Mission: Impossible - Catering Truck (Starring Donald J. Trump)

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It is just not worth it for me, especially for those nights when you maybe have work dinner or you're like having one or two drinks, maybe more than you normally would. It is a game changer for me. It is saved countless mornings at this point and I just cannot recommend it enough. And the thing you can do is just go online, go to zbiotics.com/pstw and get a sick back and give it a shot for yourself because I guarantee you won't regret it. And you know what? What's the worst thing that can happen? You don't use it again. Mondays don't move for anyone. Pre-alcohol works overnight, so you can have a real weekend and still show up sharp. Go to zbiotics.com/pstw code, "PSTW" for 15% off at zbiotics.com/pstw code, "PSTW". US voters abroad. Have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click request my ballot as to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Votefromabroad.org. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to pod day of the world. I'm Tommy Vitor. - I'm Ben Rhodes. - Ben, and his counter, former guests on the show, former NBA player. He's now kind of making it his deal to just attack trans people, I guess. He's suggesting he's gonna join the WMBA. - Yes. - I've really followed what the specific goals are that he thinks would allow him to join the WMBA. - It's an interesting cautionary tale about me booking guests because, and his can to reach out to me some years ago, before he'd gone full maga. And he was on the Knicks. So. - He was on the Celtics too. So you know. - It was before yourself. - Don't blame yourself, holy. - No, but the world does know, like I, you know, a Knicks player like, sure. And so we have Monny as the story about authoritarianism and ever gone. But man, this guy's gone, I think particularly as his NBA career has crashed and burned. The remaining relevancy seems to be this magas were. But as someone who does kind of follow the WMBA discourse, like, Ennis Cantor declaring himself eligible for the WMBA draft as a shot at trans people, it was pretty, pretty darn. - It's him and a guy named Royce White, who's another NBA player, who a judge found, this is from the Star Tribune, Minnesota Star Tribune, found that Royce White abuses X-White repeatedly, slapping her, grabbing her, pulling her hair, leaving her bruised and swollen, and then a child advocate assigned to the case found that Royce White's son is scared for his physical safety around his father. This guy was on Benny Johnson's TPUSA show, because he decided to also declare for the WMBA and he wore a wig in the interview, and they think this is fun and cool. So there's having this guy who beat up his wife. - You know what's so dumb about this too? He's like, the WMB is awesome right now. They don't need any other play. Look, they've got great players. Like, the quality of the play's never been better. This is controlling and like, oh my God, it's just, it's exhausting. - And then it's counter. - Yeah. - It's not that good. - He wasn't, I mean, you could stand under the basket and get you some new bounds, but like, that's about what he could do. - Yeah, anyway. So we disavow, we disavow our form. - Yeah, sorry guys. - Probably a long list if we really thought about it. - But some wonderful people too. - Yeah, some great ones too. We got a great show for you guys today. We're back together in studio. It's great to see you. - I'm here. - We're gonna cover this insane story about Donald Trump's secret flight home from the NATO summit last month. We covered it at the time, how they switch planes, but now it turns out the Washington Post had this great scoop about how Trump switched his plane, but then used the media and his own staff as a decoy, so we'll dig into all of that. We're gonna update you on the Iran talks, such as there are updates. We'll tell you about how the diplomatic effort to forge a path forward in Gaza are going. We'll talk about why people are scared of resumption of fighting in Yemen. And then we're gonna talk about this brave activist who is calling out the leaders of the UAE for perpetuating the civil war in Sudan. I don't know if you saw this quote, but I saw it 'cause you sent it to me. - All over my Twitter timeline and made me very happy. Then we're gonna check it on Pete Hexeth, our Secretary of War over at the Pentagon. Always great to hear from Pete. We're gonna talk about Ukraine's military campaign against a Russian e-commerce site in this blurry line between civilian and military targeting. We'll update you on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's effort to steal an island, basically, or at least a peninsula. - Yes. - Quick thing on Ebola just so you guys know what's going on over there and some great moments in AI. Then Ben, you did a new interview for today. What are we in here? - So I talked to Richard Horsey who's been on before and very good guest. He is a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Asia, he's led their work in Myanmar. And so we thought that there's actually been a lot going on in Myanmar. We didn't update people on where things stand five years after the military coup and civil war that's got 100,000 people. The military government's going the extra mile to kind of create a sense of legitimacy, a lot of diplomatic visits. The state of the opposition we talk about, Anksung Suchi, who nobody had seen for years. - For years, right. The Red Cross just saw it. - Red Cross just saw it. So Richard walks us through that. And then just kind of how people are feeling in Myanmar what governments can be doing not that the Trump administration cares that much. So it's an important update if people have just been kind of curious about what's going on there. This is a level set. - There's a lot of things we've worked on in the Obama administration that are now depressing to talk about. Myanmar might be number one. And there's nothing to do with Trump. - Cuban Myanmar. - Cuba's 100% Trump's fault. - Cuba's 100% Trump's fault with a little Biden smuggled in. - Yeah. - Myanmar is just a horrific series of events here. - Yeah, yeah, really awful. I'm definitely gonna listen to that interview. I think it's a very undercover story and important one. After Ben's interview, our friend of the pod subscribers will hear Ben and I answer some questions from the friend of the pod or the pod say the world discord community. If you want, add free episodes of this show, add free episodes of pod save America and a bunch more. Consider becoming a paid subscriber. You'll also get tons of bonus content, including bonus pod save America episodes. Get discounted tickets to CrookedCon, great newsletters, tasteful nudes of Dan. So go to Crooked.com/friends to learn more, just kidding about the nudes of Dan. They're not tasteful. No, you don't get any. Just head shots. - Speaking of nudes, did you listen to the 100-biden talker interview? - No, I listened to the entire thing. - I downloaded it, I will listen to it eventually. It's interesting, I'm guessing, but, you know. - Yeah, they spend a fair amount of time on the nudes. - Oh good, wonderful, something to look forward to. - All right, we're gonna lead with this shocking scoop from the Washington Post about President Trump's secret flight home from the NATO summit last month. So again, we talked about this at the time. There was some sort of intel about an Iranian threat. It forced President Trump to abandon the new Air Force One, the one that was the bribe from Qatar and ride on the old Air Force One back from the NATO summit Ankara to the UK. At the time, Trump lied about it. He was like, we're sending the new Air Force One ahead so the troops can check it out in Britain. That was a lie. The old Air Force One has missile defense features. The new one does not. And Trump said would be better defended on the old one. But it turns out the story is even crazier than that. The Washington Post reported that after Trump boarded the old Air Force One jet and the press was loaded up. He was then secretly taken to another Air Force jet while hiding inside a catering truck that is normally used for like meals and supplies. Very macho, very manly to hide in a catering truck. The media and Trump staff flew to the UK inside the jet. The Trump had abandoned most of them unwitting that he had left the plane. They were essentially treated like human decoys in case a run. They tried to do something. Then when Trump landed and the other plane landed, Trump secretly reborted the Air Force One. Everyone thought he was on and acted like nothing had happened. Then he gets on, I think the Katari bribe Force One for the flight home to the US. Gaggle with the media was asked why he switched planes and he said, quote, well, I have a threat all the time. I'm number one on their list before you. But if I go, you go, right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions, which is an interesting comment. So just for context, everyone should know that this is not standard operating procedure. Presidents often use subterfuge for security reasons. The White House will release like a fake schedule to cover for a real trip to a war zone. For example, there was a story in the post today another story about an incident in the March of 2000 when President Clinton secretly switched planes like Trump did before a flight from India to Pakistan. But the difference is in the cases in the past, at least some members of the media are told about the plan. In advance, usually it's like the pool reporter that day or like the lead White House correspondent. You also get to learn about the risk to you personally. But in this case, our weak old feckless, stupid president left his own staff in the media to fly alone as bait. And then he got to hide from the consequences of his own decision to go to war with Iran. So this is way bigger than just like breaking the rules of like pool coverage. it is like endentering others to save yourself, kind of a perfect Trump anecdote. Yeah, there's so many layers to this anecdote. Let's just first of all talk about how things normally work, because you mentioned this. There are times that you engage in some subperfuge, so for instance, I remember I had to be involved in the planning of all of Obama's trip to Afghanistan. When you don't announce the trip in advance, the plane takes off kind of under cover of darkness from Andrews, Air Force Base, near the White House, you kind of land in the dark, etc. Now what we would do there is we plan the trip, then we would sit down in the White House Presector's office with usually the leader or leadership from the White House Correspondence Association, back when that was somebody you talked to about things, and bring them into it and say get your pool together for this time at this night, and you plan in conjunction with the press. And also decide if you want to come on this trip where there's elevated danger. Yeah, look, I was even on a trip, and I can't talk about in too much detail, where there was a threat that emerged, and we kind of had to evaluate that threat and make a delay something. But you know, we went on with it, I mean, you can deal with these things in stride. This felt very much not in stride, and so to look at the different pieces of this, one, why were they using the Katari Air Force One in the first place? If it isn't capable of dealing with threats, just because Trump wanted to have like golden interiors faster than the, you know, Air Force could get that ready for him. Like we had to kind of go through all this, you know, cost and danger. That's the first thing. The second thing is it is, it bears repeating how insane it is that they've invented some cover story that they're going to fly this other plane to the troop so they could see it. I mean, he said for all time's sake, we'll be taking the former Air Force One from Turkey to Milton Hall, a short trip that is totally worth doing in order to give our great military heroes a chance to appreciate our beautiful new additions to the Air Force fleet. That was your cover story? Yeah. I mean, that felt kind of weird at the time. And then we, one of the elements of the Iran War, there's so much of it that you have hard time kind of, you know, remembering these different threads, the fact that the United States and Israel assassinated the leader of Iran, right? I tell you, I tell a homine, it is nothing to do with whether he was a good guy or not. He was not a good guy. But that is a dramatically new thing to do, like we've talked about this a couple of times. And inevitably, that's going to increase the threats on the American president. And probably not just now, probably into the future too, you know, and so it does raise the question of just like, how serious are these plots from Iran? Was it really the case that how much danger was Trump in? This is a pretty extraordinary amount of length to go to. Yeah. It makes you wonder whether the information was specific or whether more likely they should have all this broad reporting that the Iranians are doing something and we happen to be in that region. Yeah. Well, the Wall Street Journal said Israel briefed Trump and Intel that included a threat to use shoulder to air missiles to target Air Force one. I mean, I don't think it's pretty vague to me. It's, yeah, they also just resumed the conflict with the war like the U.S. just started bombing. I also love this anecdote, Ben, which is that Marco Rubio stayed on the Air Force one where Trump was supposed to be and Pete Hegseth got onto the other plane with Trump and two people most responsible for the war were safe. And I guess my point, which is a little bit, you know, we're guessing here, I can't believe that the threat reporting was that specific if they let all those people get on the other plane. Like, so it feels like they went to some extra ordinary length because Trump was concerned about this because if the Secret Service really believed that there was dudes with shoulder fired rocket launchers in the vicinity of the airport, I don't think they would have let that plane take off with Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth and everybody else on it. Could you just fly around? Yeah. That avoids a wrong eye. It's so crazy. And the other thing for people who are just like, well, this frustrating, I was always talking about this. Well, Air Force one is not the personal property. It's not like Donald Trump's private jet. Like we pay for it. We pay for all this stuff. We pay for the Secret Service. Like, and all these stories, I think sometimes what's missing is Trump treats all this machinery like his personal property when it costs tens and tens of millions of dollars to move all this stuff around. And we have no idea why they're making decisions. I will say Tommy, just to bring different episodes together here. For those who listened, I wonder if that gift he got of the gun. If he got in some trouble, maybe that gun with the bullets. It might have come in handy. Yeah. He's just sniping missiles. Yeah. The thing that bugs me about this story, it's like, I don't know, the line is come to be expected from these people, but to put a bunch of journalists and your own staff at risk and basically send them up to be like the decoy to get shot at so you can fly separately is genuinely shocking. All right. Well, we're going to just quickly update you guys on the Iran talks this week because we are trapped in this like tedious endless cycle with no clear path forward, but it is still very important. So I don't know if you saw this over the weekend, Ben, but the president seems to be signaling that he just doesn't care anymore about all this. He told Axios, quote, we are low-keying it. This is about the talks with Iran. We are only semi negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money. And then he said, quote, it will work out. It always works out. It's like a chess game. So that inspires confidence. Last week, the Treasury Department announced some new sanctions because sanctions are really going to stick it to them after we just let them sell what, like $10 billion worth of oil. Iran and Oman are working on a deal to determine control of the strut or moves. Those, their demands include, quote, never threatened, nor insult Iran in any language, permanently in the war against Iran and Iran's allies and Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen and Iraq, and then naval blockade with draw military forces around Iran to pay reparations, release frozen assets, lift all sanctions, especially a big middle finger to Donald Trump. Trump was asked about Iran's negotiating position at a press event Monday. Here's his response. A massive escalation. Is that still on the table? Well, we have that certainly in that ability. If we want to do that, you'll find it. You said you're low-keying it with that, but you're semi negotiating. No. Well, they asked for reparations, you might say, or they asked for money for the damage that we've done. And I said, that's a good idea. We're going to ask for money for the damage that we've done over a 50-year period, whether you go SS call or whether you go all of the people that were so badly hurt, so badly wounded or killed, many thousands of people, and maybe damages for the 52,000 protests, over the last four months that we've killed, then, Iran. Do you, does any estimate of what you think the strut or moves will do? Well, it's open now. We're taking a lot of shit. It's open now. Look, the only one that has control of the strut or moves right now is the United States Navy. We have a blockade that's been infallible. It's a steel wall, but it's open for others. Now, a little bit complex, because they will, on occasion, drop a mine and we find the mines. You know, we've mine swept the entire strait, as you probably maybe heard, maybe you didn't hear it, but we control the strait 100 percent. They can shit up in Iran, the Supreme Leader, Mochitabu Hamanay. He's added another hard line, IRGC Goon, to his top decision-making council. This is the Supreme National Security Council. They will oversee things like efforts to end the war or reopen the strut or moves. Ben, I just like, I don't know. I'm just wondering. My only question now is when he's just going to walk away from this mess and be like, "Yes, straights open. War's over. Nukes are covered. We can watch it." He's getting pretty close. It does bear emphasizing that I think every single thing he just said there was not true. Everything from the 52,000 protestors in the last four months, they haven't really been protestin' the last four months. Right. Also, that number keeps going up too. It keeps going up. I've never seen anyone like that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not to diminish the harm. No. That's why I know it was coming. Late last year. But then also, the strait's not open. I mean, if the strait was open, we wouldn't be having this conversation. These denying physical reality, again, the US controls the strait. We do. We've mind-swept it all. We have. The Iranians are firing at tankers. They're still a fraction of the traffic getting out of that strait. I take the message from the Iranian demands is that their government is entirely in the hands of the RGC. It's the hardliners. So even some of these people that show up in Islamabad or in Oman are not empowered to make a deal. And that's them saying to Trump, "Fuck you." That's not them expecting Trump to agree to all those things. That's saying, "We don't need a deal. We have the actual leverage." And if you look, the Iranians are quite specific, even in their unrealistic demands. And Trump is never even specific. We don't need a deal. We do need a deal. Like, we don't even know what he's shooting for anymore. And I get, I mean, art of the deal, you know, would suggest that what the Iranians are doing, which is you ratchet up your demands so that whatever you get is far more than you would have anticipated at the beginning because you made such maximal demands. Look, at the end of the day, he's probably just going to have to accept a certain point that the best he can do is the strait we opens with the Iranians making a bunch of money. And that regime more entrenched him power and no nuclear deal. Like, that's the best they were going to get. That's the most likely outcome. I'd fucking take it. Like, let's just get off this war. This is stupid. And this, that is I think the most important point, which is there's this sunk cost fallacy where it's like, well, we've sacrificed so much. We can't stop now. And it's like, nope, sometimes stopping now is your best option. And that's what we should do here. Maybe the next hit of Heron will solve my addiction. Yeah. The world is brought to you by Built. Here's a question. Are you getting rewarded for paying your rent or mortgage right now? If the answer is no, you need to check out Built. Becoming a built member means earning points on every housing payment no matter where you live. Built points can be redeemed for flights, hotels, lifterides, Amazon.com purchases, future housing payments, and much more. I actually have tons of great redemption options that you can check out. You can just put your points toward future housing payments. You can go to fitness classes, like a soul cycle, or berries, or whatever, Amazon.com, there's lifterides, there's gift cards, so like over 100 brands, tons and tons of great ways to redeem your built points. Built also has a new AI-powered neighborhood concierge that doesn't just answer questions. 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If I get a good night's sleep, I'm almost guaranteed to have a good day or at least be prepared to have a good day. I think better. I'm in a better mood, generally happier. If I get a bad night's sleep, everything sucks. It's just, it's really hard to bounce back from that. And I gotta tell you, having a really comfortable bed, I won't make sure every night sleep is great, but it's a really big help. And that involves having the right mattress. And the way you know which mattress is right for you is you take the Helix sleep quiz and it'll match you with the perfect mattress based on your personal preferences and sleep needs. They have over 20 mattress models, so you can pick the perfect model for you. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door with free shipping in the US. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience, designed to ensure you're completely satisfied with your new mattress, so you can rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. Plus Helix offers a 120-night sleep trial in limited lifetime warranty. We have a Helix mattress at our house. It was a huge upgrade from the one we had before. It is unbelievably comfortable. I've slept on it. Like lots of guests have slept on it. So many people have said to us, that bed is so unbelievably comfortable where to get your mattress. It's just, it's a great, great product. It ships directly to your house. It could not be easier. Go to helixsleep.com/world for 20% off-site-wide at helixsleep.com/world for 20% off-site-wide, helixsleep.com/world. We're going to do a similarly quick update on Israel and Gaza because last week, we talked about Trump randomly announcing this 15-point plan for Gaza that included this process for a disarmament. He said, "Hamas would disarm," and then Israel would withdraw from Gaza and then the occupation. It was a bit of a head scratcher at the time. We predicted that the Israelis would not be okay with this plan. As predicted, Israeli Prime Minister Bebanan Yahweh who categorically rejected it over the weekend. He said, "Israel does not accept the 15-point document. The IDF will not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed." When I say the disarmament of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry. We are talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament. This outcome was obvious because Israel has an election coming up in October. Netanyahu only cares about appeasing the far right, so obviously he wasn't going to do anything that looked in any way soft in Gaza. Netanyahu also said, "As long as I am Prime Minister, a Palestinian state will not be established neither in Gaza nor in Judea or in Samaria," which is what they call the West Bank. For those who keep its guard home, then Hamas did reaffirm its commitment to the board of pieces. Plan. The only question I have is, "Why do you think Trump would announce this knowing these Israelis had not gotten unbored and would never get unbored?" I think he had just met with Netanyahu. That's the big mystery to me because even when they announced this, as we said at the time, nobody really believed it. It was like not. It didn't come out of any process. It just seemed out of nowhere that they're announcing this and demanding support for it. I will note that APAC, for instance, at the time, welcomed this plan and demanded that everybody support it. I'm wondering, I'm waiting for the APAC statement attacking Netanyahu for not going along with it, not holding my breath. Look, there's never any there, there to this. It never seemed plausible that this was actually going to happen again in the physical world. The only thing I want to add to me is this foreign policy, they have no way out of the dumb where they started in Iran. They've got no plan for how to deal with this. They're given away nuclear program to Saudi Arabia, or maybe they're not. No concept of how to wind down the Ukraine war. What are we doing? I guess Marco Rubio can text Delci Rodriguez and Ben Aswell about her media appearance. This is a catastrophic failure of their entire foreign policy on their terms. The things that they say they want to achieve, they're just doing the opposite. The thing that I've been trying to figure out, so there was this great piece that's worth reading. I think it's by Graham Wood and the Atlantic, there was kind of like, what's up with Al Qaeda? You know, we're like, you know, what, 20, 25 years after 9/11, are they weaker? Are they stronger? Are they biting their time? Like, by what metric do you judge? You know, because there have been no catastrophic attacks on the U.S. homeland. With the exception, well, no, there was 9/11, right? Then there were basically no Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. homeland, except for in 2019, when that Saudi pilot in Florida shot like three people. But it was sort of a blip on the radar compared to how terrorists and he's usually covered and discussed. And there's a bunch of analysts trying to figure out like what the deal is with terrorism generally. And I think it made me think about this conflict and whether the Palestinian issue is still going to be a driver of extremism in the way that it's been in the past. Whether leaders like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Arabia clearly just not giving a fuck about Gaza or the Palestinian people will impact things. And whether this could just kind of like annexation in the West Bank could become complete over the next couple of years. Gaza could just be occupied forever. I'm just like wondering when there will be blowback from that and where it will come from. I'll break the future. Well, there's a lot of pressure in the system and because if you look at the things that could happen in the next, you know, you're too given the way things are going, you could have this kind of re-escalation of the war in Iran at any point. You could have a concerted effort to annex the West Bank or you could have like an intifada in the West Bank that turns that into more of a conflict zone that gets very dangerous and potentially deadly. You could have like pent up, you know, Arab Spring type uprisings, I mean Egypt and Jordan are not in the most stable place. Like you could have this Russia, Ukraine were escalated either in that theater or somewhere else. The Chinese in Taiwan, like there's all these pots that are like, you know, boiling and like beginning to spill over a little bit and it does worry you that hey, what's the thing that could happen that just tips us into kind of seeming chaos. I mean, because we're already kind of there if you look at the Iran war. Yeah, no, it's like a steady state level of violence and uncertainty and instability. That would be kind of unimaginable a decade ago, but you're a yes, it's right. It's just crazy that there is a massive like hot war between the Russians and Ukraine that has just been going on for four years and the Iran war is not going on for so long. Yeah, just the backdrop. Well, one of those pots that's kind of seeming to boil over right now is in Yemen. Yes. That's a good one. Yeah, so we got the Houthis and then there's the internationally recognized Saudi Arabia backed Yemeni government. The UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, warned last Friday that quote, Yemen today faces a greater risk of renewed large scale conflict than at any point since the UN broke her truce of April 2022. As we've discussed on the show that that truce was broken when the Saudis attacks Sinai airport ahead of this flight that was arriving from with a Houthi delegation in it from the Supreme Leader of Iran's funeral. The Houthis retaliated, they announced a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea. And since then, there's been this tit for tat where it cheated up last week when at least 30 people were killed in Houthi attacks on Yemeni military bases during some like morning training event. Also on Tuesday, Yemeni sources told Reuters that the Houthis hit a Tanzanian flagship in the Babel Mondebs straight killing six people. And so what is so worrisome about these isolated events is that the Civil War in Yemen was so catastrophic. It was from 2015 to 2022, I think nearly 400,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, many of them from starvation or disease. And it could easily start back up again if some red line is crossed, either for the Houthis or the Saudis. And it feels like we're kind of dancing up to that red line. Yeah, because we've seen these strikes by the Saudis and these actions by the Houthis. And this is a good example of the fact that part of what's happened as the UN system that resolves conflicts has been weakened. But also as there's been in this anticipates some of our upcoming topics too, the normalization of violence, right? That if you're sitting in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi or Jerusalem or Washington. You know, what's happening in Sudan is just it's just happening and we don't really have to do anything to stop it or The situation obviously in the in Gaza or in Southern Lebanon or the situation in Ukraine like you get to the state where You know a reversion to a conflict that could kill tens of thousands of people in this place hundreds of thousands of people is Happening in so many places that it's like, oh, you know You're just kind of watching in slow motion and doing very little other than you know having a UN envoy put out these statements But the problem is first of all the human suffering they wouldn't sue and also like all as we talked about like you beginning to feel all these conflicts merge into one So the Yemen things sparks up again. It's gonna interact with the Iran war Oh for sure and it could impact Red Sea shipping and it could kind of become one big theater where everybody's kind of fighting in different places and and and and this is Man, it's like watching a bunch of different, you know to use a Southern California analogy like fire is burning and If they come together, you know, that's that's how you get something you can no longer contain and we're kind of already teetering there and just have this tolerance You know because I don't have a lot of hope that like Marco Rubio State Department has a big plan to kind of avoid a reversion to war in Yemen. No, not at all Well, another one is conflicts as you said if like just this sort of normalization or else I'm getting used to just horrific levels of violence has been Sudan Sudan has been ravaged by civil war for four years It's a conflict between the Sudanese government and a rebel group called the RSF It is very difficult to know the true death toll of the war because it's just hard to get there but there estimates Into the several hundred thousand and then between 14 and 15 million are believed to have been displaced most internally But some across the border into Chad the war is worse in and been prolonged because the UAE the United Arab Emirates has been funneling weapons to the RSF the rebel group Which brings us to this hero In London who was I guess just walking down the street when he spotted Ahambe bin Rashid al-Makhtoom who is the UAE's prime minister He's also the ruler of Dubai. He's just strolling around London with this like massive entourage And so let's watch the clip of what unfolded So as you can see there's just one guy this is clip was posted I think by Middle East high. It's one guy This entourage of like 50 people with this Emirati royal. It's a little hard to hear But he's yelling you're killing Sudanese Emirates and UAE. They're killing Sudanese people and a member of the prime minister Us prime ministers entourage responds fuck you and fuck your people mother fucker black bitch Yeah, he then crosses the street to menace the man Ben I do wonder if things would be different if Emirati, you know, cost-benefit analysis of supporting the RSF Would change if more officials were treated like this in places like Washington instead of being invited to the White House or Cafe Milano for a nice meal It is entirely the case that this Emirati support for the RSF, which is well-documented has At a minimum contributed significantly to the levels of violence and loss of life inside of Sudan and I have to say like there's been a pass on this Number one because the Emirates have a lot of friends. They have a lot of resources. I think number two They did the Abraham Accords, so it's kind of like hey, we did this thing. You like, you know, don't look at this other thing we're doing, you know But I think like the takeaway I pay a lot of bribes. I mean They're giving the Trump family a lot cash. Well, yeah, two two billion dollar investment in And they're in their crypto yet they bought half of a business that didn't yet exist for I think five hundred million dollars Seven a million was it okay? Pretty good deal. Yeah, you know and other commitments, you know, these commitments they make to invest God knows that we don't know it's trillions of dollars in the US. Oh, they bought two billion worth the One of the Emirati firm bought two million billion worth of Trump coin. That's when I used like the Trump stable coin in an investment in the Binance crypto firm So the other thing though that's interesting me about this is you do get this sense that the gap between powerful people and accountability has just been growing the last 10 years, right? So to take your tenure to come step back day The the difference between what was kind of tolerable in terms of conflict and violence and loss of civilian life Has somehow really opened up in the last 10 years and there's a sense that powerful people are not accountable And I think what you're seeing increasingly is Stuff like this happening, you know, like people are so frustrated and they feel like they have no outlet You know and you go to a place like London and all these people hang out in London and they and you're right like I think Discomfort beginning to show up in front of people is like that's just gonna keep happening Because people can see what's going on in the world They see that nobody seems to be held accountable for it and they also see by the way Nobody even feels kind of bad about it, you know their reaction wasn't to be like, you know We're not doing matter. It's been like shut the fuck up, you know, um and and it's that mentality that I think is just The powder keg is just gonna keep getting more and more pressure inside of it when it's like the most shameless proxy war stuff You've ever heard of it's like the Emirates gold down there. Yeah, they're supporting the RSF They're giving the RSF drones, which they're using to massacre civilians because the RSF has access to like gold mines Yeah, that is some yeah gross shit. Yeah Yeah, and gold's, you know doing well because People don't trust currencies because they trust your governments. I mean all this stuff is kind of connected to basically powerful people wrecking things and hoarding power and resources and ordinary people feeling that they have less outlets to express themselves So they end up just like shouting at people in the street in London, you know and they're uh for that we salute you sir Speaking of powerful people wrecking things. Let's talk about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth You might remember pistol Pete from his Fox News days drunk guy on the weekends Now he's in charge of America's nukes and up its wars, which may be why the latter's not going so well Couple stories about Pete the caught our eyes. So we'll take through these uh first The New York Times did an analysis of military promotions under Hegseth and found that he really really hates promoting women and people of color The times found quote eight of 201 candidates for high-ranking posts this year have been women or four percent Less than half the average percentage of the past 10 years the largest drop-offs have come from the Navy and Air Force In July the Times reported that Hegseth recently blocked the promotions of seven senior Navy officers Five of whom are women or people of color to the two-star admiral rank This also comes after Hegseth fired a bunch of senior women and black officers including the chairman of the joint's chiefs who is fired Literally for filming one video about what it was like to be black in America Then this just strikes me as um Well, they also looked at the lower ranks where the where Hegseth is not part of the promotions process And it there are a lot more women and people of color are coming up But it does feel like Hegseth is creating like a general generational Problem within the military by promoting only white men for this you know period Yeah, I think the alarming thing about Hegseth are there a lot of them one of the alarming things about Hegseth Versus Trump's first term Secretary's defense or war is that he's clearly trying to remake the military and magas image Like he's trying to turn the United States military into kind of an extension of maga political interest and A reflective of the maga worldview, which is pretty white and male right and the problem for that is Well, one it's wrong and unfair to people who are being overlooked for promotions Two, I worry that that's so that the military will be more likely to follow More extreme orders as the Trump administration goes on So that by the time you get to year three in your form or coming back at Greenland or coming back at you know deploying troops in America Yeah, all the streets right yeah all the sudden you know, they've got a slightly more likely group of people to to do that and then the the last piece is What's gonna be left at the end? You know like you're gonna come in and you're gonna have this kind of maga military And you know rebuilding cohesion and A force that is representative of the United States will will be hard to do after all this wrecking You're not gonna be able to just like bring these people back We're gonna have lives and families and things going on. It's not a process works The second story of the Katarai was we've talked a bunch of times about this critical shortage of US weapons and munitions Thanks to the war in Iran a lot of it is like interceptor missiles, but there's also offensive weapons Apparently Trump finally learned about this issue too and the Washington Post reported that he screamed at Hexat during a meeting at camp David So Hexat did whatever he brave leader does he blamed his deputy Who then wrote armed suppliers a letter basically telling them they had 21 days to figure it out When all of this leaked Trump posted a message calling the report both false but also treasonous which it can't be both But I mean, it's just luck we've talked about this enough. We don't need to belabor it But if Trump really did just learned that this was a problem and their response was to write a letter Like it just shows how fucked we are because the timeline for making some of these weapons is literally years And there's no way to change that in the short term. Yeah, it just shows that because you and I are on some tech threads with you know former national security types. Anybody who follows any of this stuff within the first three weeks of this war was like, oh shit, we're gonna run out of munitions. And so if Trump is behind like every text thread that I'm on by six months, like that's a little alarming. It is also the case that you, yeah, as you said, you can just like fire off a thing, and you're like replete, you're replenish our patriot missiles. Like that takes years to do, not 21 days. Hegs are passing the buck, not surprising, they're at all. And again, like to be a bit of a natural security person here, Russia, China, like, they're looking around, we're like, oh, the US doesn't have anything left, this might be the time to escalate in Ukraine or to take a whack at Taiwan, 'cause there's literally nothing that they could do. That's a very real concern, or if this thing with Iran escalates, as they've already demonstrated, they can fire it everywhere we are in the Middle East, we just don't have enough defensive munitions to protect things anymore. - Yeah, in order to our Gulf allies, the irony of all of this, well, not early irony, it's that a lot of Trump administration officials oppose support to Ukraine because they were worried about this kind of critical munitions shortage. Now we went to war with Iran, which is making it exponentially worse. - And that's a thing, and I wouldn't let them the blame the Ukraine thing, 'cause that's to be very clear. If you look at the numbers of defensive munitions we've used in Iran more as against what we gave Ukraine, like the crisis has been caused by a downward. - 100%. - We could have weathered the war. - A war of choice, yeah. Third, the Guardian had a report about corruption at the Pentagon, specifically the appointment of venture capitalists, Mark Andreessen, and then failed Senate candidate Blake Masters to the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, sub-board that kind of like oversees, it's like a sounding board for Pentagon for a hexath-- - But it gets you good access. - Yes. - It gets you in the door there. - For sure. Both have links to Donald Trump Jr.'s investment firm, 1789 Capital. They also have ties to big defense contractors and companies like Andrewl and SpaceX, ungodly numbers of investments on their own. So no conflict of interest there. It does feel like we're at the point of the kind of corruption cycle where everyone sees the President of the United States like gorging himself at the trough and they're running up to try to catch one of his scraps in their mouth. - Yeah, and again, if we talk about the personal version of remaking the Pentagon, this is the trillion half dollar budget version of remaking it, which is by the time you're in year four of the Trump administration, the, I mean, this is, there's limitless corruption available because if you have a trillion plus dollar budget and you can just do these massive contracts, you can do it with Don Jr.'s company, you can do it with Silicon Valley oligarchs that you like like Andrewsson. It also like Spotlight says we should come back on this defense tech issue because the new defense contractors are the Silicon Valley people. As systems are shifting to AI and autonomous weaponry, it's less Lockheed Martin and Boeing. They're still around obviously, but it's more, you know, Mark and Mark and Dresden, he's one of these guys who like founded Netscape. Congratulations. What does that mean? You know how to be the defense supplier? These guys think that they can supportable there, you know. - Everyone he was kind of a lib, but he was on super online, which is like tweet all day. And then I think his firm made a massive bet on crypto. Democrats kind of came at against crypto. - And he became anti-woken. - Yeah, I think he tweeted something about how colonization was good for India and got hammered for it and didn't like it and dragged. - Mad. - 'Cause he's guys, he has like, he's one of these Silicon Valley guys with like the thinnest skin imaginable. - Yeah. I'm waiting for the bad guys to start losing. - Yeah. - It's coming. I can feel it building. - Yeah, let's hope. Finally, why are it had this remarkable story that caught our eye? So in May, a Medevac plane carrying two pilots and two nurses on a routine 30 minute flight in New Mexico crashed into the side of a mountain. And an accident linked to military-conducted GPS jamming exercises in the area. Leading up to the crash, the Air Force was doing an event where it brought together all of its electronic warfare units for these two weeks of exercises, including units of test technologies to block GPS. Tragically, this Medevac flight had its GPS blocked as it was trying to land in the dead a night in the middle of the desert and they hit a mountain. Like, we don't know, it was just a horrible story. We don't really know the back story and whether like incompetence played a role here or if you could tie this to Hexath in any way, but Jesus Christ, how does this happen? - And what you also know is that there's not transparency about these kinds of events. - Right, it was like secret forever. - And so if you're gonna stack up these things, you've got and Pete Hexath the guy that is like promoting white people and trying to bring mega people in military who is burning through our munitions in a Dumbledore who is like facilitating rampant corruption and military contracting and is running the least transparent Pentagon of my life, kicking people out of the briefing room and not sharing information about stuff. And like, that's why these things go together. It just shows the depth of the rot at like an agency that is the most powerful news government. - Yes, well said. (upbeat music) - Paudev the world is brought to you by Haya. 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The first strike on this wildberries warehouse created a cloud of smoke that was reportedly so large that you could see it from space. It's a lot of stuff burning. But this campaign against wildberries, it did not end there. Foreign Policy Magazine and New York Times did great pieces on all of this that I'm going to draw from liberally in this section. They found that in the past month or so, at least 23 wildberries facilities have been hit by Ukraine and nine wildberries employees have been killed. This Moscow-based organization called Data Insight estimates that wildberries has lost up to one-third of its warehouse space and nearly $6 billion in goods. And that's a big deal if you're an average Russian because more than half of the people in Russia use wildberries once a month. And tens of millions of Russians use it multiple times a week. So the service being disrupted just has a big impact on ordinary people's lives and it brings the war home in a way that Ukraine hasn't managed to do previously. to the Russian populace, but the strikes may also have a material impact on the battlefield, so the foreign policy piece dug into a bunch of detail about how Russian soldiers use wildberries for supplies. The Russian military, I think, can be quite incompetent when it comes to resupplying guys at the front. So soldiers will end up buying stuff for themselves, or they'll are these kind of like ad hoc groups that raise money and donate supplies to them and have it delivered via wildberries, until recently the wildberry site had a dedicated section called Everything for the SVO, SVO stands for a special military operation. You could buy items like, or you still can buy items, but they were like sort of bucketed in this section. Stuff like body armor, drone components, fins for grenades, the list goes on and on. This reporter who did the piece for foreign policy, Alexei Kovalev, city counted 1,000 items that were military use only in about 4,500 that could be considered dual use. He also said that there were like, you know, you could find Russian military bloggers talking about how important wildberries is to guides at the front. So Ben, I think these strikes raise some interesting questions about civilian versus military targeting and what's appropriate. Under international law, a target becomes legitimate when it's providing a military advantage to your enemy and destroying it would create a definite military advantage for you. I think the Ukrainians argue that the extensive military hardware on the wildberry site makes it a pretty easy call. I think they'd also point out that Russia has bombed the shit out of Nova Posta, which is a Ukrainian delivery company. They're also, I think, honest though, the Ukrainians when it that part of it is psychological warfare. The commander of Ukraine's drone force said the strikes were about destroying, quote, the illusion of a comfortable peacetime. So Ben, it's interesting. Like these are obviously slippery slope arguments. Walmart and Bass Pro Shop sell a lot of guns, including the service members. I wonder how people would feel about those suddenly getting bombed by an adversary in a war. But I do feel like in this specific case, Ukraine, their argument is pretty compelling. But I don't know what you made of it. I find the whole thing worrisome. Look, I understand the Ukrainian mentality. Like we need to get any advantage. We can, these guys make no distinction between, so very limited distinction between civilian and military targets. And so they're ratcheting it up. And so we saw them hitting energy infrastructure inside of Russia. Now we're seeing them hit this. I understand why they're doing it. I think they're blurring the lines, because I think it's probably both. Yeah, as you pointed out, it's like, sure, there's some military uses. It's also more like we have to bring the war home to the Russian people. If the Russian people don't feel the impact of this war, nothing's going to change, which is a logical conclusion, but that is a slippery slope. And it's both a slippery slope to, you know, getting further and further away from clearly military targets. But what I worry about, again, is this escalation point that keeps coming up today. You know, the Russians could say, well, the Ukrainians get a lot of supplies from Europe. And so maybe we should start drone attacks on warehouses in Poland or Germany. Or if you decided, well, you have to feed your soldiers. So what if we blew up every grain depot? Yeah. And so I just, you know, the irony is that for all the ham-handed, stupid diplomacy at the beginning of the Trump administration on the war, like it would actually now would be a good time to be trying to walk, you know, the Russians and the Ukrainians back from what feels like a potential escalation cycle that could get harrier and harrier. And you don't feel that happening. And so I think this will give the Ukrainian some advantage, but I have to think the Putin will find some way to escalate and return. And then we'll just kind of keep going on this spiral the world. And again, it's another example of a kind of there are these little escalatory steps happening all the time and they almost get brushed off now. Like I think it's a Moldova said that a Russian drone had landed on Moldovan soil. That could trigger article five. Yeah. Yeah. There's this report that US intelligence believe Russia was behind an attack on the German airport. Yeah. There was a drone loaded with explosives that I think was targeting a Ukrainian cargo plane at like in Leipzig in Germany. Yeah. So it's pretty scary stuff. There's a NATO intel report that I think leaked that suggested Russia might try an attack of some kind maybe hybrid or maybe cyber on a NATO ally in the coming years to kind of test the alliance. That's what I'd watch. I mean, the thing I would watch for to be constructive only in terms of what to watch for is this is like reprisals getting into Europe because the same logic, and again, let's be very clear, Russia's the aggressor here Ukraine has our sympathy because they are being entrepreneurial in their defense. At the same time, it is what it is. And I think that the Russians could decide we got to bring this war into Europe under the same logic that they're the ones backfilling the Ukrainians. Yeah. Speaking of threats to Europe, a couple of months back, we covered this pretty wild story about Jared and Ivanka Trump claiming they discovered an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Albania. Ivanka told this story like it was kind of a real estate cute, but really it was just like a love story about colonization. Ever since they're on the Rothschilds yacht on the Rothschilds. That's when they discovered they swim up the barren islands. Walk to the top of the mountain. Bigfoot everyone's like it's not barren. It's a fucking wildlife reserve. So they cut this sweetheart deal with the Prime Minister of Albania to try to develop this area. Ever since there have been massive protests of the deal of the development of the region, which have been dubbed the Flamingo Revolution by locals because there's a bunch of like endangered Flamingo species that would be impacted by the construction. The Wall Street Journal added some incredible reporting to this firestorm over the weekend. The journal says that the development group the Jared Kushner is backing paid over 120 million dollars to a man named Arthur or Artur. I don't know. He's a gangster who gets shit. Artur, Shayhu for the land that they're trying to develop, but there were a couple small issues with that. First of all, Shayhu may not legally own the land. The villagers who live there say they like saw Jared's like AI rendering of what this resort would look like. Realized it was on top of their village and then reached out to say, Hey, this dude stole it from us back in 2000. So that's problem number one. Problem number two is that Shayhu is an alleged gangster and drug trafficker. This guy might be kind of overseeing gangs that are leading to people going in boats in the Caribbean that Pete Hexeth has then drone strikes. Yeah, great. So that's cool. And then finally, back in June, Albania's corruption office got in order to arrest Shayhu for money laundering and racketeering. He currently lives in Miami because he fled Albania because he was involved in like a shootout at a bar, maybe with a rival gang. So Ben, great reporting here by the Wall Street Journal. I'm not remotely surprised that Jared Kushner is kind of like incahoots with him, officer in Albania, since his father-in-law acts like one and actually his father acts like one, two. I remember he set up his own sister in a sting operation. Crazy story. This story is so important because every single trend in the world that people are pissed about kind of converges in it, you know, like oligarchs calling shots, like Jared Kushner doing real estate deals, environmental degradation, like life not getting better for people while these deals are done over their heads. The reality is like, I just don't see this, I'm sorry for Jornavanka. I just, I can't see this thing coming to fruition. It seems like this tapped into a level of disconnect, this content with the Albanian public, but also just, it does make you wonder, imagine if we had like a corruption unit DOJ, like what are the nature of these deals that are being made by Jared and the Trump family around the world? How many people are there like this gangster on the other end of them? Like like what, like, because there's so little, I mean, when you think about the like colonoscopy done to like every business transaction, 100 Biden was ever involved in versus this stuff, like, it is insane. This has to be like literally number one on the list for oversight for Congress. Message to Democrats. After you win, knock on wood, and hopefully get certified, knock on wood, this corruption has to be like, please, day one, subpoena, do independent investigations, do whatever you have to do. Sapina Kushner, Sapina has business partners, Sapina the banks, Sapina, like the partners, like all of it, day one. Yeah. Don't wait. Please God, don't wait again. You want to put Merrick Arlin on this case? Jesus Christ. What's that guy up to you think? Just wallowing. He's just, no, he's just dividing my norms wherever he is. Yeah, just feeling feeling good about himself. Two more quick things. So first, it's just worth mentioning that the Ebola outbreak that we've talked about a couple times, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then some parts of Uganda, it's now the second largest in history in the fastest growing on record. The Congolese government published some data on Tuesday showing that death count has now surpassed 2000, and there's over 4,000 additional confirmed cases. We say confirmed, there's probably a lot of cases they don't know about. There's a lot of problems that make this a harder outbreak. There's no vaccine for this particular strain of Ebola. The outbreak is happening in places where there is like ongoing warfare and very little health infrastructure. And there's lots of evidence that the virus is spreading in the community and not being tracked. I saw like one health center found that a 90% of their patients were not kind of registered anywhere else. There were just new people which suggest that there's a lot of transmission just happening in life. The director general of the African CDC also expressed concern this week that the virus might be mutating. So other than that, it's going good. It's wanted to bring this up because it feels very scary. It's a great example of a problem that the White House is just I don't think I've heard them talk about it or even pretending to try to solve. Well, because the chief instrument for solving the Ebola epidemic in 2014 was USAID, which doesn't exist, and the chief international organization that we work with to solve that epidemic was the World Health Organization, which the United States has pulled out of. So they don't even have the levers to try to deal with it. And this is one of those issues. It's horrible for the people impacted. And it's also the case that if and when this shows up in the United States, people are going to freak the fuck out and not really understand why it's happened. It's happened because we've dismantled the mechanisms that we have to deal with it. So things like this tragically happen in the world. But as is the case with like conflicts, we don't have a UN system that works. We don't really have an international global public health infrastructure, which after COVID is pretty remarkable. Terrifying. Yeah, and everyone is even more distrustful of vaccines. Well, you all about Fauci, but we want to talk about Ebola. Yeah, great. Finally, Ben, I want to see if you can spot what's wrong with Canadian politician, Bill Oliver speech to the legislative assembly of New Brunswick. This speech is from June, but the clip kind of made the rounds last week. Let's play that. One of the dangers associated with creating advocacy offices is that citizens often develop expectations that exceed the powers actually granted to those offices. Here's a more natural flowing version of that section that reads like legislative speech rather than a series of short points. Madam Speaker, one of my concerns with this legislation is the potential gap between what New Brunswickers may reasonably expect this office to accomplish and what the office will actually have the authorities to do once it is established. Okay, so as you could see there, like when he copied it over from ChatGBT or whatever, Claude, he left in the AI's framing of his remarks, but he didn't just do it once. A few minute later, he also read out quote, here's a more developed and flowing version of the same section and after that, he started to read another one before catching himself and saying, "Excuse me." Oliver has since responded, saying quote, "During the spring session of the legislature, I employed AI to help prepare speaking notes when printing the final version of my speech AI prompts were not removed, which were spoken by me and has caused much concern of many individuals." He says he learned an important lesson. Then a couple questions here as a former speechwriter. "How stupid do you have to be to anchor man yourself, not once, not twice, but three times, and forty minutes." Question one. And question two, "What percentage of politicians do you think have just fully outsourced speech writing to AI at this point?" This is the thing is, first of all, reading the prompts, it does suggest that. I always tell people that one of the reasons it was useful that Barack Obama actually read and edited his speeches is because he wasn't reading them for the first time in delivery. Right. And like you have Trump, like he reacts to himself, he's like so. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the thing. You can tell when a politician is kind of reading something for the first time now. He gives away the game. I'm surprised he doesn't have there. Would you like me to develop a five-point plan for how you can become a better legislator? Was this answer radical? Yeah. But then the bigger problem is beyond the fact that this is confirming what people are scared about with AI, it's also kind of confirming what people are scared about with their politicians, which is that if you can just stand up there and do your job by reciting AI, produce text, what are you? What is your, what are you bringing in particular to this? Like literally, look, everything we all do is derivative, right? Like with the words I'm saying right now are derivative of my life's experience and things I read to prepare for this show and stuff I learned in the Obama days, whatever, but it does feel like with AI, it's literally just like hunks of text fed into a machine that kind of like blends them together and spits out something new, but that is entirely derivative of whatever it was trained on. If no human beings are having new ideas or political thoughts or statements, like what happens? Organic bookplug, right? Because having done like, you know, all we say in looking at the history of political speech in this country, you know, one of the things is very clear to me is that the thing that makes someone pay attention to what a politician is saying is when you say something that sounds different. Like, oh, here's a hard truth I haven't heard before, or here's an argument that is different from what I've heard before, or here's just, you know, I was just profiled your your doppelganger's op-sand in Iowa, like he's got like this style, he's not Barack Obama, but it's like very Rob Sand, it's his earnest, it's him, you know, and I think part of what scares people about politicians is that they think that they're completely replaceable, that essentially doesn't really matter who you elect, because they're just going to read the same talking points and, you know, reward the same special interest and operate in the same system. And this is the worst version of what people are afraid of. I would imagine that a lot of politicians are using AI because it's a shortcut, but what AI produces is like literally the definition of the lowest common denominator, like what should a Canadian legislator who's, you know, from this region say about X issue, and it spits it out, like, okay, I'm glad that you have a machine that can look at a bunch of texts on the internet and decide what to say, but that's not what people vote for people to do for them. And so I caution against, you know, yeah, use AI for research or, you know, get some feedback, but you got to write your own fucking text. We're also just like, we're not far away from someone recommending that AI agents actually govern us. That's the next step, because what's the difference? The fever dream and also someone's going to propose it. Because what's the difference? You know, sure that would make, you know, you know, Mark Andreessen happy. Oh, Andreessen would be pumped. He would love that. Love nothing more. Cool feature we got going on here. All right, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear Ben's interview with Richard Horsey about all the things happening in Myanmar. So stick around for that. Pots of the world is brought to you by Ridge. You know, Ridge, they make amazing power banks, wallets, luggage, and premium everyday gear. Well, this year they're back with their legendary sweepstakes for the sixth year running in this time. It's bigger than ever. The sweepstakes runs from July 24th through September 8th. Two lucky winners will get to choose between a Lamborghini Huracan Serato. That sounds expensive. A Ford Hennessy Velociraptor, a souped up Ford Bronco or $100,000 in cash. Damn. Oh, Ridge wants to know which option I would pick if I won. I think I don't know. I really, I didn't want to Google all these cars. 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No matter what you pick, Ridge has free shipping in 99-day risk-free trial and over 100,000 five-star reviews. Ready to upgrade your wallet and maybe your ride for a limited time only head to Ridge.com and you'd code PSTW at checkout for 10% off your order and a chance to win Ridge's biggest sweepstakes ever. A Lamborghini Huracan Starrato, a Hennessy Velociraptor, a Ford Bronco or a $100,000 in cash. No purchase necessary to enter, but every dollar you spend gets you more entries. That's Ridge.com. Use the code PSTW. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that Pod Save the World sent you. US voters abroad have you got your ballot yet? Go to votefromabroad.org and click Request My Ballet. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Don't delay votefromabroad.org Right. I'm very pleased to welcome back to Pod Save the World, Richard Horsey. Richard is the senior advisor for Asia at the International Crisis Group where he has a long web their work on Myanmar. Richard, thanks so much for joining us. That's great to be on, bud. So part of what we wanted to do here is catch people up with what's been happening in Myanmar. He's a phrase. And so for people that have not been following this closely, you'll remember that in 2021, there was a military coup which overturned the kind of nascent democratic reform movement in Burma and in prison, Don Sangsu Chi, the elected state counselor. And since then, there's been a civil war which over 100,000 people have died. There are millions of people who are displaced. There's malnutrition and hunger across the country. Just to cite a recent report, the monitoring group armed conflict location and event data noted that quote, Myanmar is the most fragmented conflict in the world. With over 1,200 distinct armed groups reported to have been involved in at least one violent event. But Richard, I just want to ask just what how do you describe the current state of play? This has kind of fallen off the radar with everything that's happening around the world. I know that the military has taken steps recently that we can talk about to kind of entrench itself deeper in power. But how would you describe the state of the civil conflict? and who's in control in Myanmar. So as you said, Ben, after the coup, there was just this eruption first in peaceful demonstrations, and then when those were brutally suppressed, just huge swathes of the country, and particularly young people, took up arms, went to more remote areas, fought back against the military, joined up with long-standing ethnic armed groups who've been fighting for decades for greater autonomy. And this really led to much of the country, perhaps more than half, perhaps much more than that, falling out of state hands. This is not a new phenomenon in Myanmar, right? This is not a country that was united and where the central government has traditionally had control over all of its territory. You know, for eight decades, since independence, Myanmar has been fragmented. But I think the situation we see today is the most fragmented that Myanmar has been over all of those decades. The Myanmar military has managed to stabilize the situation. If we were talking two years ago, I think we'd have been talking about can the military survive? Will it collapse? Yeah. Did it face imminent battlefield defeat? But through the backing of China, diplomatically and militarily, through the military's own efforts to improve its drone warfare, enforce conscription for the first time, it's managed to stabilize the front lines. But that's a far cry from recovering all the territory it's lost. And there are large parts of the country, including most of the international borders that are still not under central control. It seems like the military's been trying to kind of seize on some of those gains you mentioned and kind of confer a sense that it's ultimate resilience of not ability to control the whole country is assured since having a kind of sham election earlier this year, you've seen Min Ang Long, who's the general, who left the coup, who is now the president of the country. You've seen him make these diplomatic visits to China and India and Thailand and trying to kind of send this message. You know, we're back in from the cold. What is the state of the ability of the military to kind of break its international isolation in places like ASEAN, the Organization of Southeast Asian countries or drawing on its relationship with China or India? Is that working? So I think on Min Ang Long's terms, he probably feels he's won, but he's won a enormous cost to the country, of course. Now, winning on his terms means, you know, the coup was about removing ASEAN Suchi, removing that democratic experiment that you spoke about, putting the military back at the center of politics and the economy, let's not forget as well. And in those terms, I think he feels like, you know, after a shaky few years where this coup could have actually failed that he's managed to get through this. He's had these stage-managed elections. He's now presenting himself as a civilian elected leader and some countries have accepted that. China has accepted it. Xi Jinping literally embraced him in the great hall of the people a few weeks ago, giving very clear backing. India has hosted him on an official visit. And just a couple of days ago, he was on an official visit to Thailand. So I think, you know, countries in the region are making a calculation that Min Ang Long and the Myanmar military probably aren't going anywhere. They weren't keen to reach out to him. He was in, you know, very strong diplomatic isolation in the period where it looked like he may fall. But now that he stabilised, now that he has China's very visible backing, India's very visible backing, other countries are making a calculation that these guys are going to be around for a while and we have things to discuss. We have issues. We have concerns. You know, we can't keep them at arm's length. And, you know, that hasn't broken kind of the West's general distaste for Myanmar. But frankly, Western countries have far higher priorities and are not paying a lot of attention these days to Myanmar. And in the region, some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a member country, are still kind of considering that normal engagement with Myanmar is distasteful and premature. But at the end of the day, you know, they also want to focus on other things. They don't want Myanmar dominating their meetings and summits. And the feeling is that after Thailand has now hosted him, Laos has hosted him on a state visit. That it's probably a matter of time before he will be back, you know, at least in the region in normal diplomatic circles. Yeah, in some ways, it feels like we're all the way back to where things were, you know, before, say, 2010 or '11. You know, this is kind of de facto engagement, even if it's unpleasant in some ways. I want to ask a couple of questions about them, the opposition. The first is another story that has been making him around recently, was concerned that Anksung Tsuchi had not been seen in years. And there was kind of a proof of life effort to kind of establish that she was, in fact, alive and in custody. But, you know, there's not been access for her lawyers. There's not been, you know, any obviously media confirmation of her whereabouts. How would you describe the state of play as it relates to, she's obviously very old. What do we know about her conditions, such as they are? And does she, how much does she still matter in the politics of the country? Like, what her death be of potentially galvanizing event that the military might not want people to know about, is that looking in the backdrop here too? You know, the whole point of the coup from an online was to remove Anksung Tsuchi and her National League for Democracy Party from the political landscape. You know, this was not just about him getting power. It was about her being removed from any possibility of playing a political role. And that's why she's been kept almost totally in Communicado for these last five and a half years. That has led to many concerns of her family, of her supporters, of the world at large, of what is her situation. And we know that for a time she was in very austere conditions in Napidor prison, in a sort of tin hut that got extremely hot in the hot season. And, you know, for an old person with longstanding health issues, that's a concern. The military announced a few months ago that she had been moved to a house in the capital Napidor. But there was no other information. In the last few days, the Red Cross has been given access to her. So she met with the delegate of the Red Cross in Myanmar and photographs of that meeting and a short statement from the ICRC have been released. So that is the proof of life, not only her family were calling for, but also countries in the region. And even China was pushing for greater transparency over her situation. And, you know, there are a lot of leaders in the region who are very fond of Anksung Tsuchi. They worked with her for a number of years. They were just made to see what happened after the coup. They feel a certain loyalty to her. And so this is an important issue, you know, for the region as well. The demands that she be given access to the ASEAN special envoy to other diplomats have been rebuffed. And I think the ICRC choice was precisely to stop this becoming a kind of constant demand from different diplomats, you know, where you gave access to the Philippines, who were the chair of the regional grouping, why not next year give access to Singapore, the next incoming chair. It could have led to this kind of demands to see her and so on. And I think Menong Lang did not want to give her that kind of political role. So it was the Red Cross. There's the proof of life, she seems, you know, from the photos in reasonably good shape. And the Red Cross has had a chance to pass message from her to her family. But that's basically it. She has no access to lawyers. She doesn't have access for her personal doctor. There may be other doctors seeing her, we don't know. And so with her kind of removed from the stage, as you know, you mentioned was Menong Lang's, one of his intentions, how would you describe the state of the organized opposition? You know, there was an umbrella group kind of an umbrella put over this constellation of actors after the coup that included elements of the NLD, the democratically elected party, but also young people, and then all the ethnic armed groups that you mentioned too. How would you describe the state of that opposition? Is it organized? Do they continue to have morale that they could somehow prevail in this conflict? Or they just try to hold on to whatever territory they've got? What's your sense of it? I mean, I think there's an overwhelming feeling across large swathes of the country that the current situation is unacceptable. It's untenable. The military cannot be allowed to reinsert itself at the heart of politics in the country, that the reform period of a decade was far from perfect, but was pointing in the right direction. And now, as you said, everything is pointing in the wrong direction. The clock has been turned back a generation, not only politically, you know, back to another closed authoritarian military regime, but economically as well. You know, there's a lost generation of development of childhood, of childhood health of education, of economic output. And so there is still a strong determination among many different walks of life people I talk to, you know, to finish the revolution, as they said. But that's looking like a very long-term prospect. And just as the country itself is highly fragmented, so too is resistance and opposition to the military. You have very different kinds of resistance, you have, as you say, the longstanding ethnic armed groups who really just want autonomy, they don't care who's in control in the center, they just want to have the ability to have a greater say in their own lives and their own affairs. There is a young generation of politically active people, some who've taken up arms, others who are resisting in non-violent ways. You know, the youth of the cities on the heartland who are determined to have a different future. And you know, these people have different objectives, they're in different parts of the country, they have different strategies. So it is very divided and that works to the military's advantage. After the coup, the government that was deposed established a parallel government, the National Unity government, with Angsan Suchi and President Wenmint, her nominee president, at its head, the problem with that is that in the midst of an armed revolution which it backed, it was never quite clear whether this National Unity government was a government, or was aiming to be a government, or was a revolutionary organization aiming to overthrow you know, the military in AP door. And those kind of two roles kind of clashed a little bit. And you know, I think there's a sense now that a lot of the momentum has been lost, a lot of the political momentum. There's more criticism of the parallel government. You know, the revolution was so close to succeeding and yet we failed. Where are the new ideas? Where is the new direction? And the reality is that the opposition government with Angsan Suchi at its helm doesn't have leadership. Because if your leader is incarcerated in Communicado, you don't have someone who is visible and there to kind of lead the charge, there is no Zalensky like figure because the Zalensky like figure is Angsan Suchi herself and she's in Communicado. So she remains incredibly important in that sense that she's the sort of touchstone for everybody. She's not important in the sense of leading things because she hasn't been able to speak publicly since the coup. But I do think that her death would be a trigger moment and something that the military will be very concerned about. They don't want her dying on their watch in their custody. She still is the most influential political figure in the country even after five years of incarceration and detention. One of the things that feels different to me than the past is the role of the United States, the West, whatever the United States and Europe. There was a lot of focus on Angsan Suchi and democracy and Burma in the decades leading up to that moment of reform that took place from around 2011 until the coup. It feels like there's much more disengagement now though like the Trump administration, not sure what their policy is. So while there's a familiar China backing the military and some of the Southeast Asian countries being cozier, what seems to be missing is any sense that this is even on the radar screen of the United States or it's certainly not that there's a kind of pressure strategy to change the behavior of the government. I mean, is there a role to play for the United States, recognizing the Trump administration is probably not going to be that constructive and are there other interests too? Because I noticed these recent reports too of a huge scam economy emanating from Myanmar, the proliferation of this online criminality. It feels almost North Korean that this military could just turn to crypto and scams and other illicit sources of income. Should that compel greater concern about what's happening here too? I think absolutely. We live in a different world now where we're quite inured to human suffering, where the humanitarian system is broken and broke to put it frankly and where international relations is far more transactional and so that has been a huge problem for people who've been trying to increase global interest in what's happening in Myanmar, try to drive policy changes that could really have some effect. They're hitting brick walls, right? It's very hard to advocate for Myanmar on humanitarian grounds when you have Gaza, you have Ukraine and where you have frankly not only in the US but across the West. Governments who are much more concerned about other issues closer to home and are not focused on principles based foreign policy. This is a huge challenge, but as you say, Myanmar demands attention not only because we should care about what's happening because of the humanitarian costs, the human costs. It also matters because having a failed state in the heart of Asia is a dangerous, dangerous thing. Myanmar is the largest global source of synthetic methamphetamines, mostly going to East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, and it's probably the largest current scam center economy. Now, these are many of them in parts of the country that the government doesn't have formal control over, but in many cases it's armed groups that it's somehow allied with on the battlefield that are controlling the territory near to the Thai border, mostly, where these industrial scale scam cities are growing up out of the paddy fields. And those are targeting people all around the world. Myanmar drugs may not be landing on the streets of New York, but Myanmar scam centers are scamming tens of billions of dollars a year from Americans. They're targeting Europeans, they're targeting victims all around the world. And this really matters. And it matters not only as a criminal justice issue, but I think it matters because the scale of this economy tens, possibly hundreds of billions of dollars across Southeast Asia, these scam factories. They are developing, you know, dark financial systems, dark company registration systems, North Korean money has been laundered over exactly the same channels as the scam center money is being laundered. So this is a whole criminal ecosystem, which is emerging, which is a threat to regional stability. It's a threat to financial integrity in the region. We should be very worried about that. Yeah, I mean, it just feels like you, I mean, to be blunt, have this kind of gangster military running a piece of this state with no regard for the human rights of its people, purely in self-survival mode, and willing to turn to kind of all manner of schemes to enrich itself in what has to be an illicit economy. I mean, it's in the heart of Southeast Asia. So I just think there's a lot of reasons to care about this. Well, I want to end on the human one, which is, I'm just curious, Richard, you know, I know a lot of people from Myanmar from my time working on it in more hopeful days. And it's so sad to kind of hear, you know, people are scattered, some people are out of the country, people in places like Gangana kind of gone to ground. On the other hand, it is amazing. It's what you describe, like people are still talking about, you know, what lessons they could have learned from what went wrong in the last era of reform to get it right the next time. There's this kind of persistent, you know, sense at some point, you know, the future will be different. I mean, what give people a sense from your context of just what the mood is like for more normal people in the country, you know, who are just trying to make sense of this and trying to find some hope in it all. How bad is it economically and politically and what is your sense of the remaining kind of hope for the future? So in the main cities, you know, Yangon, Mandalay, I think, you know, a lot of people are just kind of traumatized by these last five years and what's happened by the futures that they saw that was stolen from them. But at the end of the day, they have to put food on the table, they have to feed their kids, they have to get their kids to school. And so, you know, in a situation of acute economic distress where there's no jobs available, the economy is in decline, prices are very high. You know, it's a daily struggle just to make ends meet and that is what a lot of people are focused on and they don't have many options. You know, the options are you go to parts of the country where the illicit economy is thriving because that's where the money is or you go into, you know, informal labor migration routes, very dangerous, you know, risks of trafficking, risks of exploitation, to Thailand, to the Gulf, to other places, to try and send money back home. And that's how people are coping. But what I take hope from is that everyone I speak to is, you know, still has a vision of the Myanmar that they want. They have a vision of the country that they saw a glimpse of 10 years ago and they really still believe that that is the direction they have to go in. And I think that, you know, this new young generation is incredibly inspiring. They have put aside a lot of the political divisions of the past, a lot of the received wisdom about what kind of country Myanmar was, the racism, the division. And, you know, they've come to, they sort of come together as a generation, not as a group of bourbon people or minority people or whatever. They've come together as a generation. And I think that while that may not be immediately successful in unseating a violent brutal military, it's a template for the future and it will resonate in the future and when opportunities do arise, you know, what I hope is that it's that vision, it's that it's that multi ethnic, multi religious hopeful vision that will dominate and not the sort of more narrow nationalisms that we've seen exposed you know, at certain times in the past. - Yeah, no, it's a great note to end on because you do just get a sense that if the, this country were allowed to reach its potential and the potential of these extraordinary people that have so many ideas for the future, it would be truly extraordinary and yet we've had to see people go through so much. So we'll keep an eye on this. People should follow your work. Crisis Group has always been excellent on Myanmar and Southeast Asia in general. So I really appreciate you coming on and helping us understand what's going on. - Thanks for having me on the podcast by Grace Toll. - Thanks again to Richard Horsey for joining the show and we will talk to you guys next week. Pots of the world is a cooking media production. Our show is produced by Alona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith and municia Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGrope, Ben Hethco, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffett, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Her staff is proudly unionized with the writer's field of America East. [MUSIC]