The Rest Is Politics - 541. Trump’s World Cup Mess and Kushner’s Albania Deal

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

As the Trump administration blocks a referee from entering the US, is this the most political world cup of all time, and just how messy will it get? Can the Democrats flip the Senate, and would it actually stop Trump? Is Jared Kushner turning the Balkans into his personal property portfolio? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Odd Arne Westad by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Adam Thorton, James Clayden Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to the rest is politics.com. That's the rest is politics.com. There's a lot of worry about the trumpification of this World Cup. A quarter of the 48 countries taking part are currently facing either travel bans, tight restrictions or high visa rejection rates. For the first time ever, Omar Artan, who's a referee from Somalia, he arrives at the airport and he's refused entry. And I noticed your great friend Gianni Anfantino, the head of FIFA, didn't use his amazing relationship with Donald Trump to get the Somali in. There's Invantino

saying he doesn't get involved in day-to-day politics and stuff. This is the guy who gave Donald Trump the FIFA Peace Prize. The World Cup is the biggest sports event in the world. But I think this one is going to be horribly political. This episode is, brought you by Fuse Energy. Fuse has introduced the tracker tariff designed to give customers what matters most from their energy supplier, savings clarity and a bit more control. And it guarantees that your rates stay below the off-gem price gap, which saves you up to £200. And the tariff updates automatically every quarter. Energy prices don't move in straight lines. Global events and market pressures you can't predict, and certainly

can't control, still find their way onto your bill. And if you're on the wrong tariff, you can be stuck with higher rates after the pressure has ended. With Fuse Energy's tracker tariff, that changes. If prices fall, your rate adjusts at the next quarterly update. And it's automatic. No switching, no trying to second against the market. You're protected while prices are high and ready to benefit when they fall. Switch to FuseEnergies tracker tariff at Fuseenergy.com slash politics and use code Politics to get a free trip plus subscription. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to the rest of politics question time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alice Campbell.

Brorie, we're going to talk about the World Cup. Yay! Starts Thursdays. It's going to go for weeks, a weeks, a weeks, a weeks, a weeks. We're going to talk about the midterms in the US. We're going to talk about corruption in America. You want to talk about, I know, about Millay, and there's a really interesting development in relation to AI.

and we're going to talk about the election in Armenia. And I think my favorite question of the week, Roy, it's I'd be thinking a lot, is whether we would, if we had another life, whether we'd do politics. Ooh. So, World Cup.

World Cup. I know you're very, very, very excited about this. The question that we have on the World Cup is from Sunny in Lincolnshire. Is this the most political World Cup of all time? As a World Cup historian, Rory, do you think it's the most political World Cup of all time? I know what kind of historians do because I've been watching Dominic Sambrook on our sister show very carefully. What happens is you stroke your chin and you say, no, actually, you know, there was a World Cup in 1970, whatever, which did this, that, yeah.

34, go for 34 if I were you. Go 34, that's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Okay. Now, Alice, tell us, though, a bit about the politics of the World Cup. What makes it political? I guess one big political thing is people like you are not going to the World Cup. How many people do you think are going to be?

boycotting the World Cup? Is the sign of signs of that beginning to happen? Well, anecdotally, I know quite a lot of people. Look, the World Cup is the biggest sports event in the world, even bigger than the Olympics in terms of, you know, viewership around the world. But I think this one is going to be horribly political for all sorts of different reasons. The reason I mentioned 1934 is that was that was in Italy and it was at the time that Mussolini was, was really going to on the march, as it were. But I think this one is going to be pretty horrible for all sorts of reasons. Help me understand. So all I understand about World Cups, I was at the Catahar World Cup. Yeah. Which actually I really loved. There were the kids because the stadiums

were very, very close to each other. So it was amazing. I mean, you could watch two matches a day easily and you could just move between them. And it was a real, I think very, very unusual to have these enormous stadiums all within about 20 minutes of each other. Yeah. Well, it's not going to be like that in this one. No. So tell us about this one and how this is going to be very different for my experience. Well, it's going to be very different in lots of ways. First is it's the first time they've ever done a World Cup across three countries, USA, Mexico, Canada. The first game is going to be in Mexico, between Mexico and South Africa.

It's been expanded so as they can make even more money in TV rights and the rest to 48 countries. So it's going to be longer than previous World Cups as well. But it's really interesting you remember Qatar. I bet you don't remember this, that on the day that the Qatar World Cup started, the BBC, I think, did not cover the opening ceremony. Instead, they did a documentary on human rights in Qatar. And then Russia, you had Russia the World Cup, and a big part of that debate was sport washing,

Putin using sport to kind of brandish a different sort of image to the world. And also another big story is the corruption in the bidding process. Now, I would argue that when we were in Finland, and I did the same at the Redford at the Redford Book Festival of the weekend, I did my question, which is the greatest threat to global stability right now, USA or China, USA is winning every single time hands down. So I think there's a lot of worry about the trumpification of this World Cup. Just to give you some of the things that have happened in recent days,

For the first time ever, a referee from Somalia called Omar Artan, who's, you know, this is a guy who's done African Champions League finals. He's a proper professional referee. And he was coming in to do the refereeing for the World Cup. So he's been brought in for that. So there are 52 referees from different parts of the world. There's a couple of Brits all over the world. First time ever, a referee from Somalia, he arrives at the airport, and he's refused entry,

despite having visa, despite having been okayed by FIFA. He's given no reason. He's just told, you're not welcome. The Senegal team. Now, I think you can guess what colour. Most of the Senegal team are, Rory. They arrive in the United States. They arrive in the United States.

Now, when England and Scotland arrived in the United States, they were warmly welcomed. They were brought through the security onto the bus, off to the training camp, blah, blah, blah. The Senegal team were searched on the table. were searched on the tarmac in front of the cameras, asked to take their shoes off. I think it's now 14 members of the Iran staff have been denied entry. On the referee, I heard an interview yesterday with Rudy Giuliani's son

is the White House liaison man for the World Cup, and who was basically saying, why is this guy not being allowed in? We're not going to allow anybody in who threatens the security of the United States of America. reason given whatsoever. And I noticed your great friend Gianni Anfantino, the head of FIFA, didn't use his amazing relationship with Donald Trump to get the Somali in and said he's put out a solemn statement saying FIFA does not get involved in the internal immigration practices of another state. No, so therefore you're going to have a situation.

And bear in mind, Roy, I think I'm right that all of the American stadia are in blue areas, Democrat areas, okay? They've been open about the fact there's going to be an ice surge in some of these stadium cities so that they can be on the lookout for people who are in America supporting their national team and maybe not there, not shouldn't be there. A quarter of the 48 countries taking part are currently facing either travel bans, tight restrictions or high visa rejection rates for competing countries, Iran, Haiti, Senegal, Ivory Coast. They have faced full or very heavy partial bans. And there's in Vantino saying he doesn't get involved in, in, you know, day-to-day politics and stuff. This is the guy who gave Donald Trump the FIFA

Peace Prize since when we've had, God knows how many more wars. And this is the guy who in a previous, I don't get involved in politics, said, quote, today I feel black. I feel disabled. I feel gay. In other words, there has been times when he's felt I'll play into a different agenda. Okay, Roy, I've just had a brainwave. I'm texting Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada. He should make a big, big political point. Give the Somali ref a visa. Get in touch with Infantino and say, change the refing schedules. He can ref the games here. And if there's any refs who are meant to be in Canada, they can go to America, finally obviously that they're white. And they can swap down. Great idea. The other thing that I think could be life-threatening is the heat.

The World Weather, the Climate Research Group, reckons that a quarter of the 104 matches are going to be played in conditions which are over the safety limits recommended by the Global Players Union. There are protocols for electrical storms. They're predicting that several games will be interrupted by electrical storms, stadium evacuation. You've then got the whole thing about the pricing. So the bid to host the World Cup was won in 2018. Okay. Now, okay, Trump was in power, but it was a very different to America to the one that we've got now. And the promise at the time was that the tickets for the final biggest sporting event, you know, of the four-year period, the final, the maximum would be $1,50. Okay? When they went on sale, the most expensive was listed at $8,680.

Then what you have is all this sort of trading of the tickets on the FIFA platform, and every time you're trading your ticket, they're taking a 30% cut. Hotels are reporting, I don't know if this is a boycott, but hotels are reporting, they're really struggling to fill their rooms. So I think it could be a bit of a mess. I mean, I don't want it to be a complete mess, but I'm not feeling the joy that I normally feel in advance of a World Cup. And, you know, the fact that I am, I will feel very,

when Scotland kick off their first game, I will feel, well, maybe you should be there. But I don't know, I think it's going to be pretty horrible, Lalsie. Right. Okay, well, that brings us, I guess, onto the midterms, which is going to be the next big story coming out of the US. and which maybe we should have been covering more. There's been a lot of shenanigans and a lot of critical stories. Let's just try to get to the first thing.

So there's a question from Harriet. Please could you give us an update on the US midterms? Will Trump manage to keep the Senate? How much does it actually matter if he loses it? Well, first thing is there's been a loss of hope invested in the midterms. Trump is unpopular, more unpopular. he was last time round. A lot of focus has been put on the price of gas. In some states, you're seeing gas going up 25% above where it was before. And there's been a lot of hope that if he is

roundly trounced in the midterms, this is going to make a real difference to Trump's administration and future chances. I got a lovely exchange with my nephew, Charlie Freeman in the States, who's 18 has been following this all for me and has sent me incredible amount of data on these races. He's operating for me almost as Rory operates for you. But the basic story seems to be that the prediction is that the Democrats will take the House of Representatives, the lower house,

but that at the moment the Senate looks too close to call. Over to you. That's exactly what my Rory says. He says Democrats currently three to one on to take the house. So that means very, very likely. Senate is on 50-50. I don't mean 50-50.

That's going to what the makeup is, but it's 50-50 who takes it. I think, look, I do think, it's interesting the point you made, maybe we don't talk about it enough. I sort of feel that even though Trump dominates a lot of our conversations, I feel that you and I have been

even subconsciously maybe looking not to talk about him as much as we were at one point. And I think we have that in common with the public. I've been really interested how sometimes I mention things to people that Trump has said or done, that I'm just assuming, because he says and does them so loudly, that they will know. And someone didn't know about that, you know, because I think a lot of people are just turning off the news. Look, I think these elections are going to be bad for the Republicans. The one that my Rory says we should really keep an eye on, he thinks is the most interesting, is Texas.

because, and what happened there in the run-up, you had this situation where the two wings of the kind of traditional Republicans and the MAGA crowd have made it the most expensive, one of the most expensive primaries in Republican history. And what they've done is they've ended up, and this is where I think Trump becomes a problem, because they've ended up picking as a candidate, Trump's man, this guy Ken Paxton,

who is just terrible. He's going to be a terrible, I think it's going to be a terrible candidate. He beat somebody who was a four-time, John Cornyn, four-time incumbent, traditional Republican, actually had voted with Trump mainly, but, you know, he said a few critical things, so Trump decided to go against him. Paxton, meanwhile, the guy who's now going to be representing the Republicans, he's been reported to the FBI for bribery by eight people who worked for him. He was impeached for bribery in Texas.

His wife is a Republican senator who filed for divorce on what she called biblical grounds. He's been indicted for securities fraud. And he's got up against this very interesting, we're looking, we're always looking for kind of interesting democratic talent. And there's this guy, James Talariko, pretty young, mid-30s, very, very, very Christian and seems to sort of ally his Christian faith to everything he talks about. But if Trump lost Texas, which he won by 14 points in 2024, so it will be tough for Talarico. But the fact that the they're even talking about this being too close to call is, you know, I think evidence of how much trouble Trump is potentially in. Quick, quick explainer again. And thank you to Charlie Freeman for

reminding me of this all the time. It makes a difference whether the Democrats take both houses or not, just in terms of constitutionally what can happen. So constitutionally, if they take just the House but not the Senate, they can block legislation. Trump won't be able to get any laws through. Question there, does he really govern by legislation? increasingly he governs by executive orders. If they take the Senate as well, it affects his ability to make appointments, affects his ability to appoint judges, ambassadors, officials, all of which have to go through a Senate confirmation process.

Maine is a place to look. People will remember Susan Collins in Maine, who is a very, very wily controversial figure, and up against her is a man called Graham Platner. And Graham Platner is a sort of Democrat larger than life wearing a very strange, inappropriate tattoo, army veteran. Is this the guy with the sort of Nazi-flavored tattoo? Yeah, exactly, a Tottenkopf tattoo. He's a really interesting character.

I mean, we should try to get him on the show. And he seems in some of the polls to be narrowly leading Susan Collins in Maine. I think Maine, Michigan, Ohio are the main races to watch. We should start drilling in more into this, though, because I think losing both houses will make a significant difference to Trump. And I think we should maybe get listeners engaging between now and November in what's up and what's down and setting the stakes around that a little bit more. Can we not cover opinion polls too much?

Because they do my head in. They do your head in. Maybe some of the characters. I like your point about how Trump's own endorsement of Republicans. against incumbent Republican senators is going wrong for him. But also, extraordinary, he gets away with it. I mean, it shows the sort of residual power of Trump that he can do this. He's still got the power in the party, yeah.

Yeah. And I think that's partly because a lot of them, look, I wrote my column last week about this extraordinary encounter I had with a Trump supporter. I just bumped into them in the airport lounge in my recent travels. and I was on the phone to Fiona. And as you know, Rory, I always speak very quietly in public places if I'm on the phone. Absolutely. But this guy heard me saying pretty disobliging things about Trump.

And then literally the minute I came off the phone, we entered into an argument which, and I actually said in my column that four years of podcasting with you means I have sort of learned much better to kind of control my ire when it sort of rises, but I can still, I can still rise to it. This guy, he absolutely, there's nothing I could say, nothing I could say that he didn't come back with. Trump is the greatest president that we've ever had. I mean, he wouldn't accept that he lied. He wouldn't accept that he did things that he wouldn't accept that he was making money. Or if he did, he said, why shouldn't he? He's such a clever guy. He's got to do something when he stops being president. I hope he never stops being president. It was just horrific. I ended up to say, oh, there's my flight being called and I

walked down, you know, went to a bookshop. But so there are more people like that than I think we fully understand. It's a bit like some of the kind of Brexit people who are in their hearts know that it's been a disaster, but they can't ever quite bring themselves to say that in any terms. And I think we've got a lot of that with Trump. But look, I think what we should do is, as you say, maybe focus on some of the interesting characters and some of these debates. And maybe also, I'll tell you the other thing I think is quite interesting. is what the Democrat's strategy is going to be in these Winnable's places. Are they going to try to come up with a positive agenda of their own? Are they going to be anti-Trump? Or are they going to do,

you know, very localized kind of campaigning that relates to their particular area? I'd find that interesting. Good. Well, let's get into the mechanics of it, because the stakes are huge and it certainly is politics. I also do, I do think that Trump wants whoever follows him to fail. I'm convinced of that. It's an absolute, it's a strand of narcissism that I think we underrate. I think. think he wants whoever comes after him to be a total failure. Well, Alison, I think maybe time to take a break. And just before we take a break, there, maybe in Tombe has Eddie Rama sold out Albania's natural beauty to the Kushner Trump money grabber. But what's really interesting, obviously, you know, I know Albania quite well. I know Eddie Ram, the prime minister, very well.

And he's been sending me his rebuttal of this with increasing sort of anger and frustration because he actually says this is like Albania's wag the dog moment. Now, there is something clearly going on. I can't believe that Kushner and Ivank will just say, I'm not really, we're buying this island. And the conspiracy theories are now saying it's going to be the new Epstein Island, that they're going to get a new Epstein island. They're saying it's going to be a great tourism thing.

So look, I've seen different shades of coverage. I've seen some extraordinary stuff online. I can't remember a name. It was an Irish. somebody online who was Irish, I think an Irish journalist, who was really deep into the detail of who is behind Kushner and Ivanka and their money. And it's a lot of very, very, very politically connected people. I've seen other stuff that says this isn't about building a kind of luxury tourism place. It's actually about them just creating their own escape from the world if it all goes tits up and the, you know, and the masses and the peasants come, you know,

with their pitchforks to get the super elite and the super rich like Kushner. And I've seen Eddie Rama's messages to me when I keep saying, what the hell's going on here? When he basically says that this is all being kind of blown out of all proportion, Iranians are behind all the social media stuff, the protests are nowhere near as big as the pictures that you're seeing on television. He's got a spat this morning online with Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders talks about 100,000 people out there.

Eddie Rama says it's no more than 2,000. The maximum was 8,000. So I don't really know what's going on, to be absolutely honest. But I'm very suspicious of anything that has Kushner at the heart of it. Yeah, well, and you're right to be. So listen, I think it's obvious why Eddie Rama did it. And I think everyone knows, and he'll deny it until he goes blue in the face. But he's doing it to curry favor with Trump.

That's basically what it is. It's part of a pattern. Look all the way through the Balkans. Eddie Rama hands over a pristine island to Jared Kushner. It's going to build 10,000 room luxury resort and destroy one of the last pristine islands off the coast of Albania. Dodik hands over mining concessions. The Bosnians give fuel. And in Serbia, they were trying to let the Trump family build hotels on the side of the Ministry of Defense.

They're hoping by doing so that they get invitations to Marilago, that they get U.S. support on sanctions. This is why they also want to join the Board of Peace and all this kind of stuff. In no way is this anything like a transparent procurement process. This is not, you know, let's say Kiyosama got out of bed in the morning and thought what he'd want to do is turn the Isles of Silly into a luxury resort. And the British government owned the Isles of Silly. There would be a huge process, presumably of environmental impact assessments, community consultations, and then you would go out to some sort of tender and procurement process. My guess is Jared Kushner wouldn't be getting it for a knockdown price and building 10,000 flats.

But you mentioned when we were in Serbia right next to the place where Kushner and Wittkoff's money-grabbing kids were trying to build a hotel. And it's not being built because of the protests. So I guess what's happening here is the protests are going on in the hope that this thing doesn't go ahead. And the hope is that I think people are hoping they can shame Eddie Rama to back out and not hand over. prime Albanian pristine real estate to the Trump family and the hope that they can buy concessions. Yeah. Well, just to give you his official line to take, the planning process is ongoing, the environmental process is ongoing, the design process is ongoing. No project has been approved. No construction blueprint exists. No final development skin has been presented. This is a process, not a project.

Anyway, it does mean there have been these pretty large protests, but I think it is interesting how there's clearly something going on and like I say I wouldn't trust Krishna even though my friend Tony Blair keeps telling me how clever he is and how much hard work he's doing on the board of peace with him. I think this could be an example both of a government trying to carry a favour with Trump by doing something of his family and that the the kind of online world and the misinformation world is also kind of at play here. It's messy and complicated when what you get online is something that is very, very simple. Very good. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we come back from break, we've got an

election in Armenia, which we don't talk quite enough. Also an amazing announcement from Miele in Argentina, who's announced that AI is going to be able to form its own corporations, which has the dangerous possibility that there's going to be no humans responsible that you can put in prison behind these corporations and some very reckless activities can follow. And then there was a question you wanted to do on whether you'd choose politics again. So let's speak after the break. See you soon. This episode is brought to you by Vauxhall. Electric cars have become part of life on the road and Vauxhall is supporting the UK's transition to electrification. Well, how are they doing that? Well, to start, their Electric Streets of Britain initiative aims to support local authorities in accelerating the UK's on-street charging infrastructure.

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Welcome back to the rest of politics question time. With me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. So let me start you with a question which relates to something you've been looking at. Harry, are the elections in Armenia positive for Europe's future? Tom, what do the Armenian election results mean for the European? UK. We've had tons of questions on this. Take us through the Armenian election. And maybe tell us why we've had tons of questions questions on the Armenian elections. I think we've probably had tons of questions on the Armenian elections because people are aware that it was very significant, even though it's a relatively small country, about three million people, but it was significant in this seemingly

never-ending battle that Vladimir Putin is waging to keep any country that. And he's a country that, that is in his sort of reasonably close orbit under his wing. And what you have with the guy who has won the election, this is the guy who was serving as Prime Minister, Nicole Pashinian, he has won. And he's won pretty bigly, as Donald Trump might say. So Armenia was once probably Russia's closest ally in the South Caucasus. They've had really deep ties historically.

And Putin has been getting more and more angry, more and more agitated. A week before the elections, he actually recalled his ambassador in protest that Armenia's growing ties with the European Union. He warned them that unless they stop this sort of drive towards Europe and the EU in particular,

that they face what he called the Ukrainian scenario. Well, you can make your own mind up about what that might mean. He's putting all sorts of economic pressure on, suspending a gas deal that they had. They were talking about kicking them out of the Eurasian Economic Union. And, you know, so all that pressure is coming on, plus all the stuff that they do.

We saw how they did it in Moldova. You send in the spies. You do the disinformation. You get all the online stuff going. And Pachinian held his ground. He hosted a big defense cooperation agreement with France. This is the one that really would have got to Putin. He's recognized the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which has got a contract out.

Anyway, he won a majority. The party that came second was Russian-backed, and it won 25% of the seats in the parliament. So I'd say it's, in answer to the question, I think it's pretty significant, and it is good news for Europe. One of the things that struck me quickly on this is we covered on the podcast, people of very long memories, back in 2023, the final loss of Nagorno-Karabakh. And Nagorno-Karabakh was an Armenian enclave, surrounded by Azerbaijani territory. Armenia and Azerbaijan been in a conflict going back decades, one of the great kind of Caucasus conflicts, international conflicts, the 90s. And essentially what's happening is Azerbaijan has become much, much richer on its oil revenues and its neighbor Armenia. Its military has become very strong.

The Turks have pumped in drones and weapons. And they captured Nagorno-Karabakh, displacing, I think, 100,000 or more Armenians. under this guy's prime ministership. So you would have thought that he would be punished for that. And actually, interestingly, it seems as though the Armenian voter blames the Russians more for failing to help them against the Azeris, recognized there was not that much the Armenians could do, and this was a kind of unwinnable fight. And he's been rewarded for something quite difficult in a country where there'll be big strands, of nationalism, which is sort of acknowledging reality. So instead of everything that I thought

would happen on the back of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is this kind of great, unresolved, bleeding sore, leading to continual nationalist protest. And it may, maybe in five, 10 years time, there'll be another war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. But at the moment, what's interesting is that the man who lost that territory and basically said there's nothing we can do about it, has won an election. Yeah. The other election that happened at the weekend that you just said made me think of was Kosovo. Albin Korti won the election. On a terribly low turnout though. The turnout somewhere in the 30s is really, really bad. But he's on the election. That means, by the way, Albin, if you're listening, that our offer of a joint interview on the rest of his politics leading with the Serb leader Alexander Vuchich remains, it stands. But I also think I think we should, if we can, Roy, if we can track him down and persuade him. I think we should go and talk to Mr. Pashinian in Armenia because I think it's really interesting what he's done.

As you say, I imagine that his, what was seen as his conceding defeat in relation to Nagorno-Karabakh. Given how much blood and treasure was spent in trying to keep it, I thought that would really, really, really harm him. I also thought that he actually might be more harm than he seems to have been by being so out there in terms of his projection of Armenia as a European Union-focused country as opposed to classic Eastern European leaning towards Russia. But he seems to have been rewarded on both fronts. So it just shows you stand up for big bold things and you can win.

Great. Just before we go to the next question, quick plug. You've been talking a lot about this incredible new book called the Nord Stream Conspiracy. And in the newsletter, we've interviewed the author, Boyan Panchevsky, about how you uncover a story on the sky. I mean, this is amazing out. As you've told people on the show, it's got everything. It's got submarine divers, CIA, S-E-R, conspiracies, gas, energy. So sign up to the newsletter. And an erotic model.

And an erotic model. Sign up to the newsletter to read that into you without the erotic model on Thursday. If the book, which is truly brilliant, is ever turned into a film, I think the title could be Freya. I think Freya, the erotic model, is in some ways the most interesting character in the whole damn thing. She's the one, without giving too much way, she's the one who puts the bomb on the bloody pipeline. Amazing. It is a truly, truly brilliant, non-fiction book that reads like a novel, and it's absolutely brilliant.

So I'm glad we've got old Bojan in the newsletter. Now, Rory, you want to talk about Millet, Christina from Buenos Aires, capital of ours. Argentina. Argentina is now allowing AI systems to incorporate its companies with no humans behind them and no one to hold accountable. Is this the most reckless legal experiment in modern history or just the first of many countries to race to the bottom on AI accountability? My God, that is quite a story. It's an extraordinary story. So this comes out of the fact that Javier Miele wrote an op-ed in the Financial Times announcing this policy. And then Yuval No Harari, my friend who we've interviewed a couple of times on leading,

then responded with his own op-ed in the Financial Times. Worth reading both pieces. I mean, the first thing that is absolutely staggering is Miele announces this policy, and at the core of this policy is some idea that you could set up a company run by AI where there was not unlimited human liability behind it. Some idea is a real-res of limited liability,

or even that actually it's the AI that's going to end up being accountable for the company as opposed to the human. And he introduces it, you know, really to wind up most of our listeners, saying the great model for this is the Dutch East India Company. If you listen to the wonderful Empire podcast, our sister podcast that William Darlhampool does

with Anita Anand, the Dutch and the British East India companies are the most extraordinary examples of rapacious capitalism in a world, you know, like a world of hypers running the universe, destroying states, hoovering up money, corruption, etc. So amazing that Miele says that his model for this

is the Dutch East India Company. But the problem that Yuval points out is that in the end, you cannot send an AI to jail. And the ultimate backstop for a company misbehaving, there are so many incentives for a company to misbehave because an AI running a company is basically given the task of revenue and survival of the company. And if they feel the revenue and the survival of the company is under risk, the AI could begin to do more and more radical things.

It could risk bankruptcy. It could lie to people who are making loans to it. It could begin to cut laws around pollution and who knows what else. And when it's caught, what can you do to it? Absolutely nothing. You can't put an AI in jail. it would be like hanging a pig. So to finish with Christina's point, this is the big choice that we face.

Miele has made a choice, right? His choice is AI is the future of the world. And that the solution, therefore, is Argentina has no choice other than to lean into it. That either you get with the American program or you're doomed. And so Argentina is going to open up. It's going to be the most liberal, most open country to AI in the world. And this amazing AI revolution is going to happen in Argentina. The downside is it might be a bit like saying America's invented the nuclear weapons,

so we're going to make our economic model letting them test it all over our country. Back to you. Yeah. So is this why, is Peter Thiel involved in this? Peter Thiel, who's flitted to Argentina, because apparently doesn't feel terribly safe in America. Very, very much. I mean, Miele denies it. But all this references the Dutch East Indic company are absolutely central Peter Thiel cod history and sovereign individual stuff.

Well, non-Cod history, you mentioned William Dalrymple and his East India company book. It's called The Anarchy, Strollably Recommended. And you get a flavour from that title of Willie's view of how things went. And I suspect, I've not heard him much on AI, but I suspect he sees rapaciousness being repeated by the capitalist class, which is why we also love the Pope. But, Alist, just to sort of put you on a spot for a second before we move on. I mean, I think this will be the question we keep returning to again. and again with AI, which is, what do you do with a technology which looks like it could make America an incredible amount of money, give it incredible national security power, transform all its

services. And China. And China. And, you know, we could actually talk about the fact that the European Union's just brought in an AI act. And basically, not surprisingly, the European Union, being the European Union, is very much safety first, Europe first. And from the point of view of the AI companies an enormous amount of regulations and stopping the kind of innovation they can do in the US. And probably what will happen is that Europe's being completely rational, they're completely right to be very worried about the risks. But the consequences of that is the US, which will not be regulating as much, which will be innovating much more, will be flying ahead and we'll find ourselves technologically even more behind, even if we feel safer.

Yeah, somebody sent me a very interesting note on the AI, the European one. And I think you're right. It says the five key requirements. AI literacy. Organizations have a duty to ensure staff using AI, understand the risks, etc. To human oversight. Well, that's something that clearly Peter Thiel and Milley don't want with their AI companies. Transparency. People must be informed when they're interacting with it. Risk management and documentation and compliance. So I guess an American would look at the, that and say, that is why Europe's going to fall so far behind us? Or do you think there's something, is there a more positive judgment we can make of that? I think if you were going to be favourable towards the regulators, you'd say sometimes regulation actually helps innovation. And the great example of that is that introducing the brake pad, which was Mrs. Bentz, as a Mercedes-Benz, developed the brake pad, allowed cars to go much faster. It's kind of counterintuitive. Having a break allows you to go faster. Having safety regulation allows you to innovate, more because before that people went around front of cars with little red flags saying

beware of the car and actually the same stature of airbags, seatbelts, all the stuff. So that's the positive case. The other positive case for Europe is that it's demanding European headquarters companies are right at the heart of our critical infrastructure. This is trying to get away from the threat after Greenland that Trump is going to try to weaponize American companies to extort concessions out of Europe. And they're also trying to build a European sovereign cloud so that not all our data and cloud computing is those by the US. But none of this is going to work unless we can start building a lot of data centers. And it's

going to be very difficult to build data centers if we don't have cheap energy. And then without cheap energy, we won't have the data centers. We won't have the weights. And it's all a bit for the birds because actually it's only going to be the Americans and Chinese who can do any of this stuff anyway. Just briefly, before I've worked to the last question. You mentioned the Pope, who I was hero-worshipping last week, and I therefore followed his procession through Spain. Over a million people turned out to hear him speak, but I don't think he did himself a lot of favours with some of the women in Spain when he, I think he'd done it at a mass, but he went to the Congress of Deputies to do quite a big thing about abortion.

I think he should have waited to the mass for that, probably. Certainly one of my Spanish friends was very, very, very cross with him. And she was part of the hero worshipping over the encyclical. The Pope's encyclical remains a, if you haven't read it yet, I was at this book festival in Redford at the weekend. I was very upset. Only four people had read the full encyclical. Two of them were Irish.

Right, last question. So it's from Oliver. If given another life, would you have? have chosen politics again, and I think we can finish on that. Oh, depends when the life would be. I think I would, yeah. I think I would. I think if I was young now, if I was 25, 30 now, I think I would definitely choose politics, yeah.

Because I think it matters now, possibly more than ever. In fact, I mentioned the Redford Book Festival. There was a very interesting and quite moving question from a woman who said that she was standing for Labor in a local, a parish council election, parish council. And she said she was getting abuse, she was getting online threats. She was beginning to wonder whether she should be doing it. And she said she was having to answer for every single thing that the Labour government was being criticised for. You know, she's standing for the parish council and people are saying, you know, what about this in the Middle East and why aren't you do more about this in Africa?

I want to be your parish counsellor. And she said to me, what advice do you have? And I said, well, don't look at the stuff online and just, you know, try to focus on the good that you can do. But it's bloody hard these days. And it's, by the way, we're coming up, Rory, to the, I know you were a friend of Joe Cox, as was I. were coming up to the 10th anniversary of her death. So a thought for Joe and for Kim, her sister who's now doing the old job.

But I was really quite moved by this one because you know, you just think even at a parish council level she's having to deal with all this bloody online abuse and threats and stuff. So I'd still do it. I'd still do it. Yeah, I'd do it.

Glad, glad. Very good. Would you? Yeah, I'd give it a go. I think the interesting thing about politics is where's the space. I mean, you've got to work in an environment where there's the space.

And I think what I've probably learned is there may not be much space for my type of centrist politics. Somebody very kindly tried to run an opinion poll for me and thought that a kind of Rory-style party might get about 20% of the vote, but that it's very difficult to imagine in a modern kind of polarized world. I'm not sure about that. Oh, okay. You think the centre has still got potential. I think the centre has got potential. The centre in most parts of the world is just not being offered at the moment because people are tending to always. extremes.

So, and listen, by the way, 20% is a bloody good place to start. I wouldn't, I wouldn't rule that, Rory. I can be your driver. Drive you around the place. See you later. Thank you, Alasso. I look forward to seeing you next. Take care.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye.