Sagar Enjeti (2:03)

We talked to you recently about Mark Andreessen and then Zuckerberg going on with Joe Rogan and being like, you know, we gotta deal with this debanking, Elizabeth Warren's debanking agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which actually is basically like the anti scam agency, is sort of like the best way effectively to think about that. This is no surprise, but Rohit Chopra, who has been the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a very effective way, one at that, who by the way, has opposed debanking people for political ends. He has now officially been fired. And in addition, put the next piece up on the screen. Apparently the billionaire hedge fund Treasury Secretary Scott Besant has been put in for as acting director of the cfpb. And he immediately sends out a memo to staff saying you need to halt movement on any proposed or final rules guidance, suspend effective dates of rules, don't advance investigations or enforcement actions, no material agreements, no public communications or reports, seemingly giving Mark Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg and a lot of other people exactly what they were looking for here.

Matt Stoller (3:11)

Yeah, I mean. Yes.

Sagar Enjeti (3:18)

Tell us what you're proud to hear to say that. Thank you. Help people understand what is the import of this particular agency and just remind them why the Mark Andreessens and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world were irritated at it in particular.

Matt Stoller (3:33)

Yeah. So the CFPB was dealing with scams and fraud and consumer protection questions. And so they were going after, there's this company called synapse which was one of these fintech companies and it was sort of appeared like a bank and then a bunch of people lost their life savings in it. And the CFPB was investigating, doing things to try to deal with synapse. Marc Andreessen was a big investor in synapse. This is true for a number of different investments that he made. He doesn't like that the CFPB was enforcing the law. I think that's my general view. But this is also Wall street generally there are different parts here because there's some things that the CFPB was doing that Wall street did like. So they were looking into big tech owned payment systems and banks are afraid of that. Open banking rules that some fintech companies like that banks don't particularly. There's elements around FICO and credit reporting that some mortgage bankers don't like. So there are some industry splits. But by and large what you find is that Wall street hates any kind of anyone that tells them no. Right. And that the CFPB and Rohit Chopra was saying, no, you can't steal everything, you can only steal a lot. Right.

Sagar Enjeti (4:52)

How dare you?

Matt Stoller (4:53)

Yeah, I know. How dare you. Right. And the Silicon Valley was getting and has been getting into payments and banking style arrangements, especially For a long time, especially Meta.

Sagar Enjeti (5:04)

Elon himself is interested in this for Twitter as well.

Krystal Ball (5:07)

It's the original vision of Confinity and is literally PayPal. That's what the design of the company was.

Matt Stoller (5:15)

He made his original money from PayPal, so that was a big part of it. But yeah, Meta's into it. Amazon is hugely into it too. I mean, Meta tried to start their own currency like Libra. Right, I know. And everyone was like, how dare Biden be so mean to Meta. And it's like that was blocked under Trump. First Trump. So we gotta come up with a nomenclature for first Trump and now Trump.

Krystal Ball (5:41)

Trump won.

Sagar Enjeti (5:42)

Trump 2.0. Yeah, that's what I've been going with as well. Trump the return. I don't know. Let's also talk, let's go to. Let's see, C4. This is sort of more directly related to the CFPB. You've had a similar order go out at the SEC. That's the security Exchange Commission, which looks at sort of like insider trading and other white collar banking crimes. So they say that the exchan has not previously been reported made. Under new leadership, they are tightening oversight of probes, basically making it so that you have to go through the political appointees. If you want to, you can start an investigation, but if you're actually going to launch an official probe, you've got to go through the political appointees. How should we understand this shift?

Krystal Ball (6:28)

Matt, Is this common? What does this look like?

Matt Stoller (6:31)

So this is actually a big deal. It's one of these things that annoying people like me. Pay attention to. Attention to. When you're an investigator, if you have, you know, if you have to get permission from your boss to look into something, you're gonna look into less stuff.

Krystal Ball (6:46)

Right?

Matt Stoller (6:46)

And at a bunch of agencies, sometimes they delegate authority to staff to look into stuff, and sometimes they don't. This is actually true in Congress too. Like Congress has investigative authority. Sometimes they let the chairman issue subpoenas, sometimes the whole committee has to vote on subpoenas. It's a very different arrangement if you have one guy who can just issue a subpoena if he wants to. And that's basically what they're saying. Here is what they're now saying is if you work at the sec, you have to go, you have to get permission from the Republican commissioners about whether to investigate something. And so that just provides a much tighter level of control over what the SEC is doing and means that the SEC is not gonna be doing as much.

Krystal Ball (7:26)

Has it worked like that in the past. Do we know is this like a reverse of guidance under Biden or Obama?

Matt Stoller (7:32)

Well, so what that article said, and I'm just going off with that article on screen said, is that traditionally the SEC gives wide latitude to its people to just investigate. I know that the Federal Trade Commission better. They in the consumer branch of the Federal Trade Commission, they've historically allowed staff to just kind of. I got a hunch that there's that vitamin supplement guy scamming people. I'm going to go investigate. I'm not going to bug the commissioners every time on the competition side. So for antitrust, they traditionally did have to get permission to investigate companies. A couple of years ago, the FTC changed that and said, actually now on the competition side, if you smell something that's off, you can go and investigate. And so that's a way of just kind of saying, we're going to let you do more. But there are implications to it. Right. So if things are going through, the staff doesn't always have a good political sense. And so sometimes they can issue investigative demands that are intimidating or scary or whatever. So it's not like a completely outrageous proposal. But in the context of the sec, in the context of these, of what Trump is doing more broadly, it really is about shutting down investigation of corporate crime and that. I mean, we're essentially in the moment of the white collar purge. Right. All crime is legal. Right. And that is kind of true, I think, for the next six months, year or something like that. I mean, also the doj, you know, a lot of the shakeups that are going on in government, I don't think there's a lot of investigations of crime going on right now at the FBI or doj. And you know, you're seeing a CFPB shut down. You're seeing the SEC basically same sort of very similar. You're seeing, I think, a rollback at the consumer protection side of the ftc, not the competition side. So what you, I think broadly are going to see is that there's gonna be a wide latitude for pushing the law or just violating the law if you have a suit and tie.

Krystal Ball (9:32)

Well, scary.

Sagar Enjeti (9:33)

Can you respond to some of the discourse online that I've been watching spectating, is there's this analysis of you people got your way, you antitrust people got your way under Biden.

Matt Stoller (9:45)

Right.

Sagar Enjeti (9:46)

And the public voted for Trump anyway. Right. And so this stuff you care about, your whole competition and going after white collar criminals, it's not all that popular. Right. What is your view of that? Because I do think that Biden, because he was an old man who couldn't really articulate much of anything about anything, did fail to enlist the American people in a project that was pissing off the tech barons and the Wall street people and is part of, of why they decided to completely throw in with Trump. So it ended up in a sense, I mean, I'm glad that the enforcement actions happen. I think that stuff is important and hopefully has lasting, reverberating impacts. But in a sense, you got four years of a better approach. You pissed off powerful people, but you didn't enlist the American people and help them understand what you were doing to create a sort of popular understanding of why these things are important. Which makes it easy for Marc Andreessen to go on Joe Rogan's podcast and be like the cfpb. They're debanking conservatives and loop it all into some culture bullshit. Culture war umbrella.

Matt Stoller (10:59)

Yeah. So there's, I think there's two ways to understand what happened. Okay, so one, I think we can go into ways that the anti monopolist sort of things we didn't do enough of. I'll say we, because I consider myself this sort of a movement and stuff that's kind of our fault. Right. And then I think there's the broader dynamic. So let's just divide it into two different things. I think the broader dynamic is far more impactful. So just to give you a sense of how much power the anti monopolist had, so if you take the cfpb, the antitrust enforcers, which are in the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust division, total budget of all three of those is less than a billion dollars. The rest of the government, I don't know, what is that, $5 trillion? Something like that. So you're talking about a very, very, very small part of the government. Now it was, I think important and people noticed it cuz they were the only ones doing something that was actually different and articulating maybe not a new agenda, but a traditional agenda that the Democrats would have recognized in the 1930s or 1960s or something like that. But the rest of the government, you know, Javier Becerra at Health and Human Services. Right. When was the last time we heard his name? Right. They do anything. Right, right. And so how much can you really accomplish out of a couple of regulatory agencies when the Federal Reserve and we don't. Nobody is like, oh man, that Jay Powell at the Federal Reserve, that's the reason Democrats lost. Right. It's cause nobody is nobody. That's Just the water we're swimming in. Oh, man. That Janet Yellen at Treasury Department. Oh, man. That. You know.

Krystal Ball (12:34)

Although Powell probably had more to do it with than anybody.

Anthony Lowenstein (12:37)

Right?

Krystal Ball (12:37)

Yeah, yeah. Out of anybody else, it's probably.

Sagar Enjeti (12:40)

No one's thinking that, but they should.

Matt Stoller (12:42)

In 2022, Democrats overperform in the midterms at the height of inflation in 2024 got crushed because people didn't want high interest rates. It was a high interest rate election. Right.

Krystal Ball (12:54)

I mean, that's what it. You might be right.

Matt Stoller (12:58)

So I think that people notice the anti monopolists because that was different. Right. But it wasn't dominant in the administration. The other thing is there was no alignment between the politics and the policy of the. So like, yeah, what you said is right. Biden didn't articulate it. But I think if you talk to most Democrats in Congress. Right. They didn't know what the antitrust people were doing. They couldn't articulate any of this stuff. So it was sort of this orphan agenda over here. And I don't think it's totally fair to say, oh, you know, you made powerful people mad but didn't bring in any political benefits, therefore it made it worse. I think those powerful people. I think what happened is the people voted. My guess is people voted for Trump because costs went up, wages went down and Democrats were obsessed with stupid things. Right. And that's not, you know, Lina Khan's fault. That's a broader political dynamic. I do think though, there are some things that the anti monopolists. The other thing is when candidates were running, they were running on things like inhalers getting cheaper and EpiPens getting cheaper and junk fees and a whole like the arguments that basically the only thing Democrats had to run on in 2024 that was economic was the stuff the anti monopolist had done. It didn't necessarily work, although I think in some races it probably did. You saw like in Las Vegas or in Nevada and in other states there were normie Democrats that were running on opposition to the Kroger Albertson merger.

Sagar Enjeti (14:31)

Right.

Matt Stoller (14:32)

And does this stuff work? I don't know, but I'm not a political person. But it's like if that's what they're. If that's the only thing they're running on, you know, they're not running on the first, you know, non binary under secretary of whatever they're running on, you know, food prices. And so that. And the things that the Biden administration had done, the fact that the only people who did anything were the anti monopolists and is not our fault. But I do think this stuff takes way too long, right? So you launch something like you launch a Trump launched a Facebook suit and a Google suit in 2020. The Facebook suit isn't even going to trial until later this spring. So that's five years from filing the complaint. Six, seven years from the investigation to even going to trial. It's not talking about appeals and everything. And that's just broadly true across the board. The suit against Ticketmaster, the suit against Google, suit against Apple, suit. People don't feel the effects because it takes way too long. And then the other part of it is I think, and so I think the agencies did a great job. You know, you can't issue a rule and it takes three years to issue a rule capping overdraft fees. That's ridiculous. We gotta, you know, we gotta hurry this stuff up. We also have to do something about the courts who just block everything. That's nice, you know, which is kind of crazy, you know, the non compete rules, stuff like that. So there are a number of institutional factors and then I think, you know, this is the first time that any of these people that we had ever had any levers of government to pull. And so what you're seeing more broadly is the generational dynamic and a Democratic Party which was basically overlooking or actively helping oligarchs under Bill Clinton, under Barack Obama, and now some of the younger people with no mentorship at all, right, were saying maybe we should try something different. And nobody in our lifetime has done anything like this before. So of course it's not gonna be perfect. But it is the outline for a party that's going to advocate for the working class or oligarchs. And I don't mean that the Democratic Party, I mean either party that wants to do this is going to have to do some of these anti corporate things and that's gonna upset powerful people one way or the other.

Sagar Enjeti (16:44)

Oh, I'm all in favor of upsetting the powerful people. I just think, I mean I think you articulated it all very well and have thought more about it and have certainly more granular understanding than I do. But if you are pissing off the powerful people, but you aren't like an FDR explaining like I welcome their hatred and here's why they hate me and here's how it's still nobody knows about it, then you're just gonna have a lot of powerful people mad at you and hell bent on your destruction and you're not gonna have the you know, on the other side, you need to have the people behind you to back you up.

Matt Stoller (17:14)

I used to have this joke when I would talk to someone who was, you know, working on an antitrust case. I would, you know, they would say something to me about what they were doing, and I would just be like, shh. A voter might hear you. Yeah, like, that's really. I mean, if you looked at. I looked. System sort of semi systematically at what the White House press secretary was. Would say, right? And they were asked about a Ticketmaster suit or Google or whatever it was, and she would always say, I can't comment on pending litigation. And then people would be like, but it's Ticketmaster. They couldn't sell tickets to the Taylor Swift conference or concert. Concert. God, man, I am such a nerd.

Sagar Enjeti (17:47)

Really bad. It's the plaid jacket.

Matt Stoller (17:49)

It's really bad. I want to get.

Krystal Ball (17:51)

I was a victim of Ticketmaster, by the way. I couldn't get a ticket.

Matt Stoller (17:54)

It's true. It happened. So she made fun of the reporters for asking the question. And so it's like, if that's your framework, right. If you just mock the idea that. If you mock your own administration's agenda, that's a little bit. That's pretty weird, right? And I mean, you saw, like, anyway, I don't want to get into Democratic Party. There's a. I've been thinking a lot about it, but there's a basic problem that they have, which is, you know, the street lamp issue, right? So the street lamp. The parable about economists. So a drunk guy is looking for his keys, right? And the guy and the cop says, why are you looking here? And he's like, where'd you lose your keys? He said, over there. Why are you looking here? He said, oh, well, that's where the light is. That's where the light is. He's looking under the lamp.

Sagar Enjeti (18:39)

Yeah.

Matt Stoller (18:39)

I think that's kind of what Democrats do, is they are, you know, they're trying to figure out what to do about a problem that voters are complaining about, but they always look under the lamppost instead of where the problem is, even though they know it's not right. Right. And that's a dynamic party wide.

Krystal Ball (18:58)

Well, always love talking to you, man. Really appreciate you joining us.

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Sagar Enjeti (21:17)

Just when you thought DEI was out of the federal government, it is back with a vengeance. Let's put this up on the screen. We got a new task force to combat anti Semitism announced by the Justice Department. They say in this anti Semitism is any environment, in any environment is repugnant to this nation's ideals. Certainly, said Senior Counsel, Assistant Attorney General of Civil Rights will be heading this task force. Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found. Task Force to Combat Antisemitism is the first step in giving life to President Trump's renewed commitment to ending antisemitism in our schools. Of course, everybody here abhors and opposes actual anti Semitism, but we know that the definition that is embraced by Trump and has also been embraced by on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress also includes things like daring to criticize Israel. Trump has also moved to put in place procedures to deport anyone from any students who are here on foreign visas, who are pro Palestine and engage in protests there as well. So even Christopher Rufo took a principal stand on this one and said it was inconsistent with the push against the eei.

Krystal Ball (22:32)

You gotta hand it to him, could.

Sagar Enjeti (22:33)

Put this up on the screen. He says supporters of this initiative should ask themselves, how is it reasonable to support a task force on antisemitism while opposing an Ibram Kendi style task force on anti black racism, that is dei by the same principle. How is it reasonable to support a task force on antisemitism without also supporting a task force of anti white racism and a task force on anti Asian racism, both of which are widespread on campuses? How is it consistent for the administration to abolish dei, then establish a special task force for one rather than all of these groups? I think that is very well said.

Krystal Ball (23:06)

I think he's totally right. And of course, there's always a huge blind spot whenever it comes to all of this.

Sagar Enjeti (23:11)

I haven't seen much push. I mean, maybe you're more tuned in, but haven't seen much pushback. Not instantly against this.

Krystal Ball (23:17)

Yeah, let's all be like, you know, like it's always been obvious it's fake. You know, in terms of where you had Ron DeSantis, remember when he created literally affirmative action for Jewish students?

Sagar Enjeti (23:31)

That's right.

Krystal Ball (23:31)

So, and these are state resources. He's like, anybody who feels unsafe across the United States is welcome to come to Florida. We'll give you tuition assistance. I was like, are we understanding this? Or Palantir, if we'll recall, was like, oh, anybody who. Well, it's actually not his company, but I mean, he was an investor or whatever. But my only point is Peter, for some reason is always associated with Palant. It's Joe Lonsdale and Alex Karp. It's a really. Alex Karp's company. So he should get the smoke if people are looking to get it out there. He's a multi billionaire too, so there you go. You can attack him. My point around it is that it's obviously been a blind spot. It's one which is wholly focused on by these donors. And it has become extremely important because this is the literal Department of Justice, the arm of the government now adopting this antisemitism definition from Congress. What was it? The IHRA definition around antisemitism.

Sagar Enjeti (24:29)

Yes.

Krystal Ball (24:30)

Instituting it in law, which is an obvious and direct threat to First Amendment rights of all American citizens. I mean, that's my beef.

Sagar Enjeti (24:39)

They basically want to like, make it illegal to criticize Israel. I mean, it's insane. Glenn makes this point all the time. You can criticize America till the cows come home. You can't say anything about this country and you should be able to, but you can't say anything about this foreign country that we ship billions of dollars in weapons and other aid to. Like, that's insane. That is a grave infringement on our rights. And anyone who claims to be in favor of colorblindness and in favor of merit against dei, anyone who claims to be in favor of free speech should be wildly opposed to this particular direction. There are a couple other things that I just wanted to get into the show to keep an eye on as well. In terms of that attack on free speech. Ryan laid this out really well. Trump has basically adopted this new tactic where he sues a media organization or like ansels or whoever, truly by and large, frivolous lawsuits that in any normal time would either be thrown out or he would lose on the merits. But these media organizations, which are gigantic conglomerates which want various things from the federal government and want to avoid, let's say, antitrust scrutiny and whatever new merger deal that they have floated or that they just were able to accomplish, they want to keep in Trump's good graces. So they basically decide to settle and pay him off in what amounts to effectively a bribe to leave them alone. That's happened a couple of times. But now we also have the FCC going after a number of different media organizations. This is pretty wild. You could put D3 up on the screen. So CBS has been forced to hand over the unedited transcript from that Kamala Harris interview that Trump and other Republicans didn't like how it was edited.

Krystal Ball (26:32)

I mean, to be fair, they did edit it dishonestly in terms of the way they put it out or not.

Sagar Enjeti (26:38)

Okay, well, Fox News dishonestly edited a Trump town hall and edited out his stuff. Like if the Biden administration, if Kamala had been elected and the FCC was going after Fox News cuz they didn't like how the interview was edited, we should be opposed to that as well.

Krystal Ball (26:54)

I don't disagree. I Think I mean, the difference between Fox and CBS is about the network status in terms of their. I forget exactly what it is. But the fair something doctrine under. Because it's a network versus an actual channel on cable. That's the pretext that they're giving. I actually think what's more egregious are all of these media companies which are settling with Donald Trump totally. Because that is literally like, as you and I know, because we have similar insurance policies and others. It is the bar for having to pay out on defamation is you have to do what CNN did. In the case of that guy who they defamed down in Florida, they were like lied about him. They literally had recordings that were revealed where they're like, I hate that guy. I want to screw him over. Didn't issue a timely retraction and caused financial harm to an individual. And he wasn't a public figure. Like you have to check like 9.

Sagar Enjeti (27:48)

Out of 10 all of those boxes.

Krystal Ball (27:49)

Boxes to be able. That's why it's so rare that anything like it even happens. I think it's much crazier that they're settling with the President literally paying.

Sagar Enjeti (27:56)

I think all of us crazy. They're also going after. The fcc, is also going after NPR and PBS saying he's concerned that they could be violating federal law by airing commercials. In particular, they say it's possible. NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements. Again, obviously, however you feel about nprpbs, this is like an ideological attack on them that doesn't really have anything to do with whether or not they are taking appropriate commercial money. And then the other piece that kind of falls into what you were saying, Sagar, about the capitulation and the bending of the knee. This is not an overt bribe. But you guys will remember before the election, the Washington Post, the Jeff Bezos Washington Post and the LA Times both decided even though their editorial staff had prepared endorsements of Kamala Harris, they were just not going to endorse at all. Well, the LA Times tried to cloak this at the time and like, it's because we don't like her policy on Gaza. I think at this point it's pretty clear that that was not really what was going on. We now have. This is just absolutely agree. Just put this up on the screen. So they picked up an op ed from a contributor that was very critical of RFK Jr. And his approach. And it was actually an interesting op ed. Talking about his thesis was basically like the reaction to Luigi Mangione. And the support for RFK Jr. In some ways comes from the same place of, like, disgust with the healthcare system and its failures. And we're getting sicker and we're getting fatter, and, you know, our life expectancy is dropping. But he goes on to make, you know, very critical argument about RFK Jr. So it closed, it close. Originally, the closing line said, although RFK Jr and Luigi Mangioni are both responses, the same underlying problem of US Health care corruption, there's a major difference between them. One allegedly operated outside the law to kill one person in defense of millions, whereas the other, via his egomaniacal disregard for scientific evidence, seeks to use law itself to inflict preventable death on those millions. Very critical of RFK Jr. The headline was supposed to be critical. Well, the LA Times, before they published, stripped out all the sentences that were critical of RFK Jr flipped the headline to be the polar opposite of what this op ed contributor intended it to be, and published it that way. And the owner of the LA Times, the dude who blocked the endorsement, previously tweeted it out to celebrate this support of RFK Jr. Which the author had intended in the total opposite direction. So another instance, obviously, of the media just, like, wanting to be on Trump's good side, et cetera, et cetera, that we're seeing almost, almost across the board in various ways. And I think that you're right, Sagar. The settlement piece is perhaps the wildest direction.

Krystal Ball (30:46)

Absolute craziest. Yeah. By the way, if anything ever, like, that happens and somebody doesn't quit, then that's crazy.

Sagar Enjeti (30:50)

Well, he doesn't actually. He's a contributor. He doesn't actually, like, work for them, I'm sure. And he said he will never publish with any events, so you can't. I mean, it's just if somebody ever.

Krystal Ball (30:59)

Did that to me, I'm like, okay, we're done.

Sagar Enjeti (31:01)

Outrageously unethical. So between the time, you know, you work with an editor, of course, and he proved, okay, this is, you know, this is where we are and this is what you agree to. And then before it's published, like, imagine if you know our producers, after you recorded your monologue, went in and completely flipped on its head, changed the head.

Krystal Ball (31:21)

Like insane, you know, I almost can't imagine it. A previous company. Oh, oh, gosh. We'll just leave it there, shall we? All right, let's get to Anthony Lowenstein.

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Sagar Enjeti (33:09)

We are fortunate to be joined this morning by Anthony Lowenstein who is an independent journalist. He's author of the global best selling book the Palestine Laboratory. Also a podcast series with dropsite news. Our friends Ryan and Jeremy and just released a documentary series with Al Jazeera English on the Gaza Laboratory. Great to see you, Antony. Welcome.

Krystal Ball (33:28)

Good to see you.

Anthony Lowenstein (33:29)

Thanks for having me guys. Thank you.

Sagar Enjeti (33:30)

Yeah, of course. I watched the doc yesterday evening. You did a fantastic job. Let's just give our viewers a little bit of a taste of what is in that new documentary the Farnborough Air Show.

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One of the largest in the world. Global weapons giants like BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Airbus come to show off their latest military hardware. Billions of dollars of civil and military.

Anthony Lowenstein (33:59)

Deals are done here every year.

J (34:03)

Standing shoulder to shoulder with these global military giants are Israel's top weapons manufacturer manufacturers like Israel aerospace industries and missile makers.

Anthony Lowenstein (34:13)

Rafael.

J (34:16)

In the main hall, Israel's largest private weapons company, Elbit has a huge stand. They need it to showcase their World class drones and missiles. Despite its tiny population, Israel is the world's ninth largest weapons producer. This high budget promo is for the trophy anti missile system made by Israeli company Rafael. It's the kind of advanced technology Israel specializes in and makes the Israeli Mercva tank, one of the best on the.

Anthony Lowenstein (34:51)

Market, automatically activated only when enemy fire.

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Is sure to hit the vehicle.

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Both tank and anti missile systems sell around the world to undisclose clients, eliminate further enemy attacks. Overall, Israel exports more than $13 billion of weapons and surveillance equipment a year. And with adverts like this for the Spike Firefly, Israeli companies hint that their products may have been battle tested in Palestine. So how does being a major arms supplier impact Israel's diplomatic position? Could it give the country a measure of impunity when it wants to undertake its its own wars?

Sagar Enjeti (35:30)

So Anthony, why did you think this particular aspect of the conflict was important for people around the world to understand?

Anthony Lowenstein (35:37)

When I started writing the book, it came out in mid 2023, I felt that it was an issue that actually was largely. Of course, this was before October 7th, an issue that had been largely ignored, I must say. No one else had ever covered it. They had, of course, in the media here and there, but the Israeli arms industry explains so much about how Israel operates in the occupied Palestin territories and also in the region. I don't say in the book or the film or the podcast that Israel's occupying Palestine simply to make money from weapons. That would not be true, but it's sort of a self perpetuating industry where you have a massive number of Israelis who of course go into the army, the idf, they spend many years there, they're in intelligence, they're in various other units and they take that experience into the private sector once they've left. And that's why, as we say in the film, it's now the 9th biggest arms dealer in the world for a country which is a tiny, tiny population. And we thought that the reason to make the film, which has been we sort of start. I was working with a British production company, Blackley Films, and the director dan Davies since 2020, 2022, although it really ramped up last year, was to explain to people who maybe hadn't read the book or listen to the podcast, that this issue I think explains so much about how Israel is using, particularly in the war in Gaza, as a way to showcase huge amounts of new tech, including AI, despite the fact that on October 7, all the tech around Gaza failed. People failed, the military failed, the government Failed, everyone failed. This is from the Israeli perspective, of course. And despite that, the Israeli arms industry has never been better. Now, when I say better, more profitable in the last 15, 16 months.

Krystal Ball (37:18)

Yeah, Anthony, it's really interesting to think about both Gaza and Ukraine as the forefront of what warfare looks like in the future. So one of the things that you've touched on in your documentary is specifically this new use of artificial intelligence. So can you lay out some of what that looks like? I think the world really got a taste of that with that famous drone footage several months ago of following that man and assassinating him when he, even though he appeared to be doing absolutely nothing wrong.

Anthony Lowenstein (37:46)

One of the things that Israel has been doing before October 7th was using AI. But since October 7th, there's been a huge, there's various tools that they use called lavender. Where's daddy? Really dystopian names essentially are finding so called legitimate targets in the Israeli playbook to kill people in Gaza. Now, in theory, in years past, it was senior Hamas militants, senior Hamas leaders. What's happened since, and we discussed this in the film in great depth, is that the way that targets are selected is primarily done through AI, through a system of massive data collecting that Israel has been doing for years. There's about 2.3 million civilians living in Gaza. That's been the case for many years. And Israel controls all aspects of that land, that territory, or communication in and out, or information about personal details, et cetera. So all that data is fed into a machine and it essentially spits out information which is deemed to be legitimate targets. But the key point here is that as Israel calls it legitimate targets to kill civilians has been massively increased. So whereas in the past if Israel would kill a Hamas militant, alleged Hamas militant, maybe five or 10 civilians could be killed, now we're talking about hundreds. And particularly in the first three, four months of this war after October 7, where the death toll escalated into the tens of thousands very quickly. It's important to say that I'm not arguing, and no one's saying that AI is not making all these decisions. This ultimately is made still by people, by humans. And the ultimate problem here is the dehumanization of Palestinians is so paramount within Israel that if they kill 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,000 Palestinians deemed to be apparent terrorists, that's legitimate. And what the fear I have is, the film talks about this is there are many other countries that look to what Israel has been doing in Gaza as a model, as saga, as you say, what Ukraine has been doing in their own well, in their own country, essentially backed by the US Their models, their testing grounds. And that war has been used as a testing ground forever. Iraq and Afghanistan were as well. But the difference I think here is that the Israelis have a captive Palestinian population on their doorstep indefinitely. And I fear that. And I've heard this from people. I was doing work on the film last year, spending time in Israel and Palestine and across the world. And a lot of countries look to Israel with deep admiration, deep admiration, because Israel gets away with it. And they have, to this day, no one is stopping them. This wasn't happening under Trump. Under Biden, I should say, or frankly won't happen under Trump.

Sagar Enjeti (40:35)

Yeah, I think that was one of the most chilling moments of the documentary, is talking about how this is something that many countries want. They want the sort of tech that allows them to get away with it. And I think it's important for people to understand this isn't just about battlefield technologies. You spend a good amount of time on surveillance tech as well, which is extensive beyond belief. Particularly hit home for me at a time when Trump just announced this big Stargate $500 billion boondoggle. One of the people involved, Oracle's Larry Ellison, has been out bragging about how AI is going to make sure that all citizens are on their, quote, best behav because of the implementation of the surveillance tech. Talk a little bit about that aspect of it.

Anthony Lowenstein (41:20)

Well, there's actually a quote in the film by a Palestinian digital rights campaigner called Mona Shtaya, who literally uses those words that Palestinians have to be in inverted commas on their best behaviour, both in real life and online, because the surveillance is so ubiquitous. A lot of people have seen the film. It only came out less than a week ago. The first part, the first part set in Israel, Palestine, and the second part, we go globally, where I go to the US Mexico border, India, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Greece, and really show how Israeli surveillance and repressive tech is exported globally. And one of the things I think that many people don't realize is how ubiquitous the surveillance is within Palestine. A lot of people compare it to Black Mirror, the British program, which talked about a very believable near future where surveillance is utterly everywhere. So when Larry Ellison or anyone else says to be on your best behavior, who is making those decisions? What's best behavior? And it comes in terms of Palestine. It means people who, for example, don't can't express their honest opinion because they worry they'll be deemed as security threats, terrorist threats. And one of the Things that AI is doing, and we talk about this extensively in the film, is actually trying to document every single citizen in Palestine with a certain, almost like a traffic light. So you are deemed as a threat if you have certain political views. And it's really worth saying to viewers as despite what Israel and its supporters might say, this is not about going after so called terrorists. The argument has not been for years Israel's killing all the terrorists in Gaza. Has Antony Blinken himself said in the last days of the Biden administration, Hamas has essentially regrouped and recruited huge amounts of people during the last war. Now, Hamas has been bloodied and beaten in certain ways. Of course they have. It's been a 15 month war. But Hamas is still standing. Whatever we might think about them, that's the reality. So ultimately the question is, what has Israel actually achieved here? They've achieved the decimation of Gaza. Yes. They've achieved the mass surveillance of many of the Gaza population and a massive increase in violence in the West Bank. So that's what many countries look to with admiration. And we showed a lot of that in the second episode of the film.

Krystal Ball (43:44)

Yeah, I think that that extends also now to Prime Minister Netanyahu's visit to Washington. He's actually literally here as you speak, speaking with President Trump. All indications are that he wants to scuttle, quote, phase two of the deal. How does your documentary fit within that?

Anthony Lowenstein (44:01)

Look, one of the things that's very clear is that within Israel itself, the country is split in a way that there are many Israelis who want all the hostages out, the Israeli hostages, which is a very reasonable demand. But there's a huge pressure on Netanyahu within his coalition to continue the war, to essentially even destroy Gaza even more obviously. I can't predict exactly what the outcome of that meeting between Netanyahu and Trump will be, but I think, I suspect that there'll be pressure on Netanyahu to try to continue the negotiations to get more hostages out. There are many, many who remain under Hamas control. So it seems to me unlikely that Trump will simply allow that to happen. The danger to me is not just about the hostages question. The broader question is, as Trump himself said literally a week ago, very few days after he came into office. How about Jordan or Egypt just taking one and a half million Palestinians? Like, hang on a minute, the idea of removing them from Gaza so Gaza can be rebuilt. To whose dictates? Jared Kushner, his real estate mates? I mean, we can sort of joke about that, but that's literally what Trump said, while at the same time the west bank is on fire. And I think there is a real kind of acceleration as to trend in Israel, and I've been saying this for years, long before October 7th. There are obviously Israeli Jews who oppose what's going on. Of course they are. And some of them are in the film, particularly in the second part. Gideon Levy is one good example of that. But there is a sizable proportion of the Israeli population that believes that occupation is legitimate, that dehumanizing Palestinians forever is okay, is necessary, is needed, is justified. And when you have the world's biggest superpower, the U.S. whether it's Obama or Biden or Trump, basically saying, go for your life, here's more weapons. Israel's coming to Trump today asking for at least $8 billion of more weapons. And there's a good chance Trump will say yes to that. So what the outcome of the meeting will be, of course, is impossible to predict. But the bigger picture here is what the so called vision is for Palestine and the fear of many Palestinians and many, I would say, decent people around the world, is that the ultimate vision here is endless occupation dehumanisation, which never, by the way, brings peace to Israelis. None of it does. In fact, life for them has never been more insecure, in my view. Never been more insecure. And I say that as someone who's Jewish myself.

Sagar Enjeti (46:31)

Go ahead, guys, and put E2 up on the screen to this point. Trump was asked yesterday if he would support west bank annexation and he said he wouldn't really say whether he supports it or not. He said, I'm not going to talk about that. It's, it's certainly a small country in terms of land. Talking about Israel, he then took out his pen and said, you see this pen, this wonderful pen? My whole desk is the Middle east and the top of the pen is Israel. That's not good. It's a pretty big difference. It's a pretty small piece of land and it's amazing they've been able to do what they've been able to do. As you mentioned, part of the project here of continued occupation, subjugation and assault of the Palestinian people has been a long term project of dehumanization to bring it back around to documentary. How does the tech help to facilitate that ongoing process of complete dehumanization?

Anthony Lowenstein (47:26)

Well, hugely, because one of the things we investigate in the film, particularly in the second episode when we travel the world, is there are multiple examples. The us, Mexico border, India, the EU and Greece's detention, surveillance of migrants coming from Turkey and elsewhere. The reality of South Africa today, and I particularly went to South Africa looking at the connection in the past between apartheid South Africa and Israel, but also today between both countries. And so much of the surveillance and repressive tech that Israel's testing and using in Palestine is deeply attractive to those countries. And obviously we could have chosen many other examples. This is what is partly fuelling Israel's seeming impunity. India, for example, is the world's biggest population country. Modi Netanyahu are very good friends. And there's a massive example, and we detail this in the film of India being inspired by how they. India's inspired by how Israel's repressing Palestinians, and they want to use that against the Muslim population, of which There are roughly 200 million people in India, to see that tech first used in Palestine, now appearing, for example, in India on the US Mexico border at Greek detention centers backed and funded by the eu. Mexico we visit which is the world's biggest and most obsessive user of Israeli spyware. I mean, let's be clear, Mexico, whether it's controlled by the right or the left, they're equally obsessed with Israeli spyware. This is the reality of, I guess, the seeming appeal of Israeli repressive tech. So when Trump talks about it in his kind of weird explanation about the west bank, which to me sort of suggested that he supports Israel having more land, therefore supporting annexation, I mean, let's be clear, Israel has quasi annexed the west bank anyway. I mean, we talk about. I mean, it's important to say that it hasn't been officially annexed, but having spent time there. And any Palestinian will say, I mean, Palestinian life in the west bank is deeply problematic, hard and incredibly challenging. Long before October 7th, but certainly since. Yeah. So the fear I have that many other nations are seeing what Israel is doing in Gaza and the west bank and also in Israel proper, and they see it as attractive. And as the right and the far right increases its influence, it's worth saying globally, places like France, Germany, Sweden, much a lot of Europe now, parts of the US Parties, particularly in Europe, that traditionally were literally neo Nazis, view Israel as a model. Now, that might seem insane when Israel is a Jewish state and there are quasi former or current groups and parties in Sweden, in France, in Germany, that traditionally have connected to neo Nazis who see Israel as a model. Why? Because they loathe multiculturalism, they loathe Muslims. They believe in this concept of ethno nationalism. And the film touches on that in, say, India, which is, in my view, and many others becoming an ethno nationalist Hindu state. And Israeli tech is fuelling that. Now India is doing what it's doing for its own reasons, not doing it because of Israel, but Israeli tech is central to that. And we document in the film how that, how that impacts Indian population in reality. And that's a scary fact as the right and the far right grows in popularity around the world.

Sagar Enjeti (50:58)

Well, Anthony, tell people where they can watch the film. The first part of the series is out now. Next part comes out when so it's.

Anthony Lowenstein (51:06)

Available on YouTube for free. It's Al Jazeera English. It's available. Part one came out last week. It's on YouTube. You can Google it. Easy to find. It's on social media. It's on YouTube, on the Al Jazeera website. Part two comes out on February 6th. It'll also be available on YouTube. It's been seen now hundreds of thousands of times and I encourage people to see it because it all hopefully scare you and push you into some kind of action and not be paralyzed by fear. That's the idea. Anyway.

Krystal Ball (51:31)

Yeah, it was interesting talking to you. Thank you.

Sagar Enjeti (51:33)

Thank you, Antony. Great to see you so much. Take care.

Anthony Lowenstein (51:35)

Thank you.

Krystal Ball (51:35)

Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Great counterpoint show for you tomorrow. We'll see you then.

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