Xi’s Just Not That Into You

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1:12Welcome back to Potsay of the World on Tommy Dittor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, right before we started recording, 404 media reported that a hacking group says it has penetrated the FBI and stolen data, unquote, all FBI employees and applicants, a rep from this hacking group says they have the agent's names, home addresses, phone numbers and information on their spouses. Do you think that if Cash Betel had spent a little less time helping FBI agents who'd been involved in B.C. and the reality get into the force that he might have locked down their IT systems or is this unrelated? They did. I'd have to go back and review the tape here. But my hazy recollection of the early Doge days was then dismantling some of the cyber defenses of the US government. They got a lot of attention and a bunch of nerds were warning that this is going to lead to catastrophic hacks. Yeah, maybe Cash's priorities of flying to the Boondoggle Ranch and paving the way for B.C. to join the Bureau is not turning out so well.

2:18Yeah, firing everybody was involved with prosecuting like January 6th insurrectionists maybe should have focused elsewhere. Yeah, when asked a representative from this hacking group, they were asked, what's the what are you going to do with this information now? And they said what we plan to do is not something I'd call extortion, maybe coercion. That's pretty ominous. That's great when the FBI is getting hacked. It just feels like that shouldn't be happening, Cash, like from cheap seats here. Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's so many things you could say about this. I just point to one, which is the FBI is the entity that does counterintelligence. Yeah. Like IE the people that are supposed to uncover hackers and people spying on us. And you don't have to be a fan of the Americans to know that probably not good if the hackers have all this detail on the people doing the counterintelligence. All their identities. Ben is in New York this week. He's at the UN General Assembly. You have a good time. Do you feel more international this week every year? I do. I do love Anga Week coming to you here from my childhood bedroom, which was redecorated as soon as I went to college.

3:19But it's yeah, I'm seeing a bunch of different people, activists, politicians, and let's just say the mood though is not ebulent at Anga this year. There's a kind of, you know, grim fatalism about what Trump's going to say. And so we'll see there's a lot going on there. At least he's only there briefly. We have a great show for you guys. So we're going to preview President Trump's state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Talk about what they are likely to discuss. Maybe where the hell all of our leverage went in these talks. And then we're going to geek out about AI for a bit, especially the ways. AI adoption that's currently happening is leading to national security problems today. We are going to tell you all about this week's UN General Assembly meeting. We'll talk about the latest with the Houthi rebels offensive in Yemen and how it has put Trump in this just brutal strategic bind with the Saudis. We're going to cover elections in Russia that just happened elections and air quotes. We'll talk about some other elections in Germany that really are a problem. We'll talk about why so many European leaders seem worried that Russia might test NATO.

4:25There was this sort of like cacophony of social media anxiety about it over the weekend. The Ben and I were sending back and forth with each other. And then Ben, I want to end this up in new, which is a bit of a choose your own adventure section about national security stupidity. You're going to get to decide how this episode ends. So I'm excited for that. And then you did our interview today. What are folks going to hear? Tommy, we have another exclusive here in Puts at the World, which is Mara Batar, who runs national security action organization. I'm on the board of progressive advocacy organization. They commissioned a poll ahead of the midterm elections on public attitudes about foreign policy and national security. And I have to say, like I've read a lot of those polls over the years. And this is a particularly interesting one because it's quite different than any poll I've seen before. You know, like the things like tariffs and corruption and the one Iran are the foremost concerns of voters. People are connecting what's happening in the world to what's happening in their lives.

5:25So we talk a bit about like what the lessons are Democrats to take from that. We talk about AI and how some of the risks people are seeing in the economy and society are not yet mirroring risks that people see on the national security side. And how Democrats might address that. And then just kind of what are the takeaways on issues like Israel and Palestine, where this has obviously been public opinion shifts. And how should we think about the landscape for the midterm elections and the upcoming presidential campaign. Well, amazing. That's going to be upon us soon. Absolutely. It's starting. The engines are sounding. So it's a great time to do that conversation and Ma really unpacks it will. Excellent. Well, I know we have a lot of congressional staffers and members of Congress and others who listen to pay attention to that section because this stuff will be applicable. But let's start with Chinese president Xi Jinping's meeting in Washington this week. So he's coming to DC for his first state visits since 2015. He's skipping the UN General Assembly as far as we know, maybe he'll make a surprise appearance, but kind of doubt it.

6:28The visit comes as Trump is badly losing the war with Iran as concerns about AI are increasing. And as the Chinese economy is sputtering pretty badly actually. So the obvious way is to address those issues and more is with useless ceremonies and fancy dinners. So on Wednesday, Trump is going to greet Xi at the airport at joint base, Andrews. Ben, can you think of a time when Obama ever met a foreign leader at the airport? I couldn't. I can't. I mean, I think maybe Pope Francis, who would be a higher on my list than Xi Jinping. But I think this is, you know, Trump, this is what Trump is so much projection. He's obsessed with how he's received and he clearly has this like deep affinity for Xi Jinping because he's a dictator. And so I guess he likes to roll the red carpet. I don't know, man. I was talking to some Asia experts say like the Chinese are huge on protocol. But this looks like a supplicant. This, you know what I mean? Like the person who meets you at the airport usually carries your bag and gives you a ride home.

7:29And she's like, I don't know that they're going to view this as charming as much as weak. We'll find out for what's worth. She did not meet Trump at the airport in Beijing. He sent the vice president. Then there's a state dinner on Thursday. That'll be attended by a bunch of the usual text CEOs Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Jensen Wong, Sam Altman. Then she departs the US Friday after tea and a visit to the National Archives. The Treasury Secretary Scott Besson to the Pissie cadaver and charge of our money. He met with his Chinese counterpart to prepare the meeting. They reportedly talked about trade tariffs agriculture and AI. On AI, Besson said the US's proposed a quote notification mechanism to share information about AI threats to national security. But which I saw that Ben I was like, OK, it's like the bare minimum, right? Bare minimum, yeah. Politico reported that the notification mechanism is literally just like Besson in his counterpart saying like, like, let's not set our phones to silent at night or something like that's the whole thing. It's not like a bunch of experts.

8:29It's not some trigger of a notification event. If we had artificial general intelligence, it's just like Besson talking to some guy in China. So that's that felt a little insufficient. We'll dig more into AI in a minute. But just a couple more things that could be on the agenda for Trump and for for she. I suspect Ben that Iran, he'll trouble try to get some help from she on Iran. They'll obviously try to announce some sort of economic deal. It seems like rare earth will come up. Ag purchases will come up Taiwan will come up. There's a bunch of reasons I think Trump is in a pretty weak position on a lot of those issues that we can get into. But just first like let's just pause there like anything kind of jump out at you about this visit big picture. Or anything you might expect from this one. Well, I think the big picture is that a US China state visit is usually like an enormous opportunity slash responsibility to address really foundational events that are shaping the world.

9:33And instead, this is going to reflect what Trump has done to the presidency. So he will probably be trying very hard to get Xi Jinping to go along with more economic pressure on Iran to buy less Iranian oil or cooperate with US sanctions. And he will be gone to go on around the bend once more on this day, taunt we have on trade, occasionally flares up. And he will be focused on like the protocol like we said, but also impressing his buddies who are enriching him, these tech oligarchs, including Elon Musk who's in for what a quarter of a billion bucks in the midterm elections. I don't know like rewarding him with access to Xi Jinping where there's huge economic interest like that's what's happening and not kind of like you know if we didn't have the enforced errors of a dumb trade war and a dumb war in Iran and protocol obsessed president who likes to surround himself with oligarchs.

10:36This would probably be entirely a summit about artificial intelligence with some secondary issues in geopolitics and the economy. So it's going to be a reminder of what we're not doing that we should be doing. Yeah, I was talking about Evan Madaros who's an Asia policy expert who we worked with at the White House and he said like the what's the takeaway for him was like there seems to be no serious preparation very low expectations and no clear deliverables that have been articulated in any way. I mean on Iran, yeah, I'm with you. I think at a bare minimum Trump could say to Xi hey, can you please stop letting you know Chinese entities provide satellite imagery to the IRGC that's being used to target American service members and kill them. We'll see if he even does that. But I agree with you like it seems very unlikely that Trump will be able to talk the Chinese out of buying what is 80 to 90% of Iran's oil. The best case on an economic deal seems to be that they'll just kind of continue the data on tariffs. A couple of places that Trump is weaker. I mean, we've discussed at nauseam now the fact that Xi Jinping and the Chinese have all the leverage when it comes to rare earth elements.

11:43Those are like the magnets and other rare earths that are used in missile guidance systems and smartphones and you know EV batteries. China has a near monopoly on them. The financial times reported that in August shipments were actually down 13% from that August the year before and 20% from July. So it seems like the Chinese are sending a little signal that's like hey, we can still you know screw you with these things and cut you off. There's nowhere near like the kind of liberation day tariff knee deer which was maybe a tenth of what the exports are today but it's sort of that's like the lever she can press that can he knows can kind of break Trump and push back on anything. I imagine Trump is going to hype up some random economic deals. Remember when he was in China like they pretended that Boeing was going to sell all these planes. I don't think that's actually happened yet. The near times had a great piece on how back in May China agreed to all these ag purchases but the actual purchases are way behind.

12:46You have to imagine that she will continue to kind of methodically press Trump to try to weaken his or the US commitment to Taiwan. Maybe you kind of roll back some of these arms sales. It's interesting though Ben like what's not even on the table is human rights or you know like you hew it Trump's buddy is always talking about Jimmy live is you know publisher in Hong Kong. That doesn't seem to be discussed. Speaking of press freedom no then this moment from Trump in the Oval Office the other day jumped out of me I thought you'd enjoy this. China is one of those impressive countries of the world. What signals is it saying that? I don't know about it. I think we're repressive also we get fake news we don't repress but they right fake news. So that was before he kicked a bunch of news outlets out of the way now so hopeful stuff. Yeah well you would obviously prefer to have the press environment that Xi Jinping has where you know everybody's required to study Xi Jinping thought you know China. I think you make a good point about like people should be mindful for the spin that's going to come out of here right because.

13:49You know Trump will spin something on Iran for instance like beyond not buying oil there's another thing that I think he will want from Xi Jinping which is that one of the reasons that oil prices didn't go up more. So what I think is that China has a significant amount of energy reserves and they simultaneously started using less energy which we've talked about to keep prices down to keep demand somewhat down and we're able to tap into like their substantial reserves. The favor that I'm sure Trump would like to get before the midterm elections is some Chinese policy that you know releases some of the pressure will leave some of the pressure on oil markets we'll see if you know Xi Jinping is in a giving mood on that or not. My sense is he'll probably do very little but maybe a little bit the Trump tries to spin as bigger than it is. I mean it's just you know that they'll be pushing on Trump on Taiwan maybe this is the first summit since Trump you know disparaged South Korea China's obviously allied with North Korea I'd watch for whether you know in the Chinese readouts they seem to get anything from Trump on Taiwan arm sales I think there's a very significant Taiwan arm sale it's kind of frozen right now.

15:09I think 14 billion dollars or not not a considerable amount so you know the nothing about this will feel quite normal including the fact that Trump will be envious not only will you not be raising press freedom in human rights issues you will be envious of the system that Xi Jinping leads which accounts for far the reason why he's going to meet him at the airport. I think that's a good thing to look at the boots. All right let's turn to AI we just a bit of a lot of discussion lately about kind of the existential threat to humanity that AI they are may not pose the honest answer there is like no one really knows everyone's kind of speculating or guessing but there are a lot of ways that artificial intelligence is impacting our world right now that a national security implications that are worth discussing so a couple examples been first Bloomberg as a big piece out this week about this series of failures that led to the US in the US is a very important topic on the Iranian elementary school in the knob that killed over 150 people including 123 children the problem started with the fact that the US was using dated intelligence and satellite imagery for its targeting that didn't show that was once an IRGC facility had been renovated and converted at least partially into a school an elementary school.

16:25So I think that's a very important thing to do is to get the data from the digital intelligence for its targeting processes specifically this balance your program called maven the polls together all these different data points like 150 data points to create a list of targets. I think military planners according to this report wrongly thought that maven would identify and kind of like sort out outdated intelligence but it did not and maven replaced in minutes with AI these processes that used to take human analysts hours and hours of painstaking work and then on top of that. Pete Hegseth got rid of like 90% of the people who are supposed to step in and review targeting packages to prevent civilian casualties so this cascade of failures that led to the worst. The Australian casualty incident and the 21st century involving children on the second piece we wanted to highlight was seeing at this article about how AI nearly started a war between the US and China. So this the story was this past spring there was a military analyst who used AI to create a report and the report falsely claimed that a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear weapons components this flipped out everybody in the Pentagon and luckily they kind of like double checked this AI generated Intel before US forces literally boarded the ship but apparently it was a very close call they're like hours away.

17:42In more broadly speaking article gets into the ways that the Pentagon and the intelligence community is really pushing itself to use more artificial intelligence today with that adoption has been messy it's different systems different parts of the government using these different tools and there's no real way to kind of account for the fact that these things just hallucinate shit sometimes and get so far on. So the third thing is it's been a bunch of reports about artificial intelligence being used in elections the New York Times wrote up some examples of state back efforts by around China to basically spam social media with these AI generated posts. There's also private companies in Israel offering similar services and the Wall Street Journal at a big piece about how the upcoming Israeli election is just like flooded with AI generated videos and slop and crap one Israeli research out that found that one in eight recent Israeli election related posts social media posts was created or altered by AI so it's just this like delusive garbage so then I mean obviously those intelligence failures at the top or horrific in tragic and you know kind of like things that need to be addressed immediately.

18:46I would say like in terms of the biggest risks I worry about in the kind of medium term from AI it's like people like Trump or BB didn't Yahoo or other bad actors using artificial intelligence to rip our society apart both through kind of like election disinformation but also just like generally by spreading disinformation online. Yeah I think let's kind of catalog some of these national security risks because you know we'll posit that people are worried about mass job dislocation people are worried about data centers taking power and what are another resources Peter people are worried about you know they're kids being taught by chat bots you know but if you take a step back the national security risks are really acute one is cyber risks and so we saw in the hugging face incident the open AI agent. It's kind of escape human control for a time and you know hack into the internet I mean massive cyber disruption because the AI got loose or got curious or just trying out different things that should be a concern to people just the ability to do offensive cyber and the ease with which you can do it I think should be a concern for people the the risk that you can use AI to build biological pathogens create biological weapons something anthropic is worn about you know that's a concern.

20:07And then yeah as you point out like AI being implemented into kind of command and control and targeting decisions before we put guardrails around it look it's it's not not a war crime if the AI is the one that picked out the girl school like it still is and in the rush to adapt this technology and to think you're cutting edge you know I think most people would be pretty uncomfortable with AI making totally autonomous decisions to kill people which is something that I think is you know happening with an alarming degree of frequency these days I you hear some of this in the Russia Ukraine war and and that's just a flavor of it I mean in the Biden administration they were trying to negotiate the Chinese around getting AI out of any nuclear command and control for quite obvious reasons and look we you talked last week Tommy about the who these using AI to mimic the voice of commander in order to get them to surrender I mean if let's say the AI wants to mess with us you know well one way might be interesting in a kind of war games and I've been but you remember that movie

21:12but like let's try to get the US and China into a war like that might be interesting for the AI to observe you know humanity or something like so these risks are very real and and that comes back to the Xi Jinping thing I think it's very important for us occasionally to do the thought exercise of what would be happening if we had competent leadership because what I think would be happening is we would not be in a war the wrong as like I said we're not being trade war and this entire UN General Assembly would be dominated by concerns around artificial intelligence and you would have a US Chinese summit that is setting up you know and I know people say well the Chinese they may not want to negotiate and see there we fucking have to negotiate on this and you be setting up working groups and all these different aspects of AI and the guardrails needed and the communication necessary to avoid misunderstandings or cyber attacks that can cascade and that bilateral summit would I think probably inform some broader UN type process where

22:15other countries are able to participate in a discussion about guardrails and and it is just very striking that that's not happening at the same time that more and more people are figuring out wait a second we're not really ready for these technologies to be unleashed on the world yeah Trump mentioned artificial intelligence during his UN General Assembly speech on Tuesday let's watch that excerpt because uh sort of telling the United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a global scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now here and after officially called super intelligence changing the name and that the use of the word artificial makes intelligence fake it makes it sound fake and it is not fake it's actually amazing in fact it is exactly the opposite of what it purports from this point forward all of United States documents and hopefully the worlds will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial so it's super intelligence

23:24so he's worried about the branding for AI and at the same time not in any ways he's actually refusing to regulate or put a so global framework in place to protect us from the downsides of it so that's great can you imagine being in that room and being representative of some country that is not developing these crazy models that could kill us all right and you've got Donald Trump the one person the room who could actually do the most to put guardrails around this stuff and he's just talking about a branding exercise and how super it is and you know probably reading an excerpt that was prepared by like you know the all in Steven Miller yeah David Sacks or something I mean because Trump's concerns about AI I think amount to two things one it inflates the stock market the whole stock market is kind of like this AI pyramid scheme where a bunch of companies keep passing the same money around you know like they they they they build the the invest in the frontier companies that then buy the data centers and you know it just keeps on going around and he doesn't want to stop the the juice because like the stock market matters that much to him of course and then the other thing is that he's big donors like Elon Musk and you know all these other tech

24:41rose you know the market reasons of the world Peter Teal they all want an unregulated thing and talk about the globalist elite that wants to regulate things like AI and and that's all he cares about and frankly you know he's 80 years old he's not going to be around for the species extinction and looking to that is uh that is you know being predicted is 10% yeah he's not the not the leader we need for this moment that's for God damn sure speaking of super intelligence been crooked con is coming up in the lineup is here we'll have a bunch more announcements to come but you just want to announce some of the first batch of names including some elected officials some campaign strategies, posters organizers some of your favorite crooked hosts some early names are people like uh congressman Jamie Raskin who you know it's a critical voice on oversight Chris van Holland Maryland Center Chris van Holland who's been a really important progressive voice on foreign policy Ben Wickler master organizer from Wisconsin Jennifer Welsh from the I've had it pod there are many many more people on this list I have like 30 names in front of you I'm not going to read them all

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28:56all right so as we mentioned then the the u and general assembly is upon us uh Ben is therefore it's the week long meeting where the 193 member uh countries our organizations are giving the opportunity to come together give us ph they do some u and business and then they have a bunch of meetings on the sidelines with each other try to get stuff done and destroy manhattan traffic last year trump accuses the u and a triple sabotage remember this because of the malfunctioning escalator oh I forgot the elevator teleprompter and the audio is yes it was a triple sabotage uh so hopefully it doesn't fall victim to them like a tepha elevator or something this year but like the netball uh umga has a theme uh let me run this one by you Ben restoring trust managing transformation a united nations that delivers for all it's good to see that like bad focus grouped democratic slogans have made it to the u and uh trust is stirring uh yeah I don't think that uh that one's gonna pass the smell test with anyone and look the reality is this very little of the u and and its staff and leadership can do this is where I defend them right because

29:57if you've got a permanent five members of the u and security council then include Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin um and have veto over you know the most important issues in the world like and the u s with holding dues and things like that it's just you're not gonna do whatever that word salad suggests yeah I mean trump's building a board of peace that he personally controls with a slush fund to be like a counter institution so I don't know i it's nice that the u and gets people together it's still a convening force it's still a place where people can have dialogue on all these issues so it still matters but it's not you know you were there in the bomb years this felt like the center of the world there was a lot bigger than it yeah it felt like we were actually you know issued by issue taking on everything that was happening well and that wasn't unique to us I mean that was the case for any u s administration for most of the last 80 years like now trump parachute's into insults some people does a few meetings probably raises some money and takes off yeah I just

31:00like that they have terrible branding with other democrats so as you mentioned the trump's like trump's not a fan of the organization he's tried to undercut it in a million different ways he's cut off their funding so the board of peace all the board of peace is utterly failed a big focus this year is AI no surprise for some reason Joseph Gordon Levitt is hosting an AI event at the UN i'm not sure what's happening there uh this is the last umga for outgoing secretary general Antonio Gutierrez he's going to give his final address to the general assembly on Tuesday morning his successor has not yet been selected CNN says the Costa Rica's former vice president uh Rebecca Grinspan is the leading candidate to replace him but we all heard trump float uh FIFA president Gianni and Fantino for the job over the summer so this could always get dumber a couple notable things about this week uh trump delivered his speech Tuesday it was mostly the same bullshit it did include kind of the AI comments we played earlier and then a threat to a ron that we'll play later so uh trump took time out to meet with New York city mayor zora mundani uh at Gracie mansion he also

32:01met with Ukrainian president of loading your silenci on Tuesday he's going to meet with french president amenio macron and have a poll aside with venice will and president delce Rodriguez our excellent producer Anisha mentioned then that uh Nicholas Maduro Rodriguez's predecessor is really only like a 30 minute subway ride away true they want to do yeah like a unique photo op they could go to the prison kind of you know tiktok style um like uh what's her name who's the fired uh dhs person christy no thank you her name is already erased from my brain uh trump's gonna meet with british prime minister andi bernum for the first time nanny goes back to dc to to schlep she's bags or whatever in like his boots um israeli prime minister bb nendia who's coming to town sadly azora mundani will not be able to arrest him but that hasn't stopped a bb from putting out uh super lame videos like this one let's watch shema new mr mundani shema new for supporting the hamas terrors monsters who butchered our people shema new for inciting riots against new york jews

33:04i'm coming to the u n i'm going to tell the truth about our heroic soldiers and i'm going to tell the truth about you it's like every word of that is a lie also like everyone hates netanyahu that's only gonna help mundani like like israel's critics hate netanyahu israel supporters hate netanyahu democrats hate netanyahu republicans hate netanyahu and he's just like like the the israeli ambassador to the u n was saying on tv that um mundani should be arrested it's like this is going to backfire on you fucking morons i know you're playing election politics in israel but this is harming you here in the u s yeah i mean if you stacked zora mundani's approval rating against bb netanyahu is globally like you know this is not a close call and frankly the percentage of people on the world that agree with mundani about israel and palestine and gaza is gotta be i don't know eighty ninety percent you know so yeah obviously netanyahu is only speaking to like his shrinking sliver of audience among

34:07american elites and some smaller number of americans then used to be the case but it's just so stupid and hackish and insuffensive right like i was offended to see these really ambassador be like they should arrest mundani like what other ambassador of a foreign country would like call for the arrest of the mayor of the biggest city in the country you know and two other things about this tamiya like one is i i was mentioning this to our producers before we came on but like i'm struck when i talk to audiences like yesterday i spoke to a group of kind of activists from around the world they follow mundani very closely like he is wildly popular around the world like people are tracking his instagram account people are tracking what he's doing so bb is just elevating that i mean i guarantee you that all that kind of video just redounds to zohan mundani's benefit no doubt it's not persuading a single person to change your mind about mundani and probably introducing some people to mundani in ways that they've probably

35:12enough agreement the other thing i'm gonna make the mistake tamiya of like responding to the comments a bit um oh no there's a narrative well there's a narrative sometimes that i've heard that you know mundani should have called bb a war criminal because then he'll use that in his politics and he could help him in the election let me tell you this i have heard that same fucking narrative every election for the last like 15 years it israel is continued to and you know choose bb niaos it's prime minister and what that is a recommendation of is just never criticize israel it's the same mentality that led jobaidan to never break publicly with israel it's like we can't criticize them because if we do criticize them they might use that criticism in their politics well that's that's an insane way to go through life that we should never use our voice because someone might try to manipulate further they're already

36:14you know like we've not gotten a very good window in the the health of his really society in the last few days with the release of this new documentary film naza about the genocide in gaza where they're going to try to denaturalize like israeli these really citizens who made it like i'm sorry i'm glad and i'm donny speaking out and frankly the fact that they react so hyperbolicly indicates that they know they have a problem yeah indicates that they know that that's hitting the target yeah and they think it's good politics i just i just don't and also the trump administration once again denied a visa de palesini and authority president mokmuda boss so he has to join events virtually which like someone explained to me someday how that helps the peace process or you know get to a two state solution as far off as it is um so yeah i mean that's the gist of angaben anything else kind of you're looking at this week or just kind of another underwhelming weaker the only thing i'd say again like in the you know de merritt category is that this like as ostensibly i think climate week at the u.n. we have climate week and it is striking how much that's fallen off the agenda given what's

37:18happening in the world it might be time to bring that back a bit give it the gas prices that we're paying right now yeah or the like superlumineal we got out here um all right let's turn to the hooties last week we did a deep dive into the how the hootie rebels took control of all this territory in in Yemen and how they now essentially uh control access to the red sea via the bobble monday straight we're not going to revisit all of that so check out last week's episode if you want the kind of backstory but since then the uh the hootie military campaign has expanded unsaturday they they launched a bunch of missiles and drones at riyadh uh and at more oil facilities in sadi arabia they are fighting at the same time to take control of more territory in Yemen's southwest mountains basically what they're trying to do is control some territory that would allow them to cut off government forces in a city in the southwest um which would be a big deal militarily a couple things worth just sort of noting the sadi's linked the hooties fire to drone towards mecca uh that would be a bit of an unsettling escalation then in a huge you know sectarian ramifications the who these

38:20deny it but just something to watch uh the u.n says that 130 000 people have been displaced over the last few weeks by the fighting in Yemen um thousands people actually crossed the bobble monday straight to jibbuti the bbc had some great coverage uh from a refugee camp there that's that's worth everyone's time uh and the world food program says more broadly that 18 million people are facing acute food insecurity in Yemen the ap reported that houthi officials met with us embassy staff in oman and basically reaffirmed their commitment to the ceasefire with the us which gets us to our next story which is the new york times have this big uh pull out about trump's indecision over what to do about the hooties uh basically the gist is on wednesday of last week trump was not going to get involved then on thursday he changed his mind after another request from sadiqar prince mom of insam on but then on sunday uh trump i get apparently changed his mind again like right as attacks were about to begin as you know bombs are being loaded on the planes um

39:22and so it just seems like like i i'm glad the us is not getting deeper involved in a fight with the houthi rebels again i think people forget that we were bombing them for like 50 days last year and it didn't really do much um but it seems like trump is in a terrible situation then because if he goes after the houthis they're going to start targeting us ships in the red sea uh oil prices will go up voters will hate us getting sucked deeper into the war but if he hangs mbs out to dry the southeastern cities are more likely to figure out i think a path forward that just sort of ignores us interests um and i think trump seem to be alluding to the fork in the road he has generally about a ron policy uh during his umga speech let's listen to that excerpt but i have a big decision to make will the deal be made with a ron that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before what do i annihilate the islamic republic do i drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations but i

40:27believe we'll make a deal right after the election because it doesn't make sense for them not to they're waiting to see how i do in the midterm election what they don't realize is that i'm not running so there's a little uh genocidal threat from the uh from the well of the uin general assembly been what you make of the speech and kind of the reporting on you know trump and the houthis and sort of what's been happening on the ground of the last couple weeks yeah i mean to continue the theme of like what's happening and what should happen uh it is not tough or strong six months into the dumb more that you started that is creating massive global economic shortages that is screwing over every country that is represented that hall to stand up and be like i have a decision to make i could and i like guess what everybody's read the true social post where you said the exact same fucking thing for like five months about this decision to annihilate them or not you know and nobody believes it because the reality is nobody thinks that the iranians are begging for a deal

41:30because the iranians are winning the war and the iranians are pretty transparent they say out loud that they're they're using their leverage to impose as much pain as they can on the united states vis-a-vis the global economy and to even put a risk the dollars or reserve currency like the iranians or very the the world understands the iranian strategy they may not like it because they're suffering shortages but they don't understand is what trump is doing and when he gets up there and says i don't essentially know what i'm doing i could do this or i could do this and there's your two wildly different things it doesn't instill out of confidence and pointing to a midterm election that you are very likely to lose as like the the key barometer of your decision making kind of so weird i mean i i think what he was trying to tell the hoothies is like don't play me for time to get past this election because i don't care about the election but all it did in practice was show how focused he is on the election that he is actually mentally tying the issues together it was just like seem self-defeating everything about it was self-defeating i mean i just can't imagine he's like oh this is a great and we should say by the way that the united nations was

42:33founded out of the vision of the united states and franklin rozevelt to be a place where you prevented nuclear annihilation from happening and to be a place where you tried to prevent wars and so we have fallen a very far distance in the eighty plus year since that we now have a president states standing in the well the u.n. threatening to destroy an entire country you know that that's not like something that we get a pass for here in the u.s now i should say like a news of what happened or what should happen there's a there's plenty of good reasons to not start bombing the hoothies right and one of them is it we tried it like trump tried it Biden tried it i mean one of my favorite joe biden quotes was when he said and do you remember this one Tommy where he said is it effective the bombing of the hoothies no will it continue yes like that's it's that's a thing that joe biden said out loud right that kind of summed up the insanity of american post-nil of informed policy and the reality is like what needs to happen with the hoothies as with a ron is a negotiation about the future of Yemen like we have to accept

43:37and the southeastern side to accept that these people are not just like going to go away or surrender they live in Yemen they they want to some say over their lives whether we like that or not and you know unless we want this country to be a permanent humanitarian disaster in which there's periodic bombing campaigns and offensives and you know cease fires that are routinely violated like we need to negotiate something in Yemen just like we need to negotiate something with their earnings there's not a military solution to these problems and you know 25 years after 9-11 what that should be apparent to us yeah a couple of odds and ends about the war in a run generally so the the Washington Post that are report last week it says the Pentagon is lying about the number of US troops who have died in the war so the official casualty counter death count is 18 but the Washington Post sides a couple of sources one who says actually 22 service members have died and others says 23 three contractors have also died the post is quote not all the undisclosed

44:37deaths are directly tied to the conflict but have involved US personnel who are in the middle east amid ongoing hostilities this person said so just another piece of evidence about how now this administration is lying and in covering up the true cost of the war and then Alex Ward at the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is proposing a five billion dollar fund to help countries in the Gulf rebuild their energy infrastructure and kind of get around the straight-up for mues which does not suggest that the Trump administration or Trump's team is confident about them solving the problem in the near term and kind of loosening the Iranian grip on the straight-up for mues it seems like they are making long-term plans for the Iranian to be in control of it which is I think you know again another sign that they're losing it's a sign that they're adapting to a world in which Iran is quite likely maybe in partnership with Oman to extract revenue from the straight-up for mues so they can talk tough but their actions tell a different story that they're adjusting to a reality created entirely by their war yeah this was not a problem

45:41before the war the other thing is I'm not even sure that it's effective because the Saudi pipeline that was another way to get energy out of the region to global markets has been bombed and taken off line by the who these you know another Iranian proxies so it's not as if if we stay in this kind of forever war they were with Iran it's not as if they couldn't do some damage to other infrastructure that is built to try to get oil and gas out of there from some other route yeah they seem like the whoopies have been creative and their tactics have adapted and the U.S. does have not this podcast sponsored by Squarespace Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success Squarespace gives you all the tools to claim your domain build a professional website expand your brand and facilitate payments all in one place who squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools anyone could build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits their business start with blueprint AI Squarespace's

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47:43root takes into account your health goals dietary preferences and budget to create a custom delivery for you each week from there they tailor your deliveries accordingly once you note an ingredient to avoid like gluten or dairy it stays on your block list they source only high quality ingredients like meat and seafood with no hormones or antibiotics plus organic produce in non GMO options think of it as the convenience of a meal kit combined with a variety of a grocery store and getting started with hungry root couldn't be easier you answer a few questions about your diet preferences your budget and your health goals hungry root then gather recipes based on your preferences and fills your cart with everything you need all of those items are delivered right to your door and you're all set with everything you need for a healthy meals and snacks for the week for a limited time get 40% off your first order plus get a free item in every box for life go to hungry root dot com slash world and use the code world that's hungry root dot com slash world code world to get 40% off your first box and free item of your choice for life let's turn to Russia so Russia helix first partly meant to be election since the war in Ukraine

48:51began this was for the lower house the doom which happened every once every five years here's what we know so far about the results in a shocking turn of events been united russia which is Putin's party is on track to have its biggest majority in history with a record 355 seats in the body of 450 the other parties that are will have seats in the doom have basically support the war and don't oppose the kremlin in any way so it's again was not a real election turnout was reportedly 59 percent but outside observers think those numbers are inflated russians were also encouraged to vote online this year because what could go wrong with that and Putin even put out a video of himself like playing with his mouse at his computer sensibly claiming he's voting as the voting was happening Ukraine launched a major attack on Moscow they hit an oil refinery they hit a bunch of neighboring residential buildings and russia carried out a barrage of missile strikes on industrial facilities across Ukraine this week bigger picture been it seemed like the anxiety about

49:52russia potentially testing NATO in some new way hit kind of a fever pitch over the weekend it was a combination of kind of maybe fake news or misleading or alarmist news on social media but then also real comments from European intelligence officials and European political leaders about growing concern about Russian hybrid attacks there was French president and me know mechron he said he ordered a plan to protect French critical infrastructure and he did this like big briefing for a bunch of the political parties in France Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Russia was planning drone and missile attacks on NATO countries that support Ukraine last week we talked about that Russian drone strike on a train that shortly after the train station shortly after a train went through they had a bunch of like European national security officials and at Boris Johnson the former Prime Minister of the UK so I don't know Ben you and I were texting some of this stuff back and forth over the weekend like what did you make of the increased anxiety and like is there anything to say about the Russian elections I feel like of course Putin's party did well yeah the Russian elections

50:52are no surprise I have to say like I was alarmed by some of the messages out of Europe and I talked to some people that you know are close to European governments and and they everybody kind of swears and know this is real like I mean Macron for instance you know gathered all the potential presidential candidates in the next French election their parties to kind of brief them kind of extraordinary show of like this is a national issue national emergency the talk out of Poland was about the inevitability essentially Russian attacks on European soil you know and these run the gamut from you know potential military actions into the Baltics to hitting European countries directly that are providing support to Ukraine you know in talking to people what you hear is that the intelligence about you know escalating these kind of gray space things that have already happened

51:55like kind of drone probing potential kind of sabotage attacks potential drone attacks themselves that that's kind of what's in the intelligence that this could become increasingly you know kinetic to use a jargon you were but blowing stuff up in Europe which is again already happened but you know could escalate and and that you know that should get people's attention I have to say also Tommy after kind of freaking out about that for a couple days when the Ukrainians like do the single largest strike on Moscow of the war which they did a couple days ago and it makes me nervous like do I understand that Ukrainian desire to impose a cost on Russia sure but like I also think that you know at a certain point that's going to lead to an escalation into Europe and that again what should be happening is like a negotiation by people other than Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcoff to try to de-escalate this thing because right now we're going in one direction and

53:01it's not the right direction because you don't want to see attacks in Europe. I get the Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil and gas infrastructure because there's an obvious strategic path you know the there's obvious strategy there it did seem like that the the strikes over the weekend were timed to be at the end of the Duma elections to send a political message and maybe scare the population which I agree with you it seems like on one hand I get it on the other hand it does seem likely to get Putin to further escalate because it seems like that this is only speed yeah and it it seemed like it was meant to kind of personally humiliate Putin right who in the past does not take in kindly to any effort to you know when Hillary Clinton criticized this parliamentary election you know 2011 or 12 I forget which year you know Putin responded pretty forcefully so again I like I know people could say well you know you you you can't put any constraints in the Ukrainians I don't know like I just when you have a bunch of Europeans saying that they're going to start attacking Europe

54:04and killing people in these countries I'm not sure like a massive drone bombardment of Moscow is like you know the right approach well look from a Ukrainian perspective like I'm not saying they want any Europeans to get hurt or kill but they would certainly love them to be dragged in and to be part of this conference to be involved in the war yeah I mean I you know I don't I don't want to sign that intention to the Ukrainian. Yeah not saying that was their intent but I mean if that's what I mean yeah but you know one could draw that you know like conclude I look and again I they're no they're the ones fighting they're the ones dying they're the ones who got invaded like this none of this is their fault right they did not bring this upon themselves and they're fighting an existential war but I do think that that's that's why it's important for external parties Europe and the United States to be doing more to try to turn the temperature down and part for Ukraine say too right because it's not as if you know they're not suffering in this war too and it just it feels like there's no blueprint for that other than Jared Kushner giving interviews in which he demands that the Ukrainians you know accept all Putin's terms exactly so I'll ask you and then

55:07meanwhile you know we talked a couple weeks ago about these election results in Germany where the far right in some cases neo-Nazi AFD party took 44% of the vote in this region of Germany called Saxon on Holtz it's a small state in eastern Germany there were more elections in Germany over the weekend and the results were once again terrible for German chancellor Friedrich Merz and the CDU party that first there were elections in in a necklandberg of Vorpomin the AFD got the largest share of the vote there were 38% but the CDU didn't even reach the 5% threshold required to get the seat in the state parliament now I think that will not be as a a a dire an outcome there because the social democrats did well enough that they can probably cobble together a coalition that will keep the AFD out of power but it's still you know the trend is the same the AFD is doing well and the CDU is collapsing and then at Berlin the left wing delinque party beat out the CDU in the mayoral elections so again you have these centrist establishment parties getting crushed from new

56:10more extreme parties from the right and the left there was a poll released Tuesday by a broadcaster in Germany called RTL and TV they found that 55% of voters in Germany would support Merz stepping down as chancellor there was another recent poll found that only 13% of respondents thought Merz was doing a good job he has vowed to stay in office been but boy it like given all that we just discussed about threats to NATO and Trump and destabilize you know the UN being destabilized it's not the best time to have like a hobbled German chancellor as the you know far right neo-Nazi party rises yeah I mean if you're looking at a pretty unstable era for the next two years where the warner on could drag on with the cute global economic challenges maybe some financial crisis on the rise in AI could lead to kind of like cyber disruptions like I talked about Russia could escalate into Europe we're dealing with the situation in which Friedrich Merz clearly does not have the confidence of his own public right and and so much so that a far right part of the AFD is kind of replacing the CDU as like the

57:15right wing party in Germany a manual Macron is a deeply unpopular lame doc president as they prepare for an election in which Marine Le Pen from the far right national rallies probably the frontrunner in that election right Andy Burnham became prime minister of the United Kingdom like a few weeks ago right this is not well the ideal situation to be going through really acute political challenges in Europe and you know this like Burnham is off to a pretty good start so that's a good sign but like man there's a lot riding on the direction of French and German politics in the next couple years yeah it's a little scary finally Ben we're going to try something new to close the show out so we're going to do the classic kind of choose your own adventure novel style ending you get to choose have this episode ends I'm going to give you three options for stories about military genius during the Trump administration and you tell us which one you want to dig into okay option one loading the triumphal arch with drones and sniper ammo option two the Pentagon implementing a waste to height

58:20requirements and grooming standards for anyone who wants to attend ptexas state of the force speech whenever that all it is three operational security over the for the f 35 the fighter jet we can talk about how fighter jet components disappeared in Hong Kong or could be accessed in Saudi Arabia by the Chinese which which option tickles your fancy I think you just kind of identified the third option I I have one question for you before I answer which is which of those three Trump scandals do you think I did an MS now hit on oh the arch height to weight man oh no way that is like great programming yeah yeah why that one because it's just so absurd right it's just like so you know ptexas weird obsession I'm going to go with the arch though yeah I think loading a fucking arch with ammo seems a little more absurd but you tell me and because here's like you know I heard you guys talk about this a little bit I'm hot America I share your concerns that feeling a gigantic landmark that is

59:28unobstructed from all directions with a massive amount of explosives that could detonate on some charge is probably not a good idea I will tell you that I'm so authoritarian pills to though that I was like well wait a second will the military coup in 2028 begin from the arch oh yeah I was literally like is Trump going to be like pre-positioning like drones and ammunition around Washington so that when he calls ptexas and raise in cane or whoever's left in the military and says like we must not allow this a soft election to go forward or whoever it is I'm not picking a favorite that that that thought weirdly like was the first one in my mind more than the operational security maybe though full the Kennedy Center with weapons to make it a national security imperative to rebuild it I don't know that's where my head went I just I think that the like the the earliest triumphal arches the Roman iteration were commemorating when they sacked a city

1:00:33so they would like take Jerusalem or whatever and build one so I guess this is Trump just like showing us all that he's taken Washington and taken our politics and now owns it I hear you on the anxiety about this being where the its erection could begin I'd be like the idea that like you need to fill this thing full of drones or sniper ammo or any of like have a sniper pad on top of it is such obvious bullshit clearly he thinks that there's going to be all these legal challenges to the arts like there are to the ballroom and he thinks that some sort of made up national security argument will help him get the construction green lid and and through the court system maybe that's right it's probably right given kind of what we've seen but like unlike the ballroom which like I hope I'm not really all that look it's stupid I wish they didn't do it I'm not like hell bent on Democrats tearing it down this arch I hope just never gets constructed or if it does yeah I would rip it down fucking immediately because it is like a monument to authoritarianism

1:01:36and it's completely unnecessary it's a monument to authoritarianism it's potential risk to flights but it's also like again not to be I'm very rarely nostalgic by my time in Washington I do think one of the best and most beautiful things about Washington is that you have the Lincoln Memorial and then Memorial Bridge which goes to Arlington National Cemetery which was a Civil War Cemetery and our guys the radical Republicans after like stomping out slavery and defeating the South intentionally put that cemetery right in front of where Robert E. Lee used to live you know so that part of DC is all about our Civil War history and to just plop down some fascist arch in the middle of it kind of ruins the whole vibe for me I should also say you know putting coup concerns aside which we probably shouldn't entirely there's a kind of militarization of Washington I mean you know I've been in cities where the capital of a country is like a very militarized place

1:02:41and you see troops in the streets and kind of shows the military force like DC's creeping I mean the National Guard out in the streets and now we've got ammo dumps in the arch and we've got some giant bunker underneath the ballroom that's being built and it we're starting to feel like a little you know I don't want to impune any region of the world but like one of those countries it has like a military militarized capital and that's yeah it's a little disconcerting yeah it's not the vibe I want it's not good in any way it's strange I it's like it's bizarre to be that he wants this of all the things the ballroom like there are some sort of function to it find whatever he wants to have events outside he's a long history of thinking the way that us needs a ballroom he doesn't like tense on the South Lawn and he called Axel Rod about this in whatever 2012 or 2011 whatever it was the arch makes no sense I hope it never happens I agree with you that it does you know you feel like you're in like a Napier like you know Myanmar or something exactly a military capital or like Pyongyang or so I just it's not what we need in

1:03:45Washington DC it's nuts no I'm a tear down the arch guy like the other ballroom off to manage in some probably other way but this one should not send light today arches are for McDonald's okay that's it for Ben and I we are gonna take a quick break and then you're in your bends conversation with Mahar Batar about some really really interesting exclusive new polling about voter sentiment and national security ahead of the midterm election so stick around for that Pazay the world is brought to you by Quince we all have those essentials in our closet that never fail the ones we can't stop wearing the sweater that goes with everything the perfect pair of pants or the tee that somehow always gets pulled out of the rotation above all the others those are the pieces they make getting dressed easy and that's what Quince does best Quince focuses on high quality wardrobe staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere organic cotton and marina wool the styles are timeless versatile and designed to become the dependable pieces you reach for

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1:05:50to Quince download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com slashworld get free shipping on your order in 365 day returns now available in Canada the UK too that's q-i-n-c-e.com slashworld if you missed some of your favorite crooked pods this week don't worry you can now catch up on the week's best moments on MS now on Saturday nights MS now is streaming an episode of highlights from your favorite crooked pods packing as much analysis funny moments in 100% correct opinions into 40 minutes as humanly possible crooked on MS now airs every Saturday at 9 p.m. Eastern 6 p.m. Pacific Saturday September 26th two of combat sports most dangerous strikers collide bare knuckle liver pulls on down the gorilla tail goes to war with Cuban powerhouse yo-l soldier of god rameiro plus the bare knuckle middleweight championship of the world is on the line when the rating champ Dave the redneck mondale defends against undefeated British challenger jack de meet

1:06:54pleaver colon bkfc 94 till verse rameiro watch it live only on the zone sign up now at the zone.com okay i'm very pleased to be joined today by maher batar who is the executive director of national security action a progressive foreign policy advocacy organization that i co-founded i'm still on the board no longer chair of that board um maher's also played many roles over the years in the Obama administration and the Biden administration a stint in between as the counterpart to cash betel on the house intelligence committee maher was on the democratic side in case you're wondering um so that was an experience but uh maher we're not here to talk about that we're here to talk about some interesting polling that national reaction did ahead of the midterms that we wanted to lift up so thanks so much for joining us yeah thanks man thanks for having me are just just kind of set the stage a little bit um you know before you get into the finding just tell us a little bit about like

1:07:55who who you guys pulled in what states like what you were looking for in this poll sure so we we designed this poll to really meet the moment before the midterms so it's focused on seven battle ground states where we have competitive primaries including in the senate so that includes everywhere from Texas to Michigan to Iowa and a few other states and uh it's uh it has a sample size that actually leans conservative i just given the states um including voters who by a slight majority voted for president trump in 2024 and we wanted to cover the waterfront of issues uh both um kind of a cross national security and foreign policy issues including kind of overall favorability but really to dive deeper on some of the some of the top issues okay so let's jump into these findings which i think are very relevant both to the campaigns that are ongoing and then also frankly in framing the presidential campaign that will start shortly after the midterms um you and i have gone back and forth a bit on this polling why don't you just start by talking a bit about how

1:09:00front and center national security concerns are and foreign policy concerns are for voters usually that's kind of a secondary issue after economic issues what did you find about the salience of what trump in the united states is doing around the world in in the poll yeah i mean my key takeaway is that as we approach the member foreign policy is on the ballot and the reason is that the decisions that have been made here in Washington by the trump administration are boom-ranging back at home in ways that are uh having a pronounced impact for democrats and independents and even Republicans so the numbers are pretty remarkable um across the states that we pulled on for example on gas prices and the war in Iran people are tying the war and the uh the ramifications of word directly to the crisis that they're feeling at the pump same thing on tariffs so the numbers are sky high um over 90% of respondents that we had in um across the battleground states uh tied uh the

1:10:02Iran more directly to the pain that they're feeling at the pump and over 90% similarly including a large number of Republicans tied to tariffs to the cost of letting crisis that they're facing so we really at a point where every single day and i think you're seeing in another polling that is emerging um over the last few weeks and really i think you're going to see it over the next few weeks are really tying those two things together and demonstrating the the the amount to which americans are tying what's happening abroad to what they're feeling at home yeah and i mean that's a credit i guess to people um um and and it's also i think a testament to the fact that even more so than other farm policy failures or misadventures in the past right i mean tariffs correlate directly to prices going out um people feel that um the war in Iran even more so than past wars at the United States of thought um has had this direct inflationary impact so um it's a good sign that

1:11:03that people get that that that these farm policies are are fundamentally economic policies um you know i want to dig into a couple of other issues which is that you know one of the issues that has emerged as a growing source of concern to americans in the midterm elections is artificial intelligence AI um you know that that has really taken off in the last couple of weeks as these kind of hyperbolic warnings have come from some of the various companies um you worked a bit on AI in the Biden year so you're familiar with that terrain at the same time that that doesn't yet really bear out in this polling in the sense that you know the data center issues the one that's kind of gotten a lot of attention here in the u.s it's come almost treated as a domestic issue right involving tech companies and yet you know uh one of the justifications for plowing ahead with unregulated AI is it weren't some race to the death with China over it Xi Jinping is going to be with trump this week presumably AI will be in the agenda um what do you see

1:12:06in the data about voter concerns about artificial intelligence and and how do you kind of unpack the discordance that people might feel about wanting to compete with china but wanting to slow down AI yeah so we we wanted to better understand exactly how people are starting to link or not link AI to some foreign policy um arguments that are made here in Washington including on china and our findings and i should caveat the findings are we conducted this poll in late august early september so before a lot of what has surfaced in just recent weeks that has really changed the debate in the conversation of washington which we can talk about so take that with a grain of salt but in the polling that we did find in terms of whether AI is viewed as a top national security concern it does not rank anywhere close to the top people are not connecting it right now to national security concerns when you ask them about china and whether there's a race with china we saw two things one is in our focus groups that we did before the before the poll for a lot of folks they just they don't view it in those terms that

1:13:10there's a race with china and AI that's just not the way that they think about it and for a lot of them it was actually it didn't compute right it didn't make sense that we would view it in that way at the same time in this poll similarly it ranks towards the bottom in terms of priorities in terms of our engagement with china and i think that points to a few things that we're seeing on the AI front one is that for a lot of people AI is becoming increasingly a concern that is linked really to concerns that they have closer to home including their own families and their own livelihoods so there's other polling out there that that that points to the fact that people are quite concerned about what it will mean for their own jobs but also I think importantly for their children and kind of the next generation coming up I think there's also real concern around data centers and what it means for the quality of life in their own communities and then there also I think bigger social concerns that are emerging where families are concerned about what AI is going to mean for for their for their children and their teenagers very similar to

1:14:14the concerns that have arisen because of social media right over time and because of because of all that I think making an argument that there is a race with china and AI or we need to beat china does not resonate with average americans because the logical conclusion of that for many might be wait a second you want me to lose my job or sacrifice my job for some sort of hypothetical race on AI with china and those two things don't don't don't match now there's a lot more that we I think need to to better understand in terms of how the public is reacting to what's happening in AI so we're going to build out more polling in the space to better understand this but I think this is an important moment for candidates and others that they think through this and they look at the data that for americans it's a bistro it's increasingly I think a bistro and a personal issue that they have to contend with yeah I mean it's interesting to me that look the terror issue and the war issue are pretty straightforward for democrats right like this war is dumb we shouldn't have fought it we should end it these trade wars are dumb they raise prices AI is absolutely more

1:15:20complicated thing it is striking to me mara I'm curious what you think because again you worked on AI issues in the Biden administration when you guys were starting to put some guardrails around this stuff before trump dismantled them that in the conversations I'm in about AI and that I think you're in you know the national security concerns are actually quite acute you know like someone could build a biological weapon with AI the cyber risks you know particularly with this chat GPT hugging face incident where the AI agents like escape human control and we're hacking into the internet and stuff the the chance of a massive cyber disruption is is you know enormous there are these autonomous weapon we they use AI for targeting those suggestions that they may have had something to do with the bombing of the girls school in Iran I mean it is one takeaway maybe that like frankly people need to hear more about these risks on the security side because they seem like the public probably doesn't know those things that you and I spend a lot of time worrying about

1:16:21yeah I mean I think one takeaway from our polling but also other polling is that this is a very fluid environment where the public is just starting to understand and grasp the consequences of AI both positive ones but also potentially extremely negative ones for broader society but also for for their own families when I worked on this then we had conversations at the time so this was at 2023 and 2024 I was the head of intelligence and defense at the White House and we were crafting was essentially the world's first national security strategy on AI and we wanted to think about you know as we're writing this first draft what are the guardrails that we have to to build in but also how could it be valuable for national security purposes and that was a tricky balance at a moment where we could kind of foresee many of the consequences some of which have come to pass to pass but otherwise we we were also trying to kind of understand what this means as a transformative technology at that moment in time I think we're now at a point where we're starting to see the

1:17:21the likely the likely in the real risks of AI advancement in certain areas they're also huge promise in other areas and as a result of that this is a moment where there needs to be an all hands-on-text effort on the hill in the federal government which unfortunately we're not seeing and then also an effort for the public to better understand what this is going to mean for them as well and that sort of transparency is key and I think that's an area where we as an organization but I think you know in concert with a lot of others it's going to be a crucial moment now over the next year or two as we get also closer to 2028 where we've got to really understand what this means and help the public understand because I do think it's going to be also a very potent issue in the 2028 election yeah no I I think this is like put a pin in that and we'll come back to it on this show too because we want people to kind of understand these risks clearly because this is going to define or not just our politics but our society well another issue that has obviously been front

1:18:25center democratic debates is the Israel Palestine we've noted the shifts in public opinion related to support for Israel relative to support for the Palestinians or related to questions like whether or not people believe Israel's committed war crimes what did you find about how much things have shifted on Israel and in the poll yes we approach this asking essentially two sets of questions here because we wanted to understand also where the public is broadly on questions around whether or not withhold military assistance and weapons sales or whether to continue those without conditions and so so the findings I think are actually really interesting and demonstrate that there is a bipartisan consensus here on broader questions and then I'll get to Israel and Palestine in a second but on the broader question we found across the board Democrats independence and Republicans broad support for conditioning military assistance either to prevent the misuse of our own weapons

1:19:27or also to shape the behavior of the countries receiving potential military assistance or weapons from the United States we had about 20% or so across the board across Democrats and the penance and Republicans who actually want us to just end military assistance to other countries outright and then a smaller proportion who want us to continue providing weapons to other countries with no conditions and no restrictions which I think demonstrates the fact that there is actually broad support for ensuring that the United States builds in accountability to the way in which it's supporting other countries or providing weapons to other countries on Israel Palestine specifically our findings are quite consistent with some of the recent polling that you've seen and I would just remind you and in those listening the polling we did was in battleground states that leans conservative with voters that were more likely to vote for president Trump than who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and they're very similarly so about 60% of the respondents supported either withholding

1:20:36military assistance or conditioning it to prevent misuse of the weapons or the shape the Israeli government's behavior or to end it outright and a smaller percentage was open to just continuing without conditions and when you broke it out between Democrats and the penance and Republicans actually there is the numbers on the Democratic and the penance side are much more supportive of conditioning with also a certain number who want to withhold or completely restrict or end in a much smaller percentage than want to continue without conditions on the Republican side you see a higher number who do want to continue without conditions but at the same time you'd still see numbers that are open to conditioning aid or even ending military assistance in the process I think it's reflective of the shift that I know you've discussed on your show and that we've seen since essentially the Gaza war in 2024 all the way to 2026 and that's also reflecting increasingly in the way members of Congress are speaking and the way members of Congress are voting

1:21:39on the issue yeah no I mean it does suggest that a minimum the baseline of like I don't know following US laws on the books about providing assistance to countries suspected of human rights abuses or war crimes like that can be a guide for politicians at a minimum I mean I'd go farther to to a embargo but but but it's notable no but I think I think to take away then I would just say is I think there's a recognition that the US has leverage and the US should use use that leverage when it's necessary yeah there's a common sense I mean I like I'm actually hardened by these results because there's like a common sense through line to them that I think should be a wake-up call to people that work in national security like so the question I want to ask about that is I was struck by the fact that the things that you know national security people elites what everyone will call them tend to talk about as these like threats right Iran or China or you know Russia or or actually not kind of top of mind for voters in the same way that they're top of mind

1:22:43for people and people are worried about this stuff that is impacting their lives you know tariffs the war driving up gas prices and you know we just talk about AI is a growing concern um now one way to interpret that is a kind of America first thing which is that you know what we're done like we we're exhausted with all this let's just kind of pull up the drawbridge and come home and there's some of that that I think is true like particularly as relates to wars um at the same time though and you know you find support for alliances in this poll you find support for NATO and this poll I mean what do you if you take the two and they're not really strong and they're kind of the two recent approaches right the Trump well he says it's America first but then he launches wars and stuff so but if you take the America first argument they take Tucker Carlson argument you know as one poll of opinion and then you take kind of you know I know to be I think kind of the Biden you know the American exceptionalism and we have to do all these things because we're America

1:23:47what what's the third way that starts to appear in this public opinion where do you think people are on that question yeah so I was I was quite struck because you know on the one hand the poll is very clear that the foreign policy decisions that are happening now and in the last few months are having a direct impact on the lives of Americans and they're proceeding it and interpreting it that way and it's really driving the way in which they feel that like the crisis at home is in parts spurred by decisions by this administration to go to war and to be reckless with tariffs at the same time what I was struck by when I looked at the data was that there is an emerging alignment that I'm seeing in the way the electorate is also viewing foreign policy priorities and I think that's something that you know candidates in 2028 are should take heat of and that's for instance you'll see that in the polling voters do want their government to keep them safe they do support a strong military but they also want to keep us out of unnecessary wars and we have a contained experiment now with a

1:24:49war of choice that is boom-ranging at home and creating all of this pain at home and creating you know these geopolitical ripple effects around the world that are going to haunt us for a long time that's an emerging alignment that you're seeing you're seeing an emerging alignment that folks want to foreign policy and a trade policy that's going to protect American workers but it's also not one that is used for self enrichment self enrichment and corruption right in those two things you're seeing that playing out in the polling as well I was actually quite struck in the polling that on corruption it was actually in one of the top top three concerns for Americans when you ask them what their concerns were about threats to American security and remarkable support for investigations in the next Congress of Trump administration corruption including I thought quite remarkable numbers around Republicans I think it was something like 41% of Republican respondents supported investigations in the next Congress as either a high priority or a medium priority

1:25:53of Trump administration corruption and then the last thing I think you're seeing is that there's a desire to be engaged in the world as you said support for NATO support for alliances but also not to do it in a way that's wasteful spending wastefully but also where there's accountability for the support we provide other countries including with regard to weapon sales and military support I think it's a common sense approach but I think it also provides a road map as we look at what is going to resonate with the public and what ultimately is beneficial for them I guess to wrap this up a bit like okay so the message I take it that if you well two questions like one on the midterms and then one on the presidential committee so like if you were advising Abdul al-Sahiad you know in the next few weeks and maybe Abdul's listen to this while I work out or something what do you think the what what are the messages you know you would advise him or another midterms senate candidate to be hitting so one of them is don't miss the opportunity to really hammer home the

1:26:58costs of both the war and the terrorists and I've seen him do it and others have done it too for you know michiganters but also others around the country it's really hitting home and you know the the spike in diesel prices for example is having a you know deeply hurtful effects around the country so I've seen that and that's you know make sure to emphasize those points when they're campaigning would be one thing I would I would emphasize I think you know someone like Abdul is also I think hitting the nerve when he says you know I don't want U.S military support to go to the other other countries when we could be using it at home right and he's tapping into the nerve that I mentioned based on the polling that we have that in fact there is a good number of people around the country who do feel that way and they see kind of how our weapons are being used or massive military sales that are being provided with U.S. tax pay $1 given the way the system works but they're not seeing their schools being funded properly or they're having trouble with their healthcare and he's really tapping into that and I think you're going to see that you're seeing

1:27:59that already across the board but I could see it as something that is also going to resonate in 2028 yeah and so the last thing I wanted to ask is like we we've identified a lot of opportunity for Democrats here right you know yeah running against the tariffs running against the war and the cost of it you know running against kind of this unaccountable military assistance other countries what do you think are going to be challenges you know like what did you see in here that's like oh you know as Democrats begin to prepare presidential primary campaigns where do you see a need for Democrats to make up ground or to kind of meet the moment in a way they haven't like you know beyond the opportunity in the poll where do you see places where we have to move the needle yeah so there's also some hard medicine in this and these these poll results that I think we should we should take take into account and really think through how we work through kind of now between now in the midterms what also after that one is on corruption and we've seen this in other polling too where ultimately there is strong distrust of both parties on corruption and they view

1:29:05both parties as equally involved in corruption I think and we need to dig through this data a bit more but I think you know some folks might be honing in on kind of individual stock trades by certain members of Congress from both parties whereas others might be looking at just the obscene wealth that has been accumulated by the current president and his family and those around him in in this administration including you know corrupt contracts with the Department of Defense and others kind of where they're building this web of interconnectedness kind of between their wealth and the government but ultimately that distrust applies to both parties and I think it's going to be really important for Democrats when they're when they're speaking and legislating on this issue that they are acknowledging that and they're acknowledging that there is this system that has been kind of corrupt and rigged against ordinary Americans the other area is there are discrepancies between the way at least in our polling folks see Trump and the disapproval that they have of Trump

1:30:06but in certain areas they are not as negative about the Republican party versus the Democratic party and where as a result kind of the negatives and the positive numbers are not as stark and I think as a result there's more work for Democrats to do to prove to prove that they are able to actually be really effective champions of the people in this coming Congress where I think there's going to be a huge focus on making sure that there's both an affirmative agenda but also an accountability agenda an oversight agenda that's going to deliver for the population. Yeah I think that's a good warning note I was struck too that the concerns about corruption didn't tilt overwhelmingly against Republicans it was kind of a shared feeling and I recently talked about poster for a piece I wrote from there times in which he said the same thing that basically people think that the whole system is corrupt you know and both parties are in on it and maybe Trump is enriching himself more but there's just some there's too much money in politics there's too much special interests I think we shouldn't take as a given and it requires

1:31:09specificity frankly also how you're going to do anti-corruption beyond just kind of yelling about Trump well look Mark it's a facet it's it's honestly it's like much more interesting than these things usually are you know I appreciate well and they're because they're you know they're it's both the snapshot of the mood of the country but it underneath it it suggests shifting public attitudes like I'm not sure this would have been anywhere near the same results five years ago ten years ago so it's an important roadmap for us to heed so thanks so much for coming on to for us to walk us through this and we'll we'll keep in touch great thanks really appreciate it thanks again Amar over joining the show and we will talk to you guys next week pod say the world is a crooked media production our show is produced by Alonam and Kofsky Michael Goldsmith and Inisha Bonnergy our team includes Matt DeGroat Ben Heffko Jordan Cantor Kenny Moffat David Tolls and Ryan Young our staff is proudly unionized with the writers killed of America East if you missed some of your favorite crooked pods this week don't worry you can now catch up on the

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