The Long Game with Jake Sullivan and John Finer

Speaker 1 Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to.

Speaker 1 Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro.

Speaker 2 You just have to hire one.

Speaker 1 You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today.

Speaker 3 Support for this show comes from Odo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

Speaker 7 Introducing Odoo.

Speaker 3 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 7 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

Speaker 10 CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 5 And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 4 That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

Speaker 7 So why not you?

Speaker 5 Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 3 Support for this show comes from Odo.

Speaker 6 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

Speaker 4 Introducing Odo.

Speaker 3 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 7 It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

Speaker 10 CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 5 And the best part, Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 4 That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

Speaker 7 So why not you?

Speaker 8 Try Odu for free at Odu.com.

Speaker 9 That's ODOO.com.

Speaker 11 Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher.
Merry Christmas.

Speaker 11 We're off for the holiday, but we've still got something special for you today. It's an episode of The Long Game, another great Vox Media podcast.

Speaker 11 It's a weekly national security podcast hosted by Jake Sullivan, President Biden's national security advisor, and his top deputy, John Feiner.

Speaker 11 Jake and John take a long view analysis of the big news stories that dominate our headlines each week.

Speaker 11 On today's show, they're talking about NVIDIA's ship sales to China and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia peace talks. Jake and John's conversations are always very insightful, so stick around.

Speaker 2 For Trump, he's probably thinking in his mind, with a show of strength, I can get a big win on the cheap by bending this country and this dictator to my will.

Speaker 2 And so I think this is about just strength and domination.

Speaker 2 From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is the long game. I'm Jake Sullivan.

Speaker 12 And I'm John Finer.

Speaker 2 So John, what's on the agenda for today?

Speaker 12 Well, we're going to go through a quick update on where things stand with the ongoing and maybe escalating U.S. campaign against the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

Speaker 12 Then we'll talk about the Trump administration's recent decision, which we spoke to briefly last week, to release and make available for sale advanced U.S. AI chips for China.

Speaker 12 And then finally, we'll do a bit of a debate, a red team, blue team, on the recent negotiations with regard to the war in Ukraine, how this looks from the perspective of the Ukrainians, how this looks from the perspective of the Russians, and who should and shouldn't be open to a deal.

Speaker 2 Sounds like a plan. Before we get into all that, though, John, since we recorded last week, you and I have both been out on the road.
Recently got back to the U.S. How were your travels?

Speaker 12 Not half bad. I was in the Middle East for a couple days in the UAE, saw a number of our friends and former colleagues and caught up on some of the issues in the region.

Speaker 12 It's a long way to go for just a couple days,

Speaker 12 but a worthwhile trip and feels like it's a good way to sort of stay current. You are even further away.

Speaker 2 Actually, I circumnavigated the world i flew to india then to japan then home all since a week ago it was a good trip that you got india and japan two major democracies two major players in the indo-pacific two countries that are struggling to find their footing with the trump administration and most importantly two of the best food countries in the world i love both indian and japanese food so uh i was

Speaker 2 doing pretty well for myself over the last week. All right.

Speaker 12 Should we dive into the substance of the episode?

Speaker 2 Let's do it. So we're recording this podcast on Wednesday.
Donald Trump will be speaking to the nation tonight. We don't know on what, but one topic he could cover is Venezuela.

Speaker 2 And it has been an action-pact last few days. First, Maria Carina Machado, the Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader in Venezuela, made this remarkable journey to get to Norway.

Speaker 2 Now, of course, she has to get back in the country.

Speaker 12 May well have nearly died, by the way, in the process of this. She was sort of afloat, adrift at sea, and had to be pulled out of the water and rescued.

Speaker 12 So, this could have been an even bigger story than it ultimately was.

Speaker 2 She was out in a boat, basically hanging out in rough seas for quite an extended period of time. I think she was actually injured.
She could have died. So,

Speaker 2 we're very pleased that she got to Norway, had incredible scenes, and got to make a statement, even though she wasn't there on the day the prize was actually awarded.

Speaker 2 And now we're praying for her safe return and just generally for her health and well-being. So you have the Machado moment.
The American buildup, military buildup continues.

Speaker 2 We've talked about the sheer scale of this buildup. Now they're adding in the kinds of assets that you'd really put in place if you're getting ready to start operations.

Speaker 2 They've sent down, for example, combat rescue aircraft in case a pilot were to get shot down over Venezuela. They've sent a series of refuelers.

Speaker 2 And then they seized an oil tanker, the first oil tanker that the administration has grabbed in the Caribbean.

Speaker 2 Quite dramatic video footage of American service members descending off of a helicopter to take this oil tanker.

Speaker 2 It belongs to the shadow fleet of this large number of oil tankers that take exports from sanctioned countries to try to circumvent sanctions.

Speaker 2 And finally, just yesterday, you had President Trump tweeting out or truth socialing out

Speaker 2 that he has announced that the Venezuelan government is now a foreign terrorist organization. We don't know exactly what the official ruling on that is.

Speaker 2 It's right now just something he has put in his Truth Social post, and that he is going to have a quote, total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into or out of Venezuela.

Speaker 2 So, this is the state of play here on Wednesday as we record this podcast, and things could change a lot over the course of the next couple of days. So, John, what do you make of all of this?

Speaker 12 I think the way I've been thinking about this is there's sort of the official narrative of what's happening, and then there's the subtext, which feels to me much more like the real story of what's happening.

Speaker 12 The way I describe the official narrative is at least until Trump's recent post, which actually wasn't all that much about drugs, they are saying that this is all about reducing the threat of drug trafficking and cocaine specifically to the United States.

Speaker 12 And in that vein, there were also three more strikes against boats on Monday that killed, I think, eight people.

Speaker 12 So we're now up over 90 people who have been killed in this series of, I think, 25 now boat strikes.

Speaker 12 And so the ostensible purpose of all of this buildup and everything they're doing is to reduce the threat of drugs.

Speaker 12 But Trump's tweet and then a few other things that have happened in the last couple of days, I think give away a bit more of the game that we've all been tracking, which is that this is about much more than drugs.

Speaker 12 His tweet was about the Maduro regime and all of its various, as he sees them, transgressions against the United States, the expropriation of American assets, including oil assets in Venezuela, corruption, every manner of evil act by the Maduro regime that is seemingly laying a predicate for exactly what you just described, which is possible military action, not about drugs, but about removing or forcing out the president of Venezuela and replacing it with a more friendly or palatable government.

Speaker 12 And the other interesting thing that happened in the last day or two, and it didn't get as much attention because it was in an interview that Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff gave that had much more, I would say, sensational news in it.

Speaker 12 But she also talked a little bit about. Venezuela and said two things that are relevant to this discussion.

Speaker 12 One is she said the goal is to get Maduro to quote unquote cry uncle, which I think is basically a euphemism for getting him to capitulate and ultimately leave or at least leave office.

Speaker 12 She also said something interesting, which is that strikes on Venezuelan territory, which I think we've all been wondering if that was going to be in the offing, and certainly U.S.

Speaker 12 troop presence on the ground in Venezuela, which could be coming, would require congressional approval.

Speaker 12 And this comes back, I think, to another facet of this that we've been tracking, which is Congress feels and seems deeply unsettled by everything the administration is doing, both in the Caribbean and the prospect of military action, when still at this point, we have not gotten a particularly detailed explanation of why they see this threat as so severe, who is actually on these boats that they're blowing up, what they are carrying.

Speaker 12 They assert cocaine, but we haven't seen a lot of evidence of that. And what is the theory of the case for why this requires possibly the U.S.
to actually go to war?

Speaker 12 There was a briefing for Congress just yesterday for all members that left, I think, many members less than fully satisfied with the answers to those questions.

Speaker 12 So this still feels like a big open question about where it's headed, but all of the trends are in the direction of escalation.

Speaker 2 A couple of things are raised by this. One is, obviously, this is not just about drugs.

Speaker 2 It doesn't seem to be just about seized oil, land, or other assets that they quote unquote stole from us, which is, I'm quoting from his True Social Post. it does seem to be about Maduro giving up.

Speaker 2 Maduro saying, okay, fine, I'm going to go. While says, people way smarter than me say that he will.
He will cry, uncle. And why is this important?

Speaker 2 Because I think what is happening inside the White House right now is people are going to the president and saying, boss, if we keep squeezing, if we keep building up our forces, if we keep blowing up boats, and frankly, if you keep sending all caps tweets about the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America, eventually this regime is going to crack.

Speaker 2 I think they have some view that that is going to happen, which is why this buildup has happened over the course of many months, why Trump has been saying for weeks that strikes on land are just about to start, and why they haven't started yet.

Speaker 2 Because I think they're continuing to hope that actually Maduro will decide, okay, fine, you guys got me, before they actually have to execute some significant military action. Now,

Speaker 2 alongside everything else that has been happening, there have been these conversations with the Venezuelan leadership, including between Trump and Maduro directly, where I think the American position has been, Maduro, you have to go, you have to get out of there.

Speaker 2 And Maduro has basically to this point said no.

Speaker 2 John, you raised the million-dollar question, which is, why is all this happening? What is going on? Why have we decided to do a massive military buildup to go after Venezuela?

Speaker 2 What is the national security imperative for this? And I get that Marco Rubio cares a lot about this, and he sees a Cuba angle here too, because of the relationship between Cuba and the Maduro regime.

Speaker 2 But why Trump?

Speaker 2 Why do you think they are so intent? to the point of being prepared to use military action. Why are they so intent on getting rid of Maduro?

Speaker 12 One of the things that Trump has always seemed to stand for is not engaging in frivolous, unnecessary conflicts. Usually, when he says this, he's talking about the Middle East.

Speaker 12 He points to the war in Iraq. But it is a general mantra that he seems to apply to policy everywhere.

Speaker 12 And yet, simultaneous to that, and having just published a national security strategy that says the U.S.

Speaker 12 should not go around fighting all these unnecessary wars, we see him on the cusp of maybe fighting what might be the most unnecessary war the country has engaged in in quite some time.

Speaker 12 So I don't, frankly, know how to square that.

Speaker 2 And he also, John, he's not exactly somebody who feels passionately about democratic legitimacy. You know, oh man, we've got to do this because this is an illegitimate dictator.

Speaker 2 I mean, the guy seems to like dictators in a lot of other places. So that to me feels like not exactly the defining motivation of what's going on here.

Speaker 12 Look, a lot of what he does, I believe, comes back to politics, his own personal politics, base politics. Here, I think his base is probably pretty deeply divided.

Speaker 12 There are many people in the sort of MAGA core

Speaker 12 who very much believe what the president has said previously about engaging in unnecessary wars being bad for the country. But this is also a president who spends a lot of his time in Florida.

Speaker 12 There is a strong current in Florida Republican politics that is extremely anti-Maduro regime, extremely anti-Cuban regime, as you just mentioned, and the link between the two.

Speaker 12 And I think this is something that the president has heard quite a lot in recent years.

Speaker 12 He's got a Secretary of State, as you said, who is historically and currently ideologically committed to undermining and I think at this point, overthrowing the Maduro regime. And so.

Speaker 12 This is an impulsive president who I think now believes somewhat contradictory things, that it would be good for him in some ways with some part of his base to be extremely strong and force Maduro out, and that it's a bit dangerous to go down that path for all the reasons in the back of his mind.

Speaker 12 He does know because he has been against these unnecessary wars previously. I give one more dimension of this that I think will be part of the debate, and we've talked about it before.

Speaker 12 We sometimes talk about adults in the room, which I think is a kind of a terrible phrase when it comes to the people advising Trump.

Speaker 12 Marco Rubio, by the way, is one of the most commonly pointed to adults in the room in the Trump firmament, now the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor.

Speaker 12 Here, he is not going to be a voice for restraint by any stretch of of the imagination.

Speaker 12 But one person who we don't often refer to as an adult in the room might be Stephen Miller, not because he has any particular affection for the Maduro regime, but because I think he might be concerned that a significant U.S.

Speaker 12 military action in Venezuela that destabilizes the regime without a significant enough U.S.

Speaker 12 presence to actually impose a more friendly, capable government could lead to a basically a situation of chaos that puts millions more Venezuelans on the migration path to the United States.

Speaker 12 One thing, if Venezuela does not produce a lot of cocaine, but one thing it has produced in recent years is millions and millions of migrants, many of whom have ended up on our southern border.

Speaker 12 It is the number one exporter of migrants. It is definitely not the number one exporter of cocaine.

Speaker 12 So I think that might be part of the debate that leads to a bit more concern about the possibility of a big war.

Speaker 2 I think there may be one other thing going on. I agree with everything that you just laid out, which is his national security strategy is about dominating the western hemisphere.

Speaker 2 And he's probably thinking in his mind, with a show of strength and the amassing of these significant American military capabilities, I can get a big win on the cheap by bending this country and this dictator to my will.

Speaker 2 And so I think this is about something elemental, something almost guttural about just strength and domination for Trump.

Speaker 2 And that is only enhanced then by the fact that it touches on these issues that for him lie at the intersection of domestic policy and politics and national security, namely migration and drugs.

Speaker 2 So in a way, while it's kind of bizarre that he'd be doing a regime change war when he's railed against them, on the other hand, the mix of factors that have come together here, including the point about Florida politics you said, but also these more base instincts, I think they're probably propelling him along to a certain extent.

Speaker 2 So, what is probably happening? Of course, we're not in the room.

Speaker 2 No one's calling us to ask our opinion from the Trump administration, but I think the military is briefing Trump on operational plans that they have likely fully developed to hit a wide range of targets inside Venezuela.

Speaker 2 They're going to tell him this is what we can do over this amount of time with these impacts and these risks.

Speaker 2 That his advisors, including Rubio and Miller, as you just mentioned, but also his Pentagon advisors as well, are debating

Speaker 2 whether pressing go on that military campaign will actually achieve what they seek to achieve or become something they regret. And they're probably also debating timing.

Speaker 2 The Venezuelan opposition, I think, is probably telling Rubio and company, this regime is weak. It can crack, keep building up.

Speaker 2 keep escalating the threats, and you're likely to see them break and, as Susie Wiles put it, cry uncle.

Speaker 2 They're probably also encouraging President Trump to start the military action because they're probably getting a bit impatient.

Speaker 2 And then there's likely continuing outreach to Maduro and those around him on the back of this public statement by President Trump saying, you know, last chance saloon, you better act or we're going to have to do something.

Speaker 2 At some point, something's got to give. And it seems like there are three basic scenarios.
One is that Maduro agrees to something, agrees to go in some way. A second second is we start bombing.

Speaker 2 And a third is we just kind of keep muddling along indefinitely in the current posture or something like it. Do you have a view on which of those is most likely?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think the two big questions are one, Does this massive show of force and threatening and intimidating language ultimately lead to Maduro taking a significant step, stepping down from the presidency, leaving the country, whatever, without the U.S.

Speaker 12 having to use force? And if that doesn't happen, does the U.S.

Speaker 2 actually use force?

Speaker 12 I guess my view is there is nothing about the history of trying to intimidate dictators into leaving office that suggests to me that Maduro is going to leave absent the use of military force by the United States.

Speaker 12 You know, I have in mind the big military buildup before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in which the Bush administration then was trying to get, or at least saying they were trying to get, Saddam Hussein to allow weapons inspectors back in, open the doors to his alleged chemical and maybe even nuclear weapons program.

Speaker 12 And he didn't do any of that and wasn't going to do any of that absent what actually happened, which was a massive U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Speaker 12 There was a different but kind of thematically similar effort to try to intimidate Bashar al-Assad in Syria into leaving office.

Speaker 12 Ultimately, that didn't happen until he was chased out of Damascus by the opposition in a very unexpected way, as we've discussed.

Speaker 12 So I don't think we have any good reason to believe that that's going to happen this time. Can't rule it out because, you know, strange things happen, but that seems unlikely.

Speaker 12 So to me, then the big question is, if Maduro calls Trump's bluff, will he take military action? And as you said, there's a number of flavors of this.

Speaker 12 Military options, we used to get them from the Pentagon in various scenarios, tend to come in sort of small, medium, and large.

Speaker 12 Small might be just some airstrikes and see if that is unsettling enough to get Maduro to change his view and leave office. Medium might be some actual physical U.S.

Speaker 12 presence on the ground, maybe just special forces in small numbers to try to grab him, grab other senior officials to increase the pressure.

Speaker 12 And then large is like the big land invasion that Trump has said he never would want to do anywhere.

Speaker 12 My own bet is that we see at least the small version of this, I don't want to say in the next couple of weeks, but sometime by early next year, it just feels like you don't go this far down the path only to not do anything like that if you don't get a yes.

Speaker 12 And I don't think they're going to get a yes.

Speaker 2 On this question of getting a yes, I think there's two flavors of that. The demand that they have right now, the Americans have, to the Maduro regime is

Speaker 2 you go and you cede power, your whole regime, to the democratic opposition, to Maria Carina Machado and her people.

Speaker 2 I regard that as quite unlikely, that the entire Hugo Chavez legacy regime that is in place in Venezuela just walks out the door and hands the keys over to people that they

Speaker 2 just hate with all of the attendant consequences. I think that's very unlikely.
The alternative is Maduro himself maybe says, you know, I'll do a transition.

Speaker 2 I'll be replaced by someone else in my regime. I'll make some promises about some future elections.
Let me give Trump a deal on Venezuelan oil.

Speaker 2 Maybe I'll return some assets or respond to this truth social post in some way. Now, the opposition strongly opposes that because they think that would basically be the regime wriggling off the hook.

Speaker 2 I think Rubio probably opposes that. But Trump might be interested in that.
So I think that, while maybe not likely, is a totally plausible ultimate scenario.

Speaker 2 Some kind of good enough deal with the regime that Trump touts is a win. But I agree with you.

Speaker 2 I think the more likely thing is that Maduro is intransigent and it forces the choice for the United States as to whether to move forward with military action.

Speaker 2 Now, there's one more wrinkle in all this, which is this seizing of oil tankers. They've done the first one.

Speaker 2 Now President Trump has basically said we're going to blockade any further sanctioned oil tankers.

Speaker 2 We don't know if that means all oil tankers coming in and out or if it just means the ones that we have placed sanctions on, which is a limited subset of them. But this is the regime's lifeline.

Speaker 2 This is how they get the money to pay the soldiers, to pay all the people who keep them in place.

Speaker 2 So there is a world in which this military buildup continues, but just kind of sits there in the Caribbean without taking strikes in Venezuela. And we seize a bunch more tankers.

Speaker 2 and see if the economic pressure actually changes the calculus of Maduro and the people around him. Now, of course, all of these military operations come with inherent risk.

Speaker 2 We've already seen two cases now where civilian aircraft almost collided with military aircraft in the region.

Speaker 2 When you try to take a tanker by having guys scale down off of helicopters, things can go wrong. People can die.

Speaker 2 So it could also be the case that they don't make an affirmative decision: we're going to start the strikes tonight on our clock, but that the situation is forced on them by something that happens.

Speaker 2 So I guess where I am is I don't think Maduro goes.

Speaker 2 I think that the administration will continue to try to squeeze him at least for a while and may ultimately get to bombing, but I'm going to say not for a little while yet.

Speaker 2 How do you think that the tankers play into the calculus about starting military action?

Speaker 12 I think your point about the risk associated with these operations is a good one. History has shown that this stuff can be extremely high risk.

Speaker 12 And so, if something like that happens, you wonder how that raises the stakes, ups the ante, changes the psychology in the White House, and maybe even for the president.

Speaker 12 By the way, overflying Venezuela with U.S. military aircraft is also not without risk.
Venezuela does have somewhat advanced anti-aircraft systems.

Speaker 12 They're a partner, an ally, maybe even of Russia, which has sold them military equipment in the past.

Speaker 12 And so, on the off chance, I don't think Maduro is likely to want to start a kinetic war with the United States.

Speaker 12 But if a plane is targeted or a plane malfunctions and a pilot has to eject, Venezuela also has a history of using in the past mostly U.S.

Speaker 12 civilians, but would certainly, I think, take advantage of picking up a U.S. pilot to try to hold the U.S.
at risk in some way and negotiate a better outcome.

Speaker 12 So there's all kinds of things that could go wrong here in the kind of black swan category that you can't rule out.

Speaker 2 Okay, final point on this.

Speaker 2 You mentioned what Susie Wiles said about congressional authorization, that if President Trump were to authorize some activity on land, then it's war, as she put it, and we'd need Congress.

Speaker 2 There are efforts in the Congress to put limits on the president's ability to actually conduct military operations in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 There is no basis that I can see for why the president would have the authority to start a war in Venezuela.

Speaker 2 And Congress is trying to, at least some members of Congress are trying to create an outcome in which he is blocked from doing so.

Speaker 2 But my guess is that a lot of members of Congress would prefer just not to vote on this at all.

Speaker 2 They'll want to duck on it. And of course, Republicans in Congress are probably just going to stand with the president.

Speaker 2 So in all likelihood, you're not going to get anything out of the Congress on this in the near term.

Speaker 2 And the president probably is just going to say, I don't need any authority, even though his chief of staff has said what is obvious, that you want to start a war in another country.

Speaker 12 The constitution says you have to have congressional authorization but do you think that that's going to be any check on him your your point about members hating to vote on these resolutions i think is the most important and salient one because

Speaker 12 these are resolutions that people then tend to look back on historically and count who was where if the outcome is bad or if the outcome is is good and you were against it so uh people don't like uh if they don't have to to be on the hook for these sorts of things you think back to the you know authorization uh for the use of military force before the Iraq War.

Speaker 12 We went through a version of this in the Obama administration when President Obama was thinking about taking military action against the Assad regime in Syria after the use of chemical weapons.

Speaker 12 And members of Congress pushed him to bring that issue to the Congress, I think not expecting that he would actually do it.

Speaker 12 And when he did go to the Congress and say, okay, like, let's have a vote on this.

Speaker 12 All of a sudden, the backpedaling was ferocious and furious because nobody wanted to have to be on one side or the other of this question. Ultimately, there wasn't a vote.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was part of the team that tried to get a positive vote on an authorization to use military force in Syria.

Speaker 2 You know, we'd been sent up there by the president and members of Congress literally said to us, why are you doing this to us? Why are you putting us in this position? Why are you making us vote?

Speaker 2 Discharge our congressional responsibility.

Speaker 2 They made no bones about the fact they wanted President Obama to make the decision and they wanted nothing to do with it.

Speaker 2 And this after many of them had said before, hey, this is a matter for congressional prerogative.

Speaker 2 So we will have to see how this plays out on the Hill and what happens with respect to congressional authorization.

Speaker 2 If anything, most likely outcome, President Trump, as he has done in so many areas, just kind of powers through any legal objections, no matter how well-founded, and does what he wants to do.

Speaker 3 Support for this show comes from Odoo.

Speaker 6 Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

Speaker 4 Introducing Odo.

Speaker 3 It's the only business software you'll ever need.

Speaker 7 It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier.

Speaker 10 CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.

Speaker 5 And the best part? Odo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

Speaker 4 That's why why over thousands of businesses have made the switch.

Speaker 7 So why not you?

Speaker 5 Try Odu for free at odu.com. That's odoo.com.

Speaker 13 This episode is brought to you by Toyota. This winter, explore California in a brand new Toyota hybrid.

Speaker 13 Test drive the stylish all-hybrid Camry, the adventure-ready RAV4 hybrid, or the rugged Tacoma hybrid at your local Toyota dealer.

Speaker 13 Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability. Toyota, let's go places.

Speaker 13 See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 15 Shopping is hard, right? But I found a better way. Stitch Fix Online Personal Styling makes it easy.
I just give my stylist my size, style, and budget preferences.

Speaker 15 I order boxes when I want and how I want. No subscription required.
And he sends just for me pieces, plus outfit recommendations and styling tips. I keep what works and send back the rest.

Speaker 2 It's so easy.

Speaker 15 Make style easy. Get started today at stitchfix.com slash Spotify.
That's stitchfix.com slash spotify.

Speaker 2 Diving a bit deeper after our conversation last week on this decision by the Trump administration to sell these advanced AI chips to China.

Speaker 12 We sort of signaled last week our real concerns about this step that the president announced, again, by tweet or Truth Social Post, and kind of out of the blue to stop controlling, meaning stop restricting the export of a chip made by the company Nvidia called the H200, which is currently about six times as powerful as the best chip, US-made chip.

Speaker 12 that is available for export to China, which is a chip called the H20, which had also been restricted.

Speaker 12 And then President Trump over the summer decided he would allow the Chinese to buy that chip as well. So it's not the most advanced chip made by the United States.

Speaker 12 NVIDIA has a more advanced chip called the Blackwell that has not been made available to the Chinese, as President Trump also said in his post.

Speaker 12 And there are more advanced chips coming down the pike, but it is quite a powerful chip that can be used for both training advanced AI models and for what's called inference, which is the development further of decision-making by AI models.

Speaker 12 And just to give President Trump the moment to explain what he did, what his words were, I have informed President Xi of China that the United States will allow NVIDIA to ship its H-200 products to approved customers in China and other countries under conditions that allow for continued strong national security.

Speaker 12 Not clear what those conditions are, but I have one thought about it. He then said, President Xi responded positively, exclamation point, shocking.

Speaker 12 And this is, I think, part of what he thinks is the benefit of his bargain here. 25%

Speaker 12 will be paid to the United States of America. So, you know, essentially, I don't want to call it a kickback because it goes to the country, not to President Trump personally, but to the U.S.

Speaker 12 Treasury, some 25% of these sales will go towards, I guess, reducing the national debt. This policy will support American jobs, strengthen U.S.
manufacturing, and benefit American taxpayers.

Speaker 12 So he basically makes an economic case. He kind of hand waves at the national security issues.

Speaker 12 And the reaction, I think, by most commentators, by many members of Congress, including Republicans, is, why are we doing this? So I want to ask you that question.

Speaker 12 If you had to make the most compelling case possible that this is okay or even good,

Speaker 12 how would you do that?

Speaker 2 Hard to make the most compelling case because I don't. think there is anything remotely resembling a compelling case.
This is, for me, not a 5149 issue.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's a close call that this is a terrible decision to provide this chip.

Speaker 2 But let me go ahead and take up your challenge and lay out the reasoning that Jensen Wong, the CEO of NVIDIA, David Sachs, the president's AI advisor, and others around them are putting forward to defend this beyond the thing that I think is really appealing to President Trump, which is this mercantilist 25%

Speaker 2 export tax that, you know, or

Speaker 2 windfall that the U.S. taxpayer will get.
So Jensen would say, first, Huawei is catching up fast.

Speaker 2 It is advancing its ability to make these chips in China, Huawei being the flagship Chinese technology company, that if we don't sell NVIDIA chips and keep Chinese technology companies quote unquote addicted to the American chip that they will have their own chip, that that chip will end up being as good or better than American chips down the road, and we will live to regret that.

Speaker 2 So that's one big part of the argument that he is making.

Speaker 2 Second argument that he is making is that if we don't sell chips into the Chinese market, it's going to hurt NVIDIA's revenue and therefore hurt NVIDIA's ability to continue to do R ⁇ D and therefore mean that NVIDIA, this really important American technology asset, won't be able to stay ahead at the cutting edge.

Speaker 2 So you cut into their revenue, you cut into their innovation, and ultimately America loses.

Speaker 2 And then finally, Jensen says, these concerns about how these chips can be used for military and national security purposes are just overstated.

Speaker 2 Yes, this is a good chip. It's not the best chip.
And frankly, people are overblowing the risk of China taking this chip and using it in ways that is harmful to America's national security interests.

Speaker 2 So I would say those are the major arguments that the proponents of doing this are making. And I think we should break those down.

Speaker 2 Before we break them down, though, I think it's, you mentioned this on our pod last week, but it bears repeating.

Speaker 2 On the very same day that the Trump administration approved the sale of these chips, the Trump Justice Department actually put out a statement saying they had shut down a smuggling network involving the very same chip.

Speaker 2 And in their release, in that statement, they said, these chips, meaning the H-200s, are the building blocks of AI superiority and are integral to modern military applications.

Speaker 2 The country that controls these chips will control AI technology, and the country that controls AI technology will control the future.

Speaker 2 So you have the Trump Justice Department basically making a robust case that selling these chips to China is a massive problem on the very day that the Trump administration, President Trump himself, goes out and says, We're going to sell these chips to China.

Speaker 2 So that's a backdrop for how to think about this entire question.

Speaker 12 I will say a couple of other things that at least some of the commentary has reflected, including, I think, commentary from people who do not agree with this step.

Speaker 12 One is we don't know yet how many of these chips will be made available to the Chinese market. And that is a relevant question.

Speaker 12 If this actually ends up opening the floodgates and sending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of H200 chips into the Chinese market, ultimately possibly millions, which is almost unthinkable, but let's just say that happens.

Speaker 12 That will give China a massive advantage in bridging what right now is a significant gap between the U.S. and China in compute, in one of these major components of who will win the AI race.

Speaker 12 China has advantages in others. I'll let you maybe go through where we line up and where they line up.

Speaker 12 But what is, I think, indisputable is the U.S.'s main advantage when it comes to kind of achieving AI superiority or ultimately supremacy is compute.

Speaker 12 China will not make a chip as advanced as the H200 until at the earliest, the end of 2027. And this would give them that chip today.

Speaker 12 So basically allow them to jump ahead 18 months, two years in terms of the technology that is available to them.

Speaker 12 But if it's a very small number of these chips, that will reduce how quickly and how much they're able to actually close this gap. That's something we don't yet know.

Speaker 2 It's a very fair point because ultimately the chips are still subject to licensing. And so

Speaker 2 the Commerce Department has to issue a license to send them. President Trump has said he supports the issuance of licenses, but how that plays, he's also said there need to be guardrails around that.

Speaker 2 So how that plays out is important.

Speaker 2 But John, if it turns out they send a very limited number, which is possible, doesn't that really undermine the argument for doing it in the first place, which was to get them addicted to the

Speaker 2 U.S. chip?

Speaker 12 I don't actually think this is for President Trump primarily about the arguments.

Speaker 12 for how this will benefit American companies.

Speaker 12 I actually think this is about a different thing or related thing, which is the U.S.

Speaker 12 relationship with China, which he increasingly seems to see not as a fundamentally competitive relationship, but as essentially a symbiotic relationship where we have something to offer, China has something to offer, and we can both benefit going forward if we turn down the temperature and improve our ability to be collaborative in an economic sense and work together.

Speaker 12 And he wants to send the signal, because by the way, this was not negotiated. I think that's another really important point to have out there.

Speaker 12 He did not negotiate this decision with the Chinese in exchange for for something from the Chinese. He just made this announcement.

Speaker 12 And he made this announcement at the end of a year, in which we are preparing to see several encounters between Xi Jinping and President Trump in 2026.

Speaker 12 And he seems to be trying to kind of set the environment for a series of positive meetings that will improve, enhance, even deepen the U.S. economic relationship.
with China.

Speaker 12 And what's to me strangest about this decision is, yes, we get this 25%

Speaker 12 whatever back into the U.S. Treasury, but there are a number of things he could have asked of the Chinese for doing this.

Speaker 12 I ultimately, I don't think you ultimately would have supported anyway, but there are things he could have asked of them.

Speaker 12 And he chose not to, because this seems to be really about actually trying to improve the climate in the U.S.-China relationship, much more than about anything substantive.

Speaker 2 You're 100% right that we got nothing in return for this. Not that I, as you said, likely would have supported it anyway, but we got nothing in return.
I don't know,

Speaker 2 though, if you're definitely right that it wasn't negotiated. What do I mean by that?

Speaker 2 I think there's a possibility that in setting up the deal that President Trump struck with President Xi in their last meeting in Korea several weeks ago, that there was some message passed to the Chinese that we were going to

Speaker 2 give them something positive on chips. I think that is possible.

Speaker 2 I think it's very possible that an unstated part of the deal, and in fact, I think you and I discussed this a few weeks ago that, you know, we didn't quite know exactly what was going to happen on the chips front.

Speaker 2 So this may actually be a delayed announcement of something that had kind of previously maybe not been agreed with China, but at least had been signaled to create positive conditions around the Korea meeting and to set up.

Speaker 2 this agreement between the two leaders that they would have these reciprocal visits in China and the United States next year.

Speaker 12 It would suggest that maybe we have paid twice for whatever modest concessions we got out of the Chinese around that meeting because Trump already at that point pulled back, for example, this subsidiaries rule that restricted U.S.

Speaker 12 chip sales to Chinese majority-owned entities in other countries. That was, at the time, thought to be the quid pro quo for the Chinese pulling back on the restrictions on rare earths.

Speaker 12 So maybe we offered even more than was known. Do you want to explain the nature of your severe concerns about this step?

Speaker 2 These AI chips, I agree with the Trump Justice Department, really are the building blocks of AI superiority. As you pointed out, they're used to train the most advanced AI models.

Speaker 2 They're used to create new, powerful military and intelligence capabilities that can be used against us.

Speaker 2 And they're used to serve commercial applications that would help China out-compete the U.S. economically.
So this is China's main constraint in the technology competition with the United States.

Speaker 2 They have the money. They have the researchers and the know-how.
They have the capacity to generate an enormous amount of electrical power, far more than we do. What they lack are the chips.

Speaker 2 And you don't have to take my word for it. In fact, the CEO of DeepSeek, one of the leading Chinese AI companies, said, this is a quote from him, money has never been the problem for us.

Speaker 2 Bans on shipments of advanced chips are the problem.

Speaker 2 So the Chinese themselves recognize this is a problem for them. And what President Trump is doing by allowing the sale of these chips is solving their problem for them.

Speaker 2 Next is Jensen's argument: hey, we got to send these chips to them because they're catching up so fast.

Speaker 2 Our former colleague Chris Maguire, who worked with us on these technology controls when we were in the Biden administration, has published, I think, a very interesting analysis that says basically that's just not right.

Speaker 2 Let me give you a few stats that are relevant to this that he lays out. Right now, this year, China is producing with its chips about 5%

Speaker 2 of the computing power that NVIDIA and the American companies are producing this year. Next year, it'll be 4%.

Speaker 2 And in 2027, it'll be 2%.

Speaker 2 And that's using Huawei's roadmap for what it's going to produce. So, this is not a circumstance where

Speaker 2 in 2026 or 2027, we will be facing a pure competitor in advanced chip production. There's going to be a huge gap and giving them H200s helps fill that gap.
So let's talk about this addiction. concept.

Speaker 2 This is really David Sachs's theory that we need to keep China addicted to NVIDIA because that keeps them locked into our AI stack. I think this addiction theory is completely misguided.

Speaker 2 Starting with the fact that anyone who knows the history of China and the opium wars, where Britain flooded China with opium to get silver, knows that any argument that starts with, hey, we're going to get you addicted to something is not going to go over very well in Beijing.

Speaker 2 A second, China has already decided long ago, it is determined to get off of American ships if it can do so. It is highly motivated to do that.

Speaker 2 And by the way, that is is not a reaction to the chip controls we put in place in 2022. Here's President Xi from back in 2014.

Speaker 2 Semiconductors are a core technology that China should produce domestically.

Speaker 2 In 2015, in 2016, every year you can find statements from their top leadership basically saying we cannot have this core technology controlled by others.

Speaker 2 President Xi has called it our greatest hidden danger, China's greatest hidden danger. And then this last argument, this is going to hurt NVIDIA's revenue and therefore hurt NVIDIA's RD.

Speaker 2 I got to say, back in 2022, when we put the original controls in place, Jensen made the case that those controls would hurt NVIDIA's revenue.

Speaker 2 Back when we did that, NVIDIA had a market cap of $300 billion.

Speaker 2 Now it has a market cap of $4.3 trillion.

Speaker 2 Why?

Speaker 2 Because actually demand still exceeds supply for these chips. U.S.
companies can't get all the chips they need. The U.S.
government can't get all the chips they need.

Speaker 2 So the idea that we're now going to sell some of these chips to China really makes no sense because NVIDIA can sell every one of the chips it's producing to American or allied customers.

Speaker 2 And that's why actually Congress, on a bipartisan basis, proposed this act that had a simple idea, which is before you sell any chips to a country like China, you have to fulfill all the orders for the chips being made by American companies.

Speaker 2 If you did that, no chips would go to China.

Speaker 2 So I'll just close with a point that I heard from Jordan Schneider on the China Talk podcast. He said, there's a crazy contradiction in what Jensen's saying.

Speaker 2 On the one hand, he's saying AI is going to revolutionize everything, that we're all underreacting to how profound and revolutionary this technology is.

Speaker 2 But then when we point out that AI could revolutionize China's military capabilities and we shouldn't help with that, Jensen says, you're all overreacting. It's not that big a deal.

Speaker 2 So something really doesn't add up in all of this.

Speaker 12 And I think one other concern that we, I think, sort of hinted at last week that hasn't yet come to fruition, but I think could be coming down the pike is the two key components of our and our allies export controls.

Speaker 12 to maintain this advantage in compute that you described are restrictions on advanced semiconductors and then restrictions on the tools that are are used to make advanced semiconductors.

Speaker 12 And for the most part, those tools are not made in and by the United States. They're made in and by a company called ASML, located in the Netherlands, in Europe.

Speaker 12 And while that company has not come out and said this decision by the United States to sell even more advanced chips means we should get to re-look at the restrictions placed on us, denying us access to the Chinese market and inhibiting our growth in the same way that Jensen is arguing about NVIDIA.

Speaker 12 They have not said that yet. You could imagine very logically that European regulators, European companies that feel like they are taking a hit in solidarity with U.S.

Speaker 12 policy to try to maintain this compute advantage in the West and in the United States might start to question why they should continue to maintain those controls if the U.S. is

Speaker 12 relaxing to the degree that this decision suggests they are. And I think that would be a major concern because obviously, as you say, China is not going to be content to be addicted to U.S.

Speaker 12 chips, even if they get access to the ones that Trump is now making available. Their goal, dating back a decade or more, is to develop an indigenous leading-edge semiconductor industry.

Speaker 12 And a main restriction that has limited that is their inability to produce these tools that ASML makes and no longer sells, at least the most advanced versions of, into the Chinese market.

Speaker 12 If they got access to those, it would be an enormous quantum leap forward in their ability to produce leading-edge chips in China.

Speaker 12 So that has not yet reached a point of decision or even pressure, but you could imagine that coming down the pike in the near term if the U.S. continues down that path.

Speaker 2 Does this make our allies rethink their willingness to go along with us on the whole thing? We'll have to watch to see.

Speaker 12 I watched this interesting interview with the

Speaker 12 ASML CEO, a guy named Christophe Fouquet in Bloomberg, just in the last week. And he says the sort of fundamental question at issue here is how far behind do we want China to be?

Speaker 12 And I do think on some level, that is sort of the core policy question. Is the answer, you know, maybe just a generation, which seems to be the David Sachs answer, at least based on current policy.

Speaker 12 Is the answer for now, while we are on the cusp of perhaps a massive breakthrough in this AI revolution, as far behind as possible, which might be the sort of more hawkish approach.

Speaker 12 But I think that is the core question that policymakers face. I think we wrestled with that in our administration.

Speaker 12 The Trump administration has come to a very different, I think, position about how far they want China to be, which I would characterize as basically not very far behind, but still somewhat.

Speaker 12 But ASML is also producing more advanced tools to make these chips. They've got a next generation tool coming down the pike that they call HNA, higher numerical aperture.

Speaker 12 And I just, I have to imagine that this question is going to come back that the US is now facing, which is if they have an even better tool to make chips that can make even smaller, the miniaturization even easier and even further, maybe they're going to say, well, why can't we sell the one generation behind that to China in the way that the United States is doing on semiconductors themselves?

Speaker 12 And so I think having a counter to that argument is going to be challenged by the more advanced chips that we start to sell to the Chinese.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and look, we did take a different position. We did say, no, one generation behind is not sufficient given the stakes at play and the way in which a chip like the H-200

Speaker 2 can be used to advance China's military and intelligence capabilities at the expense of the United States and its allies. So for us, the question was kind of simpler than simply how many generations.

Speaker 2 It was take a look at the piece of equipment or the chip in question and ask yourself,

Speaker 2 is this a powerful enough implement that it can harm the security of the United States? If yes, we're not going to sell it to China.

Speaker 2 And I think that still requires some line drawing, no doubt about it, because we were not trying to stop basic commercial chips from being sold to China.

Speaker 2 We did commit to the idea of small yard high fence.

Speaker 2 But for me, fundamentally, the touchstone question is to look at the particular piece of technology and run that assessment. Now, Now,

Speaker 2 the final watch this space issue is what does Congress do about it?

Speaker 2 There's been noise in Congress about trying to actually pass something that would block the sale of H-200s and other similar chips to China. Whether that goes anywhere or not is a question.

Speaker 2 I doubt that we could get veto-approved majorities on that, but it certainly would be a powerful signal if Congress on a bipartisan basis could pass something.

Speaker 2 And I think that they should take a serious look at doing so.

Speaker 2 Right now, get up to 20% off Select Online Storage Solutions. Put heavy-duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you.

Speaker 2 The solid, impact-resistant design prevents cracking, and the clear base insides make items easy to find, even when the totes are stacked.

Speaker 2 Find select online shelving and tote storage up to 20% off at the Home Depot. To organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic, visit HomeDepot.com, how doers get more done.

Speaker 16 Every chase cardholder experiences more. Savings on food, drinks, and merch at some of the biggest sports and music events.

Speaker 16 Enjoying great views from prime seats and relaxing in exclusive lounges at top sports and music venues. Reserve your spot in advance and make more of every chase experience.

Speaker 16 Tap the banner to learn more. Benefits available only to eligible Chase cardholders, terms, conditions, restrictions, and limitations apply.

Speaker 16 Deposited credit card products provided by JP Morgan Chase Bank, NA member FDIC.

Speaker 17 Ghana por la mañana con el extra value meal, sausage, mc, muffin with egg, hash browns, and a cafe aliene pequeño poros $6.

Speaker 17 Bara ba ba ba. Preses y participación pueden varía.
Los preces de la promision pueden serminores que los de las comidas.

Speaker 2 So normally, when we do red team, blue team, we are sitting in the shoes of U.S.

Speaker 2 policymakers, making one side of the argument or the other for what the United States should do in a given circumstance. But today,

Speaker 2 we are actually going to put ourselves in other people's shoes. We're going to put ourselves in the shoes of the Ukrainians as they consider whether to take this deal or not.
And we're going to put

Speaker 2 ourselves in the shoes of the Russians as they consider whether to take this deal.

Speaker 12 Very uncomfortable shoes.

Speaker 2 Uncomfortable. But you cannot be effective.
in strategy or policy if you're not prepared to put yourself in other people's shoes, including your friends and your enemies.

Speaker 2 You've got to put yourself in their shoes, see it from their perspective. So we are going to do that as an exercise.
And the question is, take the deal or don't take the deal.

Speaker 2 And I think you and I are each going to take one side of it from the Ukrainian perspective and from the Russian perspective. But as you point out, we don't know exactly what the deal is.

Speaker 2 We're relying on a combination of reporting and this statement that the European leaders put out characterizing aspects of the deal.

Speaker 2 I'll give kind of a straw man for the elements, which are still very much subject to negotiation.

Speaker 2 An Article 5-like security guarantee, not NATO, but effectively a commitment from the United States and Europe to defend Ukraine if it's attacked again. A pathway to the European Union for Ukraine.

Speaker 2 Limitations on Ukraine's armed forces, but at a high level, 800,000 standing person army, and they can get crucially the arms, weapons and other support that they need from the west from the united states and europe ukraine would give up the rest of the donbas how exactly that's framed a demilitarized zone you know what the the nature of them pulling out of the rest of the donbas looks like and what the status is of that territory after maybe a little up in the air but fundamentally they'd have to give up territory their own sovereign territory they currently control and then use of some Russian sovereign assets for rebuilding Ukraine and access to other investment so that Ukraine would be able to deal with its significant budget problems and with this gargantuan task of reconstruction.

Speaker 12 That is the most positive version of the deal that is on the table from the perspective of the Ukrainians. And I think all of this is subject to negotiation and pressure still at this point.

Speaker 2 So part of the- Well, put another way, what I just laid out, the Russians may just say, no way,

Speaker 2 we need more. Exactly.
Because one thing I left out of this that was in the European statement is that there will be a European force presence in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 And I left that out of what I've characterized as the deal because the Russians have so emphatically rejected that. But it could be that the proposal on the table includes some form of standing

Speaker 2 European force on the physical territory of Ukraine as part of guaranteeing Ukraine's future security.

Speaker 12 Yes, even though the Russians have said yet, yet, yet. So you think, or you will argue whether you think it or not, that Ukraine should take this deal?

Speaker 2 I do not think Ukraine should take a deal at the point of a gun. I object to the whole process of so ostentatiously squeezing them, saying basically you're the weaker party, you have to give in.

Speaker 2 So I think this whole

Speaker 2 context is problematic. And then I can't say what deal exactly Ukraine should or shouldn't take until we actually see the full terms of it.

Speaker 2 So I'm kind of in a position similar to where European leaders are right now, which is just they're trying to get the best possible terms that they can muster.

Speaker 12 Something that Ukraine could say yes to.

Speaker 2 Exactly. So on what I just laid out, I'm not going to offer my own position on this.
What I'm going to do in the red team, blue team exercise is make the case

Speaker 2 to, you know, I'm putting myself in the shoes of an advisor to President Zelensky and saying to him, boss, you should take this deal.

Speaker 2 And then you'll put yourself in the position of a Ukrainian advisor saying, boss, you should not take this deal. So here's the case for taking the deal.

Speaker 2 President Trump has a gun to our head, us being the Ukrainians. America could cut off.
intelligence and weapons. They've already cut back on the weapons and they could just cut them off entirely.

Speaker 2 And while our drone capacity that we're producing inside our own country is really good, it is not sufficient. We need more than that.
We need continued support from the West and we could lose it.

Speaker 2 So therefore, we could lose all of the Donbass

Speaker 2 and more on the battlefield over the coming months. We could face a wider collapse given the loss of support from the West, given manpower challenges, given the risk of more desertions.

Speaker 2 We're also now facing another winter where we could be plunged into cold and darkness.

Speaker 2 And it'll be even worse if the Americans aren't sending us more air defense missiles to try to protect our cities. We don't know if we're going to get the Russian sovereign assets.

Speaker 2 So we could face a massive fiscal crunch in the next few months, a budget crisis. And then on the positive side, we've moved the U.S.
a long way on security guarantees.

Speaker 2 We now have on the table something that looks close to Article 5, like they're going to come protect us so that we can have greater confidence that Russia can't just turn around and attack again.

Speaker 2 That could be taken away from us. If we turn the deal down now, we may not get that back as an offer.

Speaker 2 And if we take the deal as much as we have to swallow, we can then build a strong, vibrant, unified nation with a pathway into the European Union, actually without the Russian sympathizing regions, you know, creating challenges for us internally.

Speaker 2 And most importantly, with peace, peace that we can sustain and peace that will allow us to rebuild with the resources we need to rebuild. So, bottom line, the deal could get worse rather than better.

Speaker 2 And as painful as it is, we should take it now rather than take the risk of waiting and actually having our situation deteriorate to the point where we're sitting here at some point and talking about a worse deal, not a better deal.

Speaker 2 And that's the case I would make for taking it.

Speaker 12 So, if we were both sitting in front of President Zelensky, I would start by saying, Look, Mr. President, the

Speaker 12 Americans are telling you that we are losing this war and that you need to make a deal before our losses become catastrophic. But that's not true.

Speaker 12 There is no reason to believe that the losses that we are facing in territory are anything other than small and ultimately negligible.

Speaker 12 We are a big country that is losing a very small amount of our territory in the extreme eastern part. And the U.S.

Speaker 12 narrative that this is a precursor to some sort of catastrophic collapse for our armed services, our armed forces, is intended to pressure you.

Speaker 12 Russia continues to pay an enormous cost for its invasion, more than a million casualties growing every day. They are losing more people at a faster rate than we are.

Speaker 12 And so just do not believe, do not make a decision because you believe that this U.S. narrative about our battlefield situation is correct.
That is not what we are hearing from our commanders.

Speaker 12 Second, I would say there is reason to believe that our circumstances could improve considerably in the very near term.

Speaker 12 We are on the cusp of being handed by the Europeans more than $200 billion in Russian sovereign assets that we can make use of to enhance our economy and enhance our ability to procure the weapons that we need to fight this war.

Speaker 12 Now, I'm playing a bit fast and loose because this is really contested whether this is ultimately going to get done. And I think a big decision is coming at the end of this week.

Speaker 12 But why would we take a deal before being handed this massive card that actually strengthens our hand, strengthens your hand, Mr. President, in the negotiations?

Speaker 12 We should keep pushing the Europeans to take this step and use that to extract better terms from the Russians. Third, it is not clear that your people are with you if you go down this path.

Speaker 12 The polling on this is complicated, but there is reason to believe that most Ukrainians would reject a peace plan that involves us withdrawing our forces from the Donbass, any military restrictions on our army, even if it's a large size going forward, without very extensive security guarantees.

Speaker 12 I'm going to come back to this question of security guarantees because I think the way your other advisor phrased this is a bit more optimistic than I would be about how real. these are.

Speaker 12 But if you make a deal that is ultimately not supported by the Ukrainian people, it could be the end of your government.

Speaker 12 It could have even more severe consequences, consequences for you going forward and for the country, which it could throw into a state of severe turmoil and undermine the unity that we have had up till now in this conflict.

Speaker 12 So, not clear the Ukrainian people would support this. And then, finally, how can you trust security guarantees from the Trump administration?

Speaker 12 Honestly, this administration has been on every side of this conflict, including basically the Russian side at various points, maybe even now.

Speaker 12 So, no matter what the language is is on the paper, and even if it gets quite good, Article 5, like

Speaker 12 if the Russians start this conflict again during the next few years of the Trump administration, are you really confident that they will, the United States will come to your defense, or frankly, that the Europeans will, once they get used to this war being at least over for a temporary period?

Speaker 12 I don't think you can have that confidence. What the U.S.
is saying is it wants a better relationship with Russia. It wants to deepen its economic ties to Russia.
It wants stability with Russia.

Speaker 12 None of that language suggests to me a willingness to come back and fight on behalf of Ukraine if Ukraine is ultimately attacked.

Speaker 12 And by the way, if it really were an Article 5-like commitment that the United States was ready to make, they would let you into NATO, let us into NATO, which is a real Article 5 commitment that's backed by more than just the words of President Trump.

Speaker 12 And I would point to what the German chancellor Murrs said recently. He was talking about Europe, but it goes just as well for us here in Ukraine.
He said

Speaker 12 in a statement just over the past week, as this negotiation is unfolding, the decades of Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany as well.

Speaker 12 It no longer exists as we know it, and nostalgia won't change that. And I would be one of the last people who wouldn't gladly indulge in that nostalgia, but it is of no use.
That's the way it is.

Speaker 12 The Americans are now very, very ruthlessly pursuing their own interests. And this cannot have a different answer than that that it is the time that we also pursue our own interests.

Speaker 12 And dear friends here, we are not weak, we are not small. Well, Ukraine is also not weak anymore and not small.

Speaker 12 We've built a considerable army, we've built a considerable industrial base, and we should not mortgage our security to a guarantee for the United States that I don't know that we can count on.

Speaker 2 Stepping out of the role of Ukrainian security advisor, where are you on this?

Speaker 2 Do you think that Ukraine should just say kind of flat no or should kind of keep saying the yes, but that they have been, meaning, you know, try to stay engaged in the negotiations.

Speaker 2 What do you think realistically about whether a deal along the lines of what I described, which may be a very hopeful deal and set aside whether the Russians would take it, whether the Ukrainians should?

Speaker 12 Ukraine should never say a flat no to the Trump administration. Every time that happens, it leads to Trump essentially flipping sides to the Russian position on all of the core issues.

Speaker 12 So they should never say that. They should continue to negotiate.
They should try to claw back as much as they can in terms of the concessions being forced on them about their territory.

Speaker 12 And to me, the most important thing is they should accept almost no restrictions on the future size and capacity of their armed forces.

Speaker 12 I'm less frankly focused on the number of troops because Ukraine, as we both know, has had a very difficult time raising a big army because they are refusing up till now to conscript people under the age of 27 or 25, depending on whether you're talking about policy or reality.

Speaker 12 So they are going to need every bit of advanced weaponry they can get. They should accept no restrictions on producing that or purchasing that.

Speaker 12 And then this question, I think, of NATO forces not being allowed on Ukrainian territory.

Speaker 12 By the way, there were NATO forces, forces from NATO countries, at least, on the territory of Ukraine before this war.

Speaker 12 And I don't see any reason why they should accept a total restriction on that going forward or why the European countries.

Speaker 12 So I think they should keep negotiating, keep turning over cards, ideally get this $200 billion

Speaker 2 from the Europeans to strengthen their hand and see what they can get and we may know again we're recording on wednesday the european decision on sovereign assets is coming later this week that could be a yes we're providing upwards of 200 billion dollars to ukraine it could be a maybe we are it could be a let's kick it to january we'll have to see what happens there they by the way crazily some signs the trump administration is actually now pushing certain european countries against making these assets more than some signs i mean they seem to be actively lobbying european countries to oppose this, which I think is just, as you said, crazy.

Speaker 2 All right. So

Speaker 2 now let's put ourselves in the shoes of the Russians. And you are making the case that Russia should take this deal.

Speaker 2 I'm making the case Russia should not take this deal as Russian advisors to President Putin. Why don't you go first on the should, and then I'll follow with the should not.

Speaker 12 Just trying to get my mind around the idea of sitting in a room and trying to explain anything to President Putin.

Speaker 12 We've both been in diplomatic conversations with him before, but thankfully I've never had to advise somebody quite like that.

Speaker 2 Inhabit the mind of these guys

Speaker 12 or of the people who work for him.

Speaker 2 You know, one thing I will say before you jump in is this is, you know, President Biden would say to us frequently, what are these guys thinking?

Speaker 2 You know, like, tell me what the people around Xi are telling Xi or the people around Putin are telling Putin.

Speaker 2 So it's an important exercise and one I think that requires a level of discipline to conduct rather than just say, look, we're going to put blinders on on that.

Speaker 2 So as uncomfortable as it is, it's important.

Speaker 12 So I would start off by saying our strategy up till now, after we badly miscalculated early on about how quickly we would win this war, has been to play, to use a phrase familiar to us, the long game.

Speaker 12 We have made a bet against the resiliency of Ukrainian. society and the Ukrainian army.
We have made a bet against the resiliency of the West in terms of its unified support for Ukraine.

Speaker 12 But candidly, it is not going all that well. Our casualty numbers are extremely high.
And while the Russian people are not rising up in anger about that, that is not lost on them.

Speaker 12 And I think more importantly, for the future of Russia, while we have weathered to a very large extent the economic pressure that has been placed on us, we have mortgaged the future of our economy and essentially become a country that is entirely dependent on oil sales and government spending to prop up this war.

Speaker 12 And when you look at the industries that are going to define the future of the world, Russia is not playing in any of that space, in large part because of the sanctions and restrictions on technology and other areas of the future economy that the West has imposed on us.

Speaker 12 So, this is not going as well for us as, Mr. President, maybe you think.

Speaker 12 Second, we now have a pretty good chance to pause, consolidate our position, and extract quite a lot from the Trump administration while living to fight another day.

Speaker 12 It is not clear that any other American president who could come down the pike will ever give Russia so much and Ukraine so little in a deal scenario.

Speaker 12 And President Trump is not going to be here forever.

Speaker 12 So whether it is right now or sometime soon, if we are going to make a deal, we should make that deal under the Trump administration and not wait for some future administration that might be much more hostile to our interests.

Speaker 12 And by the way, you and I have both heard President Trump talk about the massive increase in economic ties between the United States and Russia that are going to be on the table.

Speaker 12 It is hard to imagine another president making that sort of offer, separate and apart from the terms of this deal.

Speaker 2 to Russia.

Speaker 12 U.S. investment flows coming back in, which President Trump seems to very much want and be promising us.

Speaker 12 And maybe this is coming just in time to salvage some version of our future economy, rebuild the reserves that we have depleted during the course of this war, and again, prepare us for whatever comes down the pipe in the future.

Speaker 12 I would say we also have, we Russia, very hard phrase to say out loud, a victory narrative that you can sell.

Speaker 12 We have liberated or will have through the course of this deal, the Donbass, which was the most important territory to the Russian people and to you, President Putin.

Speaker 12 We may get through this deal recognition of Russian annexation of Crimea, or at least acceptance by the rest of the world that Crimea is not going back to Ukraine anytime soon.

Speaker 12 We will get Ukraine out of NATO definitively for the future. Maybe we will also get no NATO forces in Ukraine like there were before this war.

Speaker 12 So that's another positive change in the direction of Russia. Maybe we get NATO to commit to no further expansion at all.

Speaker 12 That's another element of this deal that's being requested or demanded by the Russians. And then maybe there are some other quiet commitments that we can extract from President Trump on the U.S.

Speaker 12 role and posture on NATO territory

Speaker 12 that is not Ukraine, but that are in other frontline states. Maybe we can get the U.S.

Speaker 12 to quietly commit to reducing troop numbers or force posture in other ways that start to put these what I think of as hairline fractures in the NATO alliance, which addresses a core Russian security concern.

Speaker 12 And Mr.

Speaker 12 President, regardless of any of this narrative that I've just laid out, you can sell anything because you control the information space in Russia and you have the support and you are very popular by all accounts, according to, I'm sure, very reliable poll data among the Russian people.

Speaker 12 Finally, the last thing I'll say is, I know you don't like the idea of U.S.

Speaker 12 security guarantees, but do you really believe that if we decided we needed to go back into Ukraine, the United States will fight you over that, at least under the Trump administration? I do not.

Speaker 12 I don't believe the Ukrainians believe that.

Speaker 12 And so I do not think you would be giving up all of that much to accept some words on a page that it's hard to believe that at least this American president will stand by.

Speaker 12 And once he's gone, who knows? It could get much more uncomfortable, much more inhospitable to Russian interests in a new administration.

Speaker 2 Mr. President, I got to say, I do not think we should take this deal because we can achieve our goals by force.
We can get the rest rest of the Donbass if we just keep going.

Speaker 2 You can conquer the Donbass and then restore it rightfully to Russia, which is

Speaker 2 its historic legacy and it will be your historic legacy. We don't have to haggle over it or accept some strange terms around demilitarization and peacekeeping forces and the like.

Speaker 2 We can just go take it. And more broadly, we can make Ukraine capitulate.
And there are real risks to stopping.

Speaker 2 Stopping this war

Speaker 2 just create a set of headaches for you, boss, that you don't want. Do you want to demobilize a million Russians who have nothing to go back to, who have guns in their hands?

Speaker 2 We could have another mutiny on our hands like we did a couple years ago when the Wagner group launched a convoy towards Moscow. We turn the economy into a giant war machine.

Speaker 2 If we turn off the war machine, we could crash our economy. Do we want to take that risk? And by the way, we should not be conceding anything on these sovereign assets.

Speaker 2 That's our money, not Ukraine's Ukraine's money. So it's crazy to me to think that we would give that up.

Speaker 2 If the war stops and Ukraine gets to keep a big army and an uninterrupted supply of weapons from the West, maybe even Western troops in Ukraine, we're going to have a nightmare.

Speaker 2 A militarily strong, anti-Russian, angry neighbor.

Speaker 2 a country that actually then would have peace and could build a strong democracy, the very idea of which could present a threat to your regime in the future.

Speaker 2 We need Ukraine weak, divided, and destabilized, and continuing the war helps with that. Giving them peace does not help with that.
And right now, it's sustainable for us to keep going.

Speaker 2 We can muddle through economically. We can keep paying families in small Russian villages to send their people to the front.

Speaker 2 And frankly, we can keep luring in people from outside Russia and send them to the front. Yeah, we're losing a lot of folks, but we seem to be able to continue to supply folks to the front.

Speaker 2 So this is sustainable for us as we look out into next year.

Speaker 2 And finally, we like Trump, but he's just one guy and he's got three years left. This whole point that we have a limited window with him really cuts both ways.
And I think it mostly cuts my way.

Speaker 2 The whole American system, the deep state, those guys are anti-Russia. Trump's not going to be around long enough.
to lock in any of the things he's promising you.

Speaker 2 He's already losing political support. And the next president is just going to go back to threatening and pressuring Russia.

Speaker 2 So all those commitments he's making to on NATO, they're not going to amount to a hill of beans. So the bottom line is we have more to gain by continuing than we do by stopping.

Speaker 2 And I think we should push until we get Ukraine to capitulate, not cut some kind of midway deal here where we create more risks than we create benefits. We can get what we want by winning this war.

Speaker 12 I'll tell you, my non-neutral, impartial assessment of where we are after both of these arguments is the odds of a near-term deal are not super high.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 2 that seems right. Absent the president really being able to squeeze and coerce the Ukrainians into something that is truly terrible, because I don't think the Russian side is going to settle for

Speaker 2 things that are acceptable to Ukraine and should be acceptable to, you know, should be what we are asking for.

Speaker 2 I think the argument I just laid out from the Russian side is has some purchase in Moscow. Putin may be prepared to make certain concessions, but I also think he sees merit in continuing.

Speaker 12 The most we can hope for in the current moment is that Russia saves us from ourselves here to some extent.

Speaker 2 Exactly. That a bad deal does not happen because Russia says no to it.

Speaker 2 Well, we've taken enough time going through these incredibly meaty topics that we've left no time for rap, no end of the year rap this year.

Speaker 2 And so what we're going to do is preserve for our first episode in the new year, sometime at the end to talk about book recommendations and to confess error on the many things we predicted in this episode that may or may not bear out over the course of the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 12 Well, that's all for today. Wishing all of you and your families a healthy, happy holiday season.

Speaker 2 We'll be back in two weeks with new episodes of The Long Game. And in the meantime, send us your questions and comments at longgame at Voxmedia.com.

Speaker 12 That's it for this episode of The Long Game.

Speaker 2 If you like the show, please follow, share with friends, and leave a review. It really helps listeners find us.

Speaker 12 For updates and more analysis in your inbox, join the community at staytuned.substack.com.

Speaker 2 The Long Game is a Vox Media Podcast Network Production.

Speaker 12 Executive producer Tamara Sepper.

Speaker 2 Lead editorial producer Jennifer Indig.

Speaker 12 Deputy Editor Celine Rohr.

Speaker 2 Senior Producer Matthew Billy.

Speaker 12 Video producers Nat Wiener and Adam Harris.

Speaker 2 Supervising producer Jake Kaplan.

Speaker 12 Associate Producer Claudia Hernandez.

Speaker 2 Marketing Manager Leanna Greenway.

Speaker 12 Music is by Nat Wiener. We're your hosts, John Feiner.

Speaker 2 And Jake Sullivan. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 11 Thanks for listening to this special episode of The Long Game. Merry Christmas.
We'll be back with a new episode of On on Monday.

Speaker 14 Did you know you can opt out of winter? With Verbo, save up to $1,500 for booking a month-long stay. With thousands of sunny homes, why subject yourself to the cold?

Speaker 14 Just filter your search by monthly stays and save up to $1,500. Book now at Verbo.com.

Speaker 18 Do you care about global issues but don't know how to help? Gates Philanthropy Partners was designed with you in mind.

Speaker 18 We work alongside Gates Foundation experts to select projects working on ending diseases like polio and malaria, reducing malnutrition, and helping children learn the fundamentals of math and reading.

Speaker 18 Join us in building a world where every person has the opportunity to live a healthy, productive life. Give today at gatesphilanthropypartners.org.

Speaker 16 Hey, Ryan Reynolds here, wishing you a very happy half-off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited.

Speaker 16 To be clear, that's half the price, not half the service.

Speaker 19 Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price.

Speaker 20 So, that means a half day.

Speaker 16 Yeah? Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch.

Speaker 20 Upfront payment of $45 for three months plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only.
Speed slow under 35 gigabytes of networks busy. Taxes and fees extra.

Speaker 2 See Mintmobile.com.