Latest / Pod Save the World / Mission: Impossible - Catering Truck (Starring Donald J. Trump)

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Mission: Impossible - Catering Truck (Starring Donald J. Trump) · Pod Save the World

• 0:00
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• 1:23
  Speaker 1: dot com slash PSTW code pstw Welcome back to Pods
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of the World.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I'm Tommy Beetur, I'm Ben Roads, then.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Enniskant, former guests on this show, former NBA player. It's
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: now kind of making it his deal to just attack
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: trans people. I guess he's suggesting he's going to join
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the WNBA. I didn't really followed what the specific goals
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: are that he thinks would allow him to join in
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the wnbavior.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: It's an interesting cautionary tale about me booking guests because
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Ennis Candor reached out to me some years ago before
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: he'd gone full MAGA and he was on the Knicks, so.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: He was on the Celtics too, so it was before
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: pulling yourself.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: No, but the world does know like I.
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: You know, Nick s Blair like sure, and so we
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: have MONI has this story about Athar terranism in Edragon.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: But man, this guy's gone, I think, particularly as his
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: NBA careers crashed and burned. The remaining relevancy seems to
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: be this MAGA swerve. But as someone who does kind
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: of follow the WNBA discourse, like Ennis Kendor declaring himself
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: eligible for the WNBA Draft as a shot at trans people,
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: it was pretty pretty jarring.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: It's him and a guy named Royce White, who's another
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: NBA player who a judge found. This is from the
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Star tribb in Minnesota. Star Tribune found that Royce White
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: abuses ex wife repeatedly slapping her, grabbing her, pulling her hair,
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: leaving her bruised and swollen. And then a child advocate
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: assigned to the case found that Royce White's son is
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: scared for his physical safety around his father. This guy
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: was on Benny Johnson's tp USA show because he decided
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: to also declare for the WNBA, and he wore a
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: wig in the interview, and they think this is fun
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: and cool. So they're just having this guy who beat
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: up his wife.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: You know what's so dumb about this too. He's like,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: the WM is awesome right now. They don't need any
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: other play. They've got great players. Like the quality of
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: play has never been better. This is kind of trolling
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: and like, oh my god, it's just it's exhausting.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: And then the Skinner it's not that good.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: He wasn't.
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, he could stand out of the basket and
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: get you to be bounds, but like that's about what
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: he could do.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, so we disavowed. We disavow our former Yeah,
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, guys. Probably a long list if we really thought.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: But some wonderful people too.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Some great ones too. We got a great trop for
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: you guys. Today we're back together in studio. It's great
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: to see you.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I'm here.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: We're going to cover this insane story about Donald Trump's
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: secret flight home from the NATO summit last month. We
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: covered at the time how they switched planes. But now
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: it turns out the Washington Post had this great scoop
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: about how Trump switched his plane but then use the
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: media and his own staff as a decoy. So we'll
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: dig into all of that. We're going to update you
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: on the Iran talks such as there are updates. We'll
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: tell you about how the diplomatic effort to Forgia path
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Forward and Gaza are going. We'll talk about why people
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: are scared of resumption of fighting in Yemen. And then
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this brave activist who is
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: calling out the leaders of the UAE for perpetuating the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: civil war in Sudan. And I don't know if you
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: saw this guy did? I saw all over my Twitter timeline.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: It made me very happy. Then we're going to check
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: in on Pete Hexth, our Secretary of War over at
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon. Always great to hear from Pete. We're going
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to talk about Ukraine's military campaign against a Russian e
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: commerce site and this blurry line between civilian and military targeting.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: We'll update you on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's effort
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: to steal an island basically, or at least a peninsula.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Quick thing on a bowla just so you guys know
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: what's going on over there and some great moments in Ai.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Then Ben, you did a new interview for today, what
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: are we going to hear?
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: So I talked to Richard Horsey, who's been on before
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: and very good guest. He is a senior analyst for
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: the International Crisis Group in Asia. He's led their work
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: in Meanmar, and so thought that there's actually been a
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: lot going on in We update people on you know,
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: where things stand five years after the military coup and
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: civil war that'scilled one hundred thousand people. The military government's
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: going the extra mile to kind of create a sense
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: of legitimacy, a lot of diplomatic visits, the state of
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: the opposition. We talk about Ansang su Chi, who nobody
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: had seen.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: For years years, right, the Red Cross just Sarre and.
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: Red Cross just Sarrow.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: So Richard walks us through that, and then just kind
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: of how people are feeling in Meanmar, what governments can
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: be doing. Not that the Trump administration cares that much,
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: So it's an important update if people have just been
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: kind of curious about what's going on there. This this
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: is a level set.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of things we've worked on in the
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Obama administration that are now depressing to talk about Tom
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: might be number one, and there's nothing to do with Trump,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Cuban one hundred percent Trump, he was.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: Umber Trump salt with little Biden smriggled in, Yeah, me
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: and Mars is just just.
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: A horrifical series of events.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, really awful. I'm definitely gonna listen to that interview.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's a very undercovered story, an important one.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: After Ben's interview, our Friend of the Pod subscribers will
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: hear Ben and I answer some questions from the Friend
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: of the Pod or the Pots of the World discord community.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: If you want add free episodes of this show, add
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: free episodes of POTSA of America, and a bunch more,
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: consider becoming a paid subscriber. You'll also get tons of
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: bonus content, including bonus Pots of America episodes, get discounted
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: tickets to Crooked con great newsletters. Tasteful nudes of Dan,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: So go to Crooked dot com slash friends to learn more.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Just kidding about the nudes of Dan. They're not tasteful.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Now you don't get any just headshots.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: Speaking of nudes, did you listen to the Hunter Biden
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Tucker interview? No?
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: I listened to the entire thing.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: I downloaded it. I will listen to it eventually. It's interesting,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing, but you know, yeah, you did.
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: They spend a fair amount of time in the nudes.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Oh good, I'm wonderful. Something to look forward to. All right.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: We're going to lead with this shocking scoop from the
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Washington Post about President Trump's secret flight home from the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: NATO summit last month. So again we talked about this
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: at the time. There was some sort of intel about
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: an Iranian threat. It forced President Trump to abandon the
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: New Air Force One, the one that was the bribe
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: from Qatar, and ride on the old Air Force One
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: back from the NATO summitt Ankara to the UK. At
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: the time, Trump lied about it. He was like, We're
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: sending the new Air Force One ahead so the troops
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: can check it out in Britain. That was a lie.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: The old Air Force one as missile defense features the
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: new one does not, and Trump, they said, would be
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: better defended on the old one. But it turns out
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: the stories even crazier than that. The Washington Post reported
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: that after Trump boarded the old Air Force one jet
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: and the press was loaded up, he was then secretly
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: taken to another Air Force jet while hiding inside a
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: catering truck that is normally used for meals and supplies.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Very macho, very manly to hide in a catering truck.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: The media and Trump's staff flew to the UK inside
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: the jet that Trump had abandoned, most of them unwitting
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: that he had left the left the plane. They were
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: essentially treated like human decoys in case run they tried
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: to do something. Then, when Trump landed and the other
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: plane landded, Trump secretly reboarded the Air Force one. Everyone
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: thought he was on and acted like nothing had happened.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Then he gets on I think the Katari bribe Force
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: one for the flight home to the US gaggle with
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the media. Was asked why he switched planes, and he said, quote, well,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: I have a threat all the time. I'm number one
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: on their list before you. But if I go, you
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: go right. Perhaps someday you want to change professions, which
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: is an interesting comment. So just for context, everyone should
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: know that this is not standard operating procedure. Presidents often
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: use subterfuge for security reasons. The White House will release
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: like a fake schedule to cover for a real trip
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: to a war zone. For example, there was a story
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: in the Post today, another story about an incident in
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: the in March of two thousand when President Clinton secretly
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: switched planes like Trump did before a flight from India
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to Pakistan. But the difference is in the cases in
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the past, at least some members of the media are
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: told about the plan in advance. Usually it's like the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: pool proporter that day, or like the lead white host correspondent.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: You also get to learn about the risk to you personally.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: But in this case, our weak, old, feckless, stupid president
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: left his own staff and the media to fly alone
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: as bait, and then he got to hide from the
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: consequences of his own decision to go to war with Iran.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: So this is way bigger than just like breaking the
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: rules of like pool coverage. It is like endangering others
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: to save yourself. Kind of a perfect Trump anecdote.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's so many layers to this anecdote. Let's just
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: first of all, talk about how things normally work. Because
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: you mentioned this, You know there are times that you
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: engage in some subterfuge. So, for instance, I remember I
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: had to be involved in the planning of all of
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Obama's trips to Afghanistan. When you don't announce the trip
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: in advance, the plane takes off kind of under cover
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: of darkness from Andrews Air Force Base. You're the White House,
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: you kind of land in the dark, et cetera. Now
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: what we would do there is we plan the trip.
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: Then we would sit down in the White House Press
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Sector's office with like usually the leader or leadership from
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: the White House Correspondence Association back when that was somebody
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: you talked to me about things, and you know, bring
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: them into it and say, get your pool together for
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: this time at this night, and you kind of plan
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: in conjunction with the press.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: And also like decide if you want to come on
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: this trip where there's elevated danger.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Look, I was even on a trip and I can't
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: tyke ant to a bunch of detail where where there was
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: a threat that emerged and we kind of had to
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: evaluate that threat and make a delay something. But you
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: know we went on with it. I mean, you can
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: deal with these things in stride. This felt very much
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: not in stride. And so like to look at the
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: different pieces of this one. Why were they using the
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: Katari Air Force one in the first place, if it
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: isn't capable of dealing with threats, just because Trump wanted
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: to have like golden interiors faster than the you know,
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Air Force could get that ready for him, Like we
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: had to kind of go through all this you know,
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: cost and danger.
• 11:11
  Speaker 4: That's the first thing.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: The second thing is it is it bears repeating that
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: out and saying it is that they've invented some cover
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: story that they're going to fly this other plane to
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: the troops so they could see it.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, he said, for old time's sake, we'll be
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: taking the former Air Force one from Turkey to Mildenhall,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: a short trip that is totally worth doing in order
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: to give our great military heroes a chance to appreciate
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: our beautiful new addition to the Air Force fleet. That
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: was your cover story.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that that felt kind of weird at
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: the time. And then one of the elements of the
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Iran War, there's so much of it that you have
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: hard time kind of, you know, remembering these different threads.
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: The fact that the United States in Israel assassinated the
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: leader of Iran. Right, I told you, I told Kamene
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: there is nothing to do with whether he was a
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: good guy or not.
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: He was not a good guy.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: But that is a dramatically new thing to do.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: Like we've talked about this a couple of times, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: inevitably that's going to increase the threats on the American
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: president and probably not just now, probably into the future too,
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: you know. And so it does raise the question of
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: just like how serious are these plots from Iran? Was
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: it really the case that how much danger was Trump in?
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: This is a pretty extraordinary amount of length to go to. Yeah,
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: it makes you wonder whether the information was specific or
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: whether more likely they just have all this broad reporting
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: that the rings are interested in doing something and we
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: happen to be in that region.
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Well, the Wall Street Journal said Israel brief Trump and
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: Intel that included a threat to use shoulder to air
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: missiles to target Air Force one. I mean, it seems
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: pretty vague to me. It's yeah, they also just resumed
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: the conflict with the war like US just started bombing.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I also love this anecdote, then, which is that Marco
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: Rubio stayed on the Air Force one where Trump was
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: supposed to be and Pete Hegseth got onto the other
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: plane with Trump. The two people most responsible for the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: war were safe.
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: And I guess my point, which is a little bit
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: you know, we're guessing here. I can't believe that the
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: threat reporting was that specific if they let all those
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: people get on the other plane, you know, like so
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: it feels like they run into some extraordinary length because
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: Trump was concerned about this. Because if this secret service
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: really believed that there was dudes with shoulder fired rocket
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: launchers in the vicinity of the airport, I don't think
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: they would have let that plane take off.
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: With Marco Rubio and pt Text and everybody else on it.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Couldn't you just fly a route that avoids it wrong.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: It's so crazy.
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: And the other thing for people who are just like, well,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: this frustrating. I we always talking about this. Well, Air
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: Force one is not the personal property. It's not like
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump's private jet, like we pay for it. We
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: pay for all this stuff, we pay for the Secret Service.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: We like and all these stories. I think sometimes what's
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: missing is Trump treats all this machinery like his personal property.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: When it costs tens and tens of millions of dollars
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: to move all this stuff around, and we have no
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: idea why they're making decisions. I will say, Tommy, just
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: to bring different episodes together here for those who listened.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: I wonder if that gift he got of the gun,
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: if he got in some trouble game, maybe that gun
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: with the bullets might have come in hand.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's just sniping missiles. Yeah. The thing that bugs
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: me about this story, it's like, I don't know, the
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: lying has come to be expected from these people, but
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: to put a bunch of journalists in your own staff
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: at risk and basically send them up to be like
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the decoy to get shot at so you can fly
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: separately is genuinely shocking. All right, Well, we're gonna just
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: quickly update you guys on the Iran talks this week
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: because we are trapped in this like tedious, endless cycle
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: with no clear path forward, but it is still very important.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if you saw this over the
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: weekend bend, but the President seems to be signaling that
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: he just doesn't care anymore about all this. He told
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Axio's quote, we are low keying it. This is about
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the talks with the run. We are only semi negotiating
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: with them. We're just watching Iran with its huge inflation
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and the fact they have no money, and then he said, quote,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: it will work out out. It always works out. It's
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: like a chess game. So that inspires confidence. Last week,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: the Treasury Department announced some new sanctions because sanctions are
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: really going to stick it to them after we just
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: let them sell what like ten billion dollars worth of oil.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Iran and Oman are working on a deal to determine
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: control the straight or moves those. Their demands include, quote
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: never threatened nor in salt Iran in any language, permanently
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: in the war against Iran and Iran's allies and Lebanon, Gaza,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Yemen in Iraq and the naval blockade, withdraw military forces
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: around Iran, pay reparations, release frozen assets, lift all sanctions.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: It's basically a big middle finger to Donald Trump. Trump
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: was asked about Iran's negotiating position at a press event Monday.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Here's his response, massive escolation.
• 15:43
  Speaker 6: Is that still on the table, Well, we have that
• 15:44
  Speaker 6: certainly in that ability if we want to do then yeah,
• 15:47
  Speaker 6: you'll find out.
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: You said you're low keying it with them for your semi.
• 15:50
  Speaker 6: Negotionating Well, they asked for they asked for reparations.
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: You might say, or they asked for money for the
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: damage that we've done, and I said, that's a good idea. Well,
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: we're gonna ask for money for the damage they've done
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: over a fifty year period, whether you go ss coal
• 16:08
  Speaker 5: or whether you go all of the people that were
• 16:10
  Speaker 5: so badly hurt, so badly wounded or killed many thousands
• 16:14
  Speaker 5: of people and maybe damages for the fifty two thousand
• 16:18
  Speaker 5: protests over the last four months that were killed and around.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Visit the estimate of when you take the strait of
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: our room.
• 16:24
  Speaker 6: School, well it's open now. We're taking a lot of shit.
• 16:27
  Speaker 6: It's open now. Look, the only one that has control
• 16:30
  Speaker 6: of the strait of her moves right now is the
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: United States Navy. We have a blockade that's been infallible.
• 16:36
  Speaker 6: It's a steel wall, but it's open for others. Now
• 16:41
  Speaker 6: a little bit complex because they will on occasion drop
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: a mine and we find the mind. You know, we've
• 16:48
  Speaker 6: mine swept the entire strait as you probably maybe hurt,
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: maybe you didn't hear, but but we control the straight
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: one hundred percent.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Just making shit up in ran the supreme leader at Moshtabahamane.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: He's added another hard line IRGC goon to his top
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: decision making council. This is the Supreme National Security Council.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: They will oversee things like efforts to end the war
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: or reopen the Straight or horror moves. So Ben, I
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: just like, I don't know. I'm just wondering. My only
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: question now is when he's just going to walk away
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: from this mess and be like, yeah, straight's open, war's over,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and nuke's are covered. We can watch it.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: He's getting pretty close. I mean, it does bear emphasizing that.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: I think every single thing he just said there was
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: not true, Like everything from like the fifty two thousand
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: protesters in the last four months.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: They haven't really been protesting the last four months, right.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: Also that number keeps going up too, keeps going up,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and I just I've never seen anyone.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: Right yeah, yeah, And it's not to diminish the horror
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: it happened was coming from late last year. But but
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: then also, the street's not open. I mean, if the
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: Strait was open, we wouldn't be having this conversation. You know,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: like he's denying physical reality again. You know, the US
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: controls the Straight. We do, like we've mind soup at all.
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: We have like the Iranians are firing at tankers like
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: they're still you know, a fraction of the traffic getting
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: out of that straight. I take that the message from
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: the Iranian demands is that their government is entirely in
• 18:13
  Speaker 3: the hands of the RGC.
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: It's the hardliners.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: So even some of these people that show up in
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Islamabad or in Oman are not empowered to make a deal.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: And that's them saying to Trump, fuck you. That's not
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: them expecting Trump to agreet all those things. That's saying,
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: we don't need a deal. We have the actual leverage.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: And if you look, the Iranians are.
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: Quite specific even in their unrealistic demands, and Trump is
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: never even specific because all we don't need a deal,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: we do need a deal, like we look, we don't
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: even know what he's shooting for anymore.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: And I mean art of the deal, you know, would suggest.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: That that you're what the Iranians are doing, which is
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: you ratchet up your demands so that whatever you get
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: is far more than you would have anticipated the beginning,
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: because you may such maximums demands. Look, at the end
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: of the day, he's probably just gonna have to accept
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: a certain point that the best you can do is
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: the straight reopens with the Iranians making a bunch of
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: money and that regime more entrenched in power and no
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: nuclear deal. Like that's the best that we're going to get.
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: I'd take it, Like, let's just get off this war.
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: This is stupid. Yeah, that is I think the most
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: important point, which is there's this sunk cost fallacy where
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, we've sacrificed so much, we can't stop now,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and it's like nope, Sometimes stopping now is your best option,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: and that's what we should do here.
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: Maybe the next hit of Heroin will solve my addiction,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: you know, yeah, pod tape the world is brought to
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• 19:42
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• 22:36
  Speaker 1: We're going to do a similarly quick update on Israel
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: and Gaza because last week we talked about Trump like
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: randomly announcing this fifteen point plan for Gaza that included
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: this process for disarmament and said Hamas would disarm and
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: then Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the occupation. It
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: was a bit of a head scratcher at the time,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: we predicted that the Israelis would not be okay with
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: this plan, and as predicted Israeli Prime Minister, we've been
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: n Yah, who categorically rejected it. Over the weekend. He said, quote,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Israel does not accept the fifteen point document. The idea
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: When I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: lighter weaponry, all weaponry. And we were talking about genuine disarmament,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: not fictitious disarmament. This outcome was obvious because Israel has
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: an election coming up in October. Netanyah, who only cares
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: about appeasing the far right, so obviously he wasn't going
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: to do anything that looked in any way soft In Gaza.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Net Yahu also said quote, as long as I am
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: Prime Minister, at Palestinian state will not be established, neither
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: in Gaza, nor in Judea or in Samaria, which is
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: what they call the West Bank. So for those keep
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: it score at home, Ben Hamas did reaffirm its commitment
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: to the Board of Pieces plan. I guess the only
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: question I have is why do you think Trump would
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: announce this knowing the Israelis had not gotten on board
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: and would never get on board. I think you had
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: just met with Nyau.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: That's the big mystery to me, because even when aynnounced this,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: as we said at the time, like nobody really believed it.
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: It was like what, it didn't kind of come out
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: of any process. It just seemed out of nowhere that
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: they're announcing this and like kind of demanding support for it.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: I will note that Apak, for instance, at the time,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: welcomed this plan and demanded that everybody supported. I'm wondering,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: I'm waiting for the apac a statement attacking nan Yao for.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: Not for so long with it. I'm not holding my breath.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: Look, there's never any there there to this. It never
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: seemed plausible that this was actually gonna happen again in
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: the physical world. The only thing I want to add,
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Tommy is like this foreign policy, they have no way
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: out of the dumb where they start in Iran. They've
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: got no plan for how to deal with this. They're
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: giving away a nuclear weapon or nuclear program to Saudi Arabia,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: or maybe they're not. No concept of how to wind
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: on the Ukraine War, Like what are we doing? You know,
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: I mean, like I guess Marco Rubio can text Elsa
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Rodrigez in Venezuela about her media appearances like this is
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: a catastrophic failure of their entire farm policy on their terms,
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: Like the things that they say they want to achieve,
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: they're just doing the opposite.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: The thing that I've been trying to figure out. So
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: there was this great piece that's worth reading. I think
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: it's by Graham Wood in the Atlantic that was kind
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: of like what's up with al Qaeda? You know where,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: like you know what, twenty twenty five years after nine
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: to eleven? Are they weaker? Are they stronger? Are they
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: biting their time? Like why by what metric do you judge?
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: You know, because there have been no catastrophic attacks on
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: the US homeland with the exception well, no, there was
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: nine to eleven right then, there were basically no A
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Kaida attacks on the US homeland except for in twenty
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen when that Saudi pilot in Florida shot like three people.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: But it was sort of a blip on the radar
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: compared to how terroritsm He's usually covered in discussed, and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: there was a bunch of analysts trying to figure out
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: like what the deal is with terrorism generally, and I
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: think it made me think about this conflict and whether
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: the Palestinian issue is still going to be a driver
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: of extremism in the way that it's been in the past,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: whether leaders like Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salmon in Saudi
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Arabia clearly just not giving a fuck about Gaza or
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the Palestinian people will impact things, and whether this could
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: just kind of like annexation in the West Bank could
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: become complete over the next couple of years, Gaza could
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: just be occupied forever. I'm just like wondering when there
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: will be blowback from that and where it will come from. Obviously,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: that's like trying to preck the future.
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a lot of pressure in the system, and
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: because if you look at the things that could happen
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: in the next you know, year two, given the way
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: things are going, you could have this kind of re
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: escalation of the war and iron at any point you
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: could have a concerted effort to annex the West Bank,
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: or you could have like an intofada in the West
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: Bank that turns that into more of a conflict zone
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: that gets very dangerous and potentially deadly. You could have
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: like pent up you know, Arab spring type uprisings. I mean,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: each and Jordan are not in the most stable place,
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Like you could have this Russia Ukraine war escalate either
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: in that theater or somewhere else, the Chinese in Taiwan. Like,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: there's all these pots that are like, you know, boiling
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: and like beginning to spill over a little bit. And
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: it does worry you that, hey, what's the thing that
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: could happen that just tips this into kind of seeming chaos.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: I mean, because we're already kind of there if you
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: look at the Iron War.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's it's like a steady state level of
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: violence and uncertainty and instability that would be kind of
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: unimaginable a decade ago. But you're yes, that's right. It's
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: just crazy that there is a massive, like hot war
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: between the Russians in Ukraine that's just been going on
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: for four years, and the Iran War have not been
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: going on for so long. With you just the backdrop, Well,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: one of those pots that's kind of seeming to boil
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: over right now is in Yemen.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it's a good one. Yeah, Yeah, we got
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: the Huthis.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: And then there's the internationally recognized Saudi Arabia backed Yomeni government.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: The UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, warned last
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Friday that quote Yemen today faces a greater risk of
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: renewed large scale conflict than at any point since the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: UN brokeer Truce of April twenty twenty two. As we've
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: discussed on the show, that that truce was broken when
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the Saudis attacked Sannat Airport ahead of this flight that
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: was arriving from with a Huthi delegation in it from
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: the Supreme Leader of Iran's funeral. The Huthi's retaliated, they
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: announced a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: and since then there's been this tit for tat, where
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: cheated up last week when at least thirty people were
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: killed in Huthi attacks on Yemeni military basis during some
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: morning training event. Also on Tuesday, Yemeni sources told Reuters
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: that the Houthis hit a Tanzanian flagged ship in the
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Babaman dev straight killing six people. And so what is
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: so worrisome about these isolated events is that the civil
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: war in Yemen was so catastrophic, you know, it was
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty two, I think nearly
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: four hundred thousand people were killed, most of them civilians,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: many of them from starvation or disease. And it could
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: easily start back up again if you know, some red
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: line has crossed, either for the Houthis or the Saudis,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and it feels like we're kind of dancing up to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: that red line.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because we've seen these strikes by the Saudis and
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: these actions by the Huthis. And this is a good
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: example of the fact that part of what's happened as
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: the UN system that resolves conflicts has been weakened, but
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: also as there's been and this anticipates some of our
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: upcoming topics too, the normalization of violence.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: Right that if you're sitting.
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: In Riod or Abu Dhabi or Jerusalem or Washington, you know,
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: what's happening in Sudan is just it's just happening, and
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: we don't really have to do anything to stop it.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Or the situation obviously in the in Gaza or in
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: southern Lebanon, or the situation in Ukraine, like you get
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: to the state where you know, a reversion to a
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: conflict that could kill tens of thousands of people in
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: this place, hundreds of thousands of people is happening in
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: so many places that it's like, oh, you know, you're
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: just kind of watching in soil motion and doing very
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: little other than you know, having a U and N
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: boy put out these statements. But the problem is, first
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: of all, the human suffering they would ensue, and also,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: like all as we talked about, like you're beginning to
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: feel all these conflicts merge into one. So the Yemen
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: thing sparks up again, It's going to interact with the
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Iran war, oh for sure, and it could impact red
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Zea shipping, and it could kind of become one big
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: theater where everybody's kind of fighting in different places and
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: and and this is, man, it's like watching a bunch
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: of different you know, to use a Southern California analogy,
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: like fire is burning and if they come together, you know,
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: that's that's how you get something you can no longer contain.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: And we're kind of already teetering there and just have
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: this tolerance, you know, because I don't have a lot
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: of hope that like Mark Arubio, State Department has a
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: big plan to kind of avoid a reverge into war
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: and Yemen.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: No, not at all. Well, another one is conflicts, as
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: you said of like just the sort of normal as
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: a russo getting used to just horrific levels of violence
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: has been sued in Sudan has been ravaged by civil
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: war for four years. It's a conflict between the Sudanese
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: government and a rebel group called the RSF. It's very
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: difficult to know the true death toll of the war
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: because it's just so hard to get there, but there
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: are estimates into the several hundred thousand, and then between
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: fourteen and fifteen million are believed to have been displaced,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: most internally, but some across the border into Chad. The
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: war is worsened and been prolonged because the UAE, the
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: United Arab Emirates, has been funneling weapons to the RSF,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the rebel group, which brings us to this hero in London,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: who is I guess, just walking down the street when
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: he spotted Mohammad bin Rashid al Maktoum, who is the
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: UAES Prime Minister. He's also the ruler of Dubai. He's
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: just strolling around London with his massive entourage. And so
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: let's watch the clip of what unfolded.
• 32:05
  Speaker 6: Your people.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: So you can see there's just one guy. This is
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: clip was posted I think by Middle East Tides. It's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: one guy, this entourage of like fifty people with this
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Emaradi royal. Uh. It's a little hard to hear, but
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: he's yelling, you're killing Sudanese Emaradi's and uae, they're killing
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Sudanese people, and a member of the Prime Minister us
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: prime Minister's entourage responds, fuck you and fuck your people, motherfucker,
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: black bitch. He then crosses the street to menace the
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: man ben. I do wonder if things would be different
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: if Amaradi, you know, cost benefit analysis of supporting the
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: RSF would change if more officials were treated like this
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: in places like Washington instead of being invited to the
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: White House or Cafe Milano a nice meal.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is entirely the case that this EMORAATEI support
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: for the RSF, which is well documented, has at a
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: minimum contributed significantly to the levels of violence and loss
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: of life.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: Inside of Sudan. And I have to say, like there's
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: been a pass on this.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Number one, because the Amortis have a lot of friends,
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: they have a lot of resources. I think number two
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: they did the Abram records, so it's kind of like, hey,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: we did this thing, you like, you know, don't look
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: at this other thing we're doing.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: But I think that, like the takeaway, I.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Pay a lot of bribes. I mean, they're giving the
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Trump family a love cash.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: Well two billion dollar investment in in their in their crypto.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they bought half of a business that didn't yet
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: exists for I think five hundred million five million. Was
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: it a pretty good deal?
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and and other commitments. You know, these
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: commitments they make to god knows what, we don't know,
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: trillions of dollars in the US.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: Oh, they bought two billion worth the one of the
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: m Royty firm bought two million billion worth of Trump coin.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: That's what I use, like the Trump stable coin and
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: an investment. It's a finance and crypto firm.
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: So the other thing though, that's interesting me about this
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: is you do get this sense that the gap between
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: powerful people and accountability has just been growing the last
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: ten years. Right, So to take your tenure to kind
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: of step back day that the difference between what was
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: kind of tolerable in terms of conflict and violence and
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: loss of civilian life has somehow really opened up in
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: the last ten years, and there's a sense that powerful
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: people are not accountable. And I think what you're seeing
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: increasingly is stuff like this happening. You know, like people
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: are so frustrated and they feel like they have no outlet,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: you know, and you go to a place like a
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: loton and all these people hang out in London and
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: they and You're right, like, I think discomfort beginning to
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: show up in front of people is like that's just
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: going to keep happening because people can see what going
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: on in the world, they see that nobody seems to
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: be held accountable for it, and they also see by
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: the way nobody even feels kind of bad about it,
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: you know, like their reaction wasn't to be like you know, no,
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: we're not doing that, or it's been like shut the
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: fuck up, you know. And it's that mentality that I
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: think is just the powder keg is just going to
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: keep getting more and more pressure inside of it.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: When it's like the most shameless proxy war stuff you've
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: ever heard of. It's like the Amorti gold down there. Yeah,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: they're supporting the RSF. They're giving the RSF drones which
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: they're using to massacre civilians because the RSF has access
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: to the like gold mines. Yeah, that is some gross shit.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah yep, and gold's you know, doing well because people
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: don't trust currencies because they trust their governments and all.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: This stuff is kind of connected to basically powerful people
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: wrecking things and hoarding power and resources, and ordinary people
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: feeling that they have less outlets to express themselves, so
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: they end up just like shouting at people in the
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: street in London, you know there.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: For that, we salute you, sir. Speaking of powerful people
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: wrecking things, let's talk about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: You might remember Pistol Pete from his Fox News days
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: drunk Guy on the Weekends. Now he's in charge of
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: America's nukes and of its wars, which maybe why the
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: latter's not going so well. A couple of stories about
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: Pete the catter Eye, so we'll tick through these first.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: The New York Times did an analysis of military promotions
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: under Hegseth and found that he really really hates promoting
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: women and people of color. The Times found quote eight
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: of two hundred and one candidates for high ranking posts
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: this year have been women, or four percent, less than
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: half the average percentage of the past ten years. The
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: largest drop offs have come from the Navy and Air Force.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: In July, the Times reported that Hegseth recently blocked the
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: promotions of seven senior Navy officers, five of whom are
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: women or people of color, to the two star admiral rank.
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: This also comes after Hegseth fired a bunch of senior
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: women and black officers, including the chairman of the Joints
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Chiefs who was fired literally for filming one video about
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: what it was like to be black in America. Then
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: this just strikes me as.
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: Well.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: They also looked at the lower ranks where that where
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: he Seth is not part of the promotions process, and
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: there are a lot more women and people of color
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: are coming up. But it does feel like he Seth
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: is creating like a general generational problem within the military
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: by promoting only white men for this period.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the alarming thing about he Seth are
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: there are a lot of them. One of the alarming
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: things about Hegseth.
• 37:28
  Speaker 4: Versus Trump's first term Secretary of Defense or.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: War is that he's clearly trying to remake the military
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: and magaz image, Like he's trying to turn the United
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: States military into kind of an extension of mega political
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: interest and a reflective of the MAGA worldview, which is
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: pretty white and male, right. And the problem for that is, well, one,
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: it's wrong and unfair to people who are being overlooked
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: for promotions. Two, I worry that that's so that the
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: military will be more likely to follow more extreme orders
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: as the Trump administration goes on, so that by the
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: time you get to year three, in year four and
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: we're coming back at Greenland or we're coming back at
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: you know, deploying troops in American Center the streets, right, Yeah,
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you know, they've got a slightly
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: more likely group of people to do that.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: And then the last piece is what's going to be left.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: At the end.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: You know, like you're going to come in and you're
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: gonna have this kind of mag of military and you know,
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: rebuilding cohesion and a force that is representative of the
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: United States will will be hard to do after all
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: this wrecking.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: You're not Gonvilla, just like bring these people back right,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: They're gonna have lives and families and things going on.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: It's just not how the process works. The second story
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: that catter Eye was we've talked a bunch of times
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: about this critical shortage of US weapons and munitions thanks
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: to the war and Iran. A lot of it is
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: like interceptor missiles, but there's also offensive weapons. Apparently Trump
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: finally learned about this issue too, and The Washington Post
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: reported that he screamed at Hesset during a meeting at
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Camp David, so Hexath did whatever he leader does. He
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: blamed his deputy, who then wrote arm suppliers a letter
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: basically telling them they had twenty one days to figure
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: it out. When all of this leaked, Trump posted a
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: message calling the report both false but also treasonous, which
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: it can't be both. But I mean, it's just luck.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: We've talked about this enough. We don't need to belabor it.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: But if Trump really did just learn that this was
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: a problem and their response was to write a letter
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: like it just shows how fucked we are because the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: timeline for making some of these weapons is literally years,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: and there's no way to change that in the short term.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it just shows that because you and I are
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: on some text threads with you know, former national security types,
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: anybody who follows any of this stuff. Within the first
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: three weeks of this war was like, oh shit, yeah,
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: we're going to run out of munitions. And so if
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: Trump is behind like every text thread that I'm on,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: you know, like by six months, like that's a little alarming.
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: It is also the case that you yeah, as you said,
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: you can just like fire off the thing like replete,
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: You'll replenish our patriot missiles Like that takes years to do,
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: not twenty one days. Hegsat passing the buck, not surprising
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: there at all. And again like to be a bit
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: of a natural security person here Russia and China, like
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: they're looking around, We're like, oh, the US doesn't have
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: anything left, you know, like this might be the time
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: to escalate in Ukraine or to take a whack at
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Taiwan because there's literally nothing that they could do.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: That's a very real concern.
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: Or if this thing with Iran escalates, as they've already demonstrated,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: they can fire it everywhere we are in the Middle East,
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: and we just don't have enough defensive munitions to protect
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: things anymore.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in order our golf allies. The irony of all
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: of this is well, not really iron It's that a
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: lot of Trump administration officials oppose support to Ukraine because
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: they were worried about this kind of critical munitions shortage.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Now we went to war with Iran, which is making
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: it exponentially worse.
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: And that's the thing.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: And I wouldn't let them to blame the Ukraine thing,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: because let's be very clear, if you look at the
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: numbers of defensive munitions we've used in the Iran w
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: or as against what we gave Ukraine, Like what the
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: crisis has been caused by a dumb war hunter.
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: We could have weathered the choice.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Third, the Guardian had a report about corruption at
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: the Pentagon, specifically the appointment of venture capitalists Mark and
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: Dresen and then failed Senate candidate Blake Masters to the
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Pentagon's Defense policy board, some board that kind of like oversees.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: It's like a sounding board for Pentagon for a HEXAFT.
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: But it gets you good access, it gets you in
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: the door there.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: For sure. Both have links to Donald Trump Junior's investment firm,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine Capital. They also have ties to big
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: defense contractors and companies like Androl and SpaceX ungodly numbers
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: of investments on their own, so no conflict of interest there.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: It does feel like we're at the point of the
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: kind of corruption cycle where everyone sees the President United
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: State it's like gorging himself at the trough and they're
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: running up to try to like catch one of his
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: scraps in their mouth.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, if we talk about the personnel version
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: of remaking the Pentagon, this is the you know, a
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: half dollars budget version of remaking it, which is by
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: the time year and year four the Trump administration. The
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: I mean this is there's limitless coruption available because if
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: you have a trillion plus dollar budget and you can
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: just do these massive contracts, you know, you can do
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: it with Don Junior's company. You can do it with
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: Silicon Valley oligarchs that you like, like andresen It also
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: like Spotlights. We should come back on this defense tech
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: issue because the new defense contractors are the Silicon Valley people,
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: you know, as systems are shifting to AI and autonomous weaponry,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: it's less lockeyed. Martin and Boeing they're still around, obviously,
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: but it's it's more, you know, and Marco and Driesen.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: He's one of these guys who like founded Netscape. Congratulations.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: Does that mean you know how to be the defense supplier?
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: These guys think that they get as portable there.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: You know Ember when he was kind of a lib
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: and he was on super online, which is like tweet
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: all day, and then I think his firm made a
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: massive bet on crypto. Democrats kind of came out against crypt.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: And he became anti woke. He became anti woke, and.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he tweeted something about how colonization was
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: good for India. Yeah, and got hammered for it and didn't.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Like getting dragged mad because these guys he has like
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: he's one of these silk and Valley of guys with
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: like the thinnis skin imaginable.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm waiting for the bad guys to start losing, Like, yeah,
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: it's coming, I can feel it building. No, it's hope. Finally,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Wired had the remarkable story that caught our eye. So
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: in May, a METAVAC plane carrying two pilots and two
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: nurses on a routine thirty minute flight in New Mexico
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: crashed into the side of a mountain and an accident
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: linked to military conducted GPS jamming exercises in the area.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Leading up to the crash, the Air Force was doing
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: an event where it brought together all of its electronic
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: warfare units for these two weeks of exercises, including units
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: to test technologies to block GPS. Tragically, this METAVAC flight
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: had its GPS blocked as it was trying to land
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: in the dead of night in the middle of a
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: desert and they hit a mountain. Like, we don't know,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: it was just a horrible story. We don't really know
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: the backstory and whether like incompetence played a role here
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: or if you could tie this to hexcept in any way.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: But Jesus Christ, how does this happen?
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: But what you also know is that there's not transparency
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: about these kinds of events, right, It's like secret. And
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: so if you're gonna stack up these things you've got
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: in petex at the guy that is like promoting white
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: people and trying to bring MAGA people in the military,
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: who's burning through our munitions in a dumb war, who
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: is like facilitating rampant corruption and military contracting, and is
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: running the least transparent Pentagon of my life, kicking people
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: out of the briefing room and not sharing information about stuff,
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: and like that's why these things go together. It just
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: shows the depth of the rot at like an agency
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: that is the most powerful USS government.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, well said.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Hot Tap.
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• 48:22
  Speaker 1: and conditions may apply. All right, Let's turn to Ukraine
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: because a couple weeks back we talked about this surprising
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian airstrike or probably a drone strike on a Russian
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: business called wild Berries. Wildberries is basically the Amazon of Russia.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: You can buy anything there, it's e commerce. The first
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: strike on this Wildberries warehouse created a cloud of smoke
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: that was reportedly so large that you could see it
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: from space. It's a lot of stuff burning. But this
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: campaign against wild Berries it did not end there. Foreign
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: Policy Magazine and the New York Times did great pieces
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: on all of this I'm going to draw from liberally
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: in this section. They found that in the past month
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: or so, at least twenty three wild Berries facilities have
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: been hit by Ukraine, and nine wild Berries employees have
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: been killed. This Moscow based organization called Data Insight, estimates
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: that wild Berries has lost up to one third of
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: its warehouse space and nearly six billion dollars in goods,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: And that's a big deal if you're an average Russian,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: because more than half of the people in Russia use
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: wild berries once a month, and tens of millions of
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Russians use it multiple times a week. So the service
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: being disrupted just has a big impact on ordinary people's lives,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: and it brings the war home in a way that
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Ukraine hasn't managed to do previously, to like sort of
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: the Russian populace. But the strikes may also have a
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: material impact on the battlefield. So the FP the foreign
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: policy piece, dug into a bunch of detail about how
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Russian soldiers use wild berries for supplies. The Russian military,
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: I think, can be quite incompetent when it comes to
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: resupplying guys at the front, so soldiers will end up
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: buying stuff for themselves, or they are these kind of
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: like ad hoc groups that raise money and donate supplies
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: to them and have it delivered via wildberries. Until recently,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: the Wildberry site had a dedicated section called Everything for
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: THEO SVO stands for a Special Military Operation. You could
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: buy items like or you still can buy items, but
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: they were like sort of bucketed in this section, stuff
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: like body armour, drone components, fins for grenades. The list
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: goes on and on. This reporter who did the peace
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: for Foreign Policy, Alexei Kovolev, said he counted one thousand
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: items that were military use, only in about forty five
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: hundred that could be considered dual use. He also said
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: that they were like, you know, you can find Russian
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: military bloggers talking about how important wild Berries is to
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: guides at the front. So Ben, I think these strikes
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: raised some interesting questions about civilian versus military targeting and
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: what's appropriate under international law. A target becomes legitimate when
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: it's providing a military vanish to your enemy, and destroying
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: it would create a definite military advantage for you. I
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: think the Ukrainians argued that the extent of military hardware
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: on the Wildberry site makes it a pretty easy call.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: I think they'd also point out that Russia's bombed shit
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: out of a Nova Poshta, which is a Ukrainian delivery company.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: They're also I think honest though, the Ukrainians when that
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: part of it is psychological warfare. The commander of Ukraine's
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: drone force said, the strikes we're about destroying quote the
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: illusion of a comfortable peace time. So Ben, it's interesting,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: like these are obviously slippery slope arguments. Walmart and Bass
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: Pro Shop saw a lot of guns, including the service members.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I wonder how people would feel about those suddenly getting
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: bombed by an adversary in a war. But I do
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: feel like in this specific case Ukraine, their argument is
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: pretty compelling. But I don't know what you made of it.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: I find the whole thing worrisome.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: Look, I understand the Ukrainian mentality, like we need to
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: get any advantage we can. These guys make no, you know,
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: distinction between a very limited distinction between civilian and military targets,
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: and so they're ratcheting it up. And so there we
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: saw them hitting energy infrastructure inside of Russia. Now we're
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: seeing them hit this Understand why they're doing it. I
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: think they're blurring the lines because I think it's probably both. Yet,
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: as you point out, it's like, sure, there's some military uses,
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: it's also more like we have to bring the war
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: home to the Russian people. If the Russian people don't
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: feel the impact of this war, nothing's going to change,
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: which is a logical conclusion, but that is.
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: A slippery slope. And it's both the slippery slope.
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: To you know, getting further and further away from clearly
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: military targets. But what I worry about again is this
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: escalation point that keeps coming up today. You know, the
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: Russians could say, well, the Ukrainians get a lot of
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: supplies from Europe, and so maybe we should start drone
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: attacks on warehouses in Poland.
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: Germany, or if you you decided, well you have to
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: feed your soldiers, so what if we blew up every
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: grain depot?
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so I just you know, the irony is
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: that for all the hand handed, stupid diplomacy at the
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: beginning of the Trump administration on the war like it
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: would actually now would be a good time to be
• 53:02
  Speaker 3: trying to walk, you know, the Russians and the Ukrainians
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: back from what feels like a potential escalation cycle that
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: could get harrier and harrier.
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: And you don't feel that happening.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: And so I think this will give the Ukrainians some advantage,
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: but I have to think that Putin will find some
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: way to escalate and return and then we're just kind
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: of keep going on this spiral the world.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: And again it's another example of the kind of there
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: are these little escalatory steps happening all the time, and
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: they almost get brushed off. Now, like I think Moldova
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: said that a Russian drone had landed on Moldovan soil
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: that could trigger Article five.
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, There's this report that US intelligence believe Russia was
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: behind an attack on a German airport. There was a
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: drone loaded with explosives that I think was targeting a
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Ukrainian cargo plane at like in Leipzig, in Germany. So
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: just it's pretty scary stuff. There's a NATO intel report
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: that I think leaked that suggested Russia might try an
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: attack of some kind, maybe hybrid or maybe cyber on
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: a NATO ally in the coming years to kind of
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: test the alligned.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: That's what i'd watch I mean, the thing I would
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: watch for, to be constructive only in terms of what
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: to watch for is this is like reprisals getting into
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: Europe because the same logic, and again let's be very clear,
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: Russia is the aggressor here. Ukraine has our sympathy because
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: they are being entrepreneurial in their defense. At the same time,
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: it is what it is, and I think that the
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: Russians could decide we got to bring this war into
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: Europe under the same logic that they're the ones backfilling
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: the Ukrainians.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Speaking of threats to Europe. A couple of months back,
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: we covered this pretty wild story about Jared and Ivanka
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Trump claiming they discovered an island in the Mediterranean off
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: the coast of Albania. Levanca told the story like it
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: was kind of a real estate and meet cute, but
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: really it was just like a love story about colonization.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: Ever since, on the Rothschild's yacht.
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: On the Child, that's when they discovered. They swim up
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: the barren islands.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Walk to the top of the mountain barefoot. Everyone's like,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: it's not barren, it's a fucking wildlife the earth. So
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: they cut this sweetheart deal with the Prime Minister of
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: Albania to try to develop this area. Ever since, there
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: have been massive protests of the deal of the development
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: of the region, which have been dubed the Flamingo Revolution
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: by locals because there's a bunch of endangered flamingo species
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: that would be impacted by the construction. The Wall Street
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: Journal added some incredible reporting to this firestorm over the weekend.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: The journal says that the development group that Jared Kushner
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: is backing paid over one hundred and twenty million dollars
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: to a man named Arthur our Tour. I don't know.
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: He's a gangster who gets our tour Shay Who for
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: the land that they're trying to develop. But there were
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: a couple of small issues with that. First of all,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Shay who may not legally own the land. The villagers
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: who live there say they saw Jared's ai rendering of
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: what this resort would look like, realized it was on
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: top of their village, and then reached out to say, hey,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: this dude stole it from us back in two thousand.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: So that's the problem number one. Problem Number two is
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: that Chay Who is an alleged gangster in drug tre Africa.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: This guy might be kind of overseeing gangs that are
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: leading to people going in boats in the Caribbean. That
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth has then drone strike now so that's cool.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: And then finally back in June, Albania's corruption office got
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: in order to arrest sha Who for money laundering and racketeering.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: He currently lives in Miami because he fled Albania because
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: he was involved in like a shootout at a bar,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: maybe with a rival gang. So ben great reporting here
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: by the Wall Street Journal. I'm not remotely surprised that
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Jared Kushner is kind of like in cahoots with a
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: mobster in Albania since his father in law acts like one,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: and actually his father acts like one too, remember set
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: up his own sister in a sting operation. But crazy story.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: This story is so important because every single trend in
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: the world that people are pissed about kind of converges
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: in it. You know, like oligarchs calling shots like Jared
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: Kushner doing real estate deals, environmental degradation, like life not
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: getting better for people while these deals are done over
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: their heads. The reality is like, I just don't see this.
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry for Jordan and I Vanka. I just I
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: can't see this thing coming to fruition. But it seems
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: like this tapped into a level of disconnect discontent with
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: the Albanian public. But also just it does make you
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: wonder imagine if we had like a correct anti corruption
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: unit a DJ, like what are the nature of these
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: deals that are being made by Jared and the Trump
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: family around the world. How many people are there like
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: this gangster on the other end of them, Like like
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: what like because there's so little I mean when you
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: think about the like Colonosco be done to like every
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: business transaction Hunter Biden was ever involved in versus this stuff, Like.
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is insane.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: This has to be like literally number one on the list.
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: Message to Democrats after you win knock on wood and
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: hopefully get certified knock on wood. This corruption has to
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: be do not wait, please daily dive ins subpoenas, do
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: independent investigations, do whatever you have to do.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Subpoena. Kushner subpoena, has business partner subpoena, the banks subpoena,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: like the partners, like all of it. Day one. Yeah,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: don't wait, please God, don't wait again.
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: You want to put Marik Garland on this case.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Jesus Chris, what's that guy up to? You think? Just wallowing?
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: He just know he's just abiding my norms wherever he is.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, feeling good about himself. Two more quick things. So first,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: it's just worth mentioning that the Ebola outbreak that we've
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: talked about a couple of times the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: And then some parts of Fuganda. It's now the second
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: largest in history and the fastest growing on record. The
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Congolese government published some data on Tuesday showing that death
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: counts now surpassed two thousand, and there's over four thousand
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: additional confirmed cases. We say confirms probably a lot of
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: cases they don't know about. There's a lot of problems
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: that make this a harder outbreak. There's no vaccine for
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: this particular strain of abola. The outbreak is happening in
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: places where there is like ongoing warfare and very little
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: health infrastructure, and there's lots of evidence that the virus
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: is breading in the community and not being tracked. I
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: saw one health center found that ninety percent of their
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: patients were not kind of registered anywhere else. They were
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: just new people, which suggests that there's a lot of
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: transmission just happening in life. The Director General of the
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: African CDC also express concern this week that the virus
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: might be mutating. So other than that it's going good,
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: it's one to bring this up because it feels very scary.
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: It's a great example of a problem that the White
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: House is just I don't think i've heard them talk
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: about it or even pretending to try to.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: Solve well, because the chief instrument for solving the Ebola
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: epidemic in twenty fourteen was UCID, which doesn't exist, And
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: the chief international organization that we work with to solve
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: that epidemic was the World Health Organization, which the United
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: States has pulled out of, so they don't even have
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: the levers to try to deal with it. And this
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: is one of those issues. It's horrible for the people impacted.
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: And it's also the case that even when this shows
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: up in the United States, people are going to freak
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: the fuck out and not really understand why it's happened
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: like it's happened because we've dismantled the mechanisms that we
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: have to deal with it. So things like this tragically
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: happen in the world. But as is the case with
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: like conflicts, we don't have a UN system that works.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: We don't really have an international global public health infrastructure,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: which after COVID is pretty remarkable terrifying.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and everyone is even more distrustful of that official
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: vaccines Fauci.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah about Fauci, but we won't talk about ebola.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: You know. Great. Finally, Ben I want to see if
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: you can spot what's wrong with Canadian politician Bill Oliver's
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: speech to the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. This speech
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: is from June, but the clip kind of made the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: rounds last week. Let's play that one of.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 7: The dangers associated with creating advocacy offices is that citizens
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 7: often develop expectations that exceed the powers actually granted.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: To those offices.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 7: Here's a more natural, flowing version of that section that
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 7: reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 7: short points. Madam speaker.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: One of my concerns with.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 7: This legislation is a potential gap between what New Brunswickers
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 7: may reasonably expect this office to accomplish and what the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 7: office will actually have the authorities to do once it
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 7: is established.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, so, as you could see there, like when he
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: copied it over from chat GBT or whatever claude he
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: left in the AI's framing of his remarks, but he
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: didn't just do it once. A few minutes later he
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: also read out quote, here's a more developed and flowing
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: version of the same section, and after that he started
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: to read another one, before catching himself and seeing excuse me,
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: so oliver OUs Thins responded, saying, quote, during the spring
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: session of the legislature, I employed AI to help prepare
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: speaking notes. When printing the final version of my speech,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: AI prompts were not removed which were spoken by me
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: and has caused much concern of many individuals. He says
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: he learned an important lesson. Then a couple questions here
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: as a former speech writer, how stupid do you have
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: to be to anchor man yourself? Not once, not twice,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: but three times in forty minutes. That's question one? And
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: question two? What percentage of politicians do you think have
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: just fully outsourced speech writing to AI? At this point?
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: This is the thing is first of all, reading the prompts.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: It does suggest that I always tell people that it was.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: One of the reasons was useful that Barack Obauma actually
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: like read and edited his speeches is because he wasn't
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: reading them for the first time in delivery.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: Right and like you have Trump like he reacts to himself,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: He's like, so yeah, yeah, Like well, that's.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: The thing you can tell when a politician is kind
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: of reading something for the first time. Now he gives
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: away the game and I'm surprised. He doesn't have there like,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: would you like me to develop a five point plan
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: for how you can become a better you know, legislator. Yeah,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: But then the bigger problem is beyond the fact that
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: this is confirming like what people are scared about with AI,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: it's also kind of confirming what people are scared about
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: with their politicians, which is that if you can just
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: stand up there and do your job by reciting AI
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: produced text, what are you like? What what is your
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: what is your what are you bringing in particular to this?
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: Right? Well? Oh like you're like, literally, look, everything we
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: all do is derivative, right, Like the words I'm saying
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: right now are derivative of my life's experience and things
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: I read to prepare for this show and stuff I
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: learned in the Obama days whatever. But it does feel
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: like with AI, it's literally just like hanks of texts
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: fed into a machine that kind of like blends them
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: together and spits out something new, but that is entirely
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: derivative of whatever it was trained on. If no human
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: beings are having new ideas or political thoughts this statement.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: It's like what happens organic book plug right, because having
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: done like you always say and looking at the history
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: of political speech in this country. You know, one of
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: the things is very clear to me is that the
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: thing that makes someone pay attention to what a politician
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: is saying is when you say something that sounds different, like, oh,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: here's a hard truth I haven't heard before, or here's
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  Speaker 3: an argument that is different from what I've heard before,
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  Speaker 3: or here's just you know, I was just profiled your doppelganger,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: Rob sand in Iowa.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: Like he's got like this style.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: He's not Barack Obama, but it's like very Rob sand
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: it's his earnest, it's him, you know. And I think
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: part of what scares people about politicians is that they
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: think that they're completely replaceable, that essentially it doesn't really
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: matter who you elect, because they're just going to read
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: the same talking points and you know, reward the same
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: special interest and operate in the same system. And this
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: is the worst version of what people are afraid of.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: I would imagine that a lot of politicians are using
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: AI because it's a shortcut. But what AI produces is
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: like literally the definition of the lowest common denominator, Like
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: what should a Canadian legislator who's you know, from this
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: region say about X issue and it spits it out like, well, okay,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: I'm glad that you have a machine that can look
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: at a bunch of texts on the Internet and decide
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: what to say. But that's not what people vote for
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: people to do for them, and so I caution against
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: you know, yeah, I use AI for research or you know,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: get some feedback, but you got to write your.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: Own fucking tech.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: We're also just like, we're not far away from someone
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: recommending that AI agents actually govern us. That's the next step,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: because it's like a fever dream. And also someone's going
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: to propose.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: To use what's the difference, And I'm sure that would
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: make you know, you know, Mark Andresen happy.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, inter Reason will be pumped. He would love that.
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  Speaker 1: He loved nothing more cool future we got going on here.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: All right, We're going to take a quick break when
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: we come back here and to hear Ben's interview with
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: Richard Horsey about all the things happening in Myanmar. So
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  Speaker 3: All right, I'm very pleased to welcome back to Pod
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: Save the World.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: Richard Horsey.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Richard is the Senior Advisor for Asia at the International
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: Crisis Group, where he has along led their work on
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: Me and mar Richard, thanks so much for joining us.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: That's great to be on Ben.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: So part of what we wanted to do here is
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: catch people up with what's been happening in Me and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: Marty is a phrase, and so for people that have
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: not been following this closely, you'll remember that in twenty
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: twenty one there was a military coup which overturned the
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: kind of nascent democratic reform movement in Burma and imprisoned
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: Don Sung Suchi, the elected state councilor. And since then
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: there's been a civil war in which over one hundred
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: thousand people have died. There are millions of people who
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: are displaced, There's malnutrition and hunger across the country. Just
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: to site of recent report the Moditoring Group Armed Conflict
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: Location and Event Data noted that quote Me and mart
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: is the most fragmented conflict in the world, with over
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: two hundred distinct armed groups reported have been involved in
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: at least one violent event. Richard, I just I want
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: to ask, just how would you describe the current state
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: of play. This has kind of fallen off the radar
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: with everything that's happening around the world. I know that
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: the military has taken steps recently that we can talk
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: about to kind of entrench itself deeper in power, but
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: how would you describe the state of the civil conflict
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: and who's in control in me and more so.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 8: As you said, Ben, after the coup, there was just
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 8: this irruption, first in peaceful demonstrations and then when those
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 8: were brutally suppressed, just you know, huge swathes of the
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 8: country and particularly young people, took up arms, went to
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 8: more remote areas, fought back against the military, joined up
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 8: with long standing ethnic armed groups who've been fighting for
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 8: decades for greater autonomy. And this really led to you know,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 8: much of the country, perhaps more than half, perhaps much
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 8: more than that, falling out of state hands. This is
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 8: not a new phenomenon in Meammah, right. This is not
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 8: a country that was united and where the central government
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 8: has traditionally had control over all of its territory. You know,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 8: for eight decades since independence, Myamah has been fragmented, But
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 8: I think the situation we today is the most fragmented
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 8: that Miyamah has been over all of those decades. The
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 8: Miyama military has managed to stabilize the situation. If we
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 8: were talking two years ago, I think we'd have been
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 8: talking about can the military survive, will it collapse? Did
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 8: it face imminent battlefield defeat? But through the backing of
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 8: China diplomatically and militarily, through the military's own efforts to
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 8: improve its drone warfare, enforced conscription for the first time,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 8: it's managed to stabilize the front lines. But that's a
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 8: far cry from recovering all the territory it's lost, and
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 8: there are large parts of the country, including most of
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 8: the international borders, that are still not under central control.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: It seems like the military's been trying to kind of
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: seize on some of those gains you mentioned and kind
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: of confer a sense that its ultimate resilience, if not
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: ability to control the world country is. Since having a
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: kind of sham election earlier this year, you've seen Minang Lang,
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: who's the general who led the coup, who is now
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 3: the president of the country. You've seen him make these
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: diplomatic visits to China and India and Thailand and trying
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: to kind of send this message on you know, we're
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 3: back in from the cold. What is the state of
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: the ability of the military to kind of break its
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: international isolation in places like as on the Organization of
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 3: Southeast Asian Countries or drawing ads relationship with China, India?
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: Is that is that working?
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 8: So I think on min on Lyne's terms, he probably
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 8: feels he's won, but he's one enormous cost to the country.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 8: Of course, now winning on his terms means, you know,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 8: the coup was about removing on Sansuci, removing that democratic
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 8: experiment that you spoke about, putting the military back at
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 8: the center of politics and the economy.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: Let's not forget as well.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 8: And in those terms, I think he feels like, you know,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 8: after a shaky few years where this this coup could
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 8: have actually have failed, that he's managed to get through this.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 8: He's had these stage managed elections, he's now presenting himself
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 8: as a civilian elected leader, and some countries have accepted
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: that China has accepted it. Hi Jiping, you know, literally
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 8: embraced him in the Great Hall of the People a
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 8: few weeks ago, giving very clear backing. India has hosted
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 8: him on an official visit, and just a couple of
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 8: days ago, he was on an official visit to Thailand.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 8: So I think, you know, countries in the region are
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 8: making a calculation that Minong Laing and the Miyama military
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 8: probably aren't going anywhere. They weren't keen to reach out
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 8: to him. He was in you know, very strong diplomatic
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 8: isolation in the period where it looked like he may fall.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 8: But now that he's stabilized, now that he has China's
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 8: very visible backing, India's very visible backing, other countries are
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 8: making a calculation that these guys are going to be
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 8: around for a while, and we have things to discuss,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 8: we have issues, we have concerns. You know, we can't
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 8: keep them at arm's length. And you know, that hasn't
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 8: that hasn't broken kind of the West's general distaste for Memmah.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: But frankly, Western.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 8: Countries have far higher priorities and are not paying a
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 8: lot of attention these days to Myanmah and in the region.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 8: Some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 8: which miamh is a is a member country, are still
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: kind of considering that normal engagement with Miamar is distasteful
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 8: and premature. But at the end of the day, you know,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 8: they also want to focus on other things. They don't
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 8: want Meamma dominating their meetings and summits. And the feeling
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 8: is that after Thailand has has now hosted him, LAOS
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 8: has hosted him on a state visit, that it's probably
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 8: a matter of time before he will he will be back,
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 8: you know, at least in the region in normal diplomatic circles.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in some ways, it feels like or all the
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: way back to where things were, you know, before say
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: two thousand and ten or eleven. You know, there's this
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: kind of de facto engagement, even if it's unpleasant in
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: some ways. I want to ask a couple of questions
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: about then the opposition. The first is another story that
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: has been making around recently. Was concerned that Anksung Suchi
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: had not been seen in years, and there was kind
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: of a proof of life effort to kind of establish
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: that she was in fact alive and in custody, but
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: you know, there's not been access for her lawyers or
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 3: has not been any obviously media confirmation of her whereabouts.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: How would you describe the state of play as it
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: relates She's obviously very old. What do we know about
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: her conditions such as they are, and does she how
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: much does she still matter in the politics of the country,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: Like would her death be potentially galvanizing event that the
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: military might not want people to know about?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 4: Is that lurking in the backdrop here?
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 8: You know, the whole point of the coup for minong
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 8: Hian was to remove Onng Sansuci and her National League
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 8: for Democracy party from the political landscape. You know, this
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 8: was not just about him getting power. It was about
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 8: her being removed from any possibility of playing a political role.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 8: And that's why she's been kept almost totally in communicado
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 8: for these last five and a half years. That has
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 8: led to many concerns of her family, of her supporters,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 8: of the world at large. What is her situation? And
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 8: we know that for a time she was in very
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 8: austere conditions in Napi door prison, in a sort of
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 8: tin hut that got extremely hot in the hot season.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 8: And you know, for an old person with longstanding her
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 8: health issues, that's a concern. The military announced a few
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 8: months ago that she had been moved to a house
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 8: in the capitol Napi door, but there was no other information.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 8: In the last few days, the Red Cross has been
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 8: given access to her. So she met with the delegate
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 8: of the Red Cross in Myanmar, and photographs of that
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 8: meeting and a short statement from the ICRC have been released.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 8: So that is the proof of life that not only
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 8: her family were calling for, but also countries in the
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 8: region and even China was pushing for greater transparency over
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 8: her situation. And you know, there are a lot of
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 8: leaders in the region who are very.
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: Fond of Mong Sansucci. They worked with her for a
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: number of years.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 8: They were dismayed to see what happened after the coup.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 8: They feel a certain loyalty to her, and so this
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 8: is an important issue, you know, for the region as well.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 8: The demands that she'd be given access to the Asian
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 8: Special Envoy to other diplomats have been rebuffed, and I
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 8: think the ICRC choice was precisely to stop this becoming
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 8: a kind of constant demand from different diplomats. You know,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 8: while you gave access to the Philippines who were the
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 8: chair of the regional grouping why not next year give
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 8: access to Singapore the next incoming chair. It could have
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 8: led to this kind of demands to see her and
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 8: so on, and I think menong Lang did not want
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 8: to give her that kind of political role. So so
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 8: it was the Red Cross. There's the proof of life.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 8: She seems, you know from the photos, in reasonably good shape,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 8: and the Red Cross has had a chance to pass
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 8: message from her to her family. But that's that's basically it.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 8: She has no access to lawyers, she doesn't have access
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 8: for her personal doctor than maybe other doctors, seeing how
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 8: we don't know.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: And so with her kind of removed from the stage,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: as you know you mentioned, was menang Lang's one of
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: his intentions. How would you describe the state of the
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: organized opposition? You know, there was an umbrella group, kind
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: of an umbrella put over this constellation of actors after
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: the coup that included you know, elements of the NLD,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: the democratically elected party, you know, but also young people
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: and then all the ethnic arm groups that you mentioned too.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: How would you describe the state of that opposition?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: Is it?
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: Is it organized.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: Do they continue to have morale that they could somehow
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: prevail in this conflict, or are they just trying to
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: hold on to whatever territory they've got.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: What's your sense of it?
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 8: I mean, I think there's an overwhelming feeling across large
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 8: swathes of the country that the current situation is unacceptable,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 8: it's untenable. The military cannot be allowed to reinsert itself
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 8: at the heart of politics in the country. That the
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 8: reform period of a decade was far from perfect, but
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 8: was pointing in the right direction. And now, as you said,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 8: everything is pointing in the wrong direction. The clock has
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 8: been turned back a generation, not only politically back to
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 8: another closed authoritarian military regime, but economically as well. You know,
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 8: there's a lost generation of development of childhood, of childhood health, education.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: Of economic output.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 8: And so there is still a strong determination among many
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 8: different walks of life people I talk to, you know,
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 8: to to finish the revolution as they see it, But
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 8: that's looking like a very long term prospect. And just
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 8: as the country itself is highly fragmented, so too is
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 8: resistance and opposition to the military. You have very different
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 8: kinds of resistance. You have, as you say, the long
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 8: standing ethnic arm groups who really just want autonomy. They
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 8: don't care who's in control in the center. They just
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 8: want to have the ability to have a greater say
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 8: in their their own lives and their own affairs. There
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 8: is a young generation of politically active people, some who've
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 8: taken up arms, others who are resisting in non violent ways.
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 8: You know, the youth of the of the cities and
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 8: the heartland who are determined to have a different future.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 8: And you know, these people have different objectives in different
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 8: parts of the country, they have different strategies, so it
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 8: is very divided and that works to the military's advantage.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 8: After the coup, the government that was deposed established a
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 8: parallel government, the National Unity Government, with Osan Succi and
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 8: President meant Her nominee president at its head. The problem
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 8: with that is that in the midst of an armed
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 8: revolution which it backed, it was never quite clear whether
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 8: this National Unity Government was a government and was aiming
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 8: to be a government, or was a revolutionary organization aiming
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 8: to overthrow the military in naypy Door, and those kind
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 8: of two.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: Roles kind of clashed a little bit.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 8: And you know, I think there's a sense now that
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 8: a lot of the momentum has been lost, a lot
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 8: of the political momentum. There is more criticism of the
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 8: parallel government. You know, the revolution was so close to
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 8: succeeding and yet we failed.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: Where are the new ideas? Where is the new direction?
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 8: And the reality is that the opposition government with on
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 8: Sansucci at its helm, doesn't have leadership because if your
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 8: leader is incarcerated in communicado, you don't have someone who
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 8: is visible and there to kind of lead the charge.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 8: There is no Zelenski like figure because the Zelenski like
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 8: figure is on Sansuchi herself and she's in communicata. So
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 8: she remains incredibly important in that sense that she's the
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 8: sort of touchstone for everybody. She's not important in the
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 8: sense of leading things because she hasn't been able to
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 8: speak publicly since the coup. But I do think that
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 8: her death would be a trigger moment and something that
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 8: the military would be very concerned about. They don't want
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 8: her dying on their watch, in their in their custody.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 8: She still is the most influential political figure in the country,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 8: even after five years of incarceration and detention.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 3: One of the things that is that feels different to
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: me than the past. Is the role of the United States,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: the West whatever, you know, the United States and Europe.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: There was a lot of focus on Ank Sang Suchi
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 3: and democracy in Burma in the decades leader up to
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: that moment of reform that took place from around twenty
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: eleven until the coup. It feels like there's much more
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: disengagement now though, like you know, the Trump administration, I'm
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: not sure what their policy is. You know, so while
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: there's a familiar you know, try to backing the military
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: and some of the Southeast Asian countries being cozier, what
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: seems to be missing is is any sense that this
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: is even on the radar screen of the United States,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: or certainly not that there's a kind of pressure strategy
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: to to change the behavior of the government.
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, do you is there a role to play.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: For the United States, you know, recognizing the Trump administration
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: is probably not going to be that constructive. And are
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: there other interests too, because I noticed you know, these
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: recent reports too of a huge kind of a scam
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: economy emanating from me and mar The kind of proliferation
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: of this online criminality feels almost with Korean right that
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: this militay could just turn to like you know, crypto
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: and scams and other ills sices of income. Should that
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: compel greater concerned about what's happening here too?
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 8: I think absolutely. I mean, you know, we live in
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 8: a different world now right where we're quite inured to
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 8: human suffering, where the humanitarian system is broken and broke,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 8: to put it frankly, and where international relations is far
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 8: more transactional. And so that has been a huge problem
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 8: for people who've been trying to, you know, increase global
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 8: interest in what's happening in Mamma, try to drive policy
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 8: changes that could really have some effect.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: They're hitting brick walls, right. It's very hard to advocate for.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 8: Memma on humanitarian grounds when you have Gaza, you have Ukraine,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 8: and where you have frankly, not only in the US
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 8: but across the West, governments are much more concerned about
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 8: other issues closer to home, and I'm not focused on
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 8: on principles based foreign policy. So this is a huge challenge.
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 8: But it, as you say, Ma'ammar, demands attention, not only
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 8: because we should care about what's happening because of the
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 8: humanitarian costs, the human costs. It also matters because having
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 8: a failed state in the heart of Asia is a dangerous,
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 8: dangerous thing.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 8: Miyamar is the largest global source of synthetic methanthetiments, mostly
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 8: going to East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Australia
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 8: and New Zealand, and it's probably the largest current scam
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 8: center economy. Now, these are many of them in parts
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 8: of the country that the government doesn't have formal control over.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 8: But in many cases it's armed groups that it's somehow
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 8: allied with on the battlefield that are controlling the territory
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 8: near to the Thai border, mostly where these industrial scale
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 8: scam cities are growing up out of the paddi fields,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 8: and those are targeting people all around the world. So
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 8: who you know, Mawmar drugs may not be landing on
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 8: the streets of New York, but now my scam centers
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 8: are scamming tens of billions of dollars a year from Americans,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 8: They're targeting Europeans, They're targeting, you know, victims all around
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 8: the world. And this really matters, and it matters not
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 8: only as a criminal justice issue, but I think it
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 8: matters because the scale of this economy tens, possibly hundreds
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 8: of billions of dollars across Southeast Asia. These scam factories
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 8: they are developing, you know, dark financial systems, dark company
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 8: registration systems. North Korean money has been laundered over exactly
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 8: the same channels as the scam center money is being launded.
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 8: So this is a whole criminal ecosystem which is emerging,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 8: which is a threat to regional stability. It's a threat
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 8: to financial integrity in the region. We should be very
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 8: worried about that.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it just feels like you, I mean,
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 3: to be blunt, had this kind of gangster military running
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: a piece of this state with no regard for the
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: human rights. It's people purely in self survival mode and
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 3: willing to turn to kind of all manner of schemes
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 3: to enrich itself in what has to be an illicited economy.
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's in the heart of Southeast ASA. So
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: I just think there's a lot of reasons to care
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: about this. Well, I want to end on the human one,
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: which is I'm just curious, Richard. You know, I know
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: a lot of people from me and are from my
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 3: time working on it in more hopeful days, and it's
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 3: so sad to kind of hear you know, people are scattered,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: some people are out of the country. People in places
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: like Gangan have kind of gone to ground. On the
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: other hand, it is amazing. It's what you describe like
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 3: people are still talking about, you know, what lessons they
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: could have learned from what went wrong in the last
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: error of reform to get it right the next time.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: There's this kind of persistent, you know sense at some point,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 3: you know, the future will be different. I mean, what
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: give people a sense from your content of just what
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: the mood is like for more more normal people in
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 3: the country, you know, who are just trying to make
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 3: sense of this and trying to find some hope in
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: it all. How bad is it economically and politically, and
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: what is your sense of the remaining kind of hope
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: for the future.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 8: So in the main cities, you know, yangon Mandalay, I think,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 8: you know a lot of people are just kind of
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 8: traumatized by these last five years and what's happened by
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 8: the futures that they saw that were stolen from them.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 8: But at the end of the day, they have to
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 8: put food on the table, they have to feed their kids,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 8: they have to get their kids to school, and so
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 8: you know, in a situation of acute economic distress where
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 8: there's no jobs available, the economy is in decline, prices
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 8: are very high. You know, it's a daily struggle just
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 8: to make ends meet, and that that is what a
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 8: lot of people are focused on them. They don't have
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 8: many options.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 8: The options are you go to parts of the country
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 8: where the elicit economy is thriving because that's where the
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 8: money is, or you go into the you know, informal
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 8: labor migration routes very dangerous, you know, risks of tracking,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 8: risks of exploitation to Thailand, to the Gulf, to other
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 8: places to try and send money back home. And that's
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 8: how that's how people are coping. But what I take
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 8: hope from is that everyone I speak to is, you know,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 8: still has a vision of the of the memma that
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 8: they want. They have a vision of the country that
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 8: they saw a glimpse of ten years ago, and they
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 8: really still believe that that is.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: The direction they have to go in.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 8: And I think that, you know, this new young generation
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 8: is incredibly inspiring. They have put aside a lot of
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 8: the political divisions of the past, a lot of the
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 8: received wisdom about what kind of country Meamah was the racism,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 8: the division, and you know, they've come to they sort
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 8: of come together as a generation, not as a group
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 8: of Burman people or minority people or whatever. They've come
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 8: together as a generation. And I think that while that
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 8: may not be immediately successful in unseating a violent, brutal military,
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 8: it's a template for the future and it will resonate
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 8: in the future and when opportunities do arise.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: You know, what I hope is that it's that vision.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 8: It's that multi ethnic, multi religious, hopeful vision that will
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 8: dominate and not the sort of more narrow nationalisms that
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 8: we've seen exposed, you know, at certain times in the past.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: No, it's a great note to end on because you
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: do just get a sense that if this country were
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: allowed to reach its potential and the potential of these
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: extraordinary people that have so many ideas for the future,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 3: it would be truly extraordinary. And yet we've had to
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 3: see people go through so much. So we'll keep an
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 3: eye on this. People should follow your work. Crisis Group
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: has always been excellent on me and Maran Southeast Asia
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: in general, so really appreciate you coming on and helping
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: us understand what's going.
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: On Thanks for having me on the podcast.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 4: Man great to talk.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: Thanks again to Richard Horsey for joining the show, and
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: we will talk to you guys next week. Pots of
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 1: the World is a crook and Media production. Our show
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: is produced by Alone Minkowski, Michael golds Smith, Anini shap Bonnergy.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: Our team includes Matt de Groste, Then Heathcote, Jordan Kanter,
• 1:30:04
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• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East