Jonathan Berk

speaker

579 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 13 Aug

Jonathan Berk’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 3.

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All Else Equal: Making Better Decisions · Rerun: Ep68 “Is It Better to Overestimate or Underestimate Your Enemies?” with H.R. McMaster · 1 Jul 2026 podcast

We have a full agreement on that, absolutely.

I think this is a good time to introduce our guest.

Our guest today is H.R.

McMaster.

H.R.

McMaster was National Security Advisor.

Before that, he was Lieutenant General in the United States Army.

And currently, he's on the faculty at the Hoover Institution.

The reason we invited HR to address this question is because as national security advisor, his job was essentially to look at intelligence and figure out what the security and threats were to the United States of America.

And so HR dealt with this question on a daily basis.

So with that, HR, welcome to the show.

Welcome, HR.

So, HR, a few years ago, I was reading a book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the extent to which during that crisis we completely overestimated Russia's capabilities, you know, really struck me.

And then I began thinking about it, and it seems like we do this a lot.

We seem to overestimate our enemies.

You know, we knock the Iranian nuclear stuff out, and the next thing we're talking about, oh, it wasn't a successful raid.

Is this intentional?

Do you think the intelligence people intentionally overestimate our enemies?

I think this is a pattern.

We overestimate the capabilities of our enemies.

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