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Lab launches Thursday, April 11th. Follow

1:01

the show wherever you get your podcasts. It

1:06

would actually be great if we

1:09

had much more opportunities for national service

1:11

and much more of a cultural sense

1:13

that one ought to do something, right?

1:15

Whether it's in the military or otherwise,

1:18

because I think that

1:20

sense of civic participation, connection

1:23

to the broader national project, and also

1:25

just like, you know, when you

1:27

join the military, like you meet America, right?

1:30

Everybody, we all live in our little bubbles,

1:32

and then you join the military and you're

1:34

there with everybody, like every type of American.

1:37

And it is a radically different experience than

1:39

the kind of group of people that I

1:41

knew growing up in New York and then

1:43

going to an Ivy League school. What

1:49

could go right? I'm

1:51

Zachary Carabell, the founder of The

1:53

Progress Network, joined as always by

1:55

Emma Varvalukas, the executive director of

1:57

The Progress Network. And What

1:59

could go, right? right? is our weekly podcast where

2:01

we tried to look at. Well.

2:04

What could go right in the world?

2:06

So today we're going to talk to

2:08

someone about. A. Massively important

2:10

aspect of American society

2:12

and policy. The. Military.

2:14

This is a vastly important aspect

2:17

of our society that we. Don't.

2:19

Worry, talk about a nurse in some

2:21

fundamental fashion, so we're going to look

2:24

at that today. Emma one to

2:26

tell us who were gonna speak but today. So.

2:28

We're in and talk to fill Cli. He's

2:30

a veteran of the Us. Marines who served

2:32

in Iraq. And he's or and

2:34

a handful of books both fiction and

2:36

nonfiction about his time there, the role

2:39

of the Us military and but what

2:41

he calls the endless invisible war. Of

2:43

the U S. His most recent book was

2:46

an essay collection caught Uncertain Ground and he

2:48

also teaches section at Fairfield. University.

2:50

You. Ready to to sell. I am ready

2:52

to talk to Sell It's Do it. Fills.

2:56

To pleasure to have you with

2:58

us today for what could go

3:00

right. We have not really touched

3:02

on this subject of the American

3:04

military Have been many ways. for

3:06

most Americans, the American military is.

3:08

An idea that as often romanticize.

3:11

I guess in the nineteen seventies

3:13

and into the Nineteen eighties, Vilified

3:15

Said vilified. A romanticized. But.

3:17

In many respects, it remains an

3:19

abstraction by that suspicious thing. That

3:22

we use. it's nothing, sir, geographically.

3:24

the touches many people's lives. Yeah,

3:27

there's a unitary funny because. Gonna

3:29

read. read my book and ends and

3:32

he liked it on certain ground. My.

3:34

Book. Nonfiction. But he said, you know

3:36

this disconnect. I. Don't really feel because everybody

3:39

in like this little town in in

3:41

rural Maine where he lives in like

3:43

everybody's know somebody who joined the military

3:45

and switch. That. You're in one

3:47

of those. Those. Towns those

3:49

very specific places where it's incredibly

3:51

comments. it's not just the you

3:53

have. A small. Percentage

3:56

of Americans who sir. But.

3:59

That small. percentage tends to be

4:01

clustered in very specific communities and

4:03

also specific families. The military is

4:06

increasingly becoming a family business. And that

4:09

tends to sort of increase that

4:11

disconnect. Maybe to make a bit of a

4:13

connection with you, Phil, why don't you just give us some

4:16

background about how you ended up in the military, what your

4:18

time there was like, and how you ended up writing so

4:20

much about it. Yeah. Yeah.

4:22

Well, I was a kid who

4:24

never thought I was going to join the

4:26

military. My goal as a teenager was to

4:29

ultimately go into the foreign

4:31

service. My maternal grandfather

4:34

had served as

4:36

a diplomat all over the world. My

4:38

mother and my aunts grew up in

4:40

Africa and in Europe mostly,

4:42

they had stories about

4:44

being followed by the

4:47

secret police in communist

4:49

Czechoslovakia and so on

4:51

when my grandfather was there in the 70s.

4:54

And so I was always fascinated

4:56

by American foreign policy. And

4:59

then when I went to college, I went

5:01

to college September of 2001 and we had

5:03

9-11 and very rapidly we

5:06

were going into Afghanistan and then

5:12

soon after that we're going into Iraq. And

5:14

it seemed that if I wanted to serve

5:16

my country, the best way to do that

5:19

was to join the military. So I joined

5:22

the Marine Corps. I did the Officer Canit

5:24

School, which is the, you know, you do

5:27

a lot of physical exercise and get

5:29

yelled at a lot, portion of military training

5:32

during my junior summer in 2004 and then

5:34

accepted my commission in 2005, which is

5:36

kind of an interesting time, right? So in

5:39

a very different time from now in terms of our

5:41

wars, we had these large

5:44

true presidencies overseas, especially in

5:46

Iraq. And the

5:48

war was a topic of

5:50

great political debate and

5:52

it wasn't going well. It

5:55

was fairly obvious that the promises that

5:57

it had made by people Rumsfeld

6:01

had not come anywhere close

6:03

to true about how well

6:06

we would be received and how quickly we would be able

6:09

to get out. And so

6:11

you had a kind of spiraling insurgency,

6:13

spiraling chaos in Iraq, a lot of

6:15

violence that was only getting worse. And

6:19

so that was the context in which I,

6:21

you know, swore my oath of office and

6:23

signed the contract. I

6:26

ultimately went to Iraq in

6:28

2007 as a public affairs officer, so

6:30

my job was working with the media,

6:32

right? Which was this interesting

6:34

job because I was supposed to kind of be

6:36

a conduit between the civilian and the military world,

6:38

which I suppose is something that I'm still doing

6:40

in a certain sense. And

6:43

it also meant that I had to

6:45

try and think about how things would

6:47

be perceived from the outside as well

6:49

as kind of understand what the military

6:51

was thinking about. And I would go

6:53

out on, you know, everything from going

6:55

out on a mission with a bunch

6:57

of infantry guys to hanging out with

6:59

engineers or mortuary affairs specialists or, you

7:01

know, Navy doctors would have you. So

7:03

I saw a large range of what

7:05

the military does, right? Not just, you

7:08

know, the kind of sexier details of

7:10

the military, but, you know, how much

7:12

discussion of fueling goes on in

7:16

general officers' meetings. And so I came

7:18

back from Iraq in 2008. The

7:22

period where I was in Iraq was

7:24

part of the surge, which was

7:26

this hugely contentious, politically fraught policy

7:30

where we increased the number of troops in

7:32

Iraq in an attempt

7:34

to bring the level of violence down. And

7:37

it's interesting to think about that now in

7:39

terms of the level and the anger of

7:42

scrutiny and political debate about our

7:44

military policy in that country. But back in

7:46

2008, feeling actually quite good about the mission

7:48

as it had been carried out

7:50

because violence had gone down a lot in Ambar

7:52

Province when I was there. You know, there are

7:54

places that were extremely violent that, you know, there's

7:56

a route-route frand, which was like, you know, it

7:58

used to be if you were going to Iraq,

8:00

you know, there going down there, you were gonna

8:02

get IED'd or hit in some way. And I

8:04

remember a bunch of guys seeing like a bridal

8:07

shop that had opened on route Fran. Like,

8:09

how freaking bridal shop on Fran, you

8:12

know? You know, we left feeling great

8:14

about things. And then of course, I

8:17

get out of the military, I'm sort of trying

8:19

to think through like, all right, what was that? What

8:22

was I a part of? What does America look like

8:24

when you get back home? But the weird thing about

8:26

being a veteran of these wars is like, you leave

8:28

the military and the war just keeps going, right?

8:31

So as I'm working on

8:33

my first book and thinking these through, people

8:36

that I know are going to Afghanistan, in some cases,

8:38

you know, I find out that somebody's been injured or

8:41

killed that I knew. I remember being

8:43

in a bar in Brooklyn in Greenpoint,

8:45

it was like a, you know, the

8:47

most hipster scenario you could possibly imagine.

8:50

There was literally a band setting up

8:52

with a ukulele player. Of

8:54

course, of course, ukulele. It was straight out

8:56

of, you know, like an episode of Girls.

8:58

And that's when I get a call that,

9:00

you know, a guy that I served with

9:03

got shot in Afghanistan. So it was this

9:05

very weird kind of like split screen existence

9:07

where you feel like you're a certain

9:10

amount of your consciousness

9:12

and moral concern should

9:14

be in this place that

9:16

feels radically different from where you are. And

9:18

then the places where I'd

9:21

served, over time,

9:23

the political situation in Iraq starts to

9:25

devolve. You have the rise of ISIS

9:27

and then places that I felt like, oh,

9:29

okay, you know, we brought a certain amount of security

9:32

to these places. ISIS

9:34

comes through. There's

9:36

a tremendous amount of death and devastation.

9:39

They sweep through in the north and

9:42

do, you know, genocide in UCD

9:44

areas and take over Mosul.

9:47

And, you know, that kind of

9:49

settled and firm opinion I had about my

9:51

service and what we had achieved and what

9:53

I thought it meant starts to be, starts

9:56

to come under certain kind of doubt, right?

9:58

Because of just trying

10:01

to think through all the

10:04

gains that we thought we made, which turned out

10:06

to have been sort of built with sand or

10:08

written in sand. That's kind of how I came

10:10

to it, right? I

10:13

got back from Iraq. It seemed

10:15

like this was the most morally

10:18

significant thing that our nation was doing,

10:20

right? War is the most

10:22

morally fraught thing a country can do. There

10:25

was a tremendous amount of death and devastation overseas.

10:27

I did not think the answer was as

10:30

simple as being kind of pro-war anti-war, because

10:33

it was not at all

10:35

convinced that a withdrawal of American forces would lead

10:37

to less violence, right?

10:39

But nor could I

10:41

tell myself that the presence of troops in

10:43

Iraq was an unqualified good. The invasion as

10:45

a whole, I think, was a disaster. And

10:49

a lot of the policies that we pursued were pretty

10:51

disastrous in various ways. I mentioned

10:53

Afghanistan, those people that I

10:55

knew who were

10:57

getting injured or killed were getting injured

10:59

or killed as part of a surge,

11:01

Obama's surge to Afghanistan, which was a

11:04

complete failure in every way, right?

11:06

And whose main upshot was a lot

11:08

of fighting and unnecessary death. And

11:10

so I started writing about these things to

11:13

try and think through, okay, what was that?

11:15

What are these wars? What did they mean? What

11:18

are the complexities of being in

11:20

these wars? What do they say

11:22

about America? How should we think

11:24

about them as, you know, American

11:26

citizens, as veterans, and so on? And that's

11:28

the path that I've been on. I think

11:31

there's still probably not a

11:33

full American appreciation, domestic American appreciation

11:35

of how radically different the

11:38

United States is after World War II

11:40

from like what it was before World

11:42

War II. And one of the

11:44

ways in which it is radically different is the maintenance of

11:46

a massive standing army in

11:48

what is at least in theory peacetime. I

11:50

mean, there have been multiple periods of actual

11:53

war in Korea and Vietnam and Iraq in

11:55

1991 and then Iraq again in 2003. The

12:00

whole series of kind of. Not more

12:02

not peace reality is exposed to some degree

12:04

or korea holidays or not, we're not peace

12:06

reality and I out of the most Americans

12:09

recognize that just the inner the maintenance of

12:11

this massive army Army being all armed forces

12:13

are not saying the army our is a

12:15

army Marines, Air, force, Navy, And

12:18

a concomitant. Military.

12:20

Budget was people might be more aware of is

12:22

just as good as a significant break and it's

12:24

not. Grow. That typical globally and

12:26

one of the reasons that. There.

12:28

Had been a traditional. Hesitation

12:31

to maintain an army and the

12:33

United Socialist his was unusual thing

12:35

of a relatively large, dynamic prosperous

12:37

nation in the. Late. Nineteenth and

12:39

twentieth centuries. By not maintaining a military of

12:41

size, it had a military, just not. Comparable

12:44

was partly the awareness of.

12:47

To. Maintain a lot of people under arms and you

12:49

spend a lot of money. It is both tempting and

12:51

feasible to think of using that. As.

12:53

A tool of foreign policy. You

12:55

don't have. i'm in Norway, doesn't in and sit around getting.

12:58

Lincoln Center of us are we cannot send our boss

13:00

or we can spend money We cannot spend money or

13:02

we can invade like be invade parts is not part

13:04

of and it doesn't to not like on the top

13:06

ten lists of foreign policy options of I'm Him. Do

13:08

you think this is a healthy thing or is it

13:11

just a necessary thing and an anarchic world that we

13:13

be powerful and strong armed. And sell it.

13:15

we didn't use or military quite a bit in

13:17

in the nineteenth century to. And that

13:19

was part of the kind of westward

13:21

cost of America the sounders did originally.

13:23

they want to. congress have to vote

13:25

every two years if there's gonna be even

13:27

a standing army. Right! and there

13:30

were very skeptical the idea of a

13:32

bard standing army. This they they feared

13:34

that that would lead to despotism. Bryant.

13:37

Washington. had a somewhat different view

13:39

i mean the original thinking of the

13:41

founders were said like you'd have these

13:43

militias where you'd have citizens who would

13:45

maintain the arms that you would need

13:47

for like a light infantry force right

13:49

you know the basic small arms of

13:52

the day and that you could call

13:54

these people up and is brave citizen

13:56

soldiers motivated by patriotism and civic duty

13:58

they would be able to to prop

14:00

function. And I think that

14:02

Washington was more skeptical of that than

14:04

the other founders because he had experience

14:06

at war with citizens called up with

14:08

their arms and they got sort of

14:11

their asses pretty roundly kicked, particularly

14:13

the Battle of Brooklyn against Hessian

14:15

troops. And

14:17

so we initially had this system and

14:19

the Second Amendment is in part an

14:22

artifact of this where the idea was

14:24

that you would be able to rely

14:26

on state militias. And then militias just

14:28

got totally slaughtered in combat with American

14:30

Indian tribes. And eventually, they decided

14:33

to kind of beef up the American

14:36

military. And we do use that military

14:38

as part of the conquest of the

14:40

West. We have the Mexican-American War, which

14:42

Grant once said was, I think,

14:44

one of the evilest wars ever fought. We

14:46

have a situation where we're relatively secure, we're

14:49

bounded by two oceans and have this dynamic,

14:51

powerful country at the end of the 19th

14:53

century. And then it's like,

14:55

what role is this thing gonna

14:57

play in global affairs? And after the

14:59

sort of massive bloodletting of the

15:02

first half of the 20th century, it's like,

15:04

okay, we want a

15:06

more stable global order

15:08

that will benefit us. And

15:11

the only way to maintain that is gonna be

15:13

to have a really robust

15:16

military presence around the world. And

15:18

I think that there are lots

15:22

and lots of moral hazards

15:24

in that, right? And the

15:26

number of... There's a huge number

15:28

of misuses of the American military. In

15:30

many ways, my career has been about

15:33

writing about my problems

15:35

with the way that the American military has been

15:37

used in the 21st century.

15:41

But at the same time, I...

15:43

And the reason that

15:45

I don't subscribe to a kind

15:48

of more isolationist

15:50

foreign policy is I don't

15:53

Necessarily see a world in which

15:56

the United States withdraws that presence

15:58

as one where that's... The vacuum

16:00

isn't filled. By. Other actors including

16:02

Billie Malign actors. To. See give a

16:04

very small example I was in. I

16:07

went through Northern Iraqi in December.

16:09

Twenty Nine Team. And the

16:11

went through refugee camps at one point in Northern

16:13

Iraq that were filled with Syrian refugees and they're

16:16

all Kurds, mostly. the folks who were meeting in

16:18

this particular cap. So. He will call.

16:20

We'd. We'd said. War Against Isis.

16:23

Both interact. And. In

16:25

Syria. And so we had

16:27

relatively small numbers of troops

16:29

remaining in Syria, in particular

16:31

regions of Syria. And they

16:33

were. they are, too, Well

16:36

do. A variety of things but one

16:39

of the things that their presence mans was

16:41

a kind of check on other powers of

16:43

my one move in. And during

16:45

the Trump presidency don't from in this

16:47

kind of bizarre incident tweeted out that

16:49

he wanted to remove troops from from

16:51

Syria or we've been Syria for a

16:54

long time and we're supposed to be

16:56

a very sure hes and a hit

16:58

on Isis but it didn't work out

17:00

that way. They never left and they've

17:02

been there for many, many years and

17:04

I we have to bring our people

17:06

back home and frankly our great soldiers

17:08

every talking about this on the campaign

17:10

about three years ago and more. As

17:12

you watch the speeches we want to

17:14

bring our soldiers back. Home is of

17:16

the endless wars and then the

17:18

military and diplomats in the region

17:20

played this kind of game where

17:22

they tried to delayed sayings, push

17:24

back, Withdraw some troops but not

17:26

a lot for in the regions where

17:28

we withdrew. Turkish backed militias moved in

17:30

and ethnically cleanse that region of Kurds and

17:33

the refugees went to Northern Iraq to

17:35

the Kurdish reach this Northern Iraq you

17:37

know they are talking with this father whose

17:39

be no has two sons, were about

17:41

the age of my sons and his wife

17:43

is pregnant. My wife is also. Pregnant at

17:45

the time and he's got pins all down his

17:48

leg from Iraq and pack. And. He says

17:50

to me, he says, "In America relied

17:52

on us to fight isis and then

17:54

they just abandon us right this basically

17:56

that will happen" curse politicians

17:58

at that time We're very concerned,

18:00

you know, somebody said to us like,

18:03

all right, you know, right now there's still

18:05

like a couple hundred troops in Syria. And he

18:07

goes like, they're protecting the oil. And

18:09

he goes, I don't care what they say they're protecting,

18:12

as long as they stay there, right? Because

18:15

they quite sure that if troops

18:17

withdrew, the same thing would happen

18:20

again, but at a larger scale, and you'd

18:22

have another flood of refugees, which would probably

18:24

be incredibly destabilizing to that portion of Iraq.

18:27

And Iraq, as we know, is not like incredibly

18:29

super stable country with a huge

18:31

capacity to be able to help

18:34

large numbers of refugees, let alone the kind of

18:36

internally displaced people in the country. And

18:39

so that's an instance where

18:41

there's a whole variety of reasons that it

18:43

makes sense to me for there to be

18:45

that presence. And there are sort

18:47

of cases like that around the world. I think the invasion

18:49

of Ukraine was a reminder to

18:51

a lot of folks that we do

18:54

still live in a dangerous world with

18:56

really malign actors. And in

18:59

the absence of powers

19:01

that are willing to check those forces,

19:04

international affairs can devolve very quickly

19:06

in extremely bloody ways, right? And

19:08

the idea that we will be

19:10

forever inured to that, especially

19:12

in like the modern interconnected world is

19:15

I think delusional. So no,

19:17

I don't think that it makes sense for

19:19

America to move back to a, you know,

19:22

more isolationist posture, but at the

19:24

same time to say that is

19:26

not at all to say that we've necessarily

19:28

been using our power extremely wisely. History

19:40

doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

19:43

That may be a Mark Twain quote, but it's

19:45

just as true today as when he originally said

19:47

it. My History Can Beat Up Your Politics is

19:49

a podcast that compares and contrasts history to the

19:51

current events of today. Host Bruce

19:53

Carlson has recently done deep dives on fascinating

19:55

topics like the fall of the Soviet Union,

19:57

which sets the stage for today's to your

19:59

politics. The man who was in prison

20:01

and still won a million votes for the

20:04

presidency, and the mystery behind George Washington's involvement,

20:06

or lack thereof, in the Bill of Rights.

20:08

My History Can Beat Up Your Politics offers

20:10

deep context to all these historic stories, especially

20:12

those that you may think you know well,

20:15

and is particularly adept at relating them to

20:17

current events. So don't miss out. Listen to

20:19

My History Can Beat Up Your Politics on

20:21

all platforms. Hey

20:24

everybody, I'm Scott Schaeffer. And I'm Marisa

20:26

Lago. We're the host of Political Breakdown,

20:28

a show that pulls back the curtain

20:31

on the people and forces driving politics

20:33

in the Golden State from KQED in

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21:44

I mean, trying to balance that kind of

21:46

moral imperative that you're talking about as far

21:48

as people in the region might want us

21:50

to be there versus I think the absolute

21:52

kind of like exhaustion and nothing

21:54

discusses the right word, but just tiredness

21:56

from the American public about being constantly

21:58

at war. I mean, what does

22:00

that landscape look like to you, you

22:02

know, a year plus from our withdrawal

22:04

in Afghanistan, like both from the perspective

22:06

there and from the American public's perspective?

22:09

God, Afghanistan, it feels like we've washed

22:11

our hands of it, right? You

22:13

know, there's, you know, we had major,

22:16

several major other conflicts since then, Ukraine

22:18

and the war in Gaza, right, which

22:20

is currently generating the most attention, right?

22:23

And the war in Ukraine is not going particularly well. We

22:26

have a contingent of folks

22:28

on the American right who

22:31

don't want to help Ukraine repel

22:33

Russian forces. Where does that leave

22:36

Afghans, including, you know, Afghans who worked

22:38

with us, whose lives might be at

22:41

risk, who are trying to seek asylum, doesn't leave

22:43

them with a lot of options, right? And

22:46

there's not a lot of political will to deal with

22:48

that, certainly not in the way that we did after

22:50

the Vietnam War, where we accepted large numbers of Vietnamese

22:52

refugees, right? And I think that

22:54

one of the things about

22:57

the current way we wage war, and

23:00

we haven't touched on this yet, but I

23:02

think it's significant because after

23:06

my time at war, right, and

23:09

after the Obama troop surge to

23:11

Afghanistan, America started shifting more

23:13

and more away from large-scale troop

23:15

deployments where you have, you know,

23:17

lots of infantry units trying to

23:19

control territory in foreign countries to

23:21

a reliance on a lighter

23:24

footprint, working with local

23:27

forces, sending in maybe special

23:29

operators, using drone strikes and

23:31

airstrikes, but we won't have lethal effects and not

23:33

having much of a presence on the ground, right?

23:37

And one of the things that that does

23:40

is it makes it a lot easier for

23:42

us to maintain a troop presence without a

23:44

lot of visible cost to the American public.

23:47

And we also don't really debate it in

23:50

Congress anymore. We have

23:52

been using the same authorization for

23:54

the use of military force for

23:56

over 20 years at this point

23:58

to justify America doing lethal

24:01

things in a whole variety of countries, right?

24:03

In Africa, in the Middle

24:05

East, in the Philippines, and so on.

24:07

And so, you have the situation where

24:10

the president has a huge

24:12

amount of authority to do

24:14

things with our military without

24:16

consulting Congress, and he's doing

24:18

them with the tools

24:21

of the American military that are the

24:23

least visible, right? Special operators

24:25

tend not to have media in beds, drones.

24:28

Obviously, there's not even a human pilot,

24:30

the details of which are not well

24:32

reported among. That situation means that Americans

24:37

are not having the kind

24:39

of political battles about our wars. They're just sort

24:41

of like things off there in the distance that

24:43

we're sort of hazily aware of. And so, the

24:45

debates about these things don't have

24:48

the kind of urgency that they did back

24:51

in the early stages of the Iraq War. I

24:54

mean, this is one of those things where, you know,

24:56

in the season finale, last season, for us, Zachary and

24:58

I, we were talking about how war

25:00

has kind of moved to the periphery of

25:02

people's attention in the United States. And we

25:05

were framing that as a positive thing, but

25:07

maybe you could elucidate some of the downsides

25:09

more specifically. Part of the problem is,

25:11

it would be fine if we weren't

25:13

deeply engaged in a lot of conflicts

25:15

around the world, right? And

25:18

so, one of the reasons that

25:20

war has moved to the periphery of people's

25:22

consciousness is a result of political choices to

25:24

kind of evade accountability about wars, right? Barack

25:26

Obama pulled troops out of Iraq. There was

25:28

a lot of fanfare, right? And

25:31

they touted it as an achievement. Okay. And

25:33

then you had the rise of ISIS. And

25:36

you had a political problem for

25:38

the commander in chief because

25:40

he had come into the

25:42

White House as the preferred candidate of the

25:44

anti-war left, right? And he was

25:47

never anti-war himself, right? He sort

25:49

of distinguished between dumb wars and justified

25:52

wars. He seemed to have

25:54

a different response to Afghanistan than he did

25:56

to Iraq. And yet, you

25:59

had this fairly... horrific insurgent

26:01

group rampaging against

26:03

across Iraq that America had

26:05

the capability of doing something about, right?

26:07

And so what he started

26:10

doing was ramping up military airstrikes,

26:12

drone strikes while also introducing special

26:14

operations forces into Iraq. But instead

26:16

of going to Congress and saying,

26:18

hey, we're reigniting the war in

26:20

Iraq, can we vote on whether

26:22

or not this is a good idea? And I'll go

26:24

before Congress and I'll explain, you know, what this commitment

26:26

is going to be in terms of troops and money

26:28

and effort and what we expect

26:31

to see out of this war and why we're doing it

26:33

and why it's in the national interest and why

26:35

you should vote for it and then have every member of Congress

26:37

vote on it. He used the 2001

26:41

authorization for the use of military forces, well, so

26:43

2002 on for Iraq, didn't go to debate and

26:45

then denied that the war

26:47

was restarting, right? So

26:49

we were told that, you know,

26:51

yes, we were sending special operations troops

26:53

to Iraq, but we weren't putting boots

26:55

on the ground, right? The distinction that

26:57

seemed particularly odd when the special operations

27:00

troops ended up in combat, a

27:02

Pentagon spokesperson explained that we weren't sending troops

27:05

into combat, but that sometimes troops could end

27:07

up in a combat situation. In

27:09

2015, this war is really amping

27:11

up. I was in an event where then

27:14

Ambassador Susan Rice claimed that one of

27:17

the Obama administration's proudest accomplishments was having ended

27:19

the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, right?

27:21

Two months later, Barack Obama said the same thing at

27:23

a fundraiser. So we were being told

27:25

that the war was over, even

27:27

as we were ramping up our

27:30

military involvement in a very bloody war,

27:33

right? And that

27:35

kind of rhetoric, I think, fits

27:38

into this mood that you were talking about

27:40

of exhaustion, right? The issue that I think

27:43

politicians are facing is

27:45

that the American public is kind

27:47

of schizophrenic on wars.

27:50

When they see a group like ISIS, they

27:54

tend to want it crushed,

27:56

okay? But they

27:59

are also... war weary and

28:01

they don't want American forces enforcing

28:03

the peace in a foreign land that they don't

28:06

know much about, right? And those

28:08

are very contradictory desires. And so the

28:10

easy thing to do, the easy option

28:12

is to tell people that the killing

28:14

will continue, but the wars are over,

28:16

right? And this, by the way, the same

28:18

thing that... Well, I should tell you something, the interrupts on

28:21

that. I mean, it's more... The easy option is to bomb,

28:23

right? Because we have this Air Force where you

28:25

can use military force because the one thing

28:27

people tend to want is they want

28:29

to eliminate threats without people dying. I

28:32

mean, bottom line, right? They want the immaculate

28:34

war. Immaculate on the American side, not immaculate,

28:37

you know, somewhat indifferent on the

28:39

other side. What did Joe Biden

28:41

say when he pulled troops out of Afghanistan? That

28:43

the war was over, but that we

28:45

would continue to have over the horizon

28:47

strike capabilities, right? So

28:49

the war is over, the killing

28:51

will continue, but we'll be safe, right?

28:54

And that is... You know,

28:57

that's an additional problem. I mean, you write a

28:59

lot about the out of sight, out of mind

29:01

reality of a volunteer force that's geographically selective,

29:04

right? So it's not... Two million people

29:07

spread evenly demographically around the country. And

29:10

then there's the increasing

29:12

way of waging war either by the Air Force

29:14

or by drones, which is obviously a form of

29:16

Air Force where you can have

29:19

massive amounts of lethal force without

29:21

anyone necessarily of your

29:23

own soldiers dying. And that's

29:25

another whole issue that of course we

29:27

can't really look to constitutional precedent because

29:30

the fathers of the founding fathers were

29:32

sitting around going, one day there shall

29:34

be autonomous airborne vehicles, cold drones, such

29:36

health, you know, do

29:38

massive harm without any Americans. I

29:41

do think if you told the founding fathers like, hey,

29:44

we're going to be using our military to

29:46

kill people we don't like in foreign lands.

29:49

And they'd be like, okay, so a war and

29:51

be like, no, no, no, it doesn't count as

29:53

war. No, it's... It's

29:56

just a thing. It's just a thing. It's a thing.

29:58

It's a thing we did. It

30:00

sounds like war, you know? The

30:11

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30:13

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30:15

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30:17

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31:47

would you be in favor... This is

31:49

not going to happen, but

31:51

it certainly has been talked about occasionally. Would

31:53

you be in favor of a draft that

31:56

had people actually serve, meaning that there would be

31:58

more of a... connection

32:00

between our use of force and

32:02

that that's a real choice, right? That that's

32:04

a choice of our children, of

32:06

our lives, and therefore should

32:08

be taken as seriously

32:11

accordingly. I

32:15

don't necessarily know if

32:17

that would solve the issues that

32:19

I'm talking about, right? Because

32:23

I was part of an all-volunteer force whose use

32:25

was hotly debated, right? The wars in Iraq and

32:28

Afghanistan were a major issue of political contention in

32:30

2004, 2005, 2006, going

32:35

into the 2008 election, right?

32:37

I mean, it's not

32:40

particularly likely that Barack

32:42

Obama would dispute Hillary Clinton, right, had

32:46

it not been for the

32:48

war in Iraq. And then, you

32:50

know, a decade later, we're using the

32:52

war in a different way and all of a sudden it doesn't

32:54

have the same kind of political import

32:57

to people because we're not even using

32:59

– we're using a fraction of our

33:01

military and the bit that is the

33:04

most surrounded in secrecy, that is most

33:06

opaque to the American public and

33:09

we're not having regular debates about

33:11

how we use that military as

33:14

a result of political decisions that

33:17

commanders in chief multiple over the past, you

33:19

know, two decades have made to insulate themselves

33:21

from that kind of debate and scrutiny. And

33:24

so, I don't think that a

33:26

draft would necessarily solve that problem. I

33:29

do think, however, that national service is

33:31

a really good thing, right? I do

33:33

think that it would actually be great

33:36

if we had much more

33:38

opportunities for national service, much more

33:41

broad variety and much

33:43

more of a kind of cultural

33:45

sense that one ought to do something,

33:47

right, whether it's in the military or

33:49

otherwise, because I think that

33:52

sense of a civic

33:55

participation connection to the broader national

33:57

project and also just like... When

34:00

you join the military like you meet America

34:02

right everybody we all live in our little

34:05

bubbles and then you join the military and

34:07

you're there with everybody like every type of

34:09

of american. And it is a

34:11

radically different experience than

34:13

the kind of group of people that i

34:15

knew growing up in new york and then

34:17

going to an ivy league school. Right

34:20

yeah i'm a great time at darmett but it's

34:22

just you know it's a bubble right

34:25

it's very easy for people to

34:27

dismiss. Folks that

34:29

they don't know i'll tell you the story before

34:31

the trump election you know i'm going down to

34:33

marines. And

34:36

this is a story that i like to

34:38

tell you that kind of ivy league circle

34:40

i told the story a couple weeks ago

34:43

right before the trump election and

34:45

you know my buddies getting married and

34:48

johnson pennsylvania's cold country right so

34:50

like we passed by like seventeen

34:52

trump diggs call sign. And

34:54

my wife who's called american turns me she's like

34:57

i'm not gonna be the only spanish person this

34:59

wedding i'm like not like military guys get married

35:01

the wedding is gonna be super diverse you know

35:03

what it was but i. I don't

35:05

need the groomsmen i text my wife i'm like.

35:08

Not only are you not the only hispanic person

35:10

that's at this wedding but you're not even the

35:13

only columbian american just like really. Like

35:15

yeah he already early voted trump the

35:18

rationale for this guy was pretty

35:20

straightforward. Any said to me said

35:22

it's like you and i were both military both

35:25

no guys but overseas got blown up killed whatever

35:27

we have overseas. We

35:29

have catastrophe this is before the

35:32

fall of Afghanistan humanitarian catastrophes shattered

35:34

societies and who are the two

35:36

candidates one of the show your

35:38

clinton to liberal hall. Should general

35:41

john alan speaker convention i want to put

35:43

command command in syria she knows the military

35:45

she's good relationships with the general. And

35:48

her take away from the livid

35:50

intervention with the more involved. And

35:52

so i think that if she gets

35:54

in she will intelligently and competently work

35:57

to expand american military footprint overseas and

35:59

if the path. is any prologue,

36:01

that's gonna mean a lot of death and waste.

36:04

And who's the other guy? Donald Trump. Do you

36:06

know much about the military? No. Is he mainly

36:08

a kind of isolationist? Yes. Right? Did he support

36:10

the war in Iraq for like a second when

36:12

everybody else did and then within like a year

36:14

was already saying we should declare victory and come

36:16

home? So he's like, I

36:19

don't think he's gonna do anything radical, but I don't

36:21

think he's gonna expand the war. So I'm gonna vote

36:23

for that guy. And the thing is, I didn't ultimately

36:26

vote for Donald Trump, but that analysis is

36:28

not totally wrong. And it's not something

36:31

that can just be waved away as

36:33

the attitude of

36:36

an ignorant person from a

36:38

region of the country that we dismiss,

36:40

who's just morally obtuse and not

36:43

attuned to the true wall

36:45

stakes in the election. And that's

36:47

very true. My partner is a veteran

36:49

who voted for Trump and for the

36:51

reasons, the very same reasons that you

36:54

just described among others, but those among them. And

36:56

he tells me... It's not that uncommon. No,

36:59

it's not. And also he tells me all the time, like

37:01

you need to go out and like meet more people

37:03

because you're in a bubble. I'm

37:06

with you on the idea of civil core,

37:08

you know, some kind of like boy and

37:10

girl scouts of America type of thing. And

37:12

you know, I just don't see a lot of people

37:15

talking about it, a lot of interest in it. But

37:17

other than that, I was also curious to

37:19

go back to your statement of like a

37:21

draft wouldn't necessarily fix the problems that you're

37:24

talking about. But if you had a magic

37:26

wand, what would? I'm guessing that

37:28

probably the repeal of the authorization of the use

37:30

of military force. Sure. I think

37:32

we should create more, much more transparency about the use

37:35

of military force and much more political debate about it.

37:37

I think that if we're going to be killing people

37:39

overseas, the commander in chief should

37:41

have to on a regular basis come before

37:43

Congress and justify, you know, what

37:46

we're doing, what the mission is, what

37:48

it's supposed to achieve, how much it's going to cost,

37:50

what the commitment is, you know, what the benchmarks of

37:52

success are going to be. So if in a year

37:54

he comes back and asks to continue the mission, we

37:56

can actually judge whether or not anything that he said

37:59

is true or not. has come to pass, and

38:01

then every member of Congress should vote for it, right?

38:03

That's not going to guarantee good policy,

38:07

right? If you do that, I don't think

38:09

there's any solution that kind

38:11

of cures things, right? Figuring out what

38:13

to do with one's military in a

38:16

complex world, in the complex political environment

38:18

is hard, but I think that if

38:20

we create political

38:22

structures and norms that allow us

38:24

to evade regular accountability, that will

38:27

breed failures in the future.

38:30

So let's say you repeal that authority. One of

38:32

the things that's happened over the past

38:34

three months is that the United States

38:36

military has been bombing

38:38

select targets in Yemen to try

38:41

to take out Houthi capability to

38:43

disrupt shipping in the Red Sea,

38:45

in that area, and

38:47

has done so with the collaboration of

38:49

the United Kingdom. While Congress

38:52

and relevant committees were certainly

38:54

informed of these actions before,

38:57

as in picking up the phone saying, oh, by the way,

38:59

we're going to bomb

39:01

Houthi positions in Yemen, no

39:04

congressional authorization, no discussion, and

39:06

no congressional objection to this,

39:08

or at least not in any meaningful fashion.

39:11

Yeah. I mean, one of the problems is that

39:13

Congress doesn't want the authority, right? Right. They

39:16

don't want to be on the hook for difficult votes, right?

39:18

Or votes that might split their coalition. Would

39:21

you go so far as to say even

39:24

that kind of action, which was responsive, immediate,

39:27

that if it's going to be ongoing, you

39:29

need to have a congressional buy-in? Yeah, of

39:32

course. There's stuff

39:35

like, obviously, the president is

39:37

able to take responsive action,

39:39

right? If it's ongoing,

39:41

then yeah. There's no reason not

39:43

to have that go through a

39:45

more normal political process over time

39:48

so that we can actually have a

39:52

discussion. One of the benefits of the discussion

39:54

about the surge when I was there, even

39:57

as somebody in Iraq

39:59

at the time... was I could

40:01

see the public debates that were happening about

40:03

the war and what our

40:05

leaders were saying success was supposed to look like.

40:08

I knew what I was supposed to do because

40:10

there was a political debate. I think a lot

40:12

of... I think there are soldiers who've

40:15

been in countries where it's like, they're not even

40:17

quite sure what the mission is supposed to be,

40:20

right? Because we

40:23

don't actually debate them and force

40:25

the commander in chief to make

40:27

a full-throated declaration of what

40:30

we're supposed to be achieving and how it fits

40:32

in terms of the national interest and what success

40:34

is supposed to look like. And

40:36

that's a significant problem. Adam L

40:57

The policy approach to the American foreign policy establishment

40:59

certainly acts as if the

41:02

president in a time of that

41:04

conflict essentially determine what US military

41:06

engagement would be to either prevent

41:08

that or intervene in that. While

41:10

the US spent 20 years fighting

41:12

land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,

41:14

the Pentagon watched China, its greatest

41:17

geopolitical rival of the 21st century,

41:19

build the largest navy in the world.

41:22

China has threatened to use that navy

41:24

to invade Taiwan, an important

41:26

American ally. As tensions

41:29

with China continue to rise, we

41:31

wanted to know more about the current state

41:33

of the US Navy and how it's trying

41:35

to deter China while preparing for

41:38

the possibility of war. Adam

41:41

L Without any real clear sense of,

41:43

is there actually an American

41:45

democratic consensus that

41:47

we're going to have hundreds of thousands

41:49

US troops and tens of thousands of

41:52

casualties in order to defend

41:54

Taiwanese sovereignty against China? That

41:57

question is not a, we shouldn't therefore

41:59

do that. is the whole way

42:01

we talk about our involvement in that is

42:03

somewhat predicated on the president could just choose

42:05

to do that or not. Right.

42:09

And that's one of the

42:11

reasons that makes me very uncomfortable to have the situation

42:13

we do where everything is somewhat

42:16

about who the executive is, right?

42:19

It's not like in the absence

42:21

of scrutiny, you know, well, the adults will be

42:23

in charge and they'll make sure that things make

42:25

sense, you know? I

42:28

don't think there's any reason to look back on the past two

42:30

decades and think that that's the case. Although,

42:32

I mean, from this perspective of choose

42:34

your executive wisely, though, Trump, Obama and

42:36

Biden have all kind of done similar things.

42:40

The incentives are all there, right? I mean, the

42:42

big thing that Biden did was pull out of

42:44

Afghanistan, right? Why would Trump want a situation where

42:46

he was more constrained, but didn't have the ability

42:49

to, you know, kill somebody from time

42:51

to time? Right? And I mean, like

42:53

for both Obama and

42:56

Trump, you know, when people

42:58

talk about their military policy, there are these

43:00

like signature achievements, which are them killing a

43:02

guy. I remember Obama's last state of the

43:04

union, he was like, you know, if

43:06

you don't think I have a serious policy, counter-terrorism policy,

43:08

you know, ask Osama bin Laden, ask the planner of

43:10

the Benghazi attack, right? And it's like, well, okay,

43:13

like it's good that we got bin Laden, but killing

43:16

a couple guys is not a coherent policy that you

43:18

have to argue for. Trump killing

43:20

of Soleimani, which happened

43:22

in a very complex environment

43:24

because there was a really delicate political situation in

43:26

Iraq at the time and he was killed in

43:29

Iraq. And it's discussed as if it's purely the

43:31

killing of a guy in relationship

43:33

of like, you know, deterring

43:35

Iran. And so there's this sort of

43:37

weird thing where it's almost like the

43:39

celebratization of military policy centering around like,

43:42

you know, famous guys that we killed rather

43:44

than a more rigorously

43:47

articulated policy. But

43:49

the political incentives for the executive are very clear.

43:51

It's just that Congress needs to take back authority.

43:53

Adamus It's a new jeopardy category, famous

43:55

guys who killed for 1,000. John Deeb Yeah, yeah.

43:59

At this point, there's a bunch. Anyway,

44:01

Phobel, I'm sure we

44:03

could keep having this conversation. I think you've

44:06

done great work bringing to attention this sort

44:08

of hiding in plain sight reality of we

44:10

have this massive military establishment, but unless you're

44:12

in certain parts of the country, you rarely

44:15

interact with it, except like if there's any

44:17

veterans, please check in first to an airplane.

44:20

And that disconnect, it's part of a

44:22

whole lattice that you're talking about, including

44:24

the congressional abnegation of its own, presumably,

44:27

constitutional authority to weigh in and be

44:29

the ultimate arbiter of and authorizer of

44:31

the use of lethal force abroad. And

44:33

these issues are not going

44:36

anywhere, clearly global tensions being what they are and

44:38

the fact that we maintain this military means that

44:40

we're going to keep having these discussions. But I'm

44:42

really glad that you have an unusual given your

44:44

own demography choice to serve and then you've continued

44:47

that act of service by trying to bring to

44:49

people's attention something that at least

44:51

the more urban educated tend to treat as an

44:53

out of sight, out of mind and absolutely should

44:55

not. And so thank you for that. And thank

44:58

you for joining us. Thank

45:00

you so much. Thank you, Phil. So

45:03

that was a meaningful conversation, albeit

45:05

one that didn't do much

45:08

to resolve the various contradictions and conundrums

45:10

that surround a all

45:13

volunteer military force and what we do with it

45:15

and what we don't do with it. And look,

45:18

I appreciated very much Phil's willingness

45:22

to live in ambiguity or live

45:24

in this liminal

45:26

space between moral certitude

45:29

and not really knowing

45:31

exactly what's right or what's wrong. I

45:33

mean, he clearly has strong views

45:35

about what he believes to be right and wrong,

45:37

but his own experience in the military as he

45:39

talked about led to a

45:41

lot of questions more than it led to a lot

45:44

of answers other than the answers that we talked about

45:46

in the episode of, you know, there should be more

45:48

congressional authorization of the use

45:50

of force rather than just somebody sitting

45:53

in the White House with this vast

45:55

amount of unilateral power. Yeah, of

45:57

course we want answers, right? And

46:00

people listening to the conversation might be frustrated

46:02

by the fact that there wasn't an easy

46:04

one, two, three step. Here's

46:06

the answer for US foreign policy in

46:08

various countries. But I think what

46:11

Phil is doing is asking the questions that he would

46:13

like all of us to be asking a little bit

46:15

more. Like I said, during the conversation, I had framed

46:17

war moving to the periphery of our attention

46:20

as a good thing, but certainly

46:22

Phil is bringing out the issues

46:25

with doing that, one of them being

46:27

that we've kind of relegated it to

46:29

somebody else's problem. But it's our problem

46:31

as citizens. I would have liked to

46:34

get into more of this question of

46:36

isolationism versus, I don't know, globalism

46:38

or I don't know what the

46:40

perfect word, the perfect

46:42

opposite to isolationism. Because

46:46

there's a way you could say we shouldn't, the United

46:48

States should not be using force quite

46:50

so promiscuously. That isn't therefore

46:53

isolationist. It's just saying we shouldn't

46:55

be using military force as

46:57

a first or second resort, really

46:59

should be a last resort. And I'm sure there are many

47:02

people in the government who would say, oh, it is a

47:04

last resort. But given how much

47:06

the United States actually uses military force

47:08

versus other nations, it doesn't

47:10

appear to be a last resort. It may not

47:12

be a first one. And

47:15

you could argue for more military restraint

47:17

without arguing for isolationism. We could

47:20

be diplomatically engaged. We could be

47:22

actively, economically engaged. None of

47:24

that's isolationist. It just isn't the

47:26

use of force in quite the way we do now.

47:29

I mean, it's such a highly debated topic because

47:31

there's also the point that a lot of people

47:33

have made, I think Greg Easterbrook made this point

47:35

on our podcast a few seasons ago, the whole

47:38

idea of Pax Americana, right? There

47:40

is this 70-year plus era in

47:42

the world where conflict was

47:45

less likely in part because the

47:47

US was everywhere, particularly with naval

47:49

power. That was Easterbrook's point. And

47:51

whether overall we're doing good

47:53

or evil, I think is a question

47:56

we have not well settled on. And

47:59

it's not entirely clear. earlier, that there

48:01

has been less conflict over the past seven years. There's

48:03

been less what we would use to call great power

48:05

conflict. There's been no repeat of World War I or

48:08

World War II or

48:10

the Napoleonic Wars for that matter. But

48:12

there's been a lot of regional conflict. And a

48:14

lot of that regional conflict in the United States

48:16

has been involved in either as a counterpoint to

48:18

the Soviet Union or as we've

48:20

seen since 1990 in the Middle East and

48:23

in various conflicts, many of which we have

48:26

chosen as opposed to not

48:29

just in response to, right? The invasion of

48:31

Iraq in 2003 was a war

48:33

of choice. It wasn't like Afghanistan in 2001,

48:35

2002. It wasn't a response to an attack.

48:37

It was its own really nice special thing.

48:42

And that sort of packs

48:44

Americana question, looms large. We've talked about this

48:47

a bit with some people about do you

48:49

need an American hegemon? Is that

48:51

a vital necessary factor in the world or will

48:53

the world just kind of fall apart into

48:56

a narcic chaos without the United States

48:58

bestriding it like a policeman

49:00

colossus? So again, these are not

49:02

questions that we're going to answer right now. They're not

49:04

really questions we answered. But Phil, what's interesting about the

49:07

conversation we had is the degree to which on

49:09

the ground how messy things are and

49:12

whether you want to serve and whether you're patriotic or

49:14

not, the messiness of military

49:16

conflict, particularly as he said, when it's not

49:18

always clear what the actual end game is

49:20

to even the soldiers on the ground. Like

49:22

what is our mission? What

49:25

are we fighting for? What does it look like when

49:27

it's over or is it just open

49:29

ended and eternal? And that is a real problem. That's

49:32

a real problem for the men and women in the

49:34

service in that if you don't give a

49:37

clear goal, that can also be somewhat innovating

49:39

and debilitating. Yeah. I mean,

49:42

if people are interested in reading Phil's writing,

49:44

he talks about that a lot as well

49:46

as just all the conflicting emotions that go

49:48

around being a veteran. And

49:51

sometimes they are in direct opposition to

49:53

one another. I use my partner as

49:55

an example during the conversation. I'll bring

49:58

him up again now because He

50:00

sort of leans right. He's very against

50:02

the US getting involved in Ukraine. And

50:05

on the other hand, if we

50:07

decided to help out Ukraine with boots

50:09

on the ground, he's like, I would go. I

50:12

would sign up, really. So there's a whole

50:14

complex tapestry of things that are

50:16

going on for people that serve

50:18

in the military that if

50:21

at least we didn't provide answers, at least maybe we

50:23

gave people a bit of an interior look into that

50:25

with Phil. Indeed. All

50:28

right. Onward to the news of the week. So

50:32

we're going to talk about the news de

50:34

jour de cement. I'm sure

50:37

there's other ways of phrasing it. Things that you might

50:39

have missed whilst otherwise

50:41

engaged in the dystopian

50:44

desiderata of daily life.

50:47

All right. Let's talk about the news. Happy

50:50

progress news. So in

50:52

April, construction began on the

50:54

US's first high speed rail

50:56

project, where it will be the first one that's completed.

50:59

This is going to connect Las

51:01

Vegas to Los Angeles suburbs.

51:05

And we'll see if they finish it because there

51:07

have been other projects planned that have

51:09

not gone through

51:11

with construction, delays, blooming

51:14

costs. There's some optimism around this one.

51:16

I don't know about Las Vegas

51:18

to LA as the most important

51:20

test case. Like that one may

51:22

be primed for, if not failure,

51:24

not failure technically, but failure

51:26

commercially just because it's never going to

51:28

become a metropolitan corridor, right? Like there's

51:30

too much desert between Las Vegas and

51:33

Los Angeles as you've ever done that

51:35

drive. It's not like that corridor is

51:37

going to become Boston

51:39

to DC, which

51:42

in some sense is becoming ever more of a two, 300

51:44

mile metroplex. So

51:47

I don't know. I mean, it's an

51:50

interesting one. Obviously the one that would have

51:52

made the most sense would be taking the

51:54

current Assela, which is our version of high

51:56

speed. I can see an electric car future.

51:58

It seems to be like the United States. States in particular is

52:01

so wedded to, and its

52:03

economy is so bound up in interstate roads

52:06

and driving, I guess we'll see. So,

52:09

look, you can take that up with Brightline West, which is the

52:11

company that chose LA to Las Vegas.

52:13

And apparently the reason why they chose

52:15

it is because they have done some profitability reports,

52:19

somebody somewhere that talks

52:21

about the sweet spot, high-speed rail projects

52:23

being a certain amount of kilometers that

52:25

might not necessarily be a commuter route

52:28

or a metropolitan corridor. California

52:30

is trying to build one between, I think,

52:32

San Francisco and LA. Yeah,

52:35

that's an old obsession. Yeah. Yes.

52:38

They haven't broken ground, apparently. There's

52:40

the cost of pin-toupled,

52:43

sex-toupled. This one,

52:45

they've actually started, so I'm giving them

52:47

props. They are optimistic,

52:49

or this Bloomberg article where I read

52:52

it was optimistic about profitability. I'm

52:54

assuming they chose it for a reason. But we'll

52:56

see. What's up, son? So,

52:59

did you know that in Japan until April

53:01

that if you were a couple going through

53:03

a divorce, you actually had to choose which

53:05

parent got sole custody of the child.

53:08

There was no negotiations for

53:10

joint custody, which

53:12

I find rather archaic to

53:15

end this. Yeah. They updated the

53:17

law in April, so from 2026 onward,

53:20

divorcing couples can file for joint

53:22

custody, they can decide amongst themselves

53:24

or decide amongst mediating attorneys,

53:26

whatever the case may be, some kind

53:28

of joint custody arrangement, which I

53:30

imagine, I would imagine, is better for the

53:33

children, no? I would think so.

53:35

You know, it's certainly to deny

53:39

a child not just

53:41

a joint family, but an

53:44

entire parent is, I

53:46

think, having insulted injury, to say the least. And

53:48

there's some evidence that, you know, divorces where both

53:51

parents remain heavily involved are profoundly

53:53

better than any alternative,

53:56

except for parents staying together, except if they're

53:59

in an abusive. unhealthy, toxic relationship. Blah, blah, blah,

54:01

blah, blah. Good for Japan. They've

54:04

had a rash of like kind of liberalizing

54:06

a lot of their sort of

54:08

like marriage and social

54:11

codes around women recently in the last

54:13

couple of years. They've done a lot

54:15

of stuff. Although it's interesting. I

54:17

mean, it's all unfolding under the framework

54:20

of rapidly

54:22

shrinking and aging population,

54:25

birth rates being well, well below replacement in

54:27

Japan. They're not quite as low as they

54:29

are in South Korea, but still

54:32

hovering around 1, 1.2 per couple,

54:35

which is just Japan's going to

54:37

shrink precipitously in the 21st century. So

54:40

it's all sort of in the backdrop of that. Yeah.

54:42

And all of a sudden they're also designing policies when

54:45

they're new to the workplace. Same

54:47

reason. So yeah, I will

54:49

probably continue seeing changes like this one. So

54:52

last but not least for

54:54

today, England and Wales has

54:57

decided to make creating sexually

54:59

explicit deepfakes. So you

55:01

know, when you take someone's face and

55:03

put it on someone else's body or just

55:05

create a wholesale, a criminal offense. So

55:08

it is a criminal offense regardless of whether you

55:10

meant to share that deepfake or not. So

55:13

the simple creation of it is a little... Oh, wow. Yeah.

55:17

And it's already led to two of

55:19

the world's largest deepfake porn sites, which

55:21

was a category that to be honest,

55:23

I didn't really know existed.

55:25

They already started blocking visitors from the

55:27

UK. You know, one of the members of

55:30

the Progress Network, Danielle Citron, has been very

55:32

active about this. We had a conversation

55:34

with her and I think a few years ago in

55:38

pandemic Zoom events that we did, she's

55:40

been really active in... Like this

55:42

is an area where the law just hasn't really caught

55:44

up to technology. There actually

55:47

had been no clear laws about something that

55:49

is so clearly abusive and potentially, you

55:53

know, aggressively destructive. So I think

55:57

you're going to see more and more of those as people try

55:59

to work out. you know,

56:01

what the realm of free speech is and where

56:04

that bleeds into

56:07

abusive, illegal behavior. Yeah.

56:10

The article on it was fascinating because it was

56:12

a BBC article that I read it on, but

56:14

they interviewed, I think, a channel news reporter in

56:16

the UK that had had deepfakes created of herself.

56:19

So it was a very interesting blend of like

56:21

journalists, you know, giving a

56:23

quote on something that she was personally affected

56:25

by. But I don't know

56:27

if it's the first of its kind, this law. I'm

56:29

not sure. I didn't check up on that. But as

56:31

you said, we'll probably see more and more of this

56:34

coming into the future. Yeah. And

56:36

we're going to see more and more of it

56:38

certainly in the political realm. I mean, you've already,

56:41

I think all of us have seen hilarious sort

56:43

of jokey deepfakes of, you

56:46

know, there was one going around a few

56:48

months ago, maybe it's still going around of

56:50

like an AI enhanced Biden and Trump fighting

56:53

or doing a dance. You know, all those

56:55

are really kind of deepfakes and that they

56:58

are taking the imagery and creating photorealistic

57:01

videos that are fake. So

57:05

I think it will be even harder.

57:08

Although people I know who are working on this say that

57:11

it may be harder to identify fakes increasingly,

57:13

being able to tell the difference between them

57:15

and real. There's also

57:17

the technology of being able

57:19

to identify whether they're fake or real continues

57:21

to get better as well. So kind

57:24

of action reaction. Yeah. In

57:27

studies of whether computer models or humans

57:29

are better at identifying deepfakes, humans perform

57:31

just as well as the computer models

57:33

because they're able to ask themselves context

57:35

clues about the situation which the computer model

57:37

can't do. Right. So humans are

57:39

able to go, really? Does this

57:41

scan with anything I know as being

57:43

possible? Or the computer

57:46

may not have the context mechanism

57:48

behind it? Interesting. Yep. Still

57:51

relining little glimmer of hope in

57:54

the AI deepfake world that's coming towards those

57:56

fasts. So that's it for today. That's

57:59

it. all for listening, please

58:01

send us comments to

58:04

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58:07

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58:25

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58:27

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58:34

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