Trump’s “Insane” Plan to Reignite the Iran War

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If you want to know what's at stake in today's nuclear arms race, this is the show for you. Listen to Face Off Nuclear Anarchy on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. ♪ Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Welcome to Ben and My Favorite Tradition, where every year we record on Election Day. So you get to listen to a little time capsule of us. We record at about 2 p.m. Pacific time, which means usually it's late enough to have some early vote data. We've got some turnout, you know, anecdotes, and we're going to talk about some of the things that we've done. We're going to talk about some of the things that we've done. Maybe some exit polls. And it's a nice little time capsule of our mood in this moment before our hopes are either dashed or, I don't know, maybe something good will happen for once, Ben. I'm in Istanbul, Turkey, where it is 1 o'clock in the morning, and so it's already Wednesday here. So it's very strange to not know the results of the election on Wednesday yet. But I can't decide, Tommy. What's the move? It depends on how optimistic you are. Do I sleep for a few hours and just wake up to results, or do I, like, eke out? Eke out and just kind of pull a bit of an all-nighter here? I don't know. I mean, I think in a few hours you'll have, like, whenever, like, Indiana closes, there'll be some bellwether districts that will give you a sense in, what, like, three hours or something like that. So if you can gut it out for four hours, you'll learn something. I might take a nap, personally. Yeah, that's what I can do. If you can nap for four or five hours, wake up, you'll be a lot better off. But here we are. So you can hear us, the agony in our voices, the anxiety. But we've got a great show for you guys today. We're going to cover a whole bunch of very important stuff. So there's a lot of stuff. There's all these disconcerting reports that Trump is on the cusp of resuming the war with Iran, and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is once again pressuring him to do so, including by passing along some alarming new intelligence. I guess The New York Times just reported, like, a minute ago, that the Israelis passed along intelligence suggesting that Iran is preparing to use chemical weapons if the war continues, and that's sort of the new thing. Am I telling you this for the first time, Ben? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm glad I'm in the Middle East, yeah. I bet you're shocked to learn that Netanyahu is using WMD intel to go Trump back into war. We're going to tell you about the latest on the Israeli elections and the government formation process. We'll talk about this billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar hack on the crypto platform Binance, a bunch of disconcerting reports out of Ukraine, and then we'll explain why the latest Chinese Communist Party meeting was more like a speed round of Survivor than a political meeting. It was just a purge fest, Ben. Yeah. Boy, you know, you think of— China's not having politics, but they have a more extreme form of politics there. Yes. You never know what straw you're going to draw. Yeah. Haley Stevens might get kicked out of the Democratic Party. She's not going to disappear, along with like 33 other generals or whatever. Could be worse, Haley. Jason Turkish wouldn't last very long in the CCP. No, he would not. So we'll tell you all about that. We're also going to explain this crazy spy story about Jensen Wang, the CEO of NVIDIA, potentially having— having a relationship of some sort. A lot of reading between the lines in this New York Times report with someone connected to Chinese intelligence. So a wild story there. So, Ben, regardless of what happens in the midterms, it does seem like Trump is just hell-bent on going right back to war with Iran. Netanyahu, as I mentioned, is pushing for more strikes. Surprise, surprise. That would help him consolidate his control over the government at a moment when he is facing this acute threat from Gadi Aizenkot and the opposition. It could impact the government formation process. We'll talk about all that in a minute. On Monday, Trump told Axios, one way or the other, we will do something, but there is no rush. We crippled them financially. They have no money, no gasoline, and their people are getting very tired of it. Now we're going to play you guys a selection of some of the things Trump has said recently about Iran that kind of range from him downplaying the war to threatening a massacre. So let's listen to that. But I guess a lot of the base Republicans, you hear them saying they're angry because they thought you were going, to be the no wars president. Well, I haven't had much of a war. If you think about it. I mean, what's a war? A war is fighting. Take a look at World War I, World War II. When was the last time you saw us fighting with them? The only reason we're not finished with Iran is I want to be nice. I want to try and save all those lives if I can. And they're sitting there with a very bad, but at some point we're going to have to give them the hammer. We might have to go have to pickaxe, but that's not a big deal. We can do it in literally. We can do that in one hour. Okay. Mr. President, we know we had to take this little detour because Iran could not have a nuclear weapon. We had to do it. But after the election. And it's been totally successful, by the way. Yes, sir. It's been one of the greatest victories of this administration. But what's going to happen after the election day? After today? What's the next move? Well, we'll see. Look, I'm not looking to, you know, kill lots of people. But if we have to, we'll have to. Like I always say, a war is fighting. A very incisive, sir. By the way, for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the U.S. bombed the Iranians last night. So there has been fighting. The Wall Street Journal reported that J.D. Vance sent a letter to a top Iranian hardliner who once served as commander of the IRGC in its effort to revive talks. Vance and Wyckoff reportedly, Steve Wyckoff, the dumbass golf buddy turned emissary, they reportedly want to make a deal. A bunch of news outlets have reported that Scott Besson, Marco Rubio, and CIA Director John Ratcliffe are kind of in like the stay of the course, keep the economic pressure on camp. But then we got dumbass fucking secretary of Pound and Beers, Pete Hegsath, who wants to resume the war. It seems like Trump might be leaning that direction because it's gone so well so far, Ben. Just for the record, Iran attacked 35 ships in the Strait of Hormuz in October alone. Sustaining the escort mission where the U.S. Navy has been protecting these ships requires 50,000 U.S. troops in the region, 20 Navy ships, two carrier strike groups, and an extra two-tenths of a million to $3 billion a month above normal spending. That's per the Wall Street Journal. And then finally, Tucker Carlson flipped like everybody on Twitter out this week by reporting that Trump might, quote, maybe within days of launching a nuclear strike on Iran and then Netanyahu is pushing to do it. That strikes me as a bit unlikely, but Trump is a crazy person, so we don't know. And again, there were these like limited strikes on Keshem Island last night or Monday night or Tuesday night, whatever day it is, Monday night. And there have apparently been strikes between the U.S. and Iran for like the last week. So things are just kind of ramping back up slowly, but just in the, you know, quietly. The head of CENTCOM was at the White House last week to brief Trump on military options. Ben, like, there's just so, there's so many little pieces here that just seem like this is a foregone conclusion, but I don't know. What are you watching for? So I got to do the best nerd prep for this show. Tommy, I mentioned to you before coming on that I had dinner tonight with the entire Middle East team for the International Crisis Group. That's awesome. Which includes two of the smartest Iran analysts out there. Should have just recorded the dinner. I should have, man. So, and yeah, I think the mood music, you know, out here is like a certain sense of grim inevitability about this. And there are different pieces. First, I just want to say one thing. On those clips, if you couldn't watch it, one of those times where he talks about he may have to kill people and bring the hammer down, there's like a three-year-old boy, like right behind Trump on his father's shoulders. Like, that's really nice that that child got to experience that whole thing. Awesome moment there with his dad. But I will say, like, all right, so what's going on in the negotiations? You have Qatar basically going back and forth to Tehran trying to negotiate something. That doesn't feel to me like the U.S. actually negotiating with Iran. That feels like Qatar trying to furiously avert an escalation because they know that they might get hit as part of an escalation. And so I don't really see, okay, Qatar, you know, trying their best. I'm glad they're doing it. J.D. Vance sending a letter. Like this. It does not feel to me like some, you know, doorstep of a historic breakthrough here. I mean, I pray I'm wrong. Like nothing would be better than if the Qataris pull a rabbit out of a hat and comes out in two days and the war's over. But it just doesn't feel that way. And especially given the Iranians have been bombed twice in kind of more advanced talks in the past, where literally the Iranian negotiators the last time around were killed in the middle of those talks. So I don't see a lot of, I don't know, prospects for an imminent breakthrough at the negotiating table. Then you see all this rhetoric anticipating escalation. You see the U.S. kind of doing some of the things to prepare the ground, including perhaps some of these one-off strikes that we've seen the last couple of days. Then you see Israeli politics, which we can get into, but it's obvious that an escalation in Iran would help Bibi Netanyahu politically. It would just take the emphasis off of the coalition formation and make it a kind of unity moment. And we need, you know, Bibi, the strong leader to stand up to Iran. I mean, it's a crazy way of thinking, but that's what his political interests have always been, perpetuate war to stay in power. And I think that the feeling here is that the Iranians are quite prepared to escalate too, that they've spent a lot of time figuring out how they can impose an even bigger cost on the Gulf countries in particular, but perhaps Israel as well. Each time around, you know, they've come back with a different type of wave of escalation. So what's concerning to me is, and then we should say we have Chris Murphy, who tragically, you know, hopefully he's okay. You probably saw the news of people listening that he had a stroke. You know, Chris Murphy out there saying he'd been briefed on what the war plan was and it was crazy. It was insane, I think, was his- Why don't we throw to that clip, actually? Why don't we play that? Yeah, Chris Murphy had a stroke. He's like at his kid's hockey game and all of a sudden started feeling something. So, you know, everyone just, we love, like, we love the guy personally. Love that guy. Talk about a Paz at the World guy, yeah. Yeah, seriously, we've probably been on the show more than any U.S. senator and just like an awesome guy, you know, privately and publicly. Here's that clip that Ben was mentioning. In one of these briefings, we did get the chance to have a fairly detailed conversation about what the war plan would be if we restarted military operations. You've heard a preview that it would be a short duration plan. I will just say this, their plan is insane. It won't, it won't, it will lead to, devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law. I mean, that is a stark warning. The commitment to the rule of law part, like, I'm not even sure what he's getting at there, like, suggesting there might be war crimes. I mean, Ben, the one thing I wanted to flag is that I think Democrats have an opportunity in early December to block a funding vote on a continuing resolution to keep the government open. I think they should fight tooth and nail to make sure that no money goes towards continuing the rule of law. I think they should fight tooth and nail to make sure that no money goes towards continuing this illegal war. I mean, that should be, like, kind of table stakes here. They should. I mean, especially if the election result seems to validate the public wants to know part of this war. And I think what he's getting at, like, it's hard to guess at what the military plan is. It seems like what Murphy's alluding to is the massive bombardment of civilian infrastructure that the administration was kind of toying with before. And we know that because Trump mused out loud about blowing up bridges and power plants, which would be war crimes. And I think what people should recognize, what's so crazy about their plan is that, sure, in their minds, it might be like, oh, it's four days of airstrikes on all this civilian infrastructure. Well, yeah. And then there's, like, a whole wave of Iranian reprisals that could light the entire region on fire again, further cripple the global economy, you know, somehow precipitate another American response. I mean, we've lived this in the Iran war before. They have not learned the lesson that Iran is capable of retaliation here. I will say the Tucker Carlson thing, because Newt King, Pickaxe Mountain would obviously be the most extreme war crime that you can engage in. It's strange to even talk about it. Tucker Carlson does talk to people inside the administration. You've heard, like, I've heard these kinds of rumors before, too, about Pickaxe Mountain. I never know. It's always, like, second or third hand. So what do I know? But also, Tucker has been concerned about Trump nuking Iran since the very beginning, just for what it's worth. And I will say, Tommy, like, I'm reading this and I'm like, oh, shit, like, maybe this is plausible. And then he's like, and Barack Obama opposes the deal with Iran. I'm like, what would Tucker Carlson knows? Like, I'm pretty certain that Barack Obama's not being consulted about the negotiations and weighing in on them. So that made me think that there was less credibility to the entire rant. But that's the far end. And I just want to say this because I can't believe we even have to. But, like, I would hope that the U.S. military wouldn't do that if somehow they did. I mean, this, I hate that I'm saying this, because we might have to look through two years of this. Like, they should just impeach him if he does that. I mean, like, we shouldn't even have to say that. But, like, you know, it's out there, right? But look, I think the most likely thing, unfortunately, is Murphy's scenario of, like, a civilian infrastructure bombardment, an Iranian wave of escalation and return. And then we're kind of right back where we were at the height of the war. Yeah, it is not a righteous or just thing to nuke a country to prevent them from doing nuclear research. That's just an insane bit of logic to talk yourself into. There's also reports, though, that Trump is considering dropping the mother of all bombs on Pickaxe Mountain, which is a 21,000-pound bomb, which, you know, I talk about this with the guys on PSA. I mean, it's sort of like the perfect Trump thing because it sounds impressive, but it will do absolutely nothing strategically. It would just be like dropping a whole bunch of bombs at once. Like, great. The problem is that all the stuff is underground, like buried into, like, you know, rock. And that's the challenge is you need some sort of missile that can penetrate deep into that. And when, you know, you're not going to be able to when Trump bombed the other nuclear facilities in the Midnight Hammer Strike, those massive ordnance penetrator bombs were able to go through a ventilation shaft. It's kind of like get to the area where they needed to be. There's no indication that we've heard, Ben, that there is some sort of similar opportunity at Pickaxe Mountain. On that intelligence, so the New York Times, here's the report. Israel has shared intelligence with the United States asserting that Iran is considering the use of chemical weapons against its adversaries. Information met with alarm by some American officials and deep skepticism by others, according to U.S. and regional officials. Some American officials see the Israeli intelligence as part of a pressure campaign by Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's government to persuade the Trump administration to return to major combat operations against Iran. It's worth noting that Saddam Hussein actually used chemical weapons against the Iranians. So there's a pretty painful history there. You know, the story also noted that CENTCOM has a plan to strike Iran beginning as early as Wednesday. So, you know, that's wonderful. Yeah, look, whenever I hear Israel, intelligence passed on to the United States, I immediately become skeptical because we've seen this kind of repeated effort to goad the United States into doing something. I also, again, like, I, why would the Iranians do that? Because it would clearly invite, like, a massive response. And they have all manner of other ways to escalate to increase the cost to the United States, the global economy, to Gulf Arab countries, potentially to Israel itself. That just doesn't seem that feasible to me. But at the same time, I guess, like, I hate to be an armchair psychologist too, Tommy. I'm curious what you think about this. It does feel to me, though, like, if Trump loses this midterm election and he loses it potentially handily, will his psychology compel him to kind of change the story, show his strength, show that he doesn't care that, you know, these voters didn't like my war? And unfortunately, that kind of does add up to me, that he will not, particularly if it's a very decisive result against him, he may want to do something this week just to show he's still here, he's still in charge, he's still the commander-in-chief of the military. And that's kind of alarming too. Yeah, I worry about that a lot. I mean, I think he's going to want to change the narrative no matter what from a loss to something else. There's probably no more kind of plug-and-play method than bombing someone, hopefully without the nuke, without using a nuke. I also think that he's just, his actions, including his Monday press conference at the Reflecting Pool, where he talked about renovations for an hour, suggests that he doesn't give a shit about politics, really. And he's concerned about himself making money for his family and literally burnishing his legacy, including, like, building monuments to himself, gilding statues, etc. So he is certainly going to want to be seen as the guy who completed the war with Iran, whether or not that is possible and a good idea. So I think it's almost certain that he's going to resume fighting and probably just not really care about, like, gas prices or what it means for J.D. Vance's political future. He doesn't give a shit about J.D. Vance. Yeah, we seem to be entering, like, late-stage autocrat, both in terms of, like, you know, he's going to be a lame duck and in terms of just his age. And also, like, on some level, despite what he says in all those interviews, he's got to know that he's headed towards electoral because of Iran, you know, because the Iranians basically beat him in this war and raised gas prices. And he may, you know, the same way that he wants to, like, punish James Comey, for reasons I still don't quite understand, he may want to punish them. And that's a really scary thing to think about, that that's probably true. That's not even just, like, you know, a wow theory, because that's not the mentality you want of the President of the United States for the next two years. No, yeah, the enemy's list is, like, that Olympic rower, Iran, and then Comey for the seashell. - Obama for the Cheesecake Factory. moment. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We all love those nagging things taking up too much space in our heads. Maybe it's an awkward interaction from years ago, an irrational worry, or a minor annoyance that somehow becomes all-consuming. 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Ben and I recorded an episode up on Friday that's up on the Pod Save the World YouTube page, where we dug into like kind of the range of government formation options going forward. We also kind of dug into like the Arab parties, who they are, their backgrounds, et cetera, and why they were so successful last week. So check that out if you want more. And also please subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube, because we usually do breaking news episodes there. It's free, by the way. And when you subscribe, when you like the episodes, when you share the episodes, it really does help us grow the show and get it in front of more people. So we'd really appreciate it if you would just subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. And just like and share and do all the things. But you can also listen on the podcast. And just to kind of catch people up on where we are. So post-election, Netanyahu's party, the Likud, got 27 seats. And then Netanyahu's coalition got 53 seats. So that's all the parties that aligned with Netanyahu. The opposition bloc that's led by the former IDF chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, got 48 seats, which was a disappointment. And then his party, Yashar, got 21 seats, also a disappointment. So the real big story from this election was the Arab parties had huge turnout. They got 19 seats that divided up between like two blocs. There's the Joint List Coalition, and then there's Ram. So what happens now is the president of Israel, Isaac Hertog, he meets with representatives from all the 11 parties that cleared the threshold to get a seat in the Knesset. He will then tap the leader of one of those coalitions, presumably Eisenkot, to form a government. Eisenkot would get about a month to try and form a government. He can go back to the president and get a 14-day extension. But if that doesn't work, then the other team gets a shot, presumably Netanyahu. And then if there's no government formed within 100 days, they call new elections, which would suck because Netanyahu stays in charge the whole time. And it will probably benefit him politically to have another election. So since we recorded that thing on Friday, the Pod Save the World episode on YouTube on Friday, all the opposition parties have said that they back Eisenkot, which is good. He is also named a negotiating team to begin the talks. And then I saw this morning, Ben, that one of the parties in Netanyahu's block, it's an ultra-Orthodox party that I think has seven seats, the United Torah Judaism Party, said they are currently not going to recommend Netanyahu to Hertog. So he has a little less support. Now, during the campaign, Eisenkot said he would not go into coalition with Arab parties. Then on Saturday, he seemed to change his mind a bit on that. He released a statement that included four principles. A couple of them were recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, mandatory service for all Israelis, as a terrorist group. And then he said, quote, every Knesset member who is willing to sign on to these principles as a potential partner on the path to establishing a new and better government for Israel, the door of the government we will form will be open to every public representative who accepts these principles and is ready to rise to the occasion. So, Ben, that sure sounds like he is trying to open up a path towards forging a coalition in some form or fashion with the Arab parties. It's a little more complicated than that, but it's a positive development since we talked last. Yeah. It is. And it's good for Eisenkot signaling that openness. I heard, I talked to the Israel analysts tonight, and there's kind of an optimistic view and then there's a pessimistic view, right? And so the optimistic view is Eisenkot has opened up this door that, you know, it could be difficult, but he could either put together some coalition, perhaps peeling off one of the smaller parties from the Netanyahu bloc and then bringing in some of these Arab parties, or he could form a minority government. Maybe the Arab parties are not fully a part of his coalition. They're not like running ministries and stuff, but they agreed to vote with him on enough things that he can have a government that survives for some period of time. And frankly, that government will probably collapse at some point, but at least gets Netanyahu out of there. And so the optimistic scenario generally has some role for the Arab parties, unless he can kind of find some other arithmetic. The pessimistic scenario is, you're already seeing cracks. Like when Eisenkot made that statement, some people, even within his own party, were like, I don't know about that. Avedor Lieberman, who's a bit of a kingmaker, has his own party, has come out and said, I don't really want to go in a coalition. And he's been, the Eisenkot bloc has come out and been like, I don't really want to be in the coalition with the Arab parties. And so he may just not be able to get, he may not be able to maintain enough support to do anything with the Arab parties. Like we don't know that yet. But this whole thing hinges on how racist, Israeli politics decides it will be. Because the math is right there. Like if, you know, in a country that didn't have like racial hangups, I mean, I'm sorry, I don't, I don't know what else to say about people that refused to enter a coalition with parties that are Arab, that are clearly not going to be like the decision makers on major issues anyway. They're going to be a small part of the coalition. But so that's, that's kind of where we are. And in that pessimistic scenario, what happens is Eisenkot just starts to lose control of the, of the negotiation. And a lot of people validated a point you made, Tommy, which is he's a general, like he doesn't know how to do backroom, smoke-filled room, political horse trading. Like that's, Netanyahu has been doing this for 30 years. This is the first time this guy's like been in discussions like this. So the pessimistic scenario is he kind of loses control. Some people don't want to go in with the Arabs. The Arab parties start to get obviously a bit, you know, put out by that. And there's Netanyahu sitting there. He's still the caretaker prime minister. And we're either headed towards another election or some, you know, somehow Netanyahu kind of creates some unity government that allows him to preserve his standing. And this gets to the Iran war point, because if there's a major escalation of the war in Iran and there's Iranian missiles coming into, you know, Israel and Israelis are being killed, like suddenly, you know, Netanyahu will come out and say, now's not the time to be even thinking about politics. You know, we must all unify right now and look at me, I'm out in front and maybe I'll have the other guys stand behind me and, you know, just kick the can and, you know, create the appearance of crisis and unity and all the rest of it. I mean, this isn't like a hypothetical because we've seen this guy do that before, like time and again, you know. And so that's why I think he has every interest to be, you know, in a craven way. War is not a reason for you to, you know, anyone to stay in office. It's a horrible way to stay in office. But like, I would be shocked if he wasn't really pushing Trump hard to do something here. Yeah, I mean, just like Arab parties aren't monolithic. Within the joint list, there's three different parties. One of them is kind of like a hardline Palestinian nationalist party. There's some genuinely problematic members and views, right? Like, so I can understand why Eisenhower wouldn't want to go into coalition with them. But what we're probably talking about is a handful of these Arab parties that are more pragmatic and have been in government before voting to be joining, like officially joining the coalition. And then others, members of other Arab parties abstaining from the vote and forming a minority government that is fragile, like you said, will likely collapse, you know, when like kind of major issues come to the fore in the future. So I think that's a really good point. And I think that's a really good point. And I think so hard. The game theory is so hard because you have people like Avigdor Lieberman who controls a pretty important block within the opposition. He has said he won't go into coalition with Arab parties. He also won't go into coalition with the ultra-Orthodox, nor will he go into coalition with Netanyahu. So it's like, dude, what are you doing here? It's quite confusing. And then, you know, Netanyahu is obviously like stoking this fire. He said on Monday, the public in Israel does not want a government that depends on Rahm and the joint list parties that support terrorism, reject the existence of the Jewish state, right? So he's trying to make this, you know, about terror and et cetera. And so, you know, the question is, is there a creative, you know, idea out there? Anshul Pfeiffer at The Economist or Pfeffer, we can't, we don't know. Sorry, Anshul, you're a great reporter, pointed out that only the prime minister is required to be a member of the Knesset. So he could actually, Eisenhower could put forward like a fully technocratic government with like experienced professionals who are not political in any way to kind of take control of the ministries. And maybe that could be a way to make everyone feel good. Who knows, Ben? Did you see this though? Earlier this morning, President Trump decided to make a surprising announcement about the U.S. relationship with Israel. Let's watch this. Now, as far as paying Israel, Bibi Netanyahu and I have made a deal that we give Israel $4 billion a year. And we made a deal months ago that we're stopping and they're fine with it because, you know, they're a very successful country that are needed. And we won't be paying any more Israel. So it's just a wasted thing because we've already agreed that by the end of this year, we won't be paying Israel. And that will help Israel if they need it. You know, they've been a great ally and we've been the greatest of all allies to many, many countries. We've been great to many countries. So, Mr. President, you're saying you're not giving them $4 billion worth of weapons? We have total control, Brian. We have total control of the harmless trade. I'm at 99% approval rating in Israel. Can you believe that? Absolutely. In fact, if people ever got tired of me in the U.S., I'll move to Israel and become prime minister. We're tired of you, sir. Please move. The U.S. provides Israel with about $4 billion a year. But of course, we've provided tens of billions more since October 7th and throughout the Iran war. The current agreement that stems from the Obama administration that governs how much aid goes to Israel expires in 2028. So Trump is kind of like moving that expiration date up a little bit. I think it's significant for the Israelis. I think it's 8% of the Israeli defense budget. But Ben, it was just like a surprising thing to do in kind of a random like throwaway Fox & Friends election day interview. What did you make of this? Well, first of all, weird to do it. If he was going to do it, given how unpopular aid to Israel is just politically, I know I didn't do it a week ago. That said, they've been preparing the ground for this for a while. You know who's a big proponent of this idea? Lindsey Graham, who was about as hardcore pro-Israel. What this is about, right, is because aid matters. And we should say, and I have a piece out if people want to check out the New York Review books about Gaza, which I go through all this, but I think that Obama-era MOU was wrong, you know, like just to point the finger at our administration. We had just been through a bruising battle over the Iran deal, and it was kind of a way to shore up support from senators who were worried. And it was also kind of a continuation of obviously giving them the assistance. Another $20 billion plus was provided after October 7th. So they have been getting a lot of money in recent years. All that said, they don't really need the money. And this is important as you watch the debate in the Democratic primary going forward. The question to me is not just aid. Aid is absurd. That's low-hanging fruit. It's going to be easy for people to come out and say, yeah, we should stop getting the aid. The question is, do we provide them with all these weapons? Do we provide them with 2,000-pound bombs that they might drop on Palestinian refugee camps? Do we do technology transfers? Do we provide them with weapons that they might drop on Palestinian refugee camps? Do we give them the most sophisticated systems that we have? There's a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that would kind of create a joint venture in defense technology between the Pentagon and Israel. I think the play here is going to be, okay, now that we've taken the easiest thing for people to oppose, aid away, we're actually going to up the sophistication of the collaboration. The question is whether you sell these weapons to Israel, whether you make these technology transfers to Israel. So this, I think, is them trying to get ahead of where they see the politics going in the United States. I think we should do that, but it's not getting at the fundamental question of, like, should we be providing this type of support to a government that is committing war crimes? Yeah, it's the U.S. policy that we help Israel maintain a qualitative military edge over its competitors in the region. And so will that continue to be the case? It's a important thing to watch. Final thing on this, Ben, I mean, Netanyahu is alleging fraud. He's saying that the Arab parties use foreign money from Qatar to steal the election. It seems pretty specious. And then I saw that Haaretz reported that the Likud, even before the election, was preparing to accuse Arab parties of stealing the election if the results showed that Netanyahu lost and that the Likud invested a bunch of money in some scheme to monitor polling places in Arab communities. And they're also considering not certifying the election. So I think that's I think that was reported today. This would be unprecedented in Israeli history. It's likely the courts would just overturn it. But, you know, Trump and Netanyahu kind of run in the same playbook. Exact same playbook. I like that Qatar is like the new George Soros. Netanyahu used to claim this about George Soros, and now he just says Qatar. But I mean, these Arab parties, like, they're citizens of Israel. Like, they're allowed to vote. He's basically calling the fact that citizens of Israel voted in an election fraud. Yeah. I mean, it's not only like Trumpian and it's, you know, absurdity. It's also gross because, like, he's suggesting that they should not have the right to vote at all, essentially, is what he's saying. And, you know, that gives you a bit of a window into where how far to the right Israeli politics has gone. Yeah. It's nakedly racist. Speaking of motley coalition meetings, Crooked Con is this weekend. The official schedule is up on CrookedCon.com. There's 25 sessions on November 7th at the D.C. Invention Center. Stuff like Pod Save the World Live with me, with Ben, with Congressman Jason Crowe and Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari. We're going to talk about the Democratic Party's oversight priorities once we hopefully take back the House. Pray to God. And we're recording this before the election. So, you know, anyway, I'm also going to be hosting a debate on U.S.-Israel policy. There's tons of great speakers and panelists, Governor Josh Shapiro, Senator Mark Kelly, Alyssa Slotkin, Wes Moore. It's going to be amazing. Today only, we're having a flash sale. $30 off your Crooked Con ticket if you use the code CCMIDTERMS26. That's CCMIDTERMS26. We'll put it in the episode description. Go to CrookedCon.com for more information. Pod Save the World is brought to you by Helix. How long have you had your old mattress? Can you even remember? 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Go to H-I-Y-A-H-E-A-L-T-H.com slash world, that's W-O-R-L-D, and get your kids the full vitamin support they deserve. All right, Ben, let's change gears here. We want to talk about a massive crypto hack that was essentially a bank heist to the tune of about $6.3 billion, which would be the largest in history. This hack was of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. North Korea was reportedly behind the hack. On Tuesday, Binance kind of walked a bunch of reporters and put out a blog item about how it all happened. So this hacking group is called Trader Trader. So T-R-A-D-E-R, T-R-A-I-T-O-R, sort of glued together. I don't know. Clever. Someone pretending to be a project manager who was hiring developers reached out to a Binance engineer in September. They then put this engineer through two rounds of interviews, including a live video call. Then they told him to download an assignment on his work computer. Unfortunately, that assignment contained malicious code that the hackers then used to compromise. And then they used the compromised computer and an internal tool at Binance to take control to other computers that could deploy software internally. And then nine days later, they gained access to a service at Binance that allowed them to drain what are called hot wallets. And then they drained those wallets over the course of several hours and took billions of dollars. The New York Times reported that the hackers then moved that stolen crypto through like 12,000 wallets to try to trade it and hide it and wash it through various ways. And prevent the funds from getting frozen. Binance said they were able to intercept or freeze $2.85 billion of the $6.3 billion. And they also said they're going to make the rest of anyone who was impacted whole. But like this was probably the single largest theft of anything ever. The previous record was a $1.5 billion hack in February of 2025 of an exchange in Dubai. North Korea has stolen an estimated $7.6 billion worth of crypto. This year alone, this is per Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, that is, you know, like a quarter of their GDP. It's a massive amount of the country's wealth. The blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimated that 89% of crypto hack losses in 2026 were linked to North Korea, up from 15% in 2021. Ben, incredible story. It's good to know that the blockchain and crypto is helping someone. It just happens to be Kim Jong-un, I guess. Yeah, there's a bunch of dimensions to this that are worth people keeping their eye on. Like number one, like crypto has a lot of fucking problems. And, you know, I'm in my little, you know, national security nerd corner here. And people in that corner have been saying for years, crypto is like tailor made for money washing, money laundering, like thefts, like, you know, transfers to places like North Korea. And we're always scolded, like, you don't get how this is the future of, you know, whatever. No, like you create a massive unregulated kind of dark money street. Like, it's going to become like a place that bad actors go to steal your money, you know? And precisely because it's so unregulated, because it's designed to kind of be beyond the writ of governments, like this kind of shit happens. The second point I'd make is, North Korea has gotten quite sophisticated doing this. And I was reading a lot about this. This is before agentic AI enters the chat here, okay? Like, they don't assess it, they necessarily were making use of it. Like, frontier AI capabilities to do this. One of the things that we know, already know, that AI is really good at is offensive cyber operations. We know that because the fucking AI agents themselves have escaped human control and done offensive cyber operations and hacked into things. So, if you think this is bad now, what do you think is going to be going on one year from now, not 10 years from now, two years from now, when the North Korean hackers can make use of all these new AI tools to just do, like, infinite probating? And hacking exercises with AI agents. This is like a nightmare coming, right? And crypto is just the most vulnerable mark on the block. I would not be putting my fucking money in crypto right now. And then the last thing is, this is real money for the North Koreans. I mean, this is not like, you know, they got a million bucks in a bank heist. You know, this is like, like, if they actually pulled off the bank heist in heat, you know, like, I mean, like, $7 billion, $10 billion, like, what can they do? What can they buy with that? A lot of shit. A lot of weapons. A lot of weapons, what they could buy. Yeah. And like, look, they didn't get all of it, right? Like, some of it was frozen. Like, so what happens is, the challenge with crypto transactions is they are, like, by design, irreversible. So, it's not like if, you know, someone, like, hacks your bank account, transfers money to another bank, you can get the bank to transfer it back. You just can't do that with crypto. Now, some of the money, especially, like, the stable coins, the coins that are, like, you know, pegged to the dollar, they can be frozen by those companies. They can be rendered useless. And kind of, like, written off on their ledgers. But other money was, like, clearly, the North Koreans have been preparing this for a while. And they transferred it to all these wallets to quickly, like, wash it in as many ways as possible to convert it to different currencies. So, they walked away with billions of dollars, like, a ton of money. Yeah. And to your point, like, yeah, the North Koreans were already really good at hacking, right? Like, everyone remembers the 2014 Sony hack. In 2017, the North Korean cyber hackers were behind the WannaCry ransomware attack that like, 300,000 computers in 150 countries, including the NHS, the British, you know, healthcare system. They've robbed, you know, real banks before. Like, so, you know, this is, like, a, it's not just, it's not like the United States, where, like, we have the NSA that does, kind of, like, these bespoke, like, intel operations. Like, this is a huge part of their economy. And you're right, with AI, that part is only going to grow. Yeah. And, I mean, before the crypto people at me, again, Binance has said they'll make people whole here. But the point is that this just doesn't feel like a very safe space to be in right now. Like, with AI coming online, too, and the cyber risk going up, because North Korea will continue to try to do this. Other cyber actors will try to do this. And it's interesting that they're just, kind of, beyond, you can't punish them anymore, because they're basically sanctioned so much that they're cut off from the U.S. dollar-based economy, you know? Which is partly why they do this. Yeah. And so, a lot of the debates, in terms of how to deal with this, start to get at things like, do you start your own offensive cyber attacks on the North Koreans and get in, kind of, like, a cyber war with them? Which is, kind of, scary to think about, too, because that creates incentives for them to maybe fuck with you in more direct ways. Because they're clearly very good at this. I mean, one thing that they've clearly done there is that they've, like, trained, like, a generation of hackers. And again, I think that the thing to watch on this is, how does this evolve as AI becomes more potent? And then, because then what people say is, well, the best defense against offensive AI, cyber attacks, is defensive AI. It's the perfect manifestation of the AI economy, where, like, an AI company is making the thing that creates the threat that the AI company then has to be paid for to defend against the threat. Like, it makes you feel like this whole AI economy is, like, one big circle of cash. It just, everything mandates that we pay, you know, some tech company more money. Yeah. I just want to unplug the computer. Let me do a couple updates from Ukraine. So, first, on Monday, President Zelensky tweeted this very disconcerting video saying, quote, we have intel that Russia is preparing a new massive attack on our country, primarily targeting energy and logistics. He says he thinks Russia will be distracted by the U.S. midterms. And then he said, quote, we must not play games with Russia's oil or gas revenue. We must put pressure on Russia in such a way that it has no alternative but to end this war. That last part of his statement is probably a reference to a Wall Street Journal report that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are pushing a deal that would let Russia sell natural gas to Europe again or to the world again. The way they would do it, though, is to get around European sanctions. They would have the sales go through a U.S. intermediary, which, by the way, what a nice surprise, would allow a bunch of American investors to make a ton of money. I'm guessing ones with connections to the Trump administration. And this natural gas would have to go through a pipeline that crosses Ukraine. So, you're going to need the, you know, Ukrainians to play ball here. Now, none of this makes any sense, Ben. Ukrainians would make some money off of fees if this were to ramp back up these natural gas sales. But they also know that, like, any Russian money they make would go towards fueling the war effort. So, it's nuts. And it doesn't make sense when you think back to how much time Trump spent chastising the Germans for building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany in his first term. Currently, I think about 11 percent of Europe's natural gas comes from Russia, which is down from 45 percent before the war. So, the EU has made real efforts to wean itself off natural gas. They're trying to fully phase out Russian natural gas by the end of 2027. Similarly, the New York Times reported that last week, this is a report from last week, that Trump is considering lifting sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund. This is, you know, the Biden administration sanctioned that fund after the invasion of Ukraine. He called it a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin that is emblematic of Russia's broader kleptocracy. So, there's a very clear pattern here now of Trump giving Putin whatever he wants and not getting anything back. And then, meanwhile, Russia dropped nine massive glide bombs on a Ukrainian school that was being used to distribute humanitarian aid. Nine bombs total killed 33 people, including ones who were in this, like, brand new, newly reinforced bomb shelter in the basement that just could not hold up against that much tonnage. So, don't be fooled by these reports about, like, Melania Trump brokered a ceasefire. That was total bullshit. It was one town for a couple days, and Russia used the time to reinforce its military. So, I think that's a very clear pattern. And I think that's a very clear pattern. And now it's bombing again. So, all bad news for Ukraine right now. Yeah, I'm glad that we weren't even credulous of the Melania Trump boomlet there for 24 hours um the the the way the way you very accurately describe this deal just reinforces that it doesn't benefit anybody except russia and whatever americans make money on the deal because the ukrainians even though they ostensibly get revenue don't want this because they'd rather russia be denied revenue than they get some the europeans like don't want this therefore more sanctions on russians even though they're the ones who would get some gas so like this is literally just trump doing something for putin and you know whoever else in his orbit is going to profit off of this the only other thing that i thought was interesting in the ukraine news this week tommy was um it connects with the iran story you know witkoff announced a meeting in in abu dhabi next week uh to negotiate the end of the war um some people were reading tea leaves like oh does that mean they're not going to strike iran i i don't know steve wickoff has also had meetings scheduled with iranian negotiators who then got killed so i don't read a ton into it um you but you know if there is a meeting in abu dhabi that probably means they're not going to bomb them that day but that's all i'd make of that yeah i mean i just have no confidence in those idiots getting anything done yeah i don't i have no confidence in these guys pot save the world is brought to you by quince the mvps of your wardrobe are the pieces you can always count on whether you're heading to work going out or keeping things casual at this time of year quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy find something for yourself and everyone on your list this holiday season at quince quince focuses on high quality staples made with premium materials like 100 mongolian cashmere 14 karat gold and italian leather they specialize in those timeless versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the 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basically plenty of ways to find something great for everyone on your list give the gift of quality this holiday season download the quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in canada and the uk too and when quince asks where you heard about them let them know it was a great place to come and check out the world it's the best way to support the show finally let's talk about china so um the central committee of china's communist party wrapped up its fifth plenum last week uh this is a four-day meeting it's about uh 370 or so senior ccp officials these meetings mostly rubber stamp decisions that were already made by chinese president xi jinping and the most senior leaders of the party but the one real function of the meetings is personnel the meetings are where the ccp formalizes expulsions from the party and promotes members to like empty seats and boy have they been busy with the expulsions um this plenum ratified the expulsion of 33 senior members from the party which was a record the expulsions include lots of top military officials the body that actually commands china's armed forces is called the central military commission or cmc the cmc has been reduced from seven members down to two and one of the two is xi jinping but the expulsions do not stop just at the military she expelled a diplomat who was seen as potentially being next in line uh to be china's foreign minister he booted his former secretary who had worked for him for over a decade um in some cases these former formal expulsions were the only like official news about the fate of top officials who had just mysteriously disappeared for months had not been seen in public for months uh and no one knew where they were and it also seems like she is just in no rush to replace these people uh the plenum was also record-breaking and that it had the most empty seats in the post mao era so only 279 members full and alternate there's alternate members that go to um attended according to the party statement in 2022 when the the current committee was named there were 376 members so about almost 100 people were missing um so ben what the hell is going on she frames the purge as cleaning up corruption but he's also accused members of disloyalty and subordination scheming there's all these weird adjectives they use um he's also been it's just it seems to be a massive power play by xi jinping as he prepares to secure a fourth five-year term as party leader that would officially happen next year um but ben what did you take away from this uh it seems like a very fun meeting that they had i was really struck by this because yeah this does feel like you know any annals you talked to you know they're not going to be able to get to the bottom of this he's trying to just kind of further reinforce the full inevitability of this you know fourth term but also that this is not any longer like a communist party governed country it is a xi jinping governed country like it is a one-man one-rule country in a way that we hadn't seen in china since i don't know deng xiaoping maybe or mao but also like if you look at some of these officials like i i was i was looking at it we've now reached the state because power so long. These were the people that Xi Jinping elevated over time when he purged other people, you know, so he's just been around so long. He chose these guys. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be like if Obama like purged, you know, you and me and like, you know, like he's purging his people now. Right. Yeah. And that to me, there's a kind of, I don't know, like he can say corruption, he can say whatever he wants. This is kind of a paranoid, weird, like Mao kind of behavior, you know, this is what happened to Xi's dad, by the way, like, you know, he got purged and sent to like a labor camp, you know, after being a top party official. So he's kind of repeating the hits there. And I just to tie these stories together today, Tommy, like, I'm very optimistic about these midterms. So I'm just to prove that I'm not just a pessimist. But we have three men, three old fucking men who run the three empires, right? We've got Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. And the psychology of these aging men is not making me sleep any better at night. You've got Trump preparing to like escalate and potentially commit war crimes in Iran. You've got Putin preparing to like make Ukraine uninhabitable in the winter. You've got Xi Jinping like purging his longtime associates and some, you know, massive power play. I just, this habit of men staying in power into their 70s and 80s. I'd like to try a different experiment. Like, please. Yeah. Even when we like them, even like Lula da Silva, it's like, you know what, it would be great if they figured out a succession plan right away. By the way, it's something Xi is not even considering. Like, Xi Jinping is making sure there is no succession plan. So he, even though there's all these health concerns about him, right? Like, remember a couple weeks ago, we were talking about how he was like, holding on to his wife, walking up and down the stairs and people are saying, oh, look, he disappeared from a dinner and, you know, wondering if he was sick. It's like, nope, this guy's planning for five more. Well, six total, if you count the rest of the time between now and then years in office. Ben, just to hammer home your point about, you know, Xi purging his allies, like one of the top military officials he purged was seen as one of his closest allies. Their families knew each other for decades. This guy was only like one of the few remaining leaders with actual battlefield experience in the military and he's gone. CSIS has tracked more than a hundred senior PLA leaders who were removed or somehow implicated in this purge, which just makes you ask questions about like, how ready or prepared could the Chinese military be? Like, how do you take Taiwan if you have no one on the CMC that runs the military? Who is telling Xi Jinping the truth if all of them are even more paranoid and worried than normal that they might get thrown out of the place? So like, you know, yeah, like none of it's good. None of it makes you feel good about their leadership, the process. Xi Jinping's mentality. Yeah, he doesn't seem like a very sentimental guy, Tai. But I guess if there is good news, you're right about the Taiwan thing. I mean, like they keep purging the senior military officials. Like that does make it, I guess, less likely that they're like going to do something in Taiwan next year, you know? I mean, just because like you kind of need your people in place, I would hope. I mean, I would hope that nothing happens. That's my objective here. But yeah, I just, the man in the high castle never ends. I mean, that's how we got the invasion of Ukraine. Like, you know, Putin purged everybody and was just by himself and cooked this up and COVID, it seemed like, you know, and it does feel like Xi is increasingly isolated from any external opinion that is not. Can you imagine how sick, if you think Mr. Trump gets, if you think Natalie Harp is, you know, printing out the good clips, can you imagine the information flow to Xi Jinping? It's unimaginable. Yeah, although his Natalie is now like a work camp in Xinjiang somewhere. It's not going so well, worse than a drink cart or whatever it was. Final story before Ben and I go and refresh election results. The New York Times had a piece out about how NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong was in some sort of potentially compromising relationship with a woman who is believed to be a woman. be a Chinese intelligence asset or maybe even a spy. She's a top executive at Megaspeed, which is a Singapore-based data center company and one of NVIDIA's business partners. She was, according to US intelligence, collecting intel for Beijing. US officials suspected this was happening. She figured she was helping get Chinese companies access to advanced NVIDIA chips and maybe going around American export restrictions. And the intel found that she was probably sending information straight to Beijing, and that prompted a concern about what she knew about NVIDIA and maybe even like what she knew about the Trump administration's thinking about China and AI, because Trump talks to Jensen Wang all the time. The story says that some US officials questioned whether Jensen Wang could have been unaware about her affiliations. And it says that Trump was briefed on this intelligence a year ago and apparently just did nothing about it. And I suspect that, you know, anger over that inaction is probably why this all ended up in the New York Times, Ben. But, you know, just like a crazy story. I mean, I don't know. I don't know that, like, we needed, like, a spy in the bowels of NVIDIA to know why, you know, Jensen Wang was pumped to sell a bunch of semiconductors to the Chinese. But, I don't know, fascinating piece of reporting there. First of all, I love when these reports kind of, like, hint at the nature of the relationship. I know. I know. Lots of photos of them, like, late at night after conferences. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. What's going on there? Look, it. It does. It builds on something we said after the OpenAI story, right? The Saudi spy at OpenAI with the, you know, thumb drive or whatever. These tech companies are clear marks for foreign intelligence and are clearly not taking the precautions that you normally would if you're dealing with the most sensitive technology in some ways in the world today, you know? And, I mean, this is the Jensen Wang, like, arguably, you know, he's in the top. If we're doing power rankings of the most influential tech leaders, he's in the top three or five right now, right? This is the guy who's literally sitting at the all-in podcast, like, getting Trump on speakerphone to talk about how AI shouldn't be regulated. And so, would you like that guy to be a mark of Chinese intelligence? No, you would not, you know? And yet, the second piece it tells you is that Trump just could give a shit, you know? As long as everybody's making money, and the AI bubble is, like, keeping the stock market propped up, and he's making his cut, or his kids are, or whoever in his orbit is making some money. And, oh, you know, people have relationships, big deal. I mean, it just, it shows a carelessness that, you know, is a little frightening, right? Because it makes you wonder, again, if the fucking CEO of NVIDIA is in a relationship like this, what else is going on? What don't we know? These tech companies, like. Yeah. People, I love that these companies, too, they sometimes come out, and they're like, you know, the Chinese are, they're stealing our models, they're stealing our intellectual property, you know? Well, I mean, you're making it pretty easy for them to do that. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't seem like there weren't a lot of hops to get to the very top of, you know, the NVIDIA brain trust. It's always, like, a little notable, you know, when these guys, a lot of these tech guys are, like, walking midlife crises, you know? I know. So, like, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, we got the. We got the weird supplements and the martial arts. Jensen Wong, like, you never see him without wearing, like, a black leather jacket, which is like your, you know, I mean. It's like, buddy, you're just a nerd. Come on, relax. Yeah, like, just be a nerd. Like, just be a nerd, you know? You can get a date. You're worth, like, a trillion dollars, you know? You don't need to wear the black leather jacket. Yeah, this is not a movie. Anyway, crazy story, one we're going to, I'm sure, hear a lot more about, something, an opportunity for oversight for Democrats going forward is figuring out a lot of these questions. And what the hell NVIDIA is about to do. Which we will talk about at CrookedCon. We'll talk about it at CrookedCon. So, we will all see you there. And until then, fingers crossed on the midterms. 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. This is Danielle Fishel. Ryder Strong. And Will Friedle. Ready to turn up the holiday season? Arm & Hammer is bringing the biggest jingle ball ticket giveaway ever to Dallas-Fort Worth. 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