Rational Security: The "Middle-Aged Dads" Edition

Summary

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The Lawfare Podcast: Rational Security – “Middle-Aged Dads” Edition

Date: May 14, 2026
Host: Scott R. Andersen (Senior Editor, Lawfare)
Guests: Mike Feinberg (Senior Editor) & Dana Stuster (Foreign Policy Editor)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Rational Security tackles three principal topics at the crossroads of U.S. national security, diplomacy, and law:

1. The high-stakes U.S.–China summit—pitting America’s “Five B’s” versus China’s “Three T’s”
2. The stagnation and consequences of the ongoing Iran War
3. Revelations about CIA targeted assassinations against Mexican cartel members, and the implications for U.S.-Mexico relations

The discussion is rich with behind-the-scenes insights, critical analysis, and sharply candid perspectives, all flavored with the camaraderie and wit the “Middle-Aged Dads” edition promises.

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I. Banter & Opening Vibe

— Home offices, organizing shelves, and the hazards of middle-aged dad stereotypes

• The hosts poke fun at each other's home office setups and overly organized bookshelves (02:46–03:36).
  • Mike: “I have a series of photographs of my bookshelves for every time I move...with fiction I organize it chronologically by date of the author's birth. Most movers are not sympathetic to that...this is where my overly organizational tendencies reveal themselves in the most obnoxious, pretentious way possible.” (02:46)
  • Scott: “Just some guys sitting back cracking some brews, talking about national security news.” (05:05)

Notable Moment:

• Mike: “I'm just leaning into the whole middle age dad stereotype. I'm probably going to start listening to Wilco soon too, which I haven't done in years.” (04:51)

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II. U.S.–China Summit: “Minding Your B’s and T’s”

[06:22–35:53]

Key Segments

• Set-Up: The Trump administration’s summit with Xi Jinping in China, delayed several times due to the Iran war, brings together top U.S. officials and a cadre of headline tech CEOs.
• U.S. Agenda: “Five B’s”—Beef, Soybeans, Boeing, plus two ‘boards’ for investment and trade
• China’s Agenda: “Three T’s”—Taiwan, Technology, Tariffs
• Looming over the summit: The unresolved Iran war and consequential economic disruptions.

1. Private-Sector-First Diplomacy

Mike Feinberg:

• Expresses deep skepticism at the U.S. bringing leading tech CEOs to the negotiating table:
  • “Their primary loyalty is not to the United States or the Department of Defense...while they may pay lip service to… grand strategic goals, what they really want is two things. Access to the Chinese market...and access to the Chinese labor pool.” (10:28)
  • “Given that we know the Trump administration… takes a very transactional view towards international relations, I’m more inclined to believe that the Trump administration is taking the CEOs points of view.” (10:28)
• Warns that strategic interests (especially Taiwan) may be sacrificed for short-term economic gains.

2. The Spheres of Influence Shift

Dana Stuster:

• Highlights the Trump administration’s departure from “strategic competition” to a 19th-century “spheres of influence” approach—suggesting the U.S. may tacitly concede more autonomy to China in East Asia in exchange for influence in the Western Hemisphere:
  • “They are really moving in this direction of a spheres of influence approach where rather than being confrontational with China, it’s having some level of interdependence that allows for greater Chinese independence in ways that then start to impinge on US Partners…” (17:01)

3. Taiwan: Strategic Ambiguity at Risk

Scott R. Andersen:

• Illustrates how, for decades, the core of U.S.–Taiwan policy has been “strategic ambiguity” with a foundation in security assistance—now apparently up for negotiation.
  • “This really drives at the heart of a lot of that. That's why it has, I think, people in Taiwan pretty nervous.” (18:36)

Mike Feinberg:

• Takes a dim view of the Republican “constancy” on Taiwan, warning that today's GOP could abandon Taiwan if Trump changes his mind:
  • “This is a different debate at a different time. But like the Republican Party has become personalists to a degree it never has been before…if he does flip that switch, I think Taiwan has a real reason to be worried.” (21:02)
  • Cites the apparent willingness within the administration (including key policy architects like Elbridge Colby) to deplete resources for Taiwan’s defense, notably because of the ongoing Iran war. (21:02)

Dana Stuster:

• Flags the growing “not our fight” sentiment within the Republican party:
  • “…there has been a current of the Republican Party for a long time now that has said that like, well, Taiwan isn't our fight and it's not worth...escalating with the nuclear power over Taiwan. And I think that current is only getting stronger.” (24:40)

4. Spheres of Influence: Dangerous Echoes

Mike Feinberg:

• Warns that a ‘spheres-of-influence’ strategy in history usually “results in much greater conflict.” (25:15)

5. Is the U.S. Set Up to Trade Away Taiwan?

Scott R. Andersen:

• Offers a hypothetical on responsibly “deescalating” Taiwan, but expresses doubt that the administration has the discipline or vision to execute a process that considers all downstream interests; fears policy is being reduced to narrow horse-trading. (31:52–35:53)

Notable Quotes

• Mike: “Most Sinologists...are all firmly of the opinion that Xi Jinping is going to use, or is willing to use military force to overtake the island...There's a moral argument...there's an economic one...and...just geostrategic...” (28:32)
• Scott: “It belies a lack of seriousness on the part of the United States, a lack of understanding of the broader interconnectivity of all this stuff. And that's what's concerning.” (31:52)

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III. The Iran War: “Crude Awakening”

[43:20–59:53]

Key Segments

• Stalemate: Stalled negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz, oil flow, and broader regional security, with neither side conceding.
• Major sticking points: U.S. wants Iran’s nuclear capability eliminated; Iran wants sanctions relief, international recognition of control over the Strait, and reparations.

1. Economic Chicken & Deeper Costs

Dana Stuster:

• Explains both sides are locked in a “war of attrition,” hurting themselves and many allies—but timelines differ:

  • “So neither side is willing to budge at this point, because I think the Trump administration doesn't want to admit concessions that would look like a defeat. And the Iranians want to be able to demonstrate that they actually won something in this conflict...What this means is that we're now playing economic chicken.” (45:21)

• Allies (Philippines, China, others) are being hit hardest by oil disruption, and domestic U.S. economic impacts will intensify by mid-June.

2. The Sunk Costs Trap & Unmet Objectives

Mike Feinberg:

• Frames the conflict as mired in “sunk costs” fallacy; bluntly questions whether any original objectives are being met:
  • “All the reporting...indicates that we have not met our strategic objectives that we had in embarking on this conflict...this is just comically inept...” (50:26)
  • Notes high-profile failures: most targeted missile sites are still operational, U.S. munitions stockpiles depleted, no clear goal achieved.

3. Political Narratives & Risks

Scott R. Andersen:

• Points out that the only strategic “success” argument is the Israeli/“mow the grass” strategy—keeping threats suppressed without broad regional stability:
  • “There is a real question, though, becomes a Is that a good strategic vision even for Israel?...For the US Perspective, the US Security interests are so much broader...” (55:31)

4. Reflections on U.S. Strategy

All Discussants:

• Consensus that the U.S. lacks a clear, rational strategy; political incentives for symbolic victories are driving dangerous policy choices.
  • Dana: “There was no contingency planning for this type of outcome...The Trump administration's also imposed a limit on itself that this is going to be no boots on the ground...” (53:57)

Notable Quotes

• Mike: “Explain to me how there is any conclusion to this conflict that does not result in the United States being in a materially worse position than it was before it began.” (50:26)
• Scott: “I'm just shocked the administration doesn't get hit harder by this yet on the political front. But the strategic case is really bad.” (55:31)

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IV. CIA Operations in Mexico: “Cartel Blanche”

[59:53–74:52]

Key Segments

• Revelation: CNN reports CIA covert assassinations of mid-level Mexican cartel members, with fuzzy lines around Mexican government cooperation or awareness.
• U.S. previously relied on law enforcement for counter-narcotics; now shifting to lethal military tactics, facilitated by the FTO (foreign terrorist organization) designation.

1. Slippery Slope from “War on Terror” to Cartels

Mike Feinberg:

• Admits past support for expansive war-on-terror powers and expresses deep concern about their domestic repurposing:

  • “These very policies, techniques and methods could very easily be turned and used in other situations where there might not be as much moral clarity...what we're seeing happen in Mexico...is something that gives me real cause for concern.” (63:02)

• Warns of deteriorating due process:

  • “You don't have a specifically identifiable person. You have somebody whose behaviors fit a matrix of a likely terrorist into a certain percentile. You are authorized to kill them. I would humbly suggest that is not something we want to...be doing in a...neighboring country...” (63:02)

• Raises alarms about the broad remit unlocked by FTO designation: surveillance and lethal tools could spill over to ever-wider targets.

2. Legal, Policy & Security Implications

Scott R. Andersen:

• Outlines that, while the legal hooks exist if Mexico consents or if self-defense is invoked, the risks and precedent are serious:
  • “...the Mexican government’s role… is the real question for me.” (67:45)
  • “If they are just mules like most of the targets of maritime strikes seem to be...that raises a whole different set of issues.” (67:45)

3. Retaliation & Regional Instability

Dana Stuster:

• Raises the risk of escalation and blowback for U.S. citizens in Mexico, potential reprisals, and the danger of shadow wars spreading domestically. (71:27)
  • References the risk of cartel retaliation reminiscent of past violent episodes, should these operations come fully to light.

Notable Quotes

• Mike: “We, all of us in every single topic we've covered today, recognize the need to at least attempt to see around corners and consider second and third order consequences. And what concerns me...is that that doesn't seem to be happening...[That] is as negative an omen for international relations as it is for democratic norms.” (73:04)

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V. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mike: “I can't see any world in which not defending Taiwan redounds to the United States benefit.” (28:32)
• Dana (on professorial grading): “We already had our graduation. We are off to the summer.” (06:19)
• Scott (on strategic ambiguity): “...the one thing [the Taiwan Relations Act] does say is we're going to give substantial security assistance and we're going to try and give enough security assistance to keep Taiwan ability to resist any sort of effort to forcibly change the status in the strait.” (18:36)
• Mike: “This administration is highly transactional and this administration is under a lot of political pressure and really like symbolic victories. They are very happy to take something that they can have talking points around because it delivers or could deliver domestically at a shorter time frame.” (31:52)

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VI. Timestamps for Key Sections

• 02:46–05:05: Opening banter, home office and bookshelves
• 06:22–35:53: U.S.–China Summit, “Five B’s”, Taiwan, spheres of influence
• 43:20–59:53: Iran War, oil crisis, strategic failures
• 59:53–74:52: CIA assassinations in Mexico, legal, diplomatic, and regional fallout

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VII. Closing: Object Lessons

• Scott: Earnest plea for Lawfare financial supporters (“if you value these conversations, help us keep the project going”—74:52)
• Dana: Domestic troubles—apologizes for lack of professional audio equipment and blames his podcast-producer wife’s standards. (77:29)
• Mike: Recommends AFI’s upcoming “Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair”—contemplating among the most depressing films ever made. (78:24)

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VIII. Final Thoughts

The episode boldly challenges the lack of strategy and foresight in America’s global security posture—whether in Asia, the Middle East, or its closest neighborhood. This candid, jargon-free but deeply informed discussion is both an alarming and necessary reflection on where U.S. national security strategy—rooted in law, power, and alliances—may be heading.

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Summary prepared by Lawfare Podcast Summarizer AI
Listen to the full episode or check lawfaremedia.org for archival content and supporting resources.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hey everyone, Scott R. Andersen here as a senior editor with Lawfare, you might know me as the guy always rambling about treaties and war powers, or perhaps as the host of Rational Security. What you might not know is that Lawfare has been a part of my life a lot longer than I've been contributing to it. Before I came to Lawfare, I was a national security lawyer, an occasional diplomat working for the government, both here in Washington D.C. and overseas. They were the sorts of jobs that wrestled with hard national security choices of the type Lawfare specializes in. Which is why Lawfare is one of the first things I opened when I got to my desk each morning. From Iran to Venezuela to back here at home, those questions haven't gotten any easier. Policymakers, journalists, and citizens all need the sort of deep, nonpartisan expertise the law firm specializes in in now more than ever. Lawfare is also a non profit, meaning we're committed to keeping all of our core content from getting put behind a paywall. But we can't do it without help from the people who read and listen to us. People like you. So if you can visit lawfairmedia.org support and join our community of supporters, just $10 a month will make a world of difference in helping us keep Lawfare free to everyone for a long time. To. Mike, I have to say for folks who listen to the podcast don't watch the video. They may not be aware that we've gotten to see the gradual evolution of your new home office since you've relocated. And I gotta say I'm pretty impressed. You got wooden shelves up that might be a drop leaf table behind you. I think I'm seeing, and I will say I'm particularly impressed slash a little embarrassed because I've been in my house for six years and still have not really got effectively set up a home office. And yet you've beat me by half a decade. So congratulations on that front.

[C]

Well, what you find impressive my wife finds infuriating because this is the room I set up first before our bedroom. And I don't think our listeners or viewers could tell, but these books are pretty fastidiously organized. I have a series of photographs of my bookshelves for every time I move, which I used to do fairly frequently because for example, with fiction I organize it chronologically by date of the author's birth. Most movers are not sympathetic to that and willing to box up the book and make sure that Milton is in the right place vis a vis Goethe. You know, vis a vis antiquarians. You know, this is where my overly organizational tendencies reveal themselves in the most obnoxious, pretentious way possible.

[D]

And somehow you have it alphabetical while also extremely uniformly organized by height. It is just a straight line of hardcovers behind you.

[C]

Well, yeah, that's another thing that infuriates my wife is as a matter of principle, I will not buy paperbacks unless there are no other options.

[B]

I feel like I'm getting a full tour of your house at this point. Mike. I got to see you working on the garage earlier and what did look a little bit like the first 30 seconds of a hostage video before they scanned down a hostage. It was Mike drilling into a wall with an impact drill or some other impressive looking drill. It was a hammer drill. There you go. I knew I saw some irregular equipment there. I know my driver array of drills at my garage shelf. But what is your, what is your ambition for the garage? What direction is that headed in?

[C]

This is the first time we have ever owned a detached house with a pretty sizable garage. And it is large enough that it can fit one of our cars in terms of width, but it's much longer than it needs to be. It's much deeper. So I've actually turned the garage into to a combination, you know, carport as it is supposed to be, but also woodworking shop and home gym.

[B]

Hopefully not all at once. That sounds dangerous.

[C]

No, no. I mean I'm not going to like do acrobatics with the table saw, but I'm just leaning into the whole middle age dad stereotype. I'm probably going to start listening to Wilco soon too, which I haven't done in years.

[B]

I'm 10 years ahead of you, buddy. That's the way to do it. It's not a bad way to live foreign. And welcome back to Rational Security. We invite you to join members of the Law Fair team as we try to make sense of the week's biggest national security news stories, whether they are in our lane or not. I am your host, Scott R. Andersen. Thrilled to be back this week with a pair of my Law Fair colleagues. Here we're doing a day with the boys today. Just a just some guys sitting back cracking some brews, talking about national security news. And I'm thrilled to be joined first off by lawfare's one of lawfare's senior editors, my fellow senior editor here at lawfair, Mike Feinberg. Mike, thank you for coming back on the podcast.

[C]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

And also joining us after a couple of months of unavailability because of his real job and day job. But we're thrilled to have back now that the summer months are upon us and all of our academic friends have a little more freedom and time in their schedule. None other than lawfare foreign policy editor Dana Stuster. Dana, it's been a while. It's great to have you back on the podcast as well.

[D]

It's great to be back. It's great to be done grading finals.

[B]

Yeah. The fact that you're already done grading is really genuinely impressive. All my law professor friends are just entering into final season down. Every time I talk to them, it's all just like impending dread of having how much grading they're going to have to do.

[D]

We already had our graduation. We are off to the summer.

[B]

Oh, there you go. There you go. That's the nice part about think tank work is. Yeah, there's downsides and you don't have all that tuition and things flowing in. But at the same time, we don't have to grade anything. Unless you. Unless we choose to. Well, I will say we have had a lot of things happening in the news in the world. We have a couple of pretty big stories I think for this week to talk over, at least one of which we may also revisit last week for a little bit of an ex post review of what's happened. But we're going to set the stage for it today. So let's go ahead and jump into our three topics. Our first topic today, minding your B's and T's. President Trump arrived in China this week alongside top U.S. officials and a number of top business executives for a much anticipated summit with President Xi Jinping. US diplomats hope the summit will revolve around the five Bs, meaning US beef, soybeans, Boeing airplanes and proposed boards for both investment and trade. While Chinese officials want to talk about the three T's of Taiwan technology and tariffs, what should our expectations be for the summit? And how much will the Iran war loom over the negotiations? Our second topic, speaking of the Iran war, crude awakening. This past week, negotiations between Iran, the United States appeared to reach a standstill without any movement on reopening the Strait of Hormuz or restoring the flow of oil and other goods that have driven crude oil prices, among other commodity prices, to record highs. Each side seems poised to try and wait out the other. But how long can they last before having to capitulate or escalate? And what do these dynamics mean for the war of attrition that now appears to be holding up trade in the Strait of Hormuz and across the broader Middle East? And topic three, Cartel Blanche. On Tuesday, CNN reported that CIA has been conducting a covert campaign of assassinations in Mexico targeting mid level members of the country's drug cartels. Despite these reports and the Trump administration's long standing claims that it is at war with the cartels, but the Mexican government and CIA have denied any involve in these operations. What does this all say about the Trump administration's plans for future counter narcotics operations as well as the broader US Mexico relationship? So for our first topic, Mike, I want to come to you first to kind of set the stage for us for this Xi Jinping summit. This is supposed to happen a long time ago. Like six weeks ago was the last kind of target date. Frankly it was supposed to happen a few months before that, before it got postponed to the 6 weeks ago date, got postponed because of the Iran war. And at the time there was this idea that at least in some circles, mostly circles favorable to the administration, they were saying, oh, the Iran war is kind of an effort to gain leverage over China. We're pushing back against one of its main trading partners. We're exerting US role now. It seems like the tables have shifted a little bit. The United States is engaged in this conflict that it is having trouble ending on the terms that it would like to see it end on, but also is constrained in how it can escalate that. We're going to talk about that for the second topic, but that's where it's led us to this timeline now and this kind of agenda, this 5B's, 3T's formula that we're seeing everywhere that I think traces back to some, I don't think specifically sourced, but generally sourced statements by people within the administration. And looking at it shows the extent to which we're having kind of a different agenda. The five Bs are really discrete sort of deliverable ideas, all of which hit on, like, very specific takeaways the Trump administration seems to take on. When you're talking about beans, beef and Boeing, there's a whole bigger relationship and set of issues that aren't captured by that. And I don't think either the two boards, the two remaining beans, are going to cover that either. But meanwhile, the Chinese agenda really seems pretty broad. We're talking about Taiwan, the perennial issue between these two countries. Really one of the defining issues of the relationship for the last 70 years, technology. We're all talking about AI in that context, primarily in chips and semiconductors and everything that feeds into the AI stack. And then tariffs, the defining Trump administration policy that has kicked off this round of economic tensions with China. Although notably tariffs, not a strictly Trump administration policy, the Biden administration kept a lot of the first Trump administration tariffs on China on as well. So talk to us about what you see going into this. Where do you see the two sides positioning themselves in this relationship that you have watched for a long time, both inside the government and out? And what does it tell you about what we should be expecting coming out the other end in terms of deliverables, progress, anything like that?

[C]

Yeah. So I'll start with the final part of your question in terms of what we can expect. And this is not me prophesying or reading portents, but I think there's a couple of very clear signals that China hawks like myself, to be frank, should steel themselves to be immensely disappointed by anything that results from these meetings. And I think the real skeleton key to understanding this is not actually what either country wants to be the main topics of discussion, but rather looking at the people whom the Trump administration has chosen to bring with them from the private sector as part of an official delegation. You are essentially looking at a coterie of Silicon Valley Tech Titan CEOs. And as somebody who worked in Chinese intelligence matters and was engaged for the better part of two decades in trying to use law enforcement, enforcement and intelligence techniques to stop China from gaining sensitive technology, their accompaniment to the president really rings some alarm bells to me. It is, of course, the sort of thing that always happens in public where these companies play nice with the US Government and say that they support its goals in terms of preventing other countries from gaining technologies. But the fact is, Tim Cook, Elon Musk, pick whatever CEO you will. Their primary loyalty is not to the United States or the Department of Defense or the intelligence community. They have legitimate legal loyalties to provide quarterly shareholder earnings. And as a result, while they may pay lip service to sort of the United States grand strategic goals, what they really want is two things. Access to the Chinese market to sell their goods and access to the Chinese labor pool to make those goods more cheaply. And the fact that they're going with Trump says to me that they're going to have a seat at the table and that their views and their goals are going to be largely in lockstep with the administration. And given that we know the Trump administration sort of at all levels and in all departments, takes a very transactional view towards international relations, I'm more inclined to believe that the Trump administration is taking the CEOs points of view than the CEOs have all of a sudden become fans of a militaristic buildup in case we need to defend Taiwan. And as a result, I have a lot of concern that we are going to give up larger strategic priorities and potentially abandon guarantees that may even only be half hearted, but guarantees nonetheless to help our allies in East Asia should arising China become belligerent, and that we're going to give those things up in favor of market considerations. And there's a legitimate argument to be made for that. I think it's not a very persuasive one because it's very short term focused. And I think a China that rises further could have a larger negative economic impact on the United States is growth and influence than one that is contained. But it doesn't seem to me that the Trump administration is trying to hide its cards with this particular plan. The fact that they've selected a group of CEOs rather than a group of diplomats or intelligence officials or Department of Defense officials to be the public face of this trip, to me very much signifies that they are going to do everything and anything they can to help American business interests, possibly to the detriment of our larger geostrategic interests.

[B]

Dana, let me come to you on that because I think that's interesting and a little bit provocative take, but one that you can see a little bit in this trajectory the Trump administration has taken around China, because it's been a weird one, right? I mean, at the end of the first Trump administration, we were at a level of just maximum peak in the relationship, right? We had the president mouthing off about China, accusing it of starting the global pandemic and threatening in a variety of kind of veiled ways, not just on trade measures, on a variety of Measures very aggressive on Taiwan as well, rhetorically, which is something that a lot of people in his party, but plenty of people across the aisle as well, are particularly sensitive about, particularly pointed about. The Biden administration carried a lot of that forward, I think, in ways that were more calibrated and more balanced, at least from their perspective, that balanced other equities they were always careful towards to try and not make it sound too much like a zero sum game, to make clear there was some relationship and cooperation we had with China, but nonetheless very clearly labeled them strategic competitor, enacted a whole range of policies, particularly in the economic statecraft space, aimed at constraining their ability to be more effective competitors, not just around AI, but around a number of other areas. And then you saw cases like the famous weather balloon incident we talked about a lot on national security at the time, where clearly the Biden administration was nervous about not looking hard enough on China and ended up leaning in a way that may have been, at least from my perspective, pretty counterproductive even further because they felt like they need to look strong on that. And President Trump has, in a way that only, frankly, Donald Trump can completely pivot away from that in this term. In this administration, we have seen him soften on China to the point that the National Security Strategies Administration released doesn't even really use the language of strategic competition or major power rivalry. It talks about spheres of influence, suggesting that to some extent, we are actually trying to reach an accommodation with China and Russia as the two other major powers that will concede a lot to them as long as they concede what we have for them. It acknowledges there are points of tension, particularly around Taiwan, particularly around economic ties to Taiwan, but it's a very different framing and thinking about that. So which of these different lenses, which of these different Donald Trumps and Trump administrations are we seeing carrying forward into this? And what does that tell us about how they're setting the agenda?

[D]

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned those strategy documents, because I think that is a real indicator of the shift that we're seeing, and this is a major test of whether that's going to be rhetoric. Sometimes those strategy documents can be super detached from reality and actual policy. But it seems like with the way the administration has talked about other foreign policy issues, especially in the Western Hemisphere, they are really moving in this direction of a spheres of influence approach where rather than being confrontational with China, it's having some level of interdependence that allows for greater Chinese independence in ways that then start to impinge on US Partners, whether it's Taiwan or potentially other countries that feel threatened in East Asia. And so with the United States and the Trump administration talking about the Don Row doctrine, how the United States is going to focus more on the Western Hemisphere and really exert US Influence in North America, Latin America, and increasingly South America, it's carving out this is where we really exert greater influence. And China may have greater freedom of maneuver in East Asia, which to Mike's point, like this is a real cause for concern for Taiwan. And what comes out of this meeting will really determine whether how much of this is rhetoric, how much of this is actual policy. What I've read has suggested that a lot of Taiwan experts are not expecting some sort of grand bargain to be struck in this meeting. In particular, that. But we're going to see a lot of pressure from China to try to get the United States to reduce arms deliveries to Taiwan as a sort of gradual process of pushing the United States out of Taiwanese defense.

[B]

Yeah. And this suggestion that Donald Trump has said in media remarks that the idea of arms sales and security assistance generally to Taiwan is on the table, I think is one of those things that if you haven't followed the history of U.S. china, Taiwan relations, you may not get the significance of that. But the security assistance relationship is just the foundational tenet in a lot of ways of the post1979 post normalization with Beijing security relationship with Taiwan. Taiwan Relations act does not make any hard commitment for the United States to come to the defense of Taiwan in the events of an attack by China. It very carefully doesn't, very deliberately doesn't. It maintains what has become to be known as this policy of strategic ambiguity as to what the United States would do in such a circumstance. But the one thing it does say is we're going to give substantial security assistance and we're going to try and give enough security assistance to keep Taiwan ability to resist any sort of effort to forcibly change the status in the strait. That's not quite the exact language, but that's kind of the logic behind it. And we saw this issue revisited in the 1980s by the Reagan administration, where we saw this set of communiques with Beijing and a set of commitments to Taiwan and assurances that kind of defined the parameters of this relationship, which basically boiled down to, hey, China, as long as you give compelling, credible assurances that you will not be using force to normalize or trying to change the status regardless of Taiwan, but that you engage in a peaceful process, we will consider adjusting security assistance accordingly, where if it looks like you're approaching Taiwan peacefully, then they will need security assistance and we'll adjust that accordingly. And then the opposite implication is true. There's also commitments about not directly allowing Beijing to check security assistance, things like that. This really drives at the heart of a lot of that. That's why it has, I think, people in Taiwan pretty nervous. And Trump is one of these people, one of these presidents that in part because he is, at least for far this term, not been constrained by his party, although we can talk about whether that's still the case the way it used to be. He can break from these orthodoxy points. And these points, it should be noted, are particularly important to congressional Republicans in particular, who really care about Taiwan and have been some of the most vocal proponents of the US Taiwanese relationship. But I'm not sure that doesn't mean you couldn't see Trump pivot away from that in a way that other presidents wouldn't be able to for political reasons, or not willing to anyway. Mike, am I being too alarmist about this? About what this hint that security systems might be on the table could be getting at?

[C]

I'm a little concerned you're not being alarmist enough. And I say that because I think you are attributing a greater constancy to the Republican thinking on Taiwan than really exists in this present day and age. I mean, this is a different debate at a different time. But like the Republican Party has become personalists to a degree it never has been before. And I think that a lot of the individuals in Congress, former Senator Marco Rubio's transformation being just one example, are very anti China, very pro Taiwan, until Trump decides it is no longer in our interest to be such. And I don't see a really robust intellectual debate going on between the two branches, at least the Republican side of the two branches. If he does flip that switch, I think Taiwan has a real reason to be worried. First of all, I think the hawkishness of the Trump administration during its first time around with respect to China has been greatly inflated. We talk about the rhetoric, and it certainly was at times, frankly off the reservation. But there were also a real lot of concessions made to China economically and in terms of trade and in terms of leniency on law enforcement and intelligence matters that didn't get the same amount of press because they're simply not as offensive, for example, as calling Covid Kung flu. But the notion that Trump has always been a China hawk, I think is just false. And the second cause for concern actually focuses on someone you guys will of course know, but I think is a rather minor figure for the American public. And that's one of hegseth's deputies, Elbridge Colby. Elbridge Colby wrote a book during the Biden administration called the Strategy of Denial, which was very much one of the most, I think, well thought out arguments as to why the United States needs to defend Taiwan, what it should do in order to do that, and what was really the crux of his argument, why the United States should do everything under its power to avoid any conflict that might drain or deplete resources needed to defend the island. But since that book was published, he has become one of the most virulent cheerleaders in public of our Iranian excursions. And there has been massive amounts of public reporting at how much our munitions have just been quite frankly drained by that misadventure and that we don't have the artillery and missile capacity to engage with a 2 AD weapon, anti area access denial weaponry. That really forms the backbone of a lot of the PLA Navy strategies like we're not well suited to combat them right now. And if Elbridge Colby, who was one of the most vociferous defenders of Taiwan independence in US History, has been willing to make that shift, what does that say about everybody else in the administration?

[B]

Yeah, and it's a really compelling point, Dana.

[D]

Yeah. And I think, you know, the direction of the Republican Party generally should make Taiwan more and more nervous about this because we're seeing this with the Iran war. There's a strong contingent within the Republican Party that is sees that conflict as the United States being dragged into some other country's war, into a war that was primarily driven by Israel. And there has been a current of the Republican Party for a long time now that has said that like, well, Taiwan isn't our fight and it's not worth, you know, escalating with the nuclear power over Taiwan. And I think that current is only getting stronger.

[C]

Scott, can I make one final point on this that just sort of harkens back to what we were saying about the various strategic doctrines that seem to be backing away from traditional great power rivalry in favor of this almost 19th century spheres of influence policy. This is one of those things that really made me wish our present day statesmen and stateswoman drew more from the ranks of historians, because I'm really hard pressed to think of a time where the spheres of influence theories did not ultimately result in much greater conflict than might have been possible had we stood up to rising powers when they were still nascent. I hear spheres of influence. I think of the Greater East Asia Co Prosperity Sphere that Japan was very much pushing in the 30s. And you don't have to be a diplomatic historian to know how well that worked out. I think of the various wars that still managed to occur despite the concert of Europe. And while none of them resulted in a continental conflagration, a lot of people still died and there was a lot of economic damage. And I worry that they're using the spheres of language vocabulary to justify what is really a neo isolationism. And history has just shown that that doesn't actually solve problems. It just kicks them down the road when they are more intractable.

[B]

So I do want to put out a hypothetical or a question which is I think there is a case to be made. I'm not trying to buy into it, but I think there is a reasonable case to be made about. There is the juice versus the squeeze around Taiwan for the United States. There is a differential there. The sheer scale of a conflict the United States would be risking with China if China really went to bore there is dramatic and you have to ask about whether the interests United States are substantial enough to warrant that. At the moment you have semiconductors, semiconductor industry. There's these deep economic reliances. That's true. There's also an effort for a variety of unrelated reasons, and probably in part for this reason, to off ramp that. There's efforts to build domestic production in the United States and find other supply chains not realistically going to be deployed in the next 10 years. But you can see an off ramp towards there. What is it that we could see? What would you want to see if there were a reasonable de escalation around Taiwan, what would that look like if that's what the Trump administration wanted to pursue? Because I think there are reasonable voices you can see about that saying maybe Taiwan is not the hill we want to die on. Maybe it's the rest of Asia. Maybe it is Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, other traditional GD allies. But is Taiwan really the one that we have to go on? Are there other tools to deploy? What would you expect to see if the administration were pursuing that tack in a responsible manner? And what are we missing from the current status quo if that's the direction they're headed in that we would want to see?

[C]

I don't think there is a responsible way, and I'm going to use provocative language here, I don't think there is a responsible way to give up or abdicate our responsibility to Taiwan. Most Sinologists whose research and writings I really value are all firmly of the opinion that Xi Jinping is going to use, or is willing to use military force to overtake the island. If he can do it diplomatically, so much the better. But the point is, there is not a world, I think, where Xi Jinping leaves power without having tried to reintegrate the two countries. And they are two countries. I defy you to find a sizable group of Taiwanese citizens who want to be reunited with the mainland. Many of them are in Taiwan precisely because recent ancestors did not want that. So there's a moral argument, I think is the United States as what is still, if fleetingly, the world's most powerful nation. We should at least pay lip service to the ideals of democracy and self determination. So there's a moral argument for not abandoning Taiwan. There's an economic one. And at the risk of being reductionist, you know, if Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing, if their fabrication facilities were the only thing on Taiwan, that would still be a reason to defend it. It is difficult to overstate how reliant we are on that single company's ability to engage in free and fair commerce with us. And if China takes over the island, they have zero incentive to continue allowing us to do that. And the last reason is not moral or economic, but just geostrategic or geopolitical. If we don't defend Taiwan, a whole lot of other nations in East Asia, by which I mean almost all of them, are going to view the United States's security commitments and willingness to back up its promises and implications as worth absolutely nothing. And if they do that, they have no choice but to allow themselves to fall into the PRC's orbit, because that's the only other game in town. And if that happens, the economic effects on the average American are going to be deleterious. We're worried about the Straits of Hormuz. Now, 70% of the world's international commerce goes through the South China Sea. If all of a sudden we have no allies who are helping promote freedom of navigation and freedom of the seas in that area, there is not going to be freedom of navigation. And the marginal increase in costs of literally 90% of what America consumes is going to go through the roof. I just, I can't see any world in which not defending Taiwan redounds to the United States benefit.

[B]

I think there is a fundamental premise, a question to say for all the horrible things that could flow from this. Is the ultimate question of, like, going to a hot war ultimately worth it? Like, there's hugely Devastating consequences to that. That's a condition far, far down the line really for either party. I mean, I think where I come out on this is that if you were to want to de escalate around Taiwan, and frankly, I think there are reasons to want to find ways to de escalate, that may not mean walking back security commitments, but to find ways to de escalate and make it less of a hot point of tension. You would want to see a process that accounts for all these other interests. It would be a process. This is like the most diplomat speak thing you can do, which is that you would set up a process where you set up broad principles, broad objectives, you set a timeline for it. You have a whole process to de escalate. And those things really only work when you have that desire. On both sides. They can be really useful because they don't require any immediate concessions. But it would require like a genuine sign that like both sides want to step back from this a little bit. That's not what we're seeing the Trump administration really postured be. The Trump administration A I don't think there's a ton of signs of a desire to de escalate on the part of Beijing. They're facing economic headwinds. There are a lot of reasons why they may not want to face and pursue a deep, immediate imminent military buildup. But it does different from saying we want to de escalate the situation. But even that aside, you would want to say instead of the Trump administration seems to be poised if they're having this on the table as horse trading with all these other interests. And those other interests are so discreet, particularly if you are focusing around these five Bs that again are largely symbolic. I mean, two of them are boards are process things on totally unrelated sets of issues. Three of them are like discrete industry specific or even the case of Boeing, like company specific concessions that are significant but do not get at the overall underlying broader relationship. If that's where you're coming into horse trade, that is a real problem. I think as you open at the top, Mike, that's what I'm worried about here. This administration is highly transactional and this administration is under a lot of political pressure and really like symbolic victories. They are very happy to take something that they can have talking points around because it delivers or could deliver domestically at a shorter time frame. That matters for them, even if the broader online interests are there. And that's what concerns me more about this. I am genuinely torn on the Taiwan question. I think it's actually probably the hardest or among the absolute hardest questions that policymakers have to wrestle with, that contingency of what would happen in the worst case scenario. That is why we have the strategic ambiguity policy and have had it for so long across administrations. But even to get at that, you just have to wrestle with all these other things. You can't come in with such a narrow frame and then just drop on the table. Oh, and we're talking about removing this tenet of this relationship. Even if you don't make concessions around other allies, even if other allies can distinguish between themselves and Taiwan, I think there are lots of ways they could and might in other circumstances. It just belies a lack of seriousness on the part of the United States, a lack of understanding of the broader interconnectivity of all this stuff. And that's what's concerning. Now, hopefully this is just an errant comment Trump dropped and it's not actually going to manifest. And I think he would there's a good chance he would would get pushback from his party on this at this particular moment going into this election. I mean, we're seeing the president facing pushback on the east ballroom right at this point. There's a serious chance he will not be able to get money for his ballroom renovation through reconciliation, meaning a straight majority vote in a Congress his party controls. That's not a great sign, but who knows. Exactly. You're right, Mike. I think that the Republican Party is a little more overall on this than they used to be. And Democrats are have mixed feelings as well. But I don't know, it is a little disconcerting to see things staged this way. We'll have to wait and see. And I have a feeling we will probably be revisiting this topic next week to talk about what exactly has come out of this particular summit.

[E]

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[C]

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[C]

so

[B]

we already mentioned the elephant in the room hanging over the China summit. And that's the Iran war. Dana, I want to come to you first on this. We've seen a dramatically undramatic two weeks, I think of around Iran politics or week. You know, one week ago we saw this Moment where the United States launched a military operation to try to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. This is Project Freedom. And then wound it up in 48 hours after it seemed to be on the verge of breaking down the ceasefire because of exchanges of fire between US Crafts and Iranian vessels and a number of commercial vessels getting caught in between and captured by the Iranians. And at the request of diplomats trying to facilitate the cease fire, the President threatened, as he has done so many times at this point, to restart large scale hostilities. I think this time it was something about glowing rubble. Iran, you know, there would be a glow coming from rubble in the direction of Iran has not manifested probably for the better. The President's willingness to not deliver on his ludicrous threats is a good thing, I think a good thing in the general world. And now in the last week, we talked about debate. We've seen proposals go back and forth. We've seen the President be pretty dismissive of Iranian counter proposal, the Iranians be, frankly, fairly dismissive of a U.S. proposal. We've seen talks fall apart. It's not clear we're getting anywhere. And the fundamental lines haven't moved. The Trump administration says we want to see an end of Iran's nuclear program. They haven't really defined what that means, though, notably. And the Iranians have basically said we don't want to end our nuclear program or we want to retain some degree of capacity. And they throw in a bunch of other terms like control of the strait. Reparations occasionally come up, things like that. So talk to us about dynamics around this, because as this is happening, we are in a status quo that is injuring both parties, the United States and Iran and many, many actors around the rest of the world. So talk about what that means in terms of timeline when we're in these, what I think with most logic game modelers would call a war of attrition, where each side's trying to outweigh the other. What are the timelines we're working with here?

[D]

Yeah, so we are in this prolonged ceasefire phase that's starting to feel sort of like a phony war happening as these negotiations play out with radically divergent bargaining positions from both sides. And nowhere like there's not an overlapping bargaining range that they're both comfortable reaching at this point. As you said, Trump administration wants to see major concessions from Iran, including giving up its nuclear program. It wants to pull out all the enriched uranium that is still buried and has been buried for about a year now in Iran's nuclear facilities. It also wants other concessions. The Iranians are saying that, well, we won the war and we should get something out of this. So they want sanctions relief. They want control of the Strait of Hormuz. They want recognition that they have sovereignty over it, which is a huge concession, not just from the Trump administration, but under international law, that would completely shift the idea of freedom of navigation in that water. Part of what this means is that Iran seems to want to be able to continue to charge tolls for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, in addition to reparations, which would be a huge concession on the Trump administration's part. So neither side is willing to budge at this point, because I think the Trump administration doesn't want to admit concessions that would look like a defeat. And the Iranians want to be able to demonstrate that they actually won something in this conflict. What this means is that we're now playing economic chicken. And the United States is bearing costs of increasing oil prices. And Iran was in terrible economic straits before the war, which have only gotten worse. They're in a recession. There have been huge unemployment. It's skyrocketing. But the major pressures are so far hitting other countries. The US Has a lot of partners in Asia that are being hit a lot harder by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz than the United States is at this point. The Philippines has been in a national energy emergency for a month and a half. And other countries are also really feeling this. China is also feeling this, and it is closer to Iran. They are, I think, the largest consumer of Iranian oil. And so there is this question of who is going, like, which partners are going to pressure the United States and Iran to blink first. This is also coming up against where this crisis will sort of escalate. And there's reporting that maybe by mid June, this is really going to start to hit the US Energy market a lot harder. And if that's the case, there's already reporting about how this will affect gas prices into the midterm elections. Gas prices correlate with midterm election results pretty significantly. But it's also going to affect the price of jet fuel and the price of airfare in really significant ways. And that's going to hit not just the United States, but Europe as well. And so there are a lot of pressures that are occurring now that are sort of indirectly pressuring the United States and Iran, but they're going to be a lot more direct real soon.

[B]

Yeah, it is a real fundamental math problem that the United States and Iran are facing just what is the timeline that they can sustain this and the pressure points on to sustain this? There's a really, really good piece that I'll recommend from William Usher, former CIA analyst who now has a substack called Fault Lines. I interviewed him, Chip Usher, he goes by on the Lawfare podcast maybe three weeks ago. But he wrote a good piece on May 1 called Two Clocks, where he crunched some numbers and basically gave, I think, a timeline similar to what you just gave Dana. Basically the United states has then 45 to 60 days from May 1, so mid June. And he gave the Iranians an extra, basically like two to three weeks, it seems like, before they're really going to face major economic pressure and window to capitulate. No doubt. Those are all gross estimates. We don't know what they are. A lot of it is contingent upon the actions of outside actors. China, in the particular case of Iran, at a certain point, oil prices are going to go high enough, it will really affect China's bottom line, which is facing real economic headwinds. In the United States case, it's Europe, it's Asian allies. Although there is this question about is the Trump administration as sensitive to pressure to them as the United States has been in the past? So what exactly does this all come out? Mike, I want to come to you on this because the economic conversation dominates in this case. I think it's important. We have to bear this in mind. It probably is the thing driving the big policy contours, but it's not the only source of pressure these parties can bring. What is the risk of other domains and sources of pressure? One other one Chip mentions is arms supplies in the United States. The impact has happened, particularly the mass disparity between the rate of production and cost of production of Iranian shaheds versus the interceptors the United States uses to bring them down. This is a well documented and acknowledged by the administration dynamic that it becomes very expensive to sustain this war. But what are the other pressure points that might come into play here and how do we see them being activated?

[C]

It's a really good question and I'll confess I'm not so much thinking about this in terms of pressure points. It's very difficult for me to view this conflict now through any sort of rubric other than the fallacy of sunk costs. All the reporting that we have seen in reputable media indicates that we have not met our strategic objectives that we had in embarking on this conflict. I'm going to get to that in a second. You know, the most salient One is the recent New York Times article, I think from yesterday, which shows that of the 33 missile launch sites we set out to destroy, as one of our purported goals of this war, 30 hour operational. That is not a very good return on investment to deplete the majority of your military resources, the majority of your large scale ammunition. So I really question, if our initial salvos failed to do what we wanted and we are not able to produce our munitions at the rate we are expending them, what are we getting out of this conflict at this point? And that sort of begs the question, like, what did we expect to get out of it at the beginning? I'm still not quite sure why we began this war. There was talk initially about needing to support Tehranian protesters who were trying to overthrow the regime. The language that Trump, Hegseth and their compatriots have been using lately does not really evince a lot of concern for the average Iranian civilian who might still have those views. They're viewed as expendable chess pieces that we can drown beneath glowing rubble. As was said the other day, are we trying to stop them from getting a bomb? It's a good goal. It's one I wholeheartedly support. But I point out that the Trump administration's stated goal is a return to the status quo that we had under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which Trump himself abrogated because he didn't like the deal that the Obama administration had made. Like, this is military adventurism, not of like the Rudyard Kipling sort, but like almost of the Flashman sort for those who know the reference. I mean, this is just comically inept, and it is really difficult for me to see. If we're not destroying their munitions, we are not fostering regime change. We are seeing the Straits of Hormuz essentially go to a toll channel. We are not winning hearts and minds in the Middle east, and we are doing things that antagonize our strategic rivals at a time Trump is trying to get economic concessions from them. Like, explain to me how there is any conclusion to this conflict that does not result in the United States being in a materially worse position than it was before it began.

[B]

Dana, how do you respond to that provocation? What are your thoughts about that?

[D]

I completely agree. I think trying to back out some sort of coherent rationale to this conflict is becoming increasingly difficult. It was difficult at the start of this conflict, and it has only gotten more difficult because all the reporting indicates that the available intelligence suggested that any type of major operation like this was only going to empower more hardline elements of the Iranian regime that it was going to be difficult to actually achieve the other objectives. I think they like how limited the effectiveness of these strikes has been is still surprising. But this is something that Trump's advisors around him told him when this was being considered. Marco Rubio, according to the New York Times, Marco Rubio said these assessments that the Israelis are giving us that this is going to be a cakewalk to a regime change operation is bullshit. And Trump said, no, it'll be over in two weeks. And so trying to like there was no contingency planning for this type of outcome. And so now we are trying to put something together. The Trump administration's also imposed a limit on itself that this is going to be no boots on the ground entirely an air campaign. It probably would have been more effective and way, way more costly to put boots on the ground. And to do a major operation that would have benefited from a coalition of partners that were supportive of this and it would have required a public case that this is worth doing, none of which was present.

[B]

So there's one perspective that I think sees what's come out of this as kind of a win, and it's the one that we hear in that cakewalk anecdote from, I believe it was the New York Times reporting about the discussion around this, which again, as I've talked about on the podcast before, I think we have to get a little grain of salt. It's a very lionizing report for a particular vice president who's hoping to run for president in a few years. But if we take it as there's a good chunk of reality behind it, what's happening in Iran fits with the current Israeli government strategic vision, I think, which is that their vision has been the region's hostile. We just need to keep it off balance. Disabled, keep other regional actors that are hostile to us disabled and underpowered. And while in Lebanon and in Gaza you can march in occupied territory, you're not realistically going to do that in Iran. And Iran, from a distance, the one thing you can do is kick as many of their capacities that can hit us. I suspect Iran is going to be on an uphill battle of doing at scale support of the proxies that Israel has traditionally been worried about, which were down to the benefit of certain others like the Lebanese government, other than Hezbollah. Right. And come others in the region, there are advantages of that. Syria is. The current Syrian government is benefiting from that to some extent. Right. The real question, though, becomes a Is that a good strategic vision even for Israel? I have real issues with it. It sounds a lot like what the plan was for Gaza for a long time up till October 7th. Essentially keep it weak, keep it down, keep hostile actors suppressed, and then don't worry about relations democratizing. We just got to keep it and manage the lower threat level if it's spread out. And obviously that is a disaster and horrifying, disastrous case. And bringing that strategy writ large to the region is concerning on a variety of fronts. For the US Perspective, the US Security interests are so much broader than that. When you have Gulf allies suffering the way they have in ways that might not be reparable, and it's hard to underscore what a huge loss that is. I mean, the Gulf allies, as problematic as they are on lots and lots of fronts, have been a pillar of US Policy in the Middle east for the last few years. They were the wedge that's trying to be used to normalize relations with Israel. They are backing and funding reconstruction of Gaza and a variety of other projects that both the Turn administration and the Biden administration were working on in the Middle east and other parts of the world as well. So you really are hitting a lot of issues and that's before you even get to the broader global economic ramifications. So I do think the case for this being in the U.S. strategic interest is just really, really foundationally weak at this point, even if you get the nuclear weapons out, because I'm not sure what the Delta is exactly, because you may be able to get some material out maybe under some sort of hypothetical agreement, but like, how confident are you going to be you get all of it? Are you going up with a regime that's more or less willing to actually use weapons? Are they going to be developing different types of weapons? Are they going to be more intent on developing weapons if in a covert manner that they can pull off under whatever scheme the Trump notion agrees to? And as our colleague Ari is flagged, this administration, as I mentioned before, likes symbolic victories and has a lot of political incentive to accept what might ultimately be less than credible assurances if it gets them an apparent end to the conflict, less than credible assurance on the nuclear profile. So yeah, it's really concerning. I'm just shocked the administration doesn't get hit harder by this yet on the political front. And I got to think it's just because no one wants to look like they're coming to Iran's defense. But the strategic case is really bad. I have to agree with you that's as good as I can do as a devil's advocate on the other side. I don't know guys, am I missing anything like other pro points that we should be throwing in here?

[D]

I would just point out that I don't think it's been a success even on those objectives because Israel by most reporting what it wanted out of this was if not a positive regime change then at least regime collapse. It wanted to destroy all this infrastructure. As you said, this is a potentially mowing the grass type of thing where we're going to reduce capacity so it can't actually support the proxies and threaten Israel. But if Iran still has 70% of its missiles and it still has access to all these launch sites and it still has its enriched uranium and a breakout time equivalent to after the 12 day war a year ago and the regime has only shifted more into the hands of the irgc, then this was not a victory on those merits either.

[B]

Yeah, totally fair point. I will say. I think those were mostly selling points to the Americans. I don't think the Israelis really bought that. They did not argue when they killed Hassan Nasrallah that they were going to moderate and lead to moderate regime change among Hezbollah. And I think that's basically would be the same argument they were making here. So I don't know if they really bought that. But you're right on the capacities front. There's still lots of capacity to be really concerned about and maybe more willingness to actually use it now or less centralized control and less predictable environment like that is really what the United States is going to wrestle with here is that it's not clear who you're negotiating with Iran and we're seeing that these negotiating dynamics, it's part of the reason why CC's fire negotiations keep hitting these walls is because Iran isn't. There isn't a Iran anymore. There are a lot of different Irans and you've got to find some way to get them kind of all on board all these different centers of gravity. It's a much harder lift than it is coordinating with one government, even a hostile one. Well, let us now turn our viewers away from the Middle east, away from East Asia here to our native western hemisphere, our sphere of influence, if you will. At least the Trump administration has its way because there was a pretty big story that broke in CNN yesterday. Not entirely surprising, but kind of surprising in the details the report has. Natasha Bertrand is the reporter whose name I'm recalling off of Apologies to her co authors because there are a Couple reporters listed on there. Natasha's a wonderful national security reporter who does great work in this space and she came up with a story describing a set of operations the CIA has been pursuing in Mexico, at least in some cases, not entirely in coordination with the Mexican government. But I think the piece is very cagey about the degree of consent or agreement by the Mexican government, at least at the high levels of essentially targeted assassination against mid level cartel members. This is to an extent not that surprising because this administration has said since entering office we are at war with the cartels. They have designated them terrorist organizations, including Mexican cartels. While we don't see, you know, the equivalent of the boat strikes yet happening in Mexico, there's a similar policy trajectory to do that. It raises bigger international law questions, or actually not bigger, but different international law questions. But nonetheless there is this, there is a clear policy parallel logic there and it is a real escalation in sort of the way we approach cartels generally. That's not surprising for the administration. But doing it so close to the United States, with a key ally, Mexico, a place where lots of Americans live, lots of economic interests, obviously raises an even bigger kind of risk, question, risk threshold than arguably the maritime strikes do and other places, parts of the Western hemisphere. So Mike, I want to come to you on this first. Obviously you were in federal law enforcement for the vast majority of your career and that was the tool we used to tackle cartel problems for a long time. Talk to us about this general shift to the military and particularly the lethal military perspective. Military has played a role in counter narcotics for a long time on a kind of support role, intelligence, yada yada. But this is different. Killing people is the line that traditionally not been part of the formula. So talk to us about how big a break this is and, and how surprising it is in ways that may make sense, it may not make sense.

[C]

So the most surprising thing I'm going to do is start my answer with Emea Culpa and issue an apology to many people I've debated over the past 25 years who made arguments against policies I very much supported in the war on terror by pointing out that those very policies, techniques and methods could very easily be turned and used in other situations where there might not be as much moral clarity or as many guardrails to regulate their usage. And as the brash young conservative I was, I always dismiss those arguments out of hand, rarely even bothering to engage with them them. But what we're seeing happen in Mexico, and to a certain extent also in the Boat strikes is something that gives me real cause for concern. I think a lot of this is hinging. I have no doubt we will eventually see heretofore secret OLC opinions on this matter or what have you. I suspect a lot of the authority for these actions is coming from the President's designation of the cartels is foreign terrorist organizations. And I think a lot of people don't realize there is no real check or seriously involved process with countervailing interests that constrains the President's ability to really name anything a foreign terrorist organization. And what we are seeing now with the cartels can very easily be done to other organizations that, quite frankly, might not pose an actual threat to United States interests. And the FTO designation is essentially, no pun intended, a trump card that does allow them, within the norms of United States intelligence, law enforcement, and defense policy, to do things like targeted assassinations. And targeted assassinations. You know, we use that term as if it refers to a single thing, but it actually encompasses a lot that I don't think the administration is ready to debate with the American people. For example, what is the process by which we identified these targets and guaranteed that we were getting the right person and minimizing collateral damage? That's problem number one. Problem number two becomes that in the past decade or so, the United States has very much become a fan of what is called signature strikes. In other words, you don't have a specifically identifiable person. You have somebody whose behaviors fit a matrix of a likely terrorist into a certain percentile. You are authorized to kill them. I would humbly suggest that is not something we want to eventually be doing in a neighborhood, neighboring country with whom we are not at war. You're essentially using an algorithm to decide which of its citizens you can kill. And that's a real escalation in terms of how you deal with a country that is a major trading partner and a major source of labor and literally a neighbor. Somewhere people go vacation. This could have a really seriously negative impact on our relationship with Mexico. The second concern I have is that this assassination reveals that they are willing to use every tool in the toolbox that we've developed against a foreign terrorist organization. If they are willing to use something as extreme as a targeted killing, what is to stop them from using FISA on individuals they suspect might be in the drug trade? Simply because the cartels are now FTOs like that designation did not get a lot of pushback from the Democrats, which surprised me, quite frankly, and I worry nobody's thought about these contingencies Once you've designated an fto, what you are allowed to do to people, even American citizens, is immensely more concerning and aggressive than what you could do under ordinary criminal law.

[B]

So I want to drill down on that a little bit because on the legal perspective, from the use, I think that's right. From a surveillance perspective, on the use of force perspective, I mean the FTO designation doesn't authorize the use of force for anything under domestic or international law. Now I suspect it unlocks a bunch of like executive branch constructed policy and presumptions. Right. And that's shift a little bit across administrations. We know what some of those look like most under the Obama administration because they were kind of like a little more transparent about this. We get reports mostly from Charlie Savage and New York Times who says, hey, the Trump administration has shifted this. And we get a 10,000 foot sense of how it shifted, but we don't really know. That's not terribly surprising. I will say from a domestic legal perspective, this raises a whole array of questions. And from the international law perspective, from the international law you could actually see in some ways a bit of a stronger case here than you could in other counter narcotics contexts, which I think a lot of people lose on this for two different angles. And look, a lot of people are going to take critics. I'm not endorsing either of these. I think there's criticism for both of them. I think they are different dynamics than you see where with things like the Venezuelan cartels and stuff like that. One is that Mexican cartels, a number of the Mexican cartels have been involved actually in attacks on Americans and even American government facilities, including shooting up American consulates and embassies and targeting American government employees. That's the sort of stuff or the sort of threads that it becomes very easy to make a self defense case out of. You look at what was the self defense basis for the US invasion of Panama. Both from a domestic law perspective, the President's authority to take that action without Congress, and from a international law perspective, that's the argument they invoked. People will criticize it, but the hook was frankly less than that. Other things that were in the Panama case, like a declaration of war, but regardless, in terms of actual attacks and threats, it's lower than what some of these cartels have done against Americans in Mexico. The other side of it is the fact that the Mexican government's role, and this is the real question for me, which is how much the Mexican government is signing off on this, even if they won't admit it Publicly or giving some degree of carte blanche. The Mexican government, I think, has a case that they are in a non international armed conflict with some of these cartels. The sheer level of violence and militarization of the cartels is pretty extreme and astounding and is more so than plenty of what we consider terrorist groups in other parts of the world. So the legal parts of the case are there. Particularly if you get the consent of Mexico, then you're in a lot more comfortable territory. Otherwise you have to use the unused, unable or unwilling sort of template that we used in Syria. That I think there's a hard case to make that about Mexico. You may not agree with all the steps they're taking, but they certainly are doing stuff against the cartels. So I want to lay it out there. I think there's actually a legal framework here that you could see other administrations even buy into. May be a really bad policy idea, but particularly if you get the Mexicans on board with some of this, maybe that's a legal framework that you could get other administrations come buy into. Unlike the maritime strikes, which are a much bigger issue. Although I will say we got to know what these mid level guys are. If they are actually like, you know, armed commanders equivalent of the quasi military structure of the cartels, that's much more compelling. If they are just mules like most of the targets of maritime strikes seem to be, at least according to reporting, that raises a whole different set of issues. Sorry, I had to do my international lawyer, former State Department lawyer hat on this one. This is lawfare, after all. I'm not sure I'm gonna have time to write a piece on this. So in case I don't, this is. Go ahead and copy and paste that into a transcription. Dana, I want to come to you on this. Talk to us about what your perspective on this is. I mean, how big a shift is this in terms of how we think about regional politics, how the United States is engaging and framing both around relationship with Mexico and potential other countries as well, but also around the use of force dynamic, the use of force as a tool.

[D]

Yeah, I would just echo Mike's point that this is bringing this level of this use of force to a neighboring country that we are trying to have a positive diplomatic relationship with and that we are reliant on for trade and immigration is a huge risk to run. And we don't. From the reporting, we don't have a good sense of how bad in the administration, the Mexican administration is. And some of it kind of reminds me of that famous WikiLeaks cable from Ali Abdullah Saleh where he says, well, we'll keep denying that you're doing the strikes and our country, so long as you keep the whiskey flowing. Like are there.

[B]

I forgot about that.

[C]

Yes, for a thing Pete Hegseth would be in favor of.

[D]

Yes, yes, they're sending Cash Patel whiskey to smooth this over. But like, how permissive is the Mexican government of this? We're not really clear. They're definitely not going to acknowledge it. But in terms of the potential for escalation, Scott, as you mentioned, there have been attacks by cartel members on US Diplomatic infrastructure before. But I think of just a couple months ago when the Mexican military went after the head of the Jalisco new generation cartel, El Mencho, there was a bunch of reprisal attacks. And if it's out in the open that the CIA is conducting a targeted assassination campaign and that we are in some sort of, sort of escalating shadow war with the cartels, I think that's a real risk for US individuals in Mexico and for the United States, like within the the borders of the United States, potential reprisal attacks.

[C]

You know, something just sort of dawned on me. We, the three of us have very different backgrounds in terms of how we approach international relations and national security affairs. I mean, we have the practicing international lawyer who has been both in and out of government looking at these issues. We have an academic with significant think tank work I believe as well who has studied these probably more than both of us. I'm sort of like the knuckle dragging contingent who's just like a fan of adventurism. But we, we, all of us in every single topic we've covered today, recognize the need to at least attempt to see around corners and consider second and third order consequences. And what concerns me about this particular moment in American diplomacy and American defense policy is that that doesn't seem to be happening. I don't think any of us think it was happening with respect to how this Xi summit is going to go in China. I don't think any of us see that happening in Iran. And it sounds like none of us see it happening with respect to targeted assassinations of cartel members. That doesn't mean that nothing the administration is doing is correct. It doesn't mean that they haven't considered these things. But there hasn't been any explanation of how they're going to try and mitigate second and third or consequence consequences given to the public or Congress, as far as we know. And frankly, that is, that is as negative an omen for international relations as it is for democratic norms, I'm concerned.

[B]

Well, I think that is as good a point as any we can ask to wrap up this topic, this conversation on, because we are just about out of time. But this would not be Rational Security if we did not leave you some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Before we do, though, I'm going to introduce a brief segment which I'm going to call the Earnest Please segment, which I'll be doing for the next few weeks. Folks who have subscribed to Lawfare's newsletter or follow us on social media may have noticed we are doing a little bit of a fundraising drive at the moment, and I am going to do my part to try and encourage you to throw some support our way. I have been at Lawfare now for eight years. I have been reading Lawfare twice as long, more than twice as long at this point, since it started back in 2002. Frankly, I was reading Ben and Bobby and Jack stuff before Lawfare started back in the day, and it is an incredible resource. I don't think I have to tell you the conversations we have here on national Security on the podcast are some of the best conversations I get to have and that I hear anywhere about the technicalities of national security law and policy. With the broad aperture we bring to them, whether it's trial coverage, whether it's war powers and treaties, and the stuff I care about, whether it's emerging tech and AI, we are tackling all sorts of issues on an incredibly broad front. We're doing essential high impact work. It's what's kept me here for eight years, kept me doing this sort of work. Makes me look forward to the conversation I get to have with my colleagues every week here on Rational Security. Coming up on the five year mark in September, and hopefully maybe I have five more years in me, I don't know. But I enjoy it every week. It's energizing because it is so high value, so substantive in a way that's really hard to find these days. But we can't do it alone. We are a small nonprofit. So if you listen to Rational Security, if you listen to Lawfare podcast, if you read our writing, please consider going to lawfairmedia.org support, throw some support our way. $10 a month makes you a material supporter. Not only does it give us an immense amount of help, it also means you get access to special insider podcasts and conversations and exchanges at occasional events, things like that. We're kind of broadening the different options and opportunities to engage our community there. And we have other tiers as well, different levels of engagement. So please really give it a thought. We also have a mechanism you can make a one time contribution. But lawfare is an incredible resource. It's incredibly valuable. That's why I made it such a big part of my professional life and I want it to be here for many years to come because the hard national security choices we tackle are not getting easy, easier, and we still need law firm more than ever. So please throw us some support and help on that. So I will make that earnest plea my object lesson for this week. Dana, what did you bring for us? Hopefully something a little less, little less solicitous than my fundraising plea.

[D]

So this is not particularly edifying, but I did want to share a GCHAT message that I got from my wife just before coming on which said, do you have a mic in your office? And I said I do not. And she said, you cannot keep making me look bad. My wife is a podcast producer. She's Alex. She produces podcasts for Defector Media. She makes try hard and only if you get caught. And every time I go on a podcast she goes, do you have a mic? Will you sound professional? And I did. Not this time. And so my apologies not only to the listeners for having a little bit lower fidelity audio, but especially to my wife for making her look bad.

[B]

Dana, we will send you a mic. Tell your wife we're on it. She has mics.

[D]

I could have just brought a spare.

[B]

Next time we'll figure it out. Coordinate. We'll get one in your office, your house, wherever you'll be. We'll get a mic there just in case we can catch.

[D]

I'll be ready next time.

[B]

Mike, bring us home. What do you have for an object lesson this week?

[C]

So one of the real joys of living in the D.C. area is being only a short drive or metro trip from the American Film Institute and they are doing a series in mid June about which I am particularly excited. It is called Bleak Week, the Cinema of Despair. And it is a week long festival of some of the most depressing and reprehensible movies ever made about the human condition. One of my favorite films, Lars Von Trier's Breaking the Waves will be there. They're also showing the classic, not classic, but classic in terms of qualities film about the Russian front during World War II. Come and see. And they are showing two films I have never had the intestinal fortitude to actually go see. And I'm debating whether I should One of them is Threads, a British film about the aftermath of a nuclear war, which is supposed to be one of the most despair inducing films ever made. And the other is Pasolini's Salo, which I'm not going to describe the details of because it would have the FCC come down on us. But it is what it's it's an adaptation of the Marquis de Sade reset in mid century Fascist Italy as a means means of exploring the psychology of fascism and it is supposed to be one of the most horrific, gory, difficult movies to watch. I'm debating whether to go see it and I'm also debating whether to make it a date night and just not tell my wife what it's about. So stay tuned.

[B]

I do love living on the cusp of your marital status is always an enjoying update just to check in on, but fingers crossed on that one. On that one, you know, hopefully there's a double feature she can sneak across to the theater across the way when she catches onto this game. Well, regardless, 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 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 Offer's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media wherever you socialize your media. Be sure to leave a rating 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 lawfaremedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was me of me, and as always, our music was performed by Sophia Yan. We were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guests Dana and Mike, I am Scott R. Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.

[D]

Bye.

[A]

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