Trump Launches Economic War On Canada & Iran

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They make well-designed pieces for everyday living. I have been living in Quince through the summer. I mean the blue pants that just, I mean they dry quickly when I'm sweating, it's perfect for the beach, but they're also dressy enough to go out to dinner, and also the linen pants I have totally fallen in love with them, and I can't get enough. Those are some of the items I have been reaching for almost every single day. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com/lrc. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. That is quince.com/lrc. That's q-u-i-n-c-e.com/lrc. Welcome to Left Right and Center everybody. I am David Green. President Trump's popularity continues to sink, dragged down by the war in Iran and also unaffordability in the United States. So in the past week he has turned to a strategy where maybe he feels like he can notch some wins and that is launching economic warfare. And there are two fronts. The first is Iran, a war that he has struggled to finish and a war that's been going on for six months now. Now the president has vowed to strangle and isolate Iran's economy through new sanctions calling it a "economic d-day". Here is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announcing the plan. Our objective is to sever every economic pipeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until tyrann stands alone. The president's second front in this economic warfare is against our northern neighbor Canada. The president wanted to even trade between us and them. But after talks recently broke down, we are in quite a tariff war. If these economic fights are worth it to the president, what do Americans have to gain or lose here? And that's where we want to begin the conversation today. So the Lathe is here with us on the left as always. And we have a new voice on left right and center this week. It's Orrin Cass. He is on the right. He is founder and chief economist of American Compass and also a contributor to the New York Times and the Financial Times. Orrin, thank you for being here and taking the plunge into left right and center. Appreciate it. Long time listener. First time are on the press. There we go. Well, we love that. I'd love to start with you. I mean, can we talk about Iran? This is a country that is familiar with U.S. sanctions over the past 45 years. And the signals we're getting from their leadership is that they're going to weather this new threat like they've done in the past. As you look at what president Trump is doing, do you see any reason to think that these sanctions are going to be different in some way or lead to what the president's talking about? Well, it seems like they are escalating further. There are most of the time more tools in the tool belt. And I think they're trying to use a lot of them. The problem is the position the U.S. is in given the basis on which we started this war. Did not I would say have very clear objectives for what we were trying to achieve and we're not ultimately in a position to prevail. And so now I think the question is less, can we do these economic sanctions? We can. I'm sure they will cause pain in Iran. They won't really cause much pain here in the U.S. if any. But it's not clear what we can hope to do at this point besides just get get back to where we were before the war started. So I just wanted to make sure I understand what you're saying. If this had been a war that was started from a position of more strength and with clear objectives, you're saying that this is a tool in the toolbox that could be more effective. But because there were not clear objectives and because we're sort of in a difficult position, it seems like with Iran that makes you less optimistic about something like this. I think that's right. I think even now if we ask what are the objectives of these sanctions, you know, surely we want the straight to be open again. Of course before the war they were open. Are we trying to help the nuclear program? It's not clear if that's even on the table for negotiating at this point. You know, Treasury Secretary Besson, you heard him speaking about the kind of problems of the tyrannical regime in Iran. Are we now seeking regime change or not at times, Trump has said, yes, generally the answer has been no. I think we are essentially hoping we can get the straight open again, but it's not clear what levers the U.S. does have that could actually force the regime from power or force it to do what we want on the nuclear issue. Well, I guess one of the levers that President Trump is at least hoping to use here is getting other countries involved. The President and the administration are threatening countries if they don't cut economic ties with Iran. And that includes China. And you know, the first response from Chinese officials, they shot back sort of scoffing at all of this. But do you see any path here if President Trump is able to bring on countries like China and expand the threat to make Iran. To make Iran feel, you know, the potential for more pain. I mean, China's the ballgame in this, right? Like they're the one that matters 90% of Iran's exported oil goes to China. And China has kind of figured out like how to get around this. So China doesn't have to do this. And it's not like we're going to do anything to China because Trump doesn't. So I don't get it. I mean, I think everything orange said is primarily right. Like these sanctions will hurt Iran. Iran doesn't care. They have shown time and time again. They are willing to let their people suffer to wait this thing out. So I don't get this other than it's this spaghetti strategy, right? They're just throwing whatever they can against the wall to see what sticks because the war has been a failure. And if anything is, I think, or it rightly points out we're in a worst position today because we've lost the straight. And it remains now their single greatest bargaining chip. If this economic pressure, which probably doesn't work because China's not going to be on board, is designed to reopen the straight. Like Iran shown us that's not going to be effective. They're just going to hold on to it and wait Trump out. Or it sounds like we're all sort of saying the same thing that as we hear about this as a conflict between the United States and Iran, we really are at a moment where we should be thinking about this as an inflection point in the relationship between the United States and China. But that's how our listeners and everyone should be should be really seeing this moment as a fair. Yeah, I agree very much with that. I would say it's not so much an inflection point in the relationship as it is a realization of the actual state of the world. I think the reality is that a lot of certainly Americans and even more so foreign policy makers still had in their head this idea of the US as the global hegemon or superpower that kind of got to call the shots everywhere. And the reality is that that's not really true anymore. The one place I might disagree with Mo a little bit is when he says Iran isn't as susceptible to these pressure points. That's a universal problem. The sanctions as a way of getting almost anybody to do what you want tends not to be very effective. Typically, it has to be backed up with the credible idea that you will take over the country if you have to. Not that that's worked especially well for the US, but at least the US could threaten or follow through on that in the past. What we're really seeing today and the Iran situation lays bear is a reality that the days of the US just deciding what is going to happen everywhere in the world and being able to bring unbearable global pressure to bear if people go along. That world is over. And in an ideal world, Trump seemed like the figure who ideally would have understood that and already been conducting himself that way, you know, Secretary of State Rubio is somebody who right when he came into office, for instance, emphasized that this idea of a unipolar world is over and we have to be operating now in a multipolar world. I think the approach Trump took pretty much disregarded that very much to our regret, but hopefully one good thing that comes out of it is that this is now better understood that it's not just a question of whether we want the US to be the world's policeman or we want to be going and promoting this or that around the world. It's a question of what we even can do and what we can do is is limited in many ways. That's so interesting. I mean, Mo, I listen to Orin there and there's certainly a narrative that President Trump's foreign policy has been, you know, a failure in many ways, but Orin kind of paints an interesting picture to me that like the United States was losing its role as the country calling the shots around the world. That predated Trump. Trump came in and promised everything. Like, you know, America first and we're gonna be powerful and I can do whatever I want. That's not happening. And I wonder if this president goes down as sort of a last gasp trying to do something dramatic and be Mr. Tough Guy around the world just facing the reality as Orin is saying that this is the new world order. And the United States does not have the leverage that it always had in the past. - I think what this president has shown us is that he has proven without any doubt that the days of unilateral muscle flexing are over. The United States still can and should have a leadership role in the world. But what we've found out is that going alone and pissing off our allies along the way is not the way to get it done. That we can get it done when we actually build multilateral coalitions that we can at least, you know, play a legitimate leadership role in the world. But this is embarrassing to the United States because this is a president who said he was gonna go out there, beat his chest and the world would just comply. And we are now seeing people come to terms with the fact that they can just shrug it off and go about their business, go about their days. Other countries do not need us in the way this president tried to demonstrate that they do. And that's a sad and dangerous place for the United States. - I disagree a little bit there and I think this is where we'll likely in the future also see a pretty significant left right divide because, you know, most prior answer was China is the whole ball game. And now he's saying, well, if we had worked with our allies, maybe we could have accomplished something which is essentially the opposite of that. And I think he's correct the first time when he says that China is the whole ball game. The reality is that this Iran situation would not be going better if somehow, you know, we had been able to fly more planes out of European airspace or something. The shift to a multipolar world isn't to a shift of a multipolar world with allies we just have to cooperate with. It's a shift to a multipolar world where there is an adversary of essentially comparable strength. And in that world, it's not going to be just a question of better alliances. It's going to be a reality that what US policymakers might want to do, what our values might say would be nice to do, are far beyond what we can do. And look, let me just clarify because I actually don't disagree with you. My point that China was the ball game was in the context of whether or not these economic sanctions, this economic war against Iran that the administration just announced was going to be successful. If China ignores it, then it won't be successful full stop. And I'm not suggesting that just if we hold hands with our traditional Western allies in Sincumbaya that we'll get whatever we want, I'm not suggesting that. And you're right, just asking more countries nicely to let us fly missions out of their bases isn't the right thing either. But maybe if we hadn't unilaterally gone to war without actually trying to work, build an international community to repair the damage that was created when he tore up the first Iran deal, maybe we be further along with a multilateral non-military response then we are by this go-it-alone military response 'cause the go-it-alone military response does it work. So I'm not suggesting we go back to the old world order but in this new world order, which is far more complex with non-state actors proving to be huge threats, all sorts of challenges out there. I think we still need allies. I think we still need to work with other countries for the reason that we don't control all the levers anymore. Having more people on board with us still allows us to play some sort of leadership role. - Lauren, I wonder, you know, Moes are tickling a lot of what I think we're gonna hear from Democrats as they talk about foreign policy out on the campaign trail in coming years. As you think about maybe not just focusing on our traditional Western alliances but that maybe what President Trump has done is not the perfect solution in this new world order. Like how would you articulate a new foreign policy coming from conservative circles that we might see in the next few years? - Well, I agree entirely with Mo about the point that we do need allies, the questions to what end and what can we accomplish with them? Because the way that I think about the world and I think you'll see a lot more of this in right of center foreign policy is essentially that we are headed back to a world of different spheres. You know, you don't have to call it Cold War 2.0. There are all sorts of ways it will look nothing like the first Cold War. But you do have two quite incompatible economic and political systems that do not work well together and are going to have to operate quite separate from each other. And so as I think about what the US should be, first of all, you should be focused on is the interests of the American people. And in pursuing a foreign policy that advances those interests, I think what we want to do is ensure that we have security within our own borders and ensure that we have a large enough economic sphere that is unified in its opposition to the alternative. And we'll get into this in the Canada discussion. But what we really need our allies for is for a sort of unified defense security platform and economic zone that is going to be large enough to stand up to a Chinese-led one. All right, and we are going to talk about Canada and the Terra 4 that has begun. That's coming up next, but we're going to take a quick break. Mo and Orin and I will be right back with more left-right in center. (upbeat music) Summer is almost over. Can you believe it? And I'm already thinking about this fall and winter when it'll be harder to go outside and stay in shape. 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After you're purchased, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. All right, welcome back to left-rightened center. I'm David Greene with Moelathy on the left and on the right this week we have Orrin Cass. We were talking about economic warfare and what we have been hearing and seeing from President Trump in recent days, obviously something he's calling economic d-day tightening sanctions on Iran, but also we've seen a front open up with our Northern neighbor, Canada. Trade talks between those countries, United States and Canada. to broke down last weekend and here is Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's take. In short, they asked too much and they offered too little. Okay, so there is a neighbor and a once ally shrugging their shoulders when they're being kicked in the shin to use some of the language that we were using a few minutes ago, but now the United States and Canada have announced a tear of war up to 50% back and forth on a range of exports. Orren, I know tariffs are something that you've thought about a lot and written about a lot in the past. What is President Trump doing here and how might this help Americans in a short run or long run if at all? Well, I think it connects to exactly what we were talking about before the break, which is the need for the United States to have a wider economic market, economic partnerships with countries that are willing to play by the same rules, but importantly to hold hands and hold the line against China. One of the biggest problems we've had under the USMCA framework, which was the successor to NAFTA, is that you have a situation where if foreign goods can get into Canada or Mexico, well then they start getting treated like Canadian or Mexican goods coming into the US. And with China in particular, there's a huge problem that nobody in a capitalist market can really compete with China. So let's just take, you know, Hottos electric vehicles as the quintessential example. If we are going to have a free trade agreement with Canada, Canada has to agree not to take Chinese batteries that are absurdly subsidized. It has to agree not to take Chinese electric vehicles that are going to compete with vehicles that the US might want to sell. Most of the countries that the US has been negotiating with have agreed to that. So Mexico has committed very strongly to holding hands with the US. Even smaller countries we've done deals with in Southeast Asia. This is an ongoing issue with the EU, but they're working on it. Everyone sort of agrees we are going to have to find a way to keep Chinese distorted exports out of our common market. And Canada appears to have said no. They are trying to show that they can play both sides and make deals with China as well. And the US is saying I guess you can do that if you want, but if that's what you do, then you're not going to have a very good relationship with us. And I think that's a choice the US is rightly putting countries to. And I think Canada is making the wrong choice. Mo, you said China is the whole ball game. I mean, if this, you know, tougher stance with Canada is a way to force Canada to have a different approach to China. Do you see some positives here potentially? I guess there's a couple of ways to look at this. Yeah, I want the United States to have the best trade terms with everybody that it can. That comes from actual negotiations. But one thing that has become somewhat evident since Donald Trump returned to office, is a lot of our trade partners don't see us as a reliable trade partner anymore. And so they feel forced to begin looking elsewhere. One way to look at it that I've heard is that the Canadians are looking more towards China because they no longer feel that we are a dependable trade partner because of just the willy-nilly way that this president has gone about tariffs since he returned to office. And so I'm all for if we truly feel that there are areas where Canada or any of our trading partners are being unfair. Let's talk about it. Let's try to negotiate it. I do not think the way to do it though is to launch a full-scale trade war by announcing tariffs on all sorts of other goods that actually end up hurting American manufacturers and consumers as much as anybody else. And when you look at him terrifying aluminum, which we actually need from Canada or fertilizer that our farmers rely on. We're hurting American farmers when you are launching attacks on electricity, putting us in a position where we no longer have access to Canadian power which we actually use and we actually need. Like it just doesn't make sense. If Orrin were the US trade rep conducting negotiations, I don't think he would take this approach. I think he would be more strategic rather than launching a full-scale willy-nilly trade war that targets sectors that impact American consumers and American manufacturers as much as they do the Canadians. Well, Orrin, it's actually interesting. I do think about some of the rhetoric that we've been hearing from the administration. I mean, the White House keeps saying that Canada has been unfair to the United States. This is Vice President J.D. Vance actually lumping Canada in with China. Canada and China have been the two worst countries when it come to trade policy anywhere in the world. Is there an issue of trust here? And I guess I wonder if because of some of what President Trump has said, renaming lakes and some of the rhetoric distrust a road in some of these conversations, to a point where potentially could we see the opposite effect? I mean, could this actually push Canada closer to China instead of working with the United States as allies to oppose China? I certainly take the point that I think a lot of the rhetoric and so forth going back to the start of the administration has obviously been needlessly antagonistic to Canada. That being said, I don't agree with most characterization of kind of the whole world deciding or our allies deciding that, you know, we are not a trustworthy trade partner or difficult to deal with and looking elsewhere because the reality is that everybody else did come to a deal with the US. In the opening weeks after what what Trump called Liberation Day when he was causing all of the initial disruption, ever saying, oh, you know, look at this. This is everyone's going to retaliate. This is going to, you know, destroy trust, et cetera, et cetera. The reality is that's not what happened. The opposite happened. Almost none of our allies retaliated at all. For the most part, they actually acknowledged that the US had some very good points about ways the system was not working, about ways they were free riding. They all came to the table. They all made deals. Those deals have all stuck. Trade is proceeding smoothly with all of them and Canada is the outlier. So it's possible that the US is kind of giving Canada some much worse unfair set of terms than what it's asking of everybody else. But I doubt it. I think actually the evidence is very clear from, frankly, Mark Carney himself that he sees himself as a hashtag resistance figure and he's going to go to Davos and give a brave speech. And unfortunately, it is very damaging to Canada. Canada just doesn't have any of the cards here. And so while I take most point that, you know, they're absolutely cost to the United States and to American consumers and American firms as well, the reality is that it is extraordinarily asymmetric in the cost to Canada, relative to the cost to the US. And that relative to the overall scale of the US economy of economic activity, you know, the effects that you're going to see here on this side of the border, as was the case with all of the other tariffs that we were warned, we're going to cause all these effects and simply did not. The effects are not going to be that big. So I think we need to treat our allies fairly. I think we need to have clear and reasonable demands. We need to be predictable. I think, again, less kind of antagonistic rhetoric would be nice. But as a fundamental strategy, driving a hard bargain, saying, this is what it takes to have a functional economic relationship with the US. And if you don't, then they're going to be spear consequences. I think that's a pretty good strategy. And it has served the US quite well over the past year. You're listening to Left Right and Center from KCRW. We're talking about economic warfare and President Trump's tough approach to Canada right now with a new tariff war, Moe. Where I push back a bit is 2.1. When Liberation Day occurred and we started announcing all these deals, I don't know that it is clear that what we negotiated was materially better than where we were before. In many cases, we kind of negotiated back to where we started, you know, maybe more trade diversion, but not less importing. And it's impact on the overall economic outlook. I think is a matter for debate. I don't know that it is as clear or as maybe you see it. The second thing is that, you know, it didn't have a negative impact on the United States. I don't think you can say that as clearly. When you look at the direct correlation that many people see between tariffs and inflation, tariffs, and increased prices for American consumers, I'm reluctant to say to an American consumer who is truly struggling with the cost of living and saying, yeah, these tariffs had nothing to do with that. Like, it wasn't real. I think people feel it and they have been feeling it. And I think the double whammy of a trade policy and tariff policy that did materially increase prices for a lot of people, along with a misguided war in Iran, that increased prices for people, particularly at the gas pump. Like, I'm just not comfortable saying to people that But what they're feeling as a result of those two policies isn't real. And so we're about to see it again, if this trade war with Canada actually takes shape and you do see the retaliation escalate on both sides, there are going to be a lot of people, right? There's a reason why Susan Collins and Maine is denouncing this because of the impact it's going to have on Maine fishermen who export a lot to Canada. She called us a mistake, right? I mean, even if we don't see sort of how this plays out long-term anytime soon, are Republicans in a difficult spot defending this? Or having to buck the president and do what Susan Collins did and Maine and say this tear forms a mistake? Well, look, conversely, Jared Golden, the Democratic Congressman from Maine said he supports it. So, this isn't clear-cut either way in the, let's count our political noses. But more importantly, I really take issue with the way Mo framed that critique because there was this sort of vague, like, well, people have a feeling about this and it's unclear, like either you have data and can support this argument or you don't. I mean, fortunately, we have a consumer price index that measures the price level quite carefully and you can just look at the consumer price index since liberation day and see that in fact, inflation steadily came down over the course of the year until the Iran war, it was almost all the way back down to 2%. I completely agree with Mo that the Iran war has had very negative effects on prices. But if you look at the actual effect on the consumer price level of the tariffs, you can kind of go try to find it. You might find a fractional of fractional percentage in some cases, but the fact that people feel there are problems with affordability, which I completely agree with, their huge problems with affordability is not evidence that tariffs are the cause of the problem. And when you think about Canada, you'll see that even more so. Imports from Canada, as a share of GDP, are just not high enough for imposing tariffs on them to have a significant effect on price levels. And so I think it would be much better, especially in conversations like this, if we had sort of clear database discussions about what is happening and then talk to the American people about, you know, where we do need policy changes, as opposed to just taking the policies we don't like and saying, well, we validate your feelings that this must be the cause. No, sure. I don't disagree with you. And I actually think that there is room for tariffs in our trade policy. I think they can be when they're done strategically. But when you look at a number of reports that came out at the time, it shows that the tariffs did reshape who we traded with far more than how much we imported. So the overall trade balance for the United States didn't really shift. And because of the haphazard way the president did it, without the legal authority he needed to back it up, once the Supreme Court overturned it, we start to have to pay refunds to a lot of our international trading partners. We are paying out more in refunds than we brought in. So the two things the president said, this was going to do one, that it was going to make the trade balance right-sized for the United States, and two, that it would be a net benefit, it would be a revenue generator for the country, neither one of those has borne out. And so I'm not saying, let's never do any tariffs. I'm saying, let's be strategic in our trade policy, not just stand up, thump our chest and say, we're going to tariff the hell out of everybody. Let's negotiate the right deals in the right way. And I don't think we're seeing that with Canada right now. Orren, as you've watched tariff disputes like this play out in the past, I mean, is there something we could tell Americans, like, if and when you start feeling X, this was a good policy for the United States, this tariff war with Canada. It's a great question, and I think it speaks to the way tariffs have different purposes and goals, right? I think some of the things that we're doing with tariff, so for instance, having a significant baseline tariff pretty much around the world is oriented toward that goal of rebalancing and reducing trade deficits. And of course, Moe is right that we didn't reduce the trade deficit significantly in the first year, you can't reduce the trade deficit until you build entire new factories and create the capacity. So that's a many years long process. I think the good news is that the early indicators on demand, on manufacturing sentiment, and so forth have all moved up significantly, but that's going to be a multi-year process. At the other extreme, we have what we're doing with China, where the tariffs are really intended to push the economies apart to say, wherever we're getting stuff from we want to get less from China. And as Moe said, that's happening, and that's a good thing. In between, you have something like this Canada situation where you are essentially using a tariff as leverage. It's a negotiating tool, right? In a sense, it's no different than what we're doing with Iran. In other senses, it's completely different. But when you have a confrontation with another country, and you are trying to force them to change their policy, and the things that you can do to attempt to change their calculus have costs for you as well. That's not unusual, but the question is, do they work or not? In the long run, does this lead to Canada, or countries generally, agreeing to what the U.S. wants to see with respect to China in particular? If we are able to come out of this with a trading zone of friendly, allied countries that have all agreed with us not to trade with China, that will be incredibly valuable to the American people in the long run. Canada decides it doesn't want to be one of those countries. That's unfortunate. We can't force them to decide one or the other. But if that's their decision, we are better off with them on the outside than saying, go ahead, have free trade with China, and send all your Chinese stuff in here. We just can't accept that. All right. Well, wondering what you all out there think about tariffs or anything else that we talk about on the show, you can tell us and you can engage with one another in debate if you join the left, right, and center sub-stack, we'll send you a weekly email to give you a chance to hone up on the show and get to debating with one another. You can join at kcrwlrc.substack.com, again, that's kcrwlrc.substack.com. We're going to take a break and come right back and talk about flock cameras when we come back with more left, right, and center. All right, we're back with more left, right, and center. I'm David Green. Moal Athe is here on the left. On the right, we have, for the first time on left, right, and center, Orrin Cass, he is the founder and chief economist of American Compass and a contributor to the New York Times and the financial times. You know, I think obviously we've been talking about the economy and the economy is going to be a big issue in this coming election, surely in the presidential election heading into 2028. But there's also a dark horse in these upcoming midterms that, who knows, could affect races up and down the ballot. For some voters, the question to candidates is simple. Do you or do you not support flock cameras in your communities? Flock is actually just one technology brand of many that installs cameras in public places to read license plates. Human enforcement says this is a tool to help track stolen vehicles, to help combat human trafficking, also tackle other crimes, but there's also a broad swath of people across the political spectrum who say that these cameras are invading personal privacy, and that is led to cameras being vandalized in 36 states in the US, and people have been swarming council meetings to get their cities to cancel contracts with flock and others. I mean, we were talking off mic a few minutes ago, asking each other if you're pro flock or anti flock, Orren, where do you stand? I'm fairly anti flock, I think. There are plenty of good and worthwhile applications of video monitoring and other things. Obviously, you have all sorts of CCTV and urban centers and so forth. At the same time, I think we need to be very aware of the extent to which, especially the new wave of technology that's hitting us, by default, will lead toward constant and permanent surveillance of everybody at all times. I am equally anti-people asking if they can record our Zoom conversation for their notes, because I don't want to be recorded all the time. You can take notes if you want notes. And so I think we are at a place where we are having to very quickly figure out what the social norms are, what the community standards are going to be, and what trade-offs we're willing to make. And by default, my sense is you see way too much, oh, well, this solved a crime. Therefore, it's good. You have to be for it. And it's really important to remember who's really good at preventing crime, China. And at some point we have to be willing to think seriously about what the long-term priorities are for our civil liberties, rather than just adopt every technology as soon as it comes along. Mo, our flood camera is crossing the line for you. They are. I mean, look, I am not anti-tech. But I am anti-mass deployment of tech before we've thought through all the ramifications, and we certainly have not thought through all the ramifications of this. I think Oren brings up a really strong point on privacy issues. There are good uses of this type of stuff, or there's some good outlooks. for this type of technology, right? Like police departments actually can use these to help identify or find missing persons or stolen vehicles. But I think there are a couple of challenges that we have not figured out yet. Number one, it doesn't work as well as it's sold right now. There were a couple of hundred false stolen vehicle alerts in the last couple of months where people actually ended up getting pulled over and treated as if they stole a car when it was their own car. That's about close to a one-third false positive rate. That's a problem. Number two, there's a growing pattern of abuse and it's mainly domestic abuse. You had one police officer in Florida arrested for using this to keep tabs on his estranged wife. You saw another officer in Kentucky arrested for over 2,000 searches on the mother of his child tracking her across multiple states when she had a protective order against him. Not to mention the case that did get quite a lot of buzz of a Texas deputy who used this to find a woman. He claimed gone out of state to have an abortion. He used this to track her. And the charges when they found her, they ended up DA not pressing charges because medical examiner said, "Yeah, actually it wasn't an abortion." So the abuse pattern is real. And then number three, there are a lot of people on the left who are concerned about this technology being used by ICE, which is a federal agency that has already shown its pattern of abuse. Flux says, "No, we are not cooperating. We are not giving this over to the federal government. This is only being used by local agencies." Well, there's over 7,000 agencies that are part of the network that Flux serves. And so it can easily make its way into agencies that the company says. So for all those reasons, we're just not ready for this to be used in a responsible way. Well, and we should say, like there has been a bipartisan outcry over this. You've got three House Republicans who have introduced a bill to stop the federal government from buying flat cameras and other similar technology. You've got a Democrat who's running for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El Sayed, who was taking advantage of his opponent, Mike Rogers, seeming supportive of these things and ran an ad on this recently. There's been this mass proliferation of flat cameras any and everywhere. Little cameras watching your every move to collect information about you without you even noticing. That's all been part of a regime that's been pushed by, well, this guy. Somebody must be doing something exactly, right? But who would be complaining? Somebody whose privacy was violated. You can't have your privacy violated if you don't know your privacy is violated, right? Who happens to be the guy I'm running against? That's Mike Rogers, who wants to be Michigan's next U.S. senator. Not if I have anything to say about it. Just the fact that this issue is catching fire and I just wonder, you sort of were talking about this kind of the comparison between flat cameras and things like whether we want our Zoom recorded. Have it we given up a ton of privacy online already? None of us seem that agitated or not that many people with cookies and everything. We're being tracked everywhere on our phones and everything. This seems to be just a manifestation of this kind of "invasion" in our real lives. And why is that seeming to cause such a moment that could, yeah, become like an issue in our politics? Well, for one thing, I think the crossover from the digital to the physical is probably and rightly in some respects recognized as a major line to being crossed. I see that, but online is dangerous too. It's safe in the tech world. That's true. I also think, though, that to the extent that people are tracked involuntarily online that has tended to raise significant concerns as well. And there is, to some extent, an opt out. At the end of the day, if I don't want to be tracked on using a browser, I can use a browser without cookies. I can turn off location services on my phone. And this is one of the interesting things about flat cameras. My understanding is that, you know, to an extent, it actually started more as, like, the concept was, well, people have, you know, their home cameras on their doorbells and so forth. And you had the Super Bowl ad where they proudly showed how you could take you know, everybody's doorbell cameras together could be helped with finding a lost dog. And the backlash against that, when people said, "Wait a minute. We have no interest in it at all." And this was extraordinary. I think the idea that there is going to be a surveillance system out there that tracks you at all times, whether you want it or not, is rightly very concerning to people. And I take most point about the concerns. I think it's a mistake to say, you know, we need to wait until the technology gets better, right? Like the fact that this stuff doesn't work. So, you know, it's a good thing, right? No, I got that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It kind of reminds me of the, like, torture doesn't work. So we shouldn't use it. And it's like, well, if torture did work, are you saying we should use it? Like, I don't think better surveillance would have a case for being deployed where this is not. I think we, you know, at the end of the day, more than anything comes down to a question of risk. It comes down to what extent are we willing to accept risks in society? Are we willing to accept that a crime might be committed because we don't want to live in a world where there is such overriding control at all times that nothing ever happens. And that is the premise of most of the dystopian novels you read. I tell you, we are clearly barreling towards living in a society that looks like Black Mirror, which, like, we don't want that. But I mean, you're not wrong, yeah. But I agree with you, or I guess the point I'm making is we don't pause often before deploying these types of new technologies at scale. And I think that causes this kind of backlash, right? Let's pause and say, do we actually want to surrender this much privacy to a system, particularly one that doesn't work that well? We didn't pause to do that on data centers, right? I think that is such a great example of how we haven't paused to ask ourselves how AI is going to impact local communities and people negatively. And I think it's the reason why it has become one of the most bipartisan salient issues on the campaign trail for this election cycle. Because nobody right now feels comfortable. And I think data centers, frankly, is just sort of the placeholder way we are talking about bigger concerns around artificial intelligence. I agree, absolutely. I think you're hearing a cry out from voters in some ways saying that these are big, scary changes in technology and in our society. And like we slow down, we want thoughtful people to think through the right policies and where the right balance is. And that's not exactly the message we're getting from most people in politics today. I know. And the response is, well, we can't let China get ahead of us on this, right? Like I get that. I truly do. But at the same time, let's make sure we know what we're doing and that we are ready for whatever may come out on the other end. And I don't think in either these cases, we are. And if you all out there have any questions, thoughts about flock cameras or anything else we've heard on the show, we'd love you to send us your questions. And as you all know, we sometimes play them on the show. Just record a voice memo if you can. Keep it to around 30 seconds or so. Don't go too long. And just shoot it to us at [email protected]. That's [email protected]. Just give us at least your first name. Tell us where you're calling from. And maybe we will take your question on the show. All right, we're going to leave it there. And Moor and I hope you'll forgive me. I am going to use host prerogative today and take over rants and raves because I want to rave about this voice. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene. I'm begging of you, please don't take my man. We lost Dali Parton this week. It is hard to put into words what she meant to us. In the American songbook on screen, the legacy she left in our culture, her sense of humor. The mourning and the sense of loss, they've been global. This was sound from the Kingsguard outside Buckingham Palace. You know, in the context of the work that we do here, it is worth remembering how Dali, like no other celebrity, appealed to the left, right, and center. When someone asks what my favorite podcast of all time is, I often say Dali Parton's America from Jad Abumarad and Shima Uliahi at WNYC. They talked to Dali in the show about her discomfort with political strife and about why she didn't jump into the framework. You know, it's like we've just divided. It's just torn my own family apart, this political stuff. We can't even have a nice dinner. Like we used to have read life about things that was going on. Something going on in the family or some jokes or whatever. Now everybody's arguing about politics. And I said, can we just stop and eat? Let's stop, don't do that. We don't need to talk about that now. Shima jumped in with one more question. Sometimes when I don't speak up, people get hurt because I don't. say what needed to be said. Do you ever feel like by not opposing like maybe it is hurting others or you could be taking other people's pain away? Do you ever worry about that or think about that? No, because I know that when the time comes I will speak out. I have a great sense of timing and that's always worked in my favor. That's why I say I don't just join the marches, I don't just join the group. I know that my time will come and hopefully when it does I will say my peace. What struck me when I interviewed Dolly on Morning Edition at NPR in 2014 was the authenticity of an entertainer who also worked really hard to shape her public persona and her openness about that vulnerability I think is a big reason she was so relatable to so many of us. I always took my music really seriously and I always singing right from my heart, from my gut and it's true. I look totally artificial but I like to think I'm totally real where it really counts but my look came from a very sincere place. It's just a country girl's idea of glamour just like the song I wrote back with Barbie. You know I just wanted to be pretty I wasn't pretty I'm not a natural beauty but well you don't know you ain't save me. It's easy for you to say. I'm telling you I'm not a natural beauty so I need help I can get and I just early on I just felt like so much more outgoing than what my look was. So I just started looking you know the way I did and I always tell the story and it's the truth that I patterned my look after the town tramp in our hometown because she wore all that you know bleached hair teased hair lipsticks, shorts, skirts tight, high heels because we didn't go to movies at that time we didn't have movie magazines and all that but she was the one I thought was so beautiful and I kind of patterned myself after that and that's just where it comes from but I'm real sincere about my work but I don't take myself all that serious. You know one song I have been thinking about the last few days is you can't make old friends she's saying it with who else Kenny Rogers I asked Dolly about it when we chatted. What are you thinking about Ellie Park when you listen to this? Well I was thinking when you was playing that how much I love Kenny Rogers how you don't know in your life time when you're young who you're going to meet up with and what people are going to mean to you you don't know if you're going to see your dreams come true or what people are going to think about you and we're still hanging in there after all these years and Kenny and I not only sing great together and have had wonderful success we really really are good friends getting in our both old timers and knew the music when it first started out it is completely different now than it was back in our day but the fact that we're just still at it and still being able to sing and still do concerts it makes you feel good I know you Dolly and Kenny we should say as well are gone now but you're still making us feel good thank you Dolly for being an old friend we will never meet another like you and that is all the time we have for today want to thank Orrin Cass and Moe Lately for the great conversation left writing center is produced by Leo Durand our executive producer is Arnie Cyple the show is recorded and mixed by Katie Gilchrist Todd M. Simon composed our theme music left writing center is a co-production of KCRW and fearless media and we are distributed by PRX I'm David Drain hope you'll join us next week for more left writing center you can make your friends with the same Peter opens the gate and if you come I'll get in I'll be there just waiting for you cause you can't make a friend you can't make a friend from PRX.