Pod Save the World - The War Goes to Russia

Episode Date: May 24, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about President Zelensky’s travel to the Arab League and G7 summits, Biden’s policy change on training Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s, mysterious attacks inside Russia and outcomes from the G-7 summit. They also discuss the foreign policy fallout from Biden cutting his foreign trip short, how the Air Force failed to stop the Discord leaker, a leadership change in Iran, another tragic mistaken Pentagon drone strike mistake, an AI generated attack on the Pentagon and Dubai’s $5 billion man-made moon. Then Ben talks to Mark Malloch-Brown, president of Open Society Foundations, the biggest global foundation promoting human rights, about the effect authoritarian governments have on their efforts and the debt crisis that many countries are facing. 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 POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, welcome back. How's the jet lag? It's rather extreme, Tommy. Yeah, I was in Asia. I was in Hong Kong. And that city's changed a bit. I bet it has. But it just gets harder.

With each year of age, I think it doesn't get easier. Like the sands of time. We need Dr. Ronnie to come on these tips. You need a maga congressman doctor. We knew. You know, just pushing pills to everybody. You know who else needs some pills, at least the upper version, or the Boston Celtics? Well, you have to remember, I'm a huge Knicks fan, and the Heat that are now torching your Celtics just beat the Knicks.

So I've experienced him being beaten by the Heat this playoffs. Yeah. Does that mean you're rooting for the Heat now? Yes, it does, because it, you know, retroactively makes your team look better. That's exactly great. They look. Tried and true. I get it.

Also, there should be no love for Boston fans if you're a New Yorker. No, but we also hate the Heat because we had the rivalry with the Heat in the 90s. I don't know, I kind of like this weird team, like, of old guys. Yeah, Jimmy Butler. Like, as I get older, I tend to like older athletes more, even though they're like, I think of them as older than me even though they're like 35 years old. I'm like, oh, Jimmy Belller's so old, you know? Yeah, you hear about a stretch of your team.

He's cracking like 35, you know? He kills me. Well, it's great to have you back. We have a lot to cover today. We are going to talk about the president of Ukraine's far-flung travels, speaking of jet lag. the latest in the war effort, including reports of saboteurs in Russia. Sabatours is fun to say. How the Air Force missed multiple chances to stop the Pentagon leaker, an update on Trump's classified

document hoarding executions and personnel changes in Iran, another tragic Pentagon drone strike, AI causing chaos online, and then much, much more. And then, Ben, you did today's interview. What are folks going to hear about? So I talked to Mark Malik Brown, who's the president of the Open Society Foundation, obviously kind of the biggest global foundation promoting human rights. And we talked about how, among other things, we talked about how the effort to promote human rights and civil society is more complicated today than it has been in a very long time because

of all these authoritarian's and all these efforts to kind of crack down. We talked about an important story, Tommy, that we haven't touched on yet, which is the debt crisis that so many countries are facing. Basically. Big topic of the G7. Yeah, big topic at the G7 because we talked about the G7, the challenges of America kind of talking about democracy, but then having people like Modi at the G7,

this challenge of a whole bunch of developing countries in middle-income countries that are just totally squeezed by the combination of COVID and high-interest rates and all kinds of stuff that is risking default. Like, Mark was just in Kenya, and they're not paying salaries to government employees. Like, this is happening now. And then what are the bright spots out there?

What can we learn from some of the stuff that's going well in terms of beating back populism and autocracy? He was just in Brazil, so talked about what he saw there. So it's a really good conversation about the current state of the effort to promote democracy and civil society generally. Excellent. We might need his to do a little more work here. Yeah. Well, that too. We actually, interestingly, I talked a bit at the end about how the demonization of George Soros here impacts their work globally because Elon Musk.

could just tweeted something like George Soros is committed to destroying civilization or something. So we talked a bit about the Soros conspiracy theory. Yeah, the Elon's just lost his mind. By the way, that sounds like a fascinating interview. If listeners want a general daily roundup of all the top news stories, including many of the ones you just touched on Ben, they should subscribe to the what a day newsletter. It's crooked.com slash daily to subscribe. And if you want a hilarious once a week, deep dive into all things, British politics,

Check out PotsA of the UK. From strikes to scandals to very funny jokes, hard jokes. They have got you covered. So check it out. Chat should get banged. Check shit get banged. All right. So a lot of news this week on the Ukraine front.

President Zelensky has been popping up everywhere. He's like the Ukrainian Carmen San Diego. He went to, how dated is that joke? Carmen San Diego, I think that's on anymore? I mean, it's in my wheelhouse. No. Okay. We'll work on that.

So Zelensky went to Saudi Arabia. He delivered a speech at the Arab League's meeting. I get why Zelensky will go anywhere and talk to anyone, but the fact that he had to deliver a speech before the Arab League in an audience that included Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who was in power because the Russians and the Wagner group in particular propped him up and committed war crimes on his behalf for the last decade is truly appalling. Yeah. This is such a crazy world a week. Maybe it's because I was in withdrawal last week too, but like this, meeting itself was fascinating. So I know we'll get to elements of Ukraine around the G7, but like this was the first meeting in which they were going to bring Assad back into the Arab League fold. Essentially full normalization of Bashar al-Assad. It's like it never happened. There he is. It's been building for a while as we've talked about. And I have to say like MBS, Mohamed Salman,

he's the, you know, he was the host of this meeting in Saudi Arabia, but he's also kind of the king of the Arab League too. They played this pretty interestingly. This is not a praise from Hammond Salman, but like it is, like, there's something that he does that is pretty clever, which is he balances, you know, he doesn't give any side everything they want, but he gives everybody a little bit of something. And he kind of operates as this free agent between the China, Russia block and the U.S. Western bloc. And so he had to know that Assad going there was going to get a lot of negative attention in the West, was going to call into question whether they're fully embracing Russia because of the U. Assad is kind of Russia's guy like Trojan horse in the Arab League. And I think very consciously, he's like, you know what I could do? The only thing I could do to kind of counterbalance that

is have Zelensky here as kind of the avatar of the West, you know, and give him a big platform. And it was interesting in that regard. It was MBS sending a message to both sides, China and the U.S., hey, I'm going to get my best deal wherever it is and I'm going to play both sides of this thing. Zelenzky, I thought was interesting. He did call out some people in the room for kind of not siding with Ukraine for, you know, he showed some guts. Like he didn't just go and kiss the ring, as it were. And I think what he knows is the Saudis and the Emirates have a lot of cash. Not only could that support, you know, things like Ukrainian reconstruction, but that they talk to the Russians. And who knows where this war is going. And we've seen the Saudis involved

in prisoner exchanges, and Zelensky said maybe you could do something like that again. So whether we like it or not, and I don't think you and I love it, this is a sign that the Saudis and the Amaradis are players and are going to stay players. And let's be honest, it's probably smart of Zelensky to have a direct relationship with the Saudis and not go through the United States anymore because that relationship is afraid. It's good point. So then, so Zelensky goes. Although it should be noted that Jake Sullivan was in Saudi like a week or so before this. Yeah, Jake's been doing a lot of mop-up work. Yeah, so it made you wonder.

He's been in London, figuring out this F-16 thing. He had to go meet with the Chinese in Vienna, I think, for eight hours. Then he went to the Saudi. So he had been doing a lot of work. So Zelensky goes from the Arab League to the G7, a surprise appearance in Japan. This trip was orchestrated apparently by President Macron of France, who sent a French jet to get Zelensky in Poland, fly him to Japan. In his speech, Zelensky compared the total destruction of Bakhmut to the aftermath of the U.S. dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.

I'm genuinely curious how that played to Japanese audiences given the scale of destruction from a nuclear weapon. But anyway, the G7 leaders themselves rolled out new sanctions on Russia. They celebrated the success of this American-led effort to set a cap on the price of Russian oil, which stabilized supply while reducing Russia's revenues. But the big headline was about Biden's policy change on providing F-16s to Ukraine. So the U.S. is now going to train Ukrainian pilots to fly the F-16s to fly the F-16s. F-16. Longer term, we will work with allies like Poland and the Netherlands to facilitate the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine. This training is going to take about four months, so the F-16s

will not be part of this spring offensive, which is now a summer offensive, I guess, Ben. I'm sure a lot of listeners are wondering kind of like what happened here. Like, I have whiplash on this one again, too. We caught them from no to yes. I talked some folks in the White House, and it's clear that this is a recognition that this war is not ending anytime soon, that long-term, even if the Russians stopped fighting right now, Ukraine needs a modern air force to defend its borders. In terms of the escalation risk, Politico reported that the administration has basically decided that Russia responds to new weapon systems primarily with rhetoric, but they haven't seen, you know, sort of the worst case scenarios we talked about. So I don't know, Ben, what did you make

of this move? Was this inevitable for a long time? I mean, it started to feel inevitable after the tank thing because, you know, we went through this with long-range artillery. the Haimars. Then we went through it with the tanks. And there was this pattern of like kind of almost making the Ukrainians work for it and justify it in order to get people comfortable with it. I mean, well, first of all, I was going to ask you like, don't you think McCrone loved the Zelensky flying around these summits in a French plane? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have to say like the sequencing of this was really interesting to play back in your head. And I have to say, like, pretty impressive because if you look at where by, presumably by the Ukrainians and the U.S. and, you know, the other staunch Ukrainian supporters in Europe, because, you know, we've covered for the last kind of month, first of all, Zelensky's travel, he went to the Netherlands, right, which is a key F-16 country. They'd be doing some of the training maybe providing. He went to Poland. Also, like, a key country for doing training and providing F-16s. Then he went to Germany, well, Italy-Gyx10s.

Germany, France, UK. Clearly, there was, like, an effort to kind of bring everybody along who's going to be a part of this. You seem at Checkers with Rishi Snuck? Yeah, Rishi. I think Boris Johnson wanted that picture. Rishi tries so hard, though. Like, he takes off the jacket.

He does, like, the skinny shirt with the skinny tie. And, like, he just looks, like, not as cool as Zelensky, you know? It looks like the kid who's, like, glad to be at the lunch table. But so, like, they clearly sequence this in a way to kind of bring everybody along and kind create this momentum that would crescendo at the G7. And I think that was pretty well done. Now, what does it really mean? I agree with you.

So you're right. I think this is not for this offensive. It's for a long-term fight. I guess the thing I'd add to it is on the escalation risk, you know, what you really worry about is the F-16 is a weapon that they could use to attack Russia in Russia, right? And so. In practice, you would probably get shot down immediately by like an S-400 missile defense system, right?

Like, nobody's flying into the other's airspace at the moment because you're you will just get smoked. You get smoked. But like I think like the two things are for escalation are like, will the Russians respond just because we provided them this weapon? Or might the Ukrainians do something with this weapon that we would be worried about? And so in a way, it's a signal not just that this war is going to go on and they're going to need this stuff into next year and beyond for safe skies or safe first skies over Ukraine.

But it's kind of a vote of trust in the Ukrainians to not do something, you know, with this weapon that would be beyond what we're comfortable with. And so, you know, I think that's a positive sign, I guess, that the Biden team feels a degree of trust in the Ukrainians. We're going to probably talk about some of these cross-border tax in Russia that might test that. But yeah, they clearly wanted this G7 to kind of be a moment of momentum, the F-16, some new sanctions, some new money, all this diplomatic offensive. it's kind of the last piece before this spring slash summer offensive.

Yeah, maybe fall. Yeah, that they could do diplomatically. And maybe it's kind of lowering expectations a bit because then you can start to say, well, they got the F-16s coming in the fall, you know, like it's a way to kind of take some of the heat off this offensive. That's a really good point. We'll talk about some of the non-Ukraine G7 news in a minute, but just staying with Ukraine because you hinted at this. So, Yegivni Progogian, our favorite mercenary head of the Wagner group, says that his troops are now in control. of the town of Bachmout.

Bakhmut is this tiny little town. There's no real strategic significance, but has been the site of months of some of those brutal fighting imaginable. There's a long piece in New Yorker out right now by a guy named Luke Mogulsin who spent, I think, two weeks on the front lines in eastern Ukraine.

And if you really want to understand what this war is like in practice, I suggest reading it, it sounds like a living hell. The Pentagon, meanwhile, said they found another $3 billion in initial funding for Ukraine after an accounting error. It's the only building in the world

where you could find $3 billion. $3 billion. I'm sure that won't lead to any conspiracy theories or founded conspiracy theories. So what you mentioned then. So the other news that happened this week is an armed group launched an attack inside Russia in the city of Belgarad, which is right on the border. A group called the Free Russia Legion took credit for this assault. They said Ukraine was aware of their actions, but not behind them. Regardless, there were days of soldiers running around a Russian city in heavily armored vehicles. Shortly before we started recording, Russia said they killed, I think, all of them at 70 people.

They ended this incursion. So, I don't know, this is like the 10th time this has happened. You can't really tell who's behind this stuff. But I don't know, I've seen some people suggest maybe this is the kind of splashy thing you do to distract before a big offensive. Maybe not. Maybe we're thinking too hard now. I don't know. What was your take on this?

I think it's, yeah, I think it's really interesting. You know, these guys claim to be essentially kind of the right. Russian resistance, right? So they and claim, I don't, you know, plausibly claim that they are Russians who want to help Ukraine because they hate the war and they want to destabilize the Russian political system and they want to take attention away from the front into Russia. Interestingly, that in the command structure of Ukraine, they fall under this umbrella of like the Foreign Legion we've talked about. So there's Americans fighting in that. There's there's Brits fighting in that. They were careful to say they weren't directed by Ukraine, but that

is a part of the Ukrainian structure and the Ukrainians didn't act like they didn't know about it. I think the main thing for me is, yeah, it could be tied to the offensive and try to distract the Russians. But I've said this a couple times before. The longer this war goes on, I think the more the Ukrainians are going to do stuff inside of Russia because it's the natural impulse to want to lash out. And as we talked about car bomb assassinations, pipeline and infrastructure attacks, things have blown up in Crimea, all that's not Russia. Obviously, that's Ukraine, but Russia sees it that way. And so to me, it does speak to this kind of variable in the war, which is what happens

if there's more and more of these attacks inside of Russia. Might that be the thing that triggers some escalation by the Russians, or might it actually really start to weaken Putin at home? Pergozen, to your point, like, used it to attack the Russian military, look how weak the military. So it kind of played into the far right and the people that are to Putin's right somehow in Russia, talking about how this is outrageous that the military could let this happen, like the drone over the Kremlin. So I think we're going to see more of this. And it's just, to me, it's one of the most interesting variables in the war because it's the one thing that could be, you know,

not a game changer, but at least something that causes the Russians to think differently. Yeah, for Sure. Speaking of the finding $3 billion in the budget, 60 Minutes is a great piece this week, or this Sunday, this past Sunday, I think, about a military contractor price gouging that is worth watching. It's a six-month investigation. And to us, you know, paying 10 grand for a part that NASA pays $200 for. So, you know, as these debt-sealing talks are happening, no one's talking about the Pentagon budget. Well, at least it's not the focus of attention or where cuts would be if the Republicans had their way. But there seems to be some fat there. Yeah. And, you know, the thing is the better proposal around when the Republicans started to talk about defunding the Ukrainian stuff and the end of last year, there was a proposal for like an inspector general of this.

Yeah, that's a good idea. I don't, I mean, I get that the Biden administration like, you know, the executive branch is always reluctant to have added oversight and accountability. But like it seems like that's not a bad place for this to land, especially if we're going to have to provide this. for a longer time, like having some kind of special IG or, you know, we used to have this around Iraq and Afghanistan funding. To me, that makes sense. It seems like you were watching Zelensky's social media. I will say it's funny, you mentioned Rishi. The contrast and the personalities

between Oloff Schultz, McCrown, and Rishi-Soonak with Zolensky, because, like, O'Lov Schultz is, like, super business-like, and, you know, he's just, like, walking through hallways with the guy. McCrone is like very emotional and he's always got like hand draped on his shoulder and you know. Do you look anguished? He looks anguished and but like and then Rishi just looks like this guy. He's just happy to be there.

It's really funny window in the European leaders. I love it. I love it. Okay. So in some non-Ukraine G7 news, speaking of like the awkward family photos, the leaders talked a lot about debt restructuring as you mentioned the top end and how to make institutions like the World Bank work or work at all for countries in the global south who, need assistance. They talked a lot about China, including China's unfair economic practices, making supply chains more resilient in the event of economic pressure by China or Russia. For example, you know, Biden team wants to get other countries to make semiconductors so that

the Chinese can't surround Taiwan, cut off the world supply of semiconductors and cause a huge crisis. President Biden was able to get some buy-in from G7 countries for U.S. export controls that prevent the sale of certain technologies to China. The Chinese were not thrilled about this focus. But still, Biden seemed bullish about talking to Chinese president Xi Jinping soon. There's nothing scheduled, nothing announced, but they haven't talked since the spy balloon incident. Looming over this whole summit was the debt ceiling standoff back in Washington and concerned that our idiotic politics would tank the global economy. President Biden had to cut his trip short. He canceled a visit to Papua New Guinea in Australia. It would have been the first U.S. presidential

visit to Papua New Guinea leaders from 17 other countries were planning to go to Papua New Guinea for a big meeting. So it wasn't just this like one bilateral trip. It was a much bigger thing. In Australia, Biden was supposed to meet with the quad, which is what nerds call meetings between the U.S., Japan, India, and Australia. Ben, this is the second time in a decade that Republicans have manufactured a crisis that forced the President of the United States, this time Biden, the last time Obama, to cancel a foreign trip. October 2013. was when Obama had to skip a major summit in Asia. How do you quantify the cost of a cancellation like that, of our politics just making us look like incompetent? So I think this one is pretty bad.

And look, it was bad in 2013. I don't think it was as bad because, first of all, the summer was in Brunei, which is a bit problematic, the Sultan there. It's true. No friend of... He owned a bunch of hotels in L.A. Yeah, the Polo Lounge over, you know, Beverly Hills. But here's why this is bad in this context. First of all, the whole point of this Asia strategy is to kind of counter China, right? That's no secret, right? China's message to all of these countries, whether it's the Pacific Island countries where they're throwing around a lot of money and leverage or even the Australia's and

Japan's of the world is, hey, you at least know who we are. We are who we are. Xi Jinping's present for life. we may be bullies, but like you kind of know the terms are transactional, right? The Americans in the Chinese argument, the Americans are dysfunctional. You can't trust them. They break agreements or they go from Obama to Trump to Biden. The thing they say now might be different to years from now.

And so the reason this is damaging is the cancellation is entirely consistent with the Chinese narrative. Right. There's like, see? Yeah, see, like they're so dis, we've been telling you democracy is dysfunctional, And they're so dysfunctional that they're putting the whole global economy risk because the dollars are reserved currency with the Chinese don't also like. And so that's a problem. And in places like the Pacific Islands, I would hope Biden would go back because to plan some big summit and raise expectations and not show up, I think is quite damaging. And the Chinese will make good use of that, you know.

She doesn't get extorted by the Paula Burrough Standing Committee. Yeah, exactly. He doesn't have a Kevin McCarthy. And I'd rather live in a democracy, even if it means we have Kevin McCarthy. Because the other thing is that the G7, they came to some common ground on China, but there are some real differences between the U.S. and Europe on China. And these export controls you talk about are a big part of it, because the U.S. is essentially trying to deny inputs into the Chinese economy.

So certain technologies are restricted from going to China, but increasingly also certain investments, right? Like they don't want investment from the U.S. or Europe to be going into certain Chinese sectors. And Europe has a lot of businesses that do a lot of stuff in China. And so they're kind of going along reluctantly with some of this. And again, to see the United States, like, telling them you have to take a hit at home. And you have to tell your companies that they can't invest in China anymore. Oh, and by the way, then we have to rush home to stop the U.S. economy from defaulting.

It is a problem. And it's not, it's ultimately it's a Republican's fault, not Joe Biden's, but we shouldn't pretend like this doesn't matter. Yeah, it's totally dysfunctional. I mean, ultimately, I'm sure these countries were like, look, my choice is you default on your debt or you cancel this trip, like cancel the trip. But like, that's an absurd choice to have to make for Joe Biden. Yeah. Okay. So, Ben, in back home, speaking of this function, we are learning more about just how badly the Air Force screwed up when it comes to protecting classified information and that massive leak of Pentagon documents by a 21-year-old IT specialist named Jack Tashara.

Prosecutors say, Tashira was reprimanded on two separate occasions for mishandling classified information. In September 2022, he was observed taking notes on classified intelligence and putting those notes in his pocket. Then a month later, Tashire got in trouble because he attended a classified briefing and started asking detailed questions. The IT guy was at a classified briefing asking questions. Then there was a third incident where to share was caught looking at intelligence, not related to his duties, but he wasn't reprimanded. Ben, like, I think back to our days at the White House in how, like, anxious I would feel asking to get rid into something or to see a document or to be a part of a meeting and how closely held we pretended things were. Or you could be asked to leave meetings in the situation all the time. Absolutely.

We have to skinny down to like some super red and good. Yeah, the real meeting after the meeting. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think we both when we heard about this story, we were like, how did the Air Force not like have ways to monitor what this guy was looking at? Now it seems like, in fact, it's worse than that. they caught him and they just failed to do anything about it? Yeah, I mean, I have to tell you that this whole thing has really made me realize that there's a much deeper cultural problem. For sure.

Clearly, the Air Force in this case, but you have to kind of think this might be going on in other, you know, branches of military or the intelligence community. Like, if you're in their tent, you're just kind of in, you're wandering around, you can read whatever you want, you can take notes on stuff. I mean, these are the reddest of red flags that this guy was exhibiting. And this does suggest the need for like a part. pretty massive cultural shift. Like we said, you're not going to plug every leak, but this one didn't seem like you needed, you know, George Smiley or Inspector Clouseau to like uncover the fucking mole here. I mean, right before we started taping, Ashley from our team sent her on a clip where the head of the German Ford Intelligence was complaining that it's hard to recruit

because his recruits want to work from home and they can't take their personal self-house work. So maybe there is a broader challenging cultural shift happening. But related to the to share a story, The CNN had a depressing piece last week about efforts to identify and root out extremists in the military. It was called the countering extremism working group. It was quietly abandoned because of Republican attacks of the military is woke. And we have long known that the military has a big far-right extremism problem in its ranks. The Department of Homeland Security in 2009, when we were in the White House, talked about this, how veterans were prone to getting recruited by these groups. Republicans attacked us.

Janet Napolitano had to walk it back. That was shameful. We shouldn't have done that. But like fast forward a few years, and I saw an analysis that found 15% of the January 6th insurrectionists had prior military experience. So it's clearly like there's a problem and it's not going away. And there was some like recently over the course last week too, like the first active duty person got prosecuted for January 6th. I mean, there's a real problem here. And look, some of this is just, you know, demographic, right?

Like it's young white men. young white men from certain parts of the country that are super conservative going to the military. And military is an institution with millions of people. So the kind of extremism we've seen in society is going to be represented in military. However, you know, highly trained, you know, armed people who, you know, also in extreme circumstances, it might make them more prone to radicalization. So this has clearly been like an elephant in the room of the conversation about extremism for some time. We've talked about in the context of like the Navy SEAL community that Eddie Gallagher came out of the war criminal.

But part of what I think the Republicans do in constantly attacking the military for being woke because of things like, you know, openness to transgender participation. It's kind of projection, too. Like some of it's like, oh, they can score political points on something that the military did that feels woke. But I think part of it is to kind of keep the attention in that direction. There's not some problem in the military with it being woke. There's not some issue where, like, the U.S. military is not carrying out its functions because it's woke. If anything, this is more corrosive. Because the U.S. military, in addition to this being a threat to the broader extremism picture in the United States, is a big diverse institution.

And I feel bad for people who have to serve with, like, white nationalist lunatics in the military, too. That's what we should be feeling bad for you. Yeah. Yeah. You feel like the only, you know, black male in a member of a unit where there's a bunch of, like, Jack Tisharas who are posting videos of themselves saying, the N-word and anti-Semitic slurs and firing guns, you would be scared for your life. Yeah, and can you imagine how much of that there is? I mean, they should be setting up, I hope they are, kind of reporting channels for people to raise this. And not trying to turn this

into like, I mean, look, the military, like the language is probably not perfect all the time. I get it, right? But this is something that I think is going to continue to be with us. And precise because it's hard to have a conversation in open politics about this, it's something that the military itself is going to have to handle in-house. Absolutely. Absolutely. Speaking of classified information, we learned an intriguing new detail about the investigation of President Trump's hoarding of classified information. The New York Times reported that prosecutors have issued a subpoena for information about Trump's business dealings in foreign countries since he took office.

That includes a request for quotes from the New York Times. Details on the Trump organization's real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries, China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE in Oman. It starts in 2017 when he took office. Previously, we heard. that prosecutors wanted details about Trump's dealings with the Saudi-owned live golf tour. Maybe the same thing here. Ben, clearly these guys are looking into any connection between Trump taking these documents and foreign dealings. I'm struggling with whether this is an obvious investigative step, whether there's smoke,

there's fire. What's your take with the caveat that we're both totally speculating? I mean, with the fact that you have four golf countries on this thing, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, you know, it suggests to me that everything we've been talking about, you know, is coming to play here, which is that if they're kind of looking at his conduct around Maralago, around corruption, around what may have been these documents or whom been sharing it with, the most obvious, you know, corruption, you know, Trump tends to be corrupt and commit crimes in public. And like, you know, there's so much money,

pumped into Trump properties from Saudi Arabia and the UAE in these countries, that I don't know how you don't end up looking in this direction. And the reality is if you have like an empowered special counsel who doesn't like this stuff and you start pulling these threads, like you're going to find all kinds of stuff. Yeah. It does sound like it's creating some, the internal lawyers are quitting left and right from Trump's team. They're all blaming Boris Epstein from obstructing them who's sort of like the in-house counsel in a previous life. He was like the surrogate. booking guy at the White House, sort of a marble-mouthed idiot propagandist. And the good thing that could come out of this is, like, this may not stop him from becoming president. I'm not ready to put Jack Smith, the special counsel, in a Superman suit like Bob Mueller. But, like, if this can help blunt this kind of growing snowball of corruption from places like Saudi Arabia and American politics, like, that could be good. Yeah, that could be good.

And also, I think some of the recent focus groups that Washington Post did found that people are sort of aware of the corruption cases and don't like them or the investigations. Two stories out of Iran, Ben. So first, the Iranian government executed three men who were sentenced in connection with the last year's anti-government protests after the murder of a young Iranian woman named Masa Amini. Amnesty International says these men were tortured into making false confessions. Iran has executed seven protesters since last December. dozens more have been charged the capital offenses or sentenced to death.

Also in Iran on Monday, Iran's Supreme Leader fired the country's top national security official. This guy's name is Ali Shamkani. He was until recently the Secretary of the Supreme National Council, which handles security and foreign policy. I think sort of the U.S. National Security Advisor equivalent. He led the effort to restore ties with Saudi Arabia. The New York Times said Shumkani was pushed out after his deputy was executed after charges that he spied for the British government. He was accused of corruption, failing to get Iran back into the Iran nuclear agreement. That was sort of an interesting one.

And that his replacement is some sort of military leader with no experience in diplomacy. so not great all around. How do you like to be that guy who, you know, it's not a comfortable place to probably be in retirement, you know, when you've been fired as, I mean, look, I obviously in the internal matters, they're dug in, they're going to crack down. It's tragic and I don't think it's going to make the opposition to the regime go away. It's just how they reflexively deal with it. It does feel like things are unsteady there. And again, the variable, we've talked about the nuclear issue and how far along there with the nuclear program. The other variable that we haven't talked about

a little bit is the Supreme Leader's health. Like he's old. It's true. And it feels like underneath him, it's not kind of clear where the power is going. No. And so the possibility there being a vacuum that is filled probably by like the hardline military types in the aftermath of Supreme Leader is quite high. But that's something to watch. Like geopolitical variables like a, we talked about the internal instability, but like a leadership, you know, transition in Iran. could be quite a mess. Absolutely. Another story out of the military here.

So U.S. military officials are walking back. Previous claims that a U.S. drone strike in Syria killed a senior al-Qaeda leader. A bunch of analysts, experts, humanitarian groups in the regions say that the May 3rd strike in Syria by the Pentagon actually killed a 56-year-old man named L'Avati Hassan, Misto, who had no ties to extremist groups and was literally just like tending to his sheep when he was killed. Misto is a father of 10. Ben, the last time there was reporting like this about, you know, a disastrously wrong drone strike was two years ago when the Pentagon mistakenly killed 10 members of an Afghan family in Kabul. They thought they were targeting an ISIS K member connected to the attack outside the Kabul airport. After incidents like this, there is often an after action report. There's conversations about, you know, biases that led them to take a strike when they shouldn't and ignore information that,

would have dissuaded them from moving forward. Maybe there's some changes of the targeting process. There is very rarely accountability. And I do think in this case, it will be important to watch and see if something changes here because I think this isn't something that happened in the fog of war. It doesn't sound like there was some imminent threat. Yeah.

And someone's reacting, you know, quickly. It sounds like they just got the wrong guy. they had all the time in the world to collect information, and they just killed an innocent person. And that just cannot happen. It just can't. And part of the reason why is that if they can make a mistake in that circumstance once, like it calls into question all the strikes they take, right?

I mean, if you have the opportunity to kind of observe something for a while and are just this wrong about who the person is, I mean, Afghanistan was a complete tragedy and catastrophe. it was at least, as you say, it was like a dynamic situation. It was, you know, after an attack, you know, trying to prevent another attack that appeared imminent. If you can demonstrate accountability and kind of corrective measures that you're taking after something like this, then how can people have confidence that future strikes in Syria or not, you know, similarly compromised? So they need to, accountability is a question, or at least also like explaining how you, you,

could have got this wrong. But it does call in the question just how long are we going to be using this tool is drone or drone strikes. And this is why I felt, you know, the Obama record, and we've talked about this in the past, the one thing I'd say is like what I always felt the most uncomfortable about was to kind of open-ended nature of this thing. It'd be one thing to say, like, we're going to use drones for a couple years until we, you know, the al-Qaeda threat is reduced to this level or until Congress, you know, withdraws at authorization for the use of force. here we are like a decade later, you know, and it seems like this is just an open-ended thing.

Yeah. And more I think about this, I mean, I guess this was sort of in the time period where there was an attack on that U.S. base in Syria. So maybe they thought, maybe this was associated with that. But still, I mean, I think the point still stands that like we shouldn't be getting these things wrong. The point still stands. And also that's a sign of like, does that mean, you know, should we be relaxing all of. of our, like, I don't know what happened here, but like if, if what happened, and that's it, is that in the aftermath of an attack like that, they, they reduce the threshold. Right. Open the aperture. Maybe they shouldn't be doing that.

You know, like, I get the impulse to do it. You want to find who did this, but like, this will only make that harder in the future. Absolutely. I saw, sorry in the intercept reported that some of the survivors of that strike in Afghanistan, the tragic mistake two years ago are now in the U.S., I think in California, but they still haven't gotten any financial compensation from the U.S. government, which seems like inconceivable. That seems inconceivable, yeah. Fix that if you're listening. So, speaking of the Pentagon Ben, so on Monday, an AI-generated image of the Pentagon pouring out smoke on fire after some like explosion,

went viral on Twitter, panicked people, led to a dip in the stock market. Turns out it was just fake. It was AI-generated. So a lot of the idiots spreading this hoax had blue check marks, of course. they pay Elon for that privilege to disseminate fake news. The RT, the Russian propaganda network, pushed it around too. I think it was on some state TV in Russia as well. So, you know, Ben, I think it was all fun in games when we were retweeting the Balenciaga Pope. That was a great time.

But I worry like this is the future of AI on social media, at least on Twitter since Elon doesn't seem to care. But I just read today that the White House is now, I think, starting a process for how to, I don't know, regulate her reign in AI. Yeah, which is a massive endeavor. because it touches everything from education to public health to financial markets to national security, right? Just to take this example, this issue of images and deep fakes, you know, it's not hard. This is like a relatively straightforward one, like fake image of the Pentagon fire market dips.

Some blue check marks look like a bunch of rubs, but, you know. But I was thinking in the context of like a Sudan civil war, right? You could create like a fake AI generated version of the two warlords and like be giving like, instructions to paramilitary forces, right? So this isn't just disinformation campaigns. You could like really destabilize countries. Fake atrocities.

Yeah, fake atrocities enrage, you know, certain communities. A video of a fake burning Quran. Fake burning Quran. Imagine what that would have done back in the day or still today. So to me like one place where this is clearly going in conversations is there's going to have to be some way of verifying images, you know, or, you know, whether their images or videos, something that's like a signature, like some

blue checkmark. This is actually why the blue checkmark thing. I know. I know. I'm just continuing to realize how much it sucks because if you're only battle on behalf of like some objective reality is verification. And then you basically turn verification into a joke. That's a problem.

It's a real bummer. Some quicker headlines, just a flag for everybody. So the European Union find meta, Facebook, $1.3 billion for breaking EU privacy laws by transferring data from Europe to the U.S. without proper safeguards. This is the biggest financial penalty for a company in the five years since the EU enacted its general data protection regulation, which is designed to protect people's online data. Facebook says they're going to appeal it. Best of luck. Also, Ben, I saw the first ever female Arab astronaut has arrived at the International Space Station. Her name is Rayana Barnawi.

She's one of two Saudi astronauts on this mission. She's going to conduct stem cell and breast cancer research during her 10 days at the space station. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said that the entire nation is proud of Barnawi and that he can't wait to unjustly imprison her upon her return. I made up that last part, but, you know, it's cool that she's up there. It's cool that she's up there. Who is like the worst Boston sports free agent signing that you can think of or trade or something? I don't know. That'll take me.

Well, we did trade Babe Ruth. You did trade Babe Ruth. I mean, the point I'm making here is that it's kind of funny me that meta is named meta, because basically that's like they bet this whole company on the Metaverse, which is now failed, and it's funny that they're saddled by the name. It'd be like, you know, the Mets most infamously signed Bobby Bania to this contract. You're still paying them, I believe. We're still paying him.

It'd be like if we change our name from the Mets to the New York Bobby Benias. So first of all, that's funny. The $1.3 billion fine to try to get them to not be. move any European data to the U.S. That's what it was about, saying that, like, European data privacy mandates that data stay in Europe because it's not safe in the U.S. And intelligence, like, that's a pretty big marker to lay down from the European. So this will go through appeals, but, like, it does show that on these tech questions from social media to data and, you know, AI is looming their eyes in that, like, the Europeans' appetite to regulate is going up, not down. Yeah, and it could hopefully it'll help us raise our levels, too.

The newly re-elected Greek crime minister says his government is going to investigate a video that shows about a dozen asylum seekers from Somalia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia, including several children in a six-month-old baby, being taken in a van to a dock on the southern tip of the island of Lesbos, transferred to a speedboat, motor out it to the sea, transferred again to a Greek coast guard vessel, driven out of Greece's territorial waters, and then abandoned in a black inflatable raft in the middle of the ocean, six-month-old. baby. Luckily, these people were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard. Then, obviously, like, our immigration policy record has got some real horrible stains on it. But the video of these fucking monsters passing a baby from one boat to another is like, it's just sort of, it's burned into my memory now. Yeah, the New York Times does there's credit for an investigation? I mean, there have been rumors of this kind of thing happening. And one of the things that's really tragic when you see something like this is you realize, shit, we're sitting. this one, how many times does this happen? How many boats did not survive? Yeah, there's an

activist with like a long lens and a video camera. Exactly. That's the only reason they got this one. And, you know, the Greek government has taken like a hard line. Like this is, I mean, this may not be their overt policy, but this is definitely the orientation that they've moved to, with, by the way, the support of the European Union. So this is, you know, this is where immigration policy has gone in Europe. We see where immigration policies in the U.S. with Biden. maintaining a lot of the strict Trump error rules. I mean, like, there needs to be a shift back to figuring out how to have a more humane approach. Like, I get that open door policies are not, you know, going to take in the West. But we seem to have lost the thread on the humanity

of this. Even at the height of the refugee crisis in 2015-16, there was more of an effort to try to treat people humanely. That may have generated some backlash, but I mean, I think we need to realize there's got to be a way to enforce policies without doing crap like this. Yeah. Speaking of losing the threat on humanity, soccer star Vinicius Jr. is calling out racist soccer fans in Spain and the country itself for doing nothing to stop them. So Vinicius Jr. plays for Real Madrid. It's one of the best teams in Spain's La L'Lea, one of the best teams in the world. He posted a compilation video of fans in stadiums across Spain calling him a monkey and other viable. things over and over and over again. Real Madrid said that this abuse qualifies as hate crime.

The idiot chief executive of La Liga logged onto Twitter to defend Spanish fans. He started arguing with Nisius Jr. going back and forth, outrageous. Lula de Silva, the president of Brazil, got asked about the matter at the G7. So this is like a global affair now. So Spain wants to jointly host the 2030 World Cup with Portugal and Morocco. Hopefully that can be some kind of pressure point to get them to take some real action and fix this problem and, like, I don't know, permanently ban these fans that pull this shit. Because it's all in video. You can see who's doing it. It's not deniable, but it's truly, it's like really appalling stuff. Yeah. And it's just like, like, you've seen this over the years just like a bunch of racist garbage like from from soccer fans and parts of Europe at a pretty big scale, too. Like this isn't just usually some one drunk guy. These are like the whole sections, whole stadiums, channing complete bullshit. And by the way, like, it's worth calling out these racist European fans.

Like, you know, your players, like, you're more than happy to pay all this money to bring players from African or Arab or other backgrounds to play your teams or Brazil and then just fucking, you know, treat them like dehumanized garbage. Like, fuck you. You know, like, you don't have that right to, like, buy players and then, you know, treat the ones you aren't your nationality or aren't white differently. So I do hope that there's a concerted effort to root this out. And yeah, like, I, is it safe for the African bracket of the World Cup to go to Spain? I don't know. They have to show that it would be safe for them. Absolutely.

Speaking of crazy soccer fans, there's this wild video that popped up, I think, over the weekend of, There's a West Ham game against some Dutch club at West Ham. And a bunch of these ultras who were like the super right wing guys who like cover their faces and go beat the shit out of people, jumped a barrier and started to try to get to the West Ham section where friends and family of the players sit. So this massive West Ham fan, this big British dude named, they call him Nolsey. He and this other guy just got to the top of the staircase that led up to the section and beat the shit out of every single ultra who tried to get up there until like they were ripped and blood. but, like, fought off 40 guys. I mean, maybe that's the answer.

Maybe we just need, like, Nolzey and all these games. You know, just like, just bouncing, yeah. But like, yeah, I probably shouldn't have to come to that. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Maybe we should clean up some problems. Anyway, a couple of dumb things to close, Ben. So first, there is a new entrance to the ongoing Gulf Country Real Estate Dick measuring contest.

So we talked about plans for the Lion Project in Saudi Arabia. That's the 170 kilometer, 170 kilometer long, 200 meter wide, 500 meter tall building that will absolutely never, ever be built. Not to be outdone, a Canadian entrepreneur named Michael Henderson is proposed creating a 900 foot tall, $5 billion replica of the moon in Dubai. Inside the moon will be a 4,000 room hotel, Ben's putting his head in his hand, a 10,000 capacity arena, a nightclub, and a wellness center. Henderson said, quote, we have the biggest brand in the world.

Eight billion people know our brand, and we haven't even started yet. that brand being the literal moon. So there you go, Ben. I guess at what point do you think the reporters covering the stuff are like, maybe we shouldn't publish this? There's just such like a late stage capitalist dystopian vibe to all these Gulf real estate projects. It's just like the combination of like megalomania and tackiness, you know? Like why would you, if you had this kind of money, why would you want to build a replica of the moon

in Dubai, you know, like it. And apparently other sort of like moon replica structures that have been built are so bright that they block out the natural sky that cause like massive light pollution. The irony is so rich and so weird. Yeah. Yeah. And the moon is like, I wonder how the moon feels about being a brand. Yeah, poor moon. It's just kind of like a moon. First we all said it was made of cheese and now this just, it's just, I mean, for that money, you could just go to the moon and build a colony up there. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Which I think the Emirates are probably doing too. Grab Elon. Yeah, grab Elon. Yeah, grab the blue checks. Get going. Last thing, an aid to disgrace former British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, told some stories

about Boris's dealings with other European heads of states. He said Boris called French President Emmanuel Macron Putin's lick spittle. He said he would, quote, punch his lights out and that he wanted, quote, an orgy of frog bashing. Boris also called... Wait, is that, I mean, where is that on the hierarchy of insults? Frog, yeah. Can you say that? I mean... Why do we call the French Frogs? Do they eat frogs's legs? And they eat frogs' legs, I think. But I don't know if that's like...

I don't know where that one is either. That's a good question. I'll ask, you know, I'll ask a friend Rob. We get some French people here. Yeah. So Boris also called McCron, a word that starts with C that our friends on Potsave the UK are comfortable saying, but I am not. So I don't know, man.

Is that a norm thing? Is that like word more normal over there? Yeah, that word is. Because all the Brits, I know, they use that word, especially women seem to use that word a lot over there. Yeah. Yeah. That word to me is like the word.

you don't say. You know? It's on a list that only has about three or four words on it for me. Yeah, right. There's a whole bucket of like slurs that you never say. But it turns just like profanity. Yeah, the things you just don't. Like the C word is like, that's a big one.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, uh, Boris probably don't want to go to San Trope or whatever. The funny thing about that is like the punch lights out. Could you actually see Boris Johnson like getting in a fight? Like it's such a false bravado to this. Yeah.

He's the kind of guy who would like take his swing and fall over backwards, you know? I have his head beat you up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Have his, you know, have his, like, bigger friend from Eden beating you up or something. Is he an Oxford friend? Nolsey, you know.

That's so incredible. I mean, this guy was the prime minister for a long time. Yeah, you wonder why he got along with Trump. But Macron, it's kind of interesting. He's one of those leaders you kind of want to know privately what all the other leaders sing about him. Yeah, he does seem to trigger these guys. He seems like he triggers these guys, you know, pretty uniformly. Yeah, I'm not suggesting it justifies Boris Johnson, but.

No, no, no. But it's interesting. Okay. We are going to take a quick break. When we come back, you'll hear Ben's interview with Mark Malick Brown. So stick around for that. Well, I am very pleased to welcome to POTS at the world Mark Malick Brown, who's the president of the Open Society Foundations, the world's largest private funder of independent groups,

working for justice, democracy, human rights. Mark also has a really extraordinary career over several decades working in the United Nations system, the World Bank, the British government. So, Mark, thanks so much for joining us here. No, thank you, Ben. Okay, so, you know, OSF, for those who don't know, is really on the front lines and has been for decades in terms of supporting civil society and supporting people working for human rights and democratic values all over the world. We cover these issues a lot on this podcast, Mark, and obviously we've been living through over the last decade or two a democratic recession here. and one in which there's been a concerted effort, I think, to make it harder for OSF and the people

it supports to do their work with restrictive laws and conspiracy theories and restrictions on funding for NGOs. Just speaking generally, as someone who's been in this space for a long time, how does that impact the work of an OSF? How do you guys feel the kind of closing space around civil society generally in your work? It's gotten, you're right, it's gotten a lot harder, a lot more challenging, but of course, when you win victories, therefore, a lot more rewarding. I mean, you know, go back to the 90s, 1990s and there was a sort of a sense of inevitability about, you know, this rollout of democracy reaching pretty much every corner of the world. We reached a point where more than two-thirds of countries were fully fledged democracies and it wasn't clear that trend was going to stop. And, you know, at that time, we were able to operate under a fairly simple sort of narrative formula in a way, or theory of change formula, maybe better to put it, where, you know, democracy was rolling out. People were adopting constitutions. They were holding elections. And yet the problem was there wasn't a strong civil society to contest these governments, some of which still had a lot of people in them from previous more authoritarian governments. So building up the civil society as the other side, if you like, of the scales to democratic institutions and constitutionalism seem the way to make those democracies really

breathe and live and introduce challenge to ruling elites. You know, fast forward to now, and we've gone through 17 years of democracy deficit where every year Freedom House has reported a decline in the amount of democracy in the world. And, you know, organizations like ours are in many parts of the world on the back foot and, in fact, banned essentially from many countries. So it is a much more challenging environment, but not least because that theory of change doesn't work anymore. You know, you've got to really understand the anatomy of power in these countries much more clearly to work out where the levers of change still are. You know, what will improve the quality of governance, which will, what will offer more protection to human rights. So I think we're down to

a, you know, almost much more micro country by country effort to define strategies to protect and rebuild democracy and human rights. So, and I want to get to kind of solutions and what's working, but kind of one more question about the challenge. OSF operates globally, right? So a lot of people think in terms of the extraordinary work that's been done in central and eastern Europe, but obviously you guys are also in Africa. You're in Latin America. You're in Asia. And I'm curious, how common are the challenges you face? Because there have been these kind of copycat laws and approaches around, you know, stamping out civil society or choking off any resourcing for civil society. Do you see that the democratic deficit, the challenge as distinct

in different regions, or do you feel like there's a common playbook that you're confronting in all parts of the world? Well, I think there is a common playbook, but it passes through the filter of local conditions. So, you know, there are significant differences across countries and regions. But, you know, the common playbook is, you know, democracy is not delivering results for citizens. you know, in despair, reach out for a more populist solution. You know, easy answers are promised. They're rarely delivered. And, you know, in that probably lies the seeds of the future defeat of authoritarianism. I mean, because, you know, populist government is much less able than democratic government to ultimately deliver the economic security, the welfare, the opportunity that people want.

So, you know, I don't think we should despair about democracy. This is a setback, but it needn't be a fatal one. And, you know, in every country, we see different coalitions of either political parties, but increasingly young activist, social activist movements, single issue groups, think tanks of different kinds, all combining to start to offer alternatives to either a failing, populism or in other places a democracy which isn't delivering for people. Yeah. Well, that turns us into kind of solutions. And I want to talk first about kind of the role of governments and then getting into what OSF is doing. I mean, if you look at the G7 that

just took place, on the one end, you've seen the United States far more so than in recent years can embrace the language of democracy promotion and hold democracy summits and kind of frame conflicts like the war in Ukraine or the competition with China around democratic values. On the other hand, you know, at the G7, you had Narendra Modi from India kind of getting the red carpet welcome. Obviously, he's on the right side from the G7's perspective of geopolitical competition with China, but we've talked a lot about democratic backsliding and populism in India on this podcast. How do you see the, the, the, the opportunity in the G7 and the United States

kind of embracing the language of democracy. But how does that, how do you deal with the challenge of at the same time they're doing that? You know, they're embracing a Modi, they're courting Mohammed bin Salman. What good can you take from what's happening around the G7 and what challenges do you see from the kind of narrower geopolitical interests

that sometimes complicate the rhetoric of democracy promotion? Well, you know, on the one hand, and I think, you know, Biden genuinely has, at least temporarily, saved democracy in the US and should be celebrated as such. That said, I think there is, you know, a naivety that comes maybe from the euphoric, blood to the head moment of a campaign promise rather than a considered policy promising government that led to these democracy summits. Because, you know, in truth, you know, Biden has spent more years,

in Washington than pretty much any political, well, than any other politician to occupy the presidency of all people might have remembered that interests ultimately Trump values when it comes to foreign policy. I don't say that with any enthusiasm. I say it with regret, but it's, you know, a fact of life. And so, you know, I think India is really the case in point

because here is a country which is treating its Muslim minority in a very reckless way with disregard for their human rights in many cases, and yet is viewed by the US as a vital ally in the containment of China, a member of the quad, etc. And, you know, so it's getting a free pass on human rights. It's getting a free pass from the US on human rights. And, you know, Saudi Arabia an even more embarrassing U-turn for a president who, you know, not wanted to visit and who then the war in Ukraine forced him to turn to Saudi to sustain American, or not so actually not the U.S., but to sustain the U.S.'s allies, you know, energy security. And so it's, you know, he should have foreseen that. I mean,

international politics delivers you surprises every day, but the only surprise that you shouldn't have is that in responding to the crises and the strategic threats you face, you're going to fall back on interests over values. And, you know, in that sense, you know, I think he probably, you know, he just hadn't given these democracy summits enough thought in advance. Yeah. Well, I think what they would say too, coming at something like the G7, is that Ukraine is so fundamental to the survivability or momentum around democracy that sometimes you have to make those tradeoffs. I mean, in your work at OSF, I mean, how central do you, do you accept the premise that Ukraine is kind of the main event in some ways in terms of the fault line between, you know, a totalitarian or at least autocratic Russia

and a democratic or aspiring Democrat, Democratic Ukraine? Do you, do you, do you, do you, Do you believe that the outcome of that conflict based on your networks around the globe, that the outcome of that conflict will ripple beyond just the space of Ukraine itself? Yeah, I do. And, you know, but I think that makes OSF a little unusual. I mean, we've had a office and a program and a foundation in Ukraine for more than 25 years. and we spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars there on democracy, human rights, economic reform. You know, over many years with considerable frustration because, you know, corruption continued.

There were some very weak governments in quick succession. The biggest shot in the arm for Ukraine democracy and nation building has been Putin's invasion. You know, tragic, though, it's been in terms of the loss of life. And, you know, so we are really committed to Ukraine and see this as much more than just a war in Europe that shouldn't preoccupied the wider world when a permanent member of the Security Council invades a neighbor without cause. You know, it is a breach of the most fundamental cardinal rule of the UN-based international system. So it's a big deal. You know, that said, you know, I have in recent weeks, months, you know, been in Africa a couple of times, been in countries like Lebanon, been in Latin America, and seen that there is a really racing bushfire of a crisis across many economies where, you know, debt is rapidly becoming unsustainable, there is inflation in food and energy prices, there is major disruption. of supply chains. All of it aggravated by the Ukraine conflict, which disrupted not just energy

supplies, but wheat supplies, grain supplies as well. And, you know, there just simply isn't enough attention from G7 leaders to this second crisis, often called the polycrisis. And, you know, that has led to a huge anger about double standards that comes on the heels. of the anger felt around COVID access issues of Africa not getting COVID drugs until two years after the, or vaccinations, until two years after the rest of the world kind of thing. And, you know, so there is a real anger which has been compounded by this crisis. And, you know, obviously, while I would argue that Ukraine is very different to those situations where America has gone in to other countries,

without the full blessing of the UN Security Council. Nevertheless, for many, there is over Kosovo and Iraq, as well as more generally on Middle East policy by the US, a big whiff of double standards. And so, you know, in that context, it's created a huge anger. And, you know, the G7 communique last weekend, which had lots of new commitments and, citing stuff about F-16s for Ukraine and had the visit of Zelensky himself to the summit,

you know, was the normal sort of mix of nice words and good intentions, but not hard answers when it came to this other crisis. Yeah. And do you put the debt piece of that at the top? I mean, you know, so I think people aren't aware of just how much, you know, a huge swath of developing countries on the precipice of default. It's not just the United States with itself and post one. Do you think the G7 can be doing more around debt forgiveness or restructuring? Yeah, at the very minimum, you would have expected the G7 to have blessed some debt standstills for countries most in need, which isn't even debt reductions or write-offs. It's just standstill on interest, which then accumulates. So, you know, there were some very modest measures which would

produce some relief and headroom for countries in terrible difficulty at the moment. And it's a combination of both low-income countries and middle-income ones. In case, middle-income ones, they've, you know, over-borrowed in eurobonds. Sometimes they've over-borrowed from the Chinese as well. And, you know, and for the poor ones, it's a lot of it's official debt. It's not, not private sector debt. But in each case, you know, rising interest rates, depreciation, local currencies, falling state revenues because of disruptions of exports. You know, all of these things are combining to make the debt service really difficult and reach critical crisis levels.

And, you know, it's very striking to me. I was recently at spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington where there was a sort of technical conversation in technical language about how to nudge up the so-called capital adequacy of the World Bank to essentially. allow it to lend a little bit more. And then went from there to Nairobi, Kenya, where the sense of just sheer crisis and alarm and a sort of debt doomsday scenario was huge.

Civil servants haven't been paid that month. And across the continent, there was a real sense that these number of debt crises, which at the moment the most front ones are Zambia and Ghana, and Ghana a little bit of good news there was a deal last week, a restructuring of the debt deal. But, you know, Zambia is still struggling to complete. And, you know, people can't help but point out a California bank gets into trouble. It gets rescued in three days.

Zambia's been several years waiting for its debt deal and still hasn't got it. And so this sense of how the West, whether it's from COVID or to, a bank failure can deploy whatever it takes to stabilize the situation when its own citizens are at risk is reticent to the point of inaction when it comes to doing more than just words and sympathy for the needs of developing countries. So it's a pretty bad time out there in terms of North-South relations. Yeah, no, I think this is a really good point. I think it's the most under-discussed crisis in the world right now. And it's somewhat of our own making in that, you know, you had a lot of cheap credit when interest rates were flat. Our raising of interest

rates in the United States is compounding this debt crisis on top of COVID and the war in Ukraine. I do want to ask you about, you know, kind of a good news story. You were just in Brazil, where we've actually seen this kind of interesting coalition between the kind of established progressive alternative to populism and Lula, but a kind of younger network of folks who came together to really try to save democracy in Brazil. I mean, what did you find there? What worked in Brazil, not saying they're out of the woods completely, but what worked there that people could learn from? What did you leave in terms of your impression of where Brazil has gone? Well, look, I mean, I think the first thing is to just reaffirm they're not out of the woods. This is a kind of quite weak

government, you know, it only won the popular vote by about one and a half percent, the presidency, and it does not enjoy a majority in Congress. So it's quite limited in its legislative capabilities. And that's critical because it is a system quite like the U.S. is. And so its hands are partially tied. But, you know, having, and, you know, the right could come back. you know, in the next election anytime, really, and it's had its own January the 6th on January the 8th, when similarly, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, legislature were invaded, uh, by pro-Belsenaro demonstrators. So there's a fragility about it. But behind that fragility is this dynamic sort of ant-hill of activists who, who've built something remarkable.

And they come, not, not. I always used the analogy of British Labour Party where, you know, we had governments where the leading figures in them were MPs from old Labor Union and mining districts in many cases. And the, you know, the advisors who weren't ministers themselves came from similar party backgrounds. And then under Blair, we got what we called New Labor, which had a network of people drawn in from think tanks, from a ton of them had done, been graduate students at the Kennedy School in the US. And, you know, there were a lot of activists coming in from single issue causes. And, you know, nothing reminded me more of the dawn of new labor in the UK, it seems a long time ago,

than sort of new workers' party, if you like, where, you know, extraordinary individuals, a woman who'd gone straight from a favela to 10 years of playing sports for American universities and now is back as returned as a social activist to inherit her sister who was assassinated, sort of mantle as a leader of black, Afro-Brailians, and is now Minister for Racial Affairs. An extraordinary indigenous woman who, you know, has fought hard to protect the Amazon and the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands in the Amazon, now minister of a new ministry for indigenous people's affairs. And both of them were sworn in the same day in the presidential palace two days after it had been all its windows blown out by the riots and assault on it of January 8th this year. And, you know, a sense of renewal amidst that devastation, these two remarkable women, probably 18 inches apart in height, the very short indigenous woman, this tall, striking ex-volleyball player who was Minister for Racial Affairs.

So, you know, a real sense of this and a pride for us in OSF because this sort of revolving. door of people going out of think tanks and social movements and into government and trying to drive through reform, then going back to the think tank social movement world. That to me is the modern anatomy of power in many places where, you know, it's ideas which are going to change things and those ideas don't come from permanent living in government or from the increasingly sort of closed world of aging political parties, but they come. from think tanks and social movements. And in Brazil, that virtuous revolving door seems to have been quite effectively created.

Well, so the last question I want to ask you, you know, globally, we've seen a lot of coordination among far-right movements among autocrats. What needs to happen for that ecosystem that you're describing to globalize? for progressives or small D Democrats who are living in different parts of the world, but facing similar challenges to kind of work together. And obviously, OSF is as networked as anybody. And I did want to ask, as you are working to create that outcome, which I think, you know, this podcast and our listeners are very supportive of, you're constantly dealing with the conspiracy theories about, you know, George Soros. And does that matter? Is that, I mean, I see that as a, as people

trying to disrupt any effort to create coordination by making it seem like some big conspiracy theory when in fact we're all very transparent about wanting to support human rights. I mean, how do you achieve that scale while kind of beating back these efforts to delegitimize your work? Well, let me take that second part first. And, you know, I think it is, you know, it's not, one can't pretend it isn't without its damage to certain susceptible audiences, this idea that where somehow the dark face of some, you know, hidden conspiracy. And, you know, George gets the brunt of it, but I have an honoured part as his henchman in the UK

who's busy apparently trying to recolonize America for the British Crown. And so their view seems to be that it's a strange mixture of secret Jewish activists and British royalists who are conspiring against the right in America. I sort of think there's an element of pride in being, you know, in who your enemies are about some of this. But I think, you know, it does do damage. And we just last week, you know, had, you know,

a really vicious Twitter attack on George, which may have had up to a billion views through the network of retweeting that's happening to it. So one shouldn't, you know, underestimate this. But, you know, for me, you know, our legitimacy lies in two things. The partners we have and their credibility and authority in the communities and countries where they operate. And our ability to support the development of new solutions, either immediate urgent solutions to something like the debt crisis we were talking about, or longer term patient solutions to global problems.

And here, I would say this, Ben, that, you know, I've really, have. being involved in democracy and government all my life, I have come to conclude this isn't actually a crisis of democracy, it's a crisis of governing. And, you know, that in all our countries, developed or developing alike, US, UK, Kenya, Brazil, you name it, there is this similar shared sense that government simply isn't delivering, that minorities feel excluded, I mean, minorities by economic status or ethnicity or class or religion feel excluded, but also that mainstream groups who've been used to an economic security for themselves and their families increasingly feel marginalized.

And, you know, we're leaving a period of, you know, I know it's a phrase which is getting too much use nowadays, but of a neoliberal paradigm where small governments and leave it to big markets to sort out the allocation of wealth, it has failed. You know, and it came to being on the shoulders of a new deal, which had also failed for completely other reasons. So we're a world casting around for a new political paradigm, if you like, of how to govern ourselves. And I think we don't want to make the mistakes of going back, to the very big, big, big government of the New Deal. We know there is a room for markets and the private sector, which was, the oxygen was squeezed out of in that period. But nor do we want

to continue the sin of neoliberalism, which is allowing the markets to sort out our economic and social security and well-being. And so we're casting around how do we build the kind of government which can address our internal divisions and exclusions and build a much kinder, more inclusive kind of governance. And globally, a kind of government which both at the national and more global level can address these big strategic long-term problems that need sustained public investment over decades, such as the transition to green energy and the efforts to limit global warming. And, you know, and so I think, you know, populism and failed democracy are two sides of the same coin of a governing idea that isn't delivering. And so I think we're

all on this shared journey. And, you know, my vision for OSF is that over the next 10 years, we can see the social movements and the think tanks at the national level, which will together collectively, arrive at some kind of global consensus on the best way we should all govern ourselves. And I don't for a moment mean it's going to be world government. It'll be strong national government, but national governments which share a lot more of a view about how to best tackle these common problems we all have. And I, you know, in the past, whether it was the Thatcher Reagan years or the New Deal and welfare state years of a generation earlier. You know, it was a narrow range of think tanks and intellectuals and academics very heavily in

those days concentrated in Washington and London, and Cambridge Mass and a few other places who developed this or Chicago when it came to the Reagan-Thatcher period. This time, the idea for the new order will not come from such a narrow range of places. You know, we'll find them in India, we'll find them in China, we'll find them in Kenya or Brasilia. And, you know, that's what for me is the excitement of running OSF, that we can help seed the thinking that will produce a new and better way for us to govern ourselves. Well, look, that's a great note to Edna on Mark. And, you know, one thing I've noticed in being in this space is one thing that's true today versus five or ten years ago, certainly ten years ago, is just the awareness of the challenges and the desire for new solutions and people feeling the need for mobilization. So OSF is obviously a huge part of that.

And we appreciate you coming on to talk about it. Thank you, Ben. Thanks again, Mark, for joining the show. You know, maybe we'll just go to this moon hotel. I think they're building something like that in Vegas. See, but Vegas would do it in a more tasteful way because it's pretty small. You know, like these replicas are... You have New York, New York or something.

You know, New York or the Eiffel Tower there is kind of like a... Fountain that goes up. Yeah. I don't know. I guess I'm defending Vegas here, but still... Just try better. Be better. Be better.

If you had that... But here's the thing. Like, that's... You put your finger on it. Like, these people have like a trillion dollars, right? They're like liquid to the tune of a trillion dollars. They can write checks. Think of what?

you would do with that money. Yeah, not build the moon. It's not this. It looks like a death star. Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, kind of is, I guess. Kind of is, maybe it is. Maybe that's what this is really about.

Excited for COP28. Yeah, they can have COP28 in the moon. In the moon. Yeah. Excellent. Okay, well, that's it for us this week and talk to guys next week. See ya. Pod Save the World is a cricket media production.

Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley News. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Seguin, Charlotte Landis, and Vesilius Futopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, D.B. Bradford, and Milo Kim, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube every week and check out the Pots Save the World YouTube account. Thanks to Saul Rubin for production support.