13: Garry Kasparov - Avoiding Zugzwang in AI and Politics

Avoiding Zugzwang in AI and Politics
Information
Guest	Garry Kasparov
Length	01:34:43
Release Date	23 November 2019
YouTube Date	18 December 2019
Apple Podcasts	Listen
Links
YouTube	Watch
Portal Blog	Read
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In this cordially combative episode, Eric sits down with Russian chess legend, multiple-year champion and (inarguably) one of the greatest players of all time, Garry Kasparov. The two discuss transcending AI-induced demotivation, AI brilliancy (and lack thereof), the perilous time for global democracy in Russia, America and globally and Garry's penchant for risking his life for what he believes in. Beyond Chess, Garry is an active political dissident and truth seeker; founding the Russian "United Civil Front" and speaking out against Putin since his retirement from the game in 2005, he's an ardent defender of democracy in Russia and abroad. 1997 was also a watershed year for Garry; it was the year that AI - in the form of IBM's Deep Blue - was able to beat the best chess player in the world (Kasparov). Since then, Garry's been thinking deeply about the role of a newly positioned mankind in the world of a rising AI. From tech displacement to political unrest, please enjoy this wide ranging episode covering some of the most crucial issues of our time.

Eric Weinstein (right) talking with Garry Kasparov (left) on episode 13 of The Portal Podcast

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Transcript

00:00:00
Eric Weinstein: [intro music] Oсторожно, товарищи. Двери открываются. Привет. Э-э-э, вы нашли портал. Я твой хозяин Эрик Вайнштайн. И сегодня, э-э, мой guest в студии Гарри Вайнштайн или Гарри Каспаров, я не знаю точно, но еще нет проблем. Э-э, Гарри, добро пожаловать. Очень приятно. It's a huge honor to welcome you to the portal.

00:00:32
Garry Kasparov: Thank you very much. So it's Garry Kasparov, yes. You know-

00:00:35
Eric Weinstein: Garry Kasparov

00:00:35
Garry Kasparov: ... make, let's make sure. So I, uh-

00:00:36
Eric Weinstein: So-

00:00:37
Garry Kasparov: My name was changed in 1975 because my father died tragically when I was seven, so it just, it's, uh... He was just 39, and, uh, it was just, uh, a, um, s- leukemia and, uh, yeah, they couldn't save him. And I grew up with my mother and, uh, her parents. And, uh, in 1975, so there was a family decision that, you know, I c- I could change my name and to carry my name of, uh, name of my, my, uh, mother, my grand- my, my gr- grandfather. So, um, that's, that's, that's the story. So, uh, since 1975, I'm known for the world of chess as Garry Kasparov.

00:01:16
Eric Weinstein: Well, I know that you're Garry Kasparov. In fact, there are very few people who need no introduction. You are one of them, and I was tempted to give you almost no introduction at all.

00:01:24
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but you said it in almost in perfect Russian, so that's [laughs]

00:01:27
Eric Weinstein: You're very kind.

00:01:28
Garry Kasparov: Yes.

00:01:29
Eric Weinstein: Um, Garry, uh, you're known for many things. Um, we could talk about your dominance of the world, uh, of chess as world number one for many years, famous from top-level play, uh, uh, sort of a str- uh, streak of dominance like we've never seen. But if anything, it's been really remarkable to watch your career after chess, where you've taken on this incredible role in a very confusing age as a champion of human rights. And I'm not sure really, uh, which of the topics I, I wanna hit most, whether it's talking about a- automation and your famous, uh, interaction with, uh, Deep Blue. But I think that the thing I wanna do is I wanna try to avoid some of the questions you get asked over and over again, like, "Who's the greatest chess player of all time?" Or-

00:02:16
Garry Kasparov: Thank you.

00:02:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:02:18
Garry Kasparov: I'm very grateful. [laughs]

00:02:18
Eric Weinstein: So, so let's try to figure out what that might have, uh, crowded out, and let's, let's move on to the next sorts of things. So to begin with, um, one of the things that I'd like to talk to you about is, uh, something that I'm very confused by. When you played Deep Blue back in the late 1990s and the world-

00:02:39
Garry Kasparov: '96 and '97-

00:02:40
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:02:41
Garry Kasparov: ... to be precise.

00:02:41
Eric Weinstein: All right. Mid, m- mid to late '90s, uh, th- th- the world watched in a way that it probably hadn't watched a chess match since, uh, Fischer versus Spassky. Is that a fair statement?

00:02:54
Garry Kasparov: Yes, it's a fair statement. I, I think that this was the, the most, uh, uh, visible chess event in history.

00:03:01
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:03:02
Garry Kasparov: Uh, because it was not just chess event. It, uh, it was, um, the pinnacle of this human versus machine competition that, uh, um, uh, was so fascinating for general public for decades. Uh, y- this match was and is still surrounded by very, uh, thick fog of mythology.

00:03:25
Eric Weinstein: Of course.

00:03:25
Garry Kasparov: Uh, and again, what, what to expect? It was a machine, and it's just people think, oh, it was unique accomplishment because it's the do- it was a dawn of AI. Look, I mean, Deep Blue was not intelligent at all. Uh, this, it's was not more intelligent than your alarm clock, a very expensive one, $10 million a piece. But, but the, the, the, the, the truth is that the machine that played chess in 1997 did not have to be intelligent at all. Because at the end of the day, it's not about being intelligent. It's not about, uh, replicating c- uh, this human process. You know, just it's the following the way we're making our decisions, but it's about making fewer mistakes. And that's it. That's something that is, is so, it... This is actually the most relevant lesson of 1997 match, and also remind people I won in 1996.

00:04:16
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:04:16
Garry Kasparov: And IBM then chickened out. They didn't want to play the third match because probably at, at that time I was still stronger.

00:04:21
Eric Weinstein: Such pussies.

00:04:22
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. No, but look, the, it's a good business decision.

00:04:24
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:04:25
Garry Kasparov: I, as I explained in my book, Deep Thinking, it was a good business decision because they, they, they, they, they lo- they knew that in 1997 Deep Blue was, you know, it's a very powerful force. But compared to, you know, just to, to com- to machines today, it was just, you know, it was, well, it was just a novice. I mean, it's just today, to understand what's happened over the last 20 years-

00:04:46
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:04:46
Garry Kasparov: ... it's the, it's, uh, uh, Deep Blue in 1997 was the unique, uh, project of IBM-

00:04:52
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:04:52
Garry Kasparov: ... with millions and millions of dollars invested and one of the largest, uh, uh, corporations on, on this planet. Today, you can buy a chess engine online and download on your laptop, and, uh, this computer, this chess device-

00:05:10
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:05:10
Garry Kasparov: ... will be much stronger than Magnus Carlsen, um, the, um, c- current world chess champion.

00:05:17
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:05:17
Garry Kasparov: So and if you have specialized hardware for the same, you know, uh, engines like Stockfish, Houdini, uh, um-

00:05:26
Eric Weinstein: Komodo

00:05:26
Garry Kasparov: ... Komo- Komo- Komodo, the difference in strengths between these devices-

00:05:31
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:05:32
Garry Kasparov: ... specialized hardware, and Magnus Carlsen-

00:05:34
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:05:34
Garry Kasparov: ... it's about the same as between Usain Bolt and Ferrari.

00:05:38
Eric Weinstein: Fantastic.

00:05:38
Garry Kasparov: So Deep Blue in 1997, uh, was not that good. So it is when you-

00:05:43
Eric Weinstein: Do we know if we to- if we took that exact software, and you guys keep track of, in some sense, how good something is by these Elo ratings?

00:05:51
Garry Kasparov: Yes.

00:05:52
Eric Weinstein: So what would its Elo rating today be relative to the top players?

00:05:56
Garry Kasparov: Okay, I think we can just add... Yeah, I thank you very much for just bringing this, the numbers because-

00:06:00
Eric Weinstein: Let's do that

00:06:01
Garry Kasparov: ... audience always likes numbers. So, um, my highest rating, my peak rating-

00:06:05
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:06:05
Garry Kasparov: ... was 2851 28,251. Now, Bobby Fischer's highest rating was 2785, but in 1972. So you always have to remember that, you know, it's the inflation was and still is a factor.

00:06:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's a relative system.

00:06:19
Garry Kasparov: It's a relative system.

00:06:19
Eric Weinstein: It has nothing to do with chess itself.

00:06:21
Garry Kasparov: No, no, no, no. It is basically, it's, you know, you, you know, you perform well, you add points. You don't perform well, you lose points. So-

00:06:27
Eric Weinstein: And the, and the point value predicts how likely-

00:06:29
Garry Kasparov: Exactly. That's the-

00:06:30
Eric Weinstein: ... you are to beat somebody with a different score

00:06:31
Garry Kasparov: ... no, if, you know, if, if, if, if we play against each other and we have the same rating-

00:06:34
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:06:34
Garry Kasparov: ... so that's why, you know, and I do, uh, let's say, um, I beat you six to four, so that means I, I, I add, uh, uh, 10 points. So that's-

00:06:42
Eric Weinstein: And you take away a little from me.

00:06:43
Garry Kasparov: Y- y- 10 points. Uh, if we're the... Now, if, you know, if the gap between us 200 points-

00:06:48
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:06:48
Garry Kasparov: ... I think it's 230 points, it's, I should score 80, 80%. I think that's just from the top of my memory.

00:06:53
Eric Weinstein: Got it.

00:06:54
Garry Kasparov: So, and it's, it's, again, it's predictions based on the dif- difference in our, in our rating.

00:06:58
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:06:58
Garry Kasparov: And then so I do better than predicted, so I add points, worse, I lose points. So go back to, this is to, to my absolute perform, uh, absolute record was t- t- 208, t- 2851. Fischer was 2785, but remember that when Fischer r- reached this, this phenomenal height-

00:07:15
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:07:15
Garry Kasparov: ... there were no players in 2700.

00:07:17
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:07:17
Garry Kasparov: And there were very few players 2600. So this, in this category.

00:07:21
Eric Weinstein: So it was a big gap.

00:07:21
Garry Kasparov: It was a huge gap. So this is 2785 in, in, in 1972, probably was over 2900 today. So there were probably my 2851 in 1999 as well. Magnus Carlsen highest rating was 2882. Now he's about 2840. So he's just, he's still, you know, traversing this 2800 category.

00:07:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:07:40
Garry Kasparov: There are only few players actually cross 2800 th- these days, and they're, uh, at the range of twen- 2810, 2820. So, so, um, um, m- and, uh, it, when I played Deep Blue, so I was 2800 plus, Deep Blue's objective strength was probably 2700 plus. But it's not about objective strength, it's about how you play in this very game-

00:08:01
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:08:01
Garry Kasparov: ... and how many mistakes you make. Now, today, the, uh, if you y- have these, um, uh, chess engines on the specialized hardware-

00:08:10
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:08:10
Garry Kasparov: ... that will be probably 3400.

00:08:12
Eric Weinstein: It's amazing.

00:08:13
Garry Kasparov: 3400.

00:08:14
Eric Weinstein: It's amazing.

00:08:15
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. It's this, it's, again, it's not because they have-

00:08:17
Eric Weinstein: Okay, but the, but I wanna ask this different question, which is if we took the exact machine and the software, and we took it out of mothballs from-

00:08:26
Garry Kasparov: Yeah

00:08:26
Eric Weinstein: ... 1997, what do we think its ELO rating would be today?

00:08:30
Garry Kasparov: This Deep Blue?

00:08:31
Eric Weinstein: Yes, the old Deep Blue. Like-

00:08:33
Garry Kasparov: Well, the old Deep Blue, I said it's this 20, t- maybe 2800, but not more. Because it's, it's-

00:08:38
Eric Weinstein: So Magnus Carlsen would be expe- th- the reason I ask is that you make-

00:08:42
Garry Kasparov: It, it w- it would be competition. I mean, this is Deep Blue. Again, I could have beaten Deep Blue. If we played a third match-

00:08:47
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:08:47
Garry Kasparov: ... I would be a favorite because I really learned a lot about it. And then-

00:08:49
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the thing is, that I, that I thought was so i- inspiring-

00:08:53
Garry Kasparov: It, it, it-

00:08:53
Eric Weinstein: ... is that you talked about how we learn from these computers, that the humans are getting smarter.

00:08:58
Garry Kasparov: It's not about... It's, it's, it's machines made huge progress.

00:09:01
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:09:01
Garry Kasparov: It, it's, it's the, it's machines today, they are so much, I, I'm not sure I can say smarter, but it's, there's more advanced.

00:09:08
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:09:08
Garry Kasparov: And because don't forget, Deep Blue was in a, it was not just a chess project, it was a project of parallel processors.

00:09:15
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

00:09:15
Garry Kasparov: So they had 256 processors. Each of them was a mini computer that could make 1.5 million positions per second. So combined, they could reach phenomenal speeds of 200 million positions per second, 200 million. Which again, today it's not, it's not, it's not, you know-

00:09:31
Eric Weinstein: Not impressive

00:09:31
Garry Kasparov: ... s- uh, y- it's not that impressive. But these, the, these chess devices we just, we just discussed, uh, on your laptop, they will not be faster than 5, 6 million positions per second. So they're not as fast, but they are far more advanced because they don't have to be that fast. It's not about calculating-

00:09:47
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:09:47
Garry Kasparov: ... calculating. Because chess is, some people don't recognize, chess is mathematically infinite or almost infinite game.

00:09:54
Eric Weinstein: Functionally infinite from our perspective.

00:09:56
Garry Kasparov: Functionally, functionally inf- infinite. According to Claude Shannon, you know, one of the founding fathers of computer science, the number of legal moves in the game of ch-

00:10:03
Eric Weinstein: 10 to the 40-something?

00:10:04
Garry Kasparov: 10 to the 46 power.

00:10:05
Eric Weinstein: Okay, 10 to the 46th.

00:10:05
Garry Kasparov: 46 power. That's, again, that's, that's, it's just, this number is just, just, it's, uh, kills imagination.

00:10:11
Eric Weinstein: Right. Exactly.

00:10:12
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. So, um, uh, it's not about calculating only, but it's also about, quote, unquote, "understanding." And, uh, the, the, um, programs today, they, they are so much advanced.

00:10:22
Eric Weinstein: All right, but let me-

00:10:23
Garry Kasparov: There, there, there's no f- there's no com- there, there's no question. It's you cannot even touch them, so just because even strongest players, you know, they will, they will be badly beaten. Now, if you have a free chess app on your mobile phone-

00:10:35
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:10:35
Garry Kasparov: ... that's probably as good as Deep Blue-

00:10:37
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:10:37
Garry Kasparov: ... thanks to the Moore's Law.

00:10:39
Eric Weinstein: Which is very impressive, but what I really wanna get at is the reason that chess matters to us, and the reason that we all thrilled to it, has to do with its legacy, the way it's interwoven with our society, our culture, uh, our storytelling, uh, even our language. We are constantly searching for chess metaphor, and one of the things that animates us is the poetry of chess, that when, when, uh, fathers and sons, for example, would pull out, uh, you know, games of Morphy or something and s- and to try to show something really graceful and beautiful, um, we'd, we'd, we'd look to the Evergreen Game or the Immortal Game or something like that, and it, it lifts our spirits. And sometimes we, we, w- we're really focused not on who won or who lost, but on the concept of brilliancies. When does somebody do something so unexpected and so daring that they put themselves at great risk, and then manage to somehow extricate themselves? What I wanna know is, are we in a position to program computers for brilliancies and poetries rather than simply brute force?

00:11:42
Garry Kasparov: Okay. Let's start with your, uh, uh, uh-

00:11:45
Eric Weinstein: Assumptions. You can unweave them if you want

00:11:47
Garry Kasparov: ... y- not assumption, not ass- actually assertion of, you know, or your concept of us, because you said a few times us.

00:11:53
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:11:53
Garry Kasparov: You know, it's the, now a- at the era of globalization, we should recognize that, you know, us, you know, look different, uh, in, in, in different quarters. The game of chess that you mentioned, it's the, it's not the only game of chess that does exist.

00:12:08
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

00:12:09
Garry Kasparov: So, and it-

00:12:09
Eric Weinstein: It's one that came from, like, India through Persia to Europe.

00:12:11
Garry Kasparov: No, but it's, it's, it's a, it's one of, one of the versions.

00:12:14
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:12:14
Garry Kasparov: Whether it's India, again, we don't have any records about India. We definitely have few records about the game played in, in-

00:12:20
Eric Weinstein: In Persia?

00:12:21
Garry Kasparov: ... P- Persia. In, uh, m- m- m- it's The re- the records come actually from the Arab world.

00:12:26
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:12:26
Garry Kasparov: So what we know about European chess, uh, let me call it European chess, is that the, the, the game traveled from, you know, from the Arab world to Iberian Peninsula, and the first book that, that, um, um, uh, mm, presented the compilation of chess studies, um, um, played by, you know, in, in, in Old Arab rules, shatranj, you know?

00:12:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:12:48
Garry Kasparov: Much slower game, because the ch- game of chess always reflected some sort of... It's, it's a military knowledge of its time.

00:12:54
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:12:54
Garry Kasparov: So it... And it was king, um, allegedly written by King Alfonso the Wise. It's, it's, it's, its original is kept in Es- in Escorial in, in, in Spain, uh, in 20- 1283. And, uh, and then, you know, the, the, the current version of chess has been shaped by the end of the 15th cent- century, 6- early 16th century in Spain with few extra additions in Italy and in France in the next couple of hundred years. That's European chess. That's international chess.

00:13:22
Eric Weinstein: Got it.

00:13:22
Garry Kasparov: But there is also Chinese chess.

00:13:24
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

00:13:25
Garry Kasparov: There is Thai chess. Uh, uh, and it have some variation of Thai chess. That is, by the way, the closest to original Arab version, shatranj. So that's a, a very slow version ga- game, game. And there's a totally separate game called shogi, Japanese chess, by far the most popular game in Japan, far more popular than, than Go.

00:13:42
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:13:42
Garry Kasparov: So, and, and the g- the, the way this Japanese chess is, is, is played, this probably reflects the way, you know, the military operations, um, have been conducted over centuries there. One of the key elements there that just you always can bring a piece that you took from your opponent back with a parachute move.

00:13:58
Eric Weinstein: Oh, really?

00:13:58
Garry Kasparov: So, and most of the pieces, they just move fast.

00:14:00
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:14:00
Garry Kasparov: So just it's... A- and, and straight. So this is... Uh, it's, it's, it's, it's, it, it... The game doesn't, doesn't have an end game the way we have it in chess. It's all about attacking the king. It's, it's, it's like a slow motion game, but then it's, the moment it's the, it's, the, the, the, the, the both sides, they, they, they, um, uh, they, like, they meet each other at the ba- battlefield.

00:14:19
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:14:19
Garry Kasparov: It's a, like a samurai, samurai, you know, just it's, uh, um, a bloodshed.

00:14:23
Eric Weinstein: Okay, [laughs] so-

00:14:24
Garry Kasparov: Yeah

00:14:24
Eric Weinstein: ... there's, like, a metaphoric aspect to which kind of chess we play.

00:14:26
Garry Kasparov: Exactly. Exactly. No, but it's this, but you said exactly. In, in, in, in, in the, in the Western wo- wo- European-

00:14:32
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:14:33
Garry Kasparov: ... s- Eurocentric world-

00:14:34
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:14:34
Garry Kasparov: ... chess has been viewed for centuries as the, as, um, as this, like, a nexus of, uh, of human intelligence. So that's this, this... It's, it's saying, "Oh, he or she play chess. Wow. What a..." It's, it's, it's because it was like a mystery. It's not surprising that Alfred Binet, the, uh, father of IQ test.

00:14:55
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:14:55
Garry Kasparov: So at the end of the 19th century, he was fascinated by the way the chess player's mind, uh, uh, was working. So he believed that if he could study, uh, uh, the, the minds of the chess player to the brains of the chess players, he could reveal the ultimate secrets of human intelligence.

00:15:12
Eric Weinstein: It's very interesting.

00:15:13
Garry Kasparov: By the way, it's not true. It is, it's, it's very flattering for me to say that, but, you know, that's, that's the great- greatest minds w- always looked at chess as sort of the ultimate test.

00:15:21
Eric Weinstein: Have you always, have you always been as self-critical as you're being right now?

00:15:24
Garry Kasparov: I am self, self-critical. I'm, I'm objective. Yes, the, the aptitude for-

00:15:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:15:27
Garry Kasparov: ... aptitude for playing chess is nothing else than aptitude for playing chess. You can... It's like, you know, your capital. You know, you have intellectual capital. So you can invest it wisely, you can invest it poorly.

00:15:36
Eric Weinstein: Well, I, I, I like the idea that even IQ, of course, is not intelligence. It's a particular measure of a something. Um, I don't know if you happen to know him, but I, I went to graduate school in the same year as a guy named Noam Elkies, who, you know, is-

00:15:50
Garry Kasparov: He's, he's, he's, he's the, the, uh, uh, it is, it's, uh, the main re- he's the Israeli chess composer, yes.

00:15:55
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:15:56
Garry Kasparov: Yes, yes, yes. I just because I, I, I had a book, you know, of just, you know, of the be- it's, uh, of, uh, um, of the best Israeli ch- uh, chess studies.

00:16:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:16:04
Garry Kasparov: And, and I just, that's, that's why I recognize the name.

00:16:07
Eric Weinstein: Well, yeah, but he, he was, like, the, the youngest pr- full professor at Harvard.

00:16:11
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's, i- i- it's, for him, it was a hobby.

00:16:14
Eric Weinstein: But the, uh-

00:16:14
Garry Kasparov: Some of the great studies, uh, he-

00:16:15
Eric Weinstein: But he comments on the fact that he can only achieve the level of chess master, even though he's a grandmaster in problem-solving and sol- uh, and composing. And so there's even there, there's, like, something very mysterious because this is a sort of like a John von Neumann-like level of intelligence, and he's commenting on the fact that he's merely a chess master. And so I found that to be quite shocking and surprising-

00:16:39
Garry Kasparov: Look, but he, he, he-

00:16:39
Eric Weinstein: ... because I know how, how s- how amazing Noam is.

00:16:42
Garry Kasparov: Look, it gets... It's, that's, uh, you know, uh, it, it's not, it's not ab-

00:16:45
Eric Weinstein: I'm making your point

00:16:45
Garry Kasparov: ... it's not... Yeah, but yeah, absolutely, but it, because it's also about competition. You have to, you have to compete. I mean, I... He's, his, his great mind feels probably more, more at home by composing.

00:16:55
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:16:55
Garry Kasparov: Because, you know, he's just, you know, he's in comf- comfort of his study. He can think about it, so he can... You know, get... There's no time pressure.

00:17:01
Eric Weinstein: Well, it-

00:17:02
Garry Kasparov: There's no opponent just, you know, across the board, you know, no intimidation, so.

00:17:06
Eric Weinstein: Exactly. So getting back to brilliancies, which I don't want you to avoid.

00:17:10
Garry Kasparov: Okay. No, no, no, I'm not g- gonna avoid it. It's, uh, because I, you know, I, I, uh, have a straightforward answer.

00:17:15
Eric Weinstein: Do you wanna say what a brilliancy is in your own language so that I, we don't-

00:17:18
Garry Kasparov: No, it's not, it's... The, uh, before move, move to the, to, to, to my definition of brilliancy-

00:17:23
Eric Weinstein: Sure

00:17:24
Garry Kasparov: ... yes, I, I think it's n- the answer is no. Straightforward no. Machines cannot do it for a simple reason. Because you're talking about brilliancy and, and, and about creativity. Those are things that, you know, that's, uh, and versus brute force.

00:17:36
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:17:36
Garry Kasparov: The way machines operate, they have been operating, uh, ever since, and they will be operating for, you know, indefinite period of time. It's based on odds. They know odds. They know patterns. They can just, they can operate within, you know, within this, like, a n- a known universe.

00:17:52
Eric Weinstein: Hmm.

00:17:52
Garry Kasparov: That's the, something that they know within the rules that they, they, they, they, they, they, um, either they've desi- uh, they have been told about those rules or the information that had been provided for them. Um, but they're always looking for the best move. So brilliancy based on, on, on creativity, and it means that, yes, I can play a very risky, uh, you know, adventurous game. Maybe it could be brilliant game. Maybe it could be failure.

00:18:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:18:18
Garry Kasparov: You have to accept the, the, the ch- a chance-

00:18:21
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:18:21
Garry Kasparov: ... sometimes significant chance of failure to create a masterpiece. Machines cannot operate in, in, in, in, in this, uh, uh, within this paradigm.

00:18:27
Eric Weinstein: But we don't know how to encode the concept of masterpiece?

00:18:30
Garry Kasparov: Okay, now, it's, masterpiece is, it's, it's, it's something that's, you know, it's-

00:18:34
Eric Weinstein: Is it still subjective is the question.

00:18:36
Garry Kasparov: It is still subjective because, you know, some people, you know, it's, it's about taste.

00:18:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:18:40
Garry Kasparov: Now, it's, some games, you know, people say, "Wow, it's, it's amazing." Most likely these games are just, you know, they include some kind of sacrifices because people always enjoy seeing that the spirit triumphs over material. So when you sacrifice pieces, you know, here and there or right, right, left, and center, and eventually you mate opponent's king, that's the, that's the most popular concept of masterpiece. But you can have a very slow motion positional masterpiece, you know, by just adding, you know, just advantage, micro-advantage after an- one after another and strike, strangling your opponent. It could be a mixture of that. So, uh, but again-

00:19:14
Eric Weinstein: You, you, you for example described, uh, the current number one, Magnus Carlsen, as a mixture of Karpov and Fischer.

00:19:21
Garry Kasparov: Yes.

00:19:21
Eric Weinstein: And y- i- in, Fischer was the obvious, uh, sort of virtuoso at the level of masterpiece, but you pointed out that Karpov was a master of maximum efficiency of the power of an individual piece to do the most with the least.

00:19:35
Garry Kasparov: Yes, absolutely. And, and Magnus is, is, is, is this lethal combination of two because, uh, Fischer I think is just, it, it was, he was very rough but is, uh, I mean, sheer energy. You know, he, he could play until the last pawn, you know, that's just basically squeezing, you know, water out of a stone. Now, Karpov was good in just in, in, in getting the maximum effect out of the minimum, you know, uh, uh, resources he ha- he, he had available, but he was not as consistent as Fischer, n- not so pushy. He, you know, it's, it's, it was more relaxed. So Magnus brings them together and that's, you know, he has Karpov's ability to, to, to maximize the effect of, of, of his pieces, but also he will play to the very last pawn, to the very last move as Fischer did.

00:20:19
Eric Weinstein: Right. And okay, so I think what you're telling me is, is that we are not yet able to figure out how to encode the concept of brilliancy so that we may lose to these machines, but that the poetry to be extracted from chess at one level belongs to this positional brute force aspect, and another belongs to something that's ineffable that we can't quite touch.

00:20:42
Garry Kasparov: But m- look, yes, it's the, uh, uh-

00:20:46
Eric Weinstein: And I, and I took your point about the sacrifices, that that's a sort of an obvious version of a risk taking.

00:20:50
Garry Kasparov: But it's interesting thing is, is the, it's the, uh, the latest, uh, chess computer prodigy.

00:20:56
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:20:57
Garry Kasparov: AlphaZero. That's a, the, the, uh, the program run by, um, Demis Hassabis and his team. Um, it's the DeepMind team that is working, uh, uh, for Google. Um, they succeeded in, in, in beating the best Go players. Uh, then they just, uh, they came up with this concept of AlphaZero, which is, you know, starting from the scratch. So the machine knows only the rules, whether it's Go, whether it's chess, whether it's, uh, StarCraft, any game. And then, you know, it plays against itself. It, it learns from its own experience, no human contamination.

00:21:30
Eric Weinstein: Which is very funny because one definition of genius is the fire that lights itself.

00:21:35
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but it's, but, but it, yes, and, uh, and it, it, it, it played against Stockfish against this, one of the strongest chess engines, and it beat it convincingly a number of times. Um-

00:21:46
Eric Weinstein: But then Stockfish got better.

00:21:48
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but it's still, uh, AlphaZero still dominates the game. Now-

00:21:51
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:21:51
Garry Kasparov: ... when we look at these games, you know, uh, that's the first time when I thought, "Oh wow, I can learn something from these machines." AlphaZero, um, uh, played chess more aggressively, contrary to our expectations that stronger machines will play m- duller games, more, you know, just it's the slower m- games because they, e- every, uh, sacrifice can, can be refuted, so that's why machines, they don't take too much risk. But AlphaZero, contrary to our beliefs, you know, played very aggressive chess, sacrificing material and, and, and beating, beating Stockfish, machine, not humans. It's by just, you know, uh, uh, uh, always being, um, uh, one or two moves ahead in anticipating what's coming next. Now, it, it's, I use word sacrifice.

00:22:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:22:38
Garry Kasparov: But for deep, for, for machine, for AlphaZero, it wasn't a sacrifice. AlphaZero, thanks to its massive experience through these six- 60 million games, 6-0, 60 million games it played against itself.

00:22:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:22:51
Garry Kasparov: So it generated a bank of, of, of data.

00:22:55
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:22:55
Garry Kasparov: So this is, which provided its, you know, better understanding of patterns. So when AlphaZero "sacrificed" quote unquote, in, in is, we saw it as a sacrifice. It, for AlphaZero it was the transformation of a material, uh, uh, uh, uh, um, pawns or, or, or pieces into other factors that were more domi-

00:23:16
Eric Weinstein: Position or momentum or anything like that.

00:23:17
Garry Kasparov: Exactly, it's momen- So and it's, it's, it's, it's, and it's amazing that it's AlphaZero that, that had, you know, just looked at the fewer positions. It's about 1% of what, you know, when you look at the, at the, at the number of positions analyzed-

00:23:29
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:23:30
Garry Kasparov: ... versus Stockfish. It was far more prescient in understanding what's coming next, again, playing without the material. Stockfish, you know, it took, you know, uh, one or two moves to actually understand what's coming because it looked... And it, again, it's, it's not that it's the combination was winning. It's when AlphaZero made sacrifices-

00:23:46
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:23:46
Garry Kasparov: ... it was not a forced win because-

00:23:48
Eric Weinstein: Well, but-

00:23:48
Garry Kasparov: ... Stockfish would have seen it as well.

00:23:50
Eric Weinstein: Okay, but-

00:23:50
Garry Kasparov: It, it, it, it's, it was, you know, it was, again, be- deeper understanding of the game based on, on, on, on its, its pattern that it, it, it, it, it was, uh, able to design out of these 60 million games.

00:24:02
Eric Weinstein: But in general, I would think about brill- uh, again, c- imagine me telling you what a brilliancy is. [laughs] It's ridiculous.

00:24:07
Garry Kasparov: I don't know what-

00:24:08
Eric Weinstein: But I don't know either. Exactly

00:24:09
Garry Kasparov: ... I think of brilliant games, but it's, it's, it's-

00:24:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one thing I, I, I might define it as is anything that where there would be a body of conventional wisdom and then there's a move that is deeply weird relative to that expectation. So for example, a, a move that doesn't seem to develop anything, it's like a- almost a waste, a throwaway move could also be a brilliancy if it turned out that that unlocked something nobody could see.

00:24:32
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but, and yeah, yes. Anything that surprises people-

00:24:35
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:24:35
Garry Kasparov: ... could, could be brilliant. So, um, yeah, maybe one of the most, uh, brilliant moves based on your definition-

00:24:41
Eric Weinstein: Sure

00:24:41
Garry Kasparov: ... I ever made was game 24, I played Anatoly Karpov. It's, it was a unique moment when you just, you know, it's, it's... I had to survive this game, and Karpov had to win the game to, to, to, uh, uh, retain his title.

00:24:53
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:24:53
Garry Kasparov: I was one, you know, point ahead, and it was the last game of the match. Um, and Karpov had a very, you know, potentially very strong attack. And I found a move that was totally illogical. By the way, e- ever since this game, this, this, this idea became, you know, part of the defensive, uh, uh, um, concept for-

00:25:10
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:25:10
Garry Kasparov: ... for black. Uh, but at the time, you know, it was just, it looked so ugly because you don't put these rooks, you know, just, uh, so, the, in, in, in, just in a position where it, it, it has no other moves surrounded by, by your own pieces. But it was not about, you know, it's not about attacking. Basically, it was a very good prophylactic moves because it prevented big threats from, from, from white, and it had to force Karpov to start looking for other plans. So you know, it's... And I was very happy when I just... I remember, I remember I made this move because I just didn't understand how else to defend. It just was so much against, you know, what I learned, but I had to make the move. And I remember when I just, you know, it's, this is, when Karpov came to the stage, he looked at this, and then it's great, another g- great player. He realized that this move basically killed his attacking, you know, uh-

00:25:56
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

00:25:58
Garry Kasparov: ... uh, um, um, um, uh, structure, and it's a, it's, and, and he had to actually start regrouping pieces, wasting time, and he just, I think it's, it's, it definitely sh- the, the, it's not just a strong move, but it was so unusual move looking weird, but it, it, it shook Karpov's confidence and, and, and he quickly made mistake and lost the game.

00:26:15
Eric Weinstein: That's fantastic. Um, okay. Uh, here's a question that I've never been able to ask, and maybe if it doesn't make sense, you'll help me formulate a better one. I guess when we lost, I mean, Checkers was solved.

00:26:28
Garry Kasparov: Yeah.

00:26:29
Eric Weinstein: Chess, we lost with you in, in-

00:26:32
Garry Kasparov: So Go, so, uh-

00:26:33
Eric Weinstein: Wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:26:34
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, okay.

00:26:34
Eric Weinstein: Okay. But the question is, after Go, I sort of expected something to happen that didn't happen. I expected someone to start trying to create a new game which, in which humans would still have an advantage that had the deterministic characteristics, and everyone seems so demotivated by this experience. Like, what's the point? Why are we... W- why race? It's like trying to continue to be a better, um, number multiplier in an age of computers. There's no point. Uh, have we become demotivated? Is anyone searching for things that show off and accentuate what humans still do better than any, any machine?

00:27:15
Garry Kasparov: Uh, it's a very important question, and it's just, it's, uh, I think you just, uh... So it's, uh, it's like almost home run because it's, that's, that's a question that's in, in different, uh, modifications I hear all the time since I now speak, uh, uh, three times a month, uh, uh, at the conferences. It's, it's about AI, it's about cybersecurity, and about, you know, human machine collaboration. Um, and, um-

00:27:39
Eric Weinstein: And about vanity.

00:27:41
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. So yes. [laughs] Uh, um, [lips smack] um, the, um, the answer is that it's, uh, we're not demotivated. I think we're more pragmatic. We simply understand that it doesn't make any sense. Because it's not just Chess or Go. It's, uh, StarCraft. It's, uh, Texas Hold'em poker. It's, and you name games, you know, and it's, it's, at, at the end of the day, machines will always prevail. So to make it, you know, easier for my audience to understand, I always tell them that every game can be described as a closed system. And if we have, if you build a closed system-

00:28:21
Eric Weinstein: Eventually, a computer will always win.

00:28:23
Garry Kasparov: Exactly.

00:28:24
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:28:24
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, that's it. So the human strength is not, you know, is not, uh, trying to compete with machines in the closed systems because if we know how to do it, machines will do it better.

00:28:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, and-

00:28:34
Garry Kasparov: Not because they're perfect. Again, that's important. They will never reach 100% perfection. It doesn't exist in, in the universe. But they will make fewer mistakes. So machines will always, you know, o- outperform humans by, you know, by minimizing number of mistakes, or it's not just a number of mistakes. Machines do not make blunders. So again, the gravity of machines' mistakes or inaccuracies-

00:28:57
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:28:57
Garry Kasparov: ... it's, it's not as, you know, sometimes humans could do something really stupid.

00:29:00
Eric Weinstein: Have you ever looked at, um, the history of electric guitar?

00:29:06
Garry Kasparov: No.

00:29:07
Eric Weinstein: So you have these very weird players. I'm just gonna riff off of your open versus closed games, where, um, probably the first great electric guitarist was a guy named Charlie Christian, but he was really playing the guitar, and it happened to be electrified. By the time we get to people like Jimi Hendrix and Eddie Van Halen, whatever we thought the vocabulary was that we were restricted to in the instrument, they showed us that the dimensionality of play was so much greater than we'd ever considered. For example, by bringing the amplification into the instrument and making it part of the instrument, or with Les Paul creating the instrument as the recording studio, not just as the instrument. And so eventually, these become closed games, but there is something about, and to just fit with the theme of this series, the search for a portal out of the closed game into a higher dimensional space where something else is available Like, people talk about hearing Eddie Van Halen for the first time, and they're a guitarist and they're thinking, "I have no idea what I'm listening to. How do those noises come from that man?" Um, are there any sort of innovations like that that, uh, you think where computers can start looking for ways out of the closed systems into higher dimensions?

00:30:25
Garry Kasparov: Um, I don't think so. Uh, I think machines will not be able, in the foreseeable future, if not indefinitely, to understand how to transfer the knowledge from one closed system to another. Can machine ask questions? Yes. They just don't know what questions are relevant.

00:30:43
Eric Weinstein: Well, so I, I, I give this example quite a bit, but there's a very powerful concept in pure mathematics, uh, of taking square roots of various objects where it... L- like with, with real numbers it's quite clear what a square root should be. But even when you get to the negative numbers, you, you end up having to go outside of the real numbers to answer a question about the square root of negative seven. And you can take the square roots of rotations, you can take the square roots of determinants of matrices, and you find these structures that nobody knew were hiding there. Um, so one of the things we've learned in pure mathematics is that there is a way of going from a closed system into a larger closed system, and in that one moment the closed system reveals itself to be open. Um, is that something that you imagine?

00:31:32
Garry Kasparov: No. Again, it's, I, I'm not sure it's the, it's, it's a legitimate comparison because, again, it's, it's, it's, it's here is... it's decision making. It's, in math, you know, there's, the, there are answers. So math, you know, just it's, it's one way or another. You know, y- you have an answer and it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not a straightforward, it could be, you know, just crooked. But at the end of the day, you know that there's, there's, there's a solution. Game of chess is not, or any other game, it's not math. It's not, you know, there's no perfect solution.

00:31:59
Eric Weinstein: Well, Hardy dif- disagreed with you. G.H. Hardy wrote that chess is real mathematics but of a trivial kind in the sense that... He didn't mean trivial in that it was easy or that it wasn't beautiful, he meant that it didn't connect to anything else because the r- the rules were artificial, and so what it told you about was simply internal to the world of chess.

00:32:18
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but this again, but, but again, this is in, in math you have perfect solutions.

00:32:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:32:22
Garry Kasparov: In chess, sometimes you have perfect solutions. But in most cases it's based on your assumptions. So it's this... And it's, it's, you know, the, the, again, machines will always win not because they see the perfect solution, again, 10 to the 46th power-

00:32:37
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:32:37
Garry Kasparov: ... number of legal moves. But because they make fewer mistakes.

00:32:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:32:40
Garry Kasparov: By... So, so they will be closer to perfection than humans.

00:32:44
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:32:44
Garry Kasparov: So it's the, whether it's much close or just close, it doesn't matter. So they will be always ahead. So same with e- every other game. So all you need is to provide machine with the rules, and machines will start operating, you know, just, uh, on their own by, by creating their data. Uh, though I have to say that it's today AlphaZero is still quite an exception. Most of the machines today, 99%, if not 99.9%, they are doing not transformation but optimization.

00:33:10
Eric Weinstein: Got it.

00:33:10
Garry Kasparov: They're still, you know, operating with human-generated data. But the future, I've no doubt it's for AlphaZero type computers. You know, they, they will be... It's, it's like, you know, um, uh, computer, uh, uh, with AI algorithms. Uh, and the, the, um, it's, they will require some form of human guidance. It's like I always call this, you know, the future, uh, computer experts shepherds. So they will be nudging the flocks of, of intelligent algorithms one way or another.

00:33:39
Eric Weinstein: Got it.

00:33:40
Garry Kasparov: Um, but it's, it's still, you know, they will still need to be nudged. So it's, it's, it's, it's, again, moving from one system to another. It's, it's one closed system to another closed system, will require human guidance. What is very important for us to recognize is that our role percentage-wise is shrinking.

00:33:58
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:33:58
Garry Kasparov: But it doesn't mean that we become, uh, um, uh, expendable. So actually I think it's, we're getting, we, we, we could become even more important in this human machine collaboration because we will be deciding how this massive brute force-

00:34:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, I worry that-

00:34:13
Garry Kasparov: ... will be, will be moved, you know, right or left or whatever, up and down.

00:34:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, i- if I'm honest about that, the way in which I receive what you just said is that in the short term I think we become more important because the least interesting things are taken over by the computers.

00:34:28
Garry Kasparov: Yes.

00:34:28
Eric Weinstein: And then if we're smart, we invest in what it is that we do best, which is often this act of brilliance, induction, uh, o- opening a, a closed system into a larger one, which temporarily opening it up, and that's exciting. However, I do feel that this is a short-term, uh, win for humanity.

00:34:51
Garry Kasparov: Define short-term to be.

00:34:52
Eric Weinstein: Well, uh, I worry that this is on the order of decades, not centuries.

00:34:58
Garry Kasparov: It's, for, for you and me it's probably not a very short term. [laughs]

00:35:02
Eric Weinstein: Oh, yes. [laughs]

00:35:02
Garry Kasparov: That's, that's why I was... Yeah, it's... Look, why do we go too far? So this is, again, we... You know, the strength of humanity was always to, to respond to the challenges that we are, that are here now-

00:35:14
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:35:14
Garry Kasparov: ... on the table.

00:35:15
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:35:16
Garry Kasparov: Um, I don't want us to spend time, I would say waste our time debating what, what can or may m- m- may happen, may not happen 30, 40, 50 years from now. We have challenges that we should address right now, and, uh, I think that the, it's-

00:35:36
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:35:36
Garry Kasparov: ... it's, it's time for us to understand how we can maximize the, the, uh, uh, the benefits out of human machine collaboration.

00:35:43
Eric Weinstein: Well, okay. A f- so I had a very funny interaction preparing for my interview with you today, which is that I t- I spoke to two brilliant, uh, young women, uh, one of whom just released 25,000 new stock photos of people who don't exist generated by her AI. She's a PhD from Berkeley.

00:36:02
Garry Kasparov: Mm.

00:36:02
Eric Weinstein: The other of which is a brilliant musician, but arguably also one of the world's most stunningly beautiful women, a, a supermodel. And I, I noticed that the Elo system that you use for chess-

00:36:14
Garry Kasparov: Mm-hmm

00:36:14
Eric Weinstein: ... can be used in any situation where if, like, i- if you asked, "Well, who would p- who would people find more beautiful, uh, person A or person B?" And then you have a prediction. So you could use an Elo system. And I asked my friend, the supermodel, uh, her name is Charlotte Kemp Muhl, um- Would you be willing to subject yourself to a Kasparov versus the machine type, uh, competition where my other friend will attempt to generate, uh, photographs that are even more beautiful than any human being who has ever been, and we could tr- try to figure out what the Elo rating is for simply, uh, feminine beauty? Now, that's a very different thing than a computational pro- problem, uh, on the surface. It may be a computational problem under the hood, but what happened when I started looking through, uh, the friend's catalog of stock photos is that I could see that you could very easily fall in love with the images that she'd generated even though they correspond to no human being. They were filled with emotion, um, you know, grace, whatever you, whatever it is that you associate most with being human, and yet she knew exactly how they'd been generated, uh, from her neural nets. That's pretty disturbing in some ways, would you not say so?

00:37:28
Garry Kasparov: Look, uh, that's... You're talking about images.

00:37:32
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:37:33
Garry Kasparov: Still, still images.

00:37:34
Eric Weinstein: Still images.

00:37:34
Garry Kasparov: Still images. Now, uh, you need just for proper relations, you need more than still images.

00:37:39
Eric Weinstein: Well, that's true, but you... the idea, she, she's able to animate a lot of these, first of all, into video.

00:37:44
Garry Kasparov: Now, that's, that's, that, that, that becomes interesting.

00:37:46
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:37:46
Garry Kasparov: Because the moment you start animating, you know-

00:37:48
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:37:48
Garry Kasparov: ... this is, that's... it will-

00:37:49
Eric Weinstein: And then a couple of our friends, Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan, have do- have put so many hours of data of their voice into the world-

00:37:56
Garry Kasparov: Yeah

00:37:56
Eric Weinstein: ... that we can now generate their voice so that they can't tell the difference between what they've said and what the machine's. So we're d- we're starting to get to the point. Uh, we also have programs that write sports stories simply from the statistics that come off the games i- in a credible fashion.

00:38:12
Garry Kasparov: It's the data.

00:38:13
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:38:14
Garry Kasparov: So, so what's the... But look, at the end of the day-

00:38:15
Eric Weinstein: Well, you know what, you know what's here, is that we've associated various things with our humanity, and I think your point about chess, which I, I just think is, is great, is don't make the mistake of holding those associations too tightly because the machines will let you know, um, that some of this is not having to do with being human at all.

00:38:36
Garry Kasparov: Yes. It's the, the decision-making process is not, you know, uh, it's not just human prerogative forever.

00:38:42
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:38:42
Garry Kasparov: So it's... Yes. We used to think that, you know, it's these machines could do all sorts of work, but not, you know, not to challenge our cognitive skills.

00:38:51
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:38:51
Garry Kasparov: At the end of the day, it's what's the difference? So it's this, it's the... It's again, it's, it's machines could, could, uh, help us in just mo- making progress in, in, whether it's in, in, in the field of physical exercises-

00:39:06
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:39:06
Garry Kasparov: ... or, um, mental, uh, exercises. Though, again, it's just, it's... If you look at the statistics is that, is this, I think it's the, um, the McKinsey's, uh, report of 2016 US job market showed that, you know, it's the only 4% of working activities-

00:39:24
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:39:25
Garry Kasparov: ... required medium human creativity.

00:39:28
Eric Weinstein: Wow.

00:39:29
Garry Kasparov: 4%.

00:39:29
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:39:30
Garry Kasparov: So it means that for over decades we have been trained people to work like machines.

00:39:36
Eric Weinstein: Like mach- Exactly right.

00:39:37
Garry Kasparov: And now, now we're shocked that many of these jobs, they, they are just, you know, they're doomed.

00:39:41
Eric Weinstein: Well, I think every-

00:39:42
Garry Kasparov: This is like zombie jobs. They're already dead, they just don't know it

00:39:44
Eric Weinstein: ... every repetitive job has that characteristic.

00:39:46
Garry Kasparov: But you see, but it could be... It, repetitive jobs does not necessarily, you know, uh, it's, it's, um, it's a physical one. It... You could have-

00:39:55
Eric Weinstein: No, no, it... Like-

00:39:55
Garry Kasparov: You could have a ro- repetitive jobs, you know, it's re-

00:39:58
Eric Weinstein: Well, ra- radiology is the easy one

00:40:00
Garry Kasparov: ... it, it, it, intellectually.

00:40:01
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:40:02
Garry Kasparov: And, and, and when people say, "Oh yeah, but these, many of these jobs, they are just in, in, in, in grave danger."

00:40:06
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:40:07
Garry Kasparov: But you know what it's... Y- thank you for mentioning radiology.

00:40:10
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

00:40:10
Garry Kasparov: So this is, yes. You know, we know that human machine collaboration-

00:40:15
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:40:16
Garry Kasparov: ... you know, uh, shows better results-

00:40:18
Eric Weinstein: Than either one individually

00:40:19
Garry Kasparov: ... than either one individual.

00:40:20
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:40:20
Garry Kasparov: So that means that, you know, you will have some experts. And from my experience, you know, in chess, in combination of human plus machines-

00:40:27
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:40:28
Garry Kasparov: ... you don't need the strongest minds, so the most talented players working with machine, but someone who knows enough to give machines so that it's, it's, like, it's to guide machine, not to interfere with machine-

00:40:40
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:40:40
Garry Kasparov: ... with superior knowledge. So that's why you may not need a top professor, but maybe, you know, an assistant professor, maybe even experienced nurse to-

00:40:47
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:40:48
Garry Kasparov: ... to, to work with this machine. Oh, but y- I hear, you know, time and again, thousands of jobs, you know, they will be at grave risk. Maybe they'll be lost, and it's, it's the well-paid jobs. Yes, but what is the, what is the other side of this, of this-

00:41:03
Eric Weinstein: Well-

00:41:03
Garry Kasparov: ... of this coin? The jobs will be lost, but the cost goes down. More people could have access to that. And when you look at the number of lives that can be saved-

00:41:12
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:41:13
Garry Kasparov: ... i- in this country, or especially in, in, in, in the third world countries, developing countries-

00:41:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:41:18
Garry Kasparov: ... so then, you know, all of a sudden you understand that it's, it's while certain groups of people could be in danger because-

00:41:24
Eric Weinstein: They're-

00:41:24
Garry Kasparov: ... computation-

00:41:25
Eric Weinstein: Of course

00:41:25
Garry Kasparov: ... uh, and, and, and, and, and machines, they bringing, you know, you know, havoc in our, in our professional routine. But as a humanity, we'll always win.

00:41:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, y- but isn't it weird how many of us are seeking drudgery? That we wish... Like, you watch what happens when you liberate people, and you find that they go back to these games on their computers that they play repetitively. You know? That there's a way in which humans, we had always thought we wanted to be liberated to do creativity, but there's something terrifying about creativity, and many of us actually seek repetitive, uh, activity which anesthetizes us and arguably, um, we're happiest when we start behaving in a way that is machine-like.

00:42:04
Garry Kasparov: But again, but it's the, it's, it brings us back to, to us. That bring us back to-

00:42:07
Eric Weinstein: What-

00:42:07
Garry Kasparov: ... human.

00:42:08
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:42:08
Garry Kasparov: Because, you know, it's the, you know, it's instead of talking about killer robots, the Terminators, Matrix, and other horrors produced by Hollywood, so that's, you know, it's your neighbors here, so brainwashing-

00:42:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:42:20
Garry Kasparov: ... the generations of, of, of, um, uh-

00:42:23
Eric Weinstein: Pay no attention to Boston Dynamics

00:42:25
Garry Kasparov: ... yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs] Yeah. Uh, look, it's, it's, it's, I mean, it's, it's, it's quite primitive, you know, this.

00:42:30
Eric Weinstein: But-

00:42:30
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but it's, it... Why don't we talk about, you know, about- ... humans using modern technology-

00:42:36
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:42:37
Garry Kasparov: ... to harm other humans, because humans still have monopoly for evil.

00:42:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:42:40
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. And it's, and I think it's far more important now to understand how this modern technology that has been designed-

00:42:46
Eric Weinstein: Yes

00:42:47
Garry Kasparov: ... in theory to make our lives better have been, have been-

00:42:50
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's a, it's amoral

00:42:50
Garry Kasparov: ... effectively used-

00:42:52
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:42:52
Garry Kasparov: ... to undermine the very foundation of the free world.

00:42:55
Eric Weinstein: So what I... That's a great opportunity to transition because if there's anything that I'm more interested in than talking about computers and poetry and all of these things, it's this bizarre moment that we find ourselves in in the f- the free world, where I've never seen anything like this in my life. It appears that there are almost no adults left in the system. It appears to me that there's almost no institution that really cares about ground truth, and it appears to me that we are right now in the process of sort of abandoning everything we'd built up for the most trivial of reasons. And I don't know whether you subscribe to this, but the transformation of our country intellectually to me, since slightly before the election of Donald Trump till the present moment, has been the most unexpected, uh, singularity in terms of the ability to hold conversations, to analyze, um, what it is that we in fact hold in common. Our sense-making apparatus appears to have been broken down, and a large number of people don't even seem to be aware of this, and I don't know how to explain how many different clusters of beliefs have now cropped up, which appear to be incapable of communicating with each other. Are you seeing the same thing?

00:44:10
Garry Kasparov: Yes. Yes. Uh, and, uh, I've been warning about it for quite a while. So I wrote the book, Winter Is Coming, uh, uh, just, you know, before the presidential elections, uh, in 2016. And unfortunately, this warning, uh, w-

00:44:27
Eric Weinstein: Nobody understood it.

00:44:28
Garry Kasparov: No, nobody wanted to hear this because it seemed that it's just like a thing so far away.

00:44:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:44:34
Garry Kasparov: Now, the book didn't mention Trump or Syria, but you could read between the lines. That is this... Because I already talked about Putin-

00:44:40
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:44:40
Garry Kasparov: ... and about his, his threat to the, to the free world, so his, his war on the free world. That is just, it was just a matter of time before the techniques that have been developed in Russia and tested in, um, neighboring countries and in, and, and, and, and in other European countries, that these techniques, uh, uh, would be used to undermine American democracy. Um, and also, I talked about the growing vacuum in the world that was a result of the free world led by the United States to depart from its leadership role after the end of the Cold War. So it's, yeah, it's easy to say it's everything is about Donald Trump, but when you look at the Donald Trump phenomena, it has roots. And-

00:45:20
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the thing

00:45:21
Garry Kasparov: ... it's a symptom. It's a symptom that somehow Trump, you know, just demonstrated that the system was already so weak that it, that it could, it could have persons so unqualified to win elections by the rules. I mean, that's it's... Yes, it was foreign interference with other things, but-

00:45:37
Eric Weinstein: No, but, but you're exactly right. The adaptive landscape, if you want to take the evolutionary metaphor, was created, and then suddenly there was a creature that's, that inhabited some leak.

00:45:46
Garry Kasparov: But, get, that, absolutely. But then, but then, just before we go to Trump, we should understand, so why the system was so, you know, it's, it was weak enough.

00:45:54
Eric Weinstein: Susceptible.

00:45:54
Garry Kasparov: Susceptible, yes.

00:45:55
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:45:55
Garry Kasparov: Just to, to, uh, to succumb to, to Trump's... It's not even evil genius. I mean, just, it's, it's, I mean, it's just intellectually it's always insulting just to hear what he said.

00:46:04
Eric Weinstein: [laughs]

00:46:04
Garry Kasparov: But it's, but you know, the man so, you know, just, it's so, um, not just unqualified, but it's just, it's, if you asked, you know, uh, people to describe a potential threat to US democracy-

00:46:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:46:15
Garry Kasparov: ... you know, 20 years ago, so what, what could be this, the image of this, you know, of this villain that would be threatening, you know, the very foundation of American Republic, you could come up with somebody very intelligent, you know, very slick, you know, just this... I mean, more likely you have somebody like Bill Clinton, so that's his type, you know, very intelligent, well-spoken.

00:46:33
Eric Weinstein: Charming.

00:46:34
Garry Kasparov: Charming. But not Trump. So but, so now let's go back-

00:46:37
Eric Weinstein: No, no, just, just so you know, I did write, I think it was in 2013, an essay warning about what I thought was going to come up based on my understanding of professional wrestling, and professional wrestling is in some sense something that mirrors some of the techniques that may have been developed in Russia because the propensity to suspend disbelief, um, is not well understood by many people who have a rational enlightenment-oriented bent.

00:47:03
Garry Kasparov: But it's easy. I still want to go back to 1991, '92-

00:47:06
Eric Weinstein: Sure

00:47:06
Garry Kasparov: ... because it was the end of the Cold War. It was a moment of the greatest triumph of the free world. Soviet empire collapsed. Soviet Union ceased to exist. And-

00:47:15
Eric Weinstein: And relatively peacefully. Not perfectly.

00:47:17
Garry Kasparov: Well, yeah, yes. Yes. It's, it, it's, because, you know-

00:47:19
Eric Weinstein: But amazingly peaceful.

00:47:20
Garry Kasparov: Amazingly, yeah. There was few wars, you know, on the, the, in the perimeter of the former Soviet Union.

00:47:24
Eric Weinstein: There was a demographic crisis. A lot of people died.

00:47:25
Garry Kasparov: Soviet Union. Yes, there was a very bloody war in former Yugoslavia. But still, you know, the cost, you know, the human cost for-

00:47:32
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:47:33
Garry Kasparov: ... for collapse of the evil empire, I mean, was insignificant compared to what people expected, you know, would be, would be the outcome.

00:47:39
Eric Weinstein: Exactly.

00:47:40
Garry Kasparov: Now, uh, and, uh, in 1992, one of the most popular books, best-selling book was The End of History by Francis Fukuyama. And I have to say, I share the same expectations about, you know, the triumphant, uh, uh, um, continuation of, of, of the history of the free world, and it's, it's liberal democracies won, and, and the rest would be just, you know, us doing some great things, but never, never, never to worry again about, about threat to the free world coming from dictators and other, you know-

00:48:15
Eric Weinstein: Wow.

00:48:16
Garry Kasparov: That's, that's what we expected in '91, '92.

00:48:18
Eric Weinstein: It's not what I expected, but okay.

00:48:19
Garry Kasparov: In '91, '92?

00:48:20
Eric Weinstein: Not, no, no, no, no.

00:48:21
Garry Kasparov: Ooh.

00:48:21
Eric Weinstein: I was, I was terrified by the fact that this is what was claimed, because I had thought-

00:48:26
Garry Kasparov: No, it's, for-

00:48:27
Eric Weinstein: How, how is it that a, a s- a country like the US, which has needed counterweights in order for it to... Like, like, you know, you and I both have a Jewish component in, in our background. There's a weird way in which antisemitism, i- i- if, if it's at the... If it's too low, we stop being very Jewish. If it's too high, we're in incredible threat. You have two separate, uh, ethnic heritages which show you how vulnerable and precarious life can be. Somehow, what I, what terrified me was the idea that we were gonna take a bipolar system, which represented the Cold War, and suddenly remove one part of it without any plan as to how to manage this.

00:49:05
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but that's... Okay, that's a good point. Now, first of all, removing, you know, evil component of this dichotomy was a good idea.

00:49:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:49:11
Garry Kasparov: I grew up in the Soviet Union. The... W- what was bad-

00:49:14
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:49:15
Garry Kasparov: ... is that, you know, it required a new plan.

00:49:17
Eric Weinstein: It did.

00:49:18
Garry Kasparov: It did, and nobody wanted to talk about that.

00:49:20
Eric Weinstein: That's the weird part.

00:49:21
Garry Kasparov: That's... Now, now I understand. Now being a Monday, Monday m- m- morning-

00:49:24
Eric Weinstein: Monday Quarterback

00:49:26
Garry Kasparov: ... a quarterback.

00:49:26
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

00:49:26
Garry Kasparov: So I, you know, I know exactly, so what was wrong. Actually, I knew about it already a few years ago. So in 1991, 1992, it was America's role to start reconsidering, you know, its global participation. No Soviet Union, so what's the plan? And one of the m- m- most important things was to address the reform of United Nations, because United Nations was built in 1945 as a success or fail League of Nations to prevent a, an open war, open w- w- military conflict between USSR and USA-

00:49:55
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:49:55
Garry Kasparov: ... between the two superpowers. It's about... It was all about freezing conflicts, and it managed. Yeah, there were conflicts, but they, they, it's, thanks God, you know, they didn't-

00:50:03
Eric Weinstein: It's been ver- it's been ridiculously successful.

00:50:05
Garry Kasparov: Exactly. In 1962, it came close with the, with the Caribbean crisis, but it was-

00:50:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:50:09
Garry Kasparov: ... basically f- basically for a couple of weeks. It was... There was no real threat of, of, of, uh, World War III and, and, and global extermination.

00:50:16
Eric Weinstein: No, it's been amazingly quiet since '45.

00:50:17
Garry Kasparov: Again, so, uh, yes, you look around the world, so this is, you know, the, the w- the wars actually moved from Europe-

00:50:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:50:26
Garry Kasparov: ... to other continents, yes.

00:50:27
Eric Weinstein: Well, but Europe-

00:50:27
Garry Kasparov: So there was a Korean War. There was a Chinese civil war. You know, this is then, it's, we, we had-

00:50:32
Eric Weinstein: Look, I hate to say it this way, but Europe is weirdly-

00:50:34
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, Vietnam

00:50:35
Eric Weinstein: ... Europe is one of the world's most dangerous places, and we don't think about it that way because we've had this period of stability that has been anomalous.

00:50:43
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. Eur- y- you got Europe, you know, that, that, that, that had wars for centuries-

00:50:47
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:50:48
Garry Kasparov: ... you know, was pacified. So thanks to this United Nations concept of, you know, finding compromise, two systems, yes, they were fighting each other, but mostly proxy wars-

00:50:58
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:50:59
Garry Kasparov: ... just around the world. Yes, that's why we had these James Bond movies, you know, and sometimes even James Bond cooperated with KGB officers to fight global evil. So it's the, it's, it, it, the, the... Again, we knew how to live in this world. Now, 1991, you're right. So it's just, you know, the Soviet Union has gone. So what's next? It's the, it's the idea that evil, you know, disappears. It was dead wrong, because evil can be buried for a while under the rubbles of Berlin Wall, but the moment we lose our vigilance, it sprouts out. So, uh, the, the United Nations that was built to freeze conflicts-

00:51:31
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:51:31
Garry Kasparov: ... was not, was not there to solve c- solve problems. And we needed, we need to start looking for, you know, solving problems. We needed, I believe, an organization that would be rather called League of Democracies, you know? Just it's, uh, actually it's, it's, uh... Late Senator McCain used it, but I, I have to say I used it, uh, uh, uh, separately. It's, it's an organization where the m- members will not be just paying lip service-

00:51:54
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:51:54
Garry Kasparov: ... to democracy. So America had to come up with a plan, like in 1946, rebuilding Europe.

00:51:59
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:51:59
Garry Kasparov: The global plan of, of spreading democracy and freedom and, and, and, and, uh-

00:52:04
Eric Weinstein: We, we almost instantly got stupid.

00:52:06
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but it's the, it's the... Then it's... But again, it's a human nature. It's very difficult to tell people that, you know, that, that recognize that for nearly half a century there was an existential threat, you know, of potential threat of the nuclear war. And s- those who remember 1962 crisis and Vietnam War say, "Oh, wow, it's all over. So why don't we just, you know, celebrate? Why don't we get rich? Why don't we just do other things, stop worrying about the rest of the world?" You know, it's... Sometimes I think that it's, if the Soviet Union collapsed a year later-

00:52:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:52:38
Garry Kasparov: ... probably Bush 41 could be reelected. Because I think one of the reasons Clinton, you know, won the elections is not just Ross Perot, which was important factor, but they, but, but the Republicans lost their big card.

00:52:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

00:52:48
Garry Kasparov: So the Cold War was over. So why do we need Bush? And then an economy stupid, uh, motto-

00:52:54
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:52:55
Garry Kasparov: ... th- th- won the day.

00:52:55
Eric Weinstein: Well, yeah, we turned inward.

00:52:56
Garry Kasparov: Exactly. Uh, no, it's not e- it's basically, America was still there because it was the only superpower, but it lost its, you know, its role as the, you know, as the stabilizing factor. Because, look, Clinton, 1992, you know, you won the elections. In 2000, you know, he, uh, 2001, January, he walked away. 1992, America was basically in the position to do whatever, is make, you know, make any, any, any suggestions that others had no choice but to accept. In 2001, early, Al- Al-Qaeda was ready to strike. So this, it's, we missed, you know, we missed this, these years, and also something else happened in these eight years. Russia moved from a very fragile, feeble democracy into the first, you know, it, into the, um, [lip smack] uh, next stage that's, that, that would be eventually dominated by KGB. In the year 2000, Vladimir Putin became Russian president. The fact is that, you know, in nine years after the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of, uh, K- KGB, has been removed from Lubyanka Square, in less than nine years, Vladimir Putin became the president of Russia, a Lu- K- KGB lieutenant colonel, who immediately said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical cata- catastrophe of the 20th century, who re- r- immediately re- r- r- returns Soviet anthem To make a symbolic gesture. Who proudly said that there were no former KGB officers. Once KGB, always KGB, quote, unquote. So that was already a warning sign that things changing.

00:54:25
Eric Weinstein: Well, th- this was another confusion that I had. My model for Russia is two, two separate things we Americans often don't understand. One, it's a barbell culture. It's got the highest of the high culture and the lowest of the low. And two, because of this in some sense, there's a fractal nature to the Putins. It's like Putins all the way down. There's always a, a, a sort of a look for strength and leadership of a kind of-

00:54:50
Garry Kasparov: Um

00:54:50
Eric Weinstein: ... uncomfortable way, not just at the very top.

00:54:53
Garry Kasparov: It's the... But it's... Yes, but it, the, the uniqueness of Putini- Putinism-

00:54:58
Eric Weinstein: Okay

00:54:58
Garry Kasparov: ... of, of Putin's regime was that it was not based on any ideology. Traditionally, Russia always, you know, followed some sort of the grand idea, I call it-

00:55:06
Eric Weinstein: Well, I, I-

00:55:06
Garry Kasparov: ... like empire, communism.

00:55:08
Eric Weinstein: Can I try one and then you tell me why it doesn't work? Dehumiliation.

00:55:12
Garry Kasparov: No. Absolutely not.

00:55:13
Eric Weinstein: Or unhumiliation.

00:55:13
Garry Kasparov: Ab- ab- absolute nonsense. It's just they used it, they used it, they used it for, you know, it's, it was a propaganda shtick. But it's just, it's not-

00:55:20
Eric Weinstein: You don't think that there was a need to restore some kind of sense of identity? I remember people talking fondly about Stalin. I thought it was very confusing.

00:55:28
Garry Kasparov: Because in the, in, in the last year of Yeltsin, you know, they started, you know, just, you know, playing with this nostalgia.

00:55:33
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:55:33
Garry Kasparov: Because KGB was playing a bigger and bigger role. You know, going back to nine- early '90s in Russia, after Yeltsin shut down Russian parliament in 1993, though I had no sympathy for Russian parliament, and I thought Yeltsin was right because they were full of communists and nationalists, but he ruined just, you know, the balance of power that was just building up in Russia. And it was, again, since 1993, it was all powerful executives. Uh, uh, and the Russian constitution that in theory, in, adopted in 1993, was a good document, gave, you know, enormous power to-

00:56:03
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm

00:56:04
Garry Kasparov: ... the president if he wanted to abuse it.

00:56:06
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:56:07
Garry Kasparov: It was just, it was, you know, on paper looked good, but it, it, it, it almost, it, it almost eliminated, you know, the key, key elements of checks and balances, of the control of the, of the executive power, which is in Russia traditionally was just, you know, was, was dominant force. And in 1994, the First Chechen War already showed that the country was moving in the wrong direction, and 1996 elections was already... It was free, but not fair. And then, then selecting his successor, which by itself is not democratic process, selecting successor-

00:56:41
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:56:42
Garry Kasparov: ... nominating him. Yeltsin came up with, and Yeltsin's family, not just immediate family, but family as the, as the group of his advisors, closest oligarchs, the circle of oligarchs, they came up with a KGB lieutenant colonel. So it was more about preserving the enormous wealth that they concentrated at the time. The, the humiliation was just, you know, it's for the, for the general public, but it's, it's the Russia under Putin, you know, the strength of Putin's regime is that they don't care about ideology. Putin, Putin could become nationalist, could become a sort of the populist, could be imperialist. At the end of the day, he doesn't care what anything-

00:57:16
Eric Weinstein: He wants power and wealth.

00:57:17
Garry Kasparov: Exact- It's all, it's, it's more like-

00:57:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:57:19
Garry Kasparov: ... a mafia state. That's why I say that every country has its own mafia. In Russia, mafia has its own country. So that's, that's, it's something quite unique. And, uh, Putin believes in only in power of money. And, uh, he just discovered at a point quite early in, uh, in his presidency that money can buy anyone anything. And, and that's the problem for this, with the free world. Losing Russia, also losing, losing Soviet Union as an existential enemy.

00:57:45
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:57:46
Garry Kasparov: The w- the free world lost its sense of danger. So it is, it's, "Oh, now let's, you know, let's, let's make deals, so who cares? We are, you know, we are, um, um, in- in- invincible."

00:57:58
Eric Weinstein: Well, we keep looking for our new, uh, Soviet Union. We, whether it's China, the environment, Islamic terror, we're trying to find a-

00:58:06
Garry Kasparov: Yes, but the free world, you know, is, is much weaker. You know, I t- I remember, um, it's, it's few years ago, I spoke to one of my friends, uh, in New York, and we talked about... It's a- after my book was published, Winter Is Coming, and, uh, we talked about challenges to the free world. And I said, uh, "In 1948, Joseph Stalin wanted take, to take over West Berlin." It was, it, he, he announced a blockade.

00:58:30
Eric Weinstein: Right.

00:58:30
Garry Kasparov: And Harry Truman, uh, said, you know, "Hell, we'll defend West Berlin." It was a biggest, you know, boldest decision that American president could make. Uh, and for 11 months, US and, um, British planes supplied West Berlin with everything it needed to survive, and Stalin decided against shooting, shooting these planes. So he knew that Harry Truman was not a man just to, to, to play games with.

00:58:52
Eric Weinstein: Not to be careful with.

00:58:53
Garry Kasparov: Exactly. So, and I said, "Look, Harry Truman faced, I mean, uh, uh, Joseph Stalin." And this is Russia today, not Putin, Joseph Stalin. Russia today in 2015 is a pale shadow of Ame- uh, of, of, uh, Stalin's Soviet Union-

00:59:09
Eric Weinstein: Absolutely

00:59:09
Garry Kasparov: ... militarily or economically.

00:59:10
Eric Weinstein: Absolutely.

00:59:10
Garry Kasparov: And you know what he, what he, he, he, he, he, he said quite sadly, you know? Signed and said, "Yes, but America today is also pale shadow-"

00:59:17
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is-

00:59:18
Garry Kasparov: "... of America of Harry Truman."

00:59:19
Eric Weinstein: This is the horrible truth, which is that in a weird way, Putin appears to be relatively, in my way of thinking, one of the most skilled players left on the chessboard.

00:59:30
Garry Kasparov: No. I just, I, I, here I have to disagree. I-

00:59:32
Eric Weinstein: Please.

00:59:33
Garry Kasparov: I have to defend the integrity of my game, so Putin is not a chess player. He's-

00:59:37
Eric Weinstein: Oh, sor- sorry. Sorry.

00:59:38
Garry Kasparov: He's, he's, he's an opportunist.

00:59:39
Eric Weinstein: I, I didn't see that I had done that. [laughs]

00:59:40
Garry Kasparov: He's this... No, it's this, it's, it's the... Putin, Putin doesn't create these opportunities. He uses them. So he's, he grabs them.

00:59:46
Eric Weinstein: Okay, let me say it differently. Um-

00:59:48
Garry Kasparov: Putin's strengths is, is, is, is a weakness of the free world.

00:59:52
Eric Weinstein: Yes, but the KGB had a tremendous amount of know-how. It was resident within that-

00:59:58
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but know-how is fine, but KGB, and it, it has enormous amount of cash now.

01:00:02
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

01:00:03
Garry Kasparov: Vladimir Putin controls more money than any other individual in the history of, of-

01:00:07
Eric Weinstein: Ri- richest, richest man

01:00:09
Garry Kasparov: ... of humanity. It's, it's again, he's... When, when these people say, "Oh, how rich is Putin?"

01:00:12
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:00:12
Garry Kasparov: Putin's, Putin is mega rich. Uh, but is, it's not, you know, it's not the same kind of wealth that, you know, that-

01:00:19
Eric Weinstein: It's like a bank account

01:00:20
Garry Kasparov: ... Bill Gates-

01:00:20
Eric Weinstein: Right, got it

01:00:20
Garry Kasparov: ... or Carlos Slim or Bezos or whoever.

01:00:24
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:00:24
Garry Kasparov: Because it all depends on him staying in power. But when you look at the amount of money Vladimir Putin can move directly or indirectly-

01:00:31
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:00:31
Garry Kasparov: ... you're probably talking about something like $1 trillion.

01:00:34
Eric Weinstein: That's stunning.

01:00:35
Garry Kasparov: $1 trillion.

01:00:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:00:37
Garry Kasparov: It just, you, you add Russian annual budget, you add Russian, um-

01:00:41
Eric Weinstein: So it's-

01:00:41
Garry Kasparov: ... uh, Russian hard currency reserves, the, uh, s- the, the fortunes of some of the top Russian oligarchs who are-

01:00:47
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:00:47
Garry Kasparov: ... connected to Putin.

01:00:47
Eric Weinstein: But s- he's skilled, he's ruthless, he's a single decision-maker, and he has this level of control over resource.

01:00:54
Garry Kasparov: Yes.

01:00:55
Eric Weinstein: There's no e- no equal to that, uh, unless it's the Chinese-

01:00:59
Garry Kasparov: No, no. I'd say he has, he has more power probably than Xi Jinping, uh, relatively to, can, to, to, to the country because Xi Jinping's resources are just incomparable to Putin.

01:01:08
Eric Weinstein: Well, he, he, he can't-

01:01:09
Garry Kasparov: China is far more s- s- China's much stronger. I mean, and, and, uh, I think Xi Jinping and Chinese Communists, they are very happy to see Putin creating these problems because-

01:01:17
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:01:17
Garry Kasparov: ... it, you know, it helps them to shift the attention. China is a strategic threat if you're using chess language.

01:01:23
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:01:24
Garry Kasparov: A long-term strategic threat.

01:01:25
Eric Weinstein: Okay, well-

01:01:25
Garry Kasparov: So Putin is more of a tactical threat, but right now this is, you know, that's, this is the real threat because if your king is under threat of being mated-

01:01:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:01:33
Garry Kasparov: ... you cannot think about long-term consequences of the endgame.

01:01:36
Eric Weinstein: All right. Well, so let's hit another chess term while, uh, and then I'll, I'll pull the rip cord if it doesn't work. Um, there's a concept which not everyone knows called zugzwang-

01:01:46
Garry Kasparov: Yes

01:01:46
Eric Weinstein: ... where, where you are in a situation where you prefer not to have to move because anything you do actually puts you in a worse-

01:01:53
Garry Kasparov: But you must move. I don't-

01:01:53
Eric Weinstein: But you have to move. Why do we keep acting as if we're in zugzwang?

01:01:56
Garry Kasparov: No, but that's, uh, let me go back to what I said few, few moments ago. Putin's strengths is our weakness.

01:02:02
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

01:02:02
Garry Kasparov: Putin is good at, at looking at opportunities like, and, and, and then, and he strikes. He doesn't create them, but the moment he sees weakness, it's animal instinct. You know, he goes for kill.

01:02:11
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:02:12
Garry Kasparov: So why Vladimir Putin is in Syria? Because America walked away, because America created vacuum there. So when you look at the, at the global map, why Putin is here or there? Because the free world, you know, blinked, didn't want to interfere, and that's what we learned, I hoped, actually I was wrong, l- had to learn from the man in Suez. It's the, if we see rising dictatorship-

01:02:33
Eric Weinstein: Yes

01:02:33
Garry Kasparov: ... and, and br- and, and dictatorship that is, is, is, is, is, is challenging the very foundation of our, of, of our world, and we know we have a choice of confronting it early or postponing the decision, trying to appease a dictator, every day, every week, every month, every year of a delay p- p- pushing the price up.

01:02:54
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is what's very scary to me about Tulsi Gabbard's candidacy, which is that she's pushing this concept of regime change wars, and she's try-

01:03:02
Garry Kasparov: She, yeah.

01:03:03
Eric Weinstein: No, after you.

01:03:04
Garry Kasparov: Yes, I'm, you know, it is the moment you mentioned the name, so I almost jumped on my chair.

01:03:08
Eric Weinstein: All right. Well, no, that's-

01:03:08
Garry Kasparov: I, I don't, I don't understand.

01:03:09
Eric Weinstein: [speaking foreign language]

01:03:10
Garry Kasparov: You know, this is, yeah, I, it is, the Democrats will not allow any, any, any climate change denier on stage.

01:03:16
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:03:17
Garry Kasparov: Rightly so. How they allow a genocide denier on stage? I mean, she's just, you know, she acts like, like I don't want, I don't know all, about the details of your relations with Assad or Putin, but she's supporting the most brutal dictators on the planet, and she on the s-

01:03:32
Eric Weinstein: What do you think she thinks she's doing?

01:03:34
Garry Kasparov: I don't know what she's doing. You know, I, I'm, and I'm not here in, I'm not in business of analyzing, you know, whether she's-

01:03:38
Eric Weinstein: No, well, the re-

01:03:38
Garry Kasparov: ... she's on the payroll or not. I don't care. What is she saying? And by the way, she has some following. Look at the... You know, she has percentage here and there.

01:03:46
Eric Weinstein: But it goes back to the-

01:03:46
Garry Kasparov: So she's on stage, and it's, and, and she's not confronted. She's defending Bashar al-Assad.

01:03:52
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:03:52
Garry Kasparov: You know, one of the, one of the worst, uh, dictator who used chemical weapons. She's denying it. I didn't hear any Democrat taking her on that. So saying, ex- "Wait a second, what the hell are you doing here?" And it's a, and that's, again, that's what Putin is, is, is, is-

01:04:05
Eric Weinstein: Okay. But Gary, what, what's going on in some sense is, just as you were saying in 1991, '92, we started, "It's the economy, stupid," as if the rest of the world went away. We, we were gonna just abandon all of our opportunities, obligations, what have you. W- we're now not capable of formulating an America that makes sense as a continuation of our previous self.

01:04:25
Garry Kasparov: But, but listen, you said again, this is, it's, it's the, it's America from 1946 to 1991.

01:04:31
Eric Weinstein: Was a thing.

01:04:32
Garry Kasparov: Uh, w- no, it's this, it had certainly no policy that it followed. You had Harry Truman set up certain rules and, and institutions, and then you had Republicans, Democrats, Republicans following the plan, and it, it, it led to a victory in the Cold War.

01:04:45
Eric Weinstein: Exactly.

01:04:45
Garry Kasparov: Because the strength of democracy-

01:04:47
Eric Weinstein: Yes

01:04:47
Garry Kasparov: ... it's, it's a strategy, again, using chess terms, because you can rely on continuity. You can change administrations.

01:04:54
Eric Weinstein: And then?

01:04:54
Garry Kasparov: But, but you still have the plan. It could be, yeah, it could be some deviations, you know. There could be, you know, just, you know, one way or another, you know, somebody could be more aggressive, more, you know, more, uh, defensive. But at the end of the day, it's-

01:05:05
Eric Weinstein: Well, we were, we were trying to become captains of the same team. Now it looks like we're trying to be captains of different teams.

01:05:10
Garry Kasparov: But since, but going back to '91, '92-

01:05:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah

01:05:11
Garry Kasparov: ... American foreign policy-

01:05:13
Eric Weinstein: Yes

01:05:13
Garry Kasparov: ... became, you know, more like a pendulum shifting, you know, one side, from one side to another based on who is in the Oval Office. There's no... Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump. This, it's, this, this, this, these are-

01:05:24
Eric Weinstein: Well, and the rest of the world, to, to, to-

01:05:26
Garry Kasparov: And the rest of the world is watching America-

01:05:27
Eric Weinstein: Like, what, what, w-

01:05:28
Garry Kasparov: ... and it's just, it's, and it's, it's paralyzed in fear because-

01:05:30
Eric Weinstein: You're looking at a car that's swerving-

01:05:32
Garry Kasparov: Exactly

01:05:33
Eric Weinstein: ... lane to lane.

01:05:33
Garry Kasparov: But people used to know that America is there, whether it's, you know, you know, uh, it's Eisenhower or Kennedy-

01:05:40
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:05:40
Garry Kasparov: ... or Johnson. I mean, Nixon, uh, Ford, even Reagan, Carter, so Bush. America was there.

01:05:46
Eric Weinstein: Okay, so how-

01:05:46
Garry Kasparov: And all, all of a sudden, it's, you can no longer rely on America.

01:05:50
Eric Weinstein: But Gary-

01:05:51
Garry Kasparov: So it's, you have massive cl- uh, uh, it's, it's vacuum holes.

01:05:55
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:05:55
Garry Kasparov: And there's no vacuum-

01:05:56
Eric Weinstein: Gary, you know that no millennials have any, uh, [laughs] intuition of where our passion is coming f-

01:06:03
Garry Kasparov: It's not intuition. It's, it's-

01:06:03
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no. I'm saying something has broken in terms of our collective understanding of ourselves. We are having the most irrelevant, bizarre, non-fact-based, non-theory-based conversations Like children

01:06:18
Garry Kasparov: But you said non-fact-based. That's one of the problems. That's what Putins of this world want us to forget, history. So it is, now, now you're talking about World War II, and so who cares? It's not relevant. It is relevant.

01:06:30
Eric Weinstein: Oh, my God.

01:06:30
Garry Kasparov: Because, because, you know, we, we could see, you know, this is how, you know, Putin is basically, you know, just it's- it's conquering the, not territories, but, you know, but it's, it's actually, it's, uh, conquering our minds by conducting very successful hybrid war.

01:06:44
Eric Weinstein: Okay, so l- l- let's go to that. What is it that the Soviet Union and then Russia understands about the human mind that the US needs to understand ASAP but cannot figure out how to teach its own people?

01:06:58
Garry Kasparov: Look, uh, I don't think that we can compare Soviet propaganda and Putin's, Putin's machine, propaganda machine, for simple reason. Soviet Union had a, um, had-

01:07:08
Eric Weinstein: An ideology

01:07:08
Garry Kasparov: ... an ideology.

01:07:09
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:07:09
Garry Kasparov: It's, it's, it's-

01:07:09
Eric Weinstein: No, I, I took your point. Let's-

01:07:10
Garry Kasparov: It, it, it's ideology.

01:07:11
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:07:11
Garry Kasparov: It's a... Again, I, look, m- my mother, she's e- she's 82. She was born under Stalin, 1937. So she still lives in Moscow. She heard it all, Stalin-

01:07:23
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:07:23
Garry Kasparov: ... uh, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev, da, da, da. And she's, she's watching this television and, and she keeps telling me that, "This, Garry, it's much worse than ever," because-

01:07:35
Eric Weinstein: It's much worse than anything

01:07:36
Garry Kasparov: ... it is. Because before we had some ideals. Yeah, they were false ideals, but is the, the, it was, it was all about bright future. Every ideology has its future. It could be horrible idea, even like, you know, like Nazism, but again, they try to sell you the image of the future.

01:07:53
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:07:53
Garry Kasparov: Putin doesn't care about the future. It's the, Putin's ideology in Russia, it's more like a cult of death. It's we're surrounded by enemies and you have to rely on, on the dear leader.

01:08:01
Eric Weinstein: Well, it's a cult of confusion.

01:08:02
Garry Kasparov: It's a-

01:08:02
Eric Weinstein: Everything is confusing

01:08:03
Garry Kasparov: ... yes. It's e- yeah. And they discovered that, you know, instead of selling an ideology-

01:08:07
Eric Weinstein: Yes

01:08:07
Garry Kasparov: ... which is always vulnerable.

01:08:09
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:08:09
Garry Kasparov: Because the moment I give you the idea, you say, "I am not so sure." It is just this, yeah.

01:08:12
Eric Weinstein: No, you can't even tell what the ideas are.

01:08:14
Garry Kasparov: No.

01:08:14
Eric Weinstein: Everything slips through your fingers.

01:08:15
Garry Kasparov: Exactly.

01:08:15
Eric Weinstein: It's like quicksilver.

01:08:16
Garry Kasparov: That's it. So it's this, in 2004, 2005-

01:08:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:08:19
Garry Kasparov: ... so, you know, it's, um, uh, uh, they had to make a decision.

01:08:24
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:24
Garry Kasparov: How to fight Russian oppositional internet.

01:08:27
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:27
Garry Kasparov: I just, at the time where I just was about to s- stop my chess c- career and as I tried to help Russian opposition more.

01:08:33
Eric Weinstein: Your early 40s.

01:08:34
Garry Kasparov: Yes. Yeah.

01:08:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:08:34
Garry Kasparov: I'm in early 40s in 2004, 2005. And they made an, call it ingenious decision that's based on the KGB experience. Instead of following Chinese model, firewall, close, you know, just, you know, uh, make people starve of information, traditional dictatorships. They said, "How about doing it exactly the opposite?" You know, i- it's, it's, uh, instead of, you know, closed, closing every, you know, hole-

01:09:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:09:00
Garry Kasparov: ... so what about the flood of in-

01:09:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:09:01
Garry Kasparov: ... flooding i- this information? By just, you know, creating so much information here and there so for people just to get lost. And you can have a Pravda newspaper, front page.

01:09:13
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:09:13
Garry Kasparov: One story that everyone must follow, nine o'clock news. Or you can start, you know, just, you know, dividing this, this, this story in, into many poisonous elements and start spreading them in the true stories.

01:09:24
Eric Weinstein: Okay, is-

01:09:24
Garry Kasparov: So this is, that's, you know, it's-

01:09:25
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is now all through our country.

01:09:27
Garry Kasparov: Yeah.

01:09:27
Eric Weinstein: Is that coming from Russia?

01:09:29
Garry Kasparov: Yes. It's this, in 2005-

01:09:30
Eric Weinstein: What's the transmission mechanism?

01:09:33
Garry Kasparov: 2004, 2005.

01:09:33
Eric Weinstein: By the way, I'm gonna get, I know you have a hard stop coming up.

01:09:34
Garry Kasparov: They, they, they, no, they made, they, they said they, they, they create-

01:09:36
Eric Weinstein: So I'm gonna get super aggressive-

01:09:37
Garry Kasparov: No

01:09:37
Eric Weinstein: ... 'cause I wanna get to this

01:09:38
Garry Kasparov: ... they, they, they decided just that they'll start creating these fake websites.

01:09:42
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:09:42
Garry Kasparov: When I s- when I say fake websites, they're real websites.

01:09:44
Eric Weinstein: Sure.

01:09:45
Garry Kasparov: But they looked like, you know, very liberal websites. They talked about s- certain things. They could even criticize Putin.

01:09:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:09:50
Garry Kasparov: Some of them, you know, this. But it's, they always carried-

01:09:53
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:09:53
Garry Kasparov: ... a little bit of piece of story here and there.

01:09:55
Eric Weinstein: But look, you and I have been talking very critically about Trump and the Republican phenomena as i- inhabiting this landscape. Part of the problem we've had is is that the, the Democratic Party went kleptocratic in the center and started pursuing policies that started, like, let's say, widening the Gini coefficients, uh, so that we had greater inequality, and we started experimenting with our own American style of nonsense. So right now we have a situation in which, uh, let me give you my feelings. I've, uh, been a lifelong Democrat. I don't trust my party as far as I can throw them. I don't trust The New York Times, Washington Post. I don't trust Fox News and the Republicans, obviously, because that's transparently wrong.

01:10:34
Garry Kasparov: Please.

01:10:34
Eric Weinstein: There is no ground truth. There's no place to go. And, and people are tuning into this podcast. And look, by the way, I'm gonna force you to come back to this podcast 'cause we need more time. Right now we're mostly talking to millennials, and the millennials are hungry because they have an idea of, "We came in on this game. We have no idea what we missed. Everything makes no sense. Where can I find some concept of overarching, uh, continuity to make sense of a world that is disintegrating into like-

01:11:05
Garry Kasparov: Well, look, it is, is the, it's-

01:11:05
Eric Weinstein: ... wet toilet paper?"

01:11:06
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, okay. It's this, this, just, just, let's finish, you know, this, this, this story about, uh, fake news and troll factories. That's what Putin created. That's what KGB created, and they recognize it's far more effective. And let's say they have to deal with Garry Kasparov and his followers.

01:11:20
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:11:20
Garry Kasparov: You can go after Garry saying, "Oh, he's just American agent. He's just, you know, he's a bad guy. He's, um, working for CIA, for Mossad," whatever. Some people will believe. Some say, "No, it's, doesn't look here."

01:11:30
Eric Weinstein: He sells drugs.

01:11:30
Garry Kasparov: Yeah.

01:11:30
Eric Weinstein: He sells guns.

01:11:31
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, exactly.

01:11:32
Eric Weinstein: He runs a prostitution ring.

01:11:32
Garry Kasparov: But many, many will, many s- intelligent will say, "No, he's a s- he was a great, you know, Soviet champion."

01:11:37
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:11:37
Garry Kasparov: You know, this is probably most decorated Soviet Russian athlete in the history. Say, "No." So for them it's a different story.

01:11:42
Eric Weinstein: Yep.

01:11:42
Garry Kasparov: You know, this, they managed to create, you know, this, it's a fake, you know, d- debates. You have a whole page-

01:11:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:11:48
Garry Kasparov: ... that is, it's totally, you know, just designed, you know, elsewhere, but it, it, it comes to, it's on, on, on, on, on, on, on social media. Somebody says, "Garry Kasparov is, is a bad guy," and then somebody else come in, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's a great guy. He's... But, you know, I'm not so sure." And it's this, and then you have a whole this, it's-

01:12:04
Eric Weinstein: Well, if it wasn't for his drinking problem.

01:12:06
Garry Kasparov: No, no, no, it-

01:12:06
Eric Weinstein: And I wish he'd paid his taxes

01:12:07
Garry Kasparov: ... no, it's this, it's, the most typical one was-

01:12:10
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:12:10
Garry Kasparov: ... "Garry was a greatest champion, but unfortunately he got his, you know, it's, he, he-"

01:12:13
Eric Weinstein: The ego went to his head.

01:12:15
Garry Kasparov: Exa- yeah.

01:12:15
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:12:15
Garry Kasparov: Exactly.

01:12:15
Eric Weinstein: I know this-

01:12:16
Garry Kasparov: So this is, it's, and, and, and it's-

01:12:17
Eric Weinstein: You, you understand that some people refer to me as the alt-right

01:12:20
Garry Kasparov: ... but it, but I could, I could see, but I could see-

01:12:21
Eric Weinstein: Right? Like as if I could possibly be the alt-r-

01:12:23
Garry Kasparov: Look, this is-

01:12:23
Eric Weinstein: The, the, the level of nonsense

01:12:25
Garry Kasparov: But the level of nonsense because people, again, this is, they, there's no gravitas. This is, it's, you know, t- for us to understand-

01:12:30
Eric Weinstein: Thank you

01:12:30
Garry Kasparov: ... what is, uh, what is right is this, you need, you, you need-

01:12:32
Eric Weinstein: Okay, nobody's been kept-

01:12:33
Garry Kasparov: What, what, what is ground zero where you start counting?

01:12:34
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, exact- nobody's been kept aside. They like, you- You keep a fire extinguisher under glass in case of emergencies. There's no adult that's ready to go when things get bad.

01:12:44
Garry Kasparov: See, but it's, but it's, they rec- recognize that is the, the, the, uh, um, new social media could offer them enormous opportunities to spread this fake news. Because there's one way to tell the truth, many ways to lie. So the, it's the- well, typical story was with M- it's, it was MH17, the, the, um, uh, Malaysian Boeing that was shot by Russian missile.

01:13:04
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:13:05
Garry Kasparov: And it's, they, you know, they didn't care, uh, uh, uh, um, uh, to provide, you know, one, one, uh, narrative that could, uh, could, uh, refute the, it's, the, the, the widespread conviction that it was Russia.

01:13:17
Eric Weinstein: Gary, is, look-

01:13:17
Garry Kasparov: What they did, they spread all sorts of news and, and one day on Russian television on two different channels-

01:13:22
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:22
Garry Kasparov: ... there are two competing stories.

01:13:24
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:13:25
Garry Kasparov: Which is, and with experts-

01:13:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:27
Garry Kasparov: ... with diagrams. Again, who cares? If it's, if it's 10 different lies, people say, "Ah, I don't know, just, you know, forget about it."

01:13:33
Eric Weinstein: It's, it's a needle in a haystack, and they always give you a haystack.

01:13:35
Garry Kasparov: You know, in 2015-

01:13:37
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:38
Garry Kasparov: ... I said that if, to Facebook, that your business model-

01:13:41
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:13:42
Garry Kasparov: ... is the honeypot for Russian bear.

01:13:43
Eric Weinstein: No kidding.

01:13:44
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. Because it was so obvious. You know, they says, it was ideal opportunity. So they says, how to use it, you know, choose to s- to, to affect people's mind with information that could be most, you know, uh, sensitive.

01:13:56
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is the, this is a very strange thing, is that I know these guys in Silicon Valley. They're very smart in a very limited way.

01:14:03
Garry Kasparov: They didn't-

01:14:03
Eric Weinstein: And they are so childlike-

01:14:05
Garry Kasparov: But they didn't understand that is this-

01:14:08
Eric Weinstein: ... that they have no idea how-

01:14:08
Garry Kasparov: It's the, this, un- understand that is, the, the, Putin already had a machine. It, it, the, before he attacked America with this fake-

01:14:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:14:13
Garry Kasparov: ... news industry.

01:14:14
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:14:14
Garry Kasparov: So he already had 10 years-

01:14:15
Eric Weinstein: Attacked his own people

01:14:16
Garry Kasparov: ... 10 year, te- Russia, then Russian-speaking minorities in a f- in the neighboring countries.

01:14:21
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:14:21
Garry Kasparov: Then Europe. So, um, the, attacking America was just a matter of time. And I don't think Putin expected to be so successful. Because the way the Russian propaganda handled it, I think they expected Trump to lose elections narrowly.

01:14:33
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

01:14:33
Garry Kasparov: That, that, that was the expectations. And that's why Trump already repeated the, the, the, uh, Russian narrative, rigged elections. How many times Trump said, "Rigged elections. Rigged elections."

01:14:40
Eric Weinstein: Well, so this is the thing that you did which was very interesting. You said, "Look, all you need to know to impeach Trump is one thing, which is how he handled Ukraine." Now, whether I agree with you or I don't agree with you, your point was, "Look, it's very important not to get caught up in very complicated stories. Let's keep it super simple so that you can just stay on one point." Is that fair representation of your point?

01:15:04
Garry Kasparov: Ex- exactly. I think it's, by the way, I think he, he, he, he, he, um, he, um, had other impeachable offenses. He, he's-

01:15:11
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:15:11
Garry Kasparov: ... so, but-

01:15:12
Eric Weinstein: But your point was, just stay-

01:15:13
Garry Kasparov: But if you want to win this battle, because right now, the moment you, you, you, you accuse Trump of, of numerous crimes that's, I believe he, he committed, it will be very, very easy for-

01:15:23
Eric Weinstein: Well, we can see the, the, the-

01:15:24
Garry Kasparov: ... for, for, for Trump's defenders to sort of, to, to, to, uh, sort of dilute it by the, by contaminating it with-

01:15:30
Eric Weinstein: But that has to do, but Gary, that has to s- that has to do with the corruption in the, in the Democratic side. Because you can see that The New York Times and The Washington Post are not behaving as honest actors, and it's very clear at the moment that they're not. You have this different problem, which is I can't, like, I spend almost all of my time criticizing the left, not the right. Not because I think the right is okay, it absolutely isn't, but because if the left continues to pursue these petty, transparent, ridiculous mini propaganda operations, we've undercut our own credibility in any place that can actually call this out.

01:16:07
Garry Kasparov: Well, again, this is, again, it's, it, it, what I hate most is hypocrisy. And is this now, you know, in the next Democratic debates, I want to hear one question.

01:16:14
Eric Weinstein: Yeah?

01:16:14
Garry Kasparov: To every, ev- every, every, uh, uh, um, Democratic hopeful on stage.

01:16:19
Eric Weinstein: Give it to me.

01:16:19
Garry Kasparov: With a simple yes or no, will you s- will you authorize sale of, uh, lethal weapons to Ukraine? Yes or no? Because you, Trump is on, uh, Trump is on trial for that. Will you or not? I'm afraid most of them will say no, and that shows the hypocrisy. That's it's, again, it's at the end of the day, Trump's foreign policy, just don't kill me for that, not so different from Obama's. Trump, the, the motivation's different, but Obama retreated because of his beliefs. It's, it's like ideological retreat. Trump doing these things for profit. But it's, but unfortunately, you know, the, the outcome for-

01:16:54
Eric Weinstein: You don't believe that Trump is under direct control of Putin, or does it matter?

01:16:58
Garry Kasparov: But that's, okay, that's, it's, it's, I said for profit.

01:17:00
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:17:00
Garry Kasparov: Profit also... No, Trump is a Russian asset. I said it many times.

01:17:03
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:17:03
Garry Kasparov: And there's, whether he understands it or not, it's another story. Trump is a Russian asset. I don't even ha- have to know all the details, uh, of-

01:17:09
Eric Weinstein: Your point is that the incentive structures are sufficient

01:17:11
Garry Kasparov: ... it's a, and, and all, y- I grew up in the Soviet Union, and I just, I can, I can repeat it time and again. I met enough KGB colonels.

01:17:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:17:19
Garry Kasparov: And I know how these people look at you.

01:17:21
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:17:22
Garry Kasparov: So the way V- Putin looks at Trump is the way KGB handler looks at his asset. He looks at Merkel, at Macron, with a contempt. It's a contempt. Because he, he believes he can buy anyone on this planet. Unfortunately, they, they-

01:17:35
Eric Weinstein: Like B.F. Skinner who can incentivize any-

01:17:35
Garry Kasparov: ... they, they fail to prove him wrong. But the way he looks at Trump, the way he acts-

01:17:39
Eric Weinstein: Okay. Yeah

01:17:39
Garry Kasparov: ... the, it's this, it, it's, it's this, this, this, uh, r- you know, this wry smile and this smirk, he's smirking.

01:17:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah.

01:17:45
Garry Kasparov: Trump is an asset. He believes that Trump-

01:17:47
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:17:47
Garry Kasparov: ... for some reasons will do whatever he wants. And by the way, the w- it's the, Trump, you know, it's, when people say, "How can you say that?" Now, he, I, I can name-

01:17:55
Eric Weinstein: Okay, but do you understand that when the Democratic Party asserts that Donald Trump, w- when, when somebody inside of the traditional left of center media or political apparatus starts to assert that Donald Con- Trump is under the direct control as opposed to the incentive control, like even to adva-

01:18:12
Garry Kasparov: At, because at the end of the day, this, Trump is... Look, let's, let's-

01:18:14
Eric Weinstein: You're not understanding my point, Gary.

01:18:15
Garry Kasparov: Yeah.

01:18:16
Eric Weinstein: What I'm trying to say is there's a problem right now with we can't form a sense making, we can't form a story that enough of us can participate in-

01:18:26
Garry Kasparov: Mm-hmm

01:18:26
Eric Weinstein: ... to start actually dealing with our real problems. We're just in free fall. And whether or not I sign on to everything that you say about Trump or not, I know that if you and I have enough time, we can at least figure out what we agree on, what we disagree on-

01:18:41
Garry Kasparov: Oh, absolutely, yeah

01:18:41
Eric Weinstein: ... what the theories are. And-

01:18:43
Garry Kasparov: No, we have, we have enou- we have enough common denominator, so that's as clear this is from our conversation.

01:18:47
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:18:48
Garry Kasparov: We may disagree on many things, but at the end of the day, we know where we are, where we stand, so our disagreements would be more of a tactical, not a strategical character.

01:18:55
Eric Weinstein: Yes. So what, what I'm concerned about is that right now we're a sitting duck because we're not actually be- there, there are no adults that I can find anywhere on the stage.

01:19:05
Garry Kasparov: No, but because again, it's just, it's the, it's a tr- it's the... Again, America has to-

01:19:08
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:19:08
Garry Kasparov: ... you know, reinvent itself. America has to-

01:19:10
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:19:10
Garry Kasparov: ... reconsider what is America's role. And this is, and again, it's this, you go back to Democratic debates. They're talking about things that they, they might be very important. Again, this is I, I understand, you know, you should talk about healthcare, you should talk about other issues that are important, you know, uh, for America long term. But right now you have the foundation of the Republic is in jeopardy. You have Trump, who is, I don't, I don't want to repeat it. He's a Russian asset, but it's, let's say he's not. But he's-

01:19:36
Eric Weinstein: It doesn't matter. Your, your, your assertion is not that he's a Russian asset in the standard way, Garry

01:19:40
Garry Kasparov: ... but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but he's, but, but look at, but look at what he, what he has been doing is, you know, if he were a Russian asset, what could he, he could do differently? So this is, it's the, the, it's... Even, even his, you know, his famous betrayal of Kurds, infamous re- betrayal of Kurds. So he spoke to Erdogan this October 6th. On October 7th, Putin's birthday, he announced greatest American, uh, uh, retreat, and it's for next couple of days. Russian television was celebrating this, the, the pictures from Americans' camps with food on the table, saying, "Americans were running away because our great leader, you know, keep, pushed them out." So that's the... So another coincidence, I always say I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in KGB.

01:20:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:20:19
Garry Kasparov: And when it's, e- every time, you know, we talk about coincidence and Trump, it ends up with Russia.

01:20:23
Eric Weinstein: Garry, why are you still alive?

01:20:26
Garry Kasparov: It's a good question. Yeah, so, uh-

01:20:27
Eric Weinstein: So are you here because you're still useful to him?

01:20:32
Garry Kasparov: Look, I, you know, it's, it's, it's everything, you know, has its price. So I, again, I, I try not to be just an easy target. I don't go to places-

01:20:39
Eric Weinstein: Garry, I don't believe this for a second. If he wants you gone, he's gonna have you gone.

01:20:43
Garry Kasparov: Look, thank you very much. So my wife will be very happy to hear that.

01:20:45
Eric Weinstein: No, no, no, look.

01:20:46
Garry Kasparov: So but is this the, it's-

01:20:46
Eric Weinstein: Come on. You're, you're, you're a grown-up.

01:20:47
Garry Kasparov: So we're gonna-

01:20:48
Eric Weinstein: We're having a grown-up conversation.

01:20:49
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, a grown-up conversation. Yes.

01:20:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:20:50
Garry Kasparov: I know that. So what... You know, I, I say what I say. At the end of the day, again, this, this the, it's, it's, it, I'm, I'm-

01:20:56
Eric Weinstein: Well, call up the boat. I mean-

01:20:56
Garry Kasparov: ... I have a powerful voice.

01:20:57
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

01:20:57
Garry Kasparov: But look, if they want me gone, I'm sure you know they can, they can do it. So it doesn't change anything in my behavior.

01:21:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, I noticed that.

01:21:05
Garry Kasparov: Yeah. So that's the-

01:21:06
Eric Weinstein: But by the way, I just want to say how much I admire that.

01:21:09
Garry Kasparov: Look, again, it's just, it's would it help? So people say-

01:21:11
Eric Weinstein: But I don't think you could do anything else.

01:21:12
Garry Kasparov: No, but it's I have to do, just, you know, do what you must, so be. That's what I learned, you know, as a kid from Soviet dissidents.

01:21:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, they call it-

01:21:18
Garry Kasparov: So it's, yeah. It's the... And, uh, and again, it's just going back to this is, it's not, you know, Trump is a symptom.

01:21:24
Eric Weinstein: Okay, let me ask you a different one.

01:21:25
Garry Kasparov: Trump, Trump, Trump shows how, you know, as, following your point, you know.

01:21:27
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:21:28
Garry Kasparov: That's it's how this society, how this great country lost its way, and it's, and that's why Trump, Trump, Trump is, you know, he's still there.

01:21:34
Eric Weinstein: So you and I have a mutual friend in Peter Thiel. Were you very surprised that Peter backed Trump?

01:21:39
Garry Kasparov: Disappointed.

01:21:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:21:41
Garry Kasparov: Very. But look, he's a businessman. I understand why he did it. I think it's just, it's a wrong decision. It's bad for the country, so maybe good for his business. But, uh, it's the... I mean, from day one when I heard about it, I, I was, uh, sup- well, unpleasantly surprised because I, you know, it's not, again, not just saying things now. You know, from the first day of Trump's campaign-

01:22:02
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:22:02
Garry Kasparov: ... I've been, is mo- one of the most vocal critics.

01:22:04
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:22:05
Garry Kasparov: And by the way, speaking about the media-

01:22:06
Eric Weinstein: Please

01:22:06
Garry Kasparov: ... it, one of the reasons Trump was there is because, uh, New York Times and The Washington Post and CNN, they liked him. From, from-

01:22:15
Eric Weinstein: He resuscitated their business model.

01:22:17
Garry Kasparov: Not, not only business model. For 16 years-

01:22:19
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:22:20
Garry Kasparov: ... the Democratic Party-

01:22:21
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:22:21
Garry Kasparov: ... has served as the political branch of Clinton Foundation-

01:22:24
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:22:25
Garry Kasparov: ... with one goal, to elect unelectable woman to, to the President of the United States. In 2008, she lost to Obama. That had to be it, but they, they tried again. Any, I mean, Joe Biden would have trashed Trump in, in, in 2016. So Hillary Clinton was the only chance for Trump, but they wanted Trump because they knew Trump was the only person she could beat. She would have, she would have no chance against in, a, a modern Republican. So they wanted Trump.

01:22:49
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:22:49
Garry Kasparov: So this is, again, it's, it's, it's... And that's why Trump got all this f- free publicity in, in, in hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of free publicity. And they could have killed Trump when he attacked John McCain. If the CNN of this world wanted to go after Trump in, in, in, in summer 2015, they could have, they could have-

01:23:06
Eric Weinstein: Well, I, I agree that our media is complicit

01:23:07
Garry Kasparov: ... they could have, they could have sunk this ship-

01:23:09
Eric Weinstein: Okay. All right

01:23:09
Garry Kasparov: ... you know, just before it left harbor.

01:23:12
Eric Weinstein: Another question. Jeffrey Epstein died under bizarre circumstances, and the l- the amount of follow-on on this story, the entire world wants to know, is there a tie to the intelligence community? I don't see papers getting the denials from in- intelligence communities. I don't see any very significant attempt to talk about whether or not... Like, all you, you need is to get somebody to say, "This person was never an asset. They were never under, under, uh, US or foreign protection." What do we learn when things that are supposed to happen because they would sell papers, they're of interest to everybody, and they're the natural thing to do, simply don't happen in full view of the world?

01:23:52
Garry Kasparov: Look, it's the-

01:23:54
Eric Weinstein: Do you have an, do you have an explanation? Do you think this is interesting or not interesting?

01:23:57
Garry Kasparov: No, it's, it's, look, it, it, let's, you know, it's, it's, it's always happened, uh, uh, before, but we didn't have the same knowledge. So that's, the, the only difference is now there's this, people died in, people of that, of that type-

01:24:10
Eric Weinstein: Yes

01:24:10
Garry Kasparov: ... like Jeffrey Epstein, they used to die in prisons under suspicious circumstances for decades, if not for centuries. But only now we know about it. But at the end of the day, who cares? Because, again, look, public, you know, it's attention at our, our-

01:24:24
Eric Weinstein: Look, his murder, his murder-suicide or whatever doesn't interest me that much.

01:24:28
Garry Kasparov: No.

01:24:28
Eric Weinstein: That's not the issue. The issue is, is that it's like dark matter. You don't detect it directly. You see all sorts of other things behaving bizarrely around it, and so you know that there's something there.

01:24:40
Garry Kasparov: Look, we know it's something there because, again, it's just, it's the while, while we have so much information available, again, our attention span is so short-

01:24:47
Eric Weinstein: Sure

01:24:47
Garry Kasparov: ... that we can move from just one, one thing to another. So it's this, I'm, I'm, y- I wonder how many, you know, how many listeners you will immediately pick up, "Who's Jeffrey Epstein?" There were so many scandals, and that's what Trump knows. You know, he knows that, you know, if he's tried for one, you know, one, you know, t- treason thing, it's, it's, it's bad. But it's, but if he's tried for 10-

01:25:07
Eric Weinstein: Gary, we have, we have a-

01:25:08
Garry Kasparov: ... it's better. It's better

01:25:08
Eric Weinstein: ... let me just tell you, we have an amazing audience. We have, the people who are attracted to this show-

01:25:12
Garry Kasparov: Okay, thank God that they, if they, but, but it's amazing how many things people forget because you have a new scandal. You know, that's-

01:25:17
Eric Weinstein: No, I understand that, but I'm, what I'm trying to say is that the people who are tuning into this-

01:25:20
Garry Kasparov: Excellent. Yeah

01:25:21
Eric Weinstein: ... are people who are, they're sick of being in the matrix. They just, they want out, and that's why it's called The Portal, because they're people looking for an exit from the confusion. So I'm gonna tell you this. You are coming back to this show because I am so not finished with you. It's been a fantastic-

01:25:38
Garry Kasparov: So when you say it's not finished, you know, that sounds [laughs], you know, that sounds like-

01:25:40
Eric Weinstein: We have unfinished business

01:25:41
Garry Kasparov: ... like page view warning. I'm not so finished with you. [laughs]

01:25:43
Eric Weinstein: You and I have unfinished business, Garry Kasparov. Um, is there anything you wanna talk about about RDI before, uh, uh, I let you go and send you along your way?

01:25:52
Garry Kasparov: It's the... No, it's the, it's, uh, I, um, after Trump election, so with some of my friends, you know, I, I call them, you know, refugees from The Wall Street Journal, like, uh-

01:26:01
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:26:01
Garry Kasparov: ... Bret Stephens, Max Boot, Mark Llewellyn. So those who just couldn't, you know, couldn't stand Trump, so that's the, um, and few moderate Democrats in New York. So we got together, and we decided to come up with an organization. We called it Renew Democracy Initiative.

01:26:14
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:26:15
Garry Kasparov: So rdi.org now is the website.

01:26:16
Eric Weinstein: And you don't invite me?

01:26:18
Garry Kasparov: Oh, I'd be delighted, you know, just, just, just the, it's, um... And, uh, the idea was that, you know, this is, it's, it's, and it's, I use my own experience that democracy is under, you know, this, it's, it's, it's, um, um, uh, it's in great danger. It's a great threat when it's attacked from both sides-

01:26:33
Eric Weinstein: Mm

01:26:33
Garry Kasparov: ... from radicals. People, sometimes they think that, "Oh, Hitler won elections in Germany." He never won elections, you know. It's, it's not a majority. The best result of Nazi Party in 1932 was just over 37%.

01:26:45
Eric Weinstein: Mm.

01:26:45
Garry Kasparov: But at the same elections, communists made nearly 16.

01:26:48
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:26:48
Garry Kasparov: Which means half of the Ger- more than half of German population rejected, uh, rejected, uh, democracy. So it's, what we saw is, as you know, it's Trump's brutal assault on, on liberal democracy and our freedoms, but at the same time, we saw the growing power of the far left, uh, so-called progressive wing attacking the very foundation of the, of the free market.

01:27:08
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

01:27:08
Garry Kasparov: And it, these two forces, they are just, you know, threatening to dilute the very foundation of, of American society.

01:27:14
Eric Weinstein: Well, this is why it's important to get rid of the kleptocracy in our center-

01:27:18
Garry Kasparov: It's the-

01:27:18
Eric Weinstein: ... because you need a center that is intellectually healthy

01:27:20
Garry Kasparov: ... I, I have been, I've been shouting for, for, for years-

01:27:23
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:27:23
Garry Kasparov: ... for more than a decade.

01:27:24
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:27:24
Garry Kasparov: That too big to fail-

01:27:25
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:27:26
Garry Kasparov: ... is against the very principle of capitalism.

01:27:28
Eric Weinstein: Amen.

01:27:28
Garry Kasparov: I, I, you know, I said it as, as, as, as many times. Once-

01:27:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:27:31
Garry Kasparov: ... I think it's at, uh, uh, it was, um, at the Cato Institute, um, that's Milton Friedman Award for Leszek Balcerowicz in 2013. I did a keynote.

01:27:40
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:27:40
Garry Kasparov: And I said that it's, if a small business in North Carolina, uh, is bankrupt, it's, it, it goes belly up, so must Goldman Sachs. So it's, it's, it's-

01:27:49
Eric Weinstein: Amen

01:27:49
Garry Kasparov: ... the, the, the whole idea that, you know-

01:27:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:27:51
Garry Kasparov: ... you can use taxpayers' money supporting, supporting big corporations because they are, you know, indispensable, but they grew up even bigger now. So I-

01:28:00
Eric Weinstein: Does that extend to Harvard? Should Harvard be allowed to fail? Should, for example, the Democratic Party be allowed to fail financially? As you know, Donna Brazile was asserting that Hillary Clinton was a, essentially the only thing propping up the Democratic Party.

01:28:13
Garry Kasparov: I don't know. This is, it's the, it's, this is again, we, I, uh, w- for people who say capitalism failed us, I say-

01:28:18
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:28:18
Garry Kasparov: ... you know, capitalism hasn't failed us. We failed capitalism.

01:28:20
Eric Weinstein: Okay.

01:28:21
Garry Kasparov: We are violating fundamental principles of free market, which is, you know, you bankrupt-

01:28:25
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:28:25
Garry Kasparov: ... you fail-

01:28:26
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:28:26
Garry Kasparov: ... you're out of business. Somebody else will c- will, will replace you. That was the whole idea. And right now-

01:28:31
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:28:31
Garry Kasparov: ... we just, it's, it's, it's all about your connections to the government. It's all your connections to, to, to those who, who have money and power, and you could see that money and power, they just, you know, they are getting closer and closer. It's, it's in, it's almost, you know, it's, it's-

01:28:42
Eric Weinstein: So which organizations are you put... Other than RDI, what are you putting your faith in?

01:28:45
Garry Kasparov: No, but it's, look, you know, there's a-

01:28:46
Eric Weinstein: Do you think Soros is a positive force?

01:28:49
Garry Kasparov: Soros is a partisan force. That's a problem, you know. There's a-

01:28:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:28:51
Garry Kasparov: The idea was RDI was to, to bring people from both sides. So it's, we have a board now that k- brings people from both sides, two former s- uh, senators, s- Heidi Heitkamp and, and Bob Kerrey from Nebraska.

01:29:02
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:29:02
Garry Kasparov: So okay, both Democrat, but Blue Dog Democrats.

01:29:04
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:29:04
Garry Kasparov: The idea is this, and, and we're working with donors. Many of them are just, you know, are f- former Republicans-

01:29:10
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:29:10
Garry Kasparov: ... or the Republicans, looking for building something in the center.

01:29:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:29:13
Garry Kasparov: Because it's the, the, the problem of, of United States, but also-

01:29:17
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:29:17
Garry Kasparov: ... you, you look at the United Kingdom, look at Europe. The problem is that the, the radicals from both sides, they're gaining more and more power by dragging people out of the center. It's what I call the phenomena of Spanish Civil War. When you have, you know, it's the social, uh, s- communists on one side and fascists on the other side, and, and somebody who wants to stay in the middle, no, no room.

01:29:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, that is the thing.

01:29:35
Garry Kasparov: You, you, you must take sides.

01:29:36
Eric Weinstein: It's like an A-frame roof-

01:29:37
Garry Kasparov: Yeah

01:29:37
Eric Weinstein: ... and the A-frame is getting more and more peaked.

01:29:40
Garry Kasparov: It's the-

01:29:40
Eric Weinstein: So the idea is that only the most agile people can-

01:29:43
Garry Kasparov: It, it, it's-

01:29:43
Eric Weinstein: ... can, can dance on the top

01:29:43
Garry Kasparov: ... it's, American, American, the two-party system-

01:29:45
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:29:45
Garry Kasparov: ... in America always, you know, served as the shield against radicalism.

01:29:50
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:29:50
Garry Kasparov: If one party went too far, like Goldwater-

01:29:52
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:29:52
Garry Kasparov: ... landslide.

01:29:53
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:29:53
Garry Kasparov: McGovern on the left, landslide.

01:29:55
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:29:55
Garry Kasparov: So right now, you have in elections, potentially elections-

01:29:58
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:29:58
Garry Kasparov: ... what do you have? Two radicals.

01:29:59
Eric Weinstein: Right. Yeah.

01:29:59
Garry Kasparov: You know, and this is, and there's so much room in the center now. So-

01:30:03
Eric Weinstein: Do you have anyone that you like on the Democratic side?

01:30:05
Garry Kasparov: Look, again, this is, I, it's, the way I look at this, at this elections is that it's all about defeating Donald Trump. So you have to make these elections about Donald Trump. You have to look for the best candidate who can win, you know, uh, win against Trump in battleground states.

01:30:17
Eric Weinstein: There's just that one thing. Who would that be at the moment?

01:30:20
Garry Kasparov: Uh, s- sta-

01:30:20
Eric Weinstein: Best chance of winning

01:30:20
Garry Kasparov: ... statistically, Amy Klobuchar. It's very clear because she's, she's exactly from the area where the elections will be decided.

01:30:26
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:30:26
Garry Kasparov: It's Midwest. She won in Minnesota 2018 re-election by, by, by carrying many districts that Trump won in 2016.

01:30:33
Eric Weinstein: All right.

01:30:33
Garry Kasparov: Again, it's about winning elections. It-

01:30:36
Eric Weinstein: What do you think about if we get these candidates away from this typical CNN, uh, MSNBC, NPR group?

01:30:43
Garry Kasparov: But it's again, it's, it's, it's, look, I'm in a... I used to be a chess player, and it's, and it's, uh, this election is-

01:30:47
Eric Weinstein: I've heard that

01:30:47
Garry Kasparov: ... but it, but I always, you know, knew that, learned from my mother, it's not just about winning, it's about making the difference. But this elections is about winning and saving the republic. If Trump is reelected-

01:30:57
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:30:58
Garry Kasparov: ... it's the, I mean, the consequences cannot be, I mean, you, I can't even predict them. NATO will, will go bust. Trump will, will withdraw from Europe, and he will, he will destroy every foundation.

01:31:07
Eric Weinstein: Well, the game theory of him not worrying about re-election, we'd have no idea what that looks like.

01:31:11
Garry Kasparov: It's, uh, absolutely. So it's the, so that's why-

01:31:13
Eric Weinstein: By the way, you have to know that a lot of my l- my audience is split A lot of them put up with my anti-Trump stuff, um, because they, they believe that I'm at least trying in good faith, right? I don't always understand how they look at this and they say that this is normal. I don't get it.

01:31:30
Garry Kasparov: But you see, look, it's, it's just, you know, the, Trump's ability to corrupt others, you know? There's... I mean, look at, at, at attorney general.

01:31:36
Eric Weinstein: Yeah.

01:31:37
Garry Kasparov: Attorney general now, it sounds like ideological warrior.

01:31:40
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:31:40
Garry Kasparov: When, when, when attorney general uses words left or right, he, he talked about left, you know, it's violating the law. That's it, you know? That's, it's Trump succeeded already in l- in three years, you know-

01:31:50
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:31:51
Garry Kasparov: ... by just, by destroying, you know, what was left of American image abroad, uh, and, and also in the country, Trump-

01:31:57
Eric Weinstein: Well, we don't have a shared idea of what, where we are, what's going on, and what's relevant. We just don't.

01:32:02
Garry Kasparov: It is, that's why, yeah, it's just, it's about restoration, and that's why you need to make sure that Trump is defeated in this elections.

01:32:07
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, but it's more-

01:32:08
Garry Kasparov: And need, and you cannot have a candidate that coming up with a-

01:32:11
Eric Weinstein: Okay, Garry-

01:32:11
Garry Kasparov: ... with a big, with a b-

01:32:12
Eric Weinstein: Garry, I can't-

01:32:12
Garry Kasparov: It's not about big ideas

01:32:13
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, but it can't only be defeating Trump. I'll, I'll just be honest with you. If the, if the left of the United States does not stop with its propagandistic bullshit, there's no way we are going to be able to put things back together.

01:32:27
Garry Kasparov: But it is, again, is you cannot, you cannot come up with a big socialist ideas because that's Trump's-

01:32:31
Eric Weinstein: Right

01:32:31
Garry Kasparov: ... that's Trump's only hope.

01:32:32
Eric Weinstein: No kidding.

01:32:32
Garry Kasparov: He's praying, you know, for Sanders w- more San-

01:32:34
Eric Weinstein: Well, but it's also a question of denying things, like if somebody shoots up, uh, a, a parade route or something and, and shouts Allahu Akbar at the end, there will be a Democratic attempt to not talk about what the basis, what-

01:32:47
Garry Kasparov: But it's, we just, we just, we, again, let's, let's go back to the question. So-

01:32:50
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

01:32:50
Garry Kasparov: ... I want to hear, I want to hear what they say about foreign policy. Because Trump is b- Trump is on trial now. He m- will be impeached in the House for his, you know, uh, for his crimes, you know, uh, for, for foreign policy related crimes.

01:33:03
Eric Weinstein: Right.

01:33:03
Garry Kasparov: And they don't talk about it. It's just they talk about something else. So the country, they want the country to believe that Trump was guilty, but we don't h- hear what would be, w- what would they do differently?

01:33:13
Eric Weinstein: Right, but if the Democrats, for example, pursue things where Trump actually isn't guilty, assume that he's both guilty and not guilty of things that he's accused of, any attempt to prosecute things frivolously, which we will see, right, is going to result in this loss of trust. We have to do something about trust, and if we don't have some... Yeah.

01:33:32
Garry Kasparov: Bingo. I mean, this is-

01:33:33
Eric Weinstein: Amen

01:33:33
Garry Kasparov: ... trust, trust is, trust is important, yes.

01:33:35
Eric Weinstein: G- Garry, you gotta come back to Los Angeles. Thank you-

01:33:37
Garry Kasparov: Okay

01:33:37
Eric Weinstein: ... so much for coming and vis-

01:33:39
Garry Kasparov: Fine. So there's, there's, there's more to talk about, you know, capitalism, socialism, the rest of the world-

01:33:42
Eric Weinstein: Look, I can keep-

01:33:42
Garry Kasparov: ... my own experience, but-

01:33:43
Eric Weinstein: Look, my bladder can go on forever.

01:33:45
Garry Kasparov: Yeah, but-

01:33:45
Eric Weinstein: It is now 5:30, which is your hard stop.

01:33:47
Garry Kasparov: Okay, yes, yes, yes.

01:33:47
Eric Weinstein: So I'm just trying to take care of you. You'll come back to the portal as our guest, sir?

01:33:50
Garry Kasparov: Thank you. Absolutely.

01:33:51
Eric Weinstein: Fantastic.

01:33:52
Garry Kasparov: Thank you much-

01:33:52
Eric Weinstein: Okay

01:33:53
Garry Kasparov: ... for inviting me.

01:33:54
Eric Weinstein: [instrumental music plays] [speaks foreign language] You've been through the portal with, uh, the inimitable Garry Kasparov. It's been an incredible journey. Garry, thank you for visiting us. Take care of yourselves.

01:34:04
Garry Kasparov: See you next time.

01:34:04
Eric Weinstein: Be well. Uh, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, on Apple, Stitcher, uh, Spotify, what have you, and go over to YouTube and make sure you find our channel. Click the subscribe button and the bell to be notified when our next episode drops. Thank you very much. [instrumental music plays]