War breeds generational hatred

The Short Version

The usual way to count the cost of war is deaths, injuries and destroyed buildings. The people in these conversations say that misses what lasts longest: the hate war leaves behind, which spreads from the soldiers who did the killing to an entire people and passes down through families for decades. Lex Fridman came back from Ukraine saying that "war creates generational hate" [1]. Elon Musk makes the same argument about Gaza as a kind of arithmetic: "for every Hamas member that you kill, how many did you create? And if you create more than you kill, you've not succeeded" [2]. Bryan Callen, who lived through war in Lebanon as a child, and grappler Craig Jones, who went to the front lines in Kherson, describe how thin the line between civilization and chaos is up close [3][4]. Taken together, these conversations argue that any decision about war should count the future enemies it creates, not just today's casualties.

Table of contents

What They Said

Lex Fridman: the hate that outlives the war

Lex Fridman recorded his conversation with Andrew Huberman only weeks after returning from Ukraine. He had spent time in Kyiv and near the front lines, interviewing several hundred people, from grandmothers who had lost everything to soldiers and senior politicians [1]. For him, the most painful lesson was simple: "war creates generational hate" [1].

We usually think of war in terms of deaths and injuries, Fridman says, but the secondary effects last for decades [1]. The key point is what happens to the targets of that hate. Anyone who has lost a parent or a child comes to hate not just the soldiers or the leaders who invaded, but the entire people [1]. Grief doesn't stay aimed at whoever pulled the trigger. It spreads to a whole nation.

Fridman tested this directly. He regularly asked people whether they had love or hate in their hearts [1]. Some who were full of hate could see it in themselves and knew they shouldn't feel it, but described how "hate escalates it's like a vicious spiral" [1]. When he asked whether they could ever forgive Russia, most said no, and many meant all Russians. In their view, doing nothing is as bad as, or worse than, joining the invading army [1]. That reasoning turns ordinary civilians on the other side into targets too.

This is personal for Fridman. Half of his family is from Ukraine and half from Russia, and memories of Russians and Ukrainians fighting side by side in World War II still run through his family tree [1]. He finds it deeply painful to watch that shared history torn apart [1]. The hardest footage for him to edit from his 30 to 40 hours of recordings isn't the interviews with politicians, including people he calls the number two and number three in the country. It's the conversations with grandmothers in the middle of nowhere who have lost everything, still have hope and love, and in many cases now carry hate [1].

He also noticed that war destroys the continuity that normally holds communities together. Without war, families can stay in one place across generations; war wipes out whole communities and the life stories that run through them [1]. At the same time, loss clarified what mattered to the people who suffered it: "nobody gives a damn when your photos are gone," he says. People who had lost their homes kept talking about how lucky they were that the people they loved were still alive [1].

Fridman adds two observations about how the hate is sustained. The first is propaganda. He gets hateful messages from every side, calling him a shill for Zelensky, Putin, NATO, the American empire, Democrats or Republicans. What stands out is that every group is sure it alone sees the truth. People in Russia say they are smart enough to ignore state propaganda, and people in the United States say the same about the mainstream media [1]. Everyone claims to think for themselves, and the conclusion is often hatred toward some group [1]. His approach is to "ignore the powerful and listen to actual citizens actual people" [1]. The second is who pays: "wars waged by powerful rich people and it's the poor people that suffer" [1].

He also worries about what the world is learning. China, India and the United States are all watching and realizing a large-scale hot war is still possible in the 21st century [1]. He recalls that after World War I people believed there would never be another world war, and within twenty years Nazi Germany had risen. His blunt conclusion: "we don't know shit about what's going to happen in the 21st century" [1].

Fridman also reports one surprising exception to the idea that war unleashes chaos. Early in the war, guns were handed out to everyone and some prisoners were released, yet crime went to zero [1]. Huberman calls it a case where love generalized, or at least hate did not [1].

Elon Musk: how many enemies did you create?

In his fourth conversation with Fridman, Musk takes the same idea and turns it into a test for strategy [2]. Speaking about the war between Israel and Hamas, and stressing that it is "strictly my opinion," he argues that Hamas "really wanted to commit the worst atrocities that they could in order to provoke the, the most aggressive response possible from Israel," and then "leverage that, uh, aggressive response to, um, rally Muslims worldwide" [2].

He doesn't argue for doing nothing. He thinks "it is appropriate for Israel to find the Hamas members" [2]. But he says a military response alone faces a hard limit: "if you're not going to just outright, uh, commit genocide, like it against an entire people, which obviously would not be acceptable... then you, you're going to leave basically a lot of people alive who subsequently, you know, hate Israel" [2]. Hence his test: "for every Hamas member that you kill, how many did you create? And if you create more than you kill, you've not succeeded" [2]. He makes the mechanism concrete: "if you kill somebody's child in Gaza, if you've, you've made at least a few, uh, Hamas members" [2]. And he sets the right timeframe: "if the goal ultimate is some sort of long-term peace, one has to be, look at this from standpoint of over time, are there more or fewer, uh, terrorists being created?" [2].

His counterintuitive answer: "I would recommend that Israel engage in the most conspicuous acts of kindness possible" [2]. That means mobile hospitals and food, water and medical supplies, delivered so transparently, even filmed around the clock, that nobody can call it a trick [2]. He describes it as a version of "turn the other cheek" adapted to geopolitics, though "It's not exactly turn the other cheek" [2]. Fridman admits the idea sounds naive at first but calls it brilliant [2].

Musk backs it with history. The Treaty of Versailles piled all the blame and impossible reparations on Germany after World War I, which sowed the seeds of World War II. After World War II, the Marshall Plan rebuilt the defeated countries instead [2]. "Something must stop the cycle of reciprocal violence," he says, or it goes on forever, an eye for an eye and a life for a life [2]. He points out the United States could have taken over almost any country after 1945 but helped rebuild Europe and Japan instead, and he offers a blunt moral test: as a German in 1945, "I recommend being a POW with the Americans" [2].

He carries the generational theme into his own family. He worries that very few people in the West still understand the horrors of war. His grandfather spent almost six years in the war, saw his friends killed in front of him and had severe PTSD. He never talked about it or bragged about his medals; Musk only found out about them from military records online [2].

On Ukraine, Musk focuses on the young men sent to die. He predicted "a lot of people dying for basically almost no changes in land," and grieves "the loss of the flower of Ukrainian and Russian youth" [2]. He asks for sympathy for both sides: "we should have some sympathy for the Russian boys as well as the Ukrainian boys because they're not going to ask to be on their front line. They have to be. So there's a lot of sons not come back to their parents" [2]. Then he adds a line that complicates Fridman's picture: "I think most of them don't really have, they don't hate the other side" [2]. He quotes the World War I saying about "young boys who don't know each other, killing each other on the half of old men that do know each other. The hell's the point of that?" [2]. His advice to Zelensky: "do not send the flower of Ukrainian youth to die in trenches, whether he talks Putin or not. Just don't do that" [2].

Musk also warns against the opposite fantasy. Nature is anything but peaceful, he says, and chimpanzee society is full of horrific violence, a primitive version of our own limbic system at work; the hope is that intelligence gives us more ability to control those instincts [2]. He considers ignorance, not other people, the real enemy [2]. But he cautions against wishing for peace at any price: "if you wish for world peace sounds good. But how's it enforced? And what cost is it?... The suppression of everyone. It might be the suppression of progress. It might be an ossified society that never changes" [2].

Bryan Callen: how fast the fabric tears

Comedian Bryan Callen brings the view of someone who lived through war as a child. War broke out in Lebanon when he was about 10 [3]. His family lived in a hotel for six months, sleeping on floors and then in an underground garage while bombs fell, and he remembers watching planes bomb a gas station [3]. When he returned as a teenager, a rocket fired over the beach he was on was so loud everyone fell to the ground [3].

As a young man, he was also around some genuinely violent people, and he learned that if the grid ever broke down, such people would take over with no mercy [3]. That is why he bristles at college students romanticizing violent revolution: they don't understand how fast a society's fabric can tear, as he says looting and crime showed during COVID [3]. He and Joe Rogan agree that some men are very comfortable with violence and that it's best not to "let those dogs slip" [3]. Callen stresses the importance of civilian control of the military, citing the founders' fear of a charismatic general seizing power [3].

Callen also brings in anthropology that bears on how hate gets built. He cites Jared Diamond's observation that tribes invented stories about their neighbors to justify attacking them when resources ran short [3]. He relays Erik Prince's argument that Israel could have flooded Hamas's tunnels with seawater rather than bombing [3]. That is a suggestion, like Musk's, that the method of fighting matters as much as the goal, though Callen offers it as Prince's view, not his own conclusion.

His broader outlook runs in the same direction as the others. After reading Michael Lewis's The Fifth Risk, which humbled him as a self-described libertarian, he urges people to "take politics out of it," "approach everything like it's a problem," respond to evidence and be humble [3].

Craig Jones: ordinary people, and weapons that outlast the fighting

Australian grappler Craig Jones made two trips into wartime Ukraine, first for a charity seminar in Kyiv and later to the front [4]. A soldier named Roman, who had attended the seminar, invited him to the front with the line: "listen, I can't promise you'll survive, but I'll promise you have a good time" [4]. They got to within about seven kilometers of the front line [4]. Everyone runs an air-defense alert app, he says, because "at any time, there could be an air siren going off" [4]. In Kyiv, a hypersonic missile was shot down by a Patriot system about five minutes from his hotel and the whole building shook [4].

On his second trip, Ukraine's national police chief took him to Kherson. When they switched to armored vehicles, a guard asked for a phone number to call "to recover your bodies" [4]. Kherson, he says, had fallen from roughly 250,000 people to about 50,000, mostly military [4]. They got "to within one kilometer of the front line," and inside the armored vehicle the artillery "sounds further away than it is... And then we heard two more strikes hit very, very close" [4]. He later learned that the strike less than half a kilometer away killed one person and injured others [4].

What changed for Jones was his sense of who fights. Coming from Australia, he had thought of military people as a separate category [4]. Roman, though, had lived in France for eight years with a wife and daughter and came back voluntarily to protect his mother and brother, while many others are conscripted ordinary people [4]. "A lot of these guys every day people, they're just in this crazy situation," he says [4]. Another friend, Dmitry, showed him documents of his grandfather's execution by the USSR, and when the invasion began went into the streets with a bicycle helmet and an AK-47 [4]. That is generational memory at work: a family grievance from one era shaping a man's response in the next.

Jones contrasts this with his own background: "Japan was coming for Australia, I guess in World War II, they attacked the North, but really there was no foot battle and there was no soldiers on the ground within Australia" [4]. For Ukrainians, "their responsibility to protect their homeland and their family is just something you can't imagine, but also after having spent time with them, you can see why they feel such a strong sense of obligation" [4]. He reports that attacks on civilians, such as the bombing of a children's hospital, reignite the will to fight [4].

The conversation also covers a physical legacy that matches the emotional one: land mines. Discussing Chernobyl, now empty and mined, the conversation notes "how many mines are left, even when the war ends for decades after this mines everywhere because the demining is extremely difficult. And that could continually kill people" [4]. Jones adds that a site where triggering a mine could cause a radiation leak will probably be very low on the demining list [4].

He also describes how cheap drones are changing war. FPV drones costing $300 to $500, often 3D-printed, can destroy a multimillion-dollar tank [4]. The police chief who gave him one told him that "artillery is scary, but a drone will follow you into a building" [4]. Fridman worries that the best defense against a piloted drone would be an AI-controlled one, creating a huge incentive for autonomous swarms on both sides, perhaps even between the US and China over Taiwan, killing indiscriminately [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

They agree that the real cost of war is long-term. Fridman says the secondary effects last for decades [1]. Musk judges success "over time" by whether more or fewer enemies are being created [2]. Jones's conversation points to mines that kill for decades after the fighting ends [4]. Callen's childhood memories of bombs over Beirut still shape how he thinks about social order [3].

They agree grievance runs through families. Fridman's family tree carries memories of Russians and Ukrainians fighting side by side, now torn apart [1]. Musk's grandfather came home with severe PTSD he never spoke about [2]. Jones's friend Dmitry carries documents of his grandfather's execution into a new war [4]. Musk's Versailles example shows the same pattern at the scale of nations: punishment after one war helped seed the next [2].

They agree that the killing doesn't hit the right people. Fridman: wars are waged by the powerful and the poor suffer [1]. Musk: young men who don't know each other die for old men who do [2]. Jones: the people fighting are ordinary citizens and conscripts, not a separate military class [4].

Where they differ: do the fighters themselves hate? Fridman found hate mostly in those who had lost family, especially civilians, and it spread to an entire people [1]. Musk says most of the young soldiers on both sides "don't hate the other side" [2]. These fit together more than they conflict. Musk is describing conscripts facing each other in trenches, while Fridman is describing grandmothers and families who lost children and parents. And Musk's own Gaza arithmetic agrees with Fridman on the key mechanism: killing someone's child creates new enemies [1][2].

Where they differ: how fast does order collapse? Callen warns that if the grid breaks down, violent people take over with no mercy, and that society's fabric tears fast [3]. Fridman reports the opposite early in the war in Ukraine: guns handed out to everyone, some prisoners released, and crime going to zero [1]. The difference may come down to context. Fridman describes a society united against an outside invader with sky-high morale, where scientists, engineers and students were joining the fight [1]. Callen describes a breakdown from within, where no shared purpose holds people together [3]. Jones's account of ordinary people taking up arms to protect family and homeland supports the idea that a common threat can hold a society together [4].

Where they differ: what to do about it. Musk offers the clearest prescription: pursue the fighters, but pair it with conspicuous kindness, and rebuild rather than punish, as with the Marshall Plan [2]. Fridman's response is personal: listen to ordinary people, ignore the powerful, and hear the other side; he plans to travel to Russia as well [1]. Callen passes along Erik Prince's idea about flooding tunnels as an alternative to bombing, and urges humility and evidence over politics [3]. Musk also warns that the ideal of permanent peace could itself become dystopian if it requires suppressing everyone [2].

Why It Works

The sources describe several mechanisms that keep war's hatred alive long after the fighting.

Grief generalizes. Losing a parent or child turns hate from the soldiers or leaders to the entire people [1]. Musk's version: killing one child in Gaza creates several new fighters [2].

Bystanders become culpable. Many Ukrainians Fridman met believed that doing nothing is as bad as, or worse than, joining the invading army, so forgiveness is withheld from all Russians, not just soldiers [1].

Hate escalates on its own. Even people who knew they shouldn't feel it described hate as "a vicious spiral" [1]. Musk calls it the "cycle of reciprocal violence" that goes on forever unless something breaks it [2].

Provocation is designed to trigger overreaction. Musk argues Hamas's atrocities were designed to provoke the most aggressive possible response, which could then be used to recruit [2]. An overreaction hands the enemy what it wanted.

Stories justify violence. Diamond's observation that tribes invented stories about their neighbors to justify attacking them [3], and Fridman's point that everyone believes they alone see through propaganda and ends up hating some group [1], show how narratives prepare people for hate and keep it going.

Punishment breeds the next war, rebuilding breaks the cycle. Versailles versus the Marshall Plan is Musk's historical evidence [2].

The physical legacy persists. Mines left in the ground keep killing for decades because demining is extremely difficult [4]. Communities scattered by war lose the continuity of families living in one place across generations [1].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

These points apply most clearly to wars fought among civilian populations, where many families lose someone: Ukraine and Gaza are the examples discussed [1][2][4]. They apply especially to decisions about how a war is fought and ended, where Musk's test of enemies created versus enemies killed, and his comparison of Versailles and the Marshall Plan, are most useful [2].

There are limits. Musk explicitly offers his Gaza view as his opinion on "one of the most contentious subjects one could possibly discuss" [2], and Fridman first found the kindness idea naive before calling it brilliant [2]. Neither source denies a country's right to defend itself: Musk says pursuing Hamas members is appropriate, and Jones describes Ukrainians' sense of obligation to protect their homeland as understandable once you've spent time with them [2][4]. The point isn't that fighting is never justified. It's that the hate war creates should be counted as a real cost. And hate isn't inevitable for everyone: Fridman met people who still held hope and love, and some full of hate recognized it and wished they didn't feel it [1]. Musk believes conscripted soldiers often don't hate each other [2].

The evidence here is testimony and history, not systematic data. Fridman's conclusions come from interviewing several hundred people [1]; Callen's and Jones's are personal experience [3][4]; Musk's are historical analogies [2]. Fridman himself warns against overconfidence about the future: "we don't know shit about what's going to happen in the 21st century" [1].

What To Do With It

1. When weighing any war or military response, ask Musk's question: for every enemy killed, how many are created? Judge success by whether there are more or fewer enemies over time, not by this week's results [2].
2. Count the long-term costs alongside the immediate ones. Include lost family continuity, scattered communities, and mines that kill for decades [1][4].
3. Remember that a destroyed family produces lasting hate toward an entire people. Fridman found most who had lost loved ones couldn't imagine forgiving [1].
4. Watch for provocations meant to trigger an overreaction. Musk argues that the most aggressive response is sometimes exactly what the attacker wanted [2].
5. Look at history's two models. Punishing the defeated (Versailles) preceded the next world war; rebuilding them (the Marshall Plan) did not [2].
6. Ignore the powerful and listen to ordinary people. That's Fridman's rule for cutting through propaganda from every side, and he goes to hear the other side too [1].
7. Be wary of stories that make a whole people the enemy. Groups have long invented stories about their neighbors to justify attacks, and everyone believes they alone see through the propaganda [1][3].
8. Don't romanticize violence or revolution. Callen, who lived through war as a child, warns how fast social order can tear and who takes over when it does [3].
9. Feel for the young men on both sides. Many are conscripts who "don't hate the other side," sent to die for decisions made by others [2][4].
10. Learn from people who carry the memory. Grandparents with unspoken PTSD, families with records of executions, and survivors who lost everything all show what war leaves behind [2][4][1].

Sources

1. Dr. Lex Fridman: Navigating Conflict, Finding Purpose & Maintaining Drive · Huberman Lab
2. Elon Musk: War, AI, Aliens, Politics, Physics, Video Games, and Humanity · Lex Fridman Podcast
3. Bryan Callen · The Joe Rogan Experience
4. Craig Jones: Jiu Jitsu, $2 Million Prize, CJI, ADCC, Ukraine & Trolling · Lex Fridman Podcast