Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Anne Applebaum Says Trump 2.0 Might Be Good News For Dictators

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Anne Applebaum Says Trump 2.0 Might Be Good News For Dictators · Merryn Talks Money

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Hello listeners, John and I are still in our well
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: deserved holidays, but the merin dogs money feed never rests.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: This week we bring you an episode from our colleagues
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: on the Voting Nomics podcast series, Stephanie Flanders, head of
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Government and Economics of Bloomberg, Allegro Straton contributor read Out
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: newsletter author and opinion columnists Adrian Wildridge. This episode we're
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: bringing you as part of their summer reading series, each
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  Speaker 2: of those booked to an author, and this is the
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  Speaker 2: conversation Stephanie had with author and historian An Abblebaum.
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  Speaker 3: On our latest release, Autocracy, Inc.
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  Speaker 2: Listen, enjoy, and be sure to subscribe.
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  Speaker 4: Hello voter Nomics listeners. Stephanie Flanders here, and it's that
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: time of year where everyone has summer holiday plans, including
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: the three hosts of this show. So to keep things simple,
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: we thought it would be a good idea to offer
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: up a Voter Nomics summer reading list for the beach,
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: the mountain, or the campaign trail, depending. We've each picked
• 1:11
  Speaker 4: a non fiction book touching on politics and economics that
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: we thought was worth reading right now. Some of them
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: are fresh off the presses, some a little older. Even
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: if you don't end up reading them, I hope you'll
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  Speaker 4: enjoy hearing us talk about them with the author, and
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  Speaker 4: for my summer reading selection, I'm speaking with Anne Applebaum
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  Speaker 4: about her newest book, Autocracy inc The Dictators Who Want
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  Speaker 4: to Run the World, and as a columnist for The
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  Speaker 4: Atlantic and senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Author of
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  Speaker 4: many other books, including Goolag a History which won the
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  Speaker 4: Pulitzer Prize, and my recent favorite, the best selling Twilight
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  Speaker 4: of Democracy, The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends.
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  Speaker 4: As that title suggests, the strength of her writing for me,
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  Speaker 4: especially in recent years, comes not only from her unique
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: experience and expertise living and working in Poland, the UK,
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  Speaker 4: and the US, but the directly personal way she writes
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  Speaker 4: about the shift that has happened in the world since,
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: roughly speaking, the fall of the Berlin Wall, as what
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  Speaker 4: initially appeared to many of us to be a great
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  Speaker 4: flourishing of liberal values and democracy in many parts of
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  Speaker 4: the world metastasized into well Autocracy Incorporated. And thanks so
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  Speaker 4: much for doing this opening question very broadly, tell us
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  Speaker 4: what this book is about and why we should be
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  Speaker 4: reading it on the beach or anywhere else this summer.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, no, definitely you want to read it on the beach. So,
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  Speaker 1: first of all, thank you very much for having me.
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  Speaker 1: It's a great it's privilege to be talking to you.
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  Speaker 3: The book is the book is a little bit.
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  Speaker 1: Less personal than my previous book, although it does it
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: was born out of personal experiences. So for many years
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  Speaker 1: I've known people who are active in the Russian opposition,
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  Speaker 1: in the Iranian opposition, in the Venezuelan position, and over
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  Speaker 1: in recent years I've come to understand that much of
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  Speaker 1: what they do isn't working anymore. And even though they
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: are popular, they would win, certainly, the Venezuelan opposition would
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: win a free election, and the Iranian opposition are fighting
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  Speaker 1: a very, very unpopular government. They are no longer fighting
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  Speaker 1: a single dictator in a single country. They're fighting a
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  Speaker 1: network of dictators. And the book describes this network. It's
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  Speaker 1: not an alliance, it's not an axis. And I don't
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  Speaker 1: think we're locked in a new Cold war with them.
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  Speaker 1: So there's deocratic Iran and bolivarian socialist Venezuela and nationalist
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  Speaker 1: Russia and communist China. Don't have similar goals, but they
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  Speaker 1: do all have similar enemies. And the enemy is us.
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  Speaker 1: The enemy is my friends, the democracy or the transparency,
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  Speaker 1: the anti corruption activists. And the reason why is that
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  Speaker 1: they see our ideas and I speak, are includes we
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  Speaker 1: in the democratic world. We have ideas that would challenge them.
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  Speaker 1: And this is the idea of transparency, of accountability, of
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  Speaker 1: the rule of law, of rights, of human rights, and
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  Speaker 1: all of these things are challenge to their particular form
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  Speaker 1: of dictatorship. And the book describes how that world came
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  Speaker 1: to be, and it describes the financial and the propaganda
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  Speaker 1: arms of those regimes, as well as some of the
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  Speaker 1: military and strategic arms. It's a brief read. I don't
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  Speaker 1: know about beaches, but you could certainly read it on
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  Speaker 1: a plane or a train. It's meant to make you
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  Speaker 1: aware of how it works. And once you see it,
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  Speaker 1: I find that you can't unsee it. And I now
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  Speaker 1: almost every day I pick up a newspaper, are here,
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  Speaker 1: radio program, I think.
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  Speaker 3: It's at work again.
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  Speaker 4: There is something about the message of the book when
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  Speaker 4: you step back, and it is a great read. It's
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  Speaker 4: very easy read. It does open your eyes to a
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  Speaker 4: lot of things, but there's something about it. That does
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  Speaker 4: go against the grain for say, skeptical journalists who've spent
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  Speaker 4: a lot of time trying to douse conspiracy theories or
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  Speaker 4: the idea that x or y sinister global organization is
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  Speaker 4: out to get us. Because although you explicitly say there
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  Speaker 4: isn't a single sort of James Bond Island where they're
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  Speaker 4: all sitting and plotting, you are basically claiming that there's
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  Speaker 4: these very disparate figures. President Madua of Venezuela, Prime Minister
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  Speaker 4: Maningagua and Zimbabwe, and Vladimir Putin are all working together
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  Speaker 4: at some level, united by this desire to defeat a
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  Speaker 4: certain set of values.
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  Speaker 1: I repeat, it is not a conspiracy. They don't coordinate
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  Speaker 1: their activity, but they do watch what one another does,
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  Speaker 1: and sometimes they help one another out. There is no question,
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  Speaker 1: for example, that the Venezuelan regime, which probably would have
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  Speaker 1: fallen a long time ago, which is has been economically
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  Speaker 1: and politically disastrous for what was once the wealthiest country
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  Speaker 1: in South America, has been rescued by Russian armaments and weapons,
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  Speaker 1: by Chinese investment in Chinese surveillance technology, by Cuban secret policemen,
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  Speaker 1: and even with the help of the Iranians. You know,
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  Speaker 1: you think about Venezuela and ran These are countries that
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  Speaker 1: have really nothing to do with one another geopolitically or historically,
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  Speaker 1: or culturally or in any other way. But they are
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: both countries that are subject to sanctions. They both produce oil,
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  Speaker 1: and they have found ways. Iran helps Venezuela and break sanctions,
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  Speaker 1: and Venezuela has offered visas and other kinds of help,
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  Speaker 1: for example, to Hesbala activists in Europe. So it's again,
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  Speaker 1: it's not a plot. It's just that they have things
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  Speaker 1: in common, the way that we American Britain have things
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  Speaker 1: in common in America, and France and Germany have things
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  Speaker 1: in common, and they act to help one another out
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  Speaker 1: and to cooperate. But it's not it is None of
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  Speaker 1: it is a conspiracy. You can see it all on
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  Speaker 1: the surface. You do not have to have secret knowledge
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  Speaker 1: to interpret it.
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  Speaker 3: You don't need.
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  Speaker 1: Access to secret documents. Most of the stuff that connects
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  Speaker 1: them they say it in public and what they do
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  Speaker 1: is visible.
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  Speaker 4: I think the power of the book actually is that
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  Speaker 4: you're is the journalism involved in tracing some of these
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  Speaker 4: examples and the way that these different regimes are sort
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  Speaker 4: of playing each other's songs. So I wonder if it's
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  Speaker 4: worth just giving us one of those examples to show
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  Speaker 4: the kind of thing that you're talking about.
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  Speaker 1: Well, one of the examples was, you know, the example
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  Speaker 1: of Venezuela and how it's been propped up by the
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  Speaker 1: other regimes. I mean, I suppose another example that I use.
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  Speaker 3: In the book.
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  Speaker 1: I talk about the way in which their propaganda is
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  Speaker 1: again coordinated, makes it sound to you know, to conspiratorial,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: but in which they echo and repeat one another. So
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: the Chinese have made a huge investment, I mean tens
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: of millions, probably hundreds of millions of dollars in TV, radio, websites,
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  Speaker 1: broadcasting in many, many languages all over the world. Some
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  Speaker 1: of it is Chinese state TV and media, some of
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it is content sharing arrangements with other organizations, all kinds
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  Speaker 1: of investments. In Shinhwa, which is the Chinese newswire, is
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  Speaker 1: cheap or free in many countries, and some of that,
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  Speaker 1: for a long time has just been the way that
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  Speaker 1: that's just what the Chinese did to get out their
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: messages about why you should trade with us, and a
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  Speaker 1: lot of them's even pretty boring. The Russians simultaneously created
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  Speaker 1: this whole system of fake websites. I mean, we've got
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  Speaker 1: a little blips of that in the US twenty sixteen elections,
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  Speaker 1: and that has also been expanding. It's well beyond fake
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  Speaker 1: Facebook posts. Now they create fake news organizations that look
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  Speaker 1: like they're Ecuadorian or Peruvian, but they're really designed in
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  Speaker 1: Moscow and so on. And these systems have been in
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  Speaker 1: creation for a while, and you can argue about how
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  Speaker 1: important they are, but what interested me was the way
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  Speaker 1: in which they were starting to say the same things,
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: and others were as well. And so one of the
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: story that I trace in the book is the story
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  Speaker 1: of the Ukrainian biolabs. I don't know how many of
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  Speaker 1: your listeners remember, but at the very beginning of the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian War, the Russians made this claim that there were
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  Speaker 1: US biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. And this is not true,
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  Speaker 1: and it was proven to be not true, and it
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  Speaker 1: was actually the UN Security Council declared that it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: true in multiple international organizations. Nevertheless, you could find that
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  Speaker 1: conspiracy theory, I mean, that lie was all over Russian media,
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  Speaker 1: it was all over Chinese state media. It was therefore
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: picked up by all kinds of African media. It was
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  Speaker 1: picked up by the US far right, so Tucker Carlson
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  Speaker 1: repeated it on his he was then still a Fox
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  Speaker 1: News host. There were a couple of Internet figures who
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  Speaker 1: put it on Twitter, who put it elsewhere, who got
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  Speaker 1: an enormous echo, and it spread very widely. The rumor
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  Speaker 1: probably benefited from the recent memory of COVID. People are
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  Speaker 1: paranoid about viruses being created laboratories, and the Chinese were
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  Speaker 1: probably eager to promote it because it somehow absolved them
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  Speaker 1: of the accusation they had helped create COVID in a laboratory.
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  Speaker 1: It was also designed to muddy the story of the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Russian invasion. So the Russian invasion Ukraine was a very
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  Speaker 1: brutal colonial invasion. It was an imperial invasion of occupation.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: The occupied territories were treated brutally. There, concentration camps were
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  Speaker 1: set up, people were arrested, children were deported, and all
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  Speaker 1: that was somehow muddied by the idea that, well, there
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  Speaker 1: are these US biolabs in Ukraine, and that's I'm not
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  Speaker 1: even quite sure I understand the logic of how that.
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  Speaker 3: Explains the war.
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  Speaker 1: But but it does, it makes it makes it you know,
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  Speaker 1: less less crystal clear. And but the point was is
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: that I found this conspiracy theory all.
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  Speaker 3: Over the place. Again.
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  Speaker 1: I found it in Venezuela, I found it in Africa,
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  Speaker 1: I found it in as I said, Chinese, Russian, you know,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: other media. Yeah, I don't think somebody there were people
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  Speaker 1: who sat in your room, is at right, were now
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  Speaker 1: everyone's going to do this. It was just that people
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  Speaker 1: saw it coming out of Russia and they repeated it
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  Speaker 1: and used it. And that's an example now of how
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the narratives spread and how they're copied and imitated, and
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: then they and then create a kind of giant echo
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  Speaker 1: chamber where you can hear this story about biolabs from
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: lots of different sources.
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  Speaker 4: You were saying at the start that you don't need
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  Speaker 4: to have a special conspiracy because you can hear it
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: and see it in what they say and what they're doing.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: But of course, I guess part of the point with
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: campaigns like that is that you can you cannot realize
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: how much an idea is being propagated around the world
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  Speaker 4: and through social media, because even that is so untransparent.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you cannot know where ideas are coming from. And actually,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the way that the Russians now often spread ideas or
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: spread narratives is they'll sometimes post something on social media
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  Speaker 1: or in a video form, and then it will begin
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  Speaker 1: to be repeated, and then they'll take down the original posting.
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  Speaker 1: So sometimes they go to great efforts to hide that
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  Speaker 1: they are the originators of a particular idea or theory
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: or explanation or story. So, you know, they spend a
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  Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about it, they care about it,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: they put a lot of money into it.
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  Speaker 3: You know.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Some of this actually, of course, is pretty cheap, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: it's hard to measure how much it matters or how
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: much it works. But we did have in the last
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: few months some evidence that it does. And so, for example,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: one conspiracy theory that went out on Russian media and
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Russian sort of Russian aligned media and social media in
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the last year was that President Lensky had bought two yachts,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and pictures of the yachts circulated online, and of course
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: they were not his yachts, they belonged to other people. Nevertheless,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: the yacht story somehow filtered into the ecosystem, and during
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: the debate on Ukraine, aid in the US Senate. Apparently
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: some US senators brought up the yachts in their com
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: you know, why should we help Ukraine when the money
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: is going on yachts. I mean, this is completely false,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: not true. Nevertheless, it had infiltrated the conversation to such
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: an extent that was heart of the American political debate.
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: So if you want evidence that these things matter, that
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: was it.
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  Speaker 4: You have also a great example that's sort of almost comical,
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: of a similar dynamic in a much smaller forum, where
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: you have the story around for the Taiwanese, why the
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: Taiwanese people trapped in a Japanese typhoon had not been
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: rescued when there had been a Chinese but coaches coming
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: to rescue them, And then it turns out that all
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: of that completely untrue. But then it had started this
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: whole debate about why does the Taiwanese government not look
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: after its poor stranded tourists. I thought, it's just such
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: an obscure thing.
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  Speaker 1: And what was important about that this was the story
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  Speaker 1: that was told to me in Taiwan. What was important
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: about it is that it played into a larger narrative.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: So the Chinese want to convince the Taiwanese, and they
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: spent they do a lot of information warfare and targeting
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: in Taiwan. They want to convince the Taiwanese that their
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: stage is weak, that they don't have any friends, that
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: they're incompetent, that democracy is less efficient, less effective than dictatorleadership,
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  Speaker 1: And that little story about supposedly some Chinese buses rescuing
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Taiwanese tourists was designed to play into that bigger, larger
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: meta narrative. And the story became so viral, pushed by
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: both by actual Chinese people and by kind of pro
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Chinese media in Taiwan, that there was a diplomat connected
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: to the story who killed himself. I mean, it led
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: to a suicide because there was this outcry, why are
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: why are we so incompetent? Why can't we rescue our tourists?
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: So these are you know, again, they can seem like
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: little things, but they're they're meant to be part of
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: a larger narrative about the stability and success of dictatorship,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: about the division and degeneracy sometimes even the sexual degeneracy
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: of democracies. And you know, they they and it's and
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: it's kind of non stop. So they do it all
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the time. They framed stories and they tell them in
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: a way that's designed to I mean disabilizes the wrong
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: word because it sounds too active, but undermine people's sense
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: of security and stability in the democratic world, whether it's
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Taiwan or Britain or the United States.
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: You got to know her long before I did, but
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Audrey Tang, the former Digital Minister in Taiwan, that was
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: very much the point she was making. Is not just
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: about the message, but also that it's about making people
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: apathetic and not really believe in government. It doesn't have
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: to be active. I want to move on later to
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: how has this confronted what you've described, because that's an
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: important bit of the book. But I guess we have
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: to have a bit of a conversation about how Donald
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: Trump fits into this, because it's definitely not a book
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: about Donald Trump, but it certainly feels like it has
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: a lot of resonance for the US election campaign.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I began to write it at a moment when I
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: did not know that Donald Trump was going to be
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party candidate, but I did have some aspects
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: of trump Ism in my head. What Trump has in
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: common with the autocratic world is his transactionalism. So these
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: are regimes, as as I said, They're not knit together
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: by ideology or values of any kind. Instead, they do
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: deals with one another. And this is how Trump thinks.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: We saw it in his first term, when he was
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: still surrounded by people who wanted to keep the US
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: in NATO and wanted the US to remain a leader
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: of the democratic world. I worry that in Trump's second
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: term those people would be gone. And his natural instinct,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: which is to do deals with whoever wants to do,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: deals with him for his personal benefit, maybe for the
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: benefit of his friends in the business community, maybe for
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the benefit of his family. That that would be the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: purpose of his foreign policy would be to not for
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the benefit of Americans and certainly not for the benefit
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: of the democratic world, but.
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: It would be for him personally.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: And I was just talking to somebody this morning about
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: what his China policy would be and she was saying, well,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it's very confusing because he says different things. Right. Sometimes
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: he sounds very hawkius. Sometimes he says how marvelous Shei
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Jinping is and how much he admires him. And you know,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: my answer to that is his policy will be whatever
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: he decides is most beneficial for him. If he decides
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the China Hawk thing works for him politically or in
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: some other way, he'll do it. And if he thinks
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: it's not going to work for him, he won't. And
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: this course very hard for you know, policy analysts and
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: maybe even business people to understand when they hear that,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: because we're used to thinking of Western or American rather,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: I don't trying not to use the word Western, American
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: or European democratic politicians as acting somehow in the interest
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: of a set of ideas or you know, certainly in
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: the interest of their country or where they believe is
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to be the interest of their country. And he will
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: not do that, and that is why he could be
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: extremely dangerous, and the deals that he could make could
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: be very well be detrimental to American interests and maybe
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: even to the global interests of the democratic world.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: We had that conversation around the ambiguity on China, specifically
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: with one of the people who might be as National
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: Security Advisor, Elbridge Colby, last week, but also a while
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: ago with Neil Ferguson, whose claim and he's not the
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: only one. A lot of people like Neil, who was
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: sort of hoping to at least that there'll be a
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: sort of clear course on foreign policy out of a
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: Trump administration, says, well, it will depend on who's in
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: the room, and there'll be someone in the room who
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: will be hawkish, because the Republicans are hawkish. I guess
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: in that context, I wondered, we're speaking quite soon after
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: the selection of J. D. Vance as Donald Trump's running mate.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: You know, what would the Confederation of strong man autocrats
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: think about his selection as vice president? Do you think
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: is he likely to tilt policy further in that more
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: autocratic direction in a second Trump administration?
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: So funny if what concerns me about gdie Vance is
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: not stuff that he says, which seems to change depending
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: on what the pulp political mood is. What disserves me
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: about him is the degree to which his candidacy was
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: lobbied for or by Elon Musk and David Sachs, who
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: have very clear ideas at least about Russia and Ukraine.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: And so what I.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: Worry about is that Vance is there because you know,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Trump was essentially selling the vice presidency, and who's going
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: to give me more for it?
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: You know, what's the you know, and.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know what exactly that means, but I'm not
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: sure that his policies are as important as the group
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: of business people whom he represents are or might be.
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: As the name of the book suggests, you are focused
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: on the financial corporate side of autocracy, inc. And one
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: of the distinctive things about them that you highlight is
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: that they are working together to not just to stay
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: in power, but they have been very financially motivated as well.
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: What kind of challenge does that present to those who
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: are trying to combat this or undermine these autocrats.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: One of the big differences between the autocrats of the
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: current day and some of their predecessors in the twentieth
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: entry is that these.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: Are individually very very rich people.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: So either they are billionaires or their families are billionaires.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: They've enriched groups of people around them. That's one of
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: the reasons why they stay in power. It's one of
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the reasons why they want power.
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: It's one of the reasons.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Why they why they hate the conversation about transparency and
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: accountability and the rule of law so much. Because the
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: instinct that most people have about justice.
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: You know that this is unfair.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Why is our economy so opaque? You know, they the
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: you know, they need to push back against that all
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the time because they need to protect their wealth and
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: the wealth of their of their inner circle. How did
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: they obtain this wealth? I mean, that's a long story
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and I won't tell it all here, but partly it
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: was by taking advantage of the loopholes in the Western
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: financial system. So I essentially Putin came to power by
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: stealing money from Russia, by laundering it in the West,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: by and then by bringing it back in. And his
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: story was pretty typical of a lot of people at
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: that time, in the nineteen nineties, and he did so
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: with the help of Western lawyers, bankers, partners, you know,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: all kinds of accountants, all kinds of people. And one
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: of the great challenges for the democratic world is will
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: we shut down that system? Can we stop enabling the
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: theft of money from populations, whether it's in Africa or
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: it's in Eurasia, Can we stop that happening? And can
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: we draw a line both because it's good for those countries,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: but also because it's good for us, because the amount
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of dirty money washing around in our systems. I mean,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: some in the US is a special case where politics
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: have become insane and very driven by money. But even
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: in European countries where it's not clear who has money
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: and why, it's not clear who owns property in London,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, none of that is conducive to good governance
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: or good public conversation or democracy.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: More broadly, you know, one thing that has kind of
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: quote unquote saved the West from itself or I agree
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: with you with West is awkward, but liberal democracy from
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: itself in the past is the self interest of the
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: commercial class. You know, at key points there was a
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: recognition that democratic norms were needed to make capitalism work,
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: even if those norms also constrained individual capitalists from doing
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: everything they wanted to do. I guess the question back
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: to you is that just doesn't seem there doesn't seem
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: to be that rationale operating. There's something that's not working
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: in the system. I mean, in an age of corporate
• 22:34
  Speaker 4: social responsibility, we still have a lot of big businesses
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: apparently not at all concerned about Donald Trump as a
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: threat to US democracy, if that's what you think he is,
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: and still continuing even to operate in Russia or countries
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: allied with Russia. Despite the sanctions that we've seen, it
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: doesn't feel like the self interest of capitalists is quite
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: moving in that direction as we have seen in the past.
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: So it depends what kind of company.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: These are.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Often companies with global ambitions and sometimes bases who are
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: hoping that a Trump administration will give them special access
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: or special deals. So a little bit like in Pruftians
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Russia or in Orbond's Hungary, where people who are close
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to power get special arrangements, you know, the foreign policies
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: made in their interests, or even sometimes the domestic policy.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: And there's always been lots of influence of business on
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: democratic governments. I'm not going to say otherwise, but where
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: this is the scale of it is different. Now that
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's going to be good for everybody else.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: I lived in Poland over the last ten years, and
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: in Poland we had a kind of autocratic populist party
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: that sought to capture the state and had business favorites,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: especially some of the state companies that they were using
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to reward their friends and so on. It was a
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: disaster for normal companies. So companies that depend on the
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: rule of law, that need to rely on judicial system,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: that need contracts to be recognized, that need the rules
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: of the game to be clear and fair. You know,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: when there's a system that encourages favoritism, it's not corruption
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: necessarily in the old fashioned sense.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: People aren't necessarily being given bribes.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: But transactionalism.
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: Let you transactionalism at a very high level. This might
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: be good for people who are on the inside, and
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: it might be really bad for everyone else. And I'm
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: actually surprised by the degree to which the US business
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: community hasn't fully recognized this. I mean, I know some have,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: but the degree to which this could be very bad
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: for a lot of people, I'm not sure is understood yet.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, think about what we were just talking about,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: a transactional China policy. I mean, to a company that
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: sells things in China or trades with China, I mean,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: you need a policy that's predictable, that you understand, that's
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: based on, you know, some kind of some strategy that
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: makes sense. And if you're if instead there's going to
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: be a policy that depends on whoever Donald Trump was
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: in the room with and whoever pays the most money
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: to his political campaign or invests in some company that's
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: close to him, then you're going to have a lot
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: of trouble doing business and having that kind of government,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: you know, in the long run is bad for the economy.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: And you can look around the world at every single,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: every single instance of it, and we see that.
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: Well, it's funny you should say that, because when we
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: sat down, we Bloomberg sat down with President Trump a
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: few weeks ago, and he was quite explicit on precisely
• 25:29
  Speaker 4: this point. We said, well, surely the tariffs could be
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: bad for a lot of American business. He's like, anyone
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: who has a problem with the tariffs, they should just
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: come to me, like Tim Cook took to me. He's
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: a smart businessman. He did a deal. Anyone can do
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: a deal. And as you you know, as you suggest,
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: of course if you're a small if you're a small business,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: that's not going to work. Just thinking more about how
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: to confront this and some of the things in your
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: book about that. You know, as you said when you
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: were talking about Taiwan, there are these kind of central
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: ideas being propagated by China and by the whole group
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: in terms of the sort of information war, which is
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: that democracy brings chaos, it doesn't deliver. To combat that,
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: as Udrew Tanger told us in the previous episode, you
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: need to prove otherwise that it does work. You know,
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: President Biden is probably the Western leader that's taken that
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: most to heart and has tried to operationalize that, making
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: it work for people and bringing work back to the US,
• 26:23
  Speaker 4: and all of that just doesn't seem to have worked.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: I Mean, the part of Biden's problem is specific to him,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: which is that he was not good at selling what
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: he had done or explaining it to people. And some
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: of that was I mean, maybe I don't know who
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: to blame exactly for it. Some of it were that
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: some of it may have been his age. He wasn't
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: a convincing public speaker. His television appearances weren't convincing. I mean,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: to get across to millions of Americans through mass media,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: you need to have an outsized personality. I mean, whether
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: it's Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, you know, you need
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: someone who can sell their message, and he was not
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: good at doing that.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: And that's a part of the explanation.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you've had a million guests on
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: who've told you the other parts of the explanation, which
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: is to do with the ways in which people still
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: feel shut out of the housing market, and they still
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: there are parts of the economy that don't work for people.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: And of course the other piece of it, and this,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I think is why he wanted to run for president again,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: is that some of what he.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Did, you know, you don't see the impact yet. I mean, you.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Created the chipsack, which is designed to create more high
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: tech jobs in the United States when you pass it.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: That doesn't mean the effects of passing the law are
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: felt six months later. I mean they maybe felt four
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: years later. And so some of what.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: He does I think hasn't hasn't had an effect yet.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: There are examples around the world that are that are
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: also going to be relevant. I mean, so the British
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Labor Party just won an election basically arguing we're competent,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: we're going to manage things better. We have people who
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: have experience in government and nobod economics and we're going
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to fix things and their government and their legacy will
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: rise or fall on whether people perceive that to be true.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: And of course perception is partly about what people really
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: experience in their ordinary lives and partly it's about.
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: How it's communicated.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: But I mean the test the Kamala Harris campaign is
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: also going to be partly about, you know, can she
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: retell the Biden story? Can she convince people that she
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: can make things work? So so it's it's not that
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: it's not that that's wrong, it's just that it you know,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: much depends on your execution and your and your explanation.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: There have been Biden's staffers over the last few years
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: who've been exasperated that he wasn't giving more speeches about bridges,
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: and I sort of felt like that probably wasn't It's
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: probably not going to help that much to just be
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: constantly talking about big infrastructure projects. But that is that
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: was maybe part of it.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: The other election that I had the chance to observe
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: recently was the Polish election in October, and you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I have had declaration of mintance. My husband is a
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Polish politician, although he wasn't a candidate. You know, how
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: did how did Donald Tusk, who's now the Prime minister,
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: how did he campaigns? Campaigned by going around and round
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the country for six months and stopping in small towns,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: big towns, big I mean, he's simply talked and met
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: with people every single day. You know, it's a genuine
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: grassroots campaign because he had to get around their problem,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: which was the capture of the state media by the
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: ruling party. But you know, any US or European politician
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: has a similar problem. How do you break through to
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: people and how do you link up with them, and
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: how do you talk about the things they care about?
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, you might have to spend a lot of
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: time on the road, and that wasn't something that Biden
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: could do. He didn't talk about the investments that were beginning.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: He didn't spend enough time on factory floors.
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: I get it.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: He's the president of the United States and he's busy.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: But someone has to do it.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: Some of this is not about economic outcomes though, right,
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: I mean, and that's what also comes through in the book.
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: The sort of information war that these leaders are waging,
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: you know, has achieved is a sort of lack of
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: identification with some of those democratic values of feeling. You know,
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: it doesn't resonate necessarily the idea of rule based order,
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: if that's what we're trying to defend, sort of democratic values,
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: and people actually no longer see the value of it
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: or even and particularly think the US is not a
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: very good ambassador for it, having not necessarily respected people's
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: sovereignty or always respected democracy. How does one get around that?
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: I can't give you a kind of three sentence solution,
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: but actually, know who's very good This is the people.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I began the conversation with the democracy activists of the
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: autocratic world, reminding people of what happens when you lose
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: your rights and what it's like to live in a
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: state where you don't have rule of law. I mean,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you know, in the US we're getting a little closer
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: to that. I mean we now have judges in the
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: system who who you know, people now talk about Trump
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: judges and Obama judges, which is something you know, we
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: used to hear in Poland you know, what kind of
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: judge you got in your case would affect the ruling
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: that's already the beginning of a slippery slope in the
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. And convincing people that this will
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: affect their lives and it will begin to change what
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: kind of choices they have is part of the argument.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is actually why again, just to use
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the Polish election as example, abortion turned out to be
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: a big issue in Poland. Well, abortion was already illegal
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: in Poland, but it was tightened further so that in effect,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: many doctors would not help women who were dying they
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: had problematic pregnancies.
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: And two women died.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: And when people realize that a decision made by judges,
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: you know, sitting in robes in some distant place, had led,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: after a series of events, to the deaths of these
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: two women, that created a kind of outrage. I mean,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: if Harris or people around her are able to connect
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: changes in the digital system to people on the ground,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: that's a way of explaining, you know, what it is
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: that you lose. When you lose rights, when you lose
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the rule of law, it can begin to affect you personally.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, those words don't mean that much to people,
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: you know, the you say judicial independence, and it doesn't
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: make people scream and yell and clap and cheer and
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: run out on the streets. But when people begin to
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: see the longer term effect of the loss of judicial independence,
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: sometimes the mood changes.
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: You've stolen my last question, which was to be ending
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: on a moment of a sort of some hopefulness in
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: that you are in Poland, a country that has succeeded
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: in at least for the moment, turning a certain kind
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: of tide against a more personal, more autocratic style of leadership.
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: You won that election last autumn, or at least those
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: forces won the election. Donald Tusk is now Prime Minister again.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: Do you feel like that shows that you know, we
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: can do more, maybe than many people now think when
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: they look at what the force is coaliessing in the
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: US and elsewhere.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is no law of history.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: There is no rule that says.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: We have to decline or democracy will decline, or you know,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: the twenty first century is the century of autocracy and
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: doesn't work like sat does not who history works. You know,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: what happens tomorrow depends on the actions of a lot
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: of people today. And there is always space for civic engagement.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: There's space for people to involve themselves in the political
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: lives of their countries if they care about the direction
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: that they're going. And I mean, I've always believed that,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: and I think it's more true than ever.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: And Apple Bam, thank you so much, Thank you, thanks
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: for listening to this week some of book's photonomics from Bloomberg.
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: This episode was hosted by me Stephanie Flanders. It was
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: produced by Samasadi with booking support from Chris Martlou, production
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: support and sound design by Moses and dam Brendan Francis
• 33:50
  Speaker 4: Newnham is our executive producer and Sage Bowman is head
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: of Bloomberg Podcast, with special thanks to ann Apple bamb.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: Please subscribe, rate, and review you highly this show wherever
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: you listen to it