Pod Insights The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway The New Rules of Power — with Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill About this episode For our 400th episode, Scott is joined by Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill to discuss the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the future of global power, and what these conflicts reveal about America's role in the world.
They explore whether Ukraine is changing the future of warfare, how Vladimir Putin's position has evolved over the last year, and what might come next for Iran. They also discuss the strengths and weaknesses of authoritarian regimes, the importance of alliances, and why soft power may matter more than military power in the years ahead.
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Transcript 12,301 words · 13 speakers
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1:30 Scott Galloway? Episode 400. If you listen to all 400 episodes back to back, you've spent more than 16 straight days with us. Oh, God. Anyways, in 2000, the iPhone didn't exist and the dot-com bubble was at its peak. True story. I got a new iPhone for my wife. Pretty good trade. Okay, that's not good. All right. Why do the Chinese love iPhones? Because the best gifts are the ones that your children made for you. Is that wrong? Go, go, go!
2:10 Scott Galloway? Welcome to the 400th episode of the Prof G Pod. 400? I literally, I can't remember the 399th. Actually, I can't remember what I had for breakfast. Mom, where am I? Heat my soup. I'm so ready to be an old man. All right, I guess ready. I guess I've already kind of, I was an old man when I was 22. But I do remember the first episode of the Prof G Pod. So it was during COVID and that was, um, so let's get, let's bring this back to me. I had just raised a shit ton of money for a company called Section and I was going to start a media company. And then essentially, anyways, I did, I made the same rookie move I always mistake. I went out and thought, oh, I'm an entrepreneur and I've raised a
2:55 Scott Galloway? lot of venture capital. I need to get big splashy office space. So I rented an entire floor, I sub leased from, who was it? One of the LVMH brands that's been sucking wind. Just a short walk from my house and we were going to spend a million dollars building it out. And then, and we're interviewing a bunch of people on the podcast and I interviewed an epidemiologist from, I think it was the University of Maryland. This guy just clearly knew his shit. And this was when there was some cases in Seattle, a couple of cruise ships, people were starting to worry. They had just, they hadn't even shut down, decided whether or not they were going to have South by Southwest or not. And I, of course, decided I was a mini epidemiologist and this didn't present a threat to the, to the world. And I talked to this guy and quite frankly, he kind of scared the shit out of me. And after
3:39 Scott Galloway? we were off mic, I said, all things considered, just what are your thoughts here? And he goes, people don't realize how bad this is. And I freaked out. And I realized that in our little corner of our one floor office, we were all huddled very close to each other. And I said, okay, everybody needs to get their laptop and go home. And I might be being paranoid here, but this epidemiologist says this is worse than anyone thinks. I then called my partner and said, load up the kids, we're headed somewhere. And I did this analysis. I was looking for a place that was remote, low density, high end resort, sunshine, as at that time, for some reason, I thought, or I read somewhere that heat
4:19 Scott Galloway? might kill the virus. And within 30 minutes to a good hospital and within an hour, fly to a great hospital. Like I put together a speech spreadsheet. And I came up with the Myakoba. And we pieced out to the Myakoba. And we were all planning to go to Aspen to go skiing and then Aspen got closed down and the whole thing, you know, COVID started and we ended up spending several weeks down there and which is obviously a story of privilege. But we had decided to start the Prop G podcast and our first guest from the Maya Coba was Aslat de Motaran and trying to figure out wireless. But anyways, the first of 400 or number
5:01 Scott Galloway? one was from Mexico as COVID was breaking out. God, God, the world has changed. Anyways, with that, we appreciate if you've been here for summer, all of the 400, we very much appreciate your support. And with that, we wanted to do something, I don't know if special is the right word, but wanted to bring on two people who I just think a great deal of and I think deserve more attention. And when I think of Prop G and what we're trying to do here, we're not necessarily trying to find celebrities or the most well-known people, but people who provide a new, new thinking or insight on really important issues. And so we thought we'd have both Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill on, who are very well-known in their respective domains, but sometimes don't have, I don't
5:45 Scott Galloway? know, the general curb awareness of some of the more popular podcast guests. But I just think the world of both of these, both of these women, I think they're so unafraid and insightful and intelligent and right to the point. So anyways, with that, we hope you enjoy our conversation with Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill.
6:15 Scott Galloway? Anne, you wrote that Trump does not think strategically or historically. How do you assess his handling of this war thus far?
6:24 Anne Applebaum? He's not handling it strategically. He's handling it the way he handles everything, namely, when he looks at the problem, he doesn't think How do I solve this in a way that's good for Americans? That's good for the people of the Middle East? That's good for the people of Iran? He thinks, how is this good for me? How do I emerge from this conflict as the winner? How do I make sure people don't say I'm just adopting Obama's deal? Or people don't say X or Y? He's not thinking about solving the problem on behalf of others. He's thinking entirely about himself. And I mean, I think that's why you get these strange zigzags, these strange claims that he's about to do a deal or not to do a deal.
7:09 Anne Applebaum? He's trying to create applause. He's not trying to solve the problem.
7:14 Scott Galloway? I think Americans barely have the time to understand domestic politics, much less international politics. And it feels as if there's not enough attention or understanding around how Lebanon has become a key point of tension between Israel, Iran, and the US. And you go first. What role? Or describe the situation, and I'd like to get Fiona's reaction.
7:38 Anne Applebaum? So Lebanon is important to Israel because Lebanon is the home of Hezbollah, which is a really important Iranian proxy. Iran has tried to spread its revolution around the Middle East through the use of, through the creation of other groups who have Islamic ideologies and who work, not necessarily exactly coordinated with Iran, but in the same, you know, in the same direction. And Israel feels that it won't be safe until it has destroyed not only the regime in Iran, which I think is still its ultimate goal, but also all of these proxies. And so the war in Lebanon is not from, either from the Israeli or from the Iranian point of view. It's not a separate story.
8:22 Anne Applebaum? It's part of the same, it's part of the same picture. I'm not sure that Donald Trump understands that or that his team understands that. But for the Israelis, it's part of that, it's part of the story. And if the war isn't over there, if the Israelis haven't defeated Hezbollah there, which, by the way, I should say is probably a generational task, then the war's not over.
8:43 Scott Galloway? Fiona, any thoughts?
8:44 Fiona Hill? Yes, I think the problem, just as you scoped it out in the way that you framed the question, is that for the American public, this is just too much. I mean, it's literally overkill. I mean, most people are not listening to your podcast, they're not reading the New York Times or the Atlantic and Ann's columns. You know, they're not tracking the complexity of all of this and all of the ties between and among all of the conflicts. I mean, not just is Lebanon, you know, tied into Iran through the prism of Israel and Israel's threat perceptions, but Ukraine is also tied into the conflicts in the Middle East as well through all kinds of different ways. And for everyone to untangle this is really a bit much. And I think Anna is absolutely right. Trump doesn't understand all of this complexity. For him, it's all very simple.
9:28 Fiona Hill? It's all about dealing with whoever it is on top, negotiating with himself most of all to, you know, figure out where he is coming from on all of this. He's not listening to any kind of advice. And we now also see that he has a major rift with Netanyahu, which is going to make any kind of resolution of what's going on in the ground in Lebanon extraordinarily complicated too.
9:49 Scott Galloway? I want to put forward a thesis and have each of you respond to it. Fiona, I'll ask you to go first. The IRGC is a car dealership. Trump is a car purchaser browsing for cars. And Trump is trying to negotiate and has accidentally or has let the car dealership know that he needs a car to get home. Or that he's playing poker and his cards are turned upside down and he has a weak hand. I have, I can find no reason why the IRGC would negotiate at all. I just, it strikes me that we are negotiating with, we don't even have a hand, much less a weak hand. Fiona, your thoughts?
10:25 Fiona Hill? I think that's absolutely true. And I think, you know, the other part of your analogy here is that Trump also thinks that he's the seller, not just the buyer. And that is the problem, because he's always telling the Iranians what he would do. And in real time, he's laying out everything, everything that he's thinking. So of course, there is no incentive whatsoever for them to make a deal on any kind of basis right now, because they have no certainty, no assurances of what the outcome is going to be. So Trump, every single day, confounds his own ability to make any progress.
10:55 Anne Applebaum? Yeah, I think there are some things the Iranians want, actually. I mean, they want their frozen assets.
11:02 Anne Applebaum? They want, I mean, they say they want some kind of compensation for damage done. I mean, that seems pretty unlikely. They want lifting of sanctions. There are things that they want, and they think they might get them. And there actually have been moments over the last few weeks when it looked like Trump was willing to give them some of those things. But of course, then, that gets us back to where we started with the first question, was that then that looks a lot like previous attempts, including the one led by Obama, to do a nuclear deal or a sanctions lifting deal with Iran. And then, as soon as he realizes that, he backtracks again. You know, the things that they want are things that he doesn't want to give them because that makes him look bad, and so he keeps reverting to this language of, you know,
11:45 Anne Applebaum? they have to, we need absolute surrender, or we need regime change, or we need, you know, some kind of, he needs some kind of maximum, maybe even just some show of genuflection or some, you know, some demonstration that he's the greatest leader in the world. Maybe that's what he wants from them. And of course, that's not what they're going to give him.
12:05 Scott Galloway? Ian, what do you think the political landscape looks like inside of Iran right now?
12:10 Anne Applebaum? This is a really interesting question, and one I've tried to pay attention to, to the degree to which it's possible, because we, Iran is pretty cut off. They cut the internet. I think some of it is back on now, and it's very hard to reach people or get any clear idea. Obviously, there's no polling, there's no public opinion, there's no, there's no national conversation. I have some Iranian friends who are part of the opposition, who've been in touch with people there, and they report, they reported initially really enormous enthusiasm and happiness and joy that the leaders were destroyed. Actually, a friend of mine said to me, you know, "I know what you think about this, but I just want you to know, this is on the day Khamenei was killed. I just want you to know, this is the best day of my life."
12:54 Anne Applebaum? So people were initially very enthusiastic. Obviously, there's been a change since then. Um, there's a lot of disappointment with the way the war is being conducted. There's a lot of fear that the end of the war will give more legitimacy to the regime rather than less. Uh, that we've, in essence, given them a new, not nuclear weapon, but something like a nuclear weapon that they can use against the United States and against the Gulf stage, which is control of the Strait of Hormuz, and that will give them extra power. Um, there may be people inside Iran and this, here, I'm just guessing, I don't have any evidence or proof, who are, who are rallying around the regime, you know, because they're being attacked by the United States.
13:39 Anne Applebaum? Um, and we certainly haven't seen the kinds of protests that we saw a few months ago in January. Um, there's a sense that the regime is still in charge. Now, it's not so much the religious leaders, it's the army and the military. Uh, and the, that, that seems to have kind of, I'm sure there are divisions within that group, but there, but it hasn't, it doesn't leave any room for other conversations, you know, about what kind of other regime we would like. Uh, but this is almost a, you know, the strange thing about this is it's almost a moot point. I mean, even whatever you think of the Iraq war, during the, during the invasion, after the invasion, there was a constant conversation about Iraqis and attempts to reach Iraqis and speak to Iraqis.
14:22 Anne Applebaum? And there was concern about giving the Iraqis agencies so that they could run their own country someday. Uh, and there was, nobody wanted to have a long-term occupation. That was never the point. And here, there seems to be almost no conversation about the Iranians and what they want and how we could help them live better or, or make them a country that's better integrated with the Middle East. And that seems to be very odd. I mean, you know, you're asking that question, but almost nobody else does.
14:50 Scott Galloway? Fiona?
14:50 Fiona Hill? Yes, I agree. I think that it's very strange indeed. And in fact, if we think back to the very beginning of the conflict, of course, President Trump himself tried to actually suggest that he was doing this on behalf of the Iranians and even exhorting them to take to the streets to further his attempts to decapitate the regime. But look, it's, as Anne has suggested here, a fundamental misunderstanding of how Iran works. And you can be sure that President Trump hasn't consulted any of the Iran experts. We've got many colleagues who are out there who really know the situation, have been following it for decades, who always would have said that Iran wasn't as hierarchical as it looked.
15:32 Fiona Hill? The theocracy is on top of these other great groups that Anne has already delineated, the IRGC, the military, you know, other groups that have penetrated the whole economy. And the Iranian people are separate from all of this. And it's those groups that are fighting for their survival. And how one activates then, or actually tries to respond to the desires of the Iranian people, to live better, to work with opposition that is not also seen in a hierarchical mode. I mean, the latching on at first to Palavi, to the son of the late Shah, that was just a kind of a classic of a US top-down approach that also wasn't going to get any traction. I think we are completely missing the perspective
16:14 Fiona Hill? of Iran looking out into the future here. And that is going to also complicate any means of resolving this war. Because you were going to leave, even if Trump manages to make some kind of accommodation with all of these different groups at the top, you're going to leave Iran in a very perilous, powerless state. And essentially, as a very weak state in many respects, despite the strength of these groups on the top, that is going to be dysfunctional in such a critical region. And it's traditionally, of course, been a country that was heavily involved in creating a balance of power of sorts in the region. It was very important for Russia, as well as for Turkey and all of
16:55 Fiona Hill? the other bordering states, not just its interrelationships with Iraq and Israel, for example, and Afghanistan.
17:02 Scott Galloway? Most of the autocracies you both study are secular. Putin, Orban, kind of the autocracy Inc. model. Iran adds a theological dimension.
17:14 Scott Galloway? How does a religious autocracy differ? And does it change how this war is fought and how it ends? Fiona, you start.
17:20 Fiona Hill? Well, it's interesting because the Russians and perhaps the Turks might say to you there isn't really a religious theocracy in Iran. I mean, they see the mullahs and religion as a kind of an icing on top of a cake of an ancient civilization and, you know, kind of a country that they've dealt with for, in some cases, millennia and, you know, more recently for centuries. And they saw the theocracy as having its own role, but not dominating in the way that we would all have seen this from the outside. Putin, for example, you know, found it quite easy to interact despite, obviously, the religious differences. And I think he saw it, or still sees it, as a group that want to remain in power by harnessing religion for their own purposes, which is frankly what he has done.
18:04 Fiona Hill? And to some degree, that's also what Erdogan has done. And, you know, I'll defer to Anne on Hungary and, you know, others. But, I mean, I think you could also see attempts, and we've got that in the United States, to harness religion for one's own purposes. And I think for those in the region, Iran was seen as the ultimate harnessing of religion. And obviously, this is a sort of top-down, bottom-up movement there. But I think the Russians and Turks and others have always approached Iran as a kind of, as I said, a sort of theocracy light, not really kind of buying in to the whole idea that this was now, everything was motivated by religion.
18:38 Anne Applebaum? Yeah, I think actually the religious, the religious aspect of theocracy in Iran did make a difference. I mean, if you believe that your power is justified by God and that you're part of an eternal, you know, an eternal movement that will, that is legitimate and doesn't need to brook any conversation or debate or opposition because, you know, because the long range of history will demonstrate that you were right, you know. I think that gives you a different attitude to the world. And I think it gives you a different attitude, maybe even to fighting.
19:21 Anne Applebaum? I mean, I think it's not an accident that the Iranians produced. So many people who are inspired by suicide missions and visions of virgins in heaven who would make it all worthwhile. I mean, it can motivate people and it can give people a sense of certainty that others don't have. I mean, I suppose there are sort of secular religions like Marxism used to be that give people something similar. But I think the Iranian regime with its pretensions to universality, or at least the pretension to that sooner or later, every Muslim would be part of a regime like this one.
20:03 Anne Applebaum? You know, that gave them the confidence to be involved in all over the Middle East. It's what motivates their proxies and so on. So I think it does matter. Although I think, Scott, the fundamental basis of your question, which is, you know, what binds this group of autocracies to work together? And right now, the most important ones are Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, plus a handful of others, is really not religion and obviously is not any ideology. So ideology doesn't matter. The Chinese are communists and the Russians are nationalists and the Iranians have a theocracy. You know, what binds all of them is rather their dislike of and fear of the language of the liberal world.
20:46 Anne Applebaum? In other words, the language of rights, the language of rule of law, the language of separation of powers. You know, all of these are states that are seeking to create a kind of total environment where the regime or the leader or the ruling party controls all media, all conversation, makes all the decisions, controls the court system, which is why so many of them become so profoundly corrupt, controls the legal system. And what they, all of them are fighting against is the influence of... Liberalism, secular liberalism, democracy, whichever word you prefer to use, but the influence of other cultures where you have actual debate, where you have independent courts, where you have the rule of law.
21:30 Anne Applebaum? And I think that's what, they have that in common with the other regime. Although, as I said, I think the religious nature of their regime gives them a particular fanatical edge that you might not find in Russia or China.
21:44 Scott Galloway? Yeah, speaking of that edge, and I'll put forward another thesis, and that is, it doesn't matter if you spend 1.4 trillion dollars or committed to your military, and you have the most expensive sophisticated platforms in the world, if you have a glass jaw. Now, what do I mean by that? I don't mean to diminish the loss and the tragedy of the families who've lost 13 servicemen and servicewomen in the war in Iran, but Russia's willing to lose 1,000 people a day. Iran will kill 30,000 of its own people and let their civilian infrastructure be destroyed and bombed. Americans freak out if they can't get their Netflix for five minutes. And that is, regardless of how strong we are,
22:27 Scott Galloway? do we ultimately maintain our interests overseas? If we can deliver violence but we're not willing to absorb the losses? If Europe is never willing, you know, granted, Europe's really stepped up in terms of economic support, but at the end of the day, aren't the autocrats going to win? If we lose 13 people and say we're out? Don't we operate at a severe disadvantage that may be correctly? We just aren't willing to make the type of sacrifices these autocracies are. I'll let you go first, Fiona.
23:00 Fiona Hill? I'd like to jump in on this because I think that there's a fundamental difference in this, the way that we see power and the exercising of power in the United States and in other countries as well in Europe. And also in Ukraine, by the way. And, you know, I don't disagree at all with anything that Anne has just said about the way that all of this group of autocracies look at things. She's absolutely right that, of course, there is an edge that was given to Iran and to its perspective from the religion. You know, that was, you know, something that I, you know, a point I didn't make at the very beginning, but I was trying to also explain that most of the countries around that don't really see Iran as being all about religion. But it's absolutely right that they all see themselves as very strong states and states in which societies, individuals, people have
23:43 Fiona Hill? no role. And that is really the kind of the fundamental difference for now still with the United States and with European countries. I mean, we've got over time, particularly over the course of the 20th century, to a point where we believe that societies and our populations have more say in how power is exercised. And of course, that's a fundamental struggle going on right now in the United States as we try to move in a different direction. And if you see in the case of Ukraine, for example, Ukrainians have been willing to sacrifice large numbers of people. I mean, yes, it's extraordinarily difficult for them, but they've proven to be just as resilient as the Russians have, but for a very different reason. They have had to fight for their existence and for their survival. And I think that the way that Trump has presented this whole war in Iran, this is not about United States survival, it's not about the American people, this is a war of choice
24:27 Fiona Hill? that he made. And that was also the backlash that we had in the United States and other countries after Iraq and the invasion of Iraq. Afghanistan might have been a different matter, given 9/11 and the attacks on the United States by bin Laden, and that sort of sense that the United States was in peril at that time. But if you look back to the wars of the 20th century, to World War I and World War II, you know, particularly in the case of the United Kingdom and, you know, many other countries, there was a sense that the society also had to the right of the occasion. And remember that the deaths in World War II on the part of the UK and all of the then Commonwealth countries were as great as the worst battles in World War I. So people were willing to sacrifice where
25:08 Fiona Hill? they saw themselves as individuals, as families, as groups, as people and as their countries on the line. And I think that the difference here is that no one in the United States sees the United States being on the line in this Particular conflict in Iran, and that's also the case with Ukraine. Now Europeans are having a big debate about how much they are on the line now in Ukraine, but they certainly don't see themselves, they see their livelihoods on the line, but not themselves, their own existence, on the line in what's happening in the Gulf, although perhaps that might shift as the economic and other problems become more acute.
25:42 Anne Applebaum? I think the difference is, just to say what Fiona just said in a sentence, is there's a big difference between wars that are existential and wars of choice. If you are an Iranian and you are in the regime, then you are fighting for your survival, for your family, for your future, for your life, and you have no exit. Losing is your death and the disappearance of your regime and everything that you think you've built. If you're Ukrainian, then you're fighting for your existence, for your country, for the ability to speak your language, for the ability to raise your children the way you want. You're fighting actually for your existence as a nation
26:27 Anne Applebaum? and you're fighting against a country that wants to eliminate you as a nation. If you're America in Iran, why exactly are you fighting? You're fighting because Trump was angry that he didn't get rid of all the nuclear facilities in the bombing strike last year, I guess. You know, or you're fighting for, you know, Trump's need to make friends with Netanyahu or to show that he's on their side. Who knows? Trump has never made it really clear why he's fighting or why America's fighting there. So obviously, you're not going to get either Americans willing to make huge sacrifices or Trump himself wanting to make huge sacrifices
27:09 Anne Applebaum? and wanting to lose political points or lose people or lose aircraft or lose weapons, because that's the... He's not fighting for something that's that existential. You could say the story of Russia is a little bit different, but one of the reasons why in these asymmetric wars, when you have one big power fighting a small one, why they often come out differently from what you expect. Look at Vietnam, look at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Look at the US in Afghanistan as well. One of the reasons why they come out differently from what you would think if you just looked at which country is larger, which is smaller, which has more military ability and which has less, is that the reasons why they're fighting are so opposite.
27:53 Anne Applebaum? I mean, I think if the United States really was, if there was an existential war that
28:00 Scott Galloway? If Canada invaded us?
28:01 Anne Applebaum? Canada invaded us, or if, I don't know, if China invaded us, I think Americans would fight. I don't think it's a, I don't think it's a problem of democracy. I think it's a problem of why are we in this war? And I have to say, I mean, it's interesting. If you, I've had this conversation recently with a lot of Europeans, actually, about would Europeans fight Russia? And many people say, no, they won't. And people are always looking at surveys before the war that show, I don't know, I'm making this up. Some large percentage of Spaniards won't fight for Spain and so on, or Germans won't fight for Germany. If you had done those same kinds of surveys in Ukraine before the war, and I think they were done, it would have been similar. You know, everything changes once the war begins, and it's in your country,
28:46 Anne Applebaum? and it's threatening your life and your children and your way of, you know, your existence. And that's the difference here, is that we're all fighting for different things. I don't think the problem is our, is our democracy. The problem, you know, or the fact that we're Democrats. I think the problem is we're not fighting this war for very good reasons.
29:06 Fiona Hill? And those surveys were done in Ukraine. And as Anne suggested, Ukrainians were not ready for the fight at all. And in fact, you might recall, if we go back to just before February 2022, there was a big debate in Ukraine whether Russia was going to invade or not. And in fact, it was very hard for the US government at the time, for Bill Burns as the CIA director, to get it across to the Ukrainians that this was real and there was going to be a Russian invasion. So I think that also just proves the point that we're trying to make here.
29:41 Scott Galloway? We'll be right back after a quick break.
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33:11 Scott Galloway? I want to move to Ukraine, and I'll start with you, Anne, as you've kind of been all over this for a long time, and you've been early and often. I would argue that the most important news story of 2026 is the most underreported, and that is, in the last 60 days, I sense just what is an incredibly wonderful pivot, and that is, Ukraine has gone from defense to offense. And I don't know how much of that is me projecting my own desires and hopes in interpreting the news one way, but if you do, I'm fascinated by search volume. The SpaceX IPO will get about eight to 12 times the amount of search volume as the war in Ukraine today. And there has been an enormous shift that I think is just incredibly positive for the
33:56 Scott Galloway? West. One, am I projecting my own desires here, or do you see the same shift in momentum, if you will, from Ukraine going from defense to offense?
34:09 Anne Applebaum? So as it happens, I was in Ukraine about 10 days ago and was having these conversations there, and I've just written something about it. And the real interesting part of this story is not so much that Ukraine has gone from defense to offense, is that Ukraine has changed completely the way this war is being fought. And so what you have to understand about the Ukrainian frontline is that it's a kind of 20-mile-wide zone. It's not like a line that people are fighting against. It's a 20-mile-wide zone, which is now completely transparent. And the Ukrainians can see everything in it because of their extraordinary, the literally
34:51 Anne Applebaum? millions of drones that they've built in the last couple of years. They have reconnaissance drones, they have short-range drones, long-range drones, they can see the whole frontline. And every time any Russian truck, or car, or person comes into the zone, they see that person, and they can hit them. And these huge numbers of people dying, 1,000 a day, 30,000 a month, or dying or being wounded, are coming from the fact that despite the existence of the zone, the Russians have until now continued sending people in it. And even at the beginning of this year and late last year, by doing that, they were able to move it forward a little bit.
35:34 Anne Applebaum? They were, you know, so many resources were being thrown into it that they were still moving. That has now stopped completely. They cannot move forward. And actually, in the last couple of months, they've lost. So it's not what I would call like a huge counteroffensive, at least not yet, it could be, but the Russians are not able to move. And that has happened at the same time as Ukraine's long-range drones, which I've been in factories where they make them, they're like little mini airplanes. They're not what you think of, it's not like a little toy drone, it's a big thing, like the size of a long dining table. These long-range drones are now able to travel quite far into Russia and hit with enough
36:17 Anne Applebaum? force to destroy, or at least damage, literally every refinery in central Russia has now been hit, most of them more than once. A few days ago, they hit the refinery in St. Petersburg on the day that Putin was opening an important economic conference in St. Petersburg, and you could see people walking into the building with kind of billows of black smoke. In the background, which it's pretty extraordinary, I mean, the something burning in St. Petersburg as the leaders of the country are there, as if, as if there was a big economic conference in Washington DC and somebody exploded, not that we have any oil refineries in Washington, but if there were someone exploding one while they were there and everybody somehow going on as if that were normal. So they have this ability to hit longer range things.
37:02 Anne Applebaum? They have the ability to see the frontline and they also now increasingly have the ability to hit the supply routes into the, into the front line, while making it much harder for the Russians to supply and resupply their troops. And all of that has, has turned the tide, not just of the war, but of perceptions of the war. You know, there's been this kind of automatic assumption since the war began. And you, actually, you alluded to it in one of your previous questions, you know, the bigger country would defeat the smaller country sooner or later, and us helping Ukraine was just a matter of staving it off. Instead, what's happened is the Ukrainians have revolutionarily changed the drone industry.
37:45 Anne Applebaum? Hundreds of Ukrainian companies, small ones, big ones, it's a very, it's a very decentralized, grassroots effort. It's not been directed by one person, have rewritten the rules of war by re, by redesigning drones and thinking differently about what they do. They didn't have as much artillery, although they still use that, they didn't have a huge air force, but what they have is this ability to do that. And suddenly the perceptions of them are different. Suddenly the Gulf states want visits from Ukraine and from Ukrainian military because they want the drone interceptors that Ukraine has to hit, to hit the Shahids, the kind of drones that Iran and Russia now both use as, as attack drones.
38:28 Anne Applebaum? Suddenly, European companies want to do deals with Ukrainian drone companies, and there are several big joint venture projects now happening all over Europe as well as inside Ukraine. And suddenly Ukraine isn't a victim, it's a provider of security. And it's a provider of security despite the fact that the US cut off supplies to Ukraine. I believe, hoping that that meant that Ukraine would surrender. And despite the fact that negotiations fail, the Trump administration-led negotiations, they are enormously helped by Europe's, by European money and cooperation with European companies. But a lot of it is coming from the society itself. And I think, in fact, this change happened a while ago.
39:13 Anne Applebaum? It really began a year ago. But Scott, you're right that in the last couple of months, it suddenly becomes clear. And the perception is shifting, and that changes also the way the Russians see the war. I'm sure Fiona's been following that. And that changes the way, the assumptions people are making about its outcome. It could be that there is another shift and Ukrainians begin moving forward. That hasn't happened yet. But certainly, the ability of the Russians to move forward has stopped completely.
39:43 Scott Galloway? And Fiona, I'll put the same question to you that we asked about Iran. What does the domestic political landscape look like right now in Russia?
39:50 Fiona Hill? Well, it looks very different from Iran, let's say, and also from the state of Ukraine. Because, look, everything in Russia is a vertical of power leading up to Putin. And I think in the way that Anne has just laid out what's happening in Ukraine, in this case, strong society is beating out strong state. And there's a lesson in that. I mean, you made a quip earlier about Canada, and I would actually say that Canada is actually reacting to the United States and thinking more about its defense against fending off the United States after predatory commentary, as well as predatory policy and tariffs and other things as well. Look at the Danes and the Greenlanders reacting to things that the United States has said. I think there's a big lesson in all of this here that we can see in the case of Russia and Putin. Putin keeps everything very tight-holed.
40:36 Fiona Hill? It's top-down. Yes, there's innovation on the battlefield by Russian soldiers, just like you might see in Ukraine, but Putin is scared of his own society. He's scared of that mobilization. In Ukraine, people had to step up because the state didn't have the capacity. It wasn't incapacitated, but it was pretty weak. Still remains quite weak and feckless at times. We talk all the time about corruption. We see all the infighting. Ukraine's been notorious for cycling through all kinds of forms of leadership and each of its leaders going after the other on corruption, a lot of it justified. We still talk about this and yet Ukraine keeps going, yes, with support because it's crowdsourced, it's networked, there's flattened hierarchies. All of the innovation that Anne is describing here is because of that mobilisation, that activation
41:20 Fiona Hill? of Ukrainian society working in lockstep with the military. That's not what you're seeing in Ukraine. And in Russia rather, and in Russia Putin is now starting to get very nervous about Russian society and perhaps the elites. I mean, we hear stories about this, I wouldn't overplay it because Putin has all kinds of repressive capacities, but it's certainly the case that now his choices are shrinking. And as Anne has described on the frontline, he's not as close as he would like to be, to be able to be taking the whole of the Donbass, which is certainly one of the intermediate goals. And he's going to have to make some tough decisions as to whether he keeps on escalating these bombardments against Kiev, whether he starts doing more nuclear sabre rattling, putting more pressure
42:05 Fiona Hill? on Europe, and really still trying to get others to hand him Ukraine's capitulation. Because the situation for him doesn't look as great as it did earlier. Now, he will always think that there will be some way of getting himself out of this bind, but it's him making all of the decisions again, and it's just a question of whether the constraints around him, in terms of the number of people who will continue to volunteer, as Anne's described about all of the casualties here, in the last months we've seen the numbers of dead, not just injured, increasing. And in fact, it's kind of flipping now the ratio of dead to injured in a way that is very detrimental to Putin. So for him, it's more of constrained choices and consequences. The other thing is that oil, everyone's expecting
42:50 Fiona Hill? that Russia will have benefited enormously from the increase in oil prices. But in fact, the sanctions that were imposed by the Europeans and others on Russian oil have actually constrained some of those revenues. And revenue isn't the same as having more manpower or more weaponry and this kind of ability to turn the innovation tide against Ukraine. It's still costly for Putin to buy from abroad, from China, you know, it's such a components that he needs or the military needs for their weapons development. So it's not a tipping point at this particular point, but we can see that the picture has become darker from Putin's perspective.
43:28 Scott Galloway? It feels like autocrats fall slowly than suddenly. And when you see Putin, it feels like Putin's on the run right now. When he is scared to put on kind of these big celebrations for fear, and I've heard he's got buddy doubles everywhere and isn't seen in public. And I don't know how much of that is is is is wishful thinking on our part. The question is, is there, do you think there's a non-zero probability that Putin could fall, that this is an existential threat to him? And if so, is there a risk that he does something very bold, irrational? Because can't can he come to some sort of negotiated settlement that
44:09 Scott Galloway? is perceived as a loss? Is that an existential crisis for him? Does does he end up finding a window on the eighth floor somewhere if he's perceived as weak in having lost this war?
44:20 Fiona Hill? Well, he's thinking all those same things that you've just let up, Scott. So absolutely, he's making all these calculations all the time. I'm sure all the windows where he are, he is a very low or they're sealed shut very firmly. But putting that joking aside, for Putin, yes, he worries about this all the time, because if you look back through Russian history, it isn't always the case that every war resulted in the demise, and Anne's been writing about this and others have, of the Tsars. But it's certainly the case that a defeat in war could be pretty disastrous. And in fact, if you look at World War One, the war that Putin never talks about, it was the implosion of the Tsarist regime that caused Russia to have to pull out of World War One. But that treaty that was signed
45:05 Fiona Hill? and concluded by the Bolsheviks, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Anne's probably sitting actually talking to a Samania Brest-Litovsk in fighting. Was concluded as getting as a strategic decision to get a kind of breathing space for some kind of regrouping. And in fact, you know, Stalin, of course, took most of that territory back again, you know, a couple of decades later with the Molotov-Ribbentsov Pact. All of this is to say that Putin is probably wondering, and others around him are wondering, if there is some possibility of getting a strategic pause at this point that might allow him to get a better grip on the situation. But that's also very dangerous. I don't think we're right at that point yet, but I think absolutely it's correct to lay out the fact that something could happen very suddenly. Because if you look back at
45:49 Fiona Hill? the Soviet Union, there were all kinds of predictions of the Soviet Union's demise, and then it happened in ways that people never really anticipated. And Putin is always worrying, from the perspective of Russian history, because he's a very good student of Russian history, about a situation that could become detrimental to him. So he's constantly thinking about how he maneuvers in the spaces that he sees.
46:10 Scott Galloway? Yeah.
46:12 Anne Applebaum? A few months ago, there was a leak from the office of one of Putin's advisers, Sergei Kryryak, who is actually a former prime minister of Russia. And the leak was of a kind of slide deck, a presentation. And the presentation was a description of how we will sell the end of the war to the Russians. In other words, it was a great victory. We defeated the combined forces of the West. You know, we damaged Ukraine. We, you know, we avoided worse consequences. We took over the territories of, you know,
46:50 Anne Applebaum? along the coast. We took over Crimea. And it's a way of trying to sell this story of victory to the Russian people. So someone inside the Kremlin is definitely already thinking about how, what if the war ended now? What if there was a ceasefire now? How would we explain it and yet stay in power? So there's, so that option is definitely under consideration. The question is whether Putin is in a position to take it. And the question is, if he doesn't take it. How much pressure will be on you? Will he be under from other people who want it? I mean, it's pretty clear that there's a part of the Russian elite that does want the war to
47:34 Anne Applebaum? end, and of course, there's a part that never liked it and was unhappy from the beginning. There's probably a part that, connected to the security services, that are now so invested in the defense industry and in the buildup of the army that they want to keep going. And what we, you know, what may be happening is some kind of, you know, game behind the scenes where, where those two groups are competing for power. Your point about autocracies falling slowly and then all at once is been repeated so many times in Russian history that it's almost a cliche. I mean, it's a, it is true that right up until the final moment that the Soviet Union didn't exist, nobody could imagine a world in which it didn't exist.
48:17 Anne Applebaum? And, you know, literally a year earlier, nobody predicted that it would be gone. And the same, you know, the same was true of Tsarist Russia, which up until the last minute was also seemed eternal and would be there forever and, and, and nobody imagined any alternative. So, so it's important, it's, it's important, of course, to remember that Putin has a grip on power unlike almost any other leader in the world. He controls enormously economic, political, social propaganda levers. And at the same time, it's important to remember that there is nothing more fragile than a system in which there is no obvious successor.
48:56 Anne Applebaum? You know, the funny thing about Putin is that not only do we not know who would replace him, we don't know how that person would be chosen. There's no Politburo, there's no Soviet Communist Party, there's no, there's no internal group who would choose the next leader. So you have this weird precarious situation where you have this strong system that without him would be suddenly very chaotic.
49:24 Scott Galloway? We'll be right back.
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51:42 Scott Galloway? We're back with more from Anne Applebaum and Fiona Hill. If there was one word, I think, if you had, if you could go back in time, or if somebody saw what had happened in these wars and then had the ability to communicate, you know, could only have one word to describe any learning from this, to inform future policy or military strategy, I think the word would be asymmetry.
52:06 Speaker 09 Mm-hmm.
52:07 Scott Galloway? And that is, you know, I wonder if a $1.4 trillion military budget with expensive platforms has just been rendered obsolete. And when you look at what Ukraine's been able to accomplish, when you look at Iran's ability to kind of strike back and wreak havoc with their neighbors, it just strikes me that we literally need to tear up the old kind of playbook here and what should have huge impact on our policy and our expenditures. And I'll go through who I think are the winners and losers, and I want each of you to respond. I think ultimately, big winner, and I don't mean to in any way diminish the loss of human life and the destruction, but I think Ukraine is probably going to become the third Silicon
52:46 Scott Galloway? Valley behind Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, and I think if there's any sort of sustainable peace, Kiev could arguably be the next Palo Alto. I mean, what they have done there, the fact that they are now advising the US and Gulf nations on how to defend themselves offensively and defensively just speaks to the innovation coming out of Ukraine right now. I think Iran, quite frankly, I hate to admit this, I think is somewhat of a winner. They've discovered something inadvertently or strategically more powerful than nuclear material, and that is the Strait of Hormuz. And I think that they have no intention of giving up that leverage. I think they may come out of this stronger. And obviously, the biggest loser, Russia, toothless tiger.
53:31 Scott Galloway? And I think the US is an enormous loser here. I think our ability to deliver violence, which I think is a real asset all over the world, has been vastly, I think that threat has been diminished, or that power has been diminished. And I'd like to think that Europe's a winner here by staying at least economically steadfast behind Ukraine. I'll start with you, Anne. Where do I have that right and where do I have that wrong?
53:54 Anne Applebaum? So I think the broad contour is right. I mean, remember that we still don't know what will happen. You know, I still think Iran is a pretty unstable country and unhappy country that doesn't have the, you know, they haven't created a new industry like the Ukrainians have. So I didn't know that I'm, I would be, I would be able to call them a winner. But I would add another kind of lesson to what you just said. The lesson is that the projection of power and influence is not only about military strength. And actually, this is something that the US used to know, not even that long ago, like 10 years ago.
54:38 Anne Applebaum? It was something that Americans understood, American statesmen understood. The US has historically had influence in the world, not because or only because of their military ability, but because they had the ability, almost unique ability, to have these values-based alliances. They had allies who would create institutions with them, who would voluntarily work with them, whether on defense projects or on economic projects. They had countries that wanted to imitate and copy the American system. They had, you know, they had, they had systems of aid and cooperation in almost every country on the planet that people wanted to be part of. That was the source of American power and influence.
55:21 Scott Galloway? We were the operating system.
55:22 Anne Applebaum? We were the operating system. We wrote the system, the world as it was created after 1945. I mean, it went through different phases and, you know, Cold War and post-Cold War are different and so on. But the operating system was largely one that the US designed or was at least a very large participant in. And we were the primary beneficiaries of that system. And that was part of why we became the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. And for reasons that you're right would take another podcast, full podcast to explain and debate, we have decided to give that up. Or the Trump administration, I think in his first, Trump's first attempt to put it to an end, didn't really succeed.
56:06 Anne Applebaum? And now, really in only, you know, just over a year, have pretty much succeeded in undermining that system, maybe forever, but anyway, doing it an enormous amount of damage. And what is the result? We don't have allies who want to help us in Iran, not least because they don't understand why we're there and what we're doing. We don't have people working with us to achieve the things that we want to achieve because we're not building, you know, we're not planning with others. We're not building, you know, international agreement to achieve our goals. Instead, the idea is that we're going to simply impose our power on other countries using military strikes and guys who come out of the air, and that's how we're going to win.
56:50 Anne Applebaum? And it's a, it's almost like a child's idea of how power works. It's a, you know, a kind of elementary school vision of how you project power. You just bomb stuff and then you win. That is not how the United States became the world's most influential country, and it's not how we achieve, how we achieved good outcomes in the past.
57:10 Fiona Hill? I couldn't agree more. I mean, I mean, basically, it's, it's also an autocrat's view or an authoritarian status that you consolidate all of the power at the top and then you use all of your repressive and violent capabilities to basically force everybody else into submission rather than bringing them along with you. The other thing is that what I agree with and on Iran, I don't think Iran has really benefited from this, although everybody who has something that they can use as a chokehold, a choke point, has actually benefited. The Houthis, you know, you've given all kinds of ideas to all kinds of other countries and groups that have one thing or two things or a few things, in the case of China with
57:51 Fiona Hill? critical resources and minerals, for example, that they can use and leverage against everyone else. And what America had always been in the business of, if we go back Back to the United States role over the last thirty years was breaking out of all of those chokeholds, was breaking away from the dominance of one set of countries or one individual, the tyrants of the world, and from breaking their ability to be able to repress and to try to literally call the shots by shooting at everyone. And I think the secret of the United States, which Anne has already laid out very eloquently, was really in the strength of its society. I don't want to say civil society, because people always get confused by that and think
58:33 Fiona Hill? it's the kind of NGOs and other things that Anne and, you know, and myself and others have been involved in, but it's rooted in the institutions of that society. That includes the federal government institutions that were run by experts with great expertise, and universities where you had a partnership on innovation. It wasn't just about the BOMOs, the giant, huge companies that have come to dominate the defence sector. And it was all about subversion in a positive way of people coming in and innovating in the way that Ukrainians have done in the battlefield and as a society at large. And now what we've seen is each of those great innovators, the heads of Palantir and Starlink
59:17 Fiona Hill? and, you know, Musk and CARP and everybody else, have actually become autocrats in their own right. They're stifling everybody else's ability to innovate. And I think what Ukraine is showing us is that the old model of state and society working together, of civilians being part of the innovation, and investing in that kind of innovative capacity is the way to go. And it's where we started off after World War II and during World War II. It's where the UK was in World War I and World War II. It's where most European countries were as well. I think actually what Ukraine could show is that the beneficiaries of all of this ought to be society, the private sector, the innovators, and that we need to find some kind of model after this, a refresh after all of the justice settled here, or while the justice is settling,
1:00:02 Fiona Hill? to basically get ourselves back into gear again. So a trillion-plus defence budget that's going to be top-down is not the way to go at all. You're absolutely right, that is not the model.
1:00:13 Scott Galloway? It feels as if it's such an indictment on US priorities that a lesson from this is that soft power is underrated and hard power is overrated. Correct. And we've just gotten it all wrong. So to the extent that you're willing, I'm going to ask each of you to speculate what these regions or what might happen. And let's go 12 months out, Russia and Iran. And I realize nobody has a crystal ball, so this is pure speculation. But if you were to try and game theory this, I know you each advise governments and think tanks. What do you think, sitting here in a year, hoping and trusting you'll come back on the podcast, what do you think we'll be looking at in terms of the situation in Ukraine and Iran? Anne, I'll start with you.
1:00:57 Anne Applebaum? So I really dislike predicting the future. And I
1:01:01 Scott Galloway? It's because you're smart, Anne. And there's Twitter to remind you.
1:01:05 Anne Applebaum? There's Twitter to remind me. And there's also, you know, there are events that you don't predict or foresee, or, you know, Putin dies, or Zelensky dies, or something, you know, that I feel are not in my control. You know, the only thing I think I will, I would say about Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine will not disappear as a country. It will be more integrated with Europe. It's possible that we would have a, I won't say a different regime in Russia, we could have a different leader, if things keep going the way they go. That's one alternative. It's also possible that we could have between now and then, a broader European war. So it's possible that, as you were asking, will Putin lash out?
1:01:47 Anne Applebaum? Will he, will he try to, you know, will he try to somehow want to use this moment to prove what he believes, which is that NATO isn't real? So he may, he may, something in the, I would think in the region, just to test whether the United States would come to anybody's aid. And this would be not just a test of NATO, but also, of course, a test of the United States and its alliances, as we were discussing. So I think all those things are possible. In the Middle East, I would find it very hard to predict what would happen. I mean, I can tell you what I hope would happen, which is that I do hope there will be a regime change or some evolution inside Iran. And it seems to me that has to happen sooner or later.
1:02:32 Anne Applebaum? It's unsustainable for the country to go on being this poor and to be this dominated by By a small group of people, but that's my wishful thinking rather than a prediction.
1:02:45 Scott Galloway? Fiona?
1:02:46 Fiona Hill? I have the same fear that Anne does of prediction. You know, it's probably why, you know, I never went off to run a casino or anything like this. So I'm just not very good at those kinds of gambles and this. But anyway, I think that what we are going to see, though, is a real shift in the way that people think about the United States. And that will shift the balances of power because you're already seeing it. You are seeing countries not just starting to realize, but already have realized that the United States is not acting in their best interest. It gets back to everything that we've talked about now. The Gulf states' interest in Ukraine and closer connections. I mean, the Ukrainians were very well advised to go and start to forge new relationships with the Gulf countries. They didn't have an opening there previously, but now they do.
1:03:31 Fiona Hill? Iran has shifted all of the thinking that everybody has in the Middle East as well about the configuration and balances of power there. And I think you're going to start to see many more regional groupings that are really about trying to mitigate the impact of United States actions and the United States policies. Because I think people are no longer seeing Trump, you know, pun intended here, as their trump card for things that could benefit them. Although there will always be corrupt elites everywhere who are cashing in alongside the Trump family, you know, from here, you know, to there and everywhere. But a lot of people are starting to see that in the Gulf and in Europe as a real liability, not just an asset to be so close to the United States.
1:04:13 Fiona Hill? And so those regional groupings, we're already seeing it in Europe. There's the Joint Expeditionary Force, which I think I've mentioned before, which is a subgrouping of now all NATO countries. It was originally set up to bring Sweden and Finland into closer coordination with the countries of the North, the North Atlantic, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, you know, other NATO countries when they were not members. Now they are members. It's becoming a platform for more coordination on Ukraine. And as the United States pulls back from its commitments to NATO, and Anne's absolutely right, I would expect that Putin will... Be trying to show that it was the paper tiger that Trump keeps calling it all the time. In any case, those countries will start to pull together more.
1:04:56 Fiona Hill? It may not be the Spaniards who don't see this in as quite as existential, getting back to that point. But for countries like the Baltic States and Finland, right there on Russia's borders, this is existential. And they will do what it takes and they will find platforms to coordinate. And they will increasingly move away from reliance on the United States. As much as they possibly can, we might see more platforms for co-production. More platforms for working with the Ukrainians on that co-production and innovation. Just like you're suggesting, that Ukraine becomes a new Silicon Valley for military innovation. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if you saw similar. I'm not obviously so familiar with all the dynamics in the Middle East and the Gulf. But similar arrangements made in the Gulf in response to what's happened.
1:05:41 Scott Galloway? Yeah, I take two things away from this or two major things away from this conversation. One, going all the way back to Lincoln, that you can't win a war without public support and you can't lose it with it. And two, what Anne was referencing, operating system. We used to be the operating system for two thirds of the world's economy. It's been cut to a third because Canada, Europe, Latin America have decided they need to develop their own operating system and protect their own interests more vigorously. And what people don't realize is that that likely might be the greatest shift in power or the greatest erosion or forfeiture of power in the last couple of centuries. Because to go from sixty six percent to thirty three percent isn't your power gets cut in half. Your power gets cut by eighty percent because you're no longer in the majority control.
1:06:26 Scott Galloway? I think this is arguably the greatest own goal in the last century. Was deciding we're no longer setting the tone for two thirds of the world, but one third because we've been so reckless with our foreign policy. Anyways, that's my. TED Talk. Anne Alphabomb is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Autocracy, Inc. Fiona Hill is a senior fellow at Brookings, former National Security Council official and one of the world's leading experts on Russia and geopolitics. This is our 400th episode and our producer Jennifer said, who do you want? And I said, either Anne Alphabomb or Fiona Hill. And she said, let's do both. I think, I think that two of you are a gift to journalism, thought leadership and democracy at large.
1:07:11 Scott Galloway? So much appreciate your good work and your time today. Thanks again.
1:07:15 Anne Applebaum? Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations on your 400th. We should have had champagne. I hope someone's going to celebrate with you afterwards, right?
1:07:21 Scott Galloway? 400.
1:07:23 Scott Galloway? I barely remember that. I don't remember what I had for breakfast, much less the first, but we keep on trucking. Stay safe, Anne, and thanks for your time, Fiona.
1:07:30 Anne Applebaum? Thank you. Thanks a lot.
1:07:37 Scott Galloway? This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Laura Janer. Kami Reek is our social producer. Bianca Rosario Ramirez is our video editor. And Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from Prop G Media.
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