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Amanpour
Conversation About Global Leadership With U.S. Ambassador Rahm Emanuel; Anna Ardin Tells Her Story On Her New Book, "No Monsters, No Heroes"; Walter Isaacson Speaks To Nate Silver About His New Book And How Risk Defines Our World; Celia Cruz Is Bringing Her Rhythm To The U.S. Quarter, 25 Cent Coin; Aired 12-1p ET
Aired August 15, 2024 - 12:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:00:32]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to AMANPOUR. Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RAHM EMANUEL, UNITED STATES AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN: There's only one option that's delivered security, an opportunity, and a regional acceptance. And
that's negotiated.
AMANPOUR: As hopes for a Gaza ceasefire hostage deal hang in the balance.
And Kamala Harris prepares to deliver her presidential policies at the Democratic Convention, my conversation about global leadership with U.S.
Ambassador, Rahm Emanuel.
Then.
ANNA ARDIN, SWEDISH ACTIVIST: This book is my testimony to the trial that never took place.
AMANPOUR: She accused WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, of sexual assault, then came the hate.
Swedish activist, Anna Ardin, tells me why she believes there are no monsters, no heroes in this story.
Also ahead.
NATE SILVER, POLLSTER: I think politics can be viewed as a strategic game.
AMANPOUR: On the edge, Walter Isaacson speaks to famed pollster, Nate Silver, about his new book and how risk defines our world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since October 7th. The Health Ministry there says. It is yet another dark marker in this war,
and with more than 100 Israeli hostages, still not returned to their families, the focus is firmly on high-level talks in Doha today.
Without a ceasefire, hostage deal, America's global leadership is being solely tested.
And in this presidential election year, the stakes are extremely high, with war in Ukraine and strengthening relations between Russia and China,
presenting major challenges ahead.
To get a feel for what's waiting out there for the next American president, we checked in with Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, the Biden administration's
envoy to Japan, at the heart of the vital Asia-Pacific Alliance.
He's a former congressman, White House Chief of Staff, and Mayor of Chicago, and I spoke with him from Tokyo today.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Ambassador Emanuel, welcome, from Tokyo.
EMANUEL: Thank you. How are you?
AMANPOUR: Oh, good. I want to ask how it's been for you. Because some have called you a bull in a china shop, you called yourself lacking in patience.
And people said, if you're going to make success in Japan, you have to take it slow like they do.
What is the actual result?
EMANUEL: Well, my joke is that I've been here two and a half years, and for the Japanese, it feels like 25 years.
But the truth is that the Japanese have made, in the last two and a half years on their own, some of the most momentous changes in policies, six or
five of them, that are 70-year-old policies. They went from one percent to two percent of defense spending on GDP. They acquired 400-plus
counterstrike capabilities. They lifted the export restrictions on defense equipment to countries that are not in conflict. They opened up a
trilateral relationship with Korea that's been now normalized to a level that is not even news anymore.
And fifth, they rewrote their national security documents, and our documents are so parallel in complementary to each other. They help
facilitate a cooperation, a collaboration that the United States and Japan have not seen in 60 years. So the change has been momentous.
And most importantly, the United States and Japan that for years were focused on what I call alliance protection.
Now, as true partners, is focused on alliance projection into the region. And it is the stability of the United States and Japan's relationship that
has brought stability to this region.
AMANPOUR: Do you believe -- because you were very bullish on these partnerships in your region, the last time we spoke. Is this enough to
counter what I think the U.S. thinks is its biggest strategic threat, which is China?
EMANUEL: The most important thing, Christiane, is when you go back and look at it. China's entire strategy, in this region, is to isolate the
Philippines and use their old -- their economic, political, military pressure to break their will and their sovereignty.
That's what they've tried with Japan on economic coercion. That's what they tried with Australia, is to take country, A, isolate them, use all their
political, economic, and strategic bustle to force them to bend them to their will.
[12:05:07]
Now you have the flip of the script. The isolated party is China, not a Philippines, not a Japan, not an Australia.
And President Biden has designed a new architecture that has flipped the script on China and has made it more difficult.
And I said that, and I believe this back in August of 18, a year ago, when the United States, Japan, and Korea got on the same page. That was a really
bad day for China and a really good day for America's interests in this region.
AMANPOUR: Let's just play out, you know, game plan, the election, and who might win.
Will a Kamala Harris, as president, continue the exact same policies, let's just say, in the Indo-Pacific region?
EMANUEL: I do believe that -- I mean, Kamala -- Vice President Harris, will build -- you don't just continue. You build off of it.
And I'll give you one anecdote. She was here for former Prime Minister Abe's funeral, and she had a private meeting with Prime Minister Kishida.
Those were the early days when we were beginning to just scratch out this lattice work architecture. There hadn't been yet a trilateral with Korea.
There hadn't yet been even the concept of the trilateral of the Philippines. So she has put what I would call sweat equity into something
right now that's standing the test of time.
Just two weeks ago, Canada, the United States, Australia, the Philippines did a naval exercise in the islands. That is coalition building, China
isolated, Philippines standing with allies, Canada, Australia, and the United States.
And she was an early, literally shaper of that clay, shaper of the strategy, and came in and traveled her many times and put the miles.
You've got to keep investing in it and strengthening it. And I think she'll do that.
AMANPOUR: And, conversely, if there's a Trump 2.0, many of the Asia-Pacific leaders have baked in their previous relationship with him.
But on the issue of Taiwan, for instance, he just told Bloomberg, Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know we're no different than an insurance
company.
What did you think when you heard that? And what do you think could be the result of a Trump presidency in your region there?
EMANUEL: OK.
Well, as you know, I'd like to be ambassador. And so ambassadors, have it by law, have to stay nonpartisan, which is very hard for me, so I'm going
to show a level of restraint that I'm not really good at.
But I will just say, when you look at this region, President Biden has accomplished a great deal.
In this region, the United States is not going to be able to achieve anything without our allies. They are a force multiplier for the United
States. You cannot do anything in the region as a deterrent to China without allies. Impossible. This is an away game for us.
And so here in Japan, they have significantly increased their defense budget. That's the same of Korea that has made significant investments.
So I, again, President Trump 2.0 can say what he wants, but I just know from a strategic game plan that the isolated party in the region is China.
Making your allies feel more insecure makes our position all that more vulnerable. And that's all I'll say.
You can draw whatever conclusion you want from that.
AMANPOUR: OK. Let me ask you what you'd say about the anti-Western alliance, the anti-U.S. alliance that's been building between Russia,
China, Iran, North Korea.
Most recently, China and Russia coordinating and cooperating more militarily on military exercises.
EMANUEL: I think today people see a challenge in that level that they hadn't seen before.
And for China, I want to say, supporting Russia has caused them serious economic and other political support in Europe. It's not cost free.
Now you called it anti-U.S. Well, there's no doubt we are a main focus. I would actually say, it's anti-both democratic, it's anti -- the economic
order and rules-based systems.
And I'll give you a classic example. I mean, China today constantly is engaged in economic espionage.
Now the system that China doesn't like is a system based on rules and laws. They want one where economic coercion is the norm. They want one where you
can engage in economic espionage, intellectual property theft.
So it's more than just anti-U.S. It's anti-asset of values of trust based on a set of principles that we all share. That is what they're against.
AMANPOUR: And you could say a similar dynamic is playing in Europe where the Russian dynamic is anti-democratic, anti-rule of law, et cetera.
Now while that might be out of your area, I want to know what you think the Biden administration has achieved, NATO is bigger. They've attracted more
into NATO, which is against what Putin thought.
[12:10:09]
And now Ukraine is moving into trying to change the dynamic on the ground. Where do you think a Kamala Harris president, if it happens, would stand in
bolstering Ukraine's ability to defend itself? And where should it be?
EMANUEL: Well, let me do two things here. You called NATO bigger, which it is, because you had Sweden and Finland. But I would also call it
revitalized.
I think, you know, in the United States, through Democratic Republic administrations, we're telling NATO-based countries the consequences of
what Russia was doing. Russia finally proved what we've been saying for decades, true.
I do think that the threat to Ukraine, if something were to happen to Ukraine, President Putin would not stop. He would not stop in Georgia. He
would not stop at Moldova. He would not stop.
Now, we are not exactly pure on that as a country. We've had our own violations, and so we're not -- we're kind of have a glass house that we
live in.
That said, Ukraine's sovereignty, Ukraine's independence, Ukraine's desire to be as a people repeatedly have gone to the streets to be part of the
West. They're aspirations to be part of something, the economic opportunity, the freedom that the -- that the West offers as a political
principle is something that people have sacrificed, not only on the military battles, but also on the political battles.
They see a future that's more promising to the West. They've also seen, when Poland joined the West, how much economic prosperity has happened to
Poland as opposed to what's happened to Ukraine. They want to be a part of that, and that's worth defending. We have defended that repeatedly in our
history.
It would be walking away from our own history not to stand by a country that's willing to fight for their freedom and be part of a -- the house of
freedom.
AMANPOUR: Further into the Middle East now. You know, we speak on a day where there's meant to be ceasefire negotiations. We don't know whether
they're going to actually bear any fruit, but it's something that the Biden administration absolutely wants and needs for all sides in the Israel-Gaza
conflict.
You wrote a pretty stiff op-ed or article after October 7th atrocities, in which you were very shocked by the intelligence failures that were partly
enabling what happened on October 7th.
I'm just wondering whether you still feel that way and whether you feel that Israel's conduct in the Gaza war has dangerously isolated it and
compromised its own security.
EMANUEL: Look, I mean, that's a -- that's a 10-month piece of real estate.
Look, I was shocked, given the intelligence level, that Israel was caught flat-footed in -- but this is more less than intelligence because the facts
have come out.
In fact, many of the young women that were monitoring the cameras and many of their young women in the intelligence apparatus of the Israeli IDF,
actually, reported what they were seeing and said there's something happening here, and it's their higher-ups that cast a judgment. It wasn't
an intelligence failure. It was a political judgment failure.
As you saw what I'm reading right now in Russia, there were some of their own intelligence officials said, look, something's happening here in
Ukraine. And the higher-ups dismissed it. That became what's now where in day 10 of a serious black eye for Putin. That was more than just a black
eye for Israel.
Now, I do want to take one side note, which is, and I know what the thrust of the question is, there have been, in the last -- since 2005, five
different ceasefires between Israel and Hamas. And, each time, those ceasefires have been violated by Hamas.
Israel has a right to defend itself, when in fact, 1,200 people were killed. And many, many women were raped and many, many children were killed
in front of their parents. Any country that's invaded has a right to self- defense.
How it conducts a war, it must -- you know, I grew up in a period of time where the IDF was respected, not only for their capabilities, but for the
ethics in which they conducted.
That hasn't been in all the case here, but they have a right to defend themselves. And to do it in a way that's true to the values of the state of
Israel. And they haven't been perfect at it.
On the other hand, they have done other things that have been, in the sense of the safety and sanctity of human life, conducted things that other
countries, ourselves included, have not done when it comes to urban warfare.
So it's not just a broad stroke, but there's no doubt where Israel is today, where Israel is before. It's more isolated because of the length of
this war and the conduct of it.
[12:15:01]
AMANPOUR: So I --
EMANUEL: You don't need me to say that, that's a
AMANPOUR: Yes.
EMANUEL: -- self-evident.
AMANPOUR: Yes. But I do want to ask you because it's important. President Biden has the historic American -- and personal relationship with Israel
that his generation has. And you see the majority of American people and where they are and the pressures they're putting on the Democratic Party
right now. Kamala Harris is a slightly different generation.
I'm just wondering what you think should be a policy shift or not towards trying to resolve this unresolved decades-long situation in the Middle East
between Israel and the Palestinians.
EMANUEL: Well, I think let me say so -- that somebody that goes back on this to President Clinton working, both mainly Oslo is kind of independent,
but the Wye Plantation and the Camp David efforts towards the end of the president's tenure and then worked on this with President Obama.
There are three tracks. And the reason the United States is for a negotiated agreement.
You look at the history of Israel, there's three tracks as it relates. Israel has tried a negotiated track. You've seen that with Egypt. You've
seen it with Jordan. You've seen it with the Abraha Accords.
The negotiated track has delivered both security, as well as an acceptance for Israel into the right of region. And those peace agreements with those
three, Egypt in the late '70s, Jordan in the early '90s, under President Clinton, the Abraham Accords, under President Trump, have delivered
security, delivered economic opportunity, and delivered a regional acceptance.
The other option Israel's tried is unilateral, both in Lebanon and in Gaza, and that's led to Hamas and Hezbollah.
The other option, the third option, which is divorce, which they've tried with the West Bank. There's only one option that's delivered security and
opportunity and a regional acceptance. And that's negotiated.
AMANPOUR: Mm-hmm.
EMANUEL: And the United States president, by both parties, has never pushed this just because, while we believe in, you know, an aspiration for a
Palestinian self-determination, we've pushed it because we believe, like many, many, many, many voices within the Israeli security establishment, a
negotiated track is the one that has the most promise for peace.
Now, I can understand, when you have on the heels of Oslo, bus is blowing up in Tel Aviv, why you get very, very cynical that negotiations won't
work.
But, you know, the late Yitzhak Rabin once said, you fight terror as if there's no peace and you make peace as if there's no terror. And to me,
that is still a truism.
And the president's commitment to not only a two-state solution, but to a negotiated process, is because it has stemmed, it has stood the test of
time for Israel's own security.
What I find now, which is most promising, and I don't think -- I'm not an optimist, usually, I'm kind of cold, kind of pragmatist about this, is that
there are many forces now for stability and for regional security that didn't exist. Gulf countries and neighbors to Israel in the Arab Israeli
border.
They want stability because it's important for their own economic development. Instability, mainly driven by Iran and their surrogates, is
the force here. But Israel, for the first time, has partners and allies who are seeking quiet, they're seeking stability, seeking kind of overall
strategic alignment. So economic growth and political growth can happen.
That's a big difference. And one that I think accrues to Israel's historic interests is not only economic growth, but political acceptance in the
region.
AMANPOUR: OK.
EMANUEL: And the forces, mainly driven, again, I want to repeat, by Russia, but most importantly by Iran, is one for instability versus those who've
agreed for stability. That's a big difference. And the voices for stability are bigger today, and larger today, than they've existed in the past.
AMANPOUR: It's an important point.
And finally, you were mayor of Chicago, Monday starts the Democratic Convention there. Are you going?
EMANUEL: No. You know, a ambassador --
AMANPOUR: OK. All right.
EMANUEL: As I said in an earlier question, can't get involved in partisan politics.
AMANPOUR: And when do you think your term as ambassador will be up? And what's next for Rahm Emanuel?
EMANUEL: Well, first of all, it's up at the end -- at the end of this year. And Rahm Emanuel's going to run through the tape.
AMANPOUR: Got it.
EMANUEL: I got it. It's an honor to serve. It's been an honor to be capped by a president. And I don't believe I'm walking away from that. And I'll
run through the tape.
AMANPOUR: Ambassador Rahm Emanuel, thank you for joining us.
EMANUEL: Thanks, Christiane.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Definitive statements from Tokyo.
[12:20:00]
Now, when WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, walked free earlier this summer, after pleading guilty to an espionage charge, he was cheered on by
his supporters.
But among the more surprising voices, glad to see him out of prison, was the Swedish activist Anna Ardin, who in 2010 was one of two women who said
he had sexually assaulted them. He denied the allegations.
She's now recounting the experience in her book, "No Heroes, No Monsters," where she describes the barrage of hate and conspiracy theories directed at
her after the accusation.
Fourteen years on from that traumatic time, I spoke with her about her reflections on Assange, WikiLeaks and rebuilding her life.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Anna Ardin, welcome to the program.
You have written a book, "No Heroes, No Monsters: What I learned Being the Most Hated Woman on the Internet."
This is about your experience with Julian Assange. And it comes, you know, 14 years or so after that experience. Why now? Tell me about why you wanted
to write this book.
ARDIN: I mean, this book is my testimony to the trial that never took place. And it took 10 years to know that there was not going to be a trial
for my case.
And then it took me some while to get it translated into English and to like find the energy to take all this again, because it wasn't really like
-- I mean, there is no money in it. There is no -- there is not much -- you don't gain a lot personally from doing this.
But I felt it was really important to pass on what I learned. Like I said, being the most hated woman on the internet, that was just for a few days.
But every day there's a new woman being the most hated.
And many times it has to do with sexual abuse and sexual violence. And I want to give that to other people who have been abused.
AMANPOUR: So, Anna, tell me, in a nutshell, what you accused Julian Assange of.
ARDIN: I accused him of abuse, not rape, but that he was, in short, inseminating me without my consent.
And that I don't know his motives, but I was guessing that he wanted to get impregnate. And I didn't want that. So that was -- I wanted to get him
tested for HIV or for other sexually transmitted diseases, because I thought I might have been infected. And that's why I went to the police. So
that was my accusation against him.
AMANPOUR: And for people who don't understand what you mean by inseminating, how -- what were the physical aspects of that?
ARDIN: He broke the condom without me noticing it when it happened. And, yes -- I mean, it was -- I write about that in depth and it's in several
pages, like, exactly what happened, because it was not entirely voluntary that the situation was kind of violent, as well as the -- this ripped
condom that I didn't really have the chance to check.
I heard the sound as if the condom had broke, but I -- he was holding my hands like this, and I couldn't really check what had happened. And that it
was a very uncomfortable situation. And it took me -- it took me a long time to understand that this was an abuse and that it probably wasn't
legal.
AMANPOUR: So, of course, as you know, he denies everything. The statute of limitations has run out. The case was dropped.
But I want you to read an excerpt of the complications, really. It kind of illustrates the title. You write, "No Monsters, No Heroes." And you're
saying something that is reflected in the way you have complicated emotions about him and about what I assume was a consensual relationship despite
this aspect of it.
Can you read the first extract of when you saw him at a party right after this event?
ARDIN: The Julian who attends the Crayfish Party is a completely different one than the Julian who humiliated and used me in the night before. I
decide not to see the horrible Julian anymore, just the nice one. And it's -- it appears as though I can make that choice.
In the conversation tonight, I'm once again an equal, someone worth listening and responding to. I write on Twitter about how wonderful it is
to hang out with some of the smartest and most fun people, how warm the weather is and how light the evening is, how privileged I am.
I have marks on my neck from the snapped necklace and nagging worry about HIV, a broken heart and the desire to show an ex-boyfriend I'm going to be
fine without him, but I don't display that openly.
[12:25:05]
Just as all people do. I choose to show a portion of myself and my feelings, a portion of the truth, not it's whole.
The entirety wouldn't fit into Twitter's 140 characters. There's rarely room in the light for the entirety with all its nuances.
AMANPOUR: I find it really interesting because you keep referring to nuances. And again, your title of your book is very interesting.
Why do you think you were under such under his spell so to speak? Do you kind of want to be part of the cool crowd? You had worked at WikiLeaks.
What was it about him that made you want to be in his domain, so to speak?
ARDIN: I mean there were a lot of reasons, of course, but mainly, I was working for this organization who was criticizing the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
And we were -- like we were opposing the United States. And we were opposing war. And we were opposing the logics of war. And we were a crowd
and we were gaining momentum.
And it was a fantastic feeling that we were -- we were onto something, being able to leak the secrets.
And my conviction was that if we display the atrocities of war, we will be able to put an end to them.
And beside that, like, being in this -- I mean these discussions were like right in the center of the global politics by then. And for a young person
involved in politics, that was amazing. And the other people at this party as well that I was talking to all night, I mean the whole spirit was
amazing.
And you don't want to go and report like a small abuse in the middle of that. But and then that was what happened. And then the whole was story
unfolded.
AMANPOUR: Yes. I mean, it was an abuse that you did report to the police.
But I just want to go back to the WikiLeaks, because that's also part of what makes this whole story so unique really.
Do you think, in retrospect, that you were -- do you still support what WikiLeaks did? And do you think, in retrospect, you may have been naive
about him and his work?
ARDIN: Yes. I mean things are much more complicated. And there has been a lot of discussion after this. Like -- I mean I've been in touch with a lot
of the activists that were engaged in WikiLeaks and much more people than me have been subject to different kinds of abuse, not only sexually.
And I mean, WikiLeaks was not really working as an organization. And I didn't understand that at this point. And maybe it's always like this that
nobody's perfect. And that the perfect organization doesn't exist. You always have criticism.
That's why I put in the title, there are no heroes, because there are no perfect people that are worthy of following and listening to 100 percent
that everyone has to be following the same rules. I mean that was one of the principles of WikiLeaks, that you shouldn't be able to be above the
rules just because you have power or just because you're an important person.
AMANPOUR: And --
ARDIN: And that goes for WikiLeaks and for Julian Assange as well, not only press.
AMANPOUR: You said two things, there were other kinds of abuse at WikiLeaks. What?
ARDIN: I mean people were shut out of the organization. There were no democratic structures. It was very difficult to know where the money was
going. It was -- I mean, it was pretty much a one-man show.
And I have one example in my book of an activist who was organizing and he was trying to protect them. The people who appeared in the -- in the
documents that you couldn't leak details on private persons, for example, like people being homosexual since -- in Saudi Arabia could be a real
threat to them if that -- if those kind of documents leaked.
And that Julian pushed these people to publish these documents. And they said, we cannot -- we cannot publish this because it will put people into
danger. And Julian was yelling that, you have to listen to me because I am God.
AMANPOUR: He actually said that?
ARDIN: He said that -- he said that according to this activist in one of the big organizations in Sweden.
AMANPOUR: I want to get back to your story, your personal story in a moment. But I want to ask you one more thing about WikiLeaks. Because as we
all know, Julian Assange then hid out, he went to the Ecuador embassy. You know, he was accused and charged by the United States for various
infractions of national security.
[12:30:06]
And as we all know in June, he did plead guilty at an extraterritorial U.S. court in a Pacific Island and he's now free.
You have said that you're glad that he's free and with his family.
ARDIN: Yes. Yes. There is no reason that he should be in jail for these accusations that the United States had against him, in my opinion. And that
has absolutely nothing to do with my case.
They -- I mean, they have been mixed up throughout all these years. Every time something bad has happened to him, I have been accused of being
responsible for that. And that's completely out of my control and a complete different case as well, so.
AMANPOUR: So you suffered a huge amount of abuse. I mean, at one point, you were removed from your home nation of Sweden by the police there because
they didn't think they could protect you.
What did they do? They took you away for several years, right? You hid out in a different country.
ARDIN: They took me away for just a few weeks from my country, but I had to -- I was away from my apartment for quite a long time.
And I normally say that it was about two years for me where I couldn't really work, where everything I said publicly -- because I was working as a
press secretary, and I was a public -- like, senior public person. I was writing pieces in papers and stuff.
AMANPOUR: The subtitle is about being the most hated person, you know, on the internet. And all of this happened in a pre-Me Too world.
Do you think it would have been different had all of these revelations and your story come out after 2017?
ARDIN: Maybe. And a lot of those things were so difficult to explain because nobody had discussed anything near similar to this.
But after Me Too, a lot of people were much more educated in the great zones and the behavior of women after sexual abuse that you don't report
immediately to the police normally, et cetera.
But on the other hand, I think that -- I mean, the structures are really deep. We saw, for example, the hate against Amber Heard in the Johnny Depp
case. That was exactly the same arguments that were used against me several years earlier.
So it was the same story for her. And the hate, the accusations of ruining a man's life, for telling what happened to you.
AMANPOUR: Can you read the excerpt that we've asked you to read about that hatred that was expressed to you?
ARDIN: Yes. It's -- this was just like a week or a little bit more than a week after the abuse, the first wave of hate. And it's just like this.
It's from August 23rd, 2010. I've already been prejudged and it doesn't matter what I say. There's nothing I can do to improve the situation.
People, the overwhelming majority of whom appear to be men, right, shout, photo-shop, and even animate various degrading opinions, insulting language
or threats of assault, bodily harm and death.
Women, even the ones who are furious at those mock crime victims, calling them complicit in the crime, still defend Julian and deride me.
Mothers and grandmothers chime in with a chorus of accusations, lies, and conspiracies.
Men, even those who believe that the death penalty should be applied to rape, think that I should be raped.
Naming and shaming Julian goes hand in hand with naming and shaming me. The frenzy is directed at both of us.
AMANPOUR: It's very powerful memories and testimony. And you dedicate your book for the feminists every single one of you.
But you also say, and you've just said, you know, old allies, people at WikiLeaks, the left, feminists, many of them turned on you as well. Were
you surprised by that?
ARDIN: I -- of course. I was -- it was so many things happening. So I was just surprised that it was so big. I was surprised at everything that
happened, that it was the legal. It was like two tribunals at the same time. A lot of things happening legally. And then on the other hand,
everything that went on in the media and on social media and in my inboxes.
So it was just overwhelming. I didn't have the time to be surprised of anything. And I didn't -- I mean, expect much.
But what happened, just like a few months after this, in December, feminists started to mobilize. Like to give a different story, to show a
different perspective, to start talking about (INAUDIBLE)
[12:35:12]
There was this big campaign, like pre-Me Too campaign, I would say in Sweden called the, Talk About It (ph), that really changed my situation a
lot, where people started to talk about their their own experiences.
And so -- but I mean, of course, there have been a lot of feminists also apologizing for being like drawn into this frenzy of hate against me.
AMANPOUR: How will you move on with your life now that you've written this?
ARDIN: I mean, this book was very much for me like a way of closing this story, like giving my testimony. And if people want to read it, I would be
really happy because I think there's a lot of like things that haven't been discussed yet, in it, but also a way of like not being -- now feeling that
I have to repeat the story over and over again to defend myself because now it's -- I mean, people are still accusing me that I have written the book.
I did what I could to give my truth in this.
And I'm a PhD (ph) student. I work on my thesis on democracy and civic space for civil society organizations. And it's not like a global attention
to this, but it's -- it feels important. And I have my family and I have my life. I have my friends and things are -- things are working out pretty
good right now in my life.
AMANPOUR: Well, I'm glad to hear that.
Anna Ardin, thank you very much for being with us.
ARDIN: Thank you so much for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Now, with the U.S. presidential election edging closer, all eyes are seriously focused on candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Nate Silver, the prophetic pollster and poker player who founded the website, 538, has a new bulletin with all the latest analysis. He also has
a new book detailing how much like in poker, risk taking could be the key to success.
And Nate Silver is joining Walter Isaacson to discuss how bold action could be a game changer in November.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER ISAACSON, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: Thank you, Christiane. And, Nate Silver, welcome to the show.
SILVER: Thank you, Walter.
ISAACSON: You have a great new book out this week called "On The Edge." And it's about everything from poker to cryptocurrency to politics.
Let me start though with politics. People like me go to your substack, the "Silver Bulletin," every day to see that election predictor, the election
odds type thing.
Tell me, what is it showing now in terms of Harris versus Trump. And how do you calculate the probabilities for that?
SILVER: So it shows that right now Harris is about a three-point lead in national polls. That's a number that Democrats are familiar with. Hillary
Clinton won the popular vote by two points in 2016. Biden won it by four points in 2020. So she's kind of right in between those two benchmarks.
However, there is a lot of uncertainty. We've seen the dramatic events that have been pulled in the campaign so far from Democrats changing their
candidate to the assassination attempt against former President Trump.
So probabilistically, we have her as about a 55, 45 favorite. If you're a poker player, you'd rather have the 55 and the 45, but for regular people,
it's a tossup.
ISAACSON: But what goes into that algorithm besides poll numbers?
SILVER: It's polls, but we also account for the state of the economy and whether the candidate is an incumbent or a challenger.
In Harris's case, there's no incumbent the election anymore. Biden is not running for another term. So -- and the economy is good by some measures,
bad by some measures. We have it about average overall.
So our model thinks that if you had average candidates, that it would be a tossup in the popular vote, a tie in the popular vote, which means in the
Electoral College, which usually favors Republicans recently, she might be a disadvantage.
So she has a headwind where, you know, again, in 2016 and 2000, Democrats won the popular vote and lost in Electoral College. That could happen
again. It's about a 12 percent chance of her model that she kind of comes so close to victory that she just comes a little bit short in Wisconsin,
Pennsylvania, Michigan, despite winning a popular vote again.
ISAACSON: We've seen a lot of what we could call black swan events. Things totally unexpected that disrupt everything, whether it's an outbreak of
COVID from China or Biden dropping out of the race. And we may have a lot more black swan events. Who knows? A war in the Middle East or a Gaza
ceasefire.
How do you, when you do probabilistic models, calculate in the black swan events?
SILVER: We don't try to account for black swans, per se, but we do understand that the further out you are from the election, the more
uncertainty there is. So you'll see it's kind of like a little hurricane track where you kind of go out in time and space and the -- and the cone of
the hurricane gets wider. That's basically how our model works.
[12:40:12]
If the election were tomorrow, it would still be uncertain because the polling is close, but less uncertain than it is now. Or less uncertain than
an election in three months.
ISAACSON: In terms of calculating risks, one of the big risks the Democratic Party faced was doing that period when Biden was thinking of
staying in the race, dropping out of the race. You said that the risk of doing nothing was much stronger. Why?
SILVER: I mean, this is one core lesson from the book, and it's taken where people like H.R. McMaster that have been in military battles.
Standing still is sometimes not a good option. If you're on the battlefield, you either want to retreat and live to fight another day or
charge forward. Staying there as a sitting duck is not a great option.
People conflate doing nothing with being the safe choice when sometimes in a lot of walks of life, we have to take bold action, one way or another.
In a poker term, it's you have to raise or fold. Sometimes calling is the worst choice.
ISAACSON: That's what you're talking about, what you learn from poker, which is, you know, those of us who are much more amateurs than you are,
you've won all sorts of tournaments, you know, sometimes we're like, don't know what to do. So we don't -- we don't fold, we don't raise, we just
call.
Tell me why that's a bad strategy.
SILVER: It's a bad choice because you want to dictate the action in poker, yes. Now and then I'll feel like a backyard game to friends in Brooklyn who
are playing for the first time.
And the hallmark of a bad amateur poker player is they just want to call and see what unfolds. And poker is a game about controlled aggression.
ISAACSON: How does that apply to politics then?
SILVER: Well, look, I think politics can be viewed as a strategic game, among other things. It's much higher stakes in a poker game for sure.
But, you know, both parties are intelligent. They both have an incentive to win. And in the long run, both parties win about half the time.
I think one mistake that Trump made was to underestimate Democrats' willingness to change their candidate. Democrats do not have a personality
cults around Joe Biden in the same way that the GOP does around Trump.
They kind of selected Biden in 2020. Jim Clyburn, and other people came behind Biden to kind of spark into the nomination. And they pushed him
aside when it was in their strategic interest to pick another candidate instead.
ISAACSON: Well, in your book, you say your first love is not really politics. Your first love was poker. You're a great poker player. You
played online, then Congress passed some bills saying you couldn't collect your winnings from online and that drove you into politics. Explain that to
me.
SILVER: Yes. I had a boring consulting job coming out of college, a friend of mine at work wanted to start a poker game. I played a little bit in
college. And I started practicing a lot. I'm a competitive guy. I started playing free games on the internet. The poker is a game meant to be played
for money.
So eventually deposited at one of the somewhat sketchy offshore sites. And it was a time when it was called the poker boom, but more like a poker
bubble where you had a lot of dumb money in the game, maybe like the crypto bubble from a couple of years ago.
So by being kind of mediocre, I was still better relative to competition. The cliche about, you know, if you can't spot the sucker at the table, then
you're the sucker. It was kind of the reverse of that.
It was like everyone was a sucker and I was halfway decent. And so for a time, it was a good way to earn a living.
ISAACSON: Tell me about some of the lessons you learned from poker and how that applies to other things.
SILVER: Yes. Look, the great and late Doyle Brunson, maybe the best poker player of all time, who I talked to before he passed away, preached the
gospel of tight aggressive poker, meaning, you're selective about which hands you play.
But when you play them, you play them aggressively and try to win. It's important to bluff in poker, actually.
The reason why poker works is because you have to bluff to induce your opponents to call when you have a strong hand.
But there's also like a lot of emotional discipline that you face when you play poker.
If you lose a big pot and lose half your stack, then you still have to battle as best you can for the next big hand that you have or vice versa.
Sometimes people go on what's called tilt, meaning, being emotional and not playing optimally.
And that can happen when you're on a winning streak too. I mean, a lot of people in my world, the kind of the world like all the river of calculated
risk taking, they go on a winning streak and then they get overconfident. And that's a big risk as well.
ISAACSON: And one of the characters in your book that's pretty big is Elon Musk. And he says that we used to be a nation of risk-takers. But now we
become a nation with more referees than risk takers. Do you agree with that?
SILVER: I agree with that, in part. I think. I mean, look, Silicon Valley is still the innovation capital of the world in AI, which might be the most
important technology of the next generation and the U.S. as a leader right now.
You know, attracting immigrants from all around the world is very important. But at the same time, we saw, I think COVID revealed that
there's a streak maybe on the East Coast, in particular, of risk aversion, instead of trying to weigh risk and rewards.
But, yes, look, you know, the book, in some ways, is about American exceptionalism in certain ways. Our economy is still growing, whereas
Europe has stagnated, for example. And risk taking countries tend to -- tend to win in the long run.
[12:45:11]
ISAACSON^ Tell me about COVID and how we miscalculated, in your mind, risks during that period.
SILVER^ Yes, look, it's a hard problem to solve. It's the worst pandemic that the world pays in 100 years and maybe where our intuitions weren't
very valuable there.
But, you know, sometimes things that are hard to calculate, like the value of being able to have a social life or the value of more importantly being
able to send your kids to school, that actually has huge consequences that will be realized years later when you have, you know, half a year of
education permanently lost to poor students around the United States.
You know, if you try to calculate that and that's hard, but that has effects on well-being and the GDP and everything else.
And so -- and so, you know -- unfortunately, we have to make decisions, right? We can't just call again in the poker sense all the time.
And I think in that sense, we could have been maybe bolder about shutting down more strictly at the start and then realizing after the first couple
of months that we had to open up and pay a prize, but that the consequences of not getting back to normal for education and other such the economy
outweighed, you know, the frankly horrible death toll.
But that's a tough choice that you have to make. You can't avoid -- you can't avoid tough choices sometimes.
ISAACSON: Did the partisan response to COVID, in some ways, shift your own political thinking?
SILVER: Yes. Look, one trend that you've seen for the past 15 or 20 years is that more and more people who go to college, or especially have advanced
degrees, are liberals and Democrats, which is fine.
But when you have communities where 95 percent of people are progressive Democrats, I think there can be more groupthink. And especially in election
year, remember COVID happened in 2020, the previous election.
You can have a conflation between, you know, expertise for expertise's sake and using that for a partisan weapon sometimes in terms of, you know,
questions like the origins of COVID seem highly ambiguous to me.
But because President Trump was kind of on the side of the lab league, I think that suppressed valid discussion about this disease that we don't
know. We still don't know yet. There's no scientific consensus on how it emerged.
And that seemed to me -- I mean, that -- you know, that caused to me a loss of trust in these institutions.
And part of what the book's about is in a world where we feel like we have to fend for ourselves because, you know, every institution but the military
from the Catholic Church to the media, has declined in perceptions of trust.
And that is a, you know, kind of dangerous world in which you maybe have to make choices for yourself and make up your own mind. And that's what the
book's about.
ISAACSON: To what extent is a taste for risk-taking and ingrained trait?
SILVER: I think it's pretty genetic. I talked to a man named Victor Vescovo in the book, who's kind of the ultimate risk-taker. He has climbed the
seven summits, the seven highest mountain peaks on every continent.
He's gone to the depths of the five oceans. He's gone into outer space. He's been a fighter pilot. And he's like, when I talk to other people who
are taking these risks, because he knows, if you're on a mountain 28,000 feet high, right, you can't control every risk. There's some chance of an
avalanche or a misstep.
He's been in accidents before. And he talks to other explorers, he's like, yes, there's just something innate genetic. I don't know if he knows what
it is, but some people just have an intrinsic desire to push boundaries, I think.
ISAACSON: Do you think that there's a fundamental difference between the physical risk-takers, people climb mountains, astronauts, versus say
somebody who just loves day trading on cryptocurrency or gambling on the roulette wheel rather than poker?
SILVER: When I started the book, I assumed there was a difference, but by talking to both groups, now I think there probably actually isn't.
In part, because when you play poker, your body, for high stakes, your body perceives the risk. You actually see your heart rate increase. You see --
you know, time perception can slow down a little bit.
I mean, even in things like -- if you ever are giving a public speech, in a high-stakes situation where if you flub the speech, it's going to look
badly on you. It might hurt your career. You can get stage fright on the one hand, but other people become possessed and they become kind of in the
zone and they can be better under pressure than other people.
Having that skill -- and the good news, by the way, is that it can be learned. I think Kamala Harris is an example of a candidate who was not
very good in her first campaign in 2020, but had a lot of practice giving speeches all around the world and now it seems like a much better
candidate, at least subjectively to me.
So you can train yourself to when you're operating a different operating system and your body has a stress response, you're actually picking up more
information from your environment. And you'll sometimes see up here people take, like Michael Jordan talk about how I'm in the zone and I see more
things and time slows down. I can think really clearly.
That's a rare trait, but if you possess it, and if you -- and if you practice in that zone, then you can actually accomplish tremendous things.
[12:50:06]
ISAACSON: If you were advising, let's start with the Harris campaign, which risk, calculated risk, would you be willing to take and which would you
avoid?
SILVER: I mean, I think there's a case that she should have picked Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania as her running mate, that's kind of the percentage
played, given how important Pennsylvania is to the outcome.
I think now she has to worry a little bit about the risk of complacency. You know, she's a little bit ahead in the polls right now. She'll probably
continue to be ahead after the convention.
But the polls have been wrong before. We saw with Hillary Clinton in 2016, how, you know, having a two or three-point lead is far from the guarantee
of success.
ISAACON: And what about the Trump campaign? What risk do you think they should be taking now?
SILVER: Yes. Look, I mean, the term that we use in poker sometimes as a player, like I said, is on tilt where they're playing emotionally.
And some of Trump's recent decisions are hard to rationalize, I think. Going after Kamala Harris's race or complaining about AI-enhanced crowd
size.
When there's a lot of, you know, low-hanging fruit in terms of voter concerns about inflation and the economy, in terms of immigration and the
border, in terms of Harris running very far to her left in 2020.
Look, Trump thought he had a winning hand. He thought he had the campaign in the bag. And with Biden as a candidate, he might have, but he has to --
he has to adjust and recalibrate.
They've been very slow on the draw as Democrats redefined J.D. Vance negatively and Tim Walz positively. And, you know, there's no much -- not
much more time to make up at this point.
ISAACON: And someone said that all great ideas come from intuition. But he said, all great intuition comes from processing a whole lot of earlier
experiences.
You talk in the book about quantifying intuitions. Explain that.
SILVER: So in poker, you kind of can actually develop like a sixth sense, based on someone's mannerisms, the way they're poshier (ph) or things like
that. If you see their heart beating in their neck, for example.
You develop an intuition where you correlate that with whether they have a strong or weak handle. It's very contextual. Some players get more nervous
when they're bluffing. Some players get more nervous when they have a strong hand. And they end up trying to win a huge pot.
So we have some maybe semantic vocabulary deep in our brains that we develop over time, but it has to be practiced. Intuition provides us with
data if we know how to correlate that with behavioral traits.
I mean, another person, you know, Nancy Pelosi talked about her intuition with Ezra Klein for understanding how the democratic caucus behaves. And I
believe in her intuition. She understands like nobody else, how Democrats think. Maybe not swing voters, but Democrats. Democratic legislators for
sure.
But it's a matter of practice and skill. It's a matter of not just trusting your gut because you're being lazy and don't want to think through a
problem, but when you actually have thousands of hours of experience with it, then it can be helpful.
ISAACON: At the end of your book, you talk about certain things we could do to have a better society. You talk about agency, you talk about plurality.
And you also have talked about reciprocity.
Let me deal with the reciprocity one.
SILVER: Yes.
ISAACON: That seemed the most interesting and what we most need now. Explain that to me.
SILVER: So this comes partly from game theory. And game theory is what evolves when both you and your opponent are playing strategically and
roughly rational, roughly optimal in your decision-making.
In the United States, both parties win elections roughly half the time because they do adapt. I mean, Donald Trump understood that maybe there
were opportunities among white working class voters that were being neglected by the, you know, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan types of candidates.
Recently though, I think there's a risk that both parties had caught up in their own bubble and don't give the other side credit for adapting
intelligently. I think this was, you know, most obviously the case with the Trump campaigns and ability to foresee Democrats switching their candidate,
which was the right strategic moves.
So I think if you -- you know, assume your opponent's playing their hand well and play your hand as best you can, given that, that's reciprocity.
Sometimes you get lucky and your opponent makes a mistake, but that's easy to win. Most of the time, it's hard to actually make good bets. It's a
competitive market. It's a competitive economy.
And so give your opponent's credit and then adapt from there.
ISAACON: Nate Silver, thank you so much for joining us.
SILVER: Thank you, Walter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And after that, the world, all of us will be watching and waiting to see whether and what risk candidates Harris and Trump could take and if
they pay off.
Finally, the Queen of Salsa, Celia Cruz, conquered the world of music. And now, she's bringing her rhythm to the U.S. quarter. That is the 25 cent
coin.
The Cuban singer who died in 2003 becomes the first Afro-Latina to appear on a U.S. currency. Her contagious stage presence and signature Azucar
motto, which means sugar in Spanish, turned her into a household named the legions of salsa lovers. Her hits, like "Life is a Carnival," and now
anthems in Latin America.
[12:55:06]
That's it for us now. If you have missed our show, you can find the latest episodes shortly after it airs on our podcast. Remember, you can always
catch us online and on our website and all over social media.
Thanks for watching and we want to leave you with some of that inimitable Celia Cruz. Goodbye from London.
(MUSIC)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:00:00]
END
