How JD Vance Is Getting Ready for When Trump Is Gone | News Round-Up

0:00In this news round-up of a week for Friday, September 11, 2026, the Iranians take actions to escalate the war with the United States, even as Trump is trying to keep it all quiet. JD Vance lays out his stall-very shot of a presidency in 2028, as echoes of politics as usual can just faintly be heard. Everybody's talking about whether AI is soon to end all human life under planets, which would kind of put the other items into context, and Germany lets it be known it is not happy with President Trump's promotion of the far-right AFD party's recent successes. Lastly, discuss Celestium straight in. Reportedly hardliners in Iran are pushing for further escalation of the war with Trump's America, as the economic pressure continues to bite. Generally in such conflicts, the big strategic choices follow reasonably obvious and known incentives, and so it is here. Donald Trump wants for conflict to go quiet with a midterm

1:07elections approaching, and with all the stories circulating about how depleted US weapons stocks have become. He wants the economic pressure of America's blockade of Iran's shipping in the state of all moves to do the most damage it can on Iranian society and the grip of its radical government. Such damage, largely focusing on preventing Iran from exporting its oil. The key reason why global oil prices have been heading back up again. And that damage is real. Right now, food inflation in Iran has hit 128% year on year. And Americans are complaining about $5 gasoline. The Iranians, however, want the reverse. They want to escalate in the military sphere to expose America's weaknesses wherever they can find them, and to impose the biggest profile, the biggest cost they can on Trump at the point where he leased once it. They also want to reverse the momentum that suggests they are losing control

2:11of the state of all moves, which is Iran's key leverage against the US, and so something they want to defend vigorously. A few days ago, the shift was signaled by the Speaker of Parliament, Mohammed Gallibaff, who said that the time for proportionate responses to US attacks was over. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard said yesterday that the Navy had targeted two US vessels, eight oil tankers and ten other ships in the strait in response to US attacks on five Iranian oil tankers. Others are calling for Iran to harden its position on nuclear development by formally withdrawing from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. This, after the International Atomic Energy Agency, referred Iran to the UN Security Council over breaches of the treaty. Meanwhile, Iranian allies and hooters have been escalating their actions by seizing the

3:13port city of Mocker, the town of Dubab, and the island of Perim, all three strategically placed near the Babel Mandeb strait, which links for Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. With a strait of all moves constrained, the Red Sea has become an important alternative route, especially for oil from Saudi Arabia. The hooters conflict with the Saudis has become a key overflow consequence. The hooters said the Babel Mandeb strait was still open to international shipping, but closed the Saudis, who ship most of the oil to be fair. That led the Saudis to request of Trump's America that it should make strikes against the hooters, a request made direct to Trump by Mohammed bin Salman himself reportedly. Something you think that Trump would agree to, if Trump and Hague says story about having more munitions than they ever could use, we're actually true.

4:13Well, surprise, surprise, the US declined to make such strikes. It's going to stick to focusing on Iran and the strait of all moves, thanks very much, because the last thing that Donald Trump needs is to be caught up in an expansion of the conflict across more of the Middle East. Now of course, it is all connected to Iran, so he may not be able to stay completely out of it for that long. While all of that's happening, Iran is planning to meet various Gulf states on Monday to push for their agreement to the deal between it and Oman over the management of the strait of all moves. Again, Iran sees cementing its role in controlling the strait as its top priority, apart from just surviving America's bombings, of course. It is keen to get agreement with all of the legitimate parties in the region so that it can just cut across whatever Donald Trump thinks about it. I salute the United States as being the stranger, the non-state holder.

5:15The Gulf states however are not keen to sign up to agreement on a permanent system. They do want to solidify a temporary agreement that enables them to better get their ships in the out of the strait of all moves. It means the talks they're likely to remain background noise, at least in the short term. Meanwhile, back in the United States itself, the standard dynamic of politics as usual, which has been missing in action for quite some time, is just starting to nose its way into view. Exhibit A, JD Vance's speech to Trump's oddball midterm convention during its second and final day yesterday. Vance clearly took the brief of what would it look like if you took all the MAGA themes, the midterm election campaign promises, except for that ding-bat one about giving everyone $5,000, which he and every other speaker did not mention, and turned it into

6:18properly crafted political speech, rather than just the usual stream of consciousness ramble that we've all got news to. Vance delivered a speech, pitched at disaffected voters that was pro-family, expressing personal terms, such as describing at length a country he wants for his newborn son, all to make the speaker human and relatable. And of course, with lots of attack lines to delight the base, delivered in the way that a politician would, sure, pretty scathing generalisations about the other side, that's not exactly new. Nothing though about, I don't know, people eating pets, which to be fair, didn't used to be the sort of thing even to a illicit comment about its absence, but here we are. It was an early expression of Vance's public profile for the period to come, the period immediately after this election, not that far away in other words. Indeed, at one point,

7:23some in the crowd started chanting, 48, ie, 48th president, J.D. Vance did the professional politician thing of demurring, saying, ah, we've got to take care of business this November, then we'll worry about what comes next. Even should, the multiverse exist, with an infinite number of Donald Trump's in an infinite number of shades of orange, not one of them, whatever have said, such a thing in response to that sort of a prompt. And likewise, none of those Trump's would happily ever be upstaged by a face of the future. As became evident, when Trump followed Vance's speech and basically stomped his, shall we say, unique brand of crazy, all over the stage, to wipe out any semblance of semi-normality that might have been allowed to creep in. He demanded, the audience repeat after him, word for word, a pledge that he,

8:26obviously made up on the spot. And because it's crazy time, yes, it started like this. I pledge, to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much, he can't even breathe, because it's totally normal for a sitting president to describe himself in that way. That I will go out with my family, my friends, I'll do it anyway, I don't care if I'm registered or not, I'm going to try and cheat like hell, like they do. So there it is, as Trump is seeking to ban mail-in voting and possibly sending ice to the polling booths, he happily attests that his supporters should quote, cheat like hell. It's not a surprise that that's for plan, but even in these jaded times it is slightly startling to say so out loud in a speech before the nation. Whatever well-crafted version of Magger J.D. Vance thought he'd been

9:30working on for days, got completely forgotten by everybody at that point. It is not of course a recommendation for J.D. Vance, that he can produce a speech that turns Trump's ideas into standard political discourse. Arguably, it's the opposite. Arguably, the last thing you want is the values and principles of Trump getting delivered competently. But that is the task the likes of Vance and Rubio are setting for themselves. You never know where someone's going to go until they're clearly in charge, to be fair. Mikhail Gorbachev from the Soviet Union, for instance, was a good member of the Soviet Politburo until he became the leader. You don't get into post unless you're loyal to the old ways on the way up. And so he could be here. Could be. But yeah, probably not. Because generally, most often, people just follow the obvious incentives in front of

10:35them. Interestingly, we got some behind-the-scenes additional information this week, but underlined this with regard to J.D. Vance. Apparently, over the summer, Vance was calling US military commanders in the Middle East, in Europe and Asia. He was calling them directly, asking for their franken honest assessment of the Iran War. And he specifically wanted to hear what they had to say, rather than getting his information from the comic book version offered up by Pete Heggstiff's Pentagon. Okay, last bit is my words, not his, but these are the actions of someone who does not trust the information being provided, who places a high premium in personally understanding the details to inform his actions. Vance reportedly asked about the war objectives, tactics, casualty estimates, what the Iranians would likely do in the state of Hormuz, how adaptable they were, and how much punishment they could absorb. He asked for a detailed accounting of what remained

11:36in the commander's stockpiles, and how the transfer of weapons to the Middle East would affect their ability to deter China and Russia. All the sort of stuff you would imagine would be in a Pentagon briefing for the commander in chief. But reportedly, what Donald Trump mostly got, and what Donald Trump mostly wanted, was video footage of the US military blaring stuff up. No context needed. According to the reports covered by the New York Times, the commanders Vance spoke to were blunt about their concerns about depleted patriot incentives and other weapons. They were clear that the Iranian government could take an extraordinary amount of pain. Vance incorporated those insights into his private talks with Trump and his inner circle. Apparently, Trump found it difficult to believe what he was hearing about both the stockpiles and the Iranian resilience for quite some time. Now these are not the actions of someone who's

12:39just trying to give Trump the best information possible. They are those of someone who thinks it possible they will inherit those problems, or at least some of the aftermath and fall out from them. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday a report saying that Trump's top advisors are now starting to raise with the president. Extremely cautiously, you have to imagine, the prospect that the war could drag on through the remainder of Trump's term. I thought that has obviously occurred already to JD Vance. And so he is looking to be as well informed and prepared as possible should a miracle occur, and he finds himself a next overlophic occupant in 2029. But obviously, he has been keen to downplay the degree of freelancing involved in all of this. Not least, because the fastest way to turn Trump against you is to appear to be too good,

13:40to become in Trump's words more famous than him. As the Times was obviously canvassing statements for their article, Vance's press secretary, Luke Schroeder, said this, the vice president is thankful for the partnership of Secretary Hegseth and Chairman Cain. He views them as indispensable colleagues in advising the president and executing his decisions. Yeah, does he though? Not enough apparently to take their word on anything that really matters. Vance's appetite for the detail has apparently pushed Hegseth's Pentagon to start producing daily reports on the straight-of-all moves detailing which ships are going through the straight, what their flags were, and what their cargo was. General Cain sends Vance previews and recaps of US strikes, all the sort of thing you could imagine, used to get fed in briefings to actual grown-up presidents back in the days when that was a thing.

14:40How much of a text gets generated by AI? Because they can't be bothered to write it themselves, that is unknown. But even so, couldn't be more susceptible to hallucinations than Pete Hegseth himself. And speaking of AI, in a slightly contrived way to fit an awkward segue, there has been much talk this week, and not for the first time about how artificial intelligence is going to kill all humans, a 10% chance within the next decade. No, 10% can say not quite a small figure for risks that you're relatively okay with. I mean, if I'm going out for a morning run, a 10% chance of rain, well that's not going to dissuade me. On the other hand, the proverbial example, if you tell me the plane I'm about to get onto has a 10% chance of crashing, yeah, I'm definitely going to pass up on that opportunity. Generally speaking, you would presume the extinction of the entire human race would

15:45belong in the latter camp, not the former. So, a quick recount of what provoked this discussion. An AI researcher who worked for Anthropic and previously open AI announced that he'd resigned his job because the tech giants are quote, gambling with our lives. Jacob Coxon said that AI firms were quote, racing straight to self-improving superintelligence, which is the idea that AI models develop and improve their successors at a rapid rate, creating something that can't be understood by humans, much less controlled. And he said this, these will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources. We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains and progress is not slowing. The point, Coxon added in a follow-up post was this, the people building AI earnestly believe that it could

16:46kill us all by the end of a decade. And Anthropics current staff lead on keeping the technology in line with human values, he pitched in to agree. Jacob is correct here, he said, we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. This was the sort of problem that the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov envisaged when he wrote his robot series that were premised on AI humanoids being given three laws that they could not break, not harming humans, doing what humans told them to, and self-preservation, in that order of importance. The thing is, those rules of course were crafted to have all sorts of grey areas and loopholes that then get explored in the various fictional story scenarios. In the real world, such rules would be extremely hard to frame in a way that didn't have such loopholes, and in any case, as far as I can tell, no one's even trying

17:49to do such a thing. There are plenty who have heard all of this before and have become rather cynical about it. You'll probably see some of them in the comments below if previous videos are anything to go by. Oh, this is something they say. It's a form of marketing. They do it to impress everyone with how powerful these models are, but it's all just a weird form of reverse psychology boasting. Now they may be right, but the boy who cried wolf also comes to mind. The point of the boy who cried wolf is, yes, constant repetition about the danger meant it became downgraded in everyone's mind, and they stopped taking it seriously. But you will recall, but in the story, there actually was a wolf. You could argue this is the effect we've seen already with climate change. The various badly-advised campaigners and political figures who would regularly intone the fake deadline messages of 18 months to save a world and so on and so on, which had a sincere

18:54basis to them, but they were bluntly stated they were designed to fail and they were easy to be seized upon by the other side. Well, now the world is seen for itself, the growing and visible impacts of global warming, and in many ways the reaction now is muted by exhaustion with the whole topic. It's not the only reason, but yes, it is a factor about how we understand risk and how much weighting we give to it over time, as the framing of it becomes more and more familiar. For me, the real issue isn't that AI is going to start wiping us out of the imminent future, because it decides some reason it's in its interest to do so. More to the point, it does us harm, because it becomes utilized by fanatical human actors who remove any guardrails and maximise its destructive potential, designing a supervirus, for instance, all sorts of creative possibilities. And then you start with a question, how comfortable are we,

19:58that the regulation and orientation of this technology is currently within the purview of the Trump administration? The people who sought to punish Anthropic for telling them that maybe they shouldn't use AI for deciding who to kill on the battlefield, or indeed for the mass surveillance of the population? This week we learned that Anthropic had declined to submit its latest model to Britain's AI Security Institute for testing before release. That prompted fears that tech companies are being pushed not to give such access by the Trump administration, which does sound pretty likely at first hearing. We know that Trump is planning to target the EU and Britain and others for separately having some forms of digital services regulation. Trump was furious, for example, that the EU had fined Google. So here we have a technology that the people most closely involved suggest could, maybe, destroy the entire human race,

21:04and Donald Trump will protect it in the same way he is protecting the social media companies. And Manly Man's Man Pete XF will seek to weaponise it on the battlefield, because that's what Manly Man's men do. And maybe, against the US population who are already waking up to the flock cameras that are saturating their times and cities. Polisco reported that the viral post by Coxon had rather jolted awake a number of law-makers in Congress who suddenly realised, what, maybe? This was the sort of thing congressional oversight was supposed to step up to. Are they capable of actually doing that? Well, that's where the cynics might have a point, with lots of historical precedent to support them in their argument, yeah, probably not. But those congressional voices may have been pushed even harder. By the news that the Houses tries to use Anthropics AI to develop guidance software for their ballistic missiles. The company identified that attempt and shut it down. Oh, an Anthropic also

22:11noted that scientists, unknown, sought multiple times to use its Claude model to research biological weapons. It shut that one down as well. Which ones did they then turn to? Who did not shut them down? Open AI? One of the open models? We don't know. Maybe they got shut down everywhere, for now, but for how long? Arguably though, you don't need to go to the ending or humans part of the spectrum, or even bad actors using it to slightly enhance the bad stuff they already intend to do. AI is already here and is sending shockwaves through human society. All the various corporations that are swapping human endeavor for AI processing, all the people who are turning to AI for a highly effective but fake nonetheless substitute for human connection. And even if it doesn't end the world, the open AI agents that carried out

23:12hacking attacks on the hugging face site amongst others showing that random mischief with real world harms is certainly now possible at any time. We're used to hearing that social media fundamentally changed and damaged us, human beings. Terrible attention spans, polarized world views, social isolation, plunging self-esteem, all that stuff, which companies are starting to be pushed to answer for, somewhat after the event. So, arguably, we are watching the next level of a similar transformation taking place around us. How it plays out, one of the actual longer term harms, none of that's really known, but the early signs are all there if you're paying attention. And to get it taken seriously, you're going to have to fight not only a bunch of tech bros who are pushing ahead regardless of the warnings of the exercise risk, but also the US government led by Donald J. Trump. Which does not, I would suggest, have the intellectual capacity to engage

24:16with the nature of these issues, but just sees that it gets lots of money from these companies and their products might help them to dominate the world, even more clearly than they believe they do right now, which of course as far as the rest of us concerned, is exactly the point. So, no wonder large numbers of citizens from across the political spectrum have been turning against the visible signs of all of this in their own communities. I mentioned the flock cameras, but also, of course, all of those data centres, the data centres that might host the thing that one day is going to kill us all. Who could complain about that? But in any case, whether that happens or not, are polluting the air, are consuming the water, providing many fewer jobs than was promised, and whose products are clearly changing society in ways that nobody signed up to. The mobs with pitchforks moment is coming, but the technology of controlling them, a somewhat outstrip that of the pitchfork, so I wouldn't take bets right now on how it's all

25:19going to play out. Meanwhile, Donald Trump's main weapon of choice is still social media, and his continual use of it to interfere in the affairs of others is starting to provoke real-world pushback. Of a sort, we didn't really see over his first year. For example, Germany's Chancellor Merz was scheduled this week for a high-level phone call with Trump to discuss various important affairs of states. Well, he cancelled that call right after Donald Trump posted a social media post celebrating the AFD's win in one of Germany's state elections, as we discussed on this channel on Monday. He posted this, wow, the populist party in Germany just had a really big night. They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly. Shifting to all caps, they are on the rise,

26:20and not going to take it any more. Mooo-gah, president DJT. Mooo-gah might be the same so it makes when they're frothing at the moment, but more likely it was intended to make Germany great again. Which is nonsense, of course, because Trump doesn't want other countries to be great. That's why he tries to strike one-sided trade deals, forcing them on people with economic threats. He has a zero-sum, big-of-ein-a-nabour approach to the world, and only uses those sorts of slogans to encourage disruptors in those other countries that he imagines will help to make them more subservient to him. A spokesman for Chancellor Merz declined to tell the media that the cancellation of the call was a direct response to Trump's message, but it was such an obvious cause and effect for timing was so straightforwardly stark he didn't really need to. Alright, usually, after I do a video about Trump's actions in relation to Canada, or indeed most

27:22other places come to that, the comments are full of people deploring what he's doing, making their own evaluations and what's going on, agreeing or disagreeing with things that I said all good stuff. This week, I did for one on Canada and Trump tariffs, and the comment section was overwhelmingly, politely, telling me off for mispronouncing the name of Canadian aerospace company Bombardier. That will be that cultural French language thing that the Trump administration was moaning about with malign intent. In my defence, Canadians pronounce many things. The English way, aluminium, for instance, rather than the US aluminum version. So people tend to assume words pronounced a certain way in Britain will likely be pronounced the same way in Canada. Also, in my defence, a friend of mine is from the Wells family whose signature product in the UK is the Bombardier A or. But, oh well, this happens from time to time because I do the vast

28:28majority of my news research and updating via reading, not with audio or video. We learn as we go. My thanks to the literally hundreds of people who corrected me on that detail. Separately, my thoughts are with everyone who's commemorating the 9-11 attacks today, especially those, of course, who lost somebody on that occasion. It's hard to process, but it was 25 years ago today. My thanks as always to the people who support this channel on Patreon and elsewhere, without whom these videos would not be possible. That's all for now. Have a great weekend.