I guest-hosted The Atlas Society Asks program and interviewed classicist Victor Davis Hanson for 30-minutes on what we moderns can learn from the classics about human nature and war. Some of the questions we covered:
- Is a lesson of history that freer societies prevail over authoritarian ones? E.g., how the Greeks were able to defeat the vastly numerically superior Persians?
- Our classical inheritance: Which of your works most recommend to grapple with current geopolitical strategy?
- What do you think of this hypothesis — that 20th-century conflicts were ideological (over National Socialism, Fascism, Communism, Capitalism, Democratic-Republicanism) while 21st-century ones are reverting to cultural and/or nationalist conflicts?
- How do you assess the current line-up of major players? USA, China, Russia, Islamism, Europe.
- Another hypothesis: Next generation’s conflict will be different because artificial intelligence and robotics are game-changers. E.g., autonomous weapon systems mean it will be our algorithms and robots against theirs?
- External threats are concerns to a nation, but can, e.g., only the USA beat itself? That is, are its internal conflicts over morals, identity, and culture more important?