The Long Game with Jake Sullivan and John Finer

Happy Holidays from the On with Kara Swisher team! To celebrate, we’re gifting you a recent episode of a new national security podcast from the Vox Media Podcast Network. “The Long Game” is hosted by Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s National Security Advisor, and Jon Finer, his Principal Deputy — both senior aides who sat in on the classified Presidential Daily Brief each morning and translated raw intelligence into policy advice. On this episode of The Long Game, Jake and Jon cover: - The fast-escalating U. S. pressure campaign against the Maduro regime in Venezuela — including the growing American military buildup and Trump’s post calling Venezuela a “foreign terrorist organization.” - President Trump’s decision to allow the sale of Nvidia’s advanced H200 AI chips to China — announced on the same day that the DOJ called the chip a cornerstone of “AI superiority.” - A Red Team/Blue Team exercise on the U. S.-backed peace proposal for the Ukraine–Russia war, with Jake and Jon stepping into the roles of advisers to Zelensky and Putin. Follow The Long Game so you never miss an episode. New episodes drop on Fridays. Show notes and a transcript of the episode are available here. Watch the video of this episode on Youtube. 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.

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire, they fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more. And listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.

• 0:44Speaker 01

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• 1:15Speaker 02

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• 1:58Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Merry Christmas. We're off for the holiday, but we've still got something special for you today. It's an episode of The Long Game, another great Vox Media podcast. It's a weekly national security podcast hosted by Jake Sullivan, President Biden's National Security Advisor, and his top deputy, John Finer. Jake and John take a long view analysis of the big news stories that dominate our headlines each week. On today's show, they're talking about Nvidia's chip sales to China and the ongoing Ukraine-Russia peace talks. Jake and John's conversations are always very insightful, so stick around.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  For Trump, he's probably thinking in his mind, with a show of strength, "I can get a big win on the cheap by bending this country and this dictator to my will." And so I think this is about just strength and domination.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  From the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is The Long Game. I'm Jake Sullivan.

• 3:03Speaker 04

  And I'm John Finer.

• 3:04Speaker 03

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

• 3:06Speaker 04

  Well, we're going to go through a quick update on where things stand with the ongoing and maybe escalating US campaign against the Maduro regime in Venezuela. Then we'll talk about the Trump administration's recent decision, which we spoke to briefly last week, to release and make available for sale advanced US AI chips for China. And then finally, we'll do a bit of a debate, a red team, blue team, on the recent negotiations with regard to the war in Ukraine, how this looks from the perspective of Ukrainians, how this looks from the perspective of the Russians, and who should and shouldn't be open to a deal.

• 3:41Speaker 03

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

• 3:52Speaker 04

  Not half bad. I was in the Middle East for a couple of days in the UAE, saw a number of our friends and former colleagues, and caught up on some of the issues in the region. It's a long way to go for just a couple of days, but a worthwhile trip, and feels like it's a good way to... To sort of stay current, you are even further away.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Actually, I circumnavigated the world. I flew to India, then to Japan, then home, all since a week ago. It was a good trip that you got India and Japan, two major democracies, two major players in the Indo-Pacific, two countries that are struggling to find their footing with the Trump administration, and most importantly, two of the best food countries in the world. I love both Indian and Japanese food, so I was doing pretty well for myself over the last week.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  All right. Should we dive into the substance of the episode?

• 4:43Speaker 03

  Let's do it. So, we're recording this podcast on Wednesday. Donald Trump will be speaking to the nation tonight. We don't know on what, but one topic he could cover is Venezuela, and it has been an action-packed last few days. First, Maria Corina Machado, the Nobel Prize-winning opposition leader in Venezuela, made this remarkable journey to get to Norway. Now, of course, she has to get back in the country.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  Maywell have nearly died, by the way, in the process of this. She was sort of a float adrift at sea and had to be pulled out of the water and rescued. So, this could have been an even bigger story than it ultimately was.

• 5:23Speaker 03

  She was out in a boat, basically, hanging out in rough seas for quite an extended period of time. I think she was actually injured. She could have died. So, while we're very pleased that she got to Norway, had incredible scenes, and got to make a statement, even though she wasn't there on the day the prize was actually awarded, and now we're praying for her safe return, and just generally for her health and well-being. So, you have the Machado moment. The American buildup, military buildup continues. We've talked about the sheer scale of this buildup. Now, they're adding in the kinds of assets that you'd really put in place if you're getting ready to start operations. They've sent down,

• 6:07Speaker 03

  for example, combat rescue aircraft in case a pilot were to get shot down over Venezuela. They've sent a series of refuelers. And then, they seized an oil tank.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  The first oil tanker that the administration has grabbed in the Caribbean. Quite dramatic video footage of an American service members descending off of a helicopter to to take this oil tanker. It belongs to the shadow fleet of this large number of oil tankers that that take exports from sanctioned countries to try to circumvent sanctions. And finally, just yesterday, you had President Trump tweeting out or truth socialing out that he has announced that the Venezuelan government is now a foreign terrorist organization. We don't know exactly what the official ruling on that is. It's right now just something he has put in his truth social post and that he is going

• 7:03Speaker 03

  to have a, quote, "total and complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going into or out of Venezuela." So this is the state of play here on Wednesday as we record this podcast and things could change a lot over the course of the next couple of days. So, John, what do you make of all of this?

• 7:21Speaker 04

  I think the way I've been thinking about this is there's sort of the official narrative of what's happening and then there's the subtext, which feels to me much more like the real story of what's happening. The way I describe the official narrative is at least until Trump's recent post, which actually wasn't all that much about drugs, they are saying that this is all about reducing the threat of drug trafficking and cocaine specifically to the United States. And in that vein, there were also three more strikes against boats on Monday that killed, I think, eight people. So we're now up over 90 people who have been killed in this series of, I think, 25 now boat strikes. And so the ostensible purpose of all of this buildup and everything they're doing is to reduce the threat of drugs.

• 8:05Speaker 04

  But Trump's tweet and then a few other things that have happened in the last couple of days, I think, give away a bit more of the game that we've all been tracking, which is that this is about much more than drugs. His tweet was about the Maduro regime and all of its various, as he sees them, transgressions against the United States, the expropriation of American assets, including oil assets in Venezuela, corruption, every manner of evil act by the Maduro regime that is

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Seemingly laying a predicate for exactly what you just described, which is possible military action, not about drugs, but about removing or forcing out the president of Venezuela and replacing it with a more friendly or palatable government. And the other interesting thing that happened in the last day or two, and it didn't get as much attention because it was in an interview that Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, gave that had much more, I would say, sensational news in it. But she also talked a little bit about Venezuela and said two things that are relevant to this discussion. One is she said the goal is to get Maduro to quote unquote, "cry uncle," which I think is basically a euphemism for getting him to capitulate and ultimately leave, or at least leave office.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  She also said something interesting, which is that strikes on Venezuelan territory, which I think we've all been wondering if that was going to be in the offing. And certainly, US troop presence on the ground in Venezuela, which could be coming, would require congressional approval. And this comes back, I think, to another facet of this that we've been tracking, which is Congress feels and seems deeply unsettled by everything the administration is doing, both in the Caribbean and the prospect of military action, when still, at this point, we have not gotten a particularly detailed explanation of why they see this threat as so severe, who is actually on these boats that they're blowing up, what they are carrying. They assert cocaine, but we haven't seen a lot of evidence of that.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  And what is the theory of the case for why this requires possibly the US to actually go to war? There was a briefing for Congress just yesterday for all members that left, I think, many members less than fully satisfied with the answers to those questions. So this still feels like a big, open question about where it's headed, but all of the trends are in the direction of escalation.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  Couple of things are raised by this. One is, obviously, this is not just about drugs. It doesn't seem to be just about seized oil land or other assets that they quote unquote, "stole from us," which is, I'm quoting from his Truth Social post. It does seem to be about Maduro giving up. Maduro saying, okay, fine, I'm gonna go. Wiles says, people way smarter than me say that he will. He will cry uncle. And why is this important? Because I think what is happening inside the White House right now is people are going to the president and saying, boss, if we keep squeezing, if we keep building up our forces, if we keep blowing up boats, and frankly, if you keep sending all caps tweets about

• 11:09Speaker 03

  the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America, eventually this regime is gonna crack. I think they have some view that that is going to happen, which is why this buildup has happened over the course of many months, why Trump has been saying for weeks that strikes on land are just about to start, and why they haven't started yet. Because I think they're continuing to hope that actually Maduro will decide, okay, fine, you guys got me, before they actually have to execute some significant military action. Now, alongside everything else that has been happening, there have been these conversations with the Venezuelan leadership, including between Trump and Maduro directly, where

• 11:54Speaker 03

  I think the American position has been, Maduro, you have to go, you have to get out of there. And Maduro has basically, to this point, said no. John, you raised the million dollar question, which is, why is all this happening? What is going on? Why have we decided to do a massive military buildup to go after Venezuela? What is the national security imperative for this? And I get that Marco Rubio cares a lot about this, and he sees a Cuba angle here, too, because of the relationship between Cuba and the Maduro regime. But why Trump? Why do you think they're so intent, to the point of being prepared to use military action, why are they so intent on getting rid of Maduro?

• 12:39Speaker 04

  One of the things that Trump has always seemed to stand for is not engaging in frivolous, unnecessary conflicts. Usually when he says this, he's talking about the Middle East. He points to the war in Iraq. But it is a general mantra that he seems to apply to policy everywhere. And yet, simultaneous to that, and having just published a national security strategy that says, you know, the US should not go around fighting all these unnecessary wars. We see him on the cusp of maybe fighting what might be the most unnecessary war the country has engaged in in quite some time. So I don't frankly know how to square that.

• 13:13Speaker 03

  And also, John, he's not exactly somebody who feels passionately about democratic legitimacy. You know, oh, man, we've got to do this because this is an illegitimate dictator. I mean, the guy seems to like dictators in a lot of other places. So that, to me, feels like not exactly the defining motivation of what's going on here.

• 13:36Speaker 04

  Look, a lot of what he does, I believe, comes back to politics, his own personal politics, base politics. Here, I think his base is probably pretty deeply divided. There are many people in the sort of MAGA core who very much believe what the president has said previously about engaging in unnecessary wars being bad for the country. But this is also a president who spends a lot of his time in Florida. There is a strong current in Florida Republican politics that is extremely anti-Maduro regime, extremely anti-Cuban regime, as you just mentioned, and the link between the two. And I think this is something that the president has heard quite a lot in recent years. He's got a secretary of state, as

• 14:18Speaker 04

  you said, who is, you know, historically and currently ideologically committed to undermining and, I think, at this point, overthrowing the Maduro regime. And so, this is an impulsive president who, I think, now believes somewhat contradictory things. That it would be good for him, in some ways, with some part of his base, to be extremely strong and force Maduro out, and that it's a bit dangerous to go down that path for all the reasons in the back of his mind. He does know, because he has been against these unnecessary wars previously. I give one more dimension of this that I think... I think will be part of the debate and we've talked about it before. We sometimes talk about adults in the room, which I think is a kind of a terrible phrase when it comes to the people advising Trump.

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Marco Rubio, by the way, is one of the most commonly pointed to adults in the room in the Trump firmament. Now the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor here, he is not going to be a voice for restraint by any stretch of the imagination. But one person who we don't often refer to as an adult in the room might be Stephen Miller. Not because he has any particular affection for the Maduro regime, but because I think he might be concerned that a significant US military action in Venezuela that destabilizes the regime without a significant enough US presence to actually impose a more friendly, capable government could lead to a basically situation of chaos

• 15:41Speaker 04

  that puts millions more Venezuelans on the migration path to the United States. One thing, if Venezuela does not produce a lot of cocaine, but one thing it has produced in recent years is millions and millions of migrants, many of whom have ended up on our southern border. It is the number one exporter of migrants. It is definitely not the number one exporter of cocaine. So I think that might be part of the debate that leads to a bit more concern about the possibility of a big war.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  I think there may be one other thing going on. I agree with everything that you just laid out, which is his national security strategy is about dominating the Western Hemisphere. And he's probably thinking in his mind with a show of strength and the amassing of these significant American military capabilities. I can get a big win on the cheap by bending this country and this dictator to my will. And so I think this is about something elemental, something almost guttural about just strength and domination for Trump. And that is only enhanced then by the fact that it touches on these issues that for him lie at the intersection

• 16:49Speaker 03

  of domestic policy and politics and national security, namely migration and drugs. So in a way, while it's kind of bizarre that he'd be doing a regime change war when he's railed against them. On the other hand, the mix of factors that have come together here, including the point about Florida politics you said, but also these more base instincts. I think they're probably propelling him along to a certain extent. So what is probably happening, of course, we're not in the room. No one's calling us to ask our opinion from the Trump administration. But I think the military is briefing Trump on operational plans that they have likely fully developed to hit a wide range of targets inside Venezuela.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  They're going to tell him this is what we can do over this amount of time with these impacts and these risks, that his advisors, including Rubio and Miller, as you just mentioned, but also his Pentagon advisors as well, are debating whether pressing go on that military campaign will actually achieve what they seek to achieve or become something they regret. And they're probably also debating timing. The Venezuelan opposition, I think, is probably telling Rubio and company, this regime is weak, it can crack, keep building up, keep escalating the threats. And you're likely to see them break, and as Suzy Wells put it, cry uncle.

• 18:12Speaker 03

  They're probably also encouraging President Trump to start the military action because they're probably getting a bit impatient. And then there's likely continuing outreach to Maduro and those around him on the back of this public statement by President Trump, saying, you know, last chance saloon, you better act or we're going to have to do something. At some point, something's got to give. And it seems like there are three basic scenarios. One is that Maduro agrees to something, agrees to go in some way. A second is we start bombing. And a third is we just kind of keep muddling along indefinitely in the current posture or something like it. Do you have a view on which of those is most likely?

• 18:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think the two big questions are, one, does this massive show of force and threatening and intimidating language ultimately lead to Maduro taking a significant step, stepping down from the presidency, leaving the country, whatever, without the US having to use force? And if that doesn't happen, does the US actually use force? I guess my view is there is nothing about the history of trying to intimidate dictators into leaving office that suggests to me that Maduro is going to leave absent the use of military force by the United States. You know, I have in mind the big military buildup before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in which the Bush administration then was trying to get, or at least saying they were

• 19:34Speaker 04

  trying to get Saddam Hussein to allow weapons inspectors back in, open the doors to his alleged chemical and maybe even nuclear weapons program. And he didn't do any of that and wasn't going to do any of that, absent what actually happened, which was a massive US invasion of Iraq. There was a different, but but kind of thematically similar effort to try to intimidate Bashar al-Assad in Syria into leaving office. Ultimately, that didn't happen until he was chased out of Damascus by the opposition in a very unexpected way, as we've discussed. So I don't think we have any good reason to believe that that's going to happen this time. Can't rule it out because, you know, strange things happen, but but that seems unlikely. So to me, then,

• 20:15Speaker 04

  the big question is, if Maduro calls Trump's bluff, will he take military action? And as you said, there's a number of flavors of this. Military options, we used to get them from the Pentagon on in various scenarios, tend to come in in sort of small, medium, and large. Small might be just some airstrikes and see if that is unsettling enough to get Maduro to change his his view and and leave office. Medium might be some actual physical US presence on the ground, maybe just special forces in small numbers to try to grab him, grab other senior officials to increase the pressure. And then large is like the big land invasion that Trump has said he never would want to do anywhere. My own bet is that we see at least the small version of this, I don't want to say in the next couple of weeks,

• 20:59Speaker 04

  but sometime by early next year. It just feels like you don't go this far down the path only to not do anything like that if you don't get a yes. And I don't think they're going to get a yes.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  On this question of getting a yes, I think there's two flavors of that. The demand that they have right now, the Americans have to the Maduro regime is you go and you cede power, your whole regime, to the Democratic opposition, to Maria Corina Machado and her people. I regard that as quite unlikely, that the entire Hugo Chavez legacy regime that is in place in Venezuela just walks out the door and hands the keys over to people that they just hate, with all of the attendant consequences to that. I think that's very

• 21:52Speaker 03

  unlikely. The alternative is Maduro himself maybe says, you know, I'll do a transition, I'll be replaced by someone else in my regime, I'll make some promises about some future elections, let me give Trump a deal on Venezuelan oil, maybe I'll return some assets or, you know, respond to this this Truth Social post in some way. Now, the opposition strongly opposes that because they think that would basically be the regime wriggling off the hook. I think Rubio probably opposes that. But, you know, Trump might be interested in that. So I think that, while maybe not likely, is a totally plausible ultimate scenario,

• 22:33Speaker 03

  some kind of good enough deal with the regime that Trump touts as a win. But I agree with you. I think the more likely thing is that Maduro is intransigent and it forces the choice for the United States as to whether to move forward with military action. Now, there's one more wrinkle in all this, which is this seizing of oil tankers. They've done the first one. Now President Trump has basically said, we're going to blockade any further sanctioned oil tankers. We don't know if that means all oil tankers coming in and out, or if it just means the ones that we have placed sanctions on, which is a limited subset of them. But this is the regime's lifeline. This is how they get the money

• 23:14Speaker 03

  to pay the soldiers, to pay all the people who keep them in place. So there is a world in which this military buildup continues, but just kind of sits there in the Caribbean without taking strikes in Venezuela, and we seize a bunch more tankers and see if the economic pressure actually changes the calculus of Maduro and the people around him. Now, of course, all of these military operations Come with inherent risk. We've already seen two cases now where civilian aircraft almost collided with military aircraft in the region. When you try to take a tanker

• 23:54Speaker 03

  by having guys scale down off of helicopters, things can go wrong. People can die. So it could also be the case that they don't make an affirmative decision, we're going to start the strikes tonight on our clock, but that the situation is forced on them by something that happens. So I guess where I am is I don't think Maduro goes. I think that the administration will continue to try to squeeze him at least for a while and may ultimately get to bombing, but I'm going to say not for a little while yet. How do you think that the tankers play into the calculus about starting military action?

• 24:35Speaker 04

  I think your point about the risk associated with these operations is a good one. History has shown that that this stuff can be extremely high risk. And so if something like that happens, you wonder how that raises the stakes, ups the ante, changes the psychology in the White House, maybe even for the president. By the way, overflying Venezuela with US military aircraft is also not without risk. Venezuela does have somewhat advanced anti-aircraft systems. They're a partner, an ally, maybe even of Russia, which has sold them military equipment in the past. And so on the off chance, I don't think Maduro is likely to want to start a kinetic war with the United States. But if if a plane is targeted or a plane malfunctions and a pilot has to eject, Venezuela also has a history of using in the past mostly

• 25:20Speaker 04

  US civilians, but would certainly, I think, take advantage of picking up a US pilot to try to hold the US at risk in some way and negotiate a better outcome. So there's all kinds of things that could go wrong here in the kind of black swan category that you can't rule out.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Okay, final point on this.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  You mentioned what Susie Wiles said about congressional authorization, that if President Trump were to authorize some activity on land, then it's war, as she put it, and we'd need Congress. There are efforts in the Congress to put limits on the president's ability to actually conduct military operations in Venezuela. There is no basis that I can see for why the president would have the authority to start a war in Venezuela. And Congress is trying to, at least some members of Congress are trying to create an outcome in which he is blocked from doing so. But my guess is that a lot of members of Congress would prefer just not to vote on this at all. They don't, they'll want to duck on it.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  And of course, Republicans in Congress are probably just going to stand with the president. So in all likelihood, you're not going to get anything out of the Congress on this in the near term. And the president probably is just going to say, I don't need any authority, even though his chief of staff has said, what is obvious, that you want to start a war in another country. The Constitution says you have to have congressional authorization. But do you think that that's going to be any check on him?

• 26:46Speaker 04

  Your, your point about members hating to vote on these resolutions, I think, is the most important and salient one because these are resolutions that people then tend to look back on historically and count who was where, if the outcome is bad or if the outcome is, is good and you were against it. So people don't like, if they don't have to, to be on the hook for these sorts of things. You think back to the, you know, authorization for the use of military force before the Iraq war. We went through a version of this in the Obama administration when President Obama was thinking about taking military action against the Assad regime in Syria after the use of chemical weapons. And members of Congress pushed him to bring that issue to the Congress, I think, not expecting that he would actually do it.

• 27:30Speaker 04

  And when he did go to the Congress and say, okay, like, let's have a vote on this, all of a sudden, the backpedaling was ferocious and furious because nobody wanted to have to be on one side or the other of, of this question. Ultimately, there wasn't a vote.

• 27:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was part of the team that tried to. Get a positive vote on an authorization to use military force in Syria. You know, we'd been sent up there by the president and members of Congress literally said to us, why are you doing this to us? Why are you putting us in this position? Why are you making us vote? Discharge our congressional responsibility. They were, they made no bones about the fact. They wanted President Obama to make the decision and they wanted nothing to do with it. And this after many of them had said before, hey, this is a matter for congressional prerogative. So we will have to see how this plays out on the Hill and what happens with respect to congressional authorization. If anything, most likely outcome, President Trump, as he has done in so many areas, just

• 28:26Speaker 03

  powers through any legal objections, no matter how well founded, and does what he wants to do.

• 28:44Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian. Trying to locate news sources that reliably separate fact from fiction can seem like looking for a needle in a haystack these days. Social media feeds, cable news, and subscription-based news outlets might be able to give you one version of the news, but not in the way that you need. You want news fast, but slow enough to actually absorb the information. Stateside with Kai Wright and Carter Sherman is here to do just that. The podcast tries to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions regarding the world at large at your own pace. Three times a week, hosts Kai Wright and Carter Sherman bring their expertise together to showcase different and engaging perspectives regarding the world today. They will use their collective knowledge to discuss the news, international affairs,

• 29:27Kara Swisher?

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• 29:48Kara Swisher?

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• 32:13Speaker 03

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

• 32:23Speaker 04

  We sort of signaled last week our real concerns about this step that the president announced, again, by tweet or Truth Social post, and kind of out of the blue, to stop controlling, meaning stop restricting the export of a chip made by the company Nvidia called the H200, which is currently about six times as powerful as the best chip, US-made chip, that is available for export to China, which is a chip called the H20, which had also been restricted. And then President Trump, over the summer, decided he would allow the Chinese to buy that chip as well. So it's not the most advanced chip made by the United States. Nvidia has a more advanced chip called

• 33:06Speaker 04

  the Blackwell that has not been made available to the Chinese, as President Trump also said in his post, and there are more advanced chips coming down the pike. But it is quite a powerful chip that can be used for both training advanced AI models and for what's called inference, which is the development further of decision-making by AI models. And just to give President Trump the moment to explain what he did, what his words were, "I have informed President Xi of China that the United States will allow Nvidia to ship its H200 products to approved customers in China and other countries, under conditions that allow for continued strong national security." Not clear what those conditions

• 33:49Speaker 04

  are, but I have one thought about it. He then said, President Xi responded positively, exclamation point, shocking. And this is, I think, part of what he thinks is the benefit of his bargain here. 25% will be paid to the United States of America. So, you know, essentially, I don't want to call it a kickback, because it goes to the country, not to hit President Trump personally, but to the US Treasury, some 25% of these sales will go towards, I guess, reducing the national debt. This policy will support American jobs, strengthen US manufacturing, and benefit American taxpayers. So he basically makes an economic case. He kind of handwaves at the national security issues. And the reaction,

• 34:30Speaker 04

  I think, by most commentators, by many members of Congress, including Republicans, is, why are we doing this? So I want to ask you that question. If you had to make the most compelling case possible that this is okay or even good, how would you do that?

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Hard to make the most compelling case because I don't think there is anything remotely resembling a compelling case. This is for me not a 5149 issue. I don't think it's a close call that this is a terrible decision to provide this chip. But let me go ahead and take up your challenge and lay out the reasoning that Jensen Wong, the CEO of Nvidia, David Sacks, the president's AI advisor, and others around them are putting forward to defend this beyond the thing that I think is really appealing to President Trump, which is this mercantilist 25% export tax that, you know, or windfall that the US taxpayer will get.

• 35:29Speaker 03

  So Jensen would say first Huawei is catching up fast. It is advancing its ability to make these chips in China, Huawei being the flagship Chinese technology company, that if we don't sell Nvidia chips and keep Chinese technology companies quote unquote addicted to the American chip, that they will have their own chip, that that chip will end up being as good or better than American chips down the road, and we will live to regret that. So that's one big part of the argument that he is making.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Second argument that he is making is that if we don't sell chips into the Chinese market, it's going to hurt Nvidia's revenue and therefore hurt Nvidia's ability to continue to do R and D and therefore mean that Nvidia, this really important American technology asset, won't be able to stay ahead at the cutting edge. So you cut into their revenue, you cut into their innovation, and ultimately, America loses. And then finally, Jensen says, these concerns about how these chips can be used for military and national security purposes are just overstated. Yes, this is a good chip. It's not the best chip. And frankly, people are overblowing.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  The risk of China taking this chip and using it in ways that is harmful to America's national security interests. So I would say those are the major arguments that the proponents of doing this are making. And I think we should break those down. Before we break them down, though, I think it's, you mentioned this on our pod last week, but it bears repeating. On the very same day that the Trump administration approved the sale of these chips, the Trump Justice Department actually put out a statement saying they had shut down a smuggling network involving the very same chip. And in their release, in that statement, they said, "These chips," meaning the H200s,

• 37:38Speaker 03

  "are the building blocks of AI superiority and are integral to modern military applications. The country that controls these chips will control AI technology, and the country that controls AI technology will control the future." So you have the Trump Justice Department basically making a robust case that selling these chips to China is a massive problem on the very day that the Trump administration, President Trump himself, goes out and says, "We're going to sell these chips to China." So that's a backdrop for, you know, how to think about this entire question.

• 38:12Speaker 04

  I will say a couple of other things that at least some of the commentary has reflected, including, I think, commentary from people who do not agree with this step. One is, we don't know yet how many of these chips will be made available to the Chinese market. And that is a relevant question. If this actually ends up opening the floodgates and sending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of H200s chips-

• 38:39Speaker 03

  Or even millions.

• 38:40Speaker 04

  ... into the Chinese market, ultimately possibly millions, which is almost unthinkable, but let's just say that happens, that will give China a massive advantage in bridging what right now is a significant gap between the US and China in compute, in one of these major components of who will win the AI race. China has advantages in others. I'll let you maybe go through where we line up and where they line up. But what is, I think, indisputable is the US's main advantage when it comes to kind of achieving AI superiority or ultimately supremacy is compute.

• 39:15Speaker 04

  China will not make a chip as advanced as the H200 until at the earliest the end of 2027, and this would give them that chip today. So basically allow them to jump ahead 18 months, two years in terms of the technology that's available to them. But if it's a very small number of these chips, that will reduce how quickly and how much they're able to actually close this gap. That's something we don't yet know.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  It's a very fair point because ultimately the chips are still subject to licensing. And so Commerce, the Commerce Department has to issue a license to send them. President Trump has said he supports the issuance of licenses, but how that plays, he's also said there need to be guardrails around that. So how that plays out is important. But John, if it turns out they send a very limited number, which is possible, doesn't that really undermine the argument for doing it in the first place, which was to get them addicted to the US chip?

• 40:08Speaker 04

  I don't actually think this is for President Trump primarily about the arguments for how this will benefit American companies. I actually think this is about a different thing or related thing, which is the US relationship with China, which he increasingly seems to see not as a fundamentally competitive relationship, but as essentially a symbiotic relationship where we have something to offer, China has something to offer, and we can both benefit going forward if we turn down the temperature and improve our ability to be collaborative in an economic sense and work together. And he wants to send the signal, because by the way, this was not negotiated. I think that's another really important point

• 40:50Speaker 04

  to have out there. He did not negotiate this decision with the Chinese in exchange for something from the Chinese. He just made this announcement. And he made this announcement at the end of a year in which we are preparing to see several encounters between Xi Jinping and President Trump in 2026. And he seems to be trying to kind of set the environment for a series of positive meetings that will improve, enhance, even deepen the US economic relationship with China. And what's to me strangest about this decision is, yes, we get this 25% whatever back into the US Treasury, but there are a number of things he could have asked of the Chinese for doing this. Ultimately, I don't think you ultimately

• 41:33Speaker 04

  would have supported it anyway, but there are things he could have asked of them, and he chose not to because this seems to be Really about actually trying to improve the climate in the US-China relationship, much more than about anything substantive.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  You're 100% right that we got nothing in return for this. Not that I, as you said, likely would have supported it anyway, but we got nothing in return. I don't know, though, if you're definitely right that it wasn't negotiated. What do I mean by that? I think there's a possibility that in setting up the deal that President Trump struck with President Xi in their last meeting in Korea several weeks ago, that there was some message passed to the Chinese that we were going to give them something positive on chips. I think that is possible. I think it's very possible that an unstated part of the deal, and in fact, I think you and I discussed this a few weeks ago, that, you know, we didn't quite know exactly what

• 42:31Speaker 03

  was going to happen on the chips front. So this may actually be a delayed announcement of something that had kind of previously, maybe not been agreed with China, but at least had been signaled to create positive conditions around the Korea meeting and to set up this agreement between the two leaders that they would have these reciprocal visits in China and the United States next year.

• 42:55Speaker 04

  It would suggest that maybe we have paid twice for whatever modest concessions we got out of the Chinese around that meeting, because Trump already at that point pulled back, for example, this subsidiaries rule that restricted US chip sales to Chinese majority-owned entities in other countries. That was, at the time, thought to be the quid pro quo for the Chinese pulling back on the restrictions on rare earths. So maybe we offered even more than was known. Do you want to explain the nature of your severe concerns about this step?

• 43:26Speaker 03

  These AI chips, I agree with the Trump Justice Department, really are the building blocks of AI superiority. As you pointed out, they're used to train the most advanced AI models. They're used to create new, powerful military and intelligence capabilities that can be used against us. And they're used to serve commercial applications that would help China outcompete the US economically. So this is China's main constraint in the technology competition with the United States. They have the money. They have the researchers and the know-how. They have the capacity to generate an enormous amount of electrical power, far more than we do. What they lack are the chips. And you don't have to take my word for it.

• 44:11Speaker 03

  In fact, the CEO of DeepSeek, one of the leading Chinese AI companies, said, this is a quote from him, "Money has never been the problem for us. Bans on shipments of advanced chips are the problem." So the Chinese themselves recognize this is a problem for them. And what President Trump is doing by allowing the sale of these chips is solving their problem for them. Next is Jensen's argument, hey, we got to send these chips to them because they're catching up so fast. Our former colleague, Chris McGuire, who worked with us on these technology controls when we were in the Biden administration, has published, I think, a very interesting analysis that says, basically, that's just not right.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  Let me give you a few stats that are relevant to this, that he lays out. Right now, this year, China is producing with its chips about 5% of the computing power that Nvidia and the American companies are producing this year. Next year, it'll be 4%, and in 2027, it'll be 2%. And that's using Huawei's roadmap for what it's going to produce. So this is not a circumstance where in 2026 or 2027, we will be facing a pure competitor in advanced chip production. There's going to be a huge gap, and giving them H200s helps fill that gap.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  So let's talk about this addiction concept. This is really David Sacks's theory that we need to keep China addicted to Nvidia because that keeps them locked into our AI stack. I think this addiction theory is completely misguided. Starting with the fact that anyone who knows the history of China and the opium wars, where Britain flooded China with opium to get silver, knows that any argument that starts with, hey, we're going to get you addicted to something, is not going to go over very well in Beijing. A second, China has already decided long ago. It is determined to get off of American ships if it can do so. It is highly motivated to do that.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  And by the way, that is not a reaction to the chip controls we put in place in 2022. Here's President Xi from back in 2014. Semiconductors are a core technology that China should produce domestically. In 2015 and 2016, every year you can find statements from their top leadership basically saying, we cannot have this core technology controlled by others. President Xi has called it our greatest hidden danger, China's greatest hidden danger. And then this last argument, this is going to hurt Nvidia's revenue and therefore hurt Nvidia's R and D. I got to say, back in 2022, when we put the original controls in place, Jensen made

• 47:06Speaker 03

  the case that those controls would hurt Nvidia's revenue. Back when we did that, Nvidia had a market cap of $300 billion. Now it has a market cap of $4.3 trillion. Why? Because actually, demand still exceeds supply for these chips. U.S. companies can't get all the chips they need. The U.S. government can't get all the chips they need. So the idea that we're now going to sell some of these chips to China really makes no sense because Nvidia can sell every one of the chips it's producing to American or allied customers. And that's why actually Congress, on a bipartisan basis, proposed this act that had a simple

• 47:47Speaker 03

  idea, which is before you sell any chips to a country like China, you have to fulfill all the orders for the chips being made by American companies. If you did that, no chips would go to China. So I'll just close with a point that I heard from Jordan Schneider on the China Talk podcast. He said, there's a crazy contradiction in what Jensen's saying. On the one hand, he's saying AI is going to revolutionize everything, that we're all underreacting to how profound and revolutionary this technology is. But then, when we point out that AI could revolutionize China's military capabilities and we shouldn't help with that, Jensen says, you're all overreacting. It's not that big a deal.

• 48:29Speaker 03

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

• 48:33Speaker 04

  And I think one other concern that we, I think, sort of hinted at last week that hasn't yet come to fruition, but I think could be coming down the pike, is the two key components of our and our allies' export controls to maintain this advantage in compute that you described are restrictions on advanced semiconductors and then restrictions on the tools that are used to make advanced semiconductors. And for the most part, those tools are not made in and by the United States. They're made in and by a company called ASML, located in the Netherlands, in Europe. And while that company has not come out and said this decision by the United States to sell even more advanced chips means we should get to relook at the restrictions placed on

• 49:17Speaker 04

  us, denying us access to the Chinese market and inhibiting our growth in the same way that Jensen is arguing about Nvidia. They have not said that yet. You could imagine, very logically, that European regulators, European companies that feel like they are taking a hit in solidarity with US policy to try to maintain this compute advantage in the West and in the United States, might start to question why they should continue to maintain those controls if the US is relaxing to the degree that this decision suggests they are. And I think... That would be a major concern because obviously, as you say, China is not going to be content to be addicted to US chips, even if they get access to the ones that Trump is

• 50:02Speaker 04

  now making available. Their goal, dating back a decade or more, is to develop an indigenous, leading-edge semiconductor industry. And a main restriction that has limited that is their inability to produce these tools that ASML makes and no longer sells, at least the most advanced versions of, into the Chinese market. If they got access to those, it would be an enormous quantum leap forward in their ability to produce leading-edge chips in China. So that has not yet reached a point of decision or even pressure, but you could imagine that coming down the pike in the near term if the US continues down that path.

• 50:38Speaker 03

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

• 50:44Speaker 04

  I watched this interesting interview with the ASML CEO, a guy named Christophe Foucault, in Bloomberg, just in the last week. And he says the sort of fundamental question at issue here is how far behind do we want China to be? And I do think on some level that is sort of the core policy question. Is the answer, you know, maybe just a generation, which seems to be the David Sacks answer, at least based on current policy, is the answer for now, while we are on the cusp of perhaps a massive breakthrough in this AI revolution, as far behind as possible, which might be the sort of more hawkish approach? But I think that is the core question that policymakers face. I think we wrestled with

• 51:27Speaker 04

  that in our administration. The Trump administration's come to a very different, I think, position about how far they want China to be, which I would characterize as basically not very far behind, but still somewhat. But ASML is also producing more advanced tools to make these chips. They've got a next-generation tool coming down the pike that they call HNA, Higher Numerical Aperture. And I just, I have to imagine that this question is going to come back that the US is now facing, which is if they have an even better tool to make chips, they can make even smaller, the miniaturization even easier and even further, maybe they're going to say, well, why can't we sell the... One generation behind that to China in the way that the United States is doing

• 52:09Speaker 04

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

• 52:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, and look, we did take a different position. We did say, no, one generation behind is not sufficient, given the stakes at play and the way in which a chip like the H200 can be used to advance China's military and intelligence capabilities at the expense of the United States and its allies. So for us, the question was kind of simpler than simply how many generations. It was, take a look at the piece of equipment or the chip in question and ask yourself, is this a powerful enough implement that it can harm the security of the United States? If yes, we're not going to sell it to China.

• 53:03Speaker 03

  And I think that still requires some line drawing, no doubt about it, because we were not trying to stop basic commercial chips from being sold to China. We did commit to the idea of small yard, high fence. But for me, fundamentally, the touchstone question is to look at the particular piece of technology and run that assessment. Now, the final watch this space issue is what does Congress do about it? There's been noise in Congress about trying to actually pass something that would block the sale of H200s and other similar chips to China. Whether that goes anywhere or not is a question. I doubt that we could get veto-proof majorities on that, but it certainly would be a powerful signal

• 53:47Speaker 03

  if Congress on a bipartisan basis could pass something. And I think that they should take a serious look at doing so.

• 54:06Speaker 05

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• 56:02Kara Swisher?

  I'm Kara Swisher, and I like people who say the quiet part out loud. In fact, I love it. That's Tiger Sisters, a new podcast that recently joined the Vox Media Podcast Network. Cherie Brooke Lu and Jean Lu are real sisters who built their careers at LinkedIn and Goldman Sachs. On their weekly podcast, they're giving the next generation practical tips on how to get ahead, how to write emails people actually answer, how to make your LinkedIn profile stand out, and how to keep learning as an adult. It's straight talk about money, career, and relationships every Monday. Follow Tiger Sisters wherever you get your podcasts.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  So normally, when we do Red Team, Blue Team, we are sitting in the shoes of US policymakers, making one side of the argument or the other for what the United States should do in a given circumstance. But today, we are actually going to put ourselves in other people's shoes. We're going to put ourselves in the shoes of the Ukrainians as they consider whether to take this deal or not. And we're going to put ourselves in the shoes of the Russians as they consider whether to-

• 57:14Speaker 04

  Very uncomfortable shoes.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  Uncomfortable, but you cannot be effective in strategy or policy if you're not prepared to put yourselves in other people's shoes, including your friends and your enemies. You've got to put yourself in their shoes, see it from their perspective. So we are going to do that as an exercise. And the question is, take the deal or don't take the deal. And I think you and I are each going to take one side of it, from the Ukrainian perspective and from the Russian perspective. But as you point out, we don't know exactly what the deal is. We're relying on a combination of reporting and this statement that the European leaders put out, characterizing aspects of the deal. I'll give kind of a straw man for the elements,

• 58:00Speaker 03

  which are still very much subject to negotiation. An Article 5-like security guarantee, not NATO, but effectively a commitment from the United States and Europe to defend Ukraine if it's attacked again. A pathway to the European Union for Ukraine. Limitations on Ukraine's armed forces, but at a high level, 800,000 standing person army. And they can get crucially the arms, weapons and other support that they need from the West, from the United States and Europe. Ukraine would give up the rest of the Donbass. How exactly that's framed, a demilitarized zone, you know, what the the nature of them

• 58:45Speaker 03

  pulling out of the rest of the Donbass looks like and what the status is of that territory after, maybe a little up in the air, but fundamentally they'd have to give up territory, their own sovereign territory they currently control. And then use of some Russian sovereign assets for rebuilding Ukraine and access to other investment so that Ukraine would be able to deal with its significant budget problems. And with this gargantuan task of reconstruction.

• 59:15Speaker 04

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

• 59:27Speaker 03

  Or put another way, what I just laid out, the Russians may just say, no way, we, you know, we need more.

• 59:33Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  Because one thing I left out of this that was in the European statement is that there will be a European force presence in Ukraine. And I left that out of what I've characterized as the deal because the Russians have so emphatically rejected that. But it could be that the proposal on the table includes some form of standing European force on the physical territory of Ukraine as part of guaranteeing Ukraine's future security.

• 1:00:04Speaker 04

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

• 1:00:13Speaker 03

  I do not think Ukraine should take a deal at the point of a gun. I object to the whole process of so ostentatiously squeezing them, saying basically you're the weaker party, you have to give in. So I think this whole. Context is problematic. And then I can't say what deal exactly Ukraine should or shouldn't take until we actually see the full terms of it. So I'm kind of in a position similar to where European leaders are right now, which is just they're trying to get the best possible terms that they can muster. Something that Ukraine could say yes to. Exactly. So on what I just laid out, I'm not going to offer my own position on this.

• 1:00:57Speaker 03

  What I'm going to do in the red team, blue team exercise is make the case to, you know, I'm putting myself in the shoes of an advisor to President Zelensky and saying to him, boss, you should take this deal. And then you'll put yourself in the position of a Ukrainian advisor saying, boss, you should not take this deal. So here's the case for taking the deal. President Trump has a gun to our head, us being the Ukrainians. America could cut off intelligence and weapons. They've already cut back on the weapons and they could just cut them off entirely. And while our drone capacity that we're producing inside our own country is really good, it is not sufficient. We need more than that. And we need continued support from the West and we could lose it.

• 1:01:38Speaker 03

  So therefore, we could lose all of the Donbass and more on the battlefield over the coming months. We could face a wider collapse, given the loss of support from the West, given manpower challenges, given the risk of more desertions. We're also now facing another winter where we could be plunged into cold and darkness. And it'll be even worse if the Americans aren't sending us more air defense missiles to try to protect our cities. We don't know if we're going to get the Russian sovereign assets, so we could face a massive fiscal crunch in the next few months, a budget crisis. And then, on the positive side, we've moved the US a long way on security guarantees.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  We now have on the table something that looks close to Article Five, like they're going to come protect us so that we can have greater confidence that Russia can't just turn around and attack again. That could be taken away from us. If we turn the deal down now, we may not get that back as an offer.

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  And if we take the deal as much as we have to swallow, we can then build a strong, vibrant, unified nation with a pathway into the European Union, actually without the Russians sympathizing regions, you know, creating challenges for us internally, and most importantly, with peace, peace that we can sustain and peace that will allow us to rebuild with the resources we need to rebuild. So, bottom line, the deal could get worse rather than better, and as painful as it is, we should take it now rather than take the risk of waiting and actually having our situation deteriorate to the point where we're sitting here at some point and talking about a worse deal, not a better deal, and that's the case I would make for taking it.

• 1:03:23Speaker 04

  So if we were both sitting in front of President Zelensky, I would start by saying, "Look, Mr. President, the Americans are telling you that we are losing this war and that you need to make a deal before our losses become catastrophic," but that's not true. There is no reason to believe that the losses that we are facing in territory are anything other than small and ultimately negligible. We are a big country that is losing a very small amount of our territory in the extreme eastern part, and the US narrative that this is a precursor to some sort of catastrophic collapse for our armed services, our armed

• 1:04:04Speaker 04

  forces, is intended to pressure you. Russia continues to pay an enormous cost for its invasion, more than a million casualties, growing every day. They are losing more people at a faster rate than we are, and so just do not believe, do not make a decision because you believe that this US narrative about our battlefield situation is correct. That is not what we are hearing from our commanders. Second, I would say there is reason to believe that our circumstances could improve considerably in the very near term. We are on the cusp of being handed by the Europeans more than $200 billion in Russian sovereign assets that we can make use of to enhance our economy

• 1:04:45Speaker 04

  and enhance our ability to procure the weapons that we need to fight this war. Now, I'm playing a bit fast and loose because this is really contested, whether this is ultimately going to get done, and I think a big decision is coming at the end of this week, but why would we take a deal? Before being handed this massive card that actually strengthens our hand, strengthens your hand, Mr. President, in the negotiations, we should keep pushing the Europeans to take this step and use that to extract better terms from the Russians. Third, it is not clear that your people are with you if you go down this path. The polling on this is complicated, but there is reason to believe that most Ukrainians would

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  reject a peace plan that involves us withdrawing our forces from the Donbass, any military restrictions on our army, even if it's a large size going forward, without very extensive security guarantees. And I'm going to come back to this question of security guarantees because I think the way your other advisor phrased this is a bit more optimistic than I would be about how real these are. But if you make a deal that is ultimately not supported by the Ukrainian people, it could be the end of your government. It could have even more severe consequences for you going forward and for the country, which it could throw into a state of severe turmoil and undermine the unity that we have had up till now in this conflict.

• 1:06:08Speaker 04

  So not clear the Ukrainian people would support this. And then finally, how can you trust security guarantees from the Trump administration? Honestly, this administration has been on every side of this conflict, including basically the Russian side at various points, maybe even now. So no matter what the language is on the paper, even if it gets quite good, Article Five like, if the Russians start this conflict again during the next few years of the Trump administration, are you really confident that they will, the United States will, come to your defense? Or frankly, that the Europeans will, once they get used to this war of being at least over for a temporary period? I don't think you can have that confidence.

• 1:06:52Speaker 04

  What the US is saying is it wants a better relationship with Russia. It wants to deepen its economic ties to Russia. It wants stability with Russia. None of that language suggests to me a willingness to come back and fight on behalf of Ukraine if Ukraine is ultimately attacked. And by the way, if it really were an Article Five like... Commitment that the United States was ready to make, they would let you into NATO, let us into NATO, which is a real Article Five commitment that's backed by more than just the words of President Trump. And I would point to what the German Chancellor Mür said recently. He was talking about Europe, but it goes just as well for us here in Ukraine. He said in a statement just over the past week, as this negotiation is unfolding,

• 1:07:35Speaker 04

  the decades of Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe and for us in Germany as well. It no longer exists as we know it, and nostalgia won't change that. And I would be one of the last people who wouldn't gladly indulge in that nostalgia, but it is of no use. That's the way it is. The Americans are now very, very ruthlessly pursuing their own interests, and this cannot have a different answer than that it is the time that we also pursue our own interests. And dear friends here, we are not weak, we are not small. Well, Ukraine is also not weak anymore and not small. We've built a considerable army, we've built a considerable industrial base, and we should not mortgage our security to a guarantee for the United States that I don't know that we can count on.

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  Stepping out of the role of Ukrainian security advisor, where are you on this? Do you think that Ukraine should just say kind of flat no, or should kind of keep saying the yes, but that they have been, meaning, you know, try to stay engaged in the negotiations? What do you think realistically about whether a deal along the lines of what I described, which may be a very hopeful deal, and set aside whether the Russians would take it, whether the Ukrainians should?

• 1:08:42Speaker 04

  Ukraine should never say a flat no to the Trump administration. Every time that happens, it leads to Trump essentially flipping sides to the Russian position on all of the core issues. So they should never say that. They should continue to negotiate. They should try to claw back as much as they can in terms of the concessions being forced on them about their territory. And to me, the most important thing is they should accept Almost no restrictions on the future size and capacity of their armed forces. I'm less frankly focused on the number of troops because Ukraine, as we both know, has had a very difficult time raising a big army because they are refusing up till now to conscript people under the age of 27 or 25, depending on whether you're talking about policy or reality.

• 1:09:25Speaker 04

  So they are going to need every bit of advanced weaponry they can get. They should accept no restrictions on producing that or purchasing that. And then this question, I think, of NATO forces not being allowed on Ukrainian territory. By the way, there were NATO forces, forces from NATO countries at least, on the territory of Ukraine before this war, and I don't see any reason why they should accept a total restriction on that going forward or why the European countries. So I think they should keep negotiating, keep turning over cards, ideally get this $200 billion from the Europeans to strengthen their hand and see what they can get.

• 1:09:59Speaker 03

  And we may know, again, we're recording on Wednesday, the European decision on sovereign assets is coming later this week. That could be a yes, we're providing upwards of $200 billion to Ukraine. It could be a maybe we are, it could be a let's kick it to January, we'll have to see what happens there.

• 1:10:17Speaker 04

  And by the way, crazily, some signs the Trump administration is actually now pushing certain European countries against making these assets available.

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  More than some signs. I mean, they seem to be actively lobbying European countries to oppose this, which I think is just, as you said, crazy. All right, so now let's put ourselves in the shoes of the Russians. And you are making the case that Russia should take this deal. I'm making the case Russia should not take this deal as Russian advisers to President Putin. Why don't you go first on the should and then I'll follow with the should not?

• 1:10:52Speaker 04

  Just trying to get my mind around the idea of sitting in a room and trying to explain anything to President Putin. We've both been in... Diplomatic conversations with him before, but thankfully I've never had to advise somebody quite like that.

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Inhabit the mind of these guys.

• 1:11:07Speaker 04

  Or of the people who work for him.

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  Well, you know, one thing I will say before you jump in is this is, you know, President Biden would say to us frequently, what are these guys thinking? You know, like, tell me what the people around Xi are telling Xi or the people around Putin are telling Putin. So it's an important exercise and one I think that that requires a level of discipline to conduct rather than just say, look, we're going to put blinders on on that. So as uncomfortable as it is, it's important.

• 1:11:36Speaker 04

  So I would start off by saying our strategy up till now, after we badly miscalculated early on about how quickly we would win this war has been to play, to use a phrase familiar to us, the long game. We have made a bet against the resiliency of Ukrainian society and the Ukrainian army. We have made a bet against the resiliency of the West in terms of its unified support for Ukraine. But candidly, it is not going all that well. Our casualty numbers are extremely high. And, you know, while the Russian people are not rising up in anger about that, that is not lost on them. And I think more importantly, for the future of Russia, while we have weathered to a very large extent, the economic pressure

• 1:12:21Speaker 04

  that has been placed on us, we have mortgaged the future of our economy and essentially become a country that is entirely dependent on oil sales and government spending to prop up this war. And when you look at the industries that are going to define the the future of the world, Russia is not playing in any of that space, in large part because of the sanctions and restrictions on technology and and other areas of the future economy that the West has imposed on us. So this is not going as well for us as, Mr. President, maybe you think. Second, we now have a pretty good chance to pause, consolidate our position,

• 1:13:00Speaker 04

  and extract quite a lot from the Trump administration while living to fight another day. It is not clear that any other American president who could come down the pike will ever give Russia so much and Ukraine so little in a deal scenario. And President Trump is not going to be here forever. So whether it is right now or sometime soon, if we are going to make a deal, we should make that deal under the Trump administration and not wait for some future administration that might be much more hostile to our interests. And by the way, you and I have both heard President Trump talk about the massive increase in economic ties between the United States and Russia that are going to be on the table.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  It is hard to imagine another president making that sort of offer. Separate and apart from the terms of this deal to Russia, US investment flows coming back in, which President Trump seems to very much want and be promising us. And maybe this is coming just in time to salvage some version of our future economy, rebuild the reserves that we have depleted during the course of this war. And again, prepare us for whatever comes down the pipe in the future. I would say we also have, we Russia, very hard phrase to say out loud, a victory narrative that you can sell. We have liberated, or will have through the course of this deal, the Donbass, which was the most important territory to the Russian people and to you, President Putin.

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  We may get through this deal recognition of Russian annexation of Crimea, or at least acceptance by the rest of the world that Crimea is not going back to Ukraine anytime soon. We will get Ukraine out of NATO definitively for the future. Maybe we will also get no NATO forces in Ukraine like there were before this war. So that's another positive change in the direction of Russia. Maybe we get NATO to commit to no further expansion at all. That's another element of this deal that's being requested or demanded by the Russians. And then maybe there are some other quiet commitments that we can extract from President Trump on the US role and posture on NATO territory that is not Ukraine, but that are in other frontline states.

• 1:15:11Speaker 04

  Maybe we can get the US to quietly commit to reducing troop numbers or force posture in other ways that start to put these, what I think of as hairline fractures in the NATO alliance, which addresses a core Russian security concern. And, Mr. President, Regardless of any of this narrative that I've just laid out, you can sell anything because you control the information space in Russia. And you have the support and you are very popular by all accounts, according to, I'm sure, very reliable poll data among the Russian people. Finally, the last thing I'll say is, I know you don't like the idea of US security guarantees, but do you really believe that if we decided we needed to go back into Ukraine,

• 1:15:55Speaker 04

  the United States will fight you over that, at least under the Trump administration? I do not. I don't believe the Ukrainians believe that. And so I do not think you would be giving up all of that much to accept some words on a page that it's hard to believe that at least this American president will stand by. And once he's gone, who knows? It could get much more uncomfortable, much more inhospitable to Russian interests in a new administration.

• 1:16:19Speaker 03

  Mr. President, I gotta say, I do not think we should take this deal because we can achieve our goals by force. We could get the rest of the Donbass if we just keep going. You can conquer the Donbass and then restore it rightfully to Russia, which is, you know, its historic legacy and it will be your historic legacy. We don't have to haggle over it or accept some strange terms around demilitarization and peacekeeping forces and the like. We can just go take it. And more broadly, we can make Ukraine capitulate and there are real risks to stopping. Stopping this war could just create a set of headaches for you, boss, that you don't want.

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  Do you want to demobilize a million Russians who have nothing to go back to? Who have guns in their hands? We could have another mutiny on our hands like we did a couple of years ago when the Wagner Group launched a convoy towards Moscow. We turn the economy into a giant war machine. If we turn off the war machine, we could crash our economy. Do we want to take that risk? And by the way, we should not be conceding anything on these sovereign assets. That's our money, not Ukraine's money. So it's crazy to me to think that we would give that up. If the war stops and Ukraine gets to keep a big army and an uninterrupted supply of weapons from the West, maybe even Western troops in Ukraine, we're going

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  to have a nightmare, a militarily strong, anti-Russian, angry neighbor, a country that actually then would have peace and could build a strong democracy, the very idea of which could present a threat to your regime in the future. We need Ukraine weak, divided, and destabilized, and continuing the war helps with that. Giving them peace does not help with that. And right now, it's sustainable for us to keep going. We can muddle through economically, we can keep paying families in small Russian villages to send their people to the front, and frankly, we can keep luring in people from outside Russia and send them to the front. Yeah, we're losing a lot of folks, but we seem to be able to continue

• 1:18:26Speaker 03

  to supply folks to the front. So this is sustainable for us as we look out into next year. And finally, we like Trump, but he's just one guy, and he's got three years left. This whole point that we have a limited window with him really cuts both ways. I think it mostly cuts my way. The whole American system, the deep state, those guys are anti-Russia. Trump's not going to be around long enough to lock in any of the things he's promising you. He's already losing political support, and the next president is just going to go back to threatening and pressuring Russia. So all those commitments he's making to on NATO, they're not going to amount to a hill of beans. So the bottom line is, we have

• 1:19:07Speaker 03

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

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

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

• 1:19:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that seems right, absent the president really being able to squeeze and coerce the Ukrainians into something that is truly terrible. Because I don't think the Russian side is going to settle for

• 1:19:53Speaker 03

  Things that are acceptable to Ukraine and should be acceptable to, you know, should be what we are asking for. I think the argument I just laid out from the Russian side is, has some purchase in Moscow. Putin may be prepared to make certain concessions, but I also think he sees merit in continuing.

• 1:20:12Speaker 04

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

• 1:20:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. That a bad deal does not happen because Russia says no to it. Well, we've taken enough time going through these incredibly meaty topics that we've left no time for wrap, no end of the year wrap this year. And so what we're going to do is preserve for our first episode in the new year, sometime at the end to talk about book recommendations and to confess error on the many things we predicted in this episode that may or may not bear out over the course of the next couple of weeks.

• 1:20:49Speaker 04

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

• 1:20:54Speaker 03

  We'll be back in two weeks with new episodes of The Long Game. And in the meantime, send us your questions and comments at [email protected].

• 1:21:09Speaker 04

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

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

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• 1:21:18Speaker 04

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• 1:21:24Speaker 03

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• 1:21:27Speaker 04

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• 1:21:30Speaker 03

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• 1:21:32Speaker 04

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• 1:21:34Speaker 03

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• 1:21:36Speaker 04

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• 1:21:39Speaker 03

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• 1:21:42Speaker 04

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• 1:21:44Speaker 03

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• 1:21:46Speaker 04

  Music is by Nat Weiner. We're your hosts, John Finer.

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  And Jake Sullivan. Thanks for listening.

• 1:21:56Kara Swisher?

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

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

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