Iran’s President BLASTS Donald Trump In FIERY UN Speech

Welcome to Navara Live. Coming up tonight, more drama at the UN as the US delegation storms out of the Iranian president's defiant speech. I say stormed, it was actually one guy sort of putting his papers and walking out, but the speech itself was very dramatic. Um, also a former adviser to the Star government gives us his take on the Burnham Trump summit. We have a bit of a debate um about whether or not Burnham's meeting with Donald Trump shows how wrongfooted StarMA's strategy was. Um also, London is apparently running out of kids to teach. And could tomorrow's meeting between Xiinping and Donald Trump decide the future of humankind? I speak to an AI expert. Um I'm Michael Walker and tonight I'm joined by BCA KMBBE. Um who's wearing a fantastic t-shirt. >> I hope you can see it. Yeah. Tell us the story of of this Zier 74. >> Zier 74. Yeah. So we've been thinking a lot recently obviously with all the Mmore Ed Sheer and D'vorl about you know what's music's place in terms of you know pushing political boundaries. Um this was a festival that took place in 1974 in Zier now known as Democratic Republic of Congo which my dad is from. Um and it was a festival originally set up by the dictator Mabu who kind of wanted it as this propaganda festival. Mabu was very much the kind of US approved uh leader of of Congo. and um it kind of got taken over by the artists and it became this kind of amazing sort of uh festival of unity and of pan-Africanism and of something I think politically a lot more positive than how Mabbouti wanted to utilize it. So I thought it was just a kind of interesting shirt to wear today. Um given everything that's that's happening and you know all the debate around politics and music you know music can I think be a very positive force in politics. And you were saying before we went live, I hope you don't mind me mentioning your dad was the translator to George Foreman at the Rumble in the Jungle. >> Yeah. So, this festival took place as part of the the infamous Rumble in the Jungle fight um between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. Spoiler, Muhammad Ali wins. Um and my dad worked as a as a as a translator um because uh George Foreman didn't speak uh French and Congo is a French-speaking country. So, yeah, bit of lovely bit of history there. Bit of family connection, French. Yeah. Um, fascinating. I love that. I want to meet your dad. Um, if you'd like support our work, you can sign up at environia.com/sport. You can also listen to the show on Spotify and Apple podcast. Um, do like this video, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and don't forget to let us know what you think in the comments below. I'm trying to read that faster every time, a bit like the terms and conditions at the end of an advert. There are three big issues at this year's UN General Assembly. artificial intelligence, Israel's war on Palestine, and Trump's war on Iran. On that latter topic, Trump gave a pretty vicious speech yesterday. >> But I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again. >> And today at the UN General Assembly, the Iranian president has hit back. >> I had prepared a speech to present to you yesterday. The United States president described us as terrorists. We have been the victims of terrorism. >> I come from an Iran in which our esteemed supreme leader was assassinated without any legal framework or reason. I come from an Iran where in truth they bombed a school. You see these children perished under bombs with weapons used by the United States and Israel. They were innocent, had committed no crimes. one of the small cities in a province in Iran, a sports hall where children were busy playing. The United States by using weapons with multiple warheads, targeted them. They martyed, assassinated our scientists, our men, women, and children. innocent children whom in truth had committed no crimes, no sins. Terrorists, those who are terrorists and train and protect terrorists describe us as such. We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists. So, if you're listening to the podcast, the dramatic scene at the end was the um gentleman who is, I suppose, a delegate for the United States sort of putting up his papers and and walking out. Um I think that speech from the Iranian president there, Peshkan, does show the the power of the UN General Assembly. There have obviously been so many sort of historically significant speeches there over the years. But to have yesterday Donald Trump calling the Iranians, you know, terrorists and then it's just so clear to anyone listening when he holds up a picture of, you know, the head of state you killed this guy, hold up the picture of the girls at that school, you bombed these people. It's it's so clearly the case that the Americans behaved more like terrorists than Iran over the past 12 months. Right? So and and that is a message that now gets broadcast to the world and broadcast to everyone in that room. Interestingly obviously how the UN works unfortunately really and it's a security council that has most of the power and especially the permanent members of the security council. So Britain, France, the United States, Russia and China. The general assembly is where it's sort of one person, one vote where the whole world turns up and gets a somewhat equal chance to speak, but its rulings aren't as binding as the Security Council. So, the Security Council has more of the power, but the General Assembly has the sort of symbolic force and that's what we've been seeing this week in New York. Um, two other countries trading blows this week are the Israelis and the French. So, Macron said this um at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. What is our credibility worth if we remain inactive on Gaza? Some claim that peace has been achieved, but this has not opened up humanitarian deliveries. This spectacle, it's shameful. Shame on all of us. Just look at what's happening in the West Bank where day in day out we're seeing violations and in the name of what Hamas was never active in the West Bank. Now that speech from Macron prompted a furious response from the Israelis. Um so the prime minister's office put out this statement. The grotesque absurdity of Emanuel Macron statement is staggering. On Sunday, the eve of Yamapour just two days ago, Netanel Shukrun, a French citizen and father of six, was murdered in his car by a Hamas terrorist in Judea and Samaria. With his final breath, he told his son to run. Hamas terrorists carry out attacks against Jews almost every day. They have murdered countless Israeli civilians in Judea and Samaria. ignorance is no excuse for erasing their blood. Um the French have since said this was actually a confusion um and a result of a mistransation that what Macron actually said was that Hamas had never governed in the West Bank which is more uncontroversially true than that they're not active there. Of course, you know, whatever Benjamin Netanyahu is saying here, whether or not Hamas are active in the West Bank, it doesn't really matter in terms of what people are critiquing Israel for, which is stealing land, right? I don't think anyone has ever suggested um well, one, they shouldn't be there in the first place. They're occupying the West Bank and they're expanding their settlement. So, the idea that, oh, someone got killed in his car, so that means we can steal their land. That's never been a principle of international law. Um Netanyahu himself will give his speech to the UN General Assembly tomorrow. It's likely to be histrionic. Um he often brings props. His ambassador to the UN has already been making some pretty preposterous claims. No, it's very dangerous what the mayor is doing. It's irresponsible. We know we you see the traffic today in New York City. Dozens of head of states in town instead of taking care of the security of the well-being of the visitors and the veteran of New York is inciting against Israeli prime minister. But you know, we are not surprised. He supported Hamas. He sent up officials from the the city council to meet with the representative of Iran. It's shameful. If someone should be arrested, Mayor Mandani should be arrested for his behavior. Prime Minister Netanyahu will come here on Saturday, will speak in the general assembly, and the only thing the mayor can do is listen to the word of the prime minister. >> Well, if I were to make a prediction, I would predict that neither one of them gets arrested, but that's just me. >> So, that was Danny Denon. um he is the Israeli ambassador to the UN and he's there on Fox News in New York saying that the democratically elected mayor of New York should be arrested. Um obvious it's it's too ridiculous to have to debunk that Mandani has not committed any crimes. But obviously the reason Mamani is calling for Netanyahu to be arrested, Mandani said he doesn't have the constitutional power to do it, but he thinks that morally it should happen is because there is an arrest warrant by the ICC, the International Criminal Court out for um Netanyahu for various war crimes. So the moral the legal I mean unfortunately the Americans aren't signed up to the International Criminal Court. So actually the ICC doesn't have legal force in the United States. But the moral thing to do would be for Netanyahu to be arrested. Mani doesn't have that power. Um but he has a point when he says that Netanyahu should be arrested. Um the Israelis when they say that Maani should be arrested, they they lash out like children a lot. And I suppose maybe if there were a different president that would sort of seem more out of step than sort of maybe it seems now because that's the kind of thing that Donald Trump says all the time that this politician that politician should be arrested even though Donald Trump seems to quite like Ma Dani. Um, Ben, what have you made of um some of these disputes, the scenes we're seeing from the UN General Assembly this week? >> I think the thing that kind of links, you know, the uh Israeli uh uh UN uh representative there and and uh the US is it was a just a kind of childishness really. You know, I think it's ridiculous from a diplomacy point of view that you would make a point of getting up and you know, shuffling your papers and shuffling out during what was a really deeply moving, I thought emotional speech. Um the use of images I thought was was really smart and and really clever actually for the uh Iranian president to to do so because we know of course that images often will stick in the mind a lot more than than words and when you're seeing the image of a child you know that's an image of innocence that I think you know no one can really dispute and and you know the idea that a state was going around murdering you know children it's just kind of incontrovertibly you know terrible in incontrovertibly immoral um this discussion about you know arrest Mamani I actually thought that there was a clip that I saw of Mandani talking in in in the run-up to uh Netanyahu um and um basically saying look I'm not going to be out protesting him. I'm not even encouraging people to go out and protest him. So he was quite restrained actually. He actually got some criticism right from the left who from people who really wanted him to go much harder actually on the rhetoric. Um but he's been very clear in following you know international law which is you know what everybody should be doing and you know the US the Israelis they don't view international law as a kind of leveling playing field where you know everyone is subject to the same rules no matter you know where you're from or what nation state you are they view it as mechanisms for them to achieve their own interests and I think what's interesting about this particular UN assembly is it it does seem to be very openly adversarial you know more so than maybe I I can ever really remember and that's not to kind of romanticize, you know, the kind of what is now a crumbling world order and and pretend that, you know, all these countries always got along, but there was perhaps more of an acceptance before of, you know, we're still, yes, we might disagree here and there, we might not always be quite lined up in each other's interest, but but overall, we're still operating within this framework and that seems to really kind of disintegrated now. And it feels very obvious. There's something very inherently Trumpian basically now about this UN assembly that feels quite different and it it feels more obvious that perhaps we are moving towards a more multi-polar world where there are just incredibly uh more jarring clashing interests that are kind of right there at the forefront and I suppose what's interesting to me is thinking about well you know does that mean that we're going to be heading towards a better well because yes it's great to see some of these power holders challenged you know finally some of the hypocrisies being kind of really laid to bear at the world stage. Um, but I'm also worried about to what extent that also means that actually we're just tipping into something that might just openly be much worse in this multipolar world where actually everyone or or more states are just kind of nakedly working within their own self-interest and there's there's not even a kind of surface level pretense about how we work together collectively as a world which was, you know, which is what the UN is meant to be forged in. It's meant to be forged in a coming together. um you know >> it's the two big sort of unknowns in international politics in the 21st century. Will the arrival of a multipolar world mean that there is more recourse to justice for small states or um will it mean that we end up in an anarchctic situation with more wars and then also um while the sort of liberal world order I think best represented by someone like Obama you know was maybe uh duplicitous uh dishonest in certain ways are we going to miss it now it's gone the big two questions of the 21st century we sort of seeing that um in New York this weekend. Andy Bernham's first meeting with Donald Trump went pretty well for our current prime minister, but for our former prime minister, it was a total humiliation. >> Mr. President, relations between the US and the UK have been a little bit up and down lately. >> No, I think they're up. >> What sort of state would you say they're in now? >> They were with your last prime minister. Let me put it that way. >> So, why do I think that was a humiliation? Well, it's not because Donald Trump apparently doesn't like Kier Starma. Trump is a chaotic, completely amoral, immoral man. There are many very decent people who he's willing to put down. So, I'm not going to stand here and say, "Oh, because Trump says he doesn't like K Star Dama, that means Karma is an idiot." Uh, like I I I don't take Donald Trump as any kind of um, you know, guide to who we shouldn't shouldn't respect. However, the reason I think that this was humiliating for K Dharma is because of what happened before in that meeting. >> We've all spoken over the years about the importance of a twostate solution. If we face a situation where there's a tender to put settlements on the West Bank that in effect make a two-state solution nonviable, what do we do? Because if we do nothing, then it further erodess people's trust in politics. because they think well you all talk when it comes to it you're not prepared to follow up on that talk and and do something. >> So that was Andy Bernham in front of Donald Trump defending the UK's decision to ban exports from Israeli settlements. Now that's a position a policy a move that Kharma never dared to do. Karmama his administration said it wasn't possible and Kama took a big hit in his standing at home by refusing that action. Right? People thought he was weak. people thought he wasn't standing up to Israel as he should have been. However, one supposed benefit for Britain um was that it would keep Donald Trump on side. Right? So, the idea is that yes, Karma, he might not have done the the thing that you think is right and just, but he's being a realist. He's recognizing that Britain isn't in a particularly strong position in the world. Um and he can't do bold things in case Donald Trump then goes and punishes Britain and we're somewhat defenseless. That was the argument. However, what have we seen now? Within weeks of coming to power, Andy Burnham has implemented that ban. He's gone much further than K Star DMA. Um, and as we saw in that clip there, it's brought very little approprium from the president. Um, and indeed, um, even though Bernham has been much tougher on Israel than Star, Donald Trump still thinks that Burnham is a much better guy than Star. Right? So, to me, this proves that Karmama could have been much tougher on Israel all along. Um, you know, I'm I'm not sure I ever took the line that it was just to not please the Americans. I think, you know, Kisama just didn't care that much about Palestine. That's my interpretation of Tuesday's meeting. Anyway, um, on this show though, I do like to hear multiple views and so I was pleased when Ben Judah agreed to an interview. So, Ben was a special adviser to David Lambi between July 2024 and September 2025. That was, of course, when Lammy was foreign secretary. Um Ben is now a visiting fellow at Chattam House, which is um where he spoke to me from earlier today. Um I began our conversation by asking what Ben took away from Burnham's first meeting with Trump. I think that it was perfectly fine first meeting with Donald Trump. Uh Trump was on relatively decent behavior and didn't press the UK particularly hard on a lot of painful doseas uh that he could have, you know, such as attacking kind of the recent sanctions taken on uh West Bank Israeli settlements by the UK government. The one thing that I think uh didn't go so well is I don't think that Bernham went in sufficiently prepared with strong enough lines on the chaos deal. >> Um we'll talk about the Chaos deal in a moment because I know you've written about this and you worked on this when you were in government. Um, I want to focus on what you just mentioned there, which was the the sanctions on the Israeli settlers because my interpretation really of that meeting was it was a bit of humiliation for K Starmmer because Bernham has done something much bolder on Israel than Starmmer was ever willing to do. And my interpretation is that one of the reasons Stalmar didn't do that is because he didn't want to um provoke Donald Trump. Let's say Andy Burnham's gone in there, defended his position of sanctioning the the settlers, something Starmmer never did. And not only is Trump okay with it, Trump says he prefers Burnham to Star. So, does this not show how misplaced and misguided Star's foreign policy was, especially when it comes to to Palestine and Gaza? You know, this is 2026 and K was dealing with the world in early 2025 in which it actually wasn't really very clear like what Trump's views were and how he would react to these things and the situation that he was facing and people don't realize how close it was in fact was the risk really that Trump would do something that can only be described as a new Munich with uh with Putin over the head of the Ukrainians and he was putting all his efforts towards uh avoiding avoiding that and what he did was bring together a coalition of non-American leestern countries so basically that's two categories of countries that is the Kzuk countries Canada Australia New Zealand and the UK together with European Union and its associates to present an alternative peace plan for Ukraine that the rest of the west could live with and what we learned from that was that if you come together strong enough way and go to Trump who likes likes being emperor of the west. He likes being the big man uh you know commanding a club and not attacking them uh as a group. He likes picking on them individually. The Americans will go along with it. And then what we saw was the UK government beginning with Star but really taking off with Burnham beginning to deploy some of that methodology towards advancing to a more progressive position on Palestine. And you saw that in the sanctions uh a small smaller coalition but bringing together a mixture of Kzak and European countries to break the seal on putting sanctions on extremist Israeli ministers like Smrich and Benv and then in the recognition of Palestine which took place uh of course under Kar. So I view as a kind of a logical continuation but in answer the question you're really asking is that could K have been bolder towards uh Trump uh than he was? I think definitely he could have by the end in the last few months I think there was room to be bolder but already then he was under such huge attacks uh domestically that his authority was diminished in every direction >> and I mean the idea that what we're seeing now is just a logical continuation of of K star I think that will be surprising to hear from from many people because Kama was so resistant to this kind of thing and I suppose the big difference to me when it comes to Andy Bernham and Karma is Andy Bernham does seem to actually have taken a position of leadership here so he announced this ban on settler export reports and other countries came in behind him when it came to the recognition of of of Palestine for example. Stalmer only mentioned that after France had already announced they would do the same thing. So it always seemed with Star as if he was being dragged kicking and screaming to do anything on Gaza whereas Andy Burman and especially Abilan seems to be on the front foot here. So the continuity is Britain and France using these non-Americanled Western coalitions to put pressure on the United States. That's the that's the continuity. The continuity is not they had exactly the same policies towards towards uh towards Palestine and towards the situation in Gaza in the West Bank. You know, Andy Bernham's clearly a step up in uh in in that in that direction. I mean you had an article on your Substack recently, a very interesting one which I found very persuasive at the time which was saying that Britain doesn't have a foreign secretary. So the argument was was basically that the prime minister does the job now in in the 21st century. Um obviously you work for for David Lammy and I sort of interpret within that argument that you felt that he didn't have quite as much power as maybe you were expecting he would. Ed Milliband I mean he seems to be a pretty powerful foreign secretary. My assumption is that he drove this ban on settlement goods. it wasn't driven by by Andy Bernham. So are you reassessing that argument? >> Uh well I think that you know Andy Bernham was completely behind Ed Milliband and you look at the house he was sitting next to Ed when he gave his kind of speech announcing the ban and talking and really supporting him and number 10 had of course signed off on all of that extensive communication that had been done. So I would argue what that shows is how powerful a foreign secretary can be if he has if a prime minister is really throwing his full weight behind him and they're working together in uh working together in uh in lock step if a prime minister wants to lend his power to uh to a foreign secretary. But what we're seeing with Trump today is sort of what I was kind of arguing about, which is that in the 21st century, the prime minister has just got to do a vast amount of foreign policy himself because there are so many summits, there are so many events, there are so many calls, there are so with, you know, they live in a kind of neverending WhatsApp chat and uh see you again in six weeks time, guys, at the next NATO summit with other world leaders. That just really wasn't the case in the mid 20th century or in the early uh let alone the early 20th century when these people traveled very very infrequently and it was the foreign secretary who did all of that traveling sometimes leaving the country for months. >> From my perspective Ed Milliband has shown how you can be a proactive foreign secretary. He's got a much more progressive policy on Palestine than David Lammy ever had. David Lammy has suffered an awful lot sort of domestically in terms of the respect he can command because of how he dealt with or didn't deal with I suppose the Gaza issue. David Lammy now apparently wants to be London mayor. I mean is he not going to be really regretting his time as foreign secretary that he didn't go nearly far enough when it came to holding Israel to account and will he not be looking at sort of the success of Ed Milliband and thinking [ __ ] maybe I should have done that? Well, I think it's all about sequence in terms of changing things like if you know it was it was very important to get to a point where the UK was putting sanctions on Israeli extremists in the government doing that first and then it was important to get to a place of recognizing Palestine as a state which opened up the pathway towards where Ed Miband has gone and that's really kind of one of his key uh legacies is driving the recognition of Palestine kind of through government and really pushing and persuading Kama to go along with France at that key moment and that had to happen first in order to sort of open the open the door to where we where where we ended up. >> I think Miliban was asked in parliament though you know why wasn't this done earlier when it came to the ban on settlement goods and he said well we needed a change of leadership so I mean his impression is that it wasn't oh we just needed to wait until 2026 it was that we needed to wait until there was a new political dynamic who were willing to take different positions. Well, I'm sure you saw that he credited both, you know, David Lammy and Iette Cooper for the work they had done and that was really a criticism of the uh previous prime minister. >> That was Benjuda speaking to me earlier today. Um slightly longer version of that interview going out where we talk about the Chaos Islands. Um I mean as you can tell I kind of disagree with Benjuda quite fundamentally on on Palestine and Gaza on the Chaos Islands. Actually, I was very persuaded by the argument he put forward. You can check that out when we put it out. Um, Banana Seca, I mean, me and Aaron, especially on the day, uh, I I think after these sanctions were announced, were sort of really laying in to Karma, suggesting that this shows just how sort of weak he was on this issue that within weeks of him leaving as prime minister, we have a much stronger position when it comes to Palestine. Not a good enough one, right? We should be sanctioning more than just the settlements. We should be sanctioning the Israeli state. But we've spoken to lots of people on this show um Daniel Levy one of them even the Palestinian ambassador who have said um Hassan Zomler who have said that this is you know not something to be sniffed at sort of the policy that Ed Milliband and Andy Button have come up with yes we need to go further yes it's not perfect but it is something that does materially make a difference and it has shifted the dial in terms of sort of the international pressure on Israel so they're saying this is meaningful um I'm I'm persuaded by that Um, you know, what do you think have sort of been there suggesting that actually this is a continuation of of StarMA's policy? I mean, as you can see from the interview, I wasn't quite convinced. >> No. And neither was I to to be quite honest with you. I I don't believe that. I I think Ed Milliban is right that I can imagine him being frustrated behind the scenes that there wasn't uh the change that was needed quick enough. And you know, it it's not like the signs weren't there as well already around Star's leadership. I know he had other problems like Peter Manderson and stuff but the you know a real sticking point the essential sticking point which is the thing that brought him down in the end and has allowed a new prime minister to be installed Andy Bernham is the issues on Gaza that is fundamentally why they lost so many voters at the local elections and that was projected you know that that wasn't a a huge shot we we knew that something like that was coming and yet karma failed to take those alarm bells seriously and he continued to do you know the same the same things as is so I I don't believe that there was a kind of grander long-term plan of, you know, oh, in later in 2026, we'll be able to start sneaking in some sanctions. I I just don't think that that's, you know, particularly convincing. And and one thing that I think was interesting about seeing Andy Bernham meet Donald Trump uh yesterday was that I think maybe Andy Burnham has a bit more of an appetite for disagreement and a little bit more of an appetite for for a kind of split with with Trump. Again, it's not as much as as as I'm sure that we would like, but you know, I thought it was it was good that he sort of stood there and said, you know, we we've introduced these sanctions alongside some other European countries, and that's what we're doing. And Trump was kind of, you know, he didn't agree obviously because he doesn't agree with the sanctions, but, you know, he didn't disagree necessarily too openly either. And I thought that was good that he he was willing to kind of stick stick to stick to his line on that. There were clearly other things that they agreed on a lot. You know, immigration was a kind of key frame framework that they didn't necessarily disagree on either. My other opinion about some of this as well with regards to I suppose Bernham's uh conversation with with Trump as well yesterday was that some of it I think is also about timing and it'll be interesting to see future wise how much Andy Bernham can stick to his guns when Trump does do the thing where actually he gets quite furious or he gets quite angry and he throws his toys out the prime. We know that Trump goes through these cycles and I think a lot of it is very much dependent on what he sees as an immediate priority. I do think Trump has long-term goals, but I think daytoday or week to week, what he sees as the kind of top or immediate priority of this is where we have to agree. This is where, you know, people have to agree with me, that does change. And for whatever reason at the moment, maybe what's going on in the West Bank is not necessarily um something which he views as like top top priority. He's got other priorities perhaps perhaps at the moment. So, some of it is also about timing, I think, as well. and Andy Burn was maybe yet to be tested whereby you know he's he's up against Trump where Trump is really fuming starts threatening you know economic sanctions like we saw him do I think was it earlier this year or beginning or last year you know so that test is yet to come you know it'd be interesting to see what Andy Bernham does and how much he holds firm against a US president who's not actually that happy with him but I think the idea that you know this was always part of some grand plan with with Star you know I'm not buying it I think that's a bit you know bit fantastical for me I also do think that this is I mean my assessment is that this is driven by Ed Milliband right that it is that there was a foreign secretary who really gave a [ __ ] and made this happen. Obviously I think Andy Badam is less interested in international politics and Karma was just an establishment stoogge when it came to foreign policy basically if it was sort of like what the British deep state likes which is being hard on Russia he loves it and if it involves going against American empire sort of like oh I couldn't possibly. Yeah. Um whereas Andy Bernham is is sort of I think not particularly interested in international policy which means that Ed Milliban actually has quite a lot of freedom um to to go out and take as I say this action is not enough that it is meaningful. I do think that Andy Bernham explained the policy in an interesting way because it was very Andy Bernham, right? Right? Because obviously for someone who cares about international policy, as you should by the way, you know, you can talk about this via the history of Israel Palestine, via the project for a greater Israel of Netanyahu. But Andy Bernham sort of translated it into his language, which is to say, if we've been talking about a two-state solution all this time, and then we don't have any consequences for people making it impossible by expanding settlements in the West Bank, then that people are going to lose faith in politics. So, this is just a simple issue of us sort of putting our money where where our mouth is. Now, again, not far enough. I think that if you if you really want a two-state state solution, which at the moment looks pretty much impossible, you have to put sanctions on Israel, which are so extreme um that they not just stop expanding settlements that anyone in settlements has to move back to Israel, you know, and and and and that's going to have to be like real strong tough international pressure, not just sanctioning the export of of settler goods. all Israeli good should be sanctioned until the government mandates that all settlers go back to Israel because that's the only way you can possibly have a two-state solution and if a two-state solution is what our government wants that's what they should be pushing for but I think you know I suppose that's also a way that one could sort of try and push and burn and say well if you want to put your money where your mouth is if you really want to bring back faith in politics then you have to do something a bit you know if you really want a two-state solution this is you know it's better than the last guy but there is a lot further you can go >> yeah it it opens the floodgates a little bit. It gets the major a little bit. I know that there are some people who feel despondent because of course we know it's nowhere near enough. But we have to see the the small win in this along the way, which is that, you know, you did this. The people who left the Labour party went and voted for the Greens instead. Uh the people who've been protesting, you know, for the last several years, particularly those who've really risked their own personal liberty with protesting um the prescription of Palestine action as well. You did this like you guys have moved this dial. Um and it's really important that we kind of seize that and and take hold of that and and do pressure for that next step. you know, there's lots of questions like why haven't we gotten rid of the rest of the the UK approved steel licenses um to, you know, arms to Israel, for example. Why are we potentially still providing Israel with intelligence from spy flights over over Gaza? There's lots here to still do, but there's there's something here. And and I agree with you. It's a bit chicken and egg with the whole, you know, is it Burnham or is it Ed Milliband? because of course you could say Andy Bernham installs Ed Milliband in part because he knows Ed Milliband is going to be stronger on um Gaza and he's going to kind of tick that box a bit better um for those Labour voters who felt like they had to leave the party as well. But I agree with you. I don't think he's necessarily all over the detail. It's not really perhaps his his kind of natural comfort zone. He looked more comfortable talking about Manchester when he had a little joke about it, didn't he, than than he did necessarily talking about the the nitty-gritty of of what's going on in in in the West Bank. So there's there's there's a bit of both I think there in terms of there's a recognition from Burnham clearly from the top that the old line was was not working and they had to do something. But I think Ed Milliband I suspect has been given a a bit of autonomy here to really go out and and flesh out the detail. He's been very persuasive on media as well talking about his own mother and and um as a as a as someone who went through the the Holocaust herself and and and became pro Palestine I think in the later years of her life. and he's talking about, you know, that being part of his commitment to, you know, using words, language. We've not heard from a foreign secretary before, a British foreign secretary about, you know, ethnic cleansing and and using these these these terms and it is just rhetoric, but I think it matters. >> That is important. Like Ed Milliban clearly doesn't believe that this is just a continuation of Starman's policy like he thinks there's been a break here. Um, again, I think you're absolutely right to sort of talk about this as something which is being pushed by movements and I think pushed by the threat of the Greens, right? If Ed Milliban has a bit more freedom to do things his own way than previous foreign secretaries have, then that's partly because he can say to Andy Bonham, look, you want to lose Hobbman and St. Pancress, um, then sort of, you know, do whatever Donald Trump says, do whatever Netanyahu says. If you want any chance whatsoever of winning back those green voters that you need to win British cities, then we are going to have to get genuinely tough on on Israel. And I think we are seeing the beginning, just the beginning of that. Britain's capital, London, is running out of kids. That's the message from a story in the Financial Times about schools closing due to lack of children. Um they report that more than 90 schools have closed since 2019 as there just simply are not enough children enrolling. Um in Hackne where I live, primary school numbers are down 15% since the pandemic. So 15% in 5 years, that's a lot. in Islington they're expected to fall 22% in the next 5 years. Again, these are just huge figures in a really short space of time. Um there's also no sign the trend will reverse. So the fertility rate has fallen by nearly a third since 2012 to 1.39 children per woman. That's in the UK um as a whole. Um the BBC made a recent report on the issue from Islington where the fertility rate is actually much lower. It's 0.99. We live in a onebedroom as well, two kids. So, our living room becomes our bedroom, our one bed becomes the kids' room. And, you know, it's one of those things where you just have to juggle and make use of the space. But, um, you know, isn't this a very lovely area to live in? It's great, but because of that, it's really expensive to live in as well. >> But what about those who haven't had kids yet? Is it on their radar? Could they even imagine raising a family here in inner London? >> Hi, everyone. Students Jess, Emily, and Millie, all in their early 20s and living in Islington, were happy to have a chat. It was never something I worried about, but now I'm kind of like, "Oh, I need to make sure I'm like settled and can afford that if that's something I want in the future." Obviously, that's very stressful at the moment with like cost of living and where the job market is. >> You definitely do want to have children, but kind of same thing at Jess as Jess, there's like a million and one things that I want to do first. I want to have a career. >> It kind of sounds like you've got so much to think about as it is. The thought of even considering having a family, it feels like a whole other step that is perhaps overwhelming to think about at the moment or think it feels relevant. Do I want to bring someone else into that if I can't actually support myself at this point when having conversations with grandparents or parents and they'll, you know, slide in a little comment about like, oh, what happens when you have children? And then you get to say, I might not. whenever we discuss this topic because I think this is one of the big stories of the 21st century which I find completely fascinating sort of the decline in the birth rate the fact that the next generation is going to be smaller than the last for the first time in kind of forever. Um it's important to note there is a positive story here which is obviously people have much more choice as to whether or not to start a family than they used to. You know the fact that the fertility rate used to be very high wasn't because everyone loved kids. It was because there was massive social pressure to start a family and have kids and sort of in certain periods for women to have as many kids as their husband demanded. So, the fact that people have the option to not have kids, fantastic. I like that clip of the woman at the end kind of taking pleasure in telling her grandkids, "Maybe I won't." So, that's great. Um, at the same time, you saw in the beginning of that clip there that one of the reasons people aren't having so many kids, especially in a place like London, is because of the cost of housing. And then also, you know, if everyone's individual decisions, you know, which are all made for perfectly legitimate, reasonable, good, you know, reasons leads to this societal outcome of like schools closing because there just aren't enough kids is a bit sad, isn't it, Van? I mean, what do you make of this? Yeah, I mean, well, there's a certain kind of person who might spin it in a positive way to say, well, there's going to be lots, you know, much smaller class sizes now in uh in London schools and, you know, that'll be great for for peoples because class size is one of the things that gets brought up a lot in terms of what's wrong with our what's wrong with our schooling system. But, I mean, fundamentally, I think it's a it's a sad thing because I don't think it's happening by choice. You know, people were choosing to leave the city because for whatever reason, you know, out of individual choice, maybe it would be a positive story, but I don't think that is why this is happening. you know, housing, the housing crisis, I think, is kind of fundamental to this, right? Um, and one of the kind of negative things about um lots of people leaving a school, lots of pupils leaving a school within a very short period of time, is that that impacts things like, you know, the per pupil funding, for example, that goes into uh schools. So, basically, the fewer pupils there are at a school, this isn't the case with every school because there's about a million different types of schools in our education system, which is a whole other debate in of itself. I know we've been talking about grammar schools and all sorts as well, but you know, generally speaking, when it comes to comprehensive schools, you know, the you get funding per pupil. And so if that dramatically declines very quickly, then all of a sudden you've got less funding for a school. You might say, well, you don't need as much funding if you don't have as many pupils, but you know, you still need, you know, a whole variety of other parts of the infrastructure of the school, jobs, all those types of things that gets, you know, those get um those get eliminated as well, you know, quite quickly. and and there's a kind of societal sort of harm I think that happens in that local community right suddenly you know a school which is this a part of the the local infrastructure suddenly gets decimated and shrinks very quickly and I think I think that's a negative thing I think as somebody on the left I think that's that's quite a bad thing actually as well um so overall I think for me it's it's it's quite a sad story and you know it's interesting I suppose to to think about you know what the right think about this or or would say about this you know I I I can imagine, I haven't looked into the details, but I can imagine this is hitting certain demographics more than others. You know, for example, in urban city centers that, you know, you're more likely to have people of color there, for example. Um, those are often the people who suddenly can't, you know, can't afford to live in in these places anymore. So, they get they get displaced, which can be very disruptive for for young kids as well. >> I I mean, in a place like Hackne or Islington. Yeah. >> Because it is the it's the case in Hackne and Islington that you can only afford to have kids if you're really really rich. >> Yeah. or you're in council housing because basically no no no one in between those groups can afford a house big enough to have kids. I you saw that guy who'd made the decision to stay there. I don't know if it's in council housing, but if they're in a one-bedroom flat with the two kids, maybe they are sort of privately renting, but that would be one of the So, in a way, it doesn't need to be a leftright issue because it is this sort of like middle that sort of is a should be swing voters really or part of everyone's constituency who are the ones who can't. >> I think we should be getting those people on the left. >> Yeah. No, 100%. No, but what I mean is I don't think this is just a story of like poor people being driven out of Islington and Hackne. Actually the people who are most likely to be driven out of in Islington at this point are people who are neither rich nor poor. They're kind of middle class. They might have quite good jobs but they couldn't. And I think one of the reasons why the birth rate so low in these places because people think well I want to stay living in Islington or Hackne because that's where I've lived my whole life and I can't possibly buy a house with more than two bedrooms. >> Yeah. I mean that's >> and what what we going to do then? >> Yeah. I mean that's fair. I mean to be fair a lot of the very poorest who who didn't have access to council housing in those places probably already long left already long been displaced so we are probably talking about middle class people but there's a conversation there of course isn't there about the way in which the middle class is becoming proletarialized you they're kind of joining the the you know an ever growing uh group of of working-class people and and the middle class is is is kind of shrinking as as as well right but but but I I I agree with that I mean one of the reasons I live in Dartford in Kent you know in a different economy I would have probably lived in like Brixton or I would have stayed in Wilson Green, you know, where where I was living before, but it wasn't a viable option for me if I wanted to not be in a house share basically and I wanted to have a hope in hell of of being able to live, you know, in in a relatively comfortable space on on on my own. And it's it these kinds of like shifts and these demographic changes and things like that are producing all kinds of kind of very undesirable as well kind of uh conversations that emanating from the right who were debating last week you know why there are so many young people of color at grammar schools for example which was a really kind of awful quite racist conversation really that really ignored a lot of these uh much more important issues about why people are being displaced and being moved into into certain areas and being kind of pushed out of these these more central areas and in city centers. Um so someone in the comment says um park um at the beginning of the piece Michael said the fertility rate has decreased. Can someone clarify what he meant? So this is it's it's it's unfortunate really because the term in demographics sort of the technical term for fertility rate means how many children a woman can expect be expected to have in her lifetime. So it's a it's an estimate. Um but it has nothing to do with biological fertility. It's got nothing to do at all with your ability to conceive. So if you know people might say if someone has a fertility problem, it might be that there's a biological issue which means that they struggle to conceive a child. The fertility rate is is completely different to that. So this is not an issue of people being unable to conceive children. It's people deciding to have fewer children, but it's the same word. Maybe they should change the word. Um on the topic of a world with fewer kids, um this story went completely viral on X this week. So, it's um from NBC News. Toy sales among adult only households have now outpaced households with children for toy sales, growing 16% through June, according to a market research group. Um so, the story is that 55% of revenue from toy sales now comes from adults. So, the majority comes from adults, not from kids. Um, the head of the market research company who did the study said this. Um, we're seeing toys increasingly function as hobbies, fandom ecosystems, and social experiences rather than traditional children's products. That's expanding the consumer base and creating new opportunities for manufacturers and retailers that understand how to engage collectors, enthusiasts, and self-purchases. I love this phrase. It's very like market research, self-purchases. Someone buying the thing for themselves. Um, this uh prompted lots of people, you know, to reply with pictures of Children of Men, the movie, if it's in the movie Children of Men, um, and yeah, I mean, >> again, you don't want to be mean. You don't want to be sort of like saying, why are you adults buying to, you know, do whatever the hell you want. If you want toys, buy toys, whatever your age. You know, I'm a libertarian to some degree when it comes to this. I'm like, do what you want as long as it's not affecting anyone. But again, at a societal level, if everyone's individual choices have led us to an outcome where like children are a minority in toy shops because people are they're the people buying them are now enthusiasts and collectors. That's a bit depressing, isn't it? >> Quite an incredible piece of research, I have to say, isn't it? I mean, it's like we talk a lot about this idea of like wealth kind of going upwards, right? And and being kind of ever more concentrated in in in older people. And to an extent, you can also see that even in the differences between like, you know, millennials and Gen Z or maybe millennials and and younger younger cohorts and stuff. And maybe this is another example of that. Like we've also got the toys. We we've got the economic ability to be able to buy these these toys. And again, I agree with you. Like there's nothing wrong with, you know, enjoying yourself. There's nothing wrong with adults, you know, wanting to have, you know, as much fun as they want. That's a good thing in many respects at Disneyland. Apparently the majority of people at Disneyland are now adults as well. >> Oh gosh. >> And not obviously the majority probably always are adults, but the majority are adults without children. So adults going on their own self purchases you might call them. I'm not sure. >> But yeah, I mean it's it's a bit bleak really, isn't it? I suppose it's maybe it's a hierarchy of needs thing where it's like if you're a parent you know your number one thing of course is to get clothes on your kids get you know hot food on the on the table and and maybe after after that economically clearly a lot of parents maybe feel like we haven't got you know the we haven't got the luxury of then getting you a toy every every few months and that makes me sad because I mean me and you're a similar age right and I remember it was like the coolest thing in the world to like leave through the Argos catalog when you get like a physical catalog and you know I' I'd like put a little cross next to all the things I wanted. >> My Santa's list used to have the page numbers on it. >> Oh, see and like kids like you know that's just not possible for them I feel like anymore. And you know that's you know I'm not saying my parents got me all that stuff cuz your parents shouldn't buy you every toy you want obviously. Um but um but yeah it's it's it's really sad to think that you know playtime and these things are are not going to be potentially as much a part of young people's lives. Again relegated to the screen perhaps. I I don't know. Um it's it's quite sad. >> What's your favorite policy to sort of resolve some of these issues. >> Well, housing I think has to be the number one thing because I think that's the thing that's really screwing over just multiple people, multiple generations. So, we've got to really um try to build affordable housing, more social housing, please, far fewer landlords, please enter and end this rentier economy madness that is, you know, it's it's killing us. I think we should I think the policy goal should not necessarily be to have more kids because I think you know it's people's choice whatever I'm not into like social pressure but I think we should end the financial penalty of having kids. So at the moment lots of people don't have kids because they can't afford kids or not even or sometimes they can afford kids but they don't have kids because of the financial opportunity cost. their friends who don't have kids will end up getting a better career and more income. And so they think, well, if I have kids, I'll end up being poor and then it'll be harder to I think you want to have a system where having kids does not affect your lifetime income. So I think that probably would need to include tax breaks. >> I was going to say like the marriage tax breaks that used to do. >> Yeah. Except not for for kids. So tax breaks. Um so for for the promotion that you might have forgotten or the hours of work that you might have forgotten and then obviously loads of housing which benefits everyone. Um and then free child care and then I think you know whether or not it will work in terms of having more kids I don't know but it can't do any harm and I think that would create a fairer system. Maybe the kids maybe the parents who do have kids can then afford to take them to Disneyland. Who knows? When Donald Trump and Xiinping meet this Thursday, AI will be at the top of their agenda. Um experts and some Congress people like Bernie Sanders have been calling on the two leaders to agree to slow down AI progress, but the signs so far aren't great. This was a headline from CNBC on Wednesday and so it says Trump she summit puts AI safety talks on the table but neither side wants to slow down. Of course, Trump has publicly dismissed AI safety concerns over the last two weeks. He's called them a hoax. Um Trump also posted on Monday, quote, "Whoever wins AI wins. We are leading now over China and everyone else, and I'm going to keep it that way." Um, now that's unlikely to be the kind of rhetoric that would get the Chinese leadership on side. That's not a great sort of premise for talks. Um, this doesn't mean, however, there's been no progress at all when it comes to collaboration on artificial intelligence. Over the weekend, US Treasury Secretary Scott Besson met with Chinese Vice Premier Heang. Um, and Scott Bessant told CNBC what they had agreed. >> I think the important thing was to start talking. So to set up the dialogue, we we've now formalized something called the USA China AI dialogues. We've agreed to meet again probably in 2 months uh in um in Shenzhen. Uh the second thing is we want to open a communications line, an incident line uh so that we have constant communications especially in the event of some kind of an incident. And then we want to start discussing protocols for what are so both sides can agree on what the leading AI dangers are. >> So what are the stakes in AI talks between the United States and China. I spoke earlier to David Krueger, an assistant professor in responsible AI at the University of Montreal. Um he previously worked at DeepMind and the UK AI Safety Institute. Right now I think what we need if we want to reduce the risk to an acceptable level is an immediate indefinite international moratorum on frontier development. We need to stop building more powerful AI systems. Um so that's something that I think could basically in principle come out of this. So Trump and and Xi Jinping could have a handshake deal saying, "Yeah, we both agree this is too dangerous and we're going to figure out how to make sure that nobody keeps building these more powerful AI systems." >> Presumably, you're not predicting that's going to happen. You just think that would be theoretically possible were the political will there? >> I think there's some chance. I don't know, maybe like uh 1% or something. Like I think Donald Trump is kind of hard to predict and I don't know that much about the the Chinese side here. >> Um >> I know you spoke to a number of Chinese scientists, didn't you, earlier this year because you were with Bernie Sanders when he was having I suppose a bit of a summit. Obviously not with the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, but with Chinese AI scientists who were concerned about this issue. Um I'm not sure what did you what did you take away from from that discussion? I kind of got the sense that they have a different attitude in general towards this where in the west I feel like people historically have been like guys we have to solve alignment. We have to solve the safety problems. Um because if we don't government isn't going to do anything. Um whereas in China it felt more like they were like guys we have to solve these problems because if we don't government isn't going to let us deploy these things. Um and I think that's actually more you know how how it should be. We should be unlocking capabilities through this research. We shouldn't be unlocking safety. Safety should be something that we get by default because of policy that prevents AI companies from doing unsafe things. You know, I suppose you you've been on this scene for a while talking about and thinking about this issue for for a very long time. You studied under Joshua Benjio. Um I understand. Um, and I suppose something you just spoke to there, I think is so peculiar to people because it's this idea that the people at the forefront of these AI companies, they think that they should be the um it should be they themselves who as private individuals or as corporations oversee the development of super intelligence and and they should be granted the societal responsibility to make sure this all goes okay and you're saying that from your brief impression in China obviously they had a completely different interpretation which was to say well we'll build it until it gets dangerous because if it were dangerous Xiinping is going to not let us build it anymore. Um how ingrained is that idea in the sort of American company leaders that they have the right I suppose to carry this responsibility and to take these risks themselves. >> I actually don't think it's like that. I think uh I I don't think they feel like they have the right to do this. I mean, I think there's some of that, but I think it's more they just feel like government isn't going to act. Uh and that's I think a really common view when I talk to other people about this issue. They're like this is such a you know um lucrative business and of course companies are just going to you know lobby the government to prevent regulation which you know we've seen a lot of that um and you know I I think historically also people didn't get it like people outside of AI really weren't paying attention um and they're still not paying enough attention and even after chat GPT there was a lot of attention on AI and even some attention on, you know, AI safety and and loss of control risk, but you know, not not enough like the the appropriate reaction, right, when you learn that we might lose control of the AI systems we're building and they might destroy humanity is uh to basically be like, wait, is that at all likely? And then when you learn that yes, it is, you know, we're talking about like maybe 10% is a common number that gets thrown around, then to be like, why on earth are we doing this? How do we stop? We have to stop right away. Drop everything. Figure out how to stop this. Um, and obviously that's not the response we've seen yet. Although, we're getting closer and closer to that as, you know, we get closer and closer to actually building the thing. >> I mean, I suppose that the reason we're not seeing that isn't because there are a bunch of people who don't really mind taking a 1 in 10 chance of dying. is because lots of people still hear what you've just said and find it somewhat implausible. Um I personal position is I think that if you know Jeffrey Hinton, Joshua Benjio, Stuart Russell, if they all think that this is a serious issue and they develop the technology and they don't seem to have any particular vested interest and you know I don't necessarily think there is a 10% chance but personally I think there is good reason to take what they're saying seriously and act accordingly. Um, but I suppose to our audience who aren't convinced, there's many of them, which I think is very understandable. So, like, how do you make this argument to people because you've been making it for a for a very long time? >> The recent polling suggests that Americans largely are convinced that this is a real risk. Uh, and so I think the problem lies elsewhere. I think I'm I'm curious which, you know, why it still isn't an issue of the prominence that I described, but I have a bunch of guesses about why. So one thing is I think even when people understand that it's a risk, they don't necessarily understand how urgent the risk is or how deep the risk is. So they might think that we have much longer than we do to come up with the solution or they might think that solutions are easier to come by. So a lot of the conversation now is about doing better safety testing and having better guard rails and having standards and regulations, but that's not, you know, the reasonable response here. that's not going to actually reduce the risk to an acceptable level because we know that those things are unreliable. We know that they are quite likely to fail when we get to super intelligence. We're building AI that is going to be like another form of life. Uh and it's going to basically be able to do everything that humans can and more faster, cheaper, better. We don't know how these systems work. We don't know how to keep them from misbehaving. we don't know how to stay in control if they do misbehave and we don't know how to test them to make sure that you know they're not going to misbehave. >> You were the founding I think research director for the UK AI Institute and that often comes up I think because people often say this is a good you know they s what can governments do and people look at this institute as an example of a government doing something quite effectively. Obviously, it's the Chinese government and the American government here who are really going to get to determine, you know, if if we take your sort of interpretation of the risks AI poses, then it's going to be the Chinese and the Americans who get to determine the future of humanity essentially. Um, but lots of people pointing to the UK um AI safety institute as an example of, I suppose, a middle power doing something quite useful. Is that your interpretation of the UK um AIS? >> UK AC I think they do a very good job at those things. I think they're one of, you know, the maybe five, let's say, leading evaluators in the world. Um, so they definitely have have talent and skill. Uh, I think that is something that can be useful. Um, but ultimately I don't think it's very useful because we know that safety testing is flawed. And unfortunately, the way that it's been sort of enshrined in practice and in, you know, governance, I mean, it's self-regulation. It's not real governance for the most part. Um but uh it's gotten the burden of proof backwards. So these safety tests are very different from the kind of um safety practices that you see in other fields like aviation, nuclear power, pharmaceuticals, uh where they have, you know, they take safety very seriously and they have established processes for um you know, seeing if something is safe. And one basic thing that we get backwards here is the safety tests we have in AI, they can only show that a system is dangerous. They can't really show that it's safe. And what this means is that in practice, the policy that we've implemented here is to say, let's assume that these AI systems are safe until we can prove that they're dangerous. And that's really backwards because it should be on the people building the technology to demonstrate convincingly that it is safe. Uh and unfortunately they don't know how to do that because of you know the technical limitations and technical immaturity of the field. Um, and and you know, there's other problems as well, like external evaluators don't have all the access that they would need in order to even do a a best shot at figuring out if it's if it's uh dangerous. And then often times there hasn't really been um teeth. If you do figure out, hey, this model is dangerous, then what happens? Well, Anthropic used to say, we won't release something if we think it has a good chance of killing a million people or something like that. Uh and then at the beginning of this year they just changed that. They changed their self-governance responsible scaling policy to say actually we would still maybe do that because we're in a race with other companies. >> And you seem to think a pause is plausible. I mean you're campaigning on it. You're sort of really working towards raising awareness about this. What do you see as the most sort of likely sequence of events where that might happen? I mean lots of people are suggesting we we need some kind of Chernobyl moment. Obviously, no one wants to sort of wish for a catastrophe, but a sort of minor one uh is what lots of people are suggesting might be the only thing that actually creates a political momentum to make it happen. And obviously there are midterms coming up. It seems like AI is going to be an issue there. Um Donald Trump could have a damosine conversion. You never know with the guy. Um if if a pause were to happen, what do you see as the most sort of likely sequence of events that gets us there? >> Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I would like to think that if we're all going around saying, "Well, nobody's going to do anything until a bunch of people die until we have a huge catastrophe, then we can take the next step and be like, "Hey, wait a sec. If we're all just going to wait for this catastrophe, why don't we just skip that part and just jump to doing something?" If we all know that we're just looking around waiting for that to happen, you know? Um, and and I do think that's possible. I think the idea that you need the catastrophe in order to get governments to act, I think that's just wrong. Um I think what we saw with uh Jacob Coxin and the news cycle there is that one person resigning can shift the conversation in a huge way. Uh and of course that's on the heels of the hugging face incident which was definitely some sort of warning shot and actually quite a quite a good one because nobody did die. Um but you know it was still a huge huge gamecher just by itself just that one resignation. Um, so you know, what do I think is the most likely way to get a pause? Well, I think it probably still is that we're gonna see more warning shots because we aren't going to do the right thing like, you know, today. Um, I'm I'm I think we absolutely could. I think it's certainly possible. Um, there's a lot of, you know, things are still moving really fast. There's a lot of momentum. There's a lot of political will emerging. Um there's also, you know, a big difference between a pause uh of a few months at the frontier AI companies or this kind of pacing the frontier idea that's become popular um versus what I'm proposing which is indefinite an indefinite pause. So with no fixed end point um so it could be it still could be short if we you know we pause we get a grip on the situation and we're like oh actually you know we think we can do this safely if we just XYZ. That's not what I'm expecting. I'm expecting it to take longer because there are these difficult unsolved problems. Um but yeah, it could also take a long time, right? And and I think we we can't count on solving these problems on a deadline. That's why I think it needs to be indefinite is we need to give ourselves the time that we need to figure out what we're doing technically and then also like to figure out how we might want to integrate more advanced AI into society. Like if we're serious about building something that could do all the jobs that humans are doing, that's the most disruptive, you know, thing technology we've ever built. um because society is sort of built on you know the idea that people's labor has value and that's where they derive a bunch of their power including their political power and and finally this is I suppose this is jumping a few steps ahead of where we probably are because Donald Trump is not a particularly rational man looking to make a rational deal but if if he were to be a sensible person um and I suppose if if if Congress decides to take action on this front um the big sort of technical issue everyone is going to start debating is verification you know if America stop. How can they check that China isn't going ahead? Or even if you know, say OpenAI pace the frontier, how can they know that Amphropic isn't racing ahead? Is this a Is this an irresolvable problem or is there a quite simple technical fix? I >> I think it's actually pretty simple. The hard part is knowing where the chips are and the factories that build the chips. Um, if you know where those things are, you can just take them offline. You can just decommission them. You can dismantle the supply chain for the chips. you can, you know, destroy the chips. That's like a very very simple solution that I think would be quite robust and easy to implement to ensure that nobody has the means of continuing to build more powerful AI systems. Um, now there's a lot of things you can do besides that, right? You can instead say let's let's monitor these chips. Uh, you can for instance have people from different countries literally at the data centers um and inspecting that some protocol is being implemented correctly. you can say these data centers are only going to run certain kinds of computations. For instance, they're only going to do inference on existing models instead of training new models. Um, and we have, you know, a technical protocol for ensuring that that's the case. And then we have people from all the relevant, you know, signatorries, all the relevant parties, US, China, whoever else monitoring all the activities at the data centers to make sure those protocols are implemented correctly. Um, you can also like just take all the chips and like put them on an island somewhere and, you know, have the everyone will have the ability to blow them up at a moment's notice and then you kind of figure out what to do next. Um, so I think it's actually really easy to begin such a pause and then there's lots of options for how to continue it. Uh, what I'm also concerned with is the durability, right? uh because I want it to be indefinite and for that I think the main concern is that somebody somewhere will continue doing this in secret and they could you know if they have a bunch of chips that they've squirreled away they could build a data center you know underground somewhere and keep training even if they don't have the chips maybe they could build one of these factories one of these fabs although they're extremely extremely sophisticated and require regular servicing and maintenance um so I do think it would be pretty hard to build one of those in secret and to carry out this kind of a secret development project if we just collected all of the chips and fabs that currently exist and um you know monitored them, took them offline, whatever. Uh cuz it would probably take a matter of years and so intelligence agencies from your rivals would probably figure out that it's happening in time to have a diplomatic solution resolution to the to that um to that development and the threats that it poses. On the other hand, um if we don't get rid of the chips, uh if there's still a bunch of training capable chips lying around, I do worry that at any moment one of the countries might just say, "Hey, we're going to grab a bunch of these chips and keep training." And then you only have like maybe a few weeks or months potentially until they could be building something that is, you know, extremely dangerous. Um and that becomes much more tense situation. I think you can potentially resolve that by setting it up such that it's easy for anybody to again like destroy the chips or take them offline. So like if the US tries to seize them, China can just blow them up or something like that. But I haven't thought through all the geopolitics there cuz you know if that's the situation then China might decide to blow them up for another reason like just because they feel like it's to their advantage for some other reason and so you don't necessarily want to give everyone that power. So there's a lot of things to think through here still. Um, fortunately, we're starting to see, I mean, it's it's a little bit later than I would like, but we're starting to see a lot of research um, coming out looking at this stuff. And I'm I'm currently working on a very extensive feasibility study with some other professors here at Berkeley and other universities that should be out in like maybe a week or two. >> Fascinating. Everything is moving so fast in this discipline. You say sort of, you know, talk to people in some disciplines, they say it might be coming out next year. In in AI research, it's coming out in two weeks time. Um, David Krueger, thank you so much for for joining us on Navara Media. really fascinating conversation. >> Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been great. >> That was David Krueger getting on to bombing data centers, which I think is a fascinating vision of the future. Uh but we will wrap up there. Basea, thank you so much for joining me this evening. >> Thank you very much for having me. >> And thank you guys for watching. We'll be back tomorrow at 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Live. Good night. Thank you.