Pod Save the World - Ukraine Sea Drones and Peace Talks

Episode Date: August 9, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about the global response to the coup in Niger, Ukraine’s sea drone attacks and peace talks in Saudi Arabia, new polling about approval Biden’s foreign policy and support for Ukraine, a quick look at some foreign policy debates in the 2024 GOP primary, and reports that US Marines will defend ships in the Persian gulf. Then updates from Colombia, Pakistan, ISIS, Chinese information operations, crypto scams, and why Rishi Sunak is the Prime Minister of Soul Cycle. Then Crooked Contributor Max Fisher joins to talk about the health of democracy around the world.  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 POTSate the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Listeners, you might assume that Ben and my text conversations are about wonky, nerdy stuff, like what Chris Van Hollen is saying about aid to Israel. And you'd be right. But it's also about the hilarious content that Twitter users are making about a brawl in Alabama on sort of a riverwalk. That consumed most of my morning, thanks to you. I have to admit that I had one of those days yesterday when I could just, just tell early on I was going to be very productive. And I actually think I end up spending about two hours consuming that content.

I told you guys 45 minutes, but that was, that was, I actually wrote and deleted because I was embarrassed. It's like when you tell the doctor, you had three drinks this week on average. Yeah, exactly. Oh, you know, maybe I have a glass of wine. Yeah. Once every while. Yeah, I, we should probably not comment too much on it.

But if you have not gone down the rabbit hole of the Montgomery and there are, many different names for it now. Brawl, I guess, is usually the best search. Let's just say, like, it can be a satisfying. It's impressive. The gist is the sort of like horrible rednecky guys jump a security guard in front of a riverboat full of passengers. And one guy is so pissed about it. He literally dives off the riverboat and swim to the shore to help him. And let me just tell you, the bad guys get it in the end. Yeah, that guy's a total legend. And I just, the only thing I will say confidently is that the white guys, like, could not appear to be more, like, redneckish. And in the wrong, yeah.

They have their shirts off. They literally have rednecks, you know. And, yeah, they get what's coming. Yeah, but people are calling the hero, scuba gooding Jr., among other, like, incredible nicknames. But enough about that. We got a great, great show today, Ben. So we're going to talk about the latest developments with the coup in Niger, sea drones in Ukraine and peace talks that were hosted by Saudi Arabia.

Some rare foreign policy polling from CNN got us both quite excited. We'll once again also try to take you inside the mind of the foreign policy debates happening in the Republican presidential primary. There's reports that Marines are going to start defending ships in the Persian Gulf. We'll talk about whether that's a good idea. There's some good news and bad news for the president of Colombia. ISIS gets a new boss. Congrats to everyone in ISIS.

There's a story about China, leftist groups, and a terrible wedding invite. The worst start of pitch I've ever heard. And then Crooked Media's Max Fisher is going to join us to talk about like a snapshot of where democracy is around the globe before we get to the news, Ben. So the Crooked Media subscription community is hopping. We got to get you on the Discord

because there's a potta to the world. I didn't been on until recently either. But now I'm like deep in it and there's a whole Pod Save the World. Are there leaked documents? No, not yet. Wink. There's a Pod Save the World channel

and it's this very fun, very fun, like funny, rolling, nerdy conversation about our policy. I promise to get on the podcast. I'd say the world discord to the world. Cricket.com slash friends if you want to join today. Also, if you want to see Love it or Leave it live in L.A., the Thursday Night Shows at Dynasty Typewriter are back.

Go to crooked.com slash events for more details and to score tickets. Let's start Niger. Sound good? Let's do it. So on July 26, the former head of the military guard, Niger, seized power from the current president, Muhammad Bazum, and they put him under house arrest where Mahabazum remains with his family. In response, Echowas, a union of 15 West African countries threatened consequences. That could include military action if Buzum wasn't reinstated by last Sunday.

That deadline has obviously lapsed. The U.S., the EU, the French, the World Bank, they've suspended aid or they stopped military cooperation with Niger. ECHOWAS sanctions of the coup leaders. Nigeria even cut power to Niger, which is a huge deal because Niger gets 70% of its power from Nigeria. That's a hell of a sanction right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this, you know, this threat from ECHOAS was concerning enough for the folks in that they closed their airspace over the country on Sunday. It might still be closed. Actually,

I think flights are diverting around Niger. But obviously, the deadlines passed. There have been a lot of talks and meetings, but no further action. Ben, I saw that the acting deputy secretary of state, Tori Newland, went to Niger. She met face to face with some of the coup members. No resolution from that. The Deputy National Security Advisor, John Feiner, went to Nigeria with some NSE folks for talks. So ECOWAS meets again on Thursday. The leaders of neighboring Molly and Burkia. Kina Faso, who also took power in military coup, sent delegations to Niger. They keep reiterating their support for the coup and their opposition to any intervention. According to Al Jazeera, an estimated 30,000 people gathered in Niger's capital for a pro-ku rally. There's lots of photos

from that rally. Some people have little Russian flags. It seems like everybody is worried about or expecting the Wagner group to swing at Niger if they haven't already. So, Ben, you know, you're starting to see, there's a lot of diplomacy happening, a lot of good things probably, I assume. There's also some splits within ECOWAS happening. I saw Algeria and Chad said they do not support military intervention. There was a debate in the Nigerian Senate where I think the Senate came out against intervention. There's a lot of tribal and cultural overlap between Niger and Nigeria, which share a border and, you know, peoples that would make a Nigerian military intervention in Niger, uh, fraught politically, for a variety of reasons. You're starting to see people ask the question, was it a mistake for ECOWAS?

to threaten military action so quickly when there maybe wasn't political support for following through, or at least meeting their one week deadline. Do you agree with that? Is it too soon to tell? And anything else you sort of noticed over the – I know you've been deep in Niger coup, Twitter, because you've been sending me lots of links. Yeah, this is a really interesting story, the more you dig into it. And there are different dimensions to it.

I mean, first, as we've talked about, this is yet another coup in West Africa. And if you stack up Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, that's a huge swath of territory that will all be run by coup leaders, all of whom have clearly oriented around Russia and the Wagner group. And so it represents an enormous potential gain in Russian influence in that part of the world and just a catastrophic kind of collapse of French influence. Because the one thing that the coup leaders seem to be tapping into that clearly the public feels pretty intuitively is kind of anti-French. sentiment. Fifteen hundred French troops in Niger. Yeah, and the French have been trying, you know, if you read about this, the French have been trying to use Niger as like a model for a somewhat more equitable relationship, you know, so they were like, you know, not flying French flags, and they were not in command of Nigerian forces, but kind of in the supporting role. And,

but, you know what, it seems like that shift was kind of too late to impact public opinion. Echoast threatening, you know, military intervention. I mean, the problem, you know, there is that they clearly issued that threat because they wanted to kind of send a message that, you know, this kind of domino of coups can continue. But the problem is that they made the threat before they did any kind of planning around what that would actually mean. And even in Nigeria, you can't intervene militarily without support from their parliament. And that doesn't seem to be forthcoming.

So, yeah, I do think it was a mistake to do that if they didn't kind of know what that meant. know, because we still, is that like an invasion of Niger? Is that, you know, some kind of more limited military action? Was this to Nubu's redline? Yeah, exactly. That's the nerdiest joke I've ever made. I'm sorry. Take it back. Yeah, it, a little bit. That's a good nerdy joke. But yeah, the president of Nigeria, you know, so the first question is, what does this mean for AcoaS going forward? Did they really mean what they say by military intervention? If so, that seems like that may actually be like another pretty large war on the African continent when we've already seen in Ethiopia and Sudan and obviously ongoing conflicts in the Horn of Africa.

So it seems like the people opposing the coup, that is the United States government that just sent to our Newland, that is ECOWAS, that is the French government, don't really have like a means of dislodging this coup government. they were hoping, I think, that the military in Niger would do it for them because the military has received all this aid in assistance and training from the French and the United States. And they weren't necessarily part of the first wave of this coup because it was the presidential guard, which is this kind of smaller force in the capital. That doesn't seem to be happening unless there's something we're not seeing within, you know, something to watch is whether

any factions in Nigerian military try to take this on. And if that doesn't happen and the Wagner guys get in there and they kind of consolidate power, your window for reversing this can close very fast. And then the question remains, well, what happens to this French and American troops that are there? The U.S. has drone bases there. And then that could lead to a situation where not only you're concerned about, you know, getting those people out and does Wagner kind of take over our drone bases, I'm sure we

have ways to kind of destroy that on the way at the door. But also, frankly, there's, you know, there is a threat from extremists that, you know, continue to be in that region. And so you could be left with a scenario where you've got three entrenched pro-Russian coup governments. You got the Wagner group all over the place. And you have probably a growing extremist challenge because we've seen in places like Mali, that's what's happened. Wagner is not as capable as the French and the U.S. Or they don't even try.

Or they don't try, right? And then that could become a bigger threat across West Africa. So this is not good because like unless this resolves somehow politically and diplomatically or the Nigerian military is able to do this, you got a situation where you could have rising terrorist threat or you could have some kind of interstate conflict in West Africa along with a Russian foothold. It's just not great. Yeah, and it's worth pointing out that I think, you know, over the last six months, security incidents, like terrorist attacks, anything, are down 40 percent in Niger, in neighboring Mali where the Wagner group took over a couple of years ago, like you pointed out, they're up. So things are getting much less safe in places where Wagner is stationed. I think that the key question is what you said is whether there can be some sort of diplomatic resolution to this coup in concert with Niger's constitution. I think like the powers that be, the anti-coup forces out there, probably think it's helpful to have ECOWAS supplying real pressure. I do, you know, setting a weak deadline without your ducks in a row is probably a problem. But, you know,

uh, but once the U.S. makes a determination that there was a coup, there's a bunch of U.S. assistants that they have to withhold and they can't turn back on until there's a democratically elected government again, right? Like the French can, Europeans can turn assistance on and off. We have a lot more restrictions in place that would make it really challenging. Yeah. Those restrictions you know, are legal and this is not a close call. This is a coup, like a few hundred guys went in the presidential palace, put the president under house arrest and went on television and announced that they were the government. By the way, the president is still under house arrest because he...

But writing op-eds in the Washington Post, interestingly. Well, he had, what's crazy is he had like some safe room built in the presidential residence, like, for this contingency. So he's still hanging out there. I guess the question also is like, what are the lessons from the U.S. here? And I don't, you know, these are tough problems, so I don't want to blame the U.S. for this. I mean, this is something that happened internal to Niger just as it's happened to the places. I do think that just as the French have learned the lesson over the last decade that people were tired of French influence being outsized in this part of the world, the U.S. assistance to these countries is often very securitized around our security interests.

Now, they shared that interest in fighting extremists, but we plowed a bunch of money into Niger. The units that we trained were off fighting extremists. They were not in the capital. Exactly. And to me, you know, I've heard for a long time, dating back to the Obama years, complaints from Africans that Afri-Com, the U.S. command down in Africa, that does a lot of training and assisting down there, you know, our relationships have become very securitized with these countries and securitized in ways that are very focused on terrorism and our threat picture.

And yeah, sure, even though that's a threat picture that's shared, it's not like institution building. And the people notice that there's hundreds of millions of dollars coming into their country and yet the standards of living in New Jersey are among the lowest in the world. And so I think that the point for the U.S. is we need a more holistic approach here, just kind of training counterterrorism forces and having hugely weighted funding towards that. you know, that doesn't give us the leverage that we think we might have in these types of places. Because even we train some of the coup people, you know, we need to kind of look more

comprehensively at our relationships with countries like Niger so that they're not just places where we're building like a CT force. I'm sure, yes, we have other development programs there, but clearly that didn't add up to like a more stable government, you know. Yeah. And so, you know, there is some hope. There is some precedent of coups getting resolved. There was a coup in Mali in 2012 that I think was resolved, although it was a short-term fix, which led to future challenges.

In 2017, ECHOWAS troops went into the Gambia, where they helped resolve a constitutional crisis after the Gambian president refused to leave. We could have used some ECHOAS troops ourselves, Ben, after January 6th. But there was a Wall Street Journal story last week that you and I both read. And the headline triggered the shit out of me, which was how the U.S. fumbled Niger's coup and gave Russia an opening. And it triggered me because it's like there's so much foreign policy. reporting that is viewed through the prism of Washington. Like win-loss column. Yeah, like we can or should influence all these events.

But it did note a couple things that were notable. So the U.S. has no ambassador to Niger because Rand Paul was holding that person up. Actually, it turns out the ambassador in Niger, Kathleen Fitzgibbon, did finally get through the Friday after the coup. So thank you, Rand, for that. But the Senate is also holding up the ambassador of the AU, the African Union, our ambassador to Nigeria. The Senate is just like gumbing up the works. So, you know, do I think having those personnel in place would have prevented the coup? No. But those are your eyes and ears on the ground.

Those are the people that can, you know, intervene in those crucial first 24, 48 hours and, you know, do some diplomacy for you. And, you know, you have, you don't have Senate confirmed folks in there. Yeah. No, and it's both eyes and ears and getting your best and most senior people on the ground. It's also a message to these places about how much they matter to us. I mean, the African, Union is the principal body, the coordinating all the African states. And it's like, you know, it's like not having the ambassador to the United Nations. Like it just sends a message to the African Union that we don't really give a shit, that these appointments can be held up for political gainsanship. And look, across the board, I think the U.S. needs to continue. There's some wonderful

people in the government working on Africa, but we need to continue to be investing in and creating promotion tracks for people who are Africa experts. I've seen this in the U.S. government, that if you're focused on a region like Africa or a lot of America, you know, sometimes that's not what gets you ahead. And we need to do better across the board. Senate confirmation is the easiest place where you would think that that shouldn't be a problem. But yeah, it's not great when you don't have your people in place and there's a potential war. And Rand Paul is holding up your nominees because he wants information with a lab leak theory.

Literally. That's that's up to do in here. Literally. Infuriating. Okay. Well, let's talk about Ukraine. So, Ben, Ukraine continues to very effectively employ sea drones. over the weekend, they hit a Russian oil tanker off the coast of Crimea.

Before that, they hit a Russian landing ship in the Black Sea. Both of these targets, you know, suggest some very impressive range on these things, and clearly, like, they're making more of them, their capabilities ramping up. The New York Times reported that these sea drones can travel 48 miles an hour and have a range of up to 450 nautical miles, which is pretty far. So, you know, 3% of global oil and gas products move through the Black Sea, including 10 to 20% of Russian oil exports. So Ukraine could have a big impact on global energy prices.

They keep hitting these oil tankers as well as warships. Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie went to Ukraine. He solved everything. That's great. Although, look, I do appreciate him doing this. It'll probably lose him votes, if we're being honest. We'll get some polling later. Well, you know, Chris Christie going to Ukraine is kind of the foreign policy version of

Chris Christie coming on Pots Save America for his presidential campaign. Speaking of the wrong audience. I might get some donors, you know, I might get some attention, but I'm not sure it's going to win in the Republican primary. Not winning a lot of votes. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine is burning through 90,000 artillery shells a month and struggling to ramp up production to sustain that pace. It just gives you an idea of how brutal this conflict is. In Russia proper anti-corruption activists and opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced to another 19 years in prison for charges of extremism, bullshit charges of extremism.

It's the latest in the series of show trials and unjust sentences for Navalny. I think this trial was held in the penal colony where he's already at. So it's like, it's a joke. And then finally, Ben, representatives from 40 countries met in Saudi Arabia for talks about a potential peaceful settlement to the war in Ukraine. That included reps from China, India, the U.S., Europe, but not the Russians, things like the national security advisor level. The Ukrainians said the talks were productive.

Russia denounced them. The attendees aren't talking much about what was discussed. But it does seem like, I don't know, I was cynical about these things, if nothing else. getting those people in the room might have a net benefit long term. Maybe you can badger. The Saudis clearly did this for PR, right? Like, they know if they hosted Ukraine peace talks, like that's the best thing for them in terms of influencing Western audiences. I do wonder if there's just some value of like getting the national security official from Ukraine talking directly to the Chinese and the Indians. Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, I do think it was, you know, cynical PR for the Saudis and that it was also

probably part of them trying to create positive mood music around these normalization talks that we talked about last week. But look, I think that you want to create structures where people can come together and meet. Part of that is, yes, the Saudis have a convening power and some of these other countries do that can get the Ukrainians in the room with people that they're not going to meet with at the G7 or NATO summit, right? Or the European countries couldn't get to come. Yeah, exactly.

So it's just enlarges the people they're talking to. But more importantly, I think, is that you never know. know when momentum might build for some kind of agreement. Some escalation risk could take place, something scary could happen, the grain crisis could accelerate. And, you know, the best thing I saw out of this is that there may be further meetings in other places. So this becomes kind of like something that continues in terms of a format. And that's really the best you can hope for, is like, you know, create formats for diplomacy. That serves some Ukrainian purpose and talk to more countries, but also if something happens that really seems to accelerate the global interest

in resolving this, which you'd think it would already be there. You know, you want to have some structure and some muscle memory around that so that the same people are not meeting for the first time. Definitely. Definitely. And in terms of the war itself, I mean, this drone capability is interesting and seems to be ramping up and these attacks deep into Russia are the norm now. I did hear an interesting analysis from Mike Hoffman, who's a...

Russia analysts who's all over the news and the war started. Yeah, he was on the War on the Rocks podcast. Great show. He was talking about how, and has been arguing for a while, how the Ukrainian decision to throw so many resources and troops at Bakhmut was a mistake because it tied them up there. It allowed the Russians sort of entrench and lay down more minds in other places and reinforce those positions. And then meanwhile, like for a while it seemed like, okay, maybe Ukraine is winning this war of attrition. But even if it was three to one Russian deaths compared to Ukrainians, the Russian deaths were all Wagner forces that they just got out of a prison while the Ukrainian forces who died were like some of their

battle-tested men who they can't replace. Yeah, so two things on the war. That point, I mean, I've heard this from a lot from a bunch of people. I think it was the U.S. government's position at the time. Yeah, I mean, I'm comfortable saying I've heard that from people that, let's just say, serve in the U.S. government, that not only was it a huge expenditure of resources, but exactly the point that you made or that you, you know, coffee made, which is that the Russians have a bigger population and they have bigger pool of people to draw from. And so sure, the Ukrainians were saying, hey, look at what's happening, Bakhmu, we're killing all these Russians, but they were using their best troops to kill the Russians' wars troops. The Russians were literally throwing

convicts at this. And there was a bit of like a kind of body count thing happening. like the Vietnam thing where we're like measuring success by. And remember there were like the Ukrainians that were lifting up the Russian casualty numbers. Well, you know, Russians have more people. And I think, you know, there's been this deference to not question any Ukrainian military decisions. Well, look, political leaders make military decisions. And they're not always in the best military interests. Yeah.

The war in Iraq. Yeah, well, exactly. Look at 20 years in Afghanistan. Yeah. So I think it's pretty clear that, you know, the Ukrainians, so what does that mean for now? I think in general it kind of means that the Ukrainians need to be a little more careful about their most highly trained troops, their most advanced equipment. They have to be pretty strategic about where they choose to deploy that, you know. And I think it kind of explains why the counteroffensive might be going a little slower than people thought, because it does seem like they're putting,

Ukrainians are putting a premium on avoiding casualties. and they're not just rushing these newly equipped best arms into the fight. They're like kind of probing still for weak spots and having a really hard time getting through like gigantic minefields. Yeah, no, and that's the right decision. But the problem is that Bachmoud probably necessitated that even more. On the drone thing, the one thing I'd say, we've talked a lot about how they're moving to these kinds of strikes,

in part because of the counterfeensive. The Black Sea is becoming this flashpoint in an interesting way because you're seeing more Ukrainian drone attacks in the Black Sea against Russian vessels. The absence of the grain initiative has kind of removed Russian constraints on striking. We talked to Samantha Power about strikes in Odessa. They were striking along NATO's borders on the Danube River. So if you look at the Black Sea, you've got, you mentioned the oral going through there. You've got now drone attacks from the Ukrainians.

You've got NATO countries, Romania and Bulgaria that border the Black Sea. Russia kind of close for comfort there. this is like, you know, a real flashpoint for potential NATO-Russia confrontation. If Russia strays into NATO territory or if like somehow there's like a naval confrontation, you've got U.S. military and NATO aircraft in the international skies or the Blaxi. So, you know, in addition to Ukraine just getting more aggressive, this is something to watch. The only thing I'd say about Navalny is like Navalny himself has said like he has a life sentence basically. So long as Putin is alive. Navalini's being in prison. I think they do these trials to just kind of create media circuses

where they can once again attack. I wonder why they did it. I think it's just like it's like, it's like programming for their like cinematic universe, right? Like they can, they're trying to drive down his support and every time they have one of these trials, I'm sure that there's like, you know, hundreds of hours of programming on Russian television demonizing Navalny. And I can't think of any other reason other than to kind of depressed, demoralize the opposition and try to turn Russian public opinion further against him. So speaking of public opinion, let's talk about American public opinion, because it does seem likely that the war in Ukraine is going to go on for a long time. We will probably need to do

another supplemental appropriations bill to send more arms and stuff over. No question. So they get to you into public opinion. CNN released a foreign policy poll. Very exciting moment for us, world-o nerds here. Let's take into some of the numbers. So Ben, first the top line stuff. So the poll asked respondents whether they approved or disapproved of Biden's handling of the following issues. The U.S. relationship with China, 42% approve, 57 disapprove. The U.S. relationship with Russia, 43% approved, 56 disapprove. Situation in Ukraine, 45 approve, 54 disapprove. So basically, that seemed to kind of track Biden's overall approval rating, if not, like, float a little above where like the 538 averages.

But the poll also asked whether the U.S. should do more to stop Russian military actions in Ukraine. or whether the U.S. is already done enough. 48% said we should do more. 51% said we've done enough. That's a pretty big change from February of 2022. 62% said we should do more. They also asked if Congress should or should not authorize more funding for Ukraine. 45% said yes, more funding.

55% said no. When you get into specifics of what the U.S. should provide, intelligence gathering is the most supported at 63%. 53% support military training, 43% support sending weapons, 17% support sending U.S. troops into combat, which is actually a little higher than I would have expected there. So, you know, Ben, it speaks to, this poll might be an outlier. Like, you know, there's other polling we can talk about that has shown, if you, if you phrase it differently, like, do you think it's in our interests that shows better numbers

in terms of support for ongoing U.S. support for Ukraine? I also noticed that 77% of voters in this poll are worried that the war in Ukraine will continue without resolution for a long time. Pretty smart. Pretty understandable, yeah. 56% are worried it threatens U.S. national security. So, like, you know, there's some risk in here. There is risk. I mean, there's the question of, like, can you continue to provide assistance?

And it strikes me that, like, whatever they get kind of towards the end of this year, assuming they can get some more funding is probably, might be their last term. before the election, you know, because it's hard to imagine, you know, in the summer of an election year with Donald Trump, if he's a nominee, like the House Republicans passing more of this stuff. And so that, you know, that could put Ukraine on like a tighter, you know, bandwidth of what they can count off from the U.S. Then there's just a question of like, where is this in the summer of an election year? Like, is public opinion going to continue to sour? And what the Biden people kind of tout understandably as one of his most important, you know, policies could, you know, could shift from being, like, a positive to, you know, at least something that's very contested. And so they have to do some work there.

I think that, like, one thing to think about is who are you, who's the audience? And it, you know, this ties back actually to the Chris Christie thing, because the Ukrainians are involved in this, too, because they're sometimes their own best messengers. Yeah. I would say that way too much time it has been spent by the Ukrainians and the Biden administration. But I say this, you know, with sympathy. But they've messaged a lot to like the foreign policy audience, the never Trumpers, the Aspen security for, you know, like, you've got those people. Get Zelensky on Fox News.

Yeah, like Chris Christie is emblematic of the wing of the Republican Party that could not be more invested in Ukraine. Like there's not, I don't think there's a single person. Yeah. And like, I'm not trashing Christie on this because I'm glad he shares his name. No, I'm glad he went to. But like, not one person is going to now support the war in Ukraine because Chris Christie went there. I think that they need, yes, they have a problem in MAGA world. And if they can find any, any, the Ukrainians or the kind of pro support Ukraine people can find any kind of MAGA.

Like, there's got to be some people in Congress that are kind of MAGA adjacent that are still sympathetic to the Ukrainians. But here's my other piece of advice, the left. You know, the left has stuck with Ukraine, despite, I think, some discomfort over, you know, the lack of an end strategy and the pouring weapons in. I would be like trying to get some more left wing. That's interesting. Like, because if I look at where I'm worried about support, you know, the Republican support is going to diminish over time because of Trump and Fox and all the rest of it. But the left is also could get tired of this because they. Definitely. And I don't see a lot of effort to message to those people. So if I'm the Ukrainians or the Biden administration, I'm thinking like, let's spend a little less time on Ann Applebaum and, you know, the Morning Joe panel and the Aspen Security Forum and the never Trumpers and more on like the where this support is softening, you know.

So I looked at this poll. It was probably like 400 some odd people, right? Usually that's what they are. I don't remember what it was. If you look at the cross tabs by like race or age, the margin of error. on these things goes from like three or five percent to maybe 10 percent because the sample size gets so small. But I did notice in here that support from black voters was propping up Biden's overall approval on like handling of issues. But when you ask black voters about should the U.S. authorize more assistance Ukraine, they were like the majorities were opposed to it. So it does seem like you were to your point, like Biden is losing his base on the next set of questions and hard choices around assistance. Yeah, and if you think about who you tend to see, you know,

getting the carpet rolled out in Kiev, I mean, it's pretty white, you know. I mean, and it's not a knock on anybody. I just, you know, putting a little more effort into building bridges to other constituencies than the ones that are already fully invested in this is where I'd go if I was Ukrainian and the Biden people. Chris Christie did bring a, uh, autographed copy of Bon Jovi's lyrics to it's my life. I'm not sure that's going to help you deal with your, with your block and his spanish.

Okay. Well, I take it back. I take it back. So Ben, speaking of approval, we have tried, we did that bunch of clips from that forum in Iowa that Tucker Carlson hosted where, you know, he talked about foreign policy with a bunch of the 2024 Republican candidates. We're going to try to take you back inside the mind of these Republican candidates and the Republican primary voters. So two data points that seemed instructive this week. So first, Ben, Ron DeSantis,

he's running for president. It's not going very well, as you might not have heard of him. He has been saying he supports using deadly force against migrants coming into the U.S. who are suspected of smuggling drugs, like the straight up, like Rodrigo Duterte, the policy of kill him first. Ask question later. Here's a clip from a DeSantis interview with NBC News. You outline some pretty severe consequences for those who come into our country illegally. You've said that folks can use deadly force, that law enforcement can use deadly force, saying if cartels are trying to run product into this country, they're going to end up stone cold dead. How far might you take that method for preventing illegal crossings in general? Like under a DeSantis administration, would anyone crossing the border illegally potentially face death?

forced from law enforcement. It's similar to like if you're in the military. You have rules of engagement. Anyone that's hostile intent or a hostile act, which the cartels are, you know, you would then engage with lethal force. I think these cartels are basically foreign terrorist organizations. They are responsible for killing more Americans on an annual basis than any other group or country throughout the entire world.

And yet this is just happening and it's happening in communities all across the United States. You can find these angel mothers who've lost kids. children to fentanyl overdose in virtually any community in the United States. And it really hit me when I was down in Arizona. You know, most of the border doesn't have a wall, of course, but there was parts where there was a wall. And these guys are working on the wall. I'm like, what do you do? And they're like, we're repairing the hole. The cartels cut through the steel beams. So if you see that happening and they got the satchel of fentanyl strapped to their back, you use deadly force against them. You lay them out. You will see a change of behavior. You have to. You have.

to take the fight to the cartels. Otherwise, we're going to continue to see Americans dying. Sorry for making you listen to his horrible voice for that long. Every time the voice starts, it's tough. It's tough. Dasha Burns, the reporter, did the interview from NBC. She pushes it on him on like, okay, how do you know it's the middle of the night? You see someone crossing the border. How do you know it's a drug dealer versus like a pregnant mom? And he's like, well, in Iraq, we figured it out. But, you know. No, we didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But reminder, like, there's an NBC poll recently that found 86% of Republican

primary voters support deploying the U.S. military to the border to stop drug dealers, majorities of the entire country, the entire electorate supported to. Here's the problem with this. I mean, we are repeating. We're doing an incredibly typical American, particularly right-wing American thing, right, which is that there's a very big problem in fentanyl. And you could, you know, you could categorize as a national security issue. It's also, you know, public health issue.

And that's what we get to is, like, their toolkit that's emerging is sanctioned China and bomb Mexico essentially. Literally. I mean, that's their policy. And it's such an American, we have this problem in our communities. We have all kinds of underlying factors that are contributing to demand for fentanyl.

We can't get our arms around this problem. So we're going to sanction some people in China because the fentanyl, some of it comes from there. And we're just going to start bombing stuff along the border. Yeah, after the Sackler family got everybody hooked in the first place on legal pills here. Well, this is the thing.

If you think that that's going to work, just take a look at how the war on drugs went the last 30, however many or 40 years. I mean, this militarizing, like, an issue where you can't, I mean, there's no way you can stop this stuff from coming in the country. You know, even if you bomb some people and, like, the fentanyl is going to get into the country. Like, we have to deal with this issue in our communities. You know, we have to deal with it internationally. You're much more likely to make progress diplomatically.

You know, if you get getting the Chinese to do more working multi-lux. with other countries to like, especially with Mexico. Disrupt this. Cooperation has helped us. A lot. Like, you're going to get more through cooperation and just slowing this down. You're never going to stop it.

Then you are by saying we're now going to make ourselves hostile to China where this is emanating from in some cases. And hostile to Mexico, which probably won't like us bombing on their side of the border. Indiscriminately shooting people. You're inevitably going to kill people that you missed mistaken for fentanyl, you know, traffickers. This is a terrible idea. And it is going to be gaining momentum, too.

I mean, this is something to watch because obviously if Trump wins, I think all this stuff is on the table. Absolutely. Absolutely. So that is the concerning sort of development on sort of immigration and toward drugs, even though sort of immigration numbers have dropped because of some of the Biden policies controversial as they are. But also, Ben, I thought this clip from another candidate, Vivek Ramoswamy was interesting too. It was posted on Twitter by a friend of the pod, Tim Miller, who went to an event, Vivek hosted in Iowa. and this is him talking about the government withholding intelligence around the 9-11 tax. Quiet.

You always want to, Dr. Waterwatch, the 20-year deadline when they declassify the documents on a Friday evening. A little dump they'll put out at 7 p.m. on a Friday. In 2021, what do we say? Actually, they changed their tune. Is it actually this guy was a Saudi intelligence operative? The government never said it. Is this a core campaign issue for me? No, it's not.

Right? And so it's some, you know, the other campaigns will love for me to get down this rabbit hole because you get to sound like a crazy man if you're like a 9-11 truther. But the truth is, I do not trust our government. They have systematically lied to us. And you know what? Some people, Wall Street Journal was upset about this. They said, Vivique Ramosromis is pushing a left-wing conspiracy theory.

I don't care if it's left-wing or right-wing. I could care less for the Republican Party. I would just be honest with you about that. I don't stand for Republican or Democrat. I stand for the United States of America. So I actually don't really know what he thinks, if he's like a 9-11 conspiracy theorist, I think right there he's just talking about sort of like the slow way that information in the 9-11 commission report was declassified or released or withheld, right?

Yeah. But like the broader, I mean, we'll talk about both. But the broader distrust of government, I think he's right. It is not a Republican or Democratic thing. It is a cross-party sort of like, especially post-9-11 post-A-Rocq, real concern that people have no faith in anything the government tells them. And he's appealing to that audience in doing really well

despite being a 37-year-old businessman with no relevant experience who looks like he's 12, but is like getting more traction than Ron DeSantis. Yeah, so on the 9-11 piece, some of you may know I worked with the 9-11 commission. I was like the working for the Democratic vice chair

of the 9-11 commission throughout that process. I think he's referring to the Saudi intelligence piece of this, which is, so to be fair to him, Not that I want to be that ferdom. I don't think he's saying that like the World Trade Center was dynamited. No, no. There was this question about whether Saudi intelligence was involved in 9-11. And this centered around two of the hijackers who came through San Diego who had established

contacts with Saudi intelligence figures. That's actually in the 9-11 commission report. It's in the congressional report. And basically a lot was established around, you know, did these guys know people who had ties to Saudi intelligence, blah, blah. The problem is it never established like, that this was like a policy of Saudi intelligence to support these attackers. And so, anyway, that's what he's talking about. It, I don't think the government is like withheld stuff,

but the original sin was at the beginning because they redacted all this stuff about it. If you remember this, so. But he, so what he's speaking to is that the U.S. government is selective with the information it shares when it's embarrassing. And he's not wrong about that. No, no, no. I don't know why else that information was redacted at the beginning. I think the more general point that you make is really important because people don't. don't trust the U.S. government writ large. At the same time that you see an explosion in conspiracy theories, conspiracy theories used to be about like, you know, curious somewhat, sometimes, you know,

strange people, but sometimes, you know, even, you know, all of us have gone on rabidels of, like, trying to figure out if something happened. What's happening now is that they're just being told what's the counter story, the QAnon story or the Trump big lie about the election story. And all of a sudden you have 40, 50, 60 percent of Americans just ready to say. sign on without doing the research, as Joe Rogan would say. Like, they're just willing to hear an alternative reality that sounds. It's more satisfying. Yeah. Conspiracies are satisfied. And I think it is distorting the American political brain. And we've talked that we should continue to follow

this because I think that the whole Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, you know, Bobby Kennedy Jr., Vivek, Rameshami, like, it's not like a huge force in American politics, but, you know, you're not, you It is there. And with such razor-send margins in our elections, like, it's a potentially determining factor in elections, you know? Yeah. Look, I think the United States is a history of, I think, being prone to believing conspiracy theories. But I think, look, like, I'm not calling the lab leak theory at conspiracy theory. It's one theory.

There's another theory that there was a natural release. New York Times had a great piece recently, like sort of laying out the case for both sides. And I don't know what the answer is. But it is interesting that the majority, the majority of the country believes the last. Ab-Bliq theory now, I think in part because it helps answer the question of how this horrible thing could happen to us in a way that's much more satisfying than the world is chaotic and random and out of control. You know, it's like a little more, it makes you feel a little more control if you think,

okay, there was a lab doing research. They shouldn't have done. We're going to shut down that research. We're going to shut the border and prevent this from happening again. Yeah. And I think it speaks to the need to be careful at the outset of the same thing. I was saying with the Saudi piece. the lab league theory in part got traction is because some of the statements about the origins of COVID

were probably, you know, too definitive out of the gate. You know, too categorical. And so then when you could raise questions about those statements, even if you could prove the lab leak theory, if you can raise questions about the quote unquote official version, it throws everything up into question. And those questions got silence on some social platforms. Yeah. So you've got to be transparent about what you know and don't know. And you have to be careful about making categorical statements.

until you know, you know it categorically. Yeah, for sure. We got a lot of stuff today, so we'll move a little faster through these next few. So the U.S. military is reportedly prepared to put teams and Marines and sailors on commercial ships transiting the Persian Gulf to deter Iranian forces from attacking them. These ships are vulnerable, especially in the Strait of Hormuz, which is this like narrow choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, where 20% roughly of the world's crew passes through. it looks like what would happen here, Ben, is ships would request protection, including international ships.

They would get approved or not approved by the U.S. government based on whatever equities they consider, including the country of origin of the ship, approving the marine presence on them. The U.S. has steadily been deploying more and more Navy and, you know, military assets to the Gulf in response to Iran harassing and seizing a bunch of ships in the area, especially since 2019. In response, there was some Iranian military drills the other day in the area, so they're watching this and not happy about it. So I have not seen confirmation that Biden has approved this plan. It sounds like he will, though, because you're not seeing it denied.

I'd love to know a lot more about how this would work in practice. Like, let's say you have 20 Marines on some Dutch oil ship. They're attacked by a bunch of Iranian boats. They get in a firefight. Things don't go well. Are they calling an air support? You know, like, are we directly bombing these Iranian boats? Like, you know, so there's a lot of ways this seems escalatory or risky.

But I don't know. Like, what, have you heard? Is this proposal something that's surprising to you? It is. Because I think we need to hear a little bit more about, like, why now? Like, what, why? There's been, like, as we said last week, there have been challenges in that, in the Straits for Moose for a long time.

Like, what are they seeing that, you know, necessitates his escalatory step? In any conventional flare-up, the U.S. has such overwhelming superiority that I'm not sure we need the Marines there at the beginning to be able to deal with it. And you're right. Like them being there could kind of raise the escalation risk out of the box. So like, well, let's reserve judgment, but I think they need to provide a little more information like why they don't do this now. What's interesting is at the same time, I think there's these progress, you know, reportedly being made to some, you know, some deal to get detainees released. from inside of Iran and maybe freeze the nuclear program, not roll it back as far as the JCPOA did. But like, so this may also be the U.S. sometimes you flex, you know, on the punitive side at the same

time that you're trying to get a deal done. So part of me wonders if it's tied to that too. It's like we're going to show you, you know, here's our hard line policy at the same time that we're, you know, talking to you. Yeah, let's hope that. Yeah, let's hope that's the case. Diplomatic tracks happening too. Good news, bad news for the president of Columbia, president of Gustavo Petro. So good news. The Colombian government signed a six-month ceasefire agreement with the National Liberation Army or ELN rebel group.

The ELN has an estimated of 2,000 to 5,000 fighters, and they are the largest remaining rebel group in Colombia. Fighting between the Colombian government and these various rebel groups, especially the FARC, has killed at least 450,000 people over the last 60 years, according to a government sort of truth and reconciliation commission report that I think came out last year. Petro has been really prioritizing these sort of peace agreements and pushes. So let's hope this one holds. The bad news for President Petro Ben is that his son Nicholas was charged with money laundering and illicit enrichment for allegedly taking money from drug traffickers and then like buying houses with it. His ex-wife said she was at a meeting where her then husband arranged a campaign donation to

his father's campaign, but then pocket it. The donation was from a guy convicted of drug trafficking. the U.S. That has raised a broader set of questions about whether drug money funded Petro's political campaign. So never a great day when you're on a campaign and you get a press call that's like, hey, did you take a donation from a drug dealer? Yeah, and I think the son kind of pointed to finger his dad too. I mean, look, first on the ELN piece of this, very welcome. The FARC was the biggest part of the peace process that needed to get settled and that did under President Santos at the end of the Obama years. But the ELN is still out there in some other smaller groups. Now Petro,

you know, unlike Santos, the previous president who had made the deal with the FARC, he, Santos had been defense minister, you know, Petra was a left-begrila. So like way back in the day. And so, you know, his approach is going to be more diplomacy focused. And if he can get that done, that's huge because, like, you know, you need to put this to rest. Part of the problem, though, is that these conflicts have become less ideological over time. Some of these groups are, you know, they're basically kind of drug traffickers who are in it more for the money. and so it makes peacemaking a little more complicated

because part of what they want to hold on to is control of land where they, so you've got to combine this with some broader strategy to kind of integrate them into the economy and the politics of the country, but like it's in our interest to see that happen, so we should continue to be very supportive. On the corruption thing, I mean, you know, we'll just see how that plays out. I mean, it's not great for Petro and Colombian politics is always a little murky. There's a lot of money sloshing around, so we'll see here.

Tough to get dimed out by your ex-wife. It's not good. That's tough. But, yeah, Petra was a member of the M-19 guerrilla movement. So, you know, interesting that he can cut a peace deal. Yeah. Because it's credibility. ISIS announced that they have a new boss.

Their leader, Abu al-Hasain al-Karashi has been killed in fighting with a rival militant group in Syria. So ISIS named a new leader who's, you know, another brutal dickhead whose name I'm for you to learn. He'll probably die soon, too. But the reason we wanted to flag this one was because a few months ago, we mentioned on the show, I think, that Turkish president type Erdogan announced that, that Al-Karashi had been killed in a Turkish intelligence operation. This new news where apparently ISIS now says, I mean, I guess it depends on who you believe,

ISIS, he was killed in a fight with another extremist group? It makes you wonder, was Erdogan lying? Was the Turkish intelligence working with this rival militant group? Is there someone connected? I have no idea, but it was just weird and notable. Yeah, well, the Erdogan thing, too, was like before his elections. They might have seen that the guy died and took credit for it. Who knows?

I mean, we don't know. I guess to me, like the good news, I guess, in this is that how small story this is. Like the ISIS leader is kind of like the Al-Qaeda number three back in the day. I mean, it's not a lot of job security in that position. And their territory in Iraq and Syria is really shrunk. They're pretty marginalized. And so the only other issue I'd raise on this is like there are still U.S. troops in Syria. And I'm not sure like what they're doing there.

And I'm not saying like I'm sure people will say they need to be there to continue to coordinate. I think they're helping guard a lot of those prisons where some of these I think it's a combination of prisons and facilitating any continued counter-iris operations and just kind of being there because our allies, the Kurds in the north are more secure if the U.S. continues their presence. But I think some conversation over like what are we doing there for how much longer is in order at some point? because I'm not sure most Americans are where we saw these troops in Syria. So they serve a purpose or they have served a purpose, but maybe less and less. And one of the things about ending the Forever Wars, if you get to the point where you've accomplished what you sent troops to do, like, you know, bring them back. Another thing we wanted to flag was the former president of Pakistan, Imran Khan, was arrested Saturday after a court sentenced him to three years in prison. In a number of past shows, we've talked a lot about Khan.

He's sort of this like, you know, cricket star turned politician. He was in power for a while. He picked a fight with the Pakistani military. He got tossed out. And now he's whipping up his supporters in protest ever since. We won't revisit all of that. But it's a big deal now that he apparently won't be able to run for office again because he will be in prison for the October elections, I guess, unless he pulls a Trump and just does both.

Yeah. Well, at the end of the day, I mean, his supporters didn't kind of completely take to the street. streets when you get thrown in prison. Sure. He may be running out of cards. Like if you're, you know, if you're taken on like a military-backed government and prison is kind of the card that they have to play. Now, he may become over time, like, that may give him legitimacy to, you know, not inconceivable

in a place like Pakistan that he steps out of prison one day and becomes prime minister again. But for the time being, at least, you know, this makes the election feel even more military controlled than usual. Oh, yeah. I called him president. I meant Prime Minister. How dare you. A couple later things here, Ben. So there was a New York Times story.

It ran with the headline, A Global Web of Chinese propaganda leads to U.S. technical. So you and I both read this and were like, what is going on? So the story is about how a guy named Neville Roy Singham, who the Times says is a, quote, known as a socialist benefactor of far-left causes, is actually getting his money from the Chinese government as part of this broad propaganda effort.

And then he uses it to prop upper fun progressive advocacy groups. One thing we've learned on this show is that it's very hard to do long, investigative pieces like this justice on the podcast by just repeating them. So you should all go read it yourselves. But two things jumped out at us, one serious, one funny. The first is that. So Singham is married to a woman named Jody Evans,

who's the co-founder of Code Pink, which is a very well-known anti-war group. I was surprised, disappointed. I don't know, shocked really to learn that Code Pink has gone. gone from criticizing China's human rights record to defending their internment of the Uyghurs, which is a Muslim minority group in China that the Chinese have been throwing people in concentration camps, in reeducation camps, people by the millions. She basically calls a Uyghurs terrorist and defends their detention, which is really, it means worse than genocide than I'll.

It's support for these actions. And then, so that's the serious part. The funny part was the Times describes their wedding. as a who's who of progressivism and said that it was a working event that included a panel conversation on the future of the left. So they're all in Jamaica.

They're all in the... Who's... Who wrote the vagina analogs? Right, who wrote the vagina analogs? Who else was on it? I don't have the story in front of me. It was a fascinating group. It was a good crew, yeah.

Yeah. It was quite a crew. I just did want to say, if you invite me to your wedding and there's a panel discussion, I will not be attending and we're no longer friends. Yeah, I'd be like, you know, you have the ceremony, and then you think you're going to be, like, shown into a reception for drinks, and instead you're shown into, like, a panel discussion.

It's just you and me talking about the future of the left, you know, like, I mean, the one, like serious point I make on this is it's a great article people should read it. And essentially, it's like the Chinese are funding all these different bits and pieces of left-wing infrastructure in the United States that take positions that are friendly China. And also kind of more insiduously, frankly, funding stuff in Africa. that is basically like African think they're showing up to be trained to be like kind of organizers and politics and all they're being trained on is how great the Chinese are. The challenge for this on the left in this country is as someone who kind of interacts with a bunch of people in the progressive and even left space, like there are, you know, there are good left wing arguments that will need to be made in the years and even decades to come about not getting into conflict of China and not getting into, you know, a total Cold War paradigm with China. If you are making those arguments from a vantage point of a being paid by the Chinese government or being in some kind of paid partnership of the Chinese government, or the only way you're making those arguments is around apologies for the internment.

This is where the left gets in trouble. Like, it's a good policy objective to say, let's not have war with China. We don't need to deny a genocide in order to make that policy argument. I don't get why that's so hard. It's just very important to draw, like, and it doesn't mean you have to. to be hating on the Chinese all the time. Some people could even say, like, as this guy says in the article, like, I actually like their system.

I don't like their system. But like if basically the movement in this country against conflict of China becomes kind of co-opted by this Chinese Communist Party agenda of burnishing their image, that's very bad for, I think, what is a legitimate point of view. Yeah, it's very bad for the left. For the left. You should not be out there defending, throwing well over a million people into these education camps where people are tortured, murdered, raped. I mean, the stories from survivors of

these camps are the most harrowing things you've ever heard in your life to suggest that, like, it was a necessary evil because this is what she said, like the Saudis funded Wahhabi schools and, you know, exported extremists to Xinjiang China. It's like, what are you talking about? And they also had points in there that like the Hong Kong protest movement were the same as the January 6 rioters. I mean, what? I mean, like that kind of stuff is just hugely discreet. crediting to left-wing views on foreign policy at large. And so I would urge people to just make sure that you're not like dipping your toe in these waters because it's undermines, it undermines, frankly, well-meaning people who aren't taking those positions, but who don't

want to conflict with China. Wild. Wild, sorry. Worth reading. Ben, before we get to some of interviews, I just want to quickly describe to you one of the worst ideas I've ever heard, if that's okay. Sure. Have you heard of WorldCoyne? I don't think so. It's okay. It was co-founded by a guy named Sam Altman. You might have heard of him. Oh, yeah. I've heard him. Silicon Valley VC muck-dy-muck. He started Y Combinator, very successful investor thingy. He's currently the CEO of Open AI. So they do chat, GBT, et cetera. So here's the pitch for WorldCoy. So these Silicon Valley types say, because of AI, which by the way, we unleashed on humanity, it's becoming almost impossible to distinguish between humans. and machines online. Basically, like, they can do all the CAPTCHA things, right? It's, like, hard to prove that you are you. Also, AI is going to take all of our jobs because it's going to achieve, you know, it's going to surpass human intelligence.

So eventually, we are all going to need a universal basic income. That, too, will require being able to confirm your digital identity and prove that you're a human because we don't want a bunch of fraud getting paid out. Enter WorldCoin. It is a biometric cryptocurrency cryptocurrency. proof of identity concept company. Okay, so what they've done, they've sent these shiny metallic orbs all over the world.

And when you look at the orbs, I wish I had an orb, you can scan your iris and it creates a unique digital fingerprint for you called a world ID. Sam Altman hopes that one day you can use this ID for all your passwords and various accounts, but it's more secure because it's linked to this like hash, this sort of digital token that's made from your iris,

not your identity, not your email, et cetera, et cetera. The way they're getting people to sign up for this thing is by saying, if you do the scan of your iris, then you download our app will give you some cryptocurrency that, by the way, we created, and here's your magic money. So WorldCoin, they've been focusing in their marketing in places like Indonesia, Kenya, Kenya, Chile. You'll be shocked to hear that there's been a lot of deceptive marketing. People have offered like free AirPods and things that never materialized.

The Kenyan government recently ordered WorldCoin to stop signing up users because of privacy concerns and launched an investigation. Some of World Coins investors include A16C, Mark Andreessen's venture capital company, Bain Capital Crypto. So, Ben, I just want to be clear that these rapacious Silicon Valley VCs, they're investing in World Coin because they want to help poor people. They care about welfare and UBI, not because they want a massive business with all our identities to make a lot of money.

Yeah, I guess the only thing I'd say... You're just to stare at the orb? Not quite ready for the orb. I think that it ties back to what we're saying about distressing governments, right? Because, look, I have a healthy, you know, I think everybody should have a healthy distrust of governments. But governments, for whatever their faults, or at least our government, doesn't have like a profit motive, you know? Some governments do. I mean, Putin does.

But, like, you know, part of the problem is I would rather trust the government to, you know, to back up currencies. Me too. Like, like, because once you are handing over currencies to people with their own profit motive, you know, that gets murky to me.

And so it's telling to me, or your identity. Like Sam Holm and I found to be like a more, you know, reasonable guy than some of these other people. But like, you know, it's no coincidence, I guess,

is where I'd lead this, that some very same people stoking distrust in governments, right? You're Elon Musk's, your Andresens, your Zuckerbergs, are also the people proposing these systems where basically the corporation replaces the government or the Elon Musk replaces the government. And they're robbing up cryptocurrency in the process, which A16Z has pumped a ton of money into that they could lose.

So, you know, next time you hear one of these tech bros propagating conspiracy theories, like, well, maybe they have like a business reason that they're doing it, which is that they want to discredit governments and they basically, I think some of these people, I don't think Sam because he's actually called for government regulations. But some of these people, I think, would like to replace governments, and that's scary. The only thing worse in governments would be tech companies running all of our lives. I just would rather have my money in a bank backed by the FDIC than in, let's say, FTCS, Sam Beckman-Frieds.

Well, when there's Silicon Valley Bank went under, guess who bailed it out, the FDICC? Look who they wind to. Finally, Ben, this new segment is called, What in the World is British Prime Minister Rishi-Soonak up to? Well, it turns out one, activists from Greenpeace managed to climb onto the roof of his house, cover it entirely with black cloth to protest his plan to approve

100 new oil and gas licenses. So, bold protest. Greenpeace still got it. Seems like a bit of a security failure. I don't know, the White House is covered in cloth all of a sudden. But Rishi didn't seem to mind, Ben, because he was on the road. Let's hear a clip.

I just had the biggest heart attack of my life. So I walk into my Taylor Swift-themed 7 a.m. Soul Cycle class in Santa Monica and there's Secret Service everywhere in the studio. They're lined up on the sidewalk. They're inside. They're in every corner. They're like standing there with their earpieces and like they're all serious and there's just security everywhere. And like what is going on? My mind immediately goes like holy shit. Taylor Swift is about to be riding in my 7 a.m. Soul Cycle class. Like she's performing in LA like celebrities do this all the time. So we get in and I'm like trying to look around but trying to play it cool. And the security

guard comes into the class. There's actually like three of them like standing in all the corners and they stand there like all serious the whole entire class and the teachers usually like turn on and off the lights in this class she just like kept the lights off it was very private and of course you've heard of like Justin Bieber coming in and singing a song and like Beyonce and Jay Z for like riding class so I'm freaking out the whole time so the class ends and I'm looking around trying to see where she is it turns out it was the prime minister of the UK apparently he's a swiftie uh that's a tic talk from a woman named Hannah Harmelin who apparently thinks taylor swift Secret Service.

Big bummer, Rishi Sunak is to want-w-wa. Yeah, imagine, you know, first of all, that, like that is such a, and I'm a Swifty, but like not in Hannah's League. Like that, that, you could just tell we had a great Swifty correspondent there. I don't know, Rishi,

you know, we, we like, you know, Soul Cycle, it's just kind of a strange, but I guess what you could say, maybe he's trying to differentiate himself from Boris Johnson. Boris probably didn't work that much. Yeah, Boris probably couldn't do the Taylor Swift Soul Cycle.

But, you know, we see what you're doing. We know it all too well. Also, interesting, there you go. Also, interesting that they're not, you know, bound by the politics of like, I don't know, I figure like U.S. presidents, you end up vacationing in the United States or else you're brutally attacked. Interesting to the British Prime Minister just vacations in L.A. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's, I think it's. Like we have, we're one of the only countries that has this kind of weird fixation on where people vacation. Because I notice a lot of European leaders like a vacation like the south of France or something. That's true. That's true. In Europe, you can travel more freely. They're a little more open to that kind of thing, which is probably healthy. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we are going to talk about the status of democracy globally. So stick around for that.

Okay, we are back and we are joined by Crooked Media's own Max Fisher. Max, good to see you. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you. You're getting all this offline time. we're starting to feel jealous. Fat, bro. I was actually, look, I was on my way for the Rishi-Soonak soul cycle class. Yeah, around here.

Am I in the right way? Is that why you're wearing this tour de frant outfit? That's right. I think I look great in my purpose. Are you the person that would be psyched to find out that it wasn't T. Swift in the soul cycle class? It was Rishi-Soon-A-W-N-E-Soon-K would be the coolest world leader to see in a soul-cycle class. That's a good question.

Who would be the number one? You know who's done them over in Santa Monica a few times, Michelle Obama. But I think they usually rent the whole thing out. Rishi, you cheap, bastard. Worth have a million dollars. But anyway, we're digressing. So Max is here. We keep talking about stories on the show that feel like are very depressing about the state of global democracy.

You know, Thailand, you know, it's unclear if democratically elected leaders will get to take power. It's obviously the coup in Niger. And Max, you're a student of democracy globally. You pay attention to this stuff for years. you've written about it forever. And we were hoping you could give us sort of a snapshot of like how things look when you really look around the world for democracy.

So I love to be the optimist on the show and boy am I not going to do that today. I am so sorry to say. You did such a good job on right-wing populism giving the optimist case a couple of years ago. I know, well, I have to counterbalance it. I have to bring some balance by the... Yeah, no, yeah.

You were like... Maybe you feel better. Yeah, they got a 15% ceiling. Okay, good. Well, now I'm ready to bring you back down again. So we are, I think it's... easy to miss in the ups and downs of all these individual countries. We are living in the middle of a completely unprecedented moment in the history of global democracy. And I think like

probably a very pivotal moment. And when you kind of like take a step back and look at the story of democracy and where we are today, I think it really clicks into view what's happening. So until recently, like throughout the democratic era, like basically the onset of democracy in the late 1900s, with the exception of World War II, two, the world has always been getting steadily more democratic. And that's everything. That's more new democracies in the world that's like existing democracies getting freer and stabbler. That's authoritarian countries becoming softer. And it's fewer and fewer things like coups and other shocks that like will overturn a democracy. And so everyone thought that democracy was

just like inevitable in the world for a really long time, especially if you're our age. Like you grew up at a time when we all thought like everybody's going to be a democracy eventually peaks in the late 90s when at one point at the like height of democracy's growth in the world, there are 72 countries worldwide that are democratizing at the same time, which is huge. And there's only three that are getting more authoritarian. So you see how everybody was like really optimistic and thought that it was going to be this great inevitable wave towards democracy. That late era Clinton State Department had it so good.

Oh, man. Oh, my God. It's just like shooting fish in a barrel. I know. Just like, what wind should we puck in today? Yeah, what press release? The entire US State Department going to Kosovo, the one problem spot they could find where Kosovo's are actually outnumbered for a little bit.

East Timor, you know. Yeah, that's right. East Timor, right. East Timor is a huge foreign policy. Right, right. Australian scuba divers, the anti-democracy movement. Sorry for cutting up. Oh, no, no, no, no, fine.

So, but recently political scientists have developed these new metrics for studying democracy, where we can now measure very finely the democracy, the precise level of democracy in every country on earth over every year. And we've learned a lot from that. And the big thing we've learned that I think makes a lot of sense of what's happening today is that all of those democratizing trends reversed really hard around the year 2000, starting in the early 2000s. Democracy's expansion started to slow.

And at the same time, the number of countries moving towards authoritarianism that had like basically zeroed out started to rise. And that was really easy to miss at the time. because we were looking for dramatic events like coups and wars. Like we think of like the tanks showing up with the capitalists how a democracy ends, but it was actually starting to happen much more in like elected leaders like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Vladimir Putin and Russia, under whom democracy would gradually erode. And there's this really important threshold that got crossed in 2014,

although we didn't know it at the time. We only found out about this later where that year, more countries in the world were moving towards authoritarianism, than countries that were moving towards democracy, which has only happened one other time in world history during World War II. So, like, basically the spread of authoritarianism started to grow so much. It caught up to the spread of democracy in 2014. And then several years after that, 2021, another really important threshold gets crossed,

which is that year there are only 15 countries in the world democratizing, but there are more than twice that, 33 moving towards authoritarianism, which has never happened, never happened at any point, in the democratic era, even during the rise of fascism, that it was two to one outnumbered countries moving towards authoritarianism versus democracy. And I'll give you some stats on where we are now, what that picture looks like. Democracy is now contracting on average in every region of the world, including, of course, right here in lovely North America, declining in wealthy countries, in Bork countries, in U.S. allies among adversaries, in new democracies, and old ones.

in 2011, only 5% of people worldwide lived in a country that was becoming more authoritarian. So it was very rare to live in a country that is getting more authoritarian. But 10 years later, in 2021, that figure had shot up to 36% of the world. So almost 3 billion people in the world live in a country that is getting more authoritarian. Also in 2021, only 3% of the world population lives in a country that is getting more democratic, because democracy's growth has slowed that much. Never in modern history have this many countries been moving towards authoritarianism. And the rate of change in any one country is usually very gradual.

And a year by year, it doesn't feel like a big seismic event. But that adds up to such a dramatic change that as of last year, democracy's global gains since the Cold War have been completely wiped out. So we are now in the state of global democracy worse than we were in 1989 with the end of the Cold War. So I'm going to throw some things at you because you know I you and I both written books about this After the Fall by me Kiosmachine by you sure if you want to check it out Oh yeah, cheers but like you know you've got you mentioned Putin coming power in 2000 you've got the war and terror starting in 2001 right which kind of securitizes Democracy start prioritizing national security and terrorism starts to be used as an excuse by autocrats to become more autocratic

Then you've got the war in Iraq and the kind of fusion of U.S. imperial militarist foreign policy under the guise of democracy promotion, which I think was not great for the cause of democracy promotion at large. You've got the financial crisis in 2008, which kind of creates this huge space of disaffected publics looking for different models of leadership. Then you have the explosion of social media. in the Obama years, which brings both the kind of Arab Spring, but also the crackdown in response and the utilization of social media tools to crack down. You have China offering a more, you know,

successful autocratic model that begins to be replicated in different parts of the world. Then you have Donald Trump, like the U.S. suddenly governed by an autocrat breaking norms. You've got the rise of anti-immigrant politics in Europe. You've got all these, you know, I throw those out there as some, you know, I'm sure that people could come up with a few more steps along the way. I guess the one thing I want to just put on the table of Max and we can come back to this is there's, you know, the question of democracies kind of being undone from within the kind of Orban effect we've talked about a lot. But then like one of the things I worry about the most is if you look at the post, you know, Cold War positivity, a lot of it was in Latin America, in Southeast Asia. sub-Saharan Africa. So, you know, global south, non-western. And those seem to be places where this is really a trend. You know, there's so much focus on kind of like what's happening

inside of European and U.S. democracy. But those places, I mean, we did Thailand, you know, the other day. Like Southeast Asia went from being a bright spot in this space to like a pretty dark spot. We've talked about Africa today and the coups there. And Latin America, a little tenuous, Kele is the most popular leader in Latin America from El Salvador, who's popular as an autocrat. One thing, you know, one question is just like, how can you arrest this trend, not just within the West, but, you know, in these regions like Latin America, sub-Stern Africa and Southeast Asia. Obviously, Latin America is still, you know, largely democratic. But that, that to me, is a real problem. It's how do you get a foothold to renew democratization in these regions where the trendlines are all bad, you know? I think that's a really important option.

because something that I have really come away with is that there is simultaneously the set of like global forces that have slowed the rise of democracy like the war on terror, which led to this like big global shift where democracy is no longer an international priority. And now it's towards like counterterrorism, things like the financial crisis. A big response by global autocrats after the color revolutions in the early 2000s in the Arp Springs in 2011. But at the same time, I think in like in, like the financial crisis, a big response by global autocrats after the color revolutions in the early 2000s in 2011. But at the same time, I think in like, like some ways the most power, like you're saying, the most powerful force for pulling back democracy has been this simultaneous emergence in so many different countries and so many parts of the world towards a real desire among a lot of voters for like strong man illiberal rule. And there's a lot of theories as to like why that might be. But I think we do have to see this as, as tempting as it is as to see it as just like the bad guys, the, you know, Vladimir Putin's and Xi Jinping's are like assaulting democracy globally. I think that we have to look at it as a problem of so many populations around the world and especially

religious and ethnic minorities in a lot of countries deciding maybe we don't like democracy that much or we don't like liberal democracy and we want to temper that. And that's why people like Narendra Modi and Rwanda. Paul Kagame in Rwanda, Nandermode in India, the Singapore model in Southeast Asia. You know, these are, you know, the people who support democracy need to answer the question of why, you know, I have friends in sub-Southern Africa who say, like, Kagami looks pretty good, you know, and I'm not saying that that's not without, we could poke holes in that, but, but that, to me, you know, Bukhili now, who we've made fun of a lot on this podcast, you know, but like, he's, like an 85% of government. I mean, they like what he's doing there.

And, you know, so. To be clear, what he's doing is throwing everybody in jail, every one you can see in Every man of a certain agent. You know, it's akin to the Rodrigo Duterte, it's a drug policy in the Philippines where you just kill them all. Right. What do you think about Max, sorry, what last quote thing for me? In this, because I focus on this in my book, the discrediting of globalization generally.

Like the democracy was tied to the idea that you have more equitable and successful economic outcomes. Right. And that kind of the collapse in confidence in globalization, which in this country is like, you know, we don't like elites and we don't like the trade agreements and things like that. But the democracy got tied to kind of like neoliberal globalization. Right. And that that's part of what's going on here is that like the failure of economics has led to a failure of democratic politics.

I mean, I think that we always had this belief that economic development, like if that if the numbers are going up in the economy, people will naturally prefer democracy. And I think that was always rooted in an idea that what people ultimately want is a liberal democracy. And I think that whether we're talking about, you know, the Philippines, India, the United States, I think that something that we have found is that is ultimately just not. People will reject liberal democracy, even if the economy is good, if they feel that their social in-group is not thriving in the way that they want it to thrive. And that's not to endorse that view. That's not to say that like they have a point or we like that. And I think of that a lot of what looks like the backlash towards globalization.

I mean, partly it's just like the post financial crisis failures of globalization, but I think it was always just this assumption that this particular economic development model of like lift all boats, a rising tide that lifts all boats will make people want democracy. And I think what we're learning, like if you look at the United States or you look at India, is that there was this real backlash, and especially in Europe too, actually, when democracy actually reached a certain point. And this is a like Pippinoris thesis that I really buy into. as to what's driving the democratic backlash, that democracy reached such a point that minorities started to be really included socially and politically in a way that they weren't before. And immigrants started to be really included

and that, you know, a lot of us think that's great. I think that's great, but that for some number of people, and again, this is not to say these views have to be catered to, but just as a diagnosis, had a real severe backlash against that. And so like the idea of a strong man who's going to come in and say, I'm going to impose order, I'm going to control these minorities that you don't like,

and I'm going to restore or make America great again or make India Hindu nationalist again. It's depressing. Yeah, but I mean, look, it certainly tracks with our history and some of the things we're seeing the Republicans do right now. It's like a post-reconstruction. Right. Global.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Republicans ran around for how many decades saying abortion should be left up to the states. Then today, Ohio was voting to make it harder for citizens to enshrine abortion rights into their constitution. So it doesn't seem like they want democracy unless it's the brand of it that they like. Yeah.

A lot of U.S. States are in that category. Right. Yeah, a lot of people like to vote for a government that will impose strict control over social behaviors that they don't like. But if there is a silver lining, I think it's that when people... Invade them. Bring democracy. Echo was a Avengers Force. Absolutely.

Yes. Echo was in Washington, D.C. It could be worse. Is that people who, these electorates that support the, like, strong man, populist government, that tears down democracy from within, which is the big driving force of democracies like decline globally. They tend to like those governments in theory, but they tend to hate living under them. And this is like what happened to like Donald Trump. A lot of people voted for him. And then they saw what that actually looks like. And they see what actually it feels like to

start losing your rights. And then they hate it. And they throw that off. That's what happened in a lot of European countries. And I think the question is like, how do you empower movements? in these countries. Like in India, there are now, what was it, Kerala that voted out, Modi's party, empower movements in these countries to say like, actually liberal democracy is not just nice as an ideal, but it is actually a better kind of system to live under, even if I've forgotten that because I find the rate of social change scary and then help people like act on that and bring it about before it becomes too late as a canon countries where you have these populace around for too long. Yeah, they're getting too late part is the scary part where,

you know, it's a sort of gerryman. or the courts get rigged to the extent that it's hard to put. Right. Or Hungary or Turkey. Yeah. It just feels generally to me like someone who tried to work on like, you know, one country, like a Myanmar democracy transition. The pendulum is going to have to swing back big globally.

You know, like it's harder and harder to find like one country and, you know, there's going to have to be some bigger backlash against this trend, you know. Yeah. Something I was really struck by is this Pew poll from two years ago where they pulled people in 16 different countries about a lot of things about how they view the U.S. was one, one was whether they considered American democracy to be a model. And it was only 17% said that they thought American democracy was worth emulating. And I think that has a real.

That's very new. That's very new. Right. Yeah. I think that has a real effect. And I don't think you have to be like a proud American patriot who like loves American democracy to worry about the decline of that model because I think it is really useful to have like something that people think is like, look, here's a big democracy. I know about and it works. Yeah. Well, Max, that was very depressing, but super interesting.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, that's it for us this week. Thanks again to Max Fisher. We're still sitting right here. Guys, thanks for having me. And I'll see you at SoulCy. We're on a carpool over to SoulCycle.

See you, Rishi. Better than seeing Boris Johnson's. Yeah, that is. Come on. I would love to see Boris Johnson's SoulCycles. Getting a bike behind him is nobody describes that. You don't want to stop on it. talk to guys next week.

Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzou. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seaglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World. Thanks to Saul Rubin and Rebecca Rottenberg for production support. Our intern is Naomi Beerenbaum.