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Soccer Scandal & Idiot Ambassadors · Pod Save the World

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Petor.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I'm Ben Rhodes.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Ben, the New England Patriots officially suck. This is our
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: NFL talk, everyone. Skip forward 30 seconds.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Well, we can actually cross the streams here because in
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: part it's because, you know, Drake May- may have been
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: a flash in the pan. In part, it's because your
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: coach may have run off to some Arizona resort with
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: an ESPN reporter. Diana, take him back. Also, maybe the
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Bob Craft karma. I noticed that the Ed Sheeran shows
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: are canceled because of weather. So maybe all this karma
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: is hitting Bob Craft.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Do you see all the tweets of people being, there
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: was like, Hey, Bibi Netanyahu, the Patriots offensive coordinator, is
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. I did.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: So I may have sent you one. If not, I
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: definitely thought about sending you one of those because it
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: was pretty good.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It was a good tweet. Red Sox-Yankees tonight. We're recording Tuesday,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: September 29th. I will be rooting for the Red Sox.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Playoff baseball.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: I always like, as soon as the Mets are eliminated,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: which is every season, I always root for whoever is
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: playing the Yankees.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: So I will actually be rooting for Boston.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Well, famously, the Yankees do suck, as I have chanted.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: My entire life.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: It may not be known to the Pod Save the
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: World audience, and I'm really dating myself here, but do
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: you remember when Roger Clemens hit Mike Piazza in the
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: head with a pitch?
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: I was at that game at Yankee Stadium, and I
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: vowed to never enter Yankee Stadium again, and I have
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: not been since then.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: Wow, good for you.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: I was a kid. It's been like 30 years or something.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: I haven't gone back.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: You're like Mandela. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: We have a great show for you guys today. We're
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: going to recap the Trump state visit with Xi Jinping
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and frankly, just how little was actually accomplished. How strange
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: it was. Got a lease on some pandas. We're going
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: to update you at the latest with Iran and this
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: kind of new workaround for oil and gas producers in
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: the Strait of Hormuz and the arrests in the UK
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: that may or may not be linked to Iran. I
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: don't know that we know yet. We're going to dig
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: into serious concern about renewed conflict in Ethiopia and Um,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: and like, just the more I read about this, the
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: more freaked out it became. And I talked to someone
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: who said like, she was worried that the crisis could
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: engulf the entire horn of Africa, a very troubled region.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: You could see all these wars kind of merged together.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: It's a very important story that gets no attention. So
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: we're going to cover that. We're going to talk about
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: the scandal engulfing Manchester city, uh, and its ownership group
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: in the United Arab Emirates. If you're non-soccer fans, trust me, you'll,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: you'll like this one. Um, Collision of state-backed entities in
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: professional sports, which is very interesting.
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: Always rich terrain.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's coming for us. We're going to talk about
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: some tech and AI news because you can't avoid it
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: these days, and it's not fun to read about. And
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: then the final segment we're calling Dumb Ambassadors, Ben.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: This is a little surprise for us. Oh, Dumb Ambassadors
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: is always great.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: There's been some great coverage.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: I hope Grease is on the list. Oh, yeah.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: That one I did see.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: You're not going to surprise me with Grease.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: For those, a little teaser for you guys. Donald Trump Jr.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: 's ex-fiance, Kim Guilfoyle.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: And Gavin's ex.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: And Gavin Newsom's ex out here in California.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: Strange convergence of personalities.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: She's the ambassador to Grease.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she is. For reasons that nobody can identify.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: No one knows. And she's doing some weird shit. Uh,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: then you're gonna hear my conversation, uh, with Sam Vygursky.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: He's the international affairs fellow at the council on foreign relations.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: He went to Haiti for about a week back in June,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: did a really great write up and report about the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: situation on the ground. Um, and it just, it's a
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: really important story, Ben, because to me, first of all,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: we should care about people in Haiti because they're, it's
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: very close to our own shores. It's a country that
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: desperately needs some sort of help or intervention and it
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: has not come. In fact, it's just gotten harmed by
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: us interventions over the many decades. But also, it underscores
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: the unbelievable cruelty and immorality of removing temporary protected status
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and sending 350,000 people back to a place with war
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: zone-like violence.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: While you have a State Department travel warning telling Americans
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: it's not safe to go there. So we've literally determined
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: as a government that it is unsafe, which is the
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: criteria to get asylum or temporary protected status in this country.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: And I guess because Stephen Miller once hit the quota.
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: And Stephen Miller's quote is like, well, it's safe for Haitians.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: No.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: It's absolutely not. It's literally war zone-like levels of violence.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: So stick around for that, please, because it's very important.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: All right, Ben. So we spent a bunch of time
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: last week previewing Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: We're going to close the loop on it today, but
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: it's going to be brief because, as expected, they didn't
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: do much. There was a small reduction in tariffs, like
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: $ 30 billion, I think. The two leaders extended this broader
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: truce in the trade war for a couple months. The
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: US and China agreed to hold a dialogue about artificial intelligence.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: So they're talking, they talked about talking about AI.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Great.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: The White House also announced that, do you see this?
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: China said, or the White House said that China is
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: now going to call it super intelligence, not artificial intelligence.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure that, I think the Chinese kind of
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: disputed it. But again, I think we all can agree
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: that the branding is what matters. The most concrete deliverable
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: was that the Chinese loaned us two giant pandas, which
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: are now chilling at the Atlanta Zoo. There's Ping Ping,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: which means peace, and Fu Shuang, which means double blessings.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: You have to quarantine for a month. Then they can
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: get registered to vote and vote for John Ossoff down
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: in Atlanta. But big picture, it seems like the Chinese
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: got all the trappings of a state visit. They gave
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Trump vague process crap in return, which is their favorite
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: thing to do. Just kind of give you some make work.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: No actual deliverable. The one headline that did catch our
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: attention came from these comments from the U.S. ambassador to China,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: David Perdue. So this clip is from Fox News Sunday.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: And then we added in Trump's response when he was
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: asked about Purdue's comments on Monday. Let's watch. There are
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: continuing conversations about other sales. He and President Xi talk
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: about that every time they get together. But President Trump
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: around the world.
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy
• 5:59
  Speaker 5: some at one point.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: President Xi that the U.S.
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: Would sell U.S.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Military equipment to China.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Is that accurate? Did you make such a suggestion? The
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: President President Trump To China? The President President Trump.
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: To China, yes.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: The President President Trump You mean to Taiwan? The President President.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Trump No, to China.
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: That's what he said. The President President Trump I never
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: heard of that one.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: I'm going to have to ask him. You mean we're
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: going to sell— no, they'd probably like to buy it
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: because we do make better equipment than them, so maybe
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: it's a good idea.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: But we didn't discuss it. They may have been talking
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: about Taiwan. I think he probably was talking about Taiwan.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: What do you think would be most useful for the
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Chinese when it comes to invading Taiwan? Some U.S. amphibious
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: assault ships.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Maybe a Virginia-class, maybe aircraft carrier, if you can afford it.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Why not?
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: I don't know that we can spare any because they're
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: all breaking down in the med.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: What do you make of this? I assumed he was kidding, but, like,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It doesn't really seem like it.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: He was not. kidding, Purdue, who's not the brightest bulb, though.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's one of these, I mean, first of all,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: as you pointed out, and we're going to allow ourselves
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: to say this on top of the show, this would
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: be like a, you know, multi-year story if a Democratic
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: president had an ambassador go out and say, yeah, we're
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: going to sell some arms to China. Like, you know,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: we'd be the centerpiece of the next presidential campaign or something.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: But put that aside.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Purdue is certain about it. Trump loves selling stuff to
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: other countries.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Love selling weapons.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: We should add, by the way, that China committed at
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: the last summit where nothing really happened in China to
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: buy all these Boeing planes that they still have not bought.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: So they figured out the same thing the Gulf did.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: You just promise to do a bunch of stuff that
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: you're never going to do. Trump celebrates it. I mean,
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: what I think is interesting and alarming here is that
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: one of these two men is not telling the truth. Right.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: So either Donald Trump is actually talking to Xi Jinping
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: about selling them weapons, which they spent a lot of
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: time spying on. Right. Or actually, like, let's pause on
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: the fact and foreshadowing our final segment here. Their ambassador
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: to China, which is probably the single most important ambassador
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: post in the world, is such a dumb fucking moron.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: that he mixed up Taiwan and China.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: And, you know, there's a lot of talk about arms sales.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not a good outcome either way.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: You do talk about arms sales in the bilat with
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: the Chinese president, but it's arms sales to Taiwan. Neither
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: of those answers are particularly comforting, you know?
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Especially at a time when the U.S. is holding up
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: this $ 14 billion arms sale to Taiwan. I'm sure the
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Taiwanese read this headline. You've got to be kidding me.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: You've got to be kidding me. Yeah, you're already holding
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: this back.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: I mean, and this matters because if— If we do
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: hold back that $ 14 billion arms sale, at a time
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: of the U.S. on the back foot without munitions to spare,
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: even for ourselves, we can spare it to Israel, but
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: that's another story. This is like the window when China
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: might do something in Taiwan. 2027, 2028, the last years
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: of the Trump administration, the U.S. is isolated. It's running
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: out of munitions. We're no longer supplying arms to Taiwan
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: that are meant to deter an invasion. And we can't
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: decide whether we're trying to sell China arms or not.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: We apparently forgot which side we're trying to arm here.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: We won't be selling them interceptor missiles because we're out
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: of those.
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we're out of a lot of this stuff.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: A lot of that stuff. Just on the panda point,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: it's funny that it's a loan. They don't give us
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the pandas. They loan them. It's the third pair of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: pandas to come over here in two years, I think
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: in 2024. The Atlanta Zoo had to return four pandas
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: to Giants. So then a couple of them arrived in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: San Diego in 2024. This is a tradition that dates
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: back to Mao and Nixon. I think the first panda
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: that the Chinese ever loaned us was named Ping Ping.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: So that's fun. I like pandas, I guess. They're cute looking. Yeah,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: I like.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Pandas. I remember when they used to be at the
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: National Zoo in D.C., they got yanked.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Real bummer.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they took them back.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: I will say from the summit in general, it bears
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: emphasis that it is an astonishingly thin gruel that came
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: out of now two summits between Trump and Xi. where
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Trump just wanted, as we talked about that kind of
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: the protocol piece, but there were a couple of interesting
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: things underneath the hood. Like one is, did you see,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: they basically extended the negotiations around some of these trade
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: irritants and terrorists for two, two months, like kind of
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: noticeably until after the midterm elections. And so, you know, that,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: that could be the Chinese just kind of wanting to
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: see what they're dealing with. I think on the back
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: end of the midterm elections, um, that could be the
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Chinese just kind of squeezing, you know, uh, Trump a bit.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: Um, That could be the Chinese is kind of, you know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: playing for time.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: But they are the ones who appear to have the
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: leverage because, you know, as we've talked about, they demonstrated
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: they have this choke point of these rare earth materials.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: And that is much more damaging to the U.S.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Economy than Trump's kind of episodic tariff tantrums with the Chinese.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: But I think that there's a common thread, you know,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: to Iran, which we'll talk about, to China, Of these
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: other countries, like really watching the midterm elections. And it
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: raises an interesting question about if Trump gets shellacked and
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: there are Democrats in control of Congress, like how does
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: the rest of the world react to that?
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they know he's a lame duck.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Then they know he's a lame duck.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And so that I thought was a really interesting outcome.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: The two months is not a subtle period of time.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. Good point.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: Good point.
• 11:48
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• 14:29
  Speaker 1: So speaking of Iran, the war just kind of is
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: dragging on in this frozen kind of on-again, off-again state.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: Last week, we played for you the clip of Trump
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: threatening to annihilate Iran in his speech to the UN.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: That was an uplifting moment in UN history. At the
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: same time, though, the Qataris were mediating these indirect talks
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: between Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the son-in-law and the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: idiot golf buddy, and then Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Arachi.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Iran reportedly proposed a seven-day ceasefire that included fighting stops everywhere,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: including Lebanon. America unfreezes billions in Iranian assets, lifts oil sanctions,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: and calls off the blockade. And then on day seven,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the Strait of Hormuz would reopen for business and then
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: nuclear talks would resume. Trump, not surprisingly, said that was
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: an unacceptable proposal. According to the Wall Street Journal, he
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: has told his aides that he will probably resume bombing
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: after the midterms. And I would like to see Democrats saying,
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: please release your secret plan to resume the war after
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: the midterms and calling on all Republicans to denounce it.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Axios reported that Trump was willing to give Iran sanctions
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: relief and unfreeze frozen Iranian assets in return for steps
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: in the nuclear program. Trump denied that. But again, that's
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: always been the deal that's on the table. So it's like,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: I don't get what everyone's denying at this point or
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: what's on the table. One area, though, where conditions have
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: improved for Trump is the flow of oil through the
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Strait of Hormuz. So the U.S. embargo seemingly has choked
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: off Iran's exports of oil, which will cause them increasing
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: problems over time if their entire industry gets shut down.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: At the same time, the U.S. military, along with these
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: countries in the Gulf, have kind of worked out a
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: system to get oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and out such that the level is close to pre-war levels,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: although not fully at it. So it sounds like the
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Emiratis piloted a system where they have a fleet of tankers.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: They load it up at their ports, they shuttle the
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: oil out, and then they unload the oil from their
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: tankers into the international tankers at sea. So they basically
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: take the back and forth risk of passing through the
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Strait of Hormuz but also the process adds significant cost.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I've seen estimates between $ 15 and $ 30 per barrel, so
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of money. And it's not without risk, right?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: The Iranians take a shot and they hit one of
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: these tankers. That's a huge deal. But the Strait is
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: no longer fully choked off by Iran, which is significant.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: But Trump seems kind of just disinterested in all of this. Ben,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: this clip is from Monday in the Oval Office where
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: he was asked about the war. Let's watch real quick.
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: Has your team focused on Iran today?
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they have. They have their mediators?
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:00
  Speaker 6: Anything else you can share about a movement of your own?
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: We're going to win.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: As far as I'm concerned, it's going to be one
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: way or the other.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: It's going to go pretty quickly. Give that guy an Adderall.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: Do you think that's a 5-milligram edible or a 10-milligram?
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: He took the wrong pill.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: He took the Xanax. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He thought it
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: was the Addy. I think the question, like being serious
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: for a second, does this kind of oil work around
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: that the Gulf countries have figured out with CENTCOM? Does
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: this make Trump more or less likely to seek a deal?
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: Does it increase or decrease the risk of the Iranians
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: doing something escalatory? I think with the Iranians, I feel
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: like it makes escalation more likely, but I, it's hard
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: for me to gauge the Trump piece. Yeah.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Like we're all reading the tea leaves here. And so,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: you know, with the disclaimer that we, we, you know, who.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Knows, right.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Um, There is clearly more oil and gas getting to
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: that strait. Here's the problem with that, though. The costs are, like,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: very significant. You mentioned the cost to just the shipping.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: But there's also the cost of the U.S. maintaining this
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: blockade of Iran, maintaining all this presence.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: They're not disclosing.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: And at times there's, like, you know, we have to
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: escort some of these tankers. And so this is not, like,
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: some great solution, right? I mean, sure, it's better than
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: nothing getting to the straits. But essentially, we've gone from
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: the straping open for the war to like a massive U.S.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: military presence and blockade of Iran and occasional escorting of
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: tanker ships to go through a laborious process that already
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: adds to the price of energy because it just costs money.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: It's like a mini no-fly zone over the Strait of Hormuz, right?
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Because I think what's happening is American air assets are
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: flying and prepared to shoot down any missiles or drones
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: when these ships go through, which, as you said, that's
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: pretty intensive.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: That's pretty intensive, right?
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: And so we're paying billions and billions and billions of
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: dollars just to do this. Second, to your point, I mean,
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: the Iranians are more likely to escalate, I think. I mean,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: everything that we've seen out of the Iranians in this
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: war is that they're not particularly inclined to de-escalate.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: The hardliners are in charge. They're calling the shots.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: They're going to want to demonstrate that they have some
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: capacity to impose a cost. That could be on trying
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: to hit tankers. That could be on trying to target U.S.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Vessels.
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: That could be reopening some of the attacks on the
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Gulf that we've seen. That could be through, you know,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: continued proxy attacks like we've seen from the Houthis on
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia that has had its own costs on energy.
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: So the baseline point is that this kind of semi
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: on again, off again, frozen conflict is not a solution.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: Because also part of the disruption of the closing of
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: the strait or even just the, you know, mucking up
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: of the strait is that you can't like kind of
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: plan against that. Like an example I'd give is the Qataris,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: they can't, they're not like resuming their LNG production, their
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: liquefied natural gas production in part because they're just worried
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: about it getting hit again. And they're worried about like, well,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: if we resume all these, you know, we start drilling
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: and the field is resumed, the gas field, can we
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: get that stuff out?
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: And so This is like a Band-Aid that is slowing
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: the bleeding, but it's still like the problem.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: And I think only for oil and gas, right? Because
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of ships that CENTCOM is not going to protect. Yes.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Trump only cares about oil and gas. And then
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: to your point, the big question is this post midterms
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: question where it's the same two paths that are available
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: for Trump. Like he can either just start bombing them
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: again because he wants to try to win the war
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: that he's kind of already lost in many ways.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: That we've discussed.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Or he could kind of take the deal that everybody
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: knows has been the deal, which is Iran gets a
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: bunch of money and the strait opens and there's some
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: nominal nuclear concession that is, you know, maybe the dust
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: is diluted or something.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: That dust going.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: And that's, you know, part of, I think, what is
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: worrying to me, Tommy, is a.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: Lot of this depends on Trump's post-midterms psychology, you know?
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: I was surprised, I was in New York last week
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: around the UN General Assembly, and some of the people
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: I talked to from other countries, I don't know if
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: they listened to Tucker Carlson or what, but there's some
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: people that were seriously concerned about Trump doing this nuclear option,
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: quite literally, like nuking Mount Pickaxe or whatever it's called.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: And while I dismiss that as insane, and I don't
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: think that will happen, like a Trump who gets humiliated
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: in the midterms and, you know, is getting humiliated by Iran. Like,
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: we have to think about the psychology of lame duck Trump.
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: I hope that's the psychology of a man that just
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: wants to build ballrooms and arches, but not a man
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: who wants to nuke Pickaxe Mountain.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I hope you're right, too. But I do think he's
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: sort of the psychology of a man who would like
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: some people to think he might nuke it as leverage. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: You know, and like Tucker being worried about that didn't
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: come out of nowhere. It didn't come out.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: He's clearly hearing something.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: I still think the most likely outcome is at some point,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: and who knows when, the same deal that's been on
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: the table.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: It's like we slink away. They give us some of
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: the dust.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Trump says he got the greatest nuclear deal ever, and
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Iranians get a bunch of money, and that's it.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: Everything sucks. NBC reported that two weeks ago, an Iranian
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: cruise missile hit a non-commissioned commercial ship in the Strait
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: and wounded eight Marines. So that puts it between 19 dead.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Some reporting says more dead, up to 22. and then
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: 861 U.S. service members wounded. Over in Yemen, you know,
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: we've talked about that conflict. The WHO says 838 people
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: have died, 3,000 are wounded, and 180,000 have been displaced
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: in the fighting against the Houthis. There's also a horrible
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: case of cholera, so just another example of how the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: longer this drags out, the worse the war gets. One other, like,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: potentially Iran-related thing was this incident at a Royal Air
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Force base in the U.K. over the weekend. So this
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: is just such a weird story.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Very strange story.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: This RAF base, RAF Fairford in southern England, has been
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: used by the U.S. Air Force as a forward operating
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: base for a long time. And initially, remember, the Brits
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: said no to the U.S. when it comes to using
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: their bases for the war in Iran. But then Keir
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Starmer reversed course and said defensive operations were allowed. So U.S.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: bombers have been flying out of there to strike Iranians.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: Defensive bombers. Defensive bombing. That's the most Keir Starmer.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: Thing that's ever happened.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: It's like, I love these military euphemisms, too. So the
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: gist of what happened over the weekend is early mornings,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: like Sunday morning, there's a witness called the police and
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: said there was a large group of hooded and masked
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: men operating three vans near the base. The cops came,
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: they arrested five men. They're all British citizens in their
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: early to mid twenties. They were arrested for suspicion of
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: violating the explosive acts and preparing some sort of terrorist attack.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: They evacuate the place. Airspace gets restricted. Everyone freaks the
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: fuck out. The vans get investigated for explosives. But then
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Fast forward a couple of days, the Wall Street Journal
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: says the vans didn't have any viable explosives. The men
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: are released on bail. And under British law, the police
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: say you can hold individuals suspected of terrorism for two weeks.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: So it's kind of notable that these guys were released,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: albeit with restrictions. Security of the base was already high
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: because of threats. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, the new one,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: not Keir Starmer, the new guy, he told people not
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: to speculate. Trump, of course, speculated and then announced that
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: the U.S. had had these guys under few for a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: long time and that quote we know everything about them
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: and then marco rubio went on fox news monday night
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: saying the incident quote clearly involves the hands of a
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: foreign actor so some options for what might have happened
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: here like we talked about these hybrid attacks by the
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: russians yeah where they just like hire people on telegram
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: to do a task they don't tell them who they
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: are what's going on it could have been the russians
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: could have been the iranian doing something similar kind of
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: witting or unwitting operation um they are the irgc is
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: believed to have hired men in the UK to carry
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: out anti-Semitic attacks, for example. So it could be a
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: continuation of that. Or the economist says, apparently in this area,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: people steal fuel all the time. So these guys could
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: have been just like stealing gasoline from this base or something.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: We don't know. I guess we'll find out. I don't
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: really trust Trump or Rubio to tell us the truth.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: I trust Burnham's government. But Ben, like when you think about,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: when you read about this and like kind of speculate
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: on what happened, like how much tinfoil are we putting
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: around our heads at this point? Are we going to
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: whole roll half?
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're only doing a half because of the
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: way the British authorities are treating this.
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, they're releasing these guys on bail.
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: I do think that the couple of things that they're
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: watching are.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Where the tinfoil hat would lead.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Like one, the Russians, they are, as we've talked about,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: ramping up these sabotage attacks. I mean, just today, the
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Estonian government announced that the Russians had undergone a sabotage
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: attack along their border, raising concerns that they were trying
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: to disable border defenses to maybe do some incursion. The
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: UK has been on their list. I mean, the UK,
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: they've said, is one of the countries that could be
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: in the crosshairs of their reprisal attacks for what's happening
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: inside of Russia.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: Some people have died in the UK at the hands
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: of the Russians before.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: So That's just one more worrying concern that that's even plausible.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: The Iranians, what we have not seen them do, it's interesting.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: Like their reaction in their escalation in this war has
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: almost entirely been in the region. It's been hitting the
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Gulf countries, hitting Jordan, like hitting Israel.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Remember all the concern about like sleeper cells in the U.S.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: or Western countries?
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: It's the dog that hasn't barked, you know, and– And
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: so that's another reason– because actually, frankly, if the Iranians
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: really wanted to do that, I think they probably could.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: Maybe not a military base, but if they wanted to have.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: Terrorist attacks, we've seen in the past Hezbollah do that.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: They've had attacks in Europe. They've had attacks in Asia.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: So– It is plausible, but it's just not yet something
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: we've seen the Iranians do. It's a reminder, though, that
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: if the war continues to drag on or if Trump
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: escalates in some fashion, that is something available to them.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: Although this would be a pretty ambitious operation, attacking a
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: military base. And yeah, like dudes trying to steal fuel
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: feels probably the most plausible because guess what? Fuel is
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: really expensive.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also, if you're like a secret, IRGC sleeper cell,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: are you going to have like three white vans parked
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: all together?
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: I think their OPSEC is a little better than that.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe it's a reassuring that, you know, it's Keystone Pops.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Or it could be like one of those cases in
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the U.S. where like the FBI recruits some 18-year-old guy,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: like gives them an inert IED and has them planted
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: at a parade and then announces a big terrorism.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: Bust, you know? Yeah, or I guess the fourth scenario
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: is they're just very like fly-by-night, shitty terrorists, you know,
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: like a bunch of pissed off Brits. They don't like
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: the U.S.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Foreign policy.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: That's very possible. It's possible. We'll find out, I guess.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: All right. Today, we wanted to spend some time on
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: a very important, but I think chronically undercovered story in
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: the Western media, which is the conflict in Ethiopia and
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the potential for it to spill out into the horn
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: of Africa. And I should say at the top that
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I spent a ton of time on this the last
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: couple of days. It is one of the most complicated
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: subjects I've ever dug deep into for this show because
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: there's so many different militias and political factions and ethnic
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: groups and external factors involved. And a lot of them
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: have confusing acronyms and names and they rebrand and they
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: switch sides. So we're not going to go into all
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: the details. But we wanted to explain why this matters
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: and why listeners should care because the short version is
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: that Ethiopia could be on the cusp of reigniting a
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: civil war that just a few years ago led to
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people And then, though,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: we could see this conflict bleed over or merge with
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the war in Sudan, which is currently the worst humanitarian
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: conflict in the world. And also, it's on the border
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: of Somalia, where there has just been chronic, decades-long instability
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: and terrorism. So that's like the scale of the challenge.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: And just for background, Ethiopia is a country of 130
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: million people. It's like long and quite proud history that
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: goes back centuries. It was one of the only countries
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: in the global south never to be colonized. Christians and
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Muslims were living side by side for centuries. It is
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: home to the African Union. It carries a lot of
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: geopolitical weight, but it has never met its economic potential
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: in part because of conflict and instability. And the most
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: recent civil war that we covered a bunch over the
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: last few years, Ben, it went from basically like our
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: election night 2020 through November 2022. The death toll is
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: estimated between several hundred thousand and up to 600,000 people.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: It's hard to get information out of the area, so
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: no one really knows. That 2022 peace agreement that froze
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: the fighting was a very important and well-executed piece of
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: diplomatic work by the Biden administration. But implementing the deal
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: required ongoing diplomacy that never materialized and also funding that
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Elon Musk doged. Like they were trying to like disarm
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: these militia groups that requires money. He's got to pay
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: these guys pensions when they lose their day job of
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: fighting and that money went away. Um, so now there's
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: concern that the country's on the precipice of another conflict
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: between the Ethiopian government and a group called the Tigrayan
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: People's Liberation Front or TPLF. Excuse a little more backstory here,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: just because again, it's worth understanding. So the roots of
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the conflict in the seventies and nineties, the Ethiopia was
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: ruled by this socialist military junta. Um, the main ethnic
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: groups in Ethiopia, Ethiopia overthrew the junta of the nineties
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: that led to the creation of Eritrea, a very weird
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: country that we can talk about. Um, And this government
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: structure in Ethiopia where essentially these three main ethnic groups,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: the Oromos, the Aparas, and the Tigrayans were given some
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: like regional autonomy. Fast forward to 2018, Abiy Ahmed becomes
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: prime minister. He thinks that Ethiopia's regional factionalism and this
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: power sharing is holding the country back. So he undertakes
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: this project to create a more unified country and a
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: national government that is stronger, which is not inherently bad
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: as a vision. But in practice, he exploits and exacerbates
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: these regional tensions to implement that vision. And his actions
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: lead to both real and perceived sense among some of
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: these groups that they were losing. They were like political losers,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: especially the Tigrayans or the TPLF, because they were in
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: charge before Abiy was elected, that they lost their status.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: They camped to the northern Tigray region. And so they
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: lost their power, but also they were concerned about the
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: setup going forward because they just felt like they were
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: going to be treated unfairly. So Those are the kind
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: of internal issues. Then there's a whole bucket of external
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: factors and challenges that I want to get into, but
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I want to pause there and let you get a
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: fucking word in here about just kind of like the
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: past six years and just sort of the internal dynamics
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: within Ethiopia and the scale of this conflict here.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, it's, and you're right to point
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: out that this was a good piece of diplomacy by
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: the Biden administration, right? You know, who we've been hard
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: on about other things, but The reality is I highlight
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: like the international piece and then the Ethiopian piece and
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: then some of these risks.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: On the international side, you're absolutely right.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Like it's both the dozing of USAID, but it's also
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: kind of the perfect storm of something.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: That would normally have a lot.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Of people working to avert this from happening. You get
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: a fragile ceasefire and normally you'd have USAID providing the
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: kind of funding you talk about.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: U.S.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: Diplomats showing up a lot. You know, there'd be some
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: envoy for this.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Special envoy for the Horn of Africa.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: The State Department would really be working.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: This is the kind of thing that when people talk about,
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: it's interesting, when people talk about the kind of dismantling
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: the State Department and the exodus of experts, which is
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: all true, you know, sometimes people think about like Ukraine
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: or actually these issues almost suffer more because these are
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: the issues that are usually really handed over to the
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: experts in the Foreign Service, people with decades of experience
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: in the Horn of Africa. I can promise you that
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: most of those people are gone because they don't want
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: to work for Trump or because they got mini-dozed.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Remember, Rubio fired a bunch of people. And so that hurts.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: And then lastly, again, the UN system, this is like
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: a classic issue where the UN Security Council, the UN system, international,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: whether it's peacekeeping or post-conflict resourcing, all of that stuff,
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: like is not working anymore because just nobody's paying attention
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: to it.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: Nobody's resourcing it. Nobody wants to pick up the ball
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: and run with it.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: And so if you take the absence of USAID, the
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: absence of US diplomacy, frankly, even other kinds of diplomacy
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: because everybody's focused on Iran or Sudan or like this
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: thing starts to fester and there's no UN structure around it.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: So then inside of Ethiopia, like you have a situation
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: where the TPLF, in Tigray, as you said, these people
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: ran Ethiopia like for 30 years.
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Decades, yeah.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: And I mean, when I was there, I remember going
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: to Addis and with Obama in like 2015, like, you know,
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: they were in charge. Like, and so they lost all
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: their power. And then they're in this like shrinking island.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: And what's interesting here is, you know, Abiy Ahmed, you know,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: he won the Nobel Peace Prize, which is amazing because
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: he made this peace deal with Eritrea in part because
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: he was, you know, it turned.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Out he wanted to isolate these guys.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Now, what they did in the vacuum is they kind
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: of went around and made some allies in the area.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: Like these are other groups.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, just to further complicate it, other groups that
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: had beef with the government, but also had beef with
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: the TPLF. And they kind of built their own little
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: tag team. Um, it's not clear like who kind of
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: resumed this fighting.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, the seven armed groups announced a coalition and
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: announced that they were going to take down the government.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Most of the fighting so far has been in the North,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: but it's not clear they have the capacity to do
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: any of the things they announced necessarily.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: They, and, and, but you know, provocative to announce that.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, for sure.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: So, so, so you have these people who are kind
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: of like you're fighting to kind of reclaim some power,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: some autonomy, you know, maybe a top of the government.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: I think that's a pretty tall task.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Um, And you're just looking at this and it's not
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: like a problem with an obvious solution unless there's like
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: heavy mediation that can come in. Because I think very
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: few people think left to their own devices, the Ethiopian
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: government and the TPLF and these other armed groups can
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: reach some agreement.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: It's going to take external actors.
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: And just to get to the external actors and the
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: way this has become or could become even more of
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: a proxy war, just worth like sort of touching on.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: So Eritrea and Ethiopia, they fight a brutal civil war
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: in the late 90s. As you mentioned, Abiy Ahmed got
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for signing this peace
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: agreement with the Eritreans. But then he allies with the
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Eritreans to take out the TPLF or the Tigrayans. But
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: now the Ethiopian government thinks that Eritrea is helping the TPLF.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: So their old enemy is now their new enemy. The
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Emiratis show up in all the worst conflict zones, Ben.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: So they act like arsonists in this part of Africa.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: They are selling the Ethiopians weapons and drones. I believe
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: the Turks are selling drones to the Ethiopians as well. Also, though,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: we've talked about Sudan a lot and how the UAE
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: is providing the RSF, which is one of the militia
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: groups fighting the Sudanese government as part of that civil war.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: Sudan believes that the RSF or maybe even the Emiratis
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: on their behalf are flying drones from bases in Ethiopia,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: bombing targets in Khartoum and then flying back. They also
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: think that the UAE is shipping weapons to the RSF
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: via Ethiopia and that there's RSF training camps everywhere. on
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Ethiopian soil. So the Emiratis are backing funding, arming a
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: lot of this. Then there's Egypt. Um, Ethiopia and Egypt
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: have a longstanding dispute over water access in this massive
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: hydroelectric dam or power plant that the Ethiopians built on
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the Nile river. It's one of the wars Trump says
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: he solved by the way. Um, never was a war
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: hasn't solved it. Um, there's, there's a lot of analysts.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: So that's a huge flashpoint and point of tension. Um,
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: there's also a lot of analysts who think that the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: Egyptians want a weaker Ethiopia. So they just stir shit
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: up to kind of weaken them. And then there's Somalia. Like, so,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: so Ethiopia is landlocked. There's basically two ways that Abiy
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Ahmed could get access to the sea. One is by
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: taking Eritrea. The other is by recognizing Somaliland as an
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: independent country. He's flirted with that outcome, kind of walked
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: it back because it pissed off all the other countries, but.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: That's- Except Israel. Israel's own.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: The Israelis are. So, Those are all the regional factors.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: So there's just this internal conflict in Ethiopia surrounded by
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: external tensions and conflicts. And to your point about the diplomacy,
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: like the person I think who is in charge of
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: this is Mossad Boulos, who's Tiffany Trump's fucking husband's dad.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:00
  Speaker 5: Right?
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Like the fake billionaire. Was he like a car salesman
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: or something?
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Right? And so the diplomatic piece that's so frustrating is,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: Over and over again.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Everything that Jared and Witkoff pass on, they give to
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: this guy. I mean, quite literally, that's what his job is.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: And like, again, with Sudan, with this conflict, like, it
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: feels like a really important piece of this is putting
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: pressure on the Emiratis to stop funding all these places.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: It's always like 20th on the to-do list for the
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Biden administration and for the Trump administration. Apparently, the U.S. ambassador,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: one of the ambassadors in the region, put out a
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: statement that sided with Ethiopia and and attacked the TPLF,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: which is like on some levels understandable, but if we
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: want to be an honest broker, that's not going to work.
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: And then like, we just need to put pressure on
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Emiratis to stop fucking around.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: And also Trump, I guess, just got rid of sanctions
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: on Eritrea. He just like kind of let them lapse.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: So I'm not sure why, but it just feels like
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: not only is there no real diplomatic effort, but we're
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: kind of maybe making things worse.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. A bit of like a bull in a China
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: shop where stuff is already breaking. And Yeah, because what
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: should happen, right, in addition to kind of the U.S.
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: role that we talked about or the potential U.N. role,
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: like the African Union, the African Union has actually made
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: some constructive statements. That's kind of a grouping of African
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: countries that can come and mediate disputes. They actually have
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: familiarity with this conflict. Awkward for them since they're based
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: in Ethiopia.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They're in a Chinese-built building, quite literally, in Addis Ababa.
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: But the.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: I guess one way to communicate this to people is, like,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: what's the concern here, right? Well, number one, there's a
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: massive humanitarian concern. Like, hundreds of thousands of people have died. Like,
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: if this resumes... You know, we've had issues with famine.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: We've had issues with like mass civilian deaths. And so
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: that should be enough to care about it. I think
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: beyond that, if you just look at this region, right,
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is right across like the Red Sea
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: from Yemen. You know, there's just war everywhere, like Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: Ethiopia. Eritrea.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: All the shipping for the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And my concern is like the Emiratis in particular,
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: but you could also kind of lay this on some
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: of the other regional actors, the Saudis. There's this kind
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: of doctrine now of just kind of funding these proxies constantly,
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: you know, and creating like chaos and violence as kind
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: of this weird means of pushing the instability out, you know.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: And at a certain point, when there's so much of
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: that activity taking place, you know, we talk about like
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: world war, like these conflicts, just like the worst case
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: scenario is that they all just kind of start to
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: blend together.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: Because that's, if you think that's alarmist, like that's already happened.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: Like the war in Yemen is clearly tied to the
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: war in Iran, which is clearly tied to some extent
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: to kind of Israel's post-October 7th response. And then suddenly
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: this war is somehow attached to that. And the Emiratis
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: are in Sudan. I mean, again, like picture this whole
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: region just kind of descending into different groups and proxy groups.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: And that's why you're right.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: As with the case in Sudan, you have to go
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: to the people that are fomenting some of this and
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: providing some of these arms.
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: There's also concerns like Eritrea. I know some Eritreans too. Man,
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: they've had the same fucking dictator since the early 90s.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: For folks who don't know, it's often referred to as
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: the North Korea of Africa because it is this a
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: military police state, you can be conscripted for like literally
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: decades into the military and There is, like, no— there' s no
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: freedom of speech. Like, I don't think they have a
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: constitution that has actually been working for decades. I don't
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: think their parliament's met since, like, the early 2000s. No, yeah,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: they just had this old guy. Yeah, an 80-year-old guy.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Who just survives by— because his people hate him.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: He survives on this proxy, you know, like, just, you know,
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: for hire, essentially.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he likes to fuck around with other countries all
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, just fuck around with other countries.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: But the other piece— one more thing to be concerned about, too,
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: is that there have been, like, pretty significant refugee flows,
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: you know, into Europe from Eritrea.
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: Yes.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: Because people are desperate and we know that those refugee
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: flows then foment far-right backlashes.
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: All this stuff is connected.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: And so you would like to think that someone can
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: step in here or that Abiy Ahmed can figure out
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: some way to make a deal.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: But we should watch this.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: We spent a lot of time on this in 21
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: and 22 because if this tips over into full-scale fighting,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: like in this environment, which is a much worse environment
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: than even 21 and 22– This could become a major
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: regional conflagration.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the environment is worse. And this time it could
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: be an out-and-out conflict between two nation states, not just
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Abiy Ahmed versus like the TPLF in the north. It
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: could be Eritrea versus Ethiopia, like two really well-armed militaries
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: going at full-scale war.
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: Who fought in the past.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Who fought in the past. And like, you know, if
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: I were pitching, you know, briefing trump on this on
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: why he should care it's like sir even if you
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: don't care about a single ethiopian you got the sir
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: down i got the sir down and you should care
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: because by the way this is one of those wars
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: where very little reporting came out but eventually when it
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: did like the atrocities were just like unspeakable the sexual
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: violence but if trump cares about migration flows of the
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: instability like after the syrian conflict for example imagine like
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: a hundred or 50 million ethiopians are like fleeing a
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: conflict yeah yeah just flowing across the world It's going
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: to destabilize the region, Europe, other countries.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: This is one where.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: You really need mediation and you're looking at the world
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: and you're thinking, who is the mediator? Who's going to
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: do it? Again, African Union. You want some regional buy-in here.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: Part of that, though, is that I remember when we
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: were in government, It was kind of like, you know,
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: the U.S. would quietly get together like Kenya and other,
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: you know, like it takes some doing to kind of
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: create the regional groupings that can form a solution. And
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: there's just kind of nobody calling the play. And so
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: every nation is making its own hedges. And that's how
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: you get these proxy wars, and that's a recipe for
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: actually the bad outcomes.
• 44:17
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: The former president of Nigeria is the AU's designated envoy,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: but he can't do this by himself.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: No, exactly.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: They're going to be like low-level shuttle diplomacy, but you
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: need senior leader levels to be able to go to
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: the Emiratis, the Saudis, the Egyptians, and say, stop.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: And resources to say, like you said, we'll pay salaries
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: or we'll try to reconstruction assistance in Tigray.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, that stuff is just not existent right now.
• 44:42
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: By the way, thank you to Peter Coronto, who worked
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: on these issues at the end of C for Biden
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: and talked to me about it this morning, and also
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: Leslie and Warner, who wrote a great background briefing for JustSecurity.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Those were useful and also jumped on the phone. And
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: also the Crisis Group did a great paper on this.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: By the way, people ask us sometimes for recommendations. We've
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: mentioned Crisis Group. JustSecurity is a great resource. If people
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: check out our website, all things international law, international kind
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: of law of war, like check it out.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Ben, as you know, Election Day is coming up. taking
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  Speaker 1: by BetterHelp. Mental health is top of mind for a
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• 48:54
  Speaker 1: slash crookedworld. Let's talk about another massive scandal, this time
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: involving Soccer Ben, but has global ramifications. Folks might have
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: heard of Manchester City, English Premier League team. They have
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: been found guilty on all of these charges that were
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: alleged against them that they broke the Premier League's financial
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: regulation rules. The Premier League CEO said, quote, that Manchester
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: City systematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: And the reason this matters for this show, for Pod
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Save the World, is because Man City is owned by
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: an organization that's run by the Deputy Prime Minister of
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: the United Arab Emirates. There's the UAE again. And it
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: will have implications for the UAE specifically for soccer and
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: and for foreign ownership of teams in all the leagues.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: But first, Ben, here are some people with British accents
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: explaining the details. It just sounds better from them.
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: The Premier League has put out a statement in relation
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: to Manchester City.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: And it's mind-boggling. It's absolutely incredible.
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: They're basically saying that Manchester City have been found guilty
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: of all charges related to breaches of Premier League financial
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. They've been basically
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: accused of sham sponsorship, image rights and other arrangements inflating
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: revenue by more than £ 900 million.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: Kieran, can you.
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: As simply as possible, because I'm pretty sure most people
• 50:25
  Speaker 5: listening will know, just run through what they've been found
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: guilty or what we know they've been found guilty of.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: Three things.
• 50:33
  Speaker 6: First of all, disguising money from the owner and pretending
• 50:37
  Speaker 6: that it's sponsorship money. So that's artificially inflating your revenue. Secondly,
• 50:42
  Speaker 6: paying people off book, which suppresses your costs. Both of
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: those go into your PSR calculations. And thirdly, not complying
• 50:50
  Speaker 6: with the Premier League investigation into their finances.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: So that was from a podcast called That's Football and
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: then the Guardians Football Weekly Podcast.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: We're getting a glimpse into your library.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Roger Bennett and Rory Smith over at Ben and Blazers.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: They actually did an excellent breakdown of all the details.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: that folks should listen to if they want to go deeper.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: And also, I'm going to steal liberally from them here
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: so that I can sound smart.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: I just want to say that Pablo Torre kind of
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: got scooped on this one. Well, something he could have
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: found out.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: So very well said, because like, as.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: Those guys, it sounds like aspiration.
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: It sounds like the Clippers deal.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: OK, that's why I want to talk to you about this,
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: because I know you love this. The main buckets, again,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: it's like they created these fake sponsorship deals to disguise
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: the amount that the club was spending, the Man City
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: was spending. So the The way the old rules of
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: the Premier League and UEFA basically said, it capped the
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: amount of losses you could have. So you couldn't just
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: like spend yourself into a hole to lose because others
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: couldn't afford to do that. So what the owners of
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: the Man City did is they had like an Emirati
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: airline pretend to be a sponsor of the club to
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: falsely inflate their revenue so they could spend more money
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: on paper. But really, it was just the owners pumping
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: more money. It was pumping their own money into their
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: own club. Second, they paid players off the books, which
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: like you mentioned with Pablo Torre, This is the Kawhi
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Leonard Clippers situation that's pretty familiar. And then also they
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: just refused to participate in the investigation, which just makes
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: it seem like it's going to be hard for the
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: league not to come down on them pretty hard. Because
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: if you flagrantly break the laws for a decade and
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: then you say piss off when they try to investigate it,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: they seem like they have to punish you. Just again,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: for those who don't follow soccer, that cheating really, really helped.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: Man City won eight Premier League titles. four FA League
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Cups and one Champions League under the current Emirati ownership.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: Man City says they're innocent. They said they're going to appeal.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: No penalties have been announced and they have maybe not
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: have been decided, but the process has been going on
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: for years. It could go on for years longer, but
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: the punishment could range from fines to point deductions to
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: relegation or expulsion from the Premier League. And then Ben,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: there's the even more complicated question of like, do you
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: strip away the titles from Man City in those years
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: and award them to other clubs? And if they do that,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: Could they open Man City up to legal liability? Because
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: imagine you're a Premier League club. You didn't make the
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: Champions League one year because Man City beat you out.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: If you make the Champions League, you get tons of
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: revenue from TV rights and sponsorships and all this other shit.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Could you then sue Man City? Because I think that
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: happened to another club called Everton in a similar situation.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: And so zooming out for us, though, I think the
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: interesting thing is you have this collision of like state-owned
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: entities and sports leagues.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: And the reality that the rules were just not built
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: to play at this level and to have organizations with
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: unlimited money and where the ownership's goals aren't just winning
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: or making a profit. It's like sports washing, soft power, reputation.
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: It's just like a, it's a fascinating question.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of overlapping circles here. And so I'll
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: bring my non, I'm not as big of a soccer
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: fan as you. Although I, what does this mean for
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: Erling Haaland's? Isn't he on Man City?
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: Good question.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: Because we all felt, for those who remember the good
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: old days of the World Cup, remember we all felt
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: them with Erling Haaland.
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: It would suck if he's like somehow fucked by this.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: There was a hilarious AI video of a fake him
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: talking about all the clubs he was going to beat
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: this year. And they were like tier two and three clubs. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: Actually, that'd be kind of funny if he's like relegating.
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: But put that aside.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So first of all, like this points to like,
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: you know, obviously massive corruption, you.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: It does make, I have a few questions about Tommy.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: Like one is a part of me kind of wonders,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: and I don't, I say there was no knowledge, but
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: you kind of feel with soccer, like if you pointed
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: the camera really closely at a lot of places, you'd,
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: you'd find, you know, corruption.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Certainly FIFA.
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: Uh, yeah, exactly.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: Um, and so is this the beginning of, you know,
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: people start pulling these threads in other places, what are
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: they going to find? Which by the way is another,
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: you know, the NBA is a whole other question as
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: to whether there's similar things happening there. Um, The other
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: questions that are really interesting though, like the British economy,
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: because we talked about like Boris Johnson at one point
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: like thinking about whether to get involved in blocking ownership.
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: But there's been this kind of implicit deal where they
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: kind of– first it was the Russian oligarchs, but then
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: a lot of these Gulf oligarchs come in and they
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: just pour money into the British economy. through sports, through
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: other investments, through real estate. And clearly, what this shows
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: is that some of that money, and this is kind
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: of an open secret in London, is kind of not
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: following the same rules that back when these franchises didn't
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: cost as much. The massive money coming in comes with
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: massive corruption at times. And if you start cracking down
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: on that, that will lead to less corrupt outcomes. But actually,
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: it could be damaging to London, to the British economy.
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: It's that scale of money. And this is a big
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: question for all of us today is like turning off
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: these spigots and starting to hold these people accountable will
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: have some economic impact. That leads me to the kind
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: of future version of this because this is obviously something
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: I had to do in the past. The valuations of
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: sports franchises are going through the roof.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: Like you and I have talked about this offline.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: And part of what you see, Tommy, like some of
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: this AI money starting to go into sports, a lot
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: of venture capital, like Ari Emanuel's getting into live events.
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: Because as AI like starts taking out other entertainment, live events,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: like sports in particular, is going to become more valuable.
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner's brother set up an entire like investment entity.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: to invest in this kind of stuff because they felt
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: it was AI proof. That was what was behind this
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: whole attempt to like privatize the FIFA.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: It got shut down.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: I actually think this raises fascinating dilemmas because what we've
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: seen is in a cash poor world, the cash rich people.
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: Are the most corrupt people.
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, whether it's from the Gulf or
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: whether it's from Russia or whether it's our American oligarchs
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: are just as corrupt.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: I'm not picking on the Gulf here. Yeah.
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: And so I think sports is going to have to
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: really get its arms around this or else it's just
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: going to get drowned in this money, which clearly has
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: happened in the Premier League and other places.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And to your point about like, boy, don't look
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: too close or you won't like what you'll see. The
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Saudis bought Newcastle United and the league was willing to
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: go along with the fiction that the Saudi government wouldn't
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: be running the team because it was going to be
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: run by the Saudi Foreign Wealth Fund or owned and
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: operated by the Saudi Foreign Sovereign Wealth Fund. The chairman
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: of that fund is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly the one that I think Boris Johnson
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: kind of thought about messing with. like we don't have
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: to dwell on this, but I think this is a
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: really important topic for us to think about because sports
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: used to be about kind of like community, like the
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: local rich guy on the team.
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: Richest guy in Pittsburgh bought this deal.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: And what does it mean for sports? Because this is
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: going to come to the U.S.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Because at a certain point, these franchises become so valuable
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: that they're going to need golf sovereign wealth.
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: Private equity or golf money.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: It's the only one who's going to be able to
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: afford them. It's a really important and like kind of
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: brewing question. And also like For all the other owners, like,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: you know, these giant rich guys come in, they overpay,
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: it props up the valuation of all the other teams.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: So they're benefiting on some level, but eventually it's going
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: to be unsustainable. Two more things. So we just want
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: to walk you guys through some of the big developments
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: in tech and AI news. I don't know if you saw, Ben,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: right before we started recording, Trump came out of this
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: lunch with all the big AI company leaders. He did
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: like an impromptu press conference at the sticks out in
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: the driveway. I think what happened was he literally saw
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: Speaker Johnson and all the tech guys doing a press
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: avail conversation. He saw it on TV, so he walked
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: his ass out to the front of the White House
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: to do his own. So if you want to see
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: what the oligarchy looks like, there it is. In tech news,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: OpenAI paused its latest model. I think they scrapped it,
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: the GPT-61 Astra, because it was lying all the time.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: It was deceiving us all the time. So that's great
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: news in the wake of the other model hacking a
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: website called Hugging Face. We also learned that an OpenAI
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: model hacked an Australian government healthcare website. OpenAI described it as, quote,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: an OpenAI model discovered a way to gain non-public access
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: to the service and ran commands, retrieved internal files, credentials,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: and aggregate statistics and wrote files. However, individual patient or
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: client records were not accessed. But also they did a
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: terrible job and were very slow in notifying the Australian government.
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: God help us if this happens with the Chinese government, right?
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: And then there were a lot of other– there's tons
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: of other coverage of all these other open AI incidents.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: There's also reports, Ben, that the U.S. and the Russians
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: worked together to weaken guardrails around deadly autonomous weapons.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: So, like, that's– Glad we're doing that.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: So, I don't know. There's, like, a million different stories
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: we could talk about. I'm just wondering kind of, like–
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: What's your temp check on AI these days?
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: My temp check is like through the roof. I haven't
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: plugged my substack in a while. I wrote like a
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: pretty detailed substack about my AI alarmism after a week
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: at the UN General Assembly last week that was dominated
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: by AI discussions. That was kind of the hallway conversation everywhere.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: So check that out. Notes on the stories we tell.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: A quick summary of my anxieties. There's so many. I
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: think one way to think about this is it is
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: now apparent that that whether we can debate how far
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: we are from AGI, superintelligence, recursive self-improvement, all these things
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: you hear, what is clear is that these models are
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: beginning to act in ways that the people who are
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: creating them don't understand and that are.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: Evading human control.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: And that is the thing that has always been the
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: most alarming, whether you're talking about you know, species extinction
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: and the robots killing us, or you're just talking about
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: some things we've discussed, offensive cyber attacks that cause like
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: a geopolitical conflict or cause a significant loss of value,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: offensive cyber attacks that have some impact on society, like
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: a grid goes down or, you know, an aviation system
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: is imperiled, autonomous weapons that are beginning to make their
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: own targeting decisions, which we've seen in the Russians begin
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: to use in Ukraine and civilians have died because of that.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Like this is the scenarios that people, you know, two
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: or three years ago would say like, well, this would
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: be bad if this started to happen. Those scenarios are
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: beginning to happen now, right? And at the precise time
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: that that is happening, we had two events that were
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: dedicated to examining whether AI should be regulated. Put aside
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Dario Amadei, Anthropic CEO, periodically telling us he needs to
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: be regulated and yet he keeps building what.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: He's building, right?
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: One was the all-in pod summit, which, you know, happened
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: a couple weeks ago, where, like, literally because David Sachs is, like,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: the AI czar and profiting enormously off of this, something
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: that Democrats should, you know, look into if they, you know,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: take back control of Congress. You have all these people
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: kind of coming through to say, no, no, no, you know, like,
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: Jensen Wang, you know, the CEO of NVIDIA, like, let's
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: keep going with this.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: It's, you know, the risks are overblown.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe that's because NVIDIA makes the chips that make
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: the compute power that depend on this kind of, you know. So,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: and then you have Trump at the UN say he's
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: not going to regulate. And in fact, he's just going
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: to rebrand it super intelligence. Now, again, like what should
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: be happening in a normal world is the US regulating
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: these models, insisting that there's a government testing regime before
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: they're released into the world that There's efforts to shut
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: off certain AI development that's dangerous, that there are prohibitions
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: on AI doing certain things like, you know, around bioweapons, around,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: I would argue, autonomous targeting decisions, things of that nature.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: And like, that's just not happening. It's not happening in
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: the U.S. And that's what we should be talking to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: China about. To go back to the Chinese summit, the
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: only thing that they've really said is that, like, Scott Besant, who,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: what the fuck does that guy know about AI?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: Nothing.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: Like, is just going to be talking to his counterpart
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: about this.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: But they set up a hotline. Like, it's 1965. You
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: have to have, like, a dedicated piece of wire from
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: the U.S. to Beijing. Like, that's not how this system
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: should work.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I sense and I understand this. I don't know, Tommy,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: what do you think, like in your own conversations with
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: people and frankly, probably in the how content does in
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: the same way that climate people would kind of not
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: tune in. We've seen it here at Cricket Media. If
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: you give people what they want, they don't want climate
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: content because it's too crushing. Well, this one, I think
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: we can't afford to tune out because the only thing
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: that is going to compel these oligarchs and our government
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: to do something is the swing in public opinion. The
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: data center backlash has been constructive. It's gotten politicians' attention.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: This is not a sustainable path we're on. Because it's
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: a path in which there will be a catastrophic incident,
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: and then there'll be a demand that you nationalize these labs.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: But I'd rather not go through the catastrophic incident.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, same here. I'm not a full doomer, but I'm
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: pretty anxious about what we're reading.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: I'm not a full doomer, but I'm very anxious.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I'm anxious because of what the people who know the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: most about these technologies are saying. And I also think
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: it is greatly compounded by the experience of social media
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: in the last decade with a lot of these same
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: people in charge. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman. They
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: are greedy, selfish people. I do not trust them to
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: do the right thing. We also know that they fundamentally,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: even the smartest people in these companies, the geniuses, they
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: don't understand the technology that they're building really or exactly
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: how it works. And so how are you going to
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: build safeguards or tests or ways to constrain something that
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: you fundamentally don't understand that is fundamentally kind of random
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: in some sense? And Trump is asleep at the switch
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: or he's paid off or he just wants to stock
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: market up. And there's this like, you're right. This is
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: a debate about like, you know, we talked about this
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: on PSA a little bit, like, is this a normal
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: technology where you can kind of just like engineer your
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: way through the problem or is it not normal? It's new.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: And I I'm just leaning towards the ladder and it
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: feels like these guys are going to need to do
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: like novel science to figure out what is happening here,
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: how to control it, whether or not it's safe. And
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: if so, how to keep us all safe. And we
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: are racing forward as fast as humanly possible. for no
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: good reason, with no upside for any of us, except
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: for the companies that are trying to IPO. And that
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: is making me very angry. Yeah.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: You know, you keep hearing about how anxious people are
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: at these companies, but these people are also making like
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: gobs of money at the same time. And, and look,
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: we'll revisit this because there's too much to talk about.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: I will say that the China excuse is one that's used. Look,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: China has this technology. They're going to have this technology.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: So if you're worried about China, it's not just like
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: a foot race. It's putting guardrails on it with the Chinese.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: By the way, also, one of the ways that Chinese advance,
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: especially because they have less computing power, is they just
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: distill our models. So like Anthropic or OpenAI releases a
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: model or fucking Mark Zuckerberg open sources Lama, the meta model,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: and they just kind of reverse engineer it. So if
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: we stop, well, it's harder for them to race ahead.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: So just like this China thing is, I think, overblown.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: If anything, the China thing compels us regulation and negotiation
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: with the chinese not like just rushing.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: I'm so tired of that yeah excuse it's so unconvincing
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: yeah the amount of damage we've done to ourselves as
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: a society through our own decisions over the last few
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: decades like we don't need the chinese to fuck us
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: up we can do it ourselves yeah uh finally i
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: agree we should come back to this again next week
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: uh finally ben so uh later subjects to end good
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: trump 2.0 um They either have failed to name ambassadors
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: to like most, a lot of positions, I think like 50%,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: or they've named some of the dumbest, most corrupt venal
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: people possible. We have had fun on this show, making
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: fun of Calista Gingrich, Newt Gingrich's spouse, who was ambassador
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: to both Switzerland and Lichtenstein. But it gets way worse
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: than like the weird video she's putting out. We got
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner's criminal dad as the US ambassador to France.
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Mike Huckabee is like the zealot Trump put in Israel.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Carrie Lake was nominated for a post in Jamaica because
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: that makes sense. And the Washington Post reported that 90%
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: of Trump's ambassador nominations have gone to political supporters rather
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: than career diplomats, back to the point you're making about Ethiopia.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: So we also don't have ambassadors in Germany, Russia, or
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia on important places. Totally normal. So I just
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: want to tell you a couple examples about some ambassadors
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: and how they're performing. You forgot Kushner. Kushner. Oh, you
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: got it. Charles is my guy at the top.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: I missed it. I was like.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: I was checking up something I'm going to drop here.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: You're finding knowledge. I want to tell you some examples
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: of how some of these guys are performing, guys and gals.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: And then you can rank the selection on a scale
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: of good choice, great choice to finally Mr. Trump, sir.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: I literally couldn't have picked anyone better if I had
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: all the time and resources in the world, sir. First one,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: you mentioned him, Charles Kushner. Did you know that he
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: has been summoned twice by France's foreign affairs ministry and
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: reprimanded for interfering in French internal affairs? And both times
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: he's just ignored the request and refused to show up. Yeah,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: I did know that. I did not know that until today.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: I did know.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: How does that work?
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, because he just doesn't give a fuck. And
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: in normal times, I mean, here's how that works. In
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: normal times, that would cause a huge problem back in
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: Washington and the president or the secretary of state would
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: be like, what the fuck are you doing?
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 3: But Trump doesn't give a shit. It's Charles Kushner. It's
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: Jared's dad.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: And so like, it's like everything else with Trump, like
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: the norms would be, we better recall that ambassador or
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: that ambassador better go in and talk to, you know,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: the French, you know, foreign ministry or Macron's office. But
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: because he has cover of, you know, Donald Trump, like
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: he just can fucking ignore it.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: Remember, didn't Cory Booker vote to confirm Charles Kushner? He did.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: It's another reason I'm just, I'm not ever going to
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: be on the Cory Booker train.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Terrible choice, sir.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal, you mentioned this at the top.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: They did a long piece on our U.S. ambassador degrees,
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr. 's ex, Gavin Newsom's ex, Fox
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: News host. It talks about her relationship with this young
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: lobbyist for this Greek construction company. There's clearly like a subtext,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: maybe a romantic relationship that's very weird. But like the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: malfeasance is all the way she's steering contracts to this
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: one company in a way that just feels illegal. Then
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: also there's the part where Kimberly reportedly threatened to collapse
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: the Greek government during a shouting match with Greece's energy minister.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Good job or great job?
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing. You have to bear in mind, first
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: of all, I love the Greeks.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And the Greeks have a history of the U.S.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: doing this.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: Like there was a coup.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: There was literally like a right-wing government in Greece shorthanded
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: the regime of the colonels.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: Now, that is never a good thing, right? You never
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: want the regime of the colonels.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: That's a low-level.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: In the late 60s, like the U.S., like it was
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: always debated how much we were behind it. But like,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: you know, certainly the Greeks believe we're behind it. So
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: she's not only doing this in a European country, in
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: a NATO ally, but she's also doing it in a
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: country with like a pretty recent historical memory of the
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: US fucking around. Jesus.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 3: So, which I'm sure she's totally unaware of.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: But because she wants to keep the gravy train going
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: to her subtextual, you know, friend, like what she's going to,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: Kimberly Goifel, I could never pronounce her name, is going
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: to like collapse the Greek government.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Not, I mean. I guess there's no other ambassadors in
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: the region. So she's playing this outsized role in like
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: messing with the Romanians and Macedonia.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: I don't know what she's doing, but like, look, the
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: bottom line is this is the perfect Trump bastard. So, sir,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: I couldn't pick a better choice because this is like
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: the perfect manifestation of of how little of a shit
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: Donald Trump cares about anybody else.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Remember her insane 2020 convention speech when she ended by
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: just shouting into the void because it was literally outside
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: with no crowd? Yeah. I forget what her exact quote was,
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: but maybe we could drop it in here. It was fun.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: Let's drop it in because I remember that.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: It was great. It was the COVID convention on the
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: White House lawn.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: and the American dream, the best is yet to come.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: Uh, over in Italy, neighboring Italy.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: That's a thing that happened.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: Remember that thing that happened? Uh, Tillman J for Tita,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: I think is this person's name. He's Trump's richest ambassador.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: I think he's worth 11 billion. He is doing like
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: a summer, like listening tour and meeting people on his
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: super yacht, which just feels very in touch with the
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: kind of economic moment to just drive around on a
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: super yacht and I guess live off it and then
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: do events on it. That's a sweet.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't know that, that, uh, I mean, it's perfect, right?
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, these are all perfect ambassadors for Trump. I
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: will say, you know, people could, what about us that
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: like we had donor ambassadors in some of these European countries.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: I will say like across administrations, like you would usually
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: try to select people that have like a modicum of class,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: you know, or intelligence, like intelligence, like the people could
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: kind of be at the center of like the kind
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: of political social scene.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: In the, in Rome or wherever they were. This kind
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: of crass like offending everyone on a yacht. Like what's
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: the fucking point by the way too? Like the cool
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: thing about being ambassador is.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: That Go live in Italy. You have a sweet residence.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: You've got a sweet residence and you're the hub for
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: all this activity and you're hosting dinners with like business
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: leaders and politicians and media figures and not just like
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: hanging out. If you want to just hang on your yacht,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: you don't have to be the fucking ambassador in the
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: first place.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: Just go to the Mediterranean and hang on your yacht.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: In fact, I'd go and I'd say to Trump, sir,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: If this guy wants to be on the yacht, like
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: maybe just send me to Italy.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 4: I'll live in the residence.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: I'll take that job in a heartbeat.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We had a few duds of political nominees or
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: donors or whatever who got pushed out. But then we
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: had some like really great people from business, finance, politics,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: like Matthew Barzin, our friend, who was like– had two
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: different posts and was beloved and became this like cultural
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: epicenter for these countries.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: We had– in Germany, we had Phil Murphy who became
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 2: the governor of New Jersey. Competent dude, right?
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: John Emerson.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, so you could have good political ambassadors in
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: these places. That's not what these people are.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you got to want the job. And then finally,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: in Belgium, Ben, Ambassador Bill White picked a huge fight
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: with the Belgian government over who was allowed to perform circumcisions.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: Belgian law says you should be a medical professional. White
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: called that anti-Semitic because a lot of royals are not
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: doctors and made this a big thing. So that feels
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: like the thing we should be fighting with the Belgians about.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this guy I have noticed because he keeps stepping
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: on rakes too. The Belgians are not the easiest people
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: in the world to like piss off.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's like, what is this?
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, actually, we had a bit of a mini
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: scandal in Belgium ourselves, but that's another, just Google it.
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: But yeah, like this guy's like, what's he doing over there?
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: You know, like, what's the point? Why do you want
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: to spend your time? When I look at all this stuff,
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: I wonder like, what is the, I mean, actually, Kimberly Goifeld,
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: I guess we see what her point is. I'm sure
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: she's probably– Lining up the next contract.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: Alleged.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: Read the Wall Street Journal piece because there's lots about
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: her trying to set up contracts and companies.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: And who knows how much of that is flowing back
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: her way, right? Kushner, I'm sure, is using that fancy
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: residence in.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: Paris to just do all kinds of deals and stuff.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: This guy, what the fuck is he doing?
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: He's carrying out his anti-woke, calling people anti-Semite agenda in Belgium.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: What's the point? You could do that here.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Fighting about circumcisions. Okay, that is it for our segment
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: on Trump's incredible ambassadors. Thank you for listening to the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: news section of the show, but stick around for my
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: conversation with Sam Begurski. We're going to talk all about
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: what is happening on the ground in Haiti, what the
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: Trump administration is doing, how cruel it is, and what
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: the international community could or should be doing to try
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: to right the ship to the extent possible. So check
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  Speaker 1: safe like SimpliSafe. My guest today is Sam Begurski. He's
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: Sam visited Haiti this summer. Just before the Supreme Court
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: allowed the Trump administration to end a temporary protected status
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: for Haitians living in the U.S., he wrote about the
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: escalating gang violence, collapsing healthcare system, and the lack of
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: access to food and any humanitarian support and the impact
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: it's having on individuals there. So I'm very grateful, Sam,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: to you for this work and the report you wrote
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: up and for joining us today.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: Great to be with you, Tommy. Thank you.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: So you were in Haiti in June. Um, you said
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: it was your first trip there since you were there
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: as a UN aid worker following the 2010 earthquake. I
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: was actually there briefly around the same period of time.
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: And I just remember it was like post-apocalyptic even then, um,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: in your piece, you wrote quote after the earthquake response
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: 14 years ago, I remember thinking Haiti could not get worse,
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: but in 2026, it has, uh, Haiti's capital port of
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: Prince is often described as a, like a literal war
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: zone due to the escalating gang violence, uh, Can you
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: just describe the security situation on the ground? What does
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: that mean in practice when someone says Haiti is a
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: war zone in the capital?
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think most Americans would be surprised to hear
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: that 700 miles off the coast of Florida, there's an
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 4: active war zone. But when I went to Haiti this summer,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 4: that's exactly what I found when I went to Port-au-Prince.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: Practically speaking, there are 26-odd gangs in Haiti in mostly
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in 2024-2024. They consolidated into a
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 4: federation of sorts called Vive Ensemble. They weren't just taxing
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: people in their neighborhoods, committing crimes. They were actually challenging
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 4: the state, controlling territory, and displacing, at this point, over
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: a million and a half people. So what that means...
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: as far as a war zone, from their standpoint, is
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: these gangs are often fighting each other. They're fighting the state.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 4: People are fleeing violence in their neighborhoods. They're ending up
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: in shelters. But it also means that the Haitian government's
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 4: looking for a solution to fight back against them. And
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: about a year and a half ago, they turned to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: Eric Prince, the former CEO of Blackwater, to help them
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 4: put together a secretive police task force that's launching lethal
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: drones towards these gang members and the damage that that
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: has brought to both the gangs and to civilians has
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 4: been unsparing over the last year and a half. When
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 4: you get on the ground, it feels incredibly tense. You
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 4: see burned out buildings. You see husks of cars that
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 4: have been put into barricades to prevent police and civilians
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 4: from accessing certain neighborhoods. And there's a feeling that something
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: could go wrong really at any moment for aid workers, civilians,
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 4: or Haitian authorities.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to ask you about Eric Prince in
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: a minute. He's the former CEO of Blackwater, for folks
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: who don't know. And I sort of feel like it's
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: never a good idea to send that guy anywhere. But
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: you have a chart in your report that shows how
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: there was just an explosion of violence not long after
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: the then president of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in 2021.
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: Why, in your view, did that incident lead to such
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: an explosion of violence?
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: So the assassination of Moise is something that reads out
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: of a Hollywood plot. It actually came together in South
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: Florida through a small group of men in early 2021.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: Their goal was to launch a coup d'etat to install
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 4: one of their own in the presidency in Haiti. They
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: wanted to rig contracts that the government had for infrastructure
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 4: to enrich themselves. They financed an operation that involved hiring
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 4: a couple dozen Colombian mercenaries. They got money from SBA
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: pandemic loans from the U.S. government to do this. And
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: in July, they stormed his house and assassinated him in 2021.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: What followed was a crisis of governance. There was actually
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 4: an earthquake shortly thereafter in the southern part of the
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: country that devastated an entirely different region. And there was
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 4: a vacuum that ensued. These gangs that had Loosely controlled
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: certain parts of the country, as I mentioned, came together
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: into this federation in the years that followed and really
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 4: began challenging the state itself. That being their goal was
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 4: to run Haiti, these gang members. And they're led by
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 4: one guy named Barbecue, who has a $ 5 million bounty
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 4: from the U.S. government on his head. He's the face
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: of the operation, but there's a really loose agreement between them.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: Sometimes they're cooperating against the state. Other times they're fighting
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 4: against each other. And really, no matter what, civilians are
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: caught in the crosshair. The government has lost control almost
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: entirely of Port-au-Prince. At its peak, 90% of the city
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: was being controlled by gangs.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's like the parade of terrible things. It's
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: just so unrelenting. I mean, you write that half of
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: Haiti's gang members are now children of Food itself has
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: become a, quote, weapon of war. Sexual violence is pervasive.
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, how did the gangs in this gang warfare
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: end up adopting like so many of the most evil
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: practices you hear about warfare?
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: These gangs are incredibly strategic, and they're now running transnational
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: crime organizations that are importing guns from the United States
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: to fight each other and fight the state. they have
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 4: consolidated control, not just of Port-au-Prince, but of some of
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 4: these rural areas that are the breadbasket of the country.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: So they see their tactics as being a way to
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: enrich themselves, empower their affiliates, and ways that they're doing that, like,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 4: for example, through Food is a Weapon of War, they're
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 4: cutting off the suppliers, the farmers in these rural areas
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: from their markets. So the people whose livelihoods depend on
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: that are collapsing, but the people who are going hungry
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: aren't getting And, you know, to give you the most
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 4: extreme example of this, in 2023, in one neighborhood in Port-au-Prince,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 4: Cité Soleil, these gangs crushed any incoming food convoys from
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 4: coming in, and even the aid workers couldn't get in.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: What ensued was a famine of 20,000 people, which in
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: an urban environment is insane. unbelievably rare. This isn't a
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: situation where there's no food around. It's a situation where
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: the access control is being run by people who are
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: preventing it from getting there. But the other ways they're
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: doing some of these power dynamics, as you mentioned, is
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: using sexual violence as a weapon. They'll come in, they'll
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: conquer some of these different neighborhoods that they take control of.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: They'll brutally, sexually assault families, children, You know, they're given
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: a choice basically between fighting for these gangs, running for
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: their lives. And, you know, the end result is something
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 4: that's twofold type of terror. I mean, there's the terror
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 4: of losing your life in some of these fights. But,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 4: you know, what I saw and speaking with people on
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 4: the ground there was a psychological trauma and terror that
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: people are living with every day. The gang members are completely...
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: in cahoots or, you know, collaborating with members of the
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: Haitian National Police. So if you come to a checkpoint,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 4: you see a Haitian National Police officer, you don't know
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: if that person is a gang member or actually, you know,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: a security figure that could protect you. And that type
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 4: of mental warfare that's going on in country was something
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: that has just not been present. And these gangs have
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: escalated to a completely different level. And, you know, again,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 4: I don't want to make this too bleak for everybody,
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: but I mean, you write that the world health organization
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 4: says 37 of a hundred inpatient health facilities in Port-au-Prince
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 4: are still functional.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: So there's, I mean, what, what is the health infrastructure?
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: What's left at this point? The health infrastructure is dissolving, uh,
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: in real time. And, um, I was able to visit
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: five different clinics. I spent a day going around with, uh,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: medicine sans frontier. I spent time going around with the
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: world food program and the pandemic and health organization. And
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: what you really see is, um, when these gangs take
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: control of a neighborhood, they're destroying the infrastructure or they're
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: extorting the people who remain there, including the health facilities.
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: So there are really two options. One is you run
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: and you shut down your shop or you end up
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 4: paying these people who will take whatever you'll give them,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 4: I assume. But that stat you mentioned is so striking
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: because the caseload of patients in Port-au-Prince remains the same,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: which means the catchment zone that they're now going to
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 4: to get healthcare is shrinking. And the patient loads for
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: those healthcare centers remaining have doubled in most cases. And
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 4: that just leaves very few options for people. The other
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 4: thing that's just an extraordinary challenge for everyday Haitians is
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 4: getting healthcare itself. So if you live in a neighborhood
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 4: like Cité Soleil that I mentioned earlier, and you have
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 4: no health care options, you're crossing gang territory to another
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 4: part of the city to get health care, doing that
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 4: is a risk to your life. Gangs will threaten it
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 4: if you leave. If you come back, they wonder if
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 4: you're collaborating with the police or someone else. There's a
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 4: deep mistrust. And many people are just foregoing health care altogether.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: And so that kind of brutal lay down of the
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: security situation and life on the ground in Haiti is
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: why I think President Trump's decision to end temporary protected
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: status for Haitians feels like I'm searching for a better
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: word than evil. We're talking about an effort to send
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: about 350,000 Haitians, many of whom have been in the
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: United States for decades now, back to this country at
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: a time when the State Department says you should not
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: travel there under any circumstances because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping, etc.,
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: at a time when I think the charge called it
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: a war zone, right? I believe you quoted him in there.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: He called it full-scale urban warfare. Right. So, I mean, like,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: can you talk about, like, the cruelty of that decision
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: and how it's possible that there could be a determination
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: made by the State Department, on the other hand, that
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: it's actually safe and okay to send Haitians back to Haiti?
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 4: Do you just see this cognitive dissidence in the administration's policy?
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: On the one hand, you have people like Stephen Miller
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: and Chrissy Noem from the DHS saying Haiti is safe.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: It's now improved, actually, the conditions enough that the Haitians
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: can return back to Haiti and they're going to be
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 4: rounded up by ICE and sent back. But then you
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 4: have other parts of the administration completely contradicting that. The
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: State Department, as you say, has a level four travel
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 4: advisory citing terrorism, crime and kidnapping as do not travel
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 4: under any circumstances. You have the FAA, who has forbidden flights,
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 4: commercial flights in the United States from going into Port-au-Prince
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 4: because gangs opened fire on commercial aircraft in 2024. They
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: struck a Spirit Airlines flight attendant in one of those cases,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 4: and they completely shut that down for, at this point,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 4: two years. You know, you have the Department of Defense
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 4: calling this a counterinsurgency operation that they're putting together. Clearhold build,
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: it sounds like Iraq and Afghanistan build. you know, from
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 4: a decade plus ago. And yet here we are, ICE
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: calling people who had temporary protected status into their offices.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: They're putting ankle bracelets on them to monitor them in
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 4: their communities. And, you know, when I've spoken to people
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: who have lost their TPS status, This is an equally
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: traumatizing situation. They're living in fear every day that they
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: could be detained by ICE, put in a holding cell,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: and eventually deported back to a country with little more
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 4: than the clothes on their back.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in which, you know, at worst could be a
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: death sentence. At best, there's no economic opportunity. They have
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: no connections there. In many cases, nowhere to work, no
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: place to stay. I mean, it's just a horrific thing
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: to do to a human being. The international community's efforts
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: to help Haiti have been kind of sclerotic. At best,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: there was this UN-led or Kenyan-led stabilization force mission that
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: just kind of failed. That has been updated. Now it's more,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's called the Gang Suppression Force. which is,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: I believe, 5,000 international troops from places like Chad that
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: I think are going to take the fight to the Haitians.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: Then there's Eric Prince, the Blackwater CEO, doing something with
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: drones on the ground in Haiti. Can you just talk
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: about kind of what efforts are ongoing to combat these
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: gangs at the moment?
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so– This Kenyan-led force, as you say, was a
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: complete failure on all levels. And I think by anyone
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: involved in it would admit as much. The Trump administration
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: came up with this idea for a gang suppression force
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: that had a higher ceiling of troops. It was approved
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: by the UN Security Council exactly a year ago. So 5,500
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: troops made up of Chad, of Sri Lanka, of Cote
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: d'Ivoire and others. To go in, they had a license
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: to kill from the UN Security Council to use lethal
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: force against these gangs. What we've seen one year on
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: is a mission that cannot get off the ground. They
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: have only put about 1,500 troops by last count into Haiti,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 4: despite having two-thirds more that need to be there, despite
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 4: the urgency of the situation. They've really struggled to collect
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 4: money to pay for this. And it's just half-baked at
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 4: this point. And actually, today, the UN Security Council extended
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 4: this gang suppression force, but they only did it for
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 4: six months. And part of that is the political dynamic
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 4: with China and Russia on the council who are not
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 4: on board with this intervention. But, you know, I think
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 4: a bigger part of this speaks to the fact that
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 4: the Trump administration has is doing a poor job diplomatically
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 4: and getting the international community to a place where they
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 4: can support some type of stabilization and corollary humanitarian mission
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 4: in the country. And a six-month resolution for a program
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: that hasn't even scaled itself, I, for many years, was
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: the top U.S. humanitarian negotiator in the Security Council. If
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 4: we wanted a year, we wanted two years, and we
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: ended up with six months. It meant we were dealing
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 4: with a very weak hand. And ultimately, that signals to
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 4: me that those two countries who have veto over this
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: gang suppression force are likely to want to see it
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 4: wind down in the next year, which looking out for
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 4: Haiti's own future does not seem like a positive development
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: for their own security. You know, putting aside the use
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 4: of lethal force, there are very few police officers there.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 4: There are very few ways of securing the country against
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 4: these gangs at the moment. On the Prince side of it,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 4: This has been really behind closed doors. The Arms Export
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 4: Act that the State Department has to use to allow
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 4: companies that Eric Prince runs, because he's an American, to
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 4: get things like lethal drones and defense security support training
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 4: to the Haitian National Police. They've authorized this, but we
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 4: don't really know any details of it. When you listen
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: to testimony from State Department and Defense Department officials. They
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 4: stay at arm's length from Prince's operation. But the fact is,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 4: he has described his work in Haiti as the definition
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 4: of mercenary. I think that does not bode well for
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 4: the future of a country who has had a lot
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 4: of criminal activity in the past, that has had a
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 4: pattern of abuse in terms of military dating back decades.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 4: And a Human Rights Watch report that came out earlier
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 4: this year looked at the use of these lethal drones.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 4: They found over 1,200 people had been killed by them,
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 4: including 43 civilians and 17 children. They've talked about the
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: types of ways this lethal force is being used as
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: potentially extrajudicial killings. This just doesn't seem like the way
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: to get Haiti's future back on track.
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: No, and the satellite photos, you know, that you sort
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: of before and after like 2021 to today that you
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: post in the piece, you know, look like Gaza. Frankly,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: they just look like, you know, the place has been
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: just bombed to hell. Also, in the piece, you do
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: some math on what typically is needed in normal times
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: to secure a population, and then in a war zone,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: what is needed to secure a population. And the number
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: of troops we're talking about through this UN-led force is
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: just nowhere even close to what's necessary. So if you
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: could wave a magic wand and put forward your own
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: policy and implement it, what's the gist of what that
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: would look like? What does Haiti need?
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 4: Well, Haiti's humanitarian appeal is 40%. 47% funded at this point.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 4: So the first thing that we could do, you know,
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 4: as the United States with others is fund the rest
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 4: of that. And just to put in perspective what that Delta,
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 4: that gap of funding is, it's about $ 450 million, which
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: last time I checked was the equivalent budget of this
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 4: White House ballroom. So, you know, we're not talking about
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 4: money that's unavailable. We should put that forward immediately. There
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 4: are these development programs that have been cut because of
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 4: the Trump administration's takedown of USAID. Last year, they cut
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 4: the development assistance to Haiti by 48%. To put in
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 4: practical terms what that involves, those are programs like PEPFAR,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 4: where people who were getting antiretrovirals are struggling because some
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 4: of the wraparound programs that they received in addition to
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 4: the medication involved food, involved transport, involved counseling. All of
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 4: that has been taken down. If you look at the
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: livelihoods that Haitians are trying to build That requires development assistance.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 4: The World Food Program had an amazing program, one they're
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 4: still trying to keep afloat, that involved buying food locally
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 4: from farmers and giving it to schools so that school
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: children have meals to eat, which helps this nutrition program.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 4: It helps avoid things like famine in a country like Haiti.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 4: When you're not looking at the long term, you're not
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 4: investing in those. That'd be the first part. You know,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 4: the second part is Haiti has been on the receiving
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 4: end of so many bad ideas over the years. There's really,
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 4: I think, good intentions from actually even a lot of
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 4: people in the Trump administration right now who are trying
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 4: to do the right thing for Haiti. But you have
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 4: to think about the impact and consequences of what might happen.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 4: You know, in 2010, when I was in Haiti, Peacekeepers
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 4: brought cholera to a country that had none and ended up,
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 4: you know, killing thousands of people in the years that followed.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 4: When you look at this kind of work around drones
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 4: and mercenaries, you know, we know that these are not positives.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: So I think part of this thought has to be
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 4: what damage can be done by further intervention more than
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 4: just thinking we have the solution to Haiti. And, you know,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 4: The third part is that there just are no easy
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 4: answers for this country. It's an incredibly complicated poly crisis,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 4: but it does require a long-term commitment. And the U.S.
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 4: is the sole figure, you know, in the Western Hemisphere
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 4: and globally to make that happen.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: Last question, Sam. I mean, I read your piece and
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: I just imagined driving around, you know, the city where
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: I'd been, you know, 16 years ago. And just, I mean,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: were you scared shitless? I mean, it's terrifying. There's all
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: these people get kidnapped, even when the ransoms are paid.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: they're not necessarily let go. You talk about one individual,
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: a man who worked for the Haitian police force, who
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: was kidnapped with his six-year-old daughter. It's like every human
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: being's worst nightmare. And yet you kind of dropped yourself
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: in there to write this report. And I just wondered
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: what that was like.
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 4: I think what's so challenging for Haiti right now is
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 4: most mainstream media cannot get into the country because it's
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 4: so dangerous. And so telling this story just felt, for me, critical.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: I love Haiti. I love Haitians. I want people to
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 4: understand what's going on there right now. and how the U.S.
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 4: is playing a big role in shaping that future. So
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 4: I did not feel too nervous, mostly because the people
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 4: I was with, the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders, these
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: are people who are very smart. They understand the operating
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 4: environment they're working in. They're not going to put their
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 4: people in harm's way if it means getting kidnapped or
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 4: potentially killed. One thing I would say is, The people
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 4: I was with have an enormous privilege of a security
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 4: bubble that they can work in. They have people paid
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: on staff. The Haitians that are living their lives every day,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 4: the ones I talked about who are crossing gang lines
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 4: to get health care, the people who are going to
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: work to deliver the health care, they have none of that.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 4: And their lives are on the line every single time
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: they step outside. One of the most tragic things I
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 4: learned about on my trip, I went back to my
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 4: old office. I learned that a driver who had been
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: there for two decades had uh, one morning was going
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 4: to be picked up for work. He left his house
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 4: at five in the morning. He called, uh, to get,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: you know, confirmation of, of where they would meet. The
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 4: driver went to go meet him. He wasn't there. They
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 4: circled around, they found him. He'd been shot. You know,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 4: this is, you know, before sunlight comes up, people are
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: watching constantly for targets. And he was sadly and tragically killed.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 4: You know, this is a father who had young children, um,
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 4: And it was devastating for the office.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: It's devastating, obviously, for the family.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 4: And I just think it speaks to the risk and
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 4: the courage that it takes to get up every day
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 4: and go to work in an environment like that that
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 4: Haitians are showing. And we, as the United States, have
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 4: a huge role in trying to alter that direction and
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 4: remember that even if someone like myself can go down
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 4: there for a week and come back and tell that story,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 4: that people are living this day-to-day life. And the trauma
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 4: is not going to be easy to get out of.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, folks can read the full report at CFR.org.
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: And Sam, just thanks for coming on the show. Thanks
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: for doing the work you did. It was really important
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: and informative. So I appreciate it. Thanks, Tommy. I really
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: appreciate it. Thanks again to Sam Bergerski for joining the show.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: And we'll text you.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 3: We'll text you.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: Thanks again to Sam Bergerski for joining. You know what?
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: Leave it in. Yeah, yeah. It's been a long episode.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah. We'll text you next week.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: Text you next week. Pod Save the World is a
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Ilona Minkowski,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee. Our team includes Matt DeGroat,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolles, and Ryan Young.
• 1:39:00
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• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: America East.