Shownotes Transcript
So we're on the precipice of a disinformation apocalypse, the likes of which we can hardly fathom, where anything can be said at any time about any but anyone. And powerful and motivated enemies are weaponizing that today, and they will more so in the future, to destroy states and people and organizations and leaders and companies. That's already happening.
David Keyes, welcome to State of a Nation. Good to be here. You went off grid for a while and we didn't hear from you. And now you're back on Twitter with videos trolling everyone from the Qataris to Piers Morgan to Khamenei and the legacy media. Where did you go and why are you back? Well, I've been building a business and raising a few children as well. But a lot of people came to me pretty much every day and said Israel's in trouble. It's losing on the narrative front. How can we win this? What should we be saying?
And I felt I had something to add. I've lived a pretty unique life and had a lot of unique experiences. And so I wanted to go directly to the people with no intermediaries, as I've been preaching for a long time. And I figured I'll just put my voice out there and see what happens. And that's exactly what I want to dive into with you in this conversation. As Elon Musk, the owner of X, says now, you are the media. You can bypass the legacy media. If you have content that is good enough, it will reach a good reach, begin to expand.
influence and affect public discourse but there is an art and there is a science about it you can't just type anything send it off and hope that it goes far there's a special way to go about it and you've really mastered the art both of viral videos and also strategic communications as well you were for three years prime minister netanyahu's foreign media spokesman let's go back then first of all go down memory lane and tell me what were you doing there in the prime minister's office
Well, I was trying to get Israel's message out to the world. I was the point person that dealt with the media. I wrote a lot of videos. I tried to take complex issues and whittle them down into simple and impactful ways that people would understand what Israel's up against.
And that was an enormous challenge. We had so many different audiences and so many different things that were happening, nonstop crises, you know, 15 critical things happening every day that you didn't see coming when you started that day. And so it was a very difficult job, but it was a privilege and very fascinating to be there and to meet with world leaders, you know, personally with the prime minister and to be part of seeing how things happen at the highest level. So I enjoyed it. There were also immense challenges.
But it gave me an opportunity to see really what Israel's up against from that perch. And you were working with a prime minister who is, I think, more than any other Israeli leader, a showman with a flair for theater. And I think one of his most iconic moments from the time that you were his international media spokesman was the unveiling of the Iranian atomic archives. Netanyahu, in a very theatrical release, said,
showed that Mossad had gone into Iran, stolen Iran's secret nuclear archives, brought them back to Israel, and he unveiled it in the most theatrical way possible. Tell me the backstory. Take me back memory lane, just as one example of how you were trying to bring your knack for viral videos and strategic communications and Netanyahu's theatricality to try to make that point to the world.
Well, long before the world had heard that Israel had stolen in one of the most audacious intelligence operations, I think, in history, I was tasked with the prime minister with helping expose this to the world. So we had this treasure trove of information, the vast, vast majority of it we couldn't show because it was the plans of how to make a nuclear weapon. It showed that the Islamic Republic had lied about literally everything. They said they had no nuclear weapons program and that was a lie and their leaders would go around and say, we've never had anything like this.
And so we discovered, of course, that they did. And the Mossad and the intelligence community did absolutely incredible work. That was one operation. But then there was the operation of how to get that information out into the world in a way that truly painted the fact that Iran had lied and that we were on the right side of that debate. At what point did you get looped into the information and find out what was happening? Many weeks before it was public. So I was working, you know, in a basement somewhere looking at this material. But after the documents were safely out of Iran. Yes.
And so it was an incredible moment to be exposed to some of this and to be part of the group that helped determine what we should expose and how. And of course,
So wait, hang on. You're sitting there somewhere in the Kiryat in the basement with boxes and boxes of documents in Farsi on how to build a nuclear weapon, and you have to decide what you're releasing to the international media and how? Yeah, that's right. I mean, you said the Kiryat, not me. Maybe elsewhere. I'm speculating. Right, you're speculating. But yes, we were working on it very, very intensively, and the idea was to show the world that,
Iran had lied and that this nuclear deal was putting Iran on the path to an arsenal of nuclear weapons. It was extremely dangerous for Israel, extremely dangerous for the world. So we needed to find ways to make it stand out and to shock people. And so we could have done it in a myriad of ways. We could have put out a press release and said, hey, we have this thing.
but the question was, would that convince the world and would it be seen and would it go viral? And so, you know, what I helped come up with was this very dramatic scene where there's a black curtain that the prime minister unveils, because if you don't know what's behind it, you might be intrigued. I recommended that we put an exact copy of the atomic archive right there next to the prime minister with the files, you know, placed right there and the files, you know, copies of the files were actually in those
documents and we invited the world's media and the Prime Minister put out a PowerPoint and a video and sure enough it went all around the world and it had its intended effect because the President of the United States cited these documents as proof that Iran was lying about everything and it's hard to be in an agreement with somebody if they've lied in order to get their way into that agreement. I think you're jumping ahead several steps in trying to explain what was a really theatrical moment because, okay, the Prime Minister stands with a PowerPoint and
Look, did you come up with that PowerPoint? I mean, it was a white page and it said in Times New Roman, Iran lied. I mean, your graphic design skills are not particularly advanced, are they? Well, actually, that one slide was my brainchild. And the prime minister is a master at whittling down messages to its simplest form.
And so, you know, I recommended that we just put these two words in as large a font as possible, which people laughed at, but that's okay, because it was memorable, and it was simple, and it was understandable. And it took this whole complex thing of exactly how many warheads they were trying to produce, and where, and in Shorobad, and, you know, there were many, many fascinating details to both the operation and the exposure, but that was the essence. And so he stood with those two words, and
suddenly understood what it was about. And we showed the proof that they lied. But yes, Iran lied was a very important slide in that presentation. Take me back to the brainstorming process, the storyboarding where you're trying to work out the myriad ways that you can present this information. What other ideas did you have that were shot down that didn't get past the
Well, a large portion of it was, you know, sifting through the material and deciding what is okay to show. And so that you need real experts in, you know, those relevant fields to say, this would be dangerous. This would tip people off. We can't include that piece of information because it might show our hand too much of how we know what we know or how we got it or things like that. So there are many, many such discussions.
And then the question is, from all this information, what is most persuasive? What is most interesting? What shows the truth about what they did in the simplest form that people can understand? So we had CDs and we had documents and we had pictures and we had them by the tens of thousands. And so a few people sat around for weeks on end and we consistently updated the prime minister and showed him, here's what we're thinking. What do you think about this? And he was very engaged in the process of deciding what to say and how to say it. We did many practice rounds.
to make sure we got it right. And yeah, it worked like a charm and it was good that the world saw it. There were of course debates about whether to put it out at all. But if you're trying to convince the world of something, you can't always just stay behind the scenes and public diplomacy is a really important part of shifting policy as well to help elucidate what is true about the world so that policymakers can make informed decisions and so that the public understands why they're making those decisions.
So there was a big debate about whether to be in that Iran deal at all. I thought it was terrible. It ended up giving the Iranian regime hundreds of billions of dollars of sanction relief. They spread that money to terrorist organizations around the world. And so definitively showing that Iran had lied and we shouldn't be in that deal was a very important part. I'm very proud of having partaken in that deal.
uh in that spectacle and of course in your time at the prime minister's office you weren't just trying to help netanyahu repackage messages that had been or i mean you're part of building the messages but deciding what information you're taking and putting out you're also trying to influence policy behind the scenes right yeah absolutely what policies are you trying to influence behind the scenes israeli policies around the world anything well because i'm interested in you're there
you know in a communications capacity but you know as any spin doctor knows you know how the sausage is made behind the scenes so at the end of the day whatever decision is made you have to be the one who packages it in the most palatable way but it doesn't mean you always agree with the particular policy and i'm sure that when you were in the prime minister's office there were policies particularly relating to israel's security foreign policy defense where you thought look i'll go on tv and defend this if i have to but this is crazy we shouldn't be doing this
Yeah, look, I had many debates internally that I kept internal about what I thought we should do on certain issues. And I made no secret about it to...
the prime minister and to the other advisors where I stood on issues related to Hamas, related to security, related to Iran. And I advocated for them very strongly. I was a big proponent of speaking directly to the Iranian people, of, you know, positioning them against the regime as the real victims of the regime and saying that we are on your side, that we can help. Not everybody agreed with that. Some people would say, don't interfere, or that's not going to have the intended effect, or it might actually do the opposite. So I was part of these discussions. But having come from a human rights background, having worked for Natan Sharansky, I
I had very strong views about what should be done around the world. And yes, occasionally, you know, there were some things that, you know, I didn't agree with 100%. Nobody's going to agree with anybody 100% of the time. I don't even agree with myself much of the time. But, you know, I think I had somewhat of an impact in terms of not just how we spoke, but of how we shaped the policies towards
world and sitting in these meetings you get a real interesting perspective about what foreign leaders are interested in what they want what they need how they speak and you can formulate ideas about how to impact those other leaders and it's not just us fighting we were fighting against powerful enemies so hang on what do you mean just go back a second what sort of meetings were you in with foreign leaders where suddenly the penny drops and you say huh okay here's a way that we can influence them what can you tell me behind the scenes well look um
Take Iran, for example. Our job was to convince leaders around the world to have much harsher policies to punish the Iranian regime. And on the other side of that equation was Iran going around meeting the exact same people, trying to sway them in the exact opposite direction. So I would pick up on things that Iran was doing and try to undermine it both in meetings and in public diplomacy. I'll give you just one example that comes to mind.
You know, I was looking at polling data in 2016-17 and it turned out that the number one fear of American liberals, and we met with many congressmen on both the left and right, was climate change. And so I googled Iran and climate change. And up pops Vox and The New Yorker and all these big publications praising Iran to the hilt for being the paragon of virtue on climate change.
$5 million in the green economy. Hey, look, nuclear energy is green. Yeah, well, that's what they say. So they're painting Iran in this virtuous light as a power that is helping the world fight climate change, working with Ban Ki-moon at the UN on the green economy and blah, blah, blah. Never mind they're hanging gay people and torturing dissidents, etc.,
So, you know, I would realize that this had an impact on, you know, American policymakers that we met with as well, that they may be wooed by this kind of rhetoric about Iran. And certainly, you know, young American students, you're sitting at Berkeley and you open a site that you like or you're reading The New Yorker praising Iran. What are you going to think? You're going to think, hey, this is a great country doing good things around the world on the issues that I care about.
So I went to the prime minister and I said, listen, we have to change this. We have to undermine their narrative and we have to advance ours. It turns out the facts are exactly the opposite. Iran is destroying their environment. There's tons of drought. We're the best in the world at water management. Why don't we offer our water management expertise to Iranian farmers? So we opened a telegram channel in Farsi and the prime minister took a glass of water and poured water to have that powerful visual effect.
The video became, I think, his number one most viewed video, at least on Twitter at the time. Millions and millions of people, tens of thousands of Iranians wrote us thanking us for helping them. They said, we chant death to Israel, you chant life to the Iranian people. The regime hated it. All the senior leaders blasted it. The people loved it.
And we helped portray ourselves in a light which was seen by people with, you know, who really valued the issue of the climate as more in a positive direction. And we countered our enemy that seeks our annihilation that was completely, you know, misleading people on an issue that they cared about. So it was sort of this like 3D chess where you're triangulating between an ally, adversaries, publics.
the issue of the day and how to change minds at scale. Right, because what you're trying to do is to try to make yourself relevant to them in a way that
So much of the debate that is happening about Israel is other countries, other cultures projecting their own psychodramas onto us. You want to find a way to make yourself relevant to them and say, look, supporting us is a way of supporting the things that you already care about. David, I want to get back to this topic later when I want to drill down with you into the secrets of viral videos and effective communications. But I do want to talk about the policy side and specifically Hamas. You entered the prime minister's office 2016, right? I remember because...
I also interviewed for the same position and you beat me to it. And it's a good thing because it's a good thing in hindsight. And you did an awesome job. But 2016, you were there at a critical period after the 2014 war with Hamas. The beginning of Hamas laying the foundations for the war machine that it used against us on October 7th. This was the period when Israel allowed massive reconstruction inside Gaza, turning a blind eye to the military machine that Hamas was building.
in which Israel started to allow Qatari money to go into Gaza to buy off Hamas to try to... I'll let you explain that. And I'm wondering, as this is happening, and we're beginning to basically give Hamas the rope with which they're going to hang us on October 7th,
What's going through your mind as you see this policy being put into effect? Are you supportive of it or critical? Well, I had written many articles in the years before that calling for Hamas's total and utter defeat because I speak Arabic. I learned Arabic. I was listening every day to what Hamas leaders were saying. By the way, AI has become...
so good and so convincing that when I saw one of the videos you did on Twitter speaking in Arabic, I just assumed that it was AI dubbing because that's how good AI dubbing has become. But you do actually speak Arabic. Thank you. Yeah. A lot of people, you know, told me, oh, great AI video. And I spent... Because you never know what... Because the problem with AI now, you don't know what's true and you don't know what's real anymore and you don't believe your own eyes. Yeah. But maybe I wasted 25 years, you know, breaking my teeth on this difficult language. I could have just used AI. Yeah.
But to answer your question, I had always viewed Hamas as a real and present danger. I said they're threatening genocide every single day. They call for literal genocide. You know, to use my Arabic, the deputy speaker of the parliament, Ahmed Bahar, gets up and he says about Jews, every Jew, he says, count them all, kill them all, don't leave a single one standing.
And I listened to Sinoir as the protests were happening, trying to storm into Israel in 2018. He said, we're going to cut out the hearts of every Israeli. And I said, he means this literally, we have to stop them before they attack us. Now, there were some reasons at the time, you know, most people were not willing to pay the price to really remove Hamas from power. And there would have been a steep price. So Israeli society as a whole, there wasn't
you know, really, you know, people were not, you know, egging to go into Gaza and pay the price of removing Hamas from power. I thought at the time it would have saved many lives. And I think in retrospect, most people think that. But when the cabinet met in 2014, this was publicly reported. And they said, well, 500 soldiers could die if we go into Gaza.
everybody said, well, that's obviously not worth it because right now 500 soldiers are not dying. But what you ended up getting was many hundreds more than those 500 soldiers died and the 1,200 civilians on, you know, mostly civilians on October 7th were killed. And,
And so I saw this as a clear and present danger that was growing with every single day. And so I made the case and I didn't win that case that we should be absolutely destroying and defeating Hamas long before October 7th. And there were good reasons not to do it and there were bad reasons not to do it. But I supported that policy regardless. And I lost in that policy fight.
I mean, looking at how destructive the war in Gaza to bring down Hamas has been with the Israeli justification that this is in the wake of October 7th as Hamas is threatening another October 7th and difficult enough to rally international support when the case now is so obvious in the wake of that massacre. It's difficult to imagine how Israel could have made that case on the world stage and justified this level of destruction before the world knew what Hamas was capable of doing.
David, you're a very skilled communicator, but you didn't manage to convince the people in the prime minister's office. Not on that one. I mean, nobody can win 100% of the time. Okay, but why? Well, there are certain worldviews that are very set, and there are strong countervailing measures for every good idea or good policy. So I ran into a lot of reticence, particularly, I would say, from the defense establishment that came to me and said, you don't know what you're talking about. You're completely wrong. I had one very memorable conversation with a very senior officer where I said, we need to say that Hamas wants to destroy Israel.
And I checked with the prime minister. He said, yes, that's the right thing to say because it's true and because it frames the fight we're in as an existential fight, which it is. And this very senior officer in the Israeli army said to me, I'm never going to say that line because Hamas is a joke of an organization. He said in Hebrew, it's a nothing burger. He said, and if I ever said that line, journalists would laugh in my face.
And I thought I was taking crazy pills because here is, you know, a terrorist organization that every day calls for our annihilation. The messaging is simple and clear and correct and true. And yet senior officials were unwilling to say it because they didn't want to be laughed at by...
and because they had a very different read of Hamas and there was a lot of hubris about how good we were and we underestimated our enemies and we can never make that mistake again. And we were lulled into a false sense of security by sophisticated enemies and by too much ego on our part that we know everything.
You know, alongside that, we also had to be ready to fight on multiple fronts at any given moment. So a lot of people said, why get stuck in the mud of Gaza when we have to, on a moment's notice, potentially go after Iran's nuclear program or be at full war with Iran and the Houthis and the West Bank could rise up and Lebanon could explode at any second. So it was many things at once, but despite all those challenges,
hesitations I strongly and still favor total victory against Hamas. Before October 7th, Netanyahu believed that Hamas genuinely wanted to destroy Israel.
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Yeah, I mean, I don't think he had any real doubts about the fact that they wanted to destroy Israel. What to do in the face of that threat, given limited arms, given limited army, given all the other threats, given the fact that the public wasn't with an invasion of Gaza before October 7th, given the limited support we would have had around the world, given the fact of who was in the White House and we could have had arms stopped long before that.
So I understood the other case. I just, I didn't agree. Well, help me explain that case. What was the thinking on the eve of October 7th? Because clearly you thought it was wrong, but the prime minister disagreed because you weren't able to convince him and continue.
continued allowing Qatar to send money to Hamas. Why was that happening? What was the thinking there? Well, I wasn't there in those years, but I think the thinking... You were there, what, 2016 to 2018? But a lot of people in the defense establishment, a lot of people across the entire spectrum felt that this was a powder keg and by allowing some money in and by thinking that they would improve the economy somewhat and bring in workers, and it was just...
the prime minister, Netanyahu, it was a lot of people that came before him and came after him during that period. It was a lot of people in the multiple defense bodies who felt the same exact thing, that they felt that they were decreasing the chances of war by doing these policies. That was completely wrong. And I was opposed to it at the time. But there was some case to be made. And they would say, look at the quiet from Gaza. Look at the fact that Hamas didn't fight in this round. They, you know, refrained and it was only Islamic jihad.
But Hamas was completely dedicated the entire time to destroying us. They were quietly and patiently biding their time. They were regrouping and rearming and plotting and planning. And we didn't take seriously enough the threats and we didn't act as if they were a clear and present danger, which they were. And we should have destroyed their regime in 2007.
And now talking of short, snappy soundbites and slogans, you have a favorite one now, don't you? I've had a favorite one for a long time. It's on this hat over here, which is one of your creations, right? That's correct. Total Victory. Tell me about this campaign.
Well, that was my preferred policy for Hamas going back a long time, so much so that my friends from my bachelor party made me a hat in 2017 that said total victory. So I have pictures and proof and it's there. I was wondering what the back story was. They're telling you, David, you're going to get married, you're going to a difficult battlefield, no retreat. No, no, it was my favorite slogan. Don't give her an inch. It was my favorite slogans. So right after October 7th, I said,
okay, this is the opportunity where we can pursue the policy that we should have pursued before, which is total victory against a theocratic, genocidal, Islamist, tyrannical, vicious, mass-murdering terrorist organization. And the way you deal with those savages is to completely defeat them, not to have pauses or hudnas, as they say in Arabic, not to reward them, not to give them time to regroup or rearm, but to pursue total victory. I'm a huge fan, both a history buff and a huge fan of
You know, the American generals who engineered, you know, along with policymakers, of course, the total victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And there was no middle ground given the threat that they were up against, given how vicious those enemies were. A lot of people think that comparison to Nazi Germany is a bit gauche. It's out of place. I mean, Nazi Germany, you can't compare Hamas, Gaza, but you see things differently.
Yeah, I mean, of course there are differences and there are important differences, but there are also similarities. Both Hamas and the Nazis called for genocide of Jews. Both Hamas and the Nazis were completely tyrannical in nature. Both had global ambitions to conquer the world. And both were kind of lulling the world into a false sense of security for a long time. So there are some similarities. Of course there are differences. But the question is, when faced with people who say, we're going to annihilate you, we're going to kill you all, what do you do?
And the answer is you stop them. You don't just throw up a barrier. You don't just shoot their rockets down in the sky because they're always going to find a way around the barriers that you place. You must defeat them hook, line, and sinker. You must defeat them completely and remove them from power. Hamas can never, ever, ever rule Gaza again. Full stop. They walked into these communities and butchered every man, woman, and child that they saw. They kidnapped babies. They beheaded people with garden hose.
They burned entire families alive. Actually, I don't think you're being fair there. The beheading with the God and hope was a civilian, not Hamas.
On that particular case, it may have been a civilian, but they killed and butchered more than enough people to, you know, it wasn't just Hamas that attacked also, and we also don't only need to attack Hamas. We also need to attack Islamic Jihad, right? We also need to attack the civilians that came in that day and committed murder. We also need to stop them, right? So it's not just this one small, tiny, defined group. Of course, the regime of Hamas, which planned and plotted and opened the floodgates of hell to the residents of southern Israel, they need to be completely defeated.
Do you think that the message of total victory is resonating internationally? Do you think anyone is on board with that vision of the total destruction of Hamas? I think we have an uphill battle. I mean, I'm sure there's large swaths of America and I've met many of these people who say, how come you're not defeating your enemy faster, sooner, more decisively with more firepower? But the more we go towards that policy, I think the more support we'll have because the longer it
goes on and the less we pursue that policy. But of course, the stated aim is still total victory, which I'm very grateful for. That is the correct policy. And we collectively, the people, you know, anybody with a voice needs to speak up and demand that because there's a lot of people who don't favor total victory. If it was up to them, they would say, we've achieved all that we can achieve. Let's go back towards, you know, October 6th
thinking. Let's retreat. Let's let Hamas remain in power. And that is completely unacceptable. So I'm trying to rally the troops. I'm trying to convince whoever will listen. But yes, I'm sure that the French public is not totally in favor of total victory, but that's okay. This is our country. We need to help define the parameters of what this war should be about. And that's what I strongly favor. But total victory isn't possible, is it?
No, I totally disagree with that. It's absolutely possible. It's a moral necessity. It's strategically vital. We are more than capable of achieving it. We must achieve it. And anything short of that will lead to much worse things in the future. But total victory isn't possible because the moment that the prime minister said that the goals of the war are to dismantle Hamas's military, remove it from power,
and bring back all the hostages. The moment a single hostage is executed in captivity, you don't have total victory. It's going to be at most partial, right? The vision that you are going to both destroy Hamas, remove it from power, extirpate it, and bring back all the hostages alive, even those who are still alive. I don't understand how those two go hand in hand right now. Well, we obviously have to bring back hostages and we obviously have to fight very hard in order to find them and to bring them back and to stop their captors from taking even more hostages, which they actively plan to do.
We can't sacrifice victory in the name of anything else. In other words, there were thousands of American civilians that were taken hostage by both Germany and Japan in the war. But the war wasn't stopped. You didn't negate the goal of total victory. But victory wasn't defined as bringing back those hostages in the way that in this war, victory is defined by the standard of bringing back the hostages. It's one of the explicit goals of the war. Well, I don't think you can't
total victory if a single person is killed by the Hamas savages that are genocidal. They killed 1,200 on October 7th. So we still can achieve total victory. To me, total victory means denying them the capability of waging war ever again and probably defeating their will to wage war ever again. And I think both of those
goals can be achieved. We saw it achieved in the past, and I think it can be achieved in the future. What do you think needs to be said in order to make that point clearer to people around the world, that Israel needs to... Okay, we can talk about
to what extent, you know, what perhaps what price Israel should pay in order to bring back the hostages, how thoroughly it can trump, trump, good choice of words, how thoroughly it can trounce Hamas in Gaza. But still 18 months into the war, making the case to the international community that no, this war is not going to end with a permanent ceasefire that leaves Hamas in power, free to govern,
Hamas, free to govern Gaza, free to plot another October 7th massacre, and with reinforcements of terrorists let out of jail who are going to be the next foot soldiers in the next invasion and hostage taking. Because, I mean, I just think from a comms perspective, if right at the beginning of the war there was a willingness to understand that Hamas has to be removed from power completely, it just doesn't feel like we're there anymore, that the world is willing to give us any of the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, I mean, it's a tough fight and every day we have to fight it. I think it mostly starts with understanding who our enemy is and what they want. Because once you understand what Hamas is, I don't think you're going to be too quick to compromise on their removal from power. And that's where, you know, being having my ear close to the ground and seeing what I saw and having been exposed to a bunch of the intelligence about it and, you know, speaking Arabic and listening every day to what they're saying. I have no doubt whatsoever that I know what they seek and their deepest goals and aspirations.
And not everybody understands that because there's a whole counter narrative about what we're up against. Well, hey, it's just this organization and maybe they can moderate and maybe they're ideologically flexible or maybe they can be persuaded not to destroy Israel completely now, but maybe half destroy it a little bit later.
And the answer is no, no, and no. They're not, they're not, they deeply hold these views and we have to take them seriously. And we cannot, we cannot be so insulting so as to say, yeah, we know you're saying that, but you don't really mean that. But a lot of people are pushing that narrative that, hey, that's just for domestic consumption. And you had all these supposed experts, you know, over these years that would say, well, now Hamas has to fix potholes.
now that they run Gaza. So maybe they won't really want to kill all the Jews. Or, hey, maybe if we give them some money, we can buy them off, and they won't really want to destroy Israel. No, they do. They believe that as deeply as I believe that I love my children. And not one iota less.
So that's what we're up against. And if you can help bring that to light for people, suddenly the policy becomes a lot more understandable and reasonable because you say that's not something you can live with on your border. So wait a minute, you're telling me they're building up arms and they're calling for genocide and they slaughter thousands of your people in a day and they say they'll do it again and again and again and again and you want to have a ceasefire with that group?
There's no ceasefire with the Nazis. There's no ceasefire with Al-Qaeda. There's no ceasefire with ISIS. These are people who are deeply ideologically committed to evil aims, and we have to win. And one of the best ways of getting the message across, in your view, is a merch store. You had Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump posing with this baseball cap. Total victory. Tell me how that happened. Well,
Well, first of all, yes. I mean, merch sounds silly, but merch can move the world. I mean, what is the, you know, instantly if you put on the Make America Great hat again, people understand a lot about you and where you stand. And that went super viral because it was the manifestation of a complex message in a simple way that was fun and interesting and a little bit different. And it stood out and it was, you know, it was read. So this was my attempt to do that, to kind of put that message in.
in front of people's eyes so that when you walk around, you can see hopefully a lot of people, you know, thinking about, I wanted to move the goalposts because in every past conflict with Hamas, we've said,
well, we hit them hard. We pushed them back a few years. We denied them, you know, a little bit of time. And that's what we'll do again in another two or four or six years. I wanted to move the goalposts that people are thinking and talking about total victory. And merch is a part of that. Yeah. I mean, how else are you supposed to get in front of, you know, a million people's eyes, you know, I guess on social or people are taking out billboards. But when somebody says, you know,
at any cost, you know, given to Hamas or, you know, we have to stop this war immediately right now, but we haven't removed Hamas from power, they can look around and see many people hopefully wearing the total victory hat. You just asked the question that I wanted to ask you next. How do you get things in front of millions of pairs of eyeballs? You were with the prime minister at the time. Let's just say some of his statements, international statements in English were not doing particularly well on YouTube. And then suddenly he had a few videos that
And they didn't skyrocket because of particularly fancy video editing or graphics. There was something about the way they were scripted, something about the way that they presented that worked. And it showed in the numbers. Tell me about that.
Yeah, well, look, there are tried and true ways of effectively communicating, and some of it is very old school. It's Dale Carnegie and Ogilvy and lots of things, but there's also new science that comes out all the time about this very subject. And so I would go into the prime minister's office every day and print out 10 Google Scholar articles about virality and persuasion and communication and all sorts of things like that, and I tried to incorporate those principles into...
in our messaging. And it turned out that when you did those things, tens of millions of people would want to see it when the average before was about 100,000 views per video. So we found ways of incorporating those principles. It started with surprising people. If something is not surprising in today's day and age, when you're up against every celebrity and war and scandal on earth and someone just
And cat video and spaghetti recipe and Amazon home finds. Those were my adversaries, actually, was trying to capture that mind share of somebody for the few seconds where they might think about the Middle East in a day. And so we tried to find ways of surprising and shocking people. When we went to the Munich Security Conference and the prime minister gave his millionth speech about Iran, I recommended that he...
hold up the wing of the armed Iranian drone that we had just shot down in front of all the world's defense ministers. And he held it up and he said, Mr. Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, do you recognize this? You should. It's yours. So it was a... How did you get that through airport security? That's a story unto itself.
That's a long story. We have time. We brought it on the plane with us. The guys who gave it to us at the warehouse almost fell off their chair when we said we're taking it back. Actually, the deputy military secretary said, I bet no one ever thought that this drone would fly again, let alone an Israeli plane. Ha ha ha.
And the prime minister's hand was full of soot still from the drone. And we had some guys take it in the hall and then we hid it behind the podium in the moments before he spoke. You didn't have to declare it at customs? No, no. It was a whole operation. Diplomatic luggage. Some cool pictures in a black bag holding the drone.
But to get back to your question, it started with shock and surprise. It had elements of visuals. So, you know, pouring that water cup for the Iranian video or holding up the drone. And the prime minister is a master of this. You'll see visuals all the time. The bomb at the United Nations and the black curtain with the atomic archive. Anytime we could, we would incorporate visuals.
We used emotional and empathetic and inclusive language whenever we could. We had simple contrasts between things, me, Tarzan, you, Jane, to keep things simple. These are very complex things. And in a 30-second soundbite, you can't get into all of the complexities of all the histories. 30 seconds is a long soundbite. Exactly. Nowadays, it's six seconds or something like that.
We had accessible things that people could do, you know, invite your neighbor here, speak to this person. We tried to bring it down to the level of where somebody could do something about it rather than this is just an abstract thing of a faraway conflict. So that telegram channel for Iranian farmers was a way that we could get people to just, you know, click a button and be more active participants in this sort of geopolitical war.
So you start to string all those things together and many, many dozens of other principles and all of a sudden people find it more appealing, they find it more interesting, it's more memorable, they're more willing to share it. What is it that you want to share?
well, you want to share Mr. Beast videos or, you know, Ryan Reynolds, you know, aviation gin ads, or there are ways of making things deeply, deeply entertaining. And too many people on our side of this conflict say, well, let's get the facts out. The facts change minds. But it turns out that facts alone don't change minds. You also need to, you know, convey them in compelling ways such that people understand
are interested in it and they remember it and they want to share it. And that's an entirely different skill set than being well-versed in the diplomatic history of Resolution 242. Okay, but what's...
You've gone through a lot of academic articles about the science of strategic communications and persuasion. What are your major takeaways on how to create viral videos? Because the prime minister will have an automatic inbuilt audience where even his videos that are not doing well are doing better than most creators could possibly expect because he's the prime minister and that comes with its own brand. What should I be thinking of when I'm
I consider how I want to create videos, whether in the field, here in the studio, to try to grab people's attention. What have you learned? Well, one thing I've learned is that if you're doing anything expected or similar to a lot of other people, it will almost certainly be, you know,
uh, you know, hard to stand out from the crowd. And then that leads to, you know, low, low engagement and people not really wanting to share things. So, you know, you might say, go to a place that you've never been. I like to ask the question, what would somebody in your, what's the last thing somebody in your position would do? Where would you go? Who would you speak to? How would you speak?
So you can literally make a list. You know, these are some of the exercises you can do in order to spark that sort of creative genius. Mr. B said he would sit around for weeks on end and ruminate just about ideas. People are too quick to the execution of say, hey, this is what I do. So let me do it and let me get a camera crew. But they're not thinking deeply about what's the most intriguing idea I can possibly come up with and how can I do the opposite of what people most expect. So Ogilvy, who was the father of modern PR, said, study your competitors and do the exact opposite.
That's a wonderful frame. You're a podcaster, so what do you expect from a podcast? Where do you expect them to be? What do you expect to look like? What do you expect them to talk about? How do you expect them to distribute their stuff? And so if you can radically differentiate yourself, that is highly, highly rewarded in terms of numbers, engagement, and interest. That's one thing, but it's a very, very important thing, and it's a very hard thing to do.
What should I, other people who are interested in strategic communications, be reading? I mean, what resources should we be tapping into, you know, since your brain is not available to all of us? Well, first of all, study the GOATs, you know, the greatest of all time. I've actually sort of, you know, listened to everything Mr. B said because I'm intrigued. How do you get hundreds of millions of views on everything you do? Who's your pantheon of GOATs?
Oh, well, there's a number of them. I mean, look, Dale Carnegie's original book is still brilliant to this day, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I do like Ogilvy's stuff a lot. I've mentioned him a few times. Mr. Beast is absolutely brilliant. There's a number of companies and people that have done very smart things, you know, Dollar Shave Club and Purple Mattress. And these people get hundreds of millions of views. I just ask myself for the causes I care about, for the causes of freedom or human rights or Israel.
How come that most times when I'm seeing content about that, it's paltry? It's a few thousands or tens of thousands. What needs to be done in order to elevate those to the views that commercial companies are getting? And so that's the bridge I'm trying to gap. And of course, there are the tried and tested questions.
truths of human psychology and things that have remained true throughout time. But the information landscape is now changing beyond recognition with the explosion of AI tools that are making it possible for everyone for free or with very cheap subscriptions to create things that even just a few years ago, a year ago, two years ago, you would have needed multi-million dollar budgets, huge ad agencies to be able to pull off and create content and things that look extremely, extremely realistic using AI, not just the level of execution, the level of
Thank you.
Oh, great question. Everything has changed in the last few years. The scope of what we're up against, the mediums that people use, the algorithms themselves have changed, who's behind them, who's manipulating them, how information flows, all of it has changed dramatically. And so the worst thing we can do, you asked, you know, what can you learn going forward? The worst we can, the worst thing we can do is fight yesterday's war.
So I'm not a believer in anything traditional. Traditional media is dead and dying, and for good reason. It's untrusted. It gets small numbers. It's not interesting. It's not the future of where people are or how they get information. You look at small accounts that get hundreds of millions of views, and then you look at the... You mean all the neo-Nazis on Twitter? Well, I mean, there are some neo-Nazis on Twitter, but it's also opened the floodgates of ordinary people who have deep insights in order to inform the world, and they're often a much better...
to get insight and information than the dinosaurs of yore. Oh, definitely. I found in this war that I have a select number of accounts of people who are really reading the documents, going through the data, doing some basic OSINT, open source intelligence, who are
Shining far more light on the complexities of the war than the legacy media. Yeah, no legacy media is dead In fact, I just hosted a funeral for legacy media one of your one of your videos will include the link in a Very somber moment. It was very sad, but they've they've gone from the world So yes, how's it changing that the decline of legacy media the rise of individuals over? Brands and organizations. What else?
The tools you can use to create content. Pixel perfect images and video now. Anybody can do it. So as where before you were dependent upon some expensive crew of editors and videographers, etc. Nowadays, literally everybody has access to tools that create. So we're on the precipice of a disinformation apocalypse, the likes of which we can
hardly fathom, where anything can be said at any time about any but anyone. And powerful and motivated enemies are weaponizing that today, and they will more so in the future, to destroy states and people and organizations and leaders and companies. That's already happening. So how do you defend against that? Wait, before you jump onto the question of how you defend against it, that's a very big statement. What's the disinformation apocalypse? How do you see this threat emerging? Because, you know, if in recent years people said, well, there could be deep fakes, and then you can, like, create a fake...
sex video with someone by putting in their face. The technology is now a lot more advanced than just creating a fake sex video with someone's face. You can do anything with anyone instantaneously. And so the question is, what do you do in an age where everybody can produce that? And I don't think anybody really has the answer. When I was in the prime minister's office, I saw every single day completely false things spread at the speed of light instantaneously everywhere.
everywhere. Against the Prime Minister, against the army, against myself, against my colleagues. You'd wake up, you'd walk into a meeting and then you'd walk out and 180 degrees in the opposite direction everywhere. And the rumor mill of social media and people not only making up things but half-truths and distorting things everywhere all at once. Well, hang on. When you say they can make up anything about anyone at any time,
That's scary and that's something that I want to dwell on. What are the emerging AI tools that you are seeing that are allowing bad actors to make up anything they want about states, about individuals to try to destroy them? And how should people be concerned about – I mean what are these emerging tools?
Because, you know, not everyone is following this as closely. Blink and you've missed half of the developments of the last six months. Yeah. Well, look, there's names, you know, of tools for each one of these things from voice creation to, you know, 11 Labs or Midjourney or DALI or ChatGPT or any one of the tools. Yeah, but not the tools. Talk to me about the big picture, the capabilities of what, like, this disinformation apocalypse. What are we staring at down the barrel?
Well, look, as it stands today, you have, you know, TikTok controlled by China. You have billions from Qatar, you know, in American universities. You have Russian subterfuge and psychological warfare. And what's happening today is that the tools that normally states and very wealthy enemies could use in order to attack democracies and companies.
are in the hands of everyone. So I'll give you a good example. You know, NVIDIA, you know, woke up one day and $600 billion is wiped off their cap table because a story came out saying that DeepSeek in China could do what OpenAI had done with $5 million rather than billions of dollars. And so suddenly everyone said, oh, well, maybe we don't need all these GPU, these fancy GPUs in order to create, you know, very powerful large language models. And $600 billion are gone. Now, is that story true? It might be.
Might not be. How hard would it be to create that story and distribute it quickly in lots of places where people are thinking about these things? And by the time you've issued the, oh, this isn't true, it's too late because everyone's already read it and it's already inside people's heads and they're thinking about it and you've sown doubt and
And the negation doesn't even work, by the way. That's part of what the academic literature says. You say, oh, we didn't do this. I didn't do this. You do that enough and then the negation dissipates. And Israel's enemies have already understood that clear enough by throwing genocide, genocide, genocide at Israel. What they left to us is saying, no, we're not committing genocide. Once you get someone in a position where, you know, you have to empty your pockets to show that you're not a thief, then you're winning. That's a really scary question about it.
about what democracies can do to defend themselves and also what individuals can do to defend themselves because we're living in a whole new world when not even state actors, anyone with a grudge against you can create deep fakes, so misinformation about you. And the broader question not only about what it means for you as an individual but what it means for society when you now know that AI is so convincing you cannot believe anything.
Anything you are seeing, I mean, you know, people watching on YouTube now, maybe the AI is advanced enough that you're a hologram. I mean, maybe, you know, the technology isn't there, but it could be in a couple of years. And so you can't, you know, the information landscape is shifting such that people will be automatically disbelieving of anything that
that doesn't confirm what they already think or what they want to believe. And that's really dangerous. Yeah, look, I saw on X the other day audio of J.D. Vance talking poorly about Elon Musk. And something felt a little bit off to me, but I said, well, maybe it's true. And then, of course...
It wasn't true. It was completely fake. But already that's stuck in my head now. And that's unfortunate. That's going to happen at scale all the time. So there's the defensive measures. We need to build better detection, et cetera, et cetera. That's a sort of cat and mouse game. But what really intrigues me are what are the technologies of the future that we have to build in order to win this?
And winning it is a very complex thing because it's putting together dozens of very complex things at once. You have to understand what's being said and how people are speaking and what matters to them and where they're getting their information and how do you reach them and how do you craft content that is persuasive to those audiences and how do you know that what you're saying is actually working and you're not just throwing things out into the ether. And so if you're doing all of that simultaneously against...
China and Iran and Russia and rogue actors that are trying to undermine your values and your country and your democracies. How can you manage all that simultaneously 24 seven? That's a really huge problem. Uh,
And that's a problem that's only going to grow in scope. And it's just something now that I think Western democracies are waking up to. But we're completely ill-equipped to fight that war and to win that war. We're fighting with one hand behind our back for sure. Because if you're a dictatorship halfway across the world, there's no democratic constraints. So you can do whatever you want. You can use data in any way you want. You can suck up anything from the Internet. You can use people's private information with nary a care in the world. Western democracies don't do that.
We're also slow to mobilize and slow to see threats. That was true of Pearl Harbor. That was true of 9-11. We don't sort of preempt and act soon. So you smash these two things together and you have a very, very scary situation that every leader and every democracy, every country, and every entrepreneur needs to be thinking about and to be consulting on and building their defenses and using perhaps more offensive tools. And that's particularly concerning because if you look at it just the traditional way
Without AI and the whole development, it doesn't look like Israel is even on the pitch when it comes to fighting the social media war. And it doesn't matter how many tweets the foreign ministry or Kogat puts out. This is not where major things are shifting. But what you're describing to me now is a reality in which...
Western countries are not even fighting on that pitch because China will have no compunctions about using a bot army to try to shift public opinion somewhere in Africa in favor of China. I don't think the West is using the same tools because for democracies, there seems to be something very icky about the idea of using bots and other technology to mass manipulate public opinion. But that's what the enemies of Western civilization, the free world, are doing right now. Do you see...
I mean, how does the West adapt to make these changes without losing its basic...
Democratic soul. The first thing is just to understand what's happening, because if you're aware of what's happening, you can be better situated to defend against it and to win that war. Most people I don't think are aware of the level of attack that the West is under from these enemies. And I felt it in the prime minister's office because I know what it's like to be deluged with fake stuff all day, every day. And that was a few years ago. Now you extrapolate forward, the technologies have gotten more powerful. We have to understand that we do not have the manpower or the resources that our enemies have.
So we're outgunned and outmanned and outspent. And we is the Israel or the West? Both Israel and America and the West writ large. Okay. It's all of those things. So the question is, how do you win a fight like that? So my thesis is we need better technology and better messaging. Those are the two things and we need to smash them together. The technology part is understanding what is happening in the social world, primarily understanding how narratives are changing, how they're being manipulated by powers and
good defenses and going on offense when needed. It's not just a matter of a bot army versus a bot army. Yes, they're using bot armies and yes, they're very real and important ethical questions about what to use, where, when. So let's put that aside for one second. But being aware of the threat and building the technologies, the...
Manhattan Project of Narrative Warfare is really what needs to happen. We need to get really, really brilliant minds. And those minds have to, you have to have AI people and quantum people and messaging people and creative people all sitting around. What you don't need is, well, let's write an op-ed about this thing because we're being attacked. So let's get an op-ed out there. There's a completely different game today being played. It's primarily algorithmically driven. It's very well funded.
It is attempting to undermine people 24-7. And so this is not just a matter of I've seen something I don't like. Let's get the other narrative out there. What does it mean? How do you reach the world today? How do you reach billions of people? All young people are on TikTok all day long. How many videos on TikTok got over 100 million views in the last week?
supporting good and democracy in the world. Well, if the algorithms are controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and the national security law dictates that they have to give all their information to China as a state, well, that's a very different world we live in. If Iran is putting $600 million behind their propaganda budget, if Qatar has given $12 billion or so to American universities...
How exactly do you counter that? Do you just give $24 billion to American universities? How do you stop people from using soft power to infiltrate the minds of the masses? And that's what they're trying to do because they understand its impact and they understand that they can't just wage a kinetic war because, you know, Israel is very powerful and America is very powerful. So they're trying to undermine everything we believe in with subterfuge. And we're not generally aware of what's happening because it's beneath the surface.
So Iran hacked the American election. They hacked campaigns on both sides and they funded protests at American universities. And they're spreading disinformation about climate change and how good they are on climate change. And this slowly seeps into our consciousness and it lulls us.
into passivity and it lulls us into thinking these are partners instead of adversaries and then we don't really fight them and then they end up winning these wars. That's why it's so dangerous. And it's a monumental policy challenge because as always the solution isn't going to come from government, it's going to come from the private sector. The private sector can sell its soul to the highest bidder and democratic countries that need to justify every shekel and every dollar in their budgets can't necessarily justify
I mean, essentially the creation of brand new technologies, creating whole new systems of warfare that don't exist. I mean, just the idea of finding the leaders who have the breadth of vision to understand and employ the right people in government service who can possibly manage this evolving landscape with the tools you think are relevant now may not be relevant at all in six years. I mean, what would your advice be to the leaders of – forget Israel, OK? Yeah.
broader democratic countries, the UK, the US, Canada, that are going to be coming under attack, they're already coming under attack, but I think the war that Israel is fighting now is just a preview of the way that democracies are going to come under attack when their interests are directly threatened by authoritarian powers. How do you even begin to get on top of
of this enormous challenge and what role does the private sector play? I mean, I do want to hear, we opened this podcast by saying you've gone off grid slightly because you've been building your own business and this is exactly what you're working on. Tell me a bit about that as well. Sure. Well, you're absolutely right to point out that the solution is not in government. The solution is outside of government. Government is slow and bureaucratic and inefficient and there are broken feedback loops and
It's where good ideas go to die. And that's why you need a Palantir to help build data for governments. And that's why you need Andoril to help build the weapon systems for governments. And that's why you need SpaceX to create the most innovative rocketry instead of doing it in the government. Because the government is incapable of doing those things. And government should be small and should generally protect your freedoms. And then private industry and brilliant entrepreneurs and innovators should marshal their resources and their minds in order to build the future that we need.
So the same is true here. I think the solutions will not be in government. Government may be a client one day, but it's not where the best ideas are going to sprout from. So in the private sector is where we need to focus. And we need...
interdisciplinary teams to take this on because there's no silver bullet. It's not like you just invent this one thing and then everything is good. So I do meet with, you know, a lot of, you know, world leaders and, and, and, and people who are, you know, on the, on the international stage. And they're asking that exact question, which is what the hell do I do? Um, where does one even start?
Well, it's a very tough problem. I mean, shedding one's own mistaken preconceptions about this war is probably the most important thing because if you haven't realized what's actually happening, you're going to be building systems in order to solve the wrong problem. So right now, the comms team of a big company is probably going to have some creative folks and they're going to use some social listening tools and they're going to put up press releases and they're going to give a speech every now and again and they're going to say, hey, we're doing the thing that communications...
you know, the way communications are supposed to be done.
But I don't think that's actually the way it's supposed to be done. It's sort of completely different. You need to number one, obsess about what works and where people are and how people think. And then you need to be able to reach people quickly, you know, at scale in real time around the world. So the idea of like, hey, we'll put out a press release, it'll be covered by the media. And then people's minds are changed on the subject, dead, gone forever. That's not the reality anymore. Not for governments, not for companies. Where should a nation begin when it doesn't have a budget?
By creating a budget for it, frankly, it's a war. And so it's like saying, okay, you want to fight World War II, but you've decided to have no air force. Dedicating it where? Using that budget in order to take a private sector company on a retainer to manage the nation's information warfare for it? Yeah, I mean, frankly, yes, it should be outsourcing those skill sets to companies, of course, with clearance and the proper... I mean, it's the equivalent of outsourcing your physical defense, your kinetic defense to a private military company, to a PMC.
Well, there is a role for private militaries and for private industry and a lot of the best defenses. I mean, what does the CIA use for data? Apparently, it's Palantir. So why didn't they just build that internally? Because it's better and more innovative on the outside. How come NASA just didn't build SpaceX rockets that can be caught? Because they weren't capable of it, frankly. And why is Anduril selling drones to the Department of Defense instead of just building their own drones? You're outsourcing it. Yeah, because it's better and more efficient and more innovative outside the government.
Anybody who spent a day in government understands that the limitations are extreme and oppressive and the bureaucracy is just next to impossible.
And that's why the great innovations always come or almost always come outside of government. There's a role for government. I understand what government is about and it's important and noble and there's good things about it, but it's incapable of doing what needs to be done in order to, to, to win this war. David, the world has changed beyond recognition since you tried to create viral moments by driving an ice cream van around New York, giving out free ice cream to Iranian diplomats to, uh, to celebrate ironically, um,
the hanging of people in Iran. You trolled them and that was a very good video. But I wonder now at this point where the world has changed in ways that back then when you started creating viral content, you couldn't have imagined the way that the technology was going to transform. How optimistic you are that the West can get its act in order and overcome what you describe as being both the ethical concerns within democracies, but also the questions of the resources that authoritarian regimes are able to dedicate to
And to prevail in the information battle of the 21st century. I'm not particularly optimistic that the governments can solve it. I am optimistic that the people can create brilliant solutions. You know, you mentioned the example of... Yes, but those people need to decide that they're putting them in the service of democracies. Yes, yes. And democracies are slow to... And Qatar pays...
Yes, that's true. Look, democracies are slow to mobilize, but when they're mobilized, they're, you know, I'm a big fan of Victor Davis Hanson's and he's written a bunch of books kind of emphasizing the incredible lethality and effectiveness of Western fighting forces and free men when they are mobilized. So it's understandable that we're reticent to sort of marshal, you know, ourselves for this fight because it's,
You know, people would rather, you know, work and be with their families and think about these terrible things. But here we are. And we may have to wait for some kind of, you know, mass terrible event for people to even be aware of the problem, like drone swarms, for example. You know, it's going to take some terrible drone swarm for people to wake up and say, oh, this is a real thing. You can actually have 100,000 drones with facial recognition and small explosives attached and anybody can throw it up there. And, you know, I hope it never happens, but it may take that for people to wake up to the threat because, you know,
That's a hard thing to wake up and you have breakfast and you think, well, you know, there's going to be a huge drone storm attack. We have to, you know, some people are thinking about, but not enough because we're not living in the future. We are now living in a sci-fi movie. We are definitely living in a sci-fi movie and things. We're living in an episode of black mirror. We are, we are changing. Yeah.
We're living on the cutting room floor of Black Mirror with technologies that would have seemed too extreme and delusional even for that. But you mentioned the ice cream truck. I saw the power of a good idea and how it can spread. And that's what does give me hope. When Zarif came to New York, I rented this ice cream truck and handed out free ice cream to celebrate a thousand hangings.
And it went super viral. And suddenly this regime, which was getting away with bloody murder, suddenly had to contend with a lot of negative press about the record of hanging people.
people. And I had done that over and over, not just by pranking dictators, but I changed the street names in front of the embassies of dictatorships after political prisoners. So the Washington Post wrote that this became one of the main issues of contention between China and America. So that was an idea which cost no money, took very little time, but people liked that idea. By changing the street signs? Yes, because that means when they have to walk outside, they see the name of the person that they are, you know, jailing unjustly.
So I saw how good ideas can spread at the speed of light. They can go everywhere instantaneously. And so we need investment and ingenuity in the best ideas, not just resting on our laurels and saying, ah, well, we say that this isn't true and that's not true. You have to understand that people only share what is interesting and intriguing. And we have to start there and work our way backwards to the policies and the truth, not just say, well, this isn't true and that's not true. And this year this thing happened and expect the entire world is going to want to pay attention because they just won't.
David, it's great not only having your brain thinking about these major challenges that the Western democracies face in the 21st century, but also to have you back contributing to public debate, public discourse, hearing your thoughts. How can people who've been watching this episode follow you and your work?
Yeah, so I've started to post on X again at David M. Keyes. My company is Tezza, and this is what we do for companies and for geopolitical struggles around the world to help make people go viral and help position companies to win these narrative challenges that they're facing. So I'm there, but I guess mostly on X or just say hi to me on the street. Okay, fantastic. David Keyes, thank you for coming on State of a Nation. Thank you, Alan.
And it's a wrap for this episode of State of a Nation. As always, if you enjoy, please subscribe wherever you are following this podcast. Give us a like on social media platforms and send the link to a friend you think will enjoy these discussions. I'm Elon Levy, and thanks for joining us.