Allies left wanting: China’s isolation

Malcolm & Simone Collins break down the bombshell signals that China’s military bluff has been called — and the world order is shifting in real time.

After US-led operations dismantled Iranian and Venezuelan defenses with near-zero losses, China’s “world-class” weapons systems (the ones they sold their allies for billions) failed spectacularly in live combat. The very next day China quietly stopped its near-daily provocative flights over Taiwan. Coincidence? Malcolm doesn’t think so.

In this episode they explain:

* Why Iran’s desperate attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz are actually crushing China far more than the United States

* How Xi Jinping just purged the last experienced generals who warned him against invading Taiwan — right before those warnings came true

* The internal CCP chaos, the “fake it till you make it” culture exposed, and why even Peter Zeihan-style analysts got this completely wrong

* Trump’s surprisingly warm calls with Putin & Xi and what they really signal

* Why the next 6–12 months could decide whether Taiwan stays free or falls

Raw, data-heavy, zero corporate-media spin. If you want to understand what’s actually happening behind the headlines in 2026, this is the episode.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Right now, the United States, in terms of where we are struggling in this warfront, because a few big ships have been hit by Iranian missiles is to defend China’s economic interest.

That’s where their oil comes from, not ours. they’re essentially trying to hurt China until the US backs down over this.

Like the news. Says all of this without explaining it to people in stark terms,

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about the signals that we have of a massive change in how China might be thinking about itself. Foreign policy wise.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: specifically, they shut down their flights over Taiwan, where they used to have constant sort of military antagonistic flights over Taiwan.

They said, oh, this is because, you know, we’re going to have this [00:01:00] upcoming meeting with Trump. Or people have said, well, maybe it’s because of oil prices. It happened literally the, the next sort that was supposed to fly over after the first news of the bombing started. So it’s, it’s obvious that’s not the case.

Simone Collins: Well, hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And specifically what I want to talk about is not just this that happened with China, but. In Iran, in Venezuela. And in another instance in Pakistan Chinese equipment, which they had touted and perhaps believed internally to be top of the line in equivalent to US equipment failed any level that was beyond spectacular.

You’ve gotta keep in mind the, I ran at a, a $5 billion weapons deal with China. Oh. And so they reportedly had some of the best equipment there. And not just that we’ll go over what analysts were saying, but you know, you have Peter Zhan [00:02:00] calling Caracas a, a fortress you know, and impossible to, to invade.

You have other analysts saying, Iran, there’s just nothing you can do. You know, it’s, it’s completely. Impregnable. And yet, and I’d like to point out people, like if, if you watch something that’s tainted by like the, the, the bias media sources you’ll get a very bad understanding, I think, of what’s going on right now.

And I, I think a lot of people when I hear them talk about what’s happening for example, in Iran or what happened in Venezuela. For, for, for context, we lost only two planes and those were to friendly fire. We have lost no boats. Okay. And in terms of the, the very light, I think it’s seven casualties now.

It’s because of like random missiles of bases. This is astonishing when you’re talking about these attacks taking [00:03:00] off the board within any, a matter of months Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba which was reliant on Venezuela, but, but the, the point here being is China, I think it’s now, and we’ll go into evidence of this, why this would be sort of going back over the books and having to rethink, like, are, are we anywhere near the military power?

We thought we were.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Hold on though. We, the US shut down two of our own planes.

Malcolm Collins: It wasn’t us, it was another ally. I’ll get into it.

Simone Collins: Okay. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: The, no, this is actually insane. Like at this point we have total air dominance in Iran at this point, which basically means we can fly wherever we want within.

What was one of the most hostile countries on earth to the United States until fairly recently, all of this happened without China. And Russia actually has [00:04:00] attempted to help a little bit with the Iran situation. Oh, really? But keep in mind, if you go to CCP videos they would regularly talk about how the reason why the US hadn’t done anything in Venezuela is because we’re afraid of China.

Speaker 2: Why has the United States held back for so long and still dared, not really strike Venezuela? This whole thing is pretty strange. This is Chinese, US warships. Were already deployed in the Caribbean. The threats were made loud and clear, yet nothing actually happened because China is watching from behind.

And Venezuela itself isn’t easy to deal with either. It has real backing from China, money when it needs money, supplies, when it needs supplies. That means if the US attacks, it won’t be anything like Iraq. Maduro is actually quite clever. He keeps saying China’s victory is our victory. Deliberately tying himself to China and making Washington even more hesitant to act.

Malcolm Collins: That was the, the CCP talking position. Right.

Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. Well, what’s also interesting too, and why I’m really glad you’re talking about this is what I’m hearing from mainstream, [00:05:00] we’ll say progressive leaning. YouTube people and from mainstream media is that the United States is putting itself in a uniquely, strategically weak position vis-a-vis China because we are diminishing our back stock of weapons on Iran making us unable to potentially support Taiwan, should China make a move.

So

Malcolm Collins: that is Okay. So like we, we, we should talk about how embarrassing this situation is for China right now. , The way that Iran is trying to get us to stop attacking them.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Is by doing enough economic damage that the US feels it needs to pull back.

Right. The, the core way that they are doing that is attempting to increase shipping prices through the strait of Hermo. If that was cut off the core country that’s going to fail is China. Mm-hmm. Right now, the United [00:06:00] States, in terms of anywhere where we have our back against the wall in this Warfront anywhere where we are struggling in this warfront, because a few big ships have been hit by Iranian missiles is to defend China’s economic interest.

That’s where their oil comes from, not ours. We don’t get anything from the strai of her both. That’s China.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Had you contextualized that Simone?

Simone Collins: Huh? Well, it’s certainly not what people are talking about, so, no, I wasn’t thinking about it. It wasn’t top of mind. I mean, people had mentioned like, well, the US isn’t directly affected by the, you know, oil interruption, but that doesn’t matter because globalization means the US is affected.

If anyone else is affected, that’s, yes. And

Malcolm Collins: who is most affected? China. China is the country that [00:07:00] is most affected by what’s happening right now in terms of global powers. And. It’s, it’s so weird how they gloss over that they’re like, this could cause a global economic crash. Instigated, obviously not by the United States because we now have a bunch more oil, but by outside powers collapsing.

What outside power are you talking about there, buddy? Because I can think of one that depends on this strait being open a heck of a lot. And we’ve talked about this in other videos, but I think a lot of people do not contextualize how much China depends on this. A huge chunk. If the straight of Malacco was closed, which would be a little bit closer they’re losing 45% of and I’ve heard other estimates as high as 80% of their imported energy.

Mm-hmm. Which would be devastating. Not only that, but China is a net food importer and a net phosphorus importer, which is Doub China. We’re phosphorus

Simone Collins: though,

Malcolm Collins: because we’ll do a second video on this. Morocco did this play where it took the Western Sahara, which is like, they did a really good job of it as well.

Oh,

Simone Collins: you mentioned [00:08:00] this. They’re just like quietly doing a land grab. Is

Malcolm Collins: that right? That’s the vast majority of the world’s phosphorus supply, which is necessary to create fertilizer. Good for em isn’t something we can create artificially yet. All

Simone Collins: right,

Malcolm Collins: Maria? They have like 13 x the amount that China has.

Mm-hmm. And so, another thing about this conflict, which is interesting that you point this out. So not only is 17% of China’s oil coming from Iran and Venezuela, but a lot of the rest of their oil comes from countries that are now better friends with us because of this conflict, specifically Saudi Arabia.

Everyone out there who’s like, oh, you know, the United States is doing this because we’re being manipulated by Israel and the Jews, and everything like that. Yeah, okay. Whatever you wanna believe that. But the, the reality of geopolitics is that this is as much something that Saudi Arabia wants as something that Israel wants.

And Saudi Arabia has a lot of global geopolitical power specifically. [00:09:00] Because of the concentration of wealth within the country, which allows them to do things that other countries cannot do. But secondarily, because of their ability to cut off oil supply to other players if you have any degree of the control of Iranian, Venezuela and Saudi oil, you control a huge chunk.

And then the US oil, which is a huge chunk of, of, of global oil supply, just a huge chunk of the global oil supply. So that’s also super relevant to think about. But I’ll, I’ll get into the points here. In regards to where I think things are going in Iran right now. My, my read of the situation is, is a lot of, if this ends up working out the way that Trump wants it to work out to, in a best case scenario, is they need to, when I say they, I mean Mossad needs to kill the new Ayatollah.

If they can successfully show that if you put in an ayatollah that is not willing to play ball, we’ll just keep killing them eventually. One of these Ayatollahs, because like the one that they put in

actually let’s talk about [00:10:00] like the religious significance of what’s going on right now. So they put in an ayatollah that is the direct son of the last Ayatollah, which both cel, last Ayatollah, and the first Ayatollah put in writing that they’re never do and that would make them a, a hereditary rural country again, and they said that that was anti-Islamic. Yeah. And not only is this guy horrendously corrupt, hundreds of millions in the UK right now in terms of like laundered estates and everything. But in Islam, this is, this is shown as happening in the Koran. When a country loses a war Allah says I make you do that.

Like, like this happens to you because you are not being faithful to me in the right way. And so this puts a bit of a mandate, Kevin, what’s going on in Iran right now? Oh, for the person who was elected Ayatollah in an anti-Islamic fashion. Mm-hmm. Which is ironic that the former Aya [00:11:00] took that position because they’re Shia, and the Shia is a faction of Islam that split came over wanting Islam to be more hereditary.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I, whatever, you know, may, maybe they can get around it with that. Right. You know. But the, the point here being is, even if we just pull up, people can be like, well, now Iran is more motivated to attack us. And it’s like, well, they were certainly motivated to attack us before. Right. Most of the terrorist action that we have been dealing with globally other than the stuff that’s funded by the Saudis and the Wabu was funded by Iran.

And this is why support for the war is so strong in the US military. There were some recent polls about this. I mean, I think it’s because, you know, even though that they’re the ones who are most directly impacted by having to go into action where there is action they also realized that this has been the group that we’ve actually been fighting throughout all Middle Eastern conflicts that were just pussyfooting.

Hmm. But let’s get into this. China significantly reduces military aircraft incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification dome [00:12:00] starting on February 27th, 2026, marking an abrupt, unexplained pause in what had been near daily operations. This whole lasted at least seven days, initially, the longest such period of time since Taiwan began publicly tracking these before the 2020s.

So, so, no, this is the longest we’ve ever seen. Since the 2020s and this period of no planes was only ended by the resumption of just a two aircraft. And these were surveillance, not military aircraft or traditional like fighting aircraft on March 6th, followed by minimal continued activity. Now a few interesting notes as to China’s position right now and why this may have China so much to see their equipment fail.

So spec spectacularly in a public context is China over the past year has reduced actually it’s over the past couple years, has reduced its military purchases by 73%. And the reason they’ve reduced military purchases is because they went with this policy of we want to produce more internally.

That

Simone Collins: makes sense. I mean, from a national [00:13:00] security standpoint, you should be internally producing these things,

Malcolm Collins: right? Unless it turns out that you can’t make things internally or everything internal is corrupt. Then they have the secondary issue and, and see our video about the coup that happened was in China recently.

And I mean, I still think the evidence points to this, but one of the guys, I, I, I love it that some of our people are like, no, no, no. This was just a totally normal thing for Xi. To illegally. Mind you, this was illegal within the CCP because it was the top council. And to take action against other members of the council required a majority vote of the council.

Mm-hmm. The problem is, is that she was arresting the only two remaining members of the council other than him and the head of the secret police. And so he couldn’t have gotten a majority vote. And a lot of people were like, oh, this may have just been a normal thing to have happened within China or something like this.

So some side notes after that, immediately they do this big announcement about this, which they’ve never done before. Normally when they’re doing corruption cleanups, they don’t immediately then be like, this [00:14:00] guy was a traitor to the nation. Like super strong wording in major publications and then withdraw it the next day, which was really interesting as well showed there’s some like power stuff going on there.

It’s really fascinating. This happened since then. Is it, you know, what happened to that guy? They’ve coming to the backyard dead.

Simone Collins: Oh, just what? Murdered or just,

Malcolm Collins: oops. Likely. Likely. They said he had medical complications.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Huh. Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, this hasn’t been announced officially, but this is what the rumor mill is, and there hasn’t been any proof of his life, which, given that there is a rumor of this, you think that if he was alive, they would be like, and here’s proof that he’s still alive.

Sure. But this matters a lot from Chinese perspectives. It means their entire upper military barras has been removed at this point. Right. And there have been rumors that she actually wanted to go and try to take Taiwan during this last US election cycle. And that it [00:15:00] was these two top generals that were keeping him from doing that saying this is a bad idea.

Simone Collins: And these are generals who per the previous podcast you did on this were more experienced? They were some of the most,

Malcolm Collins: they were, yeah. The only people with real experience, like

Simone Collins: in,

Malcolm Collins: in, in the

Simone Collins: like they, they’ve seen more before. They’ve seen China involved in military action, and they, I guess had presumably the wisdom to say, let’s not do this.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And I, if I was gonna suspect anything before I get further here what I think might be going through, she’s head with all of this. Mm-hmm. Put yourself in, in, in she’s position. Okay. He takes out these two top generals because he is them. As blocking his ability to do what China needs to do, which is just retake Taiwan.

Okay? He thinks they’re blocking him. They’re not really listening, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So he does that. And keep in mind, these people have been long-term friends of j. As well, right? Like they were not in the anti G faction. These people were always [00:16:00] in the G faction, the inner

Simone Collins: circle.

Malcolm Collins: And don’t be stupid about this.

So he’s likely having some internal feelings about this.

Speaker 3: The point I’m making here is that I xi the Xi feeling very certain about all of this until, you know, Heath killed one of his best friends for a long time. And then all of the things that that guy warned him about and was the very reason he believed that guy was betraying him. Not just that guy, but two guys, um, start coming true, one after another and you start to think, oh my God, am I actually like with.

Was I wrong to do this?

I.

Malcolm Collins: But also now, you know, he’s responsible for what China does next. He actually needs to, because he doesn’t have anyone else in the room anymore. Meaningfully,

Speaker 4: And this is similar to what I say about relationships. , The reason why it’s useful to structure relationship for a man to have all of the power is because when a man has to make final decisions and only has you to [00:17:00] consult, he’s actually often going to, unless he’s a complete evil sociopath, going to make decisions that are in your favor more because he doesn’t feel that there is some alternate source there that’s, you know, arguing against him.

And he needs to compromise. He needs to think, okay, now I’m. Fully responsible for everyone, and she may finally be in that position. Now that he’s taken everyone who can disagree with him outta the room, he needs to begin to model their opinions, and he might not have been doing that before. He might have been using them to model the opinions of the why Would it be a bad idea to go directly after Taiwan faction?

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Immediately after he does this is when the Venezuela thing happens. Which he had believed was impossible.

Most of the world’s top military analysts believed was impossible.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Then a few months later, the Iran thing happens. And increasingly, and this is also really important, China has become isolated because of its reaction to these individual instances. Every time a Chinese [00:18:00] ally who China had promised they would protect, comes into a situation like this, and China does literally nothing but sends a strongly worded email.

That makes it so much less likely that any other Chinese ally is going to come to their aid if a conflict actually were to begin. And I think that this has become ex like dramatically starker in a modern context than it was before this. So if you go, let’s go six months ago. Okay. China attacks Taiwan.

Now China’s gonna be saying, yes, America has allies in the region, you know, Japan, Korea, Australia but and I’m just here listing allies that I am fairly certain would militarily go to bat over this. Right? But we also have allies, you know, throughout the, the globe, you know, Iran and Venezuela and Russia.

And they’re gonna put [00:19:00] on either economic pressure or military pressure to help us. The, the problem is, is that right now it doesn’t look like that. It’s very obvious Iran isn’t gonna be able to do anything no matter what happens, even if the war winds up in the like, best possible scenario for them.

Which really for them is the US of what, what, what does Iran want? It wants the US to pull out without the new guy being killed, and then no long-term geopolitical destabilization within their country. The problem is, is even that would be a win for the United States when contrasted with the pre this status quo.

Right. I, I ran basically just once this to end or dragged the United States into something long term that causes, again, geopolitical strife. But that geopolitical strife will be felt disproportionately by China. Right. So again, it’s like a weird situation. So in Iran’s best case scenario, China [00:20:00] is one of the primary people who suffers.

Right?

Simone Collins: I don’t follow that. And I think what Iran wants is Israel gone off the map and the US not involved

Malcolm Collins: in cases? No, I’m talking about realistic. The path they could go from where they are now.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: China Iran’s strategy right now is like, you know, we punched him. They’re trying to like grab us and hold us in place to be like, now you can’t get out.

Now you’re entrenched within this, this fight.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. They’re just trying to basically last us out until this becomes too politically unpopular for us to continue and then we back out and then they just continue on with their current regime. That’s their plan,

Speaker: For some idea of how bad things are and how potentially unrealistic this is for Iran. They just froze at some large banks. , I think all the civilian bank accounts, meaning that it looks like the government is just going to begin to steal money from its civilian population, , because it does not have enough to pay to keep this war going.

Malcolm Collins: that’s their best [00:21:00] case scenario. But they’re still geopolitically completely isolated after that at this point because they spazzed out and attacked every one of their neighbors.

And the reason they did that is ‘cause they were trying to create economic damage. The problem is, is it geopolitically isolated them and the core economic damage they’re doing globally is to China, not to the United States. Right. Like they’re essentially trying to hurt China until the US backs down over this.

Mm-hmm. Which is a terrible situation like the news. Says all of this without explaining it to people in stark terms, it really better gives you an idea of China’s position. So, even in the best case scenario for Iran, China is in a terribly backseat position. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so China. Does decide it wants to go into this war now.

Now the position that it’s in is not China and Taiwan and China asking does the US actually involve itself? Because I think with a lot of this, this, this you [00:22:00] know, historically Biden said that we wouldn’t I think Trump has wavered on whether or not we definitely would try to defend Taiwan.

I think that China’s now getting the perception that the United States would try to defend Taiwan if, if they went in, you know, after seeing what happened in Iran. Venezuela, I think they’re getting the idea of, oh, as long as Donald Trump’s in power, it’s a yes from the United States,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: And the problem with a yes from the United States on Taiwan, from China’s perspective after not backing its own allies, is Russia obviously isn’t gonna be able to do anything.

Really differentially to support them. Iran’s outta the picture of Venezuela’s outta the picture, every regional power of relevance except North Korea, which I’ll get to in a little bit. Mm-hmm. And yet within the region, if the United States decided to do something, at the very least, Japan’s gonna jump in especially with their current president.

Who Oh yeah. Says that Margaret Thatcher is her primary political inspiration. Mm-hmm. And is a politician. We maybe should do a whole episode on just her. She’s [00:23:00] awesome. I like her. So

Simone Collins: I think they also have invested more in the mil military

since

Malcolm Collins: she, but they, they’ve increased their military spending.

If you look at animes recently like gate and stuff like that, they’ve become incredibly more militaristic and jingoistic in terms of military fantasies. Japan wants to be, and very core to their culture historically is brutal militarism. And

Simone Collins: it’s, yeah. So it’s just no longer hashtag too soon.

Like we’ve finally gotten to the point where,

Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s no longer hashtag too soon. Yeah. Yeah. They, they are

Simone Collins: enough time has passed where they can like be military and not be creepy anymore.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They’re not like Europe, where Europe is like, oh, you know what, if like young men die in war or something like that, or like imagine the burden to us, the young Japanese men are like, yeah, like, this is gonna be awesome.

In part because the way that the history of World War II is taught to them and the way that the history of their own words [00:24:00] is taught to them is so jingoistic that. It’s really either they’re the victims or they’re just winning, winning, winning. Right. It’s never like this is a morally complicated thing to be doing.

And with United States on their back and potentially a moral reason to justify them going to war, they’re gonna be quite excited about it. Mm-hmm. Would Australia get involved maybe. I mean, China is, they’re hugely economically tied to China. Yeah. So it’s a little bit harder to say on that front.

Simone Collins: They’re in a very fraught position. Yeah. And in the past, China has thrown its weight around with Australia,

Malcolm Collins: so Yeah. Same with South Korea. But why South Korea is sort of irrelevant whether or not they get involved, which is an interesting position is South Korea, like, so China decides to go for Taiwan.

The natural thing for them to do. North Korea recently has been doing major arms purchases of modern weapons. And a lot of people think that, they, they might be seriously considering an [00:25:00] invasion at this point. I mean, the question is, is why would they be seriously considering one at this point?

And it might be because it would be a jointly timed thing. If Xi Jinping has been planning to attack Taiwan, it may be a, a, a joint operation. Right. That, that’s when it would make sense to do that. If both countries have this, you know, wishlist. I want to go in scenario. It could be dual triggered.

The problem is, is that if South Korea doesn’t get involved in the war, right? Like suppose China does go for Taiwan and South Korea doesn’t get involved China’s gonna want to do everything as power to prevent North Korea from attacking because that would immediately trigger South Korean involvement.

And frankly, South Korea is just a lot stronger than North Korea. In, in every as we’ve seen from the current wars that Israel has been involved in the. Technological capability of a nation matters a lot, and the level of corruption within a nation matters a lot. And a nation could take on much bigger opponents [00:26:00] if those opponents are corrupt and can’t manage decentralized military forces.

And so, you know, the US would take that card, bring North Korea into the war, but we get South Korea. Yeah, that’s, that’s a great card to have, right? Sure. That’s, that’s again, why it’s, it’s sort of irrelevant the, the South Korea question to go over the specific military equipment that was on display here.

So Venezuela has long been one of China’s biggest arms customers in Latin America. Since 2005. They bought systems including the JY two seven A a mobile range, long range anti stealth radar. The, they bought the HQ nine and the HQ 12 surface to air missile sand batteries. And they layered these with Russian S 300 pals.

I was gonna make this episode talking about Russia as well, but I wanted to keep this focused on China. They in terms of how they formed the, so how’s the systems [00:27:00] performed? They failed completely. The US steals helicopters and aircraft entered Venezuela. Totally undetectable.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. So they had this total false sense of security. Like, don’t worry, we bought the anti stealth radar.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, they were, they were quickly blinded and, and, and jammed by EA 18 G Growler electronic warfare.

No. And none of the Chinese or Russian Sams fired effectively keep in mind how scary that is if you are China now. Right. It wasn’t like the systems performed poorly. They were still, they just didn’t work out matched. They were completely irrelevant.

Simone Collins: It’s, it’s kind of nice though. I would appreciate it as China having all these test cases for our military technology better that better with Iran and Venezuela than with them in some.

Scenario. So I guess, you know, the best way to test your military capability is to [00:28:00] have someone else pay for it. Basically, Iran and Venezuela subsidized it by buying these things from them and then have them play test it in live scenario. Yeah. This is,

Malcolm Collins: this is no longer a fluke in terms of Chinese systems.

This is the rule. They are

complete,

Simone Collins: totally well-documented that Chinese military tech has failed consistently, both in Venezuela and Iran when matched with American military tech. Correct?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And there’s been separate failures in Pakistan, but that’s a separate scenario. I’m not gonna go too deep on

Simone Collins: Oh wow.

Okay. So three, three different locations. All Chinese military tech

Malcolm Collins: people don’t understand how corrupt, corrupt countries are in terms of like, like how incompetent they can be. I think a lot of people, they see a big country, they see shiny things and they think, oh this country. A good example is Iran’s military tanks, for example, they had something called the Suleman.

And I’ll put one on screen here. And they’re very pretty tanks. They’re actually an American tank that’s around, I think 70 [00:29:00] years old where they have just basically put metal plates over it. They make it look more angular.

Simone Collins: They added skins.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they added skins. They added skins to old timey tanks.

Simone Collins: That’s amazing.

Malcolm Collins: And people can be like, well, China isn’t that look. And China has good drones. You know, who had Chinese drones? Was Iran. But on top of the Chinese drones that, that Iran had, oh, sorry. I was going to go over one of my favorite stories about China to give you an idea of what I mean and why people at the head of China can be so scared when you can go and you see the display and you think that this stuff works and then you realize it’s all fake.

Is for the Olympic Games when they wanted to look like very you know, cutting edge and green and like we’re so much better than the west and they had a stoplight.

Simone Collins: This is the Suman tank. It does just looked like someone put like cardboard or, or like, I don’t know, like cool metal over a tank. It like, just they covered it.

It, it, it, it kind of reminds of like, you know, when like families at home make tanks that of cardboard, like [00:30:00] cos Halloween costumes, it kind of looks like that, don’t you think? Is

Malcolm Collins: it Yes. Is it so much worse than you expected, Simone? It,

Simone Collins: it is just about what you described, actually. So pretty good for our audio only listeners.

Malcolm Collins: But the well, speaking of the, the, so, so during the Olympic games, they wanted to look really you know, high tech and everything.

Simone Collins: Sure.

Malcolm Collins: And so they had on street corners air powered street lamps. And it turned out that not only did they not work, but they used electricity to spin the fans to make it look like they were working.

Simone Collins: That’s adorable. So, wait, people knew that because if there was no wind, they were still spinning.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know how people figured this out. I mean, the, the, the, just the d extent that you get this within Chinese culture because, because it’s so centralized, there’s just so much room for grift.

Mm-hmm. And so there isn’t a good understanding at the top how much of their equipment actually works. And now that more and more of Chinese equipment is sourced from within China, there is even [00:31:00] more doubt to give another example of one of their stealth detection systems completely failing Israel sent in.

This was a case where over Iran, a Iranian fighter jet was downed by an Israeli fighter jet. And one, this is insane that they have that much air control of tarran to begin with, right? But it’s also insane the way it went down. Okay. What the Israeli fighter jet was. And I’ll put pictures on screen and you’ll immediately see how comical this was.

Mm-hmm. It was a completely cutting edge stealth fighter. Like a best in class. Aircraft. Mm-hmm. The Iranian aircraft with an aircraft that was really made for training. It had no chance against the Israeli plane. And a lot of people are like, why did they even go off the ground? Why even waste a pilot on that?

Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And the answer may be that they couldn’t tell it apart from a drone

Simone Collins: with their tech or just with their knowledge.

Malcolm Collins: With tech is the Chinese [00:32:00] tech. They can’t tell Israeli fighter jet from a drone.

Simone Collins: That’s really bad. Okay. Wow.

Malcolm Collins: And note here, they have taken down seven drones, American drones.

That’s, oh, okay. So, no, no planes or boats but a few drones. That’s good for you, Iran. And, and people here note like the constant lashing out of Iran, the damage to surrounding gulf countries infrastructure as like some sort of failure on America’s part. Like, oh, they’re still sending rockets.

It’s like, no, that’s further geopolitically isolating Iran. Right? Like that’s not earning them goodwill in the Gulf, right? Like, the e especially when a lot of these countries are protecting themselves like the uua E with America bought systems. That’s a good. Economic opportunity for the United States in the future to sell them more of those.

Talk about, you know, depleted weapon. Surprise. [00:33:00] Yeah. Yes. This

Simone Collins: has been a big sales pitch for American military tech,

Malcolm Collins: And Israeli. These systems have failed marketed aggressively as equivalent to Western technology by China up, up until now.

Octavian Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So just say we were looking at. Venezuela. There was the $5 billion agreement signed in secret with Iran. And the known equipment that it included is the CM 3 0 2 anti-ship cruise missiles. These supersonic missiles with a range of 290 kilometers designed to skim the water surface at high speeds to evade ship defenses.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: The hq and keep in mind, none of these ended up hitting American ships. A, a few commercial tankers maybe, but no American ships. HQ nine B surface to air anti-ballistic missile system. The HQ one B surface to air missile system the F in six MAN pads the YLC nine B long range surveillance radar and [00:34:00] the type 3 0 5, a air surveillance radar and the SLC two counter battery radar for locating artillery.

And they acquired Sunflower, 200 kamikaze drones. And they acquired HQ 19 antisatellite interceptor missiles. I, I think they did actually take down one satellite. And and

Simone Collins: these were things, wait, that Venezuela purchased from China?

Malcolm Collins: No, these things I ran purchased from China.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: They, and again, these largely failed.

So we lost three F 15 E Strike Eagle Firefighter Jets March 1st, 2026, in a friendly fire incident involving Kuwaiti Air defenses near the Ali Alam Air Base. All six crews survived after ejecting, and the aircraft were valued at Route 282 million and were destroyed. We lost seven mq, nine reaper drones that were down by Iranian fire. But that’s it.

Simone Collins: Defense shock.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think it was [00:35:00] automated Kuwaiti Defense system, probably systems we gave them.

Speaker 5: Okay, so the, , system that shot down the American jets was indeed American in origin. , And what happened was, is some of the only casualties on, at least on the American side on this war had been recently killed in Kuwait due to bombs that had gone into the country, , from from Iran. By the way, for people who are wondering, most of these bombs aren’t flying anywhere.

Iran is like at what, 5% or something of the bombing that they were early in the campaign. But anyway, so, , the six American service members had been killed by one of these. , And so the Kuwaiti operatives who were not as well trained as the Americans, but had American equipment were incredibly on edge.

, And when they saw signals in the sky, they shot reflexively.

Malcolm Collins: So just, I mean, keep in mind these attacks may have been happening without Kuwait knowing that they were gonna happen. All of a sudden you see a bunch of fighter jets systems may have been automated.

But the point being is. It’s not that our equipment is [00:36:00] unassailable. If you have competent equipment that like is American or Israeli bought our equipment was able to take down our equipment. Right. It’s unassailable when going up against Chinese and Russian equipment.

Simone Collins: Hmm, interesting.

And then what do you make of Trump expressing such warm regard for both President Putin and Xi Jinping? I’m so confused by this in recent press conferences, for example, Trump was talking about his conversation with Vladimir Putin and about how impressed he was with the American progress in Iran, though of course, it’s, it’s hard to tell when Trump has been genuinely flattered by Putin or when put Putin is just mocking Trump.

And Trump doesn’t understand that. No. I think

Malcolm Collins: what happened is that at first Putin, like a lot of people thought Trump [00:37:00] was a fool. And I think that he did mock him in a, a lot of press and stuff like this. I think that if you contrast the US’ recent military incursions with Russia’s recent military incursions, Putin might be feeling a little bit like, wait, wait a second.

Does Trump actually know what he’s doing? Like, he made me look very foolish in comparison. It’s almost the exact opposite reaction to what Putin had is Putin had this big plan of how he’s gonna have this big military win without any you know, losses and how he’s gonna be overwhelming force and blah, blah, blah.

And Trump comes in with a totally new way of doing things. Your other episode where we talk more about that. And I, I genuinely suspect that Trump got on a call with Putin. This, this is my modeling of this. Yeah. Putin internally does not like what’s happening in Iran. He apparently has been helping Iran target oil [00:38:00] tankers and stuff like this to try to damage global economy.

Of course he would. It increases the price of his own oil, right?

Simone Collins: Well, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So,

Simone Collins: which is embargo. I mean, another thing recently discussed was that Trump, I think allowed, what was it? India, to take one Russian oil tanker without any penalties because you know, things are all messed up with oil right now and India really needed it or something.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway, the point being is I can imagine internally Putin might be thieving at Trump, you know? But when you get on a call with somebody who’s nice to you, and the thing about Trump with people like and stuff like that, is even if you look at where, like there have been fights like the, the, the Zelensky JD fight that wasn’t initiated by Trump.

Trump is genuinely pretty amicable with world leaders. Unless there are, or they are openly being hostile to him. Mm-hmm. So he gets on a call and he’s like, Hey, Putin, like, and Trump’s probably pretty excited about what’s going on in Iran right now. Like, can you [00:39:00] believe what we just did? Like we did?

And if I’m Putin right, first of all you’re gonna be like, yeah, you actually have done pretty well compared to what I expected. But in addition, Putin’s probably flattering him trying to get more military information because Trump’s on the phone all giddy about what the successes we’ve had in Iran.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m Putin and I’m like, wait, it can I get more information by telling him to talk more about all of his victories?

Simone Collins: Maybe Trump is also so friendly with Russia and China, or at least voicing such warm regard toward them because in his view now he has demonstrated that he has negotiating power.

And Mr. Art of the Deal loves knowing that he has the bargaining chips at this time.

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is the way that Trump always does deals when the other person is playing hard to get, and we’ve actually seen this in real time play out. So we can tell from Trump’s public speeches what’s going on in his private calls.

By this, what I mean is there have been instances in which somebody was [00:40:00] saying really bad things about Trump publicly, but Trump was saying really positive things about them publicly. And then a bunch of deals come out that are hugely favorable to the United States. The new leader of Venezuela is a great example of that, that to me implied that Trump knew under the table they were having positive negotiations.

And he’s not gonna bad mouth her just ‘cause she’s badmouthing him. He is like, I understand why you have to do this. Right. With Xi Jinping and Putin what this tells me is he feels he’s getting what he wants in the conversations he’s having with him. And why shouldn’t he Putin. How did Defense Pact with Iran?

Right? Like they should have come in now. Realistically, could they have given how tied down they are to Ukraine? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, no. Yeah, they would’ve been insane. Could China have, honestly, I think it would’ve been the right call for China to come in in Iran. People can be like, they

Simone Collins: do what though, really?

Malcolm Collins: Well, so the problem is, is at least make it costly for the United States. If China had tried to come in, at least we may not have been able to hold Iranian airspace.

Simone Collins: Well, but [00:41:00] then there would be precedent for us being in open military conflict, whereas right now we are just tense frenemies.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Okay.

So let, let’s go over why I think it was demonstrably stupid for China to not intervene in this. Now I don’t think that anyone could have made this call in the speed that China needed to make this call. But China could have defended Iran, you know, tried Air Defense of Iran keep it limited as an opportunity to get one information on how good their systems really are.

Right? Which would’ve been very important for China two, to prevent the US and Israel from getting complete air dominance over Iran. And three, make America look really, really bad. Because if China gets involved, then everyone can say, this is a global war. This is a world war, even though it’s not.

China could have easily with the United States if China had done that and said, and we will not take this conflict outside the border of Iran. Everyone else would’ve respected that because nobody wants a global war with [00:42:00] China. China doesn’t want that. We don’t want that. But the real benefit to China over this is it would’ve made it way harder for us to maintain the moral high ground in a defense of Taiwan if China tried to attack Taiwan.

Right. Because it could be like, oh, look at this instance where they attacked this innocent foreign power and we came in to protect them. Right? It would’ve really bolstered them in, in that position, given them a lot more information, and it would’ve made the United States hugely reticent to get involved in another conflict.

But the speed at which the US achieved air superiority was in Iran. Unfortunately, I think, and China can see this too, emboldens the US in any sort of future potential conflict here, thinking what could happen with Taiwan. And I wanna keep in mind what analysts were saying and how they got everything so wrong, because this is also important.

You hear just some of the words from analysts like Peter Zian saying, you know, Caracas is a fortress without the surrounding context. And the surrounding context [00:43:00] shows you geopolitically why they misunderstood things so hugely. Okay. So. Zhan talking about this, right? He goes, there’s a very strong coastal uplift with mountains, basically paralleling the coast.

So to get to Caracas, you actually have to go into the mountains and then punch through a couple of tunnels, one of which is about a mile and a third long. The other one’s a little less than a third of a mile, half a mile, somewhere in between. The hard part is. Keeping the city and the country alive, you’re talking about hours and any number of ways that things can go wrong.

So first here, note that he’s thinking a traditional invasion force, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Which wasn’t what we did at all, right? And so because he thinking a traditional invasion like what Putin attempted and got punched in the face he’s, he’s not, he’s, he’s making huge miscalculations about their actual defensibility.

Then he goes on, the hard part is keeping the city and the country alive. You’re talking about hours in any number of ways a thing could go wrong. It turns out all you need to do, and it, Trump has said, this was in the [00:44:00] press said, who do you want running Iran? And Trump said a regime insider. You know, he, he, he said that, yeah, the, the son of the Shah would be nice, but what we really want is a regime inr.

He said, that’s what we did in Venezuela, that’s what we want in Iran. Mm-hmm. Right. That’s how you maintain stability. Mm-hmm. Which wasn’t something that people had really done before in terms of geopolitics, which was this really ingenious play that Trump essentially invented. Then you’ve got in, in terms of Iran matia soak, who called Iran an impregnable fortress, he said, due to its geographical position, Iran is practically an impeccable fortress.

The Zargos Mountain Mastiff, which defies the Iran, Turkey, and much of the Iran Iraq border would make an invasion completely impractical. Then I point to the invincibility of the Iran Nation, which of, oh, this is the what? The previous, aya said well, we’ll get to this in a second actually.

‘cause it’s, it’s an important point. Okay. But what we’re seeing here [00:45:00] is they keep imagining an on the ground tank to hold the country invasion. Mm-hmm. Not a I can act within your country was impunity and the way the Iran war was carried out is very different from the Venezuela War. Right. And it says something very different.

The fact that we had recently just bombed Iran a bunch, ended that bombing on our terms, come back and bomb them a bunch and might be able to the point where we have Ariel dominance within their own country. We were then, we might be able to say after this, okay. We let the war come over. You have a new ayatollah think much later.

We come in when we know that he’s gonna be in a boardroom and we bomb that room. Right. That, that’s sort of the situation until you guys do what we want, because we can act with impunity within your borders from an aerial position.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That

Simone Collins: is So you think that’s why the Trump administration is being so cagey about [00:46:00] timing and while they’re, why they’re also being so cagey about defining success?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: When they mean unconditional surrender, I mean, it’s really more just, I mean, they’ve been clear. We will, we will keep taking out leaders until we like the leader you’ve chosen. That’s basically just, yeah. Sure. We’ll, we’ll calm down for a little bit and then we will be back as long as it takes.

Malcolm Collins: One thing that has been good about this word, I think it shows. Shown me really easily, who is actually not pro to the United States interests. And all the right is just a bought and paid for shill. I don’t know if you’ve seen Tucker Carl. We’ve been

Simone Collins: accused of being propagandists on

Malcolm Collins: this. Of course we have.

But these are people who are stupid and listen to the propagandists. They, no, they, they literally like to give you an example of how crazy the propagandists are. Tucker Carlson, did you see his interview on this?

Simone Collins: I did not, no.

Malcolm Collins: He said that Trump is asking for a [00:47:00] unconditional surrender from Iran, and he goes, and do you know what unconditional surrender means?

Speaker 6: Unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter and that has been, if there’s one consistent lesson of history, it means unconditional surrender means foreign troops get to rape your wife and daughter.. I don’t think Americans would voluntarily participate in it.

I, I just don’t think we can do that. And let’s stop. Let’s not lie to ourselves. We’re moving toward that.

Simone Collins: I heard that. Yeah. Soundbite.

Malcolm Collins: And, and he’s like an, I don’t think

Simone Collins: any sense, he made it seem like that’s some kind of definition.

Malcolm Collins: He’s, you know, and then he’s, then he goes on to say that I don’t think that a lot of Americans like want to get like that Trump.

He literally words it like, Trump’s gonna put out a call to American citizens. ‘cause he is like, and I don’t think a lot of American citizens would be interested in that. He’s gonna put out on a call to like American servicemen being like, who wants to get on the rape train?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Please, please fill out this, this Google form

Malcolm Collins: to get on the, this is what, no, but, but I think that, that you would say something that [00:48:00] anyone with basic common sense knows is.

Not true and is not true in an almost comical sense. Like you have to like assume your audience is really stupid. And keep in mind that Tucker Carlson was also the one who was saying that Venezuela was great because they kill gay people, right? Like, and that we should be better allies, wisdom. And that the Maduro’s regime, it’s awesome.

You, you heard about this, right?

Simone Collins: Oh no I didn’t. I thought you were referring by mistake to his whole Russia thing.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. This was, he had a thing with Madura, he had an interview and he talked about how great they are. And in the United States, we don’t realize how socially conservative Venezuela is and thus why they’re such a good ally or could be such a good ally which they are now Trump handled that, that was fantastic.

But. I just, I just don’t know how you can hear somebody say something like that and still be like, this person is being honest with me. Right. And for the people who are like, oh, well, there’s like Israel shills out there or something, the Israel shills [00:49:00] aren’t saying stuff. Like, if, if that’s the only reason somebody would be pro the bombing of Iran, not a extracted war, but the type of conflict that we’re in right now is Iran.

The, the people who are pro that, I haven’t heard them say stuff as crazy as this means that we need to go in and rape all of their women and children. Right. Like, to me it means at least they assume that their audiences aren’t as stupid. Which is just wild to me that he went there. That was one of the craziest things I’ve heard with this.

If you wanna hear what the Aah said about his country’s defensibility, he goes, I point to the invincibility of the Iranian nation, which is of course, due to Islam. This invincibility can be observed in the nation’s victory against the Doms invasion and resistance against hostile conspiracies over 40 years.

So it’s important to remember that this can be seen as, as, as disconfirming of the faith of the founders of the country if we can, and if [00:50:00] Israel can continue to act with impunity, with an area of borders.

Octavian Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I love when people are like, well, now Iran’s gonna do terrorism in the United States. Iran has been funding potential terrorist attacks within the United States for decades at this point. Like literally, they probably spend over a hundred million dollars a year. And I think that that’s probably a low number on funding terrorist groups with the goal of attacking the United States.

Speaker 7: Okay, so I way low-balled it. So I decided to ask an ai, I said, , how much money on average does Iran spend funding terrorist groups that have America as one of their targets? And it said, , expert estimates on the low end would put it at a billion dollars. And on the high end would put it at two to $3 billion a year.

If you’re like, oh, now Iran will start funding terrorist cells that want to attack the us. They were [00:51:00] spending at least a billion dollars on this a year up until now. People who act like this is just the concern of Israel are frankly cued in the extreme.

Malcolm Collins: They have two, one of them in custody right now. Confirmed attempted assassination attempts against Trump alone, right? Like,

Simone Collins: oh, you’re right. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The, this idea of now Iran is going to be, you could not have been more motivated than what they were already doing in anti-American attacks.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and that’s where I really get it. When, when these Americans are like you, you’d only attack Iran for Israel. They tried to assassinate Trump twice.

Simone Collins: It’s, it’s, yeah, it’s a pretty hostile enemy. There’s, there’s also a lot of people holding the United States responsible for deaths in this conflict. [00:52:00] You know, children in rebels of, of, of buildings.

This the girls school that was bombed.

Malcolm Collins: Way less people have died since we started this than died than civilians were killed. Like Iranian protestors, civilians were

killed. They sent your house now?

Simone Collins: No, they haven’t sent me any messages, buddy.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Yeah, no, I mean, I’ve heard that. I just don’t think that they actually care. They would’ve cared about the Iranian civilians that were being killed, and most of the people who were making these complaints when Iran was killing civilians, were saying stuff like you know, this is like Nick Fuentes.

He was cheerleading the regime while they were slaughtering civilians. Right.

Simone Collins: He really, I I have no idea. I, I haven’t been following what he’s been saying, honestly. I, yeah, I’m just so confused because I’m, I’m hearing such a consistent story on one side, honestly, both from the left and right, which is so strange that both the left and right are saying the same things about our conflict in Iran, which is we never wanted to be involved.

We’re killing people, and this is [00:53:00] horrible. Woo. On

Malcolm Collins: the right, not a single YouTuber I watch has been anything other than totally enthusiastic.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like Asma Gold’s enthusiastic. That’s the one person I’m seeing who’s

Malcolm Collins: Asma Gold Leaflet. N Zor the guy being enthusiastic little troll guy. The troll avatar.

Ready? The Romanian tv.

Simone Collins: Oh, it’s sitting on top of daddy’s cabinet.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: I’m, I’m literally only seeing people pro this and I’m, and I’m talking about every single YouTuber I watch

Simone Collins: Anna and Dacia on the Red Scare podcast, who are like sort of big right-leaning now. Influencers or both, are

Malcolm Collins: they right-leaning?

What are their right-leaning positions?

Simone Collins: I think they’re right-leaning. Yeah. I mean, they voted, one of them voted for Trump. I think the other one maybe just didn’t vote. But yeah, they have on all like the major right-leaning guests.

Malcolm Collins: They, they don’t have any kids by the way. One kid,

Simone Collins: one, one has a kid, two

Malcolm Collins: women.

And this is something I’ve persistently seen about the faction on the right that takes these [00:54:00] positions, right? Mm-hmm. Is they are not the faun position on the right. And they’re not going to be relevant in long-term right-Leaning culture in the United States.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, I mean, I guess, you know, if if they vote for our guys, it’s okay to partner with them For now, I’m just not seeing it among any of the YouTubers I follow.

And the, the YouTube, the people who have heard are the ones who have, you know, everyone’s like, oh, they’re Astro or the Trotter, I

Simone Collins: okay.

Octavian Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: It’s on the other side.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So it’s interesting that you’re seeing this, that our social media circles are so different. But my social media circle is very new. Right. And like the new right is the faction that’s pro this stuff. So

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, it, it, it, it seems to me that from a perspective of we want humanitarian crises to end this regime is running itself to the ground.

This regime is, has made it very clear that it is an existential threat. To the United States that it basically wants the United States to not [00:55:00] exist and it wants Israel to not exist. And Israel was like, Hey, we’re going in. Are you, are you with us or not? And maybe the United States was too. Also, the United States alleged at some point in this process that there was an imminent threat to the United States and all this, which we don’t know about, and maybe we can’t,

Malcolm Collins: Two assassination attempts on a president is a pretty imminent threat.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But there were like three or five days, like something in the future that was going to happen that would have happened had they not done this. That was

Malcolm Collins: also, who knows passed as well.

Simone Collins: So yeah. And,

Malcolm Collins: and

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The administration’s decision on this, as Simone pointed out, wasn’t to go to war or not go to war.

It was Israel’s doing this, are you gonna come in or not?

Simone Collins: Yeah. The Trump later said that we pressured Israel into it, though. That sounds like something he would say because he doesn’t wanna. Ever follow someone else’s?

Malcolm Collins: I don’t believe that

Simone Collins: lead. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I believe Israel this is just too risky to do under after something.

So as big a win as the Maduro thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:56:00] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, especially how, given how unpopular it is right now among many Americans just whinging about it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, the question is, and the, the, the long term is the people who are complaining about this are like, this is gonna be another Iraq. Do they reflect when we pull out and it’s not another Iraq?

Do they say, oh, I was completely wrong, or do they just listen to the next thing? Their propaganda of the weak week says?

Simone Collins: The, the narrative I get presumably when we pull out, ‘cause I just didn’t really see there being a, a very clear conclusion to all this is gonna be, well, you know, all we did was go in and kill a bunch of people and not achieve anything because basically a copy of the previous guys now in power.

And we lost millions of dollars in a lot of our weapons stockpile. And what do we have to show for it? Absolutely nothing. That’s what the narrative’s gonna be like.

Malcolm Collins: This, the stupidest narrative I’ve ever heard. Like clearly we already have a huge weapon because of Iran’s lower geopolitical position [00:57:00] was in the region after randomly lashing out at all of the neighboring countries.

Right? Like that’s already been an enormous geopolitical win for us within the region. And in addition, Iran is significantly less capable, militarily and economically after this in, in, even, even in that scenario.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. By the way, is there reasoning as to why they were lashing out at all these.

Not necessarily hospital to them nations.

Malcolm Collins: So the core reason and their core military philosophy is that they’re going to keep bombing all of the major infrastructure. So this is desalination plants that are important for living in the region and oil processing facilities mm-hmm. And gas processing facilities in the region to do enough economic damage to then blame that economic damage on the United States to make the United States look bad for this war.

They’re essentially

Simone Collins: trying to, they’re trying to hold the entire region hostage.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But the problem is that the US doesn’t rely [00:58:00] on this region economically, China does.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Back to the core topic of the video. So it, and it’s working. It’s working. It does. It’s having some economic impact. And it is making people be like, yeah, we don’t want to be in here especially long.

Especially given that this is happening with Iran. Right. That they’re doing this.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, it’s, it’s a working strategy for giving them leverage within the conflict, but it has a, a, a exactly opposite impact on their geopolitical influence.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They’re digging a deep grave, but they’re also, I mean, existentially threatened, so what do you expect?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Interesting. But in general, the, the bigger picture of China, you’re saying is China has now discovered basically that its military tech is not as efficacious as they thought it was. And they may be changing their stance on Taiwan, which may have been under imminent [00:59:00] threat. So perhaps a buy one, get one free of the United States invading, not invading, well, we’ll say attacking Iran.

Is that perhaps Taiwan has been given some more time.

Malcolm Collins: Or they’re prepping to begin attacking Taiwan right now and they haven’t taken any lessons from this. Oh. That’s obviously the other, or in this

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because that’s the other narrative that’s being spread in mainstream media is that now we have less capability to be involved in some kind of conflict with China over Taiwan if we want to go out and try to participate there as well.

So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. I don’t, we don’t wanna end up with Russia with a bunch of rotten bombs, you know, we make a lot of bombs use them. Okay.

Simone Collins: Keep it fresh. Yeah. I gotta do that whole Mormon thing where, you know, you [01:00:00] take your old emergency food that’s about to expire and you do potluck and you keep a fresh supply.

Yes. Gotta use up the old stuff and then bring in the new stuff so you have good, fresh. Emergency support. Well, it

Malcolm Collins: matters as we saw in the Russia, Ukraine war.

Simone Collins: You’re right. Actually, you make a good point. I mean, and and any infrastructure ages, it really is. I wonder if we are going through the older stuff, just like all the inventory managers of the US military being like, well, this was going to expire anyway.

We’d better use it. Just like people making casserole

Malcolm Collins: their old love your own, have a spectacular day. And it’s interesting to see what China does next.

Simone Collins: I am genuinely curious. Now, thanks for giving me a bigger picture of this, because what I’m seeing, and I think what many of our viewers are seeing is this very myopic, oh, isn’t it so horrible that we’re involved in Iran?

Take. And you are bringing focus back to a larger [01:01:00] picture and geopolitical story.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the horror of other involvement in Iran is China is being economically hurt, which of course hurts us because we live in a global economy, but we are being hurt because China is being hurt.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And to a lesser extent, Europe.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that totally makes sense. Okay. Interesting. Thank you. And I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: I think I’m gonna chase the other kids down and just shear them in the backyard like sheep

because they’re also in need of haircuts, as are you desperate day. So get ready for that. Know that you will not be spared the knife,

the razor, whatever it is. Aren’t you glad, by the way that electric razors exist? Can you imagine that people used to get shaved with like a straight blade? I wonder how many murders were conducted that way.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t use electric [01:02:00] razors.

Simone Collins: Well, I know you don’t. I’m just thinking about shaving in general and, and grooming history.

Okay. Well, I mean, when you think about it, since barbershops were also medical establishments in, in Europe for the longest time they must have like really the way it was, it was just seemed like, well if we have a a knife this close to your face, we might as well get dental work done then too. Like,

Malcolm Collins: yeah,

Simone Collins: you are already in danger.

Don’t worry about it.

Malcolm Collins: And today’s episode,

I guess you didn’t get to comments.

Simone Collins: I did not.

Malcolm Collins: I am working on better coding for the agents now ‘cause the agents are live, who our fab.ai. And so hopefully they can be you know, good for. Making. What I really wanna do is task some ways making games. ‘cause I have some specific game concepts I really wanna get out there.

Simone Collins: Oh, that’s awesome. I didn’t

Malcolm Collins: even, I

Simone Collins: even think about that

Malcolm Collins: life coding is because the agent system can like, do NPM start and see the game it’s working on and everything like that and capture the back end and the front end. It can do more of the iterative [01:03:00] process. No this is when it’s all working right now.

They’re still in an early stage, but the rest of the side is fully working now, so That’s neat. If you’re interested in like AI chatbots,

Speaker 8: what happened? There’s kids in my bed.

Speaker 9: They get in here. Why are there, why are there kids in daddy’s bed? I, why were you hiding?

The people. I wanna whisper some Beda Whisper. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 8: What I just, [01:04:00] I just whispered, I couldn’t hear you. What did you say?

Do you have a plan? No, I don’t. I don’t. I don’t stop it. Everybody outta my room. I said I was whispering it. I I This out, out, out. Everybody out. You goof. Get them out. You can go back down. Get them out. No, no, no. Be nice. Be nice. Roll out this, go out. Go out. If you do 20 lessons, you can stay in daddy’s room.

Otherwise, back downstairs. Oh. You’re driving to drop this. Get downstairs. I tried to show you where you wanna plan. Okay. I saw no Torson. Get downstairs now.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe