Soccer Scandal & Idiot Ambassadors

Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Erick, founder of Madison Reed, a hair color company I named after my daughter. I'd like to share hair color's best-kept secret with you, Madison Reed Hair Color Bars, where our licensed pros use our award-winning ammonia-free hair color to deliver salon-gorgeous results and 100% great coverage without the traditional salon price tag. Visit madison-reed.com and use code PODCAST20 for 20% off your first visit. We can't wait to see you. Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, the New England Patriots officially suck. This is our NFL talk, everyone. Skip forward 37. Well, we can actually cross the streams here because, in part, it's because, you know, Drake may have been a flash in the pan. In part, it's because your coach may have run off to some Arizona resort with a ESPN reporter. Diana, take him back. Also, maybe the Bob Craft karma. I noticed that the Ed Sheeran shows are canceled because of weather. So, maybe, like, all this karma is hitting Bob Craft, you know. Do you see all the tweets of people being, there was, like, Hey, BBNet and Yahoo! Patriots offensive coordinator is in a bus. I did. So, I may have sent you one. If not, I definitely thought about sending you one of those because it was pretty good. It was a good tweet. Red Sox-Yankees tonight. We're recording Tuesday, September 29th. I will be rooting for the Red Sox. Playoff baseball. I always like, you know, as soon as the Mets are eliminated, which is every season, I always root for whoever is playing the Yankees. So, I will actually be rooting for Boston. Well, famously, the Yankees do suck, as I have chanted my entire life. It may not be. I'm already known to the Patsy of the World audience, and I'm really dating myself here, but do you remember when Roger Clemens hit Mike Piazza in the head with a pitch? Oh, yeah. I was at that game at Yankee Stadium, and I vowed to never enter Yankee Stadium again, and I have not been since then. Wow, good for you. I was a kid. It's been, like, you know, 30 years or something. I haven't got back. You're like Mandela. Yeah. We have a great show for you guys today. We're going to recap the Trump state visit with Xi Jinping, and frankly, just how little was actually accomplished. And how strange it was. Got a lease on some pandas. We're going to update you at the latest with Iran and this kind of new workaround for oil and gas producers in the Strait of Hormuz, and the arrests in the UK that may or may not be linked to Iran. I don't know that we know yet. We're going to dig into serious concern about renewed conflict in Ethiopia. Like, just the more I read about this, the more freaked out I became, and I talked to someone who said, like, she was worried that the crisis could engulf the entire horn of Africa. Troubled region. You could see all these wars kind of merge together. It's a very important story that gets no attention, so we're going to cover that. We're going to talk about the scandal engulfing Manchester City and its ownership group in the United Arab Emirates. If you're non-soccer fans, trust me, you'll like this one. Yeah, it's a good one. Collision of, like, state-backed entities in professional sports, which is very interesting. Always, always rich terrain. Yeah, it's coming for us. We're going to talk about some tech and AI news, because you can't avoid it these days, and it's not fun to read about. And then the final segment we're calling dumb. Dumb ambassadors, Ben. This is a little surprise for us. Oh, dumb ambassadors is always great. There's been some great coverage. I hope Greece is on the list. Oh, yeah. Okay. That one I did see. That one, you're not going to surprise me with Greece. For those, a little teaser for you guys. Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-fiance, Kim Guilfoyle. And Gavin's ex. And Gavin Newsom's ex out here in California. Strange convergence of personalities. She's the ambassador to Greece. Yeah, she is. For reasons that nobody can identify. No one knows, and she's doing some weird shit. Then you're going to hear my conversation. But with Sam Vigursky, he's an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He went to Haiti for about a week back in June. Did a really great write-up and report about the situation on the ground. And it just, it's a really important story, Ben, because to me, first of all, we should care about people in Haiti because it's very close to our own shores. It's a country that desperately needs some sort of help or intervention, and it has not come. In fact, it's just gotten harmed by U.S. interventions over the many decades. But also, it underscores the unbelievable, cruelty, immorality of removing temporary protected status and sending 350,000 people back to a place with war zone-like violence. While you have a State Department travel warning telling Americans it's not safe to go there. So we've literally determined as a government that it is unsafe, which is the criteria to get asylum or temporary protected status in this country. And I guess because Stephen Miller once hit the quota. Yeah, and Stephen Miller's quote is like, well, it's safe for Haitians. Absolutely not. No. It's absolutely not. It's literally a war zone-like level. So, stick around for that, please, because it's very important. All right, Ben. So we spent a bunch of time last week previewing Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington. We're going to close the loop on it today, but it's going to be brief because, as expected, they didn't do much. There was a small reduction in tariffs, like $30 billion, I think. The two leaders extended this broader truce in the trade war for a couple months. The U.S. and China agreed to hold a dialogue about artificial intelligence. So they're talking. They talked about talking about AI. Great. The White House said, the White House also announced that, did you see this? China said, or the White House said that China is now going to call it super intelligence, not artificial intelligence. I'm not sure that, I think the Chinese kind of disputed it, but again, I think we all can agree that the branding is what matters. The most concrete deliverable was that the Chinese loaned us two giant pandas, which are now chilling at the Atlanta Zoo. There's Ping Ping, which means peace, and Fu Shuang, which means double blessings. You have to quarantine for a month. Then they can get registered to vote and vote for John Ossoff down in Atlanta. But big picture, it seems like, the Chinese got all the trappings of a state visit. They gave Trump vague process crap in return, which is their favorite thing to do. Just kind of give you some like make work. No actual deliverable. The one headline that did catch our attention came from these comments from the U.S. ambassador to China, David Perdue. So this clip is from Fox News Sunday. And then we added in Trump's response when he was asked about Perdue's comments on Monday. Let's watch. There are continuing conversations about other sales. He and President Xi talk about that every time they get together but President Trump continues to say, "Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world." He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point. Perdue said that you suggested to President Xi that the U.S. would sell U.S. military equipment to China. Is that accurate? Did you make such a suggestion? To China? To China. You mean to Taiwan? No, to China. That's what he said. I never heard of that one. I'm going to have to ask him. You mean, we're going to sell? No, they'd probably like to buy it because, we do make better equipment than them. So, maybe it's a good idea. But we didn't discuss it. They may have been talking about Taiwan. I think he probably was talking about Taiwan. What do you think would be most useful for the Chinese when it comes to invading Taiwan? Some U.S. amphibious assault ships. Yeah. Maybe a Virginia-class, maybe aircraft carrier if you can afford it. Why not? We can actually, well, I don't know that we can spare any because they're all breaking down in the Med. Yeah. What do you make of this? I assumed he was kidding, but like, I don't know. It doesn't really seem like it. He was not kidding, Perdue, who's not the brightest bulb, though. I mean, it's one of these, I mean, first of all, as you pointed out, and we're going to allow ourselves to say this at the top of the show, this would be like a, you know, multi-year story if a Democratic president had an ambassador go out and say, "Yeah, we're going to sell some arms to China." Like, you know, we'd be the centerpiece of the next presidential campaign or something, but put that aside. Perdue was, like, certain about it. Trump loves selling stuff to other countries. Loves selling weapons. We should add, by the way, that China committed at the last summit where nothing really happened in China to buy all these Boeing planes that they still have not bought, right? So they figured out the same thing the Gulf did. You just promise to do a bunch of stuff that you're never going to do. Trump celebrates it. I mean, what I think is interesting and alarming here is that one of these two men is not telling the truth. Right? So either Donald Trump is actually talking to Xi Jinping about selling them weapons, which they spent a lot of time spying on, right? Or actually, like, let's pause on the fact and foreshadowing our final segment here. Their ambassador to China, which is probably the single most important ambassadorial post in the world, is such a dumb fucking moron that he mixed up Taiwan with China. And, you know, there's a lot of talk about arms sales. Yeah, not a good outcome either way, huh? You do talk about arms sales in the bilat with the Chinese president, but it's arms sales to Taiwan. Neither of those answers are particularly comforting, you know? Especially at a time when the U.S. is holding up this $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan. I'm sure the Taiwanese read this headline and were like, "You've got to be kidding me." You've got to be kidding me. Yeah. You're already holding this back. And this matters because if we do, like, hold back that $14 billion arms sale at a time of, you know, the U.S. on the back foot without munitions to spare, even for ourselves—we can spare it to Israel, but that's another story—this is, like, the window when China might do something in Taiwan. 2027, 2028, the last years of the Trump administration, the U.S. is isolated, it's running out of munitions, we're no longer supplying arms to Taiwan that are meant to deter an invasion, and we can't decide whether we're trying to sell China arms or not. We apparently forgot which side we're trying to arm here. We won't be selling them interceptor missiles. because we're out of those. Yeah, we're out of a lot of this stuff. A lot of that stuff. Just on the panda point, it's funny that it's a loan. I always hope they don't give us the pandas, they loan them. It's the third pair of pandas to come over here in two years, I think in 2024. The Atlanta Zoo had to return four pandas to Giants, so then a couple of them arrived in San Diego in 2024. This is a tradition that dates back to Mao and Nixon. I think the first panda that the Chinese ever loaned us was named Ping Ping. So that's fun. I like pandas, I guess. They're cute looking. Yeah, I like pandas. I remember when they used to be at the National Zoo in DC, they got yanked. Real bummer. Yeah, they took them back. I will say from the summit in general, it bears emphasis that it is an astonishingly thin gruel that came out of now two summits between Trump and Xi, where Trump just wanted, as we talked about, kind of the protocol piece. But there were a couple of interesting things underneath the hood. Like one is, did you see they basically extended the negotiations around some of these trade irritants and terrorists for two months? Like kind of noticeably until after the midterm elections. Yeah, strange. And so, you know, that could be the Chinese just kind of wanting to see what they're dealing with, I think, on the back end of the midterm elections. That could be the Chinese just kind of squeezing, you know, Trump a bit. That could be the Chinese just kind of, you know, playing for time. But they are the ones who appear to have the leverage. Because, you know, as we've talked about, they demonstrated they have this choke point of these rare earth materials. And that is much more damaging to the U.S. economy than Trump's kind of episodic tariff tantrums with the Chinese. But I think that there's a common thread, you know, to Iran, which we'll talk about, to China, of these other countries, like really watching the midterm elections. And it raises an interesting question about if Trump gets shellacked, and there are Democrats in control of Congress, like, how does the rest of the world react to that? Yeah, they know he's a lame duck. Yeah, and then they know he's a lame duck. And so that, I thought, was a really interesting outcome. The two months is not a subtle period of time. No, not at all. Good point. Pod Save 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. 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Get your free quote at selectquote.com/world. That's selectquote.com/world, selectquote.com/world. They shop, you save. That's selectquote.com/world. - So, speaking of Iran, the war just kind of is dragging on in this frozen kind of on-again, off-again state. Last week, we played for you the clip of Trump threatening to annihilate Iran in his speech to the UN. That was an uplifting moment in UN history. At the same time, though, the Qataris were mediating these indirect talks between Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the son-in-law and the idiot golf buddy, and then Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Arachi. Iran reportedly proposed a seven-day ceasefire that included fighting stops everywhere, including Lebanon. America unfreezes billions in Iranian assets, lifts oil sanctions, and calls off the blockade. And then on day seven, the Strait of Hormuz would reopen for business, and then nuclear talks would resume. Trump, not surprisingly, said that was an unacceptable proposal. According to the Wall Street Journal, he has told his aides that he will probably resume bombing after the midterms, and I would like to see Democrats saying, "Please release your secret plan "to resume the war after the midterms," and calling on all Republicans to denounce it. Axios reported that Trump was willing to give Iran sanctions relief and unfreeze frozen Iranian assets in return for steps in the nuclear program. Trump denied that, but again, that's always been the deal that's on the table, so it's like, I don't get what everyone's denying at this point or what's on the table. One area, though, where conditions have improved for Trump is the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. So the U.S. embargo seemingly has choked off Iran's exports of oil, which will cause them increasing problems over time if their entire industry gets shut down. At the same time, the U.S. military, along with these countries in the Gulf, have kind of worked out a system to get oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz and out, such that the level is close to pre-war levels, although not fully at it. So it sounds like the Emiratis piloted a system where they have a fleet of tankers, they load it up at their ports, they shuttle the oil out, and then they unload the oil from their tankers into the international tankers at sea. So they basically take the back-and-forth risk of passing through the Strait of Hormuz, but also the process adds significant cost. I've seen estimates between $15 and $30 per barrel, so it's a lot of money. - Yeah. - And it's not without risk, right? The Iranians took a shot and they hit one of these tankers. That's a huge deal. But the Strait is no longer fully choked off by Iran, which is significant. But Trump seems kind of just disinterested in all of this. Ben, this clip is from Monday in the Oval Office where he was asked about the war. Let's watch real quick. - Has your team just overrun today? - Yeah, they have. - They have for mediators? - Yeah, they have. - Anything else you can share about a movement of the oil toxin? - We're gonna win. As far as I'm concerned, it's gonna be one way or the other. It's gonna be, it's gonna go pretty quickly. - Give that guy an Adderall. - Do you think that's a five milligram edible or a 10 milligram? - Yeah, yeah. - He took the wrong pill. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He took the Xanax. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - He thought it was yaddy. - Xanny. - I think the question, like, being serious for a second, does this kind of oil work around, that the Gulf countries have figured out with CENTCOM? Does this make Trump more or less likely to seek a deal? Does it increase or decrease the risk of the Iranians doing something escalatory? I think with the Iranians, I feel like it makes escalation more likely, but it's hard for me to gauge the Trump piece. - Yeah, like, we're all reading the tea leaves here. And so, you know, with the disclaimer that we, you know, who knows, right? There is clearly more oil and gas getting to that Strait. Here's the problem with that, though. The costs are, like, very significant. You mentioned the cost to just the shipping, but there's also the cost of the U.S. maintaining this blockade of Iran, maintaining all this presence. - They're not disclosing. - And at times there's like, you know, we have to escort some of these tankers. And so this is not like some great solution, right? I mean, sure, it's better than nothing getting to the Strait, but essentially we've gone from the Strait being open before the war to like a massive U.S. military presence, and blockade of Iran and occasional escorting of tanker ships to go through a laborious process that already, you know, adds to the price of energy 'cause it just costs money. - It's like a mini no-fly zone over the Strait of Hormuz, right? Because I think what's happening is American air assets are flying and prepared to shoot down any missiles or drones when these ships go through, which, as you said, that's pretty intensive. - That's pretty intensive, right? And so we're paying billions and billions and billions of dollars just to do this. - And to your point, I mean, the Iranians are more likely to escalate, I think. I mean, everything that we've seen out of the Iranians in this war is that they're not particularly inclined to deescalate. The hardliners are in charge. They're calling the shots. They're going to want to demonstrate that they have some capacity to impose a cost. That could be on trying to hit tankers. That could be on trying to target U.S. vessels. That could be reopening some of the attacks on the Gulf that we've seen. That could be through, you know, continued proxy attacks like we've seen from the Houthis on Saudi Arabia that has had its own cost on energy. the baseline point is that this kind of semi on again, off again, frozen conflict is not a solution. Because also part of the disruption of the closing of the Strait or even just the, you know, mucking up of the Strait is that you can't like kind of plan against that. Like an example I'd give is the Qataris, they can't, they're not like resuming their LNG production, their liquefied natural gas production, in part because they're just worried about it getting hit again. And they're worried about like, well, if we resume all these, you know, we start drilling and the field is resumed, the gas field, can we get that stuff out? Right. And so this is like a bandaid that is, you know, slowing the bleeding, but it's still like the problem. And I think only for oil and gas, right? I think there's a lot of ships that CENTCOM is not going to protect. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Standard ship. Trump only cares about oil and gas. And then to your point, like the big question is this post midterms question where it's the same two paths that are available for Trump. Like he can either just start bombing them again because he wants to try to win the war that he's kind of already lost in many ways that we've discussed. Or he could kind of take the deal that everybody knows has been the deal, which is Iran gets a bunch of money and the strait opens and there's some nominal nuclear concession that is, you know, maybe the dust is diluted or something. That dust going. And that's, you know, part of I think what is worrying to me, Tommy, is a lot of this depends on Trump post midterms psychology, you know? And I was surprised. I was in New York last week around the UN General Assembly. And some of the people I talked to like from other countries, I don't know if they listened to Tucker Carlson or what, but there's some people that were like seriously concerned about Trump doing this like nuclear option, like quite literally like nuking Mount Pickaxe or whatever it's called. And while I dismiss that as insane, and I don't think that will happen, like a Trump who gets humiliated in the midterms and, you know, is getting humiliated by Iran, like I, we have to think about the psychology of lame duck Trump. I hope that's the psychology of a man that just wants to build ballrooms and arches, but not a man who wants to nuke Pickaxe Mountain. I hope you're right, too. But I do think he's sort of the psychology of a man who would like some people to think he might nuke it as leverage. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and like Tucker being worried about that didn't come out of nowhere. It didn't come out. He's clearly hearing something. I still think that's the psychology of a man who wants to nuke Mount Pickaxe Mountain. I think the most likely outcome is at some point, and who knows when, the same deal that's been on the table is like, we slink away, they give us some of the dust, Trump says he got the greatest nuclear deal ever, and Iranians get a bunch of money, and that's it. Everything sucks. NBC reported that two weeks ago, an Iranian cruise missile hit a non-commissioned commercial ship in the Strait and wounded eight Marines. So that puts it, you know, between like 19 dead, some reporting says you want U.S. service members wounded. Over in Yemen, you know, we've talked about that conflict. The WHO says 838 people have died, 3,000 are wounded, and 180,000 have been displaced in the fighting against the Houthis. There's also a horrible case of cholera, so just another example of how the longer this drags out, the worse the war gets. One other like potentially Iran-related thing was this incident at a Royal Air Force base in the U.K. over the weekend. So this is just such a weird story. Very strange story. This RAF base, RAF Fairford in southern England, has been used by the U.S. Air Force as a forward operating base for a long time. And initially, remember, the Brits said no to the U.S. when it comes to using their bases for the war in Iran. But then he, Keir Starmer, reversed course and said defensive operations were allowed. So U.S. bombers have been flying out of there to strike Iranians. Defensive bombers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the most Keir Starmer thing that's ever happened. It's like, I love these military euphemisms, too. So the gist of what happened over the weekend is, early mornings, like Sunday morning, there's a witness called the police and said there was a large group of hooded and masked men operating three vans near the base. The cops came. They arrested five men. They're all British citizens in their early to mid-20s. They were arrested for suspicion of violating the Explosive Act and preparing some sort of terrorist attack. They evacuate the place. Airspace gets restricted. Everyone freaks the fuck out. The vans get investigated for explosives. But then, fast forward a couple of days, the Wall Street Journal says the vans didn't have any viable explosives. The men are released on bail. And under British law, the police say you can hold individuals suspected of terrorism for two weeks. So it's kind of notable that these guys were released, albeit with restrictions. Security of the base was already high because of threats. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, the new one, not Keir Starmer, the new guy, he told people not to speculate. Trump, of course, speculated and then announced that the U.S. had these guys under view for a long time. And that, quote, we know everything about them. And then Fox News on Monday night saying the incident, quote, clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor. So some options for what might have happened here, like we talked about these hybrid attacks by the Russians where they just like hire people on Telegram to do a task. They don't tell them who they are or what's going on. It could have been the Russians, could have been the Iranian doing something similar, kind of witting or unwitting operation. They are, IRGC is believed to have hired men in the U.K. to carry out anti-Semitic attacks, for example. So it could be a continuation of that. Or the Economist says, apparently in this area, people steal fuel all the time. So these guys could have been just like stealing gasoline from this base or something. We don't know. I guess we'll find out. I don't really trust Trump or Rubio to tell us the truth. I trust Burnham's government. But Ben, like when you think about when you read about this and like kind of speculate on what happened, like how much tinfoil are we putting around our heads at this point? Are we going to whole roll half? I mean, we're only doing a half because of the way the British authorities are treating this. I mean, they're releasing these guys on bail. I do think the couple of things, you know, that they're watching are, you know, where the tinfoil hat would lead. Like one, the Russians, they are, as we've talked about, ramping up these sabotage attacks. I mean, just today, the Estonian government announced that the Russians had, you know, undergone a sabotage attack kind of along their border, raising concerns that they were, you know, being attacked. And, you know, the U.K. has been on their list. I mean, the U.K., they've said, is one of the countries that could be in the crosshairs of their reprisal attacks for what's happening inside of Russia. You know, some people have died in the U.K. at the hands of the Russians before. So that's just one more worrying concern that the, if that's, you know, that that's even plausible. The Iranians, what we've not seen them do, it's interesting, like they're, their reaction in their escalation in this war has almost entirely been, you know, in the region. It's been hitting the Gulf countries, hitting Jordan, like, you know, hitting Israel. Remember all the good stuff about like sleeper cells in the U.S. or Western countries? It's the dog that hasn't barked, you know. And so that's another reason, because actually, frankly, if the Iranians like really wanted to do that, I think they probably could. I mean, maybe not a military base, but if they wanted to have like a, you know, terrorist attacks, we've seen in the past Hizballah do that. You know, they've had attacks in Europe, they've had attacks in Asia. So, you know, it is, it is plausible, but it's just not yet something we've seen the Iranians do. It's a reminder, though, that if the war continues to drag on, or if Trump escalates in some fashion, that is something available to them. Although this would be a pretty, you know, ambitious operation, attacking a military base. And yeah, like dudes trying to steal fuel feels probably the most plausible, because guess what? It feels really expensive. Yeah. It's also, if you're like a secret IRGC sleeper cell, are you going to have like three white vans parked all together? I think their OPSEC is a little better than that. Yeah. Maybe it's a reassuring that, you know, it's Keystone Pops. Or it could be like one of those cases in the U.S. where like the FBI recruits some 18-year-old guy, like gives them an inert IED and has them planted at a parade and then announces a big terrorism bust, you know? Yeah. Or, or they're, yeah, or I guess the fourth scenario is they're just very like fly-by-night shitty terrorists, you know, like a bunch of pissed-off Brits. They don't like the U.S. foreign policy. Right. That's very possible, too. Yeah. It's possible. Yeah. We'll find out, I guess. All right. Today, we wanted to spend some time on a very important, but I think chronically undercovered story in the Western media, which is the conflict in Ethiopia and the potential for it to spill out into the Horn of Africa. And I should say at the top that I spent a ton of time on this the last couple of days. It is one of the most complicated subjects I've ever like dug deep into for this show because there's so many different militias and political factions and ethnic groups and external factors involved. And a lot of them have confusing acronyms and names and they rebrand and they switch sides. So we're not going to go into all the details, but we wanted to explain why this matters and why listeners should care because the short version is that Ethiopia could be on the cusp of reigniting a civil war that just a few years ago led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. And so, you know, I think that's a very important part of the story. And then though, we could see this conflict bleed over or merge with the war in Sudan, which is the currently the worst humanitarian conflict in the world. And also it's on the border of Somalia where there has just been chronic decades long instability and terrorism. So that's like the scale of the challenge. And just for background, Ethiopia is a country of 130 million people. It's like long and quite proud history that goes back centuries. It was one of the only countries in the global South never to be colonized. Christians and Muslims were living side for centuries. It is home to to the African Union. It carries a lot of geopolitical weight, but it's an economic potential in part because of conflict and instability. And the most recent civil war that we covered a bunch over the last few years, Ben, it went from basically like our election night 2020 through November 2022. The death toll is estimated between several hundred thousand and up to 600,000 people. It's hard to get information out of the area, so no one really knows. That 2022 peace agreement that froze the fighting was a very important and well-executed piece of diplomatic work by the Biden administration. But implementing the deal required ongoing diplomacy that never materialized and also funding that Elon Musk doged. They were trying to disarm these militia groups. That requires money. He's got to pay these guys pensions when they lose their day job of fighting and that money went away. So now there's concern that the country's on the precipice of another conflict between the Ethiopian government and a group called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front or TPLF. Excuse a little more backstory here just because, again, it's worth understanding. So the roots of the conflict in the 70s and 90s that Ethiopia was ruled by this socialist military junta. The main ethnic groups in Ethiopia overthrew the junta in the 90s. That led to the creation of Eritrea, a very weird country that we can talk about. Um, and this government structure in Ethiopia, where essentially these three, main ethnic groups, the Oromos, the Aparas, and the Tigrayans were given some like regional autonomy. Fast forward to 2018, Abiy Ahmed becomes prime minister. He thinks that Ethiopia's regional factionalism and this power sharing is holding the country back. So he undertakes this project to create a more unified country and a national government that is stronger, which is not inherently bad as a vision. But in practice, he exploits and exacerbates these regional tensions to implement that vision. And his actions lead to both real and perceived sense among some of these groups that they were losing. They were like political losers, especially the Tigrayans or the TPLF because they were in charge before Abiy was elected, that they lost their status. They camped to the northern Tigray region. Um, and so they were, you know, they lost their power, but also they were concerned about the setup going forward because, um, they just felt like they were going to be treated unfairly. So those are the kind of internal issues. Then there's a whole bucket of external factors and challenges that I want to get into, but I want to pause there. And let you get a fucking word in here, um, about just kind of like the past six years and just sort of the, the, the internal dynamics within Ethiopia and the scale of this conflict here. Well, yeah, I mean, it's, and you're right to point out that this is, was a good piece of diplomacy by the Biden administration, right. Um, you know, who we've been hard on about other things. Um, but, uh, the, the reality is I'd highlight like the international piece and then the Ethiopian piece, and then some of these risks on the international side, you're absolutely right. Like it's, it's both the dozing of USAID, but, but it's also kind of the perfect storm of something that would normally have a lot of people working to avert this from happening. You get a fragile ceasefire and normally you'd have, uh, USAID providing the kind of funding you talk about, um, us diplomats showing up a lot. You know, there'd be some envoy for this special envoy for the state department would really be working. This is the kind of thing that when people talk about, it's interesting when people talk about, it's interesting when people talk about the kind of dismantling the state department and the exodus of experts, which is all true. You know, sometimes people think about like Ukraine or actually these issues almost suffer more because these are the issues that are usually really handed over to the experts in the foreign service, people with decades of experience in the horn of Africa. I can promise you that most of those people are gone because they don't want to work for Trump or because they got, you know, mini dozed. Remember Rubio fired a bunch of people. And so that hurts. And then again, the UN system, this is like a classic issue where the UN security council, the UN system international, you know, whether it's peacekeeping or post-conflict resourcing, um, all of that stuff like is not working anymore because just nobody's paying attention to it. Nobody's resourcing it. Um, nobody wants to pick up the ball and run with it. And so if you, if you take the absence of USAID, the absence of us diplomacy, frankly, even other kinds of diplomacy, because everybody's focused on Iran or Sudan or like this thing starts to fester and there's no UN structure around it. So then inside of Ethiopia, like you have a situation where, um, the, uh, TPLF, uh, and Tigray, as you said, these people ran Ethiopia like for 30 years. Um, and I mean, when I was there, I went, I remember going to Addis and with Obama in like 2015, like, you know, they, they were in charge, like, and so they lost all their power. They won this like, I'm shrinking Island. And, and what's interesting here is, you know, uh, Abiy Ahmed, you know, he won the Nobel peace prize, which is amazing because he made this peace deal with Eritrea in part, cause he was, you know, it turned out he wanted to isolate these guys. Now what they did in the vacuum is they kind of went around and made some allies in the area. Like these are other groups. I mean, just to further complicate it, other groups that had beef with the government, but also had beef with the TPLF and they kind of, you know, built their own little tag team. Um, it's not clear, like who, kind of resume this fighting. Um, yeah, the seven armed groups announced a coalition and announced that they were going to take down the government. Most of the fighting so far has been in the North, but it's not clear they have the capacity to do any of the things they announced necessarily. Yeah. They, and, and, but you know, provocative to announce that. Yes, for sure. So, so, so you have these people who are kind of like you're fighting to kind of reclaim some power, some autonomy, you know, maybe a top of the government. I think that's a pretty tall task. Um, and, and, and you're just looking at this and it's, it's like not like a problem, it's a problem with an obvious solution unless there's like heavy mediation that can come in because, you know, I, I think very few people think left to their own devices, the Ethiopian government and the TPLF and these other armed groups can, can reach some agreement. It's going to take external actors. Yeah. And just to get to the, the external actors and the way this has become or could become even more of a proxy war, just worth like sort of touching on like, so Eritrea and Ethiopia, they fight a brutal civil war in the late nineties. As you mentioned, Abiy Ahmed got the, the Nobel peace prize in 2019 for signing the, peace agreement with the Eritreans, but then he allies with the Eritreans to take out the TPLF or the Tigrayans. But now the Ethiopian government thinks that Eritrea is helping the TPLF. So their old enemy is now their new enemy. There's the Emiratis show up in all the worst conflict zones, Ben. So you have the, they act like arsonists in this part of Africa. They are selling the Ethiopians weapons and drones. I believe the Turks are selling drones, the Ethiopians as well. Also though, we've talked about Sudan a lot and how the UAE is providing the RSF, which is one of the militia groups fighting the Sudanese government as part of that civil war. Sudan believes that the RSF or maybe even the Emiratis on their behalf are flying drones from bases in Ethiopia, bombing targets in Khartoum and then flying back. They also think that the UAE is shipping weapons to the RSF via Ethiopia and that there's RSF training camps on Ethiopian soil. So the Emiratis are backing funding, arming a lot of this. Then there's Egypt. Ethiopia and Egypt have a longstanding dispute over water access and this massive hydroelectric dam or power plant that the Ethiopians built on the Nile river. It's one of the wars Trump says he solved, by the way. Yeah. Never was a war. Hasn't solved it. There's, there's a lot of analysts. So that's a huge flashpoint and point of tension. There's also a lot of analysts who think that the Egyptians want a weaker Ethiopia. So they just stir shit up to kind of weaken them. And then there's Somalia. So Ethiopia is landlocked. There's basically two ways that Abiy Ahmed could get access to the sea. One is by taking Eritrea. The other is by recognizing Somaliland as an independent country. He's flirted with that outcome. Kind of walked it back because it pissed off all the other countries, but that's- Except Israel. Israel's on it. Right. The Israelis are. So those are all the regional factors. So there's just this internal conflict in Ethiopia surrounded by external tensions and conflicts. And to your point about the diplomacy, like the person I think who was in charge of this, is Masaad Boulos, who's Tiffany Trump's fucking husband's dad, right? Like the fake billionaire, was he like a car salesman or something? Right. And so the diplomatic piece, it's so frustrating is over and over again. Everything that Jared and Witkoff pass on, they give to this guy. I mean, quite literally, that's what his job is. And like, again, with Sudan, with this conflict, like it feels like a really important piece of this is, is putting pressure on the Emiratis to stop funding all these places. It's always like, 20th on the to-do list for the Biden administration and for the Trump administration. Apparently the US ambassador, one of the ambassadors in the region put out a statement that sided with Ethiopia and attacked the TPLF, which is like on some levels understandable, but if we want to be an honest broker, that's not going to work. And then like, we just need to put pressure on the Egyptians, the Saudis, the Emiratis to stop fucking around. And also Trump, I guess, just got rid of sanctions on Eritrea. He just like kind of let them lapse. So I'm not sure why, but it just feels like- Not only is there no real diplomatic effort, but we're kind of maybe making things worse. Yeah. A bit of like a bull in a China shop where stuff is already breaking. And yeah, because you, what should happen, right? In addition to kind of the US role that we talked about or the potential UN role, like the African Union, the African Union has actually made some constructive statements. That's like kind of a grouping of African countries that can come in and mediate disputes. They actually have familiarity with this, you know, this situation. And so, you know, it's like, this conflict, but. - Awkward for them since they're based And in Addis, they're in a Chinese built building, quite literally in Addis Ababa. But I guess one way to communicate this to people is like, what's the concern here, right? Well, number one, there's a massive humanitarian concern, like hundreds of thousands of people have died. Like if this resumes, you know, we've had issues with famine, we've had issues with like mass civilian deaths. And so that should be enough to care about it. I think beyond that, if you just look at this region, right, I mean, this is right across like the Red Sea from Yemen. You know, like there's just war everywhere, like Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea. All the shipping for the Bab al-Mandab Strait. All the ship, yeah, yeah. And my concern is like the Emiratis in particular, but you could also kind of lay this on some of the other regional actors, the Saudis, there's this kind of doctrine now of just kind of funding these projects. You know, and, and creating like chaos and violence as kind of this weird means of, of pushing the instability out, you know, and at a certain point when there's so much of that activity taking place, you know, we, we, we, we talk about like world war, like these conflicts, just like the worst case scenario is that they all just kind of start to blend together. Cause that's our, if you think that's alarmist, like that's already happened. Like the war in Yemen is clearly tied to the war in Iraq. Iran, which is clearly tied to, to some extent to kind of Israel's post October 7th response. And then suddenly this war is somehow attached to that. And the Emiratis are in Sudan. I mean, again, like picture this whole region, just kind of descending into different groups and proxy groups. And, and that's why you're right. Like, as with the case in Sudan, you, you have to go to the people that are, are fomenting some of this and providing some of these arms. There's also concerns. Like Eritrea, like I, I know some Eritreans too, like man, they've had the same fucking dictator since like the early nineties. Yeah. For folks who don't know, it's often referred to as the North Korea of Africa because it is this, uh, military police state. You can be conscripted for like literally decades into the military. There is like no, there's no freedom of speech. Like the, I don't think they have a constitution that has actually been working for decades. I don't think their parliament's met since like the early two thousands. They just had this old guy. Yeah. An 80 year old guy. Who just survives by, cause his people hate him. He survives on this proxy, you know, like just, you know, for hires. Yeah. He likes to fuck around with other countries all the time. Yeah, just fuck around with other countries. But the other piece, one more thing to be concerned about too, is that there've been like pretty significant refugee flows, you know, into Europe from Eritrea because people are desperate and we know that those refugee flows then foment far right backlashes, you know, all this stuff is connected, you know, um, and so you, you would like to think that someone can step in. Um, or that Abiy Ahmed can, you know, figure out some way to, to make a deal, but we should watch this. We spent a lot of time on this in 21 and 22, but because if this tips over into full scale fighting, like in this environment, which is much worse environment than even 21, 22, this could become a major regional conflagration. Yeah. The environment is worse in this time. It could be an out and out conflict between two nation states, not just Abiy Ahmed versus like the TPLF and the North. It could be Eritrea versus Ethiopia. Like two really well armed militaries going at full scale war. And who fought in the past, who fought in the past. And like, you know, if I were pitching, you know, briefing Trump on this, on why he should care, it's like, sir, even if you don't care about a single Ethiopian, you got the sir down, I got the sir down and you should care because by the way, this is one of those wars where very little reporting came out, but eventually when it did, like the atrocities were just like unspeakable, the sexual violence. But if Trump cares about migration flows and the instability, like after the Syrian conflict, for example, imagine like a hundred or 50 million Ethiopians are like fleeing a conflict. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just flowing across the world, right? So it could destabilize the region, Europe, other countries. This is one where, you know, you really need mediation and you're looking at it, the world and you're thinking like, who is the mediator? Yeah, who's going to do it? I mean, like again, African Union, I mean, like you want some regional buy-in here, but a part of that though, is that, I'm sorry to, but I remember, I remember when I was in the United States, I remember, you know, when I, when we were in government, it was kind of like, you know, the US would quietly get together like Kenya and other, you know, like it takes some, some doing to kind of create the regional groupings that can form a solution. And there's just kind of nobody calling the play. And so every nation is making its own hedges and that's how you get these proxy wars. And that's a recipe for actually the bad outcomes. The former president of Nigeria is the AU's like designated envoy, but like he can't do this by himself. No, exactly. They're going to be like low level. Shuttle diplomacy, but you need like senior leader levels to be able to go to the Emiratis, the Saudis, the Egyptians and say, stop. And resources to say, like you said, like we'll pay salaries or we'll, you know, we'll, we'll try to reconstruction assistance and Tigray. I mean, it just, that stuff is just not existent right now. Yeah. By the way, thank you to Peter Coronto who worked on these issues at the end of C for Biden and talked to me about it this morning. And also Leslie and Warner who wrote a great background briefing for just security. Those are really useful. And also jumped on that. And also the crisis group did a great paper on this. By the way, people ask us sometimes for recommendations. We've mentioned crisis group, just security is a great resource. If people check out our website, all things, international law, international kind of war, law of war, like check it out. Ben, as you know, election day is coming up. Taking back Congress is going to come down to just a few competitive seats. So our buddies at Vote Save America, they're launching a new thing. It's called their action clubs. They are based on kind of the latest tactics and tools that we think can help make a difference. One is called Club Digi. Where you're going to boost helpful information online and get the social media algorithms working to push that out and get it to more people. Then there's Club Vopro where you get trained on your rights and how to keep other voters safe and informed as they cast their ballots. And then finally, Club Relational, where you learn about one of the two most important organizing tactics of this era, which is talking to people in your life and making sure they have a plan to vote. Go to VoteSaveAmerica.com to get started now. Bring some friends with you. This message has been paid for by Vote Save America. It is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. And one more thing, if you're planning to join us at CrookedCon, especially if you're a friend of the pod, remember, early bird pricing ends on October 6th. 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And it will have implications for the UAE specifically, for soccer, and for foreign ownership of teams in all the leagues. But first, Ben, here are some people with British accents explaining the details. It just sounds better from there. The Premier League has put out a statement in relation to Manchester City, and it's mind-boggling. It's absolutely incredible. They're basically saying that Manchester City have been found guilty of all charges related to breaches of Premier League financial rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. They've been basically accused of sham sponsorship, image rights, and other arrangements inflating revenue by more than £900 million. Kieran, can you, as simply as possible, because I'm pretty sure most people listening will know, just run through what they've been found guilty, or what we know they've been found guilty of. Three things. First of all, disguising money from the owner and pretending that it's sponsorship money. So that's artificially inflating your revenue. Secondly, paying people off book, which suppresses your costs. Both of those go into your PSR calculations. And thirdly, not complying with the Premier League investigation into their finances. So that was from a podcast called That's Football. And then the Guardian's Football Weekly podcast. We're getting a glimpse into your library. Roger Bennett and Rory Smith over at Ben & Blazers, they actually did an excellent breakdown of all the details that folks should listen to if they want to go deeper. And also, I'm going to steal liberally from them here so that I can sound smart. I just want to say that Pablo Torre kind of got scooped on this one, man. This is something he could have found out. So, very well said. It sounds like aspiration. It sounds like the Clippers deal. Okay, that's why I want to talk to you about this because I know you love this. The main buckets, again, it's like, fake the. They created these fake sponsorship deals to disguise the amount that the club was spending, the Man City was spending. So, the way the old rules of the Premier League and UEFA basically said, it capped the amount of losses you could have. So, you couldn't just, like, spend yourself into a hole to lose because others, you know, couldn't afford to do that. So, what the owners of the Man City did is they had, like, an Emirati airline pretend to be a sponsor of the club to falsely inflate their revenue so they could spend more money on paper. But really, it was just the owners pumping more money. It was pumping their own money into their own. Second, they paid players off the books, which, like you mentioned with Pablo Torre, this is the Kawhi Leonard Clippers situation that's pretty familiar. And then, also, they just refused to participate in the investigation, which just makes it seem like it's going to be hard for the league not to come down on them pretty hard. Because if you flagrantly, like, break the laws for a decade and then you say, piss off when they try to investigate it, like, they seem like they have to punish you. Just, again, for those who don't follow soccer, that cheating really, really helped. Man City won eight Premier League titles, four FA League Cups, and one Champions League under the current Emirati ownership. Man City says they're innocent. They said they're going to appeal. No penalties have been announced, and they maybe haven't been decided. But the process has been going on for years. It could go on for years longer. But the punishment could range from fines to point deductions to relegation or expulsion from the Premier League. And then, Ben, there's the even more complicated question of, like, do you strip away the titles from Man City in those years and award them to other clubs? And if they do that, could they open Man City up to legal liability? Because imagine you're a Premier League club. You didn't make the Champions League one year because Man City beat you out. If you make the Champions League, you get tons of revenue from TV rights and sponsorships and all this other shit. Could you then sue Man City? Because I think that happened to another club called Everton in a similar situation. And so, zooming out for us, though, I think the interesting thing is you have this collision of, like, state-owned entities and sports leagues. Yeah. And the reality is the rules were just not built to play at this level and to have organizations with unlimited money. And where the ownership's goals aren't just winning or making a profit, it's, like, sports washing, soft power, reputation stuff. It's just, like, a fascinating question. There's a lot of overlapping circles here. And so, I'll bring my non. I'm not as big of a soccer fan as you. Although, I. What does this mean for Erling Haaland's? Isn't he on Man City? Good question. Because we all felt, you know, for those who. who remember the good old days of the World Cup, remember we all felt them with Erling Haaland, they're like, it would suck if he's, like, somehow fucked by this. There was a hilarious AI video of a fake him talking about all the clubs he was going to beat this year, and they were, like, tier two and three clubs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, that'd be kind of funny if he's, like, relegated. Just beating the fuck out of someone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But put that aside. Yeah, so, first of all, like, this points to, like, you know, obviously, massive corruption. It does make. I have a few questions about Tommy. Like, one is. Part of me kind of wonders, and I don't. I say there was no knowledge, but you kind of feel with soccer, like, if you pointed the camera really closely at a lot of places, you'd find, you know, corruption. Certainly FIFA. Yeah, exactly. And so, is this the beginning of, you know, people start pulling these threads in other places, what are they going to find? Which, by the way, is another, you know, the NBA is a whole other question as to whether there's similar things happening there. The other questions that are really interesting, though, do you. Like, the British economy. Because we talked about, like, Boris Johnson, you know, at one point, like, thinking about whether to get involved in blocking ownership of. But there's been this kind of implicit deal where they kind of. First, it was the Russian oligarchs, but then a lot of these Gulf, you know, oligarchs come in and they just pour money into the British economy through sports, through other investments, through real estate. And clearly, what this shows is that some of that money, and this is kind of an open secret in London, you know, is kind of not following the same rules that, you know, back when these franchises didn't cost as much and. Right. Like, the massive money coming in comes with massive corruption at times. And if you start cracking down on that, that will lead to, like, less corrupt outcomes. But actually, it could be damaging to, like, to London, to the British economy. You know, it's that scale, that scale of money. Yep. And this is a big question for all of us today, is, like, you know, turning off these spigots and starting to hold these people accountable, you know, will have some economic impact. That leads me to the kind of future, like, version of this, because this is obviously something I had to do in the past. The valuations of sports franchises are going through the roof. Like, you and I have talked about this offline. And part of what you see, Tommy, like, some of this AI money is starting to go into sports. A lot of venture capital, like, Ari Emanuel's getting into live events because as AI, like, starts taking out other entertainment, live events, like sports in particular, is going to become more valuable. Jared Kushner's brother set up an entire, like, investment entity to invest in this kind of stuff because they felt it was AI-proof. That was what was behind this whole attempt to, like, privatize the FIFA. Yeah. They got shut down. I actually think this raises fascinating, like, dilemmas, because what we've seen is in a cash-poor world, the cash-rich people are the most corrupt people. It's like, you know, whether it's from the Gulf or whether it's from Russia or whether it's our American oligarchs are just as corrupt. I'm not picking on the Gulf here. And so I think sports is going to have to really get its arms around this or else it's just going to get drowned in this money, which clearly has happened in the Premier League and other places. Yeah, and to your point about, like, boy, don't look too close or you won't like what you'll see, the Saudis bought Newcastle United, and the league was willing to go along with the fiction that the Saudi government wouldn't be running the team because it was going to be run by the Saudi Foreign Wealth Fund or owned and operated by the Saudi Foreign Sovereign Wealth Fund. The chairman of that fund is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's exactly the one that I think Boris Johnson kind of thought about messing with. But again, like, we don't have to dwell on this, but I think this is a really important topic for us to think about because sports used to be about kind of like community, like the. the local rich guy on the team. Richest guy in Pittsburgh bought this deal. And what does it mean for sports? Because this is going to come. the U.S., because at a certain point, these franchises become so valuable that they're going to need golf sovereign wealth fund money. Private equity or golf money. Yeah, yeah. It's the only one that's going to be able to afford them. It's a really important and, like, kind of brewing question. And also, like, for all the other owners, like, you know, these giant rich guys come in, they overpay, it props up the valuation of all the other teams, so they're benefiting on some level, but eventually, it's going to be unsustainable. Two more things. So, we just want to walk you guys through some of the big developments in tech and AI news. I don't know if you saw, Ben, right before we started recording, Trump came out of this lunch with all the big AI company leaders. He did, like, an impromptu press conference at the Sticks out in the driveway. I think what happened was he literally saw Speaker Johnson and all the tech guys doing a press avail. He saw it on TV, so he walked his ass out to the front of the White House to, like, do his own. So, if you want to see what the, like, oligarchy looks like, there it is. In tech news, OpenAI paused its latest model. I think they scrapped it, the GPT-6-1 Astra, because it was lying all the time. It was deceiving us all the time. So, that's great news in the wake of the other model, you know, hacking a website called Hugging Face. We also learned that an OpenAI model hacked an Australian government healthcare website. OpenAI described it as, an OpenAI model discovered a way to gain non-public access to the service and ran commands, retrieved internal files, credentials, and aggregate statistics and wrote files. However, individual patient or client records were not accessed but also they did a terrible job and were very slow in notifying the Australian government. Like, God help us if this happens with the Chinese government, right? And then there were a lot of other, there's tons of other coverage of all these other open AI incidents. There's also reports, Ben, that the U.S. and the Russians worked together to weaken guardrails around deadly autonomous weapons. So, like, that's… Glad we're doing that. Yeah. So, I don't know. There's, like, a million different stories we could talk about. I'm just wondering, kind of, like, what's your temp check on AI these days? My temp check is, like, through the roof. I haven't plugged my substack in a while. I wrote, like, a pretty detailed substack about my AI alarmism after a week at the U.N. General Assembly last week that was dominated by AI discussions. That was kind of the hallway conversation everywhere. So, check that out. Notes on the stories we tell. A quick summary of my anxieties. There's so many. I think one way to think about this is it is now apparent that whether, you know, we can debate how far we are from AGI, you know, superintelligence. Recursive self-improvement, all these things you hear. What is clear is that these models are beginning to act in ways that the people who are creating them don't understand and that are evading human control, right? And, like, that is the thing that has, like, always been the most alarming, whether you're talking about, you know, species extinction and the robots killing us or you're just talking about some things we've discussed, offensive cyber attacks that cause, like, a geopolitical conflict or cause significant loss of value. Offensive cyber attacks that have some impact on society, like a grid goes down or, you know, an aviation system is imperiled. Autonomous weapons that are beginning to make their own targeting decisions, which we've seen in the Russians begin to use in Ukraine and civilians have died because of that. Like, this is the scenarios that people, you know, two or three years ago would say, like, well, this would be bad if this started to happen. Those scenarios are beginning to happen now, right? And at the precise time. That that is happening. We had two events that were dedicated to examining whether AI should be regulated. Put aside Dario Amadei, Anthropic CEO, periodically telling us he needs to be regulated and yet he keeps building what he's building, right? One was the all-in pod summit, which, you know, happened a couple weeks ago, where, like, literally because David Sachs is, like, the AI czar and profiting enormously off of this, something that Democrats should, you know, look into. If they, you know, take back control of Congress. You have all these people kind of coming through to say, no, no, no, you know, like, Jensen Wang, you know, the CEO of NVIDIA, like, let's keep going with this. It's, you know, the risks are overblown. Well, maybe that's because NVIDIA makes the chips that make the compute power that depend on this kind of, you know. So, and then you have Trump at the UN say he's not going to regulate. And, in fact, he's just going to rebrand it superintelligence. Now, again. Like, what should be happening in a normal world is the U.S. regulating these models, insisting that there's a government testing regime before they're released into the world, that there's efforts to shut off certain AI development that's dangerous, that there are prohibitions on AI doing certain things, like, you know, around bioweapons, around, I would argue, autonomous targeting decisions, things of that nature. And, like, that's just not happening. It's not happening in the U.S. And that's what we should be talking to China about. To go back to the Chinese summit, the only thing that they've really said is that, like, Scott Besant, who, what the fuck does that guy know about AI? Nothing. Like, is just going to be talking to his counterpart about this. But they set up a hotline. Like, it's 1965. You have to have, like, a dedicated piece of wire from the U.S. to Beijing. Like, that's not how this system should work. Yeah. And I sense and I understand this. I don't know, Tommy, what do you think? Like, in your own conversations with people and, frankly, probably in how content does. In the same way that climate… Like, people would kind of not tune in. Like, we've seen it here at Cricket Media. Like, people, if you give people what they want, they don't want climate content because it's too crushing. Well, this one, I think we can't afford to tune out because the only thing that is going to compel these oligarchs and these, you know, our government to do something is the swing in public opinion. The data center backlash has been constructive. It's gotten politicians' attention. This is not a sustainable path we're on because it's a path in which there will be a catastrophic incident. And then… And then there'll be, like, a demand that you, like, nationalize these labs. But I'd rather not go through the catastrophic incident. Yeah, same here. I'm, like, I'm not, like, a full doomer. No, you're not. I'm pretty anxious about what we're reading. I'm not a full doomer, but I'm very anxious. I'm anxious because of what the people who know the most about these technologies are saying. And I also think, like, it is greatly compounded by the experience of social media in the last decade with a lot of these same people in charge. Mark Zuckerberg. Exact same people. Elon Musk. Sam Altman. They are greedy, selfish people. I do not trust them to do the right thing. I also, we also know that they fundamentally, even the smartest people in these companies, the geniuses, they don't understand the technology that they're building, really, or exactly how it works. And so, how are you going to build safeguards or tests or ways to constrain something that you fundamentally don't understand, that is fundamentally kind of random in some sense? And Trump is asleep at the switch, or he's paid off, or he just wants the stock market up. And there's this, like… All of the above, probably. You're right. There's a debate about, like, you know, we talked about this on PSA a little bit, like, is this a normal technology? Is this a normal technology where you can kind of just, like, engineer your way through the problem, or is it not normal? It's new. And I'm just leaning towards the latter, and it feels like these guys are going to need to do, like, novel science to figure out what is happening here, how to control it, whether or not it's safe, and if so, how to keep us all safe. And we are racing forward as fast as humanly possible for no good reason, with no upside for any of us except for the companies that are trying to IPO. And that is making me very angry. Yeah, you know. You keep hearing about how anxious people are at these companies, but these people are also making, like, gobs of money at the same time. And look, we'll revisit this because there's too much to talk about. I will say that the China excuse is one that's used. Look, China has this technology. They're going to have this technology. So if you're worried about China, it's not just, like, a foot race. It's putting guardrails on it with the Chinese. By the way, also, one of the ways that Chinese advance, especially… Because they have less computing power, is they just distill our models. You know, so, like, Anthropic or OpenAI releases a model or, you know, fucking Mark Zuckerberg open sources Lama, the meta model. And they just kind of reverse engineer it. So if we stop, well, that's going to, you know, it's going to be harder for them to race ahead. So just, like, this China thing is, I think, overblown. If anything, the China thing compels regulation and negotiation with the Chinese, not, like, just rushing forward. I'm so tired of that excuse. It's so unconvincing. Yeah. The amount of damage we've done to our… To ourselves as a society through our own decisions over the last few decades. Like, we don't need the Chinese to fuck us up. We can do it ourselves. Yeah. Finally, I agree, we should come back to this again next week. Finally, Ben, so, lighter subjects to end. Good. Trump 2.0, they either have failed to name ambassadors to, like, most, a lot of positions, I think, like, 50%. Or they've named some of the dumbest, most corrupt, venal people possible. We have had fun on this show making fun of Calista Gingrich, Newt Gingrich's spouse, who was ambassador to both… Sir Lindh and Lichtenstein. But it gets way worse than, like, the weird videos she's putting out. We've got Jared Kushner's criminal dad as the U.S. ambassador to France. Mike Huckabee is, like, the zealot Trump put in Israel. Carrie Lake was nominated for a post in Jamaica, because that makes sense. And the Washington Post reported that 90% of Trump's ambassador nominations have gone to political supporters rather than career diplomats. Back to the point you were making about Ethiopia. So, we also don't have ambassadors in Germany, Russia. Or Saudi Arabia. Unimportant places. Totally normal. So, I just want to tell you a couple examples about some ambassadors and how they're performing. You forgot Kushner. Kushner. Oh, you got my… Charles is my guy at the top. I missed it. I was, like… No, no. I was checking up something I'm going to drop. You're finding knowledge. I want to tell you some examples of how some of these guys are performing, guys and gals. And then you can rank the selection on a scale of good choice, great choice, to finally Mr. Trump, sir. I literally couldn't have picked anyone better. If I had all the time and resources in the world, sir. First one, you mentioned him. Charles Kushner. Did you know that he has been summoned twice by France's foreign affairs ministry and reprimanded for interfering in French internal affairs? And both times, he's just ignored the request and refused to show up? Yeah, I did know that. I did not know that until today. I did know that. How does that work? I mean, because he just doesn't give a fuck. And in normal times, I mean, here's how that works. In normal times, that would cause a huge problem back in Washington. And the president or the secretary of state would be like, what the fuck are you doing? But Trump doesn't give a shit. It's Charles Kushner. It's Jared's dad. And so, like, it's like everything else with Trump. Like, the norms would be, we better recall that ambassador or that ambassador better go in and talk to, you know, the French, you know, foreign ministry or Macron's office. But because he has cover of, you know, Donald Trump, like, he just couldn't fucking ignore it. Remember, didn't Cory Booker vote to confirm Charles Kushner? He did. It's another reason I'm just, I'm not. I'm not ever going to be on the Cory Booker train. Terrible choice, sir. Yeah. The Wall Street Journal, you mentioned this at the top. They did a long piece on our U.S. ambassador degrees, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr.'s ex, Gavin Newsom's ex, Fox News host. It talks about her relationship with this young lobbyist for this Greek construction company. There's clearly, like, a subtext. Yeah. Maybe a romantic relationship. That's very weird. But, like, the malfeasance is all the way she's steering contracts to this one company. In a way that just feels illegal. Then, also, there's the part where Kimberly reportedly threatened to collapse the Greek government during a shouting match with Greece's energy minister. Good job or great job? Here's the thing. You have to bear in mind, first of all, I love the Greeks. And the Greeks have a history of the U.S. doing this. Like there was a coup. There was literally like a right-wing government in Greece shorthanded the regime of the colonels. Now, that is never a good thing, right? Like you never want the regime of the colonels. That's a low-level hint. In the late 60s, like the U.S., like, you know, it was always debated how much we were behind it. But like, you know, certainly the Greeks believe we're behind it. So she's not only doing this in a European country, in a NATO ally, but she's also doing it in a country with like a pretty recent historical memory of the U.S. fucking around. Jesus. So, which I'm sure she's totally unaware of. But because she wants to keep the gravy train going to her subtextual, you know, friend like what she's going to, Kimberly Goifel, I could never pronounce her name, is going to like collapse the Greek government. Not, I mean. I guess there's no other ambassadors in the region. So she's playing this outsized role and like messing with the Romanians. Macedonia, I don't know what she's doing. But like, look, the bottom line is this is the perfect Trump ambassador. So, sir, I couldn't have picked a better choice because this is like the perfect manifestation of how little of a shit Donald Trump cares about anybody else. Remember her insane 2020 convention speech when she ended by just shouting into the void? Yeah. Because it was literally outside with no crowd. Yeah. I forget what her exact quote was, but maybe we could drop it in here. It was fun. Let's drop it in because I remember that. It was great. It was the COVID convention in the White House lawn. Yes, yes. The White House lawn. Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream, the best is yet to come. Over in Italy, neighboring Italy. That's a thing that happened. Remember that? Yeah, a thing that happened. Tillman J. Fertitta, I think is this person's name. He's Trump's richest ambassador. I think he's worth 11 billion. He is the president of the United States. He's doing like a summer like listening tour and meeting people on his super yacht, which just feels very in touch with the kind of economic moment to just drive around on a super yacht and I guess live off it and then do events on it. That's a sweet case. I didn't know that. I mean, it's perfect, right? I mean, these are all perfect ambassadors for Trump. I will say, you know, people could, what about us that like we had donor ambassadors in some of these European countries. I will say like across administrations, like you would usually try to select people that have like a modicum of class, you know? Or intelligence or success. Yeah, intelligence. Like the people could kind of be at the center of like the kind of political social scene in Rome or wherever they were. This kind of crass like on a yacht. Like what's the fucking point, by the way, too? Like the cool thing, the cool thing about being ambassador is that- Go live in Italy. You have a sweet residence. You've got a sweet residence and you're the hub for all this activity and you're hosting dinners with like business leaders and politicians and media figures and not just like hanging out. If you want to just hang on your yacht, you don't have to be the fucking ambassador in the first place. Just go to the Mediterranean and hang on your yacht. In fact, I'd go and I'd say to Trump, sir, if this guy wants to be on the yacht, like maybe just send me to Italy. I'll live in the residence. I'll take that job in a heartbeat. Yeah, we had a few duds. Political nominees or donors or whatever who got pushed out. But then we had some like really great people from business, finance, politics, like Matthew Barzin, our friend, who was like, had two different posts and was beloved and became this like cultural epicenter for these countries. We had, in Germany, we had Phil Murphy who became the governor of New Jersey. Competent dude, right? John Emerson. I mean, so you can have good political ambassadors in these places. That's not what these people are. Yeah, you got to want the job. And then finally in Belgium, Ben, Ambassador Ben. Bill White picked a huge fight with the Belgian government over who was allowed to perform circumcisions. Belgian law says you should be a medical professional. White called that anti-Semitic because a lot of oils are not doctors and made this a big thing. So that feels like the thing we should be fighting with the Belgians about. Yeah, this guy, I have noticed because he keeps stepping on rakes too. Like the Belgians are not the easiest people in the world to like piss off. I mean, that's like, what is this guy? I mean, we actually, we had a bit of a mini scandal in Belgium ourselves, but that's another, just Google it. But yeah, like this guy's like, what's he doing over there? You know, like, what's the point? Well, that's it. Why do you want to spend your time? When I look at all this stuff, I wonder like, what is the, I mean, actually, Kimberly Goifel, I guess we see what her point is. You know, I'm sure she's probably, well, lining up the next contract. You know, yeah. We read the Wall Street Journal piece because there's lots about her trying to set up contracts and companies. And who knows how much of that is flowing back her way. Right. Kushner, I'm sure, is using that fancy residence in Paris to just do all kinds of deals and stuff. This guy, well, what the fuck is he doing? He's like carrying out his like anti-woke, you know, calling people anti-Semite agenda in Belgium. Like, what's the point? You could do that here. Fighting about circumcisions. Okay. That is it for our segment on Trump's incredible ambassadors. Thank you for listening to the news section of the show, but stick around for my conversation with Sam Begurski. We're going to talk all about what is happening on the ground in Haiti and what the Trump administration is doing, how cruel it is, and what the international community could or should be doing to try to right the ship to the extent possible. So check that out. Pod Save the World is brought to you by SimpliSafe. When your home is under threat, you need more than a recording of a break-in. You need it prevented. SimpliSafe stops break-ins before they start. When a burglar steps onto your property, AI-powered cameras alert live U.S.-based agents who take action to deter them. And call for police dispatch. Unlike traditional security systems that only alert you after a break-in is already underway, SimpliSafe is designed to prevent the crime before it starts. They have AI-powered cameras that detect suspicious activity at the perimeter and alert live U.S.-based agents. SimpliSafe's agents assess the threat, they intervene, they speak through the cameras to scare off the intruders, and they call 911 dispatch. Our CEO, Lucinda, recently had a SimpliSafe system installed. She said the installation process was seamless, that the app was easy to use, it allows her to online arm and disarm the system and check the cameras from her phone. She now has total peace of mind knowing that her home is protected by SimpliSafe. Right now, you can get 50% off a new SimpliSafe system. Go to simplisafe.com slash crookedworld. That's simplisafe.com slash crookedworld for 50% off. And when you order, please write in Pod Save the World and How Did You Hear About Us survey to let them know we sent you. Don't forget, there's no safe like SimpliSafe. Hello, beautiful. I'm Amy Erick, founder of Madison Reed, a hair company I named after my daughter. My guest today is Sam Begurski. He's an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Sam visited Haiti this summer just before the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end a temporary protected status for Haitians living in the U.S. He wrote about the escalating gang violence, collapsing healthcare system, and the lack of access to food and any humanitarian support and the impact it's having on individuals there. So I'm very grateful, Sam, to you for this work. And the report you wrote up and for joining us today. Great to be with you, Tommy. Thank you. So you were in Haiti in June. You said it was your first trip there since you were there as a UNAID worker following the 2010 earthquake. I was actually there briefly around the same period of time. And I just remember it was like post-apocalyptic even then. In your piece, you wrote, quote, after the earthquake response 14 years ago, I remember thinking Haiti could not get worse. But in 2026, it has. Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is often described as like a literal war zone due to the escalating gang violence. Can you just describe like the security situation on the ground? What does that mean in practice when someone says it's, you know, Haiti is a war zone in the capital? Yeah, I think most Americans would be surprised to hear that 700 miles off the coast of Florida, there's an active war zone. But when I went to Haiti this summer, that's exactly what I found when I went to Port-au-Prince. Practically speaking, there are 26-odd gangs in Haiti in mostly the Port-au-Prince, metropolitan area. In 2024, they consolidated into a federation of sorts called Vive Ensemble. They weren't just taxing people in their neighborhoods, committing crimes. They were actually challenging the state, controlling territory, and displacing, at this point, over a million and a half people. So what that means as far as a war zone, from their standpoint, is these gangs are often fighting each other. They're fighting the state. People are fleeing. They're fighting violence in their neighborhoods. They're ending up in shelters. But it also means that the Haitian government's looking for a solution to fight back against them. And about a year and a half ago, they turned to Eric Prince, the former CEO of Blackwater, to help them put together a secretive police task force that's launching lethal drones towards these gang members. And the damage that that has brought to both the gangs and to civilians has been unsparing over the last year and a half. year and a half, would you get on the ground, it feels incredibly tense. You see burned out buildings, you see husks of cars that have been put into barricades to prevent police and civilians from accessing certain neighborhoods. And there's a feeling that something could go wrong really at any moment for aid workers, civilians, or Haitian authorities. Yeah, I want to ask you about Eric Prince in a minute. He's the former CEO of Blackwater for folks who don't know. And I sort of feel like it's never a good idea to send that guy anywhere. But you have a chart in your report that shows how there was just an explosion of violence not long after the then president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in 2021. Why? Why, in your view, did that incident lead to such an explosion of violence? So the assassination of Moïse is something that reads out of a Hollywood plot. It actually came together in South Florida through a small group of men in early 2021. Their goal was to launch a coup d'etat to install one of their own in the presidency in Haiti. They wanted to rig contracts that the government had for infrastructure to enrich themselves. They financed an operation that involved hiring a couple dozen Colombian mercenaries. They got money from SBA pandemic loans from the U.S. government to do this. And in July, they stormed his house and assassinated him in 2021. What followed was a crisis of governance. There was actually an earthquake shortly thereafter in the southern part of the country that devastated an entirely different region. And there was a vacuum that ensued. These gangs that had loosely controlled certain parts of the country, as I mentioned, came together into this federation in the years that followed and really began challenging the state itself. That being their goal was to run Haiti, these gang members. And they're led by one guy named Barbecue, who has a $5 million bounty from the U.S. government on his head. He's the face of the operation. But there's a really loose agreement between them. Sometimes they're cooperating against the state. Other times they're fighting against each other. And really, no matter what, civilians are caught in the crosshair. The government has lost control almost entirely of Port-au-Prince. At its peak, 90% of the city was being controlled by gangs. Wow. I mean, and there's like the parade. It's a parade of terrible things. It's just so unrelenting. I mean, you write that half of Haiti's gang members are now children. Food itself has become a, quote, weapon of war. Sexual violence is pervasive. I mean, how did the gangs in this gang warfare end up adopting, like, so many of the most evil practices you hear about warfare? These gangs are incredibly strategic. And they're now running transnational crime organizations that are importing guns from the United States to, um, fight each other and fight the state. They have consolidated control, not just of Port-au-Prince, but of some of these rural areas that are the breadbasket of the country. So they see their tactics as being a way to enrich themselves, uh, and empower their affiliates and ways that they're doing that. Like, for example, through food as a weapon of war, they're cutting off the suppliers, the farmers in these rural areas from their markets. So the people whose livelihoods depend on that are collapsing. But the people who are going hungry aren't getting food in those neighborhoods. And, you know, to give you the most extreme example of this, in 2023, in one neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil, these gangs crushed any incoming food, um, convoys from coming in. And even the aid workers couldn't get in. What ensued was a famine of 20,000 people, which in an urban environment is, you know, unbelievably rare. This isn't a situation where there's no food around. It's a situation where, the access control is being run by people who are preventing it from getting there. Um, but, you know, the other ways they're doing some of these power dynamics, uh, as, as you mentioned, is, you know, using sexual violence as a, as a weapon, uh, they'll come in, they'll conquer some of these different neighborhoods that they take control of. They'll, um, they'll brutally sexually assault families, um, children, you know, they're given a choice basically between, uh, fighting for these gangs, running for their lives. And, uh, you know, the end result is something that's, that's twofold type of terror. I mean, there's the terror of, um, losing your life in some of this, these fights, but, you know, what I saw and speaking with people on the ground there was, it was a psychological trauma and terror that people are living with every day. The gang members are completely in, in cahoots or, you know, collaborating with members of the Haitian national police. So if you come to a checkpoint, you see a Haitian national police officer, you don't know if that person is a gang member or actually, you know, a security figure that could protect you. And, and that type of, um, mental warfare that's going on in country was something that has just not been present. Um, and these gangs have escalated to a completely different level. And, you know, again, I don't want to make this too bleak for everybody, but I mean, you write that the world health organization says 37 of a hundred inpatient health facilities in Port-au-Prince are still functional. So there's, I mean, what, what is the health infrastructure? What's left at this point? The health infrastructure is dissolving, uh, in real time. And, um, I was able to visit five different clinics. I spent a day going around with, uh, Medicine Sans Frontieres. I spent time going around with the World Food Program and the Pan American Health Organization. And what you really see is, um, when these gangs take control of a neighborhood, they're destroying the infrastructure or they're extorting the, the people who remain there, including the health facilities. So there are really two options. Uh, you know, one is you run and you shut down your shop or you end up paying these people who, uh, will take whatever you'll give them, I assume. Um, but you know, that's that you mentioned is so striking because the caseload of patients in Port-au-Prince remains the same, which means the catchment zone that they're, they're now going to, to get healthcare is shrinking. And the patient loads for those healthcare centers remaining have doubled, um, in most cases. And that just leaves very few options for people. The other thing that's just an extraordinary challenge for everyday Haitians is getting healthcare itself. So, uh, if you live in a neighborhood like Cité Soleil that I mentioned, and you have no healthcare options, you're crossing gang territory to another part of the city to get healthcare, doing that is a risk to your life. You know, gangs will threaten it. If you leave, if you come back, they wonder if you're collaborating with the police or someone else. There's a deep mistrust and, you know, many people are just foregoing healthcare altogether. And so that kind of brutal lay down of the security situation and life on the ground in Haiti is why I think the president Trump's decision to end temporary protected status for Haitians feels like I'm searching for a better word than evil. Um, we're talking about, uh, an effort to send about 350,000 Haitians, many of whom have been in the United States, uh, for decades now back to this country at a time when the state department says, uh, you should not travel there under any circumstances because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping, et cetera. Um, uh, at a time when I think the charge called it a war zone, right? I believe you, you quoted him in there. We called it full scale urban warfare. Right. So, I mean, like, can you talk about like the, the cruelty of that decision and how it's possible that there could be a determination made by the state department on the other hand, that it's actually safe and okay to send Haitians back to Haiti? You just see this cognitive dissidence in the administration's policy. On the one hand, you have people like Stephen Miller and the, and Chrissy Noem from the DHS saying Haiti is safe. It's now, uh, improved actually the conditions enough that, that Haitians can return. Back to Haiti and they're going to be rounded up by ice and sent back. But then you have other parts of the administration completely contradicting that the state department, as you say, has a level four travel advisory citing terrorism, crime, and kidnapping as do not travel under any circumstances. Um, you have the FAA who has, uh, forbidden flights, commercial flights from the United States from going into Port-au-Prince because gangs opened fire on commercial aircraft in 2024. They struck a spirit airlines flight attendant in one of those cases, and they completely shut that down for, at this point, two years. You know, you have the department of defense calling this a counterinsurgency operation that they're putting together clear hold build. It sounds like Iraq and Afghanistan, um, you know, from a decade plus ago. And, and yet here we are, uh, ice calling people who had temporary protected status, uh, into their offices. They're putting ankle bracelets on them to monitor them in their communities. And, you know, when I've spoken to people who have lost their TPS status, this is an equally traumatizing situation. They're living in fear every day that they could be, uh, detained by ice, put in a holding cell and eventually deported back to a country with little more than the clothes on their back. Yeah. In which, you know, at worst could be a death sentence at best. There's no economic opportunity. They have no connections there in many cases, nowhere to work, no place to stay. I mean, it's just, it's a horrific thing to do to a human being. Um, the international community's efforts to help Haiti have been kind of sclerotic at best. There was this UN led or Kenyan led, um, stabilization force mission that just kind of failed. Um, that has been updated. I think it's called the Gang Suppression Force, which is, I believe, 5,000 international troops from places like Chad that I think are going to take the fight to the Haitians. Then there's Eric Prince, the Blackwater CEO, doing something with drones on the ground in Haiti. Can you just talk about what efforts are ongoing to combat these gangs at the moment? Yeah. So this Kenyan-led force, as you say, was a complete failure on all levels. And I think by anyone involved in it would admit as much. The Trump administration came up with this idea for a gang suppression force that had a higher ceiling of troops. It was approved by the UN Security Council exactly a year ago. So 5,500 troops made up of Chad, of Sri Lanka, of Cote d'Ivoire, and others to go in. They had a license to kill from the UN Security Council to use lethal force against these gangs. What we've seen one year on is a mission that cannot get off the ground. They have only put about 1,500 troops by last count into Haiti, despite having two-thirds more that need to be there, despite the urgency of the situation. They've really struggled to collect money to pay for this. And it's just half-baked at this point. And actually, today, the UN Security Council extended this gang suppression force, but they only did it for six months. And part of that is the political dynamic with China and Russia on the council, who are not on board with the intervention. But I think a bigger part of this speaks to the fact that the Trump administration is doing a poor job diplomatically in getting the international community to a place where they can support some type of stabilization and corollary humanitarian mission in the country. And a six-month resolution for a program that hasn't even scaled itself, I, for many years, was the top U.S. humanitarian negotiator in the Security Council. If we wanted a year, we wanted two years. We ended up with six months. It meant we were dealing with a very weak hand. And ultimately, that signals to me that those two countries who have veto over this gang suppression force are likely to want to see it wind down in the next year, which, looking out for Haiti's own future, does not seem like a positive development for their own security. Putting aside the use of lethal force, there are very few police officers there. There are very few ways of securing the country against these gangs at the moment. On the Prince side of it, this has been really behind closed doors. You know, the Arms Export Act that the State Department has to use to allow companies that Eric Prince runs, because he's an American, to get things like lethal drones and defense security support training to the Haitian National Police. They've authorized this, but we don't really know any details of it. When you listen to testimony from the State Department and the Defense Department, you don't really know any details of it. We don't really know any details of it. When you listen to the State Department and the Defense Department officials, they stay at arm's length from Prince's operation. But the fact is, he has described his work in Haiti as the definition of mercenary. I think that does not bode well for the future of a country who has had a lot of criminal activity in the past, that has had a pattern of abuse in terms of military, you know, dating back decades. And a Human Rights Watch report that came out, earlier this year, looked at the use of these lethal drones. They found over 1,200 people had been killed by them, including 43 civilians and 17 children. They've talked about the types of ways this lethal force is being used as potentially extrajudicial killings. This just doesn't seem like the way to get Haiti's future back on track. No, and the satellite photos, you know, that you before and after, like 2021 to today, that you post in the piece, you know, look like Gaza, frankly. They just look like, you know, the place has been just bombed to hell. Also, you know, in the piece, you do some math on kind of what typically is needed in normal times to secure a population, and then in a war zone, what is needed to secure a population. And the number of troops we're talking about through this UN-led force is just nowhere even close to what's necessary. So just to, if you could wave a magic wand and kind of put forward your own policy and implement it, like, what's the gist of what that would look like? What does Haiti need? Well, Haiti's humanitarian appeal is 40%, 47%. Funded at this point. So the first thing that we could do, you know, as the United States with others is fund the rest of that. And just to put in perspective what that delta, that gap of funding is, it's about $450 million, which last time I checked was the equivalent budget of this White House ballroom. So, you know, we're not talking about money that's unavailable. We should put that forward immediately. There are these development programs that have been cut because of the Trump administration's takedown of USAID. Last year, they cut the development assistance to Haiti by 48%. You know, to put in practical terms, what that involves, those are programs like PEPFAR, where people who were getting antiretrovirals are struggling because some of the wraparound programs that they received in addition to the medication involved food, involved transport, involved counseling, you know, all of that has been taken down. If you look at the livelihoods that Haitians are trying to build, that requires development assistance. The World Food Program had an amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, program, one they're still trying to keep afloat, that involved buying food locally from farmers and giving it to schools so that school children have meals to eat, which helps this nutrition program. It helps avoid things like famine in a country like Haiti. When you're not looking at the long term, you're not investing in those. That'd be the first part. You know, the second part is Haiti has been on the receiving end of so many bad ideas over the years. There's really, I think, good intentions from actually the World Food Program. So, you know, there's a lot of good people in the Trump administration right now who are trying to do the right thing for Haiti. But you have to think about the impact and consequences of what might happen. You know, in 2010, when I was in Haiti, peacekeepers brought cholera to a country that had none and ended up, you know, killing thousands of people in the years that followed. When you look at this kind of work around drones and mercenaries, you know, we know that these are not positives. So I think part of this thought has to be what damage can be done by further intervention more than just thinking we have the solution to Haiti. And, you know, the third part is that there just are no easy answers for this country. It's an incredibly complicated poly crisis, but it does require a long term commitment. And the U.S. is the sole figure, you know, in the Western Hemisphere and globally to make that happen. Last question, Sam. I mean, I read your piece and I just imagined driving around, you know, the city where I'd been, you know, 16 years ago and just, I mean, were you scared shitless? I mean, it's terrifying. There's all these people get kidnapped, even when the ransoms are paid. They're not necessarily let go. You talk about one individual, a man who worked for the Haitian police force, who was kidnapped with his six-year-old daughter. It's like every human being's worst nightmare. And yet you kind of dropped yourself in there to write this report. And I just wondered what that was like. I think what's so challenging for Haiti right now is most mainstream media cannot get into the country because it's so dangerous. And so telling this story just felt, for me, critical. You know, I love Haiti. I love Haitians. I want people to understand what's going on there right now and how the U.S. is playing a big role in shaping that future. So I did not feel too nervous, mostly because the people I was with, the United Nations, Doctors Without Borders, you know, these are people who are very smart. They understand the operating environment they're working in. They're not going to put their people in harm's way if it means getting kidnapped or potentially killed. You know, one thing I would say is the people I was with have an enormous privilege of a security bubble that they can work in. They have people paid on staff. The Haitians that are living their lives every day, the ones I talked about who are crossing gang lines to get health care, the people who are going to work to deliver the health care, they have none of that. And their lives are on the line every single time they step outside. One of the most tragic things I learned about on my trip was that I was in a hospital and I was I went back to my old office. I learned that a driver who had been there for two decades one morning was going to be picked up for work. He left his house at five in the morning. He called to get confirmation of where they would meet. The driver went to go meet him. He wasn't there. They circled around. They found him. He'd been shot. You know, this is before sunlight comes up. People are watching constantly for targets. And he was sadly and tragically killed. You know, this is a father who had young children. And it was devastating for the office. It's devastating, obviously, for the family. And I just think it speaks to the risk that and the courage that it takes to get up every day and go to work in an environment like that, that Haitians are showing. And we as the United States have a huge role in trying to alter that direction and remember that even if someone like myself can go down there for a week and come back and tell that story that people are living this day to day. And I think that's a big part of what we're doing. And I think the trauma is not going to be easy to get out of. Yeah. Well, folks can read the full report at CFR.org. And Sam, just thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for doing the work you did. It's really important and informative. So I appreciate it. Thanks, Tommy. I really appreciate it. Thanks again to Sam Bergerski for joining the show. And we'll text you. We'll text you. Thanks again to Sam Bergerski. 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