Pod Save the World - Spyware for profit

Episode Date: July 21, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss unrest and inequality in South Africa, the spyware for profit industry in Israel, Chinese cyberattacks, climate change news, updates from Haiti and Cuba, Jeff Bezos' trip to space, whether the Australian prime minister pooped his pants and more. Then Mohamed Soltan joins Ben to talk about claims the US government pledged to incarcerate him after he was released from Egyptian prison and why it is so critical that the Biden administration rethink American policy towards Egypt.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 on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And we are in the studio together. I've never been this excited to come to a workspace. They said this day would never come. We both were laughing very hard a minute ago when you called me to be like, what is the office address again? I forgot where this was.

I drove 30 minutes from my house in Venice, got into the neighbor and I was like, I don't even remember the name of the street. It was a year and a half. The muscle memory is gone. It's gone. It's gone. It was gone. And it wasn't even in my maps, right? Because I haven't been gone there and so long. We're reversed Bo Burnhaming. Yes. We're moving outside. Yes. We're moving outside. And it does. It feels very good to be in any kind of workspace other than the room I've been sitting in forever.

Yeah. I mean, in this, since I've last seen you, you've had to try to teach school. I'm sure that was maybe harder than writing another bestseller. I mean, if I think about, I taught a class, I wrote a book, I record. I recorded. I recorded a podcast, Missing America, in my closet, right? You know, so that I had the good audio quality. And I was angry coming in the studio thinking, like, how easy it would have been to record that podcast if I could have just sat in a professional studio instead of being in a closet with, like, a kit in somebody in my ear. I forgot you taught a college class. I just meant, like, trying to teach elementary school to two little kids.

Oh, that. Well, that, forget that. Yeah, I mean, the hardest thing that happened in the entire pandemic. And I think, you know, this is universal appearance is, like, a four and a six-year-old on Zoom school. I mean, the four-year-old was not wanting to. Chloe was like, this is not. It was not having it.

And she's right. She's a smart kid. She's like, where are my friends? Where are the fun teachers? You guys are boring me. Yeah, I don't need you over my shoulder helping me with this art project. No. Thank you very much.

Go away. Go away, dad. Go read about authoritarianism or whatever you do for fun. Go work on your authoritarianism. I want to pick a picture. Well, much like Bob Burnham, we're going to make you guys some sweet, sweet content today. We have a ton to cover. There is the worst civil unrest in South Africa since apartheid ended.

New details about the shady for-profit spying industry and how it's being used to target journalists, activists. Others, Ben, I know you have some experience with these creeps. Some climate change news, updates out of Haiti and Cuba, the space race, big update there this morning, if you give a shit. And a pretty gross Australian mystery. And then some fun Olympic updates. And then, Ben, you just wrapped today's interview. What are folks going to hear? I mean, I really love this interview with Muhammad Sultan.

Great guy. Those were those who I'd listen to Missing America or read my book. Muhammad is a key character in it, but he was someone who's an Egyptian American who would move back to be part of the protest in Tahrir Square. When the CC coup happened, he was in the protest against that. He was shot in the square. He was arrested for tweeting, basically, tortured. He walks you through some of his ordeal in prison. he gets out and becomes a human rights activist,

and he talks about his motivation for his work, which is very inspiring in this interview. But recently, the head of Egyptian intelligence, who's kind of Cici's right-hand man, came to Washington, the first kind of high-ranking member of the C.C. government since Biden got elected and basically demanded that Muhammad be thrown in prison in the United States

and said that somehow, you know, it's totally the impunity you must feel to do that. So he takes us through this. kind of the latest episode in his saga. And it's very powerful. I'm genuinely horrified to think about how that demand might have landed in the Trump White House, to be honest. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I thought about that. I mean, it may be that Trump was so kind of, you know, in their pocket in a way that they didn't need to kind of press the envelope. You know, now they're kind of almost challenging the Biden team. You know, to me it's almost like, hey, look what we're willing to do. You know, are you going to withhold our $300 million in? military assistance. So I hope the answer is, yes, we are going to do that. Well, we'll see.

Stick around for that interview because it's very important stuff. And it kind of dovetails to a lot of what we're talking about today. It does, it does, especially that Pegasus story. Yes, especially the spying story. Okay, so let's start in South Africa because, you know, people in eastern South Africa are slowly recovering from days of violence in looting that left hundreds dead, more than 2,500 arrests and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. So this violence started on July 8th after former South African President Jacob Zuma was arrested and sentenced to 15 months in prison for refusing to testify before a commission investigating government corruption. But it quickly ballooned into widespread ransacking the malls, other retail stores, and

there was a bunch of arson and just destruction of warehouses and factories. And it's been described, the violence as the worst since South Africa became a democracy in 1994. And it only ended after current South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa. deployed 25,000 South African troops to restore order. South Africa's economy has been just devastated by the coronavirus. Unemployment is over 33%. The country is in the midst of its third COVID lockdown,

but I believe unemployment benefits have run out, so people are really desperate. It could take years to rebuild these businesses, the infrastructure. There's concern that all these people gathering together could lead to another spike in COVID cases. So just devastating news here for the people of South Africa who are, you know, I didn't realize this has been, according to, I think it's the World Bank, one of these international bodies, South Africa has the worst economic inequality of any country in the world, period. Yeah. And it's gotten worse since apartheid.

Yeah, which has some of its roots in apartheid. And then in the post-apartheid corruption. And to me, you know, this is a story that speaks to kind of the nexus of corruption with other societal problems because Zuma was, you know, Jacob Zuma was the president before Ramaphosa, just phenomenally corrupt. I mean, you know, billions and basically treated his position as a head of the ANC and president as a way to enrich himself. I think there's a lot of suspicion that after he was sentenced, you know, he kind of, his people kind of jinned up some people to get out and protest. And then that clearly blended in with a lot of grievances that are already out there over the scale of inequality. COVID has been particularly difficult. They've had, you know, they had the beta variant there.

They've had a hard time with that. But this kind of combination of a sense that government is not only not solving the problem, but has been part of the problem. Right. You know, and Ramaphosa has tried to kind of turn the page a bit. And just the very fact of the prosecution going forward of Zuma is a sign of introducing some accountability to the system. But unless they kind of get their arms around this massive corruption in society, their

capacity to deal with things like inequality and having a fairer economy is going to be much harder. So I think it also speaks to one other thing, Tommy, which is COVID. You know, our economy is booming here and, you know, feels great. And, you know, the worst concern is inflation in South Africa-type countries, or you see in Indonesia, for instance, now a big wave, like we're not out of the woods. And there's going to be potential political instability and huge ripple effects from COVID all over the developing world, including in fairly developed societies like South Africa, for instance, you know, this is, This is going to be with us for a while.

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned this. Romaphosa called the unrest a coordinated effort to sabotage the economy and essentially stage a coup. To your broader point about Zuma and the ANC, I mean, the ANC, his political party has been in power since 1994. There's basically no real opposition. Corruption's gotten worse.

And equality has gotten worse. And it's just, it's hard to tell exactly where the tipping point was from sort of like political allies staging something to create unrest to just this broader. thing that incumbents, basically it was two of the nine provinces in South Africa were basically just, you know, destroyed. I mean, and they account for nearly 50% of GDP. Yeah. So it's a really big deal. Yeah. And it does, I mean, the ANC issued more broadly. I mean, everybody remembers the heroic history of the ANC and Nelson Mandela's leadership. And Mandel himself stepping down, instead of trying to stay in power forever, like a lot of people around the world do. But it's

gotten kind of progressively worse up through Zuma where, you look, when you have a one party, system, that opens up a lot of doors for potential corruption. And guys like Zuma kind of traded on the legitimacy of their history as part of that struggle, tragically, to just kind of enrich themselves. Yeah. And hopefully Ramaphosa, he seems to be a more on the level character, but there's just a competitive political environment would be healthy there so that there isn't this kind of sense of impunity. Yeah. Then I was trying to do a bunch of reading on this. So I was reading like from Jacobin on the left and then I clicked on a Fox News story.

It was Laura Ingram and talking to Laura Logan, who's a correspondent who I believe is South African. Laura Logan tried to blame what was happening in South Africa on critical race theory, woke ideology, and tech companies. And then she goes, and Obama's former ambassador to South Africa, Patrick Gaspar, now works for George Soros. It was like the Fox fever dream.

Yeah, they just saw like video of violence or unrest, and they decided like, let's take this, make it about the United States, and try to scare old white people once again. That's disgusting. That's really dark. Super dark. That's your first reaction. Because none of that is connected to what's happening.

Critical race theory. What the fuck you're talking about? Yeah. I mean, it just shows, you know, images of black and brown people in the streets, it doesn't matter where they are, whether than the United States or anywhere in the world. Let's just play those and play the greatest hits, right? Like, we'll go after George Soros. You know, we'll go after Obama somehow.

now, you know, cap where Patrick Gaspar now works. What else? Totally insane. Yeah, the DLC? Let's throw some more in there. Yeah, yeah. What are we got? Disgusting.

Okay, we'll keep an eye on that story. But let's talk about spying for profit. So there was a bunch of blockbuster reports this week. There's an Israeli company called the NSAO group that has been leasing military-grade surveillance technology to governments, and they've been using it to hack phones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, and even to women who are close to Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was murdered by the Saudi government. This comes, this report, it was like 17 news outlets and like a French nonprofit called

Forbidden Stories who got all this information and put it out. And it's worth reading these reports in full because the posts and others are just like cranking out reams and reams of stories. But a couple of things I took away. One, the software is being used against private citizens, the claim by the company that's like against terrorists and criminals. Total bullshit. Two, those of us who are iPhones, you ain't safe.

They're generally considered more secure, but this software could gain access to everything on an iPhone, emails, calls, passwords, locations. data, pictures. Great. Bad news. Bad news. Three, you victims, like, sometimes when people get, are victims of a fishing attack, you think, oh, you idiot.

How do you click on that, right? In this case, you don't have to click on a link. They can just text you something. You might never know about it. You can be infected, not do anything. So it's like everyone could be a victim. So, again, lots of the story. But here's some things that really bug me, Ben.

So the NSO group was founded by former Israeli intelligence goons, right? They worked for their version of the NSA doing signals. intelligence. The Israeli government reportedly signs off on all their licenses. So when Hungary gets a license, the Israeli government signs off on this. The U.S. subsidizes the entire enterprise, right? Because we give $3 billion a year in military aid to Israel. Sure do. And help prop up the Israeli defense industry, like the Iron Dome missile defense system, good purchase. This very bad purchase. And so here's my problem. The net effect here is that tyrants like Victor Orban, the authoritarian leader of Hungary

who you've written about a lot can spy on journalists. The Indian government can spy on activists, maybe like Rana Ayu, but I don't know that to be the case. That's not in our interests, right? And so, like, the concerns about this software, this company aren't new.

I'm sure listeners are probably listening to this and thinking, hey, you guys worked for, like, the U.S. government spies on more people than anyone else. You're full of shit, you're hypocrites. You know what? Fine. But, like, a bunch of companies selling spyware for profit.

it is a very slippery slope to me. And I'm just wondering, what did you make of these reports? And do you think that we're going to pressure the Israeli government to say, shut this down? Well, yeah, I mean, a couple thoughts on this. And one is to play back the tape, right? And I do, I talk about this a lot and after the fall. You know, I learned that I was spied on by Black Cube. You know, so Black Cube is a bunch of former Mossad guys. And they also had spied on Harvey Weinstein's accusers, right? So, you know, if Mossad is kind of the CIA and NSO is the NSA. It's like these guys just leave and set up private shop. And what was interesting in working in my book, when I went to Hungary, two of the people I met with in Hungary had a connection to being spied on by Black Cube. Shandra Leder, one of the

main characters in Hungary, his cousin had been spied on by Black Cube and worked for Marta Pardavi, another person whose organization was spied on by Black Cube. And then I tucked in Navalny and he'd been spot on by Black Cube. And there was like this international community of people, if you're, if you're an NGO activist or former official like me or an any corruption person or what have you, like suddenly, you know, we should just expect that an autocrat or an oligarch is paying like a bunch of former Mossad guys to spy on you or intimidate you or surveil you. And it led me to kind of investigate more this question of this private intelligence industry where any autocrat or any oligarch associated with an autocrat can go kind of one-stop shopping for disinformation campaign

to dig up dirt on someone, to surveil someone, try to entrap somebody. The person in Hungary who had actually been caught in this Black Cube scheme where they went to him and they got him, and I described this in the book, they got him on tape saying that he was lobbying the European Union to be tougher on Orban's government, which, of course he was. He's an NGO activist. But this appears in the Jerusalem. post of all places. That's where it's leaked right before the Hungarian election is proof of like a conspiracy by Hungarian NGOs to overthrow Orban, right? So that leads me to my second point, which is, again, like people may add us, but like there's an Israeli nexus to this. And

what it's a part of a broader ecosystem that is not limited Israel, but it includes the American right and Trump associates who are tied in with these people. Remember when we were on that list of like enemies from the list of enemies or what's right of. Yeah, whatever the fuck is Eric Prince doing in his private intel work. And then you've got Victor Orban who's clearly in this world. Bibi Netanyahu was clearly in this world. The Saudis and the Emirates clearly in this world. There's this kind of alliance of these autocrats that look at journalists and certain former officials like us or look at activists and we're nowhere near the danger that these other people are. But like it's totally unsettling. And there's a part of me that thinks that they don't even

mind when these stories come out because I think part of it is it's like, oh, are they going to be my phone? I better not say certain things on my phone, you know, or maybe it's not worth, you know, being a journalist who investigates corruption because I don't want to be targeted by this, right? So to me, it's part of this kind of really kind of transnational industry of, and this is where it's different than the U.S. government, you know, conducting basically state, espionage, right? Like, this is like a transnational network of autocrats and oligarchs and service industries that is meant to intimidate people. That also makes me wonder, I mean, if you have the Mossad and then this unit 8200 that does the Zagl's intelligence for Israel, if they can't

get government approval to spy on someone or something, maybe you call up your old buddy in private industry and sort of outsource it to them. Like put a couple layers between you. I mean, I just, the whole thing is disconcertified. and right for abuse. I could not agree with you more. Like, clearly what happens is, you know, you might not want it to get out that the Israeli government or the Saudi government or the Hungarian government were spying on a journalist or an activist. So you just create this layer where when it comes out, everybody denies that they knew anything

about it. If you're telling me for a second that the Netanyahu government in Israel had no idea that a bunch of former Mossad agents and former Israeli NSA types were doing all this, stuff and that's insane that they like of course they somebody knew in the Israeli government like this is a pretty small community of people they work on this stuff and so look it's another thing of where we have to ask these hard questions and and again something else we took a lot of shit for but like one of the darker underbellies of the Abraham Accords right and is it good that the

Emirates and and other governments have recognized Israel yes but part of what is undergirded this relationship is the collaboration in space like this, which is not great. Yeah. Yeah, we just, we just don't want to see like a private spyware industry crop up in every country. And all of a sudden, everyone's selling this stuff to the highest bidder and God help us all. Speaking of hacks on Monday in the U.S., the European Union, NATO, a bunch of other close allies of the U.S., accused the Chinese government of being behind a series of recent cyber attacks, including this March 2021 hack into Microsoft's email servers. I think we talked about at the time. DoJ also charged four Chinese nationals.

was trying to steal intellectual property, including Ebola vaccine research and driverless vehicle technology. So we're used to that kind of stuff, like the Chinese government stealing IP. But apparently the Chinese were working with criminals for hire, and they were also conducting ransomware. And that surprised the government officials talking on background and some of the reporting on this. So it was interesting to me to see that there is this big multilateral announcement. It included NATO.

I think that might have been new. They didn't announce any sanctions, but it does seem like the goal, according to people in these stories. The goal is to get the Chinese and the Russians to agree to some guardrails for cyber attacks and maybe these enforcements periodically are trying to help to get us there. I don't know. What did you make of this? I mean, first of all, it does show how far things have moved in a decade because when there were some of these types of cyber attacks in the Obama years, we were always told like you're not allowed to talk. I think you probably dealt with this, right? Yeah. It was treated like a law enforcement activity, right? So it was only the FBI or DOJ that was allowed to say someone

was responsible for a hack, you know. And it wasn't until that North Korea's Sony hack that that began to change. I'm glad that we're not. I thought that was stupid at the time. It's like everybody knows, you know, why can't we say the Russians are doing this? And they would say because there's an ongoing law enforcement case and we might bring charges and you don't want to prejudice that. But the reality is this is such a sure those charges are going to land.

Yeah, those four Chinese nationals are going to fly over. Yeah, yeah. We got them. We got them. You know, like, Preet's going to be ringing them up in front of the SD&Y. But, like, I think it's good to we raise this and just put a pin on it. this is no fault of the Biden people, because I'm actually, I give them a huge credit for prioritizing this. We don't quite know what to do about this yet.

No. You know, like the Russians and Chinese clearly have no respect for any norm or guardrail when it comes to ransomware. This is far beyond espionage, right? Because, again, people could rightly say, well, they're just like hacking into systems trying to learn stuff about what's happening in America. How is that different than what America does in other places? This is going well beyond that. It's not just theft of intellectual property. It's ransomware.

It's criminality. So I think it's smart to try to multilateralize this, bring a lot of public attention to it, and then try to drive that into some kind of negotiation. Yeah. Give me the Ebola research vaccine. Let everybody work on that. Take that one. You know, driverless cars, though, like, I mean, you know, we – oh, I don't know if I want to drive – Yeah, I can't tell if they're working or not.

Let's talk climate change because there's a bunch of news from this last week. So first thing, this is a little dark. A new study found that part of the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it absorbs. This is very bad since historically the Amazon has absorbed and captured CO2 and helped take it out of the atmosphere, which slows down climate change. But deforestation, which dramatically increased under President Bolsonaro, and then just general warming of the planet has led to a typical point where you could see a functional destruction of the Amazon where it turns into grass savannah, basically. So that's real depressing. Two, climate change is seen as a factor that led to extreme rain and flooding in parts of Germany and Belgium that killed hundreds of people, left. hundreds more missing and will cost billions to clean up and repair. It could also create some

political fallout in Germany because the conservative candidate who is looking to replace Angela Merkel when she steps down at the end of this year was caught on camera at an event honoring the victims. He was like joking with some colleagues. So there's a question of whether this will help the Green Party. Three cheers for that if it does. And then finally, then last week, China opened a national carbon's emissions market or a cap and trade program. So this would limit the amount of carbon dioxide that companies can release power companies specifically in China. It's not their entire industry. But it would encourage them to be more energy efficient because if you are a coal, fat power plant and you can reduce your carbon output, you can then sell the unused pollution

allowances. Companies that go over the limit will have to pay, right? So it creates this market to be a little cleaner. Ben, these three stories together, like the Amazon News is horrible, the floods are awful. What do you think about the creation of this long promised emissions market from China. I know this was promised to Obama, I believe, in 2015 by Xi Jinping. Yeah. I think it's a positive step. And I think you see some, you know, the European Union's pressing for a border adjustment tax too, which essentially would be a tax on, you know, other countries that are not taking sufficient steps on climate on their goods. So you're seeing these new public policy responses on China in particular. They've actually shown increasing and positive

ambition in terms of what they're doing at home. And this is the latest step in that regard. The next frontier with China, though, is their Belt Road initiative, right, where they're building, you know, trillion dollars worth of infrastructure along this vast territory. Right. They're not applying the same standards there. The cement. So they're building like, yeah, they're using coal on the Belt Road. So it's good. Next step, though, is like China has to end the U.S. by the way, in our own development efforts around the world.

You know, everybody needs to, the highest bar that they're meeting domestically needs to be rationalized. Brazil is another piece of this picture, which is. is that, you know, one of the things I was struck by late in the Obama administration getting to Paris, and I mentioned before, is how climate change enters into a bilateral relationship. It's not just at the multilateral nerdy climate negotiations that you do business. The biggest issue in the U.S.-Brazil relationship going forward should be the protection of the Amazon. Yeah.

You know, I mean, that bilaterally, when we sit down to talk to Brazil, it shouldn't just be about, you know, commerce and hemispheric issues. This is it, right? And it's a good example of how every country has some. unique piece of this climate puzzle that we have to solve. And this one, clearly they're moving under Bolsonaro in a hugely wrong direction, literally to the point where like the entire planet has a stake in Bolsonaro losing next year. Yeah. Well, you know, last we heard of him, he was at the hospital because he had been hiccuping for days and days and days. Two weeks of hiccups. Yeah,

I wanted to make fun of him. And then I learned it was related to when he was stabbed in 2018, I believe. So that made it less funny to me. But I don't know. We need that got to lose. Yeah. I mean, there's enough other reasons for that guy to lose other than the hiccups. Yeah, I mean, he's wildly corrupt. The latest allegation is that he cut some sweetheart deal to get, I believe, the Indian vaccine for COVID that was at some inflated price when he turned down Pfizer. He's just the worst leader possible for that country. Can you imagine having so little regard for your country and its future that because the Amazon is first and foremost a climate resource, but it's also just like part of Brazil's identity? Indigenous people.

He's just like, oh, that's a bunch of, I got some logger friends, and I want to own the, I want to own the Brazilian libs by cutting down the Amazon. Well, congratulations. Yeah, thanks again. Yeah. Some Haiti update. So on Monday, Haiti announced a new prime minister who they hope will fill the leadership vacuum left by the assassination of President Chauvinel Moyse. Just before Moise's assassination, he announced that a man named Ariel Henri will become the next prime minister. But the prime minister at the time, Claude Joseph, decided to hang on to power after the assassination happened.

So for a while, we had two people claiming to be the prime minister of Haiti, not good. Tough gig. Yeah, tough gig. Joseph announced that he will step down after reportedly lots of pressure from the U.S. and other foreign countries. His consolation prize is becoming foreign minister. So all the gangs kind of sticking together here. U.S. officials say they're pushing for a unity government followed by elections. So, I have no idea what to make of this.

I don't know the players. I'm not in Haiti, obviously. But clearly it was dangerous and untenable to have two people claiming to control the country, right? You don't want it to devolve. But the international community barging in and forcing a solution like this and saying, this guy's in charge now. It sounds like exactly the opposite of what with Lorne-Corps, who I talked to last week, a Haitian journalist, suggested was needed, right, which is just listen to the Haitian people,

listen to civil society. And it comes not long after both Trump and the Biden White House publicly backed President Moyes, who was disputing the link of his term, basically. He said he should be able to hang on for one more. because he took power late, long sort of short. What did you make of this recent news about sort of like U.S. back machinations and that broader criticism that the U.S. is once again tolerating authoritarian rulers in hope of creating stability?

Yeah, I thought, I mean, the New York Times did a long story on this over the weekend about how both Trump and Biden had backed moist, despite kind of constant warnings that this guy is autocratic, this guy is undermining the rule of law. and it's a pretty disappointing story. And it had this other piece that connects to what we're talking about in terms of listening to Haitians. The kind of reflexive talking point is like just, we'll have an election, you know, like. Right.

And that sounds good. Yes. Right. Like, it sounds great. We'll have an election and that'll sort this out and then there'll be a legitimate government. But the problem is like when you rush these elections, I mean, these Haitian elections, they're a mess. Like there's constant charges of fraud.

There's violence in certain areas and intimidation. The elections kind of get rushed and then they're disputed. And look, obviously you want to get to an election. But like to what we're talking about last, we should just keep repeating this. Like, let's listen to the Haitian NGOs and civil society who want democracy in Haiti to work, right? About like. Have since 1804. Yes.

You know, like let's instead of a bunch of foreigners saying, okay, you know, hold an election. And then we can all say this is taken care of even though nothing is fixed. fixed, like, let's listen to these people and develop a process that is driven by them. That is the roadmap to what the government is and what the election process is and how can we better put up guardrails against, you know, corrupt results and the rest of it. I just, there's this kind of, you know, cookie cutter approach where you say, you know, well, we're back that guy because he happens to be there and then we'll hold the election. And including Haiti, that has not worked.

Yeah, I mean, clearly a lot of these leaders have just not served the place well for a while. And I guess they told the president of the Senate who was going to run to stand down. And he was asked why. And he said because the U.S. diplomats basically called and told me not to. So yeah, we are very much thumbing the scale. Speaking of thumbing the scale, let's go to Cuba because last week we talked about these truly unprecedented anti-government protests. So a couple updates since then.

First, it was interesting that the Cuban government made some small concessions to the protesters by announcing that Cubans can temporarily travel abroad and bring back food, medicine, and other essential items without having to pay customs. Did you think that was a significant concession? I did. The other thing that they did, which they almost never do, is they admitted error. They said that they'd made some mistakes. It did suggest to me a government that is nervous about what's happening.

I think it also suggests, like, Diaz Canal, who's the president now, is not Fidel or Raul Castro. Like, he doesn't have the same aura, right? And so he's kind of. of grasping for ways to let some air out of this balloon. So to me, again, broken record here, what we should be trying to do is get as much into Cuba as possible in terms of both the humanitarian assistance, but like greater connectivity to the world. I've seen some people, you know, saying we should like put the internet up in the sky or something. We negotiated internet access and that was beginning to make headway. You can block. You can block.

the internet. The Cubans have Chinese and Russian friends who can show them how to block the internet. Ultimately, the best and most efficient way to get internet access, which we did and worked was like just a negotiated process of getting that in there. It feels like their vulnerability. It's funny, you could look at that. And most people, I guess, in American politics would look at what the Cubans did in terms of allowing for some people to travel and said, oh, that means we should squeeze them more, you know? Right. I'd come to the opposite conclusions. It's no, oh, that means that these guys might allow in more connectivity to the outside world. That's what we should be trying to do.

I'm not optimistic that that's what we'll try to do, given the politics of Cuba. But to me, it would be a huge missed opportunity. If these guys are somewhat desperate and looking to open back up in some ways, despite the last few years of Trump sanctions, if we just kind of issue our statements from Washington, keep everything in place, it's not going to change down there. It's just going to stay the pressure cooker that it is. Yeah, I mean, speaking of pressure cooker,

So I saw that they are, Cubans are dealing with 11% contraction in GDP in 2020, an estimated 500% inflation rate. The other sort of notable things were the government, I guess, has been organizing counter-protests to show bring out everybody in support of the revolution. And then President Biden ordered the State Department to review U.S. remittance policy and then consider adding staff to the U.S. embassy. So those are some things we talked about last week. Those are good steps. And reminses go directly to Cubans, helps them deepens connections. to the United States, diplomats we went there. Because I guess, you know, the way, if it did change, right, like, and this is something

people need to keep in mind, right? It's, they wouldn't just stand up and hold multi-party elections and declare freedom. It would change probably for the worst if the government kind of collapses to some extent and then there's like desperation and the rest of it. You know, that's why you want a diplomatic presence. That's why you want to be there. You want to be engaged to try to understand what's happening and see what we can do to nudge things in a better direction?

One sort of Cuba adjacent story. So, you know, the Trump administration emptied out the embassy because of this mysterious illness or reports of a mysterious illness that was afflicting staff there. It was called the Havana syndrome, for short. Symptoms include debilitating headaches, nausea, vertigo, vision problems. And in some cases, brain damage that resembles a concussion. We've talked about this a bunch. This week, the New Yorker guy named Adam Entis reported that since Biden took office,

about two dozen U.S. government officials serving in Vienna, Austria, have reported symptoms similar to the Havana syndrome. So the working hypothesis still seems to be that Russian intelligence goons are aiming microwave radiation devices at these victims, probably trying to steal their data. Although that doesn't totally make sense to me. If you're like some intel guy with your iPhone, like what's the value of that data? It's not classified. Anyway. But then it's hurting people. Invertently, that's one of the theories.

We don't know for sure. it does seem clear, Ben, that, like, this wasn't some Cuban-led ops. And it's, like, I don't think they're running big teams in Vienna or D.C. You could be 100% sure that the Cubans were not attacking U.S. diplomats in Vienna, which, again, just like the theory from the beginning that I had that a lot of people had is that the Russians are behind this. So the only ones were that aggressive. And that maybe in a place like Cuba, they had some help from some Cubans on the inside. who knows who they, you know, they're pretty deep in places like Vienna too. But like this is a problem of enormous scale because this is happening around the world.

Any U.S. diplomat is probably feeling a little unsafe right now. And again, this is not a criticism because the Biden people just, you know, have only been there for a few months, probably trying to get their arms around this. But this is another one where they need to kind of explain what's happened, I think. I think some greater transparency is needed on this because this is that big of an issue. And then they need to figure out how to communicate that they can deal with this, right? And again, I say that with a lot of, that's not easy. But this keeps popping up.

And I'm glad that Adamentis is still on this because a lot of people kind of moved on from the story, but like it just keeps getting worse. Yeah, I mean, the good thing is, you know, according to this report, you know, Bill Burns, the new CIA director is like seized with the problem. He's really, you know, talking to victims, paying personal attention. And Park is a diplomat, right? So he knows, he's a CIA director who was a lifelong diplomat. So he knows what it must feel like to be in a, you know, posted at some embassy and not know whether your headache is because you got hit with a, you know, weapon or whether you just have a headache.

Yeah, you just, you know, look, both could be true. Yeah. You know, it's a real thing. Well, actually, I tell you, I tell this, again, the story at the beginning after the fall, which I'm not not going out of my way to plug. it's like weirdly the news keeps intersecting with it. But I was in Havana and in 2017 and I learned about these attacks from a friend who worked at the embassy. Oh, really?

Yeah, we had like a drink and he kind of quietly told me about this and I was like, what do you, what? And a couple days later, I got incredibly sick. Oh, no. I had like a massive headache and I was, let's just say it was, you know, it was falling up, you know, yeah, yeah, all that. Sure. And it was like, I was like, I have food poisoning, you know, like that, which happens in Cuba, right? like, you know, you're eating a bunch of different stuff. And I was just incredibly sick for, like, longer than you normally would be, you know,

two days instead of one, basically. And then I was fine. And I probably, you know, 95%, you know, I ate something bad or, you know, the Havana Club rum did something weird to my system or whatever. But like, it's in your head. Yeah, that anxiety ain't going anywhere. It was this anxiety in my head of like, did I get, did somebody hit me here? Like, what's going on here? That anxiety is your friend.

And I guarantee you that that's in the heads of a lot of people serving overseas. Totally. Or people thinking about serving overseas. Yeah. It's terrible. Let's see a little space news. This morning, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his Blue Origin rocket company successfully launched the richest man in the world and three other people, 65 miles above the earth and briefly into space. On a previous pod, we talked about how this was a space race between Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson is an intergalactic dick measuring contest. And so I would be remiss.

We were way ahead of the curve. Speaking of the curve, Ben, I would be remiss if I didn't mention. that Bezos's rocket was by far the most phallic looking of the three. I mean... I have to say, I opened up Twitter this morning. And I was like, we were about two weeks ahead of the zeitgeist on this one. Wow. So I was thinking of like, what is the additional angle?

Because the fallas we've referenced and people should make fun of that because it does say something. But the picture, right? So like when I was a kid and I grew up, there always was iconic pictures of the. like the flight cruise, like before they went up in a space mission. Yeah, looking bad ass, walking slowly. The old cool ones were like the Apollo missions, but even like this space shuttle, they'd always take that picture of the astronauts. Ben Affleck.

Yeah, yeah, and then it's like Affleck, right? Now Bezos put out this picture. Did you see this of the four of them in the blue suits? With the hat? Yeah, and they're all holding the helmets and there's randomly like, it's him and his brother and there's like an old woman who I don't even know who she is. She's an interesting story. She qualified to be an astronaut and was.

not allowed because of sexism and gender roles. She's like 80 years old. So that's like a cool story. Then there's some young kid who I think maybe won it in the auction. He's some Dutch kid. Okay. So here's the thing. Like we'll put aside this woman who I'm glad she went to space.

But like those people that used to be in those pictures like had earned it. You know what I mean? Like they trained to be astronauts for like decades, you know, like their whole lives or they were like fighter pilots in the Navy or something. You know, like these guys just like one. the thrill ride, it's like that picture that maybe they had to post her on the wall when they're a kid of like the people going up in the shuttle or something. I was like, come on, man. Yeah, it's like Jared Bynes went to Harvard. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Like,

you didn't earn this trip to space like all these astronauts that you're posing on. Say what you want about Elon Musk, but he's like his primary job is engineering. He's designing things. Like that's what he does all day. He's not just financing it by selling some shares of Amazon. Like, whatever. I think it's kind of cool. Here's a quote from Mr. Bezos, Ben. The solar system can easily support a trillion humans, Bezos said, if we had a trillion humans, we could have a thousand Einstein's and a thousand Mozart's and unlimited for all practical purposes, resources, and solar power, to which I say, Jeff, the edibles have gotten a lot stronger. Well, and if you have a trillion humans, how many prime customers is that?

You know, like, when he takes the edible and he thinks about the trillion humans and the colonies on Mars and stuff, he's thinking about Amazon Prime, like, that's 100 million kindles. hoverboards and stuff coming down. Like, yeah, like dropping off like your paper towels at the fucking colony. Intergalactic drones. Yeah, yeah. Flipping you some TP. Again, space exploration is cool.

I guess I'm happy about this. I'd love to see these billionaires think about spending money on climate change so that we could hang onto this planet for a while because these rockets are just like belching out like 60 airplanes worth of CO2 every time they launch. So if this becomes like a tourism thing, it's going to be a problem. Well, this is the other question. I generally, because like, you're right, Elon Musk, who we can find a lot to criticize him for, but like he's mostly his tweets. He's been, yeah, mostly his tweets. He's been consistent and diligent in like building something that's like a kind of model, a business, public-private partnership, whatever. But like on these flights, like what, what clearance do you have to get? Like if Jeff Bezos wants to go to space, like, is that just like another air traffic control thing? Like, I mean, how do you do you do that? Do you have to call NASA and be like, hey, can I get, do you need a permit to go to go to?

of space like I bet you do yeah I mean interesting like this I'd like to see I you know if you're Jeff Bezos I guess you just do what you want I'm gonna take an edible and Google that for the hour's right Ben so everybody loves I still think people should have like the army on mass should have taken the edibles in March in area 51 yeah that was a miss once again we were ahead of the curve well not exactly it was like it was like a year ahead of the alien report two years and we were calling for this to happen pre-covid and then they canceled the march remember and it was like well I think there were there all going to die in Death Valley.

That's fair. Because I was going to root it on from here. I was in actionary go. So Area 51, great mystery. Everybody loves a good mystery, right? Knives out, get out, memento scream, Who Frame Roger Rabbit? Here's a new entry from our friends in Australia. Did Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison shit himself in McDonald's in 1997?

Apparently everyone in Australia wants to know. So Ben, the weirdest part of this story, people are wondering, what is Tommy talking about? I guess. No, this is like a huge deal. Morrison brought this up. in a radio interview. So I guess the rumor went viral in 2019. You could have done this on Pots at the World.

Any other time. You could have done this any time. So I guess in 2019, this went so viral that a street artist put up a commemorative plaque at the McDonald's question. And you can find like Kennedy assassination, Zapruder film like breakdowns of what his exit would be going from like the rugby match to home. So it's absolutely hilarious. Some, the most, you know, advanced conspiracy theorists, wonder if he brought this up in

the interview to distract from their. terrible record on COVID. I don't know. Like, what do we make of this? Could be, could bad McDonald's be why those guys got lost naked in the woods a few weeks ago? So I have a couple thoughts on this. And I was going to start with the naked people in the woods.

And just allude to the fact that, like, we keep coming back to Australia through these pretty interesting angles. But I have to say, this is kind of what I love about Australians. Is it, like, how big this, when I started reading about this, like, how big this thing was? Huge. Like, like, if you know all. Australians and their sense of humor, like, the endless jokes that there must be about this episode is just kind of awesome, right?

Like, in the same way that there was something weirdly awesome about, like, the naked dudes who were probably so high that they ran into the woods. By the way, though, a lot of listeners were talking shit to us, being very credulous that we thought that these guys were really scared by a deer. Neither of us ruled out that they were engaging in maybe other activities, like mushrooms, perhaps other. I just didn't understand how you could run so far

into the woods that you got lost or the deer component. The deer component. It's a bad lot. That's a bad cover story if it's cover story. So kudos to the Australian people for keeping this conspiracy theory

or the thing alive about Scott Morrison, who's kind of a pretty creepy guy anyway. But then the other thing is, clearly, and I'm going to go kind of on the record here, he clearly shit himself. I mean, you protest too much.

Like he kept, I saw the, you know, oh, everybody says this. And I see why people think it's a good yarn, but it's wrong. And like, like, it felt like a defensiveness. Like, if you had been accused of shitting yourself in McDonald's, like, 15 years or 20 years ago, whatever, is it probably like, come on, that's crazy. I'm sick of hearing that. He seemed to, like, really engage, you know? Yeah, you know, it reminds me of a very famous viral tweet that I think said something like,

my not engaging in human trafficking t-shirt is raising more. questions that it answered. Yeah, yeah. You know, bringing up the story of you maybe sharding into McDonald's in 1997. And look, man, I mean, I haven't done that, but like, you know, who knows what was going on in 97? It happens. Famously, shit happens.

I mean, McDonald's bathroom is usually not the nicest place. Yeah, he's probably slamming some pints at the rugby match. Yeah, you just get in like a couple of Big Macs after having a little too much to drink. Like, it's all right, man. I love Australia. I want to go back. I love Australia. I want to go to Sydney.

Remember, we went to Australia, went to Australia, went to Canberra. Darwin and those are not where you go as a tourist. We went to Canberra and Darwin and then I went back to Brisbane. But then I got to go to Sydney after government and it's everything that people tell you it is. It's just awesome. It's like. Can't go right now.

Yeah. They're not really vaccinated over there. Yeah. Well, that's why Scott Morrison. I mean, they've had low cases because they did effective lockdowns and stuff. Yeah. Pretty cut off. But like their vaccine rates are like really, really low.

Yeah, not good. I don't think they prioritized it. A little Olympic update. So the games start very soon. Unfortunately, the big news so far is a lot of positive COVID test results that might prevent athletes from competing. So American tennis star Cocoa Golf tested positive. She's so good.

I love her. She's really cool. I guess a young woman minor, an alternate on the gymnastics team tested positive. Several South African soccer players tested positive. Then you have all these athletes flying on commercial flights and a bunch of. bunch of them had been on planes where they found out someone on their flight had COVID. So now they're stuck in like maybe quarantine limbo. And if they have to fully quarantine, they can't compete.

So these poor people are just screwed. It's like you, I don't know that you could do a better job designing an international super spreader event than like slap a bunch of athletes from hundreds of countries on a plane to one place commercially. Yeah, this doesn't feel like it's going well. And this question of whether people who. been exposed after quarantine. I don't know if like Jason can steps, Joan can help us. Does anybody know whether Chris Paul had COVID?

Good question. Because he didn't, it wasn't 14 days and then he was playing. And I'm glad he was playing. It's great to watch Chris Paul. But like I only raised that because it feels like people are kind of making ad hoc calls here. You know what I mean? And maybe they aren't. I mean, and I'm not even talking to the NBA.

I'm talking about the Olympics. Like they haven't been clear about like what are, because the NBA at least has these COVID. protocols that they're, now the Olympics has something like that, but I feel like we're going to face a lot of pressure where the number of athletes exposed is going to kind of complicate the integrity of the competition or there going to be people who flew all the way there who might not be able to compete or like the richer countries whose athletes don't have to like change planes 900 times.

Right. Or were vaccinated earlier. Or vaccinated earlier. Had this kind of weird advantage. There's just going to be a lot of tough calls here. And thus far, it feels like it's not great. Yeah, it's not, not great. It's, it's dampening my enthusiasm a little bit.

I'm still enthusiastic. I'm still like 100% behind our athletes. And that no way diminishes their accomplishment. No. Let's be very clear. I want to see Simone Biles crush it and all the rest of it. I'm going to watch the wheelchair rugby because now you and I are like totally standing U.S. wheelchair rugby.

But like, I just, yeah, this is a tough one. Yeah, I think it's a question of whether some of these breakthrough infections. Like you're infected, but you're not sick at all. And that might be what Chris Paul had. Mostly, I just feel for the Japanese people who are like, we didn't want this. We're in lockdown. We're not making any money on this. We can't go to the games.

I feel so bad for the Japanese. We can't hang out. We can't do anything. Japanese world is out there. Like, we have like total solidarity. And how much it much suck to like spend billions of dollars to host these games, then you can't go. And it makes it feel like COVID's kind of coming around.

It's just not. And there's all these weird controversies, like South Korean. The president's not going because... There's always a Japan-South Korea thing, yeah. He said something, I don't... You know what? Yeah. I don't have the exact wording, but it was something...

So don't wait into it. Don't wait into it. Because you're going to piss off one side of that, and it's not going to be good. Google what a Japanese embassy official said about the South Korean leadership and you'll know why. I'll Google it myself. Yeah. I wasn't tracking. It's kind of funny.

Okay, so three athletes for you, Ben. So Brianna Clark, Brianna is a Paralympian competing in track and field. She's from L.A., so you got a shout out the home. town girl. Totally got her back. Won a gold medal in 2016 in the 400 meters. She has autism developed when she was four, but she's an incredible pedigree of athletes that, you know, make her just a likely winner this year because her mom, Roslyn,

won a silver medal in the 1976 Olympic Games. So when she won her Olympic medal, it was like 40 years later. It's a really awesome story. I mean, because the thing about the Olympics generally is that like you end up crying, right? Because like you see the story, the kind of. brief package that NBC does about all the things that some athlete had to overcome. They're astonishing human beings. Ryan Krauser.

Ryan is competing in the shot put. This guy, the Haas is six-se. Bad-ass. Bad-ass event. Six-seven to 75 lives in Oregon. One gold in Rio in 2016. Okay, listen to this. His cousin qualified for the 2016 games.

His dad was an alternate on the 1984 Olympic team. His uncle is also a two-time Olympian. So, again, serious genes. Can you imagine like the family reunion when you're just a bunch of shot putters? Do you think they just like rip a bunch of beers and then go out to the backyard and see you can like toss the shop? Throw nieces and nephews. Imagine that dad tossing you in the pool. The dad tosses in the pool.

Yeah, they're better than mine. Dad, we're reaching the shallow end here. Last one I got. Angelica Delgado. So Angelica is competing in judo. She's from Miami, Florida. competed the 2016 games in his team USA's top rank hopeful for this year's games. Angelica's dad was on the Cuban national judo team.

and he started training her at nine years old. So that's a tough nine-year-old kid who's like, yeah, let's fight every day in the backyard. Hey, my dad, my judo dad's going to take me out. And, you know, that, I mean, there's just, there's this pretty, you know, like, amazing, you know, interconnection between Cuban athletes and American athletes, people who, you know, came here from Cuba. the scale of athletic, you know, capability from Cubans and Cuban Americans, like, if, you know, is, I mean, baseball, because I love baseball. Like, if you, if you added that up, like, like, if you had an all Cuban team that included Cuban Americans and Cuban players, like, they just, they just crushed the baseball, for instance. Yeah, that's true. Judo, I'm, you know, I'm not sure about, but she's clearly going to crush.

Okay, so that is all our Olympic news for today. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, you will hear Ben's interview with Muhammad Sultan. Stick around for that. It's a really important story at Dovetails with a lot of what we talked about today. So stick around. So I'm very pleased to be joined by Muhammad Sultan, a good friend of mine. Muhammad is a human rights activist and the founder of the Freedom Initiative, a human rights

organization advocating for release of wrongfully detained prisoners across the Middle East and North Africa. Ahmed, thanks so much for being with us here. Thank you so much, Ben, for having me. I really appreciate you. So I will have given a little bit of background on your story in the setup for this interview. So I want to pick it up where we unfortunately found it earlier this month when the head of Egyptian intelligence came to the United States, was in Washington, and kind of put forward

this idea that the U.S. government, as part of its effort to free you from an Egyptian prison had promised the Egyptian government that you would then be incarcerated in the United States. I know that to not be true. I can talk about that if you'd like, but I want to start by just, you know, what was your reaction? How did you learn this news? What did you think when you saw it? Okay, so I definitely want to hear your thoughts on there because you have a different perspective than I did. So this is nothing new. When I first heard it, I thought it was joke. And then when it sank in a little bit, I kind of had a sense this is the top most senior official of the Egyptian government, probably the senior most person that's going to visit the United

States since, you know, it's not looking likely that Biden, at least for optics reasons, is going to roll out the red carpet for a state visit for CC or Trump's favorite dictator as the president named him as July 2020. And so this guy is not. And so this guy is not just the top intelligence chief. This, Abbas Kamen is Cici's right hand man. He was his chief of staff. When he was the head of the military intelligence, he was his chief of staff and he was a defense minister.

And after the coup, he was the person that got everything done for him. He was the interlocutor between the Gulf states that literally funded the coup and thereafter. And so there is the significance of this man coming to the United States on the first visit, trying to do a victory lap. At the same time, there's an Israeli delegation here in the United States, sort of showing off what they were able to do in the Gaza-Israeli ceasefire, trying to capitalize on it. And one of the top four dossiers that he makes an intentional effort

to print out and bring to him to when meeting senior officials with Libya, Gaza, and the Ethiopia dam, he brings up why isn't Muhammad Sultan in prison? and it was sort of mind-blowing. Like, why do they see my human rights advocacy in Washington as a national security threat, almost equivalent to the Ethiopia dam that endangers, according to them, 105 million Egyptians? Why am I that big of a threat to them?

And then it started sinking in, and it was really, really scary. It was scary on a lot of levels that I'm, A, a target of a ruthless regime, like that, but also that they see me as a top national security threat. And so it's scary to say the least, to be honest. Yeah. I mean, all I was going to refer to you, Muhammad, is that, I mean, as you know, I was in the room when President Obama himself appealed to C.C. to release you at a meeting on the margins of the UN General Assembly. There was no word about detaining you or anything. It was just like, where this guy should be released as an American, you know. So I, but, I mean, clearly, the Egyptian government knows that the U.S. government's not going to arrest you and put you in prison, right?

So I want to come back to the impunity that they feel to even be saying something like that. But given that he was saying this, you know, on the Hill meetings in Washington, what is the response you would like to see from the U.S. government and for members of Congress to this kind of really brazen statement? and how have they responded to date? So from everything that we're hearing from folks on the Hill and from the administration is that they sort of dismissed this, you know, that I did not commit a crime that, you know, punishable by U.S. law. I was tweeting, for God's sakes.

I got a life sentence for literally tweeting. My charge for life sentence in a terrorism court in Egypt was spreading false information to shake the grandeur of the state. And so the response, at least a private response to the Egyptians that has sort of been dismissive as it should and trying not to make a big deal about this. Because it's not, the paper itself is not going to prison. And just on that before I answer what I'd like to see, Senator McCain, God rest, so foresaw that the Egyptians would try to do this in 2016. and he wrote a letter when Trump got elected in 2016 at the end of 2016 to the Obama administration and to the State Department.

It's clearly saying the Egyptians have in the past claim that Muhammad is deported to go spend out the rest of the sentence in the United States and asking the U.S. State Department to clearly spell out in a fact sheet, sort of in a legal fact sheet that my case is closed. And we have that letter. It's a private letter. So I've had that on my back pocket in anticipation that this would happen under the Trump administration, given how close CCM him was, given that he was the first, you know, to call Trump. But surprisingly, this happens under the Biden administration. And so the sort of emboldenedness that you're talking about and the impunity that they enjoy, how brazen it is for them on their first visit to come and ask for

an American human rights advocate to be in prison, knowing full well that that's not going to be the case, knowing full well that this paper literally is meaningless. It's about setting the precedent. It's about telling the U.S. administration, hey, you cannot renege on your promises. And so if we release people and we make a deal or whatever a deal that they perceive that they made, we're going to hold you up to it. otherwise we can't have a trusting relationship. And it's gaslighting. It's this bully diplomacy that these ruthless regimes, you know, practice on U.S. diplomats.

And they play on the short-term memory of the institutions. And, you know, I think it's this forum picking, this everything that they're trying to do. And so what I would like to see in response to that is an unequited, sort of statement from the, whether in words or in some sort of optics, I mean, the Obama administration did this really well. So I met Secretary Kerry before he went to strategic talks in Egypt for 45 minutes and, you know, photo ops, weed out the whole deal and sort of sending a very strong message, maybe not a very, like a statement, but that not just am I not. going anywhere, but that the U.S. government is hosting me in this sort of, you know, in these

forms, in these rooms. Thankfully, you know, you brought me up to the Oval Office to meet President Obama, which was one of the best days of my life and taking a picture with him and having that. I mean, this is like these sort of messaging and communicating to the Egyptians that they cannot do this. The Biden administration has yet to do that. The statement, that came out from the state department last week was weak at best, to be honest, to sort of reiterate what was said in 2015, but to say that they can't comment on the legal authority of this paper so as to not open up the can of warms and comment on Egypt's independent judiciary, you know, and it's like you don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but you can say,

Muhammad's case is closed, and, you know, Mohammed is an American citizen that we'll continue to protect him and his rights. So yeah, I mean, that's what I would like to see from some sort of gesture, some sort of something to communicate to the Egyptians to back the hell off and to stop this campaign of intimidation and harassment against me, my family, against other American citizens on U.S. soil, and to just send a very strong message that you can't, you can't just come to the United States, you know, waltzing in these congressional rooms in the White House and State Department, ask for an American to be in prison. like the U.S. government is not going to do the job, the repressive job of an autocratic regime. Like, that's just not going to happen. Why do you think there's been like a reticence to be more forward-leaning and in that messaging and that engagement with you? I mean, I know it's an unknowable question, but do you have a sense of why? I think there's a sense of let's try to have a dialogue with the Egyptians.

Yeah. Let's try to convince them that they need to. to do the right thing, which the regime, I mean, again, why this document, why this newsbreaking with political is so important, not because the paper has no significance then. It's that the regime is sending a message that's not very understood by the US government, unfortunately, and by this administration that it sees human rights advocacy as big of a threat as water scarcity and food poverty for the literally 105 million Egyptians. They see it at the same way because they see it as an existential threat.

CCC's any sort of breathing room, any sort of releases, any sort of just like just loosening up the security grip is an existential threat on him personally and his rate. And so that message is sent loud and clear, but then there are those in the administration that still feel like we cannot. center human rights in our foreign policy, that this is a longstanding legacy of relationship that needs to be maintained, that we need them for counterterrorism operations, we need them for this. But what happens when then a regime like this extends its hands beyond its own borders,

but also within U.S. borders, that violates Section 6 of the Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the arm sale of arms to, countries where there is a pattern of intimidation and harassment. At the Freedom Initiative, we just released a report that Secretary Blinken acknowledged hours within its release. If this is not happening to me, there's at least two dozen cases that this is more than two dozen cases in the United States where there is a pattern of intimidation and harassment by the Egyptian regime of American citizens. And the direct result of that is self-censorship, of the diaspora of being so scared that the arm, the, the, the,

hands of the regime will reach them in the United States, but even if they can't, they're going to take their family hostage. They took my family hostage. Ben, my dad is still disappeared since June 2020 because I filed a Torture and Victim Protection Act lawsuit in U.S. federal court. I don't know if my dad's dead or alive right now. My family still lives in fear. I stopped communicating with them out of fear that they're going to face repercussions because of my advocacy. And so What all of this and all of this now also what this paper represents is that this targeting and harassment of me, my family, and all of the other Americans, it comes from the top of the pyramid. And speaking with former officials, they're saying Abbas Kamel would not have ever done this without CCC's orders and directive to mention this as one of the top four national security threats. And so what the U.S. admin has to do in response is yet to be, I mean, the fact that they're still considering the $300 million security waiver that they have to make a decision on, the fact that they're still sort of banking on some dialogue that's going to work when there's a fundamental disagreement in the way that they see governments.

And, you know, I don't know that they're going to get to a place where they're going to change. But this dialogue period, I don't know how long the admin is banking on it. But these authoritarian are buying time and they feel emboldened. And, you know, Egypt gets away with so much, Ben. It gets away with so much. People don't care about it. People don't talk about it. It's not Saudi.

But it's not going to be Saudi. Just like Saudi wasn't what it is now until Ahashoggi happens. And then it's like, oh, my God. how did this happen? And it's like, well, no, shit. Activists have been saying this for a very long time. Yeah. I tell this story in my book and to some extent on Missing America,

another podcast I talked to you for, but not everybody will have heard it. And I don't mean to take you back. What I wanted to draw out for people, though, is that some people listening might think, well, these guys are maybe they're bad guys, but we need their help on things like counterterrorism. And I think that the episode in your awful, Odyssey through the Egyptian prison torture justice system, that really puts the lie to that is when they literally put an ISIS recruiter, you know, allowed an ISIS recruiter roaming the prisons to come into your cell and you're on a nonviolent hunger strike. You know, what was that experience like

of recognizing that a government that receives billions of dollars in American assistance is allowing, is not only detaining you, but is also kind of trying to radicalize you, allowing ISIS recruiters in your cell and connect that for people to why we shouldn't necessarily be moving forward with things like the next $300 million in assistance to the Egyptian government. Yeah, I mean, it's very, so you told the story. I mean, I was on a hunger strike. I was one of the longest hunger strike to Egyptian prisons. I almost died over a dozen times going into high police.

McComas and low blood pressure, all of that. I'm very thankful and fortunate and grateful to you, President Obama and the thousands of people that advocated for me to be here today to be able to tell the story. But throughout it, in the last six months, I was in utter isolation where the regime literally pulled every trick in the book and tried to torture me physically, psychologically. And from time to time, they would allow ISIS members. And so they would torture the hell out of me so I can break my hunger strike. They light control, temperature control.

They would throw people and let them die in my cell and leave their corpse in the room for, they would torture my dad in the next cell and just, you know, ask me to break my hunger strike. And then they would do all of that and sort of trying to rile me up. And then they would allow an ISIS member to come in my cell when I was not allowed to see a single soul, it was even worse than solitary confinement. They would try to talk me out of, try to talk me out of my hunger strike and say, hey, this nonviolent stuff doesn't work. It's might makes right. The world only understands the language of violence. And, you know, for me, it was seeing this, I didn't, I couldn't understand it. And then there was another point where on March 16,

2015, my dad was sentenced to death literally for politicized charges. And on the same day, there was an ISIS member in front of the same judge that literally got released on bail. Literally, we were on the same transport car back, and it made no sense until after I was released. It made all the sense in the world. We gave our entire relationship is based off of There's military security assistance that we've been giving them for decades. And they need the extremists, and the extremists need them to survive. And they both, their common enemy is anyone who's a moderate, anyone, any sort of moderate opposition that has his voice. They both need each other.

And so you put these people disenfranchised youth of the Arab Spring who had hopes and aspirations to be partake in their future and all of that. And you torture the shit out of them. And torture that literally is unimaginable. You put them in these horrendous underground dungeons for years going through a system of injustice, going through no due process, nothing. And you have these recruiters in there. You want to radicalize these people. These are the same prisons, Ben, that in the 50s, 60s and 70s produced Islamic jihad movement

that gave birth to Al Qaeda, that grandfathered ISIS. And right now, as we speak, these prisons are fertile ground for radicalization. And I can't imagine what it will produce because there is a higher concentration of people in those prisons in much worse conditions than they were in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And it makes me so frustrated that people don't see that, that we are subsidizing this with our tax dollars. They need our tax dollars to continue this. And it's so frustrating. Yeah. I mean, I just, I think that it's long past time to not be providing assistance for that kind of human rights abuse and even in our own interest for that kind of radicalization. One last question I want to ask you, you know, I mean, one of the things that's inspiring about your story is that, you know, you could have just kind of come back to the United States, you know, disappeared into the economy, gotten a job.

like you decided to become a human rights activist despite this intimidation and probably the intimidation is worse because you decided to become a human rights activist. You know, you're friends with someone like Jamak Shogi who paid the ultimate price. But what keeps you going? Like what, I asked this question to Ron Ayyub, who is facing kind of harassment and charges in India for her journalism. But for the people out there, like, what keeps you going and how can people help? What would you ask of people listening? So what keeps me going is not having a choice. There's so many people that depend.

This is much bigger than just me. And this is about 60,000 political prisoners in Egypt and tens of thousands of Saudi political prisoners. This is about this regime literally going with all its might against individuals and people. And we don't have a choice but to sort of push. back in the best way that we can. What keeps me going is my dad in prison, my friends, activists who are literally in prison over tweets or posts. What keeps me going is seeing people get released and going back and resuming their life and their emotional career, their financial life, their family life. That keeps me going every single day.

And it's far in between that we see these successes, but when they happen, they're so fulfilling on every way. And lastly, what keeps me going is people like Mustafa Qasem, who was an American citizen that died last year in prison because Trump didn't advocate hard enough for him with CCE to get released. And he was the first case that we ever worked on. And him dying in prison after having gone on a hunger strike it made me sort of very even more committed to say, honestly, never again, never again, that

we're going to allow people to die in these prisons without giving them a voice, without, you know, putting their stories out there. And what can people do? I mean, go to the freedom initiative, thefreedomI.org and get involved. Call your congressmen and senators. Tell them you don't want your tax dollars to go to an autocracy and an opportunity. autocratic regime that is both repressing its own people, using the weapons that we send them against their own people, and repressing even American citizens and what's called get, get active posts, share. Honestly, the smallest things can make the biggest difference. You don't know if you can retweet something and the right person can see it and be,

you know, a move to change something. So that's, that's it. Well, look, that's a great message to leave us with. Really appreciate you joining us. I'm sorry you're once again going through this, but I know you're one of the most resilient people I've met. So thanks for joining us, Ed Mubarak, and hope you have, hope that things move in the right direction here on some of these issues. Thank you so much, man.

Thank you for having me. You really appreciate it. Thank you to Mohamed Salton for joining the show. Ben, one story I didn't bring up to you because it was fake news. Did you see the viral New York Post link about the anti-sex beds at the Olympic Village? No, I tend to not go to the New York Post so much. So good practice, good hygiene. Usually they're attacking me.

The only time I see it is when they see it. Yeah, they're really mean to us. So the organizers are making a lot of the beds for athletes out of cardboard, I guess, to save space, to recycle them, whatever. The New York Post decided they were anti-sex beds because, I guess in their minds you couldn't have sex on them because they might collapse or something. What is in your post? What are they into over there? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, they're also making, they're really, I think, showing a lack of imagination for some of the most athletic people on the planet. Yeah, they could figure it out.

They could figure it out. But yeah, so that was fake news. But we're repeating. That feels like fake news to me. And like going too far out of your way to generate an Olympic story, which I support to some extent. But come on. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you just forget it's like, it's like the Murdoch paper. Like everybody, like, yes, it's like a tabloid. So sometimes there's like a funny story. But like it's also like, you know, it's like the family paper. And the thing that's talked about it is people are like, who reads that rag, you know, reads that rag, every like morning TV producer who lives in New York who gets into some car that's paid for by their network in the morning and has like that paper there in the New York Times in the journal. I used to be a daily news guy growing up. Really? But it kind of, it used to be awesome. It used to be like, there used to be these legends. I don't know if you've heard of like Pete Hamill and all these like hard scrabble, hard drinking, like New York political and sports reporters.

Lupico was there. But yeah, it kind of fell in harder times. Yeah, harder times. Maybe cricket should start like a tabloid newspaper. That'd be fun. I do think there's a space for that on the left that's missing. A lot of stories and you get laundered through some rags, you know, come on the other side. Yeah, the right's been pretty smart about having like a really entertaining tabloid.

And we're just going to slide like some insight. sane editorial perspective into it. You know, it's worked very well in the UK and Australia. Highly effective. Okay, well, great to be back in studio with you. This is awesome. This is so nice. Look these guys.

They're beside themselves, the joy. They look so happy. If you could see this team here. All right, talk to you 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 Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week.