From Zionist to Pragmatist: Why He Changed His Mind

Join Malcolm and Simone Collins as they dive deep into the evolving relationship between the United States and Israel, challenging traditional Zionist perspectives with a pragmatic approach. In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm shares why he’s shifted from ardent Zionism to advocating for a strategic reevaluation of U.S. military aid to Israel. The conversation covers the political, economic, and cultural implications of cutting off aid, the influence of lobbying groups, and the potential for a new era of U.S.-Israel cooperation focused on AI and technological innovation.The episode also explores the dynamics within the American right, the rise of anti-cancellation sentiment, and the importance of aligning national interests for long-term stability. Plus, Malcolm and Simone touch on global topics like the future of energy, lunar mining, and the shifting landscape of international alliances.Whether you’re interested in geopolitics, U.S. foreign policy, or the future of technology and global power, this episode offers a nuanced perspective you won’t want to miss.Subscribe for more in-depth conversations and let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. I have been thinking a lot about this over the past few days and one I changed my mind on a major issue, which is the best fast forward with Israel. Oh. ‘cause a lot of people know I have been pretty ardently Zionist in the past. And two,

Simone Collins: are you a Zionist or are you a pragmatist?

Malcolm Collins: I’m more of a pragmatist and I think that I’ll explain where I’ve changed my view on this. And I, I think that if this is correctly implemented, and the reason I’m gonna lay this out in the podcast is I’m gonna lay out every step in terms of doing this, how you would do it as a Republican administration right now.

And like, we’ll explain how we’ll. It basically destroy the modern Democratic party if Trump can execute on this, the

Simone Collins: path forward to own the Libs. Cut off Israel.

Malcolm Collins: Cut off Israel. Yes. So we’re going to go over how you can do this. How you can do this in a way that is [00:01:00] politically viable. How you can do this in a way that maintains a strong relationship with Israel, how you can do this in a way that strengthens our relationship, not just with Israel, but with the Middle East more broadly.

How you can do this in a way that Netanyahu has basically baited already. And I was unaware that Netanyahu has kept saying this and basically, so they

Simone Collins: blocked it anyway.

Malcolm Collins: The only reason why we are not aggressively moving towards this right now is apac who we need to just railroad. Although I will go over that.

APAC has shown a willingness to bend on stuff like this in the past if it’s laid out to them logically. Oh, and the, the thing that sort of brought this up for me, so I’ll go into where I started to go down this path was twofold. One was, I was talking with a fan in the Discord and they’re like, you’ve always said that the right should not maintain any issue.

Like this is a, that’s an [00:02:00] overlap of, of ideologies that we can’t actually win. Elections wins. Right. Or that’s really gonna impact our chances of winning elections.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That’s

Simone Collins: 90 10 issues has been so smart, right? Like he’s

Malcolm Collins: very aware, but we get so much in terms of Jewish and APAC money, it can be useful.

Even in terms of if it’s not getting out the vote in terms of getting out the money, which helps get out the vote more. But the, there’s a few problems here. One is money has been mattering less and less in terms of election cycles historically. And two is what happened recently, which is recently one of the girls from the Red Scare Podcast were having Nick Fuentes, not even their own beliefs, but interviewing him on their podcast got like actually canceled.

And I was under the position that cancellation was over. Like they lost a major job contract, they lost their agency. And I was like, no. Like this. This is the type of thing that when it happens to someone in the right, the rest of the right needs to 100% get behind them. Tucker [00:03:00] Carlson has done some iffy things, but this is different.

This is like a more mainstream. Like, not like Venezuela dictator interviewing type. This is more like, and I think that that was cool that he did that, whatever, but I can understand where you can be like, oh, he’s a more out there figure on the right. These days. This is a more centrist figure on the right these days.

And two is Ben Shapiro has been basically spiraling like lemon grab since this event.

Speaker 6: Unacceptable. Unacceptable. Unacceptable.

Malcolm Collins: And I’m just like. The mainstream of the right, like it’s very obvious to me, the mainstream of the right is going to have to cut the Ben Shapiro faction completely off if we don’t want a full on civil war. Would you agree with that, by the way, Simone?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

If you’re like, well, why the Ben Shapiro faction and not the Nick Fuentes faction? The reason is twofold. One is you just have to be practical. Ben Shapiro’s [00:04:00] been dropping fall or is like flies recently, , like 20,000 on subs every month. He’s been losing people for the past, well, really since this blew up.

So, , it’s obvious that he’s losing in the public mind. But not just that, it’s also that he committed the cardinal sin of the modern, right? Which is attempting to ban people and make arguments based on pearl clutching rather than rational argument, we cannot allow that. That needs to be an absolute, if you do that, you are out, right?

That makes you a leftist. That is the argument that the leftists have been Retreating to, and if you normalize that style of argument, then the leftists automatically win because they always win in the game of, you hurt my Fifis, and that’s the game that Ben Shapiro’s been trying to play. You said something that falls outside of what I consider and what the dominant culture considers socially normal.

But the modern right is made up of people who oppose the [00:05:00] dominant culture that oppose the urban monoculture. So of course, we cannot allow the mean streaming of that form of argumentation.

I ran a sentiment analysis on X and 70 to 75% of the tweets that have gone out about Ben Shapiro recently have been extremely negative with only five to 10% being positive, and the five to 10% that are positive are pretty much exclusively from.

Boomers and neocons, which are factions that are dying out. If you do not want anti-Semitic sentiment to grow, we need to cut out the type of sentiment that Ben Shapiro represents.

Malcolm Collins: And so how do we navigate that without losing Israel, which is. Very important in terms of being a highly economically productive, highly technologically productive nation

That has a decent fertility rate. In fact, the only such country on Earth.

Malcolm Collins: that is, has a good reason to be allied with us going into the future. Right? How do we do that with zip? Right? While keeping them on board [00:06:00] basically completely cut them off.

And there is a way too that helps us in a ton of other areas as well. So to go forwards. Hmm. By the way, the larger problem, what are your thoughts on it? Do you actually believe that we do sort of like things are sort of coming to a head where the American right cannot maintain both of these ideologies?

Simone Collins: It does. Yeah. It, it seems like, especially Nick Fuentes trending so much, even in our comments, I see it, this, this really weird

Malcolm Collins: tension Well, is so coming off as the, the weest bad guy in all this. And that like we sort of need a mainstream play. And that’s the reason why we’re making this episode because a lot of policymakers watch our show or a number do at least.

And after we’ve spoken at the White House on this stuff and a lot of other influencers watch our show. And so if we can begin influencing a third way forwards in a way that has so many positive externalities for the party, let’s do it. Right.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because honestly the, the arguments that I mostly hear [00:07:00] against Israel all get grouped in by some people into like, oh, this just, you are trying to exterminate journals.

But like, some people are just like, Hey, why are we paying for this? Like some of the arguments are very, very, very reasonable. And, and Israel

Malcolm Collins: needs to make it so that these arguments are not reasonable. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: the way, yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is similar to your your AI argument where if, if you make it such that one group cannot exist.

Period. Then you know the other group is obligated to

Malcolm Collins: get, yeah. What she’s saying is, if you say, I will kill any human who is better than me through like augmentations, or I will kill any AI that’s better than me, then eventually you mandate those systems turning against you. And yeah,

Simone Collins: and right now the way the arguments seem to be going is like, well.

You know, if you question Israel at all, then you know, you, you are the enemy. Or if you support Israel at all then you are the enemy. And, and I, we need to [00:08:00] deescalate that to like. More boring. Well, I actually

Malcolm Collins: don’t even think we need to deescalate it. I think we can do the throwing the anchor off the boat in mid-flight to turn it around at full speed,

Speaker: , Lower the starboard anchor can.

Take off

third club, one part of horse

Malcolm Collins: you know, like they do.

We’re, we’re

Simone Collins: really mixing metaphor here.

Malcolm Collins: Pirate to the Caribbean. Mine

Simone Collins: boats,

Malcolm Collins: no. What I mean is, is, is, or the. Apollo 13 use our trajectory in one direction with gravitational pull to slingshot us at an equal velocity in the opposite direction in a way that your [00:09:00] opponents don’t see coming at all

Simone Collins: which is totally changed course with

Malcolm Collins: flash.

So we over how this works.

Simone Collins: Stunt submission.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So right now the US is putting about 3.8. Billion. This is like on an average year in terms of our preexisting agreements with a 10 year more random signed in 2016 with Israel. Right. I’m suggesting we cut this off before the turning point, and I’ll explain why in just a second.

Now, if we put that 3.8 billion in context, it’s really not that much with, and consider that that’s like Ethiopia is 1.8 billion a year. Jordan is 1.7 billion a year. So that’s as much as we’re giving Ethiopia and Jordan every year. Except that money stays in Ethiopia and Jordan and with Israel it’s mostly coming back to us.

I think over 90% comes back to our military contractors who are going to be the biggest problem in doing this. Like Ethiopia and Jordan are not long-term geopolitically relevant to us. Israel is long-term geopolitically relevant to us, so. Why, why are we, why are [00:10:00] we like caring about this? Right?

Like, optically speaking. And that’s when I started to be like, okay, so what actually happens? And we’re gonna go into the economics of cutting Israel off. Or it’s not just Zim. What if you took like Jordan Egypt together? That’s about the same amount a year. What if you took . Yemen, Nigeria, Somalia, and Kenya together. That’s about the same amount for a year. And again, it’s, it’s much worse in these countries ‘cause we’re wasting the money in these countries. IE it stays in those countries. It’s for development in Israel. It mostly comes back to us. Let’s cut it off.

But let’s go forward here. All right, so the foreign military financing FMS under the 2016 to 2028 memorandum of understanding the MOU, which is a binding treaty, but not legally enforceable agreement between the government. So the president actually has flexibility here. Aid is appropriated by Congress each year.

So Trump couldn’t quote unquote just cut it off, although I do think it is smart to push it to Congress, and I’ll explain why in a second, overnight without legislative buy-in, but he could delay disbursements attached to new conditions. Eeg tying it to quote unquote American first [00:11:00] Procedures favoring US jobs or push for reductions via budgetary proposals.

And he’s already done stuff like this in other areas. So, how would Trump frame this in a way that doesn’t just burn everything down? Well, what’s important to note is Trump’s unique relationship with Israel. Trump in his first term, moved the embassy very controversially into Jerusalem, which freaked everyone else in the left, the F out.

But in Israel that

Simone Collins: was announced while you were in Israel, was

Malcolm Collins: it? Yeah. They like had his picture projected on buildings around like Jerusalem. When I was there, it was very big.

Simone Collins: It was a big deal. It wasn’t

Malcolm Collins: just like, then he, he negotiated this ri the, the troop the, the hostage release in Israel where they regularly on the left and the right in Israel.

They super came together over this.

They like painted big memorials of him on beaches and stuff like this. It was seen as like in across the board broadly. Good thing where some leftist, a tax trump over this, but broadly, everyone in Israel thought this was a good idea. [00:12:00] Then you had the Helping Israel in Iran, right?

So if Trump said, Hey, let’s cut this off and we’re gonna go to Netanyahu and see that Netanyahu has actually suggested this broadly. And the core reason Trump hasn’t gone along with it is because of people who are basically more Zionists than Netanyahu in United States positions that we can get around.

We’ll get to that in a second. Cut off. This funding entirely. If he said, we’re gonna cut this off, but he frames it as a graduation, basically saying, this is military aid. When this military aid was given to you, you had three core opponents that were an existential threat to your state, Hamas, Hezbollah, and ran.

Well. We just helped you deal with Iran. We just. U Rights basically handled Hezbollah on your own. They’re at like 30% operational efficiency now. And Hamas isn’t exactly an existential threat anymore, right? So [00:13:00] it only makes sense that we would pull back on these sorts of funding, but you don’t do this right away.

There’s other benefits. We could get to this. Before you do this deal, you go to Saudi Arabia, you go to Saudi Arabia, and you say, Hey. What if we build this framing for you guys, right? You work towards re normalizing with Israel, but we can treat this as a Saudi Arabia victory America pulling out of funding Israel military.

And we will say, we did it with you as the negotiator of Saudi Arabia. Now this is gonna look great for Saudi Arabia. In terms of regional power plays and Saudi Arabia can say, look at what happens when Iran tries to move the US out of Israel. The US gets more entrenched. Look at when we try to do it, we actually get the US out of the region.

Now what does this do politically in the United States? Well, the, the left is completely effed, completely effed [00:14:00] because they’ve been trying to get the US dis disentangled from Israel for. Decades at this point and they haven’t been able to. If Trump did an about face on this one, his base would be super into it.

Like, like his core, core base would be super into it. Oh yeah. It would completely undermine the left in the next elections ‘cause he ended the Gaza war. And Indian military funding in Israel. Right. Which would be very hard for leftists to go against at that point. Right. And this is becoming like a major issue for them.

Right. H how do, how do you even win? How do you, how do you as like a OC go up and try to run against somebody like that or an administration member like that? Right. Better. It helps fold the, the civil war that’s happening right now. Right. Which is to say, amid doing this, you could make a speech and I think Vance would do a very good job of handling this.

‘cause he’s very good with nuance. Things that the right should not be about canceling our [00:15:00] own. Right? Like basically everyone knows who he’s talking about on this issue. So it can also be seen as this is what happens if you try to build large cancellation campaigns on the right, like we will about face in a way that you potentially don’t like.

Because I can see Israel will like this, but APAC and people like whatever his name is. Ben Shapiro will hate this, right? Because it’s basically framed as a failure on their part, right? Mm. For doing these types of cancellation campaigns, but it will prevent the actual you know, basically just.

Antisemitic for the state of antisemitism from gaining any more ground, because now they either have to say in the same way that many leftists had to be like, actually, it wasn’t about the war, it was just about the antisemitism. Many people on the right are either gonna have to take a stance, which is either, okay, now I’m all in MAGA America first again, or.

No, I, I still really wanted like attack Jewish people. Right. So it [00:16:00] basically forces people’s true colors in a way that prevents antisemitism from growing under the guise of, we are really concerned about this money we’re sending to Israel without getting. Anything, quote unquote, in return. Now, I’ve argued that I do think we get stuff in return, but it prevents that argument from being used, which is fundamentally long-term beneficial to Israel.

We’ll get to that in a second. Before I go further here, thought Simone,

Simone Collins: I find this very compelling. Keep going. I mean, I just, the one thing I’m not so sure about is the really heavy lobbying interests. Behind the companies. Companies are primarily benefiting from this aid. It is

Malcolm Collins: gonna be like Boeing.

It’s gonna be like Honeywell. It’s gonna be like a bunch of American contractors. Right. They’re gonna have an absolute connection because they have been the primary beneficiaries of our aid to Israel. Not,

Simone Collins: yeah, because this is basically like a spending program for American businesses [00:17:00] where their products end up in Israel.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And they

Simone Collins: frame it as a, and I feel like that’s might be more of a driver. Behind all this. Did anyone think

Malcolm Collins: this is No, but this is actually the beauty of this, right? Okay. So Trump can handle all of this in a way where I would believe that like Trump has a strong enough relationship with Netanyahu’s government that he can be like, Hey, I need you to come out and say like, this is a really good idea.

We want to do this. And I’m gonna argue that all the signs point to them being amenable to that if they do that. Right. Then if you as a congressman or senator come out against this, and recently Democrats have been getting equal two more funding from the military contractors and Republicans, right? Yeah.

The only reason you would be coming out defending this is military contractors, right. If you can get Netanyahu on your side on this. Right, [00:18:00] and, and I actually think this would work really well in Israel as well. If Netanyahu got on board with this, and I’m gonna explain the project that I think we can pitch to Israel that would get him on board with this even further than he already is.

But basically it’s Trump’s opportunity to call out the quote unquote true deeps stake. Trump doesn’t care about military contractors, but if he’s out there being like anyone who opposes this. It’s clearly doing it. Not for the sake of Israel. Look at what Netanyahu is saying, but because of their crony ties to APAC and the military contractors, this looks good for nobody.

Right? Yeah. It’s a good way to clear out opposition and democratic opposition and watch if, because so many Democrats just reflexively oppose anything. Trump does watch if a large faction of Democratic congressman, because I think enough Republicans would. Be like, oh. Like we actually kind of need to get on board with this, especially if we can get Netanyahu on board with this.

You know, like you’re your otherwise simpy for Israel, like Ted Cruz [00:19:00] types. Well, if the Democrats, and I promise you a large fraction of Democrats reflexively will end up saying, no, we cannot. In these military contracts, it makes the Democratic Party look cooked to their base.

Simone Collins: That’s a fair point. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I, I wanna go into the Netanyahu stuff before I pitch. What I think we can do that would make this look really good, like long term, right? And, and like we’re talking Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, like that’s gonna be the huge, huge fighters on this, right? Yes. They’re gonna lose their minds over this and we’ll go into it, but let’s see, what has net and Yahoo been saying on this?

Okay. Here’s a quote from Netanyahu. We received close to 4 billion for arms. I think we will need to wean ourselves off American Security Aid just as we weaned ourselves off of America. Economic aid. This is a direct quote from Netanyahu during the meeting referenced in multiple [00:20:00] expos and it was in November 13th, 2025.

Simone Collins: Okay, so this is very fresh.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He’s basically saying, I’m up for this. And note here, the core danger of not doing this under the left, we wean Israel off of economic aid, right. If they do that for military aid, they’re going to own that as a feather in their hat, right? Mm-hmm. If we do this as the right, basically it’s gonna happen.

If the left wins anyway, right? Why don’t we do this while maintaining a strong relationship? In the meantime? Right. It’s foolish of us to not take advantage of this potential win given how much it will throw our opponents geopolitically. I mean, even I think in Europe, who’s been complaining about the United States Israel relationship forever but also locally, right?

Okay. Other quote here. This is Amit Haval. This is a, a high level guy, was a sort of Netanyahu ally guy. He [00:21:00] says, quote Biden or Trump Woff, or former Secretary of State, Tony Blinken. There is one clear con conclusion. For the past two years, Israel needs to be independent and not reliant. Israel is already 77 years old.

It’s time to be weaned. This is an important statement by Prime Minister Netanyahu. And this was in March, 2025. So basically he’s saying and, and this is on his US visit, right?

Basically saying, Hey, I support Netanyahu in this. So he’s getting political support on this. If we go to other interviews we get Netanyahu saying, I don’t know what they’re talking about.

My direction is in the exact opposite. So, basically this was when they were talking about Netanyahu renewing at the end of 2028, another 20 year agreement. And Netanyahu, he said. I plan to do the exact opposite of that. So Netanyahu plans to not renew the agreement, but what would be an even louder political sign is if we cut it off a few years before that because we don’t want Netanyahu handing this [00:22:00] win to Democrats.

Right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Assuming they end up winning in the next cycle. Like we, we basically gain nothing from this. Another quote from Netanyahu. Now I want to make our arms industry independent. Totally as independent as possible. Then we have Netanyahu. I think that it is time to ensure that Israel is independent.

Then we have Netanyahu. We have a very strong economy, a very strong arm industry. And even though we get what we get, which we appreciate, 80% of that is spent on the US and produces jobs in the us. I want an even more independent Israeli defense industry. Basically he’s saying, do you not see that? In a way this hurts us to be so dependent on the United States one?

Simone Collins: It does. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right. Okay, next one. And this one has been quoted in a few different ways. Israel does not ask others to fight for us.

Okay, so it’s close to net. Yahoo. In this one, we don’t know who it was but it was confirmed in some reporting. We passed on civilian aid in 1996 [00:23:00] and might pass on military aid in 2026.

Israel and America are partners and alliance like no other fighting on the front lines of civilization. So note here. He’s saying let it it pass in 2026. What I’m saying is, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If that’s the direction you’re planning to go anyways, handle it in this administration, cut it off in this administration.

It puts you in a much stronger position and you have the political protection because who is really gonna complain if it’s coming from Trump, given all the other things he’s already done for Israel?

Simone Collins: Exactly. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then in another unconfirmed the per like insider, this is out of the box thinking.

We want to change the way in which we handle past agreements and put more emphasis on US Israeli corporation cooperation. The Americans like this idea.

So. How do you do this in a way that benefits the United States even further? So I’ve always said that Israel’s core advantage is the Jews. A lot of the leading AI people, even in the United States, are of Jewish ancestry, right? So we want to align their [00:24:00] interests with ours. If we look at the future of warfare, even currently, Israel has been investing a lot.

In AI based projects right now, a lot of their existing AI based projects are very distributive in terms of how they are implemented. Well, what if you say, when you announce all of this, you say, Hey, we want to do. A joint effort in one of the most important areas of military technology going forwards, which is ai.

Now, one of the things to note was past joint efforts was Israel, as I noted in the past Israel video is Israel has sometimes sold technology from these joint efforts when they are being done with in Israel. Mm-hmm. This wasn’t ones that were being developed in the United States, but when they were developed within Israel, they later sold them to China in, I think in both instances.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which, no, not something we feel great about.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so basically, but why were they able to do this? They were able to do this after the projects were discontinued, and they basically had all of the tech that they had been working on [00:25:00] in a US co-venture in Israel, right? Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: Mm.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, but AI is different than something like developing a plane or something like that.

You need giant, stable data centers. Exactly. The type of thing that would be a very juicy target to the type of people who would want to bomb you, right? Mm-hmm. Second, they need to be cooled, right? Not easy to do in Israel, right? Because Israel’s a hot place. Huh? What’s a location that is probably the single most defensible place on earth where you have cheap energy and lots of cooling resources.

Oh, the United States, right. So if Israel wanted to move to a partnership relationship with United States and they want to develop super advanced AI, and they wanted to show that they are moving into a more equal partners position with United States, what we [00:26:00] should do is a totally joint AI mega project.

Simone Collins: I love it.

Malcolm Collins: Now, why is it needing to be totally joint? Because that way it doesn’t get sunset like one of these past plane projects and then sold to China. Mm. If it’s Israel’s core mega data center, right. For AI development and if it is a core development center for US military AI development. Mm-hmm. It doesn’t benefit Israel to leak the technology.

It would in fact be completely foolish for Israel to leak the technology. Second it. Very logically, you know, you’re basically saying, Hey, why would you develop a mega data center in Israel when it can just be bombed? Right? Right. Like there is a logical reason for them to put it in the United States, but now they have a further vested interest in our continued relationship with Israel in our defense.

And. And actually making this a [00:27:00] really good project, and it looks like a joint project where we can say, we won’t invest a dime going to Israel because all of this development money is going to the United States and Israel needs to develop an AI mega project anyway. So why does it matter? Now we might still have aid, but it’s going directly to the United States.

Do not pass, go. Do not collect $200. Not going to Israel. To the United States. And it’s going directly to American contractors within the United States developing a project that is directly for American use. It’s just that the Israeli government is doing it as a joint project. Mm-hmm. So it benefits us across the board while actually solidifying our longitudinal alliance much more than military aid for American government contractors does.

And this could be used to lower, I think, initially the fears that the government contractors have. Which is, you go to Boeing, you go to Raytheon, you go, Hey, [00:28:00] AI is the future anyway.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right. We promise you a certain amount of contractor deals in the new AI mega project for the military. And so you’re just transitioning the money that used to go to Israel to this.

We’ll cut them off eventually, but you know, for the first year to have them not do a bunch of lobbying, we can handle this. Right.

Simone Collins: Well Melissa, this is not going just to like fuel weapons and instead develop

Malcolm Collins: something at least not gonna benefit at bombs. Right. Like, okay. So before I go further on the economics of how Israel can pull this off without American aid, because I’m gonna go over, basically we learned in the last military theater that they don’t actually need this aid as much as they thought they did.

Oh, really?

Simone Collins: So basically we’re was a lot of this to go to get weapons that just aren’t gonna get used now because they’re not

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Relevant with how modern relevant works. Oh, I hate wasted money.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s going to pay for big, fancy American tanks and planes that nobody really needs anymore. [00:29:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Your thoughts before I go further Samo,

Simone Collins: I just, I just want this done now.

This sounds good to me.

Malcolm Collins: You just want this implemented? Well, the other joint project we could go into is Israel is bringing them in on Project Replicator, but it would have to be a completely joint project if, if they were doing that. No, it being developed in Israel. So if they want, if they want to have basically Israeli military officials or Israeli military scientists, those people are living and working in the United States facility.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I could see that one. That would work better,

Malcolm Collins: That way. And, and again, we have a good, or wait, you guys have ha habitually leaked stuff when we’ve developed it in Israel in the past. It’s stupid to develop it in Israel and it’s not even in your own best interest.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Continuing here. Okay, so what can we cut? First we can cut the Navy Corvettes, the SAR ships. So these are a partial Northrop developed ship. Okay. And you could [00:30:00] easily cut 50% moss ball. Two to three Corvettes. Right now they’re costing around 800 million a year.

And there have been no recent naval battles that they would be relevant with. They are really only relevant in Gza Gaza blockade. But the Gza Gaza blockade could be done much better with drone ships than this. For sure they’re not particularly relevant Submarines, why the heck do you need submarines?

Except for Iran Intel. That’s really, it is Iranian nuke deterrent which we can help with anyway. So you could cut this 60% easily. It’s around 400 million a year and there has been no sub war for in a long time. Anyway air base defense this is the iron dome arrow. So they do about. 10,000 intercepts.

And yeah,

Simone Collins: this seems like one of the more active thing. I mean, very, very expensive, but also quite active.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But also because they’ve taken down Hezbollah and Hamas significantly. It is something that could potentially be cut back. Another one that [00:31:00] could be cut back is the reserve slash Special Forces.

The, they are. Well, this is medium deployment. Well, we’ll say maybe. And the cyber intel is obviously incredibly useful.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: If you made those potential cutbacks, you could get around three to 4 billion a year. And I also think that, and specifically here, I think tanks is what I would focus on cutting back the most.

We’ve seen in more recent warfare types. That tanks are less relevant than they have been historically and things like embarrassing,

Simone Collins: if any. The only stories you hear about tanks now are just

Malcolm Collins: embarrassing stories. Well, no, the tanks have been useful against Hamas, simply because Hamas is so primitive.

Mm-hmm. That tanks are still useful against Air forces. That said, if you have autonomous drones, why are you using tanks at all? I would actually move entirely to Moss Ball the Tank program. Like, like literally tank tanks off the battlefield entirely. And you can say, why not keep like a small amount?

It’s because of the cost [00:32:00] savings of not having to have. Any variable parts for these is just so giant. If you completely moss ball that and replace that with AI drones which I think are going to be much more effective, especially at urban combat I think you’re just gonna get much better functionality in in future combat scenarios.

The Air Force is much harder. I also think the Navy can be significantly moss balled, whiz. Drone ships and drone programs. So just move to an entire drone based Navy program. And then in terms of the, the aircraft just, you gotta keep it, it’s, it’s too useful for bombing campaigns and stuff like that, unfortunately.

Also the, the Navy branch is just not that active. So that’s, that’s also easy there. Now in terms of apac, APAC is going to be one of the hardest things to deal with because they’re just zealots. But we were able to cut back US economic aid to [00:33:00] Israel in spite of apac. I think we can cut back here.

The other thing that really defends APAC is if this come from Trump. So thoughts, Simone, we move forward with this. What do you think happens?

Simone Collins: I think it better aligns incentives. And I think when people misinterpret concepts around Zionism or support for Israel or opposition for Israel, they’re not looking enough at incentives.

And, and underlying streams or pathways to human flourishing or human suffering. And what I like about your formulation here and, and your proposal is that it is designed to optimize around future human flourishing and benevolently aligned incentives in a way that the current status quo, which we still su, have supported historically over other alternatives.

Does like [00:34:00] the, what we’ve said in the past is, listen, it makes sense for the US to be allied with Israel. It makes sense for us to have a friend in that region. Well, so, you know, our

Malcolm Collins: best interest and people have pointed out, they’re like, well, there’s Jews in Israel that like spit on Christians. And I’m like, there’s Christians in the US that spit on Jews.

Like, I don’t understand, like, like you’ve seen the things that like

Simone Collins: Well, and that it, but it, it also doesn’t matter. What matters is overall what these countries and their interests are, and. Yeah, I mean what, what we need are allies who support our right to. You know? Right. And I think

Malcolm Collins: there’s a, a misunderstanding where they think that there’s, like, again, Israel is other than the United States, and the Jewish people are, other than you know, like Protestant populations, right?

Like they are a, a different group with different interests and. I think that you can recognize that this group might favor their own interest over ours. Yeah. And so the goal is to align those interests in a way where they can’t [00:35:00] easily favor their interests over

Simone Collins: ours. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The, the better way to put it is you want to create it, create systems such that their best interests are best served in a way that also serves our best interests.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s, that’s what I

Simone Collins: meant to say, right? Everyone acting maximally, selfishly. Act in a way that benefits each other. Exactly. Now it’s not set up that way,

Malcolm Collins: point out here that there is like, people will be like, oh, there are Jews who dislike, you know, Goms or whatever, or even, even America more broadly, right.

Or Christians. And my answer is, yeah, and there’s a lot of Christians who hate Jews, right? Like, if we allow. Potential alliances to be leveled by the iterations of each faction that hate the other one. You, you wouldn’t have any ally on earth, right? Like, there’s good, there’s factions within every group that hate every other group,

Simone Collins: right?

It just, it seems so stupid to just hate a group. Like, what you need to look at is, okay, what do you want and how are you gonna get it? [00:36:00] And you know what groups.

Malcolm Collins: I mean

Simone Collins: in that

Malcolm Collins: battle, people on the Discord being like, oh, like Israel is destroying like a thousand year old churches. And I was like, where on earth is that happening?

And they’re like, in Gaza. And I’m like, you, you understand that the Christian population in Gaza was Genocided, right? Like they used to have a decent Christian population and now it’s less than 1% of the population.

For context, , when Palestine was created, Christians made up. This was in 19 22, 9 0.5% of the population. Now they’re well under 1%. I.

Malcolm Collins: And. The, the, this is a bit like saying like the US was antisemitic because we bombed, you know, at an ancient temple in Dresden when we were firebombing it during World War ii.

Like, obviously interests are aligned here. Like the, the, it matters much more the actual humans who are being genocided in a region. Not that, you know, Israel can prevent that without a total occupation of the region, but I’m just saying that like, if you’re talking about are Christians being genocided in [00:37:00] Israel, absolutely not.

Are Christians being genocided in many Muslim majority areas around the world today? Yes, they are. So it’s, it’s worth. Like being aware of the scope of the conflict and that the conflict, I think going forward than, as I’ve said, going forwards in a world of demographic collapse, we, alliances are gonna matter much less between countries and much more between cultural groups, IE, Jews, Protestants, Catholics, Protestants various Muslim groups, et cetera.

Right? Like, and within a country, your alliance is gonna be much more towards your broader cultural group than it’s going to be towards your individual country. And I think that the, this is broadly already true across most of Europe. It’s just that like the Muslims realize it. And the native Europeans don’t yet.

But for that reason, a lot of those countries are going to fall, like it’s just inevitable that they’re gonna fall at, at current demographic rates. And so when we think about like the [00:38:00] future aligned power factions, there’s a, a lot of the regions that we, we think we can allot. Like also, I don’t even think that Europe is really on our side anymore.

You know, they’ve, they’ve gone so woke even if they maintain power,

Simone Collins: it hasn’t felt a long time. It hasn’t felt like that since 2016. I,

Malcolm Collins: I, I see them like when I look at the core nexuses of power that oppose us interests like geopolitically. I’m typically like, it’s the, the woke Europe monoculture, it’s the Chinese alliance.

It’s the sort of two Muslim fact, well, one Muslim faction largely, which is the Iran Nexus, maybe Saudi Arabia, but they’re more are allies ish. They’re like in the Ishi zone. More directly opposed to us in the Saudi Arabia in faction is the Vatican faction. They are always criticizing us and the, the socialist countries that fall under their control always are, you know, thinking things about us.

And then in terms of like the nexus that, [00:39:00] that like. Is more reliable, I think is like when I’m looking it is United States, Israel, maybe the uk if it can be reclaimed, but that seems unlikely. Maybe Australia, it can be reclaimed, but that’s likely, unlike, unlikely, maybe New Zealand, but that’s also unlikely.

So like the only reliable player we have on the table is Israel. Which is one of the reasons I’m like, it makes sense to invest in them, but it doesn’t make sense to invest in them in a way that could cause us long-term reputa or even electoral damage if they plan to pull out in 2026 anyway. Right.

So, any fans of this, if you’re in the, I know we have fans related to the Israeli government, try to get this idea up to like Netanyahu’s administration, get him to mention it to Trump or somebody like that, or within the Trump administration. I want to see this idea broadcast more because I think it would destroy the left in this country while building a much stronger.

More [00:40:00] realistically permanent alliance between the United States and Israel, and also fix part of the problem we have growing within the right and completely throw cold water on growing antisemitism among the right in the United States,

Simone Collins: plus boost investment in ai, which is the ultimate arms race we should be focused on right now.

Not on

Malcolm Collins: exactly

Simone Collins: foreign conflicts that. Honestly don’t matter that much, but

Malcolm Collins: also potentially strengthen our relationship with the Saudi Arabia Alliance, which would be really powerful if

Simone Collins: we could say. Yeah, I love that element of it. I, I do. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All

Simone Collins: right. It’s another nice perk.

Malcolm Collins: Love you, Simone. And, and I, I’ve totally done a 180 on this, and it largely came from the fan who is like,

Simone Collins: I know.

Yeah. Have you done a 180? I mean, we’ve always, your interest in Israel, I mean. We, we like to, I think, but what I’m saying

Malcolm Collins: is we need a faction in the right that’s actively pushing, being like, look like we need to cut military funding to Israel. Now. They won the war. It’s over. Now is the time to do it.

Simone Collins: [00:41:00] I know, it’s just, I, I feel like there’s this tendency for people, and this is something that just culturally we don’t do.

There are a lot of people who are just like, this group is good, or this person is good, or, I love this person ‘cause this person is just inherently valuable. You know, like, I just love them because they exist. Or, I love these people because they exist. And a lot of people view Zionism as the Jewish people have a right.

To Jerusalem. In, in that is,

Malcolm Collins: that is not, by the way, the way I view Zionism.

Simone Collins: Well, I know, but lemme explain. People have a right

Malcolm Collins: to fight for a right to

Simone Collins: Jerusalem. Well, that’s, no, see, that’s the thing is, is people confuse the two. So they think, they think they, they impose that view on everyone because they themselves hold it.

These weird. Totalizing like definitional, this person is good, or this person deserves love. And we are extremely pragmatic in and conditional in everything. Like, I love you because, or you know, these [00:42:00] people deserve this place because they’re the best ones to run it right now. Or, you know, we, we like.

Judaism as a religion and a cultural set because we see that it produces really compelling outcomes. We like the fact that Jewish contingents run Israel because. Malcolm visited it and saw how well it was going. Like, but,

Malcolm Collins: but, but what I’m saying is, is, is the Jews would lose their right to Israel and Jerusalem if somebody defeated them.

Yeah. If they lost the seven days, you entitled not say they have a right to it. I would say the stronger force won. You know, they, they through political maneuvering and their own blood, they. Earned that, right? Yeah. But it can be lost at any time.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and, and, and the US should be, in our view, aligned with Israel because the US benefits from that alignment.

It’s not that we believe that there’s some inherent reason.

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: just kind of like if, if we had a, a family member. [00:43:00] Who was like severely addicted to drugs and stealing from other family members. Like some people are like, well, that person deserves to be taken care of no matter what. No, we cut them off. And like that’s a family tradition of Malcolm.

Like even more ruthless than that. Like basically if you’re not succeeding, like well, don’t come to me. So final

Malcolm Collins: question for you on this.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Venezuela do about it. Do you think we should intervene? They’ve got a lot of oil. They’ve got a lot of rare earth minerals. They, we have political capital to intervene because of the Nobel Prize.

What do you think?

Simone Collins: I feel like there are things going on with Venezuela that we don’t know about.

Malcolm Collins: I, I feel like they’re already intervening in a way that’s doesn’t require full on the ground operations. That’s sort of where I am with that right now. I think,

Simone Collins: I mean, Trump keeps saying like, we’ve got plans.

I, I can’t tell you about them.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: the fact is the Nobel Prize winner seemed so indebted to Trump leads me to believe that he’s probably working with them pretty aggressively.

Simone Collins: [00:44:00] Maybe I, I really don’t know. I’m, I’m just not enough. I’m not informed enough about this, but I also, one thing that I really do like about Trump is he is also very mercenary and therefore pragmatic in his, I think, view with alliance is, except for when he’s being sort of flattered and aesthetically.

Malcolm Collins: Which is a problem. The person who we need to convince of this plan is Jared Kushner. If Jared Kushner gets on board with it, we can get Trump on board with it.

Simone Collins: I, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know, I don’t know if Jared Kushner is sufficiently mercenary, but I, I, I feel like at least with Venezuela, Trump, I, if he’s gonna do something, it’s because he thinks that there is a very distinct.

Benefit to the United States. Oh, by

Malcolm Collins: the way, another crazy thing that’s happened recently. Have you seen the riots in Mexico recently?

Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s crazy. Right?

Malcolm Collins: And that they’re calling for America intervention. Yeah. Like America, military occupation of Mexico called for by the younger generation.

That’s [00:45:00] another episode.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I’ve often pointed out if we did occupy Mexico and integrated Mexico into the United States we could make the border Mexico southern border, which would be incredibly easy to defend. It’s an incredibly small, a harder to cross border. And it would be so much easier to make it the 51st state. It’s culturally very similar to us anyway.

Simone Collins: In some ways. In some ways it’s very, very distinct. But yeah, that’s a whole nother episode.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you to DeSimone.

Simone Collins: I love you too, gorgeous.

Malcolm Collins: Bye.

Simone Collins: There. Wait, I’m on the wrong side. Oh, I learned something that I just find quite interesting that has nothing to do with stuff we normally cover in our podcasts, but are you familiar with Helium three?

Malcolm Collins: No. Tell me about it.

Simone Collins: This [00:46:00] like, I think it was someone who follows our podcast who shared with this with me, but like.

Basically there’s, there’s gold in the mar hills. It, it’s just the, the hills are the moon and the gold is helium three. And it’s basically current nuclear power plants use fission of uranium, as you know, but like, obviously we prefer a future with nuclear fission. But. Right now, it’s not really that feasible apparently.

It, it both is really lossy in terms of energy and it also produces neutrons. But fusion using helium three it, it results in basically what’s called a neutronic reactions, and it produces power without neutrons, minimal waste, and virtually no radiation. So kind of like interesting, perfect fusion. But where are we gonna get the [00:47:00] helium three?

Because it’s really, really scarce on Earth. Like only around 15 kilograms annually are produced of, of Helium three on Earth as a byproduct of nuclear weapons maintenance. So it’s not exactly like abundant here, but the moon surface. May have as much as 1.1 million metric tons of helium three.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that’d be so cool.

A, a viable economic reason for a moon base.

Simone Collins: There’s golden in hills, I’m telling you.

Malcolm Collins: Can

Simone Collins: we, it’s up there. Moon

Malcolm Collins: Base, I,

Simone Collins: Russia, the US have announced ambitious plans actually for, for lunar mining. Related to this because it’s such a big freaking deal. Like basically I, I think 20, just 25 tons. Yeah, 25 tons of helium. Three taken from a lunar mine. That’s one space. Shell, argo. So just [00:48:00] one space, one, one trip, right. Could power the United States for a year.

Our whole country, and we’re not exactly like the light on electricity country. Right. Like we’re, we’re, we’re kind of big energy hogs. Right. So that’s, that’s just how valuable it’s, but yeah. Going after it or something? No, no. Actually he’s said nothing about the moon so far, as I’ve heard, and Russia and the US have announced ambitious plans for lunar mining, but they haven’t materialized China.

Is actively pursuing Luter exploration. Well, it matters. Everything was

Malcolm Collins: AI to be able to get more power.

Simone Collins: I know. That’s the thing. So it looks like China. Has stages for its lunar exploration planned. And they’ve completed early stages already. So China’s kind of, they might be eating our lunch on ai, but not, not through the means you would think, but it’s because they, they’re going for the moon better than we are

Malcolm Collins: helium.

Well, no, I mean, as soon as we start to get in, AI is developing so quickly who will be able [00:49:00] to develop things like. Missions like this on its own.

Simone Collins: Oh, so you think that we’ll still get to the moon?

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Sure.

Simone Collins: As long as we have smart ai and then we’ll just Okay. So you think the bottleneck as an energy initially, it’s more just

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, just getting AI to where it’s gonna be and we’re like way ahead of China on that

Simone Collins: stuff and, and using it smartly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: But yeah, I don’t know. I, I kind of feel like we’re, we’re sleeping on the space race now, and that Elon Musk is overly focused on Mars and needs to get on the moon here. Well,

Malcolm Collins: all this debt could be used for the moon.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, yeah. And it is also he’s setting up supply chains and models built around.

More sustainable forms of like space, cargo, mining and, you know, getting stuff. So like harvesting helium three, I mean, so the feasibility of harvesting and, and, and processing it remains to be seen. Of course, this is kind of theoretical at this point ‘cause no one’s tried because you have to heat the helium up, I think to like negative 60 degrees Celsius.

I can’t remember the exact number, but like, it’s really, [00:50:00] really cold on the moon. And you have to make it slightly less really, really cold to get it out. And I don’t know how they’re gonna do that. I mean, AI can figure it out to your point, right? So it doesn’t really matter if China’s hanging out on the moon.

It doesn’t matter if they have a fricking moon base, if they can’t get it off the moon. Yeah. So fair point there. Like we have to actually get there and be able to take it out and take it back. But anyway, I just thought I’d share that with you. And thanks to our amazing listeners who share weird stuff like this with us, it’s really cool.

Malcolm Collins: Alright.

Speaker 3: Look at this. Look at this. What are you doing? I, you, I’m, this is my beef lo mane that my wife made. Look at this. Could you imagine if you had this every night? Oh my God. Could you imagine? It’s so tender. You guys have no idea. Yeah, it’s.

Speaker 9: All right here. Right here. Perfect. Up. That’s stable. Very stable. Stable. I up. Mommy. [00:51:00] If you get a bag and I can’t get this straight up for you, that’s not a cookie. I can get that. Do you want a cookie? Okay.

Speaker 10: Yeah, it would be so cool. Wow. That’s so cool. Good job you guys. That way while always so my hand, it is your hand until you tried to eat it. You want a real picture? My, I wanna see what the picture looks like. My picture. I love you toasty and I.

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