Pod Save the World - What Worldos wanna know (Mailbag episode!)

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Tommy and Ben answer listener questions in a special mailbag episode. Then, Ben chats with Congressman Ro Khanna about Donald Trump’s misadventures at the G-7, Yemen, Iran, and what a progressive foreign policy platform should look like.

Welcome back to Pot Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben, Ben, we are recording a little bit earlier this week because I'm taken next week off. When you all hear this, I should be somewhere in France, maybe donning a yellow vest. Doing a little field research. Yeah. Yeah, me and Macron, we're going to go protests. So we're going to go, now it's just some R&R with my wife. But because we care so much about the world does and we love doing this, we're going to do a very special Pod Save the of the world, mailbag edition. Yeah, and later in the show, I'll be talking to Congressman Roe Kana, who has emerged as one of the leading progressive voices in Congress, standing out to the Trump administration on Yemen, on Iran, on a number of things. So we'll be talking about what a progressive foreign policy looks like. So these are questions that you all sent in on social media. We are very grateful to all the questions.

Those were not easy questions. Yeah, World has been. They brought it, man. They really brought it. It's like, holy shit, I got to do this. some research here. Two kind of, I wouldn't call them breaking news items. They won't be anymore by the time you all listen to this, but some newsy items right now that came up over and over again were the situation in Greenland and then the Russia and the G7s. We might as well start there. So you might

have noticed that President Trump somehow got in his head that he wanted to buy Greenland. I guess he like yapped with enough people on his staff that this somehow got leaked to the press. And then the poor prime minister of Denmark had to issue a statement saying, no, we're not going to sell like a semi-autonomous iceberg to you. That's crazy. Trump kind of backpedaled initially. He said that it's just an interesting idea. It's not a top priority to buy Greenland. So, okay, good. Probably shouldn't be a top priority. But this did remind me of the time Obama threatened to invade Portugal because they wouldn't sell us the Azores. I mean, once again, there's just like no precedent for how deeply strange this is. And the reality

is like Denmark is a really good ally of the United States. You know, they're really dependable NATO ally, significant foreign aid donor, and to basically insult them, treat them like some tributary of the United States that should give us over 800,000 square miles of territory, and then to cancel your, you know, visit with them. It reminded me of when I was little and, like, an older brother or a neighborhood bully would take your fist and punch you in the face and say, why are you hitting yourself? That's how he treats our allies. We're like, I have a four and a half-year-old and a two-and-a-half-year-old. Both wonderful, obviously.

And, you know, but the dynamic is that the older one, Ella, often wants to take the toy that the younger one has. I mean, it's kind of like, you won't give me your Lego set, so I won't come to visit you, which is clearly because Trump is lazy and doesn't give a shit and was probably looking for it out to go to Denmark, so he comes up with one with Greenland. But, I mean, like, all right, step back.

Like in the United States, it's like, oh, here's another crazy thing. Trump did. And we can all tweet about it. Like the rest of the world is like, wait a second. The president of the United States of America was going to visit this country and refuses to go because they won't give him Greenland. It's so baffling. It's so baffling and embarrassing.

And no other leader, there are a bunch of crazy crackpot leaders around the world and we'll probably get to some of the mailbag. None of them would do this. No. You know, like nobody does this. This is really weird. And it'll be like a 24-hour story in our politics, but like this will never be forgotten in the history of Denmark.

It'll be the one thing a lot of people think of in Greenland and Denmark when they think of the United States. Yeah. Like, oh, yeah. It's one of these things file away as like, this is actually worse than the dumb thing that looks like. I kind of assume that some Koch brother or someone told him that, hey, climate change is about to melt all the ice in that place.

So let's buy it so we can drill. there and he thought this was some clever creative idea. No, there's this huge focus now on Greenland and the Arctic as this area that's going to open up because of the ice melting and there's going to be military, strategic value to it and oil and gas reserves. And so, yeah, I mean, somebody planted some seed in the very small brain of Donald Trump. Very, very small brain. The other thing a bunch of you guys asked about is this suggestion Trump made that we should

invite Russia back into the G7, which was a very small brain. would then make it the G8. There were even some reports that he had talked to French President Emmanuel Macron about this idea and that Macron was in favor. I find that to be a little bit dubious, probably a misrepresentation of what Macron said since he's been on the record saying that Russia should not be allowed back in. But what happened was during this press event, Trump said that Obama kicked Russia out of the G8 because he got outsmarted.

Actually, if we remember our very recent history, it was because the Russians invaded parts of Ukraine, they invaded Crimea. Ben, is there any argument for inviting Russia back to? to these meetings and like, what would the process be? Isn't it sort of an informal setup anyway? Yeah, no, there's no case. And I was in all the meetings when we decided to kick them out. What happened is they invaded and then annexed Crimea.

And they were actually supposed to host the next G8 in Sochi where he'd had the Olympics. And there was this collective decision. It was kind of a no-brainer. It wasn't like controversial that we can't have this country that just violated international law and annexed a piece of territory from its neighbor back in this. club, essentially. And we impose sanctions, obviously, over the annexation of Crimea. There's no reason to invite them back in because the initial reason for them being kicked out is still holds. Like they've annexed Crimea. They're still messing around in eastern Ukraine. And the fact is,

you don't even need to. The whole purpose of having a G7 is so that like-minded countries can get together and forge common strategies for how to deal with international issues. And so Russia is clearly not a like-minded nation. They'd be a spoiler. If they came to the G8, they would just spend the whole time disagreeing with everybody there about everything, which I guess Trump does now too, but we can meet them at the G20, right? So there are these different groupings. The G7 is supposed to be the U.S. and our allies and partners. The G20, we can meet Russia and China there too. it makes no sense. There's literally no reason to do this now. The reason for them being kicked out is still valid. And you wouldn't really gain anything from having this venue. It's like he just wants to be with Putin more. It's really weird. Yeah. It doesn't make it. You remember that G8, Camp David, maybe that was 2012 or 2013. And I remember, Demetri Medvedev was sent. Putin didn't show. And Medvedev's people knew that this was kind of, I think, their last harassed. on the international stage, and they got fucking hammered,

and they ordered 27 hamburgers from the media. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if we've talked about this on the pod before, but like, so I'm there, and Medvedev was prime minister, like Putin had been elected president, didn't come, but he knew this is his last turn on the world stage like this, right? So he comes, and there's actually a bar at Camp David. It's not that nice a bar, no offense.

I mean, it's just like a place where you can get, you know, a beer. Yeah, in a Camp David cup. They have vodka. And so the Russians literally bought all of the vodka bottles that were behind the bar and just took them back to their cabin. I know this because I was at the bar and I'm like, pardon my bad habits, but I was smoking out back and all the Russians are smoking. They're like chain smoking. And then they come out with these vodka bottles. And then the next morning I'm walking by like the Russian house that they're staying at.

And there's just empty vodka bottles all over the thing. And then we go into the G8 and they're sitting around this table. And Medvedev has an iPad out, and he's just watching, like, a soccer game. Like, so, like, during these, like, intense discussions about the future of the world, because he's so checked out. He's, like, literally just watching the soccer. Was it the World Cup that weekend? Because we all, all of us sort of migrated into this room with a huge TV in it.

And at one point, we were all watching a soccer game, and we looked up, and, like, Merkel was on the right. Yeah. And, like, the Canadians were, like, all the foreign leaders just kind of migrated. We were all hanging out watching TV. Yeah. Chelsea versus Byron Munich. Oh, is that one of the championship of, you know, I don't want to embarrass myself,

but a lack of knowledge of what that is. But so Merkel and Cameron are like, it's a really tense game. And what was interesting is like I think Chelsea won. I think we can look this up. And Merkel was like rip shit at David Cameron. Like was not, there was no like collegiality. It wasn't like, oh, friendly bets or something. Like Uncle Merkel was really pissed about this.

Oh, you're right. Yeah. It was a Chelsea score. a dramatic win over Germany's Bayern Munich. And there's this iconic photo. Cameron got his hands up. Obama's like mouth agape. Merkel is just pissed.

The other thing I remember from that G8 was in that same bar, I remember like having a beer with Jay Carney. Some of Medvedev's people were in there. And a staffer who was, you know, on our advanced scene, very nice went up to one of them and said, oh, are you going to move over and work for Putin after this? Yeah, yeah. Carney and I were kind of laughing like,

that's not how this works. Yeah, this is going to be a different. You're lucky if you stay out of prison. Different vibe. Ben, here's one that came in from the Twitter machine. Chinese expansion into Africa through BRI, the Belt and Road Initiative, would be something I'd love to hear y'all speak on, not only in the context of today, but also what the thought process around the BRI was like during your time in the White House.

Thanks. Yeah, so I'll start the time in the White House. I actually think that we got this wrong. Can you tell folks what the Belt and Road Initiative is? Yeah, so the Belt Road Initiative is. is this essentially, you know, Chinese pool of funding that can help fund infrastructure projects. And they call it the Belt Road Initiative because essentially it mimicked the old Silk Road. So it's infrastructure projects that are going to start in China, go through Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and then down into Africa.

And the idea is that this can be a financing for all these countries to facilitate large infrastructure project, roads, dams, ports and things like that, right? And obviously, because the Chinese are really in the driver's seat of this, it really makes them a dominant economic player in all these places that are joining on to this initiative. We made a mistake. they were setting up this Asia infrastructure development bank, and we were kind of urging countries to not participate. And frankly, that didn't work because countries are like, well, we can get financing here quickly and more efficiently quicker in some ways than the World Bank, which has correctly hoops you have to jump through to make sure that these projects aren't corrupt and make sure

that they make sense and that they're not cost overruns. And this is kind of like a faster way. but it's one of these things where I think we could have probably had more influence if we kind of got involved from the get-go. Instead, it became kind of this, it morphed into this Chinese-dominated thing. And what you see, the Belt Road Initiative, I believe, you know, yes, it can do some positive things. It can build roads. It can build, you know, large construction projects, dams that bring electricity and the like. but it has become also not just this form of Chinese influence,

because part of what happens is countries go into debt to China, right? So China is going to build a several billion dollar project that you can't really pay for and you get into this kind of debt trap and you're kind of beholden to the Chinese, but also it's totally corrupt, right? So the Chinese, and in some of these places the Chinese are building the projects with like Chinese labor, so they're like bringing Chinese laborers into Africa, paying off the African leaders, building these infrastructure, infrastructure projects, putting the countries into a debt trap, and just dealing with corrupt

governments in order to get that done. What I've seen happen with Belt Road Initiative in Africa is it's morphed into this growing Chinese influence, where it started where the Chinese are doing these infrastructure projects. But then the Chinese, you know, I was in Kenya a year ago and talking to some Americans working there, and they said, yeah, the Chinese influence here is really growing. And I said, well, yeah, infrastructure projects. And they said, no, it started with infrastructure. Now they're buying media companies. They're training the political party, the ruling political party back in Beijing. They're attracting foreign students. You hear this all over Africa that the Chinese are using the kind of foothold of Belt Road to really expand their political influence and their media influence

and to take the best and brightest students who used to kind of go to the United States, take them to China. and, you know, some of this is, again, also corrupt, and they're facilitating. They don't care if the governments are democracies. They'd actually prefer that they not be because it's easier to kind of make deals and do business with them. So to me, there's like a slight net plus for Africa that they are getting infrastructure that they need. There's probably also net plus for Africa that they've been overly relying on the United States in Europe for a long time, and now they feel like they have options, right? But then the downsides, I think, are China has no interest in promoting good governance and anti-corruption in Africa, and those things are badly needed in many African countries.

And so this could compound some of the governance problems that we've seen in certain African countries over the years. Here's a related question. Can you break down what's going on with Huawei and the significance of it all? So I can kick that one off because there is an Africa nexus here, too. So Huawei is this massive Chinese telecon company. They make phones. I think they're the second biggest phone manufacturer after Samsung,

but they also make the equipment that can create a 5G network. So they're really important and can, I think they're the biggest telecom company in the world. The United States has long a concern is that Huawei has ties to the Communist Party and to the military establishment. The thinking goes that if a company like Huawei is allowed to build out, say, 5G infrastructure or networks in your country, they could engineer a way to have a backdoor into that network.

network and let the Chinese spy on government leaders, individuals, whatever, using that equipment. They've basically been locked out of the U.S. market since I believe 2012. The Obama administration did a bunch of work trying to force them out of there under this provision called Sipheus, where the Treasury Department says an investment would create a national security concern. But the Trump administration is like quadrupled down on the lobbying. They've been telling allies like Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea to not let Huawei into their countries. A common thread there is a lot of those countries have U.S. military bases, and I think they're particularly worried about our service members getting on those networks. Trump also issued an executive order that

essentially barred U.S. companies from using communications technology from any company considered a national security threat. This was a Huawei, but not about Huawei provision. And then the Commerce Department put like a bunch of Huawei affiliates on this blacklist that requires U.S. approval before any U.S. companies can use their stuff. So they're really sticking it to them. Some countries have followed our lead, like the Australians, I think, barred them. Others have have not at all, like the Indians are welcoming Huawei and to build other infrastructure. And like you were saying before, they just dominate these African markets. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Huawei helped African government spy on their

political opponents. Yeah. So the well-informed listeners to this show might fairly point out that a lot of U.S. telecom companies have helped the U.S. government spy on people too. But I just point out that the journal reports that Huawei technicians were like training security forces on how to hack you. Yeah. And so, you know, like...

And it's to perpetuate usually like authoritarian rule, not to try to, you know, unwind a terrorist plot or something. Yeah, so this is political opponents or people they view as politically risky. So, you know, we've also raised concerns about a Chinese company called ZTE, but it does seem like Huawei is a way to project influence abroad in the same way that the Bell and Road initiative can. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the complicated thing here, so there are issues around whether companies like

Huawei have been stealing intellectual property from U.S. tech companies to get in advantage. And then there's a question of whether Huawei is a backdoor for the Chinese government to spy on everybody. And those concerns are both very real. The way in which these kind of quote-unquote private or non-state-owned businesses in China operate is very murky, right? Because everybody kind of knows that if you're a really big company in China, like you have to make accommodations with the government. And in fact, the government even has put in place, you know, kind of a governed structure for these companies where, like, the Chinese Communist Party kind of has a seat on the board. You know, there really is, people really should be skeptical that a large Chinese

enterprise like Huawei is operating independently. And I think there is good reason to think that the Chinese government is using its tech companies as a backdoor to spy. Waii's been trying to go on this PR offensive to say how the independent they are. They actually have this kind of weird campus in China that has like a bunch of European-style buildings and, you know, restaurants and stuff and they take journalists on these tours to show. Cool. Yeah, it's very, it's very odd if you want to read up on it. But the bottom line is that, okay, so what do you do about this, right? So, Huawei has all this technology. They're a big, you know, tech company. They're building 5G networks. if you travel and you get off the plane in most countries in the world,

then you get that, you know, the different Wi-Fi networks you can get on or other dudes' phones and you're sitting around you in the plane. You'll see Huawei. You know, so like you can't, if you're going anywhere, you know, in most parts of the world, you will see that Huawei's networks are kind of everywhere, right? And so what the U.S. government is currently trying to do under Trump is say, we want to essentially cut this off and say to all these countries in Europe, in Asia that deal a lot with us.

You have to choose. You can't use any Huawei, you know, use Western technology. And frankly, I think that is, the horse is out of the barn. It's impractical because, first of all, the supply chain for how all these things work are so intermingled, you know, like, you know, you have your phone, and then you have the network that your phone gets on, and then you have the materials in your phone, and, you know, the chips that go into your phone, and the data store, like, you know, Microsoft stores data in China, like, you know, Google.

Like, all these companies are operating in a global marketplace, right? And so the idea that you can kind of untangle that and get Huawei out of these places, I think is incredibly difficult to begin with. Then if you've torched all your goodwill around the world like Trump has, to ask countries to do really hard things. You know, I was using a country like Spain, and they're like, yeah, they're trying to get us to get rid of Huawei in Portugal too. And it's like, you know how hard that we?

would be. And they have partnerships with the kind of large telecoms in a lot of these countries and expensive. I think the Brits handled this well, which is they essentially said, okay, we believe that we can find a way to wall off, you know, the most important secrets in our, you know, territory from Huawei. We'll let them in kind of private business. But as we had with Sifias, as we had with this review process about whether or not a company can operate in a certain area or enter a certain domain, the Brits are saying, like, we'll kind of establish what our firewall is and keep Huawei on the other side of that, but we're not going to kick them out of the country, right? And I think that that is a natural place where this lands. But I think, you know,

like people should be mindful that, yeah, like if you're on a Huawei network, like, that is a potential backdoor for the Chinese government. And I have no doubt that they're making, these deals in certain African countries where it's like, okay, you corrupt leader of X country, we will pay you some bribes to get our infrastructure projects grease. Huawei's going to come in and dominate your telecom market. Oh, by the way, we can also help you out here. If you've got some internal opponents that you want some information on, we'll use Huawei. Like that totally rings true to me.

And again, the U.S. doesn't have totally clean hands in the space, too, as you point out. But the Chinese model is, I think, you know, undeniably more authoritarian than ours. Yeah, a little more transactional, too. Here's a good, like, foreign policy 101 question. So I would love a breakdown of key roles. What exactly is the NSC? What's the difference between NSC and State Department? Bolton's job versus Pompeo's.

They mention a lot of positions, titles, but context as to who does. What would be awesome? Great question. And sorry if we sometimes gloss over this one. Yeah, yeah, through acronyms. around. Yeah, with too many acronyms. So let's start with, I'll do some basics here. So John Bolton is the National Security Advisor. The thing that makes that job so powerful is, there's a couple pieces of it, really. You sit down the hall from the president. Yeah. You go into the PDB every morning. So the President of

United States always turns to Bolton or Susan Rice with all foreign policy questions sort of on the spot. You also manage the interagency process. Well, what is that? So when the situation room meetings are convened by the National Security Advisor or the president. The idea is to bring in all the components of the government that make foreign policy literally around a big table. So you have the Defense Department and Secretary of State. You have the intelligence community. You have, you know, treasury. And they come together to debate things, make decisions, and ultimately push forward the whole process. So the National Security Advisor oversees that process, which is incredibly powerful. You know, you're supposed to be an honest broker. You're supposed to facilitate a conversation.

and then, you know, weigh in when you need to weigh in. But, like, that's the way the role was traditionally set up. The State Department, those are our diplomats. They serve in places all around the world in the diplomatic capacity. They're ambassadors. They're stamping passports and visas. And just, like, doing all kinds of stuff to represent the United States abroad. It's incredibly important.

And Mike Pompeo is supposed to be leading that group. He seems to play a different role than, like, John Kerry did or Hillary Clinton. He's some weird pseudo-general that's out there. But, I mean, that's kind of the gist. I don't know if there are anything you think is worth adding or noting. Yeah, I mean, I think that this, you know, the NSC itself is a couple hundred people, right, organized around different regions, right? So Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, but then also certain issues, terrorism, not nuclear weapons. And that's a relatively small group of people, a couple hundred people, where the State Department is tens of thousands of people.

and the Department of Defense is millions of people, right? And so the NSC is both coordinating and staffing the president kind of personally. The only thing I'd add to your very good summary is why is this not working like it normally works under Trump? You know, Bolton, as you said, you're supposed to provide a vice president, but also be this kind of honest broker. So you go under Obama, you know, with Susan Rice or Tom Donald. And they'd say, here's the issue, here's the recommendation of the Secretary of State, here's the recommendation of the Defense Department, you know, here are there arguments facilitate, frankly, if the cabinet secretary has want to make those arguments directly present. It feels like Bolton just tries to dominate this process himself and make the

decisions himself or probably present his own option to Trump. So it feels like Bolton is choking off what is supposed to be the collaborative nature of the approach. And then, yeah, Pompeo, instead of seeing his strength as I have all these diplomats in the field and I'm the leader of them and I, you know, we're implementing strategies every day. And the State Department's kind of responsible for implementing foreign policy, he's trying to be the advisor to Trump too, right? And he's getting in a space that secretaries of state don't normally get into like military policy. And then the Secretary of Defense, since Mattis left, is just a non-entity. I literally don't remember his name. No. Still don't. Yeah, kind of embarrassing. Yeah. I can't remember. Probably embarrassing more for

him than me, but yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I don't, I also know the name of the White House press secretary. Oh, yeah, she used to work for her, what's her name? Which is remarkable, right? Mark Esper. The person who's a spokesperson for the U.S. government, I actually don't know their name. No. I mean, you could tell people, like, a good window in how the NSC works, right, is the press guidance that you used to do as spokesperson, right? Yeah, I mean, right. So we were in the comm shop.

I mean, the idea for the NSC press team was, you know, you deal with the reporters all day, every day, who have questions about Obama on foreign policy. We're calling the White House. Yeah, calling the White House. But you're also trying to coordinate the entire government's messaging around foreign policy. So we would lead a call in the morning with the DOD comms people and the State Department folks. and the CIA and try to get everybody on the same sheet of music. I guarantee you that doesn't happen anymore. I guarantee you they don't try, they don't care because they can't get the president on the same sheet of music with himself yesterday. So why bother trying to coordinate the agencies?

And here's why that matters, right? Because if you're the NSC spokesperson, you're relaying, okay, here's what we're saying in the White House and so the State Department knows that. The State Department has their press briefing. But then every embassy around the world has a press officer, right? These people wake up today and are like... You're in Denmark. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. like and and because there's no coordination they're like what what are we even saying about Denmark you know message of the day is fuck Denmark yeah yeah yeah yeah so I'm just I

heart goes out to these like press officers at like you know couple hundred embassies around the world who like are just flying behind every day on like you know what the message of the U.S. government is it has got to be just infuriating but that process is replicated in every issue right so the Asia people are coordinating and you know the rest of it here's a really important question that does not get talked about enough or worried about enough, and we should. Is there anything the international community can do about the fires in general deforestation in the Amazon? Since Bolsonaro, Bolsonaro is the president of Brazil, seems not to care about the environment. Is there any action we can take?

Ben, I know you have been kind of seized with this problem. Yeah, it's a massive problem, and it's very much tied to climate change, right? because you need large rainforests to, you know, help soak up all of the stuff we're putting up in the air, like the carbon. And the more there's deforestation, the less cooling there is natural cooling of the earth. And the Amazon is by far the largest rainforest in the world. And with the Paris Agreement, what was interesting is, you know, Western countries often in China and India, we're focused on reducing emissions. but for Brazil and Indonesia, in countries with large rainforests, like the most important thing they could do is protect those resources, right?

Bolsonaro's come in and essentially said, I don't give a shit about the Amazon. Like the people can log in there, they can cut down these trees, they can sell them. And frankly, he's gotten some pushback in the Brazilian judicial system, but by all accounts, deforestation has continued in the Amazon. And today he's blaming NGOs saying they might have lit the fires. Yeah. It's very Trumpy.

Yeah, because the defarcyation. kind of can contribute to these fires being worse, right? And if the Amazon reaches a certain tipping point, the Amazon kind of naturally takes care of itself, right? So I'm not a scientist, but essentially, if you destroy enough of the Amazon, like you could reach a tipping point where this kind of ecosystem can no longer effectively protect itself.

Just becomes like arid grasses. Exactly, right? And water isn't kind of circulating, species are going extinct, neighboring countries that depend on. resources from the Amazon are suffering. Yes, something can be done about this. In the past, we have actually gotten Brazil to protect this resource by essentially saying, as governments, we're going to make part of our trading relationship that you have to protect these resources, right? Or in addition to governments, companies can take a stand here. And so, for instance,

in the past, there have been circumstances where food companies refuse to buy certain goods that were produced on parts of the Amazon that would have been illegally logged, right? And so beef and soybeans and other products that emanate from this region, frankly, consumers can pressure the companies that they buy food from to say, I don't want to be contributing to this problem, right? So I think there's a combination of Brazilians pushing back against this, and they are, and then also international pressure through trade agreements, and also frankly just people saying

we're not going to buy this stuff. Because if he's successful and essentially having the short-term sugar high, and by the way, this is also in Brazil's interest, of cutting down all these logs and selling them, but meanwhile, destroying this natural resource, like that environmental degradation is not only

going to contribute to climate change, it's going to hurt Brazil because they're going to lose this resource. It's just going to be arid land, as you said. It will be an absolute disaster. Let's do a fun one. Some people have been asking about what was the best foreign trip or the most fun. I was trying to think about this. I feel like that first swing when he gave the major nonproliferation speech in Prague back in 2009 might have been my favorite

trip ever. It was probably in part because it was this spectacular day in Prague when in Obama was speaking from Prague Castle in front of like tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people. And like Prague is one of the most beautiful cities I think I've ever been to in my life. It might also have been because it was like our first trip and everything was new and cool and exciting. I think maybe Straussberg was on that trip for the NATO summit. So it was just this like very cool Euro trip. And then I believe we ended up in Istanbul where the plane broke down and we spent an extra day. But, you know, whatever.

Well, yeah, I guess my, I really loved Southeast Asia in general. And the trip we took to Vietnam in 2016. was an amazing trip. So we started Hanoi, and we saw Anthony Bourdain there, right? Right. And so I was like a total Bordane fan. I was just such totally obsessed with Anthony Bordane for years. Did you set that up? I did because I was like so obsessed with this show.

It was actually kind of funny. We're in the car on the way to see Bordane, and Obama's like, why are we doing this? He's like, this is a guy who wrote Kitchen Confidential. He didn't even remember, like he didn't watch that show because he didn't a lot of time. So I'm explaining this all of him. He's like, oh, great. doing this because you want to meet Anthony Bourdain, basically. But we had actually gotten to a point where we could push the Secret Service much harder

than we were comfortable earlier in the administration to say, hey, we want him to just walk into some restaurant where the people are just eating there. They don't know Obama's coming. So Bordane picked the restaurant. And we just like walk into this noodle shop in a Hanoi side street. And like, there are just people eating dinner there. And Obama sits down with Bordane. And the best thing is they put us in a, in a.

in kind of this tiny room next to the dining room, but they gave us all the same food. Nice, yes. So I'm just, like, sitting there drinking a beer, eating, like, buncha, like these noodles and meatballs. Is it spicy? Yeah, it's super spicy. And I'm just, like, listening on headphones

to this conversation that Bourdain had with Obama for, like, an hour. That was definitely a high point. I saw Bordane after, and he looked like he was thinking, like, how has everything I've done in my life, like, somehow gotten me here? Yeah. Like, he had these tats everywhere, and like did not seem like the kind of guy who thought he was going to interview a president. That show, though, that show did more to help me understand, like, foreign cultures and people

than anything I read. Yes. Oh, unbelievably so. And I actually had an impact on policy. I told Bourdain that. I saw his show on Laos and about the 80 million unexploded bombs that the U.S. left behind in Laos. I had no idea that the scale of that problem. And me and some other people got very interested in, and we ended up providing significant amount of assistance to try to clean up those bombs. and the origin of that was just like watching Andy Bourdain in my house.

That same trip we went to Vietnam, we went to Hiroshima, which was one of the most powerful things I've ever experienced, like flying in by helicopter to Hiroshima, first U.S. president. We're with Caroline Kennedy, our ambassador, whose father also came the closest to nuclear war. I remember standing in the middle of the Peace Memorial, and there's like 100,000 people around us, and it's totally silent, just like waiting for Obama to lay this wreath

and give this speech. And I thought what was so powerful about that whole trip is Vietnam and Hiroshima, right? Places that have every reason to be pretty... Hate our guts? Yes. Two million people in the streets of Vietnam. The biggest crowds we ever had to greet Obama.

Hundreds of thousands of people lining the streets and Hiroshima waving, it was a window into like people are good. Like people can forgive, people can reconcile. It felt like a very Obama thing, you know? And the end of the Bernan thing is in there. Also, I mean, the power of American, can get you past having someone drop a nuclear bomb on you. Yeah.

That's pretty amazing. And this friendship we've built with Japan over the years. And yeah, they want to believe, they want to believe in the better America. Yeah. Like they know. They're not seeing it right now. Yeah, yeah. No, nobody knows better than Vietnam, the bad America, right?

But they want to believe the better story, you know. Yeah. I got to say, I know you love all things to do with Asia, but for me, some of the worst trips were to Asia because, like, they would always be like 10-day slogs. to some G20, normally in Seoul. And like, I would say two or three nights, I just wouldn't sleep one wink for one second. You'd walk down to the press file,

and I'd see Mike Hammer and Ben Chang, who are also NSC press people. And we all just be zombies. Half the time you'd take an ambient, it doesn't work. You're kind of, like, losing your mind. And so, I mean, this is actually a fun thing that people should know. I mean, when you travel with the press corps, like I usually did, you're on a charter plane.

You had it much worse than we did. We leave earlier and like we didn't have connectivity in the air, so that was the good part. But if you were on Air Force One, you were kind of like rolling with Obama. I did a bunch of trips with Obama, like we went to Portugal for some NATO summit, I think, and I was with him. But it was also funny to see like the over the time, over four years I was in the White House, the budgets for these reporters went down. Yeah. So like the first.

No, it's a really interesting thing to watch. It's wild, right? So like the first trip we did was like a two-level plane. you know, like lots of space, people were in like business class seats. By the end, we were taking like 737 maxes across the Atlantic,

which was not particularly safe or comfortable or a great way to travel. One time we took the Miami Heats charter plane to like Brazil. This is actually really interesting. So, you know, they're the parallel trips, right? The Air Force One and the traveling presidential party

and then the press travels on their own and people like you were traveling the press. It got so bad. The buddy. budgets are shrinking, right? So much for all these news organizations, there were trips after you left Tommy, I think, in the second term where there was no charter. Which is crazy because if you're a CNN cameraman, you have like hundreds of pounds of equipment.

Yeah. And so what happens is all the media companies pool, the resources to charter, plane, to fly everybody. But then there's a small number of reporters who travel on Air Force One. They're called the pool, right? And they can file reports that everybody has access to of like just Obama went here and did this. and some of these news organizations, because they're cutting so much out of their budget, we're like, you know what, it's not worth covering a presidential trip for foreign policy. And, you know, you lose something. You really do.

If all you're getting is the president of this and president of that and your reporters can't go and sense what's happening on the ground and interview people on the ground in the countries where we are, like, that's texture lost to the American people. Totally. And the decline of the, the, the real. resources for these for foreign coverage really just totally pronounced over the eight years. Yeah. And I sit here agreeing with you 100% knowing full well that the press coverage out of our trips was almost never what we wanted it to be. It was never about the massive international issues that we were trying to put forward. It was usually about some dumb domestic thing that

followed us. Which also bothered me. I mean, I remember, you know, this is part of what I got so mad at the media by the by eighth year, but, you know, we would, we would fly all the way around the world to be doing something like really important. And all they would ask about is like the political story on cable news at home. Right. So it's like this, you'd have this bizarre situation where like Obama is there with the leader of like Japan and, you know, we're trying to negotiate a massive trade agreement or we're dealing North Korea. And they're asking about like a cable news controversy from home. And like it's not even the reporter's fault. It's like that's what they're being told to ask. Well, right. It goes back to your fundamental point, though. If you're just reading

the pool reports about what Obama said and you're not seeing the crowd and the reaction in Vietnam, you are missing half the story. You're missing the story. The more important part of the story because half these trips are about public diplomacy and like making those populations want to, I don't know, support the United States. I mean, I remember when we were in Paris in 2015, we're negotiating the Paris Climate Accord. I mean, like, arguably the most important issue in the world, the entire world is there negotiating this. And it was, It was really hard to get a question on that, you know? And basically there had been a terrorist attack in Paris a couple weeks before or a few weeks

for. And so all the questions were like, should you even be here? Like shouldn't, you know, shouldn't you be dealing with ISIS? And it's like the French are the ones who are attacked and they're hosting the conference on the climate change, you know? But because Republicans are criticizing us on cable news for caring more about climate change and terrorism, like John Carl is asking us, like what's a bigger threat, ISIS or climate change because he wants us to say that climate change is because then he knows some gotcha bullshit

yeah you know yeah it's making me mad all over again although motorcating through paris with the president united states was i think the coolest single thing i ever did except from you know air force one marine one like that stuff's amazing but being in a foreign country with the president of united states it's a feeling unlike anything i'll experience again and and i think it is you know kind of intoxicating and you have to remind yourself that you know you're You're just temporary, right? Right. The motorcade is not for Obama, and it's certainly not for you.

Right. It's for the office of the presidency, right? And a lot of what seems to go to Trump's head, it's fascinating when you watch him after a foreign trip. He's like, I was received so well. Like, they rolled out the red, they put out these videos. You should look at the videos that the Trump people put out after his farm trips. Because all they show is like red carpets and motorcades and 21 gun salutes or whatever. And it's like, dude, they did that for the president.

present before you and unless you destroy the world they will do it for the present after you. Trump thinks it's about him. Yeah, you're not special. The respect is for the office of the presidency. And like that's what you have to remind yourself. Like it's not them like bowing down to you. It's them, you know, recognizing the importance of your office. Yeah, totally agree.

Okay, here's another question we got. So someone asks, I'd like to hear more about U.S. military operations in Africa. Where, why, who I've only heard Jeremy Scahill, who's a great reporter, talk about it. Okay, I can kick that one off. So I don't think we know all the places we're doing military operations anymore. But there was some good reporting in New York Times recently and also in Politico. They talked about how we're doing direct action missions in Somalia, Libya, Kenya, Tunisia, Maritime, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.

Some of those shouldn't surprise you at all like Somalia and Libya. You know, Cameroon. Molly shouldn't surprise you, but, you know, Tunisia, Mali, Cameroon. You know, look, it was a big surprise to a lot of people when four U.S. service members were killed in Niger after their unit was ambushed by ISIS-linked militants back in 2017. And then Trump was a jerk to the mother of one of the people who was killed. So this became a big issue. So those countries are where we know that guys are out doing missions to capture or kill militants. The tempo of those operations isn't the same everywhere. I imagine that the fighting against al-Shabaab in Somalia is

incredibly intense. There's tons of airstrikes. The New York Times reported that there's about 500 U.S. troops in Somalia. So that's a pretty big deal. The truth is they're probably way more special forces, missions, and units in other countries on the continent. We also have a huge base in Djibouti that is the hub for a lot of these operations, including a lot of drone operations that collect intelligence and do other things. In late 2018, a Pentagon spokesperson said that there were 7,200 U.S. forces deployed in Africa, but notably 10% of those are going to get shifted to other places. A lot of what they're doing is training missions. The goal is to get these local armies or security forces trained up and equipped to deal with threats themselves, in particular

terrorism, because they're not just al-Qaeda and ISIS, but there are groups like al-Shabaab or Ansar al-Sharia or all sorts of many flavors extremist groups in the country. Boko Haram. Yeah, Boko Haram is a huge threat. You know, the challenge is that the Pentagon's always drawing this distinction between a training mission and direct action missions where there's actually going out and killing and capturing people ourselves. They can play a little fast and loose with how we define those things. But there's an Africa command. There's AfriCom. It's one of the 10 combatant commands. It's oddly based in Germany, which is an issue for another episode. But, you know, we have significant military operations on the continent. Yeah, and I think we have too many.

I don't think the U.S. should be engaged in like trigger pulling in countries where there's been no debate about it or discussion in the United States. Like Cameroon, like I'm surprised. The one thing I'll say about this is it ties back to the question about the Belt Road Initiative. In Africa, people know about this, right? Like, Afri-Com has become kind of the United States in large parts of Africa, and that's what they see from us or that's what they're aware we're doing. So it's like the Chinese are here building stuff and you're here. like training our security forces or, you know, fighting terrorists. I'm not saying that there's not a need for that in some places.

Like there is. Like there's a huge threat from al-Shabaab and Somalia and Boko-Rama, obviously, and Nigeria, but also into Cameroon. You've got al-Qaeda and Mali. But I feel like we've securitized our relationship with the African continent. And that's a comparative disadvantage of China, who it's like, we're here to build your roads and give you Huawei. And then we're here with a bunch of special forces guys.

like training your security forces who, you know, may or may not respect human rights. Yeah, good point. Here is a complicated but important question that we will try to answer. Why did the Obama-Libya intervention fail so badly? Didn't you end up repeating exactly what happened in Iraq? Good question. I'm not sure. Totally good.

I mean, I think you probably have to divide this into two parts, right? Like there was the very near-term Libya mission, which was to prevent the city of Benghazi, which then was not associated with the attack on our consulate, right? It was just a city of like, what, 800,000 people? And there was intelligence, not even intelligence. I believe there were like, there was media reports. No, Gaddafi was, so Gaddafi had said, he had, the opposition took control over like half the country.

And Benghazi was the center of the opposition. And Gaddafi began to retake control of the country. And he said he was going to go house to house in Benghazi and kill people like rats. Yes. He announced that he was going to commit a massacre, right? So there was also intelligence, but you didn't need it. Like you had Gaddafi saying this.

And the intervention was UN Security Council authorized intervention to essentially stop Gadda from massacring people in Benghazi and a couple of the Libyan cities like Mizrata where the opposition was. And then it, of course, morphed into what became a regime change effort. Phil Gordon, who worked at the NSC under Obama, had a great quote when he left, which is, we went into Iraq with an enormous military footprint and it was a catastrophe. We went into Libya with a very light footprint and ended up being catastrophe, and we didn't go into Syria and ended up being catastrophe.

It's not a direct quote, but that's basically what he said. And there's something to that, which is essentially like our capacity as America to shape what happens inside of other countries is much more limited than we think. We could have 150 to 180,000 troops in Iraq for many years, and the place ends up as a complete mess. And in Libya, we put nobody on the ground, and the place ended up as a mess, right? There are two questions, as you said.

Like, the initial intervention, which, you know, has drawn growing criticism over the years because of what happened, was a humanitarian intervention. It really was. I mean, people, I know people don't believe that. if we wanted Libya's war or something? No. Obama didn't want to go to another fucking war. The only reason is because he's sitting there and I was in the meeting and people are like,

if we don't stop Gaddafi, he will massacre all these people. We can stop him and the UN will authorize this. And so he would actually almost have to decide not to save these people because I don't want to get another war, which by the way might have been the right decision. In Syria, he never had that kind of option. You certainly didn't have UN authorization because the Russians were going to support it. But there was never as clear cut a thing as like there are all these people in this one place. And if you can just keep Assad out of that place, those people will be safe.

Right. Like they were intermingled. Yeah. Imagine a map in your head. And like Gaddafi's guys are in New York and the rebels are in Boston. And there's a line of tanks moving north. That's what it was. I guess northeast.

We were able to hit those forces who were moving with our, you know, cruise missiles and with planes. and, you know, whatever. We were able to take them out from the air, basically. Now, there's arguments we shouldn't done that either because U.S. military intervention, the Middle East ends badly. It wasn't congressionally authorized. I think this is one of these things that is, for history's sake, a 5149 call because we did it, and Libya, after Gaddafi was removed, has devolved into this kind of chaotic

civil war because Gaddafi had hollowed out the opposition, so you just have all these militias fighting. If we had not done anything, Gaddafi would have massacred all this. people like there would have been a bad outcome either way. And if your argument is on the side of not intervening, you say don't intervene. Now, what went wrong? Like, analytically with our policy. The principal thing I think we made a mistake that we shouldn't have made is once Gaddafi was removed, there was this kind of Libyan governing authority called the Transitional National Council. They seemed like really good people. Like they were largely

diaspora Libyans and they said all the right things about democracy. And we were dealing with these people. You know, these are the people we're meeting with and Obama's meeting with and the UN is meeting with. They had no control of religion. You know, like basically you had a situation where you had this political authority that was chosen and there was a process that produced who these people were. But then militias were controlling all these cities. And so you have this whole political strategy that is running through people that really aren't able to pull a lever that affects what the people on the ground in Benghazi or Tripoli or Mizrata are doing. And we never kind of, it's not that we didn't see that.

We just never solved that problem. And one of the problems we had is the normal things you might do, like try to have a big UN office in Libya or even try to have some foreign NATO trainers trained security forces, the Libyans didn't want any foreigners on their ground. It was a huge effort just to open us up a small UN office. So we could never solve this problem of the fact that like we as an international community can't seem to do much to demobilize these militias or to train security forces or to get development going in Libya. And the people were talking to, even though they're Libyan and

the governing authority of Libya, they can't really seem to do that. Somewhere in that window of time between when Gaddafi was removed and when kind of the wheels came off a year later, we just didn't make maximum use of that window. And I, that's not to criticize the people working on this policy in addition to me. I don't even know that we could have, but like that to me is where you have three stages, the decision to intervene itself, then the window of time when it seems like things are going okay, and maybe you can keep things going off the rails, and then the period of time after things go off the rails, right? And you have to question our decisions at all three junctures. I feel like I can still defend the decision to intervene

to save those people, although I've become so skeptical about military intervention that, you know, I don't know if 2016 Ben Rhodes would have recommended it. in the same vigor that 2011 Ben Rhodes did. You'll recall I was a big supporter of that intervention for that purpose. Then there's this period of time when we're trying to affect what happens after Kadavis gone, where I think we didn't. So people should assign failure to us for that. And not just us, by the way, the Europeans who have been front and center on this too.

And then once it becomes a chaotic kind of civil conflict, then your policy options are much more limited. Yeah, and maybe a common thread with a lot of these failed war efforts is a total lack of institutions or governance or any capacity to sort of pick up the pieces after this intervention. Yeah. And the lesson for the United States is this lesson that like this idea that we can, and this has been my principal criticism of like the foreign policy establishment, we assume in the options we develop in and out of government that we can engineer outcomes in these Middle Eastern countries. Yeah, no chance. And we can't. And we should learn that

lesson. Yeah, agreed. We'll do a couple more. We might run a little long, but that's okay. World is can pace. out as long as they want. Lots of China questions today. That's interesting. So China in the Uyghur re-education camps. Are Muslims still being placed in these camps? Is there any talk of intervention happening to stop it? Has this administration said anything about the thousands of people being placed in these camps? Great question. We've talked about this a few times. The Chinese government is holding like one to two million Chinese Uyghurs in concentration camps in northwest China. The Uyghurs are a Muslim minority group that the Chinese government views as a threat.

about them essentially being, you know, the Xinjiang province, which is where they are, it's really closer to Kyrgyzstan or Uzbekistan than Beijing, both physically and culturally. And I think they worry about the Uyghurs breaking away and trying to become an autonomous region. And the Xinjiang province has a lot of coal reserves and oil and gas. So it's, you know, resource rich. And they think that they, the Chinese government thinks that they need those resources long term. So they've done a lot of things to that, the region, they've convinced a whole bunch of Han Chinese to move to Xinjiang from other places. That's led to a lot of ethnic strife. There were some bad

riots back in 2009 between Han Chinese and Uyghurs, which really, I don't want to say led to. The Uyghurs are not to blame here, but I think precipitated at this crackdown. So, Xinjiang province has become a dystopian police state. There are cameras everywhere. Those cameras use facial recognition software to identify regular citizens to track their movements. There's checkpoints everywhere. There's a free. freedom of expression. Like these Uyghurs have to give over biometric data to the government, like their fingerprints, they have to give blood.

They have to install a surveillance app on their phones. I can't imagine anything that's awful. On top of that... It is 1984. It's literally 1984. It's actually literally 19284. Yeah. And then on top of that it gets worse, which are these reeducation camps, which it's not...

This is like... They're not reeducating. They're not educating shit, right? It's rote memorization of like Chinese communist propaganda songs and sayings and shit. and you have to like, you know, sing your fealty to Xi Jinping. And there's reports of like torture. Yeah, it is brainwashing. And at worst, it's torture and abuse.

And so back in July, the Chinese claimed that the camps were a great success and everyone had been reeducated and released. No one should believe that. Released where, released into what. Now there's all these reports that they're actually building giant factories adjacent to these camps. So now they're forced labor camps. The administration, someone in the Pentagon, I think, called the camps concentration.

camps. I wouldn't say Trump has done a damn thing to try to help these people. There's zero talk of intervention happening. A whole bunch of Muslim countries, the Saudis have suggested that these camps are actually a good thing if you want to know how absolutely morally bankrupt these people are. So, you know, it's a crime against humanity. Yeah. And if people want to get the playbook, they're trying to do really quickly in the Uyghur situation what they did the Tibet, which is Tibet, autonomous province that had an independence movement, its own culture, its own language. And over decades, they basically strangled Tibetan culture, repopulated the area with a lot of Han Chinese, started trying to stamp out the Tibetan language, the Dalai Lama is treated like a terrorist,

even though he's the Dalai Lama, so that they basically take this province that used to not be Chinese. I mean, it was seen as part of China by China, but it was distinctly Tibetan in terms of its, culture and they're making it Chinese and now they seem to be trying to do the same thing here. And what can be done, I mean, at a minimum, like just much more spotlighting and international tension, which is uncomfortable to the Chinese, right? The U.S. raising this, the U.S. working with other countries to raise it, the U.S. trying to spotlight it, the U.S. is on like the Human Rights Council, the U.N., which we're not, you'd be trying to press the issue there. You know, the Chinese, you may not solve the problem that way, but I think you would check

some of this abuse, create some discomfort for the Chinese around it. Right now, they clearly kind of feel like they have some free reign in this. Yeah, total impunity. There's been amazing reporting on these camps. The BBC did incredible work that you should check out. A friend of the pod, Isabel Young from Vice News, did an amazing report where she like embedded and traveled there. It's dangerous to do that. Super dangerous and brave. So check it out. Another question before we sort of come to a close here. The second largest Ebola outbreak is happening right now and spreading to different countries and yet it seems to be hardly reported on what differences are there between this outbreak and the one of 2014 and what's that the media seemed to be covering at the

time. So a few thoughts and then Ben, you live through this. I mean, this is the second biggest Ebola outbreak ever. The 2014 Ebola outbreak was made much worse by some truly hysterical irresponsible coverage. Donald Trump was a key driver of that coverage. So I guess it's good that he's not doing that anymore, but it's bad that he's in charge the international response. This time it's different because there's a vaccine that has helped a lot, but there's also concern that the virus will mutate because all viruses ultimately mutate and maybe could get more contagious or lethal. A major problem this time is distrust for health workers or even worse that the Ebola is

spreading in a lot of places like the Democratic Republic of Congo that are dangerous, that are controlled by militia forces to make it too unsafe for health care workers to even go there. It's also being found Ebola is being found in major population center. which is really the nightmare scenario. I interviewed Ron Clayne a few months back who coordinated the response for us in 2014. I think everything he said in that conversation still probably holds.

But I mean, I imagine this must have been one of the scariest things you guys dealt with. Yeah. Yeah, there was a meeting where we were briefed by the people run like the Center for Disease Control and National Institute of Health that unchecked, like if the current conditions continued, the number of people killed by the people killed

by this could go into like above 10 million people, right? It was in like the low thousands and they were showing us this curve where essentially this was not dealt with quickly over 10 million people could die largely in Africa. But another key difference here is the Ebola epidemic, the outbreak in 2014 was in West Africa. So it was in countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone where where there's just much more transit to other parts of the world. You know, coastal areas, people flying to Europe, to the U.S. even, whereas this is large, yeah, Democratic Republic of Congo, there's not as much circulation with kind of the outside world. So tragically, like if this isn't coming to the West, sometimes it doesn't generate the same hysteria, right?

But what we essentially had to do is set up this massive public health infrastructure in Africa, facilified the U.S. military to essentially get this under control and stamp it out and ultimately we're successful. I honestly think it's like perhaps the most underappreciated accomplishment of Barack Obama is eight years as president because nobody gives you credit for what you prevented and might have saved literally millions of lies by doing something that had never been done before, setting up like a mobile military unit that could, and Trump said this was stupid. Trump demagogued every step we took to stamp out of Ebola. We shouldn't send health care workers. We shouldn't send the military. that's what worked.

Here, the problem is, as you said, in places like the DRC, the Democratic Republic of Congo, you've got militias, like attacking health care workers, you've got people spreading conspiracy theories that the healthcare workers are there to give you a Bola. And, you know, we have to care about these places because they're fellow human beings and also because if we don't get it on control, it will spread, right?

And this ties back to the conversation we've had about foreign assistance. You know, like if we're not paying for the international health infrastructure through the World Health Organization or even kind of like the minimal amount of public health infrastructure that's necessary to deal with an Ebola epidemic, that's going to come to our borders. This really is an investment that is relatively small compared to the investment we'd have to make if this Ebola epidemic spreads. Yeah. I mean, I remember watching a 60 Minutes piece on.

on some of these healthcare workers who traveled to treat Ebola patients and they're the most brave, like heroic people on the planet. And Trump was suggesting that if they got sick, we shouldn't bring them back to the United States, which is just so craven. Oh yeah, I mean, like he quarantined, you know, and Chris Christie, I remember quarantining

some healthcare worker who'd gone there. She didn't have Ebola, but it was just this hysteria. That we're, politicians literally knew that they were fueling fears and making the response more difficult. But because it was near to a midterm election and Barack Obama happened to the President of the United States, I mean, it was among the most cynical things ever done, right, during the Obama presidency. And that's saying a lot. But did you work on like H1N1? Oh, yeah.

So swine flu or avian flu. Those were some scary. The scariest meetings were always the healthcare-related meetings. Yeah. All these people who worked on like terrorism in the government and stuff, the thing they were most scared of was not like some guy shooting a bunch of people as terrible that is. It's what if one of these things proves to be. untreatable or unstoppable. You're talking about like biblical, you know, levels of potential human suffering. We fortunately got that 2014 epidemic of bull under control, but this is always worried me

about, like Trump. Like, not to, I'm not just taking this back to Trump because I don't like Trump. It's that the amount of competence it is necessary to get on top of something like that. And the credibility. And the need for the credibility for the public to trust you or for the government to work, all these government agencies that he's like hollowing out. man, you don't need the CDC, the Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health until you really need them. That's right. You know, and if they're gutted and they're not funded, when we need them, they won't be there.

Yeah, the meetings where I saw random generals with like three or four stars look scared shitless or Lisa Monaco or John Brennan look truly terrified. We're all health-related. And, yeah. Okay, two quick ones that came in from Instagram. And then we're going to close this bad boy out. But here's one for you, Ben, short and sweet. And so the point, why should I care about Brexit?

I imagine this from an American. Oh, I mean, as an American, like the, you know, Brexit, if it goes forward as a hard Brexit, if you talked about, there's no deal with the European Union. It's one more potential big economic shock that could contribute to this general building sense of a recession or even a potentially financial crisis globally. So there could be kind of short-term after shocks that reach the United States. in terms of the global economy. I think more generally, the European Union, right,

the largest trading bloc in the world, largely a creation and part of American foreign policy. We've been talking about this big, bad world, where there's the Chinese and the Russians and India is taking a difficult turn. Europe is our partner in the world. That's who we generally agree with about things. They share democratic values.

And so the more powerful the U.S. and Europe are working together. The more effective we're going to be in dealing with all the foreign policy challenges, we've been talking about, whether it's promoting democracy or combating disease, standing up for human rights and difficult circumstances. The UK leaving the EU kind of weakens the EU's voice globally because you take a big chunk of an important country out of it. And it weakens the UK, who's our closest ally, because they can no longer amplify their voice within the European Union. So just from a general American farm policy interest, you know, by diminishing the influence

potentially of both the UK and the EU, it might just, it will over time, make it harder. I think also it complicates all kinds of information sharing. We have all these agreements with Europe on sharing information, fighting terrorism, etc. We may need to now figure out how to duplicate those. And so it adds another layer of cumbersome bureaucracy to how we deal with threats. But I think the core thing is it could hurt the economy. it undermines the strength of kind of the democratic world. It undermines the way in which the U.S. has conducted foreign policy aligned with Europe.

It potentially weakens and even could disintegrate the United Kingdom. And it'll just complicate how we coordinate among all these different parties. Well said. Last one, equally short and sweet. How do tariffs affect me? Another great, important question. So I can start with this one. A tariff is a tax.

and a tariff is a tax on you, the U.S. consumer. Trump tries to claim that somehow he's taxing the government of China. That is not the case. These taxes go on the companies that import goods from China, who pass along that price increase to you. So Trump right now has been floating the suggestion that maybe the payroll tax to juice the economy. A bunch of economists and banks think that any kind of move like that

has already been offset by increased prices consumers will pay on these tariffs. So that's a very immediate, your term way these tariffs impact you. The other thing you should just know, though, is it's rare that a tariff gets put on a good or a service, and that's the end of it. It's usually they return the favor, and those tariffs can escalate. This is what people have been warning about since the very beginning. I mean, part of the problem about this trade war is when it started, there were a lot of people

saying that the sky is falling, and what they should have said is that the sky will slowly start falling over the course of several years because this trade war will escalate. And as you've noted on this show before, trade wars like this can not only impact the global economy, and we're already seeing that, but they can lead to different kinds of conflicts, actual wars. So tariffs are, you know, look, we're not saying like absolute free trade is the best way to go on all things we do. But, you know, last episode we talked about how tariffs are going to decimate the California wine industry. I mean, there's farmers, there's small businesses. There's people who are being hurt all across this country. And it's also one of the biggest tax hikes in history.

So tariffs suck. Yeah. I mean, pay attention, you know, you're paying higher prices for things. If you notice the prices going up, chances are it's go to the tariffs. If you're in an industry that's been hit by China's reciprocal actions, like the agricultural industry, you really hurt are the California winemakers. And yeah, I mean, this is, this one hits you directly, you know, more so even than Brexit. And it's hitting most Americans in your wallet. Yeah.

Well, this was fun. We should do more mailbags. These are great questions. Yeah. So stick with us after the break, and you will hear my interview with Congressman Roe Kana. So I'm Ben Rhodes. I'm really happy to be joined by someone I've gotten to know a bit over the last couple of years, who's really one of the leading progressive voices in the House of Representatives on developing a progressive farm policy and a lot of issues. So Congressman Ro Kana from California, thanks for joining us. Ben, it's great to be on with you.

So I can't help but start Congressman with the G7 that recently concluded. in France. There's obviously a lot to take in there. Putting aside, you know, Trump wanting to host the next summit at his resort and the kind of weirdness about Putin, you know, there are a lot of real issues on the table there, including, you know, climate change and the fires in the Amazon. What is your reaction as someone, you know, who has a role to play on American foreign policy and watching, you know, how our president approached that summit and how the leaders of the rest of the G7 countries responded to him? It shows the consequence of a lack of American leadership.

Usually the world looks to the American president for leadership, whether it's on climate change or whether it's on Iran or whether it's on tackling a global slowdown in the economy. Here you have a president unwilling to provide that leadership. So you have Macron trying to negotiate a deal for how we tackle the Amazon fires in Brazil. And he's blown off because, the reality is, France economically and culturally in this world doesn't matter as much as the American

president. That should be Donald Trump leading the efforts to do something to stop those fires in the Amazon. And he doesn't even show up to the session on that. He doesn't show up in terms of the negotiation with Iran. And of course, I mean, you helped construct the agreement with Iran that he just casually tossed aside. But, you know, why would you want to say? the negotiation to the president of France. So, and on the economy, I mean, he has, it's his trade war that's hurting directly Germany's economy and he has no constructive solution. So this is the consequence of a lack of American leadership. Well, you know, what's interesting to me is you mentioned a few issues, Iran and climate, obviously that depend on American leadership

and engagement. One of the things I've noticed over the years is, you know, you and me, for that matter, have made some criticisms of American farm policy that Trump has also made about the wars in the Middle East, about the need to promote less intervention militarily and more burden sharing. But Trump takes that in this kind of isolationist direction. You know, I'm wondering as a progressive, how do you define an American leadership in the world that gets us out of the business of the post-9-11 era of fighting wars, but doesn't fall into the kind of trap of isolationism and retrenchment that we see with Trump? I think that's exactly right. I mean, we need to be for military restraint, restraint in

military interventionism, recognizing that we can't through the military promote democracy or transform other nations. But that doesn't mean that we retreat from the world stage. We still need to lead in helping solve problems, whether it's climate change, whether it's nuclear non-proliferation, whether it's counterterrorism, whether it's dealing with the global poverty. And I think, I mean, you can go all the way back to John Quincy Adams, where he says, you know, you don't go out to seek monsters to destroy. But the passage right before that famous phrase is America should be engaged in giving our benedictions, our hopes, our prayers, our constructive engagement to building a world that is consistent with the values of liberal democracy. So Trump rejects the engagement part of it, and I think progressives should have a focus on restraining the military interventionism part of it. So to get into that, you've led in the House on two really signature efforts, I think, that are among the most important things that have happened in the Democratic House on foreign policy.

One is the provision to end U.S. support for the war in Yemen, and the other was an amendment to essentially make clear that there is not congressional authorization for the use of force against Iran. And obviously Trump is not going to sign these into law, but to achieve majorities on these issues is a real achievement. I want to break this down into two pieces. First, the Democratic Party, and then we'll get to the Republican Party. First, the Democratic Party, I I mean, I actually think it's a bit of a sea change that you have Democrats voting in these numbers against a potential war of Iran and to terminate support for the war in Yemen. We didn't have that kind of support for the Iran deal. We had support, but not the same numbers you had on the Yemen bill. Do you think, in talking to your colleagues the last four years, do you have a sense that the party is moving in a more progressive direction on these questions of the use of force in the Middle East? Is that a response to Trump or is that the work the people like you've been doing to try to build a new consensus in the party? Why do you think you were able to achieve those results just looking at the Democratic vote? I do think it has changed and I certainly wouldn't give myself credit.

I frankly would start with President Obama's campaign or even before that Howard Dean's campaign in 2004 and a sense of complete frustration with the war in Iraq, a recognition that that was one of the greatest blunders of the 21st century American foreign policy. And many Democrats had voted, as you know, for that war. I mean, almost half the party had voted for that war, and not Speaker Pelosi, but a lot of the other Democrats. And I think many people regret that vote. And so from that moment, you started to see a reexamination of American foreign policy and what the use of force could accomplish. The Yemen war, the Khashoggi murder, I think, where the Saudis were so barbaric about that.

And then when people learned that Khashoggi was writing about the casualties in Yemen and the fact that there were almost 14 million people in Yemen who faced famine, I think that really struck the conscience of a lot of people in our caucus. And by the end of it, we had almost unanimity. in saying that the United States shouldn't be refueling the Saudi planes that are bombing Yemen. And this made a huge difference. I mean, one of the things try to get across is that Congress can actually impact foreign policy. Even though the Senate and House passed the War Powers Resolution and it was vetoed by the president,

that doesn't mean it didn't have an impact. It led to Mattis calling up the Saudis and telling them that they needed to work with special envoy Griffiths and get a ceasefire in Hodeda. It led to the administration voluntarily suspending the refueling. I believe it's led to the administration now being willing to engage with the Houthis in Yemen, and you've seen UAE now withdrawing, at least from active engagement in Yemen. All of these things, I think, happened because Congress said, we're going to care, we're going to exercise our right for scrutiny. And I think you have on the Democrats side not just a wariness about getting in these interventions, but also a greater boldness of saying, you know, we can actually impact the world in a direction more consistent with progressive values. Yeah, no, and I think that's clear. And you see that in the platforms of all the candidates who basically supported those efforts and the effort to say that we need to repeal the authorization for the use of military force that's been in place since shortly after 9-11.

And before we come back to the progressive side, though, I also think it's important to note that you've made an effort to try to build coalitions with Republicans on the Iran provision saying that the war was not authorized with Iran. You worked with some very conservative representatives, Matt Gates, for example. I've also noticed, you know, you've taken your case on some of these issues to Fox News and other places. Are you finding that there are areas of foreign policy where you can reach out to some Republicans and build. coalitions, like what is the opening for progressives to work with some Republicans on these issues? Yes, there is an opening. I mean, you're not going to be able to work with Republicans on tackling climate change or tackling global poverty or, you know, even a new deal with Iran. But you can work with Republicans on two areas, one that the president of the United States needs to

come to Congress before getting us in a military conflict. A lot of the Freedom Caucus actually take the Constitution quite seriously, and they believe that Congress under Article 1 has the power of a war in peace. So you have people like Jim Jordan or Mark Meadows who may actually even believe that an intervention is justified, but will oppose any intervention without congressional authorization. So that's one place of common ground. And second, The argument that I used with some of these Republicans is I said, look, you believe that China is the long-term strategic challenge to the United States. Well, our GDP is about 24% of the world. China is about 15% or 16% of the world. And the entire Middle East is 3.5% of the world. And Iran is 0.44% of the world. So strategically, what are we doing there?

I mean, how do you think that this is helping our strategic posture in the 21st century? And there are a growing number of Republicans, again, in the Freedom Caucus, who do believe that some of these interventions have weakened our position to lead the world and weakened us relative to China. So, you know, I think the China piece is a good segue to talking about if you look at what a progressive foreign policy would look like, both emanating from Congress and hopefully from a Democratic president. in 2021. I think you've made very clear the kind of restraint on the use of military force manifested in ending support for the war in Yemen, ending the authorization of the use of military force, presumably winding down some of our military commitments in the Middle East and deprioritizing

that as a kind of central focus of American foreign policy. And I've noticed, you know, that's also been a focus, of course, of candidates like Bernie Sanders, you know, who you've supported. What else constitutes, though, a long-term progressive agenda. What do you want to see the next Democratic President do in addition to kind of winding down these wars and showing more restraint on the use of military force? What's the affirmative piece here? Well, I think the affirmative piece first begins with investments in the new technologies and new industries of the 21st century. The way to stay ahead of China isn't to have an irrational tariff war. It's to see what they're doing. They are putting resources into artificial intelligence, into quantum computing, into new industries.

By the way, they're copying what America used to do. And I think the United States needs to look at this like we did post-Sputnik. We need to say America is going to lead in these industries of the future. We need to make massive investments in the National Science Foundation in DARPA and ARPA and the National Institute of Health in the leading industries and technologies of the future. And we need to focus on how to locate these innovation hubs, not just on the coast, but across America, so that we're having our talent everywhere. And I think that that is a much more honest answer to how to deal with deindustrialization

and how to stay ahead of China than this sense of tariffy, a tariff. that isn't even thought through, and that is hurting many American manufacturers, by definition, by the way, because the manufacturing index, as you probably saw Ben, is down at the lowest level for the last 10 years. I mean, it's the first time we've had a contraction since 2008. So it's not working. Let's have a real policy that would work and keep us ahead. And second, in terms of how you confront a nation like China, let's recognize that there is IP theft. But why aren't we investing in smart solutions?

Why aren't we investing in blockchain that could help prevent some of this? Why aren't we investing in cloud software that can turn off software if it's stolen? I mean, why aren't we being more imaginative? If you talk to people like Tim Cook at Apple or technology leaders, they'll tell you there are actually technology solutions that would be much more helpful. And then finally, I guess, is a philosophical perspective, which is, I believe, that multilateral institutions have been good for stability and have been good for peace. And I believe that having relations with nations like China and like India and like Brazil around the world to push for a 21st century that doesn't have the same horrors of the 20th century

is something we should be working towards. We shouldn't be ripped off by China, but we also shouldn't be seeking to replicate a new Cold War. And we need to cooperate on certain issues, climate change, again, being one of them, tackling global poverty being another one of them. So looking at how do we advance the sort of common values that are going to make a better world while making sure that we're tough where it's appropriate. And you mentioned in there in a couple places, you know, the role of technology, obviously in the context of the ongoing tradeboard China, but also the way in which technology is used is going to have a lot to say about, you know, the future of democracy.

for instance and hate speech. And, you know, as I see it, there are two real risks here. One is the use of technology in kind of a surveillance state way is that Chinese are putting into place. And the other is the kind of unbridled, unregulated Internet that has been manipulated by Russia, for instance, interfere in our election, or that is a place where you see the spread of hate speech on platforms like 8chan were used by some of the mass shooters recently. You represent Silicon Valley, and so you're obviously close to the tech industry, you know, physically. You've also been an advocate for an Internet bill of rights to protect consumer privacy, which bears some resemblance to what was recently passed in the European Union.

I'm wondering what your view of the government's role in regulating the tech companies and social media companies on these questions of speech and privacy. What is the responsibility of the government and what falls on the shoulders of the companies. Well, we need more regulation and tech companies need to do better. Now, we need thoughtful regulation, but there is no excuse for having some of these manifestos going viral on the internet that are inciting violence. I mean, these manifestos on H-N that you referenced are from the great replacement theory or the, you know, the shooter in Norway or the shooter with the Christchurch shootings where people.

are concerned that there's massive demographic change, and the way to deal with that is to resort to violence. Well, that isn't protected speech under the First Amendment. And I think our government needs to be far more aggressive in shutting down that kind of speech that's inciting violence. And I think the tech companies have a greater responsibility to hire more human reviewers and to put more resources into artificial intelligence to be able to detect that kind of speech and to remove it. And you can have human review. I'm not saying that, you know, I mean, in certain cases, you genuinely have First Amendment concerns that, like when Mitch McConnell wanted to put the protest against himself online, I mean, I don't think that should be removed

because that is probably a legitimate First Amendment exercise. So you definitely need human review, but these tech companies can hire more folks. And then finally, I will say that you need a better legal framework. We need a consortium of tech companies that are able to share information with each other about bad actors and work with the Department of Homeland Security. And I'm actually working on a bill with Kevin McCarthy to try to fund that kind of a consortium, similar to what the banks have, so that we can be more aggressive in identifying the bad actors online. And do you think that some of these approaches, since these are kind of global issues, right, and all these tech companies are global?

Are these the kinds of things that the United States, you know, just tries to get our house in order here at home? Or, you know, is this the kind of thing where we have to go around the world and work with Europe and work with other countries to try to develop kind of standards, norms, a legal framework that can be globalized to deal with these various challenges? I think we need to work globally. but the problem has been in the absence of American leadership the Europeans have led with the GDPR, which is, by the way, I don't think that great. I mean, for example, I mean, it's better than nothing, but in the GDPR, the regulations say that you need to be able to get a person's consent anytime data is used. Well, anytime you see an ad online, you are going to have data be used in some way.

And so what you have now is consumers literally having to click 20, 25 times on a website. The problem is that the United States Congress has enacted. I mean, President Obama, and I don't want to be biased, but it's just the fact. He tried two times with people like Todd Park and Megan Smith to have an Internet Bill of Rights. That would have been a far more thoughtful framework on Internet privacy than what the GDPR has. And frankly, the tech companies didn't come to the table enough, and Congress didn't come to table. So what you have now is because of the absence of American leadership, a privacy regime that isn't as thoughtful and in the United States is non-existent. And what we really need is

American leadership to have a regime that's going to encourage innovation and then let that be the standard for the world. But we can't expect the world to choose that when we aren't offering anything. So one more question tying some of this together is you've been developing through your oversight and legislation, you know, these kind of pillars of a progressive foreign policy. Trump has obviously ignored the will of Congress on issues like Yemen and some extent Iran and not acting on these tech issues. I mean, I'm just, for our listeners, you know, to try to get a sense of what the role of a member of the House majority is, how much do you see yourself, you know, trying to move the ball down the field,

trying to get stuff passed that might become law, or trying, as with Yemen, to at least send a message that the world has to respond to versus how much are you trying to build the agenda that can then get put into place of a Democrat wins the president? I mean, what is the role of being in the House majority right now when you know some of this stuff you're working on is ultimately going to hit a roadblock with Trump? Are you conducting oversight or are you also seeing yourself as kind of building a runway to a potential Democratic presidency? That's a very thoughtful question. I'd say that there three different priorities. The highest priority is stop bad things from happening. Just make sure that the administration isn't separating kids from their parents. Make sure that the administration

isn't denying people entry because of their religion. Try to make sure in my district that there's been so many cases and I don't want to go mentioning personal cases of people who have just been treated without any regard for their rights or are. applying through the process on on immigration. So make sure you're helping them and you're standing against some of the atrocious actions of the administration. I think most members of Congress of the majority first view is we've got to stop the harm. And I actually think that's where we've been most successful as a House majority. I just know because I got elected in 2016. And that first term, almost every day you had the House voting to repeal or undermine an EPA regulation, a Department of Labor regulation, a health regulation.

And now that we have the majority, at the very least, we can stop that from happening because they don't have Congress. The second area, I think, is the leadership with trying to build coalitions and trying to at least shame or put pressure on the administration to do the right thing. And that's what we've tried in Yemen and Iran. You know that the president is probably not going to end up signing the war powers legislation, and he's not going to sign a standalone bill to support, to stop funding for a war in Iran. So you work to see, can you add the Iran amendment to the authorization, to the national defense authorization, where the president's probably not going to veto the authorization to fund the military. So if you can get the amendment in there, you're finding a way to handcuff the administration,

And if you can build enough pressure where you get Republicans speaking out as well, then maybe the president listens more to Congress than to the more hawkish advisors, Pompeo and Bolton. So I would say, you know, that's probably the second priority. And then the final priority, which is probably 20 percent, is can we start to build a affirmative vision for a more progressive foreign policy? And I want to give, you know, you've been credit and President Obama credit because I believe, and I believe it's very fundamentally, that what you achieved in Iran and the JCPOA was a fundamental reimagining of America's role in the world. We have been beset with the problem in the Middle East since 1953, since the CIA's involvement in the overthrow of Mossaday. And that tension between the United States and Iran in one way or another has led. led to a lot of hardship for the United States and a lot of intervention. And the president, with your help and others, reset that fundamental dynamic.

And I think she was trying to shift us away from the Middle East into a sense of how are we going to win the 21st century and innovation and how are we going to be recognized the rise of China, the rise of India. So I think that framework is one we have to build on. Now, I obviously don't agree with every step of the previous Obama administration. No one is perfect. But I think that framework is one that now the next president can build with, learn from, and make sure that we are engaged in the real things that are going to help win the 21st century.

Great. Well, look, that's a great note to end on. And I want to thank you for all your leadership on these issues. Everybody should kind of watch Rokana on Twitter. and when he's out in the media, a fair amount, he's really helping to drive with his colleagues a progressive agenda. So thank you for joining us.

Hope we can keep in touch on these issues in the future too. I appreciate it, Ben, and I appreciate your help and counsel to many members on Congress on these issues. I enjoy doing it. Thanks so much. Thank you all for sending in great questions. Thank you all for listening. Yeah, thank you, Worldose for listening.

We really appreciate it. And you should know that, you know, I think that number of people listening to the show on a weekly basis is basically double what it was a year and a half ago. So lots of people out there care about the planet. Yeah, world is one to know stuff. So tell your friends, rate and review us in the store. Thank you for allowing me this brief reprieve.

Hopefully Ben will. I'll try to hold it down here before I'm the one who starts traveling. And I will say, what's interesting, I look at the questions, and I've noticed this in some of the comments that, like, we hadn't talked about Africa, we haven't talked about certain regions. Like, we appreciate that feedback and we'll make an effort to make sure that we're trying to cover what you guys are interested. Yeah, for sure. And also, I didn't get to say it, but, man, I'm sad I missed the NS Canter interview.

Yeah, yeah. What a cool guy. Yeah. And also, my God, he's jacked. He's jacked. He's got, he came right from his workout shirt. Sleeveless workout shirt. I'd never done a sleeveless interview, but if I had guns like that, I would definitely do the sleeves. I have to say, you're wearing one of the best teachers I've ever seen right now, which is just an old school Andre Agassiz. I'm an Aggissy guy. That's like Agassie with a big hair. It's kind of got a neon 90s, I guess. That thing is that thing is. is sweet. This is top of the drawer with the Isle of Haters. All right, guys. Thank you for tuning in. Talk to you next week. See it.

Ponte at the World is a product of crooked media. The show is produced by Michael Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Chris Basil. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, NAR Malkonian, and Milo Kim, who film and share these interviews on video each week.