The Nearest War Wins

The lecture begins after a major escalation. Source trail 0:003:085:216:29 Last night, there was a major escalation in this war. So the Israelis have bombed the Iranian oil fields. And in response, the Iranians now are attacking the energy infrastructure of the GCC. Okay, so let's have a look...And as you can see, it is a regional war. And both sides are seeking maximalist objectives. And what this means is the United States and Israel wants to destroy Israel, especially its capacity to be a nation state. And... Israel has bombed Iranian oil fields; Iran is striking the energy infrastructure of the GCC and hitting Tel Aviv. The material logic is already global because cheap energy is the basis of the world economy. If Iran attacks Qatar, Saudi Arabia, chokepoints, and the GCC energy system, the war is not local. It becomes an attack on the world's operating system.

But the sharper opening is psychological and religious. Source trail 0:001:47 Last night, there was a major escalation in this war. So the Israelis have bombed the Iranian oil fields. And in response, the Iranians now are attacking the energy infrastructure of the GCC. Okay, so let's have a look...Because Tel Aviv and other cities are getting destroyed. And again, there's really no way for the Israelis to defend themselves against Iranian ballistic missiles. But, unfortunately, there are many Israelis who are ver... Tel Aviv is getting pummeled, yet a rabbi in Jerusalem treats the destruction as a sign that the Messiah is coming. That changes the analytic lens. The same event that looks like national damage from one angle looks like spiritual confirmation from another. A bomb can be read as evidence.

That is why the first puzzle is not simply who has military advantage. Source trail 3:088:4011:0112:13 And as you can see, it is a regional war. And both sides are seeking maximalist objectives. And what this means is the United States and Israel wants to destroy Israel, especially its capacity to be a nation state. And...And Netanyahu's residence was also targeted in Tel Aviv. So that's a really interesting question. How are the Iranians able to target so many of the top leadership of the Israelis? Okay? We don't need that. But this is... The Americans and Israelis seek maximalist aims against Iran; Iran seeks maximalist destruction of the global economy. At the same time, the killing of Ali Larajani removes the pragmatic figure who could have negotiated a ceasefire. The war is losing its off-ramp while some actors welcome the fire.

Jiang uses a gang analogy to explain why decapitation strikes are dangerous. Source trail 9:4811:01 With him dead, it is now almost impossible. Okay? To foresee a ceasefire, okay? So let's discuss why you really don't want to do this sort of stuff. You don't really want to kill other nations' leaders, okay? And so let...And you do that by negotiating with each other's leaders, okay? Because they have the authority to implement the treaty. That's the first reason. The second reason is, if you kill the leader, then more people, there'll... War is not normally about killing everyone. It is about bargaining toward the treaty most beneficial to your side. That means the enemy leader is not only a target. He is also the person with authority to implement the deal.

Kill that leader and two things happen. Source trail 11:0112:13 And you do that by negotiating with each other's leaders, okay? Because they have the authority to implement the treaty. That's the first reason. The second reason is, if you kill the leader, then more people, there'll...The Israelis and Americans are interested in maximalist aims. They destroy Iran permanently, okay? And the Iranians are also maximalists in that they want to destroy the global economy permanently, in order to restore t... First, the treaty authority disappears. Second, succession rewards extremity: the most violent faction can seize leadership because escalation now looks like strength. The strike may feel like precision, but politically it can make the war less controllable. In Jiang's phrase, there is no off-ramp.

The question then becomes how protected leaders are being found. Source trail 12:1313:2542:4543:57 The Israelis and Americans are interested in maximalist aims. They destroy Iran permanently, okay? And the Iranians are also maximalists in that they want to destroy the global economy permanently, in order to restore t...I don't think that's convincing. I think the most important... The most important... The most important... The most important source, the most reliable source of information is human intelligence, having spies embedded... Jiang doubts the clean electronic-surveillance story. Signal intelligence exists, but the better explanation is human intelligence: embedded local networks telling outsiders where internal rivals are. That question leads directly to the law of proximity.

The law is simple: everyone plays many games at once, but the game closest to you shapes action most Lens point game-theory-method The law of proximity says actors play many games at once, but the nearest visible game often governs action; in geopolitics, internal factional contests can determine how nations behave toward external enemies. Source trail 14:3216:43 What do these decapitation strikes mean? What does this ultimately mean for how this war will progress and how this will affect the world in general, okay? All right, so those are the three big questions I want to look...Yeah, I know. Then you go to work, where you're competing in order to win the favor of your boss and to be popular among your colleagues. Then you play a city game where you live in Beijing and you want Beijing to be be... . You play a family game, a school game, a work game, a city game, a national game. The visible, immediate game wins attention. The same is true of nations. We think the game is between nations, but often the deciding game is within nations Lens point game-theory-method The law of proximity says actors play many games at once, but the nearest visible game often governs action; in geopolitics, internal factional contests can determine how nations behave toward external enemies. Source trail 16:4317:46 Yeah, I know. Then you go to work, where you're competing in order to win the favor of your boss and to be popular among your colleagues. Then you play a city game where you live in Beijing and you want Beijing to be be...And the conflict within nations is the one conflict that determines how nations behave against each other. So today, what we will do is we will look at three examples of this. We will look at the civil conflicts in Amer... .

America becomes the first example. Democrats can support an unpopular war because they believe it will destroy Trump and the Republican Party. Republicans can support the same war because emergency powers, voting rules, and a national draft could help them keep power. The Iran war becomes a tool in the American power game nearest to each party. Source trail 17:4619:0220:29 And the conflict within nations is the one conflict that determines how nations behave against each other. So today, what we will do is we will look at three examples of this. We will look at the civil conflicts in Amer...that this war will be so unpopular it will destroy Donald Trump and allow the Democrats to rule forever. It will basically destroy the Republican Party. And so that is your strategy. And if you think about it, it actual...

Then the party fight turns into a deeper elite fight. Source trail 21:4422:5424:0525:2626:2227:22 This is the Peter Turchin idea. And he argues that what leads to the election is the election. What leads to civil war is that you have too many elite who want to be the ones in power. Power is a zero sum game. And ther...Okay? And AI. Okay? So, in other words, Wall Street are the main backers of the current elite. And then Silicon Valley are the main backers of the counter elite. Okay? So, these people are interested in maintaining the... Wall Street and the imperial elite want to maintain the current order; Silicon Valley and the MAGA counter-elite want revolution. Finance has a private-credit bubble; AI has a circular money bubble. Both expect Washington to bail them out. The state cannot rescue every parasite, so foreign policy becomes one surface of the bailout civil war.

Israel is not treated as a unified conspiracy Lens point secret-society-coordination The secret-society lens needs an anti-master-plan guardrail: apparent coordination may come from incompetence, factional infighting, incentive alignment, self-interested agents, or shared stories rather than from a single hidden command center. Source trail 29:25 Let's appreciate this. You know, a lot of people talk about a Jewish global conspiracy. What people don't really understand is the Jewish people have never, ever gotten along. So you go back to the time of Jesus, and th... . It is treated as a divided society, and that division is old. Jiang points from the Knesset's fragmentation back to the factions of ancient Jerusalem. The Jewish people, in this reading, are intensely creative and intellectual, and that creativity also produces massive infighting.

The central split is geographic and spiritual. Source trail 30:2632:0133:1134:28 The different political parties of Israel. And again, I hate to say this, but they really hate each other. It's not a show. They generally hate each other. And that's why Israel has been politically been so dysfunctiona...Lots of homosexuals. Lots of open ideas. Very secular. Very outward looking. Very Western. Jerusalem is the complete opposite. Okay? Very religious. Very conservative. And they, again, they hate each other. And the fact... Tel Aviv is secular, open, progressive, Western, and democratic. Jerusalem is religious, conservative, and theocratic. Tel Aviv sees David as the king of an open, creative empire. Jerusalem sees David as the repentant poet-prophet, the favorite of God because sin and grief brought him into daily relation with God.

That is why Tel Aviv's destruction can be legible to some Jerusalem religious actors as good. Source trail 34:2835:3236:3837:35 He's asking for redemption. He is repenting. And God forgives him. And in this process, not only does David become a better person, but he becomes united with God, because now they're best friends. Now they talk every d...And this is the divine soul. All right? So, what the animal soul is, you seek material comfort. You want to have sex. You want to get drunk. You want to party. You want to drive a Ferrari. Okay? This is all animal. But... Tel Aviv is the animal soul: comfort, sex, parties, wealth, material desire. Jerusalem is the divine soul: the part that wants God. If the animal soul must suffer so the divine soul can awaken, destruction becomes purification. Job loses everything and becomes more faithful; Israel loses Tel Aviv and rediscovers God.

The student question about whether the Messiah affects China draws the harsh eschatological answer: in that frame China does not matter, Russia does not matter, even the United States matters only insofar as it touches Israel. Source trail 38:1138:2538:42 a question today which is Thursday and like no I didn't say that I didn't saythe rabbi said that ah the rabbi said that like the Messiah is coming today but like well the coming of Messiah really affect China and those countries or is all their personal beliefs okay listen I know this is hard fo... The world is hierarchized around the sacred center.

Iran gets the same internal reading. Source trail 38:4239:55 understand but China doesn't matter okay only Israel matters United States China Russia does not matter the only thing that matters is Israel okay only matters is the people in Israel the Jews so these are major country...presidential election, and as you can see, it's a pretty divided country, where people in the middle voted for Jalali, but people in the outskirts voted for Pajasikin. So there's a lot of conflict in Iran, not just poli... The decisive split is not simply ethnic. It is the Islamic theocracy against secular nationalists, rural against urban, religious authority against a modernizing vision. War does not moderate this split. War radicalizes both sides.

On one side, the theocracy moves into Shia eschatology and martyrdom, imagining a messianic war against Israel and the United States. Source trail 39:5541:37 presidential election, and as you can see, it's a pretty divided country, where people in the middle voted for Jalali, but people in the outskirts voted for Pajasikin. So there's a lot of conflict in Iran, not just poli...Where they think that this war is about having a twelfth iman, massacres, and so on. And the Shia, who is basically the messiah, will turn to lead them to war against the great Satan, which is Israel in the United State... On the other, secular nationalists become Persian exceptionalists: Persia is the greatest civilization in human history, and its survival matters more than the Iranian state. The country can be torn apart by two sacred stories at once.

Now the opening puzzle resolves. Leaders are being found and killed because internal enemies can feed intelligence to external enemies. The foreign strike is the visible event, but the motive may be nearer: a faction wants to limit a domestic rival. This is the law of proximity at the level of espionage. Source trail 42:4543:57 Or will this lead to civil war in Iran, okay? We are seeing civil war in Israel, we're seeing civil war in America. Iran cannot afford to fight a civil war at this time, because they're being bombarded by two very power...That's, again, I don't have evidence, but I think, according to game theory, that's the best explanation for how these leaders are getting killed. Because again, it's not that easy as a foreign nation to identify the lo...

The political conclusion is bleak. Source trail 43:5745:04 That's, again, I don't have evidence, but I think, according to game theory, that's the best explanation for how these leaders are getting killed. Because again, it's not that easy as a foreign nation to identify the lo...You have the global secular financial order, okay? And this is the world that we live in today. Okay? And they're fighting against a nationalist theocracy, theocratic. So this is what we can expect for the next five to... The war is between the global secular financial order and nationalist theocracy, and the trend is toward theocracy. Iran becomes more theocratic and nationalistic. Israel abandons democracy and embraces theocracy. America also abandons democracy and embraces theocracy. This is offered as the next five to ten years of world history.

Then a student pulls the Israel map back into ordinary life. Source trail 46:0846:43 You mentioned that Israel have two divided parts, and one represents the animal soul, and the other represents the divine soul. Like I can substitute this logic to a single person. Like... People are always struggled wi...Okay. So first of all, it's important to understand that this is how religious people in Israel frame the conflict in Israel, okay? A conflict between the animal soul and the divine soul. The conflict between the animal... If Tel Aviv is the animal soul and Jerusalem is the divine soul, is that also an individual struggle? Jiang's answer is yes, with a caveat: this is how religious Israelis frame Israel, but the analogy works. Modern life has spent twenty years indulging the animal soul and abandoning the divine soul.

The final reversal is that economic depression becomes forced spiritual training. Source trail 47:4848:53 Where we are too materialistic and not spiritual enough. And what we know from history is that if you... If a society... If a society goes too far in one extreme, they swing back to the extreme, okay? And that's what we...There will be... There will be avocados in the supermarket, okay? But all this means is now you have a chance to focus more on introspection, on reflection, on family, on asking yourself, what makes me happy? What gives... You may not get the Gulfstream, the giant company, or the Maldives vacation. But the loss of those fantasies creates space for introspection, family, community, and the question of what gives life meaning. The answer, in this closing movement, is each other.

So the lecture's religious logic comes full circle. Source trail 35:3236:3846:4348:53 And this is the divine soul. All right? So, what the animal soul is, you seek material comfort. You want to have sex. You want to get drunk. You want to party. You want to drive a Ferrari. Okay? This is all animal. But...And so, God decides, you know what? Maybe he's only faithful to me because he's very wealthy. So, Job loses everything. And this heightens his faith in God. Okay? So, that's the vision that these Christians have. This v... Jerusalem says Israel can find God through destruction. Jiang ends by saying many religious people would put the human problem the same way: redemption comes through suffering, pain, and tragedy. The nearest war is not finally only party, city, or nation. It is the struggle between the soul that wants comfort and the soul that wants God.