Don Jr.’s Big Fat Russian Wedding

Pod Save the World

Tommy Vitor and Ben Rhodes dissect a chaotic week in global politics, covering Houthi advances in Yemen, U.S. military vulnerabilities due t

Key takeaways

• Houthi rebels have seized critical Red Sea territory, threatening global oil routes and challenging U.S. regional strategy.
• Chinese satellite imagery is enabling Iran to more accurately target U.S. military assets in the Gulf.

Main topics

• Houthi military offensive in Yemen
• Iran's use of Chinese satellite data

Notable quotes

If he voluntarily did it, sure, but if he was trafficked into it... How do you even define that?

Conclusion

The episode underscores how interconnected global crises—military, politic

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) Positive World is brought to you by Ridge. It's 2026, which means we all rely on our devices. And for some infuriating reason, they have all different charging cables. And don't even get me started on traveling with all those cords and plugs. Ridge's 5-in-1 Travel Power Bank is exactly the solution that you've been looking for. The Power Bank has MagSafe wireless charging, an Apple Watch charger, lightning and USB-C, every way you need to charge all in one premium device. No more juggling adapters and wall outlets at the airport just to get 20 % battery life. With 20 watts of power and a 10,000 milliamp battery, you can get up to three full phone charges wherever you go. And because it's MagSafe compatible, you can keep it magnetically attached to the back of your iPhone whenever you need some extra juice. Just like everything Ridge makes, it's built to last with free shipping, a 99-day risk-free trial, and a lifetime warranty. This is the last power bank you will ever need. They come with an LED charge status indicator that displays... the battery, and the charge levels at a glance. It's got an integrated kickstand for effortless hands-free viewing while your phone powers up. One thing to pack, five ways to power. You can find Ridge's Power Bank at Best Buy, or our listeners can get 10 % off at Ridge.com by using the code PSTW at checkout. Just head to Ridge.com and use the code PSTW, and you're all set. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them that Pod Save the World sent you. Speaker 1 (1:22) For many of us, going further isn't a choice. It's a feeling we can't ignore. Because ambition has a way of outgrowing where it began. Turning dreams into direction. Every journey brings us closer to the life we imagine. So, where will your journey take you? Etihad. Beyond Borders. Speaker 3 (2:04) Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Speaker 2 (2:06) Ben Rhodes. Speaker 3 (2:07) Ben, as our listeners know, we are big boosters of FBI Director Kash Patel on this show. Speaker 7 (2:12) Always, Speaker 3 (2:13) always. Speaker 7 (2:13) He was up on Capitol Hill today. He was testifying before the U.S. Senate. I'd like to play for you an exchange he had with Republican Senator John Kennedy. Let's watch. Speaker 6 (2:25) What about the bestiality? Tell me what it said before. Speaker 8 (2:31) It automatically disqualified any individual who participated on either side of it. Obviously, we are never going to hire the criminal. This side of what? Speaker 6 (2:40) The bestiality? Speaker 8 (2:41) Yes. Speaker 6 (2:42) So you disqualified the animal? Why would you even get into bestiality? Speaker 8 (2:48) We are not into bestiality, but a lot of these individuals... Speaker 6 (2:51) I know you're not, but you changed... But I'm trying to Speaker 8 (2:55) explain it. Speaker 6 (2:55) Hang on. You changed the qualifications and mentioned bestiality. If Joe participated in bestiality, not as the animal, but as the human, don't you think he ought to be disqualified? Speaker 8 (3:11) If he voluntarily did it, sure, but if he was trafficked into it... Okay, how do you Speaker 6 (3:15) involuntarily do it? When you saw bestiality, I say this with respect, the person who recommended it, why didn't you just say what planet did you parachute in from? Speaker 3 (3:31) You hadn't seen that? Speaker 2 (3:32) I had not. That makes me so happy. I've not been online today. I'm Speaker 3 (3:35) so Speaker 2 (3:35) glad we can play that for you. I'd love to know some context. I'm fascinated by the woman sitting next to him, who I don't even know who that is. That's why I'm with the Senate at this point. I wasn't even watching. Who's just looking at her phone. She's Googling bestiality. What Speaker 7 (3:50) is Speaker 2 (3:50) happening in the United States Senate? Am I feeling a strange... Bit of sympathy for cash? No. The Speaker 3 (3:59) FBI lowered hiring standards. Lowered? Oh, I thought Speaker 2 (4:02) you Speaker 3 (4:02) were, whoa, whoa, okay. To no longer discredit applicants who engaged in acts of bestiality, among other things. That seems Speaker 2 (4:09) worrisome. Speaker 3 (4:10) But it's victims of bestiality. Speaker 7 (4:12) So, like. What are we talking about here? The animal forced Speaker 2 (4:18) itself on the human? How frequent Speaker 7 (4:20) is this use case Speaker 2 (4:21) coming Speaker 7 (4:21) up? Speaker 2 (4:21) There must have been a trigger. I mean, now I'm with the lunatic John Kennedy here. I mean, was there a case that triggered this? What animal does Kash Patel want to fuck or has he fucked? I Speaker 7 (4:33) think is the question you're wondering. Speaker 2 (4:35) Raises some questions, Tommy. That's what's going on at the FBI. Just asking some questions. Speaker 3 (4:41) I realize maybe they're having some recruiting problems over there. Maybe folks don't want to go work for cash. There's a funny thing in the kind of intel deep state world that we all experience where to get into the CIA, you could have a lot more of a checkered past. The FBI, they were like the choir boys, Eagle Scouts, right? I knew somebody who had applied to be in the Speaker 7 (5:04) FBI and I think worked at a restaurant or a bar. found a bag of cocaine on the ground and like gave it to a coworker. And because this person didn't turn it into the Speaker 3 (5:12) police or whatever, like failed an FBI interview, it was like that level of bullshit. At the agency, Speaker 7 (5:17) you can do a lot more stuff. Can Speaker 2 (5:19) we put a pin in my hobby horse, which is also Democratic presidents tend to come in. Joe Biden did this. And set the bar like marijuana use for security clearance. Yeah. Now, our boss gave Speaker 7 (5:31) some Speaker 2 (5:33) waivers to that. But yeah, apparently you can go out to the chicken coop and have a great time. And that's fine. But if you take an edible. So Speaker 7 (5:43) that's what the deep state's up to. All right. That explains Speaker 2 (5:46) who's in the U.S. government. Speaker 7 (5:47) That might explain why things are not going too well internationally. We're going to talk about this stunning military offensive by the Houthi rebels in Yemen. that humiliated the Saudi government and created huge new problems for the oil markets and for the Trump administration and potentially a humanitarian disaster. We're going to dig into how it happened and what the ripple effects could be. Then we're going to unpack reports that Chinese satellite imagery has been helping Iran target U.S. military facilities in the Gulf and even kill U.S. service members. We're going to talk about some new numbers about the cost of the war and some exclusive new polling about how Americans feel about the Iran war. Is this our first exclusive? Probably in some polling. Speaker 2 (6:27) It's in a while. I mean, I feel like every day is exclusive. Yeah, Speaker 7 (6:31) this is an exclusive show. These Speaker 2 (6:32) takes are exclusive. These are Speaker 7 (6:33) hot. Yeah, you got to subscribe to these. And then we're going to walk you through Trump's visit to Ireland and how a little golf weekend might destabilize the Good Friday Agreement. Stepping on rakes everywhere. Then we're going to tell you about how Don Jr.'s wedding became a counterintelligence nightmare. Some new reports about Jared Kushner and corruption. and then some scary updates on escalating Russian attacks on NATO. Then you're going to hear my interview with Hamza Chaudhry. He works at a place called the Future of Life Institute. They're focused on the downside risk of technologies like artificial intelligence. They're the ones hosting that big conference that's happening today, Tuesday, that includes Steve Bannon to Bernie. It kind of shows you this bipartisan anxiety, at least, about artificial intelligence. We talk about... Kind of the events over the weekend about all these AI researchers coming out and saying, hey, this might lead to the extinction of humanity. Some of the bio risks that are out there, what the government could or should be doing. Very important and timely interview. And I think a topic that we probably should get to more. It's just sort of like, it's so big and scary sometimes. It's hard to know how to cover it appropriately. Speaker 2 (7:41) We should get to this more. I mean, we've tried with increasing frequency, but the fact is that... nothing else matters in some ways, like beyond what happens. I mean, I've often thought, and I think I've said in the podcast, but like Trump may end up being like the B story of this time we're living through. Speaker 7 (8:01) For bestiality. Speaker 2 (8:03) Well, I mean, just asking questions. I would say I'm for the future of life. I'm for Speaker 7 (8:09) the Speaker 2 (8:09) future of life. Life should have a future. But you were Speaker 7 (8:10) saying, yes, like Trump, like the Trump, all of the badness that he has done, the stupid fucking ballroom. won't really matter to us if, you know, some rogue AI creates a pathogen that is Speaker 2 (8:19) COVID Speaker 7 (8:20) -like. Speaker 2 (8:21) Or even if it's not like at that scale, but the concentration of wealth and power that a few people have, like, is unprecedented in human history. So there's that too. Speaker 7 (8:33) Even if like AI doesn't pose an existential risk, it could still upend democracies. Yeah, Speaker 2 (8:38) yeah. No, like this is the thing. I mean, I was joking with you before, kind of dark joke, but... Now they're setting the bar at human extinction as if like if we avert that, we've succeeded. But, you know, mass job displacement, no big deal. Or, you know, massive cyber disruptions, no big deal. No, no, like this is a spectrum here and you can fall short of extinction and be fucked. Yeah, Sam Altman's like, no global genocide, you're welcome. Yeah, so thank you. You know, we did our job here at OpenAI with our trillion dollar IPO. Yeah, Speaker 3 (9:07) must be nice. All right, let's start with Yemen. We're six months Speaker 7 (9:12) into the war with Iran, and somehow the conflict is still spreading into new places and getting worse and worse and worse for Speaker 3 (9:17) the Trump administration and the world. The latest very bad news about the war comes to us from Yemen, where over the past week or so, the Houthi rebels have captured a big swath of territory along Yemen's western Red Sea coast. The BBC estimates that they control about 80 miles of coastline now. And crucially, That territory includes the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is the narrow choke point that lets ships pass in and out of the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden and then on to the Indian Ocean or to Asia or wherever they're going. And for those keeping score at home, Iran now controls shipping in and out of the Persian Gulf through the state of Hormuz, and their allies and at times proxy force, the Houthi rebels, now control shipping in and out of the Eastern Red Sea. In normal times, Those two waterways, like roughly one third of seaborne oil trade goes through those two waterways. So that's a pretty big deal for global energy supplies and oil flows. On top of that, militant groups in Iraq that are allied with Iran attacked the 745 mile east to west pipeline across Saudi Arabia, forcing the Saudi to shut it down for what will probably be weeks of repairs. That pipeline has a maximum capacity of 7 million barrels Speaker 7 (10:27) of oil per day. The Saudis have been using it to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and get around the Iranians, but now it's offline for a while. And this offensive by the Houthis also risks restarting the Yemeni civil war, which had disastrous humanitarian consequences just very quickly. In 2014, the Houthi rebels seized a bunch of territory in Yemen, including the capital of Sana'a. In 2015, the Saudis intervened to displace them. That kicked off this awful... civil war. They killed an estimated 150,000 people, the two sides who agreed to a ceasefire in 2022 that like froze the conflict, but left the Houthis in charge of parts of the country. And then the internationally recognized Yemeni government in charge of the rest. And that was the status quo until July when the Saudis bombed this Houthi controlled airport. The Houthis retaliated, announced a blockade of Saudi ships, and then the fighting kind of sporadically escalated until last Thursday. when the Houthis captured this major Red Sea port city of Mocha. Then Friday, they captured this island, Parim, which is a little island in the middle of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is a great place from which to launch attacks and shipping. It's also 20 miles from the U.S. military base in Djibouti. Yeah. Like, that's bonkers. So, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman saw what was going on, freaked out, called Trump maybe once or twice. Twice, twice. Asked Speaker 2 (11:41) him Speaker 7 (11:41) to intervene. Trump said no. Trump was asked about... this issue in Ireland last week. Let's watch a clip. Speaker 6 (12:11) We'll get that straightened out. Well, I have a call with MBS. He's a good friend of mine. And I can just say everything's going to work out fine and dandy. Speaker 7 (12:20) We should note there's reportedly about 100 U.S. military advisors in Saudi Arabia, I guess, doing intelligence support, targeting support, God knows Speaker 3 (12:27) what else. Brent crude oil prices hit $109 a barrel last week. They're hovering over $100 today. Ben, there's so Speaker 7 (12:35) much to unpack here. Let's just like, let's pause with like your initial reactions to what's happened. Speaker 2 (12:40) This is a massive story that like people need to pay attention to because there's so many dimensions to it. So first, just the degree to which we're fucked on global energy markets. I mean, if you take the Saudi oil offline through that pipeline and you're closing both straits, like we are in like acute shortage territory right away. So the political instability in countries is going to ramp up. The prices are going to keep ramping up here. This is a cataclysmic event if it holds. And because who knows if they can even rebuild that pipeline without the Houthis hitting it again. Right, and it's at risk. There you go. That's the first thing. The second thing is it really reveals the gross incompetence of Trump and everybody involved in this war. And again, like Trump is the idiot who started it at Netanyahu's urging. Speaker 2 (13:33) But let's not spare, I mean, we did, you know, Scott Besson comes out and does economic D-Day. And then CENTCOM starts being like, well, you hit a tanker, we're going to hit, you know, five tankers or something. And the Iranians are like, oh, guess what? We can escalate too. Because my guess is that there's like IRGC guys who are helping, you know, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps guys who are like helping the Houthis plan all this stuff. you know, Intel support training, whatever. Missiles, drones. Yeah, missiles, drones. So they've now called our escalation and like 10x'd it, you know, because us blowing some tankers out of the water so that we can feel tough, you know, and Scott Besson gets to have his press day on economic D-Day with like very little, you know, results. Well, this is material escalation, you know, and... I think it's the Iranians sending a message that, you know, we can keep doing this. So that's the state of the war. That's the state of the energy markets. And then the third thing I just say by way of introduction is this is putting in, you know, peril like the entire Saudi model, right? Because the Saudi model is, you know, we depend on all this oil revenue to finance this, you know, lavish kingdom and all these things that MBS likes to do. and spread the money around enough to kind of keep the rest of the population okay. And yet, you know, their own military is somewhat of a paper tiger, despite how much money they spent on it. They kind of need the U.S. military to kind of maintain that bargain. And what did they just learn? Well, they learned that they can't, on their own, prevent the Houthis from taking over large tracts of Yemen and attacking their energy infrastructure that is existential to them. That when they call the United States, Trump is like, ah, you know, well, the Houthis seem nice on the phone. I was wondering, like, who the Houthis called, you know? Yeah. Did they, like, hit him on WhatsApp? How does that work? It's kind of weird. Are they signal guys? You know, and so this could, you know, honestly, like, you know, at the extreme end, threaten the kingdom. I mean, it could literally threaten MBS. I mean, I'm not saying that's likely, but it's the fact that it's even possible is notable. And it certainly should encourage MBS, it will encourage MBS to not put all of his chips on the United States. I mean, I just say this, like when Israel gets missiles thrown at it, like, you know, we rush, you Speaker 1 (16:03) know, every single Speaker 2 (16:04) missile defense battery we have, like beyond not just bombing the Houthis, like clearly we're not providing the Saudis with like defensive weaponry to defend even their most important oil infrastructure. If I, you know, it is so extreme that like, I might take a tinfoil hat on here for a second, Tommy, if you'll spare me, which is that, like, does Trump being so complacent suggest he's in some ways leaving them no recourse except to normalize with Israel, to have, like, some kind of security relationship with Israel? Does Trump not mind the massive disruption to, you know, Saudi and Emirati and Qatari oil and gas because... the U.S. could in the long run replace it. I don't know, but like this is so nonsensical to just kind of, you know, look, I'm not for wars. I'm, you know, I don't want to go to war in Yemen. But for Trump to kind of get in this deep and then just do nothing as he. further loses this war is pretty remarkable. Just imagine you're him for a minute. Like you think you've built this great relationship Speaker 3 (17:07) with Trump. You've Speaker 2 (17:08) given Jared a couple of billion. You bought billions of Speaker 3 (17:10) dollars of US weapons. You promised to invest. How many times have you been to the US and promised to like invest a trillion dollars every other time? You cut deals to build Trump towers and Speaker 7 (17:19) golf courses and Jetta and all these places. You gave Jared Kushner. five, six, seven, Speaker 3 (17:25) eight billion for his investment company or whatever it was. Then Trump starts a war with Iran over your objections. The IRGC fires missiles and drones at you and your country. The oil industry gets upended. Now you're getting attacked by the Houthis and by these Shia-backed militias in Iraq. And Trump is like, eh, go fuck yourself. The Houthis are cool with us. I will hear your tinfoil hat version of why he might not be intervening. The other one that it could be, though, is like, they would probably have to move an aircraft carrier from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea to support major military operations against the Houthis. And like, we just don't really have the capacity to do that right now. Speaker 2 (18:00) That's right. We've talked a lot about like munitions shortages and things like that. Well, this is when the rubber hits the road on that because like ultimately we do have finite resources of this stuff, whether it's aircraft carriers or missile defense batteries or what have you. And we've kind of reached that state, you know, and the Iranians know that. And so. They can turn the dial. I mean, they've been smart. Like they, you know, after focusing on the Gulf member, they were focusing their missile attacks on Jordan. Like, oh, you know, suddenly a new theater. And now their proxies are on the offense in Yemen. And they have, you know, one of the missile strikes on the pipeline came from Iraq, right? And the Iraqis, of course, said, well, we had nothing to do with it, but it came from Iraq. And so we kept hearing. under Biden and Trump, how, you know, we've destroyed all these Iranian proxy networks. Well, apparently not. And part of the thing you realize, and I experienced this when I was in government, is like, it doesn't take much to kind of replenish these guys, you know, like give them some drones. I mean, you know, the online pieces, like these guys have Toyotas and RPGs and drones. and routed the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces, it does not take much to reconstitute these proxy forces. And at a time when we're overstretched and we can't fight the kind of eight-front war that Israel started in the Middle East, Israel is notably sitting out the war after getting us to fight it, we just can't cover all that terrain. Speaker 3 (19:31) Yeah, and so according to a bunch of news reports and analysis from experts, this lightning-fast military offensive by the Houthis, it was not like... some genius surprise attack. This wasn't D-Day. It was that the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces, the Yemeni government forces, were just a disaster. The CNN reported to the Saudis, like they were put on alert maybe even three weeks ago that something was coming, but they never moved air assets in place to provide air support to these troops. This is a couple quotes from that CNN story, Ben. The source said he contacted the United States Central Command and was assured the U.S. was watching the situation closely and that Saudi air support was coming, but the air support never came. Quote, there was not one airstrike throughout the day yesterday by the Saudi support forces. Although there were minute-by-minute updates, the regional source added it was a Saudi-American fuck-up of epic proportions. And then there's kind of the bigger problem that... The GCC, the Gulf countries, their approach to Yemen is just totally fractured and a mess. The Saudis and the Emiratis used to be aligned against the Houthis in Yemen. But then at the end of last year, this UAE-backed group called the Southern Traditional Coalition, or STC, they attacked Saudi forces who were also part of this anti-Houthi coalition. The Saudi kicked the Emiratis out of Yemen. The STC disbanded, but the Saudis never backfilled them, apparently. Speaker 3 (20:52) The Emiratis would provide air support. Speaker 7 (20:54) The Saudis didn't backfill that. And then I guess CNN reported that some of the units were at like 20 % capacity of where they claim to be, these Yemeni government military units, because it was full of quote-unquote ghost soldiers who were just like names on a list collecting a paycheck, but no human being was there. So the Houthis did some smart stuff. They like seemed to have hacked into the Yemeni military comm system and like... use an AI deepfake of the general's voice to tell them all to retreat. And they did. And that confused people. But a bunch of soldiers were just surrendered. They were selling their weapons on the side of the road and disbanding. So it's like there wasn't really a big will to fight among the government forces like there was from the Houthis. Speaker 2 (21:36) Yeah, because they're like mercenaries for hire or just people collecting salaries. And like the Houthis, whatever you think of them, have like a deep ideological. These people survived like a decade of war, you know. And they're not some like transplanted terrorist group. They're just people that live in southern Yemen. You know, they're not going anywhere. And look, I think a couple of things stand out. Like one is what you just mentioned. Like, you know, Larry Wright was on and he was talking about how these new tools of cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence are going to start to manifest in terrorist actions or on the battlefield. And, you know. We had the Houthis using AI for intelligence purposes or disinformation purposes. We also have reports that the Houthis were using Claude to figure out how to build weapons. Better targeting with Speaker 7 (22:30) their Speaker 2 (22:30) missiles. Targeting with their missiles. And make no mistake, this stuff is a leveler. And in the same way that you can build a really effective drone for not that much money, you can use AI technologies to improve what you do. We tend to have, frankly, sometimes like a racist attitude that these people are going to figure it out. Like these people are fucking smart, you know. You don't have to like agree with them to know that the fact that they've been able to fight off this coalition demonstrates some entrepreneurial capability. And that leads me to like the paradigm of what is the future of the Middle East here? Because, you know, the Abraham Accords is supposed to be the future. Well, a lot of peace was delivered by the Abraham Accords. It Speaker 7 (23:10) was supposed Speaker 2 (23:10) to be peace and it was also supposed to be this like unbeatable. of Gulf countries in Israel and Iran was going to be minimized and the Houthis were going to be defeated. If you judge the Abraham Accords against its own objectives, like forget the fact that it wasn't going to bring peace to the Palestinians, look at where Iran is today. Look at where the Houthis are today. Like this kind of handshake deal between autocrats that frankly, you know, there's a house of cards feeling to the Middle East infrastructure as it is. with the U.S. as kind of the force behind the House of Cards, like something is going to emerge on the other side of this war. And I think there's something that emerges. Iran is going to have to be dealt with, not ignored or, you know, not cowering in the face of the Iran Accords. And countries like Saudi Arabia are going to make their own deals with the Chinese, with other countries, because who wants to be wholly relying on the United States anymore? Speaker 3 (24:05) Well, also the... what do you do with the Houthis? I mean, before, like, look, before they were winning in this last offensive, they basically wanted to control the airspace in Speaker 7 (24:14) Sana'a. They wanted to be able to fly in and out of that airspace and that airport and even fly to Iran. They wanted the Saudis to pay public sector employees in Houthi areas a share of Yemeni oil revenues and to get rid of some restrictions at the Hodeidah port. Now they're going to want more, obviously. They're going to up the cost and they're