Mission: Impossible - Catering Truck (Starring Donald J. Trump)

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I'm Ben Rhodes. Then Ennis Canter, former guests on this show, former NBA player. It's now kind of making it his deal to just attack trans people. He's suggesting he's going to join the WMBA. I don't really follow what the specific rules are that he thinks would allow him to join the WMBA.

It's an interesting cautionary tale about me booking guests because Ennis Canter reached out to me some years ago. Before he'd gone full maga and he was on the nix. He was on the Celtics too. He was before assaulting yourself. No, but the world was no like a nix player like sure.

So we have Monny as a story about a thar terrorism and ever gone. But man this guy's gone. I think particularly as this NBA career is crash and burned. The remaining relevancy seems to be this magas were. But as someone who does kind of follow the WMBA discourse like Ennis Canter declaring himself eligible for the WMBA draft as a shot of trans people was pretty.

It's him in a guy named Royce White who's another NBA player who a judge found. This is from the Star Tribune Minnesota Star Tribune found that Royce White abuses ex-wife repeatedly, slapping her grabbing her pulling her hair, leaving her bruised and swollen. And then a child advocate assigned to the case found that Royce White's son is scared for his physical safety around his father. This guy was on Benny Johnson's TPUSA show because he decided to also declare for the WMBA and he wore a wig in the interview.

And they think this is fun and cool. So there's having this guy who beat up his wife. You know what to dumb about this, too? He's like the WMBA is awesome right now. They don't need any other players.

They've got great players.

Like quality of play is never in better.

This is controlling. Oh my god. It's just exhausting. And then this canter. He's not that good.

He wasn't. I mean, you could stand under the best and get you three bands. But like that's about what he could do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But some wonderful people. Yeah. I'm great. We got a great show for you guys today.

We're back together in City. I was great to see you. I'm here.

“We're going to cover this insane story about Donald Trump's secret flight home from the NATO summit last month.”

We covered at the time how they switched planes. But now it turns out the Washington Post had this great scoop about how Trump switched. His plane. But then use the media and his own staff as a decoy. So we'll dig into all of that.

We're going to update you on the Iran talks, such as there are updates. We'll tell you about how the diplomatic effort for Japan forward and Gaza are going. We'll talk about why people are scared of resumption of fighting in Yemen. And then we're going to talk about this brave activist who was calling out the leaders of the UAE for perpetuating the civil war in Sudan. I don't know if you saw this.

I did. I thought because you said it all over my Twitter timeline. It may be very happy. Then we're going to check in on Pete Hexeth, our Secretary of War over at the Pentagon.

I always great to hear from Pete.

We're going to talk about Ukraine's military campaign against a Russian e-commerce site in this blurry line between civilian and military targeting. We'll update you on Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump's effort to steal an island, basically, or at least a peninsula. Yes. Quick thing on a bowl. I just so you guys know what's going on over there.

And then some great moments in AI. Then Ben, you didn't interview for today. What are we going to hear?

He is a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Asia.

He's led their work in Myanmar. And so I thought that there's actually been a lot going on in Myanmar. We're going to update people on where things stand. Five years after the military coup and civil war that's got a hundred thousand people. The military governments going the extra mile to kind of create a sense of legitimacy.

A lot of diplomatic visits. The state of the opposition. We talk about Onksung Succi, who nobody had seen for years. For years, right? The Red Cross just saw it.

Red Cross just saw it. So Richard walks us through that. And then just kind of how people are feeling in Myanmar. What governments can be doing at the Trump administration cares that much. So it's an important update if people have just been kind of curious about what's going on there.

This is a level set.

There's a lot of things we've worked on in the Obama administration that are now depressing to talk about.

Top on our might be number one. And it's nothing to do with Trump. Cuban Myanmar. Cuba's 100% Trump. Cuba's numbers that Trump solved with a little Biden smuggle then.

Yeah. I mean, Myanmar is just just a horrific event. Yeah, really awful. I'm definitely going to listen to that interview.

“I think it's a very undercovered story and important one.”

After Ben's interview, our friend of the pod subscribers will hear Ben and I answer some questions from the friend of the pod. Or the pod say the world discord community. If you want ad free episodes of this show, ad free episodes, pots of America and a bunch more, consider becoming a paid subscriber. You'll also get tons of bonus content, including bonus pots of American episodes.

Get discounted tickets to cricket con, great newsletters, tasteful news of Dan. So go to crooked.com/friend. So learn more just kidding about the news of Dan. They're not tasteful.

Now you don't get any. Just headshots. Speak of news. Did you listen to the hundred button Tucker interview? No.

I listened to the entire thing. I downloaded it. I will listen to it eventually. It's interesting. I'm guessing, but you know.

Yeah. They spend a fair amount of time in the news. That's good. Wonderful. Some of you look forward to.

All right.

“We're going to lead with this shocking scoop from the Washington Post about President Trump's secret flight home from the NATO summit last month.”

So again, we talked about this at the time. There was some sort of intel about an Iranian threat. It forced President Trump to abandon the new Air Force one, the one that was the bribe from Qatar and ride on the old Air Force one, back from the NATO summit Ankara to the UK. At the time, Trump lied about it. He was like, we're sending the new Air Force one ahead.

So the troops can check it out in Britain. That was a lie. The old Air Force one has missile defense features. The new one does not. And Trump, they said, would be better defended on the old one.

But it turns out the stories even crazier than that. The Washington Post reported that after Trump boarded the old Air Force one jet and the press was loaded up. It was then secretly taken to another Air Force jet while hiding inside a catering truck that is normally used for like meals and supplies. Very much, very manly to hide in a catering truck. The media and Trump staff flew to the UK inside the jet that Trump had abandoned most of them unwitting that he had left the plane.

They were essentially treated like human decoys in case Iran did try to do something. Then when Trump landed and the other plane landed, Trump secretly reported the Air Force one. Everyone thought he was on and acted like nothing had happened. Then he gets on.

“I think the Kattari bribe force one for the flight home to the US gaggle with the media was asked why he switched planes.”

And he said, quote, well, I have a threat all the time. I'm number one on there list before you. But if I go, you go, right? Perhaps someday you want to change professions, which is an interesting comment. So just for context, everyone should know that this is not standard operating procedure.

Presidents often use subterfuge for security reasons. The White House will release like a fake schedule to cover for a real trip to a war zone. For example, there was a story in the post today. Another story about an incident in the March of 2000 when President Clinton secretly switched planes like Trump did before a flight from India to Pakistan. But the difference is in the cases in the past.

At least some members of the media are told about the plan in advance. Usually it's like the pool reporter or that day or like the lead White House correspondent. You also get to learn about the risk to you personally. But in this case, our weak, old, feckless, stupid president left his own staff in the media to fly alone as bait. And then he got to hide from the consequences of his own decision to go to war with Iran.

So this is way bigger than just like breaking the rules of like pool coverage. It is like indientering others to save yourself kind of a perfect Trump anecdote. Yeah, there's so many layers to this anecdote.

Let's just first of all talk about how things normally work because you mentioned this.

There are times that you engage in some subterfuge. So for instance, I remember I had to be involved in the planning of all of Obama's trip staff, Afghanistan. When you don't announce the trip in advance, the plan takes off, kind of undercover of darkness from Andrews, Air Force Base near the White House.

Now what we would do there is we plan the trip. Then we would sit down on the White House press secretary's office with usually the leader or leadership from the White House correspondent's association. Back when that was somebody you talked about things and you know bring them into it and say get your pool together for this time at this night. And you kind of plan in conjunction with the press.

“And also like decide if you want to come on this trip where there's elevated danger.”

Yeah, look, I was even on a trip and I can't talk about it much detail where there was a threat that emerged and we kind of had to evaluate that threat and make a delay something. But you know, we went on with it. I mean, you can deal with these things in stride. This felt very much not in stride.

And so like to look at the different pieces of this one, why were they using the Katari Air Force one in the first place?

If it isn't capable of dealing with threats, just because Trump wanted to have like golden interiors faster than the, you know, Air Force could get that ready for them. Like we had to kind of go through all this, you know, cost and danger. That's the first thing. Second thing is it bears repeating how insane it is that they've invented some cover story that they're going to fly this other plane to the troops so they could see it. I mean, he said for all times sake, we'll be taking the former Air Force one from Turkey to Milton Hall, a short trip that is totally worth doing in order to give our great military heroes a chance to appreciate our beautiful new addition to the Air Force fleet.

That was your cover story. Yeah. I mean, that felt kind of weird in time. And then we, one of the elements of the Iran war, there's so much of it that you have hard time kind of, you know, remembering the different threads. The fact that the United States in Israel assassinated the leader for Iran, right? I tell you, I tell you, I tell you how many is nothing to do with whether he was a good guy or not. He was not a good guy. But that is a dramatically new thing to do, like we've talked about this a couple times.

And inevitably, that's going to increase the threats on the American president and probably not just now probably into the future too, you know.

“And so it does raise the question of just like, how serious are these plots from Iran? Was it really the case that how much danger was Trump in?”

This is a pretty extraordinary amount of length to go to. Yeah. It makes you wonder whether the information was specific or whether more likely they should have all this broad reporting that the Iranians are interested in doing something and we happen to be in that region. Yeah. Well, the Wall Street Journal said Israel briefs Trump an intel that included a threat to use shoulder to air missiles to target Air Force one. I mean, I don't think it's pretty vague to me. Yeah, they also just resumed the conflict with the war. I was just starting bombing. I also love this anecdote.

Then, which is that Marco Rubio stayed on the Air Force one. We're Trump was supposed to be in Pete Heggseth got onto the other plane with Trump. And two people most responsible for war were safe. And I guess my point, which is a little bit, you know, we're guessing here. I can't believe that the threat reporting was that specific if they let all those people get on the other plane. You know, like it feels like they run to some extra ordinary length because Trump was concerned about this because If this secret service really believed that there was dudes with shoulderfire rocket launchers in the vicinity of the airport,

I don't think they would have let that plane take off with the Rubio and Pete Heggseth and everybody else on it. Can you just fly around with it avoids around? It was so crazy.

And the other thing for people who were just like, well, this frustrating, I was always talking about this, well, Air Force one is not the personal property.

It's not like Donald Trump's private jet, like we pay for it. We pay for all this stuff. We pay for the secret service.

“Like, and all these stories, I think sometimes what's missing is Trump treats all this machinery like his personal property.”

When it costs tens and tens of millions of dollars to move all this stuff around and we have no idea why they're making decisions. I will say Tommy, just to bring different episodes together here. For those who listened, I wonder if that gift he got of the gun. If he got in some trouble. Air to one game, maybe that gun with the bullets might have come in handy. Yeah, you just sniping missiles. Yeah, the thing that bugs me about this story.

It's like, I don't know, they're the lying is the come to be expected from these people. But to put a bunch of journalists in your own staff at risk and basically send them up to be like the decoy to get shot at. So you can fly separately is genuinely shocking. All right, well, we're going to just quickly update you guys on the Iran talks this week. Because we are trapped in this like tedious endless cycle with no clear path forward.

But it is still very important. So I don't know if you saw this over the weekend, but the president seems to be signaling that he just doesn't care anymore about all this. He told Axios, quote, "We are low-king it." This is about the talks of the run. We are only semi-negotiating with them. We are just watching Iran with its huge inflation and the fact they have no money.

And then he said, quote, "It will work out. It always works out.

Last week, the Treasury Department announced some new sanctions because sanctions are really going to stick to them after we just let them sell what, like, ten billion dollars worth of oil. Iran and Oman are working on a deal to determine control the straight or remove those.

There demands include, quote, "never threaten nor insult Iran in any language, permanently end the war against Iran and Iran's allies in Lebanon and Gaza, Yemen and Iraq,

and then able blockade withdraw military forces around Iran, pay reparations, release frozen assets, lift all sanctions. It's basically a big middle finger to Donald Trump. Trump was asked about Iran's negotiating position at a press event Monday. Here's his response. Mass investigation is that still on the table? Well, we have that certainly of that ability if we want to do that.

Yeah, you'll find it. You said you're low-keying it with your semi-negotiating. Well, they asked for reparations, you might say, or they asked for money for the damage that we've done. And I said, that's a good idea. Well, we're going to ask for money for the damage it done over a 50-year period. Whether you go SS call or whether you go all of the people that were so badly hurt, so badly wounded or killed, many thousands of people.

And maybe damages for the 52,000 protest votes over the last four months that we killed in Iran. It doesn't get to that.

“What do you think the state of our movement school?”

Well, it's open now. We're taking a lot of shit. It's open now. Look, the only one that has control of the state of our movement right now is the United States Navy. We have a blockade that's been infallible. It's a steel wall. But it's open for others now, a little bit complex because they will on occasion drop a mine.

And we find the mine. You know, we've mine swept the entire straight, as you probably maybe hurt, maybe it in here. But we control the straight 100%. Just making shit up in Iran, the screen leader, most of a homine, he's added another hard line. IRGC-goon to his top decision making counsel. This is the Supreme National Security Council.

They will oversee things like effort to end the war or reopen the straight-of-home moves. So Ben, I just, like, I don't know. I'm just wondering, my only question now is when he's just going to walk away from this mess and be like, "Yes, straight to open. Wars over. Nukes are covered. We can watch it."

“He's getting pretty close. I mean, it does bear emphasizing that I think every single thing he just said there was not true.”

Like, everything from, like, the 52,000 protesters in the last four months, they're really been protests in less four months.

Also that number keeps going up and I just, I've never seen anyone like that.

Yeah. And it's not to diminish the harm happened. It's one hour's coming. Late last year. But then also, the straight's not open. I mean, the straight was open. We wouldn't be having this conversation. He's denying physical reality again.

You know, the US controls the straight. We do. Like, we've mind swept it all. We have, like, the reins are firing at tankers. Like, they're still, you know, a fraction of the traffic getting out of that straight. I take that the, the message from the Iranian demands is that their government is entirely in the hands of the RGC. It's the hardliners. So even some of these people that show up in Islamabad or in Oman

are not empowered to make a deal. And that's them saying to Trump, fuck you. That's not them expecting Trump to agree to all those things. We don't need a deal. We have the actual leverage. And if you look, the Iranians are quite specific, even in their unrealistic demands.

And Trump is never even specific.

We don't need a deal or we do need a deal or we, like, we don't even know what he's shooting for anymore. And I mean, art of the deal, you know, it would suggest that you're, what the Iranians are doing, which is you ratchet up your demands so that whatever you get is far more than you would have anticipated. The beginning because you made such maximal demands.

Look, at the end of the day, he's probably just an after accepted certain point that the best you can do is the straight we open with the Iranians making a bunch of money. And that regime more entrenched in power and no nuclear deal. Like, that's the best they were going to get. That's the most likely outcome.

I fucking take it. Like, let's just get off this war. This is stupid.

“Yeah, this, that is, I think the most important point,”

which is there's this sunk cost fallacy where it's like, what we sacrifice so much we can't stop now. And it's like, nope, sometimes stopping now is your best option. And that's what we should do here. Maybe the next hit of hair and will solve my addiction.

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If I get a good night's sleep, I'm almost guaranteed to have a good day. Or at least be prepared a good day. I think better, I'm in a better mood. Generally happier. If I get a bad night's sleep, everything sucks.

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That's HelixSleep.com/world for 20% off-site-wide. HelixSleep.com/world. We're going to do a similarly quick update on Israel and Gaza. These last week, we talked about Trump randomly announcing this 15-point plan for Gaza. They included this process for a disarmament and said, "Hamas would disarm."

And then Israel would withdraw from Gaza and the occupation. It was a bit of a headscratcher at the time. We predicted that the Israelis would not be okay with this plan. And as predicted, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin and Yahoo categorically rejected it. Over the weekend, he said, "Israel does not accept the 15-point document.

The idea of not carry out any withdrawal until Hamas is disarmed." When I say the disarming of Hamas, it means heavy weaponry, lighter weaponry, all weaponry. And we were talking about genuine disarmament, not fictitious disarmament. This outcome was obvious because Israel has an election coming up in October. Netanyahu only cares about appeasing the far right.

So obviously, he wasn't going to do anything that looked in any way soft. And Gaza, Netanyahu also said, "As long as I am Prime Minister, a Palestinian state will not be established neither in Gaza nor in Judea, or in Samaria, which is what they call the West Bank." So for those keep it scored home, then Hamas did reaffirm its commitment to the Board of Peace's plan.

I guess the only question I have is, why do you think Trump would announce this,

knowing the Israelis had not gotten unbored and would never get unbored?

I think you had just met with Netanyahu. That's the big mystery to me because even when they announced this, as we said at the time, nobody really believed it. It didn't kind of come out of any process. It just seemed out of nowhere that they're announcing this in demanding support for it.

I will note that APEC, for instance, at the time, welcome this plan and demanded that everybody support it. I'm wondering, I'm waiting for the APEC. Are you talking about that? A statement attacking Netanyahu for not just a longer than my breath. Look, there's never any there to this.

It never seemed plausible that this was actually going to happen again in the physical world.

“The only thing I want to add to me is, like, this foreign policy, they have no way out of the dumb”

where they started an Iran. They've got no plan for how to deal with this. They're given away a nuclear program to Saudi Arabia, or maybe they're not. No concept of how to wind on the Ukraine war. Like, what are we doing?

I guess Mark Rubio attacks Delcibered Regas in Venezuela about her media appearance.

Like, the things that they say they want to achieve, they're just doing the opposite.

The thing that I've been trying to figure out, so there was this great piece that's worth reading. It's like, gramwood and the Atlantic. There was kind of like, what's up with Al Qaeda?

“You know, we're like, you know, what 20, 25 years after 9/11, are they weaker?”

Are they stronger? Are they biting their time? Like, why, why? By what metric do you judge? You know, because there have been no catastrophic attacks on the US homeland?

With the exception, well, no, there was 9/11, right?

Then there were basically no Al Qaeda attacks on the US homeland.

Except for in 2019, when that Saudi pilot in Florida shot like three people. Yeah. But it was sort of a blip on the radar compared to how terrets and usually covered and discussed. And there was a bunch of analysts trying to figure out, like, what the deal is with terrorism generally.

“And I think it made me think about this conflict and whether the Palestinian issue is still going to be a driver of extremism in the way that it's been in the past.”

Whether leaders like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Saudi Arabia, clearly just not giving a fuck about Gaza or the Palestinian people. We'll impact things and whether this could just kind of like annexation in the West Bank could become complete over the next couple of years. Gaza could just be occupied forever.

I'm just like wondering when there will be blowback from that and where it will come from.

Obviously, that's like trying to predict the future. Well, there's a lot of pressure in the system. And because if you look at the things that could happen in the next, you know, you're to given the way things are going. You could have this kind of re-escalation of the war in Iran at any point. You could have a concerted effort to annex the West Bank.

Or you could have, like, an antifada in the West Bank that turns that into more of a conflict zone that gets very dangerous and potentially deadly. You could have, like, pent up, you know, Arab Spring type uprisings. I mean, Egypt and Jordan are not in the most stable place. Like, you know, you could have this Russia, you create more escalate either in that theater or somewhere else. The Chinese and Taiwan, like, there's all these pots that are like,

you know, boiling and like beginning to spill over a little bit.

“And it does worry you that hey, what's the thing that could happen that just tips us into kind of seeming chaos?”

I mean, because we're already kind of there if you look at the Iran War. Yeah, no, it's like a steady state level of violence and uncertainty and instability that would be kind of unimaginable. Uh, a decade ago. Yeah, but you're right. Yes, that's right. It's just crazy that there is a massive, like, hot war between the Russians and Ukraine that's just been going on for four years and the Iran War is going on for so long. Yeah, just the backdrop. Well, what one of those pots that's kind of seeming to boil over right now is Yemen.

Yes. That's a good one. Yeah. Yeah, so we got the Houthis and then there's the internationally recognized Saudi Arabia backed Yemeni government. The UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Groodberg warned last Friday that quote, Yemen today faces a greater risk of renewed large skill conflict than at any point since the UN broker truce of April 2022. As we've discussed on the show, that that truce was broken when the Saudis attacked Sinai airport ahead of this flight that was arriving from with a Houthi delegation in it from the Supreme Leader of Iran's funeral.

The Houthis retaliated. They announced a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea. And since then, there's been this tit-for-tat where she did up last week when at least 30 people were killed in Houthi attacks on Yemeni military bases during some like morning training event. Also, on Tuesday, Yemeni sources told voters that the Houthis hit a Tanzanian flagship in the bubble-mondab straight killing six people. And so what is so worrisome about these isolated events is that the civil war in Yemen was so catastrophic.

It was from 2015 to 2022, I think nearly 400,000 people were killed, most of them civilians, many of them from starvation or disease. And it could easily start back up again if some red line is crossed either for the Houthis or the Saudis. And it feels like we're kind of dancing up to that red line. We're seeing these strikes by the Saudis and these actions by the Houthis. And this is a good example of the fact that part of what's happened as the UN system that resolves conflicts has been weakened. But also, as there's been in this anticipate some of our upcoming topics too, the normalization of violence.

That if you're sitting in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi or Jerusalem or Washington, you know, what's happening in Sudan is just it's just happening. And we don't really have to do anything to stop it or the situation obviously in Gaza or in southern Lebanon or the situation in Ukraine. Like you get to the state where, you know, a reversion to a conflict that could kill tens of thousands of people in this place hundreds of thousands of people is happening in so many places. You know, you're just kind of watching in slow motion and doing very little other than having UN envoy put out these statements.

And also, like, as we talked about, like, you begin to feel all these conflicts merge into one. So the Yemen thing sparks up again, it's going to interact with the Iran War. Oh, for sure. And it could impact red z-shipping and it could kind of become one big theater where everybody's kind of fighting in different places. And this is, man, it's like watching a bunch of different, you know, to use a southern California analogy like fire is burning.

“And if they come together, you know, that's how you get something you can no longer contain.”

And we're kind of already teetering there and just have this tolerance, you know, because I don't have a lot of hope that, like, Marco Rubio State Department has a big plan to kind of avoid a diverge into war and Yemen. Well, another one is complex, as you said, of like, there's this sort of normalization or else I'm getting used to, just horrific levels of violence has been Sudan. Syria has been ravaged by civil war for four years. It's a conflict between the Sudanese government and a rebel group called the RSF.

It is very difficult to know the true death toll of the war because it's just hard to get there.

But there are estimates into the several hundred thousand, and then between 14 and 15 million are believed to have been displaced,

most internally, but some across the border to Chad. The war is worsened and been prolonged because the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, has been funneling weapons to the RSF, the rebel group, which brings us to this hero in London, who was, I guess, just walking down the street when he spotted Muhammad bin Rashid al-Makhtum, who is the UAE's prime minister. He's also the ruler of Dubai. He's just strolling around London with this like massive entourage. And so let's watch the clip of what unfolded.

So as you can see, there's just one guy. This clip was posted by Middle East eyes. It's one guy. This entourage of like 50 people with this emirati royal. It's a little hard to hear, but he's yelling, you're killing Sudanese emirati's in UAE. They're killing Sudanese people, and a member of the prime minister us. Prime minister's entourage responds, "Fuck you and fuck your people, mother-fucker, black bitch."

Yeah. Then crosses the street to menace the man. Ben, I do wonder if things would be different if emirati, you know, cost-benefit analysis of supporting the RSF would change if more officials were treated like this in places like Washington, instead of being invited to the White House, or Cafe Milano, for a nice meal. It is entirely the case that this emirati support for the RSF, which is well documented,

has, at a minimum, contributed significantly to the levels of violence and loss of life inside of Sudan. And I have to say, like, there's been a pass on this. Number one, because the emirati's have a lot of friends, they have a lot of resources.

“I think number two, they did the Abraham Accords, so it's kind of like, "Hey, we did this thing.”

You like, you know, don't look at this other thing we're doing." But I think that, like, the takeaway I-- >> Okay, a lot of bribes. >> I mean, they're giving the Trump family a love cash.

>> Well, yeah, yeah, two billion dollar investment in their crypto.

>> Yeah, they bought half of a business that didn't yet exist for, I think, 500 million. >> 500 million? >> Yeah. >> Pretty good deal. >> Yeah.

>> And other commitments, you know, these commitments they make to-- >> God knows what we don't know. >> Chillions of dollars in the US. >> Oh, they bought two billion worth.

One of the emirati firm bought two million worth of Trump coin.

>> That's when I was like the Trump stable coin in investment. >> Yeah. >> It's a finance crypto. >> So the other thing though that's interesting to me about this is, you do get this sense that the gap between powerful people and accountability is just been growing.

>> The last ten years, right? So to take your ten year-- it kind of step back day. The difference between what was kind of tolerable in terms of conflict and violence and loss of civil and life has somehow really opened up in the last ten years. And there's a sense of powerful people are not accountable.

“And I think what you're seeing increasingly is stuff like this happening.”

People are so frustrated and they feel like they have no outlet. And you go to a place like London and all these people hang out in London. And you're right. I think discomfort beginning to show up in front of people is that's just going to keep happening. Because people can see what's going on in the world.

They see that nobody seems to be held accountable for it. And they also see, by the way, nobody even feels kind of bad about it.

And it's that mentality that I think is just the powder keg is just going to keep getting more and more pressure inside of it.

“When it's like the most shameless proxy war stuff you've ever heard of.”

It's like the MRI, the whole down there. They're supporting the RSF, they're giving the RSF drones, which they're using to massacre civilians. Because the RSF has access to the like gold mines. Yeah. That is some gross shit.

Yeah. And gold's, you know, doing well because people don't trust currencies because in

the industry government, it's all this stuff is kind of connected to basically powerful people, wrecking things and hoarding power and resources.

And ordinary people feeling they've less outlets to express themselves. So they end up just like shouting at people in the street in a moment. And they're for that, we salute you, sir. Speaking of powerful people, wrecking things. Let's talk about Secretary Defense Pete Hegsef.

“You might remember pistol beat from his Fox News days.”

Drunk guy on the weekends. Now he's in charge of America's nukes and of its wars. Which may be why the latter's not going so well. A couple stories about Pete The Caterai. So we'll take through these.

First, the New York Times did an analysis of military promotions under Hegsef and found that he really really hates promoting women and people of color.

The Times found, quote, eight of 211 candidates for high-ranking posts this year have been women or 4% less than half the average percentage of the past 10 years. The largest drop-offs have come from the Navy and Air Force in July of the Times reported that Hegsef recently blocked the promotions of seven senior Navy officers. Five of whom are women or people of color to the two-star Admiral Rank. This also comes after Hegsef fired a bunch of senior women and black officers, including the chairman of the joint chiefs who has fired literally for filming one video about what it was like to be black in America.

Then it just strikes me as, well, they also looked at the lower ranks where Hegsef is not part of the promotions process. And there are a lot more women and people of color are coming up. But it does feel like Hegsef is creating a generational problem within the military by putting only white men for this period.

“Yeah, I think the alarming thing about Hegsef are a lot of them.”

One of the alarming things about Hegsef versus Trump's first term sector as a defense or war. Is that he's clearly trying to remake the military in magas image. Like he's trying to turn the United States military into kind of an extension of maga political interest and a reflective of the maga worldview which is pretty white and male, right? And the problem for that is, well, one, it's wrong and unfair to people who are being overlooked for promotions. Two, I worry that that's so that the military will be more likely to follow more extreme orders as the Trump administration goes on.

So that by the time you get to your three and your four and we're coming back at Greenland or coming back at deploying troops in America. Yeah, all the sub-action. They've got a slightly more likely group of people to do that. And then the last piece is, what's going to be left at the end? You know, like you're going to come in and you're going to have this kind of maga military and, you know, rebuilding cohesion and a force that is representative of the United States will, will be hard to do after all this wrecking.

You're not going to be able to just like bring these people back. Yeah, they're going to have lives and families and things going on. It's not the process works.

The second story that caught our eye was we've talked a bunch of times about this critical shortage of U.S. weapons and munitions.

Thanks to the war neuron. A lot of it is like intercepted missiles, but there's also offensive weapons. Apparently Trump finally learned about this issue too. And the Washington Post reported that he screamed at Hexat during a meeting at Camp David. So Hexat did whatever he brave leader does.

He blamed his deputy who then wrote armed suppliers a letter basically telling them they had 21 days to figure it out. When all this leaked Trump posted a message calling the report both false but also treasonous, which it can't be both. But I mean, it just like we've talked about this enough. We don't need to belabor it, but if Trump really did just learn that this was a problem. And their response was to write a letter like it just shows how fucked we are because the timeline for making some of these weapons is literally years.

And there's no way to change that in the shorter. Yeah, it just shows that because you and I are on some text threads with former national security types. Anybody who follows any of this stuff within the first three weeks of this war was like, oh shit, we've gone around in munitions. And so if Trump is behind like every text thread that I'm on, you know, like by six months, like that's a little alarming. It is also the case that you, yeah, as you said, you can just like fire off a thing like replete your replenish our Patriot missiles like that takes years to do not 21 days.

Hegsa passing the buck, not surprising there at all. And again, like to be a bit of a natural security person here.

That's a very real concern, or if this thing with Iran escalates as they've already demonstrated.

“They can fire it everywhere we are in the Middle East and we just don't have enough defensive munitions to protect things anymore.”

Yeah, in order our Gulf allies, the irony of all this will not really matter. It's it's that a lot of Trump administration officials oppose support to Ukraine because they were worried about this kind of critical munitions shortage. Now we want to war with Iran, which is making it exponentially worse. And that's a thing. And I wouldn't let them to blame the Ukraine thing because that's be very clear. If you look at the numbers of defensive munitions we've used in the Iran more as against what we gave Ukraine.

Like what the crisis has been caused by a dumb war. We could have weather the war of choice. Yeah.

Third, the Guardian had a report about corruption at the Pentagon specifically.

The appointment of venture capitalists, Mark and Dreson, and then failed Senate candidate Blake Masters to the Pentagon's defense policy board. Support the kind of like overseas. It's like a sounding board for Pentagon for a headset. But it gets you good access, it gets you in the door there for sure. Both have links to Donald Trump Jr.'s investment firm 1789 capital.

They also ties to big defense contractors and companies like Andrewl and SpaceX. Ungodly numbers of investments on their own. So no conflict of interest there. Does feel like we're at the point of the kind of corruption cycle where everyone sees the president of the United States. It's like gorging himself at the trough and they're running up to try to like catch one of his scraps in their mouth.

Yeah, and again, if we talk about the personnel version of re-making the Pentagon, this is the, you know, truly not dollar budget version of re-making it, which is by the time you're in your for the Trump administration. The, I mean, this is there's limitless corruption available because if you have a trillion plus dollar budget. And you can just do these massive contracts, you know, you can do it with Don Jr.'s company. You can do it with Silicon Valley oligarchs that you like, like, in recent. It also like spotlights this, we should come back on this defense tech issue, because the new defense contractors are the Silicon Valley people, you know, as systems are shifting to AI and autonomous weaponry.

It's less lockied, Martin and Boeing, they're still around obviously, but it's more, you know, Mark and Mark and recent. He's one of these guys who like founded Netscape, congratulations. Does that mean you know how to be the defense supplier of these guys think that they can be portable there. You know, everyone who's kind of a live, but he was on, like you were online, which is like tweet all day.

“And then I think his firm made it massive bet on crypto Democrats kind of came out against crypto.”

And he came in to work and yeah, I think he tweeted something about how colonization was good for India. Yeah, yeah, and got hammered for it. And then like getting dragged. Because he's guys, he has like, he's one of these Silicon Valley guys with like the finished skin imaginable. Yeah, I'm waiting for the bad guys to start losing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's coming. I can feel a build. Yeah, it's so.

Finally, wire had this remarkable story that caught our eye.

So in May a MetaVac plane carrying two pilots and two nurses on a routine 30 minute flight in New Mexico, crash, it's the side of a mountain in an accident linked to military conducted GPS jamming exercises in the area. Leading up to the crash, the Air Force was doing an event where brought together all of its electronic warfare units for these two weeks of exercises, including units of test technologies to block GPS tragically this MetaVac flight had its GPS blocked as it was trying to land in the detonate in the middle of the desert and they hit a mountain.

Like we don't know, it was just a horrible story. We don't really know the back story and whether like incompetence played a role here or if you could tie this to hexapht in any way. But Jesus Christ, how does this happen? And but what you also know is that there's not transparency about these kinds of events. And so if you're going to stack up these things, you've got in ptx at the guy that is like promoting white people and trying to bring mega people in military who's burning through our munitions in a dumb war,

who is like facilitating rampant corruption in military contracting and is running the least transparent pentagon of my life, kicking people out of the briefing room and not showing information about stuff.

“Like that's why these things go together.”

It just shows the depth of the rot at like an agency that is the most powerful news coming.

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Let's grow together use code world to save today offers valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Alright, let's turn to Ukraine. Because a couple weeks back, we talked about this surprising Ukrainian air strike or probably a drone strike on a Russian business called wild berries. Wild berries is basically the Amazon of Russia.

You could buy anything there, it's e-commerce. The first strike on this wild berries warehouse created a cloud of smoke that was reportedly so large that you could see it from space. It's a lot of stuff burning. But this campaign against wild berries, it did not end there. Foreign policy magazine in the New York Times take great pieces on all of this that I'm going to draw from liberally in this section.

They found that in the past month or so, at least 23 wild berries facilities have been hit by Ukraine. And nine wild berries employees have been killed.

This Moscow base organization called data insight estimates that wild berries has lost up to one third of its warehouse space and nearly six billion dollars in goods.

And that's a big deal if you're an average Russian because more than half of the people in Russia use wild berries once a month. Intends of millions of Russians use it multiple times a week. So the service being disrupted just has a big impact on ordinary people's lives and it brings the war home in a way that Ukraine hasn't managed to do previously to like sort of the Russian populace. But the strikes may also have a material impact on the battlefield. So the F.P. the foreign policy piece dug into a bunch of detail about how Russian soldiers use wild berries for supplies.

“The Russian military, I think, can be quite incompetent when it comes to resupplying guys at the front.”

So soldiers will end up buying stuff for themselves or they'll are these kind of like ad hoc groups that raise money and donate supplies to them and have it delivered via wild berries. Until recently the wild berry site had a dedicated section called everything for the S.V.O.S.V.O. stand for a special military operation. You could buy items like or you still can buy items, but they're like sort of bucketed in this section. Stuff like body armor, drone components, fins for grenades, the list goes on and on. This reporter who did the piece for foreign policy, Alexey Kovalev, city counted 1,000 items that were military use only in about 4,500 that could be considered dual use.

So Ben, I think these strikes raise some interesting questions about civilian services military targeting and what's appropriate under international law.

A target becomes legitimate when it's providing a military banish year enemy and destroying it would create a definite military advantage for you.

“I think the Ukrainians argue that the extensive military hardware on the wild berry site makes it a pretty easy call.”

I think they'd also point out that Russia has bombed the shit out of Novaposta, which is a Ukrainian delivery company. There are also, I think, honest though, the Ukrainians, when it that part of it is psychological warfare, the commander of Ukraine's drone force said the strikes were about destroying quote the illusion of a comfortable peace time.

So Ben, it's interesting, like these are obviously slippery slope arguments Walmart and bass pro shop, so a lot of guns, including to service members.

I wonder how people would feel about those suddenly getting bombed by an adversary in a war, but I do feel like in this specific case Ukraine, their argument is pretty compelling, but I don't know what you made of it. I find the whole thing worrisome, look, I understand that Ukrainian mentality, like we need to get any advantage we can. And these guys make no distinction between, so a very limited distinction between civilian military targets, and so they're ratching it up, and so they were we saw them hitting energy infrastructure inside of Russia, now we're seeing them hit this.

I understand why they're doing it. I think they're blurring the lines, because I think it's probably both, yet as you point out it's like sure there's a military uses, it's also more like we have to bring the war home to the Russian people. If the Russian people don't feel the impact of this war, nothing's going to change, which is a logical conclusion, but that is a slippery slope. And it's both a slippery slope to, you know, getting further and further away from clearly military targets, but what I worry about, again, is this escalation point that keeps coming up today.

Yeah, the Russians could say, well, the Ukrainians got a lot of supplies from Europe, and so maybe we should start drone attacks on warehouses in Poland or Germany.

“Or if you're about to decide it, well, you have to feed your soldiers, so what if we blew up every grain depot?”

Yeah, and so I just, you know, the irony is that for all of the hand-handed stupid diplomacy at the beginning of the Trump administration on the war, like it would actually now would be a good time to be trying to walk. You know, the Russians and the Ukrainians back from what feels like a potential escalation cycle that you get harrier and harrier, and you don't feel that happening. And so I think this will give the Ukrainians some advantage, but I have to think that Putin will find some way to escalate and return, and then we're just kind of keep going on this spiral.

And again, it's another example of a kind of, there are these little escalatory steps happening all the time, and they almost get brushed off now. Like I think it's a Moldova said that a Russian drone had landed on Moldova and soil that could trigger article five. There's this report that US intelligence believe Russia was behind an attack on the German airport. Yeah, there's a drone loaded with explosives that I think was targeting a Ukrainian cargo plane at like in Leipzig and Germany. Yeah, so it could be just pretty scary stuff. There's a NATO intel report that I think leaked that suggested Russia might try in attack of some kind of a hybrid or maybe cyber on a NATO ally in the coming years are going to test the alliance.

“That's what I'd watch. I mean, the thing I would watch for to be constructive only in terms of what to watch for is this is like reprisals getting into Europe.”

Because the same logic and again, let's be very clear Russia's the aggressor here Ukraine has our sympathy because they are being entrepreneurial in their defense. At the same time, it is what it is and I think that the Russians could decide we got to bring this war into Europe under the same logic that they're the ones back filling the Ukrainians. Yeah, speaking of threats to Europe, a couple of months back we covered this pretty wild story about Jared and Ivanka Trump claiming they discovered an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Albania.

Ivanka told the story like it was kind of a real estate meet cute but really it was just like a love story about colonization ever since on the Rothschild's yacht on the Rothschild's. That's when they discovered this is where I'm up. The Baron Island is locked to the top of the mountain. Everyone's like it's not barren. It's a fucking wildlife. So they cut this wheat heart deal with the Prime Minister of Albania to try to develop this area. Ever since there have been massive protests of the deal of the development of the region, which have been dubbed the Flamingo Revolution by locals because there's a bunch of like endangered Flamingo species that would be impacted by the construction.

The Wall Street Journal added some incredible reporting to this firestorm over the weekend.

The journal says that the development group that Jared Kushner is backing paid over $120 million to a man named Arthur or Arthur. I don't know he's a gangster who gets shit.

Reach out to say, hey, this dude stole it from us back in 2000. So that's the problem number one. Problem number two is that Shehu is an alleged gangster and drug trafficker. This guy might be kind of overseeing gangs that are leading to people going in boats in the Caribbean that Pete Hexeth has then drone strike. I'm great. So that's cool. And then finally back in June, Albania's corruption office got in order to arrest Shehu for money laundering and racketeering. He currently lives in Miami because he fled Albania because he was involved in like a shoot out of the bar, maybe with a rival gang.

So Ben, great reporting here by the Wall Street Journal. I'm not remotely surprised that Jared Kushner is kind of like in co hoots with a mobster in Albania since his father and law acts like one and actually his father acts like one, too. So he set up his own sister in a sting operation, but a crazy story. This story is so important because every single trend in the world that people are pissed about kind of converges in it, you know, like oligarchs calling shots like Jared Kushner doing real estate deals environmental degradation like life not getting better for people while these deals are done over their heads.

The reality is like, I just don't see this, I'm sorry for Jared and Vanka. I just I can't see this thing coming to fruition again. Look, it seems like this tapped into a level of disconnect, just this content with the Albanian public.

“But also just it does make you wonder imagine if we had like a corrupt anti-corruption unit DOJ, like what are the nature of these deals that are being made by Jared and the Trump family around the world?”

Many people are like this gangster on the other end of them. Like like what like because there's so little, I mean, when you think about the like colonoscopy done to like every business transaction, 100 Biden was ever involved in versus this stuff, like it is insane.

This has to be like literally number one in the list for over a long time, after you win knock-on-wood and hopefully get certified knock-on-wood. This corruption has to be do not wait.

Do independent investigations do whatever you have to do. So Pina Kushner, so Pina has business partners, so Pina the banks, so Pina like the partners like all of it day one, don't wait, please God don't wait again. You want to put Merrick Arlan on this case? What's that guy up to you think? Just wallowing. He's just just abiding my norms. Yeah, just feeling good about himself. Two more quick things. So first it just worth mentioning that the Ebola outbreak that we've talked about a couple times in the Democratic Republic of Congo and then some parts of Uganda.

“It's now the second largest in history in the fastest growing on record.”

The Congolese government published some data on Tuesday showing the death count is now surpassed 2000 and there's over 4,000 additional confirmed cases that we say confirms by a lot of cases they don't know about.

There's a lot of problems that make this a harder outbreak. There's no vaccine for this particular strain of Ebola.

The outbreak is happening in places where there is like ongoing warfare and very little health infrastructure and there's lots of evidence that the virus is spreading in the community and not being tracked. I saw like one.

“One health center found that a 90% of their patients were not kind of registered anywhere else or just new people, which suggests that there's a lot of transmission just happening in life.”

Dr. General, the African CDC also expressed concern this week that the virus might be mutating so other than that. It's going good. It's wonderful to bring this up because it feels very scary. It's a great example of a problem that the White House is just I don't think I've heard them talk about it or even pretending to try to solve. Because the chief instrument for solving the Ebola epidemic in 2014 was USAID, which doesn't exist. And the chief international organization we work with to solve that epidemic was the World Health Organization, which the United States is pulled out of.

So they don't even have the levers to try to deal with it. And this is one of those issues. It's horrible for the people impacted and it's also the case that if and when this shows up in the United States, people are going to freak the fuck out and not really understand why it's happened.

Like it's happened because we've dismantled the mechanisms that we have to deal with it. So things like this tragically happen in the world.

But as is the case with like complex, we don't have a UN system that works. We don't really have an international global public health infrastructure, which after COVID is pretty remarkable. Terrifying. Yeah, and everyone is even more distrustful of that. Vaccines, Fauci. Well, y'all about Fauci, but we won't talk about Ebola, you know, great. Finally, Ben, I want to see if you can spot what's wrong with Canadian politician Bill Oliver's speech to the legislative assembly of New Brunswick.

One of the dangers associated with creating advocacy offices is that citizens often develop expectations that exceed the powers actually grant it to those offices.

“Here's a more natural flowing version of that section that reads like a legislative speech rather than a series of short points.”

Madam Speaker, one of my concerns with this legislation is the potential gap between what New Brunswick has made reasonably expect this office to accomplish. And what the office will actually have the authority to do once it is established. Okay, so as you could see there, like when he copied it over from chat, GBT or whatever, Claude, you left in the AI's framing of his remarks, but he didn't just do it once. A few minute later, he also read out quote, here's a more developed and flowing version of the same section.

And after that, he started to read another one before catching himself and saying, excuse me. So Oliver has been responded saying, quote, during the spring session of the legislature, I employed AI to help prepare speaking notes when printing the final version of my speech. The AI prompts were not removed, which was spoken by me and has caused much concern of many individuals. He says he learned an important lesson. Then a couple questions here is a former speechwriter.

“How stupid do you have to be to anchor man yourself, not once, not twice, but three times and 40 minutes, question one.”

And question two, what percentage of politicians do you think have just fully outsourced speechwriting to AI this morning? This is the thing is, first of all, reading the prompts, it does suggest that I always tell people that it was one of the reasons it was useful that Barack Obama actually read and edited his speeches is because he wasn't reading them for the first time in delivery. And as you have Trump, he reacts to himself, he's like so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's the thing. You can tell when a politician is kind of reading something for the first time. Now he gives away the game.

And I'm surprised you didn't have their, like, would you like me to develop a five point plan for how you can become a better, you know, legislator? Is this answer radical? Yeah. But then the bigger problem is beyond the fact that this is confirming like what people are scared about with AI, it's also kind of confirming what people are scared about with their politicians, which is that if you can just stand up there and do your job by reciting AI produce text, what are you?

“What are you? What is your, what is your, what are you bringing in particular to this?”

Right. Oh, like you're like literally, look, everything we all do is derivative, right? Like the words I'm saying right now are derivative of my life's experience and things I read. Yeah, for this show and stuff I learned in the Obama day is whatever, but it does feel like with AI, it's literally just like hunks of text fed into a machine that kind of like blends them together and spits out something new. But that is entirely derivative of whatever it was trained on. If no human beings are having new ideas or political thoughts or statements like what happens.

Organic book plug, right? Because having done like, you know, all we say and looking at the history of political speech in this country, you know, one of the things is very clear to me is that the thing that makes someone pay attention to what a politician is saying is when you say something that sounds different. Like, oh, here's a hard truth I haven't heard before or here's an argument that is different from what I've heard before or here's just, you know, I was just profiled your, your double gang or obsand and I was like, he's got like this style is not Barack Obama, but it's like very Rob sand. It's his earnest, it's him, you know, and I think part of what scares people about politicians is that they think that they're completely replaceable that essentially doesn't really matter who you elect because they're just going to read the same talking points and, you know,

reward the same special interest in operating the same system. And this is the worst version of what people are afraid of. I would imagine that a lot of politicians are using AI. Because it's a shortcut, but what AI produces is like literally the definition of the lowest common denominator like what should a Canadian legislator who's, you know, from this region say about X issue. And it spits it out like, okay, I'm glad that you have a machine that can look at a bunch of texts on the internet and decide what to say, but that's not what people vote for people to do for them. And so I caution against.

You know, yeah, use AI for researcher, you know, get some feedback, but you got to write your own fucking text. We're also just like, we're not far away from someone recommending that AI agents actually govern us. That's an extent because what's like the fever dream and also someone's going to propose it. What's the difference? You know, I'm sure that would make, you know, you know, mark and recent happy. Oh, injuries simply pumped. He would love that love nothing more. Cool future. We got going on here. All right. We're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, you're in your bends interview with Richard Horsey about all the things happening in Myanmar. So stick around for that.

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The What-A-Day podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know the five days a week, I, Jane Coston, bring you the need to know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today and tomorrow.

Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice.

All in less time that it takes to roast a chicken. And now what are the episodes of hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons? You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out what it is, now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. All right, I'm very pleased to welcome back to pod save the world, Richard Horsey. Richard is the senior advisor for Asia at the International Crisis Group where he is along with their work on Myanmar. Richard, thanks so much for joining us. That's great to be able to.

So part of what we wanted to do here is catch people up with what's been happening in Myanmar to use a phrase.

“And so for people that have not been following this closely, you'll remember that in 2021 there was a military coup,”

which overturned the cremation democratic reform movement in Burma and in prison. And there's been a civil war which over 100,000 people have died, there are millions of people who are displaced. There's malnutrition and hunger across the country. The just to set a recent report. The modern group armed conflict location and event data noted that quote, "Me and Mars, the most fragmented conflict in the world.

With over 1,200 distinct armed groups reported have been involved in at least one violent event." But Richard, I just want to ask just how would you describe the current state of play. This is kind of falling off the radar with everything that's happening around the world. I know that the military has taken steps recently that we can talk about to kind of entrench itself deeper and power.

“But how would you describe the state of the civil conflict and who's in control in Myanmar?”

So as you said, then after the coup, there was just this eruption, first in peaceful demonstrations.

And then when those were brutally suppressed, just huge swathes of the country, and particularly young people, took up arms, went to more remote areas, fought back against the military, joined up with longstanding ethnic armed groups who've been fighting for decades for greater autonomy. And this really led to a much of the country, perhaps more than half, perhaps more than that, falling out of state hands.

This is not a new phenomenon in Myanmar, right? This is not a country that was united and where the central government has traditionally had control over all of its territory. You know, for eight decades, a sense of dependence, Myanmar has been fragmented. But I think the situation we see today is the most fragmented that Myanmar has been overall of those decades.

If we were talking two years ago, I think we'd have been talking about can the military survive? Will it collapse? Yeah.

“Did it face imminent battlefield defeat?”

But through the backing of China, diplomatically and militarily, through the military's own efforts to improve its drone warfare,

enforce conscription for the first time, it's managed to to stabilize the front lines.

But that's a far cry from recovering all the territory it's lost. And there are large parts of the country, including most of the international borders that are still not under central control. It seems like the military has been trying to kind of seize on some of those gains you mentioned. And kind of confer a sense that it's ultimate resilience of not ability to control low country. Is this sure, since having a kind of sham election earlier this year, you've seen Minanglong, who's the general who led the coup, who is now the president of the country.

You've seen him make these diplomatic visits to China and India and Thailand and trying to kind of send this message.

You know, we're back in from the cold. What is the state of the ability of the military to kind of break its international isolation in places like ASEAN, the organization of Southeast Asian countries,

“or drawing that's relationship with China and India, is that, is that working?”

So I think on Minanglong's terms, he probably feels his one, but his one enormous cost to the country, of course. Now winning on his terms means, you know, the coup was about removing on San Suji, removing that democratic experiment that you spoke about,

putting the military back at the center of politics and the economy, let's not forget as well.

And in those terms, I think he feels like, you know, after a shaky few years where this coup could have actually failed, that he's managed to get through this. He's had these stage managed elections. He's now presenting himself as a civilian elected leader, and some countries have accepted that. China has accepted it, Xi Jinping, you know, literally embraced him in the great hall of the people a few weeks ago, giving very clear backing.

India has hosted him on an official visit, and just a couple of days ago, he was on an official visit to Thailand.

“So I think, you know, countries in the region are making a calculation that Minanglong and the Myanmar military probably aren't going anywhere.”

They weren't keen to reach out to him. He was in, you know, very strong diplomatic isolation in the period where it looked like he may fall. But now that he's stabilized now that he has China's very visible backing, India's very visible backing. Other countries are making a calculation that these guys are going to be around for a while, and we have things to discuss, we have issues, we have concerns. You know, we can't keep them at arms length, and you know, that hasn't broken kind of the West's general distaste for Myanmar.

But frankly, Western countries have far higher priorities, and I'm not paying a lot of attention these days to Myanmar. And in the region, some members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Myanmar is a, as a member country, are still kind of considering that normal engagement with Myanmar is distasteful. And premature. But at the end of the day, you know, they also want to focus on other things. They don't want Myanmar dominating their meetings and summits. And the feeling is that after Thailand has now hosted him, allow us as hosted him on a state visit, that it's probably a matter of time before he will be back, you know, at least in the region in normal diplomatic circles.

Yeah, in some ways, it feels like we were all the way back to where things were, you know, before they 2010 or 11, you know, this is kind of de facto engagement even if it's unpleasant in some ways. I want to ask a couple questions about them, the opposition, the first is another story that has been making it around recently was concerned that Anksung Sushi had not been seen in years, and there was kind of a proof of life effort to kind of establish that. She was, in fact, alive and in custody, but, you know, there's not been access for her lawyers or there's not been, you know, any obviously media confirmation of her whereabouts.

How would you describe the state of play as relates, she's obviously very old. What do we know about her condition, such as they are, and does she how much does she still matter in the politics of the country, like what her death be potentially. The galvanizing event that the military might not want people to know about, is that, you know, is that looking in the backdrop here too.

That has led to many concerns of her family of her supporters of the world at large, what is her situation.

“And we know that for a time, she was in very austere conditions in Napido prison in a sort of tin hut that got extremely hot in the hot season, and, you know, for an old person with longstanding health issues, that's a concern.”

The military announced a few months ago that she had been moved to a house in the capital Napido, but there was no other information. In the last few days, the Red Cross has been given access to her, so she met with the delegate of the Red Cross in Myanmar and photographs of that meeting and a short statement from the ICRC have been released. So that is the proof of life, not only a family we're calling for, but also countries in the region, and even China was pushing for greater transparency over her situation.

And, you know, there are a lot of leaders in the region who are very fond of Hong San Siqi. They worked with her for a number of years. They were just made to see what happened after the coup.

They feel a certain loyalty to her, and so this is an important issue, you know, for the region as well.

“The demands that she'd be given access to the Asian Special Envoy to other diplomats have been rebuffed, and I think the ICRC choice was precisely to stop this becoming a kind of constant demand from different diplomats.”

You know, where do you give access to the Philippines over the chair of the regional grouping? Why not next year give access to Singapore the next incoming chair? It could have led to this kind of demands to see her and so on, and I think men online did not want to give her that kind of political role. So it was the Red Cross. There's the proof of life, she seems, you know, from the photos in reasonably good shape, and the Red Cross has had a chance to pass message from her to her family.

But that's basically it. She has no access to lawyers. She doesn't have access for her personal doctor.

There may be other doctors seeing her, we don't know. And so with her, you kind of removed from the stage as, you know, you mentioned with men online, one of his intentions. How would you describe the state of the organized opposition? You know, there was an umbrella group, kind of an umbrella put over this, you know, constellation of actors after the coup that included, you know, elements of the, NLD, the democratically elected party, you know, but also young people, and then all the ethnic armed groups that you mentioned too.

“How would you describe the state of that opposition? Is it organized? Do they continue to have morale that they could somehow prevail in this conflict?”

Do they just try to hold on to whatever territory they've got? What's your sense of it? I think there's an overwhelming feeling across large swades of the country that the current situation is unacceptable. It's untenable. The military cannot be allowed to reinsert itself at the heart of politics in the country, but the reform period of a decade was far from perfect, but was pointing in the right direction. And now, as you said, everything is pointing in the wrong direction. The clock has been turned back. A generation not only politically, you know, back to another closed authoritarian military regime, but economically as well.

There's a, there's a lost generation of development of childhood, of childhood health, of education, of economic output. And so there is a still a strong determination among many different walks of life people I talk to, you know, to finish the revolution as they see it. But that's looking like a very long-term prospect. And just as the country itself is highly fragmented, so too is resistance and opposition to the military. You have very different kinds of resistance. You have, as you say, the long-standing ethnic armed groups who really just want autonomy, that don't care who's in control in the center, they just want to have the ability to have a greater say in their own lives and their own affairs.

There is a young generation of politically active people, some who've taken up arms, others who are resisting in non-violent ways. You know, the youth of the, of the cities and the heartland who are determined to have a different future. And, you know, these people have different objectives, different parts of the country, they have different strategies, so it is very divided and that works to the military's advantage. After the coup, the government that was deposed established a parallel government, the national unity government, with on-sansucci and president, when meant her nominee president at its head.

The problem with that is that in the midst of an armed revolution which it backed, it was never quite clear whether this national unity government was a government, I was aiming to be a government, always a revolutionary organization, aiming to overthrow, you know, the military in a bidore.

And the reality is that the opposition government with on-sansucci at its helm doesn't have leadership, because if your leader is incarcerated in communicato, you don't have someone who is visible and there to kind of lead the charge, there is no Zelenski-like figure, because the Zelenski-like figure is on-sansucci herself and she's in communicato.

“So she remains incredibly important in that sense that she's the sort of touchstone for everybody. She's not important in the sense of leading things because she hasn't been able to speak publicly since the coup.”

But I do think that her death would be a trigger moment and something the military would be very concerned about. They don't want her dying on their watch in their custody. She still is the most influential political figure in the country even after five years of incarceration and detention.

One of the things that feels different to me than the past is the role of the United States, the West, whatever point of the United States in Europe.

There was a lot of focus on Onksung-succi and democracy in Burma in the decades leading up to that moment of reform that took place around 2011 until the coup. It feels like there's much more disengagement now, though, like the Trump administration, not sure what their policy is. So while there's a familiar China backing the military and some of the Southeast Asian countries being cozier, what seems to be missing is any sense that this is even on the radar screen of the United States, or it's really not that there's a kind of pressure strategy to change the behavior of the government. I mean, is there a role to play for the United States recognizing the Trump administration is probably not going to be that constructive.

And are there other interests too, because I noticed these recent reports, too, of a huge scam economy emanating from Myanmar, the kind of proliferation of this online criminality.

“It feels almost North Korean, right, that this military could just turn to crypto and scams and other listed sources of income. Should that compel greater concern about what's happening here, too?”

I think, absolutely. I mean, we live in a different world now, right, where we're quite renewed to human suffering, where the humanitarian system is broken and broke to put it frankly, and where international relations is far more transactional. And so that has, you know, been a huge problem for people who've been trying to, you know, increase global interest in what's happening in Myanmar, try to drive policy changes that could really have some effect. They're hitting brick walls, right. It's very hard to advocate for Myanmar on humanitarian grounds when you have Gaza, you have Ukraine, and where you have frankly not only in the US, but across the West.

“And to a much more concerned about other issues closer to home, and a not focused on principles based foreign policy.”

So this is a huge challenge, but as you say, Myanmar demands attention not only because we should care about what's happening, because of the humanitarian costs, the human costs.

And so matters because having a failed state in the heart of Asia is a dangerous, dangerous thing. You know, Myanmar is the largest global source of synthetic methamphetamines. Most are going to East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, Australia, and New Zealand. And it's probably the largest current scam center economy. Now, these are many of them in parts of the country that the government doesn't have formal control over. But in many cases, it's armed groups that it's somehow allied with on the battlefield that are controlling the territory near to the Thai border mostly, where these industrial scale scam cities are growing up out of the patty fields.

And those are targeting people all around the world. So, you know, Myanmar drugs may not be landing on the streets of New York, but Myanmar scam centers are scamming tens of billions of dollars a year from Americans. They're targeting Europeans, they're targeting victims all around the world. And there's really matters. And it matters not only as a criminal justice issue, but I think it matters because the scale of this economy, tens possibly hundreds of billions of dollars across Southeast Asia, these scam factories.

So, this is a whole criminal ecosystem, which is emerging, which is a threat to regional stability. It's a threat to financial integrity in the region. We should be very worried about that.

“Yeah, I mean, it just feels like you, I mean, to be blunt, have this kind of gangster military running a piece of this state with no regard for the human rights of its people.”

Purely in self survival mode and willing to turn to kind of all manner of schemes to enrich itself in what has to be an illicit economy. I mean, it's in the heart of Southeast Asia. So I just think there's a lot of reasons to care about this. Well, I want to end on the human one, which is I'm just curious, Richard, you know, I know a lot of people from me and my from my time working on it in more hopeful days. And it's it's sat, it's so sad to kind of hear people are scattered. Some people are the country. People in places like Ganga and kind of gone to ground. On the other hand, it is amazing. It's what you describe like people are still talking about, you know, what lessons they could have learned from what when wrong and the last era of reform to get it right the next time there's this kind of persistent, you know, sense it at some point, you know, the future will be different.

I mean, what give people a sense from your contacts of just what the mood is like for more more normal people in the country, you know, who are just trying to make sense of this and trying to find some hope in it all, how bad is it economically and politically and what is your sense of the remaining kind of hope for the future.

“So in the main cities, you know, Yangan Mandela, I think, you know, a lot of people are just kind of traumatised by these last five years and what's happened by the futures that they saw that were stolen from them.”

But at the end of the day, they have to put food on the table, they have to feed their kids, they have to get their kids to school. And so, you know, in a situation of acute economic distress where there's no jobs available, the economy is into client prices are very high.

You know, it's a daily struggle just to make ends meet and that is what a lot of people are focused on and they don't have many options.

You know, the options are you go to parts of the country where the illicit economy is thriving because that's where the money is. Or you go into, you know, informal labor migration routes, very dangerous, you know, risks of trafficking, risks of exploitation, to Thailand, to the Gulf, to other places, to try and send money back home.

“And that's how people are coping. But what I take hope from is that everyone I speak to is, you know, still has a vision of the, of the Myanmar that they want.”

They have a vision of the country that they saw a glimpse of 10 years ago and they really still believe that that is the direction they have to go in.

And I think that, you know, this new young generation is incredibly inspiring. They have put aside a lot of the political divisions of the past, a lot of the received wisdom about what kind of country Myanmar was the, the races and the division. And, you know, they've come to, they sort of come together as a generation, not as a group of Berman people or minority people or whatever, they've come together as a generation. And I think that while that may not be immediately successful in unseating a, a violent brutal military, it's a template for the future and it will resonate in the future and when opportunities do arise, you know, what I hope is that it's that vision, it's that, it's that multi-ethnic, multi-religious hopeful vision that will dominate and not the sort of more narrow nationalisms that we've seen exposed, you know, a certain times in the past.

Yeah, no, it's a great note to end on because you do just get a sense that if the, this country were allowed to reach its potential and the potential of these extraordinary people that have so many ideas for the future. It would be truly extraordinary and, and, and yet we've had to see people go through so much. So we'll keep an eye on this, people should follow your work. Crisis group has always been excellent on Myanmar and Southeast Asia in general. So really appreciate you coming on and helping us understand what's going on.

Thanks again to Richard Horsey for joining the show and we will talk to you guys next week. Podsate World is a quick and media production. Our show is produced by Elona Minkowski, Michael Goldsmith, and Unisha Bonnergy. Our team includes Matt DeGroat, then Hethcote, Jordan Canter, Kenny Muffet, David Tolls, and Ryan Young. Her staff is proud of the unionized with the writer's field of America East. The What-A-Day podcast you know and love is shaking things up. You already know the five days a week. I, Jane Coston,

bring you the need to know news and expert analysis on the big stories shaping today in tomorrow. Stories like how social media warps our perception of the world and the strange reality of who is signing up to work for ice.

And now, what-a-day episodes will be hitting your YouTube and podcast feeds in the afternoons. You'll get the breaking news even faster. Check out what-a-day. Now dropping in the PM on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.