This is a good one. Adam Kinzinger and I dig into the political fallout from Elon Musk's split with Donald Trump…
We explore how the culture war has overtaken fiscal policy, the strategic shifts in the war in Ukraine, Trump’s TACO bleat about President Xi, and the geopolitical implications of China’s dominance in rare earth minerals. The episode also highlights the dangerous consequences of performative politics, from renaming ships to gutting battery research, as America prepares for a new era of drone warfare.
You can watch or listen right here or on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
Catching up
Don’t worry, I’m going to be commenting on (waves hands in air) all of this in an upcoming post. Spoiler alert: Lots of bright shiny objects that seem designed to distract attention from… what?
The travel bans are back. Trump announces travel ban and restrictions on 19 countries | AP News
Trump signs proclamation to suspend visas for new Harvard international students | CNN
Weakest ADP jobs report in two years points to hiring freeze tied to trade wars. Is the worst over?
Trump Is Losing Patience With Musk’s Outbursts Over Megabill - WSJ
Trump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides - The New York Times
Thomas Fugate, the 22-Year-Old Leading Trump’s Terrorism Prevention Hub — ProPublica (The FFS is implied.)
Some highlights of our conversation
A game changer for Ukraine
AK: This is a strategic victory. A tactical victory would be like Ukraine's counteroffensive against Russia.
A strategic victory is like we're changing the pieces on the field. And the fact that this was so successful, let's think about this.
A third of Russian planes [were hit] – and we do have confirmation now of the numbers because Ukraine just put out a video with basically all these hits. And one of the biggest one is against an A-50, which is the equivalent of our AWACS, which is airborne command and control… They now don't have enough to basically protect Moscow's airspace and the frontline — immense. And they're not making these anymore.
And so each of these bombers that was blown up have also been bombers that have delivered cruise missiles, against civilian targets in Ukraine.
So anybody out there that's like ‘oh my gosh this is escalation’ — it's first off it's not escalation: According to the law of war, which Russia of course doesn't follow, these are legitimate targets — a target of war. There is nothing illegal wrong unethical about this in a war. What is unethical is Russia's inevitable response against civilians.
And so this is, I would honestly say, Charlie, this is as game changing for Ukraine as the pager attack was for the Israelis against Hezbollah….
Ukraine has planned this thing for years.
Russia, — which had limited air defense because they've been destroyed and depleted — now has to defend the entire country, which is entirely too large to do that. I just saw before we got on, in fact, there's videos coming out of mile long queues of trucks on interstates because they're now paranoid and searching all these trucks.
So you look at what it's doing to commerce, not to mention the fact that Ukraine on that same day, it just didn't get as much attention, took out two bridges that were basically essential for train traffic to the front.
And and so this is game changing.
Ukraine’s military achievements in three years.
AK: So let's just take a quick look at three years.
They sunk the Moskova, the flagship of without a Navy, the flagship of Russia. We thought the Black Sea was going to be closed. They cleared the Black Sea of Russia.
They had a counteroffensive. They've killed or captured or wounded a million Russians…
And they just destroyed a third of the strategic bomber force of Russia. So this is crushing for Russian morale, amazing for Ukrainian morale.
The new Axis of Evil
AK: I want to add like even another layer on this, which is to me actually more chilling than the economic side, which is China and Russia have developed secretly a strong alliance.
We're now seeing Ukraine is now showing basically videos of Chinese weapons that are being flown into Russia and China has decided to allow Russia to come in and recruit its citizens to join the Russian military. They're not preventing that like India has.
North Korea on top of this, which has donated close to 7 million artillery rounds as well as a bunch of other stuff, as well as 20,000 men. A then Iran with its Shahid drone production and ballistic missiles, which is why Russia has not run out of that stuff.
You have created a genuine axis of evil now.
This is no longer about the United States taking on China — this is now an axis of evil versus the rest of the world.
And we have abdicated that.
And we've basically told Europe, you guys are the ones that have to back Ukraine now against Russia. But the thing we have to think about is it’s now Europe against Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, and we've walked away.
Thursday dogs
Since I shared a picture of Eli hiding in the fireplace yesterday, i thought it only fair to point out that he prefers hiding in the bathtub. (He’s sleeping under my desk as I’m typing this.)
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