60 Minutes - 06/23/2024: The Capital of Free Russia, Our Mistake is Your Responsibility, Law of the Sea

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

In Russia many of Vladimir Putin’s political opponents are dead or in exile. Scott Pelley meets some of those who defied Putin and were forced to flee to the nearby capital of Vilnius, Lithuania. Few people realize it, but Social Security’s mistakes are your responsibility. It often doesn’t matter if it’s not your fault – you still must pay. Anderson Cooper reports. The U.S. is conspicuously absent from the international race to explore deep sea mining. Bill Whitaker speaks with former diplomats and military leaders trying to break a Senate logjam, and with others standing firm in their opposition. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here? And maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Lithuania's capital is clothed in the colors of Ukraine. And Putin is reminded an international court is waiting with his arrest warrant. Since the 2022 invasion, Lithuania has become a refuge for Putin's fiercest critics. You would be in a Russian prison just for doing this interview. Oh, for sure, for sure.

In 2022, nearly one million Americans, like Stephen and Becky Sword, received a letter from the Social Security Administration saying that due to a government miscalculation, they owed Social Security money. A lot of money in their case, $51,887. The Swords were asked to repay it within 30 days. Are you scared? He's thinking we're going to lose our house, you know, what are we going to do? I mean, we're very scared.

168 countries, including China, have signed on to the United Nations Law of the Sea, a treaty that divvies up the international seabed for the mining of precious metals, a treaty that divvies up the international seabed for the mining of precious metals, vital for everything from electric cars to defense systems. Absent from the treaty, the United States. The United States probably has got the most to gain of any country in the world if it were party to the Law of the Sea Convention.

And conversely, we actually probably have the most to lose by not being part of it. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. There's a lot going on right now. Mounting economic inequality, threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke Gladstone,

host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts. 71-year-old Vladimir Putin has now led Russia for 24 years. If he serves out the presidential term he won this year, he will be in power as long as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. Putin's challengers often meet untimely ends. One, after an explosion on a plane, and Alexei Navalny, Putin's leading rival who died in February in an Arctic prison camp. Putin has also killed nearly all internal opposition to his unprovoked war in Ukraine.

And yet, many courageous Russians continue the struggle outside the country. As we first reported in March, we met some of them in a city that you might think of as the capital of free Russia. It's 500 miles west of Moscow, the city of Vilnius in Lithuania, where there's no love lost for Russia. Lithuania is a democracy of about 3 million people and a NATO ally. Vilnius, the capital, is clothed in the colors of Ukraine. The city changed the Russian embassy's address to Heroes of Ukraine Street, and Putin is reminded the international court in The Hague is waiting with his arrest warrant. Since Putin's 2022 invasion, Lithuania has welcomed more than 2,500 Russian exiles.

It is our policy to provide shelter to all freedom fighters. Montas Adomenis served as Lithuania's deputy foreign minister from 2020 until last August. I haven't seen so many Ukrainian flags since I was in Kiev. Why do your people feel so strongly about this? Our freedom, our independence, our sort of security is being defended in the battlefields in Ukraine. Ukrainians are dying so that we can be safe. There are many more Russian dissidents who would like to come to Lithuania. Can you accept any more?

Yes, I think we can accept. Of course, we will accommodate as many as needed and provide them with possibility to work for the freedom and democracy in Russia. One of the Russian exiles in Lithuania working for freedom and democracy is a crusading mom. Two years ago, Anastasia Shevchenko fled Putin's regime. This is a terrorist regime. They are threatening other countries with oil, gas,

nuclear weapon and grain. They are threatening us countries with oil, gas, nuclear weapon and grain. They are threatening us with our children, with our parents, with our lives and so on. More than anything, it was her daughter Alina, severely disabled at birth, that made Shevchenko an activist against Putin. Back then, the family was in southern Russia, and Alina was in a Russian government nursing home. She was 17, but even, you know, to feed her, it was a whole science, because she needed blended food. You need to hold her in a special position. Shebchenko cared for Alina much of the time because the Russian nursing facility was short on staff and supplies. I was struggling to get medication for my daughter. Begging in the pharmacy, She needed it. It was

very important for her health. They said, no, we just don't have it because the ministry forgot to order it this month and you need to wait. I decided I'm not going to keep silence and I'm going to stand out and to speak out. She spoke out through a Russian democracy group called Open Russia. It was tolerated 10 years ago and Shevchenko organized protests in her hometown. But in 2019, the Kremlin cracked down. Shevchenko was arrested, and her lawyer warned her she would be shocked by what the police had already done. He showed me the screenshots of me in my bed, and I realized that they had installed the video camera into the air conditioning unit above my bed, and they have been watching me for six months in my bedroom.

A Russian court ordered Shevchenko into house arrest. She couldn't visit or care for Alina. It wasn't long before her daughter developed pneumonia. By the time a judge granted Shevchenko a pass to the hospital, Alina was unconscious. I spent maybe 10 minutes holding her hand because that's what I do when my children are ill. When you hold their hand, they feel better.

But this time, she was cold. She didn't feel me. And she died in an hour. In 2021, Shevchenko was given a four-year suspended sentence. But when Putin invaded Ukraine the next year, she decided to flee Russia. From her southern city, she took her two surviving children on an 1,100-mile drive. A U.S.-based democracy group arranged Lithuanian visas. What does this tell us about Russia today? It's enough to write something on social media,

just one sentence, and you can be imprisoned for years. They are listening to your phone calls. They are watching you in your bedroom. They are listening to your phone calls, they are watching you in your bedroom, they are controlling you. Breaking that control is why Sergei Davidis also left Russia for Lithuania in 2022. You would be in a Russian prison just for doing this interview. In Moscow, Davidis helped lead one of Russia's largest human rights groups, called Memorial.

It won the Nobel Peace Prize two years ago, but now it's banned. He told us, DAVIDIS, Russian President of the United States Almost every day, there are more and more arrests. We hear news about new political arrests. And apart from the legal side of it, more often than before, there's violence and torture. Davidis heads Memorial's project to support political prisoners. He told us he has confirmed 680 in prison today, but he believes the actual number is multiples of that.

Since 2022, Russians can be sentenced to 15 years just for criticizing the war, on the street or in the media. One of the consequences of the war, he says, was a complete wipeout of independent mass media, a prohibition of any opinion that's not under control of the government. Independent newsrooms in Russia have been forced to close. Government-controlled newscasts report only the absurd lie that the war is self-defense against Nazis. This host says, We are on the side of good against the forces of absolute evil

embodied by the Ukrainian Nazi battalions. People are scared, so they feel lonely. They feel terribly lonely. Tatiana Fegenhauer and Alexander Polushev were talk radio hosts on a prominent Moscow station. They were allowed to speak their minds until the day Putin launched his war. It was my morning show. I said, it's half past six. Good morning. War began. War began, and within two weeks, their station was forced to close.

Now, Polushev and Faginhauer are in Vilnius, streaming daily into Russia on YouTube. Putin silenced Facebook, X, and Instagram, but YouTube may be too popular for the Kremlin to block so far. This is the only chance to talk about the war honestly, because the propaganda tries to create this feeling that you are completely alone if you are against the war. Why does this mean so much to you? Really, I would hate myself if I am silent or pretending that everything is okay. If Russian radio and TV stations are allowed only Kremlin talking points, we saw a Lithuanian station telling the truth, not on a channel, but on platform number five,

to a captive Russian audience. Because part of Russia, Kaliningrad on the left, is separate like Alaska from the lower 48, the Moscow-Kaliningrad train must travel through Lithuania. The cars are sealed for the transit, but at a stop in Vilnius, Russian passengers were confronted by posters of atrocities. Each read, Putin is killing civilians in Ukraine. Do you agree with this? The gallery testified as the train waited half an hour. There's no way to know how much truth climbed aboard. And no one is allowed off the train, in part because Lithuania worries about Russian agents. Putin is infamous for attempting to attack his enemies in foreign countries.

And I wonder if the Russian dissidents are safe here in Lithuania? Of course, it is a major concern for us. We spent considerable effort in making sure that dissidents are safe here, and safer than they would be, in fact, in many other countries. Have there been attempts? Well, I'm afraid I can't release that information

in more detail, but let's put it this way, that Russia is constantly probing and constantly trying. And this past March, Russia may have gotten through. Leonid Volkov was attacked with a hammer outside Vilnius. Volkov, on the right, was a top aide to Putin's late rival, Alexei Navalny. Volkov's arm was broken. The attacker fled. Vladimir Putin's re-election this year brought him to his fifth term, which will cover the

next six years. He enjoys support from nationalists, who want to believe that today's Russia is an exceptional nation. But Putin also has weaknesses. It's estimated he's lost 300,000 troops killed and wounded. And Russia has a population less than half that of the United States and an economy about the size of Italy's. My hope is a country where government takes care about citizens. JOHN CERRE, Anastasia Shevchenko is free in Vilnius, but she's wanted in Russia

for breaking her probation. These days, she's streaming her own YouTube show and sends medicine, food, and letters to political prisoners. She's become another voice to the isolated and the lonely and those like her daughter who will never escape the new Iron Curtain. She was alone, no one next to her. I really feel very guilty about it. But I wouldn't change anything in my life, I think.

Why not? You know, the society in Russia is based on fakes. We have fake democracy by constitution. It is a democracy. Fake news, fake elections. And I want to be the opposite. I want to be open. I want Russia to be open. Three men were arrested in neighboring Poland for the attack on Leonid Volkov. The Polish prime minister called it an attempted assassination and said the man who arranged it worked for the Russians. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard.

When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Each month, about 71 million Americans, retirees, disabled workers, and others receive checks from Social Security.

But as we first reported last fall, each year about a million people get something else in the mail, a bill. They're told they owe the government money, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, because the Social Security Administration miscalculated their benefits and paid them too much. It can happen to anyone. It can take years, even decades, for these unexpected debts to suddenly come to light. It often doesn't matter if it's not the recipient's fault, they still have to pay. Few people realize it, but Social Security's mistakes are your responsibility. In 2022, at Stephen and Becky Sword's home in Chicago,

a letter arrived from the Social Security Administration. When Becky Sword read it, she was stunned to discover that she and her husband owed Social Security $51,887 and were expected to repay it within 30 days. That letter changed your life? Oh, yeah. Are you scared? He's thinking we're going to lose our house. You know, what are we going to do? I mean, we're very scared. When we spoke with Stephen and Becky Sword in August, Stephen was making $16 an hour as a security guard on the overnight shift at a condominium complex. Becky was working days as an occupational therapy assistant in a nursing home. They're 62 years old

and have worked full-time most of their lives. But for several years now, Stephen's been dealing with the effects of a pancreatic disease that nearly killed him in 2016. How long were you in the hospital for? About 105 days. It was hard because when I left the hospital, it took me about two months to learn to eat and walk again. Stephen started receiving Social Security disability checks in 2017 as he recovered and returned to work. The agency's rules are complicated, but Becky faxed Stevens' pay stubs to Social Security so the agency could monitor his earnings and eligibility.

She kept the fax receipts. So I knew they were getting it, you know. In return, Social Security sent the Swords letters like this one, saying it had increased Stevens' benefits to give him credit for his 2019 earnings. Is the impression you got from that that they're examining the pay stubs and they're paying attention? Because they're increasing it. But the letter the Swords got from Social Security in 2022 said Stephen shouldn't have gotten any money at the time the agency gave him that increase. Stephen and Becky owed more than $50,000, the agency said,

because we did not stop his checks about three years sooner. Has anyone in Social Security ever sort of apologized? No. They take no blame at all. They say it's our fault. They're saying you should have known that... They're making too much money. That Social Security was giving you too much money. Yeah.

Even though Social Security didn't know that they were giving you too much money. Which is strange because you're sending in all your pay stuff. Someone has to file that. And when we asked them, they said, well, they're not looking at that every month. And then she even said, well, they're not even looking at it every year. I would think yearly at least they would review it. I could see making a mistake after a few months but not three years of a mistake and then they blamed it on covid they blamed it on being understaffed and so to me right there it's

saying it's their fault the social security administration told us its privacy rules prevent it from commenting on individual cases like the swords. No one from the agency would give us an on-camera interview. But Kilolo Kijikaze, the former acting commissioner of Social Security, gave this testimony before a congressional committee in October. How many people are receiving overpayment notices in a year? For FY 2022, 1,028,389.

For FY 2023, 986,912. Seems like an awful lot. Nobody knows this is happening to so many people. This is not a story Social Security wants to publicize. No. Terry Savage writes a nationally syndicated column on personal finance. Lawrence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University, created software to help people maximize their Social Security benefits. Together, they've been trying to draw attention to what they

call Social Security horror stories, caused largely, they say, by the Social Security Administration's own mistakes. Their mantra, their rule is, our mistake is your mistake. And you can appeal it or ask for a waiver. The only reason they will waive this clawback is if you are indigent, really, really poor. The worst part of it is, they have all the power. Because they say, if you don't pay us back, we're just going to cut your benefit check. Imagine, people live on those checks, and all of a sudden you get no check or a small amount? If someone's been paid too much in Social Security benefits, why shouldn't they have to pay it back?

Because you relied on it. So you may have decided to retire early or to spend the money on your child's tuition. Overpayments have existed for decades and caused people a lot of financial pain. But fixing the problem has never been a high priority on Capitol Hill. In 2015, Congress did approve a measure to reduce overpayments by giving Social Security more timely access to payroll data. But eight years later, the agency still hasn't put the new system in place. Aging technology and staff shortages have taken a toll on Social Security.

In 2022, the agency's workforce hit a 25-year low as the number of people claiming benefits kept going up. When we took a close look at Social Security's annual reports to Congress, we discovered something else has been going up as well. The amount of money the agency has been clawing back from the checks of people with overpayments. Jean Rodriguez, who's 73 years old, told us her retirement checks had been withheld for the past two years. A former school cafeteria worker, she started receiving benefits in 2014. But four years later, she and her husband Glenn were asked to come to the local Social Security office in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to speak with the representative. And he says, we have a small problem. How much did he say they had overpaid you?

$72,000. That doesn't sound like a small problem. No. It wasn't. We were both devastated. What did they tell you happened? Somewhere along the line, they made a combination of four other people in addition to my numbers. So they were giving you benefits based not just on your salary, but on four other people's salary all combined. How does that happen? Good question.

Don't know how they did it. Did Social Security admit to you that this was their fault? Yes, they did. But the agency said the Rodriguez's had to pay the money back anyway because they could afford to do so. Jean and Glenn own their home, and Glenn gets a pension from the Navy. If it was something I knew I did totally wrong, they had the right to come after me. But I didn't know how they calculated it, and then they waited four years to figure it out.

In a statement, the Social Security Administration told us our payment accuracy rates are high, yet even small error rates add up to substantial improper payment amounts. The agency said it's required by law to recover this money and added that overpayments are not necessarily the agency's fault. They can happen when a beneficiary does not timely report work or other financial information. There's no statute of limitations on how long Social Security can wait to collect an overpayment. More than two years ago, Roy Farmer of Grand Rapids, Michigan, got a letter from Social Security asking whether he'd forgotten to pay a debt he didn't know he had.

This is an alleged overpayment from 20 years ago. Yes, sir. When you were 11 or 12 years old. Correct. Roy Farmer grew up in rural Cadillac, Michigan, in a family of six that struggled to make ends meet. We ended up near homelessness a couple of times. At one point, even living, you know, six of us in a camper trailer.

He was born with cerebral palsy. I had leg braces. I had to walk with a child-sized version of like an old person walker. And you had surgeries, you had doctor's visits, you had it treated. Yeah, and so thankfully they were able to get me to a point where I can live a more or less normal life with some limitations. He's 33 years old now and works full-time. But when he was a child, his mother received benefits on his behalf. Social Security told him that when he was 11 years old,

the agency determined he was no longer medically eligible for benefits, and his mother received $4,902 too much. His mother died a few years ago, and the agency is insisting he pay back the money because it believes he can afford to do so. Could you afford $4,902? No, sir. That much is about a sixth of my annual take-home pay. Like most of the people we spoke to, Roy Farmer couldn't find a lawyer to help him. There's little financial incentive for attorneys to take on these cases. It took Farmer nine months to get the document in his Social Security file. He was looking for the agency's evidence that he was no longer medically eligible for benefits

when he was 11 years old. But, he says, there was none. And they told me, we probably had it at some point, but we don't have it now. And they admit there's no evidence you're at fault, but they're still coming after you for it. Yes, sir. People at Social Security have told us, look, this is a law, this has to be changed through Congress, our hands are tied. It's not, Anderson, because the law says that if equity and good conscience demands that the clawback be waived, it should be waived. Lawrence Kotlikoff, the economist who's written about overpayments, is talking about a specific part of the Social Security Act that says the

agency should not recover an overpayment if doing so would be against equity and good conscience. The problem, he says, is that Social Security interprets that phrase in a very narrow way. So the agency itself, Social Security Administration, has a lot of discretion. Absolutely. Oh, sure they do. But financially, the long-term picture is not good. And they've trained the staff, look, your job is to collect every penny you can, no matter what. The Social Security Trust Fund for Retirement and Disability Benefits is expected to be depleted around 2035 because the benefits being paid out are greater than the payroll taxes coming in. But Kotlikoff and Savage argue that clawing back money from the elderly and disabled

isn't going to make much of a dent in that problem. They say there are some simple things Congress and the Social Security Administration could do to alleviate the stress and financial difficulty caused by overpayments. For example, shouldn't there be a statute of limitations so that after 18 months it's their mistake and they have to deal with it, not the person who mistakenly received and lived on that benefit check. If it's more than a year or two... Just waive it. Just say, our mistake, you're fine.

Roy Farmer in Michigan had been waiting four months to appeal his case before an administrative law judge who works for Social Security. Gene and Glenn Rodriguez told us they'd been waiting four years. As for the swords in Chicago, Stephen and Becky told us they were tired of fighting the government and had decided not to appeal the matter any further. I just figured we're going to have to give up our retirement funds. That's the only way you could do it? That's the only way, yeah. Because they said we'd have to pay it back in three years' time,

and we'd have to come up with $1,400 a month to pay back, and we don't have that. We don't have that kind of money. When Stephen Sword was not working the night shift and Becky Sword was not working the day shift, they were preparing to hand over most of the $60,000 they'd saved for their retirement to the government agency charged with supporting Americans in their old age. After we asked the Social Security Administration detailed questions about their cases,

all the people in our story received phone calls from the agency saying they would not have to pay the money back after all. In March, the new Social Security Commissioner, Martin O'Malley, cited our story when he told a Senate committee he was changing the way his agency handles overpayments. Social Security says it will no longer withhold more than 10 percent of a monthly check to recover an overpayment and it'll make it easier for people to receive waivers in cases where there's no evidence of fraud. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life. But you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe and water to drink.

And, of course, you can rest assured that with Public Mobile's 5G subscription phone plans, you'll pay the same thing every month. With all of the mysteries that life has to offer, a few certainties can really go a long way. Subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for. Public Mobile. Different is calling. Something akin to the California gold rush is happening in the eastern Pacific, an international mad dash, not for one precious metal, but for vast quantities of minerals scattered across the ocean floor, vital for everything from electric cars to defense systems.

To avoid a free-for-all, 168 countries, including China, have signed on to the United Nations Law of the Sea, a treaty that divvies up the international seabed. Conspicuously absent is the United States, kept out of the race by a group of Republican senators who say the treaty undermines American power. Despite efforts by five presidents, ratifying the treaty has hit a wall in the Senate year after year. As we first reported in March, seabed mining is set to begin next year, and China is in place to dominate it. Now Now a group of former diplomats and military leaders is trying again to break the logjam in the Senate.

A thousand miles from U.S. waters, between Mexico and Hawaii, lies this patch of Pacific Ocean. It looks tranquil, but it's a locus of fierce competition. To see what's at stake, you have to plunge to the bottom. See those potato-sized rocks? They're filled with cobalt, nickel, manganese, and copper, some of the most valuable metals on Earth. All right, start coming up. In 2019, we went along on a pilot expedition as a crew with Canada's Metals Company hauled its sunken treasure to the surface.

There were that many of them down there. If they found a deposit with this much metal concentration on land, it would be a bonanza that nobody would stop talking about for years. Today, the race is on for the estimated trillions of dollars of strategic minerals on the ocean floor vital for next generation electronics. Countries that ratified the law of the sea treaty now are testing giant robots that vacuum the minerals from the sea floor. They're carving up and laying claim to parcels on the seabed covered with rich balls of ore. China has five sites, 90,000 square miles, the most of any country.

The United States? None, blocked from even putting a toe in the water by its refusal to ratify the treaty. We are not only not at the table, but we're off the field. The United States probably has got the most to gain of any country in the world if it were party to the Law of the Sea Convention, and conversely, we actually probably have the most to lose by not being part of it. John Bellinger is a partner at the D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter. In 2012, he testified in favor of the treaty at Senate hearings

as a former legal advisor to George W. Bush. He told us Bush was no fan of U.N. treaties, but he supported this one, not only for codifying access to the deep seabed, but also for safeguarding the free navigation of U.S. ships around the world. Bellinger told us support was so broad in 2012, he thought it would be a slam dunk. President George W. Bush is in favor. That's right.

U.S. intelligence. Yes. Military. Yes. Major business groups. Big oil. Yes. And environmental groups as well.

Hard to find any treaty or probably any piece of legislation that has such broad support. Yet it failed. The Conservative Heritage Foundation convinced 34 Republican senators to turn thumbs down, saying it would subjugate the United States to the UN. My problem is with sovereignty. The law of the sea was sunk. It surprised me that a number of senators would tell us in the government, we know better than you.

We know better than our U.S. military. We know better than U.S. business. Does the American position make any sense to you? than our US military. We know better than US business. Does the American position make any sense to you? It honestly does not. The opposition was not on national security reasons or on business reasons. It, to me, seemed just a reflexive ideological opposition to joining the treaty. Since 2012, while repeated attempts to ratify the treaty have failed, China has made deep-sea mining a national priority.

It already has a near-monopoly of the critical minerals on land. Now it's set to lock up the bounty on the seafloor. Ambassador John Negroponte, a former director of national intelligence in the Bush administration, told us China's aggressive actions should be setting off alarms. What's changed since 2012? The People's Republic of China and its more assertive behavior on the international scene, particularly in the South China Sea. And then with respect to deep seabed mining, they're eating our lunch.

They've got access to five sites. Right now we have access to none. John Negroponte is one of a number of senior Republicans urging the Senate to reconsider and ratify the treaty. If it doesn't, the U.S. can't get a license from the U.N.-backed International Seabed Authority to mine the ocean bottom. It won't have a say in drafting environmental rules for mining the deep. Absent the U.S., China is the heavyweight in the room. So does it seem to you that we're just sort of giving this resource to the Chinese without any pushback from us? We are conceding. If we're not at the table and we're not members of the seabed authority, we're not going to have a voice in writing the environmental guidelines for deep-sea bed mining.

Well, who would you prefer to see writing those guidelines? The People's Republic of China or the United States of America? It just doesn't make sense to a conservative to say, these minerals that are in the deep-sea bed are so important to the United States, we are done without those. Let's put an international bureaucracy in charge of getting us access to them. Stephen Groves is a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. He was a special counsel in Donald Trump's White House.

In 2012, Groves testified that the U.S. didn't need anyone's permission to mine the seabed. His views haven't changed. What businessman in the right mind said, I'm going to invest tens of billions of dollars into a company that I will then have to go and ask permission from an international organization to engage in deep sea bed mining. But no general counsel, no board of a company, if faced with a clear right under a treaty that says you can go and do this, or taking an action that's flatly contrary to the treaty, of course the companies are going to say, I want to take the clearly lawful route before I invest billions of dollars. Lawyer John Bellinger told us U.S. companies interested in mining the seabed

want the legal guarantees of the treaty. But even as other countries move ahead, Stephen Groves insists American companies are staying away not because the U.S. hasn't ratified a treaty, but because deep sea mining isn't viable. If China wants to go and think that it's economically feasible to drag those nodules up to the surface and process them, let them do it. The United States has decided to stay out of the game. The one U.S. company that had rights to the deep sea bed got out of the game.

That's Lockheed Martin. The U.S. companies will tell you it's because there's uncertainty. What U.S. companies? Lockheed. Lockheed is out of the game. Lockheed will tell you is because there's uncertainty. What U.S. companies? Lockheed. Lockheed is out of the game. Lockheed will tell you that their investors, their counsel, all say if we don't have this treaty, we're not getting into this. They're already

out of it. They quit. Because we are not supporting them in any way. Well, that's a business decision they made. Lockheed Martin has not quit. The defense giant had rights to four Pacific seabed sites. It sold two and is holding on to two in case the treaty passes. But Lockheed told us if the U.S. doesn't ratify the treaty, it can't dive in. Ambassador John Negroponte told us the Heritage

Foundation is standing in the way. What Heritage is saying is we don't even want to give them a chance. We know the answer already. And I think that's sort of hypothetical thinking. The pragmatic approach would be to say, okay, let us have access and see what happens and we could end up being even more dependent than we are today on china for access to these minerals if they end up being the largest producer and we're not producing at all that might place us in a difficult economic position but national security fears of China's growing prowess in the deep are about more than mining. In March, a letter signed by 346 former political, national security, and military leaders warned that China was taking advantage

of America's absence from the treaty to pursue overall naval supremacy. Over the last decade, and I've done the math, China has built 20% more warships by tonnage than the United States Navy has. They built 160 warships, where the U.S. Navy built 66. It is a truly massive expansion in naval power. Thomas Shugart is a former U.S. Navy submarine warfare officer and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He told us China is flexing its maritime muscle by claiming the South China Sea as its private ocean. It has challenged the treaty's navigation laws that ensure safe passage by harassing passing ships, including the U.S. Navy.

It has fired water cannons at its neighbors, caused collisions, even flashed a military-grade laser at ships. Stephen Groves at the Heritage Foundation says that's why the treaty is meaningless. It's China, who is a party to the treaty, who doesn't obey the rules of the road. They're the ones getting into near collisions with U.S. vessels in the South China Sea. The United States respects and adheres to international law. It is the Chinese who are the scofflaws here. And the idea that the U.S. joining the treaty would somehow change that Chinese behavior has no basis in reality.

Every time the U.S. points at them and says, you're violating the law, they very quickly turn back and say, well, you're not in the signatory, so what do you have to say about it? We are in a messaging contest and an effort to win hearts and minds all over the world against what is clearly our greatest strategic competitor. Former submarine captain Thomas Shugart told us being outside the treaty undercuts American credibility, while China is laser-focused on building its maritime power. He told us China's deep-sea miners have a second mission, collecting information for the Chinese military.

The technology that these companies use to mine the seabed, do they also have a military application? Absolutely. If you're going to find submarines in the ocean, you need to know what the bottom looks like. You need to know what the temperature is. You need to know what the salinity is. If China is using civilian vessels

to sort of on the sly do those surveys, then that improves, could improve their ability to find U.S. and allied submarines over time as they better understand that undersea environment. Back in D.C., Ambassador Negroponte's group is lobbying the Republican holdouts. We decided to call the senators who torpedoed the treaty in 2012 to see if anything had changed. We found their opposition as strong as ever. With the U.S. Senate locked in stalemate, China is forging ahead. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes. threats to democracy, environmental disaster, the sour stench of chaos in the air. I'm Brooke

Gladstone, host of WNYC's On the Media. Want to understand the reasons and the meanings of the narratives that led us here, and maybe how to head them off at the pass? That's On the Media's specialty. Take a listen wherever you get your podcasts.