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- [00:00]
Tommy Vietor
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- [01:15]
Alex Preddy (or Host of Runaway Country)
The country feels like it's falling apart right before our eyes and the people inside it are being silenced. So we're going to East 26th street and Nicollet Avenue, which is where Alex Preddy was executed by ICE and Border Patrol. That is not a headline. That is a human life and it is all happening right now. Do you worry about your own safety being involved in all this?
- [01:41]
Mike Horowitz
Yes, but it doesn't really feel like there's another option, you know?
- [01:48]
Interviewee on Runaway Country
And of course they use a 5 year old child as bait. And of course they're doing all these horrible bad things because they don't know what they're doing. They've been told that they're going to get rid of the worst of the worst. Then they have absolute immunity. And they've been told that nothing they do will they ever be held accountable for.
- [02:09]
Alex Preddy (or Host of Runaway Country)
On my show, Runaway country, we go where the headlines hit home from communities under threat to to the people fighting to be heard. New episodes of Runaway country drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.
- [02:37]
Tommy Vietor
Welcome to POD of the World.
- [02:38]
Ben Rhodes
I'm Tommy Vitor, I'm Ben Rhodes.
- [02:40]
Tommy Vietor
How's the Iran war insomnia for you?
- [02:43]
Ben Rhodes
I do have this kind of habitual fall asleep and wake up at 3:30 in the morning and I was right at 4, mind racing and then like start reading stuff and then you're up. So yeah.
- [02:55]
Tommy Vietor
Not a good idea to look at your phone these days.
- [02:56]
Ben Rhodes
Not a good idea to look at your phone ever in the middle of the night. I break that rule frequently and I do think there's like a weird instinctive, you know, I'm not trying to over dramatize this but you know, having in eight years like had to kind of feel like you had to work when something terrible monitoring situation. Yeah. I mean you just kind of like there's this weird instinctive thing in my body that's like do you see the
- [03:22]
Tommy Vietor
thing where the, where the, when the war started about all these dads who are saying they had to monitor the situation?
- [03:26]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [03:27]
Tommy Vietor
I did watch CNN all day or MSNBC or whatever. Yeah, well that's basically us.
- [03:32]
Ben Rhodes
Well by the way, it's an interesting war in that regard because I mean, I hate to say this but I don't find CNN's coverage to be particularly illuminating.
- [03:41]
Tommy Vietor
Look, I got that guy in cnn.
- [03:42]
Ben Rhodes
That guy's good. But some of the, let's just say some of the guest choices and the panels are pretty, oh, 2004 feeling. You kind of have to really search for your content on this war. You know, it's a weird mix of outlets and social media and people in the region. There's clearly censorship happening.
- [04:02]
Tommy Vietor
Like Israel.
- [04:02]
Ben Rhodes
Why does Al Jazeera have all these images that don't seem to appear on other stations, you know.
- [04:08]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, a lot of people covering it from Israel are probably having to deal with censors. The guy's name is Frederick Plykin. Plaikin. P L E I T G N. He's doing a great job.
- [04:17]
Ben Rhodes
He is doing great job.
- [04:19]
Tommy Vietor
Frederick Plaitkin. Search for him on Twitter if you want to see what CNN's doing actually in Iran, which is, I mean it's pretty fucking brave to get in a car and drive into Iran as it's getting bombed.
- [04:30]
Ben Rhodes
Can't get into Gaza.
- [04:31]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [04:31]
Ben Rhodes
You can get into Iran.
- [04:32]
Tommy Vietor
That's a very good point. Be obviously going to focus much of our time today on Iran. We're going to talk about the total incoherence of the White House's messaging and we're going to try to figure out genuinely whether this war is about to end, whether it's about to escalate. Something in between, like I, I genuinely don't know. I'm excited to hear your opinion because we have not talked about this. We'll tick through some of the latest developments from the last week, including casualties, all things oil, and then some scary signs of escalation. We'll tell you what we know about the new Supreme Leader of Iran and what his selection signals from the regime. We'll also talk about what a ground operation to get Iran's nuclear materials would tale the latest on the bombing of an Iranian girls school and then what's happening in Lebanon. Then finally, Ben, we're going to talk about the US military's new counter drug mission in Ecuador and then the Gen Z rapper who is about to be prime minister of Nepal. That's actually a fun story.
- [05:20]
Ben Rhodes
It's a fun story.
- [05:21]
Tommy Vietor
Then you're going to hear my interview with Mike Horowitz. He's been on the show before. He is an expert on how the Pentagon adopts and uses new technology. So we talk about the fight between the Trump administration and the AI company Anthropic over the use of its model Claude, as well as growing concern about this munitions shortage, especially missile defense system shortages and how the US is now turning to drone technology from Ukraine to close the gap and counter these Iranian drones. So very interesting conversation with him.
- [05:49]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, there's a lot there. I, I do think again I'm glad you did that because the Anthropic story is not getting the attention that it might otherwise get. But it for the future of humanity, it's, it's hugely important.
- [06:01]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I'd love to know what the Pentagon is doing with super powerful AI
- [06:05]
Ben Rhodes
systems, why they need autonomous weapons and mass surveillance capabilities.
- [06:09]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, seems like something be easy to say no to. Also for those of you who are friends of the POD subscribers, you're going to hear Ben and I do a Q and A where we take some questions from the pod. Save the world Discord. By the way, if you like crooked media, if you like this show, if you like what we're doing here, please become a friend of the POD subscriber is the single most helpful thing you could do to us as a progressive independent media company. And our promise to you in return is never to book Lindsey Graham on any of our shows unless we are going to be really mean to him.
- [06:37]
Ben Rhodes
We promise to play clips of Lindsey Graham and to react to them and make fun of him.
- [06:41]
Tommy Vietor
We will also we also know Fly Zone for John Bolton. Although it would be fun to yell at him. Mike Pompeo, he's insufferable.
- [06:50]
Ben Rhodes
He's just a. I just love how much he's disappeared.
- [06:53]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, he's gone.
- [06:54]
Ben Rhodes
Yet another proof point that sucking up to Trump does not save you the humiliation that always comes at the end of.
- [07:00]
Tommy Vietor
But like, somehow, grandma, he's just like a barnacle on the ass of like, whatever person he thinks is in charge with John McCain for a decade. It's now Donald Trump. Now he seems to have real influence. I mean, just. It's just terrible. So I don't know. We're not gonna talk to that guy or take him seriously, but please become a friend of the pod subscriber. Also, just subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast because it helps the show grow and it helps us displace all the propaganda that's floating around on the Internet about this terrible war. All right, Ben. So we're now 11 days into this regime change war with Iran. The goals and the broader strategy are like, somehow less clear, I think now than when they started. We'll do a broader update in a minute on like, major developments since our last recording. But we just wanted to, like, recap this, this head spinning messaging shift from the White House this week. So the quick version is at the end of last week and over the weekend, Trump was suggesting, like, really maximalist goals for the war. He posted a message on Truth Social where he said, quote, there will be no deal with Iran except unconditional surrender. That freaked out the oil markets, understandably, to the point where on Sunday night you saw the price of oil hitting above $120 a barrel, just like exploding. So it seems like Trump freaked out. The Wall Street Journal reported that his advisors were telling him, like, find an off ramp. This is going to kill us in the midterms. So he made this call to CBS News while markets were still open. The US Stock market was open and basically was like, oh, yeah, the war's about to be over. Everything's going to be fine. And that seems to have worked in the near term. Remember, because the stock market has this taco phrase, which is Trump always chickens out. So it folded into that. But once the markets closed, the messaging changed again. We had Trump, like talking to Republicans at this retreat. We had him doing a press conference. And then Pete Hegseth was out this morning, Tuesday morning, doing another press conference. And this is a super cute that our team put together of Trump and Hegseth messaging from Saturday through Tuesday that I think kind of Gets at the incoherence. Let's watch.
- [08:52]
Pete Hegseth
We're winning the war by a lot. We've decimated their whole evil empire. It'll continue, I'm sure for a little while. We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that, get rid of some evil. And I think you'll see it's going to be a short term excursion. We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.
- [09:13]
Tommy Vietor
You've said the war is quote, very complete, but your Defense Secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it and how long should Americans be?
- [09:21]
Pete Hegseth
Well, I think you could say it both. We could call it a tremendous success right now as we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further. And we're going to go further.
- [09:30]
Tommy Vietor
You promised the Iranian people you would help them.
- [09:32]
Mike Horowitz
But it sounds like you're willing to
- [09:33]
Tommy Vietor
end this fight after your military objectives have wrapped up. Is that, isn't that a betrayal?
- [09:38]
Pete Hegseth
Will I help them?
- [09:39]
Tommy Vietor
I'd like to if they can behave.
- [09:42]
Pete Hegseth
But they've been very menacing.
- [09:44]
Ben Rhodes
Today will be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes. I see in the media banners that say, you know, war expanding or war spread.
- [09:58]
Mike Horowitz
It's actually the opposite.
- [09:59]
Ben Rhodes
It's, it's actually quite contained.
- [10:02]
Tommy Vietor
It's so again, I think, excellent. Supercut there. So let's just like, let's just take on this idea. First of all, quite a message to the Iranian people, like if you can behave, maybe I'll consider supporting you. Like what does that mean, this idea that the war has been a success? First of all, the nuclear material has not been secured. We'll get into what that would entail in a bit. But it's 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium sit in Iran. The ballistic missiles are diminished but not gone. Right. The US and Israel are not saying they've gotten all their stockpiles. Before the war, Iran was on the cusp of a leadership transition. But by killing the 86 year old Ayatollah before he could regime change.
- [10:35]
Ben Rhodes
We were so tough, we killed an 86 year old man about to die,
- [10:38]
Tommy Vietor
installed his much younger son. So that's great. And we might have taken out Iran's navy, but there's some reports we'll get into in a minute that they're mining the Strait of Hormuz as we speak.
- [10:49]
Ben Rhodes
So we only took out the people who are a thousand miles away, who are defenseless, with no weapons and killed them without saving them.
- [10:54]
Tommy Vietor
But yeah, we should talk about that, because. Right. There was a. An Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean that I believe was unarmed, that had been invited as part of, like, a, you know, a parade of military assets that we sank, which is probably a war crime. Ben, is the war over? Is it just beginning? Like, what. What's happening?
- [11:13]
Ben Rhodes
Trump talks about a war literally, like, it's a football game, you know, like, we got a big lead in the second quarter. You know, we're winning, and we can call the end of the game whenever we want. And I think what those clips confirm, I mean, there are a number of things. The first thing is that he. He literally started this war with no idea what its objective was or what it was going to lead to or how it was going to end. I mean, because he himself never defined it, and we talked about that, but he essentially came out, made it sound like regime change. Iranian people rise up. You know, the language of regime change, the language of unconditional surrender. He, I, Bibi Netanyahu, Lindsey Graham, whatever small number of people convinced him to do this clearly made him think that this was going to be very easy, that their regime was about to collapse. Because, by the way, that's the kind of arguments they've been making for years, like, if only you bomb them, this will be easy and they'll all collapse. I actually think Bibi Netanyahu knew full well that this wouldn't happen.
- [12:12]
Tommy Vietor
Oh, yeah.
- [12:13]
Ben Rhodes
Bibi Netanyahu knew full well that this would not be quick and easy and simple. And frankly, because he wants to destroy Iran and have it be a violent, chaotic place, that's fine with him. But Trump cannot say what. He talks about winning and, you know, we're achieving our objectives, but he doesn't say what they are. Like, what, what our military objectives are. I heard him say in the club, you know, we're achieving our military objectives, but what are the military objectives? Because we're. We're not achieving any clearly defined objective that. And you or I could understand. And, and he's got his finger in the wind here. And it is just appalling, and we should say it's appalling that he seems to care the most about the markets, not the human beings who are being destroyed, not the geopolitical consequences to US Service members dying, US Service members dying, Iranian civilians dying, Gulf States security being completely punctured, instability that could be unleashed for years to come. He cares about the price of gas tomorrow and the stock market, because that's the only kind of metric that he knows how to Pay attention to. That's appalling. It is absolutely appalling. And we should not get accustomed to the fact that he just lies to us relentlessly about war. Like, he is no different than Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong Un. I think we, as Americans, even when we don't like our president, tend to think of him as a really bad version of a bad US President. So we've had presidents lie about wars before. Take your pick. Lbj, Nixon, whomever. Um, he's in a whole other category of he'll just make stuff up out of whole cloth. You know, I don't trust anything he's saying.
- [13:58]
Tommy Vietor
Not a word.
- [13:59]
Ben Rhodes
And we probably get more. What he said about the girls, school, those types of things.
- [14:03]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, we have another clip of that.
- [14:04]
Ben Rhodes
So. So show you that. Yeah, unfortunately. So then there's that. And then the last thing I want to say about Hegseth is, again, to take a historic analogy. Remember the body count? You know, in Vietnam, the only way that we could kind of try to quantify the success was, like, the number of people he killed. He's taken this to the level of, like, the number of bombing that we do every day is somehow a measure of our success. Or that that is an insane way to talk. Today is going to be even more bombing. You know, okay, what are we bombing? Why are we bombing it? Where is this going? Like, he can't answer those questions, and he just goes out there and brags about how many bombs were dropping and missiles were firing. We don't know what the target set is. We don't know what we're degrading to what end. He certainly doesn't seem to know. And he's the Secretary of Defense, and
- [15:02]
Tommy Vietor
he does it in this annoying cat in the hat rhyme scheme, which is really grating for just being.
- [15:07]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. And so what you have is a kind of clueless US Government that has no idea why it's doing this, other than maybe Israel was going to do it and we had to come in or what. I just don't know what we're doing.
- [15:21]
Tommy Vietor
Why not?
- [15:22]
Ben Rhodes
And we can go through, like, they can blow up some more nuclear material. The Iranians will regenerate it, because they know how to do that. They can blow up a bunch of ballistic missiles. The Iranians will regenerate their ballistic missile program. They killed the supreme leader. Now we have the younger supreme Leader. Like this. This is making everything worse. It's not making anything better. And it's creating all these risks, some of which we'll get in here and they don't even know why they're doing it.
- [15:50]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, there's a big picture strategy piece missing here. So we're going to go deeper on the supreme Leader in a second. The ground operation, how Democrats should respond and then the latest on Lebanon. But just some like quick kind of news updates in the last week. Ben. So the, the in terms of the casualty count for the broader region so far, these are from official government sources. So for the US it's seven US Service members have been killed. But today we learned that 140 have been wounded, including eight who were seriously wounded. So that is new information. Iran says 1255 people have been killed and 12,000 have been injured. Obviously that number is probably growing as we speak. Israel says 12 killed, over 1900 injured. Lebanon says 486 killed, over over a thousand injured. UAE's death toll is six. Kuwait reports six dead as well, and Bahrain reports one. And then on the sort of oil front that Trump seems to primarily care about, as we're recording, oil is back down to about $86 per barrel, but the Strait of Hormuz is still effectively closed. And there are reports right before we started recording that US Intelligence is either starting to see indications that Iran is taking steps to deploy mines in the state in the Strait of Hormones, or CNN went even further and said that Iran has begun laying mines. They said it was a couple dozen in recent days. So after those reports, Trump posted something on Truth Social saying that, quote, we have no reports, end quote, of Iran mining the strait, but that if Iran did do it, he wants them removed or else there will be a major military response which as far as I can tell, more major than doing. Yeah. So that clears things up. But if the strait is mined, it would be a disaster for shipping. And if shipping is shut down in the Strait of Hormuz, the oil producers in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, they can't ship their petroleum products out. They will have to either further cut production or fully stop production in ways that could permanently impact supply. So like, watch this space as people say, and also like congrats Vladimir Putin, you're now getting in a bunch more revenue because the price of oil just went way up.
- [17:50]
Ben Rhodes
So first of all, we heard in that clip Hexa say this war is contained and getting smaller, even though the bombing is getting bigger. There are 700,000 displaced people in Lebanon because of this war like this. The violence being unleashed in Lebanon would normally shock the consciousness, be front page news. I'm sure the reason Israel is doing it is because they Know that the tension's on Iran. So we. But the war is in Lebanon. It's in every Gulf state.
- [18:22]
Tommy Vietor
They're firing missiles at Turkey.
- [18:23]
Ben Rhodes
It's in like this. This war is not contained.
- [18:25]
Tommy Vietor
No, this is a region.
- [18:27]
Ben Rhodes
And part of what is so frustrating is that the people, those of us who've been warning against this type of war with Iran for 15 years, all of these things were very predictable. These are the things that were going to happen. And they seem caught off guard that they're happening. And it is. It's horrible that we should just pause for the people of Lebanon, that there's a normalization and routinization of, oh, Beirut's being bombed again for the umpteenth time. Right. Then if you get to the Straits of Hormuz again, any Iranian war game scenario knew that the extreme version of what the Iranians could do is mine the strait. Because if they threaten the Straits of Hormuz, even if they blow up a tanker, it has a huge impact for a period of time. But then kind of once the hostilities seem like they have diminished, that traffic begins. It takes months and months and months to de mine the Straits of Hormuz. And so if you are disrupting or halting the traffic of 20% of the world's energy, the oil and gas coming out of the Straits of Hormuz, the economic consequences of that could be absolutely catastrophic and go far beyond high oil prices and gas prices. It could be a seismic shock to the global economy. Again, very predictable. I'm not sure why Trump is surprised by that. And he has no strategy to deal with it other than to bomb them more. That is the logic of escalation of a regime change war. Oh, I'm not able to get you to do what I want by bombing you, so I'm just gonna keep bombing you more, which is gonna make you want to do more to hurt me, that is, you know, keep mining the Straits of Home wars, keep shooting at the Gulf states. And this is the other crazy thing I see in how Trump talks about this. He thinks he controls the timeline. He doesn't. No. He can, like, stop bombing in two weeks, the Iranians could still mind the streets of Hormuz. They're not going to launch supercell attacks. They don't give a shit about Trump's timeline. The Israelis certainly don't seem to care. And so this idea that he's in control of events is such a fiction. Like, he has taken a war to, like, this is not the assassination. Soleimani, where you can calibrate or even the 12 Day War, we. By going for regime change, by killing the supreme leader, who's also the religious leader of Shia Islam, whatever you think of the guy. And he was a creep during Ramadan. Yeah. Like the idea that you can like neatly say this is a, you know, we had a 12 day war and it's a 19 day war this time. No, it's one big war. This is the same war as the 12 day war too, by the way. Like, you don't have multiple wars with the same country within a year and get to call them different wars because you want to have shorter timelines. We are at war with Iran on an open ended basis even if we stop bombing in a couple of weeks. Yeah.
- [21:07]
Tommy Vietor
This is not tariffs where you can turn it off. Speaking of oil, I mean, over the weekend the Israelis bombed 30 Iranian oil depots. I'm sure folks saw these images. There were massive fires right in Tehran. It created these like apocalyptic scenes of these massive black clouds. Like it was dark during the day. And then you had literally had oil raining down on an entire city of 10 million people that create health problems for generations. The Trump administration leaked to Axios that they were mad about these strikes, that the Israelis did this. But like, it's not really clear to me if they were mad because this is oil that will be needed by the Iranian people or if Trump was just mad that it spooked the oil markets. The other kind of major escalatory development from over the weekend then was the targeting of desalination plants. So Iran accused the US of hitting one of their water desalination plants. So in return, they targeted a detalination plant in Bahrain. And if that kind of like escalatory tit for tat continues, it could have devastating consequences because Bahrain is basically totally dependent on desalination for its fresh water. I think Israel gets 80% of its water from desalination. Kuwait gets 90% of its supply. So I mean, that's people just like literally not being able to drink. They'll die. On Monday, as we mentioned, NATO defenses shot down a second missile from Iran over Turkey. US Diplomats were pulled from a consular facility in southern Turkey. So back to this. This thing being contained. It ain't contained. And then finally, Ben, there's some data out today indicating that the UAE's missile defense systems might be degrading. On March 10, 25% of Iran's drones made it through the UAE's missile defense systems. The previous high was 10% on March 3. So it's like, it's not clear if the Iranians are learning or if the UAE is like running out of missiles or if the radar is being gone or something's impacting it. There's also reports today that the US Is taking missile defense systems from Asia and redeploying them to the Middle East. So again, so much for dealing with the threat from China.
- [23:02]
Ben Rhodes
Well, first of all, on the oil strikes, beyond the horrific scenes and potential horrific human cost of those strikes, what does that have to do with degrading the ballistic missiles? What does it have to do with degrading the nuclear program? Don't tell me that this is about degrading Iranian capabilities. You're Israel is trying to destroy Iran. They're trying to destroy the Iranian regime. But they're also just, I mean, what is that? I mean, and so they're going to try to spin their victory. As you know, we took out this many ballistic missile sites. Well, then why are you bombing desalination plants? Why are you bombing energy infrastructure? Right. The U.S. is doing that too, with the desalination plants. By the way, on the oil piece, you mentioned this earlier, but it bears repeating. And I have a substack ad on this if you want to check out my substack. Putin wins because energy prices are higher and Russia benefits from that. Putin wins because Trump even acknowledges and gave India a waiver to buy more Russian oil because they know that they can't get the energy from the Middle east in the long run. Putin wins if other countries, including in Europe potentially are like, well, we can't rely on oil and gas from the Middle east, so maybe we have to go back to buying Russian.
- [24:14]
Tommy Vietor
By the way, these are all these countries that shifted from Russian oil and gas to Qatari lng. Yeah.
- [24:19]
Ben Rhodes
Now the Qatar shut down. And by the way, that that takes a while to turn back on if you shut it down. This is not like a 12 day war kind of situation. Putin wins, by the way, because Ukraine has to send anti drone technology and personnel down to the Middle east, which they're doing to help protect the Gulf states against Iranian drones. Like, Putin is such a big winner of this war that he could have designed it in a laboratory. Now he's, of course, he's giving targeting to. The reports are that he's giving targeting to the Iranians.
- [24:49]
Tommy Vietor
Steve Witkoff says that he's not and that we take them at their word. Is there a more credulous idiot on the planet than that guy?
- [24:57]
Mike Horowitz
No.
- [24:57]
Ben Rhodes
You know, and so like the oil peace is A sign that this is not just about ballistic missiles. It's also a huge boon to Putin. The desalination thing is existential to the Gulf. It's going to accelerate them thinking that the US Cannot be relied on because they put our security and existential risk again, even if he calls the end to the war tomorrow, the geopolitical cost of potentially endangering the whole global economy for an insane war, endangering the security of the Gulf states. They're going to look for their own nuclear weapons, they're going to look for their own security guarantee across the board. They just so comprehensively didn't think through the consequences of this. Again, I can see it might serve Israel's interest to unleash this kind of violence and chaos in Iran, eliminate any potential competitor, have regional hegemony. By the way, the uae, which had been Israel's biggest partner in that effort through the Abraham Accords, is clearly being targeted more than the Gulf states by Iran for that. So the UAE didn't get security from the Abraham Accords. They got.
- [25:57]
Tommy Vietor
Or from our bases.
- [25:58]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, or from our bases. And so this is going to reverberate for many years to come if it ended today, you know, and I think that is what is not being told to the American people by their political leaders sufficiently, that this has already been like, a catastrophic decision by Trump.
- [26:18]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. And like, look, Trump might say, well, you know, we've blown up the entire Iranian navy, and maybe that's the case. But, like, you don't need the naval ship to.
- [26:25]
Ben Rhodes
Was that causing you problem?
- [26:26]
Tommy Vietor
I mean, I was really worried.
- [26:29]
Ben Rhodes
Iranian navy causing you a problem?
- [26:30]
Tommy Vietor
I live in la.
- [26:31]
Ben Rhodes
Was the Iranian navy going to come invade California?
- [26:34]
Tommy Vietor
And also. But, like, getting rid of the Iranian navy doesn't mean that they can't mine the straight of Hormuz. You do that with small boats. These little boats can carry like two to three mines. The Iranians are estimated to have a stockpile of between 2,000 and 6,000 naval mines, which they bought from the Russians and the Chinese, by the way. And a friend of ours who's an expert in this stuff pointed out that even if they have decided to do this, like, whether or not they're successful is a pretty clear indication that they are all in on this war and that they are not seeking peace. And we'll talk about the new well,
- [27:05]
Ben Rhodes
and just real quick, the reason that they wouldn't do it right, is because they sell their energy through the Straits of Hormuz. But if Israel is bombing their oil facilities, they can't sell it anyway, right? So in a way, you're lowering the price tag for them to sabotage the strait because they're just fucking over the Gulf states and not themselves. Because their shit is getting blown up anyway.
- [27:26]
Pete Hegseth
Yes.
- [27:32]
Tommy Vietor
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- [29:31]
Ben Rhodes
Me too.
- [29:32]
Tommy Vietor
The greatest hoodie ever made. I have great sweatpants too that I got two little kids and they do their best to destroy everything I own and wear and they are still kicking and they look great and I've watched them a thousand times. That's why you like American Giant because it's not like fast fashion crap. It is really well made. Good looking clothing and a great hoodie is a staple for any wardrobe, especially as we approach the spring season with fluctuating temps throughout the day. The iconic Classic Full Zip hoodie is the jacket that started it all for American Giant. Custom heavyweight fleece and side panels for mobility make it the best hoodie ever. Body skimming fit with a double line hood and reinforced elbow patches mean this hoodie will last. Born from a commitment to support the communities that create its products, every American Giant piece is made in America and designed to last. No exceptions. The kind of difference you'll feel and appreciate for years to come. Stay ready for anything with the American giant classic full zip and save 20% off your first order at american-giant.com when you use the code world at checkout. That's 20% off your first order at American-giant.com code world. There's also been a leadership change and remember early in the war Israel killed the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an area strike that was with US intelligence helped that Ali Ham was 86 years old. He was about to regime change himself or be regime changed by nature. But now, thanks to Trump and Netanyahu, his son, a younger, reportedly even more hardline figure, is now in charge. This selection reportedly went against Ali Khamenei's written will and desire because he did not want Iran to become a dynastic country again like that was part of what the 1979 revolution was all about. But 56 year old Mustaba Khamenei was the IRGC's choice to lead Iran because that's the best way to give the middle finger to Trump and Netanyahu and like the military goons like Mustaba. So here we are. We don't know much about Mustab Al Khamenei. He's like been a behind the scenes player in Iranian politics. A lot of Iranians have remarked that they've never heard him speak in public. He doesn't have much of a public profile, but he does seem to have operated as kind of like a chief of staff, maybe for his dad. Maybe he's like a liaison between his father's office at the military and the intelligence leaders. So we know that they like him. We know that, like the IRGC goons reportedly wanted Mujtaba to be selected. He doesn't have all the religious credentials that you were supposed to have for that job. But now he's in charge. He's the spiritual leader of the country. He's the commander in chief, and he's the final decider of all political decisions. And again, like, time will tell, but it seems like he won't want to make nice with the US And Israel since so far in this war, the US and Israel have killed his father, his wife, his mother, and his son. So that doesn't seem like someone who will want to sue for peace. Of course, he may not last long in the job. The Israelis already tried to kill him, according to news reports. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump would be cool with killing him, but for now, at least, he's the guy. Ben, thoughts on this new Supreme Leader of Iran?
- [32:33]
Ben Rhodes
I think what I would say to people who sincerely want a better future for the Iranian people, right. A lot of people in the diaspora, other people, is that you would have had a better leadership transition if we had not bombed and killed the supreme Leader. That regime was beginning to change. Not because it wanted to, it did not want to. But you saw again, the women life freedom movement. It forced some societal changes. Right. People were beginning. Women were beginning to appear in public uncovered. There was a sense of, like, prying something open that was closed. If, in the normal course of events, which would not have been much longer, Khamenei had died of natural causes, the ability to force his son on the country would have been, I think, much more difficult. Yeah, there'd be protests, there'd be mass protests, there would be competing people, there'd be processes that would been under huge pressure because of the rally around the flag that happens particularly among the IRGC and the hardliners in the country when they're under attack. You have the most hardline possible succession, because that's what this is. And it just puts the lie to the idea that bombing a country and assassinating its leader is a way to bring democracy to the country. No, it's a way to. To ensure that the people with the most guns in the country are the ones who choose the successor. Now, he may not last, he may be killed. But I think what we learn is if he's killed, it'll be another IRGC backed person because they're the only people with power left. When you are under assault like this, the people with power in the country are the people who are armed and the people who are armed are the irgc. And we can keep killing one after another. I just think this is why even in like times when there were no laws of war, we didn't assassinate the leaders of countries. Again. That doesn't mean you like Khamenei, but we don't just get to go and choose that we assassinate the leaders of places we don't like in part cuz it ushers in a very dangerous new world where that may become normal and suddenly you have more and more assassinations.
- [34:44]
Tommy Vietor
Well, Trump is reportedly very angry about the Iranians plotting to assassinate him. Well, I mean that's the other piece of this.
- [34:50]
Ben Rhodes
They're going to be trying to kill a US President for a long time, including after Donald Trump and very senior
- [34:54]
Tommy Vietor
generals and people who work to the.
- [34:56]
Ben Rhodes
They will do that. They will be. This is why you don't end the war in 12 days. Like they might try to assassinate the next US president because of what Donald Trump did. But the reality is that we've made the situation internal to Iran worse by bombing and killing them, but also by empowering the absolute most hardline people in the country.
- [35:19]
Tommy Vietor
So that part's going good. The other thing that I imagine like the actual national security experts both in the US and the Israeli government are probably the most worried about is this 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that is, we think is buried under a mountain at one or more sites, but we don't really know. And securing those materials will almost certainly require a sending in troops to get them. That's why I suspect Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out putting boots on the ground in Iran. Here's a couple examples of him kind of dancing around this.
- [35:53]
Ben Rhodes
What are the circumstances where you sent in ground troops? How are you thinking about that?
- [35:57]
Pete Hegseth
I don't even want to talk about it. I mean that's, I don't think it's an appropriate question. You know, I'm not going to answer it. Could there be possibly for very good reason. I have to be very good research it. And I would say if we ever did that they would be so decimated that they wouldn't be able to fight at the ground level. Don't you need ground troops to secure
- [36:19]
Tommy Vietor
the enriched uranium at the nuclear sites.
- [36:22]
Pete Hegseth
We'll find out about that. We haven't talked about it, but it was a total obliteration. They haven't been able to get to it. And at some point, maybe we will, you know, be a great thing, but we have, haven't. We haven't gone after it, but something we could do later on, we wouldn't want. We wouldn't do it now. Maybe we'll do it later.
- [36:44]
Tommy Vietor
Okay, so let's dig into what this kind of operation would look like, because I got very triggered over the weekend, Ben. I was reading this Axios report that said the White House doesn't view a mission to secure Iran's nuclear materials as boots on the ground or an invasion, which is just, like, insane on every level.
- [36:58]
Ben Rhodes
Are they going to be wearing socks, not boots?
- [37:00]
Tommy Vietor
Yes. Yeah, we're just torturing the English language here. So this will be a major military operation that by any definition, is men, boots on the ground in an invasion. So there's been some good reporting on what this operation would look like. A lot of these plans existed when we were in government. We've talked to experts about them. So we got. We got a good window into this one. So long story short, like you were talking about sending hundreds of troops into Iran, you would need a specialized team to find, secure, and store the nuclear materials. That might be like a highly trained Delta Force team or a Navy SEAL team. And then on top of that, the Pentagon would almost certainly send in troops to secure a big perimeter around the sites where the guys are digging up this shit. You might have to send in, like, earth moving equipment and stuff. Right? Like specialized equipment. And I think that's why a lot of people's heads perked up last week when the Washington Post reported that the 82nd Airborne was given a change in its planning, seemingly to be more ready to deploy. Because they do this kind of stuff, like, they go in behind enemy lines, they seize airports, they seize strategic areas. The Pentagon would also need to figure out how to get those materials and out of Iran. Hundreds of miles, that would either be by air or ground. You would need, like, missile defense, drone defense during the operation, throughout. And so this would not be a small operation by any stretch of the imagination. I just, like, don't get why a news outlet would repeat this absurd spin that it wouldn't be boots on the ground. And then finally, Ben, earlier today, Tuesday, Richard Blumenthal, Senator Richard Blumenthal, came out of an Iran briefing and said, quote, we seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran. He also added that Russia seems to be aiding our enemies. So he seems to be confirming that, even though Steve Wykoff doesn't think it
- [38:33]
Ben Rhodes
takes Putin at his word.
- [38:34]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, it takes Putin at his word.
- [38:35]
Ben Rhodes
Such a trustworthy.
- [38:36]
Tommy Vietor
He also said China might be aiding them, too. So we'll, I guess we'll find out. But, like, what do you think the odds are that there is this kind of like, heu focused ground invasion? And, like, how is leaving this material in Iran not like a red line for Netanyahu? This seems to be the thing he cares about most over the last, what, three decades?
- [38:58]
Ben Rhodes
There's something surreal about, you know, the fact that Trump has to simultaneously affirm his lie that he obliterated the Iran nuclear program while leaving open the door to the fact that we may have to do an incredibly complex and risky operation. Yeah, it was a nice touch to actually clean up the fact that we didn't obliterate the Iran nuclear program, because as many of us have been saying for 15 years, you can't bomb a nuclear program and obliterate. It's physically impossible. So that just shows you the kind of danger of having someone who's this dishonest making decisions because he can't really explain anything, because he's trying to keep these competing narratives from bumping into each other. Look, yeah, we've been there, we've studied this, we followed this. Because you can't bomb all of the nuclear program away. There has always been this idea that if you're truly going to try to, like, take out as much of the Iranian nuclear program as possible, by the way, you can't eliminate it entirely. They know how to do the nuclear fuel cycle. So you can't bomb the knowledge that exists inside of Iran how to do this. But if you were to do this, you would need a very complex special forces operation with close air support and lots of personnel. I will tell you this, Tommy, too, that in some of the kind of war gaming on this, and I'll say, like, even out of government. Right. So this is not anything sensitive. You might want the element of surprise, you know, like pop up. Here's the team to get season materials. This is the most telegraphed punch, you know, possible. So I imagine that that will make it harder that wherever this is buried and whatever, you know, things that they've put in place to try to protect against this operation doesn't mean you couldn't do it, but it'd just be incredibly risky. And whether it's Israeli commandos or US Commandos and special forces, joint US Israeli military operation. It's complex, it's risky. It introduces ground forces into Iran. Even if you get some of these materials, it still doesn't eliminate the nuclear program, because, again, they know how to do this. There are people inside of Iran, like, not even Israel and the US can kill that fast, who know how to do this.
- [41:11]
Tommy Vietor
Just sets them back.
- [41:12]
Ben Rhodes
It sets them back. And we've told them that the only way you could ever survive is get a nuclear weapon. So I guarantee you, if we seize this, whatever we do, they're still going to be trying to build a nuclear weapon there, you know, on the back end of it.
- [41:24]
Tommy Vietor
Yep.
- [41:25]
Ben Rhodes
So here we are.
- [41:25]
Tommy Vietor
The other kind of, like, invasion option that I think people are talking about and worried about is the US Or Israel seizing a place called Kharg island, which is this little island. It's about 25 km off the coast of Iran, which is a key transit point for the export of about 90 or 95% of Iran's oil. So that would be a way for the US Or Israel to essentially take control of Iran's oil industry. Again, be very risky. You would be shot at. There's troops there. It would be a big, big deal. But that's the thing. I think nerds will tell you that, like, CENTCOM has had that plan on the shelf for a long time, and there's probably people in there want to
- [41:59]
Ben Rhodes
do it, but it's amazing. And we're back in the 19th century here. This is what we're. This is where we're at, that we're just. See, I saw some people on Fox who'd never heard of Carg island, you know, a week ago were like, oh, yeah, we're get the island and get the oil. Like, we're back in the empire business. By the way, that would be the biggest terrorist target in the world if we were like, seize some island and try to, like, run the Iranian oil industry from there. Like, this is how we got an Islamic Republic of Iran in the first place, because we overthrew a democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 because that leader was nationalizing the Iranian oil resources. And lo and behold, you know, within 25 years, we get the Islamic Republic. So the reason we've had an Islamic Republic in the first place is because we tried to do this.
- [42:42]
Tommy Vietor
Disagree, Ben. We are always the victims in these stories. You can't. You can't ever make us a protagonist. The one, like, little bit of good news is that last week there were all these reports that the US Was arming Kurdish militia forces, especially in Iraq, and encouraging them to go into Iran and try to topple the government. Trump now says he doesn't want the Kurds to go into Iran. Hopefully that's true, and he's being honest, but, like, I guess put a pin in that one.
- [43:05]
Ben Rhodes
All I'd say about that is it seems pretty clear to me that at least the Iraqi Kurds said no, because they were saying it very publicly.
- [43:11]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [43:11]
Mike Horowitz
There's.
- [43:12]
Tommy Vietor
One of them was.
- [43:12]
Ben Rhodes
They were raising their hands. You know, the people that are in the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq were like, we don't want any part of this war. So I don't necessarily give Trump credit for that. I actually think the Iraqi Kurds would be like, this would be an insane thing for us to do.
- [43:24]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, I saw one of them was interviewed on Fox News and was just like, no, this is a really bad idea. I don't think this is worth doing. Also, I just. One last thing, Ben. I mean, I just think it's very clear there's been a bunch of really good reporting now about the nuclear negotiations that took place between the Trump administration and the Iranians, specifically what Witkoff and Kushner were doing. And it's just so clear to me now that Jared and Steve Wyckoff, like, fundamentally didn't understand the subject matter, obviously. Right. They're not nuclear experts, they're not scientists, they're not PhDs. But there was a. There was a transcript of a call that those two bozos did for press, and, like, you can just tell, like, they keep misstating the name of the iaea, like they're getting basic facts wrong. And, like, maybe, look, maybe Trump never wanted to cut a deal and there was always going to be a war, but those idiots definitely didn't make it better. And it's kind of terrifying to think that they're handling Gaza negotiations, Iran negotiations, and Ukraine, like, no shit, that nothing's going well.
- [44:25]
Ben Rhodes
There are two scenarios. One is that the entire diplomatic effort, both last summer and this time were a facade, a deception operation so that we could bomb Iran. That is a outrageous and dangerous thing to do because no one will ever trust US Diplomacy again. If, you know, if it's just meant to be a deception cover story.
- [44:47]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [44:48]
Ben Rhodes
If they were sincerely negotiating. We make fun of these people. We have a laugh about them, particularly Jared, because he's a moron who, like, was born with a winning lottery ticket and thinks that he earned all that money. But the reality is sending two Complete idiots into the most sensitive negotiations in the world over and over and over again is not just embarrassing, it is terrible for US Interests. Like, and Americans sometimes make this mistake, particularly right wing Americans. They think other people are stupid, you know, or particularly brown people like the Iranians. These are very smart, sophisticated people. Right? The Russians. These are, the Russians are the toughest negotiators in the world. You know, they are eating these people for lunch every day in every negotiation. The Russians are, I mean, such that Steve Wyckoff is reporting propaganda that Putin is somehow not doing things that he's clearly doing right, or the Iranians aren't going to figure out that these guys aren't serious and so it's not worth coming back in the talks with them. Trump would clearly like to be able to say we're back in the talks with Iran because he's dangled it a couple of times and the Iranians keep shooting it down. So this is, this, is, this Jared Witkoff show is, is, is, is an abomination from a corruption standpoint, but from a pure competence standpoint as well.
- [46:02]
Tommy Vietor
Yes. And speaking of U.S. credibility, Ben, so it is just like increasingly clear, as you've mentioned, that this airstrike on an Iranian school full of young schoolgirls that killed 168 children and 14 teachers was an airstrike conducted by the United States military. Iranian state media released footage that has been confirmed by major news organizations as authentic. It shows a US Tomahawk missile hitting a naval base that is directly adjacent to this girls school. There have also been a number of news reports that the Pentagon, like, has been doing internal investigations. They believe they were responsible for this strike. But Trump, of course, is refusing to take responsibility. He is instead trying to lie and spin his way through this one. So here's a couple examples of his shifting story on this.
- [46:47]
Ben Rhodes
Did the United States bomb a girl's elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the war and kill 175 people?
- [46:54]
Pete Hegseth
Opinion based on what I've seen, that was done by Iran.
- [46:58]
Ben Rhodes
Is that true, Mr. Hexa? It was Iran who did that.
- [47:01]
Tommy Vietor
We're certainly investigating, still investigating, but the
- [47:04]
Ben Rhodes
only, the only side that targets civilians is Iran. Omaha missile likely destroyed that Iranian girls school. So will the Americans, will the US Accept any responsibility?
- [47:16]
Pete Hegseth
Well, I haven't seen it. And I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries. You know that. And whether it's Iran who also has some Tomahawks. I wish they had more.
- [47:32]
Ben Rhodes
You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war. But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?
- [47:47]
Pete Hegseth
Because I just don't know enough about it.
- [47:50]
Tommy Vietor
So, like, we don't sell Iran Tomahawk missiles. That's crazy. Like, my understanding is that only the us, the UK and Australia currently have Tomahawks deployed. Unless the Iranians broke into a British submarine, stole a Tomahawk, and then dropped it on their own IRGC naval base, slash girls school. Like, this story is so Trump. Like, he clearly thinks he could deflect and, like, wait for this story to go away. Ben. But, like, when you combine those lies with Pete Hegseth bragging about getting rid of, like, woke rules of engagement. Yeah, it sends. It's hard to, like, think of a way to make the US military look worse than that.
- [48:28]
Ben Rhodes
And all of us, you and I paid for that bomb that killed those girls. Right? We American taxpayers pay for this. Those girls are dead today because of decisions that Donald Trump made and because of the way in which, you know, we spend our tax dollars. And look, just to take a couple of these pieces, the investigations that are very thorough that are out there, that this was our missile. I just point out a couple of things. The idea that these were the children of IRGC people that went to the school so they were gonna kill their. The idea that they got this conspiracy theory that is all over the Internet. The reason we have to address this is because this is all over the Internet.
- [49:07]
Tommy Vietor
I assume the Israelis are super charged.
- [49:09]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, the bots are out there with this.
- [49:10]
Tommy Vietor
I had an Iranian woman come up to me in la. I was like, hanging out with Lizette. Lovely woman, couldn't have been nicer, but was like, spouting like, insane made up propaganda about the war and be like, tell everyone that you know Iranians like the war. I'm like, well, not the ones getting bombed. And she was like, well, the IRGC is the one who bombed that school. I was like, ma', am, that's not what happened. It was 100% US.
- [49:29]
Ben Rhodes
If you think that I feel sorry for you because you're unwilling to look like truth in the eye. And here's the other thing. We gave a lot of shit to the Biden administration during the Gaza war. For defending the idf, Right? And every time there was some horrific incident in Gaza, which is very regular, remember, it was always this is being investigated or this was the Hamas Pentagon. You know, every hospital had the Hamas Pentagon under it. There's a way in which we are becoming like that. Like the Trump response to this and even the Hegseth response, which weirdly, Hegseth is actually not going as far as Trump.
- [50:09]
Tommy Vietor
He's more reasonable than Trump.
- [50:10]
Ben Rhodes
Because the US Military, I believe, are still some people with some honor. I mean, I mean this, I'm not trying. I'm saying this as a compliment who have some honor in that institution who are like, we do not lie about our mistakes.
- [50:21]
Tommy Vietor
Most of the military is horrified that this happened. This was a massive intelligence fuck up. And I'm sure that people are like, just devastated, devastated.
- [50:31]
Ben Rhodes
But this is why you don't do what Biden and Trump both have done with the idf, which is go along with this bullshit. That every single child who's killed is like a Hamas terrorist. Or every single hospital that's blown up is a secret target, you know, or secret Hamas command center, or every single one that you can't possibly defend. You just say, we're investigating it, but we never get you the results of the investigation. And oh, by the way, it's Hamas's fault. We are now doing that about Iran. We're doing the same language. We're investigating it. We'll get back to you. But maybe they did it. They're the only ones who kill civilians, not us. Like, we cannot become and should not become that kind of country. But I fear that, you know, with Trump as president, like, that's where we're at. But that is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous place to be not alone because of what we saw already with these girls, which the whole war is not worth it. I'd rather have those kids back than all the missile launchers that we've blown up. Like, that's why we have to be an anti war party in this country, because this stuff can happen.
- [51:32]
Tommy Vietor
Let's talk more about that. Let's talk about how our tax dollars should be spent in the Democratic Party, because as listeners probably know, like, last week, the House of Representatives voted down a bill to stop the war in Iran. Not Trump would have vetoed it, but it was important, symbolically. Four Democrats voted in favor of allowing Trump and Pete Hegseth to continue this regime change war of choice in Iran, which is just insane to me. But Politico reported that the next step in Congress will be the Administration coming back to them to request an estimated $50 billion in additional funding for the war. That's on top of the nearly $1 trillion Pentagon budget for 2026. Over the weekend, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Senator Chris Murphy about this request. Let's play that exchange and then talk about it. The administration is reportedly weighing Congress to approve an additional $50 billion in funding for these operations. You have said you're a hell no. Not just a no on funding the war.
- [52:26]
Ben Rhodes
We have seen this movie before.
- [52:27]
Tommy Vietor
We know that that vote will be cast as especially if you run for higher office. You voting against the troops? Oh, come on. I mean the American people don't want this war. They don't want this war. They have seen what happens when American troops go into places like Iraq, places like Afghanistan. Ultimately we get a lot of people killed. We waste a lot of dollars.
- [52:51]
Ben Rhodes
The one thing the American people are
- [52:53]
Tommy Vietor
clear about is that they do not want the United States dragged into another long term war in the Middle East. If you support the troops, then you should be voting against funding this war so that we get our troops out of harm's way. Virtually nothing good happened from sending thousands of Americans to die inside Iraq in the 2000s. And if we don't learn that lesson, then shame on every single one of us. It's a good answer by Murphy there. I so I teed on off on this on POD Save America on Monday. So I'll be quick. But I want to make sure that every Democrat listening understands that you cannot oppose the war and then vote for funding. That is not a position that exists in the real world. That's a thing people in Washington convince themselves is rational and it's actually incoherent. Also, I just want them to understand that like opposing funding is the right thing to do strategically, morally and politically. Like this is not 2004, this is Jake is wrong. We're not going to watch the same movie. Like the Pentagon doesn't need more money to sustain operations. They have a trillion dollars. There are not guys sitting in Fallujah waiting to get an MRAP that might not show up. If you vote against the 77 billion or whatever the hell the funding request was in in 2004, like Trump could end this war tomorrow. He has basically declared victory a couple times. It suggests that it might be over tomorrow. And I also voters will reward you if you say let's not spend 50 billion more bombing girls schools in Iran. Let's spend it on education, health care, literally anything else that will be like the most popular thing you ever do as a lawmaker.
- [54:22]
Ben Rhodes
Absolutely. And first of all, you're right. The Jake Tapper from 2002 doesn't need to like, conduct that interview. I mean, we have Barack Obama. The very first meeting I was in with him, the first time I met him, was in 2007 when he decided to vote against the supplemental that funded the surgeon. And the argument that was cast at him was that he was voting against the troops. And lo and behold, if it wasn't for his opposition in the Iraq war, he never would have become President of the United States. This political thinking is so outdated that it's astonishing to me that it still gets currency in the kind of media framing around these issues. I also want to say you covered the argument well about the obvious political point that people don't want to be spending this money, that this war is not popular. I also think that one of the things that drives people crazy about the Democratic Party is it seems like it's a party that has constantly got its finger in the wind and is trying to figure out, like what it stands for, what it actually believes, what will be the most politically fruitful argument. Are we tough? Are we tough? Can I afford to piss off these donors? Look, if you vote for the funding of this war, you should be primaried. I don't want you in the Democratic Party, and I'm not trying to be obtuse or stubborn, but this is a threshold issue. I would like to have a big tent on this party. I think there should be people with different ideas of how to get health care, different ideas of taxation. To me, this is not a left center issue. This is a right and wrong issue morally. What do we stand for as Democrats? If you as a Democrat can't say that I'm against a war and I'm not going to fund a war that is being launched by an authoritarian president illegally with no rational basis that is explained to the American people that has already unleashed these consequences. If you can't stand against that, you don't stand for a fucking thing, okay? And everybody can see it. How is anybody gonna trust you to fight for their healthcare if you're too afraid to cast a vote that someone might call you weak or some donor might call you and complain. So I'm sorry, I got a little hot today. I came in hot, but this is, you know, I don't know what to say anymore.
- [56:25]
Tommy Vietor
It's. It's an astounding lapse in judgment, I think to trust Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth to lead a regime change war of choice with Iran along with Bibinet and Yahoo. And like, like, we didn't put it on the rundown today because it's just like, the things to be mad about is. Are endless. But Trump, like, wearing a hat to the dignified transfer ceremony, like, really bothered me because, like, I know you've been like, I'm sure you've been to Dover. Like, I never went to Dover with President Obama, but I went to Walter Reed with. With. I never was in obama in like 2000, so like 2009 or 2010, it was like, me, Reggie, Matt, Flavin, and Obama, like, in Marine One on the way there. And then, you know, like, I chilled out with the press while he went and met with wounded service members for, like three, four hours, whatever it was. And then we all flew home together. And like, my memory of flying there is talking and people, like, it was fun, right? It was cool. And on the way back, it was like the heaviest situation I've ever been in. Like, you could feel the weight of what Obama had just experienced on his shoulders and the devastation he'd seen, and the families and the people's lives were just ruined. And he didn't say a fucking word, nor did anybody else. And just like to see Trump kind of winging it out there, doing press events, goofing around. He's talking about the Iran war in front of, like, the Miami Inter Miami soccer team, cracking jokes about the renovations at the White House. He's just like a fundamentally unserious person who is not conducting this war for serious strategic reasons. It's all about his politics. It's all about Lindsey Graham fluffing him 10 times a day and, like, doing whatever Netanyahu tells me to do, and it's a fucking embarrassment. So vote no. Yeah.
- [57:58]
Ben Rhodes
And to your point, I mean, the guy is showing up at the dignified transfer of caskets of dead service members coming home because of decisions he's made. And he's wearing a USA hat that looks like the kind of thing that you could buy at like, a gas station rest stop, right? Which, no offense, against those. Those are great hats. I bought hats there. But the point is that were afraid of being called weak, right? We're afraid of being called unpatriotic sad old man. In a weird way, we're afraid of, like, that we're against the troops. The guy against the troops is the one who's getting them killed for no reason and who's showing up in a fucking baseball cap for a dignified transfer ceremony like this is not a hard argument to make.
- [58:34]
Tommy Vietor
Very easy. I just couldn't agree more, Ben. Speaking of our feckless Congress, as we did a minute ago, so November is going to be a huge election. It'll decide if Democrats are in control of the House, maybe we can take back the Senate. Or if Trump just maintains his iron grip on the trifecta. Winning the House is gonna be the fastest way to put a real check on Trump's abuses of power and the Republicans enabling them. So we gotta go on offense and try to win as many seats as possible. So folks here who listen to this show and listen to Pod Save America are some of the most engaged people. There's volunteers, there's donors, there's candidates, there's people in grassroots organizations. And if you have not signed up yet for Vote Save America, please consider doing so because it will be the best way to find opportunities where you can spend your time and your money and your attention. And I promise we will make sure it's like Moneyball for politics, that it will go a long way. So here's what we're asking folks to do. Go to votesave america.com Sign up to be part of the work this year. Then send that link to five friends who you think might be interested too. That's all we're asking. We promise we won't spam you. We won't, you know, demand send you crazy.
- [59:38]
Ben Rhodes
Or they may text it or like Rachel Maddows going crazy.
- [59:42]
Tommy Vietor
Hakeem Chevrey Nancy Pelosi okay, this, I promise it will be worth your time. We'll send you good opportunities that actually matter. Votesafeamerica.com Sign up. Be a part of this community. Be a part of the work this year. Get five friends to do it. Paid for by Vote Save America. Learn more@votesave America.com this ad has not been authorized by any candidate or candidate committee. Positive World is brought to you by Sundays. When it comes to dog food, it seems like you have to make a choice. You can either have fresh and healthy or you can have easy to store and serve, but never both. But you don't have to choose anymore. Thanks to Sundays. Sundays was founded by a veterinarian and mom, Dr. Tori Waxman who got tired of seeing so called premium dog food full of fillers and synthetics. So she designed sundaes, air dried real food made in a human grade kitchen using the same ingredients and care you'd use to cook for yourself and your family. Every bite of sundaes is clean and made from real meat, fruits, veggies and no kibble. That means no weird ingredients you can't pronounce and no fillers compared to kibble or other brands out there. Sundays invest 50 times more in its ingredients to ensure premium quality because your dog deserves food made with care, not in the interest of cost cutting. And the best part? You just scoop and serve. No freezer, no thawing or prep, no mess. Just nutrient rich, clean food that fuels their happiest, healthiest days so you get more of them to share together. Look, we all love our dogs like they're as if they're children. Many of them are our children. And why would you not feed your dog the kind of food you would feed your own family? I know Leo loves Sundays. I know Luca loves Sundays for dogs because she steals it every time she comes over to your house. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to sundays4dogs.com World50 and get 50% off your first order. Or you can use the code World50 at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at sundays4dogs.com World 50 Sundays for dogs.com World50 or use the code World50 at checkout. This podcast is sponsored by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to elevate your online presence and drive your success. Squarespace provides all the necessary tools to claim your domain, build a professional website, expand your brand and facilitate payments, making it the ideal solution for businesses of all sizes. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place, from consultations to events and experiences. Showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. With Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a bespoke online presence that perfectly fits with their brand or business. Squarespace domains makes it easy to find the best name for your business at a one fair, all inclusive price. No hidden fees or add ons required. Get discovered fast with integrated Squarespace SEO tools. Every website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions, an auto generated sitemap and more so you show up more often on search engines and bring in more of your ideal customers. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.comworld to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.comWorld let's end this around section by talking about like Hezbollah Lebanon. And you know, the fact that the country is once again getting hammered by the idf. So the, the numbers are really great grim, Ben, as you. As we mentioned, the top, like we're Talking about nearly 500 people dead in Lebanon and nearly 700,000 people have been displaced. So, you know, Hezbollah entered the conflict and started firing rockets at Israel after the Supreme Leader was assassinated. The Israelis leapt on this opportunity to retaliate and just destroy them again. And like whatever was left of the 2024 ceasefire agreement is now just fully eviscerated. And the IDF has both been conducting massive airstrikes in southern Lebanon and the parts of the suburbs of Beirut. But also the IDF ground forces have pushed into southern Lebanon. Last week the French offered to like intervene and maybe support the Lebanese military. Emmanuel Macron kind of jumped into the fray here. I think the Israelis basically told him to off. Yeah, I can't tell if anything came of that.
- [63:34]
Ben Rhodes
You're not exactly showing a lot of strength on this Iran war in general.
- [63:37]
Tommy Vietor
No, not much. I think my concern, Ben, though, if I were a Lebanese official, like beyond the immediate security and threat to people's lives and the humanitarian situation and humanitarian crisis that could develop, if this many people are displaced for this long, like, I, I would wonder if Israel is going to use this opportunity to just permanently capture parts of Lebanon while the world is kind of focused elsewhere.
- [63:58]
Ben Rhodes
I think that's what's happening. I mean, I, I think that they want to permanently occupy, if not end up annexing southern Lebanon. Some Israeli political leaders talk about that openly. They know that this is a chaotic and violent time in the region, so they can kind of ratcheted up in Lebanon without getting as much scrutiny. They have not announced kind of what their end game is in Lebanon other than just destroying things. And I think people have to realize that these people have been through hell in Lebanon and 700,000 people being told to evacuate is, I mean, just think about that. Where are they supposed to go? And many of them are going to come back to homes that are destroyed. And we've so thoroughly normalized that level of destruction with the, you know, and this, with this idea that it's somehow like, about Hezbollah. This is so far beyond Hezbollah. This is like breaking Lebanon completely yet again. By the way, what always ends up happening. I'm not defending corrupt Lebanese politicians because there are plenty of those too. But like, they'll palm Lebanon for, you know, however long they bomb it and destroy all this stuff and displace people. And then nine months now, they'll be like, oh, the politics in Lebanon are so Dysfunctional. Like, what the hell are these people supposed to do?
- [65:04]
Tommy Vietor
Right? Yeah. That's like a city the size of Denver just being pushed out of their homes and displaced. Yeah, I mean, it's. It's staggering. It's like, you know, and I guess we'll just keep an eye on it. Like, I don't know, the world is just kind of.
- [65:18]
Ben Rhodes
Well, and then you'll get these people, you know, who will, like, be posting pictures from, like, 1984 of, like, women in bathing suits in Beirut and be like, this is what it was like before his blood or something. No, no, this is what it was like before the place got bombed, you know, however many times I've lost track of it.
- [65:34]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, it's a nightmare. Okay, so a couple more things from us. So, while the world is focused on Iran, the US Military has been expanding its activities in South America. Specifically, the US Military is now conducting joint military operation against drug cartels in Ecuador. So this is on top of the boat strikes off the coast of Ecuador and in the Caribbean. The New York Times reported that US Special Forces are, quote, advising and supporting Ecuadorian commandos who are hitting drug facilities. U.S. southern Command. Ben, I don't know if you saw that. They tweeted out this weird video.
- [66:04]
Ben Rhodes
I saw that.
- [66:05]
Tommy Vietor
The helicopter taking off. Right. And then it was like a drone feed of, like, U.S. troops getting into the helicopter. But the way they filmed it, it made it look like there was about to be an airstrike on our own helicopter. It was all very, very weird. As we've discussed on the show before, Ecuador went from being one of the safest countries in Latin America to becoming one of the most dangerous and becoming a major transit point for cocaine coming out of Colombia and Peru, usually to Europe. There's also these Albanian gangs in Ecuador, and they're sort of, like, facilitating those cocaine flows into Europe. In 2024, the President, Daniel Naboa, declared war on the gangs and on the cartels that set in motion this huge crackdown in a wave of violence does not solve the problem, but has led to a lot of deaths and now apparently involves the US Military. Ben, I was just reading about this, sort of marveling at how little attention it's getting. And then remembering back in 2018 when Trump said, quote, we more and more are not wanting to be the policeman of the world, it feels like that's kind of.
- [67:05]
Ben Rhodes
That's out the window. And again, another thing that we're doing with no public discussion. He clearly has this idea that there's this collection of Right wing leaders across Latin America. It's kind of his team. I think Kristi Noem is now like, isn't she the envoy to the envoy
- [67:21]
Tommy Vietor
of the Shields of the Americas?
- [67:22]
Ben Rhodes
The Shield of the Americas.
- [67:24]
Tommy Vietor
Absolutely made up.
- [67:25]
Ben Rhodes
Curious if that actually happens.
- [67:27]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah.
- [67:27]
Ben Rhodes
If she gets a plane to go down Ecuador. But, but, but the reality is this, this, this idea where the US becomes
- [67:34]
Tommy Vietor
like Cory down Ecuador. I mean, think Lewandowski would last long down Ecuador?
- [67:40]
Ben Rhodes
Erik Prince could probably put him to work.
- [67:42]
Tommy Vietor
See, Erik Prince opposed the Iran war.
- [67:44]
Mike Horowitz
I think I saw he did.
- [67:45]
Ben Rhodes
He went on Bannon, you know, and he opposed it in part because this is the kind of war he wants to fight.
- [67:49]
Tommy Vietor
He's like, I want to be, yeah,
- [67:50]
Ben Rhodes
I want to be in equity, I
- [67:51]
Tommy Vietor
want to get paid for this.
- [67:52]
Ben Rhodes
But the reality is, are we just going to become the security force for every right wing autocrat in Latin America? What's the goal here? What's the end state if we lose personnel down there? Are Americans going to know why they're there? You had Ricardo on like the way to deal with these drug cartels. You first you have to go off their money because they're multi billion dollar enterprises instead of skipping right ahead to like some military operation for ambiguous purposes. So yeah, we are on this kind of slippery slope to being the kind of military force for the Shield of the Americas. And that's yet another thing. How much does this operation cost?
- [68:25]
Tommy Vietor
Good question.
- [68:26]
Ben Rhodes
Because they're not free. Right. So yet another argument to make that that's not lowering prices, that's not doing anything to solve problems. Americans actually, because it's not even doing anything about the fentanyl problem which is what Americans are most concerned about. It's just buttressing some right wing autocrat who tells Trump what he wants to hear.
- [68:43]
Tommy Vietor
It's not great. Okay, let's end this by talking about the recent election in Nepal. So this, ladies and gentlemen, is Nepal's next Prime Minister. Let's watch. I go hard like a blastist AKA shot fire is the closest I'm a
- [68:56]
Ben Rhodes
wet mix Gettys I'm a semen of
- [68:57]
Tommy Vietor
the closet full of wet dips this is I do Holly she knit like a baptist like a baptist your bitch got fake Eilish My dick is mostly she drip like missiles Mileage they say they fly ain't got no mileage they saying they fly and fly in private no Kylie Jenner ain't got no Hummer
- [69:15]
Ben Rhodes
Next time you show up you get
- [69:16]
Tommy Vietor
bit like a drummer Give out that pipe pipe like a Plumber. I put you in trauma.
- [69:21]
Ben Rhodes
I shoot like I'm gonna, I mean,
- [69:24]
Tommy Vietor
collab with Zora Mumdani.
- [69:27]
Ben Rhodes
I mean, Michael had a better time watching that. That guy's.
- [69:30]
Tommy Vietor
Yes.
- [69:30]
Ben Rhodes
And better than the Liz Truss show. Yeah.
- [69:32]
Tommy Vietor
Finally. Okay, so that's a rapper. Not bad. He's pretty good.
- [69:36]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, he was laying down the beats too. It's pretty good.
- [69:38]
Tommy Vietor
That's Balendra Shah, a rapper, civil engineer turned politician. People call him Ballin. He's the former. He's Ballin. Yeah, he's Ballin out there also. I'm pretty sure Kirill has that same code. I don't know if Kirill's not in here anyway. He's the former mayor of Kathmandu. They're still counting ballots, but so far he's leading in what looks like a landslide election. This election is the result of these Gen Z led protests from last year that brought down the former government. The protests kicked off. Remember, there's the social media ban that seemingly was just a cover to hide that the children of the elites were just like, spending money in Paris and pissing away government money. But like the, the, those protests exploded in size because of deep frustration about corruption and lack of economic opportunity. Because Nepal is a very young, highly educated population. But it also has a 21% youth unemployment rate. So there's a brain drain and a lot of people leaving to go work abroad. 19 people were killed during those initial protests last year because the government violently cracked down on them. Then 70 more in the unrest and chaos that followed. So that forced out the prime minister at the time. So Balin is part of the centrist party. He has campaigned on anti corruption, on creating jobs. He says he's going to double per capita GDP to $3,000 within the next decade. Nepal is landlocked between India and China. They have very limited manufacturing. They rely on a lot of tourism to Mount Everest for their economy. And its current GDP per capita is about $1500. So delivering on that promise will be quite a challenge. But Ben, thoughts on our new Gen Z rapper, King?
- [71:07]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, look, I, I, I can't really vouch for Ballin, you know, and I spent a bunch of time reading up on this because it's, because it's fascinating. We'll see how it goes. Here's the main thing that I think I take away from this that is hopeful. Clearly, people across the world, particularly younger people, are absolutely fed up with the corruption and the kind of rotten establishments that govern their lives. And I do think that there is a connection between, you know, The Zoran Mamdani campaign and what he did. Did you see the Hannah Spencer Green Party campaign in the uk? This is. I mean if people haven't watched Hannah Spencer, she was a Green Party member who won a by election recently. She's 34. She had a very Xeron esque kind of message and campaign.
- [71:56]
Tommy Vietor
Did Morris go over there? Morris Katz go over there and meet with some of those kids?
- [71:59]
Ben Rhodes
Morris is kicking the tires on taking over European politics.
- [72:01]
Tommy Vietor
Morris Katz is a friend of ours who works for Zoramdani. Like a kind of young, brilliant communist. Brilliant, brilliant guy in campaign.
- [72:08]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah, absolutely.
- [72:09]
Tommy Vietor
Good for him going over to Europe to meet with some of these progressive parties because we need to trade best practices.
- [72:14]
Ben Rhodes
My advice to Europeans, and I know we have a lot of European listeners, is like talk to Morse cats, right? Because it's not just about having clever social media, it's about having a smart message. But Ballin, you know, he capitalized on the fact that Gen Z, I don't think it's some irrational thing. Oh, we like the rapper. It's that they're so comprehensively fed up with their political establishment that they kind of ousted them in this protest movement and are like, you know what, let's put this guy in charge. Because at least we know he's different, right? And at least we know he's not been tethered to the same corruption. At least we know he hasn't kind of taken money from the same crowd that's been around. And so I actually think the warning to politicians everywhere in the democratic world and the non democratic world is that this is kind of where people are at right now, particularly young people. And I actually think it's wrong to say that Gen Z, they're disengaged. They seem pretty fucking engaged in a lot of these places.
- [73:07]
Tommy Vietor
They're pretty engaged over there.
- [73:08]
Ben Rhodes
They're lighting some fires. They were engaged and they've been engaged. We've seen it in Africa, we've seen it in the Middle east, we've seen it in this country, we're seeing it in Europe. And if you. Again, I'll just talk to the places where if you are a smart politician trying to appeal to young voters, you gotta get to that mood. You know, maybe not the ball and video, but the anti establishment mood of like this is different. This is a clean break. This is a. This politics is gonna look different, it's gonna feel different, it's gonna be funded differently. Because I think that is increasingly where the mood's gonna go given the direction of events in the world.
- [73:42]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah. People don't like elites. Get inside my semen all the closet full of rap tapes. This is how I do. Hallucinate like a Baptist. That was a vtour joint. No, that was a Ballin joint. He also, he also dropped Kylie Jenner's name. Whatever.
- [73:56]
Ben Rhodes
I heard the Kylie Jenner in there. Yeah. There's a logic train I'm trying to follow with the lyrics. Hey, sounded good.
- [74:02]
Tommy Vietor
It was more of a slant rhyme which you know, Bob Dylan would tell us is an art form.
- [74:07]
Ben Rhodes
Ballin seems to not do a lot of media too. Like I was trying to like he doesn't give a lot of interviews, let's just say so. Like it's a bit of a mystery.
- [74:12]
Tommy Vietor
Whenever I hear someone named Ballin I think of the big Baller brand.
- [74:16]
Ben Rhodes
Yes. You know, but well I saw them by the way just to you know, we. I heard you guys on PSA rightly complain about like the video game message but I also hate them expropriating. Like I saw I don't know, one of their Dan Scavino war porn posts said like if you don't know now, you know, like Biggie Smalls RIP does not want you taking like his potentially best catchphrase from you know like one of the greatest.
- [74:42]
Tommy Vietor
He was not repping the military industrial. Yeah.
- [74:45]
Ben Rhodes
Biggie was not complex, you know, but said they don't know now. You know, give me a break.
- [74:49]
Tommy Vietor
Shut up.
- [74:50]
Ben Rhodes
Dan Scavina or whatever like 23 year old white nationalist groipers like now become a war porn addict.
- [74:56]
Tommy Vietor
What's funny is I think actually like they are trying to appeal to the kind of Nick Fuentes young, white, angry like incel crowd with this kind of content and I think it's falling on its face hard.
- [75:07]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [75:07]
Tommy Vietor
Because those guys actually listen to Fuentes like Tucker Carlson, a bunch of right wingers who were opposed to the war in Iran before and now were opposed to it after. And they seem consistent at least. And you know Fox News might fall in line but like who cares what they say.
- [75:23]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah. I will say I have some notes for the kind of anti war maga crowd like in Tucker's among it because I've, you know I sample this to see where things are going. It is remarkable the lengths they go to to somehow like solve Trump. Yeah, like, like we should need to call this out. Like you could listen. Like listen. I mean actually don't listen. Like we'll listen to it for you. But like they have a two hour conversation. Unlike Tucker, Megyn Kelly and like you would think that this happened to Trump.
- [75:49]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, they'll blame like the undersecretary for something, something over the Pentagon.
- [75:53]
Ben Rhodes
Or by the way, they'll blame Netanyahu. I like, I blame Netanyahu, but that doesn't absolve Trump.
- [75:59]
Tommy Vietor
I blame Netanyahu too, but I blame Trump for being too weak.
- [76:01]
Ben Rhodes
I blame Trump more than Netanyahu.
- [76:03]
Tommy Vietor
Like to be very clear, American president, he's more powerful.
- [76:05]
Ben Rhodes
He's the American President. He made the decision. Every other American president of the 21st century said no to this. So it just this all the more reason for Democrats to burrow in on this because just because there's some anti war MAGA influencers, they won't call out Trump. And Americans are not stupid. They know that Donald Trump either A, shouldn't have done this and B, could have said no to Bibi Ninja.
- [76:25]
Tommy Vietor
Oh Jesus. Okay, so Trump truthed as we were recording. Ben, I am pleased to report that within the last few hours we have hit and completely destroyed 10 inactive mine laying boats and or ships with more to follow. I'm not really sure what that means or does exactly.
- [76:41]
Ben Rhodes
That means he's trying to tell the markets and the oil futures to not price in a mining of the Straits of Hormuz.
- [76:48]
Tommy Vietor
Google price.
- [76:49]
Ben Rhodes
All he cares about is that now
- [76:52]
Tommy Vietor
it's up at 8771. So you don't really want the crude oil futures to rip like bitcoin, you know what I mean?
- [76:59]
Ben Rhodes
I just. Yeah. And you also want like. And not to get too heavy here, but like I kind of like a commander in chief who cares more about the lives of US service members and Iranian schoolchildren than he cares about tomorrow's oil futures, which is clearly the only thing that can get his fat ass, you know, in gear to like, truth, social, something.
- [77:21]
Tommy Vietor
Until Lindsey Graham gets him on the phone, gets him all hot and bothered again for another regime change. Okay, I think that's it for us for this week. Anything else pissing you off?
- [77:31]
Ben Rhodes
I will say the only thing pissing me off is that I had two of my best friends come into town. I got banger tickets to the Knicks Lakers game on Sunday and the Knicks Clippers game last night. Got to both games half an hour early and in the, in the two games, the Knicks led once by a single point and just fucking mailed it in.
- [77:54]
Tommy Vietor
I'm sorry man.
- [77:55]
Ben Rhodes
Except for Cat. Except for my guy Carl Anthony Towns who showed up. The rest of these guys, not much. I love them, but they just didn't show up for me.
- [78:02]
Tommy Vietor
I bet when you're playing away in
- [78:03]
Ben Rhodes
la, it seemed like so. So the Saturday we were. We were taking an Uber Saturday game. So we. At 12:38, 12:30pm, 12:30 START. So we're in the Uber over because we're gonna, like, pound some beers at the game. So responsibly took an Uber and I said to these guys, I was like, hey, I'm worried that our guys are out last night. You know, like, it's la, you know, we got og, we got, you know, Josh Hart. We got these guys. Maybe they wanted to go out and like. No, no, no. Like, our guys are serious, you know, we, our guys look like they went out Friday night.
- [78:35]
Tommy Vietor
I think a lot of players go out every single night. If you're young and rich and a great athlete, you're probably having a good time.
- [78:40]
Ben Rhodes
Let me just say that Knicks did not come out of the, you know, blocks running at full speed on Saturday at 12:30. No, Luca looked like he was hungover, but Luca always looks like he's kind of hungover.
- [78:49]
Tommy Vietor
He does look like he's hungover. And it doesn't matter. A little bit hungry. CNN headline. US Intelligence community ramps up warnings of possible retaliatory attacks by Iran. That's great. Of cyber attacks. I don't know. Everything's really great.
- [79:02]
Ben Rhodes
So, yeah, I came in kind of pissed off today and sorry about that. It's hard to be light about a war, though.
- [79:09]
Tommy Vietor
It's not fun. It is not fun. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but when you come back, you're going to hear my interview with Mike Horowitz. We're going to talk about the Pentagon fighting with AI companies, drones, new drone technology that will help us take out Iranian drones that we're getting from the Ukrainian. So very important conversation about the future of warfare and technology. So stick around for that. Podcast of the World is brought to you by bilt. No one likes paying rent, but BILT makes it feel a little better. Built is the loyalty program for renters that revolution rewards you monthly with points and exclusive benefits in your neighborhood. Let me explain. With bilt, every rent payment earns you points that can be used towards flights, hotels, Lyft rides, Amazon.com purchases, and much more. Here's something to get excited about. Now BILT members can earn points on mortgage payments for the first time. That means you can get rewarded wherever you live and unlock exclusive benefits from more than 45,000 restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, and other neighborhood partners. Personally, I think I'd redeem mine for, you know, fitness classes. They got a travel portal. You can just do it on Amazon. There's Lyft rides, there's gift cards at like 120 or more brands. So you have a ton of options. It is very simple. Paying rent is better with built. And now owning a home can be better too. Earn rewards and get something back wherever you live. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbuilt.com world. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T.com world. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you.
- [80:42]
Alex Preddy (or Host of Runaway Country)
The country feels like it's falling apart right before our eyes and the people inside it are being silenced. So we're going to East 26th street and Nicollet Avenue, which is where Alex Preddy was executed by ICE and Border Patrol. That is not a headline. That is a human life. And it is all happening right now. Do you worry about your own safety being involved in all this?
- [81:08]
Mike Horowitz
Yes, but it doesn't really feel like there's another option, you know, and of
- [81:15]
Interviewee on Runaway Country
course they use a 5 year old child as bait. And of course they're doing all these horrible bad things because they don't know what they're doing. They've been told that they're going to get rid of the worst of the worst, then they have absolute immunity. And they've been told that nothing they do will they ever be held accountable for.
- [81:36]
Alex Preddy (or Host of Runaway Country)
On my show, Runaway country, we go where the headlines hit home. From communities under threat to the people fighting to be heard. New episodes of Runaway country drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.
- [81:56]
Tommy Vietor
I am very excited to welcome back today's guest of the show. He's a senior fellow for Technology and Innovation at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And then from 2022 to 2024, he served as US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Force development and emerging capabilities. Mike Horo, it's great to see you again.
- [82:15]
Mike Horowitz
Thanks so much for having me. Not like anything's going on in the world.
- [82:19]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, slow week. Also, it's very funny. We booked you twice and you've been on vacation twice. I love to just ruin whatever you're doing in your real life, but given all the fighting between the Pentagon and these AI companies and then what's happening in Iran, it seemed like an amazing time to get you back on the show. So before we get to this big fight between the Defense Department and Anthropic, an AI company. I was just hoping you could understand how AI is being used in warfare because we've now seen reports that AI was used in the operation to get Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. There's lots of reports that AI is being used in the Iran operations, including Claude Anthropic's model. There are reports that the Israelis were using AI with targeting both in Gaza and now again with Iran. What does that mean in practice to the best you can kind of help us get it?
- [83:04]
Mike Horowitz
Yeah, absolutely. So when you think about the integration of AI into warfare, you separated into three buckets in your mind. The first are the kinds of uses of AI that any company might do. Think like hr, payroll processing, basic logistics, like that kind of thing. And the Pentagon should be full speed ahead at that, although frankly that has taken a lot of time to get moving as well. The second bucket is in what's called intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance. So that is all the data and information that say the American military gets about the world, whether from satellites, whether from human intelligence sources, whether from truth, social or X or whatever your like poison might be and you know, trying to aggregate that all together to separate the signal from the noise choice. The third, and this is both where the current operational context discussion is and where the dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon goes is closer to the battlefield. And those are essentially AI decision support systems that help commanders in theory make better decisions about how to use force within operations. And then autonomous weapon systems that can involve AI actually on the edge selecting and engaging targets. And it's that third category where people have really raised lots of questions about how much, how much that integration is happening today in the Iran context, how much have happened to the Maduro operation and then where it may go, where it may go from there.
- [84:30]
Tommy Vietor
So I can imagine a scenario where over Iran, the US and Israel have so many satellites or drones or things bringing in imagery that it's almost impossible to monitor them all in real time. And you could imagine an AI that's trained to notice. The second that a shape that looks like an Iranian ballistic missile launcher shows up on the screen and then you immediately move to target. That is like that the kind of thing we're talking about. And maybe that data is cross checked with some other SIGINT thing that's happened. Like it's just, it's, I think it's hard for people to understand like the volume of data that's coming in to, through intelligence channels and how quickly we need to move to kind of act on it.
- [85:09]
Mike Horowitz
So there's two different categories which I'd put some of the things that we have heard about in the Iran context. The first is that AI decision support category I mentioned before, and that is often using a platform built by the tech company Palantir called Maven Smart System. And what that's doing is aggregating all of this data together to try to give advice to the US Combatant commander in the, in Central Command, so the head of the US military in the Middle east who has. And there are all these processes for how the Pentagon selects targets, makes decisions to engage them, legal reviews, checks, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's lots of really fantastical descriptions, you know, out there. But imagine what, what Maven essentially does is kind of the way a paralegal would support a lawyer, where they're doing all of this research and analysis to simplify all of these sort of different tasks, all the sort of staff work that would normally happen on the battlefield. Now it's still the lawyer that goes to court and argues, and so the lawyer that takes responsibility, but that paralegal or team of paralegals or whatever is doing a ton of the back office work to sort of queue things up. That's the way that Maven essentially works in the way that CLAUDE then is integrated into Maven as one of many different tools to simplify those data processing tasks even more. So that's category one. And then category two is more like that missile defense scenario that you're talking about, where frankly, you don't need large language models, like you don't need CLAUDE to do this. But like good old fashioned computer vision sort of algorithms can do this sort of thing. And that's just about detecting launches and then moving systems in position to shoot them down, which say, like Israel's Iron Dome, for example, has proven to be exceptional at. And the Patriot missile defense system for the United States is much more expensive but also very good at.
- [87:00]
Tommy Vietor
Got it. Okay. Okay. So we've, we've talked on this show about this dispute between this AI company, Anthropic, and the Pentagon. The gist for those who have not followed this is Anthropic's model. Claude was at the time the only AI model cleared for use on the Pentagon's classified systems. The department wanted CLAUDE to sign a contract that allowed them, quote, all lawful uses of the model. But Anthropic said no, we have some red lines and they don't want CLAUDE used for mass surveillance of Americans or fully autonomous weapons yet because they say the the software is not ready yet. The two sides couldn't come to an agreement. That led a bunch of people, the Pentagon, to absolutely flip out on Twitter a couple weekends ago. And then Hegseth, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, declared Anthropic a quote, supply chain risk. That is a designation normally reserved for companies like Huawei, which has ties with the Chinese military. Mike, what do you think happened here and can you explain the impact of a supply chain risk designation on a company like Anthropic who I just noticed has filed suit?
- [88:02]
Mike Horowitz
Yeah, that's not like the least surprising thing this week. I think this to me is a dispute about vibes and personalities masquerading as a policy dispute. And what I mean by that is Anthropic, as you said, was the first company in the door to work with the Pentagon in a classified environment. And there were no things that Anthropic was doing with the Pentagon that either were. Either side had objections. Furthermore, there were no asks of the Pentagon of Anthropic for the future that Anthropic had, that Anthropic had an issue with. Essentially what happened is after the Maduro operation, it sounds like somebody from Anthropic called somebody from Palantir since, remember I said that the way that Claude is implemented operationally for the military right now is through this Palantir platform called Maven Smart System. So someone from Anthropic calls somebody from Palantir up to be like, hey, did they use Claude in the Maduro operation? And that they even asked the question apparently like really set off alarm bells at the Pentagon. And they were, you know, essentially to like really simplify a bunch of things. They're like, why are these woke doomers asking all of these questions like this? Seem like this seems problematic. And the dispute really escalates from that. Given the fact that there's no disagreement between the company, between the company and the Pentagon about any current use cases. And the Pentagon is using Claude in Iran, as has been widely reported in the media, calling them a supply chain risk, calling Anthropic a supply chain risk like Huawei means that any the parts of any company that work with the federal government, say, like the part of Microsoft that works with the government, the part of Google that works with the government, et cetera, isn't allowed to use Claude. So any company, that part of the company that works with the government, it's now illegal in theory for them to use to them to work with Anthropic or and certainly to use Anthropic's technology directly.
- [90:00]
Tommy Vietor
I mean that seems like a big, big deal for Anthropic, right? Going forward. I mean that could kill off a lot of contracts for them.
- [90:07]
Mike Horowitz
No, I mean it could be worse, I guess. I mean they could have made it so that it was illegal to do business with Anthropic at all in that say the part of Microsoft that doesn't work with the federal government still could work with Anthropic. And don't get me wrong, this is a big hit to Anthropic and this is a bad move in my view from a sort of free market kind of perspective because it means that the sort of best technology in the world from an American company is no longer going to be available either to the Pentagon in that like they gave a six month time frame for this to sort of happen and with other and for contractors who also are seeking to work with the Pentagon. Like from where I sit, that is a win for China and a loss for. In a loss for America. And problematic from a free market perspective.
- [90:56]
Tommy Vietor
I mean just from the Anthropic perspective, don't you understand why they would maybe have some questions? I mean like this sort of like all lawful uses provision, what federal laws are there regulating AI use right now? Right. Like isn't that part of the problem is that the federal government is completely asleep at the switch when it comes to the use of artificial intelligence? And then you have all these, you know, nerds out there telling us that this could be more powerful than the atomic bomb. I mean like, I don't understand what these companies are doing in practice and, or the technology itself. But like the combination of those two things controlled by Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump like doesn't make me feel great.
- [91:35]
Mike Horowitz
Totally fair, just to be perfectly honest. Comparing AI to the atomic bomb is vaguely triggering. And so I'm going to leave that one aside for the, for the triggered the. But the, I think that the, what this really reflects in some ways is a breakdown in trust between Anthropic and the Pentagon and that the Pentagon didn't trust that Anthropic would be there to. Anthropic would be there for important national security use cases and Anthropic didn't trust that the government would use their technology responsibly. I will say I think, I think one can have some sympathy for the Pentagon actually on parts, on parts of this like I certainly would have when I, when I worked there at least. And here's why. When Lockheed sells like an F35 or a missile to the Pentagon. It's not like Lockheed gets to say, like, hey, you could use this against like Cuba, but like, don't use it against Iran or something or you know, like, or something like that. The, these, these companies like sell a product to the Pentagon and the Pentagon then uses it the way that it, the way that it sees fit. I think Anthropic is thinking about this more like terms of service in a software contract, which is a thing in contracts with the Pentagon. And they think that the, and they think that once they sell that they have the right to tell the Pentagon, like, hey, we want to sign a contract for, you know, like X set of use cases, but not Y set of use cases. And Anthropic has even said, we will work with you on, on, on like a, something like how to make LLMs ready for fully autonomous weapon systems. But the, but I think that it is not true to say that there's no law or policy that governs these topics. And there's two layers of this one that has nothing to do with artificial intelligence. So there's federal law and international treaties that require the US to use force in ways that comply with international humanitarian law. Using things which we are ignoring left and right. Fair, but like, but in theory, but
- [93:30]
Tommy Vietor
like those are bombing the fuck out of boats in the Caribbean, like on the regular. And it's just total violation of international law. Yeah.
- [93:37]
Ben Rhodes
Argument.
- [93:37]
Mike Horowitz
Absolutely no argument.
- [93:38]
Tommy Vietor
Okay.
- [93:38]
Mike Horowitz
I just mean that in theory, when it comes to like AI, the way that that boils down is essentially all uses for any use of force, whether it's a bow and arrow, a radar guided missile, or an autonomous weapon system. There has to be human responsibility and accountability for the use of force. Like, for example, in that, like, first boat operation back in September. That was really, I mean, not that they're not all controversial, but in the first one, that guy like got a lot of public attention, you know, attention focused on the specific military commander that authorized the second strike. Like, there's always responsibility, human responsibility. And that is true even in the case for an autonomous weapon system. And that has nothing to do with any policies surrounding AI in particular. It is also true that there is not law governing the Pentagon's use of AI for the most part. Well, there is policy. Like the office that I used to work for in the Pentagon wrote the Pentagon's policy on autonomy and weapon Systems. It's called DoD Directive 3000.09. And more people have probably downloaded and read that directive and became experts on it. In the last like two or three weeks than probably read it since it was like, re released in January 2023. And that does sort of set out pretty clear guidelines, at least on the autonomous weapon system side for when it is that you could use them. It's not law. And Anthropic did have questions.
- [94:58]
Tommy Vietor
I get. Yeah, I mean, I hear you on the comparison. Like, look, if I were a combatant commander, the idea of calling over to a tech company to say, hey, can we do this thing, you're right. On some level it's untenable and unworkable on your Lockheed comparison. I mean, this is very imperfect. I do think, like, Lockheed probably sells the US military F35s, assuming they will not be used to bomb Boston. Right. I mean, that's sort of like a bit of what Anthropic's getting at.
- [95:24]
Mike Horowitz
I like to think so, at least of Americans. I'd like to think so.
- [95:26]
Tommy Vietor
You would like to think so. Not necessarily bomb Americans. Well, but. So let's get at this other piece of this, because then a competitor to Anthropic open AI, they sweep in, they ink a deal with the Pentagon to replace Anthropic. You wrote in your Financial Times piece where you also got into these sort of bigger picture philosophical questions that they got 99% of the deal Anthropic wanted. What does that mean in practice? And what's the 1% that they didn't get? And how relevant is it?
- [95:52]
Mike Horowitz
Sure. I think it's really interesting that OpenAI has gotten so much heat for this. I think that it's a timing question in some ways as much as it is a substance question. So, like, here, here's why the OpenAI deal says that their technology can only be used through the cloud. It couldn't be used on the edge. And so you couldn't put an OpenAI model, say, like, into a weapon system directly and use it. If you were. Now, you could in theory then put an, I guess in theory put an OpenAI model in, you know, in the cloud and have it be like directing a weapon to the target. But if you did that, it wouldn't be an autonomous weapon system. The thing that makes it an autonomous weapon system, unless it's human supervised, is that there is no data link. And that's because autonomous weapon systems are designed for, say, I don't know, like a war in the Indo Pacific where you might not have access to satellites and all of that data and you need, and you want the weapon system to keep operating. And so if OpenAI's technology can only be used in the cloud and not on the edge, then actually it means that an autonomous weapon system without human supervision, that their model simply wouldn't work for on the surveillance side, it sounds like, and that I'm personally a little less expert in. There do seem to be concerns that the technology that. The sort of deal that OpenAI signed might not be quite as restrictive as what Anthropic wanted. But some of this, I mean, to kind of like the back and forth we were having about international, about international law and about the Pentagon sort of in general at some point, like, if you, if you do business with the Pentagon, the business of the Pentagon is war. And if you don't trust that the Pentagon will follow its own rules sort of, or laws, then you, then you shouldn't. Then, you know, it's like, it's, you know, it's like a tough luck then to do business with the Pentagon and perhaps one shouldn't.
- [97:41]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, no, look, I think that's sort of a very real part of this. It's getting less attention, which is like if Anthropic has. I don't know.
- [97:48]
Ben Rhodes
Yeah.
- [97:48]
Tommy Vietor
If they're, if they're so concerned about how the Pentagon might use the models and maybe they shouldn't do business with the Pentagon, period. Look, I think the reason OpenAI got so much blowback is because Sam Altman looked like a total scumbag and he swept in at the last moment and swept up a contract from his competitor. And he's seen as someone who has been willing to kiss Trump's ass more than, you know, any other AI CEO. And therefore he, you know, made a deal that it seems like Anthropic didn't want. It's also my understanding that maybe Anthropic was looking for their concerns to be handled in the contract where OpenAI is now saying, actually we're just going to kind of like hard code the restrictions into the model. And I think experts will then point out, well, then you can update the model down the road and maybe we'd probably never know about it. Right.
- [98:31]
Mike Horowitz
Not. Not wrong. I mean, the. Like, like, I think that, that, that, that, that's in some ways because there is no if. What you are worried about is that the Pentagon's going to misuse your technology. There's like two scenarios for misuse. One is that your technology would actually be very good at the thing that the Pentagon wants to do, in which case there's actually, there's probably very little you could put in a contract that would stop them from doing it if they wish to violate the law. The, the second, and this is actually why I am personally less concerned on the autonomous weapon system side, is that the Pentagon could attempt to violate your contract. But the if, like, you're correct that your technology isn't like, ready to do the thing that will come out in the Pentagon's own testing and evaluation process, like, the worst thing, like, like the last thing you would use an LLM for, like a large language model that like, like Claude or ChatGPT or something like that is to put into an autonomous weapon system. If you want to build an autonomous weapon system, you should do that with a bespoke algorithm trained on a data set of very specific things like say, Russian tanks or Chinese fighters or something like that. The idea that you would take a, you would take a large language model trained on the slap of the Internet and like, plug it into a missile and like, send that missile off, like, what are we even doing here? And, and I feel like either the Pentagon's testing and evaluation process should clearly reveal that, like, or we've got like, bigger problems that have nothing to do with AI.
- [99:55]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, that's where, like, sometimes I'm just confused about this fight. Like, the mass surveillance piece of this really worries me because one major limiting factor when you talk about, you know, preventing the mass surveillance of an entire population, let's say all Americans, was that it was prohibitively difficult to work with that much data. And I think AI has fundamentally changed that. But I guess my concern then would be about more about like, contracts with the NSA or the CIA or other intelligence community components than the Pentagon. I was wondering what your read was on that kind of piece of this fight.
- [100:32]
Mike Horowitz
Yeah, I'm, look, I'm super worried about mass surveillance in the context of AI technology and the way that it could help de. Identify a bunch of data that like law says that the, you're not supposed to have on the American people. I'm not worried about the Pentagon is the locus of the American mass surveillance state. I would be like, much more worried maybe about like, other departments and agencies that are in the news sometimes. And the, and so like, I, and I think the, and I think the reaction of the Pentagon is telling in this context, in that on the mass surveillance side you can, I mean, to whatever extent one like, views them as credible, like on this and you know, like, mileage will travel for different people. The, like, the Pentagon on the mass surveillance side is essentially like, how could you ever say that? Like, we would never do that that violates the fourth Amendment. And I suspect that they probably genuinely think that because again, I think other departments and agencies are a higher risk. Or maybe like an in between, like the nsa, like, I guess, if you really wanted to worry. But man, does the NSA have rules. The.
- [101:31]
Pete Hegseth
The.
- [101:31]
Mike Horowitz
If it. Whereas their response to the autonomous weapon side, it's like, well, we totally wouldn't do that now. Like, we agree with you. The tech isn't ready, but it might be at some point.
- [101:39]
Tommy Vietor
Right.
- [101:39]
Mike Horowitz
And Anthropic's like, yeah, that's why we want to work with you on that. Like, why are you kicking us out?
- [101:43]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, it's all. Yeah, it just feels like the Pentagon, the Trump administration, they have one speed which is to punch back as hard as humanly possible, and in so doing escalated this fight.
- [101:54]
Mike Horowitz
Yeah, I mean, look, this is like the Hegseth Pentagon is on full send all the time, like, no matter what. And in that case, like, this is like going back to what I said before, that this is like really about vibes and personalities, which I think are at least to me. Like, our discussion in some ways is. Has illustrated the. In that kind of like breakdown in trust. Like, how do you crawl down from here? How do you climb down from here? Then in some ways if, like, if we're talking about a Pentagon that literally will never admit that it's wrong about anything.
- [102:21]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, it's like rage tweeting at 5pm or like 10pm on a Friday night for no reason about this issue. Last sort of topic I want to talk about is a lot of experts are very concerned about US Weapons stockpiles, in particular interceptor munitions that are being used in the Patriot missile systems and other systems to defend from Iranian missiles and drones, and then also some offensive US Missile systems that you can get into. That is a problem in the near term with the war in Iran, especially for some of these Gulf states, which news reports, they are like within a week of running out of some of these interceptors, but more broadly, for our readiness as a country to fight the next war, especially one with China. How worried are you about these stockpiles? And what do you make of these efforts to use new drones developed by the Ukrainians to defend from these Iranian drones, which have been used by Russia as a. As a solve or a fix.
- [103:15]
Mike Horowitz
Oh, what a short question. I mean, like, call back to the last time I was on. I talked about how we are in the age of precise mass and war, where advances in AI and autonomy and commercial manufacturing and. And the fact that Precision guidance is now a 50 year old technology, means everyone can now access precision strike. And now we see that on display in Iran sort of every day when Iran fires these Shaheed 136 weapons. You know, like the Shahid 136 is arguably the best precise mass system in the world. It can go like 1500 to 2000 kilometers. It can carry a, you know, 50 to 150 kilogram warhead. And unless you shoot it down, it like depending on build quality will like hit the thing that it's aimed at. They can produce that for an average of $35,000. A Patriot missile costs about $4 million each. So now we're using like two Patriot missiles to shoot down a Shaheed and like we're trying to be better about that with a bunch of different kinds of things. And like the unit cost for say like Israel's Iron Dome is a little bit, is a little bit lower. But because Iran has thousands of these shaheds and it's just firing them off, everybody in the region with Patriot missile interceptors is now, is now using them. And so the US is in a position where, and Iran is starting to target the radars that try to track those that we use to ensure those missiles hit their target, which would mean, and if those get really damaged, you would need to fire even more to intercept a single thing. And add all of that up and the US is running short on missile defense interceptors, especially for the Indo Pacific. But even in the context of the Middle east, if the US wants to sort of re up the stockpiles of all of the Gulf states that have had our back in the context of this conflict. And so guess what, in some ways like China wins again. And, and while you focused more on the, on the missile defense question, I'll note that the US has produced about the like premier US Cruise missile for like both of our professional lives as being called the tomahawk missile, the US has produced about like 9,000 plus of them like over, over that time period there. If you look at like inventory based on uses over time, retirements, tests, et cetera, the US inventory might be like around 3,000 or even below frankly at this, at this point and decreasing rapidly given the hundreds that the US has already used against Iran. And so we are running out of weapons. And in this age of precise mass, like that's a big problem, which is why the US needs to be producing itself then a lot more of these low cost weapons. Our own precise mass systems like the Lucas, which the U.S. debuted against Iran for the first time. And it's actually reverse engineered from an Iranian weapon. So like a little bit of irony there.
- [106:03]
Tommy Vietor
Yeah, yeah, sorry, when you say low cost weapons, you don't mean that the T Lambs or the Tomahawks. You mean these new modern drones?
- [106:10]
Mike Horowitz
No, like the, so like the Lucas system. What? The Lucas system essentially is the US Equivalent of the Shaheed. So the Lucas system cost the US like 35 to $50,000 a pop, which is really different than a Tomahawk missile that cost about like $2 million each. Yeah, on average. And because you can produce them with commercial manufacturing, like the Lucas that the Lucas of rounds that the US Is using in the Middle east were produced by like Spectre works like a tiny company in Scottsdale with like 13 employees, not like Raytheon or Lockheed shows. You could really scale production of these kinds of things in a way that would give future American leaders a lot more depth and a lot more options.
- [106:51]
Tommy Vietor
And so on the Ukrainian front, I mean the Ukrainians have been dealing with the Iranians, provided Russia with these Shahid drones, and now the Ukrainians will have swarms of them fired at Ukrainian cities, maybe dozens, maybe even hundreds of them at a time. And so one option they have evolved to, to deal with that threat is low cost drones of their own, which basically are like, hunt these drones. Can you talk about that technology, how effective it is and how quickly we might be able to put that to use in this conflict with Iran, if at all?
- [107:22]
Mike Horowitz
Yeah, absolutely. Like you think about, like, if we're, if we have currently been using, you know, $4 million Interceptors to shoot down like not just Shaheds, but things that are slightly more expensive, but still maybe like, like Iranian ballistic missiles that might be, say, I don't know, like half a million dollars each or something like that. You need something cheaper then, otherwise the cost curve just isn't in your favor. You've got a couple of options if you want the cost curve to be really low. The first, and this has been like the dream of the 1980s on repeat, is lasers. You could use directed energy, microwave weapons, things like that, where the cost per shot is super low. And now you've got options to try to take down these systems. Like Israel used Iron Beam, which is their short range laser defense system, I think maybe for the first time operationally in the context recently. Right, yeah, yeah. This particular conflict with Iran, your other option is to try to come up with a really low cost interceptor. And there are a bunch of different companies that have been working on this, including, you know, companies like Andrew, some of the new defense tech companies in the, in the United States. But like, like you said, look, the Ukrainians live this every day and no one has been more incentivized to do it. And so the Ukrainians have these sort of hit a bullet with a bullet really inexpensive, like a thousand to ten thousand dollar a piece defense, defense systems. They have a bunch of different like kinds of them. And you know, it looks like the US Is now importing a bunch of them because the US Actually purchased some of them from Ukraine to test them out and see how they work. And so those that the US Purchased are now heading to the Middle East. But now there's a prospect that the US Will get even more from Ukraine and that Ukrainian trainers are going to come help those people. And that's actually really promising. But again, remember I said like China's the winner in all of this before. It's hard to see. I mean, unless this makes the Trump administration feel really favorable toward Ukraine and then re up them from a weapons perspective, the like Patriot missile interceptor inventory going way down around the world is really bad for Ukraine. Who needs more of those interceptors for when they're. Their inexpensive solutions, fail to protect them from. Not like the Russian shahid variant necessarily, but say like Russian hypersonics and Russian ballistic missiles that they also fire at Ukraine on a regular basis.
- [109:37]
Tommy Vietor
Well, yeah, no, it's, I'm glad, I'm glad we kicked off this Iran war to just inject more chaos and dysfunction and horror into the world. It feels like that's what we were missing. It was just another theater of war. You know, we really needed this right now.
- [109:49]
Mike Horowitz
We're off to a great start in 2026.
- [109:51]
Tommy Vietor
What can I say, Been a great start. Bomb in eight countries and in 15 or 16 months, President Trump, the President of peace, the FIFA Peace Prize winner.
- [109:59]
Mike Horowitz
I can come back when Cuba's next.
- [110:01]
Tommy Vietor
Listen, there might have been a deal cut. Hopefully maybe that won't happen, but I don't know. We got to get Lindsey Graham off tv. He's talking about invading literally everything. Mike Horowitz, thank you so much for doing the show. Really appreciate it. You've made us a lot smarter on this topic and many other things. We appreciate your time.
- [110:16]
Mike Horowitz
Thanks for having me.
- [110:21]
Tommy Vietor
Thanks again to Mike Korowitz for doing the show and see you guys next week. Unless we record something sooner.
- [110:26]
Ben Rhodes
You never know. It's quite possible.
- [110:32]
Tommy Vietor
Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our associate producer is Anisha Bonderji. We get production support from Saul Rubin. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes. The show is engineered, mixed and edited by Jordan Cantor. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thank you to our digital team, Ben Hethcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Toles and Ryan Young. Matt de Groat is our head of production. Adrian Hill is our Senior Vice President of News and politics. If you want to listen to Pod Save the World ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts, go to crooked.com friends to subscribe, subscribe on Supercast, Substack, YouTube or Apple Podcasts. Don't forget to follow us at Crooked Media on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter for more original content, host takeovers and other community events. Please subscribe to Pod Save the world on YouTube for access to full episodes, bonus content and much more. If you're opinionated like us, weave a review. Our production staff is proudly unionized by the Writers Guild of America. East.
- [111:44]
Alex Preddy (or Host of Runaway Country)
The country feels like it's falling apart right before our eyes and the people inside it are being silenced. So we're going to East 26th street and Nicollet Avenue, which is where Alex Preddy was executed by ICE and Border Patrol. That is not a headline. That is a human life and it is all happening right now. Do you worry about your own safety being involved in all this?
- [112:09]
Mike Horowitz
Yes, but it doesn't really feel like there's another option, you know?
- [112:16]
Interviewee on Runaway Country
And of course they use a 5 year old child as bait. And of course they're doing all these horrible bad things because they don't know what they're doing. They've been told that they're going to get rid of the worst of the worst, then they have absolute immunity and they've been told that nothing they do will they ever be held accountable for.
- [112:37]
Alex Preddy (or Host of Runaway Country)
On my show, Runaway country, we go where the headlines hit home, from communities under threat to the people fighting to be heard. New episodes of Runaway country drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.