Tinker, Tailor, Chipmaker, Spy

welcome back to pod save the world i'm tommy vitor i'm ben rhodes ben what's your level of uh like uh mental recovery from crooked con i think yesterday i was at like a i was like a 50 or a 60 today a little better well there's a physical recovery um i think i stayed out a little later than you on saturday night yeah well it was pretty late regardless it's not not ideal i wasn't feeling great about that uh yeah so i'm i'm not at 100 yet i have to admit but uh the combination of not sleeping all week of consuming election content all week and then seeing about 100 or you know several hundred people i knew at cricket con um i'm still definitely like you know getting my sea legs under me yeah i went from like two weeks of anxiety-based uh insomnia into a election night into crooked con and then when i got back here like i woke up yesterday i felt like a bus had hit me i was at like 50 like my body like physically hurt last night i slept a lot better but we did just move our daughter from the crib to a big girl bed which meant that around midnight you know we had a three-year-old climbing into bed and then just kicking us for the rest of the night so you know not not the ideal night's sleep but we're doing better here from time to time my nine-year-old still does that so um which is wonderful i'll be really sad when that stops happening yeah it was actually very very fun just wake up with a little you know munchkin next to you we got a great episode for you guys today we are going to talk about this exploding controversy around uh nvidia ceo jensen wong and his relationship with a chinese spy there has been a ton of reporting since we mentioned this last week about what trump knew and when he knew it and then all the implications for u.s national security then we're going to talk about the effort to impeach secretary of defense pete hegseth that's a fun one ben that's what counts as comic relief on the show very enjoyable we're going to cover also cover the latest when it comes to what trump seems to be thinking when it comes to the war with iran whether it might end continue something between we don't know we'll talk quickly about israeli prime minister bb netanyahu's disgraceful racist screed in israel's parliament on tuesday and then the broader effort to get rid of him uh we'll also talk about what we know about the the trump administration brokered russia ukraine peace talks and then finally ben we're going to get into uh there's a little podcast competition out there that i wanted to tell you about don't get too nervous but get nervous oh i was gonna say like uh those are always the best segments though yeah surprises we got a uh we got a four-star competition and then our guest today is the host of the new podcast it's called face off nuclear anarchy so uh jane perlez is the former new york times bureau chief she worked in beijing pakistan a bunch of other countries she was one of those people ben that every once in a while would like call us over the phone and be like hey jane perlez is the former new york times bureau chief or would be in town and drop by to like meet with you know senior directors or tom donnellan or whoever and you were just deeply intimidated because they had done more amazing reporting and knew more about the world than i would ever learn in you know a million briefings but very very fun to talk to her yeah i've never come out of a conversation with her without being smarter so i assume that happened again yes it did it did it's a great show so check it out uh face off nuclear anarchy and then at the end of the show uh our subscribers will hear ben and i do some q a from our discord community so stick around for that um okay let's talk about this nvidia story and jensen wong last week we told you about this report in the new york times that said the u.s intelligence community was concerned that jensen wong had a close relationship with a suspected chinese spy for listeners who don't track ai stuff or the industry closely nvidia sells something like 80 or 90 percent of the chips that are used to build ai and jensen wong is like one of the most prominent ceos in the entire industry like top three right um he is the guy you always see in leather jacket who is trying way too hard to be cool when he is in fact a dork um he's also very close to president trump he advises him on ai policy so the situation also becomes this counter-intelligence nightmare for the intelligence community given that proximity um since that story ran jensen wong is admitted to having an affair with alice wong the ceo of an ai company called mega speed now there is no relation there that is not why this is salacious uh but the confusing like shared last name is why i'm going to refer to the two lovers here by just alice or jenny wong um we've also learned a lot about what the trump administration knew and when they knew it for example the new york times reported that this past spring marco rubio the secretary of state and national security advisor oversaw the drafting of a memo warning trump administration officials about jensen wong's compromising relationship the memo was based off of intercepts of alice wong's communications it was circulated to administration officials ahead of trump's trip to china back in may i remember that was the trip when trump brought all these tech eos and you know business leaders with him to china but initially jensen wong was not included uh the press took notice so then trump called him and jensen wong flew to alaska at the last minute met up with air force one boarded the plane and flew with the delegation including president trump to china the new york times says it's unclear whether jensen wong was excluded from that china trip because of concerns that he was compromised by the chinese but it sure seems like that's what happened here um nvidia says jensen wong was never briefed on this in intelligence about his uh paramour um on monday trump was asked about what he knew and when he knew it in his level of concern let's watch the follow-up on the when were you first told of these potential issues with mr wang you didn't answer that question well i've been hearing about it and i've been reading a little bit about it over a period of time but uh not too long ago we'll look into it i know the fbi is looking into it in terms of something else and i think that he'll be in good shape are you going to bring up the case of jenny wong with president xi when you visit with him next week no i don't think so i mean maybe i'm sure president she will ask me about it when you went to china earlier this year in may did you know about these alleged ties with the chinese by then or no i didn't hear about it then but a lot of people have heard about it and jensen totally denies that he had i asked him today because i did speak to him today just to see if he's feeling all right how you doing and i asked him about that and he had he said he had absolutely no idea that the person in question was a spy i wanted you to put a finer point on what exactly you were made aware of the intelligence around jensen wang oh i'd have to check but this has been going on put an intelligence memo out last year did you read that well i'd certainly check with the intelligence people they could have been mentioned certainly it didn't make much of an impact on me okay uh very convincing word salad there ben so for what it's worth the new york times reported uh earlier tuesday that trump is lying that he was briefed on this intelligence about jensen wang twice including by marco rubio right before jensen wang joined the trip to china uh i guess trump's kind of being honest there by saying like look i didn't really care it didn't bother me the times also reported the department of commerce was investigating whether uh mega speed which is alice wong's company was smuggling nvidia chips to china but then they suddenly got an email from an nvidia lawyer and were forced to suddenly stop their work and transfer the case to doj which raises a bunch of questions about what the department of commerce department secretary howard lutnik knew and when they knew it so ben i'll pause there um it just kind of it seems like we're at the beginning of this story this seems like this is a huge deal that is going to unravel spectacularly over the next few months first of all tommy if i was president united states which is not something that exists and will exist in the physical universe i think i would remember um if i was if and when i was briefed about the fact that a chinese spy had honey trapped um arguably the most important thing in the history of the most important ceo in the country but put that aside yeah like there's so many reasons why this is an enormous story like number one the entire ai industry runs on nvidia like it is nvidia chips that power all these frontier models um it is nvidia that props up the ai bubble and the stock market uh it is impossible to overstate centrality i mean you could actually remove like or open ai from the ai industry uh and not nearly as much would change as removing nvidia right because they're the ones who provide the chips that uh power the models um so fundamentally important we have heard you know and that that we are in this existential race uh with china for ai supremacy for artificial general intelligence um you know the the so this is not just like a domestic issue it's a domestic issue it's a domestic issue it's a domestic issue it's a domestic issue like the the entire framework for american ai policy under the biden administration and to a somewhat lesser extent of the trump administration has been we have to not regulate these technologies because we have to get there first and embedded in that assumption is not just getting the technology first it is the fact that there is proprietary information inside these companies about how the models work so we we both have to deny or defeat the chinese in terms of the compute power to create the ai but we also have to protect the proprietary information about how this whole industry works and about how the models work now you know you've heard me say i think that that can be over torqued but that has been the operating assumption of the u.s government and the ai companies generally we because we have all these restrictions on how much compute power can flow to china how much american chips and things like nvidia chips can flow to china the thing that has been of concern to people in national security is In addition to kind of distilling, and that means basically reverse engineering models like ChatGPT and Cloud once they're released, that if there are sales of these chips to places like, I don't know, Southeast Asia, that they will be a backdoor for the Chinese to get their hands on chips that they're otherwise prohibited from getting because of U.S. export controls. That's restrictions of the chips going there. And in this exact scenario, that appears to be what happened because she ran a Singapore-based company that bought an enormous amount, I think $4.5 billion worth of NVIDIA chips. And the appearance, and we don't know yet, like you said, we had to investigate this, is that those chips literally might have just been going in the front door, not the back door. I mean, some of my favorite details of this are people that went to the location of this company. Then nobody. Nobody seemed to work there. There were two employees, and those employees were like, yeah, all our bosses are in China. And they said the NVIDIA gear was all in boxes. Like, it was just going to be like sent forward. Packed up in a FedEx box or something, right? So, again, like, it appears, like, just to name what happened, that a Chinese spy started having a pretty regular affair with the CEO of the Elemental company for the American AI industry, was purchasing chips. That were potentially just being shipped to China. And, this is the part we don't know, what did she learn about Donald Trump and his policies from Jensen Wang? What did she learn about NVIDIA's business practices and plans? What did she learn about companies like Anthropic and OpenAI that NVIDIA does business with? Like, that's why this is the tip of, you know, we don't know much more because, you know, we don't know how good a spy she was. Did she compromise his phone? Did she, like, extract information? Did they have pillow talk? Talk about this stuff? You know, I'm not trying to make light of it. I mean, that's literally what you would do in a counterintelligence investigation. And, like, it wasn't, her activities were very much on the radar screen of the intelligence community, but also, like, reporters and financial analysts for all the reasons you just talked about, Ben. Because, the Financial Times reported that in 2025, Alice Wong pitched Chinese-based investors on a proposal to build a data center in Southeast Asia. And, the pitch was, I have access to NVIDIA GPUs, i.e., I have this Jensen Wang relationship. But, also, I have a big, I have a relationship with Alibaba, this kind of, like, state-backed technology firm that apparently was primarily funding Megaspeed, her company. So, it was just very obvious. Like, our U.S. export controls have kind of a weird carve-out where you can't sell NVIDIA chips to China, but you can sell them to people building a data center in Malaysia that then, like, lease the compute to the Chinese. It doesn't make a ton of sense, but she just threw up a truck right through the kind of poor design. And, I think, Ben, I mean, like, my big takeaways were you and I talked about Jensen Wang in the past in his kind of, like, maximalist approach to artificial intelligence. Where he just wants to sell as much stuff, as many chips as possible, make as much money as possible. And, I think we both assumed that that was just because he was, like, a rapacious capitalist and that was his vibe. Now, we have to wonder whether he was compromised by Chinese intelligence. And, I don't think that kind of suspicion is ever going to go away. And, just partially, I think that's a good thing. Part of it is because so much of the story does not add up. Like, the administration would normally view this as a situation where they have a duty to warn the person being exploited by Chinese intelligence. Now, under U.S. law, if they thought Jensen Wang was going to be physically harmed by the, you know, a Chinese spy or the Chinese state, they would be required to warn him. But, normally, like, it seems like it would be best practices here for the IC to tell what they know to the FBI. The FBI briefed Jensen Wang. But, again, NVIDIA says that never happened. And, again, the question is why. Like, the administration officials say that was because they wanted to protect intelligence sources and methods about how they learned that Alice Wong was a spy. But, there was a lot of information in the public domain about how sketchy Megaspeed was. And, like, a cursory look at Alice Wong's background would raise a lot of questions about her. Like, I think she was a journalist for Chinese state media who suddenly becomes the CEO of a billion-dollar AI company. Yeah. This wasn't exactly, I mean, you know, this wasn't exactly like a John le Carre novel in terms of, like, the, you know, the intricacies of the spycraft. Like you said, it wasn't even that subtle. Like, a very attractive, you know, person goes from being a Chinese state-backed media personality to running a multi-billion-dollar Megaspeed, you know. It raises, like, I mean, there's so many concerns. Let's just talk about two. One of the things that we've talked about that is worrying about the fact that, there's potential existential risk in the AI industry is that the people running the AI industry don't exactly seem like the kind of people that you want to entrust with the future of humanity. They all seem to be at various stages of a midlife crisis, you know. Yeah, big time. And I've said this before, but, you know, you've got Mark Zuckerberg with his, like, whatever testosterone pills he's taking and his MMA. You've got Elon Musk and his kind of ketamine-addled behavior. And you've got Jensen Wong, who's a grown man who will not appear in politics. He will not appear in the public seemingly without wearing a black leather jacket. You know, like, literally the caricature of a guy kind of going through it in some fashion. Are these serious people that you want? I mean, they're serious, obviously, and smart. Jensen Wong's clearly, like, a genius about chips. But do we really want to entrust him? I mean, this is a man who sat at the all-in pod summit, which is weirdly where AI decisions got made before Tuesday's midterm elections, and called Donald Trump, or answered a call from Donald Trump. A call from Donald Trump that didn't seem to be coincidental on speakerphone and made the case with Trump for why there should be absolutely no guardrails whatsoever on AI. Like, is this, do we really want to be trusting the judgment of Jensen Wong and Donald Trump about something that could bring about a collapsing stock market bubble, mass job displacement, human extinction, you know, bioweapons? Like, another reason to hit pause on this stuff and give it a thought here, right? And the second part is the corruption piece. Because Jensen Wong has been at every one of these tech, you know, oligarch gatherings at the White House. You know, he's traveled around with Trump. Donated to the ballroom. Yeah, he's donated to the ballroom. Talk about an area for oversight, like, are the Trump kids in some kind of business with NVIDIA? Like, you know, I don't know. But, like, it seems like Donald Trump cared more about whatever relationship he has with Jensen Wong than he cared about the national security of the United States or the future of artificial intelligence. Yeah. And that is fucking crazy. And, like, that is the part that we have to stop and let sink in here. That, like, a low-level employee honey-trapped like this, you would have them fired from the U.S. government or you'd have some warning to a company in normal times. But because Jensen Wong, like, hangs out at the White House or makes certain donations to Trump or may be in some kind of business relationship that, you know, look, I love the fact that the person who's responsible for the oversight of this in the Senate is going to be held accountable. Is going to be Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, she's going to haul his ass up to the banking committee. All these guys thought, and they're all guys, thought that they were in, like, this permanent new reality where nobody was going to look over their shoulder. Well, I'm very much looking forward to Elizabeth Warren sitting across from Jensen Wong under oath and asking him some questions. Me too. And also, Trump is just so casually lying about it. Like, clearly Marco Rubio drafted this memo and would have briefed Trump on it. And Trump's like, oh, jeez, I don't remember. It didn't make much of an impact on me. I mean, it's crazy. There's also, like, to your point about AI companies, I mean, if this happened to the CEO of Boeing or Northrop Grumman, they would be fired immediately because those companies have real rules. There's national security laws. They have real boards. The semaphore looked at NVIDIA's board of directors and they looked through all the relevant documents. The company has no clear succession plan. There's no current deputy or number two. I've read varying reports. Some say Jensen Wong has 50, 5-0 direct reports. Other outlets say 60. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is crazy. So it's just like a cult of personality. The board is composed of people who have been there forever, have no relevant national security experience. They're not even close to peers with Jensen Wong. Mostly it's just like people he made fabulously rich through the growth of the company. So in other words, like, the structure of the board is just built to protect him because they view losing him as an existential risk to the company. So what probably happens here is they launch, they hire a law firm to, to do an investigation. The investigation kind of whitewashes over the problem. They release some bullshit statement in five or six months and nothing changes in part because he has Trump's backing. Yeah, assuming the underlying facts are true about her being a Chinese intelligence asset and these chip sales going forward and all the rest of it and the nature of the relationship, I guess what they'll hang their hat on is that he wasn't aware of this, but it doesn't matter. Like you said, that, that wouldn't pass at a normal company. It just shows you how much these AI companies are kind of these cults of personalities around these individuals, which should cause us concern because I want the most important companies in the world to have like real governance structures and real accountability built into them. Like that is something that, by the way, if they don't, like the U.S. government can take action, you know? I mean, there are people that think that the Frontier Labs should be national labs, you know? Yeah. I mean, I mean, like, they won't get serious about self-regulating, then the government has to step in and regulate in some fashion. But again, like, and you think about all the different investigations that could go forward, it is also a concern. Like you mentioned Howard Lutnick, like the Commerce Department is supposed to be monitoring how these chips are flowing around the world. Like that's the manner, I'm not one who thinks that we should like build walls and moats around all this stuff, because I think the world is going to end up having artificial intelligence and you need some structure for it. But there's a difference between that happening and being completely flippant and careless about the fact that the most important figure in the American AI industry is having a relationship like this with a Chinese spy. Two pieces of this commerce thing, like one, it's very troubling and they need to get the bottom of why the Commerce Department killed an investigation into Megaspeed specifically and transferred it over to DOJ. But also, I mean, the people within commerce then have made no additions to the entities list, like which is how you ban exports of these chips since October of 2025. They're just like asleep at the switch when it comes to actually implementing these export controls. And trying to prevent these chips from getting into the hands of the wrong people. So yeah, there's just like, either the Trump administration is just completely asleep at the wheel here, or there is something more nefarious going on. And maybe people are getting bought off. We just don't really know. That's right. I mean, the question is like, as with everything with the Trump administration, is it incompetence or corruption or a little bit of both? And we really deserve to know answers to that. Yeah. Last thing, I noticed before we came in that an outlet called the Midas Project, which monitors AI companies, has a post up about how all these, like this foreign influence network that was promoting NVIDIA, this like army of bots just kind of popped up and started defending him after these reports came. And they'd previously been connected to this Israeli influence operation. So there's just like a lot of weird things happening online as well about this. Patsy, the world is brought to you by Sundays. In some ways, our pets are just like us. They need a healthy diet and regular exercise to feel their best. Feeding your dog genuinely well is one of the best investments you can make in their health and in their happiness. That's why Sundays for Dogs is different from other pet food brands. It's human grade real food made with 80% plus all natural meat and nutrient rich ingredients like kale, ginger, and blueberries. 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There's eight counts. The first three involve waging the Iran war in contravention with the War Powers Resolution. Massey says the war was unlawful. And that Hexheff ignored deadlines to end it. Count four of his eight counts is ignoring laws to minimize civilian casualties. Count five is the illegal boat strikes. Count six is using the Defense Department to chill free speech by going after Senator Mark Kelly. Count seven is kidnapping Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. And count eight is starting a war in Yemen without congressional authorization. So quite a list. Here's some clips. This is Massey talking about his resolution. Then we have some of Trump's response and then some of Hexheff's response on Tuesday. - Secretary Hexheff knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders to initiate war against a foreign nation. He will remain a threat to the constitution if allowed to remain in office and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law. - But really, what has Hexheff done? He won the war, he was in charge. He won the war in Venezuela, as I said, 48 minutes. It was flawless, nobody killed. And he certainly, I think he's won the war in Iran, but he's certainly winning the war. What about impeaching the gentleman from Biden? His person that disappeared for two weeks and nobody had any idea where he was. What about impeaching the people that ran the Vietnam War? - Massey says that he's carried out a lot of- - Massey's a loser, just like you're a loser at CNN. - Hope he addresses the eight articles and doesn't get up and misquote the Bible and Quentin Tarantino. in Quentin Tarantino fashion and do some pull-ups and call everybody fat and gay like for being for this impeachment. For the first time in American history, a cabinet secretary overseeing America's military is being attacked, not for losing conflicts with our enemies, but for winning them. Condemned not for defeat, but for military victory. The disgruntled congressman even admitted this himself yesterday. No failure here, just impeachment for success. And not sure you won yet. So it's also funny. It's hard to do a whataboutism when you forget the name of Lloyd Austin, the person you're trying to flag. So the way this works is the House will have to vote on this issue by Wednesday. Members could vote to table it, kind of just kill the resolution. They could refer it to a committee - I completely support impeaching Hegseth. You and I talked about this at CricketCon. The boat strikes, for example, are just clearly illegal and people will probably go to jail for that. All of these conflicts, it's just worth noting that you could make some of these arguments about wars started by Obama and Bill Clinton and even Bush 41. These are all conflicts that were started without congressional authorization. I understand if people are listening to this are like, "Hey, this is hypocritical of you guys "to make this argument." But I think it doesn't matter if it makes some of these counts in the broader effort inaccurate or certainly doesn't make it bad politics. I think absolutely demanding accountability on a lot of these issues, especially Iran, is exactly what voters said they wanted in the midterms, so they should do it. - Yeah, and I could take this legal argument head on because in the Obama years, just to take the one that people could accuse us of hypocrisy, all of the operations that related to terrorism, that's Afghanistan, that's whatever we were doing against counter-ISIS, that's al-Shabaab. Those are covered under the authorization of use of military force passed after 9/11. Now, I've said, and I said at CricketCon, that should be repealed and replaced with something else, but that was the lawful basis for those wars. The one war that falls in different categories, Libya. Now, the differences there, we had, first of all, a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force in Libya. So we did have an international legal basis for our military action in Libya. And yes, you can criticize us. We went through many contortions with Congress with the war powers that they didn't go through to address the congressional role through the War Powers Act. I think we stretched it, to be honest. But they didn't give a shit at all. And I think that's a good thing. And like their approach this time, which we've talked about, is they renamed the operation. You know, it was Epic Fury or something. And now it's something else, right? But to your point, the boat strikes are actually, to me, the most acute violation of the law. Because that's not even a war. They've just been murdering people in the Caribbean for months with absolutely no legal basis whatsoever. Like, we're not at a war with anybody. can define who we're at war with. There's no legal basis for it. They seem to have been killing innocent fishermen in addition to cartel members. Like you said, some people, probably Pete Hegseth, I think, may go to jail for that someday because it's just straight up murder. So the extrajudicial nature, I mean, it does matter. You can tell me that other presidents have done it, and I agree with you. And I think anyone who's listened to this podcast knows. I'm at a place where I think we need to really tighten up the legal basis for any of these actions. But the repetitive and flagrant violation, right? You can hang Libby on Obama or hang other military actions on Clinton or whatever, but when you stack up boat strikes in Iran and Yemen all in that resolution, it's a pattern of unconstitutional action. Never. Remind the attack on Mark Kelly, which has no basis in anything other than a political vendetta. So there's a legal reason, and frankly, there's a purely competence reason. Pete Hegseth has lost the confidence of the Congress. He's confirmed by Congress. They don't have confidence in him. He's been, if nothing else, totally incompetent in his management of the war in Iran. And we just had an election in which an overwhelming majority of Americans were like, we fucking hate this war. And he's the guy who's been in charge of it. And so why shouldn't Congress try to restore its own authority over war making? And hold someone accountable for what? Pete Hegseth can't even describe what the purpose of the war is today. Yeah, he's a clown. I also like that we won it, but we may have to continue it. We never really know. We won it. We've lost it. And if we've won it, why are we there? Let's go home. So that gets us to kind of the war generally. So again, as we've discussed, there's kind of three options. One is just keep up the military pressure, the economic pressure, and preserve the status quo with the escort mission for the tankers. Instead, cut a deal or let some of his Gulf allies cut a deal and kind of slink away. Or he could escalate. That might mean blowing up like the remaining nuclear site, Pickaxe Mountain, or even just a full regime change operation. We just don't know. Before the war, it felt like all the signs were pointing towards an escalation post midterms. Axios even had a report that if Trump lost the midterms, they might make him feel so humiliated and upset that he would go back to war. Just some of the most self-serving spin I've ever seen then. The tone, though, from Trump has been quite different since the results came in. Here's President Trump on Monday afternoon after he closed door meeting with Qatar's prime minister. And then there's a bit of Marco Rubio at the G7 on Tuesday. And others would prefer the status quo that we remain as is. Should there be any change with respect to developments in the Middle East, the United States of America is fully locked and loaded. Yeah, I mean, right now, I mean, look, we're not going to pay. Iran, you know, is demanding reparations. They should be the ones paying reparations because they're the ones that have, you know, destabilized the region for long periods of time. They're demanding pallets of cash, which the president's made clear is not going to happen if they want a nuclear energy program. They should have one like many other countries around the world have. So there's things they can do. But just right now, they just don't seem, you know, at that point. Now, I think they want a deal. There's no doubt they'd like a deal, too. But they're just not ready to make one, apparently. But we're open to it. Look, it changes. And then this is part of what Trump had to say about Iran on 60 Minutes. So you're not going to escalate the war now that the midterms are over? Well, I'm not looking to. I don't think there's any reason to. Look, the harm is great. They still have nuclear material, right? They have nothing. It's buried under. There's thousands of tons of rock. So there's still stuff in Pickaxe Mountain. Well, we don't know that. There wasn't. There's been very little activity there. They have other problems. So what's the deal in the end with that? The deal. That gets the Strait open. The deal. Because it's important. It's important to stress. No, no, the Strait is open. But the ships that are going through are being babysat by a large U.S. military presence. So how do we make a deal that gets that presence out of there? Not very expensive. We can just leave them there indefinitely. At the end of this whole thing, those countries that we've protected are going to pay us back any and all costs that we've had for the war. We're going to get all that money back. And I've told them, and they're going to do it, 100%. Because without us, they wouldn't exist. Without us, Israel wouldn't exist. So, again, the cost is like $2 or $3 billion additional dollars a month. Again, the Iranians have a say in this. I mean, there was a report today, Ben, that once again the U.S. had to evacuate aircraft from a base in England because of threats from Iran. So, I don't know. We'll see what happens. But, like, what are you reading in Trump's tone there? Like, it feels like he knows it would be a very bad idea to go back to war. But then you hear from Marco Rubio, who's like just sounds just as hardline on any deal that's on the table as anyone else. So, it's like, I don't know. I can't tell anymore. First of all, it's just everything he says is a lie about this. And now that there's some restoration of political gravity with Democrats winning the election, we should point out, like, he says they have no nuclear material. Well, they clearly do. He says that they've been destroyed militarily. Well, clearly they aren't. He says the strait is open. Well, ask Americans how much they're paying for gas. Like, this is just all bullshit, you know? And it's crazy that he's talking about something as real as a war with Iran like this. I take from his tone that he's kind of been chastened and he doesn't quite know how to get out of the box he's in because he knows that escalating the war in Iran right after you just got completely wiped out at the ballot box because of the war in Iran would be a pretty, pretty ridiculous thing to do. He also knows that the deal that the Iranians are asking for, I assume, is essentially a complete U.S. surrender. It's like, lift sanctions, give us money, like, give us everything we want, and, you know, maybe we'll open the Strait of Hormuz, but toll it. You know, like, that's probably the Iran offer. So he's kind of caught between, like, just a kind of humiliating loss and an escalation that nobody wants and that will bring, you know, huge damage to those Gulf partners that he's talking about. By the way, he's lying about that, too. I'm sure those Gulf countries don't want the status quo to continue because they can't fucking ship their oil. You're going to tell me Qatar wants a status quo in which they can't ship their liquefied natural gas out of the Strait of Hormuz? That's crazy, you know? So I think we're just stuck in this. This is why you and I agree on, like, just cut off funding. Just end this thing. Let the Gulf countries cut their own deals with Iran and let's just be done with this thing. Yes, Democrats have to take the initiative here because it's just so clear that there is no plan. It's rudderless. It's rudderless. Mike Smith is in charge. Trump doesn't know what he wants. He's talking out of both sides of his mouth. He's making up nonsense. One day we've won. One day we might have to go back and bomb again. Like, it just, it's completely incoherent. It's a mess and it's only going to get worse. It's not going to get better. Just take the initiative. The politics are so obvious. Force a vote to end the war. Do it. Yeah, yeah. Before we take a break, you might have noticed that Democrats want every single statewide office in Texas. Yes, every single one. Listen to this week's episode of Long Play, a podcast from Crooked Media to get an inside look at the final days of the campaign for James Tallarico, Gina Hinojosa, and Johnny Garcia. Check out Long Play. Check it out now, wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Helix. 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Just go to helixsleep.com slash world for up to 30% off. That's helixsleep.com slash world for up to 30% off. helixsleep.com slash world helixsleep.com slash world. Patsy of the World is brought to you by SimpliSafe. If you've been thinking about securing your home, there is no better time to do it than right now and no better way to protect it than with SimpliSafe. Right now, you can save 70% on a new system, their biggest savings of the year. You've heard us talk about SimpliSafe before because unlike traditional home security systems, it doesn't just record or react to a break-in once it's already begun. It is designed to keep those threats away before they've even approached your door. It's got smart AI-powered cameras that watch for potential threats and alert a live US-based agent that's ready to intervene. The agent intervenes in under 30 seconds, speaking through the camera to stop an intruder in their tracks and calling an urgent 911 dispatch when it's needed most. Our CEO, Lucinda, recently got a SimpliSafe system. Setup took just a couple of hours. Every component is up and running right away. The app makes arming and disarming the system from her phone effortless and the temperature and water sensors let her keep an eye on vulnerable spots around the house as the seasons change. We partnered with SimpliSafe to offer our listeners their biggest savings of the year. 70% off your new system with professional monitoring when you visit SimpliSafe.com slash Crooked World. That's SimpliSafe.com slash Crooked World. And when you order, write in Pod Save the World at checkout. It tells them we sent you and it really helps the show. SimpliSafe, ahead of crime in real time. All right. So as long as we're talking the Middle East, let's talk about. the latest from Israel. So opposition leader Gadi Eizenkot has officially been tapped to lead the government formation process in Israel. He has until December 6th to get it done. Then he can ask for a two-week extension. In past episodes, we've covered the election results. We've explained why forming a government is going to be really challenging given the kind of makeup of the various parties. So we're not going to dig into all of that today. But we did want to highlight just how despicable Netanyahu is being and racist he is being on what we hope is his way out. On Tuesday, Netanyahu delivered a speech to the incoming Knesset, to Israel's parliament members. In that speech, he said the following then. Here in the Knesset, there is serious talk of forming a narrow government, a government that includes terrorist supporters who hate Israel or one that will be dependent on them. Some people seem to think there is a major difference between the supposedly moderate United Arab List and the extremist Joint List. The only difference is that there is a major difference between the supposedly moderate United Arab List and the extremist Joint List. The only difference is that they disagree over what kind of state will be established here on the ruins of the Jewish state. An Islamist state modeled on the Muslim Brotherhood, like Hamas in Gaza, or a nationalist Palestinian state modeled on Fatah. On one thing, they agree Israel as a Jewish state has no right to exist. Netanyahu also repeated in his speech his claim that the election was stolen and influenced by foreign money. He keeps saying it's Qatari money. Another Israeli political leader named Naftali Bennett actually heckled him during that section and said, what about the Qatari advisors in your office? Referring to the dudes who are working for Netanyahu and on Qatar's payroll. Eisenkot called Netanyahu's speech delusional, divisive, full of hate, and shameful. And then United Arab List chairman Mansour Abbas responded to Netanyahu's speech saying, quote, we do not want to establish an Islamist state or an Arab state or anything else here. The state of Israel was established and we defined ourselves as citizens of the state of Israel. We support peace and an end to the conflict based on a two-state solution. Just like the the state of Israel was established and we defined ourselves as citizens of the state of Israel. But absolutely, Netanyahu just being an arsonist, Ben, is like the most Trumpian thing possible. Yeah, I mean, his only like pathway to political survival is to do this combination of like January 6-ish like conspiracy theories about the election to sow doubt there, absolute fear mongering that anybody other than him is going to lead to the destruction of Israel. Kind of a wrecking ball, like divide and conquer with some of the other political parties and personalities who've been in the ring with him for many years. Like he's literally just like, like a guy standing, you know, in the middle of the ring, like swinging at everybody, just trying to kind of wreck this coalition formation process. And, you know, what he's trying to do is he's trying to, to kind of play to the fears of some parts of the Israeli public and some parts of these political parties to prevent them from going into any kind of coalition, or agreement with the Arab parties, and then to have them kind of fracture. So he can either get this thing, increasingly, it doesn't look like he can get into a coalition that he leads, but just get it to another election. So he can be like a caretaker, prime minister, next election, as you've said, lots of Israelis are coming home, people are dispirited because they've just seen that the opposition can't get its shit together and that like he can emerge from it. He has no constructive positive vision of the future, you know, like, let's just point this out. This is not a man who's like, yeah, who has like, some vision for Israel, it's just the vision for him staying in power through permanent war, permanent, like, repression and violence against Palestinians and totally uncaring about the fact that Israel is more isolated than it's ever been probably in its entire history. And all in service of staying out of prison because Netanyahu was corrupt and he knows that he will get prosecuted. Meanwhile, Ben, in Gaza, like, life continues to be hell on earth for the people living there. The winter weather is setting in, it's the fourth winter. Since October 7th, heavy rain since Friday has flooded tens of thousands of tents, three kids and a woman were killed when the rain caused an embankment to collapse onto their tents. Israel continues to blockade the Gaza Strip, despite the ceasefire deal that was signed over a year ago, and they've prevented all kinds of aid from getting in, including they've prevented 60,000 mobile homes and 200,000 new tents from getting in. They prevented machinery from getting in to remove rubble and building material that was that was promised under the agreement. All of that has yet to arrive. So people are just like in this horrific purgatory. They're freezing to death. Disease is rampant. It's a nightmare. And so we actually we got two voice notes. One is from Mohammed El Akhlouk from the Norwegian Refugee Council. He does the shelter cluster there. And a second voice note is from a man named Asim from UNRWA. Let's listen to that. One storm. That's all it took. The rain of the season. About three hours of it. When the rain started, tents flooded in minutes. Families woke up with water running inside their mattresses and blankets are sucked through their kids shaking from the cold. Two days ago, sand dunes collapsed on top of tents. People died, including children and the pregnant woman. The crisis is not rain only. It's the absence of infrastructure needed. To withstand it. This is a continued reminder to the international community of the failure to manage the families of humanitarian gaps who continue another winter in misery, flooding, collapse of tents and tarps, sands, slides, risks of collapse of the heavily damaged building structures, consequent health crisis, sewerage flood, rodents, infestation, etc. So just to add to that. I think it's very important. Thank you. I think a reminder of what life is like on the ground, but also how little the international community is doing to actually help people now. Yeah, I have talked to some people too. It just sounds absolutely horrific. I mean, you can imagine, you know, being in a place with already horrific conditions, no provisions, tents, and then you have these kinds of floods. And let's be very clear, like this is not a natural disaster. This is an Israeli government policy to create these conditions. Right? This is why people talk about. This is why people talk about war crimes. This is why people talk about genocide, because you're just leaving a population there to just be completely vulnerable to the elements and vulnerable to disease that can kill you. And imagine being, you know, you and I have small children, like imagine having your children in those conditions. The other two things I'd say about U.S. policy is first of all, like, what about the Board of Peace? You know, Jared Kushner with his presentations of Davos about like a kind of Jetsons style futuristic city. And then the other piece of this is there is a law on the books that says the United States government cannot provide any assistance whatsoever to a government that is denying the delivery of humanitarian aid to a civilian population. So once again, like Israel is violating U.S. law and we're not cutting them off. So again, one of my arguments to Democrats has been you don't have to contort yourself trying to calibrate this thing like they're violating multiple American laws. They're violating provisions of American law, and one of them is not letting assistance in. Yeah. Speaking of Jared Kushner and failed peace negotiations. So on Tuesday and Wednesday, the U.S., Ukraine and Russia are holding peace talks in Abu Dhabi. There's also representatives from NATO and some other European countries in Abu Dhabi for separate meetings. So Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, Trump's golf buddy, turned envoy for everything. They're still leading the talks. Jared said again today that he believes Russia and Putin are ready to make peace. We'll play you a bit of that later. There's zero evidence to prove it, but they keep repeating this line. In recent episodes, you know, we've walked you guys through all the ways that Trump has been attacking Ukrainians and giving Russia kind of political gifts and economic gifts. There was the deal to sell diesel. There was the Trump administration or Elon Musk or both cutting off Ukraine's access to Starlink satellite internet access. Last Thursday, Melania Trump hosted a meeting between Russian Ukrainian officials to like celebrate her little temporary ceasefire in one town. Yeah. President Trump then met with Putin's special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, the oligarch in charge of their sovereign wealth fund, and afterwards told reporters that, you know, any agreement would involve more than Ukraine. It might involve all of Europe. So they're like trying to cut up some bigger deal without really involving the Europeans. So here are a bit of Trump's comments following that meeting with Kirill Dmitriev last week, and then some comments from Jared Kushner on Tuesday from these talks in Abu Dhabi. There's going to be an agreement. It's going to be a big agreement, and it's going to involve more than Ukraine. It's going to be a very big, it's going to involve more than Ukraine. And I could even say it might involve all of Europe. It's going to be a big, beautiful agreement, and everyone's going to be thrilled. You know, Russia is losing civilians also. They are, it is a bloodbath and it has to end. And I think we're going to get it ended pretty soon, very soon, man. The question we get asked the most from the Europeans is, are the Russians going to be ready for peace? And this president proved really ready for peace. And from what Steve and I have heard from him, we can say very strongly, we believe so under the right conditions. So I, Ben, it's just like, it's, it's so frustrating to be in these ruts. Like the same idiots leading these talks, Jared Kushner is now doing it, you know, from the Gulf where he is getting paid by all these people that, you know, he's like, he's not a government employee. He's not, you know, sort of a hardened diplomat, he's a guy who's getting paid off by various actors. He's got all these sorts of inner economic interests that are interlocking with whatever he's working on. And it's just like, I just, it's so frustrating. It's exhausting. Like, what are we even doing here? This links to what I was saying about Iran in some ways in the sense that, and it always takes me, sorry, like maybe about 30 seconds to a minute for just a side of Jared Kushner to kind of, like, things happen inside me that have to settle. Yeah, skeletal stuff. But the common thread here is that actually enlarging the conversation, right, to include aspects of European security is a potentially good idea that I'm sure came from the Europeans, right? And that leads me to the point that this would all be easier if they would just stop, just get out. Like, get Jared and Witkoff out of the room, get Trump out of the fucking room. I don't even, you know how I feel. I don't even feel about the Emiratis. They can stay there. Like, the Europeans and the Emiratis and the Turks and whoever else should just sit down with the Russians and Ukrainians and negotiate this thing. Like, this is where we're at. Like, the United States is, like, an impediment to this kind of progress because the vanity of Trump, like, inserts himself in it. Or the business interests of Jared and Witkoff and Russia, like, you know, get in the middle of this thing. Like, as with Iran. Like. Like, I actually think we'd be in a much position to get a better outcome if we weren't trying to help, you know? I agree. Yeah. And ironically, this is coming at a moment when the Ukrainians are actually making some battlefield gains. You know, it's very limited, right? We're talking about in proportion to the entirety of Ukraine or even the amount that's been held. But, like, they're winning in some parts of the front lines. And then Trump is just undercutting them everywhere he can. And they're about to go into another really brutal winter where the Russians… The Russians are going to cut off. They're going to try to destroy all electricity, all heating infrastructure. It just frees out the population. And everything Trump does just sort of, like, helps Putin play for time and make it easier. It's just… It's horrible. Yeah. And the credulous nature of, you know, Jared saying Putin's for peace. I mean, the only reason that Trump and Jared and Witkoff are in the middle of this thing are, number one, Trump wants to take credit for any deal that might potentially emerge, even if he had nothing to do with it. And they want to make money there. Like, they're not, like, sincerely focused on, like, the long-term sovereignty of Ukraine or some long-term vision of European security in relations with Russia. Like, as it would be… And this is a message maybe to the Europeans. Like, it'd be better to spend the next two years just increasingly treating Trump. And I know it's complicated because he might lash out or tear a few or whatever. But, like, just trying to increasingly sideline him, you know, because he's not, like, a positive force. No, he is not. All right, Ben, finally, there are some good news and bad news for those of us in the podcast industry. So, the good news for guys like us who are kind of grinding it out in the content minds is that Katie Miller has resigned from the business. When Steven became chief of staff, she said she just didn't have enough time, which means there are tens of listeners that could come over to our show if we do a good job. Who are natural listeners for us. The Venn diagram is probably… Katie had dozens of listeners. There are dozens of listeners per episode that we could, you know, win. The bad news, though, is that these guys are now getting in the game. Let's watch. Welcome to Inside CENTCOM. For this very first episode, I am so excited to be joined by no other than the commander of United States Central Command, Admiral Brad Cooper. Welcome, sir. How are you doing today? Fleet, I'm having a great day. Great to join you. This is my first podcast. Yeah, I would say this is my first podcast as well. Tell us what's your routine in getting out there to… Physical fitness during Epic Fury and even now. You know, I always think of this as, you know, as mental fitness, spiritual fitness, and physical fitness. What do you do for lunch? What do you eat? Yeah, well, one of my challenges in life is I pretty much like everything. I don't think you ever knew that I knew you took my french fries. So, is that your favorite food? French fries. We should let the world know for years I've been eating your french fries. The secret is now out. But yeah, I never met a french fry I didn't like. How can guys who do such… Interesting stuff. Like, it'd be that boring. That is the US Central Command podcast. The first episode is an interview with the CENTCOM commander, Admiral Brad Cooper. The episode is 11 minutes and 42 seconds long. So, we just saw, like, you know, basically… We saw the majority of it. I don't know, man. Like, I guess you could imagine, like, the brainstorm in the comms department. It's like, how do we better tell a story about what we really do? But, again, I think this goes to show there are bad ideas in a brainstorm. This is one. You know, I was about to say the same thing. Like, what was the meeting that produced that? Brutal. You know, these are guys that could be pretty busy with some other stuff. You got those something do you want to say. Not, like, you shouldn't be brainstorming about, like, formats for how to say it. Like, what do you want to say? If you're out there just being like, how do you get after it in the gym? And do you like french fries? Like, what's the value there to you? Yeah, it just goes to show that, like, if I may be defensive of our industry here, Tommy, like, podcasting is not… It's not quite as easy as it looks. Like, I'm not suggesting it's that hard. But you and I have made this comment, too, before. Like, I'm not suggesting that our top of show banter is always A+++. But it is a little bit better than some of the other shit I've heard where, like, people are like, how do we sound like real humans? We say, like, hi, what food do you eat? I really like french fries. Ha, ha, ha, ha. You know, like… It's also very… It's also very funny to be like, this is my first podcast. This is my first podcast, too. You don't say. I can tell you're not the most comfortable. Although, it's got to be, like, you know, pretty scary to interview a guy who could, like, court-martial you or, you know, whatever. So, that's not a recipe for a chill conversation. Yeah, it is funny. I mean, I wonder, like, one reason they might be doing it, too, is, like, they are clearly not… I hate to tell to them, and they could probably… I mean, not probably. Those guys can kick my ass. But I don't think they have a future. They don't have a future in the game. But there is this whole culture. I mean, like, Sean Ryan is sitting there with, like, you know, 7,000 bottles of alcohol behind him, like, podcasting the shit out of things. Like, you know, there's military guys who can pull this off. But I don't think CENTCOM… Here's my question, Tommy. Do you think this means there'll be, like, a Paycom podcast and a SOCOM podcast? I think the reaction to this was so negative that there probably won't be. Again, like, Sean Ryan's show, so he's a former, like, Navy SEAL. I think he did some stuff for the CIA as well. His show is interesting because it's a lot of… It is. And also, he's very open about himself. Like, he basically moved to Columbia, I think, and was, like, working for a cartel or something or, like, selling cocaine himself. Like, fascinating guy. Very interesting. Listen, if you're just going to be up there and, like, all you're trying to do is not make a mistake, like, it's not going to be very interesting. You're not going to learn a lot about CENTCOM. There's probably a version of this. Like, I think the CIA had a podcast for a while. Maybe they still do, where they were telling, like, success stories, you know? Like, what's the… What's the Ben Affleck movie? Fargo. Yeah, Fargo. Argo. Argo, right? Like, you can imagine, like, telling… Argo fucked yourself. Yeah, you can tell, like, Argo-like stories about past successes or whatever. You know, talk about the spy tech. Talk about, like, the wigs they used to wear in Russia in the 70s or the Soviet Union in the 70s. Like, that shit's cool. But, like, you know, unless you're going to bring in some nail-biter, you know, lieutenant general to tell stories about being in the shit, you know, and whatever, it's not going to work. I mean, they could do, like, a 10-episode mini on the Jensen-Huang relationship. That would be interesting. Actually, maybe that's my next crooked pitch. I'm in. All right, that's it for me and Ben. And, you know, probably it for our chances of getting booked on the CENTCOM podcast. But we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear my interview with Jane Perlez about her new podcast about nuclear annihilation. So, stick around for that. Back to you by Hungry Root. Why does figuring out what to eat always feel so much harder than it should? Playing the daily I don't know what do you want game on repeat. You run out of time. You run out of energy to plan or cook after a long day. Between a busy schedule and everyone in your family's personal tastes, getting dinner on the table can often feel like an uphill battle. That's where Hungry Root comes in. Hungry Root gets to know what you like and what you don't like, any health and nutrition goals you want to accomplish, and what fits into your lifestyle. Then it recommends recipes tailored to you. Hungry Root doesn't just give you more options. It helps you discover the right ones for you. It takes a lot of the mental energy out of meal planning so you can get back to what matters. Grace on our team here at Crooked just started using Hungry Root. She said it has made meal planning effortless, even for the whole week. You've got a great mix of quick microwave meals and simple recipes. She has saved a ton of time after work and stopped dining out as much. Plus, the healthy snacks included in the delivery meant fewer random runs to the grocery store. You're going to love Hungry Root as much as I do for a limited time. Get 40% off your first order plus a free item in every box for life. Go to HungryRoot.com. HungryRoot.com slash world and use the code world. That's HungryRoot.com slash world code world for 40% off your first box and a free item of your choice for life. This election is a battle between the powers that be and the powers that ought to be. Texans from El Paso to El Campo are mad as hell and we're not taking it anymore. Power does not step aside. People have to move it. People regret being Republican and now they have voted Democrat. It is election eve. I think Texas is going to win. It's going to pollute. We made it. We made the change happen. I cannot believe that this is a possibility. We will take back Texas. - I'm Jennifer Palmieri, host of Long Play. After a historic sweep for Democrats across the country, we're taking you inside the final days of one of the biggest flips on the map, Texas. Capturing what most people thought could never happen here and what it means for the future of the South. Watch Long Play on YouTube at youtube.com/atlongplayseries or listen wherever you get your podcasts. - My guest today is the host of the podcast, Face Off. She is a former New York Times Bureau Chief in a lot of very interesting places, Beijing, Pakistan, among many other countries. Jane Perlez, welcome to the show. - Well, good to be with you, Tommy. We were just regaling each other with the last time we spoke to each other. - Yeah, I was probably sweating and nervous calling you back from the White House. - Yeah. - You were the little peon staffer and you were the big shot at the New York Times. - Come on, I was the excited one because someone was returning my call. - Well, listen, you guys were always very kind to us, to me personally. The latest season of Face Off is called Nuclear Anarchy. So, you know, folks don't have enough anxiety in their lives. We can learn more about what nuclear anarchy would look like. The first couple of seasons of the show, though, they focused on U.S.-China. What made you decide to refocus the podcast on nukes? - Well, I think because it's such a loony, - Well, I think because it's such a loony, - Well, I think because it's such a loony, consuming, desperate danger that nobody's talking about. And we thought we'd try and get it back on the map. You know, nuclear weapons seem to have faded from the scene, maybe because climate has overtaken. I'm not quite sure why. But it's not as though the threat has lessened. In fact, it has increased because we have China expanding like crazy and secretly, and we don't know how many weapons they have exactly now and what their goal is. Russia is threatening in Ukraine. And the United States isn't actually innocent in all of this. The United States is pledged to spend $2 trillion on modernizing the arsenal. So I think there's some room for this very serious matter to be reconsidered. And as my good pal at the New York Times, Bill Hennigan, who writes about all of this continuously says, the question is, are we going to go back to a dark age going to go forward to a more enlightened age where we talk about this in terms that people can understand. Because I think in the last number of years, it's all been cloaked in very stiff academies, very sort of high-tech level stuff, and not the conversation that we can all understand. Yeah, because the downside risk is pretty bad for these things. And it's interesting because when Obama was in office, he made a commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. Obviously, we did not achieve that goal, but I do think it raises the issue in the political conversation. There was a lot of work that Obama got done with the Russians negotiating the New START Treaty and trying to limit the number of deployed nuclear weapons. But at the same time, our administration was responsible for a lot of that increased investment on the U.S. side. I do wonder if it's just a question of leadership, right? It's about, you know, presidents or members of Congress being out there and talking about these things. I think it's a question of leadership. As we can see in this current administration, there seems to be no interest in this at all, except for the president to make some vague statement that he wants to talk about denuclearization with Xi Jinping when he sees him next week, when there's A, no preparation, B, the Chinese have no interest in talking about this. And there needs to be real preparation if you're going to encourage the Chinese to talk about it. So. We're in a pretty stark position, I think. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that. Because for a long time, the two main actors in this conversation were the U.S. and, you know, for a while, the Soviet Union, but now the U.S. and Russia. As you mentioned, China has drastically ramped up its production of nuclear weapons. How does that complicate non-proliferation efforts, efforts to get all the sides in a treaty? And what do we know about Xi Jinping's nuclear ambitions? Well, we know this in our next episode, which drops next week, if I may give us a plug. Our next episode is on China. And I talked to Tong Zhao, who is a really great expert on all of this at Carnegie China. And he says that Xi Jinping has said on several times, several occasions, that we need to build an arsenal so big that it scares the United States. That's the verb, scares. So there doesn't seem to be any partnership in that. And beyond that, there's the secrecy of the whole thing. Because there are no talks, we really don't know what China's goals are, how many to build, what to build, et cetera. I mean, maybe on the plus side from the United States and the rest of the world's point of view, there's a huge amount of corruption going on in the rocket force, which is responsible for building the. It's responsible for building the Chinese arsenal. So maybe it's not going as fast as we think it is, but I don't think that's anything to rely on. That's a really good point. Yeah, Xi Jinping has purged a whole lot of his military leadership, including parts of the rocket force. So there's a question of whether corruption maybe could be undercutting those efforts. I guess you're right that we don't know. You have seen denuclearization efforts firsthand reporting in Ukraine in the 1990s. Can you take us back to that time when Ukraine actually made a very, very big deal about the decision to give up its nuclear arsenal? Some people there may regret today, but what did you see on the ground there? Well, it was actually quite amazing, Tommy. I went with my good friend James Hill, who was an amazing photographer, and we went to a missile factory where they were dissembling the missiles that had been so carefully engineered over so many years. They were dissembling them in front of our eyes. And the engineers were really, really, really, really quite torn. I mean, they believed in the sort of the reduction of weapons side of it. But on the other hand, these were their babies. These are the things that they'd worked on so hard and with such brain power for so many years. So we saw these things being just sheets of metal lying around, which had been taken off the round shields of the missiles. And they were ready for civilian use of some kind. I mean, there's a lot of controversy about that decision. You know, the United States basically allied with the then Russia to strip Ukraine of its nuclear weapons, thinking that it was the best thing to have a country that was home to many nuclear weapons to have get rid of them. But there's now a question about whether if Ukraine had kept those weapons, the Russians would have invaded. Now, we have to remember that the command and control of those weapons was in Moscow. It was not in Kiev or Donetsk or anywhere in Ukraine. So whether the Ukrainians could have found a way to get command and control of the weapons is a question that most people think is probably, they say is probably unlikely. So maybe it is a dream to think that they could have done that. But I think it's a dream to think that they could have kept them. But it is interesting to think that back in 1996, when this happened, that Washington was allied with Moscow in this effort to strip Ukraine of its nuclear weapons. Quite ironical. And also, what an extraordinarily hopeful time. You know, you're going over to Ukraine and watching these missiles get disassembled. And now we're all watching these AI companies just build things without guardrails that they're telling us are just as powerful as nuclear weapons. Absolutely. And somebody came back. Well, it's not just somebody. Matt Bunn, who's my comrade in this podcast from the Managing the Atom program at Harvard, came back from a track two session with some Russians about a month ago. And on the agenda was the fact that two Russian drone manufacturers were looking to get licenses. I don't know why they needed to get licenses, because whoever gets licenses, Russia, but they're looking to get permission to drop nukes from their drones. Oh, good. That's fun. Yes. Love that. This is the latest weaponry. Wonderful. Speaking of fun places to visit, you also went to North Korea with then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000, when she met with Kim Jong Il. I would love to hear about that experience. And the policy part of this question I have is, at what point do you think that the international community is going to be able to do that? It's just going to accept that North Korea is a nuclear state, and they're never going to give up their arsenal. And we can try sanctions and talks or whatever, but it just seems like it's not going to happen, at least in my view. I don't think the international community is ready to do that. But I mean, it's a cosmic question, because you have to ask first, where's the international community going as we sit here today? We don't know what it's going to look like two years from now. Five years from now. But let me tell you about the visit in 2000, which of course seems like so many centuries ago. There were quite serious talks between the Clinton administration and Pyongyang on limiting their ability to make nuclear weapons. They had the missiles, but it wasn't quite clear. I don't think it was, they didn't quite have the enriched uranium. They didn't have the whole wherewithal. So the idea was that Madeleine would go to Pyongyang and talk to Kim Jong-il, the then leader, which she did. And they had two days of quite long talks. And one of the most interesting things in the whole gambit was on the first night he said, okay, we've had our first session. We want to take you to the stadium. And of course had given no warning to the secretary or her party at what was going to happen at the stadium. So we in the press were all trundled into buses and she was taking us to the stadium. And she was taking us to the stadium. And she was taken in a limousine. I guess I didn't see how she arrived. And the stadium was just packed with people. And on the floor of the stadium were, it seemed like tens of thousands, huge number of performers who danced and did rhythmic dancing in front of Kim Jong-il and Madeleine Albright, who was sitting right next to the dictator. And towards the end, they did a formation where they danced in the formation of a rocket taking off, a missile taking off, the very weapon that she had come to try and stop them doing. And he, Kim Jong-il, turns to her and says, oh, that's the last time you'll see that. Well, if only. That is an incredible story. What an elaborate bit of trolling. I feel like he could have gotten her a little easier than that. He will. And also he could have given her a bit of warning. I mean, I think it's a good lesson in diplomacy what to do. And she had already given him the prize that he wanted, which was a basketball signed by Michael Jordan. Amazing. Amazing. I mean, don't we all want that? Let's talk a little more about the Chinese. So President Biden and Xi Jinping agreed in 2024 that we need to maintain human control over nuclear weapons in the AI age. That's good. It doesn't feel all that comforting given all the AI-fueled security breaches we've seen in the past few months alone. Do you think that global leaders are taking the intersection of nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence seriously enough? And what kind of things should they be talking about? Well, they should be talking about keeping the control and command of nuclear weapons in the hands of humans. And your colleague, Jake Sullivan, did a lot of work on this, right? And in the last year of the Biden administration, I think he met with the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi four times. And out of that came this agreement in Peru at a big meeting. I think it was maybe an APEC meeting, an agreement that China and the United States recognized that AI should be kept out of the command and control of nuclear weapons, which is a great start. But as Jake points out, it took a whole year to get basically that one sentence. And there doesn't seem to have been much development since then. And I think it's very worrying because China, as we've seen, well, we see all the time, is just intent on winning what it calls the AI race. So, OK, maybe there's this formal agreement saying the two powers will theoretically keep it in human hands. But AI is not only about launching the nuclear weapons, which has launched in 81 years, which in itself is, I guess, a victory. But AI is in every other kind of battlefield weaponry these days, particularly drones. But any fast-moving weapon has got AI in it. So it's a broader field than just keeping AI out of nuclear weapons, command and control of nuclear weapons. And there doesn't seem to be much discussion about it. And let's see if anything happens in Shenzhen. I'm highly skeptical. You and me both. Yeah, Trump doesn't seem. Sometimes he says the right things when it comes to nukes, but it doesn't seem like he cares about doing the hard work. But yeah, that's one thing. But Tommy, the other thing is, I don't think the Chinese are interested either. They want to. They see talks on control of nuclear weapons or the threat of diminishing the numbers as keeping them down, as keeping China down when they're in the. Very much in the mode of being at parity. So they don't want to get involved in talks that threaten their rise. They'd love to be in talks, of course, that diminish us. Right. Yeah. And a trilateral negotiation like that that involves the US, Russia and China is just way more complicated. I think that's going to end up being a few pretty, maybe not so pretty pictures. Yeah. Yeah, I agreed. Switching gears a little bit. I mean, you worked. You reported from so many. You worked with the Chinese. You worked with the extraordinary places. Was there a country or a story or, you know, a person you met that kind of stands out in your memory as like, I don't know, one of the most memorable, historic, exciting? It's funny, you know, people ask that. And I always. Well, they'd ask me while I was on the job. And I would say, well, I like being where I am, which was true. I mean, I love being in Pakistan. You know why I like being in Pakistan? Because the Pakistanis are so talkative. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. They just love to talk. So it made reporting interesting, of course, and one way to get all the talking. But it also made it a little bit easier because you basically needed one person in the military, one person in the parliament, one person in civilian life, one person in the Taliban, and somebody else somewhere else. And I mean, that's not what I limited myself to, but they were just marvelous, marvelous storytellers. So I really enjoyed that. That's so much fun. Yeah. A bunch of like, you know, tight wads over in the foggy bottom or, you know, in the White House. Oh, my God. Scared of their own shadows. That's why I was so impressed that you called me back. I thought, oh, my God, this is someone different. Well, it helps when you're young and stupid and don't know any better. But yeah, in Washington, you have a bunch of people who will say things like, off the record, no comment, which is like, what are we doing here? Well, listen, I'm actually, you know, we ran into each other at a summit that was designed around. Or conference, I should say, around bringing together people who are experts in the nuclear world with folks from film and TV to just try to raise awareness about these issues. Because I'm really glad you were doing face-off nuclear anarchy, because it's very important that people care. And if folks care enough about trying to, once again, focus on nonproliferation or reducing the risk of annihilation from nuclear weapons, it really helps to be informed and to reach out to people who should care about this stuff again. We should talk about it. So I'm really glad that you're doing the show. And also, we hope that we've made it. We think we've made it a good listen. Yeah. Each interview has a sort of a mini-documentary beforehand. So we have on the Iran-North Korea episode that dropped just today, as a matter of fact, it's called Outliers. And before we start the interview with Wendy Sherman, we have a little mini-documentary about the visit of Madeline Albright to Pyongyang in. In 2000. And I think the most amazing mini-doc is the opening to our interview on the Cuban Missile Crisis, where we have audio that makes the listener feel as though they're inside the Soviet submarine as it approaches the quarantine line in 1962. Incredible. And while that's going on, while that's approaching the line, there are two, the commander and the deputy commander. Of the submarine are having a major fight about whether they'll launch a tactical nuclear weapon or not. And if they had, you and I probably wouldn't be here. So it's high stakes. It's very, very high stakes. And those are just incredible stories, like things that are, you know, where the truth is stranger than fiction. Jane Perlez, thank you so much for doing the show. Thanks for all the great work you've done over the years to keep us informed. We need, you know, dogged foreign correspondents like yourself, I don't know, helping us understand the world. So thank you. Well, thank you. It's been a great pleasure to talk. Thanks again to Jane Perlez for doing the show. We'll be back in your feeds next week. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our show is produced by Ilona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Anisha Banerjee. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, Ben Hethcote, Jordan Cantor, Kenny Moffitt, David Tolles, and Ryan Young. Our staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. That ought to be. It is election eve. I think Texas is going to pollute tonight. We made it. I'm Jennifer Palmieri, host of Long Play. After a historic, sweet for Democrats across the country, we're taking you inside the final days of one of the biggest flips on the map. texas capturing what most people thought could never happen here and what it means for the future of the south watch long play on youtube at youtube.com slash at long play series or listen wherever you get your podcasts