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- [00:00]
Boost Mobile Announcer
If this back to school season talking to your teenager sounds like this.
- [00:06]
Renee Diresta
With.
- [00:07]
Boost Mobile Announcer
Boost Mobile, make it sound like this. Come to your Boost store, get a line and take home a tablet for only $99.99. Perfect for staying connected and studying anywhere they're happy and you safe. Visit your nearest booth. Store requires ID verification, new $20 per month tablet plan and $35 device setup fee. Taxes extra.
- [00:33]
Scott R. Andersen
I know. Roger, Renee, I think you guys both are parents and I have had a small unintended parental win. I am eager to share. Can I share it with you all? Tyler, it's maybe a little less interesting to you, but I have a very bad habit that came out frequently over the holidays of getting exasperated sometimes with my children, sometimes with other things and just putting my head in my hands and just saying using the Lord's name in vain. And unfortunately, my newly christened four year old son has developed the same habit, but has a slight listening tic. And so when he gets frustrated now, I see him visibly put his head in his hands and mumble under his breath, cheez its. Which is great. So he thinks, A, I hate Cheez its, which is fine. I'm not a huge Cheez Its fan and B, it really gives him a way to express himself. But I think this is a big win for me. I'm wondering how long I can stretch this out before I have to confess that I'm doing something. Something a little less appropriate even than he's recognized.
- [01:31]
Tyler McBrien
Scott, I will always be interested in these things.
- [01:33]
Scott R. Andersen
Well, it's good parenting practice.
- [01:35]
Renee Diresta
No? I have a four year old too. It's amazing how much she internalizes and how many incredibly inappropriate things. I say that. Then she says, I was playing Fortnite with my 11 year old and I was dying.
- [01:49]
Scott R. Andersen
That's a mom right there. That's a pro mom move. As you're playing Fortnite with 11 year.
- [01:53]
Tyler McBrien
Old and I was dying.
- [01:57]
Renee Diresta
He considers me his project. I taught him how to play Halo and I was much better at that when I was in college. And you have that, like, muscle memory. Anyway, moving to Fortnite's been fun, but the 4 year old was sitting next to me and I was dying and she looked up at me and she said, like, use the other goddamn gun, mom. Oh no. So that's my proud parenting moment of the week.
- [02:20]
Tyler McBrien
If things happen out there on the field, you know, emotions run high.
- [02:26]
Scott R. Andersen
That reminds me of an amazing story for sports fans where there's this very touching story of, I think it was Cardell Jones who is where is he now? I think he may be with the Cardinals, a professional football player, as part of a Make a Wish foundation thing, went into a children's hospital and played Madden with a sick young kid and then just completely annihilated him and refused to pull any punches in beating it. And his complaint as it went out on Twitter, on social media, was he said something to the effect of, I wish people would stop saying I beat that kid 97. I beat 98 to 7. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security. I am your host, Scott R. Andersen. Thrilled to be back with you on the podcast where we invite you to join members of the lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories. And I'm thrilled to be joined by colleagues old and new to do exactly that in this very big week of national security and adjacent news and in the lead up to our incoming president's inauguration. Joining me today is Lawfare managing editor Tyler McBrien. Tyler, thank you for coming back on the podcast.
- [03:37]
Tyler McBrien
Good afternoon.
- [03:38]
Scott R. Andersen
I was so thrilled to be joined by lawfare Senior Editor Roger Parloff. Roger, thank you for joining us back on the podcast.
- [03:44]
Roger Parloff
Thank you, Scott.
- [03:45]
Scott R. Andersen
And thrilled to be joined for the very first time by lawfare's newest or one of our newest contributing editors, Renee Diresta. Renee, thrilled to have you both in the lawfair family and on today's podcast. Welcome.
- [03:56]
Renee Diresta
Thank you for having me.
- [03:57]
Scott R. Andersen
This is the true trial by fire. This is the least substantive thing we do, and therefore the hardest thing for most lawfare people to wrap their heads around how to approach. So we're excited that you jumped right in so quickly after coming into our folds. And we're really excited to have you on the podcast, not least because one of these stories, at least, is very much up your alley. And I'm sure you have thoughts on some of the other ones as well. Because who doesn't think about the things. Not a coincidence. Exactly. And who doesn't have thoughts on all the things that we are seeing in the headlines and this week and I'm sure for many, many weeks to come. Our first topic for today, the art of the heel. As President Elect Donald Trump's inauguration nears, the various legal cases against him are gradually winding down to their inevitable end. But Trump is not letting them go quietly. Instead, he has fought certain final steps tooth and nail, ranging from the mostly meaningless sentencing in his New York case to the final release of the report that special counsel Jack Smith is obligated to write how do these various threads seem likely to resolve, and what will the legacy be for Presidential Accountability? Topic 2 Make Meta Mega Again the recent election appears to be triggering a wave of changes in corporate America, as a number of leading tech companies like Meta have begun quite publicly breaking down content moderation protections, paring back DEI programs, and eliminating offices and personnel that have long peeved conservatives. And even CEOs who have not implemented such changes have seemed eager to meet with Trump at his home in Mar a Lago. How much of this shift is smoke and how much is fire and what might it mean in the long term? And topic 3 Embracing a growth Mindset President Elect Trump sent shivers to the international community last week when he refused to rule out the possibility of using economic coercion or even military force to expand US Territorial control, specifically over Greenland and the Panama Canal, to allied foreign territories that he has previously identified as having a direct bearing on US national interests. How realistic are his threats and what are the ramifications likely to be? So for our first topic, Roger, let me come to you in the first instance and listeners will have to forgive us if a few of us are sounding a little yawny or like we may not have gotten a lot of sleep last night because we had a very big revelation directly related to this topic come out in between the hours of 1 and 2am here on the East Coast. And that is volume one of special counsel Jack Smith's report that he provided to the Attorney General and was released publicly after an extended litigation fight last night. I've been reading through that. I'm sure you have as well, Roger Tyler and Renee possibly as well, or at least taking a quick look, seeing some of the news coverage. There's a lot in there, maybe a lot that's new, but the fight over it has been fairly hard fought and we're seeing that continue over the second volume, which relates to the classified documents cases. At the same time as we've seen a whole line of litigation around that report which has threatened at various points to go all the way to the Supreme Court, we actually did see another line of legal argument regarding another wind up aspect of these Trump cases, and that is the sentencing. In the one case in which Trump was convicted. This is his New York case where even though the judge signaled that he didn't intend to install any fines or jail time, meaning Trump really wasn't going to face any substantive sentencing. Nonetheless, Trump and his lawyers fought it tooth and nail, going all the way to the Supreme Court to try and get them to stop the sentencing on presidential immunity grounds, unsuccessfully, ultimately. And that sentencing played out the other week. So we have seen just a lot of happenings in these final weeks. Roger, let me turn to you first. Then I want to come to Tyler, because Tyler was actually there for the sentencing and may have some perspectives on that. But let me turn to you first, Roger, because you've been tracking all this litigation, helping with some of our colleagues, put together a really phenomenal overview of all this litigation as it's been playing out over the week or two. Talk to us about what this means, what is driving this litigation, and how much sense does it make to you? Part of me says, and I saw a bulwark op ed that said something to this effect in the last day or two, that this seems very much like being a source winner because this seems to be drawing a ton of attention to a lot of these allegations and final documents that otherwise may have really fallen to the back pages of the newspapers. Talk to us about what this says about Trump's legal strategy, maybe incoming President Elect Trump himself, and where these final chapters fit into the broader narrative that we've come to know about these cases and this effort to secure presidential accountability.
- [08:10]
Roger Parloff
Well, I think you're right that personality disorders may explain this better than legal strategy. There are two strands here. There's been a flurry of filings in six courts over the last nine days, I would say, and there's two threads, and I think they do share something. One thread, as you said, was to stop the sentencing from taking place in New York. The other thread was to stop any portion of Jack Smith's final report from coming out. And the two, what they have in common is that he is trying to erase his criminal record. And he had a theory, the sentencing plays in here because in his mind, he hadn't really been convicted unless there was a sentencing. And there's a speck of basis for this. It's after you're sentenced. And then and only then does the judgment of conviction get entered. And that's the thing, you appeal. So there's an argument that even though the jury had convicted him until he was sentenced, he, in his mind he hadn't been convicted. And I think he was even or his people were threatening people with lawsuits if they said you've been convicted. And, and of course, somebody like ABC might take that seriously. So I think both ends of it, we're trying to just suppress as much truth as possible. The special counsel's report, it turned out, is two volumes. Volume one dealt with the case in D.C. which was the January 6th case, the election interference case, you might say, volume two dealt with the classified documents case in the Southern District of Florida. That was the case with 32 counts of willful retention of national defense information and eight counts of obstruction. He wanted to suppress both. So beginning on January 6th, and I won't go through the TikTok because it is crazy, but I'll tell you where we stand. But if you remember that he had two co defendants in the Southern District, and he had a judge, Judge Cannon, who seemed to be receptive to a lot of his arguments. Nauta and de Oliveira, his co defendants, filed there trying to block the report. Trump has been dismissed from that case after his election. Now, this is sort of strange because remember, Cannon dismissed the case back in July. She dismissed it, she terminated it, she closed it, and now it's on appeal to the 11th Circuit. So you might think, wait a minute, does she even have jurisdiction? And a lot of people are still scratching their heads and saying, wait a minute, does she have jurisdiction? Nevertheless, on January 7, she did enter a temporary stay before even hearing the government's response. Noda and d' Oliveira were arguing that originally that the theory goes like this. It's sort of a sequence of events. It's almost inconceivable, but because once Trump is inaugurated, it's very likely that he will. These cases will disappear, okay, that he will tell the DOJ to drop its appeal of Judge Cannon's dismissal, and these. Both of these guys will be home free. Alternatively, he could give them a pardon. But anyway, the theory to. To block the final report was to say, well, they're still criminal defendants. If the 11th Circuit ultimately reverses Cannon and reinstates, the case would come back to her. These guys would go to trial. And if anything about volume two leaked out, it could prejudice their jury. Now, Jack Smith never planned to publish and Garland never Attorney General Garland never planned to publish volume two because the case against them is still pending. But he did plan to withhold it, to say that he thought it should become public after their cases end. And immediately. What he was planning to do was to make it available to the chairman and ranking member of the two Judiciary committees, the House and Senate Judiciary Committee. So that's the real the nub. And so that includes Jamie Raskin and Senator Dick Durbin. So they would see it in camera after giving confidentiality assurances. And the theory, the fear was that it will leak out through them and prejudice Nada's and de Oliveira's cases realistically, what's going on is if it does get to those people and de Oliveira and Nauta are dismissed, we will eventually probably see the report. Somehow it probably will leak. Whereas if it doesn't get to them, and this is all up to a becomes the decision of a Trump attorney general whether to make volume two available public ever. It may be deep sixed for the entire four years, if not forever. So those are sort of the stakes. And yesterday Cannon decided after some more briefing that she really couldn't keep volume one, prevent it from coming out. That's the one about the D.C. case. She wasn't involved in that. Her order doesn't discuss it and nada and d' Oliveira have no remote standing to block it and she let that go. But she is still trying. Well, she is still deciding what to do about volume two and holding a hearing Friday at 2pm in Fort Pierce. There was one last ditch effort about maybe about 10:30 last night or maybe 10 by Trump, to intervene in the Cannons case or to make a supplementary filing to block volume one, but she declined to do that. So that's where we are.
- [15:22]
Scott R. Andersen
So, Tyler, you were in the vaunted position of being one of the people in the courtroom in New York when we heard both the sentencing of President Elect Trump, as well as his sort of response to it that he's given the opportunity to provide. And it strikes me that this is like a pretty significant seminal set of exchanges and motions. This is not the absolute end of this process because we know there's likely to be, frankly, further appeals from the final conviction potentially, or at least it's a possibility. And of course we have these other special counsel sides kind of litigation still happening, but still a close to capstone statement from both sides. Talk about what your impression was of that. What was the framing of this by the judge, the DA's office, and perhaps most importantly, Trump himself. How is he going to try and spin these actions kind of moving forward?
- [16:12]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, you're right. It was an atmosphere of finality on both sides and that was the chief reason given for imposing sentence now to make the conviction final, to open the way for appeals. And I will say Todd Blanche, on behalf of Trump, voiced every intention to pursue every single avenue of appeal. I will say, just to paint the scene a little bit. It was a bit of a strange and surre coda, I think, to the trial. Everyone was back in the courtroom, everyone being basically the same press corps, but the defendant wasn't there, having been given the option to appear virtually. There's no Secret Service kind of breeze right through. He appeared on screens next to Todd Blanche within the frame. The only counsel there on his behalf in person was Emil Bovey. And so you're right, the way the run of show of sentencing was that the prosecution got to give a statement. So Joshua Steinglass did that for the da, then Todd Blanche for the defense counsel, then Trump himself, and then Justice Merchan issued something of a statement and then imposed a sentence. So a few things that stuck out to me from these statements. I'll take them in order. Steinglass himself was very stern, very solemn. On the live stream immediately after Ben Wittes asked a question of did it feel like he won? Which I thought was a great question, because it didn't feel like a victory speech. I don't think he would have done something like that, but it almost felt like a Pyrrhic victory. He talked about how Trump's conduct before, during and after the trial was a direct attack. I'm paraphrasing here. A direct attack on the institutions of the United States, on the rule of law. It was intended to have a chilling effect on criticism and to create this impression that Trump himself was. Is above the rule of law. So he didn't pull punches or mince words. He was quite stern. Next up was Todd Blanche. He delivered a statement that was quite similar to things we've read in filings, how he's argued in court. But I think the biggest narrative that Blanche pursued was that the American public, having followed the ins and outs of the trial themselves throughout the entire process, delivered their own verdict on Election Day, which was a not guilty verdict in the form of reelecting Trump as president. These were all fairly short statements as well. The whole hearing lasted about 40 minutes, if that. Then Trump went, which is I thought the most, in a way, interesting, but in a way not so interesting because it was a bit of a greatest hit speech. He seemed like he was still kind of in campaign mode. He used a lot of the same words that he's been calling the trial since it started, witch hunt, rigged and the like. So, yeah, he said he was treated unfairly. These are all things we've heard before. And then Justice Merchand, I wouldn't say came out as strongly as Joshua Steinglass in his statement, but he, too, seemed exhausted. He wanted to really portray the trial as one that was done by the book. He talked about this paradox of the trial that on the one hand, it was extremely ordinary. There was the same procedure as other criminal trials. There was a jury, there was A burden of proof. There were two sides. I think he may have overstated the ordinariness of the proceedings. But then he said, of course, the what's extraordinary are the legal protections afforded to the office of the defendant. And he was clear to disentangle the office and then the occupant of that office. And then he ended with well wishes or a good luck and a Godspeed to the defendant, the President elect Trump in his second term. And that was it. And we wrapped up and we all packed up and headed out of the courtroom.
- [20:17]
Scott R. Andersen
What about Trump's statement?
- [20:19]
Tyler McBrien
It was, like I said, it was quite similar to things we'd heard. I think the only extraordinary thing about it was that he was giving a statement inside the courtroom rather than outside. It echoed to me a lot of his hallway statements that he would give. I would say he landed in this zone that he's very good at occupying, which is hinting at a threat without quite explicitly stating it. So this was on two occasions. One, he was clearly talking about Michael Cohen, one of the star witnesses. Those are all things we've heard before. But I think the more troubling one was against a member of the prosecution, Matthew Colangelo, who, again, Trump didn't name him explicitly. He said there was a guy who came in from a law firm. He had DOJ connections. I mean, the subtext here was that Matthew Colangelo conspired with the doj, with Merrick Garland, with Biden, to secure this conviction. And I should say there's no evidence for that whatsoever. And given the threats and the way that he's talked about members of the prosecution, their family, members of the court, and their families throughout the trial. The intention, I think, is it was very threatening in the way he delivered it, and I think that was intentional. So those are the biggest things that stuck out to me from Trump's statement.
- [21:39]
Scott R. Andersen
Renee, let me ask you actually, an aspect of this, because you are, unless I'm mistaken, about what your extracurricular activities are, which I easily could be, but you probably have not been deeply versed in the details of the TikTok of this going the last few days, like most folks around lawfare are. I am not either, for the record. So no judgment on that part, as this stuff is all a little out of my lane and I tend to tackle a slightly higher altitude level. Tell me about your sense of what the ultimate payoff is and what the ultimate relevance of these final steps really is. Something that strikes me. I mean, my instinct, as I thought about, as I Read through volume one of the special counsel's report. As I listened to my colleagues excellent summary of these statements that we got and their discussion of them, my sense is that I'm not sure how much of this stuff really penetrates or is even really likely to penetrate. Doesn't mean it's not important. I could see why it's important from a court's perspective as a proceduralist to say we got to abide by the rule of law. I can see why it's important for historical records purposes, the special counsel's report, and for compliance with the regulations, rule of law, but particularly with the exception of the Mar A Lago special counsel report, which actually think there's a lot unknown that we're like we might learn from that. I'm not sure any of this really affects the big narrative, which makes me wonder why it was such a. A point for Trump to fight over. Do you think I'm off on that or is it more of this getting through to your kind of like media perception?
- [23:01]
Renee Diresta
Certainly the extremely online.
- [23:03]
Scott R. Andersen
The extremely online. Yeah, exactly. Maybe you're the wrong person to ask about that. There's a lot of intense online attention to these details.
- [23:09]
Renee Diresta
Certainly I caught myself among them. So one of the things that's happening is there are so many massive stories that people are paying attention to right now. TikTok and what is going to happen presumably on the 19th or on Sunday is a huge part of the conversation. A lot of the younger audience audiences on TikTok are paying attention to TikTok. Right. And what's going to happen to their space and the kind of channels they've built and stuff like that. There's the Mark Zuckerberg thing from last week was a huge topic in the tech community. I think ultimately what we're seeing, though, is that what you see and what you pay attention to is so different and so completely divergent from what other people are seeing and paying attention to. There's the fires. Right. That's a huge story that continues to go on. There's the hearings, which I think we're going to talk a little bit about also. Right. There's just so much stuff. And that question of what breaks through is it's very, very difficult, I think, to get people following the same things. It's just so niche ified at this point and so hard to feel like you're actually adept at weighing in on every single story. My personal approach is to not weigh in when I'm not informed and haven't been paying much attention. So that's where we are.
- [24:18]
Scott R. Andersen
Roger and Tyler, let me turn it back to you. Kind of a similar question. People who are a little more immersed in this. What is the significance of these final steps for the broader project of presidential accountability? Right. Like reading through Jack Smith's volume one last night and this morning, mostly this morning, it struck me as pretty interesting in that he's clearly a little peeved. Not peeved, but maybe a little surprised at the legal terrain. He does a lot of justifying, I think very sound justifying saying here's the legal choices we made, here's why he lays out as legal reasoning. I haven't found anything that's super surprising there or jumps out at me. But there's a lot of stuff about how we approach things before the immunity decision and how we approach things after the immunity decision. So there's not much that could have been done about that. Now we're living in a different legal terrain about how these sorts of decisions are made. And looking back, you can Monday morning quarterback as much as you want, but that's all new facts. And I don't think anybody saw the contours of that coming out exactly as they have over the last few months for the Supreme Court. So bearing that in mind, what does this mean for presidential accountability moving forward, the immunity decision? I think Jack Smith says pretty clearly he doesn't think this shuts down criminal prosecution of a president. If they really do anything wrong, it makes it harder, it narrows the scope of what you can prosecute. But he very clearly thought President Trump hadn't been elected, he was going to get convicted because we had the evidence for it and he thought it was legally available even after the immunity decision. But is that, is that politically realistic? Is it procedurally realistic? Is this as much we're going to get, is a little bit of clarification of the record, the factual record from the special counsel, maybe from the New York case? Or are there bigger lessons for presidential accountability we should be taking out of these last few gasps of this multi year saga we've all been tracking? Let me start with you on that, Roger, and I'll come to you, Tyler.
- [26:10]
Roger Parloff
Well, first, I agree with you. The volume one, there's very little new information. There's some things. But volume two is a fairly high stakes thing. And I mean, obviously none of us have seen it, but I think in principle, the idea, which is quite possible, that they will simply suppress this for at least four years, you know, that's something new. It's yet another notch of just the President being beyond any sort of accountability. There was never a point when Garland thought, oh, I'll suppress Robert Hur's report on Joe Biden or I'll suppress David Weiss's report on Hunter Biden or John Durham's report on whatever his was about. It's just wrong. And you can't, you know, the fact that the people under investigation say, gee, you know, it's one sided, it's not fair, we should suppress it. That's not been considered sufficient in the past. But if this volume two is not given at least to the four congressmen before January 20th, you really have to ask, is there any Trump appointed Attorney General that would make this public? Actually a small thing in that report or it's not in the report, it's in a letter that Garland wrote also and made public yesterday to the four members of Congress is that he has said, I do determine this is in the public interest to make public. That's under the special counsel regulations. That's supposed to be his call. The new Attorney General, if they don't want to release it, is going to have to reverse that formally. I think that will be a real loss. There were other things that, you know, in the process of fighting to keep it secret and of course they may be exaggerating the Nauta and de Oliveira's lawyer, I should say they've seen their volume. They were permitted to see it. They claim that there's stuff in there that would be damaging to some of Trump's appointment or his nominees. That might mean Kash Patel, we know he's sort of involved in this case a little bit as a witness. We don't really know what else. They also claimed that there was stuff in there that would be, that was damaging to, was pejorative. About the defense lawyers, I'm a little surprised to see that. I don't know what they're referring to. But many of his defense lawyers are now going into high level government positions too. So there are some high stakes to that volume too. I think just the way things played out volume one, it so happens this factual recitation is much shorter than the original indictment. It's shorter than, and it's a lot shorter than the October filing about the motion for a determination of whether immunity applied or not. That was about 85 pages of factual proffer. This one was about 30. So nevertheless, I think they're important questions. I think these things ought to come out. It sets a terrible precedent to say, well, the object of the investigation thinks it's not in the Public interest for the public to see what the prosecutors found out. I did.
- [30:14]
Scott R. Andersen
Tyler, let me come to you with just a closing thought on this before we go to the next topic. Let's say we have four years from now, repeat of a similar situation, right. A former president, then newly former President Trump, once again has done something that crosses criminal lines. And let's even say maybe it's the end of his presidency, it's in his private conduct, or maybe it's even after the presidency, like the documents case. Right. So we can take some of the core immunity questions out of it. Say, like there really is a strong reason to believe it is, even after the immediate decision, criminally prosecutable, although it still raises the usual slew of other legal questions. How do you think after all this experience, a future president, Kamala Harris, or whoever it is in 2028, 2029, should or will look back at this and the lessons they'll take for how they approach that situation? Is it that we go through this again? Is it just to start earlier? Is it the foot dragging by Merrick Garland that he's taken so much criticism for recently? I think sometimes fair, sometimes not entirely rooted in an assessment of the facts. What are the lessons we take away from this to this big question of how do you hold presidents accountable when they do wrong things?
- [31:20]
Tyler McBrien
I think looking back over the past two years, it's easy. And looking now where we are now, it's easy to get pretty nihilistic about the idea of even of accountability for a president whom you believe had deep, deep wrongdoing. And I think that the New York case is the best example of that. It went to trial, it resulted in a conviction. There was a sentence of unconditional discharge, which I think itself looms large in some people's minds as the encapsulation of this question of did any of this matter if the sentence was a non sentence? I had an answer initially in my head, but you changed the question a little bit because I think early on, at least in some people's minds, legal accountability may beget political accountability. If he's a convicted felon, some people would be less likely to vote for him. That obviously didn't pan out. In fact, it may have had the opposite effect. He co opted the felon label, used his mugshot on campaign merch. So I think it really complicates what even accountability is, especially political accountability and electoral accountability, because all of the assumptions and predictions I was hearing, or most of them, at least at the beginning of the trial and even the day the jury handed down its verdict have been completely disproven by what happened in November. So I don't have a great answer for you, other than the assumption that accountability in the courts will have an adverse effect on someone's political prospects has been thrown out the window, in my opinion.
- [33:08]
Scott R. Andersen
Well, speaking of philosophical nihilism and an utter lack of accountability, let us turn our gaze now to Silicon Valley and our friends in big tech who have been having quite an interesting couple weeks, particularly one Mark Zuckerberg of Social Network and David Fincher film fame who has adopted a whole new look, a real glam up sort of vibe in the last few weeks. For people who have missed it, I missed it until just a few days ago. It's really quite something. I will say it's someone of a somewhat similar complexion and fashion challenges that arise from that. So not that I don't sympathize, Mark, but I don't know if the gold necklace and the crazy sunglasses and black tees are the way to go, but not just a style review, but kind of a worldview update in a really dramatic, interesting way. We saw Mark Zuckerberg make an appearance on Joe Rogan where he started calling for a more masculine view at Meta, more masculine value set, something that that effect of the language. We've seen him do a lot of overhauls to content moderation policies at Meta, to DEI policies, to limiting officials who worked on civil rights related issues that have installed the last few years. It strikes, at least outwardly it looks like a pretty sea change sort of shift in approach to a lot of these kind of cultural touchstone issues. Although if you read some of the official Meta stuff, I think they try and walk a little more finer line than that. And Meta is still kind of like an outlier, but the tip of a spear. We see lots of other companies doing a variety of things on a spectrum from that all the way down to Jeff Bezos, who to my knowledge has not really implemented a lot of these policies other than the op ed endorsing Kamala Harris debate at the Washington Post. But I'm not aware of him pursuing a lot of other changes that are along these lines. But we do know went to Mar A Lago to meet with former President Trump, somebody he's had an antagonistic relationship with and many, many other industrial leaders. Billionaires are doing that exact same thing. So Rene, let me turn to you on this as somebod who I know follows and has followed content moderation particularly closely. But a lot of these Other aspects that are tied up with that reflect a similar sort of questions. What the hell is going on? Because it's just utterly bizarre. Is this really just people taking what was still at its heart, a very close election, as reflecting a key cultural change in the United States or in Silicon Valley or in these companies? Or is there something more strategic happening here?
- [35:23]
Renee Diresta
There's a term we use. I'm not sure how familiar people are with it working. The referees reflect refworking in sort of thirdhand parlance. Okay, so refworking is the story of Meta's moderation policies. And I just want to, like, get that out there up front. Platform policies are supposed to reflect platform values, and in an ideal world, you would see strong values that they stand for and defend. But what we see a lot on Meta is this whipsawing around when the political winds change. And that's not only in response to the right. You see that in response to calls from the left. Meta has changed policies and evolved over the years also. So it tries to strike this balance between being responsive to where it sees the public zeitgeist, while also trying to strike this balance between user safety and freedom of expression. What you're seeing here is a phenomenal capitulation. It's just an extraordinary. Again, it frustrates me a little bit because instead of the policies, which I can kind of enumerate, if helpful, but instead of the policies being rooted in a set of facts or emerging data, where we say, like, hey, this policy didn't work, so we're going to change it instead, we have policies that could work, we actually don't really know. They're not very transparent about them. But we see a whipsaw, we see a pendulum swing from far left to far right, if you will, as opposed to landing somewhere in the middle where we're saying, hey, this policy worked, that policy didn't. So here's how we're changing course instead. We get it reframed through this, you know, through this bro on Rogan kind of lens.
- [36:51]
Tyler McBrien
Yeah, Renee, I've seen a back and forth. I mean, you were talking about the whipsaw a bit. I've seen back and forth, especially with regard to Meta and Mark Zuckerberg, that this represents either an about face reading the writing on the wall, that there's Trump 2.0, so get on board, work the new refs who are in power, or that there were signs that these were Mark Zuckerberg's true beliefs the entire time and that you just weren't paying close enough attention. Do you have a sense based on Meta's content moderation history, whether this is a continuation or more of a break.
- [37:34]
Renee Diresta
It'S a pretty big reversion to a maybe pre2015 kind of timeframe on some of this stuff. So I think it's important to just go over what happened because it's being described as like, content moderation has changed. So there's a few things, right? First, there's an end to the fact checking program. So the fact checking program was started in 2016 and it was largely in response to people being like, hey, tons of what we very quaintly for like five minutes called fake news, where we meant like things that were actually false, that were going viral. That kind of stuff was happening a lot in 2015, 2016, particularly because things like Macedonian Content Farms were gaming Meta's algorithms. And so in response to concern largely from the left at that point, you did start to see Meta begin to make statements about how one of its values was making sure that its users were informed. And you have to keep in mind also that all of these policies are now being read through an American culture war lens, but they apply globally. And so the fact checking thing is a very interesting carve out because while it was implemented and rolled out globally, it's being ended in the United States and continued elsewhere because Europe and other countries have actually regulated that Meta perform certain types of things whereby fact checking is not part, fact checking specifically is not part of it. But there is this sort of set of policy rubrics that Europe wants to make sure that what it considers to be its interests in having informed citizens continue to be met. So you have this kind of complicated thing around fact checking. In lieu of fact checking in the United States, we're going to get what are called Community notes. So I've been a big supporter of Community Notes for a long time. It's where any user can go and sort of throw up a comment saying, hey, this is wrong, this is out of context. It's supposed to be supplemental to fact checking in a way. It says like fact checkers have to go and do all this work, they're bandwidth constrained. Whereas users and the wisdom of the crowd can go and can correct more things, or people who are very deeply informed on an issue can add perspective. But in order for a community Note to display, somebody has to write it, a bunch of people have to go vote on it, and then a bridging based algorithm has to determine that a sufficient number of the raters come from what it considers to be Opposite sides of the political aisle, right? And that's because you don't want to have Community Notes that appear because of brigading, right, where everybody on the left says, like, okay guys, go up, vote my note. Right? So you have to have that broad appeal. And one of the reasons why Community Notes is important is that fact checking works a lot of the time as far as, like, helps people change their mind and become informed, but only if they trust the fact checker. And so Community Notes is a means of adding more legitimacy because on the right, there's been a very deliberate effort to undermine fact checkers for a very long time now and to delegitimize fact checking. And so one of the reasons to kill fact checking and roll out Community Notes as opposed to having both of these things together, is that capitulation to the audiences on the right who fundamentally distrust fact checking and see it as some sort of vast, tyrannical mass media cabal trying to silence conservative voices. So that's the sort of tension between fact checking and Community Notes. That's like one small piece of what was in that announcement. There was also stuff about reducing auto moderation, meaning instead of having content like the auto mods, which is the kind of colloquial term, is when non human entities are sort of reading, if you will, Facebook comments and posts, deciding if they violate a policy and then actioning in a no humans in the loop process. So the algorithm decides that something is good or bad and acts accordingly. This leads to some like, really bad over enforcement. Like they're not very precise. That's meta's problem, by the way. They could make them more precise. But there's a but what they're doing is they're basically saying that this, this part of Zuckerberg's kind of litany of changes is that the auto mods are going to be deployed only in very specific kind of high tension or high stakes areas. And he mentions like drugs and terrorism and child safety. So again, I don't think that's necessarily a bad call. These things just aren't very good. People don't like them. They do create a sense that the platform is against you and somebody is censoring you. And everybody across the political spectrum has had some surreal experience with an auto mod, like misconstruing something. So it's not a terrible change. But on the flip side, much like Community, it puts the onus on the users now to report, and that's a huge shift. I don't know. You know, I imagine we've all been on social media for like, 15 years now. I don't know how many people feel like, oh, yes, I have a great experience when I report something, like, my report is actioned, it's taken seriously. I feel confident that the platform cares about me. No, that doesn't happen. Most people actually won't report because they don't believe the platform will do anything. So it's just sort of going to, I think, you know, in aggregate, change the tone of. Of being in some of the communities on the platform. And that'll take me, I guess, to the final, you know, the final major change on the moderation front, which was Meta changing some of its hate speech policy. And there, what you see is Zuckerberg specifically calls out immigration and LGBT and trans issues, gender issues. He mentions gender specifically. And there what you've seen is some changes where I was actually very, very surprised. You can go and you can read the change logs. You can see what it was, you know, two weeks ago versus now. You can now do things like call LGBT people, including, you know, teenagers and kids who are on these Instagram and platforms like this. You know, you can call them mentally ill. You can. It really just sort of opens the door. You can call immigrants, like, dirty and all these other terms. Areas where we used to Meta used to, again, if platform policies are reflecting platform values, saying, like, dehumanization is not okay. We don't want you bullying people. That's not even a particularly courageous stance. Right? This is just how we behave as humans amongst ourselves. We don't say these things to people when they're in front of us. But now all of a sudden, we're kind of opening the door to change that dynamic. There used to be this line that platforms tried to strike where you could argue political commentary on culture war issues, like you could talk in the abstract about men playing women's sports, these sorts of things, but you weren't supposed to go after individual people with dehumanizing language. And we're seeing that rollback. And that, I think is like, that's an explicitly political choice to try to be more in line with the MAGA aesthetic. And candidly, I think the real reason it's being done is that Meta knows that that kind of language is going to come from political elites and doesn't want to be put in the position of trying to moderate the political elites who are going to say it's, hey.
- [44:26]
Scott R. Andersen
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- [46:15]
Renee Diresta
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Roger Parloff
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- [46:20]
Scott R. Andersen
New 5G phone?
- [46:21]
Renee Diresta
Enough.
- [46:22]
Scott R. Andersen
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- [49:14]
Renee Diresta
You know, there's this phrase I think about a lot. It actually gets talked about a lot in the Valley. Exit versus Voice, you know, and loyalty.
- [49:22]
Scott R. Andersen
That's the third one. Everybody leaves that out for Hirschman. Poor Hirschman.
- [49:25]
Renee Diresta
Yes, yes, yes. Exit, Voice. And loyalty. Well, and loyalty is actually. Let's talk about loyalty, because that, I think is important here. Very important here. Right? So exit versus voice means you either voice, you stay and complain, right? You try to refwork. And again, when I say refworking, it's not a pejorative. It's every team, every sports team does it, right? They're all trying to work the reps to maximize our advantage.
- [49:47]
Scott R. Andersen
That's why I laugh at Ben's jokes. That's a general policy.
- [49:51]
Tyler McBrien
That's why I just laughed at yours.
- [49:52]
Scott R. Andersen
There you go.
- [49:54]
Tyler McBrien
It goes all the way down.
- [49:55]
Renee Diresta
But Exit was really hard on social media for a long time. And ironically, what you see, the very first Exits you mentioned, Blue sky, and there's Threads and Mastodon and some of these other places that people left Twitter because they didn't like the value change. But that actually began on the right. The very first platforms that really were explicitly politically coded were like Parler and Getter, and that was in 2018. And that was because, again, the. The thing that the right did very effectively was it reframed freedom of speech as freedom from moderation, whatever the moderation is. And again, these are private platforms, but we had this. This complete reframing, this notion of the public square, as opposed to this is unaccountable private power, maximizing its business decisions, maximizing its relationships with regulators, and making determinations that the users just get stuck with. And what happened on Twitter, what's really interesting about Twitter is that the exodus from Twitter happened at a time when there's actually now a lot of tools, a lot of technology that gives users the capacity for much more control. Right. You have. So one of the interesting things about bluesky is that. And Mastodon, for that matter. And even Threads was planning to integrate with the Fediverse. It's not clear what they need Threads for at this point, but what was happening there was this infrastructure that gave users more control from the ground up. So if you wanted to see more of something or less of something, you had the ability to, you know, on bluesky you can subscribe to content labelers and if you want to, and they're incredibly granular. There is this sort of blow up on bluesky in early December where this journalist Jesse Single joined. And people have very strong opinions about Jesse Single. And people literally made block lists not only to block Jesse Single, but to block all of the people who followed Jesse Single. Right now again, this is like kind of a. Do I think that's healthy? Like, well, I mean, you know, it's a pretty crude tool, but what you see is users who want that can have it. And there's just a capacity. You can use labels to show you certain types of content or hide other types of content, but it's at the user discretion, not the platform discretion. And third party providers are coming in and creating more tools. So what you're seeing is the emergence of like a completely different type of user controlled social media. And I think that's, that's where the exit into someplace where you have the capacity to build, right? To be an active part in building your experience is incredibly powerful. And that's where I hope as people see the whipsaw that a whole lot of people are now going to be subjected to because Mark Zuckerberg made a decision in response to political pressure to kowtow to a person who threatened to jail him. Let's not leave that part out. Jawboning I think the kids call that. But this is where we have that dynamic and the users are the ones who get screwed. And it's sort of a fascinating experience to see the emergence of platforms where not only are you moving for the vibes, but you're moving because you can have a whole lot more granular control over your experience.
- [53:03]
Roger Parloff
This may already be old news, but this morning the Wall Street Journal was reporting that maybe Musk was in Talks to acquire TikTok. Do you know if that's a real thing still or ever or. What do you know about that?
- [53:24]
Renee Diresta
I saw that last night as I was funny enough watching a bunch of TikTok users migrate to and even more Chinese app called RedNote. I spent a bunch of time on RedNote last night.
- [53:38]
Tyler McBrien
How are the vibes?
- [53:39]
Renee Diresta
You know, it was really interesting. It was not what I expected, I have to say. So first I went there and the first screen it showed me was like Luigi, you know, like Luigi, literally latte art of Luigi. And I was like, oh, oh God, you know, whatever. Express Yourself how? However you want. I was just like, it's very interesting to see the decampment, like, which groups migrate in these moments. And so I get the Luigi Coffee art. But. But as I. As I kept scrolling, there were really fascinating exchanges between these, like, TikTok refugees, as they called themselves. And then the Chinese users on the platform. And you saw the creation of content where the Chinese users were speaking to the new people. Right? There was a. There was a Chinese person who created a. Like, welcome to RedNote. Here's Chinese 101. And it was, I am American. I am a TikTok refugee. It was literally like a language lesson with it, you know, with it drawn out. And then there are people who are asking questions. They're like, I am a black person. Like, how are black people treated in China? And you just see this fascinating exchange of Chinese, you know, Chinese, I assume, youth and, you know, sort of American TikTokers like having conversations in the. The comments, using the translation tool. Again, I don't have any fluency in Mandarin whatsoever, but watching that set of exchanges was really interesting. Also watching the sort of Chinese community mock the American government alongside the American users, that part was a little bit. A little bit surreal. Like, we're so sorry your government is censoring you and you're like, well, you.
- [55:13]
Roger Parloff
Know.
- [55:16]
Scott R. Andersen
Good for the goose, good for the gander. Yeah.
- [55:20]
Renee Diresta
I mean, it's not like a place. I'm not a TikTok user, really. I'm not a creator on there, so I don't anticipate spending time. But just from one of these cultural moments, it was an interesting way to spend a couple hours last night when.
- [55:30]
Tyler McBrien
You said something about how there's a lot more power for users to kind of curate their feeds from the bottom up. And it strikes me as. And let me know if I'm off base here, because I don't follow this as closely. More of a consumer that users like moderation, but they don't like to be moderated themselves. It was really interesting. I was an early joiner of bluesky, and it was sort of like what you were saying about maybe similar, that the Chinese users already on RedNote were talking about the platform to the new refugees. There was a bit of that sense, it seemed on bluesky that these elders were welcoming in the new people, but also laying out the rules of the road and the values. But it was interesting that there was at least a perception or a feeling whether or not it was true. I'm not sure that the users themselves were setting Those values rather than it being top down like a big policy.
- [56:25]
Renee Diresta
So I think there's a trend towards these smaller, more niche environments on some, like Parler and Getter were explicitly sort of avowedly reaching out to a very particular group that felt itself like chafing under the moderation rules of mainstream platforms back five years ago. Now, I think the early adopters do set the tone for the community and there was a lot of, I think, interest in threads, particularly among more liberals who wanted to leave Twitter but didn't consider themselves to be quite in the more what was sort of seen as like far left shit poster culture that had established itself on Blue sky in the early days. And so you're seeing that shift. But the change that you see happening on Blue sky though is in the early days of Blue sky it was very much that. And so there is these sort of like elder culture, but more and more mainstream journalists and sort of liberal folks are on there also. And so you are seeing the emergence of distinct networks. Some of the heterodox people are on there also engaging. I saw like Saurabh Amari posting something this morning. You know, sometimes they're like trying to be provocateurs and get a rise from the community too. But there is this sense that I think for a lot of people who follow both the content wars and social media, that it's the most technologically interesting thing out there right now. Right. And both Mastodon and Blue sky are trying to facilitate development on top of their ecosystems, which creates even more. More of an opportunity. I did a bunch of writing on this that's. We wrote a whole big white paper, Frank Fukuyama and Luke Hogg at FAI and Daphne Keller and I and just huge litany of. I didn't name check some of the other extraordinary authors, but we basically wrote a paper that we put out in December. Just saying like now is really the time for this. If you want to change curation and moderation, if we want to have a real ecosystem driven by what users want, as opposed to this whipsawing that happens, this is the place to do it. Where different communities can leverage the same technology to carve out spaces and rules that are palatable to them. And I think that you're starting to really see that bear out the meta thing was a real, I think, wake up call for some people who believed that there would just be certain types of values that would power the platform. And when it became clear that changes could be made that were not aligned with their values, they're looking for somewhere else to go.
- [58:58]
Scott R. Andersen
Well, to stay on our theme of some shifts in perspective that are coming out in this week before our next presidential inauguration, let us take our aperture and open it wider to the rest of the world because we saw former President Trump really trigger a actually kind of surprising to me a little bit wave of alarm in a lot of circles, occupy a number of op ed pages and even sometimes front pages or, you know, a sections of major newspapers with a set of off the cuff remarks he made in response to a reporter at a Mar a Lago press conference last week when asked whether he would assure the international community that he would not use force, presumably military force or economic coercion, as a means of securing control over the Panama Canal and Greenland, two objectives he's kind of laid out as part of his nominal early foreign policy agenda. Although I would say agendas maybe being a little generous of what it is, kind of a bundle of thoughts at the moment. He said no, he couldn't rule those things out because they're both necessary to U.S. economic interests. The sort of thing that is alarming, although coming from Donald Trump, somebody who's known for these off the cuff remarks, that sometimes it's always the question of taking him literally versus taking him seriously. I'm not sure which side this falls on, but this raises those questions all over again. And it's probably an indicator of many things to come in international affairs and otherwise for the next four years to come. But Tyler, let me turn to you specifically on this. I was really surprised by just how big a stir these comments made. They are alarming, but I was more surprised because it's just the sort of thing that Trump has been known to say, and it doesn't always mean that's going to translate directly into policy. But this has gotten a huge amount of pickup. We've seen reactions from foreign officials, like I said, a whole plethora of media articles. What is it about these comments that really seems to have people so on alert and reacting so strongly and so broadly to them? Is it just that we're at that moment now where everything Trump says seems laden with weight and import, or is there something more fundamental going on here?
- [61:02]
Tyler McBrien
That was my first instinct. It seemed like a very classic throwback exercise from the first Trump administration of separating signals from noise and, and everyone is rusty. So we're all failing at it because it didn't seem like a serious thing. But then I started thinking about the context in which he's saying it now versus then because this is a bit of a reprise of sorts from the first time around. And I think my read of the alarmism about borders and sovereignty and those issues of great import is the global context of Ukraine, of Gaza, of the still lingering threat of China, Taiwan. And so then I think the world feels more dangerous. So these statements like Greenland and Panama Canal seem more dangerous too, because they seem more serious because of that. That was my only guess. And I want to just bring up one. The first person I thought of who may have something to say on this is a historian named Daniel Imavar at Northwestern. So I googled his name and sure enough, he was quoted in a New York Times piece and he said, quote, we are seeing a reversion to a more grabby world. So I think I would call that context. It's a much grabbier world than the first time Trump said he wanted to buy Greenland. That's what I could think of. But Scott, I'm curious your take on the same question. And then also it would be helpful to have a refresher of once again, can he even legally do this if we are to take it as a serious suggestion or offer?
- [62:48]
Scott R. Andersen
So it's a good question and I've been like a little disappointed by some of the muddiness we've seen even very good legal analysts approach this question and particularly newspapers say, oh yeah, Trump could buy Greenland, but technically that's not true. He almost certainly cannot buy Greenland. I wrote a piece on this in 2019 for Lawfare which folks encourage folks to look at, which I think is entitled something to the effect of why Trump cannot buy Greenland. But the basic logic is that the Danish government recognizes Greenland as a territory that has its own self determination. So even though it's within part of Denmark, it doesn't claim to own it. It gives it a bunch of legal rights. It actually has a defined process by which it can pursue independence if it wants to. And so buying it outright just is like not the way you're going to go about this. You can reach out to people who live in Greenland and with Denmark or perhaps even trying to bypass Denmark by trying to get them to declare independence and then build a relationship with them. And that's totally a reasonable thing to do. And there are very good strategic arguments for doing something like that. We've seen the Biden administration and the prior Trump administration do stuff like that. Build this relationship out on a voluntary basis. That's not buying anything. You're not claiming any sort of sovereignty over this territory. You would have to get the consent of the people who live in Greenland to enter into it and in the United States, the only alternative in a very hypothetical landscape would be I guess, occupying militarily. Greenland claiming enough authority and then trying to get Congress on board to make it an unincorporated territory. Color me extremely skeptical of that A because I think there's a very good argument the President's constitutional authority to use military force doesn't go that far. I don't think you're going to get Congress on board on doing any of these things under such outlandish terms. And he's going to get a lot of pushback for his own party economic coercion. I think he makes things difficult. Tariffs, sanctions, there's a whole range of things he can do there. But those are going to be on a macro level against Denmark, who is a very close US Ally. People don't appreciate. Denmark has been lockstep with the United States and most of its foreign policy for the last 20 years or so. Not in Iraq so much, but in Afghanistan, in the counter ISIS fight. In a whole lot of global diplomacy, Denmark's been among European allies, some of the closest and most effective European allies, even though they're small, but they have well trained, well regarded military and are from a policy perspective much more in aligned with U.S. views, people and of a lot lot of stuff than other European countries. So you're really kind of blowing up a potentially major relationship that has lots of other benefits for you. Not least the airbase we already have on Greenland or I guess it's a space based now because it was transferred to the space force which is co staffed by Danish military officers and American military officers. So the Greenland aspect of this is just really kind of a little outlandish. There's lots of good arguments that you could strengthen relationship with Greenland and maybe you can get them all on board to voluntarily build up some sort of more formal association with the United States. Although they keep telling us they're not interested in it and maybe we should take that seriously. But that's another thing. Panama, slightly different, more complicated example Panama. There is a US history of military intervention there and we do have a treaty relationship and a set of rights built around the Panama Canal that prior administrations have used as a hook, although not itself a freestanding hook, to justify military intervention or asserting different types of control. I think it's going to be viewed very negatively by countries in the region. I think it's going to be viewed very negatively by a lot of allies. Certainly in Panama there may be less to some extent domestic legal questions raised by that, although I think if there really is no sort of military threat in any way to the neutrality of the canal, the operation of the canal as allowed, even though Trump says there is, you're straining credulity if you're kind of making up facts to justify that, that it's a slightly harder case in Panama and we don't have as close relationship with Panama as we do with Denmark. So the costs of deep sixing it are maybe a little lower. But I'm still highly skeptical that this is the way this is going to go about. There's a lot of diplomatic measures and frankly, a lot of rights the United States has under the existing treaty regime they can use as pressure points to push Panama's government towards making the sorts of concessions and transparency and other issues that they're really worried about. So, again, economic pressure could come into play in terms of getting specific concessions. But there is this idea that somehow we're just going to bully them, sanction them, or use military force to just take control of these territories, I think is outlandish and extremely unlikely and a.
- [67:03]
Tyler McBrien
Bit of a farce, I'll just say very, very quickly. Fun fact. My great grandfather worked on the Panama Canal in its construction. So I, for one, will be first in line to go down there and claim my birthright.
- [67:17]
Scott R. Andersen
The Lockean prerogative. I think you get a slice of it. I think that's exactly right. So, Roger and Renee, let me ask you guys an aspect of this I'm kind of curious about your thoughts on. The chatter around this tends to break into two camps, or maybe a spectrum kind of between two poles. On the one pole, you have a view kind of like I laid out, which I still subscribe to in this, which is that this is mostly sort of outlandish, that things that are kind of counterproductive. Because even if there's a good idea underlying all of this, when you threaten to do a bunch of stuff that you probably aren't going to be able to do politically, legally or otherwise, and you're striking a much more adversarial relationship, that's not always to your benefit. And then there's the other camp that paints these in a much more favorable light. When President Trump does things like this, which he does do somewhat regularly, where he says he's just kicking open the Overton window, maybe, but he makes these outlandish threats and he says, hey, all of a sudden if you ask for X, Y and Z, it makes you a lot more likely you're going to get X and Y, and that's what we really care about. So shoot for the moon, ask for the world, blow things up as much as you need. There's no real limits. It's a very forgiving standard that these people tend to apply to this sort of conduct. In the end, it's more likely we're going to get what we actually care about, even though it falls short of what Trump is actually saying he wants or threatens.
- [68:34]
Renee Diresta
Threatening.
- [68:34]
Scott R. Andersen
And I will say in this case, Danish government has responded and engaged on ways to improve U.S. access to Greenland and improvement. I don't think there was ever that much resistance to that. It's something that Danes have worked with Americans very closely on for many years, but they are listening and they seem to have reacted and it's opened a new avenue of communication. So maybe there's something to this. How do you all react to that? Where does this fit in the bargaining strategy spectrum?
- [68:59]
Renee Diresta
That was my take on it, that you ask for or you broach crazy things so that when you, you know, walk it back to actually we just want military bases or something along those lines, it sounds much more palatable, you know, so it is more of like an art of the deal negotiation type dynamic. The other thing that's been interesting about Greenland, though, is that it's a huge source of entertainment for, like, the memes, you know, we're making America great again. We're doing conquests, we're gonna. We're gonna make the moon the 51st state, you know, these sorts of. These sorts of things. And so I think. I think in that sphere, it's also a way to keep the base engaged, keep them excited and give them something to talk about.
- [69:37]
Scott R. Andersen
Also a little slice of red meat off the table to get people excited who want a little more territorial lean. What about the tension with this view, with the whole idea of peaceful Trump, this was actually a big line of his political appeal. It was a big part of the 2024 campaign, was this idea that Biden and Harris were a warmonger. They were the ones who had dragged out the conflict in Ukraine, ruined Afghanistan through the withdrawal. And it's not clear exactly what they did wrong around Gaza, but somehow it contributed to Gaza being what we all agree is a giant mess and a historical tragedy of epic proportions. Doesn't this run contrary to that? And does that matter? Or is this kind of about the segmentation of your camp into different pockets, that you can throw this piece to one pocket without upsetting these other too much?
- [70:24]
Renee Diresta
I don't think they see it as a war, like, what the. You know, they would see it more as like, you know, an acquisition. I don't think that they are necessarily seeing this as something that there would be a war for it. I think that they're expecting more of like a. Like a capitulation. So I don't think that they're taking the take it by force piece quite so seriously. I think it's seen as bluster.
- [70:45]
Roger Parloff
You know, it's definitely part of his self image about being about the art of the deal. And, you know, I would like to think that it doesn't really work or that he's incompetent, but there's indications that it does seem to work. And what happened with Zuckerberg, in fact, you know, writing that maybe I'll put you in jail for the rest of your life, and then these amazing turnaround occurs, you know, maybe things come out of it. The other thing we've seen with these gestures and these threats is often the other side will make an empty response, empty but fawning, and that will be sufficient. And because he's not locked into literal truth, he can say, look what I've obtained from my negotiation, but it's really out of my silo or bailiwick or whatever.
- [71:48]
Scott R. Andersen
Yeah, it's a good question. Obviously, there's a role in any sort of negotiations for making big asks, right? That's part of the game. That is negotiations 101. When you go in to buy a house, well, in D.C. in certain markets, you always just have to pay well over the price of the house, because that's just the way it works. Right? But in theory, ideally, you're going to go in, you want to set the price, make an aggressive offer, and then meet somewhere in the middle of something, they're going to counter offer, and you're going to write ratchet back or any other big perch. Maybe a car is a better example than a house these days. But I have to wonder whether this idea that this madness theory is a universal solvent strikes me as extremely generous. I know Dan Dresner, on his substack, has been tracking, looking for cases of the madman theory actually being successful from Trump's first term in office, and hasn't identified any. I'm not sure there aren't a few you can point to, say, oh, we probably did something here. But then you also see cases like the North Korea case, where Trump did it extremely aggressively and then walked it back in an extremely aggressive fashion to the point of building this almost fawning relationship with North Korean leadership, this very close kind of rapport that far exceeded diplomatic accomplishments. And I always wonder what the driver is of that. Is it just that you hit the point where it wasn't working and you kind of 180 on this? It's hard to disagree exactly what is contributing to these things. But I think the general idea about saying if you're threatening your negotiating partners outright, particularly when they're partners with whom you have a good relationship, and you need to get their parliament on board to do things like you would for Greenland, at least I'm not sure that's a successful strategy. We'll have to wait and see. Maybe we'll be welcoming Greenland as our 51st state in the next year or two. And I will be eating my crow.
- [73:22]
Roger Parloff
Quite satisfactorily, if I can say. In law school, we once had a labor lawyer come speak to us and he was explaining that you can't really just ask for the world, you know, because especially if you have a constituency, because they're listening and they might believe you and then they'll be disappointed with what you can really get. And so you have to ask for something more than you expect, but still reasonable. And I don't know if acquiring Greenland was one of those sorts of opening gambling fair question.
- [74:00]
Scott R. Andersen
Well, that brings us to just about the end of our time 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 were back in your podcatcher. Tyler, what do you have for us this week?
- [74:16]
Tyler McBrien
I don't have music this week, but I do have an article which answers an eternal question, I think, for many New Yorkers, which is why are there so many Australians here? So I'm advocating for everyone to read this article called Bogans in Brooklyn in the Baffler. Bogan being it's not a pejorative term as it kind of sounds. It's the word that Australians use for workmen or tradesmen, and I think it's actually quite a bit of an honorific as well. But it also can be used to mean like an Australian bro. But I think the answer is not going to be surprising to many lawfare listeners who who probably either know or suspect that it has to do with some sort of reciprocity for the Australian government helping the US Government and in return for visas. Spoiler alert, the origins in the Iraq War. This again, probably is not surprising to many listeners, but it is surprising, I'm sure, to a lot of New Yorkers. But it's just a great article. It's really well written. It goes deep into the history of this visa program and the quid pro quo. Super interesting. This is also not to say that we shouldn't have Australians in New York. Wonderful people, beautiful country. It's just a great piece of journalism.
- [75:25]
Scott R. Andersen
I'm really looking forward to reading this. Although I will say, in my globetrotting 20s, where I went to a lot of different corners of the world, I never found one where there weren't a lot of Australians. They are kind of ubiquitous. And the few places where there weren't a lot of Australians, there were always a ton of Russians and Israelis. And so I feel like there's a weird handoff going in kind of the globe trotting 20 something set between the global locales that they've kind of divided the world and conquered. As far as I can tell.
- [75:46]
Tyler McBrien
Probably a better article to write. Why are there no Australians here in these particular places?
- [75:51]
Scott R. Andersen
Exactly. Roger, what do you have for us this week?
- [75:53]
Roger Parloff
Well, I was in France last week for the anniversary of January 6th, and there was a lot in the news about January 6th and the anniversary and what's happened, but there was also a lot about January 7, which is more known there. And that is the 10th anniversary of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. It actually goes from seventh to the ninth because it was a series of three day period of mayhem. Relevant to that, I read a fantastic book called V13 by Emmanuel Carrer, which is about the November 13, 2015 attacks in France. The Bataclan, the Stade de France and the shootings of people on the terraces of restaurants. And it's about the trial of 14 people which took place in, in 2021. Well, it was nine months, so it. And he's just, he's not just a court reporter, he's a very experienced writer and novelist. And it's a fabulous book. Both about the underlying events, which I think are. They're actually more topical than. I hope they aren't really topical, but they're. They could be. They're about, you know, this was the Islamic State that was coming mainly from Syria and their sense was seeking retaliation for bombardments of them that, you know, this would be. Obviously this isn't much of a defense in my view, but it's just a very fascinating fair book. A ton of information about the victims, a ton about the accused, a ton about the lawyers. It really shows you what a trial can be, even though it's not our system. I totally recommend it and there is a translation now came out last year. So V13 that means Vendre D13 it was the Friday 13th November 2015.
- [78:26]
Scott R. Andersen
Phenomenal. I've heard wonderful things about that book. I definitely am going to check that out for my object lesson. I slightly light her fare, obviously for folks who listen to the podcast every week. You know, that December I commit to doing holiday themed object lessons. I ran a little light because I've been doing it for a couple years now and I'm running out of all my old standbys. But somehow after the holidays as my son was a little reluctant to let them go and we're still watching holiday movies well into January, I found one that's absolutely fantastic that just came out this year and is going to make its way into my family regular rotation and that is a movie called that Christmas. It's an animated movie set in, I think, Suffolk, if I recall correctly, in England, about a bunch of groups of kids dealing with different Christmas shenanigans. It is incredibly charming, very funny, has very good music, has a lot of comedians, has Reece Darby in it and Bill Nighy and a bunch of other people who are like, I think are funny British. And Rhys Darby is New Zealand from New Zealand, I recall. And a bunch of other folks who are are really interesting, really charming in it. It's just a phenomenal movie. I watched the movie and every 10 minutes I kept telling my wife, I'm really liking this because I really don't like most holiday movies we end up watching over the holidays. We just watch them because it's the season. But this one is phenomenal. So highly recommend, folks, check out that Christmas while you have the opportunity. Even though it's not quite the holiday season anymore, it can stay with us throughout the year and this movie can help do that at least a little bit longer. Renee, why don't you bring us home? What do you have for us this week?
- [79:48]
Renee Diresta
Oh man. Well, mine is pretty boring. The only thing I've been looking at is I've been looking at a lot of the work on like AI's role in helping people find common ground in democratic deliberation. So there's a paper in science that I was reading. There's another one that was looking at the question of community notes. We all like the idea how do we make them better? Turns out that there is a group of researchers including from Google, DeepMind and X Community Notes that's actually saying like maybe the AI goes and looks at all the rejected notes and sort of cobbles together from among them some sort of vision of the world and then produces what it calls a supernote, and then users can kind of rate that. So how can we use AI to reduce bias in the way that people describe facts and scenarios and situations and actually get much more of a consensus building, bridging process whereby we can have more constructive discourse and faster Fact checking on social media so that's been my the only thing I've really been reading, so I'm a very boring person this week. But it's a paper called supernotes Driving Consensus in Crowdsourced Fact Checking and it is actually interesting and accessible and has nice handy figures. So if people want to think about what role does technology play and maybe helping humans overcome their worst instincts, I do think it's kind of an interesting proposition.
- [81:08]
Scott R. Andersen
Phenomenal Sounds super interesting. Well, with that range of options, from the somewhat more frivolous and a seasonal to some heavy things, much more up our lane. That is the end of Rational Security and the end of this week's episode. But remember that Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to visit us at Lawfare Media for our show page with links to past episodes, for written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. And be sure to follow Lawfare on social media wherever you may socialize your media, and be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening. In addition, sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare 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 is Noam Osban of Goat Rodeo and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan and we were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guests Renee, Roger and Tyler, I am Scott R. Andersen and we will talk to you next week. Till then, goodbye.
- [82:09]
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