Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine
政治与社会历史与文明音乐与艺术技术与编程生物与进化
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🎙️ 完整对话（2427 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.200)
If you could talk to Vladimir Putin once again now,
如果你现在能再次与弗拉基米尔·普京交谈的话
Lex Fridman (00:04.440)
what kind of things would you talk about here?
你会在这里谈论什么样的事情？
Lex Fridman (00:08.460)
What kind of questions would you ask?
你会问什么样的问题？
Lex Fridman (00:12.740)
The following is a conversation with Oliver Stone.
以下是与奥利弗·斯通的对话。
Lex Fridman (00:15.240)
He's one of the greatest filmmakers of all time
他是有史以来最伟大的电影制片人之一
Oliver Stone (00:17.720)
with three Oscar wins and 11 Oscar nominations.
荣获 3 项奥斯卡奖和 11 项奥斯卡提名。
Lex Fridman (00:21.320)
His films tell stories of war and power,
他的电影讲述了战争和权力的故事，
Oliver Stone (00:24.840)
fearlessly and often controversially,
无所畏惧且经常引起争议，
Lex Fridman (00:27.240)
shining a light on the dark parts
照亮黑暗的部分
Oliver Stone (00:28.840)
of American and global history.
美国和全球历史。
Lex Fridman (00:31.400)
His films include Platoon, Wall Street,
他的电影包括《野战排》、《华尔街》、
Oliver Stone (00:34.160)
Born on the 4th of July, Scarface, JFK,
7月4日出生，疤面煞星，肯尼迪，
Lex Fridman (00:37.680)
Nixon, Alexander, W, Snowden,
尼克松、亚历山大、W、斯诺登、
Lex Fridman (00:41.140)
and documentaries where he has interviewed
以及他采访过的纪录片
Lex Fridman (00:43.760)
some of the most powerful and consequential people
一些最有权势、最有影响力的人
Oliver Stone (00:46.420)
in the world, including Fidel Castro,
在世界各地，包括菲德尔·卡斯特罗，
Lex Fridman (00:49.040)
Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Putin.
乌戈·查韦斯和弗拉基米尔·普京。
Lex Fridman (00:52.720)
And in this conversation, Oliver and I
在这次谈话中，奥利弗和我
Lex Fridman (00:54.840)
mostly focus our discussion on Vladimir Putin,
我们的讨论主要集中在弗拉基米尔·普京，
Oliver Stone (00:57.560)
Russia, and the war in Ukraine.
俄罗斯和乌克兰战争。
Lex Fridman (01:00.720)
My goal with these conversations
Oliver Stone (01:02.300)
is to understand the human being before me,
Lex Fridman (01:04.840)
to understand not just what they think,
Lex Fridman (01:07.280)
but how they think, to steel man their ideas,
Lex Fridman (01:10.240)
and to steel man the devil's advocate,
Oliver Stone (01:12.800)
all in service of understanding, not derision.
Lex Fridman (01:16.600)
I have done this poorly in the past.
Oliver Stone (01:18.720)
I'm still struggling with this,
Lex Fridman (01:20.560)
but I'm working hard to do better.
Oliver Stone (01:23.880)
I believe the moment we draw lines
Lex Fridman (01:25.760)
between good people and evil people
Oliver Stone (01:28.800)
will lose our ability to see that we're all one people
Lex Fridman (01:32.840)
in the most fundamental of ways,
Lex Fridman (01:35.160)
and will lose track of the deep truth
Lex Fridman (01:37.440)
expressed by the old Solzhenitsyn line
Oliver Stone (01:40.240)
that I return to time and time again,
Lex Fridman (01:43.360)
that the line between good and evil
Oliver Stone (01:45.460)
runs through the heart of every man.
Lex Fridman (01:48.720)
Oliver Stone has a perspective
Oliver Stone (01:50.820)
that he extensively documents
Lex Fridman (01:52.520)
in his powerful controversial series,
Oliver Stone (01:54.720)
The Untold History of the United States,
Lex Fridman (01:57.680)
that imperialism and the military industrial complex
Oliver Stone (02:01.800)
paved the path to absolute power,
Lex Fridman (02:04.080)
and thus corrupt the minds of the leaders
Lex Fridman (02:06.180)
and institutions that wield it.
Lex Fridman (02:08.840)
From this perspective, the way out
Oliver Stone (02:10.920)
of the humanitarian crisis and human suffering in Ukraine,
Lex Fridman (02:14.600)
and the way out from the pull
Oliver Stone (02:16.600)
of the beating drums of nuclear war
Lex Fridman (02:18.520)
is not simple to understand,
Lex Fridman (02:20.600)
but we must, because all of humanity hangs in the balance.
Lex Fridman (02:25.520)
I will talk to many people who seek to understand
Oliver Stone (02:27.720)
the way out of this growing catastrophe,
Lex Fridman (02:30.060)
including to historians, to leaders,
Lex Fridman (02:32.720)
and perhaps most importantly,
Lex Fridman (02:34.440)
to people on the ground in Ukraine and Russia,
Oliver Stone (02:37.640)
not just about war and suffering,
Lex Fridman (02:39.880)
but about life, friendship, family, love, and hope.
Oliver Stone (02:44.760)
This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
Lex Fridman (02:46.760)
To support it, please check out our sponsors
Oliver Stone (02:48.960)
in the description, and now, dear friends,
Lex Fridman (02:51.880)
here's Oliver Stone.
Oliver Stone (02:54.500)
You're working on a documentary now about nuclear energy.
Lex Fridman (02:58.680)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (02:59.520)
So it's interesting to talk about this.
Lex Fridman (03:01.760)
Energy is such a big part of the world,
Oliver Stone (03:04.540)
about geopolitics of the world,
Lex Fridman (03:06.440)
about the way the world is.
Lex Fridman (03:08.300)
What do you think is the role of nuclear energy
Lex Fridman (03:10.440)
in the 21st century?
Oliver Stone (03:11.400)
Good question, and first of all,
Lex Fridman (03:12.640)
obviously everyone's talking about climate change, right?
Lex Fridman (03:14.960)
So here I wake up to that a few years ago,
Lex Fridman (03:17.760)
and clearly were concerned.
Oliver Stone (03:21.920)
I picked up a book by Josh Goldstein
Lex Fridman (03:25.360)
and his coauthor, who's Swedish.
Oliver Stone (03:27.760)
Those two wrote a book called A Bright Future.
Lex Fridman (03:30.280)
It came out a few years ago, and I lapped it up.
Oliver Stone (03:33.680)
It was a book, fact based, clear,
Lex Fridman (03:37.980)
not too long, and not too technical,
Lex Fridman (03:40.640)
and it was very clear that they were in favor
Lex Fridman (03:44.040)
of all kinds of renewables, renewable energy, yes.
Oliver Stone (03:49.320)
They made it very clear how dangerous oil
Lex Fridman (03:53.680)
and gas were, methane,
Lex Fridman (03:56.960)
and made it very clear to the layman like me,
Lex Fridman (03:59.840)
and at the same time said that these renewables
Oliver Stone (04:02.900)
could work so far, but the gap is enormous
Lex Fridman (04:06.440)
as to how much electricity the world is gonna need
Oliver Stone (04:10.120)
in 2050 and beyond, two, three, four times.
Lex Fridman (04:14.360)
We don't even know the damage, but we have India,
Oliver Stone (04:16.640)
we have China, we have Africa, we have Asia
Lex Fridman (04:19.380)
coming onto the scene wanting more and more electricity.
Lex Fridman (04:22.920)
So they address the problem as a global one,
Lex Fridman (04:25.200)
not just as often in the United States.
Oliver Stone (04:27.560)
You get the ethnocentric United States point of view
Lex Fridman (04:31.000)
that we know we're doing well, blah, blah, blah.
Oliver Stone (04:34.200)
We're not doing well, but we sell that
Lex Fridman (04:37.080)
to people that we're comfortable.
Oliver Stone (04:38.440)
We spend more energy than anybody,
Lex Fridman (04:40.560)
this country per capita, than anybody,
Lex Fridman (04:44.200)
and at the same time, we don't seem to understand
Lex Fridman (04:47.960)
the global picture, so that's what they did,
Lex Fridman (04:49.760)
and they made me very worried.
Lex Fridman (04:50.760)
So the only way to close that gap,
Oliver Stone (04:52.700)
the only way in their mind is nuclear energy,
Lex Fridman (04:55.800)
and talking about a gap of building a huge amount
Oliver Stone (04:58.840)
of reactors over the next 30 years,
Lex Fridman (05:01.680)
and starting now, they make that point over and over again.
Lex Fridman (05:08.600)
So obviously this country, the United States,
Lex Fridman (05:11.840)
is not gonna go in that direction,
Oliver Stone (05:13.240)
because it just is incapable of having that kind of will,
Lex Fridman (05:17.640)
political will, and fear is a huge factor,
Lex Fridman (05:20.520)
and still a lot of shibboleths, a lot of myths
Lex Fridman (05:25.240)
about nuclear energy have confused
Lex Fridman (05:29.520)
and confounded the landscape.
Lex Fridman (05:30.920)
The environmentalists have played a huge role
Oliver Stone (05:33.680)
in doing good things, many good things,
Lex Fridman (05:36.080)
but also confusing and confounding the landscape,
Lex Fridman (05:39.360)
and making accusations against nuclear energy
Lex Fridman (05:41.520)
that were exaggerated.
Lex Fridman (05:45.280)
So taking all these things into consideration,
Lex Fridman (05:48.360)
we set about making this documentary,
Oliver Stone (05:50.100)
which is about finished now, almost finishing.
Lex Fridman (05:53.000)
It's an hour and 40 minutes, and that was a hard part,
Oliver Stone (05:56.080)
getting it down from about three and a half hours
Lex Fridman (05:58.900)
to about this, something more manageable,
Lex Fridman (06:00.880)
and is it interviews?
Lex Fridman (06:02.760)
It's interviews, among others,
Lex Fridman (06:04.440)
but essentially we went to Russia, we went to France,
Lex Fridman (06:07.200)
which is the most, perhaps, advanced nuclear country
Oliver Stone (06:10.560)
in the world, Russia, and the United States.
Lex Fridman (06:14.180)
We went to the Idaho laboratory,
Lex Fridman (06:16.720)
and talked to the scientists there,
Lex Fridman (06:19.840)
as well as the Department of Energy people
Oliver Stone (06:22.640)
that are handling this.
Lex Fridman (06:23.680)
Idaho is one of the experimental labs,
Oliver Stone (06:25.280)
the United States is probably one of the most advanced,
Lex Fridman (06:27.320)
and they're doing a lot of advanced nuclear there.
Oliver Stone (06:29.960)
We also, we studied, well, Russia gave us a lot of insight.
Lex Fridman (06:36.560)
We're very cooperative,
Oliver Stone (06:37.680)
because they have some of the most advanced nuclear,
Lex Fridman (06:41.080)
actually the probably most advanced nuclear reactor
Oliver Stone (06:43.180)
in the world, at Beloyarsk, at the Ural Mountains.
Lex Fridman (06:46.440)
So we did an investigation there,
Lex Fridman (06:49.740)
and in France they have some very advanced nuclear reactors
Lex Fridman (06:55.400)
and they're building, and now they're building again.
Oliver Stone (06:58.400)
The Green Party came into power,
Lex Fridman (07:01.240)
just not into power, but became a factor in France,
Lex Fridman (07:04.600)
and there was a motion when Hollande was president,
Lex Fridman (07:07.200)
they started to move away from it.
Oliver Stone (07:08.920)
Actually, they were beginning to just abandon,
Lex Fridman (07:13.360)
they let, not complete, in other words,
Oliver Stone (07:17.080)
close down some of the nuclear reactors,
Lex Fridman (07:18.640)
there was talk of that, but thank God,
Oliver Stone (07:20.920)
France did not do that, and Macron came in
Lex Fridman (07:23.720)
and recently reversed it, reversed it,
Lex Fridman (07:27.000)
and they're building as fast as they can now,
Lex Fridman (07:28.880)
especially with the Ukraine war going on,
Oliver Stone (07:32.200)
there's an awareness that Russia will not be providing,
Lex Fridman (07:36.640)
may not be providing the energy Europe needs.
Oliver Stone (07:39.840)
So, and then China is the other one too,
Lex Fridman (07:42.440)
that's the other factor, I'm talking about the big boys.
Oliver Stone (07:45.640)
They have, doing tremendous work and fast,
Lex Fridman (07:48.760)
which is very hopeful, but of course,
Oliver Stone (07:51.040)
China is building in all directions at once,
Lex Fridman (07:53.940)
coal continues to be huge in China,
Lex Fridman (07:57.120)
and methane too,
Lex Fridman (08:01.920)
but basically coal, coal in India, in China,
Oliver Stone (08:05.240)
have the biggest users of coal,
Lex Fridman (08:08.840)
and as you know, Germany went back to coal a few years ago,
Lex Fridman (08:13.120)
so all these factors, it's a fascinating picture globally,
Lex Fridman (08:16.000)
so we try to achieve a consensus that where nuclear can work
Lex Fridman (08:20.840)
and where it will be working,
Lex Fridman (08:22.760)
where it will be used more and more,
Oliver Stone (08:24.960)
the question is how much carbon dioxide China
Lex Fridman (08:28.400)
and Russia will be putting out.
Oliver Stone (08:30.840)
France is the only one that's not putting it out.
Lex Fridman (08:33.240)
The United States has not changed,
Oliver Stone (08:34.680)
with all the talk and all the nonsense about renewables
Lex Fridman (08:38.640)
and the new lifestyle and all this,
Oliver Stone (08:41.400)
it's great for your guilt complex,
Lex Fridman (08:43.320)
but it doesn't do anything for the total accumulation
Oliver Stone (08:47.240)
of carbon dioxide in the world.
Lex Fridman (08:48.680)
Who's gonna lead the way on nuclear, do you think?
Oliver Stone (08:51.120)
You mentioned Russia, France, China, United States,
Lex Fridman (08:54.080)
who's gonna lead?
Oliver Stone (08:54.920)
Yeah, I don't think it's gonna be
Lex Fridman (08:56.120)
a United Nations kind of thing,
Oliver Stone (08:58.240)
because the world doesn't seem capable of uniting.
Lex Fridman (09:01.040)
We go to these conferences, Kyoto,
Lex Fridman (09:03.880)
and we talk and we agree,
Lex Fridman (09:06.840)
but then we don't actually enforce,
Lex Fridman (09:08.400)
so I don't think it can happen that way.
Lex Fridman (09:09.740)
I think it's gonna be an individual race with countries.
Oliver Stone (09:13.120)
They're gonna just do it for their own self interest,
Lex Fridman (09:16.200)
like China's doing it.
Oliver Stone (09:18.140)
China, the thing is, if it works, and I'm praying
Lex Fridman (09:21.480)
that it will really work on a big scale,
Oliver Stone (09:23.680)
China will back away from coal naturally.
Lex Fridman (09:26.240)
The same thing will be true of India.
Oliver Stone (09:27.960)
They will see the benefits, because if you go to India,
Lex Fridman (09:31.240)
you see the cities, the pollution.
Oliver Stone (09:33.040)
You walk around in that stuff, and you get,
Lex Fridman (09:35.520)
it's not, there's no hope in this, and you sense it.
Lex Fridman (09:39.040)
So people will move in this direction naturally,
Lex Fridman (09:41.760)
because nuclear is clean energy.
Lex Fridman (09:44.840)
And the amount of casualties of nuclear
Lex Fridman (09:48.600)
is the lowest on the industrial scale
Oliver Stone (09:50.800)
for energy producing, from coal down to oil, everything.
Lex Fridman (09:54.360)
The lowest casualty rate, very lowest,
Oliver Stone (09:57.680)
.002 or something, is nuclear.
Lex Fridman (10:00.880)
So not that many people have died from nuclear.
Oliver Stone (10:04.120)
Not that many, I think 50 people at Chernobyl,
Lex Fridman (10:07.600)
which was the worst accident.
Oliver Stone (10:09.640)
Nobody had died at Fukushima.
Lex Fridman (10:12.160)
Nobody died at Three Mile Island,
Lex Fridman (10:13.820)
and that's what you hear all over and over again,
Lex Fridman (10:16.440)
these accidents.
Oliver Stone (10:19.520)
The environmentalists have sold us the idea
Lex Fridman (10:22.480)
that they're dangerous.
Lex Fridman (10:24.960)
And it's, a lot of environmentalists, thank God,
Lex Fridman (10:27.560)
are changing, they've come off that routine,
Lex Fridman (10:29.680)
and they've saying, this, we were wrong.
Lex Fridman (10:32.400)
We've done a lot of good work.
Oliver Stone (10:34.040)
Greenpeace did a lot of good work.
Lex Fridman (10:35.480)
Whale, whales, saving this, saving that.
Lex Fridman (10:38.560)
But they admit themselves, not they don't,
Lex Fridman (10:41.480)
but people who have been in the organization
Oliver Stone (10:44.360)
have said, we were wrong.
Lex Fridman (10:46.680)
In 1956, we show the articles
Oliver Stone (10:51.920)
in the New York Times that came out,
Lex Fridman (10:54.080)
the Rockefeller Foundation,
Oliver Stone (10:56.280)
which of course is a big producer of oil,
Lex Fridman (11:00.360)
the Rockefeller family, and the foundation came out
Oliver Stone (11:05.960)
with a study, which was weighted.
Lex Fridman (11:09.960)
They tipped the scale, put a thumb on the scale,
Lex Fridman (11:13.360)
but it was a scientific expose of radiation
Lex Fridman (11:17.440)
in the study that came out, printed in the New York Times,
Oliver Stone (11:22.220)
because the New York Times publisher, Salzburger,
Lex Fridman (11:24.720)
was on their board, he was one of the board members.
Lex Fridman (11:28.080)
So they got a lot of strong publicity
Lex Fridman (11:32.840)
condemning radiation, which killed,
Oliver Stone (11:36.320)
started the process of doubting nuclear energy.
Lex Fridman (11:39.040)
The radiation levels that they pointed out
Oliver Stone (11:40.920)
were very minor, and of course,
Lex Fridman (11:43.400)
if you go into a scientific analysis of this now
Oliver Stone (11:46.200)
with what we know, it's just not true.
Lex Fridman (11:49.120)
But it tilted the scale back in the 50s, 60s,
Lex Fridman (11:52.280)
and started the questioning the nuclear business.
Lex Fridman (11:56.520)
Do you think that was malevolence or incompetence?
Oliver Stone (11:59.000)
No, I think it was competition.
Lex Fridman (12:01.200)
I don't think it was conspiracy
Oliver Stone (12:02.480)
as much as it was essentially,
Lex Fridman (12:04.080)
we don't want this, nuclear energy's gonna end
Oliver Stone (12:07.160)
the dominance of oil, absolutely, and it will.
Lex Fridman (12:10.640)
And it will anyway, because it's the only sane way
Oliver Stone (12:13.080)
for the world to proceed.
Lex Fridman (12:14.480)
But the world will have to learn through adversity.
Lex Fridman (12:20.640)
So in other words, this situation could get worse,
Lex Fridman (12:23.560)
much worse, and certain countries
Oliver Stone (12:25.920)
are just gonna have to adapt, like we always do.
Lex Fridman (12:28.240)
When things become too hard, you've got to go,
Oliver Stone (12:30.960)
you have to change your thinking.
Lex Fridman (12:33.400)
And humans are pretty good at that.
Oliver Stone (12:35.200)
Yes, talking about human nature, they're very adept
Lex Fridman (12:37.920)
at that, Germany, for example.
Oliver Stone (12:40.080)
I mean, they were, when the Fukushima happened,
Lex Fridman (12:42.480)
they went out of the nuclear business.
Oliver Stone (12:44.080)
That was shocking to me.
Lex Fridman (12:46.660)
They just pulled out and they destroyed,
Oliver Stone (12:49.320)
destructed several of their nuclear reactors
Lex Fridman (12:51.440)
who were still functioning, and put up coal,
Oliver Stone (12:54.920)
or yeah, put up coal and oil, replaced it.
Lex Fridman (12:59.360)
And as a result, Germany drifted into this place
Oliver Stone (13:03.560)
next to France, their electricity bills went up,
Lex Fridman (13:07.160)
and France stayed the same.
Oliver Stone (13:09.500)
They don't have that, they have a different system
Lex Fridman (13:11.240)
in Europe, but more or less, no question that France
Oliver Stone (13:13.760)
was doing a lot better than Germany.
Lex Fridman (13:15.840)
And now, with this Ukraine issue,
Oliver Stone (13:18.880)
it's a very interesting fulcrum point,
Lex Fridman (13:20.840)
whether Germany is, what direction they're gonna go now.
Lex Fridman (13:25.680)
How can they, how can they keep going with coal?
Lex Fridman (13:29.240)
They just can't.
Lex Fridman (13:30.080)
What's the connection between oil, coal, nuclear, and war?
Lex Fridman (13:36.640)
Sort of energy and conflict.
Oliver Stone (13:41.560)
When you look at the 21st century,
Lex Fridman (13:43.280)
when you were doing this documentary,
Oliver Stone (13:45.160)
were you thinking of nuclear as a way to power the world,
Lex Fridman (13:48.200)
but is it also to avoid conflict over resources?
Oliver Stone (13:53.660)
Is there some aspect to energy being a source of conflict
Lex Fridman (13:57.120)
that we're trying to avoid?
Oliver Stone (14:04.360)
I don't have the energy, the history of energy
Lex Fridman (14:06.960)
at my fingertips, and it's a very long history here.
Lex Fridman (14:12.000)
But I would say, apparently not.
Lex Fridman (14:15.520)
It does seem that individually, each country
Oliver Stone (14:18.080)
can answer its needs by building.
Lex Fridman (14:21.320)
And up until now, we haven't had conflict,
Oliver Stone (14:24.560)
except in this issue of Russia supplying Europe.
Lex Fridman (14:31.040)
Obviously, the pipeline, Nord Stream 2 has been closed,
Lex Fridman (14:34.880)
and Nord Stream 1 is also probably gonna be phased out.
Lex Fridman (14:38.840)
And the concept of Russia supplying gas to Europe
Oliver Stone (14:44.360)
is now up in the air, and who knows what's gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (14:47.480)
I just don't see how Europe can get away
Oliver Stone (14:50.800)
from using Russian gas.
Lex Fridman (14:53.880)
But Russian gas is not the solution,
Oliver Stone (14:55.460)
because it's methane, too, and it goes up
Lex Fridman (14:57.440)
into the atmosphere.
Oliver Stone (14:58.780)
Methane, in the short term, is worse than coal, worse.
Lex Fridman (15:04.640)
There's all kinds of charts we show in the film.
Oliver Stone (15:06.760)
We try not to be too overfactual,
Lex Fridman (15:09.320)
but methane is not the answer.
Oliver Stone (15:12.940)
It's a short term answer.
Lex Fridman (15:18.580)
Will countries go to war over energy is a question
Oliver Stone (15:22.040)
that I'm trying to think of all the wars that happened.
Lex Fridman (15:25.800)
You could say Germany, of course, during World War II
Oliver Stone (15:28.160)
needed oil very badly, and it dictated their strategy
Lex Fridman (15:32.480)
with Romania, et cetera, and getting the oil fields open.
Lex Fridman (15:36.800)
But I haven't thought that one through.
Lex Fridman (15:40.720)
I'd have to make a documentary on it
Oliver Stone (15:42.240)
to really understand how energy and war interface.
Lex Fridman (15:47.720)
It's always part of the calculation,
Lex Fridman (15:49.180)
but it's a question of how much.
Lex Fridman (15:51.600)
Right, that's the question.
Oliver Stone (15:53.320)
I just have to ask, because you mentioned
Lex Fridman (15:55.000)
your mom was from France, you've traveled
Oliver Stone (15:57.480)
for this documentary, and you traveled in general
Lex Fridman (16:00.280)
throughout the world in Russia, Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (16:04.760)
What are the defining characteristics of these cultures?
Lex Fridman (16:07.820)
Let's go with Russia.
Lex Fridman (16:09.480)
So as I told you, I'm half Ukrainian, half Russian.
Lex Fridman (16:14.520)
I came from that part of the world.
Lex Fridman (16:16.280)
What are some interesting, beautiful aspects
Lex Fridman (16:18.840)
of the culture of Russia and Ukraine?
Oliver Stone (16:21.600)
I can't really speak honestly of Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (16:23.760)
I was there only in 1983 when I visited
Oliver Stone (16:28.080)
the Soviet Union under the communism,
Lex Fridman (16:30.560)
and Kiev was beautiful and was one of the nicer places
Oliver Stone (16:34.080)
I went, but they were very much stultified
Lex Fridman (16:38.020)
by the communist system, they all were.
Oliver Stone (16:41.260)
The best places to visit in Russia were always in the South,
Lex Fridman (16:43.760)
whether Georgia or the Muslim countries,
Oliver Stone (16:49.120)
it was always a better culture in terms of comfort.
Lex Fridman (16:52.520)
But communism was rough, and that was the end of it,
Oliver Stone (16:55.120)
pretty much Brezhnev regime, and then Andropov.
Lex Fridman (16:58.720)
Gorbachev was three years in the future when I was there.
Lex Fridman (17:01.840)
So I can't talk about Ukraine, and they've not been friendly
Lex Fridman (17:05.680)
to me since ISIS, of course, since I made
Oliver Stone (17:08.160)
the Putin interviews, you know, Ukraine has banned me,
Lex Fridman (17:11.640)
I believe, they've been very tough on people
Oliver Stone (17:14.320)
who are critical.
Lex Fridman (17:16.200)
I think the Russian people have been very special to me,
Lex Fridman (17:19.520)
and perhaps because of my European upbringing,
Lex Fridman (17:22.460)
but I enjoy talking to them, I find them very open,
Oliver Stone (17:25.000)
very generous, and they appreciate support,
Lex Fridman (17:29.320)
they appreciate people who say, you know,
Oliver Stone (17:31.640)
I understand why your government is doing this
Lex Fridman (17:33.840)
or this or this, I've tried to stay open minded
Lex Fridman (17:36.720)
and listen to both sides.
Lex Fridman (17:39.140)
The thing that I have seen as an American is, of course,
Oliver Stone (17:42.040)
this American enmity towards Russia from the very beginning.
Lex Fridman (17:46.520)
I grew up in 1940, 46, I was born in the 50s,
Oliver Stone (17:50.640)
it was so anti Russian, they were everywhere,
Lex Fridman (17:54.720)
they were in our schools, they were in our State Department,
Oliver Stone (17:57.080)
they were spying on us, they were stealing the country
Lex Fridman (18:01.600)
from us, that was the way the American right wing,
Oliver Stone (18:05.640)
not even the right wing, I'd say the Republican party,
Lex Fridman (18:08.280)
pictured the Russians, they were actively engaged
Oliver Stone (18:11.800)
in infiltrating America and changing our thinking.
Lex Fridman (18:15.720)
And television shows were based on this,
Oliver Stone (18:17.840)
it was very much the J. Edgar Hoover mentality
Lex Fridman (18:21.080)
that communism was even behind the student protests
Oliver Stone (18:24.960)
of the 1960s, this was the direction in which the FBI
Lex Fridman (18:28.640)
and the CIA were thinking.
Lex Fridman (18:30.720)
So I grew up with a prejudice, and it took me many years,
Lex Fridman (18:35.240)
my father was a Republican and he was a stockbroker
Lex Fridman (18:38.800)
and he was a very intelligent man, but even he,
Lex Fridman (18:41.400)
because he was a World War II soldier, he was a colonel,
Oliver Stone (18:45.440)
had fallen under the influence.
Lex Fridman (18:47.480)
In order to be successful in American business
Oliver Stone (18:50.080)
in the 1950s, you had to have a very strong
Lex Fridman (18:53.400)
anti Soviet line, very strong, you wouldn't get ahead.
Oliver Stone (18:58.080)
If you expressed any kind of, let's end this Cold War,
Lex Fridman (19:01.640)
any kind of activity of that nature, you'd be cast aside
Oliver Stone (19:04.640)
as a pinko or somebody who was not completely
Lex Fridman (19:09.840)
on the board with the American way of doing business,
Oliver Stone (19:12.360)
which was capitalism works, communism doesn't.
Lex Fridman (19:16.280)
And in particular, communism was embodied
Oliver Stone (19:19.680)
by the Soviet Union as the enemy.
Lex Fridman (19:24.400)
So hence the narrative behind the Cold War.
Oliver Stone (19:29.400)
Behind the Cold War, that's correct, and it basically
Lex Fridman (19:33.560)
lasted, I mean, you saw the ups and downs of it.
Oliver Stone (19:37.480)
When Reagan came in, I was, well, first of all,
Lex Fridman (19:40.000)
we had the crisis of 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis,
Lex Fridman (19:44.000)
and Kennedy proved himself to be a warrior for peace.
Lex Fridman (19:47.520)
He resolved that with Khrushchev.
Oliver Stone (19:49.360)
That was a big moment, huge moment, and people don't
Lex Fridman (19:52.240)
give him credit enough for really saving us from a war
Oliver Stone (19:56.400)
that could have affected all of mankind.
Lex Fridman (19:59.480)
But it still didn't avert.
Oliver Stone (1:00:00.300)
he didn't assess the operation correctly.
Lex Fridman (1:00:03.360)
Remember this.
Oliver Stone (1:00:04.540)
Mr. Putin has had this cancer, and I think he's licked it,
Lex Fridman (1:00:09.780)
but he's also been isolated because of COVID.
Lex Fridman (1:00:12.540)
And some people would argue that the isolation
Lex Fridman (1:00:15.020)
from normal activity, which he was meeting people
Oliver Stone (1:00:18.800)
face to face, but all of a sudden he was meeting people
Lex Fridman (1:00:20.980)
across the table 100 yards away, or whatever,
Oliver Stone (1:00:23.940)
10 yards away, it was very hard.
Lex Fridman (1:00:26.380)
Perhaps he lost touch with, contact with people.
Lex Fridman (1:00:30.180)
So it's not just power, it's the very simple fact
Lex Fridman (1:00:33.460)
that you're just distant from humans.
Oliver Stone (1:00:34.300)
As I say, I'm speculating, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:00:36.500)
I see that, and I also, perhaps he thought in his mind
Oliver Stone (1:00:40.580)
that there would be a faster resolution
Lex Fridman (1:00:45.020)
that the Ukrainian, because the evidence had been
Oliver Stone (1:00:48.260)
that the Ukrainian Russians, the Ukrainian army
Lex Fridman (1:00:52.500)
had folded so many times, and that they were only backed up
Lex Fridman (1:00:56.300)
and they were stiffened by the resistance
Lex Fridman (1:00:57.840)
of the Nazi oriented Azov battalions.
Oliver Stone (1:01:02.380)
That was a factor, of course.
Lex Fridman (1:01:04.260)
And that is a big factor for the Russians
Oliver Stone (1:01:06.100)
because these people are very tough, they rush.
Lex Fridman (1:01:08.820)
See, what people don't understand is that Ukraine,
Oliver Stone (1:01:11.460)
since 2014, has been a terror state.
Lex Fridman (1:01:14.460)
They've been run, anytime a Ukrainian has expressed
Oliver Stone (1:01:18.620)
any understanding of the Russian Ukrainian position,
Lex Fridman (1:01:25.920)
they've been threatened by the state.
Oliver Stone (1:01:28.240)
From 2014 to 2022, there's been a set of hideous murders
Lex Fridman (1:01:32.700)
that people don't even know about in the West.
Oliver Stone (1:01:34.200)
Journalists, people who speak out, liberals,
Lex Fridman (1:01:37.900)
people who, I interviewed Viktor Medvedev,
Oliver Stone (1:01:40.980)
who they make out to be some kind of horrible person,
Lex Fridman (1:01:43.660)
but Medvedev was a very important figure
Oliver Stone (1:01:46.380)
in the administration of Khushma,
Lex Fridman (1:01:48.180)
the first Ukrainian Prime Minister in the 1990s,
Lex Fridman (1:01:52.020)
and he did a great job on the economy.
Lex Fridman (1:01:54.260)
He was a very thoughtful man.
Oliver Stone (1:01:55.660)
If you'll see my interview, it's called Ukraine Revealed.
Lex Fridman (1:01:58.260)
He's very thoughtful about the future of Ukraine.
Oliver Stone (1:02:00.620)
He doesn't want to go back and join Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:02:02.660)
He wants it to be an independent country.
Oliver Stone (1:02:04.860)
Ukraine is independent, and he wants it to be
Lex Fridman (1:02:07.740)
a functioning economic democracy, more or less,
Oliver Stone (1:02:10.760)
a democracy, if you can get that,
Lex Fridman (1:02:13.900)
that exists in a neutral state,
Oliver Stone (1:02:15.740)
a neutral state, which Ukraine used to be before 2014.
Lex Fridman (1:02:19.500)
It was neutral from 1991 to 2014, neutral, very important.
Oliver Stone (1:02:25.740)
Under Poroshenko, it just immediately went
Lex Fridman (1:02:28.700)
into an anti Soviet Cold War position
Oliver Stone (1:02:31.740)
as an ally of the United States,
Lex Fridman (1:02:34.100)
and my point was that it was a very dangerous place
Oliver Stone (1:02:39.100)
in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (1:02:39.940)
People were being killed, death squads were out there.
Oliver Stone (1:02:43.940)
Medvedev, they stripped him of his television stations
Lex Fridman (1:02:47.540)
very suddenly, this is Zelensky, the new president.
Oliver Stone (1:02:50.620)
Zelensky was elected on a peace platform, remember that.
Lex Fridman (1:02:54.460)
70% of the country was for him to make peace with Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:02:57.860)
Did he ever even try to make peace with Russia?
Lex Fridman (1:03:00.780)
Did he attend any of the Minsk Two agreements?
Lex Fridman (1:03:04.460)
Did he visit, did he pay any attention to the Minsk?
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.460)
Did he pay attention to Putin?
Lex Fridman (1:03:09.660)
Did he go to Russia?
Lex Fridman (1:03:10.500)
No, not at all.
Oliver Stone (1:03:11.900)
The moment he got into office, I'm convinced
Lex Fridman (1:03:14.580)
that the militant sector of the right sector parties
Oliver Stone (1:03:22.780)
of Ukraine let him know that you will not make a deal
Lex Fridman (1:03:26.900)
with Russia, there'll be no concessions to Russia.
Oliver Stone (1:03:30.140)
This is very dangerous.
Lex Fridman (1:03:31.220)
This is where this attitude that's very, very hostile
Oliver Stone (1:03:34.520)
to Russia has hurt us.
Lex Fridman (1:03:35.940)
The whole world is being hurt by this,
Lex Fridman (1:03:37.940)
and no one calls them out.
Lex Fridman (1:03:40.460)
No one calls them out.
Oliver Stone (1:03:41.860)
Zelensky backed off from his platform
Lex Fridman (1:03:45.180)
as running for president, and as president,
Oliver Stone (1:03:47.540)
has been ineffective, did nothing to promote it.
Lex Fridman (1:03:50.220)
On the contrary, went the other way,
Lex Fridman (1:03:52.180)
and seemed to support the Ukrainian aggression.
Lex Fridman (1:03:56.700)
Well, he found his support in this war.
Oliver Stone (1:03:59.440)
You've revealed through your work some of the most honest
Lex Fridman (1:04:02.820)
and dark aspects of war.
Oliver Stone (1:04:04.800)
Nevertheless, this is a war,
Lex Fridman (1:04:07.960)
and there's a humanitarian crisis.
Oliver Stone (1:04:10.760)
Millions of people, refugees, escape in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (1:04:16.040)
What do you think about the human cost of this war,
Oliver Stone (1:04:20.080)
initiated by whoever, just as you write,
Lex Fridman (1:04:24.640)
whatever the context, whatever NATO, whatever pressure,
Oliver Stone (1:04:28.960)
as you wrote, Russia was wrong to invade.
Lex Fridman (1:04:32.880)
Okay, yeah, let's get back to that original question.
Lex Fridman (1:04:36.400)
You said, what was he thinking at that time?
Lex Fridman (1:04:38.320)
We never answered that.
Oliver Stone (1:04:39.920)
Now, by the way, among those people
Lex Fridman (1:04:44.920)
who've been ruined by this war,
Oliver Stone (1:04:48.440)
you have to include the 2014 to 2022 Ukrainian Russians.
Lex Fridman (1:04:53.120)
14,000 were killed, not necessarily by,
Oliver Stone (1:04:58.600)
some of them by maybe accident and this and that,
Lex Fridman (1:05:01.080)
but certainly a large number of that
Oliver Stone (1:05:02.800)
is responsible to the Ukrainian military
Lex Fridman (1:05:05.760)
and the Nazi related battalions
Oliver Stone (1:05:09.120)
who have done a good job of death squatting that whole area.
Lex Fridman (1:05:11.880)
And remember, I did a film about Salvador.
Oliver Stone (1:05:13.920)
I know a little bit about death squads and how they work,
Lex Fridman (1:05:16.000)
and I know about paramilitaries,
Oliver Stone (1:05:17.640)
because in South America, they're all over the place.
Lex Fridman (1:05:19.920)
America supports, hates Venezuela,
Oliver Stone (1:05:22.800)
goes on about Venezuela,
Lex Fridman (1:05:23.920)
but do they tell you anything about Colombia,
Lex Fridman (1:05:25.840)
its next door neighbor?
Lex Fridman (1:05:27.040)
Colombia for years has been plagued by paramilitaries
Oliver Stone (1:05:30.440)
that are right wing, and the United States has said,
Lex Fridman (1:05:32.600)
nothing about them except occasionally,
Oliver Stone (1:05:34.360)
there's a newspaper report now.
Lex Fridman (1:05:36.040)
So this support of death squads by the United States
Oliver Stone (1:05:39.720)
is all over the world.
Lex Fridman (1:05:40.720)
It's not just in South America and Central America
Oliver Stone (1:05:43.680)
where we see plenty of evidence of it.
Lex Fridman (1:05:46.440)
It's here too, and this is what's horrible
Oliver Stone (1:05:48.680)
about this whole thing, this hypocrisy of America
Lex Fridman (1:05:51.960)
that they can support such evil, such evil.
Oliver Stone (1:05:55.000)
Now, going back to your larger question about,
Lex Fridman (1:05:59.720)
yeah, it's a terrible refugee disaster,
Lex Fridman (1:06:02.000)
but again, we have to get the numbers.
Lex Fridman (1:06:03.880)
Let's get the numbers and get the evidence,
Oliver Stone (1:06:05.520)
because I would ask you, I'm not sure at this point
Lex Fridman (1:06:09.080)
whether more civilians were killed before 2022 in Donbass
Oliver Stone (1:06:13.440)
than have been killed in this latest.
Lex Fridman (1:06:15.880)
So we can't talk about this without,
Oliver Stone (1:06:17.880)
we can't talk about the invasion of Ukraine
Lex Fridman (1:06:19.840)
without considering the full war
Oliver Stone (1:06:21.360)
between Russia and Ukraine since 2014.
Lex Fridman (1:06:24.480)
That's correct, absolutely,
Lex Fridman (1:06:26.520)
and take the toll on both sides,
Lex Fridman (1:06:29.560)
and you might be surprised by the result.
Oliver Stone (1:06:32.320)
I think the Russian military, of course, I'm not there,
Lex Fridman (1:06:35.440)
and I'm not, this is speculation.
Oliver Stone (1:06:37.520)
The Russian military has slowed down,
Lex Fridman (1:06:39.240)
and part of that reason
Oliver Stone (1:06:40.560)
is not to keep the civilian corridors open,
Lex Fridman (1:06:43.240)
and I think the Ukrainian military
Oliver Stone (1:06:45.160)
has made it more difficult on purpose,
Lex Fridman (1:06:47.640)
especially some of these battalions
Oliver Stone (1:06:49.240)
that are death squad battalions have gone out of their way
Lex Fridman (1:06:51.920)
to keep the civilians locked into these cities in danger
Oliver Stone (1:06:55.680)
because it's in their interest to do so.
Lex Fridman (1:06:58.400)
So there's no reason why Ukrainian military,
Oliver Stone (1:07:01.840)
who have killed Ukrainian civilians for years,
Lex Fridman (1:07:04.320)
would change their policies.
Oliver Stone (1:07:06.120)
They would have no compunctions about wiping out,
Lex Fridman (1:07:08.600)
for example, people with white armbands in Bukha.
Oliver Stone (1:07:12.600)
Okay, as to what Putin was thinking at the time,
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.440)
I wondered this, and I still do.
Oliver Stone (1:07:18.640)
I said, okay, so Putin can say,
Lex Fridman (1:07:22.320)
let's say the Ukrainian government
Oliver Stone (1:07:24.880)
wants to now invade Donbass.
Lex Fridman (1:07:27.720)
This is on February 23, and they have artillery,
Oliver Stone (1:07:30.600)
they're peppering the whole place.
Lex Fridman (1:07:32.000)
They're gonna go in, and they're gonna get Donbass back.
Lex Fridman (1:07:35.600)
What do you do?
Lex Fridman (1:07:36.880)
And you have Russian separatists,
Oliver Stone (1:07:39.680)
who are Russian Ukrainians who are on,
Lex Fridman (1:07:42.440)
who are gonna fight.
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.720)
How far do you go in supporting them?
Lex Fridman (1:07:49.200)
Can Russia at this point say, well, we can't help you.
Oliver Stone (1:07:51.640)
You have to get along, you have to somehow,
Lex Fridman (1:07:54.080)
you have to be absorbed by the Kiev,
Oliver Stone (1:07:56.960)
you're gonna be absorbed by them,
Lex Fridman (1:07:58.080)
and they're not gonna give you autonomy,
Lex Fridman (1:08:00.920)
and you have to live with them,
Lex Fridman (1:08:02.640)
and there's gonna be a price to pay.
Oliver Stone (1:08:04.440)
You could do that, and you could also say,
Lex Fridman (1:08:05.800)
well, we open our borders to Donbass.
Oliver Stone (1:08:08.120)
You can come in to our country, you can leave,
Lex Fridman (1:08:10.360)
and we will help you to resettle.
Lex Fridman (1:08:13.760)
And that would be a reasonable approach.
Lex Fridman (1:08:16.360)
So you take it to the next stage, as Putin's thinking.
Oliver Stone (1:08:18.640)
You take it to the next stage.
Lex Fridman (1:08:20.640)
You stall, it's harder for your,
Oliver Stone (1:08:23.640)
of course, there's this pressure on Putin
Lex Fridman (1:08:25.040)
from inside his own government to say,
Lex Fridman (1:08:27.800)
what are you gonna do?
Lex Fridman (1:08:28.640)
I mean, you can't do this,
Oliver Stone (1:08:29.840)
there's a lot of nationalists in Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:08:31.640)
They would certainly bring, it would be to his,
Oliver Stone (1:08:34.480)
they'd say Putin is weak, and that's the biggest rap
Lex Fridman (1:08:37.320)
you can ever give a Russian leader,
Oliver Stone (1:08:39.080)
is you're weak, you can't get anything done.
Lex Fridman (1:08:41.240)
So there would have been some damage,
Lex Fridman (1:08:42.800)
but let's say he goes with that, and he says,
Lex Fridman (1:08:44.840)
okay, we know what the United States intention is.
Oliver Stone (1:08:47.840)
It's to get rid of me, regime change,
Lex Fridman (1:08:51.640)
and to get another Yeltsin in.
Oliver Stone (1:08:53.240)
That's what they want.
Lex Fridman (1:08:54.640)
And they will go to any ends,
Oliver Stone (1:08:55.880)
they will destroy Ukraine if necessary,
Lex Fridman (1:08:58.200)
but they want regime change in Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:09:00.480)
And then after they do that, of course,
Lex Fridman (1:09:02.680)
they'll go after China,
Lex Fridman (1:09:03.600)
but that's the ultimate policy of the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:09:06.240)
This is a country that has no compunctions
Oliver Stone (1:09:09.560)
about going all the way,
Lex Fridman (1:09:11.400)
and it will use hypocrisy and all the news propaganda
Oliver Stone (1:09:14.680)
in the world to get what it wants.
Lex Fridman (1:09:16.360)
This is the equivalent, frankly,
Oliver Stone (1:09:17.760)
of Germany's goals in World War II, world domination.
Lex Fridman (1:09:22.760)
There's no question in my mind,
Lex Fridman (1:09:24.320)
but we're going about it in our way
Lex Fridman (1:09:26.680)
as opposed to Hitler's way.
Lex Fridman (1:09:29.000)
So just to finish your thought, where do they go?
Lex Fridman (1:09:32.160)
What's stage two?
Oliver Stone (1:09:33.120)
Okay, let's say they take, Ukraine takes back Donbas.
Lex Fridman (1:09:36.880)
Let's say people get killed in large quantities.
Lex Fridman (1:09:40.520)
So we now to the next stage,
Lex Fridman (1:09:42.000)
we're finished with the Minsk II agreements
Oliver Stone (1:09:44.400)
that were never adhered to.
Lex Fridman (1:09:45.840)
So what does Russia do?
Oliver Stone (1:09:46.680)
They wait for the next aggression,
Lex Fridman (1:09:48.880)
which is gonna come in one form or another.
Oliver Stone (1:09:52.000)
Perhaps in Georgia, I don't know what happened,
Lex Fridman (1:09:54.960)
what the US is thinking,
Lex Fridman (1:09:56.480)
but the US cannot say Russia has done anything.
Lex Fridman (1:10:02.080)
They have not used violence to stop Donbas
Lex Fridman (1:10:05.160)
from belonging back to Ukraine, right?
Lex Fridman (1:10:07.920)
So you're in a new setup now.
Oliver Stone (1:10:10.080)
It's a whole thing rearranges.
Lex Fridman (1:10:12.240)
Now you have, but you still have nuclear weapons,
Lex Fridman (1:10:15.560)
and you still have a Russian nuclear weapons,
Lex Fridman (1:10:17.800)
and they're serious weapons.
Oliver Stone (1:10:19.520)
They're very well developed, crude,
Lex Fridman (1:10:21.560)
but not as refined as the American nuclear force,
Lex Fridman (1:10:24.320)
but powerful.
Lex Fridman (1:10:26.720)
That becomes another game.
Oliver Stone (1:10:27.960)
Then you open another chess board,
Lex Fridman (1:10:29.560)
and you still haven't been condemned.
Oliver Stone (1:10:31.720)
The sanctions haven't been imposed.
Lex Fridman (1:10:33.400)
That's a new, it's a new game.
Lex Fridman (1:10:35.440)
Could he have done, could he have lived with that?
Lex Fridman (1:10:36.880)
That's the question I ask myself.
Lex Fridman (1:10:39.160)
So you see ultimately Ukraine today
Lex Fridman (1:10:41.960)
as a battleground for the proxy war
Oliver Stone (1:10:43.960)
between Russia and the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:10:45.640)
The United States would have then NATOized Ukraine,
Oliver Stone (1:10:49.120)
or certainly put more weapons in.
Lex Fridman (1:10:51.360)
The United States has already done a lot in Ukraine
Oliver Stone (1:10:53.480)
with intelligence, with training advisors.
Lex Fridman (1:10:57.800)
The intelligence aspect of the Ukrainian army
Oliver Stone (1:11:00.800)
has been raised enormously by the United States contribution.
Lex Fridman (1:11:04.120)
Is it possible for you to steal man,
Oliver Stone (1:11:05.920)
to play devil's advocate against yourself,
Lex Fridman (1:11:07.960)
and say that Vladimir Zelensky
Lex Fridman (1:11:11.940)
is fighting for the sovereignty of his nation?
Lex Fridman (1:11:14.920)
And in a way against Russia,
Lex Fridman (1:11:17.240)
but also against the United States,
Lex Fridman (1:11:19.120)
it just happens that for now, the United States
Oliver Stone (1:11:21.880)
is a useful ally.
Lex Fridman (1:11:23.960)
But ultimately, the man, the leader,
Oliver Stone (1:11:27.140)
is fighting for the sovereignty of his nation.
Lex Fridman (1:11:29.640)
I would think, he thinks so.
Oliver Stone (1:11:31.280)
Yes, and he could say that.
Lex Fridman (1:11:33.200)
But he's not acknowledging that the sovereignty
Oliver Stone (1:11:35.240)
of his nation was stolen in 2014
Lex Fridman (1:11:38.320)
with the coup d'tat that brought this right sector
Oliver Stone (1:11:42.960)
into power, and they have controlled the country since then.
Lex Fridman (1:11:46.400)
It's thuggery, what they've done.
Oliver Stone (1:11:50.040)
The Medvedev case is a case in point.
Lex Fridman (1:11:52.080)
They just take what they need.
Oliver Stone (1:11:53.840)
They go to a house, and they have a,
Lex Fridman (1:11:55.880)
how many people have been killed?
Oliver Stone (1:11:57.640)
Serious people, journalists killed by these battalions.
Lex Fridman (1:12:02.980)
That's what people don't realize.
Oliver Stone (1:12:04.560)
In other words, you can't speak out.
Lex Fridman (1:12:06.160)
A person like me would have been on the death list
Oliver Stone (1:12:08.440)
on day five.
Lex Fridman (1:12:11.240)
There's no opposition to Zelensky,
Lex Fridman (1:12:13.480)
so he doesn't have a real sovereignty.
Lex Fridman (1:12:16.000)
It was a stolen sovereignty.
Lex Fridman (1:12:17.840)
Do you think President Zelensky would accept
Lex Fridman (1:12:21.280)
an interview with you today?
Oliver Stone (1:12:24.160)
Actually, since I made Ukraine on Fire,
Lex Fridman (1:12:27.720)
a documentary which perhaps you've seen,
Oliver Stone (1:12:29.920)
which records the incidents of 2014
Lex Fridman (1:12:35.040)
and the Maidan demonstrations,
Lex Fridman (1:12:37.820)
and shows you the dishonesty behind it,
Lex Fridman (1:12:40.600)
no, I think that they've been very negative,
Lex Fridman (1:12:43.000)
and they would kill me if I was in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (1:12:46.320)
I mean, they don't have any,
Oliver Stone (1:12:48.360)
these people are very tough.
Lex Fridman (1:12:50.400)
These are as rough as they come, in my opinion,
Lex Fridman (1:12:52.760)
and I've seen rough in my life.
Lex Fridman (1:12:54.120)
I mean, these guys are not playing fair at all.
Oliver Stone (1:12:57.920)
These are death squads.
Lex Fridman (1:12:59.360)
No, I don't think, and Zelensky would have
Oliver Stone (1:13:01.080)
nothing to do with it, but of course,
Lex Fridman (1:13:02.920)
it would be dangerous for me,
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.460)
and they've been very hostile in their policies
Lex Fridman (1:13:07.800)
to any Ukrainians abroad who are also threatened.
Oliver Stone (1:13:11.320)
In other words, you could be in Paris,
Lex Fridman (1:13:12.840)
but if you speak out too much,
Oliver Stone (1:13:16.080)
I think Ukrainians know that they're gonna be targeted,
Lex Fridman (1:13:18.840)
and I think that's part of the reason they don't talk.
Oliver Stone (1:13:21.680)
A lot of them, you have to take the anti Russian line,
Lex Fridman (1:13:24.800)
but I think a lot of them are divided.
Lex Fridman (1:13:26.480)
So you think you would be killed,
Lex Fridman (1:13:29.120)
and Zelensky wouldn't even know about it, so there is?
Oliver Stone (1:13:31.920)
Well, I don't think, if I was killed certainly abroad,
Lex Fridman (1:13:34.800)
no, they wouldn't kill me abroad.
Oliver Stone (1:13:35.880)
I think they'd figure out a way.
Lex Fridman (1:13:37.600)
No, no, no, no, if you traveled to Ukraine, I mean.
Oliver Stone (1:13:40.360)
I wouldn't get in, I wouldn't get in,
Lex Fridman (1:13:42.600)
except through Donbass, I'd come through.
Oliver Stone (1:13:44.520)
There are some Americans in Donbass
Lex Fridman (1:13:46.160)
who are reporting on the war there,
Lex Fridman (1:13:48.080)
and I read their reports, actually.
Lex Fridman (1:13:49.640)
They're pretty interesting,
Oliver Stone (1:13:50.820)
because they show you the cruelty of what's going on,
Lex Fridman (1:13:53.180)
but never mentioned in the West, never.
Oliver Stone (1:13:55.440)
That's what's so strange about this.
Lex Fridman (1:13:58.200)
This is a modern world that we're living in,
Lex Fridman (1:13:59.920)
and yet this information is not coming out
Lex Fridman (1:14:02.020)
to the mass of the people,
Lex Fridman (1:14:03.520)
and on the contrary, the United States has closed down
Lex Fridman (1:14:06.700)
all the information centers that are possible
Oliver Stone (1:14:11.700)
to alternative news getting to the American people.
Lex Fridman (1:14:15.060)
They've seriously made an effort,
Lex Fridman (1:14:16.420)
and the BBC, English, and France.
Lex Fridman (1:14:20.060)
I was shocked when France closed RT down,
Oliver Stone (1:14:22.400)
because RT is actually pretty good.
Lex Fridman (1:14:24.380)
Yes, they may, it's called, there are distortions,
Lex Fridman (1:14:27.200)
but you know as well as I do, because you hear,
Lex Fridman (1:14:29.140)
you speak that RT has done a very brave job
Oliver Stone (1:14:33.260)
of putting correspondents into the field
Lex Fridman (1:14:35.320)
in very dangerous positions,
Lex Fridman (1:14:36.620)
and they've gotten great footage
Lex Fridman (1:14:38.620)
of some of the violence that's going on.
Oliver Stone (1:14:40.760)
Well, given the wall of propaganda in the West,
Lex Fridman (1:14:43.720)
I also see the wall of propaganda in Russia,
Oliver Stone (1:14:47.380)
the wall of propaganda in China,
Lex Fridman (1:14:49.380)
the wall of propaganda in India.
Lex Fridman (1:14:51.900)
What do we do with these walls of propaganda?
Lex Fridman (1:14:54.220)
Yes, let's talk about Russia,
Oliver Stone (1:14:55.460)
because you would know more about it,
Lex Fridman (1:14:57.320)
but my last experience there, newspapers,
Oliver Stone (1:15:00.740)
it was more interesting, put it this way,
Lex Fridman (1:15:03.400)
when I went to Venezuela, the United States was saying
Oliver Stone (1:15:06.540)
back then that Chavez controlled the press.
Lex Fridman (1:15:09.300)
I get to Venezuela, and there's nothing but criticism
Oliver Stone (1:15:11.660)
of Chavez in the press.
Lex Fridman (1:15:12.940)
It was owned by the oligarchs of Venezuela,
Lex Fridman (1:15:16.300)
and who hated him, so it was across the board.
Lex Fridman (1:15:18.640)
That's why Chavez opened the state television,
Oliver Stone (1:15:22.540)
spent more money on it, and advertised his point of view
Lex Fridman (1:15:26.180)
through state television.
Lex Fridman (1:15:27.620)
But in Russia, there is, what I saw was criticism.
Lex Fridman (1:15:32.180)
I met with a publisher who got the Nobel Prize
Oliver Stone (1:15:34.480)
of that famous newspaper, and his point of view
Lex Fridman (1:15:38.100)
at that time when I spoke to him a few years ago
Oliver Stone (1:15:40.300)
was we're operating, there is criticism of him,
Lex Fridman (1:15:44.320)
but you can't call for the overthrow of the government,
Oliver Stone (1:15:48.060)
nor in Venezuela, nor in the United States for that matter.
Lex Fridman (1:15:50.700)
If you call for the overthrow of the government
Oliver Stone (1:15:53.060)
of the United States, you're gonna be in deep trouble.
Lex Fridman (1:15:55.540)
Well, all right, so to push back on that,
Oliver Stone (1:15:57.860)
it's interesting, it's so interesting,
Lex Fridman (1:15:59.620)
because we mentioned Elon Musk,
Lex Fridman (1:16:02.540)
and there's a way that people sound when they speak freely.
Lex Fridman (1:16:06.480)
When I speak to, I have family in Ukraine,
Oliver Stone (1:16:09.580)
I have family in Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:16:11.140)
When I speak to people in Russia,
Oliver Stone (1:16:12.820)
let's put my family aside,
Lex Fridman (1:16:14.100)
when I speak to people in Russia,
Oliver Stone (1:16:16.940)
I think there's fear.
Lex Fridman (1:16:21.300)
I think they don't,
Oliver Stone (1:16:25.860)
sometimes when you call for the overthrow of government,
Lex Fridman (1:16:28.380)
that's important, not because you necessarily believe
Oliver Stone (1:16:30.860)
for the overthrow of the government,
Lex Fridman (1:16:32.720)
but you just need to test the power centers
Lex Fridman (1:16:36.820)
and make sure they're responsive to the people.
Lex Fridman (1:16:41.060)
And I feel like there's a mix of fear and apathy
Oliver Stone (1:16:47.380)
that has a different texture than it does
Lex Fridman (1:16:51.140)
in the United States.
Oliver Stone (1:16:53.620)
That worries me, because I would like to see
Lex Fridman (1:16:58.980)
the flourishing of a people in all places.
Oliver Stone (1:17:01.520)
Well, as I said, my impression was that there's far more
Lex Fridman (1:17:05.460)
freedom in the press than was pictured by the West,
Lex Fridman (1:17:08.980)
and that means different points of view,
Lex Fridman (1:17:10.900)
because the Russians are always arguing with themselves.
Oliver Stone (1:17:12.660)
I've never seen a country that's so contentious.
Lex Fridman (1:17:14.580)
There's more intellectuals in Moscow and the cities
Oliver Stone (1:17:19.700)
than you can believe, and you know the Russian people there.
Lex Fridman (1:17:23.420)
They've been fighting government for years,
Oliver Stone (1:17:25.620)
back from the 1870s, it was czarist times,
Lex Fridman (1:17:27.680)
they're always plotting against the government,
Lex Fridman (1:17:30.260)
and the intelligentsia has known through history
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.900)
as being contentious and anti government in many ways.
Lex Fridman (1:17:37.140)
And we see the same thing,
Lex Fridman (1:17:39.180)
educated people turning against Russia.
Oliver Stone (1:17:40.860)
I don't appreciate those people,
Lex Fridman (1:17:41.980)
because I think they're very spoiled,
Lex Fridman (1:17:43.900)
and they don't understand some of the stuff
Lex Fridman (1:17:45.280)
that's going on in the West.
Lex Fridman (1:17:46.620)
But we have a lot of Russians in Europe and America
Lex Fridman (1:17:51.100)
that attack Russia and sometimes don't understand
Oliver Stone (1:17:55.060)
that they are under pressure from the United States,
Lex Fridman (1:17:57.240)
and they don't understand the size of the pressure.
Lex Fridman (1:17:59.940)
And that's why Putin connects with the people,
Lex Fridman (1:18:02.480)
because he represents the common,
Oliver Stone (1:18:05.860)
more the common man who's saying to you,
Lex Fridman (1:18:08.820)
your interests are threatened, Russia is threatened.
Oliver Stone (1:18:11.980)
We are representing only the interests of Russia,
Lex Fridman (1:18:14.220)
not, we're not an empire, we're not gonna expand.
Oliver Stone (1:18:16.940)
He has no empire intentions,
Lex Fridman (1:18:19.000)
although the West paints it as empire.
Oliver Stone (1:18:21.940)
I see no evidence of it.
Lex Fridman (1:18:24.180)
Why didn't he do something in all these years?
Oliver Stone (1:18:26.020)
Nothing, he did nothing except defend the country
Lex Fridman (1:18:29.140)
in Georgia and in Chechnya.
Lex Fridman (1:18:30.980)
So the imperialist imperative is coming more
Lex Fridman (1:18:33.820)
from the West.
Oliver Stone (1:18:34.660)
It's the imperialist, it's the imperialist agenda.
Lex Fridman (1:18:37.420)
Going back to, I'm sorry, where we left our discussion off,
Oliver Stone (1:18:40.620)
I mean, I was gonna go on with America
Lex Fridman (1:18:42.780)
not only being censored, closed down now, closed down.
Lex Fridman (1:18:47.620)
And you say it's not fear, well, it is fear.
Lex Fridman (1:18:50.180)
I am scared, because if you get your Facebook page
Oliver Stone (1:18:53.900)
suspended or your YouTube, your Twitter account thrown off,
Lex Fridman (1:18:58.220)
a lot of good people are getting there, thrown off.
Oliver Stone (1:19:02.020)
You can't speak out, it affects your business.
Lex Fridman (1:19:04.460)
It goes back to the 1950s when my father's world,
Oliver Stone (1:19:07.660)
when you could not express any sympathy for a Soviet Union
Lex Fridman (1:19:12.620)
without endangering your job,
Oliver Stone (1:19:14.220)
without basically being not trusted.
Lex Fridman (1:19:16.380)
You had to be part of the program to get along, to go along.
Oliver Stone (1:19:20.700)
Same thing when the United Kingdom,
Lex Fridman (1:19:22.660)
I mean, for all their talk, this Boris Johnson is an idiot.
Lex Fridman (1:19:26.300)
But all their talk about, do you remember their policies
Lex Fridman (1:19:29.220)
with the IRA in Ireland when Ireland was threatening them?
Oliver Stone (1:19:32.260)
They cut off the IRA completely.
Lex Fridman (1:19:34.140)
Gerry Adams, who was a wonderful guy, I met him,
Oliver Stone (1:19:37.860)
was not allowed to even be heard in Britain
Lex Fridman (1:19:40.260)
during certain years.
Oliver Stone (1:19:41.220)
In France, all constantly through the Algerian War,
Lex Fridman (1:19:44.620)
the Algerians were not allowed to be heard.
Oliver Stone (1:19:46.660)
The Algerian War for Independence divided France greatly.
Lex Fridman (1:19:51.060)
You could not even show Paths of Glory,
Oliver Stone (1:19:52.820)
World War I film in France for, I don't know, 20 years
Lex Fridman (1:19:56.820)
after it came out.
Oliver Stone (1:19:58.980)
Censorship is a way of life
Lex Fridman (1:20:00.380)
when democracies also feel threatened.
Oliver Stone (1:20:02.940)
They are much more fragile than they pretend to be.
Lex Fridman (1:20:05.300)
A healthy democracy would take all the criticism
Oliver Stone (1:20:07.500)
in the world and shrug it off and say,
Lex Fridman (1:20:09.300)
okay, that's what's good about our country.
Oliver Stone (1:20:11.340)
Well, I'd like to see that in America.
Lex Fridman (1:20:13.340)
There are times that it's been like that,
Lex Fridman (1:20:15.260)
but it's so scary now.
Lex Fridman (1:20:17.860)
So it is scary, that's what I was trying to say.
Oliver Stone (1:20:20.020)
It's not unscary to me.
Lex Fridman (1:20:22.940)
In China, I would say to you, yes, it's much scarier to me
Oliver Stone (1:20:26.260)
because there is the internet wall that they cut off,
Lex Fridman (1:20:30.260)
and I got into problems in China too
Oliver Stone (1:20:32.620)
because I said something years ago
Lex Fridman (1:20:34.700)
about you have to discover your own history.
Oliver Stone (1:20:37.100)
You have to be honest about Mao.
Lex Fridman (1:20:38.500)
You have to go back and let's make a movie about Mao.
Oliver Stone (1:20:42.060)
That upset them and show his negatives.
Lex Fridman (1:20:46.900)
So China has been much more sensitive than Russia
Oliver Stone (1:20:49.300)
about criticism, much more.
Lex Fridman (1:20:51.460)
And it is a source of problems, but on the other hand,
Oliver Stone (1:20:54.020)
China has a lot of grievances,
Lex Fridman (1:20:56.660)
a lot going back to the 19th century
Lex Fridman (1:20:58.700)
and the British imperialism of that era
Lex Fridman (1:21:01.020)
and the American imperialism.
Oliver Stone (1:21:02.620)
If you could talk to Vladimir Putin once again now,
Lex Fridman (1:21:07.620)
what kind of things would you talk about here?
Lex Fridman (1:21:11.580)
What kind of questions would you ask?
Lex Fridman (1:21:13.500)
Huh, well, one thing I would certainly ask
Oliver Stone (1:21:19.300)
is what you were thinking on February 23,
Lex Fridman (1:21:21.940)
and I would ask him to reply to my question
Oliver Stone (1:21:24.340)
about what if you took this to phase two.
Lex Fridman (1:21:26.580)
You surrendered in Donbass.
Oliver Stone (1:21:28.900)
You had no ego about it.
Lex Fridman (1:21:30.580)
You just surrendered.
Oliver Stone (1:21:31.420)
It's in your interest to your country,
Lex Fridman (1:21:33.140)
and you invited all the refugees from Donbass into Russia
Oliver Stone (1:21:36.780)
as much as they can.
Lex Fridman (1:21:38.900)
What would you do now?
Lex Fridman (1:21:40.500)
What's the US next move in your opinion?
Lex Fridman (1:21:43.780)
How are you gonna, okay, where are we gonna go?
Oliver Stone (1:21:46.740)
That would be the key question because it's,
Lex Fridman (1:21:50.020)
but he didn't go that way.
Oliver Stone (1:21:51.020)
He chose to take the sanctions and to go this way.
Lex Fridman (1:21:56.020)
Why he did that is a key question for our time.
Oliver Stone (1:22:00.460)
Perhaps it was a mistake.
Lex Fridman (1:22:01.620)
Perhaps it was his judgment.
Oliver Stone (1:22:03.260)
Perhaps, as I said, but I don't,
Lex Fridman (1:22:05.340)
knowing the man I did, I don't think so.
Oliver Stone (1:22:07.300)
I think it was calculated.
Lex Fridman (1:22:09.420)
Now this is projection and speculation,
Lex Fridman (1:22:12.380)
but there's something different about him
Lex Fridman (1:22:14.620)
in the past several months.
Oliver Stone (1:22:16.820)
It could be the COVID thing,
Lex Fridman (1:22:17.980)
the isolation that you mentioned.
Oliver Stone (1:22:20.180)
I listen to a lot of interviews and speeches in Russian,
Lex Fridman (1:22:23.940)
and there's something about power over time
Oliver Stone (1:22:28.120)
that can change you, that can isolate you.
Lex Fridman (1:22:30.620)
Well, when I was there,
Oliver Stone (1:22:31.860)
no, he'd been in office for already 15 years.
Lex Fridman (1:22:35.820)
He had power.
Oliver Stone (1:22:37.140)
He didn't misuse it in my opinion.
Lex Fridman (1:22:38.700)
He was very even.
Oliver Stone (1:22:39.540)
I saw him go on television and talk to his fellows
Lex Fridman (1:22:42.220)
the same way he always talked to them.
Oliver Stone (1:22:44.180)
He grew in intelligence and knowledge
Lex Fridman (1:22:47.700)
because he had dealings with the whole world.
Oliver Stone (1:22:50.540)
Now people had come to him.
Lex Fridman (1:22:52.260)
He was very well known in Africa and Middle East,
Oliver Stone (1:22:55.620)
certainly Syria, and I just never saw misuse of his power.
Lex Fridman (1:23:01.780)
I saw humility in him, actually.
Lex Fridman (1:23:03.940)
So perhaps there was a calculation and he calculated wrong
Lex Fridman (1:23:09.180)
in terms of what happens if he doesn't invade.
Oliver Stone (1:23:12.620)
Perhaps there was a calculation,
Lex Fridman (1:23:14.060)
perhaps he had a calm and clear mind,
Lex Fridman (1:23:16.900)
and he calculated wrong.
Lex Fridman (1:23:18.360)
Well, he also made the point that he,
Oliver Stone (1:23:20.380)
the talk of Zelensky saying,
Lex Fridman (1:23:22.780)
well, nuclear weapons were gonna come into Ukraine.
Oliver Stone (1:23:25.180)
There was talk about that right before the invasion too,
Lex Fridman (1:23:28.260)
and certainly that would have set off alarms.
Oliver Stone (1:23:30.980)
You know, the United States is already kind of doing that
Lex Fridman (1:23:34.000)
by not only putting its intelligence
Lex Fridman (1:23:36.460)
and its heavy weaponry into Ukraine,
Lex Fridman (1:23:39.660)
but you've got to deal with the question,
Oliver Stone (1:23:41.300)
the next question that comes up,
Lex Fridman (1:23:42.480)
the most immediate question is,
Lex Fridman (1:23:44.600)
is the United States gonna start?
Lex Fridman (1:23:47.680)
And I'm saying this is good.
Oliver Stone (1:23:50.420)
They're making a lot of noise in United States press
Lex Fridman (1:23:52.660)
about Russia using nuclear weapons and chemical weapons.
Oliver Stone (1:23:56.360)
That's a lot of noise.
Lex Fridman (1:23:58.460)
Again, going back to my analogy,
Oliver Stone (1:24:00.580)
when the United States starts that,
Lex Fridman (1:24:02.100)
it starts the conversation going.
Oliver Stone (1:24:04.280)
It's in the interest of the United States
Lex Fridman (1:24:07.380)
for Russia to be pinned with any kind of chemical
Oliver Stone (1:24:12.980)
or nuclear incident.
Lex Fridman (1:24:16.560)
Except, for example, it'd be very, not simple,
Lex Fridman (1:24:19.560)
but it would be possible to explode a nuclear device
Lex Fridman (1:24:23.380)
in Donbass and kill thousands of people.
Lex Fridman (1:24:27.520)
And we would not know right away who did it,
Lex Fridman (1:24:29.740)
but of course the blame would go right to Russia,
Oliver Stone (1:24:32.380)
right to Russia, even if it didn't make sense,
Lex Fridman (1:24:34.460)
if there was no motivation for it.
Oliver Stone (1:24:36.320)
It would just be blamed on Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:24:38.340)
The United States might well be the one
Oliver Stone (1:24:40.140)
who does that false flag operation.
Lex Fridman (1:24:42.540)
It would not be beyond them.
Oliver Stone (1:24:44.580)
It would be a very dramatic solution
Lex Fridman (1:24:48.240)
to sealing this war off as a major victory
Oliver Stone (1:24:50.700)
for the United States.
Lex Fridman (1:24:51.540)
That's terrifying.
Oliver Stone (1:24:52.700)
No, but it can happen.
Lex Fridman (1:24:53.740)
It can happen.
Oliver Stone (1:24:54.580)
A one kiloton device, low yield, it's possible.
Lex Fridman (1:24:59.260)
So when you walk across that line,
Oliver Stone (1:25:01.860)
you can potentially never walk back.
Lex Fridman (1:25:05.020)
Well, I think the United States is calculating
Oliver Stone (1:25:07.540)
that it's a dangerous, yes, I agree,
Lex Fridman (1:25:10.520)
but I think the neoconservative arrogance is such
Oliver Stone (1:25:13.460)
that they really believe they can push their advantage
Lex Fridman (1:25:16.300)
to the max now because of all these propaganda successes
Oliver Stone (1:25:20.340)
up to now.
Lex Fridman (1:25:21.500)
The Ukrainian army could be wiped out for all we know.
Oliver Stone (1:25:23.780)
There's all this leftists or neo, Nazi brigades,
Lex Fridman (1:25:25.960)
but they're being advised very well by US
Lex Fridman (1:25:29.580)
and they're sending the weapons in,
Lex Fridman (1:25:30.860)
are huge amounts of weapons.
Lex Fridman (1:25:31.940)
What about American budget?
Lex Fridman (1:25:33.020)
No one talks about how much money we're giving to Ukraine.
Oliver Stone (1:25:36.900)
It's a billion dollars already in weaponry
Lex Fridman (1:25:39.200)
and not most of it just poured in.
Lex Fridman (1:25:41.780)
What about, you know, the Russian budget is,
Lex Fridman (1:25:47.440)
defense budget is 60 some billion dollars a year.
Oliver Stone (1:25:51.060)
It's nothing compared to the United States, 1 15th of it.
Lex Fridman (1:25:54.780)
But yet we've put so much weaponry into Ukraine.
Oliver Stone (1:25:59.020)
The money we've spent on Ukraine is equivalent almost
Lex Fridman (1:26:03.060)
to what we spent on COVID in our own country.
Oliver Stone (1:26:07.060)
It's astounding the distortion of our priorities.
Lex Fridman (1:26:11.700)
There's also chemical.
Oliver Stone (1:26:12.860)
Don't forget chemical is probably the easier way to go.
Lex Fridman (1:26:15.820)
But in Syria, there was far too many incidents of America
Oliver Stone (1:26:20.500)
in its quest to demonize Assad and the Russians
Lex Fridman (1:26:25.660)
of all these chemical attacks that were happening
Oliver Stone (1:26:27.980)
that they were vowing came from Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:26:31.140)
And in spite of the fact that Russia just pulled out of the,
Oliver Stone (1:26:36.660)
signed the agreement on chemical arms
Lex Fridman (1:26:38.460)
and apparently destroyed its stock several years ago,
Oliver Stone (1:26:43.780)
it's strange that the strangest incidents happened in Syria.
Lex Fridman (1:26:47.660)
You go back to them, trace every one,
Oliver Stone (1:26:50.300)
good journalism was done.
Lex Fridman (1:26:51.900)
The White Helmets got a lot of fame,
Lex Fridman (1:26:53.620)
but they were corrupted.
Lex Fridman (1:26:55.060)
And many good journalists tried to point out
Oliver Stone (1:26:58.060)
the inconsistencies in the American accusations.
Lex Fridman (1:27:04.140)
Robert Parry among them,
Oliver Stone (1:27:05.780)
who was one of my mentors at Consortium Press.
Lex Fridman (1:27:08.620)
A lot of good, you'd have to go back,
Lex Fridman (1:27:10.100)
but trace each, like you would trace each time
Lex Fridman (1:27:13.420)
they made an accusation against Putin of murder.
Oliver Stone (1:27:16.020)
You need that same kind of Sherlock Holmes intensity,
Lex Fridman (1:27:19.660)
investigation, and they don't do it
Oliver Stone (1:27:21.740)
because the United Nations or the chemical,
Lex Fridman (1:27:24.660)
not the United Nations as much as the chemical people,
Oliver Stone (1:27:27.020)
the organization has been tampered with.
Lex Fridman (1:27:30.740)
If you remember correctly, there was accusations
Oliver Stone (1:27:33.220)
that the chemical investigative unit,
Lex Fridman (1:27:36.780)
I don't know the name of it, was tampered with.
Lex Fridman (1:27:39.980)
And people quit, people who were working on that commission
Lex Fridman (1:27:42.900)
quit and said that this is not legit.
Lex Fridman (1:27:45.380)
So very interesting, that Syria story is wacko.
Lex Fridman (1:27:48.780)
So the United States is willing
Oliver Stone (1:27:49.900)
to use chemical in Syria freely.
Lex Fridman (1:27:52.300)
It did it three, four times.
Oliver Stone (1:27:53.340)
If you remember correctly, Trump was challenged
Lex Fridman (1:27:55.420)
that he did not attack after a chemical incident in Syria.
Oliver Stone (1:27:59.980)
All these newscasters in the United States,
Lex Fridman (1:28:02.460)
the most heaviest of them were saying,
Oliver Stone (1:28:04.700)
well, President Trump is now finally acting
Lex Fridman (1:28:08.860)
like a real president when he attacks,
Oliver Stone (1:28:11.180)
when he drops missiles in Syria.
Lex Fridman (1:28:12.900)
They actually said that.
Oliver Stone (1:28:14.300)
In other words, they wanted Trump to go to war on Syria,
Lex Fridman (1:28:17.140)
but he didn't.
Oliver Stone (1:28:17.980)
Chemical weapons and nuclear is really terrifying.
Lex Fridman (1:28:23.260)
Do you think, now combine this with the fascinating choice
Oliver Stone (1:28:28.740)
in your interviews with Vladimir Putin
Lex Fridman (1:28:31.260)
to watch Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove
Oliver Stone (1:28:36.300)
or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Lex Fridman (1:28:38.860)
And given the fact that you did that,
Oliver Stone (1:28:42.180)
now looking at the fact that the word nuclear,
Lex Fridman (1:28:46.380)
and it feels like the world hangs
Oliver Stone (1:28:49.820)
on the brink of nuclear war,
Lex Fridman (1:28:52.180)
do you think that that's overstating the case?
Oliver Stone (1:28:55.740)
No, that's what worried me from the beginning,
Lex Fridman (1:28:58.300)
and that's probably why I got involved in all this stuff,
Oliver Stone (1:29:00.580)
because I go back to the 60s when we were so close
Lex Fridman (1:29:06.320)
to nuclear war.
Oliver Stone (1:29:07.440)
I lived through that period,
Lex Fridman (1:29:08.720)
and I thought, as many people did,
Oliver Stone (1:29:11.220)
that this was, it was gonna come now.
Lex Fridman (1:29:14.900)
So I've lived through that,
Lex Fridman (1:29:16.620)
and I didn't sense the period in 83
Lex Fridman (1:29:19.700)
when Reagan took us to the edge,
Oliver Stone (1:29:21.540)
if you remember correctly.
Lex Fridman (1:29:22.500)
Able Archer was an exercise that almost brought us to,
Oliver Stone (1:29:26.380)
because the Russians were really paranoid at that point,
Lex Fridman (1:29:29.240)
and they were responding to our military exercise
Oliver Stone (1:29:32.860)
on Able Archer.
Lex Fridman (1:29:33.700)
There was also the Korean airliner, they went down.
Oliver Stone (1:29:35.580)
There were numerous incidents in the 80s,
Lex Fridman (1:29:37.500)
but I never felt the fear.
Oliver Stone (1:29:40.200)
I thought Reagan was testing the limits,
Lex Fridman (1:29:43.300)
but perhaps if I'd been younger, I would've felt it.
Lex Fridman (1:29:46.240)
But anyway, no, we come close.
Lex Fridman (1:29:48.340)
The United States has risked this several times.
Oliver Stone (1:29:51.380)
If I told you, it would be hard for you to believe,
Lex Fridman (1:29:53.540)
if I could set a scene for you in a drama in 1962
Oliver Stone (1:29:57.980)
when Kennedy has a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Lex Fridman (1:30:01.180)
and the CIA, and they talk about a plan,
Oliver Stone (1:30:06.220)
a military plan, to first strike the Soviet Union and China.
Lex Fridman (1:30:11.220)
It was an Eisenhower plan that had been put into potential
Oliver Stone (1:30:18.820)
operation in early 60s or 50s, late 50s, SIOP 62.
Lex Fridman (1:30:27.060)
This was an attack on the Soviet Union, first strike.
Oliver Stone (1:30:29.820)
That's why the United States has never given up
Lex Fridman (1:30:32.220)
the concept of first strike.
Oliver Stone (1:30:34.700)
It's interesting that the Russian nuclear policy posture
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.520)
is more defensive than the American one,
Oliver Stone (1:30:41.860)
which leaves options open.
Lex Fridman (1:30:44.900)
The same options are open in neoconservative agreements
Oliver Stone (1:30:49.300)
that we see from the late 90s, where they say,
Lex Fridman (1:30:52.460)
the emergence of a rival power will not be tolerated.
Oliver Stone (1:30:56.140)
That's a very broad statement,
Lex Fridman (1:30:58.260)
and it allows you to do a lot, including nuclear.
Lex Fridman (1:31:01.780)
So you have to understand the United States is always,
Lex Fridman (1:31:05.620)
first of all, it breaks so many treaties.
Oliver Stone (1:31:07.900)
We know that from the Putin story
Lex Fridman (1:31:10.180)
about the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002,
Lex Fridman (1:31:13.940)
and then the INF Treaty of, they broke that one.
Lex Fridman (1:31:17.240)
That was the intermediate missiles.
Oliver Stone (1:31:19.980)
That was 2019.
Lex Fridman (1:31:21.380)
I don't know when they broke it off,
Lex Fridman (1:31:22.920)
but the United States has not been very faithful
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.040)
on its nuclear agreements, and so I don't know
Oliver Stone (1:31:29.560)
that we can even deal with the United States diplomatically.
Lex Fridman (1:31:32.140)
It seems to be impossible.
Oliver Stone (1:31:34.220)
Now, it brings me to Biden.
Lex Fridman (1:31:36.240)
And this is the opposite of Kennedy.
Oliver Stone (1:31:40.220)
Kennedy was a Catholic Irish anti imperialist.
Lex Fridman (1:31:43.820)
Biden seems to be the opposite.
Oliver Stone (1:31:45.300)
He seems to be a get along, go along guy
Lex Fridman (1:31:48.300)
who's been not only old,
Lex Fridman (1:31:50.780)
but he's also gone along with this program,
Lex Fridman (1:31:52.760)
which I voted for Biden because I feared Trump,
Lex Fridman (1:31:56.140)
but I thought Biden at a certain age would mellow.
Lex Fridman (1:31:59.020)
I really did.
Oliver Stone (1:32:00.260)
He's not mellowed, apparently.
Lex Fridman (1:32:01.620)
He's still listening to these people, and he believes them.
Lex Fridman (1:32:05.040)
And it seems that his, that horrible woman,
Lex Fridman (1:32:08.300)
Victoria Nuland, who was Under Secretary of State,
Oliver Stone (1:32:10.540)
he appointed her to this sector of the world.
Lex Fridman (1:32:14.580)
She's very influential,
Lex Fridman (1:32:16.020)
and she's been one of the worst people on Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (1:32:19.460)
Obviously, she's behind the coup.
Oliver Stone (1:32:21.860)
She was the one who boasted that, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:32:24.740)
we got our man in, Yats, whatever it is, Yatsenuk.
Lex Fridman (1:32:28.780)
And also, remember the famous statement, fuck the EU?
Lex Fridman (1:32:32.780)
All these things, but she's back,
Lex Fridman (1:32:34.400)
and she said the other day about if the Soviets,
Lex Fridman (1:32:37.340)
if the Russians use nuclear weaponry of any kind,
Oliver Stone (1:32:41.440)
there's gonna be a horrible price to pay.
Lex Fridman (1:32:44.020)
She was out of the blue.
Lex Fridman (1:32:44.900)
I said, what the hell is she doing?
Lex Fridman (1:32:46.660)
She's talking nuclear all of a sudden.
Lex Fridman (1:32:48.660)
And then since that day, everybody in the US press,
Lex Fridman (1:32:52.780)
all the shows have gone, talk nuclear, nuclear, nuclear.
Oliver Stone (1:32:55.620)
Secretary of State has done it, Blinken, it scares you.
Lex Fridman (1:33:05.580)
If you think about it, the United States scares me.
Lex Fridman (1:33:08.300)
So that's the military industrial complex machine,
Lex Fridman (1:33:11.300)
fully functional, fully operational
Oliver Stone (1:33:13.220)
behind this whole thing.
Lex Fridman (1:33:14.140)
Certainly is.
Lex Fridman (1:33:14.980)
Is that what's to blame?
Lex Fridman (1:33:16.220)
Certainly is.
Oliver Stone (1:33:17.460)
That's why I showed him Strangelove,
Lex Fridman (1:33:18.900)
because I wanted him to show him.
Oliver Stone (1:33:20.700)
I wanted Mr. Putin to say, look at this film.
Lex Fridman (1:33:22.900)
You never saw it.
Lex Fridman (1:33:23.720)
How can you not say, you know,
Lex Fridman (1:33:24.860)
it's a seminal film in American history
Oliver Stone (1:33:27.740)
to those people who care.
Lex Fridman (1:33:28.940)
And it shows you the Kubrick had a pacifist, thank God,
Oliver Stone (1:33:34.100)
antiwar mentality, which he showed in Bows of Glory
Lex Fridman (1:33:39.560)
as well as Strangelove.
Lex Fridman (1:33:42.300)
And it's such a dire, well done scenario
Lex Fridman (1:33:46.180)
that I wanted Mr. Putin to be aware
Oliver Stone (1:33:48.700)
of the way the United States thinks.
Lex Fridman (1:33:51.360)
Yeah, the absurdity of escalation,
Oliver Stone (1:33:53.940)
the absurdity of war at the largest scale,
Lex Fridman (1:33:56.500)
the absurdity of nuclear war, especially.
Lex Fridman (1:33:59.420)
Can we walk back from the brink of nuclear war?
Lex Fridman (1:34:03.740)
Can we?
Lex Fridman (1:34:04.580)
Can we?
Lex Fridman (1:34:05.400)
Yes, yes we can.
Lex Fridman (1:34:06.240)
What's the path to walk back?
Lex Fridman (1:34:07.740)
Reason.
Oliver Stone (1:34:08.580)
Reason.
Lex Fridman (1:34:09.420)
Between who and whom?
Oliver Stone (1:34:10.240)
Reason and diplomacy.
Lex Fridman (1:34:11.380)
There's no reason.
Oliver Stone (1:34:12.420)
I mean, talk to the guy.
Lex Fridman (1:34:15.180)
Mr. Biden, why don't you calm down
Lex Fridman (1:34:17.860)
and go and talk to Mr. Putin in Moscow?
Lex Fridman (1:34:20.860)
Why don't you just sit across the table from him
Lex Fridman (1:34:23.020)
and try to have a discussion without falling
Lex Fridman (1:34:26.060)
into ideologies and stuff like that?
Lex Fridman (1:34:29.540)
Can I ask you for advice?
Lex Fridman (1:34:31.180)
You did some of the most difficult interviews ever.
Lex Fridman (1:34:34.740)
Do you have advice that you can give to someone like me
Lex Fridman (1:34:38.460)
or anyone hoping to understand something
Oliver Stone (1:34:40.540)
about a human being sitting across from them
Lex Fridman (1:34:44.780)
about what it takes to do a good interview?
Oliver Stone (1:34:47.860)
You're doing one.
Lex Fridman (1:34:48.760)
Well, no, but there's a, listen,
Oliver Stone (1:34:52.720)
there's levels to this game.
Lex Fridman (1:34:55.080)
And interviewing somebody like Vladimir Putin,
Oliver Stone (1:34:58.080)
also language barrier, sit across from the man,
Lex Fridman (1:35:03.160)
try to keep an open mind,
Oliver Stone (1:35:06.120)
try to also ask challenging questions,
Lex Fridman (1:35:08.840)
but not challenging with an agenda,
Lex Fridman (1:35:11.040)
but seeking to understand and understand deeply.
Lex Fridman (1:35:14.340)
How do you do that?
Oliver Stone (1:35:15.920)
Seeking the truth.
Lex Fridman (1:35:17.200)
It's very simple.
Oliver Stone (1:35:18.080)
Seeking the truth, being a questioner like you are.
Lex Fridman (1:35:20.960)
You wanna know what is really going on.
Oliver Stone (1:35:23.400)
I could not get anywhere with Biden or Bush
Lex Fridman (1:35:26.960)
or for that matter, Obama.
Oliver Stone (1:35:28.400)
They'd be opaque with me.
Lex Fridman (1:35:30.080)
There's no interview possible
Oliver Stone (1:35:31.360)
with the president of the United States
Lex Fridman (1:35:32.640)
because he's got to stand for all the stuff
Oliver Stone (1:35:34.920)
that they stand for, which is imperialism,
Lex Fridman (1:35:37.640)
which is control of the world.
Lex Fridman (1:35:39.160)
How can you defend that?
Lex Fridman (1:35:41.360)
No one's gonna come out and say that.
Oliver Stone (1:35:42.560)
They're always gonna blame the enemy.
Lex Fridman (1:35:44.720)
They're gonna blame Iran.
Oliver Stone (1:35:45.760)
They're gonna blame China.
Lex Fridman (1:35:47.920)
So with some people, it may not be possible
Oliver Stone (1:35:50.040)
to break through the opaqueness.
Lex Fridman (1:35:51.360)
You can't, you can't.
Oliver Stone (1:35:52.200)
I mean, have you ever seen an interview with the president
Lex Fridman (1:35:54.280)
besides being personable,
Lex Fridman (1:35:57.480)
where he actually discussed American policy?
Lex Fridman (1:36:00.200)
Yeah, I mean, not really, but maybe after their president.
Oliver Stone (1:36:03.600)
I could see Obama being able to do such an interview.
Lex Fridman (1:36:06.880)
I could see George W. being able to do such an interview.
Lex Fridman (1:36:10.220)
Or are they not able to reflect at all on the?
Lex Fridman (1:36:13.360)
George W. hasn't shown much conscience
Oliver Stone (1:36:15.200)
in terms of thinking about what he's done.
Lex Fridman (1:36:17.680)
You've seen that.
Lex Fridman (1:36:18.640)
You ever see my movie, W.?
Lex Fridman (1:36:20.520)
I think that's one of my best movies
Oliver Stone (1:36:22.240)
because it shows a man who's just out of his depth
Lex Fridman (1:36:25.400)
and has no, he has a conscience at the end of the movie.
Oliver Stone (1:36:28.320)
If you remember correctly, he talks to his wife
Lex Fridman (1:36:31.080)
and he says, I don't get it.
Oliver Stone (1:36:33.200)
I'm trying to do good in the world.
Lex Fridman (1:36:34.480)
I've done, I believe in good and right.
Lex Fridman (1:36:36.880)
And why do people not understand that kind of complaint
Lex Fridman (1:36:40.920)
as if he can't get outside himself
Lex Fridman (1:36:42.660)
to understand the way other people think?
Lex Fridman (1:36:45.040)
Empathies, walking like a dramatist is what I do.
Oliver Stone (1:36:47.800)
You walk in the footsteps of other people.
Lex Fridman (1:36:50.720)
When I did a movie about Richard Nixon,
Oliver Stone (1:36:52.440)
it wasn't because I liked him.
Lex Fridman (1:36:54.080)
It was because I wanted to,
Oliver Stone (1:36:55.820)
I think I understood a part of him because of my father
Lex Fridman (1:36:57.960)
and I think I wanted to walk in his footsteps.
Oliver Stone (1:37:00.680)
That's not to say I sympathize with him because I didn't.
Lex Fridman (1:37:03.160)
I don't think he helped the American cause at all,
Lex Fridman (1:37:05.920)
but it was empathize as opposed to sympathize.
Lex Fridman (1:37:08.920)
Same thing with Bush.
Oliver Stone (1:37:10.080)
People were shocked when I did the Bush movie.
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.720)
They said, how can you be in any way receptive to this guy?
Oliver Stone (1:37:18.360)
That's wrong.
Lex Fridman (1:37:19.720)
Dramatists don't have political positions.
Oliver Stone (1:37:22.120)
They walk in the shoes of.
Lex Fridman (1:37:23.940)
That's why Bush movie perhaps was surprising
Lex Fridman (1:37:27.160)
and many people didn't care for it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:29.380)
Maybe that's what, but that's, you've got to go there.
Oliver Stone (1:37:34.840)
If you did a movie about a villain, you have to go there.
Lex Fridman (1:37:38.080)
You have to walk in their shoes.
Oliver Stone (1:37:41.000)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:37:41.840)
So see them, cause they usually,
Oliver Stone (1:37:43.640)
villains usually see themselves as the hero.
Lex Fridman (1:37:46.640)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:37:47.560)
So you have to consider what is it like to live in a world
Lex Fridman (1:37:51.160)
where this person is the hero?
Oliver Stone (1:37:53.880)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:37:55.680)
Is that a burden?
Lex Fridman (1:37:56.980)
Is that hard?
Lex Fridman (1:37:57.820)
Not for George W. Bush.
Oliver Stone (1:37:59.480)
He's bitching because they didn't understand him,
Lex Fridman (1:38:02.600)
but he had a good vision he said of democracy
Lex Fridman (1:38:05.140)
and you know, democracy forgives a lot of sins.
Lex Fridman (1:38:09.720)
Can I ask you a hard question on that?
Oliver Stone (1:38:11.780)
Yes, sure.
Lex Fridman (1:38:13.280)
So because empathy is so important to a great interview,
Oliver Stone (1:38:16.860)
let's ask the most challenging version of empathy,
Lex Fridman (1:38:19.400)
which is when you're sitting across from a man
Oliver Stone (1:38:23.080)
on the brink of war that leads to tens of millions
Lex Fridman (1:38:26.840)
of deaths, which is Hitler.
Lex Fridman (1:38:28.620)
So if you could interview Hitler in 1939,
Lex Fridman (1:38:32.200)
as the drums of war start to beat or 1941
Oliver Stone (1:38:36.780)
when they're already full on war, but there's still
Lex Fridman (1:38:39.840)
a lot of pacifists, there's still a lot of people unsure
Lex Fridman (1:38:44.100)
what are the motivations behind what Hitler's doing.
Lex Fridman (1:38:48.320)
How would you do that interview?
Oliver Stone (1:38:49.640)
Well it depends when you do it.
Lex Fridman (1:38:50.760)
If you do it in 38, I certainly would have,
Oliver Stone (1:38:54.480)
no you have to, if you sit down across from Hitler,
Lex Fridman (1:38:57.120)
you empathize.
Lex Fridman (1:38:57.960)
What is your beef?
Lex Fridman (1:38:59.040)
Where have you been?
Lex Fridman (1:39:00.680)
What is your consciousness?
Lex Fridman (1:39:02.200)
Why do you hate Jewish people?
Oliver Stone (1:39:05.200)
Why, what is, all these questions that come up.
Lex Fridman (1:39:10.840)
His sense of grievance as a result of World War I.
Oliver Stone (1:39:13.880)
There's justifications there, et cetera.
Lex Fridman (1:39:16.380)
But if I, and by the way, Churchill was trying
Oliver Stone (1:39:19.120)
to make a deal with him in 38.
Lex Fridman (1:39:21.120)
That's a fact that people don't know.
Oliver Stone (1:39:23.040)
Churchill himself, there was still the desire
Lex Fridman (1:39:25.780)
in England to make peace with Germany.
Lex Fridman (1:39:29.880)
And it was seen as a possible, what Churchill
Lex Fridman (1:39:34.440)
really wanted was Hitler to go against Russia.
Lex Fridman (1:39:36.900)
And anything to destroy the Bolsheviks.
Lex Fridman (1:39:40.080)
So he was using Hitler as much as he could
Oliver Stone (1:39:42.760)
to go after Russia, but Hitler was too elusive
Lex Fridman (1:39:46.760)
to get, to pin him down.
Lex Fridman (1:39:48.640)
But if you remember, Hitler was very kind at the end of,
Lex Fridman (1:39:51.640)
kind is not the right word, was,
Oliver Stone (1:39:54.960)
did not go after the British Empire when he had France.
Lex Fridman (1:39:58.560)
And he could have.
Oliver Stone (1:40:00.740)
He had another objective, which was obviously the East.
Lex Fridman (1:40:04.300)
So Hitler's goal, I think, he always had an admiration
Oliver Stone (1:40:08.880)
for England.
Lex Fridman (1:40:09.720)
It's an interesting story, always.
Lex Fridman (1:40:13.040)
And the empire.
Lex Fridman (1:40:15.320)
Yes, and certainly Churchill, we have no doubts now
Oliver Stone (1:40:19.320)
from history revisionism that Churchill's interest,
Lex Fridman (1:40:22.560)
main interest, was not Germany.
Oliver Stone (1:40:24.560)
It was the British Empire.
Lex Fridman (1:40:26.160)
And to preserve it to India, the road to India
Lex Fridman (1:40:28.480)
and all that, and Middle East.
Lex Fridman (1:40:31.240)
Churchill fought the entire war with the concept
Oliver Stone (1:40:34.360)
of preserving the British Empire.
Lex Fridman (1:40:36.160)
All his goals, he sent America on a goose chase into Italy,
Oliver Stone (1:40:39.920)
you could argue, instead of establishing
Lex Fridman (1:40:41.840)
a sincere second front in Western Europe.
Oliver Stone (1:40:47.680)
Interesting man.
Lex Fridman (1:40:49.120)
So I would have tried to get, you know,
Oliver Stone (1:40:50.480)
I think I would have approached it the same way.
Lex Fridman (1:40:52.660)
In 1939, it would have been a different story
Oliver Stone (1:40:55.080)
because at that point, he'd attacked Poland,
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.080)
and in 1940, France.
Lex Fridman (1:41:00.420)
So it's another ball game.
Lex Fridman (1:41:02.440)
But certainly, at whatever point you talk to him,
Oliver Stone (1:41:05.320)
I would try to understand his point.
Lex Fridman (1:41:07.660)
I'm not judging you, Hitler.
Oliver Stone (1:41:09.200)
I'm saying to you, tell me what you're thinking.
Lex Fridman (1:41:11.360)
Why are you invading Russia?
Lex Fridman (1:41:12.560)
What's your thought?
Lex Fridman (1:41:13.800)
That's all an interviewer should do.
Oliver Stone (1:41:15.160)
He shouldn't be expressing his contempt for Hitler,
Lex Fridman (1:41:18.080)
which like an American journalist interviewing Putin,
Oliver Stone (1:41:21.420)
I'm getting brownie points for expressing my contempt for you.
Lex Fridman (1:41:26.880)
That doesn't wash with me.
Oliver Stone (1:41:27.880)
That's ugly.
Lex Fridman (1:41:29.160)
Seek to understand.
Oliver Stone (1:41:30.280)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (1:41:32.280)
This is a technical question,
Lex Fridman (1:41:33.760)
but was language a barrier as an interviewer?
Lex Fridman (1:41:36.840)
To some degree.
Oliver Stone (1:41:37.780)
It's very hard to learn Russian.
Lex Fridman (1:41:40.160)
But I had very, they have excellent translators
Oliver Stone (1:41:42.520)
in the Kremlin, excellent.
Lex Fridman (1:41:43.880)
They are people who are trained very seriously
Oliver Stone (1:41:47.560)
for months or years before they,
Lex Fridman (1:41:50.460)
these people are young and they're very bright.
Oliver Stone (1:41:53.720)
I was very impressed with the Russian translators.
Lex Fridman (1:41:55.520)
It's interesting.
Oliver Stone (1:41:56.360)
I mean, I'm impressed as well,
Lex Fridman (1:41:58.260)
but there's a humor that's lost.
Oliver Stone (1:42:01.760)
There's a wit, a dry wit.
Lex Fridman (1:42:03.680)
There's stuff said between the lines.
Oliver Stone (1:42:06.880)
That's not actually how much content,
Lex Fridman (1:42:09.380)
but it's more kind of the things
Oliver Stone (1:42:12.720)
that make communication more frictionless.
Lex Fridman (1:42:15.360)
It's the, there's a kind of sadness to a Russian humor
Oliver Stone (1:42:20.920)
that permeates all things.
Lex Fridman (1:42:22.720)
And that sometimes is lost in translation.
Oliver Stone (1:42:24.840)
The translation is a little bit colder,
Lex Fridman (1:42:26.960)
meaning it just conveys the facts.
Lex Fridman (1:42:29.880)
Would you call it sardonic humor?
Lex Fridman (1:42:31.720)
I would say so, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:42:33.440)
And so it's interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:42:34.320)
But I think you could see that from facial expressions
Oliver Stone (1:42:36.440)
when you're sitting across from the person
Lex Fridman (1:42:38.160)
and you can feel it.
Oliver Stone (1:42:39.000)
I feel it, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:42:39.820)
You can feel it.
Oliver Stone (1:42:41.280)
Let me ask you in general,
Lex Fridman (1:42:43.840)
what's the role of love in the human condition,
Lex Fridman (1:42:48.500)
in your life, in life in general?
Lex Fridman (1:42:50.760)
You've talked, you looked at some of the darkest aspect
Oliver Stone (1:42:53.720)
of human nature.
Lex Fridman (1:42:55.600)
What's the role of this,
Lex Fridman (1:42:57.160)
one of the more beautiful aspects of human nature?
Lex Fridman (1:42:59.520)
I think without love, I wouldn't,
Oliver Stone (1:43:01.040)
I don't think I'd be able to carry on.
Lex Fridman (1:43:02.920)
I think that love is my, love is the greatest,
Oliver Stone (1:43:08.520)
the ability to love is the greatest virtue you can have.
Lex Fridman (1:43:11.120)
It's the ability to share with another,
Oliver Stone (1:43:14.960)
with your family, with your children, with your wife,
Lex Fridman (1:43:17.680)
with your lover, your partner.
Oliver Stone (1:43:19.440)
It's an ability to extend yourself into the world
Lex Fridman (1:43:22.360)
and it brings empathy with it.
Oliver Stone (1:43:23.860)
If you love well,
Lex Fridman (1:43:25.840)
I think you expand it to the human race too.
Lex Fridman (1:43:28.400)
And it's the strength behind the great novelists,
Lex Fridman (1:43:32.440)
the great artists of our time.
Oliver Stone (1:43:35.640)
I think part of the reason I suppose
Lex Fridman (1:43:41.300)
we're scared of science sometimes
Oliver Stone (1:43:42.800)
is because the scientists sometimes
Lex Fridman (1:43:44.320)
don't express that clearly.
Oliver Stone (1:43:45.640)
You can lose that when you focus on the facts,
Lex Fridman (1:43:49.480)
on empirical data, on the science of things.
Oliver Stone (1:43:54.480)
You can lose the humanity that's between the lines.
Lex Fridman (1:43:58.320)
I'm often struck by when I talk to scientists
Lex Fridman (1:44:00.720)
and I've talked to a few,
Lex Fridman (1:44:02.040)
that how arrogant they can be about,
Oliver Stone (1:44:03.920)
they don't talk to you if you don't understand their world
Lex Fridman (1:44:06.960)
and they talk to each other and there's an arrogance,
Oliver Stone (1:44:09.120)
a closed circle kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (1:44:10.620)
Oh, he's not at my level, I can't,
Oliver Stone (1:44:12.520)
there's no discussion to be had with this person,
Lex Fridman (1:44:14.580)
he's a human being.
Oliver Stone (1:44:16.200)
That arrogance is terrifying to me
Lex Fridman (1:44:18.080)
because it's next door neighbor to closed mindedness
Oliver Stone (1:44:23.040)
which then can be used by charismatic leaders
Lex Fridman (1:44:25.440)
as it was in Nazi Germany
Oliver Stone (1:44:27.440)
to commit some of the worst atrocities.
Lex Fridman (1:44:29.740)
The scientists can be used as pawns
Oliver Stone (1:44:34.040)
in a very cruel game.
Lex Fridman (1:44:37.800)
What advice would you give to young people?
Oliver Stone (1:44:39.560)
You've done, first of all, some of the greatest films ever.
Lex Fridman (1:44:43.720)
You've lived a heck of a life.
Oliver Stone (1:44:47.920)
You've, were fearless and bold
Lex Fridman (1:44:51.180)
in asking some really difficult questions of this world.
Lex Fridman (1:44:53.960)
What advice would you give to young people today,
Lex Fridman (1:44:56.280)
high school, college, about career?
Lex Fridman (1:45:00.920)
How to have a career they can be proud of
Lex Fridman (1:45:02.800)
or how to have a life they can be proud of?
Oliver Stone (1:45:06.640)
Well, I have three children
Lex Fridman (1:45:07.840)
so obviously I'm not necessarily the best advisor
Oliver Stone (1:45:11.920)
in the world and I do find that the children,
Lex Fridman (1:45:15.640)
I've raised them with a sense of freedom
Lex Fridman (1:45:17.460)
and they do what they want.
Lex Fridman (1:45:19.280)
In the end, it's their life, their destiny, their character.
Oliver Stone (1:45:22.800)
That's what comes out.
Lex Fridman (1:45:24.520)
You can try to influence it
Lex Fridman (1:45:27.040)
but you can try to get your daughter to wake up
Lex Fridman (1:45:30.360)
at a certain hour in the day but it never works.
Lex Fridman (1:45:34.160)
So I long ago gave up on that
Lex Fridman (1:45:38.200)
and my children are all grown now
Lex Fridman (1:45:40.200)
but aside from that, I think if I was a teacher in a school
Lex Fridman (1:45:44.500)
and teaching film, I'd say to the students,
Oliver Stone (1:45:48.720)
get an education.
Lex Fridman (1:45:49.920)
You can't just look at film because it's not
Oliver Stone (1:45:53.640)
a full education, it's not the spectrum.
Lex Fridman (1:45:55.900)
I don't think you should teach film as a,
Oliver Stone (1:45:59.240)
I think you need a base in other worlds.
Lex Fridman (1:46:02.760)
One of the greatest courses I took at NYU was,
Lex Fridman (1:46:05.840)
and I was a war veteran on the GI Bill
Lex Fridman (1:46:08.520)
so I was older than the other students.
Oliver Stone (1:46:10.300)
One of the great, I took a class outside the film school
Lex Fridman (1:46:13.520)
in Greek classics because I hadn't had much history
Lex Fridman (1:46:18.160)
and I wanted to know more about the world of Homer
Lex Fridman (1:46:20.680)
and so forth and the teacher opened my eyes
Oliver Stone (1:46:23.600)
to so much in that class and I wrote about it
Lex Fridman (1:46:26.380)
in my memoir, it's called Chasing the Light
Oliver Stone (1:46:29.600)
about Professor Leahy and what he did to me.
Lex Fridman (1:46:33.080)
He gave me the concepts clearly of consciousness
Oliver Stone (1:46:36.600)
which is the Homeric theme of Odysseus
Lex Fridman (1:46:39.560)
and also lethe, L E T H E, which is sleep
Lex Fridman (1:46:47.240)
and how most of the crew, Odysseus's crew,
Lex Fridman (1:46:53.240)
were experiencing lethe and how necessary it was
Oliver Stone (1:46:56.200)
to stay awake.
Lex Fridman (1:46:58.360)
So it's not just film, it's just you have to learn
Oliver Stone (1:47:01.880)
the world as much as you can when you're young
Lex Fridman (1:47:04.460)
and so that I think is the basis of a good education
Lex Fridman (1:47:10.040)
and a classic one is important, a basis.
Lex Fridman (1:47:15.440)
I think then you go on and you can learn computer
Oliver Stone (1:47:18.120)
if you want but that's specialization.
Lex Fridman (1:47:21.900)
If you're a computer geek, is that a life?
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.600)
Does that give you enough satisfaction?
Lex Fridman (1:47:26.380)
Do you get the joy out of people?
Oliver Stone (1:47:29.860)
No, just like filmmaking is a skill.
Lex Fridman (1:47:32.120)
Yes, right.
Oliver Stone (1:47:32.960)
You have the broad background to understand the world,
Lex Fridman (1:47:36.640)
literature, history.
Oliver Stone (1:47:40.360)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (1:47:43.760)
So one of the things about being human is life is finite.
Oliver Stone (1:47:48.520)
It ends.
Lex Fridman (1:47:50.000)
Do you think about your death?
Lex Fridman (1:47:52.200)
Are you afraid of your death?
Lex Fridman (1:47:53.240)
Yeah, sure.
Oliver Stone (1:47:54.320)
Absolutely, you have to come to terms with death
Lex Fridman (1:47:56.640)
and that's a tough one for many people.
Oliver Stone (1:47:58.640)
It's always there.
Lex Fridman (1:47:59.480)
I'm older than you, obviously,
Lex Fridman (1:48:01.320)
and I'm getting closer to it.
Lex Fridman (1:48:02.960)
Couldn't happen any day, actually.
Oliver Stone (1:48:04.820)
When you get to a certain age,
Lex Fridman (1:48:06.260)
you can't assume that you're gonna be alive tomorrow.
Lex Fridman (1:48:08.480)
So I try to deal with that.
Lex Fridman (1:48:10.360)
Are you afraid of it?
Oliver Stone (1:48:12.320)
Much less so than I was when I was younger.
Lex Fridman (1:48:15.520)
Remember, I was in Vietnam
Lex Fridman (1:48:16.760)
but I thought I dealt with it there
Lex Fridman (1:48:18.320)
but when I came back, I realized that I wanted to live.
Lex Fridman (1:48:21.800)
So yes, I've learned over time
Lex Fridman (1:48:24.600)
to get more and more used to it and get ready for it.
Lex Fridman (1:48:27.940)
What's a good answer to the question of why live?
Lex Fridman (1:48:31.000)
So the realization that you wanted to live.
Lex Fridman (1:48:34.600)
What was the reason to live?
Lex Fridman (1:48:36.580)
Because it was better than being one of those corpses
Oliver Stone (1:48:38.720)
that I saw in the jungle.
Lex Fridman (1:48:40.760)
I saw how finite death is.
Lex Fridman (1:48:45.320)
Are there things in your life you regret?
Lex Fridman (1:48:48.080)
Oh, sure.
Oliver Stone (1:48:48.920)
Too many.
Lex Fridman (1:48:55.640)
Is there something you wish you could have done differently?
Oliver Stone (1:48:58.020)
Like if you could go back to do one thing differently
Lex Fridman (1:49:00.600)
or that it regrets all of it.
Lex Fridman (1:49:01.820)
Did you ask Musk this?
Lex Fridman (1:49:02.660)
I'm curious.
Lex Fridman (1:49:04.040)
What did he say?
Lex Fridman (1:49:04.880)
Offline all the time.
Oliver Stone (1:49:09.600)
No, no.
Lex Fridman (1:49:11.520)
You'd be curious to know.
Lex Fridman (1:49:12.680)
And he's an engineer too
Lex Fridman (1:49:13.960)
and engineers really value mistakes.
Oliver Stone (1:49:17.360)
Engineers value mistakes.
Lex Fridman (1:49:18.200)
Value mistakes and errors
Oliver Stone (1:49:19.600)
because that's an opportunity to learn.
Lex Fridman (1:49:22.400)
I mean, this is what you do with systems
Oliver Stone (1:49:24.120)
is you test them, then test them, then test them
Lex Fridman (1:49:26.520)
and errors is just information.
Oliver Stone (1:49:28.560)
He did that with the rockets.
Lex Fridman (1:49:29.400)
That is true in its way of filmmaking.
Oliver Stone (1:49:31.240)
There are certain things you learn as you build films
Lex Fridman (1:49:35.240)
and you make mistakes.
Oliver Stone (1:49:36.720)
It's like putting an engine together and you,
Lex Fridman (1:49:39.600)
oh, the film is flawed in that way, you know it.
Oliver Stone (1:49:42.260)
Other people may or may not see it,
Lex Fridman (1:49:43.880)
but the car runs or it made money or it didn't make money.
Oliver Stone (1:49:48.260)
It can be good and it didn't make money,
Lex Fridman (1:49:49.900)
but the point is that everything is a build.
Oliver Stone (1:49:53.120)
Every film is a construction.
Lex Fridman (1:49:54.800)
Same thing as he goes through on a Tesla,
Oliver Stone (1:49:57.540)
we go through on each film.
Lex Fridman (1:49:59.480)
But films are art.
Oliver Stone (1:50:03.100)
It's a little tricky.
Lex Fridman (1:50:03.940)
Yeah, the thing is one film does not lead
Oliver Stone (1:50:05.760)
to a lifetime guarantee of copyright.
Lex Fridman (1:50:11.580)
Well, yeah, you have the movie game as you've called it.
Oliver Stone (1:50:17.120)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:50:17.960)
It's a complicated and cruel game.
Lex Fridman (1:50:22.640)
But it takes enormous amount of work,
Lex Fridman (1:50:24.920)
enormous amount of work to make a film.
Oliver Stone (1:50:26.520)
People underestimate that.
Lex Fridman (1:50:28.800)
It's extremely complicated to have something be successful
Oliver Stone (1:50:34.900)
because it has so many elements of luck involved
Lex Fridman (1:50:38.200)
and reception and so forth.
Lex Fridman (1:50:42.000)
What do you think, I apologize for the absurd question,
Lex Fridman (1:50:46.280)
but what do you think is the meaning of life?
Lex Fridman (1:50:48.520)
Why are we here?
Lex Fridman (1:50:50.280)
The why.
Oliver Stone (1:50:51.100)
I think to realize ourselves,
Lex Fridman (1:50:52.320)
to realize more of what you are,
Oliver Stone (1:50:54.700)
to realize what life is, to appreciate it,
Lex Fridman (1:50:57.700)
to grow, to honor our life,
Oliver Stone (1:51:01.040)
to honor the concept of life
Lex Fridman (1:51:02.580)
and to understand how precious life is.
Oliver Stone (1:51:06.180)
The preciousness of life, as the Buddhists say.
Lex Fridman (1:51:08.880)
And of course, the immediacy of death all around us.
Oliver Stone (1:51:12.360)
The causes of death are all around us.
Lex Fridman (1:51:15.880)
And our life is like, as they say,
Oliver Stone (1:51:18.600)
is like a lantern in a strong breeze existing
Lex Fridman (1:51:23.600)
among the causes of death.
Lex Fridman (1:51:25.600)
So life is so precious.
Lex Fridman (1:51:27.520)
And at the same time, the immediacy of death
Lex Fridman (1:51:31.080)
and then of course, the continuation of life
Lex Fridman (1:51:33.160)
in whatever form it's gonna take.
Lex Fridman (1:51:36.280)
But in this life, to wake up to the preciousness of it.
Lex Fridman (1:51:40.200)
To the preciousness.
Oliver Stone (1:51:41.080)
Yeah, that's a wonderful thing, by the way.
Lex Fridman (1:51:42.480)
I didn't have that when I was young.
Oliver Stone (1:51:43.800)
I took it for granted.
Lex Fridman (1:51:47.280)
Oliver, like I said, I'm a huge fan.
Oliver Stone (1:51:49.840)
You're an incredible human being,
Lex Fridman (1:51:51.760)
one of the greatest artists ever.
Lex Fridman (1:51:54.760)
So it's a huge honor that you sit with me
Lex Fridman (1:51:57.320)
and talk so deeply and honestly
Oliver Stone (1:52:00.720)
about some very difficult topics.
Lex Fridman (1:52:02.480)
Again, you're an inspiration and it's an honor
Oliver Stone (1:52:05.180)
that you will spend your valuable time with me.
Lex Fridman (1:52:06.840)
Thank you very much.
Oliver Stone (1:52:07.680)
Thanks for talking to me.
Lex Fridman (1:52:08.520)
Fun being here.
Oliver Stone (1:52:10.000)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Oliver Stone.
Lex Fridman (1:52:12.640)
To support this podcast,
Oliver Stone (1:52:13.920)
please check out our sponsors in the description.
Lex Fridman (1:52:16.280)
And now, let me leave you with some words
Oliver Stone (1:52:18.360)
from Oliver Stone in the untold history
Lex Fridman (1:52:20.560)
of the United States.
Oliver Stone (1:52:22.560)
To fail is not tragic.
Lex Fridman (1:52:24.720)
To be human is.
Oliver Stone (1:52:26.440)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (20:02.800)
No, because the moment he was killed,
Oliver Stone (20:05.760)
honestly, there was a lot of, we can talk about that,
Lex Fridman (20:08.440)
and as you know, I've made a film, JFK Revisited
Oliver Stone (20:11.240)
is a documentary we released this year
Lex Fridman (20:14.520)
about the movie I made in 1991.
Lex Fridman (20:18.600)
But the moment he was killed, I would argue
Lex Fridman (20:21.680)
that Lyndon Johnson went back immediately
Oliver Stone (20:24.200)
to the old way of thinking, the old way of doing business,
Lex Fridman (20:26.760)
which was the Eisenhower, Truman way,
Oliver Stone (20:30.360)
which we had adapted since World War II.
Lex Fridman (20:33.280)
That was an interim.
Oliver Stone (20:34.800)
You have to think about it from, Roosevelt dies in 45.
Lex Fridman (20:37.520)
Roosevelt has an interim of 15 years where he,
Oliver Stone (20:44.520)
he has more of a democratic regime, more liberal.
Lex Fridman (20:47.200)
He establishes, he recognizes the Soviet Union
Oliver Stone (20:49.600)
for the first time since the revolution,
Lex Fridman (20:52.000)
and he actually has a relationship with them.
Oliver Stone (20:54.640)
He sends ambassadors who are friendly,
Lex Fridman (20:56.920)
and he has a relationship with Stalin, et cetera,
Lex Fridman (21:01.440)
and at Yalta, or no, at Tehran, rather,
Lex Fridman (21:05.880)
that's where he had the relationship.
Lex Fridman (21:08.000)
Do you think if JFK lived, we would not have a Cold War?
Lex Fridman (21:10.840)
No, absolutely not, and we go into great depth on that
Oliver Stone (21:14.600)
in the film, and I'd urge you to see it,
Lex Fridman (21:17.000)
because it goes into all the issues around the world.
Oliver Stone (21:19.480)
Kennedy was being very much an anti imperialist.
Lex Fridman (21:21.920)
It turns out, and many people just don't understand that,
Lex Fridman (21:24.880)
but you have to look at all his policies in Middle East
Lex Fridman (21:28.520)
with Nasser, he had a relationship with Sukarno in Indonesia,
Oliver Stone (21:33.840)
with Latin America, he made a big effort
Lex Fridman (21:35.760)
with the Alliance for Progress,
Lex Fridman (21:37.640)
and when Africa, above all, with Lumumba,
Lex Fridman (21:40.800)
he was very shocked at his death,
Lex Fridman (21:42.760)
and tried to defend the right, the integrity
Lex Fridman (21:47.840)
of the Belgian Congo with Dag Hammarskjold of the UN.
Oliver Stone (21:51.360)
He made a big effort.
Lex Fridman (21:52.840)
Unfortunately, it didn't work out,
Oliver Stone (21:55.240)
because Dag Hammarskjold was killed,
Lex Fridman (21:57.280)
and then Kennedy was killed,
Lex Fridman (21:58.840)
and Congo descended into the chaos
Lex Fridman (22:01.400)
of Joseph Mobutu's dictatorship.
Lex Fridman (22:04.560)
But Kennedy was very active in terms of,
Lex Fridman (22:07.040)
as an Irishman, not as an Englishman, he was an Irishman.
Lex Fridman (22:10.720)
And I say that because, well, we'll come back to that,
Lex Fridman (22:12.880)
because Mr. Joe Biden is an Irishman,
Lex Fridman (22:14.600)
but it's a different kind of an Irishman.
Lex Fridman (22:16.040)
They're both Catholic Irish, but Kennedy really made
Oliver Stone (22:19.400)
an effort to change the imperialist mindset
Lex Fridman (22:25.320)
that still was very strong in America and Europe.
Oliver Stone (22:30.000)
Lyndon Johnson changed back to the old policy,
Lex Fridman (22:33.160)
and we were never able to really keep
Oliver Stone (22:36.360)
big talk going with the Russians.
Lex Fridman (22:37.800)
Briefly had it with Carter, but then Brzezinski came in.
Oliver Stone (22:42.800)
Brzezinski was his national security advisor.
Lex Fridman (22:45.480)
He was put there by Rockefeller,
Lex Fridman (22:47.000)
and Brzezinski was a Pole, he got revenge from Poland.
Lex Fridman (22:50.760)
Poland has always been attacking Russia,
Oliver Stone (22:53.080)
as far as I remember, back to another century.
Lex Fridman (22:55.760)
I mean, the two world wars that occupied Russia,
Lex Fridman (22:58.960)
so tragically, entry points were always
Lex Fridman (23:02.360)
through Poland and Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (23:05.360)
So Brzezinski got his revenge,
Lex Fridman (23:07.720)
and Carter ended up being an enemy of the Soviet Union,
Lex Fridman (23:11.600)
and creating, as Brzezinski took pride in it,
Lex Fridman (23:15.240)
he created the atmosphere of the trap
Oliver Stone (23:16.880)
for the Soviets to go into Afghanistan in 79.
Lex Fridman (23:20.600)
That trap was set, he says, he said, in 1978.
Lex Fridman (23:26.240)
So there was never, except for brief moments,
Lex Fridman (23:29.400)
periods of detente with the Soviets,
Lex Fridman (23:33.240)
and I grew up under that.
Lex Fridman (23:35.200)
I didn't really know anything of this going on,
Oliver Stone (23:37.800)
because I was learning, I was educating myself
Lex Fridman (23:40.600)
as I was going, learning movies,
Lex Fridman (23:42.200)
and trying to be a dramatist, and this and that,
Lex Fridman (23:45.040)
so I wasn't thinking about this.
Oliver Stone (23:47.280)
Then, when Reagan came in, I was worried again,
Lex Fridman (23:50.440)
because it was the beat of the old beat,
Oliver Stone (23:52.520)
which was there, the most evil empire.
Lex Fridman (23:54.840)
I mean, it goes on in American history, it doesn't end.
Oliver Stone (23:57.720)
Reagan got a lot of points for that,
Lex Fridman (24:00.080)
and of course, when Gorbachev came in,
Oliver Stone (24:04.600)
it was a beautiful moment for the world.
Lex Fridman (24:07.360)
It was a great surprise.
Oliver Stone (24:09.000)
It was probably the best years for America,
Lex Fridman (24:11.480)
at least from my point of view,
Oliver Stone (24:13.040)
in terms of this relaxation in the mood.
Lex Fridman (24:16.280)
1986 to 1991 were great years
Oliver Stone (24:21.560)
in terms of ability to believe, once again,
Lex Fridman (24:24.400)
that there could be a peace dividend,
Lex Fridman (24:27.040)
but the world changed again in 1991, 92.
Lex Fridman (24:30.080)
There's an internal mechanism, who knows?
Oliver Stone (24:31.880)
You could blame the United States,
Lex Fridman (24:35.000)
you could blame Russia for...
Oliver Stone (24:39.040)
Gorbachev was perhaps not the right man
Lex Fridman (24:41.080)
to try to administer that country at that point.
Oliver Stone (24:43.400)
He had great visions, he was a man of peace,
Lex Fridman (24:47.120)
but it was very difficult to hold together
Oliver Stone (24:48.880)
such a huge empire.
Lex Fridman (24:50.080)
So vision is not enough to hold together the Soviet Union?
Oliver Stone (24:53.520)
I think the details are interesting.
Lex Fridman (24:56.360)
I followed up on that a little bit,
Oliver Stone (24:58.000)
because I was recently in countries like Kazakhstan,
Lex Fridman (25:01.520)
talked about the negotiations that were going on,
Lex Fridman (25:05.360)
and the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman (25:08.360)
It's a very interesting story,
Oliver Stone (25:09.800)
because it involves everything, Ukraine, of course,
Lex Fridman (25:12.160)
everything that's going on now.
Oliver Stone (25:14.080)
Some, what is it, 30 million Russians
Lex Fridman (25:15.760)
were left outside of the Soviet Union when it collapsed.
Oliver Stone (25:19.320)
They had no home anymore, they were homes
Lex Fridman (25:21.840)
in other countries, such as in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (25:25.640)
So it's an interesting story, and with repercussions today,
Lex Fridman (25:30.200)
Kazakhstan is a good example of keeping a balance,
Oliver Stone (25:34.520)
keeping it neutral.
Lex Fridman (25:36.160)
He played both sides,
Lex Fridman (25:37.840)
and because Yeltsin wanted him
Lex Fridman (25:41.520)
to join the Russian Confederation
Oliver Stone (25:45.320)
in a certain way where he'd be supporting,
Lex Fridman (25:48.640)
against Gorbachev, there's a whole inward battle there.
Oliver Stone (25:53.400)
I think the Ukraine came along with Yeltsin,
Lex Fridman (25:57.800)
as well as, I'm sorry, I don't remember now,
Lex Fridman (26:02.280)
but two other regions came with him,
Lex Fridman (26:04.760)
and that was a block that broke up the Soviet Union.
Oliver Stone (26:09.240)
It was Yeltsin's plan to,
Lex Fridman (26:12.280)
and it wasn't make the Russian Federation, and they did.
Oliver Stone (26:15.760)
I would love to return back to JFK eventually,
Lex Fridman (26:19.240)
because he's such a fascinating figure
Oliver Stone (26:20.640)
in the history of human civilization,
Lex Fridman (26:23.600)
but let me ask you, fast forward.
Oliver Stone (26:26.200)
In 2000, Yeltsin was no longer president,
Lex Fridman (26:29.720)
and Vladimir Putin became president.
Oliver Stone (26:32.440)
You did a series of interviews with Vladimir Putin,
Lex Fridman (26:36.600)
as you mentioned, over a period of two years,
Oliver Stone (26:39.080)
from 2015 to 2017.
Lex Fridman (26:43.080)
Let me ask with a high level question.
Lex Fridman (26:45.740)
What was your goal with that conversation?
Lex Fridman (26:49.720)
Oh, came out in 2017, I guess I started them in 2014.
Oliver Stone (26:55.440)
At that point, the Snowden affair had happened,
Lex Fridman (26:58.560)
and I was working on a movie on Snowden.
Oliver Stone (27:00.760)
That happened in 13, Ukraine happened in 14,
Lex Fridman (27:08.200)
and one thing after another.
Oliver Stone (27:10.880)
By 14, Putin was enemy number, again,
Lex Fridman (27:14.640)
becoming a wanted man on the American list.
Oliver Stone (27:17.200)
He was enemy, he was certainly in the top five.
Lex Fridman (27:22.480)
But the animosity towards Putin
Oliver Stone (27:24.720)
had been growing since 2007 at Munich.
Lex Fridman (27:27.840)
I remember that speech when he made it.
Oliver Stone (27:29.880)
It's in my documentary, that's a four hour documentary,
Lex Fridman (27:32.720)
four different conversations.
Oliver Stone (27:34.000)
I mean, we talked over two years, two and a half years,
Lex Fridman (27:37.660)
but I remember that image of him at Munich
Oliver Stone (27:40.080)
making a very important speech about world harmony,
Lex Fridman (27:44.980)
about the balance necessary in the world,
Lex Fridman (27:47.480)
and I remember the sneer, the sneer on John McCain's face.
Lex Fridman (27:52.200)
He was in Munich, obviously eyeballing Putin
Lex Fridman (27:55.460)
and hating him, and it was so evident
Lex Fridman (27:57.760)
that McCain had no belief whatsoever that this,
Oliver Stone (28:01.160)
he was almost treating him like these are the communists
Lex Fridman (28:03.080)
are back, and we know that Putin was not a communist.
Oliver Stone (28:05.840)
We know that Putin is very much a market man,
Lex Fridman (28:07.840)
and he made it very clear and tried to keep an open climate,
Oliver Stone (28:13.340)
a new relationship with Europe,
Lex Fridman (28:15.000)
but the United States always, certain people
Oliver Stone (28:17.160)
in the United States always saw that as a threat,
Lex Fridman (28:18.800)
like Putin is trying to take Europe away from us
Oliver Stone (28:21.580)
as if we own it, as if we have the right to own it.
Lex Fridman (28:24.800)
But Putin was making the point, it's very important,
Oliver Stone (28:26.720)
about sovereignty, and sovereignty for countries
Lex Fridman (28:31.600)
is crucial for this new world to have balance.
Oliver Stone (28:35.000)
That's sovereignty for China, sovereignty for Russia,
Lex Fridman (28:38.240)
sovereignty for Iran, sovereignty for Venezuela,
Oliver Stone (28:41.920)
sovereignty for Cuba.
Lex Fridman (28:43.240)
This is an idea that's crucial to the new world,
Lex Fridman (28:45.960)
and I think the United States has never accepted that.
Lex Fridman (28:49.760)
Sovereignty is not an idea that they can allow.
Oliver Stone (28:53.480)
You have to be obedient to the United States idea
Lex Fridman (28:58.960)
of so called democracy and freedom,
Lex Fridman (29:02.240)
but much more important is sovereignty for these countries,
Lex Fridman (29:07.120)
and the United States has not obeyed that,
Oliver Stone (29:08.880)
has not even acknowledged it, and it never comes up.
Lex Fridman (29:13.600)
So from the perspective of the United States,
Oliver Stone (29:15.600)
when power centers arise in the world,
Lex Fridman (29:18.440)
you start to oppose those, not because of the ideas,
Lex Fridman (29:24.740)
but merely because they have power.
Lex Fridman (29:28.460)
Isn't that at the heart of the doctrine
Oliver Stone (29:30.660)
of the neoconservatives,
Lex Fridman (29:32.780)
and the pact for the new American century
Oliver Stone (29:34.940)
they wrote down in 1996, seven,
Lex Fridman (29:38.220)
they said there shall be no emergence of a rival power.
Oliver Stone (29:41.700)
It was very clear it was about power,
Lex Fridman (29:43.980)
and they've stuck to that doctrine,
Oliver Stone (29:46.480)
which is if you start to get dangerous in any way
Lex Fridman (29:49.340)
or have power, we're gonna knock you out.
Oliver Stone (29:52.680)
Now that won't work, and I don't believe it can work,
Lex Fridman (29:56.000)
and that is unfortunately a policy
Oliver Stone (29:58.220)
the United States is following,
Lex Fridman (30:00.140)
and the neoconservatives group, which is very small,
Lex Fridman (30:04.180)
but it's very strong apparently,
Lex Fridman (30:05.660)
and their idea has resonated.
Oliver Stone (30:08.020)
It was behind the George Bush's invasion of Iraq.
Lex Fridman (30:12.640)
It was part of not only Iraq,
Lex Fridman (30:14.560)
but cleaning out the whole world, draining the swamp,
Lex Fridman (30:17.780)
going to Afghanistan first,
Lex Fridman (30:19.220)
and then although Iraq had nothing to do
Lex Fridman (30:21.660)
with al Qaeda's attack, going after Iraq.
Lex Fridman (30:25.960)
And of course 60 some other countries
Lex Fridman (30:28.100)
that were terrorism had some signs of,
Oliver Stone (30:34.740)
wherever America judged would be a dangerous country.
Lex Fridman (30:38.260)
We had the right, you're either with us or against us.
Oliver Stone (30:41.300)
Now that is a disastrous policy,
Lex Fridman (30:43.540)
and led to one thing after another.
Oliver Stone (30:45.160)
The Iraq war never learned a lesson.
Lex Fridman (30:48.060)
The neoconservatives were never fired,
Oliver Stone (30:50.180)
never thrown out of office.
Lex Fridman (30:51.540)
The people who prosecuted that war are still around.
Oliver Stone (30:55.280)
Many of them are still around,
Lex Fridman (30:57.340)
and they're obviously guiding America now.
Oliver Stone (31:00.260)
Let me return to this question of power.
Lex Fridman (31:03.540)
Don't forget the sneer that I saw there.
Oliver Stone (31:07.220)
That emblemized the United States reaction.
Lex Fridman (31:09.440)
Also there were several other American representatives
Oliver Stone (31:12.580)
who were laughing, kind of mocking Putin.
Lex Fridman (31:16.180)
It was very serious.
Oliver Stone (31:17.280)
I felt there was a divide there.
Lex Fridman (31:21.780)
So since then, I mean in a certain sense,
Oliver Stone (31:25.100)
the Europe reaction to Putin is crucial,
Lex Fridman (31:27.740)
and they were more with him back then.
Lex Fridman (31:31.060)
And a big thing for America was always to keep NATO,
Lex Fridman (31:34.460)
to keep Europe in its pocket as a satellite.
Lex Fridman (31:37.500)
And with this recent war, of course they've succeeded
Lex Fridman (31:40.700)
in beyond their dreams.
Oliver Stone (31:42.620)
The Russians have fulfilled the fantasy
Lex Fridman (31:44.780)
of the United States, to finally be this aggressor
Oliver Stone (31:47.820)
that they have pictured for years.
Lex Fridman (31:50.180)
We can talk about that later.
Lex Fridman (31:51.640)
But at that time, Europe had significant support for Putin,
Lex Fridman (31:58.180)
and the United States was sneering at Putin.
Oliver Stone (32:01.700)
That's correct, you can say that.
Lex Fridman (32:03.380)
And then, so there was this,
Oliver Stone (32:05.300)
there was uncertainty as to the direction,
Lex Fridman (32:12.220)
as to the future of Russia.
Lex Fridman (32:13.420)
And that's exactly when you interviewed Vladimir Putin.
Lex Fridman (32:16.900)
I wanted to know what they thought,
Oliver Stone (32:20.020)
because we couldn't get the information war
Lex Fridman (32:24.520)
that the United States was fighting against Russia.
Oliver Stone (32:26.340)
It was in evidence back then.
Lex Fridman (32:28.020)
It was full out.
Oliver Stone (32:29.380)
The condemnation of Russia on all fronts.
Lex Fridman (32:33.500)
I never saw a positive article about Putin.
Oliver Stone (32:36.820)
Although when I traveled in the world,
Lex Fridman (32:38.420)
and I traveled a lot doing documentaries,
Oliver Stone (32:40.700)
it was very clear in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia,
Lex Fridman (32:44.180)
there was respect for him.
Oliver Stone (32:45.740)
That he was a man who was getting his job done
Lex Fridman (32:48.380)
in the interest of Russia.
Oliver Stone (32:50.100)
He was, as I said in the documentary, a son of Russia.
Lex Fridman (32:53.580)
Very much so, in the positive sense, a son of Russia.
Oliver Stone (32:58.020)
Not that he's out there trying to destroy
Lex Fridman (33:02.100)
the interests of other countries, no.
Oliver Stone (33:05.340)
That he was out there to promote the interests of Russia,
Lex Fridman (33:09.020)
but at the same time, keep a balance.
Oliver Stone (33:11.060)
Keep the world into a harmony.
Lex Fridman (33:14.140)
This has always been his picture.
Oliver Stone (33:15.980)
Peace was always his idea.
Lex Fridman (33:17.880)
In other words, he always referred to the United States
Oliver Stone (33:19.780)
in all these interviews as our partners.
Lex Fridman (33:22.740)
And I said, will you stop using that word?
Oliver Stone (33:24.320)
They're not.
Lex Fridman (33:26.580)
And he was a little bit slow in waking up
Oliver Stone (33:28.380)
to what the United States was doing.
Lex Fridman (33:31.140)
Well, that said, he's one of the most powerful men
Oliver Stone (33:34.460)
in the world.
Lex Fridman (33:35.940)
He was at that time.
Lex Fridman (33:37.980)
And let me ask you the human question.
Lex Fridman (33:42.020)
As the old adage goes, power corrupts
Lex Fridman (33:44.440)
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lex Fridman (33:47.260)
Did you see any corroding effects of power on the man?
Oliver Stone (33:52.920)
Forget the political leader, on just the human being
Lex Fridman (33:55.500)
that carries that power on his shoulders for so many years.
Oliver Stone (33:59.420)
Keep in mind that he's been, unlike most modern leaders,
Lex Fridman (34:03.660)
he's been in office off and on,
Oliver Stone (34:06.220)
because Medvedev was president
Lex Fridman (34:08.860)
and he was not literally in charge.
Oliver Stone (34:12.740)
He took another appointment at that point,
Lex Fridman (34:17.060)
but he was still very much involved.
Lex Fridman (34:18.860)
But for 20 years, more or less,
Lex Fridman (34:20.540)
he's been at the administrator of the state,
Oliver Stone (34:24.580)
the protector of the state.
Lex Fridman (34:26.580)
And he's apparently done a good enough job
Oliver Stone (34:29.780)
that the Russian people have kept him there.
Lex Fridman (34:32.060)
Because contrary to what many people think,
Oliver Stone (34:34.020)
I really believe that if the Russian people didn't want him,
Lex Fridman (34:37.460)
he would be out.
Oliver Stone (34:39.180)
I firmly believe that.
Lex Fridman (34:40.260)
I don't think you can go against the will of the people.
Oliver Stone (34:42.700)
Now, it expresses itself in many ways,
Lex Fridman (34:44.900)
at the ballot box and so forth,
Lex Fridman (34:46.520)
but also in other ways in Russia.
Lex Fridman (34:47.980)
There's a strong currents of opinion.
Lex Fridman (34:51.420)
So contrary to what the position of him as a dictator,
Lex Fridman (34:55.580)
he wouldn't last if he was unpopular, number one.
Oliver Stone (34:58.300)
Number two, Russia is much more divided than people know.
Lex Fridman (35:01.860)
There's other factors in Russia.
Oliver Stone (35:04.580)
There are always tensions around the Kremlin,
Lex Fridman (35:07.820)
who has power, who doesn't have power.
Oliver Stone (35:09.940)
That's been going on for 100 years.
Lex Fridman (35:12.680)
But the factions in Russia are very much there.
Lex Fridman (35:17.420)
So when people refer to Russia as Putin, they're mistaken.
Lex Fridman (35:22.140)
And they do this regularly in the New York papers
Lex Fridman (35:25.040)
and all this.
Lex Fridman (35:25.880)
They say, Putin did this, Putin did that,
Oliver Stone (35:28.020)
Putin's doing that, but it's Russia that's doing it.
Lex Fridman (35:31.100)
And that's what, there's a distinction there that I,
Oliver Stone (35:34.220)
it's changed.
Lex Fridman (35:35.060)
In the old days, I would read about Khrushchev,
Lex Fridman (35:37.780)
but it was never Khrushchev personally.
Lex Fridman (35:40.040)
It was about the Soviet Union.
Oliver Stone (35:43.100)
There was respect for a country.
Lex Fridman (35:45.020)
And now when it started to get personal with Putin,
Oliver Stone (35:48.860)
it changed and our thinking changed in a negative way.
Lex Fridman (35:53.360)
We no longer respected it as a country,
Oliver Stone (35:56.180)
we were seeing it as a man.
Lex Fridman (35:57.380)
And the man we had trashed repeatedly,
Oliver Stone (36:00.100)
repeatedly as a poisoner, as a murderer,
Lex Fridman (36:02.780)
and none of which has ever been proven,
Lex Fridman (36:04.900)
but which has always been repeated and repeated
Lex Fridman (36:07.100)
to the point at which it becomes like an Orwell mantra.
Oliver Stone (36:10.900)
It becomes like, he is of course a bad guy.
Lex Fridman (36:13.740)
Can I just ask you, as a great filmmaker,
Oliver Stone (36:17.280)
as a human being, what was it like talking
Lex Fridman (36:20.340)
to one of the most powerful men in the world?
Oliver Stone (36:23.060)
For honestly, and I'm not naive,
Lex Fridman (36:25.260)
I've talked to a lot of powerful people.
Oliver Stone (36:28.980)
In the movie business, there are powerful people
Lex Fridman (36:30.900)
and many of them are corrupted.
Oliver Stone (36:32.580)
I've talked to many people in my life.
Lex Fridman (36:34.100)
I've been in the military, I've seen, I've had other jobs.
Oliver Stone (36:38.060)
I have to say, I found him to be a human being.
Lex Fridman (36:40.420)
I just found him to be reasonable, calm.
Oliver Stone (36:44.500)
I never saw him lose his temper.
Lex Fridman (36:45.980)
And I mean, you have to understand that most people,
Oliver Stone (36:48.980)
most people in the Western way of doing business
Lex Fridman (36:51.820)
get emotional.
Oliver Stone (36:53.100)
I don't see that.
Lex Fridman (36:54.220)
I saw him as a balanced man,
Oliver Stone (36:56.700)
as a man who had studied this like you have.
Lex Fridman (36:59.020)
There's a calmness to you.
Oliver Stone (37:00.860)
It comes from studying the world
Lex Fridman (37:02.420)
and having a rational response to it.
Oliver Stone (37:06.420)
It's interesting, his two daughters,
Lex Fridman (37:07.980)
one of them is very scientific
Lex Fridman (37:09.580)
and the other one's doing very well in another profession,
Lex Fridman (37:12.500)
but they're a thinking family.
Oliver Stone (37:15.360)
His wife too was.
Lex Fridman (37:18.180)
I can't talk for the new wife
Oliver Stone (37:19.340)
because I don't know about it,
Lex Fridman (37:20.380)
but he kept his family with great respect.
Oliver Stone (37:23.660)
He's raised his daughter's right.
Lex Fridman (37:26.180)
He served Yeltsin the way he looked at it.
Oliver Stone (37:28.220)
He served Yeltsin well, and he never trashed Yeltsin.
Lex Fridman (37:32.780)
Certainly a lot of people did,
Lex Fridman (37:34.100)
but I asked him repeatedly was he an alcoholic,
Lex Fridman (37:38.020)
this or that, but he wouldn't even go that far.
Oliver Stone (37:40.220)
Just respect.
Lex Fridman (37:41.900)
And this man, Yeltsin, was in many ways ridiculed
Oliver Stone (37:46.900)
by the Russians, and he turned over the power
Lex Fridman (37:52.020)
because he felt like he was overwhelmed.
Lex Fridman (37:53.780)
He turned over the power to this man because why?
Lex Fridman (37:56.160)
How many people had he fired before him?
Oliver Stone (37:57.860)
Several, several prime ministers, this, that.
Lex Fridman (38:00.460)
Why did he turn power over to Mr. Putin?
Oliver Stone (38:03.260)
Because he respected him for his work ethic
Lex Fridman (38:07.700)
and his balance, his maturity.
Lex Fridman (38:10.860)
And that's what I can say is I saw in him.
Lex Fridman (38:12.860)
A poor person from a poor family who worked his way up
Oliver Stone (38:18.740)
through the KGB, Americans keep saying he's a KGB agent,
Lex Fridman (38:21.780)
but it's like saying George Bush was a CIA agent,
Lex Fridman (38:25.980)
but he became, you grow, you grow in your life.
Lex Fridman (38:28.860)
And he went from the KGB to this technocratic position.
Oliver Stone (38:33.060)
He dealt with many problems, including the Chechnyan War,
Lex Fridman (38:38.100)
which is a very difficult situation,
Oliver Stone (38:40.500)
as well as the Russian submarine problem.
Lex Fridman (38:43.100)
Several things happened early in his,
Oliver Stone (38:44.940)
that gave him a lot of experience,
Lex Fridman (38:47.900)
and he handled them all pretty well.
Lex Fridman (38:49.960)
Do you think he was an honest man?
Lex Fridman (38:52.100)
I do.
Oliver Stone (38:52.920)
Now, of course, the question of money,
Lex Fridman (38:54.900)
the charge is that he's the richest man in the world,
Oliver Stone (38:57.300)
or ludicrous, certainly doesn't live like it
Lex Fridman (39:00.420)
or act like it.
Oliver Stone (39:01.340)
If you're rich, I've been around
Lex Fridman (39:03.540)
a lot of rich people in my life.
Oliver Stone (39:05.140)
You'd probably have, too.
Lex Fridman (39:06.020)
In America, you run into them.
Lex Fridman (39:07.500)
So many of them are arrogant.
Lex Fridman (39:08.740)
I'm actually good friends now
Oliver Stone (39:11.380)
with the richest man in the world.
Lex Fridman (39:13.140)
Of course, I saw your interview with Mr. Musk,
Oliver Stone (39:16.820)
who I appreciate.
Lex Fridman (39:18.180)
At least he speaks freely.
Oliver Stone (39:21.480)
I'm positive about him owning Twitter,
Lex Fridman (39:23.780)
because Twitter has become censorship city,
Oliver Stone (39:27.100)
as has all the major tech.
Lex Fridman (39:29.100)
I mean, the censorship that we are now seeing
Oliver Stone (39:30.860)
in the United States is so unAmerican and shocking to me.
Lex Fridman (39:34.620)
And he is a resistance to that, that is true.
Oliver Stone (39:36.940)
Yeah, I like Musk for that.
Lex Fridman (39:38.440)
Just for that only.
Lex Fridman (39:39.340)
But I also appreciate him, his adventuresome,
Lex Fridman (39:43.380)
his nature and his desire to explore the world
Lex Fridman (39:47.680)
and to ask questions.
Lex Fridman (39:49.020)
Yeah, there's certain ways you sound when you speak freely.
Oliver Stone (39:54.060)
There's certain ways you sound,
Lex Fridman (39:56.260)
a man sounds when he speaks freely,
Lex Fridman (39:58.540)
and he speaks freely.
Lex Fridman (40:00.420)
And it's refreshing.
Oliver Stone (40:02.500)
No matter whether you're rich or not, it doesn't matter.
Lex Fridman (40:05.140)
When you speak freely, it's a beautiful thing.
Oliver Stone (40:06.940)
Actually, Musk, in a major point
Lex Fridman (40:10.180)
on going back to nuclear energy,
Oliver Stone (40:12.020)
he never believed in it at first, apparently.
Lex Fridman (40:15.580)
He was going for batteries, right?
Lex Fridman (40:17.180)
And he put a lot of money into batteries.
Lex Fridman (40:19.280)
He made them bigger and bigger batteries.
Lex Fridman (40:20.700)
But it just, as Bill Gates has said,
Lex Fridman (40:23.300)
it's just, it's not gonna get us there.
Lex Fridman (40:25.960)
And now I think Musk is on another path.
Lex Fridman (40:28.220)
He understands the need for nuclear.
Oliver Stone (40:29.900)
Yeah, he's a supporter of nuclear.
Lex Fridman (40:33.620)
We're jumping around.
Oliver Stone (40:35.060)
Putin never asked for one thing, never.
Lex Fridman (40:37.900)
It was an interview, it was free form.
Oliver Stone (40:39.940)
Ask anything you want.
Lex Fridman (40:41.580)
No restrictions, no rules.
Oliver Stone (40:44.780)
As with Castro, frankly,
Lex Fridman (40:46.140)
Castro did the same thing as did Chavez.
Lex Fridman (40:47.820)
So I've had good luck in interviewing free ranging subjects,
Lex Fridman (40:50.660)
people willing to express themselves.
Oliver Stone (40:52.380)
He's much more guarded than Castro or Chavez,
Lex Fridman (40:57.300)
because as you know, he's setting government policy
Oliver Stone (41:00.200)
when he speaks.
Lex Fridman (41:01.040)
Anything he says is gonna be taken out of context.
Lex Fridman (41:03.940)
But there was no restrictions on what to talk about,
Lex Fridman (41:06.920)
none of that.
Oliver Stone (41:07.760)
Nor any desire to see anything before we published it.
Lex Fridman (41:10.920)
No need to check it with him.
Oliver Stone (41:14.460)
It was a completely.
Lex Fridman (41:17.780)
Do you think he watched the final product?
Oliver Stone (41:19.980)
Yes, I do, but I don't think he made judgments on it.
Lex Fridman (41:23.220)
I think he was pleased.
Oliver Stone (41:25.280)
He doesn't go either way.
Lex Fridman (41:26.300)
You see, he's pleased.
Oliver Stone (41:28.460)
I mean, it went well and he's happy for us.
Lex Fridman (41:30.940)
But I don't think he had great enthusiasm
Oliver Stone (41:33.340)
expressed it to me.
Lex Fridman (41:34.820)
He trusted me.
Lex Fridman (41:35.740)
And you can see the way he dealt with me each time.
Lex Fridman (41:38.100)
He warmed up to me four times.
Oliver Stone (41:41.140)
The first time I might've been a little stiff.
Lex Fridman (41:44.300)
You're asking, you don't know who you're dealing with
Lex Fridman (41:47.180)
and so forth.
Lex Fridman (41:48.020)
I understand that.
Lex Fridman (41:49.540)
But he's used to it now.
Lex Fridman (41:51.020)
He's done a lot of press.
Oliver Stone (41:53.380)
The worst press he's done, frankly,
Lex Fridman (41:55.500)
has been the American press.
Lex Fridman (41:57.340)
And not because of his fault,
Lex Fridman (41:59.220)
but because of the way they have treated him.
Oliver Stone (42:01.420)
If you look at the interviews, they're awful.
Lex Fridman (42:04.300)
First of all, I noticed one thing as a filmmaker,
Oliver Stone (42:06.820)
right away, they use an overdub.
Lex Fridman (42:09.020)
They put a Russian speaker for everything he says,
Oliver Stone (42:11.540)
who's much harsher.
Lex Fridman (42:12.900)
He speaks Russian in a much harsher manner
Oliver Stone (42:15.140)
than actually Putin does.
Lex Fridman (42:17.420)
On my interview, I left him in his original language
Oliver Stone (42:20.340)
with translator, and I think that's important
Lex Fridman (42:22.500)
because he expresses himself very clearly and calmly.
Oliver Stone (42:27.620)
When you listen to the American broadcast,
Lex Fridman (42:29.340)
it's a belligerent person who looks like
Oliver Stone (42:30.940)
he's about to bang his shoe on the table.
Lex Fridman (42:33.940)
And secondly, the questions are highly aggressive
Oliver Stone (42:37.280)
from the beginning.
Lex Fridman (42:38.120)
There's no sense of rapport, there's no sense of,
Lex Fridman (42:41.900)
well, it's why, Mr. Putin, did you poison this person?
Lex Fridman (42:44.640)
Why, Mr. Putin, did you kill this person?
Lex Fridman (42:46.860)
Why are you a murderer?
Lex Fridman (42:47.860)
I mean, it's blunt, blunt negative television.
Oliver Stone (42:52.240)
Yeah, it's not just aggressive.
Lex Fridman (42:53.960)
So I obviously speak Russian,
Lex Fridman (42:56.940)
so I get to appreciate both the original and the translation.
Lex Fridman (43:00.640)
And it's not just aggressive, it's very shallow.
Oliver Stone (43:04.880)
They're not looking to understand.
Lex Fridman (43:06.860)
To me, aggression is okay if that's the way
Oliver Stone (43:09.460)
you wanna approach it, but it should be,
Lex Fridman (43:12.220)
there should be underlying kind of empathy
Oliver Stone (43:15.580)
for another human being in order to be able to understand.
Lex Fridman (43:19.140)
And so some of the worst interviews I've ever listened to
Oliver Stone (43:23.460)
is by American press of Vladimir Putin.
Lex Fridman (43:25.700)
So NBC and all those kinds of organizations,
Oliver Stone (43:29.580)
it's very painful to watch.
Lex Fridman (43:32.100)
And you saw the reception to the Putin interviews
Oliver Stone (43:34.060)
in America was hostile without seeing it.
Lex Fridman (43:37.380)
So many people criticized my series
Oliver Stone (43:41.460)
without having seen it.
Lex Fridman (43:43.080)
Even, I went on a show, a television show
Oliver Stone (43:45.540)
with this famous coal bearer.
Lex Fridman (43:47.660)
You know, he's very famous in America.
Lex Fridman (43:49.700)
And I was shocked on the show to find out
Lex Fridman (43:51.720)
that he hadn't seen anything of the four hours.
Oliver Stone (43:53.860)
He was just attacking Putin.
Lex Fridman (43:56.140)
And he threw me, I was complicit,
Oliver Stone (43:58.660)
therefore I was a Putin supporter.
Lex Fridman (44:01.500)
And the show was a disaster.
Oliver Stone (44:03.940)
It's one of my worst television shows.
Lex Fridman (44:05.980)
I actually, I had to just shut up and get off the air.
Oliver Stone (44:10.660)
I mean, at some point, it was embarrassing.
Lex Fridman (44:13.780)
Because the audience, too, was clapping for Kobe
Oliver Stone (44:16.180)
on anything he said.
Lex Fridman (44:17.340)
Well, as an interviewer in that situation,
Oliver Stone (44:20.100)
because between you and Vladimir Putin,
Lex Fridman (44:23.300)
there was camaraderie, there was joking, there was...
Oliver Stone (44:28.660)
Are you worried, do you put that into the calculation
Lex Fridman (44:34.020)
when you're making a film with somebody
Lex Fridman (44:37.660)
that could be lying to you, that could be evil?
Lex Fridman (44:41.780)
When you talk about Castro, you talk about,
Lex Fridman (44:43.980)
so are you worried about how charisma of a man
Lex Fridman (44:48.780)
across the table from you can...
Lex Fridman (44:51.860)
Do I take that into account?
Lex Fridman (44:53.580)
I absolutely take that into account.
Oliver Stone (44:55.300)
I mean, doing Castro, he's a wonderful speaker,
Lex Fridman (44:58.820)
he's charismatic, so is Chavez.
Oliver Stone (45:01.340)
Look at those interviews.
Lex Fridman (45:03.040)
I took it into account.
Lex Fridman (45:04.560)
But Putin doesn't play that game.
Lex Fridman (45:06.360)
He doesn't charm you, he doesn't try to overwhelm you
Oliver Stone (45:09.540)
with his bon ami at all.
Lex Fridman (45:13.780)
He just says, okay, ask your question,
Oliver Stone (45:15.620)
I'll give you my answer straight.
Lex Fridman (45:17.180)
Here it is, and he analyzes it.
Oliver Stone (45:19.340)
This is the history of NATO,
Lex Fridman (45:20.580)
this is the history of our relationship
Oliver Stone (45:22.180)
with the United States.
Lex Fridman (45:23.460)
How many times have we tried to talk to them
Oliver Stone (45:26.000)
about such and such and such and such,
Lex Fridman (45:27.740)
and each time, we get nowhere.
Oliver Stone (45:29.980)
In fact, it's a very...
Lex Fridman (45:32.860)
I would like to get along with the United States so much,
Oliver Stone (45:35.460)
he's saying it so clearly in all his words.
Lex Fridman (45:38.820)
So to play devil's advocate.
Lex Fridman (45:40.780)
But he's not making a big deal about it.
Lex Fridman (45:42.580)
But there is a charisma in the calmness.
Oliver Stone (45:44.820)
Yes, there is.
Lex Fridman (45:45.780)
So let's just calm everything down, it's simple facts.
Oliver Stone (45:50.000)
That you can call, so there's like the Hitler thing,
Lex Fridman (45:56.340)
which is screaming, being very loud, charismatic,
Oliver Stone (46:00.260)
strong message and so on.
Lex Fridman (46:02.100)
And then there's a Putin style,
Oliver Stone (46:03.500)
I'm not comparing those two,
Lex Fridman (46:04.620)
there's the Putin style communication of calmness.
Lex Fridman (46:07.860)
And that, at least to me, my personality,
Lex Fridman (46:10.500)
that can be very captivating,
Oliver Stone (46:12.220)
is bringing everything down, the facts are simple.
Lex Fridman (46:15.220)
But then when you say the facts are simple,
Oliver Stone (46:16.860)
you can now start lying.
Lex Fridman (46:18.420)
And you don't know what's true and what's lies.
Oliver Stone (46:21.220)
It behooves you to do some research.
Lex Fridman (46:23.180)
Yes.
Lex Fridman (46:24.020)
And frankly, when it comes to research,
Lex Fridman (46:26.260)
you're gonna have a problem.
Oliver Stone (46:27.100)
Because if you go to the Americanized versions
Lex Fridman (46:30.060)
of Russian history, you're gonna run into a problem.
Lex Fridman (46:33.540)
And that includes even Wikipedia.
Lex Fridman (46:35.680)
They will tell you things
Oliver Stone (46:37.140)
that are just not factually supported.
Lex Fridman (46:39.580)
So it was a problem in terms of,
Oliver Stone (46:42.540)
if you read all the books in the American library
Lex Fridman (46:45.060)
about Putin, there's nothing positive about it.
Oliver Stone (46:48.340)
They're awful, they're awful.
Lex Fridman (46:49.840)
And a lot of them, I had a good relationship
Oliver Stone (46:52.680)
with Professor Stephen Cohen,
Lex Fridman (46:54.140)
who's the most, I think, one of the most informed men
Oliver Stone (46:56.820)
on Russia, he'd done a lot of research all his life.
Lex Fridman (46:59.940)
And knew Gorbachev very well.
Lex Fridman (47:02.700)
And was very analytical about all these situations
Lex Fridman (47:07.180)
that happened before his death in 2019.
Oliver Stone (47:11.940)
I'm not quite sure when Stephen died,
Lex Fridman (47:13.560)
but I knew him well.
Lex Fridman (47:15.060)
And he gave me the best information I could get.
Lex Fridman (47:20.140)
I would go to Stephen and I'd say,
Oliver Stone (47:22.360)
I'm confused here, tell me the history
Lex Fridman (47:24.220)
of this accusation of poisoning against this person
Lex Fridman (47:27.100)
and so forth.
Lex Fridman (47:27.940)
And he'd explain it to me in, I think,
Oliver Stone (47:30.620)
the clearest ways that I understood.
Lex Fridman (47:32.820)
And he said to me once, he said,
Oliver Stone (47:34.180)
most of these people who go to Russia
Lex Fridman (47:35.780)
and write this stuff about Putin are going off internet.
Oliver Stone (47:38.580)
The internet has really been a source
Lex Fridman (47:40.660)
of a lot of fractured facts here.
Oliver Stone (47:42.440)
He said, pure analysis.
Lex Fridman (47:44.760)
You have to go back to the texts,
Oliver Stone (47:46.880)
all the documents, and to really fully understand.
Lex Fridman (47:50.440)
But he spoke Russian.
Lex Fridman (47:54.040)
And his wife and him, Katerina Vanhoovle,
Lex Fridman (47:59.080)
who's an editor, publisher of The Nation magazine,
Oliver Stone (48:03.440)
would go to Russia several times a year
Lex Fridman (48:06.280)
and talk to their friend Gorbachev.
Lex Fridman (48:08.400)
And Gorbachev's an interesting character.
Lex Fridman (48:10.440)
I talked to him, interviewed him,
Oliver Stone (48:12.440)
not interviewed him, but talked to him at length,
Lex Fridman (48:14.400)
and I like him very much.
Lex Fridman (48:16.360)
And I saw the divide, as you saw in the Putin interviews,
Lex Fridman (48:19.160)
between Gorbachev and Putin.
Oliver Stone (48:20.840)
Early on in the interviews, you sense Putin
Lex Fridman (48:23.480)
doesn't particularly care for Gorbachev
Oliver Stone (48:25.440)
because in his point of view,
Lex Fridman (48:26.980)
he screwed up the administration of Russia
Lex Fridman (48:29.400)
and is responsible for so much of the disaster
Lex Fridman (48:32.400)
of leaving all those people outside the Soviet Union.
Lex Fridman (48:36.200)
So these are problems that continue into the future.
Lex Fridman (48:39.400)
But they see each other at the,
Oliver Stone (48:44.300)
or he knows he's there at the May Day Parade, we filmed,
Lex Fridman (48:48.500)
and his attitude is funny, it's very human.
Oliver Stone (48:53.880)
He says, you know, he's welcome, he's got his pension,
Lex Fridman (48:57.040)
he's a pensioneer, he's done his duty.
Oliver Stone (48:59.760)
There's no animus towards him.
Lex Fridman (49:04.720)
Even when Gorbachev, in the early days,
Oliver Stone (49:07.000)
as you remember, criticized for his manners in terms
Lex Fridman (49:09.680)
of democracy, but I don't know that that becomes a quarrel.
Lex Fridman (49:14.800)
But frankly, by the end of the situation,
Lex Fridman (49:18.840)
it's very clear that Gorbachev has now moved closer
Lex Fridman (49:21.840)
and closer to the, says that Russia is now
Lex Fridman (49:23.860)
really under attack.
Oliver Stone (49:24.920)
This is, he sees where the United States
Lex Fridman (49:28.280)
has made a concerted effort to undermine Putin.
Lex Fridman (49:31.840)
And he's repeated this several times about Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (49:35.400)
I think you've seen what he said.
Oliver Stone (49:37.280)
You can quote it.
Lex Fridman (49:39.000)
And Gorbachev is, we have no respect for Gorbachev even,
Oliver Stone (49:42.040)
even at this juncture.
Lex Fridman (49:43.520)
When can you see Gorbachev's ideas printed
Lex Fridman (49:46.480)
in most American newspapers?
Lex Fridman (49:48.160)
Very rarely, very rarely, and recently not at all.
Lex Fridman (49:52.120)
So Gorbachev, who was our hero back in,
Lex Fridman (49:54.600)
an American hero back in the 1980s,
Oliver Stone (49:58.120)
has now been condemned to the garbage can,
Lex Fridman (50:00.580)
so to speak, of history.
Oliver Stone (50:01.780)
Well, in this complicated geopolitical picture
Lex Fridman (50:05.380)
you just outlined, can we talk about
Lex Fridman (50:08.440)
the recent invasion of Ukraine?
Lex Fridman (50:12.180)
So you wrote on Facebook a pretty eloquent analysis,
Oliver Stone (50:17.500)
I think on March 3rd.
Lex Fridman (50:22.900)
Let me just read a small section of that,
Oliver Stone (50:26.100)
just to give context, and maybe we can talk
Lex Fridman (50:28.780)
a little bit more about both Russia and the man Putin.
Oliver Stone (50:33.140)
You wrote, although the United States
Lex Fridman (50:35.340)
has many wars of aggression on its conscience,
Oliver Stone (50:38.020)
it doesn't justify Mr. Putin's aggression in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (50:41.780)
A dozen wrongs don't make a right.
Oliver Stone (50:44.500)
Russia was wrong to invade.
Lex Fridman (50:46.460)
It has made too many mistakes.
Oliver Stone (50:48.580)
One, underestimating Ukraine resistance.
Lex Fridman (50:51.440)
Two, overestimating the military ability
Oliver Stone (50:54.100)
to achieve its objective.
Lex Fridman (50:55.940)
Three, underestimating Europe's reaction,
Oliver Stone (50:58.480)
especially Germany, upping its military contribution
Lex Fridman (51:01.760)
to NATO, which they've resisted for some 20 years.
Oliver Stone (51:04.980)
Even Switzerland has joined the cause.
Lex Fridman (51:07.580)
Russia will be more isolated than ever from the West.
Oliver Stone (51:11.540)
Four, underestimating the enhanced power of NATO,
Lex Fridman (51:15.100)
which will now put more pressure on Russia's borders.
Oliver Stone (51:18.020)
Five, probably putting Ukraine into NATO.
Lex Fridman (51:22.000)
Six, underestimating the damage to its own economy,
Lex Fridman (51:25.820)
and certainly creating more internal resistance
Lex Fridman (51:28.220)
in Russia.
Oliver Stone (51:29.360)
Seven, creating a major readjustment of power
Lex Fridman (51:32.520)
in its oligarch class.
Oliver Stone (51:34.800)
Eight, putting cluster and vacuum bombs into play.
Lex Fridman (51:39.800)
Nine, and underestimating the power
Oliver Stone (51:43.300)
of social media worldwide.
Lex Fridman (51:45.340)
And you go on for a while giving a much broader picture
Oliver Stone (51:51.020)
of the history and the geopolitics of all of this.
Lex Fridman (51:53.820)
So now, a little bit later, two months later,
Lex Fridman (52:01.020)
what are your thoughts about the invasion of Ukraine?
Lex Fridman (52:05.140)
Well, it's very hard to be honest in this regard
Oliver Stone (52:08.660)
because the West has brought down a curtain here
Lex Fridman (52:13.900)
and anyone who questions the invasion of Ukraine
Lex Fridman (52:18.380)
and its consequences is an enemy of the people.
Lex Fridman (52:24.340)
It's become so difficult.
Oliver Stone (52:26.780)
I've never seen in my lifetime ever such a wall
Lex Fridman (52:33.140)
of propaganda as I've seen in the West.
Lex Fridman (52:38.580)
And that includes France too
Lex Fridman (52:39.860)
because I was there recently and England.
Oliver Stone (52:42.020)
England is of course really vociferous.
Lex Fridman (52:46.420)
It's shocking to me how quickly Europe moved
Oliver Stone (52:50.220)
in this direction and that includes Germany.
Lex Fridman (52:52.460)
I have German friends who express to me their shock
Oliver Stone (52:55.020)
over Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (52:56.280)
I have Italian friends, same thing.
Lex Fridman (52:58.100)
And Italy of course has been perhaps the most understanding
Lex Fridman (53:01.740)
and compassionate of countries.
Lex Fridman (53:03.980)
So it's quite evident that there's a united,
Lex Fridman (53:09.060)
and this attests to the power of the United States.
Lex Fridman (53:11.820)
And of course you have Finland and Svinland
Lex Fridman (53:14.900)
which has generally been reasonable jumping in,
Oliver Stone (53:17.660)
talking about joining NATO and Sweden too.
Lex Fridman (53:21.860)
Generally there's been some more restraint in Europe.
Oliver Stone (53:26.260)
That's what surprised me the most, Europe.
Lex Fridman (53:29.100)
How quickly they fell into this NATO basket
Oliver Stone (53:33.420)
which is very dangerous for Europe, very dangerous.
Lex Fridman (53:36.300)
This goes back to my idea what I was saying earlier
Oliver Stone (53:38.960)
about sovereignty.
Lex Fridman (53:41.460)
These countries don't really give me a sense
Oliver Stone (53:44.400)
that they have sovereignty over their own countries.
Lex Fridman (53:47.420)
They don't feel, to me I'm obviously intuition here
Oliver Stone (53:52.420)
is working, I just don't feel that they have freedom
Lex Fridman (53:56.300)
to say what they really think and they're scared to say it.
Oliver Stone (53:59.620)
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003,
Lex Fridman (54:05.040)
I remember with great in a sense satisfaction
Oliver Stone (54:07.900)
that at least France, Chirac who I had not really
Lex Fridman (54:12.420)
known much about, stood up and said the United States
Oliver Stone (54:15.120)
we're not gonna join you in this expedition,
Lex Fridman (54:17.200)
basically into madness.
Oliver Stone (54:18.940)
Schroeder in Germany, same thing.
Lex Fridman (54:21.760)
Of course Putin condemned the invasion
Lex Fridman (54:24.340)
and Putin had been an ally of the United States
Lex Fridman (54:27.260)
since 9 11 if you remember correctly.
Lex Fridman (54:29.620)
And had called Bush and they were getting along.
Lex Fridman (54:32.320)
So even Putin said I won't go, don't go into Iraq.
Oliver Stone (54:36.060)
This is not the solution.
Lex Fridman (54:38.940)
He didn't oppose Afghanistan but he opposed Iraq.
Lex Fridman (54:41.900)
So Chirac and Schroeder stood for the old Europe.
Lex Fridman (54:46.720)
I remember de Gaulle, Charles de Gaulle,
Oliver Stone (54:49.920)
he was independent of the United States.
Lex Fridman (54:52.420)
Charles de Gaulle pulled France out of NATO
Oliver Stone (54:54.620)
because he saw the dangers of NATO,
Lex Fridman (54:56.680)
which is to say you have to fight an American war.
Oliver Stone (54:59.940)
When they say and they put nuclear weapons
Lex Fridman (55:02.540)
on your territory in England and France
Lex Fridman (55:05.020)
and Italy and Germany, when they do that,
Lex Fridman (55:09.020)
you're hitched to this superpower
Lex Fridman (55:12.060)
and you have no say in what they're gonna do.
Lex Fridman (55:14.980)
If they declare war and they use your territory,
Oliver Stone (55:18.140)
you're gonna be involved in a major conflict.
Lex Fridman (55:20.820)
I'm talking about sovereignty.
Lex Fridman (55:22.060)
Where is that sovereignty?
Lex Fridman (55:23.620)
They don't have it.
Lex Fridman (55:24.940)
And that has influenced their mindset for years now.
Lex Fridman (55:28.720)
Since 1940, well de Gaulle was the 60s.
Oliver Stone (55:33.020)
He actually reversed the whole flow
Lex Fridman (55:34.940)
and I think it was Sarkozy who put France
Oliver Stone (55:38.940)
back into NATO and now it's Macron.
Lex Fridman (55:44.740)
I hope because he was talking to Putin
Oliver Stone (55:47.320)
would at least have an independent viewpoint
Lex Fridman (55:50.400)
that could be helpful here, so he rolled it up.
Oliver Stone (55:53.860)
He may have told Putin something else,
Lex Fridman (55:55.360)
but within days he had rolled it up
Lex Fridman (55:57.000)
and gone along with the United States position,
Lex Fridman (55:59.580)
which was enforced by the United States in a very fierce way.
Oliver Stone (56:03.140)
The propaganda, as I say, I don't know how much time
Lex Fridman (56:05.540)
you spend in America, but it was vicious
Lex Fridman (56:08.300)
and everything was anti Russian.
Lex Fridman (56:10.300)
Russia were killing all these people,
Oliver Stone (56:11.940)
were shooting down civilians,
Lex Fridman (56:17.100)
although there was no proof of it.
Oliver Stone (56:18.820)
There was just, these are the accidents of war,
Lex Fridman (56:20.780)
but all of a sudden it was a campaign of criminality
Lex Fridman (56:23.540)
and they were talking about bringing Putin
Lex Fridman (56:25.380)
into war crime trial.
Oliver Stone (56:27.700)
Well, why didn't they talk like that when Iraq was going on
Lex Fridman (56:30.700)
and Bush was killing far more people?
Oliver Stone (56:33.500)
Or for that matter, why were they not talking
Lex Fridman (56:35.260)
about the killings in Donbass and Lugansk
Lex Fridman (56:39.420)
during that 2014 to 2022 period?
Lex Fridman (56:45.300)
That is what, it's a crime.
Oliver Stone (56:47.180)
There were so many people that were killed,
Lex Fridman (56:49.540)
many of them innocent, many of them innocent.
Lex Fridman (56:51.620)
What would be the way for Vladimir Putin
Lex Fridman (56:54.860)
to stop the killing in Donbass
Lex Fridman (57:00.020)
without the invasion of Ukraine?
Lex Fridman (57:02.460)
That's a very good question and I've asked that
Oliver Stone (57:04.460)
several times and I don't have the,
Lex Fridman (57:06.460)
I have not talked to him since about two years now.
Oliver Stone (57:12.300)
It's a very good question.
Lex Fridman (57:13.380)
What's the mistakes, what the human mistakes
Lex Fridman (57:16.540)
and the leadership mistakes made by Vladimir Putin?
Lex Fridman (57:18.340)
It's a very good question.
Oliver Stone (57:19.180)
You see, what the American press has not said
Lex Fridman (57:21.900)
and the Western press has not said is that on February 24,
Oliver Stone (57:25.220)
was it, that was, on that day when they invaded,
Lex Fridman (57:28.660)
the day before, if you check the logs
Oliver Stone (57:31.260)
of the European organization that was supervising,
Lex Fridman (57:35.780)
was in the field in Ukraine.
Oliver Stone (57:37.820)
These are neutral observers.
Lex Fridman (57:39.940)
They were seeing heavier and heavier artillery fire
Oliver Stone (57:43.300)
going into Donbass from the Ukrainian side.
Lex Fridman (57:50.860)
So they had, apparently, Ukraine had 110,000 troops
Oliver Stone (57:55.540)
on the border.
Lex Fridman (57:56.380)
They were about to invade Donbass, that was the plan.
Oliver Stone (57:59.220)
That's what I think.
Lex Fridman (58:00.740)
Russia, because of the buildup on the border of Donbass,
Oliver Stone (58:05.580)
brought 130, they say 130,000 troops
Lex Fridman (58:09.180)
to the area near Donbass, right?
Lex Fridman (58:13.180)
So you have buildup of forces on both sides,
Lex Fridman (58:15.820)
but you wouldn't know that from reading the press
Oliver Stone (58:18.180)
in the West.
Lex Fridman (58:19.020)
You'd believe that the Russians suddenly put all these men
Oliver Stone (58:21.900)
into the situation with the idea of invading Ukraine,
Lex Fridman (58:26.980)
not only Donbass, but invading all of Ukraine
Lex Fridman (58:29.460)
and getting rid of the, decapitating the government there,
Lex Fridman (58:33.460)
which is all assumption.
Oliver Stone (58:34.780)
We don't know what they would intend it to do.
Lex Fridman (58:36.900)
But you, at the time, as in a lot of people,
Oliver Stone (58:40.220)
thought that all the talk of the invasion,
Lex Fridman (58:44.780)
Russian invasion of Ukraine, is just propaganda.
Oliver Stone (58:48.460)
It's not gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (58:49.300)
It's very unlikely to happen.
Oliver Stone (58:50.500)
I think many of us thought that the United States
Lex Fridman (58:52.300)
is building this up into an invasion.
Oliver Stone (58:54.820)
In other words, that is the nature of false flag operations,
Lex Fridman (58:58.300)
when you create this propaganda.
Oliver Stone (59:00.900)
They are gonna invade.
Lex Fridman (59:01.820)
They are gonna invade.
Lex Fridman (59:02.780)
And then, when they invaded, the United States
Lex Fridman (59:05.620)
was completely ready, and all their allies
Lex Fridman (59:07.500)
were completely ready for the invasion, correct?
Lex Fridman (59:09.840)
So why did Putin do that?
Oliver Stone (59:11.180)
He fell into this, theoretically, into this trap
Lex Fridman (59:14.100)
set by the United States.
Oliver Stone (59:16.060)
Here you're telling all your allies across the board
Lex Fridman (59:18.220)
they're gonna invade.
Lex Fridman (59:19.900)
But you.
Lex Fridman (59:21.280)
Why do you think he did it?
Lex Fridman (59:23.420)
So here, is it madness, or is it common
Lex Fridman (59:27.020)
strategic calculation, perhaps?
Oliver Stone (59:29.500)
This one I cannot answer you faithfully,
Lex Fridman (59:31.540)
because, first of all, we don't know what he was told.
Oliver Stone (59:34.700)
If he was indeed getting the right intelligence estimates,
Lex Fridman (59:38.300)
from what I said earlier in that essay I wrote,
Oliver Stone (59:44.220)
you would think he was not well informed, perhaps,
Lex Fridman (59:47.660)
about the degree of cooperation he would get
Oliver Stone (59:51.620)
from the Ukrainian Russians in Ukraine.
Lex Fridman (59:57.200)
That would be one factor, that he wasn't,
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