Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz: The Dangers Posed by Sam Altman

**Tim Miller** (0:13)
Welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. On today's show, we are going to take a little swerve into AI politics with the authors of a New Yorker profile on OpenAI, Sam Altman. But first, a programming note and a little bit of what's on my mind as it goes to the Iran war. Tonight, the next level podcast will be live on Substack and YouTube at 7:45 PM Eastern to cover the latest war crime Redline from the madman that the American people elected president again, so make sure to tune in from that. Here's the latest, it was a bleat from his social media account this morning, Tuesday morning. A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have complete and total regime change where a different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen. Who knows? We will find out tonight one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the world, 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death will finally end. God bless the great people of Iran. You know, treating death of a civilization as some like apprentice reality show thing, where there's a cliffhanger. Can't wait to see what happens on next week's episode. It's truly sick. It's truly deranged. It's obviously deranged. And even people who otherwise supported Trump can see that.
We know this morning that Iran recognizes it as completely deranged. And they recognize that they have a counterparty that's not rational or worth dealing with. They announced that they're cutting off all negotiations following the threat. So pretty ominous stuff ahead. And we don't exactly know what will happen tonight. But what we do know is that the consequences of his chaos and lunacy are going to impact people's lives.
Not just in Iran, but here at home and around the world. We saw last night a Saudi petrochemical plant get hit. It's a random attack, but it's going to create a major supply chain disruption. It's going to impact the cost and availability of everyday products throughout the world. And if Trump does not turn back on his threat now, this is only just a small sample of what's to come. And so, as people start to feel the damage that Trump's war of choice has wrought, they're going to be pissed. Some of those that supported them are going to feel betrayed. And as a result, this is the best opportunity for the Democrats to regain credibility with voters that have turned away from them during the Trump era. The human stakes are obviously more important than the political stakes, but it's because the human stakes are so high that it's critical that we get the politics right now. This relates to something we've been talking about around here all week. I feel like I've said my piece a little bit in the discourse about whether Democrats should engage with anti-war streamers on the left, even if they have problematic or bigoted views. So I'm going to leave that be on this show. But as I've been thinking through my arguments about that and why I was making the case that I was making and watching at the same time some prominent Manosphere figures break up with Trump and some prominent MAGA figures break up with Trump, I started to noodle on like what was underneath all that, what was underneath the argument that I was trying to make. And there are two topics I want to get to before we get to our guests. One is the importance of taking yes for an answer. And the other is how to think about America first and how to engage with people that see themselves as America first if you're part of the pro-democracy coalition. On the first topic of taking yes for an answer, I know, I've heard, I think some people might see my argument here as like strategic positioning for the future or a performative bit or an engagement bait, I promise you it really isn't. I am genuinely striving to be a person that takes yes for an answer, like in politics and in life. When people come around, I just think it's important to accept it for what it is. This doesn't mean that we should allow ourselves to be made into a sucker, to be fooled by people that are pretending to be converts, but it does mean that we should be open-minded about folks that are changing their point of view. It's important to recognize that a person can be genuinely fooled or they can be blinded by their own motivated reasoning or tribal prejudices and as a result, they end up participating in something that's true nature they didn't really see. I know that might be hard to believe given how obvious and awful Trump has been for so long now, but compartmentalization is a hell of a drug. Tribal mindset is a hell of a drug. We all have seen it. And so I think that in order for us to ever move forward out of this awful place that we're in, we have to accept that there are people who are genuinely trying to change themselves, their engagement with politics, their engagement with the country, their engagement with their fellow Americans and try to do the best we can to foster an environment where they can come on over. I want to play you a bit from Tim Dillon. I think it's fair to call him an America first comedian. I don't know that he's MAGA, but if you listen to him, he's, from a comic standpoint, he sounds a lot like Marjorie Taylor Greene and has had Marjorie Taylor Greene on his show and given her a love up about how she should run for president. So that's kind of his politics. I want to play a little bit from his show over the past weekend for you.