The “Mosquitos and Heat and Sweaty and Eww” Edition

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So, Ari, I think anybody just listening to this won't be able to tell me you're 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 environment. Technically, I think you should be in a puffy coat, eating a sausage or a deep-fried ravioli. I think that's like Lekly-Z-Lewis, but you know what I mean. It's a little different vibe,

but you're bringing your own flair to 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 talk 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 out. 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 D.C. where over the summer, you just don't leave your house, right? Because mosquitoes and heats and sweaty and eh. That's our experience. That's actually lovely outside in D.C. today. But other than that, we're preparing for the inevitable 90-degree swamp that we have most summers. Yeah, I admit, I've 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 have this vision of tropical Chicago that I like never want to abandon in my brain. Because I see these pictures. I hear 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. I want to see like, you know, a sunny reflection of a tropical drink in that big silver bean, whatever else you guys have going downtown.

It's, it sounds lovely. Just miles of beaches. Just miles of beaches and sailboats. Exactly. Exactly. That's kind of what my vision of Chicago. I will say I lived in, I told Ari this before you moved there, but I lived in Chicago for 10 months, and I did the architectural boat tour three times. I guess you're so incredible.

So if you want to talk to me, talk about Chicago tourism, I'm your guy. Don't tell Mike Feinberg and Natalie, but I think I'm a Chicago convert. So I'm not part of the cult that is Chicago. I feel like it's a dangerous thing to assert when you move there in like April and it's only June. Like let's see how that first winter goes. And then we'll see how big a convert you really are. That's true.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Rational Security. The show where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare 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 to be 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 Lawfare Public Service Fellow, now Lawfare, I think contributing editor? I think that's where we later, right?

It is Ari Tabatabai 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 Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrion. Tyler, thank 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 I'm excited to have you back on. Whatever poetic title, you just gave me as far too kind. I don't know if I'm the masked. I think that's probably you. That keeps... Well, we have a... It's like one of those multi-masted boats. I just listened to a podcast by Master and Commander, so I have big old boats on the brand. And it's like you can be one of the masks. There's like several masks. It's okay.

It's not just the one. There's not one of these little dinky, you know, boats like they have outside of our place in Chicago. A lesser mass. Yeah, they're all equal mass, style. They're all important. The boat ain't going anywhere without all three masks. 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 Kiev is our Ukraine fellow, Nastia Lepadana. 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. It's always 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. Topic one for this week. The Empire strikes out. Russia's ground offensive in Ukraine appears to have hit some stiff resistance, with losing some territory over the past calendar year in the face of a strong defense by Ukrainian forces,

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 a major offensive against Hezbollah over the weekend, in part, to keep them alive. What do we make of all of these developments? Has there been progress towards a negotiated solution to the conflict, and is there any reality to Marco Rubio's assertion that the war has come to an end? And topic three, Polt fiction. President Trump announced an unexpected pick to take over the position of Director of National

Intelligence on Tuesday. Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, erred to a residential home building empire with apparently no national security experience whatsoever. President Trump said Polt 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.

This is something we've been talking about internally at lawfare, I think over the past few weeks, few months really, and 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 reasons, an 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 they've lost in more and net. I thought one assessment from the Institute for the Study of War suggested they had net lost territory over the last calendar year, more or less. We know that they are facing huge economic headwinds at home, particularly massive manpower

shortages at home, 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 in this conflict, talk 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 just shift to a different phase? So you're right that there was,

you know, for a lack of a better term, a vibe shift in the way that the war in Ukraine is covered in the last few months. There, you know, have been articles in a number of outlets, some of which I have written, 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, this 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, it's in 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. And 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 this 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 I even get into them, I'd caution against making any sort of grant predictions of, you know, Russia's counterfeensive is, is, you know, is about to grant a halt or Ukraine is about to win the war. Like, none of that is true. I mean,

you could very much argue that everything I'm about to tell you is like way too early to even judge whether this is going to be long-term consequential. So, you know, just, you know, 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 cut 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 and register and be approved by the Ukrainian government. And this was a little bit of a headache for literally myself included because I as a civilian had a Starlink so I could have internet during power outages. 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 comms just kind of basically shut down one day 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 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 effects 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 in 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 it 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 logistical lockdown or logistics lockdown. 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 Manlyde Russia. So that's the so-called land bridge in the south of Ukraine, this chunk of occupied Ukrainian territory. That, of course, is a very prized possession for Russia because it helps the Russian stern occupied Crimea basically into one large military base, supplying it from mainland 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 of art, but basically able to hit all of these important supply routes. And it's such a problem that some portions of those important highways have now been blocked to civilian traffic because the authorities and occupiers are trying to control and trying to do something about it. And so all of these drone 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 cautioned, again, making any grand 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 simple analog to it. And the medium-range drones, the only, you know, cost-effective antidote to that would be the interceptor drones, which are these drones that Ukraine is now mass-producing to counter Russian Shahed drones. And Ukraine has had to deal with this Shahed 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 have never 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 Russia's rate of advance really slowing down.

Also, according to Ukrainian authorities, which, you know, we should take that with a grain of sold 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 Ukraine 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 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 share statistics for their losses. And even when they do, I mean, I think Volodymyr Zelensky have flowed at 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 moral reasons. everything else. So no, I don't know what the statistics on the other side are. But there are all of these, you know, 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 the Ukraine is able to decimate its supply lines, given that is how Russia defended itself from Napoleon in 1812,

the Germans in the 1940s. And it's a 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,

drone-related technology, counter-drone technology, because all of a sudden we see these reports of Ukrainians, Ukrainian officials, occasion private citizens, showing up in places like the Persian Gulf and other contexts where drones are all of a sudden being deployed and they've got just 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 the ability that we've seen of Ukraine really be able to push back what I think in 2022, in January 2020, 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 just a little about these and new emerging technologies and the way we're seeing them play out. And what that might tell us about the trajectory of this conflict where they first really came to a head. Yeah. And to Nassia's point about 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 a sudden people are waking up to this notion that Ukraine really knows what it's doing when it comes to drone and counter drone 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 here, 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 in maintenance. And by the way, then they're using those same very expensive, very sophisticated capabilities to shoot down these really cheap drones. So finally, you have... Gulf Arabs kind of waking up to this idea that they should really be looking beyond the United States and they should be looking to Ukraine because there's a lot to learn there. The United States, frankly, 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 in the Middle East. So, you know, one of the things that is also interesting is, you know, Nastia kind of mentioned this. Obviously, Iran at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine started to deliver Shahheads 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 and the capabilities they've been developing are so important And for Gulf countries, we'll talk about this in a second as we talk about the attack

that just happened in Kuwait and there's been some targeting of the Fifth 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 Gulf Arabs to learn how to deal with this threat because Ukraine has been dealing with it for 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 provide to both the United States and U.S. 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 tech money and I believe Peter Thiel is funding it. But they have a, they announced a new fellowship a few months ago called the Dark Fellowship, where they're D-A-R-C, their acronym, where they're sending young Americans to Ukraine to learn four areas. Oh, wow. Sorry, several. But the first one is drone warfare and counter drone systems. So there's this, at least that there's this recognition among, you know, some parts of even civil society, the defense intellectual sectors that not only are we like falling behind and do 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 a really fascinating idea. Again, I don't know, with the caveat that I don't know much about this organization, I just saw it advertised. But yeah, it 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. Because here is 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 or 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, maybe something a little bit about the tail of those programs. I mean, we know that Biden administration came in and were rapidly installed huge unprecedented economic sanctions on Russia in February,

2022, in part because they were trying to match the tempo of the battlefield. I think that's a quote from Julia Friedlander, a former NST official I interviewed that week or the week after for a podcast that I've had in my brain. It's 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. And that failed, absolutely. Obviously, Russia proceeded, right? and the economic effect of those was substantial, but not something that Russia couldn't weather in the short term

and even in the medium term for a couple of years. Most experts you talked to at the time, though, said essentially, look, a lot of these big measures a country with the reserves Russia has, particularly because Russia has spent years preparing itself for like kind of an onslaught of Western sanctions, they said they can adapt to this for a couple of years, but the costs build up.

And you see these big systemic shifts in 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. I mean, Russia's supply chain, incoming supply chain for key components of its defense tech sector is decimated. It has been under massive export control. It's several years now. Its supplies have worn down.

They're heavily reliant upon like basically black market transfers of technology. You've seen supply from their like laborer challenges, which is an more inherent problem because they are losing huge amounts of people to fatalities, they're pulling a bunch of 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 they're able to stay as well as they are is because of energy exports and energy prices. And there, they've actually gotten a windfall over the last three or 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. You can imagine, I mean, 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 his foot off the accelerator and frankly put it on the break in a lot of context about economic measures against Russia. Europe stayed at a pretty stiff clip and continued updates regime. The Trump administration

really hasn't. And we've even seen the Trump administration do things like give licenses for 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 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 mean 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, 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 you're 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 Vladimir 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 a kind of flawed, very flawed, unequal 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 there is that the narrative that all these things put pressure on Russia is true.

It's just it's a five-year time frame or maybe a five-to-ten year timeframe that we're beginning to see now, not, you know, back in when we would have liked to see it in March and April. And that may not mean a lot to like Ukrainians, I think for very good reasons, who 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 an outer time horizon that actually matters a lot if it ends up being a war of attrition. Like we're basically seeing in Ukraine where each side's trying to outlast the other. Does that resonate with you at all, Nostia? Yeah, I'm kind of curious as to like how people think about,

look, I mean, I think for a lot of good reasons, the focus on economic sanctions has come under a lot of criticism for a lot of people. But I do think you're actually seeing some of the effects of that, particularly accumulate the last few years in Russia. Is there a sense of that like the long-term time frame of this might be limited because of Russia's domestic ability to sustain it there? Or are most people assume Russia and Vladimir Putin will be able to reallocate things as much as they need to continue the offensive?

I mean, I don't want to speak for the nation of Ukraine. That's probably not very fair. But in my bubble, I'll refrain from that, if that's okay with you. But in my sort of, you know, national security journalism bubble, I think most people operate, you know, 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 Vladimir Putin agrees to a ceasefire, 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 Vladimir Putin.

to wage, but I would caution against thinking that that can have some sort of, you know, key impact on Vladimir Putin's actual decision making because, you know, Russia is obviously a 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're a rational actor and you assume that your adversary also is. but in fact the Russians are operating in a completely different state of reality with different assumptions with different data also. I mean, we know that Vladimir Putin doesn't actually understand the reality on the ground and is constantly being given flawed data on, you know, Russia's successes

on the battlefield. 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 Vladimir 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 rational 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 and chatter in Ukraine, but 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, 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 Belarusian territory to do that to send a bunch of columns of, you know, tanks to Kyrgyz. 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, 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 Vladimir 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 Vladimir Putin.

thinking about this war. And also, Vladimir 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 Nostia isn't brave enough to speak for all of Ukraine,

I guess I'll have to do it. I'm just kidding. We should probably go to the next segment. Hey folks, Scott R. Anderson here. It is officially hot here in Washington, D.C. The kind of hot where biking to work means arriving, already regretting your life choices. Or the only sane afternoon plans involve shade, something cold to drink, and anything other than jeans. Luckily, Quince has you covered for the season.

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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. But for now, let's shift our attention to a different corner of the world where we thought, at least I thought, middally when I played in this segment 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. it seemed pretty clear, indicating that they had exchanged different types of agreements with the Iranians. They were very close. I think we saw in 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. Towards the end of the week, we saw President Trump then throw cold water on that saying, I'm not going to rush into anything, I'm not going to do anything.

And since then appears negotiations have fallen apart, we've seen a number of exchange. changes of hostilities over the last few days between two forces, primarily what I think the U.S. military would characterize as defensive strikes, this idea that they see the Russians doing something either against commercial maritime traffic or against them, and the U.S. responds 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 purportedly aiming for U.S. military facilities in Kuwait, of which there are a lot, and there are substantial. I do happen to be near what actually got hit, which was the airport, where killed at least one person in Kuwait damage, the civilian airport there, an airport that anyways worked to the Middle East, including me, probably you are, I'm guessing, maybe you all nasty and Tyler too have flown through many, many times. And it's a bit of a transport hub, particularly for the United States and for Americans in the region. So, Ari, let me turn to you on this.

What is your sense of the state of play, right? Like, we are clearly getting a neat narrative from this administration about what this all looks like. That's not surprising. This is a very media-oriented administration. The president really cares about how things are perceived and how they're being reported. They're constantly trying to shape that kind of perception. So, you know, maybe we were sold 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 be 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 an agreement with Iran. although I don't know if I haven't heard many good alternatives. So Ari, talk 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 Nostia was describing what it comes to Ukraine in the sense that, you know, I think there is this kind of cottage industry essentially of 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, you know, 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. There are a few reasons for it. One is that, you know, it's really easy to read into the ebbs 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. So I just want to make sure that, you know, 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 on true social. like is not basically sitting there on social media talking about the latest twist and turns themselves. We're seeing that in this administration.

And 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 divisive topic within the Republican Party and in the broader kind of, you know, U.S. 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 have. haven't really seen happen on a lot of things. And there is, gosh, there's 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 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, 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. That was going 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. when it's just basically bringing us to the status quo when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz 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, at least on the Senate side with the president on too many things. But this was one issue where all of a sudden

folks seemed to revert back to how they used to see the world before 2016 and went back to principles that they held. All right. I wanted to just ask a quick follow up about this experience of for observers or anyone reading headlines of this whipsaw experience of if they'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 U.S. 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 on 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 their predecessors, in this case, you know, the Supreme Leader, his father, was killed. So, you know, in a bit of a traumatic moment 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. Then, you know, there was some back and forth on this. I do think that by and large, looking at the current cast of characters, they're much more unified that Iran had been in a really long time.

This has been a system where ultimately, yes, the Supreme Meter makes the decisions and the IRJC 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 saw happen earlier today. Because it strikes me as this is a event that could tip things in a few different direction, particularly becomes not a one-off, but some of that heads in a indicator of a trend. where 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 they were trying to hit U.S. military forces there, but hit this failing target that's not entirely implausible because U.S. 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 in 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 around 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 strait of her 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 the idea that a military solution actually has a role to play in some of this, whether reopening the strait, whether pushing back against these sorts of Iranian operations, it legitimates a lot of what, you know, potential military

responses, the administration or the Israelis might consider. We saw this dynamic earlier in the conflict, right? Like, we saw a number of countries say, we're not going to participate in the general offensive against Iran. 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, and a number of other countries about saying, here's the things we are going to participate in. So what's your sense of that? Like, 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? like 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 U.S. military target and they didn't. Because it just seems like putting the wrong sorts of 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 U.S. 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 conflicts, 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 Amman, 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 U.S. 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 hand, 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 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 on the 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, 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 doesn't in normal times. And on top of that, it is

continuing to experiment with this whole notion of, you know, this new tolling system in the Strait of Hormuz. 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. Scott or Ari or Nasty, 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, yesterday or the past couple days with quite a fiery phone call between Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. 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 a really interesting report. Park as the president confirmed it after that he described. No, you know, it's effing, grace. I don't think he said effing, but you get what I'm saying in this call. Although he, like, later said, oh, I wasn't really angry. I was just kind of expressing perturbance, I think, was the language he used.

I was perturbed. Same here. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I came to the war in Lebanon. I mean, it's really a sign of like, Ari, I'd be curious, but your thoughts on this, but like, in my sense, it's really just a sign of the difficult relationship that the Trump administration that Benjamin Netanyahu government have had really throughout this entire second presidency after they were so hand in glove for much of the first Trump administration, although we saw that relationship begin to break down a little bit. And it's because you're in a moment where you just see two very different strategic visions and interests for the two different leaders. Nan Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, it's the 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 in southern Lebanon. It's what you've gotten in Gaza and sustained in Gaza still, despite, you know, the ceasefire and other measures. It's what you're getting in Iran now and are likely to keep getting in Iran for a good while after this military operation, which Benjamin Netanyahu is the one who talked Trump into by at least some accounts over the reservations of most of his cabinet members. There's a clear split here. Meanwhile, the United States doesn't see regional instability and security is something that is sustainable or desirable from its perspective. And it feels a lot more of these global economic pressures. I have no doubt they're affecting 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 his main talking points, was elected on affordability and is deep-sixing it now because of this ongoing conflict. That said, I'm not sure really pushes to the limits here. We've seen the Trump administration successfully get the Israelis to buy into ceasefires and do other things that kind of constrain them in Lebanon. The Israelis do eventually go along with some of it, and then they push back. They basically say, okay, yes, we'll only, you know, we'll ratchet back to a sea offensive. And they keep pushing on and find them.

finding little excuses to push beyond that. And the real question is just what kind of sustain pressure will the Trump administration keep on the Israelis? Is there a point where the Israelis will continue without them? I highly doubt that. Like, I think if the administration really draws a line in the sand, the Israelis are going to feel a lot of pressure to comport to that. But then we'll 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 a negotiated deal on this. And that's, when you hear a conversation like this, it screams of real desperation. What 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 them are supposed to be tapped. Oil prices are supposed to climb dramatically beyond where they've been. Now, I think they're like a 95-ish dollars a barrel, have been a little higher than that. But, I mean, people are talking about in the next few weeks, oil prices going significantly higher than that, like 50 percent higher than that. And that is, going to have a wild economic effects domestically in the United States and in almost every corner

of the world, that pressure is going to be huge. So I don't think that President Trump, especially when he starts really experiencing that, I suspect he already is, he's not going to have many other options other than to find some way to get the straight open. And if Lebanon war and Israel was in its way, I think they're what's going to budge. What do you think about that, Ari? Do you think my being too optimistic about Trump's leverage over the Israelis or his pressure he's feeling from the global economic situation, or is he really need an agreement 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 essentially 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, 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 a 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 bored 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 in a way, I think Iran is using that at the negotiating table right now because Iran benefits if Israel and the United States are not 100% aligned. 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 and the United States is just not benefiting from this conflict kind of continuing.

So, yeah, no, 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 unlike 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 in top position. Well, we are going to have opportunity to come back to this topic. We have one more we want to get to 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 of them let out. exasperated size almost simultaneously as the notification got pushed to everyone's phones, that none of them Bill Pulte, the 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, essentially real estate housing-related policy and measures so far in this administration. He's a businessman 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 may be motivating the president to make 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 ask me to climb into the mind of Donald Trump, which I actually do love doing because it's fascinating. But I, I, and I, you're here. You're a resident Trump, Trump, Trump, inside her, even a way, but not that way. I mean 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 DNI to come from the world of housing, construction, and finance. So I guess, I know, it's the most diverse cabinet in history, if you look at it from a point of view of experience, like relevant experience. But I think there's a things going on here. One is that it's a, this is typical of this sort of pseudo patronage system, spoils 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 doesn't quite understand them fully. I think he probably has this idea of, you know, how hard could it be?

It's, it's, I just put a trusted loyalist in there and then their staff can do the, the heavy lifting. So I don't think he, you know, takes it very seriously. And then third, I think what's happening is that the, the DNI, there's reporting that, you know, this the CIA, I believe, has started to, let me just get this right, that they started to, you know, demote the, the DNI and and elevate the CIA in terms of intelligence briefing. So I think just the role itself has faced, you know, less prominence. And so all that together, I think it makes perfect sense that he would want someone like a Bill Pulte in there because of that combination of reasons. But I'm curious if anyone else has a different take, a different psychoanalysis of the Trumpian mind.

Yeah, Arias, I'm curious what you take on this. I will add two things to your assessment title, which I generally agree with. both of which are maybe throwing cold water a little bit on some of the alarmism that this raises, although I think there's plenty of reason to be alarmed. But one is that, you know, the ODI and I, in a weird way, is a role that from my understanding, my limited experience with it, 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 are a bureaucratic layer on top of a number of other very powerful agencies that have a lot of personnel that do 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, seizing voting records, that it was an FBI raid, right? Like, the ODNI doesn't

have personnel that they can personally direct through all this stuff. They have to coordinate through other agencies ads. The extent to which they have power really is sourced from the extent to which they can work with those other agency ads and extent to which are understood to speak for the president and kind of direct and shape a lot of things. They do have some of their own internal authorities, they certainly do, they do a lot of like kind of coordination and policy setting for the intelligence community 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? I don't think the ODNI can really, or the DNI, like, traditionally can really do that that effectively. Other folks correct me if I'm wrong on that. That's just like my understanding is that they've got kind of less defined capacity to do that. Instead, your power really comes

to how source you closer to the president. Maybe Polta is very close to the president and that he is going to have, be able to get a lot of poll, that's put pressure on John Ratcliffe and other people, Kash Patel, to do things they otherwise wouldn't want to do. But I suspect those people have a lot of space into part of there's 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 Polt is kind of got the inside track on that. It was going to be as persuasive as it might be in other capacities. 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, though, is 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, Ari, feel free to disagree with me. Do you think I'm off based on this?

I am alarmed, 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 Tulsi Gabbard's tenure, there's been a huge blow to morale within the IC. You know, the IC has been sort of viewed 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 further from 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 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 kind of this view that, you know, these are just deep-staters who are, you know, trying to undercut the great success of our military operation. This was Midnight Hammer in June 2025. 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 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, what it will look like after all is set 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 wasn't true with Tulsi Gabbard, when she decided to join that raid, I imagine with someone like Polt, it's going to be even less true. And we are going to see this continued politicization of the IC. And that is a 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? We were able to publicly release,

publicly disclose intelligence that showed what Russia was doing. And people believed that because it was 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 and 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 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 having it helped shape decisions that are 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. You know, this is a construct that was put in place, of course, after 9-11 to help kind of, you know, integrate these 17 different agents, that produce intelligence in different disciplines and in 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. actually need the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, because we now have, 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, my alarm, I was not saying there's, demand.

I'd be saying there's no reason for alarm on a lot of fronts, particularly relating to IC and the ODNI, simply on the weaponization of an agency front. I'm just thinking there's not clearly as much he can do here. Although, again, Mr. Polt found a lot to do with mortgage records. So who knows what we could do, I suppose, with access to a lot of intelligence. I'll bet mostly on foreign targets, not necessarily on Americans. With that said, we are probably out of time today. But 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 podcatcher. Nasty, what did you bring for us today? So my book recommendation is going to be a book that is a history of the U.S. Russia relationship by Angela Stend, who, speaking of the ICE, 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-ish 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 is actually engaging and not super dry, though it may be because I'm biased and I'm fascinated by the subject. But if you care about the U.S. First relationship, I think you'd find this an amazing sort of primer and overview of all of those topics. I actually happen to disagree with some of her takes on 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 Limits of Partnership, U.S. Russian Relations in 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 architecture 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 they're 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 of architecture, but the importance of just criticism in general has really opened my mind. People may be familiar with her old blog, which I think now is turning into a book called McMansion Hell. So she writes, she has a lot of amazing just takes on the McMansion. A lot of them are not so negative, but sort of very empathetic. Just I think, you know, one of the best critics out there explaining a field about which I know very little in this 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 land. I have been listening to an album that's super interesting. I'm really

enjoying. I'll encourage post to check out. That is from Marisa Anderson. It's called the Anthology of Un-American Folk Music. She plays like primitive guitar, so kind of like John Fahey style. like I associate with like finger picking. I don't think that's quite right. I don't like she play guitar, even though I listen to a lot of kind of fokey 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 in the Middle East, I can hear all sorts of things being borrowed from Middle Eastern music. There's stuff from other parts of the world as well,

but she's kind of blended together in like a really, really fascinating work. So I really recommend checking it out. It is very cool. It's a very stimulating listen in a way, like relatively few things are. And yeah, it's really worth checking out and read and living and listen to.

And I will say they also, the New York Times, did a little profile on her a couple, maybe a week or two ago. And they shouted that she spent time at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I have a friend who works and has supposedly a phenomenal music scene in Tulsa that she was involved in for a little while in visiting that I have not gotten to experience. So in so far as we'll do with a shout out to the BDC and to Tulsa's music scene, all more reason to check out this album. So that's, again, M. A. Anderson, the anthology of un-American folk music worth checking out. Ari, bring us home.

What do you have for our last object lesson today? I just want to note that Nasty was going after academic writing in ways that are uncalled for, but I'll shelf that for now. 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. It's okay. Okay, my object lesson this week is switched on pop. A pop. 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 and 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 Cohn'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 is a lot to actually appreciate here. So anyway, highly recommend it. It's a fantastic podcast. Awesome. Well, folks, that brings us to the end of this week's episode.

Rastral Security is, of course, a production of lawfare. So be sure to visit Lawfaremedia.org for our show page, for links to past episodes for our written work and the written work of other lawfare contributors and for information lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series. While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare and social media. Be sure to leave a rating or review wherever you might be listening. And signs become a material supporter of Lawfare on Patreon for an ad-free version of this podcast,

among other special benefits. For more information, visit lawfairmedia.org slash support. Our audio engineer and producer this week was me of me, and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan. We were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Pacha. On behalf of my guests, Ari, Tyler, and Nastia. I am Scott R. Anderson. We will talk to you next week.

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