanna talk about.
Lex Fridman (1:06:46.500)
His book on nuclear weapons, when it's written,
Jeremi Suri (1:06:48.740)
is given to President Eisenhower to read
Lex Fridman (1:06:51.660)
because they say this is someone writing interesting things.
Jeremi Suri (1:06:54.220)
You should read what he says.
Lex Fridman (1:06:56.460)
There's a certain aspect to him
Jeremi Suri (1:06:57.860)
that's kind of like Forrest Gump.
Lex Fridman (1:06:59.740)
He seems to continuously be the right person
Jeremi Suri (1:07:02.060)
at the right time in the right place.
Lex Fridman (1:07:03.820)
That's right.
Jeremi Suri (1:07:04.660)
Somehow finding him in this.
Lex Fridman (1:07:05.660)
I don't wanna, you know,
Jeremi Suri (1:07:07.660)
you can only get lucky so many times
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.500)
because he continues to get lucky
Jeremi Suri (1:07:13.540)
in terms of being at the right place in history
Lex Fridman (1:07:17.060)
for many decades, until today.
Jeremi Suri (1:07:19.500)
Yeah, well, he has a knack for that.
Lex Fridman (1:07:21.140)
I spent a lot of time talking with him.
Lex Fridman (1:07:24.580)
And what comes through very quickly
Lex Fridman (1:07:27.940)
is that he has an eye for power.
Jeremi Suri (1:07:30.620)
It's, I think, unhealthy.
Lex Fridman (1:07:31.820)
He's obsessed with power.
Lex Fridman (1:07:33.220)
Can you explain like an observer of power
Lex Fridman (1:07:36.380)
or does he want power himself?
Jeremi Suri (1:07:39.500)
Yes, both of those things.
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.140)
Both of those.
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.980)
And I think I explained this in the book.
Lex Fridman (1:07:43.940)
He doesn't agree with what I'm gonna say now,
Lex Fridman (1:07:46.180)
but I think I'm right and I think he's right.
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.980)
It's very hard to analyze yourself, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:07:50.740)
I think he develops an obsession with gaining power
Lex Fridman (1:07:54.380)
because he sees what happens when you have no power.
Jeremi Suri (1:07:57.660)
He experiences the trauma.
Lex Fridman (1:08:00.180)
His father is a very respected Gymnasium Lehrer in Germany.
Jeremi Suri (1:08:04.980)
Even though he's Jewish,
Lex Fridman (1:08:06.420)
he's actually the teacher of German classics
Jeremi Suri (1:08:09.460)
to the German kids.
Lex Fridman (1:08:11.180)
That's great.
Lex Fridman (1:08:12.020)
And he's forced to flee and he becomes nothing.
Lex Fridman (1:08:15.580)
His father never really makes a way
Jeremi Suri (1:08:17.900)
for himself in the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:08:18.980)
He becomes a postal delivery person,
Jeremi Suri (1:08:21.100)
which is nothing wrong with that,
Lex Fridman (1:08:22.100)
but for someone who's a respected teacher in Germany,
Lex Fridman (1:08:25.260)
and Gymnasium Lehrer are like professors there, right?
Lex Fridman (1:08:27.820)
To then be in this position.
Jeremi Suri (1:08:29.380)
His mother has to open a catering business
Lex Fridman (1:08:31.300)
when they come to New York.
Jeremi Suri (1:08:33.100)
It's a typical immigrant story, but he sees the trauma.
Lex Fridman (1:08:35.740)
His grandparents are killed by the Nazis.
Lex Fridman (1:08:38.260)
So he sees the trauma and he realizes how perilous it is
Lex Fridman (1:08:41.940)
to be without power.
Lex Fridman (1:08:43.060)
And you're saying he does not want to acknowledge
Lex Fridman (1:08:46.500)
the effect of that?
Jeremi Suri (1:08:49.060)
It's hard.
Lex Fridman (1:08:49.900)
It's hard.
Jeremi Suri (1:08:50.740)
I mean, most of us, if we've had trauma,
Lex Fridman (1:08:52.660)
it's believable that it's traumatic
Jeremi Suri (1:08:54.260)
because you don't talk about it.
Lex Fridman (1:08:55.180)
I have a friend who interviews combat veterans and he says,
Jeremi Suri (1:08:58.980)
as soon as someone freely wants to tell me
Lex Fridman (1:09:01.100)
about their combat trauma,
Jeremi Suri (1:09:02.660)
I suspect that they're not telling me the truth.
Lex Fridman (1:09:05.260)
If it's traumatic, it's hard to talk about.
Jeremi Suri (1:09:08.900)
Yeah, sometimes I wonder how much from my own life,
Lex Fridman (1:09:13.140)
everything that I've ever done is just the result
Jeremi Suri (1:09:15.740)
of the complicated relationship with my father.
Lex Fridman (1:09:21.100)
I tend to, I had a really difficult time.
Jeremi Suri (1:09:23.180)
I did a podcast conversation with him.
Lex Fridman (1:09:25.620)
I saw it actually.
Jeremi Suri (1:09:26.460)
Yeah, it's great.
Lex Fridman (1:09:27.420)
It's great.
Jeremi Suri (1:09:28.780)
It was, I was thinking I could never do that with my father.
Lex Fridman (1:09:31.860)
But I remember as I was doing it,
Lex Fridman (1:09:33.940)
and for months after I regretted doing it,
Lex Fridman (1:09:37.060)
I just kept regretting it.
Lex Fridman (1:09:39.140)
And the fact that I was regretting it spoke to the fact
Lex Fridman (1:09:42.300)
that I'm running away from some truths
Jeremi Suri (1:09:45.020)
that are back there somewhere.
Lex Fridman (1:09:47.700)
And that's perhaps what Kissinger is as well.
Lex Fridman (1:09:50.540)
But is there, I mean, he's done,
Lex Fridman (1:09:53.180)
he's been a part of so many interesting moments
Jeremi Suri (1:09:56.700)
of American history, of world history,
Lex Fridman (1:09:59.100)
from the Cold War, Vietnam War, until today.
Lex Fridman (1:10:03.420)
What stands out to you as a particularly important moment
Lex Fridman (1:10:08.500)
in his career that made who he is?
Jeremi Suri (1:10:13.740)
Well, I think what made his career in many ways
Lex Fridman (1:10:18.340)
was his experience in the 1950s, building a network,
Jeremi Suri (1:10:23.620)
a network of people across the world
Lex Fridman (1:10:26.460)
who were rising leaders from unique positions.
Jeremi Suri (1:10:30.340)
He ran what he called the International Seminar at Harvard,
Lex Fridman (1:10:35.220)
which was actually a summer school class
Jeremi Suri (1:10:37.300)
that no one at Harvard cared about.
Lex Fridman (1:10:39.340)
But he invited all of these rising intellectuals
Lex Fridman (1:10:44.700)
and thinkers from around the world.
Lex Fridman (1:10:46.780)
And he built a network there that he used forevermore.
Lex Fridman (1:10:50.860)
So that's what really, I think, boosts him.
Lex Fridman (1:10:53.980)
The most important moments in terms of making his reputation
Lex Fridman (1:10:56.820)
and making his career are two sets of activities.
Lex Fridman (1:10:59.340)
One is the opening to China.
Lex Fridman (1:11:02.100)
And his ability to, first of all,
Lex Fridman (1:11:04.580)
take control of US policy without the authority to do that
Lex Fridman (1:11:07.580)
and direct US policy, and then build a relationship
Lex Fridman (1:11:11.180)
with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai that was unthinkable
Jeremi Suri (1:11:14.580)
just four or five years earlier.
Lex Fridman (1:11:16.580)
Of course, President Nixon is a big part of that as well,
Lex Fridman (1:11:18.860)
but Kissinger is the mover and shaker on that.
Lex Fridman (1:11:20.780)
And it's a lot of manipulation, but it's also a vision.
Jeremi Suri (1:11:23.660)
Now, this is in the moment of American history
Lex Fridman (1:11:26.860)
where there's a very powerful anti communism.
Jeremi Suri (1:11:29.660)
Correct.
Lex Fridman (1:11:30.500)
So communism is seen as much more even though
Jeremi Suri (1:11:33.820)
than today as the enemy.
Lex Fridman (1:11:35.620)
Correct.
Lex Fridman (1:11:36.460)
And China in particular,
Lex Fridman (1:11:37.460)
they were one of our key enemies in Vietnam.
Lex Fridman (1:11:40.700)
And in Korea, American forces
Lex Fridman (1:11:42.300)
were fighting Chinese forces directly.
Jeremi Suri (1:11:44.100)
Chinese forces come over the border.
Lex Fridman (1:11:46.780)
Thousands of Americans die at the hand of Chinese forces.
Lex Fridman (1:11:49.180)
So for the long time, the United States
Lex Fridman (1:11:50.540)
had no relationship with communist China.
Jeremi Suri (1:11:52.260)
He opens that relationship.
Lex Fridman (1:11:54.460)
And at the same time, he also creates a whole new dynamic
Jeremi Suri (1:11:58.260)
in the Middle East.
Lex Fridman (1:11:59.420)
After the 1973 war, the so called Yom Kippur War,
Jeremi Suri (1:12:02.340)
he steps in and becomes the leading negotiator
Lex Fridman (1:12:05.100)
between the Israelis, the Egyptians,
Lex Fridman (1:12:07.500)
and other major actors in the region.
Lex Fridman (1:12:09.980)
And it makes the United States the most powerful actor
Jeremi Suri (1:12:12.780)
in the Middle East, the Soviet Union far less powerful,
Lex Fridman (1:12:15.420)
which is great for the United States in the 70s and 80s.
Jeremi Suri (1:12:17.940)
It gets us though into the problems
Lex Fridman (1:12:19.420)
we of course have thereafter.
Lex Fridman (1:12:21.780)
So that speaks to the very pragmatic approach
Lex Fridman (1:12:25.460)
that he's taken the realistic approach
Jeremi Suri (1:12:28.740)
versus the idealistic approach termed realpolitik.
Lex Fridman (1:12:34.580)
What is this thing?
Lex Fridman (1:12:35.780)
What is this approach to world politics?
Lex Fridman (1:12:38.900)
So realpolitik for Kissinger is really focusing
Jeremi Suri (1:12:43.500)
on the power centers in the world
Lex Fridman (1:12:46.980)
and trying as best you can to manipulate
Jeremi Suri (1:12:49.300)
those power centers to serve the interests
Lex Fridman (1:12:51.140)
of your own country.
Lex Fridman (1:12:52.580)
And so that's why he's a multilateralist.
Lex Fridman (1:12:54.420)
He's not a unilateralist.
Jeremi Suri (1:12:55.940)
He believes the United States should put itself
Lex Fridman (1:12:58.420)
at the center of negotiations
Jeremi Suri (1:13:00.060)
between other powerful countries.
Lex Fridman (1:13:02.060)
But that's also why he pays very little attention
Jeremi Suri (1:13:03.900)
to countries that are less powerful.
Lex Fridman (1:13:05.500)
And this is why he's often criticized
Jeremi Suri (1:13:07.220)
by human rights activists.
Lex Fridman (1:13:09.020)
For him, parts of Africa and Latin America,
Jeremi Suri (1:13:12.500)
which you and I would consider important places
Lex Fridman (1:13:14.420)
are unimportant because they don't have power.
Jeremi Suri (1:13:16.740)
They can't project their power.
Lex Fridman (1:13:17.900)
They don't produce a lot of economic wealth.
Lex Fridman (1:13:20.540)
And so they matter less.
Lex Fridman (1:13:21.620)
Realpolitik views the world in a hierarchy of power.
Lex Fridman (1:13:26.940)
How does realpolitik realize itself in the world?
Lex Fridman (1:13:32.140)
What does that really mean?
Jeremi Suri (1:13:34.980)
Like how do you push forward the interest
Lex Fridman (1:13:37.100)
of your own country?
Jeremi Suri (1:13:37.980)
You said there's power centers,
Lex Fridman (1:13:40.060)
but it is a big bold move to negotiate
Jeremi Suri (1:13:45.420)
to work with a communist nation,
Lex Fridman (1:13:47.460)
with your enemies that are powerful.
Lex Fridman (1:13:50.500)
What is the sort of, if you can further elaborate
Lex Fridman (1:13:53.780)
the philosophy behind it.
Jeremi Suri (1:13:55.020)
Sure, so there are two key elements
Lex Fridman (1:13:57.180)
that then end up producing all kinds of tactics.
Lex Fridman (1:13:59.820)
But the two strategic elements of Kissinger's way
Lex Fridman (1:14:01.980)
of thinking about realpolitik,
Jeremi Suri (1:14:03.340)
which are classical ways,
Lex Fridman (1:14:04.580)
going back to Thucydides and the Greeks,
Jeremi Suri (1:14:07.100)
are to say, first of all,
Lex Fridman (1:14:08.700)
you figure out who your allies are
Lex Fridman (1:14:10.820)
and you build webs of connection
Lex Fridman (1:14:13.380)
so that your allies help you to acquire
Lex Fridman (1:14:16.300)
what you want to acquire.
Lex Fridman (1:14:18.340)
This is why, according to Herodotus,
Jeremi Suri (1:14:20.100)
the Greeks beat the Persians.
Lex Fridman (1:14:21.260)
The Persians are bigger,
Lex Fridman (1:14:22.460)
but the Greeks, the Spartans, the Athenians,
Lex Fridman (1:14:24.100)
others are able to work together
Lex Fridman (1:14:25.180)
and leverage their resources.
Lex Fridman (1:14:27.260)
So it's about leveraging your resources.
Jeremi Suri (1:14:28.740)
For Kissinger, this makes Western Europe
Lex Fridman (1:14:31.100)
crucially important.
Jeremi Suri (1:14:32.420)
It makes Japan crucially important.
Lex Fridman (1:14:35.060)
It makes Israel and Egypt crucially important
Jeremi Suri (1:14:38.300)
in building these webs.
Lex Fridman (1:14:39.460)
You build your surrogates,
Jeremi Suri (1:14:41.060)
you build your brother states.
Lex Fridman (1:14:43.100)
In other parts of the world,
Jeremi Suri (1:14:44.220)
you build tight connections and you work together
Lex Fridman (1:14:46.260)
to control the resources that you want.
Jeremi Suri (1:14:49.060)
The second element of the strategy
Lex Fridman (1:14:50.900)
is not to go to war with your adversary,
Lex Fridman (1:14:53.740)
but to do all you can to limit the power
Lex Fridman (1:14:56.060)
of your adversary.
Jeremi Suri (1:14:57.420)
Some of that is containment,
Lex Fridman (1:14:59.340)
preventing the Soviet Union from expanding.
Jeremi Suri (1:15:01.500)
That was the key element of American Cold War policy.
Lex Fridman (1:15:04.260)
But sometimes it's actually negotiation.
Jeremi Suri (1:15:07.180)
That's what detente was about for Kissinger.
Lex Fridman (1:15:09.020)
He spends a lot of time,
Jeremi Suri (1:15:09.900)
more time than any other American foreign policymaker,
Lex Fridman (1:15:12.500)
negotiating with Soviet leaders
Jeremi Suri (1:15:14.500)
as well as Chinese leaders.
Lex Fridman (1:15:15.900)
What does he want to do?
Jeremi Suri (1:15:16.740)
He wants to limit the nuclear arms race.
Lex Fridman (1:15:18.540)
The United States is ahead.
Jeremi Suri (1:15:20.860)
We don't want the Soviet Union to get ahead of us.
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.780)
We negotiate to limit their abilities, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:15:26.100)
We play to our strengths.
Lex Fridman (1:15:28.140)
So it's a combination of keeping your adversary down
Lex Fridman (1:15:31.620)
and building tight webs.
Lex Fridman (1:15:33.660)
Within that context, military force is used,
Lex Fridman (1:15:36.580)
but you're not using war for the sake of war.
Lex Fridman (1:15:39.100)
You're using warfare to further your access to the resources,
Jeremi Suri (1:15:43.300)
economic, political, geographic that you want.
Lex Fridman (1:15:46.420)
To build relationships and then the second thing,
Jeremi Suri (1:15:49.100)
to limit the powers of those you're against.
Lex Fridman (1:15:51.020)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (1:15:51.860)
So is there any sort of insights
Lex Fridman (1:15:56.060)
into how he preferred to build relationships?
Jeremi Suri (1:15:59.140)
Are we talking about like, again, it's the one on one.
Lex Fridman (1:16:03.060)
Is it through policy or is it through like,
Lex Fridman (1:16:05.140)
phone conversations?
Lex Fridman (1:16:06.860)
Is there any cool kind of insights that you could speak to?
Jeremi Suri (1:16:09.820)
Yeah, Kissinger is the ultimate kiss up.
Lex Fridman (1:16:14.420)
He is, some used to make fun of him.
Jeremi Suri (1:16:16.700)
In fact, even the filmmaker from Dr. Strangelove,
Lex Fridman (1:16:20.900)
whose name I'm forgetting, Stanley Kubrick,
Lex Fridman (1:16:23.700)
called him kiss up at that time, right?
Lex Fridman (1:16:27.260)
He had a wonderful way of figuring out
Lex Fridman (1:16:30.220)
what it is you wanted, back to that discussion we had before
Lex Fridman (1:16:33.580)
and trying to show how he could give you more
Jeremi Suri (1:16:35.620)
of what you wanted as a leader.
Lex Fridman (1:16:36.780)
It was very personalistic, very personalistic.
Lex Fridman (1:16:40.460)
And he spends a lot of time, for example,
Lex Fridman (1:16:43.060)
kissing up to Leonid Brezhnev, kissing up to Mao.
Jeremi Suri (1:16:46.620)
He tells Mao, you're the greatest leader
Lex Fridman (1:16:48.140)
in the history of the 20th century.
Jeremi Suri (1:16:49.700)
People will look back on you as the great leader.
Lex Fridman (1:16:52.540)
Some of this sounds like BS, but it's serious, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:16:55.460)
He's feeding the egos of those around him.
Lex Fridman (1:16:58.340)
Second, he is willing to get things done for you.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:02.060)
He's effective.
Lex Fridman (1:17:03.020)
You want him around you because of his efficacy.
Lex Fridman (1:17:05.500)
So Richard Nixon is always suspicious
Lex Fridman (1:17:07.740)
that Henry Kissinger is getting more of the limelight.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:09.660)
He hates that Kissinger gets the Nobel Peace Prize
Lex Fridman (1:17:11.780)
and he doesn't, but he needs him.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:13.940)
Because Kissinger's the guy who gets things done.
Lex Fridman (1:17:16.420)
So he performs.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:17.620)
He builds a relationship in almost,
Lex Fridman (1:17:19.540)
I say this in the book, in almost a gangster way.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:21.340)
He didn't like that he criticized that part of the book.
Lex Fridman (1:17:23.100)
But again, I still think the evidence is there.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:26.460)
You need something to be done, boss, I'll do it.
Lex Fridman (1:17:29.780)
And don't forget that I'm doing this for you.
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.020)
And you get mutual dependency in a Hegelian way, right?
Lex Fridman (1:17:35.060)
And so he builds this personal dependency
Jeremi Suri (1:17:39.980)
through ego and through performance.
Lex Fridman (1:17:42.460)
And then he's so skillful at making decisions
Jeremi Suri (1:17:46.780)
for people who are more powerful
Lex Fridman (1:17:48.340)
because he's never elected to office.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:49.780)
He always needs powerful people to let him do things.
Lex Fridman (1:17:53.060)
But he convinces you it's your decision when it's really his.
Jeremi Suri (1:17:55.820)
To read his memos are beautiful.
Lex Fridman (1:17:57.660)
He's actually very skilled at writing things
Jeremi Suri (1:17:59.780)
in a way that looks like he's giving you options
Lex Fridman (1:18:02.420)
as president, but in fact, there's only one option there.
Jeremi Suri (1:18:05.420)
Is he, speaking to the gangster, to the loyalty,
Lex Fridman (1:18:10.740)
is he ever, like the sense I got from Nixon
Jeremi Suri (1:18:14.060)
is he would, Nixon would backstab you if he needed to.
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.900)
One of the things that I admire about gangsters
Jeremi Suri (1:18:25.620)
is they don't backstab those in their circle,
Lex Fridman (1:18:28.820)
like loyalty above all else.
Jeremi Suri (1:18:30.700)
I mean, at least that's the sense I've gotten
Lex Fridman (1:18:33.260)
from the stories of the past, at least.
Lex Fridman (1:18:36.500)
Is, where would you put Kissinger on that?
Lex Fridman (1:18:38.820)
Is he loyalty above all else?
Jeremi Suri (1:18:41.820)
Or is it, or a human, it's like the Steve Jobs thing,
Lex Fridman (1:18:45.900)
is like, as long as you're useful, you're useful,
Lex Fridman (1:18:48.220)
but then once, the moment you're no longer useful
Lex Fridman (1:18:52.420)
is when you're knocked off the chessboard.
Jeremi Suri (1:18:55.340)
It's the latter with him.
Lex Fridman (1:18:56.380)
He's backstabbing quite a lot.
Lex Fridman (1:18:59.260)
And he's self serving.
Lex Fridman (1:19:00.740)
But he also makes himself so useful
Jeremi Suri (1:19:03.820)
that even though Nixon knows he's doing that,
Lex Fridman (1:19:05.740)
Nixon still needs him.
Jeremi Suri (1:19:07.300)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:19:09.380)
By the way, on that point, so having spoken with Kissinger,
Jeremi Suri (1:19:13.420)
what's your relationship like with him
Lex Fridman (1:19:15.380)
as somebody who is in an objective way writing his story?
Jeremi Suri (1:19:21.540)
It was very difficult
Lex Fridman (1:19:22.620)
because he's very good at manipulating people.
Lex Fridman (1:19:25.780)
And we had about 12 or 13 interviews,
Lex Fridman (1:19:28.900)
usually informal over lunch.
Lex Fridman (1:19:32.260)
And this was many years ago.
Lex Fridman (1:19:34.980)
This is probably now more than 10 years ago.
Jeremi Suri (1:19:37.580)
Did you find yourself being like sweet talked,
Lex Fridman (1:19:41.420)
like to where you like go back home later
Lex Fridman (1:19:43.940)
and look in the mirror and it's like,
Lex Fridman (1:19:44.900)
wait, what just happened?
Jeremi Suri (1:19:46.300)
He can be enormously charming
Lex Fridman (1:19:48.980)
and enormously obnoxious at the same time.
Lex Fridman (1:19:51.020)
So I would have these very mixed emotions
Lex Fridman (1:19:53.380)
because he gives no ground.
Jeremi Suri (1:19:54.700)
He's unwilling to, and I think this is a weakness,
Lex Fridman (1:19:58.580)
he's unwilling to admit mistake.
Jeremi Suri (1:20:03.580)
Others make mistakes, but he doesn't.
Lex Fridman (1:20:05.100)
And he certainly won't take on any of the big criticisms
Jeremi Suri (1:20:07.860)
that are pushed.
Lex Fridman (1:20:09.140)
I understand why.
Jeremi Suri (1:20:09.980)
I mean, when you've worked as hard for what he has
Lex Fridman (1:20:11.740)
as he has, you're defensive about it.
Lex Fridman (1:20:13.740)
But he is very defensive and he's very fragile about it.
Lex Fridman (1:20:15.580)
He does not like criticisms at all.
Jeremi Suri (1:20:17.620)
He used to, he hasn't done this in a while,
Lex Fridman (1:20:19.820)
but he used to call me up and yell at me on the phone,
Jeremi Suri (1:20:22.420)
quite literally, when I would be quoted
Lex Fridman (1:20:24.620)
in the New York Times or somewhere saying something
Jeremi Suri (1:20:27.220)
that sounded critical of him.
Lex Fridman (1:20:28.740)
So for instance, there was one instance
Jeremi Suri (1:20:30.420)
a number of years ago,
Lex Fridman (1:20:31.380)
where a reporter came across some documents
Jeremi Suri (1:20:34.460)
where Kissinger said negative things about Jews in Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:20:37.740)
Typical things that a German Jew would say
Jeremi Suri (1:20:39.460)
about East European Jews.
Lex Fridman (1:20:41.580)
And the New York Times asked me, is this accurate?
Lex Fridman (1:20:44.660)
And I said, yeah, the documents are accurate.
Lex Fridman (1:20:46.860)
I've seen them, they're accurate.
Jeremi Suri (1:20:47.740)
He was so angry about that.
Lex Fridman (1:20:49.820)
So there's the fragility,
Lex Fridman (1:20:50.740)
but there's also the enormous charm
Lex Fridman (1:20:52.060)
and the enormous intelligence.
Jeremi Suri (1:20:53.740)
The real challenge with him though,
Lex Fridman (1:20:54.860)
is he's very good at making his case.
Jeremi Suri (1:20:56.940)
He'll convince you.
Lex Fridman (1:20:58.780)
And as a scholar, as an observer,
Jeremi Suri (1:21:02.220)
you don't wanna hear a lawyer's case.
Lex Fridman (1:21:03.660)
You wanna actually interrogate the evidence
Lex Fridman (1:21:05.580)
and get to the truth.
Lex Fridman (1:21:07.060)
And so that was a real challenge with him.
Lex Fridman (1:21:09.340)
So speaking of his approach of realpolitik,
Lex Fridman (1:21:14.220)
if we just zoom out and look at a human history,
Jeremi Suri (1:21:17.020)
human civilization, what do you think works best
Lex Fridman (1:21:20.660)
in the way we progress forward?
Jeremi Suri (1:21:25.580)
A realistic approach, do whatever it takes,
Lex Fridman (1:21:28.700)
control the centers of power,
Jeremi Suri (1:21:30.500)
to play a game for the greater interests
Lex Fridman (1:21:34.100)
of the good guys, quote unquote.
Jeremi Suri (1:21:36.420)
Or lead by sort of idealism,
Lex Fridman (1:21:40.100)
which is like truly act in the best version
Jeremi Suri (1:21:46.860)
of the ideas you represent,
Lex Fridman (1:21:48.660)
as opposed to kind of present one view
Lex Fridman (1:21:52.180)
and then do whatever it takes behind the scenes.
Lex Fridman (1:21:55.460)
Obviously you need some of both,
Lex Fridman (1:21:56.620)
but I lean more to the idealistic side
Lex Fridman (1:21:58.340)
and more so actually, believe it or not,
Jeremi Suri (1:22:00.540)
as I get into my 40s, as I do more historical work.
Lex Fridman (1:22:04.380)
Why do I say that?
Jeremi Suri (1:22:05.220)
Because I think, and this is one of my criticisms
Lex Fridman (1:22:07.500)
of Kissinger, who I also have a lot of respect for,
Jeremi Suri (1:22:10.020)
the realpolitik becomes self defeating
Lex Fridman (1:22:13.100)
because you're constantly running to keep power,
Lex Fridman (1:22:15.380)
but you forget why.
Lex Fridman (1:22:17.140)
And you often then use power,
Lex Fridman (1:22:18.740)
and I think Kissinger falls into this
Lex Fridman (1:22:20.340)
in some of his worst moments, not all of his moments,
Jeremi Suri (1:22:22.620)
where the power is actually being used
Lex Fridman (1:22:23.860)
to undermine the things you care about.
Jeremi Suri (1:22:25.580)
It's sort of the example of being a parent
Lex Fridman (1:22:27.300)
and you're doing all these things
Jeremi Suri (1:22:28.980)
to take your kid to violin, basketball, all these things,
Lex Fridman (1:22:32.260)
and you realize you're actually killing your kid
Lex Fridman (1:22:33.860)
and making your kid very unhappy.
Lex Fridman (1:22:35.580)
And the whole reason you were doing it
Jeremi Suri (1:22:36.780)
was to improve the person's life.
Lex Fridman (1:22:39.140)
And so you have to remember why it is,
Lex Fridman (1:22:41.380)
what Hans Morgenthau calls this is your purpose.
Lex Fridman (1:22:43.940)
Your purpose has to drive you.
Jeremi Suri (1:22:45.780)
Now your purpose doesn't have to be airy, fiery idealism.
Lex Fridman (1:22:49.180)
So I believe deeply in democracy is an ideal.
Jeremi Suri (1:22:52.300)
I don't think it's gonna ever look like Athenian democracy,
Lex Fridman (1:22:56.700)
but that should drive our policy.
Lex Fridman (1:23:00.220)
But we still have to be realistic
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.460)
and recognize we're not gonna build that democracy
Jeremi Suri (1:23:03.460)
in Afghanistan tomorrow.
Lex Fridman (1:23:06.020)
I mean, does it ultimately just boil down again
Jeremi Suri (1:23:07.940)
to the corrupting nature of power
Lex Fridman (1:23:09.580)
that nobody can hold power for very long
Jeremi Suri (1:23:16.260)
before you start acting in the interest of power
Lex Fridman (1:23:21.260)
as opposed to in the interest of your ideals?
Jeremi Suri (1:23:23.940)
It's impossible to be like somebody like Kissinger
Lex Fridman (1:23:27.420)
who is essentially in power for many, many decades
Lex Fridman (1:23:32.420)
and still remember what are the initial ideals
Lex Fridman (1:23:37.260)
that you strove to achieve.
Jeremi Suri (1:23:42.540)
Yes, I think that's exactly right.
Lex Fridman (1:23:44.380)
There's a moment in the book I quote about him,
Jeremi Suri (1:23:48.300)
comes from one of our interviews.
Lex Fridman (1:23:49.380)
I asked him, what were the guiding ideals for your policies?
Lex Fridman (1:23:54.060)
And he said, I'm not prepared to share that.
Lex Fridman (1:23:57.300)
And I don't think it's because he doesn't know
Lex Fridman (1:23:58.900)
what he thinks he was trying to do.
Lex Fridman (1:24:00.500)
He realizes his use of power departed quite a lot from.
Lex Fridman (1:24:04.620)
So it would sound, if he made them explicit,
Lex Fridman (1:24:08.100)
it would sound hypocritical.
Jeremi Suri (1:24:09.460)
Correct.
Lex Fridman (1:24:12.020)
Well, on that, let me ask about war.
Jeremi Suri (1:24:15.180)
America often presents itself to its own people,
Lex Fridman (1:24:20.140)
but just the leaders, when they look in the mirror,
Jeremi Suri (1:24:22.660)
I get a sense that we think of ourselves as the good guys.
Lex Fridman (1:24:29.780)
And especially this begins sometimes to look hypocritical
Jeremi Suri (1:24:34.980)
when you're waging war.
Lex Fridman (1:24:38.260)
Is there a good way to know when you've lost all sense
Lex Fridman (1:24:43.260)
of what it is to be good?
Lex Fridman (1:24:48.580)
Another way to ask that, is there in military policy
Jeremi Suri (1:24:52.620)
in conducting war, is there a good way to know
Lex Fridman (1:24:55.820)
what is a just war and what is a war crime?
Jeremi Suri (1:24:59.980)
I mean, in some circles, Kissinger is accused
Lex Fridman (1:25:03.820)
of contributing, being a war criminal.
Jeremi Suri (1:25:07.360)
Yes, and I argue in the book, he's not a war criminal,
Lex Fridman (1:25:10.080)
but that doesn't mean that he didn't misuse military power.
Jeremi Suri (1:25:15.140)
I think a just war, a just war,
Lex Fridman (1:25:20.020)
as Michael Walzer and others write about it,
Jeremi Suri (1:25:21.780)
a just war is a war where both the purpose is just,
Lex Fridman (1:25:26.020)
and you are using the means to get to that purpose
Jeremi Suri (1:25:29.780)
that kill as few people as necessary.
Lex Fridman (1:25:33.400)
That doesn't mean they won't be killing,
Lex Fridman (1:25:35.180)
but as few as necessary.
Lex Fridman (1:25:36.020)
Proportionality, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:25:37.300)
Your means should be proportional to your ends.
Lex Fridman (1:25:40.580)
And that's often lost sight of,
Jeremi Suri (1:25:43.500)
because the drive to get to the end often self justifies
Lex Fridman (1:25:48.620)
means that go well beyond that.
Lex Fridman (1:25:50.100)
And so that's how we get into torture in the war on terror.
Lex Fridman (1:25:55.620)
Is there some kind of lesson for the future
Lex Fridman (1:25:57.980)
that you can take away from that?
Lex Fridman (1:26:00.160)
Yes, I think the first set of lessons that I've shared
Jeremi Suri (1:26:03.940)
as a historian with military decision makers is,
Lex Fridman (1:26:06.820)
first of all, always remember why you're there,
Lex Fridman (1:26:08.580)
what your purpose is, and always ask yourself
Lex Fridman (1:26:10.460)
if the means you're using are actually proportional.
Jeremi Suri (1:26:13.620)
Ask that question.
Lex Fridman (1:26:15.140)
Just because you have these means that you can use,
Jeremi Suri (1:26:17.300)
just because you have these tools,
Lex Fridman (1:26:19.340)
doesn't mean they're the right tools to use.
Lex Fridman (1:26:22.180)
And here's the question that follows from that.
Lex Fridman (1:26:25.180)
And it's a hard question to ask,
Jeremi Suri (1:26:26.780)
because the answer is one we often don't like to hear.
Lex Fridman (1:26:29.380)
Are the things I'm doing in war actually doing more harm
Lex Fridman (1:26:33.140)
or more good to the reason I went into war?
Lex Fridman (1:26:36.900)
We came to a point in the war on terror
Jeremi Suri (1:26:39.020)
where what we were doing was actually
Lex Fridman (1:26:40.100)
creating more terrorists.
Lex Fridman (1:26:42.900)
And that's when you have to stop.
Lex Fridman (1:26:46.140)
Well, some of that is in the data,
Lex Fridman (1:26:47.460)
but some of it, there's a leap of faith.
Lex Fridman (1:26:49.460)
So from a parenting perspective,
Jeremi Suri (1:26:51.140)
let me speak as a person with no kids and a single guy,
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.700)
let me be the expert in the room on parenting.
Jeremi Suri (1:26:58.100)
Now, it does seem that it's a very difficult thing to do,
Lex Fridman (1:27:05.900)
even though you know that your kid was making a mistake,
Jeremi Suri (1:27:10.980)
to let them make a mistake,
Lex Fridman (1:27:12.180)
to give them the freedom to make the mistake.
Jeremi Suri (1:27:15.500)
I don't know what to do,
Lex Fridman (1:27:16.580)
but I mean, that's a very kind of lighthearted way
Jeremi Suri (1:27:19.620)
of phrasing the following,
Lex Fridman (1:27:21.540)
which is when you look at some of the places in the world,
Jeremi Suri (1:27:26.460)
like Afghanistan, which is not doing well.
Lex Fridman (1:27:32.300)
To move out knowing that there's going to be
Jeremi Suri (1:27:34.900)
a lot of suffering, economic suffering, injustices,
Lex Fridman (1:27:40.100)
terrorist organizations growing,
Jeremi Suri (1:27:42.540)
that's committing crimes on its own people
Lex Fridman (1:27:44.860)
and potentially committing crimes against allies,
Jeremi Suri (1:27:48.660)
violence against allies, violence against the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:27:52.180)
So how do you know what to do in that case?
Jeremi Suri (1:27:58.260)
Well, again, it's an art, not a science,
Lex Fridman (1:28:01.420)
which is what makes it hard for an engineer to think about.
Jeremi Suri (1:28:04.660)
This is what makes it endlessly fascinating for me.
Lex Fridman (1:28:07.180)
And I think the real intellectual work
Lex Fridman (1:28:08.700)
is at the level of the art, right?
Lex Fridman (1:28:10.740)
And I think probably engineering at its highest level
Lex Fridman (1:28:13.060)
becomes an art as well, right?
Lex Fridman (1:28:14.980)
So policymaking, you never know.
Lex Fridman (1:28:17.660)
But I will say this,
Lex Fridman (1:28:18.900)
I'll say you have to ask yourself and look in the mirror
Lex Fridman (1:28:21.020)
and say, is all the effort I'm putting in
Lex Fridman (1:28:23.460)
actually making this better?
Lex Fridman (1:28:25.500)
And in Afghanistan, you look at the 20 years
Lex Fridman (1:28:28.420)
and two plus trillion dollars that the US has put in.
Lex Fridman (1:28:32.740)
And the fact that, as you said correctly,
Lex Fridman (1:28:34.900)
it's not doing well right now
Jeremi Suri (1:28:36.020)
after 20 years of that investment.
Lex Fridman (1:28:38.980)
I might like a company that I invest in,
Lex Fridman (1:28:41.780)
but after 20 years of my throwing money in that company,
Lex Fridman (1:28:45.460)
it's time to get out.
Jeremi Suri (1:28:46.300)
Well, in some sense, getting out now, that's kind of obvious.
Lex Fridman (1:28:51.540)
I'm more interested in how we figure out in the future
Lex Fridman (1:28:54.340)
how to get out earlier than, I mean, at this point,
Lex Fridman (1:28:57.740)
we stayed too long and it's obvious,
Jeremi Suri (1:28:59.340)
the data, the investment, nothing is working.
Lex Fridman (1:29:04.380)
The very little data points to us staying there.
Jeremi Suri (1:29:07.580)
I'm more interested in being in a relation,
Lex Fridman (1:29:11.620)
let me take it back to a safer place again,
Jeremi Suri (1:29:13.740)
being in a relationship
Lex Fridman (1:29:14.740)
and getting out of that relationship
Jeremi Suri (1:29:16.300)
while things are still good,
Lex Fridman (1:29:17.420)
but you have a sense that it's not going to end up
Jeremi Suri (1:29:19.300)
in a good place.
Lex Fridman (1:29:20.380)
That's the difficult thing.
Jeremi Suri (1:29:22.300)
You have to ask yourself, whether it's a relationship
Lex Fridman (1:29:24.660)
or you're talking about policymaking
Jeremi Suri (1:29:26.300)
in a place like Afghanistan,
Lex Fridman (1:29:28.220)
are the things I'm doing showing me evidence,
Jeremi Suri (1:29:31.540)
real evidence that they're making things better
Lex Fridman (1:29:34.220)
or making things worse?
Jeremi Suri (1:29:35.620)
That's a hard question to answer.
Lex Fridman (1:29:37.460)
You have to be very honest.
Lex Fridman (1:29:38.540)
And in a policymaking context,
Lex Fridman (1:29:40.780)
we have to actually do the same thing
Jeremi Suri (1:29:41.860)
we do in a relationship context.
Lex Fridman (1:29:43.260)
What do we do in a relationship context?
Jeremi Suri (1:29:44.300)
We ask other friends who are observing.
Lex Fridman (1:29:46.500)
We ask for other observers.
Jeremi Suri (1:29:48.060)
This is actually just a scientific method element actually
Lex Fridman (1:29:50.700)
that we can't, the Heisenberg principle,
Jeremi Suri (1:29:52.540)
I can't see it because I'm too close to it.
Lex Fridman (1:29:54.540)
I'm changing it by my looking at it.
Jeremi Suri (1:29:57.140)
I need others to tell me in a policymaking context,
Lex Fridman (1:30:00.500)
this is why you need to hear from other people,
Jeremi Suri (1:30:02.660)
not just the generals,
Lex Fridman (1:30:03.900)
because here's the thing about the generals.
Jeremi Suri (1:30:05.860)
They generally are patriotic, hardworking people,
Lex Fridman (1:30:09.540)
but they're too close.
Jeremi Suri (1:30:11.460)
They're not lying.
Lex Fridman (1:30:12.300)
They're too close.
Jeremi Suri (1:30:13.140)
I just think they can do better.
Lex Fridman (1:30:14.420)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:30:17.180)
How do you think about the Cold War now
Lex Fridman (1:30:20.580)
from the beginning to end,
Lex Fridman (1:30:21.940)
and maybe also with an eye towards
Lex Fridman (1:30:26.020)
the current potential cyber conflict,
Jeremi Suri (1:30:30.340)
cyber war with China and with Russia,
Lex Fridman (1:30:32.860)
if we look sort of other kind of Cold Wars
Jeremi Suri (1:30:35.580)
potentially emerging in the 21st century,
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.820)
when you look back at the Cold War of the 20th century,
Lex Fridman (1:30:43.300)
how do you see it and what lessons do we draw from it?
Lex Fridman (1:30:46.620)
It's a wonderful question
Jeremi Suri (1:30:48.340)
because I teach this to undergraduates
Lex Fridman (1:30:50.260)
and it's really interesting to see how undergraduates now,
Jeremi Suri (1:30:54.220)
almost all of whom were born after 9 11.
Lex Fridman (1:30:56.620)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:30:57.580)
So the Cold War is ancient history to them.
Lex Fridman (1:30:59.780)
In fact, the Cold War to them is as far removed
Jeremi Suri (1:31:04.700)
as the 1950s were to me.
Lex Fridman (1:31:07.260)
I mean, it's unbelievable.
Jeremi Suri (1:31:10.700)
It's almost like World War II for my generation
Lex Fridman (1:31:13.420)
and Cold War for them.
Jeremi Suri (1:31:14.940)
It's so far removed.
Lex Fridman (1:31:15.780)
The collapse of the Soviet Union
Jeremi Suri (1:31:16.820)
doesn't mean anything to them.
Lex Fridman (1:31:20.220)
So how do you describe the Cold War to them?
Lex Fridman (1:31:23.340)
How do you describe the Soviet Union to them?
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.500)
First of all, I have to explain to them
Lex Fridman (1:31:27.700)
why people were so fearful of communism.
Lex Fridman (1:31:30.700)
Anti communism is very hard for them to understand.
Jeremi Suri (1:31:33.260)
The fact that in the 1950s,
Lex Fridman (1:31:36.460)
Americans believed that communists
Jeremi Suri (1:31:39.060)
were going to infiltrate our society
Lex Fridman (1:31:40.660)
and many other societies.
Lex Fridman (1:31:41.820)
And that after Fidel Castro comes to power in 1959,
Lex Fridman (1:31:46.380)
that we're going to see communist regimes
Jeremi Suri (1:31:47.900)
all across Latin America,
Lex Fridman (1:31:49.740)
that fear of communism married to nuclear power.
Lex Fridman (1:31:53.620)
And then even the fear that maybe economically
Lex Fridman (1:31:56.380)
they would outpace us because they would create
Jeremi Suri (1:31:58.260)
this sort of army of Khrushchevian builders of things
Lex Fridman (1:32:02.820)
and what does Khrushchev said, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:32:04.300)
Say we're gonna catch Britain in five years
Lex Fridman (1:32:06.580)
and then the United States after that, right?
Lex Fridman (1:32:08.620)
So to explain that sense of fear to them
Lex Fridman (1:32:11.540)
that they don't have of those others,
Jeremi Suri (1:32:14.300)
that's really important.
Lex Fridman (1:32:15.900)
The Cold War was fundamentally about the United States
Jeremi Suri (1:32:19.860)
defending a capitalist world order
Lex Fridman (1:32:22.060)
against a serious challenger from communism.
Jeremi Suri (1:32:24.940)
An alternative way of organizing everything,
Lex Fridman (1:32:27.780)
private property, economic activity,
Jeremi Suri (1:32:30.660)
enterprise, life, everything,
Lex Fridman (1:32:32.780)
organized in a totally different way.
Jeremi Suri (1:32:34.300)
It was a struggle between two systems.
Lex Fridman (1:32:36.940)
So your sense is, and sorry to interrupt,
Lex Fridman (1:32:38.580)
but your sense is that the conflict of the Cold War
Lex Fridman (1:32:41.820)
was between two ideologies
Lex Fridman (1:32:44.780)
and not just two big countries with nuclear weapons.
Lex Fridman (1:32:48.460)
I think it was about two different ways of life
Jeremi Suri (1:32:49.980)
or two different promoted ways of life.
Lex Fridman (1:32:52.620)
The Soviet Union never actually lived communism.
Lex Fridman (1:32:56.380)
But I think my reading of Stalin
Lex Fridman (1:32:58.780)
is he really tried to go there.
Jeremi Suri (1:33:00.380)
Khrushchev really believed Gorbachev
Lex Fridman (1:33:02.620)
thought he was going to reform the Soviet Union
Lex Fridman (1:33:04.460)
so you would go back to a kind of Bukhar and Lenin
Lex Fridman (1:33:07.020)
communism, right?
Lex Fridman (1:33:08.260)
So I do think that mattered.
Lex Fridman (1:33:10.380)
I do think that mattered enormously.
Lex Fridman (1:33:11.660)
And for the United States point of view,
Lex Fridman (1:33:13.860)
the view was that communism and fascism
Jeremi Suri (1:33:16.820)
were these totalitarian threats
Lex Fridman (1:33:18.860)
to liberal democracy and capitalism,
Jeremi Suri (1:33:21.340)
which went hand in hand.
Lex Fridman (1:33:22.700)
So I do think that's what the struggle was about.
Lex Fridman (1:33:24.540)
And in a certain way, liberal capitalism
Lex Fridman (1:33:26.580)
proved to be the more enduring system
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.340)
and the United States played a key role in that.
Lex Fridman (1:33:30.980)
That's the reality of the Cold War.
Lex Fridman (1:33:33.580)
But I think it means different things now
Lex Fridman (1:33:35.220)
to my students and others.
Jeremi Suri (1:33:38.140)
They focus very much on the expansion of American power
Lex Fridman (1:33:43.980)
and the challenges of managing.
Jeremi Suri (1:33:47.180)
They're looking at it from the perspective
Lex Fridman (1:33:49.340)
of not will we survive,
Lex Fridman (1:33:51.980)
but did we waste our resources on some elements of it?
Lex Fridman (1:33:54.820)
It doesn't mean they were against what America did,
Lex Fridman (1:33:57.540)
but there is a question of the resources
Lex Fridman (1:33:59.260)
that went into the Cold War and the opportunity costs.
Lex Fridman (1:34:02.580)
And you see this when you look at the sort of
Lex Fridman (1:34:04.860)
healthcare systems that other countries build
Lex Fridman (1:34:06.740)
and you compare them to the United States, race issues also.
Lex Fridman (1:34:10.780)
So they look at the costs,
Jeremi Suri (1:34:12.220)
which I think often happens after a project is done,
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.900)
you look back at that.
Jeremi Suri (1:34:16.420)
Second, I think they're also more inclined
Lex Fridman (1:34:19.900)
to see the world as less bipolar,
Jeremi Suri (1:34:23.460)
to see the role of China as more complicated.
Lex Fridman (1:34:26.700)
Post colonial or anti colonial movements,
Jeremi Suri (1:34:29.900)
independent states in Africa and Latin America,
Lex Fridman (1:34:32.220)
that gets more attention.
Lex Fridman (1:34:34.140)
So one of the criticisms now is because you forget
Lex Fridman (1:34:39.260)
the lessons of 20th century history
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.220)
and the atrocities committed under communism,
Lex Fridman (1:34:45.380)
that you may be a little bit more willing
Jeremi Suri (1:34:48.500)
to accept some of those ideologies
Lex Fridman (1:34:52.260)
into our United States society.
Jeremi Suri (1:34:54.700)
That this kind of, that forgetting that capitalistic forces
Lex Fridman (1:35:00.100)
are part of the reason why we have what we have today.
Jeremi Suri (1:35:05.940)
There's a fear amongst some now that we would have,
Lex Fridman (1:35:11.780)
what would allow basically communism
Jeremi Suri (1:35:14.980)
to take hold in America.
Lex Fridman (1:35:17.700)
I mean, Jordan and others speak to this kind of idea.
Jeremi Suri (1:35:20.740)
I tend to not be so fearful of it.
Lex Fridman (1:35:23.860)
I think it's on the surface, it's not deep within.
Jeremi Suri (1:35:27.780)
I do see the world as very complicated
Lex Fridman (1:35:30.460)
as there needing to be a role of having support
Jeremi Suri (1:35:34.340)
for each other on certain political levels,
Lex Fridman (1:35:36.500)
economic levels, and then also supporting entrepreneurs.
Jeremi Suri (1:35:40.140)
It's like that the kind of enforcing of outcomes
Lex Fridman (1:35:45.460)
that is fundamental to the communist system
Jeremi Suri (1:35:47.780)
is not something we're actually close to.
Lex Fridman (1:35:50.100)
And some of that is just fear mongering
Jeremi Suri (1:35:52.020)
for likes on Twitter kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (1:35:56.300)
If I could come in on that,
Jeremi Suri (1:35:57.340)
because I agree with you 100%.
Lex Fridman (1:35:58.660)
I've spent a lot of time writing and looking at this
Lex Fridman (1:36:00.940)
and talking to people about this.
Lex Fridman (1:36:02.980)
There's no communism in the United States.
Jeremi Suri (1:36:04.980)
There never has been, and there certainly isn't now.
Lex Fridman (1:36:07.380)
And I'll say this both from an academic point of view,
Lex Fridman (1:36:09.980)
but also from just spending a lot of time
Lex Fridman (1:36:11.500)
observing young people in the United States.
Jeremi Suri (1:36:13.380)
Even those on the farthest left,
Lex Fridman (1:36:14.900)
take whoever you think is the farthest left,
Jeremi Suri (1:36:16.940)
they don't even understand what communism is.
Lex Fridman (1:36:18.660)
They're not communist in any sense.
Jeremi Suri (1:36:20.620)
Americans are raised in a vernacular
Lex Fridman (1:36:22.420)
and environment of private property ownership.
Lex Fridman (1:36:24.900)
And as you know better than anyone,
Lex Fridman (1:36:26.660)
if you believe in private property,
Jeremi Suri (1:36:27.780)
you don't believe in communism.
Lex Fridman (1:36:28.820)
So the sort of Bernie Sanders kind of socialist elements,
Lex Fridman (1:36:34.700)
that's very different, right?
Lex Fridman (1:36:36.660)
And I would say some of that, not all of that,
Jeremi Suri (1:36:39.140)
some of that does hearken back
Lex Fridman (1:36:40.540)
to actually what won in the Cold War.
Jeremi Suri (1:36:42.780)
There were many social democratic elements
Lex Fridman (1:36:45.020)
of what the United States did
Jeremi Suri (1:36:46.220)
that led to our winning the Cold War.
Lex Fridman (1:36:48.020)
For example, the New Deal was investing government money
Jeremi Suri (1:36:53.580)
in propping up business, in propping up labor unions.
Lex Fridman (1:36:57.220)
And during the Cold War, we spent more money
Jeremi Suri (1:37:00.180)
than we had ever spent in our history on infrastructure,
Lex Fridman (1:37:03.660)
on schools, on providing social support, social security,
Jeremi Suri (1:37:08.700)
our national pension system being one of them.
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.780)
So you could argue actually that social democracy
Jeremi Suri (1:37:15.260)
is very compatible with capitalism.
Lex Fridman (1:37:17.740)
And I think that's the debate we're having today,
Lex Fridman (1:37:19.500)
how much social democracy.
Lex Fridman (1:37:20.620)
I'll also say that the capitalism we've experienced
Jeremi Suri (1:37:22.940)
the last 20 years is different
Lex Fridman (1:37:24.700)
from the capitalism of the Cold War.
Jeremi Suri (1:37:26.900)
During the Cold War, there was the presumption
Lex Fridman (1:37:28.980)
in the United States that you had to pay taxes
Jeremi Suri (1:37:35.420)
to support our Cold War activities,
Lex Fridman (1:37:38.180)
that it was okay to make money,
Lex Fridman (1:37:40.340)
but the more money you made, the more taxes you had to pay.
Lex Fridman (1:37:43.740)
We had the highest marginal tax rates
Jeremi Suri (1:37:45.500)
in our history during the Cold War.
Lex Fridman (1:37:47.860)
Now, the aversion to taxes,
Lex Fridman (1:37:50.620)
and of course, no one ever likes paying taxes,
Lex Fridman (1:37:52.260)
but the notion that we can do things on deficit spending,
Jeremi Suri (1:37:55.060)
that's a post Cold War phenomenon.
Lex Fridman (1:37:58.020)
That's not a Cold War phenomenon.
Jeremi Suri (1:37:59.540)
So, so much of the capitalism that we're talking about today
Lex Fridman (1:38:02.300)
is not the capitalism of the Cold War.
Lex Fridman (1:38:03.780)
And maybe, again, we can learn that
Lex Fridman (1:38:05.660)
and see how we can reform capitalism today
Lex Fridman (1:38:09.900)
and get rid of this false worry
Lex Fridman (1:38:13.500)
about communism in the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:38:14.900)
Yeah, you know what?
Lex Fridman (1:38:15.740)
You make me actually realize something important.
Lex Fridman (1:38:17.380)
What we have to remember is the words we use
Lex Fridman (1:38:20.060)
on the surface about different policies,
Lex Fridman (1:38:21.860)
what you think is right and wrong,
Lex Fridman (1:38:23.900)
is actually different than the core thing
Jeremi Suri (1:38:28.300)
that is in your blood, the core ideas that are there.
Lex Fridman (1:38:33.740)
I do see the United States as this,
Jeremi Suri (1:38:36.420)
there's this fire that burns of individual freedoms,
Lex Fridman (1:38:41.260)
of property rights, these basic foundational ideas
Jeremi Suri (1:38:48.380)
that everybody just kind of takes for granted.
Lex Fridman (1:38:50.820)
And I think if you hold on to them,
Jeremi Suri (1:38:54.220)
if you're like raised in them,
Lex Fridman (1:38:57.060)
talking about ideas of social security,
Jeremi Suri (1:39:00.740)
of universal basic income, of reallocation of resources
Lex Fridman (1:39:05.740)
is a fundamentally different kind of discussion
Jeremi Suri (1:39:08.380)
than you had in the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman (1:39:10.700)
I think the value of the individual
Jeremi Suri (1:39:13.420)
is so core to the American system
Lex Fridman (1:39:16.460)
that you basically cannot possibly do the kind of atrocities
Jeremi Suri (1:39:21.300)
that you saw in the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman (1:39:25.100)
But, of course, you never know,
Jeremi Suri (1:39:26.860)
the slippery slope has a way of changing things.
Lex Fridman (1:39:30.620)
But I do believe the things you're born with
Jeremi Suri (1:39:33.100)
is just so core to this country.
Lex Fridman (1:39:34.940)
It's part of the, I don't know what your thoughts are.
Jeremi Suri (1:39:38.420)
We are in Texas, I'm not necessarily,
Lex Fridman (1:39:42.180)
I don't necessarily wanna have
Jeremi Suri (1:39:43.420)
a gun control type of conversation,
Lex Fridman (1:39:45.340)
but the reason I really like guns,
Jeremi Suri (1:39:50.380)
it doesn't make any sense, but philosophically,
Lex Fridman (1:39:53.980)
it's such a declaration of individual rights
Jeremi Suri (1:39:58.620)
that's so different than the conversations I hear
Lex Fridman (1:40:01.780)
with my Russian family and my Russian friends,
Jeremi Suri (1:40:04.460)
that the gun, it's very possible
Lex Fridman (1:40:06.420)
that having guns is bad for society
Jeremi Suri (1:40:08.660)
in the sense that it will lead to more violence.
Lex Fridman (1:40:11.580)
But there's something about this discussion
Jeremi Suri (1:40:20.260)
that proclaims the value of my freedom as an individual.
Lex Fridman (1:40:24.660)
I'm not being eloquent in it,
Lex Fridman (1:40:26.300)
but there's very few debates
Lex Fridman (1:40:28.740)
where whenever people are saying,
Jeremi Suri (1:40:30.340)
should you have what level of gun control,
Lex Fridman (1:40:32.300)
all those kinds of things,
Lex Fridman (1:40:34.380)
what I hear is it's a fight for how much freedom,
Lex Fridman (1:40:40.500)
even if it's stupid freedom, should the individual have.
Jeremi Suri (1:40:44.180)
I think that's what's articulated quite often.
Lex Fridman (1:40:46.620)
I think combining your two points, which are great points,
Jeremi Suri (1:40:49.980)
I think there is something about American individualism
Lex Fridman (1:40:52.700)
which is deeply ingrained in our culture and our society.
Lex Fridman (1:40:56.620)
And it means that the kinds of bad things
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.860)
that happen are different, usually not as bad.
Lex Fridman (1:41:01.460)
But our individualism often covers up
Lex Fridman (1:41:04.300)
for vigilante activity and individual violence
Jeremi Suri (1:41:08.900)
toward people that you wouldn't have
Lex Fridman (1:41:10.100)
in a more collective culture.
Lex Fridman (1:41:11.980)
So in the Soviet Union, it was at a much worse scale
Lex Fridman (1:41:14.060)
and it was done by government organizations.
Jeremi Suri (1:41:17.220)
In the United States, it's individuals,
Lex Fridman (1:41:19.340)
the history of lynching in our country, for example.
Jeremi Suri (1:41:22.020)
Sometimes it's individual police officers,
Lex Fridman (1:41:23.980)
sometimes it's others.
Jeremi Suri (1:41:24.980)
Again, the vast majority of police officers are good people
Lex Fridman (1:41:27.300)
and don't do harm to people, but there are these examples
Lex Fridman (1:41:30.260)
and they are able to fester in our society
Lex Fridman (1:41:33.740)
because of our individualism.
Jeremi Suri (1:41:34.780)
Now, gun ownership is about personal freedom,
Lex Fridman (1:41:37.940)
I think, for a lot of people.
Lex Fridman (1:41:39.620)
And there's no doubt that in our history,
Lex Fridman (1:41:42.780)
included in the Second Amendment,
Jeremi Suri (1:41:44.420)
which can be interpreted in different ways,
Lex Fridman (1:41:46.300)
is the presumption that people should have the right
Jeremi Suri (1:41:48.260)
to defend themselves,
Lex Fridman (1:41:49.220)
which is what I think you're getting at here.
Jeremi Suri (1:41:51.020)
That you should not be completely dependent
Lex Fridman (1:41:53.300)
for your defense on an entity
Jeremi Suri (1:41:55.780)
that might not be there for you.
Lex Fridman (1:41:56.860)
You should be able to defend yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:41:59.500)
And guns symbolize that.
Lex Fridman (1:42:01.620)
I think that's a fair point.
Lex Fridman (1:42:03.620)
But I think it's also a fair point to say
Lex Fridman (1:42:06.100)
that as with everything,
Jeremi Suri (1:42:08.140)
defining what self defense is, is really important.
Lex Fridman (1:42:10.700)
So does self defense mean I can have a bazooka?
Jeremi Suri (1:42:13.540)
Does it mean I can have weapons that are designed
Lex Fridman (1:42:16.020)
for a military battlefield to mass kill people?
Jeremi Suri (1:42:19.020)
That seems to me to be very different
Lex Fridman (1:42:21.340)
from saying I should have a handgun
Jeremi Suri (1:42:23.060)
or some small arm to defend myself.
Lex Fridman (1:42:26.340)
That distinction alone would make a huge difference.
Jeremi Suri (1:42:28.620)
Most of the mass shootings, at least,
Lex Fridman (1:42:31.820)
which are a smaller proportion of the larger gun deaths
Jeremi Suri (1:42:34.500)
in the United States, which are larger
Lex Fridman (1:42:35.540)
than any other society, but at least the mass shootings
Jeremi Suri (1:42:37.780)
are usually perpetrated by people
Lex Fridman (1:42:39.100)
who have not self defense weapons,
Lex Fridman (1:42:41.260)
but mass killing, mass killing weapons.
Lex Fridman (1:42:43.460)
And I think there's an important distinction there.
Jeremi Suri (1:42:45.660)
The Constitution talks about a right to bear arms
Lex Fridman (1:42:47.460)
for a well regulated militia.
Jeremi Suri (1:42:49.100)
When the framers talked about arms,
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.300)
that did not mean the ability to kill
Jeremi Suri (1:42:53.180)
as many people as you wanna kill.
Lex Fridman (1:42:55.140)
It meant the ability to defend yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:42:56.500)
So let's have that conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:42:57.740)
I think it would be useful as a society.
Jeremi Suri (1:42:59.500)
Stop talking about guns or no guns.
Lex Fridman (1:43:02.060)
What is it that we as citizens need
Lex Fridman (1:43:04.180)
to feel we can defend ourselves?
Lex Fridman (1:43:05.740)
Yes.
Jeremi Suri (1:43:06.740)
Yeah, I mean, guns have this complicated issue
Lex Fridman (1:43:09.180)
that it can cause harm to others.
Jeremi Suri (1:43:11.060)
I tend to see sort of maybe like legalization of drugs.
Lex Fridman (1:43:16.100)
I tend to believe that we should have the freedom
Jeremi Suri (1:43:19.100)
to do stupid things.
Lex Fridman (1:43:20.620)
Yeah, so long as we're not harming lots of other people.
Jeremi Suri (1:43:23.420)
Yes, and then guns, of course, have the property
Lex Fridman (1:43:25.740)
that they can be used.
Jeremi Suri (1:43:26.900)
It's not just a bazooka I would argue is pretty stupid
Lex Fridman (1:43:30.660)
to own for your own self defense,
Lex Fridman (1:43:32.820)
but it has the very negative side effect
Lex Fridman (1:43:35.380)
of being potentially used to harm other people.
Lex Fridman (1:43:38.540)
And you have to consider that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:43:42.420)
By the way, as a side note to the listeners,
Jeremi Suri (1:43:45.180)
there's been a bunch of people saying
Lex Fridman (1:43:47.180)
that Lex is way too libertarian for my taste.
Jeremi Suri (1:43:50.980)
No, I actually am just struggling with ideas
Lex Fridman (1:43:54.900)
and sometimes put on different hats in these conversations.
Jeremi Suri (1:43:57.380)
I think through different ideas,
Lex Fridman (1:43:59.620)
whether they're left, right or libertarian.
Jeremi Suri (1:44:02.080)
That's true for gun control.
Lex Fridman (1:44:03.300)
That's true for immigration.
Jeremi Suri (1:44:04.500)
That's true for all of that.
Lex Fridman (1:44:05.980)
I think we should have discussions in the space of ideas
Jeremi Suri (1:44:10.220)
versus in the space of bins we put each other in labels
Lex Fridman (1:44:13.020)
and we put each other in.
Jeremi Suri (1:44:13.860)
I agree 100%.
Lex Fridman (1:44:15.100)
And also change our minds all the time.
Jeremi Suri (1:44:18.700)
Try out, say stupid stuff with the best of intention,
Lex Fridman (1:44:23.220)
trying our best to think through it.
Lex Fridman (1:44:25.460)
And then after saying it, think about it for a few days
Lex Fridman (1:44:29.020)
and then change your mind and grow in this way.
Jeremi Suri (1:44:32.780)
Let me ask a ridiculous question.
Lex Fridman (1:44:35.020)
When you zoom out, when human civilization
Jeremi Suri (1:44:38.220)
has destroyed itself and alien graduate students
Lex Fridman (1:44:41.560)
are studying it like three, four, five centuries from now,
Lex Fridman (1:44:46.460)
what do you think we'll remember
Lex Fridman (1:44:47.720)
about this period in history?
Jeremi Suri (1:44:50.520)
The 20th century, the 21st century, this time.
Lex Fridman (1:44:55.300)
We had a couple of wars.
Jeremi Suri (1:44:57.900)
We had a charismatic black president in the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:45:02.140)
We had a couple of pandemics.
Lex Fridman (1:45:06.020)
What do you think will actually stand out in history?
Lex Fridman (1:45:11.100)
No doubt the rapid technological innovation
Jeremi Suri (1:45:15.740)
of the last 20 to 30 years.
Lex Fridman (1:45:18.220)
How we created a whole virtual universe
Jeremi Suri (1:45:21.820)
we didn't have before.
Lex Fridman (1:45:23.260)
And of course that's gonna go in directions
Jeremi Suri (1:45:25.060)
you and I can't imagine 50 years from now.
Lex Fridman (1:45:27.460)
But this will be seen as that origin moment
Jeremi Suri (1:45:29.360)
that when we went from playing below the rim
Lex Fridman (1:45:31.920)
to playing above the rim, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:45:33.260)
To be all in person to having a whole virtual world.
Lex Fridman (1:45:37.140)
And in a strange way, the pandemic was a provocation
Jeremi Suri (1:45:41.060)
to move even further in that direction.
Lex Fridman (1:45:43.240)
And we're never going back, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:45:44.940)
We're gonna restore some of the things we were doing
Lex Fridman (1:45:46.780)
before the pandemic, but we're never gonna go back
Jeremi Suri (1:45:48.580)
to that world we were in before where every meeting
Lex Fridman (1:45:50.580)
you had to fly to that place to be in the room
Jeremi Suri (1:45:53.280)
with the people.
Lex Fridman (1:45:54.620)
So this whole virtual world and the virtual personas
Lex Fridman (1:45:57.060)
and the avatars and all of that,
Lex Fridman (1:46:00.020)
I think that's going to be a big part
Jeremi Suri (1:46:02.600)
of how people remember our time.
Lex Fridman (1:46:03.880)
Also the sort of biotechnology element of it,
Jeremi Suri (1:46:06.820)
which the vaccines are part of.
Lex Fridman (1:46:10.080)
It's amazing how quickly, this is the great triumph,
Lex Fridman (1:46:12.740)
how quickly we've produced and distributed these vaccines.
Lex Fridman (1:46:15.940)
And of course there are problems with who's taking them,
Lex Fridman (1:46:18.020)
but the reality is, I mean, this is light speed
Lex Fridman (1:46:22.180)
compared to what it would have been like,
Jeremi Suri (1:46:23.780)
not just in 1918, in 1980.
Lex Fridman (1:46:26.580)
Yeah, one of the, I'm sorry if I'm interrupting,
Lex Fridman (1:46:28.940)
but one of the disappointing things
Lex Fridman (1:46:30.760)
about this particular time is because vaccines,
Jeremi Suri (1:46:33.660)
like a lot of things got politicized,
Lex Fridman (1:46:37.400)
used as little pawns in the game of politics,
Jeremi Suri (1:46:40.700)
that we don't get the chance to step back fully at least
Lex Fridman (1:46:44.420)
and celebrate the brilliance of the human species.
Jeremi Suri (1:46:49.220)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (1:46:51.780)
Yes, there are scientists who use their authority
Jeremi Suri (1:46:55.780)
improperly, that have an ego,
Lex Fridman (1:46:59.840)
that when they're within institutions,
Jeremi Suri (1:47:05.220)
are dishonest with the public
Lex Fridman (1:47:06.900)
because they don't trust the intelligence of the public,
Jeremi Suri (1:47:09.340)
they are not authentic and transparent,
Lex Fridman (1:47:11.320)
all the same things you could say about humans
Jeremi Suri (1:47:13.080)
in any positions of power, anywhere.
Lex Fridman (1:47:15.420)
Okay, that doesn't mean science isn't incredible
Lex Fridman (1:47:18.980)
and the vaccines, I mean, I don't often talk about it
Lex Fridman (1:47:23.520)
because it's so political and it's heartbreaking to,
Jeremi Suri (1:47:28.660)
it's heartbreaking how all the good stuff
Lex Fridman (1:47:31.180)
is getting politicized.
Jeremi Suri (1:47:32.540)
Yeah, that's right, and it shouldn't be,
Lex Fridman (1:47:34.240)
and it'll seem less political.
Jeremi Suri (1:47:36.580)
Eating the long arc of history.
Lex Fridman (1:47:37.780)
Yep, it'll be seen as an outstanding accomplishment.
Lex Fridman (1:47:42.600)
And as a step toward whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:47:44.740)
maybe they're doing vaccines
Jeremi Suri (1:47:46.180)
or something that replaces the vaccine in 10 seconds,
Lex Fridman (1:47:48.620)
at that point, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:47:49.700)
It'll be seen as a step.
Lex Fridman (1:47:50.700)
Those will be some of the positives.
Jeremi Suri (1:47:52.240)
I think one of the negatives they will point to
Lex Fridman (1:47:54.100)
will be our inability, at least at this moment,
Jeremi Suri (1:47:58.420)
to manage our environment better,
Lex Fridman (1:48:00.460)
how we're destroying our living space
Lex Fridman (1:48:02.740)
and not doing enough even though we have the capabilities
Lex Fridman (1:48:05.100)
to do more to preserve
Jeremi Suri (1:48:06.260)
or at least allow a sustainable living space.
Lex Fridman (1:48:09.300)
I'm confident because I'm an optimist
Jeremi Suri (1:48:11.740)
that we will get through this
Lex Fridman (1:48:12.780)
and we will be better at sustaining our environment
Jeremi Suri (1:48:15.300)
in future decades.
Lex Fridman (1:48:16.700)
And so in terms of environmental policy,
Jeremi Suri (1:48:18.820)
they'll see this moment as a dark age
Lex Fridman (1:48:21.540)
or the beginnings of a better age, maybe as a renaissance.
Jeremi Suri (1:48:26.180)
Or maybe as the last time most people lived on Earth
Lex Fridman (1:48:31.340)
when a couple of centuries afterwards
Jeremi Suri (1:48:33.300)
we were all dissipated throughout the solar system
Lex Fridman (1:48:36.300)
and the galaxy.
Jeremi Suri (1:48:37.260)
Very possible.
Lex Fridman (1:48:38.100)
If the local resident, hometown resident,
Jeremi Suri (1:48:41.120)
Mr. Elon Musk has anything to do with it.
Lex Fridman (1:48:45.300)
I do tend to think you're absolutely right.
Jeremi Suri (1:48:49.140)
With all this political bickering,
Lex Fridman (1:48:51.020)
we shouldn't forget that what this age will be remembered by
Jeremi Suri (1:48:55.020)
is the incredible levels of innovation.
Lex Fridman (1:48:57.360)
I do think the biotech stuff worries me more than anything
Jeremi Suri (1:49:02.480)
because it feels like there's a lot of weapons
Lex Fridman (1:49:04.640)
that could be yet to be developed in that space.
Lex Fridman (1:49:06.780)
But I tend to believe that,
Lex Fridman (1:49:09.860)
I'm excited by two avenues.
Jeremi Suri (1:49:11.720)
One is artificial intelligence.
Lex Fridman (1:49:16.900)
The kind of systems we'll create in this digital space
Jeremi Suri (1:49:19.660)
that you mentioned we're moving to.
Lex Fridman (1:49:21.260)
And then the other, of course,
Jeremi Suri (1:49:23.140)
this could be the product of the Cold War,
Lex Fridman (1:49:24.820)
but I'm super excited by space exploration.
Jeremi Suri (1:49:27.620)
There's a magic to humans being.
Lex Fridman (1:49:30.380)
And we're getting back to it.
Jeremi Suri (1:49:31.320)
I mean, we were enthralled with it in the 50s and 60s
Lex Fridman (1:49:34.380)
when it was a Cold War competition.
Lex Fridman (1:49:35.780)
And then after the 70s, we sort of gave up on it.
Lex Fridman (1:49:38.260)
And thanks to Elon Musk and others,
Jeremi Suri (1:49:40.100)
we're coming back to this issue.
Lex Fridman (1:49:41.700)
And I think there's so much to be gained
Jeremi Suri (1:49:44.860)
from the power of exploration.
Lex Fridman (1:49:47.580)
Is there books or movies in your life,
Lex Fridman (1:49:50.060)
long ago or recently, that had a big impact on you?
Lex Fridman (1:49:53.060)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:49:53.900)
Is there something you would?
Lex Fridman (1:49:54.720)
Yes.
Jeremi Suri (1:49:56.740)
My favorite novel, I always tell people this,
Lex Fridman (1:49:58.740)
I love reading novels.
Jeremi Suri (1:49:59.660)
I'm a historian.
Lex Fridman (1:50:01.120)
And I think the historian and the novelist are actually,
Lex Fridman (1:50:03.900)
and the technology innovator are all actually
Lex Fridman (1:50:06.240)
one and the same.
Jeremi Suri (1:50:07.080)
They're all storytellers.
Lex Fridman (1:50:08.860)
And we're all in the imagination space.
Lex Fridman (1:50:11.460)
And I'm trying to imagine the world of the past
Lex Fridman (1:50:14.460)
to inform us in the present for the future.
Lex Fridman (1:50:16.760)
So one of my favorite novels that I read,
Lex Fridman (1:50:18.780)
actually when I was in graduate school,
Jeremi Suri (1:50:20.220)
is Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks.
Lex Fridman (1:50:23.040)
And it's the story of a family in Lübeck
Jeremi Suri (1:50:26.220)
in Northern Germany, living through the 19th century
Lex Fridman (1:50:29.180)
and the rise and fall of family, cycles of life.
Jeremi Suri (1:50:31.780)
Many things we've talked about in the last couple of hours.
Lex Fridman (1:50:34.420)
Cycles of life, challenges of adjusting
Jeremi Suri (1:50:38.740)
to the world around you.
Lex Fridman (1:50:39.680)
And it's just a very moving reflection
Jeremi Suri (1:50:42.420)
on the limits of human agency
Lex Fridman (1:50:44.300)
and how we all have to understand the circumstances
Jeremi Suri (1:50:47.500)
we're in and adjust to them.
Lex Fridman (1:50:49.140)
And there's triumph and tragedy in that.
Jeremi Suri (1:50:51.660)
It's a wonderful novel.
Lex Fridman (1:50:52.600)
It used to be a kind of canonical work.
Jeremi Suri (1:50:54.260)
It's sort of fallen out now.
Lex Fridman (1:50:55.580)
It's a big, big novel, but I'm very moved by that.
Jeremi Suri (1:50:59.240)
I'm very moved by Tall Stories, War and Peace.
Lex Fridman (1:51:01.020)
I assign that every year to my students.
Jeremi Suri (1:51:03.020)
That's a big, big book.
Lex Fridman (1:51:04.740)
But what Tall Story challenges
Jeremi Suri (1:51:07.300)
is he challenges the notion
Lex Fridman (1:51:08.940)
that a Napoleon can rule the world.
Lex Fridman (1:51:11.100)
And we're all little Napoleons, right?
Lex Fridman (1:51:12.720)
We're all sort of thinking that we're gonna do that.
Lex Fridman (1:51:15.180)
And he reminds us how much is contingency, circumstance.
Lex Fridman (1:51:18.180)
It doesn't mean we don't have some control.
Jeremi Suri (1:51:21.000)
You've spoke to me a little bit of Russian.
Lex Fridman (1:51:23.640)
Where does that come from?
Lex Fridman (1:51:24.740)
So your appreciation of Tall Story,
Lex Fridman (1:51:26.940)
but also your ability to speak a bit of Russian.
Lex Fridman (1:51:28.840)
Where's that from?
Lex Fridman (1:51:30.040)
So I speak, in addition to English,
Jeremi Suri (1:51:32.020)
I speak reasonably well,
Lex Fridman (1:51:34.500)
depending on how much vodka I've had.
Jeremi Suri (1:51:36.820)
Russian, I speak French and German.
Lex Fridman (1:51:39.420)
I learned those for research purposes.
Jeremi Suri (1:51:42.960)
I learned French actually when I was in high school,
Lex Fridman (1:51:44.620)
Russian when I was in college,
Jeremi Suri (1:51:45.900)
German when I was in graduate school.
Lex Fridman (1:51:47.760)
Now I do have family on my mother's side
Jeremi Suri (1:51:49.860)
that's of Russian Jewish extraction,
Lex Fridman (1:51:52.660)
but they were Yiddish speakers by the time I met them.
Jeremi Suri (1:51:55.220)
By the time they had gone through Germany
Lex Fridman (1:51:56.700)
and come to the United States,
Jeremi Suri (1:51:57.580)
or really gone through Poland and come to the United States,
Lex Fridman (1:51:59.140)
they were Yiddish speakers.
Lex Fridman (1:52:00.020)
So there's no one really in my family who speaks Russian,
Lex Fridman (1:52:02.500)
but I do feel a connection there,
Jeremi Suri (1:52:04.060)
at least a long range personal connection.
Lex Fridman (1:52:07.280)
Is there something to be said about the language
Lex Fridman (1:52:09.660)
and your ability to imagine history?
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.780)
Sort of when you study these different countries,
Jeremi Suri (1:52:17.160)
your ability to imagine what it was like
Lex Fridman (1:52:19.440)
to be a part of that culture, part of that time?
Jeremi Suri (1:52:24.640)
Yes, language is crucial to understanding a culture.
Lex Fridman (1:52:27.580)
And even if you learn the languages I have,
Jeremi Suri (1:52:30.620)
learning Russian and German and French,
Lex Fridman (1:52:32.440)
it's still not the same
Jeremi Suri (1:52:33.280)
as also being a native speaker either, as you know.
Lex Fridman (1:52:36.340)
But I think language tells you a lot about mannerism,
Jeremi Suri (1:52:39.420)
about assumptions.
Lex Fridman (1:52:41.940)
The very fact that English doesn't have a formal U,
Lex Fridman (1:52:46.780)
but Russian has a formal U, right?
Lex Fridman (1:52:48.380)
V versus T, right?
Lex Fridman (1:52:49.820)
German has a formal U, Z versus D, right?
Lex Fridman (1:52:53.160)
So the fact that English doesn't have a formal U
Lex Fridman (1:52:56.380)
tells you something about Americans, right?
Lex Fridman (1:52:59.140)
And that's just one example.
Jeremi Suri (1:53:01.020)
The fact that Germans have such a wider vocabulary
Lex Fridman (1:53:07.300)
for certain scientific concepts than we have in English
Lex Fridman (1:53:10.500)
tells you something about the culture, right?
Lex Fridman (1:53:12.100)
Language is an artifact of the culture.
Jeremi Suri (1:53:14.980)
The culture makes the language.
Lex Fridman (1:53:16.340)
It's fascinating to explore.
Jeremi Suri (1:53:17.420)
I mean, even just exactly what you just said,
Lex Fridman (1:53:19.720)
V, T, which is, there's a fascinating transition.
Lex Fridman (1:53:26.680)
So I guess in English we just have U.
Lex Fridman (1:53:28.720)
There's a fascinating transition that persists to this day
Jeremi Suri (1:53:34.760)
is of formalism and politeness,
Lex Fridman (1:53:38.040)
where it's an initial kind of dance of interaction
Jeremi Suri (1:53:41.520)
that's different methods of signaling respect, I guess.
Lex Fridman (1:53:46.520)
We don't, and language provides that,
Lex Fridman (1:53:48.520)
and then in the English language,
Lex Fridman (1:53:51.360)
there's fewer tools to show that kind of respect,
Jeremi Suri (1:53:53.640)
which has potentially positive or negative effects
Lex Fridman (1:53:56.200)
on, it flattens the society where like a teenager
Jeremi Suri (1:53:59.040)
could talk to an older person and show like a deference.
Lex Fridman (1:54:04.280)
I mean, but at the same time,
Jeremi Suri (1:54:06.920)
I mean, it creates a certain kind of dynamic,
Lex Fridman (1:54:09.240)
a certain kind of society.
Lex Fridman (1:54:10.920)
And it's funny to think of just like those few words
Lex Fridman (1:54:13.560)
can have like a ripple effect through the whole culture.
Lex Fridman (1:54:16.800)
And we don't have a history in the United States
Lex Fridman (1:54:18.760)
of aristocracy.
Jeremi Suri (1:54:20.600)
These elements of language reflect aristocracy.
Lex Fridman (1:54:23.920)
The serf would never refer to the master,
Jeremi Suri (1:54:26.440)
even if the master is younger,
Lex Fridman (1:54:27.960)
it's always Voi, right?
Lex Fridman (1:54:29.600)
In Turgenev, it's always Voi, right?
Lex Fridman (1:54:30.920)
I mean, and so it's, yeah,
Lex Fridman (1:54:33.640)
so it tells you something about the history.
Lex Fridman (1:54:34.960)
That's why to your question, which was a great question,
Jeremi Suri (1:54:37.160)
it's so crucial to try to penetrate the language.
Lex Fridman (1:54:40.080)
I'll also say something else,
Lex Fridman (1:54:41.600)
and this is a problem for many Americans
Lex Fridman (1:54:43.400)
who haven't learned a foreign language.
Jeremi Suri (1:54:44.440)
We're very bad at teaching foreign languages.
Lex Fridman (1:54:46.480)
If you've never taught yourself a foreign language,
Jeremi Suri (1:54:49.920)
you have closed yourself off to certain kinds of empathy
Lex Fridman (1:54:53.200)
because you have basically trained your brain
Jeremi Suri (1:54:55.640)
to only look at the world one way.
Lex Fridman (1:54:57.840)
The very act of learning another language,
Jeremi Suri (1:55:00.440)
I think tells your brain that words and concepts
Lex Fridman (1:55:05.040)
don't translate one to one.
Lex Fridman (1:55:06.440)
This is the first thing you realize, right?
Lex Fridman (1:55:07.520)
We can say, you know, these two words mean this thing,
Jeremi Suri (1:55:10.160)
you know, these two words mean the same thing
Lex Fridman (1:55:12.000)
from two languages, they never mean exactly the same thing.
Lex Fridman (1:55:15.200)
Dosvidanya is really not goodbye, right?
Lex Fridman (1:55:19.240)
And there's something, you know,
Jeremi Suri (1:55:20.760)
right now there's people talking about
Lex Fridman (1:55:22.360)
idea of lived experience.
Jeremi Suri (1:55:24.520)
One of the ways to force yourself into this idea
Lex Fridman (1:55:27.800)
of lived experience is by learning another language,
Jeremi Suri (1:55:30.280)
to understand that you can perceive the world
Lex Fridman (1:55:32.320)
in a totally different way,
Jeremi Suri (1:55:33.360)
even though you're perceiving the same thing.
Lex Fridman (1:55:35.920)
And of course, the way to first learn Russian
Jeremi Suri (1:55:38.400)
for those looking for tutorial lessons for me
Lex Fridman (1:55:41.120)
is just like as you said, we start by drinking lots of vodka.
Jeremi Suri (1:55:44.680)
Yes, of course.
Lex Fridman (1:55:45.520)
It's very difficult to do otherwise.
Jeremi Suri (1:55:48.040)
Is there advice you have for young people about career,
Lex Fridman (1:55:51.640)
about life, in making their way in the world?
Jeremi Suri (1:55:56.920)
Yes, two things I believe that I say
Lex Fridman (1:56:00.440)
to a lot of talented young people.
Jeremi Suri (1:56:02.200)
First, I don't think you can predict
Lex Fridman (1:56:05.880)
what is gonna be well renumerated 20 years from now.
Jeremi Suri (1:56:08.880)
Don't pick a profession because you think,
Lex Fridman (1:56:11.160)
even though your parents might tell you or something,
Jeremi Suri (1:56:13.080)
do this and you'll make money.
Lex Fridman (1:56:14.200)
You know, this is the scene in The Graduate
Jeremi Suri (1:56:16.240)
where a guy tells Dustin Hoffman,
Lex Fridman (1:56:17.760)
go into plastics, money in plastics.
Jeremi Suri (1:56:20.360)
We don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:56:21.200)
So many of my students now have parents
Jeremi Suri (1:56:22.480)
who are telling them, bright students, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:56:25.360)
go to the business school.
Jeremi Suri (1:56:26.560)
That's what's gonna set you up to make money.
Lex Fridman (1:56:29.360)
If you're passionate about business, yes.
Lex Fridman (1:56:31.080)
But don't begin by thinking you know
Lex Fridman (1:56:33.560)
what's gonna be hot 20 years from now.
Jeremi Suri (1:56:35.480)
You don't know what's gonna be hot from 20 years ago,
Lex Fridman (1:56:38.080)
20 years from now.
Lex Fridman (1:56:38.920)
What should you do?
Lex Fridman (1:56:39.760)
This is advice number one.
Jeremi Suri (1:56:40.840)
Find what you're passionate about.
Lex Fridman (1:56:43.000)
Because if you're passionate about it,
Jeremi Suri (1:56:45.160)
you will do good work in that area if you're talented
Lex Fridman (1:56:47.640)
and usually passion and talent overlap.
Lex Fridman (1:56:50.280)
And you'll find a way to get people to pay you for it.
Lex Fridman (1:56:52.800)
I mean, you do it really well, people will wanna pay.
Jeremi Suri (1:56:54.880)
That's where capitalism works.
Lex Fridman (1:56:56.200)
People will find it valuable, right?
Lex Fridman (1:56:57.920)
Whether it's violin playing, right?
Lex Fridman (1:57:00.000)
Or engineering or poetry, you will find,
Jeremi Suri (1:57:02.320)
you might not become a billionaire.
Lex Fridman (1:57:03.920)
That involves other things.
Lex Fridman (1:57:05.160)
But you'll find a way to get people to pay you for it.
Lex Fridman (1:57:07.400)
And then the second thing is it's really important
Jeremi Suri (1:57:11.960)
at the very beginning of your career,
Lex Fridman (1:57:13.440)
even before you're in your job, right?
Jeremi Suri (1:57:16.520)
To start building your networks.
Lex Fridman (1:57:18.320)
But networks are not just people you're on Facebook with
Jeremi Suri (1:57:22.120)
or Twitter with, I mean, that's fine.
Lex Fridman (1:57:24.640)
It's actually forming relationships.
Lex Fridman (1:57:26.720)
And some of that can be mediated in the digital world,
Lex Fridman (1:57:28.720)
but I mean real relationships.
Jeremi Suri (1:57:30.360)
I like podcasts because I think
Lex Fridman (1:57:31.880)
they actually open up that space.
Jeremi Suri (1:57:33.720)
I know a lot of people can listen to a podcast
Lex Fridman (1:57:36.280)
and find someone else who's listened to that podcast
Lex Fridman (1:57:38.760)
and have a conversation about a topic.
Lex Fridman (1:57:40.440)
It opens up that space.
Jeremi Suri (1:57:42.200)
Build those relationships,
Lex Fridman (1:57:43.800)
not with people who you think will be powerful,
Lex Fridman (1:57:45.840)
but people you think are interesting
Lex Fridman (1:57:48.320)
because they'll do interesting things.
Lex Fridman (1:57:50.480)
And every successful person I know at some level
Lex Fridman (1:57:54.840)
had a key moment where they got where they are
Jeremi Suri (1:57:57.440)
because of someone they knew for some other reason
Lex Fridman (1:58:00.120)
who had that connection.
Lex Fridman (1:58:01.160)
So use and spread your networks
Lex Fridman (1:58:03.760)
and make them as diverse as possible.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:05.200)
Find people who are of a different party,
Lex Fridman (1:58:08.080)
have different interests, but are interesting to you.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:11.800)
That's brilliant advice.
Lex Fridman (1:58:12.640)
And some of that on the passion side,
Jeremi Suri (1:58:15.160)
I do find that as somebody who has a lot of passions,
Lex Fridman (1:58:21.320)
I find the second part to that is committing.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:27.080)
Yes, that's true too.
Lex Fridman (1:58:28.560)
Which sucks because life is finite.
Lex Fridman (1:58:32.000)
And when you commit, you say,
Lex Fridman (1:58:34.200)
well, I'm never going to be good.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:37.960)
Like when you choose one of the two passions,
Lex Fridman (1:58:40.400)
one of the two things you're interested in,
Jeremi Suri (1:58:42.400)
you're basically saying, I'm letting go.
Lex Fridman (1:58:45.320)
I'm saying goodbye to.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:47.560)
That's true.
Lex Fridman (1:58:48.400)
That's true.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:49.240)
Which is actually what does goodbye means,
Lex Fridman (1:58:50.160)
not goodbye, but letting go.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:51.320)
That's exactly right.
Lex Fridman (1:58:52.520)
I think that's exactly right.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:53.640)
I think you do have to make choices.
Lex Fridman (1:58:55.480)
You do have to set priorities.
Jeremi Suri (1:58:56.800)
I often laugh at students who tell me
Lex Fridman (1:58:58.560)
they want to have like three majors.
Lex Fridman (1:59:00.560)
If you have three majors, you have no major, right?
Lex Fridman (1:59:02.120)
I mean, so I do think you have to make choices.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:04.680)
I also think it's important that whatever you do,
Lex Fridman (1:59:09.920)
even if it's a small thing,
Jeremi Suri (1:59:11.840)
you always do the best you can.
Lex Fridman (1:59:13.760)
You always do excellent work.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:15.520)
My kids are tired of hearing me say this at home,
Lex Fridman (1:59:17.440)
but I believe everything you do should be about excellence.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:21.200)
The best you can do.
Lex Fridman (1:59:22.600)
If I'm going to wash the dishes,
Jeremi Suri (1:59:23.560)
I'm going to be the best person washing the dishes.
Lex Fridman (1:59:26.120)
If I'm going to write a book review,
Jeremi Suri (1:59:28.000)
I'm going to write the best possible book review I can.
Lex Fridman (1:59:30.120)
Why?
Jeremi Suri (1:59:30.960)
Because you develop a culture about yourself,
Lex Fridman (1:59:33.920)
which is about excellence.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:35.480)
Yeah, I was telling you offline about all the kind of stuff,
Lex Fridman (1:59:39.040)
Google Fiber and cable installation, all that stuff.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:41.420)
I've been always a believer, washing dishes.
Lex Fridman (1:59:45.480)
People don't often believe me when I say this.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:47.840)
I don't care what I do.
Lex Fridman (1:59:50.800)
I am with David Foster Wallace.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:52.560)
I'm unborable.
Lex Fridman (1:59:53.920)
There's so much joy for me.
Jeremi Suri (1:59:55.840)
I think for everyone, but okay, let me just speak for me,
Lex Fridman (1:59:58.560)
to be discovered in getting really good at anything.
Lex Fridman (20:01.920)
and if a president chooses to take it, they do,
Lex Fridman (20:04.560)
and if they don't, they don't?
Jeremi Suri (20:06.840)
Almost like you don't want to take on the responsibility
Lex Fridman (20:10.080)
because of the burden of that responsibility.
Lex Fridman (20:12.960)
So a lot of my research is about this exact question,
Lex Fridman (20:16.360)
not just with Obama.
Lex Fridman (20:17.680)
And my conclusion, and I think the research
Lex Fridman (20:19.780)
is pretty clear on this, is that structure
Jeremi Suri (20:21.920)
has a lot more effect on us than we like to admit,
Lex Fridman (20:24.940)
which is to say that the circumstances,
Jeremi Suri (20:26.760)
the institutions around us drive our behavior
Lex Fridman (20:29.540)
more than we like to think.
Lex Fridman (20:30.600)
So Barack Obama, I'm quite certain,
Lex Fridman (20:32.640)
came into the office of the presidency committed
Jeremi Suri (20:34.840)
to actually reducing the use of military force overseas
Lex Fridman (20:37.880)
and reducing presidential war making power.
Jeremi Suri (20:40.800)
As a trained lawyer, he had a moral position
Lex Fridman (20:43.180)
on this actually, and he tried.
Lex Fridman (20:45.320)
And he did withdraw American forces from Iraq
Lex Fridman (20:47.700)
and was of course criticized by many people for doing that.
Lex Fridman (20:50.640)
But at the same time, he had some real problems
Lex Fridman (20:52.680)
in the world to deal with, terrorism being one of them.
Lex Fridman (20:55.600)
And the tools he has are very much biased
Lex Fridman (20:59.040)
towards the use of military force.
Jeremi Suri (21:01.080)
It's much harder as president to go and get Vladimir Putin
Lex Fridman (21:04.160)
and Xi Jinping to agree with you.
Jeremi Suri (21:06.400)
It's much easier to send these wonderful toys we have
Lex Fridman (21:09.800)
and these incredible soldiers we have over there.
Lex Fridman (21:12.800)
And when you have Congress, which is always against you,
Lex Fridman (21:15.860)
it's also easier to use the military
Jeremi Suri (21:17.640)
because you send them there.
Lex Fridman (21:18.920)
And even if members of Congress from your own party
Jeremi Suri (21:21.040)
or the other are angry at you,
Lex Fridman (21:23.000)
they'll still fund the soldiers.
Jeremi Suri (21:24.240)
No member of Congress wants to vote
Lex Fridman (21:25.920)
to starve our soldiers overseas.
Lex Fridman (21:27.980)
So they'll stop your budget,
Lex Fridman (21:29.000)
they'll even threaten not to pay the debt,
Lex Fridman (21:31.240)
but they'll still fund your soldiers.
Lex Fridman (21:33.040)
And so you are pushed by the circumstances you're in
Jeremi Suri (21:36.960)
to do this, and it's very hard to resist.
Lex Fridman (21:39.880)
So that's, I think the criticism of Obama,
Jeremi Suri (21:42.360)
the fair one would be that he didn't resist the pressures
Lex Fridman (21:45.080)
that were there, but he did not make those pressures.
Lex Fridman (21:47.800)
So is there something about putting the responsibility
Lex Fridman (21:52.000)
on the president to form the structure around him locally
Lex Fridman (21:57.040)
such that he can make the policy that matches the rhetoric?
Lex Fridman (22:01.580)
So what I'm talking to is hiring.
Lex Fridman (22:05.680)
So basically just everybody you work with,
Lex Fridman (22:08.840)
you have power as a president to fire and hire
Jeremi Suri (22:12.120)
or to basically schedule meetings in such a way
Lex Fridman (22:16.400)
that can control your decision making.
Lex Fridman (22:19.960)
So I imagine it's very difficult to get out of Afghanistan
Lex Fridman (22:24.380)
or Iraq when most of your scheduled meetings
Jeremi Suri (22:28.520)
are with generals or something like that.
Lex Fridman (22:31.240)
But if you reorganize the schedule
Lex Fridman (22:33.720)
and you reorganize who you have like late night talks with,
Lex Fridman (22:37.740)
you potentially have a huge ripple effect on the policy.
Jeremi Suri (22:41.860)
I think that's right.
Lex Fridman (22:42.700)
I think who has access to the president
Jeremi Suri (22:44.600)
is absolutely crucial.
Lex Fridman (22:45.880)
And presidents have to be more strategic about that.
Jeremi Suri (22:48.080)
They tend to be reacting to crises
Lex Fridman (22:50.480)
because every day has a crisis.
Lex Fridman (22:52.200)
And if you're reacting to a crisis,
Lex Fridman (22:53.240)
you're not controlling access
Jeremi Suri (22:54.360)
because the crisis is driving you.
Lex Fridman (22:56.300)
So that's one element of it.
Lex Fridman (22:57.640)
But I also think, and this is the moment we're in right now,
Lex Fridman (23:00.200)
presidents have to invest in reforming the system,
Jeremi Suri (23:04.140)
the system of decision making.
Lex Fridman (23:05.820)
Should we have a national security council
Lex Fridman (23:07.760)
that looks the way it does?
Lex Fridman (23:09.320)
Should our military be structured the way it is?
Jeremi Suri (23:11.620)
The founding fathers wanted a military that was divided.
Lex Fridman (23:14.680)
They did not want a unified department of defense.
Jeremi Suri (23:17.000)
That was only created after World War II.
Lex Fridman (23:19.160)
Should we have as large a military as we have?
Lex Fridman (23:20.800)
Should we be in as many places?
Lex Fridman (23:23.040)
There are some fundamental structural reforms
Jeremi Suri (23:25.320)
we have to undertake.
Lex Fridman (23:26.720)
And part of that is who you appoint,
Lex Fridman (23:28.180)
but part of that is also how you change the institutions.
Lex Fridman (23:30.620)
The genius of the American system
Jeremi Suri (23:32.320)
is that it's a dynamic system.
Lex Fridman (23:34.220)
It can be adjusted.
Jeremi Suri (23:35.480)
It has been adjusted over time.
Lex Fridman (23:37.200)
That's the heroic story.
Jeremi Suri (23:39.600)
The frustrating story is it often takes us a long time
Lex Fridman (23:43.600)
to make those adjustments until we go
Jeremi Suri (23:45.440)
into such bad circumstances that we have no choice.
Lex Fridman (23:48.800)
So in the battle of power of the office of the president
Jeremi Suri (23:53.480)
versus the United States military,
Lex Fridman (23:56.540)
the department of defense,
Lex Fridman (23:58.720)
do you have a sense that the president
Lex Fridman (24:00.000)
has more power ultimately?
Lex Fridman (24:01.960)
So to decrease the size of the department of defense,
Lex Fridman (24:06.060)
to withdraw from any wars,
Jeremi Suri (24:08.620)
or increase the amount of wars,
Lex Fridman (24:11.200)
is the president, you're kind of implying
Jeremi Suri (24:13.880)
the president has a lot of power here in this scale.
Lex Fridman (24:16.700)
Yes, the president has a lot of power
Lex Fridman (24:18.280)
and we are fortunate and it was just proven
Lex Fridman (24:20.440)
in the last few years that our military,
Jeremi Suri (24:22.560)
uniquely among many countries with large militaries,
Lex Fridman (24:26.140)
is very deferential to the president
Lex Fridman (24:27.920)
and very restricted in its ability
Lex Fridman (24:29.540)
to challenge the president.
Lex Fridman (24:31.360)
So that's a strength of our system.
Lex Fridman (24:33.800)
But the way you reform the military
Jeremi Suri (24:35.920)
is not with individual decisions.
Lex Fridman (24:37.640)
It's by having a strategic plan
Jeremi Suri (24:40.380)
that reexamines what role it plays.
Lex Fridman (24:43.080)
So it's not just about whether we're in Afghanistan or not.
Jeremi Suri (24:45.640)
The question we have to ask is,
Lex Fridman (24:47.520)
when we look at our toolbox
Jeremi Suri (24:48.880)
of what we can do in our foreign policy,
Lex Fridman (24:51.560)
are there other tools we should build up
Lex Fridman (24:54.920)
and therefore some tools in the military we should reduce?
Lex Fridman (24:58.020)
That's the broader strategic question.
Jeremi Suri (25:00.320)
Let me ask you the most absurd question of all
Lex Fridman (25:03.180)
that you did not sign up for,
Lex Fridman (25:04.600)
but I've been hanging out
Lex Fridman (25:06.720)
with a guy named Joe Rogan recently,
Lex Fridman (25:08.720)
so it's very important for me and him to figure this out.
Lex Fridman (25:13.560)
If a president, because you said,
Jeremi Suri (25:15.560)
you implied the president's very powerful,
Lex Fridman (25:17.640)
if a president shows up and the US government is in fact
Jeremi Suri (25:21.320)
in possession of aliens, alien spacecraft,
Lex Fridman (25:25.080)
do you think the president will be told?
Jeremi Suri (25:28.720)
A more responsible adult historian question version of that
Lex Fridman (25:32.840)
is, is there some things that the machine of government
Lex Fridman (25:37.680)
keeps secret from the president?
Lex Fridman (25:40.560)
Or is the president ultimately at the very center?
Lex Fridman (25:42.720)
So if you map out the set of information and power,
Lex Fridman (25:46.520)
you have CIA, you have all these organizations
Jeremi Suri (25:49.200)
that do the machinery of government,
Lex Fridman (25:53.800)
not just the passing of bills,
Lex Fridman (25:55.800)
but gaining information, homeland security,
Lex Fridman (26:01.680)
actually engaging in wars, all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (26:06.680)
How central is the president?
Lex Fridman (26:09.160)
Would the president know some of the shady things
Lex Fridman (26:11.440)
that are going on?
Lex Fridman (26:14.080)
Aliens or some kind of cybersecurity stuff
Jeremi Suri (26:18.740)
against Russia and China, all those kinds of things,
Lex Fridman (26:21.400)
is the president really made aware?
Lex Fridman (26:23.440)
And if so, how nervous does that make you?
Lex Fridman (26:26.440)
So presidents like leaders of any complex organizations
Jeremi Suri (26:30.880)
don't know everything that goes on.
Lex Fridman (26:32.880)
They have to ask the right questions.
Jeremi Suri (26:34.140)
This is Machiavelli.
Lex Fridman (26:35.600)
Most important thing a leader has to do
Jeremi Suri (26:38.680)
is ask the right questions.
Lex Fridman (26:40.100)
You don't have to know the answers.
Jeremi Suri (26:41.840)
That's why you hire smart people,
Lex Fridman (26:43.680)
but you have to ask the right questions.
Lex Fridman (26:45.400)
So if the president asks the US government,
Lex Fridman (26:48.440)
those who are responsible for the aliens
Jeremi Suri (26:50.320)
or responsible for the cyber warfare against Russia,
Lex Fridman (26:53.640)
they will answer honestly, they will have to,
Lex Fridman (26:56.160)
but they will not volunteer that information in all cases.
Lex Fridman (27:00.000)
So the best way a president can operate
Jeremi Suri (27:01.560)
is to have people around him or her
Lex Fridman (27:04.680)
who are not the traditional policymakers,
Jeremi Suri (27:06.640)
this is where I think academic experts are important,
Lex Fridman (27:09.520)
suggesting questions to ask
Jeremi Suri (27:12.800)
to therefore try to get the information.
Lex Fridman (27:14.760)
It makes me nervous because I think human nature
Jeremi Suri (27:18.480)
is such that the academics, the experts,
Lex Fridman (27:23.080)
everybody is almost afraid to ask the questions
Jeremi Suri (27:27.120)
for which the answers might be burdensome.
Lex Fridman (27:32.800)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (27:33.840)
And so that's right.
Lex Fridman (27:34.880)
And you can get into a lot of trouble not asking,
Jeremi Suri (27:37.720)
it's the old elephant in the room.
Lex Fridman (27:40.160)
Correct, correct.
Jeremi Suri (27:42.960)
This is exactly right.
Lex Fridman (27:44.160)
And too often mediocre leaders
Lex Fridman (27:46.720)
and those who try to protect them try to shield themselves.
Lex Fridman (27:49.520)
They don't want to know certain things.
Lex Fridman (27:51.480)
So this is part of what happened
Lex Fridman (27:53.200)
with the use of torture by the United States,
Jeremi Suri (27:55.640)
which is a war crime during the war on terror.
Lex Fridman (27:59.400)
President Bush at times intentionally did not ask
Lex Fridman (28:02.640)
and people around him prevented him from asking
Lex Fridman (28:04.880)
or discouraged him from asking questions
Jeremi Suri (28:06.520)
he should have asked to know about what was going on.
Lex Fridman (28:09.640)
And that's how we ended up where we did.
Jeremi Suri (28:12.360)
You could say the same thing about Reagan and Iran Contra.
Lex Fridman (28:15.360)
I wonder what it takes to be the kind of leader
Jeremi Suri (28:18.600)
that steps in and asks some difficult questions.
Lex Fridman (28:21.160)
So aliens is one, UFO spacecraft, right?
Jeremi Suri (28:25.560)
Another one, yeah, torture is another one.
Lex Fridman (28:28.320)
The CIA, how much information
Lex Fridman (28:30.560)
is being collected about Americans?
Lex Fridman (28:32.720)
I can see as a president being very uncomfortable
Jeremi Suri (28:35.640)
asking that question.
Lex Fridman (28:37.120)
Because if the answer is a lot of information
Jeremi Suri (28:39.480)
is being collected by Americans,
Lex Fridman (28:41.640)
then you have to be the guy
Jeremi Suri (28:43.560)
who lives with that information.
Lex Fridman (28:46.480)
For the rest of your life, you have to walk around.
Jeremi Suri (28:50.040)
You're probably not going to reform that system.
Lex Fridman (28:53.320)
It's very difficult.
Jeremi Suri (28:54.160)
You probably have to be very picky
Lex Fridman (28:55.640)
about which things you reform.
Jeremi Suri (28:57.080)
You don't have much time.
Lex Fridman (28:58.680)
It takes a lot of sort of effort to restructure things.
Lex Fridman (29:01.760)
But you nevertheless would have to be basically lying
Lex Fridman (29:06.000)
to yourself, to others around you
Jeremi Suri (29:11.080)
about the unethical things.
Lex Fridman (29:13.240)
Depends of course what your ethical system is.
Jeremi Suri (29:17.200)
I wonder what it takes to ask those hard questions.
Lex Fridman (29:20.400)
I wonder if how few of us can be great leaders like that.
Lex Fridman (29:25.400)
And I wonder if our political system, the electoral system
Lex Fridman (29:29.400)
is such that makes it likely
Jeremi Suri (29:32.160)
that such leaders will come to power.
Lex Fridman (29:34.800)
It's hard and you can't ask all the right questions
Lex Fridman (29:36.760)
and there is a legal hazard if you know things
Lex Fridman (29:39.400)
at certain times.
Lex Fridman (29:40.760)
But I think you can, back to your point on hiring,
Lex Fridman (29:42.920)
you can hire people who will do that in their domains.
Lex Fridman (29:45.680)
And then you have to trust that when they think
Lex Fridman (29:47.440)
it's something that's a question you need to ask,
Jeremi Suri (29:49.440)
they'll pass that on to you.
Lex Fridman (29:51.280)
This is why it's not a good idea to have loyalists
Jeremi Suri (29:54.160)
because loyalists will shield you from things.
Lex Fridman (29:57.000)
It's a good idea to have people of integrity
Jeremi Suri (29:59.560)
who you can rely on and who you think will ask
Lex Fridman (2:00:02.740)
In fact, getting good at stuff
Jeremi Suri (2:00:04.280)
that most people believe is boring or menial labor
Lex Fridman (2:00:09.320)
or impossible to be interesting,
Jeremi Suri (2:00:14.120)
that's even more joyful to find the joy within that
Lex Fridman (2:00:17.040)
and the excellence.
Jeremi Suri (2:00:17.880)
It's the Jiro dreams of sushi,
Lex Fridman (2:00:19.400)
making the same fricking sushi over and over
Lex Fridman (2:00:22.560)
and becoming a master that can be truly joyful.
Lex Fridman (2:00:25.720)
There's a sense of pride and on the pragmatic level,
Jeremi Suri (2:00:29.360)
you never know when someone will spot that.
Lex Fridman (2:00:31.640)
And intelligent people who perform
Jeremi Suri (2:00:34.480)
at the level of high excellence look for others.
Lex Fridman (2:00:36.840)
Who do you say?
Lex Fridman (2:00:37.680)
And it radiates some kind of signal.
Lex Fridman (2:00:39.320)
It's weird.
Jeremi Suri (2:00:40.160)
It's weird what you attract to yourself
Lex Fridman (2:00:43.660)
when you just focus on mastery
Lex Fridman (2:00:45.760)
and pursuing excellence in something.
Lex Fridman (2:00:48.440)
Like this is the cool thing about it.
Jeremi Suri (2:00:51.840)
That's the joy I've really truly experienced.
Lex Fridman (2:00:53.960)
I didn't have to do much work.
Jeremi Suri (2:00:55.060)
It's just cool people kind of,
Lex Fridman (2:00:56.760)
I find myself in groups of cool people,
Jeremi Suri (2:00:58.840)
like really people who are excited about life,
Lex Fridman (2:01:01.120)
who are passionate about life.
Jeremi Suri (2:01:02.600)
There's a fire in their eyes.
Lex Fridman (2:01:04.060)
That's at the end of the day just makes life fun.
Lex Fridman (2:01:09.000)
And then also money wise,
Lex Fridman (2:01:11.020)
at least in this society,
Jeremi Suri (2:01:12.420)
we're fortunate to where if you do that kind of thing,
Lex Fridman (2:01:15.080)
money will find a way.
Jeremi Suri (2:01:16.440)
Like I have the great,
Lex Fridman (2:01:17.780)
I say this that I don't care about money.
Jeremi Suri (2:01:21.820)
I have to think about what that means
Lex Fridman (2:01:23.580)
because some people criticize that idea.
Jeremi Suri (2:01:25.200)
It's like, yeah, it must be nice to say that.
Lex Fridman (2:01:28.560)
Cause I have for much,
Jeremi Suri (2:01:30.040)
many periods of my life had very little money,
Lex Fridman (2:01:32.240)
but I think we live in a society
Jeremi Suri (2:01:34.560)
where not caring about money,
Lex Fridman (2:01:36.400)
but just focusing on your passions.
Jeremi Suri (2:01:38.960)
If you're truly pursuing excellence, whatever that is,
Lex Fridman (2:01:41.560)
money will find you.
Jeremi Suri (2:01:42.480)
That's I guess the ideal of the capitalist system.
Lex Fridman (2:01:44.720)
And I think that the entrepreneurs I've studied
Lex Fridman (2:01:46.760)
and had the chance to get to know,
Lex Fridman (2:01:48.240)
and I'm sure you'd agree with this,
Jeremi Suri (2:01:49.360)
they do what they do
Lex Fridman (2:01:50.960)
cause they're passionate about the product.
Jeremi Suri (2:01:53.320)
They're not just in it to make money.
Lex Fridman (2:01:55.600)
In fact, that's when they get into trouble
Jeremi Suri (2:01:57.240)
when they're just trying to make money.
Lex Fridman (2:01:58.440)
Exactly.
Jeremi Suri (2:02:00.800)
You said your grandmother, Emily,
Lex Fridman (2:02:02.480)
had a big impact on your life.
Jeremi Suri (2:02:04.280)
She lived to 102.
Lex Fridman (2:02:08.320)
What are some lessons she taught you?
Jeremi Suri (2:02:11.520)
Emily, who was the child of immigrants
Lex Fridman (2:02:13.820)
from Russia and Poland,
Jeremi Suri (2:02:15.960)
who never went to college,
Lex Fridman (2:02:18.320)
her proudest day I think was when I went to college.
Jeremi Suri (2:02:21.520)
She treated everyone with respect
Lex Fridman (2:02:27.560)
and tried to get to know everyone.
Jeremi Suri (2:02:28.660)
She knew every bus driver in the town.
Lex Fridman (2:02:31.020)
She'd remember their birthdays.
Lex Fridman (2:02:33.420)
And one of the things she taught me is
Lex Fridman (2:02:35.340)
no matter how high you fly,
Jeremi Suri (2:02:37.940)
the lowest person close to the ground matters to you.
Lex Fridman (2:02:41.700)
And you treat them the same way
Jeremi Suri (2:02:43.860)
you treat the billionaire at the top of the podium.
Lex Fridman (2:02:47.180)
And she did that.
Jeremi Suri (2:02:48.080)
She didn't just say that.
Lex Fridman (2:02:49.600)
Some people say that and don't do it.
Jeremi Suri (2:02:50.820)
She really did that.
Lex Fridman (2:02:52.100)
And I always remember that it comes up in my mind
Jeremi Suri (2:02:56.780)
at least once a week
Lex Fridman (2:02:57.660)
because we're all busy doing a lot of things
Lex Fridman (2:03:01.300)
and you either see or you even feel in yourself
Lex Fridman (2:03:04.100)
the desire to just, for the reasons of speed,
Jeremi Suri (2:03:07.220)
to be short or not polite with someone
Lex Fridman (2:03:09.980)
who can't do anything to harm you right now.
Lex Fridman (2:03:13.320)
And I remember her saying to me,
Lex Fridman (2:03:15.500)
no, you don't, you treat everyone with respect.
Jeremi Suri (2:03:18.620)
You treat the person you're on the phone with,
Lex Fridman (2:03:21.060)
customer service.
Jeremi Suri (2:03:22.500)
You treat that person if you're talking to Jeff Bezos
Lex Fridman (2:03:24.500)
or you're talking to Elon Musk.
Lex Fridman (2:03:27.260)
And I think making that a culture
Lex Fridman (2:03:29.780)
of who you are is so important.
Lex Fridman (2:03:31.500)
And people notice that.
Lex Fridman (2:03:32.460)
That's the other thing.
Lex Fridman (2:03:33.520)
And they notice when it's authentic.
Lex Fridman (2:03:34.780)
Everyone's nice to the person at the bottom
Jeremi Suri (2:03:36.420)
of the totem pole when you want to get ahead in the line
Lex Fridman (2:03:38.740)
for your driver's license.
Lex Fridman (2:03:40.380)
But are you nice to them when you don't need that?
Lex Fridman (2:03:42.460)
They notice that.
Lex Fridman (2:03:43.300)
And even when nobody's watching,
Lex Fridman (2:03:45.180)
that has a weird effect on you
Jeremi Suri (2:03:47.100)
that's going to have a ripple effect and people know.
Lex Fridman (2:03:51.240)
That's the cool thing about the internet.
Jeremi Suri (2:03:52.660)
I've come to believe that people see authenticity.
Lex Fridman (2:03:55.280)
They see when you're full of shit, when you're not.
Jeremi Suri (2:03:57.500)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (2:03:58.340)
The other thing that Emily taught me,
Lex Fridman (2:03:59.900)
and I think we've all had relatives who have taught us this,
Lex Fridman (2:04:02.140)
that you could be very uneducated.
Jeremi Suri (2:04:04.020)
She was very uneducated.
Lex Fridman (2:04:05.140)
She had a high school diploma,
Lex Fridman (2:04:06.940)
but I think she was working in a delicatessen in New York
Lex Fridman (2:04:11.060)
while she was in high school,
Jeremi Suri (2:04:12.080)
or maybe it was at Gimbels or somebody.
Lex Fridman (2:04:13.460)
So she probably didn't take high school very seriously.
Jeremi Suri (2:04:14.860)
She wasn't very well educated.
Lex Fridman (2:04:16.020)
She was very smart.
Lex Fridman (2:04:17.420)
And we can fall into a world
Lex Fridman (2:04:19.740)
where I'm a big believer in higher education
Lex Fridman (2:04:21.960)
and getting a PhD and things of that sort,
Lex Fridman (2:04:24.380)
but where we think those are the only smart people.
Jeremi Suri (2:04:26.540)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:04:29.280)
Sometimes those are the people,
Jeremi Suri (2:04:31.020)
because of their accomplishments,
Lex Fridman (2:04:32.380)
because their egos are the ones
Jeremi Suri (2:04:33.740)
who are least educated in the way of the world.
Lex Fridman (2:04:38.940)
Yeah.
Jeremi Suri (2:04:39.940)
Least curious, and ultimately wisdom comes from curiosity.
Lex Fridman (2:04:44.860)
And sometimes getting a PhD can get in the way of curiosity
Jeremi Suri (2:04:49.660)
as opposed to empower curiosity.
Lex Fridman (2:04:54.180)
Let me ask, from a historical perspective,
Jeremi Suri (2:04:58.300)
you've studied some of human history.
Lex Fridman (2:05:00.940)
So maybe you have an insight
Jeremi Suri (2:05:02.800)
about what's the meaning of life.
Lex Fridman (2:05:07.860)
Do you ever ask when you look at history, the why?
Jeremi Suri (2:05:10.260)
Yeah, I do all the time, and I don't have an answer.
Lex Fridman (2:05:13.740)
It's the mystery that we can't answer.
Jeremi Suri (2:05:16.260)
I do think what it means is what we make of it.
Lex Fridman (2:05:21.940)
There's no universal, every period I've studied,
Lex Fridman (2:05:24.980)
and I've studied a little bit of a lot of periods
Lex Fridman (2:05:26.420)
and a lot of a few periods,
Jeremi Suri (2:05:28.000)
every period people struggle with this,
Lex Fridman (2:05:29.420)
and they don't come to,
Jeremi Suri (2:05:31.140)
wiser people than us don't come to a firm answer,
Lex Fridman (2:05:34.500)
except it's what you make of it.
Jeremi Suri (2:05:37.060)
Meaning is what you make of it.
Lex Fridman (2:05:38.380)
So think about what you want to care about
Lex Fridman (2:05:42.240)
and make that the meaning in your life.
Lex Fridman (2:05:44.940)
I wonder how that changes throughout human history,
Jeremi Suri (2:05:48.140)
whether there's a constant.
Lex Fridman (2:05:50.260)
Like I often think,
Jeremi Suri (2:05:52.560)
especially when you study evolutionary biology
Lex Fridman (2:05:55.340)
and you just see our origins from life and as it evolves,
Jeremi Suri (2:05:59.220)
it's like, it makes you wonder,
Lex Fridman (2:06:02.260)
it feels like there's a thread that connects all of it,
Jeremi Suri (2:06:06.820)
that we're headed somewhere.
Lex Fridman (2:06:11.060)
We're trying to actualize some greater purpose.
Jeremi Suri (2:06:17.420)
Like there seems to be a direction to this thing,
Lex Fridman (2:06:20.180)
and we're all kind of stumbling in the dark
Jeremi Suri (2:06:22.140)
trying to figure it out,
Lex Fridman (2:06:24.060)
but it feels like we eventually will find an answer.
Jeremi Suri (2:06:28.400)
I hope so, yeah, maybe.
Lex Fridman (2:06:30.000)
I mean, I do think we all want our families to do better.
Jeremi Suri (2:06:35.000)
We are familiar,
Lex Fridman (2:06:39.560)
and family doesn't just mean biological family.
Jeremi Suri (2:06:41.320)
You can have all kinds of ways
Lex Fridman (2:06:42.680)
you define family and community,
Lex Fridman (2:06:44.220)
and I think we are moving slowly
Lex Fridman (2:06:47.760)
and in a very messy way toward a larger world community.
Jeremi Suri (2:06:53.100)
To include all of biological life
Lex Fridman (2:06:54.900)
and eventually artificial life as well.
Jeremi Suri (2:06:58.680)
Yeah, so to expand the lesson to the advice
Lex Fridman (2:07:05.680)
that your grandmother taught you,
Jeremi Suri (2:07:08.040)
is I think we should treat robots and AI systems
Lex Fridman (2:07:12.160)
good as well, even if they're currently not very intelligent
Jeremi Suri (2:07:15.480)
because one day they might be.
Lex Fridman (2:07:16.960)
Right, right, I think that's exactly right,
Lex Fridman (2:07:18.580)
and we should think through,
Lex Fridman (2:07:21.760)
exactly as a humanist how I would approach that issue.
Jeremi Suri (2:07:24.520)
We need to think through the kinds of behavior patterns
Lex Fridman (2:07:27.760)
we want to establish with these new forms of life,
Jeremi Suri (2:07:31.280)
artificial life for ourselves also, to your point,
Lex Fridman (2:07:35.800)
so we behave the right way, so we don't misuse this.
Jeremi Suri (2:07:39.720)
We started talking about Abraham Lincoln,
Lex Fridman (2:07:42.280)
ended talking about robots.
Jeremi Suri (2:07:44.600)
I think this is the perfect conversation, Jeremy.
Lex Fridman (2:07:47.040)
This was a huge honor.
Jeremi Suri (2:07:48.960)
I love Austin, I love UT Austin,
Lex Fridman (2:07:52.360)
and I love the fact that you would agree
Jeremi Suri (2:07:54.400)
to waste all your valuable time with me today.
Lex Fridman (2:07:56.600)
Thank you so much for talking to me.
Jeremi Suri (2:07:57.880)
I can't imagine a better way to spend a Friday afternoon.
Lex Fridman (2:08:00.440)
This was so much fun, and I'm such a fan of your podcast
Lex Fridman (2:08:03.120)
and delighted to be a part of it.
Lex Fridman (2:08:04.800)
Thank you.
Jeremi Suri (2:08:06.440)
Thanks for listening to this conversation
Lex Fridman (2:08:07.920)
with Jeremy Suri, and thank you to Element, Monkpac,
Jeremi Suri (2:08:11.920)
Belcampo, Four Sigmatic, and Asleep.
Lex Fridman (2:08:15.840)
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (2:08:19.260)
And now, let me leave you with some words
Lex Fridman (2:08:21.440)
from Franklin D. Roosevelt, FDR.
Jeremi Suri (2:08:24.960)
Democracy cannot succeed unless those
Lex Fridman (2:08:27.320)
who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.
Jeremi Suri (2:08:31.560)
The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Lex Fridman (2:08:35.960)
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.
Jeremi Suri (30:01.880)
those right questions and then pass that down
Lex Fridman (30:03.960)
through their organization.
Jeremi Suri (30:06.960)
What's inspiring to you, what's insightful to you
Lex Fridman (30:10.240)
about several of the presidencies
Lex Fridman (30:12.800)
throughout the recent decades?
Lex Fridman (30:14.920)
Is there somebody that stands out to you
Jeremi Suri (30:16.480)
that's interesting and sort of in your study
Lex Fridman (30:19.760)
of how the office has changed?
Jeremi Suri (30:21.420)
Well, Bill Clinton is one of the most fascinating figures.
Lex Fridman (30:25.300)
Why can't I, I apologize.
Jeremi Suri (30:26.820)
Bill Clinton just puts a smile on my face
Lex Fridman (30:28.580)
every time somebody mentions him at this point.
Jeremi Suri (30:30.420)
I don't know why.
Lex Fridman (30:31.700)
I guess it's charisma, I suppose.
Jeremi Suri (30:33.500)
Well, and he's a unique individual,
Lex Fridman (30:36.340)
but he fascinates me because he's a figure
Jeremi Suri (30:41.660)
of such enormous talent and enormous appetite
Lex Fridman (30:45.660)
and such little self control and such extremes.
Lex Fridman (30:50.660)
And I think it's not just that he tells us
Lex Fridman (30:53.140)
something about the presidency,
Jeremi Suri (30:53.980)
he tells us something about our society.
Lex Fridman (30:56.180)
American society, this is not new to our time,
Jeremi Suri (30:58.980)
is filled with enormous reservoirs of talent and creativity.
Lex Fridman (31:02.700)
And those have a bright and a dark side.
Lex Fridman (31:05.500)
And you see both with Bill Clinton.
Lex Fridman (31:06.900)
In some ways, he's the mirror of the best and worst
Jeremi Suri (31:09.760)
of our society.
Lex Fridman (31:10.940)
And maybe that's really what presidents are in the end.
Jeremi Suri (31:13.040)
They're mirrors of our world
Lex Fridman (31:14.660)
that we get the government we deserve,
Jeremi Suri (31:16.180)
we get the leaders we deserve.
Lex Fridman (31:18.060)
I wish we embraced that a little bit more.
Jeremi Suri (31:20.220)
A lot of people criticize Donald Trump
Lex Fridman (31:22.460)
for certain human qualities that he has.
Jeremi Suri (31:24.740)
A lot of people criticize Bill Clinton
Lex Fridman (31:27.040)
for certain human qualities.
Jeremi Suri (31:28.580)
I wish we kind of embraced the chaos of that.
Lex Fridman (31:32.140)
Because he does, you're right, in some sense represent,
Jeremi Suri (31:35.460)
I mean, he doesn't represent the greatest ideal of America,
Lex Fridman (31:39.740)
but the flawed aspect of human nature is what he represents.
Lex Fridman (31:43.720)
And that's the beautiful thing about America,
Lex Fridman (31:45.300)
the diversity of this land with the mix of it,
Jeremi Suri (31:49.740)
the corruption within capitalism,
Lex Fridman (31:53.660)
the beauty of capitalism, the innovation,
Jeremi Suri (31:56.800)
all those kinds of things,
Lex Fridman (31:57.760)
the people that start from nothing and create everything,
Jeremi Suri (32:01.620)
the Elon Musk's of the world and the Bill Gates and so on.
Lex Fridman (32:04.380)
But also the people, Bernie Mados and all,
Jeremi Suri (32:08.240)
as the Me Too movement has showed the multitude of creeps
Lex Fridman (32:11.620)
that apparently permeate the entirety of our system.
Lex Fridman (32:15.200)
So I don't know, there is something, there is some sense
Lex Fridman (32:21.020)
in which we put our president on a pedestal,
Jeremi Suri (32:24.600)
which actually creates a fake human being.
Lex Fridman (32:30.180)
Like the standard we hold them to
Jeremi Suri (32:33.220)
is forcing the fake politicians to come to power
Lex Fridman (32:36.620)
versus the authentic one, which is in some sense,
Jeremi Suri (32:39.140)
the promise of Donald Trump is like,
Lex Fridman (32:42.740)
it's a definitive statement of authenticity.
Jeremi Suri (32:46.420)
It's like, this is the opposite of the fake politician.
Lex Fridman (32:50.540)
It's whatever else you wanna say about him
Jeremi Suri (32:52.580)
is there's the chaos that's unlike anything else
Lex Fridman (32:55.880)
that came before.
Jeremi Suri (32:57.520)
One thing, and this is a particular maybe preference
Lex Fridman (33:00.560)
and quirk of mine, but I really admire,
Jeremi Suri (33:03.300)
maybe I'm romanticizing the past again,
Lex Fridman (33:05.400)
but I romanticize the presidents
Jeremi Suri (33:07.500)
that were students of history.
Lex Fridman (33:09.300)
They were almost like king philosophers,
Jeremi Suri (33:17.620)
that made speeches that reverberated through decades after.
Lex Fridman (33:26.860)
Using the words of those presidents,
Jeremi Suri (33:28.780)
whether written by them or not,
Lex Fridman (33:30.580)
we tell the story of America.
Lex Fridman (33:33.460)
And I don't know, even Obama has been an exceptionally good,
Lex Fridman (33:37.740)
as far as I know, I apologize if I'm incorrect on this,
Lex Fridman (33:40.320)
but from everything I've seen,
Lex Fridman (33:42.260)
he was a very deep scholar of history.
Lex Fridman (33:45.740)
And I really admire that.
Lex Fridman (33:48.100)
Is that through the history of the office of the presidency,
Jeremi Suri (33:53.520)
is that just your own preference
Lex Fridman (33:55.940)
or is that supposed to come with the job?
Lex Fridman (33:58.080)
Are you supposed to be a student of history?
Lex Fridman (34:00.020)
I think, I mean, I'm obviously biased as a historian,
Lex Fridman (34:02.100)
but I do think it comes with the job.
Lex Fridman (34:03.740)
Every president I've studied had a serious interest
Jeremi Suri (34:08.620)
in history.
Lex Fridman (34:09.460)
Now, how they pursued that interest would vary.
Jeremi Suri (34:13.180)
Obama was more bookish, more academic.
Lex Fridman (34:16.560)
So was George W. Bush in strange ways.
Jeremi Suri (34:18.540)
George H. W. Bush was less so,
Lex Fridman (34:20.180)
but George H. W. Bush loved to talk to people.
Lex Fridman (34:22.180)
So he would talk to historians, right?
Lex Fridman (34:24.380)
Ronald Reagan loved movies
Lex Fridman (34:27.220)
and movies were an insight into history for him.
Lex Fridman (34:30.020)
He likes to watch movies about another time.
Jeremi Suri (34:32.900)
It wasn't always the best of history,
Lex Fridman (34:34.740)
but he was interested
Jeremi Suri (34:35.920)
in what is a fundamental historical question.
Lex Fridman (34:38.700)
How has our society developed?
Lex Fridman (34:40.780)
How has it grown and changed over time?
Lex Fridman (34:43.380)
And how has that change affected who we are today?
Jeremi Suri (34:46.980)
That's the historical question.
Lex Fridman (34:48.820)
It's really interesting to me.
Jeremi Suri (34:50.100)
I do a lot of work with business leaders and others too.
Lex Fridman (34:53.620)
You reach a certain point in any career
Lex Fridman (34:55.940)
and you become a historian
Lex Fridman (34:57.660)
because you realize that the formulas
Lex Fridman (35:00.380)
and the technical knowledge that you've gained
Lex Fridman (35:02.140)
got you to where you are.
Lex Fridman (35:04.020)
But now your decisions are about human nature.
Lex Fridman (35:07.280)
Your decisions are about social change
Lex Fridman (35:09.420)
and they can't be answered technically.
Lex Fridman (35:12.020)
They can only be answered by studying human beings.
Lex Fridman (35:15.100)
And what is history?
Lex Fridman (35:15.920)
It's studying the laboratory of human behavior.
Jeremi Suri (35:19.700)
To sort of play devil's advocate,
Lex Fridman (35:21.640)
I kind of, especially in the engineering scientific domains,
Jeremi Suri (35:27.820)
I often see history holding us back.
Lex Fridman (35:30.340)
Sort of the way things were done in the past
Jeremi Suri (35:34.100)
are not necessarily going to hold the key
Lex Fridman (35:36.260)
to what will progress us into the future.
Jeremi Suri (35:43.060)
Of course, with history in studying human nature,
Lex Fridman (35:45.820)
it does seem like humans are just the same.
Jeremi Suri (35:49.060)
She has like the same problems over and over.
Lex Fridman (35:51.740)
So in that sense, it feels like history has all the lessons,
Jeremi Suri (35:55.580)
whether we're talking about wars,
Lex Fridman (35:56.980)
whether we're talking about corruption,
Jeremi Suri (35:58.880)
whether we're talking about economics.
Lex Fridman (36:02.000)
I think there's a difference between
Jeremi Suri (36:04.300)
history and antiquarianism.
Lex Fridman (36:06.620)
So antiquarianism, which some people call history,
Jeremi Suri (36:10.020)
is the desire to go back to the past
Lex Fridman (36:12.000)
or stay stuck in the past.
Lex Fridman (36:13.040)
So antiquarianism is the desire to have the desk
Lex Fridman (36:16.000)
that Abraham Lincoln sat at.
Lex Fridman (36:17.300)
Wouldn't it be cool to sit at his desk?
Lex Fridman (36:19.180)
I'd love to have that desk.
Jeremi Suri (36:20.280)
If I had a few extra million dollars, I'd acquire it.
Lex Fridman (36:22.860)
So in a way, that's antiquarianism.
Jeremi Suri (36:25.640)
That's trying to capture and hold on to the past.
Lex Fridman (36:28.740)
The past is a talisman for antiquarians.
Lex Fridman (36:32.980)
What history is, is the study of change over time.
Lex Fridman (36:35.980)
That's the real definition of historical study
Lex Fridman (36:38.260)
and historical thinking.
Lex Fridman (36:39.860)
And so what we're studying is change.
Lex Fridman (36:42.200)
And so a historian should never say,
Lex Fridman (36:45.840)
we have to do things the way we've done them in the past.
Jeremi Suri (36:47.700)
The historian should say, we can't do them
Lex Fridman (36:49.860)
the way we did them in the past.
Jeremi Suri (36:51.020)
We can't step in the same river twice.
Lex Fridman (36:53.100)
Every podcast of yours is different from the last one.
Jeremi Suri (36:56.500)
You plan it out and then it goes in its own direction.
Lex Fridman (37:00.420)
And what are we studying then in history?
Jeremi Suri (37:02.980)
We're studying the patterns of change
Lex Fridman (37:05.500)
and we're recognizing we're part of a pattern.
Lex Fridman (37:08.020)
So what I would say to the historian
Lex Fridman (37:10.000)
who's trying to hold the engineer back,
Jeremi Suri (37:11.280)
I'd say, no, don't tell that engineer not to do this.
Lex Fridman (37:14.820)
Tell them to understand how this fits
Jeremi Suri (37:16.820)
into the relationship with other engineering products
Lex Fridman (37:20.040)
and other activities from the past
Jeremi Suri (37:22.100)
that still affect us today.
Lex Fridman (37:23.620)
For example, any product you produce
Jeremi Suri (37:25.620)
is gonna be used by human beings who have prejudices.
Lex Fridman (37:28.500)
It's gonna go into an unequal society.
Jeremi Suri (37:30.240)
Don't assume it's gonna go into an equal society.
Lex Fridman (37:32.180)
Don't assume that when you create a social media site
Jeremi Suri (37:34.660)
that people are going to use it fairly
Lex Fridman (37:36.220)
and put only truthful things on it.
Jeremi Suri (37:38.900)
We shouldn't be surprised.
Lex Fridman (37:39.740)
That's where human nature comes in.
Lex Fridman (37:42.060)
But it's not trying to hold onto the past.
Lex Fridman (37:43.520)
It's trying to use the knowledge from the past
Jeremi Suri (37:45.020)
to better inform the changes today.
Lex Fridman (37:48.020)
I have to ask you about George Washington.
Jeremi Suri (37:50.620)
Maybe you have some insights.
Lex Fridman (37:52.680)
It seems like he's such a fascinating figure
Jeremi Suri (37:56.660)
in the context of the study of power.
Lex Fridman (37:59.860)
Because I kind of intuitively have come to internalize
Jeremi Suri (38:03.940)
the belief that power corrupts
Lex Fridman (38:06.120)
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Jeremi Suri (38:07.780)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (38:11.700)
And sort of like basically in thinking
Jeremi Suri (38:15.500)
that we cannot trust any one individual.
Lex Fridman (38:18.540)
I can't trust myself with power.
Jeremi Suri (38:20.800)
Nobody can trust anybody with power.
Lex Fridman (38:22.860)
We have to create institutions and structures
Jeremi Suri (38:24.880)
that prevent us from ever being able
Lex Fridman (38:27.300)
to amass absolute power.
Lex Fridman (38:29.220)
And yet, here's a guy, George Washington,
Lex Fridman (38:31.540)
who seems to, you can correct me if I'm wrong,
Lex Fridman (38:34.280)
but he seems to give away, relinquish power.
Lex Fridman (38:37.180)
It feels like George Washington did it
Jeremi Suri (38:40.580)
almost like the purest of ways,
Lex Fridman (38:43.260)
which is believes in this country,
Lex Fridman (38:46.620)
but he just believes he's not the person
Lex Fridman (38:48.660)
to carry it forward.
Lex Fridman (38:54.020)
What do you make of that?
Lex Fridman (38:55.460)
What kind of human does it take to give away that power?
Jeremi Suri (38:58.640)
Is there some hopeful message we can carry through
Lex Fridman (39:01.660)
to the future to elect leaders like that
Lex Fridman (39:05.140)
or to find friends to hang out with who are like that?
Lex Fridman (39:09.580)
Like what is that?
Lex Fridman (39:10.420)
How do you explain that?
Lex Fridman (39:11.340)
So it's actually the most important thing
Jeremi Suri (39:14.020)
about George Washington.
Lex Fridman (39:14.980)
It's the right thing to bring up.
Lex Fridman (39:16.660)
What the historian Gary Wills wrote years ago,
Lex Fridman (39:21.420)
I'm gonna quote him,
Jeremi Suri (39:22.260)
was that Washington recognized
Lex Fridman (39:23.940)
that sometimes you get more power by giving it up
Jeremi Suri (39:26.660)
than by trying to hold on to every last piece of it.
Lex Fridman (39:30.540)
Washington gives up power at the end of the revolution.
Jeremi Suri (39:32.740)
He's successfully carried
Lex Fridman (39:34.460)
through the revolutionary war aims.
Jeremi Suri (39:35.940)
He's commander of the revolutionary forces
Lex Fridman (39:38.460)
and he gives up his command.
Lex Fridman (39:40.020)
And then of course he's president
Lex Fridman (39:41.180)
and after two terms, he gives up his command.
Lex Fridman (39:43.340)
What is he doing?
Lex Fridman (39:44.180)
He's an ambitious person,
Lex Fridman (39:46.100)
but he's recognizing that the most important currency
Lex Fridman (39:49.540)
he has for power is his respected status
Jeremi Suri (39:53.620)
as a disinterested statesman.
Lex Fridman (39:56.580)
That's really what his power is.
Lex Fridman (39:58.580)
And how does he further that power?
Lex Fridman (40:00.500)
By showing that he doesn't crave power.
Lex Fridman (40:04.400)
So he was self aware.
Lex Fridman (40:05.620)
Very self aware of this
Lex Fridman (40:06.840)
and very sophisticated in understanding this.
Lex Fridman (40:10.300)
And I think there are many other leaders who recognize that.
Jeremi Suri (40:14.620)
You can look to, in some ways,
Lex Fridman (40:19.400)
the story of many of our presidents
Jeremi Suri (40:20.980)
who even before there is a two term limit
Lex Fridman (40:24.100)
in the constitution, leave after two terms.
Jeremi Suri (40:26.960)
They do that because they recognize
Lex Fridman (40:28.740)
that their power is the power of being a statesman,
Jeremi Suri (40:32.880)
not of being a president.
Lex Fridman (40:34.260)
I still wonder what kind of man it takes,
Lex Fridman (40:36.940)
what kind of human being it takes to do that.
Lex Fridman (40:39.560)
Because I've been studying Vladimir Putin quite a bit.
Jeremi Suri (40:43.940)
Right.
Lex Fridman (40:44.780)
And he's still, I believe he still has popular support
Jeremi Suri (40:51.500)
that that's not fully manipulated.
Lex Fridman (40:54.200)
Because I know a lot of people in Russia
Lex Fridman (40:55.940)
and actually almost the entirety of my family in Russia
Lex Fridman (40:59.100)
are big supporters of Putin.
Lex Fridman (41:01.140)
And everybody I talk to sort of,
Lex Fridman (41:03.460)
that's not just like on social media.
Jeremi Suri (41:05.460)
Right.
Lex Fridman (41:06.300)
Like the people that live in Russia
Jeremi Suri (41:08.140)
seem to support him.
Lex Fridman (41:10.980)
It feels like this will be in a George Washington way.
Jeremi Suri (41:16.540)
Now will be the time that Putin,
Lex Fridman (41:19.820)
just like Yeltsin, could relinquish power.
Lex Fridman (41:22.580)
And thereby, in the eyes of Russians,
Lex Fridman (41:25.860)
become, in like the long arc of history,
Jeremi Suri (41:29.580)
be viewed as a great leader.
Lex Fridman (41:31.620)
You look at the economic growth of Russia,
Jeremi Suri (41:34.500)
you look at the rescue from the collapse
Lex Fridman (41:36.220)
of the Soviet Union and Russia finding its footing,
Lex Fridman (41:39.460)
and then relinquishing power in a way that perhaps,
Lex Fridman (41:44.020)
if Russia succeeds, forms a truly democratic state.
Jeremi Suri (41:48.080)
This would be how Putin can become
Lex Fridman (41:49.940)
one of the great leaders in Russian history,
Jeremi Suri (41:52.660)
at least in the context of the 21st century.
Lex Fridman (41:55.860)
I think there are two reasons why this is really hard
Jeremi Suri (41:59.140)
for Putin and for others.
Lex Fridman (42:01.420)
One is the trappings of power are very seductive,
Jeremi Suri (42:05.500)
as you said before, they're corrupting.
Lex Fridman (42:07.280)
This is a real problem, right?
Jeremi Suri (42:09.380)
If it's in the business context,
Lex Fridman (42:10.500)
you don't wanna give up that private jet.
Jeremi Suri (42:13.060)
If it's in Putin's context,
Lex Fridman (42:14.500)
it's billions of dollars every year
Jeremi Suri (42:15.940)
that he's able to take for himself or give to his friends.
Lex Fridman (42:19.520)
It's not that he'll be poor if he leaves,
Jeremi Suri (42:20.780)
he'll still be rich,
Lex Fridman (42:21.940)
and he has billions of dollars stored away,
Lex Fridman (42:23.980)
but he won't be able to get the new billions.
Lex Fridman (42:26.460)
And so that's part of it,
Jeremi Suri (42:27.420)
the trappings of power are a big deal.
Lex Fridman (42:30.300)
And then second, in Putin's case in particular,
Jeremi Suri (42:32.660)
he has to be worried about what happens next.
Lex Fridman (42:34.960)
Will he be tried?
Lex Fridman (42:35.860)
Will someone try to come and arrest him?
Lex Fridman (42:38.260)
Will someone try to come and assassinate him?
Jeremi Suri (42:41.060)
Washington recognized that leaving early
Lex Fridman (42:44.900)
limited the corruption and limited the enemies that you made.
Lex Fridman (42:48.780)
And so it was a strategic choice.
Lex Fridman (42:50.740)
Putin is at this point bringing power too long.
Lex Fridman (42:53.100)
And this comes back to your core insight.
Lex Fridman (42:55.420)
It's a cliche, but it's true, power corrupts.
Jeremi Suri (42:57.960)
No one should have power for too long.
Lex Fridman (42:59.320)
This was one of the best insights
Jeremi Suri (43:00.860)
the founders of the United States had,
Lex Fridman (43:02.580)
that power was to be held for a short time
Jeremi Suri (43:04.740)
as a fiduciary responsibility,
Lex Fridman (43:07.160)
not as something you owned, right?
Jeremi Suri (43:08.800)
This is the problem with monarchy,
Lex Fridman (43:10.220)
with aristocracy, that you own power, right?
Jeremi Suri (43:12.820)
We don't own power, we're holding it in trust.
Lex Fridman (43:17.840)
Yeah, there's some probably like very specific
Jeremi Suri (43:22.060)
psychological study of how many years it takes
Lex Fridman (43:24.980)
for you to forget that you can't own power.
Jeremi Suri (43:28.600)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (43:29.440)
That could be a much more rigorous discussion
Jeremi Suri (43:32.680)
about the length of terms that are appropriate,
Lex Fridman (43:35.260)
but really there's an amount,
Jeremi Suri (43:37.260)
like Stalin had power for 30 years,
Lex Fridman (43:39.380)
like Putin is pushing those that many years already.
Jeremi Suri (43:44.100)
There's a certain point where you forget
Lex Fridman (43:46.160)
the person you were before you took the power.
Jeremi Suri (43:48.420)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (43:49.260)
You forget to be humble in the face of this responsibility
Lex Fridman (43:52.100)
and then there's no going back.
Lex Fridman (43:55.060)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (43:55.900)
And that's how dictators are born.
Lex Fridman (43:57.580)
That's how the evil like authoritarians become evil
Jeremi Suri (44:01.780)
or let's not use the word evil,
Lex Fridman (44:05.880)
but counterproductive, destructive
Jeremi Suri (44:08.600)
to the ideal that they initially
Lex Fridman (44:11.720)
probably came to office with.
Jeremi Suri (44:13.340)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (44:14.180)
That's right.
Jeremi Suri (44:15.020)
One of the core historical insights
Lex Fridman (44:16.360)
is people should move jobs.
Lex Fridman (44:19.960)
And this applies for CEOs probably.
Lex Fridman (44:21.720)
Absolutely.
Jeremi Suri (44:22.700)
They can go become CEO somewhere else,
Lex Fridman (44:24.320)
but don't stay CEO one place too long.
Lex Fridman (44:26.520)
It's a problem with startups, right?
Lex Fridman (44:27.860)
The founder, you can have a brilliant founder
Lex Fridman (44:29.880)
and that founder doesn't want to let go.
Lex Fridman (44:31.460)
Yeah.
Jeremi Suri (44:32.300)
Right, it's the same issue.
Lex Fridman (44:33.400)
At the same time, I mean, this is where Elon Musk
Lex Fridman (44:35.800)
and a few others like Larry Page and Sergey Brin
Lex Fridman (44:41.120)
that stayed for quite a long time
Lex Fridman (44:42.900)
and they actually were the beacon.
Lex Fridman (44:45.200)
They, on their shoulders, carried the dream of the company
Jeremi Suri (44:48.920)
where everybody else doubted.
Lex Fridman (44:51.120)
But that seems to be the exception versus the rule.
Jeremi Suri (44:54.660)
Well, and even Sergey, for example, has stepped back.
Lex Fridman (44:57.640)
He plays less of a day to day role
Lex Fridman (44:59.580)
and is not running Google in the way he did.
Lex Fridman (45:01.880)
But the interesting thing is he stepped back
Jeremi Suri (45:04.480)
in a quite tragic way from what I've seen,
Lex Fridman (45:07.640)
which is, I think Google's mission, initial mission
Jeremi Suri (45:12.400)
of making the world's information accessible to everybody
Lex Fridman (45:15.560)
is one of the most beautiful missions of any company
Jeremi Suri (45:17.880)
in the history of the world.
Lex Fridman (45:18.920)
I think it's what Google has done with the search engine
Lex Fridman (45:22.520)
and other efforts that are similar,
Lex Fridman (45:25.500)
like scanning a lot of books, it's just incredible.
Jeremi Suri (45:29.120)
It's similar to Wikipedia.
Lex Fridman (45:32.760)
But what he said was that it's not the same company anymore.
Lex Fridman (45:38.040)
And I know maybe I'm reading too much into it
Lex Fridman (45:41.020)
because it's more maybe practically saying
Jeremi Suri (45:43.480)
just the size of the company is much larger,
Lex Fridman (45:45.280)
the kind of leadership that's required.
Lex Fridman (45:47.120)
But at the same time, they changed the model
Lex Fridman (45:50.080)
from don't be evil to it's becoming corporatized
Lex Fridman (45:54.320)
and all those kinds of things and it's sad.
Lex Fridman (45:56.920)
There also are cycles, right?
Lex Fridman (45:59.280)
History is about cycles, right?
Lex Fridman (46:01.160)
There are cycles to life, there are cycles to organizations.
Jeremi Suri (46:05.040)
It's sad.
Lex Fridman (46:05.880)
I mean, it's sad Steve Jobs leaving Apple
Jeremi Suri (46:08.200)
by passing away, sad.
Lex Fridman (46:11.520)
You know, what the future of SpaceX and Tesla looks like
Jeremi Suri (46:14.760)
without Elon Musk is quite sad.
Lex Fridman (46:16.920)
It's very possible that those companies
Jeremi Suri (46:18.640)
become something very different.
Lex Fridman (46:20.360)
They become something much more like corporate
Lex Fridman (46:24.360)
and stale, yeah.
Lex Fridman (46:28.920)
So maybe most of the progress is made through cycles.
Jeremi Suri (46:31.680)
Maybe a new Elon Musk comes along
Lex Fridman (46:33.320)
and all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (46:35.500)
But it does seem that the American system of government
Lex Fridman (46:39.560)
has built into it the cycling that makes it effective
Lex Fridman (46:46.080)
and it makes it last very long.
Lex Fridman (46:47.760)
It lasts a very long time, right?
Jeremi Suri (46:50.040)
It continues to excel and lead the world.
Lex Fridman (46:53.340)
Sure, sure.
Lex Fridman (46:55.280)
And let's hope it continues to.
Lex Fridman (46:56.320)
No, I mean, we're into a third century
Lex Fridman (47:00.040)
and democracies on this scale rarely last that long.
Lex Fridman (47:03.680)
So that's a point of pride, but it also means
Jeremi Suri (47:07.320)
we need to be attentive to keep our house in order
Lex Fridman (47:09.240)
because it's not inevitable that this experiment continues.
Jeremi Suri (47:14.240)
Now it's important to meditate on that actually.
Lex Fridman (47:17.160)
You've mentioned that FDR, Franklin D. Roosevelt
Jeremi Suri (47:20.320)
is one of the great leaders in American history.
Lex Fridman (47:24.480)
Why is that?
Jeremi Suri (47:25.560)
Franklin Roosevelt had the power of empathy.
Lex Fridman (47:29.600)
No leader that I've ever studied or been around
Jeremi Suri (47:32.320)
or spent any time reading about was able to connect
Lex Fridman (47:35.480)
with people who were so different from himself
Jeremi Suri (47:37.800)
as Franklin Roosevelt.
Lex Fridman (47:39.200)
He came from the most elite family.
Jeremi Suri (47:40.960)
He never had to work for a paycheck in his life.
Lex Fridman (47:43.260)
When he was president, he was still collecting
Jeremi Suri (47:44.900)
an allowance from his mom.
Lex Fridman (47:46.640)
I mean, you couldn't be more elite than Franklin Roosevelt,
Lex Fridman (47:49.660)
but he authentically connected.
Lex Fridman (47:52.280)
This was not propaganda.
Jeremi Suri (47:54.440)
He was able to feel the pain and understand the lives
Lex Fridman (47:57.780)
of some of the most destitute Americans
Jeremi Suri (48:00.760)
in other parts of the country.
Lex Fridman (48:02.040)
It's interesting.
Lex Fridman (48:02.880)
So through one of the hardest economic periods
Lex Fridman (48:06.360)
of American history, he was able to feel the pain.
Jeremi Suri (48:08.480)
He was able to, the number of immigrants
Lex Fridman (48:10.520)
I read oral histories from or who have written themselves,
Jeremi Suri (48:13.240)
Saul Bellow is one example, the great novelist
Lex Fridman (48:15.200)
who talk about how as immigrants to the US,
Jeremi Suri (48:17.480)
Saul Bellow was a Russian Jewish immigrant.
Lex Fridman (48:19.360)
He said, growing up in Chicago, politicians were all trying
Jeremi Suri (48:21.600)
to steal from us.
Lex Fridman (48:22.440)
I didn't think any of them cared until I heard FDR.
Lex Fridman (48:25.200)
And I knew he spoke to me.
Lex Fridman (48:27.920)
And I think part of it was FDR really tried
Jeremi Suri (48:31.520)
to understand people.
Lex Fridman (48:32.480)
That's the first thing, he was humble enough
Jeremi Suri (48:33.680)
to try to do that.
Lex Fridman (48:34.960)
But second, he had a talent for that.
Lex Fridman (48:36.520)
And it's hard to know exactly what it was,
Lex Fridman (48:38.900)
but he had a talent for putting himself,
Jeremi Suri (48:40.600)
imagining himself in someone else's shoes.
Lex Fridman (48:43.740)
What stands out to you as important?
Jeremi Suri (48:48.200)
I mean, so he was, he went through the great depression.
Lex Fridman (48:51.720)
The, so the new deal, which some people criticize,
Jeremi Suri (48:54.880)
some people see, I mean, it's funny to look at some
Lex Fridman (48:57.760)
of these policies and their long ripple effects.
Lex Fridman (49:03.400)
But at the time, it's some of the most innovative policies
Lex Fridman (49:08.040)
in the history of America.
Jeremi Suri (49:09.320)
You could say they're ultimately not good for America,
Lex Fridman (49:12.300)
but they're nevertheless hold within them very rich
Lex Fridman (49:16.000)
and important lessons.
Lex Fridman (49:17.560)
But the new deal, obviously World War II,
Jeremi Suri (49:20.680)
that entire process, is there something that stands out
Lex Fridman (49:23.400)
to you as a particularly great moment that made FDR?
Jeremi Suri (49:30.080)
Yes, I think what FDR does from his first 100 days
Lex Fridman (49:34.860)
in office forward, and this begins with his fireside chats,
Jeremi Suri (49:38.840)
is he helps Americans to see that they're all in it together.
Lex Fridman (49:43.400)
And that's by creating hope and creating a sense
Jeremi Suri (49:46.720)
of common suffering and common mission.
Lex Fridman (49:49.320)
It's not offering simple solutions.
Jeremi Suri (49:51.200)
One of the lessons from FDR is,
Lex Fridman (49:52.960)
if you wanna bring people together,
Jeremi Suri (49:54.320)
don't offer a simple solution.
Lex Fridman (49:56.160)
Because as soon as I offer a simple solution,
Jeremi Suri (49:57.920)
I have people for it and against it.
Lex Fridman (50:00.080)
Don't do that.
Jeremi Suri (50:00.960)
Explain the problem, frame the problem,
Lex Fridman (50:04.040)
and then give people a mission.
Lex Fridman (50:05.940)
So Roosevelt's first radio address in March of 1933,
Lex Fridman (50:10.200)
the banking system is collapsing.
Lex Fridman (50:12.400)
And we can't imagine it, right?
Lex Fridman (50:13.600)
Banks were closing and you couldn't get your money out.
Lex Fridman (50:16.400)
Your life savings would be lost, right?
Lex Fridman (50:17.960)
We can't imagine that happening in our world today.
Jeremi Suri (50:20.440)
He comes on the radio, he takes five minutes
Lex Fridman (50:22.520)
to explain how banking works.
Lex Fridman (50:24.360)
Most people didn't understand how banking worked, right?
Lex Fridman (50:26.560)
They don't actually hold your money in a vault.
Jeremi Suri (50:28.400)
They lend it out to someone else.
Lex Fridman (50:30.320)
And then he explains why if you go and take your money
Jeremi Suri (50:33.520)
out of the bank and put it in your mattress,
Lex Fridman (50:35.000)
you're making it worse for yourself.
Jeremi Suri (50:36.840)
He explains this.
Lex Fridman (50:38.400)
And then he says, I don't have a solution,
Lex Fridman (50:40.960)
but here's what I'm gonna do.
Lex Fridman (50:42.240)
I'm gonna send in government officers to examine the banks
Lex Fridman (50:46.680)
and show you the books on the banks.
Lex Fridman (50:48.520)
And I want you to help me by going
Lex Fridman (50:50.520)
and putting your money back in the bank.
Lex Fridman (50:52.400)
We're all gonna do this together.
Jeremi Suri (50:54.160)
No simple solution, no ideological statement,
Lex Fridman (50:56.680)
but a sense of common mission.
Jeremi Suri (50:58.420)
Let's go out and do this together.
Lex Fridman (51:00.180)
When you read as I have so many of these oral histories
Lex Fridman (51:03.420)
and memoirs for people who lived through that period,
Lex Fridman (51:06.000)
many of them disagreed with some of his policies.
Jeremi Suri (51:08.400)
Many of them thought he was too close to Jews
Lex Fridman (51:10.260)
and they didn't like the fact he had a woman
Jeremi Suri (51:11.600)
in his cabinet and all that, but they felt he cared.
Lex Fridman (51:15.560)
And they felt they were part of some common mission.
Lex Fridman (51:18.300)
And when they talk about their experience fighting
Lex Fridman (51:20.520)
in World War II, whether in Europe or Asia,
Jeremi Suri (51:22.980)
it was that that prepared them.
Lex Fridman (51:24.380)
They knew what it meant to be an American
Jeremi Suri (51:26.040)
when they were over there.
Lex Fridman (51:27.960)
So that to me is a model of leadership.
Lex Fridman (51:30.560)
And I think that's as possible today as it's ever been.
Lex Fridman (51:33.520)
So you think it's possible, like I was going to ask this,
Jeremi Suri (51:37.280)
again, it may be a very shallow view,
Lex Fridman (51:41.760)
but it feels like this country is more divided
Jeremi Suri (51:45.200)
than it has been in recent history.
Lex Fridman (51:48.560)
Perhaps the social media and all those kinds of things
Jeremi Suri (51:51.520)
are merely revealing the division
Lex Fridman (51:54.300)
as opposed to creating the division.
Lex Fridman (51:56.360)
But is it possible to have a leader
Lex Fridman (52:00.080)
that unites in the same way that FDR did without,
Jeremi Suri (52:03.880)
well, we're living through a pandemic.
Lex Fridman (52:06.280)
This is already, so like, I was going to say
Jeremi Suri (52:09.420)
without suffering, but this is economic suffering.
Lex Fridman (52:12.560)
A huge number of people have lost their job.
Lex Fridman (52:14.240)
So is it possible to have, is there one a hunger?
Lex Fridman (52:18.260)
Is there a possibility to have an FDR style leader
Lex Fridman (52:21.320)
who unites?
Lex Fridman (52:22.920)
Yes, I think that is what President Biden is trying.
Jeremi Suri (52:25.680)
I'm not saying he'll succeed,
Lex Fridman (52:27.680)
but I think that's what he's trying to do.
Jeremi Suri (52:29.420)
The way you do this is you do not allow yourself
Lex Fridman (52:31.760)
to be captured by your opponents in Congress
Jeremi Suri (52:35.100)
or somewhere else.
Lex Fridman (52:36.080)
FDR had a lot of opponents in Congress.
Jeremi Suri (52:38.000)
He had a lot of opponents in politics,
Lex Fridman (52:39.960)
governors and others who didn't like him.
Jeremi Suri (52:41.840)
Herbert Hoover was still around
Lex Fridman (52:44.040)
and still accusing FDR of being a conspiratist
Lex Fridman (52:47.200)
and all these other things.
Lex Fridman (52:48.240)
So you don't allow yourself to be captured
Jeremi Suri (52:52.100)
by the leaders of the other side.
Lex Fridman (52:53.380)
You go over their heads to the people.
Lex Fridman (52:55.760)
And so today, the way to do this is to explain to people
Lex Fridman (52:59.340)
and empathize with the suffering and dislocation
Lex Fridman (53:01.700)
and difficulties they're dealing with
Lex Fridman (53:03.600)
and show that you're trying to help them.
Jeremi Suri (53:05.860)
Not an easy solution, not a simple statement,
Lex Fridman (53:08.760)
but here are some things we can all do together.
Jeremi Suri (53:11.340)
That's why I think infrastructure makes a lot of sense.
Lex Fridman (53:13.620)
It's what FDR invested into, right?
Jeremi Suri (53:15.960)
FDR built Hoover Dam.
Lex Fridman (53:17.400)
Hoover Dam turned the lights on for young Lyndon Johnson
Lex Fridman (53:20.600)
who grew up outside of Austin, right?
Lex Fridman (53:22.720)
FDR was the one who invested in road construction
Jeremi Suri (53:25.720)
that was then continued by Dwight Eisenhower,
Lex Fridman (53:28.480)
by a Republican with the interstate highway system, right?
Jeremi Suri (53:31.800)
FDR invested through the WPA in building thousands
Lex Fridman (53:34.480)
of schools in our country, planting trees.
Jeremi Suri (53:37.020)
That's the kind of work that can bring people together.
Lex Fridman (53:40.460)
You don't have to be a Democrat or a Republican to say,
Jeremi Suri (53:42.600)
you know what, we'd be a lot better off in my community
Lex Fridman (53:45.380)
if we had better infrastructure today.
Jeremi Suri (53:47.540)
I wanna be a part of that.
Lex Fridman (53:48.440)
Oh, well, maybe I can get a job doing that.
Jeremi Suri (53:49.960)
Maybe my company can benefit from that.
Lex Fridman (53:52.800)
You bring people together and that way
Jeremi Suri (53:54.560)
it becomes a common mission,
Lex Fridman (53:56.520)
even if we have different ideological positions.
Jeremi Suri (53:59.200)
Yeah, it's funny.
Lex Fridman (54:01.560)
When I first heard Joe Biden,
Jeremi Suri (54:05.100)
many years ago, I think he ran for president against Obama.
Lex Fridman (54:08.560)
That's correct.
Jeremi Suri (54:10.920)
Before I heard him speak, I really liked him.
Lex Fridman (54:13.800)
But once I heard him speak,
Jeremi Suri (54:15.560)
I started liking him less and less.
Lex Fridman (54:17.800)
And it speaks to something interesting,
Jeremi Suri (54:21.000)
where it's hard to put into words
Lex Fridman (54:22.680)
why you connect with people.
Jeremi Suri (54:24.940)
The empathy that you mentioned in FDR,
Lex Fridman (54:27.400)
you have these bad, pardon the French, motherfuckers
Jeremi Suri (54:31.240)
like Teddy Roosevelt that connect with you.
Lex Fridman (54:33.900)
There's something just powerful.
Lex Fridman (54:35.920)
And with Joe Biden, I wanna really like him.
Lex Fridman (54:39.000)
And there's something not quite there
Jeremi Suri (54:41.740)
where it feels like he doesn't quite know my pain,
Lex Fridman (54:45.500)
even though he, on paper, is exactly,
Jeremi Suri (54:49.600)
he knows the pain of the people
Lex Fridman (54:50.980)
and there's something not connecting.
Lex Fridman (54:52.440)
And it's hard to explain.
Lex Fridman (54:53.800)
It's hard to put into words.
Lex Fridman (54:55.160)
And it makes me not,
Lex Fridman (55:00.040)
as an engineer and scientist,
Jeremi Suri (55:01.680)
it makes me not feel good about presidencies
Lex Fridman (55:04.680)
because it makes me feel like it's more art than science.
Jeremi Suri (55:08.760)
It is an art.
Lex Fridman (55:09.600)
And I think it's exactly an art
Jeremi Suri (55:11.320)
for the reasons you laid out, it's aesthetic.
Lex Fridman (55:13.280)
It's about feeling, it's about emotion,
Jeremi Suri (55:14.840)
all the things that we can't engineer.
Lex Fridman (55:16.180)
We've tried for centuries to engineer emotion.
Jeremi Suri (55:18.960)
We're never gonna do it.
Lex Fridman (55:19.880)
Don't try it.
Jeremi Suri (55:20.720)
I'm a parent of teenagers.
Lex Fridman (55:21.680)
Don't even try to explain emotion.
Lex Fridman (55:24.080)
But you hit on the key point
Lex Fridman (55:26.120)
and the key challenge for Biden.
Jeremi Suri (55:27.160)
He's gotta find the right words.
Lex Fridman (55:28.860)
It's not finding the words to bullshit people.
Jeremi Suri (55:32.400)
It's finding the words to help express.
Lex Fridman (55:34.360)
We've all felt empowered and felt good.
Jeremi Suri (55:36.640)
When someone uses words
Lex Fridman (55:38.640)
that put into words what we're feeling,
Jeremi Suri (55:41.060)
that's what he needs.
Lex Fridman (55:41.900)
That's the job of a leader.
Lex Fridman (55:42.960)
And there's certain words,
Lex Fridman (55:44.560)
I haven't heard many politicians use those words,
Lex Fridman (55:47.020)
but there's certain words that make you forget
Lex Fridman (55:49.760)
that you're for immigration or against immigration.
Jeremi Suri (55:54.840)
Make you forget whether you're for wars and against wars.
Lex Fridman (55:57.880)
Make you forget about the bickering
Lex Fridman (56:00.600)
and somehow inspire you, elevate you
Lex Fridman (56:04.320)
to believe in the greatness that this country could be.
Jeremi Suri (56:07.040)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (56:08.200)
In that same way, the reason I moved to Austin,
Jeremi Suri (56:11.240)
it's funny to say, I just heard words
Lex Fridman (56:15.240)
from people, from friends,
Jeremi Suri (56:17.520)
where they're excited by the possibility of the future here.
Lex Fridman (56:21.840)
I wasn't thinking like, what's the right thing to do?
Jeremi Suri (56:24.760)
What's the strategic,
Lex Fridman (56:26.200)
cause I wanna launch a business.
Jeremi Suri (56:28.080)
There's a lot of arguments for San Francisco
Lex Fridman (56:30.040)
or maybe staying in Boston in my case,
Lex Fridman (56:32.360)
but there's this excitement that was beyond reason.
Lex Fridman (56:37.080)
That was emotional.
Jeremi Suri (56:38.040)
Yes, yes.
Lex Fridman (56:38.880)
And that's what it seems like.
Jeremi Suri (56:40.800)
That's what builds, that's what great leaders do,
Lex Fridman (56:43.840)
but that's what builds countries.
Jeremi Suri (56:45.200)
That's what builds great businesses.
Lex Fridman (56:47.720)
That's right.
Lex Fridman (56:48.560)
And it's what people say about Austin,
Lex Fridman (56:50.160)
for example, all the time.
Jeremi Suri (56:51.640)
A talented people who come here like yourself.
Lex Fridman (56:54.080)
And here's the interesting thing.
Jeremi Suri (56:55.240)
No one person creates that.
Lex Fridman (56:56.760)
The words emerge.
Lex Fridman (56:58.200)
And part of what FDR understood,
Lex Fridman (57:00.240)
you've got to find the words out there and use them.
Jeremi Suri (57:03.200)
You don't have to be the creator of them.
Lex Fridman (57:05.880)
Just as the great painter doesn't invent the painting,
Jeremi Suri (57:08.200)
they're taking things from others.
Lex Fridman (57:10.320)
As a small aside,
Jeremi Suri (57:11.640)
is there something you could say about FDR
Lex Fridman (57:15.080)
and Hitler?
Jeremi Suri (57:19.240)
I constantly tried to think,
Lex Fridman (57:21.480)
can this person, can this moment in history
Lex Fridman (57:23.880)
have been circumvented, prevented?
Lex Fridman (57:29.320)
Can Hitler have been stopped?
Jeremi Suri (57:31.600)
Can some of the atrocities from my own family
Lex Fridman (57:34.800)
that my grandparents had to live through
Jeremi Suri (57:37.560)
the starvation in the Soviet Union,
Lex Fridman (57:39.840)
so the thing that people don't often talk about
Jeremi Suri (57:42.400)
is the atrocities committed by Stalin and his own people.
Lex Fridman (57:46.840)
It feels like here's this great leader, FDR,
Jeremi Suri (57:53.560)
that had the chance to have an impact on the world
Lex Fridman (57:59.320)
that he already probably had a great positive impact,
Lex Fridman (58:05.320)
but had a chance to stop maybe World War II
Lex Fridman (58:09.920)
or stop some of the evils.
Jeremi Suri (58:12.040)
When you look at how weak Hitler was
Lex Fridman (58:14.400)
from much of the 30s relative to militarily,
Jeremi Suri (58:17.760)
relative to everything else,
Lex Fridman (58:19.560)
how many people could have done a lot to stop him?
Lex Fridman (58:23.320)
And FDR in particular didn't.
Lex Fridman (58:26.600)
He tried to play, not pacify,
Lex Fridman (58:31.040)
but basically do diplomacy and let Germany do Germany,
Lex Fridman (58:36.760)
let Europe do Europe, and focus on America.
Jeremi Suri (58:40.080)
Is there something you would,
Lex Fridman (58:42.240)
would you hold his feet to the fire on this?
Jeremi Suri (58:44.640)
Or is it very difficult from the perspective of FDR
Lex Fridman (58:47.560)
to have known what was coming?
Jeremi Suri (58:50.440)
I think FDR had a sense of what was coming,
Lex Fridman (58:52.600)
not quite the enormity of what Hitler was doing
Lex Fridman (58:55.080)
and not quite the enormity of what the Holocaust became.
Lex Fridman (58:57.360)
I also lost relatives in the Holocaust.
Lex Fridman (59:01.640)
And part of that was beyond the imagination of human beings.
Lex Fridman (59:04.440)
But it's clear in his papers that as early as 1934,
Jeremi Suri (59:08.640)
people he respected, who he knew well,
Lex Fridman (59:10.360)
told him that Hitler was very dangerous.
Jeremi Suri (59:12.320)
They also thought Hitler was crazy, that he was a lunatic.
Lex Fridman (59:15.200)
Hamilton Fish Armstrong, who was a friend of Roosevelt's,
Jeremi Suri (59:18.840)
who was actually the Council on Foreign Relations
Lex Fridman (59:20.400)
in New York, had a meeting with Hitler in 1934.
Jeremi Suri (59:22.520)
I remember reading the account of this.
Lex Fridman (59:24.920)
And he basically said to FDR,
Jeremi Suri (59:25.960)
this man is gonna cause a war.
Lex Fridman (59:27.520)
He's gonna cause a lot of damage.
Jeremi Suri (59:28.680)
Again, they didn't know quite the scale.
Lex Fridman (59:30.600)
So they saw this coming.
Jeremi Suri (59:32.320)
They saw this coming.
Lex Fridman (59:33.520)
FDR had two problems.
Jeremi Suri (59:34.960)
First, he had an American public that was deeply isolationist.
Lex Fridman (59:38.720)
The opposite of the problem in a sense
Jeremi Suri (59:40.280)
that we were talking about before.
Lex Fridman (59:41.480)
If we're an over militarized society,
Jeremi Suri (59:43.600)
now we were a deeply isolationist society in the 1930s.
Lex Fridman (59:47.840)
The depression reinforced that.
Jeremi Suri (59:49.520)
FDR actually had to break the law in the late 30s
Lex Fridman (59:52.160)
to support the allies.
Lex Fridman (59:53.800)
So it was very hard to move the country in that direction,
Lex Fridman (59:57.360)
especially when he had this program at home,
Jeremi Suri (59:59.920)
the New Deal, that he didn't wanna jeopardize
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