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Mary Louise Kelly
Every week we bring you as much insight as we can about events unfolding in America's centers of power and their global impact. It takes a lot of work, late nights across time zones, planning, sourcing, checking, taping, editing. Join our supporters who make that work possible with npr. You'll get all episodes sponsor free and unlock access to our archives. Sign up@plus.NPR.org so I was talking to.
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Tom Bowman
This U.S. official I've known for years, and he said, this is a new way ahead. And I said, you guys aren't going to shoot on the land in Venezuela, are you? He wouldn't answer, but he said, this will continue.
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Mary Louise Kelly
The might of the US Military trained against South American drug cartels. As three men, the leaders of US Adversaries rivals China, Russia and North Korea, stand shoulder to shoulder for the very first time. This is Sources and Methods from npr. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Every Thursday, we discuss the biggest national security stories of the week. I do that with my colleagues from NPR's NATSEC team covering the military, the State Department, the intelligence community, and also with NPR international correspondents stationed around the world today. That is Anthony Kuhn. He's here in the middle of the night for him, 13 hours ahead of us in Seoul, South Korea, his home base, reporting on the region. Anthony, good evening. Good morning. I'm not sure. Hello, how are you?
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Anthony Kuhn
Wee hours of the morning. Good morning. Good wee hours to you.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Good wee hours to you. And here with me, happily, in the same time zone, indeed, the very same studio here in Washington on a Thursday workday, Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hey there, Tom.
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Tom Bowman
Hey, Mary Louise.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Hi. So it has been a short work week for many of us here in the US because of the Labor Day holiday, but there's been no shortage of national security news. So let's dive in. I wanna start on Tuesday, which is when President Trump posted a black and white video, a grainy video. It showed small motorboat obliterated by what President Trump said was a strike from the US Navy. In that boat, he said was a big Venezuelan drug shipment. He said 11 people were in the boat. They were all killed. Tom Bowman, Tensions between the US And Venezuela were already high. Now they are really high.
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Tom Bowman
No, very high. And you know, that's pretty much. Mary Louise, all we know about this, we don't know what kind of drugs are on board. Were these people actually narco terrorists? Where did they come from? And I talked to a couple of.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Sources because it's all blown up. So it's right. Exactly.
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Tom Bowman
It just blew it out of the water. I talked to a couple of sources on Capitol Hill, one in the Senate, one in the House. They have not been briefed on this yet, which is highly unusual. And they also raised the question, what was the legal authority for doing this? Because generally, if you suspect a vessel having drugs on it, the Coast Guard shows up, they communicate with the crew. And if the boat takes off, they can shoot one across the bow or they can just disable the engine. They could just shoot a.50 caliber round right through the engine block and stop it dead in the water. In this case, you know, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, we could have stopped it, but the president said, blow it up. And as we see in the video, just big flash and that boat is gone and it'll happen again.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Maybe it's happening right now, I don't know. But the point is, yeah, this was. We'll note that Marco Rubio has been traveling in Latin America this week, not in Venezuela, but he did, as you say, he weighed in on this boat attack from Mexico City. I just want to play a little bit of it because he did answer that question on my mind. Why didn't they just search the boat? Why did they have to blow it up? Let's listen. The United States has long, for many, many years, established intelligence that allow us to interdict and stop drug boats. So the same information and the same intelligence mechanisms with maybe a higher focus was used to determine that a drug boat was headed towards eventually the United States using the same intelligence mechanisms with maybe a higher focus. Do we have any idea what that means?
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Tom Bowman
Well, we don't. It could be satellites keeping an eye on some of the ports here. It could be human intelligence with these guys loading the boat. And it could be voice intercepts, communications intercepts, as you know, covering the intelligence community. They're pretty easy to gather. It would tell you, you know, what they're doing, what they're talking about. But the big thing is, okay, if that's the case, why don't you share it with the public, and you sure as hell should share it with Congress. That has not happened.
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Mary Louise Kelly
This is what people in Congress are telling you, right?
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Tom Bowman
So I was talking to this US Official I've known for years. It's like, come on, man, why don't you give us some information? What's going on? And he's privy to kind of the way ahead on this. And he said, get this, this is a new way ahead. And he said he likened it to fighting the Houthis in Yemen. He said, this is not going to end anytime soon. And I said, wait a minute. The Houthis in Yemen, you're hitting land sites, you're hitting radar facilities, headquarters. You gu aren't gonna shoot on the land in Venezuela, are ya? He wouldn't answer, but he said this will continue. This is the new normal, he said.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Anthony Kuhn, hop in on this. You're watching all this from a different continent and you're watching, just to recap, this boat destroyed by the US Navy. Meanwhile, I'm sure you're also tracking the armed National Guard troops patrolling the streets here in Washington, D.C. we're hearing from President Trump more about the idea of sending troops to other cities. He's floated Chicag this week. He added New Orleans maybe to the list of where he may want to send federal troops. From your perch there in Asia, what does this look like? What are people telling you? Military might, military theater? What?
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Anthony Kuhn
Well, China has kept pretty quiet on this, but I have an idea of what they're thinking, and that is that it reminds them of gunboat diplomacy of the sort that imperialist powers used on China in the late 19th century. At the same time, this has a big connection with them, and that is that the US has indicated that it could use the military to go after drug production such as fentanyl, including in Mexico. And the precursors, the ingredients for that come from China. And of course, the US has levied tariffs on China that are related to that. Fentanyl.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Yeah. Just to just to spell some of this out, this is the Trump administration, which for a while now has said, look, a lot of the illegal drugs that come into the US Come from China. They've pointed, as you just noted, they've used fentanyl to justify tariffs. Tom Bowman.
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Tom Bowman
Well, first of all, this boat that they blew up, the drugs on board were likely cocaine, which comes from Colombia, through Venezuela, and then on into the Caribbean to the United States. Now, if that's the case, why are you going after cocaine, which is obviously huge amounts going through the Caribbean? If you're going after fentanyl, it doesn't come in in this route. It comes in through Mexico on Chinese ships. Either the fentanyl or the precursor chemic. I was talking to an administration official earlier this year, and he said one of the things we're talking about, work with the Mexicans at the docks. Now, we don't know if they're doing that. It would make a lot of sense, a lot more sense in blowing up this fast boat in the Caribbean.
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Mary Louise Kelly
One thing we do know Just to round out this portion of our discussion, the Trump administration has been increasingly confrontational toward Venezuela. This week being the latest manifestation. They accused President Nicolas Maduro of of Venezuela of leading a drug cartel. They just doubled the bounty on his head to $50 million. With now multiple warships, US warships deployed. The Pentagon has confirmed eight warships.
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Tom Bowman
Eight warships, including three destroyers.
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Mary Louise Kelly
How worried should Caracas be?
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Tom Bowman
Well, I don't think they'll probably invade Venezuela. They're clearly putting a lot more pressure on Maduro. There was an indictment against him five years ago during the first Trump administration. He denies any involvement in the narco terrorism world.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Are you hearing, though, as you walk Pentagon hallways, any idea of what those warships are doing? Is it just a show of force?
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Tom Bowman
Yeah, pretty much a show of force. And also, you don't need eight warships, including three destroyers to take out a small motorboat. You could do that with the Coast Guard. So, yeah, clearly a lot of this is a show of force, frankly, just like the National Guard on the streets of Washington D.C. it's a show of force. What do those guys know about policing?
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Mary Louise Kelly
Doesn't mean it's not effective.
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Tom Bowman
Correct. It's also good pictures.
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Podcast Announcer
If you're a robot, this might not be the show for you. But if you're a human with hopes, dreams and bills to pay, the Life Kit podcast might be just what you need. Three times a week, Life Kit brings you a fresh set of solutions to help you tackle topics big and small, from how to save money on groceries to how to bring the house down at karaoke. You know, human stuff. Listen to the Life Kit podcast from npr. Presentado por me, Mariel Segarra.
- [09:10]
Mary Louise Kelly
A good Internet domain name can be worth millions. Think apple.com or zoom.com so what is up with the guy who owns milk.com?
- [09:19]
Tom Bowman
I happened to like chocolate milk, you know, and so he started calling me Milk Boy. Like, hey, milk boy, how's it going?
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Anthony Kuhn
Milk Boy.
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Tom Bowman
Yeah, Milk Boy. On the latest Planet Money podcast, the.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Strange economics of million dollar domain name. Moving on now to Beijing, where, Anthony, we witnessed some history this week. China's President Xi Jinping, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with a couple of dozen other world leaders were all there watching thousands of soldiers goose stepping through Tiananmen Square. This huge military parade, it was officially to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, the defeat of Imperial Japan. But it sent a lot of signals that are a lot more contemporary than that. Anthony, unpack the significance for us.
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Anthony Kuhn
So there was a military message, and there was a political message. The military message was that they have some serious new weaponry. And chief among those were some new ICBMs that can hit anywhere in the continental US and that are part of a bigger expansion that includes building new missile silo fields in China and also tripling the stockpile of their nuclear warheads. There were also new high tech gadgets such as directed energy weapons or lasers, AI drones. Now, these things, the US And China may both say they have them first, but they're all sort of emerging technologies, all not completely deployed or proven yet. So that's unclear.
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Mary Louise Kelly
And for those who haven't seen the video, I will note, Anthony, when you say they were rolling them out this week, they were literally rolling them on these giant flatbed trucks down the streets. Tom Bowman, did the Pentagon, did the US Military know China has all this stuff? Was there any huge revelation?
- [11:22]
Tom Bowman
Oh, sure. No, no, they know. And China in some respects is moving ahead of the on some of these armaments, like hypersonic missiles which can go five times the speed of sound. They have them. The US Is going to deploy them later this year. So that's a concern for the US in particular. Also with cyber, with robotics, some space assets, the Chinese are either on par or moving ahead. I'll note too that one of the concerns China has is the US Working with other countries in the region, training bases and exercises with Filipino troops, with Australian troops. Singapore is quietly working with the U.S. even Vietnam is closer to the U.S. so people tell me, listen, the U.S. has allies, China has customers.
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Anthony Kuhn
Tom, you know, we brought this up before that the US Feels it's a generation or multiple generations ahead of China in terms of certain technology. But you can't discount other factors like distance, like willingness to absorb costs and casualties and asymmetrical approaches that sort of, you know, nullify technological advantages. Right.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Spell out what you mean with some of that when you talk about distance.
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Anthony Kuhn
The home field advantage that China enjoys in its own backyard, where the US Is, you know, deploying a lot of military hardware, positioning missiles around China. But what China does is called anti access and area denial. And that means using their weapons to make it impossible for America to get to the fight.
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Tom Bowman
No, that's absolutely a big part of this also. And here's the thing. If China ever goes to war with the United States, and people think that's unlikely, they're not even sure if they're going to try to take Taiwan. They'll have a capability in two years. If you really want to go after your Enemy in this day and age, you blind them, you take out their satellites. That's something that I think the US Is going to focus on more and sending more troops over to the region. And you're absolutely right. There's a tyranny of distance getting the US Forces there. But US Officials say to me also, listen, China might have a huge army, they might have more ships. They haven't fought a battle since 1979, and they got their heads kicked in by Vietnam, a border battle. It's one thing to have a lot of really good hardware. What happens when the bullets start flying? Can you fight just one more on hardware?
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Mary Louise Kelly
Before we move on from the whole spectacle on Tiananmen Square this week, how did it measure up to the big military parade here in Washington this summer? That President Trump. It was on his actual birthday. He was excited about it. Tom Bowman, you were reporting on that.
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Tom Bowman
It was completely different. Now. They sent tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles down the streets. In Washington, I'm told President Trump was kind of upset. He wanted something that looked like the Chinese parade, where they're all squared away, they're all the same height, they're all the same.
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Mary Louise Kelly
There was no goose stepping here.
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Tom Bowman
Nonconforming, none of that. Apparently he was upset because, you know, they were waving at the crowd. They didn't look mean and tough like the Chinese or the Russians do.
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Anthony Kuhn
Too relaxed, right?
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Tom Bowman
So relaxed. And people tell me, Tom, we don't put on shows. We fight.
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Mary Louise Kelly
Okay, so let's go to the big. The big symbolism or the message that may have been intended here, Anthony, because I was struck by something from President Xi's. I think it was his opening speech where he said, humanity again has to choose between peace and war, dialogue and confrontation. Win, win, cooperation or zero sum game. That's President Xi of China apparently making the case that China is the peace, dialogue and cooperation side of this equation.
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Anthony Kuhn
Yes, that's right. I mean, that's his message that, you know, China is supposed to be learning the lessons of World War II. You know, you can't have these law of the jungle and zero sum games. People have got to cooperate. Well, that's a great message, but look at the people around him. Not just Russia and North Korea, but Iran and Belarus and Vietnam and Cuba and basically a lot of authoritarian nations. But basically Xi's message is that we are entering a new global order in which the west is declining and China and the countries there at the parade, including Russia and North Korea, are on the ascent. And he says that this process is accelerating with you know, the populism that is besetting Western democracies and all. These three men did not need to sit down for a meeting because just the image of the three of them, Kim, Putin and Xi standing up there was as effective a message as they could send.
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Tom Bowman
And they're basically putting out the message of stability and predictability as opposed to chaos with the Trump administration. Unpredictability again, getting back to the tariffs, sticking it to your allies with tariffs. He's trying to portray them as this is the new way forward.
- [16:23]
Podcast Announcer
What's made you happy as of late? On Pop Culture Happy Hour, we've been talking about the things that have made us happy in the pop culture universe for the past 15 years. Whether it's a blockbuster or deliciously bad reality TV, the newest shows, dramas and reboots, we're here to keep your spirits high. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Ollie. Back to school season can take a lot out of parents. Ollie is dedicated to helping you prioritize your wellness with solutions that fit seamlessly into your routine, like Women's Multi and Probiotic Mango for your immune system and Ollie's Sleep Gummies for nighttime rest when occasional sleeplessness occurs. Shop these products and more@olli.com or retailers nationwide. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Congress is back from its summer recess with a lot on its agenda. What's all in store for lawmakers and what does their work mean for you? Every weekday, the NPR Politics Podcast unpacks Washington's inner workings. Listen to the NPR Politics Podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On this week's Wildcard podcast author Ocean Vuong says we need to reframe how.
- [17:47]
Mary Louise Kelly
We think about trauma.
- [17:49]
Tom Bowman
The trauma comes on one side of a coin that also has strength on it.
- [17:55]
Podcast Announcer
Find that Wildcard conversation on the NPR app, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [18:06]
Mary Louise Kelly
Okay, as we wrap the show, a quick note that you can email us@groupsandmethodspr.org I.e. sources and methods all spelled out no spaces. And that link is in our episode notes. We would love to hear your feedback, your ideas for what we should be talking about, your reaction to anything you hear us talking about here. And with thanks to those who have already written to us in these first couple of weeks of the show, we thought we would share a note or two among the many of you who've written. We heard from Jonathan. He wrote that he is a former Air Force intelligence coordinator and said I missed the Department of War story and the fire hose of this week. Great work. Well, thank you, Jonathan. He was referring to a story that I mentioned last week that President Trump thinks he would like to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War. Tom Bowman, just quickly, any movement on that this week, or is this the.
- [18:56]
Tom Bowman
I have not heard anything about that yet. I would not be surprised. It would be highly unusual. The Department of War, by the way, when they created it, it was only about the army and then they created Department of the Navy. One of the reasons they put together the Department of Defense was it embraced all of the services, including the new Air Force and the national security Act of 1947.
- [19:16]
Mary Louise Kelly
Well, this brings me to the next letter I wanted to share. This was we heard from Peter, who is at the Ohio State University. He wrote us and said, yes, President Truman oversaw changing the name from Department of War to Department of Defense. That was indeed the national security Act of 1947. That did it. And it also established the CIA, the National Security Council, and Peter Rodas, the reason was, and I'm quoting him, to centralize security and intelligence to avoid future calamities on the scale of Pearl harbor and to safeguard the country against rising communist influence. So, Peter, thank you. Tom Bowman, thank you for the history lesson this week. That brings us to the end of our show and to my favorite part of the show, if I'm allowed to say that our regular segment, osint. That OSINT is open source intelligence, meaning it's out there, it's in the open. It's valuable information that is publicly available to one and all, but that you might miss if you are not looking for it. Anthony, anything you want to offer up this week?
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Anthony Kuhn
Sure. A little visual detail from China's military parade. So I've been to a lot of these things and one area of continuity I saw was this. If you look at Xi Jinping's limousine as he goes down through Tiananmen Square with his head sticking out of the vehicle, reviewing the troops, you notice there's an empty limousine behind him. And these limousines are made by China's own factory. They're called red flag limousines, and they started making them shortly after the revolution. And I once spoke to an engineer who made these things and he said, you know, this is really embarrassing. These are Chinese made things and they have to have this empty limousine as a backup in case the thing breaks down in the middle of the street.
- [21:00]
Mary Louise Kelly
Oh, I thought you were going to tell me it was a decoy. It's in case the first one breaks down.
- [21:05]
Anthony Kuhn
Yes. Even though it's China's homemade limousine, inside that thing are engines made by Chrysler and Nissan and Audi. A little embarrassing. And, yes, there is also a security element involved, but it's a slightly embarrassing holdover for the automotive engineers.
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Mary Louise Kelly
There you go. Tom Bowman, can you top it?
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Tom Bowman
Well, I was having a couple of pints with two sources of mine. My favorite way to talk with sources, one from the State Department. And he, as we all know, VOA has been gutted. The voice of America, Right? So, as a result, all these broadcast licenses around the world are open. And this guy told me that in the island nation off the west coast of Africa, it's so Tome and Principe, their licenses, these radio licenses, are up for grabs because VOA basically said, we don't need these anymore. Guess who is interested in picking them up?
- [22:01]
Mary Louise Kelly
I have the feeling you're about to tie together this whole episode. Are we back to China?
- [22:05]
Tom Bowman
We are indeed.
- [22:07]
Mary Louise Kelly
What's in your pint glass, by the way? Are you a lager guy? No, no.
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Tom Bowman
IPA all the way.
- [22:12]
Mary Louise Kelly
Well, I can top you. So my Osint involves me drinking champagne here in Washington. Last night, the hot ticket party was headlined by British politician and MP Nigel Farage. He was in town, among other things, he was on Capitol Hill. But last night, he was headlining a launch party to open the D.C. bureau of GB News. This is the conservative news outlet, Upstart News channel in Britain. So they had a few hundred people, journalists, politicians, quite a few members of the Trump cabinet to a private club down the block from the White House. Farage was holding court himself in this bright blue suit. He had just tweeted out a picture of himself with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Same suit. I was there. I was working. I went to ask Nigel Farage for an interview, asked him for it. I am interested, among other things, in his immigration policies and how the immigration debate in Britain tracks or does not track the conversation here. So, Nigel, Nigel Farage, if you're listening, I hope you will take our questions. We're going to take this podcast to London in a couple of weeks because President Trump is going over there to make his second state visit. And we'll be hoping to bring you a lot of voices from that. That is it for today's episode of Sources and Methods. Anthony Kuhn, Tom Bowman, thank you so much for being here.
- [23:41]
Tom Bowman
You're welcome.
- [23:42]
Anthony Kuhn
Thank you, Mary Louise before we go.
- [23:44]
Mary Louise Kelly
A plug for npr. NPR supporters hear every episode without sponsor messages, which means more national security news, more NATSAC analysis in less time, and you get to unlock access to our complete archive, which means the four most, most recent episodes of this show will always be free and available. After that, they go into our archive, where our supporters can hear them anytime. So sign up for NPR. You get a lot more perks@plus.NPR.org that link is in our Episode Notes. We're back next Thursday, we'll have another new episode for you. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Thanks for listening to sources and methods from NPR.
- [24:33]
Podcast Announcer
Stars. They're just like us. John Legend goes to cvs. Well, that's because he has his own skincare line.
- [24:39]
Mary Louise Kelly
It was so exciting to actually go into one of those stores. We had the end caps.
- [24:44]
Podcast Announcer
Were you like, I don't want this locked up? John Legend is one of many stars riding the celebrity branding wave. He tells us about it on the indicator from Planet Money. Listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On the TED Radio Hour podcast, Tech CEO Victor Riparbelli says that in the future, AI avatars will be teaching our kids.
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Tom Bowman
They will equalize the world of education. Everyone will get their own private tutor, no matter if you're rich or poor. Hey there, learner.
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Podcast Announcer
I'm Professor Cadence Hartman.
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Tom Bowman
I promise I got some interesting stuff.
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Podcast Announcer
How AI is shaping education. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [25:21]
Tom Bowman
Jaws has been called the perfect movie, the first blockbuster, the film that changed why we go to the movies. But what does it still have to say 50 years later? We're bringing fresh eyes to the film. Lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes on pop culture.
- [25:35]
Mary Louise Kelly
Happy hour.
- [25:36]
Tom Bowman
Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.