Narrator: What if one man’s decision, in the suffocating heat of a submarine deep beneath the Atlantic, was the only thing that stood between human civilization and total nuclear annihilation? On October 27, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Soviet submarine captain Vasili Arkhipov refused to authorize the launch of a nuclear torpedo, even as American destroyers dropped depth charges around him. He saved the world, yet his story is a footnote in a history that celebrates the "cool courage" of leaders who brought us to that brink. This terrifying gap between official narratives and the precarious reality of our survival is the central puzzle explored in Noam Chomsky's incisive book, Who Rules the World?. Chomsky dismantles the comforting myths we are told about global power, forcing us to confront a far more unsettling question: are the institutions designed to protect us actually the greatest threat to our existence?

Narrator: In the arena of global politics, Chomsky argues that terms like "terrorism" and "dissident" are not objective labels but tools of power, applied selectively to serve state interests. The outrage we are encouraged to feel is carefully managed, directed at the crimes of official enemies while our own are ignored or justified.

A stark example of this double standard is the tale of two downed airliners. When Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine in 2014, the world erupted in what President Obama called an "outrage of unspeakable proportions," with blame quickly directed at Russian-backed rebels. Yet, this righteous fury was conspicuously absent in 1988 when the USS Vincennes, a U.S. Navy cruiser, shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf. The cruiser, operating in Iranian waters, fired on a civilian airliner in a clearly marked commercial corridor, killing all 290 people aboard, including 66 children. Instead of apologies, the U.S. government defended the action. President George H.W. Bush later declared, "I will never apologize for the United States—I don’t care what the facts are." The ship's commander was even awarded the Legion of Merit for his "exceptionally meritorious service." For Chomsky, this isn't just hypocrisy; it's a calculated feature of a world order where the powerful define the crime, ensuring their own actions are exempt from the moral standards they apply to others.

Narrator: According to Chomsky, a core principle of U.S. foreign policy since World War II has been the containment of what planners call "independent nationalism." This is the idea that a country might successfully pursue a path of development outside of U.S. control. This "virus" of successful defiance is considered a grave threat, not because of its military power, but because it might "spread contagion" and inspire other nations to do the same, thereby eroding the U.S.-managed global system.

The "first 9/11" serves as a chilling case study. On September 11, 1973, the United States backed a military coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. Allende was not a threat to U.S. security, but his socialist policies and independent path were a "virus" that had to be eradicated. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, who dismissed the coup as "nothing of very great consequence," had previously made the U.S. position clear: the "insidious" example of a successful, independent Chile could infect other nations, even as far away as Italy. The coup installed the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which tortured and murdered thousands while implementing radical free-market policies designed by U.S. economists. This pattern of crushing independent development, Chomsky reveals, is not an exception but a guiding rule of U.S. foreign policy, from Guatemala and Cuba to Vietnam and beyond.

Narrator: While much is made of America's declining power relative to rising nations like China, Chomsky argues that a significant part of this decline is self-inflicted, a direct result of a class war waged by the "masters of mankind"—a term he borrows from Adam Smith to describe the corporate and financial elite. For decades, U.S. policy has deliberately shifted the economy away from productive industry and towards financialization and offshoring.

This shift has had devastating consequences for the majority of the population. As Norman Ware observed during the first industrial revolution, the core degradation of the worker was the loss of independence and control. This sentiment echoes today, as real median income for American men is lower than it was in 1968, and 95% of economic growth in the last decade has gone to the top 1%. Policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, were instrumental in this process. A study on the effects of NAFTA found that corporations could effectively break union organizing drives simply by threatening to relocate their plants to Mexico. This threat was not an unintended side effect; it was a weapon that shattered the bargaining power of American workers. The result is a society where a tiny, fabulously wealthy "plutonomy" coexists with a precarious and stagnant majority, hollowing out the country's social and economic foundations from within.

Narrator: The ultimate consequence of this world order, where state and corporate power operate without accountability, is that humanity is accelerating toward two existential threats: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe. Chomsky points out the terrifying irony that the world's richest and most powerful societies are leading the charge to the precipice, while indigenous and less-developed societies are often at the forefront of trying to apply the brakes.

The threat of nuclear war, far from ending with the Cold War, remains perilously high. Chomsky recounts numerous instances where the world was saved from nuclear holocaust not by wise leadership, but by sheer luck or the insubordination of a single officer. In 1983, during a highly realistic NATO military exercise called Able Archer, the Soviet Union's leadership became convinced a U.S. first strike was imminent and prepared to retaliate. Disaster was averted, but the incident reveals how easily miscalculation can lead to annihilation. Simultaneously, the threat of climate change is being actively ignored and exacerbated by the world's most powerful actors. In the U.S., the Republican party has become a "radical insurgency" that rejects climate science, blocking any meaningful action. While the public largely supports international agreements to curb emissions, the government, beholden to corporate interests, champions "energy independence" through the maximum use of fossil fuels. This, Chomsky warns, is a suicidal course, a race to an abyss from which there may be no return.

Narrator: In Who Rules the World?, Noam Chomsky delivers a stark and uncompromising verdict: the world is not ruled by the consent of the governed, but by the intertwined interests of state power and a transnational corporate elite. The most critical takeaway is that the concept of "national security" is often a shield used to protect the security of these elite interests, frequently at the direct expense of the security of the general population. The very institutions that claim to keep us safe are actively driving us toward nuclear and environmental disaster.

Chomsky leaves us with a profound challenge. It is not enough to be a passive spectator. We must pierce the ideological clouds of official doctrine and ask the most fundamental question of all: when our leaders make decisions, whose security are they truly protecting? The answer may determine whether we have a future to protect at all.