Pod Save the World - Belarus hijacks a plane (and Samantha Power)

Episode Date: May 26, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss how the Belarusian president forced a plan to land so he could arrest a journalist, the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, a spike in coronavirus cases in Japan ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, more theories about the origins of coronavirus, a coup in Samoa, why John Cena had to apologize for calling Taiwan a country and more. Then USAID Administrator Samantha Power joins Ben to talk about her development agenda and how the agency can actually help get coronavirus vaccines into arms around the world.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, we got a hell of a good show for the listeners today. Real quick. I just got a pulse check on your Knicks. How are you feeling? I know you guys took an L. I don't want to rub it in or anything. Oh, well, is this what you have to do after you got deconstructed by Jason on? Uh-huh. Take line. Oh, my God's just savage. People should check that out if they haven't. I feel really good, Tommy, because as a kid, like there was no higher experience in my life than going to like a 1990s Nix playoff series, which is also like the last time the Knicks were relevant because like it felt like the entire city of New York was in the arena screaming at the same time. And even though they lost, just to see that, it was like such a catharsis as a Knicks fan, but to be a little serious too, it's like the first post-vaccination. period event I've seen where people were just, like the place was full and like people were just happy to be around each other and enjoying a basketball game, right? So, but I do think we,

if Randall can play better, we should be able to win games. Because we took like about as good a punch from Trey Young as, as he's got, you know? He's a badass. Now I'm glad that, you know, we have a villain, which always makes playoff series more fun too. But I feel pretty good. Good. You should feel good. Also, we all participate. intended that sports were cool without crowds. We lie to ourselves. It's so much better with the crowd. Also, in honor of the 90s, I'm wearing a naughty by nature sweatshirt. So I just want to keep the theme going. Ben, also, just want to say quick thanks to all the listeners who rated, reviewed, and shared POD Save the World. Like, we love doing the show. We appreciate your five-star reviews

and less than five-star reviews, but we appreciate them less in proportion because it helps people find the show. Also, Ben's book is coming out. And I was just informed that the number one book on the bestseller list is killing the mob by Bill O'Reilly? How are you listeners? How is anyone letting that happen? How is killing the 400th killing series by Bill O'Reilly beating Ben's book right now, which comes out on June 1st? You know, like the whole killing series has mystified me for a long time.

It's just like, it's pretty dark. And it basically is clearly like Bill O'Reilly talking to some right-wing historian for like a few minutes. And then that guy writes a book in about three weeks, you know? Whereas, again, as I took you guys along the journey, you were there with me when I was recording this podcast from places like Hungary and Singapore and back from Hong Kong and come along with me through the journey of the book. I'd like nothing more than for you guys to not only surpass killing whatever Bill

O'Reilly is currently killing, but to experience kind of this fascinating set of characters that I try to bring to life and whose voices I try to platform in the book, as well as my own feelings about the plight of democracy in the world today and what we need to do to not keep going in the direction we've been going in. Yeah, I can't wait to read it. It's going to show up on my Kindle on June 1st because Dan Bongino, the roid-raging Secret Service agent turned mega guy, told me to boycott Amazon, and then he admitted he shopped at Whole Foods. But we have a great show today, okay, we're going to talk about a state-sanctioned hijacking in Belarus, the ceasefire in Gaza and the fallout from the last couple weeks of fighting, news about Iran's presidential

election, the Tokyo Olympics, the origins of COVID, the story that just won't go away, or at least just can't be clarified. News out of Samoa, which we rarely get to talk about, then a roundup of some headlines and close with the story about how close the U.S. came to using nuclear weapons in the late 50s and why a professional wrestler is groveling. on video to his fans in China. And then, Ben, people are going to be excited about this. You did the interview today with our friend Samantha Power. How did that go? And what are folks going to hear? So it was awesome. You guys should know Samantha, of course, mainly through appearances on this podcast. Not to mention her trailblazing work in the Ranger Fields. But it was so great to talk to her as the

administrator of USAID. And you can tell that she is like, she's gone deep on this stuff. She's got an agenda. She walks us through, I think, in the best way I've heard yet. What is the U.S. going to try to do to produce and at least pursue vaccine equity around the world, as well as just talking about how she's thinking about her job, what her priorities are? Definitely check it out. You will think about U.S. international development in a way that you haven't before because there's now and Sam like a just fantastic spokesperson who can both break it down and has a clear vision of it. That's great.

I can't wait for Sam to just be incredible at that job and reinvigorate an age. agency that gets overlooked way too often. Okay, let's start in Belarus because over the weekend, a Ryan Air flight traveling from Greece to Lithuania was intercepted by a Meg 29 fighter while passing through Belarus, and the plane was forced to land in Minsk, which is Belarus's capital. I believe a Ryan Airplane for those who haven't taken one in Europe. It's sort of like the bolt bus of European Airlines, you know, sort of a discount. So Belarusian air traffic controllers, they told this pilot that there was a bomb on board and that he had to land, but we now know that was a lie designed to get the plane on the ground. So that Belarus's intelligence services,

which is literally called the KGB, literally still, could arrest a 26-year-old opposition journalist named Roman Protasevich. Protasevich fled Belarus in 2019 and his work helping organize protests against Belarus's president, Alexander Lukashenko. It's made him an enemy of the state. The KGB literally named him a terrorist. So there's concern that if he's prosecuted, he could face the death penalty. The U.S., in most EU countries quickly denounced this state-sanctioned hijacking. Poland's prime minister called it an act of terrorism. President Biden called it an outrageous incident. They demanded his immediate release and said the U.S. was preparing new sanctions. On Monday, the EU said that they're going to impose sanctions on Belarus, including banning

Belarus's airlines from using EU airspace or airports. Belarusian state TV released a literal hostage video of Protisevich, where he said, you know, he's being treated well, but like there were bruises on the guy's face, so you know that's not true. President Lukashenko, he's often called Europe's last dictator. There have been months of protests against his latest and, I guess, ongoing attempt to steal this most recent election. On Monday, Lukashenko signed another law, putting even more restrictions in place on protesters. I think he banned live streaming from a protest, which is absurd stuff. So, Ben, you know, the international community, I think, is rightly taking this very seriously. They're doing it as a violation of international rules and sovereignty. But Lukashenko, you know, he's been

an international pariah for years. He was recently sanctioned because of the post-election crackdown that doesn't seem to have slowed him down. Like, do you think these sanctions are the right step? Are they appropriate? And if not, like, do you have better ideas for how to inflict a cost on a leader like Lukashenko when Belarus, you know, it's basically a Russian client state who probably is less interested than some other countries in what the U.S. has to stay, for example? Well, look, I think it's worth just noting how serious this is. I mean, first of all, to the global norm, right, that you should be able to get on a plane without fear that some autocratic government's going to ground it, you know? I mean, shoot, Tommy, I've flown on planes that flew over Russian

airspace or Chinese airspace or Gulf Arab airspace or, you know, keep naming your 31 flavors here. And if this, they're able to get away with this, why would this not happen again? And it's designed to send a message that critics of this regime in Belarus are not safe anywhere. And I think it's even more ominous in a way because some of us are quite skeptical that the KGB for the Russian client state would have done this without at least the knowledge of not the participation of Russia, too. So that makes it kind of a bigger deal in a lot of ways. And then you see this video, this kind of Stalin show trial of this young person who's a journalist, by the way, too. so it's also an attack on kind of the idea of independent journalists and free speech.

And so where are we with Lukashenko? I think the first steps were appropriate, and I was glad to see the EU ban flights from, you know, landing in Belarus or going through its aerospace, essentially cutting them off from the commons of international air travel. And that was a big step because usually Victor Orban uses his veto of EU foreign policymaking decisions to block stuff like that. Clearly, there was such overwhelming opinion to do this that he couldn't do that, which is a sign that you should do more of this and not let Victor Orvan continually be kind of the skunk at the garden party when they try to stand up for values.

I think, look, to tick through the list of things that could be done, you can more aggressively sanction Lukashenko and his kind of inner circle. But more broadly, I think what the U.S. in Europe can do, because we're really at this point, Tommy, where this guy is irredeemable. like he's done. We're not going to deal with him anymore. He and his cronies cannot get visas to travel to the U.S. or to Europe. They're just kind of, we're done with you, you guys, you know. And we're going to sanction you. We're going to try to hunt down all the assets that you launder through the global financial system. And we're going to start doing what these journalists are doing, which is publicizing just how corrupt you are. And we're going to support and show solidarity with the Belarusian opposition, including inviting them potentially to the, to the G7, that's one idea that's been floated to invite the leadership of the Belarus opposition to attend the G7 as a show of support. And just kind of be, it's not a regime change policy. It's just, it's a policy saying, like, we can't, this guy was not legitimately elected. So he has no legitimacy as president because the election was a fraud and appeared to go

the way of the opposition. He just kind of stepped in. And then this guy won't respect any national norm, right? So we're just, we can't, we can't deal with him here. And I think it's, something like this deserves that scale of response, because this isn't the U.S. and Europe going to look to escalate. This guy just did something that was an enormous escalation, taking his internal political disputes and really trying to create a new world in which people aren't safe anywhere, which is what Russia's done through its assassinations in other countries. It's time to just really start pushing back against this. Yeah, I mean, 170 people were on this flight. So you mentioned Russia's role a couple times. They have been, you know, you know,

cheering this move and spinning for for Lukashenko, the foreign ministry spokeswoman compared what happened on Sunday to an incident back in 2013 where a plane-carrying Bolivian president Evo Morales made an unscheduled landing in Austria when he was flying home from Moscow after other European countries refused permission to refuel in their countries or to use their airspace and when there might have been, you know, there's some suspicion that Edward Snowden might have been on the flight. What do you make of that comparison besides the fact that clearly in 2013 there wasn't a big fighter jet or a fake bomb threat involved? I mean, the first answer is I take with a grain of salt the arguments made by a government

that concocted this insane story that Hamas had threatened to blow up the plane in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, which already exists. Like, that didn't make no sense. These people don't care about making good faith arguments. They're just trolls, right? Then on the specific, it's a case of what aboutism that draws an incredibly false equivalence. And look, I think you can say that it was wrong to ground Avo Morales's plane, right? And I know I was in the Obama administration. I wasn't in some meeting where we decided to do that, but like, you can say that that was the wrong decision. But let's be clear, like, this was not grounded with a MIG fighter jet or any fighter jet, for that matter. there, Avo Morales was not detained and arrested and denied his rights.

He ended up just flying on. And there wasn't, so this wasn't like the established from some new norm of like, you know, detaining opposition figures by grounding international air travel. So like, I, again, I think you have to be able to have two thoughts in your head at the same time. Even if you think, yeah, I don't like how they landed Avo's plane, that's not the same thing as what happened here. And this is what Putin and all of his. his satellites do all the time is to try to draw a direct equivalence between these completely

flagrant violations of international norms and human rights that they engage in and things that the U.S. has done in the past. I just don't think that's the case here. Yeah, it certainly doesn't excuse this behavior. We'll definitely keep watching this one because I don't think this story has played out yet. But let's turn to Gaza because there's finally some good news out of Gaza. So the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that was announced last week has held up so far. And it's ended the 11-day conflict that killed an estimated 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, and 12 Israelis, including one child. Officials in Gaza said that roughly 1,000 residential buildings were destroyed, including several large residential towers. 17 hospitals and clinics were damaged,

including Gaza's only COVID-19 testing laboratory. The bombing also damaged other infrastructure, like electric power lines, water, sewer lines, et cetera. There's also, you know, a lot of non-physical damage, Ben, like to both Israeli and Palestinians, it's harder to quantify. There's the fallout from the mob violence and the fighting between Arabs and Jews in multi-ethnic parts of Israel, Israeli authorities said they have arrested more than 1,550 people who they believe were involved in the violence. I saw estimates that 70% of those arrested were Arabs, 30% were Jews. There has been a really horrifying rise in anti-Semitic violence around the world, including in the U.S. We saw the unraveling of efforts to form a unity government in Israel that might have helped the country move past the Netanyahu era

and forged a coalition of Jewish and Arab parties. So the damage is vast. It seems to be lasting. And all the underlying tensions that got us here around evictions and settlements that kicked off the fightings are still exist, if not worse. So, you know, Ben, last week we saw lots of pressure at this time on President Biden to demand a ceasefire. He kind of got there, right? So he said after his final call with BB Netanyahu that he expected, quote, a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire. It doesn't demand, but it's what he expected to see. Despite that, readout, a lot of the after-action sort of TikTok press stories were all about how this sort of quiet, intensive, diplomatic effort was the key to success instead of going public and demanding

things at a Netanyahu. So just a few thoughts I had before I ask you what you make of all this. So first, look, I'm incredibly grateful to Biden and his team for all the work they did to help broker a ceasefire. I do think that the Washington press and the Washington pundit class too often centers the U.S. in almost every foreign policy story when the reality more often than not is that we're not driving the train, right? In this instance, I saw Israeli military officials quoted saying that they accomplished more militarily in 50 hours of fighting than they did in 50 days of war in 2014. So my guess is that Netanyahu, the IDF leader, basically just hit targets for as long as they wanted to and then decided to hit pause. I guess given that context, you might say to us, like, well, then why does

a matter of Biden demands a ceasefire or not? If BB's just going to do what he's going to do, then why are you suggesting that Biden should call for a ceasefire? And for me, the answer is, to be credible on human rights, you have to be as consistent and clear as you possibly can about your views, even when you're talking about your friends. So I think that's why we were pushing so hard for this call for a ceasefire. So, Ben, what thoughts do you have, you know, sort of a couple days after the ceasefire happened on both that effort and then just the toll that this fighting took generally. Yeah, I think, look, it's just great to see that the fighting itself stopped or at least paused in Gaza and with the rocket fire. That's a positive thing. And clearly the Biden administration's

diplomacy, you know, helped support that positive outcome. And that is to be celebrated. I mean, that kind of, you know, get in there diplomatically, work with all the countries in the region, the Egyptians, kind of the ones talking Hamas and Gatru Sisfar, that's all to the good. I do think I had some issues with both kind of the look back at the whole process. And like you said, there was a kind of victory lap of sorts that, you know, you could sense in the press after, which I want to be very honest. I've been a part of that kind of thing in the past, you know, where you, so of you you Tommy, right, where you put out the best story of what you did. So I want people, therefore, to understand, like, to the extent that I'm, I don't know, critical is the right word,

a part of I'm just trying to explain some of the challenges with succumbing to the temptation to do that from having been there myself. I mean, first, there was this emphasis on how the approach was the right one because there was no public pressure or daylight with BB, but there was this kind of private, you know, quiet, intense conversation happening. which ultimately became public, as you said in the readout. The problem I have with that is if you're suggesting that your approach going forward is to be not at all pressuring of BB, that gives him an enormous amount of leverage in a way. Yeah. That conventional wisdom is pretty great for him.

Exactly. You can't move me with criticism? Come on. Think about that. Yeah. Like a lot of the DC punitive is like, well, this shows that you shouldn't criticize BB at all because if you criticize him, he might do something even crazier. He might extend the war longer.

think about just stop and think about that for a second you're suggesting that this guy can pressure you by threatening to be at war longer that will kill civilians if you don't support his shorter war that also kills civilians yeah that's just when you know the logic of not the Biden administration's policy because this was very much the approach in in the Obama years uh or at least for a lot of bomb ears too. That's a logic that demands questioning. The same thing with the idea that you, you know, we heard this phrase a lot, that you put your arm around Bibi to get him to do things. That's never worked. We've talked about that before in this podcast. The idea that you kind of hug Beebe and then he's going to make concessions to the Palestinians, I hope I'm proven wrong on this.

Let me just posit. Like, I'd love to be proven wrong. I'm not sure that's the case. I'm not sure that's even the case with the ceasefire because, as you said, it had more the feeling like the Israelis had a certain amount of time in mind for this operation. They did a lot very fast this time in terms of the scale of destruction. And then we're kind of ending on their own timeline here. So I'm not sure we got BB to do something that was that qualitatively different from what he had set out to do. And again, to be cynical, which we should point out, as you have, the Israeli press is usually much more cynical about this stuff than the American. and press, B.B. served as political aims. He kind of crippled his political opponent's effort,

Yarra Lepid, to form a government. You know, he strengthened, you know, his approval ratings, you know, and he is going to try to head into another election, the fifth one, to maintain power. And the last thing that I felt a little reluctant about is the ceasefire was very good, but the whole thing was not a positive episode for anybody or anything. Like, it, it, they didn't, they clearly didn't dislodge Hamas. Hamas was declaring victory at the end of this thing. A lot of people died, including a lot of Palestinian children. There's a huge amount of destruction in Gaza. There's trauma on both sides, the trauma that the Israelis had from being in bomb shelters and obviously the trauma in Gaza being through this bombardment. There's this horrific rise of

anti-Semitism, which again, I want to be very clear. I don't blame B.B. Nen. Like, if you're in semi-Semite, like, you have problems. If you're, like, beating up people in West Hollywood because they're Jewish, like, you have no fucking place. You're doing nothing to help Palestinians. That's for sure. You're harming Palestinians. And you're only revealing yourself to be a hateful person. But the broader point here, and then we also see that there's, you know, the tensions have not ended in Jerusalem. And there are these mass arrests taking place. This situation is not better than it was at the beginning of this operation, the beginning of this whole flare-up and shake Girard.

So again, I'm glad that what you saw is a kind of competent, capable, focused diplomacy to get to a ceasefire. That's all to the good. I just, I was a little wary about the impression that this was, you know, kind of a success for anybody in the sense that really it was like B.B. at Yahoo, extending what has been a negative trend, in terms of Palestinian rights, in terms of the Israeli-Palestin conflict, and of course, Amos, too, you know, establishing itself as the leadership of a certain Palestinian faction, that is the only one that, you know, is standing up to

Israel because we're firing rockets, which is utter bullshit, too. My hope, so going forward, what I hope, you know, Tony Blinkin's there now. That's good. They've announced that they're going to have representative to the Palestinian people again, a consul general like they've had in the past in Jerusalem. Trump got rid of that. That's good. It allows you to have representation to Palestinians, which suggests, you know, like a belief that there are people that deserve their own state and their own kind of diplomatic relationships. There's been talk about Gaza reconstruction, which, as has been rightly pointed out by critics, points to kind of the strangeness of giving Israel almost $4 billion in military aid, they destroy Gaza and then we pay to reconstruct it,

which again speaks to kind of the madness of this whole thing. But I'd really like to see them follow through on that. There have been some good ideas about giving people in Gaza more freedom of movement, including the capacity to work inside of Israel because they've basically been stuck there in Gaza. So good could come out of this, I think, with continued quiet, intensive diplomacy, I would hope, coupled with the occasional public statement of where this is going and kind of what the administration's view of this is. Again, like you said, both for the purpose of speaking to the situation in Israel-Palestine, but also to the purpose of, you know, U.S. international credibility, which, you know, is evaluated on all issues. And in which I think

in the present reality of trying to come back after the damage to our credibility of Trump, you know, fair or not, there's just kind of a greater scrutiny when we talk to the government. about human rights now than ever before. They're always a scrutiny, but particularly now. Yeah, we've got some real work to do on the human rights front. By the way, I've seen some feedback from listeners who say, why don't you focus on blame, talk about Hamas more? And the answer is, the menu of options for dealing with Hamas is much more limited and a lot less satisfying, right? I mean, like, you can do what we do. You can call them terrorists. You can call them arsonists. You can condemn them. They don't really care what the U.S. says, right? The international community

has tried to undercut Hamas by empowering the Palestinian Authority, but the PA has proven to be pretty feckless and really hasn't gotten that much support. The U.S. doesn't talk to Hamas. Like Ben, you mentioned this earlier. We play telephone. We talk to them through the Egyptians. And I guess U.S. officials could consider changing that approach and engaging with Hamas directly, the way we do with the Taliban. But I've not seen that idea floated at all. Hamas is funded and armed by Iran. And the U.S. tries to crack down on Iranian support for terrorism in every way possible. but it's not perfect. And, you know, what ultimately happens is the U.S. support for Israel, the ties between Israeli officials and U.S. officials means we have more leverage there. And right,

and that's why those talks become the focus of the coverage. So I think like that speaks to why I could feel disproportionate. And as you said, Ben, you know, the question is, what happens now? What is going to break this cycle? What is going to prevent another war in a couple months or a couple years? And I'm glad that Tony Blinken is in the region now. I share your concern that the U.S. is green lighting, like $735 million worth of missiles to the Israelis as we're talking about reconstruction. I'm very worried that BB Netanyahu is going to run for a fifth term, and he tends to do better when these security concerns are at the four. So I don't know the best path forward here to reduce tensions and make life better for the Palestinians. What I do know is that

we're recording this episode on the one year anniversary of George Floyd's death. And over the past year, the Black Lives Matter movement, the protests in the U.S., the series of global protests that we've seen in solidarity with George Floyd and BLM, has really changed the framework of this conversation about Palestinian statehood and has changed the focus onto social justice. So that's just a way of saying the problem isn't going away for Israelis. The problem is not going away for Palestinians. But I don't think the conversation is going anywhere in the U.S. either. In fact, I think a lot of people have woken up to feeling like there's pretty grave injustices happening in places like Sheikh Jura. And they are going to be more willing to talk about that and to pressure the Biden administration or the Israeli government to try to resolve some of those tensions and just give average Palestinian people a better life. Because that's fundamentally the path forward here to disempower Hamas and to make the entire living situation more tenable for everybody involved. Yeah, and to the Hamas, Iran point, you know, because I hear the same thing. And look, I understand it. The U.S. does a ton on this, though. You know, we found the Iron Dome system to protect Israelis from Hamas. The amount of effort put into kind of disrupting the flow of material from Iran to Hamas is really intense. And at the end of the day, some of the components for these rockets are fairly rudimentary. They have these tunnel networks. that go into Gaza through Egypt.

And by the way, this 15-year blockade of Gaza is, if your goal is to say you want to stop these rockets from getting into or getting constructed in Gaza, this isn't working. You know, like the 15-year blockade of kind of sealing off Gaza clearly is not sealing off whatever is necessary to build these rockets and is sealing off basic humanitarian goods that the people of Gaza need to not be living in a way that you would not want anyone to live. It's, you know, without the kind of basic, you know, dignity that people deserve. And so I do think there's a legitimate question to put back to those people of, you know, having tried this approach for 15 years, why not try to open things up and to improve life

and opportunity for people in Gaza, give them more connection to the rest of the world while dealing with Hamas in a way that might give the Palestinian people the capacity to make different choices about who their leaders are. They're stuck there like with Hamas. I mean, it's kind of a perverse situation. Literally trapped, yeah. Literally trapped. And that gets to the point, too, like, where I think the Biden team may be wary, like, oh, we can't get to a two-state solution so we don't have put too much capital of this. You can still do things to address the circumstances facing the Palestinians to try to improve their lives. Not just through humanitarian aid, but these questions like their freedom of movement, right? The questions are,

how they're able to live in Gaza and the West Bank, because as we've all seen, this is a kind of a daily series of humiliations and degradations that a lot of Palestinians are facing. And yeah, to me, the broad takeaway, too, is that I've never seen this much U.S. domestic support for the rights of Palestinians, never mind the global support that we saw as well. And look, I think the Biden team clearly felt some pressure from that, and that's healthy and constructive. I mean, look, part of what happens is people on the outside, I'm well aware that I can say things because I'm not in government that I couldn't just say if I was sitting in a government job. We all have a different role here. Members of Congress have a different role. And so I think the idea is the administration may, for its own good reasons, be somewhat more cautious and how they talk about this. But there's kind of a creative collaboration between people creating outside pressure, between members of Congress, creating new pressures. between global movements and then what an administration is doing. And you just hope that moves things in a better direction.

Let's turn to Iran because they've been sort of the subtext of all of this. So we've got some good news and some bad news. Good news out of Iran, Iran agreed to a one-month extension of the Iran nuclear agreement that will allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to continue monitoring its nuclear facilities until June 24th. Bad news. Iran is a presidential election in late June. that deadline is in part why you guys have heard me and Ben express some urgency around the U.S. rejoining the Iran nuclear deal because we don't know who's going to get elected when Hassan Rouhani is gone.

Today we learned that an Iranian committee, it's this committee of these old geezer hardline conservative clerics that pre-approves candidates. It has that that committee disqualified nearly all the candidates that you might describe as moderate or as reformers, which makes it more likely that a hardline individual will get elected. So the current president, Hassan Rouhani, he's a relatively moderate individual, but he's barred from running for a third term. So, Ben, what do you think this says about the Trump-Pompeo strategy of crushing Iran with sanctions, pulling out of the JCPOA and leaving this shitburger for Biden? Would you say that's a smashing success if we get some hardline cleric as the next president of Iran?

Yeah, well, look, I just, these were so pretty. predictable. All the thing, you know, when the JCPOA was blown up by Trump, like everybody said, this is going to lead the Iranians to resume their nuclear program. This is going to cut the legs out from anybody who wanted to build on the Iran nuclear deal inside of Iran, you know, with the types of following agreements that people call for. And this is going to empower the more hardline factions inside Iran who would say, why did you do a deal with the U.S.? Don't trust them, don't trust the West, like it's so painfully predictable that this happened. I know. Predicted. Even by his own staff. Yeah. And again, like, you know, having been like mildly critical of the Biden team, I just want to say,

like they were left on both the previous issue we discussed, Israel, Palestine, and this, like just, like a total shitburger intentionally. Like that was the goal of the Trump people was to make this as hard as possible for a Democrat who would come after them. There's, you know, there's still some uncertainty about what the final final candidate list would be, but the current crop is a pretty hardline group of people that have been around Iranian politics for a while. And it suggests that that's the direction that things are going. Again, I think which speaks to the urgency of trying to at least return to the JCPOA. So you at least have that protection, those restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program. You're rolling it back from all the progress they've made since Trump pulled out. And then

you can see what you can do to address these other issues. Yeah. Now, the Supreme Leader could overturn the vetting process that basically rejected all of these moderates. But, you know, I don't have a ton of hope for that. So we'll wait and see. I guess we have another month here because of this extension on the inspections under the JCPOA. Yeah, the only pressure is that they do like to have some appearance of democracy to prevent popular unrest. And right now it looks like such a sham. Yeah. The only reason the Supreme Leader might go the other way is just to give the appearance of democracy. But yeah, these are not Democrats in the Supreme Leader and the Grand Council, which I saw included, like, one guy who's like a 94-year-old cleric. Yeah, 94-year-old

Iranian cleric. Yeah, I'm sure he's making TikToks and really like hip with modern culture. Let's talk about the Olympics, Ben, because the International Olympic Committee, the vice president of it, said last week that the Tokyo Olympics will begin as scheduled in late July, even if Tokyo or other parts of Japan are under a COVID-19 state of emergency. That was very nice thing to say. So this went over about as well as you'd expect in a country where, like, I've seen estimates of 2 to 6% of the country has been vaccinated, and they are experiencing a fourth wave of infections that has overwhelmed the country's health care system. Recently, a group of 6,000 doctors in Japan called for the games to be canceled, and somewhere

between 60 to 80% of the country agrees with them. They want the games to be canceled. It depends on which poll you read and how the question is phrased. So on Monday, the State Department issued guidelines warning travelers to avoid all travel to Japan. They're even warning vaccinated travelers. Of course, there's hope that Japan can ramp up their vaccination efforts. Those have been slowed by basically a slow start, skepticism around foreign vaccines, and then just truly stupid rules that require a doctor or a nurse to be the one to give the shot. Like, there's no rolling into CVS to get a jab from a pharmacist.

Tokyo has spent $15.4 billion organizing the Olympics. The IOC gets 75% of its income from selling broadcast rights, so it's clear what's driving this choice. The IOC also said the number of people coming to Japan from abroad has been reduced from 180,000 to 80,000, and that 80% of the athletes will be vaccinated. But obviously, like, just bringing in that many people creates concerns about health care capacity above and beyond what they're already experiencing. So, Ben, I feel for the athletes here because the IOC said that these games don't happen, they're going to get canceled. They're not getting postponed again. But man, if I lived in Japan and I was not vaccinated, I would be rip-shit pissed.

I don't know how you defend this if you're elected leaders there. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, on the one end, you're sympathetic to a country that plans for years. I mean, there's like a decade or more of planning that goes in hosting a games and spends $15 billion. And to the athletes themselves, like, we all want to see the Olympic Games. Like, I want to see Simone Biles. Like, you do just, at the end of the day, though, right? you have to put public safety first. And at this point, I guess the focus, if this is the way they're going to go,

has to be on just ramping up this vaccine effort in Japan, which should be able to do that. You know, they have the kind of capacity and wealth to do that. And really strict protocols around kind of what the athletes are doing and how much they're, you know, it's kind of a bubble situation like right where we saw at the NBA. So there are steps that can be taken to mitigate the risk here. But you're right. It's just it makes it appear like the profit outweighed the public safety.

Yeah. Fingers crossed, hopefully they can make good use of the remaining time, but not a situation I would want to be in. Speaking of COVID-19, so the debate over the origins of COVID-19 continues to just rage online. in various newspapers. Here's the latest, which was over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that a secret U.S. intelligence report said that three researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized with a COVID-19 like illness back in November of 2019. That would obviously be a very big deal of true. The journal says there are differing views within the intel community over the strength of this evidence. And then the White House, I think Jen Saki clarified that

the information in that Intel report came from a foreign entity. So that means it hasn't been independently verified by the U.S. And if you want a quick reminder why, it is really important for the U.S. to independently vet and verify intelligence from foreign partners, even friendly ones, do a little Google deep dive into the story about how George W. Bush ended up claiming in the 2003 State of the Union that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium or yellow cake from Africa. The short version is that the Italians intelligence services passed along documents to the U.S. and the U.K. Those got bubbled up to, like, Cheney and the White House. They ran with them. It turns out they were forged, and suddenly you have questionable intelligence as a key part of the case for war with Iraq. Oops. Again, like I'm not arguing that this lab leak theory is in any way like Iraq. I'm just saying we need to be extra, extra careful with unverified intelligence from a liaison partner.

So the Wall Street Journal also published a long feature about the way Chinese authorities have been blocking efforts to investigate an abandoned mine where back in 2012, I believe, six miners got sick with a mysterious COVID-19 like illness after they had been working, cleaning up bat poop. We know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology took samples from that mine. And research on those samples found a virus that was like 96% similar to the virus that causes COVID-19. All of it becomes more suspicious because of the lack of transparency from officials. in China, the Wuhan Institute of Irology, the government generally. So Ben, I think here's what we know, right? Like the WHO investigation into the Wuhan lab and the origins of the virus was rushed and shoddy and probably should be redone. The lab needs to be more transparent, especially when it comes to providing information about what research they may have done on so-called gain-of-function

experiments, where research is basically edit or create new viruses in an effort to identify potential future pandemics. We also know that Trump and people like Tom Cotton made getting to the bottom of this so much harder by suggesting that, you know, maybe China was creating a bio weapon and folding this claim into their broader racist effort to blame China and deflect from Trump's failures. So like it feels like it's clearly wrong to dismiss this lab theory as a conspiracy theory, but I just, I do want to see some evidence. I still feel like if Trump had had had hard evidence of some sort of lab leak, experiment gone wrong. He would have released it. But I just don't know if you, if where you land on the latest iteration of this saga has changed, or if you're like me just sort of

frustrated by the lack of hard evidence that comes out every time there's some big dust up on this. Well, first of all, like, I'm glad you, you know, look, if the Chinese are more transparent, like this wouldn't be an issue. The one thing I'd say here is that I defer to, like, the health experts on this. There's a lot of, like, Twitter, you know, sleuths. And, Oh, you don't think Nate Silver is the guy who's in a lock of a dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like Wuhan lab stands online, you know, who kind of grab any shred of information that seems to validate the idea that this came from the lab as proof of their 100% correctness on this theory. So what can we do?

We should defer to the health experts. What are they not getting? They need more information out of China, which again, We may not be able to trust, given how much time has already gone by, but it's worth that effort to kind of go back and do another look at what we know about the origins of this. I think, secondly, though, the U.S. intelligence community drips and drabs of, you know, like what was in the Wall Street Journal, three guys got sick, you know, oh, that proves the whole theory.

That's not going to serve the interest of figuring this out. And so I do think that they should consider kind of pulling together everything they know. about this, you know, and... NIE? Time for an NIE? Well, some way to be transparent about it, right? So that we don't... I'm just going back to the Iraq comparison.

Yeah, no, exactly. I don't want to go, you know, but we don't want to necessarily be over reading like these tiny little bits and pieces. You know, the U.S. government should do, and I'm sure we'll do, lessons learned on this whole thing. For sure. So channel this lesson to like Twitter debates and or right-left debates, which makes it's a science, right?

Like it's not, yeah. It's not an ideological issue. about like whether it was like bat shit or like what side's it yeah like tell me yeah it's like become both sides in this very bizarre way like let's just kind of like be as as comprehensive as we can and putting out information and then let a bunch of really smart people who understand the origins of diseases like this make make their own judgments yeah uh of real haines bill burns uh the head of the intel community declassify this bad boy hand it to us we'll break the news in a thoughtful substantive way, and we will not let Nate Silver weigh in on it, or Alex Berenson or all the other

terrible, frustrating Twitter accounts to talk about this all the time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, like, saying Avril Hines and Bill Burns, like, it does at least point to the fact that having, like, very credible people who have a reputation for integrity, leading these intelligence agencies is a much better place to be than having, like, Rick Grinnell and a bunch of political nut cases. Mike Pompeo, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Like, I know there's some people who won't just never trust what the U.S. intelligence community says, but, like, I would just, you know, these people are much more credible. I trust what they say. I trust what Averylians and Bill Burns say. And I'd like to know if they, if their analysts take a full look at the information picture. And, you know, like they'll say, sources and methods, blah, blah, blah. Look here, like, there's a way to share the information we've learned about this. And I think it'd be helpful to do so.

Yeah, I agree. And, you know, Avril and Billard, like two of the nicest, most thoughtful people I've worked with in government. So I do think they'll figure out a way to do it. Ben, let's talk about Samoa because we never get to do that. So the first woman elected prime minister of Samoa was literally, physically, locked out of her swearing in ceremony in this growing constitutional crisis, if not outright coup. So listeners will know that Ben and I have already issued a blanket apology for our total inability to pronounce names, especially on the fly when we're we're just going on the pot here. So I'm going to try to avoid butchering some of them. But the backstory is that Fiamé Naomi Mataafa, who is the candidate that won this election and her newly created Fast Party, they had defeated the HRP party and the incumbent prime minister who had been in charge for 22 years. They beat him by one vote in Parliament. But then this electoral commission said, no, no, no, we're adding another person to Parliament because we need to meet this gender quota that's in the Constitution, this incredibly cynical attempt to add

another member of parliament to block the first female prime minister by citing gender quotas. So then there's a tie, the election is tied again. So then there was a call for a new election altogether. The Supreme Court weighs in. They say absolutely not. Swear in Mata'afa, which, you know, that's where you get to the scene where she's trying to get into the parliament building. she's locked out, and they end up holding her own swearing in ceremony in a tent on the parliament lawn. So the backdrop of this, Ben, which will be no surprise to you, is a fight over how close Samoa should get to China. The incumbent prime minister was about to cut some big deal on a port. The insurgent new candidate says, no, why don't we sort of step back from our relationship with China a bit?

Australia and New Zealand are trying to mediate. But man, like, this is a mess, A, but B, like, couldn't you see the Biden campaign, like, setting up a tent in the back of the White House, like, doing their own swearing in? Like, we were about this close to being in the exact same situation here. Well, look, it's Exhibit Z on the notion that basically there are these common tactics being utilized by people to undermine democracy everywhere. I mean, this felt like the kind of thing that, like, the Georgia State Legislature is going to do in the next. election, you know. And I do think it's going to be an increasing point of tension as, you know, we've already seen the Chinese influence in some of these countries is beginning to create some

internal tensions in a lot of different places in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. I think that's going to be another common characteristic here. And so I think good for Australia and New Zealand to kind of be trying to play a really heavy mediating role here with the goal being like this should reflect the way. will of Samoans, not like some crazy kind of cynical gambit to keep this woman out of office. Yeah. It's a wild story. We'll keep it on it. All right, I've gone a little long. So I'm going to roll a couple of things together here because we're running out of time. So first, there was a military coup in Molly. The president and the prime minister were pushed out of office and they were detained on Monday.

This comes nine months after the previous prime minister, which pushed out in a coup. So not great. a lot of instability there in a country that does not need it. Second, the White House announced that President Biden and President Putin will meet in Geneva, Switzerland on June 16th. I'm sure that will be about as much fun as a military coup. Third, President Biden is extended for 18 months. Temporary protection from deportation for Haitians currently in the U.S. These protections are usually called TPS. They were first granted to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. They were extended several times until Trump decided to end them in 2018. That was a horrible decision because Haiti's experiencing this horrible political crisis that has exacerbated shortages of food, water, health care, everything,

and made the country very unsafe. So I've seen some estimates been that this could help protect up to 150,000 Haitians in the U.S. from getting sent home. So some good news there. Yeah, no, I fully think the TBS is definitely warranted in this case. I think on the Putin thing, we'll have plenty of opportunity to talk more about that in future shows. This will be a growing story. The one thing I just noted is there was some really interesting language in the readout of Jake Sullivan's meeting with Patrushchev, the Russian National Security Advisor, in which it referred to the goal of normalizing relations between the U.S. and Russia, which has stirred up a bunch of controversy, you know, in online foreign policy circles, which I recognize are not that broad.

But as to whether that's the appropriate goal or not, I mean, I think, I think. I fully support what you saw Jensaki say today, which is like, look, you meet with your adversaries. Like, I don't think refusing to meet with Vladimir Putin makes any sense. You know, because it's not like we talked about what you meet with Kim Jong-un. You're kind of conferring legitimacy on this guy. Like, like, Vladimir Putin has, like, is going to be around one way or another. Like Russia touches upon so many U.S. interests. They have to deal with them.

And so I think it's right that they've taken some pretty, you know, strong actions against Russia in response to recent events. It's right that they want to have this summit. But normalizing relations, I'm not sure what that means in this context. I understand some of the concerns raised about not wanting to kind of normalize the sense that we're not continually disturbed with Russia's doing in Ukraine, with Navalny, with what we just saw in Belarus, with cyber attacks. On the other end, if it's kind of just trying to stop an escalatory cycle, and that's

a different goal. So I think in the coming weeks, we'll learn more about the Biden team. intentions here. And look, this is a highwire act. I mean, for a, you know, a team that's been pretty cautious, you know, on the national security front and foreign policy front while they've been doing their domestic agenda, having, having Biden go into a son with Putin is a tricky piece of business here. So it'll be interesting to watch. By the way, do you think of the run-up to that summit that the Biden team is able to go to the State Department and find the translator from the Putin-Trump meetings and say, all right, spill the beans, like tell me everything that was

talked about and promised? Well, except there were sometimes when they didn't even have that translator in there. But, but, yeah, you're right. I mean, it'd be interesting because I remember that translator. Like, he's kind of a, you know, you never talked to him except when he's translating. But you're right. I mean, you do want to try to figure out, like, what was discussed in the last meetings between the U.S.S.

It seems relevant, right? Yeah, it seems relevant. Two more quick things. So about China. So according to leaked documents, in 19, In the United States came closer to using nuclear weapons against China than most historians even realized. So this happened when the Chinese military started shelling islands controlled by Taiwan, and the U.S. military at a very senior level, started pushing for a first-use nuclear strike on mainland China, even though they knew it could escalate and kill millions of people and would likely results in a nuclear retaliation by the Soviet Union. Ben, I thought this quote by John Foster Dulles, who, you know, was a sociopath along with his brother, who was running the country for a while, but then the Secretary of State really nicely captured the insanity of Cold War thinking.

Quote, nobody would mind very much the loss of the offshore islands, but that loss would mean further communist aggression. Nothing seems worth a world war until you looked at the effect of not standing up to each challenge posed, end quote. the good news is that President Eisenhower said no to these like nuke-loving generals. These documents were disclosed by Daniel Ellsberg, the same guy who leaked the Pentagon papers, the secret history of the war in Vietnam back in the early 70s. Ellsberg copied this Taiwan study at the time and kept it, but he didn't make it public until very recently because he said he had just started to get increasingly concerned about potential war between the U.S. and China, especially over Taiwan.

And Ellsberg also said he wanted to be prosecuted for this disclosure so that he can pick a fight over First Amendment issues in the use of the Espionage Act. I can't imagine DOJ would do something that stupid since like this is like a historical document, right? This thing should be declassified. Anyway, sobering stuff, Ben. Do you share Ellsberg's concern about these like increasing tensions? And like, could you just give listeners a quick 101 on why people talk about the concept of strategic imping? ambiguity when it comes to Taiwan? I have 100% sure it's concern.

I have a thing we're going to be talking a lot about Taiwan, you know, in the coming years. And look, the origin story here, right, was this is the Taiwan is where the Chinese nationalist under Chen Kai Sheck went after they lost a civil war to the communist in Mao Zedong. It's an island that the U.S. is basically supported, recognized as China until Nixon's opening to Mao Zedong. and the finalization of those agreements in which the U.S. committed to recognizing a one China policy that there's one China, the People's Republic of China and Taiwan. But at the same time, you know, kind of the de facto status quo was we continue to sell arms to Taiwan, continue to have very close relationships to Taiwan, and, you know, just hope that this would work itself out over time.

The challenge is that China's gotten much more assertive here. And the concerns, is what people are looking at is China's done a massive military buildup of late, a lot of which appears designed to be able to fight and win a war to take back Taiwan. At the same time that we've seen them swallow up Hong Kong with no regard to kind of one country, two systems promise that they've also been making to Taiwan, combined with Xi Jinping just being an incredibly assertive leader, who, you know, not to be armchair psychoanalysis here, but he seems like the kind of guy who will want to take care of this account while he's around. you know, as we talked about.

So I think you have this basic conundrum, right, where the U.S. has to decide, well, will we defend Taiwan against the Chinese invasion? And this strategic ambiguity concept is, on the one hand, we don't want to come out and say we won't defend Taiwan because that's basically like a green light to the Chinese to do this. On the other hand, if we come out and we say, you know, we're essentially going to treat Taiwan like a treaty ally of the United States, States, that could provoke the Chinese too and make a conflict more likely. And so you want to be

ambiguous where you're trying to create some deterrence from a Chinese invasion without necessarily going as far as giving a security guarantee. I think that the service of this, like, you know, Daniel Ellsberg, you know, daring the feds to prosecute him was kind of guaranteed that that won't happen in a way. But the service that this did is, I don't think, and maybe it's something we can talk about on future pods, like, we don't take seriously enough the reality that like nuclear war could happen. Yeah. Not just in Taiwan.

Just in Korea too. Yeah, just in general, like a bunch of countries have nuclear weapons, Indian Pakistan, the Taiwan conflict with the Chinese getting involved here. Like we seem to put in our rear-view mirror concerns about nuclear weapons after the Cold War or we look at things like the Iran nuclear issue, the proliferation concerns. But we all, this document reminds you that you can get into scenarios where very quickly it's turning to like planning for the use of nuclear weapons. And we should not, that would be such a catastrophic and world-changing event

that just because it's not likely doesn't mean we shouldn't take it very seriously. Yeah, man. And also, this country just had a bunch of lunatics working for it at senior levels at the Pentagon in the State Department during the Cold War. And my God, are we lucky that we didn't do worse things? Because the Dulles Brothers, these generals that are talking about like, oh, it's just, we're just going to nuke Chinese airports. And then, you know, when they retaliate,

we might have to nuke all the way up to just saying high. Like, you're a sociopath if you're recommending that. Yeah. I think in retrospect, Eisenhower and, you know, certainly Truman and Eisenhower and Kennedy, just from what I've learned from mystery, said no to a bunch of really insane shit that would have led to nuclear war, you know?

Yeah. So we were lucky to have those people. And not that they were perfect presidents, but, you know, they could have been hard. Far from it. Yeah. Well, then they also had a literal deep state that was doing things that they didn't,

that didn't tell you what the leaders about. Anyway, one more story about Taiwan and Ben, which is John Sina, the professional wrestler-turned-to-actor, is getting roasted from a distance online only because he's really big for a video he posted where he apologizes in Mandarin to fans in China for referring to Taiwan as a country. This grave offense occurred during interview where John Sina was promoting F9, the latest fast and The Furious movie. China, as listeners know, claims Taiwan. as part of China, and both the government and the people of China get super pissed off if you suggest otherwise. So some quotes from John Cena's video include, I made a mistake. I love and

respect China and Chinese people. I'm very sorry for my mistake. Sorry, sorry. I'm really sorry. You have to understand that I love and respect China and the Chinese people. Very weird, Ben, to hear this like ripped 250 pounds. Record a hostage video. Raveling in a hostage video. No, impressive that he did it in Mandarin. Like, good for him. So like the context here, right, again, a Hollywood reporter story that came out two days ago said that F9 had already grossed $135 million in ticket sales in China alone, hence the groveling. In the past, we've talked about how ESPN, the gap, the NBA, like tons of countries have bent to China's will to preserve market access and not offend them over Hong Kong or Taiwan

or name the issues. So this is why, again, positive the world is officially a. Dwayne the Rock Johnson podcast, although Blockers was a good movie. But man, didn't expect us to be talking about John Cena today. Well, this is going to be a growing issue, right? I mean, the extremity of this kind of hostage video kind of pointed up the fact that of just how much leverage China has on anybody who's in their market. And I think, you know, the entertainment industry gets like the bullseye on it for public attention because it's such a public industry. But make no mistake, this happens across the board. I mean, there's plenty of CEOs. I'm

sure who would similarly grovel apologies. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's an increasing uncomfortable reality that is going to have to change at some point. Like, I don't know how you can have an industry devoted to basically the idea of free expression, right, which is, we're out here in L.A. Tommy, like, that's supposed to be the basis of this industry out here that is so dependent on the Chinese market that there's no free expression when it comes to China.

I mean, it's, and it's not only his fault. It's not John Cena's fault. Like the fast franchise depends on Chinese market access. And so I get why John Cena is doing it. It's the structural issue here that I think at some point, this industry and others is going to have to kind of really wrestle with. And the U.S. government may have to help figure this out, too, in terms of just like, you know, I don't want to live in a world. which there's total self-censorship on issues related to China. That's affecting our free speech

in this country. Yeah, it's gross. It's depressing. I'm sure John Zina faced tons of pressure from studios and others to issue this apology. In the same way, you know, Daryl, the GM of the Rockets, got his ass kicked by people in the NBA and by like literally LeBron James after he dared to support protesters in Hong Kong. But you're right that it's gross. It's unsustainable. And at some point, maybe there will be a financial cost to issuing a video like this that will be seen as bigger than the financial cost of not having market access in China. I just don't know when those lines cross. Yeah. And just thinking about this way, a lot like the, if you're an actor who has said something about human rights in China, say that weager, you've spoken out about the Uighur issue, you're probably not going to get cast in these movies.

No. Like, is that fair? Like, you know, is that the world we want to live in where essentially, like, if you just express concern about like a genocide in Western China, that you kind of can't be in Marvel movies or something, you know, like, or fast movies or whatever it is, like, it's pretty uncomfortable. Yeah, now that's some broken cancel culture right there. Okay. When we come back, we will have Ben's interview with USAID administrator, Samantha Power, our friend,

noted author, hilarious human, gigantic Red Sox fan. So stick around for that. We are very excited to be joined by the best friend of the pod, Samantha Power, who is now the administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, USAID, previously ambassador to the United Nations, among many other hats. And I think, Sam, you're going, you know, you may actually now have the record for most pods of the world appearances, which we appreciate. But we're so excited to have you in this official role now. I did just purchase the dog water bowl that says friend of the pod, P-A-W-D.

So I think that's official. Well, that, you know, that you're beyond me on merch, but I owe my, my girls a dog. I'm delinquent in buying a dog. But look, I thought what would be really helpful to folks, you know, I think, you know, our audience, the world, those they care about development. But USAID doesn't get a lot of spotlight, doesn't get a lot of attention and can seem a bit mysterious to people. And so I wanted to just start by asking you to explain, you know, how would you, in layman's terms, characterize what does USAID do? What is distinct about USAID from the State Department? What is your mission and role in the

world. Well, let me start with the kind of grim sit rep on the world, which everyone is familiar with, which is that the world right now risks getting sicker, dirtier, hotter, and less free. And that's what we know we read in the newspaper every day. USAID is the U.S. government agency focused on making the world healthier, cleaner, stopping the warming or halting the warming as best we can in our tracks, and more democratic. And there are other government agencies that contribute to all of those causes as well. But I think what makes USAID so special is that those functions, those causes, those programs all live under one roof. And for too long, of course, the emphasis has been on curving pollution without thinking at the same time about the health ramifications of, for example, climate change or thinking about economic growth,

but perhaps not paying too much attention to the rise of illiberal forces like those you've been spending a lot of time thinking about. And so the fact that you can have an agency that is pursuing anti-corruption programming, preventing TB, AIDS, and malaria, trying to provide partnerships that help farmers become more resistant to droughts brought about by climate change, support small business entrepreneurs in communities where we are trying to fuel economic growth, knowing that those are markets for U.S. goods, but also knowing that over time that's going to be stabilizing. At the same time, you know, we're making more headlines for distributing COVID vaccines or oxygen support to India or humanitarian relief to Yemen. I mean, it is basically both

applying the Band-Aids and trying to address root causes of instability so as to advance rights and prosperity over time. And of course, these programs take time. And of course, these programs take time and there's a lot of impatience right now for us to make an immediate impact, for example, on such issues as COVID, which I hope we'll talk about. But it's, you know, it's pretty remarkable that, that, you know, beneath the headline, behind the headlines and the bad news that we all read about every day, there is this cadre of Americans who are out there in 80 missions around the world. I should say that 40% of U.S.A. staff overseas are actually foreign service nationals. So they're nationals of the countries in which we work or of other countries.

So we also have just these great partnerships in the communities and great insights from the communities in which we work. But, you know, trying to mitigate the harms and solve the world's hardest problems. And I want to get into the COVID certainly. I did want to ask you first, you know, there was a lot of, attention in the press and in political debates about you know the fact that the state department had been kind of hollowed out to some extent in the Trump years not a lot of discussion of USAID with obviously the the critical caveat that that there's an incredible workforce that does incredible work and it is out in the world doing that work at any given time so this is not a comment

on them but did you find that there was any effort you know in those Trump years to kind of starve the agency, did you find morale issues? Like, what did you, when you walked in the door, you know, did you find that the previous four years had taken a toll? Well, stepping back, I would just say that the people who sign up to work at USAID in under, in whatever capacity, by and large, are mission driven, you know, really motivated by the belief that our fates are connected to the fates of people living internationally as the pandemic, of course, shows dramatically and devastatingly. And motivated by the desire to help communities,

you know, less fortunate than our own. And so needless to say, you know, some of the rhetoric out of the president, the prior president, you can imagine just the way that certain countries were talked about, the way that regions of the world were looked down upon. I mean, just that That is like a dagger, you know, to the heart and, you know, a wound to the spirit, I think, throughout much of that period. That said, I think the prior administrator, Mark Green, did a really good job trying to insulate the good that USAID is doing around the world from broader politicization. I think senators up and members of the House of Representatives did a good job,

protecting USAID funding. You know, whatever about America first, again, our programs are reflective, remain reflective and remained reflective of the importance of supporting agriculture, supporting economic growth, trying to address large-scale global health emergencies, like even an Ebola outbreak, smaller than the one that we dealt with in the Obama administration. but the last administration worked really hard to smother another Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and made a major difference. And that was in part, again, because of bipartisan support and a kind of protective security detail that was mobilized up on Capitol Hill.

So I'm really grateful for that because there are only a few places in the world where we're kind of having to ramp up. from very little. Unfortunately, one of those places is Northern Triangle, where crazily, you know, unhappy about migration north toward the southern border. The prior president decided to cut off our funding of, you know, violence prevention programs of domestic violence prevention programs, of anti-corruption programs. And so cutting off funding, you can imagine,

is not going to help you deal with the root causes. of migration. So there are places we have to ramp up, but it was protected. I think I want to, just if I could say a word about the workforce and to encourage listeners, particularly young listeners, to consider to come work at USAID because in terms of the civil service and the foreign service, which are, you know, two of the key kind of hiring authorities we have, you know, there has been a depletion. And it, you know, wasn't only an issue in the last administration, but we are really looking to revitalize the workforce, particularly to bring people of color into the agency, to make sure it's an agency that looks like America. We've started recruiting at historically

black colleges and doing kind of the equivalent of Model UN, sort of U.S. aid programs in high schools to alert people to the fact that these kinds of career opportunities exist. And, you know, as these problems do come home to ruse, whether a pandemic or climate change or other effects of events in the world, we're hoping that the same kind of youth mobilization that we've seen domestically on issues like voter suppression or on climate change, that we can channel some of that to bring young people from really diverse backgrounds into the workforce. That's a really exciting part of my agenda as administration. Yeah, no, and I bet. And those are good points. I mean, I do think Congress did clearly have some bipartisan support for aid. And you also didn't have, you know, an acting administrator, Rick Grinnell over there,

which helps. I wanted to get a few for the issues that are in front of you, first and foremost, COVID. And again, I think people see, you know, we talked about vaccine equity and global vaccine imperative around the world on the podcast. And people see announcements like, you know, the idea that we're going to begin to look at lifting patent restrictions or that we're going to begin to provide X amount of doses overseas or that we're providing assistance to India. And then they have no idea what does that mean? What does that actually look like? And so just broadly speaking, I do want to get into India specifically, but what is USAID doing? What is your, what on the team, what is the play that you are running to try to get as many shots and arms around the world?

world, what will that look like? How should people think about what this effort is going to entail? Great. Well, I think for starters, USAID is supporting COVAX. And COVAX, as your listeners probably know, is the international agency or rubric under which vaccines are going to be supplied to those countries that either couldn't afford the prices charged by pharmaceutical companies or were so far in the back of the queue that coax will facilitate them getting doses sooner. Now, I want to just say a word about coax because it is a really important part of what USAID supports. Covax has not gotten out the gate in the way that any of us want to see. And that's for a couple reasons. I mean, first, there wasn't a lot of financing. The prior administration, American administration,

didn't engage coax, didn't provide financing so that coax. would be in a position, again, to make the kinds of purchases that are needed to vaccinate low and middle-income countries. So that was a big issue. And then Kovacs had planned to get more than 100 million doses from India, from the Serum Institute of India, which is making those doses, which was great that they made that deal and that contribution was in train. But then, of course, when the pandemic swept through India, those doses were pulled back in order to deal with the domestic emergency. So Kovacs has had a hard time of it, but we have, President Biden has announced that we have contributed $2 billion already. So they now have the capital, again, to be buying vaccines

at low cost from around the world. Another $2 billion is going to be forthcoming once that's needed. And now we are, we the United States, of course, are beginning to provide surplus vaccine doses. And you asked about USAID specifically, because USAID has these 80 missions around the world, and we have so much experience on HIV, AIDS, TB, malaria, routine immunizations, on measles and so forth, and the building of global health security around the world, we work with health ministries to make sure that those ministries are ready to actually receive doses, whether those are Pfizer doses or AstraZeneca or Johnson and Johnson. I mean, each of the coal chains looks different depending on what vaccine it is.

So making sure that there's that receptivity when those vaccines are actually being shipped. In some cases, we'll do the shipments ourselves, as you saw in India, with, for example, other supplies like oxygen concentrators and PPE and the like. But in some cases, we'll just be there, you know, at the airport to greet the plane and try to make sure that nothing goes off course in the distribution and the implementation phase. And remember, again, when this gets up and running, when Kovacs has the kinds of doses on hand that they need to begin to contemplate vaccinating the world, you know, it's in the distribution and the implementation phase that a lot can go wrong. And so that oversight, making sure that

there's not corruption also in that process, strong on our anti-corruption expertise, all of that are, I think, are examples of where USAID will plug in. But I would expect the United States to be donating through COVAX, like we have traditionally as America, right? We try to make these international institutions work for the common good, knowing that that advances our interests as well over time, and knowing that when we stand outside those institutions, it's more likely that bad actors will have sway and hold sway, as we saw over the course of the last few years. So we work that way. But in a pinch, in an emergency, we will also, as President Biden has said, be in a position to to share bilaterally as well, just to make sure we can do things in an effective

and efficient and speedy manner. Now, last thing I'll say, just, you know, you and I know, Ben from our Obama years, we're constantly thinking, how do we leverage what the United States is doing? How do we leverage what the taxpayer is supported to get other countries to do more? So I think you can look at the upcoming G7 meeting, which President Biden will attend, to see how we take our plans, which are starting now with 80 million excess doses, but that that's going to go up and up and up. And because of the announcement around the TRIPS waiver in terms of intellectual property, we're also now in a position to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies to try to bring the prices down

so that we're in a position to purchase even more doses and that others are in a position to purchase more doses at scale and at cost for developing countries that can't afford the prices that Western governments have been paying in their negotiations. So in trying to bring prices down, create more supply, put more money in the pipeline, be in-country, again, to ensure the optimal distribution and implementation, and then take what all of those moving parts and get other countries to do their share, you know, then we're in a position to talk about really cutting down the timeline that people have in mind about the date by which we can see the world vaccinated and not just Western countries. And so just one other question

in COVID, which is, you know, part of what is so difficult to think about this is, is there's kind of a selection, right, of who, where does this vaccine go when everybody obviously needs it? is part of the inevitable implementation that's going to be if you see a flare up like in India, you're surging to places where like the house is on fire. And then you're just kind of trying to globally set up an infrastructure. Like how will choices be made about where vaccine distribution is happening? And do we have that capacity to kind of surge if we see a new variant or new outbreak somewhere? It's a great question.

I'd say a couple things. first, if you wait till the outbreak has struck, when it comes at least to vaccine distribution, you've waited too long. I mean, it never hurt to vaccinate more people, but part of what we're trying to do is to use data mapping and all kinds of new technological tools to try to anticipate, where will the next India be? It wasn't hard within South Asia to know that given the connections among those countries that Nepal and Sri Lanka and other countries would follow.

and of course that's what is happening right now. So there's that dimension of it. But I think you're talking about something more fundamental, which is, you know, the kind of, you know, picking, playing God almost with your supply. Yeah, it feels like. And I think that this is where what we are trying to do is just put the world in a position. And when I say we, I mean USAID, the United States,

but also all countries that are focused on this broader question of global public goods, and this is the ultimate global public good, of having maximum supply so that you're in a position to do what amounts to triage also on vaccination. So you start with your help workers. That is what Kovacs was doing, is that they were beginning to move out, and it's a small share of the population in developing countries. Of course, they're not arriving in every country on the same day, so there's some inevitable inequity there. But, you know, it's low and middle-income countries that weren't able to get

vaccines on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, on the free market. Now, uh, the, one of the priorities is second shots because the Indian vaccines that had been expected didn't arrive. A lot of people got first shots and were expecting to get their second shot and that second shot is not forthcoming. So now you end up prioritizing going back to countries that have already had their first doses so as to make sure you get full. So these kinds of tactical choices are upon you all the time. And you're absolutely right. It's excruciating.

I think for covex and for us bilaterally to make these choices. And so the fundamental objective is to just get as much supply in the hopper as possible. And the issue right now, the gating issue, is not money per se, although it will be once, you know, the vaccination. in some of the developed countries, you know, those spots in the queue have kind of passed. But the issue is supply. It's raw materials. It's the implements, you know, for getting the vaccines in arms. All of those are, we're seeing shortages.

So the separate conversation is also how do you capitalize production of those items in a manner where you don't have bottlenecks when you have the money in the bank and you're ready to make the purchases and the companies even, you know, are in a position to manufacture the doses, how do you anticipate those bottlenecks and prevent them so that you can basically vaccinate the world, even if it inevitably is in, just as it was in the United States, in a staggered way, starting with your privacy populations of health workers and then older people and then making your way down as we've been so fortunate to be able to do. Yeah. Well, look, I feel better already that you're there on this issue.

I want to ask a couple of things. You and I have spent a lot of time last few years talking about democratic backsliding, you know, challenges facing civil society. We've, you know, even since the Biden administration took office through no, you know, agency of its own, you had the coup in Myanmar, a place that you and I worked on. What can USAID do? What is the piece that USAID has in addressing democratic backsliding? In particular, you know, how do you think about ways to extend lifelines of support to civil society, people who, you know, have been recipients of different forms of U.S. assistance, not all from U.S.Aid. Just how are you thinking about that as someone who, you know, has really been immersed in this question of how to help people on the front lines of defending democratic values in a world of democratic backsliving?

Yeah, thanks for the question. It's definitely something that I'm thinking really hard about. first just digging into what programming has the United States been doing, what has been effective, how do you even measure success when, you know, part of what you're doing is preventing worse outcomes rather than creating good outcomes. You know, it's not like global health where you can see the effect of immunizations or mosquito nets and so forth. So digging into this question, I'd offer a couple thoughts. First, I think you and I both in our parallel universes here have concluded that anti-corruption work really needs to be at the heart of our democracy

strategy. And it is an Achilles heel for so many illiberal regimes. It's the natural outgrowth of what illiberalism is or autocracy is, which is the consolidation concentration of power. It's almost always the concentration of power and wealth at the same time. And so, you know, how can we partner with Treasury and the intelligence? community and others, I think I've heard you advocate this in the Russia context and in other domains, but to make sure that the partners that we have on the ground or on the front lines doing their best to document corruption, but that their work is amplified and supported by us, there are grave risks, the obvious sort of mortal risks of doing this kind of work.

So, you know, making sure that governments know that this work, is important to us and hoping that that offers a monocum of protection and, of course, using our diplomacy to DeMarsh when people who are doing straight up independent reporting or anti-corruption documentation are harassed or arrested. But there's another kind of support that I just met with a group of anti-corruption activists last week, and they really brought to my attention, which is the prevalence of the oligarchs lawsuit and the extent to which oligarchs now are just banking that they can put, you know, NGOs or whole newspapers out of business by claiming slander and so forth. So that's thinking through like, what's the global public good that

would, you know, give reporters the kind of insurance that they need to know that they can do that kind of work. That may not be a U.S. government thing, but these are the kinds of questions I think you need to be asking. Then apart from anti-corruption work, and there's lots more to say on that, But I think recognizing that even though there aren't a ton of bright spots on the global stage, really digging in on cases like Sudan, where you have a democratic transition that nobody saw coming, right? I mean, this is a country run by a genocidal dictator who had probably one of the strongest heirs of impunity of any of those aging African dictators. and protests driven by women, 70% of the protesters are thought to have been women, brought down that regime, and now a very fragile political transition is underway.

So what does that mean, again, for USAID? It's probably a little bit about democracy programming and how do we support independent media and women's groups and the anti-corruption work, but it's probably a lot about the other aspects of USAID's portfolio. You know, how do we support small landholders? how do we support, you know, the judicial training? How do we fuel economic growth and take advantage of some of the new investments that are being made? How do we help them change their regulatory environment so that it's a more attractive place to do business

in order to ensure that there's some democracy dividend as this very difficult transition is underway? So this is something I think we look back at the Obama years. And with the Arab Spring, it was just Tunisia happened. and then we were busy dealing with Egypt and then Syria and then Yemen and all of those were turning in the wrong direction and causing so much pain and suffering to the people living in those countries. As a result, Tunisia arguably didn't get the attention that it might have, right? And we want now, when there are bright spots like Tunisia, like Sudan, you know, to make sure that we are channeling resources in an expeditious way.

Yeah, that's a lot of food for thought. So again, I'm glad. you're the person thinking about it there. One more big question, which is, and this will give you entry to perhaps talk about a hotspot if you want, recognizing you're new there. But you have a seat at the table. Your announcement was accompanied by announcement the USA Administrator will be a part of the National Security Council, which means, you know, in layperson's terms, that means you're at the table in the situation room when, you know, foreign policy issues are being discussed. you're not just kind of told to implement a development policy. Why was that important?

And just looking at the news, you see Tigray and the lack of humanitarian access into there, or you see the huge humanitarian needs in Yemen that will have to be addressed, accompanying efforts to end of war there. You can pick whatever the issue is, but take us into what perspective you will bring into the NSC and then how that interacts with what USAD may have to do. do in a particularly hot spot like a Yemen or Tigray or Myanmar and, you know, anyone that might illustrate this? I think as your question illustrates that part of the logic for President Biden doing this is just that the things that are most important to American foreign policy and ultimately

to Americans and to creating global stability and getting the economy back on track involve humanitarian emergencies, conflict, climate change, extremism. You know, so whether it's root causes and the need to address root causes upstream or downstream the need to mitigate the harms caused by us not having dealt with climate change soon enough or us not having been able, you know, through our diplomacy to resolve solve a conflict, whether as the United States or as the UN or as these conflicts persist, just the perspective of the U.S. aid folks who are out in the field seeing the human consequences of American foreign policy decisions, non-decisions, seeing kind of what works and what doesn't.

I think there's just a recognition that what's on the plate of the president, you know, demands as much knowledge and ground know-how as possible, and that that should be reflected in the discussion. So I think it's a real tribute, actually, to USAID staff and the kind of expertise that they bring to bear. And bear in mind again that we're coming into office after expertise was, and, you know, whether linguistic or cultural or technical in the scientific realm, when that wasn't valued.

And so I think it's President Biden saying we want to hear that. We want to know what's actually happening on the ground to inform our decision making. And then the second dimension of it has been, you and I have heard talk for a very long time about the three D's defense diplomacy and development as the three legs of the stool around, again, protecting U.S. interests and advancing U.S. security. But that stool has been pretty lopsided for a long time, right? The defense leg, you know, it's more like a U.S. interests and advancing U. a pogo stick, right, with these two appendages.

So I think it's also to signal that we need to lead with diplomacy and lead with development and that those are the tools that we need to be investing in and that there's been a kind of skewing over time that overweights defense. And, you know, if you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And if those are the tools that can move the most nimbly off. you're going to go there first. And so I think to diversify the toolkit and take advantage of the soft power tools as well, I think that's what President Biden is attempting to do also. That's going to take some time, obviously. Yeah, no, I totally get that. And we'd love to

have you on at some point to talk about one of these issues where you can illustrate, you know, hey, here's what we're trying to do in Yemen or something. But at last, so how are you got two young kids, Declan and Rian, how are they feeling about their mom taking this on? I think that it was, I think it's hard. You know, I think that the problems of the world, mommy's bringing them home now over the dinner table, you know, never good at respecting boundaries, their mother. And so I think they're, you know, really focused on, you know, the war in Gaza. And they're really, like, Declan's asking me all kinds of questions about famine and Ethiopia.

and but you know I think that's to the good I think that it's because we're not back to work in the workplace in quite the same way there's a little bit of a glide path so a lot of the work is still done from home because not everybody you know has been vaccinated we're not yet back working 24-7 in the office we're just working 24-7 from from some hybrid of home and office so I think that eases the transition but but As you know, for my family, the key to happiness is how the Washington Nationals do for my son. So the biggest source of unhappiness is the slow start to the Washington national season, because that was my big selling point is we're going to be really near to the nationals.

You'll be back where you want to be, but we'll see what happens here. It's not too late to shift to the minutes, but I don't think that's going to happen. Well, look, you've got a lot of people listening to this, not just in the U.S., but around the world, you know, who admired you for a long time and are, I think, really excited during this role and probably feel some sense of kind of solidarity from you and with you. So we hope you can come back every now and then and give us progress report. I'd love to. And again, for those of you thinking about career shifts or career launches, you know, look to USAID.

It really is trying to solve the world's hardest problems. I'll echo that if you want a life of meaning. Not that there aren't other ways to do that, but USAID is definitely one of them. Well, thanks so much, Sam. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Ben. Thanks again to Sam Power for joining the show. Ben, one last bone I had to pick.

Tony Blinken just went to Greenland and he didn't buy it. Why? I thought that was the plan. Didn't care enough. Yeah. Pompeo woulda would have. Yeah, Pompeo would have walked home with Greenland in his pocket. Just stop it in your pocket.

like a change in a couch kitchen. Put in your pocket, man. Sometimes I think about shit like that. I'm like, man, we talked about the dumbest stuff on the planet for four straight years because of Trump and his goons. And, you know, it's a nice, it's nice to remember it, but not have to live it. This is a side note, but, like, one of the coolest things about working in the U.S. government is like getting to go to places like Greenland. You know what I mean? Like, I was jealous.

I was like, that'd be pretty cool to go to Greenland. Like, when else are you going to go to Greenland, you know? Probably never. So kudos to the Blinken traveling staff that got to hang out in Greenland. Yeah, shout out team Tony. Yeah. All the lands. Anyway, thanks for tuning in and talk to you guys next week.

See you. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Segglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.