Latest / Pod Save the World / Trump’s Top Spy Has One Job: Revenge

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Trump’s Top Spy Has One Job: Revenge · Pod Save the World

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Speaker 3: Welcome back to Podsay the World On Tommy Vitur, I'm
1:58
Speaker 3: Ben Rods.
1:58
Speaker 1: Ben. Is this the best week of your life? You
2:00
Speaker 1: get the next going to the NBA Finals. Your second
2:02
Speaker 1: book is now out into the worlds. Are you more
2:05
Speaker 1: confident that the Knicks can beat Wemby, or that you
2:10
Speaker 1: can beat Fox and Friends co host and Real World
2:13
Speaker 1: star Rachel Campo's Duffy on the New York Times bestseller list.
2:17
Speaker 1: That's your competition, buddy.
2:18
Speaker 3: I guess the gumlet I threw down is I'm probably
2:22
Speaker 3: more confident in the Knicks. But that's more because of
2:25
Speaker 3: my confidence in the Knicks than my self doubt or anything.
2:29
Speaker 3: That is some tough comp in the book market though,
2:31
Speaker 3: I mean Fox and Friends. Man, that's a rabid audience, yep.
2:35
Speaker 1: And she can market the hell out of it. So
2:37
Speaker 1: that's why you guys got to go buy Ben's book.
2:38
Speaker 1: It's very important. We got a great show for you today, though.
2:41
Speaker 1: We're going to cover Trump's insane new choice to serve
2:44
Speaker 1: as acting Director of National Intelligence. We are gonna explain
2:48
Speaker 1: why this feels like a step towards the intelligence community
2:51
Speaker 1: being just used in the views to punish Trump's enemies.
2:54
Speaker 1: We're going to walk you through the latest on the
2:56
Speaker 1: mess that is the warn Iran, the failed negotiations to
2:58
Speaker 1: end the war and to reopen the straight hr Mouz.
3:00
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the escalation in fighting between Israel and
3:04
Speaker 1: Hesbel and Lebanon, and then some conflicting reports about whether
3:07
Speaker 1: Trump maybe or maybe did not yell at Israeli Prime
3:10
Speaker 1: Minister be being in Yahoo about Lebanon. It felt very
3:13
Speaker 1: Biden Era. Then to read about, you know, private scolding.
3:16
Speaker 3: How upset he was.
3:17
Speaker 1: Nothing changes, Nothing changes. We'll do a Gaza update. We'll
3:21
Speaker 1: update you guys on the war in Ukraine and try
3:22
Speaker 1: to figure out why a bunch of far right influencers
3:25
Speaker 1: from the US or Europe are descending on Moscow. Finally,
3:28
Speaker 1: we will tell you about presidential election in Colombia and
3:31
Speaker 1: what's this stake there, and if we have time, maybe
3:33
Speaker 1: some stories about Maga Grift Ben. You did an interview today.
3:36
Speaker 1: What are folks going to hear?
3:37
Speaker 4: So?
3:38
Speaker 3: I talked to AA Ibraheim, who's with the AI Now
3:41
Speaker 3: Institute and has worked on AI and foreign policy in
3:44
Speaker 3: the past, and the Congress and the Body mat House.
3:47
Speaker 3: We talked about the Pope's and cyclical that you know,
3:50
Speaker 3: you and I talked about last week, what's important in it?
3:53
Speaker 3: Trump's new executive order announced today, and artificial intelligence, whether
3:57
Speaker 3: the idea of like a race between the US in
4:00
Speaker 3: China on AI's kind of the right policy framework and
4:03
Speaker 3: just what would the right approach to regulating these technologies
4:07
Speaker 3: look like. So we've been talking for a while about
4:09
Speaker 3: doing a little bit more AI on the show because
4:11
Speaker 3: it's coming for everything.
4:13
Speaker 1: So this is a great conversation with day. People should
4:15
Speaker 1: check it out. We just interview Claude Mythos on the show.
4:18
Speaker 1: Maybe see how that goes.
4:19
Speaker 3: We should, actually that'd be quite interesting just to be.
4:21
Speaker 1: Like, hello, Claude, how are you. At the very end
4:23
Speaker 1: of the show, our friends of the pod Discord subscribers
4:25
Speaker 1: will hear Ben and I answer some questions from the
4:27
Speaker 1: Discord community, so stick around for that. So Ben, in summary,
4:31
Speaker 1: I think our ask for listeners today our root for
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Speaker 1: the Knicks, which is a tough pill to swallow for
4:35
Speaker 1: me as a card carrying masshole, but I will try
4:38
Speaker 1: by Ben as much all we say available now. It's
4:42
Speaker 1: truly excellent. You can also hear Ben with Jon Favora
4:44
Speaker 1: talking about speechwriting on the pod Save America feed. And
4:48
Speaker 1: but you know, also help them displace Rachel Campos Stuffy
4:52
Speaker 1: on the best seller chart because that is offensive that
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Speaker 1: she is. I think there're three right now that's very upsetive.
4:58
Speaker 3: We do have to beat here.
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Speaker 3: And temmy. I have two Crooked book crossovers. Today Wednesday,
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Speaker 3: Alex Wagner and I will be in conversation in New
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Speaker 3: York City at the ninety second Street Why there are
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Speaker 3: few tickets left if people want to check that out.
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Speaker 3: And then next Monday, John Favor and I will be
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Speaker 3: in conversation in LA. You can find links to this,
5:43
Speaker 3: We'll put them in the show notes, but they're also
5:44
Speaker 3: on my website. Benroads dot info dot info.
5:48
Speaker 1: Okay, get the coveted dot info.
5:50
Speaker 3: I got the dot info. You know, every time I
5:53
Speaker 3: have a book, I have.
5:54
Speaker 1: To like redo a website. Yeah, that's all up there. Listen.
5:56
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it all right. So we
5:58
Speaker 1: were going to lead the show today with this head spinning,
6:01
Speaker 1: you know, like tweets and fucking sirens and you know,
6:05
Speaker 1: fake scoops about Iran. But then the news broke this
6:07
Speaker 1: morning that Donald Trump is installed a googer named Bill
6:11
Speaker 1: Poulty as Acting Director of National Intelligence. And to me,
6:15
Speaker 1: that was just a five alarm fire. So just to
6:18
Speaker 1: back up to explain, Bill Poulty is this random businessman
6:21
Speaker 1: who Trump installed as the head of the Federal Housing
6:24
Speaker 1: Finance Agency here FHFA without getting two wonky. FHFA is
6:29
Speaker 1: supposed to oversee Fannie May and Freddie Mack and other
6:31
Speaker 1: parts of like the government systems that provide loans mortgages.
6:36
Speaker 1: But in practice, what Paulty has done this He's used
6:38
Speaker 1: his access to sensitive mortgage data to manufacture criminal cases
6:43
Speaker 1: against Trump's enemies like Letitia James. It is very obvious
6:48
Speaker 1: than what is happening here with this news from today
6:51
Speaker 1: because Poulty has no experience and intelligence. He has no
6:54
Speaker 1: national security background, literally none. And the only reason you
6:58
Speaker 1: make this guy the top spy in the US government
7:01
Speaker 1: overseeing the entire intelligence community is to give him access
7:04
Speaker 1: to all of our intelligence data and all of the
7:07
Speaker 1: authorities they have and all of the collection tools they
7:09
Speaker 1: have to use those to go after Trump's enemies. It's
7:14
Speaker 1: to move that retribution project that started in a you know,
7:18
Speaker 1: backwater housing agency and move it to the d and
7:21
Speaker 1: i's office. And so that is absolutely chilling. This is
7:25
Speaker 1: what dictators do. This is how countries slide into becoming
7:27
Speaker 1: police states. And I'm sure that the Pulti marching orders
7:32
Speaker 1: will include cherry picking data to you know, prove that
7:37
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election was stolen, right like the old
7:39
Speaker 1: Trump hobby horses. But it will not stop there, Like
7:42
Speaker 1: we know this guy is willing to say and do
7:44
Speaker 1: anything to make Trump happy, and so is Cash betel
7:47
Speaker 1: Over at the FBI, and that combination is scary as hell,
7:50
Speaker 1: and Democrats need to fight this tooth and nail. So
7:52
Speaker 1: then the arguments I would make to Democrats like listening
7:55
Speaker 1: to this are that I would just scream to the world,
7:57
Speaker 1: are one putting someone with no inteelligence experience in charge
8:01
Speaker 1: of the intelligence community is self evidently crazy and makes
8:05
Speaker 1: all of us less safe. And Pulty doesn't meet the
8:07
Speaker 1: statutory requirements for the job like they should just race
8:10
Speaker 1: hell about how unqualified he is. But then too, I
8:13
Speaker 1: think the leverage for them is I would say, I'm
8:16
Speaker 1: not reauthorizing any intelligence collected collection authorities, in particular Section
8:21
Speaker 1: seven or two of FAIZA, which lets the US government
8:24
Speaker 1: force American telecom and tech companies to give over data
8:27
Speaker 1: without a warrant. If this guy is in that job period,
8:31
Speaker 1: draw a line in the sand. Do it now? This
8:33
Speaker 1: is fucking.
8:34
Speaker 3: Crazy, absolutely right, And this is one of those tests
8:38
Speaker 3: of whether Democrats understand what's happening or not. Because Bill
8:42
Speaker 3: Poulti has no interest whatsoever in national security. He's not
8:46
Speaker 3: someone who's thinking about China. He's someone whose pure role
8:51
Speaker 3: is to exact vengeance on Trump's political opponents or to
8:54
Speaker 3: advance Trump's conspiracy theories. If it wasn't enough that he
8:58
Speaker 3: has no experience or background whatsoever an intelligence and national
9:01
Speaker 3: security temmy, the fact that he's still going to run
9:03
Speaker 3: that housing agency while he's running the d n I
9:06
Speaker 3: is the I thought the most comic part of this.
9:09
Speaker 3: He's gonna run all the most powerful intelligence agency community
9:12
Speaker 3: in the history of the world, and he's also gonna
9:14
Speaker 3: run Fanny Main freddie Ye. Yeah, if this guy could
9:18
Speaker 3: comb through the mortgage records of James to invent a
9:20
Speaker 3: conspiracy theory to try to prosecute her. What's he going
9:23
Speaker 3: to do with the NSA's capacity to collect, you know,
9:26
Speaker 3: all the phone calls in the fucking world, you know,
9:31
Speaker 3: So buckle up here, and absolutely there's no if you
9:35
Speaker 3: if you're concerned that someone's going to say that you
9:38
Speaker 3: don't take intelligence seriously because you're not reauthorizing Section seven
9:41
Speaker 3: oh two. Like do you think Bill Poulty and Donald
9:44
Speaker 3: Trump are.
9:45
Speaker 1: Taking it seriously?
9:46
Speaker 3: Those are the guys that don't give a shit about
9:48
Speaker 3: keeping us safe. It does also make me worry, Tommy
9:51
Speaker 3: about what we're in for for the next two and
9:54
Speaker 3: a half years of the Trump administration, because remember in
9:57
Speaker 3: the first Trump term, by the end, we were down
9:59
Speaker 3: to the dregs. You know, I don't even remember the
10:01
Speaker 3: name of the guy who was Attorney General. Cash Mattel
10:04
Speaker 3: was chief of staff at d D. We had Rick
10:06
Speaker 3: Grinnell as acting director of d and I we're already
10:09
Speaker 3: kind of entering this phase where the people are just
10:11
Speaker 3: getting weirder and weirder and more and more vindictive. And
10:14
Speaker 3: so I think that's another we should be ready for
10:17
Speaker 3: that this Trump craziest is not going to plateau. It's
10:21
Speaker 3: actually going to get exponentially more weird and crazy going forward.
10:25
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said about the dregs because like just
10:27
Speaker 1: an a sign of how extreme the White House is.
10:28
Speaker 1: Remember Greg Bavino, Remember the little like fascist munchkin who
10:32
Speaker 1: was in charge of customs and border patrol and war
10:34
Speaker 1: like his big Nazi coat. That guy popped up over
10:36
Speaker 1: the weekend in Portugal. He was at a far right
10:39
Speaker 1: someone's called neo Nazi conference focused on remigration i e.
10:43
Speaker 1: Like the ethnic cleansing of migrants in various countries, and
10:47
Speaker 1: that included representatives from far right parties like the AfD
10:51
Speaker 1: from Vox. There was fascists, like literal fascists from Belgium
10:54
Speaker 1: and the Netherlands. And he did like a Bovino did
10:57
Speaker 1: an interview leading up to the conference where he literally
11:00
Speaker 1: gave a shout out to Irwin rommel aka the Desert Fox, the.
11:05
Speaker 5: Nazi field Marshall, who ran the Africa campaign here when
11:09
Speaker 5: he was like talking about how his kind of improbable
11:12
Speaker 5: rise from like agent out into the field to leading organization.
11:16
Speaker 1: So your point about that we're being down in the
11:18
Speaker 1: dregs of the Trump administration landed with me.
11:21
Speaker 3: Well, and it is like, the only thing I can
11:23
Speaker 3: say too, is that cash running the FBI and this
11:27
Speaker 3: guy running the intelligence community. I do like there are,
11:31
Speaker 3: you know, terrorists out there, there are adversaries, Like who
11:35
Speaker 3: is mining the store is going to be an incredible
11:38
Speaker 3: story because nobody's mining the store, So it's we're getting
11:41
Speaker 3: the worst of their actions and also the worst of
11:43
Speaker 3: their neglect and incompetence.
11:45
Speaker 1: Everything that happens, Like Tulsey Gabber leaves, you celebrate. She
11:48
Speaker 1: is obviously not prepared for this job, and it's like, God,
11:50
Speaker 1: careful what you wish for. But just just to highlight
11:53
Speaker 1: how truly unserious putting Bill Poulty in this position has been.
11:59
Speaker 1: Michael and our team talk up two clips that we
12:01
Speaker 1: wanted to show you. This first one is from a
12:03
Speaker 1: conference from back in twenty twenty two. At the time,
12:06
Speaker 1: I think Bill Poulty was really into memestocks, remember like
12:09
Speaker 1: the game stop phenomenon ondering code. I think I saw
12:11
Speaker 1: this clip. Okay, this is this is from a conference
12:15
Speaker 1: where he's trying to get people to buy bed, bath
12:16
Speaker 1: and Beyond stock, which did not end well for anyone
12:19
Speaker 1: who did so. Uh, here's the clip. Then let's talk
12:22
Speaker 1: about it.
12:22
Speaker 3: Let's watch Pulty look at this fucking thing.
12:26
Speaker 1: All right, So what we're watching is a man slap
12:31
Speaker 1: another man in the face with a dildo. For those
12:34
Speaker 1: listening not watching, you should subscribe to pots there to
12:37
Speaker 1: fucking have it.
12:37
Speaker 6: The first dil doo slap in history live. So Bill,
12:42
Speaker 6: this says Bill Poulty bucks, all right, yeah, and then
12:48
Speaker 6: if you notice on it's got a tramp stamp with
12:50
Speaker 6: a butterfly like one ass cheek said, yes, it does
12:54
Speaker 6: say uh, it does say only the young on the
12:57
Speaker 6: back here only young.
12:59
Speaker 1: December five, look pretty badass. We have a.
13:02
Speaker 6: Mushroom stamp on the head of it and bed bath
13:05
Speaker 6: on one cheek and gm me.
13:06
Speaker 1: Oh, gm me on the other. I got too excited there.
13:11
Speaker 1: They broke their little statue. So they gave the guy
13:14
Speaker 1: Bill Bill Holty was given a little statue by the
13:16
Speaker 1: man who just slapped the other man in the face
13:17
Speaker 1: of the dildo. That'sa Bill Pulti bucks, Only the young
13:21
Speaker 1: that this man is now the they're going to be
13:23
Speaker 1: the acting dn I Director of National Intelligence top spy,
13:26
Speaker 1: overseeing eighteen component parts of the intelligence community, your thoughts.
13:31
Speaker 3: I have some more like sober serious friends of mine
13:34
Speaker 3: who are like you and Tommy sometimes get a little
13:36
Speaker 3: too immature, Like, you know, we are covering the news, people,
13:40
Speaker 3: We are covering the news. The reason that there is
13:42
Speaker 3: a man slapping another man in the face of the
13:45
Speaker 3: dildo in giving you know, some pedophilia reference to someone
13:50
Speaker 3: is because that man who's involved in that is the
13:53
Speaker 3: Director of National Intelligence. Now, so we just have to,
13:56
Speaker 3: you know, report what's happening.
13:58
Speaker 1: Just the fact, I will.
13:59
Speaker 3: Say, like, for an administration that came in committed to
14:04
Speaker 3: depoliticizing intelligence, not weaponizing the justice system, and rooting out pedophilia,
14:11
Speaker 3: Bill Poulty kind of seems to be checking the box
14:14
Speaker 3: on all three of those things in the wrong direction here.
14:17
Speaker 3: So not exactly promises kept among all the other disgusting
14:22
Speaker 3: and horrifying and troubling things about.
14:25
Speaker 1: That video I saw n I saw a clip of
14:27
Speaker 1: Vanka today, Alanka Trump talking about how she and her
14:29
Speaker 1: husband were going to build a new paradise on an island.
14:32
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, the Epstein has taught these people
14:33
Speaker 1: a lot. To our listeners who think that Ben and
14:35
Speaker 1: I have childish sets as of humor. I know it
14:38
Speaker 1: sometimes occurs to me that we hear from like current
14:41
Speaker 1: and former prime ministers who listened to the show. Yes
14:44
Speaker 1: we're talking about this. I do actually listen. These are
14:46
Speaker 1: the facts we're presented by the universe. We're just relaying
14:48
Speaker 1: them to you. Ben. So here's a second clip of
14:51
Speaker 1: Pulty again that Michael dug up from a podcast interview
14:54
Speaker 1: he did in twenty twenty two. I want to know
14:57
Speaker 1: if this makes you feel better about your concerns about
15:00
Speaker 1: his lack of experience. Let's watch. Oh no, what did
15:03
Speaker 1: you learn about h fact that kept you going deeper
15:06
Speaker 1: into that space that leads you to the podcast like
15:08
Speaker 1: we're on today.
15:10
Speaker 4: Well, I my first business was a countertop business, kitchen
15:13
Speaker 4: and bath countertops. And you know, I don't know if
15:16
Speaker 4: you know a lot about countertops, but I'll tell you
15:18
Speaker 4: one thing about on their pain in the ass and
15:21
Speaker 4: to make to make back your life is so much
15:23
Speaker 4: easier than the HVAC space compared to count And I.
15:27
Speaker 1: Said that says a lot. That says a lot about countertops.
15:31
Speaker 3: Yeah.
15:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, The like dying joke there reminded me of the
15:37
Speaker 1: NPR sweaty Balls famous section. So that was Bill Poulty
15:42
Speaker 1: on the To the Point Home Services podcasts talking about
15:46
Speaker 1: being in the HVAC business. So I guess if the
15:49
Speaker 1: AC goes down to any of the many intelligence community buildings,
15:52
Speaker 1: Bill Polty can be there. In the interview, he spends
15:56
Speaker 1: a lot of time bragging about his follower account on
15:59
Speaker 1: various social media platforms. So did that make you feel
16:02
Speaker 1: better about this choice?
16:04
Speaker 5: You know?
16:04
Speaker 1: Tell me?
16:05
Speaker 3: Listeners may not know that. Like my first job in
16:08
Speaker 3: Washington was for Lee Hamilton, who was the coach of
16:11
Speaker 3: the nine to eleven Commission, which recommended the creation of
16:14
Speaker 3: the Director of National Intelligence to better coordinate and manage
16:17
Speaker 3: and connect the dots between the different intelligence agencies in
16:20
Speaker 3: the United States. And then after that report came out,
16:23
Speaker 3: I wrote a lot of Congressional testimony for Lee Hamilton
16:26
Speaker 3: in support of the reforms that created the d and I.
16:29
Speaker 3: And now I'm not so sure about that whole process,
16:32
Speaker 3: not because we don't need that, but because I don't
16:36
Speaker 3: think that the authors of that legislation of the nine
16:38
Speaker 3: to eleven Commission envisioned someday a man taking the helm
16:44
Speaker 3: of all the US intelligence agencies, informed by his expertise
16:49
Speaker 3: in countertop Renovation and various other podcast appearances. No shot
16:56
Speaker 3: to podcasters. But I think when Democrats lost the last
16:59
Speaker 3: election and there was this debate about showing up on podcasts,
17:02
Speaker 3: I'm not sure they had that one in mind.
17:03
Speaker 1: No, that wasn't the highest highest traffic podcast. Yeah, unless
17:06
Speaker 1: the dots Lee Hamilton was trying to connect to war
17:08
Speaker 1: between heating ventilation and air conditioning, I don't know that.
17:12
Speaker 1: I don't know that we hit the mark here. Apparently
17:14
Speaker 1: this idea was pushed by Roger Stone. Roger Stone has
17:18
Speaker 1: a big mix and tattooed on his back and was
17:19
Speaker 1: also found guilty of charges of obstruction, fall statements, and
17:22
Speaker 1: witness tampering in twenty nineteen for his role in the
17:26
Speaker 1: Russia investigation at the twenty sixteen election. So everything is
17:29
Speaker 1: going great here, Ben, I feel really good about this,
17:32
Speaker 1: not at all horrified and excited for Bill Polty to
17:34
Speaker 1: watch this and for us to get on his radar
17:36
Speaker 1: screen as well.
17:37
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, between him and Cash, we're making
17:40
Speaker 3: friends everywhere. The other point I'd make to people is
17:43
Speaker 3: that there's a midterm election coming up, and the basis
17:48
Speaker 3: of whatever fight fake fraud claims are going to make
17:51
Speaker 3: is going to be some foreign interferencing because we saw
17:53
Speaker 3: that already. Yeah, when they said did Hugo Shavez and
17:56
Speaker 3: Venzuela intervened in the twenty twenty election, tho stt Hugo
17:59
Speaker 3: Shavs had been dead for years. So in addition to
18:02
Speaker 3: the weaponization of justice and you know, trying to comb
18:05
Speaker 3: through records and target Trump's enemies, let's keep an eye
18:08
Speaker 3: on the space of whether Bill Poultes's job is also
18:11
Speaker 3: to kind of manufacture conspiracy theories about feign interference to
18:14
Speaker 3: glib the basis for overturning elections in this country, because
18:17
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21:29
Speaker 1: let's turn to Iran. It's now been more than three
21:32
Speaker 1: months since this war started. But despite weeks of you know,
21:36
Speaker 1: countless breathless reports and tweets with sirens in them about
21:40
Speaker 1: some imminent peace deal. There still isn't one, which means
21:43
Speaker 1: the Straight or Her Moves is still closed. Oil and
21:45
Speaker 1: gas exports are choked off, and every day we get
21:48
Speaker 1: closer to some kind of breaking point in rupture in
21:50
Speaker 1: the global economy. But besides that is going great in practice. Also,
21:55
Speaker 1: what we're seeing lately is escalation between the two sides.
21:58
Speaker 1: Over the last few days were US air strikes on
22:01
Speaker 1: Iranian air defense sites and drone sites, and then Iran
22:03
Speaker 1: shot down another American Predator drone and fired a ballistic
22:07
Speaker 1: missile at a Kuwaiti air base. Apparently US air defenses
22:10
Speaker 1: intercepted that missile, but Bloomberg reported that the shrapnel injured
22:14
Speaker 1: five people, including US service members. It's a pretty serious incident.
22:18
Speaker 1: The outlines of the deal that's being negotiated is reportedly
22:22
Speaker 1: the same as what we've talked about in the following
22:24
Speaker 1: It's like a sixty day pause in fighting to allow
22:27
Speaker 1: for negotiations over the much harder issues around the nuclear program,
22:31
Speaker 1: unrestricted shipping through the Strait of Horror Moves, and then
22:33
Speaker 1: a gradual relaxation of the US blockade on the Strait.
22:37
Speaker 1: So Iran has to move first. In this framework, The
22:39
Speaker 1: New York Times said that there could be some sort
22:41
Speaker 1: of post war investment fund of three hundred billion dollars
22:45
Speaker 1: for a run. That surprised me. It sounds like Trump
22:48
Speaker 1: wants his money to come from Gulf countries so we
22:50
Speaker 1: can pretend the US isn't providing it. But that is insane.
22:53
Speaker 1: I mean, you and I and Obama would have been
22:55
Speaker 1: drawn and quartered if something like this had been proposed
22:58
Speaker 1: during the JCPOA days. And then there's some sort of
23:01
Speaker 1: agreement looking to reach some sort of agreement over releasing
23:04
Speaker 1: frozen Iranian assets, and then some sort of sanctions relief
23:07
Speaker 1: for Ron maybe as well as usual. The sticking points
23:10
Speaker 1: are Iran wants the war to be over everywhere, that
23:14
Speaker 1: includes in Lebanon, which these Raelies are not happy about.
23:17
Speaker 1: And then Trump wants Ron to ship all of it's
23:19
Speaker 1: highly enriched uranium out of the country, though he did
23:21
Speaker 1: post something like a week or two ago that suggested
23:24
Speaker 1: he might be okay with that HU being destroyed in
23:27
Speaker 1: place by the IAEA by international regulators. So on Monday,
23:33
Speaker 1: Trump called somebody at CNBC Aman Jabbers at CNBC about
23:37
Speaker 1: the peace talks and he said the following, Ben, I
23:39
Speaker 1: don't care if they're over Honestly, I really don't care.
23:42
Speaker 1: I couldn't care less if they're over there over if
23:44
Speaker 1: they're not. You know, I think they took too much time. Frankly,
23:46
Speaker 1: I thought they started to get very boring. That's an actual,
23:50
Speaker 1: real quote that he said to a reporter. So Ben, this,
23:54
Speaker 1: you know. Trump has been spinning his wheels in place
23:56
Speaker 1: for the same couple weeks on this policy. I think
23:58
Speaker 1: what's driving me crazy is the White House is able
24:01
Speaker 1: to just churn out all these little mini updates and
24:04
Speaker 1: bullshit and fake reports whatever to journalists to manipulate the
24:08
Speaker 1: oil markets. I shouldn't say fake reports. They're giving updates
24:13
Speaker 1: that never really bear out or never solve the underlying
24:15
Speaker 1: problem that needs to be solved. But all that kind
24:17
Speaker 1: of minutes a minute coverage distracts everybody, and there's not
24:21
Speaker 1: a real I think, understanding or focus on the big
24:25
Speaker 1: picture of what an absolute, ongoing, massive disaster this war
24:30
Speaker 1: is and remains.
24:31
Speaker 3: I'll start with the media and then get to the
24:33
Speaker 3: substance of it. It's not just typical media criticism here.
24:39
Speaker 3: What in particular Axios has done in credulously, consistently, constantly
24:46
Speaker 3: tweeting out these reports that a deal is imminent with
24:49
Speaker 3: sirens is allowing themselves to be used to affect oil markets,
24:57
Speaker 3: and you know, whether they know that they're doing that
24:59
Speaker 3: or not, that's what's happening. And probably a lot of
25:03
Speaker 3: people are profiting off of ETCA trading, and it's also
25:07
Speaker 3: kind of giving people this kind of false sense of comfort. Look,
25:10
Speaker 3: I hope we get a deal today, like while we're
25:12
Speaker 3: recording this podcast, to reopen the straight and lift the
25:14
Speaker 3: blockade and move towards a nuclear deal. But that leads
25:17
Speaker 3: to the second part, which is I think what Trump
25:19
Speaker 3: is trying to do that is truly bizarre, is he's
25:23
Speaker 3: trying to give people the impression with these leaks and
25:26
Speaker 3: with his own comments downplaying this, that there's not really
25:30
Speaker 3: war going on there anyway, you know, because you know,
25:32
Speaker 3: we're not seeing big explosions and there's not a lot
25:35
Speaker 3: of firing back and forth, although there's some. But the
25:38
Speaker 3: reality is the strait of hormones is still closed. Maybe
25:41
Speaker 3: a tiny trickle of ships is getting through, and so
25:45
Speaker 3: the global economic impact and the global shortages of not
25:50
Speaker 3: just oil and gas but other vital resources like helium
25:54
Speaker 3: and fertilizer that's getting worse by the day.
25:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a report that you military to score like
26:01
Speaker 1: seventy some odd ships through the Strait over the last
26:03
Speaker 1: few weeks. But that's as compared to like one hundred
26:06
Speaker 1: and thirty a day during peacetime.
26:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a tiny fraction. So I think we're kind
26:11
Speaker 3: of being lulled into the sense that something is not happening.
26:14
Speaker 3: That is happening, and people know it because they're paying
26:17
Speaker 3: more the pump. But essentially other nations have been tapping
26:21
Speaker 3: into their reserves to survive this and kind of prop
26:25
Speaker 3: up what is left of global energy markets. But with
26:29
Speaker 3: each passing day that gets harder to do, and so
26:31
Speaker 3: there could come a time when what's already a horrific
26:35
Speaker 3: global economic disruption and disruption people's lives could become a crash.
26:41
Speaker 3: And so I think there needs to be a little
26:43
Speaker 3: bit more attention, not just on the imminent deal that
26:47
Speaker 3: is constantly being discussed. Everybody knows what it is, but
26:50
Speaker 3: on the consequences that this is still a war. Just
26:52
Speaker 3: because it's kind of a semi frozen conflict, it doesn't
26:55
Speaker 3: mean we're not still in the state of war with
26:56
Speaker 3: all the consequences. And then on the deal, We've talked
27:01
Speaker 3: before about the elements of it and about how Trump
27:04
Speaker 3: may try to spin it as a victory when it's
27:08
Speaker 3: not reopening the strait that was opened before the war.
27:11
Speaker 3: I think the other thing i'd say is on this money,
27:14
Speaker 3: because you're seeing the three hundred billion dollar investment fund
27:17
Speaker 3: reported in different places. You're also seeing maybe some upfront
27:21
Speaker 3: payment of twelve billion, some sanctions relief. What I think
27:25
Speaker 3: Trump is doing he's so fucking fixated on a bomba
27:30
Speaker 3: and look, whatever happens, he's going to have to do
27:34
Speaker 3: something that eventually looks like the Iron Nuclear Deal, which
27:38
Speaker 3: again shipped the AGU out and did all these other
27:40
Speaker 3: things that he's trying to get. The reality is, I
27:44
Speaker 3: imagine that this money is going to be probably Iranian
27:48
Speaker 3: frozen assets, you know, and they'll try to pretend what gets.
27:53
Speaker 1: They'll say it was released by Kutar or whoever was
27:55
Speaker 1: holding or whatever, and therefore we didn't give it to Iran,
27:58
Speaker 1: which is just like, give me a break. You made
28:00
Speaker 1: the deal that released the money.
28:02
Speaker 3: And that's the point. In the Obama deal. Iran got
28:05
Speaker 3: money that had been frozen in other bank accounts because
28:10
Speaker 3: other countries had bought Iranian oil and that they had
28:13
Speaker 3: not been able to access thos revenues. And so Trump
28:16
Speaker 3: is probably going to do the exact same thing. And
28:19
Speaker 3: this is a message. Then he follows this and message
28:22
Speaker 3: to the journalists who are going to be covering this
28:24
Speaker 3: just because cutter or some other country is providing Iran
28:28
Speaker 3: access to that money. It's not like a cuttery check
28:32
Speaker 3: or some other country. It's the exact same mechanism as
28:36
Speaker 3: the JCPOA. And so the fact that we're held hostage
28:41
Speaker 3: to this man's Obama obsession and ego, like this isn't
28:45
Speaker 3: even about defending Obomba. It's about like how absurd it
28:47
Speaker 3: is that he's desperately trying to find some way to
28:50
Speaker 3: spin that he's not going to end up doing something
28:54
Speaker 3: that is somewhat analogous JCPOA.
28:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's gonna look like the JP He just
28:59
Speaker 1: wants to be able to say it's better. Did this
29:02
Speaker 1: resonate with you, Ben? This is a post from Trump.
29:04
Speaker 1: Aron really wants to make a deal. It'll be a
29:06
Speaker 1: good one for the USA and those that are with us.
29:08
Speaker 1: But don't the Democrats get it? And various seemingly unpatriotic
29:12
Speaker 1: Republicans understand that it's much tougher me to properly do
29:15
Speaker 1: my job and negotiate when political HAPs keep negatively chirping
29:18
Speaker 1: at levels never seen before, over and over again that
29:21
Speaker 1: I should move faster and move slower, or go to
29:22
Speaker 1: war or not go to war or whatever. Just sit
29:25
Speaker 1: back and relax. It'll all work out well in the end,
29:27
Speaker 1: it always does. I feel better. I feel better hearing that.
29:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, first of all, because Trump and the Republicans
29:33
Speaker 3: never chirped at Democratic presidents when they're conducting foreign policy.
29:37
Speaker 3: Kind of the biggest glass house anybody's ever been in.
29:40
Speaker 3: I think that what that tells me, though, there's a
29:42
Speaker 3: desperation and a lameness, frankly to Trump's efforts to post
29:47
Speaker 3: his way through this and to talk his way through
29:49
Speaker 3: it in friendly interviews. He's finally done something that is
29:53
Speaker 3: the opposite of what he said. It's not going to
29:55
Speaker 3: end that. Well, it's already been terrible. This has already
29:57
Speaker 3: been a catastrophe, and and everybody can see it.
30:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a mess. There are also some reports that
30:03
Speaker 1: were later denied by the Iranians that President Pozeski and
30:06
Speaker 1: it resigned because he'd been cut out of the decision
30:08
Speaker 1: making process by the IRGC. Very well could have happened,
30:11
Speaker 1: but it came out of a London based outlet with
30:13
Speaker 1: ties the opposition and then was denied by the government.
30:15
Speaker 1: So I don't know. We'll see. Then, a couple of
30:17
Speaker 1: recent comments that were worth playing for the audience. The
30:21
Speaker 1: first is, we just wanted to juxtapose some of Trump's
30:24
Speaker 1: comments about the war and its impact on the Iranian
30:27
Speaker 1: military with comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio
30:32
Speaker 1: on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
30:33
Speaker 7: Let's watch Operation Epic Fury. Some of you didn't like it,
30:36
Speaker 7: some of you did. Was highly successful in achieving its
30:39
Speaker 7: military objectives, which is dramatically reducing the defense industrial base
30:44
Speaker 7: of Iran. The ability to build these missiles and to
30:47
Speaker 7: build these drones, especially the missiles program, substantially degraded.
30:50
Speaker 8: From their military. We sort of left it alone because
30:53
Speaker 8: we think that their military is somewhat somewhat moderate. They
30:59
Speaker 8: have other people that aren't moderate. We've taken them out,
31:01
Speaker 8: We've taken different forms of leadership. We've actually left their
31:04
Speaker 8: military alone. People would be surprised to hear.
31:06
Speaker 1: That, Yeah, I'd be very surprised to hear that, because
31:08
Speaker 1: the entire message so far had been that heg Seth
31:12
Speaker 1: and his team had decimated the Iranian military. It's all
31:14
Speaker 1: you've told us, and now you're saying that they're moderate,
31:17
Speaker 1: so you didn't bomb them. What on earth are we
31:18
Speaker 1: talking about here?
31:20
Speaker 3: It just shows how out to launch he is and
31:21
Speaker 3: how disconnected he is. But let's talk about Rubia for
31:24
Speaker 3: a second here, because he gets this kind of participation
31:27
Speaker 3: trophy for sinewashing what Trump should be saying to spin
31:32
Speaker 3: his war. It's like, what a good job he did
31:35
Speaker 3: spinning this war on Trump's behalf. He should be president
31:38
Speaker 3: or at least Republican nominee Marco Rubio is fucking lying
31:43
Speaker 3: in that clip. They did not decimate the missile programs
31:46
Speaker 3: like that. We have reporting that over seventy percent of
31:50
Speaker 3: Iran's blistic missiles and launchers remain intact, and so we
31:54
Speaker 3: kind of keep hearing I mean, like, I know this
31:58
Speaker 3: is not a shot at the military at all, but
32:00
Speaker 3: there's this effort to say, well, it was militarily successful.
32:03
Speaker 3: It was not military successful, like they said, they destroyed
32:07
Speaker 3: the Ranie Navy and the Ranian Navy is still able
32:09
Speaker 3: to control the straight war moves. Like they said, they
32:11
Speaker 3: destroyed the blissed missiles, and they still have most of
32:13
Speaker 3: the blistic missiles and they're still firing them at us.
32:15
Speaker 3: They don't tell There were multiple reports Tommy, including in
32:18
Speaker 3: the BBC in the Washington Post, about the extensive damage
32:22
Speaker 3: unreported to US bass and facilities across the Middle East
32:26
Speaker 3: that Marco Rubio and p Texas never get around to
32:29
Speaker 3: telling us, even though we are the fucking taxpayers to
32:31
Speaker 3: pay for those bases.
32:32
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a classic Washington problem of like inputs versus outputs,
32:35
Speaker 1: Like you might have fired a lot of missiles and
32:37
Speaker 1: hit a lot of stuff, but like the outcome wasn't
32:40
Speaker 1: that the the RN's military is no longer functional. It's
32:44
Speaker 1: what you talked about, which is seventy percent of the
32:45
Speaker 1: sock wile is still sitting there and they're able to
32:47
Speaker 1: control the straight And then that BBC report about the
32:49
Speaker 1: satellite imagery about the damage to US basis and assets
32:52
Speaker 1: in the Middle East is like staggering stuff. We I
32:55
Speaker 1: wrote down a couple of details. Ben twenty US military
32:57
Speaker 1: facilities have been hit in Saudi Raa, the UAE Cutar, Kuwait,
33:01
Speaker 1: a Rock, Jordan, Bahrain, and Oman. They took out forty
33:04
Speaker 1: two aircraft F fifteen's, F thirty five's, twenty four MQ
33:09
Speaker 1: nine reaper drones and eight ten attack plane and then
33:12
Speaker 1: three THAD missile defense batteries that cost a billion dollars each.
33:17
Speaker 1: And then they damaged this one E three century surveillance
33:20
Speaker 1: plane that was worth up to seven hundred million dollars.
33:23
Speaker 1: So just like a vast amount of structural economic damage there,
33:28
Speaker 1: and also like damage to the US military's ability to
33:31
Speaker 1: station troops in the Middle East for a long time.
33:34
Speaker 3: And look to draw forward the access point. Because I've
33:38
Speaker 3: been saying for a few weeks now that the damage
33:41
Speaker 3: is worse than we've heard, because I literally just have
33:44
Speaker 3: some friends in the Middle East.
33:46
Speaker 1: I mean they're sending me payers.
33:47
Speaker 3: I'm hearing this is much worse. And the reason that's
33:50
Speaker 3: important is this is the problem with our media. Like
33:54
Speaker 3: the corporatization and magnification of so much of the media
33:57
Speaker 3: means that like Americans no less about what's happened to
34:01
Speaker 3: American military bases. Then just like regular people that live
34:05
Speaker 3: in the Gulf, like that is insane, and that look,
34:08
Speaker 3: there's the posted a good report here. The Times has
34:10
Speaker 3: done good reporting on this, but like that's kind of
34:13
Speaker 3: there's not much else, and that's by design. I think
34:17
Speaker 3: people have to realize, like the reason you get corporate
34:20
Speaker 3: authority and takeover of media is so that the bad
34:22
Speaker 3: news that the leader doesn't want reported kind of goes
34:25
Speaker 3: either unreported or underreported, Like only a small number of
34:28
Speaker 3: people who read a certain set of publications are where.
34:30
Speaker 1: Even today, we learned that the Pentagon has kicked the
34:33
Speaker 1: press Corps out of their briefing room because they've declared
34:35
Speaker 1: it's now a skiff because the Pentagon speechwriters need to
34:38
Speaker 1: be able to sit in there, so now it's a classified.
34:40
Speaker 3: I didn't see that.
34:41
Speaker 1: It's quite crazy. The fucking Pentagon is the second biggest
34:44
Speaker 1: office building in the world. There's like three million square
34:47
Speaker 1: feet of office space alone, and they're like, oh no,
34:49
Speaker 1: the speechwriters have to sit here, so we have to
34:51
Speaker 1: kick the reporters out of their area. Last thing, ben
34:54
Speaker 1: so Trump waited on the war a bunch last week
34:56
Speaker 1: at the cabinet meeting. A couple comments caught our attention
34:59
Speaker 1: that we want to play for you guys, let's watch and.
35:01
Speaker 9: We'd like to have the countries we were talking about,
35:03
Speaker 9: Saudi Arabia, Ue Guitar and the others. We'd like to
35:07
Speaker 9: have them immediately join the n see Woodcoff is working
35:11
Speaker 9: on that with jareded and some others, but would like
35:13
Speaker 9: to have them join the Abraham. Of course, it'll be
35:15
Speaker 9: historic if they do it.
35:16
Speaker 10: And we would.
35:17
Speaker 9: I think they I think they owe that to us,
35:19
Speaker 9: to be honest, I think because that really would be
35:22
Speaker 9: a tremendous side, and I think those countries owe it
35:25
Speaker 9: to us. See, what are you going to get them
35:28
Speaker 9: to side?
35:30
Speaker 10: We're definitely pushing it, mister prest.
35:32
Speaker 1: I'm not sure.
35:33
Speaker 9: I'm not sure we should make the deal if they
35:36
Speaker 9: don't sign.
35:36
Speaker 10: You want to know them.
35:37
Speaker 1: They would like to control.
35:39
Speaker 8: Nobody's going to control.
35:40
Speaker 9: It's international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody
35:44
Speaker 9: else who will have to blow them up. They understand
35:47
Speaker 9: that they'll be fun.
35:48
Speaker 1: So I'm sure that the folks in Oman, not Iran,
35:51
Speaker 1: were thrilled to hear about potentially getting bombed. And then
35:55
Speaker 1: you know, this new effort to force everybody into the
35:57
Speaker 1: Abraham Accord seems to be going really great. So far,
36:00
Speaker 1: so good stuff.
36:01
Speaker 3: And it's important because we are dealing with a man
36:04
Speaker 3: in the hike rapidly losing his power. That's part of
36:08
Speaker 3: what's happening here, because look, the Abram Accords. He did
36:12
Speaker 3: this at the end of his first term in twenty twenty.
36:15
Speaker 3: He got tremendous bipartisan and media validation forward because there's
36:18
Speaker 3: a normalization deal with Israel. But I think it's just
36:21
Speaker 3: worth saying here, Tommy, the Abram Accords have been a
36:23
Speaker 3: catastrophic failure. Actually, had they brought peace to the Middle East,
36:28
Speaker 3: the two problems they were supposed to solve is somehow
36:30
Speaker 3: like replacing an Israeli Palestinian deal and dealing with the
36:34
Speaker 3: Iran threat. Well, look at where we are today. The
36:37
Speaker 3: Palestinians have been subjected to a relentless campaign of war
36:40
Speaker 3: crimes by Israel that is bombing multiple countries in the region.
36:45
Speaker 3: Despite the Abram Accords, we're at a war with Iran.
36:49
Speaker 3: This has been a failure and Democrats need to be
36:52
Speaker 3: much more outspoken about this because frankly, even the Biden
36:56
Speaker 3: administration's efforts to kind of wrap themselves around the Abram
36:59
Speaker 3: Accords that ended terribly too. Yeah, and we just need
37:03
Speaker 3: to name that and the fact that he's out there
37:04
Speaker 3: saying demanding these countries join this at a time when
37:07
Speaker 3: Israel's never been less popular in those countries and across
37:10
Speaker 3: the most the world. It just makes him look feckless
37:13
Speaker 3: because even Witkoff couldn't say, yes, sir, we'll get the
37:15
Speaker 3: neighborhom courts.
37:16
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, well, push, I'll make some calls. It's
37:18
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. Yeah, it's a that's.
37:20
Speaker 3: A week leader right there. That's someone who's like, I
37:22
Speaker 3: got good press on this thing before, and I know
37:25
Speaker 3: I'm pissing off some of the pro's real people in
37:27
Speaker 3: my coalition. So now I'm going to demand these countries
37:29
Speaker 3: joining the abram Coords. Well they're not because nobody's paying
37:32
Speaker 3: attention to what you're saying.
37:33
Speaker 1: I do think that the failure of the Abraham Cords
37:35
Speaker 1: is a really important point. I think Matt Dust had
37:36
Speaker 1: a great piece on this a few weeks or months
37:38
Speaker 1: back in like foreign policy dot com or something, where
37:40
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, the Abraham Accord's a bit of failure.
37:43
Speaker 1: They were agreements between countries that weren't at war that
37:47
Speaker 1: led to a distraction from the real conflict, which was
37:51
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Peace process, and they need to
37:53
Speaker 1: create a Palestinian state. And there's all this reporting that
37:56
Speaker 1: Hamas did took this, you know, did the evil thing
38:00
Speaker 1: they did on October seventh, the attack because they were
38:03
Speaker 1: concerned about potential normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia and
38:07
Speaker 1: they wanted to blow up any prospect of that. And
38:10
Speaker 1: so I think that is a reality of the Abraham
38:11
Speaker 1: Accords that we should talk a lot more about than
38:14
Speaker 1: you know, direct flights from the UAE to Tel Aviv
38:18
Speaker 1: or whatever people like brag about. Then we'll talk about
38:21
Speaker 1: the conflicted Lebanon because that's very much part of this
38:24
Speaker 1: broader war with Iran, but it also brings with it,
38:27
Speaker 1: like these distinct challenges and complexities that make it all
38:30
Speaker 1: so much harder. So first we got this voice note
38:33
Speaker 1: from a journalist named Justin Sohani from Al Jazeera who
38:37
Speaker 1: has been covering the conflict. That will give you a
38:39
Speaker 1: sense of just how absurd it is when people refer
38:42
Speaker 1: to there being a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbelah in Lebanon.
38:45
Speaker 11: Let's listen just to speak of the disparity of attacks,
38:50
Speaker 11: because because Hezbellah and Israel are still trading attacks the
38:54
Speaker 11: most intense day in the last week before today. I
38:59
Speaker 11: have figures here May twenty four until June first that
39:01
Speaker 11: were provided to me by UNIFIL, which is the UN
39:04
Speaker 11: peacekeepers in South Lebanon. The most intense day was Sunday,
39:08
Speaker 11: May thirty first. This is when sixty one trajectories were
39:11
Speaker 11: counted by UNIFIL going from north to south, so that
39:14
Speaker 11: would be Hazbala or other non state actors hitting either
39:18
Speaker 11: targets in South Lebanon or in Israel and from south
39:21
Speaker 11: to north, so this is Israel firing back six hundred
39:24
Speaker 11: and eighty three, So sixty one to six hundred and
39:26
Speaker 11: eighty three as the most severe day has Budala's number
39:30
Speaker 11: of trajectories over the past week are often in the
39:34
Speaker 11: double digits, usually somewhere between let's say, sixteen to forty
39:39
Speaker 11: five forty six. Israel's lowest was one hundred and ninety four,
39:44
Speaker 11: with an average over well over three hundred.
39:47
Speaker 1: Three hundred and fifty.
39:49
Speaker 11: So just to give an idea about the disparity of
39:52
Speaker 11: the fighting.
39:53
Speaker 1: Quite a seaspier there when you have hundreds of you know,
39:56
Speaker 1: projectiles being lobbied over the border every day. As we
39:59
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, b So the Lebanon piece of the fighting
40:02
Speaker 1: has become a big sticking point in the peace talks.
40:04
Speaker 1: Iran wants the fighting over in Lebanon as well as
40:06
Speaker 1: everywhere else. The Israelis has said in no way, and
40:09
Speaker 1: in fact, I've used this latest round of fighting since
40:12
Speaker 1: February twenty eight as an opportunity to advance further into
40:15
Speaker 1: Lebanon and take more territory. And unfortunately, you know, before
40:18
Speaker 1: February twenty eighth, the US was facilitating talks between Israel
40:22
Speaker 1: and the Lebanese government about trying to disarm Hesbalah, and
40:25
Speaker 1: those all ended when the latest round of fighting started.
40:28
Speaker 1: So on Monday, Axios reported that Trump called nt Yahoo
40:31
Speaker 1: and yelled at him about Israeli escalation in Lebanon. The
40:34
Speaker 1: report said that Trump said to b B n Yahoo quote,
40:37
Speaker 1: you're fucking crazy. You'd be in prison if it weren't
40:39
Speaker 1: for me. I'm saving your ass. Everybody hates you, now,
40:42
Speaker 1: everybody hates Israel because of this. Some factual statements in
40:47
Speaker 1: there about Nen Yahoo. But did that really happen unclear.
40:51
Speaker 1: There's an Israeli political analyst who a lot of people
40:54
Speaker 1: in Israel think is basically just another spokesman for the
40:57
Speaker 1: nt Yahoo government. He tweeted that Yaktios report is false.
41:02
Speaker 1: A friend of mine in Israel told me that this person,
41:05
Speaker 1: while in that name, is often called BB's shofar because
41:09
Speaker 1: net Yaho blows air into him and outcomes noise, which
41:12
Speaker 1: is really funny and great. But the analyst claimed that
41:16
Speaker 1: Trump didn't mention Bbe being in jail or that he's hated.
41:19
Speaker 1: But then Alex Ward, our buddy over at the Wall
41:22
Speaker 1: Street Journal reported that are actually two calls. The first
41:25
Speaker 1: was about a ceasefire and the second one is where
41:27
Speaker 1: Trump was like talking shit, saying up and jail if
41:30
Speaker 1: not for me. Regardless, Ben, I think they apparently reach
41:34
Speaker 1: an agreement where Israel is going to hold off airstrikes
41:36
Speaker 1: on be Rout as long as they are not attacked.
41:38
Speaker 1: We'll see if that holds. And in the meantime, Israel
41:41
Speaker 1: is pummeling southern Lebanon with air strikes, and they recaptured
41:44
Speaker 1: this ancient hilltop castle called Beaufort, which is Israel held
41:48
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago during its previous occupation of Lebanon,
41:51
Speaker 1: which is bringing back terrible memories both in Lebanon and
41:54
Speaker 1: in Israel of you know, because that support did not
41:58
Speaker 1: go well and people or worried that this could become
42:01
Speaker 1: the beginning of a protracted Israeli occupation of Lebanon. And
42:05
Speaker 1: it comes after the IDF displaced like a million Lebanese
42:07
Speaker 1: residents in the south and the overall death toll is
42:10
Speaker 1: thirty four hundred dead in Lebanon, twenty seven Israeli soldiers killed,
42:13
Speaker 1: So been a lot there. But I do think like
42:16
Speaker 1: the Lebanon piece of this is the most clear point
42:19
Speaker 1: where you can see the US and Israeli political interests
42:24
Speaker 1: diverging completely, especially as the Israelis get closer and closer
42:27
Speaker 1: to their election.
42:28
Speaker 3: Yes, and it's because of what the nature of the
42:31
Speaker 3: Israeli military operation in Lebanon is. And at the risk
42:36
Speaker 3: of making this kind of media criticism day and again,
42:38
Speaker 3: this is the reason why you should support independent media.
42:41
Speaker 3: If you're watching this from Afar, like what you're presented
42:44
Speaker 3: with by most of the US media is that there's
42:47
Speaker 3: a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon in Israel's war against Hesbola,
42:52
Speaker 3: And in fact, there is no ceasefire in Lebanon. There's
42:55
Speaker 3: no such thing as a ceasefire where you're relentlessly bombing
42:58
Speaker 3: a country and occupying almost twenty percent of it, and
43:01
Speaker 3: at the same time, as much as Israel does have
43:04
Speaker 3: a challenge from Hebola, if you actually watch what's happening,
43:08
Speaker 3: and the media criticism is like these calls or smokescreen,
43:11
Speaker 3: like somebody from you know, Trump's staff is told to
43:15
Speaker 3: call Axios and say he said fuck you to BB.
43:18
Speaker 3: Watch what's happening, not what you're told to said in
43:21
Speaker 3: a phone call, exactly because Israel is continuing to do
43:24
Speaker 3: all these things, and what they're doing it does not
43:26
Speaker 3: seem to be about disarming Hesbla. It seems to be
43:29
Speaker 3: about taking southern Lebanon, where they're literally occupying like a
43:33
Speaker 3: huge swath of this country and you know, depopulating it,
43:36
Speaker 3: making it uninhabitable, probably for the purposes of either annexing
43:40
Speaker 3: part of that territory or holding it as a kind
43:43
Speaker 3: of so called buffer zone. But like there's no international
43:46
Speaker 3: legal basis for like just claiming like part of another
43:49
Speaker 3: country and saying that's a buffer zone. And my concern
43:52
Speaker 3: is you point out is that because there's an election
43:54
Speaker 3: later this fall, because BB completely failed to achieve the
43:58
Speaker 3: objectives he set out for the Iran war. He's just
44:01
Speaker 3: going to keep doing this in Lebanon so that he
44:03
Speaker 3: has some war that he can show. The kind of
44:05
Speaker 3: right wing voters in Israel requires him to stay in office.
44:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of BB's election, I mean we should talk
44:10
Speaker 1: about Gaza for a minute because net Yahoo again as
44:13
Speaker 1: we lead up to the selection, is talking about occupying
44:16
Speaker 1: more of the territory in Gaza. So there's a recent
44:18
Speaker 1: press conference which I think he did from like maybe
44:22
Speaker 1: a settlement in the West Bank or something something he
44:24
Speaker 1: did from the West Bank, and he said, quote, we
44:26
Speaker 1: are now in sixty percent of the territory of the
44:28
Speaker 1: Gaza Strip. We were at fifty percent, we moved to
44:30
Speaker 1: sixty percent. My directive is to move to and then
44:34
Speaker 1: someone in the crowd yells one hundred percent, and he
44:36
Speaker 1: says take it. He goes take it step by step.
44:39
Speaker 1: First of all, seventy percent, we'll start with that. So
44:42
Speaker 1: net and Yahoo is like playing to the crowd saying
44:44
Speaker 1: we're going to take seventy percent of the territory in Gaza.
44:47
Speaker 1: So he wants to squeeze two million people into thirty
44:50
Speaker 1: percent of the Gaza Strip, where it was already one
44:52
Speaker 1: of the most crowded places in the world. Then Israel's
44:55
Speaker 1: Defense Minister Israel Katz tweeted last week, quote, we pledge
44:58
Speaker 1: that Hamas will not rule Kyz civilly or militarily, and
45:01
Speaker 1: so it shall be the voluntary migration plan will be
45:04
Speaker 1: implemented all at the proper time, in the proper manner.
45:07
Speaker 1: So I guess everyone should get incited for some ethnic
45:10
Speaker 1: cleansing to happen soon, I guess. And then, as we've discussed,
45:14
Speaker 1: like life on the ground for people in Gaza is
45:16
Speaker 1: hell on earth. There's a recent report from Doctors Without
45:19
Speaker 1: Borders that said, Israel it's just destroyed or damaged nearly
45:22
Speaker 1: ninety percent of water and sanitation infrastructure in Gaza, including
45:25
Speaker 1: desalination plants, boreholes, pipelines, and sewage systems. And as a
45:29
Speaker 1: result of the damage sewer systems, there's pest breeding in
45:33
Speaker 1: the wastewater. Rats are everywhere, there are lice, scabies, fungal infections,
45:39
Speaker 1: bug bites, rat bites, and nowhere near enough healthcare resources.
45:45
Speaker 1: And then shockingly, ben the Board of Peace is accomplished
45:48
Speaker 1: exactly nothing. There's no funding, there's nobody on the ground,
45:50
Speaker 1: there's no nothing. So like maybe Jared Kushner got a
45:53
Speaker 1: good meeting at Davos out of it, but that seems
45:55
Speaker 1: to be the only accomplishment there.
45:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think we have to again consider
46:00
Speaker 3: that there's this veneer of a ceasefire in Gaza. What
46:03
Speaker 3: part of the ceasefire terms that were announced to such
46:05
Speaker 3: fanfare with all these foreign leaders and all this credulous
46:08
Speaker 3: media attention back last fall, what part of that ceasefire
46:12
Speaker 3: agreement permitted Israel to take seventy percent of the Gaza
46:15
Speaker 3: strip And then talk about quote unquote, you know, the
46:18
Speaker 3: voluntary migration, aka the ethnic cleansing of the remaining two
46:22
Speaker 3: million people that are in these horrific conditions. And the
46:26
Speaker 3: problem is there's no rooting in any of these policies
46:31
Speaker 3: in concern for the actual Palestinians who are there, Like
46:34
Speaker 3: there's no discussion about getting assistance into those people addressing
46:39
Speaker 3: those horrific conditions. We still don't have international media access
46:44
Speaker 3: to Gaza to see what's happened and to get an
46:47
Speaker 3: accurate death count, which is probably far higher than the
46:50
Speaker 3: seventy thousand that's already been reported here. And so it
46:52
Speaker 3: just goes to show that again, while attention the camera
46:56
Speaker 3: keeps swirling around, and it's largely been focused on Iran
46:59
Speaker 3: and straightform moves like the situation for the people in
47:02
Speaker 3: Gaza has continued to deteriorate since the ceasefire was announced
47:07
Speaker 3: in the same way that the people of Lebanon are
47:09
Speaker 3: suffering such extraordinary consequences, and the absence of any kind
47:13
Speaker 3: of moral framework of concern for those people, not just
47:17
Speaker 3: out of the United States, but frankly out of a
47:18
Speaker 3: lot of governments, speaks to kind of the broken moment
47:22
Speaker 3: that we're in geopolitically.
47:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you're not seeing any real international support
47:27
Speaker 1: for Gaza, Like I'm not seeing any action really at
47:30
Speaker 1: the UN. I'm not seeing a lot of fundraising. You
47:32
Speaker 1: would imagine, there's just nothing. There's nothing. I mean, we
47:35
Speaker 1: got the UK, they got the UK saying that Jank
47:37
Speaker 1: Weaker and Hassan Piker Camp Company because they are they're
47:41
Speaker 1: there are a threat to British society in some way
47:44
Speaker 1: because you know, they criticize the occupation or the war
47:47
Speaker 1: in Gaza. But yeah, there's just nothing to help actual
47:49
Speaker 1: human beings on the ground who are suffering every single day,
47:51
Speaker 1: including lots of kids.
47:52
Speaker 3: And I'm just going to say, like the idea that
47:57
Speaker 3: that tells you a lot about the priorities of the
47:58
Speaker 3: Starmar government, and we should call this out because, like
48:02
Speaker 3: whatever you think about Chenk and Hassan, the idea that
48:06
Speaker 3: that government has the time to say that because of
48:09
Speaker 3: their views on Israel, they're not even allowed to enter
48:12
Speaker 3: the country. But what are they doing to help the
48:15
Speaker 3: people of Gaza. What is this Starmer government doing to
48:17
Speaker 3: help them? It's absolutely ridiculous and outrageous, even if you
48:21
Speaker 3: disagree with Hassan Piker. By the way, he was going
48:25
Speaker 3: there to have a debate at the Oxford Union, so
48:28
Speaker 3: the form that was set up was for someone else
48:30
Speaker 3: to be able to tell him he was wrong, right,
48:33
Speaker 3: And so the idea that we're more afraid of free
48:35
Speaker 3: speech in places like the United Kingdom than we are
48:40
Speaker 3: of like risking the ire of Donald Trump by expressing
48:44
Speaker 3: concern for the people of Gaza is It was a
48:47
Speaker 3: shameful moment for this Starmer government.
48:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, Son told me he was going to go to
48:50
Speaker 1: the Oxford Union and do a speech, and the last
48:52
Speaker 1: one he did there was about the danger of conflating
48:55
Speaker 1: Judaism and Zionism. He was trying to disaggregate them to
48:58
Speaker 1: talk about combating anti Semitism. But then he was told
49:01
Speaker 1: by the British government that is, uh, you can't travel
49:05
Speaker 1: because quote, your presence in the UK is not considered
49:08
Speaker 1: to be conducive to the public good. It's just such
49:10
Speaker 1: a vague kind of you know, nineteen eighty four. Notice that. Anyway,
49:15
Speaker 1: it's just really fucking weird.
49:17
Speaker 3: It's chilling. It's actually it's absolutely chilling. And for center
49:20
Speaker 3: left government to be doing it, yeah, for a center
49:21
Speaker 3: left government be doing it is absolutely chilling. Or maybe
49:24
Speaker 3: they're not a smile.
49:24
Speaker 1: And like you, if you find the comments that either
49:28
Speaker 1: of those two guys made to be offensive or wrong
49:32
Speaker 1: or upsetting anyway.
49:33
Speaker 3: That's totally fine.
49:34
Speaker 1: I respect that. But like that, I guess this is
49:36
Speaker 1: just the American in me, the First Amendment support or
49:38
Speaker 1: in me thinks it's crazy to tell someone they're barred
49:41
Speaker 1: from your country for political opinions. I think it's bonkers.
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53:20
Speaker 1: strike on what they described as a Russian college dorm
53:23
Speaker 1: that killed twenty one people. I think the Ukrainian site
53:25
Speaker 1: is a military drone site. Also alarming Ben, was a
53:28
Speaker 1: Russian drone hitt an apartment building in Romania over the weekend.
53:32
Speaker 1: Romanian officials said the drone probably went into their territory
53:35
Speaker 1: because it was hit by Ukrainian air defenses and I
53:37
Speaker 1: think got knocked off course or something. But this is
53:40
Speaker 1: a big deal. We're going to watch and see if
53:42
Speaker 1: NATO responds in any way. But that is the political
53:46
Speaker 1: backdrop here as we get to our next point about Russia,
53:49
Speaker 1: which is, the Russians are hosting this annual investment conference
53:52
Speaker 1: in Saint Petersburg, and this year there is a much
53:55
Speaker 1: increased American presence. The White House is sending a representative.
53:59
Speaker 1: It is some dipshit named Rodney Mims Cook Junior, who
54:03
Speaker 1: is chairman of the US Commission of Fine Arts. I
54:06
Speaker 1: think he's from Georgia some whatever. And then a bunch
54:09
Speaker 1: of far right influencers are heading over. So check out
54:11
Speaker 1: this clip we put together to show you who's going okay.
54:47
Speaker 1: So the first the first thing we saw was our tea.
54:51
Speaker 1: The Russian and Propaganda Network put together some sort of
54:54
Speaker 1: like video they take took a bunch of Candice Owens
54:57
Speaker 1: as photos she posted on social media and commentary. Owns
55:00
Speaker 1: a far right podcast or influencer. She posts a bunch
55:04
Speaker 1: of stuff, including commentary like I'm starting to understand why
55:07
Speaker 1: the talking heads panic and shout and lie about Russia
55:09
Speaker 1: collusion when they learned an American with a platform is
55:12
Speaker 1: traveling here. It's Plato's allegory of the cave is genuinely shocking.
55:16
Speaker 1: How clean, beautiful an ordered the city is. It's so
55:18
Speaker 1: far removed from media depictions. Yes, I too am stunned
55:23
Speaker 1: that famously beautiful Moscow looks beautiful. And then there were
55:28
Speaker 1: the Tate brothers who were indicted a couple of years
55:31
Speaker 1: back on charges like rape in human trafficking, who are
55:34
Speaker 1: also in Moscow. I guess for this conference, but I
55:38
Speaker 1: don't really know, so I hope they have a good time. Ben,
55:41
Speaker 1: What do you think is happening here? Why are these
55:43
Speaker 1: goobers descending upon Moscow?
55:45
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sure they're getting paid in some fashion here,
55:50
Speaker 3: and or they're just trolling people like us. But the
55:54
Speaker 3: reality is that like Russia has managed to make these
55:57
Speaker 3: kind of consistent inroads in the right wing of the
56:01
Speaker 3: United States without doing anything at all differently in the
56:07
Speaker 3: conduct of their war or their repression, the war just
56:10
Speaker 3: keeps getting worse. Like they've just been relentlessly bombarding Ukraine
56:15
Speaker 3: more under Trump than they did before that they have
56:19
Speaker 3: not made any meaningful concession towards peace whatsoever. The repression
56:23
Speaker 3: inside of Russia has gotten much worse. Frankly, they've been
56:27
Speaker 3: restricting internet access in ways that you influencers in Russia
56:32
Speaker 3: like don't have the capacity that the Tate Brothers or
56:35
Speaker 3: Canie Owens have to go there and post things. And
56:38
Speaker 3: so it's quite remarkable to watch people kind of go
56:41
Speaker 3: there and claim that they're like discovering some different Russia
56:46
Speaker 3: when in fact, like if anything, repression in the war
56:49
Speaker 3: have just been deteriorating. By the way, the fact that
56:52
Speaker 3: Moscow's clean, I mean Pyongyang is pretty clean too, Like
56:57
Speaker 3: uber repressive societies like can kind of keep the streets
57:01
Speaker 3: pretty clean. Sometimes that doesn't mean that people have any
57:05
Speaker 3: political rights whatsoever. And it kind of connects to the
57:08
Speaker 3: Romania thin because part of what's happening is Europeans are
57:11
Speaker 3: seeing this, right, So they're seeing Trump's thirst for investment
57:16
Speaker 3: in Russia. They're seeing Trump's total disregard for Ukraine. At
57:21
Speaker 3: the same time that there have been like meaningful Russian
57:25
Speaker 3: sabotage operations in European countries, some of which have destroyed
57:29
Speaker 3: significant amounts of property. Now we have this drone attack
57:32
Speaker 3: and so if you talk to people in Europe, like
57:33
Speaker 3: the actual fear that Russia might do something that is
57:37
Speaker 3: a military escalation in Poland or the Baltics or place
57:40
Speaker 3: of Romania that's going up, and the more they kind
57:43
Speaker 3: of see this kind of weirdness and brokenness in the
57:46
Speaker 3: American right wing drifting in Russia's direction, I think more
57:50
Speaker 3: it's going to just contribute to those anxieties at the
57:52
Speaker 3: precise time. By the way, tom me that Trump's threatening
57:54
Speaker 3: to pull US troops out of Europe because he's mad
57:57
Speaker 3: that they didn't open the straight of horror moves.
57:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a weird back and forth last week
58:01
Speaker 1: about the US maybe polling troops out of Poland and
58:04
Speaker 1: then not or there's all sorts of weird threats Toado.
58:06
Speaker 1: It's always so it's so funny when influencers like Candice
58:10
Speaker 1: go over to a place like Russia, like, yeah, obviously
58:13
Speaker 1: it's not binary. It's not like America good, Russia bad.
58:17
Speaker 1: Like Russia's an extraordinary place, incredible culture.
58:20
Speaker 3: Or Russian people bad. Yeah, yeah, Russian people, incredible.
58:22
Speaker 1: History, incredible architecture, Like no one's arguing otherwise the architecture
58:27
Speaker 1: that she's taking photos of and posting has existed for
58:29
Speaker 1: a very long time. A lot of people were well
58:32
Speaker 1: aware of. It's like never, they're never like self awareness.
58:36
Speaker 3: Wait until she finds out about Tolstoy Ballet, you know, yeah, yeah.
58:41
Speaker 1: Have you guys heard of this guy. It's like, hey,
58:43
Speaker 1: you're there with like a minder probably taking you around
58:47
Speaker 1: to all these great cultural sites.
58:49
Speaker 5: For a reason.
58:49
Speaker 1: Like the same thing happened with Tucker Carlson when he
58:51
Speaker 1: was like, look at this unbelievable subway, and it's like,
58:54
Speaker 1: you know who built the subway? You know what the
58:57
Speaker 1: cost was there? Like any went at the supermarket, It's like, guys,
59:00
Speaker 1: come on, just like give us a little more nuance
59:03
Speaker 1: and everything you're saying will be fine.
59:05
Speaker 3: And also like nobody does a good will tour better
59:08
Speaker 3: than an autocratic country, right you know, of course they're
59:11
Speaker 3: ruling out the red carpet and they're super nice, and
59:13
Speaker 3: I go, oh, these people are so lovely, Like of course
59:15
Speaker 3: that's what happens. Again, it's not just similar in Gaza,
59:17
Speaker 3: Like go outside of Moscow and go into some of
59:20
Speaker 3: those cities where people have been conscripted and they're disabled,
59:24
Speaker 3: broken veterans returning home and you've got a better sense
59:27
Speaker 3: of like what the cost of Putin's policies are.
59:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is embarrassing. Excited to see what content they
59:32
Speaker 1: crank out. Hopefully we'll talk about it next week. A
59:34
Speaker 1: couple more things. Ben Voters in Columbia went to the
59:36
Speaker 1: polls this past Sunday and now there are two candidates
59:39
Speaker 1: heading to a runoff election on June twenty first. So
59:42
Speaker 1: the contest will be between Senator Ivonne Septa, who's a
59:46
Speaker 1: left wing candidate running on a continuation of President Petro's policies.
59:51
Speaker 1: Petro's term limited. He's running against a right wing candidate
59:54
Speaker 1: that is backed by Trump named Ebalardo de la Espriea,
59:58
Speaker 1: who calls himself the Tiger, not the Tiger King. We're
1:00:01
Speaker 1: not going back to like covid Era, just the Tiger.
1:00:05
Speaker 1: The big choice for voters is about security and how
1:00:08
Speaker 1: to deal with the enormous amount of violence from drug
1:00:11
Speaker 1: cartels and rebel groups in Columbia. The kind of left
1:00:14
Speaker 1: approach to violence is negotiations and peace pacts. Well, the
1:00:19
Speaker 1: conservatives basically want to return to a policy of war
1:00:22
Speaker 1: on the cartels and also now they want to build
1:00:25
Speaker 1: out a detention system like the one Naibukele created an
1:00:29
Speaker 1: El Salvador where he has thrown hundreds of thousands of
1:00:32
Speaker 1: people in mega prisons, often without charges. Senators to Pada
1:00:38
Speaker 1: was from the left, was directly involved in Columbia's peace
1:00:40
Speaker 1: deal with the FARC rebel group back in twenty sixteen. Again,
1:00:44
Speaker 1: he wants to consider continue Petro's policies. The problem with
1:00:47
Speaker 1: that pitch politically in this moment is that the violence
1:00:50
Speaker 1: has gotten really bad. Last year we covered this, I
1:00:54
Speaker 1: think at the time a conservative politician was shot on
1:00:57
Speaker 1: the campaign trail. He later died. He's at a presidential
1:00:59
Speaker 1: campaign stop. And then there's criminal organizations who are launching
1:01:03
Speaker 1: armed attacks. They're carrying out drone strikes. There's kidnappings, there's homicides,
1:01:07
Speaker 1: and thousands, thousands people have been displaced. Then the Trump
1:01:11
Speaker 1: White House has made no secret of the fact that
1:01:14
Speaker 1: they want to see this like right wing wave in
1:01:17
Speaker 1: elections in Central and South America, and they will overtly
1:01:20
Speaker 1: meddle in elections to do it, though I think they've
1:01:22
Speaker 1: been a less overt in Columbia so far. What do
1:01:25
Speaker 1: you think, though, what are things going to happen?
1:01:27
Speaker 9: Here?
1:01:27
Speaker 1: Is Columbia next?
1:01:28
Speaker 3: You know, it certainly feels like that they're going to
1:01:31
Speaker 3: make a push Trump is because you know, they're trying
1:01:33
Speaker 3: to construct like a critical mass of right wing leaders
1:01:37
Speaker 3: that are kind of with this imperial project where the
1:01:41
Speaker 3: deal is that the United States gets to kind of
1:01:44
Speaker 3: do whatever once in hemisphere, but we kind of back up,
1:01:47
Speaker 3: prop up or provide private security forces or what have you,
1:01:51
Speaker 3: or maybe even direct military support to some of these
1:01:53
Speaker 3: autocratic leaders. And Columbia has been like a key bell
1:01:57
Speaker 3: Weather like kind of swing state in that competition. It's
1:01:59
Speaker 3: a country it tends to veer back and forth between
1:02:02
Speaker 3: left and right wing leadership. By the way, you have
1:02:05
Speaker 3: an incredibly important election that we'll be talking a lot
1:02:07
Speaker 3: about later this year in Brazil that'll be the key
1:02:10
Speaker 3: test to this, So i'd expect them to kind of
1:02:13
Speaker 3: lean in here. Look, whoever comes next is going to
1:02:15
Speaker 3: have to pursue some policies to try to get their
1:02:18
Speaker 3: arms around the security situation, because what you kind of
1:02:21
Speaker 3: have is kind of cartel and other violence like migrating
1:02:23
Speaker 3: around different places. We abvious seen an Ecuador, We've seen
1:02:27
Speaker 3: a lot of this in Columbia now too. But I
1:02:29
Speaker 3: do I worry about the kind of construction of like
1:02:32
Speaker 3: this collection of Bouquelas and Melas and right wing leaders
1:02:37
Speaker 3: that we've seen in places like Honduras and Ecuador, because again,
1:02:41
Speaker 3: like it's going to polarize politics on a left right
1:02:45
Speaker 3: basis across the hemisphere and in history when the United
1:02:49
Speaker 3: States has kind of invested in like a right wing
1:02:51
Speaker 3: block against the left wing block in Latin America has
1:02:54
Speaker 3: not ended.
1:02:55
Speaker 1: Well, it does not go.
1:02:56
Speaker 3: In fact, the CONFLX in Columbia, like we're partly an outgrowth.
1:02:59
Speaker 1: Of that, also not going well. The New York Times,
1:03:02
Speaker 1: i think, just had a big piece about how we've
1:03:05
Speaker 1: reached this grim milestone of more than two hundred people
1:03:08
Speaker 1: killed in the Trump pete Hegseth extrajudicial murder boat strikes
1:03:14
Speaker 1: in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific. So far, experts
1:03:17
Speaker 1: say it is just as easy to find cocaine in
1:03:20
Speaker 1: the United States as it was before this policy started.
1:03:23
Speaker 1: The street price of the cocaine has not gone up,
1:03:26
Speaker 1: which means there's no less availability, there's no scarcity, the
1:03:30
Speaker 1: purity of the cocaine is about the same. But then
1:03:33
Speaker 1: the cost of the Pentagon policy to just murder people,
1:03:36
Speaker 1: murder fishermen is about four point seven billion and counting.
1:03:41
Speaker 1: So smashing success would you say.
1:03:43
Speaker 3: I mean, the one thing I'd add to this is
1:03:45
Speaker 3: it like there's gonna be a lot of things that
1:03:47
Speaker 3: people go back and investigate and try to bring accountability
1:03:52
Speaker 3: to after the Trump administration is over. This should absolutely
1:03:56
Speaker 3: be one of them, yep. Because there's no legal or
1:03:59
Speaker 3: policy base for this. It's just murder. Like there's not
1:04:02
Speaker 3: some authorization for the use of force against boats. There's
1:04:06
Speaker 3: credible reports that at least some of these strikes and
1:04:09
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be okay if it was even drug traffickers
1:04:11
Speaker 3: because you know, just like murdered drug traffickers. But there's
1:04:14
Speaker 3: credible reports that some of these people are just fishermen.
1:04:16
Speaker 3: So like keep in mind, like Pete he sets orders,
1:04:19
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's orders through petext have been murdering people and
1:04:22
Speaker 3: have now murdered two hundred people. It has no impact
1:04:25
Speaker 3: whatsoever on the amount of drugs in the United States.
1:04:28
Speaker 3: As you point out, for a time it seemed to
1:04:30
Speaker 3: be part of the Venezuela operation, and yet it still
1:04:32
Speaker 3: continues even though that's over. Like, what is it about
1:04:35
Speaker 3: other than the use of brute force? Because it seems
1:04:38
Speaker 3: to make Trump and Hexath feel tough, and that's a
1:04:41
Speaker 3: it's grotesque. So there's gonna there should be investigations into this.
1:04:44
Speaker 3: And by the way, as has been pointed out to
1:04:47
Speaker 3: me by experts repeatedly, it's not a war crime. It's
1:04:49
Speaker 3: just murder, just because it's not a war.
1:04:51
Speaker 1: It's just a quick, good, good point two quick, just
1:04:55
Speaker 1: quick things. He's running out of time here, so Ben,
1:04:57
Speaker 1: last night I was I picked back up Reaganland, like
1:04:59
Speaker 1: great Rick Pearlstein book on Ronald Reagan. There was a
1:05:02
Speaker 1: part on Jimmy Carter where I talked about how some
1:05:04
Speaker 1: members of Congress called for an investigation into Billy Carter,
1:05:08
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter's kind of jerk off jackass brother, for apparently
1:05:12
Speaker 1: getting like a sweetheart deal on like wholesale gasoline for
1:05:17
Speaker 1: two gas pumps he owned back in Georgia. Right, So
1:05:19
Speaker 1: like that's the level of grift We're talking very very low.
1:05:23
Speaker 1: That made me think of a story I read last
1:05:25
Speaker 1: week in ProPublica about a six and twenty million dollar
1:05:30
Speaker 1: loan from the Pentagon to a company called Vulcan Elements.
1:05:34
Speaker 1: Vulcan Elements that's a little startup in North North Carolina.
1:05:36
Speaker 1: They think they can reduce America's dependence on rare earth materials,
1:05:40
Speaker 1: rare earth elements that are critical for US weapons systems
1:05:44
Speaker 1: and our phones and electric vehicles and like everything we
1:05:47
Speaker 1: do now. But remember we talked about this in the
1:05:49
Speaker 1: context of the China trade war. The Chinese have an
1:05:52
Speaker 1: absolute monopoly on the on with the processing of these
1:05:57
Speaker 1: rare earth elements, and they were able to choke them
1:06:00
Speaker 1: off to great effect and put pressure in the United States.
1:06:02
Speaker 1: So the timeline of this story goes as Following August
1:06:05
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, seventeen to eighty nine, Capital Don Junior's
1:06:08
Speaker 1: venture capital firm, they took a stake in Vulcan Elements.
1:06:12
Speaker 1: At the time, the company was valued at two hundred
1:06:15
Speaker 1: million dollars. Three months after that investment, ben the US
1:06:18
Speaker 1: government gave them a six hundred and twenty million dollar
1:06:21
Speaker 1: Pentagon loan and I think like fifty million dollars that
1:06:24
Speaker 1: were part of the Chips Act, So six hundred and
1:06:26
Speaker 1: seventy million dollars all in, and by January of twenty
1:06:30
Speaker 1: twenty six, so a few months ago, Bloomberg said the
1:06:33
Speaker 1: company was valued at two billion dollars, so a ten
1:06:37
Speaker 1: x increase in value. In five months. And what Pro
1:06:40
Speaker 1: Publica dug up was that the loan only happened after
1:06:43
Speaker 1: Peter Navarro, remember Trump's trade advisor, who was like thickest
1:06:47
Speaker 1: thieves with Don Junior made a call from the White House.
1:06:49
Speaker 3: Over thevicted convicted to say get this on.
1:06:52
Speaker 1: You know who visited Peter Navarro in jail, Donald Trump Junior,
1:06:56
Speaker 1: and he is mentioned the fucking acknowledgment of his book. Unbelievable.
1:07:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's just rank corruption. What they're doing
1:07:05
Speaker 3: is they're migrating to the biggest kiddy that there is,
1:07:08
Speaker 3: which is depending on budget. I mean, one reason out
1:07:10
Speaker 3: of many that they want a one point five trillion
1:07:12
Speaker 3: dollar defense budget is probably because they want to profit
1:07:15
Speaker 3: off of this. I mean, this is an absolutely outrageous
1:07:17
Speaker 3: level of corruption. And again, like to go all the
1:07:20
Speaker 3: way back to the craziness of Bill Poulting, what it
1:07:22
Speaker 3: says about the last two years, the looting that is
1:07:25
Speaker 3: going to take place Tommy in the last couple of
1:07:27
Speaker 3: years here when they can control these budgets is just
1:07:30
Speaker 3: going to be extraordinary. I mean, what is Don Junior's
1:07:33
Speaker 3: particular expertise and like defense contracting rare earth element this
1:07:36
Speaker 3: is just nothing. Yeah, yeah, this is just pure payment
1:07:40
Speaker 3: right to like the Trump family via the depending on budget,
1:07:44
Speaker 3: there needs to be like if Democrats do win back
1:07:46
Speaker 3: control of one or both houses of Congress, like burring
1:07:50
Speaker 3: In and the corruption at the Pentagon and the Trump family,
1:07:53
Speaker 3: which seems to be an overlapping Venn diagram, like that
1:07:56
Speaker 3: should be like an a central priority. And then if
1:07:59
Speaker 3: we do get a demo at present, like let us
1:08:01
Speaker 3: inhabit that hopeful future, like there's gonna have to be
1:08:04
Speaker 3: a lot of effort to come like uproot whatever, like
1:08:07
Speaker 3: corrupt contracts have been planted at the Pentagon because it
1:08:11
Speaker 3: seems like a complete fucking boondoggle over.
1:08:13
Speaker 1: There, a total boondoggle. And apparently they're also considering giving
1:08:16
Speaker 1: a similar loan to a company called Unusual Machines which
1:08:19
Speaker 1: is a drone part manufacturer in Florida that, oh who
1:08:22
Speaker 1: wou to thunk it? Don Junior's on the board of
1:08:24
Speaker 1: it and owns like millions of dollars worth of shares,
1:08:26
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's all on the up and up. Also, Ben,
1:08:29
Speaker 1: we talked on the show a couple of times about
1:08:30
Speaker 1: how the Trump organization got this sweetheart deal to build
1:08:33
Speaker 1: a bunch of real estate, including a golf course in Vietnam.
1:08:37
Speaker 1: The Financial Times reported that families in northern Vietnam are
1:08:40
Speaker 1: digging up the graves of their relatives in order to
1:08:43
Speaker 1: accommodate the Trump orgs one point five billion dollar luxury
1:08:47
Speaker 1: golf club, hotel and villa project that's going to be
1:08:50
Speaker 1: built there. You'll be surprised to learn that some locals
1:08:53
Speaker 1: are not thrilled about uprooting the cemetery. But that's a
1:08:56
Speaker 1: price to doing business these days. If you want to police,
1:08:58
Speaker 1: dear leader, you got to dig up up your uncle's
1:09:01
Speaker 1: grave or whatever so he can have his golf course.
1:09:04
Speaker 3: And just to draw the continue the backstory in this
1:09:07
Speaker 3: is Liberation Day happens. Trump announced this huge teriff on
1:09:10
Speaker 3: Vietnam conspicuously around the same time this golf course deal
1:09:14
Speaker 3: is announced with I think Eric Trump and here we
1:09:17
Speaker 3: are fast forward and we're digging up graves.
1:09:19
Speaker 1: Right.
1:09:19
Speaker 3: So this is all a case where like the power
1:09:23
Speaker 3: of the United States, this is not just a country
1:09:25
Speaker 3: trying to gratiate itself. The power of the United States
1:09:28
Speaker 3: was leveraged via tariffs. The strategy for managing those terrorists
1:09:32
Speaker 3: by the other country was, let's kind of wink wink,
1:09:36
Speaker 3: like approve this golf course. You know, it doesn't have
1:09:38
Speaker 3: to be the it's Vietnam. It's like a one party state.
1:09:40
Speaker 3: I'm sure that this development doesn't happen without the government involved.
1:09:44
Speaker 3: All I'll say tell me is I think whatever karma
1:09:47
Speaker 3: is going to accrue to the Trump family for digging
1:09:50
Speaker 3: up Vietnamese graves is not good. Oh, some bad intergeneration
1:09:54
Speaker 3: several film doesn't go very bad, very bad intergenerational energy
1:09:59
Speaker 3: coming there. So maybe that's where little pay the price.
1:10:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, even Avana is buried on a golf course somewhere
1:10:04
Speaker 1: in a Trump resort, and that that's funny. Well, oh,
1:10:06
Speaker 1: I forgot about that. Yeah, all right, we're gonna take
1:10:09
Speaker 1: quick break, but we come back. You're in to here
1:10:10
Speaker 1: Ben's interview with Aya Ibraheim about artificial intelligence, what's coming
1:10:15
Speaker 1: down the pike, the Trump Administration's efforts or lack thereof,
1:10:18
Speaker 1: to regulate it. So stick around for that very very
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Speaker 3: All right, I'm very pleased to be joined by Aa Ibrahim,
1:11:54
Speaker 3: who is a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute
1:11:57
Speaker 3: and a former White House and State Department advisor in
1:12:00
Speaker 3: the Bide administration. Yeah, it's really good to see you,
1:12:03
Speaker 3: like Piz, thanks for having me. So you and I
1:12:05
Speaker 3: have been talking about having this conversation about AI for
1:12:08
Speaker 3: a little bit, and I think that the encyclical Bipopolio
1:12:13
Speaker 3: presents a good opportunity for jumping off point. And actually
1:12:16
Speaker 3: we also got an executive order from the Trump administration today,
1:12:20
Speaker 3: but I wanted to start with that in cyclical that
1:12:22
Speaker 3: was released last week in which the Pope tried to
1:12:27
Speaker 3: apply a humanistic lens to AI, which has notably been
1:12:31
Speaker 3: missing from the creators of it all too often he
1:12:35
Speaker 3: talked about the need for regulation. He raised issues like
1:12:39
Speaker 3: the risk of AI in warfare, obviously, the risk of
1:12:43
Speaker 3: job dislocation, and also just kind of the risk to
1:12:46
Speaker 3: our humanity from the kind of omnipresence of this technology.
1:12:52
Speaker 3: Let's just begin with a kind of broad question about
1:12:54
Speaker 3: what you thought about the encyclical How important do you
1:12:58
Speaker 3: think it was, what influenced you think can reasonably be
1:13:01
Speaker 3: expected to have.
1:13:02
Speaker 13: Well, you know, you're always going to be excited when
1:13:04
Speaker 13: something this bit comes out that confirms a lot of
1:13:06
Speaker 13: your priors. But you know, I would say, look like
1:13:09
Speaker 13: engineers can and do build systems, but it's always been
1:13:13
Speaker 13: humanities that the humanities have built and sustained societies. And
1:13:17
Speaker 13: the Pope's entry into this conversation, I think is so
1:13:20
Speaker 13: critical because there is this vacuum of moral authority and
1:13:24
Speaker 13: moral leadership on the questions of AI and what it's
1:13:27
Speaker 13: going to do to the world, even though it has
1:13:31
Speaker 13: such profound moral implications, and you know, the question of
1:13:35
Speaker 13: human dignity and the value of our labor and the
1:13:38
Speaker 13: value of our lives. I mean, he seems to be
1:13:41
Speaker 13: the only person who is taking these guys at their
1:13:43
Speaker 13: word about their desire to renegotiate the social contract. And
1:13:49
Speaker 13: one thing you know, we we have talked about that
1:13:51
Speaker 13: I find a bit frustrating is that we treat moral
1:13:54
Speaker 13: authority having the moral high ground and exercising power is
1:13:57
Speaker 13: almost these mutually exclusive things. The Pope stepping in here
1:14:01
Speaker 13: is a demonstration of actually, the point of moral authority
1:14:04
Speaker 13: is to create space for you to exercise power and
1:14:07
Speaker 13: service of your vision for a more moral and just world.
1:14:10
Speaker 3: And you've worked on I'm going to talk about a
1:14:13
Speaker 3: couple more questions about the Pope, and you've worked on
1:14:17
Speaker 3: i should say foreign policy and on AI policy, so
1:14:21
Speaker 3: you're kind of uniquely positioned to.
1:14:23
Speaker 1: Talk about this part of it.
1:14:25
Speaker 3: I mean, one thing that struck me is the timing.
1:14:29
Speaker 3: I mentioned this last week that it was probably not intentional,
1:14:32
Speaker 3: but notable that this encyclical came right after the summit
1:14:36
Speaker 3: between Shishiping and Donald Trump kind of was a big
1:14:41
Speaker 3: nothing burger on AI. You know, the people who watch AI,
1:14:44
Speaker 3: like you and me, were kind of expecting maybe something,
1:14:47
Speaker 3: and all we got was like a promise that they
1:14:50
Speaker 3: might talk about it. I'm wondering if you could talk
1:14:52
Speaker 3: to people about what the vacuum is that the Pope
1:14:56
Speaker 3: is trying to feel like, do you see any leader's
1:14:59
Speaker 3: global who are bringing both the moral and policy lens
1:15:03
Speaker 3: to these enormous challenges from AI that we're all kind
1:15:06
Speaker 3: of feeling. Do you think that you know, maybe this
1:15:10
Speaker 3: is a leading question, but I mean to what extent
1:15:11
Speaker 3: did the Pope step into a gigantic vacuum or do
1:15:14
Speaker 3: you think there are other voices that have been putting
1:15:16
Speaker 3: forward constructive ideas?
1:15:17
Speaker 13: So I think he has been the most clear about
1:15:21
Speaker 13: the entire picture. Right, So there's the political economy questions
1:15:25
Speaker 13: that he tackles again, that this is about the allocation
1:15:29
Speaker 13: of resources and capital and labor and energy and so on,
1:15:34
Speaker 13: and what that means for people's sort of station in
1:15:37
Speaker 13: their own societies and in their own economies. He talks
1:15:40
Speaker 13: about the moral pieces, he talks about the spiritual ones.
1:15:43
Speaker 13: So you know, there's like a very holistic kind of
1:15:46
Speaker 13: approach that only very few people I think can take
1:15:50
Speaker 13: in the way that he did. That being said, there
1:15:53
Speaker 13: is such a culture of fear and frankly like learned
1:15:57
Speaker 13: helplessness among our policymakers here in the United States when
1:16:00
Speaker 13: it comes to questions of technology and technology policy. It's
1:16:04
Speaker 13: as if if they themselves cannot build it, they can't
1:16:07
Speaker 13: code it, then they don't get to have a leading
1:16:11
Speaker 13: role in what this technology looks like and how it
1:16:13
Speaker 13: shows up in our lives. And the reality is that,
1:16:17
Speaker 13: like our Energy and Commerce Committee is not stacked with chemists,
1:16:20
Speaker 13: but yet we have members of Congress that sit on
1:16:22
Speaker 13: that committee that oversees the FDA and prescription drugs. So
1:16:27
Speaker 13: I don't really understand why there's such hesitation. You know,
1:16:31
Speaker 13: more recently, represent Alexandria A Costo Cortez and excuse me,
1:16:37
Speaker 13: Senator Sanders. They have their Data Center Bill, which had
1:16:41
Speaker 13: some responses from members and other parts of the party
1:16:46
Speaker 13: that felt like it was kind of a lutedite.
1:16:49
Speaker 10: Approach to this question.
1:16:52
Speaker 13: I think people are trying, but there's like there are
1:16:56
Speaker 13: structural constraints to how we would have the conversation here
1:16:59
Speaker 13: in the US, and then as it relates to the
1:17:01
Speaker 13: rest of the world, if most of the computes it's here,
1:17:04
Speaker 13: it's really on us.
1:17:05
Speaker 10: To figure it out.
1:17:06
Speaker 13: And you know, the EU has had their conversations, but
1:17:09
Speaker 13: it's it's the United States and it's China.
1:17:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a good point in the sense
1:17:13
Speaker 3: that there have been efforts that your opinion passed and
1:17:16
Speaker 3: AI Act, they would have imposed a regimen for reviewing
1:17:21
Speaker 3: models before the release. We'll and we'll get to this
1:17:23
Speaker 3: Trump executive order. But at the end of the day,
1:17:26
Speaker 3: and Rishi Sunik actually had an AI safety summit at
1:17:29
Speaker 3: the end of his tenure as britsh Premnister. But at
1:17:31
Speaker 3: the end of the day, it's the US in China.
1:17:33
Speaker 3: And to your point, there's just a remarkable deference to
1:17:37
Speaker 3: the leaders of tech companies in this country, is if
1:17:40
Speaker 3: they're the only ones who understand it. I was curious,
1:17:43
Speaker 3: you know, one last thing on the Pope. I was
1:17:44
Speaker 3: curious what you made of the participation that kind of
1:17:48
Speaker 3: clear influence of an anthropic co founder Christopher Ola on
1:17:53
Speaker 3: the announcement of the encyclical. You know, on the one hand,
1:17:58
Speaker 3: I'm glad to see you know, anthropic advocating for regulation
1:18:04
Speaker 3: and you know, working with the Pope. On the other end,
1:18:07
Speaker 3: they obviously have you know, they're also going public as
1:18:09
Speaker 3: a company. What do you think, because you actually obviously
1:18:13
Speaker 3: do need some participation from these people, how do you
1:18:18
Speaker 3: think the relationship between governments, regulators and these tech company leaders.
1:18:26
Speaker 3: What would be a healthy version of that, and also
1:18:29
Speaker 3: just kind of what did you make of the participation
1:18:32
Speaker 3: of an anthropic co founder and essentially the pope's rollout
1:18:35
Speaker 3: of his encyclical Yeah.
1:18:37
Speaker 13: I mean it's pretty consistent with the whole shtick of
1:18:40
Speaker 13: like we are the good guys, And I think the
1:18:42
Speaker 13: key here is you're all just guys. These are all
1:18:44
Speaker 13: companies that all have a bottom line. Many of them
1:18:47
Speaker 13: are rushing to IPO, so there are financial incentives here.
1:18:50
Speaker 13: And I don't want to assign like some greater nobility
1:18:53
Speaker 13: because fundamentally, you're building a technology that you're saying might
1:18:56
Speaker 13: destroy the world, and we shouldn't have feelings about it
1:19:00
Speaker 13: because hey, at least you told us and you said
1:19:02
Speaker 13: that you wanted to do the right thing. But you're
1:19:04
Speaker 13: definitely going to make money off of this technology either way.
1:19:09
Speaker 13: I think on the balance and the or imbalances I
1:19:14
Speaker 13: guess in the relationship between governments, regulators, these companies. I
1:19:19
Speaker 13: think that's a good segue to the executive order that
1:19:22
Speaker 13: was issued today, which is entirely voluntary. Again, like would
1:19:26
Speaker 13: love a preview of your potentially world ending technology, but
1:19:30
Speaker 13: like no pressure if not, And I to me, that
1:19:34
Speaker 13: does not feel consistent with what they themselves have named
1:19:38
Speaker 13: as the potential impacts of this technology, Like you're not
1:19:43
Speaker 13: asking someone on a date, you are asking for oversight
1:19:46
Speaker 13: over technology they themselves have said will change the way
1:19:50
Speaker 13: that we are interact with one another, that we structure
1:19:54
Speaker 13: our economy and our societies and our governments like our world.
1:19:59
Speaker 10: And that's the same.
1:20:00
Speaker 13: Nothing of the actual characters at the helm of this ecosystem,
1:20:03
Speaker 13: which we should talk about that at some point too.
1:20:06
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, some of these people don't inspire a
1:20:08
Speaker 3: ton of confidence. I mean, on the executive order, it's
1:20:12
Speaker 3: interesting to me because it's been a journey and just
1:20:16
Speaker 3: to catch people up. Not everybody follows the twist in
1:20:18
Speaker 3: terms of the set closely, but there's an executive order
1:20:21
Speaker 3: in the Biden administration that similarly was focused on trying
1:20:26
Speaker 3: to set up a framework where new models are the
1:20:30
Speaker 3: government's access to them before they're released. Then the Trump
1:20:36
Speaker 3: administration comes in. David Sachs has made the ais R.
1:20:39
Speaker 3: He's one of the guys maybe we should talk about.
1:20:43
Speaker 3: And all they care about is essentially removing any guardrails,
1:20:46
Speaker 3: any regulation. Jdvans flies to Europe and gives a speech
1:20:50
Speaker 3: scolding them for caring about AI safety, saying that it's innovation,
1:20:53
Speaker 3: not safety that should be driving this. And then Anthropic
1:20:57
Speaker 3: has a new model coming out Mythos. It was so
1:20:59
Speaker 3: powerful that it freaked everybody out because nobody thought that
1:21:03
Speaker 3: they could defend against potential you know, cyber attacks for
1:21:06
Speaker 3: Mythos for instance, and that seemed to have propelled this
1:21:11
Speaker 3: executive order, although to your point it seems like it
1:21:14
Speaker 3: was pretty watered down. I guess the question is what
1:21:19
Speaker 3: what do you think this executive order matters? And what
1:21:23
Speaker 3: would a credible policy look like? Like, let's say you're
1:21:27
Speaker 3: you're you're David Sacks, right, I mean you would ever
1:21:29
Speaker 3: be David Sacks, But let's say you're in that role
1:21:32
Speaker 3: as ais are. What kind of elements do you think
1:21:36
Speaker 3: you'd want to look for in an actual credible start
1:21:39
Speaker 3: at regulation.
1:21:40
Speaker 13: Well, when the Mythod stuff was first happening, I you know,
1:21:45
Speaker 13: having a background and financial regulation too, I just thought
1:21:47
Speaker 13: it would be so funny if the reason that we
1:21:49
Speaker 13: got AI regulation is because the banks were now exposed.
1:21:53
Speaker 3: And that's because they're exposed to cyber attack, right, Like
1:21:56
Speaker 3: that's the thing to freak them out.
1:21:57
Speaker 13: Yeah, And you know they met with the Treasury Secretary
1:22:00
Speaker 13: and with the FED Chair, and it's this whole big
1:22:03
Speaker 13: to do, but at the end of the day they
1:22:06
Speaker 13: may end up releasing it anyway. So again, this tech
1:22:09
Speaker 13: that's so dangerous, but there's always a path to making
1:22:11
Speaker 13: some money off of it. In terms of what you
1:22:15
Speaker 13: know an ideal framework would be, I would just take
1:22:19
Speaker 13: a step back and say that questions of technology policy
1:22:21
Speaker 13: are often about everything but the tech itself, and so
1:22:25
Speaker 13: we have more fundamental questions about one, the way that
1:22:29
Speaker 13: we value and compensate and tax capital versus labor, the
1:22:35
Speaker 13: way that we protect or don't Americans privacy, the use
1:22:40
Speaker 13: of technology for purposes of surveillance and targeting and enforcement.
1:22:47
Speaker 13: It is not going to be limited to Okay, this
1:22:51
Speaker 13: is how much compute this model can have. How do
1:22:55
Speaker 13: you apply it? What are the consequences, and what are
1:22:59
Speaker 13: the structural and systematic questions or issues that this raises independent.
1:23:06
Speaker 10: Of the technology.
1:23:07
Speaker 13: And you know, one of the things that I worked
1:23:09
Speaker 13: on when I was in at the White House was
1:23:11
Speaker 13: the blueprint for an ani blo of Rights and it
1:23:14
Speaker 13: lays out five things that should hold true regardless of
1:23:16
Speaker 13: the technology or its application. And so having a rights
1:23:20
Speaker 13: braced framework would be my go to, But I think regardless,
1:23:25
Speaker 13: this technology is sort of a forcing function for a
1:23:29
Speaker 13: lot of the issues that we haven't dealt with, whether
1:23:31
Speaker 13: it's intellectual property or the fact that wages have not
1:23:35
Speaker 13: kept up with productivity for fifty years.
1:23:37
Speaker 3: This is interesting and I think is really important. So
1:23:40
Speaker 3: because what you're saying is there's a kind of lowest
1:23:42
Speaker 3: common denominator which the Trump YA represents, which is like, yeah,
1:23:45
Speaker 3: like the governor should be able to look at these
1:23:47
Speaker 3: things before they're released and maybe raise some questions, whereas
1:23:51
Speaker 3: actual regulation would look at different issues and basically say,
1:23:56
Speaker 3: we need to regulate for people's privacy, we need to
1:23:59
Speaker 3: regulate for mass surveillance, we need to regulate for the
1:24:03
Speaker 3: capacity of AI to create a biological weapon, you know,
1:24:05
Speaker 3: putting on a national security hat, or we need to
1:24:08
Speaker 3: regulate for the capacity of AI to do offensive cyber essentially,
1:24:13
Speaker 3: and to your point, like, we also maybe need to
1:24:15
Speaker 3: tax these companies in a different way because right now
1:24:19
Speaker 3: they're making potentially trillions of dollars where ordinary people can
1:24:24
Speaker 3: afford groceries. Is that is that a fair Like you're
1:24:28
Speaker 3: smarter than me about this? Essentially, The point is it like,
1:24:31
Speaker 3: rather than just kind of some broad yeah, well look
1:24:33
Speaker 3: at the model, it's more like, let's kind of make
1:24:35
Speaker 3: a list of the things that the problems that are
1:24:39
Speaker 3: raised and have an approach for each of those.
1:24:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:24:41
Speaker 13: I mean it's it's looking at the like the underlying
1:24:45
Speaker 13: policy question itself and then whether or not you actually
1:24:48
Speaker 13: need an AI specific answer for it. I mean, one
1:24:52
Speaker 13: of the things that these folks do over and over
1:24:55
Speaker 13: again is they say, like, this is a novel technology.
1:24:58
Speaker 13: It's like, the issue itself is not new. If whether
1:25:02
Speaker 13: it's a person or an algorithm that has made a
1:25:04
Speaker 13: lending decision, if that lending decision is biased, then fair
1:25:07
Speaker 13: lending laws would apply. And they try to argue that, actually, no,
1:25:12
Speaker 13: we have to you know, re litigate settled matters because
1:25:17
Speaker 13: this technology itself is novel. And I think this just
1:25:21
Speaker 13: circles back to the broader push that they're making, like, actually,
1:25:24
Speaker 13: the social contract itself we need to renegotiate, which personally
1:25:29
Speaker 13: feels an insane premise, and particularly insane given the specific
1:25:34
Speaker 13: cohort of people that are pushing for it.
1:25:36
Speaker 3: You're saying you don't want like the small collection of
1:25:39
Speaker 3: Silicon Valley AI investors and developers to rewrite the social contract.
1:25:43
Speaker 10: I am saying that.
1:25:46
Speaker 13: You know, one of the things that I thought was
1:25:48
Speaker 13: really important in the Pope's encyclical is he says that
1:25:52
Speaker 13: the technology is never neutral, and it's always going to
1:25:57
Speaker 13: reflect those who devise it, those who finance it, is regulated,
1:26:00
Speaker 13: and those who use it. So in just thinking about
1:26:02
Speaker 13: like the people who are devising it and financing it,
1:26:05
Speaker 13: you know, you have characters across Silicon Valley and venture capital,
1:26:08
Speaker 13: men who brag about having zero introspection. You know, men
1:26:13
Speaker 13: who refer to people as meat computers, who have espoused
1:26:18
Speaker 13: all kinds of misogynistic and xenophobic rhetoric. And these are
1:26:23
Speaker 13: the people that we are supposed to entrust to design
1:26:25
Speaker 13: this technology that again will remake the world.
1:26:28
Speaker 3: No, thank you, I hear you on that. I do
1:26:31
Speaker 3: want to ask a kind of foreign policy angle to this.
1:26:34
Speaker 3: Given parts of the world, there's a I think most
1:26:39
Speaker 3: people who work in foreign policy and national security policy,
1:26:43
Speaker 3: and you and I have been kind of a part
1:26:44
Speaker 3: of her adjacent to those fields, has kind of accepted
1:26:48
Speaker 3: the premise that there's an AI race between the United
1:26:52
Speaker 3: States and China that kind of conveniently overlaps with a
1:26:57
Speaker 3: lot of these you know, hyperskillers in large language mode
1:27:00
Speaker 3: in the sense of that we shouldn't put any guardrails
1:27:05
Speaker 3: on our development of the technology because we had to
1:27:07
Speaker 3: beat the Chinese Communist Party to it. And I'm wondering.
1:27:13
Speaker 3: And similarly, there were policies and the bidenministrations that were
1:27:15
Speaker 3: devoted to kind of restricting inputs into Chinese AI, like
1:27:19
Speaker 3: you know, export controls on certain chips and you know,
1:27:23
Speaker 3: advanced semiconductors. Do you I feel like right now there's
1:27:28
Speaker 3: a reconsideration of this happening. What what do you think
1:27:32
Speaker 3: about the frame of an AI race between the US
1:27:35
Speaker 3: and China is should we be thinking about a different
1:27:39
Speaker 3: paradigm for how to approach it. I can see why
1:27:42
Speaker 3: obviously you would want, you know, the US to have
1:27:44
Speaker 3: a technology that China is developing, But I also kind
1:27:48
Speaker 3: of feel like, who's actually winning this race other than
1:27:51
Speaker 3: the you know, people with AI, which is a relatively
1:27:55
Speaker 3: small number of people here in the Chinese I mean,
1:27:57
Speaker 3: how are you thinking about that right now?
1:27:59
Speaker 13: I've always used it as a as a false choice,
1:28:01
Speaker 13: right like, it's either our biggest companies or it's our
1:28:03
Speaker 13: biggest competitor.
1:28:04
Speaker 10: Either when we.
1:28:05
Speaker 13: Maintain our technological edge, or we have privacy and competition
1:28:09
Speaker 13: and governance as if there can be like no third option.
1:28:13
Speaker 13: And this race paradigm, it's like it feels like a
1:28:17
Speaker 13: race to the bottom because those who are driving the
1:28:20
Speaker 13: race are willing to sacrifice anything in everything. Right, it's
1:28:24
Speaker 13: innovation at any cost, even if the cost is democracy
1:28:28
Speaker 13: itself and increasingly humanity itself. And they themselves have gotten
1:28:32
Speaker 13: like those who are driving this ecosystem have gotten very
1:28:35
Speaker 13: comfortable just saying that outright, And so do we win
1:28:40
Speaker 13: if we let, you know, seven guys decide the fate
1:28:44
Speaker 13: of this country. It's capital markets, people's four oh one ks,
1:28:49
Speaker 13: the distribution of water and electricity.
1:28:53
Speaker 10: I don't know that that. I don't feel like a
1:28:55
Speaker 10: winner in that insect.
1:28:57
Speaker 3: And then allow peteggs at the used for autonomous weaponry
1:29:02
Speaker 3: exactly exactly.
1:29:04
Speaker 13: And I guess you know you have had your own
1:29:08
Speaker 13: experiences with emerging technology, right, drones specifically knowing.
1:29:13
Speaker 3: What we know and social media, I mean and social.
1:29:15
Speaker 13: Media knowing what you know today looking back, would you
1:29:20
Speaker 13: have considered a different approach to how we leverage the edge? Well,
1:29:25
Speaker 13: we had it, and that is that is the question.
1:29:29
Speaker 13: That I think policy makers need to have front of mind.
1:29:33
Speaker 13: You hope, and we work towards having an edge for
1:29:35
Speaker 13: as long as possible, but you should not policy make
1:29:38
Speaker 13: on the assumption that that edge has no end.
1:29:43
Speaker 3: I'm really glad you raise this because the answer is yes,
1:29:45
Speaker 3: obviously on drones and social media, where I actually think
1:29:50
Speaker 3: some of the abodministrations should get more more flack in
1:29:53
Speaker 3: some ways. But let's see, drones is a great example
1:29:56
Speaker 3: because part of what we've also learned that could be
1:30:00
Speaker 3: applicated with AI right is that we had this you know,
1:30:03
Speaker 3: the US had this advantage. We were at ahead of everybody.
1:30:06
Speaker 3: But part of what's happened now is if you look
1:30:08
Speaker 3: at Iran, they're making cheap drones that have done extraordinary
1:30:13
Speaker 3: damage to the US presence across the Middle East, and
1:30:16
Speaker 3: you know, probably contribute to their capacity to shut the
1:30:18
Speaker 3: straightform moves in the sense that they don't need a big, fancy,
1:30:22
Speaker 3: expensive drone like American defense contractors make like they can
1:30:26
Speaker 3: make this in their garage. Something similar may happen with
1:30:28
Speaker 3: AI right, where you know, there's no thought put in
1:30:32
Speaker 3: how this technology goes out in the world. Maybe you
1:30:35
Speaker 3: don't need the compute power that the US and China have,
1:30:38
Speaker 3: But in a few years people could be doing incredibly
1:30:41
Speaker 3: disruptive things right with pretty cheap, open source technology.
1:30:45
Speaker 10: That's exactly right.
1:30:47
Speaker 13: You don't actually need the most powerful or the largest
1:30:50
Speaker 13: model in order to do damage or to do harm
1:30:53
Speaker 13: if that's your intention. You can do quite a bit
1:30:55
Speaker 13: of harm with a fairly simple and uh and small model.
1:31:02
Speaker 13: And we I think over indexed our focus on the
1:31:06
Speaker 13: large model because again we're just in the competition frame
1:31:09
Speaker 13: as opposed to like, do we have baseline constraints and
1:31:13
Speaker 13: safeguards on traditional and conventional means of doing harm or
1:31:19
Speaker 13: conducting conflict and warfare, because the technology is just going
1:31:24
Speaker 13: to reflect or exacerbate what's already there, like a I
1:31:27
Speaker 13: will give you speed and scale to what you might already.
1:31:30
Speaker 10: Want to do.
1:31:31
Speaker 3: Well. One last question, I mean, because we can go
1:31:33
Speaker 3: on about this forever, but you're you're with you know,
1:31:36
Speaker 3: working with the AI Now Institute Now, which is like
1:31:38
Speaker 3: does does research and work on kind of developing understanding
1:31:42
Speaker 3: analysis of these things. If you're listening to this podcast,
1:31:46
Speaker 3: you're probably you know, taking interest in you know, geopolitics,
1:31:50
Speaker 3: foreign policy issues like that, and probably are wondering about AI,
1:31:56
Speaker 3: but it's hard for people to keep up, you know,
1:32:00
Speaker 3: and make sense of it all. Do you have any invite?
1:32:02
Speaker 3: What should people be following, whether that's people, places, publications,
1:32:08
Speaker 3: trends like just you know, I know there's a broad question,
1:32:11
Speaker 3: but what would you tell someone who's like, you know what.
1:32:13
Speaker 3: I try to follow the news, but it's kind of
1:32:16
Speaker 3: hard to keep up on this AI stuff, Like do
1:32:18
Speaker 3: you think there are particular places to go?
1:32:20
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean it's like a bit like drinking out
1:32:21
Speaker 10: of a fire hose.
1:32:22
Speaker 13: I like the Sinnecimne wants to say, just follow the money,
1:32:25
Speaker 13: and I think that actually a lot of the story
1:32:28
Speaker 13: will be covered in the IPOs, in the investment, in
1:32:33
Speaker 13: all of the activity around data centers.
1:32:36
Speaker 10: But I think that there are good publications like.
1:32:41
Speaker 13: The Vergeon Wired and they do really good reporting. Obviously,
1:32:45
Speaker 13: I have to plug AI now and a lot of
1:32:47
Speaker 13: the research that they're doing and we will continue to
1:32:50
Speaker 13: do in One of the things that I'll be working
1:32:52
Speaker 13: on is how do we take this like incredibly rich
1:32:55
Speaker 13: research and make it so that anyone who is interested
1:32:59
Speaker 13: in these or worried about these issues can can follow.
1:33:04
Speaker 13: There's almost too much out there.
1:33:07
Speaker 3: That's a good place to start. And actually the virgin
1:33:09
Speaker 3: Wired may not be in like the normal information diet
1:33:11
Speaker 3: for like all of the listeners like it's they've actually
1:33:14
Speaker 3: done quite good work on both the people involved and
1:33:16
Speaker 3: the technology involved, and obviously people should follow your work well.
1:33:21
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for joining us, say, I'm sure we'll
1:33:22
Speaker 3: have vacasion to talk about at some point.
1:33:25
Speaker 10: Awesome, Thanks for having Ben.
1:33:32
Speaker 1: Thanks again you Ran for joining the show, and we
1:33:34
Speaker 1: will talk to you guys next week. Pozz of the
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