Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - US-China De-escalation? (& the latest on covid's origin) -- with Josh Rogin

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Is the US Government trying to re-engage and bring down the temperature with China? Why right now? And what about the resurgent findings on the possible lab leaked accident (on the origin of the pandemic)? Where does this fit into the de-escalation dynamic? Josh Rogin is a long-time foreign affairs journalist, currently a columnist for The Washington Post. He’s also a Political Analyst for CNN. He’s the author of the bestselling book: “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century” Josh's columns discussed in this episode: "The State Department is wrong to play down China’s bad actions"- https://tinyurl.com/3dxtm9a3 "The investigation into covid’s origins must continue" - https://tinyurl.com/3j3ubz4v Ukrainians are begging for cluster munitions to stop the Russians - https://tinyurl.com/yr9vhe7k

And in any disaster, plane crash or nuclear meltdown, the obvious thing to do is to figure out what happened. So otherwise, how can you make politics and policy changes to ensure that you have the best chance of preventing it seems pretty clear to me. So I'm not advocating for the lab leak. What I'm saying is that for three years, there were a lot of important people who were intentionally steering people away from the lab leak hypothesis for corrupt and hidden reasons. Some of them were more egregious than others. And a lot of them were the scientists who were the best friends from the lab leak hypothesis for corrupt and hidden reasons.

Some of them were more egregious than others. And a lot of them were the scientists who were the best friends of the lab. And they misled the World Health Organization. They misled a lot of journalists. They misled Congress. They misled the intelligence community. And they continue to do that to this day. stay. Is the U.S. government trying to re-engage China, trying to bring the temperature down? Why right now? And what about the resurgent findings on the possibility of a lab-leaked accident as the origin of the pandemic. How does this fit into the current dynamic in U.S.-China relations? Josh Rogin is a longtime foreign affairs analyst, currently a columnist for The Washington Post. He's also a political

analyst for CNN, and he's the author of the best-selling book, Chaos Under Heaven, Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the 21st Century. When Josh's book first came out back in 2021, we had him on this podcast. And whenever topics related to China and U.S.-China relations emerge, I'm always quick to read Josh and check in with him. So I'm glad he was able to join us today. Josh has also recently written a provocative column for The Washington Post on what the U.S. should do next in the Russia-Ukraine war. We also get into that. It's important. What he's advocating for, you are not hearing from others. So that in and of itself is an important conversation. Josh Rogin of The Washington Post. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my friend Josh Rogin from the Washington Post. Josh, thanks for coming back on.

Great to be back. So, Josh, when we last had you on, it was April of 2021, just after your excellent book had come out, which we will repost again in this episode's show notes, highly recommend it, on China and U.S.-China policy during the Trump years. And at the time, we were focused on the U.S.-China relationship. We were focused on the origins of coronavirus, the theory that it was a lab-related incident, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, at the time we discussed that. I want to come back to that because that topic's, you know, suddenly back in the news. But before I do, I want to start with a lot of what you've been writing

about, which is China, U.S.-China relationship, relations, a lot of what we've been discussing on this podcast, and the last few episodes we've had, Richard Fontaine, Neil Ferguson, Mike Gallagher, and Rich Goldberg. And there's like a theme to all of these conversations, which is China on the march to some degree, and the U.S. a little bit on the back foot, wanting to cool things anywhere from caught off guard to not fully recognizing the threat of China, the geopolitical dynamic with China, and not recognizing the need for the U.S. to be engaged in the world, whether it's in Asia, whether it's in the Middle East, where in our last episode, we talked at length about China's brokering of a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And so there's been a tremendous focus on what China is up to. And in your last column in the Washington Post, you wrote about what Washington is up to. And I quote here, you say, President Biden clearly wants to reestablish high-level dialogue with Chinese President Xi after Secretary of State Blinken canceled his trip, I'm quoting here,

to China last month. Officials and lawmakers have noticed that the State Department has been less vocal recently in calling out China's bad behavior regarding drug trafficking, trade with Iran, human rights, and other issues. So I want to start with that. And we'll post the column in the show notes, but if you could just summarize, what are you actually seeing in recent weeks in terms of the U.S. trying to bring down the temperature? Right. Well, Dan, I think it's really important to sort of take a step back first and talk about where we are in the U.S.-China relationship, because in Washington, as you know, this gets covered usually as a horse race. Oh, the Chinese said this, the balloon went here, the missile went there.

And it's seen as a number of incidents rather than the trajectory of the complex, interconnected system of institutions and people and groups that make up the world's two superpowers interactions with each other. And so when we're talking about why it is that we're at this point in U.S.-China relations, which is, I think, objectively the lowest point since at least, like, let's say 1972, where U.S.-China high-level dialogue, much less high-level communication, totally gone. It doesn't exist, really, in any functional sense. That's a bad thing. And I'm going to get to the part of why the Biden administration is doing some things that I believe a lot of people, other people believe, are foolish in order to fix that bad thing, in order to get back into that room. It's clear that

President Biden wants to get back into that room. He thinks it's important, right? But before we do that, it's really important to understand how we got here, because what you'll hear a lot in Washington these days, Dan, is this idea that, oh, well, U.S.-China relations are so bad because bipartisan hawkish group-thinking Washington has pushed them to that point. And Congress, for political reasons, both parties just wants to ramp up the China threat to score points with careless disregard for the fact that this is causing an escalatory ladder that's going to lead to World And they call it dangerous Washington group thing. The reason that we know that that's wrong, the reason that we know that that's a blinkered and incorrect way of looking at what's actually going on in the US-China relationship is twofold. One is because it ignores how we got here. And how we got here was that the Biden administration, to its credit, started in 2021, the last time I was on your podcast, with a very rational outreach to China, which basically said that we're going to cooperate, compete, and confront you all

at the same time on three parallel tracks. They sought to de-link issues like human rights from issues like economic competition, from issues like cooperation on climate change. That was their theory of the case. They said it very clearly. And a big part of that was not to give the Chinese government concessions for talking, not to make engagement the thing that we were paying for. It was actually something that the Trump administration realized first. And there are a lot of things the Trump administration did wrong on China, but there are some things that they did right. And one of the things that they did right is they stopped paying for talking. And because's creates a perverse incentive in the minds of the Chinese, because then they'll always just demand that you back off their bad actions in exchange for it,

just having basic conversation about anything. And so that was the theory in 2021. It didn't work. The Chinese basically told the Biden administration to go screw itself. And we're not going to do that. And everything is linked. And if you want to cooperate with us on climate change, then you're going to have to ignore the Uyghur genocide. And if you don't do that, then you're responsible for the Cold War and whatever comes next. So by year two, the Biden people sort of realized that this wasn't working out because the Chinese didn't agree to it. And so they come up with a new theory of the case. That theory was called guardrails. And the rhetoric changed. And I talked to very senior officials. They said, yeah, the cooperate, confront, compete thing, they didn't buy it. So

now we're going to guardrails. This is like, okay, let's take the most contentious things and try to agree not to poke each other on them just so that we can be in the same room together. And they tried that for a little while. Then what happened? Nancy Pelosi went to Taiwan and destroyed the guardrails. The main guardrail, the Chinese guardrail, the one that they wanted was, hey, don't send Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan.

And then she went and they blamed Biden and Biden wasn't actually responsible for it, but they didn't believe that. So there go the guardrails, okay? So now we're in year three. And year three, the Biden administration plan, again, they won't admit this. This is their public rhetoric. They're still talking about this cooperate, confront, compete stuff, which they know is not working, but that's still the public line. What they're really trying to do is put a floor under the relationship. They're,

they're trying to prevent this thing from going downhill fast. And it's failing. And so what my article in this week's Washington Post says is that because they're getting desperate and because they now have an imperative, an order from the president himself to go fix this, they're falling back into old patterns of failed engagement that include paying China to talk. And one of the ways that they do that is by subtly backing off criticisms of Chinese actions related to anything. It could be fentanyl. It could be Iran sanctions. It could be human rights. And I tried to document a series of instances, examples, data that shows that, you know, they're not really confronting anymore. They're basically just trying to... So can you give one of those examples? You cite the discrepancy between the State Department, I think it's Treasury, over the fentanyl issue? Right. So the Treasury Department puts out a press release on fentanyl sanctions. They're

sanctioning Mexican companies. And it says, well, the precursor chemicals come from China. And then the State Department press release doesn't mention that. It's the same press release, but without the China mention. And Senator Bill bill hagerty former ambassador japan happened to notice that and he asked wendy sherman why would you do that what wendy sherman is the deputy secretary of state and she's asked at a hearing yes and she's basically in charge of the china engagement part of this policy and she says oh it wasn't connected to tony blinken's planned trip to china has nothing to do with it well you, you know, it was actually. And it turns out that I've discovered that actually they were trying to turn down the

temperature because they thought they could address this issue better inside the meeting than outside the meeting. Now, again, I don't blame them for wanting to seek cooperation with the Chinese on fentanyl, but you can see the problem is that now there's no meeting because Tony Blinken didn't go to China. So we have an endless waiting game. And meanwhile, we're self-censoring on the fentanyl issue when it comes to China. For what? You know, well, what did that get us? It ends up becoming essentially a unilateral concession. And that's the pattern. That's the trap that we're supposed to be avoiding. That's what the Biden administration said they were going to avoid. And the fact that they're falling into that trap, but not admitting as such, is where the gap is between their

rhetorical and functional policy. And then if you look at things like human rights, you can see, you can definitely see there's a big, a lot less of a focus. Now, again, President Trump- A lot less commentary about human rights abuses against Tibetans, against- Acrossans, against Uyghurs, Hong Kong, across the board. And these people notice that because this is their lives and their families are suffering and they pay very close attention and the State Department line is, oh, no, no, no, they're fine. But I talked to them, they're not fine. And again, Trump administration, complicated, right? It's a mixed bag, let's say. But Mike Pompeo met with the Tibetans and Uyghurs, and there was a photo of it on the State Department website. And when Secretary Blinken met with those same people, they never released the photo. The people there noticed that. That photo might not seem important to you or me, but for them, that photo is what keeps their families safe. And so, again, the State Department has a tough problem here. They've got to deal with the Chinese government, which is being obstinate

and meanwhile ramping up its rhetoric. What do we see? As the Biden administration gets nicer, and this kind of proves my theory of the case, I think, as they get less and less critical, the Chinese get more belligerent. And that's what we saw at the Munich Security Conference. Anthony Blinken went there to reestablish relations, and the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, got up on the stage and called on the United States to apologize for the balloon, that we should apologize for them sending the balloon. So this is the kind of thing we're dealing with. And you know how it is, Dan, in Washington, it's like we have this false notion, first of all, that everything's like America-centric, right? That if we just create the perfect rational policy

based on weighing interests and values, and we have a good bureaucratic process and a bunch of meetings and memos, that we're going to get the result that we want. And it fails to realize that these other countries have agency, and China isn't in the mood to make nice with us. It seems pretty clear. They're in the mood to actually press what they see as their advantage. And actually, our weakness emboldens that strategy. And that means that actually the people blaming the United States are feeding into their propaganda and actually amplifying it. I'm not saying that they're fellow travelers per se. I'm just saying that, let's call it a coincidence, that the people blaming Washington for US-China tensions in

Washington are saying the exact same things as the Chinese Communist Party propaganda outlet. So I just think we need to, again, take a step back and realize that we're not to blame for China's bad actions. And of course, they don't want step back and realize that we're not to blame for China's bad actions. And of course, they don't want us to talk about it or to respond to them. And of course, they'll tell us that that's the thing that's provocative. But responding to the provocation is not the provocation. And actually, when you don't respond, that actually creates an incentive for the provocations to only increase, which makes the situation more dangerous, which makes the Cold War and the hot war more likely.

So it's actually a much more dangerous policy. Where does the, how do we call it, the unidentified aviation object, the balloon, fit into this timeline that you're seeing, the discovery of it and just the overall pattern, I guess? Blinken canceled his trip. Go ahead. Yeah, no, that's right. Blinken canceled his trip. Not because they were upset about the balloon, because remember, they knew about the balloon for several days before they admitted it. They were hoping it would just go away. They were hoping the Chinese would just turn it around.

And if you think about it, because they wanted the trip to go ahead. But then when someone saw it in the sky, they couldn't deny it anymore. So the thing about the balloon was that you could see it. So there's no way to say, oh, what balloon? And then all of a sudden they had to cancel the trip because they were afraid of the political blowback of ignoring that kind of a provocation. And so, you know, if you think about it, what did the Chinese do? Now, first of all, it seems clear from my reporting that initially the balloon was blown off course, but then when everyone noticed it, they had a choice to make. They could have steered it back or done something to signal to the United States

that, okay, let's not make this a big deal. But instead they flew it right over the missile sites, our nuclear missile sites, where they hovered there. Right, Montana. And a couple others. So that's how you know that it was an intentional provocation and not just some sort of like chinese general going rogue it was not about the fact that the balloon made it to the united states it's the fact that once it got there the way it acted showed intentionality and so they were uh sticking up their middle finger at tony blinken and he had to cancel the trip and and everything was scuttled so that do you think it was an actual it was designed to be recognized and either be identified in the u.s to the point that the u.s has to respond it was like a no it was a humiliation

or it was just it was just it was just brazen no i i think they think it accidentally went off course. And then once they had a decision to make what to do with that accidental, they decided to double down and be more aggressive because they realized it was going to be a big story. And that's what they do when they're confronted with a challenging U.S.-China relations. They try to double down and become more aggressive to back us down. And that creates, again, a vicious sort of cycle, an escalation ladder, where now the U.S. government doesn't want to go to China because they're afraid of political backlash at home. They're forced to retreat to their corner.

And, you know, it's a real problem that something like that, which started out as an accident but then was mishandled by both sides, actually, because both of our governments are capable of doing stupid things, tanked what was supposed to be a really important sort of detente in the US-China relationship. But it just doesn't follow that in that case, what you have to do is try harder to get that meeting because in the end, the engagement is not the thing. The engagement is the means to an end. The end is solving the problems. And that sort of leads us to the next point, which is like, in order to solve the problems, if you can't solve them with the Chinese, because as we just went through, they're just not interested in proving the Chinese-US

bilateral relationship, well, then you can make a decision to use that time and resources at the top level of the US government to work with the people who do want to work with you, who happen to be our friends and allies who are facing the exact same problem that we are, who happen to be sounding like Japan and South Korea and Australia and others who are sounding the alarm very clearly. And this is sort of the second reason that we know that US-S., Washington, dangerous, bipartisan, hawkish groupthink is not the reason that people are upset with China, because that couldn't be the reason that Japan and South Korea are upset with China. They were upset with China anyway, for their own interests. I went to Tokyo and I interviewed Fumio Kishida, the prime minister, in January, right before he came to

Washington. And he's from the liberal faction of the LDP. He's considered a dove when it comes to China. Yet he made the decision to double Japan's defense budget over five years, taking it from being the ninth most highest defense budget in the world to the third. And that was before the balloon. He didn't know anything about a balloon. Balloon didn't mean nothing to him. OK, it was before Mike Gallagher started a committee to focus on China. Nothing to do with Tokyo's the threat of war is made more likely when the deterrence falters.

So we want peace, but in order to achieve that peace, we have to increase our deterrence. And we can't say that Washington is to blame for the international response to China because the demand signal is coming from the region. Because the people, the countries that are on the front lines are, are who have the most to gain and the most to lose are the ones telling us that this problem is getting worse and worse that we need to do more. So that's, that, that's just not Washington's fault. That's China's fault. And do these countries, uh, in the region, I mean, they, I got to believe that our State Department, our, the White House, the Defense Department, they believe it is important that we deep entice and reassure players like Japan and Korea, South Korea and Australia, others in the region. So are you just

saying it's just the orientation, they're pointed towards engagement with China, engagement with China, engagement with China, that's Washington, and they're doing that at the expense of engaging and reassuring all these other countries in the region, and you're saying, like, it's not either or? I mean, you can figure out what your strategy is with China, but by trying to bring down the temperature in China and doing nothing to engage deeper with these other countries in Asia, it's like the worst of all worlds. Right, but I don't think it's fair to say they're doing nothing. They have a lot going on with the allies. The question is, where does the highest level attention in government and time resources go to? Because as you know, working at the highest level

of government, Dan, it's that the most valuable commodity in the U.S. government is the time and attention of those very few people who are really powerful enough in any administration to get anything done. Okay. So you can have lots and lots of projects ongoing, but unless you really have, you know, either a president or a cabinet member or a sub-cabinet member, you know, committed to doing something, it very rarely gets done. And, you know, when it comes to the Biden administration, it's really important to understand that it's not a monolith, that it's complicated, that there are political divisions and there are bureaucratic divisions. Interestingly, that fall roughly along the same lines as they did in the past administration, which is to say that

you have a hawkish NSC, you have some competitive-minded folks at the State Department and some professionals who are more clientelist, who view the old way of doing business, which is to engage China as much as possible at the expense of everything else, as still the right way to do business. And then you have the Treasury Department, which is pushing in the other direction because they're trying to fix the U.S.-China economic relationship by helping their Wall Street and business paymasters shovel American investor funds into the PRC before the whole thing goes kaput. And so they're pushing against competitive actions because they see that as counterproductive for their aims, which is just to increase US business in China. Then you've got the climate change people.

Then you've got the political people. And what it amounts to is a mess, a garble that obviously the Chinese don't understand. Definitely the American people don't understand because they can't articulate that. They can't say, well, you know, we actually have no trade policy in Asia. They can't say that. So they came up with this thing called the Indo-Pacificific economic framework which is like you know i could something like if you put into chat gpt like give me like some boilerplate nonsense about what we should do in asia this is what would come out two pages of like oh yeah we like things that are good like digital

you know goodness and privacy and you know free markets but it doesn't amount to a it doesn't buy you a cup of coffee in Singapore. So it's sort of like the region looks at that and they're like, oh, well, how come there's no trade policy? How come there's no real investment strategy? How come there's... It's just where we have a government that has teams of people who do certain things, and some of them are good and some of them are bad. So the NSC team, which happens to be really good on this, they did what they could do. They did this AUKUS deal with the submarines, you know, so the US and Great Britain are going to help Australia develop a submarine fleet. It's going to be nuclear powered, but conventionally weapon submarine fleet.

OK, that sounds good. That couldn't hurt. Right. Let's do that. But they're not going to get the new subs for 15 or 20 years right and you know if china attacks taiwan in 2027 that's useless so i don't know i'm it's but undergirding all this josh and we'll get to russia ukraine in in a little bit but undergirding all of this other than yet russia ukraine when i

when i speak to people in the administration all all I basically hear back, either in actual words or in body language, is the goal for the next two years is to just keep geopolitics calm, right? They know they're doubling... How's that going? I know. No, no, I know. They know they're doubling and tripling down on Russia-Ukraine. But, I mean, as it relates to Iran, for instance, they are no longer being under any illusions about the return to the JCPOA. That's

good as far as Israel is concerned. They're not looking to get into any high-stakes political battle with the Israeli government over any range of issues because they don't want any big noise. I mean, that's been a little harder because they didn't anticipate some things the Israeli

government would do after being formed. But they're trying to keep that on low boil. They're trying to keep all these things in the Middle East on low boil, I presume in Asia on low boil. Other than Russia and Ukraine, they just want to keep things pretty quiet why well what what a what a sad state of u.s foreign policy ambitions in 2023 it used to what it used to be like peace through strength shining city of hell now it's like okay can everyone just like uh keep it quiet until the next election that's our that's our

foreign policy banner wow i can't think of anything less ambitious. But on the Middle East, I kind of- Well, they could argue, by the way, I agree with you, but they could argue, and I'm not sure they're doing what they need to do. Well, this is not working. Because again, there are other countries in the world, and it's really hard for Americans to believe that American power, not just military power, by the way, I'm speaking mostly of the non-military power, economic, technological, soft power, all that stuff is really the only thing keeping millions and millions of people in the world out of the clutches of, you know, mass murdering psychopaths and their control. And when we decide not to give a shit about that,

of course, those mass murdering psychopath dictators advance. And that's what we've been seeing, right? And now I've talked to the, this sort of dates back to the Obama foreign policy theory, which is a little bit distinct from the Biden one in the sense that it was more open about its admission that it was trying to steer the decline of American hegemony. In other words, their theory was, well, the world's going to be a more multipolar place. The responsible thing to do would be to hand off some of those responsibilities to regional actors so that we can, rather than just take our hands off the steering wheel and let the car veer off into the ditch. But that didn't work because those regional actors turned out to be bad actors. I'm talking about Erdogan and the Saudis and a lot of the Russian reset.

And this was the concept. They thought that all these regional actors were going to share responsibility. At least the Biden administration doesn't believe that nonsense. But at the same time, they're worried about the politics in America because they know that Americans are are soured on intervention. Rightly. Right. Because a lot of the interventions didn't go that well. At the same time, they feel this responsibility not to retreat from the world, especially after the Trump era, because, again, the demand signal is coming from everywhere. So they have to act one way and worry about the politics the other way, which is why, again, nobody really understands what they're doing. On the Middle East, I think it's a sad story, actually, because I think that there was a thing called the path towards freedom,

democracy, and human rights in the Middle East that we supported. And even though it didn't succeed this time, eventually it will, someday it will, with or without us, because that's, people don't like living on their knees. People don't like living with a boot on their neck. So eventually that region will achieve the sovereignty and dignity that people desire, but we won't have anything to do with that under the current plan. And that's a damn shame. But okay, you don't want any more adventures in the Middle East, that I get. But no one says we can't confront China, except for the Chinese. So that should be the thing that they should be more forward leaning on. And rhetorically, they are, but functionally, they're distracted You know, again, it comes back to that senior leader thing. If all the leaders are spending

all their time rounding up, you know, 20 leopard tanks for Ukraine and that takes six months, well, then Taiwan gets short shrift and that's exactly what's happening. As it relates to the Chinese brokering, the Beijing brokering of this Saudi Iran deal, the administration said they knew it was in the works, even though they acknowledge that they weren't involved with it. They say they weren't caught by surprise and they praised it. What do you think was really going on? Oh, my God. I mean, I think this is the Saudis giving yet another big F you to President Biden, a pretty bold one, a pretty brazen one. I mean, just think again, you talk about, you know, the difference between foreign policy rhetoric and

implementation. President Biden campaigned on making Saudi Arabia a pariah state. And he said that, I mean, let's face it, the Trump administration got into bed with the Saudis in a way that was pretty egregious, ignoring the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. I won't go through the whole litany. I'm not even going to get into the private equity. I'm just saying that Biden campaigned on one thing, which was to reset the US-Saudi relationship, and the MBS backed him down. And he used his control over energy prices and his flirtation with Russia and China. And it's a threat. He's threatening Biden's political survival using Saudi influence and money and pressure and power.

And it worked. And Biden backed down and did the fist bump and got humiliated and still didn't get the energy break. He still didn't get the Saudis to do the one thing that they're supposed to do in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, which is to manage the stability of the energy market. Just to remind people, what you're referring to is when Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia after he said he was going to turn them into prior state

he had to travel to saudi arabia to seek more assistance from opec right he said he wasn't going to shake uh mbs's hand but then he fist bumped mbs and it all made us or at least the biden administration look kind of of make them look foolish. Yeah, because because he he backed off his own principles for an oil concession that he didn't get that they didn't even give him. So really, he got humiliated for exactly nothing. And now here comes the Saudis to say, OK, you know, that other thing that you wanted, which is to show that America is still, you know, a power player in the region by brokering all these Middle East peace deals? Oh, no, we're going to take that gem and give it to the Chinese and hang out with the Chinese and the Iranians. You know, if that's not an F you to the Biden people, I don't know what is. Now,

again, my view may be different than your view on this, but my view on the Saudis is if they want to switch their dependent their security dependence from the usa to china i say good luck with that okay yeah i say have fun trying to order a russian tank or airplane in the next 20 years because that order is not coming okay and you get into bed with the chinese communist party on regional security okay that seems like a good let's see let's let's see how that works out. Well, not only that, but if just because Saudi and Iran have resumed diplomatic relations doesn't mean they're friends, doesn't mean they're allies, doesn't mean they can rely on one another.

So things could break down very quickly, and we should assume they will because they always have. And when they do, and Saudi Arabia is feeling the threat from Iran again, can they really rely on China to have their back in that situation, given China's- I say we should put them to that test, you know? Because obviously, why are we spending all this time and money and effort to protect Saudi Arabia if they're not holding up their end of the bargain, which is to stabilize the energy markets? And if they're not doing that, then we shouldn't do our part. That's what I think. It's funny is that, and I realize

that no administration is actually going to do that. But what's funny is that Trump actually, when he was mad at the Saudis because they were overproducing, he threatened just that. He called them up and he said, I'm going to pull the U.S. troops because they couldn't tell if he was crazy or not. They did what he wanted. So it just shows that, like, you know, when it comes to any sort of thuggish, you know, despotic regime, probably the sticks are better than the carrots and i know the saudis are still technically our allies but you know listen relationships change and and you know they're they're if they're not doing their job as uh uh stewards of the energy markets in exchange for what are doing our job well i don't i don't think that relationship is necessarily as valuable to

us as it once was before we move off that topic think, I mean, to the extent that this was clear in reporting, including in the Wall Street Journal a few days before the Chinese announcement about the Saudi-Iranian resumption of diplomatic ties, that Saudi's real near-term, near to medium-term goal is to get some kind of nuclear capability up and running you know i don't know you don't buy it no i mean i just don't know i haven't done any reporting on that you know my focus has been on the china part of this but i'm just wondering are they playing the u.s and china off each other who can get us who can get us our nuclear it's it's a big ask it's a stretch i wouldn't be shocked by anything at this point. I mean, we're talking about a guy who like kidnaps prime ministers and murders journalists and does all sorts of other, you know,

commits atrocities in Yemen. This is a, this is, he's not a reformer. Okay. And, you know, there's a lot of money thrown around Washington to make people say that he is, but he's not. And, and so what it so that means that all bets are off. That means that, yeah, if at some point in the future he thinks it's in his interest or in Saudi Arabia's interest to go buy some nuclear technology from China, that's what they're going to do. And again, that just shows us that what we think of as a strong U.S.-Saudi relationship, it's not really the case if they don't see it that way. And that's just the reality. But I don't really know exactly what is planned. I don't profess to know what's in the mind of the clown prince. Okay, so now let's talk.

You wrote extensively, and we talked when you were on the podcast back in 2021, about the possibility that the COVID originated with a lab-related accident, accident, rather than, rather than some sort of natural process through a wet market and, and all the rest, as was the conventional wisdom at the time. This, you know, Senator Cotton and others were, you know, giving oxygen to this idea. A lot of people, particularly at the CDC and the Center for Infectious Diseases, poo-pooed the idea. And it kind of, you know, the oxygen went out, you know, out of the debate, and it went quiet. And then suddenly, in the last month or so, the U.S. Energy Department changed its initial assessment on the origins of the virus, and they said that the, you know, the analysts now believe that a lab-related accident was most likely, and then they caveat it with low confidence, the, sorry, the pandemic or the coronavirus originated in a lab-related accident, and again,

they say it with low confidence. And then immediately those who had believed that along put like a neon sign on top of that news report pointing that out. Others began to focus on the low confidence part, and so then the whole debate got heated up again. And you've been writing about it and reporting on this for some time. So first of all, what actually happened? Like, why did the Energy Department already all of a sudden pop up? Was it significant that they popped up, even though they said so with low confidence? Then there was an FBI report that also came on the heels of the Energy Department report.

So just help us explain what's going on here. Sure. First, a comment on the debate, over the debate, because every time, I mean, I've been living in this nightmare of a story for three years now. And by that, I mean that it's in my book. I've done more reporting on this than, or at least I think as much reporting on this as any other journalist out there. And the story is a nightmare because it's so misunderstood. And because at this point, it's become an ideological argument rather than a factual argument. You have some people who are like, oh, it must've been the lab. And you have some people who are like, oh must have been the lab and you have some people who are like oh it definitely wasn't the lab how dare you say the lab and there's no amount of evidence or data or you know short of like xi jinping getting on tv and

saying it was the lab that would convince either of these people to move off of their long-held assumptions it's ingrained into them it's a become a matter of their identity. And they each have sources and reports that they could lean on, right? They all feel justified in having a bias, in other words. And I don't have a bias. I don't care if it came from the lab. I care about finding out what happened because that's the only rational way

of figuring out how to make sure it doesn't happen again. In any disaster, plane crash or nuclear meltdown, the obvious thing to do is to figure out what happened. So otherwise, how can you make politics and policy changes to ensure that you have the best chance of preventing it? It seems pretty clear to me. So I'm not advocating for the lab leak. What I'm saying is that for three years, there were a lot of important people who were intentionally steering people away from the lab leak accident hypothesis for corrupt and hidden reasons. Some of them were more egregious than others.

A lot of them were the scientists who were the best friends of the lab. They misled the World Health Organization. They misled a lot of journalists. They misled Congress. They misled the World Health Organization, they misled a lot of journalists, they misled Congress, they misled the intelligence community, and they continue to do that to this day. And the polarizing figure that Anthony Fauci is has also complicated the discussion of this important public health and national security issue, because there are a lot of bad faith attacks on Anthony Fauci, but there are some good faith attacks on him as well. And it's impossible for the good faith attacks to get any oxygen because the bad faith attacks fill the room. But what I'm trying to say is that it's very clear that Anthony Fauci

and Francis Collins, the head of the National Institute of Health at that time, intentionally misled the public and Congress about what they knew about the possibility, still as yet unproven theory, that the outbreak was linked to the lab. And there's thousands upon thousands of documents that they refused to provide Congress and the public for three years. And why would they do that? If they were really, as they claim to be, on a search for the truth, there's no reason that these unclassified documents about research that was funded with u.s taxpayer money shouldn't already be on the internet as of right now we know that the chinese are going to hide the origin they're by the way they have a lab leak theory too they say it came from our labs we can get into that but the point is that there's no explanation i've ever heard

that justifies why our public health officials, you know, poo-pooed this theory for three years and then hid all the information that would either exonerate them or convict them. Because remember, if they were so sure that it wasn't it, then the information would only prove their point. And there was never anybody who forced the truth to come out. Now, here we are three years later, and people say, well, who cares? What does it matter now? Well, it matters because not only because we have to know whether or not we live in a world of limited resources. If it's the market theory, we've got to close down every market in Asia.

Well, that's one thing to do. If it's the lab theory and we have to increase biosafety in the labs, well, that's another thing to do. People say, oh, well, we'll do both. But that's not really the way the world works. You're not going to go around and close down every market in Asia because that's a crazy thing to do, especially if it had nothing to do with the outbreak. So now three years later, a tiny piece of information comes out, okay, in perspective compared to the mass amounts of evidence and data. And now, again, my argument is not that I want the lab leak theory to be true, but that if you look at the piles of circumstantial evidence, the pile on the side of the lab leak is bigger and growing all the time,

whereas the pile on the side of the market is very small and hasn't moved an inch in years. So can you summarize the pile on the... Because we know about the pile on the wet market theory. Let's just go over that real quick because the pile on the wet market theory is that there are – and this is the totality of it – is that there are some early cases – oh, no, not the earliest cases that are connected to the market. There was a cluster at the market, in other words, in the early days. Number two, that there were animals at the market that might have been an intermediary host, although not one animal was ever found with any evidence of having been that intermediary host. That's it. Okay, now I can easily destroy those two pieces of evidence right now the reason that

the earlier cases were clustered around the market is because in those early days they only tested around the market okay so of course the more cases came up in the places where they tested and no cases came up in the places where they didn't test so it's crazy to use that data to conclude anything because if you only look zero in And why did they zero in on that market? Like, why did they say- Some people got sick at the market, but they found, that doesn't mean that's where it broke out. In other words, the Chinese government theories, that was a super spreader event, not an origin event.

And again, we now know that there were a lot of cases months before that, months before the earliest case was found at the market. But in 2021, it seemed like the market was an early event, so it might have been the origin. But that doesn't really seem to be the case. But you're saying that that just proves that it was a super spreader event, not that that's the Chinese government's position. Your position is it was a super spreader. You're saying most likely it was a super spreader. Right, right, right. Some people definitely got sick of the market because that market is a place where people trade sickness. But that's quite different and apart from having any evidence whatsoever that the spillover happened at the market, for which there is none.

And despite the culling of tens of thousands of pangolins and raccoon dogs and minks and other various innocent animals, a pangolin genocide occurred in Wuhan in the search for the magic pangolin that was the intimate. None were ever found that were ever connected to the outbreak so it's really like disingenuous and dishonest to hang your hat on this point that oh well there were a lot of early cases of the market or that there were animals at the market that could have possibly been related somehow though we we didn't find any now okay on the lab side well the the the evidence is just, keeps on coming out. And first was the published research. This is years and years of published research that the Chinese published with American scientists, with the ones, the very American scientists who are denying that the lab leak theory could be true,

which talked about modifying bat coronaviruses by passing them through humanized, mice with humanized lungs to make them more virulent and dangerous. They published that research. That's public. It's not contested. They were doing this research for years and years. Now, that's piece number one. And then piece number two is all of the intelligence that we know about, which is the sick researchers at the lab, the finding by the Trump and Biden administration that there are military researchers at the lab. In other words, it's not that the NIH, that the US government or Fauci sponsored research that led to the pandemic necessarily. One of the theories, the theory that I think is backed by a lot of evidence,

is that we taught these Chinese scientists how to mess around with dangerous viruses, and then they built another part of the lab, the part that they didn't tell us about, with the Chinese military. And people say, well, it's not a bioweapon. No, it's military bioresearch. We have it, too. We have it at Fort Detrick. That's where they say the outbreak came from. But that's obviously not true because there wasn't an outbreak.

People didn't get sick in Fort Detrick. People got sick in Wuhan. So big red flag right there that the published research shows that they were doing exactly this type of research at that lab. Number two, as the evidence came out, we found out more about the cover-up. And that was about the fact that American scientists and American officials totally thought the lab leak was plausible, but in public denied it and in fact orchestrated a campaign to call it a conspiracy theory, which the press ran with, because if you were in the press, typically if you saw a bunch of scientists versus Donald Trump, you would probably believe a bunch of scientists. But in a sense, they got captured.

The journalists got captured by their sources, who were these scientists, because they didn't understand that they had a conflict of interest and they were covering their own asses. And then two years later, the Biden administration comes in and they don't know, right? They weren't there. It wasn't on their watch. They didn't feel this ideology that it had to be the market. So they ordered an intelligence review, which is a very rational thing to do. And here's the crazy part, Dan. The intelligence officials, the ones that pointed to the market, their sources were those same scientists. They made the same exact mistake the journalists made, which was they got captured by their sources because they didn't know what they were doing. And we think, oh, the intelligence community must know what they're doing. No, they didn't know what they were doing. They went to those scientists who had the conflict of interest to run their intelligence investigation.'s why for the uh agencies came back with uh oh it probably was a natural origin because that was informed by those same scientists who were involved in the misleading and the cover-up the whole time now that takes us to the energy department because we have an energy department

full of national laboratories where they do investigations of this kind all the time. So one of those is the Z Division, right? Right. So can you explain what the Z Division is? Yeah. I mean, in the cold, that's the thing. We talk about bioweapons and bioresearch. We've been doing that for decades, and so have the Russians, and so have the Chinese, and a lot of other people.

So in the 60s, the US government created this division inside the Energy Department to do investigations about bio threats. 60s, the U.S. government created this division inside the Energy Department to do investigations about bio threats. And that would seem perfectly suited to this. This is definitely a bio threat, no matter what you think the origin is. And so the Z Division gets word up and they start working on it and they're told to stand down. Okay. No, no, no. Let's leave this to the NIH and Anthony Fauci's outfit. They're the experts on viruses. And quite to their chagrin, actually, no, no. Let's leave this to the NIH and the and Anthony Fauci's outfit. They're the experts on viruses. And quite to their chagrin, actually, the Z Division people were forced to stand down for two years. Now, so isn't that curious that these are actually these are the scientists in the U.S. government who aren't conflicted and they were taken off the case. And all Biden did was put them back on the case. and then it took them a while to start up again and now it's two years later and the evidence is

two years old and all that and they so they came up with this oh yeah it probably came from the lab low confidence okay fine that's the same low confidence on the other side and uh everyone's like oh my god how did that happen but the truth is that they're just doing their jobs that they were prevented from doing for the last two years. The only reason it took two years is because someone shut them down. And then the FBI comes out and they say, oh, well, we have moderate confidence it was the lab because we also have experts. And if you listen to Christopher Wray's interview on this, he's very deliberate. He says, we have teams of people who do this for a living, who investigate the danger of viruses. And they worked with Fort Detrick, by the way, who are the other experts. So all of the U.S. government experts, or at least

a lot of them, who don't have a conflict of interest, who are the most forensic-minded investigators, because again, it's not a scientific question, it's a forensic question. Something bad happened, we have to figure out what it was. Was there any coordination or was it merely a coincidence, the timing between the FBI and the Energy Department in the Z Division investigations? So the FBI actually came out with its ruling a year ago, but it wasn't public. And all they did now was acknowledge it. And the energy department's investigation gave them the political cover they needed to do that. It's clear that Christopher wanted to do that. He wanted to go on record to tell people what he thought. And I don't know if that was clear with the White House. I don't think so,

but I'm not sure. But if you look at it from the Biden administration's perspective, they have an interest in not getting caught on the wrong side of this thing. And so that's why they turned the investigations on, but they didn't really publish it. So they're playing a very sort of cynical game, which is like, okay, no one can accuse us of shutting down the investigations because we turned them back on, but we're not going to push it because it's a diplomatic problem for them with the Chinese. It's a problem for them with their progressive caucus because so many progressive Democrats are committed to the idea that the lab leak theory is racist, even though when you think about it, it's much more racist to assume that Chinese people eat weird

stuff at markets, okay? Which is, by the way, not true. I've been to China a bunch of times. The markets are everywhere. It's not like it's a weird thing to have a market, okay? But anyway, because of the messed up way the story was managed, now the lab leak theory is seen by progressives as a racist thing. So again, Biden doesn't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole, but suffice to say he's happy to let it just play out, whatever it is, and then just say, look, I turned it back on, and that's what's happening. So that's why I think it's really ridiculous when people are like, well, four agencies say market and two agencies say lab.

So four beats two, right? But that's insane because only one of the theories is 100% correct and one of them is 0% correct. It's not a horse race. The majority can be wrong and the minority can be right. It just matters what the answer is. And it's not up to the intelligence community to take a vote on it, okay? It's up to everyone involved to call for

transparency, and that transparency will reveal more data, at which point we will eventually have a preponderance of the evidence, not a smoking gun, and then we'll be forced as a society to reckon with that preponderance of the evidence in order to make policy to protect ourselves. And we can't do that because we're still arguing about whether or not the pangolin made a thousand mile trip from, or the bat made a thousand mile trip and then bit a pangolin that's happened to spill over to a human 10 miles from the lab which is again common sense tells you it's just a much much much less likely scenario before we move off this topic just very quickly i know you don't have a crystal ball but based on your reporting when are we going to get real visibility into what happened so all this is now it was sort of quiet for a couple years, now it's back on. What kind of timeline are we looking at?

And I assume now, given Congress is in, or the House is in Republican majority, and there's the special committee that Mike Gallagher is leading, so there's a lot going on that would, I would think, give fuel to those who want to get to the bottom of it. Right. The action on the Hill on this issue is in the hands of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, a subcommittee on the coronavirus chaired by Congressman Wenstrup. They had their first hearing on it. Robert Redfield, the former head of the CDC during the outbreak, a virologist, by the way, you know, testified that based on the makeup of the virus and the way it acted and his access to intelligence and sources, he believed it came from the lab. And, you know, everyone wrote that he's a racist,

he's a conspiracy theorist. So, you know, I hope that they, that subpoenas start flying. I hope that they start to pry open the files of USAID and the intelligence community, because that intelligence review itself, the allegation by Republicans is that it was completely corrupted. And so we have to see their work on this thing. And USAID too. And, you know, let's get Peter Daszak

from the EcoHealth Alliance under oath and see if he says the same thing as he's been saying this whole time, which is that, I have no idea. Why would the Chinese hide a science? And this is sort of like the big sort of lie about this issue is like that this idea that, oh, well, the Chinese labs said they didn't have it. So that means that they didn't have it.

And in order to believe that, you would have to believe that these Chinese scientists were probably very nice people, you know, have any control over really what gets released about this issue. They don't. It's a Chinese Communist Party controlled issue. This is a dual-use technology. The lab is run by the PLA. It was occupied by the PLA before. Now it's just run by the PLA. And it's not just this lab, it's a network of labs. And we shouldn't be surprised that the Chinese have a biodefense program related to virus research, because we have one too. The problem is that we built theirs for them, and then our intelligence community failed to track it properly because the people that we had on the inside decided to work with them in a way that may have probably likely caused the pandemic they were

trying to prevent. Okay, Josh, before I let you go, I would be remiss if I did not ask you about Russia-Ukraine. You've written about this war extensively. Most recently, the column about three weeks ago that I was quite moved by, this was, I think, following President Biden's trip to Ukraine, where he said something along the lines of, we will help Ukraine for as long as it takes, or something along those lines. And you wrote this column, this sort of impassioned plea that, you know, basically argue it's not about as long as it takes. It's about now, right? And I'll quote, you wrote here, and I'm quoting, Ukrainians have, this is what you wrote in the Washington Post, Ukrainians have been fighting heroically, but they're still outnumbered and outgunned.

Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops and still enjoys substantial superiority in material. Ukrainians know perfectly well that time is not on their side. A fresh Russian offensive can come at any moment. So it doesn't matter that President Biden says we'll be there as long as it takes. They're in a race against time, according to your piece. What is the Biden administration not doing that they should be doing? Because everyone I speak to, reporters I speak to who are covering this issue, this foreign policy challenge, as far as President Biden is concerned, is one of the defining, if not the defining, mission of his presidency. It will be the legacy of his presidency. It's in part why he wants to run for re-election and continue his administration.

So what is he not doing? If he really wants Ukraine to win, what is he not doing that he should be doing? Right, right. Well, to be clear, I wrote that column after going to the Munich Security Conference and speaking with a bunch of Ukrainians. And what I'm trying to do in that column is to convey the reality of what the Ukrainians are experiencing and factor that into our policy know, they're the ones fighting and dying. It's their country. It's their lives on the line. Every Ukrainian family is in a state of panic and tragedy. Every single one.

They've all lost people. Most of them are living in darkness or living as refugees. Families are separated. And it's getting the economies in the in the in the toilet and uh it's not getting any better and it's been a year okay and uh so as long as it takes sounds horrible to them you know they're like as long as it takes what are you what are you talking about they're like as long as no no no no right we're not digging in for a long fight we want this to end they're like yeah they're like you don't understand these russian criminals and zombies and messed up crazy you know hordes of rapists and murderers that they're

sending at they can send those forever okay that's horrible for those russians but that's their problem this is our country and uh you know there's there becomes a tipping point where you know the the things that ukrainians you know view view as the underpinnings of their military structure start to fade away. They start to have the people who are the skilled soldiers, the equipment that they know how to use. And moreover, what's the point of saving a country if the country is a ruin? And when you hit the Ukrainian, when you ruin their infrastructure, well, that doesn't snap back. So every time more infrastructure gets ruined, the costs of reconstruction go up and the task of rebuilding, and that's even if

they win, they could lose. They could still very well lose. So that kind of sense of desperation, I don't think is well understood in Washington, where people are like, oh, well, we give them a bunch of stuff, they're fine. And now they're just arguing over this line or that line in the sand. That's not true. They're arguing about their very existence as a country and often as human beings. So that kind of sense of desperation should lead us to say, well, okay, where do, one big problem is the U.S. and Washington and Kiev

don't have a shared agreement on what winning means, okay? They want their idea of winning and our idea of winning clearly different, although we don't acknowledge it. The other big problem is that what's the timeline at which we determine that we want to go for that end game and what the ukrainians are saying is that this is the last year we can do this don't tell us we're going to be here for five years it's not going to work we're going to lose you're going to regret that and if they really wanted to win this year well then there are a lot of specific things that

they need that they're not getting before we get to that josh i'm sorry before we get to that but so we talked about the discrepancy in timelines. Can you talk about the discrepancy in what winning means, what Ukraine thinks winning means, and every Russian troop is dead or out. And for the US, winning means getting to a diplomatic negotiation that results in a cessation of violence. And you could see the political imperative from the Biden people, right? They don't want to be, what do they want to be on TV when he's running for your election? Well, Nixon, 1968, he said, the best thing to do is to be as a peacemaker. So he ran as a peacemaker.

Now, of course, but the point is that, uh, that's what they're, they're going for. They want by the end of this year to both sides be sufficiently exhausted that they sit down at the table.

And it doesn't matter necessarily if those negotiations are concluded, just that they're ongoing. And then it'll be less violence. You can run as a peacemaker. That's a pretty good bumper sticker. The Ukrainians are saying, wouldn't it be better to run as a victor? Isn't that much, much better? And even if we're not going to get 100% of our territory, this is the Ukrainians again, isn't that a better negotiating position? Can't you even get behind us on this negotiating position so that when we sit down at this table, we have the strongest hand and the best negotiating position? Because they can't go to the Russians and say,

we want all the territory. And the Russians are like, well, we know that the Biden people don't really agree with you on that. That lack of coordination is really problematic. Now, the Biden administration will say, well, we're very unified with Germany and with France and, you know, and in many cases with Poland. And that's true. And that's good. And they deserve credit for strengthening NATO and all that stuff. But that does very little for addressing the Ukrainians desperate needs. And that's the planes, long range missiles. You know, they got them the planes it's still months before so the planes are a little bit of a red herring because uh because yeah that's what they'll say oh well

if we started today you still wouldn't get them for six months which they say well let's start today right you know rather let's let's train the pilots what could be the harm in that you know and so but i think really what's really and tanks are are on the way. Like 20 tanks, Dan. 20. Okay. There's 2,000 Russian tanks. It's insane. But really, the emergency, my reporting shows that the emergency is about the ammunition.

Okay. So it's not good. This is cluster munitions. No, no. I'm talking about just regular shells. Regular shells. Okay. Before we get to clusters.

Okay. So we haven't put our defense industries on a war footing we've sanctioned the russian defense industries but they can get drones from from from iran they can get they can find ways to break the sanctions our we're still producing the same amount of stuff as we did in peacetime and the ukrainians are using it at a rate that it can't be replenished which means that eventually they're going to run out pretty soon and that's a big problem nobody produces the 155 artillery shells anywhere except for the South Koreans. They're the only ones in the world who actually build these things because no one thought we were going to

be fighting artillery wars in Europe in 2023. But here we are. So absent a war, us getting our industries on our war footing, there are other less attractive options like giving them cluster bombs. And OK, I wrote a column about that. So let's talk about that, because that's controversial. So explain what cluster bombs are for those who don't follow the history of warfare. What are cluster bombs? Why are they so controversial? And why do you think, despite the controversy, and it will be controversial, it's worth making them available, dusting them off the shelf and make them available to the Ukrainians? Right. Well, cluster munitions describe a range of weapons whereby one munition breaks up into dozens of other munitions, essentially spreading bomblets over a wide area.

It's a good way to kill a lot of people with one shot. And if you've got 200,000 Russians storming at you and you've only got so many shots, you probably want to kill more than one with each shot. So that makes perfect military sense for the situation. The problem is that these are internationally banned weapons in 100 countries. US and Ukraine haven't ratified that treaty, but still, it's not a good look. And the Ukrainians know that. They're not happy about it. Convention on clustering munitions, as you said, 100 countries have signed onto it, not only because they can kill indiscriminately even when they're not intended to do so, but long after the fight, long after the war, there are remnants of these munitions that can stay in the areas that were hit and cause further damage to

innocents. Right. These are old weapons. They've been sitting on shelves since like the 80s or 70s in some cases. And a lot of them don't explode. They essentially become landmines that children can stumble upon years later. But the Ukrainians said, listen, we'll do the cleanup if we live that long. And if we don't live that long, then it's not going to matter. And we won't have any children to stumble upon these ordinances if the Russians kill them all today. And so they really are that desperate. And now, again, the Russians use cluster bombs on civilian areas. The Ukrainians are promising to use them. Of course, yeah, because they use them in cities, not against military targets. But it just goes to show you that it's really the use of the weapon and not the weapon that's the evil. But anyway, the Ukrainians say this is for a specific military use, which is to stop the oncoming Russian advance. And they don't have another alternative.

And what I say is that, OK, if we're not going to... And by the way, we have lots of those. We have millions of cluster bombs sitting around Europe that we can give them today that could save Ukrainian lives and kill more Russians, which I thought is what we're supposed to be doing now. If that makes you feel icky, if you don't want to be involved in that cluster bomb proliferation, I get that. Well, then you must give the Ukrainians another way to kill more Russians.

But you can't just tell them, well, we can't give you the planes because it's too complicated. We're running out of regular weapons and we can't give you the cluster bombs because we're afraid that it's like a bad image thing for us. So good luck, which is essentially where they are. And, you know, it's like giving them just enough weapons to fight to a bloody stalemate. Again, makes sense politically for the Biden administration, but militarily for the Ukrainians, it's crazy. And it leads to what Putin wants, which is to destroy the Ukrainian country as a democracy as they know it.

So it can never emerge to be a healthy democracy with a healthy economy that's integrated into Europe and partnered with NATO. That's the goal. That's the shared goal, is that at the end of this thing, Ukraine is a functional democracy that can, by the way, we'll have a huge army and we'll be on our side because we help them because we save these help these people save their own lives. But only if they win and if they if they lose, they will a cascade of horrors will surely follow in ukraine and beyond i agree uh josh we're going to leave it there you laid out uh a bunch of reporting and analysis on a number of categories we've been

following closely in this ongoing conversation this podcast that um you anyways i just sort of stayed out of the way and let you lay all these issues out. My goal was to have this podcast banned in seven different dictatorships. So I hope, well, let's see when you air it. I can count four or five. Iran you hit, Iran, Russia, China. Saudi. Saudi.

You didn't hit North Korea. I don't know. You'll have to have me back on. I'll have to. I'll have to have me back on. I'll have to, I'll have to. Josh, thank you for this. Uh,

Josh Rogan from the Washington Post will post again, your book in the show notes, will post the columns we talked about in this, uh, in the show notes, show notes. And, uh,

thanks for joining us and illuminating these issues for us. And, um, look forward to having you back. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your service. That's our show for today.

To keep up with Josh Rogin, you can find him at Josh Rogin on Twitter. That's at Josh, J-O-S-H-R-O-G-I-N. And you can follow all of his work at the Washington Post. You can find his book, which I highly recommend, at you know where you can find Josh Rogin's book. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.