Pod Save the World - The digital war in Ukraine

Episode Date: April 20, 2022

Ben and Tommy cover the latest from Ukraine, including how the fighting has moved east, the sinking of a Russian battleship, and how the war is evolving on the digital battlefield. They also discuss how fighting between Israeli police and Palestinian worshippers could break up Israel's government coalition, Ronan Farrow's new report about spyware for profit, Jared Kushner's $2 billion kickback from the Saudis, and the economic impact of the lockdowns in China. Then Ben is joined by award-winning journalist Louisa Lim to discuss her new book, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong.How to Help in Ukraine Come Back Alive Ukrainian Congress Committee of America: donate to humanitarian efforts United Help Ukraine: donate to the life-saving medical supplies to Ukraine’s front lines Revived Soldiers Ukraine: donate to treatment of the wounded and the provision of hospitals Razom for Ukraine: donate to tactical medical training and emergency response in Ukraine Nova Ukraine: donate to humanitarian aid for Ukraine Vox: How you can help Ukrainians For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Potsape the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, welcome back to the States. Back. Is it true you went to a Le Pen rally and we're leading a chant? I was in Paris, you know, during the election and after. And let's say there wasn't a ton of enthusiasm for... Marine. Or Macron, for that matter.

But there's no left in this election. So, once again, people... are kind of, I don't think she's, we'll talk about this, but I don't think she's going to win. I hope. I tried to translate Le Pen and Putin sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. It didn't really work in France. It was Assisdons an Arbvre. No.

It doesn't know. It doesn't for me. Okay. So today we're going to talk about Ukraine, the next phase of the Russian invasion in the East, some major developments over the last week in the real and the digital battlefield. We're also going to talk about why some members of the Israeli government coalition are threatening to leave it. Ronan Farrow has a new report about spyware for profit that hits a little close to home

and the economic impact of the continued lockdowns in China. And then finally, because we just, how do we not talk about it? We got to talk about Jared Kushner and a Saturday take back. Yeah, I'm sorry, I missed that last week. So we got to keep this going, though. It was hard. It was hard not having you here last week, but I'm glad you're back. And then, Ben, you're doing our interview today.

Who are you talking to and what are we going to hear? I'm talking to Louisa Lim, who's a really great award-winning journalist, who's reported for BBC and NPR. And she has a new book out called Indelible City. It's about Hong Kong. It's about, obviously, the protest movement, what it was like to be both a Hong Konger and a journal is covering that. The history that provides context.

I think that the dedication of the book, one of the all-time great dedications of a book I've ever seen, sums it up, though. The book is dedicated to everybody who fucking loves Hong Kong. That's a great. It gives you an idea of where Luis Olin comes down on the, Objectivity scale, which I love. I love that.

Where does she live? She's in Australia. I was going to say, okay. Two quick plugs. Check out the latest episode of Offline. John talks with Lauren Williams, the former editor-in-chief of Vox, about launching Capital B News, which is a new nonprofit news organization that centers black voices. And also check out America Dissected with Dr. Abdul-A-Syad.

He's talking about pain, what it is, how it shapes our society, and how people and providers can have a better conversation about it. So check out offline and America Dissected. you get your podcast. And tell me, just two quick things for me. What do you got? I'm at Stanford on Thursday. You see McFall? Well, our former boss, President Obama is giving a speech and disinformation, but then I'm on a panel. I thought he already gave that. No, this is the actual speech. Oh, okay. It was like a conversation. Got it. I'm on a panel on. I had some disinformation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You get some misinformation. I want a panel on digital authoritarianism.

And then on Sunday, I'm at the LA Times book festival at USC. talking about my book. Excellent. If you're at Stanford or in the LA area, go see Ben. Yeah. It'll be fun. Check it out. Sorry for my disinformation, President Obama. Okay, so we'll start with Ukraine. So the next phase of this Russian assault on Ukraine appears to have started Monday.

President Zelensky announced via a video address that the bulk of the Russian military is now focused on the Dombas region, which is that easternmost part of Ukraine. The Russian army looks like they have increased shelling of targets in the area, and they're still moving troops and supplies to position for a long base. larger ground invasion. So there's some debate about like whether this is the beginning of the new assault or whether there's, I don't know that it matters. It's about to get awful. The Pentagon is warning that the Russians may have learned from their initial mistakes in the war. They're not going to get as overextended. They will likely do a better job supplying their troops with

logistical and air support. There's some debate though, Ben, about whether Russia will be able to replace its more advanced weapon systems that require high tech components because international sanctions may have cut those off. So that would be a good thing. But, regardless, Ukrainian units have taken a lot of losses, too, so they're in tough shape. There's a small group of Ukrainian fighters that continue to hold out in Mariople. Some estimate they're down to about 2,000 troops. They have been under siege for nearly two months. They're basically hold up in this massive steel plant complex with underground tunnels and hardened places to high.

It's like the scariest thing I could ever imagine. This a Mariopal victory would be important for Russia because it frees up troops to go fight in the east and they'll give them basically total control of southeastern Ukraine. Biden announced 800 million more in arms to Ukraine. That included the javelin anti-tag missiles. We've talked about the switchblade drones we talked about previously. 11 helicopters. Interesting that we had all this talk about escalation.

It's like, here's 11 helicopters on top of that. Radar systems this morning President Biden is doing a call with the G7, NATO, and EU leaders to talk about how to coordinate in this next phase. Ben, we're talking about this in terms of like the first phase of support and now this new phase. I mean, do you think there's something the West should be doing differently? I wonder how they're thinking about this. Yeah. What's interesting about this whole dynamic, first of all,

is that Russia is now reverting back to doing the thing that we thought they might do, right, which is this campaign that is focused on consolidating the Donbos region in eastern Ukraine and connecting it down to Crimea through Mario. Right. That was all right. Like if you go back to, you know, before the war, that was the most logical thing for them to try to do. Instead, we had this kind of massive overextension and self-owned. by Putin in failing to decapitate the government in Kiev, then all these war crimes and

all these other areas. And now it's like they're going back to the plan where they just focus on the east, which is in some way simpler for them because the supply chains run back into Russia. They've been fighting a war in the Dombas off and on since 2014. Yeah, they know the turf apparently. They know the turf better, right? They've got some people more embedded in some of the locations. All that said, I think what this is. means, though, is, you know, the war in Dombas was a stalemate back in 2014 and 15, thousands of casualties, really intense fighting on the ground, you know, significant Ukrainian military presence. And so this could really be like a protracted grinding conflict in eastern Ukraine. If this just becomes a fight

over territory, basically, in the Dombas region and down to the south, what that means for for NATO and those of us countries that are arming Ukrainians, I think it makes even more awkward this question we've talked about in the past about like, what is an offensive weapon or a defensive weapon? Because essentially like, okay, if you're defending Kiev and you're giving them anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft weapons to defend themselves, that's one thing. But I mean, if Ukraine is fighting a back-and-forth ground war against Russia, Not only do they need to defend themselves, like, presumably they need to take back the territory that Russia is currently occupying in the Dombos region. So they need tanks. They need hawitzers. They need helicopters. And that's what they're going to be asking for, right?

And so I think the question from a policy perspective is, do we continue to maintain this kind of strange line between offensive and defensive? Or do we just say, hey, if there's going to be kind of an extended, protracted conflict over the Dombos region, are we trying to help them, like, win that? conflict and that's more than giving them javelins you know or are we trying to kind of help them just defend territory that they're currently holding and that's more the kinds of weapons we've been giving them it feels like the US is opening up yes to some heavier weapons the helicopters and the and the howitzers and we're training these guys on it and and that could continue to escalate yeah it's worth noting that the Russians are still lobbing like the occasional missile strike into western Ukraine yeah they struck Leviv on Monday night I

think it killed seven people but yeah I'm glad you mentioned the howitzers because Because part of what you heard, you know, Derek Shalais say when he was on the show was that, you know, we need to train up Ukrainian soldiers before we can give them certain kinds of equipment. Well, we're two months into this thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, and you're seeing them give this howitzer artillery system, these more advanced radars. It sounds like they're, we are, the U.S. is providing training outside of Ukraine on those systems to specific Ukrainian troops. We'll then go back in and train other guys on those systems. And, you know, there was all this discussion early on about whether the U.S. or NATO should give Ukrainians.

the Mi-29 fighter jets. But there was an article in the Washington Post a couple days ago where Ukrainian fighter pilots were saying, those planes won't help us. They're too old. They're too shitty. Train us up on F-16s or more advanced planes. And there's people in that article that suggest

give these Ukrainian pilots two weeks and maybe they could fly the system. So I don't know. I mean, this is, we are on the escalation ladder here. And some of these more advanced systems seem a little more plausible. Well, and first of all, I think that you mentioned the Leviv strike. I mean, one of the things I've watched is the Russians are, number one, they're going to continue to probably try to just terrorize the Ukrainian population with indiscriminate bombing of cities, even outside of the east. But also, like, they want to try to disrupt the flow of all these weapons into Ukraine.

The Russians claimed, I think, that that's part of what they're doing in Leviv. I don't really trust anything they say. But it is something to watch. Do they try to kind of, you know, I was thinking about if we train these Ukrainians, presumably they're a pretty big target when they go back in the country. Right. And so I'm sure that we have ways of trying to get people in and out that are, you know, with big land borders possible. But to your point, like, this could become a not just multi-month war, like this could drag on for years, right? And we've been doing these kind of aid packages to get announced with a lot of ceremony and like, you know, but if you start to look at what's in those packages over time, it's like a tremendous amount of small arms ammunition. It's just kind of sustainment of the Ukrainian military.

Communications logistics. communications, logistics. And I do think at a certain point, it's like NATO getting together and saying, wait a second, what these aren't just like individual one-off announcements of packages by countries so they can tell their people that they're doing something. It's like, what is the plan here? And what are we prepared to give the Ukrainians? And you're right.

Like at a certain point, if this is like a multi-month, multi-year struggle for the existential survival of Ukraine, when you shift from giving them like the ex-Soviet bloc, stocks that are like in a warehouse in Poland and start giving them like the new systems. It feels like if you're if we're in this, I don't know why we wouldn't do that. It kind of feels weird to kind of secondhand, you know, right this. And I don't want to diminish the scope of the support the U.S. has already given. It's massive. It's enormous.

It's millions and billions. So I'm just more talking about like what does it mean to say, hey, we might need like a six month plan here like about what we're giving them, how we're getting it in, what systems we're willing to share, and whether we're willing to get to a point where we're helping them a kind of retake territory they've lost in the Dombas region and not just helping them, like, defend the outskirts of Keith. Yeah, I mean, you can see that makes it so much more complicated. I mean, how do you tell the difference between a Ukrainian pilot trained up on a F-16, an American pilot flying through Ukraine on an F-16, right?

I mean, this escalation risk is... Yeah. So all over the place, you know, a lot of analysts are speculating that Putin wants to get some sort of victory accomplished by May 9th, which is a holiday. and Russians commemorate their victory over the Nazis in World War II. To your point about how this work could end been, I mean, where everyone's wondering, like, how it's being received in Russia itself. We're getting some glimpses.

The mayor of Moscow said that 200,000 jobs could be at risk in the capital because of sanctions. It's a pretty huge impact. The Russian central bank said Monday that consumer prices are on average 16.7% higher than they were a year ago. So that's some serious inflation, you know, worse than ours. There's also this, you know, constant effort to gauge the, impact of Russian casualties on the population. One notable example came last week when Ukrainian forces hit Russia's most important naval vessel in the Black Sea, the Moscow, and sank it. The Russians lied about what happened. They said the ship was damaged by weather and a fire on board and that the crew

was all safe. But you're starting to see families of Russian sailors serving on that ship saying, hey, we haven't heard from our kids. Does anyone know where they are? There was a report in the Washington Post about how Ukrainian officials are running the faces of captured or killed individuals through artificial intelligence, in some cases, figuring out who they are, contacting their families directly, sending them pictures of their dead bodies. I don't know how you feel about those kinds of steps, like effort to really, like, inject the reality of the war back into Russia. It's weird.

But I mean, using Clearview AI, which is like used by police in the U.S. to identify dead kids and send their families messages is hard for me. to wrap my head around, but I don't know. I mean, maybe that's just sort of the only option. Yeah, I, I, I, first of all, on the sanctions piece, um, it's interesting to me if you look, unpack those reports, you know, we focus so much more on these kind of macroeconomic indicators and how's the ruble doing. Part of what was so interesting is, is where there seemed to be really worried is on their incapacity to get parts, components, supply chain stuff in, right? Right. Which is a combination of sanctions and companies pulling out and export controls.

that's interesting, right? That, like, where these sanctions might work, we may be, like, people may focus on kind of the wrong things. Like, how's the Russian stock market during the day? And it's more like, no, this fucking factory is going to have to close because they can't get the parts that they need to make. That's really important. I think what is missing, though, is also just whether they have revenue coming into them. And they are still bringing in, like, billion bucks a day. Oil and oil and gas.

And, like, so that question is going to hang over with the Europeans, whether they can you do that. On this other stuff, I saw those same reports about, first of all, sinking that ship is a big deal. It's a pretty big, you know, puncturing of Russian, you know, military might, which is already, you know, obviously taking a hit here. But I saw reports of like literally parents finding out, you know, days later. First of all, from the Russian side, you're a pretty fucked up society if, like, you don't even feel the need to tell parents that your kid died in the war. Truly. I mean, it's, it's really dark that they don't even bother.

They have so little value in the human lives of the people they send into this war that they don't even feel the need to tell people. And presumably what they're doing is they're like waiting and then they'll lie to the families maybe until they weren't on that ship so that they don't feel like they lost as many people on the ship. Like, that's dark. Yeah. I mean, like, America, America has done plenty of dark shit.

like in wars. Like we don't, we don't hide the, the reality of casualties from the families. You know, it's just, it's, there's reports of them

just leaving bodies on the battlefield. I mean, Zolenski's talked about this. It clearly really offended him, upset him. No, I think, so I think we should,

it's worth, like, pausing on all this stuff that we are learning about the, the, the deep rot in Russian society from Putin on down. This is another indicator of that.

On the, there's going to be, a lot of questions like this. I mean, on the one hand, there's something deeply uncomfortable about, like, texting parents' pictures of their dead children. Yep. On the other hand, like, I, how do you puncture the complete absence of any, like, semblance of objective reality in Russia? Like, I don't, the idea that you'd want to just figure out, like, okay, you can't get through propaganda channels, like, we just, we want to communicate this directly. What you would like to think is that there's ways of doing that

that are not like involving images that are not involving kind of stuff that gets up into the Geneva Conventions, right? I mean, the same thing came up with like... Treatment of captured prisoners. Yeah, when the Ukrainians were like parading, you know, captured prisoners on TV to say like, hey, we didn't know what the fuck we were sent here to do. Technically, that I think is in violation of Geneva Convention. On the other hand, you can totally understand the impulse of the Ukrainians. And so I think there's going to have to, have to be a lot of thought given to like, okay, if you are being bombarded as Ukrainians are and you're desperate to get the truth to Russians, I think you can give these people a bit of a

pass that they're going to be trying all kinds of things to just get the message out about what's happening. What you would hope that they continue to do is maintain a degree of moral high ground where, you know, they're not engaged in, you know, like, hey, here's a picture of your mutilated conscript who was sent here. I am saying this from a recording studio in Los Angeles. If my sisters were being raped by Russian soldiers, and I'm not saying that in the glibway at all, like that's happening. Like, I can't imagine their mentality, though. So it's hard for me to, you know, I think with all the, this stuff with the Ukrainians, it's going to be hard to kind of be counseling restraint. Similarly, I mean, there's reports of Ukrainian troops using cluster

munitions, which are illegal or banned, no one should be using those munitions. They're indiscriminate killers of civilians. But again, to your point, like, we're sitting here in L.A. If my country was being invaded, I would probably fire back with whatever I had a vote. Yeah, yeah. And Saudis used that in Yemen, by the way. And the U.S. supports that. All the time. Well, I think the U.S. is using. A couple of other things I noticed in the digital media space. So first, you know, to this point, I mean, Wired had an interesting piece about how Ukrainian intelligence services have been able to find these lists of basically Russian personnel, like intelligence officers, troops, and then just docks them, like make their personal information

public on the internet. It's not clear again what the impact has been, but, you know, one of those lists was purportedly a list of Russian troops who fought in Buccia and may have committed war crimes. So like huge step forward potentially, if it's a real list in terms of holding people who committed war crimes accountable or at least figuring out who was there. I think this is critically important. This is like really a first opportunity even beyond what you could do in Syria to like part of what's difficult to international justice and I've heard from people who I know work in it like is getting it literally at the moment of the crime. Usually you can get evidence after. In Ukraine, what we're seeing is like pretty real time evidence that would be

relevant to war crimes. Totally. Accountability. And I think this this is something we should devote a lot of resources to supporting the accumulation of that record. Yeah. And like sort of similarly. So this report, this outlet ARS Technica, ours technical, I'm not sure to pronounce. It's that they reported Monday that Google had stopped blurring out sensitive Russian military sites on Google Maps. Google later said, hey, no, nothing has changed. Maybe you just noticed that it was a little, you know, that the resolution was there because you zoomed in. Regardless, it does speak to this broader trend that you were just getting up then of open source researchers using commercial satellite imagery, social media posts, like basic mapping software to track Russian military movements, loss of equipment like tanks. So we have almost a real-time assessment of how many of their BTGs are fully up and running with tanks and all the equipment they need.

And then the last thing I saw was if you go to buy me a fighterjet.com, you are asked to crowdsource a $25 million fighter jet for Ukraine. It's just like we are, this is such a crazy new world of war fighting and equipping and intelligence collection. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, the big tech angle is really connected to the war crimes piece too because, you know, TikTok and, you know, other platforms are going to have real-time evidence on their platforms that they can either dump, purge, sensor, or, I would hope, mechanisms are set up for them to be sharing information that can be evaluated by the kinds of people that investigate these things. I'm showing Ben, buy me a fighter jet. Jet. I mean, let's make sure that's... Wild. I mean, I don't want to discredit that. You do want to make sure that there's not like a...

It's like Steve Bannon member. Yeah, before he said a lot of Bitcoin over to this thing. Build the wall. Like, just make sure that like the GoFundMe is actually going to the Ukrainians. Check it on the relevant sanctions. I think, but this is like, this is the new... Like, Putin is in many ways, like, it's the analog 20th century war where you try to invade and conquer your neighbor. But it's in this kind of new environment. And what's been interesting to me is that Russia got, and it is,

to kind of Putin getting a bunch of smoke blown up his ass about what a great strategy was, which I think was overinflated, they were the ones credited with being at the cutting edge of like disinformation. And actually, that's not what's bearing out. What's bearing out is that like, not only Ukraine's good at this, but like if you kind of awaken this kind of generationally younger, small de-democratically oriented people to kind of participate in the war effort. Hackers like anonymous. Biden's intelligence folks. This is going to end up being a thorn in Russia's side, and it's going to make it hard for it. I mean, and to go back to like even the texting, part of what's come out in, and this is not just Russian casualties that are encountered, but conscripts.

Like the Russians said they weren't sending conscripts to fight in the war. And one of the things that is coming out in all this digital effort is how many people are just total bullshit. Like there are a bunch of conscripts over there. Now, how Putin thought if this became a multi-year war, like he's not going to be able to hide it from people. but the fact that he's been trying to, I think speaks to the utility of spot letting all this. But this is going to, look, this is going to be hit or miss. Like some stuff is going to be innovative and work out.

Some, they'll be grifters. It's like anything else online these days, right? You know, we got Malcolm Nance over there fighting in the... There's a little dudes on MSNBC just like in full kit, just like hold the gun doing. Like, this is what is this world we're living? Very weird for. Last thing. on Ukraine. So last week I mentioned how, you know, thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

Sweden and Finland are now openly considering joining NATO. Finland, just a reminder, has an 830-mile border with Russia. Finland's minister for European affairs says they are highly likely to join in response to Mitri Medvedev, former president, former prime minister, former buddy of Barack Obama's who has gone full heel, not that he was ever a good guy, but you know what I'm saying. Medvedev from his perch at some, you know, the deputy of a security council. He's been downgraded like 75 times. He threatened both countries in response by saying, you know, if you join NATO, Russia has to deploy nuclear and hypersonic weapons to the Baltic region. The Lithuania's defense minister basically called Russia's bluff by saying, you guys already

have nukes in this region. We know you do. Yeah. What's the difference? So, Ben, I mean, the interesting thing here is Finland, Sweden, I think they have pretty professional, legitimate militaries. No joke, man. Yeah. So like, you know, and Finland's fought a couple wars against the Russians, they fucking fight on skis. Yeah. I mean, how badass is that? But like strategic genius here by Putin? No.

Drive these guys into NATO? I don't think so. I mean, first of all, this is a point worth underscoring, like, whenever we were involved in these kind of NATO-associated military exercises or interventions in the Obama years, like, the Nordic militaries generally, like, don't fuck around. What was the term? Punch above their way? The punch above their way, which we, yeah, overused.

But so Finland and Sweden joining are both significant, you know, additional contributors to NATO, but also like just the ultimate self-owned by Putin. I mean, like, you know, here's another country on their border, joining NATO, like, this is having the opposite effect of what he wanted. Nobody, you know, they can threaten all they want. It's like, once you have decided to threaten the world with nuclear war and have invaded a country and committed still war crimes, like, we get it. You're dangerous.

So you're, you know, we're actually going to deal with that by amping up our defenses, not by, like, succumbing to your. threats because you're already doing the things that you're threatening us with. Medvedev, by the way, I want to pause on this. He said some really whacked out crazy shit since this war began, like some of the worst, like kind of Ukrainian denialism and stuff. Yeah. This is the guy, like, he's a good case study and like what Putin has done. I don't want to suggest I looked into his soul. Like I, but he was, you were, he, this is like probably not his preferred outcome. It just shows what, what I take away from that is just how much some guy like that has completely sold his soul, to return to the soul concept, to Putin.

And like Putin just has all the leverage on this guy. He clearly decided many years ago that he like has no dignity and will say and do whatever he needs to please Vladimir Putin to maintain the wealth he has and the status he has. It's just a sign of how pathetic these people are. You know, like Dmitri Medvedev would prefer to be hanging out, I think, probably in like, you know, European soccer tournaments and, like, London nightclubs. Like, like, he's just, like, he has no dignity. He came out of a different place, right? I mean, he was younger, right?

He was, like, a campaign manager for Putin. He wasn't a KGB guy. He came to Silicon Valley and, like, gave a speech off an iPad wearing jeans. He wanted to be that guy. He wanted to push sort of rule of law in certain reforms. And when he became president, you know, you could argue he made a bunch of mistakes, most specifically allowing the, not, uh, or a block. the Libya resolution at the UN Security Council of allowing that effort to go forward.

Apparently that infuriated Putin. But like Putin just cut the legs out from under him from the very beginning because he can't allow an independent power base. Yeah, no. But since you know, Medvedev is like, and again, I'm not suggesting this guy was a liberal in any way. The thing he wanted to do, the thing he invested himself in was trying to create like a tech sector in Russia. The rule of law reforms was his big thing. Was about trying to create like, you know, a climate where you could actually have innovation. Like IP.

Yeah, so it's not just like oil and gas economy. Like I think that was actually a legit interest of his. And, you know, it just shows you that like, and that's not, I mean, like, like at the end of the day, it's a servile economy where everybody serves Vladimir Putin. It's a servile political system. And this guy, yeah, I don't think he believes what he's saying, which makes it worse in a way. There's no half in. What I'm saying is it makes it, I'm not excusing the guy. What I'm saying is that makes him even more pathetic.

It's like, you know, like, oh, I got to stand up there and threaten people with, like, if you've seen Dimitri and Medvedev, like, not the kind of guy, like, like, comfortably threatens, like nuclear war. No, I almost walked into him physically in the hallway. I was in the prod castle. I came around a corner really fast. I was trying to find you guys, and I was late. And I ran it to almost hit him in his security detail. And he would have foreheaded my belly button. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was wearing like a little purple suit. He looked like Prince kind of, a Russian. Prince, the singer, symbol. But yeah, no, I'm not a good guy. Clearly, all in on this fucking genocidal war. All these people. I mean, it's just really, it's like what has happened? What, you know, decades of Putinism has done to that country is just really abominations.

Hollowed it out. Okay, let's take a quick break. We come back. We'll talk France and the UK, Israel, China, spyware, and Jared Kushner. So two updates from last week, Ben. So first, in France, where voters go to the polls, this. Sunday, I think the 24th, and the side between President Emmanuel Macron and a right-wing racist nut named Marie Le Pen. In the last few days, Le Pen and her party were accused of misusing

European Union funds, so we'll see if that traditional scandal has a political impact. And in the UK ban, speaking of scandals, Boris Johnson's justice minister resigned after Boris received a light penalty for his constant partying during COVID. Again, you were just across the pond doing a bunch of shoe leather reporting. Some shoe leather, wine drinking. Did you pick up any bits and pieces from the ground about what's happening? I mean, I think in France, like, there's been this pattern in the last couple of elections, right? Of, like, the Le Pen reaches a bit of a high water mark in the polls.

Every kind of thinks about it. And then she slips and, you know, the alternative wins. And the last time was Macron. This time it's McCrone. I still think that's most likely. We're knocking on wood over here. The ghost of 2016 looking over my head. But you just feel like part of what is so obvious is like Macron, for instance, was like trying to appeal back to the left who he's basically given the finger to for the last few years.

And so he's suddenly talking about climate change. It's going to be the big thing of his second term. Change in retirement age. And it's kind of like, dude, like, okay, we get it. You like fractures the traditional like right and left parties to kind of create this center. But Macron, I mean, what's clear to me being over there is he spent most of his time looking over his right shoulder. Right. and so the left, you've got the people who really are going to stay home.

Because why should they trust Macron, right? Now, I hope they get out and vote because Le Pen is such a catastrophe. And I think there's enough French people who understand that. But I met some French people who said, well, like some of my friends are saying, maybe we have to let them see what Le Pen is like to kind of wake everybody up here. I'm like, no, no, no. We experimented with that in the U.S. and let's not do it. So I think Macron will squeak by, but I think part of the lesson is,

and hopefully what can happen here is the left can regenerate into something more constructive than what it has been in the last kind of 10 years. You need a strong center-left alternative in France. In the UK, you know, Boris is, I think, kind of skillfully, but it didn't take that much skill because, like, a war is a big deal. Like, you know, he's really leaned into the war in Ukraine and like, oh, I, you know, I have more important things to worry about than these parties from two years ago. Right. And he's kind of helped by the fact that Brits themselves are moving on from COVID. But like, I think that's why it's important for labor to continue to drive that it's not about whether or not you agreed with COVID lockdowns. It's about the fact that this guy is lying to you repeatedly and at different sets of rules. And he'll clearly survive this scandal, but like it should stick to him as a guy that thinks that there's rules apply to him and there's rules that apply to us.

By the other story that just bears a quick mention when I was there is like this scheme that they have now to deport people to Rwanda. They're deporting like refugees who try to come in through the channel like Afghan refugees. Jesus Christ. To Rwanda, like not so subtly gave the Rwandans a few hundred million dollars in assistance. I mean... What a weird, cynical. Yeah, it just was dark, you know. Random play.

I mean, Brits need better than this. Yes, yes, they do. Speaking of fragile coalition governments, we turn to Israel, because that current Israeli government, it could be on the verge of collapse. So here's the backstory there. So this year, Ramadan, Passover, and Easter overlap a lot, which means you have a bunch of worshippers from many different faiths converging on the same sets of holy sites in Jerusalem at the same time. There were reports that, you know, that overlap and their specific visitation

times for different religions that Israeli police blocked some access to some holy sites for Muslim worshippers. That led to fighting between Israeli police and Palestinians, which again led to the police wildly overreacting, beating people, storming the Alaksa Mosque, which is just a wildly inflammatory action, and we talked about this couple of years ago, it led to a huge war in Gaza. So, you know, the latest tensions that we just talked about come after this wave of terrorist attacks over the last couple weeks against Israelis. Those terrorist attacks have led to a series of Israeli military operations in response that a bunch of the Palestinians feel like these are better described as, you know,

really collective punishment on a community than counterterrorism operations. So overnight militants in Gaza fired rockets into Israeli airspace. those were intercepted, so everyone is okay, I think. But the Israeli military then retaliated with airstrikes in Gaza, those, you know, hit hard into communities that are incredibly tight together. So again, that gets us back to the political situation. Remember that the Israeli government coalition led by Nafali Bennett is basically just to stop BB coalition. It's made up of right-wing, left-wing, center-wing, Arab parties that just wanted Netanyahu out of there. But now, Rahm, the Arab Party is furious about the treatment of Palestinian.

worshipers, they're threatening to quit the coalition. So parliament's out until May 8th. There's time to work things out. But if Rahm and this governing coalition don't sort things out, you could see the Knesset dissolve. You could see new elections in Israel. So Ben, new story, same as the old story. Yeah.

You got the Israeli occupation, the iron grip on holy sites, no real political progress to speak of, no efforts to create a Palestinian state, the flare-ups, bombings, innocent people get hurt, rinse repeat. It's just a horrible cycle. Yeah, except it gets worse each time. You know, like there's a kind of normalization of, you know, like storming the al-aqs, a mosque would have been, you know, 10 years ago, we're not totally unthinkable. And now it's like, oh, they're doing that and the heavy hand, I mean, we should say, obviously, that these shootings are horrific. And one of the many horrific things about the shootings of these Israelis is there was some indications that ISIS, like, was getting involved inside of Israel potentially, that the last thing we

need, right? But like the the degree of heavy-handed response kind of merited out, you know, on the Palestinians generally. It seems like as many people have died in these response counterterrorism operations have died in the terrorist attacks. And that feels that should matter. And what it suggests is like, none of this is sustainable. This Israeli government coalition is not going to last, you know, throughout the term. The idea that you're not going to have another Gaza war, you know, feels very unlikely. The idea that you're not going to have more, I mean, so long as the underlying conditions continue to deteriorate for the Palestinians, Israeli politics kind of can't decide whether to just come out and be the full right-wing expression of, we want all the land and we want

the Palestinians out, or whether they're going to kind of try to walk this line. Like, the big questions remain unresolved, but underneath that, it's a continued kind of rightward drift in terms of settlement, construction, and terms of treatment of Palestinians. And unfortunately, that's been the status quo for a while here. But the status quo is such that you look up every couple of years and the likelihood of there being a Palestinian state or there being anything like Google Rights, the Palestinians goes away. And meanwhile, this violence just festers underneath it and can flare up in different forms.

Yeah, I mean, the lack of progress gets papered over by brute force until something explodes. Yeah. And I'm worried we're about to go into the cycle of that. I'm worried that we are going to be back in the cycle again. Speaking of Israel, Ronan Farrow is a big piece in New Yorker this week about the spyware industry. He spends a lot of time talking with an investigating the NSO group, which is the Israeli intelligence-linked company that sold the Pegasus spyware that has been used by autocrats to target journalists and activists and all sorts of others all over the world. The biggest news in Ronan's story is that the software was used to target the British government, specifically a data network at 10 Downing Street. it's really worth reading Ronan's piece in full because it just gets at the sweep of how massive and pervasive and growing this business is.

But, man, I mean, I think like the kind of depressing conclusion for me is that like even with Ronan writing about it, even with these guys like thoroughly exposed over and over again, even if the NSO group gets shut down, it doesn't seem like the industry is going anywhere, right? Like there's like kind of a lesser evil maybe Israeli based similar company that has Ehud Barak on the board, right? Maybe they're a little more politically palatable. It's just like, it feels very there to stay. Yeah, I mean, there's the spyware piece and then the kind of geopolitical piece. And the spyware piece is, this is like here to stay. Like, if you are a journalist, if you are a dissident, if you are a public official, like you just have to assume that you're under kind of constant efforts to penetrate your communications.

And you used to think that, I mean, I'm, you know, about the Russians or the Chinese, but like now pick 31 flavors of who could be doing this, right? I mean, like we're criticizing Jared Kushner and the Saudis today. It's like, is that going to set off somebody? I was going to, but to anticipate that conversation, you know, part of what's so striking when you read this stuff is like, you know, yeah, they're targeting the British, you know, 10 Downing Street or they're targeting members of the European Parliament. And it's like clearly, clearly this kind of weird nexus of like the Emirates and the Israelis,

right? Like there's a lot of golf money in this and it's all Israeli technology. They think the UAE might have hit targeted the number 10. They think the UAE was hitting number 10. And it's like, why is that not a bigger problem? Like, and by the way, it anticipates to talk about Jared Christian. It would be a rupture. Like these, like there's been this, the combination of the amount of political influence that like, I'm talking about the Gulf here.

Let's put aside Israel for the second. Like that they bought in places like London and Washington. Like, just look at the, like the, like the, who owns, you know, Newcastle in London. Look at, you know, who the most, you know, popular ambassador is in Washington, the emirati guy. Like, this is like an amazing and revelatory set of stories where I guess it's okay if you spy on us so long as you, like, throw good parties and spend a lot of money around our capitals. like it's pathetic, you know? Yeah. And then you add the Israeli dimension to it in post-Abrahm Accords.

It's kind of like, well, you know, we like the Abraham Accords. So does that mean that the Emirates can never do anything wrong again? Like, because that's kind of like the vibe that you get is like, you know, they're going to pivot to like an Abraham Accords photo op any time that, you know, it turns out they're spying on you, they're undermining us foreign policy, or they're being autocratic or they're locking up dissidents or they're doing all these things. and it's like, is that all okay? Because they take photo ops where they all link hands with like Tony Blinken. And I mean, I don't. There's sort of like a, well, maybe that's a, there's a cost of doing business kind of big brain thing. But then maybe there's just like a, you know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend for some of these people.

Right. Like does the Trump really care if, you know, the number 10 is spied on or a bunch of dissidents and journalists are spied on? I don't know. That stuff used to matter. It should matter. It should matter. It's just cynical. Like it just like we're all.

supposed to be friends here. Or at least Americans. And are we supposed to care like if our alleged allies and partners are like doing this to our other allies and partners? Like that that should matter. Right. I mean, and I just think that like there's been this normalization of and it's all tied back to money in some way like, you know, because anything involving the Gulf ends up tying

back to money. Like that these people can, they don't have very good intelligence. the Saudis and Emirates. So they could just buy, they can just kind of outsource it to private intelligence outfits, some of whom are American, including former Americans, yeah. Former American spies or Israeli spyware technology. And like, that should make people uncomfortable that like, you know, that they don't recognize any boundaries when it comes to spying even on like their so-called partners. Well, let's talk about the money piece. I talk about our friend Jared. So last week, we talked about how you were out. I talked about how New York Times report detailed how Jared Kushner had gotten this $2 billion investment from a Saudi-run investment company.

What we learned was it came over serious concerns from the professional oversight board. That oversight board's concerns range from pointing out that Jared has no clue how to invest money to worrying that the Saudis would get bad PR just by being associated with Jared, which is, I guess, hilarious and also true. The intercept got hold of Jared's pitch deck, right? So Jared got his $2 billion kickback from the. Saudis. MBS looked at all these concerns from professionals and said, I don't care. I'm going to give my buddy $2 billion. He helped me cover up my role in this murder, yada, yada, yada. He helped me get the job, maybe, of Crown Prince. The Intercept got a hold of Jared's pitch deck for, I guess, potential investors.

It is just hilariously shitty. The mission statement is accelerating transformation through connectivity. It's hard to think of a more nonsensical bunch of buzzwords. There are a little like graphics as bios of all the former Trump people who are now on board. And Ben, my favorite part is that it has all these bios of like former officials, whatever, there's like a three star general who gets like a little tiny quarter of a page. And then Jared gives himself a two page bio. His career was so thorough. And he's done so much in his 40 years on this earth that he couldn't fit his resume on one page. So basically it seems like he's just trying to use this company and his Saudi investment to sell Wall Street on his access to Gulf autocrats. Right. It's like exactly way you were just getting at. I sent her warned about this whole deal. She said, yeah, you know, DOJ should look at it. Maybe an oversight committee will look at it. But I don't know that I have any confidence that they will because, you know, you see a lot of treasury secretaries like Steve

Minookin or others in Democratic administrations leave government and then kind of trade on that service. And I don't know. It sucks. It's so depressing. There's so much wrong with this, including obviously every aspect of Jared Kushner's participation in it. I'm just going to try to break it down. First of all, the Abraham Accords thing does matter here, which was essentially like commercial ties. Because as we've talked about, there was not like war that was pregnant. And this would be analogous to like after I negotiated the Cuban normalization, me like taking over the Carnival cruise line, you know, like to between Havana and Miami or something, right? Or getting a big check from the Castro. Yeah, he so just, yeah, I mean,

literally he's just directly trying to monetize like his government work in stride, right? coming out. But that's the smallest part of what's wrong with this. Okay. First of all, this is the back-end payment for everything from covering up for the murder and dismemberment of the journalists to potentially Jared's participation in running interference from Mohammed and Salman. Potentially, there were reports that he might have been providing information about problematic family members who we knew ended up in the Brits Carlton. The U.S. had a blank check of support for the ongoing war in Yemen throughout the Trump administration that has caused a humanitarian catastrophe. So on and on and on, this is a back-end payment for Jared's support for Saudi policies that were fundamentally autocratic and often not in line with U.S. interests.

Then there's the question of like, well, what happens if Trump runs again, right? So not only is this back-end payment, this could be a future investment. Down payment. You think that if, like, Trump gets back in there, the Saudis aren't going to get carte blanche to do whatever they want with American foreign policy, given the billions of dollars that they've pumped in to the Trump family, Of course they are. Like, this is the way the world works. It's purely transactional. Never mind, by the way, something that doesn't get enough attention,

Jared Kushner was getting the presidential daily briefing, despite the fact that he was not supposed to get a security clearance. Like, how many secrets are in this guy's head? I mean, if he wanted to monetize, like, the information that he knows, just from being the highest level intelligence consumer in the U.S. government, there's plenty of stuff, right? And so there's all kinds of dangers to U.S. national security. The corruption that comes from the purchasing of this kind of influence, the warping of our

farm policy priorities based on like if Trump gets back in there, never mind, you know, are the Saudis going to be playing in the election interference game in 2024, the potential sale of- Or just jacking up oil prices right now to fuck with Joe Biden and get the Republicans in there, right? All that may be happening. And I want to put a fine point in you said, this is the most grotesque version of it, but both parties do this kind of garbage. Like the Emirates and the Saudis, they're the ones who pay top.

dollar for board appointments, for speaking engagements in their countries. And there's way too much self-censorship about these relationships and both parties in Washington. Jared and Steve Mnuchin are just the most grotesque over the top, totally values-free manifestation of what is like a profound corruption of U.S. foreign policy. Yeah. And that doesn't even touch on like the think tank money, think tanks, or lobbyists, the pharaoh, the lawyers. Paid podcasts and, you know, like the whole nine yards. Gross. Hopefully someone will actually.

I mean, this would be a great area, I feel like for the Senate, Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Oversight Committee, someone could just do a little digging into Jared's deal while there's still time. I don't know,

maybe we learned something at least. Well, and I think that there are actually serious policy questions about how much kind of foreign corruption can we have in our politics. Because this stuff has always been around, right? Like, look who paid for both Bush libraries. Just go look at the,

those walls. It's a lot of golf money. But like it's gotten once you had people like the Trump people who really are just like in it for the grift and respect no norms or boundaries, it's just open season right now. And and I think that in addition to the oversight, like, is there anything we can do to tighten this up? Yeah. Got to happen. Last thing we'll talk about in the news. So we talked about the lockdowns in China, specifically Shanghai a couple times. Just a quick update on that because I was listening to an NPR report this morning that said cities accounting for 40% of economic activity in China are under some sort of lockdown. 40% of China's economic activity under lockdown. So it just sounds like far from abandoning the COVID zero policy and the stricconian lockdowns.

China is doubling down on them because their vaccines don't work very well against the Omicron strain of COVID. So I guess I'm just getting at the point that this economic impact is going to be huge. I mean, today the IMF slashed its growth forecast for China to 4.4%, which is well below the goal that Xi Jinping is set for himself. I'm no economist here, but like, I worry for the people in China, right? Being under lockdown must be horrible. But also for Democrats, trying to run for office in a democratic world, like inflation, the war in Ukraine hurting the economy, the recession that could come from China, the sanctions. like I am very worried about the economic headwinds for any progressive candidate anywhere right now.

There's never been this many. I mean, I can't remember in my lifetime in politics when there have been this many headwinds. Like Greek debt, oil, like for us and O. I mean, it's some rough times. Well, the financial crisis obviously was the. It's like a singular event. Yeah, single event. But in terms of being in like an ominous kind of period, what stands that to me is like

there was kind of this boasting victory lap from the Chinese government about their like authority. itarianism working in the context of COVID. Well, I don't think it did, right? Because you can't, like, they're in a box right now because their strategies seem to be predicated on like waiting until COVID is gone. And then, but COVID's never going to go away, you know. And so at a certain point, they're going to have to like live with the fact that people are going to get COVID. Because you can't just keep locking down cities of 20 million people or let in every time there's a variant. Vaccines that actually work. Or let in variant. Yeah, like they're trying to have it all ways. They're trying to not report their deaths, keep things locked down, use their vaccine instead of foreign vaccines to

send some message that their system is better when in fact that leads to their people being locked down. They're not eliminating the spread of the variance anyway. Their economy is taking hit. Like, this is not sustainable. Never mind the fact that like these videos of people like screaming at their windows in Shanghai. But they're starving. There's, you know, there's some dark, dark stuff. We're seeing the lie being put to the idea that the official of authoritarianism is somehow preferable. Like, look at Shanghai, does that look preferable to you? Have you seen the videos of these like drone dogs running around with bullhorns on

them being like stay in your house? Yeah. COVID lockdown is real. I mean, like that. Dystopian hell is here. And how are they like when, when will they stop doing that? Because I hate to break it to you. Like, they'll be COVID next year.

You know, like it'll hopefully be like a less virulent form of it. But at a certain point, like, you. can't like just continue to have this kind of zero COVID strategy. Well, Jared's deck for his new investment fund touts his experience getting rid of COVID so maybe they could hire him. Yeah, a little warp speed effort over there. Yeah, get some warp speed. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and when we come back. Ben is going to talk to Louisa Lim, who is an award-winning journalist who has an amazing new book out called Indelible City Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong. So stick around for that. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined now by Louisa Lim.

very excellent journalist who has a new book out called Indelible City, Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong. Louisa, thanks so much for being with us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. Such pleasure. I just want to say at the outset, I mean, this book is incredible. Everybody should check it out. I mean, it connects like all the dots with respect to Hong Kong, because what you have here is the historical context, the history with the British, the history of the handover, and then just an incredibly vivid way into covering the protest movement, both as a Hong Kong or yourself as someone who grew up there, this incredible story of the King of Kowloon, this remarkable graffiti artist that doesn't even do injustice, which is a kind of subplot

that you tracked. But in this examination of Hong Kong identity, you really bring it all together into a book that is about not just Hong Kong, but I think really tells a pretty timeless in universal story. So thanks for writing that is my first point here. I want to start with a question that gets it kind of where we are now. And then we'll go back into some of the points in the book. You know, as someone who traveled a lot to Hong Kong in between the handover and then the last time I was there was during the district elections in 2019, so right before the national security laws, you know, you could feel at those times like, you know, Hong Kong was one country, two systems. It was a place that was distinct from mainland China in the kind of speech that took place,

the kind of open media environment that it was, just a sense of separate identity there. How would you describe Hong Kong today? Is that still the case? Or is Hong Kong increasingly kind of just another Chinese city on the back end of those national security laws? Well, I would say that Hong Kong is not just another Chinese city. I think it will never be because of its own separate history and the people who live there. But as a speech environment, a place to live, I think the national security laws has really, I mean, it marks it out from mainland China. those national security laws, they really mark it out from mainland China because they're very broad and they're very indistinct. So if you're a journalist operating in mainland China, the red lines are quite clear.

You always know, what are the areas that are going to be politically sensitive. But the national security laws that were imposed in Hong Kong in June 2020, they're not the same. So these are laws that outlaw, secession, subversion, collusion with foreign powers, and terrorism. But there are no very clear definitions. And the way they're being used is quite extraordinary. So I think about 183 people have been charged since they've been used. But some of them, the offences were things like possessing stickers with banned slogans on them or carrying banners with banned slogans. there was a case last week where a sedition law was used, but it comes under the banner of

national security crimes where six people were arrested for clapping in court. This was seen as a seditious offense. So, you know, the red lines just aren't clear. You know, there are journalists who are being arrested for collusion with foreign powers for op-eds that are calling for sanctions against Hong Kong or China. And, you know, the red lines aren't clear at all. People, you know, they talk about there were no red lines. It's just a red sea. So it's just really hard to know what's permissible and what isn't. And like a lot of the conversations that you have with some really incredible characters in this book,

the national security laws talk about not, you know, defaming China to foreigners. Like could a lot of the conversations that inform this book not happen today? It's really difficult to know. I mean, you know, I think people might have those. conversations with you, but you might have to think a lot more carefully about whether those people can be named or not. And to me, that was always an issue. And I took out a lot of names and a lot of details and a lot of conversations before the book was published because I just wasn't clear about where those lines were. You know, what it's done, the national security legislation is really

introduce a whole category of speech crime that had never existed before in Hong Kong. I mean, sedition laws were on the books, but they weren't actually used. But now, you know, a third of those arrests have been for speech crimes. And, you know, you were in Hong Kong

before you know how, you know, in the past, anyone could say anything. And that was one of the things that marked it out from China. Yeah. I wanted to ask you, you know, you trace also, part of what Hong Kong is up against is they've had to define their identity in opposition to obviously an encroaching totalitarian kind of Chinese power after, you know, being a colonial, colonial subjects of Britain. And you have a

great line about kind of what the British had done in reshaping the past that they taught Hong Kongers as a means of also kind of shaping the future. And now China is doing the same thing. You write, in not being able to determine their own fate, they, Hong Kongers, lost control of their future. and in losing their records, they'd lost control of their past. And obviously, you talk about that in the British context and the Chinese context. And I'm wondering, can you describe for people like how has, particularly in the present moment, the Chinese Communist Party, tried to kind of change Hong Kongers' understanding of their past through everything from school curriculum to what you can say?

And what is that in service of in terms of the future they want for Hong Kong? What is this connection between past and future and the control that Hong Kong? Hong Kongers are subjected to. Yeah, it's a really tricky and interesting sort of question. And it was something that I thought about a lot because I went to school in Hong Kong. I was raised there. And we never learned about Hong Kong identity in schools. And I later, when I was doing research for the book, I found out this was a really conscious decision on the part of the British government because they did not want Hong Kongers to know how Hong Kong had become part of Britain, how it was to the British in perpetuity. They didn't want people to know the history of the opium wars because

they thought it was so shameful on the part of the British that it might affect the way that Hong Kong has thought about their colonial ruler. So there was this real effort under the British to sort of obscure Hong Kong history and really, you know, define Hong Kong as this sort of, you know, a free port, a great emporium of trade, you know, an international city, which was. a barren rock before the British came. And we really swallowed that. We believed that, absolutely, because that was what we kept hearing. And then in 1997, after China, after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese sovereignty, that narrative shifted, and it shifted, you know, almost overnight. What schoolchildren were being taught was, you know, Hong Kong has always

been a part of China since time immemorial. Now it's sort of returning to the fold. And, you know, it was just framed as, you know, another place in China, a place that has had a slightly different history, but another place in China. And if you project forwards, that's also what China's vision for the future of Hong Kong is. China has, for many years, signal this. They have this slogan, the Greater Bay Area,

so copying the Bay Area. The Greater Bay Area refers to, the swath of cities along the south coast of China. So that would include sort of Shenjin and Guangzhou and Zhuhai, all sort of big metropolises. But Hong Kong is really in their vision seen as just one city in the Greater Bay Area. And, you know, that's the future that they see for Hong Kong to the extent that, you know, even in the next elections, they're making plans so that people who are living inside China can vote

in the Hong Kong elections. I mean, you still have to be a Hong Kong resident, but it's still a sort of blurring of the borders and the boundaries in a really not of a very subtle way. It was, it's, so it's interesting to me, though, is it kind of what you describe there, and in the book you kind of captured this well, like just massive asymmetry of power in the sense that the Chinese Communist Party, they have all the control ultimately, right? And, And they're trying to turn Hong Kong into just another Chinese city, you know, one other megapolis as part of their greater Bay area. And yet you have this remarkable protest movement.

And one of the things you captured really well, and it's something I experienced when I was there during the protest movement, it was like everybody knew it was going to fail. It was destined to fail. And that didn't matter. Like, if anything, it made it even more intense. It was like people wanted to be heard one last time. I mean, what was it like? Why do you think people still protested so adamantly in such large numbers for such a long period of time, even though the outcome was kind of preordained?

How do you think about that? I know, it was a question that I asked people time and time again on the streets, you know, from the very first day. As you say, the future, in the end of the movement was already preordained. And I just remember because there was this clip that was going around on social media and they were interviewing this young guy. And they said, you know, what are you doing out here? You know, and then they asked him, do you think the movement will succeed? And he said, no. And they said, well, why did you come?

And he said, at least you tried. Yeah. And I do think that idea of at least you tried has really become part of, you know, you know. In many ways, Hong Kongers have never had a voice. They, right from the beginning, they, you know, were not represented when talks that ultimately ended up handing Hong Kong back to Chinese sovereignty happened. In the early 80s, Hong Kongers weren't even at the table. They weren't represented.

They didn't get to vote on the agreement. There was no referendum or anything. So I think they've never had a voice. And in many ways, that's pushed politics onto the streets because, you know, the legislature and the structures of power have always excluded Hong Kongers and they've always been designed in a way that the Hong Kong voice will be sort of tamped down. And so, you know, you can do that for so many years and then you get this kind of explosion. And I think so many people saw the 29 movement as an end game.

This is a question I really wanted to ask you because I took this away from your book. But when I was in Hong Kong in late 2019 working on my book and interviewing people, I started to hear this comparison from some of the young people comparing themselves to Jews and saying we may have to kind of go in exile for a long time and maybe even beyond my lifetime, but we're creating an identity that we will ultimately return to as a people. It was an incredibly powerful kind of image to think about. And now as you have a lot of emigres in Taiwan or in Australia or in the UK, I wanted to ask about this sense of Hong Kong. You talked about his identity in motion, but now it's potentially an identity, literally in motion, out of Hong Kong.

And you do see this kind of solidarity being forged with, I talked to people in Belarus who said they were like being, you know, people in Hong Kong were reaching out. to them proactively in saying like we will train you in you know civil disobedience and and so what is going on here with this idea of like Hong Kong identity literally leaving the city itself like the question that I had in my mind is it is Hong Kong a place or is it something else is it something that is being taken away by people who may have to leave the city thinking that they're going to return on their own terms at some point whether it's 10 years 20 years are 100 years from now. Yes.

I think Hong Kong is sort of, it is a place, but it's also increasingly, you know, becoming almost like an idea. We've had this huge outflow of an exodus of people from Hong Kong, and that's partly driven by Hong Kong's zero COVID policies, which have been incredibly draconian, you know, putting people in quarantine camps and separating parents from babies, you know, all this kind of thing. we've seen 150,000 people leave since the end of December. And these communities in exile are, you know, quite often quite activist. You know, they're organizing showings of band films.

They're continuing to campaign, as you found. They're lobbying for sort of Magnitsky ads wherever they are. And, you know, I did ask. one activist, I asked them that very question. And he said, you know, the struggle is still the same, but the battlefield is much bigger now. It's a global battlefield. So in many ways, I think when they're leaving Hong Kong,

they're taking with them, you know, this, you know, they're not giving up on the place forever. And I think what we're seeing is, the birth of Hong Kong exile communities, and particularly in the UK, whether, you know, tens of thousands of Hong Kongers, I think we will see, we will see those communities, you know, becoming more vocal. And trying to create small the democratic conditions that might change the world so as to make it possible for them to return to Hong Kong in different circumstances.

It's pretty remarkable. I want to ask you one more question about yourself, like you, there's a great kind of subtext in the book about being a journalist and being a Hong Konger. And, you know, I think you write something that will ring true in different scenarios. I could sense at a moment my comment which journalistic neutrality might become immoral, as even-handedness could undermine the very values I cherished. If I had to choose between being a journalist and being a Hong Kong or which one would I pick? You ultimately, I think, do both, right?

this whole book is an act of journalism with deep reporting and research. But, you know, you begin with yourself spray painting an expletive-laden sign against the Chinese Communist Party. So you do pick that side. But in the sense, I guess I wanted to ask, like, is that even really a choice? Because isn't it, aren't we increasingly in realities where particularly as authoritarian systems bear down on journalists? And these are authoritarian systems that seek to kind of. of obliterate the concept of objective truth. At what point does this kind of the grasping for even-handedness become, well, like you say,

immoral? Because, I mean, obviously, Hong Kong is the most extreme version of that, but we obviously see this with Russia and Ukraine. We have versions of that here in the United States. What did you learn about this dynamic that do you think applies not just to Hong Kong, but to how people think about journalism globally in an age of creeping? authoritarianism. Yeah, I mean, it's a very tricky question for any journalist to handle.

And I do think that Ukraine has slightly shifted the calculus on this because Russia's behavior, you know, whatever angle that you look at it from has been, you know, it's been so outrageous and, you know, in violation of so many, you know, on so many different levels and there's so much proof against Russia that I think in the reporting of that, we see, you know, there's less and on the other hand, you know, there's less of that kind of attempt. And part of that is also, you know, an issue of language that there are many, many Ukrainians who speak amazing English. And we, you know, our airwaves are full of, full of them. And I think in the case of Hong Kong, it was a little bit different because of,

as you say, that different power dynamic. And because the media itself in Hong Kong has already in many ways been captured by China. So, you know, when you open the newspapers in Hong Kong, when you read those, the reports that you were reading would be heavily biased, you know, always sort of quoting police and government sources, referring to riots on the streets. And then that narrative that you would see in the Hong Kong newspapers would often be picked up in different small ways by the Western media, partly because as the protest movement went on, there were fewer Western journalists or outside journalists that stayed. And partly because China actually did a relatively, you know, they had a social media campaign going on that in some ways was relatively sophisticated. and that was being picked up.

So I think that in writing in the way that I was writing at the time that I was writing, I felt that, you know, I was having to make sort of my own choices. And I felt that I was, you know, there was almost like a preponderance that was on the other side. Yeah. And particularly because, you know, even today we see it in the language that's used about Hong Kong, you know. So the next chief executive is about to be announced next week. And we're still seeing people talking about it as an election or a race. There's one candidate, John Lee, a former policeman, the former Secretary of Security.

He's being anointed by a committee of 1,200 people. This isn't an election. It's not a race. But the media and all the media, you know, all of the Western media is still using this language. they're talking about elections for, you know, these local polls, but most of the opposition is in jail. That's not an election. And, you know, because we're so ingrained in the kind of language we use,

I think for me, sometimes, you know, in those, even in those small decisions, it passes, you know, it passes a point of accuracy. But because everybody's been doing it for so long, they just continue. So I think those were some of the things that kind of I was thinking, that I was thinking about when I was writing. And I think Ukraine has, as I say, shifted the needle a little bit because it's made it, I think, more acceptable to take a side in an obvious way.

And I think Hong Kong wasn't in the same position, partly because, you know, Hong Kong was part of China. So there was always that sort of opportunity for people to raise that argument. Yeah. Well, and if I'm cynical, I could say there's a lot more money tied up in China than Russia, right? Right. Yeah. Right.

Well, look, as I hope you can tell, like I think you've figured it out in this book. Like you found a voice that is both authentically you, has a dose of, you know, obviously a point of view, but all the attributes of journalism. So thank you for that and best of luck with your book rollout. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you and what great questions. Very tricky. No, I know. I'm sorry. I just, I really found like, you know, you, there's something very, Hong Kong is not like any other place or, you know, as someone who's kind of interacted with a lot of places and issues over the last, you know, I'm like, this, this is unlike everywhere else, and yet somehow everything that's happening here feels like it implicates everything else,

you know, if that makes sense, right? Like, like, this is totally unique and it's not like any other place, and yet the future of democracy and capitalism and technology feels like it's playing out here somehow, you know, and that, that, that's why I think I was trying to, to have you answered these enormous questions, you know. Yeah, no, you're right. I mean, I do think it felt like a, you know, a little petri dish where you could look at what was happening in Hong Kong and you could start to see, you know, what that means for China's future. And, you know, it doesn't, it really doesn't look good, whatever way you look at it. Yeah. And for all of our futures, you know, because it feels like this is the future.

And I mean, what I found inspiring about Hong Kong so much like other people, but also troubling, is part of what we would always hear about the Chinese Communist Party is like, oh, no, people want this model. Like, maybe people would prefer the stability and order of this autocracy so long as there's wealth creation. And then here's the one city on earth that literally has the choice of raising their hand being like, yeah, yeah, we want in. And instead, like, the whole city is out saying like, no, no, no, we don't. don't want to be a part of that. And I find that very inspiring that human beings given the choice would rather be themselves and have their own identity. But then I found it very dark that the deck was so stacked against them, you know? Yeah. The deck has always been stacked against Hong Kongers and in so many ways. And you know, for me, one of the biggest vacuums was, you know,

the lack of any Hong Kong voices anywhere. So what I really wanted to do was center Hong Kong voices to try and tell a Hong Kong story, which was full of Hong Kong voices. And even if the histories that they were thinking about were imagined, because the histories that have been imposed on them, have been so far from how they see their own history, I just love that kind of, you know, that kind of creativity that allowed people to sort of create their own myths and legends and heroes, even though, you know, in so many cases,

they were these incredibly flawed characters. And I think that was one of the such a thing that's really endearing about Hong Kongers. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, the idea of covering up graffiti so that someone can discover it many years in the future is a metaphor for everything somehow, you know. Which, okay, well, I, you know, I'll let you go. But again, I appreciate it. And, you know, best of luck and keep in touch. And thank you so much for having me. Yeah. If you're over in Melbourne, get in touch. I will do. We'll do. Okay. Bye. Thanks again, Louisa, for joining the show. glad you're back Ben.

We missed you. Glad to be back. It wasn't fun reading updates about Jared to myself last week. I missed you very much. It was very sad. Well, doing like a solo podcast is a very interesting challenge. Yeah. I mean, it was great to like connect with.

The interviews are great. Yes. But the. Alexi is amazing. But the when you, yeah, like it's a little tough to like sit there and just kind of talk and hear your own voice. Be outraged at yourself. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're back. It's, you know, it's important to get abroad a little bit. Yeah, got to see what's going on in the world. Come back. Did Boris's, like, fine break while you were in London that he was getting fine and had to pay for it?

No, I moved down from there. I mean, I told you I had like a good cocaine scandal when I was there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And this Rwanda thing was like breaking, but... That's shocking. I'll tell you, a place where people moved down from COVID is London. Like, really? You get on the underground there and nobody's worn a mask. And I mean, they've just decided it's over. Well, they're getting it, but they're just like, we'll see how that goes. Yeah, see how that goes. All right. Get vaccinated, buddy.

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's why I was singing. He's like, get vaccinated. Get vaccinated. Boost up. All right. Talk to guys next week. See it.

Positive of the world is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support. to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth, who upload our episodes as videos at YouTube.com slash crooked media.