Pod Save the World - Who hid the nukes from Trump?

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Tommy and Ben talk about the national security news in Bob Woodward’s new book, some rare progress in nuclear talks with Iran, the latest on efforts to get the world vaccinated, why national security jobs are stalled in the Senate and an assessment of the global threat from terrorism, for-profit spyware, and Kim Jong Un’s weight loss. Then CNN’s senior international correspondent Nima Elbagir joins to talk about her reporting on the war in Ethiopia.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pots Save the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Trying to almost a new inflection there. I didn't quite deliver it. Welcome back. Welcome back. Yeah. To the show we talk about foreign policy.

Ben, today, the conventional wisdom gods, the D.C. book gods have delivered us a gift in the form of a Bob Woodward. Yeah, yeah. It's not really a gift when one shows up every six months, I guess. So there's a lot in there that we're going to talk about. We've got some rare good news about out of Iran about their nuclear program. That's exciting. The latest on efforts to get the world vaccinated, some national security vacancies, the threat from terrorism, post-Afghanistan withdrawal, spyware, climate change, Haiti, North Korea. And then we're going to talk about Sudan and Ethiopia with Nimah al-Baghir, who is an amazing correspondent for CNN.

So a lot going on this week for the people. Yeah, I'm glad you're going deep on that one. We're going to go deep. Yeah, the Ethiopia, Tigray. It's not great. Fighting has been going since November. Yeah. Almost a year.

And there's like just the reports get more and more disturbing about the potential humanitarian consequence. Yeah, it's very hard to suss it all out. If you're looking for something a little lighter. Yes. This week on Crooked Media's new X-ray Vision podcast hosted by Jason Concepcion, they are talking about all kinds of awesome Marvel movies. Why the Last Man, Jason's going to give his prediction about some upcoming episodes of Marvel's. What If series. Then MCU star Simul Leo joins to talk about his experience making Marvel's latest box office success,

Shung Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings. So check that out. Follow X-ray Vision on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you're your pod. It's an amazing show that just dives deep into some of the most popular franchises and all of entertainment, I guess. So it's exciting. Ben, did you ever get the full Woodward treatment? Yes. So it was described to me as Bob.

invites you over to his house to interrogate you. Yeah. You like the private chef makes a dinner and then is like all your colleagues say you're a piece of shit in your fault kind of thing. Respond. I'm going to give you like two iterations of the Woodwardtrient. Beautiful. Give it to me.

So the first one was I was like a, I worked for something called the Iraq study group. If you're old enough, you may remember the Baker Hamilton Iraq study group that was a really high profile offered to look at the Iraq war in 2006 and we interviewed, you know, I'm ready from Bush on down. We went to Iraq and all this stuff. And I wrote the report. And afterwards, Woodward came to interview us because my boss, Lee Hamilton, was cooperating. So it was all through the front door.

And it was so funny. Is it like, I thought there's like this momentous thing I've been a part of. And Woodward has like a research assistant with him. And he comes in and interviews me and the other staff guy about like the Bush meeting. Like the anecdote that he was going to get about the Bush meeting. And I actually had. I hadn't even been in the Bush meeting, so I had nothing to say. I'm just sitting there.

And then it's like, okay, we want to talk about this whole thing. And I got interviewed by the research assistant for a long week. So I didn't even rise to the Woodward level. Then when I moved into the White House and, you know, when we were working together, he did a book on the Afghan War and invites me to over his house. I'll never forget. You go into his house. It's this beautiful Georgetown townhome, right? And built by brick by a lot of interviews for books.

Exactly. Right. But that's what you're thinking. You're thinking like, well, this guy's, like, I'm not going to get paid off this. No, no, no, no. And they served, I'll never forget, like, they served soup. There was a soup course. Because he drags at the meal. So it's like a three-course luncheon. And part of you's like, well, this is very nice. I'm being served like hot soup for like a, you know. And then I'm like, oh, shit, I'm going to be sitting here for like 90 minutes. You know, and I'm like, dude, I got to get back to work. Then he drove me back to work. I think he had like a Cadillac or something, you know. And of course, like every other arc of Woodward. Like the books get progressively worse Of course, the administration. So I didn't talk to him for any of the other books because we just knew going in. He's just me whacking away at us. But he really, he lures you in.

Because you're looking at him too, and you're thinking like, you're thinking of like the Robert Redford character in the movie too, right? But anyway, that was my woodward treatment. Yeah, the first book's a bit of a beat sweetener. Yeah, he gratiates himself with everybody. Then he just fucks you.

He just like slides in my fit. So here is what we are. learning from the initial leaks from this book. So the initial leaks went to the Washington Post where Woodward has worked forever. It's a lot of stuff we already know. It's like the key to a Woodward book is don't really write anything new but have some like lurid details. So here's what we got. Apparently Mark Millie, the chairman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was so worried about Trump starting a war with China that he secretly called his Chinese military counterpart twice and assured him that the U.S. wouldn't attack them and even said that the U.S. would, that he,

Millie would warn China ahead of time if Trump decided to strike, which is sort of weird. Yeah. These calls occurred right before the election just after the January 6th insurrection. Milly reportedly saw some intelligence suggesting the Chinese thought the U.S. was imminently preparing to strike based on some military exercises in Trump's rhetoric, which, you know, is a reminder that words matter from a president. Yeah. Millie also called his senior officers to review the procedures for a nuclear strike, had this delivered, had them deliver an oath that he would like. like be involved in any process, so that's weird. There was also an anecdote that Millie thought Trump had suffered from mental decline after

the election. CIA director Gina Haspel reportedly told Millie, quote, we are on the way to a right-wing coup, end quote. So I'm sure the way this will play out is there will be a bunch of sort of like DC people and resistancy people who are like, oh, Millie saved us from war with China. Well, I was going to just first of all, Thomas, as a former comms guy, who do you think the source was for all these Mark Millianne? Yeah, there's a lot, uh, it'll nearly, merely spent some time, uh, drinking, having the soup.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he had a couple bolts of soup. Um, you don't know, this looks, it's all, I'm never very comfortable when I read about like, military officials, the chairman of Joint Chiefs going rogue, warning the Chinese. I don't want a war with them either, but this seems a little weird to me. Yeah, I mean, look, you have to start with the premise of like, it's alarming that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs thought that the President of the United States was so insane. He was worried that there was going to be a war in a war in a war. coup. So we just start, and by the way, Mark Millie was Trump's selection as chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And so he's not like some, you know, despite what you might hear on Tucker Carlson,

some woke general. Some lib. Yeah, he's not a lib, right? So it, like, it does speak to the fact that, and you heard, I heard, you know, like, I know people in and around the Pentagon, like, you heard that it was really insane there during the transition when like Cash Patel and all these guys were over there. And there were worries that they were going to go to war with Iran. The China thing was new on me. Like, I didn't see the word in China thing coming. I do think that, like, it was weird to me that he was calling the chairman of the, you know, the counterpart. PLA guy.

Yeah, the PLA. Was that necessary? I mean, I don't, you know, like, I appreciate that the caution and the due diligence he was doing kind of internally, like, hey, if someone asked you do something crazy, come ask me. I was a little surprised at the like the hotline to the, but I mean, it just shows you. Look, if that's the assessment, because the other, to be fair to Millie, like, none of us saw what happened inside. And here's the thing that about all these books. I think we think we know what was going on because there's so many books. These books are like just barely scratching the surface.

Yeah, we don't know what the meeting about Millie. Donald Trump has like a 16-hour day. Like we get like glimpses here and there. Like, who the hell knows what he was saying? like, you know, that Millie might have overheard, right? So, you know, the fact that we still aren't taking this seriously, like January 6th, the fact that there was an attempted coup, the fact that they were passing laws to have another coup, the fact that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought that the president was so insane that he's like hotlining the

Chinese to like to forestall some war in the South China Sea, like. You're not good. You're not good. None of it's good. Weird thing to do, weird thing to leak as well, Mr. Millie. You mentioned the... Yeah, what purpose? I mean... You mentioned the Interaction. So this is my favorite part's Ben. There's some reconstructed dialogue here. So apparently, according to the book, Trump says to Pence about his authority to overturn the election, but wouldn't it be almost cool to have that power, Trump else, according to the book? And then later, when Pence refused to do it to overturn the election, he reportedly said, I don't want to be your friend anymore if you don't do this. Now, can you hear Trump saying that? Yeah. Yes, I actually can't hear it. Like, I'm not trying you're the first one, but like the second one I can totally hear. I mean, look, the thing is, it's all like hiding in plain sight.

Yeah, a lot of support. In the sense that, like, they did try to steal the election, you know. His whole play was for people to not certify the election. And again, like, for the world those out there, what this kind of drives home one more time is how much America is like every other country. We're not, like, it can happen here. Like we can have a complete lunatic president who wants over the election. We can also have like generals who have to make weird calls about what the right thing is. You know, this is a very like kind of developing world situation where it's like the military genuinely isn't sure is the right call for democracy to back the insane elected leader who's lost his mind.

Or is the right call to like kind of raise alarms about that guy and reach out to foreign governments? Like this is the kind of thing that foreign militaries wrestle with. It's happening here. And that means that the worst case scenarios could happen here in 2024 and beyond. Weird stuff. Apparently, Millie and the CIA director, Gina Haspel, were very concerned about Trump starting a war abroad to distract from the elections, specifically with Iran. And then this has been reported before. But the book also notes that Trump had basically had two of his goons, I assume it was Cash Patel and that other guy, to sign a military order to withdraw.

all troops from Afghanistan by January 15th, 2021. So just a reminder out there, every time you read, you know, a Trump administration person in attacking Joe Biden for pulling out too fast, remember that he wanted everybody out by January 15th, 2021 and basically had to be stopped by the military. And that these guys, like to this day, the Republicans wrap themselves around the military and, you know, get the warm and fuzzies during the F-16 flyover at the college football game and, you know, attack the Democrats for not wanting to, I know, spend more money on defense. And yet, like, their contempt for the military that they back a president with no respect for them.

And a president who puts, like, flunkies, like, Cash Patel, like the biggest hack to ever occupy the office of basically every office he held in the government. The chief of staff at DOD. And, like, these are not people who respect the military. No, no. So anyway, I'm sure this will. Sell a lot of books. Yeah. Fund a lot more bowls of soup.

Yeah. But I don't know. I'm not blown away so far by these revelations. Well, you know, Woodward has always been, and this was the case I remember with that first Afghanistan book that you may recall Tommy, like, where Woodward's always always deeply sourced in the military in the Celtics community. So he always, what he gets that like, you know, Phil Ruckers and Carol Lennox don't quite get is like the chairman of the joint chiefs. Yeah, the first Santa Catam. And Gene Haspel probably, you know, the agency people, you know. By the way, I haven't heard much from her.

Yeah, I don't know what she's doing. You know, she'll not a CNN contributor, I guess. No. All right, let's talk about Iran because there was a rare bit of good news over the weekend about efforts to restore the Iran nuclear agreement. So on Sunday, Iran agreed to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency or IAEA to access its nuclear-related sites and reset equipment there that monitor those activities like cameras and stuff.

Then on Monday, Iran said it would resume negotiations about its nuclear. infrastructure basically with the U.S., with the international community. The State Department responded positively by saying that if this agreement with the IAEA is implemented, they will drop a proposal to censor Iran for failing to comply. It makes a lot of sense. So this sounds a little wonky, a little in the weeds. But it is, I think, like, the first hopeful thing we've heard since, I don't know, the Biden administration started since the Reisie election.

Since Reisie, for sure. Yeah. So what's your take on this hopeful blip of news from the weekend? I mean, I think what it shows is that Iran hasn't kind of ruled out returning to some kind of diplomatic agreement. You know, like this was the threshold point that if they basically told the IAEA to pound sand and, you know, that that was it. Like, that was going to tell you everything you need to know about whether they were serious. So what this shows me is that they're still open to diplomacy. They're still open to some form of agreement with the international community.

Otherwise, they wouldn't have done this. The question is whether that agreement could possibly be something as ambitious as the JCPOA or turn to it or whether it's just kind of stringing along some relationship with the IEA and the P5 plus one, the world powers that are part of the Iran deal. And we don't know. But to me, this was a test. Is Iran post-Raisi out altogether or are they keeping one foot in the door? And they're keeping one foot in the door. All right. I'll take it.

And let me just say it. Like, it came out, you know, I saw a report today that Iran now has, for the first time, as much nuclear capabilities they did when the nuclear deal was signed under Obama. I mean, like the people that argued for pulling out of the Iran deal, who argued for this maximum pressure campaign, are like never held to account for this other than on this podcast and a few other corners. And by the way, they're the same people that were saying, you know, Biden pulling out of Afghanistan it was the end of the world and, you know, we needed to research.

I mean, these fucking people are just so consistently wrong about everything. And on Iran, the failure that is staring at them in the face, you know, Iran, reaching the doorstep of a nuclear weapons capability because of them, because of pulling out of this deal, just doesn't, you know, like, D.C. gleefully jumps on board a chance to, like, attack Joe Biden for for weeks on Afghanistan and there are reasons to attack and we unpack those on this podcast. But there's just like never any scrutiny of the outcomes of this kind of quote-unquote maximum pressure campaign. Maximum pressure has such a nice ring to it.

Yeah, I mean, maximum pressure sounds like it's like something Mike Pompeo says to himself in the mirror, you know, to feel like a tough guy or something. Like, what is that? Oh, Mike Pompeo, you jackass. Yeah, no, it's very good news. Hopefully it'll give the Biden team a little win in their sales to get the diplomacy going again. at least an open door, yeah. So here's a global issue that's not going quite as well.

So we've talked a bunch about this global effort to fight COVID. Kobax is the name of this international entity that is trying to get the developing world vaccinated. It's obviously a huge tough job. And unfortunately, last week, Kovacs announced that they will have 25% fewer doses of the vaccine available to people in 2021 than they had initially expected. So in June, Kovac said they thought they'd have access to 1.9 billion doses this year. that was revised down to 1.4 billion doses, so not great. The reasons cited are, one, export restrictions, especially from India, two, challenges scaling up manufacturing of the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines, three, slower than expected

regulatory approval of one other vaccine. Obviously, like the fact that the U.S. and other wealthy countries are just like gobbling up doses has a huge impact on supply, but these reasons I cited are why Kovac says their numbers are down 25%. So the World Health Organization used the release of this forecast as an opportunity to call on wealthy countries to hold off on giving healthy patients booster shots because they want that supply to go elsewhere, obviously. Last week, President Biden said the U.S. will invest $2.7 billion in vaccine manufacturing. That money comes from the March stimulus package. That's good.

It's money. It's already out the door. According to Oxford University, 81% of vaccine doses administered globally have gone to high in upper middle income countries. only 0.4% of doses have gone to low-income countries been. So that's a disaster. Kovacs has delivered 245 million doses to poor countries. The WHO estimates we need 11 billion doses to vaccinate the world. So we're far away.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that Biden planned to call on world leaders to fully vaccinate 70% of the world's population at this virtual summit next week. So he's going to basically, I think, say, like, put resources in to get to 70% next year. So the inequality is appalling. Here's my question. Like, I update myself by reading all this coax news and then I think about the conversation in the U.S. We're like, we're begging, fighting, cajoling, pressuring people to get vaccinated. Do you think that like vaccine resistance talk here maybe gives Biden more political space to, I don't know, reroute some vaccine doses? I think it does. I mean, because it's been six months since the vaccine was basically available to anybody here in this country. So nobody could possibly mount an argument that sending dramatically more vaccines overseas is somehow coming at the expense of Americans get a shot. What's coming at the expense of Americans getting a shot is a bunch of idiots and a bunch of like Republican governors who and Republican media personalities intent on making sure that people remain idiots.

And look, this is this is like we've talked about this, but it's a math problem. Like, it should be more than $2 billion. You know, look, and I think the Biden people have done a lot of good work here. They're clearly trying to lead an international effort with the dissemination of vaccines that we've had. You know, seen cement the power out there prioritizing this. But this just needs to be scaled up significantly. Like, it has to, the money should be spent. It's both the right thing to do morally.

It's also, like, so profoundly in our own public health interest. Like, we've learned how variants can spread in places. in India and South Africa and other places here, by the way, we've helped develop some of our own variants. But like, so it's in our own interest to spend this money to help stamp out COVID globally. And like the world can't resume. Like we talked about travel. Like you're going to have this kind of patchwork global economy when it comes to international travel.

You're talking about next week summit. It's a UN General Assembly. It's not clear who can come to that summit because- Yeah, it's virtual, right? Yeah, most of it's virtual because people from the developing world aren't vaccinated. The Glasgow Climate Summit, there's quite. questions about how much that'll be, like, so they can't even have, like, the conduct of the kind of diplomacy as necessary to deal with other things, like climate change, like, vaccine

equity has to be funded, whatever the, because the cost is still not going to be anywhere approaching, you know, it's not like hundreds of billions of dollars here. The global slowdown. Yeah. From the Tucker Carlton variant. It's not approaching what the Carlson variant, like, is going to bring in terms of just cost-benefit analysis. I like that.

Let's just call it that for a moment. I mean, the Delta variant literally was, like, I think, created in India because the COVID was just running rampant. Yeah. Yeah. And so we've seen that why would that not happen again? Of course it will. Of course it will. Let's talk about national security jobs because there's a lot of great coverage of the 9-11 20th anniversary over the weekend.

And there's one important story in the New York Times that I just wanted to reference. So, Ben, you know, this will be familiar to you. When the 9-11 Commission looked back to see how the attacks on September 11, 2001, happened, one of their findings was before those attacks occurred, nearly half of the government's Senate-confirmed national security positions were vacant, I guess, because they haven't been named or they hadn't been confirmed or whatever. So the Times looked at what's going on today and things have gotten worse, arguably. Much worse, I think. Yeah, so today, only 26% of Biden's national security slots have been confirmed by the Senate. There's 170 national security-related

jobs at Department of Homeland Security, Defense, Justice, and State. Only 44 of those have been filled, which is pretty abysmal, though. It is worth noting that, like, there are more slots today than they were before 9-11. Like, DHS didn't exist, right? But, you know, today I saw that insurrectionist-loving U.S. Senator Josh Hawley has said that he won't confirm any nominees from the Department of Defense or State until the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin or Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, resign. Obviously, that's not going to happen. He doesn't get to tell Joe Biden who works for him. But Holly is happy to hamster. string both departments of their senior leadership if it gets in a press release. So fuck that guy.

As our old boss, Tom Donnellan used to say a good process doesn't guarantee a good outcome, but a bad process always leads to a bad result. Same principle applies here, I think. Being fully staff doesn't mean you catch every threat, but being understaffed guarantees you will miss some. What do you think about these proposals to just like drastically reduce the number of national security positions that are Senate confirmed? Like on the one hand, it'll speed stuff up. On the other hand, you could have seen Trump having, like, diamond and silk as assistant secretaries of state. Well, first of all, he basically did anyway. Yeah, because he just recessed, supported people and made them acting.

Remember how many actings we had? One point, we had an acting DNI act. So it's not like this is, you know, catching everybody that's coming to the trance and when there's a shitty president. This is a disaster. Like, it is such a fucking catastrophe. And so just so people understand how and why this happens, there's weird Senate rules that. that I still don't fully understand, where, like, individual senators can put hold on nominations.

Famously, fascist, interactionist, Tom Cotton, can't be repeated enough, just because he's this kind of guy, put a hold on a woman named Cassandra Butts to be an ambassador for two years who died while she had a hold on him. And the only reason he said that he was putting a hold on her is because she was Barack Obama's friend. He just wanted to hurt Obama.

Yeah, it's like the filibuster. These rules that might have once made sense where, like, one senator really needs a question answered so he puts a hold on it, have now become something totally different, where one senator wants to like perform on Twitter and demand resignations. Or, by the way, let's be bipartisan about this. Like Bob Menendez, notorious for holding up all nominees or huge slates of nominees unless he's promised like that he will basically get to choose your Cuba policy. It's something people for me complain about here. But that's common in the Democratic Party. Or what they do is they send like

nine million questions for the record to these nominees. takes forever. You've got huge manpower at the State Department. You've got like hundreds of people working on these confirmations. You worked on some of these confirmations. This is not serving the national interest. No. Like the idea, yes, the United States Senate should have to like confirm the absolute top people, the Secretary of State and the top people, some of these agencies. Do they really need to confirm the assistant secretaries of state for different regions and just hold up the process of getting people in there for months? And by the way, like Congress has abused this authority, so they should lose it.

of it. I mean, like, not all of it. Again, you want Senate advising consent, but like the process has been abused. It's been broken. It's frankly bipartisan, although it's much, much worse, as usual, coming from the Republicans. And, and yeah, like not having people in place, it hurts, it hurts your capacity to execute foreign policy, to plan for foreign policy. Like, you know, look at the embassies that are going to be unfilled deep into next year. You're going to have people that are Joe Biden's selection to be ambassadors to important countries. Major countries. Who will probably only end up serving like a little over half of his first term because like some senator decided to put a hold on like 20 nominees so that he could be promised something totally unrelated to those nominees.

It's insane. Yeah. I wonder if the vetting process has gotten too ridiculous. It's got much worse because I'm sure now, like you were on these like Matt, you didn't have the social media vetting that's done now. Like, I bet all the tweets? No thanks. Yeah. I mean, like, it's broken and needs to change.

Yeah, and people probably hear us talk about ambassadors. Like, we're talking about like assistant secretary of state for intelligence. That position is being held by like, I think maybe Ted Cruz or something. It's like, what are we doing here? Yeah, come on. And so like, okay, let's talk about why this matters. So following the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, there's been a bunch of testimony in the last couple days about the global terrorist threats to the U.S. and where it comes from. It's that worldwide threat assessment hearing that we would do every year.

dreaded. It was like the longest set of unclassified talking points about classified stuff you could ever imagine and just, I don't know, whatever. A few data points. First, Ariel Haynes, the Director of National Intelligence, our friend said on Monday that terrorist groups in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, and Iraq currently pose a greater threat to the U.S. homeland than Afghanistan. Now, currently is doing a lot of work there. But I don't know that that's a big surprise. I think a lot of terrorism experts would argue, yeah, that reality is why it didn't make a ton of sense to have a huge military footprint in Afghanistan and, you know, less of a capability in other places. And then on Tuesday, Ben, some intelligence officials estimated that al-Qaeda could rebuild

inside Afghanistan within one to two years to the point where they have some limited capacity to threaten the U.S. homeland. Obviously, like the CIA, the NSA, the military would take it upon themselves to monitor and try to degrade that capacity, but I don't know. That was an interesting sort of like level set public discussion of the actual risk for the first time. Yeah. And the list of countries is interesting and illustrative. I mean, you know, first of all, the list of countries shouldn't be a surprise because ISIS has been a bigger threat in Syria and Iraq were obviously ground zero for that. The list of countries also has a conspicuous overlap with places where the United States has been at war for the better part of

20 years. Yeah, notice that too. makes its own rationale for maybe fighting open-ended wars in these countries is not successfully mitigating the terrorists, right? And that leads to the point on Afghanistan, because some people may hear that and say, well, what about ISIS-K that we just saw, you know, tragically kill 13 U.S. service members and scores of Afghan civilians. But their capacity to launch an attack at a very vulnerable airport is very different from their capacity to, like, sit in a safe haven in Afghanistan and plot like some 9-11 type of time. Yeah, send dues to flight school in Florida or whatever, yeah.

And that's what we have to remind ourselves because everybody, I see all the like, you know, the greatest hits album of like Paul Wolfwitz and Paul Bremer writing op-eds, the Wall Street Journal warning about future 9-11s from Afghanistan. The pre-9-11, again, drawing on my experience working for Hamilton, the coach of the 9-11 commission at the time, like you could get on an airplane with box cutters. We weren't like anywhere near devoting the resources that we do now to just the intelligence tracking of these people. Like we've tightened every screw and every law possible. At some point, we're just going to have to trust our capacity to prevent attacks.

You know, they're going to be bad people to live in Afghanistan. They're going to be bad people, by the way, that live in America. They're going to be bad people that live all over the world. And it doesn't mean we have to take drone strikes there or go to war there. Like at a certain point, you have to trust. this massive multi-trillion dollar counterterrorism apparatus that we've built to uncover and prevent attacks like and get out of the war footing which again the war footing conspicuously completely overlaps with all the places that there's now a terrorist threat from i mean let's

let's kind of turn the page on this approach guys really does become just this circular process yeah let's not do that anymore let's not do it anymore um ben do you have an iPhone i do quick heads up for anyone with an iPhone or Apple products. Update your software. Do it now. This week, Apple issued a software patch that will block, fix, do something to stop some incredibly sophisticated software, spyware, that is, that has been found to infect phones without the user ever clicking on a link or a file. Terrifying. I know. This spyware was found on the Saudi activist phone. The University of Toronto's Citizen Lab discovered the spyware. They said they believe it was sold by this company we've talked about before, the NSO group, which is a for-profit spy company

started by a bunch of former Israeli intelligence people. Those company, the NSO group, they'd like to say their spyware is like only use against terrorists. It's funny how often it ends up being used to target activists and journalists and others who oppose repressive governments like Saudi Arabia. Boyler, they're lying. So anyway, update your software. At what point do you think this becomes a conversation with the Israeli government, like, hey, this is out of control. I think it, I hope it already has been, right? Because again, like, and I mentioned this on a previous show, but like your hope is that Netanyahu was part of the problem here and that this is not more endemic because there's just no way this is happening without the Israeli government

knowing about it. I mean, you have a bunch of formers in that community doing that without somebody knowing about it. And as we talked about, it conspicucus the overlaps of the governments in Nanyahu became friendlier with in the Gulf and India and Hungary. Yeah, Abraham Accords. Exactly. I mean, as everybody gets ready to celebrate the anniversary of Abraham Accords, there is a darker underbelly to this, and this is a manifestation of it.

I think that the other question, though, that, like, the two big issues that are converging here, one is at what point can you just not really see? secure your shit. I don't know, man. Apple's supposed to be the best at this. Yeah. And we keep hearing about these no-click spyware apps. Yeah, because I got to tell you, I get multiple clear phishing attacks a day. There's no question. You know, like weird text messages, just click this link proposing as my phone company or, you know, someone tried to hack my Instagram the other day by saying they were Instagram wanting to like, you know, change my password or something. And it's just, It's obvious, but, but again, it calls on you to at least, you know, be smart and have

two-factor authentication. If they can hack your phone without you doing anything, like it's game is open. You're done. Like, you're done. Like, and everybody's shit is everywhere. And nothing that you put in any digital platform is truly secure. And then you combine that with the second big trend, which you talked about a bunch here, is this private espionage world.

So if your shit can be accessed by anybody and then sold to anybody and then used for any purpose, like we're just in a whole new world of absence of privacy and manipulation and intimidation and intimidation and blackmail and like we're almost there. So like it feels like there just needs to be much more public conversation about what privacy like can we expect, right? And companies like Apple have got to be straight about this. Like what can they protect and what can they protect and what can they? not protect. Because it may be, I don't know, if someone says to me, and again, I'm just this back

an envelope, I don't know this to be true. I'm not like the tech guy. But like if someone kind of said to me that like, well, we're just not sure we can really secure your email. But, you know, if you do these three-step factor cloud stuff, like we can protect some of this data, well, I'd adjust accordingly. You know, right now everybody's flying a little bit too blind here. Yeah, there's no best practices. The other thing that you see happening in, you know, sort of like Russia, Intel targets is planting stuff on people's phones. There's all these reports of like such and such activist had like kitty porn on their phone and it was like clearly planted and like this would be so easy to do that.

Totally terrifying. It doesn't have to be that extreme. It doesn't have to be like criminal, you know, materials you're planting on someone. It could just be like a email or message that says something shitty about someone else. So you just throw in a pile. I've, you know, as someone who's been the subject of like totally made up stuff like, fake quotes I never said and that someone tweets and puts the quote over your face so somehow it looks like, you know, like that is the most, it makes you feel completely powerless, you know, like, because it doesn't matter that it's not true. And, and so, yeah, this is the, this privacy question really needs to move to the forefront in a way that it hasn't yet. It is in Europe, by the way. The Europeans, they're way ahead of us. I'd like to catch up to where they are. Yeah, I would too. Speaking of massive problems that need to move to the forefront, so some climate change, uh, news here, Ben. So, one, there's a global survey of 16 to 25 year olds in 10 countries,

and it found that 60% of young people are very worried or extremely worried about climate change. Seems like an opportunity for, I don't know, political parties that want to get young voters. Two, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry was in India this week. He said he made progress in pushing India towards announcing a time frame for them to get to net zero carbon emissions. So Modi is visiting Washington later this month. Then, as you mentioned earlier, the leaders will get together in early November for this global climate summit in Scotland. Some of it will be virtual maybe. India generates more than 70% of its electricity from coal.

They are on track to add many, many more new power generation plants over the coming decades. So that's a growing problem. No one thinks that the world can meet their CO2 reduction targets without China and India being on board and offering concessions. In the past, those countries have understandably been annoyed at the U.S., annoyed at Europe when we come to them and say, hey, cut your emissions because they're like, hey, you built your economy on fossil fuels for decades. And now you're telling us not to do the same thing. That's bullshit. In your experience, Ben, you know, like Obama and Modi actually, like found some common ground on climate, were there arguments or incentives that worked with Modi and the Indian government when it came

to climate change that, like, Biden could bring to bear here? I mean, first of all, there was like, let's face it, I mean, a prioritization of climate, right? And so in building a personal relationship with Modi, and similarly, in the run up to Paris, we kind of rolled out the red carpet for Modi here. Obama went there. Obviously, you know, things have grown more acute on the anti-democracy and nationalism and authoritarianism, Modi. But this presents, like, awkward tradeoffs at times.

So we should have to be eyes wide open about that. Ron Ayyub, who is on this podcast recently, she continues to just be dumped charges on her first shit. So, like, you have to find a way to do both at once, to have a voice at critical times on democracy issues, but also obviously prioritized climate. But I don't make any illusions that that's simple or easy. In terms of arguments that worked and approaches to work for Modi, you know, one of the ones that worked for Obama is like he'd say to Modi, look, you know, I need you to do much more. You need to be much more ambitious. If you guys aren't shifting your economy, not only we're going to lose ground because of your

but it lets a lot of developing countries kind of hide behind that. And Modi would say, well, that's great. I have 300 million people in this country who don't have electricity. And coal is the cheapest way to get them electricity. And Obama said, well, yeah, but look, solar is a much more sustainable source of energy over time, particularly as the global economy changes. You guys have access to significant solar energy reserves. Oh, and by the way, maybe we can work with like a consortium of philanthropic leaders

and companies to develop a kind of solar initiative that can finance a development of cheaper energy for Indians. Right. And we did that. And so at Paris, Bill Gates, of course, is involved, but a whole bunch of people are involved in announcing this initiative that could expand solar access in India. So offering solutions to the problem, I think, is one way of doing it. And then also, and this is important politically, by the time we got to Paris, Modi was basically

isolated because the Chinese had made a big commitment in terms of their emissions reduction. So it basically every other country, you know, pre-Bosanaro, Brazil, the Europeans are obviously moving aggressively. And so Modi was kind of the last holdout. And that created a lot of international pressure because it's a tough position to be in if it's like you're the last major leader holding out on doing something ambitious on climate. Right now, what I worry about, and most of this is not through no fault of the Biden team, you know, Glasgow is right around the This was supposed to be the summit five years after Paris kind of update the ambitions and there's not a lot of momentum heading into it. I mean the Chinese have not really done anything new and ambitious Our climate package is parked somewhere on Joe Mansion's houseboat and we just don't know how much you know money we're going to be able to get through there what clean energy standable you get

Modi's kind of holding out and so it's much easier for Modi to hold out if China and the US are still you know not moving aggressively and And so the expectations around Glasgow may start to come down a little bit, and that obviously is alarming to activist, but you've just got to keep pushing. So I think, you know, this is something we all have to pay attention to through Glasgow. And if that doesn't hit the mark, then that means you have to keep working on. Yeah, I hope Joe Manchin could put out forest fires, the civility, because that's the track run. Yeah.

So a couple more things, Ben. So we talked a couple times in the show about the assassination of former Haitian President Jovenel Moise back in July. Right before we started recording, I saw a report that a prosecutor in Haiti has asked a judge to charge current Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henri in connection with that murder. Henri reportedly held two phone calls with a key suspect in the killing. Right after it happened, that suspect worked at the justice ministry. He's now on the run. So, yikes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you kind of felt like, and again, we'll have to follow this information closely because, you know, first facts don't always bear out. But you kind of had the feeling

that something had happened that was more embedded in Haitian politics than, like, I think the original report was like some weird doctor. Yeah, some crazy doctor in Florida. Yeah, like it. So, you know, the potential for this to be destabilizing Haitian politics for years is there because, I mean, how many people were involved and is it how much of the political lead? And so once again, it's good to see leads develop. but it just raises more challenges. Yeah. Last thing.

So over the weekend, North Korea tested a new long-range cruise missile that analysts say could be used to carry a nuclear warhead, so that's not good. But Ben, that is not what captured the media's attention. This is an actual tweet from CBS News, quote, thinner, more energetic Kim Jong-un steals the spotlight at North Korea parade. I mean, you know, like apart from the fact that that reads like a North Korean headline writer piece of propaganda. Or like Us Weekly. Yeah, or like Us Weekly, a combination of the two. It's also a sign of like weirdly, you don't know how like Trump and Fox and all that they kind

of change the culture through osmosis. Like I feel like that tweet is impossible five years ago, right? Like, like, but like this, because there were also these Fox segments where they were talking about how good he looked and he looks better than Biden. And it's like, what do we, we're talking about like the most murderers. dictator in the world here, guys. Yeah. And the context matters a little bit. Like, obviously his health is newsworthy and relevant, right?

Remember, was it two years ago where he just disappeared for a while? People thought he was dead. There's all these, you know, issues about his limp, blah, blah, blah. But I like, I love the idea that Kim Jong-un would let someone else be the star of the parade if he hadn't lost all that way. Stilled the show. Stole the show from who? He's going to kill you if you tried to steal the show from him.

That's how the show works over there. That is, he's the show. I mean, doesn't he kind of by definition? own the fucking show. I mean, like, you know. He also had the picture of him with the, that weird green drink with like the curly straw on it. Oh, so good.

I was wondering what that drink was. Yes. There was a... Is it athletic greens? I don't know. They had like a... By the way, I got that care package. Oh, good.

Look, I'm an actual fan. There was a photo of Kim Jong-un like at this dining table and like someone had carved a centerpiece that looked like a corn of cob, I think. And then I think it might have been his sister or his wife. had what looked like a cocktail you'd get at ClubMed kind of thing with the big twirly straws. Yeah. Maybe he's in a phase. Like, maybe like Nick Shapiro cut phase. I don't know how you lose all that weight if you're drinking those blended drinks, though. Those peanut clas and stuff have a lot of calories. I mean, maybe that's just the only horse he's riding these days, you know? Like one of those

were like extreme crash diet. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Because we don't know that that could be not alcoholic. Yeah, I guess it could be just all protein. You could be one of those keto things. They may, well, that could be the danger that they've invented some super, you know, they're going have some superhuman drink that they're going to have. So that's the issue and not the nukes. I think the nukes is still the issue. Okay. I mean, I think the nukes, what is there to say? I mean, they're going to do something early in the Biden administration to remind everybody that they these nukes and they did it. And, you know, all the good nerds on North Korea on Twitter, kind of broke it down. Like, here's what to be worried about, which is.

that they have this program, but it doesn't feel like a huge leap forward, but, you know, it's concerning. It's just one of those things that's like, yep, still a problem. Still a problem. Still haven't fixed it. No idea what to do about it. The Singapore summit, you know, didn't quite close the deal. Yeah, it's weird that those love letters didn't make all the nukes go away.

But maybe they had some good drinks and, you know, that's why we're seeing all this weight loss. Anyway, he looked great. That's the bottom line here. Okay, when we come back, we'll have my interview with CNN Senior International Corps responded, Nimma al-Baghir, about what's happening in Ethiopia and Tigray. So stick around for that. All right, I am thrilled to welcome CNN's senior international correspondent, Nimma al-Bagir, to the show. Nimai is so great to talk with you. Thank you so much. So, you know, you've been doing this incredible reporting about the situation, the fighting in

Ethiopia between the Ethiopian government and these rebel factions have been the northern Tigray region. We've been covering this Civil War on the show for a while since November of last year. You know, it's been sort of been a lot of different, you know, moments in it. Like at first it seemed like the Tigray People's Liberation Front or TPLF had basically been routed by the Ethiopian government and these Eritrean troops who joined them. Then there were, you know, there have been horrible reports of war crimes. And then more recently, there were reports of a TPLF counteroffensive that retook the regional capital in Tigray. Then last month, you had this sort of haunting call by the Prime Minister

of Ethiopia to calling on citizens to fight. So I guess basically my opening question is sort of what is the latest in terms of the situation? Is there still just active fighting happening right now in Tigray? Yeah, absolutely. And what is really concerning is the sense that that fighting and the atrocities are spreading beyond the borders of Tigray itself. So going you now have the Aromo Liberation Front and their forces joining with the Tigrayans, with the Tigrayan forces. I think what complicates this and perhaps what makes it difficult for people to engage effectively with this is the fact that the TPLF was the senior partner in the coalition that ruled

Ethiopia for almost 30 years, a coalition that Abe Ahmed, the current Prime Minister, was a part of. So what the Ethiopian government has done very successfully is create an equivalence between the atrocities being perpetrated against Tigrayans by constantly harking back to what the TPLF did when it was, you know, essentially when it was in power. You know, there are all these kind of, oh, well, they weren't in power. No, they were the senior member of the coalition. So therefore they were in power.

It's really important to not kind of get caught up in the minutiae of this. because again and again what we hear from the Ethiopian government and their supporters abroad and there is quite an extensive bank of supporters is that, well, the TPLF was also guilty of atrocities. Yes, they were, but it's not the TPLF that was targeted. It was the Tigrayans as an ethnicity. And even inside Addis, the Tigrayans were targeted. And the Amhara, who are the neighbouring region and, you know, the neighbouring region, and neighboring ethnicity have essentially moved into Tigray.

So Western Tigray, Secretary Blinken, found that ethnic cleansing has happened in Western Tigray because Amhar settlers moved into these areas where the Tigrayans were moved out of. So the two most important things for people to be aware of is, as we always see in these situations, when the world does not act, the violence spreads. You start hearing these reports, and we have not verified them, but they are very believable. these reports of revenge and retributive actions by Tigrayan fighters when they come into villages held by the Amharah Regional Forces. You now have the Aromo, who are the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia.

They are now supporting the Tigrayans. But at its heart, it was a campaign by the Ethiopian government, backed by its allies in Aritrea and in the Amhar regional forces to target an ethnicity. And when you start talking about the intent to destroy in whole or part, then you're starting to talk about something that meets the international criteria for genocide. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, you were recently in Sudan reporting on evidence of Tigrayans being tortured, executed.

Can you tell us about, you know, what you witnessed? So there are, we had done a trip to Ethiopia to Tigray in April, somehow by some miracle, we got a visa. And what we saw there was we were able to film for the first time Eritreans obstructing aid. And the reason I bring that up is because there is a very important focus on our recent reporting, which is this evidence of mass detention. and torture and executions. And it's horrible. I mean, what we saw was really, you know,

and we've reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Congo. We're not ingenues, but really what we saw, you know, our cameraman, our photojournalist Alex was kneeling in, what I can only describe as corpse water on the banks of this river where these bodies were. And what was really, I think, upsetting is that parts of the bodies were decomposing, but parts of them had clearly been preserved either advertently or inadvertently. So your eye is, it's very disconcerting because your eye sees someone that looks like a living human

because of the level of external preservation. But what you can smell is clearly decay and what you can smell is death. And it's very difficult, I think, for you to kind of, I'm still kind of struggling to make sense of it. I think it's very difficult to describe that in a piece, how extraordinary it is to see those signs of torture, almost as if this was still a living being because of the preservation, but to smell the bits of the body that had begun to decay. So understandably, that was really important for us because what we were able to do by pinpointing the methodology and the level of incarceration and the level of mass detentions and the stories that we were hearing from escaped detainees, plus the stories that we were hearing from eyewitnesses, plus what we were able to see from the analysis of satellite imagery, that really allowed us to be able to say that our findings point towards. genocide, you know, this, this would meet, this would, and we're very careful because genocide is a legal finding from a tribunal. We cannot decide that something is genocide, but, you know, we all have reading comprehension, right? Like, we understand what meets the criteria of genocide.

But at the same time, for me, what we saw in April was almost, in a lot of ways, more upsetting because this debate around whether it's genocide, who's commons, who's commons, who's the atrocities, are the Tigrayan forces committing retributive atrocities, is taking away from what we do absolutely know that the Ethiopian government and their Eritrean and Amhar allies are doing, which is obstructing aid, which is categorically a war crime under UN Resolution 2417. It's using starvation as a weapon of war. And it's really upsetting when you speak to people who we've worked with, who we stay in contact, with and it's very difficult because of the ways that the Ethiopian government is obstructing

the communications and electricity and everything you can imagine. Stavving to death is awful. In a lot of ways, I mean, torture is awful. I don't think anybody would want to make a choice, but starvation, and we saw it in Yemen, starvation affects generations. You know, once you reach a certain point of starvation, the impact it has on mental abilities of children, the impact it, you know, you, it's not quite a death sentence, but it's close because it's very difficult to recover from very advanced levels of malnutrition. And that is something that the UN Security Council could engage with, because it's very clear who are the perpetrators of that. And they don't. And it's like starvation as a tool of war, essentially? Yeah, yeah, starvation.

is being used to, you know, it's an incredible degree of cruelty where you need, because of the reserves inside Tigray have been completely depleted, the government and its allies control the tap. They get to decide how many trucks come in. You need, the UN has told us, about 100 trucks a day coming into Tigray just to keep people alive. Within September, for a very short period of about two to three days. They allowed in 147 trucks, and then they shut that tap off. You know, the varying layers of the ways in which

the Ethiopian government and its allies are waging war on Tigray, it's almost in a way because it's so, it's coming from all angles, it's confusing. I think it's distracting. But because Russia and China and other allies, allies in the UN Security Council are obstructing and using, as they have done in Syria,

as they have done in Yemen, using their power of veto to obstruct any meaningful censure. It feels like in a way that it's letting everyone off the hook because after a certain point, you're kind of hitting your head against a wall. It's very, very clever. It's very, very clever. Yeah. So the ability of Russia and Russia, China and other bad actors to obstruct any sort of meaningful action at the UN Security Council is one of the more enraging parts of being in government or at least in national security. But one, hopeful is the wrong word, but one interesting point you and I were talking about

before we got started recording is how important U.S. popular opinion is for the Ethiopian government. And when I say, you know, an opportunity here, it's an opportunity for listeners, I think, to actually make a direct impact on what's happening by raising awareness. You would mention that like PR firms are reaching out to you trying to fight back against your reporting. I mean, can you tell us about the Ethiopian government's interest in U.S. popular opinion and like, you know, what that might mean in terms of the ability for the U.S. to respond? Ethiopia is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid in sub-S.-S.-Saharan Africa. So not only from a humanitarian perspective, and rightly, by the way, the humanitarian assistance is, is, is, is, is not being cut. They're looking at defense spending. But Ethiopia is also a member, and you'll remember

this, of Agoa, of the African Growth and Opportunity Act. So it has access to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of favorable market access in the US. It's what allows, what has allowed Ethiopian airlines to become the market leader in the way that it has, because it has access to aircraft parts and aviation supplies from Boeing. It allows Ethiopia to be a market, to be a market, in ways that it could not be without that access in the US. We reached out to the US Trade Representative's office to say to them, well, it's very clear that under a goa, Ethiopia is violating US law because they are human rights violators and they have not shown meaningful engagement with the independent investigation.

By the way, it's not just the US, it's not just China, it's not just Russia. The UN has also failed in its responsibilities a couple of days ago. they came out and said, you know, we have been able to carry out this independent investigation. First of all, an independent investigation is not one in which your opposing partner or the partner you're working with in this mechanism is state appointed, which is what the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission is. So that kind of gives the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and the Ethiopian government a little bit of a modesty veil. They also haven't been able to access any of the areas that we've been able to access in our investigations. So it's really extraordinary to me that

the UN Human Rights Office is saying, well, this is an independent investigation. It clearly isn't because you haven't accessed these areas. But with regards to the US, it's a very obvious pressure point. And when we ask the US Trade Representatives Office to respond to our recent findings, they didn't comment. And that is. And that is. is really disappointing because the message that that sends to the Tigrayans is, first of all, that the US administration has brought into this moral equivalence between the TPLF and what the TPLF did when they were in power. I mean, I couldn't get a visa when the TPLF were running Ethiopia. So nobody who has worked as a journalist in Africa in the last decade is a particular

fan of the TPLF or is unaware of the human rights violations that they were responsible for. But it's really dangerous territory to fall into that moral equivalence. So I think if your listeners are wondering what they can do, I think you are absolutely right. Make your voice heard, make people aware in government that Ethiopia matters because the Ethiopian government and their allies in the diaspora are absolutely making sure that the US government and US senators in areas where there is a substantial,

Ethiopian diaspora or Ethiopian descent community, they are engaging with them at every single possible level. And I mean, I've been really surprised the kind of level of slickness that we've had to deal with from USPR firms. It's kind of gone through the typical cycle that we're used to. So we're all pretty much used to death threats. And I'm from Sudan. So the whole Sudanese spy thing was kind of expected. I was like, I don't think the Sudanese government likes me that much, but okay. Good to know. So that was expected. I think what for us was unexpected was the degree of success that they've had in getting engagement from senators and from representatives in the communities where there is a large Ethiopian presence. They've been really

successful in engaging and they've been really sophisticated in their message. Interesting. Well, a lot of people always ask us, like, what can I do if I live in a blue state? You know, my vote doesn't count in terms of electoral politics. One thing you can do is call your Democratic senators, member of Congress, tell them to ask the State Department to put more pressure on the Ethiopian government to end the fighting. There's lots of lots of opportunity here. You mentioned Sudan. I've been reading reports of, you know, thousands and thousands of people flowing out of the Tigray region into places like Sudan. I mean, how are they, how is Sudan managing to take on this additional capacity that refugee need, the need to like feed and house

people who I imagine had to leave with nothing? I think it's important to remind people if they've forgotten that Sudan is in its own very fragile democratic transition post the revolution in 2018. And so that's incredibly worrying for people with regards to. to just the stability of the broader region. What happens when Sudan has to absorb all of these people in a part of Sudan that is incredibly fragile, the East, and has itself had huge food insecurity issues? At the moment is essentially a closed, militarized zone.

You know, we have to work, we have to get all sorts of permits and boxes tick to be able to go in there and report on it because this is just such a dangerous part of the country for the government and the stability of the government. Saying that, and I don't want to be accused of Sydney's bias, but this was a piece that a very lovely New York Times correspondent did. It's been really amazing to see, because this is now the third wave of displacement

from Ethiopia into Sudan. And interestingly, both, all three of them were triggered through Tigray. So in the 70s, the Emperor Heila Silesis intentionally starved Tigray. So they came out via Sudan. In the 80s, the Ethiopian famine then was similarly manmade. And now on the verge of, I mean, famine conditions have already arrived in Tigray because it's very easy to starve because it's mountainous and it's very easy to cut off. And, you know, it was really extraordinary to meet all these Ethiopians who heart-breakingly told me about how their parents had told them about coming through the camps in Sudan when they were displaced

or they were born in Kharton and that a lot of the same villages where people had opened their homes or their huts. Like this is not a part of the country where there is a lot. It is very underdeveloped. But because there's nothing there, people really had to open up their homes to take in a lot of these people. and they're still doing it because the UN response in Sudan, the UN Commissioner for Refugees response, the UNHCR response, has been really appallingly lacking. And so during the rainy season, which we're just coming out of, a lot of these camps were flooded and people opened up their homes. But again, just to be clear, not my words, the words of the New York Times. But it was really, it was really, it was really heartbreaking actually to hear so many Ethiopians talk about,

how, I mean, to be a third generation of refugees is, you know, I mean, I was, my family went into exile from Sudan because my father's dissident. So we had to go back and forth a lot, but nothing compared to this. I can't imagine what it's like to consistently pack up your home. I can't imagine what it's like to consistently be sent the message that you are a second-class citizen in your own country. Yeah, I can't either. Nimah, thanks again for your amazing reporting on this. What's the best place for people to find you to follow your work at CNN or anywhere else? I have managed to overcome my social media inadequacies. So I'm finally trying to engage on Twitter. I've got to say the death threats take the edge off it, but, you know. It's not very fun.

I'm holding on. So either at N'emal Ba'ar on Twitter or I should mention the team because the team are amazing. Alex Platt is on Instagram, our photojournalist. Barbara Vanitides is also our producer is on Instagram and Twitter, Katie Paul Glaze and John Luca Metzofrey. So any one of us will be highlighting the work. I have a quick question for you before you go with all your experience. This is a question I keep getting asked and I honestly don't know the answer.

answer to this. Do you think that the Biden administration has been spooked by Afghanistan and that will affect their engagement on issues like Tigray and like Ethiopia? I think that they are strongly of the belief that the way to solve problems like what we're seeing in Ethiopia or Afghanistan or anywhere else is not with the U.S. military and with other means. So I don't think they'd be spooked when it comes to putting pressure on the Ethiopian government or trying to get the UN to be more functional. I also think that they're smart enough to know that like Ethiopian's a massive country. It's like a hundred plus million people, the African Union. Like there's a lot of business they need to get done with Ethiopia.

I worry just about like kind of the mind share that can get sucked away from a whole bunch of other problems when there's this like acute crisis. you had in Afghanistan. So I'm not, so like I get the question sort of becomes, okay, is the National Security Council meeting regularly about Ethiopia in Tigray? Or is that getting pushed off because of the Afghanistan conversations that could be happening? I don't know the answer to it. But I do think this is a place where constituents calling, people calling their members of Congress actually can help because it can lead to more pressure. Well, and you guys giving it a platform. So thank you so much. Well, thank you for, thank you for talking with us and for covering it. And we will keep following you and hopefully check back in.

Perfect. Thank you. Thanks again to Nimma El-Baghier for joining the show. Thanks to Kim Jong-un for looking so good. Yeah, yeah. Just being a hot piece. We got a, by this time next week, we'll have a Canadian election to talk about it. Yes.

I've decided to tell you. It's funny. I tweeted something. A little nervous. And I got, like, dunked on. in the most polite way. Yes. Canadians are very polite.

You know, we definitely had some, like, non-Trudo fans, but, like, they're very polite. What was the gist? The gist was that, like, I don't understand their parliamentary system enough because I'm personalizing it too much between Trudeau and his opponent and Jav Miet Singh. And I was kind of like, well, I get it. You vote for parties, not leaders, but I still take Trudeau over. the right-wing guy. Yeah, I don't want the right-wing guy.

Yeah, I get the divided government. I get that voting for the progressive party is not exactly Jill Stein. But at the end of the day, I'd rather Trudeau be prime minister. And I hope that a week from now he is, but we'll see. And much respect to all the very polite dissenting Canadians who listen. Let's just give us some sort of progressive combo. It's all that's important. Well, it's just, yes, and it's nice to look out at the world.

because, you know, we talked last week, we could have like a progressive, or center left, a German leader. It was tough when Obama was the only guy. Like, I think it did, you know, there are times when, like, the G7, at G20, like, looking around the room, you're like, there's like almost no center left

people here, never mind progressive. So you just want as many of those people that you share a worldview with around those tables as possible. That's my more organizing principle for these. I just like pro-democracy would be good. Pro democracy. Can we just, like, let's just start from there. Start there.

And build from that. Start built from that. I like it. All right. Well, next week, we'll talk about it. We'll see. All right. See guys.

See ya. Potsave the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, and film and share our episodes as videos each week.