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- [00:03]
Dena Temple Rastin
From Recorded Future News and prx, this is Click here. Hey there, it's Dena. As we close out 2024, we're going to do something a little different. A few weeks ago, I joined 1A, a daily news magazine from NPR and WAMU to talk about some of the biggest cyber stories of the year. We focused our conversation on the growing threats from China and Russia. Take a listen now. Here's one A host, Jen White.
- [00:44]
Jen White
This is one A. I'm Jen White. This weekend's news from Syria continues to reverberate. The speedy events that led to its dictator being forced to flee speaks to a world that's evolving in ways that challenge U.S. power. The U.S. now faces risks to its interests across East Asia, Europe and the Middle East. And according to a recent assessment from the Department of Homeland Security, China and Russia pose two of the greatest threats. Later this hour, we meet a leading anti corruption campaigner who's been on the Kremlin's hit list for decades. But we start with a different type of assault, one that's virtual rather than physical, specifically cyber attacks from known adversaries. China stepped up its cyber operations over the past year, focusing not just on espionage or stealing into intellectual property as they have in the past. Instead, they've started to hack more strategically to bolster their geopolitical goals. To talk about the threat from China and how Russia is also weaponizing cyberspace, we're joined by Dina Temple Rastin. She's the host and managing editor of the Click Here podcast. From Recorded Future News. Dina, welcome back to the program.
- [01:50]
Dena Temple Rastin
Thanks so much.
- [01:51]
Jen White
So starting with China, when did we first learn about this more aggressive hacking practice?
- [01:55]
Dena Temple Rastin
Well, we first learned of this shift publicly in March. That's when FBI Director Christopher Wray announced at this security summit in Munich that the US had discovered Chinese hackers in sensitive computer networks in the U.S. here's what he said. We're seeing nation states trying to preposition.
- [02:14]
Bill Browder
To get persistent access to, in the.
- [02:17]
Dena Temple Rastin
Vol Typhoon case, critical infrastructure, for example. While that is not a new thing for intelligence services and adversaries like the Chinese government, like the Russian government, we're seeing it now on a scale and intensity that we have not previously seen. And when he talks about pre positioning in critical infrastructure, what he means is that China, this group called Volt Typhoon, was dropping malicious code in critical infrastructure in our country. So among other things, they found Chinese hackers in airport networks, they found them in water treatment systems, they even found them in the electrical grid. And the thinking, as you had mentioned before, to now was that China had previously been using these kinds of tactics for espionage. But in this case it seemed like it was an anticipation of some future conflict with the US if say Beijing decided to invade Taiwan and wanted to rattle ordinary citizens in the US by doing something like cutting off water, or maybe even more strategically cutting off water outside a military installation. And back in March, finding Chinese hacks in civilian critical infrastructure like this was considered a real water. Now as you had mentioned earlier, Chinese state backed hackers have been around for years. But as a general matter, what they did is they stole things, they stole plans. Like their J35A fighter looks more than a little bit like our J35 fighter because they stole the plans for that or they hacked into systems that had tons of personal data. Right. The famous one was the Office of Personnel Management hack. You remember they hacked into Starwood hotels and the idea was to just vacuum up tons of personal information. And it wasn't sure, they weren't sure what they would do with it, but at least they had it for a rainy day. And the problem now is with AI dicing and slicing, that kind of information becomes a lot easier.
- [04:12]
Jen White
So now we're hearing just in the past few weeks about this other Chinese hack into telecom companies.
- [04:17]
Dena Temple Rastin
Yes, this is another Typhoon state acting group. Typhoon is one of the adages that they use to be able to identify different China. And the White House had this briefing last week in which officials said they believed salt Typhoon had broken into at least eight US telecom providers, including Verizon and AT&T. And they believe they did this because China wanted to hack on top political figures as part of a broader campaign that they've been doing all over the world. But here's the really mind blowing part. The US thinks that Chinese hackers are still in these networks. They haven't gotten them out yet. So there's a risk that your communications or my communications are being compromised. And here's what's wild is that the FBI has actually said, hey, be careful when you text or phone someone, use an encrypted app. And that's pretty pervasive. So just before the election we spoke with General Paul Nakasone, he's the former NSA director and he left earlier this year. And we asked him whether or not as a general matter, Americans or American intelligence services had actually underestimated what China could do. Here's what he said.
- [05:31]
Bill Browder
I think we always knew that China had the one capability that provides them a unique spot in the world which is scale. And we're seeing that scale. And so we've got to think about how we're going to defend against that scale. Whether or not it's Volt Typhoon, whether or not Salt Typhoon, whether or not it's operations as they attempt to steal our intellectual property. What is it that we're able to do to be able to get after that scale? And so we're going to have to be able to work this, this really strategy forward in terms of thinking about an adversary that is many times our size in quantity, but not necessarily in quality.
- [06:04]
Dena Temple Rastin
So in other words, what he's saying is China has a billion people, so lots of potential hackers to choose from. So they might not be the world's most skilled hackers, but there are lots and lots of them and they kind of flood the zone. So they manage to break into systems by just leveraging their size.
- [06:21]
Jen White
You know, Dina, when we think of state sponsored hackers, I think we tend to think of them coming out of Russia, particularly in this election season, with disinformation campaigns and Russia's attempt to meddle in elections or shake support for Ukraine in the war. What have we seen most recently?
- [06:35]
Dena Temple Rastin
Just in the past week, we've seen a lot unfolding in Romania. You may remember that officials there announced that they were actually going to rerun the election because of Russian meddling. An outlier pro Russia candidate got a suspiciously huge number of votes, and he happens to be anti Ukraine. So officials basically smell maybe a Russian rat in that. And then days after Romania said that they were going to rerun this election because of the meddling, one of the country's most important service, energy service companies, something called Electric Group, announced that they'd been on the receiving end of a cyber attack. And officials there don't think that those two things are unrelated.
- [07:16]
Jen White
So another part of a Russian cyber campaign has been all these ransomware attacks against cities and hospitals and insurance companies. Is it just a coincidence that so many of these groups are from Russia?
- [07:28]
Dena Temple Rastin
Not completely, no. There is a whole sort of coterie of people in Russia who are very tech savvy. So that's part of it. But the other part of it is that there's this kind of dark covenant in which it's understood that as long as hackers in Russia don't target Russia or CIS states or maybe even provide financial kickbacks from their ransoms to the authorities there, they can do whatever it is that they want. Now, the big change, and it's a happy change this year, is that we're seeing a lot more successful international law enforcement actions against these gangs than we have in the past. Let me just give you some examples. The Dutch police have taken down a bunch of dark web markets that sell drugs and guns. Last month the Germans took down 47 illicit cryptocurrency exchanges that cyber criminals had been using. And the US and the UK have been hacking these hackers separately. Hacking groups. You know, just consider the ransomware group called Lockbit. They broke into that group and took down their servers earlier this year. And it was a really big deal. When that went down in 23 and 2024, Lockbit was responsible and had a hand in most of the ransomware attacks that we were hearing about against hospitals, insurance companies, et cetera. And when the US and its partners actually seized their servers, that really hobbled their ability to do that. And so we actually talked to the leader of Lockbit, he goes by Lockbit Sup as in Lockbit support. And they put out a actual wanted poster of him with his picture that they said, this is the guy, he really is. And when we talked to him through an interpreter, we asked him about that, this is what he said. I'm very interested in how the FBI decided I was Dmitry Khoroshov.
- [09:13]
Jen White
How did they find this person?
- [09:15]
Bill Browder
Based on what facts? Where is the proof?
- [09:18]
Dena Temple Rastin
And you know, he was rather incredulous that this picture of him had gone global. But he did admit that law enforcement had actually taken over his computer infrastructure, taken down his network, and what he was using to launch these attacks wasn't working. They have the source code and because they have that, they have gained access to a list of our partners. But I have now eliminated this shortcoming in the platform. Every time they take aim at me, I get stronger. This is a little bravado because we really haven't seen that much from Lockbin since then. And that's just the beginning of it. Right now they are starting to take apart the supply chain or the kill chain of these types of groups. A lot of law enforcement now is looking at infostealers, which are kind of a malicious software that steals credentials from networks and gives you access into a network. They're looking at shuttering leak sites, which is what a ransomware group would do. They take all the information they stole, they put it on a leak site, and then they extort whoever it is they stole it from. They're starting to shudder there. So ransomware used to be known as ransomware as a service. It was a one stop shop, right? You could get all these things together in one place. Now because of all this law enforcement in the past year, there's been a metastasis and it's much harder now to launch these kinds of attacks.
- [10:38]
Jen White
So in just a couple of sentences, what are you watching for in 2025?
- [10:41]
Dena Temple Rastin
More of these law enforcement actions? I think that they have figured out how to maybe dismantle these groups by taking apart the various parts of the kill chain. And I think we're going to see more of that. So it's kind of a good news story in that sense.
- [10:55]
Jen White
That's Dina Temple Rastin, the host and managing editor of the Click Here podcast from Recorded Future News. Dena, always great to talk to you.
- [11:02]
Dena Temple Rastin
Nice to talk to you, too. You're listening to Click Here. And today we're airing a special episode of 1A, a daily news and talk show from NPR and WAMU. Coming up, the physical threats, not just the virtual ones, that Russia continues to present. And for that one, a host Jen White talks with Bill Browder. He's a financier who may be best known for spearheading a global human rights movement against the Kremlin. His advocacy has resulted in sanctions being leveled against Russian officials and oligarchs. In his interview with Jen, he talks about what he thinks the world needs to do to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia. Stay with us.
- [11:57]
Bill Browder
You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with.
- [12:01]
Dena Temple Rastin
People you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or.
- [12:05]
Bill Browder
Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney or the godfather.
- [12:09]
Dena Temple Rastin
Of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen.
- [12:19]
Bill Browder
To podcasts.
- [12:30]
Dena Temple Rastin
From Recorded Future News. This is Click Here. Today we're bringing you an episode from our friends at 1A, a daily talk show from NPR and WAMU. A few weeks ago, host Jen White spoke with financier Bill Browder. He's a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he has spent years trying to expose corruption in Russia. As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House in a few weeks, Bill tells ONE A host, Jen White, that world leaders need to step up to support Ukraine. Here's their conversation.
- [13:07]
Jen White
You argue there's an immediate way to help Ukraine through this winter and to prepare for what's likely to be a different policy approach in the new administration. From the White House, what is it you think should be done now?
- [13:21]
Bill Browder
So what we're looking at right now is a situation where Ukraine is doing everything it can to try to ward off an aggressive, murderous, evil invader, Vladimir Putin and Russia. And in order to do that, Ukraine is a much smaller country. They're a much less resourced country. They didn't have a big military stockpile. Russia's got all that stuff. And for the last three years, the United States and the UK and the EU have all worked together to give Ukraine the ammunition they need and other military hardware they need so that they don't get run over by Vladimir Putin. And of course, all that stuff wasn't free. And this narrative has emerged over the last two years coming from certain quarters of the US Political spectrum. That's to say, why are we spending any money on Ukraine? Why aren't we spending that money on something else? And that narrative has fed its way into Trump's campaign. And Trump has now pretty much said it outright that he wants to cut off military aid for Ukraine. And so after he's inaugurated, then the big question is, does he follow through on that threat or that promise? And if he does, what happens to Ukraine? The United States provides half of the Ukrainians military aid. And what will happen is they will run out of ammunition. They will be unable to prevent the Russians coming across their border. Russians will occupy various places across their border when the Russians do occupy towns and cities in Ukraine. We've seen the aftermath. We saw Bucha, an earpin. You remember those terrible images of men with their hands tied behind their backs, shot in the head and then buried in shallow graves. We've heard the testimony of women gang raped by Russian soldiers. And we've heard the stories of children then being taken away and kidnapped and sent into Russia. And so that's what will happen. And of course, the Ukrainians know about this because they've all heard of what happened in Bucha and Irpin. And so what do the Ukrainians do in a situation like that? They flee. And so I would predict that there'll be 15 million Ukrainian refugees fleeing across Europe. Will the Europeans have room for them? I mean, the Europeans have their own migrant crises, just like the United States does.
- [15:48]
Jen White
I want to talk a little bit more about that potential humanitarian crisis. But if there's less of an appetite in the US for sending more money to support Ukraine, where can that money come from?
- [16:04]
Bill Browder
Well, so this is the thing which is so interesting is that there's. When the war started, about a week after the war started, the United States, the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, Japan froze $300 billion of Russian government central bank reserves. And that money continues to be frozen and so there's an easy solution to this whole thing. Russia has caused a trillion dollars of damage to Ukraine. We have custody of their money. And I say we. I mean the allies. And one very simple solution to all this complaining about spending money is that we confiscate that money, which is we're legally entitled to do. There was a law passed in the United States called the Repo act, which entitles the government to do that. And there are similar laws in the UK and the eu and we could confiscate that money, and then we could give that money to Ukraine for their defense, and then they don't run out of money, and then the Russians don't come across their borders and they don't occupy their towns, and they don't create this humanitarian disaster.
- [17:05]
Jen White
Even simple solutions sometimes face obstacles. Do you see obstacles? Whether it's a matter of political will or international political will.
- [17:17]
Bill Browder
Well, so here's the thing. One country can't do this without all countries doing it. So the United States would have to do it with the EU and UK Et cetera, because if one country did it and the other countries didn't, then people might say, my money is safer in the countries that didn't do it than did. And that could cause financial disruptions. However, if everyone did it together, then there's no financial disruptions. But how do you get all these countries to do it together? And the answer is it requires real leadership, and the world is lacking that right now. The French government has basically collapsed. Germany is having an election. The US has got a new president coming in. And so it's very difficult to get everybody to act together on such a potentially, I would say, controversial issue, because it's kind of straightforward, but it's something that requires real leadership to get done. And it's kind of hard for me to picture this happening before the inauguration of Trump. And it's kind of hard for me to picture Trump, who seems to want to be the one in the driver's seat on this thing, to allow that to happen after he's president. If he allows this to happen, then who determines the outcome of Ukraine? Does he? By threatening to cut off funding for Ukraine wouldn't have any impact because Ukraine would say, well, look, we got our 300 billion. We're going to continue to fight and defend ourselves. It would be the German chancellor or the French president who would be determining the outcome, not Donald Trump. So obviously, he doesn't want to lose that leverage, that power, that ability to plague on Bill.
- [18:47]
Jen White
What are the risks though of seizing Russian assets, Is there the possibility that that could backfire and impact both the international financial markets, diplomatic relations, or further escalate a leader who feels he's being backed into a corner?
- [19:06]
Bill Browder
Well, Putin is a person who we shouldn't worry about his reaction. He's not going to start a nuclear war over taking his money. He'll thump his chest and he'll scream bloody murder and all that kind of stuff. But I'm not worried about him.
- [19:19]
Jen White
Why are you confident of that?
- [19:21]
Bill Browder
Just because it's not an appropriate response to a financial sanction to do anything like that. I mean, he'll be angry. But the thing about it is that we spend so much time trying to appease Putin, we should be putting a boot on the throat. That's what he respects. And by the way, if we do this, then that is a boot on the throat. And that's the kind of thing where he says, oh my God, these guys are really serious now. But coming back to your question, what are the other obstacles? There are some people that are saying, well, this is going to totally disrupt the financial system because countries like Saudi Arabia and China won't keep their money in dollars or euros anymore. Well, I come from the world of finance. That was my before I became a political activist, I was a fund manager. And what I can tell you with 100% certainty is that if you're Saudi Arabia and you've generated a bunch of money from the sale of oil, are you going to put that money into China or are you going to buy Brazilian reals or Argentine pesos? Because those are your alternatives. And of course you're not going to. You have to own dollars, euros, because those are reserve currencies. And as much as you may find this distasteful, that the west has penalized a country that invaded another country, that will come and that will go and that will be the end of it. And I think anyone who's arguing otherwise doesn't really understand how the options that are available to countries and people who have cash.
- [20:43]
Jen White
You said we shouldn't be concerned about Putin's threats to use a tactical nuclear weapon against Ukraine. But we should also note he recently lowered the threshold for using a nuclear weapon. That's after the Biden administration changed its policy and reversed a ban that prevented Ukraine from using long range missiles to strike targets within Russia. So for people listening, that sounds like not a threat, but inching closer to a threshold that we can't move back from. And there are many people who are concerned and the idea that Putin would act in a way that is reasonable. It doesn't seem like a reasonable assumption. So again, help us better understand why this isn't a concern for you.
- [21:35]
Bill Browder
Well, it's not just not a concern for me, it's not a concern for the people who provided those missiles to Ukraine. But the simple answer is this, that Putin, he uses all these threats as a way to generate appeasement so that we are so scared that we don't want to do whatever it is that he's trying to prevent us from doing. And for what it's worth, he made all these threats when we were thinking about providing tanks, we provided tanks. Was there a nuclear war? No. He made the threats when we were talking about long range missiles. Was there a nuclear war? No. Same thing with F16s. No. So he goes around making these threats, but the reason that he doesn't actually follow through on them is because he understands that if he were to launch a tactical nuclear warhead, that would probably be the end of Vladimir Putin. Not because we're going to go and destroy him, but because all of a sudden, all of his allies, you know, the Chinese who are standing behind him and the Indians and all these people who are sort of giving him different types of support, they're not going to want to have anything to do with him anymore. And of course, NATO would then have to have some type of response. Would it be a nuclear response? No, but NATO would have to do something. We can't just let a nuclear power launch a nuclear weapon without a response because that would then unleash total chaos if everyone else thought they could do the same without a response. And so Putin is looking at all this and saying, am I strong enough to do this and live through the consequences? And I think he understands very clearly that he's not. And so the people who have made these decisions to provide more or to provide Atacam missiles to be fired into Russia did so looking at all the factors and they understood that, that, that basically Putin is what I call nuclear saber rattling. He's bluffing.
- [23:16]
Jen White
But how might that calculation change under the new administration, which has expressed less of an appetite to support Ukraine?
- [23:26]
Bill Browder
Well, we don't know what's going to happen next. You know, on one hand, Trump says he wants to solve. He said he was going to solve the Ukraine situation in 24 hours after he was elected. Well, it's been a few weeks since he was elected and the Ukraine conflict has not been resolved. You know, he promised that Mexico would build the wall. There's no Mexico and no building any walls. This is a complicated story. If it was so easy to solve, somebody else might have solved it before, you know, Putin made a decision to invade Ukraine. In my opinion, the reason he made this decision is that the easy way to stay in power as a dictator is to create a foreign enemy. And that's why he went into Ukraine, not for any other reason. And in order to stay in power, he needs to continue this war in Ukraine because he wants the Russians to have a foreign enemy. And so it's not clear to me that there's any terms that Putin would negotiate which would be acceptable to us or acceptable to the Ukrainians to end the war. And so who knows what's going to happen? But I can't imagine a scenario where there's some simple fix to this thing where everyone sits down at a table and says, here we're going to all hash it out.
- [24:33]
Jen White
Well, I want us to hear from NATO's new Secretary General, Mark Ruda. He says Ukraine needs to be put in a, quote, position of strength instead of being pushed toward peace talks. Here's what he told reporters ahead of NATO's foreign ministers meeting last week. He is using Ukraine as a testing.
- [24:49]
Bill Browder
Ground for experimental missiles and is deploying.
- [24:52]
Jen White
North Korean soldiers in this illegal war.
- [24:56]
Dena Temple Rastin
Putin is not interested in peace. He is pressing on trying to take.
- [25:01]
Jen White
More territory because he thinks he can.
- [25:04]
Bill Browder
Break Ukraine's resolve and ours.
- [25:07]
Jen White
But he's wrong. A President elect Donald Trump's pick for special envoy to Ukraine and Russia is retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg. And Kellogg has said that further US Aid to Ukraine should be conditional on Ukraine's willingness to participate in peace talks. Do you agree?
- [25:23]
Bill Browder
Well, I mean, it'syraine has already agreed to that. The President's Special advisor Yermak was here and said, we're ready to participate in peace talks. I don't think there's any question that they're ready to participate in peace talks. So Putin, is he ready to participate in peace talks? So let's say he shows up to peace talks and he says, my only condition for peace is total capitulation of Ukraine. Then what do we do? Do we say, okay, Vladimir, you can have Ukraine in the same way as Neville Chamberlain from the UK Gave up the Sudetenland to Hitler. I don't think we would accept that, and certainly the Ukrainians wouldn't accept that. And so there's no sort of snap your fingers, quick solution to this whole thing. And by the way, what is Putin seeing right now? Putin is seeing that the Ukrainians are running out of men, they're having a hard time recruiting new soldiers. He's seeing all these people questioning whether there should be more money spent on Ukraine. And so why would. If his original objectives were total capitulation of Ukraine in a situation where he's lost three quarters of a million men and untold amount of riches to do this, why would he back down now?
- [26:38]
Jen White
Last month, the Washington Post cited a number of diplomatic sources who are on board with a, quote, land for security deal. Former French ambassador to Washington Gerard Araud told the Post, quote, I think everybody has more or less reached this conclusion. It's hard to say publicly because it would be a way of saying we are going to reward aggression among the global community. What is your read on whether there is enough political willingness to support Ukraine in holding the line and not agree to a deal that requires the country to give up its land and territory?
- [27:18]
Bill Browder
I don't think that land and territory is the key issue here. I think the key issue is basically, why is Putin doing this? Is Putin doing this for a bunch of burned out villages in eastern Ukraine? I don't think so.
- [27:32]
Jen White
Why do you think he's doing it?
- [27:33]
Bill Browder
I think that Putin is a man who has been in power now for 24 years. He understands that if he ever loses power, he's committed so many terrible crimes against his people that he will go to jail, he'll lose all the money he stole and he'll die. That's why he's doing this, is to avoid that. He wants to stay in power and he understands that a good war helps the leaders stay in power. And so I don't think that he particularly cares about this particular piece of land. I think what he cares about is his own personal survival.
- [28:03]
Jen White
So with that understanding, with that context, how would you encourage the incoming Trump administration and allies to best support Ukraine? Because what I'm hearing you saying, correct me if I'm wrong, Putin's endgame is survival. It's personal survival. Ukraine says, yes, we're ready to come to the table, we're willing to engage in peace talks. But if Putin's outcome, if he's connected, if he's, pardon me, if Putin's end game is something that peace talks won't solve, what happens? What do we do?
- [28:43]
Bill Browder
We give the Ukrainians whatever they need to finish this off and to expel the Russians from their territory. Because two things happen then. One is they regain their territory. And two, the Russian people are not going to allow a loser to continue to be Running their country and we get rid of Vladimir Putin.
- [29:01]
Jen White
Is money enough, though? We mentioned this $300 billion that's been seized from Russia through sanctions. Is it just money or is something else needed as well?
- [29:12]
Bill Browder
Well, at the end of the day, wars are all about resources. And if Ukraine has the money, they'll figure out how to finish this off. But without the money, they will lose.
- [29:24]
Jen White
Does the international community have any diplomatic leverage when it comes to Russia?
- [29:29]
Bill Browder
None. The diplomacy is so long gone at this point, it's purely about hard power, either military power or financial sanctions. And we could do more on the military side to help Ukraine, and we can do more on the sanctions side to help Ukraine.
- [29:44]
Jen White
You've chosen to remain one of Putin's most outspoken critics, knowing what's happened to others who've not been quiet with their criticisms. How has your life changed since your time in Russia?
- [29:56]
Bill Browder
Well, I'm now probably the number one foreign enemy of Vladimir Putin. He's issued death threats, kidnapping threats. I've been the subject to eight Interpol arrest warrants. I live in London. They've tried to have me extradited from London. Lawsuits, they've made movies about me. You know, my life is one where I'm sort of constantly vigilant, constantly on guard, constantly having to protect myself. But this all started a long time ago, 15 years ago, when my lawyer, his name was Sergei Magnitsky, was murdered in Russian police custody after being tortured for 358 days. And I made a vow to his memory, to his family and to myself that I was going to put aside my life as a businessman and use all of my time, energy and resources going after the people who killed him. And I've been doing that, and my struggle and my fight has now widened out. It's not just about Sergei Magnitsky. It's also about helping the Ukrainians and helping other victims of the Putin regime. And I'm not going to be intimidated to back off. And I will continue this fight in spite of the risks.
- [31:01]
Jen White
I would imagine that in a moment like this, when you see, I'll say softening support for Ukraine, that might bring up some complex feelings for you as someone who has dedicated his resources and time to pushing back against Putin's regime.
- [31:20]
Bill Browder
Yeah, it's horrifying. I mean, I'm absolutely terrified of what the world is going to look like, because long before the war started and I said, everyone needs to get tough on Russia. We need to contain Putin. And we didn't. And now look, and let me tell you that If Putin succeeds in Ukraine, he'll then make a move on the Baltics, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. And those countries are NATO allies. And then the question is, do we defend them as part of our joint defense Treaty on NATO, or do we abandon them? And either one is terrifying. If we defend them, we're at war with Russia directly. And if we abandon them, then it's just like 1930s Europe, where Putin will take whatever he wants, and then it just escalates into an even bigger problem. I think we're sort of sleepwalking into potentially World War Three by cutting off Ukraine. Everyone's saying by helping Ukraine, that's World War Three. No, it's just the opposite. If we abandon them, that's World War Three.
- [32:15]
Jen White
Are you finding support here in the US among elected officials in Congress?
- [32:21]
Bill Browder
Absolutely. I mean, what's interesting is that the traditional support to be tough on Russia comes from Republicans and most of the members of Congress. I was just testifying at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaking to Democrats and Republicans, and everybody is sort of one side with the Ukrainians. Everybody wants to be tough on Russia. There's some sort of new strain of Republicans that wants to capitulate, but that's not the conventional wisdom of the Republican Party.
- [32:51]
Jen White
How have you seen that support translate into policy, if at all?
- [32:56]
Bill Browder
Well, I mean, so we saw up until today, the United States has supported Ukraine, and that's required on a bipartisan basis to vote for very large military aid packages, which have been voted with an overwhelming majority.
- [33:10]
Jen White
I want us to hear right now from incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune. He's previously expressed his support for ongoing aid to Kyiv. Here he is speaking to PBS NewsHour earlier this year.
- [33:21]
Bill Browder
America cannot retreat from the world stage, and we need to make sure that Ukraine has the weaponry and the resources that it needs to defeat the Russians, because if we're not sending them American weapons and they succeed in Ukraine and they roll into a NATO country, then we're going to be sending American sons and daughters.
- [33:40]
Jen White
So you have the incoming Senate majority leader speaking there in support of Ukraine. How do you hope that to perhaps appeal to the incoming administration?
- [33:53]
Bill Browder
Well, I think that the reality will dictate the policy of the incoming administration, and the reality is that the problem is not going to be solved by any kind of sitting down at the table with Putin because it's an unsolvable problem. People ask me when the war started, how long is this war going to last, thinking that maximum two or three months. And I said, this war is going to go on and on and on, because there's nothing that we can offer Putin that will make him want to stop. And by showing weakness, that just only gives him. Encourages him to be more awful. And so the administration is not going to be getting any result that they want. And I hope that when they see that Putin is not backing off, that they say, okay, we understand too, that we need to give the Ukrainians what they need.
- [34:42]
Jen White
You spend a good amount of time in London. How is the war in Ukraine felt differently in Europe than it is here.
- [34:48]
Bill Browder
In the US what's very interesting is that we just had an election in the UK and in the UK There is no difference between any political party. Everybody supports Ukraine, and it would be political suicide to say anything other otherwise. And so the moment that anyone becomes Prime Minister, the first trip they take is to Ukraine, and they want to show their constituents and they want to show everybody else that the UK Is on the side of Ukraine. It's sort of so interesting for us and the conversations we have is, what do we have to tell on the other side of the Atlantic? What do we have to tell them so they understand that this is in everybody's security interest not to let Ukraine go?
- [35:32]
Jen White
So there's a sense there that perhaps there's not a deep understanding on this side of the pond about what's at risk.
- [35:39]
Bill Browder
I think that that's people's perception. And more than that, I guess what people think in the UK is that America thinks it's far away from all this stuff and that there can be a sort of isolationist policy, but it never works that way. Eventually, America will get dragged into the war as it did in the Second World War. There was isolationist policy until Pearl harbor that everyone understood that, you know, if you allow murderous dictators who are expanding around the world, they're eventually going to come to America as well.
- [36:08]
Jen White
But when you look at the results of the US Election, is it your sense that Americans are supportive of sending tax dollars to Ukraine? We have a president elect who has a populist agenda, more of an isolationist approach to global affairs. He was elected a Republican majority Senate and House, as you said, that has stepped back from its support of the country. What is your read of where the American people are?
- [36:40]
Bill Browder
I don't think the American people cared one way or another about foreign policy. When I saw surveys of what people cared about. They cared about inflation. They care about some of the cultural issues. Foreign policy wasn't even on the list. And for what it's worth, we're not Talking about. I mean, the numbers sound large when you talk about them, but in the total scheme of things, we're talking about 5% of the US military's budget to destroy our largest adversary. That's a pretty great deal every day of the week. Why would anyone even complain about it when you compare it to, like, money wasted in all sorts of other areas? I don't know why that's even an issue, why everyone's sort of so focused, laser focused on the money spent on Ukraine and when it serves this purpose. And there's so many other places where you could probably get that savings if you wanted to, as opposed to allowing the world war to erupt.
- [37:30]
Jen White
Ukraine wants to join NATO and the military alliance's newest members, Sweden and Finland, signed up, citing their concerns about a more territorially aggressive Russia. What are the long term implications for NATO if the US Backs off?
- [37:47]
Bill Browder
Well, NATO doesn't exist without the us. The US is the whole basis of NATO. Without the us, all these countries are defenseless. And hopefully, if that were to happen, then it's sort of necessity as the mother of invention, that hopefully the Europeans learn how to take some of their own responsibility and take leadership and learn how to protect themselves because they can't rely on America if that's what happens.
- [38:15]
Jen White
Now, There is a $50 billion loan being proposed by G7 nations to Ukraine in support of their war efforts. Tell us more about that.
- [38:26]
Bill Browder
So what originally happened with all this frozen money that we discussed, the $300 billion, was that it seemed like too radical a step to confiscate all that money. And so they came up with sort of a half step, a compromise, sort of internally negotiated compromise, sort of negotiating with themselves. And they said, we don't want to take all the money, but let's take the interest on that money and then let's take the interest and sort of add it all up over the next few years and then give the Ukrainians the money, lend them the money secured against the interest on this frozen money. And I say 50 billion is not enough. They can burn through that pretty quickly. They need the full 300 billion. And so by, by doing that, it just prolongs the pain and doesn't solve the problem.
- [39:12]
Jen White
Inevitably, there will be a day when there is no longer a President Putin. How do you reflect on that future and what it means for Russia and the rest of the world?
- [39:24]
Bill Browder
Well, it all depends on how Putin comes to disappear. So if he were to die in his sleep tonight, all the people around him, the oligarchs and the apparatchiks would all get together because they've got a ton of money that they stole from the country, and they don't want that to get taken away by some future unfriendly leader. And so they would all congregate in the Kremlin and hash it out behind blackened windows. And then puffs of smoke would come out of the chimney, making a joke, comparing it to the Vatican, and they would say, here's our newly appointed leader, who would be a status quo leader, who would do the same thing so that they don't lose their money. That's what happens if he dies in his sleep. There could be a scenario where some general decides to march on Moscow. You remember a year ago in June, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group, did that. And it was really interesting because when he was marching towards Moscow, people were not objecting. They were putting flowers on his tanks and taking selfies with the soldiers. And everyone just wanted to know, who's the boss going to be? And nobody was coming out in defense of Putin. They were just saying, who's the boss? Who's the tough guy now? And so there's some chance that some general or some security official steps in. Would that be better than Putin? I think anything would be better than Putin. Putin has proven himself to be truly the most nightmarish of all world leaders. And then there's a scenario where, for one reason or another, the people of Russia rise up and Putin can assassinate you could be Evgeny Prigozhin from the Wagner group. He can assassinate Alexei Navalny. These are individuals. But if 2 million people march on the Kremlin, there's nothing Putin can do. And I guess that's what we're hoping is that the Russians kind of take matters into their own hands at some point.
- [41:15]
Jen White
Ukraine is one conflict of many in the world right now. You shared with us your specific goals, why you stepped back from a world of finance to focus on Russia bringing justice for your friend. When would that work be complete for you? When would you say, I've kept my promise?
- [41:42]
Bill Browder
Well, you know, the thing is that my promise has mutated into many other promises. When you become a human rights activist, as I have, people come to you with their problems, and those problems are heartbreaking. And I can't imagine that the job is ever done, because it just sucks you right in. And you can't. You know, if you have a. You know, if you have a moral compass and you hear some of these stories, you have to do something. About it. And that's what I do and that's what I'll continue to do. And that's what I derive meaning in life doing, is helping people stand up to these dictators and autocrats, not just in Russia, but elsewhere.
- [42:24]
Dena Temple Rastin
That was human rights advocate Bill Browder speaking with Jen White, the host of 1A from NPR and WAMU. I'm Dena Temple Rasta, and we'll be back on Friday with a new episode of Mic Drop. Happy New Year.
- [42:43]
Bill Browder
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- [42:45]
Jen White
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- [42:48]
Bill Browder
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- [42:51]
Jen White
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- [42:55]
Bill Browder
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- [42:58]
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- [42:59]
Bill Browder
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- [43:02]
Jen White
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- [43:04]
Bill Browder
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