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- [00:00]
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- [00:31]
Scott R. Anderson
Ben, I understand you had a very interesting dinner last night.
- [00:35]
Benjamin Wittes
Well, actually I didn't. Normally I object to being stood up for dinner, but last night I had dinner plans which I made with two people who are sisters and I was excited to see them and they stood me up. And I was overjoyed to be stood up because the reason they stood me up was that their other sister, who was being held hostage in Iraq by Khatib Hezbollah, was freed. And it was just as I was like walking out of Brookings to go home and then go meet them at the restaurant. Trump tweets that he'd managed to get Elizabeth Zerkoff freed. I still have no idea if Trump had anything to do with it, but but all of a sudden I realized I was going to get stood up for dinner and I was delighted by it.
- [01:32]
Scott R. Anderson
That is the best way Donald Trump has ruined Ben Wittes's dinner in years. Hello everyone and welcome back to Rational Security, the show where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team and sometimes our friends as we try to make sense of the week's big national security news stories. It has been a big week. Things are going boom in all corners of the world and we are here to talk about it with some of my favorite colleagues and some of my favorite non colleagues who are also here on the podcast with us. Joining us this week once again are of course, editor in chief of lawfare, co host emeritus of Rational Security, Benjamin Wittes. Ben, thank you for coming back on the podcast.
- [02:14]
Benjamin Wittes
Always a pleasure.
- [02:16]
Scott R. Anderson
Joining us as well is our executive editor at lawfare, a frequenter on the podcast, Natalie Orpet. Natalie, thank you for coming back on the podcast.
- [02:25]
Natalie Orpet
Thanks for having me.
- [02:26]
Scott R. Anderson
And joining us for the first time, to my knowledge, in my stint as host, although I can't testify to what happened before that. Maybe you're on at some point, maybe not during Ben's reign. I doubt Ben even remembers or you remember at this point because it was so long ago. We've torn down Those statues long ago. And now it is my reign. And as far as I can tell, it's the first time we've had you on. We, of course, are talking about legal scholar extraordinaire, former lawyer, diplomat, a former colleague, former counselor at the State Department, Beck. Ingber Beck. Thank you for coming on the podcast for your possibly inaugural Rational Security appearance.
- [02:55]
Beck Ingber
Thanks for having me.
- [02:57]
Scott R. Anderson
You were kind enough to join us for a livestream last week to talk about one of the topics we're going to talk about and elaborate on a little bit this week. The strike on Trenda Aragua, or a boat allegedly associated with Trenda Aragua last week. And it was such a winning success, we thought we would rope you back in and abuse your generosity for another hour or so here on this podcast. So thank you for finding the time.
- [03:16]
Beck Ingber
Thanks. And I'll just note that I think this is the second time you've now called me old on a lawfair podcast.
- [03:21]
Scott R. Anderson
How did I call you old this time? I didn't say old.
- [03:24]
Beck Ingber
Well, I mean, everyone can go back to the tape. But anyway, let's continue.
- [03:28]
Scott R. Anderson
All right, we'll see. We'll see. For the record, I think we are basically the same age now. Am I old? Yes. I'm an old person, but that's fine.
- [03:34]
Benjamin Wittes
I would just like to say that you're all young children. Mere children.
- [03:42]
Scott R. Anderson
This is why we have been on the podcast. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.
- [03:45]
Benjamin Wittes
Actual old person.
- [03:47]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, regardless, at whatever age we may be, whatever vintage we are rocking, I'm thrilled to have us all here to talk through some of our big stories for this week. Topic one, uninvited aerial vehicles. The Polish government is claiming that 19 armed Russian UAVs penetrated its airspace last night, while Russians are suggesting no attack was intended, that was, in fact, an accident. Poland has invoked Article 4 of the NATO treaty, not Article 5, and worked with allied NATO aircraft to shoot the drones down. What might be happening here, and does it mean we're on our way to World War 3? Topic 2, Bibi is a killer negotiator. No, wait, switch that. Within days of the Trump administration tabling another ceasefire proposal, by some accounts making progress and pressuring Hamas to accept it. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized a set of missile strikes that killed the leaders of Hamas's political wing in nearby Qatar, who are notably the prime interlocutors for the debate over this conflict in Gaza. It's the first such move in a Gulf country, many of which have moved towards normalization with Israel through the Trump backed Abraham Accords and it is not proving popular. What explains Israel's actions and what do they portend for both the conflict in Gaza and the region as a whole? And topic 3 Cruise control a week has passed since the Trump administration took the controversial step of targeting a boat alleged to be smuggling narcotics at the direction of the Venezuelan criminal organization Trend Uragua with lethal force. The Trump administration hasn't repeated the move to date, but it says it intends to, and US Military assets, including strategic assets whose use in a counter narcotics military campaign is far from clear, have continued to build up in the region, leading some to believe that a broader campaign against Venezuela may be in the offing. How likely is such a development and what could the implications be legally and politically? So we have changed topics for this podcast like several times in the last 12 hours because news keeps happening that we feel like we have to discuss. Beck, thank you for your flexibility as we do that to you in this appearance. But the latest news, I think is the news that we woke up to this morning or that broke earlier this morning about these UAVs penetrating Polish airspace. The facts as I understand it now, though, feel free to supplement this if I am missing Part of it is that Poland is reporting there were 19 UAVs is the count we keep seeing repeated everywhere that have since been shot down over its airspace. Armed, were armed at various points, don't appear to have engaged specifically any attacks. At least one at some point hit a residence. The Russians have said, and the Belarusians have said slightly different stories. The Belarusians have suggested this was part of a military exercise that was taking place at nearby parts of Belarus, and that something about countermeasures or other technologies may have inadvertently sent these drones over Polish airspace. The Russians have suggested that they were in fact intended to be used for an attack in Ukraine and something similar happened and they ended up in Polish airspace. By accident. Regardless, both are saying this was unintended, no attack was intended. The Russians have said, hey, happy to meet with the Polish military and work this out and clarify things, but people aren't so sure. We've seen German officials, Polish officials, other European officials so far say, hey, this looks like a deliberate act. It's hard to believe this was an accident. We should be on guard. The Trump administration has not gone quite so far yet, but we have seen President Trump in the only real public statement I've seen on this so far. That may have changed last hour and I should say we're recording around 3:30 on September 10th, Wednesday here in Washington D.C. the Trump administration so far we saw President Trump send out a truth social, basically saying, looks like Russians penetrated Polish airspace. Here we go. Who knows what that means?
- [07:12]
Benjamin Wittes
Exactly. It's a very responsible statement, but it's something.
- [07:15]
Scott R. Anderson
It's something at least. Ben, I'm gonna start with you on this. What is your reaction to this incident? I mean, what do you think is most likely happen here? The range of possibilities and how big a development is this? Obviously this is a part of the world that has been on edge for a very long time. We're not quite in the height of 2022 when people in Poland genuinely were worried about an imminent Russian invasion. This recalls the Prizdow. I'm not pronouncing that properly, I don't think, but missile attack where a. I think it actually was ultimately determined to be Ukrainian missile. But what many people thought was a Russian missile landed in Poland and did end up killing some Polish citizens. This is similar to that and it's raising maybe not quite, but similar levels of alarm as that incident did. So talk to us about what the range of possibilities here. What do you think is most likely about actually happened here and how people seem to be responding.
- [08:03]
Benjamin Wittes
So I think the range of possibilities is relatively narrow actually. And the reason is that you're talking about 19 or 12 or 13, depending on how you count or whose count you believe. Separate drones and you know, as in the previous incident where, you know, some drone gets shot down and debris from the interceptor missile lands in Poland, that can happen by accident, I think, but it's actually hard for me to imagine that you can send between a dozen and two dozen missiles into Poland by accident. Poland is, for those who don't know, one of the largest and most capable militaries in certainly in Eastern Europe. So the second thing about this is that it is so. So if it's a screw up, it's a hell of a screw up. It's like the incident that Scott and I wrote about in 2022 where debris from a Ukrainian interceptor missile ends up in Poland. This would be a hell of an air traffic control failure on the part of the Russian or Belorussian military. The second thing to note is, and you can verify this by looking at Google Maps, that Poland actually doesn't have a border with Russia except the little sliver of Russia that is Kaliningrad, that that little enclave. For a missile to get from Russia to Warsaw or to the, to. To Poland, it has to cross Belarus or cross Ukraine and So to the extent that this was an accident, there's an accident, you had a lot of time to fix it. So I am skeptical of the accidental incursion thesis or claims by the Russians. And so once you dismiss those, and I don't want to entirely dismiss them because these are incompetent militaries, among other things. And, you know, the possibility of a major screw up is always a real one. But once you dispense with those, you're left with something that we've all been speculating for a long time about, which is what happens when Vladimir Putin decides, okay, let's test whether this NATO thing is still real. And there's lots of reasons he might want to do that, starting with the fact that Donald Trump has repeatedly made noises suggesting that NATO might not be real and that he likes getting along, to use his phrase, with Russia. And that one person who has not expressed stand with Poland this morning or this afternoon so far is Donald Trump. And so having an oops, we just sent a dozen missiles into Poland is a good way to figure out whether the NATO alliance still exists, other than on paper. This is one of the flashpoints that everybody has talked about, the other one being Lithuania with respect to the Kaliningrad, various spots along the Finnish border, and of course, the Narva part of Estonia, the city of Narva. But, you know, if you had asked me yesterday, is something like this going to happen in the next six months, I would have said yes. And in fact, on various Lawfare podcasts and Dog Shirt TV episodes, we've sat around speculating, which is it going to be? Is it going to be the Oops missiles in Poland or the Oops Kaliningrad? Right. And so I don't think there's anything surprising about this. And it's taken place with Russia's usual preserving space for what I call implausible deniability.
- [12:30]
Scott R. Anderson
So I do want to clarify one aspect of this. Now, President Trump, other than the truth social message I noted, hasn't said anything. Ambassador Matthew Whitaker, who folks may remember from his stint as the interim ag, now the US Ambassador to NATO, did at some point after the incident, relatively early, because some of the early reporting I saw today did say something that's a familiar line from the Trump administration or, pardon me, from the Biden administration, just in the phrasing, which I thought was notable, saying we will defend every inch of NATO territory. So it's notable that the administration as a whole hasn't been completely silent yet. I don't know if Matt Whitaker can confidently speak for the brains inside the White House. But it's worth noting the US has taken a stated position on it, just not from the highest echelon.
- [13:11]
Benjamin Wittes
I will just add that, that to anyone who's inclined to take comfort from that. We have heard from the President of France, we have heard from, you know, European leadership at the highest levels. And the statement from Donald Trump is, let's go, whatever that means.
- [13:34]
Beck Ingber
Yeah, I agree with Ben. I think that NATO Article 5, these are most effective as deterrence. We don't actually want to ever get to a place where we're invoking them. It certainly does feel like Putin may be testing the waters here. It's easy to forget. But I think one of the signature foreign policy achievements of the last administration was in the aftermath of the Russian further invasion of Ukraine, working assiduously to unite Europe in a unified message and response. And what has this administration been doing in this term? Just as it did in the first term, it's been working to sort of break NATO's back. You know, I do worry about the erosion of that deterrence. I don't think this is the kind of action that would have necessarily, you know, to the extent it was intentional, I don't think this would have happened four years ago. You know, I worry about what it means now. I think that it's worth considering what, you know, as a lawyer, of course, I go to start thinking about, well, how are people characterizing this and what are the legal authorities at issue here? Now, first and foremost, any state that's coming to the aid of Ukraine can use force against Russia in collective self defense of Ukraine. That would be lawful even if they were defending Ukraine and not their own territory. Nevertheless, it's worth considering whether or not Poland views this as an attack on its territory. And I think the invocation of NATO Article 4 rather than the invocation of Article 5, it's worth looking at the language. It's not only about what the consequences are, but the language of Article 4 says the parties will consult when the territorial integrity, et cetera, of any of the parties is threatened. Article 5 says that the parties agree that an armed attack against one of them. So there's a distinction in terms of what you're responding to. Article four speaks of a threat. Article five speaks of an armed attack. And so that suggests, at least for the time being, that Poland is not at least considering this an armed attack on its territory. That doesn't mean they don't view it as a use of force on their territory because most states with the possible exception of the United States view a distinction between a use of force and an armed attack which has to rise to a level of gravity that's more significant use of force more or less. Now I'll just add to that that we do have some history here in terms of what the US has viewed a drone incursion to look like. And it's worth looking at the Soleimani strikes. When we took that strike, we sent an Article 51 letter to the UN in which we labeled an Iranian attack on a US drone as itself unarmed attack. And Iran was taking that action in response to a drone that it claimed had veered into its own territory and it claimed that it was acting in self defense to do so. Now I don't actually think Iran would have needed to act in self defense to repel a drone from its territory, nor do I think Poland would be needing to make that legal justification. But nevertheless, it's important history to have out here.
- [16:34]
Scott R. Anderson
And I think that that Delta is actually really important to understand the risk calculus from Russia's perspect and some of the internal challenges to some extent of NATO cooperation around here. Because this threshold question about what is an armed attack that could provide a basis for a military response on the basis of this independent from Ukraine, which is a line we haven't seen NATO partners willing to cross as actually use force in collective self defense of Ukraine is this question of what constitutes an armed attack. We know the International Court of Justice bar for this is high. There's a Nicaragua opinion from the 1980s, early 19. I can't remember the opinion came out, events underlying it were from the 1980s. That talks about frontier incidents not rising to level of armed attack. And this strikes me as colorably under that standard, not rising to that threshold. Right, because this is not a particularly high quantum of violence. We also have questions about intentionality. Maybe not super high levels of doubt, but some muddiness of the waters around intentionality. And so I think there's a question, I don't know whether Poland buys into the Nicaragua standard or is closer to US position which essentially says close to any actual use of violence can trigger a right to self defense, although the proportionality and necessity of the response variable and might be de minimis. But I don't know where on that spectrum Poland sits. But am I wrong? That's actually a little bit of a challenge here because Poland has to believe this is an armed attack to be able to invoke collective self defense. Or at least that's how I would read the North Atlantic Treaty and these usual collective self defense arrangements, although I know there's some people have slightly contrary views. And then the question is also well, are European allies going to see this as an armed attack rising to the level that Article 5 says it is, Meaning do they also need to buy into it? So does this end up being a situation where Russia only needs to be worried about concerted military response if it actually takes action that all the states will view as an armed attack, not just the United States?
- [18:35]
Beck Ingber
Yeah, I mean, I would say that. I think that there's two different questions going on here. One is what does Poland have the right under international law to do? And it certainly has the right to repel the, the drone strikes, to shoot them down if necessary. The United States shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon where there was no suggestion that there was any potential use of force behind it or threatened from that perspective. Right. It was stated by the US Government that it was a surveillance balloon. So there's no question that Poland can do that. I think there's also no question if it believes that it has been, that if it makes the political calculation that this is the straw that broke the camel's back that makes them want to get involved at a higher level and actually use force, they could always invoke their right to use collective self defense of Ukraine if Ukraine invites them to do so, which I'm sure they'd be willing to do. And so there's no international law prohibition here that is standing in the way. And I think that confuses a lot of people. So it's worth really clarifying. The NATO invocation of Article 5, however, is a different matter. And of course, as you noted, that does suggest that, that it's triggered when there's an actual armed attack. And so I don't think, certainly if there's questions about intent and it's a mere unmanned drone, there's no actual hostilities. There are no civilian deaths or other deaths, I mean actually military or civilian deaths at issue. I think that it is unlikely that these states would view that as an armed attack.
- [20:00]
Scott R. Anderson
So I then want to kind of divert this and think about what sort of response we would have wanted to see up to this point in ideal universe and where it goes from here. And that varies a little bit, I think with how we think about what Russia is trying to accomplish. One possibility is this is an accident. Okay, that's on one end of the spectrum. The other possibility is this is some sort of deliberate action they're trying to accomplish some Sort of strategic objective. And somewhere on that spectrum, although I think closer to the latter, is what strikes me maybe a more plausible scenario, which is that they're trying to trigger concern, put political stress on a political system, test the responsiveness of NATO forces, or perhaps even test the effectiveness of air defense capabilities, air defense systems, the general system of personnel and technology that would respond to an actual armed attack. Right. All of these are possibilities on that kind of broad spectrum. So given that range of possibilities, and I doubt policymakers have know that much more at this point than we do about what this all does, although they may yet in the near future, what sort of response would we wanted to see? Ben, let me start with you on that.
- [21:05]
Benjamin Wittes
Well, so first of all, what you want is a responsible response, one that is careful not to escalate recklessly, but is also extremely firm in the idea that the borders of NATO countries and the airspace of NATO countries are sacrosanct and that we will act to defend them. I'm not accustomed to praising Matt Whitaker, but his statement was just fine. The second thing that you want is in the immediate term to stabilize the situation, right, so we can deal with the import of these drones over the next two weeks. You want to make sure that there aren't more, right. You. So you got to shoot down the stuff that's in the air. You got to make it clear to Russia, cease and desist. Then you need a decision about, and this has to be informed by intelligence, the best intelligence you have. What happened here? Was this, as I suspect, a deliberate provocation or was it an accident or something else? If it's the latter, you know, you deal with it in the usual way. You get an apology, you get a, you know, appropriate statement of regret, you compensate people whose properties may have been damaged, etc. If it's the former, first of all, you got to make clear to Belarus that if they let their territory be used for this sort of thing, if they let their airspace be used for this sort of thing, they are not immune to Polish response and to response from NATO. And secondly, you got to make clear to Russia, and this is hard, I mean, how do you do this in a way that is non escalatory or that is responsibly escalatory? Knock it off. You have more to lose here than we do. And our capabilities are enormous. And the problem with that, and the reason I agree with Rebecca that this is not something that would have happened under the prior administration, is that nobody believes that the current administration actually will do what is necessary to defend maybe Poland, but certainly not, you know, Latvia. Right. Or I mean, Trump even once said, are we really going to go to war to protect.
- [23:45]
Scott R. Anderson
Montenegro?
- [23:46]
Benjamin Wittes
Montenegro, right.
- [23:47]
Scott R. Anderson
Like, he's been very lovely and we.
- [23:50]
Benjamin Wittes
Should absolutely keep it native and we should definitely protect Montenegro, you know, so you need a calibrated, careful response that is also responsive to the many European allied countries who don't believe in us anymore. And that is precisely what I don't think the administration is, wants to do or is capable of doing. And that's why this was a smart move on Putin's part.
- [24:23]
Scott R. Anderson
I want to ask you the same question, Beck, but let me complicate it slightly for a variable that matters to me how I think about this. That variable is this. I think Ben perfectly described how I would want the United States generally, on average, to respond. I wonder how it changes the calculus when you have Donald Trump as your president, who is a different diplomatic approach and has a different tactic and rhetorical approach to a variety of circumstances. That in my mind has often leaned itself to unpredictable outcomes and escalation. To me, that I suspect that might be part of the reason why we haven't seen a strong push for a high level statement, at least as of yet, because they're not sure. This is still a little bit happening in the gray area. And I think when you get the president directly involved at a certain point, it can go in unpredictable directions. Do you think that changes the calculus and what does that do to the deterrent effect, as you note, is kind of like the foundational element of Article 5. That's the reason we have it. Does it mean there's really, it's hard to save if you have to be worried about the high level messaging, let alone high level action.
- [25:32]
Beck Ingber
I think this is a test of the madman hypothesis in a way. One concept of interstate relations is that you want a stable, clear, strong leader in these states that have, for example, nuclear weapons, who can engage in strong diplomacy. That's backed by the threat of force in the idea that everyone understands that if they do X, Y or Z, they can feel pretty safe that they're not going to suddenly be on the receiving end of that force. The idea is that that is supposed to sort of hold up the world order as we know it. The other idea of how to deter states from going to war is this madman hypothesis, in which if states don't know how you're going to act, right, they'll be somehow afraid of poking the bear and everyone will clearly sit back and behave because they don't know how he's going to respond.
- [26:27]
Scott R. Anderson
I always think find the poke the bear analogy such a strange one because the secret of why you don't poke a bear is because you know exactly how a bear is going to respond. It's not going to be good. It may be just bad or super bad, but it's not going to be just fine. But if you thought that bear, there's like a 50% chance it'll just roll over. Maybe you poke the bear. I don't know.
- [26:43]
Beck Ingber
What if the bear is not actually a bear, but just a bully pretending to be a bear?
- [26:47]
Scott R. Anderson
Right. Yeah.
- [26:47]
Beck Ingber
And what if you know that and that's where we are today. Right. We don't have a bear. We have a guy who's really willing to use force against totally vulnerable people where he feels no personal risk. Right. But Putin knows that he's actually a weak man when it comes down to it.
- [27:04]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, speaking of provocative cross border incidents around the world, let us go to the other one that happened this week or one of the other ones that happened this week. Earlier this week, not a day or two after we had gotten reports that the Trump administration had tabled a new ceasefire proposal for the Gaza conflict and had actually, according to some reports I read, made some progress in strong arming Hamas into signing up for that cease fire proposal, we saw a truly monumental action by the Israeli government at the direction, according to reports by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where a number of Israeli jets fired a number of missiles at a target, a house in Qatar, a Gulf country that is not as friendly as other Gulf countries to Israel, but that has been on a trajectory towards friendlier, at least more amenable relations with Israel over the last decade or two of the Gulf countries, not the one on the firmest on that trajectory, but I think it's fair to say that's the general tenor and had been been a major interlocutor with Hamas pushing for ceasefire and was hosting Hamas. Hamas has its political wings headquarters in Qatar, blowing up a house, killing most of the political leadership of Hamas that's left, who were the main interlocutors in those negotiations as well as at least according to reports, I saw at least one member of a Qatari security service who was present at the house or nearby the house or otherwise killed in the attack. It's an extraordinary action. I mean, in other circumstances we would see this be considered by a country as an act of war because you're killing people in another country's territory. We've seen Israel do this in other contexts before. Think of what happened with other Hamas leadership in Iran earlier this year. But of course, Israeli Iran relations have been at a state where many have posited that they have been in a de facto state of armed conflict for a long time. It's debatable. But it's somewhat less shocking to see actions take place in Iran of this sort than in Qatar. Notably, according to some reports I've seen, the flights taken by the Israeli aircraft and the line of fire the jets use were actually designed specifically to avoid Emirati and Saudi airspace. Other Gulf countries that have been engaged and in the case of uae, actually have normalized relations with Israel in the last few years. But it's still a really, really provocative step to take that. I think a lot of the gcc, while they have their own issues with Qatar, is still going to take issue with Ben. Am I wrong about that? Does that strike you as wrong as somebody who's watched the region for a time?
- [29:32]
Benjamin Wittes
Oh, you're totally understating it.
- [29:35]
Scott R. Anderson
So that's my role.
- [29:37]
Benjamin Wittes
All right, let's, let's, let's start with Qatar is nobody's favorite actor in the region.
- [29:44]
Natalie Orpet
Didn't they just give Donald Trump a plane?
- [29:47]
Benjamin Wittes
They did. Well, you know, but even, even Donald Trump only gave them a 10 minute heads up on the strike. That's what one $400 million plane is working forth. So look, Qatar is a complicated actor, but it is not a country that is in any sense at war with Israel. It's not. It's a country that Israel's relationship with has been, I would say, complicated. It is used as an intermediary along with the Egyptians in Israeli negotiations with Hamas. One of the reasons it is able to do that is that it houses the Hamas leadership and it is also the home of Al Jazeera, which, you know, has reporters or at least used to have reporters in Israel. Right. And so it's a, I would say it is a complicated relationship. A lot of Israelis really hate the Qataris or they hate the actions of the state of Qatar, which has in fact supported a lot of Muslim Brotherhood movements around the region, which is of course the source of Qatar's very, very tense relations with particularly the UAE as well. You know, all of that is to say that this is, you know, not like attacking stuff on a friendly country. But it is also not Lebanon. It is not Syria or Iran. Right. Or Iraq, countries from which attacks on Israel are routinely launch. Or Yemen, where you can say Israel is defending itself when it attacks Hezbollah positions In Lebanon, there's and, and then there's this other aspect that the, the building that it attacked and the people that it killed were the component that was, they were negotiating with. And so there is a, a message that they're sending to Hamas that is kind of a no quarter. Like, even if you're the other negotiators on the other side of the table, we're still going to blow you up. Now, I don't have a moral problem with that because I think, you know, one of the things about being Hamas leadership is you run the risk that the Israelis are going to blow you up. But I do think that it's a tactically very stupid thing if you're trying to negotiate with a party to also be attacking the component of the party that is conducting the negotiations. It's not normally the way we think of getting to. Yes. So I think it's aggressive from just about every standpoint. And the evidence of that, to me, that that was really my reaction was I was completely shocked when I heard it in a way that I was not at all shocked when, oh, the Israelis hit a target in Iran. Yeah, right. And so it's Tuesday, you know, or the Israelis hit exposition in Syria that is controlled by this faction. Sure, I expect that. But hitting a target in Qatar is, it's a very aggressive thing to do. And by the way, it puts Israel's allies in the region, and allies is a funny word to describe the UAE and Israel. But they are functionally in all kinds of partnerships in a very difficult position. And so I, I'm surprised by it. I think it's dumb and I think it's not a good way. We're in this position now where they should be winding down this war. And this is a way of saying, no, we're not doing that.
- [34:00]
Scott R. Anderson
So let me clarify also one part of the factual basis I'm worried I misstated now up top because there's been conflicting reports of this. I think I saw some of them than some other. Several members of the Hamas leadership team have been killed, but Khaled Mashal and a few other people who are playing leadership roles in the negotiations were not killed. It does seem like they were still targeted. They're described as having survived the attack. So I don't think it was necessarily deliberate that they weren't killed. But there are still surviving members of the negotiating team that come out of this, at least just to be clear.
- [34:30]
Benjamin Wittes
That building is the central hub of the, the negotiating team. So if you're targeting that building you are at least not not targeting the negotiating team.
- [34:45]
Scott R. Anderson
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- [36:35]
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- [37:04]
Benjamin Wittes
Can't I just let it go?
- [37:05]
Scott R. Anderson
I wish I would stop.
- [37:07]
Beck Ingber
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- [37:34]
Scott R. Anderson
So Beck, I want to come to you for the legal side of this look. I mean the one thing you will always get, almost always get, at least if it's acknowledged military conduct from the Israelis is an international legal justification. To their credit, Israelis take certain views of international law that depart from how a lot of states view them, although it and the United States, I would say, tend to gravitate in the same part of the spectrum. But it does seem like we're going to get one. We've gotten snippets of one. I actually haven't seen a clear statement yet, but I think we can guess kind of what the likely argument is, in part because these individuals, while they were members of the negotiating team, they alleged that at least few of the specific people they were targeting did have operational roles and were specifically involved in the October 7th attacks. So if that holds, we can take that as the evidence that Israel has. We don't know what evidence Israel has of that, but we'll take that as a given. Talk to us about what the international law says about their ability to target these people and to target these people in Qatar in particular.
- [38:32]
Beck Ingber
Yeah, there's two different legal questions and you have to sort of check both boxes in order for the action to be lawful. So first I think of them as a macro and a micro question. The macro question is can you use force? We talked earlier about the UN Charter Article 24 prohibition on the use of force. So can you use for a use of force that's a 2:4 use of force in a state's territory. That case, Khadr, do you have any justification for doing so? And I mentioned that there are two very narrow exceptions. One is a UN Security Council resolution, which we obviously don't have here yet again. And the other would be an argument that you're acting in self defense against an armed attack. Now, the United States, Israel and many other states would view an armed attack as including some version of an imminent armed attack, meaning that they were going to come at some point in the imminent future, that there was a clear armed attack, that they were steering off immediately in order to, and that it was necessary and proportionate to respond at this time. Those are principles from customary international law that are well settled and the US Government absolutely accepts, as does Israel, I believe. So in this case, there would have to be an argument not just about these individuals, which is the Lowak question I'll get to in a minute. But first and foremost, can we use force in this territory? And in order to make that argument, they would need to argue that there was an imminent threat to Israel coming from these individuals and that it was necessary and proportionate to act at this time. Now, if we're in the middle of, if you're in the middle of negotiations, if a state is in the middle of negotiations, that suggests it's not actually necessary to use force right now to respond, even if there were some future threat that you're thinking about. But it's also hard to imagine in this circumstance, given what we know about the state of the conflict and given the pressure that Bibi is under to end the conflict, it's hard to see the argument that there was an imminent attack coming from these individuals in Qatar such that it was necessary and proportionate to strike in this allied country. And I should just say that even that concept itself, that a state can act against a non state actor acting within another territory, meaning these are not the Qataris that were implicated here, this was not a strike from Israel against Qatar itself, but rather non state actors acting within Qatar. And so in order to make that strike, they'd have to make the argument that Qatar was unwilling or unable to stop the attack that was emanating from its territory. So there would need to be an attack from these actors and Qatar would need to be unwilling or unable to stop it. We don't have any of those facts here. And I should also just mention that that theory itself is wildly controversial, but we do know that the United States and Israel accept it. So that's the question of striking in Qatar's territory. I don't see a great legal justification for doing so. The other question that you asked is what about these individuals? Right. So even after we've checked the box on whether we can use force here, we also have to check the box on whether or not we're striking people who are lawful targets. And so the way the US Government would go about this, and I assume that this is Also, the way the government of Israel continues to act, although their concept of who's a combatant and who's a civilian in this conflict has seemed to unravel over the past few years. These individuals would have to be operational members of the military wing of an organized armed group. Okay, so accepting for these purposes, Hamas is an organized armed group. Historically, states have viewed them as having both a political and a military wing. If these were members of the military wing, then under that theory, they would not be themselves targetable. I think Israel, I have to assume at this point, given what we've seen, that Israel has collapsed that distinction.
- [42:14]
Scott R. Anderson
So I have a slightly different understanding of the argument Israel has used in regards to targeting these individuals, which might be in play here. I am importing an argument as I understand it was applied in the Iran case a few months ago. But my rough understanding is that their usad bellum argument is basically saying we have a macro international, non international armed conflict with, with Hamas as a non state armed group, something like that, as a non state actor. And that is an ongoing conflict. And so they attacked, at least I believe. My recollection is the individuals in Iran as saying these are part of Hamas, so they are themselves legitimate military objectives because they're operational role in Hamas and support role. And so that might be in play here too. I think if they're saying one of these people was operational, then I think they would argue this is a legitimate military objective and the other people would be collar damage at the outside.
- [43:11]
Beck Ingber
That is correct. They might be viewing one person as a military objective and the rest as collateral damage, perhaps. And then they'd have to make that assessment. But that doesn't get you over the use ad bellum threshold. And I think that's a widespread misconception about how the law governing the use of force works. In the early gwat years, I think there was loose language and perhaps misunderstandings in the US Government's view of how this works and the suggestion that if we can target an Al Qaeda member in one place, we can target them anywhere in the world and that there's nothing else that stands in the way of doing so. And we've received, and I should I say we, but I was not in the government in those early days. But they received widespread pushback on that concept. And it is absolutely clear black letter law is a matter of international law that you have to both have the right to use force in the state's territory and you have to be using force only against lawful targets.
- [44:03]
Scott R. Anderson
Ben, let me talk to you about the Trump aspect of this, because I think that's really the most interesting part of this that I've seen so far, although I don't think it's surprising necessarily, given the trajectory we've seen. We've seen the Trump administration coming out actually pretty hard on Netanyahu over the Netanyahu government. Hard being a relative standard. But compared to relatively, I wouldn't say always a green light, but a worst yellow light to most other Israeli military actions in the context of Gaza and the Hamas conflict, this one got some pretty targeted criticism. So talk to us about what that is, why that is, and why you think this is different, and whether it's going to change the trajectory of the Trump administration's approach to this whole conflict.
- [44:45]
Benjamin Wittes
Well, so remember, of course, that Trump's response to things in this region is very important, emotional, and it happens. You know, he sees pictures of food, distressed Palestinian children, and he has a different reaction than he has the next day when he talks to Netanyahu. Right. Sometimes he seems genuinely distressed by things, sometimes he seems like it's just an optics problem for him and he, he doesn't like the pictures and it looks bad. And so I'm, I'm not necessarily prepared to give his initial gut reaction to something that happened that he didn't bless. The benefit of assuming that it's stable over the next few days. That said, look, the Qataris are complicated and they have a lot of interests entwined with the United States and entwined with Donald Trump. They just did give him a $400 million airplane. They're also host to a very large air force base, you know, and they are, I believe, sitting on 10% of the world's natural gas supplies. So, you know, they are a player in a way that Trump is never entirely dismissive of. People who have leverage. And one thing the gutter is have is they have leverage personally. They can give you an airplane. The US Force posture would be really messed up if the US had ever had to evacuate that base. And so, you know, it's a, it's an important relationship and it's not one that the President of the United States, even Donald Trump, can just say rah, rah when the Israelis start blowing up buildings in the capital of Qatar.
- [46:57]
Scott R. Anderson
Nelly, I want to pull you in on this question, but let me complicate it a little bit further, which is that we have seen actually like a decline in relations between Trump and Bibi and the Trump administration, the Bibi administration kind of over the last few months. It started early on, where we saw the Trump administration work around the Israeli government in directly negotiating the release of American hostages. In Gaza, we've seen tension over the Syrian government, which the Trump administration, along with most of the rest of the world, has embraced, dropped sanctions, tried to stabilize. And the Israeli government has been not quite directly targeted, but has targeted forces very closely related to them due to violence. Those forces are engaged against Jerusalem populations, which the Israelis have close ties to for various complicated reasons. In Syria, we've seen all these tensions begin to mount, but they haven't really amounted to the United States ever really putting limits. And if anything, we've seen the Trump administration double down on a lot of support for Israeli policy. We've seen it cut Palestinians out of attending the UNGA later this month. We've seen them bar visas for a variety of Palestinians. We've seen them target, just this past week, a number of Palestinian nonprofit organizations with economic sanctions of the same sort that the Biden administration applied to settler groups and the west bank believed to have engaged in violence. So it hasn't changed the actual parameters of the relationship, but there's been a chill in the rhetoric, the warmth of what was once warm. I mean, remember it was Bibi Netanyahu that announced US Recognition of claims over the Golan Heights, right next to Mike Pompeo, who handed him the mic at let him announce it. There used to be a lot of warm common interest, and that just doesn't seem to be there the same way. Is it ever going to amount to a change in US Policy around this stuff for this administration, or are the political constraints too limited? Is there just not an interest there? Is this just about rhetoric, and it's never going to have significance of change in policy? Or are we actually approaching the point where there might be policy limits the Israelis are going to run up against under this administration?
- [48:56]
Natalie Orpet
I wish I had something pithy and insightful to say about this, but I have to say that I think all of those are big question marks. And it really just begs the question of whether we should even assume that there is an effort toward building a coherent and sustainable policy and strategy with regard to the relationship and the partnership with Israel, because there are a lot of things operating on a lot of different platforms and a lot of complicated political dynamics back home that are seemingly inherently contradictory and. And also a lot of different interests happening overseas. As you say, the relationship and the coordination that we would previously expect between Israel and the United States has been seeming to break down in terms of what we would assume for a long time now, actually, certainly since the beginning of the administration. But a lot of the rhetoric then will follow and seem very familiar to previous rounds of US Israeli relationships. But then they're pursuing interests on different tracks. And I just don't think we're going to know whether there is a plan in place either within the US Foreign policy establishment to design a strategy or if there is something sort of going on behind the scenes where there is in fact close coordination with Israel, they're working out a mutually agreeable policy with regard to a subset of things or what. As I said, I wish I had something pithier and more insightful to say, but I just have many questions.
- [50:30]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, that just means we're going to have more opportunities to come back and talk about this topic later, but we are running short on time. So let us turn to the third incidence of things going boom in the recent past. This one, the closest to home. And this is of course, the attack on a boat in the southern Caribbean by the Trump administration last week. It happened more or less while we were recording rational security, as far as I can tell. At least that's when it was announced, announced by the Trump administration. This is a case where the Trump administration has alleged that this boat, this craft, was operated by Trinder Agua, engaged in smuggling narcotics into the United States, and they claim to have attacked it as an act of self defense as certainly as a domestic law matter, perhaps as international law matter as well. We've seen some statements for the administration saying as much, but we haven't seen anything quite official officially laying that yet. No Article 51 letter that I've seen, at least as of yet. All we have is a 48 hours report which is a little less clear on the international law aspect of it. But perhaps more importantly, looking forward at least, we have this assertion by Marco Rubio and others in the administration that this is the beginning of a broader trend which purportedly is one perspective among a diverse array of perspectives in the administration. We're getting reports in subsequent days about disagreements with Tulsi Gabbard, disagreements with Rick Grinnell, disagreements with others about who want to take slightly different approaches, particularly a slightly more negotiated transactional approach with the Maduro regime in Venezuela, as opposed to a more hardline approach which has been attributed to Rubio in that reporting. And perhaps most importantly, we are seeing military, US Military crafts, air assets, naval assets of a substantial nature, including things like bombers that you would not use in a counternarcotics campaign, being positioned in the southern Caribbean for Purposes that have not quite been cleared. But have many people worried that are we about to see regime change for the Maduro regime in Venezuela coming out of this? Beck, I want to start with you on this topic. You, me and Ben sat down last week. We had a long conversation shortly after the strike happened about potential international legal justification before we saw, I think, the Trump administration. I wrote a long piece about it the next day. Then we got the 48 hours report, which more or less lined up with what we said, I think what we expected. Talk to us about how those arguments could, in problematic ways or in maybe acceptable ways, bleed into a broader military campaign. Like, what are the issues there that continue to carry over if they were to try and engage in a broader campaign based off of similar action, what they did on Tuesday or to expand it to Venezuela itself? And how should we expect this kind of tip of the spear of what they've done on Tuesday, potentially? What does it signal about the trajectory they may be headed about a broader conflict, at least in terms of legal argument?
- [53:11]
Beck Ingber
Yeah, I'm really worried about this. I think this is another example of trial ballooning, of checking out the waters and seeing how people react. And I think there's a risk here that the more people paint this as somehow legally complicated, the more people shrug it off as just more sort of, okay, how you do different is this from what presidents have done in the past and nothing to see here. And I think that's exactly why the administration is painting it in these terms. Brian Finucan of Just Security used Legal Mad Libs to describe some of the language that they're using. And when I read that War powers Report, it read to me as though they'd taken language from a bunch of other war powers reports and just sort of thrown it at the mat. Maybe asked ChatGPT or Grok to write them a war powers report and just see what stuck. Including, I believe it was the War Powers Report that said that there were no forces on the ground injured. Right? And we're talking about an airstrike. So that suggests, you know, that was just further evidence to me that that was what was going on. So why is the administration painting this in wartime terms? Right? Why aren't they just saying, oh, we killed some drug dealers? They're trying to paint this as a piece. They're trying to use the language and draw on what we call the gwat, the global war on terror years and authorities, because they believe, believe, looking at that, and they believe that the public will believe that that gives the President the authority to do whatever he wants right now, whatever you think of whether or not there was presidential overreach in those years, and I happen to be one of the critics who thinks that there was, and I think Ben might not be, but I think we can all agree that this is absolutely unprecedented, that it that none of those authorities, none of the legal arguments that justified what took place under the drone strikes in the aftermath of the Al Qaeda attacks and the legal arguments for the use of force against Al Qaeda actors and other members of organized armed groups fighting the United States under the congressionally authorized armed conflict with Al Qaeda, that none of that justifies the strike we're talking about here. Just to paint in broad brushstrokes what the legal framework is. International law prohibits the summary execution of individuals. That's a customary international law prohibition. We've also signed onto it in treaties. US Domestic law also prohibits that. It's called murder. The reason that, as a legal matter, the administration might be trying to paint this in wartime terms is that the US Government has long viewed those murder statutes, the prohibition, as a matter of customary international law, which PS Is in the Dodge OPSLA handbook, has long viewed those as affected by the rules governing the law of armed conflict, such that there is an exception for lawful killing by the US Government in the context of an armed conflict. So to the extent they can paint this as an ongoing armed conflict in which they are lawfully killing combatants, they're going to argue that there's an exception both under domestic law and under international law, to the extent they make any legal argument whatsoever. So let's just look at what international law has to say. Right? We talked about what international law has to say in terms of a wartime framing. If they actually are arguing that they are going to war with some hybrid state of TDA in Venezuela, if they're arguing that they can use force against this hybrid state, they would have to argue that they were subject to an armed attack. We've just talked about this in the other two contexts as well. And there has been absolutely no suggestion of either a natural armed attack or an imminent armed attack that involves the use of military force on the United States, on U.S. military officers, on a U.S. embassy. There's been absolutely no argument whatsoever made that there has been an armed attack or that we're facing an imminent armed attack. And so there's no justification under that framing to use force, certainly not against Venezuela if they're using force against another state, whether or not, let's imagine they. They do so anyway. And they are violating that prohibition. They still have to check that second box we were talking about. They still have to make sure that they're targeting of individuals inside. That conflict that they've now created is in line with the law of armed conflict. And for that, they would have to make sure that they're not targeting civilians. And this is clearly there's no suggestion that the individuals on this boat were combatants. So if this were an ongoing armed conflict, conflict, which it is not, they would be that would be a war crime.
- [57:30]
Scott R. Anderson
I will say my assessment that I wrote up on Friday, I think more or less aligned with that for the bulk, I will encourage folks to look back at our longer conversation piece and some other good writing that's been going out there on this topic. If you want more deeper dive and some of the bigger legal questions hanging over this for what is really an unprecedented action. I could not think of a good precedent for the United States directly targeting people who have always traditionally been considered civilians before for it's just kind of extraordinary. But it's happening in a legal context that is not just about the law firm conflict and the use of force and war powers. In that context in which the administration directed the 48 hours report and discussed it. It also has some relation to some domestic litigation we're seeing in relation to another war of sorts the administration is waging, that is its hyper aggressive efforts to clamp down on unlawful immigration and to some extent, and lawful immigration. Natalie, talk to us about that. Where do you see this fitting in, if at all, with those broader conversations which we saw come to a bit of a head last week in the 5th Circuit?
- [58:33]
Natalie Orpet
Right. So this is referring to the ongoing Alien Enemies act litigation in the United States, which of course relates to President Trump's declaration that said that trend was engaged in a predatory incursion, which is a term under the statute, into the United States. And therefore the president was entitled to undertake these actions that are well outside of the other requirements of immigration law to deport people en masse if they met the definition of trend, Aragua, which is really very much up to the discretion of the executive. So, I mean, I really want to echo that. A point that Beck made with respect to international law, I think applies very much, much here as well, which is that in some ways there are some difficulties in giving too much credence to the possibility of viable legal arguments when it comes to taking actions like this, because similarly, in the domestic sense, with respect to the government's litigation strategy thus far in the Alien Enemies act cases, the legal arguments are, let us say, unbelievable stretches. They are just bending the terms of what this statute, which by the way, has not been used in many, many, many decades, last used in an unambiguous context of ongoing military armed conflict. It is a, you know, if this were a law school, it would be a creative, innovative paper that someone could write. But this is reality. And the assertion of legal authority to this degree of interpretive creativity is a strategy we're seeing in every realm right now. But you can see the parallels very clearly between what the government is doing, which is admittedly little, to really engage with the complicated international law questions insofar as there are a lot of complicated international law frameworks to think through in order to reach the conclusion that there is no way that the strike was legal under international law, and similarly the law around the Alien Enemies act and Article 2 authorities, and what deference courts owe to the Executive when it comes to defining threats to the homeland, are complicated legal frameworks that you need to think through in order to reach a conclusion that the President is, in my view, not using the Alien Enemies act in a lawful manner.
- [61:10]
Beck Ingber
Yeah, I think that's right, that it can be complicated. And so I think it's important to actually just make it really clear for people, you know, whatever you think of what legal arguments could or could not be made, and I would say that I would hope to ask more of my law students than what we have seen. It's important to think about what do we want the world to look like? Right. So in particular for members of Congress who can write the law, do you want a world in which the President and which states, where we've eroded the prohibition on the use of force, where we've eroded the prohibition on extrajudicial killings. States can use force against one another as long as they wave around the magic words of terrorism. States can use force against suspected criminals for mere crimes. We don't even have the death penalty for drug smuggling. Right. So even if so, you know, it's a due process issue in the, in the Alien Entity Enemies act context in which people are being removed without any process or with little process on the basis of these words. But here there is, of course, the due process concern. But even with process, we wouldn't be allowed to do what the President has just asserted the authority to do. And so is that the world we want to live in? And I do think that can be clear to people. Right. Summary execution of suspected criminals entirely on the President's say so.
- [62:25]
Natalie Orpet
I totally agree with that. And I will also say that similarly, it would seem compelling to argue we do not want to live in a world where the president can first proclaim himself to possess really astonishing powers to act unilaterally in an area where Congress has legislated a lot, namely immigration and the process by which people can be removed from the country by creating facts on the ground, by saying that there is a predatory incursion and then months later creating facts on the ground that look like they are trying to make a case that that's the reality. And who knows how long this operation was being planned. But I don't think that the timing coming after the 5th Circuit ruled against the government with respect to its interpretation of the Alien Enemies act and the fact that this case is quite clearly going to the Supreme Court. I don't think that timing is accidental.
- [63:22]
Beck Ingber
I think you're exactly right. And in fact, wasn't it the same day? I believe it was the same day. It was immediately after. So certainly it was in. It was. You know, whether or not it's a coincidence that it was on the same day, certainly that litigation and those asserted authorities. Right. The asserted authority to act internally, to detain anyone that they say is a terrorist, and the authority externally to target and kill anyone that they say is a member of this gang. I don't think it's an accident. I agree.
- [63:49]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, folks, that is all the time we have for this week. But before we get started on object lessons, a quick public service announcement for folks, particularly Lawfare listeners and readers in the D.C. area. It is our 15th anniversary this year when we are having a celebration on Friday, September 19th, here in Washington, D.C. we would love for you to come join us. Look in the show notes for more information on that event. It's going to be lovely. We're going to have, I think, some drinks and some refreshments and you'll hear from a couple of us talking about Lawfare, everything we've been up to, everything we're doing and everything we're going to be doing in the foreseeable future. It'd be great to meet you. I first met Benjamin Wittes at a live Lawfare event podcast recording 10 years ago almost to this week. I looked it up and, you know, I have not stopped knowing Ben Wittes in that time. And perhaps you will find this shame for you, for better, for worse, for both of us. So perhaps you'll find yourself in the same boat. We would love to have you out there. Now, Ben, what do you have for us for an object lesson?
- [64:44]
Beck Ingber
This week?
- [64:45]
Benjamin Wittes
Well, it was only a matter of time before it happened. But some of the many purged FBI officials today filed suit against Cash Patel and over the circumstances of their. Their firings. And one of them is, as he's known now, the Drizz, which is to say Brian Driscoll, who was the acting director of the FBI until Cash Patel was confirmed. And I just want to say a word about Brian Driscoll, whom I've never met. I don't know when he was appointed, everybody was kind of, you know, like, who is this guy? He's only been a special agent in charge for, I think it was literally six days or something. And he had wacky hair, and, I mean, the hair is kind of awesome. And, you know, people were kind of confused about who he was, at least outside the bureau. And then. Then he did a remarkable thing, which is in the early days of the Trump administration, when Kash Patel and Emil Bovey, whom I suppose we should call Judge Bovey now, were demanding information about individual FBI agents who had been worked on various suddenly unfavored matters, this guy Brian Driscoll was like. Like pushing back and became a bit of a folk hero in the FBI. And of course, a few months later, Cash Patel fired him, having been confirmed and having done his various Cash Pateli things. So now Brian Driscoll and two others have filed a lawsuit. And I just want to say it's 70 pages. I'm looking forward to reading it. It. And I. I think this is a man who's made a substantial contribution to the protection of American institutions. And I. I wish him well in his new career as a plaintiff, and look forward to his recovering, hopefully, very large amounts of money against Cash Patel and the FBI, but at the very least, generating some accountability for the mayhem that this group of people has wreaked on the institution.
- [67:34]
Scott R. Anderson
I have taken to thinking of him as the most honorific name I can imagine, which is Driz Duarden. If, you know, you know, I don't think any of you three do, but that's okay. Natalie, what do you have for an object lesson this week?
- [67:44]
Natalie Orpet
I have a book recommendation for one that I just finished actually rereading. I think I read it last probably 15 years ago, and I think part of the interest of reading at this time was knowing what was going to happen and also thinking about how very differently I read it 15 years after having read it the first time. It is a book called the Elegance of the Hedgehog. It's by Muriel Barbery, a French author it's translated from the French. It is delightfully French sounding. There's something about the sentence structure, like the translation was so, so well done. It just feels very reminiscent of French language to me. It is also very French in that very little happens in the book. There's very little plot, but it really doesn't matter. It's captivating. It is the story of a woman who's a concierge in a very fancy residential building in Paris. They actually give the address of the building which is right around the corner from where I went to school when I was in France, which I found delightful. And it is the story of her and then a parallel story of a little girl who lives in the same building, more a member of the aristocratic class. The little girl is very, very smart and has some strong views about her place in the world and is very philosophically oriented, but also a little suicidal. And the concierge is an autodidact who is hiding her intelligence from the world. And the book is just delightfully self indulgent in its philosophical musings and a very nice diversion from the rest of the world right now.
- [69:29]
Scott R. Anderson
Wonderful recommendation. Well, for my object lesson, I will say I got to celebrate my 8th anniversary with my beautiful, wonderful wife yesterday, which we celebrated the way anyone with two children under five does. We got a little drunk in our basement by ourselves and watch TV for a few hours, something we don't get off days to do. And we turned on something that I actually kind of enjoyed, even though I really didn't think I would, and I'm a little embarrassed to admit it. That's the paper, the new office spinoff. I have to say, the most annoying thing about it is that it is attached to the paper, the office, and related to the office. And they beat you in the head over that with that fact over and over again, ceaselessly and relentlessly. But if you can ignore that and just treat it like a freestanding show, it's actually kind of cute and charming and like, you know, I don't really think of us, me as a journalist, but I know a lot of our colleagues consider themselves journalists here at law firm. We certainly do journalist adjacent things. And it spoke to me a little bit on parts of that, on very nice, warm ways. So I really quite enjoyed it, even though I would not necessarily say it's perfect and it could cut out all that office business. But check it out. The paper, I enjoyed it. Beck, bring us home. What do you have this week?
- [70:28]
Beck Ingber
So I actually thought you were going to say k Pop Demon Hunters, which I was also surprised to have enjoyed.
- [70:32]
Scott R. Anderson
Several recommendations on that to me recently. But it's come up an object lessons before.
- [70:37]
Beck Ingber
So I thought that this had to be something really profound when I suddenly remembered I was supposed to do it with some relevance to the topic at hand. And so I asked Scott and he said he usually suggests recipes. So with those two in mind, I was thinking like, you mean like unwilling and able pudding. But we didn't ultimately get to talk about the Department of War because Trenda Agua Fresca.
- [70:58]
Scott R. Anderson
Sorry, I get that out.
- [71:01]
Beck Ingber
It got bounced from. For Gutter and Poland. And so understandably, which actually I think is useful for highlighting just how absurd that whole endeavor is. But I was thinking about it because I was looking at one of these coins that I got during my time in government, these Department of Defense coins that. These are tokens that muckety mucks at DoD, DoW tokens that the agency formerly known as DoD, there you go, go. Gives out to people as honors and otherwise. So I felt very special when I. When I get these. And it says Department of Defense on it, of course, and then the. The title of the person giving it to you. And I'm thinking that if they were really going to change it to the Department of War, if that's really happening, and of course, there's all sorts of legal issues, but just putting that to the side for the moment, all of the kajillions of dollars that they would have to spend on the coins, just the coins alone, let alone the uniforms, the seats, the building, the paper letterhead. This is just going to be billions and billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, all to rename the Department of Defense, something that is wildly offensive to the rest of the world. So I'll leave you with that.
- [72:11]
Scott R. Anderson
But do you know one company that does actually manufacture coins? I believe the Trump Organization does, or at least they've certainly served sold Trump memorabilia of this sort. So who knows, maybe. Maybe this all comes circling back a little bit.
- [72:22]
Benjamin Wittes
And another one, of course, course, is the Lawfare Institute, which has its own challenge coin.
- [72:28]
Scott R. Anderson
I don't think we've had any of those for a long time, but we did at some point, certainly. Well, folks, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. But Rational Security is of course, a production of Lawfare, so be sure to Visit us@lawfaremedia.org 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 Lawfare'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 on 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 and other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was Kara Shillin of Goat Rodeo and her music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan and we are once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. Behalf of my guests Natalie, Ben and Beck, I am Scott R. Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. If you thought goldenly breaded McDonald's chicken couldn't get more golden, think Golder because new sweet and smoky Special Edition Gold Sauce is here made for your chicken favorites at. Participate at McDonald's for a limited time.