Latest / Pod Save the World / Xi’s Just Not That Into You

Transcript

Xi’s Just Not That Into You · Pod Save the World

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Pod Save the World.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Detour.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Ben, right before we started recording, 404 Media reported that
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: a hacking group says it has penetrated the FBI and
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: stolen data on, quote, all FBI employees and applicants. A
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: rep from this hacking group says they have the agent's names,
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: home addresses, phone numbers, and information on their spouses. Do
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: you think that if Kash Patel had spent a little
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: less time, you know, helping FBI agents who'd been involved
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: in bestiality get into the force, that he might have,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: you know, locked down their IT systems, or is this unrelated?
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: They did.
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: I'd have to go back and review the tape here,
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: but my hazy recollection.
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: Of the early Doge days... was.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: Then dismantling some of the cyber defenses of the U.S.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Government.
• 1:02
  Speaker 4: They got a lot of attention, and a bunch of
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: nerds were warning that this is going to lead to
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: catastrophic hacks. So, yeah, maybe Cash's priorities of flying to
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: the boondoggle ranch and paving the way for bestiality enthusiasts
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: to join the Bureau is not turning out so well.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, firing everybody who was involved with prosecuting, like, January
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: 6th insurrectionists. Maybe he should have focused elsewhere. Yeah, when
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: asked a representative from this hacking group, they were asked,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: so what are you going to do with this information now?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: And they said, what we plan to do is not
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: something I'd call extortion, maybe coercion. That's pretty ominous. It's
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: not great when the FBI is getting hacked. It just
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: feels like that shouldn't be happening, Cash. Like, you know,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: from the cheap seats here.
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, there's so many things you could say
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: about this. I just point to one, which is the
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: FBI is the entity that does counterintelligence, like the people
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: that are supposed to uncover hackers and people spying on
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: us and Um, you don't have to be a fan
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: of the Americans to know that, uh, probably not good
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: if the hackers have all this detail on the people
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: doing the counterintelligence.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: All their identities. Uh, Ben is in New York this week.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: He's at the UN general assembly. You having a good time? You,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: do you feel more international this week, every year?
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: I do. I, I, I do love UNGA week coming
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: to you here from my childhood bedroom, which was redecorated
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: as soon as I went to college. But, um, uh, it's, yeah, I, I, Yeah,
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: I'm seeing a bunch of different people, activists, politicians. And
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: let's just say the mood, though, is not ebullient at
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: UNGA this year. There's a kind of, you know, grim
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: fatalism about what Trump's going to say. And, you know,
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: so we'll see. There's a lot going on there.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: At least he's only there briefly. We have a great
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: show for you guys. So we're going to preview President
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Trump's state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, talk about
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: what they are likely to discuss. maybe where the hell
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: all of our leverage went in these talks. And then
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: we're going to geek out about AI for a bit,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: especially the ways AI adoption that's currently happening is leading
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: to national security problems today. We are going to tell
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: you all about this week's UN General Assembly meeting. We'll
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: talk about the latest with the Houthi rebels offensive in
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Yemen and how it has put Trump in this just
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: brutal strategic bind with the Saudis. We're going to cover
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: elections in Russia that just happened, elections in air quotes,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: We'll talk about some other elections in Germany that really
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: are a problem. We'll talk about why so many European
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: leaders seem worried that Russia might test NATO. There was
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: this sort of like cacophony of social media anxiety about
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: it over the weekend that Ben and I were sending
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: back and forth to each other. And then, Ben, I
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: want to end this up with new, which is a
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: bit of a choose your own adventure section about national
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: security stupidity. You're going to get to decide how this
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: episode ends. So I'm excited for that. And then you
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: did our interview today. What are folks going to hear?
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: Tommy, we have another exclusive here on Pod State of
• 3:51
  Speaker 4: the World, which is Mahir Bhattar, who runs National Security
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: Action Organization. I'm on the board of Progressive Advocacy Organization.
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: They commissioned a poll ahead of the midterm elections on
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: public attitudes about foreign policy and national security. And I
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: have to say, like, I've read a lot of those
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: polls over the years. And this is a particularly interesting
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: one because it's quite different than any poll I've seen before.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: You know, like the Things like tariffs and corruption in
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: the war on Iran are the foremost concerns of voters.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: People are connecting what's happening in the world to what's
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: happening in their lives. So we talk a bit about
• 4:27
  Speaker 4: what the lessons are Democrats should take from that. We
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: talk about AI and how some of the risks people
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: are seeing in the economy and society are not yet
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: mirroring risks that people see on the national security side
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: and how Democrats might address that. And then just kind
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: of what are the takeaways on, on issues like Israel
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: and Palestine, where there's obviously been public opinion shifts and,
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: and how should we think about the landscape for the
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: midterm elections and the upcoming presidential campaign?
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Amazing. That's going to be upon us soon.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: Day after the election terms, buddy. It's starting.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: The engines are sounding.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: So it's a great time to do that conversation and
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: Ma really unpacks it well.
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: Excellent.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I know we have a lot of, uh, congressional
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: staffers and members of Congress and others who listen. So
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: pay attention to that section because this stuff will be applicable.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: But let's start with Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting in
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: Washington this week. So he's coming to DC for his
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: first state visit since 2015. He's skipping the UN General
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Assembly as far as we know. Maybe he'll make a
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: surprise appearance, but I kind of doubt it. The visit
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: comes as Trump is badly losing the war with Iran,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: as concerns about AI are increasing, and as the Chinese
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: economy is sputtering pretty badly actually. So the obvious ways
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: to address those issues and more is with useless ceremonies
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: and fancy dinners. So on Wednesday, Trump is going to
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: greet Xi at the airport at Joint Base Andrews. Ben,
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: can you think of a time when Obama ever met
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: a foreign leader at the airport? I couldn't.
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: I can't.
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: I mean, I think maybe Pope Francis, who would be
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: a higher on my list than Xi Jinping.
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: But I think this is, you know, Trump, this is what,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: you He's obsessed with how he's received.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: And he clearly has this deep affinity for Xi Jinping
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: because he's a dictator.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: And so I guess he likes to roll the red carpet.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know, man. I was talking to some Asia
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: experts today. The Chinese are huge on protocol, but this
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: looks like a supplicant. You know what I mean? The
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: person who meets you at the airport usually carries your
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: bag and gives you a ride home. I don't know
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: that they're going to view this as charming as much
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: as weak. We'll find out. For what it's worth, Xi
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: did not meet Trump at the airport in Beijing. He
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: sent the vice president. Um, then there's a state dinner
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: on Thursday. That'll be attended by a bunch of the
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: usual tech CEOs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Jensen Wong, Sam Altman. Uh,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: then she departs, uh, the U S Friday after tea
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: and a visit to the national archives. Um, the treasury secretary,
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Scott Besson, the, the pissy cadaver in charge of our money. Um,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: he met with his Chinese counterpart to prepare the meeting.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: They reportedly talked about trade tariffs, agriculture, and, uh, AI.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: On AI, Besson said the U.S. has proposed a, quote,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: notification mechanism to share information about AI threats to national security,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: which I saw that, Ben. I was like, okay, that's
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: like the bare minimum, right?
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: Bare minimum, yeah.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Politico reported that the notification mechanism is literally just, like,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Besson and his counterpart saying, like, let's not set our
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: phones to silent at night or something. Like, that's the
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: whole thing. It's not like a bunch of experts. It's
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: not some trigger of a notification event. If we hit
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: artificial general intelligence, it's just like Besant talking to some
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: guy in China. So that felt a little insufficient. We'll
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: dig more into AI in a minute, but just a
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: couple more things that could be on the agenda for
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Trump and for Xi. I suspect, Ben, that Trump will
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: try to get some help from Xi on Iran. They'll
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: obviously try to announce some sort of economic deal. It
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: seems like rare earths will come up. Ag purchases will
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: come up. Taiwan will come up. Um, there's a bunch
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: of reasons. I think Trump is in a pretty weak
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: position on a lot of those issues that we can
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: get into. Um, but just first, like, let's just pause there.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Like anything kind of jump out at you about this visit,
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: big picture, um, or anything you might expect from this one?
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: Well, I think the big picture is that a U
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: S China state visit is usually like an enormous opportunity
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: slash responsibility to address really foundational events that are shaping
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: the world. And instead, this is going to reflect what
• 8:39
  Speaker 4: Trump has done to the presidency. So he will probably
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: be trying very hard to get Xi Jinping to go
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: along with more economic pressure on Iran to buy less
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: Iranian oil.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: Or cooperate with U.S. sanctions.
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: He will be going around the bend once more on
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: this detente we have on trade that occasionally flares up.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: And He will be focused on, you know, like the protocol,
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: like we said, but also, you know, impressing his buddies
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: who are enriching him, you know, these tech oligarchs, including
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: Elon Musk, who's, you know, in for what, a quarter
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: of a billion bucks in the midterm elections, Tommy? I
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: don't know, like rewarding him with access to Xi Jinping,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: where there's huge economic interest. Like that's what's happening in
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: not kind of like, you know, If we didn't have
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: the unforced errors of a dumb trade war and a
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: dumb war in Iran and a protocol-obsessed president who likes
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: to surround himself with oligarchs, this would probably be entirely
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: a summit about artificial intelligence with some secondary issues in
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: geopolitics and the economy. So it's going to be a
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: reminder of what we're not doing that we should be doing.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking to Evan Medeiros, who's an Asia
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: policy expert who we worked with at the White House,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: and he said like the takeaway for him was like
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: there seems to be no serious preparation, very low expectations,
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: and no clear deliverables that have been articulated in any way.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, on Iran, yeah, I'm with you. I think
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: at a bare minimum, Trump could say to Xi, hey,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: can you please stop letting Chinese entities provide satellite imagery
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: to the IRGC that's being used to target American service
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: members and kill them? We'll see if he even does that.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: But I agree with you. Like, it seems very unlikely
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: that Trump will be able to talk the Chinese out
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: of buying, what is it, 80 to 90 percent of
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Iran's oil. The best case on an economic deal seems
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: to be that they'll just kind of continue the detente
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: on tariffs. A couple of places that Trump is weaker.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, we've discussed ad nauseum now the fact that
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Xi Jinping and the Chinese have all this leverage when
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: it comes to rare earth elements. Those are like the
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: magnets and other rare earths that are used in missile
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: guidance systems and smartphones and, you know, EV batteries. China
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: has a near monopoly on them. The Financial Times reported
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: that in August, shipments were actually down 13 percent from
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: August the year before and 20 percent from July. So
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: it seems like the Chinese are sending a little signal
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: that's like, hey, we can still, you know, screw you
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: with these things and cut you off. They're nowhere near
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: like the kind of Liberation Day tariff nadir, which was
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: maybe a tenth of what the exports are today. But
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: it's sort of that's like the lever she can press
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: that can, he knows, can kind of break Trump and
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: push back on anything. I imagine Trump is going to
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: hype up some random economic deals. Remember when he was
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: in China, like they pretended that Boeing was going to
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: sell all these planes. I don't think that's actually happened yet.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: The New York Times had a great piece on how
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: back in May, China agreed to all these ag purchases,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: but the actual purchases are way behind. You have to
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: imagine that Xi will continue to kind of methodically press
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Trump to try to weaken his or the U.S. commitment
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: to Taiwan, maybe kind of roll back some of these
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: arms sales. It's interesting, though, Ben, like what's not even
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: on the table is human rights or, you know, like
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Hugh Hewitt, Trump's buddy, is always talking about Jimmy Lai,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: this publisher in Hong Kong. That doesn't seem to be discussed.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: Speaking of press freedom, though, Ben, this moment from Trump
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: in the Oval Office the other day jumped out at me.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: I thought you'd enjoy this.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: China is one of the most repressive countries for journalists.
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: In the world. What signal does it send? Well, I
• 12:22
  Speaker 5: don't know about that. I think we're repressive also. We
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: get fake news.
• 12:25
  Speaker 6: We don't repress, but they write fake news.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: So that was before he kicked a bunch of news
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: outlets out of the White House. So hopeful stuff.
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, he would obviously prefer to have the press
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: environment that Xi Jinping has where, you know, everybody's required
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: to study Xi Jinping thought, you know, in China. I
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: think you make a good point about, like, people should
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: be mindful for the spin that's going to come out
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: of here, right? Because, you know, Trump will spin something
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: on Iran, for instance. Like, beyond not buying oil, there's
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: another thing that I think he will want from Xi Jinping,
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: which is that one of the reasons that oil prices
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: didn't go up more is that China has a significant
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: amount of energy reserves, and they simultaneously... started using less energy,
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: which we've talked about, to keep prices down, to keep
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: demand somewhat down. And we're able to tap into their
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: substantial reserves. So the favor that I'm sure Trump would
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: like to get before the midterm elections is some Chinese
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: policy that releases some of the pressure, relieves some of
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: the pressure on oil markets. We'll see if Xi Jinping
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: is in a giving mood on that or not. My
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: sense is he'll probably do very little, but maybe a
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: little bit that Trump tries to spin as bigger than
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: it is. But yeah, I mean, it's just, you know,
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: they'll be pushing on Trump on Taiwan. Maybe this is
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: the first summit since Trump disparaged South Korea.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: China's obviously allied with North Korea.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: I'd watch for whether, you know, in the Chinese readouts,
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: they seem to get anything from Trump on Taiwan arms sales.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: I think there's a very significant Taiwan arms sale that's
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: kind of frozen right now. I think $ 14 billion, so
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: not an inconsiderable amount. So, you know, nothing about this
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: will feel quite normal, including the fact that Trump will
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: be envious. Not only will he not be raising press
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: freedom and human rights issues, he will be envious of
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: the system that Xi Jinping leads, which accounts for part
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: of the reason why he's going to meet him at
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: the airport.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, to... Lick his boots. All right, let's turn to AI,
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: because there's been a lot of discussion lately about kind
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: of the existential threat to humanity that AI may or
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: may not pose. The honest answer there is like, no
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: one really knows. Everyone's kind of speculating or guessing. But
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of ways that artificial intelligence is
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: impacting our world right now that have national security implications
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: that are worth discussing. So a couple examples, Ben. First,
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Bloomberg has a big piece out this week about this
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: series of failures that led to the US airstrike on
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: the Iranian elementary school in Manab that killed over 150 people,
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: including 123 children. The problem started with the fact that
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: the U.S. was using dated intelligence and satellite imagery for
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: its targeting that didn't show that what was once an
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: IRGC facility had been renovated and converted at least partially
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: into a school, an elementary school. But then CENTCOM relied
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: heavily on artificial intelligence for its targeting processes, specifically this
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Palantir program called MAVEN. that pulls together all these different
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: data points, like 150 data points, to create a list
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: of targets. I think military planners, according to this report,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: wrongly thought that Maven would identify and sort out outdated intelligence,
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: but it did not. And Maven replaced, in minutes, with AI,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: these processes that used to take human analysts hours and
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: hours of painstaking work. And then on top of that,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Pete Hegseth got rid of 90% of the people who
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: are supposed to step in and review targeting packages. to
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: prevent civilian casualties. So this cascade of failures that led
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: to the worst civilian casualty incident in the 21st century
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: involving children. The second piece we wanted to highlight was
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: CNN had this article about how AI nearly started a
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: war between the US and China. So the story was
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: this past spring, there was a military analyst who used
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: AI to create a report, and the report falsely claimed
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: that a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear weapons components. Um,
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: this flipped out everybody in the Pentagon, uh, and luckily
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: they kind of like double checked this AI generated Intel
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: before us forces literally boarded the ship. But apparently it
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: was a very close call. They were like hours away
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: in more broadly speaking, the article gets into the ways
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: that the Pentagon and the intelligence community is really pushing
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: itself to use more artificial intelligence today. But that adoption
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: has been messy. It's different systems at different parts of
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: the government. using these different tools. And there's no real
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: way to kind of account for the fact that these
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: things just hallucinate shit sometimes and get stuff wrong. And
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: the third bend is there's been a bunch of reports
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: about artificial intelligence being used in elections. The New York
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Times wrote up some examples of state backed efforts by
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Iran and China to basically spam social media with these
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: AI generated posts. There's also private companies in Israel offering
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: similar services. And the Wall Street Journal had a big
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: piece about how the upcoming Israeli election is just like
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: flooded with AI generated videos and slop and crap. One
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: Israeli research outfit found that one in eight recent Israeli
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: election related posts, social media posts was created or altered
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: by AI. So it's just this like deluge of garbage.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: So Ben, I mean, obviously those intelligence failures at the
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: top or horrific and tragic and, you know, kind of
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: like things that need to be addressed immediately. I would
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: say like in terms of the biggest risks I worry
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: about in the kind of medium term from AI is
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: It's like people like Trump or Bibi Netanyahu or other
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: bad actors using artificial intelligence to rip our society apart,
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: both through kind of like election disinformation, but also just
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: like generally by spreading disinformation online.
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think let's kind of catalog some of these
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: national security risks because, you know, we'll posit that people
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: are worried about mass job dislocation. People are worried about
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: data centers taking power and water and other resources. Peter,
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: people are worried about You know, there are kids being
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: taught by chatbots, you know. But if you take a
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: step back, the national security risks are really acute. One
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: is cyber risks. And so we saw in the Hugging
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: Face incident, the open AI agents kind of escape human
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: control for a time and, you know, hack into the Internet.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: I mean, massive cyber disruption because the AI got loose
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: or got curious or was just trying out different things.
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: That should be a concern to people. Just the ability
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: to do offensive cyber and the ease with which you
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: can do it, I think should be a concern for people.
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: The risk that you can use AI to build biological pathogens,
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: create biological weapons, something anthropic is warned about, that's a concern.
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: And then, yeah, as you point out, like AI being
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: implemented into kind of command and control and targeting decisions
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: before we put guardrails around it. Look, it's not a
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: war crime if the AI is the one that picked
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: out the girls' school.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Like it still is.
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: And in the rush to adapt this technology and to
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: think you're cutting edge, I think most people would be
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: pretty uncomfortable with AI making totally autonomous decisions to kill people,
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: which is something that I think is happening with an
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: alarming degree of frequency these days. You hear some of
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: this in the Russia-Ukraine war. And that's just the flavor
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: of it. I mean, in the Biden administration, they were
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: trying to negotiate the Chinese around getting AI out of
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: any nuclear command and control for quite obvious reasons.
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: And look, you talked last week, Tommy, about.
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: The Houthis using AI to mimic the voice of a
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: commander in order to get them to surrender. I mean,
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: let's say the AI wants to mess with us. Well,
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: one way might be interesting in a kind of war games,
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: if anybody remembers that movie. But like, let's try to
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: get the US and China into a war. Like that
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: might be interesting for the AI to observe, you know,
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: humanity or something. So these risks are very real. And
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: that comes back to the Xi Jinping thing. I think
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: it's very important for us occasionally to do the thought
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: exercise of what would be happening if we had competent leadership.
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: Because what I think would be happening is we would
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: not be in a war with Iran, as like I said,
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: we would not be in a trade war, And this
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: entire UN General Assembly would be dominated by concerns around
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: artificial intelligence.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: And you would have a.
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: US-Chinese summit that is setting up... And I know people say, well,
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: the Chinese, they may not want to negotiate this either.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: We fucking have to negotiate on this. And you'd be
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: setting up working groups and all these different aspects of
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: AI and the guardrails needed and the communication necessary to
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: avoid misunderstandings or cyber attacks that can cascade.
• 21:07
  Speaker 6: And.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: That bilateral summit would, I think, probably inform some broader
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: UN-type process where other countries are able to participate in
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: a discussion about guardrails. And it is just very striking
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: that that's not happening at the same time that more
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: and more people are figuring out, wait a second, we're
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: not really ready for these technologies to be unleashed on
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: the world.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Trump mentioned artificial intelligence during his UN General Assembly
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: speech on Tuesday. Let's watch that excerpt because it's sort
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: of telling.
• 21:38
  Speaker 6: The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: spoken of so much now, here and after officially called superintelligence,
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: changing the name, and that the use of the word
• 21:57
  Speaker 6: artificial makes intelligence fake.
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: It makes it sound fake, and it is not fake.
• 22:02
  Speaker 5: It's actually amazing.
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports.
• 22:09
  Speaker 6: From this point forward, all of United States documents and
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: more accurate term, super, as opposed to artificial.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: So it's super intelligence.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: So he's worried about the branding for AI and at
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: the same time, not in any ways. He's actually refusing
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: to regulate it or put a sort of global framework
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: in place to protect us from the downsides of it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: So that's great.
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: Can you imagine being in that room and being a
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: representative of some country that is not developing these crazy
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: models that could kill us all? And you've got Donald Trump,
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: the one person in the room who could actually do
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: the most to put guardrails around this stuff. And he's
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: just talking about a branding exercise and how super it is. And,
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: you know, probably reading an excerpt that was prepared by like,
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: you know, the all-in pod.
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: Stephen Miller, yeah.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: David Sachs or something. I mean, because Trump's concerns about AI...
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: I think, amount to two things. One, it inflates the
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: stock market. The whole stock market is kind of like
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: this AI pyramid scheme where a bunch of companies keep
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: passing the same money around. They invest in the frontier
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: companies that then buy the data centers and it just
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: keeps on going around and he doesn't want to stop
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: the juice because the stock.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Market matters that much to him, of course.
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: And then the other thing is that his big donors
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: like Elon Musk and, you know, all these other tech bros,
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: you know, the Marc Andreessen of the world, Peter Thiel,
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: they all want an unregulated thing and talk about the
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: globalist elite that wants to regulate things like AI. And
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: that's all he cares about. And frankly, you know, he's
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: 80 years old. He's not going to be around for
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: the species extinction that is, you know, being predicted as
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: 10% chance in.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: The next decade. Yeah, he's not the leader we need
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: for this moment. That is for goddamn sure. Speaking of superintelligence, Ben,
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: CrookedCon is coming up, and the lineup is here. We'll
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: have a bunch more announcements to come. But we just
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: want to announce some of the first batch of names,
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: including some elected officials, some campaign strategists, pollsters, organizers, and
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: some of your favorite crooked hosts. Some early names are
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: people like Congressman Jamie Raskin, who you know is a
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: critical voice on Oversight. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Senator Chris
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Van Hollen, who's been a really important progressive voice on
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: foreign policy. Ben Wickler, master organizer from Wisconsin. Jennifer Welsh
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: from the I've Had It pod. There are many, many
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: more people on this list. I have like 30 names
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: in front of me. I'm not going to read them all.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: But CrookedCon is going to be amazing. It was a
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: blast last year. The vibes were immaculate. We expect nothing
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: less this year. Please come join us. Prices will go
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: up on October 6th. So get your ticket now. Go
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: to crookedcon.com. For more information and to get tickets, that's crookedcon.com.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Mental health is top
• 25:11
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• 27:57
  Speaker 2: we mentioned, Ben, the UN General Assembly is upon us.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Ben is there for it. It's the week-long meeting where
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: the 193 member countries, organizations are given the opportunity to
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: come together, give a speech. They do some UN business
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: and then they have a bunch of meetings on the
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: sidelines with each other to try to get stuff done
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: and destroy Manhattan traffic. Last year, Trump accused the UN
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: of triple sabotage.
• 28:18
  Speaker 5: Remember this?
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Because of the malfunctioning escalator.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Oh, I forgot the elevator.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Teleprompter and the audio issues. It was a triple sabotage.
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: So hopefully he doesn't fall victim to like Antifa elevator
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: or something this year. But like the Met Ball, UNGA
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: has a theme. Let me run this one by you, Ben.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Restoring trust, managing transformation, a United Nations that delivers for all.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: It's good to see that like bad focus grouped democratic
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: slogans have made it to the UN. It's real stirring.
• 28:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: I don't think that that one's going to pass the
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: smell test with anyone. And look, the reality is there's
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: very little that the UN and its staff and leadership
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: can do.
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: This is where I defend them, right?
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: Because if you've got a permanent five members of the
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: UN Security Council that include Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: and have veto over, you know, the most important issues
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: in the world, like, and the US withholding dues and
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: things like that, it's just, you're not going to do whatever.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: That word salad suggests you're going to do.
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, Trump's, building a board of peace that he
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: personally controls with a slush fund to be like a
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: counter institution.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: So I don't know. It's nice that the UN gets
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: people together. It's still a convening force.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: It's still a place where people can have dialogue on
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: all these issues.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: So it still matters.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: But it's not, you know, you were there and there
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: Obama years.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: This felt like the center.
• 29:41
  Speaker 5: Of the world.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: It was a lot bigger deal.
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it felt like we were actually, you know, issue
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: by issue taking on everything that was happening. And that
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: wasn't unique to us. I mean, that was the case
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: for any U.S. administration for most of the last 80 years.
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: Like now Trump parachutes in to insult some people, does
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: a few meetings, probably raises some money and takes off.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: I just like that they have terrible branding like other Democrats.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: So as you mentioned, Trump's not a fan of the organization.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: He's tried to undercut it in a million different ways.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: He's cut off their funding instead of the Board of Peace,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: although the Board of Peace has just utterly failed. A
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: big focus this year is AI, no surprise. For some reason,
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is hosting an AI event at the UN.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure what's happening there. This is the last
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: UNGA for outgoing Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez. He's going to
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: give his final address to the General Assembly on Tuesday morning.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: His successor has not yet been selected. CNN says that
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Costa Rica's former vice president, Rebecca Grinspan, is the leading
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: candidate to replace him. But we all heard Trump float
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: FIFA president Gianni Infantino for the job over the summer.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: So this could always get dumber. A couple of notable
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: things about this week. Trump delivered his speech Tuesday. It
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: was mostly the same bullshit. It did include the AI
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: comments we played earlier and then a threat to Iran
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: that we'll play later. So Trump took some time out
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: to meet with New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani at
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Gracie Mansion. He also met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: on Tuesday. He's going to meet with French President Emmanuel
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Macron and have a pull-aside with Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: Our excellent producer, Anisha, mentioned, Ben, that Nicolas Maduro, Rodriguez's predecessor,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: is really only like a 30-minute subway ride away. True.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: They wanted to do a unique photo op. They could
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: go to the prison immediately. Kind of, you know, TikTok style. Like,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: what's her name? Who's the fired DHS person?
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Chrissy Noem.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Her name is already erased from my brain.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Trump's going to meet with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: for the first time. Then he goes back to D.C.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: to schlep she's bags or whatever and lick his boots.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Nengar, who's coming to town. Sadly,
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Zohra Mamdani will not be able to arrest him. But
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: that hasn't stopped Bibi from putting out super lame videos
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: like this one. Let's watch.
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: Shame on you, Mr.
• 31:54
  Speaker 7: Mamdani. Shame on you for supporting the Hamas terrorist monsters
• 31:59
  Speaker 7: who butchered our people. Shame on you for inciting riots
• 32:02
  Speaker 7: against New York Jews. I'm coming to the UN. I'm
• 32:05
  Speaker 7: going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers. And
• 32:09
  Speaker 7: I'm going to tell the truth about you.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: It's just like every word of that is a lie. Also,
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: like everyone hates Netanyahu. That's only going to help Mamdani.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Like Israel's critics hate Netanyahu. Israel's supporters hate Netanyahu. Democrats
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: hate Netanyahu, Republicans hate Netanyahu. And he's just like, the
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Israeli ambassador to the UN was saying on TV that
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Mamdani should be arrested. It's like, this is going to
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: backfire on you fucking morons. I know you're playing election
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: politics in Israel, but this is harming you here in
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: the US.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, if you stacked Zohra Mamdani's approval rating
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: against Bibi Netanyahu's globally, like, you know, this is not
• 32:47
  Speaker 4: a close call. And frankly- the percentage of people on
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: the world that agree with Mamdani about Israel and Palestine
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: and Gaza is gotta be, I don't.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: Know, 80, 90%, you know?
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: Uh, so yeah, obviously Netanyahu is only speaking to like
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: his shrinking sliver of audience among American elites and some.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Smaller number of Americans than used to be the case.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: But it's just so stupid and hackish and it's offensive, right?
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: Like I was offended to see the Israeli ambassador be like,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: they should arrest Mamdani. Like what other ambassador of a
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: foreign country would like call for the arrest of the
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: mayor of the biggest city in the country, you know?
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: And two other things about this, Tommy, like one is, I.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: Was mentioning this to our producers before we came on,
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: but like, I'm struck when I talk to audiences Like yesterday,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: I spoke to a group of kind of activists from
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: around the world. They follow Mamdani very closely. Like he
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: is wildly popular around the world. Like people are tracking
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: his Instagram account. People are tracking what he's doing. So
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: Bibi is just elevating that. I mean, I guarantee you
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: that that kind of video just redounds to Zohar Mamdani's benefit.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: No doubt.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: It's not persuading a single person to change their mind
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: about Mamdani and probably introducing some people to Mamdani in
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: ways that they probably end up agreeing. The other thing
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: I'm going to make the mistake, Tommy, of like responding
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: to the comments a bit, which is there's a narrative. Well,
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: there's a narrative sometimes that I've heard that, you know,
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: Mamdani shouldn't have called Bibi a war criminal because then
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: he'll use that in his politics and it could help
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: him in the election.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: Let me tell you this.
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: I have heard that same fucking narrative every election for
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: the last, like, 15 years that Israel has continued to
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: choose Bibi Netanyahu as its prime minister. And what that
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: is a recommendation of is just never criticize Israel. It's
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: the same mentality that led Joe Biden to never break
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: publicly with Israel. It's like, we can't criticize them because
• 34:58
  Speaker 4: if we do criticize them, they might use that criticism
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: in their politics.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Well, that's an insane.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: Way to go through life, that we should never use
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: our voice because- someone might try to manipulate further.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: They're already, you know, like we've not gotten a.
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: Very good window into the health of Israeli society in
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: the last few days with the release of this new
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: documentary film, Naza, about the genocide in Gaza, where they're
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: going to try to denaturalize like the Israeli citizens who
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: made it. Like, I'm sorry, I'm glad Mamdani's speaking out.
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: And frankly, the fact that they react so hyperbolically indicates
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: that they know they have a problem. It indicates that
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: they know that that's hitting the target.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they think it's good politics. I just don't.
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: And also the Trump administration once again denied a visa
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. So he has to
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: join events virtually, which like someone explained to me someday
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: how that helps the peace process or, you know, get
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: to a two-state solution as far off as it is. So, yeah,
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's the gist of UNGA, Ben. Anything else
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: kind of you're looking at this week or just kind
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: of another underwhelming The only thing I'd.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: Say, again, like in the demerit category, is that this
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: is ostensibly, I think, climate week at the UN. It
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: is striking how much that's fallen off the agenda, given
• 36:18
  Speaker 4: what's happening in the world. It might be time to
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: bring that back a bit, given the gas prices that.
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: We're paying right now.
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or the super element we got out here. All right,
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: let's turn to the Houthis. Last week, we did a
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: deep dive into how the Houthi rebels took control of
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: all this territory in Yemen and and how they now
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: essentially control access to the Red Sea via the Bab
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: al-Mandab Strait. We're not going to revisit all of that,
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: so check out last week's episode if you want the
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: kind of backstory. But since then, the Houthi military campaign
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: has expanded. On Saturday, they launched a bunch of missiles
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: and drones at Riyadh and at more oil facilities in
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia. They are fighting at the same time to
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: take control of more territory in Yemen's southwest mountains. Basically,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: what they're trying to do is control some territory that
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: would allow them to cut off government forces in a
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: city in the southwest, which would be a big deal militarily.
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: A couple things worth just sort of noting. The Saudis
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: claim the Houthis fired a drone towards Mecca. That would
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: be a bit of an unsettling escalation then and a huge,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: you know, sectarian ramifications. The Houthis deny it, but just
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: something to watch. The UN says that 130,000 people have
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: been displaced over the last few weeks by the fighting
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: in Yemen. Thousands of people actually crossed the Bab al-Mandeb
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Strait to Djibouti The BBC had some great coverage from
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: a refugee camp there that's worth everyone's time. And the
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: World Food Program says more broadly that 18 million people
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: are facing acute food insecurity in Yemen. The AP reported
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: that Houthi officials met with U.S. embassy staff in Oman
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: and basically reaffirmed their commitment to the ceasefire with the U.S.,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: which gets us to our next story, which is the
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: New York Times had this big pullout about Trump's indecision
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: over what to do about the Houthis. Basically, the gist is,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: On Wednesday of last week, Trump was not going to
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: get involved. Then on Thursday, he changed his mind after
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: another request from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: then on Sunday, Trump apparently changed his mind again, like
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: right as attacks were about to begin, as bombs are
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: being loaded on the planes. And so it just seems like, look,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: and I'm glad the U.S. is not getting deeper involved
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: in the fight with the Houthi rebels again. I think
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: people forget that we were bombing them for like 50
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: days last year, and it didn't really do much. But
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: it seems like Trump is in a terrible situation then,
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: because if he goes after the Houthis, they're going to
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: start targeting U.S. ships in the Red Sea. Oil prices
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: will go up. Voters will hate us getting sucked deeper
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: into the war. But if he hangs MBS out to dry,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: the Saudis are more likely to figure out, I think,
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: a path forward that just sort of ignores U.S. interests.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: And I think Trump seemed to be alluding to the
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: fork in the road he has generally about Iran policy
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: during his UNGA speech. Let's listen to that excerpt.
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: But I have a big decision to make.
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them
• 39:11
  Speaker 6: rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever
• 39:15
  Speaker 6: was before?
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic?
• 39:20
  Speaker 6: Do I drive them into hell with no chance of
• 39:22
  Speaker 6: survival and no hope of future greatness or generations? But
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: I believe we'll make a deal Right? after the election
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: because it doesn't make sense for them not to. They're
• 39:35
  Speaker 6: waiting to see how I do in the midterm election.
• 39:38
  Speaker 6: What they don't realize is that I'm not running.
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: So there's a little genocidal threat from the well of
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: the UN General Assembly. Ben, what'd you make of the
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: speech And kind of the reporting on, you know, Trump
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: and the Houthis and sort of what's been happening on
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: the ground over the last couple of weeks.
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, to continue the theme of like what's
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: happening and what should happen. It is not tough or
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: strong six months into the dumb war that you started
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: that is creating massive global economic shortages that is screwing
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: over every country that is representing that hall to stand
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: up and be like, I have a decision to make.
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: I could not like, guess what? everybody's read the true
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: social posts where you said the exact same fucking thing
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: for like five months about this decision to annihilate them
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: or not, you know, and nobody believes it because the
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: reality is nobody thinks that the Iranians are begging for
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: a deal because the Iranians are winning the war and
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: the Iranians are pretty transparent. They say out loud that they're,
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: they're using their leverage to impose as much pain as
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: they can on the United States vis-a-vis the global economy.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: And to even put at risk the dollars reserve currency,
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: like the Iranians are very, The world understands the Iranian strategy.
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: They may not like it because they're suffering shortages. What
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: they don't understand is what Trump is doing. And when
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: he gets up there and says, I don't essentially know
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: what I'm doing. I could do this or I could
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: do this. And these are two wildly different things. It
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: doesn't instill a lot of confidence. And pointing to a
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: midterm election that you are very likely to lose as
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: like the key barometer of your decision-making kind.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: Of- So weird. I mean, I think what he was
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: trying to tell the Houthis is like, don't play me
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: for time to get past this election because I don't
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: care about the election. But all it did in practice
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: was show how focused he is on the election, that
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: he is actually mentally tying the issues together. It was
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: just like, seemed self-defeating.
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: Everything about it was self-defeating.
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, I just can't imagine he's like, oh, this
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: is a great, and we should say, by the way,
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: that the United Nations was founded out of the vision
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: of the United States and Franklin Roosevelt to be a
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: place where you prevented nuclear annihilation from happening and to
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: be a place where you tried to prevent wars. And
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: so we have fallen a very far distance in the
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: 80 plus years since that we now have a president
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: of the United States standing in the well of the
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: UN threatening to destroy an entire country. You know, that's
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: not like something that we get a pass for here
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: in the US. Now, I should say, like in terms
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: of what happened or what should happen, there's plenty of
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: good reasons to not start bombing the Houthis, right? And
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: one of them is that we've tried it. Like Trump
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: tried it. Biden tried it. I mean, one of my
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: favorite Joe Biden quotes was when he said, and do
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: you remember this one, Tommy, where he said, is it effective,
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: the bombing of the Houthis?
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: No.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: Will it continue?
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: Like that's a thing that Joe Biden said out loud.
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: They kind of summed up the insanity of American post
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: 9-11 foreign policy. And the reality is like what needs
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: to happen with the Houthis as with Iran is a
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: negotiation about the future of Yemen. Like we have to
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: accept and the Saudis have to accept that these people
• 42:39
  Speaker 4: are not just like going to go away or surrender.
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: They live in Yemen. They want some say over their lives,
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: whether we like that or not. And unless we want
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: this country to be a permanent humanitarian disaster in which
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: there's periodic bombing campaigns and offenses and ceasefires that are
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: routinely violated, we need to negotiate something in Yemen, just
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: like we need to negotiate something with Iranians. There's not
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: a military solution to these problems. And 25 years after 9-11,
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: Like that should be apparent to us.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, just a couple more odds and ends about the
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: war in Iran generally. So the Washington Post had a
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: report last week that says the Pentagon is lying about
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: the number of U.S. troops who have died in the war.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: So the official casualty count or death count is 18,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: but the Washington Post cites a couple of sources. One
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: who says actually 22 service members have died. Another says 23.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Three contractors have also died. The post says, quote, not
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict,
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: but have involved U.S. personnel who are in the Middle
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: East amid ongoing hostilities, this person said. So just another
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: piece of evidence about how this administration is lying and
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: covering up the true cost of the war. And then
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Alex Ward at The Wall Street Journal reported that the
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: Trump administration is proposing a $ 5 billion fund to help
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: countries in the Gulf rebuild their energy infrastructure and kind
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: of get around the Strait of Hormuz. which does not
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: suggest that the Trump administration or Trump's team is confident
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: about them solving the problem in the near term and
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: kind of loosening the Iranian grip on the Strait of Hormuz.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: It seems like they are making long-term plans for the
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Iranians to be in control of it, which is, I think,
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: you know, again, another sign that they are losing.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: It's a sign that they're losing.
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: It's a sign that they are adapting to a world
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: in which Iran is quite likely maybe in partnership with
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: Oman to extract revenue.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: From the Strait of Hormuz.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: So they can talk tough, but their actions tell a
• 44:35
  Speaker 4: different story, that they're adjusting to a reality created entirely
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: by their war.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: This was not a problem before the war.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: The other thing is, I'm not even sure that it's
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: effective because the Saudi pipeline, it was another way to
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: get energy out of the region to global markets, has
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: been bombed and taken offline by the Houthis and other
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: Iranian proxies. So It's not as if we stay in
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: this kind of forever war they were in with Iran.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: It's not as if they couldn't do some damage to
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: other infrastructure that is built to try to get oil
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: and gas out of there from some other route.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they seem like the Houthis have been creative and
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: their tactics have adapted and the U.S.s have not. This
• 45:20
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  Speaker 2: or domain, that's squarespace.com slash world. Pate of the World
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: is brought to you by Hungry Root. Anyone who has
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  Speaker 2: to get 40% off your first box and free item
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: of your choice for life. Let's turn to Russia. So
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Russia held its first parliamentary election since the war in
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: Ukraine began. These were votes for the lower house, the Duma,
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: which happened once every five years. Here's what we know
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: so far about the results. In a shocking turn of events, Ben,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: United Russia, which is Putin's party, is on track to
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: have its biggest majority in history. with a record 355
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: seats in the body of 450. The other parties that
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: will have seats in the Duma have basically support the
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: war and don't oppose the Kremlin in any way. So it's, again,
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: was not a real election. Turnout was reportedly 59%, but
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: outside observers think those numbers are inflated. Russians were also
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: encouraged to vote online this year because what could go
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: wrong with that? And Putin even put out a video
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: of himself like playing with his mouse at his computer,
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: ostensibly claiming he's voting. As the voting was happening, Ukraine
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: launched a major attack on Moscow. They hit an oil refinery.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: They hit a bunch of neighboring residential buildings. And Russia
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: carried out a barrage of missile strikes on industrial facilities
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: across Ukraine this week. Bigger picture, Ben, it seemed like
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: the anxiety about Russia potentially testing NATO in some new
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: way hit kind of a fever pitch over the weekend.
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: It was a combination of kind of maybe fake news
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: or misleading or alarmist news on social media. But then
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: also real comments from European intelligence officials and European political
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: leaders about growing concern about Russian hybrid attacks. There was
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: French President Emmanuel Macron. He said he ordered a plan
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: to protect French critical infrastructure. And he did this like
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: big briefing for a bunch of the political parties. in France.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Russia was planning drone
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: and missile attacks on NATO countries that support Ukraine. Last week,
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: we talked about that Russian drone strike on a train
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: that shortly after, a train station shortly after a train
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: went through that had a bunch of like European national
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: security officials and Boris Johnson, the former prime minister of
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: the U.K., So I don't know, Ben, you and I
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: were texting some of this stuff back and forth over
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: the weekend. What did you make of the increased anxiety?
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: And is there anything to say about the Russian elections?
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: I feel like, of course, Putin's party did well.
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the Russian elections are no surprise. I have to say,
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: I was alarmed by some of the messages out of Europe.
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: Me too.
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: I talked to some people that are close to European governments,
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: and everybody kind.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: Of swears that, no, this is real.
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: Like, I mean, Macron, for instance, you know, gathered all
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: the potential presidential candidates in the next French election, their
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: parties to kind of brief them, kind of an extraordinary
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: show of like, this is a national issue, national emergency.
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: The talk out of Poland was about the inevitability, essentially,
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: of Russian attacks on European soil. You know, and these
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: run the gamut from potential military actions into the Baltics
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: to hitting European countries directly that are providing support to Ukraine.
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: In talking to people, what you hear is that the
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: intelligence about escalating these kind of gray space things that
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: have already happened, like kind of drone probing, potential kind
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: of sabotage attacks, potential drone attacks themselves, that that's kind
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: of what's in the intelligence that this could become increasingly,
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: you know, kinetic, to use a jargony word, but blowing
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: stuff up in Europe, which is, again, already happened, but,
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: you know, could escalate. And that, you know, that should
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: get people's attention. I have to say also, Tommy, after
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: kind of freaking out about that for a couple days,
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: when the Ukrainians, like, do the single largest strike on
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: Moscow of the war, which they did a couple days ago.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: It makes me nervous.
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: Like, do I understand the Ukrainian desire to impose a
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: cost on Russia?
• 51:36
  Speaker 5: Sure.
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: But like, I also think that, you know, at a
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: certain point, that's going to lead to an escalation into Europe. And, um,
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: that again, what should be happening is like a negotiation
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: by people other than Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcoff to
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: try to deescalate this thing, because right now we're on,
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: we're going in one direction and it's not the right direction. Um,
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: because you don't want to see attacks in Europe.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: I get the Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil and gas
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: infrastructure because there's an obvious strategic path. There's an obvious
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: strategy there. It did seem like the strikes over the
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: weekend were timed to be at the end of the
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: Duma elections to send a political message and maybe scare
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: the population, which I agree with you. It seems like
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: on one hand, I get it. On the other hand,
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: it does seem likely to get Putin to further escalate
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: because it seems like that is his only speed.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it seemed like it was meant to kind
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: of personally humiliate Putin, right? Who in the past has
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: not taken kindly to any effort to, you know, when
• 52:42
  Speaker 4: Hillary Clinton criticized his parliamentary election, you know, 2011 or 12,
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: I forget which year, you know, Putin responded pretty forcefully.
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: So again, like, I know people could say, well, you know,
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: you can't put any constraints on the Ukrainians.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: Like, I just, When you have a bunch of Europeans
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: saying that they're going to start attacking Europe and killing
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: people in these countries, I'm not sure like a massive
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: drone bombardment of Moscow is like, you know, the right approach.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: Well, look, from a Ukrainian perspective, like I'm not saying
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: they want any Europeans to get hurt or killed, but
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: they would certainly love them to be dragged in and
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: to be part of this.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: To be involved in the war.
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, I, you know, I don't. I don't want
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: to assign that intention to the Ukrainians.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not saying that was their intent, but I mean,
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: that's what happened.
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but, you know, one could draw that. And again,
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: they're the ones fighting. They're the ones dying. They're the
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: ones who got invaded. Like, none of this is their fault.
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: They did not bring this upon themselves and they're fighting
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: an existential war.
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: But I do think that that's why.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: It's important for external parties, Europe and the United States,
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: to be doing more to try to turn the temperature down,
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: in part for Ukraine's sake too, right? Because it's not
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: as if, you know, they're not suffering in this war too.
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: And it just, it feels like there's no blueprint for
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: that other than Jared Kushner giving interviews in which he
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: demands that the Ukrainians, you know, accept all Putin's terms,
• 54:06
  Speaker 4: as we saw last week.
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: And then meanwhile, you know, we talked a couple weeks
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: ago about these election results in Germany, where the far right,
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: in some cases, neo-Nazi AFD party took 44% of the
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: vote in this region of Germany called Sachsen-Anhalt. It's a
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: small state in eastern Germany. There were more elections in
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Germany over the weekend, and the results were once again
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: terrible for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the CDU party. First,
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: there were elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The AFD got the largest
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: share of the vote there with 38%, but the CDU
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: didn't even reach the 5% threshold required to get a
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: seat in the state parliament. Now, I think that will
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: not be as a dire outcome there. Because the Social
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Democrats did well enough that they can probably cobble together
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: a coalition that will keep the AFD out of power.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: But it's still, you know, the trend is the same.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: The AFD is doing well and the CDU is collapsing.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: And then in Berlin, the left-wing Die Linke Party beat
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: out the CDU in the mayoral elections. So, again, you
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: have these centrist establishment parties getting crushed from new, more
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: extreme parties from the right and the left. There was
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: a poll released Tuesday by a broadcaster in Germany called RTL-NTV.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: They found that 55 percent of voters in Germany would
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: support Merz stepping down as chancellor. There was another recent
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: poll found that only 13 percent of respondents thought Merz
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: was doing a good job. He has vowed to stay
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: in office, Ben. But boy, like given all that we
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: just discussed about threats to NATO and Trump and destabilize
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: the U.N. being destabilized, it's not the best time to
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: have like a hobbled German chancellor as the far right
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: neo-Nazi party rises.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, if you're looking at a pretty unstable era
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: for the next two years, where the war in Iran
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: could drag on with acute global economic challenges, maybe some
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: financial crisis on the horizon, AI could lead to kind
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: of like cyber disruptions, like I talked about. Russia could
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: escalate into Europe. We're dealing with a situation in which
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: Friedrich Merz clearly does not have the confidence of his
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: own public, right? And so much so that a far
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: right part of the AFD is kind of replacing the
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: CDU as the right wing party in Germany. Emmanuel Macron
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: is a deeply unpopular lame duck president as they prepare
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: for an election in which Marine Le Pen from the
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: far right national rallies, probably the front runner in that election, right?
• 56:29
  Speaker 4: Andy Burnham became prime minister of the United Kingdom like
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: a few weeks ago, right? This is not the ideal
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: situation to be going through really acute political challenges in Europe. And,
• 56:43
  Speaker 4: you know, like.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: Burnham is off to a pretty good start. So that's
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: a good sign.
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: But like, man, there's a lot riding on the direction
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: of French and German politics in the next couple of years.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little scary. Finally, Ben, we're going to
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: try something new to close the show out. So we're
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: going to do the classic kind of choose your own
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: adventure novel style ending. You get to choose how this
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: episode ends. I'm going to give you three options for
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: stories about military genius during the Trump administration, and you
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: tell us which one you want to dig into, okay?
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: Option one, loading the Triumphal Arch with drones and sniper ammo.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Option two, the Pentagon implementing a waist-to-height requirements and grooming
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: standards for anyone who wants to attend Pete Hegseth's State
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: of the Force speech, whenever the hell it is. Three,
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: operational security for the F-35, our fighter jet. We could
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: talk about how fighter jet components disappeared in Hong Kong
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: or could be accessed in Saudi Arabia by the Chinese.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: Which option tickles your fancy?
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: I think you just kind of identified the third option.
• 57:45
  Speaker 4: I have one question for you before I answer, which
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: is which of those three Trump scandals do you think
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: I did an MS Now hit on?
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: Oh, ooh, the arch.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: Height to weight, man.
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: Oh, no way.
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: That is like great programming. Yeah, yeah.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Why that one?
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: Cause it's just so absurd, right? It's just like, so,
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: you know, Pete Hegg says weird obsession. I'm going to
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: go with the arch though.
• 58:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: I think loading a fucking arch with ammo seems a
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: little more absurd, but you tell me.
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: And cause here's like, you know, I, I heard you
• 58:18
  Speaker 4: guys talk about this a little bit on pots of America.
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: I share your concerns that filling a gigantic landmark with
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: that is unobstructed from all directions with a massive amount
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: of explosives that could detonate on some charge is probably
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: not a good idea. I will tell you that I'm
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: so authoritarian-pilled too, though, that I was like, well, wait
• 58:42
  Speaker 4: a second. will the military coup in 2028 begin.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: From the arch?
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: I was literally like, is Trump going to be like
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: pre-positioning like, uh, drones and ammunition around Washington so that
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: when he calls Pete Hegseth and Raisin Cane or whoever's
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: left in the military and says like, uh, we must
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: not allow this Ossoff election to go forward or whoever
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: it is, I'm not picking a favorite. Um, uh, thought weirdly, like,
• 59:12
  Speaker 4: was the first one in my mind, more than the
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: operational security. Maybe they'll fill the Kennedy Center with weapons
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: to make it a national security imperative to rebuild it.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: I don't know. That's where my head went.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: I think that the, like, the earliest triumphal arches, the
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: Roman iteration- were commemorating when they sacked a city. So
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: they would like take Jerusalem or whatever and build one.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: So I guess this is Trump just like showing us
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: all that he's taken Washington and taken our politics and
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: now owns it. I hear you on the anxiety about
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: this being where the insurrection could begin. I mean, like
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: the idea that like you need to fill this thing
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: full of drones or sniper ammo or any of like
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: have a, sniper pad on top of it is such
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: obvious bullshit. Clearly, he thinks that there's going to be
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: all these legal challenges to the arch like there are
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: to the ballroom. And he thinks that some sort of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: made up national security argument will help him get the
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: construction greenlit and through the court system. Maybe that's right.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: It's probably right, given kind of what we've seen. But
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: like like unlike the ballroom, which I hope I'm not
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: really all that. Look, it's stupid. I wish they didn't
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: do it. I'm not like hell bent on Democrats tearing
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: it down. This arch, I hope, just never gets constructed.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: Or if it does, I would rip it down fucking
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: immediately because it is like a monument to authoritarianism and
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: it's completely unnecessary.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: It's a monument to authoritarianism.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: It's potential risk to flights, right?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: But it's also like, again, not to be, I'm very
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: rarely nostalgic about my time in Washington. I do think
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: one of the best and most beautiful things about Washington
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: is is that you have the Lincoln Memorial and then
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: Memorial Bridge, which goes to Arlington National Cemetery, which was
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: a Civil War cemetery. And our guys, the radical Republicans,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: after stomping out slavery and defeating the South, intentionally put
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: that cemetery there.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Right in front of where Robert E. Lee used to live.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: So that part of DC is all about our Civil
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: War history. And to just plop down some fascist arch
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: in the middle of it kind of ruins the whole
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: vibe for me. I should also say, putting coup concerns aside,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: which we probably shouldn't entirely, there's a kind of militarization
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 4: of Washington. I mean, I've been in cities where the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: capital of a country is like a very militarized place
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: and you see troops in the streets and kind of
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: shows the military force like DC is creeping. I mean,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: the national guard out in the streets and now we've
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: got ammo dumps in the arch and we've got some
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: giant bunker underneath the ballroom that's being built. And it,
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: we're starting to feel like a little, you know, I
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: don't want to impugn any region of the world, but
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: like one of those countries that has like a military
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: militarized capital.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: And that's, you know, it's a little disconcerting.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's not the vibe I want. Um, it's not,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: good in any way it's strange it's like it's bizarre
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: to me that he wants this of all the things
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: the ballroom like there is some sort of function to
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: it fine whatever he wants to have events outside he's
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: a long history of thinking the White House needs a
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: ballroom and he doesn't like tents on the South Lawn
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: and he called Axelrod about this and whatever 2012 or
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: 2011 whatever it was the arch makes no sense I
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: hope it never happens I agree with you that it
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: does– you feel like you're in like Naypyidaw or like
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: Myanmar or something.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: Naypyidaw is a good example.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 2: A military capital or like Pyongyang or something. It's not
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: what we need in Washington, D.C. It's nuts.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: I'm a tear down the arch guy.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 4: The other ballroom we'll have to manage in some probably
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: other way, but this one should not stand the light
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: of day.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: Arches are for McDonald's. Okay, that's it for Ben and I.
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: We are going to take a quick break, and then
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 2: you're going to hear Ben's conversation with Mahar Bittar about
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: some really, really interesting, exclusive new polling about voter sentiment
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: and national security ahead of the midterm election. So stick
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: around for that. Pod Save the World is brought to
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  Speaker 4: Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined today by Maher Batar,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 4: who is the Executive Director of National Security Action. a
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 4: progressive foreign policy advocacy organization that I co-founded. I'm still
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: on the board, no longer chair of that board. Maher's
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: also played many roles over the years in the Obama administration,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: in the Biden administration, a stint in between as the
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: counterpart to Kash Patel on the House Intelligence Committee.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: Maher was on the Democratic side, in case you're wondering.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: So that was an experience. But Maher, we're not here
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: to talk about that.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: We're here to talk about some interesting polling that National
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 4: Security Action did ahead of the midterms that we wanted
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: to lift up.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: So thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 8: Yeah, thanks, Ben.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: All right, just to kind of set the stage a
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: little bit, before you get into the findings, just tell
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: us a little bit about who you guys polled, in
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: what states, what you were looking for in this poll.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 8: So we designed this poll to really meet the moment
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 8: before the midterms. So it's focused on seven battleground states
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 8: where we have competitive primaries, including in the Senate. So
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 8: that includes everywhere from Texas to Michigan to Iowa and
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 8: a few other states. And it has a sample size
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 8: that actually leans conservative, just given the states, including voters who,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 8: by a slight majority, voted for President Trump in 2024.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 8: And we wanted to cover the waterfront of issues, both
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 8: across national security and foreign policy issues. including kind of
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 8: overall favorability, but really to dive deeper on some of
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 8: the top issues.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: Okay, so let's jump into these findings, which I think
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 4: are very relevant both to the campaigns that are ongoing
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: and then also, frankly, in framing the presidential campaign that
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: will start shortly after the midterms. You and I have
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: gone back and forth a bit on this polling. Why
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: don't you just start by talking a bit about how
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: front and center national security concerns are and foreign policy
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: concerns are for voters? Usually, That's kind of a secondary
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: issue after economic issues. What did you find about the
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: salience of what Trump and the United States is doing
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 4: around the world in the poll?
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, my key takeaway is that as we
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 8: approach November, foreign policy is on the ballot. And the
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 8: reason is that the decisions that have been made here
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 8: in Washington by the Trump administration are boomeranging back at
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 8: home in ways that are having a pronounced impact for Democrats, independents,
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 8: and even Republicans. So the numbers are pretty remarkable across
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 8: the states that we polled. For example, on gas prices
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 8: and the war in Iran, people are tying the war
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 8: and the ramifications of war directly to the crisis that
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 8: they're feeling at the pump. Same thing on tariffs. So
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 8: the numbers are sky high. Over 90% of respondents that
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 8: we had across the battleground states tied the Iran war
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 8: directly to the pain that they're feeling at the pump.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 8: And over 90%, similarly, including a large number of Republicans,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 8: tied to tariffs to the cost of living crisis that
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 8: they're facing. So we're really at a point where every
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 8: single day, and I think you're seeing in other polling
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 8: that is emerging over the last few weeks, and really
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 8: I think you're going to see it over the next
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 8: few weeks, are really tying those two things together and
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 8: demonstrating the amount to which Americans are tying what's happening
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 8: abroad to what they're feeling at home.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: And I mean, that's a credit to people.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: And it's also, I think, a testament to the fact
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: that even more so than other foreign policy failures or
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 4: misadventures in the past, right? I mean, tariffs correlate directly
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: to prices going up. People feel that. The war in Iran,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: even more so than past wars that the United States
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 4: has fought, has had this direct inflationary impact. So it's
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 4: a good sign that people get that these foreign policies
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: are fundamentally economic policies. I want to dig into a
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: couple of other issues, which is that one of the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: issues that has emerged as growing source of concern to
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: Americans in the midterm elections is artificial intelligence, AI. You know,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 4: that has really taken off in the last couple of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: weeks as these kind of hyperbolic warnings have come from
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: some of the various companies. You worked a bit on
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: AI in the Biden years, so you're familiar with that terrain.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: At the same time, that doesn't yet really bear out
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: in this polling in the sense that, you know, the
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: data center issues, the one that's kind of gotten a
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: lot of attention here in the U.S., it's kind of
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: almost treated as a, domestic issue, right, involving tech companies.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 4: And yet, you know, one of the justifications for plowing
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: ahead with unregulated AI is that we're in some race
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: to the death with China over it. Xi Jinping's going
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: to be with Trump this week. Presumably AI will be
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: on the agenda. What do you see in the data
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: about voter concerns about artificial intelligence? And how do you
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: kind of unpack the discordance that people might feel about
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 4: wanting to compete with China on but wanting to slow
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: down AI.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 8: So we wanted to better understand exactly how people are
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 8: starting to link or not link AI to some foreign
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 8: policy arguments that are made here in Washington, including on China.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 8: And our findings, and I should caveat, the findings are
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 8: we conducted this poll in late August, early September. So
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 8: before a lot of what has surfaced in just recent
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 8: weeks that has really changed the debate and the conversation
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 8: in Washington, which we can talk about. So take that
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 8: with a grain of salt. But In the polling that
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 8: we did find, in terms of whether AI is viewed
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 8: as a top national security concern, it does not rank
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 8: anywhere close to the top. People are not connecting it
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 8: right now to national security concerns. When you asked them
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 8: about China and whether there's a race with China, we
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 8: saw two things. One is in our focus groups that
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 8: we did before the poll, for a lot of folks,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 8: they don't view it in those terms that there's a
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 8: race with China on AI. That's just not the way
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 8: that they think about it. And for a lot of them,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 8: it was actually.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 8: It didn't compute right. It didn't make sense that we
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 8: would view it in that way. At the same time,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 8: in this poll, similarly, it ranks towards the bottom in
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 8: terms of priorities, in terms of our engagement with China.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 8: And I think that points to a few things that
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 8: we're seeing on the AI front. One is that for
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 8: a lot of people, AI is becoming increasingly a concern
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 8: that is linked really to concerns that they have closer
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 8: to home, including their own families and their own livelihoods.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 8: So there's other polling out there that points to the
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 8: fact that people are quite concerned about what it will
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 8: mean for their own jobs, but also, I think, importantly,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 8: for their children and kind of the next generation coming up.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 8: I think there's also real concern around data centers and
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 8: what it means for the quality of life in their
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 8: own communities. And then there are also, I think, bigger
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 8: social concerns that are emerging where families are concerned about
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 8: what AI is going to mean for their children and
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 8: their teenagers and very similar to the concerns that have
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: arisen because of social media, right, over time. And because
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 8: of all of that, I think making an argument that
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 8: there is a race with China on AI where we
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 8: need to beat China does not resonate with average Americans
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 8: because the logical conclusion of that for many might be,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 8: wait a second, you want me to lose my job
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 8: or sacrifice my job for some sort of hypothetical race
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 8: on AI with China? And those two things don't match. Now,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 8: there's a lot more that we, I think, need to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 8: better understand in terms of how the public is reacting
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 8: to what's happening in AI. So we're going to build
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 8: out more polling in this space to better understand this.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 8: But I think this is an important moment for candidates
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 8: and others as they think through this and they look
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 8: at the data that for Americans, it's a visceral, it's increasingly,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 8: I think, a visceral and a personal issue that they
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 8: have to contend with.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's interesting to me that, look, the tariff
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: issue and the war issue are pretty straightforward for Democrats, right?
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: Like, This war is dumb. We shouldn't have fought it.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: We should end it. These trade wars are dumb. They
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: raise prices.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: AI is obviously a more complicated thing. It is striking
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: to me, Mara, and I'm curious what you think, because, again,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: you worked on AI issues in the Biden administration when
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: you guys were starting to put some guardrails around this
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 4: stuff before Trump dismantled them, that in the conversations I'm
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: in about AI and that I think you're in, The
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 4: national security concerns are actually quite acute. Someone could build
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: a biological weapon with AI. The cyber risks, particularly with
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 4: this chat GPT hugging face incident where the AI agents
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 4: escaped human control and were hacking into the internet and stuff.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: The chance of a massive cyber disruption is enormous. There
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: are these autonomous weapons that use AI for targeting. There's
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 4: suggestions that that may have had something to do with
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: the bombing of the girls' school in Iran. I mean,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: is one takeaway maybe that, like, frankly, people need to
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: hear more about these risks on the security side? Because
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: they seem like the public probably doesn't know those things
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 4: that you and I spend a lot of time worrying about.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I think one takeaway from our polling,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 8: but also other polling, is that this is a very
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 8: fluid environment where the public is just starting to understand
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 8: and grasp the consequences of AI, both positive ones, but
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 8: also potentially extremely negative ones for broader society, but also
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 8: for their own families. When I worked on this, Ben,
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 8: we had conversations at the time.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: So this was.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 8: At 2023 and 2024. I was the head of intelligence
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 8: and defense at the White House. And we were crafting
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 8: what was essentially the world's first national security strategy on AI.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 8: And we wanted to think about, as we're writing this
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 8: first draft, what are the guardrails that we have to
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 8: build in? But also, how could it be valuable for
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 8: national security purposes? And that was a tricky balance at
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 8: a moment where we could kind of foresee many of
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 8: the consequences, some of which have come to pass. uh,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 8: to pass, but otherwise we, we were also trying to
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 8: kind of understand what this means as a transformative technology
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 8: at that moment in time. I think we're now at
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 8: a point where we're starting to see the, um, the,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 8: the likely, uh, the likely and the real risks of, uh,
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 8: AI advancement in certain areas. There are also huge promise
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 8: in other areas. And as a result of that, um,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 8: this is a moment where there needs to be an
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 8: all hands on tech effort on the hill. in the
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 8: federal government, which unfortunately we're not seeing, and then also
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 8: an effort for the public to better understand what this
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 8: is going to mean for.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: Them as well.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 8: That sort of transparency is key. I think that's an
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 8: area where we as an organization, but I think in
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 8: concert with a lot of others, it's going to be
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 8: a crucial moment now over the next year or two,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 8: as we get also closer to 2028, where we've got
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 8: to really understand what this means and help the public
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 8: understand Because I do think it's going to be also
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 8: a very potent issue in the 2028 election.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, no, I think this is like put a pin
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: in that and we'll come back to it on this
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 4: show too because we want people to kind of understand
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 4: these risks clearly because this is going to define not
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: just our politics.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: But our society.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: Well, another issue that has obviously been front and center
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: in democratic debates is Israel-Palestine. We've noted the shifts in
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 4: public opinion related to support for Israel relative to support
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: for the Palestinians. or related to questions like whether or
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: not people believe Israel's committed war crimes. What did you
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 4: find about how much things have shifted on Israel in
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: the poll?
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so we approached this asking essentially two sets of
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 8: questions here, because we wanted to understand also where the
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 8: public is broadly on questions around whether or not to
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 8: withhold military assistance and weapon sales, or whether to continue
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 8: those without conditions. And, uh, so, so the findings I
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 8: think are actually really interesting and demonstrate that there is
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 8: a bipartisan consensus here, uh, on broader questions. And then
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 8: I'll get to Israel and Palestine in a second. But
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 8: on the broader question, we found across the board, Democrats, independents,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: and Republicans, broad support for conditioning military assistance, either.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: To prevent the.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 8: Also to shape the behavior of the countries receiving potential
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 8: military assistance or weapons from the United States. We had
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 8: about 20% or so across the board, across Democrats, Independents,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 8: and Republicans, who actually want us to just end military
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 8: assistance to other countries outright. And then a smaller proportion
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 8: who want us to continue providing weapons to other countries
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 8: with no conditions and no restrictions, which I think demonstrates
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 8: the fact that there is actually broad support for ensuring
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 8: that the United States, builds in accountability to the way
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 8: in which it's supporting other countries or providing weapons to
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: other countries. On Israel-Palestine specifically, our findings are quite consistent
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 8: with some of the recent polling that you've seen. And
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 8: I would just remind you and those listening, the polling
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 8: we did was in battleground states that leans conservative with
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 8: voters that were more likely to vote for President Trump
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: than who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: And they're very similarly.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 8: So about 60% of the respondents supported either withholding military
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 8: assistance or conditioning it to prevent misuse of the weapons
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 8: or to shape the Israeli government's behavior, or to end
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 8: it outright. And a smaller percentage was open to just
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 8: continuing without conditions. And when you broke it up between Democrats, Independents,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 8: and Republicans, actually, the numbers on the Democratic-Independent side are
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 8: much more supportive of conditioning, with also a certain number
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 8: who want to withhold or completely restrict or end in
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 8: a much smaller percentage that want to continue without conditions.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 8: On the Republican side, you see a higher number who
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 8: do want to continue without conditions. But at the same time,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 8: you'd still see numbers that are open to conditioning aid
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 8: or even ending military assistance in the process. I think
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 8: it's reflective of the shift that I know you've discussed
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 8: on your show and that we've seen since essentially the
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 8: Gaza war in 2024 all the way to 2026. And
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 8: that's also reflecting increasingly in the way members of Congress
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 8: are speaking and the way members of Congress are voting
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 8: on the issue.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: No, I mean, it does suggest at a minimum the
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 4: baseline of like, I don't know, following U.S. laws on
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: the books about providing assistance to countries suspected of human
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: rights abuses or war crimes, like that that can be
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: a guide for politicians at a minimum. I mean, I'd
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: go farther to an embargo, but it's notable.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 8: No, but I think the takeaway that I would just
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 8: say is I think there's a recognition that the U.S.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: Has leverage. And the U.S.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: Should use that leverage.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 8: When it's necessary.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a common sense.
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 4: I mean, I like I'm actually hardened by these results
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: because there's like a common sense through line to them
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: that I think should be a wake up call to
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: people that work in national security. Like so the question
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: I want to ask about that is I was struck
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 4: by the fact that the things that, you know, national
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 4: security people, elites, whatever you want to call them, tend
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 4: to talk about as these like threats.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 4: Iran or China or, you know, Russia are actually not
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: kind of top of mind for voters in the same
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: way that they're top of mind for people. And people
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: are worried about the stuff that is impacting their lives,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: you know, tariffs and the war driving up gas prices. And,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: you know, we just talk about AI is a growing concern.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: Now, one way to.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: Interpret that is a kind of America first thing, which
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: is that, you know what, we're done. Like we we're
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: exhausted with all this. Let's just kind of pull up
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: the drawbridge and come home. And there's some of that
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: that I think is true, like particularly as it relates
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: to wars. At the same time, though, you know, you
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 4: find support for alliances in this poll.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: You find support for NATO in this poll.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: I mean, what do you, if you take the two,
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: and they're not really straw men, they're kind of the
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: two recent approaches, right? The Trump, well, he says it's
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: America first, but then he launches wars and stuff. So,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: but if you take the America first argument, say Tucker
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: Carlson argument, you know, As one poll of opinion. And
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: then you take kind of, you know, I don't know,
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: to be, I think kind of the Biden, you know,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 4: the American exceptionalism and we have to do all these
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: things because we're America. What's the third way that starts
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: to appear in this public opinion?
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 3: Where do you think people are on that question?
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so I was quite struck because, you know, on
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 8: the one hand, the poll is very clear that the
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 8: foreign policy decisions that are happening now and in the
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 8: last few months are are having a direct impact on
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 8: the lives of Americans, and they're perceiving it and interpreting
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 8: it that way. And it's really driving the way in
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 8: which they feel that the crisis at home is in
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 8: part spurred by decisions by this administration to go to
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 8: war and to be reckless with tariffs. At the same time,
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 8: what I was struck by when I looked at the
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 8: data was that there is an emerging alignment that I'm
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 8: seeing in the way the electorate is also viewing foreign
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 8: policy priorities. And I think that's something that, you know,
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 8: candidates in 2028 should take heed of. And that's, for instance,
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 8: you'll see that in the polling, voters do want their
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 8: government to keep them safe. They do support a strong military,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 8: but they also want to keep us out of unnecessary wars.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 8: And we have a contained experiment now with a war
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 8: of choice that is boomeranging at home and creating all
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 8: of this pain at home and creating, you know, these
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 8: geopolitical ripple effects around the world that are going to
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 8: haunt us for a long time. That's an emerging alignment
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 8: that you're seeing. You're seeing an emerging alignment that folks
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 8: want a foreign policy and a trade policy that's going
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 8: to protect American workers. But it's also not one that
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 8: is used for self-enrichment and corruption. In those two things,
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 8: you're seeing that playing out in the polling as well.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 8: I was actually quite struck in the polling that on corruption,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 8: it was actually one of the top three concerns for
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 8: Americans when you asked them what their concerns were about
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 8: threats to American security. remarkable support for investigations in the
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 8: next Congress of Trump administration corruption, including I thought quite
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 8: remarkable numbers around Republicans. I think it was something like
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 8: 41% of Republican respondents supported investigations in the next Congress
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 8: as either a high priority or a medium priority of
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 8: Trump administration corruption. And then the last thing I think
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 8: you're seeing is that there's a desire to be engaged
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 8: in the world as you said, support for NATO, support
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 8: for alliances, but also not to do it in a
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 8: way that's spending wastefully, but also where there's accountability for
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 8: the support we provide other countries, including with regard to
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 8: weapon sales and military support. I think it's a common
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 8: sense approach, but I think it also provides a roadmap
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 8: as we look at what is going to resonate with
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 8: the public and what ultimately is beneficial for them.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: I guess to wrap this up a bit, like.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 4: Okay, so the message, I take it that if you, well,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: two questions, like one on the midterms and then one
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 4: on the presidential campaign. So like, if you were advising
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: Abdul Aseed, you know, in the next few weeks, and
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 4: maybe Abdul's listening to this while he works out or something.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: What do you think the, what are the messages, you know,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 3: you would.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 4: Advise him or another midterm Senate candidate to be hitting?
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 8: So one of them is don't miss the opportunity to
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 8: really hammer home the costs of both the war and
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 8: the tariffs. And I've seen him do it and others
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 8: have done it too. For Michiganders, but also others around
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 8: the country, it's really hitting home. And the spike in
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 8: diesel prices, for example, is having deeply hurtful effects around
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 8: the country.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 5: So I've seen that.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 8: And make sure to emphasize those points when they're campaigning
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 8: would be one thing I would emphasize. I think someone
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 8: like Abdul is also I think, hitting a nerve when
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 8: he says, you know, I don't want U.S. military support
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 8: to go to other countries when we could be using
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 8: it at home, right? And he's tapping into the nerve
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 8: that I mentioned based on the polling that we have,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 8: that in fact, there is a good number of people
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 8: around the country who do feel that way. And they
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 8: see kind of how our weapons are being used or
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 8: massive military sales that are being provided with U.S. taxpayer dollars,
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 8: given the way the system works. But they're not seeing...
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 8: their schools being funded properly or they're having trouble with
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 8: their healthcare. And he's really tapping into that. And I
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 8: think you're going to see that you're seeing that already
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 8: across the board, but I could see it as something
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 8: that is also going to resonate in 2028.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 4: And so the last thing I wanted to ask is like, we, we,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: we've identified a lot of opportunity for Democrats here, right.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 4: You know, running against the tariffs, running against the war
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 4: and the costs of it, you know, running against kind
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 4: of this unaccountable military assistance to other countries.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: Um, What do you think are going to be challenges?
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: What did you see in here that's like, oh, as
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 4: Democrats begin to prepare presidential primary campaigns, where do you
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 4: see a need for Democrats to make up ground or
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: to kind of meet the moment in a way they haven't?
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: Beyond the opportunity in the poll, where do you see
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: places where we have to move the needle?
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 8: Yeah, so there's also some hard medicine in these poll
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 8: results that I think we should take into account and
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 8: really think through how we work through kind of now
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 8: between now and the midterms, but also after that. One
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 8: is on corruption, and we've seen this in other polling too,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 8: where ultimately there is strong distrust of both parties on corruption,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 8: and they view both parties as equally involved in corruption.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 8: I think, and we need to dig through this data
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 8: a bit more, but I think some folks might be
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 8: honing in on individual stock trades by certain members of
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 8: Congress from both parties, whereas others might be looking at
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 8: just the obscene wealth that has been accumulated by the
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 8: current president and his family and those around him in
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 8: this administration, including corrupt contracts with the Department of Defense
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 8: and others where they're building this web of interconnectedness between
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 8: their wealth and the government. But ultimately, that distrust applies
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 8: to both parties. And I think it's going to be
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 8: really important for Democrats when they're speaking and legislating on
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 8: this issue, that they are acknowledging that. And they're acknowledging
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 8: that there is this system that has been kind of
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 8: corrupt and rigged against ordinary Americans. The other area is
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 8: there are discrepancies between the way, at least in our polling,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 8: folks see Trump and the disapproval that they have of Trump.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 8: But in certain areas, they are not as negative about
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 8: the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party. And where, as
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 8: a result, kind of the negatives and the positive numbers
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 8: are not as stark. And I think as a result,
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 8: there's more work for Democrats to do to prove that
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 8: they are able to actually be really effective champions of
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 8: the people in this coming Congress, where I think there's
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 8: going to be a huge focus on making sure that
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 8: there's both an affirmative agenda, but also an accountability agenda,
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 8: an oversight agenda, that's going to deliver for the population.
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's a good warning note. I was struck, too,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 4: that the concerns about corruption didn't tilt overwhelmingly against Republicans.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: It was kind of a shared feeling.
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 4: And I recently talked to a pollster for a piece
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 4: I wrote for the New York Times in which he
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: said the same thing, that basically people think that the
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: whole system is corrupt, you know. and both parties are
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: in on it and maybe Trump is enriching himself more,
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 4: but there's just some, there's too much money in politics.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 3: There's too much special interests.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: Um, I think we shouldn't take as a given and,
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: and requires specificity, frankly, and also how you're going to
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: do anti-corruption, um, beyond just kind of yelling about Trump. Um, well, look,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: it's a fascinating, it's, it's honestly, it's like much more
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 4: interesting than these things usually are, you know? Um, uh, well,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 4: and they're, cause they're, you know, they're, it's both the
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 4: snapshot of the mood of the country, but it, it,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 4: Underneath it, it suggests shifting public attitudes. I'm not sure
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: this would have been anywhere near the same results five
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: years ago, 10 years ago. It's an important roadmap for
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 4: us to heed. Thanks so much for coming on to
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 4: walk us through this, and we'll keep in touch.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 5: Great.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: Thanks.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: Really appreciate it.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: Thanks again, Amar, for joining the show, and we will
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by
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