Ukraine and America’s Credibility Crisis — with Anne Applebaum

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Anne Applebaum joins Scott Galloway to explain what’s really happening inside today’s Ukraine peace talks, why business interests are overtaking diplomacy, and how corruption is reshaping American power at home and abroad. They discuss Europe’s response, Russia’s strategy, and what this moment signals for the future of democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

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• 1:16Scott Galloway?

  Episode 375. 375 is the country code for Belarus. In 1975, Jaws premiered. I like to watch Jaws backwards as it becomes a heartwarming story of a shark that helps disabled people put their lives back together.

• 1:32Speaker 02

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• 1:41Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to the 375th episode of the Prop G Pod. So, I'm very self-conscious about my dirty jokes now. We had a guest who is a wonderful guest, a very high-profile guest, who does really well on the podcast. Basically said he can't come on again because he was so rattled, offended, I don't know what the word was, he didn't speak to me, spoke to the team about some of my profanity at the beginning of the episode, which is fair because it doesn't matter whether he's right or wrong, but... He doesn't need to be on a program where he feels like he's being strafed by a certain, I don't know, approach that he's not up for. So I totally respect that.

• 2:22Scott Galloway?

  And it got me thinking about profanity and vulgarity and the role it plays in our programming. And I've been, what I've been doing, I've been mostly recovering, recovering? Dealing with the critique of my book, No Town Bangin', available on Amazon. So came out at number one on the New York Times Bestseller list. I've never gone above number five, which is mostly a fact, mostly a function of the fact that, one, the conversation is getting a lot of attention right now around the role of men, you know, the masculinity crisis, et cetera. And also, I have been just a total media whore. I've been going on TV and different podcasts for the better part of 10 years.

• 3:07Scott Galloway?

  You know, I'm generally a likable guy. I try to help other people out. So when I had this book come out and people heard about it, everybody invited me on everywhere. And my publicists are not worried about me, or the publicists for the book are not worried about me being overexposed. And I've actually canceled a bunch of stuff this week because I feel like it's enough Scott already. I feel like I'm AOL in the 90s where if you stick your hand in a cereal box, you're going to pull out some Scott. And there's been some really interesting feedback. The most valid feedback, because it hurts, so I know it's right, is that I'm too focused on reverse engineering my success to advice that is unilaterally beneficial for all young men, recognizing that it may not work for them specifically.

• 3:49Scott Galloway?

  I, economic security solved a lot of my problems, a lot of my anxiety. So a lot of my counseling to young men is how to become more economically viable. And two, that they need to get a relationship that if you have money and a relationship, that you will be okay. And that that's not true for everybody. And some men aren't going to have access to either of those things. I think that's a fair criticism. But some of these, some of these immediate, just this gag reflex of

• 4:19Scott Galloway?

  Oh, you know, men were not interested in helping you and it's always part of the patriarchy and it's women's fault. No, it's not women's fault and that's not what we're saying. But that's not the point of this. The point of this is that I wasted my fucking weekend thinking about all this bullshit online and it has kept me glued to my phone, went extremely online. You think in my age and knowing as much as I do about the algorithms of big tech and how it is their job just to keep me online so they can sell me more ZipRecruiter ads or get me to, I don't know, target me with the right ads at the right time, that you think I'd be somewhat smarter and wouldn't just go down these rabbit holes and get all

• 4:58Scott Galloway?

  bummed out. And I'm still not. I think we're up against just this godlike technology with medieval institutions regulating them and paleolithic instincts driving us. And what's the message here? The message is that you really do need to take stock of your own screen time. We have these apps that keep our 15-year-old, who I think does suffer from a certain level of screen addiction, which supposedly affects one in four kids, to keep or to limit his use. And I feel as if I need to start limiting my own use because I end up going down these rabbit holes and getting upset and seeing all this shit that I think misrepresents my work and getting very disappointed or angry. The thing I think we all need to do, especially young men, but all of us, is say, okay, recognize a

• 5:43Scott Galloway?

  couple of things. One, the world online is a pretty small world. And that is, I used to get upset or excited about what was being said about me and about topics I cared about on Twitter. And then when I logged off from Twitter, when it kind of turned into a Nazi porn bar, I found that it just didn't matter. It didn't impact me professionally, financially, and it was impacting me positively, emotionally and psychologically. And you realize how just fucking small the world of Twitter is. It's like 1%. Twitter users are driving 90% of the content. And then I would say probably a third to two thirds of the content is being driven by bots that just have are just part of troll farms. So, one, this is not the real world. This is a part of the world, but what your friends think of you, what strangers think

• 6:27Scott Galloway?

  of you, what the majority of people think of you, who are not on TikTok or Threads or Instagram all day long, it's just not, it's meaningful, but it's not profound. And the thing that is most disappointing to me about myself is that I oftentimes let the bullshit or the views of strangers impact my time and my presence and my wellbeing around other people. I don't know how I got here. I don't know how I got here. Anyways, what's going on in today's episode, you might be asking? Well, I'll tell you. In today's episode, we speak with Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic. I love Anne Applebaum.

• 7:10Scott Galloway?

  And I not only love how incredibly smart and measured and thoughtful she is, Jesus Christ, make her secretary of fucking state. Anyway, one of the things I love about social media is it brings attention to people who are just so outstanding that their content resonates for the moment. And this is how I found Anne Applebaum. I think this is going to be your second or third time on the show. Anyways, I'm just an enormous fan of Anne's. So with that, here's our conversation with Anne Applebaum.

• 7:52Scott Galloway?

  Anne, you are one of our favorite guests. I think this might be the third time. Where does this podcast find you?

• 7:57Anne Applebaum?

  I'm in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly Magazine in Washington DC, which is a rare occasion, actually.

• 8:04Scott Galloway?

  The Atlantic Monthly in Washington DC. Wow. All right, let's bust right into it. We're recording this in the middle of what The New York Times called a week of hasty diplomacy around the war in Ukraine, leaked peace plans, private negotiations, and a swirl of business dealings. Putin is set to meet with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and as we speak, no peace agreement has been accepted or signed. Anne, give us the current state of play. What's actually happening on the ground and in these negotiations?

• 8:34Anne Applebaum?

  So the negotiations are a somewhat strange product of a series of conversations that Steve Witkoff and maybe others have been having with a guy called Kirill Dmitriev, who's the head of Russia's Sovereign Wealth Fund over the last several weeks and months, actually. And remembering that neither Steve Witkoff nor Kirill Dmitriev has as their main goal the conclusion of the war and the preservation of the sovereignty of Ukraine and the defense of Europe and a secure future for Europe and for Ukraine. They seem to have as their main goal

• 9:17Anne Applebaum?

  the creation of a possible new set of American and Russian business deals. And we know this both because of reporting, really quite amazing reporting in The Wall Street Journal, as well as a few months ago in The Financial Times. We know this because the original version of a peace deal that they presented had a whole long list of plans, American-Russian plans, including looking for minerals in the Arctic and, you know, oil and gas infrastructure and maybe the use of some frozen Russian assets that are in European banks by Americans to develop Russia. So that seems to be their primary interest.

• 10:02Anne Applebaum?

  And they came up with this 28-point peace plan that was completely unacceptable either to Ukrainians or to Europeans. It was somehow then modified. Secretary Rubio got involved, modified, changed. There's another version of it, which we haven't seen yet, that Steve Witkoff is supposedly taking to Moscow. I mean, really, as we're speaking, as we're having this conversation, he's there. What's disturbing about this episode is that it shows something very ugly about this administration, namely...

• 10:36Anne Applebaum?

  And it raises a question, in whose name are they conducting American foreign policy? Is this for the security and prosperity of America and our allies? Or is this something that's happening on behalf of companies, maybe even some involving the family of Trump or of Whitkoff, who are hoping to make money out of this negotiation? That's where we are right now. And I think it's, I've talked to a lot of people, I can't find an exact precedent in American history before where something this high stakes and at this high level and involving the security of so many millions of people and so many

• 11:18Anne Applebaum?

  other countries was being conducted by essentially business people whose main interest was business deals.

• 11:25Scott Galloway?

  Isn't this a continuing pattern? We monetize access to the White House, we've monetized the pardon system. I mean, isn't this a continuation of the Core Brand Association thus thus far? And that is one of grift?

• 11:40Anne Applebaum?

  Yes. I mean, I suppose the the shock for the outside world, and as you know, I live part of the time in Europe, I have a, I have a Polish husband who's involved in all this stuff as well. He's the, he's a Polish, well, no, he's the, he's a, he's the Polish Foreign Minister. And I'm continually hearing from not just Poles, but from British friends, from German friends, I'm continually hearing this kind of shock and surprise that even this, I mean, I guess everybody got used to the idea that American politics are corrupt, or there are elements of corruption in our system, but that even at this level, that it would be that corrupt is remains surprising to other people. Maybe it's not really surprising to us anymore. But yeah, I think you're, you know, it is an extension

• 12:24Anne Applebaum?

  of other decisions. I mean, we're talking in a week when, at the same time, speaking of foreign policy, Trump is also Working himself up, or maybe members of his administration are working themselves up to have some kind of conflict with Venezuela on the grounds that it's a narco terrorist state. And at the meantime, exactly in the same week, they've pardoned a former president of Honduras, who is in jail on cocaine charges, apparently because maybe he has business dealings with some people who are around Trump or close to Trump. So it's a, you know, it looks more and more like the main motivations for everything. You're right, not just foreign policy, are to do with the business interests of people in the entourage.

• 13:08Scott Galloway?

  Well, just along those lines, I'm curious, you validate or nullify this thesis. I think with somewhere between, if my son had committed a crime and was in prison, I think with somewhere between three and $10 million with my connections, I could figure out a way to get to the White House, communicate. I'm going to make a seven or eight figure donation to the East Wing renovation and get my son out of prison. I legitimately think I could accomplish that right now. Your thoughts?

• 13:34Anne Applebaum?

  I would be amazed if you couldn't do it. I don't even know if you need special connections. I mean, you know, you need to make a donation to the East Wing, or you need to buy into the president's cryptocurrency fund. I mean, there are lots of ways to do it. And you can buy into the cryptocurrency fund anonymously. You can do it, you know, as a, as an anonymous shell company. And so actually, nobody would have to know, except the people who, who run that fund. And they, which by the way, includes Zach Witkoff, who is Steve Witkoff's son. I'm not even sure you have to be an insider. I don't know if you have to be a MAGA Republican. I didn't think anything ideological is required. I think it's really just money.

• 14:13Scott Galloway?

  Before we talk about the piece you wrote for The Atlantic around the peace plan, I'm curious, let's, let's assume, all right, we get to some sense of normalcy. In your view, give us a historical context for whether, if you do believe that in fact real, real egregious crimes have been committed here, up and down the stack, from the Secretary of War, maybe a war crime, to outright grift and.

• 14:46Scott Galloway?

  Corruption that that makes us less safe overseas that will take decades to repair. Historically, when a democracy like ours faces this type of corruption, or if you believe that this in fact has been wrongdoing, how does a democracy best move past it? Is it to forgive it and move on? Or is it to have something resembling some sort of tribunal?

• 15:09Anne Applebaum?

  I am not sure because I don't know of an exact historical parallel to what we are living through. Very often, when you have this kind of corruption takeover system, it results in some kind of collapse or disaster or war. And it's usually after the collapse or disaster or war that you have the moment of reckoning. When people say, that was too much, we need to change our system, we need to change our constitution, you know, we need bigger, deeper changes to prevent this from happening again. And of course, I don't wish something like that to happen.

• 15:49Anne Applebaum?

  And so I'm not, you know, but in the absence of it happening, I don't know how you reach enough people, how you shake the foundation of politics. I've just been, I've just started to read Jill Lepore's new book, which is, it's about the American Constitution. And one of the points she makes is that often, our Constitution has been amended, at least in the most serious ways, after a war. So firstly, after the revolution, and then after the Civil War, that's when we got the amendments that allowed black people to vote and change the nature of American citizenship. Then after World War I, there were a number of important amendments, women's suffrage being one of them.

• 16:31Anne Applebaum?

  And it's almost as if you need some big moment of change to convince people that, you know, that the foundations of the system are rotten. And I don't right now see how we get to that. And the scenarios that would lead us to that aren't good, and so I don't wish for them. I mean, one would really have to have a, the only other alternative I can think of is that there needs to be just a lot more awareness among ordinary people of how You know, how bad it's gotten. I know that a lot of, for a lot of Americans, this doesn't feel like something new. A lot of Americans, partly because of the way they've

• 17:13Anne Applebaum?

  been reading and thinking and learning about politics in the last several years, think that Washington is corrupt anyway, and everything has always been corrupt, and this is exactly, you know, it's just an extension of past corruption. And explaining to them that this is something qualitatively different, that this is a different kind of behavior, that American foreign policy has never been for sale at this level with these kinds of stakes before. I think, you know, the best I can do is write about it and talk about it, and I know you're doing that too, in order to convince enough people, you know, to take this moment seriously and to have it change their behavior, make them vote, make them get involved in politics, make them participate.

• 17:58Anne Applebaum?

  Because it's really, without that, it's hard to see, it's really hard to see how you change. I mean, interesting comparison. I haven't written this yet, although I hope to do it in the next few days. I talked this morning to a senior figure who's involved in a corruption investigation inside Ukraine. And maybe you've heard that there's a, the Ukrainian state is investigating itself, which is actually, at this point in history, hard to imagine in the United States. There's an anti-corruption bureau inside the government, and they are investigating people, some of whom are very close to the president, for a kind of kickback scheme to do with the energy industry. The details aren't that important. What matters is that it's the Ukrainian state that's doing it.

• 18:41Anne Applebaum?

  It's as if our FBI was investigating our president, which right now is hard to imagine. You can't imagine that happening. And I asked the investigator, "How is it that you have the legitimacy to do this? How do you have the support to do it?" And he said, "Look, it comes from Ukrainians." You know, there was a moment last summer when some people in the presidential administration tried to shut down this investigation, and there were popular protests. You know, Ukrainians understand that this is an important part of their democracy. They want corruption ended. They think it's important, not just... Not just for moral reasons, but because corruption weakens them and makes them more susceptible to Russian bribery and blackmail and so on.

• 19:24Anne Applebaum?

  And so this is a state body that's acting with the support of Ukrainians. And I don't know that we have the equivalent movement here. Is there a, could you imagine big national protests if? Well, you can't imagine it because it's already happened. I mean, if the president were to replace the heads of the FBI and the Department of Justice with flunkies who would never investigate him, what would happen? I mean, we know what would happen. Nothing would happen because that's what took place early this year. And I just think Americans have lost the, you know, the ability to be shocked or the ability to absorb the ways in which this is different.

• 20:08Anne Applebaum?

  And so, as I say, all I can think of to do right now is to explain it to people as much as possible.

• 20:15Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back after a quick break.

• 20:23Scott Galloway?

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• 21:08Scott Galloway?

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• 21:25Scott Galloway?

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• 23:41Scott Galloway?

  You wrote for The Atlantic about this peace plan, which many are actually calling a capitulation document. Can you break down the quote unquote peace plan for us and what you think is the likelihood that something resembling this ends up getting more traction than it has today?

• 23:59Anne Applebaum?

  There are a couple of central pieces of it. I mean, I think the most controversial piece is that the US is promising to recognize all or most of, I mean, there are now several versions of this kicking around, so I'm going to be a little vague, but all are some of Russia's of the occupied territories of Ukraine. So that's Crimea, that's eastern Ukraine, Donetsk, and maybe some of the other territories too. But more than that, it asks the Ukrainians to give up territory that has not been conquered. So this is a part of Donetsk. Donetsk is a province of Ukraine. The Russians have conquered part of it.

• 24:40Anne Applebaum?

  In fact, they conquered a lot of it in 2014, as a part of a surprise attack, right after they occupied Crimea. And they've really been trying to conquer this whole province since then, so 11 years. And they haven't been able to do it. And they're now losing, again, I spoke to someone last night who reminded me of these numbers, they're now losing 15,000 to 20,000 people a month trying to conquer Donetsk. And I guess that's killed and wounded, but that's still 15,000 to 20,000 soldiers being knocked out every month in order to conquer this piece of territory that they can't conquer. And what they want is, they want the Trump administration to intervene and give them

• 25:24Anne Applebaum?

  this territory for free. And this is not only controversial because it rewards the Russians for... For nothing, but also it's probably politically impossible. I don't think President Zelensky could stay in office. He can't stay in office and just turn over this piece of land. It's right now very heavily fortified land. It's not especially populated anymore. Most people have left that part of Ukraine, but it's very heavily fortified. And so the Ukrainians would be giving up this fortified territory and that would allow the Russians then to set up, presumably to make another attempt to conquer central Ukraine later on.

• 26:07Anne Applebaum?

  And that's what it looks like to the Ukrainians. So the Russians haven't been able to win the war militarily. Now they're trying to win it through bribing the Americans, promising things to the Americans, and then getting the Americans to pressure the Ukrainians to give up this territory supposedly in the name of peace. So that's probably the most controversial piece of the deal. And that seems to be something that Putin himself thought up. And it's been kicking around for a while. And in fact, when I first saw this document, I didn't make that much of it because it's been, some of the points have been around for a long time. And it was only when, you'll remember a couple of weeks ago, the president said Ukrainians

• 26:49Anne Applebaum?

  have to sign this by Thanksgiving, that suddenly this became salient and relevant in new ways. And then he dropped that idea. Anyway, so that was a piece of it. Recognition, not just de facto but de jure, meaning formally recognizing that the Russians now control this Ukrainian territory, which also would be very unpopular in Ukraine. There was a line in it about organizing Ukrainian elections, which if you think about it is a strange thing to put into a peace plan. I mean, Ukrainians organizing elections is something they can do. On their own. And what about the Russians organizing elections?

• 27:32Anne Applebaum?

  The Russians haven't had free elections for 20 years. So it had that element in it that the Russians were somehow wanted to change the Ukrainian leadership and maybe hoped to shape the elections. That was the second piece of the story. There was also, Ukraine has to promise never, ever, ever to join NATO and has to put that in its constitution. Again, pretty controversial, don't know whether that could be done. And that Western powers, European powers, would promise never to put troops on Ukrainian soil. And all this also creates another problem, which is if this war was, and even right now, if there were to be a ceasefire on current lines, which is something the Ukrainians

• 28:15Anne Applebaum?

  have accepted, in order for the peace to be real, in order for it to last longer than six months or a year or two years, there has to be some reason for Ukrainians to believe that the war isn't going to just start up again next week. So there has to be a guarantee, there have to be troops, there has to be NATO or something like NATO. There has to be something that will prevent Ukrainians from fleeing the country once the borders are opened. There has to be something that gives people the belief that they can invest in Ukraine, that they can rebuild Ukraine. There has to be something that makes it a viable country. A lot of people often compare Ukraine to South Korea, which is another country that

• 28:58Anne Applebaum?

  was divided and part of it was occupied. And nevertheless, South Korea remained a viable state and it went on to become a very rich country, very successful country, culturally successful in lots of ways. And people have said, maybe that's a model for Ukraine. And it's true, you could imagine that kind of future, except that South Korea has American troops. South Korea has defense agreements. South Korea is defensible and Americans have been willing to defend it for many decades, or at least that's been the assumption of the North Koreans. And you need something like that in Ukraine to make it viable. And it just doesn't seem like Whitkoff or Jared Kushner or whoever is doing this negotiation

• 29:42Anne Applebaum?

  now has come up with a version, something that would give the Ukrainians that sense of stability. So this is why people are talking about it as a kind of surrender drug. So we give away land and in exchange for what? For certainty that the Russians are going to invade again. The problem with this document, then, as I've already said, there are all these weird clauses about US-Russian deals that are going to be done and money that the US is supposedly going to spend in Russia. And it looks from the outside like it's a US-Russia deal that just isn't worried about the future of Ukraine or the future of Europe because a fallen Ukraine or a dysfunctional

• 30:21Anne Applebaum?

  Ukraine has huge impact on security in Poland, in Germany, all across the European continent. And it just feels like the Trump administration doesn't care.

• 30:31Scott Galloway?

  So you spent a lot of time in Europe. Your husband is a senior official in the Polish government. What is the vibe, for lack of a better term, in Europe and especially in the nations bordering Ukraine around the war right now? Is it stay the course? This is an unacceptable cost for Russia and Russians, and eventually they will retreat? Or is it we're facing an inevitable end, which isn't a good one? I like what Lincoln said, you can't win a war without public support, you can't lose on with it. What is the state of public support across Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and Europe more broadly as it relates to this war?

• 31:11Anne Applebaum?

  So the Ukrainians are genuinely prepared to keep fighting. Their losses are far lower than the Russian losses. They know that they need outside support. And most of the nations of Europe, certainly those closest to Ukraine, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Germany as well, are continually stepping up, offering not just weapons but money. Remember, the Ukraine has its own defense industry. It makes its own drones now, including these long-range drones that can hit Russian targets and Russian refineries and so on. And I was there in September, and at that moment, there was still a lot of confidence.

• 31:53Anne Applebaum?

  They were pretty sure they were going to make it through the winter. They didn't expect the Russians to stop fighting anytime soon. I mean, there's been a little bit of the huge pressure from Russian airstrikes in the last month or two, I think, has been. And this is on Ukrainian cities. This has nothing to do with the frontline. This is the people, you know, bombs hitting Kiev, missiles hitting residential apartment buildings and so on. I think that's been, that's been pretty debilitating. But they don't, you know, you have to remember that if you're Ukrainian, you don't really see an option. You know, your option is you keep fighting the war or you let the Russian win and then they destroy you and your family and they wreck your country anyway.

• 32:36Anne Applebaum?

  You know, so it's not like they have this great choice. You know, and it's not like if the war ends, then that everything will be fine. And I think that for the most part, I mean, there are variations inside each country. I think most of the countries around Ukraine feel the same way. You know, for Poland, you know, or for the Baltic States, you know, for Romania. If Ukraine were to lose, that wouldn't mean, oh, okay, the war is over now and we can get on and do other things. No, that would mean it would be more expensive and they'd have to spend more money on defense. And there would be more panic about where the Russians would go next. And there would be more chaos from Ukrainian refugees and more economic disruption. So the prospect of a Russian victory doesn't make anybody feel

• 33:21Anne Applebaum?

  like that would be an improvement. And so they too have this feeling that there's no choice, you know, so that the, that they will keep fighting until they, until some, some better solution is, is reached. And I should say, there's another weird thing about this whole US-Russian negotiation, which is that it seems to, they seem to be acting as if the Ukrainians and the Europeans have no agency. I mean, actually, the Europeans are now paying for the war. You know, there is almost no US supplies going in. They're paying for the war. They are supporting Ukraine economically. You know, so actually, even if the US did bow out, they could keep going.

• 34:02Anne Applebaum?

  I mean, and acting like this negotiation is some kind of US-Russian agreement that doesn't involve the people who are actually doing the fighting and who are paying for the fighting is also very weird. I mean, it's just, it's just not how you do diplomacy. It's not going to get you to, you know, it's not going to get you to an agreement that, that, that makes sense. And that, that's again, why I question the motives of, of the people who are involved.

• 34:27Scott Galloway?

  Isn't that sort of the silver lining here? And that is, the US is somewhat abdicated, withdrawn, gone AWOL, whatever you want to call it. And my understanding is that we are still supplying weapons, but we're forcing Europeans to pay for them.

• 34:43Anne Applebaum?

  Not in huge numbers. And the weapons that we're supplying, the thing that we have that other people don't have is air defense. And so it's mostly that. But most of the other weapons are coming from Europe or they're being made in Ukraine.

• 34:56Scott Galloway?

  But isn't, back to the notion of silver lining, isn't, to be fair, and I feel like Europe is always, every headline on a broad basis about Europe as a whole is a pretty negative one, about a lack of growth, it's becoming a museum, there's a lack of leadership. Hasn't Europe really stepped up here and filled this void and is in fact pushing back?

• 35:17Anne Applebaum?

  Yeah. I mean, not only are they pushing back, and not only have they stepped up, often in ways that aren't attracting attention, you know, there's a lot of Danish help for Ukraine and the Norwegians have been really important, there's a lot of smaller countries have played an important role. But you've also had, I think especially since the US election last year, I think there's been a real transformation in European understanding. So of course, everybody's natural instinct is to say, you know, the war is far away, it doesn't touch us, you know, and everybody prefers the safe status quo to involvement in some kind of unknown project.

• 36:02Anne Applebaum?

  And I think you are finally beginning to see, especially in Germany, which is important because it's the largest European country, biggest economy, you're seeing a real transformation, like, okay, we get it. The post-1999 era is over. And the automatic assumption that the US will see the world the same way we do and shares our values is also over. And maybe we'll work with the Americans again in some way. I mean, nobody's writing them off altogether, but we're in a different era. And you can see that beginning to affect European politics in a lot of ways, especially in Germany, but but also in other places. And you see investments going into the defense industry, new thinking about strategy, new kinds of relationships. I mean, a lot of things are changing.

• 36:46Anne Applebaum?

  It's not it's not ideal, mostly because Europe is not a federation. I mean, it's funny for all the kind of eurosceptics about, you know, overbearing Europe and how it's supposedly, you know, they're creating a single state. It's on actually, it's not a single state, and that's the problem. You know, so it's very hard. It's still hard for Europe to act as one. And that's why you have this formula, the coalition of the willing. You know, you had this group of countries who are working together, the ones who and the ones who care the most are involved the most. And that coalition of the willing is the is the group that's supporting Ukraine. But no, no, there's there's been a big change in Europe and European strategic thinking and in European understanding of the world.

• 37:29Anne Applebaum?

  And, you know, I think the the big realization that Europe has made a huge mistake in allowing the US to dominate the new technology, defense technology, but also the internet AI. I think that's it's it's sunk in. I mean, everybody gets it that that was a disastrous European failure. Whether there's time to catch up, I don't know. But you you certainly have now the formation of new companies and new thinking. I mean, I know you're you're interested in that. That that's that's begun. And, you know, it's interesting to see the connection between this geopolitical shift, which is happening kind of in the ether, and people saying, right, OK, we need we

• 38:13Anne Applebaum?

  need our own stuff. And that's that's happening now.

• 38:18Scott Galloway?

  If you have an absence of US funding, a limited, limited cache of weapons from the US going to Ukraine, and it's Ukrainians fighting on the ground, doing the fighting and combat, and you have Europe is responsible for the majority of the funding or the intelligence. When what feels like a peace plan architected by Russia and the US, I mean, is it quite frankly, can Ukraine and Europe, and maybe have done this, kind of say, "Hold my beer." And to a certain extent, hasn't the US, I mean, okay, we've walked away from our responsibilities, but haven't we walked away from all leverage here? And quite frankly, it doesn't really matter what we think.

• 38:59Anne Applebaum?

  To some extent, that's true. I mean, I think that the, I think people are still hoping the US will have some influence. There's a lot of, you know, maybe, you know, maybe false hope. I think there's, you know, there's a fear that a US-Russia condominium, you know, kind of US-Russia deal would be bad for everybody, and we'd like to avoid it. So I didn't think people want some kind of huge break with the United States. But yeah, I mean, the United States is not going to be able to dictate what happens in Ukraine, and they certainly won't be able to dictate a bad solution. And by bad solution, remember, it's what a bad solution means that Ukraine is so badly weakened that Russia can invade again.

• 39:43Anne Applebaum?

  That's like, that's the bad solution. And I don't think the US is going to be able to dictate that, even if that's what they're, you know, even if that's what they want. So no, the US doesn't, has fewer and fewer cards, and is going to have less and less influence as time goes on. I think that's true.

• 40:02Scott Galloway?

  We'll be right back.

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• 41:09Scott Galloway?

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• 42:20Scott Galloway?

  We're back with more from Ann Applebaum.

• 42:25Scott Galloway?

  You have, I love this, a kleptocracy tracker on your Substack. What's the most worrying shift you're seeing right now? What has this metric unearthed?

• 42:35Anne Applebaum?

  Right, so the kleptography tracker was something I started in, this is regarding our previous conversation, I started it a few months ago, just because I felt like there were all these news stories that flashed by, you know, people being pardoned after making donations to the president's cryptocurrency fund, or, or regulation being lifted, or regulation not being enforced. And I just felt like someone should keep track of it somewhere, and so I started doing it. And it actually appears on a Johns Hopkins website as well. The Agora Institute also publishes, they even created a little graphic, so you can track it and click on it. I mean, I don't know how many people look at it or use it, but I'm hoping like at least historians of the future will be able to say that somebody

• 43:17Anne Applebaum?

  was paying attention. And I, you know, there are really two or three important shifts. I mean, one of them is this one that doesn't get attention I just mentioned, which is it's not just that the Trump administration is making money for itself, or its, you know, Trump companies are benefiting from deals with the Saudis or investments in Vietnam. It's also that the, this administration is either refusing to enforce laws made in the past, or is actively preventing new laws from being made. So, so, so laws designed to prevent for, you know, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, for example, or laws designed

• 43:59Anne Applebaum?

  to regulate the cryptocurrency industry so that ordinary people wouldn't be ripped off. You know, all kinds of regulation that's designed, mostly designed to benefit ordinary Americans and make sure that our system isn't corrupt and that people aren't ripped off by, by US or foreign companies. A lot of that is just being taken away. You know, they're just not enforcing it. They don't care anymore. And of course, the bad actors know that. And so when they see the legal system being taken apart, and they, they know it's a free for all, they can, they can just remove money from people's cryptocurrency wallets, which happens more often than you think, you know, or,

• 44:39Anne Applebaum?

  You know, or they can violate the law, or they can, you know, they can do as they please because they know that nobody's watching them. And I think that's, and that doesn't get a lot of attention because it's not, you know, it's not very exciting news to say that the Trump administration has decided it won't enforce X or Y law. But that's going to create the long-term problems. You know, if we create this atmosphere of lawlessness, where, you know, you can buy a pardon from the president if you've broken the law. You can assume that nobody will enforce regulation if you decide to break it. You can rip people off and you won't pay any price. You can do all these things with impunity.

• 45:19Anne Applebaum?

  I mean, that begins to create a kind of business culture that is ultimately bad for everyone. I mean, I guess, you know, bad guys will benefit from it. But if you've ever lived or worked in a really corrupt country, and I have, you know, I spent a lot of time in Russia in the 1990s. I spent a lot of time in Ukraine, actually, in the era before it began to reform itself. And, you know, I remember that it's a, even for, I mean, maybe particularly for ordinary people, you know, daily life is different in a really, really corrupt country. You know, you, you don't make business investments in a normal way.

• 46:00Anne Applebaum?

  You can't make judgments about how to work or where to work unless you know, you know, who's really in charge or who's the person behind each one of these companies. It distorts ordinary life and ordinary decision-making. You know, in, you know, in Russia, universities became very corrupt. The state services became very corrupt. I mean, if you wanted a driver's license or any kind of license, you could pay for it and people, people knew that. And then that has a corresponding effect on safety and so on. So, you know, so you can get into this very ugly downward drift if you don't stop it soon. And as I said, I mean, the main problem in the United States is just the lack of awareness.

• 46:44Anne Applebaum?

  I mean, we're so used to our system running on autopilot, you know, assuming that people, more or less, most people obey the law and more or less, you know, things work. And once that, once the kind of critical mass is reached and that's no longer true, then it's going to be very hard to fix.

• 47:03Scott Galloway?

  What impact do you think the war in Ukraine, let's assume that in Say nine, 10 months, it's loosely in the same place it is now, right? I wouldn't describe it at a standstill. I would describe the war rages on. What impact do you think it's going to have on the midterm elections?

• 47:23Anne Applebaum?

  I mean, that's an interesting point. I mean, it depends what it looks like. You know, if it looks like exactly like it does now, you know, maybe there wouldn't be an impact. But if there has been a series of failed Trump peace efforts that were transparently grifting, that they weren't really about peace, or if there has been some kind of Trump-Russia, Trump-Putin agreement to start doing business over the heads of the Ukrainians and the Europeans, I don't think Americans will find that attractive. And maybe I'm wrong, maybe people won't care.

• 48:03Anne Applebaum?

  You know, foreign policy is far away. Ukraine is pretty remote to a lot of people. But I still think, and this is something I know because I've seen surveys about this, Americans still like to think about their country being a good country. You know, we like to think of ourselves being a positive force in the world. I mean, reasonable people can disagree about what that means, you know, and maybe not everyone's definition of good is the same. But they don't like the idea that the main, you know, in the big issues and in the big arenas, that the main motivation of the United States of America is the wealth of a few people who are close to the president.

• 48:45Anne Applebaum?

  I just don't think Americans are going to like that. And I don't know that it would be the main issue in the midterms, but I think it would be something that would certainly affect people's perception of Trump and maybe of the Republican Party.

• 48:59Scott Galloway?

  It's strange. It feels as if, and I don't know if this is Trump or more specifically the cloud cover for this being the idolatry or the increasing idolatry of the dollar in the United States, but it feels as if diplomacy itself is being replaced by private capital networks, sovereign funds, energy deals, rare earth investments, data centers, and that the reporting shows that billionaires operating outside of the traditional lines of diplomacy, whether it's Whitkoff or Kushner on the US side, Kirill Dmitriev on the Russian side, hammering out drafts in Miami and shuttling between Mar-a-Lago and Moscow. A, what do you think of this, and I think I know the answer to this, what do you think

• 49:43Scott Galloway?

  of this business-first diplomacy? And are there any analogues for when other nations, basically diplomacy gets co-opted by what I'll call these private capital billionaire networks?

• 49:55Anne Applebaum?

  That is literally the Russian, that is exactly the Russian system. I mean, the Russian system is that you have companies like Gazprom, which are nominally private, but which are really owned by people who also run the country. And they use, you know, their Russian foreign policy has been kind of commercial and diplomatic and political, all mixed up for a long time. And the purpose of a Gazprom investment in a foreign country would be partly to make money for the people who run Gazprom, and partly it would be to achieve some goal, you know, for the Russian state. And, you know, and particularly in

• 50:35Anne Applebaum?

  oil and gas, but not only, you know, Russian companies have been inseparable from the state for a long time. And it's created, you know, this ugly system where all of government and all of foreign policy is really just designed to benefit this kind of ownership class. And we are really very much at risk of that in America, that... You know, the government isn't for everybody. It's not for to make all of us rich and prosperous. It's not to project a set of American values into the world, which has been true at least some of the time of American foreign policy, certainly since the Second World War, but you could argue further back than that. And instead of being this, you know, the kind of outward representation of us and our values

• 51:20Anne Applebaum?

  and our, you know, our desire for prosperity and a good life, it's actually just designed for those people. And that's really how the, you know, I mean, Russia is maybe the most prominent example of this, but you can look at other autocratic states and say the same thing about them. And this is the argument of my recent book was Autocracy, Inc. Is that it's a mistake to look at the world's autocrats, even when they have different ideologies, you know, Russia and China and Iran and North Korea, Venezuela, Azerbaijan, you know, they have very different ideologies, but they all often work in some of the same ways. And one of the ways that, one of the things they have in common is this kleptocratic model, you know, that the rulers of the country are also the owners of the biggest businesses.

• 52:06Anne Applebaum?

  And they use their business relations with one another to make money for themselves. And they hide money in the same ways. They hide money in the Caribbean or in, or indeed in Delaware. And they, and they move money around the world anonymously and they share ways of doing that. And that's part of what keeps them all in power. And it looks in, you know, the Trump administration is still not free to behave in that way. You know, we still live in a democracy and we still have, you know, we still, I hope, will have congressional investigations and we have courts and so on. But they, they seem to be pushing the country in that direction. And clearly there are very wealthy people in the tech world

• 52:50Anne Applebaum?

  and in the crypto world and in other industries who want the US to develop very much in that direction, a kind of a state where political power and economic power are the same thing. And, you know, the politicians own the companies and, and they act in their interests, not our interests.

• 53:10Scott Galloway?

  So I love books about war and movies. And one of the things I think I've sussed out from them is that wars don't change history. They sort of accelerate it. And that is they take existing trends and massively impul the future forward, if you will. And countries on the ascent come out big winners and countries, arguably Britain's finest moment was World War II, but it essentially accelerated the decline of the empire. They could no longer hold on to their empire, if you will. Within Europe, who do you see as a, if there's a reshuffling here and a dramatic increase or decrease in power, and I'll put forward a thesis, my sense is this is a really big moment for Poland. But A, do you agree with that?

• 53:54Scott Galloway?

  And B, who do you see as the biggest winners and losers across Europe?

• 53:59Anne Applebaum?

  Yeah, I think Poland sees itself very much as being a country that will play a role in deciding what happens next in Ukraine and will play an increasingly influential role in helping other European countries shape their security decisions. I mean, there's some interesting, there's a very close Polish Swedish relationship. The Poles just bought some submarines from Sweden. You see this kind of countries around the Baltic becoming, working together in lots of ways, and actually often including the UK. So you have kind of UK Scandinavia Baltic Poland alliance, which is emerging as a really

• 54:40Anne Applebaum?

  important alliance of countries, just because they share values and they have a similar view of the world and they work together in new ways. And you're seeing that emerging. I mean, there's also a Polish German relationship that's really important. Actually, the Polish government, I'm not sure they're still there today, but as we're speaking, they were there yesterday. Several senior Polish ministers, including the prime minister, were all in Germany. You know, there was a kind of big. You know, multi-leveled, multi-layered conference was held in which they, they, they, you know, there's still endless historical issues to work out, but in which they're looking at ways of working together economically and in security. I mean, you, you can see

• 55:23Anne Applebaum?

  those kinds of links developing and becoming more important. You know, it's almost as if in the past, a lot of stuff went kind of through NATO, like through America. You know, there was a Polish-America-German link, and now everybody's looking around and saying, wait, you know, is, is, is going through America or through NATO, is that safe? You know, we need to, we need to have much stronger country-to-country links that don't depend on, you know, some assumption of, of, of permanence, permanent American presence in Europe. So, yeah, I think Poland, Poland is also a country that is doing well economically, and it looked at over the span of 30 years, has been doing well the whole time. I mean,

• 56:05Anne Applebaum?

  it's, it's, it's caught up to Western Europe. You know, it's not exact, it's not, it's still not as rich as Germany, but I, if, if I recall this, you'd have to, I'd have to check. I think it's richer than Greece per capita, and I think it's richer than Portugal per capita. And so, if you're looking at Western European countries, so it's, it's caught up to Western Europe faster than it has ever before at any time in history, and, and, and, and continues to develop and grow in a way that you would not have guessed or imagined a couple of decades ago. So, yeah, I think, I think Poland, Germany, changing. I mean, the UK is the country that worries me the most, just because I think the damage done by Brexit is still working its way through the system. Doesn't mean there aren't brilliant

• 56:50Anne Applebaum?

  people there and great companies and, and all that. But I, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's lost so many markets and so many opportunities through that one stupid decision, that I, I worry it's falling further behind. And I, I don't want that because I'm a, I lived in London for a long time, and, and I'm a, I'm a fan of British culture and many other things. But that's, that's what, anyway, there's, it's interesting, there's often a lot of, in the UK now, there's almost a kind of... They keep writing articles in the British press about how great Poland is and what if Poland catches up to Britain? I mean, it's almost there's a kind of cultural snobbery there, like it can't possibly be the case that Poles are as rich as we are.

• 57:33Anne Applebaum?

  But but there is something happening whereby they are they're coming, certainly they're a lot closer in terms of of GDP per capita anyway than they were ever before.

• 57:45Scott Galloway?

  Do you have a sense for having spent time in Russia and I imagine still having contacts there? How do Russians feel about the state of the war and the relationship with the US and China?

• 57:58Scott Galloway?

  What's the vibe, again, I hate to use that word, in Russia right now with respect to the war?

• 58:03Anne Applebaum?

  It's really hard to say. So first of all, my I had a lot of Russian friends at one point and they are all gone. They have all left Russia, they're elsewhere in Europe, some are in the US. And so I don't have, you know, I don't have friends inside Russia anymore, at least none, none that I would be able to talk to. It's also genuinely impossible to measure something called public opinion in Russia. Because this is a country in which to be against the war is illegal. And people are arrested for saying things that are against the war. And so that means that if, you know, if you're conducting an opinion poll and you call someone up and you say, how do you feel about the war?

• 58:45Anne Applebaum?

  What are they going to tell you? They're going to say, I'm all for it. You know, it's a it's not a it's not something that you can measure. And and there isn't also a kind of public sphere in which these things are discussed. It's not like there's a place where people talk about the war and debate it's whether it's good or bad in any real way. So, you know, so what are people's opinions is it almost doesn't matter because they won't tell you what their opinions are. Because they keep them to themselves. I mean, I do have there's a part of the Russian opposition that measures kind of sentiment on the internet. They use those kinds of metrics. And they say that exhaustion with the war and disappointment with the war are pretty widespread.

• 59:30Anne Applebaum?

  And another metric you could look at is the number of Russian elite, people in the Russian elite who have fallen out of windows or have succumbed to mysterious accidents in the last couple of years. And almost all of those are probably people who in some way were seen as insufficiently enthusiastic about the war or about Putin. So it's pretty clear there's, you know, if Putin were to say tomorrow, the war is over and now we can move on, I think people would be happy. They would probably be very happy to end this terrible number of deaths. I mean, imagine the United States, imagine 20,000 people a month dying

• 1:00:11Anne Applebaum?

  or being, or being mortally injured and how that would affect us and how we would be.

• 1:00:16Scott Galloway?

  We wouldn't do it. I mean, isn't that?

• 1:00:18Anne Applebaum?

  Unthinkable.

• 1:00:20Scott Galloway?

  Isn't that, quite frankly, Russia's core confidence is willing to endure more suffering, far more than Europe or the US. There's no way we would do this. No way we would let a million Americans be injured or killed. We would have, we would have found a reason to, you know, get a helicopter on the embassy and get the hell out, you know, a year and a half ago. And I think we consistently underestimate the Russians' willingness to subject their citizenry to pain.

• 1:00:45Anne Applebaum?

  Yeah, I think we do. I don't think the Ukrainians underestimate them. I mean, my last month, a lot of recent conversations I've had in Ukraine have been with people who say, right, we get it. The Russians don't care how many people we kill. I mean, we're going to go on killing them because that's how we keep our country sovereign. But they shifted strategies some months ago and they began really focusing on hitting Russian oil export and oil refining facilities. And they do that because they say, okay, they don't care about people, but they care about money and they care about wealth. And so we're going to try to hit them in the places where they're making the most money. And actually, just in the last couple of days, they've started hitting tankers. So far, it's empty tankers, just in case you're worried about oil spills.

• 1:01:29Anne Applebaum?

  They hit a couple of tankers that were going into a port, oil tankers. I think they were under a Gambian flag, but we all understand that this is called the shadow fleet. We understand that they're, they're Russian or they're carrying Russian, they're going to be carrying Russian oil. And they also have had this campaign to hit Russian refineries. And they've hit some several dozen of them and they do it repeatedly and they do it almost every night. I was in a, I was in a Ukrainian long-range drone factory in September and they showed me these drones. They were, they were like little airplanes. They're, they're large. These aren't little drones. These are huge drones. And I said, how many do you make? And they now make a hundred a day. These are very sophisticated little planes. And how many do you launch every day? And they say, we launch a hundred

• 1:02:12Anne Applebaum?

  a day. They have this permanent now campaign of hitting Russian oil and gas infrastructure all the time. And this is, when they describe it to me, they say, this is the real sanctions. The sanctions that the US and Europe do are now full of holes. The US isn't really enforcing them anymore. It's too easy for everybody else to buy oil and gas from Russia. And so we're going to make it more difficult. And that's now really important and very under-reported for reasons that I don't really understand, but a very under-reported part of how Ukraine is fighting as well. So they, they understand that we, they, you know, killing people won't win the war, but maybe doing enough damage to infrastructure could. And their theory of victory now involves that, you know, we do enough damage that

• 1:02:55Anne Applebaum?

  they at least have to stop fighting. And that's, you know, but, but you're right. I mean, killing a million people, so what?

• 1:03:04Scott Galloway?

  So I, in our remaining three minutes here, and you've been generous with your time, I want to move to something much lighter. You said that you had lived in Russia. I know you've lived in the US. What other nations have you lived in, Anne?

• 1:03:15Anne Applebaum?

  I lived in London. I lived, I lived in Poland. I live in Poland, actually. I live, I spent about half my time in Poland. I live in Warsaw and then we have a house in northwest Poland as well in the country. We renovated, old house. I haven't really lived anywhere else, but I've spent a lot of time flying around and staying in other places. Spent a lot of time in Ukraine.

• 1:03:41Scott Galloway?

  So stack ranked, you're 25, you're thinking, you have some skills, a lot of geographic mobility. Stack ranked the best, the upside and the downside of living in all those nations for a young professional?

• 1:03:57Anne Applebaum?

  Well, Russia's out. You don't want, don't want to be kidnapped. Honestly, if I had the right kind of skills, and I don't, but maybe a young person would, I would be trying to work in the Ukrainian drone industry. That's where-

• 1:04:12Scott Galloway?

  It really feels like that could be the fuel that rebuilds that economy.

• 1:04:16Anne Applebaum?

  It will. I mean, once the fighting stops, they're now so far ahead of everybody else. Everybody's going there to learn how they're doing it, including Americans and including the British and including the Poles, obviously. I would do that. You know, so actually, the country where I see the most innovation and where things are really exciting is there. I mean, obviously, you know, you have to be pretty tolerant of loud noises at night and so on, but I would do that. And then, you know, yeah, I mean, Poland, Poland wants you overcome whatever cultural differences there are, and there are some. It's still

• 1:04:58Anne Applebaum?

  a country where there are all kinds of wide open spaces. You know, there are kind of things that haven't been done and companies that haven't been created. And I would think that that would be a great place to live. And I don't know, I mean, for me, London is still the greatest city in the world, and I'd be happy to be transplanted there again anytime, so.

• 1:05:19Scott Galloway?

  That's a nice note to end on. Wouldn't it be nice if, when this war is over, that Ukraine becomes a magnet for human capital and potential and optimism and economic growth? I like the thought of that. Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic. She's also a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins. Her books include Gulag: A History, Red Famine, Stalin's War on Ukraine, and her latest, Autocracy. And she joins us from the Atlantic office in Washington, DC. Anne, we absolutely love having you on. We have our listeners are generally kind of younger and more male, and I just love that we introduce

• 1:06:00Scott Galloway?

  them to historians and really thoughtful people that they may not come in contact with across their other channels. So very much appreciate your time and how in demand you must be right now. Thanks very much, Anne.

• 1:06:12Anne Applebaum?

  Thanks. It's always a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

• 1:06:17Scott Galloway?

  This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our assistant producer is Laura Genere. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod and Prop G Media.

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax, and let go of whatever you're carrying today.

• 1:06:40Speaker 06

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  This podcast is supported by Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Claude. Everyone's got a hard question about AI. Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.