Rational Security: The “Stop Cap” Edition

On Friday, March 6th, Laugh Fair and Georgetown Law are bringing together leading scholars,

“practitioners, and former government officials for installing updates to ECPA, a half-day”

event on what's broken with the statute and how to fix it. The event is free and open to the public in person and online. Visit LaughFairMedia.org/ECPAEVENT. For details and to register. Kate, I feel like you're about to heighten me up on a music video or something or should

be wearing a large clock. What's going on with the trucker hat? I like this. I like this kind of vibe. It's a little throwback.

It's a little throwback.

It's a little Kate has been shared yet this afternoon and that's, you know, what can

I say? It's early afternoon in your defense. That's okay. It's a good sleep room. Yeah, I'm young children and I'm like coming down with something, I'm like kind of,

but the hat is a gift that I had printed for a group of TAs in my property class. And it says, "I was a T-A in Clonix property class and all I got was this stupid chattel." There's a double on Tondra, like, pun there with chattel and hat and there's like, you know, there was kind of just like a bad joke about, like, you know,

“about property law and terminology, but yeah, I'm so this is what I'm, so that's what I'm”

wearing today. It has a little bit of a, there's a moment, I don't know if anybody, if you all are sports fans, we're like Brian Robinson, who is the running back for The Washington Commanders, had like a giant hat. It was trying to get a thing started where they were advertising hats over, like, five

times the size for a normal head, so you can have big advertising on, and that's what that hat demands. I feel like, 'cause you have a full run on sentence on the front of the hat. It needs more real estate to really take full advantage of it. Yeah, you know, the kids are saying these days that something's cap, if, like, it can't

really be believed, it's BS. I feel like it's great to have a big hat on hand to be able to put that on any time someone is capping. This is going to become Ben's new thing. We have to be careful about spreading ideas around them, and this he jumps on these things

very quickly. Don't I know it? Why would, like, we're, like, you know, five years into dog shirts, and that all started with a little fun. I'm really sorry to everyone. That is an entirely a cateclonic problem. I will say, we know where the fun of this gay problem was. It was fun. I thought he was just

doing it for the show, and then all of a sudden, they're just everywhere. And now Molly may have just expanded our demographic into the Gen Z years. This is actually a practice doing that through the whole episode. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to Rational Security, the show where we invite you to join members of the Laugh Fair team as we try to make sense of the week's big

national security news stories. I'm thrilled to have some of my colleagues back on the podcast to talk over a couple of big, national security news stories that we are following

this week. First off, joining us is Laugh Fair's senior editor returned. I think back

after a little bit of leave, none other than Professor Kate Klinick. Kate, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Great to have you back on. And it is so fun to be back. Wonderful. And join us as well as Laugh Fair's public service fellow. One of Laugh Fair's public service fels. I should say Troy Edwards. Troy great to have you back on the podcast. I think the parents number three ish or so now, I'm happy to

have you on. Thank you so much. Good to be here. Three rounding on a while you would have around two three, but somewhere in that vicinity at least. And joining us is I think officially a Ratsack regular. Now Laugh Fair, senior editor Molly Roberts, how did it feel to be elevated to the regular scene. You know, I think this means it's like SNL when you go to a feature player

“status. That's what you've accomplished here. And I hope you're as proud of that as you should”

be. Yeah, I think I've peaked. Yeah, exactly. It really, it really doesn't go anywhere from here. I could say that's why I've been doing this for five years because I didn't seem to change. I want you to get that status. But regardless, I'm thrilled to have you guys on. We've got a lot of kind of disparate stories and disparate corners of the national security ecosystem, percolating. All of which seems like it was worth spending some time on. And we thought we would

pull together this crew of very a folk to the very different interests and focuses to talk about it. Our three topics for this week, topic one, missynthropic. On Monday andthropic filed a civil complaint in the northern district of California and a petition for a hearing at the court of appeals for the DC circuit over the defense department's designation of it as a so-called unquote supply chain risk. Litigation caps off weeks of building tension between anthropic and Pentagon officials

over the firm's two ethical red lines for the defense department and its use of its AI model clawed, specifically setting around widespread surveillance of Americans and the use of AI in autonomous weapons. What exactly is the Pentagon's grounds for designating anthropic as a supply chain risk and how does anthropic argue that doing so is inconsistent with the law? And what might the implications be for the AI industry as a whole? Topic two, the mishodian candidate. I've

been trying to find an Iranian city that starts at capital M. There's really, there are a couple

but it works for these purposes. Fears that Iran might respond to the ongoing Israeli U.S. military campaign through overseas terrorism has come to ahead this past week as reports emerge that U.S. intelligence has detected an encrypted message being transmitted from Iran that some believe may serve as an operational trigger for assets sitting outside of the country.

“What do we know about Iran's involvement in past, clandestine operations including terrorism?”

And what does it mean that this is all happening at a moment when the Justice Department and FBI have lost so many of their experience with national security personnel in topic three. Mericopa colops now, Mericopa colops now, there we go. I tried to practice that one and I still

failed at the first end. There's just too many consonants in a row. Federal investigators have

ramp up several inquiries that seem here to be aimed at longstanding and thus far unsubstated allegations of fraud in the 2020 election that are particularly popular with President Trump and some of his closest supporters. Last month, FBI agents executed a search warrant on phone counties, election office and confiscated ballots of voting equipment used in 2020. Last week, FBI reportedly subpoenaed records from a conservative Arizona legislator over the state Senate's audit of the 2020 election results in

America Copa County. And days later, the Department of Homeland Security's Homeland Security Investigations Office, or HSI, requested records from Arizona State Officials regarding their own

“investigations into alleged 2020 malfeasance. Which we make of these developments and what point”

should we concern about the federal government's engagement in these sorts of matters in advance of the upcoming 20, 26 midterms. And of course, the 2020 general election would be on that.

For our first topic, Kate, I'm going to turn to you on this very messy dispute that has now emerged

between anthropic and the Department of Defense. It came to a bit of a head last week. But of course, it came to a head at the exact same moment that the Trump administration decided to engage in a large scale military campaign against Iran that remains ongoing. Which we're going to talk about the second topic. So we had to spend last week dealing with that. And the week that we kind of held onto this topic, it has a right been to bet. We now have that one but two legal actions

filed by anthropic one administrative, one more conventional federal court action, contesting what the Defense Department has done, which is to designate as a supply chain risk. This authority that's usually used against foreign companies, often foreign companies with strong and nexus is to foreign adversarial, and if not hostile foreign governments. Now being applied

for the first time to my knowledge to a US company, talk to us about what is exactly the basis

for what the Defense Department is claiming for being able to do this and why anthropic, how anthropic is challenging, what sort of actions it's pursuing and arguments it's making to try and reverse this action. Yeah. So I'll just kind of back up just slightly and kind of just again just kind of remind everyone set the state of like how we got here because it did kind of get folded into everything with Iran, which I don't think was a total accident that these things

were kind of simultaneously brewing at the same time. The fight between anthropic and the Pentagon is really a fight where who gets to kind of set the rules for military AI. And the DOD, DOW has basically said that and propaganda is a supply risk because its cloud model has ethical guardrails and limits on certain kinds of lethal uses or mass surveillance of US citizens in particular. And they wanted the the company to set those aside. They were dictated, but anthropic had in its

government contract terms that kind of broadly said that they were allowed to set these kind of ethical guardrails such that they were. And so based on that kind of language and anthropic pulls out, this is we're not going to kind of remove these. There's this brinkmanship. I want to kind of just

“briefly point out something there that I think has been under discussed in the recording of”

this, which is that this is there's not really guard. There's no like there's no specific standard of like build the fence this high or we know exactly what will happen if like if we allow this to to take place. This is in a lot of ways in my in my belief and in kind of with the intelligence that I'm kind of like surveying from people that are in Silicon Valley and abroad is like another part of kind of the smashing grab before the midterms of like just trying to get out there

and take as much and go as far the administration and go as far as it can on kind of creating like setting the stage and taking executive power over these types of contracts and over this type of tone and how AI gets set up with the belief that if you kind of do this and you set this out and you you know and I think that even a few months ago that they might have had more success with this in an anthropic wouldn't have pushed back as much that if you set this out that there's going

to be kind of an ownership and a path dependency that happens over this that will be hard to reverse course on. On the code gets written things get kind of built up into the system and so that happens. But in all of that there's kind of this breakpinship back and forth and products is no we're not going to do this. Do you know you say okay we're going to label you a supply chain risk and of course anthropic filed suit on Monday in two different jurisdictions they filed suit in a civil complaint

around the contract dispute and first amendment violations they also filed for TRO and then on

on the same day they filed in the DC circuit and so they filed in the DC circuit to challenge a supply

“chain risk designation. So that's what's happening and what you are seeing interestingly is a lot”

of advocacy groups and other other frontier models and other engineers and other technical experts deciding to write amicus briefs deciding to already get out there and kind of join this fight and so it will be very interesting to see how this unfolds over the next couple of or the next couple weeks. Microsoft has already filed an amicus brief on the TRO in the northern district today and a number of engineers from open AI Microsoft a bunch of different places all filed an amicus yesterday

in support of anthropic who's represented I think mostly by Wilmer Hale in the northern district civil suit and then I you know we know that like there's you know the Center for Democracy and Technology fire and a button you know ACLU a whole bunch of kind of like kind of predictable

players are going to be reaching out to kind of battle it out over whether or not there are first

amendment arguments whether this is a peer contact dispute or whether this has kind of no popular and then there's also like the peer public law part of it with like the uh and national security part of it so anyways it's just going to be like a host of different really interesting issues so Molly I know you listen in on the hearing that took place on this yesterday tell us a

“little about what you heard I believe there's a northern district California hearing it's a recall”

I talked with a little bit how how the court uh engaged with his arguments approach these things and notably here's here's my understanding of the Kate Molly Kurt from wrong you basically have the northern district of California pursuing a bunch of mostly constitutional claims maybe some

broader EPA claims I have to I have to go back on my myself where the APA comes fell but basically

challenging the whole implementation and seeking an injunction about stopping the implementation of this particular action then you have the specific statutory provided review process more of an administrative process but going through the DC circuits specifically challenging the basis for the design of the supply chain status is that about right Molly and and that gets which arguments do we see focused on in the in the court hearing you heard yesterday yeah it's about right

so yesterday was just a status conference for the northern district of California case and the judge there it was mostly about when should they have the hearing andthropic wanted it sooner the government wanted it later andthropic essentially one out on that partly because the government wouldn't commit to taking no additional retaliatory actions in the meantime which anthropic said it was worried about the reason they filed in two places is because there are two statutes that

the government cited in its letters to andthropic designating it a supply chain risk and one of those statutes Congress has routed all cases regarding designations under that statute to the DC circuit so they had to challenge that one there and then the other one and the what anthropic is calling the public directives which are the public statements including the tweets or posts or exes or whatever you want to call them from Donald Trump and Pete hegg Seth challenging those in northern

California as well so these will be proceeding in parallel they're going to try to have both them proceed quickly the DC circuit when is happening a little later than the other because part of the process for that statute requires them to first ask for relief from a government agency and then be denied so they ask for relief from hegg Seth interestingly it's anthropic versus department of war anthropic is being very diligent about saying department of war not department

of defense which is kind of funny I went to a case last week that was the New York Times versus the Pentagon for press access stuff and that was department of defense aka department of war

“and the lawyers there were not saying department of war but in any case that's what's going on”

that's why it's in the two courts and they didn't get to the substantive issues in this status conference they just talked about when they're going to have the hearing which will be on the 24th. So Troy you know you've been obviously practicing lawyer at a different area of law than some of the stuff by be curious but if you have thoughts about how we see the attorneys many even more former government attorneys many of them are folks law fair nose of various stripes

involved in this case how you how you're envisioning their kind of approach that's Molly described a little bit of a cautious approach around framing tone department of war obviously like excited non adversarial take on that very weird optical front but one that's really the government seems to care about and that rings a certain way given the kind of culture war background you know what else would you might you expect to see about hand to how anthropic is approaching this sort of

public messaging I'm broader framing and other activities context I'd be curious if you have a sense of that yeah a related point I've been wondering about is how the parties are going to handle their out of court statements so in most of these districts including California and DC circuit they have local rules that govern what the parties can and cannot say outside of a court once a matter begins a lot of that is to make sure that you're not you know if it's a trial

a jury trial coming up later you know you want to pollute the jury pool but it's not limited to that once it starts there are local rules that often govern and restrict what they can say on the matter

“that's going to prove to be relatively difficult here I think for the parties just based on”

the historical nature of the relationship I mean for a week or two there at least a week we saw

the CEO of anthropic Dario on Moody and the head of DOW or D consistently basically send messages

back and forth across the bow right there was a public statement or essays written by enthropic there were statements by DOD through some of their relevant individuals relatively sharp and tone from DOD and soft and tone from anthropic which is I think a nature of what we're going to see play out in the litigation so okay let me come back to you on kind of the broader sort of industry implications of this because we've seen actually a pretty strong reaction I think across the different

frontier labs and other people engage the private sector elements they are that's I think carefully couching their criticism of this to some extent but clearly concerned about it objecting to it I think avoiding saying anything to hostile the department of defense department of war but nonetheless obviously having clear reservations understandable because this obviously is a major federal intervention in the industry and federal intervention in you know a parallel company

that they could see that coming back on them what are the broader implications for you know the industry and how it approaches either defense type of work and how this fits into it other defense technologies frankly the defense department often operates on the assumption that it's such a central part of the market for the product that it can dictate a lot of terms that's not as clearly the case here does it seem to me in regards to the cloud or any of these other

models so so talk to us a little bit about the market and kind of broader industry dynamics around

“the case yeah so this is I think it's kind of interesting I mean if you've been following AI kind”

of breakouts and kind of the conversations if you've been like kind of a conference is what do

you think I feel like all have been kind of hearing is this kind of vibe of like they're so powerful

this could be so bad we have to do something but there has not been I just really like it's been it's been really frustrating for someone that like kind of craves like rigor because there has just not been any rigor around what the threat is or like what could go so bad and I think that this is actually in some ways incredibly useful and hopefully like like good pause button to kind of show us what actually the threat is and here's in my in my estimation one of the

threats that kind of was revealed by this these frontier models are but burning through compute at like an incredible incredible rate I think there were numbers that were just published that said that anthropic is spending three thousand dollars on average over like subsidizing by three thousand dollars every user of cloud right now so like like a month like that's just crazy like that's crazy levels of compute and so they're not it I mean and no one's going to be

paying three thousand right now anyways people are not going to be at a consumer level paying three thousand dollars for for to use cloud so this is kind of like well who is this product for

who's going to be buying this product who's going to be using this incredible product cloud is

clearly like the best in has kind of emerged as the leader and there is questions of like whether the six-month or pre was in the Elon and Grock could try and like get up to speed in some type of way and that's a terrifying thought because it's such as such an inferior model but cloud is really powerful and it does seem like kind of what what I'm hearing when I'm kind of talking to people the companies and things like that is that yeah they they need government contracts like this is like

that is the race the races to kind of establish who's going to be the the government contractor and getting built in a really foundational level into those systems will be is seen as kind of like once that code is kind of like in the system you're going to have a hard time untangling it and so

“I mean I think that that is kind of what we're saying now with those kind of constraints”

in place of like what that kind of threat is we can see very clearly that like okay you think that you're just going to be able to control this and like the you're just going to hand over all of your code all of your capability all of your compute everything to the government and we'll just have the super weapon of AI to use however we want or we can build a super weapon of AI to use however we want and you have a supply chain that's basically like or like an anthropic it's like no you're not we're

still private entity I mean I think it's like one of the first kind of real real moments where we

“know what actually like what what the constraints are and what like the risks actually are like”

what they're what we're actually going to kind of be risking long term and it's for the litigation just to kind of what like a little bit of a plan on this that the litigation coming through and everything else there's I mean I'm sure that in rat tech people are familiar with the idea that speech is code from from like the Bernstein case in the idea that this is like you know that asking there's an argument that like that you can say that it's happening or not but that basically in

the government compelling anthropic to not code things a certain way or to code things a certain way that they are compelling speech and that is the first amendment violation I mean the opposite thing is that like if the government contracts with you for printing services you don't just like tell that like you don't like the color of their poster as you don't just not bring to their posters and that's on the first amendment violation it's a contract dispute and so there's a lot

“of kind of there I think that there's a lot of kind of really heavy problems both kind of from a”

net-sec perspective and a really practical perspective about which model ends up becoming like the there's just so much path dependency and like which model ends up becoming the one that gets kind of the main DOD contract and and I think that the secondary argument will be kind of the secondary kind of real like question that we're finally getting is like how are we really thinking about code how are we really thinking about the constitutional protections of code is it conduct is it product

is it you know is it speech and how does that play out across a million different areas of like

civil litigation and constitutional protections and the copyright and all types of other things so anyway so that's kind of a big sprawling but if you can believe it that's actually a more cabinet kind of what what can AI like how can AI ruin us than we've had for I would say the last year and a half let me pull you in on this try just because I I want to get another lawyer's perspective because I look at this array of claims and I come to a slightly different conclusion

that sounds like you're coming down this cake which is like I look at okay you've got these background constitutional claims do process first amendment claims I have trouble seeing that many courts actually eventually reaching them at any point so it doesn't seem like we're going to have much clarity here because the statutory administrative basis for what the defense department seems to have done in this case really seems like pretty weak to me I mean this is an authority

that obviously has never been used against the US company it pretty clearly seems to be intended

for use against foreign companies it's not even applied to things like deep-seek and like other like foreign AI models right it's just being applied this one case that strikes me it's like a real uphill battle just fight even in his own like natural security where usually executive branch gets a lot of difference am I off on that try I mean how would you feel if you were the government's lawyer going in and this is the record you had to defend its conduct off of not great particularly because

mechanically I'm now wondering can I not use clod and can the other side use clod in drafting my place and litigating in my limited to lesser models now but I but your question is well taken which is probably legal in nature and and I think I would not feel great there either because one I think the court I think you're right one the court is going to want to avoid constitutional questions which is a constant doctrine of the court right you know we

don't want to get into these meaty constitutional issues if we don't need to let's turn to the statute and the facts before us and determine those issues and if those are determinative then we can resolve it there I think that's as far as the courts can need to go here I think the court can dive into the statute dive into the facts leading up to this analysis and resolve it now another reason I wouldn't feel good being a government lawyer here is you run a significant

risk of creating bad case law right and you mentioned the difference that the court offers

“to a lot of to the executive branch and national security issues I think there's an important”

reason for that difference law fair recently put out a a good article written by a number of Natsec former officials that say judicial difference is still important and national security cases but the difference owed to the executive branch is rooted in history and comes from a pretty good default of expertise in the executive branch if the executive branch here leans heavily on that difference I think a court is likely going to create some pretty bad case law by deciding that

that difference isn't due here given the raw analysis and how I think incorrect it is on the government son yeah I mean it's it's been a kind of extraordinary record I say this as you know a post 9/11 generation national security lawyer where the assumption was the executive branch would get and after 9/11 did get really substantial difference on all sorts of fact judgments all sorts of policy laden determinations but we see now courts from the Supreme Court on down

still but bears into some extent in the learning resources I eat a context we have second guessing

in uh like certain immigration context I mean enemies act cases um you have second guessing in a number of the other case saying well we're not sure executive branch if we can fully buy into your assess one of these in the uh domestic deployments cases like they said expressly yeah you actually do get a lot of difference and even with the substantial difference we give you multiple circuit courts said executive branch you're just not meeting the burden in this context right

and well it's been court didn't vindicate that on that theory like those holdings are still out

“there uh the circuit court weren't weren't told oh you should be applying a much more generous”

standard of review so it's just like it's difficult terrain to operate on I think if you're the government so while let me come to you on that like why are they doing this because it does seem like they're gonna lose uh and I really think that was our colleague Alan Rosenstein wrote a piece

saying yeah this designation is gonna survive first contact with the law from my limited reading

and I've done and I'm pregnant and attending to more in the next few days like I seems right to me it's really hard to see how this survive so what is the goal here and so far as this is just part of a broader effort with broader motivation what are the parts we might we see emerge in the days and weeks to come in addition to this you know initial designation yeah I mean I think that it is theater to a certain extent there's a lot of talk about theater within the AI community

too right there's talk about it all being security theater when the AI companies make these statements saying that they do have prohibitions on like open AI for example saying that it does have prohibitions on master valence and then people looking a little closer and saying actually this is just any

“awful use but I think it's also theater on the side of the administration here and that really what”

happened was anthropic first of all saying specifically no we're not just gonna go right ahead with

everything you want p-dex f and then p-dex f feeling like that was opity of anthropic to have the goal to suggest to him that it would tell him how he should run his department and how he should be using or not be using technology and I think he just kind of took umbridge at that or Trump took umbridge at that too I think that's really a huge part of it and then I think there's kind of the broader culture wars and that anthropic is the woke AI company which is certainly

how it's been positioning itself and you know Daria mode has not been shy about criticizing for instance in a recent essay what ice was doing in Minnesota whereas Sam Altman has been fairly differential to the administration and the and open AI other executives have been donating to Trump

“so I mean I think that I think that that is some of it I think that it's a posturing signaling”

kind of thing so yeah I mean I think it's difficult to know exactly what they'll do next I think that again to the extent that they can make these public statements that show wow we're going after anthropic that's probably what they want mostly to do because I think they also don't really and certainly not anyone for further down the food chain who is any knowledge of how anthropic is actually used to deity would not want them to stop working with anthropic I

mean would not want them to do anything to cut off more quickly for instance their ability to use these models on which I think they do rely pretty heavily because like Kate said they're the best and in fact that's partly why the national security rationale is so bogus you saw that they want to keep using this if they can as long as they can and they initially said they were going to invoke the defense production act because anthropic was so important to national security not

a threat to national security so I think they put themselves in a tough spot in terms of what they want to signal and in terms of their actual operational needs it is obviously important and fascinating in case we'll have to see where it goes I have a feeling we're going to have opportunities to revisit and discuss it more in the future but let's move on to our second topic for now and that is the question of a different sort of retribution from a very different corner

of the globe we of course now in week two of an ongoing Israeli US military operation against Iran a wide-ranging one that has really substantially decimated Iran's already fairly weakened security apparatus taken out its supreme leader potentially and a variety of other insecurity and political leaders around the country continuing to target various aspects of infrastructure overseas maritime assets as we saw in naval vessel get hit by US submarine off the

stream on call last week and Iran has been responding not quite in kind but in a similar kind

a variety of civilian targets as well and what I think is fair to describe is a very indiscriminate set of attacks or if it's discriminated deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure

in various points but you know the one thing we haven't yet seen that has always been baked in

to the assumption about how Iran's going to respond to these things is overseas terrorism we seen Iran engage in this sponsoring it in the past we know about the famous attacks on synagogues in central america in south america ten twenty years ago it was tied to Iran the bondy beach attack just last year in Australia Australian officials have tied that to Iran and various degrees so they is this inclination there is this tool in their toolkit that they have used in the

past we haven't seen it brought out yet but now we have these reports about this encrypted radio signal being broadcast around which I should say there's some a fair amount of

“flag around exactly what this means I think our our former co-host america Shane Harris wrote a”

great piece on this in the Atlantic kind of breaking down debunking at least some of the confidence about what exactly this means one possibility at least is the idea that oh they're signaling to these overseas assets these kind of ensuring candidate sleeper agents around the world hey

gloves off time to start doing things try I want to come to you on this first because you

have help prosecute you know different elements of the kind of broader global Iranian operatis as a prosecutor I know you're working with some colleagues now looking at some of these patterns what Iranian has done talked to about what Iran's historical pattern of the sort of retribution has been and how this latest set of development by fixing it like why aren't we seeing the sort of response is it something we're likely to see you know what what is the broader

“Iranian pattern and of practice in this sort of area so the toolkit that Iran has and that it's”

pulled from historically is pretty diverse so just zooming in on kind of a five or six year period from the US strike on custom salamani the former general or commander of the iRGC cuds force

which is the military apparatus in Iran focused on external operations that just zooming in on the

period following that attack from the United States shows the diversity of this toolkit the Iran has facilitated murder for higher plots and assassination attempts both on the homeland and in European countries when our government officials travel we can talk a little bit about some of those specifics they've engaged in affirmative cyber attacks on United States infrastructure both civilian and government and then they engaged reportedly in election interference in the

2024 presidential election and those are just three of the smaller examples that the iRGC and Iran engages in when it has this long-term memory to respond to US aggression or or other countries and that's to say nothing of their operations in other countries and Matthew Levitt actually has a really nifty tool to use an interactive map across the world to focus in on all of these Iranian external operations efforts so just that's zooming out that's just a toolkit that they can pull from

“the second question just in terms of why we're not seeing it now I think it's important to say”

that Iran has a long memory and we're only a week or two into this and at this start of these strikes on Iran the president president Trump said that this would likely take up to four weeks it could probably take longer but he he guessed about four weeks I think that should factor in to why we're not seeing the certain kinds of asymmetric attacks on the home front or otherwise yet I think it's because there's potential that Iran is playing a game of attrition here

allow the US in Israel to run out of munitions or to run low on stockpiles and then try to inflict political pain on both you know the US and Israel and one way to do that is to wait and then surgically approach with an asymmetric approach in the United States home front to make the political cost on Trump and his administration increase significantly while they were punishing stockpiles and I don't think we should rule that out just because we're not seeing it now doesn't mean it won't

come you know in the near future so after the salamani killing we know there was an effort like a kind of publicly stated that intent to take revenge on behalf of salamani to avenge salamani by the Iranian government that was again stated fairly publicly widely reported and did have real elements although none of them really came to fruition so so can you tell us a little bit about what we know about what that effort look like

what it consisted of and you know where it came from we know there was of course the immediate Iraq and Paraj against an awesome airbase in Iraq which did injure somewhat fairly badly a number of US service members but not directly I mean mostly as a result like the concussive force

and therefore that kind of limited the most direct hostility then we had the what had been ongoing and then increased after that hostilities with different Iran back militias in Iraq let's take that out of it what about the broader global picture outside of Iraq and the region what do we see around try and do why didn't it succeed what part might have succeeded and what is

“that tells about what they might try and do here yeah so I think there's a pattern though and even”

though we're excluding it I think it's relevant to say that Iran often works through its proxies in the region with these kind of more immediate military reactions to US interests in the region

and those proxies give it both this kind of space for deniability which they almost always do

after the attacks but they also then allow them to funnel just through finances and logistics to these other groups and to maintain their stronghold on those proxies the reason I highlight it to answer your question is it's actually a similar process that plays out in the asymmetric approach that Iran has to reaching into the US home front so for example in some cases post salamani when Iran reaches out to you know for example attempt to assassinate a dissident that had

fled Iran and had criticized Iran's regime in the post salamani time period Iran has reached out to criminal organizations organized criminal organizations in other countries including for example

“a partnership you may never have guessed hell's angels out of Canada which there is a hell's”

angels faction in Canada I did not know that before this case but Iran has this reach that

extends not only to these kind of you know more prominent terrorist networks in the region but these criminal organizations in the United States and around it so for example in that case they reached out to hell's angels through encrypted platforms and arranged this murder for higher plot to travel and attempt to murder a dissident in Maryland and that dissident spouse the same thing in New York when they reached out to in the Azerbaijani faction of the Russian mob with some

members that lived in New York City and they organized another murder for higher plot of an Iranian dissident in the New York City area and then scale upward in terms of targets post the salamani strike Iran both publicly stated but then actually acted on attempts to murder or assassinate national security officials in the Trump wanted administration and so that would include an individual that was charged at a DC that attempted to arrange for an assassination on John Bolton who was

then the national security adviser during that time period and then there was a second payment or

an offer from that same target to pay even more money to have then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo assassinated and then you know add to that when Mike Pompeo traveled to Paris a book that was published last year described details around an Iranian attempt to assassinate Mike Pompeo in a hotel in Paris and again this is four or five years after the salamani strike all evidencing this long-term memory that Iran has and even though there was that immediate aftermath of a strike on a U.S.

base you know and it was successful in injuring a number of U.S. service men and women it shows that Iran has higher hopes and the long-term memory to attack these folks that were directly

“responsible for the strike I think that will we should be concerned about the immediate aftermath”

and we can talk about the diminished capacity for us to defend against it but this is a concern that folks should have for the foreseeable future I mean years into the future yeah so I actually I have a question in that really quickly if I can cut in so try like I'm hearing a lot from people that are saying like what a great time for us to have completely dismantled like all of the FBI staffing and the decline in DOJ personnel and everything else right as kind of we ramp up all of these

efforts that create exactly the types of threats that you just described so I mean can you just say a little bit more about that yes so you know and just to kind of amplify the concern as Iran's infrastructure and the IRG season for structure and Iran is diminished by some of these strikes from the US and Israel it's possible they start to shift to kind of a loss calculus of risk acceptance as opposed to risk aversion so before these strikes and and maybe even a little bit before the June

2025 strikes from the United States on some of the nuclear facilities Iran was in a place of risk aversion right they have a pretty strong foothold although it started the weekend post October seventh retaliation from Israel they had a strong foothold in these proxies now as they start to lose that foothold and they lose the capacity even in their home front they may shift to a risk tolerance model of decision making because of how much loss they've incurred and so what that

means is they may be back to the corner where they may react a little more aggressively and that aggression can kind of look like a number of things one in may just look like Iran putting out public statements that motivate low and wolf type attacks individuals who are in the United States

it was pretty soon after the strikes started on February 28th where an attacker in Austin Texas shot up and killed I think multiple individuals at a nighttime area of Austin and I know it's a standard investigation but the public reporting is that he had some kind of Iranian

“paraphernalia or shirt design on and so you know you have to worry about that just the messaging coming”

out of Iran to radicalize out of 330 million people the risk is non-zero and increasing

that someone is going to take to that cause and then there's the more Iran's sponsored attacks or networks from their intelligence apparatus that although they're weakened in the United States they're going to have the ability to reach out and connect to folks in the United States and elsewhere and Scott you mentioned this I think it's fascinating there is this kind of reporting going on both in the Atlantic but in the ABC news about this number station and it's it's actually chilling

I have the audio I don't know if it would come through I can play and I actually have a recording of the audio that's been broadcast over 10 times over the course of the last week I might try it's 20 seconds if you don't I mean in this no let's try

so basically it is a 22nd clip where the individual yet says infarcy you know announcement announcement

and then a string of seemingly random numbers the reporting is suggesting it and I thought there was great reporting out of the Atlantic as you mentioned wondering what is this is this Iranian origin

“is this a signal to folks like sleeper cells in the United States to activate them I think it's”

good you know question to ask there's also some reporting that there is an Iranian origin jammer trying to jam this signal all the way out to Canada and so that's a pretty strong jammer and effort from Iran to potentially block this signal but then it's pretty quickly shifting to another radio frequency and so there's still speculation about whether that's Iran doing both and trying to kind of cloak whether or not it's them or them them sending out the message or them sending out the blocker

and then there's ABC reporting that seems related to the same number sequence that's going out that says that there's a government alert out to law enforcement agencies that provides a little more detail that says that they believe it's likely of Iranian origin to sequence of numbers and potentially related to a message out to these folks who will attack in the United States

“all to say it's a really important time to have a robust national security apparatus to deflect”

against these kinds of attacks and we are unfortunately at this time at a weakened state of a national security apparatus and if you take these kind of tools we've talked about the murder for higher plots the espionage attempts all the way to cyber attacks that various agencies that are responsible for guarding against them have all been diminished you've got the FBI's counterintelligence task forces that are focused on Iranian counter espionage that cash

betell fired a dozen or so of those agents and analysts about two days before the strikes began you've got NSD which has two litigating components the counter export and boy I used to call them counter espionage section and that's not actually what they're called but the CES section and I was part of CTS so I hated on them kind of like the Yankees and Red Sox and so and then there's the counterterrorism section both of which have been dwindled I mean it's reported that the head of

counterterrorism section has been deployed since last fall as a member of the National Guard activated in the District of Columbia as part of that surge and that it is down about 50% of its personnel and same with CES it's been reported that CES the folks that remain have been focused on the Epstein reductions and so when you combine this FBI distraction and dwindling and the same with the National Security Division at DOJ it's really concerning that there the folks who may remain

have their eye off the ball and the folks who aren't there have removed the kind of institutional memory and relationships that are required to keep our eye on these kinds of sophisticated attacks from Iran it really is pretty extraordinary and I will say I mean there's a administration I look at this particularly at the overseas album which I'm more familiar with from my professional background

and you look at the way they've been evacuating embassies and not essential staff or you know

early on before they launch the strikes they started moving some essential personnel out of you know a day or day or base and some of these other local regional bases they knew were like they'd be attacked I didn't see anything specifically about embassy bagged at buy wouldn't be surprised I mean there aren't there really not essential personnel there anyway or there are but there aren't there aren't like family members usually stuff like that to move out now we've seen you know

all the way to be root all sorts of other areas all in response like what was anticipated to be

the Iranian response to an action like this this is not a surprise people been talking about this for a decade or more like this is exactly what everyone you've asked how is wrong and a respond it's going to be to hit all of these targets particularly in the region the fact that they were

“this late to take that step I do think is pretty disconcerting I mean like I think it does say”

maybe they didn't think they were actually going to take the step to launch the scale of operation maybe they thought they're going to do something much more limited early on so they didn't think anticipate the sort of response maybe they think it was going to go on this long maybe the decision would just reach so quickly they didn't get it to the rest of the bureaucracy

was kept in such a narrow channel I didn't get it to rest of the parts of where people would know

would say hey we did start taking XYZ step but does not speak of a lot of like the preparation that goes beyond the strictly operational side to these sorts of things which is really disconcerting when you think about something that has a global knock-on effects including potentially here at the home front where again as you say try we like we've had such a weakened apparatus like it's astounding and if something does happen it should be a massive political liability for absolutely everyone

involved and it's one that every people like lots of people will offer and a lot of the other people I've been warning about for the last year as a consequence of what the administration is doing

“and that's the predictable outcomes from what I think that's right those are the those are the”

concerns we knew we should have going into an operation like this now think about the concerns we have in the aftermath of this that we can't predict right knowing which individuals maybe traveling awkwardly or concerningly may knowing which way the money is going to go and and the folks who are responsible for tracking that and watching that have all either been fired or put in a position to be focused on other issues and it's a really concerning you know model that will

continue to exist as we see the government continue to beg for people to come back and fill these ranks and try and hire and fail to do so so I want to come to you you know as we get closed in on closing out our conversation on this topic although again another one we're going to have opportunity come back to talk just a little about how the administration is framing this and how it fits into the broader political discourse both around the Iran operation generally but also as we're in

this moment we're approaching you know very important midterm elections we know the president as we're going to talk about a minute is doing things related to the elections one of the presidents trying to pass the safe america act desperately to the point that he's got john court and flipping on the filibuster now and effort to secure the republican nomination for the Senate in Texas right that doesn't appear like it's likely to go anywhere but it's still

some of the administration that he's basically laid out is his only legislative agenda

this all fits into an area where you see growing american discontent with the conflict with the economy which is being hit by the conflict all these other factors how is this going to be politically justified and like how do those different political pressures do they tell us anything about what the tempo and pace of the operations are likely to be like are we seeing a sense from the trump administration of some waffling around this sort of stuff or are they

finding other instrumental uses for these other factors how is it going to be politically justified I mean I don't think they're going to succeed in justifying it politically I just don't think it makes any sense for their base the way that they would justify it politically I mean it's not going over well so far it just didn't seem like a very magaline to say oh well the poor protesters we love democracy I mean that just to add just doesn't fly the one area that I've been interested

in and this does tie into the elections and I don't think this was totally on message for the administration but trump was tweeting and no one else was saying this but he was tweeting it wrong was interfering in our elections and now we're going after a wrong and that was sort of concerning to me from the point of view of election conspiracy theories generally which have had a lot to do with foreign interference and the particular legal rationale that some of the

kind of fringe actors in or close to the administration have been floating around taking federal control of elections which have to do with this is a national security emergency we have foreign

“interference and I think that those are pretty bad arguments but I also think that they're slightly”

easier arguments and certainly if you were trying to do this in a more legit way or you were citing specific statutes they're slightly better arguments if you're able to point to a foreign adversary with whom you're in an armed conflict and I saw an essay I suppose by Timothy Snyder maybe today that I think is a little melodramatic or he was saying oh maybe in this goes to the sleeper cells thing where he was saying maybe it's to trump's benefit to invite terror here

because if you have terror here then you can really declare a national emergency and you can

that is perhaps a bit overblown and I'm not suggesting that the president is trying to get around

a and sleeper cells to activate and attack Americans citizens I'm not suggesting that at all but I do think that they're being some form of conflict is useful when it comes to alleging a national security emergency I know that Kate has thoughts also though on the politics of this yeah no I just completely agree with you Molly and I just kind of wanted to like kind of cut in I have not I'm not as skilled and kind of like the operations part of any of this or kind of

understanding that side of it I'm you know just a civilian and then that sense but I do kind of I'm watching the domestic kind of deployment I'm thinking as he's saying all of this kind of stuff

about election interference this is a message to his base like that is a hundred percent what

kind of the manga base want to hear they want they have like rallied around election interference

“and everything else you know since 2020 and that you know I think that like just today like”

Joe Rogan said that the war in Iran is like a betrayal of like all of kind of the manga base and so I just I want to kind of put sample you're saying and just kind of be say yeah like they think that this is a way to kind of just it's just a manipulation of the message to justify the like the maneuvers to the domestic audience that he is trying to please and kind of stem some of the damage that this war kind of looks like he's like kicking off and I mean I just say that I think it was

the president that said just this week which is I mean you don't want to become numb to this when asked whether or not Americans should be concerned about a terrorist attack that would kill Americans after these strikes his answer was I guess I mean that's a that's a phenomenal statement in the little sense like I can't I can't I can't believe that he that that that's our approach to the aftermath of these attacks knowing that the national security apparatus has dwindled

yeah well put well let us take a moment to pivot now to our third topic and that is what Mollie has already alluded to which is this question of election investigations and allegation election interference not looking forward to looking backwards specifically in regards to that bet noir for president Trump and certain people around him the 2020 elections that he lost the president Joe Biden Mollie talked to a little bit about what we've seen at the last

few weeks in terms of the Trump administration's maybe not pivot towards this issue which has

always been hanging out there or something they care about but maybe move towards making more

taking more concrete steps towards investigating this and how it fits into some of these broader narratives around elections fraud that we're seeing looking ahead 2026 and 2028 yeah for sure

“I think it's interesting that you say not looking forward but looking backwards because”

separating those two things is quite difficult in this context I think you're right that what we've seen in recent weeks has been literally looking backwards the rate of the elections warehouse in Fulton County where they left with a bunch of ballots and information about that election and then this subpoena to the Maricopa County official who is sympathetic to them and I think would have given them all that information anyway those are focusing on again conspiracy theories

about the 2020 election that Trump lost and Maricopa County and Fulton County both were I don't know if you can have two epicenters but they were centers of those conspiracy theories of that kind of fight and there was a widely discredited audit that Republicans did of what happened in Maricopa County that you know when you really look at the fact shows that there wasn't any malfeasance but this appears to be the president trying to re-litigate all of that so you could say

alright he's upset the people are saying he lost an election that he thinks he won or that he's saying that he won and he wants to try to punish people retaliate against political enemies and also just

“prove to his base that he was right but I think it's more than that because this is to me forward”

looking as well there are lots of actions the administration is taking related to the midterms including trying to get voter rolls from a lot of states which blue states have sued red states have complied and then also molling and I'd say that loosely but the president tweeted about trying to achieve what the Save America Act that seems stalled out in Congress would achieve by executive order and so the Save America Act is voter ID voter registration it's not although the president has been

saying a lot about this making it sound like it is it is not banning mail in ballots but he really

that he's obsessed with and he's saying I can do that by executive order I have an irrefutable

“legal theory and it seems like it's possible that this irrefutable legal theory could involve”

saying that there's a national security justification and this ties into falton we know more clearly but may tie in America as well which is that when they say the election was stolen in a lot of cases these conspiracy theorists are alleging foreign interference and Renee de Resta has a really great piece up on law fair just recently about kind of the top five of these conspiracy theories about foreign interference but the idea is you alleged there's foreign interference and you use that

as a pretext to take executive presidential control over the elections which is not constitutional but that's kind of what they're thinking about doing so when I look at those raids I view them

in this broader context of an attempt to rest control over the elections and achieve these

republican objectives that it doesn't seem like congress is going to achieve even though the only constitutional avenue for it is for congress to do it yeah it's interesting like here's the part of this that I wrap my head around or have trouble wrapping my head around although it may just be that I am like just inherently more skeptical of you know the utility of some of these things that have a messaging component is that the president can declare all these actions there's

lots of people at least certainly his hit hit's camp that already believe all these things are true he could take all these actions without doing these additional investigations I don't think there's a much reasonable basis for believing the additional investigations actually in a yield evidence that supports his case for doing so it could actually do the opposite

and if what he's worried about is ultimately a legal challenge to say that these efforts are

unfounded or baseless I'm not sure why these investigations actually put them in a stronger position to do that they might help in the external optics to say with these are actively under investigation like that gives it a hint of legitimacy and this administration really buys into that right like that we've seen him do that with a lot of these political retribution things like well you're under investigation for this we're starting

investigation into that and that alone gives credence in their view to saying well there's a basis for us to take action around this but I have trouble buying into the idea that pursuing these sorts of investigations actually helps build the case for these further steps and I think like I might actually weaken it because if they're going to tie and tie evidence you know their cases into evidence for these investigations and it becomes a legal challenge people are

going to seek discovery for it people courts are going to want to look at it and it's going to be harder to hide the lack of basis than if you just don't have that data to begin with try

“I'd be curious about your thoughts about so like I'm approaching this as what I think of as”

front of litigation perspective from somebody who does not actually litigate things so I might be totally off but like what does that resonate to you like what where how do you see this investigations fitting into potentially an eventual effort to say we're going to take legally controversial executive action around 2026 do these help hurt like how how do this fit into that picture I think it's going to hurt it and like you said but it might take on it is is that when the Trump administration

particularly when DOJ acts on an interest for the president they enter the halls of the criminal justice system into a courthouse they then surround themselves by a bunch of rigid walls that close them in that are tied to truth right so the criminal rules a procedure the local rules the court system the ABA ethical rules you erect all of these road locks to them being able to actually do anything with this information we've seen that play out after fault and county when bears

parties now file 41 g motions and the federal government gets bogged down and trying to justify that they can keep these records before they can do anything with it courts can pause them from being able to do anything with materials we've seen this in an unrelated case with the search warrant for the reporter from Washington Post where the government had to freeze and not be able to look at things so all to say when you enter this criminal justice system it's a testament to

our institution the administration now is locked into a set of rules policies and procedures all of which surround the touchstone of truth and that starts to play out disfavorably when you wonder if this can lead to the federal government being able to take advantage of the information they're collecting in a way that's not envisioned in the criminal justice system you know another example this would be i suspect there will be a number of limits to what the FBI can do with

information that they collect by subpoena or by search warrant and if the government then turns around and uses the information pretty explicitly to erect a number of executive orders

“i think there will be avenues for parties to challenge that as simple violations of the material”

that they've collected through criminal process so i see this as they're presenting a number of hurdles between here and midterm elections being interfered with yeah i mean that's great to the

idea is is this to some extent a test run we're gonna see what happens when we look at a

past election and we go in and we take a bunch of ballots and we're gonna see what happens in court and we're gonna see what hurdles we have to surmount and maybe we don't care that much about what we come out with here maybe best case we get a bunch of kind of half information bits of information that we can then contort and that Tulsi Gabbard can put in her threat assessment and misrepresent in her threat assessment but then if we use that threat assessment in the future

with an active election to try to take a similar action we know what the process looks like in court we know where people are going to get in our way and then we can decide whether we're going to listen or not we can decide or we're going to respond because we've had this test balloon here and we've kind of run the game already i mean i don't want to be apocalyptic about it but that does feel like the what you're talking about feels like kind of the best case version of it

“and i think that's the worst case version of it yeah that that's a that's a fair point”

i'm heartened by the fact that even the trump administration you know will get a court order from the supreme court for example on the tariffs and the most they've done so far as we you know throw their arms up and yell that this is a desecrated institution but then follow the order once we see a deviation from that practice i'm with you molly i mean we're we're in trouble oh i will say i mean here is the thing with our institutional system that i think is like

you know proven to be a real bull work of stability in you know turbulent times is that the whole legitimacy of the whole rest of the system actually following the direction of the person in charge is that they believe they were a lawfully elected like there's a reason really the president was not lawfully elected and he nonetheless stays in the White House and appoints a new attorney general every criminal convicted in the federal government is going to

challenge the appointment of that as your any general which we already saw with the striutica

murderer the first trump administration right that causes real problems we're seeing it now with

the different you as attorneys right like okay the federal government you have a federal government he's in charge of but they can actually successfully can they prosecute anyone okay and then like when you get to you know individual soldiers or individual you know civil servants where they're asked to do something unlawful and then they face a court order to the contrary and that court

“were by the way says by the way like none of this is lawful you have to have such a systemic control”

to dictate the influence all the way down consistently enough to actually simulate and assume control of the system that it just strikes me that that I think maybe Donald Trump person people think they have that capacity but it's based off a very grandiose idea of their own popularity and significance and cultural like weight and heft that I just don't think carries that I think it's more about a symptom of being in a you know a an echo chamber ideologically then actual political

or social or social reality so I mean I that'd me they don't try I'm just not sure it's I'm not I'm not as worried about that actually succeeding I'm more I am worried about the temp maybe in certain regards but like the effectiveness of it is such a downstream council but and I think frankly you look like a lot of like everyday republicans who may go along with Trump sets these popular and gets elected but the end what I've issues with is and see political

fortunes that extend beyond their 80 year old president and say maybe I don't want to ride along with this I don't know I like I'm I'm I'm cynical about so many things but the absolute collapse of democratic government is one where I like have troubled getting all the way there how it gets there as rocky as road as it might be but maybe I'm I'm too uh Rosie Rose colored glasses uh a little small deep democrat in that regard sorry to end it on my little rant there that's

my that's my my inner institution must come again I'm good I already had my head and chin I think between our your skepticism institutions am I in here I'm I'm I'm just torn I mean I just like I

don't know right the problem is that I know that's my vision yeah yeah yeah you could be right

“and that's how it goes and you know you could they've been so weird about saying that they'll”

always listen to the Supreme Court I it's so weird to me that they have and that they you know haven't uh that I mean with the terrors it was interesting to me that the worst thing he said was that they betrayed their country but um but it's just unclear to me at what point that breaks down is it a I'm deferential until it's about the election I don't know no I just also just kind of want to say there's a you know that Thomas Edzel had like a piece I just thought the headline of it

and kind of briefly skimmed it in the nearer times it was about the smash and grab presidency reaching its apex and I have to say I don't think we're on our way to the very like the final assent but I do not think that we're at the apex and one of the reasons is because I think we're going to see increasing levels of desperation before the midterms I really do think that they see

through I think that we're seeing and when I say the courts returning comes through I think we're starting

to see things that we always need to lose they've said that they were illegal we've taken them

to court we're getting district court opinions or whatever kind of and they don't want to appeal them we're seeing that from like the firms and other types of things they don't want to create precedent that's longer than this presidency frankly in some type of way that hurts their

“chances at ever doing this again and so this is this is I think something to kind of keep in mind”

to your point is that I think it's going to get a little worse unfortunately before it gets better I think that this kicking off of the run is like actually kind of like I don't know like the final day up to the top like to the summit and I think we're going to kind of be in it for the next couple of months yeah and you know I've had a similar thought where part of the concern I see that I have is folks are going to start realizing how existential it may be as they

approached the midterm elections folks who are in the the administration and cabinet are going to see it and I'm curious if we're going to start to see some of the more fringe voices start to cry out that you know if we lose this election you'll be prosecuted by a featured administration and you'll be put in jail by a featured administration not to say that as some kind of sunglasses but to say that to fear monger and make sure that they rally a group of folks who may act to in fringe upon this

election because they see it as a bit of an existential step and so the question then becomes if that's true and we start to see that play out how should you know the other side of this political apparatus respond should they are we going to start seeing Democrats talk about yes we should prosecute these folks or are we going to see Democrats start saying boy we need to provide off ramps for these folks to be able to step down and say okay yeah this is too far for me

I've disbanded from you know the current administration and here's what I've you know learned

or know or here's what I support so that way they can start to shift toward a more free and fair election I don't know I'm curious to see how the both sides start to react to another as we get closer to the election which feels like a vector yeah yeah all fair bunch well last for us today into here in future episodes we've heard the moment we are out of time this week but this would not be rational security if we did not leave you with some object less than two ponder over in the week to come

Kate what did you bring for us this week I brought my Balkanization mug classic I know it's so great Jack Balkans like original like legal analysis but log populated for a long time largely by law fair favorite Marty leader in kind of rants and I'm on that there is but yes and so

“this is from there I think it was their 25th anniversary I can't remember but it's just crazy to think”

that it's been that long but yeah wow indeed indeed well there you go congratulations Balkanization I think that was actually the wildest of 25th anniversary right yeah Troy what did you bring for us this week okay I swear I didn't coordinate with Kate ahead of time but mine is also a mug because last time I was on rat sec I talked a little bit about the firings of a bunch of friends in colleagues and our national security apparatus I brought my ex fed hat sadly between that episode

and my second appearance there has been another slate of firing so folks who I'm close with and yet be I and so I brought my ex fed mug for those folks there you go color scheme seems low at less cheery with the mug now it's getting more and more my emotional state as it happens yeah indeed indeed well absolutely still a phenomenal logo and I'll ask if these go out to a lot of those folks as well obviously wrestling with a difficult moment for my object lesson I will say

I was stuck in union station a few weeks ago or union station now has acquired a very hip and useful and cool little store that sells used records and used books which if you're stuck in union station for like three hours right definitely happening because I live in DC but it was just like a weird

coincidence that I had a wake-up waiting for a train that never left while I was there

it proves and picked up some like great album some great books one of which I'm really enjoying

“and reading and it has weird points for this particularly moment I think this is Barbara”

Tuckman's a distant mirror I'm free at this hotel I'll let me pull it up so I can remind myself it's about the something about the 14th century a distant mirror where did it go the calamitous 14th century that's right which is this incredible portrait of like one French kind of a state over the course of about a century a little over a century mostly straddling the 14th century but it's this incredibly deep deep dive into medieval culture of the origin between church and state

and all these other things and it is fascinating really interesting and completely brutal to read and make sure appreciate just how improved we are in our modern day for all of our problems off of the issues they face back then and then there are all sorts of weird parallels where you read it and you're like you could read this exact sentence about stuff happening today it's so strange just like how much people are still the same even you know centuries earlier in such disastrous

know this I looked up the Wikipedia entry on this by highlighted this quote I think it's such a good quote

“from the book which I'll read which I don't know how to take exactly how this bears anything relevant”

but I do think it's just well done interesting where she writes after absorbing the news of today one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes crimes power failures broken water may installed train school shutdowns muggers drug addicts needle nauties and rapists in fact is that one can come home in the evening and unlucky day without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena this has led me to formulate Tuckman's law as follows

the fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five to ten fold or any figure the reader would care to supply I don't know how to take that in this particular moment but it's very useful and very true at least historically I don't know that's true of like news reports but it's really historically it's useful but yeah it's interesting she has such a it takes great joy in describing and researching really horrible things that is kind of a useful skill

at this moment and with that I'll turn you to Molly who brings a similar joy while covering

“terrible and merciless things here for us all over what did you bring for your object lesson this week?”

Yeah I'm out of talent so I was kind of scrounging I do not have a favorite mug unfortunately I am however in California and I was thinking that I could vaguely relate it to what we talked about in that the and drop it case is taking us to California and so I have brought a very California item although I think it's southern California but I just discovered the existence of because we're staying there is an avocado and tromoya orchard so this is a tromoya which is a

custard apple so new fruit for everyone to try although I don't know easily you can get them at home

“I could I'll try to pull it open alright you can you can see it's like all custardy is it good it's sweet”

it was fun out Scott is like this is the month been around you yeah we've been promising for years it's

finally coming together I will say it's good it's it's definitely tropical tasting it tastes like

an amalgam of many tropical fruits if you have texture issues like issues with weird textures perhaps would not recommend but I'm on my not be for you I'm the friend to all textures so I like this custard apple interesting all right this this we have to go this we have to go check out I love it wonderful well with that that brings us to the end of this week's episode rational script is of course a production of law fair be sure to visit us at law firm media at org for our show page

for linked to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other law fair contributors and for information on law fair's other phenomenal podcast series while you're at it be sure to follow law fair in social media wherever you socialize your media be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of law fair on patreon for an ad-free version of this podcast among other special benefits for more information visit

law firm media.org/support our audio engineer producer this week was me of me and our music as

always was performed by Sophia Ann we are once again edited by the wonderful gen patch up on behalf

of my guests Kate Troy and Molly I I am Scott our Anderson we'll talk to you next week until then goodbye (gentle music)