Rational Security: The “Shaving Face” Edition

Summary

Rational Security: The “Shaving Face” Edition The Lawfare Podcast | Release Date: May 7, 2025

In this engaging episode of The Lawfare Podcast, hosted by Scott R. Anderson and featuring Ben Wittes and guest Nastya Lapatna from the Lawfare Institute, listeners are treated to a rich discussion that seamlessly blends light-hearted banter with serious analysis of pressing national security issues. The episode, titled "Rational Security: The 'Shaving Face' Edition," delves into significant shifts within the Trump administration, the contentious US-Ukraine minerals agreement, and Russia's strategic maneuvers in the Arctic.

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1. Leadership Shifts in National Security: From Mike Waltz to Marco Rubio

Key Points:

• Background: Mike Waltz's removal as National Security Advisor and his subsequent nomination as US Ambassador to the UN marks a significant leadership change within the Trump administration. This shift places Marco Rubio into the National Security Advisor role.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • Scott R. Anderson humorously addresses the administration's approach to Waltz's transition, emphasizing Trump's lack of need for a traditional advisor:

    "Trump doesn't need a national security adviser because the national security adviser's job is to run a process, and Trump doesn't believe in process." [07:34]

  • Ben Wittes explores the potential influence Rubio might wield, comparing him to historical figures like Henry Kissinger, albeit with skepticism about his actual impact:

    "It gives you a real sense of gravitas that I think you should think about it." [04:18]

  • Nastya Lapatna provides insights from a Ukrainian perspective, suggesting that such administrative changes may hold limited sway over actual foreign policy decisions:

    "All of these people have close to zero effect on what Trump decides to do on any given day." [12:58]

Insights: The hosts concur that Rubio's appointment is more symbolic than substantive, given Trump's preference for informal advisors who operate outside traditional channels. The discussion underscores the challenges of exerting meaningful influence within an administration that prioritizes personal rapport over institutional processes.

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2. The US-Ukraine Minerals Agreement: Strategic Necessity or Exploitative Deal?

Key Points:

• Background: After prolonged negotiations, the US and Ukraine have signed a minerals agreement intended to secure US investment in Ukraine's resource extraction sectors. This deal comes amidst ongoing military and political tensions in the region.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • Nastya Lapatna outlines the agreement's evolution, highlighting that initial drafts were heavily tilted in favor of US interests, but later versions removed exploitative clauses, such as debt repayment and conditions threatening Ukraine's EU accession:

    "There is no clause or language suggesting that Ukraine has to repay the aid that it received." [36:49]

  • Ben Wittes analyzes the legal and political framework, noting that the deal is designed to incentivize continued US support while offering preferential access to Ukraine's natural resources:

    "This agreement is clearly intended to speak to the sort of worldview that Donald Trump seems to espouse." [48:08]

  • Scott R. Anderson criticizes the agreement from a US ethical standpoint but acknowledges its necessity for Ukraine under current pressures:

    "It is still a disgraceful thing for the United States government to do." [44:29]

  • Ben Wittes later offers a "silver lining" perspective, arguing that the deal could foster sustained US investment and military aid, aligning US economic interests with Ukraine's security needs:

    "America's investment into the funds can also be counted as American military aid." [50:57]

Insights: The hosts present a nuanced view of the US-Ukraine minerals agreement, recognizing its potential to bolster Ukraine's economy and security ties with the US while also critiquing its transactional nature. The agreement is seen as a pragmatic, albeit ethically questionable, response to the immediate geopolitical challenges facing Ukraine.

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3. Russia's Arctic LNG Facilities: Strategic Expansion Amidst Sanctions

Key Points:

• Background: Russia continues to develop its liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure in the Arctic, striving to capitalize on emerging navigable routes and resource extraction opportunities catalyzed by climate change.

• Discussion Highlights:

  • Nastya Lapatna details the operational status of Russia's Yamal LNG facility and the stalled Arctic 2 project due to Biden-era sanctions. She highlights attempts by Chinese companies to circumvent these sanctions, pointing to the effectiveness and limitations of current measures:

    "They have been trying to circumvent those sanctions at the second Arctic Yamo plant." [55:47]

  • Scott R. Anderson emphasizes Russia's geographical advantages in the Arctic, including its extensive coastline and strategic positioning relative to other Arctic nations:

    "They have one huge advantage, which is they've got the absolute majority of the Arctic coast." [58:57]

  • Ben Wittes discusses the broader implications of major power competition in the Arctic, critiquing the Trump administration's insufficient support for robust sanctions enforcement:

    "The Trump administration cut... really hurts the ability to implement these things in the long run." [60:00]

Insights: The conversation underscores Russia's persistent efforts to dominate the Arctic region's resource extraction despite international sanctions. The hosts highlight the challenges in enforcing these sanctions effectively, especially under the Trump administration's reduced focus on bureaucratic support and intelligence capabilities. This dynamic points to ongoing and escalating competition in one of the world's most strategically significant and resource-rich regions.

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Conclusion

The Lawfare Podcast episode "Rational Security: The 'Shaving Face' Edition" offers a comprehensive analysis of pivotal national security developments, notably the Trump administration's internal leadership shifts, the intricate US-Ukraine minerals agreement, and Russia's strategic Arctic initiatives. Through insightful dialogue and expert perspectives, the hosts illuminate the complex interplay between politics, ethics, and international strategy that defines contemporary global security challenges.

Listeners are encouraged to explore more in-depth discussions and analyses through Lawfare's various podcast offerings and support the initiative via their Patreon page for ad-free content and additional benefits.

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Transcript

[Scott R. Anderson]

The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad free version of the Lawfare Podcast. Become a material supporter of [e-mail] lawfare that's patreon.com Lawfair also check out Lawfare's other podcast offerings, Rational Security, Chatter, Lawfare, no Bull and the Aftermath what if.

[Dr. Patrick McGrath]

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[Paige]

Paige, the co host of Giggly Squad. I use Uber Eats for everything and I feel like people forget that you can truly order anything, especially living in New York City. It's why I love it. You can get Chinese food at any time of night, but it's not just for food. I order from CVS all the time. I'm always ordering from the grocery store store. If a friend stops over I have to order champagne. I also have this thing that whenever I travel, if I'm ever in a hotel room, I never feel like I'm missing something because I'll just Uber Eats it. The amount of times I've had to Uber eats hair items like hairspray, deodorant, you name it, I've ordered it. On Uber Eats you can get grocery alcohol everyday essentials in addition to restaurants and food you love. So in other words, get almost every anything with Uber Eats. Order now for alcohol you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

[Ben Wittes]

Ben I feel like you have a little Bit of a beard going. I realize. I don't think in all the years I've known you, you've ever had a beard. And I think. I think it's a missed opportunity. I'm kind of into it, actually.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Yes.

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's not going to last the rest of the day, I'm afraid, Scott. It's going to be wiped out in a brutal act of hair facial genocide.

[Nastya Lapatna]

It looks kind of good, actually.

[Ben Wittes]

That's what I'm saying.

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's itchy, but thank you.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Have you ever grown it up?

[Scott R. Anderson]

No, I just don't do that. Here's my facial hair thing that I am working on, though. My left eyebrow is going completely gray. My right eyebrow hasn't started yet, so I am working on having two entirely different color eyebrows. That's my.

[Nastya Lapatna]

That's cool.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Planned, sculpted facial hair plan.

[Ben Wittes]

Bleached eyebrows are in. I feel like this is just the. You're just going halfway there. I think that's good. It's a step. It'll make you look like you're just constantly quizzical of something, which is actually like, usual posture. Yeah, exactly. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Rational Security, 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.

[Scott R. Anderson]

And make sense of their own facial hair.

[Ben Wittes]

And their own facial hair. For those who may have tuned in to the B roll, you know, we'll be doing mine next, which is always a big topic for discussion, but I'm thrilled to be joined by key members of our Lawford team to talk over a couple of big stories, including LawThere Editor in Chief and co host emeritus of Rational Security, Benjamin Whittis. Ben, thank you for joining us back on the podcast, bearded or no.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Happy to be here, as always.

[Ben Wittes]

I do like it. It gives you a real sense of gravitas that I think you should think about it. Also. It has, like, a very kind of D'Artagnan vibe because it's mostly just a mustache and a goatee. So I worry you're going to stab me with an ape, which is a good. I think that's a good sort of, like, debate discussion, you know, fear to have. And joining us as well is Lafair's Ukraine fellow, Nastya Lapatna. Nastya, thank you so much for joining us as well. No facial hair in sight. Congratulations on that front.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Thank you. I've been trying hard.

[Ben Wittes]

I feel like you could wreck the musketeer look as well. Honestly, who can't honestly, the musketeer look is a good one on anyone. There's a reason why it's been classic from what is it, the 17th century until today. Cardinal Richelieu was onto something. Or the other guys, whatever the other guys were. Well, regardless, we have a lot of things happening in the world, around the world, here in Washington, D.C. in Ukraine, in parts cold and dark and forgotten up until recently at least. So let us dig in to this week's headlines. Our first topic for this week, a waltz on thin ice. Weeks after the signal gate controversy, Mike Waltz is out as national security advisor and set to be nominated as UN Ambassador. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, is in for a record fourth high ranking appointment. The rumors are circulating about just how long he may remain in the position. How big a deal is this switch in leadership? What might its broader Implications be? Topic 2 resource extraction. After months of negotiations, Ukraine and the Trump administration have finally signed a minerals agreement that gives the United States and perhaps more importantly President Trump, a financial stake in Ukraine's ongoing independence. Is the deal just exploiting Ukraine's vulnerability, or is there a chance it might contribute to a better outcome for the bleaker country? Topic 3 Liquid assets. Russia has gotten its liquefied natural gas, or LNG, facility off the ground in the Arctic and is getting ready to export through a shadow fleet of unregistered vessels to eager buyers in China and other places abroad despite Western sanctions. What does the situation tell us about the effectiveness of sanctions? And what is Russia up to in the Arctic? For our first topic, Ben, I want to turn to you for the first thoughts on this story. You know, we are kind of used to turnovers in the national security leadership and advisory community around President Trump. From the first Trump administration, he went through a record number of chiefs of staff and national security advisors over the course of his first presidency. We haven't seen the same rate of turnover at all so far, although we are only 100 days in. But by 100 days in the first Trump administration, we'd already seen a fair chunk of turnover and this appears to be the first big domino to fall. But of course, it's being done in a little bit of an unorthodox way. Waltz is nominally being promoted to UN Ambassador, but he's still being removed as national security advisor. And then Marco Rubio being put in there. Obviously already a cabinet member, already involved in these conversations, now dual hatted in a way that for people who follow American diplomatic history, I think immediately of Henry Kissinger being probably the person who most prominently held both of those roles at the same time and exercised hugely outsized influence over foreign policy. But I think a lot of people doubt Rubio is going to have that same degree of influence and control. What do you make of this move? What do you think it tells us about the Trump administration and how big a deal is it?

[Scott R. Anderson]

Well, fortunately, I don't have to speculate because I appear to have been accidentally added to a signal chat entitled what the Fuck Do I Do Now? Small group by somebody who appears to be Mike Waltz. And Marco Rubio is on the thread, too. At least somebody with the name Marco Rubio. And Waltz says, this sucks. I'm being kicked upstairs. And Marco Rubio sends a fist bump emoji. So. Oh, and then there's the crying with laughter emoji, you know, So I think we know what's going on here, which is that, you know, first of all, Mike Waltz has two problems from a Trumpist point of view. One is he actually doesn't believe the same things that Donald Trump does. And number two is that he, you know, is bringing disgrace onto the administration with his texting habits, which, you know, probably aren't any worse than anybody else's on the administration, except that he appears to be unable to exclude journalists from. From the thread. And so this is a pretty think, actually, on Trump's part, elegant way of getting rid of him. And the truth is that Trump doesn't need a national security adviser because the national security adviser's job is to run a process, and Trump doesn't believe in process. And so if there's actually no point in having a national security advisor unless your ambition is to have a system by which the inputs of the different agencies are collected and prioritized and synthesized and presented to you in options. And he doesn't like that. That's not the way he wants to work. And so Marco Rubio is clearly his favorite boy right now. Rubio, he kind of elevated Rubio above J.D. vance in the. In the who's gonna succeed me? Discussions the other day on, in his interview with Kristen Welker. And, you know, that'll last for six weeks or something. But for now, Marco Rubio gets to play Henry Kissinger even as he has absolutely no influence over US Foreign policy, which is, I had thought the fun of being playing Henry Kissinger was actually influencing US Foreign policy.

[Ben Wittes]

It's actually the accent, if you want to know, is the fun of playing Henry Kissinger after that. Right.

[Scott R. Anderson]

And Marco Rubio doesn't have that accent, nor does he have that sort of gravelly voice that gives you gravitas? Yeah. And so he doesn't have any of that, but he does get to collect the titles. And why. Why he finds this satisfying is mystifying because, you know, the. The flip side of it is he has had to abandon everything he's ever purported to believe in or represent and represent sort of the opposite of a lot of those things. But he does get titles in the meantime.

[Ben Wittes]

So there is a ton there. I want to unpack some parts of it because I agree with you about 80%, but I think there's a chunk there I have a slightly different take on. But first, I want to come to you, Nastya, because I think it's actually really interesting. We come to a lot of priors with figures like this. If you're somebody who watches a lot of American politics and American policy adjacent politics, like Marco Rubio is a guy who's been around for a long time.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Despite being like Nastya's age.

[Ben Wittes]

Yes, I think he's more like my age, but still. But he's been around for a while.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Just FYI, he's so not my age.

[Ben Wittes]

I think he may be a slight older than me, but we'll see. I don't know. I hope so, for God's sake. But I'm kind of curious about your thoughts of these two figures. I mean, look, a big distinction that Walt differentiated Walt from a lot of people in the foreign policy community around him is that he was seen as a more conventional, internationalist, ish, conservative, not in the vein like Republicans were 10 or 15 years ago, but in the contemporary vein, which is that he supported Ukraine and thwarted US Support for Ukraine, at least while he was in the House, presumably was advocating for a similar position in the administration. And Rubio, I think, would position himself similarly, but has been a little bit more public, as Ben has already noted in kind of echoing the administration's views on things, even where it clearly disagreed with and was contrary to what Rubio believed before he entered office, which is part of the job of being a Cabinet official. I think there's lots to criticize there, but it is also part of something that every Cabinet official has to do. So I kind of curious, what is your sense as somebody who looks at American politics and policy from a little bit more of a distance, without as much baggage, but still very closely, particularly for this issue set, do you have a sense about your view of these two figures of this switch being significant, or is there a sense among Ukrainians of this switch being significant or if it's communicating anything about Ukraine being kind of like the number one foreign policy question that's facing the administration right now.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Well, I think that in the lead up to the Trumps comeback and when Trump got elected, but we were still waiting to see what the cabinet is gonna look like and what the administration is gonna look like, all of us Ukrainian journalists were going and profiling all of these people and looking for quotes like, oh, what did they say about Ukraine? What did they say about Russia? What are their positions specifically on the Russian war against Ukraine? And so Mark Rubio and Mike Wal, actually one of the top people in that list as far as Ukrainians are concerned. Because it's like in that whole bag of people who Trump got invited to be his team, to be on his team, they were relatively not bad. They were solid. Marco Rubio, as you wrote in an excellent piece about Crimea and the potential of the US Recognizing legally Crimea, Russian occupation of Crimea. Marco Rubio was one of the people in the Senate who advocated for a law sort of banning that. And correct me if I'm wrong, I know it's probably not actually a law, but, yeah, they were having this initiative basically to say that the US can never recognize it. And he was one of the most vocal advocates for it. He was pushing for that. And Mike Waltz as well, was seen as this kind of more typical Republican who would be tough on Russia and things like that. But I think if there is kind of one thing Ukrainians learned in the last hundred years is that it doesn't really matter who's in Trump's team all that much when it comes to foreign policy. Like, all of these people have close to zero effect on what Trump decides to do on any given day. I mean, we've seen all those memes of Marco Rubio sitting on the couch in the disastrous Oval Office meeting, just like trying to disappear into the couch, being like, what the hell is going on? Like, written on his face. So I honestly, I don't think any of these jiggles matter for the sake of foreign policy towards Ukraine or like, frankly, any other foreign policy decisions the Americans make.

[Ben Wittes]

So that's interesting. So I think you and Ben are more aligned on this. Let me push back on one part of this. Why I think this is sort of significant. I think it comes back to the idea that Trump has foreign policy views. I'm actually not sure as president he has very coalesced views. I think he has a lot of instincts and he has certain priors, but. But he's a guy who ideologically doesn't have a very cohesive worldview, I think. And I think that shows in his foreign policy look, he does things left and right that just don't marry in the middle whatsoever. In terms of this is part of the fundamental weakness that comes with this administration, which is that it is both trying to balance China with strong rhetoric, at least it was during the first Trump administration. A little less vocal about it now, but alienating the allies we would need to actually back us in a confrontation with China or to sanction China picking fights left and right about a bunch of marginal issues, making little marginal wins, but in a way that again undermines sort of broader cohesion around a broader set of policy objectives. On Ukraine, we've seen a lot of oscillating and flipping and flopping. That's part of what we're going to talk about in a second. The minerals deal is supposed to do is just to give him a sort of vested interest that he understands, I think at least to keep him interested in Ukraine. That's like one of the more glass half full versions of that interpretation of that agreement. But I do think that's probably part of the motivation among some people in the Trump administration and in Zelenskyy's government. But what really seems to matter is who actually sits next to him and talks to him. We saw that in the signal gate chat that we saw that got leaked, right? Like what was happening. J.D. vance stepped in and said to Hegseth, to Rubio, to others, hey, is this really what we want to do? Is this a good idea? I think the President may have been a little confused about a pretty bold thing for Vance to say that I think he may be paying for a little bit now. Confused about what exactly we're trying to accomplish here in Yemen and how it intersects with our policy towards Europe about shifting balance back to Europe. And Vance is right. There is another one of these tensions there because Trump is not being entirely consistent across a bunch of different areas here. And what ends up happening on the chat? Well, people aren't sure exactly what Trump said and they say, well, Vance, maybe you should go back to Trump and ask and clarify if you want to raise this. Vance does not take them up on that. And what happens? They loop in Stephen Miller and Stephen Miller says, here's what I understood the President said. And that's what they agree they do. I think that reflects Stephen Mill is very influential because he's next to the President. So why does this matter? The national Security Advisor is there in the White House, if they're actually doing the job full time. And that's the real question with Rubio is whether he can actually do it. And so it gives you at least the opportunity structure to get that sort of influence if you can get into Trump's inner circle. Not all national security advisors are in Trump's inner circle. I got no real sign Walt actually had that sort of relationship with him. Certainly nothing in that conversation suggests as much like you would expect the National Security advisor to be the one verifying the interagency determinations at principals Committee meetings or committee meeting, council meetings, but he wasn't. But I do think there's a space there to say this is actually could be a way Rubio could get more influence in a different way than Secretary of State. Secretary of State gives you influence over all of the B and smaller issues that the State Department runs day to day and takes the lead on. But for the real A category, huge, big national security decisions that come from the White House, the Secretary of State isn't necessarily in the loop unless it has a relationship with the President and can build that rapport. National Security Advisor is, or at least it's institutionally better positioned to do it. So I think it could be meaningful. I just don't know if Rubio can pull it off. And I don't know if in this White House, being a national security advisor translates to that sort of proximity, but it strikes me as a better opportunity to develop it.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah, I want to take issue with this because it seems to me that, first of all, we have a history of Trump national security advisors, exactly. None of whom were able to develop. Let's leave out General Flynn, because he lasted barely more than a Scaramucci. But HR McMaster recently wrote a book about how he was unable to develop precisely the relationship. John Bolton wrote a book about how he was unable to prevent Trump, you know, get Trump to invade Iran, and unable to prevent Trump from, you know, doing all kinds of crazy things. There just isn't much of a history of anybody using the position of National Security Advisor to have the kind of influence on Trump that Stephen Miller has. Now, Stephen Miller has that influence not because he's the Deputy Chief of staff, but because he's Stephen Miller and he has that relationship with Trump, and the position is a derivative function of the influence, not the other way around. I just don't. There are lots of people who've gotten close to Trump in a formal sense, either through the chief of staff role, with the idea that they're going to be the last one who whispers in his ear. And they're going. And just none of them has had any success with it.

[Ben Wittes]

Well, Stephen Miller has.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Well, no, but Stephen Miller had that relationship first. Right. He was like Steve Bannon has this rapport with Trump. Like, I just don't like Marco Rubio is just obviously not influential. And the evidence of that is he has, you know, shut down all these programs he agrees with, including, you know, believes in like Radio Marti and, you know, he's humiliated himself doing stuff he clearly doesn't believe, sublimating his personality to Trump not being influential in order to maintain these positions. And I just can't imagine that that's going to change just because you've added a title to it.

[Ben Wittes]

Yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with that. I'm not sure it translates one to one to change. I think it's more opportunity. And if Rubio think, I mean, Rubio is bending over backwards to be obsequious, I think I'm using that word correctly towards Trump. Right. And the broader mega agenda. And if you hear read the reporting interestingly on why he got this role, they say it's because Trump sees Rubio as a team player, somebody who's really come to bat in backing the team's agenda, even though it's again, not super cohesive and has lots of elements that he really doesn't agree with. Like he has sold himself out substantially to gain influence with Trump. Maybe that's what it takes and maybe he's right. Now, I think you may be right, that that's a fool's errand for him to even try and do it. That may be where he come out on this, but I'm not sure if that's what Rubio's trying to do. This is actually a big boost for him because this gives him a seat in the White House that he otherwise only has when he's invited to cabinet meetings. The real hard part is he also has to run the State Department. So the question is if he holds this for long term, and there are very conflicting reports about that, whether this is intended to be a long term solution or just a gap fill. But if he does in the long run, that means that somebody else is going to have to take the lead role on running the State Department and just reporting big issues to him. Because I think Rubio, to take advantage of this position, needs to be there at the White House trying to talk to the president about things. So I don't know. It's interesting.

[Scott R. Anderson]

I Have a prediction for you.

[Ben Wittes]

Okay. I love bets. We can do. Maybe we'll do a bets.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah. So, first of all, the MAGA influencer world is going to turn on Marco Rubio in a big way. And the reason for that is that he is Neo Maga, but he's not Old Maga. And so there's going to be suspicion of him as a sort of closet traditionalist conservative. And that suspicion will be right. And as long as he's safely at the State Department where he's doing Trump's bidding, that's not a problem. But precisely when he's whispering in the President's ear, which is the perception that he's going to want to perpetuate, and the Laura Loomers and Steve Bannon's of the world are going to get really uncomfortable with this. And in everybody's battle with Maga base, MAGA base always wins. And so I think we can proclaim at the height of his influence and power, the beginning of the Marco Rubio death watch. And here's my crazy prediction. Marco Rubio will be gone before Pete Hegseth is.

[Ben Wittes]

That's interesting. That's bold.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Bold. Completely unsupported by any evidence. Just an instinct that it is precisely when you rise in Maga that your downfall is certain.

[Ben Wittes]

I see the logic behind it. I think you've set yourself an aggressive timeline. I'm tempted. I will take this bet. I think I will take this bet. I'll have Rubio outlasting Hegseth, not in both roles, but necessarily, but somewhere in the Cabinet.

[Scott R. Anderson]

He's going to be a private citizen out on his ass before Pete Hegseth is.

[Ben Wittes]

All right, all right, I'll take this bet. I'll take this bet. I'm not confident about it, but there's no real stakes, so that's fine. Let's go to this question about what this means for Waltz and what this UN appointment means. I'm kind of curious what we make of this, because it very clearly is trying to telegraph to saying, we have a lot of confidence in Waltz. We want him to do another job. But in my mind, it's clearly a demotion because when you're nominated as UN Ambassador, you don't have to give up your National Security Advisory job while you're waiting confirmation. You give it up the day you're confirmed. Now, Condoleezza Rice was National Security Advisor until the day she was confirmed as Secretary of State and then she became Secretary of State or the next day. So there was no gap between the two Right. And they easily could have done that and they didn't. So he's lost his current job, he's currently unemployed. Yes, he's been nominated for something, but we'll see how quickly it goes through SFR C. And my guess is like not that quickly. And there's already a bit of a cue developing there. Although you and Ambassador, do you expect to get bumped up a little bit? Am I wrong on that, Ben? Is this clearly just a weird face saving measure? And then why do we feel the need to have it? Given how merciless Trump has been about other cabinet releases and firings in the past, Is this a new angle that he's newly self conscious about how much staff turnover he's had and he's going to try and find ways to guise it or hide it or otherwise put a little bit more of a rose colored glasses on what exactly he's doing?

[Scott R. Anderson]

Okay, three points. One is, yes, you are right, it is obviously a demotion. And the evidence for that is both what you say that it was not pending confirmation, but also if you are banishing somebody from Trump's site and sending him to New York, which is out of the White House orbit, and you are banishing him to what is essentially from Trump's point of view, a PR role, which is that you make speeches on behalf of the United States to the UN for which Trump has contempt, that is a demotion. And it doesn't matter if it comes with Senate confirmation. But number two, he's subjecting him to Senate confirmation right after signal gate. And that is, you know, in Trump's lizard brain, that's the punishment for signal gate. Right? You, ha ha. You're going to be the one who has to convince four Republicans to vote for you after including Jeffrey Goldberg on a signal chat. And I'm going to stand by you, of course, but boy, am I going to enjoy that confirmation hearing. So that's number two. And then number three is, in no administration really is the UN Ambassador a more important figure than the National Security Advisor. One is Senate confirmed, one has ambassadorial rank and is kind of the third most important person in the State Department in some formal sense. But the other one is the National Security Advisor and is one of the most important people in the government, at least in a rational government. That's why all Ukrainians hate Jake Sullivan. Right? Not because Jake is a bad guy or anything, but because the National Security Advisor is the point person for everything the President does in the foreign policy arena. And so you can say, well, the real person they should hate is Lloyd Austin or Anthony Blinken. But they don't, right? It becomes personified in the person of the National Security advisor. And that's a tremendously important position, except in the Trump administration. And if you read the memoirs of the past national security advisers for Trump, they are all extremely frustrated because they can't do their jobs. And the result is that nobody thinks of foreign policy policy in the first Trump administration as nobody personifies it in the person of John Bolton. Right? Nobody. In fact, you can't even say that without laughing. Nobody personifies it. And it's like, wow, H.R. mcMaster is the real, you know, Rasputin figure in the, in the first Trump administration. That's ridiculous.

[Ben Wittes]

It was Charlie Kupperman all along. He's the face. The face of the administration.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Trump is his own Rasputin. And because the National Security Advisor position is denuded of all of its content in a Trump administration, the position becomes a bit of a non entity. You know, somebody with lots of hands on lots of levers, frantically pulling the levers, and then you realize that they're not connected to anything underneath because there's this entity on top that tweets things that then are the policy, Right? And so that's. Look, it's not the way government is supposed to work. And so what you've actually done is you've removed him from one position that doesn't really exist and put him in another position that doesn't really exist, except it has to go through Senate confirmation and it's a banishment from the site of the king.

[Ben Wittes]

There's no disagreement between us on this one. I will second that view. And I'll just note, if you want empirical evidence, listeners, I direct you to National Security Presidential memorandum number one, issued January 20, 2025, which sets out the organization of the National Security Council. And you will note who is not on there, unlike in prior, at least Democratic administrations, the UN Ambassador not even included as an occasional invitee or someone who can point agenda items. Mike Waltz may never step inside the White House again now that he's exited this job. And I think that's the bigger indicator as opposed to whatever this nomination is. So we've already mentioned our second topic, and I think it's worth going there to talk about some of the ramifications of this and frankly, lots of other moves going on. We saw a deal, hopefully what is intended to be the first step in several deals between the Trump administration and the Ukrainian government. This is the minerals deal, although notably the minerals deal refers a whole lot of the technical details and operational content to a subsequent agreement that will be negotiated at some later date. But we have at least the broad contours and some key elements of this deal, the text of which was published by the Kyiv Independent, presumably sourced with the Ukrainian government. The Americans have not released a copy of the text, at least last time I had checked, at least an official one. But I don't see anybody having contested that it's an accurate copy. Nastya, let me come to you on this. Tell us a little bit about what's in the agreement, what we know about it and how it's being received, certainly among Ukraine.

[Nastya Lapatna]

So it's a very mixed bag of things with this deal because before it was signed just a few days ago, there were these months long, extremely dramatic negotiations. It seemed like every time government officials met to talk about it, everyone was mad and the stakes went up higher and the American media would have these leaks that they would get their hands on all of the various hundreds of drafts that were happening. And they would be like, the US Is demanding this, the US Is demanding that. And basically until it was signed, kind of the vibe of the deal was that it was going to be this essentially colonial kind of agreement where the US Is going to be forcing generations of Ukrainians, like extract money out of generations of Ukrainians to come to repay for the aid that Biden has sent to Ukraine. Because this is what Trump wanted, right? He talked about this non existent number of $500 billion, which is just like it does not exist. Like that is not the amount of aid. It's almost twice more than the actual aid the US has sent to Ukraine. He kept talking about this number and he kept saying all of these terrible things, right, that he wanted this aid, like the money returned and he wanted to get access to Ukraine's rare earths and natural resources and minerals. And he'd say things like, I don't care. These places where the minerals are, they may be Russian one day, if Russia occupies them, they may be Ukraine, I don't care. But the US will get its fair share out of it and that's what matters. So it was just going terribly. And then the Oval Office meeting happened and just the relationship was going off track. And in the background there was this deal being negotiated. But now what was signed on the day, I think depends on how you count. But on the day that it was the hundredth day of the Trump Admin, Ukraine's economy minister, Yulis Svarodenkoshi flew to Washington to sign With Scott Besant, one of the several deals, the so called minerals deal. And it turned out to be, I guess, a bearable version. It turned out to be a version that we could sign politically that our governments could sign. And basically it's a political deal mainly that outlines the perimeters of what it's going to look like. It establishes a reconstruction investment fund and it says that the US Is going to have preferential rights, like special rights TO I think 57 natural resources minerals in Ukraine, including oil and gas. And it's going to have special rights to new projects. So not existing projects that are extremely important for Ukraine's budget. Like we just couldn't afford to give 50% of the existing extraction projects to the US even though the US asked for it. But we negotiated it down to being new projects. And so there is like 11 pages outlining the political parameters of the deal. And there's going to be a lot more pages, dozens and dozens that are yet to be negotiated, that will outline how it's actually going to look like, what is going to be the various stakes and who's going to govern the various consuls that govern the funds. So there's a lot that we still don't know. And that's the big risk risk that on one hand we know that this version that was signed is much less bad than what has been kind of floating in the media. So several important wins for Ukrainian diplomacy is that one, there is no clause or language suggesting that Ukraine has to repay the aid that it received. So that's something Trump wanted and Ukrainian diplomats scrapped that. There is no language suggesting that we have to repay anything or that the previous aid was as debt. There's also no clause. There was previously in one of the drafts was a clause that could endanger Ukraine's accession to the European Union. And that was extremely important, of course, to us. That process of accession is ongoing. And so they scrapped that, which is important. There was also a clause about the American jurisdiction over the entire deal. The whole thing was supposed to be like legalized in a New York court, if I'm not mistaken. And that was also problematic. And so, you know, this version is like less bad than the previous ones. But on the downside is that there is a lot of technicalities that we haven't seen yet. And the government is asking the Ukrainian parliament to ratify this deal that was signed. The kind of the political parameters, they're asking them to ratify it before anyone can see the technicalities. And so that's kind of a point of debate right now that like, well, we can't really like sign off on this and ratify it. Some people are saying until we see the full text. And that's a bit problematic. But yeah, another upside is that basically the fund is going to be replenished by Ukraine, giving 50% of its revenues from new projects and new licenses that it sells for the extraction of those minerals. And the other 50% is going to be U.S. investment or an important clause that many people highlighted as a win. America's investment into the funds can also be counted as American military aid. And they have that written as a clause that any future deliveries of American weaponry to Ukraine, not sales, just deliveries, will be counted as contributions to the fund. And that doesn't really mean anything unless it happens. But I've said on this podcast many times that we have no choice but to look for silver linings. And this kind of thing is one of those things. It's like, okay, we have this in language, in writing that at least military aid deliveries are possible and we just have to grab onto what we have and celebrate it. So it's just more than anything, it's just a good sign of a relationship sort of going back on track after all of the disasters of the Oval Office meeting and everything that happened in between. And we'll just have to see what happens with the actual implementation agreements.

[Ben Wittes]

I think your flag about the implementation agreement is actually really important here from a legal technicality standpoint, which I'll put my old State Department lawyer hat on and talk a little bit about implementing agreements under international law and most domestic legal systems, notably this agreement pretty clearly in my mind seems to be written to be. It's more or less non binding on the part of the executive branch or on the United States at all. What little obligations it takes on is about consulting and diplomatic activities the President can agree to. There's kind of an underlying question as to whether the President can agree to take on money. That's something that usually need congressional authorization for. But presumably, hopefully the administration has done its legwork and found statutory authority that says it can enter into agreements where it gets preferential mineral rights and drawdowns for whenever. This joint development fund that clearly seems to be anticipated to generate some sort of revenue that will benefit both parties, including the United States. We don't know exactly how yet because that's in the fall on agreement, but it is binding on the Ukrainians in a number of ways. I don't know about the Ukrainian government, but if it's like most European systems of government, it probably requires ratification by the parliament, as most international agreements do in most parliamentary systems of government. But importantly, when you ratify an international treaty, if it authorizes you to then enter into implementing agreements, most domestic legal systems, international law generally accepts that that is okay to pre authorize. So the parliament may just have to ratify this agreement and then the follow on agreement, what's called the LP agreement and this agreement, a limited partnership agreement, I think it says, can then be negotiated without having to go back to the Parliament. Potentially it's worth asking the Zelensky government what its intent is in this place, whether it understands this agreement to mean the same thing. But that would not be necessarily unusual. Where people are worried about a parliament being a political obstacle, they will enact a very broad framework agreement and then we'll have more specific implementing agreements authorized by that framework agreement and just try and get parliamentary approval for the broader one without having to get into the nitty gritty and potentially more politically damaging or costly details, technical details. So that's something that worth keep an eye on, particularly for Ukrainians on this point.

[Scott R. Anderson]

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[Scott R. Anderson]

All right, I want to speak from a completely non analytical American perspective here. This agreement's a total disgrace. And it needs to be a stated commitment of whoever the next Democratic nominee is that they will scrap it at Ukraine's request on day one. The Zelenskyy government has played its cards very cleverly here and it has gotten Ukraine out of the total extortion victim position and out of the colonial relationship with the United States position. But we still have a situation in which the cost of decent relations with the United States for the Ukrainians was to sign a somewhat disadvantageous deal. And for exactly the reasons that Nastya says. We don't actually know how disadvantageous it is to sign it and ratify it for the parliament to ratify it mostly sight unseen. And by the way, all of that may or may not facilitate the renewal of or the continuation of military aid. And so everything Nastya says is right and it was the right thing to do for the Ukrainian administration to get this into a posture where it was signable and sign it. But it is, from a US Perspective, a shameful agreement. And it is one that is completely different from what the 20th century and 21st century United States does with its partners. And it should be scrapped at Ukraine's request at whatever point an honorable American administration is in power again. And so I don't want to let the necessity of it in the moment pass without noting that we don't historically interact with our partners on the basis of we put a gun to their heads and say, now we extract your resources in a partnership in which we own half of the. You know, that's not the way we historically do business. And you know, for those of us who are old school, it's not the way we should be doing business.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Okay, so my toddler just decided that she needs to play with the microphone and she turned everything off. So my sound isn't going to be as great as before. But I forgot to mention the most important part of the agreement, or rather what's not in the agreement. It's that security guarantees for Ukraine are not in the agreement. And that was something that Ukraine was trying to get in there. It was one of the Important issues, why we didn't sign it in the first place. And so that's not in there. The Americans are of course, selling it, as, you know, they're saying the presence of American companies and the presence of American investors in Ukraine is going to be some sort of deterrent. But I don't think that really has any merit, really.

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's a protection racket without the protection.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Exactly. Ukrainians aren't really buying it. And we know that that's like, that's not really guaranteeing us anything, but we just had to sign it anyway because we were, you know, between Iraq and a hard place. So.

[Ben Wittes]

So I want to give the silver lining version of this dynamic of the agreement. I'm going to caveat it by saying I actually mostly agree with Ben and Nastya. I think this is a problematic agreement on a lot of front fronts. But I'm going to put it in the context of the reality that we're living in the Trump administration for at least the next almost four years at this point, and there's no getting around that. And that sets certain constraints on what we can expect, which is that this agreement is clearly intended to speak to the sort of worldview that Donald Trump seems to espouse and that even people around him seem to think he buys into, which is a very transactional one. And this is an idea that Zelenskyy himself brought out towards the end of the Biden administration. Right before the election. We saw him bring out this kind of broad outlines of a peace agreement and a big part of it, a clearly Trump oriented selling point. Something we talked about in this podcast at the time was this access to minerals and access to resources. Now, I don't think he was expecting exactly the scale of rapaciousness that would come with opening the door to that sort of sharing, but it was on the table because there was this idea, let's give Trump a stake in this. If you think that is a necessary precondition of an enduring US Commitment to Ukraine's security, then I think this agreement does that fairly well because it is only forward looking. It only applies to future foreign assistance and future arms sales. That's actually very important because to get any benefit from this agreement, Trump actually has to keep giving security assistance to Ukraine. He can justify it now by saying, one for one, every dollar we give to Ukraine, we get right back in rights to what is going to be a very profitable resource extraction deal with the Ukrainians, that we are getting a greater and greater share of the more arms we give to Ukraine. And so we are, if anything, we have a good incentive to start giving more arms to Ukraine to take advantage of this brilliant deal I have negotiated as President Trump, frankly, probably actually does make it a little easier to sell on the Hill to conservative Republicans. That might raise an issue anyway. They probably would bend over President Trump anyway and you get enough Democrats on board to back any sort of agreement. But it makes it a little easier from a budgetary perspective because it will change, I suspect, or could well change the budget assessments of the budget impact of foreign assistance being provided. And so there is really something there. And then the advantageous access to Ukrainian minerals, notably, it does actually say in this agreement, which is, I think, something I was worried about. It actually says it's on market based terms. Now what does that mean? How are those determined? We don't know. But it is not about taking minerals from Ukraine, it's about guaranteeing access to them and market rates for them. So still preferential to the United States, not complete outright piracy, certainly that of the veins of demanding being paid back for foreign assistance already given from this revenue moving forward.

[Nastya Lapatna]

It's also important to mention that no one is going to see any revenue from any minerals or any benefit from this deal in like years and years. And there's going to be billions of investing that's going to need to happen into Ukraine's extraction and infrastructure for anyone to see any kind of revenue from this, because the minerals they're talking about are unexplored reserves, theoretical places where something may be happening. So it's going to take so many years and so much money. And that's another kind of main silver lining that Ukrainians are hoping for, that this is going to bring American and other foreign investment into the country, it's going to create jobs, it's going to do all the work that we don't have the money to do. And that's going to be great for us in the long term. But you know, also, isn't it true that none of this can happen until there is a permanent ceasefire? So that's another thing. It's like until Trump can really pull off his brilliant deal making with the Kremlin and make the war stop, none of this really matters because none of this can happen. Right?

[Scott R. Anderson]

Yeah. So just to be clear, I agree with you entirely, Scott. This was the right thing for the Ukrainian government to do under the circumstances and to get it to the point where it is signable that it's not a resource theft deal, that it is an investment deal, that it's not structured in a completely exploitative way. And that it does, as Scott says, create an incentive for continued support. It is the right thing for the Ukrainian government to do. It is still a disgraceful thing for the United States government to do. And at such point as we have civilized government, again, we need to have the conversation with the Ukrainians. Look, we're sorry we put you in this position. Is this a deal you want to continue with, or should we reopen these negotiations under civilized conditions? And I could see the answer to that being no, actually, you know, the deal could be very good for us for the reasons that Nastya says. I could also see the answer being, hey, if we hadn't had a gun to our head, we would have demanded A, B and C. And I think we need to, when the time comes, we need to listen to that.

[Ben Wittes]

I'll second that as well. I mean, I think, I think for Ukrainians, you take the steal, which I think is dramatically improved from earlier drafts. Livable. I think it makes sense. But you do hope in the end, a future administration isn't actually going to try and turn it to a US Advantage as directly as it seems like the current one might, and that revenue is going to come down in a future administration out from four years. And frankly, who knows what a future President Vance might do. A future President Rubio might be friendlier to Ukraine. Even a lot of Republican presidents will be friendlier to Ukraine. Almost every Democrat will as well. So you hope that the real bite of the agreement, you don't feel until down the line when you have an American president maybe more inclined to be more generous to Ukrainians and how the revenue is actually withdrawn or distributed. But we will have to wait and see to find out that's the case. Well, that brings us to our third topic, because of course, the other actor in all of this is Russia, a country that is not only, of course, continuing its offensive military operations in Ukraine, even as the Trump administration is pressuring it to engage in some sort of ceasefire or peace agreement, at least nominally, at least for torture. Historically, it is doing things on a lot of other fronts. We're going to talk about one of those other fronts this week, and that is the front of the Arctic, where we have seen Russia being engaged really for a number of years now in efforts to build out a liquefied natural gas facilities there and industry tied in with a broader strategic picture of the Arctic about navigation rights and access to resources there, related to the fact that with the global warming and the kind of receding of ice. More parts of the Arctic are becoming navigable and accessible for resource extraction. And Russia is trying to get in the game aggressively and has been for many years, but has been at least slowed down by global sanctions, if not stopped. Nastya, you have been really interested in the story for a while. I know it is something that you have been tracking and digging into. Talk to us a little bit about what we know about what Russia is doing in the Arctic and where it fits into the strategic picture of its kind of posture in the global system and relation with the west and the United States in particular.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Russia is doing a lot of things in the Arctic that should worry people. But in terms of these latest developments on the LNG front, it's really interesting. So there is a Yamal peninsula in the Russian Arctic in the very north. It has a huge natural gas field and it's the biggest natural gas reserve in Russia. And there are two LNG plants there. One is called Yamal and another one is Arctic 2. So the Yamal field on this peninsula is fully operational. The US and Europe haven't sanctioned it. They say EU has sanctioned some ships that was delivering LNG from it, but they can't sanction it fully for it to shut down. Guess why? Because Europe is still buying a bunch of LNG from that plant. You know, Germany is buying a lot of it, Belgium is buying a lot of it. France is buying a lot of it. There has certainly. I know, I'm shocked as well. My, my kid is really upset about this development. So basically this Arctic LNG plant is fully operational and Russia has been trying to build a second one. And that second one, the building of that was grounded to a halt completely essentially because of Biden era sanctions. Just, just like a year or two ago, Biden, Biden's team sanctioned that plant and a bunch of entities that were involved in building it. And so that's grounded to a halt. They didn't get it off the ground. They still haven't built it fully. So what's interesting is that there are some Chinese companies that have been trying to circumvent those sanctions at the second Arctic Yamo plant. And they've been trying to build up some stuff, build some capacity and it's been moving. There has been some activity there, but it's still, it's very slow. The sanctions are working, but you know, you guys know better than me, the sanctions are, are kind of a cat and mouse kind of thing. It's not enough to just introduce a package and have that be. You have to Constantly be tracking and following up and fighting loopholes that your enemies are finding to circumvent it. So it's work in progress. But it's interesting because this is the largest natural gas reserve in the entire Russia, this place in Yamal. And the Russians clearly care about it because Russia has only three lobby firms in D.C. registered under FARA working for it. And one of them says that it works on LNG issues. And clearly the firm also has ties to novatech, which is the Russian company that operates those plants. So this is something they're actively working on. And this is something that I would kind of keep an eye on if there is some sort of future for the US Russia cooperation. They keep talking about the Arctic at all of these meetings and the joint exploration operation and making money in the Arctic. I'm sure Nava Tech, this company and these plants are going to have something to do with that.

[Scott R. Anderson]

So a couple things about this. One is Arctic competition in general is a big deal, and the Russians have a lot of disadvantages in it. But they have one huge advantage, which is they've got the, I believe the absolute majority of the Arctic coast. The Arctic Ocean border with or coast on Siberia is a very large percentage of the entire Arctic.

[Nastya Lapatna]

It's more than half.

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's more than half, yeah. And they also have, annoyingly for everybody else, borders with just about every other country that has a presence in the Arctic, I think with the exception of Canada. But Norway, Finland, the United States all have borders with Russia. And so they have these massive advantages in just dealing with the Arctic and in potentially resource exploitation as well as if you imagine areas becoming more habitable, an enormous percentage of that land is in Russia. The other factor that is important is that Russia feels emboldened as a result of the Trump administration. And I saw a pretty dramatic example of that this weekend, which had nothing to do with the Arctic. But so for a number of years now, there has been this sort of annual parade that takes place all over the world wherever there are Russian communities called the Immortal Brigades. And there are people who. It actually started as a protest against the government, but the government, the Russian government quickly co opted it and is now, you know, people. It's notionally a World War II memorial. People carry pictures of, of their relatives who were killed in World War II, but they also carry pictures of Stalin and they carry pictures of the hammer and sickle. It's a very weird event. For the last several years, it hasn't happened in Washington, and this year it did. And I think that, and it clearly was with the prodding of the embassy, the Russian embassy. And so you had people actually walking past the White House carrying hammered in sickles and pictures of Stalin. And I don't know when the last time that was true, that that or something like that happened. But I, I do think there's an environment right now in which Russian and pro Russian forces feel very emboldened in dealing with the west in general. The LNG stuff is part of that, but the buildup of military forces on, you know, European borders is part of that as well. And there's this presence in the United States that's visible in a way that it just didn't used to be and hasn't been since the beginning of the war. And the explanation for that, quite simply, is Donald Trump.

[Ben Wittes]

I think that's right. And it's, but it's worth, I think, thinking a little bit about this reflects a little bit of the challenges of sanctions in this new context, which is major power competition, which is the context in which we're going to hear sanctions and other economic statecraft measures discussed most squarely, because it is the top of the strategic hierarchy for the United States, for both parties generally. Although, again, the Trump administration has actually been a little weird about this compared to where they were the last time around, particularly in relation to China. But, but the basic problem you run into is that we're used to sanctions. We think of as this tool that we use to cut people off from the international system aggressively because we apply it to terrorist groups and human rights violators and other actors who are small in the grand scheme of things, largely meaningless economic actors, even when we apply it to smaller countries or agencies of the Iranian government, more significant economic actors, but relatively limited in their pack to the global economy. Just not the case with Russia, particularly after 20 or 30 years of global economic integration, where Russia has become so closely integrated with particularly European, but also American fuel and energy industries as a provider. That's why we're just seeing this transshipment ban on lng, basically preventing LNG from going across European networks being installed now because there was concern about cutting off access to it and alienating those parts of the Russian industry. And there's also concern and similarly among Americans, I understand that part of this LNG development, part of the Arctic development being driven by Russian nuclear companies originally in part because there's concerns about subjecting them so openly to sanctions, because the United States is relying upon exports of uranium for its nuclear sector, Russian exports still. So there's a complicating factor there. We're also seeing this, I think, is a happier story maybe about the effects of certain measures that are the less talked about measures that came after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which are actually the export controls and particularly industry facing export controls that the U.S. government and Western allies imposed. What they did is they installed a lot of these constraints that are meant to cut off not just access to financing, although that was in the cards as well for a lot of state owned industrial groups that are kind of the leaders of resource extraction and also infrastructure development, rail lines, air industries, all sorts of manufacturing. They also installed measures that limit their access to all sorts of emerging technologies. And that's actually really important when you are in an area like Arctic exploitation and LNG development, both of which are kind of emerging technologies, where to be at the front cutting edge of them. There are only a few global actors who can do it. Many of them are not in Russia, they're in Europe and other places that can deliver the right vehicles, or at least the major ones are. Maybe there's some Chinese competitor. When you cut off access to that technology, it can actually be really effective. The problem with it is to make sure that's actually happening, you have to actively monitor and watch what technology is being developed several steps down the production chain and supply chain. Right. If you're regulating a US Exported computer chip, you got to see where that chip ends up and how it's going to get used. Because if it's sold to a Taiwanese company that builds a product and sells it to an Indian company that builds a product, that sells it to a Chinese company, and they sell it to Russia, it's not easy to know, unlike with financial transactions, how that comes out, which circles back to how the Trump administration is approaching some of this. This is really where you actually really need staff and intelligence capability and a bureaucracy to implement these sorts of sanctions that can be really damaging for major economies who are trying to compete with each other in these kind of emerging fields. But that's what we're seeing the Trump administration cut as part of its broader governmental cuts. I haven't seen specific numbers yet on what's happening with the actually had been plans to dramatically expand the export control offices at the Commerce Department to do this sort of work. But the sheer scale of cuts you're seeing across the intelligence community, across the State Department really, really hurts the ability to implement these things in the long run, where we are already at an infrastructural disadvantage. And so it's another example of a lot of, frankly, the Trump administration's means and ends not really meeting in the middle rhetorically. They're still committed generally to this idea that we want to keep these constraints on this development. We want to compete and win the competition with Russia in the Arctic. But the steps it's taking at home threaten to undermine that is my concern. And I'm not sure we're going to see them square the circle very effectively on this front. Well, folks, that is all the time we have for today, 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. Ben, what do you have for us for an object lesson today?

[Scott R. Anderson]

So I am going to log roll for a different Lawfare product, which I don't think any of us quite realized until recently was now a Lawfare product. But for the last several weeks, we have been doing a roundup of all the Trump litigation every Friday afternoon. And sometimes you do these things and then you realize that you've started a show, but, you know, you don't decide we're starting a new show on YouTube and it's going to run every Friday at 4. You just start doing it and it's at Friday at 4 because that's kind of the end of the week. And you get this incredible team of talent that's following. Nobody can follow all the Trump litigation. And so you get people who are following different pieces of it and you put them on the show and you have a conversation and then you take audience questions. And it lasts 90 minutes, which is long for a podcast that isn't Rational Security. And you do it week after week. And all of a sudden you realize you have a YouTube show. And so I'm just gonna my object lesson is Lawfair's new Friday afternoon YouTube show, Lawfare Live, featuring, you know, Scott Anderson and Anna Bauer and Roger Parloff and James Pierce. And, you know, sometimes I show up to moderate and it's kind of great.

[Ben Wittes]

I have to say, it's a great, great product I found incredibly useful because I'm on, you know, every other week, two, every three weeks, something like that. And it is the best way to understand what's happening. I feel so much more equipped to capture the scope of what's happening in all the Trump litigation, even though I am only really following closely a small stripe of it in terms of alerts and docket notifications. But we've done a pretty good job dividing and conquering at least huge swaths of it. There's way more than any even group of five or six of us can cover. And I agree it's a great, great show. So please do tune in, folks. And it also runs as a podcast the following days after it's on Monday.

[Scott R. Anderson]

Runs on the Lawfare podcast feed. If you are listening to this on the Lawfare podcast feed or on the Rational Security podcast feed, go over to our YouTube page. Take a moment to go to our YouTube page and subscribe to the YouTube page. Because YouTube is, you know, you probably heard this on other podcasts, but it's where a lot of the growth in the audience is right now. And unlike podcast audiences, where, you know, you actively have to subscribe to things, YouTube feeds you stuff based on the other stuff you watch. And so the more people subscribe to us, the more it'll feed our stuff to their friends and their people who do searches like them. So go over there and subscribe to the LawFair YouTube page. And while you're at it, check out LawFair Live every Friday afternoon.

[Ben Wittes]

Beautiful. Well, for my object lesson this week, I will celebrate the return of warm months of outdoor time. And that, for me means one thing that I've shared on the podcast. I think almost every year I've been on at this point, that is the beauty of grilled pizza. I'm bringing it back to you this time. If you barbecue at all and you've not tried making pizza in lieu of a conventional barbecue out on your grill, you're missing out, because pizza is a wonderful, wonderful thing that you need high heat to make, and your grill is a perfect way to do it. But I have made a discovery that I feel like I've let people lead people astray on that I need to correct on this podcast from prior years. If folks have been following my pizza recommendations on the podcast, you'll know there's two different types I've talked about. You can do grill pizza just on the open grates that you can make at home, anywhere on Airbnb on vacation. That's delicious and easy, but not quite the sophisticated round pie that you would want. And then at home, I have developed a setup where I have two steel sheets of steel suspended between heatproof bricks to create a pizza oven on my grill that I can get over 700 degrees, which I highly recommend if at home you're being a little ambitious. But the problem I always ran into is that I found out my dough was burning on the bottom of my steel sheets. And the reason why I learned is because if you make New York style pizza dough, there's too much sugar and olive oil in it it to handle that high temperature. If it's over 550, 600 degrees, you're going to get burned from that. So I've shifted to Neapolitan dough. That means just salt, flour, water and yeast.

[Scott R. Anderson]

It's basically matzah.

[Ben Wittes]

Basically matzah with yeast. It's a little rise in there. You know, I miss a little bit of browning. Like I'm going to try putting a little bit of sugar, a little bit of olive oil in. So I may have a recipe in the next couple weeks where I can experiment a little bit with this just to get a little more of the browning that's missing. But it went beautiful, beautiful leopard spots on the bottom from the heat of the grill. So if you have followed my lead in building your own little mini improvised home pizza oven with those steels, check it out at home in the oven, if you're using the steels, works fine with New York pizza dough because it doesn't get quite as hot. Usually your ovens top out at 550, but I think anything over 600, the sugar and the olive oil just burns. And so it's still good, but it's better if you just stick with. Leave that out of the dough.

[Scott R. Anderson]

I have found quick addendum to the grilled pizza. Grilled bread.

[Ben Wittes]

Yes. Really good. Agreed. If you can do it, build it or. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, it's all good baked goods. This is what vegetarians do when we have. When we like to barbecue, we become vegetarian in our 20s. We got to start, you know, finding new things to grill and that's that. That's the way to do it. So bread pizza. I'll have other creative solutions coming to you. Halloumi. If you haven't tried that, Delicious. But it's grill season. Get outside. It's beautiful outside. Nastya, what do you have for us? Is it barbecuing? A Ukrainian tradition. Do you guys barbecue out there?

[Nastya Lapatna]

Oh, we barbecue.

[Ben Wittes]

You barbecue?

[Nastya Lapatna]

Barbecue.

[Ben Wittes]

Probably real meat. None of this pizza business.

[Nastya Lapatna]

We definitely barbecue. We do what's called shashlik. And I invite you to come to Ukraine this summer so my husband can make you some shashlik.

[Ben Wittes]

Oh, all right.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Yeah. But my object lessons are gonna be if you're not on substack, you should be on substack because it's a great format. And once you get onto stuff, you should subscribe to a friend of mine and Ben's, Minna Allender, who's a Finnish academic, so if you're interested in the Arctic stuff that we discussed and in Russian activities in Northern Europe, go follow Minna. She has a great newsletter on Substack.

[Scott R. Anderson]

You should mention the name of it.

[Nastya Lapatna]

Oh, Northern Flank Notes. And her name again is Minna Allender. And also look out for Loffre daily podcast episodes with Minna because I love talking to Minna and I'm gonna be speaking with her for the POD next week.

[Ben Wittes]

Wonderful, wonderful. I'm looking forward to that. Yes, a lot of very interesting things happening in the Arctic. I love all places cold and dark, and the Arctic qualifies and so keep an eye on that space because there's lots more interesting things to come. 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 Visit [e-mail] for our show page with links to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other Lawfare contributors, and for information on Lawfair's other phenomenal podcast series, including Escalation, now available in full, co hosted by none other than our own Nastya Lapatana and Of course, Tyler McBrien, that other guy. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media. Wherever you socialize your media, be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening. And be sure to 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 lawfordmedia.org support our audio engineer and producer this week was Noam Ozband of Goat Rodeo, and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan. We were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Patcha. On behalf of my guest Nastya and Ben, I am Scott R. Andersen. We will talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye.

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