UFC Fighting at the White House

Last week, the Pident of the United States did something that no technology company would ever have done He took the most capable artificial intelligence that America's leading lab had ever built And he stopped it at the border on national security grounds, which means the latest frontier model from anthropic is now in effect a weapon Americans get it But the rest of us, allies included, get whatever version they're willing to let out. Now I've spent a lot of the last few months trying to tell anyone who listen that this couldn't Be ruled out And then being told politely that I was catastrophizing, that the Americans would never do this So what if the central technology of the next century In other words, the technology on which everything will depend. Our government Fence economy Turns out to be something we can only rent something which America can withdraw whenever it wants is Bon. is Europe still a power that governs itself Or are we just quietly discovering that we've become a vassal And if it's the second thenen what do we do about it? And the answer, I've come to believe is something very radical So that's what I want to work through today. What actually is the thread What are we going to do about it All that more to come in today's episode of The Rest is Politics Question De This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy. Now moving home has a way of revealing a mountain of background tasks and under to do lists that's dealing with the boxes, the broadband, the change of address forms, and the discovery that you own far too many mugs. 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New markdowns up to seventy percent off are at Nordstrom rack stores now. Stock up and stve big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must haves for summer. Join the Nordy Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices That's why you rack Welcome to the R ofpolit Quion Time me Alice Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. Rory, we're going to talk about defense. We're going to talk about this remarkable election in Peru, one of the closest elections ever We're going to reflect on the UFC cage fighting that went on at the White House to celebrate Donald Trump's birthday So Rory, let's start with AI and defense. Daisy Oakman, what are your thoughts on the US goovernment's suspension of two crucial AI models? What does it mean for the UK and the world as a whole. So People will most people listening will now have been using AI models a lot and you will have found that you're getting a more and more updated model every few months. So your open AI system will take you from chat GBT three to chat GBT five and will give you different types of model What's happened is that over the last two and a half years, these models are getting better and better and better. So one way to illustrate it is that If we were having this conversation two and a half years ago, you'd be saying, well, I can do sort of GCSE maths, but I can't really do A level maths Now they're saying Yeah, it can do advanced graduate level mathematics, but it can't quite yet get a Nobel Prize, right So there's been an incredible eruption and you know, software They were saying, well, this thing could do the sort of thing that a human software programmer could do in about half an hour in a minute. Now it can do what a human software programmer can do in forty eight hours in about a minute. There's been an incredible improvement in performance And as the performance increases the positive potential for this massive increases. so You can have much more productivity, you can do much more exciting things for with your companies for productivity brackets, you can also lay off a lot of employees, right And on the negative side You can use it for bad in a much more powerful way. can you now have much more facility to build bioeapons, mount cyber attacks, etcetera. But the fundamental thing that's been revealed is America's finally done the thing that I've spent the last few months warning that they would do and being rubbished for saying it, right I was at a conference a week ago and I said, What if You know, Mythos fifteen were developed and the US government suddenly announced on national security grounds that it wouldn't be released, and nobody could use it except the Americans, right? By the way, do you accept that there are genuine national security grounds on this? Are there national security grounds? Might there be a logic to what they've done I think there would be logic to saying it can't be released at all Right If the thing is so dangerous gettingting in the hands of any ordinary person could bring the world to a grinding hall by mounting cyber attacks or billing biire weapons.on't release it The logic of only releasing it to American citizens is completely different. That's saying this is such a powerful competitive advantage for the US, not that this is an existential threat to global security. It's basically treating it as though America has developed its latest fighter plane. And it's not going to share that fighter plane with any other country xcept it's not just defense tools. It's not just like America having nuclear bomb and nobody else ha a nuclear bomb. It's also America having steam and electricity when nobody else has it. What are the implications? like the British government So I has been somebody in the government who said they've been really trying to get the Americans not to do this. What is the impact for a country like Britain In the short term, it means that you're stuck with the last model while they push ahead Let's say you're trying to do things that we've all been talking about for years, takeake NHS data and looking at it, find out new things about the relationship between that exercise and Pstate cancer you're going to still be working on the old creaky models, the A level model instead of the advanced math model, and with all the problems that you will have encountered when you use them, their hallucination, their fuzziness around the edges, their memory problems, the things they can't quite do while America pushes forward And what's the most dangerous thing these new ones can do When you hear people saying it could bring the entire economic system, entire banking system to a crash, it can find its way into any kind of system in the world. Is that what we're talking about? Is that the level of threat? Yeah. So the first threat that they've identified with these models is cyber attacks. So what these models are very, very good at doing is going through all the code of Microsoft or all the programming on your phone and finding thousandousands of weaknesses that no human had ever found And they find it almost instantly and then they can design attacks There is an incredible potential for cybercrime. Now to defend against it, the only way to defend against it is to have the same advanced model doing all the stuff on the defensive side, finding all those weaknesses, coming up with all the defenses If we end up in a world in which one country has The advanced models to mount the offense and none of us have the defensive models, we're in a very difficult world. But let me add to that If these models continue to improve at the rate at which The techbs claim they will And my guess is and this is the big judgment call that you have to make if your Primeinister is say right. Kiss Armor, you Andy Burnam, Well you rst to camer, right You're going to have people like me saying Listen Yes, maybe Elon Musk and Salalman over prromise, but broadly speaking, they have been vindicated. These models are unbelievably powerful. They're already changing the world and my guess is within three, four years These things will be capable of doing almost everything that a human can do remotely. They may not be able to be a good plumber but they're going to be able to do almost everything else we can do. And therefore This is not just like steam or electricity, something that maybe over forty, fifty years transports code, It's something over for five years accelerate American GDP, totally transform defense and security, totally transform public et right and we cannot afford to be completely dependent on the United States for the biggest technology story in the world because Trump can switch it off He can either blackmail us. He can either say, Well you can continue to have it if you pay me ooodles of money and give me Greenland Or he can just say, we can't have it at all and we're going to accelerate forward. And you guys are going to be like, I't know, this's a horrible analy I've used ps, but you're gonna be like Zuloo Empire. meeting the kind of British industrial revolution. I get that And yet I keep being told and I'm sure you keep being told that America and China are way out ahead of everybody else, but then not, you know, when you're looking at the sort of the second division, the UK iss kind of at the top of it Is the answer or just is this just my Brexit derangement syndrome Can Europe not become The third. power within this and how close to that are we or how far behind are we? So we're massively far behind I think the honest answer is, if I were advising as Prime Minister, we need to do it But we would need to do it UK, Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, South Korea together. And do it in competition? And we would have to develop our own sovereign capacity U Now, this is a really weird thing. It would be like us saying America's got F thirty five fighter jets and we're going to build a Euro fighter, or we're going to fill the tyyphon.. And the obvious normal answer to that is, that the American F thirty five is better and it's cheaper and you're going gonna spend all this money building your Eurifighter, and it's still going to be not quite as good as the Ameran fighter and who're going to buy the Aican fighters right And it's a hell of a bet Right? This is your problem as Prime Minister If you believe me and you believe this is completely vital to your security and just working backwards, if this stuff's that advanced And if America can't be relied upon to give it to us, we need to build our own You're talking about hundreds of billions pounds of investments, hundreds of billions The frontier labs are likely to spend over the next two to three years seven hundred forty billion US dollars You would have to have enormous data centers You probably have to have your own chips because America might stop giving you the NVIDia chips which power these things right? And it's a moonshot and the likelihood P peopleople being skeptical as well. Forget it, you're going to spe hundreds of billions and you're still going to behind the US I would argue B to have the infrastructure, the talent The chips and be a little bit behind the US. than have nothing at all becausecause if the US switches you off, at least you can go to the Eururo Fighter model, not the F thirty five. Are you talking about governments building this or about governments encouraging European versions of Musk and Oortman and the rest of them to try to get in the race. What works? Well I guess this would go back to your experience in government, whether you think the best way to get this kind of infrastructure built is putting together a big Canadian British European fund that invests in know mistral or the UK sovereign startup or gets theseese amazing Canadians who keep offering to do this for us to come over from their universities in Canada and build it for us. Is it like CEN where you know we build it together as a government Or is it a question of investing in two or three European companies becausecause I'm assuming if we had really clever people in the UK, The sorts of money that these American companies are offering of starting salaries for some of the brightest of the best, of a scale that is unimaginable for a government to be funding. It's not suy government do. so probably you're right. You just have to private companies do this And then you would have a huge fight. So imagine the fight that you'd have You firstly you'd have the fight from your friends saying This is environmentally catastrophic. These data centers use too much energy, they use too much water, they're ugly then you'd have a fight saying whyy is the government? subsidizing people getting two hundred million pounds salaries when we can't pay for the NHS. But the third argument that you'll get 's the argument that really you're hearing in number ten All right, so' the counter argument to me, and this is why it' so difficult The counter argument is America isn't going to keep cutting us off They need our markets They need our data. The only way they're going to make their money back is with the four hundred fifty million customers that they can access through Europe and their allies. that our data is very valuable, that we can use Chinese open source models. We don't have to build our own frontier models and that What we can focus on where the economic value is is in building the application there. So you know Let them spend hundreds of billions on the frontier, and we can build the really cool apps which apply it to life sciences or apply it to law And then we can build wonderful companies off the back of the American models and we'll get the economic value off the back of this. Ething comes down to Two questions Number one Is America likely to switch this stuff off And number two Can we possibly afford to build these things and get them done Generally, Well, you seem to think yes and no is the answer to that. Yes, the Americans Yeah and indeed currently have And secondly, no Europe Europe couldn't. And my conclusion is we've got to make that no ent a yes. Okay. Europe and the UK and our neighbours have to do it. We have to work backwards But there will be so much resistance because it's so expensive and so difficult to do Everybody's going to be saying, this is ridiculous. this is a moon shot. Why are we wasting all our money on this? And there will even be people saying quite quickly, maybe this American investment won't work out. Maybe they're wasting their money. Maybe this seven hundred forty billion theirre spending isn't going to work out. Maybe these AI models are always going to be a bit crappy Maybe all these predictions about how they're going to transform the world are wrong and we can just sit back. My fear about that is it's a little bit fther behind. Yeah, well my favite about this is basically like, I think, you know, in return to my Zulu emmpire idea, that I'm Shaka Zulu and I say, well you know, they keep boasting about steel and coal and all this marvelous stuff they're doing the industrial Revolution. Maybe it's not gonna work out. Maybe they're just wasting all their money on that stuff and You know, I've got a very wise man living in my community who keeps assuring me that he's got a different approach to this whole thing. and Maybe it'll all work out. It's alwayss worked out in the past. How much of this is about we'll come to UK defence in a minute, but how much of this is about the ongoing battle between the Trump administration and this specific company andthropic because They had a difficulty with the Pentagon when they basically said they would not allow the Pentagon to do certain things with their gear that they wanted to do, and that led to them attacking them They've they've called the C CEO an ideological lunatic And they've said that anthropic is all about trying to create woke AI, whatever that means. So this is this anthropic model ahead of everything else and How much of the motivation to do what the White House announced last week is actually about this company and how much is about the sort of making of a new weapon that you talked about. I mean, as usual These two questions everyone disagrees on. So number one is it ahead of anyone else Yes, for my money, I think it's ahead of everyone else, but there are some people who will say that actually putting other models together, you can achieve pretty similar performance Secondly, Is it about the genuine threat or is it bitterness towards anthropic W the Trump administration, it's completely impossible to distinguish. and there's a lot of evidence that quite a lot of it is bitterness towards anthropic because Pete Hgsetith has been chiefly saying We told you this was a bad company and this is why we've just stopped the export of the product. and anthropic are like, whooa, whoa, whoa whoa, whoa, canan you please tell us what the grounds are for you stopping our product? so that we can assess what's different between our product and our competitors. Or are you just trying to kill our business model? Am I right in saying that it's not that just they can't export it to Brits, Australians, Germans, French, Koreans, etcetera But non Americans inside the United States can't have access to it. Absolutely, which removes whichich is completely unpoliceable, I thought. But it also removes a lot of the very smartest AI researchers in the world because If you look through the great heads of all these tech companies, absolutely full of people who are South Asian or of Iranian heritage. R over a hundred Chinese herit. There are over a hundred first languages anthropy Yeah. And some of, you know, when I turn up to these conferences in the States, the guy presresenting on quantum has a strong German accent. The guy telling me about his new legal program is obviously a recent southation imigram. America has built Silicon Valley off immigrants It's an immigrant culture. you start saying only American citizens can access. It becomes really, really weird. But The probleblem is let's say Anthropic want it to say, okay, enough. We're moving out of the U.S. We're going to move to Europe They didn't really have the optionality because we haven't got the data centers, because we haven't got the chips. we can't host their weights, we can't host their models. we don't have that security And I' want going to say with this issue, AI and also defense in the context of John Healey and Al Carnes resigning from the government with the issues we've got the most questions about this week. Listen let me just give you this let's start with this one on from Charlie On British defense, what do we do now? We're getting run into the ground here Robert, has Al Carnes got a legitimate chance of being labour leader? What does he stand for Well, you won't know the answer to the first until you know the answer to the second, I would suggest. But he's certainly on manoeuvers. Yeah, he's certainly on maneuvers and we look forward to having him on the show Okay, so UK defense Fundamentally, We're trying to do it all And the only people who can do it all are people at US and China US and China are spending so much on defense. you know, the US is spending a trillion dollars a year. doesn't need to make decisions and prioritize in quite the way we do. So they bet on everything. They have an advanced fighter, they have submarines, they have aircraft carriers, they recapalize their army, they communitions stop her We can't do all those five things And that's the fundamental problem. We cannot afford to both fund our own. Sixth generation fighter in twenty forty and have a full aircraft carrier group and have the next generation of advanced submarines and recapalze our army and I have ourmunitions. We just can't do it. The government is incapable of making any decisions. And my guess is that even John Healley He tries to get round it by just asking for more money if he had wanted to cancel one of those programms. So let me try one on you o The most obvious one Aircraft cars Total waste of time Total waste of time All right, these aircraft carriers can only operate if you have a whole fleet of other ships around that we can't afford to have And we can barely afford to pay for the planes on them. and they were all based on projecting us into the Indo Pacific, which we're not interested in anymore in fighty C ser fight. forget it Is any politician going to say We're cancellling our aircraft carriers unt tell the Navy we're getting rid of that. Not without a massive opposition from within the Amed Force. Absolute. Second one This fighter, let me explain about the GCP fighter, right So this is a fighter plane we're developing with the Italians and Japanese here. Qion number one Do we actually need pilots and planes anymore? or are they going to be replaced by drones What is this plane there to do? Is it hovering around in the air, coordinating drones or is it doing its own strikes? Okay And get this, this thing will be delivered twenty forty Does anyone seriously think that we know what the world of AI, technology and drones will be like in twenty forty Yeah. Is there any point spending billions of pounds designing a plane with a pilot in it to fight a war from ten years ago in a world that's increasly about drones because the real risk is you but this thing It costsana two hundred million pounds of pop and all it is is an exquisite target for everybody's cheap mass drones to hit. I guess this is one of the points that Al Khnes, the Armed Forces minister made in his resignation letter that we're preparing for wars of the past rather than wars of the future. that is all and particularly when you've got very complicated slow procurement systems that we have, that is a a problem. A listen we talked about John Heedy's resignation on the day that it happened, but just to revisit that for a bit What seems to have happened? And what seems to have emerged since then? You mentioned the Canadians coming over to try and help us on AI It seems that what John Healley was particularly upset about was the treasury blocking any move towards this thing called the Defense Security and Resilience Bank, which is a Canadian proposal and as I understand it is a way of sort of getting more money into defense and defence investment without necessarily having to offend the fiscal rules. Now I don't know much more than that But so I think John Heley was looking he had a sort of really cryptic line in his letter about, you know, there are other ways of raising money without, you know, causing too much rou in the markets, but you're describing a gap between need and reality that feels a lot wider than it did even when you were chairing the Defense Elect Committee. Yeah. Because when I was chairing the Defense Elect Committee in twenty fourteen That was the moment at which Putin invaded Crimea.. And up to that point, the assumption had been that really our military was an expeditionary force connected to the US and NATO that fought wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. So what kind of military are you talking about? You're talking about Ral Marines or pars with armored vehicles traveling around villages in Afghanistan and you need protection against improromised explosive devices and you're fighting a guerrilla warfare. peopleeople with clash and cots Fast forward two completely new types of war that we're dealing with. And they are Ukraine and Iran Ukraine is a war with endless hovering cheap drones now nearly sixty miles deep, freezing a frontline drone, counter drone strikes Iran is the dream of the high tech US Israeli planners The most exquisite, expensive equipment in the world, incredible radar, incredible targeting, incredible precision bombing wiping out all Iranian air defenses in twenty four hours And then we have the threat of Russia to Europe. So what are we doing with Russia Europe? Are we trying to be Ukraine Defense and debt, cheap drones, or are we trying to be the US and Israel Let's have exquisite planes and take out Russia's air defenses on day one and then be able to use our fancy planes to take out all their stuff And when's Russia going to attack Because if they're attack in twenty thirty, having a plane delivered in twenty forty is not much right. Yeah If they're attacking twenty forty Then this's my final point. Actually we need to be investing in AI. I mean I'd actually scrap most of this stuff and put it into building data censers frontier models. Actually what are we learning Modern Wfare is about new software every six weeks new hardware every six months. So there's no point pretending that we know what's going to happen in twenty fourty. What we have to do is build the engineers, the systems, the industrial manufacturing capacity that is able to do new software every six weeks, new hardware every six months. and that's basically leaning into software engineers, industrial production capacity, ability to build munitions, rather than betting on exquisite platforms. last week, you were saying that the strategic defense review having been brought forward, the government should follow that plan, but even what you're describing there is very different to that plan because this thing' moving so fast. Yes. And which is why I think pentious things like kind of the ecosystem or the environment of British innovation, technology, talent Infrastructure is probably much more important than trying to guess the weapon or what the war will be in fifteen years time. There's just sort of a quick plug for a brilliant final six page economist article by my friend Shashank Joshi who tries to lay out what he calls Trparency. He thinks war is all about transparency that these devices can see things they were never able to see before I think the future war I'd add to that is sovereignty. It's all about sovereignty and our real problem is we're having to build all the stuff without being able to rely on U. S. defense equipment anymore. Yeah. By the way, before we get a break, Andrew Kinnibborgh. Does that name ring a bell He's the DG of Make UK and think you and I have both spoken at mate UK conferences. He says I have a major bone to pit with Rory and his statement ib he calls it that defence spending doesn't lead to economic growth anyone in Barrow, the Clyde, Plymouth, Bristol, Yoble, Preston, the even the Oer Hebrides And he then goes on to say this. He says, Our biggest frustration is with the treasury, echoing both John Healley and Ben Wallace, who we interviewed on leading They refuse to consider the Defense and seecurity Rilience bound. which John Heeeley and numberum ten have told us they like and we love And this is something that I think Mark Carney has been pushing. This is the thing that It seems to be about. And I think when John Healley said in his resignation letter to Gstambber that the treasury were unwilling and you were unable that I think that is what this is about. Well So answer Andrew, there has been lot of research on this and what academics have been trying to look out is pound for pound, what kind of return do you get investing in a nuclear submarine and barreow for your economy compared to? invvesting in education infrastructure skills Generally the conclusion is if what you're trying to do is generate economic growth, pound for pound, you'd be better going for education infrastuct skills, deffence is not a very productive investment. We don't really do that either though No. so I think the reason to go to defeense is not that it's the cheapest way of getting economic growth. The reason to go for defence is there's a threat from Russia. We can no longer rely on the U.S And we will have no sovereignty or independence unless we build up the capacity Yeah. I mean, if anyone wants to get into any of this more, I've done a minieries on AI with Matt Clifford that we're quite proud of we get deep into all these debates. How much does this technology matter and what should the UK do about it and what should Europe do about it in particular So just go to the rest of as pololitics. com. Okay, quick break and we'll come back and talk about UFC and Peru This episode is brought to you by Vauxhall. Electric cars have become part of life on the road and Vauxhall is supporting The UK's transition to electrification. Well, how are they doing that? Well, to start, their Electric Streets of Britain initiative aims to support local authorities in accelerating the UK's on street charging infrastructure. And it's exactly what you want to see from Vauxhall, which is of course a British brand, a proud partner of Team GB. Vauxhall's also supporting the next generation of athletes on their journey to the twenty twenty eight Olympics And there's more. Their new Vauxhall Grandland Griffin, a large family SUV, features a premium specification at an affordable price, whether you choose an electric Mild hybrid version. Even better, goingo Electric can get you an additional fifteen hundred pound discount Thankks to the electric cargo Any questions you have about electric cars are probably answered by the Vauxhaall Grandland Search Vauxall groundland or visit your local Vauxhall retailer. Today, electric grant Tas and Ces apply visit vauxhall. co. uk S more inso Hi, this is Garalinica from Goldhangers, The restest is foootball. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate and easy transfer and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple WS is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than one hundred and sixty countries and with over forty currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. WSE uses the mid market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate Know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, T's and Ts apply Finally find your thing. You want the whole world to know about that thing So you use a thing called Canva make it an even bigger and better thing wants to create flyers for that thing presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing You can do anything So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Roy Stewart. and me Alista Campbell. Now first question for you from Akash. How did you celebrate Trump's birthday last weekend, Alistter So Well, the only connection I had with Trump's birthday was to watch the news coverage of the Uutterly hideous UFC cage fighting on the lawn of the White House. Did you watch a bit of it? I watched a bit of it. I mean I went showir to my kids. I mean I used to do a lot of martial arts. I did karate, I did Akido, I did Judo, so I'm quite interested in it when you actually see some of the matches I mean it was the Netflix big match that I saw four weeks ago that it's horrifing. I mean it's not what you want a kid to see. Well, it's fighting There's a lot of blood Yeah. And sometimes you're saying, I mean There was an extraordinary match between The most enormous, incredibly impressive French Afran fighter going up against a guy who they tried to trail as having rested for two years, but he was back and feel and the poor man was destroyed I mean, destroyed within a few seconds. it was it's brutal. It's absolutely brutal And of course that's partly why he loves it. and Pete Hgs keeps talking about you know lethality. is his favourite word. Now I think the things I find most troubling because there is something about the White House that is very special and it's a beautiful building, replete with history, beautifully kept. and cdly that laore where you normally have meetings with heads of state or big events of well, it was a big event But it's got this sort of makeshift stadium put together. You've got a whole load of evil con evil type motorbike riders kind of flying through the air The honor guard, which is normally there, you know, to Greet Xi Jinping or Kiststama or the King, whatever it might be, they were there standing there as an honour guard for the fighters as they came out. The worst moment and I think even the crowd, even though the crowd was pumped up USA, USA and loving Trump, was one of the fighters who an in the ring interview afterwards and said first of all Donald Trump's the only man in the world who could deliver shit like this It's probably true All was certainly true. thenen went on to say how the only person in the world that you loved more than that was Jesus Christ because Jesus could he also deliver evil conival and You could do all that stuff and you could probably ride a mean motorbike yourself. and then one went on to say and Michelle Obama is a man America, we all know this So neeatly bringing together, neatly bringing together misogyny racism, white supremacy Allied to Christianity. I mean, utterly horrific. And Even that's quite it's quite Roman Empire, isn't it?cause as you what I feel looks seeing the blood is it's like gladiatorial games. Oh yeah. and that's why he loves it. And he and the guy who runs UFC And this by the way, was film. You had to pay to watch this on Ellon's onene of Ellison's new channels, he was of course, in the crowd So all part of the sort of Trump corruption. One of the sponsors it comes up, you know, the sponsor of this fight is truth social Right? so that he's he's making money out of it He's a shareholder in UFC, it turns out. So I thought it was pretty horrific. What does it suggest about masculinity? Because remember there was a story among Milani was there? Amongst the various things that haven't been delivered by Elon Musk. And you know, we'reking, you know, he's just become the world's first trillionaire And he's just done an amazing. I mean if people haven't followed it you read the prospectus of the SpaceX IPO Basically it's you're going to make money if he manages to put a million people on Mars and put all this stuff up into space. Oh, and by the way, you're going to have no control as a shareholder. The whole thing's written for us to control the whole thing But amongst the various promises, he's not just putting a million people on mars, he promised that he was going to fight Mark Zuckerberg a ring two years ago and we haven't yet seen that. No, we haven't. No. I'd watched that. Yeah. So what's going on Wh do you want to win?? I think Musk would probably win, but who would you want to win? What's going on though between these A actuallyually it turned out I think that he dropped out because he suddenly discovered that Mark Zquoke had literally been training two hours a day. was he's like you or hes like he's got a sort killer streak in there. the last time's What do you think's going on in the world? I mean, would this have been true, twenty thirty years ag? Are we becoming much, much more I. It's very interesting though, the polling. Yeah, but I saw some polling on this. The support it was something like thirteen percent of Americans thought that this was a good use of the White House. And Republicans it was only one in three So that iss very so it's basically, I think what we're seeing is Donald Trump as the emperor. It's my birthday. this is what I want to do in my birthday. And by the way, you know the reason why the G seven summit? you don't even like birthdays, do you? No, I don't. He clearly loves his birthday. It's not anybody else's birth. That he doesn't know where Belardia's birth is, but he The reason why the G seven summit This's going on now was started the day that it did a day later than it was meant to because Trump wanted to have his UFC f. You want to have the evil conal than in his UFC. Exactly. So there you are. you're thinking, maybe this is a day really to focus on Iran I mean,kay, it's my birthday but I should focus around, but no he has this. So I found the whole thing pretty revolting. Cheryl Crow who as I've told you before once complimented me on my hair. O of the highlights of life of my life. remind us of showell Crz? Sheelle Crow is an amazing singer. att the time, she was living with Lance Armstrong, the cyclist, and I turned up with a new haircut. She said, I love your haircut highlight, but she did a fabulous post about just how sickening and disgusting and awful this was. But I think this goes back to I was talking to And a Democrat friend yesterday was and I was raging about it. and he said, Listen, stop the rage on stuff that doesn't really matter This is why they do it. No'm with you I'm with you because I disagree the Democratic friend because I was talking yesterday to one of the great cornerstones of the U.S. foreign policy establishment He was in Washington Ivice in London. and he was saying, listen, we're beginning to think, you know Democrats as well as Republicans that maybe you know what Trump's done is not too bad and it's encouraged Europe to stand on its own two feed and take more responsibility for security. And in the end, the noise will die down and actually our alliance will be stronger because you know you will have spent more on defense. and it's true that you weren't spending enough on defense. You simply do not understand. how the whole world has changed If you really think the conclusion of all of this is we're going to come to the end of the Trump administration in Europe and Canada, and the UK, willll be like Our relationship with the U.S is stronger than ever before. We're standing on our own two feet. We're going to be wonderful allies around the world Forget it. But that's partly, that's what worries me that when people say, stop getting wound up, stop the Trumps arrangement syndrome. The risk is they end up thinking We're in a normal world. Well, it's like when we werere talking about Germany in the main podcast, I was talking to somebody who said that the actual sppringer group which look it is not like Murdoch and it's not like the maail, but it's kind of it's developed and built sital that they're becoming He used the phrase he was German, he used the phrase thean banalization of the AFD And I think we're way through that with Trump is why he is able to get away with more. And funny enough, when I was mentioned on the main podcast, the encounter H with Jacob Brie Smg Off stage when he was being his usual polite and charming self, we talking about Farage and he said, Yeah, think about Farage though. He was saying I would welcome her in alliance with Farage We should have a deal and you know we should snd down our candidates where they can win and they should do the same with uss. And I think it would be fine in government, bl, blah blah blah, blah. And I said, what about this five minutes?, it's terrible, it's terrible But you know, he's got the Trump effate. He seems to be able to survive scandal. You only survive scandal If Politics and the media allow you to survive scandal. I was very glad to see Meddi Hassan coming back to the UK with his new u, you know, taking British politics in the same way that American politics because I think the armedia is just too soft and the Americans mat is even softer You know, they let the stuff The thing that really gets me is when Trump is abusing people And the rest of the crowd don't stand up for them They all just they're all just he's dividing a ruling all the time, even in that context. He'd be doing it the G seven now. anyway, you get getting me guy, I'll shut on N next question then Luca. canan you please talk about the Peruvian election? what's going on Oh, I'm obsessed with this Rory, as you know from my it was I mean the first thing to say is it's a classic left right It's you've got Roberta Sanchez was on the left and you've got Fuji Muri relative of a previous Kjro Fujimori, she's there O as we say, Fujimori. I'm sure you do, but Okaykay, okay, Fujimori. Thank you for correcting my language You you tell me off often I don't with's true. That's true,'s tr. I noticed you corrected me on remigration as well. I don't like saying rem migration because is what they want you to say. So they they were they went through, it's a French system. lotots of people can stand and then the top two go through until somebody gets fifty percent So get this The initial count was Fujimori, nine million thirty six thousand forty six, Sanchez nine million thirty four thousand seven hundred forty three. So what's the gap again? sorry, can't do m. thirty point n n four percent. againgst forty nine point nine nine six percent. Oh my lord. And then and of course the votes were coming in and being counted a bit like during the L Rain referendum And then there was a couple of sort of big suuddenly, of course when a lot of the foreign votes overseas votes came in and they helped Fimori. So Sanchez is now demanding a total recount. Lots of the tallies now gone into the cause So it's going to be ages uil we find out actually who the president is. I think Fuimori is narrowly ahead. But yeah, Luca, thank you for that because I've been following this election far more cl closely than I should. It's been the most fascinating election, hasn't it? Because I believe the mayor of Lima was considered to be a real player on the right and was narrowly pushed out by Fum Moruri. but there was a whole narrative that Fum Mori wasn't going to make it through the last two and the mayor of Lima, who was a sort of aged genius on social media who knew how to tell a good story was going to get rid of somebody who was compromised by her father and who'd been trying to be elected forptut. mean, she wass one of the great survivers kicko Kica Fumori, I think has run again and again and again and her parties Her parties' dominated parliament at frequent occasions But also it's like, you know, a bit like Marine L Pen having to kind of sort of have the shadow of her father, Jean Marie Le Pin who was kind of know out and out neo Nazi and she's tried to moderate. So the father you'd have thought given his record it would have damaged her more than it did. She didn't do very well in the first round though. This is the thing about their system I come in. It wasn't like it's like twenty percent was an even less than I can't remember but so she gets through and it became this incredible left right battle because that is what's going on across Latin America. And I think the left were just desperately hoping that maybe we'll have one of the left wing people win this. But so I can't remember an election as a national presidential election. I can't remember anything quite as close asact. of the hanging chance in Florida. We had the hanging chance, but that was in this is like literally right at that time, Al Gore had quite considerable lead on the popular vote. Yeah this on the popular vote is anyway, it's now in the courts and we shall report back, but I was intrigued by that one Okay, final one, Scotland at the World Cup, Clarice. World Cup expectations How far Scotland go and after Scotland's match against Haiti Too much to hope, says Euwan comes home to Edinburgh Well comes home suggests that Jules the Ray was a scot. I mean, I've got to say I don't know how to put this Rver. prrinciples are being very, very badly challenged right. We would forgive you because we would forive you. No we'd forgive you partly because we like flaws It's more interesting to see someone admit that their principles are warring with their interests. We know that you're a great football fan. We know Scotlands very well. We know youate Trump So it'd be quite interesting to you navigate through this. I wouldn't tie yourself into your the fact that you publicly announced you won't go. But you'd just have to explain yourself to us. But we'd forgive you, you know, you as a Christ I'm all about forgiven. You are, I know. I know you are U you would, but would I forgive myself But would you also forgive yourself if Scottland gets's shop it in a rock and a hight so I should have just kept my mouth shut. Can you explain about World Cup tickets? I mean if Scotland gets through the quarterfiner, would you be able to get a ticket? I think I've got ways. you've got ways? I've got ways. Would a normal c be able to know? No, it'd be bloody hard. I mean, look there were tens of thousands of Scots in Boston who didn't have tickets. blood. The reason I'm feeling massive FMo is because do you know that when Scotland sang when the fads slag the powerower of Scotland? Yeah, it's been recorded as the loudest moment in World Cup history And they are and then even better than that, Roy, this would have been brilliant I don't really like baseball. they say it's like cricket, cricket is way superior to baseball. Most European things are way superior to American things. We know this. The Scotland fans decided to go to a Red sockx game at the Fedrway Stadium They were led by a pipe band. There were thousands and thousands of them and they spent the whole baseball game. singing, Flower of Scotland, Locklowland, Yes, sir, I could boogie. And it's just the American media has gone nuts for the Scots fans. So Scotland's soft power has been doing a lot of good. The other thing, because I knew I wasn't going to go, I've now got commitments that a very difficult to break without another principle being broken for both the Morocco and the Brazil games. And then so it's I guess the real test is going to come when they get through to the next round. Presumably the chananceces of them actually winning the World Cup is quite slow I think if you were to go to Polymarket, one of the sponsors of the UFC fight, I think you'd get it down at about zero point two percent Or may No maybe a bit more than that, but no, But interestingly, one of the criticisms that we all had of the World Cup is it's two big forty eight countries. It's ridiculous why countries like Caap Verde there drew Spain amazing Absolutely. amazing. And that was then Germany won sevenlyon seven one. Yeah., that's extraordinary. against Cura S.ave' you been following, Rory? Well, just enough to that a little bit. How did Iran get on against New Zeand Yeah. Isn't it Oh, I thought Iran would win easily. didid you? Yeah. Well, you don't Zealand. you' think ew aland N Zealand a capted by a former boundy player, let me tell you Yeah I've got a big bone to pick with the commentators. They they normally, you know, when John Matson wrote his book. He had a wonderful line and it said that when Greece won the Eururos, which is one of the biggest stories in football history And he said in his book that he got back he turned his phone back on and the first message that gaveed was from me saying, whyy did you mention that Papad Dopolos once played for Burnle? There's the say with Haiti, the centre back Hannes Del Croix. You made twelve games per play burn earer. We can do that. Well, maybe we should do the rest is Burnley. and we should just go through the whole World Cup looking at any team that has a Burnley player in it. Yeah well How many teams do have a Burnley player? out of the forty eight, would you say? fourour or five, I think. Burnley players quite a lot. Chris Wood Ct to New Zealand. But if you went sorry. But if you went for one of the kind of giant teams like Manchester City or something, would you find that many more of the teams the whole team?ist. Virtually the whole team, R? Yeah and all play. someome of them were sort of banched. Anyway, I'm glad that you're developing this interest in So' just trying to keep up with you, D. So anyway whereas my sporting interest in USC is massively limited by the fact that although I'm happy to sit my kids down to watch a World Cup match I'm not letting a nine year old see someone clinically destroyed in a ring with blood everywhere. What about boxing? would you say into boxing r? Just about, I mean, some of this UFC stuff that I've seen is beyond imagination. That's the point. I mean, it's really weird. That's the point. And it's also really weird how it's changed over time. They basically don't do kicks anymore It's very brutal, very, very efficient A few holdes on the ground and the rest how much lasts how many is your M Greger. Yeah, very good. This has got to be the big word. Good. Well, we actually, know Romy, you made us in a few boxes and you still haven't delivered Tyson to.ur yeah, I'm still on the cage, really? We've got a long list coming up, very good. Now Rory, the one thing we haven't talked about this week is the Makeerfield by election happening on Thursday One of the most covered by elections has ever been probably We will be talking about it sometime on Friday Very good. L looking forward to it'll be a special episode for those of you that really want to know. and of course, it is about the future of Britain. Almost certainly, the new prime Minister might emerge out of this. Rbert Keny iss going Primeinter Yeah Rber Keny. the Yeah are Keny. The remain Theain remain of Robert Kenya byah. Okay. seeee you soon. See youon, byye by Hello dear listeners. As many of you will know, Father's Day is coming up on the twenty first of June. And we know that a good number of you will be wondering what to get your centrist dad this year. And we have the perfect idea. Get him a membership to the rest is politics plus