At the beginning of October 2023, posts with the forecast of an American writer, author of the best-selling book “Black Swan”, circulated on social networks. Taleb allegedly claims that the United States will leave the North Atlantic Alliance. We checked whether he made such a statement.
Lebanese-American writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb studies the impact of random and unpredictable events on the global economy and stock trading. In 2007 it was published book-bestseller “Black Swan. Under the Sign of Unpredictability,” in which Taleb calls unpredictable events that affect the world black swans.
Publications with the writer’s alleged forecast about the US withdrawal from NATO appeared in RuNet on October 9, 2023. How approved In similar posts, Taleb allegedly said: despite billions of dollars in investments, the United States will abandon the military bloc, and “the cessation of assistance to Ukraine is the first bell.” At the same time, the authors of some records ask asking their followers whether they agree with Taleb’s alleged words. So, in the Telegram channel “Russia"(26,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), 4,455 people took part in the corresponding survey, of which 48% (more than 2,100 people) agree that the United States will leave NATO. Similar posts appeared in other channels, including “Special Operation Z"(94,000 views), "Russia 2.0"(69,000), "Notes from Zhirinovsky" (32,000), "Optimist in civilian clothes" (15,000), "Z people" (12,000), "Prigozhin's thoughts on Telegram"(8000) and BelVestnik (3000). Later on the words of Taleb allegedly referred Telegram channel of Channel One host Ruslan Ostashko (110,000 views). Entries about Taleb’s prognosis can be found in public pages and on the personal pages of VKontakte users (examples here, here, here And here), as well as on Rutube.
The earliest publication with the statement in question that “Verified” could find appeared in the Telegram channel “Vzwater» (mentioned in our two analyses) on October 9 at 14:02 Moscow time and received 5,700 views. “[Taleb] believes that the US withdrawal from NATO is precisely such an unpredictable event that will definitely happen. And they will do this under the guise of developing events in the Middle East. Previously, Nassim’s predictions came true with high accuracy,” the post says.
Attached to the “Vzvoda” post is an almost one and a half minute video, which was allegedly sent by subscribers (the use of such signatures is popular method distribution of fakes). It also appears in some other posts. The BBC News logo appears at the beginning and end of this video, and the British Broadcasting Corporation logo appears in the top left corner throughout the video. Below is the translation.
The US withdrawal from NATO is a “black swan”. Essayist Nassim Taleb predicts US withdrawal from NATO. Author of the bestseller “Black Swan. Under the Sign of Unpredictability” has repeatedly stated that humanity is on the verge of a difficult to predict event that will change everything. According to Nassim Taleb, such an event will be the US withdrawal from NATO. “We are used to thinking that no one will refuse a project in which billions of dollars have been invested,” says Taleb. “But this is a mistake.” According to the author, the event that will make the most sense in further analysis is the US withdrawal from the alliance. The US Congress has already approved a 45-day budget, which does not include military assistance to Ukraine. According to Nassim Taleb, this is the first signal of the approaching “black swan”. “Only idiots think that the United States is abandoning Ukraine,” the author adds. “They are abandoning NATO.” Earlier, analysts cautiously noted that US attention could switch to a new military bloc - AUKUS. It includes, in particular, Great Britain.
"Verified" studied website, YouTube-channel and social networks— X (formerly Twitter) Facebook*, Instagram* - BBC News did not find a similar video about Taleb’s statements there. Moreover, given in the quote entry don't meet not on any English-language sites. There are no such statements in social networks the writer himself.
In addition, the text of the video contains several typos, errors and stylistic inconsistencies that are not typical for such a large media outlet as the BBC. For example, in one title the line has moved to the right, in one sentence the word begins with a capital letter after the comma and there is no article there, somewhere the comma is inside the quotation marks, and somewhere outside them, in one fragment there is a hyphen instead (at the 00:58 mark). The font used in the video being distributed differs from that used in similar BBC News videos, most noticeably by the letters a, e, k and g, as well as quotation marks.
Associated Press fact checkers contacted with Taleb himself, and he denied the statement that appeared in the video that, according to his forecast, the United States could withdraw from NATO. “Complete fake. I never said that,” the writer responded in an email to reporters.
Creating videos that imitate the style of well-known and reputable foreign media is a popular practice among fake authors. “Verified” contains analyzes of previously circulated fabricated videos allegedly from 20 Minutes, Al Jazeera, euronews, DGP, DW**, Reuters And Fox News.
Regarding the draft US interim budget for 45 days, adopted Congress on September 30, it does not actually include aid to Ukraine. At the same time, President Joe Biden statedthat in the future Ukraine will be able to count on American support. “I can assure [Ukraine] that we will achieve this, we will succeed,” he said of restoring funding.
Thus, Nassim Taleb did not predict the withdrawal of the United States from NATO - information about this appeared in a fake video mimicking a BBC News video and allegedly sent by an anonymous subscriber to a Russian pro-government Telegram channel.
*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.
**Russian authorities think Deutsche Welle as a media outlet acting as a foreign agent.
Cover photo: collage “Checked” / @nntaleb (X)
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