Pod Save the World - Joe's Eurovision 2021

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss how Bibi Netanyahu has gone full Trump in an attempt to break up the opposition coalition in Israel, presidential elections in Nicaragua and Peru, crackdowns on journalists in Myanmar, how the US government seized money back from hackers, AI drones, controversial Ukrainian soccer jerseys and more. Then Ben talks to Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer about President Joe Biden's first international trip and why he is meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin.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, thanks for holding it down last week with Afwa. That was it was fascinating to hear you guys talk. Well, first, a lot about Africa, but also to hear about like a lot of familiar topics, but from the UK perspective. It's just super interesting. Yeah. No, and she's just awesome. I mean, I felt like we could have gone like two hours. She's such an interesting voice to listen to. Yeah. And so I will say, I missed all you world those out there. man, I needed that trip. Like, I saw my mom and my sister for the first time in a year and a half. It's just a crazy thing to say out loud. Like, I saw Hannah's family and her sister. Like, I met her sister's son when he was a newborn. And now he's like a toddler like bumping around. You know, it's like we went to a wedding.

I saw a trillion cicadas. You know, it's like creeping back to normal here on the East Coast. I'm going next week. I'll be in New York. Nice. And my kids have not seen my parents. in, yeah, like a year and a half. I mean, it's insane.

So I'm super excited about that. That's amazing. I'm so glad you're doing that. Also, congrats on a hell of a book rollout. Thanks, yeah. You must be feeling good. People are watching. I'm wearing a nice shirt, which is rare.

But it's, you know, thank you, worldos, who picked it up. Is it a shirt because you're doing TV? Yeah, you know, it's just endless sitting in this exact same chair doing TV hits and book events. But it's been great to talk about the book. and thanks so much for people who picked it up. If you haven't, you can. But we'll keep it short. But because I feel like I've been, you know,

talking about this book for forever, but it's only been a week. By the book, people. By the book. I heard from multiple people who you've never met before that they were reading it last week. So that is fantastic. And I'm excited to read it myself.

My Kindle didn't download it for my flight. And I almost lost my mind. But, you know, that's a bit of a nerdy problem. I do love reading, you know, the, I mean, I'm not just, This isn't just like our normal, like, you know, give us five stars. But I have to say, like, I really enjoy reading the Amazon reviews because it's interesting and good reads and these other sites that I've reviews because, you know, like, you write a book.

You want to know what people think about it, what they take away from it. So thanks for everybody who's not only read it, but, like, shared their thoughts. I read those because, like, that's the feedback you get. When you're on a book tour, it's nice because you meet people and you can talk to them about the book. But otherwise, if you're still virtual, that's the. that's the feedback. Yeah. Well, everybody tell your friends about the book and about POTS of the World because we have a great show today.

We are going to cover the latest on the maybe, hopefully, new Israeli government and what that new coalition could mean for U.S. Israeli relations. Talk about some elections in Nicaragua and Peru, ransomware, autonomous drones. I know one of your favorite topics, man. A massive, massive FBI sting operation that just was announced today that is fascinating. soccer nationalism and a whole lot more. And then, Ben, you just talked with John Feiner, Biden's Deputy National Security Advisor. What did you guys talk about? I imagine you dug into Biden's upcoming trip over to Europe. Yeah, no, I mean, they've got this massive trip coming up,

right? So we covered, you know, what are they trying to achieve? You know, we talked about whether or not they're in the same place with their allies. So they're, well, they're going to the UK to Belgium to Geneva, but you know, they're doing the G7 summit, the NATO summit, EU, and then Putin, obviously. And so we covered all those. And how does China interact with that, you know, how does democracy interact with that? You know, so it was good. And then I tried to, you know, peel back the veil on the life of the White House a little bit at the end there. So it was good. It was good conversation. I have heard from some sources who will remain unnamed that the logistics are a bit challenging because Boris Johnson decided to put the whole thing in like

Cornwall or someplace that's very far from the infrastructure you might otherwise want for a massive summit, but hopefully it all goes well. Yeah, you know, and they've got the royal visit in there. I didn't actually, you know, I didn't press John on the Lilibet. I didn't want him to close an international incident before wheels up to the UK. But, you know, they got a Windsor Palace visit in there too. So a lot going on. That's very cool. Also, the first trip is just the most exciting. I think our first trip was very similar, like a U.K., NATO, G20, yeah. It was the same thing, a G20 instead of G7, but then we had a NATO summit, an EU summit,

then we went to Prague, then we went to Turkey, then we went to Iraq. So we had it all. We didn't have Putin. We had Medvedev, so it went a little better than Putin would go. Yeah, yeah, a little better. Hannah's sister's boyfriend is from Strasbourg, so I feel like we always connect on that because I think it's really one of the cooler cities we went to. And also, remember Bill Plant, the CBS correspondent?

Yeah, yeah, wine expert. No, did wine expert. So Bill Plant, right, yeah, the guy covered, like, you know, did like three tours covering Vietnam, right? Just like this cool, like, legendary guy. He and his wife would just, I think, do these, like, bike trips through the Alsace region, which is, you know, eastern France, western Germany, and bike from vineyard to vineyard to vineyard.

And I think he took a bunch of, you know, the staff out one night with some other reporters and we had this big dinner where he like bought all these bottles of wine and talked us through what it is. And I'll I'll never forget the name, uh, the grape covert streaminer. Oh, good. That was like, that was the one you drink out there. Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah, it's good stuff. Anyway, enough, uh, reminiscing here. So let's start with this new Israeli government because, uh, as of, well, not new yet, Tuesday, June 8th, when we're recording this, there still isn't a new Israeli government, but there's this motley coalition of right wing, left wing, centrist parties that all just hate BB Netanyahu enough to join forces, but they still need to

be voted on in the Israeli parliament before the government becomes official. And the Speaker of the Knesset is this big Netanyahu ally. And he's delaying that vote for as long as possible to give BB time to just try to fuck it all up, of course. So there may not be a vote until June 14th. In the meantime, Netanyahu is going full Trump on his way out the door. During a speech on Sunday, he said, quote, we are witnessing the greatest election fraud in the history of the country, in my opinion, in the history of any democracy, end quote. He added that he and his party, quote, will vehemently oppose the establishment of this dangerous government of fraud and surrender.

And if, God forbid, it is established, we will bring it down very quickly. I imagine he means politically, but, you know, ominous. And, you know, this rhetoric, I think is quite literally dangerous. Neftali Bennett, who will likely become the next prime minister of Israel, had to get more security because of threats. A member of a left-wing party had to leave her home because of threats against her and threats against her toddler. And the head of the shinbet, which is the Israeli version of the FBI, basically, issued a public warning about political discourse leading to real-world violence. Unfortunately, that has not stopped other members of the Lakud Party

and a close-knit and Yahoo ally from comparing this new coalition to suicide bombers and terrorists. So, you know, Ben, as excited as I am about the prospect of Israel moving on from Netanyahu, all of this news makes me quite nervous, nervous about, you know, the fragility of the political coalition, about all the ways it could get pulled apart, nervous about the links to which, like, a cornered animal like Netanyahu could go to stay in power and not get thrown in prison, right? Because a lot of this is about avoiding prosecution. And then just nervous about actual violence, especially given Israel's history with Yitzhak Rabin and political assassination.

So I guess just broad question for you, like how are you feeling about the future of this coalition and like how seriously do you think people are taking this shindat warning? Well, I think there's a Netanyahu story and then there's the coalition story. And the Netanyahu thing, yeah, like there are these eerie echoes of, you know, before Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords.

There was this real incitement, this kind of hate language, you know, the Nenai himself, by the way, was kind of a part of. Oh, yeah. So clearly there's uncomfortable echoes. But I think the other point I want to make here that is it like Netanyahu, like this is who he is. And like some of us have basically thought this for a long time. And yet he was treated like this kind of, you know, Churchillian statesman by the Republican Party in this country.

And some Democrats, you know, because he he's a well-spoken guy. But like you didn't have to look that far under the hood to see kind of a pretty ugly. far-right, you know, mindset. And like the Republican Party, he has just moved further and further in that direction. And of course, the logical endpoint of Netanyahu's reign is this kind of Trumpian exit, you know, trying to delegitimize all of his opponents and incite hatred and spread kind of weird, you know, quasi-conspiracy theories. So I think it should make people recognize that, again, as we've said a million times on the show, like criticism of Bibi Nanyahu is warranted and giving them a pass, you know, is giving a pass to the kind of garbage we're seeing now.

Now, in terms of this kind of bizarre coalition that encompasses Neftali Bennett, the hardline, kind of Jewish nationalist right, Yair Lepid, this kind of more secular centrist, Islamist parties, the labor parties in there. So that's good. Barely. Yeah, but they're in there. Hold on by a thread. You know, obviously this is not going to do big things.

You know, like they're not going to be able to have some big initiative on the Palestinians, for instance, if people are wondering about that. And so not only you're going to have a kind of right-wing prime minister out of the gate in Bennett, you're going to have a very fragile coalition because they need to pass things and keep the government together. They're going to need to kind of be lowest common denominator that can appeal to all these factions. And I think the basic calculation of Bennett and Lapid is, let's just get BB out. By the way, once he's out, he can face charges for corruption. So he could really be out of Israeli politics in a way. And that at some point, probably before the mandate for this government expires, in a few years, they'll probably be an election. And again, I think while people are right to raise concerns about Bennett, I think it's healthy that they just, Israel needs to get past Netanyahu.

Like, they can't move on. they're kind of stuck in this crazy situation where he's so polarized the country, there have been four elections. So if they can get through this and knock on wood without violence, I still think they're huge, you know, I disagree with enough to like Bender just about everything. But it's still a step forward because it's a step away from this Netanyahu era. Yeah, I'm eager for Bibi to move to Mara Lago and start a blog. There's also a lot of interest in what the coalition could mean or what this new government could potentially mean for U.S. Israeli relations. And again, as you were saying, like Netanyahu is, he's a right-wing Republican, right? And he decided to change Israel's approach to the United States from sort of nonpartisan statesmanlike to being openly hostile to Democrats, in particular Barack Obama before he then went all in with Trump. And so Democrats now are starting to talk about the post-Net Yahoo era with a lot of optimism and that hope that really, relations could improve. And I actually think there is some reason to be optimistic here. Like,

like you were saying, Ben, you know, Neftali Bennett is extremely right wing. He's been the leader of a settler movement. He's been openly hostile to the idea of the Palestinian state. Like, we're not going to agree with him on a lot of like big ticket foreign policy issues. But the coalition as a whole will include more moderate ministers. Yair Lepid, who you mentioned is like the secular sort of center left guy. He's going to have a lot of influence. He controls a lot of votes. Yair Rosenberg, who's this great journalist at Tablet, he described the new government is roughly like replacing Donald Trump with Liz Cheney.

But if Cheney couldn't pass anything without the assent of Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Ilhan, Omar, and Mitt Romney, and if she would get replaced halfway through by Chuck Schumer, which, you know, sounds like a horrible system, a recipe for gridlock, right? And like you were saying earlier, like a reminder of how easily this whole thing could fall apart. But, you know, that sounds better than Beebe, right? and his buddies in the ministries? Yeah, I mean, I think on the one hand, I agree with that. You'll have, and also, like, you'll probably have a less emboldened, you know,

Nanyahu coming here to lobby against the Iran deal to Congress. And, you know, the Iran negotiations may become slightly easier without the kind of wrecking ball of BB trying to enter into American politics. And like you said, even if they're concerns with Bennett, they'll be probably in places like the foreign ministry and the defense ministry, different types of figures. years. That said, you know, the concerns that have increasingly been expressed, including by us, about the Palestinian circumstance, and whether it's in Gaza or Sheikh Jara or the West Bank, those are still going to be there with Nathda-Bennet. So you don't want to overcorrect where

Democrats are like, oh, now that Bibi's gone, we don't even have to think about this anymore. It's all good, you know. No, I mean, the life for the Palestinians will be the same the day after B.Bs replaced as it was before. And the guy who is likely to be prime minister, you know, shares basically the view that there should be a Palestinian state or even equal rights for Palestinians. So, you know, like, I think, again, this is a step forward, but like a lot of underlying concerns remain. Yeah. And maybe look, if this coalition can hold and it can be seen as actually delivering for the people it serves and not just leading to like constant elections and instability, you could maybe see more Arab participation in these elections, better Arab

turnout, which would lead to more representation, further moderate the coalition as a whole. Again, like, I'm just sort of spouting out hopeful hypothetical scenarios. But, you know, that's why I think, look, getting past BB, we just got to do it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like, that's my bottom line. That's my bottom line. Me too, me too. And his stupid, annoying son, he's like the Don Jr. of Israel. He'll be on cameo. That guy will be on cameo before we know it. Oh, yeah. But he won't charge as much as Don Jr. 500 bucks. Yeah. Like, it's one of those things where it would be fun to troll him and get him to say something really stupid, but like, I don't want to get him. I don't have subsidized. I don't give that guy any money.

He sucks. I hate him. Let's talk about Nicaragua. So here's a quote for you, Ben. We are very close to calling this a dictatorship. That is how Elizio Nunez, a Nicaraguan political analyst, described Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega's recent crackdown on opposition candidates. So Ortega is seeking re-election in November. And in recent days, he has basically gone all in on attacking the opposition. He charged one leading opposition candidate with money laundering. He has previously placed several others under house arrest. He's also taken steps to basically criminalized dissent in the country and make it nearly impossible to run against him because you're not allowed to criticize the government. Ortega has been the president of Nicaragua soon in 2007. He's been in and out of government

for a lot longer than that. He, you know, this growing political instability in Nicaragua comes as vice president Kamala Harris is visiting neighboring Guatemala for meetings about how to deal with corruption and violence in the region and how that's leading to migration to the U.S. from these Northern Triangle countries in Central America. So Ben, you know, like super complicated set of problems for the Biden administration. I think I just name check like four countries. There's a lot of history that we don't have time also to fully unpack about how the U.S. government, you know, toppled or interfered with governments across Latin America. Including Ortega. Including Ortega.

Yeah, including Ortega. Like, yeah, this wasn't like a long ago history. Yeah, yeah. It was like the 80s, right? Yeah. And so, look, obviously, like, the U.S. government screwed up a bunch of governments in places, and that's a factor of the instability today. So I guess my question for you is, like, one, given that history, like knowing what we,

the U.S. did, the CIA did, do you think the U.S. can or should respond to these moves by Ortega? Like, are we a credible voice here? And then just more broadly, any advice for the vice president's team is she tries to navigate this incredibly difficult issue she was given by the president. Well, I mean, look, I think the first thing is there's clearly this kind of, you know, anti-democratic authoritarian trend globally that, you know, it's obviously, I wrote a book about it. We talked about all the time. And what's interesting is in Latin America, it kind of spans the ideological spectrum, right?

Yeah, left and right. You've got Bolsonaro in Brazil. We've talked about El Salvador. where you have this kind of, it's not really left or right, it's just authoritarian. And then you've got a left-wing authoritarian increasingly in Ortega. And that's something to worry about. And I do think that they have to speak to democratic values and try to figure out ways to engage governments, but also kind of civil society actors, people who are being kind of pushed out of discussions.

I think, look, for Kamala Harris, it's so hard. I was thinking if we'd done this trip a few years ago, you'd meet with all of the Central American governments. She can't really meet with the El Salvador or Nicaraguan presidents right now, given the direction of their politics. And that makes her job that much harder. So what would I advise? I mean, first of all, like, set expectations. This is a long-term issue. Like, I totally support what she's doing.

I totally support the aid that they've requested for Central America. it will take several years to have that, you know, have an impact. And they should, they should be candid about that. But it's worth doing because I think it can't have an impact over time. I think they're going to have to figure out ways to get aid directly to people in some cases. And, you know, to the maximum extent you can, sometimes, you know, working through governments is less efficient and more vulnerable to corruption than we're trying to work with organizations that are on the ground, trying to address problems. that people are facing. I do think that, you know, she was in Guatemala, like, I think acknowledging history is powerful. I think it matters to people. I remember when when Obama would go down there,

and of course we get hit with the apology tour, but when he would just kind of acknowledge this history and speak to it, it kind of lowered the temperature a little bit to have a more conversation about what's happening now. So you're not kind of shadowed by history. We visited, you know, the grave of Oscar Romero who had been killed, you know, a Catholic priest who'd been killed by death squads in El Salvador. And that, just that gesture, I think, you know, for instance, like helped create a different type of conversation. So I think she can do more of that. And because Guatemala, we overthrew the government in 1954. So, you know, we've kind of done this in a bunch of places in Central America. And they have a right to say, like, hey, you're complaining

that things are messed up down here. But, like, you know, you did have some of a hand in that. I do think acknowledging the history is important. I think her messaging on, you know, telling people not to come, I think you can really focus more on the, it's not that people can't come. They can come through the asylum process. It's the danger of coming. You know, it's the danger of these coyotes and smuggling networks and the fact that, you know, it's not as advertised. And we did some of that messaging with Vice President at the time, Biden, in Spanish. The last thing I'd say, Tommy, and this may sound like a hobby horse, but like,

this is why you talk to the Cubans. They have connections with the Danny Ortega's of the world. And I fear that Trump's kind of return to the Cold War and the hemisphere is contributing to the kind of radicalization of the left down there, you know, the Ortega taking this kind of step. Like, they keep putting off, doing anything on Cuba. They're going to find that a lot of doors are closed that you have to walk through in Cuba. You know, like you can have a better conversation we did with a guy like Daniel Ortega when you're not in this kind of Cold War down there. So that, I threw out a lot. I'm glad she went. I'm glad she's taking this on. We should be sympathetic about a heart it is. And those are some ideas for how to make it a

little bit easier. Yeah, you're right that this is like a decades long, not generational effort or challenge. You know, also like the don't come quote obviously got picked up and sort of became the headline. But I also think, I believe I read somewhere that as part of her visit, they opened some center that's designed to walk people through the asylum process, right? So like, she's not saying, don't try to get asylum. It's saying like, let's do it through the red channels. Also, Ben, just a random aside, I was reading this some article in New York Times about this like big Bitcoin conference in Miami. And it talked about how they played a video of Naïbe Buckeli, the president of El Salvador, announcing some bill to make Bitcoin, like,

legal in the country. And everyone stood up in cheer. for this dude, like probably not knowing that like, you know, a year or so earlier he had marched the military into parliament to try to force a vote on something he wanted there, like more funding for the military, actually. So yeah, you know, strange bad fellows here. Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, it's, I mean, it is hard enough to solve these problems down there. But with kind of very problematic interlocutors, it gets much harder, you know. And Buechle is like, you know, he's an interesting figure because, again, it's just about, authoritarianism, you know, and it's kind of veered to the right. But, you know, I think Latin America,

you know, we have to be mindful. There's some, you know, of the, the reality that, like, usually things are better politically speaking, at least in our hemisphere than the rest of the world. But, like, as we've talked about, in our own country, you know, we're not immune to these strains. And that's certainly the case in our hemisphere as well. Yeah, agreed. So while Nicaragua's gearing up for this election, Peru just held one over the world. weekend. And the winner will be the country's fifth president in five years. So on Sunday, left his candidate, Pedro Castillo, he faced off against a right-wing candidate named Keiko Fujimori in a runoff election. Castillo is a total political newcomer. He's a former high school teacher and union activist,

and he's representing the Libre Party. And he has called for, you know, the state to play a larger role in the economy. He's pled to focus on reducing inequality and poverty. It's sort of like a socialist approach to the economic issues. Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of the currently jailed former Peruvian president, Alberto Fujimori, and she served as first lady after her parents' divorce, which gives me some real Ivanka vibes that I don't love. Fujimori herself has been jailed three times and is currently facing embezzlement and election fraud charges that could put her in prison for more than 30 years. Winning the presidency would provide her immunity.

And she would also be the first ethnic Japanese woman elected to lead any nation. So that's interesting. This runoff election, it's the second round. The first round was in April. Both candidates got less than 20% of the votes that neither is like broadly popular. Peru has just been devastated by the coronavirus. They have the highest per capita death toll in the world. And I read reports of an estimated 10% of the population getting pushed into poverty by the virus.

So as of right now, when we're recording, nearly all the votes are in, 96%. Castillo is up by 0.2%. Fujimori is alleging fraud because, of course, that's what everyone does these days. international observers say they have not seen any irregularities or fraud. You know, so again, there's like vast ideological differences between these two, regardless of who wins. Neither is going to have a legislative majority. So governing will be tough.

But, you know, Ben, do you have any sense of why Peru has just been cycling through leaders over the past few years? I mean, that five in five years is a lot. Well, I mean, I think there's so many things that are interesting about this. I mean, first of all, you know, Castillo and Fujimori are kind of like the ultimate ids of the left in the right in Peru. And so when you have that kind of pure competition between like the most kind of left-wing person versus the most right-wing person, and you see it's basically a 50-50 election, I mean, that says something pretty powerful about how divided this country is. You know,

Fujimori, her father, you know, his claim to fame was kind of stamping out and really going after this left-wing insurgent group, the shining path, you know, obviously that had been a terrorist threat, but also there were excesses in how we did that. So there's this kind of underlying history there, too, of political violence in Peru. You know, recent years, what they've been rocked by is largely corruption scandals, as we've seen in other Latin American countries coming to light and just destabilizing governments. You know, I think when I look at this, you realize that the polarization is very powerful right now. Latin America, but it's the pendulum swinging a bit to the left, you know. And so we've talked about

this a little bit, but if you look at Argentina, and if you look at Peru, assuming Castillo wins, which it seems like he's most likely to, if you look at Ava Morales coming back in Bolivia, if you look at, you know, Lula re-emerging and poised to potentially take back the presidency in Brazil, like it does feel like even though this is very closely divided and there are these kind of deep corruption scandals in a lot of these places, the pendulum is tilting a bit to the left. And the U.S. is going to have to deal with that. And again, I'm broken record, but one way is to the Cubans are usually at the kind of forefront of vanguard of the Latin American left. If you're not, if you're in full on Trump mode with the Cubans, you know, those conversations get harder,

summits get harder. And so I think that the U.S. is going to have to try to figure out ways to lower the temperature. And we did that like out of the gate, like to get again, like Obama went to the summit of the Americas, like he, he, you know, Hugo Chavez shook his hand. He's like, fine, I'll shake Hugo Chavez's hand. I'll acknowledge the history here. And, and again, that detoxed this a bit. The U.S. should not be contributing to ideological polarization in the Americas. I think that's very, you know, damn. damaging to our own interests and ultimately destabilizing these places. Okay, let's turn to a very different issue, which is Myanmar.

So we've talked about this a bunch, but on February 1st, Myanmar's military stage of coup against the democratically elected government, and there has just been this horrific ongoing crackdown ever since. That crackdown has also included attacks on and the detention of a lot of journalists, including most recently a U.S. citizen named Danny Fenster, who is the managing editor of the independent newspaper Frontier Myanmar. So Danny Fenster was detained at the airport on May 24th. He was preparing to fly home to see his family in Michigan.

I don't think he'd seen them in like two years because of the pandemic. He's just been in prison ever since. The military has ignored requests by his family and by the State Department to contact him in any way. So they just have no idea what's happening to him. And he's in a prison with a pretty horrifying record from talking to past inmates. So according to reporters without borders, 86 journalists have been arrested Myanmar since the coup. journalism has basically been criminalized unless you are, you know, part of state-run media. So this is obviously terrifying for Danny Fenster's family and friends.

If you want to learn more about the case, you can visit bringdanyhome.com. Ben, anything else you think we should talk about here? I'm trying to raise awareness basically about this case. No, I'm, yeah, and I'm glad that we're doing this, you know, because I hope, you know, I know, the U.S. Embassy's working on that, but international tension is important. In connecting it to this broader point about journalism, like, they, They've tried to basically shut down the internet. They've tried to silence anybody who's just kind of coming forward with the truth of what they're doing in Myanmar.

They're trying to turn it into kind of North Korea, not even North Korea light, you know. And it's on the one end that that's working, you know, in the sense that they have the levers of power. And I should say that you mentioned he's in this place called Insane Prison, which is I've no people have been in there. it's people are usually not treated well there. You would hope that he can get out of there soon. But I think more broadly, there's this kind of creeping concern, I think, from people I've heard you're from in the opposition, that while the U.S. and other countries,

and I think at the G7, they'll probably be something on Myanmar, are continuing to kind of reject this coup. There's this, you know, from ASEAN, the Southeast Asian grouping of countries and, you know, there's this kind of, you know, when maybe we need to talk to the junta. I think that there has to be an effort, diplomatic effort, not just to kind of punish the military government, but to make sure that the rest of the world stands firm against an incredibly extremist government. That, by the way, has like no support in Myanmar. This is not like a close call. And it is crashing the economy, like casting people in deep poverty,

exacerbating every division. So what I'd like to see is pressure on. cases like Danny's and obviously other political prisoners and journalists of all backgrounds there, but also making sure that, you know, we're not letting, you know, Myanmar's neighbors off the hook here. Their interest are not served by this. Like this region will be more unstable, less economically vibrant if this path is the one that they continue to go down. Yeah. I mean, as far as I can tell, the people who support this coup in Myanmar are like, you know, sort of mid-level Russian generals and Chinese generals who are making visits there. And then like Mike Flores. in the far right here in the U.S.

Those are people who think this is a good thing, which is really scary. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, if this is the template for the American right, like, that's not something you want to, you want to experience. Yeah, some dark, dark stuff. Okay, let's talk about ransomware, Ben, because, again, like, it feels like there's a new ransomware attack every month. We got meat manufacturers, hospitals, local governments, a ferry to Martha's Vineyard,

apparently was one of them, like, you name it. Last month, we talked about this ransomware attack on Clover. pipeline, which supplies fuel to much of the East Coast. Here's a little bit of good news. So the Department of Justice today announced that they were able to trace and seize $2.3 million of the $4.4 million, I think, worth of Bitcoins that were part of the ransom paid out by colonial pipeline to this hacking group called Darkside. Our friend and former colleague, Lisa Monaco, made this announcement. She's the Deputy Attorney General. But while DOJ is busy hunting hackers been and had some success here, President Trump is flowed.

a different approach for dealing with ransomware attacks that I think we should really take seriously and consider. So here's a clip. How do we stop it? The common sector says, well, the companies should take action. Well, the way you stop is go back to a much more old-fashioned form of accounting and things. You know, I have a son who's so good with computers. He's a young person. And, I mean, he can make these things sing.

And when you put everything on Internet and on all of these machines, you never see a piece of paper, I really think you have to go back to a different form of accounting. Well, yeah, there we go. Like, pretty soon Trump's going to be like on those ads on Fox where they're telling, scaring old people and they're buying gold, you know? Yeah, I think Rand Paul is on those. Have you seen that clip from like the early 90s on the Today Show where the host are like, what is internet?

They're like talking to the producer. I mean, Trump's response is basically like go back to the abacus. Like, I don't know what this is. Aaron showing them what the internet is. I mean, you know, we do, Finer is pretty interesting on this. Like you can, this is going to clearly be a subject of growing concern in the White House, but also I think internationally through NATO and other venues. Because it's just like we're in a new normal. I mean, Tommy, like watching this like,

this is life in, you know, the rest of our lives of like this kind of constant, um, asymmetric cyber threat. And Russia clearly doesn't give a shit. Um, And this is kind of part of a, you know, because I just don't think that these Russian cybercriminals could operate from within Russian soil without at least a wink. Yeah. From their autocratic government. And so this, this cyber tax disinformation campaigns, like, this is kind of part of this kind of asymmetric war that we are living in, you know? Yeah. So I guess, you know, Trump's solution is to buy some gold and put it under the bed.

Don't do that. That's not the solution. Buy golds. Print everything out. go from there. Print out your receipts, I guess, you know. Put out your receipts, yeah, from CVS and everywhere else. Speaking of technologies that are sort of causing a new normal here,

so there was a United Nations report that caught my attention, which said that a military drone used in Libya's civil war last year may have attacked soldiers fully autonomously. In other words, it may have been programmed to just go up in the sky, and if it sees a target, attack it without any kind of data link between that drone and its operator, so there's no human controlling the thing. This report is it's a little murky.

The details are not confirmed, but is kickstarted this broader conversation about AI and weapon systems. So this particular drone is made by a Turkish company. It doesn't fire missiles like a predator or a reaper drone. Instead, it basically like hangs out over an area until it sees a target. And then it just dive bombs it and explodes a three pound charge when it's close to the target, whatever it is. I watched this just terrifying little promotional video of the drone made by the manufacturer. So they show how you can use them in packs to swarm targets. So straight up nightmare fuel, like just a swarm of drones coming towards you and blowing stuff up.

But regardless of what happened in Libya, like this tech is coming, it is understandably quite alarming to human rights groups and anyone who doesn't want to be chased around by like a murder rumba. So there's an organization called stopkiller robots.org that is advocating for fully banning these kinds of weapons, which sounds great to me. but so far there's not a lot of momentum behind creating some sort of international treaty to do so. Ben, did this come up at all by the time you were leaving the White House and anything you want to say to our autonomous killer robot overlords before it's too late? Yeah, it did come up. I mean, and again, people will add us on this and, you know, rightly so. But when Obama did put out in 2013, you'll remember, we declassified a bunch of information about the drone program, released kind of the legal.

guidelines. We were trying to kind of identify, okay, here's the standards in terms of avoiding civilian casualties, here are the circumstances in which we'd use drones, which, again, I fully respect, went beyond what probably most of our listeners would want the U.S. to be doing. And I think there's a lot of truth in that criticism. Part of the thinking at that time, though, was there's no rules, like, about this technology and how it's used. I mean, there are rules about a lot of other kinds of war fighting, particularly like nuclear weapons and chemical weapons and mass destruction. And when you get into not just drones, not just flying robots, but basically artificial intelligence and killing, there's just, it's an ungoverned space. And so we talked about that

a lot and tried to begin to at least model, you know, what are norms that could be established and laws that could be put in place, you know, that you'd want to see other countries embrace. I think the challenge here, right, is it like Russia and China, who have some of these technologies are probably not going to be interested in developing a set of norms with us. That, though, I think doesn't mean you don't do it. I think still the U.S. and Europe and whatever other country wants to come to the table, like if we're not at least trying to get, not ahead, try to catch up to these technologies, what technologies do you not want to see developed at all?

what kind of rules you want to see govern the development, certain technologies. A lot of these, the R&D in this kind of stuff takes place in private sector and U.S. tech companies, right? Like the, so you need to be talking to them because you just have to start to create some principles, it become norms, it could become laws, even without the full participation of like the Russians and China's the world. So you have some coherence around these technologies because, you know, 20 years from now, like they're going to be a bunch of killer robots and I don't want them to

to become autonomous you know I don't either man I mean also it seems kind of analogous to landmines right like landmines aren't chasing you down but they are an autonomous weapon that just sits there and kills indiscriminately yeah we were able to put some rules to the rhone around that I mean I don't know hopefully someone's working on this problem because you don't want to watch this video of these things swarming it is it is not not fun well imagine the January 6th crowd like let's say 10 years ago and like someone can buy one of these things like imagine if like some of those nut jobs who're setting up like guillotine and Mike Pence effigies on the fucking lawn of the capital

could fly some killer drone you know I mean yeah that's you know that that that's real risk yeah and it's not like advanced technology right this isn't like a predator drone you know it's like no you any drone that could hold like a camera you could put some sort of you know warhead on it something explosive and fly it at someone and just kamikaze the mission I mean it's not great not great. All right, a couple more slightly lighter topics to close up the show. So the U.S. military apologized after U.S. soldiers accidentally stormed an olive oil processing factory in Bulgaria during a training exercise last month. Whoops. This was part of a training exercise where members of the 173rd Airborne Brigade were practicing how to seize and secure an airfield and they accidentally

wound up in a civilian factory. The owners of the factory, they're actually pretty cool about it, so they don't mind the training, but they wish they'd had a heads up because their employees were terrified. It seems pretty reasonable. I mean, were they making like a bunch of soup or something, and they needed some extra? I mean, like, I just don't understand how you, like, attack an olive oil factory by mistake. Yeah. With all due respect to the U.S. military. Yeah, do respect. I think it was adjacent to this airfield. But once you got in and you see a bunch of workers like pressing olives, I don't get how they ended up in there for like 20 or 30 minutes. Just maybe. get out because it's a training mission anyway?

Did they think, I mean, I'm so curious from both perspectives. Like, what are these dudes who, like, go to work and they're just, like, crushing olives, making some olive oil? Like, what do they think when they see, like, you know, the U.S. military kicking in the door? And then what is it? Terrified. If you, did the U.S. military guys, like, think, well, maybe actually this is part of the drill. Like, these guys are, you know, pretending to be whatever their exercises is about, like,

the enemy's posing as olive oil creators. Yeah. You know, I don't know. At some point when you see like a couple of dudes like dipping bread into some sort of delicious sauce, like maybe you know, olive oil machinery factory. Okay. So maybe there's some dual use, Jordan Waller tells us before we get too far. Look, let us have our fun Jordan.

I don't think we should even cut this because what I love about this is Jordan Waller, our producer, is saying, before we get too far down this road, because she's anticipating the length of the conversation you and I could have about pressing olive oil. So thank you for that correction, Jordan. Thank you, Jordan. Once again, proving that you keep this show, you are the guardrails on this show. It was an olive oil machinery factory,

which is a little bit more plausible. No, it's a little more plausible. But I'm glad everybody took that journey with us because it was fun. Ayoblast. Speaking of kind of interesting international stings, so this article popped just before we started recording too. So for years, apparently,

criminals have been buying cell phones on the black market that they thought had been like stripped of all the sort of existing software and just outfitted with one secret app that you could use to send encrypted messages. And these phones ended up getting into criminal circles used by gangs, drug traffickers, hit men, like all the best people, all the folks you want to have encrypted comms. And they so trusted the devices that they didn't even use code in some cases to disguise their activity. They were just like openly talking about shipping drugs or whatever. Well, that was a bad move because it turns out that the entire encrypted network was run by the FBI in coordination with the

Australian police. And over the last three years, law enforcement has hoovered up something like 20 million messages and arrested at least 800 people in over a dozen countries. It sounds like this is the beginning of the arrests and that they had to go public with this news for, I assume, law enforcement reasons or maybe the clock was running out on their, uh, their, you know, them being legally allowed to collect this information. But you have to imagine, Ben, that there's a lot of like angry, nervous criminals around the world right now, uh, sweating this one pretty hard. So credit to the FBI for being clever. Hopefully, uh, they will also stop demanding backdoor access into commercial encryption apps. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck off with that. But the big

question for me, Ben, is whether the, the Trump organization, maybe Trump, Jared, Manifort. Maybe they got their hands on one of these phones. I could see it happening. Yeah, maybe that like the texting between MBS and Jared was on one of these guys. I mean, yeah. Better than WhatsApp, right? Yeah, come on. I mean, it is just like a reminder that law enforcement can like get at these issues without like saying we need to be in everybody's signal. You know, like, so kudos. You know, we don't give, we don't have that many opportunities to give a shout out to the FBI. on the show here. This is definitely very cool. Final story. So this week, Ukraine unveiled a new men's

national team soccer jersey, and the Russian government is super pissed off about it. Why? Because the jersey includes a map of Ukraine with Crimea on it included as part of Ukraine. Russia, of course, annexed it, invaded it, Crimea in 2014. And today in 2021, the Russians, the Chinese, they are going to demand that everyone submit to their worldview and that we all say that, okay, yes, the new borders that you guys drew through force or through coercion are the right ones. The U.S. Embassy in Kiev, we say Kiev now. We learn that during impeachment, tweeted their support for the new design, which will be worn at the UEFA Euro 2020 tournament. Ben, should we buy a round of jerseys in solidarity? What do you think about this? Yeah, I mean, I just look, I didn't like it when, like,

you're watching like ESPN or some Disney movie or something and like the border of China includes like the nine dash line like maritime border of the South China Sea like when have you ever bought anything with the maritime border on it never mind a maritime border that claims like an entire body of water nor do I think like Russia should be able to tell the Ukrainians that this territory we annex can no longer be in New Jersey like screw that I mean people should like kind of demonstrate through their own choices, like, that they don't want to be bullied into accepting some political, you know, authoritarian, creepy insistence that everybody, like, acknowledge the legitimacy of their illegitimate actions. So I'm totally on board with

the Ukrainian jersey. Yeah, it was fun reading the story is because the Russians, like, they take every slight to just the maximum degree. Like, they were. were, they were comparing the slogan on the jersey to like Nazi propaganda. There were members of parliament that were freaking out. Some of them were just calling the jerseys ugly. Little thin skin guys. I mean, come on. Little thin skin.

I do wonder, I wonder if they'll do something incredibly stupid and dangerous in response. We, we shall see, I guess. Well, they'll probably just like hack the Martha's Vineyard Ferry again or something like like maybe they'll hack the Cape Cod Ferry next. Yeah. Yeah, they'll just continue. It would be a pain in the ass, basically. Eastern Ukraine, yeah.

Just be a huge pain in the ass. I didn't have time to write this up, but did you see the video before we went in, right before we came in here, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France was out like on the campaign trail, and some dudes started shaking his hand and then just slapped him in the face. It was hard. No, I didn't see that. I have no idea what happened. Yeah.

That wouldn't end well. Don't support that. Don't support that. I mean, that's the thing is like you can be mad at politicians, but let's not go that route, you know. Yeah, let's not hit anybody. in France, in America, or anyone else. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll have Ben's interview with Biden's Deputy National Security Advisor,

John Feiner, about Biden's upcoming trip to Europe, so stick around for that. I am very excited to be joined by the Deputy National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, John Feiner, who is a very good, very smart and I'm sure very hardworking person. John, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks a lot for having me. So I want to get into setting up this trip, you know, something that I have lots of memories of. And, you know, one of the things I remember is obviously you develop essentially how are you defining success? What are you setting out to do?

Obviously, there's all kinds of other things that you'll have to deal with and respond to. But just on this basic question, you know, you've got this upcoming visit to the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, G7 Summit, NATO summit, EU, Putin. And what do you try, how would you define success at the end of this trip? Well, so I think it's a great question. And I think it's one we've thought about a lot in building the agenda and, and thinking through how we're going to communicate. And I'd say it's a few things. First and foremost, I think the last memory that many people have of the U.S. president

on the world stage is one that we would be very happy to remove from their memory banks and replace with one that we find more consistent, not just with our interests as a country, but with our values and with kind of a core second message that we're trying to drive, which is democracy. President Biden talks a lot about democracy. He talks a lot about this moment that we're in as kind of being a contest of democracy and autocracy. And he means that as a moral contest and a contest of theories. But really what he also means, I think maybe foremost, is the need to show that democracies can

deliver for their own people and for the world. And so the first two stops on this trip at the G7. seven large democratic countries gathered in the UK and at NATO and the EU, which will take place in Belgium, the whole theme of those stops is essentially to prove that the democratic model is still the best model of governance for people on the planet and that substantively there are things that democracies can do for their own people and for the planet that autocracies, China, Russia and others, just can't deliver on. So you'll see a lot about global public health responding to the COVID pandemic. You'll see a lot of economic themes. You know, we've talked a lot

about the connection between domestic policy and foreign policy, foreign policy that actually makes lives better for or make people's lives better here in the United States. So I think that's going to be the metric by which we'll judge the success of how all this comes together. So I want to ask you about one piece of that, well, more than one, but to start, I saw the announcement heading into the G7 about the agreement on a 15 percent, global minimum corporate tax rate. And as someone who kind of believes that inequality, income inequality, has fueled in interesting ways, you know, the declining confidence in democracy and some of the kind of pivot to nationals that we've seen, I thought that was very welcome step. I guess the question

I have on this is how do you enforce that or how do you implement that? Like what is the step after the G7 making this agreement to actually trying to achieve, you know, an enforceable or some kind of universal 15% minimum corporate tax rate? Yeah, it's a good question. And I think there have been two announcements in the run-up to the G7 that really go to this equity theme that you just mentioned that is really a hallmark, I think, of how President Biden both views domestic politics in the United States, but also our foreign policy. One is the global minimum tax, which you described, in which the leaders are going to kind of formally bless at the G7 in a few days.

Now, the whole purpose of this is to try to kind of eradicate what have been a series of tax havens around the world where companies, including American companies, to be candid about it, can go and park their earnings, park their money, and essentially effectively pay a no meaningful tax rate. That robs our country of revenues that should be collected here and then spent on our people at robs other countries of those revenues as well. And so the follow-up on that is going to be to work with, these are seven of the most influential countries in the world, work with our partners to go around and use diplomacy, which is our kind of main tool of getting things done to push other countries to adopt these tax rates domestically and in their own legislatures and in their own countries. It's not guaranteed, as you indicate.

It's going to take a lot of follow-up. But the second that I want to point to is corruption. The President Biden put out a what's called a National Security Study Memorandum on corruption. That includes a bunch of steps that our country is going to take to try to kind of prevent our country from being used as a place for corrupt foreign companies and individuals to park their money, but also encourages countries around the world to take those steps as well. Again, all of this is going to require follow-up and implementation. But in terms of this proving, again, that democracies can sort of do the right thing, have the, the right model, getting this tax situation right and getting corruption under control are two of the biggest ways we're going to try to drive that. Yeah, I was like very excited by that.

Probably about as excited as someone can be about like an anti-corruption. So you were the one. I was wondering. Yeah, all those clicks were for me. I mean, like, because it, it, you increasingly, and we've talked about this over the years, but like the idea that, you know, the Putin's of the world and the, you know, other autocratic systems that have kind of oligarch. structures where cronies kind of finance authoritarianism, you know, they make significant use of of New York and London and, you know, the financial system. How much do you think you guys can begin to get at that problem? Is this the kind of thing where this is the beginning of a process where you then test through enforcement how much you can kind of get at the way in which dark money

is flowing through our systems? You've just kind of given yourself a bunch of tools. So I think there is a lot of low-hanging fruit in this area. Steps that we can take that probably should have been taken over a number of years that can start to get our arms around the problem, at least domestically, here in the United States and making it a bit of a harder target for people to either launder money or hide ill-gotten gains. But there is an arms race dimension to this problem, whereas you develop solutions, the people who are trying to park their money, develop better ways of hiding it,

or new, more innovative techniques for concealing it. So this is the kind of thing that we're going to have to stay on top of over a long period of time. And you make the point about autocrats, you know, I think one of the ways in which we're going to try to distinguish, again, kind of democratic model where we're putting out lots of ideas all the time, policies. People can debate them, disagree with them, but the purpose of these policies is, again, to try to make lives better here at home and around the world. The core goals for most of these autocratic leaders are two things. in power, which usually is the first and foremost goal, and you've written about this,

you know, as eloquently as anyone, and the other is to profit personally from political office. And so we want to just drive home the point that that is not the purpose of governance, in fact, quite the opposite. And we'll be using these policies to try to make that point. So a related question on this democracy question. You know, it's interesting you guys have but a big focus on on China out of the gate, kind of comprehensively, like, you know, coordinated sanctions related to the Uyghurs, you know, efforts to kind of secure our supply chains and sensitive areas, concerns, you know, the kind of, we're not, we're also present in the Trump years about technology. And I detect, obviously, like an interest in kind

of multilateralizing some of these issues where we have concerns with China. Do you, Are you guys on the same page with the G7? I mean, as part of the purpose of this summit, figuring out, like, whether the U.S. and Europe and the other G7 countries have common positions related to how to deal with this kind of very comprehensive set of issues related to China, you know, to try to multilateralize some of the steps that you guys have begun at home? So I think you're right to point out that there are a number of dimensions of our approach to China that may not have China in the label policy-wise. You know, our efforts to rebuild the American economy fundamentally is geared towards

obviously all the ways in which that benefits the American people, but also the way in which that makes America better position to have to compete with China internationally. Until we get our act together at home, you know, we cannot do that from a position of strength. Obviously, getting the pandemic under control at home is not a China play. It is about public health and saving people's lives. But until we did that, we were not well positioned, again, to sort of be out in the world making the case to our partners and allies that our future, frankly, is brighter and our model is better and that people should align themselves with our way of looking at things. And in terms of whether the G7 is fully bought into our agenda vis-a-vis China or the EU, I guess I would say they're a lot closer than they were four and a half months ago.

It's easy to forget that when we took office, Europe, the European Union had just completed an investment agreement with China, that the Trump administration opposed, that frankly, you know, our administration coming in was not particularly excited about. That agreement is now on life support. In part, we think, because of the outreach that we have done. We've always seen the kind of contest with China as fundamentally well served by our working together with our partners and allies, not fighting everybody. all at once and kind of leaving those alliances on the sidelines the way we think, at least, our predecessors handled that. But also the way China has kind of overplayed its hand. When the Europeans made statements against forced labor and some of the activities that were taking place in Xinjiang, rather than try to use persuasion and kind of diplomacy, the Chinese sort of lashed out at them and alienated them fundamentally. And that sort of put China on its back foot, put that investment agreement into jeopardy and put us. in a better position to try to push forward some of the things that we were working on.

You know, this is going to take constant work. There is an appeal to the Chinese market that is, you know, undeniable to a number of these countries. And, you know, at the end of the day, this whole contest is not zero sum. There are ways in which we're going to have to work with the Chinese, you know, on climate, even on some of the global health issues that we were talking about earlier. But at the end of the day, we think we are much more closely aligned with our partners and allies going into all those discussions than we were when we got here. So that's interesting to hear that, that evolution. And I think it's just a huge task of, you know,

people assume that the U.S. and Europe are of the same mind on this, but it can be hard to build consensus. I'm working my way to Putin. I'm going to stop at NATO first. And there's this question of the side, you know, Americans are seeing more cyber attacks than they have in a long time in the news. And there's kind of a growing concern and unease about it. And I'm wondering whether, you know, cyber was kind of beginning to be a NATO issue when, when I, I was around with you in the Obama administration. I'm wondering whether you guys are going to see the NATO summit as an opportunity to talk about kind of cyber as an issue where the alliance has to get better or their collective defense approaches that can be taken on cyber.

Because right now it just feels like the American government in our private sector trying to figure out how to defend our infrastructure. But, you know, we're in an alliance here. So how are you guys thinking about the cyber issue at NATO? Yeah. So I think you're exactly right in the way you've described it. This was sort of an emerging challenge, an emerging threat several years ago when you and I last served together in government. And it's moved kind of from the outer fringes of national security issues that we think about to right at the inner core. And I think you will see in the press coverage of all these summits and the trip, as well as on the agenda in each of these summits at the G7, in the EU summit at NATO and in the conversation that we've not yet

talked about, but that I know we will with Vladimir Putin, cyber issues front and center on the agenda and more prominently featured in the communications, I think, that come out of these conversations, which I know you know how much work goes into negotiating all of the details and how skittish, frankly, some of our partners and allies can sometimes be about adding, you know, new material, new threats, new challenges. I think you're going to see a lot more cyber in those documents than you saw before. And I think the focus that you rightly pointed to on critical infrastructure. You know, when people think of critical infrastructure,

they often maybe think of like pipelines and the electrical grid. We define it actually much more broadly than that. 16 sectors of our economy that we think is basically essential to the functioning and well-being of our society. And we're going to be making the point to our partners and also to President Putin

that these things should be off limits to cyber attacks, both by states and by, you know, criminals who live within these states and are sometimes allowed to operate more freely than they should. Well, I will be reading these communiques, John. And again, you mentioned you may be the one, but it's important to get them out.

Man, they're painstaking. But they matter. They do matter. They send important signals. So Putin, I just want to start, like ask you a couple questions about this. The first one being like, what was the decision-making process around doing this? You know, because I can imagine being in the White House and it's like a Putin summit's never going to go like well, right? it's not like you're going to march out of there and everything's going to be solved.

There's all kinds of risks. It's a huge event. You've already got a long trip. But I can also see the need. Like, hey, we got to talk to this guy. Why did, what was the pros and cons and what tip this to being something you want President Biden to be, you know, obviously he made the decision, but presumably you guys recommended it. Like what, what tip the balance in favor of having this summit? So I think agree or disagree with.

the decision to have a summit with President Putin, it is fundamentally consistent with how we have thought about, executed, and talked about the U.S.-Russia relationship from the minute we got here. What we have said is that this is not going to be an easy relationship, but it's also a highly consequential relationship, and mostly on the downside if we, frankly, don't get it right and allow things to continue to escalate. So from really the first or second week, I think the first week of the administration, President Biden spoke on the phone with President Putin, which some people thought was, you know, earlier than they might have expected. And in that conversation, President Biden was very clear. He said, on the one hand, that we don't seek to escalate with Russia.

We don't seek a confrontational relationship with Russia, but that we fully intend to hold Russia accountable for actions they take that are not acceptable. He said he was going to be ordering, asking the intelligence community to do assessments of some of these Russian activities, like their interference in our election, like the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, like the solar winds, cyber intrusion, and that once we determined what we thought Russia had done, we would take action. You know, some number of weeks after that, the president called President Putin again and told him that we had determined Russian culpability and all of these things, and that we would be taking a series of steps, and then we executed on those steps.

The engagement, though, is also an important piece of this. If you just leave this relationship, to its own devices, there is a risk constantly of crises that will emerge and Russian actions that will be taken that can, frankly, swallow an entire first term of an administration if we're not careful. And so part of this is about investing some time, some energy into this relationship so that we can manage it because it is highly consequential. These are two countries, you know, that have significant capabilities. And whether or not they're going to be, you know, close partners and friends, they do need to, you know, find a way to have a modus vivendi. So, you know, you've obviously got a huge list of issues, right? Navalny, Belarus, solar winds

and other hacking concerns and on and on and on. That's kind of the negative side of the ledger. And then maybe like, you know, you guys did new start extension. Maybe there's some, you know, something you can try to have constructive come out of this. I mean, what is this balance? between using this as a summit to like deliver some tough messages on all these different things while trying to put a kind of floor underneath the the free fall of U.S. Russian relations prevent kind of escalation that nobody wants. I mean, how do you, you know, how do you navigate this really complicated necessity of being firm on some things, but the kind of, I assume the purpose at the summit is to slow, at least escalation on other things?

Yeah. So, look, the theory that President Biden has brought to this relationship is that we can be candid with Russia about our differences. You know, we meet with them not in spite of our differences, but frankly because of them, but because we believe that diplomacy is the way to narrow these gaps, address these differences, solve these problems. And so he will be candid with President Putin about areas in which we disagree, about their approach in Ukraine, about, you know, the fact they've allowed their territory to be used by cyber actors in ways that are fundamentally harmful to our country and to many others.

And about the many other areas in which we differ with them. But he will also be candid about the possibility for at least a less damaging, less mutually damaging relationship if Russia can get off the course that it's on. And he has had a number of conversations with President Putin over the years going back to his time as vice president, but this is fundamentally not personal. I mean, this is about our interests and theirs. And there is not a ton of overlap between our interests and theirs, but I think it is in our mutual interest not to have an escalatory relationship, you know, that draws us closer to kind of conflict in a number of areas.

And so you're right. It is about putting a floor underneath declining relationship, guard rails, whatever metaphor you want to choose. but it is going to be different from the other meetings in that you are not going to see us come out and say, we have agreed to the following, you know, 10 steps going forward or, you know, ways in which we see the world the same. We're not under the illusion that that is likely to happen, but we think it's important to have the conversation regardless. So I remember we used to split it up where, you know, the deputy would go sometimes, but then NSA would go sometimes. Are you the guy who has to stay home and run the operation at home or is everybody going on this trip?

What's John Feiner going to be doing for the next? I will be minding the store, which, you know, pluses and minuses. But I think when everybody is out of town, you know, it'll be a different sort of feeling, different sort of feeling in the White House, maybe some time to actually do some work that always falls by the wayside because of the urgent business when the president is here. So, yeah, I'll be staying behind. My boss, Jake Sullivan, will be traveling with the presidents along with a big and expert team. The disparity in offices was glaring to me.

I mean, I at least think that, you know, people should know that John's office is pretty small compared to Jake Sullivan's. I mean, maybe you can move in there for like 10 days or so. And I didn't even ask you to, I didn't even ask you to say this, but I appreciate your, you're making this point on my behalf. And if you could maybe email Jake to follow up and underscore that, I appreciate it. Well, he's a busy guy. But if you've been in, I mean, I just want to give people a sense of how hard, like, how many deputies committee, I mean, I don't know if this is a state secret, but how. How many of those deputies committee meetings are you doing a day? I think we're probably having somewhere between six and eight a week, something along those lines. Six, oh, that's, that's, okay, that's a reasonable pace, right? More than most of the other deputies would like, I think, in most cases. But, you know, a lot to do.

Always. They always say that. But, I mean, so your day, I just want to get people a sense before, like, you know, you do the, you're in the PDB, the morning meeting with the president. you've got these deputies meetings. You're probably doing meetings with, you know, NSC directorates on all these different issues. I mean, what, is any, what it surprised you about, I mean, you used to work outside the office of the deputy national school advisor when it was Tony Blinken. But like, is something about your time or this gig other than the fact that you started in the middle of pandemic surprised you in just a pace of the day? Yeah. I mean, that's a really good question. I think the most surprising, and I had seen the job up close, as you, as you indicate. I had worked. for Tony Blinken, now our Secretary of State, when he had the job I had. So I think I had some sense of the demands. Although I do think it is, frankly, it's just different in a role in which, rather than being in a meeting where you might speak two or three times, three or four times, make your points and get out of there, when you have to sit at the head of the table and

manage the entire conversation, you just have to be on for more of the day. This is, you know, requires a little bit more coffee. But, you know, I am blessed at this point. point to have extraordinarily talented colleagues, both at the NSC, are kind of experts in the different areas who help us prepare for all these topics. And also in the interagency, the other deputies who are in this deputies committee that you mentioned really are people who, you know, friends of yours, many of them friends of mine as well, and people who are deeply experienced and are in this both for the right reasons and bring creativity and expertise in a way that makes my life certainly infinitely easier than it would otherwise be.

Well, that's good to hear. I hope you get some more folks, you know, through that confirmation process and filled out around that table. Thanks so much, John, for joining us. Remember to enjoy yourself as you're trying to make the world a better place. Thank you. And thanks again for having me on. Thanks again to John Feiner. Great to be back, Ben. Congrats again on the book rollout. It's fantastic stuff, man. Keep moving them. Yeah, no, keep moving. Are you still beating, are you beating O'Reilly? Who are we beating is this?

The list comes out the day that this podcast comes out. So we will find out whether we dethroned Bill O'Reilly, who's now going to have the extra advantage of going on a speaking tour with Donald Trump, right? I learned that yesterday. If you needed any more incentive, like Bill O'Reilly best-selling author of the Killing Series, you know, currently at the top of these lists, is now going to get further juiced by, you know, his co-partner, you know, Donald Trump. So anyway.

Bill O'Reilly sucks. He's a creepy dude. I have to say, I kind of think we were better off with him over Tucker Carlson. And I never thought I would say that. I hate it. Yeah. I mean, he was, you know, it was the rampant sexual harassment that brought the guy down. He was basically just kind of like the loudmouth guy from the Long Island Railroad,

like ranting about his grievances on the train after having a couple of tall boys. But he wasn't as like. insidiously dark white supremacist as, uh, quite as much. The incitement, like coming out of, you know, Tucker's dushy preppy mouth every week. It's just something new. Something new. Anyway, well, we got that to deal with too. So good luck with the best seller list.

And we'll talk to guys next week. See it. 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,

and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.