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Adam Grant
Hey, it's Adam Grant from Work Life, A podcast from TED this episode is.
- [00:38]
Scott R. Andersen
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Adam Grant
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Scott R. Andersen
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Adam Grant
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Scott R. Andersen
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Adam Grant
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- [01:03]
Scott R. Andersen
You'Ll work smarter, not harder. Freshworks uncomplicates. Learn more@freshworks.com if you work as a manufacturing facilities engineer, installing a new piece of equipment can be as complex as the machinery itself. From prep work to alignment and testing, it's your team's job to put it all together. That's why it's good to have Grainger on your side. With industrial grade products and next day delivery, Grainger helps ensure you have everything you need close at hand through every step of the installation. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Nasia, I am thrilled to see you on camera because I can tell you have an intact nose. All your extremities appear to be normal flesh tone. They're not blue or black. Have fallen fallen off from frostbite because you've just come back from places cold and dark as I understand. Is that right? You were just in the Arctic?
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Nastia Lapatina
Yes, I was in Arctic Norway like a week ago or two weeks ago. But it's not dark because it's already midnight sun season. So it's actually on the contrary, always light. And it was quite cold. But yeah, it was very exciting.
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Scott R. Andersen
What was it like? I have always wanted. I have been to Alaska before. I think it's about as far north as I've ever gone and that was amazing. I can only, only imagine. I've always wanted to go. For anybody out there who wants like an international lawyer to show up at their conference on Arctic things or issues, I'm your guy because I've wanted to go to the Arctic for so long. Like what was it like? How interesting was it? You mentioned it was cold, that I can guess. I got that from J.D. vance's pictures from visiting Greenland a few weeks ago where he was very cold looking. Like, how did you manage? How did it go?
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Nastia Lapatina
It was super fascinating. So I was invited to a conference about various security issues in the high north. But I also am sort of working on a project about, you know, Russia and the Arctic security issues. So I stayed a little bit extra and I went to Kirkenas, which is a town on the Norwegian border with Russia. It's like, literally, like, you can drive. It takes like 5, 10 minutes to get to the border with Russia. And there is a lot of fascinating stuff happening in that area. A lot of sort of low grade constant Russian aggression that, you know, obviously doesn't and doesn't cross the threshold, but it's definitely there and very much felt. So I'm actually working on a little dispatch about it for my substack. Yours Ukrainian? It's not out yet, but hopefully it's going to be out soon, so.
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Scott R. Andersen
Oh, awesome. I can't wait for that. What is the food like in Arctic Norway? What does that consist of?
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Nastia Lapatina
There's like one decent place to eat, and I just had burgers like there.
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Adam Grant
It's just like.
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Scott R. Andersen
You didn't go ice fishing and just whip it right out of the hole onto an open fire. That's what I like to envision.
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Nastia Lapatina
I had some local fish, and that's like the one good food thing, the.
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Scott R. Andersen
One vision I have of Arctic Norway. I doubt you experienced this, but it was in some nature documentary I viewed where a Norwegian dude, I think it was, it may have been like a travel cooking show, like, stepped out. He lived like, on a big cliff over the sea. It's probably not fully Arctic, but, like, pretty far up there. And he went out and there are all these puffins flying around his thing. And he would take a net, capture the puffins, and then just bludgeon them to death and, like, cook them on an open fire. But presumably that was not on the menu anywhere in Norway. It's like roast puffin. It's hard to see because they're kind of adorable birds. But this was like, it burned into my brain. So I'm fairly confident I'm not making it up. Maybe I am. Maybe the myth has grown with time.
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Nastia Lapatina
No, that was not. That was not my experience at all. But my experience was pretty biased, right, Because I was there, like, I was coming there kind of wanting to focus on the Russian hybrid activity. And that's exactly what I focused on the entire time. And so, you know, I didn't pay much attention to the Menus.
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Scott R. Andersen
We'll see next time. Next time we'll see. Maybe there'll be more puffin hunting on the agenda. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security. I am your host, Scott R. Andersen. Thrilled to be back with you once again this week for 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. No shortage of big stories this week, and thrilled to have some real experts to help us dig through what exactly is going on around the world. First, joining us for the first time, I believe, on this podcast. We've had them on a couple other law firm podcasts, is Alex Zardin, sanctions expert, extraordinary, among other things, in addition to being a contributing editor at Law Firm. Alex, thank you for coming on the podcast.
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Alex Zardin
Thanks so much for having me, Scott. Great to be here.
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Scott R. Andersen
Alex, not knowing the full tone of Rational Security, has dressed like a professional. We won't hold that against you, but it's not a dog shirt. So it's one step up, which we do appreciate. That's the wrong end of the spectrum. You're on the other, more correct, but still wrong end of the spectrum. But eventually we're going to calibrate somewhere in between, which is good. But thank you for joining us. We're excited to have you on.
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Alex Zardin
Yeah, I hope I get invited back.
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Scott R. Andersen
We'll see. We'll see. Well, you took the tie off, so we're stepping in the right direction. On top of that, thrilled to have back with us again two of our mavens on all things Ukraine. From Kiev itself, our Ukraine fellow, Nastya Lapatina. Nastya, thank you for coming back on the podcast.
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Nastia Lapatina
Thank you for having me. Is my attire and location unprofessional enough for you?
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Scott R. Andersen
Very chill. Very chill. It's got a little European aesthetic. It's got a little vibe. I think it's great. I think it's wonderful. And our last guest, of course, is Eric Charmella from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, right next door from a slightly nicer offices than our offices here. If I'm being completely hon, you have some nice art on your wall. Looking very professional. And thrilled to have you on the podcast as well. Eric. Thanks for coming to join us again.
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Adam Grant
Good to be with you. And next time, I'm gonna have to remember my Hawaiian shirt.
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Scott R. Andersen
There you go. There you go. That's. It's a kind of a party vibe. It's summer, guys. D.C. is getting a little sleepy. It's a little relaxed time to get a little more vacation mode. But not this week, because this week we have some serious topics to talk about. It is, as it is always these days, a big week for national security and we've got a couple things happening around the world we want to dig into our first topic for this week, the road to damasc. Over the past two weeks, the Trump administration has done an extraordinary about face on US Policy towards Syria, installing almost universal exceptions to most existing sanctions programs and promising to end others. European and other allies seem poised to follow suit, all in an effort to forestall the feared collapse of the post Assad transitional government being headed by Ahmad Al Shara, himself a former terrorist leader. Designated terrorist leader, I should say. But will it be enough to put post civil war Syria on the road to recovery? And will this new policy orientation prove sustainable within the trump administration? Topic 2 no fly zone Ukraine struck a historic blow deep into Russian territory over the weekend with a daring series of coordinated drone attacks dubbed Operation Spiderweb that may have wiped out as much as a third of Moscow's strategically important long range bombers. And they didn't stop there. We've gotten word just this morning of another series of attacks, I think the third round of attacks, this time a long planned series of hits on the strategically important Crimean bridge. It is a notable set of actions executed by Ukraine's intelligence service, presumably. But will the attacks help drive the cost of the conflict home to Russia or trigger another round of escalation? And how will they be received by the Trump administration, several senior members of which are skeptical of US support for Ukraine? And topic 3 double taxation President Trump's aggressive use of tariffs suffered a pair of defeats in federal court last week as two different courts chose to join them for two different sets of reasons. Although all those injunctions are currently on hold pending appeal. While both decisions have since been state, it's a discouraging sign for the viability of the legal authorities being relied on by the Trump administration. Yet President Trump has continued to threaten tariffs aggressively, including against Europe just this past week. How big a threat are these legal holdings to the Trump administration's policy agenda and how will they impact its efforts to negotiate new bilateral trade deals with allies and rivals alike? So for our first topic, Alex, I want to come to you first. You and I wrote a piece on serious sanctions just a few days after the Assad regime fell back in December. We, to our credit, I think, were some of the first movers to lay out just how insanely complicated the sanctions environment was around Syria and has been, frankly, really for more than half a century at this point, in part because Syria was the first state sponsored of terrorism. And sanctions have only been layered on there because of terrorism, because of ties to Iran, because of the Syrian civil war and the horrible human rights abuses committed by the Assad regime over the course of that conflict. It's a new day in Syria. We are now six months into what has now officially become a transitional government operating under a transitional constitution. In a way that seems to have a lot of popular support in big chunks of Syria, although not universal, a lot of support in the region, but not universal. Everybody wants, seems to want to see Syria, or almost everyone, I should say, wants to see Syria come out of this chapter. Better to rise from the ashes of the brutal civil war that has been experiencing for the past several years, really almost two decades at this point. And as part of that, we're seeing this dramatic shift by the Trump administration, a complete overhaul in a direction that seems uncomfortable for a party that has traditionally been extremely hawkish on things like terrorist designations and positions towards terrorist groups, in particular, those being the set of sanctions most directly relevant to Alshara and members of the new interim administration. Instead, they are terrorists. Those sanctions down, installing big exceptions. Talk to us how big a reversal this is and what's motivating, what's driving it, what's the logic behind it?
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Alex Zardin
Yeah, thanks so much, Scott. I think I and you, we were all very surprised to see President Trump's announcement on May 13 calling for the cessation of sanctions. What this means in practice, we still don't know fully, but the early indications are that this is, to your point, a dramatic shift in US administration, US government policy. And after 46 years of US restrictive economic measures, I say that term, it's a little bit garbled, but it's to say that we're talking about sanctions, and that's what I think most people are familiar with. But really, it is this broad spectrum of restrictive economic measures spanning sanctions, other types of designations, export controls, things related to counterterrorism, state sponsorship of terrorism, that really brings together something that has been built over over 46 years in the United States. And conversely, unwinding them really is difficult and is not something that can be activated with the flip of a switch or with a mere presidential declaration. Presidential speech. And so we're in a mode right now over the past two weeks where we've seen some quick responses by the interagency, by the, by the bureaucracy to respond to President Trump's instructions from the podium in Saudi Arabia, appearing to have occurred without much consultation within the US Government, but having been informed by the needs and requests of allies and partners in the region most, most predominantly. And what it did was also it broke a interagency logjam that had existed since the fall of the Assad regime under the Biden administration and then the Trump administration about what exactly to do. And just to rewind the tape a little bit, after the fall of the Assad regime, the Biden administration in its last days issued a general license for a subset of the sanctions, called General License 24. And this was in effect for six months and so provide some limited relief, but it wasn't comprehensive, and it was a bit of a placeholder for the political situation to shake out and as a courtesy in some ways, for the Trump administration to articulate its own policies without having too much of an overhang from an outgoing administration. And so over the past six months, the conversation, the past several months, the conversation and the discussions within dc, within foreign capitals, especially in the Middle east and Europe, have been focused on much more incremental changes or expectations for changes within the US at the same time, over the past several months, Europe and the UK have moved forward with relatively significant reforms to their sanctions programs. And so there was increasing divergence between the US Approach to sanctions and restrictive measures, and allies and partners in the EU and UK in particular, as the regional partners and regional actors, wanted to get back in to support the Syrian people, support humanitarian assistance, support reconstruction efforts, but were concerned and were fearful of US Government action specifically related to sanctions and what we call secondary sanctions risks. So that was kind of the background of what happened. And then kind of out of nowhere, President Trump makes his declaration for the cessation of sanctions. And within about two weeks, so on May 23rd, the Treasury Department and State Department took affirmative action. The first was a much broader base general license by the Treasury Department called General License 25, which allowed for. So it didn't get rid of sanctions, but what it did was it peeled off or put a license on most of the sanctions impacting Syria. So we're talking about new investments, we're talking about energy infrastructure in Syria, talking about interacting with the government of Syria and particularly its central bank. And we can talk about that a little bit more, but that was one pillar of it, and that was also informed. So that helps US Persons, US Citizens and others engage with Syria under these licenses. But then there's a separate statutory regime that was controlled by the State Department. And Secretary Rubio issued 180 day license or 180 day waiver, excuse me, for the Caesar act, which was the 2019 legislation that was renewed for five years after the fall of the Assad regime in December of 2024. And this allows third countries, so think Gulf partners and allies, to also get the benefit of the license that was afforded to US Persons. There was a small tweak as well to a prohibition against a systemically important bank in Syria as well, commercial bank that's state owned, called the Commercial bank of Syria by FinCEN, the treasury regulator. So with these three measures we have a better sense of these first steps. However, just importantly, these are all temporary measures. The 180 day waiver is temporary in nature. It can be renewed, but it doesn't change the overall architecture. The sanctions are still in place now with some relief. Similarly, the licenses are temporary in nature. So when we see General License 25, so when we have this statement by President Trump for cessation of sanctions, getting rid of them all and giving a new future for Syria and the Syrian people, the bureaucracy and the Mechanisms of the U.S. government and the restrictive economic measures are still firmly in place and some of them have not been addressed by the bureaucracy either. And so happy to talk about that as well.
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Scott R. Andersen
And let's talk about the motivation behind this. Right. The closest parallel we talked about in our piece, and I still think it's the most useful recent kind of example, is what we saw the United States and Europe wrestle with in Afghanistan after the rise of the Taliban. The return of the Taliban in 2021, where Afghanistan was facing a dramatic economic crisis and political crisis that was worsening, that was leading to a humanitarian crisis. You saw consensus in the Biden administration with European allies that they needed to find some way to in spite of the overwhelming set of terrorism related sanctions imposed on the Taliban that have been long standing for decades at this point needed to find a way to let some economic activity and some humanitarian activities continue and build up in Afghanistan that's now under Taliban control and started issuing licenses, but did so gradually. And we saw this kind of series of licenses that opened wider and opened wider in part because it just wasn't being perceived as having that intended effect of kind of throwing the floodgates gates open, bringing these groups back in, giving them the confidence they need to re engage in this economy. And clearly this seems to be responding to that experience, which is something we recommended in that piece. Kick the doors open. You can't start with gradual measures. You really do have to go for the bigger Measures to signal clearly to private industry these sanctions are gone away. How effective is this in that strategy if that is the motivation? The concern here is that we hear from Secretary of State Rubio himself, Syria could collapse in a matter of weeks if we don't lift sanctions substantially. So you've now opened the doors, but you need people to actually walk through them. And that's been the challenge right this over de risking excess compliance element within the private sector. Do you think this will be enough? I mean it seems like a step in the right direction, but is this enough or how quickly does the administration move on broader steps, whether it's state sponsored terrorism de designation which they've already promised, a couple of other measures that are in the cards but not yet actually implemented. How quickly do we need to see action on those to send that message?
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Alex Zardin
Yeah, that's a great question. It really depends on who is receiving the message. I think for many people the signal from President Trump, many people, especially in the Middle east, some in Europe, the speech from the podium in Riyadh was the policy comfort that they wanted or needed or required to re enter Syria. And we're seeing a lot of activity tick up. There was a $7 billion memorandum understanding on a Qatari related energy project. There's flights are resuming to Damascus from regional carriers. You're seeing a lot of a lot of work in train right now among regional actors. And that I think happened after has happened since the issuance of the general license and the waiver. So for some that's sufficient. But to your point on overcompliance and to your point on making this a sustained change in policy, there's going to be more need for more durable signals from the US Government I think because for the types of investment envisioned and required to get Syria out of the economic morass that it's in. It's had horrific economic contraction. Essentially it's only been buoyed by unfortunately narco trafficking over the past several years. It's a conflict torn economy, has terrible corruption, other structural factors that are impeding its economic rehabilitation that you need long term investments. And so with licenses that are in place, those can be revoked at any time, 188 waivers creates a political forcing function every 180 days for renewal or non renewal, especially among opponents in the US of which there are many who aren't as comfortable with this change in policy. And so the comfort I don't think is there long term. And then the other side is the overcompliance you discussed mostly by international and US Financial institutions. They're not necessarily as concerned with the proclamations by the administration today. They're worried about regulators in several years, if not within three or four years, coming back to review their books and records for apparent violations of sanctions, for other types of violations. And so they have a much longer time horizon and they need much stronger assurances.
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Scott R. Andersen
So Eric, let me come to you on this question of the sustainability of this policy, because here's what it looks like happened to me, which I'm trying to think if there's an example you would have lived through in your time in government. I can't think of one off the top of my head, but there might be, which is that the president kind of end ran the policy process on this one. We saw President Trump make a announcement in the Middle East a part of his trip saying we are going to end sanctions against Syria. Nobody 100% knew what that meant in the technical details. All reports are that big parts of his administration were caught fairly off guard by that. Maybe not National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Rubio, who's kind of reportedly, although this is all after the fact reporting, kind of suggesting that he's supportive of this attack. Who knows if that's Rubio tacking his position to match the President or not. He's very savvy that way. But regardless, for most people, working level people we know this issue is one, there was a lot of conflicting views, a lot of this interagency logjam that Alex described and the president kind of end ran it. The question I have is, you know, how does that work with the inner agency when you get these sort of presidential big macro level policy shifts and then the agency have to implement the details. We're seeing it leak out now. So they're serious about it, right? They actually are installing big licenses and saying they're going to do stuff like restricting, removing state sponsored terrorism status in theory, for the Caesar Act. They're going to have to go to Congress to get them to repeal that at some point. That's going to take a political lift. There are other measures like FTO designation of hts that they may well have to implement, although maybe they think that's not as necessary if they can license things. But there's other elements of that that are hard to license around. So what happens when you have an inner agency that may not actually be supportive of this policy agenda? Does that create opportunities for friction, for pushback? Will it affect their trajectory? Does it undermine the sustainability of this and does it matter more or less when you have a president who is, for better or for worse, highly mercurial and whose constancy on policy matters in other contexts has been questionable. I'm kind of curious about your thoughts about somebody who's worked inside NSC in the interagency. Not on these issues, but certainly on issues that involve a lot of the intersection of the same interagency concerns.
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Adam Grant
Yeah, I mean, I think this is a feature rather than a bug of the way the Trump administration operates. The, the interagency is notoriously, you know, lugubrious, I think would be a way.
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Scott R. Andersen
To describe what an adjective. What an adjective.
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Adam Grant
Very slow moving and highly bureaucratic when it comes to things like this. And, you know, I think again, it's with it is a president's prerogative to announce new policy decisions and directions whether or not the interagency agrees with them or has teed up a decision. The interagency works for the President ultimately. So, you know, I think that when it comes to something that's so technically complicated, like sanctions, there is going to be a disconnect if it hasn't been well prepared. Because as Alex was in explaining all, you know, these general licenses and all the different legal and regulatory, you know, changes that would need to be made and the different partners that need to be involved within the interagency to kind of implement this vision. But I would say this is kind of, this is how the first Trump administration generally operated and certainly how the second one does, where you have the, the departments and agencies kind of running to catch up with what the President is saying. We see it a lot on Ukraine and Russia where big announcements are made on social media and then, you know, State and DoD and the IC are kind of rushing to catch up. So in terms of the sustainability, again, I think if this is the direction the President really wants to go, then he needs to make sure that he has people, you know, sort of at the political level, but knowledgeable enough of their own agencies, equities and, you know, responsibilities and legal authorities so that they can actually monitor implementation and make sure that, you know, when we look in a month or two, are certain things being checked off the checklist, you know, in terms of preparing documentation to go to Congress or, you know, lifting certain sanctions and so on and so forth. Because again, the challenge is a president can announce something and then have no idea whether the details are being implemented at the lower level.
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Scott R. Andersen
That's incredibly useful. And Alex, I want to get your thoughts on this too, from the perspective of somebody who specifically worked with A lot of these agencies, this issue set from a lot of different advantages in the interagency over your time in government. But before that, let me add one other wrinkle here, which is the regional perspectives. We know this announcement came while Trump was in the Middle east, having met with Gulf states that are strongly supportive of this measure. He very clearly tied it to with a phrase saying something along the lines of, oh, the things I do for you, Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia, saying, like clearly saying this is part of a little bit of a gift to my Gulf allies. I'm doing this in part because at their urging. But of course, when you spend a week on a trip, you're getting a lot of interaction, a lot of perspectives. From one valence of the region, we know another part of the region that President Trump and the administration has historically had really strong ties to, even though currently the relations are a little bit more frayed. I'm talking about the Netanyahu government in Israel, highly, highly skeptical of this new Syrian transitional government, has been pursuing military action, not necessarily directly against it, but against various targets within Syria really since the fall of the Assad regime and throughout the Assad regime, but still continuing since the fall of the Assad regime, openly skeptical of it, sees it as a threat to Israeli security and has not been shy about explaining that. So far, those claims have fallen on deaf ears a little bit. But do we know that's going to be the case moving forward? I'm just kind of curious about your thoughts, both about the regional voices and those interagency voices. What do they add up to in terms of the trajectory and sustainability of this policy?
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Alex Zardin
No, definitely. I think the regional voices are trying to find partners and allies with the domestic voices. And so the fellow travelers and I think there's absolutely a faction in the US Government in the Trump administration that takes a position of the al Shar government that once a terrorist, always a terrorist. It's a bumper sticker, but it sticks, meaning that there are people who believe that Alshar is not able to reform and still will stick to his roots as a designated terrorist by the UN by the US by many partners and allies. And we should work with partners like Israel and others and follow their and work with their positions for a weaker, a more decentralized Syria that can't pose a security threat to Israel. So that's on the other side of the ledger that you were describing, Scott. I think within the US Interagency function, we are reacting and working within a bureaucracy that is not particularly familiar to me in a certain way. And I don't want to speak for Eric as well, but we have a radically shifted and slimmed down National Security Council. And I think the process points here matter because what I describe in my article, what Scott and I described in our article in December, is this is a classic National Security Council problem that you have an interagency of at least five departments and agencies, from my review of it, that have equities, that have requirements here. And when Secretary Rubio is also the national Security advisor, State Department doesn't look like an honest broker. And it's great to have Ambassador Barak as a special envoy for Syria. But I don't know. One, he still has the bias from the State Department. Two, he's in the field. He's in Turkey right now. Turkey right now. And so you need a credible quarterback likely sitting in the National Security Council to diffuse these disagreements, resolve interagency disputes, and help sequence what is a incredibly complicated problem. Scott, you discussed Afghanistan, like the sanctions imposed against the Taliban are simple in perspective to what we're seeing with the restrictive economic measures imposed over again five decades against Syria. They are not even apples and oranges. They aren't the same type of they're completely different scope and orders of magnitude in terms of complexity and also policy priorities. Right now, the US Chose not to deal with Afghanistan and the Taliban leadership. Here the opposite. The US Is trying to figure out ways to support the interim administration. So that's the challenge. And then secondly, we've talked about the restrictive measures and taking things off. What is the US Policy here? Because the question is, what are the affirmative tools? What does the US Actually want to do? Does the US Want to help Syria succeed? That's a live question. I don't have an answer on that. Does it want to farm this out to allies and partners in the region and just let them take care of it and wash US Hands of it? Kind of consistent with a more America first approach for burden sharing. But if the US Wants to actually be a market participant here, the current restrictive measures don't allow a lot of US Economic activities to take place in Syria to date. And then secondly, it really does shape how the US Government operates. With the deconstruction of usaid, that would be the first civilian agency to be on the ground providing technical assistance, helping to rehabilitate their central bank, helping on infrastructure, helping on water issues, helping to stabilize the country. And we've removed that capability from our toolkit. So those are live questions, I think as well about how Domestically interacts with the international.
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Scott R. Andersen
Well, needless to say, there are a lot of moving parts in the Syria policy picture. It is not a binary and for sanctions nerds keep an eye on this space because this is really cutting edge emerging stuff and a set of policy challenges that kind of of a scale I don't think our institutions have ever really encountered before. So we will probably circle back to it. I may pull Alex back on the podcast to talk about it more. For now though, let's turn to another major dramatic policy development. I would not call it a change in trajectory, but a deepening of trajectory. Extraordinary military operation that took place in Russia just over the last few days. Of course we've seen the details come out in a variety of media reports, including through social media postings by the Ukrainian government, social media postings across Russia capturing different parts of the attack. As far as I understand it. Nastya, I want you to correct me if I get it wrong. It looks like the Ukrainian intelligence service was able to smuggle in and they've not been shy explaining how they did this because I've seen the pictures now that they post on social media, smuggle in dozens of quadcopter drones under a guise of kind of being disguised as housing material in a series of shipping containers that were transported different parts of Russia. At some point the lids blew off the shipping containers, these quadcopters came rising out of these structures. It's quite dramatic, some of the pictures and videos you see of it. And they were able to target a number of really important strategic assets for Russia, specifically its long range bombers that are used to develop or to deliver both conventional arms, something that Ukraine knows all too well over the last couple years, but also potentially strategic arms. So this is a major power competition, big strategic hit for Russia because its deterrent capacity hinges at least in substantial part on its ability to threaten the delivery of nuclear weapons, even in a major power to major power nuclear conflict. And they took a big hit on that on this front over the weekend, a pretty notable blow. Talk to us about a correcting me if I got any details wrong that you want to pull out a bit more. And we can also talk about the Crimean Bridge operation, which we're just getting details on this morning, talked about what is behind this kind of surge in these sorts of activities. These are both long planned operations. They've been in the works for a long time, highly dramatic, but they're coming at this sensitive moment where we just saw negotiations happening face to face between Ukrainian and Russian interlocutors for the first time in a long time, didn't go anywhere, lasted less than an hour, had a few concessions around humanitarian issues. Not aware of, at least from my perspective, any agreement on other progress. But that's against the backdrop of a broader kind of degree of bottlenecking in the negotiations, a point where it's not clear there's an impasse and one the Trump administration become more openly frustrated with. So talk to us about how people are reacting in Ukraine on the ground and what the driver is for the Zelenskyy government to authorize this sort of dramatic step.
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Nastia Lapatina
So you were mainly right that this incredibly dramatic operation, dubbed Spiderweb, took place on Sunday morning, afternoon, so just a few days ago. And it happened less than 24 hours before Ukraine and Russia were planning to meet for the second time for the direct talks, peace talks in Istanbul and Turkey. And the timing in particular, I think, was important because up until the very last moment, the Ukrainian side wasn't even confirming that it was going to go to Istanbul because there was some conflict over Russia refusing to reveal its peace terms and kind of a back and forth, and it wasn't even clear if we're going to show up. And then like an hour, an hour after these first images of the operation started appearing, Zelensky publishes the statement confirming and saying, like, yeah, we're coming to Istanbul. Here are our priorities. So it definitely, you know, and I can't claim that that was sort of planned in advance specifically around this or anything like that, because again, you know, as you, as you've mentioned, this operation was being planned for a year and a half, according to Zelenskyy, more than that. But it definitely looked quite dramatic, right, that like, Ukraine was entering the negotiations, you know, as Trump would say, with a few more cards from a position of strength. Because this is something the Russians do as well all the time, that this is sort of their peace talks tactic. They ramp up their operations around these critical negotiation moments. They, you know, pick up the tempo. They. They do really bad things in the front line to keep up with the pressure. And so Ukraine was sort of responding in that same way, except we don't have the men, you know, and we don't treat our people the same way the Russians do. We can't just waste them on the front line. So we do it with drones. And so the operation, in essence, according to the Ukrainian authorities, was, I think Zelensky said, 117 FPV drones hidden in these little sort of wooden structures, like little tiny cabins, things, whatever you want to call them then, you know, those little structures were put in the trucks and the trucks went all around Russia. And then, as you've mentioned, the tops of those structures went off. They kind of slid them off remotely. And then suddenly in the middle of the day, these drones started flying out of the trucks. And the drivers of the trucks weren't even aware. They weren't Ukrainian agents or anything. They were just random Russians driving the trucks, thinking that they're delivering normal things. And so the trucks were parked in the vicinity of these at least four Russian airfields. And within minutes, it seemed that the drone started hitting these Russian strategic bombers. So it was very dramatic. But the sites that Ukraine was targeting were extremely important. There were, as I've said, at least four locations, though. The Russians said that there was also another location, a fifth one where the attack was thwarted. But the places that were definitely hit was Alenya Air Base in Murmansk. That's in the Russian Arctic. That's very close to where I was, how I described that. I went to Norway, to the border with Russia. That's like a few hours drive from this airbase and from Murmansk. And so, you know, the Russians use planes and that air base very regularly to attack Ukraine. There were two other air bases, one in Ryazan and one in Ivanovo Oblast. But probably the most shocking location was in Irkutsk Oblast, the Belaya Air base. That's like 3,000 miles away, more than 3,000 miles away from the Ukrainian border. It's in Siberia. It's like near the border with Mongolia. So that is kind of astonishing that we took it that far. And so the Ukrainian authorities said that they've damaged or destroyed 41 Russian aircraft. There's kind of very little way to really confirm this right now. This is what they're saying officially, and this is what everyone's quoting. I've seen some satellite images that I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think people have confirmed around a dozen that were, like, really severely damaged. And we can say that, like, you know, the. They're basically destroyed, so the extent of the damage isn't, Isn't, you know, sort of fully confirmed yet. But regardless, I think it's, you know, from. From a symbolic point of view and I'm sure we can, we can talk about this a lot. Like, there are so many things that Ukraine did here, kind of telling the Russians they're not safe anywhere, including in Siberia, showing that you can wreck immense damage using FPV drones that cost like a thousand dollars. Per drone to make. So just kind of like using this asymmetry that Ukraine has in the most advantageous of ways. And also exactly what was hit like these, these planes, these bombers, they're strategic Russian bombers, meaning that they're some of the most far reaching, the furthest range, the biggest payload nuclear capable. So part of the Russian nuclear triad. So just like a lot of things that we can unpack that Ukraine did here to really make the Russians uncomfortable at this very important moment of peace.
- [38:18]
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- [44:56]
Adam Grant
Sure. So looking at it from a few different perspectives, first the implications for the Russian side, I think we have to separate that into effects on Russia's military power and capabilities and then effects on leadership calculus. So on the military capabilities, I agree with Nastya that we're still in the phase of understanding the damage assessments. And what I've seen is somewhere around a dozen aircraft confirmed hit, you know, pretty much inoperable. But it's going to take us still a few days or weeks to really understand that. And we'd be looking to a lot of the kind of open source military analysts who really scour these satellite images to understand, you know, the degree of damage to individual aircraft and so on and so forth. But I would say that certainly this is going to have a meaningful impact on Russia's, you know, sort of tactics in and use of, of air launched standoff munitions and their ability to just sort of, you know, hold these aircraft kind of out in the open at different airfields and think that they're invulnerable to attack. Clearly that has changed, you know, the thinking of the Russian military leadership and the leadership of the Russian air force. But you know, unfortunately, Russia's aerial attacks on Ukraine, I mean, they don't only come from bombers. A lot of it is sea launched, land based and so on. So this is only a small component of the capabilities used to target Ukraine. And so I don't expect this to, you know, stop basically all Russian capabilities of striking Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure. That's on the capability standpoint, on the leadership intentions. I think there's a bit of a, a duality here because on the one hand this is clear humiliation for Putin, but when we've seen him, you know, backed into a corner, he tends to escalate his way out of it. And so I would expect in the near term, in the next several days, some sort of, I would call it, you know, spectacular in quotes, theatrical and probably very damaging escalation coming from Russia because he will think to himself that he has to show that, you know, he's not going to let this fly without any kind of punishment. So there's been warnings actually this morning, you know, early evening cave time, about a launch of an Oreshnik IRBM again. I mean, there was one already launched against dnipro. Could another one be launched against Kyiv, you know, and have more devastating consequences? We'll have to see what happens here. But so certainly in the near term, I expect some amount of Russian retaliation as there was retaliation in the past for, you know, the, the 2022 attacks on the Crimean Bridge and so on and so forth in the medium to long term. I think this is where it gets interesting because the logic, as I understand it from the Ukrainian side was to create a situation of enough pain and risk on the side of Russian air capabilities such that Russia de facto begrudgingly enters into some sort of air cessation of hostilities in the manner that was agreed in the Black Sea. So basically, after Ukraine demonstrated its capability to sink, you know, Russian ships in the Black Sea without having its own navy, but using a combination of, you know, drones and undersea vehicles and so on and so forth. You know, at first, when Ukraine had started the strike campaign, Russia retaliated by hitting a lot of Ukrainian port infrastructure. And it got hot for a while and then Russia sort of realized that Ukraine could do serious damage to commercial shipping in the Black Sea. And so it sort of took its hands off. And so Ukraine has created a situation such that it has negated Russia's ability to kind of use its sea based capabilities and targeting of Ukrainian port infrastructure. I think they're trying to replicate that in the air. I could See that, you know, coming about over the next couple of months as we continue with these ceasefire negotiations. But again, I don't think it's going to be an immediate kind of point A to point B, because the Russians, Putin is going to have to show like he's still in charge. Then there's the, the final point on the kind of perceptions of Ukraine's partners. From what I can tell, the United States didn't know about this operation in advance, which is actually a tremendous credit to the Ukrainian intelligence services that they managed for 18 months to plan this extraordinarily complex, ambitious operation without their main partners finding out about it, with no leaks in the Ukrainian system, which is actually, actually quite notorious for leaking, obviously, without the Russians finding out. So kudos to them for pulling that off, just from a pure operational secrecy and security standpoint. But the United States Trump administration appears to have been taken off guard. I haven't seen any definitive statements from the administration saying, you know, rah, Rah, go Ukraine, or this is a disaster and leading to World War Three. I think it's kind of, they're still trying to say, sense what's going on here. I think for the Europeans and for more of those who want to make an argument for supporting Ukraine, the clearest point here to get is that Ukraine, you know, it may be on, on the ropes is a bit of a strong term, but very vulnerable on the battlefield. And the trends on the front line are not looking good. But Ukraine is, to rephrase what President Trump said to President Zelensky in the Oval Office, Ukraine still does have some cards to play. So Ukraine is not out of the game entirely. Ukraine has its own agency, its ability to inflict damage on Russia that doesn't depend directly on Western support. And so I think that is an argument, again, for continued support here, that Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse and it's still able to pull these things off. So overall, it's kind of a mixed picture. We're going to have to look and see, particularly for the battle damage assessments, to understand what the reality, military and strategic implications of this are.
- [51:16]
Scott R. Andersen
Two aspects of this. I want to push on a little bit more, Eric, because I'm really curious about your action. Alex, welcome. Your thoughts on this, too, that are kind of interesting. One is a little more generic. It's like this feature we've seen most notably in the Ukraine conflict. I think because Ukrainians are so tech and social media savvy and I lean into that, it's an advantage they have which is that it's so interesting that we immediately saw details about how the Ukrainians did this publicly released, like off the bat, within hours, within an hour. I have no doubt. The fact that they're like, here are pictures of our sheds in which we packed our quadcopters and get it out there. What is the audience for that? What is the motivation of that? If you think about the Cold War, the United States pulling off a major intelligence operation, they still won't talk about most of them. Part of that is because they want to protect methods and operations that they might be able to repeat. Right? Like there are parts of this that they may be able to pull off. Again, Ukrainians are willing to burn that, though in this case, maybe that's because it's already burned for other reasons. So I'm just kind of curious. It's a level of transparency, even if you think of like the beeper story, right, that came out of the Israel operation, Lebanon, we got a lot of news about that story. It was mostly from leaks, maybe deliberate leaks, but not the level of kind of open sharing that we're seeing for the Ukrainian government on this. The other side of this is the choice of targets. This is a really significant set of targets. They are targets that, again, have ramifications for Ukraine on the battlefield, although they don't eliminate this ability to strike Ukraine from a distance, but they have this broader major power strategic significance. Right? Like, part of this is because they are part of the nuclear calculus. That is why Russia still has a claim to be a premier major power along the levels of China and the United States, which it is always the third of those two, three. Right. The one that people sometimes say it doesn't belong in that level or it does really depend on kind of what region you're focused on and what issue set, honestly, like is this. Is there something about targeting the major power pillars of authority that is more threatening to Putin, that might have a bigger psychological impact or might be seen as particularly advantageous by the United States or Europe and the Biden administration. I could see some kind of quiet cold warriors echoing the line we heard from earlier in this conflict saying this is what we want, this is a upside for the United States out of this conflict, is that it degrades Russia as a major power rival. So all of the things being equal, if they're going to degrade Russia, that is a strategic advantage for the United States and for other powers. I don't see that logic as much in this administration, but it might still be there. Do you think that affects the calculus on either front. I'll start with you, Eric, but Nastya, Alex, I'm curious about any thoughts you have on this.
- [53:59]
Nastia Lapatina
I mean, just from the way that Ukrainians have responded to it and the way everyone is sort of talking about it, I don't think it's the main reason why the SBU targeted these specific places. I think the main reason was, of course, because these planes are attacking the Ukrainian people every week. But I think there is a part of it is to highlight that the Russian nuclear scare isn't as scary as everyone thinks. And I've seen people, you know, kind of tweet about this immediately, like people in the west, like my good friend Min Allender, you know, an analyst from Finland. She tweeted, like, I don't remember what exactly she said, but it was something like, you know, Ukrainians asked for us for this weapon and we said no because of nuclear weapons. Ukrainians asked us for NATO and we said no because of Russian nukes. So they just went on and attacked Russian nuclear infrastructure structure. And she said that. She was like, I've been saying this all along. If we don't help the Ukrainians, they will help themselves and we will have no control over how they do that. So it's better for the west to get involved so they have some control over how the Ukrainians help themselves. So I think there is this component of highlighting maybe just how it was with Kursk a little bit, that these Russian red lines aren't as red and they're a lot more ambiguous. And, you know, Russian deterrence, a lot of it rests on just rhetoric that perhaps isn't backed by actual capabilities and intent. But again, this is like a never ending discussion that I'm sure I will be arguing about in 50 years with Eric. So, you know, the validity of the.
- [55:35]
Scott R. Andersen
Russian nuclear scare, and we'll still have you on the podcast to do it. That's exactly right.
- [55:39]
Nastia Lapatina
Yes, for sure.
- [55:41]
Scott R. Andersen
One last aspect of this I want to pull out a little bit, which is that the US Audience is not just the Trump administration. We all know that there is a strong, but in the case of on the Republican side, fairly quiet contingent of supporters of Ukraine, in Congress, in other parts of the country, other parts of the government apparatus. And we're seeing them mobilize over the last few months in a way that's actually surprisingly quiet for a piece of legislation that I think is actually really quite dramatic. And that is this bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Graham and Blumenthal I think has over 80 co sponsors. So it looks set to sail through passage in the Senate. I don't know about its odds in the House. Really depends on whether you can get the House leadership to bring it to the floor because with Democratic support, I don't think that you would need many Republican votes to pass it. But that is politically difficult. That also that calculus as to whether you move forward with that bill, particularly Republicans who have been hesitant, understandably to be perceived as doing things contrary or that constrain the Trump administration as it's trying to facilitate negotiations. That is also part of the calculus and another audience that the Zelenskyy administration has to think about. Alex, I want to come to you on that first. Talk to us a little bit about this bill, what we know about it and how you think actions like this fit into this. The sponsors, their justification for moving it forward is that it looks like Russia is just not willing to play ball. Sorry, Mr. President, we got to bring more pressure on them because they're not willing to come to the table, which is really not the administration's line. Even though they agree they're not willing to come to the table, they're not bringing more pressure to bear. So it talks about how that may enter into this calculus.
- [57:13]
Alex Zardin
Yeah, one quick thing. I mean I think we've gone from quiet to pretty loud over the past few days. Just doing a media scan to prep for conversation. Right. Like totally agree with you. I mean look, it flared out a couple months ago when the bill was dropped, especially coming from Senator Graham, a close ally and partner to the administration. That was caught some eyes for sure. But then over time this one kind of just to take a step back gets to some really fundamental dynamics between the executive and legislative branches with respect to drafting and passage of sanctions policy. This has been going on for many decades. Part of it about economic warfare, back to the history and the origins of the Republic, about where does this power lie and successive administrations have. Presidential administrations want to take the foreign policy national security prerogative. They want to have sanctions as a dynamic tool to turn off or turn on and have more discretion and flexibility to deploy. At various times over sometimes presidential wishes and or veto, Congress has asserted its prerogative to tell the executive what to do. Most notably, I think CATSA is a great example which imposed in part sanctions against Russia during the first Trump administration. But we have at Sesada for Iran during the Obama administration. It's not a Democrat or Republican thing. It's not a Trump or a non president Trump thing. And so here though I think it's a very powerful tool to have for negotiating, for the administration to go to the Russians, to go to other stakeholders and to say, look, this is your best option right now because we have this. We're trying to keep you and trying to prevent our very dynamic, very unpredictable legislature from making decisions that could have even worse ramifications for name an entity but here, Russia. And so it's great to have that negotiating space. And so I think that's where we've been. And then now I think there is growing frustration about the status of negotiations, about the candor and good faith, or lack of good faith, obviously, from the Russians, which has been apparent to many, but appears to be becoming more apparent to factions within the Trump administration. And so having this tool, the sanctions proposed are incredibly comprehensive, some novel as well, against both Russia as well as third countries called secondary sanctions for countries like uae, India, Turkey, potentially China that do business with Russia. And so it's not just imposing costs on Russia, but it's imposing costs on Russia's economic partners and a major source of Russian revenue which has been the sale of both price capped and non price capped oil and other extractives over the past several years. So that's kind of where we're sitting right now. And I think that's really fast moving in terms of potential changes in how going from quiet to loud and how support for Ukraine has remained pretty steadfast within even Republican factions, Republican caucus on the Hill, but now it's becoming a little bit more vocal.
- [60:22]
Scott R. Andersen
Yeah. And the bill is really substantively, really interesting because it in kind of subtle ways is very constraining on the Trump administration if it were enacted in its current form. So the willingness to move it forward, albeit with a rhetoric that is not confrontational, is pretty remarkable. And we'll have to see where it goes. I think we might make it a topic itself on this podcast if we see it has some legs in the weeks to come. So let us turn with our last few minutes to our third topic, and that is this question of tariffs we've all been living through, experiencing at the grocery store, at Amazon.com or wherever you may do your shopping on a variety of fronts, off and on, having somewhat disparate impacts across different industries. But we saw a major, major hit to the Trump administration this past week from the federal courts. I did a very deep dive on this with Peter Harrell, another contributing editor and sanctions expert on the Lawfare Daily podcast. Recommend check that out for people who want to deep dive, but at the highest level the key point is that the law that President Trump has used to impose these tariffs, the International Emergency Economic Powers act, was found by two separate federal courts, both which are now being appealed to, not authorize this activity. One found that IPA as a whole just doesn't authorize tariffs. Flat out that Congress enacted another law around the same time, clearly intended to do that. And IEEPA has to be read, which does not self reference tariffs, although it uses other very broad language about regulating imports that they said, essentially you can't read that to include tariffs, which is because it is a revenue generating, specific type of activity that is not covered by the statute. The other decision which came from the Court of International Trade, the first one, came from Federal Court in D.C. the Court of International Trade decision said was a little bit more specific in its analysis of a couple different measures. Not so categorical. It said IPA does authorize tariffs or can, but it doesn't authorize the sort of broad discretionary worldwide tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed around the world, because that's just too broad. It's basically application of the major questions doctrine, saying that this is just a sort of dramatic over the top action that the statute does not reach. And for those more specific programs regarding China, Mexico and Canada, the court said, yes, okay, you could use tariffs against a specific country to address a specific issue, but there's not enough of a relationship between the actual measures being imposed by the executive branch and the national emergencies. It's declared. There's just not a clear enough nexus there. This, of course, has ramifications not just for tariffs which are currently in place at least for another 10 days. I think there's a 14 day stay on the DC court opinion which has not been extended yet by the Court of Appeals, to which the Trump administration is turning. So they may be over in 10 days under that ruling. Either one of these rulings would essentially end the based tariffs, at least on appeal, or at least unless it is stayed by an appellate court. But it has ramifications for, not just for the tariffs, but also for other applications to ipa, which includes sanctions. Most of the sanctions that we've been talking about over this episode are IPA based. Alex, why don't we start there? Let me turn to you first on this. Talk to us a little bit about, about how you view these decisions through this sanctions lens or you think people are likely to view it. Is this something that we're going to see pushback from people who are concerned about national security equities, former treasury officials entering amicus briefs on appeal saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're not saying we agree with the Trump administration's tariff policies, but we got to rein in some of these aggressively narrow reads of ipa. Or do you think most sanctions folks are more comfortable with that?
- [63:55]
Alex Zardin
That's a great question. Thank you guys so much for covering this. I mean, the sense of coverage and scholarship from Peter Harrell and Adar Levy and others. And Scott, you yourself. So I want to really open this up because there's a lot of information that's been informing, hopefully for the benefit of the court and subsequent decision making policy making by the Trump administration about what the right and left lanes are boundaries are for the appropriate and recommended uses of this really powerful national Security Authority International, the name says it, but just provides broad discretion for the president in the event of a declaration of national emergency and has been used to really powerful effect, as you mentioned, for discretionary economic sanctions or as a foundation for the president to put forward various executive orders and national emergencies in the economic sanctions space over decades again, across administrations, across parties. Here I think think the first part is there's always concerns about the validity of IPA and its jurisdiction. So ofac, every single designation that the Treasury Department makes pursuant to ipa, there's always concern about litigation, always pursued, about undermining the statutory framework. And so to your question, yeah, I think it is very jealously guarded by former treasury officials, current treasury officials, because misuse of the authority for something even unrelated here related to tariffs rather than for sanctions could have very deleterious effects to the overall regulatory scheme and the important and critical national security decisions that have been made to protect the homeland, to protect the US International financial system. And there isn't a quick or reasonable substitute if IPA is overturned and found to be unconstitutional here under or found not for tariffs, but then has an impact on sanctions. So in terms of who's going to file what, I think remains to be seen of how the treasury former treasury official bar responds. But I think it's being very, very closely watched on it. And yeah, there is concerns and we've seen some peel back of the extent of the role of ipa. So the Fifth Circuit several months ago in a sanctions case called Tornado Cash, Van Loon versus the Treasury Department, plaintiffs were able to help narrow the scope of what constitutes property under ipa, which disfavored treasury designation of a cryptocurrency mixer. So a cryptocurrency anonymizer that had benefited the North Koreans and helped them develop in no small part their military programs, a huge national security threat. But the court came in there. And so the threats and concerns to IAEPA are perennial. And this may be an area where the court comes in and inadvertently or intentionally constrains overall administration, executive authority that has a negative impact on sanctions.
- [66:54]
Scott R. Andersen
So in spite of this pretty big setback a few weeks ago, apparently, I mean, just in the past week, with these two opinions clearly coming at the core legal basis of the what the Trump administration has been doing in tariffs, we've seen him double down just in the past week. He has threatened an increase on tariffs in regards to Europe, most specifically on steel and aluminum, which is worth noting. Those are under a separate legal authority, a trade act, I think, section 232 tariffs. So those are actually not directly affected by this legal opinion. But a lot of the rhetoric has suggested broader restoration of tariffs that either would have to rely upon IPA, or if it were to use one of these other statutory authorities that exists, would have to have a longer lead time. There are kind of procedural prerequisites, findings that have to be made by the secretary of Commerce or by other officials before you can go forward with implementing those tariffs. So there's a couple of weeks lead time usually. And there's always the possibility of pushback from within the bureaucracy to what the president wants to do by refusing to make the full sort of finding necessary to install the full range of sanctions. That's by design. That's why Congress put those requirements in there to have that sort of pushback back. So it's no guarantee that if Trump continues to lose in the courts, that he's going to be able to do any of this. So why is he threatening it? Eric, I'm kind of curious if you have a sense, a thought on this, about the dynamics with Europe. I mean, how is Europe receiving these tariff threats? They seem to be willing to negotiating in these negotiations, but haven't yet are capitulating. They're kind of staining their guns. They're saying, we're preparing retaliatory measures, we're ready to do it. We hope it doesn't come to that. Do you have a sense that there is a little bit of a waiting at the clock? Are they following the domestic legal process around this, that this may enter into their equation and the effectiveness of these threats on the Trump administration's part? Or is the Trump administration maybe feeling more eagerness to get these things done because it knows it's not? Probably. We'll wait to see what the appellate courts do. It's probably not going to lose the authority to do this stuff until the Supreme Court rules. And that's probably still at least six months away, probably longer. Do you have a sense of that at all?
- [68:56]
Adam Grant
And I think the general European response has been pretty fragmented because you have national governments that are looking for off ramps, particularly those leaders that have a bit of a relationship with Trump, like Giorgio Meloni of Italy trying to kind of smooth things over. But at the same time, Europe's response when it comes to, you know, tariffs and whatnot, is the competency of the commission in Brussels, which is pretty firm in kind of not wanting to capitulate and wanting to impose some pain on the United States. So you have a bit of a push and pull between the member states and the commission, which is typical of a lot of policies. But I think it's like it's pretty substantial in trade. And again, I think they're, they're just trying to keep up with events here and, and understand the, the legal implications of the recent rulings. But I just see them kind of trying to adjust to a new normal of a certain amount of unpredictability from the United States and the fact that this is going to be a roller coaster that, you know, like you said, until there's probably clarity from the Supreme Court, they're on this roller coaster for the next indefinite future, as are we all.
- [70:15]
Scott R. Andersen
And no doubt we'll have opportunities for another one of those downhill segments to return to this topic. But for the moment, we out of time. 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. Eric, what did you bring for us this week? What do you have for your object lesson?
- [70:33]
Adam Grant
Well, I just watched the finale of the recent season of the Rehearsal on hbo, which I don't know if listeners are aware of what that is. Nathan Fielder's really bizarre show where he's given an unlimited budget to do very, very strange things. And without giving any spoilers away, I have no idea how the executives at HBO and the people who deal with insurance issues and whatnot possibly approved of what happened in the finale, which was in many ways the most mind blowing thing I've ever seen. So people should tune in for that if they want a little bit of escape and to really ask some fundamental questions about air travel in the United States.
- [71:19]
Scott R. Andersen
Phenomenal, well timed questions as well, given recent events. I have not gotten to see that myself, but I am very curious. It is like the MacArthur genius grant for non genius completely insane things to do. So it's pretty amazing what he pulls off there. Nastya, what do you have for us this week?
- [71:35]
Nastia Lapatina
I was thinking hard and then I just looked around my table and I have like four books about the Arctic and a book about the history of Finland. And so I want my. My object lesson to be that people should read more about Finland and Finnish history because it's truly mind blowing. I'm. I. I've been reading a lot of it in the past two weeks, and I have this like. Because it's like being a Ukrainian in this moment, in the middle of a war can be sort of a little bit lonely. Like, nobody understands you. And when you talk to Americans, they have no idea what to say to you. And, you know, all of those vibes. And then you read History of Finland and you're like, okay, those guys get it because they, like, went through something incredibly similar. Like it's sort of mind boggling if you read about, like, the Winter War and things like that, and just how Finland built its country since. And I'm just in awe. So I want more people to know Finnish history, especially in the context of, you know, European defense and what Finland and its accession to NATO recently means in that context. It's really interesting.
- [72:42]
Scott R. Andersen
Finland has. We are blessed to have a very strong Finnish listenership contingent in Lafayette. Very strong and vocal. So they will be thrilled to hear that.
- [72:51]
Nastia Lapatina
Yeah.
- [72:52]
Scott R. Andersen
And hopefully. Check that out. Yeah, I have to check it out myself.
- [72:55]
Nastia Lapatina
There is a specific book in English as well.
- [72:58]
Scott R. Andersen
What is it? Which one is it?
- [72:59]
Nastia Lapatina
And this was approved by Finn, so it should be good. My friend from Finland said this is a good book. History of Finland by Henrik Maynander. I'm probably butchering the name, but it's great. It's in English. It's the only thing on the topic that I found. So everyone go read it.
- [73:19]
Scott R. Andersen
Hey, there you go. You're making some listeners very, very happy right now, I can tell you that. If nothing else. Well, for my object lesson this week, you know, I like a little escapist fiction and fantasy on occasion. And there's a new book out by an author whose series I read, read decade and a half ago and loved and actually just started rereading when I learned this book was coming out. I haven't actually read it yet. This has been getting reviews. This Joe Abercrombie's the Devils, a new kind of fantasy, dark fantasy book with a new universe after he's abandoned the universe he's been writing for the last 20 years. This book evidently has already been picked up for a TV series or a movie in this post Game of Thrones era. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Makes me very nervous. Weirdly, his old series, the First Law trilogy, which is what I'll you tell technically recommend since I actually have read those and they are phenomenal. They say trilogy, but it's actually like six books plus maybe a couple other books in a related sort of universe, is phenomenal. I'm shocked it hasn't been picked up. It's very Game of Thronesy, but nonetheless, I'm glad to see Joe get his sack of cash the fantasy authors seem to be entitled to these days. I hope the show or movie lives up to the results. But the new series sounds super interesting. I'm excited to check it out. So check out the Devils by Joe Abercrombie. Alex, I'll come to you as our for your inaugural episode to bring us home. What do you have for your object lesson this week?
- [74:30]
Alex Zardin
Yeah, a little bit out of left field, but it's a book called the Watch how the Truman Committee Battled Corruption and Helped win World War II by Steve Drummond. In an era one we're thinking about security in Europe, security in the Indo Pacific. Also thinking a lot about waste, fraud and abuse in government procurement, government acquisition and then also new and emerging technologies. We saw the drone strike that Nasty described today and kind of the changing nature of warfare. This book brings it together as well as what we talked about on the dynamics between executive and legislative functions and oversight. Really, really fascinating history of how President Truman, then Senator Truman, rose through the ranks, developed a national profile and did a tremendous amount to support the war effort from home and during World War II. And so I thought it was a really, really interesting read.
- [75:21]
Scott R. Andersen
Read a haberdasher for the ages that, that Truman. Absolutely. Well, it sounds like a phenomenal read. I've read, I read what I think was David McCulloch's Truman biography way back then. Like the 1400 page tome, it's another doorstopper. Yeah, yeah. But it's, it's fascinating. He's a fascinating guy if nothing else. My father actually met Harry Truman on a plane once and he was flying coach and my father got sat next to him when he was like 2 years old with his grandmother. So, you know, if nothing else, we've had a little family obsession with the man. So since then. So it's an exciting thing to check out. Well folks, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is of course a production of Lawfare, so be sure to Visit us@lawfaremedia.org for our show page, for links to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on Lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series, including Escalation, hosted by our own Nastya from this podcast, now available in podcasters near you in full and currently being broadcast on the Lawfair Daily Podcast. If you want to check out a few episodes before subscribing over at the Lawfare Presents Podcast feed where it's posted. In addition, be sure to follow LawFair on social media wherever you socialize your media. Be sure to leave a rating review wherever you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast and other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was Noam Osband of Go Rodeo and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan and we were wondering once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guests Eric, Nastya and Alex, I am Scott R. Anderson. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. Are you still quoting 30 year old movies? Have you said cool beans in the past 90 days?
- [77:05]
Eric Charmella
Do you still think Discover isn't widely accepted?
- [77:08]
Scott R. Andersen
If this sounds like you, you're stuck in the past.
- [77:11]
Eric Charmella
Discover is accepted at 99% of places.
- [77:14]
Scott R. Andersen
That take credit cards nationwide, and every time you make a purchase with your card, you automatically earn cash back. Welcome to the Now It Pays to Discover.
- [77:23]
Eric Charmella
Learn more@discover.com creditcard based on the February 2024 Nielsen report.