Latest / Pod Save the World / Trump’s “Insane” Plan to Reignite the Iran War

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Trump’s “Insane” Plan to Reignite the Iran War · Pod Save the World

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  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Ben Rhodes.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Ben and My Favorite Tradition, where every year
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  Speaker 2: Pacific time, which.
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• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe something good will happen for once, Ben.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: I'm in Istanbul, Turkey, where it is one o'clock in
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: the morning. And so it's already Wednesday here. So it's
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  Speaker 4: very strange to not know the results of the election
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  Speaker 4: on Wednesday yet. But I can't decide, Tommy. What's the move?
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: It depends on how optimistic you are.
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  Speaker 3: Do I.
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  Speaker 4: sleep for a few hours and just wake up to results?
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Or do I like eke out and just kind of
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: pull a bit of an all nighter here?
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think in a few hours you'll have like,
• 3:04
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• 3:06
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• 3:09
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• 3:11
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• 3:16
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• 3:23
  Speaker 1: But we've got a great show for you guys today.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: We're going to cover a whole bunch of very important stuff.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So there's all these disconcerting reports that Trump is on
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the cusp.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Of resuming the war with Iran.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: And Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is once again pressuring
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: him to do so, including by passing along some alarming
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: new intelligence. I guess The New York Times just reported
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: like a minute ago that the Israelis passed along intelligence
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: suggesting that Iran is preparing to use chemical weapons. If
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the war continues and that's sort of the new thing,
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: they're probably, am I telling you this for the first time, Ben?
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm glad I'm in the Middle East, yeah.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I bet you're shocked to learn that Netanyahu is using
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: WMD Intel to go Trump back into war. We're going
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: to tell you about the latest on the Israeli elections
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and the government formation process. We'll talk about this billion-dollar,
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: multi-billion-dollar hack on the crypto platform Binance, a bunch of
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: disconcerting reports out of Ukraine, and then we'll explain why
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the latest Chinese Communist Party meeting It was more like
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: a speed round of Survivor than a political meeting.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: It was just a purge fest, Ben.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: Boy, you know, you think of China as not having politics,
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: but they have a more extreme form.
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: Of politics there.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: You never know which straw you're going to draw.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Haley Stevens might get kicked out of the Democratic Party.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: She's not going to disappear along with like 33 other
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: generals or whatever.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: Jason Turkish. Jason Turkish wouldn't last very long in the CCP.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: No, he would not. So I'll tell you all about that.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: We're also going to explain this crazy spy story about,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: you know, Jensen Wong, the CEO of NVIDIA, potentially having
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: a relationship of some sort. A lot of reading between
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: the lines in this New York Times report with someone
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: connected to Chinese intelligence.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: So a wild story there.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: So, Ben, regardless of what happens in the midterms, it
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: does seem like Trump is just hell-bent on going right
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: back to war with Iran.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Netanyahu, as I mentioned, is pushing for more strikes. Surprise, surprise.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: That would help him consolidate his control over the government
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: at a moment when he is facing this acute threat
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: from Gadi Eisenkot and the opposition. It could impact the
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: government formation process. We'll talk about all that in a minute.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: On Monday, Trump told Axios, one way or the other,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: we will do something, but there is no rush. We
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: crippled them financially. They have no money, no gasoline, and
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: their people are getting very tired of it. Now we're
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: going to play you guys a selection of some of
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the things Trump has said recently about Iran that kind
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: of range from him downplaying the war to threatening a massacre.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: So let's listen to that. But I guess a lot
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: of the base Republicans, you hear them saying they're angry
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: because they thought you were going to be the no
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: wars president. Well, I haven't had.
• 6:04
  Speaker 6: Much of a war, if you think about it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: I mean, what's a war? A war is fighting. Take
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: a look at World War I, World War II, these were.
• 6:13
  Speaker 6: When was the last time you saw us fighting with him?
• 6:15
  Speaker 6: The only reason we're not finished with Iran is I
• 6:18
  Speaker 6: want to be nice. I want to try and save
• 6:20
  Speaker 6: all those lives if I can. And they're sitting there
• 6:23
  Speaker 6: with a very bad, but at some point we're going
• 6:25
  Speaker 6: to have to.
• 6:26
  Speaker 5: Give them the hammer. We might have to go after pickaxe,
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: but that's not a big deal. We can do it
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: in literally, we can do that in one hour. Okay.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 6:36
  Speaker 7: President, we know we had to take this little detour
• 6:40
  Speaker 7: because Iran could not have a nuclear weapon.
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: Yep, we had to do it. But after the election-
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: And it's been totally successful.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: By the way. Yes, sir.
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  Speaker 7: It's been one of the greatest victories of this administration.
• 6:50
  Speaker 7: But what's going to happen after the election day, after today?
• 6:53
  Speaker 7: What's the next moment?
• 6:54
  Speaker 5: Well, we'll see. Look, I'm not looking to kill lots
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: of people, but if we have to, we'll have to.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Like I always say, a war is fighting. Very incisive, sir.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: By the way, for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure-
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: The U.S. bombed the Iranians last night, so there has
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: been fighting. The Wall Street Journal reported that J.D. Vance
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: sent a letter to a top Iranian hardliner who once
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: served as commander of the IRGC in its effort to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: revive talks.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Vance and Wyckoff reportedly.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Steve Wyckoff, the dumbass golf buddy turned emissary, they reportedly
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: want to make a deal. A bunch of news outlets
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: have reported that Scott Besson, Marco Rubio, and CIA director
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: John Ratcliffe are kind of in like the stay of
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: the course, keep the economic pressure on camp. But then
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: we got dumbass fucking secretary of Pound and Beer's Pete Hegsath,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: who wants to resume the war. It seems like Trump
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: might be leaning that direction because it's gone so well
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: so far, Ben. Just for the record, Iran attacked 35
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: ships in the Strait of Hormuz in October alone. Sustaining
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the escort mission where the U.S. Navy has been protecting
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: these ships requires 50,000 U.S. troops in the region, 20
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Navy ships, two carrier strike groups, and an extra $ 2
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: to $ 3 billion a month above normal spending.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: That's per the Wall Street Journal.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: And then finally, Tucker Carlson flipped, like, everybody on Twitter
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: out this week by reporting that Trump might quote, uh,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: maybe within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: And then Netanyahu was pushing to do it. Uh, that
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: strikes me as a bit unlikely, but, uh, Trump is
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a crazy person.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: So we don't know.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: And again, there were these like limited strikes on Kesham
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: Island last night and, uh, or Monday night or Tuesday night,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: whatever that, whatever day it is Monday night. Uh, and
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: there have apparently been strikes, uh, between the U S
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: and Iran for like the last week. So there are
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: things that are just kind of ramping back up slowly,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: but just in the quietly, uh, The head of CENTCOM
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: was at the White House last week to brief Trump
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: on military options. Ben, there's so many little pieces here
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: that just seem like this is a foregone conclusion, but
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: What are you watching for?
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: So I got to do the best nerd prep for
• 8:48
  Speaker 4: this show. Tommy, I mentioned to you before coming on
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: that I had dinner tonight with the entire Middle East
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: team for the International Crisis Group, which includes two of
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: the smartest Iran analysts out there.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Should have just recorded the dinner.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: I should have, man.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: So, and yeah, I think the mood music, you know,
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: out here is like a certain sense of grim inevitability
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: about this.
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: And they're different pieces. First, I just want to say
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: one thing.
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: On those clips, if you couldn't watch it, one of
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: those times where he talks about he may have to
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: kill people and bring the hammer down, there's like a,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: a three-year-old boy right behind Trump on his father's shoulders.
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: That's really nice that that child got to experience that
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: wholesome moment there with his dad. But I will say,
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: all right, so what's going on in the negotiations? You
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: have Qatar basically going back and forth to Tehran trying
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: to negotiate something. That doesn't feel to me like the U.S.
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: actually negotiating with Iran. That feels like Qatar trying to
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: furiously avert an escalation because they know that they might
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: get hit as part of an escalation. And so I
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: don't really see, okay, Cutter, you know, trying their best.
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: I'm glad they're doing it.
• 9:55
  Speaker 5: J.D.
• 9:55
  Speaker 4: Vance sending a letter. Like this does not feel to
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: me like some, you know, we're on the same page.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: the doorstep of an historic breakthrough here. I mean, I
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: pray I'm wrong. Like nothing would be better than if
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: the Qataris pull a rabbit out of a hat and
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: comes out in two days and the war's over.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: But it just doesn't feel that way.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: And especially given the Iranians have been bombed twice and
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: kind of more advanced talks in the past where, um,
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: literally the Iranian negotiators the last time around were killed
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: in the middle of this talk. So I don't see
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: a lot of, I don't know, prospects for an imminent
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: breakthrough at the negotiating table. Then you see all this
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: rhetoric anticipating escalation.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: You see the U.S.
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: Kind of doing some of the things to prepare the ground,
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: including perhaps some of these one-off strikes that we've seen
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: the last couple of days. Then you see Israeli politics,
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: which we can get into, but it's obvious that an
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: escalation in.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Iran would help Bibi Netanyahu politically.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: It would just take the emphasis off of the coalition
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: formation and make it a kind of unity moment.
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: And we need Bibi, the strong leader, to stand up
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: to Iran.
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, it's a crazy way of thinking, but that's
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: what his political interests have always been, perpetuate war to
• 11:04
  Speaker 4: stay in power. And I think that the feeling here
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: is that the Iranians are quite prepared to escalate too,
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: that they've spent a lot of time figuring out how
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: they could impose an even bigger cost on the Gulf
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: countries in particular, but perhaps Israel as well. Each time around,
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: you know, they've come back with a different type of
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: wave of escalation. So what's concerning to me is, and
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: then we should say we have Chris Murphy, who tragically,
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: you know, hopefully he's okay. You probably saw the news
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: of people listening that he had a stroke. You hear
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: Chris Murphy out there saying he'd been briefed on what
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: the war plan was, and it was crazy.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: It was insane, I think, was his.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Why don't we throw to that clip, actually? Why don't
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: we play that? Yeah, Chris Murphy had a stroke.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: He's like at his kid's hockey game, and all of
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: a sudden he's feeling something.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: So, you know, everyone.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Just— we love the guy personally.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Love that guy. Talk about a Pazza of the World guy, yeah.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: He'd probably been on the show more than any U.S. senator,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: and just like an awesome guy, you know, privately and publicly.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: But yeah, here's that clip that Ben was mentioning.
• 12:01
  Speaker 8: In one of these briefings, we did get the chance
• 12:03
  Speaker 8: to have a fairly detailed conversation about what the war
• 12:07
  Speaker 8: plan would be if we restarted military operations. You've heard
• 12:12
  Speaker 8: a preview that it would be a short-duration plan. I
• 12:17
  Speaker 8: will just say this. Their plan is insane. It won't...
• 12:24
  Speaker 8: It won't... It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely.
• 12:35
  Speaker 8: Destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is a stark warning.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: The commitment to the rule of law part, like I'm
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: not even sure what he's getting at there, like suggesting
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: there might be war crimes. I mean, then the one
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: thing I wanted to flag is that I think Democrats
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: have an opportunity in early December to block a funding
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: vote on a continuing resolution to keep the government open.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: I think they should fight tooth and nail to make
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: sure that no money goes towards continuing this illegal war.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, that should be like kind of table stakes here.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: They should.
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, especially if the election results seems to validate
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: the public wants to know part of this war. And
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: I think what he's getting at, like, it's hard to
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: guess at what the military plan is. It seems like
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: what Murphy's alluding to is the massive bombardment of civilian
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: infrastructure that the administration was kind of toying with before.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: And we know that because Trump used out loud about
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: blowing up bridges and power plants, which.
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: Would be war crimes.
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: And I think what people should recognize what's so crazy
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: about their plan is that Sure, in their minds, it
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: might be like, oh, it's four days of airstrikes on
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: all this civilian infrastructure.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: And then there's like a whole wave of Iranian reprisals
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: that could light the entire region on fire again, further
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: cripple the global economy, somehow precipitate another American response.
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, we've lived this in the Iran war before.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: They have not learned the lesson that Iran is capable
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: of retaliation here. I will say the Tucker Carlson thing,
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: Because nuking Pickaxe Mountain would obviously be the most extreme
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: war crime that you can engage in. It's strange to
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: even talk about it. Tucker Carlson does talk to people
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: inside the administration. You've heard, like I've heard these kinds
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: of rumors before too about Pickaxe Mountain.
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: I never know. It's always like second or third hand.
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: So what do I know?
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: But also Tucker has been concerned about Trump nuking Iran
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: since the very beginning, just for what it's worth.
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: And I will say, Tommy, like I'm reading this and
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh shit, like maybe this is plausible. And
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: then he's like, and Barack Obama opposes the deal with Iran.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: I'm like, what would Tucker Carlson knows? Like, I'm pretty
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: certain that Barack Obama is not being consulted about the
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: negotiations and weighing in on them. So that made me
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: think that there was less credibility to the entire rant,
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: but that's the far end. And I just want to
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: say this because I can't believe we even have to,
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: but like, I would hope that the U S military
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: wouldn't do that. Um, If somehow they did, I hate
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: that I'm saying this already because we might have to
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: look through two years of this.
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: They should just impeach.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Him if he does that.
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: We shouldn't even have to say that, but.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: It's out there.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: But look, I think the most likely thing, unfortunately, is
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: Murphy's scenario of a civilian infrastructure bombardment, an Iranian wave
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: of escalation and return, and then we're right back where
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: we were at the height.
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: Of the war.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is not a righteous or just thing to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: nuke a country to prevent them from doing nuclear research.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: That's just an insane bit of logic to talk yourself into.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: There's also reports, though, that Trump is considering dropping the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: mother of all bombs on Pickaxe Mountain, which is a 21,000-pound bomb, which, you.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Know, I talk about this with the guys on PSA.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's sort of like the perfect Trump thing
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: because it sounds impressive, but it will do absolutely nothing strategically.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: It would just be like dropping a whole bunch of
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: bombs at once.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Like, great.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: The problem is that all this stuff is underground, like
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: buried into like, you know, rock. And that's the challenge
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: is you need some sort of missile that can penetrate
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: deep into that. And when Trump bombed the other nuclear
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: facilities in the midnight hammer strike, those massive ordnance penetrator
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: bombs were able to go through a ventilation shaft. It's
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: kind of like get to the area where they needed
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: to be. There's no indication that we've heard, Ben, that
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: there is some sort of similar opportunity at Pickaxe Mountain.
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: On that intelligence of the New York Times, here's the report.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Israel has shared intelligence with the United States asserting that
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Iran is considering the use of chemical weapons against its adversaries.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Information met with alarm by some American officials and deep
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: skepticism by others, according to U.S.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: And regional officials.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Some American officials see the Israeli intelligence as part of
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a pressure campaign by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's government to
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: persuade the Trump administration to return to major combat operations
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: against Iran. It's worth noting that Saddam Hussein actually used
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: chemical weapons against the Iranians. So there's a pretty painful
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: history there. You know, the story also noted that CENTCOM
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: has a plan to strike Iran beginning as early as Wednesday.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: So, you know, that's wonderful.
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, look, whenever I hear Israeli intelligence passed on to
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: the United States, I immediately become skeptical because we've seen
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: this kind of repeated effort to goad the United States
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: into doing something.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: I also, again, like I.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: Why would the Iranians do that? Because it would clearly
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: invite like a massive.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: And they have all manner of other ways to escalate
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: to increase the cost to the United States, the global economy,
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: to Gulf Arab countries, potentially to Israel itself.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: That just doesn't seem that feasible to me.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: But at the same time, I guess like I hate
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: to be an armchair psychologist to Tommy. I'm curious what
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: you think about this. It does feel to me, though,
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: like if Trump loses this midterm election and he loses
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: it potentially handily. Will his psychology compel him to kind
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: of change the story, show his strength, show that he
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: doesn't care that these voters didn't like my war? And unfortunately,
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: that kind of does add up to me that he
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: will not, particularly if it's a very decisive result against him.
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: He may want to do something this week just to
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: show he's still here, he's still in charge, he's still
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: the commander-in-chief of the military.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of alarming, too.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I worry about that a lot.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think he's going to want to change
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the narrative no matter what from a loss to something else.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: There's probably no more kind of plug-and-play method than bombing someone,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: hopefully without the nuke, without using a nuke.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: I also think.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: That he's just— his actions, including his Monday press conference at
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: the Reflecting Pool where he talked about renovations for an
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: hour— suggests that he doesn't give a shit about politics, really.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: And he's concerned about himself making money for his family
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: and literally burnishing his legacy, including like building monuments to himself,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: gilding statues, et cetera. So he is certainly going to
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: want to be seen as a guy who completed the
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: war with Iran, whether or not that is possible and
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: a good idea. So I think it's almost certain that
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: he's going to resume fighting and probably just not really
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: care about like gas prices or what it means for J.D.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Vance's political future. He doesn't give a shit about J.D.
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: Vance.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we seem to be entering like late stage autocrat,
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: both in terms of like, you know, he's going to
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: be a lame duck and in terms of just his age.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: And also like on some level, despite what he says
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: in all those interviews, he's got to know that he's
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: headed towards electoral defeat because of Iran, you know, because
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: The Iranians basically beat him in this war and raised
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: gas prices. And he may, in the same way that
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: he wants to punish James Comey, for reasons I still
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: don't quite understand, he may want to punish them. And
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: that's a really scary thing to think about, that that's
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: probably true. That's not even just like you know, a
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: wild theory. Because that's not the mentality you want of
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: the President of the United States for the next two years.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: No, yeah, the enemy's list is like that Olympic rower, Iran,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: and then Comey for the seashells.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: Obama for the Cheesecake Factory. Yeah, Obama.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. we all have those
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• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about Israel.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Ben and I recorded an episode up on Friday that's
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: up on the Pod Save the World YouTube page where
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: we dug into like kind of the range of government
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: formation options going forward. We also kind of dug into
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: like the Arab parties, who they are, their backgrounds, et cetera,
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: and why they were so successful last week.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: So check that out if you want more.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: And also please subscribe to Pod Save the World on
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: YouTube because we usually do breaking news episodes there.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: It's free, by the way.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And when you subscribe, when you like the episodes, when
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: you share the episodes, it really does help us grow
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the show and get it in front of more people.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: So we'd really appreciate it if you would just subscribe
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to Pod Save the World on YouTube and just like
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: and share and do all the things. But you can
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: also listen on the podcast and just to kind of
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: catch people up on.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: Where we are.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: So post-election, Netanyahu's party, The Likud got 27 seats, and
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: then Netanyahu's coalition got 53 seats. That's all the parties
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: that aligned with Netanyahu. The opposition bloc that's led by
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the former IDF chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, got 48 seats,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: which was a disappointment.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: And then his party, Yashar, got 21 seats, also a disappointment.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So the real big story from this election was the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: Arab parties had huge turnout. They got 19 seats that
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: divided up between two blocs. There's the Joint List Coalition,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and then there's Rahm. So what happens now is the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: president of Israel, Isaac Hertog, he meets with representatives from
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: all the 11 parties that cleared the threshold to get
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: a seat in the Knesset. He will then tap the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: leader of one of those coalitions, presumably Eisenkot, to form
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: a government. Eisenkot would get about a month to try
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: and form a government. He can go back to the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: president and get a 14-day extension. But if that doesn't
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: work out, then the other team gets a shot, presumably Netanyahu.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: And then if there's no government formed within 100 days,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: they call new elections, which would suck because Netanyahu stays
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: in charge the whole time. And it will probably benefit
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: him politically to have another election. So since we recorded
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: that thing on Friday, the Pod Save the World episode
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: on YouTube on Friday, all the opposition parties have said
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: that they back Eisenhower, which is good. He is also
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: named a negotiating team to begin the talks. And then
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: I saw this morning, Ben, that one of the parties
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: in Netanyahu's bloc, it's an ultra-Orthodox party that I think
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: has seven seats, the United Torah Judaism Party, said they
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: are currently not going to recommend Netanyahu to Herzog.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: So he has a little less support.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Now, during the campaign, Eisenkot said he would not go
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: into coalition with Arab parties. Then on Saturday, he seemed
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: to change his mind a bit on that. He released
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: a statement that included four principles. A couple of them
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: were recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, mandatory service
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: for all Israelis, and then recognition of Hamas as a
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: terrorist group. And then he said, quote, every Knesset member
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: who is willing to sign on to these principles as
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: a potential partner on the path to establishing a new
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and better government for Israel, the door of.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: The government we will form will be open.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: To every public representative who accepts these principles and is
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: ready to rise to the occasion. So Ben, that sure
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: sounds like he is trying to like open up a
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: path towards forging a coalition in some form or fashion
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: with the Arabs parties. It's a little more complicated than that.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: But it's, you know, a positive development since we talked last.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is.
• 25:55
  Speaker 4: And it's good for Eisenkot signaling that openness. I heard,
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: I talked to the Israel analyst tonight, and there's kind
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: of an optimistic view, and then there's a pessimistic view, right?
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: And so the optimistic view is Eisenkot has opened up
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: this door that, you know, it could be difficult, but
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: he could either put together some coalition or perhaps peeling
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: off one of the smaller parties from the Netanyahu bloc
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: and then bringing in some of these Arab parties. Or
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: he could form a minority government where maybe the Arab
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: parties are not fully a part of his coalition, they're
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: not running ministries and stuff, but they agree to vote
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: with him on enough things that he can have a
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: government that survives for some period of time. And frankly,
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: that government will probably collapse at some point, but at
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: least gets Netanyahu out of there. And so the optimistic
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: scenario generally has some role for the Arab parties, unless
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: he can kind of find some other arithmetic. The pessimistic
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: scenario is you're already seeing cracks. Like when Eisenkot made
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: that statement, some people, even within his own party, were like,
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: I don't know about that. Avedor Lieberman, who's a bit
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: of a kingmaker, has his own party, has come out
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: and said, I don't really want to go in a coalition.
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: And he's been, Eisenkot Block has come out and been like,
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: I don't really want to be in the coalition with
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: the Arab parties. And so he may just not be
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: able to get, he may not be able to maintain
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: enough support to do anything with the Arab parties. Like
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: we don't know that yet. But this whole thing hinges
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: on how racist Israeli politics decides it will be. Because
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: the math is right there. Like if, you know, in
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: a country that didn't have like racial hangups, I mean,
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say about
• 27:36
  Speaker 4: people that, refuse to enter a coalition with parties that
• 27:39
  Speaker 4: are Arab, that are clearly not going to be like
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: the decision makers on major issues anyway. They're going to
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: be a small part of the coalition. But so that's
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: kind of where we are. And in that pessimistic scenario,
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: what happens is Eisenkot just starts to lose control of
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: the negotiation. And a lot of people validated a point
• 27:57
  Speaker 4: you made, Tommy, which is he's a general, like he
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: doesn't know how to do backroom smoke-filled room political horse trading.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: Netanyahu's been doing this for 30 years.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: This is the first time this guy's been in discussions
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: like this. So the pessimistic scenario is he kind of
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: loses control. Some people don't want to go in with
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: the Arabs. The Arab party started to get, obviously, a
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: bit put out by that. And there's Netanyahu sitting there.
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: He's still the caretaker prime minister. And we're either headed
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: towards another election or somehow Netanyahu kind of creates some
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: unity government that allows him to preserve his standing.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: And this gets to the Iran war point because.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: If there's a major escalation of the war in Iran
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: and there's Iranian missiles coming into, you know, Israel and
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: Israelis are being killed, like suddenly, you know, and then
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: I will come out and say, now is not the
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: time to be even thinking about politics. You know, we
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: must all unify right now and look at me. I'm
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: out in front and maybe I'll have the other guys
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: stand behind me and, you know, just kick the can
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: and create the appearance of crisis and unity and all
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: the rest of it. I mean, this isn't like a
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: hypothetical because we've seen this guy do that before, like
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: time and again, you know? And so that's why I
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: think he has every interest to be, you know, in
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: a craven way. You know, war is not a reason
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: for you to, you know, anyone to stay in office.
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: It's a horrible way to stay in office. But like,
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: I would be shocked if he wasn't really pushing Trump
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: hard to do something here.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just like Arab parties aren't monolithic. Within
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: the joint list, there's three different parties. One of them
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: is kind of like a hardline Palestinian nationalist party that
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: has some genuinely problematic members and views, right? Like So
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I can understand why I think I wouldn't want to
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: go into coalition with them. But what we're probably talking
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: about is a handful of these Arab parties that are
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: more pragmatic and have been in government before voting to
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: be joining, like officially joining the coalition. And then others,
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: members of other Arab parties abstaining from the vote and
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: forming a minority government that is fragile, like you said,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: will likely collapse, you know, when like kind of major
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: issues come to the fore in the Knesset, but would
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: get rid of Netanyahu. What makes this impossible, the arithmetic
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: is so hard, the game theory is so hard, because
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: you have people like Avigdor Lieberman who controls a pretty
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: important block within the opposition. He has said he won't
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: go into coalition with Arab parties. He also won't go
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: into coalition with the ultra-Orthodox, nor will he go into
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: coalition with Netanyahu.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: So it's like, dude, what are you doing here? It's
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: quite confusing.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: And then Netanyahu is obviously stoking this fire. He said
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: on Monday, the public in Israel does not want a
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: government that depends on Rahm and the joint list parties
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: that support terrorism, reject the existence of the Jewish state. Right.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: So he's trying to make this, you know, about terror
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: and et cetera. And so, you know, the question is,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: is there a creative idea out there? Anshul Pfeiffer at
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: The Economist or Pfeffer, we can't, we don't know. Sorry, Anshul,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: you're a great reporter, pointed out that only the prime
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: minister is required to be a member of the Knesset.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: So he could actually, Eisenhower could put forward like a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: fully technocratic government with like experienced professionals who were not
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: political in any way to kind of take control of
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: the ministries. And maybe that could be a way to
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: make everyone feel good.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: Who knows, Ben? Did you see this though?
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Earlier this morning, President Trump decided to make a surprising
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: announcement about the U.S.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: Relationship with Israel. Let's watch this.
• 31:14
  Speaker 5: Now, as far as paying Israel, Nabi Netanyahu and I
• 31:17
  Speaker 5: have made a deal. that we give Israel $ 4 billion
• 31:20
  Speaker 5: a year, and we made a deal months ago that
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: we're stopping, and they're fine with it, because they've become
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: a very successful country. They don't need it. And we
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: won't be paying any more Israel. So it's just a
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: wasted thing, because we've already agreed that by the end
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: of this year, we won't be paying Israel. Now, we'll
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: help Israel if they need it. You know, they've been
• 31:42
  Speaker 5: a great ally, and we've been the greatest of all
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: allies to many, many countries. We've been great to many countries.
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: So, Mr.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: President, you're saying you're not giving them $ 4 billion worth
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of weapons?
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: We have total control, Brian. We have total control of
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: the harmless trade. I'm at 99% approval rating in Israel.
• 31:57
  Speaker 5: Can you believe it? In fact, if people ever got
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: tired of me in the U.S., I'll move to Israel
• 32:02
  Speaker 5: and become prime minister.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: We're tired of you, sir. Please move. The U.S. provides
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Israel with about $ 4 billion a year.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: But of course, we provided tens of billions more since
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: October 7th throughout the Iran war. The current agreement that
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: stems from the Obama administration that governs how much aid
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: goes to Israel expires in 2028. So Trump is kind
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: of like moving that expiration date up a couple of years.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: That aid is significant for the Israelis. I think it's
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: 8% of the Israeli defense budget. But Ben, I was
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: just like, a surprising thing to do in kind of
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: a random, like, throwaway Fox & Friends Election Day interview?
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: What did you make of this?
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, weird to do it, if he
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: was going to do it, given how unpopular aid to
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: Israel is, just politically, I know I didn't do it
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: a week ago. That said, they've been preparing the ground
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: for this for a while. You know who's a big
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: proponent of this idea? Lindsey Graham, who was, like, about
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: as hardcore pro-Israel as there is. What this is about, right, is,
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: because aid matters, but, and we should say, I... And
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: I have a piece out if people want to check
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: out New York Review books about Gaza, which I go
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: through all this. But I think that Obama era MOU
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: was wrong, you know, like just to point the finger
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: at our administration. We had just been through a bruising
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: battle over the Iran deal. And it was kind of
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: a way to shore up support from senators who were worried.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: And it was also kind of a continuation of obviously
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: giving them the assistance. Another $ 20 billion plus was provided
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: after October 7th. So they have been getting a lot
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: of money in recent years. All that said, they don't
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: really need the money. And this is important as you
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: watch the debate in the Democratic primary going forward.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: The question to me is not just aid. Aid is absurd.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: That's low-hanging fruit.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: It's going to be easy for people to come out
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: and say, yeah, we should stop giving them aid. The
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: question is, do we provide them with all these weapons?
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: Do we provide them with 2,000-pound bombs that they might
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: drop on Palestinian refugee camps? Do we do technology transfers
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: to their military? Do we give them the most sophisticated
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: systems that we have? Like there's a provision in the
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: National Defense Authorization Act that would kind of create like
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: a joint venture in defense technology between the Pentagon and Israel.
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: I think the play here is going to be, okay,
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: now that we've taken the easiest thing for people to oppose,
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: aid away, we're actually going to up the sophistication of
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: the collaboration. The question is whether you sell these weapons
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: to Israel, whether you make these technology transfers to Israel.
• 34:30
  Speaker 4: So this, I think, is them trying to get ahead
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: of where they see the politics going in the United States.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: But I think we should do that.
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: But it's not getting at the fundamental question of, like,
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: should we be providing this type of support to a
• 34:46
  Speaker 4: government that is committing war crimes?
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the U.S.
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: Policy that we help Israel maintain a qualitative military edge
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: over its, you know, competitors in the region. And so
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: will that continue to be the case? It's a very
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: good point, an important thing to watch. Final thing on this, Ben,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, Netanyahu is alleging fraud. He's saying that the
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: Arab parties use foreign money from Qatar to steal the election.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: It seems pretty specious. And then I saw that Haaretz.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Reported that the Likud, even before the election, was preparing
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: to accuse Arab parties of stealing the election if the
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: results show that Netanyahu lost. and that the Likud invested
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: a bunch of money in some scheme to monitor polling
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: places in Arab communities. They're also considering not certifying the election.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I think that was reported today. This would be unprecedented
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: in Israeli history. It's likely the courts would just overturn it. But,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump and Netanyahu kind of run on the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: same playbook.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: The exact same playbook. I like that Qatar is like
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: the new George Soros.
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: Netanyahu used to claim this about George Soros, and now
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: he just says, Qatar, but no, I mean, these Arab parties,
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: like they're citizens of Israel, like they're allowed to vote.
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: He's basically calling the fact that citizens of Israel voted
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: in an election fraud. I mean, it's, it's, it's not
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: only like Trumpian and it's, you know, absurdity, it's also gross, uh,
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: because like he's suggesting that they should not have the
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: right to vote at all, essentially is what he's saying. Um,
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: and yeah, that gives you a bit of a window
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: into where, how far to the right Israeli politics has gone.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nakedly racist.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Speaking of motley coalition meetings, Crooked Con is this weekend.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: The official schedule is up on crookedcon.com. There's 25 sessions
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: on November 7th at the DC Convention Center. Stuff like
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Pod Save the World Live with me, with Ben, with
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: Congressman Jason Crow and Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari. We're going to
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: talk about the Democratic Party's oversight priorities once.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: We hopefully take back the House. Pray to God.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: And we're recording this before the election. So You know, anyway,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: I'm also going to be hosting a debate on U.S.-Israel policy.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: There's tons of great speakers and panelists, Governor Josh Shapiro,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Senator Mark Kelly, Alyssa Slotkin, Wes Moore.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: It's going to be amazing.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Today only, we're having a flash sale. $ 30 off your
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: CrookedCon ticket if you use the code CCMIDTERMS26. That's CCMIDTERMS26.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: We'll put it in the episode description. Go to CrookedCon.com
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  Speaker 2: support they deserve. All right, Ben, let's change gears here.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: We want to talk about a massive crypto hack that
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: was essentially a bank heist to the tune of about $ 6. 3 billion,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: which would be the largest in history. This hack was
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. North Korea was
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: reportedly behind the hack. On Tuesday, Binance kind of walked
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: a bunch of reporters and put out a blog item
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: about how it all happened. So this hacking group is
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: called Trader Trader. So T-R-A-D-E-R, T-R-A-I-T-O-R, sort of glued together.
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Clever.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Someone pretending to be a project manager who was hiring
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: developers reached out to a Binance engineer in September. They
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: then put this engineer through two rounds of interviews, including
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: a live video call. Then they told him to download
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: an assignment on his work computer and Unfortunately, that assignment
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: contained malicious code that the hackers then used to compromise
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: that computer. And then they used the compromised computer and
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: an internal tool at Binance to take control of two
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: other computers that could deploy software internally. And then nine
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: days later, they gained access to a service at Binance
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: that allowed them to drain what are called hot wallets.
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: And then they drained those wallets over the course of
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: several hours and took billions of dollars. The New York
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Times reported that the hacker's then move that stolen crypto
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: through like 12,000 wallets to try to trade it and
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: hide it and wash it through various ways and prevent
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: the funds from getting frozen. Binance said they were able
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: to intercept or freeze 2.85 billion of the 6.3. And
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: they also said they're going to make the rest of
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: anyone who was impacted whole. But this was probably the
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: single largest theft of anything ever. The previous record was
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: a $ 1. 5 billion hack in February of 2025 of an
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: exchange in Dubai. North Korea has stolen an estimated $ 7. 6
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: billion worth of crypto this year alone. This is per Elliptic,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: a blockchain analytics firm. That is like a quarter of
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: their GDP. It's a massive amount of the country's wealth.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: The blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimated that 89% of crypto
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: hack losses in 2026 were linked to North Korea, up
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: from 15% in 2021.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: Ben.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: Incredible story. It's good to know that the blockchain and
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: crypto is helping someone. It just happens to be Kim Jong-un,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a bunch of dimensions to this that are
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: worth people keeping their eye on.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: Like, number one, like, crypto has a lot of fucking problems.
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: And, you know, I'm in my little, you know, national
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: security nerd corner here. And people in that corner have
• 42:35
  Speaker 4: been saying for years, crypto is like tailor-made for money washing,
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: money laundering, like thefts, like, you know, transfers to places
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: like North Korea. And we're always scolded, like, you don't
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: get how this is the future of, you know, whatever. No, like,
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: you create a massive, unregulated, kind of dark money stream. Like,
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: it's going to become like a place that bad actors
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: go to steal your money, you know? And precisely because
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: it's so unregulated, because it's designed to kind of be
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: beyond the writ of governments, like, this kind of shit happens.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: The second point I'd make is, North Korea has gotten
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: quite sophisticated doing this.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: And I was reading a lot about this.
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: This is before agentic AI enters the chat here.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: They don't assess it.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: They necessarily were making use of frontier AI capabilities to
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: do this. One of the things that we know, already know,
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: that AI is really good at is offensive cyber operations.
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: We know that because the fucking AI agents themselves have
• 43:36
  Speaker 4: escaped human control and done offensive cyber operations and hacked
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: into things. So if you think this is bad now,
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: what do you think is going to be going on
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: one year from now, not 10 years from now, two
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: years from now, when the North Korean hackers can make
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: use of all these new AI tools to just do
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: like infinite probing and hacking exercises with AI agents? this
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: is like a nightmare coming, right? And crypto is just
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: the most vulnerable mark on the block. I would not
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: be putting my fucking money in crypto right now. And
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: then the last thing is, this is real money for
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: the North Koreans. I mean, this is not like, you know,
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: they got a million bucks in a bank heist. You know,
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: this is like, like if they actually pulled off the
• 44:15
  Speaker 4: bank heist in heat, you know, like, I mean, like
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: $ 7 billion, $ 10 billion, like what can they buy with that?
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: A lot of shit.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: A lot of weapons, a lot of weapons, what they
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: could buy. Yeah, and like, look, they didn't get all
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: of it, right? Like some of it was frozen.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Like, so what happens is the challenge with crypto transactions
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: is they are like by design irreversible. So it's not
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: like if, you know, if someone like hacks your bank account,
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: transfers money to another bank, you can get the bank
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: to transfer it back. You just can't do that with crypto. Now,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: some of the money, especially like the stable coins, the
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: coins that are like, you know, pegged to the dollar,
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: they can be frozen by those companies. They can be
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: rendered useless and kind of like written off on their ledgers.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: But other money was like, clearly the North Koreans have
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: been preparing this for a while and they transferred it
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: to all these wallets to quickly like wash it in
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: as many ways as possible to convert it to different currencies.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: So they walked away with billions of dollars, like a
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: ton of money. And to your point, like, Yeah, the
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: North Koreans were already really good at hacking, right? Like,
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: everyone remembers the 2014 Sony hack. In 2017, the North
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: Korean cyber hackers were behind the WannaCry ransomware attack that affected, like, 300,000
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: computers in 150 countries, including the NHS, the British, you know,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: healthcare system. They've robbed, you know, real banks before. Like, so,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: you know, this is like a... It's not just... it's
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: not like the United States where like we have the
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: NSA that does kind of like these bespoke like Intel operations.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Like this is a huge part of their economy. And
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: you're right with AI, that part is only going to grow.
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I mean, before the crypto people at me, again,
• 45:51
  Speaker 4: Binance has said they'll make people whole here. But the
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: point is that this just doesn't feel like a very
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: safe space to be in right now. Like With AI
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: coming online, too, and the cyber risk going up, because
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: North Korea will continue to try to do this.
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: Other cyber actors will try to do this. And it's
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: interesting that.
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: They're just kind of beyond, you can't punish them anymore
• 46:12
  Speaker 4: because they're basically sanctioned so much that they're cut off
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: from the US dollar-based economy.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: Which is partly why they do this.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and so a.
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: Lot of the debates in terms of how to deal
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: with this start to get at things like, do you
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: start your own offensive cyber attacks on the North Koreans
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: and get in kind of like a cyber war with them,
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: which is kind of scary to think about too, because
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: that creates incentives for them to maybe fuck with you
• 46:35
  Speaker 4: in more direct ways, because they're clearly very good at this.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: I mean, one thing that they've clearly done there is
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: that they've like trained like a generation of hackers. And again,
• 46:44
  Speaker 4: I think that the thing to watch on this is
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: how does this evolve as AI.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: Becomes more potent?
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: And then, because then what people say is, well, the
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: best defense against offensive AI is, cyber taxes, defensive AI.
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: It's the perfect manifestation of the AI economy where like
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: an AI company is making the thing that creates the
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: threat that the AI company then has to be paid
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: for to defend against the threat. Like it makes you
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: feel like this whole AI economy is like one big
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: circle of cash and just everything mandates that we pay,
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: you know, some tech company more money.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I just want to unplug the computer. Let me
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: do a couple updates from Ukraine. So first on Monday,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: President Zelensky tweeted this very disconcerting video saying, quote, We
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: have intel that Russia is preparing a new massive attack
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: on our country, primarily targeting energy and logistics. He says
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: he thinks Russia will be distracted by the U.S.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Midterms.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: And then he said, quote, we must not play games
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: with Russia's oil or gas revenue. We must put pressure
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: on Russia in such a way that it has no
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: alternative but to end this war. That last part of
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: his statement is probably a reference to a Wall Street
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: Journal report that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are pushing
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: a deal that would let Russia sell natural gas to
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Europe again or to the world again. The way they
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: would do it, though, is to get around European sanctions.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: They would have the sales go through a U.S. intermediary, which,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: by the way, what a nice surprise, would allow a
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: bunch of American investors to make a ton of money.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing ones with connections to the Trump administration. And
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: this natural gas would have to go through a pipeline
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: that crosses Ukraine. So you're going to need the Ukrainians
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: to play ball here. Now, none of this makes any sense, Ben.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: Ukrainians would make some money off of fees if this
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: were to ramp back up these natural gas sales. But
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: they also know that like any Russian money they make
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: would go towards fueling the war effort.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: So it's nuts.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: And it doesn't make sense when you think back to
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: how much time Trump spent chastising the Germans for building
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany in
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: his first term. Currently, I think about 11% of Europe's
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: natural gas comes from Russia, which is down from 45%
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: before the war. So the EU has made real efforts
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: to wean itself off natural gas. They're trying to fully
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: phase out Russian natural gas by the end of 2027. Similarly,
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the New York Times reported that last week, this is
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: a report from last week, that Trump is considering lifting
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: sanctions on the Russian direct investment fund. This is, you know,
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: the Biden administration sanctioned that fund after the invasion of Ukraine.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: He called it a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: that is emblematic of Russia's broader kleptocracy.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: So there's a.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Very clear pattern here now of Trump giving Putin whatever
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: he wants and not getting anything back. And then meanwhile,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: on Monday, Russia dropped nine massive glide bombs on a
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian school that was being used to distribute humanitarian aid.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Nine bombs total killed 33 people. um, including ones who
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: were in this like brand new, newly reinforced bomb shelter
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: in the basement that just could not hold up against
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: that much tonnage. Um, so don't be fooled by these
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: reports of that, like Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire.
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: That was total bullshit.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: It was one town for a couple of days and
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Russia used the time to reinforce its military and now
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: it was bombing again.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: So all bad news for Ukraine right now.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I, I, I'm glad that we weren't even credulous
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: of the Melania Trump boomlet there for 24 hours. Um,
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: The way you very accurately described this deal just reinforces
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: that it doesn't benefit anybody except Russia and whatever Americans
• 50:12
  Speaker 4: make money on the deal. Because the Ukrainians, even though
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: they ostensibly get revenue, don't want this because they'd rather
• 50:17
  Speaker 4: Russia be denied revenue than they get some.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: The Europeans don't want this.
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: They're for more sanctions on Russians, even though they're the
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: ones who would get some gas. So this is literally
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: just Trump doing something for Putin and whoever else in
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: his orbit.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: Is going to profit off of this.
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: The only other thing that I thought was interesting in
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: the Ukraine news this week, Tommy, was it connects to
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: the Iran story. You know, Witkoff announced a meeting in
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: Abu Dhabi next week to negotiate the end of the war.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: Some people were reading tea leaves.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: It's like, oh, does that mean they're not going to
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: strike Iran? I don't know. Steve Witkoff has also had
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: meetings scheduled with Iranian negotiators who then got killed.
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: So I don't read a ton into it.
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: But, you know, if there is a meeting in Abu Dhabi,
• 50:58
  Speaker 4: that probably means they're not going to bomb them that day.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: But that's all I'd make of that.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I just have no confidence in those
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: idiots getting anything done.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have no confidence in these.
• 51:09
  Speaker 8: Guys.
• 51:14
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  Speaker 1: It's the best way to support the show. Finally, let's
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: talk about China. So the Central Committee of China's Communist
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: Party wrapped up its fifth plenum last week.
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: This is a four-day meeting.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: It's about 370 or so senior CCP officials. These meetings,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: mostly rubber stamp decisions that were already made by Chinese
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: President Xi Jinping and the most senior leaders.
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: Of the party.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: But the one real function of the meetings is personnel engagement.
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: The meetings are where the CCP formalizes expulsions from the
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: party and promotes members to empty seats.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: And boy, have they been busy with the expulsions.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: This plenum ratified the expulsion of 33 senior members from
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: the party, which was a record. The expulsions include lots
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: of top military officials. The body that actually commands China's
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: armed forces is called the Central Military Commission, or CMC.
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: The CMC has been reduced from seven members down to two,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: and one of the two is Xi Jinping. But the
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: expulsions do not stop just at the military. Xi expelled
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: a diplomat who was seen as potentially being next in
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: line to be China's foreign minister. He booted his former
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: secretary who had worked for him for over a decade.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: In some cases, these formal expulsions were the only official
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: news about the fate of top officials who had just
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: mysteriously disappeared for months, had not been seen in public
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: for months, and no one knew where they were. And
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: it also seems like Xi is just in no rush
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: to replace these people. The plenum was also record-breaking in
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: that it had the most empty seats in the post-Mao era.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: So only 279 members, full and alternate, there's alternate members
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: that go to, attended, according to the party statement. In 2022,
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: when the current committee was named, there were 376 members.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: So about almost 100 people were missing. So Ben, what
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: the hell is going on?
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Xi frames the purge as cleaning up corruption, But he's
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: also accused members of disloyalty and subordination, scheming.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: There's all these weird adjectives they use.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: He's also been, it seems to be a massive power
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: play by Xi Jinping as he prepares to secure a
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: fourth five-year term as party leader.
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: That would officially happen next year. But Ben, what did
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: you take away from this?
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: It seems like a very fun meeting that they had.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: I was really struck by this because, yeah, this does
• 55:17
  Speaker 4: feel like, you know, any analyst you talk to, he's
• 55:20
  Speaker 4: trying to just kind of further reinforce the full inevitability
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: of this fourth term, but also that this is not
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: any longer like a communist party governed country.
• 55:31
  Speaker 3: It is a Xi Jinping governed country.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: Like it is a one man, one rule country in
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: a way that we hadn't seen in China since, I
• 55:39
  Speaker 4: don't know, Deng Xiaoping, maybe, or Mao. But also like,
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: if you look at some of these officials, like I
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: was looking at it, we've now reached the state because
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: he's been in power so long, these were the people
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: that Xi Jinping elevated over time when he purged other people,
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: you know? So he's just been around so long. He
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: chose these guys, yeah. Yeah, it'd be like if Obama
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: like purged, you know, you and me. Like he's purging
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: his people now, right?
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: And that to me, there's a kind of, I don't know,
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: like he can say corruption, he can say whatever he wants.
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: This is kind of, a paranoid, weird, like Mao kind
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: of behavior. You know, this is what happened to Xi's dad,
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: by the way. Like, you know, he got purged and
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: sent to like a labor camp, you know, after being
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: a top party official.
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: So he's kind of repeating the hits there.
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: And just to tie these stories together today, Tommy, like
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: I'm very optimistic about these midterms. So just to prove
• 56:44
  Speaker 4: that I'm not just a pessimist. But we have three men,
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: three old fucking men, who run the three empires, right?
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: We've got Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. And
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: the psychology of these aging men is not making me
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: sleep any better at night. You've got Trump preparing to
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: like escalate and potentially commit war crimes in Iran. You've
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: got Putin preparing to like make Ukraine uninhabitable in the winter.
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: You've got Xi Jinping like purging his longtime associates in some,
• 57:16
  Speaker 4: you know, excessive power play. I just, this habit of
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: men staying in power into their 70s and 80s, I'd
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: like to try a different experiment.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Like, please.
• 57:27
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Even when we like them, even like Lula da Silva,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: it's like, you know what? It would be great if
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: they figured out a succession plan right away. By the way,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: it's something Xi is not even considering. Like, Xi Jinping
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: is making sure there is no succession plan. So he,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: even though there's all these health concerns about him, right? Like,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: remember a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: how he was like holding onto his wife, walking up
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: and down the stairs and people were saying, oh, look,
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: he disappeared from a dinner and, you know, wondering if
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: he was sick.
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: It's like, nope.
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: This guy's planning for five more, well, six total if
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: you count the rest of the time between now and
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: then years in office. Ben, just to hammer home your
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: point about, you know, Xi purging his allies, like one
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: of the top military officials he purged was seen as
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: one of his closest allies.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: Their families knew each other for decades.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: This guy was only like one of the few remaining
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: leaders with actual battlefield experience in the military, and he's gone.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: CSIS has tracked more than 100 senior PLA leaders who
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: either were removed or somehow implicated in this purge, which
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: just makes you ask questions about like, how ready or
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: prepared could the Chinese military be? Like, how do you
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: take Taiwan if you have no one on the CMC
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: that runs the military?
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: Who is telling Xi Jinping.
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: The truth if all of them are even more paranoid
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: and worried than normal that they might get thrown out
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: of the place?
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: So like, you know, yeah, like none of it's good.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: None of it makes you feel good about their leadership,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: the process, Xi Jinping's mentality.
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he doesn't seem like a very sentimental guy, Tai.
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: But I guess if there is good news, you're right
• 58:54
  Speaker 4: about the Taiwan thing. I mean, like, they keep purging
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: the senior military officials. Like, that does make it, I guess,
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: less likely that they're, like, going to do something in
• 59:03
  Speaker 4: Taiwan next year, you know? I mean, just because, like,
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: you kind of need your people in place, I would hope.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: uh i mean i would hope that nothing happens that's
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: my objective here but yeah it it i i just
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: the the man in the high castle never ends well
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: you know i mean that's how we got the invasion
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: of ukraine like you know purged everybody and was just
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: by himself and cooked this up and covid it seemed
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: like you know and It does feel like Xi is
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: increasingly isolated from any external opinion that is not.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: Can you imagine how sick, if you think Mr.
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: Trump gets, if you think Natalie Harp is printing out
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: the good clips, can you imagine the information flow to
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: Xi Jinping?
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: It's unimaginable.
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, although his Natalie is now at like a work
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: camp in Xinjiang somewhere. It's not going so well, worse
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: than a drink cart or whatever it was. Final story
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: before Ben and I go and refresh election results. The
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: New York Times had a piece out about how NVIDIA
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: CEO Jensen Wang was in some sort of potentially compromising
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: relationship with a woman who is believed to be a
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Chinese intelligence asset or maybe even a spy. She's a
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: top executive at Megaspeed, which is a Singapore-based data center
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: company and one of NVIDIA's business partners.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: She was, according to U.S. intelligence, collecting intel for Beijing.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 4: U.S.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Officials suspected this was happening She figured she was helping
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: get Chinese companies access to advanced NVIDIA chips and maybe
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: going around American export restrictions. And Intel found that she
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: was probably sending information straight to Beijing, and that prompted
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: a concern about what she knew about NVIDIA and maybe
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: even what she knew about the Trump administration's thinking about
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: China and AI, because Trump talks to Jensen Wang all
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: The story says that some U.S.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: Officials questioned whether Jensen Wang could have been unaware about
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: her affiliation's Um, uh, and it says that Trump was
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: briefed on this intelligence a year ago and apparently just
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: did nothing about it. Um, and I suspect that, you know,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: anger over that inaction is probably why this all ended
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: up in the New York times then.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: Um, but you know, just like a crazy story. I mean,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I don't know that like we needed like a spy
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: in the bowels of Nvidia to know why, you know,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: Jensen Wong was pumped to sell a bunch of semiconductors
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: to the, to the Chinese. But, um, I don't know,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: fascinating piece of reporting there.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: First of all, I love when these reports kind of
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 4: hint at the nature of the relationship.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 2: I know, I know.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Lots of photos of them late at night after conferences.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. What's going on there?
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: Look, it builds on something we said after the OpenAI story,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: the Saudi spy at OpenAI with the thumb drive or whatever.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: These tech companies are clear marks for foreign intelligence and
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: are clearly not taking the precautions that you normally would
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: if you're dealing with the most sensitive technology in some
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: ways in the world today, you know? And I mean,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: this is the Jensen Wong, like arguably, you know, he's
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: in the top, if we're doing power rankings of the
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: most influential tech leaders, he's in the top three or
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: five right now.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 4: Um, this is the guy who's literally sitting at the
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: all in podcasts, like getting Trump on speakerphone to talk
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: about how AI shouldn't be regulated. Um, and so, um,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: Would you like that guy to be a mark of
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: Chinese intelligence?
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: No, you would not.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: And the second piece it tells you is that Trump
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: just could give a shit.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: As long as everybody's.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: Making money and the AI bubble is keeping the stock
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: market propped up and he's making his cut or his
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: kids are or whoever in his orbit is making some
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: money and, oh, people have relationships, big deal.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, it shows a carelessness there. That, you know,
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: is a little frightening, right?
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: Because it makes you wonder, again, if the fucking CEO
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: of NVIDIA is in a relationship like this.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: What else is going on?
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: What don't we know?
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: These tech companies, like people, I love it.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 4: These companies, too, they sometimes come out and they're like,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: you know, the Chinese are they're stealing our models. They're
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: stealing our intellectual property, you know. Well, I mean, you're
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: making it pretty easy for them to do that.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like there weren't a lot of hops
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: to get to the very top of, you know, the
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: NVIDIA brain trust.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: It's always like a little notable, you know, when these guys,
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: a lot of these tech guys are like walking midlife crises,
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: you know?
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: I know.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: So like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, we got the weird
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: supplements and the martial arts. Jensen Wong, like you never
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: see him without wearing like a black leather jacket, which
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: is like your, you know.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: I mean... It's like, buddy, you're just a nerd. Come on, relax.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like, just be a nerd. Like, just be a nerd.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: You know, you can get a date. You're worth, like,
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 4: a trillion dollars. You know, you don't need to wear
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: the black leather jacket.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not a movie. Anyway, crazy story. One
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: we're going to, I'm sure, hear a lot more about.
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: Something, an opportunity for oversight for Democrats going forward is
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: figuring out a lot of these questions and what the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: hell NVIDIA is about.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: Which we will talk about at CrookedCon.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about it at CrookedCon. So we will all
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: see you there. And until then... Fingers crossed on the midterms.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: Posse of the World is a Crooked Media production. Our
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: show is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: with the Writers Guild of America East.