David Frum

The United States has been talking about this for a long time, and there are brief intervals, but Trump 1, Trump 2 have rejected it, and the Biden administration talked about it a lot, but didn't do much.

You mean talking about...

oil dependence shifting to fleets of electric vehicles powered by non-petroleum sources of fuel in the united states of course natural gases uh has huge potential for electrical production and so does nuclear power if we could ever return to that in any way you wouldn't you don't the days when you need i mean it's pretty hard to imagine how you power aviation with anything other than petroleum but the days when you need petroleum to power your motor fleet those could be behind us

But as you point out- That was a 10 years ago discussion, not a 10 years from now discussion.

And we just drove past that exit kind of heedlessly.

When you've been traveling in this region for a long time, do you notice in the Middle East region, do you notice any abating of oil?

intense anti-Western ideology.

It seems like the days of Al-Qaeda and ISIS are over, but that may be just a misreading from a distance.

Do you have any sense that there's actually less purchase in the area for these kinds of anti-Western ideology?

And if so, what's replacing it?

Last personal question.

Do you intend to return to the region anytime soon?

Do you think there'll be things for you to see that you can usefully report?

Graham, thanks so much for talking to me today.

Everyone should follow your work in The Atlantic and your two most recent articles on mutually assured energy destruction and snorkeling in the Strait of Hormuz.

Thank you, David.

Bye-bye.

Thanks so much to Graham Wood for joining me today on The David Frum Show.

As mentioned earlier, my book this week is Common Sense by Thomas Paine.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense is one of the remarkable trio of books that were published 250 years ago this year.