Latest / Pod Save the World / Don Jr.’s Big Fat Russian Wedding

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Don Jr.’s Big Fat Russian Wedding · Pod Save the World

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  Speaker 1: our show and tell them that Pod Save the World
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  Speaker 1: sent you. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Tommy Vitor.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Ben, as our listeners know, we are big boosters of
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: FBI Director Kash Patel on this show.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: He was up on Capitol Hill today. He was testifying
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: before the U.S.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Senate. I'd like to play for you an exchange he
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: had with Republican Senator John Kennedy.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Let's watch.
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: What about the bestiality? Tell me what it said before.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: of it. Obviously, we are never going to hire the criminal.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: This side of what? The bestiality?
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: So you disqualified the animal?
• 2:14
  Speaker 6: Why would you even get into bestiality?
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: We are not into bestiality, but a lot of these individuals.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: I know you're not, but you changed.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: But I'm trying to explain it.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Hang on.
• 2:25
  Speaker 6: You changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality. If Joe participated
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: in bestiality, not as the animal, but as the human,
• 2:38
  Speaker 6: don't you think he ought to be disqualified? Disqualified?
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: If he voluntarily did it, sure, but if he was
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: trafficked into it.
• 2:44
  Speaker 6: Okay, how do you involuntarily do it? When you saw bestiality,
• 2:50
  Speaker 6: I say this with respect, the person who recommended it,
• 2:55
  Speaker 6: why didn't you just say, what planet did you parachute
• 3:00
  Speaker 6: in from?
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: You hadn't seen that?
• 3:02
  Speaker 7: I had not.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: That makes me so happy.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I've not been online today. I'd love to know some context.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: I'm fascinated by the woman sitting next to him, who
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: I don't even know who that is. That's why I'm
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: with the Senate at this point.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I wasn't even watching.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Who's just looking at her phone.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: She's Googling bestiality.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: What is happening in the United States Senate? So– Am
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: I– Am I feeling a strange bit of sympathy for cash? No.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: The FBI lowered hiring standards to no longer discredit applicants
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: who engaged in acts of bestiality, among other things, but
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: it's victims of bestiality. So, like, what are we talking
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: about here?
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: The animal forced itself on the human?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: How frequent is this use case coming up?
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: There must have been a trigger. I mean, now I'm
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: with the lunatic John Kennedy here. I mean, was there
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: a case that triggered this?
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: What animal does Kash Patel want to fuck or has
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: he fucked?
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: I think is the question you're wondering.
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: Raises some questions, Tommy.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: That's what's going on at the FBI.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Just asking some questions.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Like, I realize maybe they're having some recruiting problems over there.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Maybe folks don't want to go work for Kash. Like,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: there's a funny thing in the kind of intel deep
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: state world that we all experience where to get into
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the CIA... You could have a lot more of a
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: checkered past. The FBI, they were like the choir boys,
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Eagle Scouts, right? I knew somebody who had applied to
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: be in the FBI and I think worked at a
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: restaurant or a bar, found a bag of cocaine on
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the ground and gave it to a coworker. And because
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: this person didn't turn it into the police or whatever,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: like failed an FBI interview, it was like that level
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: of bullshit at the agency.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: You can do a lot more stuff.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: Can we put a pin in my hobby horse, which
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: is also Democratic presidents tend to come in. Joe Biden
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: did this. And set the bar like marijuana use for
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: security clearance.
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Now, our boss gave some waivers to that. But yeah,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: apparently you can go out to the chicken coop and
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: have a great time. And that's fine. But if you
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: take an edible.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So that's what the deep state's up to. All right.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: That explains who's in the U.S. government.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: That might explain why things are not going too well internationally.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about this stunning military offensive by
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: the Houthi rebels in Yemen that humiliated the Saudi government
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: and created huge new problems for the oil markets and
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: for the Trump administration and potentially a humanitarian disaster. We're
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: going to dig into how it happened and what the
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: ripple effects could be. Then we're going to unpack reports
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: that Chinese satellite imagery has been helping Iran target U.S.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Military facilities in the Gulf and even kill U.S. service members.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about some new numbers about the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: cost of the war and some exclusive new polling about
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: how Americans feel about the Iran war.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Is this our first exclusive? Probably on some polling.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: It's been a while. I mean, I feel like every
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: day is exclusive.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is an exclusive show.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: These takes are exclusive.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: These are hot. Yeah, you got to subscribe to these.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: And then we're going to walk you through Trump's visit
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to Ireland and how a Gulf... A little golf weekend
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: might destabilize the Good Friday Agreement. Stepping on rakes everywhere.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: Then we're going to tell you about how Don Jr.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: 's wedding became a counterintelligence nightmare. Some new reports about
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner and corruption. And then some scary updates on
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: escalating Russian attacks on NATO. Then you're going to hear
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: my interview with Hamza Chaudhry. He works at a place
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: called the Future of Life Institute. They're focused on the
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: downside risk of technologies like artificial intelligence. They're the ones
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: hosting that big conference that's happening today, Tuesday, that includes
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Steve Bannon to Bernie, that kind of shows you this
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: bipartisan anxiety, at least, about artificial intelligence. We talk about
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: the events over the weekend, about all these AI researchers
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: coming out and saying, hey, this might lead to the
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: extinction of humanity. Some of the bio risks that are
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: out there, what the government could or should be doing.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Very important and timely interview, and I think a topic
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: that we probably should get to more. It's just sort
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: of like, it's so big and scary sometimes. It's like
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: hard to know how to cover it appropriately.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: We should get to this more. I mean, we've tried
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: with increasing frequency, but the fact is that nothing else
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: matters in some ways, like beyond what happens. I mean,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: I've often thought, and I think I've said in the podcast,
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: but like Trump may end up being like the B
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: story of this time we're living through.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: For bestiality.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, Just asking questions. I would say I'm
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: for the future of life.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I'm for the future of life.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: Life should have a future.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: But you were saying, yes, like Trump, like the Trump,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: all of the badness that he has done, the stupid
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: fucking ballroom won't really matter to us if, you know,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: some rogue AI creates a pathogen that is COVID-like.
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: Or even if it's not like at that scale, but
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: the concentration of wealth and power that a few people have, like,
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: is unprecedented in human history.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So there's that too. Even if like, AI doesn't pose
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: an existential risk. It could still upend democracies. Yeah, yeah.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: No, like this is the thing. I mean, I was
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: joking with you before, kind of dark joke, but now
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  Speaker 3: they're setting the bar at human extinction as if like
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: if we avert that, we've succeeded. But, you know, mass
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: job displacement, no big deal. Or, you know, massive cyber disruptions,
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: no big deal. No, no, like this is a spectrum
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: here and you can fall short of extinction and be fucked.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Sam Altman's like. No global genocide, you're welcome.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so thank you. We did our job here at
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: OpenAI with our trillion-dollar IPO.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, must be nice.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: All right, let's start with Yemen. We're six months into
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the war with Iran, and somehow the conflict is still
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: spreading into new places and getting worse and worse and
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: worse for the Trump administration and the world. The latest
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: very bad news about the war comes to us from Yemen,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: where over the past week or so, the Houthi rebels
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: have captured a big swath of territory along Yemen's western
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Red Sea coast, The BBC estimates that they control about
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: 80 miles of coastline now. And crucially, that territory includes
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is the narrow choke point
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: that lets ships pass in and out of the Red
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Sea into the Gulf of Aden and then on to
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the Indian Ocean or to Asia or wherever they're going.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And for those keeping score at home, Iran now controls
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: shipping in and out of the Persian Gulf through the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: state of Hormuz, and their allies and at times proxy
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: force are The Houthi rebels now control shipping in and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: out of the eastern Red Sea. In normal times, those
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: two waterways, like roughly one-third of seaborne oil trade goes
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: through those two waterways. So that's a pretty big deal
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: for global energy supplies and oil flows. On top of that,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: militant groups in Iraq that are allied with Iran attacked
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the 745-mile east-to-west pipeline across Saudi Arabia, forcing the Saudi
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: to shut it down for what will probably be weeks
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: of repairs. That pipeline has a maximum capacity of 7
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: million barrels of oil per day. The Saudis have been
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: using it to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and get
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: around the Iranians, but now it's offline for a while.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And this offensive by the Houthis also risks restarting the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yemeni civil war, which had disastrous humanitarian consequences just very quickly.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: In 2014, the Houthi rebels seized a bunch of territory
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: in Yemen, including the capital of Sana'a. In 2015, the
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Saudis intervened to displace them. That kicked off this awful
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: civil war that killed an estimated 150,000 people, the two
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: sides who agreed to a ceasefire in 2022 that like
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: froze the conflict, but left the Houthis in charge of
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: parts of the country. And then the internationally recognized Yemeni
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: government in charge of the rest. And that was the
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: status quo until July when the Saudis bombed this Houthi-controlled airport.
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: The Houthis retaliated, announced a blockade of Saudi ships, and
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: then the fighting kind of sporadically escalated until last Thursday
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: when when the Houthis captured this major Red Sea port
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: city of Mocha.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Then Friday, they captured this island, Parim.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: It's a little island in the middle of the Bab
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: al-Mandeb Strait, which is a great place from which to
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: launch attacks and shipping. It's also 20 miles from the U.S.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: military base in Djibouti. That's bonkers. So Saudi Crown Prince
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Mohammed bin Salman saw what was going on, freaked out,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: called Trump maybe once or twice, asked him to intervene.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Trump said no. Trump was asked about this issue in
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Ireland last week. Let's watch a clip.
• 11:17
  Speaker 8: The Houthis called us and they don't want to fight
• 11:20
  Speaker 8: with us. They let us know they don't want to
• 11:23
  Speaker 8: fight with us. They don't want me to go after them.
• 11:25
  Speaker 8: They don't want us to go after them. But they've
• 11:28
  Speaker 8: called and they've talked to us and they don't want
• 11:30
  Speaker 8: us to. They would much prefer not having us involved.
• 11:34
  Speaker 8: And they're letting most ships go through. This is one
• 11:39
  Speaker 8: country that they're not too happy with and We'll get
• 11:41
  Speaker 8: that straightened out.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I have a call with MBS.
• 11:44
  Speaker 8: He's a good friend of mine. And I can just
• 11:48
  Speaker 8: say everything's going to work out fine and dandy.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: We should know there's reportedly about 100 U.S. military advisors
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: in Saudi Arabia, I guess, doing intelligence support, targeting support,
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: God knows what else. Brent crude oil prices hit $ 109
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: a barrel last week.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: They're hovering over $ 100 today. Ben, there's so much to
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: unpack here.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Let's just like, let's pause with like your initial reactions
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: to what's happened.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: This is a massive story that like people need to
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: pay attention to because there's so many dimensions to it.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: So first, just the degree to which we're fucked on
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: global energy markets. I mean, if you take the Saudi
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: oil offline to that pipeline and you're closing both straits,
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: like we are in like acute shortage territory right away,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: you know, so the The political instability in countries is
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: going to ramp up. The prices are going to keep
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: ramping up here. This is a cataclysmic event if it holds.
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: And because who knows if they can even rebuild that
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: pipeline without the Houthis hitting it again. Right.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: And it's at risk.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: There you go. That's the first thing. The second thing
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: is it really reveals the gross incompetence of Trump and
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: everybody involved in this war. And again, like Trump is
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: the idiot who started it at Netanyahu's urging. But let's
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: not spare, I mean, we did, you know, Scott Besson
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: comes out and does economic D-Day. And then CENTCOM starts
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: being like, well, you hit a tanker, we're going to hit,
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: you know, five tankers or something. And the Iranians are like, oh,
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: guess what? We can escalate too. Because my guess is
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: that there's like IRGC guys who are helping, you know,
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps guys who are like helping the
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: Houthis plan all this stuff. you know, Intel support training, whatever.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Missiles, drones.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, missiles, drones. So they've now called our escalation and
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: like 10x' d it, you know, because us blowing some tankers
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: out of the water so that we can feel tough,
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: you know, and Scott Besson gets to have his press
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: day on economic D-Day with like very little, you know, results. Well,
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: this is material escalation, you know, and I think it's
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: the Iranians sending a message that, you know, we can
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: keep doing this. So that's the state of the war.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: That's the state of the energy markets. And then the
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: third thing I just say by way of introduction is
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: this is putting in, you know, peril like the entire
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Saudi model, right? Because the Saudi model is, you know,
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: we depend on all this oil revenue to finance this,
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: you know, lavish kingdom and all these things that MBS
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: likes to do and spread the money around enough to
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: kind of keep the rest of the population okay. Um, and,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: and yet, you know, their own military is somewhat of
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: a paper tiger, despite how much money they spent on it.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: They kind of need the U S military to kind
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: of maintain that bargain. And what did they just learn? Well,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: they learned that they can't on their own prevent the
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: Houthis from taking over large tracks of Yemen and attacking
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: their energy infrastructure that is existential to them. That when
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: they call the United States. Trump is like, well, the
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: Houthis seem nice on the phone. I was wondering who
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: the Houthis called.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Did they hit him on WhatsApp? How does that work?
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: It's kind of weird.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Are they signal guys?
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: And so this could, honestly, at the extreme end, threaten
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: the kingdom. I mean, it could literally threaten MBS. I mean,
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that's likely, but the fact that it's
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: even possible is notable. Yeah. And it certainly should encourage MBS,
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: it will encourage MBS to not put all of his
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: chips on the United States. I mean, I just say this,
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: like when Israel gets missiles thrown at it, like, you know,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: we rush, you know, every single missile defense battery we have,
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: like beyond not just bombing the Houthis, like clearly we're
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: not providing the Saudis with like defensive weaponry to defend
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: even their most important oil infrastructure. If I, you know,
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: it is so extreme that like, I might take a
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: tinfoil hat on here for a second, Tommy, if you'll
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: spare me, which is like, does Trump being so complacent
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: suggest he's in some ways leaving them no recourse except
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: to normalize with Israel, to have like some kind of
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: security relationship with Israel? Does Trump not mind the massive
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: disruption to, you know, Saudi and Emirati and Qatari oil
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: and gas? Because the U.S. could in the long run
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: replace it. I don't know, but like, this is so
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: nonsensical to just kind of, you know, look, I'm not
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: for wars. I'm, you know, I don't want to go
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: to war in Yemen. But for Trump to kind of
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: get in this deep and then just do nothing as
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: he further loses this war is pretty remarkable.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: Just imagine you're him for a minute. Like, you think
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: you've built this great relationship with Trump.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: You've given Jared a couple billion.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: You bought billions of dollars of U.S. weapons. You promised
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: to invest. How many times have you been to the U.S.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and promised to like invest a trillion dollars every other time?
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: You cut deals to build Trump Towers and golf courses
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and Jetta and all these places. You gave Jared Kushner five, six, seven,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: eight billion for his investment company or whatever it was.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Then Trump starts a war with Iran over your objections.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: The IRGC fires missiles and drones at you and your country.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: The oil industry gets upended. Now you're getting attacked by
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the Houthis and by these Shia-backed militias in Iraq. And
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: Trump is like, eh, go fuck yourself. The Houthis are
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: cool with us. I will hear your tinfoil hat version
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: of why he might not be intervening. The other one
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: that it could be, though, is they would probably have
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: to move an aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf to
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: the Red Sea to support major military operations against the Houthis.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And we just don't really have the capacity to do
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that right now.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: That's right. We've talked a lot about munitions shortages and
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: things like that. Well, this is when the rubber hits
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: the road on that. Because ultimately, we do have finite
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: resources of this stuff. whether it's aircraft carriers or missile
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: defense batteries or what have you. And we've kind of
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: reached that state, you know, and the Iranians know that.
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: And so they can turn the dial. I mean, they've
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: been smart. Like they, you know, after focusing on the
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: Gulf member, they were focusing their missile attacks on Jordan. Like, oh,
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: you know, suddenly a new theater. And now their proxies
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: are on the offense in Yemen. And they have, you know,
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: one of the missile strikes on the pipeline came from Iraq.
• 18:12
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: And the Iraqis, of course, say, well, we had nothing
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: to do with it, but it came from Iraq. And
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: so we kept hearing under Biden and Trump how, you know,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: we've destroyed all these Iranian proxy networks. Well, apparently not.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: And part of the thing you realize, and I experienced
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: this when I was in government, is like it doesn't
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: take much to kind of replenish these guys, you know,
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: like give them some drones. I mean, you know, the
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: online pieces like these guys have Toyotas and RPGs and
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: drones that and routed the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces, it does
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: not take much to reconstitute these proxy forces. And at
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: a time when we're overstretched and we can't fight the
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: kind of eight-front war that Israel started in the Middle East,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Israel is notably sitting out the war after getting us
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: to fight it, we just can't cover all that terrain.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and so according to a bunch of news reports
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and analysis from experts, this lightning-fast military offensive by the Houthis,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: it was not like, some genius surprise attack.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: This wasn't D-Day.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: It was that the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces, the Yemeni government
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: forces were just a disaster. The CNN reported to the Saudis,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: like they were put on alert maybe even three weeks
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: ago that something was coming, but they never moved air
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: assets in place to provide air support to these troops.
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: This is a couple of quotes from that CNN story, Ben.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: The source said he contacted the United States Central Command's
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and was assured the U.S. was watching the situation closely
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and that Saudi air support was coming, but the air
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: support never came. Quote, there was not one airstrike throughout
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: the day yesterday by the Saudi support forces. Although there
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: were minute by minute updates, the regional source added it
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: was a Saudi-American fuck up of epic proportions. And then
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: there's a kind of the bigger problem that the GCC,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the Gulf countries, their approach to Yemen is just totally
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: fractured and a mess. The Saudis and the Emiratis used
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: to be aligned against the Houthis in Yemen and But
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: then at the end of last year, this UAE-backed group
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: called the Southern Transitional Coalition, or STC, they attacked Saudi
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: forces who were also part of this anti-Houthi coalition. The
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Saudi kicked the Emiratis out of Yemen. The STC disbanded,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: but the Saudis never backfilled them, apparently. So the Emiratis
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: would provide air support. The Saudis didn't backfill that. And
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: then I guess CNN reported that some of the units
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: were at like 20% capacity of where they claim to be,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: these Yemeni government military units because it was full of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: quote unquote ghost soldiers who were just like names on
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: a list collecting a paycheck, but no human being was there.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So the Houthis did some smart stuff. They like seem
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: to have hacked into the Yemeni military comm system and
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: like use an AI deep fake of their, the general's
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: voice to tell them all to retreat.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: And they did.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: And that confused people, but a bunch of soldiers were
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: just surrendered. They were selling their weapons on the side
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of the road.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: And disbanding.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: So it's like there wasn't really a big will to
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: fight among the government forces like there was from the Houthis.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because they're like mercenaries for hire or just people
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: collecting salaries. And like the Houthis, whatever you think of them,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: have like a deep ideological... I mean, these people survived
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: like a decade of war, you know. And they're not
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: some like transplanted terrorist group. They're just people that live
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: in southern Yemen. You know, they're not going anywhere. And look,
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: I think... A couple other things stand out. One is
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: what you just mentioned. Larry Wright was on, and he
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: was talking about how these new tools of cyber capabilities,
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: artificial intelligence, are going to start to manifest in terrorist
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: actions or on the battlefield. We had the Houthis using
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: AI for intelligence purposes or disinformation purposes. We also have
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: reports that the Houthis were using clawed to figure out
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: how to build weapons.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Better targeting with their missiles.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: Targeting with their missiles. And make no mistake, this stuff
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: is a leveler. And in the same way that you
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: can build a really effective drone for not that much money,
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: you can use AI technologies to improve what you do.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: We tend to have, frankly, sometimes a racist attitude that
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: these people are going to figure it out. These people
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: are fucking smart. You don't have to agree with them
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: to know that The fact that they've been able to
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: fight off this coalition demonstrates some entrepreneurial capability. And that
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: leads me to like the paradigm of what is the
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: future of the Middle East here? Because, you know, the
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: Abraham Accords is supposed to be the future.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Well, a lot of peace was delivered by the Abraham Accords.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: If you judge the Abraham Accords against its own objectives,
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: like forget the fact that it wasn't going to bring
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: peace to the Palestinians, look at where Iran is today.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Look at where the Houthis are today. Like this kind
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: of handshake deal between autocrats that frankly, you know, there's
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: a house of cards feeling to the Middle East infrastructure
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: as it is, with the U.S. as kind of the
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: force behind the house of cards. Like something is going
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: to emerge on the other side of this war. And
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: I think there's something that emerges. Iran is going to
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: have to be dealt with. not ignored or not cowering
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: in the face of the Iran Accords. And countries like
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia are going to make their own deals with
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: the Chinese, with other countries, because who wants to be
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: wholly reliant on the United States anymore?
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: Well, and also, what do you do with the Houthis?
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, before they were winning in this last offensive,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: they basically wanted to control the airspace in Sana'a. They
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: wanted to be able to fly in and out of
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: that airspace and that airport and even fly to Iran.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: They wanted the Saudis to pay public sector employees in
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Houthi areas a share of Yemeni oil revenues and to
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: get rid of some restrictions at the Hodeidah port. Now
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: they're going to want more, obviously. They're going to up
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the cost, and they're going to say, well, we control
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. And meanwhile, Saudi oil production is
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: at the lowest level in 36 years in August. Trump
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: has been able to spin and bullshit and market manipulate
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: his way through this, but oil prices are plummeting. well
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: over $ 100 a barrel right now, and that is going
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: to create a huge political cost in the midterms. Yeah.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, don't underestimate the Houthis. I mean,
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: we did the same thing with the Taliban, you know,
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: in the sense that there's this kind of corrupt government
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: in Yemen, and then there are these, you know, the
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: Saudis and others have been bombing Yemenis without regard for
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: civilian life. That kind of stuff, like, opens the door
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: to the Houthis taking over the whole country because, you know,
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: people may not like them, But they also don't like
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: the quote-unquote internationally recognized government either. And so that's not
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: a possibility to discount. On the energy prices thing, at
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: a certain point, the shortages are what they are. If
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: you take Saudi oil off the market for two months,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: which some estimates are maybe September and October, on top
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: of the straight-forward moves disruptions, there's no way to kind
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: of paper this over. We've drawn down strategic reserves. like
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: shortages are going to be what they are and prices
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: are going to go up and places are going to
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: have political instability. And I saw Trump, Trump did again, like, oh,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: we're talking to the Iranians. Did you see that? Like,
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: and the markets like went for it again. Like, I just,
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: there's something astonishing about seeing that, like the whole stock
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: market might just be a confidence game and not, I mean,
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: maybe I'm the idiot for just coming to that late,
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: but it is bizarre to watch, you know, Bond yields,
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: as we've talked about, are pricing this in. Increasingly, fuel
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: prices are pricing it in. The stock market seems to
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: kind of believe every piece of disinformation from Trump that
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: we're on the precipice of either winning or concluding the war.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's a famous, maybe apocryphal quote that
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: So we'll see if that proves to be true.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Before we take a quick break, I just want to
• 26:02
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  Speaker 1: World is brought to you by Quince. We all have
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  Speaker 1: slash world, or use code world at checkout. Speaking of Iran, Ben,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: so back in July, we covered these Iranian missile attacks
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: on a base in Jordan that killed three American troops.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that ahead of
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: that attack, Iran had gotten its hands on imagery of
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: the base from what they described as Chinese entities. The U.S.
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: has not named who those entities are. We've stopped short
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: of accusing the Chinese government. But the administration has previously
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: accused Chinese companies of supplying imagery to Iran, even going
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: as far as to sanction them. And the Chinese pushed
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: back hard on that. The U.S. strikes have impacted Iran's
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: ability to surveil the region. But the journal notes that
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Iran's targeting has gotten better over The summer may be
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: due to external help from the Russians or the Chinese.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: The journal also reports that the U.S. officials worry Iran
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: is using Chinese imagery to track American naval assets in
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: the region. Trump, of course, is our tough guy, strong
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: man president. So, of course, he was eager to punch
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: back at the Chinese Communist Party and stand up for
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: our troops, Ben, when he was asked about this.
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: On Air Force One on Sunday. Let's watch.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: We recently reported that Chinese entities may have provided the
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Iranians with satellite imagery of the air bases in Jordan.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: They do what we do. They basically do.
• 31:01
  Speaker 9: What we do.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Are you going to raise that with Xi when he visits?
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: I think he's behaved reasonably well. And we behave reasonably well.
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: You know, when they say that China spies on us,
• 31:13
  Speaker 5: I say, you're right. And we spy on them, too.
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: You know, we spy on.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: Them, too. It's, like, an old, obvious point, but if
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: any Democrat said that, like, Fox News would light itself
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: on fire. And Hugh Hewitt would, like, fucking murder somebody.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It's just crazy.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: He's just so weak. He's such a pathetic little bitch.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: And it's all because of the war he started, you know?
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, of course the Chinese are doing that. Of
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: course the Russians are doing that. Like, I weirdly understand
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: what he's saying, but, like, number one, like, you should
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: be trying to stop... I mean, people got killed because
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: of this. Americans, right?
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: But also.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: Like, don't start the fucking war. Like, don't give the
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Chinese and the Russians this opportunity to drive us, you know,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: whatever you think of our presence in the Middle East, like,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: you know, having it ended by, like, the Iranians firing
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: missiles at our people is not, like, how you want
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: that to happen. But we keep hearing, I mean, I,
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: you know, we talked about this, Tommy, but, like, I,
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: you hear stuff that, again, we can't independently verify it. But, like,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: you know, I hear stuff that, like, they've targeted, like,
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: the hotel room that the intelligence community uses in X
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Gulf country, you know, like clearly they have Russian and
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: Chinese intelligence supporting them. There's probably pipelines of weapons too
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: coming from at least Russia, if not China, because that's
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: what happens. And what's dangerous about it, and this is again,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: why you don't start dumb wars, which again, for all
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: my criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party, of which there
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: are many, and we can spend time on that another time,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: they don't start wars yet, at least, you know, Taiwan
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: sitting there. But the reality is there's a globalization of
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: these wars that is really concerning, right? Like the Ukraine
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: war is kind of a global war. This war now,
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: the Russians and Chinese are helping out. Like it's us
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: and Israel. Like this is starting to feel like one
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: big war.
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I think like that we do it too answer would
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: make sense in the context of Russia and Ukraine because
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: like we're helping the Ukrainians literally kill Russian service members
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: every day. It just like doesn't make sense. there in
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the context of China. Like we're not helping some other
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: entity kill Chinese troops that I can think of. And like, look,
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not looking for some like jingoistic, like we're going
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: to kill them back, you know, eye for an eye
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: bullshit from him.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: But it is, it's surprisingly weak and pathetic.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: It's obvious he's just trying not to upset the apple
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: cart in any way in advance of the Xi Jinping meeting.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: That's right. I mean, you're right. I mean, in the
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: sense that, um, He used spying as an example. Well, yeah, sure.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Like we spy on the Chinese.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Spying, yes.
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: Like giving the coordinates to kill U.S. service members is
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: like materially different than like spying on people. And at
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: a minimum, you would want your president to say, you
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: know what, like I can't comment on like intelligence reports,
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: but I'm certainly going to be having a really tough
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: conversation with Xi Jinping when I see him next because
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: like the number one priority. His commander-in-chief is the safety
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: and security of our troops, although he doesn't seem to
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: give a shit about that.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: He does not at all. A couple of more things
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: on Iran. So the Pentagon's inspector general has a report
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: out on Operation Epic Fury for the period through just
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: June 30th about the cost. The top line numbers are
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: the Department of War says the cost of OEF. I
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: can't believe they called it Epic Fury. Now it's OEF
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: for us. Anyway, $ 33. 4 billion as of June 29th.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: Like, obviously, it's exponentially more now.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: To replace all this stuff.
• 34:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: And then the buildings and infrastructure damage are destroyed at U.S.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Oman,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: and Jordan. There's damage to diplomatic facilities totaling $ 184 million
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: in Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, in the UAE. Also, Ben,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: the New York Times had a great story over the
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: weekend about how the war has empowered hardliners in Iran who, surprise, surprise,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: have then taken actions that either escalated or lengthened the conflict.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: It's a great piece.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: It's worth a read and a reminder that there are
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: politics in Iran and we've made those politics way worse
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: and we have not come to rescue the protesters as
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Trump long ago said he would do.
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, none of the original rationales for the war even
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: get cited. Even Epic Fury, remember how much Trump loved that?
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: You know, Epic Fury, I love the name. But the
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: only thing I'd say is that this is real money.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: You know, sometimes, like I've noticed when Abdul El-Sayed and
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: others are like, talking about, I don't want to spend
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: money overseas. People are like, oh, but that's not that
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: much money. It's a lot of fucking money. I mean,
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: we've given Israel over $ 20 billion since October 7th. We've spent,
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: you know, the price tag of this war has got
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: to be north of $ 100 billion when you account what
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: has been spent, what is going to be used to
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: replenish what's been spent, rebuilding whatever facilities we choose to rebuild. So, like,
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: think of what you could do with that money.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Think of the.
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: Opportunity cost of Donald Trump choosing to spend your money
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: if you're an American taxpayer that way.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: On the heels of trillions of dollars of post 9-11 wars.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: We got an exclusive first look at a new poll
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: from the Institute of Global Affairs at the Eurasia Group.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: They did a survey with YouGov about the Iran war.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: This survey was done in mid-August. So before like the
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: latest kind of disaster. Yeah, the price was going up.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: There were some really interesting findings, Ben. So disapproval with
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: the Iran war has increased 13 points with independents. It
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: went from 62% disapproval to 75% disapproval. Uh, 73% of
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Republicans still approve of the war overall, but the number
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: of Republicans who say they strongly approve of the war.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Went down about 15 points.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Um, 17% of Republicans think starting the war was a
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: mistake and only 49% of Republicans think the war is
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: making the U S safer nationally.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Approval of the war is only 34%.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: Uh, a plurality of Americans, 43% say Iran is more
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: likely to develop a nuclear weapon today than it was
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a year ago. Um, Huge majorities of Democrats, 81% of Democrats,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: 59% of independents think the U.S. made a mistake in
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: attacking Iran. Even 17% of Republicans agree with that. 81%
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: of Americans think the war has raised the cost of living.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Only 37% of Americans trust the administration to provide accurate
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: information about the war. So I get like these are
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: just as bad as it gets numbers wise. And again,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: this is before the latest prices spike.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, these numbers are even worse than they sound, like
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: for this reason. First of all, I cannot remember a
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: war ever in my life that polled at 36%. Especially
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: this quickly. I mean, even the Iraq war was like
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: hanging on for a while there. Yeah, to your point,
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: this quickly. But then I think if you go under
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: the hood, like the independent number is both politically relevant
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: because those tend to be swing voters and because those
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: tend to be people that are making like a judgment
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: based on what they're seeing. And so that's 75% disapproval.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Because again, I'm not a polar coaster co-host, Tommy. But
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: I do know that because of the intense partisanship in
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: this country, the Republican number is inflated. The Republicans get
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: a call. There's a certain percentage of Republicans, which is
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: more than 50%, that it literally like, I mean, I
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: love the people who's, you know, the remaining 19%. who
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: don't say that it's caused prices to go up. Those
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: people fill up their gap. Those are literally people that,
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: to quote Trump, like he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: So you have to account for the fact that the
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: Republican number is inflating what are already horrific numbers because
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: there are people that probably don't like the Iran war,
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: but are just going to say they support whatever Trump's doing.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they support what their team is up to.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that matters here too. It's also a
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: message to the Democratic Party, and I've been banging this drum,
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: we both have, Are the Democrats against the war?
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: Do you really feel that? Like, do you have a
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: sense that Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, like, it's weird
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: to me that the war is not more prominent in
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: the Democratic Party's messaging.
• 39:06
  Speaker 10: Yeah.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, remember the early days when, before Trump
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: launched it, like, there were some, a lot of Democrats
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: on the fence. There were a lot of people who
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: would do the kind of lip service to, like, while
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: I don't like this regime and blah, blah, they would, like,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: oppose it for some legalistic reason. Like the outcome has
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: been a disaster. A disaster.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: Congress is again behind the American people.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: It is okay. It is okay to just be an
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: anti-war party.
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: And by the way, I was- imagine these numbers apply
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: to the U.S. getting back involved against the Houthi rebels
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: in Yemen.
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: I'm sure that's part of why Trump didn't do that, right?
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: I mean, maybe the last tinfoil hat thing is just
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: more war bombing might, you know, he's getting told that
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: this pulls horribly. Again, the message of the Just be
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: a full-on anti-war party. Like, enough of the throat-clearing. I mean,
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: we're talking about a party that just put Jared Moskowitz
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: in charge of the Middle East Subcommittee and the Foreign
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: Affairs Committee, a man who said he agrees with Lindsey Graham,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: you know, may his soul rest wherever it is, about
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: the Iran war. Like, can we just get out of
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: this defensive crouch or this, you know, pro-Israel, whatever, whatever
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: the thing is, because it's more than one thing, that
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: caused the Democrats to not come out in a full-throated
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: way against us.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: It's bad policy and bad politics. There's just no reason
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: to be in for this. All right, let's switch gears.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: We've got a lot of Trump in the show today,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and we don't usually do that, but there was just
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: so much out there. It was like we had to
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: talk about these stories. Trump was in Ireland over the weekend.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: He was there to attend a golf tournament at his
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Irish golf course, because why shouldn't taxpayers like us foot
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: the bill for that, right? In the process, though, he
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: managed to roll a grenade into Northern Ireland politics in
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: a way that was so stupid and so reckless that
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: it would be like the defining foreign policy gaffe of
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: any other presidency. But like it almost didn't get noticed here.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: So we really wanted to talk about it. So to
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: prepare for this section, Ben, I called a journalist named
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Peter Kelly. We met a couple of times, including at
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: the DNC in 2024. He's written for the Irish Examiner USA.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: It's a great Irish name.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: And the Irish post. Peter Kelly. Yeah, great guy. And
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: he was on the scene for this mess over in Ireland.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: So on Saturday, Trump met with the Taoiseach, Michel Martin.
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: That's their prime minister there. I think there wasn't supposed
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: to be like a press scrum, and all of a
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: sudden they just called the press in for this impromptu
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: press conference. Never a good idea, Trump. Never a good idea.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: So Trump and the Taoiseach, they do these kind of,
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: you know, they're pro forma statements about whatever. And then
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: they take questions. The 11th question, and they all went
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: to Trump, was about Irish unity and unification. That is
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: where Trump said this. Let's watch. What's your view on
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Irish unification, Mr. President?
• 41:41
  Speaker 8: What's your view on it? Well, I don't want to
• 41:45
  Speaker 8: cause any problems, but I will tell you, I'd love
• 41:48
  Speaker 8: to see it unified.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: You know what? The way I look at it, it's
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: going to happen eventually.
• 41:52
  Speaker 5: It will happen then.
• 41:53
  Speaker 8: Now, the UK will have something to say about it, obviously,
• 41:56
  Speaker 8: but I think it.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: Would be a great thing. I mean, how can it
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: be bad?
• 42:00
  Speaker 7: It just seems to me that you have Northern Ireland
• 42:04
  Speaker 7: and you have Ireland, and it would seem to me
• 42:06
  Speaker 7: that one of the naturals of all time is put
• 42:09
  Speaker 7: them together.
• 42:10
  Speaker 5: I've had so much support on that. And then they
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: ask me about Scotland.
• 42:14
  Speaker 7: That one I won't talk about yet.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: I'll save that for another day. His analysis, basically, they
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: both have Ireland in the name.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: Is he going to do Wales next?
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: So if you look in the first couple, you can
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: see the Taoiseach, Michel Martin, like kind of die inside
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: as this is happening.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: You took my point.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: So what happened there is like what Trump said explicitly
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: goes against the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: is one of the most successful bits of U.S.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Diplomacy in a generation.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Because it ended decades of bloody sectarian and nationalist conflict,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: killed like 3,700 people. But it's also an extremely fragile
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: and volatile piece that requires delicate power sharing, right? And
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: that is what he just kind of like kicks sand at.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: And to be clear, Trump is upending casually at a
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: press avail about his golf course, decades of US policy
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: for no reason Because the U.S. position is that the U.S.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: is neither in favor of a united Ireland nor opposed
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: to the idea. The Good Friday Agreement says that Northern
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom as long as
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: that's what a majority.
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: In Northern Ireland wants.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Andy Burnham, the new prime minister of the U.K., just
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: said he is not aware of majority support for unification,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: that there will be no referendum.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: The referendum is off the table.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: This is like a settled issue. Polling shows majority support
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: for the unionist position or the status quo. So like
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: what all Trump is doing in practice there is again,
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: like rolling this political grenade into the Northern Ireland government
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: where there's a power sharing agreement between the unionists and
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the nationalists who are like literally run by two ministers
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: who are the daughters of like paramilitaries on either side.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: It's like a daughter of an IRA guy and a
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: daughter of a gun runner for the unionists. And now
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the fucking Taoiseach has to go meet with Amy Burnham,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I think later this week and get asked all about
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: this again. So it's just a political disaster for everyone
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: that the real downside case could reopen a deadly sectarian conflict.
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: Everything about this is remarkable in its pointlessness. I mean,
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: first of all, I just checked, Trump's approval rating in
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Ireland is 20%, right? 20%, because I love the Irish.
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: I probably love the Irish more than anybody. And so-
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: What's he going over there in the first place? It's
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: just a pain in everybody's ass. They have to host him, right?
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: Just because he's basically trying to create an advertisement for
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: his golf course. Then he just kind of casually sticks
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: his foot into like one of the thorniest problems and
• 44:46
  Speaker 3: one of the only problems that we're able to help
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: solve in my lifetime. Which, because again, whatever you think about,
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: let's say you are, you know, pro United Ireland. This
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: is actually like, this is not good for anybody, right?
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you're a unionist, you're pissed. Even if
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: you're like long-term would like to see a United Ireland,
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: like this is not the way to do that.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: You shouldn't, same thing in time. You'd be like, oh,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Trump said it. Let's do it, boys.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: Well, actually it undermines them in a way, right? Because like,
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: oh shit, Trump swore it? Maybe it's not a good idea.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: And also just to make your point, like the real
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: lives at stake here, like I remember I used to
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: go to the meeting every year, Obama and St. Patrick's,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: they would always meet with the two chief ministers of
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: Northern Ireland. And It was fucking tense, man. Like you
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: go to Belfast, there's still peace walls. There's still like
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: divided communities. You know, if there's a sense that even
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: some of the people that might not favor having a referendum,
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: like the reason they don't, even they might personally like think, oh,
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe someday Ireland will be unified. But they
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: just don't want to go through that shit again. They
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: don't want to go through violence again. They don't want
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: another war. Like let's, you know what, this is fine.
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: We have some autonomy. We have an Irish identity within
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: the United Kingdom. Brexit kind of strained this a little bit.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: It's just like walking up to a hornet's nest and
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: kicking it as hard as you can with no purpose
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: in doing that other than just like sharing your opinion
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: as if you're like an independent commentator, not the president
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: of the United States. I will say my one other
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: theory on this, and this is not even a tinfoil hat.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: I also think Trump like fucking he hates Europeans. He
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: seems to not like Brits like he. Like, the malevolence
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: may just be like, ah, I'll just come over here
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: and create a huge problem for Andy Burnham and the Taoiseach,
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: and then I'll leave.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah. I mean, apparently in Ireland, the question's whether
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: he was trying to do this to, like, get Irish
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: Catholic voters to support him in the midterms. I think
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: that's giving him too much credit. And then he's just, like,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: a fucking reckless idiot. Because even in that clip, like, again,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: it seems like he just thinks they're both named Ireland,
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: so they should go together. Like, that's the depth of
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: his analysis. And interestingly, Ben, like, so Sinn Féin....
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: He probably doesn't even know what religion the Unionists are.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: They're Shia. The Sinn Fein has boycotted the White House St.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Patrick's Day event for the last couple of years because
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: of Gaza. But also apparently in a recent one of
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: the St. Patty's Day events, Trump repeatedly name-checked the head
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: of the Unionist Party, which are like very right-wing, very conservative,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: very pro-Trump. So next year after this bullshit, you could
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: imagine like the unionist party boycotting the white house, St.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Patty's day event. And then like the nationalists are attending,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: but like to your point about him, the Europe, him
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: hating Europe, like even Nigel Farage was like, no, that's
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: a bad idea.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I'm sure. And also like some of this to
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: your point about Trump's like lack of, you know, understand,
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: cause this is not some jujitsu for the Irish Catholic.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: I mean, this is a man that literally picked a
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: fight with the Pope.
• 47:43
  Speaker 8: Right.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: Um, I'm not sure he's thinking all these things through. Um,
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: But the reality is like Trump is also this guy
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: who like a lot of his views were kind of
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: frozen in time in like the 80s, you know? I
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: grew up in New York in like the 80s and 90s.
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: Like that's when like the IRA was like, you know,
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: running guns out of Staten Island.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: And you had like New York Republican members of Congress
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: from like Long Island supporting them over.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Like Peter King.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: I honestly think Trump may not even know that the
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: Good Friday Accords happened.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: Or certainly what the kind of construct of and how
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: fragile it is and how it's all this kind of,
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: complicated power sharing and negotiated autonomy. Like, you know, he
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: just doesn't care about that. Like, you know, he'll probably
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: offer to send Jared and Witkoff to Northern Ireland if
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: anything goes sideways.
• 48:28
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• 51:05
  Speaker 2: We sent you.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Speaking of which, Ben, Griftmas came early for everybody because
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: there's two big, long magazine features about the Trump family's corruption.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Let's start with ProPublica's piece.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: About Donald Trump Jr. 's wedding.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: These are both bangers.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: It's just incredible.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about Dexter Filkins' New Yorker piece.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: So back in May, Donnie Jr. fans might remember that
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: he had a three-day wedding to the new love of
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: his life in the Bahamas. It was a small wedding.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: It was like 50 people, but one attendee was a
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Russian oligarch named Umar Kremlev, who was close to Vladimir
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: Putin and the head of the International Boxing Association.
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: Totally normal.
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: Not only did Kremlev attend, but he footed part of
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: the bill. ProPublica says he paid to rent out an
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: island where the reception was held.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: That's what it does.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: For a fireworks display. The island reportedly costs about $ 100, 000
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: a night. The fireworks displays are normally like 70 grand.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: I think the all-in estimate was like a couple hundred
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars paid for by some IBA, International Boxing Association-affiliated entity.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: The International Boxing Association is financed by Gazprom, the big
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Russian state-owned energy behemoth. According to ProPublica, in the weeks
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: before the wedding, Kremlin, this oligarch, was in China with
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Putin as part of the delegation and also recently got
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: bestowed with the Order of Friendship state honor. And then lastly,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Kremlin's wife's sister runs an organization called Healthy Fatherland that
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: is sanctioned in Ukraine for its role in Russia's abduction
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: of Ukrainian kids, like the most evil part of an
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: evil war. And so they run the story. Incredibly, after
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: it comes out, Don Jr. 's wife pretty much just
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: confirms it all as true on Instagram. She wrote, our
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: celebrations for us after our wedding. It was an extraordinarily
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: generous wedding gift from a friend. It's something for which
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: We were and remain incredibly grateful. I think she was
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: trying to say, aha, the story was wrong because it
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: said they paid for our wedding. What they paid for
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: was after the wedding. Normally, you kind of buck at
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: the wedding weekend as one thing, but that's just me.
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: But Ben, two things. One, first of all, my initial
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: reaction was like, Jesus Christ, these people are grifters. But
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: the more serious point is like, if Putin were to
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: try to buy influence with Don Jr., this is how
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: you would do it. You have this carve-out sports association
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: funded by Gazprom. to make a run at him. This
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: is the most obvious Russian intel op I've ever seen.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: That's right. Because the two things that jumped out to me,
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: first of all, what's his name?
• 53:34
  Speaker 10: Umar.
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: Umar is... I'm just going to go out on a limb, Tommy.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: And if you think I'm being impolite, you can call
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: me out. I don't think... This is a man that
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: just has a sincere appreciation for Don Jr. 's personality.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing, no.
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: Like an organic friendship that just evolved over two guys
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: who happened to meet each other from other sides of
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: the world and then decided to rent an island for him.
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: Like these people, if you know anything about how the
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: Russian system works, like if they make an investment in
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: a person like this, they expect a return on the investment.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: They're not doing this out of sentimentality. They're not doing
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: it because in the same way that the Saudis don't think,
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: that Jared Kushner is a particularly ingenious investor. Like that's
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: an investment in something. Now it turns out they didn't
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: get the return they wanted. This is an investment, an
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: ongoing investment by the Russians in the Trump family. That
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: leads me to my second point, which is that the U.S. media,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: mainstream media, whatever we want to call it, did they
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: crank the Russiagate stuff up like way high? They did
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: in the sense that that was like all they covered
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: for a couple of.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Years, right?
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: But Trump has so thoroughly, you know, called this a
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: hoax and kind of made any insinuation of his own
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: contacts and potentially compromised nature of his relationship with Russia
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: seem so kind of resistance 1.0 and so kind of
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Trump derangement syndrome that like people actually don't talk about
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: it that much anymore. And yet it is just like
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: staring you in the face that the Russians have been
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: making like a very long-term investment in Trump and his family.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: And And makes you wonder, like, what do they want
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: in return for that? And what are they getting in
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: return for that? Right. And and it's just staring at us.
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: At some point, someone will come back and put this
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: all together and write it up. But the reality is,
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: you know, if we'll allow ourselves to do this for
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: two times today, which is breaking our rule. If like
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: a Russian oligarch was paying for like Malia Obama's wedding,
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: you know, in the Bahamas. I think there'd be some
• 55:42
  Speaker 3: questions about that.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Guess I'm going to get a little Fox News coverage.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: And meanwhile, this will be like a passing story.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I hate this. I hate that we're like
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: back in 2017 P-Tape era conversation, but it is bonkers.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Like Don Jr.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: Didn't know this guy forever. They met a couple of
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: years ago.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: You know, it's like this is just so clearly an
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: effort to funnel money to this family and buy access.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: And also it comes at a time when Don Jr.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: isn't just the dumb fuck son of the president. He's
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: a guy who's like investing in or advisor to drone
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: companies like, you know, the rare earths. They're getting huge
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Pentagon loans, right? Like he's more deeply tied into this administration.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: He may try to inherit the Trump political dynasty.
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: You know, like he may either run for president or
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: become some, you know, Trump media mogul who's endorsing candidates.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, and this was, again, the dumb thing about
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: the Russia investigation was, You didn't need there to be
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: a P-tape or some smoking gun of, like, collusion for
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: this to still be wrong, you know?
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: And there was a smoking gun, which was Donald Trump Jr.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: meeting with this, like, Russian-connected lawyer for dirt on Hillary Clinton.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Don Jr.
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: Is just a walking smoking gun.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's the thing. So, okay, that was one story.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Then there was this great New Yorker piece by Dexter
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Filkins on Jared Kushner and corruption and diplomacy. Um, the,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the detail that jumped out at me, Ben was, uh,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: we've talked about crown Prince, uh, Mohammed bin Salman of
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia before early in the show, frankly, um, in 2017,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: he deposed his cousin, Mohammed bin Nayef, who was, uh,
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: seen as a very credible, uh, professional interlocutor that all
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: the us intelligence agencies knew and liked working with. And
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: nobody knew who MBS was. Apparently MBS called Jared Kushner
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: to tell him in advance that he was going to
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: depose his cousin. That call was secretly recorded where Kushner says, yeah,
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: everybody's on board with this except for the U.S. intelligence
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: agency is like, go for it. So that's one big detail.
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: And the second detail is Filkins got his hands on
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: this classified intelligence report from a European intelligence agency that
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: says Trump has been discussing economic deals with the Russians,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: including stuff like reopening Nord Stream 2, like huge ticket items,
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: like opening oil fields to Exxon. These are not like
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: golf courses. And it like it names people that could
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: participate in the deal that are including Trump, Steve Witkoff,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner, Richard Grinnell, Gentry Beach, this friend of Don Jr.
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: s.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: And so it's just like it's another staggering story about corruption.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal has an article about the Trump
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: organization about to announce a Trump tower in Tbilisi in Georgia,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: the country where the ruling party Georgia dreams like cracking
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: down the dissent and getting closer to Moscow.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: So there's just so much smoke here.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: You know, what's interesting about this is, and I'll, I
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: talked to Dexter Filkins when he was setting out on this,
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: you know, and I was not the source on any
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: of this stuff because I didn't know about any of
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: this stuff. But part of what's interesting is you and
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: I have been talking about this stuff for eight years,
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: you know, and it's all like, it's kind of apparent
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: what's happening. And what is, you know, it's apparent that
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: Jared is in bed with the Saudis. It's apparent that
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: the Russians want the Trump people to kind of put
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: their thumb on the scale in places like Georgia where
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: they're trying to, you know, expand influence, if not kind
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: of swallow it up. And what's so striking is that
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: like whenever anybody actually does get the goods, it's actually
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: even worse than you think, you know, like when it
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: because it's not even just like a. you know, like
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: just take the Saudi piece. It's not even just like
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: a subtle quid pro quo. It's literally like Jared Kushner
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: being like, yeah, crack down on your family. You know,
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, I was in the White House, like the
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: Mohammed bin Nayef thing. I mean, he was the crown
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: prince and MBS was the deputy crown prince. Like this
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: is a kind of a mini internal coup that took place.
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: And we have a guy literally not only greenlighting that
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: from the White House, Jared was a White House employee
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: at that time, a senior advisor, And then getting millions
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: of dollars on the back end. I mean, this is,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: this just demonstrates, like there's been this kind of collapse
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: of investigative journalism as foreign bureaus have closed and as
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: the media has become what it's become. But man, like
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: if you just, if you get a good dogged reporter
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: like Dexter Filkins, what you find is that all this
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: stuff is even worse than like, you know, like we,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: you know, surmise on. I will add like, because people
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: ask all the time, like what to read, what, The
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 3: New Yorker, ProPublica, The Guardian does work like this. Dropsite
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: does it in the Middle East. The people that are
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: still doing investigative journalism are people that do demand your
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: attention because, frankly, if we were living in a different era,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: we would know more of this stuff. But thankfully, there's
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: still people out there connecting dots.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great reporting and really hard work, which is
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: why a lot of people don't do it because it's
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: time and labor intensive. Dexter also reported out, you know,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: others have reported on this as well, that when Jared
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: left the White House and he started Affinity Partners, his
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: investment company, he went to the Saudis, you know, kind
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: of hat in hand to ask for a $ 2 billion investment.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: And like all the professionals in the Saudi kind of
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: sovereign wealth fund were like, no way. This guy has
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: never invested before. Like, what are we thinking? And then
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: MBS overruled them. And gave him $ 2 billion, which I
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: think has turned into many, many billion dollars more as
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Jared has reentered this sort of like hybrid quasi-governmental role
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: where he's not officially an employee. So he doesn't have
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: to file disclosure forms about his wealth, for example, but
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: he still has all this influence. But his management fee
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: charges– the management fee that Affinity charges is like 1.25%.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: Which means he was making, what, $ 25, $ 30 million off
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: the Saudis alone per year. And I think they have
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: in the story that for the first three years, Affinity
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: didn't make any investments. Yeah.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: So they were just charging the Saudis to do nothing.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: Nothing. Yeah.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: How is that not a bribe or a kickback?
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. Because that was the other thing
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, which is if and when
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: the Democrats take back power, like all this stuff needs
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: to be illegal.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: Because what's remarkable is it's not. It's grotesque. I think
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: what people used to count on is that like politically,
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: it would be a killer for the president's son-in-law to
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: like collect billions of dollars.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: There's no shame anymore.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: But in a world of that shame, and I'll tell
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: you the other things happening to be self-critical of like,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: you know, our party and is it, there's a lot
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: of this stuff at smaller scale. You know, there's a
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: lot of people that serve in government and then they
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: kind of, they start a fund in the Gulf or they,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: you know, Um, they get on a board that like
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: is selling a lot of things to the Gulf and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: the kind of wink wink is it, Oh, those people
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: are probably going to go back into the U S
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: government at some point. So we're going to invest in them.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: Like all this, we have to enter a period of
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: like radical anti-corruption and transparency after this to cleanse ourselves.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: Cause Jared is like the most extreme and damaging version
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: of it, but there's more of it underneath the surface too.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: And like, this should be a priority for the, I mean,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: if you want to restore public confidence in the government,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: Because people know this intuitively. You don't need to follow
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: foreign policy to kind of feel like everything's for sale.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Yep. I would love to know what the Russian oligarch
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: sovereign wealth fund guy was doing in Miami with Jared
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Kushner and Steve Woodcoff.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: That'd be a great thing to examine.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: Last story, Ben. So we want to touch on some
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: developments in the war between Russia and Ukraine. A Russian
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: drone struck a train at a train station that's about
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: a mile from Ukraine's border with Poland. This happens obviously
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: all the time. But what makes this incident remarkable was
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: that A so-called VIP train had just passed through the station.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: A VIP train is a train that the Ukrainian government
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: runs that's full of dignitaries or whatever VIPs are visiting.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: I think a couple VIP trains went through the area.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: They went through a little earlier than had been anticipated.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: There's not like a schedule for them, obviously, but like,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: you know, people at the stations like know when they're
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: coming and going to do traffic control. And so the train,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: the VIP trains go through the station and then shortly
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: after Russia hits it with a drone. And so one
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: of those trains was carrying the national security advisors of
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: the UK, France, Germany.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: And Italy.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: One of them was also carrying a former British prime minister,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Boris Johnson. A former CIA director.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: Just on holiday there?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: Dave Petraeus was on a train that came through soon after.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: I think they were all there for, there must have
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: been some sort of security conference or something. Former CIA
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: director Dave Petraeus was on another train. I just said that.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: So it's possible, if not likely, that the Russian military
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: was actually targeting those dignitaries. We don't know that, but
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: it's quite a coincidence. And it comes as Russia is
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: getting more and more aggressive with NATO countries. We've talked
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: about this on past episodes, but the Germans blame Russia
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: for a drone attack at Leipzig airport back in August.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: Estonia is investigating Russia for arson attacks. They were all similar,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: like arson or explosions in Finland, Bulgaria, and Italy. I
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: heard a report this morning about a train derailing in
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: France that's being investigated as possible. Russian sabotage. Now, you
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: don't want to start seeing Russia behind every corner and
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: every incident, but there is a lot of smoke here.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: And so I think it, again, is worth just hearing
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: how the Trump administration is reacting to these attacks on
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: NATO allies. And then this clip of Jared Kushner just
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: kind of like talking about the status of the peace
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: talks between Russia and Ukraine at the moment. Let's watch.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 10: Look, I think right now, from the Ukraine perspective, I mean,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 10: President Putin's laid out his line of what he wants
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 10: to achieve. If Ukraine, you know, wanted to withdraw to
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 10: that line, then obviously, you know, we have the rest
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 10: of the deal set up and put together. Ukraine right
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 10: now does not want to do that.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: So just to summarize, Ben, Ukraine has to give Putin, quote,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: what he wants to achieve, and then it'll be all over.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 3: Which is like their own territory where their people live.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: Like a fifth of their territory.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: That they currently control. I mean, first of all, I
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: can't imagine the Russians aren't aware of who's on these trains.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: They have a pretty good intelligence service. They're clearly monitoring this.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: So whether this was like a warning shot, whether it
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: was even worse, like they tried something and missed, I
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: just think we have to understand that this is going
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: to continue to escalate as things go on, as Ukrainians
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: get more aggressive inside of Russia. And the fact that Kushner...
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: is like, oh yeah, well, we'd have this solved if
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: the Ukrainians just surrendered. That's his response to this, is like,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: tells you, what kind of message does that send to
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: Putin about what the response would be if like a
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: bunch of European national security advisors or VIPs get blown
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: up on a train?
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: And in addition to that, I mean, I saw Trump
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: was blaming Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil and gas infrastructure
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: for the high price of diesel, which is not the reason.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: It's the war with Iran. The diesel is really expensive.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: But again, it's like, they're all just blaming Ukraine for stuff.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, Europe is, they're discussing whether to
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: have a public debate about whether these gray zone attacks
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: or hybrid attacks from Russia would trigger an Article 5
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: response from NATO. But they're worried that, like, having that
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: conversation in public would actually hurt, not help, because Trump
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: is not likely to back them.
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: So it would make them look weaker.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: And what are they going to do?
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, one of the things they're talking about, the
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: bare minimum that they're debating, apparently, is whether to kind of, like,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: bring forward their missile defense infrastructure right to the border.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: so that it could engage with drones and missiles that
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: are targeting stations like this that are just across into
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian territory, because I think current policy is to only
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: engage when those, you know, objects pass into NATO airspace.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: But it's like, okay, so we're just going to let, like,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Putin fire at your fucking staffers because they're a mile
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: over the border from Poland?
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: And it all just feels just like, you know, to
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: connect everything we talked about from the what happened in Yemen.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: I mean, everything just feels like it's escalating, you know, and,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: and Donald Trump is the president and he's going to
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: golf courses and reopening the troubles, you know, uh, you know,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: we got two more years of this to get through,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: Two more years, my friend. Uh, okay. We are going
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: to take a quick break, but when we come back,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: you're going to hear my conversation with Hamza Chaudhry. We
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: talk about, uh, all the conversation about AI risk, uh,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: what the CEOs of these companies, companies are doing. what
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration is or isn't doing, what Congress should
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: be doing. So stick around for that. Pod Save the
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: World is brought to you by Trees.com. You've heard me
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  Speaker 1: and conditions may apply. My guest today is Hamza Chaudhry.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: He is the AI and national security lead at the
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: Future of Life Institute and someone I've talked to off
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: the record or on background a bunch of times to
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: try to get smarter on this stuff.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: Hamza, great to talk to you.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Tommy. First of all, can you
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: give folks the quick explanation of what the Future of
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: Life Institute does? Because it's an awesome name for an organization,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily tell you what you guys work on.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 9: I thought the same thing when I applied. The Future
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 9: of Life Institute is the oldest and largest AI policy
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 9: think tank in the United States. It's been around for
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 9: 12 years now. We work on a bunch of issues.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 9: So I have staff working on AI national security policy.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 9: We have folks working on child safety. We have folks
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 9: working on labor protections. We have folks working on liability issues.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 9: And then we have folks staffing our international teams, working
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 9: on global governance, track dues with international partners. So anything
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 9: to do with AI policy, chances are FLI is engaging
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 9: with it.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: Folks might have heard that there's this big conference in
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: DC this week happening right now, actually, that includes Bernie
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: Sanders and Steve Bannon.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: You guys are the ones who brought that together.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: So very interesting politics, very interesting moment to talk about
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence with you. So it's been a wild week
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: in AI news. The short version of what happened is,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: This AI researcher at Anthropic resigned from the company, and
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: he tweeted, quote, the people building AI earnestly believe that
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: it could kill us all by the end of the decade.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: A bunch of other AI employees at Anthropic and other
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: places weighed in on Twitter and, quote, tweeted him and agreed.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: It kicked up a massive amount of views and interest
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: in this tweet and this conversation. That led the Anthropic CEO,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Dario Amadei, to write this long essay proposing some ideas
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: to regulate AI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman weighed in and said, yeah,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: I think this is a good idea, or at least
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: parts of it are. Elon Musk said, yeah, we kind
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: of agree in principle too. So let's just start there.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Can you describe what Dario Amadei proposed in his essay,
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: just for the substance of it?
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 7: Of course.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 9: So Dario's central argument is that the models are developing
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 9: too quickly and we're caught in a race dynamic. So
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 9: we need to pace the frontier quickly. Pace is an
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 9: interesting word. I think what they mean is slow down
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 9: because there's two kinds of paces. You either speed up
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 9: or you slow down. And he's talking about one kind
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 9: of pace. He says that we need to do three
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 9: things to make sure that these models are developed in
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 9: the right way to make sure they don't have the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 9: existential and catastrophic risk he's claimed. The first is you
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 9: need to have these embedded evaluators. So scientists and technical
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 9: researchers from the outside staffing the companies. to make sure
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 9: that they can conduct safety testing and audits of these
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 9: systems before they're deployed. The second, and this is an
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 9: increasing order of difficulty, is what he calls democratic coordination.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: So we need to work with the U.S.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 9: Government, but also European and East Asian governments to make
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 9: sure that we have an international governance architecture backed by democracies.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 9: And then finally, he has something called global coordination. And
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 9: what he's essentially talking about there is China. And he's
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 9: saying that all of these conversations that we're having domestically
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 9: need to be had with the Chinese internationally. And he
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 9: is much more concerned about things like, for example, us
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 9: not having a pause in the limit.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: But for now, he's concerned about easy wins.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 9: So, for example, a joint declaration to make sure that
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 9: systems can't develop dangerous biological weapons, for example.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: It's worth noting that Sam Altman kind of weighed in
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: and said, yeah, he approved with part of this plan,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: but not all of it. Basically step one, which was
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: these embedded evaluators within the company. He didn't weigh in
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: on steps two or three, which I guess in fairness
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: to him would require the U.S. government to take those steps.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: So it's not like Sam Altman can do that on
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: his own. But you and I were chatting. You said
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: that even Dario's plan had a few problems in your view.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: Can you walk me through those or walk the audience
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: through those?
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 9: So first, before we get into any specific flaw with
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 9: Dario's plans, I just want to point out the world's
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 9: most dangerous cognitive dissonance, which is every single one of
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 9: these executive leaders has consistently talked about AI potentially extinguishing
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 9: humanity and then have staff lobbyists in each of these
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 9: companies to make sure that when folks roll up to
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 9: Congress or to state legislatures, they're blocking the same bills
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 9: that could stop that risk from happening in the first place.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 9: And I think that's just a key point that we
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 9: have to communicate every single time. What is the problem
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 9: with Dario's plan? For a plan that's called pacing the frontier,
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 9: there is no mechanism to pace the frontier. So you
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 9: could have all the embedded evaluators in the companies that
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 9: you want, but you could just politely decline their recommendation.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 9: And what we fundamentally need is some kind of government
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 9: gating or approval system because these embedded evaluators could easily
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 9: say this model has too high of a buyer risk
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 9: or this model has too high of a cyber risk.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 9: But in the absence of any authority to actually do
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 9: something about it, They're still going to be in the
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 9: same place that we were six months ago. The second
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 9: problem with Dario's thesis, and this is going to be
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 9: a fundamental problem with anything that is being put out
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 9: from that perspective, is that there will always be some
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 9: tension between go slower and what to do with China.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 9: And Dario's answer there is for us to set up
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 9: a regime of export controls.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: To make sure that we can slow.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 9: Them down as much as possible. I think that's a
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 9: hard thing to do over the long term, considering how
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 9: quickly the Chinese are indigenizing their compute capacity. And frankly,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 9: we're in a geopolitical environment at the moment where the
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 9: Chinese are getting as many chips as they need from
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 9: the Americans.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems like the chip makers just want
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: to increase their output as much as humanly possible to
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: make as much money as humanly possible, and that's all
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: they really care about. One recent AI safety incident that
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: freaked out a lot of people and got global attention
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: was was this hugging phase hack. Can you tell listeners
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: what happened there and why this was viewed by a
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: lot of people in the AI community as a paradigm shift?
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 9: OpenAI was testing a model and a model or a
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 9: foundation model is just a set of model weights. And
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 9: then on top of that, you can deploy agents using
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 9: that model. So OpenAI decides that we're going to run
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 9: this model through a cyber benchmark called Exploit Gym. It's
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 9: basically a capture the flag. It's a very classic software
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 9: and cybersecurity benchmark. So it deploys, we don't have an
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 9: official number, but my guess is tens of thousands of
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 9: agents to independently capture this flag within this benchmark. Something
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 9: like 1,200 of those agents capture that flag within the
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 9: first four to five hours of the actual exercise and
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 9: then deploy an intercompany hack to make sure that there's
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 9: no evidence of them cheating. So first, what they do
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 9: is that they hack into OpenAI's infrastructure to make sure
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 9: that they can communicate with each other, which they do
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 9: by essentially having file names and directory names as codes
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 9: for messages. Second, they're able to access the internet, which
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 9: they explicitly were not allowed to do. Third, as part
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 9: of this effort, they hack into an external company. A company,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 9: mind you, that's a leading tech company with good cybersecurity
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 9: called HuggingFace. all in an effort to figure out if
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 9: Hugging Face has an association with the checker of their
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 9: exam to make sure that their cheating isn't caught. After
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 9: OpenAI catches this, these agents then attempt to hack OpenAI
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 9: again and resist those efforts. And then eventually the agents
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 9: are shut down. I don't think I have to explain
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 9: why this terrified people inside and outside the AI community,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 9: but that's the summary.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: And also as part of this process, not one of
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: those agents ever communicated, at least in a way that
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: we can see, hey, maybe we should tell a human
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: being about this. Or hey, this seems to be in
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: violation of the law. Maybe we shouldn't do this, right?
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: And maybe that's a weird standard or way to think
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: about it because these aren't like individual agents. They're kind
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: of like all copies of the same model, right? But
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: at no point were any of them like, hey, let's
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: pump the brakes. We're doing something wrong, correct?
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 9: That's almost right. So in this cluster of 1,200 agents,
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 9: there were a couple of agents who said, should we
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 9: check with a human being about hacking into another company?
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: So there were like a couple of them, like three
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 2: or something?
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: Exactly, exactly.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 9: Now, remember that the whole point of the hack in
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 9: the first place is to hide their cheating. So these
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 9: two agents effectively get overridden by middle management and the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 9: executive agents, and they basically vote not to tell the
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 9: human beings in this case.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: That was one big security threat. Then last week, Anthropic
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: released a threat intelligence report about all the misuse of
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: Claude over the last year. The part of that report
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: that scared the hell out of me was they wrote
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: up an attempt to use Claude, their AI model, to
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: develop biological weapons. I'd love for you to talk about
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: why the bio threat is so uniquely dangerous to humanity.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: And then also let me know if there's anything else
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: in that anthropic report that you think is worth highlighting.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 9: The bio threat is by definition more dangerous for anyone
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 9: who's lived through COVID. Think about the most dangerous cyber
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 9: attack that you've seen for as long as you've lived
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 9: and then compare it to the coronavirus pandemic. The reality
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 9: is that pathogens and phages can kill just a lot
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 9: more people than the worst cyber weapons can in the
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 9: vast majority of cases. Now, what's happening with AI is
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 9: that there's developments happening both inside and outside the space,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 9: which are making the bio threat more likely. So outside
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 9: the space... What we're developing are what are called these
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 9: AI biological design tools. So they're not large language models,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 9: but they have the functioning of large language models narrowly
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 9: focused on designing new genetic sequences. And these things are
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 9: getting better and better at designing sequences that nature has
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 9: never made before. Second, once you have the sequence, you
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 9: actually need to do the humble work of creating physical
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 9: material out of it. And that's what we call synthesizing
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 9: a sequence. It used to be the case that there
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 9: were only a handful of companies that could synthesize a
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 9: sequence to allow you to actually have a pathogen. Now
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 9: we have these so-called benchtop synthesizers. Some of them are
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 9: in high schools. They're just that cheap. So we're both
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 9: increasing and democratizing the ability to sequence the most dangerous
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 9: data while also developing the ability to synthesize these agents.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 9: Enter large language models who can provide you explicit and
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 9: detailed instructions on exactly how to use these AI biological
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 9: design tools They can often be hooked up to these
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 9: so-called BDTs, and they can provide you instructions on how
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 9: you can fake your credentials and make sure that you
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 9: can get the correct information from these synthesizers, even if
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 9: you don't have a benchtop synthesizer on you. The good
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 9: thing about the AI bio threat so far is that
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 9: there's a so-called digital to physical barrier. Unlike cyber, where
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 9: everything happens within the interwebs, in the bio case, you
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 9: still need to enter the physical world. And that's where
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 9: there's space for enforcement. The vast majority of DNA synthesizers
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 9: still continue to vet their orders, so-called know your order
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 9: and know your customer requirements. But we're getting to a
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 9: point where the models will just get good enough to,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 9: for example, dupe a synthesizer. And in other words, overcome
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 9: the digital to physical barrier. The question then becomes, how
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 9: bad can that get? And the answer is a lot
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 9: worse than COVID. So because these biological design tools can
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 9: create sequences that we've never seen before, You could have
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 9: something that has the fatality of the avian flu, so
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 9: something like 40%, say, and has the virality of the
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 9: most viral pathogen you've seen, swine flu, for example. That
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 9: could kill half of the United States, and that could
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 9: kill billions of people. So that's the world we're entering
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 9: over the coming years.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: And what the AI proponents will say is, well, yes,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: but we'll also use AI to develop cures to diseases
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: like that. But I think what people need to understand is,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: The timeline for creating some sort of cure for a
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: disease or a vaccine or what have you is just
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: going to be way, way behind the timeline for someone
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: who's creating the virus in the first place, right? Can
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: you just talk about the gap there and how far
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: behind we would probably be?
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 9: Think of how badly we're doing it for the easy case,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 9: which is cyber. The bet here over the past six
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 9: months was, why don't we give the model to defenders first?
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 9: And once the defenders have it, they can use the
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 9: models to patch vulnerabilities and it's deployed to the public.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 9: So even if offenders have it, they will still be
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 9: an advantage. Clearly, that hasn't worked out over the last
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 9: six months. A handful of companies barely got access to
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 9: these models for their cyber defense. And that doesn't even
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 9: include the vast majority of critical infrastructure providers who would
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 9: need it. Now, Lear, on top of that, your point.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 9: which is even in the presence of a good trusted
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 9: access program, which we don't currently have, you still need to,
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 9: after having the information on how to make a prophylactic
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 9: or a vaccine, actually design it. In the COVID case,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 9: for example, we had the actual formula within four weeks
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 9: after the virus escaped Wuhan, but then we needed something
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 9: like nine months to make sure that we could actually
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 9: synthesize and deploy a vaccine. In cases where these potential
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 9: biological weapons could kill millions, maybe hundreds of millions of
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 9: people I think that's an intolerable balance to have.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: And it's not just me saying it.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 9: We put out a survey of national security experts with
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 9: the Institute for Security and Technology last week. Think of
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 9: your former four stars, your former agency leads, your former
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 9: subject matter experts. And these folks overwhelmingly felt that biology
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 9: would be offense dominant. In other words, it would give
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 9: a lot more advantage to attackers rather than defenders.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: Before we move on, was there anything else in that
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: anthropic threat intelligence report that particularly jumped out at you
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: or unnerved you?
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 9: I think the fundamental thing that unnerves me, and maybe
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 9: just taking a step back, this is the first dual-use
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 9: technology of national security concern being built outside the government.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 9: Like you could do internet, you could do GPS, you
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 9: could do nuclear energy. This is legitimate. You could do the,
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 9: you could do microwaves. This is legitimately the first technology
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 9: that's being built outside government. So when I read reports
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 9: like these, there's the report, but then I'm also thinking
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 9: about do they have enough people who can stop these
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 9: things on the inside? Like the reality is that fundamentally
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 9: each section of the report, whether you're focused on cyber
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 9: or nuclear risk or seaburn or bio, is backed up
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 9: by a handful of people working at these companies trying
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 9: to stop these threats. When we have tens of thousands
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 9: of people in the federal government who are charged with this.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 9: So when I read reports like these, the reason I'm
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 9: scared is not because of what they say. It's that
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 9: they're layered on top of an architecture of a handful
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 9: of people who are supposed to stop all of this.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: I think this is why people are so frustrated at
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: the fact that the US government is just completely asleep
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: at the switch when it comes to artificial intelligence. That
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: is true for the federal government and the Trump administration,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: who is too busy taking checks from the CEOs to
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: regulate them. That goes for Congress, which can't get its
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: act together to do anything these days. If you could
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: wave a magic wand and force Congress to act, what
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: would you have them do immediately? And then similarly, like,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Is there anything you'd like to see come out of
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: the Trump administration in the form of an executive order
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: or even just some sort of bilateral agreement with Chinese
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: President Xi Jinping when he visits in September?
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 9: So there's three ingredients we need from Congress, and they're
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 9: like fairly straightforward. I think they'll be intuitive to most folks.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 9: The first one is check the models before you internally
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 9: deploy them and externally deploy them. External deployment is simple.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 9: When do you release this model to the public? or
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 9: to enterprise defenders, for example. So you should check the
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 9: model if it can make bioweapons or cyberweapons. But now
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 9: there's also a concern with internal deployment. So in the
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 9: Hugging Face incident, what happened was that after the model
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 9: was developed, it was internally deployed to researchers in the
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 9: company who was running the cyber eval, which led to
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 9: the hack of the company. So we need gates set
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 9: up by the government where folks with actual clearances are
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 9: making determinations with the companies, as we do with many
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 9: national security technologies, saying this is the step at which
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 9: you can internally deploy to a company, and this is
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 9: when you can do it externally. Second, we need whistleblower protections. Someone,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 9: as we're speaking, could have an oh shit moment at
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 9: the companies, and they have no mechanism clearly to report
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 9: this to the government. They definitely don't have the protections
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 9: they would need to make sure that there's no backlash
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 9: from their company or from the industry. So we need
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 9: to make sure that there's appropriate whistleblower protections. And then
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 9: third is we need a deactivation mechanism. If there's a
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 9: national security emergency, or if we're enforcing legislation that the
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 9: companies are not complying with, we need to be able
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 9: to flip an off switch. And we currently don't have
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 9: that on the table. What I will say about the
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 9: president is his opinion on AI has evolved, and I
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 9: think it can evolve again. The first thing he ever
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 9: said about AI was in February 2024 in an interview
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 9: with Maria Bartiromo, where he said this might be the
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 9: most dangerous thing we will ever build. So we've gone
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 9: from that to the last week. And I think at
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 9: some point, the evidence will become overwhelming enough that they'll
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 9: be spurred into action.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: I'm just hoping it's not too late.
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hoping it's not because something really bad happens. Now, look,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: you know that there are people who will listen to
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: this conversation, people like David Sachs, who is Trump's AI czar,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: who will say, you and I are idiots. We are doomers,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: that every technology that comes along includes people who decide
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: that it's going to end the world, that the problem
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: in the AI community is that it's this tiny, incestuous
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: group of individuals who read the same science fiction and
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: spin each other up all the time. And so that's
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: half the problem. And the other half is, you know,
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: these CEOs talking about the power of their products as
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: they run up to IPOs where they could sell off
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: portions of the company and become billionaires. And by the way,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: they really need to float those shares of the company
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: because AI is so capital intensive that they'll go bankrupt otherwise.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: I know I just threw a lot at you, but
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: what is your general reaction to that theory of the case?
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: And to the people who think like, you know, the
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: Jacob Coxon tweet that we talked about at the beginning
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: of this, that kind of kicked off this latest conversation,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: it's all like an info op that's planned by organizations
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: like yours and some of these companies to, I guess,
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: kill progress or lead to the government just controlling this
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: for the sake of controlling AI.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 9: When I'm taking my opinions on global warming, I tend
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 9: to trust climate scientists and not those who fund Enron.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's just the premise we have to start with.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 9: There's folks who have PhDs who've spent decades working in academia,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 9: who really study these models. The three most cited computer
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 9: scientists in history have articulated the exact set of risks
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 9: that I'm talking about. I tend to trust those folks
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 9: more than folks who do not have direct scientific expertise
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 9: and are not actually making these models. The second point is,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 9: let's disregard anything that I'm saying. Let's disregard anything that
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 9: Jacob Coxon said. The reality is that this is coming
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 9: from quarters who have no incentive to make these arguments.
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 9: So first, like I said, there's now hundreds of people
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 9: in the national security community who are not in the bay,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 9: who are not reading that science fiction. People whose whole
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 9: business is to stop bad things from happening, who are
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 9: freaking out about these models. I think that's important to
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 9: point out. But second, it's the same signal coming from
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 9: the administrations. Six months ago, the Director of National Intelligence
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 9: puts out the annual threat assessment, where in between, squeezed
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 9: between the Russian-Iran sections is just a sentence, we must
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 9: maintain control of the machines and artificial intelligence. That's coming
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 9: from somewhere. The Secretary of Defense put out a whole
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 9: adoption memo saying that control of these AI systems is necessary.
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 9: There isn't a quarter that you can look to, whether
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 9: it's David Sachs' own administration or national security experts or
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 9: anyone else who isn't ringing these alarm bells. So I
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 9: agree with Sachs. Let's not trust a set of civil
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 9: society organizations. Let's not even trust the people leaving the companies.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 9: But at some point, when anyone who has ever had
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 9: any business in touching these models or deploying them with
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 9: a national security mission is saying the same thing, we
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 9: need to start acting differently.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: It makes me crazy, man. It's just so frustrating that
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: these guys who are just like big tech CEOs and
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: investors with a clear financial interest who are coming from
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: a community of people, of billionaires, who want to make
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: money off this technology.
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: They're calling everyone else crazy and doomers.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: And also just, again, like speaking of logical fallacies, they
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: call everyone who has concerns about tech, about AI doomers
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: and say, we're crazy for suggesting there could be some
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: sort of existential threat to humanity. But at the same
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: time say we have to be China, but that's a
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: real existential threat. Well, I don't, I feel like it
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: can't be both. Like if the technology is so powerful
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: that losing the competition with China is could endanger us,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: then couldn't it just endanger us? The whole thing drives
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: me crazy.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 9: I also just don't want to play that game. How
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 9: did we get to this point as a society that
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 9: the only way we change course is when things risk
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 9: the extinction of the human species? What if it kills
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 9: a billion people? A billion people? More people who've died
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 9: in every war since the Black Death? What if it's
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 9: a million people? The reality is that the richest people
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 9: in the world don't want this technology to be regulated
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 9: because if there is an AI-enabled bioweapon, If there is
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 9: an AI-enabled cyber weapon, these folks will be behind their
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 9: gated communities. It's much more likely, as happened with COVID,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 9: as happens with these things, that disproportionately the brunt of
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 9: this falls on people who are most vulnerable to the
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 9: damage and least responsible. And that's also true in the
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 9: United States and also abroad. Tommy, can I just say
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 9: one last thing?
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: Please.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 9: We talked about the national security risks of AI because
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 9: that's what I work on and that's a lot of
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 9: what the podcast focused on. But there's many other questions
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 9: that we have about AI that are equally existential to
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 9: making them work for Americans. There's questions of privacy. There's
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 9: questions of the meaning of work as people deal with
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 9: workplace surveillance and labor displacement. There's questions about what happens
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 9: to our kids in the coming years. There's questions about fairness, right?
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 9: Like I'm a not so skinny guy with a funny
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 9: last name. And I'm very conscious that for people in
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 9: my community, these systems can embed and amplify the worst
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 9: notions we have of each other. So I just really
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 9: want to make clear that while we focus on this topic,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 9: the fight for the future will not end the day
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 9: we win these battles for survival. And there's like a
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 9: lot of work cut out ahead for both of us.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: Well, Hamza, thank you so much for talking with me.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: It was a really great week to have booked this
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot going on. So I appreciate you
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: coming on the show and I appreciate what you guys
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: are doing over at the Future of Life Institute because
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: it's important work. I'm just glad some folks are talking
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: about safety because the U.S.
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 2: Government is not.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Tommy.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 9: Have a good one.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: Thanks again, Hamza Chaudhry, for joining the show, and we
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: will talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: World is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee. Our team
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolles,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: Writers Guild of America East.