June 26, 2025 • 43 mins
This week, Nate and Maria discuss Trump’s strikes on Iran. How can we understand this developing situation, without falling prey to our own biases? And when nuclear weapons are involved, how do risk calculations change?
Plus, Nate and Maria recap another week at the World Series of Poker, which wouldn’t be complete without some controversy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I'm Nate Silver. So today in typical high low fashion
Risky Business, We're going to start out with one of
the most serious topics in the world right now, Iran.
We're going to navigate carefully around this, in fact, talking
about how is an American citizen? Let alone podcast co
host We're trying to navigate things where we don't know
(00:52):
a lot of the parameters and think about a little
bit about the domestic conflicts, but also the the strategy
that Trump faces and the potential for good and bad
decision making.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
And after that we're gonna do a one eighty and
talk about poker and what's been going on at the
World Series, how Nate and I have been doing, and
some angle shooting and other controversies that have arisen in
the past week. Because what would a World Series be
without a controversy a week.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Let's get into it, Nate.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
We tape this show on Tuesdays. It's Tuesday, June twenty fourth.
You won't hear this until Thursday, and we always have
this caveat. But with the situation in Iran right now,
I think that caveat is extra important because just's changing
every second. Right So this happens all the time in
military conflicts, in wars, but in this particular situation, when
(01:49):
there's so much unknown, so much uncertainty, so much ambiguity,
where it's so difficult to make judgments, the fact that
we just don't know what's going on, and that the
situation keeps changing hour by hour really makes it difficult.
But as of now, we have Trump having announced on
truth social that there's a East fire, having successfully bullied
(02:12):
both sides, just saying okay, okay, we'll have a ceasefire
at least as of now Tuesday morning. We'll see how
how this ages on Thursday, but that's where we currently are.
So just a little bit of a recap in case
you haven't been following the news at all. The US
bombed three strategic nuclear sites in Iran. It was a
(02:33):
successful mission, but maybe not as successful as Trump initially
made it out to be. Iran retaliated by hitting a
base the largest US military base the Middle East, in Qatar,
gave the US ample warning, and Israel and Aron have
been exchanging strikes up until Tuesday. Morning, where Trump is like,
Israel stop and Iran stop, there's a ceasefire, and you're
(02:55):
going to agree to it. So that's where we are
right now.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, I mean, for better or worse. Markets are upfices
again Tuesday morning, Vegas time, Tuesday afternoon East Coast time.
When we're taping this market sere up. They seem to
put some credence in the news. Oil prices are back
down again. I believe it is a little funny because
like the heuristic had been taco Trump always chickens out,
(03:18):
which I think was kind of poorly formed. Right, I
think Trump is Okay, We're already getting into controversial territory.
I think Trump is more quote unquote rational. We can
debate what rational means about some of this stuff than
he's sometimes given credit for. Right, he backs off when
he has a losing hand. Here, I don't know. I mean,
(03:40):
there was apparently we're going to talk about like the
way Americans feel about this and the splits in the
Republican Party, right, you know, here there was apparently some
dissent in the cabinet. Tulsa Gabbard was afraid of doing
anything mean to Iran. Apparently this is not something that
Putin likes either.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
You know, the Republican Party also has a very complicated
relationship with the State of Israel, as does America in general,
and liberals and Democrats as well in their own way.
But this does appear to have been a Trump decision.
This is not a case like our previous president, President Biden,
who was maybe outsourcing a lot of high level decision
(04:21):
making to members of his cabinet.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, so on risky business, you know, we're all about
good decision analysis, Right, How do you analyze the risk?
How do you kind of weigh all the factors to
decide correctly? And in situations like this, like the simple
truth is that we don't have the information, right, no
one has the information when you're reading analyzes, you know,
whether it's in the New York Times or a Foreign
(04:43):
Policy BBC wherever it is, nobody has the facts and
we won't have them until much later on. Right, These
are the sorts of decisions that are analyzed well in
retrospect by historians when you know, there are things that
have become declassified, when we know more about what happens
when the people who were in the room actually start
talking and right, now we simply don't know. So all
of these analyzes we've talked before on the show about biases,
(05:07):
about motivated reasoning, about you know, availability, heuristics, and all
of these things, and that's I really don't want to
add to that because I think that people right now
are being biased by their political leanings, their presuppositions when
it comes to Iran, the United States should we get involved,
et cetera. And that is obviously I think tinting their
(05:28):
analysis in one direction or in another and showing how
they selectively process information. And so I think that on
this show, we don't want to do that, right, We're
not in the business of speculating on people in that
sort of sense. That's bad decision analysis. And so for now,
I think what we can focus on is on the
things that we do now, and as you know, as
(05:50):
responsible citizens. I think this is what Nate was alluding
to earlier. You often are in situations, right, this is
like the extreme of the unknowns because it's a foreign
policy decision. It was a military strike. Right, everything is classified,
like we really have no idea what the hell's going on.
We don't know what the intelligence is, we don't know
anything but we have to make decisions all the time.
(06:12):
We're in a democracy, so we vote, So we need
to kind of try to figure out what do we
do as citizens in situations of uncertainty? How do we
try to parse this sort of information? Right, Nate, that's
that's kind of what you were getting at, Right, How
do how do we respond? How do we try to
get through the fog of all of these different opinions
(06:33):
that may or may not agree with each other, and
how do we do that in a way that's actually
as unbiased as possible because it's so easy for me
to say, like in advance, oh, I agree that we
should have bombed around or I don't agree that we
should have bombed Iran, And so I'm going to look
at those analyzes only and I'll make up my mind.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, Like, let's let's enumerate for a minute here, Like
some of the things that we don't know and in
fact are deliberately likely to be concealed yep, right or ambiguous? Right?
You know. Number one thing we don't know is in
what state was Iran's nuclear program? How close they were
they developing actual weapons?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Number Two we don't know is how much to set
them back. I mean, you can look at satellite photos.
There's a big hole in the ground. Right, did that
hole was supposed to be dug very and deep in
the ground get penetrated to the point where they've been
set back by years? Right? Other other facilities that we
don't know about. That's number two. Right? Number three is
(07:27):
to what extent so Israel lacked? I believe they're called
bunker busting bombs to penetrate far enough if they could
do some things, they could take out you know, Iranian
nuclear scientists and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
You know, as a citizen, I'm I'm somewhat curious about
how much Trump felt like his hand was forced by that.
Yahoo That creates a complicated equilibrium, right. You know, Look,
I will say, I'm not a big BB guy. I
won't go further than that, Right, but you know, where
we force into a situation that like it may have
(08:02):
been the most rational action given that choice. We don't
know that either, And obviously we don't know like any
of the long term consequences of this. So far, it
seems like Iran is maybe more concerned about preserving domestic politics.
But to what extent does this like provoke for their
hatred of the United States and Israel. Does it provoke
(08:22):
future terrorist attacks? Does it make countries more determined to
develop nuclear programs or you know, biological weapons and things
like that. How does the rest of the Middle East
and the Arab world feel about this? I mean, one
of the good things. I think there were a few
good things in Trump's first term, right, one of which
is you kind of had And you can debate the
(08:44):
reasons for this, but we did see improving relations with
parts of the Arab world during Trump's first term. Are
they happy about this or not?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Right?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
We don't know any of that, right, And we also
don't know to what extent Iran would have used nuclear
weapons if they had them. I mean, I think they're
pretty widely regarded as a bad actor. But like also
that's a question of like stylized facts that we know.
It's not a case like what's the case, It's like
much more trivial. Right. It's like congestion pricing in New York. Right,
(09:14):
if you don't like research the empirical data on that
and don't look at the mechanism for how it works, right,
That's something where if you took a day and really
study it, you might have a valid opinion here, there
are just things that are unknowable beyond a certain level.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, I mean even even to the point where as
you said, we have no idea how much the nuclear
program was damaged. You know, there's speculation that a lot
of nuclear material was actually moved before the strikes, right,
And we don't know what the counterfacture would have been,
right Like, would diplomacy have been successful. We have you know,
historic data that it hasn't been in the past, but
who knows, right Like, there are so many things that
(09:48):
we just have no way of telling, and we don't
know how Iran is going to react right now kind
of over the long term. Right now, it seems like
the ceasefire is going to hold because it is a
great you know, rationally like it seems to me it's
a great space saving thing, right Like, if you know
that you don't really want the US to keep attacking you,
you can say, look, hey, we launched a at the
(10:09):
biggest US base in the region. But obviously they warned
the US ahead of time that this was going to happen,
so there were no casualties. But you can say, here
there's a win for all of us. We retaliated. Now
we're all going to step back. But what's the as
innate as you kind of alluded to, what's the long
term plan here? If we kind of saved all our
(10:30):
nuclear materials, do we just lie low for a few years, right,
and pretend that everything's fine? But really, like this really
pissed us off. What's going to happen? And the truth
is we can speculate, but speculation isn't going to be
particularly helpful in the absence of this sort of information.
And this is one of those times when I would
(10:50):
really really caution everyone to really try to understand what
your biases are, because those are really going to affect
how you're interpreting information, what information you're seeing as legitimate
or not legitimate. And that's true by the way of
policymakers as well. Right, this is one of those situations
where like, because of all of the uncertainty, actually are
(11:15):
reaching for heuristics and our brains kind of reliance on
biases becomes greater. So it's one of those things where
like there's an inverse relationship where well, actually no, it's
a direct relationship.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
The greater the uncertainty the greater our use of heuristics
and biases, because we don't actually have a lot of
information to go on, and so we go on what
we want to be true and gut feeling, and it's
much easier than to support that point of view. That's
a relationship that's very, very tricky and something that we
really need to avoid, including you and me, Nate right like,
(11:49):
we do it too, We're human. It's really difficult to
think clearly when you have all of this uncertainty. I
do want to go back to a point you made,
because I do think it's really interesting. And I was like,
what the hell, especially initially, like when you see that
the stock market, you know, and crypto and all these
things were not like they weren't really reacting right. Even
(12:13):
before the ceasefire when there was news of the bombing,
I was like, Oh, this is probably not going to
be that bad, right. We saw a much bigger fall
in both the last time that there was potential for
uncertainty and Iran a little over a year ago, and
this time everything was very muted, and I wonder if
that's just over correction saying, oh, well, last time nothing
bad happened, so we're just going to assume that it's
(12:34):
going to be just like last time, or if it's
wishful thinking, you know, oh well, we don't want anything
bad to happen, so we're just going to kind of
pretend nothing bad's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
What is it, Well, yeah, this famous thing where like
the stock market doesn't really discount for the price of
nuclear war because if we're all dead, then nobody cares
what you're for. One k is worth. I do think
it's worth saying that. Like, Iran's a big country in
various senses of that term, right, it has ninety million people.
(13:05):
I think Ted Cruz got that wrong in some interview.
It's ninety million people. It's a lot of people. It's
GDP per capita it is not very high as four
ero point five thousand per head. That's down. I don't
know what, except it's oil price fluctuations versus regime change
versus everything else. As of twenty as we say, as
twenty twelve, it had a higher per capita GDP than China,
(13:26):
so the world changes a lot. It occupies a very
important strategic location in terms of the way that oil
is moving and other goods are moving around. The Middle
East and around the world. So this is a high
leverage decision point. And by the way, it's like not
really invadable. Even foolish Americans I think would not be
(13:49):
inclined to invade. This country's much more populous and much
more mountainous than say Iraq. Right, maybe in some ways
it's better. I don't think there's any risk of like
turning this into a ground world, Like I do want
to say a couple of things here, right, you know,
One is that more countries having nuclear weapons is probably
(14:12):
probably bad. Right, you know, I think people on balance
understate the risk of a nuclear conflict. It hasn't been
that long, just a couple of generations since the world
has had weapons these powerful, right, So you know, other
things be equal, and things are not equal international law
and precedents and norms and things like that. And you know,
(14:34):
why does Israel get to have Unofficially it's a strategic
mbig explicient. Everyone believes that Israel has nuclear weapons, right,
you know who deserves them and who doesn't. I don't
know about that paternalism or whatever else, right, but some
people think we want regime change in a random like
the one thing I'll say about Trump because obviously we've
talked about Okay, you don't know all the facts, really
(14:56):
don't know any of the important facts, right, so you
default to priors, and what's a prior versus a bias?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
You know, I would feel better if Trump had people
obsessions of power that he had in his first term. Right,
if Pete Hegseth or Chelsea Gabberd don't like this, I
actually feel better about it, right, I believe it or not,
Trump trust Trump's judgment more than them frankly. But that's
the why we've come to it. That's the point we've
come to. But he has not been particularly hawkish, right.
(15:26):
He's been trying, I think not terribly effectively to be
negotiating a ceasefire with in Ukraine. Right, He's been all
over the place on China. Right, but you know, we
didn't have any new wars in Trump's first term. And
so so okay, you can clip this and criticize me.
You know the fact that like he's not doesn't have
(15:48):
this bushy and default toward intervention, I think is a
meaningful affects the priors a little bit.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
It actually does, it makes you and like I said,
we want to try to avoid speculation, but you know,
with these priors, it does seem like a potential thing
that he was thinking was not like I want the
US to be involved in Iran, but rather, oh, like
I think that I can just bomb them and they'll
(16:21):
do what I say, and we'll be one and done,
and then I'll be this beautiful peace broker, right, because
that's kind of what he like. That's always that's what
he wanted to do in Ukraine, not bombing Ukraine, but
he wants like, he wants to be seen as the peacemaker, right,
and he wants it to be done quickly. When he
took office, this we know, so this isn't speculation. You know,
he said, oh, I'll end the war in Ukraine in
(16:42):
twenty four hours. Obviously that didn't happen, but in his head,
you know, he can end everything in twenty four hours,
just you know, Trump shows up and he makes peace,
and so I think that this might have been a
bid too. Okay, well we'll just bomb them and then
everything will be fine and I can make peace and
we'll end this situation in twenty four hours or forty
(17:03):
eight hours or whatever it is. And that might seem
like insane thinking from the outside, but it is the
type of thinking that he's engaged in over and over
and over, so that seems like that might have been
what was going on in his head. Rather than oh,
we want another protected conflict, it was more of a
one and done. Right. If I do this, then I
can be Trump the Great. I can get a Nobel
(17:25):
piece price for a broker in piece between Iran and Israel.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah. Look, Trump won the Republican nomination in twenty sixteen
in part because he explicitly campaigned against Bushism in various forms, right,
and against foreign entanglements, especially in the Middle East. I mean,
in terms of the domestic politics, this policy or this
decision to bomb Iran depends on how the question is phrased. Right,
appears to be actually slightly unpopular on Trump's net approo
(17:53):
writting in the silver boltipulling average is a negative six
point eight. It's been fluctuating. It's actually fallen over the
past couple of days, whether it's an Iran effect or
just sistical noise. I think we'll need more data to show.
Maybe by Thursday you're looking at that, you'll have more.
But yeah, Maerica books, very skeptical of foreign intervention in
general in the Middle East in particular, has grown more
(18:14):
skeptical of Israel to the extent that we are are.
You know, I don't think it's a helpful factor necessarily. So,
you know, Trump, it's not a it's not a move.
It may be a cynical move to you know, Pollymark
has a ten percent chance that he wins a Nobel
Peace Prize or something. Right, But it's like, I don't
think it's a cynical Bush era move of Oh my
(18:36):
proval writing is falling, let's bomb somewhere, right. I don't
think that quote unquote trick works very well anymore. People
are very wary before and wars. Often what happens historically
is that you get an approval rating bump and then
things turn into a quagmire and then the president becomes
deeply unpopular. Here Trump, I don't way, whether it's a
decline or it's steady, does not appear to be a
(18:57):
bump coming at least from this right, So that historical
reward not being there I think might affect your your
priors too. That I don't know. I mean, there are
lots of cynical reasons to do this, I guess. But like,
but having lived through Iraq in Afghanistan, you know, and Trump,
I think again has good instincts for why the previous
(19:20):
Republicans became unpopular. I don't think he's doing this as
a way to like boose his popularity. And he's enough
other ways to have little cheap tricks to like to
do that. And like, you know, I'm not sure particularly
cares about foreign policy. Right he said recently, oh, there
are no permanent enemies. Was in the context of China
or Russia or whatever else, Right, But like he's transactional,
(19:44):
he's a deal maker, and maybe in some ways I
prefer that to the grandiosity of Bush era foreign policy.
I'm I'm I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, it's a it's a tough one. I don't think
I can go as far as to say I prefer
those because.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
We just have you know, it's not I mean, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Not a particular high bar. But it's just in the
sense that I think that there's a kind of Trump's
vision and then there's kind of the reality. Right. He
sees himself as, oh, I can be this peacemaker, but
the reality of it is that he might do things
that have unforeseen or they could have been foreseen by
good advisors, but unforeseen by him, long term consequences that
(20:32):
really fuck the world over. So it's kind of it's
kind of one of these one of these situations where, yes,
he doesn't want to entangle us. However, and I will
also say, in terms of his approval ratings, we've just
seen historically over and over and over that the Trump coalition,
kind of the MAGA coalition, is able to stomach complete
(20:52):
changes of policy when they come from Trump right, Like
he's just so good at persuading his base that what
he's doing is the right thing. So I would not
be at all surprised that if we do end up
kind of becoming more entangled in the Middle East, that
all of a sudden, the same people who were saying
no foreign entanglements will be like, yeah, America first, like
we're we're gonna show them what's happening. And we were
(21:13):
for this all along. So I can definitely I don't
see that this is going to actually do lasting damage
to him, because he has shown himself to be just
phenomenally good at being able to turn any sentiment in
his favor that's his superpower, right, Like, he is so
good at convincing his base that whatever he decided to
do was the right thing, even if it was the
(21:35):
total opposite of what he had campaigned on.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And we'll be right back after this break. Trump's other advantage,
I think your relative to Biden is that, like, he
(21:59):
is seen, I think as being a little bit unpredictable,
and that probably helps. I don't know if we want
to go too far in the game theory, but like,
but like, no, we've talked about that before.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I mean the kind of the irrational rationality, right, the
irrational actor, the kind of the Thomas Shelling model of
you know your famous chicken problem where you have two
cars going towards each other right head on collision course
and one of the drivers pulls out the steering wheel
(22:28):
and throws it out the window, signaling I can't swerve right,
so I'm going to win this, And that's kind of
the rational irrationality. Of course, the problem comes in what
happens if both of them pull out their steering wheel
at the same time. Then you're kind of screwed. What
happens if one person doesn't actually see you throwing the
steering wheel out the window, which is possible even though
(22:49):
you try to be blatant about it. You know, maybe
they were looking away at that moment. Maybe they were
so focused on your car that they didn't see that.
So there are issues with that scenario. But yes, there
is kind of the madman theory that if I'm unpredictable,
if I'm the one who is capable of ripping out
my steering wheel, and people know that, then they're going
to tread much more carefully around me.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, or at least one would, or at least one
would hope.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
So.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Right to the point earlier about like, Iran's a populist
country at times, it has flirted with becoming a developing,
wealthier country before the revolution in I guess seventy nine
and then and then more recently it's GDP had been increasing, right,
So it's it's not a I don't think it'd classified
(23:33):
as like a failed state that kind of has nothing
to lose, right, And it's always hard to gauge public
sentiment in authoritarian countries. I don't know, you know, I
think the conventional wisdom is that, like, the regime is
not especially popular in Iran. It's a sophisticated country with
(23:53):
a lot of history, and people may have ambiguous feelings
about about its current status, right, a lot of different
ethnic groups also within Iran, again a big, complex country, right,
and so like, look, all of this seems better to
me than like trying and failiate regime change in Iraq. Right,
But it's also higher stakes in some ways, involving you know,
(24:15):
one unofficial nuclear power will two the United States and Israel, right,
one perhaps aspiring nuclear power right, a state that where
a lot of oil and commerce turns on and so yeah,
I'm sorry to use a cliched metaphor, it is risky business, right.
You know. One of the things you learn in poker
is that, like, the biggest confrontations often arise from cases
(24:38):
where it becomes one decision escalates after another, and in
any isolated circumstance, it may be correct to take the
escalatory move. However, the a cumult of effective that can
be quite profoundly high stakes and profoundly negative in some cases.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, effects are not just what you see in the moment, right,
they can be exponential, And so you have kind of
the immediate stakes and it doesn't seem p regularly like oh,
you know, this is just a tiny, tiny blip, but
then it can really spiral out of control. I mean,
I know people it's to stay in the poker realm
(25:19):
who end up going bust in level one. I know
multiple people on level one of the main event of
the World Series, which Nate and I will both be
playing in just over a week. But in level one
of the main event, you have two hour long levels
and I don't remember how many big lines you start with,
but an insane amount, right, just totally crazy. And then
people just lose their minds and they end up in
(25:41):
these situations where they really do not need to bust,
but they do anyway, and they're like, oh, I couldn't
avoid it, And I was like, no, you could have
avoided it, right, Like, let's look at all of the mistakes,
all of the decision errors that led you to this
point where you felt like you couldn't avoid it, right,
there are so many mistakes that keep compounding and compounding,
and all of a sudden you're out of this tournament
(26:02):
where like you didn't need to be in that situation
at all.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, sometimes there can kind of be so what happens
a lot in these big world series events where there
are a lot of amateur recreational players, right, is like,
sometimes you'll have implicit agreement between the better players at
the table that we don't want to go to war
with one another. We both have an incentive to as
the superpowers. It's table to like preserve our chip stacks
(26:28):
and make easy profit from the fish as they're called. However,
when there's a lack of trust and there's no intrinsic
reason to trust opponents in poker, that regime can break
down right where you feel like I'm being taking advantage
of now, right, But the point is that, like you know,
when you have better global norms, there is more potential
(26:50):
for de escalation. And if you kind of look at
it as like an exponential right, So if you look
at like, how does nuclear war start when there's not
at the moment where you can argue there's a NATO
versus Russia proxy conflict obviously in Ukraine. Right at the moment,
there's not a hot war between nuclear superpowers, right, So
you know, has nuclear war starting, it happens through a
(27:11):
series of accidents probably, right, you know, we do, I
think have enough precedent in the eighty whatever one years
since Hiroshima Nagasaki to say that, like, probably you don't
have nuclear wars start easily or nuclear accidents start easily,
but in the fog of war, in these escalatory scenarios, right,
(27:32):
I mean, it is a little frightening in the sense of, like, Okay, well,
we actually have to take this rather dramatic action that
has some particular consequence because it's so bad preemptively if Iran,
you know, I mean, what if our man already has
nuclear weapons, right, and or you know, or some failed
dirty bombers. You know, there's a lot we don't know
and like and like, when you have less cooperation around
(27:53):
the world, then every step is more likely to escalate. Right, Like,
let's say you need you know, three things that have
a ten percent probability of happening to happen in sequence
to have a nuclear detonation somewhere. Right, that's a one
in one thousand chants. What if the chances go up
just because there's less cooperation in the world to fifteen
percent times three, Right, that's actually six times higher if
(28:17):
you do the math, or four times higher if you
do the math. I'm I'm trying to get my spreadsheet
out right, because the exponential increase of all these steps
you have to pass when things are a little bit
less cooperative, is more is quite a bit more dangerous
when they combine together.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, I think that's a really really important point that
we are actually in a global moment where I do
think that kind of global norms have been eroding for
a while and kind of we are in a less
cooperative moment than we were in even during the Cold War,
right like that That seems crazy to say, but I
think that norms have shifted in the last decade, in
(28:51):
the last two decades, to a point where these sorts
of percentage just probably have gone up, and you know,
and shit happens. Like we've I think we've talked on
the show before, Nate, correct me if we haven't about
Stanislav Petrov, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet
Air Force and he basically prevented World War three back
(29:15):
in nineteen eighty three unilaterally, back when there was a
false alarm basically right, the Soviet nuclear system malfunctioned and
it looked like the United States had launched a nuclear missile,
and he just made he made the decision that this
was a false alarm and that they were not going
to counterstrike, and that decision was absolutely pivotal. Now, imagine
(29:37):
if it wasn't him. Imagine if we've outsourced to AI, right,
Imagine so many different things that could have happened, where
instead of this being something that we only that we
now know happened back then, no one knew right that
we almost had a nuclear confrontation. Like imagine if those
percentages shift a little bit of you know, different person
(29:57):
like those types of situations, if the risk of them
goes up even a tiny tiny bit, then it's a
really scary proposition. Even back in nineteen eighty three, it
was terrifying, And I don't even want to know what
would have happened had someone else had have been at
the helm and decided not decided that this was the
right thing to do. So that's why these these decisions
(30:21):
are good to analyze in retrospect, because then we know
the kinds of things that could have that were avoided
that were unknown at the time. But yeah, it's someone
disobeyed orders, right, Somebody went against the military protocol and
decided not to launch a counterattack, and that prevented the
Soviets from actually launching a nuclear missile when the US
(30:41):
did not. So these sorts of things are really important,
and we've talked you know, you've you've mentioned it, I've
mentioned it. Exponential effects are really important, and human brains
don't usually think about kind of exponential growth. That's very
difficult to think about. But you know, tiny shifts can
actually have outsized effects because exponential growth is a thing.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah, it's it's both exponential and existential potentially, right, you
can to meet this and antics ever where their climate
change is quote an existential threat, right, it's a bit
more linear generally speaking, where it's like not like well,
I mean there are like feedback loops and this gets
a little bit, but like it's not like, you know,
(31:22):
there is some chance that next week a situation grows
out of control and there's a massive nuclear attack somewhere. Right,
There's no chance that, like we all burn despite the
heat wave on the East Coast. There's no chance that
like the world ends because of climate change tomorrow. It's
longer term and nuclear war is not is not like that, right, Look,
(31:45):
a lot of Americans lived in fear for many years
of nuclear war, right, I can remember just faintly from
growing up in forty seven, like the presence of like
fallout shelters by the time I was in school, they're
no longer like fallout drills, but you know, some number
of years earlier there might have been. Right. Trump is
(32:06):
obviously old enough to remember the Cold War, you know,
sooner or later we're gonna have a younger generation of
leaders that are not and that didn't live with nuclear
risk as this like persistent existential threat and the way
that people feel about climate change or increasingly even like
AI today.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, and I think that that's another very important point.
So we have the compounding effects of changing social norms,
changing international norms, less cooperation, and the loss of historical memory,
right of people who actually have that visceral knowledge of
what these things felt like, which we talk about a
lot on the show. This is like direct risky business. Right.
(32:44):
The way that we understand risk the best is by
actually experiencing, and that's why people understand risks so poorly.
But the kind of the historical memory, the people who
lived through this, who understand just how important this is,
just how scary it is, that's going away, and the
people who've lived through the world war is like, that's
going away. All sorts of these major moments in memory
(33:08):
are going away, and that has scary implications for the
next generation for us as well. I'm just saying for
the next generation of leaders. That has scary implications for
the world.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So so, yeah, we're out here playing poker. Well, I
don't think the world's on the verge of a World
War three. That's kind of like an internet meme, but
clearly this is, you know, one of the most conspecial
things happening in the world right now.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yeah, Nate, I think I think that's a good way
of putting it. So with that, let's take a quick
break and let's lighten it up a little bit and
talk a little poker. Last week on the show, we
(34:03):
promised you that if we were not going to give
you a poker update, that meant that things were not
going well. So no news, bad news, and for me,
for me, that's actually mostly the case. I had one
or two cashes in online bracelet events. I don't remember
it was one or two because I don't quite remember
the timing, But my live events have not gone well, Nate.
(34:25):
For you, they've gone slightly better.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
A little better I'm going to have four cashes and
online events, which was at the win not the World Series.
One online cash I succumbed and played one online. I
don't really love the online stuff as much. But like
I was talked about last week, the way to actually
end the trip with more than you lose is making
a very deep run top two percent, or to cash
in your higher buying events. And I've done neither. Plenty
(34:49):
of cashes in these smaller events that are medium deep,
but not deep enough to to really make good money,
and so we're still searching for that. You know, that
big win. I think it feels better to know it's
better or worse. I've played a lot of poker, right,
I've been making it to the end of nights and
stuff like that. I don't know if it's better or
worse then to maybe you have one big cash and
then a bunch of bus early. Then you have more
(35:11):
dinners with friends and things like that. But it's been
a grindy kind of World series. We've played a lot.
Get our name on the topeboard sometimes but but nothing
no lasting memories yet, and then about halfway through. That's
how it goes often.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Though, but it is how it goes often, and Nate,
you know, we still have a number of weeks left,
so we're just saving up our run good for the
main event and other events. And Nate, you and I
are going to tag team together, so there's there's a
there's a fun event called the tag Team where you
get to play with a partner and you tag in
and out, and so it would be really fun. You know,
(35:49):
we are taping this again on Tuesday, which is when
Tag Team starts, So by Thursday you'll know if we're
still in or not. We don't know right now, but
let's let's be optimistic, Nate and say that we're still
on Thursday, which means we made the final table. That
would be pretty.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Cool'd be amazing, That would be great for the fucking show.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
So so there are some fun things there been, you know,
every World Series, and we've talked about some of the
controversies so far. There have been more controversies. Not going
to talk through all of them, but there have been
more accusations of both angle shooting, which, as we've talked about,
is when you basically bend the rules but don't break
them right where you go to the limit of what's
(36:30):
technically allowed, but don't cross the line. And so there
have been accusations against multiple players of angle shooting. And
there was accusations of collusion at the final table of
the fifty KPLO, which is a which is a huge event,
some chip dumping might have happened, And Nate, you know,
this is something that I actually was thinking about as
(36:52):
you were talking about, you know, soft collusion with other
players at the table, where you think, oh, you know,
we're the better players, we're gonna we're going to stay
out of each other's way. But there's also kind of
there's also this phenomenon which is not angle shooting. It
actually is illegal, but it's incredibly difficult to police. Where
say you you and I and ate, Like, I'm not
(37:13):
saying we would ever do this, but like, let's imagine
that we're in an event together at the same table.
I have lots of chips, you don't have very many chips,
and we both decided that we really need you to cash,
and so I raise you go all in and doesn't
matter what hand I have, you know, I just fold
right so that you can take my chips. That's chip dumping.
(37:34):
That's incredibly bad. Don't ever do something like that. There's
a reason that there's a rule in poker where if
everyone is all in, you have to share your hand.
It's to prevent collusion. It's to prevent stuff like this.
But in situations like the one that happened at the
final table of the of the fifty KPLO, it was
impossible to tell what happened because the first person who
(37:55):
raised didn't scan their cards, and it was not an
all in situation where there was a call, there was
a raise, there was an all in, and there was
a fold, and so it's incredibly difficult to understand what
happened in situations like this. I don't know in that
particular situation. Other players have been accused of angle shooting
by we've talked about this before, by saying the wrong
(38:15):
raise size right with really strong hands, where they say, oh,
you know, I didn't mean to raise, or I didn't
mean to I meant to raise, not to call, and
they just pretend that they're confused, and maybe they really
are confused, maybe they aren't, And it's very difficult to
know what happened in situations like that. That's happened a
(38:36):
few times already at the World series, And you know,
I'm of mixed, so you know, I'm working on a
book about shooting. You know, I really care about angle shooting.
You know, I really care about keeping the game. You know,
at a high level, I do think that we need
to be careful of just starting to call everything angle shooting. Right.
People have become a little trigger happy. I think this
(38:58):
World series with their accusations just whenever anyone does something
that they don't like and takes their chips or like, oh,
you're angle shooting. Like, no, it's not always angle shooting, right, Like,
you need to be very very careful and reserve. That's
that terminology for moments that really are suspect, and I
think a lot of the moments people have called out
are not. They're just people really do get confused.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, a lot of people. One of the things that
comes with like having more experience than poker is you
see more situations like this number one, and you're able
to play poker without all of your bandwidth being devoted
to what's the right play in this hand? Right, You're
able to take be more aware of the setting and
the situation and so and look for potential angle shoots
(39:40):
are weird shit, right. You know, sometimes if someone makes
a weird bet size, right, and I'll ask them for
clarification on that right to get information from my own self.
Or sometimes it's kind of like not an angle but
like speech play right where I'm trying to like confuse
or intimidate somebody, but like being having more awareness in
(40:02):
a poker game like the World Series where you have
a very wide range of players from the best in
the world to the worst players in the world kind
of almost literally, right, and you have a lot of
dealers who are making let's be honest, you are making mistakes, right, then,
like just being aware of a situation over the course,
if you play seven weeks of the World Series, it's
(40:23):
going to probably save you big mistakes two or three
times in seven weeks. That could be for a lot
of chips, right, Like that's a lot, right, So don't
be on your headphones, don't be on your phone in
higher stakes moments, or you're gonna risk things like like
stupid decisions, tilting yourself or also just being a good
poker citizen and like when other players are fucking up,
(40:45):
protecting his other players too, that you have, I think
is an obligation to do as a good poker citizen.
I think that's a.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Really good note to end on. Just really really pay attention.
There was a situation that happened this past week where
with one of you know, Poker's characters that people really like,
I think he's great, Texas Mike, and he talked about
a situation where a player had raised, he went all
in and the dealer pushed the blinds and antis to him.
(41:14):
Texas Mic was also playing on the phone at the
same time and mucked his cards like assuming that it
was the whole pot. The other player had never folded
and still had his cards, and the dealer fucked up,
and Texas Mike ended up losing the pot. He had
to put in the amount of the rays and it
was just it was just a nightmare. He had had
pocket Queen's But yeah, it was a really bad situation
(41:36):
just because the dealer messed up and he was on
his phone. This was not even an angle shoot. So
bottom line, pay attention. There's nothing that's more important to
your bottom line, to your end results of anything in life,
but especially you know at poker in the World series,
just pay attention.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
And if you believe you won the pot. Where there's
anything ambiguous, you might be misreading the boord. That can
happen in Omaha games and you might have won the pot.
Do not fold, Do not muck your hand.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Never muck your hand.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Until the chips are pushed your way.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Or even when they are being pushed your way. Because
the dealer was pushing the chips towards Mike, right, she
just didn't understand that there was someone else in the
in the handstill, so just be hyper hyper aware. Always
on that note, Nate, good luck today in the five
K six Max and to both of us in the
tag team. I hope that by the time our listeners
(42:28):
hear this, we will be at the final table. Let
us know what you think of the show. Reach out
to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. And
by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we
have some bonus content for you that's coming up right
after the credits.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. What a nice price
you get access to all that premium content and ad
for listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. So this episode was
used by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.
Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kannakova and.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I'm Nate Silver. So today in typical high low fashion
Risky Business, We're going to start out with one of
the most serious topics in the world right now, Iran.
We're going to navigate carefully around this, in fact, talking
about how is an American citizen? Let alone podcast co
host We're trying to navigate things where we don't know
(00:52):
a lot of the parameters and think about a little
bit about the domestic conflicts, but also the the strategy
that Trump faces and the potential for good and bad
decision making.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
And after that we're gonna do a one eighty and
talk about poker and what's been going on at the
World Series, how Nate and I have been doing, and
some angle shooting and other controversies that have arisen in
the past week. Because what would a World Series be
without a controversy a week.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Let's get into it, Nate.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
We tape this show on Tuesdays. It's Tuesday, June twenty fourth.
You won't hear this until Thursday, and we always have
this caveat. But with the situation in Iran right now,
I think that caveat is extra important because just's changing
every second. Right So this happens all the time in
military conflicts, in wars, but in this particular situation, when
(01:49):
there's so much unknown, so much uncertainty, so much ambiguity,
where it's so difficult to make judgments, the fact that
we just don't know what's going on, and that the
situation keeps changing hour by hour really makes it difficult.
But as of now, we have Trump having announced on
truth social that there's a East fire, having successfully bullied
(02:12):
both sides, just saying okay, okay, we'll have a ceasefire
at least as of now Tuesday morning. We'll see how
how this ages on Thursday, but that's where we currently are.
So just a little bit of a recap in case
you haven't been following the news at all. The US
bombed three strategic nuclear sites in Iran. It was a
(02:33):
successful mission, but maybe not as successful as Trump initially
made it out to be. Iran retaliated by hitting a
base the largest US military base the Middle East, in Qatar,
gave the US ample warning, and Israel and Aron have
been exchanging strikes up until Tuesday. Morning, where Trump is like,
Israel stop and Iran stop, there's a ceasefire, and you're
(02:55):
going to agree to it. So that's where we are
right now.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Yeah, I mean, for better or worse. Markets are upfices
again Tuesday morning, Vegas time, Tuesday afternoon East Coast time.
When we're taping this market sere up. They seem to
put some credence in the news. Oil prices are back
down again. I believe it is a little funny because
like the heuristic had been taco Trump always chickens out,
(03:18):
which I think was kind of poorly formed. Right, I
think Trump is Okay, We're already getting into controversial territory.
I think Trump is more quote unquote rational. We can
debate what rational means about some of this stuff than
he's sometimes given credit for. Right, he backs off when
he has a losing hand. Here, I don't know. I mean,
(03:40):
there was apparently we're going to talk about like the
way Americans feel about this and the splits in the
Republican Party, right, you know, here there was apparently some
dissent in the cabinet. Tulsa Gabbard was afraid of doing
anything mean to Iran. Apparently this is not something that
Putin likes either.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
You know, the Republican Party also has a very complicated
relationship with the State of Israel, as does America in general,
and liberals and Democrats as well in their own way.
But this does appear to have been a Trump decision.
This is not a case like our previous president, President Biden,
who was maybe outsourcing a lot of high level decision
(04:21):
making to members of his cabinet.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, so on risky business, you know, we're all about
good decision analysis, Right, How do you analyze the risk?
How do you kind of weigh all the factors to
decide correctly? And in situations like this, like the simple
truth is that we don't have the information, right, no
one has the information when you're reading analyzes, you know,
whether it's in the New York Times or a Foreign
(04:43):
Policy BBC wherever it is, nobody has the facts and
we won't have them until much later on. Right, These
are the sorts of decisions that are analyzed well in
retrospect by historians when you know, there are things that
have become declassified, when we know more about what happens
when the people who were in the room actually start
talking and right, now we simply don't know. So all
of these analyzes we've talked before on the show about biases,
(05:07):
about motivated reasoning, about you know, availability, heuristics, and all
of these things, and that's I really don't want to
add to that because I think that people right now
are being biased by their political leanings, their presuppositions when
it comes to Iran, the United States should we get involved,
et cetera. And that is obviously I think tinting their
(05:28):
analysis in one direction or in another and showing how
they selectively process information. And so I think that on
this show, we don't want to do that, right, We're
not in the business of speculating on people in that
sort of sense. That's bad decision analysis. And so for now,
I think what we can focus on is on the
things that we do now, and as you know, as
(05:50):
responsible citizens. I think this is what Nate was alluding
to earlier. You often are in situations, right, this is
like the extreme of the unknowns because it's a foreign
policy decision. It was a military strike. Right, everything is classified,
like we really have no idea what the hell's going on.
We don't know what the intelligence is, we don't know
anything but we have to make decisions all the time.
(06:12):
We're in a democracy, so we vote, So we need
to kind of try to figure out what do we
do as citizens in situations of uncertainty? How do we
try to parse this sort of information? Right, Nate, that's
that's kind of what you were getting at, Right, How
do how do we respond? How do we try to
get through the fog of all of these different opinions
(06:33):
that may or may not agree with each other, and
how do we do that in a way that's actually
as unbiased as possible because it's so easy for me
to say, like in advance, oh, I agree that we
should have bombed around or I don't agree that we
should have bombed Iran, And so I'm going to look
at those analyzes only and I'll make up my mind.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, Like, let's let's enumerate for a minute here, Like
some of the things that we don't know and in
fact are deliberately likely to be concealed yep, right or ambiguous? Right?
You know. Number one thing we don't know is in
what state was Iran's nuclear program? How close they were
they developing actual weapons?
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Number Two we don't know is how much to set
them back. I mean, you can look at satellite photos.
There's a big hole in the ground. Right, did that
hole was supposed to be dug very and deep in
the ground get penetrated to the point where they've been
set back by years? Right? Other other facilities that we
don't know about. That's number two. Right? Number three is
(07:27):
to what extent so Israel lacked? I believe they're called
bunker busting bombs to penetrate far enough if they could
do some things, they could take out you know, Iranian
nuclear scientists and things like that.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
You know, as a citizen, I'm I'm somewhat curious about
how much Trump felt like his hand was forced by that.
Yahoo That creates a complicated equilibrium, right. You know, Look,
I will say, I'm not a big BB guy. I
won't go further than that, Right, but you know, where
we force into a situation that like it may have
(08:02):
been the most rational action given that choice. We don't
know that either, And obviously we don't know like any
of the long term consequences of this. So far, it
seems like Iran is maybe more concerned about preserving domestic politics.
But to what extent does this like provoke for their
hatred of the United States and Israel. Does it provoke
(08:22):
future terrorist attacks? Does it make countries more determined to
develop nuclear programs or you know, biological weapons and things
like that. How does the rest of the Middle East
and the Arab world feel about this? I mean, one
of the good things. I think there were a few
good things in Trump's first term, right, one of which
is you kind of had And you can debate the
(08:44):
reasons for this, but we did see improving relations with
parts of the Arab world during Trump's first term. Are
they happy about this or not?
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Right?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
We don't know any of that, right, And we also
don't know to what extent Iran would have used nuclear
weapons if they had them. I mean, I think they're
pretty widely regarded as a bad actor. But like also
that's a question of like stylized facts that we know.
It's not a case like what's the case, It's like
much more trivial. Right. It's like congestion pricing in New York. Right,
(09:14):
if you don't like research the empirical data on that
and don't look at the mechanism for how it works, right,
That's something where if you took a day and really
study it, you might have a valid opinion here, there
are just things that are unknowable beyond a certain level.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Yeah, I mean even even to the point where as
you said, we have no idea how much the nuclear
program was damaged. You know, there's speculation that a lot
of nuclear material was actually moved before the strikes, right,
And we don't know what the counterfacture would have been,
right Like, would diplomacy have been successful. We have you know,
historic data that it hasn't been in the past, but
who knows, right Like, there are so many things that
(09:48):
we just have no way of telling, and we don't
know how Iran is going to react right now kind
of over the long term. Right now, it seems like
the ceasefire is going to hold because it is a
great you know, rationally like it seems to me it's
a great space saving thing, right Like, if you know
that you don't really want the US to keep attacking you,
you can say, look, hey, we launched a at the
(10:09):
biggest US base in the region. But obviously they warned
the US ahead of time that this was going to happen,
so there were no casualties. But you can say, here
there's a win for all of us. We retaliated. Now
we're all going to step back. But what's the as
innate as you kind of alluded to, what's the long
term plan here? If we kind of saved all our
(10:30):
nuclear materials, do we just lie low for a few years, right,
and pretend that everything's fine? But really, like this really
pissed us off. What's going to happen? And the truth
is we can speculate, but speculation isn't going to be
particularly helpful in the absence of this sort of information.
And this is one of those times when I would
(10:50):
really really caution everyone to really try to understand what
your biases are, because those are really going to affect
how you're interpreting information, what information you're seeing as legitimate
or not legitimate. And that's true by the way of
policymakers as well. Right, this is one of those situations
where like, because of all of the uncertainty, actually are
(11:15):
reaching for heuristics and our brains kind of reliance on
biases becomes greater. So it's one of those things where
like there's an inverse relationship where well, actually no, it's
a direct relationship.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
Right.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
The greater the uncertainty the greater our use of heuristics
and biases, because we don't actually have a lot of
information to go on, and so we go on what
we want to be true and gut feeling, and it's
much easier than to support that point of view. That's
a relationship that's very, very tricky and something that we
really need to avoid, including you and me, Nate right like,
(11:49):
we do it too, We're human. It's really difficult to
think clearly when you have all of this uncertainty. I
do want to go back to a point you made,
because I do think it's really interesting. And I was like,
what the hell, especially initially, like when you see that
the stock market, you know, and crypto and all these
things were not like they weren't really reacting right. Even
(12:13):
before the ceasefire when there was news of the bombing,
I was like, Oh, this is probably not going to
be that bad, right. We saw a much bigger fall
in both the last time that there was potential for
uncertainty and Iran a little over a year ago, and
this time everything was very muted, and I wonder if
that's just over correction saying, oh, well, last time nothing
bad happened, so we're just going to assume that it's
(12:34):
going to be just like last time, or if it's
wishful thinking, you know, oh well, we don't want anything
bad to happen, so we're just going to kind of
pretend nothing bad's going to happen.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
What is it, Well, yeah, this famous thing where like
the stock market doesn't really discount for the price of
nuclear war because if we're all dead, then nobody cares
what you're for. One k is worth. I do think
it's worth saying that. Like, Iran's a big country in
various senses of that term, right, it has ninety million people.
(13:05):
I think Ted Cruz got that wrong in some interview.
It's ninety million people. It's a lot of people. It's
GDP per capita it is not very high as four
ero point five thousand per head. That's down. I don't
know what, except it's oil price fluctuations versus regime change
versus everything else. As of twenty as we say, as
twenty twelve, it had a higher per capita GDP than China,
(13:26):
so the world changes a lot. It occupies a very
important strategic location in terms of the way that oil
is moving and other goods are moving around. The Middle
East and around the world. So this is a high
leverage decision point. And by the way, it's like not
really invadable. Even foolish Americans I think would not be
(13:49):
inclined to invade. This country's much more populous and much
more mountainous than say Iraq. Right, maybe in some ways
it's better. I don't think there's any risk of like
turning this into a ground world, Like I do want
to say a couple of things here, right, you know,
One is that more countries having nuclear weapons is probably
(14:12):
probably bad. Right, you know, I think people on balance
understate the risk of a nuclear conflict. It hasn't been
that long, just a couple of generations since the world
has had weapons these powerful, right, So you know, other
things be equal, and things are not equal international law
and precedents and norms and things like that. And you know,
(14:34):
why does Israel get to have Unofficially it's a strategic
mbig explicient. Everyone believes that Israel has nuclear weapons, right,
you know who deserves them and who doesn't. I don't
know about that paternalism or whatever else, right, but some
people think we want regime change in a random like
the one thing I'll say about Trump because obviously we've
talked about Okay, you don't know all the facts, really
(14:56):
don't know any of the important facts, right, so you
default to priors, and what's a prior versus a bias?
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
You know, I would feel better if Trump had people
obsessions of power that he had in his first term. Right,
if Pete Hegseth or Chelsea Gabberd don't like this, I
actually feel better about it, right, I believe it or not,
Trump trust Trump's judgment more than them frankly. But that's
the why we've come to it. That's the point we've
come to. But he has not been particularly hawkish, right.
(15:26):
He's been trying, I think not terribly effectively to be
negotiating a ceasefire with in Ukraine. Right, He's been all
over the place on China. Right, but you know, we
didn't have any new wars in Trump's first term. And
so so okay, you can clip this and criticize me.
You know the fact that like he's not doesn't have
(15:48):
this bushy and default toward intervention, I think is a
meaningful affects the priors a little bit.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
It actually does, it makes you and like I said,
we want to try to avoid speculation, but you know,
with these priors, it does seem like a potential thing
that he was thinking was not like I want the
US to be involved in Iran, but rather, oh, like
I think that I can just bomb them and they'll
(16:21):
do what I say, and we'll be one and done,
and then I'll be this beautiful peace broker, right, because
that's kind of what he like. That's always that's what
he wanted to do in Ukraine, not bombing Ukraine, but
he wants like, he wants to be seen as the peacemaker, right,
and he wants it to be done quickly. When he
took office, this we know, so this isn't speculation. You know,
he said, oh, I'll end the war in Ukraine in
(16:42):
twenty four hours. Obviously that didn't happen, but in his head,
you know, he can end everything in twenty four hours,
just you know, Trump shows up and he makes peace,
and so I think that this might have been a
bid too. Okay, well we'll just bomb them and then
everything will be fine and I can make peace and
we'll end this situation in twenty four hours or forty
(17:03):
eight hours or whatever it is. And that might seem
like insane thinking from the outside, but it is the
type of thinking that he's engaged in over and over
and over, so that seems like that might have been
what was going on in his head. Rather than oh,
we want another protected conflict, it was more of a
one and done. Right. If I do this, then I
can be Trump the Great. I can get a Nobel
(17:25):
piece price for a broker in piece between Iran and Israel.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Yeah. Look, Trump won the Republican nomination in twenty sixteen
in part because he explicitly campaigned against Bushism in various forms, right,
and against foreign entanglements, especially in the Middle East. I mean,
in terms of the domestic politics, this policy or this
decision to bomb Iran depends on how the question is phrased. Right,
appears to be actually slightly unpopular on Trump's net approo
(17:53):
writting in the silver boltipulling average is a negative six
point eight. It's been fluctuating. It's actually fallen over the
past couple of days, whether it's an Iran effect or
just sistical noise. I think we'll need more data to show.
Maybe by Thursday you're looking at that, you'll have more.
But yeah, Maerica books, very skeptical of foreign intervention in
general in the Middle East in particular, has grown more
(18:14):
skeptical of Israel to the extent that we are are.
You know, I don't think it's a helpful factor necessarily. So,
you know, Trump, it's not a it's not a move.
It may be a cynical move to you know, Pollymark
has a ten percent chance that he wins a Nobel
Peace Prize or something. Right, But it's like, I don't
think it's a cynical Bush era move of Oh my
(18:36):
proval writing is falling, let's bomb somewhere, right. I don't
think that quote unquote trick works very well anymore. People
are very wary before and wars. Often what happens historically
is that you get an approval rating bump and then
things turn into a quagmire and then the president becomes
deeply unpopular. Here Trump, I don't way, whether it's a
decline or it's steady, does not appear to be a
(18:57):
bump coming at least from this right, So that historical
reward not being there I think might affect your your
priors too. That I don't know. I mean, there are
lots of cynical reasons to do this, I guess. But like,
but having lived through Iraq in Afghanistan, you know, and Trump,
I think again has good instincts for why the previous
(19:20):
Republicans became unpopular. I don't think he's doing this as
a way to like boose his popularity. And he's enough
other ways to have little cheap tricks to like to
do that. And like, you know, I'm not sure particularly
cares about foreign policy. Right he said recently, oh, there
are no permanent enemies. Was in the context of China
or Russia or whatever else, Right, But like he's transactional,
(19:44):
he's a deal maker, and maybe in some ways I
prefer that to the grandiosity of Bush era foreign policy.
I'm I'm I'm not sure.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, it's a it's a tough one. I don't think
I can go as far as to say I prefer
those because.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
We just have you know, it's not I mean, yeah, it's.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Not a particular high bar. But it's just in the
sense that I think that there's a kind of Trump's
vision and then there's kind of the reality. Right. He
sees himself as, oh, I can be this peacemaker, but
the reality of it is that he might do things
that have unforeseen or they could have been foreseen by
good advisors, but unforeseen by him, long term consequences that
(20:32):
really fuck the world over. So it's kind of it's
kind of one of these one of these situations where, yes,
he doesn't want to entangle us. However, and I will
also say, in terms of his approval ratings, we've just
seen historically over and over and over that the Trump coalition,
kind of the MAGA coalition, is able to stomach complete
(20:52):
changes of policy when they come from Trump right, Like
he's just so good at persuading his base that what
he's doing is the right thing. So I would not
be at all surprised that if we do end up
kind of becoming more entangled in the Middle East, that
all of a sudden, the same people who were saying
no foreign entanglements will be like, yeah, America first, like
we're we're gonna show them what's happening. And we were
(21:13):
for this all along. So I can definitely I don't
see that this is going to actually do lasting damage
to him, because he has shown himself to be just
phenomenally good at being able to turn any sentiment in
his favor that's his superpower, right, Like, he is so
good at convincing his base that whatever he decided to
do was the right thing, even if it was the
(21:35):
total opposite of what he had campaigned on.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And we'll be right back after this break. Trump's other advantage,
I think your relative to Biden is that, like, he
(21:59):
is seen, I think as being a little bit unpredictable,
and that probably helps. I don't know if we want
to go too far in the game theory, but like,
but like, no, we've talked about that before.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I mean the kind of the irrational rationality, right, the
irrational actor, the kind of the Thomas Shelling model of
you know your famous chicken problem where you have two
cars going towards each other right head on collision course
and one of the drivers pulls out the steering wheel
(22:28):
and throws it out the window, signaling I can't swerve right,
so I'm going to win this, And that's kind of
the rational irrationality. Of course, the problem comes in what
happens if both of them pull out their steering wheel
at the same time. Then you're kind of screwed. What
happens if one person doesn't actually see you throwing the
steering wheel out the window, which is possible even though
(22:49):
you try to be blatant about it. You know, maybe
they were looking away at that moment. Maybe they were
so focused on your car that they didn't see that.
So there are issues with that scenario. But yes, there
is kind of the madman theory that if I'm unpredictable,
if I'm the one who is capable of ripping out
my steering wheel, and people know that, then they're going
to tread much more carefully around me.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, or at least one would, or at least one
would hope.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
So.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Right to the point earlier about like, Iran's a populist
country at times, it has flirted with becoming a developing,
wealthier country before the revolution in I guess seventy nine
and then and then more recently it's GDP had been increasing, right,
So it's it's not a I don't think it'd classified
(23:33):
as like a failed state that kind of has nothing
to lose, right, And it's always hard to gauge public
sentiment in authoritarian countries. I don't know, you know, I
think the conventional wisdom is that, like, the regime is
not especially popular in Iran. It's a sophisticated country with
(23:53):
a lot of history, and people may have ambiguous feelings
about about its current status, right, a lot of different
ethnic groups also within Iran, again a big, complex country, right,
and so like, look, all of this seems better to
me than like trying and failiate regime change in Iraq. Right,
But it's also higher stakes in some ways, involving you know,
(24:15):
one unofficial nuclear power will two the United States and Israel, right,
one perhaps aspiring nuclear power right, a state that where
a lot of oil and commerce turns on and so yeah,
I'm sorry to use a cliched metaphor, it is risky business, right.
You know. One of the things you learn in poker
is that, like, the biggest confrontations often arise from cases
(24:38):
where it becomes one decision escalates after another, and in
any isolated circumstance, it may be correct to take the
escalatory move. However, the a cumult of effective that can
be quite profoundly high stakes and profoundly negative in some cases.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, effects are not just what you see in the moment, right,
they can be exponential, And so you have kind of
the immediate stakes and it doesn't seem p regularly like oh,
you know, this is just a tiny, tiny blip, but
then it can really spiral out of control. I mean,
I know people it's to stay in the poker realm
(25:19):
who end up going bust in level one. I know
multiple people on level one of the main event of
the World Series, which Nate and I will both be
playing in just over a week. But in level one
of the main event, you have two hour long levels
and I don't remember how many big lines you start with,
but an insane amount, right, just totally crazy. And then
people just lose their minds and they end up in
(25:41):
these situations where they really do not need to bust,
but they do anyway, and they're like, oh, I couldn't
avoid it, And I was like, no, you could have
avoided it, right, Like, let's look at all of the mistakes,
all of the decision errors that led you to this
point where you felt like you couldn't avoid it, right,
there are so many mistakes that keep compounding and compounding,
and all of a sudden you're out of this tournament
(26:02):
where like you didn't need to be in that situation
at all.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah, sometimes there can kind of be so what happens
a lot in these big world series events where there
are a lot of amateur recreational players, right, is like,
sometimes you'll have implicit agreement between the better players at
the table that we don't want to go to war
with one another. We both have an incentive to as
the superpowers. It's table to like preserve our chip stacks
(26:28):
and make easy profit from the fish as they're called. However,
when there's a lack of trust and there's no intrinsic
reason to trust opponents in poker, that regime can break
down right where you feel like I'm being taking advantage
of now, right, But the point is that, like you know,
when you have better global norms, there is more potential
(26:50):
for de escalation. And if you kind of look at
it as like an exponential right, So if you look
at like, how does nuclear war start when there's not
at the moment where you can argue there's a NATO
versus Russia proxy conflict obviously in Ukraine. Right at the moment,
there's not a hot war between nuclear superpowers, right, So
you know, has nuclear war starting, it happens through a
(27:11):
series of accidents probably, right, you know, we do, I
think have enough precedent in the eighty whatever one years
since Hiroshima Nagasaki to say that, like, probably you don't
have nuclear wars start easily or nuclear accidents start easily,
but in the fog of war, in these escalatory scenarios, right,
(27:32):
I mean, it is a little frightening in the sense of, like, Okay, well,
we actually have to take this rather dramatic action that
has some particular consequence because it's so bad preemptively if Iran,
you know, I mean, what if our man already has
nuclear weapons, right, and or you know, or some failed
dirty bombers. You know, there's a lot we don't know
and like and like, when you have less cooperation around
(27:53):
the world, then every step is more likely to escalate. Right, Like,
let's say you need you know, three things that have
a ten percent probability of happening to happen in sequence
to have a nuclear detonation somewhere. Right, that's a one
in one thousand chants. What if the chances go up
just because there's less cooperation in the world to fifteen
percent times three, Right, that's actually six times higher if
(28:17):
you do the math, or four times higher if you
do the math. I'm I'm trying to get my spreadsheet
out right, because the exponential increase of all these steps
you have to pass when things are a little bit
less cooperative, is more is quite a bit more dangerous
when they combine together.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, I think that's a really really important point that
we are actually in a global moment where I do
think that kind of global norms have been eroding for
a while and kind of we are in a less
cooperative moment than we were in even during the Cold War,
right like that That seems crazy to say, but I
think that norms have shifted in the last decade, in
(28:51):
the last two decades, to a point where these sorts
of percentage just probably have gone up, and you know,
and shit happens. Like we've I think we've talked on
the show before, Nate, correct me if we haven't about
Stanislav Petrov, who was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet
Air Force and he basically prevented World War three back
(29:15):
in nineteen eighty three unilaterally, back when there was a
false alarm basically right, the Soviet nuclear system malfunctioned and
it looked like the United States had launched a nuclear missile,
and he just made he made the decision that this
was a false alarm and that they were not going
to counterstrike, and that decision was absolutely pivotal. Now, imagine
(29:37):
if it wasn't him. Imagine if we've outsourced to AI, right,
Imagine so many different things that could have happened, where
instead of this being something that we only that we
now know happened back then, no one knew right that
we almost had a nuclear confrontation. Like imagine if those
percentages shift a little bit of you know, different person
(29:57):
like those types of situations, if the risk of them
goes up even a tiny tiny bit, then it's a
really scary proposition. Even back in nineteen eighty three, it
was terrifying, And I don't even want to know what
would have happened had someone else had have been at
the helm and decided not decided that this was the
right thing to do. So that's why these these decisions
(30:21):
are good to analyze in retrospect, because then we know
the kinds of things that could have that were avoided
that were unknown at the time. But yeah, it's someone
disobeyed orders, right, Somebody went against the military protocol and
decided not to launch a counterattack, and that prevented the
Soviets from actually launching a nuclear missile when the US
(30:41):
did not. So these sorts of things are really important,
and we've talked you know, you've you've mentioned it, I've
mentioned it. Exponential effects are really important, and human brains
don't usually think about kind of exponential growth. That's very
difficult to think about. But you know, tiny shifts can
actually have outsized effects because exponential growth is a thing.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah, it's it's both exponential and existential potentially, right, you
can to meet this and antics ever where their climate
change is quote an existential threat, right, it's a bit
more linear generally speaking, where it's like not like well,
I mean there are like feedback loops and this gets
a little bit, but like it's not like, you know,
(31:22):
there is some chance that next week a situation grows
out of control and there's a massive nuclear attack somewhere. Right,
There's no chance that, like we all burn despite the
heat wave on the East Coast. There's no chance that
like the world ends because of climate change tomorrow. It's
longer term and nuclear war is not is not like that, right, Look,
(31:45):
a lot of Americans lived in fear for many years
of nuclear war, right, I can remember just faintly from
growing up in forty seven, like the presence of like
fallout shelters by the time I was in school, they're
no longer like fallout drills, but you know, some number
of years earlier there might have been. Right. Trump is
(32:06):
obviously old enough to remember the Cold War, you know,
sooner or later we're gonna have a younger generation of
leaders that are not and that didn't live with nuclear
risk as this like persistent existential threat and the way
that people feel about climate change or increasingly even like
AI today.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, and I think that that's another very important point.
So we have the compounding effects of changing social norms,
changing international norms, less cooperation, and the loss of historical memory,
right of people who actually have that visceral knowledge of
what these things felt like, which we talk about a
lot on the show. This is like direct risky business. Right.
(32:44):
The way that we understand risk the best is by
actually experiencing, and that's why people understand risks so poorly.
But the kind of the historical memory, the people who
lived through this, who understand just how important this is,
just how scary it is, that's going away, and the
people who've lived through the world war is like, that's
going away. All sorts of these major moments in memory
(33:08):
are going away, and that has scary implications for the
next generation for us as well. I'm just saying for
the next generation of leaders. That has scary implications for
the world.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
So so, yeah, we're out here playing poker. Well, I
don't think the world's on the verge of a World
War three. That's kind of like an internet meme, but
clearly this is, you know, one of the most conspecial
things happening in the world right now.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
Yeah, Nate, I think I think that's a good way
of putting it. So with that, let's take a quick
break and let's lighten it up a little bit and
talk a little poker. Last week on the show, we
(34:03):
promised you that if we were not going to give
you a poker update, that meant that things were not
going well. So no news, bad news, and for me,
for me, that's actually mostly the case. I had one
or two cashes in online bracelet events. I don't remember
it was one or two because I don't quite remember
the timing, But my live events have not gone well, Nate.
(34:25):
For you, they've gone slightly better.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
A little better I'm going to have four cashes and
online events, which was at the win not the World Series.
One online cash I succumbed and played one online. I
don't really love the online stuff as much. But like
I was talked about last week, the way to actually
end the trip with more than you lose is making
a very deep run top two percent, or to cash
in your higher buying events. And I've done neither. Plenty
(34:49):
of cashes in these smaller events that are medium deep,
but not deep enough to to really make good money,
and so we're still searching for that. You know, that
big win. I think it feels better to know it's
better or worse. I've played a lot of poker, right,
I've been making it to the end of nights and
stuff like that. I don't know if it's better or
worse then to maybe you have one big cash and
then a bunch of bus early. Then you have more
(35:11):
dinners with friends and things like that. But it's been
a grindy kind of World series. We've played a lot.
Get our name on the topeboard sometimes but but nothing
no lasting memories yet, and then about halfway through. That's
how it goes often.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
Though, but it is how it goes often, and Nate,
you know, we still have a number of weeks left,
so we're just saving up our run good for the
main event and other events. And Nate, you and I
are going to tag team together, so there's there's a
there's a fun event called the tag Team where you
get to play with a partner and you tag in
and out, and so it would be really fun. You know,
(35:49):
we are taping this again on Tuesday, which is when
Tag Team starts, So by Thursday you'll know if we're
still in or not. We don't know right now, but
let's let's be optimistic, Nate and say that we're still
on Thursday, which means we made the final table. That
would be pretty.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Cool'd be amazing, That would be great for the fucking show.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
So so there are some fun things there been, you know,
every World Series, and we've talked about some of the
controversies so far. There have been more controversies. Not going
to talk through all of them, but there have been
more accusations of both angle shooting, which, as we've talked about,
is when you basically bend the rules but don't break
them right where you go to the limit of what's
(36:30):
technically allowed, but don't cross the line. And so there
have been accusations against multiple players of angle shooting. And
there was accusations of collusion at the final table of
the fifty KPLO, which is a which is a huge event,
some chip dumping might have happened, And Nate, you know,
this is something that I actually was thinking about as
(36:52):
you were talking about, you know, soft collusion with other
players at the table, where you think, oh, you know,
we're the better players, we're gonna we're going to stay
out of each other's way. But there's also kind of
there's also this phenomenon which is not angle shooting. It
actually is illegal, but it's incredibly difficult to police. Where
say you you and I and ate, Like, I'm not
(37:13):
saying we would ever do this, but like, let's imagine
that we're in an event together at the same table.
I have lots of chips, you don't have very many chips,
and we both decided that we really need you to cash,
and so I raise you go all in and doesn't
matter what hand I have, you know, I just fold
right so that you can take my chips. That's chip dumping.
(37:34):
That's incredibly bad. Don't ever do something like that. There's
a reason that there's a rule in poker where if
everyone is all in, you have to share your hand.
It's to prevent collusion. It's to prevent stuff like this.
But in situations like the one that happened at the
final table of the of the fifty KPLO, it was
impossible to tell what happened because the first person who
(37:55):
raised didn't scan their cards, and it was not an
all in situation where there was a call, there was
a raise, there was an all in, and there was
a fold, and so it's incredibly difficult to understand what
happened in situations like this. I don't know in that
particular situation. Other players have been accused of angle shooting
by we've talked about this before, by saying the wrong
(38:15):
raise size right with really strong hands, where they say, oh,
you know, I didn't mean to raise, or I didn't
mean to I meant to raise, not to call, and
they just pretend that they're confused, and maybe they really
are confused, maybe they aren't, And it's very difficult to
know what happened in situations like that. That's happened a
(38:36):
few times already at the World series, And you know,
I'm of mixed, so you know, I'm working on a
book about shooting. You know, I really care about angle shooting.
You know, I really care about keeping the game. You know,
at a high level, I do think that we need
to be careful of just starting to call everything angle shooting. Right.
People have become a little trigger happy. I think this
(38:58):
World series with their accusations just whenever anyone does something
that they don't like and takes their chips or like, oh,
you're angle shooting. Like, no, it's not always angle shooting, right, Like,
you need to be very very careful and reserve. That's
that terminology for moments that really are suspect, and I
think a lot of the moments people have called out
are not. They're just people really do get confused.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, a lot of people. One of the things that
comes with like having more experience than poker is you
see more situations like this number one, and you're able
to play poker without all of your bandwidth being devoted
to what's the right play in this hand? Right, You're
able to take be more aware of the setting and
the situation and so and look for potential angle shoots
(39:40):
are weird shit, right. You know, sometimes if someone makes
a weird bet size, right, and I'll ask them for
clarification on that right to get information from my own self.
Or sometimes it's kind of like not an angle but
like speech play right where I'm trying to like confuse
or intimidate somebody, but like being having more awareness in
(40:02):
a poker game like the World Series where you have
a very wide range of players from the best in
the world to the worst players in the world kind
of almost literally, right, and you have a lot of
dealers who are making let's be honest, you are making mistakes, right, then,
like just being aware of a situation over the course,
if you play seven weeks of the World Series, it's
(40:23):
going to probably save you big mistakes two or three
times in seven weeks. That could be for a lot
of chips, right, Like that's a lot, right, So don't
be on your headphones, don't be on your phone in
higher stakes moments, or you're gonna risk things like like
stupid decisions, tilting yourself or also just being a good
poker citizen and like when other players are fucking up,
(40:45):
protecting his other players too, that you have, I think
is an obligation to do as a good poker citizen.
I think that's a.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Really good note to end on. Just really really pay attention.
There was a situation that happened this past week where
with one of you know, Poker's characters that people really like,
I think he's great, Texas Mike, and he talked about
a situation where a player had raised, he went all
in and the dealer pushed the blinds and antis to him.
(41:14):
Texas Mic was also playing on the phone at the
same time and mucked his cards like assuming that it
was the whole pot. The other player had never folded
and still had his cards, and the dealer fucked up,
and Texas Mike ended up losing the pot. He had
to put in the amount of the rays and it
was just it was just a nightmare. He had had
pocket Queen's But yeah, it was a really bad situation
(41:36):
just because the dealer messed up and he was on
his phone. This was not even an angle shoot. So
bottom line, pay attention. There's nothing that's more important to
your bottom line, to your end results of anything in life,
but especially you know at poker in the World series,
just pay attention.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
And if you believe you won the pot. Where there's
anything ambiguous, you might be misreading the boord. That can
happen in Omaha games and you might have won the pot.
Do not fold, Do not muck your hand.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
Never muck your hand.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Until the chips are pushed your way.
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Or even when they are being pushed your way. Because
the dealer was pushing the chips towards Mike, right, she
just didn't understand that there was someone else in the
in the handstill, so just be hyper hyper aware. Always
on that note, Nate, good luck today in the five
K six Max and to both of us in the
tag team. I hope that by the time our listeners
(42:28):
hear this, we will be at the final table. Let
us know what you think of the show. Reach out
to us at Risky Business at pushkin dot fm. And
by the way, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, we
have some bonus content for you that's coming up right
after the credits.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
And if you're not subscribing yet, consider signing up for
just six ninety nine a month. What a nice price
you get access to all that premium content and ad
for listening across Pushkin's entire network of shows.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Risky Business is hosted by me Maria Kanikova.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
And by me Nate Silver. The show is a co
production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia. So this episode was
used by Isabelle Carter. Our associate producer is Sonia Gerwit.
Sally Helm is our editor, and our executive producer is
Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruguer.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
Thanks so much for tuning in.
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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