US Military Expansion in Ecuador

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Plaud automatically centralizes transcriptions and AI summaries for any conversation, whether it's virtual or in person. So maybe you won't need all these notebooks? Hey Bill, you have a delivery. Why so many sticky notes? Good luck, Bill. CYPLOD is trusted by over two million professionals globally. Visit uk.plaud.ai slash pod and for a limited time use promo code UK10 for 10% off any new Plawed Note Pro or Note Pin S. Offer expires May 31. That's UK.pl Aud.ai slash pod and use code UK10. Psst. Hey, I need your help. What is it? I have a follow-up with the Clancy account today. And I can't remember who's taking the lead on the new process. Oh, it's fine. Claude was there. Todd? No, Plaud with a P. Who is that? Plaud is my AI work companion. It's a game changer for meetings when follow-up is crucial. I never worry about missing a detail. How? Plaude captures the entire conversation with one button and transcribes, creates clear AI summaries, and automatically labels speakers. So I never have to worry about who is tackling what. Ah, awesome! Hey, Plaude, can you help me? A pro tip? You can get your own Plord so this never happens again. See why Plaud is trusted by over two million professionals globally. Visit uk.plad.ai slash pod and for a limited time use promo code UK10 for 10% off any new Plawed Note Pro or Note Pin S. Offer expires May 31. That's uk.plaud.ai slash pod and use code UK10 . Welcome to Pot Table World I'm EVTO.R. I'm Ben Rhodes How's the uh Iran war insomnia for you? Uh I I do have this kind of habitual uh fall asleep and wake up at 3:30 in the morning and line racing and four days in a row. Like start reading stuff and then you're up. So uh Yeah, not a good idea to look at your phone these days. Not a good idea to look at your phone ever in the middle of the night. I break that rule frequently. And I do think there's like a we ird um instincti ve you know, I'm not trying to overdram dramatize this, but but you know having in eight years like had to kind of feel like you had to work when something terrible. Yeah, I mean you just get kind of like there's this weird instinctive thing in my body that's like uh Do you see the thing where the where the when the war started about all these dads who were saying they had to monitor the situation all day or MSNBC or whatever. Uh yeah, well that's basically us. Um well By the way, it's an interesting war in that regard because I mean, I hate to say this, but I I don't find CNN's coverage to be particularly illuminating. Look at that guy in CNN. That guy's good. But some of the let's just say some of the guest choices and the panels are pretty uh uh two thousand four feeling. You kind of have to really search for your content on this war. You know, it's a weird mix of outlets and social media and people in the region. There's clearly censorship happening. Like why does Al Jazeera have all these images that don't seem to appear on other stations? You know, it's a lot of the people covering it from Israel are probably having to deal with censors. Uh the guy's name is Frederick uh Pleitkin Pleitkin? P L E I T G N. He's doing a great job. He is doing great job. Uh uh Frederick Pleitken, search for him on Twitter if you want to see what CNN's doing actually in Iran. Which is I mean it's pretty fucking brave to get in a car and drive into Iran as it's getting bombed. Can't get into Gaza. Right. That's very good point, Ben. Uh we're obviously gonna focus much of our time today on Iran. We're gonna talk about the total incoherence of the White House's messaging and we're gonna try to figure out genuinely whether this war is about to end, whether it's about to escalate, something in between. Like I I genuinely don't know. I'm excited to hear your opinion because we have not talked about this. Uh, we'll tick through some of the latest uh developments from the last week, including casualties, all things oil, and then some scary signs of escalation. We'll tell you what we know about the new supreme leader of Iran and what his selection signals from the regime. We'll also talk about what a ground operation to get Iran's nuclear materials would actually entail, the latest on the bombing of an Iranian girls' school, and then what's happening in Lebanon. And then finally, Ben, we're going to talk about the US military's new counter drug mission in Ecuador and then the Gen Z rapper who is about to be prime minister of Nepal. That's actually a fun story. It's a fun story. Then you're gonna hear my interview with Mike Horowitz. Um he's been on the show before. He is an expert on how the Pentagon adopts and uses new technologies. We talk about the fight between the Trump administration and uh the AI company Anthropic over the use of its model Claude, as well as growing concern about this munitions shortage, especially missile defense system shortages, and how the U.S. is now turning to drone technology from Ukraine to close the gap and counter these Iranian drones. So very interesting conversation with him. Yeah, there's a lot there. I I do think, again, I'm glad you did that because the anthropic story is not getting the attention that it might otherwise get, but it in for the f future of humanity, it's it's hugely important. Yeah, it's uh I'd love to know what the Pentagon is doing with uh super powerful AI systems. Why they need autonomous weapons and mass surveillance capabilities. Yeah. Seems like something would be easy to say no to. Also for those of you who are friends of the pod subscribers, you're going to hear Ben and I do a QA where we take some questions from the Pod Save the World Discord. By the way, if you like crooked media, if you like this show, if you like what we're doing here, please become a friend of the pod subscriber. It is the single most helpful thing you could do to us as a progressive independent media company. And our promise to you in return is never to book Lindsey Graham on any of our shows unless we are going to be really mean to him. We promise to play clips of Lindsey Graham and to react to them and make fun of him. We also we also no fly zone for John Bolton. Although it'd be fun to yell at him. Mike Pompeo. Uh he's insufferable. He's just a pro I just love how much he's disappeared. Yeah, he's gone. Uh yet another uh proof point that sucking up to Trump does not save you the humiliation that always comes at the end of the yeah but like somehow Graham is he's just like a barnacle on the ass of like whatever person he thinks is in charge of John McCain for decades now Donald Trump. Now he seems to have real influence. I mean it's just it's just terrible. So I don't know. We're not gonna talk to that guy or take him seriously, but please become a friend of the pod subscriber. Also just subscribe to PodSave the World on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast because it helps the show grow and it helps us uh displace all the propaganda that's floating around on the internet about this terrible war. Uh all right, Ben. So we're now 11 days into this regime change war with Iran. Um the goals and the broader strategy are like somehow less clear, I think, now than when they started. We'll do a broader update in a minute on like major developments since our last recording. But we just wanted to like recap this head spinning messaging shift from the White House this week. So the quick version is at the end of last week and over the weekend, Trump was suggesting like really maximalist goals for the war. He posted a message on Truth Social where he said, quote, there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender. Uh that freaked out the oil markets, understandably, to the point where on Sunday night, you saw the price of oil hitting above $120 a barrel, just like exploding. So it seems like Trump freaked out. Uh the Wall Street Journal reported that his advisors were telling him, like, find an off-ramp, this is gonna kill us in the midterms. So he made this call to CBS News while markets were still open. The US stock market was still open. And basically was like, oh yeah, the war's about to be over. Everything's going to be fine. And that seems to have worked in the near term. Remember, because the stock market has this taco phrase which, is Trump always chickens out. So it folded into that. But uh once the markets closed, the messaging changed again. We had Trump like talking to Republicans at this retreat. We had a him doing a press conference, and then Pete Heggseth was out this morning, Tuesday morning doing another press conference. And this is a supercut that our team put together of Trump uh and Hegseth's messaging from Saturday through Tuesday that I think kinda gets at the incoherence. Let's watch. We're winning the war by a lot. We've decimated their whole evil empi re. It'll continue I'm sure for a little while. We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil. And uh I think you'll see it's gonna be a short term excursion. We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough. You've said the war is quote very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it? And how long should Americans be able to do I think we could say it both. We could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here, I could call it. Will I help them? I'd like to. If they can behave. But they've been very menacing. Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes. I see in the media banners that say you know war expans ion Quite a message to the Iranian people. Like if you can behave, maybe I'll consider supporting you. Like, what does that mean? The this idea that the war has been a success. First of all, the nuclear material has not been secured. We'll get into what that would entail in a bit, but it's 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium sit and run. The ballistic missiles are diminished, but not gone, right? The US and Israel are not saying they've gotten all their stockpiles. Um before the war, Iran was on the cusp of a leadership transition, but by killing the eighty six year old Ayatollah before he could regime. We were so tough we killed an eighty six year old man who's about to die. Now we installed his much younger son. So that's great. Uh and uh we might have taken out Iran's navy, but there's some reports we'll get into in a minute that they're mining the Strait of Hormuz as we speak. So we only took out the people who are a thousand miles away who are defenseless with no weapons and killed them without saving them. Yeah. We should talk about that because right, there was a um uh an Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean that I believe was unarmed that had been invaded Trump talks about a war literally like it's a football game. You know, like we got a big lead in the second quarter, you know, we're winning, uh uh and we can call the end of the game whenever we want. And I think what those clips confirm, I mean, there are a number of things. Uh the first thing is that he he literally started this war with no idea what its objective was or what it was going to lead to or how it was going to end. Um I mean because he himself never defined it. And we talked about that, but he essentially came out, made it sound like regime change, Iranian people rise up, you know, the language of regime change, the language of unconditional surrender. He I I BB Netanyahu, Lindsey Graham, whatever small number of people convinced him to do this, clearly made him think that this was gonna be very easy, that the regime was about to collapse. Cause by the way, that's the kind of arguments they've been making for years. Like if only you bomb them, this will be easy and they'll all collapse. I actually think Bibi Nanyao knew full well that this wouldn't happen. Oh yeah. Bibi Nanyao knew full well that this would not be quick and easy and simple. And frankly, because he wants to destroy Iran and have it be a violent chaotic place, that's fine with him. But but Trump cannot say what he talks about winning and you know, we're achieving our objectives, but he doesn't say what they are. Like what what our military objectives are. I heard him say in the clip, you know, we're we're achieving our military objectives. Well, what are the military objectives? Um, because we're we're not uh achieving any clearly defined objective that that and you or I could understand. And and he's got his finger in the wind here and it is just appalling, and we should say it's appalling that you know, he seems to care the most about the markets, you know, not not the human beings who are being destroyed, not the geopolitical consequences to the other. US service members dying and US service members dying, Iranian civilians dying, Gulf State security being completely punctured, you know, uh instability that could be unleashed for years to come. He cares about like the price of gas tomorrow and the stock market because that's the only kind of metric that he knows how to pay attention to. That's appalling. It is absolutely appalling and we should not get accustomed to the fact that he just lies to us relentlessly about war. Like he is no different than Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un. I think we as Americans, even when we don't like our president, tend to think of him as a uh like a bad a really bad version of a bad US president, you know. So like you we've had presidents lie about wars before, you know, pick take your pick, LBJ, Nixon, whomever. Um he's in a whole other category of he'll just make stuff up out of whole cloth, you know. Um I don't trust anything he's saying. Not a word. Um and we probably get more on what he said about the girls school Oh yeah, we have another clip of that. So so show you that. Um yeah, unfortunately. So then there's that. And then the last thing I want to say about Hegeth is again to take a historic anal ogy. Remember the body count, you know, in Vietnam? The only way that we could kind of try to quantify the success was like the number of people we killed. He's taken this to the level of like the number of bombing that we do every day is somehow a measure of our success or uh w that that is an insane way to talk. Today's gonna be even more bombing, you know, okay, what are we bombing? Why are we bombing it? Where is this going? Like he can't answer those questions. And he just goes out there and and brags about how many bombs w were dropping and missiles were firing. Uh we don't know what the target set is. Uh we don't know what we're degrading to what end. He certainly doesn't seem to know and he's the Secretary of Defense. Um he does it in this like annoying cat in the hat rhyme scheme, which is really grading. Yeah. And so like what you have is a kind of clueless US government uh that has no idea why it's doing this, uh other than maybe Israel was gonna do it and we had to come in or what I d I just don't know what we're doing. Why not? And we can go through like they can blow up some more m nuclear material, the Iranians will regenerate it because they know how to do that. They can blow up a bunch of ballistic missiles, the Iranians will regenerate their ballistic missile program. They killed the Supreme Leader, now we're the younger Supreme Leader. Like this, this is making everything worse. It's not making anything better. Um and and it's creating all these risks. Uh Yeah, it's uh there's a there's a big picture strategy piece missing here. Um so we're gonna go deeper on the Supreme Leader in a second, the the ground operation, how Democrats should respond, and then the latest on Lebanon. But just some like quick kind of news updates in the last week, Ben. So the the in terms of the casualty count for the broader region so far, uh, these are from official government sources. So for the U.S., it's seven U.S. service members have been killed, but today we learned that 140 have been wounded, including eight who were seriously wounded. So that is new information. Have been killed and 12,000 have been injured. Uh obviously that number is probably growing as we speak. Israel says 12 killed, over 1,900 injured. Lebanon says 486 killed, over a thousand injured. Uh UAE's death toll is six. Kuwait reports uh six dead as well and Bahrain reports one. And then on the sort of oil front that Trump seems to primarily care about, um, as we're recording, oil is back down to about eighty-six dollars per barrel. But the Strait of Hormuz is still effectively closed. And there are reports right before we started recording that US intelligence is either starting to see indications that Iran is taking steps to deploy mines in the state in the Strait of Four Moons, or CNN went even further and said that Iran has begun laying mines, they said it was a couple dozen in recent days. Uh so after those reports, Trump posted something on Truth Social saying that quote, uh, we have no reports, end quote, of Iran mining the strait, but that if Iran did do it, he wants them removed or else there will be a major military response, which as far as I can tell we're major than doing. Yeah. So that clears things up. Um but if the strait is mined, it would be a disaster for shipping. And if shipping is shut down in the Strait of Hamous, the oil producers in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, they can't ship their petroleum products out, they will have to either further cut production or fully stop production in ways that could permanently impact supply. So like watch this space as people say and also like congrats Vladimir Putin. Yeah. You're now getting in a bunch more revenue because the price of oil just went way up. So first of all, we heard in that clip Heges say this war is contained and getting smaller, even though the bombing is getting bigger. War like this the violence being unleashed in Lebanon would normally shock the conscience. The front page news. I I'm sure the reason Israel is doing it is because they know that the tensions on Iran. So we get but the It's in turkey like this this war is not contained. No, it's a good thing. And part of what is so frustrating uh is that the people those of us who've been warning against this type of war with Iran for 15 years, all of these things were very predictable. These are the things that were going to happen. And they seem caught off guard that they're happening. Um and it is it's horrible that the d we should just pause for the people of Lebanon that there's a normalization and routinization of oh Beirut's being bombed again for the umpteenth time, right? Then if you get to the uh Straits of four moose, again, any Iranian war game scenario knew that the extreme version of what the Iranians could do is mine the strait. Because, you know, if they threaten the Straits of Four Moose, even if they if they blow up a tanker, you know, it has a huge impact for a period of time. But then kind of once the hostilities seem like they have diminished, that traffic begins. It takes months and months and months to demine the Straits of Hormuz. And so if you are disrupting or halting the traffic of 20% of the world's energy, you know, the oil and gas coming out of the Straits of Hormuz, uh the economic consequences of that could be absolutely catastrophic and go far beyond high oil prices and gas prices. Uh, it could be a like seismic shock to the global economy. Again, very predictable. I'm not sure why Trump is surprised by that. And he has no strategy to deal with it other than to bomb them more. That is the logic of escalation of a regime change war. Oh, I'm not able to get you to do what I want by bombing you. So I'm just going to keep bombing you more, which is going to make you want to do more to hurt me. I I, you know, keep mining the Straits of Hormories, keep shooting it at the Gulf States. And this is the other crazy thing I see in how Trump talks about this. He thinks he controls the timeline. He doesn't. No. He can like stop bombing in two weeks. The Iranians could still mine the Straits of Hormorus. They're not going to be able to still launch sleeper cell attacks. They they don't give a shit about Trump's timeline. Uh the Israelis certainly don't seem to care. And and so this idea that he's in control of events is such a fiction. Like he has taken a war to s like this is not the assassination of Soleimani where you can calibrate or even the twelve-day war. We bec by going for regime change, by killing the Supreme Leader, who's also the religious leader of Shia Islam, whatever you think of the guy, and he was a creep. During Ramadan. Yeah. Yeah. D like the idea that you can like neatly say this is a you know, we had a twelve day war and it's a nineteen day war this time. No, it's one big war. This is the same war as the 12-day war, too, by the way. Like you don't have multiple wars with the same country within a year and get to call them different wars because you want to have shorter timelines. We are at war with Iran on an open-ended basis, even if we stop bombing in a couple we Yeah, this is not terrorists where you can turn it off. Speaking of oil, I mean over the weekend the Israelis bombed 30 Iranian oil depots. I'm sure folks saw these images. There were massive fires right in Tehran. It created these like apocalyptic scenes of these massive black clouds, like it was dark during the day. And then you had literally had rain oil raining down on an entire city of 10 million people that could create health problems for generations. Uh, the Trump administration leaked to Axios that they were mad about these strikes, that the Israelis did this, but like it's not really clear to me if they were mad because this is oil that will be needed by the Iranian people, or if Trump was just mad that it spooked the oil markets. Um, the other kind of major escalatory development from over the weekend then was the targeting of desalination plants. So Iran accused the U.S. of hitting one of their water desalination plants. So in return, they targeted a desalination plant in Bahrain. And if that kind of like escalatory tit for tat continues, it could have devastating consequences because Bahrain is basically totally dependent on desalination for its fresh water. I think Israel gets 80% of its water from desalination. Kuwait gets 90% of its supply. So I mean, that's people just like literally not being able to drink. They'll die. Um, on Monday, as we mentioned, NATO defenses shot down a second missile from Iran over Turkey. U.S. diplomats were pulled from a consular facility in southern Turkey. So back to this thing being contained. It ain't contained. And then finally, Ben, there's some data out today indicating that the UAE's missile defense systems might be degrading. Um, on March 10th, 25% of Iran's drones made it through the UAE's missile defense systems. Um the previous high was 10% on March 3rd. So it's like it's not clear if the Iranians are learning or if the UAE is like running out of missiles or if the radar is being gone or i something's impacting it. Um there's also reports today that the U.S. is taking missile defense systems from Asia and redeploying them to the Middle East. So again, so much for dealing with the threat from China. Well, first of all, on the oil strikes, uh beyond the horrific scenes and potential horrific human cost of those strikes, what does that have to do with degrading the ballistic missiles? What does that have to do with degrading the nuclear program? Uh don't tell me that this is about degrading Iranian capabilities. You're Israel is trying to destroy Iran. They're trying to destroy the Iranian regime, but they're also just I mean what what is that? I mean and so they're gonna try to spin their victory as, you know, uh we we uh took out this many ballistic missile sites. Well then why are you bombing desalination plants? Why are you bombing energy infrastructure, right? The the the US is doing that too with the desalination plants. By the way, on the oil piece, you mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating, and I have a Substack out on this, if you want to check out my Substack. Prices are higher and Russia benefits from that. Putin wins because Trump even acknowledges and gave India a waiver to buy more Russian oil because they know that they can't get the energy from the Middle East. In the long run, Putin wins if other countries, including in Europe potentially, are like, well, we can't rely on oil and gas from the Middle East, so maybe we have to go back to buying Russians. By the way, these are all these countries that shifted from Russian oil and gas to like Qatari LNG. Yeah. Now the Qatar's shut down. And by the way, that that takes a while to turn back on if you shut it down. This is not like a twelve day war kind of situation. Putin wins, by the way, because Ukraine has to send anti-drone technology and personnel down to the Middle East, which they're doing to help protect the Gulf states against Iranian drones. Like Putin is such a big winner of this war that he could have designed it in a laboratory. Now he's of course he's giving targeting to uh the reports are that he's giving targeting to the Iranians to to Steve Witkoff says uh that he's not and that we take them at their word. Uh is there a more credulous idiot on the planet than that guy? No. Uh uh, you know, and and so uh like the the oil piece is a sign that this is not just about ballistic missiles, it's also a huge boon to Putin. Um the desalination thing is existential to the Gulf. It's going to accelerate them thinking that the US cannot be relied on because they put our security in existential risk. Again, like even if he calls the end to the war tomorrow, the the the the geopolitical cost of potentially endangering the whole global economy for an insane war, endangering the security of the Gulf states. Uh they're gonna look for their own nuclear weapons, they're gonna look for their own security guarantee. Like across the board, they just so comprehensively didn't think through the consequences of this. Again, I I can see it might serve Israel's interest to unleash this kind of violence and chaos in Iran, eliminate any potential competitor, have regional hegemony. By the way, the UAE, which had been uh Israel's biggest partner in that effort through the Abraham Accords is clearly being targeted more than other Gulf states by Iran for that. So the UA didn't get security from the Abraham Accords. They got or from our bases. Yeah, or from our bases. Yeah. Um and and so this is gonna reverberate for many years to come if it ended today, you know. And and I think that is what is not being n told to the American people by their political leaders sufficiently the that this has already been like a Aaron Powell Yeah. Was that causing you problem? I mean, were you worried I live in LA. Was the Iranian Navy gonna come invade California? And also, but like getting rid of the Iranian Navy doesn't mean that they can't mine the Strait of Hormuz. You do that with small boats, these little boats can carry like two to three mines. The Iranians are estimated to have a stockpile of between 2,000 and 6,000 naval mines, which they bought from the Russians and the Chinese, by the way. And a friend of ours who's an expert in this stuff pointed out that even if they have decided to do this, like whether or not they're successful is a pretty clear indication that uh they are all in on this war. Yeah. Um, and that they are not seeking peace. And we'll talk about the newspaper. Well, explain why. The reason that they wouldn't do it, right, is because they sell their energy through the Straits of Formuz. But if Israel is bombing their oil facilities, they can't sell it anyway. Right. So in a way, you're lowering the price tag for them to sabotage the strait because they're just fucking over the Gulf states and not themselves because their shit is getting blown up anyway. Yes . Pots of the world is brought to you by Incogni. 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And remember, early in the war, uh Israel killed the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Kameneh in an airstrike. That was with US intelligence helped that. Hamene, Ali Hamaneh was 86 years old. He was about to regime change himself or be regime change by nature. But now, thanks to Trump and to Netanyahu, his son, a younger, reportedly even more hard-line figure, is now in charge. Um, this selection reportedly went against Ali Hamene's written will and desire because he did not want Iran to become a dynastic country again. Like that was part of what the 1979 revolution was all about. But 56-year-old uh Mustaba uh Hameneh was the RGC's choice to lead Iran because that's the best way to give the middle finger to Trump and Netanyahoo and like the military goons like the Mustabah. So here we are. Um we don't know much about Mustaba Khamenei. He's like been a uh behind the scenes player in Iranian politics. A lot of Iranians have remarked that they've never heard him speak in public. He doesn't have much of a public profile. But uh he does seem to have operated as kind of like a chief of staff, maybe for his dad. Maybe he's like a liaison between his father's office at the military and the intelligence leaders. So um we know that they like him. We know that like the RGC goons reportedly wanted um Mushtaba to be selected. He doesn't have all the religious credentials that you were supposed to have for that job, but now he's in charge. He's the spiritual leader of the country, he's the commander-in-chief, and he's the final decider of all political decisions. And again, like time will tell, but it seems like he won't want to make nice with the U.S. and Israel since so far in this war, the U.S. and Israel have killed his father, his wife, his mother, and his son. Um, so that doesn't seem like someone who will want to sue for peace. Um, of course he may not last long in the job. The Israelis already tried to kill him, according to news reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump would be cool with killing him. Uh, but for now at least he's the guy. Ben, thoughts on this new uh supreme leader of Iran? I I think what I would say to people who sincerely want a better future for the Iranian people, right? You a lot of people in the diaspora, other people is Is that you would have had a better leadership transition if we had not bombed and killed the Supreme Leader. That regime was beginning to change. Not because it wanted to, it did not want to. But you saw again the women life freedom movement, it made the it forced some societal changes, right? People were beginning, uh women were beginning to appear in public uncovered. There was a sense of like prying something open that was closed. If in a if if in the normal course of events, which would not have been much longer, Hamene had died of natural causes, the ability to force his son on the country would have been, I think, much more difficult. Yeah, there'd be protests. There'd be mass protests, there would be competing people, there'd be processes that would have been under huge pressure because the of the the rally around the flag that happens, particularly among the IRGC and the hardliners in the country, when they're under attack, you have the most hardlined possible succession. Like 'cause that's what this is. And it just puts the lie to the idea that No, it's a way to ensure that the people with the most guns in the country are the ones who choose the successor. Now, he may not last. He may be killed. But I think what we learn is if he's killed, it'll be another IRGC backed person. Right because they're the only people with power left. When you are under assault like this, the people with power in the country are the people who are armed. And the people who are armed are the IRGC. And and we can you know keep killing one after another. I just think this is why even in like times when there were no laws of war, we didn't assassinate the leaders of countries. Again, I d that doesn't mean you like homine, but we don't just get to go and choose that we assassinate the leaders of of places we don't like, in part because it it it it ushers in a very dangerous new world where that may become normal and suddenly you have more and more assassinations. Well Trump is reportedly very angry about the Iranians plotting to assassinate him. They will do that. They will be this is why you don't end the war in twelve days. Like they might try to assassinate the next U.S. president because of what Donald Trump did. But the the the the reality is that we've we've made the situation internal to Iran worse by bombing and killing them, but also by empowering the absolute most hardline people in the country. Trevor Burrus So that part's going good. The other thing that I imagine like the actual national security experts, both in the US and the Israeli government, are probably the most worried about is this 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that is we think is buried under a mountain at one or more sites, but we don't really know. Um, and securing those materials will almost certainly require a sending in troops to get them. Um that's why I suspect Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out putting boots on the ground in Iran. Here's a couple examples of him kind of dancing around this. Circumstances where you'd uh send it ground troops. How are you thinking about that? I don't even want to talk about it now. I me an that's uh I don't think it's an appropriate question. You know, I'm not gonna answer it. Uh could there be? Possibly for very good reason. And I would say if we ever did that they would be so decimated that they wouldn't be able to fight at the ground level. Enriched uranium at the nucleosytes. We find out about that. We haven't talked about it, but uh it was a total obliteration. They haven't been able to get to it. And at some point maybe we will. You know, that'd be a great thing So okay, so let's dig into what this kind of operation would look like because I I got very triggered over the weekend then. I was reading this Axios report that said the White House doesn't view a mission to secure Iran's nuclear materials as boots on the ground or an invasion, which is just like insane on every level. This would be wearing socks and not boots. So this will be a major military operation uh that by any definition is is men boots on the ground in an invasion. So there's been some good reporting on what this operation would look like. A lot of these plans existed when we were in government, we talked to experts about them. So we got we got a good window into this one. So long story short, like you were talking about sending hundreds of troops into Iran. Uh you would need a specialized team to find, secure, and store the nuclear materials. That might be a like a highly trained Delta Force team or a Navy SEAL train team. And then on top of that, the Pentagon would almost certainly send in troops to secure a big perimeter around the sites where the guys are digging up this shit. Uh you might have to send in like earth-moving equipment and stuff, right? Like specialized equipment. And I think that's why a lot of people's heads perked up last week when the Washington Post reported that the 82nd Airborne was given a change in its planning seemingly to be more ready to deploy because they do this kind of stuff. Like they go in behind enemy lines, they seize airports, they seize strategic areas. Um the Pentagon would also need to figure out how to get those materials out of Iran, hundreds of miles. That would either be by air or ground. Uh you would need like missile defense, drone defense during the operation throughout. And so this would not be a small operation by any stretch of the imagination. I just like don't get why a news outlet would repeat this absurd spin that it wouldn't be boots on the ground. And then finally, Ben, um, earlier today, Tuesday, uh Richard Blumenthal, Senator Richard Blumenthal came out of an Iran briefing and said, quote, We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran. Uh he also added that Russia seems to be aiding our enemy, so he seems to be confirming that, even though Steve Wickoff doesn't think that's Putin at his word. Yeah, it takes Putin as his word. But like what do you think the odds are that there is this kind of like HEU focused ground invasion? And like w how is leaving this material in Iran not like a red line for Netanyahu? This seems to be the thing he cares about most over the last what three decades . There's something surreal about, you know, the fact that Trump has to simultaneously affirm his lie that he obliterated the Iran nuclear program while leaving open the door to the fact that we may have to do an incredibly complex and risky operation to actually clean up the fact that we didn't obliterate the Iran nuclear program. Because as many of us have been saying for 15 years, you can't bomb a nuclear program and obliterate, it's physically impossible. Um, so that that just shows you the kind of danger of having someone who's this dishonest making decisions because he can't really explain anything because he's trying to keep these competing narratives uh from bumping into each other. Look, yeah, you we've been there, we've studied this, we followed this because you can't bomb all of the uh nuclear program away. There has always been this idea that if you're truly going to try to like take out as much of the Iranian nuclear program as possible, by the way, you can't eliminate it entirely. They know how to do the nuclear fuel cycle. So you can't bomb the knowledge that exists inside of Iran how to do this. Um, but if you were to do this, you would need a very complex uh special forces operation with close air support and uh lots of uh personnel. I will tell you this, Tommy, too, that i in some of the kind of war gaming on this, and I'll say like even out out of government, right? So this is not anything s sensitive. You might want the element of surprise. Um, you know, look, pop up, here's the team to get season materials. This is the most telegraphed punch, you know, possible. Yeah. Um, so I imagine that that will make it harder that where wherever this is buried and whatever you know things that they've put in place to try to protect against uh this uh operation. Doesn't mean you couldn't do it, but it'd just be incredibly risky. And whether it's Israeli commandos or US commandos in special forces, uh joint US Israeli military operation. It's complex, it's risky, it introduces ground forces into Iran. Even if you get some of these materials, it still doesn't eliminate the nuclear program. Because again, they know how to do this. There are people inside of Iran, like not even Israel and the US can kill that fast who know how to do this. Just sets them back a couple of years. It sets them back and we've told them that the only way you could ever survive is get a nuclear weapon. So I guarantee you, if we see this, whatever we do, they're still gonna be trying to build a nuclear weapon there. Uh uh, you know, on the back end of it. Yep. So here we are. The other kind of like invasion option that I think people are are talking about and worried about is the US or Israel uh seizing a place called uh Karg Island, which is this little island, it's about twenty-five kilometers off the coast of Iran, which is a key transit point for the export of about 90 or 95 percent of Iran's oil. So that would be a way for the US or Israel to essentially take control of Iran's oil industry. Uh it would again be very risky. You would be shot at. There's troops there. It would be a big, big deal. But that's the thing. I think the nerds will tell you that like Centcom has had that plan on the shelf for a long time and there's probably people in there who want to do it. But it's amazing. And we're back in the 19th century here. This is what we're this is where we're at. That we're just see I saw some people on Fox who'd never heard of Carg Island, you know, a week ago, or like, oh yeah, we're gonna get the island and get the oil. Like, we're back in the empire business. By the way, that would be the biggest terrorist target in the world if we were like seize some island and try to like run the Iranian oil industry from there. Like this is how we got an Islamic Republic of Iran in the first place. Yep. Because we overthrew a democratically elected leader of Iran in nineteen fifty-three because that leader was nationalizing the Iranian oil resources. And lo and behold, you know, within twenty-five years, we get the Islamic Republic. So the reason we've had an Islamic Republic in the first place is because we tried to do this. Disagree, Ben. We are always uh the victims in these stories. You can't you can't ever make us a protagonist. The the one like little bit of good news is that uh last week there were all these reports that the US was arming Kurdish militia forces, especially in Iraq and encouraging them to go into Iran and try to topple the government. Trump now says he doesn't want the Kurds to go into Iran. Hopefully that's true when he's being honest. But like I guess put a pin in that one. I all I'd say about that is it seems pretty clear to me that at least the Iraqi Kurds said no. Because they were saying it very publicly. Yeah, there's one of them was they were raising their hands, you know the, the people that are in the Kurdistan regional government in Iraq were like, We don't want any part of this war. So I I I don't necessarily give Trump credit for that. I I actually think the Iraqi Kurds would be like this would be an insane thing for us to do. Yeah, I saw um uh one of them was interviewed on on uh Fox News and was just like, no, this is a really bad idea. I don't think this is uh worth doing. Also, I just one last thing, Ben. I mean, I I I just think it's very clear. There's been a bunch of really good reporting now about the nuclear negotiations that took place between the Trump administration and the Iranians, specifically what Wickkoff and Kushner were doing. Um and it's just so clear to me now that Jared and Steve Wickoff like fundamentally didn't understand the subject matter, uh obviously, right? They're not nuclear experts. They're not scientists. They're not PhDs. But um there was a there was a transcript of a call that those two bozos did for press. Um and like you can just tell like they're they keep misstating the name of the IAEA. Like they're getting basic facts wrong. And like maybe look, maybe Trump never wanted to cut a deal and uh there was always going to be a war, but those idiots definitely didn't make it better. And it's kind of terrifying to think that they are handling Gaza negotiations, Iran negotiations and Ukraine. Like no shit that nothing's going well. I I there are two scenarios. One is that the entire diplomatic effort, both last summer and this time were a facade a deception operation so that we could bomb Iran. That is a outrageous and dangerous thing to do because no one will ever trust US. di.plomacy again if if you know it's just meant to be a uh a deception. We make fun of these people, we have a laugh about them, particularly Jared, because he's a moron, um, who like h was born with a winning lottery ticket and thinks that he like earned all that money. But the reality is sending two complete idiots into the most sensitive negotiations in the world over and over and over again is not just embarrassing. It is terrible for U.S. interests. Like, and Americans sometimes make this mistake, particularly right-wing Americans. They think other people are stupid, you know, that or that particularly brown people, like the Iran These are very smart, sophisticated people, right? The Russians, these are the Russians are the toughest negotiators in the world, you know? They are eating these people for lunch every day in every negotiation. The Russians are. Um I mean, such that Steve Wickhoff is reporting propaganda that Putin is somehow not doing things that he's clearly doing. Right. Right. Or that the Iranians aren't gonna figure out that these guys aren't serious and so it's not worth coming back and talks to them. Trump would clearly like to be able to say we're back in the talks with Iran, uh 'cause he's dangled it a couple times and the Iranians keep shooting it down. So this is this is this Jared Whitcoff show is is is is an abomination from a corruption standpoint, but from a pure competence standpoint as well. Yes. Uh and speaking of US credibility, Ben, so it it's just like increasingly clear as you've mentioned that uh this airstrike on an Iranian school full of young schoolgirls that killed a hundred and sixty-eight children and 14 teachers was an airstrike conducted by the United States military. Iranian state media released footage that has been confirmed by major news organizations as authentic. It shows a U.S. Tomahawk missile hitting a naval base that is directly adjacent to this girls' school. Um, there have also been a number of news reports that the Pentagon like has been doing internal investigations. They believe they were responsible for this strike. But Trump, of course, is refusing to take responsibility. He is instead trying to lie and spin his way through this one. So here's a couple examples of his shifting story on this. Did the United States bomb a girls' elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the war and kill 175 people? Based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran. Is that true, Mr. Eksa? It was Iran who did that? We're certainly investigating. Still investigating. But the only the only side that targets the civilians is Iran. Well I haven't seen it. And I will say that the tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by you know, is sold and used by other countries, you know that. And whether it's Iran, who also has some tomahawks. They wish they had more. You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a tomahawk and bombed the town elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this? Because I just don't know enough about it. So like what we don't sell Iran Tomahawk missiles. That's crazy. Like the my understanding is that only the US, the UK, and Australia currently have tomahawks deployed, unless the Iranians broke into a a British submarine, stole a tomahawk, and then dropped it on their own IRGC naval base slash girls school. Like this story is bullshit. So Trump just like he clearly thinks he could deflect and like wait for this story to go away, Ben. But like when you combine those lies with Pete Hegh bragging about getting rid of like woke rules of engagement, yeah. Um it sends it it's hard to like think of a way to make the US military look worse than than that. And all of us, you and I paid for that bomb that killed those girls, right? We American taxpayers pay for this. Those girls are dead today because of decisions that Donald Trump made uh and because of the way in which we spend our tax dollars. And and look, just to take a couple of these pieces, the investigations that are very thorough that are out there that this was our missile. I I just point out a couple of things. The the idea that the these are these were the children of IRGC people that went to the school. So the I think they're gonna kill their own. I assume the Israelis are super charged. Yeah, the bots are out there with this. I had an Iranian woman come up to me in LA. I was like hanging out with Lizette. Lovely woman. Couldn't have nicer, but was like spouting like insane made up propaganda about the war and be like, tell everyone that, you know, uh the Iranians like the war. I'm like, well, not the ones getting bombed. And she was like, Well, the IRGC is the one who bombed that school. I was like, ma'am If you think that I feel sorry for you because you're unwilling to look like truth in the eye. And and and here's the other thing. We gave a lot of shit uh to the Biden administr ation during the Gaza war for defending the IDF, right? And every time there was some horrific incident in Gaza, which is very regular, member was always this is being investigated, or this was the Hamas Pentagon. You know, every hospital had the Hamas Pentagon under it. Um there there's there there's a way in which we are becoming like that. Like the Trump response to this and even the Heggseth response, which weirdly Hegseth is actually not going as far as Trump. He's more reasonable than Trump. Because the US military, I believe there are still some people with some honor uh I'm not mean this. I'm not trying to I'm saying this as a compliment, we ha who have some honor in that institution who are like, we do not lie about our mistakes. This was a massive intelligence fuck up, and I'm sure that people are like just devastated. Devastated. But this is why you don't do what Biden and Trump both have done with the IDF, which is go along with this bullshit that every single child who's killed is like a Hamas terrorist, or every single hospital that's blown up is a secret target, you know, or secret Hamas command center, or every single one that you can't possibly defend, you just say we're investigating it, but we never get you the results of the investigation and oh by the way, it's Hamas's fault. We are now doing that about Iran. We're doing the same language. We're investigating it. We'll get back to you. But maybe they did it. They're the only ones who kill civilians, not us. Like we cannot become and should not become that kind of country, but I fear that you, know, with Trump as president, like that's where we're at. But that is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous place to be. Um not alone because of what we saw already with these girls, which i the whole war is not worth it. I I I I'd rather have those kids back than all the missile launchers that we've blown up. Like tha that's why we have to be an anti war party in this country. Because this stuff can happen. Let's talk more about that. Let's talk about how how our tax dollars should be spent in the Democratic Party because as listeners probably know, like last week the House of Representatives voted down a bill to stop the war in Iran. Now Trump would have vetoed it, but it was important symbolically. Um four Democrats voted in favor of allowing Trump and Pete Hexeth to continue this regime change war of choice in Iran, which is just insane to me. Um, but politico reported that the next step in Congress will be the administration coming back to them to request an estimated $5 bil0lion in additional funding for the war. That's on top of the nearly $1 trillion Pentagon budget for 2026. Over the weekend, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Senator Chris Murphy about this request. Let's play that explain The administration is reportedly weighing Congress to approve an additional fifty billion dollars in funding for these operations. You have said you're a hell no, not just a no on funding the war. We have seen this movie before. We know that that vote will be cast as, especially if you run for higher office, uh, you voting against the troops. Oh, come on. I mean, the American people don't want this war. They don't want this war. They have seen what happens when American troops go into places like Iraq, places like Afghanistan. Ultimately, we get a lot of people killed. We waste a lot of dollars. The one thing the American people are clear about is that they do not want the United States dragged into another long-term war in the Middle East. If you support the troops, then you should be voting against funding this war so that we get our troops out of harm's way. Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die inside Iraq uh in the two thousands. And if we don't learn that lesson, then shame on every single one of us. So good answer by Murphy there. I I so I teed on the off on this on on Pot Save America Monday, so I'll be quick. But I just I want to make sure that every Democrat listening understands that you cannot oppose the war and then vote for funding. That is not a position that exists in the real world. That's a thing people in Washington convince themselves is rational and it's actually incoherent. Uh also I just want them to understand that like opposing funding is the right thing to do strategically, morally, and and politically. Like this is not two thousand four. This is the Jake is wrong. We're not going to watch the same movie. Like the Pentagon doesn't need more money to sustain sustain operations. They have a trillion dollars. There are not guys sitting in Fallujah waiting to get an MRAP that might not show up if you vote against the seventy seven billion or whatever the hell the the funding request was in in two thousand four. Like Trump could end this war tomorrow. He has basically dec declared victory a couple of times and suggested it might be over tomorrow. And I also voters will reward you. If you say let's not spend 50 billion more bombing girls schools in Iran, let's spend it on education, healthcare, literally anything else, that will be like the most popular thing you ever do as a lawmaker. Absolutely. And first of all, you're right. I mean, we have pro Barack Obama, the very first meeting I was in with him, the first time I met him, was in 2007 when he decided to vote against the supplemental that funded the surge. And the argument that was cast at him was that he was voting against the troops. And lo and behold, if it wasn't opposition to the Iraq War, he never would have become president of the United States. This political thinking is so outdated that it it's astonishing to me that it still gets currency in in the kind of media framing around these issues. I also want to say you covered the argument well about the obvious political point that people don't want to be spending this money, that this war is not popular. Um I I also think that one of the things that drives people crazy about the Democratic Party is it seems like it's a party that is constantly got its finger in the wind and is trying to figure out like what it stands for, what it actually believes, what will be the most politically fruitful argument. Are we tough? Uh can I afford to piss off these donors? Look, if you vote for the funding of this war, you should be primaried. I don't want you in the Democratic Party. And and I'm not trying to be obtuse or stubborn, but this is a threshold issue. Like I would like to have a big tent on this party. I think there should be people with different ideas of how to get health care, different ideas of taxation. To me, this is not a left-center issue. This is a right and wrong issue. Morally, what do we stand for as Democrats? If you as a Democrat can't say that I'm against a war and I'm not going to fund a war that is being launched by an authoritarian president illegally with no rational basis that is explained to the American people that has already unleashed these consequences. If you can't stand against that, you don't stand for a fucking thing. Okay? And everybody can see it. How is anybody going to trust you to fight for their health care if you're too afraid to cast a vote that someone might call you weak or some donor might call you and complain. So I'm sorry I got a little hot today. I came in hot. But I I this is you know I don't know what to say anymore. Like I it's a it's an astounding lapse in judgment, I think, to trust Donald Trump and Pete Heggseth to l lead a regime change war of choice with Iran along with DB Net and Yahoo. And like we didn't put it on the rundown today because it's just like uh the things to be mad about is are endless. But Trump like wearing a hat to the dignified transfer ceremony, like really bothered me because I like I I know you've been like I'm sure you've been to Dover. Like I've never gone to Dover with President Obama, but I went to Walter Reed with President Obama in like 2000. So it was like 2009 or 2010. It was like me, Reggie, Matt Flavin, and Obama, like in Marine One on the way there. And then, you know, like I chilled out with the press while he went and met with wounded service members for like three, four hours, whatever it was. And then we all flew home together. And like my memory of flying there is talking and people like it was fun, right? It was cool. And on the way back, it was like the heaviest situation I've ever been in. Like you could feel the weight of what Obama had just experienced on his shoulders and the devastation he And he didn't say a fucking word, nor did anybody else. And just like to see Trump kind of winging it out there, doing press events, goofing around, you know, like he's talking about the Iran war in front of like the Miami inter-Miami soccer team, cracking jokes about the renovations at the White House. He's just like a fundamentally unserious person who is not conducting this war for serious strategic reasons. It's all about his politics. It's all about Lindsay Graham fluffing him 10 times a day and like doing whatever Netanyahu tells me to do. And it's just it's fucking embarrassment. So vote no. Yeah and and and to your point, I mean the guy is showing up at the dignified transfer of And he's wearing a USA hat that looks like the kind of thing that you could buy like a gas station rest stop, right? Which no offense again, so those are great hats. I'd bought his hats there. But the point is that we're the w afraid of being called weak. Right. We're afraid of being called unpaid. Sad old man in a weird way. Yep. For no reason. Exactly. And he was showing up in a fucking baseball cap for a dignified transfer ceremony. Like this is not a hard argument to make. Very easy. I I just couldn't agree more. Uh Ben, speaking of our feckless Congress as we did a minute ago, so November is going to be a huge election. It'll decide if Democrats are in control of the House. Maybe we can take back the Senate, or if Trump just maintains his iron grip on uh the trifecta. Winning the House is gonna be the fastest way to put a real check on Trump's abuses of power and the Republicans enabling them. So we got to go on offense and we try to win as many seats as possible. So folks here who listen to this show and listen to Pod Save America are some of the most engaged people. 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VoteSafe America.com, sign up, be a part of this community, be a part of the work this year, get five friends to do it paid for by vote save america learn more at vote save america.com this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate committe e Potse of the world is brought to you by Sundays. When it comes to dog food, it seems like you have to make a choice. You can either have fresh and healthy or you can have easy to store and serve, but never both. But you don't have to choose anymore thanks to Sundays. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing so-called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed Sundays, air-dried real food made in a human-grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family. Every bite of Sundays is clean and made from real meat, fruits, veggies, and no kibble. That means no weird ingredients you can't pronounce and no fillers. 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Uh the Israelis leapt on this opportunity to retaliate and just destroy them again. And like whatever was left of the 2024 ceasefire agreement is now just fully eviscerated. And the IDF has both been conducting massive airstrikes in southern Lebanon and the parts of the suburbs of Beirut, but also the IDF ground forces have pushed into southern Lebanon. Last week, the French offered to like intervene and maybe support the Lebanese military. Manuel Macron like kind of jumped into the fray here. Uh I think the Israelis basically told him to fuck off. I can't tell if anything came of that. You you're not exactly showing a lot of strength on this Iran war in general. No, not much. Um I think my concern, Ben, though, if I were a Lebanese official, like beyond the immediate security and and threat to people's lives and the humanitarian situation and humanitarian crisis that could develop if this many people are displaced for this long. Like I I would wonder if Israel is going to use this opportunity to just permanently capture parts of Lebanon while the world is kind of focused elsewhere. I think that's what's happening. I mean, I I think that they want to permanently occupy, if not end up annexing southern Lebanon. Some Israeli political leaders talk about that openly. They know that this is a chaotic and violent time in the region, so they can kind of ratchet it up in Lebanon without it getting as much scrutiny. Um, they have not announced kind of what their end game is in Lebanon, uh, other than just destroying things. And I think people have to realize that the these people have been through hell in Lebanon, and you know, 700,000 people being told to evacuate is I mean just think about that. That's an instant where are they supposed to go? And many of them are going to come back to homes that are destroyed. And we've so thoroughly normalized that level of destruction uh with the you know and and this with this idea that it's somehow like about Hezbollah. I mean this is so far beyond Hezbollah. This is like breaking Lebanon completely. By the way, what always ends up happening, and I'm not defending corrupt Lebanese politicians because there are plenty of those too. But like they'll they'll bomb Lebanon for you know however long they bomb it and destroy all this stuff and displace people. And then nine months in all the politics in Lebanon are so dysfunctional. Like what what the hell are these people supposed to do? Right. Yeah, no, there's the that that's like a city that's Yeah. I mean it it it's it's staggering. It's like you know, and I guess we'll just keep an eye on it. Like I I don't know. The world is just kind of bad. Well and then you'll get these people uh you know who will like be uh posting pictures from like nineteen eighty four of like women in bathing suits in Beirut and be like, This is what it was like before Hezbollah or something. No, no, this is what it was like before the place uh uh got bombed, you know, however many times Yeah. It's a nightmare. Uh okay. So a couple more things from us. So w while the world is focused on Iran, uh the US military has been expanding its activities in South America. Um specifically the US military is now conducting joint military operation against drug cartels in Ecuador. So this is on top of the boat strikes off the coast of Ecuador and in the Caribbean. The New York Times reported that U. S. Special Forces are, quote, advising and supporting uh Ecuadorian commandos who are hitting drug facilities. Uh US Southern Command Ben, I don't know if they they tweeted out this weird video. I saw that. It was a helicopter taking off, right? And then it was like a drone feed of like US troops getting into the helicopter, but the way they filmed it, it made it look like there was about to be an airstrike on our own helicopter. It was all very, very weird. Um, as we've discussed on the show before, Ecuador went from being one of the safest countries in Latin America to becoming one of the most dangerous and becoming a There's also these Albanian gangs in Ecuador and they're sort of like facilitating those cocaine flows into Europe. Um in twenty twenty-four, uh the president uh Daniel Naboa declared war on the gangs and on the cartels that set in motion this huge crackdown in a wave of violence um does not solve the problem but has led to a lot of deaths and now apparently involves the US military. Um, Ben I, was just, you know, reading about this, sort of marveling at how little attention it's getting and then remembering back in twenty eighteen when Trump said, quote, uh, we more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world. Um it feels like that's kinda that's out the window. And again, another thing that we're doing with no public discussion. Um uh uh he clearly has this idea that that there's this collection of right wing leaders across Latin America Uh if she gets a plane to go down Ecuador. Um but but but the reality is the this this this idea where the US becomes like the Corey down Ecuador. Uh Eric Prince could probably put him to work. Yeah. See, Eric Prince opposed the Iran war. I think I saw him. He did. He went on Bannon, you know, and he opposed it. And part 'cause this is the kind of war he wants to fight. He's like, I want to be f yeah, I want to be in equity. But the reality is are we just gonna become the security force for every right-wing autocrat in uh in in Latin America? What's the goal here? What's the end state? Uh if we lose personnel down there, are Americans gonna know why they're there? Uh you had Ricardo on. The like the way to deal with these drug cartels uh you first you have to go after money, because they're multi-billion dollar enterprises, instead of skipping right ahead to like some military operation for ambiguous purposes. So yeah, we are on this kind of slippery slope to being the kind of military force for the shield of the Americas, you know. Uh and I just uh that's yet another thing. How much does this operation cost? Good question. Because they're not free, right? So yet another argument to make that uh that's not lowering prices, that's not doing anything to solve problems Americans actually. Because it's not even doing anything about the fentanyl problem, which is what Americans are most concerned about. It's just buttressing some right-wing autocrat who tells Trump what he wants to hear. Okay, let's end this by talking about uh the recent election in Nepal. So this ladies and gentlemen is Nepal's next prime minister. Let's watch. I go hard like a blastist. This is I do hallucinate like a baptist, like a baptist. Your bitch got fake eilish, my dick is most silent, she drip like me silish. They say they fly, ain't got no mileage, they say they fly, and fly in private, no Kylie Jenner, ain't got no hummer. Next time you show up, you get beat like a drummer. Give up that pipe, pipe like a plumber. I put you in trauma, I shoot like I'm gunner. I mean collab with Zoran Mamdani. I I uh I mean Michael had a better time watching that. Uh that guy's than uh Better than the Liz Truss show. Yeah fucking finally. Uh okay, so that's a rapper. It's not bad. It's pretty good. Yeah, right. That's Balindra Shaw, uh a rapper, civil engineer, turned politician. People call him Ballin. Uh he's the former he's Ballin. Yeah. He's Ballin out there. Also, uh pretty sure Kirill has that same code. I don't know if Kierel's not in here. Anyway, he's the former mayor of Kathmandu. Uh they're still counting ballots, but so far he's leading in what looks like a landslide election. This election is the result of these Gen Z-ledests from last year that brought down the former government. The protest kicked off. Remember, there's the social media ban that seemingly was just a cover to hide that the children of the elites were just like spending money in Paris and pissing away government money. But like the the those protests exploded in size because of deep frustration about corruption and lack of economic opportunity. Because Nepal is a very young, highly educated population, but it also has a twenty one percent youth unemployment rate. So there's a a brain drain and a lot of people leaving to go work abroad. Uh nineteen people were killed during those initial protests last year because the government violently cracked down on them. Uh then seventy more in the unrest and chaos that followed. So that forced out the prime minister at the time. So Bolland is part of the centrist party. He has campaigned uh on anti-corruption, on creating jobs. He says he's gonna double per capita GDP to three thousand dollars within within the next decade. Uh Nepal is landlocked between India and China. They have very limited manufacturing. The ryely on a lot of tourism to Mount Everest for their economy. And its current GDP per capita is about $1,500. So delivering on that promise will be quite a challenge. But Ben, thoughts on our new uh Gen Z wrapper King? Yeah, look, I I can't really vouch for Ballin. Um, you know, and I spent a bunch of time reading up on this because it's because it's fascinating. Um, we'll see how it goes. Uh here's the main thing that I think I take away from this that is that is hopeful. Clearly, people across the world, particularly younger people, are absolutely fed up with the corruption and the kind of rotten establishments that govern their lives. Uh and I do think that there is a connection between, you know, the Zoan Mamdani campaign and what he did. Uh did you see the Hannah Spencer Green Party campaign in the UK. This is this I mean, people haven't watched Hannah Spencer. She was a Green Party member, won a by election recently. She's thirty-four years old. She had a very Zoran-esque kind of message and campaign. Didn't Morris Katz go over there and meet with some of those campuses. Morris is kicking the tires on taking over European politics. Morris Katz is a a friend of ours who works for Zorno Mamdani, like a kind of young, brilliant community. Brilliant, brilliant guy. Yeah. Absolutely. Good for him going over to Europe to meet some of these progressive parties because, we need to trade best practices. Uh my advice to Europeans, and I know we have a lot of European listeners, is like talk to more scouts, right? Because it's not just about having clever social media, it's about having a smart message. But Ballin, you know, he capitalized on the fact that Gen Z, I don't think it's some irrational thing. Oh, we like the rapper. It's that they're so comprehensively fed up with their political establishment that they kind of ousted them in this protest movement and are like, you know what?' Lset put this guy in charge, because at least we know he's different. Right. And at least we know he's not been tethered to the same corruption. At least we know he hasn't kind of taken money from the same crowd that's been around. And and so I actually think the warning to politicians everywhere in the democratic world and the the non-democratic world is that this is kind of what where people are at right now, particularly young people. And I actually think it's wrong to say that Gen Z, they're disengaged. They seem pretty fucking engaged in a lot of these places. They're pretty engaged over there. They're lighting some fires that they were engaged. And and they've been engaged. We've seen it in Africa. We've seen it in the Middle East. We've seen it in this country. We're seeing it in Europe. And if you uh again, I'll just talk to the places where if you are a smart politician trying to appeal to young voters, you got to get to that mood. You know, not maybe not the ball and video. The anti-establishment mood. But the anti-established mood of like this is different, this is a clean break, this is a different this politics is gonna look different, it's gonna feel different, it's gonna be funded differently. Because I think that is increasingly where the mood's gonna go, given the direction of events in the world. Yeah, people don't like elites. Get inside my semen, all the closet full of rap tapes. This is how I do hallucinate like a bapt ist. That was a VTOR joint. No, that was a ball and joint. He also he also dropped Kylie Jenner's name. Whatever. I heard the Kylie Jenner in there. Yeah. I uh the there's a there's a logic train I'm trying to follow with the lyrics, but you know, hey, sounded sounded good. It was more of a slant rhyme, which you know, Bob Dylan would tell us is is an art form. Ballin seems to not do a lot of media too. Like I was trying to like it doesn't give a lot of interviews, let's just say. So like it's a bit of a mystery. Whenever I hear someone named Bollin, I think of the big baller brand. Yes. You know, but well, I saw them, by the way, just to you know, we I heard you guys on PSA Redley complain about like the video game message, but I also hate them expropriating like I saw I don't know, one of their Dan Scavino war porn post said like if you don't know, now you know. Like Biggie Small's R.I.P does not want you taking like his potentially best catchphrase from you know like the the one of the greatest Biggie was not repping the military industrial. Yeah, Biggie was not focused. But so they if you don't know, now you know. Give me a break. Dan Scavina or whatever like 23-year-old white nationalist groupers like now become a war porn addict. What's funny is I think actually like they are trying to appeal to the kind of Nick Fuentes young, white, angry, like incel crowd with this kind of content. And I think it's falling on its face hard. Yeah. Because those guys actually listen to Fuentes, like Tucker Carlson, a bunch of right wingers who were opposed to the war in Iran before and now were opposed to it after, and they seem consistent at least. Um, and you know, Fox News might fall in line, but like who cares what they say? Yeah, I will say I have some notes for the kind of anti war MAGA crowd, like in Tucker's among it. 'Cause you know, I sample this to see where things are going. It is remarkable the lengths they go to to somehow like solve Trump. Yeah. Like i uh like we should need to call this out. Like you could listen, like listen. I mean, actually don't listen. Like we'll listen to it for you. But like they can have a two hour conversation on like Tucker, Megan Kelly, and like you would think that this happened to Trump. Yeah. They'll blame like the undersecretary for something something over the Pentagon. Or by the way, they'll blame Netanyahu. I d like I blame Netanyahu, but uh that doesn't absolve Trump. I blame Netanyahu too, but I blame Trump for being too weak. I blame Trump more than Netanyahu. Of course, to be very clear. He's more powerful. He's the American president. He made the decision. Every other American president of the 21st century said no to this. So it just this uh all the more reason for Democrats to burrow in on this because just because there's some anti-war MAGA influencers And Americans are not stupid. They know that that Donald Trump either A shouldn't this and B could have said no to BB Ninja. Oh Jesus. Okay, so Trump truth as we were recording Ben. I'm pleased to report that within the last few hours we have hit and completely destroyed ten inactive mine laying boats andor ships with more to follow. I'm not really sure what that means or does exist. That means he's trying to tell the markets and the oil futures to not price in a mining of the Straits of Hormuz. Aaron Powell, so you don't really want the uh crude oil futures to rip like Bitcoin. You know what I mean? who cares more about the lives of US service members and Iranian school children than he cares about tomorrow's oil futures, which is clearly the only thing that can get his fat ass, you know, in gear to like truth social something. Until Lizzie Graham gets them on the phone, gets them all hot and bothered again for another regime change. Uh okay, I think that's it for us for this week. Anything else pissing you off? Should we have burden or something? I will say the only thing pissing me off is that I uh had two my best of friends come into town. I got banger tickets to the Knicks Lakers game on Sunday and the Knicks Clippers game last night. Uh got to both games half an hour early. And in the in the two games, the Knicks led once by a single point and just fucking mailed it in. I'm sorry, man. Except for Kat, except for my guy, Carl Anthony Towns, who showed up. The rest of these guys? Not much. I love them, but they just didn't show up for me. I bet when you're playing away in LA, this you're it seemed like so so the Saturday we were uh we were taking a new Saturday game. So we at twelve thirty uh twelve thirty PM twelve thirty start. So we're in the Uber over because we're gonna like pound some beers at the game. So responsibly took an Uber. And I said to these guys, I was like, Hey, um , I'm worried that our guys are out last night, you know, like it's LA, you know, we got OG, we got you know Josh Hart, we got these guys, maybe they w wanted to go out. And like, no, no, no. The like the our guys are serious, you know. We our guys look like they went out Friday night. I think a lot of players go out every single night. If you're young and rich and a great athlete, you're probably having a good time. Let me just say the Knicks did not come out of the you know blocks uh running at full speed on Saturday at twelve thirty. No. Luca looked like he was hungover, but Luca always looks like he's kinda hungry. He does look like he's hung over and a little bit hung CNN headline US intelligence community ramps up warnings of possible retaliatory attacks by Iran. Um that's great. Oh cyber attacks. I don't know. Everything's really great. So Yeah, I came in kind of pissed off today and sorry about that. I uh it's hard to be light about a war though. It is not fun. Uh okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but when you come back, you're gonna hear my interview with my karowitz. We're gonna talk about the Pentagon fighting with AI companies, drones, uh, new drone technology that will help us take out Iranian drones. That's we're getting from the Ukrainian. So very important uh conversation about the future of warfare and technology. So stick around for that. Potta World is brought to you by BILT. No one likes paying rent, but built makes it feel a little better. BILT is the loyalty program for renters that rewards you monthly with points and exclusive benefits in your neighborhood. Let me explain. 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What is it? I have a follow-up with the Clancy account today, and I can't remember who's taking the lead on the new process. Oh it's fine. Plaude was there. Todd? No, Plaud with a P. Who is that? Plaud is my AI work companion. It's a game changer for meetings when follow-up is crucial. I never worry about missing a detail. How? Plaud captures the entire conversation with one button. And transcribes, creates clear AI summaries, and automatically labels speakers. So I never have to worry about who is tackling what. Ah, awesome. Hey, Plaud, can you help me? A pro tip: you can get your own Plaud so this never happens again. See why Plaud is trusted by over two million professionals globally. Visit uk.plad. And for a limited time use promo code UK10 for 10% off any new Plawed Note Pro or Note Pin S. Offer expires May 31. That's uk.plaud.ai slash pod and use code UK ten . I am very excited to welcome back today's guest to the show. He's a senior fellow for technology and innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And then from 2022 to 2024, he served as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force Development and Emerging Capabilities. Mike Koro, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for having me. You know, not like anything's going on in the world. Yeah, slow week. Also, it's very funny. Uh, we booked you twice and you've been on vacation twice. So we just I love to just ruin whatever you're doing in your real life. But given all the fighting between the Pentagon and these AI companies and then what's happening in Iran, it seemed like uh an amazing time to get you back on the show. So before we get to this big fight between the defense department and anthropic, an AI company, I was just hoping you could understand how AI is being used in warfare because we've now seen reports that AI was used in the operation to get Nicholas Maduro in Venezuela. There's lots of reports that AI is being used in the Iran operations, including Claude anthropics model. Uh the reports that the Israelis were using AI with targeting both in Gaza and now again with Iran. What does that mean in practice to the best you can kind of help us get it? Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about the integration of AI into warfare, you separate it into three buckets in your mind. The first are the kinds of uses of AI that any company might do. Think like HR, payroll processing, basic logistics, like that kind of thing. And the Pentagon should be full speed ahead at that, although frankly that has taken a lot of time to get moving as well. The second bucket is in what's called intelligence sur,veillance, and reconnaissance. So that is all the data and information that say the American military gets about the world, whether from satellites, whether from human intelligence sources, whether from Truth Social or X or whatever your like um poison might be and you know trying to aggregate that all together to separate the signal from the noise. The third, and this is both where the current operational context discussion is and where the dispute between anthropic and the Pentagon goes is closer to the battlefield. And those are essentially AI decision support systems that help commanders in theory make better decisions about how to use force within operations. And then autonomous weapon systems that can involve AI actually on the edge, selecting and engaging targets. And it's that third category where people have really raised lots of questions about how much how much that integration is happening uh today in the Iran context, how much should happen to the Maduro uh operation, and then where it may go where it may go from there. So I can imagine a scenario where over Iran, the US and Israel have so many satellites or drones or things bringing in imagery that it's almost impossible to monitor them them all in real time. And you could imagine an AI that's trained to notice the second that a shape that looks like an Iranian ballistic missile launcher shows up on the screen, and then you immediately move to target that. Is like that the kind of thing we're talking about? And maybe that data is cross-checked with some other SIGIN thing that's happened. Like it's just it's I think it's hard for people to understand like the volume of data that's coming in to through intelligence channels and how quickly we need to move to kind of act on it. So there's there's two different categories in which I put some of the things that we have heard about in the Iran context. The first is this that AI decision support category I mentioned before. And that is often using a platform built by the tech company, uh a tech company Palantir called Maven Smart System. And what that's doing is aggregating all of this data together to try to give advice to the US combatant commander in the in central command. So the head of the US military in the Middle East, who has in there are all these processes for how the Pentagon selects targets, makes decisions to engage them, legal reviews, checks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's lots of really fantastical descriptions, you know, out there. But imagine what uh what Maven essentially does is kind of the way a paralegal would support a lawyer, where they're doing all of this research and analysis to simplify all of these sort of different tasks, all the sort of staff work that would normally happen on the battlefield. Now it's still the lawyer that goes to court and argues, and still the lawyer that takes responsibility, but that that paralegal or team of paralegals or whatever is doing a ton of the back office work to sort of cue things up. That's the way that that Maven essentially works and the way that Claude then is integrated into Maven to as one of many different tools to simplify those data processing tasks even more. So that that's category one. And then category two is more like that missile defense scenario that you're talking about, where frankly you don't need large language models, like you don't need Claude to you know do this, but like good old-fashioned computer vision sort of algorithms can do this sort of thing, and that's just about detecting launches and then moving systems in position to shoot them down, which say like Israel's Iron Dome, for example, has proven to be exceptional at and the Patriot Missile Defense System for the United States is is much more expensive, but also very good at. Got it. Okay. Um okay. So we've we've talked on this show about this dispute between this AI company, Anthropic, and the Pentagon. Um the gist for those who have not followed this is Anthropic's bottle clawed was at the time the only AI model cleared for use on the Pentagon's classified systems. The department wanted Claude to sign a contract that allowed them, quote, all lawful uses of the model. But Anthropic said, no, we have some red lines uh and they don't want Claude used for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons yet, because they say the the software is not ready yet. Um the two sides couldn't come to an agreement. That led a bunch of people, the Pentagon to absolutely flip out on Twitter uh a couple weekends ago. And then Heggseth, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, declared anthropic a quote supply chain risk. Um that is a designation normally reserved for companies like Huawei, which has ties with the Chinese military. Mike, what do you think happened here? And can you explain the impact of a supply chain risk designation on a company like Anthropic, who I just noticed has filed suit? Yeah, that's not like the least surprising thing this week. The the I think this to me is a dispute about vibes and personalities masquerading as a policy dispute. And what I mean by that is Anthropic, as you said, was the first company in the door to work with the Pentagon in a classified environment. And there were no things that Enthropic was doing with the Pentagon that either were either side had objections. Furthermore, there were no asks of the Pentagon of Anthropic for the future that Anthropic had uh that Anthropic had an issue with. Essentially what happened is after the Maduro operation, it sounds like somebody from Anthropic called somebody from Palantirus. Since remember I, said that the way that Claude is implemented operationally for the military right now is through this Palantir platform called Maven Smart System. So someone from Anthropic calls Palantir somebody from Palantir up to be like, hey, did they use Claude in the Maduro operation? And that they even asked the questi on, apparently like really set off alarm bells at the Pentagon. And they were, you know, you know, and essentially to like really simplify a bunch of things. They're like, why are these woke doomers asking all of these questions? Uh like this seem like this seems problematic, and the dispute really escalates from that, given the fact that there's no disagreement between the company between the company and the Pentagon about any current use cases. And the Pentagon is using Claude in Iran, as has been like widely reported in the media, calling them a supply chain risk, chain risk, calling anthropic as a supply chain risk like Huawei means that any the parts of any company that work with the federal government, say like the part of Microsoft that works with the government, the part of Google that works with the government, et cetera, isn't allowed to use claude. So any company, the part of the company that works with the government, it's now illegal in theory for them to you to them to work with Anthropic or and certainly to use Anthropic's technology direct I mean that seems like a big, big deal for Anthropic, right, going forward. I mean that could kill off a lot of contracts for them, no? I mean, it could be worse, I guess. I mean they they they could have made it so that it was illegal to do business with anthropic at all, in that the say the say the part of Microsoft that doesn't work with the federal government still could work with anthropic. And so don't get me wrong. This is a big hit to anthropic and this is a bad move in my view from a sort of free market kind of perspective, because it means that the sort of best technology in the world from an American company is no longer gonna be available either to the Pentagon in that like they they gave a six month time frame for this to sort of happen um and with uh other uh and for contractors uh who also are seeking to like work with the Pentagon like from where I sit that is a win for China and a loss for uh and a loss for America and problematic from a free market perspective. I mean, just from the anthropic perspecti ve, don't you understand why they would maybe have some questions? I mean, like this sort of like all lawful uses provision, what federal laws are there regulating AI use right now? Right? Like isn't that part of the problem? Is that the federal government is completely asleep at the switch when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence? And then you have all these, you know, nerds uh out there telling us that this could be more powerful than the atomic bomb. I mean, like, I don't understand what these companies are doing in practice and or the technology itself, but like the combination of those two things controlled by Pete Heggseth and Donald Trump, like doesn't make me feel gre at. Totally fair. I I just to be perfectly honest, comparing AI to the atomic bomb is vaguely triggering. And so I'm gonna leave that one aside for the for the moment. The but the uh I think that the what this really reflects in some ways is a breakdown in trust between Anthropic and the Pentagon. And that the Pentagon didn't trust that Anthropic would be there to re I will say I think I I think one can have some sympathy for the Pentagon, actually on parts uh on parts of this or like I certainly would have when I when I worked there at least. And here's why. When Lockheed sells like an F-35 or a missile to the Pentagon, it's not like Lockheed gets to say like, hey, you could use this against like Cuba, but like don't use it against Iran or something or you know like or something like that. The these these companies like sell a product to the Pentagon and the Pentagon then uses it the way that it the way that it sees fit. I think Enthropic is thinking about this more like terms of service in a software contract, which is a thing in contracts with the Pentagon. And they think that the and they think that once they sell that they have the right to tell the Pentagon like, hey, we want to sign a contract for, you know, like X set of use cases but not Y set of use cases. And Anthropic is even said we will work with you on on on like a something like how to make LLMs ready for fully autonomous weapon systems. But the but I think that it is not true to say that there's no law or policy that governs these topics. And there's two layers of this. One that has nothing to do with artificial intelligence. So there's federal law and international treaties that require the U.S. to use force in ways that comply with international humanitarian Which we're ignoring left and right. Fair. But like but in the butt like those are bombing the fuck out of boats in the Caribbean like on the regular and it's just total violation of international law. Yeah. No argument. Absolutely no argument. Okay. I just mean that in theory, when it comes to like AI like the way that that boils down is essentially all uses for any use of force, whether it's a bow and arrow, a radar guided missile, or an autonomous weapon system, there has to be human responsibility and accountability for the use of force. Like for example, in in that like first boat operation back in September, that was really, I mean not that they're not all controversial, but in the first one, that like got a lot of public attention, you know, attention focused on the specific military commander that authorized the second strike. Like there's always responsibility, a human responsibility. And that is true even in the case for an autonomous weapon system. And that has nothing to do with any policies surrounding AI in particular. It is also true that there is not law governing the Pentagon's use of AI for the most part. Well, there is policy. Like the office that I used to work for in the Pentagon wrote the Pentagon's policy on autonomy and weapon systems. It's called DOD Directive 3000.09. And more people have probably downloaded and read that directive and became experts on it in the last like two or three weeks than probably read it since it was like re-released in January 2023. And the and that does sort of set out pretty clear guidelines, at least on the autonomous weapon system side, for when it is that you could use them. It's not law. And Anthropic did have questions. I guess, yeah, I mean, I hear you on the compare. Like, look, I if if I were a combatant commander, the idea of calling over to a tech company to say, hey, can we do this thing? It you're right, on some level it's untenable and unworkable. On your Lockheed comparison, I mean this is very imperfect. I do think like Lockheed probably sells the US military F-35s, assuming they will not be used to bomb Boston, right? I mean that's sort of like a bit of what anthropic's getting at. I'd like to think so at least. I'd like to think so. You would like to think so. Um not necessarily bomb Americans. Well look but so let's get at this other piece of this because then a competitor to anthropic open AI, they sweep in, they ink a deal with the Pentagon to replace Anthropic. You wrote in your uh Financial Times piece, uh, where you also got into these sort of bigger picture philosophical questions, that they got 99% of the deal Anthropic wante What does that mean in practice? And what's the one percent that they didn't get? And how relevant is it? Sure. I think it's really interesting that OpenAI has gotten so much heat for this. as much as it is a substance question. So like here here's why. The open AI deal says that their technology can only be used through the cloud. It couldn't be used on the edge. And so you couldn't put an open AI model, say like into a weapon system directly and use it. If you were now you could in theory then put an op, I guess in theory, put an open AI model in, you know, in the cloud and have it be like directing a weapon to the target. But if you did that, it wouldn't be an autonomous weapon system. The thing that makes it an autonomous weapon system, unless it's human supervised, is that there is no data link. And that's because autonomous weapon systems are designed for, say, I don't know, like a war in the Indo-Pacific, where you might not have access to satellites and all of that data and you need and you want the weapon system to keep operating. And so if opening eyes technology can only be used in the cloud and not on the edge, then then actually it means that the it you know an autonomous weapon system without human supervision that their their model simply can't wouldn't wouldn't work for. On the surveillance side, it sounds like then that I'm you know personally a little less expert in, there are there are there do seem to be concerns that the that the technology that the sort of deal that openai signed might not be quite as restrictive as what anthropic wanted but some of this i mean to to the kind of like the back and forth we were having about international, about international law and about the Pentagon sort of in general. At some point, like if you if you do business with the Pentagon, the business of the Pentagon is war. And if you don't trust that the Pentagon will follow its own rules, sort of, or laws, then you then you shouldn't then it's you know it's like it's you know it's like a tough look then to do business with the Pentagon. And perhaps one shouldn't be a no I I look and I I think that's sort of a very real part of this. It's getting less attention, which is like if if Anthropic has I don't know, yeah, if if they're if they're so concerned about how the Pentagon might use the models then maybe they shouldn't do business with the Pentagon, period. Look, I think the reason OpenAI got so much blowback is because Sam Altman looked like a total scumbag and he swept in at the last moment and swept up a a contract from his competitor and he's seen as someone who has been willing to kiss Trump's ass more than, you know, any other AI CEO and therefore he you know made a deal that it seems like Anthropic didn't want. It's also my understanding that maybe Anthropic was looking for their concerns to be handled in the contract where OpenAI is now saying, actually we're just going to kind of like hard code the restrictions into the model. And I think experts will then point out, well, then you can update the model down the road and maybe we'd probably never know about it. Right? Not not wrong. I mean the like that like I think that that that that but that that's in some ways because there is no if what you are worried about is that the Pentagon's going to misuse your technology, there's like two scenarios for misuse. One is that your technology would actually be very good at the thing that the Pentagon wants to do. Uh, in which case, there's actually very little you could put in a contract that would stop them from doing it if they wish to violate the law. The the second, and this is actually why I am personally less concerned on the autonomous weapon system side, is that the Pentagon could attempt to violate your contract, but the if like you're correct that your technology isn't like ready to do the thing, that will come out in the Pentagon's own testing and evaluation process like the worst thing like the not like the last thing you would use an LLM for like a large language model that like like CLOD or chat GPT or something like that is to put into an autonomous weapon system if you want to build an autonomous weapon system you, should do that with a bespoke algorithm trained on a data set of very specific things, like say Russian tanks or Chinese fighters or something like that. The idea that you would take a uh you would take a large language model trained on the slap of the internet and like plug it into a missile and like send that missile off. Like what are we even doing here? And I and I feel like either the Pentagon's testing and evaluation process should clearly reveal that, like, or we've got like bigger problems that have nothing to do with AI. Yeah, th that's where like sometimes I'm just I'm confused about this fight. Like the mass surveillance piece of this really worries me because one major limiting factor when you talk about you know preventing the mass surveillance of an entire population, let's say all Americans, was that it was prohibitively difficult to work with that much data. And I think AI has fundamentally changed that. But I guess my concern then would be about more about like contracts with the NSA or the CIA or other intelligence community components than the Pentagon. I was wondering what your read was on that kind of piece of this fight. Yeah, I'm st uh look, I'm super worried about mass surveillance in the context of of AI technology and the way that it could help de-identify a bunch of data that like law says that the you're not supposed to have on the American people. I'm not worried about the Pentagon as the locus of the American mass surveillance state. I would be like much more worried maybe about like other departments and agencies that are in the news sometimes. And the and so like I and I think the and I think the reaction of the Pentagon is telling in this context, in that on the mass surveillance side, you can I mean to whatever extent one like views them as credible like on this and you know like mileage will travel for different people. The like the Pentagon on the mass surveillance side is essentially like how could you ever say that like we would never do that that violates the fourth amendment. And I suspect that they probably genuinely think that because again I think other departments and agencies are a higher risk or maybe like an in-between like the NSA like I guess if you really wanted to worry but man does the NSA have rules the the if it whereas their response to the autonomous weapon side, it's like, well we, totally wouldn't do that now. Like we agree with you. The tech isn't ready, but it might be at some point. Right. And Anthropic's like, yeah, that's why we want to work with you on that. Like, why are you kicking us out? Yeah. It's all, yeah. It just feels like the the the Pentagon, the Trump administration, they have one speed, which is to punch back as hard as humanly possible. And in in so doing, escalated this fight. Yeah. I mean, look, this is like the Hegseth Pentagon is on full send all the time. Like no matter what. Yep. And in that case, like this is like going back to what I said before, that this is like really about vibes and personalities, which I I think our at least to me, like our discussion in some ways has has illustrated the uh in you know, in that kind of like breakdown in trust, like how do you crawl down from here that how do you climb down from here then in some ways if like if if we're talking about a pedagog that literally will never admit that it's wrong about anything. Yeah. And it's like rage tweeting at five PM or like 10 PM on a Friday night for no reason about this issue. Um last sort of topic I want to talk about was is a lot of experts are very concerned about US weapons stockpiles, in particular interceptor munitions that are being used in the Patriot missile systems and other systems to defend from Iranian missiles and drones, and then also some offensive uh US missile systems that you can get into. Um that is a problem in the near term with the war in Iran, especially for some of these Gulf states, which news reports say are like within a week of running out of some of these interceptors. But more broadly for our readiness as a country to fight the next war, especially one with China. How worried are you about these stockpiles and what do you make of these efforts to use new drones developed by the Ukrainians to defend from these Iranian drones, which have been used by Russia as a as a solve or a fix? Oh what a short question. I mean, like call back to the last time I was on. I I I you know I talked about how we are in the age of precise mass and war, where advances in AI and autonomy and commercial manufacturing uh and uh and the fact that precision guidance is now a 50-year-old technology means everyone can now access um precision st rike. And now we see that on display in Iran sort of every day when Iran fires these Shaheed 136 weapons, you know, like the Shahid 136 is arguably the best precise mass system in the world. It can go like 1500 to 2000 kilometers. It can carry a, you know, 50 to 150 kilogram uh warhead. And unless you shoot it down, it like depending on build quality, will like hit the thing that it's aimed at. They can produce that for an average of $35,000. A Patriot missile costs about four million dollars each. So now we're using like two Patriot missiles to shoot down a Shaheed. And like we're trying to be better about that with a bunch of different kinds of things. And like the unit cost for, say, like Israel's Iron Dome is a little bit, is a little bit lower. But because Iran has thousands of these Shaheeds and is just firing them off. Everybody in the region with Patriot Missile Interceptors is now using them. And so the US is in a position where and Iran is starting to target the radars that try to track those that we use to ensure those missiles hit their target, which would mean you, and if those get really damaged, you would need to fire even more to intercept a single thing and add all of that up. And the US is running short on missile defense interceptors, especially for the Indo-Pacific, but even in the context of the Middle East, if the U.S. wants to sort of re-up the stockpiles of all of the Gulf states that have had our back in the context of this conflict. And so guess what? In some ways, like China wins again. And while you focused more on the uh on the missile defense question, I'll note that the US has produced about the the like premier U.S. cruise missile for like both of our professional lives has been called the the Tomahawk missile. The US has produced about like 9,000 plus of them like over uh over that time period. There if you look at like inventory based on uses over time, retirements, tests, et cetera, the US inventory might be like around 3,000 or even below, frankly, uh at this at this point, and decreasing rapidly given the hundreds that the US is already used against Iran. And so we are running out of weapons. And in this age of precise mass, like that's a big problem, which is why the US needs to be producing itself then a lot more of these low-cost weapons, our own precise mass systems, uh like the Lucas, which the US debuted uh against Iran for the first time, and it's actually reverse engineered from an Iranian weapon. So like a little bit of irony there. Yeah, yeah. Sorry, the you when you say low cost weapons, you don't mean the the T Lambs or the Tomahawks, you mean these new modern drones. No, like the so like the Lucas system uh what the Lucas system is essentially is the US equivalent of the Shaheed. So the Lucas system cost the US like thirty-five to fifty thousand dollars a a pop, which is really different than a Tomahawk missile that cost about like two million dollars each, yeah uh on average. And because you can produce them with commercial manufacturing, like the Lucas that the Lucas rounds that the US is using in the Middle East were produced by like SpectreWorks, like a tiny company in Scottsdale with like 13 employees, not like Raytheon or Lockheed, showed you could really scale production of these kinds of things in a way that would give you know future American leaders like a lot more like depth uh and a lot more uh and a lot more options. And so on on the Ukrainian front, I mean the the Ukrainians have been dealing with the Iranians provided Russia with these Shahid drones and now, you know, the Ukrainians will have swarms of them fired at Ukrainian cities, you know, maybe dozens, maybe even hundreds of them at a time. And so one option they have uh uh evolved to to deal with that threat is low-cost drones of their own, which basically are like hunt these drones. Can you talk about that technology, how effective it is, and how quickly we might be able to put that to use in this conflict with Iran, if at all? Yeah, absolutely. Like you think about like if we're if we have currently been using, you know, four million dollar interceptors to shoot down like not just Shahids, but things that are slightly more expensive, but still maybe like like Iranian ballistic missiles that might be say, I don't know, like half a million dollars each or something like that. Um the the you need something cheaper then. Otherwise the cost curve just isn't in your favor. And you've got a couple of options if you want the cost curve to be really low. The first, and this has been like the dream of the 1980s, like on repeat, is lasers. Like you could use directed energy, microwave weapons, things like that, where the cost per shot is super low, and now you've got options to try to take down these systems. Like Israel used uh iron beam, which is their short-range laser defense system.