May Day, May Day: Jason Pack on the Unhappy War in Iran We All Want to Ignore

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Friday, May 1, 2026. Happy May Day, everyone. Judging from the headlines of the world newspapers, not a lot going on in the world. New York Times leads with big story about Obamacare, one of the more boring subjects in the world. The BBC leads with a story about Israel and a Gaza aid flotilla. Again, not a huge story. The Financial Times leads with a story about the price of oil, another giant yawn. The Wall Street Journal actually leads with the Iran war. Their headline is Iran has sent a fresh peace proposal to mediators. So it'll be good to check-in with, my friend in London, my man in London, Jason Pack, the man behind the Disorder podcast and many other good things, a very keen observer of global politics from London, the heart of the world, still in many ways the heart of the diplomatic world. Jason, is there something surreal about the fact that there's this half war going on, this war somewhere between a hot and a cold war in Iran, and yet the world's media now seems to be mostly ignoring it? Is it because they don't know what to write or we're choosing to ignore it?

00:02:09 Jason Pack: That's a really interesting way to put it. I think that it's surreal not only for the world's media, but for the participants. It seems that many of the participants don't know if they're winning or losing. Trump puts forth the case that he's winning, and the Iranians put forth the case that they're winning. And then is it an economic war? Is it a question of rival blockades? There are many surreal and confusing aspects of this war, and I look forward to unpacking them with you, Andrew.

00:02:37 Andrew Keen: So borrowing from the way you put it, do you think that both sides, the Iranians and The US, are choosing to ignore it because they rather it wasn't happening?

00:02:51 Jason Pack: I think that both sides care bizarrely more about the narrative war and how they feel about it than about having an actual strategy. I've said a lot on my disorder podcast from the beginning. The American military has showcased its ability to achieve amazing things with AI and intelligence, but wars are about outcomes and strategy, and Trump has no strategy and no endgame. So no amount of success in tactics will win. And, also, no military campaign has ever been won solely from the air. That's not the way that war works. War is about controlling territory, installing new leaders, things of this nature that can't be done entirely from the air. And on the Iranian side, they're so obsessed with their narrative — their narrative of resistance, their narrative of the axis of, you know, Shia-aligned powers, whether it's the Houthis or Kata'ib Hezbollah in Iraq. And the axis that they want, you know, barely follows them anymore, and then they just need to survive for their narrative for their people. So what is their strategy? What are their actual aims? Whether it's the nuclear file or other goals of theirs. It's entirely unclear. So I see two sides who don't even really know what they wanna get out of this war.

00:04:18 Andrew Keen: Yeah. It's bizarre, surreal. Your day job is as a Middle Eastern analyst. You've done a lot of writing and thinking, particularly about North Africa and Libya. I didn't check Al Jazeera, actually, before we did this show, Jason. How is this war being covered in The Middle East? I'm assuming that the Al Jazeera headlines are all about it.

00:04:42 Jason Pack: I will confess to not reading much Al Jazeera these days. In The Middle East, briefly put, if you are in the pro American parts of the region, meaning UAE, Saudi, Jordan, the war is covered from a perspective of the evil Iranians have attacked us, and the Americans need to get it done, but it's a shame that they haven't. And in the parts of the world like Libya, Syria, elsewhere, it's proof that American imperialism is morally bankrupt as well as incompetent. And, of course, there are parts of all these stories that are correct, which is that even if it was a mistake to start the war, it now needs to be concluded successfully. The absolutely worst thing would be for Trump to be the one who is crying uncle. And because he says that the blockade will make the Iranians cry uncle, we know that he does projection. He says, Hillary is trying to rig the election when he's trying to rig the election. So my fear is that he is, you know, on the verge of backing down and essentially, you know, letting his adversaries defeat him because he's saying that he believes that the Iranians are gonna cave in, and that would be a nightmare. So there are truths to all these sides.

00:06:09 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And there are multiple nightmares. That might be one nightmare or might be slightly less of a troubling nightmare than other types. Jason, one of the stories that I haven't seen, but I don't follow the story as carefully as you do, as an analyst of the region, or as the host of the excellent, disorder podcast, is the Shia Sunni story. Obviously, the Iranian regime is a Shia regime. Their support for Hezbollah is a Shia organization, and Yemen is Shias. Is this still a story that matters, or is it an unfair portrayal of this division within Islam in your view?

00:06:59 Jason Pack: It's not unfair, and, of course, it matters. If we wanna back up the, quote unquote, axis of resistance that the Iranians have created over the last twenty years to deter their enemy, the Israelis, is not exclusively Shia because Hamas is a Sunni Muslim Brotherhood aligned organization. And the Houthis are Zaydis. They're fiver Shias. But the Shia dimension of resistance and, you know, we were wronged in the past whether or not, you know, Ali should have been the first caliph, and then he became the fourth caliph going all the way back to the seventh century. There is a sense of Shia standing up for injustice and being martyred and wronged, which gives them a unique perspective from which to fight the losing battle nobly and be willing to die nobly. And,

00:07:54 Andrew Keen: Blood of Hussein, a film I saw many years ago in London.

00:07:59 Jason Pack: Sure. I mean, Hussein, was martyred and is part of this Shia martyrology. And understanding how the Ashura works, and understanding Shia mentalities are things that it seems that administration strategists didn't consider heavily enough, but the Sunni Shia dimension in the region is as strong as ever. If we go all the way back to October 7, this axis of resistance is essentially just Hamas and then various Shia organizations. And since October 7, the Israelis have systematically picked off and degraded all of these Shia militias. Hezbollah, the Houthis, a range of Iraqi militias who are frequently lumped together as. And during the Twelve-Day War, they really hit the head of the snake, the Iranian regime. But because of overplaying their hand, this Shia axis could, you know, come back like a phoenix from the ashes. I think that if nothing was done militarily, but things were done to help the protesters back in January, you could see a world where the Shia resistance organizations lost and the Iranian regime fell if maybe just

00:09:21 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Although I'm not sure the West wants to be seen as or The US wants to be seen as doing the dirty business of the Sunnis. What about Syria, of course, ruled for many years by the Alawites who were a kind of, my understanding again, an offshoot of Shia, certainly closer to the Shia than the Sunnis. Is Syria off the map, so to speak, now?

00:09:47 Jason Pack: If you're interested, I can give a greater explanation of who the Alawis are. The religion is really

00:09:55 Andrew Keen: Oh, briefly. I mean, we, sorry, we

00:09:57 Jason Pack: wanna move on. But Sure. They're Nusayris. They're Twelver Shias. They're what's called the ghulat, meaning that they exaggerate. What do they exaggerate? They exaggerate the role of Ali. They see Ali as essentially god. There's an argument that they're not Muslim because of this deification of Ali, but they have a whole range of gnostic and syncretic beliefs celebrating Socrates' birthday and a very interesting theology that I did my Fulbright when I lived in Syria about. Why is it relevant or important? They are essentially seen as kaffirs by hardline Sunnis, and this has pushed them to have an alliance with the Shia and the Iranians since the 1920s and 1930s. And, of course, the people who overthrew the Alawites, whether they were Al Qaeda linked or ISIS linked, you know, want to massacre them. And we have a Sunni Islamist, al-Jolani, who runs Syria now. And I wanna go back to your point about we don't wanna be helping the Sunnis. I think we do wanna be helping those Sunnis who wish to create a reformed Islam and who wish to move these debates and questions into the twenty-first century. So we have no choice as a West but to be involved in the theological politics of the region. It's not for us to choose, but we can support different tendencies. And there was an opportunity, it seemed, to be supporting a resistance to the Iranian regime, those people who were making those protests back in January. And that is somehow not a part of the debate. I mean, I think the media has covered the war very stupidly. Why are we not discussing how we can help the Iranian people and those who protest?

00:11:52 Andrew Keen: We've made we, media, we, the West, have made that mistake so many times. I think people are a bit wary. What about The Gulf? I'm not sure that Saudi Arabia, for example, is that keen on the twenty-first century, maybe in economic terms, but certainly not in cultural or religious terms or political

00:12:10 Jason Pack: That's fair. I'm not a fan of MBS. He has many people who are bought and paid for and, you know, talk about how great Vision 2030 is and what he's done to, you know, decrease the power of the Wahhabi clergy in the kingdom. But I think you've gotta give the man his due. Although he is a brutal autocrat and has cracked down against members of his own family, confiscated their wealth, imprisoned his own extended family members, like, lots of his cousins are essentially under house arrest. Despite all of that, he has wrested control away from the hardline clerics and is kicking and screaming Saudi Arabia into the twenty-first century. It's not just that women are driving and that there are UFC fights. He's doing a lot to culturally connect Saudi to the rest of the world, whether it's e-gaming or mega projects. And I don't love everything that the man stands for, but he has to be given his due, which is that he's confronted the more backward looking and more theocratic elements in Saudi

00:13:16 Andrew Keen: He has. Jason, what about the rest of The Gulf? Obviously, Dubai, The UAE. Coming back to our original conversation about both the Iranians and the Americans sort of trying to, in some senses, sweep the war under the carpet, I assume that the Gulf states are literally trying to do that given their dependence on tourism and on travel. What is happening now in The Gulf? Are things back to normal? My brother, for example, who travels a lot in the region seems to still be going through Dubai. Are people basically going back through Dubai? Are the airports back? Is the city back?

00:14:01 Jason Pack: This is a really important observation that you've made here, Andrew. A lot of my friends are transiting through Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi as they're flying to other places, and people who work in consulting in those countries are back living there. A lot of Brits. You mentioned the interesting analogy that our Sunni Gulf allies are trying to, quote unquote, sweep the war underneath the rug, and I think this is because they weren't consulted. These countries are gonna have increasingly more power in the world. The world that we're moving into is one where AI means that the ability to generate electricity and have cheap energy is super important. The ability to have disposable capital to pay for data centers is really important. This is a world where The Gulf is really very central to how the mid twenty-first century plays out.

00:14:48 Andrew Keen: And, of course, much Gulf money is going into both or has gone into OpenAI.

00:14:54 Jason Pack: 100%. And they have the data centers there, and they are, you know, funding every kind of startup as well as having it headquartered there. But what do you know? We didn't consult them even though they're the ones. It's not American civilians mostly. It's British and, Gulf Arab civilians who are being attacked in those countries, and we didn't consult them. And, hence, they're not doing the maximal to support

00:15:19 Andrew Keen: We being, you're an American in London or a half American in London. We being the West, we being The United States, we being Trump.

00:15:28 Jason Pack: The Israelis and the Trump administration. I mean, The UAE is a classic example, which is that their two most important political, economic, and diplomatic relationships are The US and Israel. And yet The US and Israel didn't consult them before going to war, which is threatening to and has to a large extent harmed their economy and threatened their civilians. They're needing dollar swaps now to keep some of their trade afloat and not have a debt crisis. Right? So I would be pretty pissed off if I was an Emirati policymaker who has done a lot to help Israeli inclusion in the region and American strategic aims in the Islamic world, and then they go and they do this without consulting me. It's not like they were consulted behind closed doors. They simply were not consulted. And this is a mistake because if we had had all of our Sunni Gulf allies on board, what do you know? They could have found ways to produce oil that could be shipped to the Red Sea rather than out the Strait Of Hormuz, or they could have done things to, you know, have a lot of oil storage or to have financial mechanisms that could help us get through this rough patch, but they weren't consulted. And it's really a shame because on the back end of this, the gulfies are gonna need us, and we're gonna need them. We here being not only the West, but corporations and individuals, and I don't know how that relationship is going to be healed. How are you gonna get trust there?

00:16:59 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Trust is certainly, not the most abundant thing in the region. Jason, you mentioned the relationship between Israel and The Gulf States. Of course, this latest round of war perhaps was triggered by a fear in Iran and, in Gaza of the Abraham Accords. Very simply, are we closer or farther away from a deal between Israel and The Gulf States now in May 2026 than we were, before the latest Hamas outrage?

00:17:37 Jason Pack: We're further away. We might have been closer in January because it looked like that the Iranian regime might be overthrown by its people. But now that that seems almost impossible, we're further away. The Saudis have concluded that America and Israel are not really to be trusted and that their citizenry would be outraged to do a deal with an Israeli regime that has not only killed so many people in Gaza and Lebanon, but does sneak attacks without consulting its allies. And, you know, you're exactly right to always point out that during the Biden administration, good work was being done behind the scenes to bring the Saudis and Israelis to, like, an Abraham Accords 2.0, and it was upended by the Hamas atrocities of October 7. But the Biden administration was doing things the right way, which is that you lay the groundwork, you do lots of consultations, and you try to proceed to something. Trump just, I believe, loves to disorder for disorder's sake. You know, all the silly Internet memes, which is that if I don't have a strategy, then my opponents don't know my strategy. And if I don't know what my objectives are, the opponents are left guessing because they don't know what my objectives are. That shit is funny because it's true. Trump is such a disorderer. He doesn't know what his goals are vis-à-vis Saudi and Israel or vis-à-vis Iran. He doesn't know if he's gonna try to, you know, get oil to be cheaper by having some Iranian cargoes go through Hormuz or if he's gonna blockade them completely. The blockade of the blockade, Andrew, isn't even really a blockade. He's letting vessels through.

00:19:22 Andrew Keen: So, right, that's a good summary. The blockade of the blockade isn't even a blockade. It adds to the surreal quality. I wanna come to Trump, of course, who's the ultimate disorder, as you say, which is why your show, disorder, your podcast show is so important and so listenable. Jason, what about what's happening in Iran? I heard this week an interesting, New York Times podcast about this shift in Iran from the theocrats to, the revolutionary guards. Is that your take on what's happening? I always understood that this relationship between the revolutionary guards and the theocrats was pretty intimate anyway, and they were always quite hard to actually disentangle.

00:20:05 Jason Pack: That's a very good point. I wanna first point out by saying my expertise is the larger Arab world. I speak Arabic, but not Farsi, and I've never been to Iran. So it's not something that I have intimate ability to analyze, but I would disentangle the revolutionaries, IRGC, hardliners from the theocrats. There was a theological project that started in the 1960s within Shia Islam to go from being quietest to wishing to bring al-Mahdi al-Muntazar onto Earth, like, essentially, theological rule. And they believed in it, and it has certain components of helping the oppressed and a theological globalism, you know, whether we're working with the Sandinistas or, trying to overthrow British empire or whatever. And then you have just these hardliners who are thugs, who have a military dictatorship, à la Putin. And those are not the same. Right? And, unfortunately, it seems that Mojtaba has had an alliance with the just the hardliners, the securocrats. The Russian term is the siloviki. And those people have intelligence assets and an ability to just repress dissent. They don't need to be supporting liberationist Shia movements in Bahrain or in Eastern Saudi Arabia and in the oil regions there. So we're gonna be seeing a regime from what I'm told, because I'm not an expert, which is just more concerned with staying in power and not concerned with the aspirational theological, for lack of a better term, almost optimistic things that the Ayatollahs had traditionally done from 1979 until now.

00:22:00 Andrew Keen: As I said, the CNN headline is Iran has sent a fresh peace proposal to mediators that's as we speak morning of, May 1 in California.

00:22:11 Jason Pack: I don't take that proposal very seriously.

00:22:13 Andrew Keen: Let me ask what's not clear to me, and maybe this is a dumb question, but why would the Iranians want peace? What's in it for them?

00:22:25 Jason Pack: Okay. If there was a true blockade, then they would be running out of money. They need to pay the IRGC. They need to prevent inflation because it was the inflation when they were under tight sanctions that caused the protests, not only in January 2026, but going all the way back to the protests in 2009 after the stolen election. So they do want peace, and they want the ability to trade so that their people are not gonna try to overthrow them. And they also are worried that they will run out of every kind of military supply. It's important to point out that they produce drones, but they don't produce all of the things that they need for repressing their own people. They need to get them from Russia, China, and

00:23:15 Andrew Keen: Yeah. But the Russians and the Chinese are clearly in their camp. And whether or not the Iranians or the Americans have established a blockade, in the Strait Of Hormuz, it's not gonna stop the Chinese and the Russians supplying them with military support.

00:23:31 Jason Pack: It's not that simple that the Russians and Chinese are in their camp. The Russians and Chinese, when it might have looked in the first few days that the Iranians were, quote unquote, losing, were not gonna lift a finger to help them. The Russians did not lift a finger when Syria essentially collapsed. When al-Jolani marches down from Idlib, I believe Bashar al-Assad thought the Russians are gonna come save me. They're gonna deploy a few thousand mercenaries who will confront al-Jolani and his people will back down. Not a single elite mercenary unit was dispatched to save Assad. If there was an uprising of a flipped IRGC commander that was marching on Tehran to take out the regime, I don't believe the Russians would have intervened in the early days. So it's not correct to say that the Russians and Chinese will do anything to save the Iranians. Their track record is that they're just opportunistic. They'll do something which keeps the world disordered, but they're not gonna risk political capital except to save, you know, Beijing and Moscow. They're not gonna do it to save Tehran. They don't need to now. Now that they can just do a little support and keep the war going, keep the West weaker and more disordered, they love that. But they're not ideologically committed to the Ayatollahs. I think that that's important to point out.

00:24:49 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And I wasn't suggesting they are. They are interested in disorder, particularly disordering the Americans, Western global power. You had an interesting piece on Trump being outplayed — you called him the supreme disorderer, so disordered that he even disorders himself, and then acknowledges it. How much in your view is Trump losing this war? Is there such a thing as losing a war when it isn't even a war? It's a war.

00:25:23 Jason Pack: Today should have been the day that the War Powers Act resolution would come into play in congress because since Vietnam, it's illegal to go to war for more than sixty days without a congressional resolution. But Hegseth is doing this thing pretending that there's a ceasefire, pretending that it's not a real war. It's a war. But if we go back to your initial point of he's disordering himself, I wanna say that American pilots as well as Israeli pilots showcased capacities that we didn't even know they had. And the people who are losing this war are not our armed service personnel. It's Trump. It is the lack of strategy and the very disordering essence of what he's trying to do, where he doesn't know, are we doing a full blockade? Are we not blockading their blockade? Do we want oil prices to get really, really high so there's enough pain? Do we wanna keep them low so that our allies don't have inflation and their economies are not hurt, and we outlast the Iranians? There is no coherent strategy. He doesn't know if he wants regime change or if he just wants to have the Straits Of Hormuz open or does he wanna denuclearize? Those are three entirely different things. And, hence, the Iranian, quote unquote, peace proposal is, oh, let's have the Straits Of Hormuz open, which will give us more power without discussing the nuclear issue. Trump would only ever go for that if he knows that he's lost because it just gives the Iranians more leverage than what they have right now. So I hate to fall into this camp of one of these left-of-center people who says that everything that Trump says is stupid. I think that like a broken clock, he's right twice a day, and he deserves credit for getting the hostages in Gaza. He deserves credit for certain other achievements. I'm not gonna list them here, but there have been some achievements. Unfortunately, when it comes to Iran now, he just doesn't know what he's doing, and he's so concerned about the media optics rather than the military strategy. If the markets go against him, he's gonna make different decisions rather than having a coherent military goal. And to show you that I don't think everything he does is stupid, if we go back to the Twelve-Day War, the dropping of the bunker buster, I think I came on your podcast to say it, was a good idea. That brought that war to conclusion and saved thousands of lives. So sometimes he does have the right instincts, but he needs to know why he's doing what he's doing, and he doesn't seem to in this case. I believe he's had a lot of cognitive decline, Andrew. Do you agree with me?

00:28:00 Andrew Keen: Yeah. It's hard to disagree with. So to make sense of this, Jason, are there historical analogies? You and I have talked, and I've had other shows comparing what's happened in Straits Of Hormuz to Suez. There's the comparison in an American context, of course, with Iraq, Afghanistan, and particularly now, I think, Vietnam. There's also it seems to me the comparison in the six months in 1939 before, the German invasion of Poland and then the invasion of Western Europe where there was this weird state of neither war nor peace, what historical moments would you suggest we look back at to make sense of this? Because as you say, Trump is the disorder in chief. All he wants to do is, firstly, make the story about him and, secondly, confuse us so that we have no idea what's going on. But there are historical comparisons, aren't there? I mean, there are realities here, military realities, economic realities, realities of wars and peace.

00:29:07 Jason Pack: I love the question. I think that Keen On is a great program because you're such a dynamic interviewer. And you mentioned the Drôle de Guerre, which is the period in September 1, 1939 until the blitzkrieg in the next year in 1940. And there are some aspects which this is similar to where no one knows if the war is actually on or not on. And both sides think that they benefit from delaying the start of the war because they believe then that they were the one building up more military force so that if they had more time. But, actually, the German military machine was much stronger by this delay, and they were able to have the blitzkrieg. So that's a good analogy. But I think Suez is actually the best analogy because Suez showed that when the Americans were not willing to bail out the French and the British, Anthony Eden was exposed with his pants down. The British economy was so weak.

00:30:09 Andrew Keen: Not a very, edifying image. Anthony Eden with his pants down.

00:30:12 Jason Pack: Well, that's what it was. And, I mean, I chose the metaphor actually on purpose, which is that when you're the one during a wartime situation who can't handle the inflation or the, you know, decrease in your asset prices, you're the one who's gonna have to cave. And I fear that the Iranians have exposed that its western populaces, particularly in Europe and in our democratic allies in East Asia, South Korea, and Japan, notably, who will suffer the most from this war. It's not the Iranians and their allies. The Iranians and their allies benefit from high crude prices. The Iranians and their allies can deal with disturbances in refined product. You know who can't deal with disturbances in refined product? It's our South Korean, Singaporean, and Japanese allies with their economies. It's not even just the price of crude because they have money, but they can't deal with the disturbances in refined product. And this is just a disaster for them. So that's why it's like Suez, which is that if you call the bluff on the person who says, oh, I can outlast this when they can't, I don't know how we can help. But dealing with the situation where our allies are gonna go into recession, and they're gonna be pushed more towards the anti-American parts of their politics. I think that this is a disordering disaster for whom we're gonna be seeing backlash for many years, Andrew.

00:31:49 Andrew Keen: Out of Suez, the people who won out of Suez was, of course, Nasser and perhaps the Americans. The big losers were the English and the French.

00:32:00 Jason Pack: I I think the Soviets benefited as well.

00:32:02 Andrew Keen: And the Soviets benefited. But is it conceivable if the equivalent is Suez, that ultimately, the Iranian hardliners will come out of this looking heroic, not just in Iran, but throughout the Middle East. Anyone who doesn't like the Americans will look to the Iranians and say these finally were the people who gave the Americans of more than a bloody nose.

00:32:28 Jason Pack: Correct. I mean, I don't think that that's too conspiratorial or pessimistic. That's what is being said. I mean, I interact with some extreme-left commentators, you know, to the left of Zack Polanski kind of people in The Middle Eastern Studies space.

00:32:46 Andrew Keen: And just to remind everyone, Jason, Zack Polanski is the head of the British Green Party.

00:32:50 Jason Pack: Correct. And he's very, very anti-imperialist. You know? Think of a Corbyn or Mamdani, but on steroids. Right? And that milieu, but within the Middle Eastern expert community, is gleeful that American empire has been, quote unquote, defeated. And, therefore, the resistance think of all the people that the Corbyn and, you know, AOC, Rashida Tlaib types are talking up that they will emerge victorious. Obviously, it's sick to think that way because it's not just that the Ayatollahs killed their own people, but all of their allies in places like Lebanon and Yemen are corrupt thugs who, you know, essentially keep women in cages. Right? You know what I mean? This is not gonna be a great situation when the resistance, quote unquote, wins. But I have to say I see that happening because it's showcase, which is that even if the Americans have all the money and all the military tactics in the world, they can't take economic pain. We're being exposed like what Putin has always said about the West. Paper tigers, we may have a combined GDP in the EU of 10 times Russia, but Russians can take pain, and Europeans are not willing to spend more money on defense or to even have, you know, increased prices at the pump. They'll cave. And, sadly, that seems to be true.

00:34:22 Andrew Keen: I wonder also, alongside all these shifts in great power politics and the equivalent of Suez, whether in the long term, you mentioned AI earlier, whether this war will be remembered as one in which AI companies in Silicon Valley or big tech began to shape the military landscape in some ways as much as government itself. Of course, there have been a series of conflicts between top AI companies and the Pentagon. What do you make of that, in historic terms, Jason, alongside all these seismic shifts in the Middle East and in global politics?

00:35:05 Jason Pack: This and the Twelve-Day War are obviously the first two AI wars, and future historians will be able to untangle exactly what the lessons of these wars vis-à-vis how AI would be deployed are. I'm not an AI expert, but I am aware that AI is unbelievably significant. A lot of the Israeli targeteering is done by AI, and the Americans are using AI not only to get targets, but to deal with the logistics of how our planes are, you know, dispatched the sorties that they do. I don't understand that technically enough, but AI is here to stay. Like it or hate it. Do you know what I mean? This is going to be

00:35:53 Andrew Keen: Well, I suppose AI is here to stay, but, multitrillion dollar AI companies, it's been a week. I'm not sure how closely you follow the economics of Silicon Valley, but it's been a week in which, Google stock, for example, they declared their Q1 numbers this week, and their stock went up 10%. I mean, it's almost $5 trillion company.

00:36:18 Jason Pack: Because since the war, I've been buying something called UVXY, and this is a leveraged product that shorts the VIX. And, of course, what I've been wanting is all these companies to crash. I believe that they should crash given how bad the Iran war will be for their bottom lines in terms of how much electricity is gonna cost and the sustainability of data centers and all that, but the AI company stocks keep on going up and up and up and up and up. And I think that that's because people are just thinking short term. But, yes, the role of AI in war and the role and the need for power that non-state actors, i.e., the AI companies have over how people wage war is gonna be critical. These companies, if they don't get their act together, they will be used inadvertently by the Iranians, Chinese, and Russians against their own interests. I mean, this whole thing with mythos and yeah. War is going to be a AI-empowered activity.

00:37:25 Andrew Keen: In other words, the world is becoming increasingly disordered, which is why everyone should subscribe to Jason's disorder podcast. Finally, Jason, in the BBC headlines, alongside the Israel story, there's a very local story about a man appearing in court charged with attempted murder of two Jewish men in North London in Golders Green. You know, you don't live too far away, Jason. How's the atmosphere there? How would you connect what's happening in London and the maybe the rather surreal atmosphere in North London near where you live to the global situation?

00:38:02 Jason Pack: Thank you for checking in on this story. I think that people outside the British milieu may not be fully aware that there have been six terror attacks or, signal bombings on sites of Jewish infrastructure in the last six weeks since the Iran war has begun. Many of them are just targeting empty synagogues or empty ambulances. But two days ago, orthodox Jewish men who were identified by their black hats were stabbed, not to death, but the intent was to stab them to death. And I consider this not only highly disorderly, but, in keeping with the paradigm of the disorder podcast, which is that Russia and North Korea who they're not really even involved in this conflict put antisemitic memes on Facebook and Twitter, and a lot of disordering actors promote crazy antisemitic theories about great replacement, about Epstein. And it's therefore not a surprise that some guy who has mental health problems, and it's important to point out he also stabbed a police officer back in 2008, goes and gets an idea into his head and just attacks a 70-year-old Hasidic man. It's horrible, and it's crazy, and it's terrifying, but I think it's here to stay. We live in a world in which people make money on spreading these horrible lies. And I think that we're gonna find out later that it's not just the Iranian regime, but Russia and North Korea that have been just deluding the world in this great replacement theory level antisemitism.

00:39:48 Andrew Keen: Although I wonder again if that really is that dramatic a change. Last night, I went to see, tomorrow never dies, the 1997 classic James Bond film about a media mogul who used lies to promote a war between China and America and Britain in the South China Sea. So in a sense, is anything different, Jason?

00:40:12 Jason Pack: No. No. I mean, these themes are themes that have existed before. I think the ability with which you can spread the most outlandish conspiracy theories, like, people are saying on Twitter, well, the Jews have brought the illegal immigrants to The UK. They don't mind them getting stabbed because then it can, you know, help their plot or whatever. Like, this is absolutely insane stuff. This is different than conspiracy theories of the past. The level of impossibility and irrationality, and then that someone actually is like, great. I'm gonna go stab someone for no you know what I mean? For absolutely no reason. I'm sure I've expressed myself poorly on this topic, and I apologize for the lack of sensitivity that, some listeners No.

00:41:06 Andrew Keen: You can be insensitive on this show. I'm always insensitive, Jason. You can't

00:41:10 Jason Pack: What I wanna say is I feel very sensitive to people who feel terrified. I'm not good at having a woman's empathy in how I discuss these topics, and that's why I wanted to flag or apologize. I feel absolutely terribly for not only the family members, but people who do feel worried as they go out and about. I just see it getting worse and worse because I see people that I speak to who want to be allies of the Jewish community, getting driven towards reform and Farage, and then people who don't get it not grasping why we're in this position and what the failings of Starmer and kind of open border stuff are. So I see that disorderly antisemitism pushes a lot of politics, but particularly UK politics towards extremes left and right, towards reform and greens. And that's not a healthy place. We need something in the center, but we just don't see that materializing.

00:42:13 Andrew Keen: We certainly do need something in the center, and, so it's nice to talk to Jason because he is in the rational center. Disorder podcast is excellent. Jason, thank you for on this odd May 1 where we're stuck in a position where we're not even sure if the war is going on. There's something Orwellian about it as well. One can imagine waking up three days' time and seeing headlines suggesting that now the Iranians are our allies. It's rather like an inconvenience war. But we will see, Jason. As always, honor to talk. Keep your reason from the center. We need guys like you and your disorder podcast. Thank you so much.

00:42:54 Jason Pack: Always a pleasure, Andrew. Such great questions.