The “Don’t Upset the Masks” Edition

Summary

Rational Security – “Don’t Upset the Masks” Edition

Date: October 15, 2025
Hosts: Scott R. Anderson, Quinta Jurecic, Alan Rozenshtein
Guests: Benjamin Wittes, Kate Klonick, Molly Roberts

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Episode Overview

This week’s Rational Security brings together Lawfare's senior editors—including longtime co-host Ben Wittes, returning Lawfare editor Kate Klonick, and newcomer Molly Roberts—for a spirited analysis of major national security events. The group delves into the recent (fictional) Trump administration-brokered Gaza ceasefire and peace plan, unprecedented political messaging by federal agencies during the ongoing government shutdown, and China’s economic maneuvers in the form of rare earth metal export controls. The conversation is peppered with legal nuance, skepticism, historical analogies, and their signature mix of wry humor and candor.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Icebreaker: The Masks in Lawfare’s Office

[00:22–04:15]

• The episode’s title refers to Ben Wittes’ collection of large, haunting masks from Kenya, inherited after unnerving both his mother’s staff and his own colleagues.
• The masks are described as “agitated spirits” that are judged both protective and “easy to anger,” inspiring the phrase “Don’t upset the masks” from staff member Michaela Fogel.
  • “The masks came from Kenya...his wife found them so disturbing that she made him get rid of them.” – Ben Wittes [01:38]
  • “They are good. It’s just that they are easy to anger.” – Ben Wittes [04:02]
• Commentary on office decor segues into the main topics.

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2. Gaza Ceasefire & Trump Peace Plan

[05:02–30:48]

The Breakthrough

• The panel discusses the first phase of a Trump administration-brokered peace plan for Gaza, featuring:
  • Ceasefire between Israel and Hamas
  • Release of all living Israeli hostages and return of some remains
  • Release of hundreds of prisoners by Israel, some with high Hamas profiles
  • A peace conference in Sharm el Sheikh, major international buy-in, and apparent bipartisan praise in the US

Cautious Optimism & Skepticism

• Scott R. Anderson outlines the celebratory reception but queries the depth and durability of the breakthrough.

• Ben Wittes lauds the humanitarian progress, but urges caution:

  • “It is a very good thing to have a ceasefire...But I want to understand before I credit the administration with something more than a ceasefire deal, they’ve clearly got, that I want to see that the ceasefire holds for more than a few days.” [10:02–16:32]
  • Emphasizes difficulty in achieving sustainable peace: “Show me the Treaty of Versailles before you declare Armistice Day to be more than an armistice.”
  • Warns about the fragility of both Israeli and Gazan political structures.

• Molly Roberts notes the Trump administration’s unique leverage with both Gulf States and Israel, attributing success to “egos and dealmaking.”

• Quinta Jurecic/Kate Klonick are skeptical much will endure beyond this phase; see risk of collapse, especially if provocations or unsatisfactory disarmament triggers renewed fighting.

  • “I don’t really understand what is to stop Israel from saying, hey, Hamas, you haven't disarmed to our satisfaction...I don’t really understand how this doesn’t fall apart.” – Molly Roberts [17:41]

The Two-State Solution and Politics

• Scott asserts that, remarkably, the plan revives the two-state solution as a formal diplomatic objective, marking a sharp reversal in decades of Republican policy.
  • “The big shift...is a complete 180 of the Republican Party’s approach to this conflict.” [18:34–21:11]
• Ben remains deeply skeptical of genuine Israeli government buy-in, characterizing Netanyahu’s likely approach as: “Announce whatever you want and do your photo ops, and then we’ll raze Gaza to the ground tomorrow.”
  • “You are assuming the stability of administration positions over time...just isn’t the way Trump thinks about it.” [24:15]
• Group agrees that even real progress—hostage returns, humanitarian aid—is significant, but broader peace is uncertain.

Memorable Exchanges

• “You’re relying on shame to regulate Trump...I think he will walk away from ever having done this in a heartbeat.” – Ben Wittes [26:19]
• “By no stretch of imagination...is this going to be like a real process that looks like the Trump plan step by step.” – Scott R. Anderson [28:02]
• “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” – Scott R. Anderson [28:02]

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3. Government Shutdown & Official Political Messaging

[30:48–49:38]

Unprecedented Use of Government Resources

• During the third week of the US government shutdown, federal websites and out-of-office notices are brazenly blaming Democrats—something new and overtly political.
  • Example: “You will get both a pop up and a banner...that says...the Democrats aren’t letting us do it.” – Molly Roberts [32:23]

The Hatch Act Quagmire

• The group walks through the Depression-era Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in political activity on the job.
• Molly Roberts notes that despite surface-level violations, enforcement is toothless; the law presumes the President will self-police, which is unrealistic.
  • “It seems really obvious...that this is exactly what’s happening now under the Trump administration. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Hatch act...is pretty weak.” [35:11]

Accountability Gaps

• Kate Klonick explains:
  • Private citizens can file complaints with the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), but OSC ultimately reports to...the President.
  • “There is no private right of action...you can submit these complaints online...then the investigation...ends up in a report to the President who has discretion to act.” [39:40]
  • Notable: The acting OSC head lacks credibility and the nominee has troubling associations, making enforcement unlikely.
  • Quote: “Put that all together and nobody cares about violations of the HATCH Act.” – Molly Roberts [44:47]

Historical, Legal, and Practical Frustrations

• Ben Wittes:
  • “The remedy presupposes that the President takes his ‘take care’ obligations seriously and took an oath. That actually means something.”
  • The situation is “quaint relative to our current capital-S situation.” [42:06]
• Scott introduces creative historical remedies like qui tam actions as a theoretical response.

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4. China’s Rare Earth Export Controls – AI & Economic War

[49:38–66:26]

The Move

• China imposes broad export controls on rare earth metals and any downstream/exported products containing even trace amounts, impacting US and global tech supply chains.
  • “China controls...about 70% of the supply of known supply and 90% of the refinement capacity...They have become essential to key technologies.” – Scott R. Anderson [49:38]
  • Motivated by tense US-China relations and upcoming APEC meetings; restrictions may simply be bargaining chips.

Global Economic & Security Implications

• Kate Klonick walks through how fragile and interdependent tech supply chains are—few global sources for key semiconductor chemicals (“noble gases,” neon, etc.).
  • Some such resources aren’t artificially manufactured, making dependence difficult to break.
    • “Noble gases are not makeable...you have to just find them.” – Ben Wittes [58:34]
  • Quotes: “This is like rocks versus rock and roll...US has the content...China has...the rocks, the raw materials.” – Kate Klonick [61:07]

Impact and Attribution

• Scott questions whether Trump’s earlier trade war may have provoked China’s action, though others note chip-specific restrictions were a Biden initiative.
  • “This is a threat...to the whole global economy. Because we are...pouring into infrastructure for AI development, which suddenly...has big economic ramifications.” – Scott R. Anderson [62:10]
  • “If it were just escalation in the chips area you probably could point to the Biden administration more clearly...But this is about something bigger.” – Molly Roberts [64:49]

Science Interlude

• The crew gets nerdy about noble gases, Helium shortages, and blimps; references to Primo Levi’s "The Periodic Table" illuminate the names’ origins.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On being responsibly cautious:
  “No one ever went broke going cautious, on waiting for good thing, on being excited about good things happening in Gaza.” – Ben Wittes [29:24]

• On legal remedies:
  “This actually isn’t a case of a legal violation with no remedy contemplated, but it’s just one where the remedy contemplated is super quaint relative to our current capital S situation.” – Ben Wittes [42:06]

• On the new head of OSC:
  “He described federal workers as bugmen who leach the diminishing lifeblood of the dying republic.” – Molly Roberts [44:16]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Lawfare Office Masks & Superstitions: [00:22–04:15]
• Gaza Ceasefire & Trump Peace Plan: [05:02–30:48]
• Government Shutdown & Political Messaging: [30:48–49:38]
• China’s Rare Earth Export Controls: [49:38–66:26]
• Object Lessons (Fun closing segment): [67:49–74:58]

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Object Lessons (Closing Fun)

[67:49–74:58]

• Ben Wittes: Calls for DC locals to “litter” dead sunflowers in front of the Russian embassy as minor trolling for a cause.
• Kate Klonick & Scott R. Anderson: Nostalgic reflections on aging and gardening; Scott asks listeners for spicy recipe ideas for his ghost peppers.
• Molly Roberts: Suggests baking “prinsesstårta,” a domed, green Swedish cake, recommending Nicola Lamb’s accessible baking newsletter.

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Tone and Style

Light, irreverent, and collegial—combining legal rigor with deep dives into policy, and a dash of self-deprecating humor and nerdy asides.

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For Listeners Who Missed It

This episode delivers:

• Realpolitik on the new Gaza ceasefire and why not to cheer too soon
• Frustration—and dark amusement—over American norms and accountability breaking down in the “rules” era of presidential politics
• A crisp, accessible primer on rare earth minerals, semiconductor supply chains, and how international economic policy really works
• Office lore and quirky intellect, all with the Lawfare team’s inimitable style

If you care about national security, global tech, or the state of the rule of law—and want your analysis with personality—this episode delivers.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20. Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more. So the last time we had Kate on the podcast, we admired her extraordinary background, full of knickknacks. But now you have competition because we have Ben Wittes here, where his office is a whirlwind of knickknacks at any given moment. But I'm realizing we have like a nice parallel here, because, Kate, over your shoulder, including a shirtless Vladimir Putin wearing a bear as pen's just pulled out for anybody watching on video. But. But, Kate, you have, I think, was it Audrey Hepburn whose portrait that is over your picture? Grace Kelly. That's Grace Kelly over your shoulder. And Ben, you have only slightly less beautiful face over your shoulder. Tell us who this is. This beautiful visage of vaguely ominous spookiness.

[D]

I mean, it is a mask.

[B]

Part of a set.

[D]

Actually, it's part of a set of very disturbed looking masks.

[B]

Well, where, like these have become an artifact of the law for offices that I feel like we haven't, like, given enough due credit for, along with the weird severed bunny suit head that is also hanging out on our shelves. That's a. That's a B roll for another time. Like, tell us about these masks. I want to know more about.

[D]

The masks came from Kenya. My mother is a. Does clinical trials design, and she was working on a malaria study with some army docs in Kenya, and. And they went out to, you know, visit the mosquitoes and the malaria viruses. One of the doctors bought these masks on the street in Nairobi, and his wife found them so disturbing that she made him get rid of them. So he unloaded them at my mom's office, where her staff found them so upsetting that they wouldn't let her hang them up either. And so a number of years ago, I was across the street at my mom's office, where it used to be, and I opened this closet and I found these very disturbing looking masks. And my mother got all excited and she said, if you will stand up to your staff and insist that they be hung up, you can have them. And so I went back across the street. And they're heavy, you know, with these four wooden masks. And hung them up in my office, then on the eighth floor, and have moved them downstairs and have resisted all entreaties because I'm a dutiful son who keeps his commitments to his mother. I've resisted all temptation to give in to demands that I take them down.

[B]

For the folks who can see the actual image, don't be fooled. That is not a small mask. Over a bent shoulder like it looks. That is the smallest of the three, and I think it's like two feet long. The one in our common area is like three and a half or four feet.

[D]

Feet long. They're big and they. The three of them that hang in the common area. One of our associate editors, Michaela Fogel, used to have a slogan which was, don't upset the masks.

[C]

I feel like they're judging me. That one looks aghast right now at everything I'm doing. I would never put pressure on you to remove the masks. I'd be afraid of what they would do to me.

[D]

No. That they are agitated spirits, let's just. Let's just say. But over time, they come to protect you.

[C]

I will do my best to earn that.

[D]

The masks are. Are good. It's just that they are easy to anger.

[B]

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security, the show. We invite you to join members of the Lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's big national security news stories. Joining me once again for this week, we're thrilled to have Lawfare editor in Chief Benjamin Wittes and of. Co host emeritus of Rational Security. Lest I omit that, Ben, thank you for coming back on the podcast.

[D]

Anytime.

[B]

Also returning for her third, fourth, fifth, somewhere up there, she's. She's becoming a veteran Lawfare senior editor, Kate Klonik. Kate, thank you for coming back on the podcast.

[A]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

And making her debut here on Rational Security is none other than Lawfare's newest senior editor, I think. Yeah, yeah, you're the newest. You're the last one. And we're thrilled to have senior editor Molly Roberts joining us. Molly, thank you for coming on the podcast.

[C]

I am very happy to be here.

[B]

Excellent. Well, we have a lot to talk about this week. It is nothing but weeks of big news these days, and this week was no exception. We got some stuff on the home front, some stuff overseas to talk about, so let's dig into it. Our first topic for today, piece by piece, the first phase of the Trump administration's peace plan for Gaza went into effect on Monday, resulting in the return of the last living hostages held by Hamas to Israel, among other exchanges. President Trump celebrated the moment with a triumphal speech in front of the Israeli Knesset, followed by a peace conference in Sharm el Sheikh, where the United States signed a joint statement with the heads of state of Egypt, Qatar and Turkey. While much work remains to be done on implementing the deal, even Trump's Democratic political rivals have lauded his efforts. But how much credit does the Trump administration really deserve, and where is the conflict likely to head from here? Topic 2 Uncivil Service since the US government shut down at the end of September, US agency websites and emails have been plastered with messages unequivocally blaming congressional Democrats and the radical left. It's an unprecedented use of government resources for a set of messages that looks quite political. Exactly what the Hatch act, among other laws, was intended to prevent. Are these messages consistent with the law and what is there for anyone to do about it? Out of our element China kicked off a major new phase in its economic war with the United States last week when it imposed major new export controls on rare earth metals and components derived from them, materials essential to various high end technologies, including the semiconductors that power artificial intelligence. President Trump has since responded with a threat to impose 100% tariffs on Chinese imports. But what China may really want is relaxation of export controls on AI related semiconductors imposed by the United States. How big a threat is China's weaponization of its rare earth exports? And how should the United States and allies respond? So our first topic has been the subject of a lot of inner office conversation as it has been in I think, a lot of corners in Washington, D.C. it's really been a pretty amazing week and a really amazing few days for those who follow the Middle east after more than two years, just over two years of brutal conflict in Gaza. We have, I think it's fair to say, the most concrete steps towards a resolution and a ceasefire of that conflict that we've seen to date. We've seen the return of all living hostages, Israeli hostages to Israel at this point. We've seen the return of many remains and not complete return that's still a work in progress. Hamas says it's intending to return additional remains, although I think there's some dispute about exactly where some are, whether some are available even in their custody or whether they're withholding some. And of course this is just the first part of a much bigger peace plan that the Trump administration has laid out and that it's only gotten Hamas and Israel really solidly to sign on to the implementation of the first phase of which is a ceasefire and this exchange of prisoners, hundreds of prisoners held by Israel released as well, including many high profile figures associated with Hamas, although not some of the most high profile ones that Hamas was seeking in the late stages of the negotiations. It is, to say the least, a plan that is getting a lot of applause, really from every corner of the world. Chuck Schumer said very nice things about the Trump administration and its work on this plan. A number of other Democrats have we seen. Every European country was represented by almost entirely heads of states. So at the highest possible levels in the Sharm El Sheikh conference that took place this weekend, most of them congratulating the Trump administration and the various parties and to some extent each other on the role they all played in finally bringing about a ceasefire to this brutal conflict. President Trump himself was very warmly greeted by people ranging from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President El Sisi of Egypt to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, with whom he has had a very, very difficult relationship, to say the least, since becoming president, United States but at this point shared a photo op and a fairly warm seeming one as far as one can tell from the still photos that emerging for these things. It is really, really kind of extraordinary the degree to which you are seeing everybody happy about this next step. And President Trump by many accounts deserves a fair amount of credit and he certainly thinks he does, as he celebrated with a very long winded, really, really, if I mean quite indulgent speech before the Israeli Knesset involving thanks to a long, long list of people, before actually kind of getting into any prepared remarks. It was kind of extraordinary. You can tell the man feels like this is a big moment for him and he is savoring it. And to some extent that very well may be deserved. Ben, you have followed this conflict for a long time, both the Gaza conflict and the broader Israeli Palestinian conflict. I think you have slightly different instincts, or at least initially in our assessment of exactly where the Trump administration and President Trump himself deserves credit on this and how big an accomplishment this might be. But I want to turn the floor over to you first. Tell me about what your reaction is over these events of the last week. We actually talked about this a little bit last week's episode. You weren't able to join then. Part of the reason I want to talk about this week is because you are such a close watcher of these things. I think you have amazing instincts and a sense for how different actors are kind of triangling around this conflict. So talk to us about it. Where do you think this fits in, in the broader historical arc of both the Gaza conflict and the Israeli Palestinian kind of conflict as a whole?

[D]

So the short answer is that I don't know. And I have spent way too many. I guess I was going to say years, but it's really decades now, assuming that we have reached some pivotal stage of the conflict, only to find that actually this thing operates in time measurements that are as yet unknown to humans, or at least to me. And so let's start with what's easy. It is a very good thing to have a ceasefire. It is a very good thing to have the daily destruction of Gaza not happening anymore for however long that lasts. It is a very good thing to get the 20 hostages, 20 living Israeli hostages out of Gaza, some of them gaunt as skeletons. But, you know, the taking of hostages is a great war crime, and the return of hostages is a positive good. It is a great thing to have an opportunity to bring in a lot of humanitarian aid for a lot of people in, in Gaza who are either starving or getting very close to starving. And so I do think the place to start is that life under a ceasefire is better than life not under a ceasefire. And that is true for Palestinians, that is true for Israelis. That is why, despite the Israeli government's position, the vast majority of Israelis have supported a deal roughly along these, this contours for quite a number of months now. And it is why, despite the brutal leadership of Hamas in Gaza, as far as we can tell, most Palestinians have wanted a deal roughly like this for a goodly amount of time. So it is good that it has happened. It is also commendable that the Trump administration helped bring it about, helped orchestrate it. And so that far, I am perfectly willing to go and say, hey, well done. The place where I am unsure. There's two places in which I'm unsure. First of all, a major speech to the Knesset by an American president and a big peace summit all seems to me to be wildly premature. This is not a matter of peace. This is a matter of a ceasefire. Peace involves rebuilding Gaza. It involves putting a governance structure in place in Gaza. It involves creating a framework in which Israel does not feel the need to go in and raise Gaza to the ground. Again, it involves some different modus vivendi, even in the short and medium term in the west bank, and I don't see there may be the seeds for some of that in this grandiose set of pronouncements that Donald Trump has made, but color me very skeptical of it until I see not, you know, the trucks will be rolling in with aid. And that's wonderful. But I want to understand before I credit the administration with something more than a ceasefire deal, they've clearly got, that I want to see that the ceasefire holds for more than a few days. I want to see that there is some second phase of this that is, other than you've reduced Gaza from a kind of city state of 2 million people that's dependent on aid to a tent city that's of 2 million people that's dependent on aid. And I want to see some sense that the Israeli government, having gotten what it really cares about in this arrangement done, which is the 20 living hostages out, is not going to take the first provocation, which will happen, by the way, there will be a provocation in or from Gaza to then begin hostilities again. And so the Trump administration, in its usual way, has created, you know, a world historical moment out of what is actually going to be a very fragile ceasefire. And, you know, show me the Treaty of Versailles before you declare Armistice Day to be more than an armistice. That's my first thing. The second thing is I believe the Israeli government has been living on fumes for any number of months, and the only thing that has been keeping it going has been the fact that the war is ongoing. I don't believe it will survive more than a few more weeks now that unless the hostilities start again. And so I don't know what Israeli government you're going to be dealing with, you know, six months from now, nor do I know what government you're going to be dealing with in Gaza. And so, for all of those reasons, I would say, look, if you're a family member of one of the hostages, if you're, you know, a Palestinian who's getting relief from the conflict, if you're somebody who's being demobilized in the, in the IDF right now in reserves. Yeah. I do not begrudge you a lot of relief and joy at what happened over the weekend. But if you're a policy analyst in Washington watching the administration, I would just say go a little bit easy on the enthusiasm.

[C]

Yeah, I broadly agree with Ben. I think as far as the question of how much credit Trump deserves, he obviously deserves credit for having achieved something. I think that he has a particular pull over the Gulf states because he's willing to make deals with them. He wants a plane, they get a chip deal. There's a tight relationship there. And I think also, of course, he has some sway over Netanyahu because Trump is really popular in Israel and if he starts saying bad things about Netanyahu, that's terrible news for Netanyahu. So he was willing to say, essentially the reporting indicates will walk away from you or I'll walk away from you. And I think that that did matter. But yeah, I'm not sure what the something is. The big question for me is how we get from here to there or how we get from here to Tony Blair.

[B]

I guess he is in phase two. He's not the end. He's in phase two, not phase five.

[C]

He's in phase two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. But right now, this kind of, you know, heaven where everybody's holding hands or Tony Blair is holding hands with, I don't know who exactly. Hamas?

[A]

Not really.

[C]

I don't understand how that happens. And I don't really understand what is to stop Israel from saying, hey, Hamas, you haven't disarmed to our satisfaction, which I don't understand why Hamas would do, and then deals off. I don't really understand what's to stop Israel from saying we detect what looks like a buildup effort here and we're going to do another strike. I just, I don't really understand how this doesn't fall apart. So I don't feel terribly optimistic. Well, of course, I feel very grateful that anything has happened and I feel grateful for the return of the hostages and the prisoners on both sides.

[B]

So, you know, I have like a particular take on this that I want to share with you guys. And it's something I haven't like heard quite articulate this way before. I talked about a little bit last week, but I want to elaborate on a little more. I wrote a little short piece for Brookings about this over the weekend.

[D]

Speaking of grandiosity, you announced that the two state solution has been revived.

[B]

That is, but that is actually what has happened. That's what's kind of extraordinary about this in like kind of a wild way. Like what I think is really extraordinary and Trump is literally, I think the only person who could have pulled this off, in part because it's so brazen is the big shift. The thing that has really shifted in this whole regard is a complete 180 of the Republican Party's approach to this conflict. And in terms of that, the position is willing to push on the Israeli government. We have to bear in mind, since the first Trump administration, to some extent before that, but particularly since the first Trump administration, we have really seen the idea of a two state solution even being a viable option of there being any sort of engagement for a long time with the Palestinians. That's lightened up a little bit. Trump 2.0, not in Trump 1.0 really being anathema. Remember, this is the Trump administration that recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, even though that was a case of territory that they occupied as a result of armed conflict that recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, even though East Jerusalem is also considered to be occupied territory by many people in the international community. Because it was not supposed to be part of Israel initially. Right. Under the supposed party UN sort of special arrangement. It is the group party that changed the long standing legal opinion since the 1970s that settlements in the west bank were per se legal international law and replace it with an illegal opinion that's never been released to the public. But that doesn't reach that same conclusion. It's kind of extraordinary. And his party has followed Trump's lead on that. They didn't need a lot of help to some extent. Like the Republican Party has always been more skeptical of the Palestinians the two state solution than others. But even the presidential Republican presidents like George W. Bush, that's ultimately the tack they really took, leaned in the two state solution like his father did before him. Instead, we've seen the Republican Party really become increasingly hostile to it. Republican Party platforms for the last three presidential elections, of which there are only two platforms because they recycled the 2016 one in 2020 doesn't talk about Palestinians at all. It just talks about backing Israel and opposing, I think the most recent one, something like Hamas based anti Semitic free speech issues, particularly on US Campuses. It's the Democratic platform that has actually several paragraphs in the last several years saying a two state solution is important because without that we're in a status quo where Palestinians are permanent who live in west bank and Gaza are permanent second class citizens. And that's not acceptable under any standard of international law or humanity or general ethics. And that's not a sustainable status quo. We have to be moving towards some sort of better outcome in this arrangement. That's now the position that the Trump administration has staked out. It's really extraordinary.

[D]

But Scott, walk me through that. How has the Trump administration staked out a pro2 state solution position? And what evidence is there, if any, that they've gotten anybody in the Israeli government to buy their position?

[B]

So, I mean, the parts that we see in the plan are that they've gotten the Israelis to officially denounce any intention to annex or permanently occupy Gaza. They've guaranteed a right of return for Gazans and Palestinians who leave. I should say these are parts of the plan. These are not all things that Israel has firmly agreed to as of yet. They have basically said this is probably the most important part, that Gaza will ultimately be governed by the Palestinian Authority. That's significant for two different things. One, it suggests the Palestinian Authority, albeit after some reforms which the French and Saudi plans have called for, and it specifically just like kind of incorporates those reforms by reference. It suggests the Palestinian Authority is expected to be a continuing thing, which is something that's been very much in doubt for many years. And including the Trump administration's position towards that, I would say was in doubt. Although again, the last eight months there's been more engagement with the Palestinians. And importantly, it says that they're going to be the ones governing Gaza. That goes back to frankly, the Oslo model, which is that Gaza and the west bank were unified under Palestinian Authority as a transitional step towards a Palestinian state. And then the plan itself says once we reform the PA and once we get Gaza on the process for reconstruction and that in turn requires stabilization and peace, we may be on a trajectory towards Palestinian statehood, which it recognizes the aspiration of Palestinians. It stops shorts of saying, absolutely, that is the one driven outcome from that. Like it doesn't go quite that far. That's saying like this is 100% where we're going to go. And I suspect that's in part because it doesn't have 100% buy in by the Israelis and probably by or even.

[D]

20% buy in or no, has zero.

[B]

Buy in from the Israelis. Yeah, absolutely. But it is really extraordinary. And then this is coming from the President who members of his own party, many of whom supported him, like some of his close supporters in Congress were passing legislation trying to officially relabel the west bank of Judea and Samaria in U.S. legislation and in U.S. documentation. Right. It was just earlier this Congress and now not only did that is that the stated U.S. preference and plans and they got the Israelis to sign on to at least the first step of this plan. The most important part of that I think is like, remember this is the Israeli government that just three weeks ago was saying there will never be a Palestinian state. This is what Netanyahu has said at the General Assembly. It's what he said in response to European states about recognizing a Palestinian government. Right. That is really hard to reconcile with any sort of buy in into this framework work. And if you don't buy, like, maybe these really are like, yeah, we're on step one and then we're going to bail. But the administration's got like its whole credibility baked into this. Like, like it's not easy for them to let them bail.

[D]

I just want to remind you, Scott, that we live in a post truth world and that is the administration's view this week when they had to have a summit at Sharm El Sheikh and everybody had to get along. And, and it was only a few months ago that Trump was issuing beachfront, practically selling beachfront property in Gaza with AI generated videos and a big Trump hotel, Gaza City, which nobody has ever seen Gaza City could possibly think about without a certain sense of nausea. So I, I just think you're assuming the stability of administration positions over time. That may be like a good State Department lawyer, the way the State Department thinks about these things, as well it should, but just isn't the way Trump thinks about it. And more importantly, isn't the way Netanyahu thinks about Trump thinking about it. And so, you know, Netanyahu's view is announced as long as I don't have to agree to it. Announce whatever you want and do your photo ops and then we'll raise Gaza to the ground tomorrow. I mean, like, why does any of this bind Netanyahu for a second?

[B]

Because I, at this point, it's because it's the Trump peace plan and he cannot let this fail without suffering a huge egg in his face. And every Gulf state and Arab government which now are going to be involved with this consultative body they supposedly Trump is going to be personally involved in, I kind of doubt it. Tony Blair is going to be involved in. Jared Kushner is probably going to have a role. Everybody who wants to see progress on these fronts is going to be able to deploy Trump's own ego against him. That's actually big. I think that actually is like a major driver of this whole thing.

[D]

I think you're relying on shame to regulate Trump and to regulate the parties.

[B]

Ego, not shame.

[D]

Ego.

[B]

Very different thing.

[D]

And I think he will walk away from ever having done this in a heartbeat. He's flip flopped on Ukraine 30 times in a month and a half. And his ego doesn't seem to have remotely taken a bruise by the exercise. I just don't know that I. Look, I'm not criticizing it. I actually think the substance of it is pretty good. And it's, Tony Blair needs a job. I mean, you know, like, if he wants to, like, hang out with a bunch of golfies and you know, bring about peace in Gaza. God bless. It's just don't believe it's gonna happen.

[C]

I agree with Ben. If you listen to that speech, it's just hard to take it as seriously as one might wish if he had said something that felt a little more concrete and coherent about two state solution or really anything in that speech rather than kind of gone back and forth from talking somewhat vaguely about peace in the Middle east and saying that he calls Steve Witkoff Henry Kissinger who doesn't leak and talking about Sheldon Adams wife and how she has 60 billion in the bank. Just didn't feel to me that he was there for anything much other than a little victory lap and this exciting moment where he's able to say I'm going to meet 30 world leaders, I'm going to meet some of the wealthiest people and they're all there waiting for me. He got the ego boost that might be what he was looking for.

[B]

I think that if you look at the trajectory, the things he gets his teeth into and gets ideas in his mind, look at his relationship with Kim Jong Un in North Korea for most of the first term, this ongoing years long negotiations process. When he sees an opening, when he sees this kind of window, it's big. And there's a million ways for him to be reminded about his personal buy in into this plan. And I totally agree. I don't think this plan is going to proceed smoothly. By no stretch of the imagination and probably it's not going to be like a real process that looks like the Trump plan step by step. And to be entirely fair, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Right? These plans are always going to have to be highly flexible and adaptive even at the best laid out framework and plan. And this plan is not that original. It's not a brilliant sort of like unprecedented plan. It does look a lot like what the Biden administration had laid on the table at various points. It also looks a lot like what like lots of people laid on the tables and most college freshmen after a good seminar these really Palestinian conflict could have outlined, hey, here's kind of what a plan looks like. The difference is it had the political will to drive it through the biggest opponents to proposals like this in the American political scene and the Israeli political difficulty. And maybe that won't be sustained. It probably won't be sustained to the full to the same degree. It's still a breakthrough. Like I don't think we've seen anything like this in the last 20 years. Camp David I don't know. Camp David rose up to this. It's like, kind of extraordinary.

[D]

If all it does is 2000 Camp David, I should say if all it does is get 20 Israelis alive home and give some relief to Gaza civilians, both in the form of strikes not happening and in the form of humanitarian aid coming in, that's good enough. However, I would just say hold your breath on the enthusiasm for anything beyond that until there's some indication that any of it is actually likely to happen. That's my only caution. And when it does, look, when, when, when Trump, by dint of personal involvement, got Elizabeth Tsurkov out of Iraq, I had nothing but praise for it. And I'm not above saying I hate the man very deeply. But I, he, I give him, he did a solid on this one. If he does a solid on the middle, on, on Gaza, I will have no trouble saying. I'm just saying, just no one ever went broke going cautious, on waiting for good thing, on being excited about good things happening in Gaza.

[B]

Well, I think that's as good a note as any for us in this stage of the conversation. We have a few other items we should talk about today. The other one, a little bit more on the home front about some less successful negotiations to say at least the Trump administration is engaging in so far. We are now headed into week three of the government shutdown here in the United States, just on the cusp of it. Not the longest shutdown even in recent memory. I've lived through like half a dozen at this point. I think it's right smack in the middle of the curve, even on the shorter side so far, although there's no sign of it ending anytime soon. But there are a couple of unique characteristics of it, one of which you will notice the moment you log into almost any government website, and that is that nearly every government web page, the ones I've all seen, I'm assuming maybe there's one that didn't make it on there, although I have my doubts. Has a big banner splashed across the top blaming some combination of the Democrats or quote, unquote, the radical left or the angry left for the shutdown and saying, quickly, the Trump administration wants to keep the government open. This is the Democrats false. It is kind of an extraordinary thing to say the very least. Not something I ever recall seeing during prior shutdown, certainly, frankly, not something I recall seeing of any, really. That doesn't resemble much of anything I'd seen the government do in my time that I can think of in the last few years. Even during the first Trump administration. And it raises lots of not just ethical questions, but also legal questions. Molly, you spent some time digging into this for Lawfare last week. Talk to us a little bit about what you observe, what we understand is happening and where it fits into kind of the legal framework for these sorts of things.

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. So you mentioned these websites. If you go on any website, for example, the U.S. department of Agriculture, you will get both a pop up and a banner, often with kind of a bright red background that says something along the lines of, unfortunately, Democrat senators have shut down the government or the radical left has shut down the government for the Department of Agriculture. We want to feed you and clothe you, but the Democrats aren't letting us do it. That's the upshot of the messages. And combined with that, there are out of office emails that are coming from employees of various federal agencies that say essentially the same thing. And it turns out that the White House Office of Management and Budget circulated some template language for those. Another more recent and even more glaring, which you'd think would be difficult, example would be Kristi Noem. At airports, people are waiting in line at security and they get this video that says TSA is trying really hard to keep you safe and be efficient. But unfortunately the Democrats aren't letting us essentially. So a lot of people looking at this said these are super clear violations of the Hatch act, which is a depression era law that prevents federal employees from basically engaging in politics while on.

[D]

The job and has nothing to do with Senator Orrin Hatch.

[C]

Shockingly, yes, I did learn this. I would have guessed different.

[A]

Was he even born yet?

[C]

Also, shockingly, he might not actually close. You'll have to check me on that. I'm not 100% sure, but maybe not.

[B]

I'll find out. Now I'm curious.

[C]

In any case, the Hatch act, it's depression era because the New Deal was employing a ton of people and giving American people a lot of money that they had the government to thank for. And Congress basically was worried that if federal employees, as there was some evidence that they were doing, started using that money to pressure, bully, pay off voters into voting for Democratic politicians, that this, as Congress put it, powerful, invincible, perhaps corrupt. Sorry, that's as the Supreme Court put it, writing about the Hatch Act, a powerful, invincible, perhaps corrupt political machine would be created using all these federal employees paid for at public expense to entrench the political party in charge. So that's why the Hatch act was created. It seems really obvious when you look at it that this is exactly what's happening now under the Trump administration. Unfortunately, it turns out that the Hatch act as interpreted by the Office of Special Counsel is pretty weak and the letter of the law is not necessarily being violated as clearly as its spirit is here.

[B]

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[D]

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[B]

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[B]

So there is a set of kind of institutions that deals with this. It is we have the Office of Special Counsel in the government. We have a number of enforcement mechanisms and during prior administrations these have sometimes had some toots, although mostly about looking at kind of the application to lower level federal employees violating not directives from the top. Kate, talk to us a little bit about this. I know you've done some thinking about this, like what are the remedies that look like for this and how much is that part of the problem? You can have a legal violation, but you don't necessarily have a remedy for it. This is like the thing that really breaks people's brains. I feel like the first week of law school is this distinction and it bothers some of us to this very day, 15 years later. So talk to us about how that kind of framework applies in this context.

[A]

It's so interesting, Scott, because I feel like this comes up every time I talk. Maybe it's just the sign of the times, but I feel like there's every time I talk on rational security, I'm like, and then there was this time we used to have the rule of law. And also I'm remiss to say that the rule of law is actually maybe less of a thing than anyone ever thought it was. And so I guess I was going to say that yeah, this is a great example of that. This is such a good example. And I kind of had a lot of fun researching this also just kind of doing some of that research that I looked up all on the congressional website and official documents, but then just kind of had some fun and put into ChatGPT. And so one which I will share some of the funny things that Chad CBT told me about what happens when you can't sue for a violation of the Hatch Act. But first of all, I wanted to fact check and say that Carl Hatch is who the Hatch act is named after. He was a senator for New Mexico. And that Orrin Hatch, bless his soul, wherever it is, was five years old when the Hatch act came About. So, yeah, he was born, could have been named after him had he been just precocious enough.

[C]

I was wrong. Consider me fact checked.

[A]

So basically. So Molly is totally correct. This has to come there that you file a complaint. Anyone can file a complaint through the Office of Special Counsel and you can submit these complaints online. Okay. And then the OSC ostensibly investigates and the investigation kind of ends up in a report to the President who has discretion to act. We can see where this is going in terms of problems for enforcement. There is no private right of action, which is a legal term for those not familiar. That means that, like, you can't sue in federal court for a violation. Like, I can't sue in federal court because I saw one of these notices in violation of the Hatch act on the Department of Agriculture website. And you can't sue for damages to force the government to be punished. But you can file all these complaints with the Office of Special Counsel, as people have been doing. And then this was kind of the fun. The fun kind of part, the fines or the punishment is there was the Hatch act was modernized in 2012. And they basically, the penalties can include reprimands, fine, suspension or removal or a bar from federal government for five years. That would be really like, I don't. But it doesn't, like, it doesn't say, I guess this is actually the state or local employees that would have the bar from federal government. So that is, those are kind of the violations. And I don't know, like, I mean, I'm sure all of those people will be pardoned by President Trump before they leave office for their violations of the Hatch act in the telephone book of pardons that. That comes out in. In. In 2028. Anyways, the thing that I thought was interesting was basically like, I put into ChatGPT, like, here's all the stuff I know about, like, how the Hatch act works. And I said, but what if the Office of the Special Counsel is in fact ordering the Hatch act violations in the first place or the President's office is ordering the hatchet violations in the first place. And chatgpt in his wisdom was like, that's a sharp and important question. And it exposes a potential accountability gap in the enforcement structure of the Hatch Act. I'm like, oh, you're about as useful and sycophantic as one of my one Ls.

[B]

It's been a harsh episode for early law students, unfortunately. I feel like already I want to.

[D]

Blow the mind of the early law students because the early law student is now Thinking as Scott just described, Whoa. Can you have a legal violation without a remedy? And the answer is, of course, yes, you can. But this actually isn't an example of that, because the Hatch act contemplates a remedy which is embedded in Kate's description. And I just want to tease out a minute. The Hatch act remedy is a report to the President. And the idea is that the President who swore this oath to take care that the laws be faithfully executed will read a report from the Office of Special Counsel and say, I can't have people in my administration violating the Hatch act and will take administrative action to correct it. That is the remedy contemplated by the Hatch Act. And so it's not that there isn't a remedy, it's that the remedy presupposes that the President takes his take care obligations seriously and took an oath. That actually means something. So I just want to say this actually isn't a case of a legal violation with no remedy contemplated, but it's just one where the remedy contemplated is super quaint relative to our current capital S situation.

[C]

Yeah. And to your point, Kate, about what if the Office of Special Counsel directs this, and I guess to your point also, Ben, of what if the government that's supposed to be enforcing against this is just doing this instead? If you go on the Department of Justice's website where it is. So what is this hat? I'm sorry, I need to know what the hat is before I continue.

[D]

It's the who is the administrator of Doge hat?

[C]

Who is the administrator of Doge Hat. Good.

[B]

So we call niche mercandi niche merchandising. Thank you.

[C]

In any case, if you go on the Department of Justice website that talks about how political activity is restricted under the Hatch act, there's a possible Hatch act violation at the top of that website on the page where you're looking at it. But the Office of Special Counsel in particular. You're totally right, Ben. If they made a report, it would go to the President. So that's a point where this fails. But no report is going to the President either. The previous head of the osc, he probably would have taken the alleged violations seriously. He certainly did when there were complaints about Biden officials. But he said that the mass removal of probationary employees without proper procedure was probably a violation of the law. And so Trump terminated him. And now the acting head of the OSC is US Trade Representative Jamison Greer. The nominee, whose confirmation hearing has been Postponed is a 30 year old podcast host and substacker. It's supposed to be Trump's favorite substack. I don't know whether Trump truly reads the substack or whether someone told him it was his favorite substack. But this guy, Pauline Gracia, he is the nominee, but with the postponed hearing because he's had associations with neo Nazis and because he described federal workers as bugmen who leach the diminishing lifeblood of the dying republic. So put that all together and nobody cares about violations of the HATCH Act. There are other laws that possibly could be in play here, like the Anti Deficiency act, the anti Lobbying Act. Nobody's going to enforce any of these. And that's exactly the problem. And the President is not going to do anything about it. And that's the machine that Congress was talking about.

[A]

So I just want to say that, like, the, the. What did he describe as bugman federal workers? This is like giving Patrick Henry or like some type of, like, I feel like this is like a level of rhetoric that hearkens to like, a prior era. I just like, kind of, that has nothing to do with the Hatch Act. But there is like, I don't know that this entire period I'm taking like, comfort in the fact that, like, our republic survived people beating each other with canes on, like, the Senate floor. And so I'm like, well, we're not there yet. Just calling people bugmen. What's to. There's so much further to fall.

[C]

Well, it's very much yet, though. That's the first step on the road. I call them bug men, you know, I mean, what, are you gonna squish them? Right? It's very much the first step on the road to the canes. Terrible.

[B]

You know, I will say, like, we did a couple of pieces that covered similar terrain during the first Trump administration, if you all recall. Like, the thing that was really remarkable is like, Trump accepted the Republican nomination on the South Lawn, right. Of the White House. Now, it was during the pandemic, and.

[D]

Also Kellyanne Conway was found to be in violation of the Hatch act at least twice and publicly ridiculed the finding in public. So it, I mean, it wasn't. This isn't actually a new issue. And in some ways it's a less offensive presentation than others because it's not like, you know, Pam Bondi or Kristi Noem is otherwise behaving, you know, as an a, you know, as a non partisan official. Right. And so if the Justice Department says something that's in violation of the Hatch act, how is that different from, say, the daily conduct of the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

[B]

It's tricky. I mean, when we looked at this, at the history of not just the Hatch act, but a lot of like internal dealing ethics guidelines, particularly in the executive branch, you've seen Congress like not respond to violations, periodic sporadic violation of the past. You've seen the executive branch and the Office of Legal Counsel interpret them narrowly, more and more narrowly, and including particularly in relation to the president and Executive office of the President, particularly, you've seen them really restrict a lot of ethics guidelines and how they apply there really since the 1980s. And then you saw Congress actually amend and restrict certain things, particularly about like employing family members. There used to be more strict statute restrictions on Congress actually rescinded and modified some of those, if I recall, recall correctly, I think in the 1990s. And that came up in the context of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and others during the first Trump administration. So, like, this is kind of a chronic difficulty and it does raise this question, like, what could you do different if Congress ever did take this seriously? And maybe it will this time around, as I think it's learning the lesson of not having addressed it after the first Trump administration to actually amend something because you need to find a different sort of remedy other than executive branch self enforcement. And that's not something we've gotten comfortable doing. And frankly, even efforts to do it raise big constitutional questions because we live in the era where at least a solid majority of this Supreme Court is convinced of the unitary executive theory, which basically says the executive enforces the law, it's all beholden to the president. And so how do you have self enforcement? The president, I'll say the one thing I've always drifted back to because it's intellectually interesting and it's a historical model that there that isn't used except in one context this day is the Kitam action, which is a situation in the False Claims act context where you can have.

[D]

What year was that law passed, Scott?

[B]

I don't know.

[D]

Actually, I should never 1790 or something.

[B]

But the original KITAM action. Well, the amazing thing is if you look in the Kitam action for those who may not. No, Ketam is like where if there is corruption against or defraud against the government, a private citizen can sue who's otherwise uninvolved but becomes aware of it, sues on behalf of the government. And either the government steps in, takes over the suit, and the person gets a share of whatever money is recovered, or in certain select circumstances, fairly narrow but select circumstances, that individual can pursue the suit on their own on the government's behalf and again gets a slice of whatever damages that they can recover as well as attorneys fees. And what's crazy is that this mechanism was super widely used in the early Republic for like the first 30, 40, 50 years. And it makes a lot of sense because you were dealing with a government with super, super low levels of bureaucratic capacity. There wasn't an easy way to self police across the country in colonial times. So what did they do? They started these causes of action. And it's actually there's so much early practice that even in the heyday of Justice Scalia, the Supreme Court, and I think it was 2000, said Key Tam actions, at least in the False Claims act context, are totally constitutional, even though they are literally impossible to reconcile with standing doctrine as it's generally applied by the Supreme Court. They literally said yeah, but there's so much historical practice like we just have to accept it. There's like no avoiding it. This is 100% okay. It's crazy, but like this is sort of creative thinking I think Congress has to get into if they're actually going to try and address these things in an era where you don't have reliable executive branch leadership that's going to reliably enforce the them. But who knows if Congress ever really gets around it. Well, speaking of things that are a little out of the ordinary, we saw an extraordinary step by the government of the People's Republic of China this past week. It's a step that I feel like people have been worried about talking about the possibility of for frankly the better part of a decade now in certain circles, I think more popularly, at least for the last four or five years, particularly as we have been in this kind of escalating AI gold rush of an extent where we're super sensitive and become increasingly sensitive to the components technology that is fueling AI seen as like the critical technology for a huge economic and assorted other boons in the next five, 10 to 20 years. And that is China's control of rare earth metals, rare earth critical minerals, rare earth minerals. It's got a bunch of different names, essentially a bundle of elements of which China controls, I think about 70% of the supply of known supply of and 90% of the refinement capacity of in the world that have become essential components to a variety of key technologies, whether it's armaments, whether it is high end vehicles, particularly electronic vehicles, and then perhaps most importantly semiconductors that fuel and provide the Horsepower that creates AI and powers AI. China this week imposed export controls suggesting that they were going to broadly or essentially require licensing to not only export any of these rare earths to foreign markets, particularly those that are engaged in semiconductor productions. That's like the United States and to some extent Europe I suspect, but also that they're going to limit the export of components that contain all of them. And then they were going to do something that will sound a little familiar for those who have studied U.S. exports for the last 10 or 15 years. They were going to regulate downstream products that contained as little as 0.1% of Chinese origin rare earth minerals. They said, hey, we are going to actually regulate your ability to re export those to these target countries. We have a concern. Technically they're not banning it, technically they're requiring licenses. But the history and experience that companies have had with these licenses is very difficult. They're very onerous. A number of companies in the automobile space where these have become an issue with electronic motors over the last few years have actually shifted to buying entirely Chinese produced motors as a whole because they are not subject to this regime, whereas the components were. So the onerous bureaucratic requirements has the power to shape the whole supply chain to some extent, at least in certain industries. It's a pretty extraordinary step. So Kate, talk to us about why it's happening now and how big a deal this is, particularly from the perspective of AI, but also the impact that could have frankly on the whole US and to some extent global economy.

[A]

Yeah, so this has been kind of, and I will admit that I am in the midst of getting up to date on kind of all of these supply chain issues around AI, all of the chip manufacturing and the chip wars, everything else, and the global marketplace that kind of plays into this. It's absolutely fascinating. It's incredibly complicated. The ways in which, and I love like a good system, I love like, you know, the ways in which these systems are kind of inter relying on each other in kind of very old fashioned ways. So for example, like there just was always a way that like China got certain it was cheap and easy and it was reliable. How they got certain types of necessary materials to do chip manufacture from overseas meant that they just never actually had to invest and had no pressure to invest in starting to manufacture them on their own. We obviously are seeing a real shift in, in globalization from the last 20 to 30. A lot less trust between countries, a lot less trust in trade partnerships, a lot less of the so called abundance or neoliberal mentality that we're going to everyone growing means that we all get better type of idea. And so this was a bunch of chatter on Twitter and other places has basically said that this was actually a bargaining move that China put down ahead of apec. Like trying to basically put them in a position of strength going into those situations. And it's unclear if it will, they'll follow through. But that effectively the fact that they're willing to do this and even to say this is just this massive, massive blow to kind of global relations and trust with China which they everyone is always kind of unpins and needles about because no one, you know, everyone is very aware of how reliant our entire technology sector is on Chinese technology and manufacturing. The thing that I will kind of point out on this is that I kind of, I'm wondering and one of the things that I have heard from some of the people in the Chinese China experts that I've talked to is this kind of had the same, this news from China, this announcement and Trump's retaliation to it on Friday in which he said that I can't believe China's doing this in a truth social tweet. I can't believe China is doing this. And we're going to react by putting 100% tariff on Chinese goods which was seen by many as like there needed to be a strong retaliation, but maybe not that strong, but that this was, this was actually China's move was seen as like a long term consequence of Trump's earlier tariffs that he had like threatened and that this had the same effect on the US Markets. And the Trump administration was as surprised by China's announcement in this regard as China was surprised by Trump's decision to suddenly level out of the blue tariffs that you wouldn't have passed under the Grammy, like anyone who studied the Gram Leach Bliley act wouldn't have passed. So I think that was kind of to put this in perspective, there have been a lot of I think surprises by people on both sides. This has long term intelligence and national security kind of implications. This has huge implications I think for trade deals going forward and the stability of like these zones for growth and inter reliance on all of these. I mean there's just a lot of pieces that are reliant on rare earth metals and there is going to be an increasing demand to diversify the sourcing on those. But anyways, one of the things that I really dug into today and I did want to kind of say talk about was the Dean Ball had this great thread on X Dean Ball is a policy [e-mail] and a senior fellow@fai. And he was kind of going into why this was such a big deal. And one of the things that we kind of pulled out, I think, you and I, Scott, and we're kind of like, like that's an interesting observation, was that there were some consumable materials needed for semiconductor manufacturing from China that cannot be made domestically in China. And even those consumables are often degradable, meaning one can only stockpile so much. And I was kind of. At first, I think we were both like, well, what consumers can't you stockpile? And the answer to that is kind of neon gases and photogenic materials that are used in the manufacture of semiconductors. But then our next question was like, why the hell can't China make their own neon gases or noble gases for the purposes of manufacturing semiconductors? That seems like something that they could be on top of.

[D]

I can tell you the answer to that.

[A]

Oh, then tell me. I want to know if you're. If you're better than my research.

[D]

Well, so noble gases are not makeable because they, by the nature of what they are, what makes them noble gases is that they don't bond with other. With other chemicals, and they're highly unreactive. They're highly unreactive. And so you have to just find them. And so, for example, the world is running out of helium right now because we keep making balloons and releasing helium into the atmosphere. And, you know, it's actually like there's a limited supply of it, and you can't just collect it from the atmosphere. You have to get it in these pockets that are mostly underground. And so if you happen to have a landmass that doesn't have pockets of argon gas, and it's not like you can just manufacture it. You got to buy it from someone who's got it.

[A]

Yeah, so that's totally. That is exactly correct. The noble gases are not. Not super manufacturable. They're not manufacturable. It's like a whole process. I will say that's only one part that's true of noble gases. But there's a bunch of types of gases like neon gases and things like that that actually are byproducts of steel manufacturing processes and other types of processes, except that they have to be insanely pure. Like, those processes. Like, they're always like. Again, you're like, okay, China has no problem making steel, but it actually, actually turns out that, like, creating places that will basically be clean enough and pure enough to, to reliably give you very high quality neon gases or things like that that you need for, for these processes. They're just like a few places that do them really well and there's never been a problem getting those gases from other places in the world. They are made by two companies, one in France, one in Germany, and companies in Korea and Japan. And those are where China had long standing and absolutely no like reason to ever doubt that they would, they would have issues getting those gases. So it'll be interesting to kind of see like, I mean, also like it's interesting always, I think, to hear Europe in play, in the play and raw materials on anything ever. So like, it'll be interesting to see kind of how this plays out. But just, but just generally I think that this is like part of, you know, this is part of a, to kind of zoom way out for a second. This is part of a bigger geopolitical kind of conversation in which like China is going to do what they do best, which is manufacturing all the way down. But China has a lot of people and they do have a really reliable labor market and everything else. But they also like really are still super dependent on American content, even though a lot of it is a lot illegal over there. And so I actually think that there's going to be this very high, low Internet stack kind of moment and brinksmanship is my long term thing that we'll see play out, which is like US has the content, they have the music, they have the culture, they have like a lot of the stuff, they have the platforms that deliver it. And China has like, you know, the rocks and like the raw materials and it's going to be like rocks versus rock and roll is kind of like, kind of, I think really like a long term struggle and somewhere in the middle is going to be Europe.

[B]

It's like an absolutely fascinating development, if a little bit of a scary one. I mean, Dean Ball, who we should note, among other things, was the author of the Trump administration's AI plan, he was in the Office of Science and Technology Policy for like a hot three or four months. I met him the other day or a couple weeks ago, and he's pointed out, he said, basically, I came in to write the plan, then I left because I'm not the right guy to administer the plan, but I was the right guy to write the plan. And it's an interesting plan. I think there are a lot of things that people like in the plan, even though people quibble with parts of it. The point he makes is this is a threat not just if taken, applied strictly, these export controls could be a threat to the whole global economy. Because we are on the verge. We are frankly under a state of kind of false economic stimulus because we have so much money pouring into infrastructure for AI development, which suddenly, if all of that is a bad investment because you can't get the chips or the materials to make the chips that you need, it will have big economic ramifications all over the place. Which I think tells you a little bit about something about the weird spot AI has come to play in our current economic moment, which is also is kind of telling. But, you know, a key point I think is really interesting here is. And Ben Ormali, I would welcome your thoughts on this. Like, how much is the Trump administration kind of to blame for this sort of thing by opening the trade war in the first place? Because you would think there would be a reciprocal element. Like traditionally, like all wars, you go for, there's an escalation ladder, right? Any sort of competition, and usually you go notch by notch, up by up. I think everyone expected China to step up the escalation ladder on rare earths as strategic competition increased, as China and United States became more clearly economic rivals. Because it's really interesting for them to do this now because remember, the Trump administration has actually like relaxed a lot of its chip constraints to some extent. Right. Like they've opened the door from for some more exports. So it's weird for them to be pulling this out about, you know, just that issue. Instead, it seems like this is a really big hammer because the whole war is much bigger. It's over the whole trade relationship. And we have to bear in mind there's meetings about that set to take place in just a few weeks. The timing of this does not seem like a coincidence. And notably these restrictions don't go into place until December, which is after those meetings. So maybe they never go into place if there's some sort of negotiated solution. But it's clearly, in my mind seems designed to put a lot of pressure. And it's not just about the chip restrictions because again, those have already been lightened. They've made some progress there. Even though it's clearly meant to be reminiscent in the structure of the export controls to u. Export controls on chips. I don't think that's a coincidence. It doesn't seem like that's what they're aiming for. It seems like they're aiming for much bigger trade relationship. Does that sound right to you or am I.

[D]

Off base?

[C]

Yeah. No, I mean, I think if it were just escalation in the chips area, you probably could point to the Biden administration more clearly than you could to the Trump administration. Because it was the Biden administration who put the export controls into place that prevented the leading edge chips from going to China and also were supposed to make it more difficult for manufacturing equipment from asml, which is in the Netherlands, to go there too. And then the Trump administration who eased up. So definitely I think that this is about something bigger. And of course these restrictions aren't just about chips either. They have to do with cars too. I think the automobile industry, I mean, obviously arms manufacturers, but then cars. And so it is something bigger as far as the impact, but as far as the impetus, I would guess, yes, it has to do with the broader trade war because on chips, Trump has been giving ground.

[B]

Anything else essential we should get in here? Very useful comment on noble gases. Very useful. I was impressed you knew that off the dome. I did not know what noble gases were. A middle age, once you said it, I was like, oh yeah, that's right, Chemistry, that was a thing back there.

[D]

Gases with eight electrons in their outer shell.

[B]

All right, I am impressed.

[A]

This is Ben. Ben. I don't know if you know this about Ben, but Ben has like, also has a human sized slide rule and various other types of like, he's, he's got like, he has. Comes from a deep science family. So I mean, there you go.

[B]

I know the scientist parents like the.

[A]

Noble, the noble gases thing, but I appreciated it.

[C]

Ben, I never knew what made them noble, so.

[D]

Oh yeah, it's that they don't interact with others.

[A]

They're very neutral.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

It'S where the phrase, it's where the name comes from. And in fact, if you read Primo Levy's memoir, he was a chemist before he was sent to Auschwitz. And the first chapter of his memoir, which is called the Periodic Table, is called Argonne, which is about how his family was kind of elite and didn't associate with other Jewish families. And so he kind of names it after the noble gases.

[A]

I know this is going to be super nerdy, but like I remember reading about the Hindenburg and like blimp travel, like when I was, you know, like learning about that and being like, like, why did they fill this with hydrogen?

[D]

Because it was so unstable. Because the United States wouldn't sell the Nazis helium.

[A]

This is exactly right. And so this is like. And this is when I, so I was like in elementary school when I first learned that helium was actually a highly controlled and rare but very stable. We would not have had the Hindenburg disaster if they had in fact filled the the blimps with helium instead of hydrogen.

[B]

Everyone would have been speaking in like squeaky voices. So it would have been very undignified. Not very noble at all, actually, some might say. But regardless, that is unfortunately all the time we have together this week. But this would not be Rational Security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come until we are back in your podcatcher. Ben, what do you have for us this week?

[D]

So I do not usually urge listeners of Rational Security to commit violations of municipal ordinances, but I have a little new campaign of trolling the Russian Embassy and I just want to share what I am doing with people and if people on their own volition decide to take part in it, that really would be a lovely thing. I don't want to urge it because it could be considered incitement. But you know, as people may know, we grew a nice sunflower garden across the street from the Russian Embassy this summer. And sunflowers being a national symbol of Ukraine, and it drives the Russians crazy that There are these 8 foot tall sunflowers across the street from the embassy. And now it is the end of sunflower season and the, the winds are, are picking up and the temperatures are cooling and the sunflowers survived the summer and despite occasional Russian attempts to kill them, they have made it to their natural deaths. And so there are about a hundred dead sunflowers about the height of Scott Anderson standing across the street from the Russian Embassy. And if you walk over there and you grab one and you pull, it will just come out of the ground. So what I have been doing every day for the past few days is grabbing one sunflower, walking across the street to the embassy and just oops, dropping the sunflower in front of the embassy and leaving the Russians a stalk of a dead sunflower and then they have to come out of the embassy and clean it up. And yes, it is illegal because it is littering. And in the District of Columbia littering is not legal. But it is all organic. It's not, you know, plastic. And besides, the Russian embassy will clean it up for you. So, you know, if you want to join me in this campaign, which I call Litter With Me, you know, and you happen to be in the D.C. area, tweet or Blue sky or Instagram or whatever, you use a dead sunflower picture in front of the Russian embassy at me, and I will share it.

[B]

Well, thank you, Ben, for sharing. That little bit of borderline criminal directive makes me very nervous. But that's okay, Kate. What did you bring for us? What are you inciting us to do in this very time?

[A]

I'm going to bring you not an ulcer, Scott Anderson.

[B]

Look, I'm not Ben's personal.

[D]

It's fine.

[A]

You're welcome. I have my sweatshirt. I'm wearing an old sweatshirt. It is 20 years old. I realized that the other day when I pulled it out of a drawer. I was like, oh, yeah, I just bought this. This is. I bought this right before I graduated from Brown. And then I realized that that was actually not just. It was 20 years ago. And I was like, oh, this is a practically new sweatshirt. And then I like real. You know, in my mind, that is still true. And I just kind of is like. I don't know. That was my. That was my moment of, like, kind of reflection and existential crisis of the day was realizing how old my college sweatshirt actually was.

[B]

Yeah, I have a grad school reunion coming up that I'm not gonna say the number of. I'm not able to attend, unfortunately, but it's pretty depressing. When I realized, when I did the math, I was like, oh, my God, us. We're really here, aren't we?

[A]

Yeah. The nice thing is I was in grad school for so damn long that I feel like I'm in school.

[B]

That makes it easier.

[A]

And it's like barely even a decade since I left school. I still have debt, for crying out loud.

[B]

I sprinted through it too fast. It was a bad call. I feel very old right now. For my object lesson, I'm going to come to Rat SEC listeners with a plea. Plea I've made before. That worked very well, and I'm going to try it again. I am some cereal listeners know a gardener. In the summer months. I have a fairly immaturish backyard garden that I quite love that produces, among other things, lots of different types of peppers. At the end of the season, I found good things to do with most of them. My serranos, my jalapenos were pretty small batches this year that my. I had towering basil plants that overshadowed them and prevented them from growing. So I only have a few of those. Either use them or froze them. I've got a bunch of poblano peppers.

[D]

Leave them in front of the Russian embassy. Scott.

[B]

Not yet. Not yet. We'll see what happens with my dead tomato plants when I finally have to pull them out. Of the ground, but no groni sunflowers, unfortunately. I got a set of other peppers. I know what I'm gonna do. I've got some Thai chili peppers that I've already got some hot sauces lined up for. But I put out a plant of buchalokia, which is a variant of the ghost pepper pepper. It's like in the top five or top eight spicest peppers in the world, I'm told at some point and not this plant has done gangbusters. I think I have like, like 30 or 40 of these things coming in. I've already harvested about a third of them. It's pretty wild. I'm going to get at least a couple more before the first frost comes in. I have no idea what to do these. These things.

[A]

There's no spice to the Russian embassy, Scott.

[B]

Well, I think that might actually be awesome. You can. Absolutely, yeah.

[D]

I would love some peppers.

[B]

I want to know. I want to know what to do with these things. So, rad sec listeners, you sent me some awesome suggestions. The last time I made a plea at the for my chocolate habaneros and a couple other peppers. The last garden cycle. I'm coming back for more. If you have an idea what to do with these much joloquia peppers. You got a recipe for ghost peppers? I think that would go well. Something extremely spicy that I have a lot of. Let me know because I would love to do something productive with them. I'm going to freeze a lot of them because I can't imagine I need more than one or two. But I love to use a few. And I like a good spicy hot sauce. So send it my way and I'll make up a batch and I'll bring some to the office so we can see who can handle it and who can't. With that. Let me turn it over to you, Molly, for your inaugural object lesson. Tell us what you brought for us this week.

[C]

Yeah. I hope to incite people to bake a cake. There's a particular cake that I'm gonna.

[B]

Hurl it at the Russian embassy.

[C]

No, no, no. This is such a beautiful cake. It would be. It would be a terrible waste. This is called a princessa torta. I don't know if you're familiar.

[B]

No.

[C]

It is domed and bright green with a little pink kind of rose on top. So I suppose you could do one with a sunflower and chuck it at the Russian embassy in lieu of the.

[D]

Rose, but it seems too good for them.

[C]

Fair enough. I defer to you on all matters of trolling the Russian embassy.

[A]

In any case, it is sort of.

[C]

Complicated to make, but there's a recipe in the Times now to do it that makes it manageable even for, I don't want to say a novice home baker, but not anywhere near veteran home baker. And the recipe is by this woman, Nicola Lamb, who also has a great newsletter called Kitchen Projects on which she walks you through similarly kind of complicated, ambitious recipes in a very accessible way.

[B]

Oh, I have not heard of this. I have to check this out. I thought I was very deep in the weeds on food and cooking substacks. This one's totally new to me. I'm excited about that.

[C]

She's British, so you may only be, you know, in the American food and cooking.

[B]

That's probably right. It's a lot of vegetarian cooking and cocktails too, which is my like particular angle. So this one may have skipped beyond those, but regardless, I'll have to check it out. A wonderful suggestion is very dangerous thing to talk about with your new colleagues because expectations of what will show up on the conference room table abounds at a certain point when you describe your baker. Be forewarned, but until then, we are out of time for this week's episode. Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to Visit [e-mail] for our show page, for links to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on lawfair's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media. Wherever you socialize your media, be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast, among other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was me and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan and we are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guests Kate, Molly and Ben, I am Scott R. Andersen and we will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. You walk in tired and hungry, one bad dinner away from losing it. You don't like to cook.

[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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