Pod Save the World - False START

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

China tries to crush dissent in Hong Kong. Tommy and Ben discuss what the White House, Congress and the Biden campaign can do to stop them. Failed diplomacy with North Korea and why the US is walking away from bipartisan arms control agreements. Facebook leadership ignored evidence that the platform was polarizing users and driving them to extremism, the US bans travel from Brazil, scandal erupts in the UK, and Iran and Venezuela increase cooperation. Then Ben talks to Aidan Eyakuze, a Tanzanian activist, about the Tanzanian government's failure to take coronavirus seriously.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Ditor. I'm Ben Roads. Ben, you're rocking what looks like a little bit of a tan and a sweet playoff beard. It seems like you had a good weekend. Yeah, no, I was outside. I actually went to the beach, a little social distancing trip to the beach with the kids. Yes. And yeah, I only shave when I have to go on television and get room rated. So I'm either, like, got a five-day beard or I'm like resetting my house into a TV studio. I love it. I love it. Listen, we have a great show today. But before we get to that, I just want everyone listening to know that crooked media this week rolled out this brand new Adopt-a-State program where we are trying to find a way for everyone listens, everyone who cares about the election, everyone who's stuck at home in thinking, how can I help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump? How do I help take back the Senate and keep the House? We now have you covered. Go to Votesaveamerica.com. You'll see our Adoptistate state program. you'll see all the training you can get to become a virtual organizer. You'll see that all of us are lining up. We're choosing states. We're picking sides. We're going to be on teams. I'm team Wisconsin.

And so we're going to kick the crap out of Favreau and Love It and Fifer and everybody else in those other states. Ben, I'm hoping that listeners will just lobby you all week long to join one of the six swing states. So maybe we hold. We do a big reveal next week if you're down with it. Yeah. I went in, but I want to pick.

the right state, so I'll take the week to think about it here. Yeah. On the show today, we got a bunch of good stuff. We're going to talk about China's effort to just fully take control of Hong Kong. We're going to talk about how Facebook is dividing the country and driving people into extremism. We'll talk about North Korea and how the U.S. is walking away from really critical arms control agreements. We'll talk about a travel ban to Brazil and why some of the worst leaders in the world are doing the worst job of managing the coronavirus. We're also going to get into how Iran and Venezuela are finding new ways to cooperate in the face of U.S. sanctions. A coronavirus political scandal in the U.K. that is quite a row, as our friend Mark Landler would say over there.

And then a little bit of news about Bashar al-Assad and how he might be in trouble. And then, Ben, you did today's interview. Can you talk to folks about what they're going to hear? Yeah, Tommy, I talked to a guy named Aidan Ayakruz, who is an activist, a civil society leader in Tanzania. and he works on issues related to transparency. And they have a kind of remarkable situation there where the president of Tanzania, who's kind of one of these nationalists,

has basically just decided to stop counting or testing for coronavirus and to act like it just hasn't come there and it's gone away. And so they literally have only tested, like, around 600 people. Of those 600, like almost all of them have tested positive. But then they just kind of shut down the testing. And so it takes us inside a kind of weird alternative approach, that frankly may sound extreme, but is actually not that different if you think about it than where we may be headed in some other places where leaders want to say, you know what,

it's not worth it, essentially. Let's just move on. Yeah. Okay. Well, stick around for that after the news. So, Ben, you want to start in Hong Kong? Yeah, let's do it. This one's a big deal. So last week, China announced that they're going to impose a new national security law in Hong Kong. And this law would ban secession, subversion of state power, foreign interference, terrorism. And so in short, you know, that is designed to just destroy the protest movement we saw in Hong Kong last year. Those protests started in response to China's attempt to push through a law that would allow Chinese authorities to extradite people from Hong Kong and place them in China's judicial system, which is not a place you ever want to be. The Hong Kong police over the course of

last year have proven to be brutal and just, you know, willing to beat and reportedly torture protesters. This new plan would allow Chinese security services to operate openly and directly in Hong Kong and just arrest people and call it, quote, unquote, joint operation, but it is obviously not. Omidously, the commander of the Chinese military garrison in Hong Kong, they have a few thousand troops over there, said his troops were prepared to defend China's interests, which is, I believe, the first such threat from the PLA. So that is troubling. This new national security law would basically just eliminate what autonomy Hong Kong has under the one-country two systems framework that they're supposed to operate under. And Ben, you know, this comes at a particularly bad time

for these protesters because obviously the coronavirus has made it unsafe to gather in big groups. Some protesters took the street anyway. The Guardian reported that 180 people were arrested on Sunday. So back in Washington, you know, Trump has been happy to blame China for the coronavirus, the Wuhan virus, whatever formulation he uses that's most racist. But he has consistently fail to stand up for Hong Kong. When he was asked about this new national security law last week, he just ducked the question. Mike Pompeo tried to sound a little tougher, but that just doesn't matter if the Chinese know Trump is ready to sell out Hong Kong to get a trade deal through or whatever. Hong Kong is supposed to have some measure of autonomy until 2047 under the agreement that the

British signed with China back in 1997 when they handed the territory over. So Ben, my questions are how concerned are you about this latest move from Beijing? And then what do you think the White House Congress and the Biden campaign should do or say about it? So I'm very concerned. This is like a, you know, five alarm fire, blinking red light, whatever metaphor you want to use. Yeah. You know, basically the Chinese government had been put on the defensive last year, right? And so they did the extradition bill. The protest movement builds and builds and builds. It becomes kind of a culture into itself in Hong Kong. It's threatening the business viability of the city. They withdraw the extradition bill. Their elections in November where the pro-democracy parties win overwhelmingly.

And so even though China has a lot of leverage, the momentum is on the side of the protest. Obviously, with COVID-19, the momentum stops. Everything freezes. And now they're basically taking their wish list of swallowing up Hong Kong and ramming it through at the maximum moment of opportunity because there cannot be a mass mobilization and response in Hong Kong and because the Chinese government probably assumes that the rest of the world is focused on other things. It's not particularly subtle. And it comes after a period of several weeks in which they've been detaining, arresting, you know, protest leaders, democracy activists.

It feels like a part of a much bigger play. And there's a history of the Chinese Communist Party trying to introduce these kinds of national security laws in Hong Kong and people kind of pushing back. fighting back. And what it gets it is the basic premise of one country, two systems, the separate legal systems is really core to that, that Hong Kong has its own basic law, its own set of the rule of law and civil liberties. And just like the extradition bill encroached on that, because you could be taken out of Hong Kong system and spat into Beijing's, this is clearly trying to blur the lines of any autonomous legal system when you can use these kind of vague, generalized national

security rationales for detaining people, harassing people, cracking down. So clearly, this is a cynical maneuver at the most cynical possible time. I think there are a number of things that should be done. I mean, first of all, there are sanctions on the books that passed. And, you know, I think that the Trump administration, if it were serious, would be making a lot of noise about starting to list Chinese individuals or entities that they see. as complicit in repression in Hong Kong and go through the list and see who the bad actors are and start threatening sanctions or imposing sanctions. That's one tool that's available. But I think even more important than that, and this is something that Trump just can't do and won't do,

is that, like, rhetorically, this whole fight we have with the Chinese should be much more prominently about values. You know, instead of it being about soybeans and, you know, what we name COVID-19, it should be about the fact that China has a system that doesn't respect people's human rights and that Hong Kong is at the center of that problem. And I'd like to see a critique made about what China is doing that is much more centered on the fact that there is one place in the world, Hong Kong, where people have the opportunity to try to opt into the Chinese.

Chinese model or they could have civil liberties and they are desperate to maintain their civil liberties. And that kind of puts the lie to the whole Chinese argument that they've solved the issue of human rights that nobody really wants them because they want prosperity instead and mount an argument about what we stand for by contrast. Trump literally can't make that argument because he doesn't really stand for democratic values. Joe Biden can and he should. Yeah. I mean, so that's exactly where I want to go with this because we are in a campaign season. China has become like a top issue, right? Trump's attacking Joe Biden for being weak on China every day. There's millions of dollars behind these ads. And so we know from research that voters like Trump's combative stance

with China, even if it's gotten nothing done. He gets credit from them for trying. And we also know that voters are more likely to blame China for the coronavirus than blame the Trump administration, right? And there's a nationalist flavor to a lot of this rhetoric. There's a racist flavor to some of this rhetoric. It's a lot of scapegoating. And so sort of the crass political question is, how do we find a political upside to fighting for Hong Kong or does one exist, right? Do you think people will get as animated about, you know, civil liberties and freedom for people far away as they do about, you know, just sort of being pissed off at the Chinese about stealing jobs? Or I guess, you know, maybe the better question is, how do you think you frame that debate if you're Joe Biden

to ensure that people understand that on this issue that is so core to China and China's future that Trump has been incredibly weak and is just selling people out. So since we're talking politics, you know, we talked a couple episodes ago about this poll that we did through my organization, National Security Action, about voter attitudes on national security. And two of the most notable findings to me were on what are the criticisms that really stick to Trump. and two of the top criticisms that really stuck to Trump in the polling, I mean, 60 plus percent of people polled agreed with this, were a concern that America no longer stands up for our values,

that we don't really represent anything in the world, you know, and then also that Trump has cozied up to dictators and, you know, essentially become more like our adversaries than what we expect from an American president. I think that even though voters might not care about the city of Hong Kong, even though Americans might be preoccupied, obviously, with what's going on at home, that Biden should be putting together a message that is more elemental than that. It's that America used to stand for something. The reason that we were respected in the world, the reason we held our heads up high is because we fought for a set of values around the world. We stood for democratic values. That's what our grandparents did. That's what our parents did. That's what we should be about.

or in Joe, I guess in Joe Biden's case, he encompasses all those generations, right? And that Trump has sold that out. Trump doesn't stand for anything. Trump doesn't stand for freedom. Trump doesn't stand for democracy. Trump isn't respected, and Trump is cozied up to autocrats, including Xi Jinping. And that it's time that we had an American president who stood for something again. And that if you can't raise your voice when people in a city like Hong Kong are literally

losing their liberties before your eyes, then America doesn't stand for anything. the world anymore. And look, I don't expect that to be the number one issue on people's minds, but I think there's a way to not just have it be an anti-China message, but to have it be, this is about what we're for again, and America should stand for these things again. And by the way, I think some of the voters who are open to that message are voters in the middle, you know, who might find some things to like in Trump culturally or might like that he stands up to China, but understand intuitively that, you know what, this guy's not represent. what it means to be American. And, you know, a lot of veterans, you know, I remember Connor Lamb,

the member of Congress who got elected from a swing distance in Pennsylvania told me this, you know, that there are people in his district that they want America to be America again, right? And that that's part of what Biden can do. I know what some people are thinking right now listening to this, right, especially people outside the country, which is that nobody from any country around the world is ready to listen to you Americans, lecturers about democracy. I get that. But you know what? We got to start somewhere. And we got to start by winning this election at the United States. And yes, to be a more credible voice in issues like Hong Kong, we got to get our fucking shit together in the U.S. We have to make sure people have the right to vote. We have to make sure that congressional districts aren't drawn like some crazy scribbling by Republican political consultants.

We got to make sure that we're protecting basic civil liberties here. I get all that. But in terms of making a political argument to get people that care about Hong Kong again, I think you have to make it. both affirmative, here's who we are, as well as negative China is not those things, and we need to stand up to them. Yeah, look, it will surprise no one that I agree with you. I mean, look, this election is going to be won or lost based on handling of the coronavirus and handling of the economy and probably some ridiculous issues that we don't even know about yet, like a made-up caravan full of coronavirus, ISIS members of the border. But I do think there is a critical values-based international peace that the Biden campaign has been talking about, we'll continue to be talking about, and this should be in the middle of that. But speaking of cozying up to dictators, Ben,

over the weekend, the not at all dead North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un said he was going to implement new policies to advance North Korea's nuclear weapons program. This was at a big leadership meeting at which North Korea reportedly, here's a quote from state media, set forth new policies for further increasing the nuclear war deterrence of the country and putting these strategic armed forces on high alert operation. I do not know what that means, but it does seem clear that the Nobel Prize Trump demanded after his first meeting with Kim two years ago will not be coming anytime soon. So obviously that diplomatic effort has failed. Kim is making more weapons all the time. He's making more ballistic missiles. But the reason I wanted to bring this story up today is a little

different. The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is discussed conducting a nuclear weapons test of our own. And that is a very big deal. It would be the first such test since 1992. 184 countries have signed the comprehensive test ban treaty, which would all but ban the practice. It still needs to be ratified by several countries, including the U.S. before it's fully enforced, but a lot of them enforced it on their own. Obama was in favor of ratifying the treaty, but didn't complete that process. The Trump administration has said in their nuclear posture review in 2018 that they will not seek to ratify it. So recently, the U.S. has accused the Russians and the Chinese of conducting small underground nuclear tests. I don't know if that's true or not.

The Russians and the Chinese deny it. The U.S. uses, you know, computer modeling and other methods to keep their nuclear arsenal up to date. But the Trump people reportedly believe that resuming nuclear testing, underground nuclear testing, could put Russia and China under pressure somehow and try to get them to enter into arms control negotiations. So let's just pause there. Ben, can you just talk about why it would be such a big deal for the U.S. to test a nuclear weapon? And like maybe touch on what it might mean for North Korea policy too. Well, this is completely and utterly insane. And anticipating like a few topics that we could touch on this,

Let's step back here. No nation on earth has benefited more from the global non-proliferation and arms control regime than the United States. And I mean treaties like the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and a whole range of other arms control agreements. Because you know why? We have a lot of nuclear weapons. We already have them. We use all these treaties to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other countries. Right.

And it's been wildly successful. When you think about the fact that these technologies are not that hard to figure out, and yet only a handful of nations have nuclear weapons, that's a huge achievement relative to the world we could live in, in which dozens and dozens of countries have nuclear weapons, and they're testing them, and they're building larger and larger stockpiles, and we're living on the nice edge of potential nuclear flashpoints at all times. You know, precisely because we have this infrastructure, when there are outliers that get through, like when Indian Pakistan tested bombs in the 90s, it's a huge deal. And there's a huge price for those countries.

Unfortunately, sometimes not a big enough price, but enough that a lot of countries look at this and think it's not worth trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Because if I start down that path, I could be sanctioned, I could be ostracized. So this really benefits us if the U.S. were to take the step of resuming testing. And I should say, like, the U.S. had not ratified that treaty, but we basically not only not tested a nuclear weapon for the last few decades, but we basically seek to fortify that treaty around the world. Obama would have ratified it, except with Republicans in the Senate, you're never going to ratify two-thirds treaty like this. If we start testing weapons again, think about

Tommy the moments when we have been able to get maximum sanctions on in North Korea. It's when they test, because then we go to these countries and say, look what these guys just said, they tested a nuclear weapon. We better do something in response, and that's how you get a UN Security Council resolution. That's how you get sanctions. That's how you apply pressure North Korea to get them into some kind of dialogue. But that's not just about North Korea. It's about whether other countries see that happening and think, you know, if I'm Saudi Arabia, you know, I don't want to start going down this path because I don't want to face that either.

If we're suddenly testing, our standing to go to other countries and say, you have to work with us to pressure other countries not to test, just completely disappears. And not only is that going to hurt our capacity to apply pressure to North Korea, it's going to be potentially seen as a green light to a whole lot of other countries to say, you know what, screw it. Like, it looks like everybody's back to building nuclear weapons. We'll just start doing that now. And you're going to have many, many more North Korea's out there.

Yeah. So that brings us to, like, I think a bigger and even more troublesome conversation about the way this administration is just walking away from arms control agreements generally. So in August of 2019, Trump abandoned the intermediate-ranged nuclear reform. or INF Treaty. We talked about this at the time. It was a treaty negotiated by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. And without getting into all the details, it eliminated a lot of dangerous weapons. And it was really the first time the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to reduce their nuclear arsenal. So it was a very important moment. The second piece of this arms

control abdication came last week when the White House announced they are going to leave the Open Skies Treaty, which is an agreement signed in 1992 that allows members who, sign the agreement to fly on armed surveillance flights over the territory of other members of the treaty to collect information on military deployments. So the idea was increased transparency, make it easier to make sure that countries were honoring commitments under arms control treaties, et cetera. So it was especially helpful to the U.S. back in 2014 when flights done under open skies helped identify and monitor Russian military movements in Ukraine after the invasion. So the last piece of this puzzle is the New Start Tree, which was negotiated by President Obama back in 2010. And to your point

earlier, Ben, I mean, it was ratified by the Senate 71 to 26, which is just an unheard of bipartisan achievement in this climate. And New Start limits the number of nuclear weapons that the U.S. and Russia can have deployed or pointed at each other on missiles, submarines, bombers, et cetera. And, you know, like, rest assured, we could still like melt the planet a dozen times over. But that number that deploy today is so way, way, way down from the Cold War peak. So it's important. That treaty, the New START treaty, expires in February. Now, if the Russians and the U.S. agreed they could extend it for another five years, Vladimir Putin has said he's cool with that, but the Trump administration says that they want to push for a bigger treaty that also includes China. And Trump's special envoy

in charge of arms control was quoted last week or over the weekend as saying that if we can't come to some sort of agreement, the U.S. will, quote, spend the adversary into oblivion, essentially promising, you know, the most expensive arms control race in history, right, when we have a $25 trillion debt. So, you know, Ben, the argument you hear against these treaties from people like Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas, is that Russia and China are cheating, right? Like, they say they don't abide by the treaties. They say when it comes to open skies, the Russians won't let us fly over like the most sensitive places in Russia, but they use flights over the U.S. as a way to collect intelligence that they couldn't otherwise get.

Like, I think they flew a flight over Trump's golf club in New Jersey once and that pissed everybody off. They also argue, like people like Tom Cotton also argue that U.S. spy satellites get us better information than those over flights anyway, so it's not even worth it for us. But it's a long wind up. But Ben, I want to know what your response is, you know, to the criticisms of those treaties. And like, what do you think people should understand about the value of these arms controls treaties? And if you were in the White House, like, how would you address the challenges

that people are talking about in terms of implementation without abandoning the treaty itself? Yeah. So the logic of the Trump people and Tom Cotton just collapses so quickly here. Because, okay, so there's a lot of value to this constellation of treaties that they're dismantling. You know, one simple value is it tries to keep the numbers of nuclear weapons and deployed nuclear weapons down. You know, less nuclear weapons pointed at each other. That's just like a better thing, right? And that's how people tend to think of these treaties. And that's important.

Yeah. And by the way, that's also how we try to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, because the basic premise of the whole nuclear arms control regime around the world is countries with nuclear weapons are supposed to steadily give them up and nobody else can get them. and we may still have them for the foreseeable future, but that's the basic premise. But there's another really important point here, which is transparency and monitoring and verification. What do I mean by that? Like open skies means that there's transparency about the flights that are taking place. It doesn't just mean you can do them. It means that everybody's reporting it so there's less chance of an accident,

less chance of misinterpreting what a flight is. In the same way that the reason that there was a lot of need for transparency and nuclear weapons-related issues is that nobody wanted to make a mistake and think a nuclear word started because we made a misjudgment about something. And so under a new start, there's transparency and verification where we literally have visibility into Russia's deployment of its nuclear stockpile. We have eyes on the ground that are seeing. A Republican, Ronald Reagan, most famously said, trust but verify. Verification is how arms control works. It's how. It's how. you catch people cheating. And so this leads to the Tom Cotton. If you are not satisfied

that there are some violations that we are catching to these arms control agreements, the answer to that is not to get rid of any of the rules, because then that's all that's going to happen. Like these are not only do these treaties bind people to certain commitments, they also allow you to have the transparency and verification to measure what they're doing against what they're supposed to be doing. And so if you just throw out all the rules, then you're not only going to have more deployed nuclear weapons, you're going to lose that capacity to see what the Russians are doing, right? And so this is like insanity.

It makes no sense. There's no reason for us to be doing this at this point. And this leads to the spending question, which is like it is already patently insane that the United States, before the comment you made, was planning to spend a trillion dollars modernizing our nuclear weapons infrastructure. It was a mistake when some of that spending started

under Obama. It was far more than I think we should have started down the path. It is exploding under Trump. And if this arms race happens, yeah, we're going to be talking about trillions of dollars spending on nuclear weapons at a time when we have a trillion dollar deficit. We're in a depression because of a pandemic. And we have climate change barreling down on us, something that is going to cause far more damage than some kind of Cold War era view of like whether if the Russians gain like a slight advantage over us and some nuclear delivery system, like the world's going to come to an end here. So I think this is all craziness, and it's all, we're owning ourselves here. Tommy, most of these treaties have their roots in the 80s and 90s. The U.S. wrote the rules at the 90s. We will

never, ever be as powerful as we were in the 1990s when we dominated the world. Why would you toss out the rules that you wrote when you had all the power in the world and, you would, replace it for 2020 when you have a rising China and a Russia that is biting back and a world that has lost confidence in U.S. leadership. This is the worst time to go down this path. And I noted that one of the key Russians on all these issues, a guy named Riyabkov, was asked about this gambit that, you know, they have to somehow be responsible for bringing China. And he's like, no, we won't do that. So it's not going to happen. Like what? Sure, would I like to live in a world in which Russia and China magically all agreed to like some new start tree within the next year?

Sure. But it's not going to happen. Yeah. So the smarter thing to do is keep the infrastructure in place and try to negotiate from the foundation of that infrastructure. Instead, they're tossing everything out, junking all the rules, giving Russia carte blanche to do whatever the hell it wants, develop all the nuclear weapons at once, all the delivery systems at once. Same thing to China. Car blanche to everybody around the world. and then on what, the hope that Trump's going to get a better deal?

What, just like he got a better deal on Iran, just like you got a better deal on North Korea? No, it's going to be the same thing as Iran and North Korea. Yeah. He tosses out the rulebook and we're fucked. Yeah, we didn't mention the Iran deal, but you certainly could have, right? I mean, like, there's no argument I can understand where you wouldn't just extend due start for five years, keep open skies going and then try to negotiate a follow-on with more partners that's more stricter advantageous or whatnot.

But, I mean, yeah, the dichotomy of North Korea, which is just making a, a new bomb every couple months to Iran where we had restrictions in place and now they're gone as absurd. I just think like it's one of those things that people have to care about and think of it, right? Because I feel like a few months ago, there were a bucket of events or issues that were like so catastrophic that it almost felt like science fiction. You know, like there's like a Netflix special on a meteor striking the earth in what would happen or a catastrophic nuclear war. And until recently, I might have thrown a pandemic in that bucket and maybe some people view climate

change that way. But I really think we need to do a better job in our politics and just like the conversation we have about discussing and mitigating potentially catastrophic risk and a nuclear arms race where we spend other countries into oblivion as the best case. Like that should fall squarely into that new focus. Yeah. And I'll give you a few examples that don't even bring into account like some risk of war with Russia or China. One is simply that we don't have the money. right? And so anything that requires us to spend trillions of dollars of the next decade is going to be catastrophic to our ability to deal with, you know, climate change, but also like coming out of this depression. But also, like, think of these scenarios that could play out. Like, if we just junk

nuclear arms and non-proliferation treaties around the world and the dominoes start to fall, like what are the kinds of things that could happen? Well, like we've let Iran out from under the Iran deal. Let's say they get a nuclear weapon, the Saudis buy one. And then suddenly you've got Saudi Arabia and Iran with nuclear weapons. Think of all the ways that could go wrong. Or even a good friend of the United States like South Korea. South Korea and Japan have not yet developed nuclear weapons because implicitly they thought, well, the U.S. is our ally, they'll have our back and they're the ones upholding on their shoulders this whole global infrastructure of arms control. Let's say because Trump has told those countries to piss off and he's reelected,

let's say South Korea and Japan just build nuclear weapons, which they could do very easily because of their scientific innovation. Well, I think back to Tommy when we're you're in office, you know, an incident happens, like a South Korean military vessel is sank, like happened with the Chonan, where South Korean island is shelved. And let's say this time the South Koreans feel emboldened because, you know, we got a nuclear weapon as our backstop. And so then they fire back at the North Koreans. And then the North Koreans fire back at then. And then you have an escalating conventional war between North and South Korea with nuclear weapons. That could be the new normal in 10 years because of what we're seeing right now. And, you know,

it doesn't break through the news, but like systematically dismantling the entire Cold War and post-Cold War infrastructure of arms control is a big, big, big deal. And they're doing it under the cover of a pandemic, which is just as gross as, you know, China swallowing up Hong Kong under the cover of pandemic. Yeah, it's just, every day I think it can't get worse than I read a headline like that. And I'm just head in hands. Okay, let's talk about Facebook for a minute. So the Wall Street Journal had an amazing report that talked about how in 2018 Facebook's leadership was presented with evidence that its algorithms, quote, exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness and that if left unchecked would feed users more divisive content and further

polarize the country. So in other words, we've all seen this happen since. Mark Zuckerberg was presented with clear evidence that all his rhetorical bullshit about Facebook connecting the world and bringing people together was wrong. And in fact, the opposite was happening. In response, they did basically nothing to fix it. The question is why. And I believe that answer is because working the refs works. So Facebook has been called biased by Republicans for years.

The Facebook leadership was scared of upsetting conservative publishers whose entire business is based on stoking outrage and getting clicks that way. And that 2018 report was basically shelved, but it followed a 2016 study. internally at Facebook on extremism on the platform. And there, a Facebook researcher found extremist content in more than a third of large German political groups on the platform. And even worse, that 64% of all people, of all Germans, joining those extremist groups

were the result of Facebook's recommendation tool. So basically, Facebook was telling you, hey, check out this. Would it be a Nazi? Yeah. Exactly. So this story just may be infuriated. And like, look, it's not because I think that people who work at Facebook are bad or uncaring or unaware of these challenges. And I'm not sitting here suggesting that solving them is easy. But what pisses me off so much is that Mark Zuckerberg and the people at the top are political cowards.

They are more scared of being called partisan or biased than of running a company that is polarizing America or pushing Germans into extremism. And meanwhile, like Facebook has decimated the news industry. and, you know, you know, Zuckerberg's, like, getting dinner with Trump at the Oval Office so that he's not mean to him. So, like, I don't know what to do about this, Ben. You know, there's an amazing podcast by The New York Times right now. It's called Rabbit Hole. I've mentioned before by Kevin Ruse that explores the way YouTube has been radicalizing people for the last several years.

There's got to be some way to regulate these companies to try to fix this problem because we're all seeing what a big problem it's becoming. and like no one internally or externally is doing anything to address it. Nothing. Yeah. They are destroying the world. I mean, like their mainlining hate and polarization. Like their model is to polarize people. Their model is to spread sensationalism and divisive content and fear-based content.

To your point, you know, you could be on Facebook and, you know, you might read a click a story about a crime that an immigrant committed, you are going to be led like, you know, a sheep to slaughter through the stages of radicalization by the Facebook algorithm. Oh, you wanted to read about this particular crime? Like, why don't you read about this scary group that is promoting the fact that only illegal immigrants are coming here to commit crimes? And then- Breitbart has a whole section for you. Yeah. And then, oh, by the way, oh, you got your feet a little bit wet there? Like, well, guess what the algorithm is going to shoot your way? Like, you can join a group

that believes we need to arm ourselves to defend it. I mean, this is what happens in every country in the world where Facebook is present. People are led down this path of essentially radicalization by the Facebook algorithm. It has to be regulated. Like, and by the way, this is not an issue of free speech. No. Because it's not just free speech. Facebook is deciding what you see. The Facebook algorithm is shaping the speech. It is leading you in directions. It is telling you that certain content is more important for you to see than others. That should be regulated. And if it's not, they should be liable for the content that's on their platform. Like at a certain point, if they won't do what is necessary, government has to compel them to do what is necessary. And this is true for YouTube too.

Yeah. And like what pisses me off so much is like they all threw their hands up for so long. And they're like, oh, we're just a platform. We're not making values judgment. But more recently, they are all doing the right thing. And they are banning coronavirus content that is giving people misinformation or dangerous false information, including this thing pandemic, right? Which is it says that like Fauci and some people like created the coronavirus, like the craziest thing ever that's getting millions and millions of views on platforms like Facebook and YouTube until they pulled it down. But it just shows you like how quickly and deadly this misinformation spread can be. Yeah, they don't want to lose, it's their business model.

The clicks sell and fear and hate and conspiracy theory gets clicks. And they don't want to fundamentally change their business model because it will cost them a lot of money. But you know what? I don't care. Me either. In a certain point, like you've made enough money, Mark Zuckerberg. How many billions is enough for you to be able to sleep at night, you know?

And at the same time, you're right. Then they get the rest, you know, the right wing pundits say Facebook is a bunch of liberals. And because Facebook is based in Northern California and a lot of the people work there probably self-identifies liberals, they get overly defensive about that, and something like Mark Zuckerberg is rushing to do like right-wing media, they're working you just as effectively as they've worked the American news media for decades, which is they're getting you to do exactly what they want by praying upon, you know, the fact that you might know that, yeah, a lot of liberals work here. But it doesn't matter. If you look at Facebook,

I don't care what the politics are the people who work there. The stuff that gets shared the most is far-right content. It is basically a far-right machine in terms of what it is disseminating content-wise. And so, like this working of the refs, let's just leave this in the past year. It's not about that. It's about public health and safety at this point. Okay. Let's talk about Brazil. A little tiny bit of coronavirus news today. So this week, the U.S. is going to put in place travel restrictions on anyone trying to come to the U.S. who was in Brazil within two weeks of that person's arrival at a port of entry into the United States. So, That obviously sweeps up Brazilian citizens, but also travelers to Brazil who aren't U.S. citizens could get delayed entry into the United States.

That is because Brazil has become the nation with the second highest number of COVID-19 cases after the U.S., by the way, which does make you wonder why that ban isn't going both directions. But, you know, President Bolsonaro of Brazil has done an unbelievably terrible job managing the emergency. He has mocked social distancing. He's gone to rallies. He fired one health minister, another quit. he's reportedly letting like random military officials do the job now. At the same time, he's been accused of trying to shut down corruption investigations into his friends and his family. So things are looking bad for him politically.

They're looking very bad and scary for Brazilian citizens. It also just reminds you that the U.S. still has tons of travel bans in place to places like Europe and China. So the world is, you know, locked down globally, even if, you know, countries are opening up and people won't stop sharing videos of pool parties in the Ozarks. other countries in Latin America are really starting to struggle, and they're concerned about spikes of cases in Russia and India. So, you know, Ben, look, it was interesting to hear the list of countries where things are going the worst. It's the U.S., Brazil, Russia, and then you think about the folks in charge there and all their similarities, and it tells a pretty damning story about nationalism. Yeah, I mean, like what a surprise that the far right

nationalists from the U.S., Russia, Brazil are not handling this in a spirit of science-based decision-making and caring about common humanity. It's very telling that in parts of East Asia, South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand, parts of Europe, life is beginning to return to normal, and the countries that are lagging behind are the countries that have these kinds of leaders. And Bolsonaro, let's not forget that at the beginning of the lockdowns, his His last stop was to Mar-a-Lago, where he's hung out with Trump. Yep. And basically he's, you know, had the same type of response as Trump, you know, like disinformation,

you know, kind of this machismo attitude, arrogance, you know, maybe even a little more extreme, but like we're punishing Brazil with travel ban for basically pursuing a response that looks a good bit like Trump's, right? And I also think, you know, unwinding these travel bans is going to be incredibly complicated and frankly, would be a lot easier if we were able to do so working cooperatively with, like, I don't know, the World Health Organization, which provides a forum to talk about these things. So, yeah, no, it's, I think you're going to see this for years, which is that like the more poorly governed places with these kind of right-wing nationalist anti-science leaders are going to lag way behind everybody else, and that's going to become more and more apparent as time goes on. Yeah, I mean, the Times also had interesting report about how Putin had promised cash bonuses to health care workers. but almost none of that money has been actually delivered because, you know, all these corrupt

officials who work for him are skimming it off the top or they're scared about making a payment or having their budgets messed up and doling out funds and then getting investigated because they're corrupt in the first place. Now you have doctors complaining about not getting their money. They're then getting investigated by the state. Putin is threatened to punish officials who aren't distributing the cash that he had promised. But like it's all underscoring that he is In fact, not all-powerful. He's a terrible administrator. It seems like they're trying to scapegoat the prime minister of Russia who was hospitalized for a month with the coronavirus. But it is laying bare how bad many of these leaders actually are. Yeah. And I think what you're going to see,

and this comes up in the interview today, that some of these leaders are going to try to just not count the numbers, you know, just not report the debt. In Russia, there have been a lot of reports that Putin is undercounting cases and deaths. And that may be their answer to the numbers. this. And, you know, there's another connection here, which is science. Like, what a coincidence that Trump and Bolsonaro and Putin are three of the leaders who are most against dealing with climate change, you know, Bolsonaro permitting essentially the destruction of the Amazon, even though scientists warned that that could doom the planet to irreversible climate change. You know what? Leaders who listen to scientists are generally better at their jobs.

and leaders who don't, the type of leaders who have perpetrated the idea that climate change is a hoax are the type of leaders who aren't going to listen to the scientists in a pandemic either. Yeah. One other little corona fallout, which is in the UK. So British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's top aide, a guy named Dominic Cummings, is in some trouble. This has been a huge saga over in the UK that we'll try to walk you guys through. So the first thing to know is that Cummings is one of those, like, you know, wants to be some sort of political guru or Sven Gali like Steve Bannon. He was the key architect of Brexit and he's seen as this

conniving behind the scenes guy. But he and his wife got the coronavirus back in March. And instead of going into lockdown as mandated by the government he helps run, Cummings drove 260 miles to his parents' place in Northern England. And he claimed he did so because he was worried that, you know, if he and his wife both got sick, they have a small child, they wouldn't have child care. And that seems kind of understandable, even if it's against the rules. But Cummings didn't just hang out with his relatives. He also drove 20 miles to a place called Castle Barnard. And his stated reason for doing so was he said to test his eyesight, which had been impacted

by the coronavirus to see if it was good enough for him to drive the five-hour trip back to London, which, you know, you might wonder why driving for an hour is a good way to test if your eyes are safe enough to drive. That seems insane. So he did this big press conference on Monday. outside of number 10 Downing Street. It's just weird. Imagine like a staffer for a U.S. president sitting out in front of the White House doing a press conference about a scandal he or she created, right?

Like speaks to how important he is to their system and how bizarre this is. You know, the scandal itself comes on the heels of the top British epidemiologist having to resign from his role in a scientific panel. After he was caught visiting with his girlfriend during lockdown, there's been a bunch of other British officials who have been caught up in similar scandals. So, like, I guess maybe British citizens will have less tolerance for do as I say, not as I do, or at least, you know, less tolerance that we do in the U.S. But, man, this must be pretty brutal for Boris Johnson, you know, just recovering from COVID himself. Yeah, I think it, look, it's important because, you know, there's the age old political scandal, the hypocrisy of political leaders telling you to do something and then doing something else themselves.

And it matters because this guy, you know, was the, you know, it's kind of like Carl Rove meets Steve ban and, you know, this kind of man behind the curtain of the Brexit campaign and then really the indispensable advisor to Boris Johnson. I think that the reason it matters more and that you're seeing kind of a particularly high-despo level of anger about this in the UK is that Dominic Cummings has been a mastermind of a political strategy that tried to tell people that there are a bunch of elites who only care about themselves and not yet. You know, it's like the banning thing. like you, the way in which kind of rich, privileged people like Boris Johnson and Donald Trump get support from the masses is they play on these cultural grievances like, don't listen to those

elites, strain the swamp, blah, blah, blah. And here he is acting like the most privileged and elitist guy possible. Like, no, the rules don't apply to me. I can go to a castle. Yeah, I can go to a castle and then I can lie about it to your face. And so it kind of completely exposes the. of the whole Boris Johnson stick, you know, that he's the man of the people fighting the self-interested elites. Well, no, it turns out actually he is, he in his circle are the self-interested

elites who think that there's one set of rules that apply to everyone else and then no other to them. And that's why this might be a scandal that kind of sticks to them. I think also, as we talked about, there was an outpouring of, you know, support for Boris Johnson when he was sick. Right. And hope that he got better, obviously. And that's great. But that kind of obscured how bad their response was for a while. And so I think this is also giving people a permission structure to be pissed at the government again. Yeah, good for them. Have fun with it.

Quite a row, as they say over there. Yeah, it's quite a row. A couple more quick things. So, you know, we've talked a bunch of times about U.S. efforts to sanction and punish both Iran and Venezuela. And so, you know, in Venezuela, you know, it's veered into a conversation about just straight-up regime change. So now, interestingly, Iran and Venezuela are joined. forces to help each other out and just give the U.S. the middle finger. On Monday, an Iranian oil tanker arrived in Venezuela with the shipment of gasoline from Iran. It is reportedly the first of

five ships that are on the way. The Venezuelans are desperate for fuel. Iran is desperate for cash. So Nicholas Maduro, the Venezuelan president, made a trade. He had a bunch of golds. He bought a bunch of oil. The fact that Venezuela got to this point is a pretty devastating story about their mismanagement of their own oil and gas industry, the fact that they can't, you know, refine petroleum, but that's another story. But, you know, these fuel shortages are exacerbating Venezuela's economic problems that have been brought on by sanctions. I don't know, Ben, what do you think about this, this open cooperation between Iran and Venezuela? How significant do you think this sort of next phase of their cooperation is? Well, look, I think it just, the reason it's

notable is it's like two of the biggest boogeyman in U.S. politics as it relates to foreign policy, cozing up to each other. It should be no surprise. The U.S. pulls out of the Iran deal, tries to shove Iran back in the pounsy box, so they're going to look for other friends. The U.S. recognizes a different guy as president of Venezuela and starts sanctioning the Venezuelans, and so they're going to go looking for friends. But here's the net result. Iran is resumed its nuclear program. Maduro is more entrenched than ever, and he's much closer to Iran, China, and Russia than he even was before Trump recognized Guido. And so this one photo op of the Iranian and Venezuela and vessels coming together

kind of speaks to the complete failure of a policy that said, we're going to somehow squeeze these people into collapse. No, we squeeze them closer together. And I think the reason it also matters is those people who don't care about human beings who are hurt by sanctions or foreign policy outcomes would say, well, what a politically ingenious strategy in Florida? Because, you know, the Jewish voters down there love the tough on Iran stuff and the Cuban and Venezuelan American voters down there love, the tough on Venezuela stuff. Well, hey, Democratic politicians in Florida, you just got your photo that essentially

blasts a giant hole in their entire argument in your state. Which is like, okay, niche constituencies who we've decided get to determine all of U.S. foreign policy, are you happy now? Like, not only are the Iranians building a nuclear weapon, not only is Maduro in power, but they're cozy up to each other down there in Caracas. Turns out maybe like putting all your chips, giving all your chips over to Donald Trump to take to the casino to place some foreign policy bets on Iran and Venezuela has led to this. Yeah, not so good. Not so good. Okay, one last story. I just want to put a pin in for listeners. So the Washington Post, Liz Sly, has this analysis piece where she says that Syrian president, you know, dictator, sadist, Bashar,

Assad is facing the biggest challenge to his grip on power since the Syrian civil war started nine years ago. And this might surprise listeners since, like, you know, the opposition in Syria has been all but defeated. But the problem for Assad is that the Syrian economy is just decimated after a decade of war and of sanctions and now the pandemic. And the benefactors who prop him up, the Russians and the Iranians, are dealing with the coronavirus and their own economic problems. And they just can't hand him, a bunch of billions of dollars to fix their economy. So Assad has picked a public fight with his family. So he has a cousin, a guy named Rami McClough.

Assad tried to bill him basically for back taxes. McClough is one of the many powerful businessmen who operate like many warlords in Syria and they have their own little militia forces and constituencies that support them. Rami Muklouf went on Facebook and he complained about his mistreatment from Assad, which was this like rare and seemingly dangerous sign of public. dissent for an autocrat, and that has inspired other people to go public with their complaints about Bashar. So, you know, Ben, I distinctly remember being told at the very beginning of the Syrian Civil War that key business leaders like Rami McClue were turning on Assad and that,

you know, regime change was imminent because of forces within the country. And that obviously did not happen. And here we are a decade later talking about the same group of people. But I did think that, you know, Lysai is a very smart reporter and that the underlying economic analysis in the political position it's put Assad in was interesting and just worth noting. Yeah, it's worth watching because, you know, during the, you know, almost decade-long Syrian Civil War, all the pro-regime interests, like, were kind of forced to fall in the line together because it was existential to that, you know, so everyone kind of got behind Assad, put aside whatever their differences were because it was like, you know, a fight for survival.

Now that the Civil War's ending, that kind of sense of common fate may be fraying. Right. You know, Obama used to make this argument that when Russia and Iran were, you know, being kind of almost celebrated by people in the foreign policy debate in the U.S. of winning this great victory in Syria, you know.

He used to make this argument of like, well, what are they really going to be winning? Like what's going to be winning? to happen, like, why is it going to be necessarily good for them to be managing whatever is on the other end of the Syrian Civil War? I think a lot of people reacted negatively and strongly to Obama saying that because they heard it as like a justification for not taking humanitarian intervention, which I understand. But it doesn't actually make Obama's point any less true, which is, here we are, what is going to happen in Syria? Like, it's quite likely that

some of these people are going to turn on each other next few years. It's a fact that Syria has been completely destroyed by Assad and this civil war, that Russia and Iran do not have the money at all to try to rebuild this place. And so I think what you're going to see is probably like, you know, factionalism, infighting, you know, maybe the place, unfortunately, is going to be returning into different kinds of conflict of the next decade. Like that's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, more likely that Syria looks like a mess for the next decade, then it kind of emerges with Assad standing strongly on two feet with the country behind them and the spigot of aid flowing from Russia and Iran.

And again, that's a tragic, I don't in any way welcome that. It's another tragic outcome. And it's why ideally you'd have some international effort to try to, you know, provide some support for a different kind of political settlement there. Yeah. Okay. Last thing. So we talk a lot today and frequently about shitty world leaders on this program. So we just want to play a little audio from a great one to close it out.

Just having a bit of an earthquake here, Ryan. Quite a decent shake here. All right. But if you see things moving behind me. Has it stopped? The Beehive moves a little more than most. Has it stopped, Prime Minister, or is it still going? Yep. No, it's just stopped. Okay. And you're feeling safe and well to continue the interview?

No, we're fine, Ryan. I'm not under any hanging lights. I look like I'm in a structurally sound place. That was Jacinda Hardin, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, doing a live interview during an earthquake and just seemingly couldn't care less. Just happy as a clam, you know, identifying the infrastructure around and above her and, you know, managing through it. I don't know that this is related to why their country has all but eradicated. their coronavirus and has come out of this crisis better than anybody else. But I suspect it is. It definitely is. I mean, and the most hopeful trend in the world, right, is some of these younger female progressive leaders getting elected to places. And lo and behold, being terrific leaders, I have to say, like, she's about a hundred times tougher. Donald Trump or Mike Pompeo would probably

be diving for cover under a table. So it also shows you that toughness doesn't come from your capacity to, like, berate other people. It comes from being able to stand there and kind of roll with the earthquake in the same way that she rolled with the pandemic so successfully, they've had like well under 100 deaths in New Zealand, which again, even per capita, allowing for that is much more present in here. I will use the opportunity, Tommy. I don't think I've told my embarrassing story when Obama and I met with Jacinda Ardern and her top aide in 2018. I was very struck. She's so charming, so down to earth. She had this kind of mix of things she wanted to talk about ranging from like very important critical issues around the economy and climate change

to just talk to Obama about the fact that she's about to have a kid and what's it like to be a parent who's also in politics. You know, it's overwhelming sense of just like a decent, smart, hardworking person who cares about the right things. And when it was over, you know, we start taking pictures. And so Obama takes a picture with her and Obama is taking picture of their staff. And so then just Cindy Arden calls out to me and I'm over on the other side of the room. I'm stuck in my government mode where I have to look busy, you know, like I'm looking at my phone, even though what the hell do I have to do? And she's like, oh, do you want a picture? And she's like waving me over.

And I was like, no, no, no, I've already got plenty of pictures. And I thought, I thought that she was asking me if I wanted a picture with Obama for some reason. Because Obama had been taking all these pictures with different people. Like, so they've been waving over all of her staff, basically, to take pictures with Obama. And so when she said, oh, you want to come over to get a picture? I thought she was asking me if I wanted a picture with Obama. I was like, no, no, I don't want a picture with it. I've got enough of those.

And then I immediately realized, but not fast enough for not to be too late, that she had been asking me if I wanted a picture with her. And I just basically said, no, no, I don't need a picture. And I've never gotten over the embarrassment. I feel like nerves just thinking about it because, number one, I wish I had a picture with Jacinda Ardern, she's like the best leader in the world today. And number two, I just feel like,

kind of a jerk, which is obviously compounded when I had Kiwis being like, and why did you pronounce her name wrong? So I'm the top of the fan club here, but I always have that, that single moment of singular self-humiliation to draw upon. But drawing from her example, like she clearly just roll with it. So I guess I just need, I need to roll with it myself. Yeah, she was just shake it right off like the earthquake. I mean, yeah, there's also this like thing that's ingrained and you as a staffer, that like anytime anyone like acknowledged my existence or tried to bring me into a conversation where I didn't feel like I should be there, I just wanted to crawl into a ball and die and just be in the back of the room and not be like part of the thing. Why is that? That's

totally true. And I don't know why. Because you're there and you're there in a support role. And even the presumption that you're like the principal or like should be part of the conversation, just it's beaten into you that you should just step away from that. Well, and it made me think like I actually don't really have pictures of myself. Like, I met all these people in the eight years and I was in that job. And, like, I probably because of that mentality, like, I almost, the only pictures I have myself are when, like, Pete Sousa forced me to take a picture of someone, like, I don't know, it's a mixed bag. It's on the one and I find it annoying when staffers insert themselves and, like, can I get a picture? Listen, it's all about acting like,

you've been there before. Well, that, I would always try to act like I've been there before, but then I think I, like, gave off, like, a vibe, a dickish vibe that I didn't mean to. I was trying to, like, just shrink into the furniture, you know. But anyway, oh, well. Yeah. What are you going to do? It doesn't mean that we can't be eternal just under and boosters on this podcast. Yeah.

Prime Minister, if you're listening, hopefully we'll all meet you one day. Okay. When we come back, we will have Ben's interview, so stick around for that. Okay, I'm now joined by Aidan Ayakuza, who is the executive director of TWA, East Africa, which is a leading civil society organization that is active in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. Aiden, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much, Ben, for inviting me to be on. I want to start by just taking a step back and looking at what's happened in Tanzania the last few years. I remember going to Tanzania with President Obama in his second term when President

Kekwete was in office in Tanzania. And Tanzania was often held up as kind of a democratic success story and something of a model, frankly, in East Africa. And I know that since the new president, John Magafouli, was elected in 2015. that there's been, you know, some backsliding on democracy and on the space for civil society in Tanzania. And so I was hoping you could kind of talk us through how he's, you know, positioned himself as a bit of an anti-corruption reformer, but he's also taken steps to roll back democracy. Yeah, great question. I actually have thought about it for a little bit and, you know, being involved in some of the activities in trying to promote certain free

freedoms of expression, association, and assembly, we've been trying to think about how one would characterize what has been happening for the last four years. And I sort of land on a couple of words, and that's sort of, I call it muscular nationalism. This administration has really made an important narrative around self-sufficiency, self-efficacy, that we need to take back a contribution.

of the way things are done in this country. So there has been quite a robust engagement with foreign companies and investors. I think one of the early initiatives was to try and call them out for not paying the taxes that were due to the country and keeping us as a donor-dependent country. So I think you know about the recent

that was done or on Barrick and the gold mining companies to try and renegotiate those contracts, the laws were changed. So that's one aspect of what has been happening. I think another one has been really, as you mentioned, there to fight corruption internally. And that has been a big flagship initiative of this current administration. In fact, just today a couple of tax administrators in a region of Tanzania were arrested for corruption. I'm not sure what the details are. So big fish, small fish have been netted by the efforts at curbing corruption. Some have critiqued the government to say some of their anti-corruption drive has actually targeted people for, I suppose, they're more dissenting stance against the administration, for their questioning or critiquing

what's going on, for bending the rule of law. And I think that's an accusation that has a little bit of validity in it or quite a lot of validity in it. So it's a mixed bag in terms of the administration trying to take back control of the commanding heights of the economy, such as some of these sectors, especially the mining sector, renegotiating the contracts, fighting corruption. I think the other thing that is really even more problematic has been really curbs on essentially the freedoms of expression, association and assembly. essentially political activity has been deemed, you know, undesirable by the administration. So no rallies or the spaces for political parties to organize and say their peace have essentially been shut down.

And civil society organizations have found themselves in a similar kind of boat after the political parties were essentially really circumscribed in what they're operating. So these kinds of, you know, developments have given, you know, quite a lot of us a cause for concern on the direction of the democratic atmosphere in Tanzania. So, you know, I know that a big part of the issue with the government has been it's essentially manipulation at times of statistics and data. And, you know, like we've seen in a lot of countries, really using information to challenge, you know, the concept of facts and an objective reality. And that's, of course, come into

play in the COVID-19 situation when you get at questions about counting cases and deaths. I was wondering if you could talk to us about how the government has approached this use of information and data. Well, maybe I should demonstrate that by just a story that is personal to myself, you know, something that happened with me and with the organization that I work with, Tuareza. In 2015, so I'll take you back a little bit. 2015, we conducted a poll pre-election to see which way Tanzanians were leaning with respect to voting for the ruling party and its candidate, President Magu Fuli now, and in opposition candidate with a very strong, opposition party, Chadema, with a pretty strong candidate in Edward Loasa. So in September, we put out this poll. We polled the country, about 3,000 citizens. And the results were.

was 65% in favor of Magufuli and about 25 in favor of Loasa. And the opposition parties were clearly unhappy with us. But, you know, election, they come election day, and our polls were essentially validated with a slightly smaller margin between the winner and the person who came second. So in the subsequent years, we did additional polling on presidential approval ratings. it shot up in 2016 to 96%, you know, and I think that was a reflection of all of the activities that the administration was doing to curb, especially curb corruption amongst civil servants.

And then it dipped in 2017 to about 71% or thereabouts. And there was a little bit of discussion and debate. I think people began to say maybe because there are some. tendencies here which people are not too happy about with respect to their freedoms. In 2018, we polled again, and the president's approval rating had fallen even further in the high 50s, at which point I think the administration decided that maybe enough is enough with respect to independent polling, and Tuareza found itself questioned as to what it was doing, how it was authorized to do this polling, something that had never been a problem before. A couple of weeks

after launching those numbers, my passport was actually taken away from me, and I wasn't able, and to this day, still I'm not able to leave the country. Ostensibly, the reason was to investigate my citizenship as a Tanzanian. They were suspecting that I may not be a Tanzanian, and so it was fomenting some kind of wrong information or dissent by putting out these these numbers. Since then, we've had a change in the Statistics Act, which one revision gave the power to government to approve of any surveys, collection of data, and their publication. We, you know, with other civil society organizations, worked really, really hard to have a couple of those clauses in the Act changed and with some support from external,

financial institutions such as the World Bank, which said, you know, it's difficult for us to work in a space where we have to seek permission from the government to publish data. So on the 30th of June, 2019, the problematic clauses were removed from the Statistics Act. And ostensibly by law, you can still collect independent data and publish independent data. But there are administrative challenges and constraints and roadblocks put against that. So I think in the nutshell, the government wants to control the narrative. I think that's one thing that is clear. And any independent data that might paint an alternative or different picture is actively discouraged from reaching the light of day. So that's led to a pretty extraordinary situation today where you have

Tanzania reporting, you know, something along the lines of, you know, around 500 COVID cases, and that's going along with just over 600 tests. I don't think anybody believes that that's an accurate portrayal of the situation on the ground. What do you think is going on? I think, well, I think testing really stopped in early May. The last time any results were published for mainland Tanzania was on April 29th, or reported to the World Health Organization or the African. Centers for Disease Control was April 29th. So almost a month, we've had no reporting or

publishing of results. In the intervening time, doubts was cast on the testing lab, the one testing lab in Tanzania. And the government investigated as to whether it was doing the right thing and a proper job. A commission of inquiry was put in place. it reported recently that there were problems with some of the equipment and so therefore the lab was moved from the National Institute of Medical Research to another location. But I don't think any testing has happened since the, since early May, or at least it's not been reported to have happened. And so therefore the numbers of COVID cases seem to be stuck at 509 out of 652 tests. I mean, compare that to a country like Ghana, which has done 195,000

tests to find six, six thousand six hundred and eighty three cases. Compared that to Kenya just north of the border, over 60,000 tests to get 1,200 cases. Uganda, 81,000 tests to get 312 cases. Rwanda, our small neighbor, to the west, 58,000 tests with 327 cases. So yeah, Tanzania is very much an island, an outlier in terms of the number of tests, and therefore, very much. visibility into the extent of COVID-19 in the country is extremely opaque. And what do you think the government is hoping to achieve here by, you know, essentially acting like this isn't even worth testing or pursuing? And what is the mood among the people there, are people afraid or people willing to kind

of trust the government on this or just kind of go along with their mentality? Let me answer the second one first. I actually think, and I was just observable. observing on social media and talking to people, just ordinary colleagues and friends of mine, I think a lot of Tanzanians have decided that they're going to listen to what the government has said. They're going to take it as read that, yes, we are winning the battle against coronavirus. We don't need to bend over backwards to protect ourselves too, too much. And so life is continuing more or less as it was in the past.

Maybe a little bit more hand washing, a little bit more sanitizer, use, a little bit more mask wearing. But even the mask wearing, which was more extensive, maybe a week or two ago, seems to have been on the decline since the government has said,

you know, at least when the data is not being announced and published, there seems to be a bit of, of a relaxation even amongst, amongst ordinary citizens. So, but as to what the real case, the true condition of corona of COVID-19 in Tanzania is, is an open question. And so your group, Trawesa and others have tried to fill some of the gaps in terms of government communication to the public, you know, being rooted in facts. What are you trying to do to get accurate information out to people? And are there other organizations in civil society or international organizations

that are trying to fill some of this void around just public health information and education for people? To be honest, Ben, there's nobody else who is really trying to put out any numbers and statistics on the status of COVID-19 with respect to cases or deaths. That has been clearly marked out as an area only for government to pronounce on. So there's deafening silence on that. What we are hearing and seeing is just some announcements around, you know, protecting yourself, avoiding crowded spaces and places, hand washing, sanitizer wearing, and mask wear, sanitizer use, and mask wearing as well.

Even this is coming from government. But the challenging thing is that the messages remain mixed even from within government. We just had the end of Ramadan celebrated over the weekend. In one hand, we had leaders say, go out and enjoy yourselves and make merry. On the other, you get the police saying, please avoid crowded spaces. And so, you know, people, you know, we're all human beings. We go with the one that is the least incontor. And so I think people decided they were going to listen to their go out and make merry and less so about avoiding crowds.

So there is a confusion amongst people as to what the real situation is and how to cope with it. And again, we take the path of least resistance. So this lack of transparency about the state of the disease is very worrisome. And there are very few other organizations which are able to. to really paint an accurate picture. You asked about what Tuarez is doing. We are trying to speak to government about doing another one of these surveys.

We've run into some difficulty. We're still trying to negotiate whether we can or cannot do it. We've done a survey in Uganda with very interesting results. We're going to launch them in a few days. We're about to do one in Kenya to see how people are understanding

and coping with COVID-19 and how it's affecting their own economic lives and livelihoods. But in Tanzania, we've hit a pretty major stumbling block in order for us to be able to do that. We hope we'll be able to do so, but I have to be candid and say that my hope is small and evaporating. So we'll have to try and find other ways to communicate personal agency in protecting yourself, your family, your loved ones, through some of these basic personal hygiene initiatives. And as you look around, you know, East Africa and your region, I mean, do you see, who do you see as setting a good example for a type of response that is rooted in clear data, information,

public health measures, how would you evaluate the relative responses in your region? And is there a more positive model? Well, again, I think the responses are mixed. You know, our neighbors to the North, Ugandan, Kenya, and Kenya, have implemented pretty strict lockdown, especially Uganda more so than Kenya. And I think they've done that on the basis of data. Kenya closed Nairobi and Mombasa,

but the rest of the country was fairly open because they found that these were the two places that were hot spots. But I've got to also mention that the way they enforced the lockdowns was very questionable. I mean, people were beaten. You know, human rights were essentially abused to keep people indoors. And I think a few people lost their lives.

So it's a mixed evaluation when has to give. On the one hand, yes, they publish, they collect the data, they publish, and they say, this is a situation, and you get presidential addresses at least once a week, extending lockdowns or giving people an update. But on the other, I think enforcement of the lockdown has been problematic, to say the least. So one can't take their example wholly. and say this is what we should have done or ought to be doing. I think the other thing to keep in mind in terms of lockdown

is that there is a huge debate as to whether that is the right thing to do, especially in the context of our countries here where many people make their living in the informal sector and lockdowns are just economically suicidal. So there is an argument to be out there that perhaps the Tanzanian approach on that front alone of not imposing a strict lockdown may have some salutary effect. So you avoid perhaps the negative impact of financial crisis on ordinary people. But at the same time, then you're balancing it off with lack of transparency on cases, on death.

And so people are operating in an informational vacuum in data darkness, which I think carries its own. problems and dangers. So yeah, I mean, it is a version of that debate happening here in the U.S., but it seems like the government's message in Tanzania is to basically ignore that this is even happening. People should go on with their lives, and they're not testing or providing information because they don't want information to get out, I guess it might cause people to panic. I mean, is that an attitude that Tanzanians will basically just accept that better to not even know what the problem is? People I know may get sick at some point. but I don't want to see the economic disruption.

I mean, is that something you think is going to work for the Tanzanian government? To be honest with you, Ben, I think it is going to work for the Tanzanian government. Despite any sentiments one might have as to the correctness of the approach, I think the popular acceptance of that position is something that we too have to accept. You know, people don't like being recipients of bad news and being told that, you know, things are dark and desperate out there and you have to

really be super careful. And in trying to be super careful, you're going to run into serious problems of feeding your family. So I think the approach of downplaying by basically not announcing the cases and the deaths,

downplaying the extent of COVID-19 has reduced the fear or panic levels and allowed people to make their own decisions about how they're going to operate. And those decisions have led to a situation in Tanzania where life is more or less going on as normal with a little bit of personal hygiene improvement practices. But it more or less is continuing as normal

compared to all of our other neighbours. we have been very open in terms of how we are operating. And just a couple more questions. The challenge, of course, is if there is a major outbreak, you know, the health effects will become clear, but maybe not widespread enough to really puncture the government's success in pushing this narrative. One question I wanted to ask you,

we've talked a lot on this podcast about the kind of trend of, you call it muscular nationalism, nationalist kind of authoritarianism, We see a lot of common strategies, the use of disinformation at times, the manipulation of data and statistics, really trying to manipulate and control what objective truth and reality is by some of these leaders. In that sense, Trump and Putin and some right-wing governors here in the U.S. have used similar strategies to what we're hearing in Tanzania. I'm curious how much do you feel like there's a connection.

there, that these leaders are copying one another's tactics. Does Tanzania feel like it's part of a global trend of leaders manipulating information, kind of creating their own version of the truth? I notice a Tanzania president engages in conspiracy theory sometimes in the same way that our president does. I mean, do you feel a part of a trend? You know, I think what's the important thing that seems to be informed. forming the attitude of the administration here is that there's nobody out there to point their fingers at us that we ought to be really afraid of and care about too much because other people are doing similar things. They are really pushing the envelope on changing the narrative in that sort of way. So nobody's going to hold their, you know, point their fingers to us and have any credibility in so doing. So we're going to do this in our own interests here to advance our own interests in Tanzania. So in that sense, I think there is that trend. There is a normalization, a permission giving that is happening from other countries in the world,

from the Philippines to Russia, to Turkey, to Hungary, you know, you name them. And now Brazil, you name them. I think there is a permission giving sort of sense out there for that to happen. I remember being in an OGP meeting in New York in 2017, I think it was, when somebody from Transparence International said, I wonder if there is a room in the basement of the United Nations where these people meet to compare notes and give each other tips on how to do these kinds of things. Because, yeah, the pattern is so similar across very divergent countries.

And here we are in Tanzania experiencing similar things to Hungarians and Filipinos and, you know, Russians. Well, and then last question then. I want you just give a bit of a description of what you're doing through Tuaia, you know, and what Tanzanian civil society is working for in the context that we just talked about. You know, what is your organization up to

and what kind of Tanzania are you working for? Well, we at Tuaweza are working hard to make government more transparent, more inclusive of people's views and inputs and more accountable to citizens. And that is sort of what our driving mission is in a number of ways. So we try to do this by providing information, by collecting data and sharing it not only with government but with citizens to paint a more accurate picture of the life that they're experiencing. We try to do this by providing platforms for citizens to participate in government at very local levels.

And we try to promote the rule of law by engaging with lawmakers when legislation is being contemplated, such as the Statistics Act I mentioned to you, such as the Political Parties Act earlier last year in 2019, the NGO act, which made government a lot more potent in terms of managing the civil society sector. All of these things we tried to engage in coalition with others to keep the space open for civil society. But there's also, I think, a sense by civil society to continue the best they can, to provide services to the population, to citizens, where there is, you know, water, health, education services. And so that's the other element, there's other strategy, to support government in its public service delivery responsibilities. Tuaweza is less in that space.

We're trying to more focus on the keeping government open, accountable and inclusive in the country. Same for Kenya and Uganda. And, you know, it's challenging, but we have to be increasingly creative and sophisticated and certainly very perseverance. perseverance in the work that we try to do. Well, that's great, Aidan. Is there anywhere our listeners can go to learn more or support Tuaweza in your efforts? Well, we have a website, www.toaweza.org. We're actually upgrading it to come into, you know, make it a lot more user-friendly.

There's will be a lot of information on there, some of our own thoughts, our own experiences, our own ideas in the work that we do and the effects. that we're trying to accomplish and we hope they will be able to enjoy and comment on what we're doing and provide us some moral support or even just some tips on what not to do in case they find that we're not achieving our aims

in the best way possible. Great, well, thanks so much for joining us and stay safe and well out there. Thank you very much, Ben. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks again to Aden for joining the show. Ben, I have nothing. All my book recommendations, all my TV shows.

I'm getting through it all. I'm at the end of the internet. Yeah, we'll come back to that next week. I will say it was good to get a voice on from Africa. We don't hear a ton from there. So it was awesome to talk to Aden. And yeah, same as you, man. I'll have to replenish the well for next week.

Yeah, okay. We'll send us all your wrecks. All right, everybody. Have a great week. Potta of the world is a product of crooked media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil.

Kyle Seglan is our sound engineer. Special thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melconian, and Milo Kim, who film and share our episodes as videos every week.