"Today I have the pleasure of speaking with  Dominic Cummings. He was the chief advisor   to Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister and  before that, he masterminded the Brexit campaign. Let's start ..."

"makes it intrinsically difficult. Then on top  of that, you have these just incredibly old,   centralized bureaucracies actually  trying to cope with all of this. For example, when we arrived in Numbe..."

"A fundamental problem with how the British  state works is this question of prioritization   and the Prime Minister's time. So you have  all of these normal parts of the system   that essentially can'..."

"essential question was already a fundamental  disagreement between me and Boris. So in   the first week of January, Trump had just  whacked that Iranian guy. I forgot his name,   the head of the revol..."

"There's a lot I want to ask about there. It's  interesting because the way you're describing it,   it sounds like it's a company with the  Prime Minister as a CEO who's dealing   with all these operat..."

"environment in which they operate, and also  it's not the incentives in which they work. Again, one of the funny conversations I had  with Boris was, you know, we should say to   the ministers that he..."

"How much does it have to do with the fact  that in the British political system,   the people who are running these  departments have to be an MP,   so they have to be an elected official?  Is that wh..."

"remove them from the post. There are  complications, and those complications   have grown in the last few years because of the  way that the legal system and various parts of   the law have evolved. B..."

"What if the Prime Minister said, I am giving  a blank check. If I appoint you as minister,   whatever you say, I'm going to sign it. So you can  rule as if I agree on everything you said. Could   they..."

"issues later.” But it also showed that even in  a crisis where literally thousands of people   are dying day after day after day, that large  parts of the bureaucracy will still simply say   “No. We a..."

"What incentive is there for people to speak  out about how these things work? No one expects   anything to change. Even after something as big  as COVID, when you see what the reaction is,   everyone ..."

"was essentially back to normal. You will be  promoted for being the most insane process,   and you will be demoted and blacklisted if you  say this process is insane and try to do better. There's two ..."

"So those sorts of things  come in. The treasury says,   “The spending rules and how the people  in the vaccine task force make decisions,   that was an emergency thing. Now the normal  rules apply aga..."

"At some point we should talk about what it  would actually take to change the equilibrium.   It might be first useful to talk about how did  this come to be? So presumably, at some point,   this is no..."

"self-selection, largely because they go in  idealistic, they're there for a few years,   but then they look at what the process is to  be promoted, and they look at their bosses,   and the best of the..."

"parts of the system have failed. Agencies need  to be shut, new things need to be created. So it is possible to do. But the  tale of that also shows the problems,   the reaction from the old system an..."

"Starmer is so obviously rubbish on the other side,  we don't actually have to change very much either. On your blog, when you've written about all these  other reformers throughout history, they were ..."

"brilliant at manipulating the theater to keep the  egos of the MPs satisfied. The most obvious way to   think about it is the Cabinet. You have the most  famous door in the world, Number 10. Every wee..."

"system that filters out almost all of the best  people and promotes the most HR friendly types. But the PM's office is, for historical  reasons, slightly odd. In the PM's office,   you have roughly a ..."

"Because of self selection? Exactly. It's interesting, as a foreigner,  when I think about the UK and I'm   just learning the basics of what  the problems in the country are,   the main thing is your p..."

"But basically, all of that was dismantled by  Boris in 2021 after we left, because, for the   reasons I already said, he came to the conclusion  and most of the party agreed. Remember in 2020,   when ..."

"One of the most stupid things is that Number  11, the treasury, basically hides huge amounts   of financial information from Number 10, which  is obviously completely insane. How can you have   a Prim..."

"I'm more curious about the broader lessons  about personality that this reveals than him   necessarily. In the American context for example,  FDR clearly had control of the government, and as   far as..."

"that Peter Thiel said that we don't  see much about how the NSA works and   his assumption is that in lots of ways,  the NSA is worse managed than the DMV. There is, unfortunately, a lot of truth to  ..."

"brilliant people everywhere. But across all of  these things, there are budget horrors. There   is a chronic inability to build long term.  There are constant bureaucratic incentives   to not face rea..."

"And if you look at what's happening  in Ukraine now, then you can see that   large parts of the system are very happy  to dance right on the edge of the abyss. Is there more you can say on the  Chines..."

"How about the intelligence agencies?  MI5, MI6, and then in America, the CIA.   How much situational awareness do they have  about the most important things? Honestly,   if I was like the PM, maybe in..."

"So that's bad. But going back to the main  thing, amazing capabilities in various   ways but badly focused, badly prioritized.  But also the quality of analysis is much,   much worse. In trying to ana..."

"How about defense? In Ukraine, we're seeing  very asymmetric returns on different kinds of   new weapons where you have cheap drones that  are taking out expensive Russian tanks. How   competent is de..."

"Of course, once we left and the system went  back to normal, then they didn't close it down,   they haven't replaced it, they've just  thrown more money at it. And lo and behold,   the things fall out..."

"was a sort of massive waste of money. And  that's just becoming more and more obvious. All over these systems in the west, people  are now starting to face the music that a   lot of these things that ..."

"of aircraft carriers and blah, blah, blah the  whole thing makes absolutely no sense at all What happens when we have to face  the music and when does that happen? I don't know. Maybe there's a confli..."

"We're going to face the music shortly in Russia  because the Ukrainian offensive is not going to   be the great success that we've all been told.  Remember last Christmas, 9 months ago, the British   ..."

"forgotten. How much do people pay attention  to the government in Britain in 1890-1895 now? Conflict matters a lot. Technology  matters. And they matter in ways   that are very contingent and hard  to..."

"If you looked at what's happened in the West  over the last few decades and you brought back   some of the people from classical Athens, it  would seem quite familiar to them in certain   ways. Some o..."

"really worked as long as you had the old  aristocracy managing it. I'm not saying   this is necessarily what I believe,  all I'm saying is that a reasonable   perspective is that the old system worked..."

"getting involved. In fact, the opposite is  happening. The madder the system gets, the   more the competent people retreat to their fish  ponds. They look up, they build walled gardens,   and they cul..."

"across the political world, academia,  in the media, you can see on Twitter,   they're all very happy to give their personal  takes on Elon Musk as manager and his startup   abilities. And they take e..."

"that are actually focused on what voters  want, you seem insane to the old system. Wouldn't you just expect some sort of basic  evolutionary or selection argument for winning   elections. Such that ev..."

"And if you spent three days doing market  research in America, you'd know that   Donald Trump's message should be about the  economy and what he should be saying is,   this is what I did on the econom..."

"that actually decides that its fundamental goal  is to solve a set of problems. Its fundamental   goal is not maneuvering the social hierarchy  of existing political and media elites. Like   that's th..."

"If you go back to your Singapore example, so  far it's been successful in preserving that   culture. It's like: here's what our real  goals are and the different elements of   the government system ha..."

"in history, wartime and also depression. So  there's not many private sector alternatives. How would you have a situation today where  you're able to compete for that talent,   not just for these real..."

"So in the UK you'll have labor for the  next four or five years. So if you have   a new startup party and let's say it  takes control after that, and you have   another Brexit like political machine. ..."

"Speaking of which, how would you get these  political talents to hop onto your party's   label? And it's sort of a Catch-22 because you  probably need voters to convince the political   talent to join..."

"On Brexit. If it's possible to build a  new political machine that's relatively   cheap to do and is much more effective than the  current political parties at winning elections,   what is it that you..."

"With Brexit. Afterwards on your blog,  you're writing about why you did   Brexit and how the government is dysfunctional  in these ways and it's similar to the things   we're talking about. We've got ..."

"While we're talking about talent,  [you obviously put out that famous   post](https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-ass..."

"Yeah, and not responsible. You spent time in Russia when  you were a younger man. You   were trying to start an airline there, right? Yeah. What did you learn about Russia, and do you  think the regim..."

"How come? They'd be crushed by the system. You could imagine  in China, some Machiavellian character coming   through. You could say the CCP has done that to  some extent. A Machiavellian character co..."

"of it is really recorded anywhere. I mean, there  might be some sketchy WhatsApp conversations here   and there. The odd person keeps a diary, which  can be useful for sure, but it was pretty rare,   ..."

"You were giving a talk or participating in a panel  at the Orwell Festival of Political Writing about   Bismarck, and you had a quote there that I thought  was so interesting and I want you to explain..."

"Okay, big picture. What is the cause  of Britain no longer being the global   superpower it once was? Is it decolonization?  Post war socialism? Is it the war itself? The productivity stuff started ha..."

"His answer is, “Well, of course, like a whole  generation of great leaders was destroyed.” I'm curious why the opposite thing isn't more  common, where you have all these generals who   have seen Worl..."

"The science and technology staff  is important for us to develop,   but not just for economic reasons. But it's also  very, very far from a magic bullet. There's a   whole bunch of stuff that we have ..."

"and then we persuade everyone and the public  will shift and start cheering house building.   I don't think that's realistic and  I don't think that's the answer. In fact, in 2020, we did actually mak..."

"Let's talk about education for a bit. You  mentioned earlier that that's one of the   things you're working on now. But also you have  a big history here. You were at the Ministry   of Education, and ..."

"understand how things actually get done. You don't  understand how regulation actually has its effect,   because you don't see at the coalface what it's  like starting a business or scaling a business..."

"It totally depends on temperament and  personality. Two of the most interesting   intellectual people, 20th century are [John von   Neumann](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann)  and [Kurt ..."

"I think elite universities now definitely  don't train this sort of thing. The way   that I think about it is this. It's easy  to imagine creating new courses for 17   to 23 year olds where they do a ..."

"How does PPE (Politics, Philosophy,  Economics) fuck up the people who   go through it? Because basically, almost  every Prime Minister has gone through it,   and even US presidents? Clinton was a  Rh..."

"the policy people then move on to whatever  their next thing is. The management,   implementation people look at it and go, “Well,  this is not going to work for all the following   reasons.” But it's..."

"have them all. Practically by definition.  Not worrying what the media says and not   worrying about everyone hating you, I  think, is a very powerful advantage. All the way through the referendum  an..."

"Okay, final question. What does pessimism of the  intellect and optimism of the will mean to you? If you look at history, then you have to expect  that what happens to everyone else is likely   to hap..."

"Dominic, this is a huge pleasure. I honestly  learned so much. You really can't get this   anywhere else. Having somebody who is as  thoughtful as you inside the government,   so that you can have bot..."