Rational Security: The “Mosquitos and Heat and Sweaty and Eww” Edition

So, Ari, I think anybody just listened to this. I won't be able to tell you wearing a lovely tropical looking floral, you know, Hawaii, appropriate shirt, which can only mean one thing that you're in Chicago for some reason. I guess? How is it? How is it treating? Obviously, you're not acclimating at all to your new environments.

“I think you should be in a puffy coat eating a sausage or a deep fried ravioli.”

I think that's exactly the same list, but you know what I mean? A little different vibe. But you're bringing your own flirt at Chicago. I like it. How is it treating you? I've gone fully native. Listen, it is summer in Chicago, which means it's glorious. And now I can talk about the weather. Like, it's, you know, it's a thing that I just do all the time. I talked to strangers all the time. We make, you know, small talk. I look people in the eye.

It's a very different world out here. But yeah, no, people are all outside. Our team keeps telling me that, you know, it's summer. People don't go to programs anymore because everybody's outside drinking on the patio. I'm like, I come from DC where over the summer, you just don't leave your house, right? Because mosquitoes and heat and sweaty and air.

That's, that's our experience. That's actually the lovely outside in DC today. But other than that, why we're preparing for the inevitable 90 degree swamp that we have most summers.

“Yeah, I admit, I have, like, been to Chicago. I think three times now twice in summer and once in like a weekend in November,”

where it was, like, flawless. Like, it was like 80 degrees outside.

So I had this vision of tropical Chicago that I like never want to abandon in my brain.

Because I see these pictures at your stories of like the full body parkas, becoming daily attire. And I'm just like, I can't, I can't reconcile them with that brain. And I want to see, like, you know, a sunny reflection of a tropical drink in that big silver bean. Uh, whatever else you guys have going downtown, uh, it's, it's, it's what it's. It sounds like miles of beaches.

Just miles of beaches and sail boats. Exactly. That's kind of what my vision of of Chicago. I will say, I lived in, um, I've told, I told already this before you moved there, but I, uh, I lived in Chicago for 10 months and I did the architectural boat tour three times. I guess you're doing incredible.

“So if you want to talk to me, talk about leaner Chicago tourism on your guy.”

Okay. Not, don't, don't tell, uh, Mike Feinberg and Natalie, but I think I'm a Chicago convert. So I'm not the cult that is Chicago. I got to go to the dangerous thing to, to assert when you move there in, like April, and it's only June. Like, let's see, let's see how the first winter gets. And then we'll see how big a convert you really are.

Let's try. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to rational security. The show where we invite you to join members of the law fair team is we try to make sense of the week's big national security news stories. Whether they are in our lane or not, I am your host, Scott R. Anderson. Thrilled me back with a wonderful panel of my colleagues to talk through a couple of big national security news stories this week.

First, joining us back on the podcast for the first time in a little while is former law fair public service fellow now law fair. Think contributing editor. I think that's where we later, right? It is Ari Tabata by from her new environment in the city of Chicago. Ari, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. Thrilled to have you.

Always happy to be here. Thanks, Scott.

And also joining us is a regular a standby, some might say a mast on which the great sale of rational security. Flutters is law fair managing editor Tyler McBrion. Tyler, you for coming back on the podcast. It has been like maybe two weeks, three weeks, but for you, that's actually a long time because I bother you to come on the podcast a lot. So excited to have you back on. Whatever poetic title you just gave me is far too kind. I don't know if I'm the mast.

I think that's probably you. Well, it's like one of these multi-masted boats. I just listen to a podcast by mastering commanders. I've big old boats on the brand and it's like you can be one of the masters. It's like several masts. It's okay. It's not just the one. It's not only a little thinking, you know, both like they have outside of art. I don't take it out unless or mast.

Yeah, they're all equal, mast. They're all important. The boat ain't going anywhere without all three masts. But regardless, we're thrilled to have you back on.

And joining us also for the first time in a while from the city of Keeve is our Ukraine fellow.

Nastia LaPana. Nastia, thank you for coming on the podcast as well. So excited to have you back on as we were talking about. Obviously some stories that you're living through at the moment. So thank you for finding the time to join us. Thank you for having me until it was very fun, Scott. Good. Well, I'm glad to hear it.

Well, we have a lot to talk about this week. So let's get right into it.

The Empire Strikes Out.

“Russia's ground offensive in Ukraine appears to have hit some stiff resistance with a losing some territory with the past calendar year.”

The face-by-strong defense by Ukrainian forces, including strikes and Russian supply lines within Russia, and growing manpower shortages and economic pressures at home. But Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be compensating with one of the most brutal air campaigns in recent memory, including a massive aerial attack on Keeve this week,

that force tens of thousands of Ukrainians to shelter in place, including our own Nastia. What signs are there for optimism or for caution on the future of Russia's war of aggression, and how will positive developments on the battlefield for Ukraine impact Russia's demand than negotiating table? Topic two, Straight Trip in.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

in the first time since the United States went to work with Iran,

and he told senators that the war is over. This statement came just days after the United States and Iran traded strikes, actually just hours, and perhaps after they traded strikes, and Iranian state-run news outlets reported that it had broken off negotiations with the United States. President Trump, on the other hand, insists that the talks are still ongoing,

and appeared to pressure Israel to pull back from major offensive against his ball over the weekend in part to keep them alive. What do we make of all of these developments has there been progress towards negotiating solution to the conflict? And is there any reality to Secretary Rubio's assertion that the war has come to an end? And topic three, "Pult fiction." President Trump announced an unexpected pick to take over the position of Director of National Intelligence on Tuesday, Bill Pult,

the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, heir to a residential home building empire, with apparently no national security experience whatsoever. President Trump said Pult would stay on as housing director and take over the job from Tulsi Gabbard in a part-time and acting capacity. So who exactly is he?

“And why does Trump trust him enough to pick him to serve at least part-time in one of the country's most important intelligence positions?”

So for our first topic, unsurprisingly, Nasty, I want to come to you to talk about this.

There's something we've been talking about internally at Laugh Fair. I think over the past few weeks, few months, really, I know you've been looking into, which is that the media narrative around the conflict in Ukraine has shifted pretty dramatically. I think in the past few months, we are seeing, for perhaps entirely legitimate in the reasons, increasing number of stories, describing the shortcomings of the Russian offensive that they've been engaged in for the last year,

particularly over the last year compared to the prior year, where they had more substantial territorial gains over the past year, while they've gained in some areas that have lost in more and met, I thought, one assessment from the Institute for the Study of War, suggested they had net loss territory over the last calendar year or more or less. We know that they are facing huge economic headwinds at home, particularly massive manpower shortage at home, or Russia's own central bank testified to that in the recent weeks.

We know they are facing a lot of pressures on a lot of different fronts. Yet, obviously, the Russian offensive continues. So since you've been looking into this, and obviously you are living through a big part of what's happening, and this conflict talked to us about what your sense is about the state of the conflict. Is this media narrative that Russia's success on the battlefield might be winding down,

that it may be facing more and more pressure to begin to wind up this conflict true, or are we seeing this shift to a different phase? So you're right that there was, for a lack of a better term of vibe shift in the way that the war in Ukraine is covered in the last few months, there have been articles in a number of outlets, some of which I have written. And you know, in my own newsletter, and in my podcast, sort of describing how Russia seems to be on the back foot on the front line.

“And I mean, the narrative has been around for a while for a few months, specifically, I think, since the winter ended,”

and I think that was one of the reasons why this narrative sort of began is because the winter was just so brutal, the Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure were so bad, and the humanitarian situation was so horrible, you know, no heating, no light, no electricity. I mean, some instances, you know, some days would have electricity for one or two hours a day, and that was that, you know, huge swaths of the city had no heating for weeks and weeks,

at the same time as temperatures plunged to, you know, record lows.

So all of that was just so painful that, I mean, I remember as a Ukrainian, you know, the first day of spring was just kind of,

you know, I couldn't believe that this was finally over, and anything that happened after it seemed just like a radical change. But in reality, maybe it wasn't, but because the previous experience was so bad, all the other news were just very uplifting. And I think this was, this is part of why, you know, Ukraine, watchers and people in Ukraine, perhaps, you know, had the sense of relief. And then layering on top of that are some, I think, kind of real facts on the ground that are very interesting to follow.

I'd caution though, you know, before even get into them, I'd caution against making any sort of grant prediction, of, you know, Russia's contrafence, if it's, you know, is about to grant a halt,

I mean, you could very much argue that everything about it, tell you, is like way to early to win judge, whether this is going to be long term consequential. So, you know, just, you know, we're, we're going to talk about it, but being careful, you know, and not making any sort of over exaggerated statements. But there have been some very interesting developments on the front line that being said,

and in the past few weeks, specifically, there has been coverage of Ukraine's various drone programs and their impact on the situation on the battlefield. Of course, the war in Ukraine now, you know, is fought in many ways mainly by drones. And on the front line, 80% of the casualties, if I hope I'm getting that number correct,

“but I think it's 80% of the casualties are caused by drones.”

And in that environment, Ukraine has had some really interesting changes recently,

so in February, for example, Starlink finally responded to a request by the Ukrainian government

and caught off Starlink access to the Russians. It's a little too complicated to get into why the Russians even had it in the first place, but the point is that, I think, starting February 1st, all of the Starlink terminals operating in Ukraine had to sort of manually go in register and be approved by the Ukrainian government. And this was a little bit of a headache for literally myself included,

because I was a civilian head of Starlink, so I could have internet during poweroutages. And I had to do that because my Starlink stopped working one day.

And so for the Russians, this was massive, because Starlink is an amazing sort of internet communication service

that they really have no analogs for. I mean, it just doesn't exist, at least yet. And so their frontline columns just kind of, you know, basically shut down on the, and they have had to transfer to different other various ways of communication. And it was kind of a crisis on the Russian side, and of course that helped.

And it continues to help because they had their, as I said, there is really no easy way to replace that access. So that's on the tactical level. Of course, also on the long range strikes, this has also gotten a lot of headway in the media. Ukraine has been targeting, you know, Russian oil facilities for many, many months now. I mean, more than a year, but the, you know, this campaign has really intensified in recent months.

And this is one of the things that's kind of complicated to judge what the fact of it will be because it's a very much a long term game and a long term strategy. In terms of, you know, the economic pain that Russia will incur from this. But it is very dramatic, you know, because it produces these images of huge Russian oil facilities and flames. And, you know, there has been reporting of like oil rain in certain cities in Russia that Ukraine has been hitting.

And so it's, you know, that's also part of this whole narrative of, you know, Ukraine really increasing the pressure on Russia.

“And then I think the most interesting one, the most interesting aspect of the drone war recently, is this intermediate range campaign.”

You know, the medium range strikes that Ukraine has ramped up in recent months. And those are the strikes targeting Russian logistics and, you know, Russian air defenses and sort of the backbone of Russian operations. You know, something around like 120 miles from the front line in that sort of range, you know, up to 200 kilometers from the front line. And again, Ukraine has been doing this for some time, but recently, you know, very much intensified. And Ukraine's recently appointed Minister of Defense announced, I think, just last week, a program that he, you know, very dramatically in a very Ukrainian fashion called,

a log down or logistics log down. I'm not sure how to translate that perfectly into English, but basically announcing this program that they were going to be.

That Ukraine will be investing, allocating a lot more money into the production of these, you know, medium range drones strike drones. And intensifying this program targeting Russian logistics. And there have been some specific sort of dramatic strikes in recent weeks, including several Ukrainian units sharing videos that they were basically firing on very crucial logistics routes that, you know, the important highways that run between occupied Crimea and Mandelaid Russia. So that's the, you know, the so called land bridge in the south of Ukraine, this chunk of occupied Ukrainian territory.

That, of course, is a very priced position for Russia because it helps the Russian stern occupied Crimea basically into one large military base, supplying it from Mandelaid Russia.

“And I think for the first time, Ukraine has been able to take sort of fire control, again, I'm translating from Ukrainian here. I'm not sure if that's the correct term, but basically able to hit all of these important supply routes.”

And it's, you know, such a problem that some portions of those important highways have now been blocked to civilian traffic because the authorities don't get better.

And so all of these drones developments have been happening and all of them are valid and very interesting and Ukraine seems to genuinely be doing, you know, better in those avenues. Now, the question is of course, can the Russians adapt to all of these things, and which is why you know in the beginning I caution to again, making any grants sort of long term predictions. But so far, it looks very interesting because, especially with the medium range drones component, and both the starlink and the medium range drones, both of those things are very, very complicated for the Russians to adapt to.

Starlink really doesn't have any, any simple analog to it, and the medium range drones, the only, you know, the only cost effective entity to that would be the interceptor drones, which are these drones that Ukraine is now mass producing to counter a Russian overhead drones. And Ukraine has had to deal with this ahead problem for years, which is why we have now a very successful expensive interceptor drone industry and program. And now we're intercepting huge amounts of Russian drones with those, but the Russians haven't ever had to deal with that problem, and so they just don't really have a program that's as successful as ours, and they don't really produce interceptor drones on, at least not on a scale that is at all necessary to counter this medium range drone threat.

“So all that is to say that I think in the short term, definitely the Russians are going to be struggling more and more.”

And then of course also, Scott, you've mentioned some of the statistics already, you know, the Russians rate of advance really slowing down. Also, according to Ukrainian authorities, which, you know, we should take that with a grain of salt because this is coming from a government at war, we don't know whether we can fully trust these statistics, but the Ukrainian government said that for the past five months. The Russians have been losing more soldiers that they've been recruiting. This has been a long time goal for the, for Ukraine to, to make that happen, to sort of break the math of the Russian war machine.

And it seems like that's finally true, we don't know if that's, if that's the statistics is accurate or not, but that's at least what Ukraine is claiming.

“Do you have similar statistics like attrition rates on the Ukrainian side, or is it harder?”

I mean, neither side really publicizes any sort of, we don't really, like neither Ukraine nor Russia shares statistics of their losses. And even when they do, I mean, I think Zelenski have floated some at some points, but I don't think they're close to reality, which, I mean, I think that's expected in the middle of a full skill war for morale reasons and everything else. So no, I don't, I don't know what the statistics on the other side are. But there are all of these various data points that if true, and if they continue for long enough, may, you know, reflect a certain shift in the war.

I think that's incredibly useful. I mean, like there's a deep irony of a Russian invasion of Ukraine falling apart because they, you can be able to decimate its supply lines, given that it's how Russia defended itself from Napoleon 1812, the Germans in the 1940s.

And it's less historical lesson that we keep losing, and it's kind of amazing to see this play out this way with this incredibly new toolkit.

And it's fascinating because we know Ukraine is at the absolute tip of the spear in the use and development of drones and run related to technology counter-drawn technology. Because all of a sudden we see these reports of Ukrainians, Ukrainian officials, Ukrainian private citizens, showing up in places like the Persian Gulf and other contexts where drones are of some being deployed. And they've got our resources further along the learning curve in a really valuable way. All right, I want to come to you on that.

I mean, talk to us about the dynamics we're seeing in the Ukraine conflict, some of these, the ability that we see in of Ukraine, really be able to push back what I think in 2022, and January 2022, most people would have assumed, is a massively more superior military power. You know, drones are a big part of it, not the whole story, but talk to us a little about these in new emerging technologies, and the way we're seeing them play out.

And with that, my tell us about the trajectory of this conflict where they first really came to ahead.

Yeah, and Tanasia's point about the sort of the press reporting, I think some of what we're seeing is also informed by what's going on in the Middle East, right, where all of us sudden people are waking up to this notion that Ukraine really knows what it's doing when it comes to drone and counter-drawn capabilities.

“Something that, you know, when I was in government, we're trying to explain to partners, hey, you should really be looking to Ukraine because they're doing really incredible stuff.”

You're really fast innovation that is battle tested in a way that no one else is doing, but, you know, partners have tended to kind of look to the United States as, you know, wanting these big sophisticated expensive platforms that take years and years to produce and deliver. And expensive and maintenance, and by the way, then they're using those same very expensive, very sophisticated capabilities to shoot down these really cheap drones.

And frankly, it should be learning from Ukraine on that front as well. So I think part of it is also this kind of media narrative beyond the Russia Ukraine war is also kind of finally shifting to take into account what is going on, what those technologies and innovations are and what they mean for the rest of the world and for the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. You know, one of the things that is also interesting is, you know, Nastya could have mentioned this obviously Iran at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine started to deliver Shahids to Russia to use against Ukraine.

Now Russia is sending those Shahids modified back to Iran to use in the conflict in the Middle East, and that's partially why what Ukrainians have been learning at the capabilities they've been developing are so important for

golf countries we'll talk about this in a second as we talk about the attack just that just happened in Kuwait and there's been some targeting of the fit fleet headquarters in Bahrain as well.

You know, there is really the turning to Ukraine and kind of cooperating with Ukraine is a way for the golf Arabs to learn how to deal with this threat because Ukraine has been dealing with it for four four years.

“So, you know, I think it's really interesting that again, like over the past few months as the media narrative has been shifting a little bit, especially over the past couple of weeks.”

On the Russia war against Ukraine, you also have at the same time this kind of all of a sudden interest, I think, in what Ukraine is able to deliver, what Ukraine is able to to provide to both the United States and US partners around the world, but especially in the Middle East. Yeah, this is a pretty remarkable shifting of roles that I've also, you know, been interested in seeing and I think one really interesting thing that came up that I don't know too much about this organization.

I'm so curious if anyone here has heard of it, it's the defense analyses and research corporation, they're sort of branding themselves as a new type of think tank.

“I think there's a lot of like tech money and I believe Peter Teele is funding it, but they have a, they announced any fellowship a few months ago called the Dark Fellowship or their D.A.R.C.”

They're acronym where they're sending young Americans to Ukraine to learn four areas. No, or sorry, several, but the first one is drone warfare and counter joint systems, so there's this at least that there's this recognition among some parts of even civil society, the defense intellectual sectors that not only are we like falling behind and do we end we have a lot to learn from Ukraine, we actually need to go there and see how this is being applied in the field. I thought it was really fascinating idea again, I don't know, I, I, with the caveat that I don't know much about this organization, I just saw it advertised, but yeah, and it's, I think it's a very fascinating data point.

“Yeah, it really is, there's another aspect that I think is worth talking about and touching about a little bit, which is the macro aspect as well.”

But here's where I think you really get lessons frankly for the United States and for Western allies about how they approach these sorts of proxy conflicts, which is if we take the Cold War as a lesson, probably the most likely type of conflicts these countries are likely to engage in if we have a continuing tensions with China and Russia and major power competitions were environment, right. And that is that, you know, setting aside whether or not they should engage in a more hot direction, insofar as they're primarily focused around economic sanctions, security assistance, other forms of support.

I think it tells you something, something a little bit about the tail of those programs, I mean, we know the Biden administration came in and rapidly installed huge unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia in February 2022. I think that's part because they were trying to match the tempo of the battlefield, I think that's a quote from Julia Friedlander, a former NSC official interview that week or the week after for a podcast that I've had my brain, it's a great way to describe it, right. They rolled out this rapid battery of economic measures trying to essentially scare Russia into saying, hey, this is going to be so dramatically bad for your economy, you guys need to rein it in and stop this and stop pretending like this is a good idea.

Absolutely, obviously Russia proceeded, right. And the economic effect of those was substantial, but not some of that Russia couldn't weather in the short term and even in the medium term for a couple of years. Most experts you talk to at the time, though, said essentially, look, a lot of these big measures, a country with the reserve Russia has particularly because Russia has spent years preparing itself for like kind of an onset of Western sanctions, they said they can adapt to this for a couple of years.

But the cost build up and you see these big systemic shifts and how they restructure their economy and how they deploy their limited resources to balance this all out.

And I think you're really beginning to see that come to bear for Russia.

It supplies worn down their heavily reliant upon like basically black market, transfers of technology you've seen supply from their like labor challenges, which is in a more inherent problem because they are losing huge amounts of people to fatalities.

“They're pulling when people in the military and then a ton of people are fleeing Russia because they're worried about being pulled in the military or for a variety of other reasons or lots of reasons to flee Russia at this point.”

You've also got just a fundamentally dysfunctional economy and the only reason they're the only reason able to stay as close as they are is because of energy exports and energy prices.

And there they've actually gotten a windfall over the last for your four months because of the Iran War has shot oil prices up dramatically. And you've seen the Trump administration completely fall on its ass in terms of updating economic measures against Russia and trying to keep them current in a way that really keeps up current pressure. I can imagine, I would love a counterfactual that says, here's the level of pressure Russia would be under today. If the Trump administration frankly hadn't completely taken its foot off the accelerator and frankly put it on the break in a lot of context about economic measures against Russia.

Europe's state had a pretty stiff clip and continued up to its regime. The Trump administration really hasn't.

We've seen the Trump administration do things like give licenses for a Russian oil exports in the last two months over the because of the Iran conflict. I don't know what that means exactly. I mean that that could mean two different things one like it's not as we're going to talk about in a minute. It's not clear to me the Iran conflict's like coming to an end anytime soon and that may means this is more sustainable because Russia because oil prices are just going to continue to climb. And the ability of the global economy to resist them to resist buying Russian oil is going to decline.

But on the flip side, if you are able to resolve the crisis and able to get oil exports up and prices do drop a bit, which I think every country in the world wants to happen except for maybe Russia honestly, then that really puts a lot of pressure on Russia economically. There's still lots of ways it can redirect what it's doing, but it forces it to just completely restructure its economy to like a much more command style like Soviet model about how you allocate resources like your killing Russian capitalism,

which was a driver of strength for Russian economy for a long time and it changes your society.

“And you have to wonder, you know, part of Putin's rise to power was buying into the new oligarchy.”

And the people who had benefited from the capitalism importation in Russia right and kind of flawed, very flawed, un-equal way. But those people are going to get hit by this like a lot more than a lot of other people. And so the question that becomes, you know, I do think the narrative of all these input pressure on Russia is true. It's just it's a five year time frame, or maybe a five to ten year time frame that we're beginning to see now, not, you know, back and when we would have liked to see it in March and April.

And I mean, I mean, a lot to like Ukrainians, I think for very good reasons, who operate, have to operate on a very different time frame. But it does say something about maybe the trajectory of this conflict and what Western countries can think of this policy set as most effective being, which is maybe not immediately tamping down the ability to engage hostilities.

But setting it out of time horizon that actually matters a lot if it ends up being a war of attrition, like we're basically seeing a new crane where each side's trying to outlast the other.

“Did that resonate with you at all, Nastia? I'm kind of curious as to like how people think about that. You look, I mean, I think for a lot of good reasons, the focus and economic sanctions has come under a lot of criticism for a lot of people.”

But I do think are actually seeing some of the effects of that, as particularly accumulated last few years in Russia. Is there a sense of that, like, the long-term timeframe of this might be limited because of Russia's domestic ability to sustain it there, or are most people assume Russia and Putin will be able to reallocate things as much as they need to continue the offensive. I mean, I don't want to see for the nation of Ukraine that's probably not very fair, but it is my bubble in my other friend from that, that's okay with you, but in my sort of, you know, national security journalism bubble.

I think most people operate with the default thinking that this is still years away from being over, and also that whenever it is over, it's just going to be a temporary pause for the next war. I mean, I think the vast majority almost everyone I speak to says that or articulates that that even if Putin agrees to cease fire, it's going to be a temporary thing for them to sort of get back in their feet and then start the war again. But on terms of economic sanctions and the economic pain domestically, I think undoubtedly, the war is becoming harder and harder for Putin to wage, but I would caution against thinking that that can have some sort of, you know, key impact on Putin's actual decision making.

Because, you know, Russia is obviously society in which one man basically decides everything as far as this war is concerned. I mean, I'd also caution against sort of this mistake of mirror imaging or whatever you call it, where, you know, you, you're a rational actor and you assume that you're adversary also is, but in fact, the Russians are operating in a completely different state of reality with different assumptions with different data also.

And so, all that is to say that like, you know, even this latest reporting by Bloomberg, right, that the Russian Central Bank and sort of the top Russian economists are openly articulating to Putin that this is becoming unsustainable.

“I don't know how much this will actually have an effect on him. I really don't because, I mean, clearly he's not a irrational actor by our, you know, the Western world standards.”

He is willing to sacrifice, you know, half a million Russians who, you know, reportedly died according to the latest stats that I've seen for, you know, the goal of subjugating Ukraine. I don't know.

I mean, there's also, there's also been all of this recent chatter in Ukraine about the potential greater involvement of Belarus. Admittedly, this chatter happens like every few months in Ukraine, it's kind of background noise at this point, because I mean, I'm a reminder for listeners, Belarus is very close to Ukraine, we share a big border, and it's, I mean, I'm forgetting the number, but it's like a few hours drive away from Kiev. The Belarusian border is, and when Russia launched its invasion in 2022, it used Belarus in territory to do that, just kind of bunch of columns of, you know, tanks to Kiev, to try to take over Kiev.

And so ever since then, like literally in the past four years, there has been this chatter that Belarus is going to get pulled into the war more, and in the past few weeks, there have been actually notably more serious chatter than before, even with the president himself. I think for the first time kind of warning about it, which I haven't really seen before, you know, saying that Ukrainian and Ukraine has intelligence that, you know, the Russians are considering sort of expanding their offensive and launching new offensive operations from the territory of Belarus, potentially drawing Belarus closer to the war.

This may be, you know, one of Putin's ways to get out of this manpower constraint and economic constraint, etc. So anyway, all that is to say that like, yeah, I mean, I just, I don't know how much the domestic, I don't know how much, frankly, any component of the domestic Russian situation actually impacts Putin's thinking about this war. And also, Putin still has, I mean, Russia still hasn't announced a general mobilization. It still hasn't done that five years into the war. So like, it has options, right? And so that's a scary thought for me as a Ukrainian, but I think that's the truth.

Well, if Nastia isn't brave enough to speak for all of Ukraine, I guess I'll have to do it. I'm just kidding. Let's, we should probably go to the next segment.

“Well, I think that's a good note of caution to end the conversation on, and we're going to have time to revisit it next time.”

But for now, let's shift our attention to a different corner of the world, where we thought at least I thought, middle of it. So hopefully in the second and last week, we seemed like to be potentially on the verge of a breakthrough. Last week, we saw this series of media reports pretty, at least many of them being sourced to people in the White House is in pretty clear, indicating that they had exchanged different types of agreements with the Iranians. They were very close. I think we saw him paraphrasing a number of senior administration officials saying that we're extremely close to getting an agreement with Iran about how to open the streets of Hormuz have some sort of resolution or timeline for addressing its nuclear program.

For the end of the week, we saw President Trump then through a cold water on that saying, "I'm not going to rush into anything, I'm not going to do anything." And sent an appears negotiations have fallen apart. We've seen a number of exchanges of hostilities over the last few days between two forces. Primarily, what I think the US military would characterize as defensive strikes is idea that they see the Russians doing something other against commercial, maritime traffic or against them, and the US response in kind of a relatively targeted way against people associated with the source of that threat.

“And there's legal and operational reasons why that's like the way they frame these sorts of actions, so not a renewal of the overall offensive, but nonetheless ongoing what I would call hostilities between the two countries.”

And then this morning, we got reports that this got stepped up to perhaps another level more reminiscent of the heated, heyday of the conflict a few weeks ago, where Iran sent a number of rockets that hit, reportedly aiming for U.S. military facilities in Kuwait, of which there are a lot, and there are substantial, and I do have to be near what actually got hit, which was the airport. We're a killed at least one person in Kuwait damage the civilian airport there, and airport that anyways worked the Middle East, including me, probably you are, I'm guessing, maybe you all nasty and Tyler too, have fallen through many, many times.

That's surprising. This is a very media oriented administration.

President really cares about how things are perceived and how they're being reported that constantly trying to shape that kind of perception. So, you know, maybe we were sort of a bit of a bill of goods last week about how close we actually were in these negotiations.

“I think it's also possible that you saw other voices get to President Trump, the ultimate decider in this, we know that he is susceptible to being following the advice of the last person he talked to, essentially.”

And there are big swaths of his supporters, particularly in the more conventional hawkish corners of the Republican Party, that are very, very reticent to engage in agreement with Iran.

Although I don't know if I haven't heard many good alternatives. So I already talked to us a little bit about where we think we are in terms of the state of play in these negotiations and the broader conflict. Yeah, let me start with two things. One is going to be very reminiscent of what Nastia was describing what it comes to Ukraine, and the sense that, you know, I think there is this kind of cottage industry, essentially a folks who follow negotiations like it's a football game, right?

“And they kind of explained who said the last thing, what did they say during the JCPOA talks, there was all this reporting about whether or not the delegations were ordering pizza and what the pizza meant, I'm not even joking.”

So, you know, there is this whole kind of ecosystem that covers negotiations in that way, and I don't think it's particularly useful because then we end up in the kind of situation we've been in for the past week, where everybody is expecting a deal, any minute now, when in reality it's probably a bit more complicated. What's your reasons for it? One is that, you know, it's really easy to read into the ebs and flows and twists and turns of negotiations, when sometimes yeah, sure it might mean something, a lot of times it just doesn't mean anything, right? Like you're always going to have periods of progress, you're going to have periods where nothing happens, and there is quiet work that happens, and that's just how it is.

I just want to make sure that when folks are reading the news and, you know, axios is reporting the latest thing that, you know, unnamed source probably at the White House or State Department or wherever said that they're not taking all of that and just kind of rolling with it. So that's number one. Number two, this is, so that's true in any negotiations that is especially true right now because as you said Scott, we have an administration that is very forward leaning when it comes to the media, the president himself and this is the piece that is unusual.

Typically the president is not tweeting or whatever we call it untrue social, like, is not basically sitting there on social media talking about the latest twists and turns themselves. We're seeing that in this administration and that that adds a layer of, you know, confusion. I think publicly what obviously both sides try to do in any negotiation is they're trying to strengthen their hands and they try to do that, you know, via a number of ways obviously at the negotiating table, but also in the media and information space.

So, you know, we're seeing some of that play out. Then the other piece is what you described, which is that, you know, this is an inherently the vice of topic within the Republican party and in the broader kind of, you know, US domestic political system and so as soon as a deal or the contours of a deal were announced or reported, I should say,

“immediately you had a number of prominent Republicans, Senate Republicans who came out and said, you know, broke publicly with the president, which we haven't really seen happen on a lot of things.”

And there is, gosh, there is a lot of controversial things going on all the time right now, but Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham others came out and said, I don't agree with the president on this deal. And to some extent, Scott, I think you're right that there is probably a kind of a bench of the Republican party congressional Republicans who would not agree to any deal with Iran, I think there is that kind of group. I do think that to some extent, again, the contours of the deal as we were starting to hear about it last week was essentially showing that there was a more for less deal happening, right, that the United States was going to be giving a lot of a significant amount of sanctions relief to Iran for ultimately not a whole lot.

And to be a lesser deal than what the JCPOA was and that essentially all Republicans opposed. And so it would be really difficult for them now to come out and say, yeah, I support this deal.

And it's just basically bringing us to the status Quran tea, what it comes to the state of our moves and giving Iran magnitudes more sanctions relief than the Obama administration ever gave it to impose verifiable limits on Iran's nuclear program. So, you know, I think that is probably also part of it that the president perhaps thought I am not in his head, but maybe the administration thought it was going to be able to get some sort of deal through because, you know, there's not been a ton of congressional Republicans haven't really been breaking.

All right, I wanted to just ask a quick follow up about this experience of four observers or anyone reading headlines at this whipsaw experience of their, we're close to a deal, we're not Trump says one thing Iranian leaders say another thing on social media.

“I think you laid out a lot of very compelling reasons why this is happening, much can be attributed to Trump's style.”

But I think one reason the administration, at least, the US administration puts out there is that domestically, at least, the Iranian leadership is so fractured and so they're negotiating with, you know, several competing authorities or interests.

Is there any truth to that? Or is the Iranian regime much more unified with, you know, a singular negotiating voice than the administration wants people to believe?

I obviously don't know what I don't know, but I do think that they're kind of overselling a little bit the nature of the current regime. One, the administration keeps talking about we have a new regime and it's a different regime and it's not a new regime, right, it is the same regime that is still in place with a lot of the same actors. But number two, yes, a number of the previous leadership has been killed and replaced by, we've said this before in this podcast with folks who are more radical, more ideological, more hardline than their predecessors and who have less governing experience, which tends to moderate people a little bit, right, because you ultimately have to deliver certain things.

And that is just not the case with this crew. And number three, a lot of these people, including the current Supreme Leader, are rising to power in the middle of a war that is the most brutal, most kind of, you know, existential war they've seen since the Iran Iraq war in the 1980s. And coming to power, because there's predecessors in this case, you know, the premier his father was killed so, you know, in a bit of a traumatic moment for their, for in their own life. So, you know, you do have a regime that is structurally the same, but that has new characters that are more radical, more ideologically leaning.

“But I think in a way actually much more cohesive than it was before, and, you know, this week or last week there was some reporting that the president may have stepped down and, you know, there was some back and forth on this.”

I think that by and large, looking at the current cast of characters, there are much more unified that Iran had been in a really long time. This has been a system where ultimately, yes, the Supreme Leader makes the decisions and the IRGC plays a big role, but where there has been within the framework of the regime itself where there has been some divergences of opinion.

And I don't know that you're particularly seeing that right now, one because you're in a war, and so, you know, that tends to kind of create even more limitations within which people have to operate.

And two, because of everything I described in terms of who's now in charge versus who was in charge just three four months ago. So I want to take one step back and talk about this Kuwait incident that we happen, so I happen earlier today, because it strikes me as this is a event that could tip things in a few different directions, particularly it becomes not a one-off, but some of the heads in a indicator of a trend. We see Iranians or potentially a faction of Iranians, again, we don't know how unified command is over the elements that can do some of these things, hitting these regional targets again.

I believe the Iranian line has been there, you are trying to hit US military forces there, but hit this filling target, that's not entirely implausible, because the military forces are there and are adjacent to the airport nonetheless.

It's clearly a problem when you're hurling these rockets into different countries around the region.

So the question, I guess for me, is what sort of pressure does that put on the two sides? On the one hand, I think the dominant media narrative is that, oh, this is intended by the Iranians put additional pressure on the Americans because they're going to start hitting allies and putting pressure on the region again. That's true to some extent. Except the greatest pressure the Iranians have, I think, on the Americans, and most of the world actually is just maintaining the status quo, because they have the squeeze on the straight of our moves. It strikes me that hitting these different regional targets actually, to me, the most plausible outcome of that, again, it becomes a greater trend.

“I think you have to get over a lot of reluctance to do this, is that it may lend some more credence to idea that a military solution actually has a role to play in some of this.”

Whether reopening the straight, whether pushing back against these sorts of Iranian operations, it legitimates a lot of what, you know, a potential military responses, the administration or these railways might consider.

But when Iran started hitting different regional targets, they said, well, we are going to participate in different defensive military actions, specifically tailored to these Iranian attacks on these third party states.

“We saw the UK take that position, I think at one point Spain actually took that position, the number of other countries about saying, here's the thing we are going to participate in.”

So what's your sense of that? How do actions like this fit in? And what does it tell us about the perceptions of the two different sides who might be making these decisions?

It's a weird move for Iran to pursue at this particular moment, I think. Unless they were genuinely thought they could hit just a US military target and they didn't, because it just seems like putting the wrongs for the pressure on them. But am I being too optimistic about how we should be viewing this or is there a different sort of dynamic in play?

“No, I agree with that. I think, you know, it is entirely plausible that they were trying to strike US positions and then what they did, it was, you know, hit the airport. I think that is not outside of the realm of possible.”

At the same time, we have seen Iran overplay its hands and, you know, earlier in the conflict, it started targeting essentially all of the Gulf Arabs, which was a huge mistake because it brought in countries that would have been sitting this whole thing out, including a man, right, which has historically played a very constructive role from the Iranian perspective in terms of mediating on the nuclear issue on other issues between the US and Iran. One of the few countries where Iran does not have a ton of tension with historically. So, you know, they have a history of also overplaying their hands and they have also tended in the past and I imagine that it won't be the last time.

They have also tended to try to drag in other actors into the conflicts with the US just to kind of show that the costs won't be only paid by Iran but also by others to try to kind of force them to get the US to come to some sort of understanding.

“So, that's one set of things. The second set of things is, and again, here I agree with you, that for Iran, you know, it can actually continue in the steady state, I think, for for a while.”

The president has the electoral timeline, right? We are in primaries right now throughout the country. We are effectively in midterm season and he says publicly that he doesn't particularly care that he will continue to do what he's doing with Iran. I'm imagining that he is getting some pressure though from his allies under Hill and elsewhere to try to put an end to this conflict before we actually get to election day because of oil prices and, you know, because of the domestic, you know, this is an unpopular war, my current organization has done some surveys on this issue.

It is a deeply unpopular war and so, you know, I think there is pressure there that is mounting. I think on the Iranian side, they don't really have that same pressure.

One, because actually this is a regime that tends to thrive in conflict situations in a way because it is able to, again, tighten its grip on power, it's able to kind of limit a number of things, number of kind of, you know, it can really impose limitations on its population. And it tends to have a more cohesive kind of political structure in times of conflict than it does in normal times. And on top of that, it is continuing to experiment with this whole notion of, you know, this new tolling system and the straight and foremost.

So, you know, I think this is a pretty sustainable at least for now situation for Iran in a way that it is not for the United States.

Or, or are you or Nasiya, I'm curious about what you make of the big wild card in my opinion in this precarious situation, which is Israel and it's seeming to continue its war quite aggressively against Hezbollah, despite ceasefires, promises of ceasefires, which erupted, I believe in yesterday or the past couple days with quite a fiery phone call between Trump and Netanyahu. And Yahoo, if the reporting is to be believed, it was, you know, quite strong words from Trump. I don't know, Scott or Ari, or anyone, curious what you make of this big factor in the war balance.

Yeah, it's, it's a really interesting report, and part of the present confirmed it, after that he described, no, no, it's fengrys, I don't think he said feng, but yeah, when I'm saying, in this call, although he like later said, it wasn't really angry, I was just kind of expressing perturpence, I think was the language he used, I was perturbed. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I can't even warn Lebanon. I mean, it's really a sign of like, all right, because you're your thoughts on this, but like, my view, in my sense, it's really just a sign of the difficult relationship that the Trump administration that Yahoo government have had really throughout this entire second presidency.

That's because you're in a moment where you just see two very different strategic visions and interests for the two different leaders.

Then Yahoo and his government, it's very clear that their view of what's in Israel's strategic interest is to maintain a region without any really notable major rivals, and if that means that the region is largely in chaos, that's okay, they can manage chaos. That is what you're getting inside our Lebanon, it's what you've gotten in Gaza and sustaining Gaza still despite, you know, the ceasefire and other measures, it's what you're getting in Iran now, and I'd like to keep getting in Iran for a good while after this military operation, which Netanyahu is willing to talk to Trump into, by at least some accounts over the reservations of most of his cabinet members.

Clear split here, meanwhile, the United States is doesn't see regional instability and security as something that is sustainable or desirable from its perspective, and it is feels a lot more of these global economic pressures. I have no doubt their effecting Israel as well, but I don't think there is just tied into it, or on quite the same degree of sensitivity that this president, this administration in particular are. Given that there's a president who's like obsessed about the economy, sees as one of his main talking points was elected on affordability, and is deep-sixing it now because of this ongoing conflict.

That's that, I'm not sure really pushes to the limits here, we see the Trump administration successfully get Israelis to buy into ceasefires and do other things that kind of could strain them in Lebanon. These Israelis do eventually go along with some of it, and then they push back, they basically say, "Okay, yes, well, we'll wrap you back to a C offensive, and they keep pushing on and finding little excuses to push beyond that."

“And the real question is just what kind of sustained pressure will the Trump administration keep on these Israelis?”

Is there a point where the Israelis will continue without them? I highly doubt that.

I think if the administration really draws online in the sand, these Israelis are going to feel a lot of pressure to comport to that, but then will budge against it in little ways and try and move it up and try and build the case to Trump saying. This was not a good line to begin with. People advising you on this were inappropriate. But I do think this goes back to a point that I was going to bring it up in the last one, which is just, I really think Trump needs it to negotiate a deal on this. And that when you hear a conversation like this, it screams for real desperation.

Well, we have to bear in mind, is that like global oil stores, like reserves are pretty much tapped at this point.

I think in the next few weeks, like most of most of most people be tapped, oil prices are supposed to climb dramatically beyond where they've been.

“Now, I think they're like $95-ish dollars of barrel have been a little higher than that, but being people are talking about the next few weeks, oil prices going significantly higher than like 50% higher than that.”

And that is going to be, I have a wild economic effects of escalating the United States and almost every corner of the world. That pressure is going to be huge. So, I don't think that President Trump wants to, especially when he starts really experiencing that, it's the fact that he already is. He's not going to have it many other options other than to find some way to get the straight open. And if Lebanon war in Israel was in its way, I think there what's going to budge.

What do you think about that already? Do you think my being too optimistic about Trump's leverage over these realities or his pressure he's feeling from the global economic situation? Or is he really need an agreement in some way to get this resolved?

“I think in a way he is stuck between a rock and a hard place, right?”

Because if he gets a deal, he's going to see some opposition within his party from, you know, folks we've already mentioned who do not want to see a deal with Iran. And, especially regardless of what it looks like. Number one and number two, it is likely that whatever deal he ends up getting is not going to actually satisfy a lot of people because of the fact that it's probably not going to be that kind of comprehensive, you know, deal that changes all of the Iranian regime's behaviors. And number three, there's increasing reporting that good chunk of Iranian capabilities will remain in place and Iran is probably going to rebuild its capabilities down the line.

So, you know, I don't think that this issue regardless of what deal the president gets is going to be something that kind of sustainably changes the landscape of threats that we've experienced with the Iranian regime. And that is inevitably going to get a lot of people upset. At the same time, to your point, I fully agree, he can't just keep going like this, right? One, I think he's actually kind of board of this conflict, he wants to move on to Cuba, we know as much. And it's clear that he just like he doesn't tend to have the attention span for long chunks of time spent on campaigns or diplomacy or whatever the case may be.

He's ready to move on on a personal level, he's ready to move on politically. And if we get to the midterms and this is the situation that we have and the economy that we have, it is not going to be good for him. So I think he's just really stuck here. And this is where it kind of ties back to the Israel question, which is that these two countries decided to join forces because they had a lot of the same concerns and some of the same, you know, tactical, I guess goals, but politically, I get, I agree with you Scott, I think that the political objectives are actually very far apart.

And it's kind of, you know, it doesn't have to do a whole lot right now, I think, to drive that wedge between the two countries.

But it is very clear that Israel is fine continuing this and as we've said, the president is in the United States is just not benefiting from this conflict kind of continuing.

“So yeah, no, I, I don't, I'm not sure, I think that a deal is certainly possible. I don't know if it's super likely. So I'm like you, I wasn't holding my breath last week about a deal happening.”

But I do think that regardless of what happens, it is going to put the administration and top position. Well, we are going to have opportunity to come back to this topic. We have one more, we want to get you free out of time today. And that is of course the news that broke yesterday, I believe.

I think I was in a meeting with a bunch of people that all have let out exasperated size and will simultaneously as the notification got pushed everyone's phones.

That none of them built pulled gentleman in charge of the federal housing financing administration. He is, you know, the head of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he's the head of this agency. Somebody who's been involved in, you know, it's actually real estate housing related policy and measures so far in this administration. He's a business man with no background in national security, not a veteran, not have any claims of national security background. And he's now in addition to his all existing roles taking on this role as acting director of national intelligence, which is pretty wild.

Tyler talked about your reaction to this, like, where does this fit into the broader scheme of what, what maybe motivating the president to make of this particular choice and how do we expect it's going to echo through the halls of Washington and the other people have an interest in this. I feel like every time I'm on rational security, you asked me to, to climb into the mind of Donald Trump, which I actually do love doing because it's fascinating. But I, and for your, your resident Trump Trump Trump insider in a way, but not that way, let me like inside his head.

I will say, you know, I did have a similar reaction until I saw Shane Harris ever the glass half full thinker who said, we're looking at this all wrong, he's the first DNA to come from the world of housing construction in finance.

“And it's the most diverse cabinet in history if you look at it from a point of view of experience relevant experience, but I think there's a few things going on here.”

One is that it's a, this is typical of this sort of pseudo patronage system, spoil system that Trump operates under, so he has trusted loyalists and he rewards them with these portfolios of authority that don't necessarily have anything to do with their experience, but to my second point, I think Trump also just lacks reverence for these roles, he, he doesn't quite understand them fully. I think he's probably has this idea of, you know, how hard could it be? It's, I just put a trusted loyalist in there and then their staff can do the heavy lifting.

So don't think he, you know, takes it very seriously. And then third, I think what's happening is that the, the DNA, there's reporting that, you know, this, the CIA belief has started to, let me just get this right that they started to, you know, promote the, the DNA and, and elevate the CIA in terms of intelligence briefing, so I think it's just the, the role itself has faced, you know, less prominence. And so I all that together, I think it makes perfect sense that he would want someone like a billpoolty in there, because of that, that combination of reasons.

But curious if anyone else has, has a, has a different take a different psychoanalysis of, of the Trump being mind. Yeah, I already in that time, curious what you take on this, I will add two things to your assessment time, which I generally agree with.

“One, both which are like maybe throwing cold water a little bit on some of the alarmism that this raises, although I think there's plenty of reasons to be alarmed.”

But one is that, you know, the odion I in a weird way is a role that from, from my understanding, my limited experience with that. It's one that doesn't necessarily have, like, tons of power compared to other agency heads, because you're not heading up a huge agency.

You were a bureaucratic layer on top of a number of other very powerful agencies have a lot of personnel that do a very lot of powerful dangerous things, right?

But there's a reason why Tulsi Gabbard, when she did her big photo op in Georgia about, you know, season-goating records, that it was an FBI raid, right? The odion I doesn't have a person, how that they can personally direct through all this stuff, they have to coordinate through other agency heads. The extent to which they have power really is sourced from the extent to which they can work with those other agency heads. And the extent to which they're understood to speak for the president, and to kind of direct and ship all the things.

They do have some of their own internal authorities. They certainly do. They do a lot of over, like, like, kind of coordination and policies. I mean, if I didn't tell them to take me as a whole, but when you're saying, like, okay, is this person going to be able to single-handly direct a bunch of action? No, I don't think the odion I can really, or the DNA, like, traditionally can really do that that effectively.

And said, you're, you're probably really come to a house where close to the president, maybe pull to the very close to the president.

And that he is going to have be able to get a lot of pull that's going to put pressure on John Ratcliffe and other people cash-patel to do things they otherwise wouldn't want to do. But I suspect those people will have a lot of space into part of their space for pushback, and there's not a ton in this administration. I think they've probably still got it. I kind of doubt that pull to kind of got the inside track on that. The other aspect of this that I think is worth kind of thinking about is Paul was clearly put here because he's got a willingness to go after Trump's enemies.

“So that's clearly very alarming. Like, that's what he's put here. That's his only qualification.”

The question that was that if you got somebody's willing to do that does put him in this position really facilitate his ability to do that, I'm not sure it does. But are you, feel free to disagree with me? Do you, do you think I'm off base on this? I am alarm Scott. So I disagree with you. Perfect. That's fine. I think there are a number of ways in which the DNI can have a really serious impact on a number of things. One is, and we've seen this over the past year and a half with Gabbard's tenure, there's been a huge blow to morale within the IC.

You know, the IC has been reviewed and caricatured as the deepest of deep states, right? Where people go who are trying to undercut the president and his administration and, you know, it's obviously couldn't be for the front of the truth. But nevertheless, this is kind of a caricature that exists in some circles.

“And I think to some extent you've seen that really play out over the past year with the, let's say, the Iran assessment by the defense intelligence agency,”

the last summer where, you know, there was a lot of reporting about what that assessment said. I don't want to get into it. But there was this tension between the president and the DNI at the time, Tulsi Gabbard and DIA and could have this view that, you know, these are just deep status where, you know, trying to undercut the great success of our military operation. So, you know, there is this narrative and I think it's, you know, it's easy to dismiss that, but it has led to a number of people leaving the IC, it has led to a number of people being pushed out of the IC.

And so the IC is actually bleeding really incredible talent that that takes years and years to develop.

So that, you know, they can advance national security. And so I am deeply concerned about the future of that workforce. Look like after all is said and done in this administration and you go from one partisan to another in this role as the DNI. The second piece that I'm alarmed about is precisely your second point, which is this kind of hyper partisanship and hyper politicization of the IC and the DNI's role specifically, which traditionally tries to kind of, yes, they're a member of the cabinet, but they tend to kind of stay away from the politics, the day to day politics, right?

And that was in true with Tulsi Gabbard when she decided to join that raid.

“I imagine what someone like Pope, it's going to be even less true and we are going to see this continued politicization of the IC and that is particularly, I think, dangerous place to end up in.”

And it's bad domestically, it's also bad internationally just to take the Ukraine example again, you know, part of the way we built in the Biden administration that international support for the counter Russia actions was because people were believing and trusting our intelligence, right? So to publicly release, publicly disclose intelligence that showed what Russia was doing and people believed it because it was this non this impartial intelligence that was being presented. Now we're back to the Iraq war on crack where we have an intelligence community that is being hyper politicized and so next time we need our allies and partners in the international community to pay attention to what we're telling them.

They may not believe us in the way that they did just four years ago.

The third point I want to briefly make is that it's actually not clear to me to the extent that the extent to which intelligence is playing a role in driving and helping shape policy.

So maybe that's one silver lining where maybe it doesn't matter that much who's there because it doesn't seem like the president cares that much about intelligence, right? Like, you know, we're seeing that play out very clearly in the context of Iran where there are so many things that we have known for a very long time that the president seems to have completely dismissed or been ignorant of. And it's probably because there is not that much interest in consuming intelligence and how having it helped shape decisions that were being made.

The last quick point I want to make is I think there's a question and this is a question for the group about the future of the office of the director of national intelligence. I think that is being raised here.

And different different disciplines and different capacities.

And to try to kind of bring that coherence and cohesion. There's obviously been a lot of kind of back and forth on whether this is a construct that we need, whether it's too much. I happen to be of the view that it is an important office that it should exist. Maybe it doesn't need to keep ballooning as it has been.

“But I think this is maybe a moment where folks on the hill and in the expert community might begin to question whether we actually need the office of the director of national intelligence.”

Because we now have, if this, if this appointment goes forward, we're going to have a second DNI who's just kind of out of the loop, not, you know, and not really adding a whole lot to the conversation. Yeah, all very fair points I should say at my alarm.

I was not saying there's the men that would be saying there's not reason for alarm.

A lot of friends, particularly relating to IZ and the OD and I, simply on the weaponization of an agency front. I'm just thinking there's not as clearly as much you can do here. Although any of you on Mr. Polk found a lot to do with mortgage records. So who knows we could do I suppose with access to a lot of intelligence. I'll bet mostly on foreign targets not to sell it on Americans.

With that said, we are probably out of time today. We will have time to talk about these topics in the future. But this would not be rational security. If we did not leave with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come until we were back in your pod catcher. Nasty, what did you bring for us today?

Yeah, so my book recommendation is going to be a book that is a history of the U.S. Russia relationship by Angela Stent, who speaking with I see has worked in the national security space in the U.S. For many years, she wrote a book the limits of partnership that I got at Strand in New York when I was there a month ago. And it's one of those rare books I actually didn't know they really existed, but it is an academic book that's actually interesting to read. And it's actually engaging and not super dry, although it may be because I'm biased and I'm fascinated by the subject.

“But if you care about the U.S. for a relationship, I think you would find this amazing sort of primer and overview of all of those topics.”

I actually happened to disagree with some of her takes and some of the issues, but that's okay. I still think the book is great, and I recommend it to everyone. It's called the limit of partnership, U.S. Russian relations, and the 21st century. Wonderful, wonderful. What about you, Tyler? What do you have for us this week? I am bringing everyone who has not already heard of her work, the work of Kate Wagner. She's an architect or critic, and I've found myself reading her.

Whenever I read her, I realize that I never read architecture critics, because I think there aren't as many as there used to be, and it's the sort of dying field of criticism.

But the way she explains things, not only of the importance of architecture, but the importance of just criticism in general, as really like, open my mind. People may be familiar with her old blog, which I think now is turning into a book called "Mick Mansion Hell." So she writes, she has a lot of amazing just takes on the "Mick Mansion." A lot of them are not so negative, but sort of very empathetic. Just I think one of the best critics out there explaining a field about which I know very little, and it's a very like accessible way.

So check out Kate Wagner's work.

“Awesome recommendation. Two very recommendations.”

Well for my recommendation, I, or my object lesson, I'm going to dip back into the music. And I have been listening to an outlet that's super interesting. I'm really enjoying it. I would encourage both to check it out. That is from Risa Anderson, it's called the Anthology of Un-American Folk Music. She plays like "Primative Guitar." So kind of like John Fei, he's style, like, I search with finger picking. I don't think it's quite right. I want you to play guitar. No, I listen to a lot of kind of folk music, but it's really interesting, but then she pulls in lots of musical notes, compositions, patterns.

Influences from all sorts of global music. So, you know, having spent a lot of time at the least, I can hear all sorts of things being borrowed from it. Leastrin music, there's stuff from other parts of the world as well, but she's kind of blended together and like a really, really fascinating work. So I really recommend checking it out. It is very cool. It's a very stimulating listen and a way like relatively few things are. And yeah, it's really worth checking out and looking and listening to. And I will say they also, the New York Times, a little profile on her a couple of weeks or two ago.

They shout out that she's spent time at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I have a friend who works and has supposedly a phenomenal music scene and Tulsa, that she was involved in for a little while in visiting that I have not gotten to experience. So, and so far as we'll do it with shout out to the BDC and Tulsa's music scene, all more reason to check out this album. So, that's, again, recent, the anthology of Un-American folk music worth checking out. All right, bring us home. What do you have for our last topic lesson today?

I'm so sorry. I realized that I was insulting like every colleague I have right after I started saying it, but that's okay.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's okay.

“Okay, my object lesson this week is switched on pop a podcast that is not actually a rival podcast, so, you know, it's a very different genre of podcasts.”

It is a great podcast series I've been listening to for years now, and they do really excellent kind of, you know, they introduce you to new music.

They sometimes unpack music that you already know in ways that you just would never think of.

It is by a musicologist at a songwriter, and each week they either do a song, an album or an artist, and I just love listening to all kinds of episodes. They've done deep dives into one of my favorite songs. Everybody's favorite songs, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, where you could have come out of it thinking, wow, I had not heard all of these things before.

“This is really awesome, and makes you think about the song very differently.”

But also artists I don't particularly like, like Britney Spears, they did a whole episode about her, and I was like, wow, there's a lot to actually appreciate here. So anyway, how do you recommend it? It's a fantastic podcast. Awesome. Well, folks, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Ref Security is of course a production of Laugh Fair, so be sure to visit Laugh Fair at Laugh for Media.org for our show page for links to pass episodes for a written work and the written work of other Laugh for contributors and for information, Laugh for its other phenomenal podcast series.

“Well, you're out of to be sure to follow Laugh for an social media, be sure to leave a rating or a view wherever you might be listening.”

And sounds become a material supporter of Laugh Fair on Patreon for an ad free version of this podcast among other special benefits. For more information, visit Laugh for Media.org/support.

Our audio engineer producer this week was me of me, and our music has always was performed by Sophia Yen.

We were once again edited by the wonderful Jan patcha. I'm back for my guest, Ari Tyler and Nastya. I'm Scott, our Anderson, and we'll talk to you next week. Till then, goodbye. The new audio builder with Nell Hörspir. Agatha Christis, the model of her ABC.

Aestings and ishgereen, while on the art, exactly as I said. Hopefully back as tomorrow, Malik Bauer as hasty. Now, turn to the new audio builder.