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Game Theory #10: The Law of Asymmetry

Original Transcript

We continue our discussion of the US-Iran war that is happening right now. As you know, I made the prediction that the United States will lose this war. Last class we did an overview of the military and strategic position, and today we're going to provide some theoretical framework for how to understand how this war will progress and why ultimately I believe the United States will lose.

Today I present to you a very important idea in game theory. And once you understand this idea, then you understand why things will turn out the way they do. It's called the law of asymmetry. All this is saying is that the United States and Iran are not peers — they're not equals. The United States is far stronger than Iran, and we should expect the United States to overwhelm and destroy Iran really easily. But the law of asymmetry states that that's usually not the case. It's usually the underdog that has the advantage, and we see this from history all the time.

When the Persians in about 490 BC invaded mainland Greece against Athens and Sparta, Persia at that time was the first world empire — it had infinite resources, infinite manpower, infinite wealth — and it lost to the Greeks not once but twice. Then the Macedonians, under Alexander, were a tribal army, not very large, yet they were able to go into Persia — which at the time covered most of Eurasia — and conquer it in about ten years. The Romans started off as a tribal people which then built the Mediterranean Empire. The Vikings. The Aztecs. This happens a lot in human history: a people in the borderlands, a tribe, a small ethnicity, are able to conquer a great empire. And the law of asymmetry tells us why.

Let's look at an empire. There are three major advantages to an empire. The first is mass — this just means they have a lot of people. The United States has a population of about three hundred and fifty million, but it can also draw on the populations of its allies: the Five Eyes, Europe, East Asia, South Korea, Japan — basically wherever the Americans have a military base. Most of the world are either allies or vassals of the United States, so it can draw on billions and billions of people for its wars. That's mass.

Second is organization — a hierarchy of bureaucracy, science, and technology, which leads to the most advanced weaponry. Think about how the United States fights this war: satellites that provide precision targeting, B2 bombers, F-15s — the most advanced weaponry ever in human history. That's organization.

The last great strength of the empire is what we call the immunity to death. Because your people are infinite, your organization is so strong, and your resources are so vast, you can afford to lose many wars. The United States loses this war in Iran — if they want to come back, they can come back with even more soldiers, even more weaponry, because their wealth is infinite.

In theory, because of these advantages, an empire should be invincible and eternal. But we know for a fact that all empires fall, and they fall very, very hard. Most empires last maybe two hundred years, maybe three hundred years. That's not a very long time. So why is it that an empire with these vast resources falls in thirty, fifty years?

What we need to understand is that all these advantages are ultimately disadvantages in the long term. Mass means you have a lot of people. When you have a lot of people, you create a lot of inequality, because there's competition for resources. This often leads to debt and slavery. And as a result, your people become complacent, lazy, indifferent — competing against each other, not motivated to work or to fight wars. So this mass looks like an advantage in the beginning, but over time it becomes a disadvantage.

Organization means an elite. The problem is that over time the elite become parasites — through what we call rent-seeking. Rent-seeking means that you have power and you seek to monetize that power by exploiting the mass. Landlords are a classic rent-seeking elite: they don't really work, but they make a lot of money because they own the land, they control the resources, they control the capital. This forces the mass into slavery and debt — which is what's happening in America today. And the problem compounds: everyone wants to be part of the elite, and over time there are too many elite. Power is a zero-sum game, a hierarchy. This leads to what historian Peter Turchin coined as elite overproduction — you have turmoil, you have wars, like the French Revolution and the fall of the Roman Republic, because there are too many elite all fighting to accumulate power for themselves. So this organization and elite leads to factionalism and infighting. That's what's happening in America today, where the Democrats and Republicans hate each other and refuse to cooperate — political polarization. And an empire over time becomes insular, caring only about what happens in Washington DC and as a result making a lot of stupid mistakes.

The last thing is the immunity to death. The problem is that if there are no consequences to your actions, you become arrogant, lazy, and incompetent — because you don't care, it doesn't really matter. This leads to hubris — blindness to your own arrogance, a violent arrogance that makes you make silly mistakes but you don't recognize them and keep repeating them over and over again.

So the mass leads to inequality. The organization leads to elite overproduction which leads to factionalism. And the immunity to death leads to hubris. That's why an empire must fall over time. But an empire cannot fall by itself — it needs an enemy that forces it to collapse. An enemy will emerge that is able to take advantage of the weaknesses of the empire. And what are those weaknesses? The people aren't really motivated — so if you as a challenger are really motivated, you have a huge advantage. We call this energy. As an empire you become insular, you refuse to admit your mistakes, you refuse to learn from others. But if you are willing to admit your mistakes, willing to learn, willing to promote the best and brightest, willing to operate on merit, you have a huge advantage. We call this openness. And an empire is fractured — so if you're able to maintain cohesion, remain united, and have a common purpose, you'll be strong. We call this cohesion.

So if an enemy of the empire emerges with these three qualities — energy, openness, and cohesion — this enemy will defeat the empire. What I want you to focus on as you follow the news in this war between the United States and Iran is to ask yourself one question: is Iran becoming an energetic, open, and cohesive society? Because if it does, it will become invincible. The empire won't change because of hubris — it's too static, too stagnant, too bureaucratic. Iran still suffers from issues of mass, organization, and the immunity to death since it is itself a country of ninety-two million people. But if it is able to transform itself into an energetic, open, cohesive society, then it will triumph over America. That is the fundamental question in this war. Don't worry about America's technology. Don't worry about the economy. Ask yourself one question: is Iran transforming as a society? Are people becoming much more motivated? Are people in Iran learning from their mistakes and innovating and becoming resilient on the battlefield? Are the Iranians sticking together as a people? If the answer is yes to all three, then Iran will win and America will lose.

Now let's talk specifically about America and Iran. America will have three major advantages in this war: technology, propaganda, and money.

Technology is just what you see every day — satellites able to precisely target, the greatest war machines in the world, the most advanced scientists. America is home to the greatest scientists and the most advanced weaponry. Propaganda means that America controls the information space. It controls the internet. It controls the world's most powerful media — the New York Times, CNN, the BBC. It controls YouTube. It controls Google. America does not want you to know something, and it can hide it from you. It can control the discourse, control how you think about the world. That's propaganda. The last thing is money: the United States controls the US dollar, the reserve currency of the world, and can print as much of it as it needs to win this war. An infinite money printer. It can use this money to bribe people to fight the war — pay for mercenaries, bribe ethnic minorities to rebel against the government in Iran, bribe Iranian officials to betray their government.

But again, we need to think about the law of asymmetry and recognize that these advantages are also disadvantages. Technology: if you have the most advanced weaponry in the world, you become lazy, arrogant, and dependent on it. Think about school — you have access to ChatGPT, and instead of becoming smarter, you become dumber because you become lazy. The American military becomes too dependent on technology, too arrogant, too complacent. "If we get in trouble, we'll just send in the Air Force and blow everything up." This dependency hampers innovation and resilience on the battlefield — and that is what you need to win.

Propaganda: you would think that controlling the information landscape is a huge advantage. It's actually not. For innovation and resilience to happen, you need open debate, you need people to voice dissenting opinions. But if you control the information landscape, what you do is censor. America is telling people right now: shut up and obey, you're not allowed to point out that this war is stupid and unwinnable. So there's a lack of rigorous debate within the American government, the American military, the American elite — which leads to hubris, leads to bad decision-making. No one will point out the mistakes because they're too afraid of upsetting the president. America will keep making the same mistakes over and over again. We call this "drinking your own Kool-Aid" — getting high on your own supply.

Money and wealth: you would think that you can just bribe everyone and you're good. But if you bribe people, they're not going to fight for you — all they want is your money. You bribe them and they'll probably take your money and run away, or figure out how to squeeze more money out of you by cheating you. The militias and ethnic opposition groups in Iran that America is funding are hustlers — they're not fighting because they want freedom, they're fighting because they want to rip off the US government. They're motivated to scam as much as possible and could actually be a long-term problem as America puts enormous resources into people it cannot trust.

So America has three major problems. First: lack of political will. The American people don't want to fight this war. The American government doesn't even know why they're fighting this war. Nobody cares. For the Iranians, it's a struggle of life and death — if Iran loses this war, they lose their country, their society, their civilization, their identity. They cannot afford to lose. If America loses, they just go home and forget about it. America doesn't have the political will to fight this war, yet is fighting it anyway.

Second: logistics and manufacturing. America is very good at fighting short wars because it has the most advanced weaponry. But it has manufacturing issues — as we know, America shipped all its factories to China. America doesn't have that many factories. Yes, it has the most advanced weaponry in the world, but weapons don't do any good without ammunition — without munitions, bombs, and bullets, which require factories. America is trying to upgrade its manufacturing capacity, but it's slow. Maybe five years from now it will have the capacity to sustain this war, but right now it doesn't.

Third: casualties. America cannot afford to lose soldiers on the battlefield. If tens of thousands of American soldiers are coming home in coffins, the American people — because of lack of political will — will revolt. You will have protests, violence in the streets. It will be like the Vietnam era again.

So yes, America has technology, propaganda, and money, but as we discussed, these aren't really advantages. And the disadvantages are huge: lack of political will, lack of manufacturing, and the inability to sustain battlefield casualties.

Now Iran has a lot of disadvantages, but it has three major advantages it needs to emphasize to survive this war. First: faith. The Iranians are Shia, and as such theirs is a religion of martyrdom, of eschatology, of individual sacrifice for the greater good. The Shia are not afraid to die. And because their great religious leader was assassinated by the Americans and Israelis, they are motivated to seek vengeance, to martyr themselves for the greater good, to seek eternal paradise. That is jihad.

Second: terrain. Iran is a mountainous country and it's huge — three times the size of Iraq. It is very hard for America to invade. Most analysts will tell you it is suicidal for the American military to invade Iran. It is a mountain fortress.

Third: nationalism. The Iranians are Persians, and the Persians go back five thousand years. It is one of the greatest civilizations in human history. As we discussed last semester, in the ancient world there were three great civilizations: the Jews, the Greeks, and the Persians. Persian culture is vast, beautiful, and deep, and that's what gives the Iranian people a lot of pride. When they're fighting, they're not just fighting for their religion or their homes — they're fighting for an entire civilization that goes back five thousand years.

But remember: what seems like an advantage can also be a disadvantage. Faith: you might have the problem of zealotry — you're not afraid to die, but that means you're not thinking strategically. Maybe you're going to waste too many soldiers on the battlefield. They're brave, but they're kind of stupid as well. We're already seeing this: the Americans have blown up and destroyed the Iranian navy. I told you the first thing Americans would do is go destroy the Iranian navy. So you should probably not use the navy, or hide the navy, or blow up the navy yourself — you want to avoid as many casualties as possible. They didn't do that, and now the Americans have destroyed the Iranian navy.

Terrain: yes, it's a fortress, but it can also be a prison — you're stuck there, and because it's a mountainous region, it doesn't have that many resources. Americans can actually disrupt your water supply, disrupt your electricity, and cause general poverty and hardship for your people.

Nationalism: yes, Persia is a great culture, but remember that Iran is an ethnically diverse country — only fifty percent of the population of Iran are Persians. The others are different minorities. So you have ethnic divisions.

Now we know exactly what the American strategy will be. The strategy will be to inflict as many casualties as possible on the Iranians, destroy the infrastructure of Iran so that people don't have enough water, electricity, and food to survive, and create as much ethnic tension in the country as possible by arming, encouraging, and bribing ethnic groups to rebel against the central government in Tehran.

Looking at the ethnic map of Iran: the Persians are in the center. The groups to watch are the Kurds, the Azeris, and the Baluchis. The Baluchis are first of all Sunni Muslims — as we discussed, the Sunnis and Shia have never really gotten along, like Catholics and Protestants. The Baluchis have been trying to rebel against the Iranians for a long time. There are almost certainly already Israeli and American special forces embedded in that area — they want to encourage as much civil conflict as possible and prepare for the possibility of a ground invasion by establishing a forward operating base. The Kurds are another minority seeking national sovereignty. The Americans and Israelis are already bombing that area heavily and targeting police stations, trying to eliminate opposition so they can arm the Kurds and have them threaten Iran from within. In Iraq, there are Sunni groups — basically ISIS — that the Americans are bribing and arming to send into Iran to cause as much trouble as possible. Then there are the Azeris: sixty percent of ethnic Azeris actually live inside Iran, and only forty percent in the Republic of Azerbaijan. From the perspective of the Azeri people, this war could be an opportunity to reunite their people and create a greater Azerbaijan.

These are the three problem areas to watch as this war develops over the next weeks and months. We already know what the American strategy will be because we've seen it in Libya and Syria before: attack from without while simultaneously attacking from within. Arm insurgent groups, embed special forces to lead them, provide air cover, and give them a clear path into Iran while eliminating opposition. The three main pillars: decapitation — removing command and control, eliminating the capacity of Iran to govern itself; air supremacy — carpet bombing Tehran, soft targeting of hospitals and civilian infrastructure to degrade the state's capacity for resilience; and double tap — a practice that is against international law, where you attack a place and then strike again when doctors, emergency personnel, and relatives come to help the wounded, creating as much civilian casualties and fear as possible.

But the problem with this strategy is that when you do these three things, you're not actually hurting the Iranians — you're actually helping them. Because the law of asymmetry states that whichever group is able to create energy, openness, and cohesion will win, and this American strategy is going to create a more energetic, more open, and more cohesive Iranian society.

Here's how. Decapitation: one major problem for Iran is elite overproduction — too many leaders, all with their own opinions about how to lead this war. By killing so many leaders, you solve this problem for the Iranians. You allow for more mobility, more meritocracy — you're actually solving the problem of overproduction for them. The leadership will become much more lean, much more determined, much more strategic.

Air supremacy: when you carpet bomb Tehran, you're creating a more cohesive society. The major internal conflict in Iran for many decades was between the urban areas and the rural areas — the rural areas very religious, poor, and traditional; the urban areas educated, secular, and progressive. When you carpet bomb the cities — the main source of support for progressive, Western-oriented policies — you make the urban population unite with the rural. The Iranian people no longer see each other as enemies; they see the Americans as enemies. You create a much more cohesive society willing to fight together. That is a problem.

Arming the insurgents — the Baluchis, Kurds, and Azeris — activates and galvanizes Persian nationalism. For the longest time, Persian national identity was suppressed by the theocracy, which wanted to create a grand religion that unites all ethnicities above ethnic identity. When you turn the minorities against the Iranians, the Persian people are forced to come together and remember their history, celebrate their identity. And once the Persian people are able to activate those long-lasting memories, go back into the past and remember the greatness, they come together as an energetic, open, and cohesive society.

So yes, the Americans have a strategy that worked in Libya and Syria, but it's not going to work in Iran — in fact, it's going to do the opposite. And why won't the Americans adapt? Because it's an empire. It doesn't care about Iran; it cares about itself. It's stuck with this policy because it's trying to win this war as quickly as possible — it doesn't have the manufacturing capacity to fight a long war, it can't afford battlefield casualties because of the lack of political will, and it needs a fast, cheap victory. If it doesn't get one, America is in a lot of trouble.

Now let's discuss the Iranian strategy. The Americans are using classic siege warfare. The Iranians are going to respond with classic guerrilla warfare — hide and seek. You bomb me with everything you have; I hide in my mountains. Then when you leave, I attack your GCC countries — lob drones and rockets at you, lob rockets at Israel. I don't have to strike that hard. I just have to be a persistent pain, because then what happens is you're forced to come back and bomb the living hell out of me. But I hide again. Iran can do this for years and years. America is forced to win fast because there is no political will, no manufacturing capacity, and limited tolerance for casualties.

The grand question: will America launch a ground invasion? Because if it does, then they've lost the war. Look at Iran — mountains and deserts. It is impossible to occupy this country. And what Iran wants is to be such a persistent pain that America is forced to invade. From the east and the west and the north, from every side — until America's resources, political will, and manufacturing capacity run out.

Now — why is this war even happening? If I can figure this out, I'm sure the American generals can too. For years America has been planning to invade Iran and for years the generals were saying: no, that's suicidal, let's not do this. So why is this happening? We don't fully know because the administration isn't telling us. At first Trump said it was because nuclear talks didn't go well. We know for a fact that the Iranians were willing to agree to all American terms. Then Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, said something remarkable — that the reason America attacked Iran was because they heard the Israelis were going to attack first, the Iranians were going to respond by attacking both Israel and America, and therefore America had to preempt this by striking first. That's the stated reason.

But a clue lies in this: the American soldiers being asked to fight this war are being told by commanders that this is a war for Jesus — a war to create the second coming of Jesus. This is reported by journalist John Larson. US troops were told the Iran war is for Armageddon, the return of Jesus. There are some soldiers — Muslims, atheists, even Christians who found it inappropriate — who were told their combat operations in Iran are all part of God's divine plan. Their commander specifically referenced the Book of Revelation, referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ, and said that President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to earth. Several troops filed complaints about this speech.

What's happening is that there are some deeply committed Christian Zionists in the American military and government who want to use this war to end the world and force the return of Jesus. That might be why this war is being fought. I'm not saying it is the reason — I'm saying it's a possibility. Because quite honestly, there's no other reason I can come up with.

This leads us to another problem, which is interesting for a class on game theory. This is kind of weird, because what this suggests is that religion is more important than material incentives. What's the point of game theory if people don't play by game theory? If they're just religious fanatics?

And the answer is: it's still game theory. But the problem is that what you think of as the game they're playing is not the game they're playing. The reward you think they want is not the reward they want. We think in terms of material things — money, resources, power — and we think the war is being fought over these things. And it's not.

The grand reveal of this entire course is this: the real power, the real currency in the world, is not money. It is human consciousness — or basically, attention. Once you understand this idea, you understand everything. This war is being fought to control the consciousness of the human race, because it is our consciousness that creates reality itself. That is the source of all wealth and all power in this world. This is not just a war for Iran. It is not just a war for the Middle East. It is a war for the soul of humanity. Whoever wins this war will control the very soul of human existence for all of eternity. That is the end game. Everything that you believe, everything that you see today — it's all an illusion. The reality, the truth, is that consciousness is the source of all power and of reality itself. And so this is a war for human consciousness. It is a war for the very soul of humanity.