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.

Appearances

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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 seem to do it over and over again.

HR, are we overestimating or underestimating the Chinese threat, long-term Chinese threat?

I mean, in some sense, I look at this and think it's a replay of the same thing.

We're overestimating the capabilities and we're too focused on this issue.

Now, I agree.

I actually think we've been on the wrong side of India since day one.

But that's another story.

H.R., let me come back to this question.

You know, the name of the podcast is All Else Equal, which is you can't hold all else equal, meaning you have to worry about the impact of your decisions on the world.

So let's just go back to what I think is one of the greatest intelligence failures of my lifetime, which was the Saddam Hussein and nuclear weapons.

In that situation, why did we get that wrong?

Was it that the decision makers, the intelligence people, felt as if if he had nuclear weapons and they said he didn't,

That would be a huge mistake versus if they said he had nuclear weapons and he later turned out he didn't.

Not such a big cost.

Of course, as you point out, that cost was enormous.

We had a completely needless war.

Why was that mistake made?

And also, how should decision makers, you as national security advisor, how should you react when you get intelligence knowing these asymmetries?

Amazing.

Yeah, it's not directly related, but I think at a national level, we've had that attitude to China.

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