Xi’s Just Not That Into You

Pod Save the World

The episode explores the high-stakes geopolitical landscape surrounding Xi Jinping's state visit to Washington and the potential for significant shifts in

Key takeaways

• A hacking group claims to have breached FBI systems, potentially exposing sensitive data on agents and their families.
• The use of Palantir's MAVEN AI program was linked to a tragic U.S. airstrike on an Iranian elementary school due to intelligence failures.

Main topics

• U.S.-China Diplomacy
• AI National Security Risks

Notable quotes

The person who meets you at the airport usually carries your bag and gives you a ride home.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a warning about the intersection of technologica

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:11) Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Detour. Speaker 3 (0:14) I'm Ben Rhodes. Speaker 5 (0:15) Ben, right before we started recording, 404 Media reported that a hacking group says it has penetrated the FBI and stolen data on, quote, all FBI employees and applicants. A rep from this hacking group says they have the agent's names, home addresses, phone numbers, and information on their spouses. Do you think that if Kash Patel had spent a little less time, you know, helping FBI agents who'd been involved in bestiality get into the force that he might have, you know, locked down their IT systems? Or is this unrelated? Speaker 3 (0:49) They did. I'd have to go back and review the tape here, but my hazy recollection of the early Doge days was them dismantling some of the cyber defenses of the U.S. government. Speaker 5 (1:02) They Speaker 3 (1:02) got a lot of attention and a bunch of nerds were warning that this is going to lead to catastrophic hacks. Speaker 4 (1:08) Yeah, maybe Cash's Speaker 3 (1:10) priorities of flying to the boondoggle ranch and paving the way for bestiality enthusiasts to join the Bureau is not turning out so well. Speaker 5 (1:19) Yeah, firing everybody who was involved with prosecuting like January 6th insurrectionists. Maybe he should have focused elsewhere. Yeah, when asked a representative from this hacking group, they were asked, so what are you going to do with this information now? And they said, what we plan to do is not something I'd call extortion, maybe coercion. That's pretty ominous. It's not great when the FBI is getting hacked. It feels like that shouldn't be happening, Cash, from the cheap seats here. Speaker 3 (1:42) Yeah, I mean, there's so many things you could say about this. I just point to one, which is the FBI is the entity that does counterintelligence, i.e. the people that are supposed to uncover hackers and people spying on us. And you don't have to be a fan of the Americans to know that it's probably not good if the hackers have all this detail on the... people doing the counterintelligence. Speaker 5 (2:04) All their identities. Ben is in New York this week. He's at the UN General Assembly. You having a good time? Do you feel more international this week, every year? Speaker 3 (2:12) I do. I do love UNGA week. Coming to you here from my childhood bedroom, which was redecorated as soon as I went to college. But, yeah, I'm seeing a bunch of different people, activists, politicians. And let's just say the mood, though, is not ebullient at UNGA this year. There's a kind of, you know, grim fatalism about what Trump's going to say. And, you know, so we'll see. There's a lot going on there. Speaker 5 (2:39) At least he's only there briefly. We have a great show for you guys. So we're going to preview President Trump's state visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, talk about what they are likely to discuss, maybe where the hell all of our leverage went in these talks. And then we're going to geek out about AI for a bit, especially the ways AI adoption that's currently happening. is leading to national security problems today. We are going to tell you all about this week's UN General Assembly meeting. We'll talk about the latest with the Houthi rebels offensive in Yemen and how it has put Trump in this just brutal strategic bind with the Saudis. We're going to cover elections in Russia that just happened, elections in air quotes. We'll talk about some other elections in Germany that really are a problem. We'll talk about why so many European leaders seem worried that Russia might test NATO. There was this sort of like... cacophony of social media anxiety about it over the weekend that Ben and I were sending back and forth to each other. And then, Ben, I want to end this up with new, which is a bit of a choose your own adventure section about national security stupidity. You're going to get to decide how this episode ends. So I'm excited for that. And then you did our interview today. What are folks going to hear? Speaker 3 (3:47) Tommy, we have another exclusive. here on Pod State of the World, which is Mahir Bhattar, who runs National Security Action Organization. I'm on the board of Progressive Advocacy Organization. They commissioned a poll ahead of the midterm elections on public attitudes about foreign policy and national security. And I have to say, like, I've read a lot of those polls over the years. And this is a particularly interesting one because it's quite different than any poll I've seen before. You know, like the things like tariffs and corruption and the one Iran. are the foremost concerns of voters. People are connecting what's happening in the world to what's happening in their lives. So we talk a bit about what the lessons are Democrats should take from that. We talk about AI and how some of the risks people are seeing in the economy and society are not yet mirroring risks that people see on the national security side and how Democrats might address that. And then just kind of what are the takeaways on... issues like Israel and Palestine, where there's obviously been public opinion shifts. And how should we think about the landscape for the midterm elections and the upcoming presidential campaign? Amazing. That's going to be upon us soon. Day after the election Speaker 5 (4:58) terms, buddy. It's starting. Speaker 3 (5:00) The engines are sounding. Speaker 5 (5:02) Yep. Speaker 3 (5:03) So it's a great time to do that conversation. And Maher really unpacks it well. Speaker 5 (5:06) Excellent. Well, I know we have a lot of... congressional staffers and members of Congress and others who listen. So pay attention to that section because this stuff will be applicable. But let's start with Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting in Washington this week. So he's coming to D.C. for his first state visit since 2015. He's skipping the U.N. General Assembly. As far as we know, maybe he'll make a surprise appearance, but I kind of doubt it. The visit comes as Trump is badly losing the war with Iran as concerns about AI are increasing. And as the Chinese economy is sputtering pretty badly, actually. So the obvious ways to address those issues and more is with useless ceremonies and fancy dinners. So on Wednesday, Trump is going to greet Xi at the airport at Joint Base Andrews. Ben, can you think of a time when Obama ever met a foreign leader at the airport? I couldn't. Speaker 3 (5:55) I can't. I mean, I think maybe Pope Francis, who would be a higher... on my list than Xi Jinping. Speaker 2 (6:04) But Speaker 3 (6:04) I think this is, you know, Trump, this is what, you know, Trump is so much projection. He's obsessed with how he's received. And he clearly has this like deep affinity for Xi Jinping because he's a dictator. And so I guess he likes to roll the red carpet. Speaker 5 (6:17) I don't know, man. I was talking to some Asia experts today. Like the Chinese are huge on protocol, but this looks like a supplicant. You know what I mean? Like the person who meets you at the airport usually carries your bag and gives you a ride home. I just like I don't know that they're going to view this as charming as much as we will find out for what it's worth. She did not meet Trump at the airport in Beijing. He sent the vice president. Then there's a state dinner on Thursday that'll be attended by a bunch of the usual tech CEOs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Jensen Wong, Sam Altman. Then she departs the U.S. Friday after tea and a visit to the National Archives. The Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson, the pissy cadaver in charge of our money, he met with his Chinese counterpart to prepare the meeting. They reportedly talked about trade, tariffs, agriculture, and AI. On AI, Besson said the U.S. has proposed a, quote, notification mechanism to share information about AI threats to national security. Which I saw that, Ben. I was like, okay, that's like the bare minimum, right? Speaker 3 (7:15) Bare minimum, yeah. Speaker 5 (7:17) Politico reported that the notification mechanism is literally just like Besant and his counterpart saying like, let's not set our phones to silent at night or something. Like that's the whole thing. It's not like a bunch of experts. It's not some trigger of a notification event. If we hit artificial general intelligence, it's just like Besant talking to some guy in China. So that's... That felt a little insufficient. We'll dig more into AI in a minute, but just a couple more things that could be on the agenda for Trump and for Xi. I suspect, Ben, that Trump will try to get some help from Xi on Iran. They'll obviously try to announce some sort of economic deal. It seems like rare earths will come up. Ag purchases will come up. Taiwan will come up. There's a bunch of reasons I think Trump is in a pretty weak position on a lot of those issues that we can get into. But just first, let's just pause there. Anything kind of jump out at you about this visit, big picture, or anything you might expect from this one? Speaker 3 (8:18) Well, I think the big picture is that a U.S.-China state visit is usually an enormous opportunity slash responsibility to address really foundational events that are shaping the world. And instead— This is going to reflect what Trump has done to the presidency. So he will probably be trying very hard to get Xi Jinping to go along with more economic pressure on Iran to buy less Iranian oil or cooperate with U.S. sanctions. He will be going around the bend once more on this detente we have on trade that occasionally flares up. And he will be focused on the protocol, like we said, but also... you know, impressing his buddies who are enriching him, you know, these tech oligarchs, including Elon Musk, who's, you know, in for what, a quarter of a billion bucks in the midterm elections, Tommy? I don't know, like, rewarding him with access to Xi Jinping, where there's huge economic interest. Like, that's what's happening. And not kind of like, you know. If we didn't have the unforced errors of a dumb trade war and a dumb war in Iran and a protocol-obsessed president who likes to surround himself with oligarchs, this would probably be entirely a summit about artificial intelligence with some secondary issues in geopolitics and the economy. So it's going to be a reminder of what we're not doing that we should be doing. Speaker 5 (9:49) Yeah, I was talking to Evan Medeiros, who's an Asia policy expert who we worked with at the White House, and he said, like, what's... The takeaway for him was like there seemed to be no serious preparation, very low expectations, and no clear deliverables that have been articulated in any way. I mean, on Iran, yeah, I'm with you. I think at a bare minimum, Trump could say to Xi, hey, can you please stop letting, you know, Chinese entities provide satellite imagery to the IRGC that's being used to target American service members and kill them? We'll see if he even does that. But I agree with you. Like, it seems very unlikely that Trump will be able to talk to Chinese. out of buying, what is it, 80 to 90 % of Iran's oil. The best case on an economic deal seems to be that they'll just kind of continue the detente on tariffs. A couple of places that Trump is weaker, I mean, we've discussed ad nauseum now the fact that Xi Jinping and the Chinese have all this leverage when it comes. to rare earth elements. Those are like the magnets and other rare earths that are used in missile guidance systems and smartphones and, you know, EV batteries. China has a near monopoly on them. The Financial Times reported that in August, shipments were actually down 13 % from August the year before and 20 % from July. So it seems like the Chinese are sending a little signal that's like, hey, we can still. you know, screw you with these things and cut you off. They're nowhere near like the kind of Liberation Day tariff nadir, which was, you know, maybe a tenth of what the exports are today. But it's sort of that's like the lever she can press that can, he knows, can kind of break Trump and push back on anything. I imagine Trump is going to hype up some random economic deals. Remember when he was in China, like they pretended that Boeing was going to sell all these planes. I don't think that's. actually happened yet. The New York Times had a great piece on how back in May, China agreed to all these ag purchases, but the actual purchases are way behind. You have to imagine that Xi will continue to kind of methodically press Trump to try to weaken his or the U.S. commitment to Taiwan, maybe kind of roll back some of these arms sales. It's interesting, though, Ben, like what's not even on the table is human rights. Or, you know, like Hugh Hewitt, Trump's buddy, is always talking about Jimmy Lai, this publisher in Hong Kong. That doesn't seem to be discussed. Speaking of press freedom, though, Ben, this moment from Trump in the Oval Office the other day jumped out at me. I thought you'd enjoy this. Speaker 3 (12:16) China is one of the most repressive countries for journalists. Well, what signal does it send? Well, I don't know about that. I think we're repressive also. Speaker 1 (12:24) We get fake news. We don't repress, but they write fake news. Speaker 5 (12:27) So that was before he kicked a bunch of news outlets out of the White House. So hopeful stuff. Speaker 3 (12:32) Yeah, well, he would obviously prefer to have the press environment that Xi Jinping has where, you know, everybody's required to study Xi Jinping thought, you know, in China. I think you make a good point about like. people should be mindful for the spin that's going to come out of here, right? Because, you know, Trump will spin something on Iran, for instance. Like, beyond not buying oil, there's another thing that I think he will want from Xi Jinping, which is that one of the reasons that oil prices didn't go up more is that China has a significant amount of energy reserves, and they simultaneously started using less energy, which we've talked about. to keep prices down, to keep demand somewhat down. And we're able to tap into like their substantial reserves. So the favor that I'm sure Trump would like to get before the midterm elections is some Chinese policy that, you know, releases some of the pressure, relieves some of the pressure on oil markets. We'll see if, you know, Xi Jinping is in a giving mood on that or not. My sense is he'll probably do very little. but maybe a little bit that Trump tries to spin as bigger than it is. But yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, they'll be pushing on Trump on Taiwan. Maybe this is the first summit since Trump, you know, disparaged South Korea. China's obviously allied with North Korea. I'd watch for whether, you know, in the Chinese readouts, they seem to get anything from Trump on Taiwan arms sales. I think there's a... very significant Taiwan arms sale that's kind of frozen right now. I think $14 billion, so not an inconsiderable amount. So, you know, nothing about this will feel quite normal, including the fact that Trump will be envious. Not only will he not be raising press freedom and human rights issues, he will be envious of the system that Xi Jinping leads, which accounts for part of the reason why he's going to meet him at the airport. Speaker 5 (14:31) Yeah, to, uh... Lick his boots. All right, let's turn to AI because there's been a lot of discussion lately about kind of the existential threat to humanity that AI may or may not pose. The honest answer there is like no one really knows. Everyone's kind of speculating or guessing. But there are a lot of ways that artificial intelligence is impacting our world right now that have national security implications that are worth discussing. So a couple examples, Ben. First. Bloomberg has a big piece out this week about this series of failures that led to the U.S. airstrike on the Iranian elementary school in Manab that killed over 150 people, including 123 children. The problem started with the fact that the U.S. was using dated intelligence and satellite imagery for its targeting that didn't show that what was once an IRGC facility had been renovated and converted at least partially into a school, an elementary school. But then CENTCOM relied heavily on artificial intelligence for its targeting processes, specifically this Palantir program called MAVEN that pulls together all these different data points, like 150 data points, to create a list of targets. I think military planners, according to this report, wrongly thought that MAVEN would identify and sort out outdated intelligence, but it did not. And MAVEN replaced in minutes With AI, these processes that used to take human analysts hours and hours of painstaking work, and then on top of that, Pete Hegseth got rid of like 90 % of the people who are supposed to step in and review targeting packages to prevent civilian casualties. So this cascade of failures that led to the worst civilian casualty incident in the 21st century involving children. The second piece we wanted to highlight was... CNN had this article about how AI nearly started a war between the U.S. and China. So the story was this past spring, there was a military analyst who used AI to create a report, and the report falsely claimed that a Chinese ship was carrying nuclear weapons components. This flipped out everybody in the Pentagon, and luckily they kind of like double-checked this AI-generated intel before U.S. forces literally boarded the ship. But apparently it was a very close call. They were like hours away. And more broadly speaking, the article gets into the ways that the Pentagon and the intelligence community is really pushing itself to use more artificial intelligence today. But that adoption has been messy. It's different systems at different parts of the government using these different tools. And there's no real way to kind of account for the fact that these things just hallucinate shit sometimes and get stuff wrong. And the third, Ben, is there's been a bunch of reports about artificial intelligence being used in elections. The New York Times wrote up some examples of state-backed efforts by Iran and China to basically spam social media with these AI-generated posts. There's also private companies in Israel offering similar services. And the Wall Street Journal had a big piece about how the upcoming Israeli election is just like flooded with AI-generated videos and slop and crap. One Israeli research outfit found that one in eight recent Israeli election-related posts, social media posts, was created or altered by... AI. So it's just this like deluge of garbage. So Ben, I mean, obviously those intelligence failures at the top are horrific and tragic and, you know, kind of like things that need to be addressed immediately. I would say like in terms of the biggest risks I worry about in the kind of medium term from AI, it's like people like Trump or Bibi Netanyahu or other bad actors using artificial intelligence to rip our society apart, both through kind of like election disinformation, but also just like generally by spreading disinformation online. Speaker 3 (18:08) Yeah, I think let's kind of catalog some of these national security risks because, you know, we'll posit that people are worried about mass job dislocation. People are worried about data centers taking power and water and other resources. People are worried about, you know, their kids being taught by chatbots, you Speaker 2 (18:25) know. Speaker 3 (18:26) But if you take a step back, the national security risks are really acute. One is cyber risks. And so we saw in the Hugging Face incident, the open AI agents kind of escape human control for a time and, you know, hack into the Internet. I mean, massive cyber disruption because the AI got loose or got curious or was just trying out different things. That should be a concern to people. Just the ability to do offensive cyber and the ease with which you can do it, I think, should be a concern for people. The risk that you can use AI to build. biological pathogens, create biological weapons, something anthropic is warned about, you know, that's a concern. And then, yeah, as you point out, like AI being implemented into kind of command and control and targeting decisions before we put guardrails around it. Look, it's not a war crime if the AI is the one that picked out the girls' school. Like, it still is. And in the rush to adapt this technology and to think you're cutting edge, you know, I think most people would be pretty uncomfortable with AI making totally autonomous decisions to kill people, which is something that I think is happening with an alarming degree of frequency these days. You hear some of this in the Russia-Ukraine war. And that's just the flavor of it. I mean, in the Biden administration, they were trying to negotiate the Chinese around getting AI out of any nuclear command and control for quite obvious reasons. And look, you talked last week, Tommy, about... the Houthis using AI to mimic the voice of a commander in order to get them to surrender. I mean, if let's say the AI wants to mess with us, you know, well, one way it might be interesting in a kind of war games, if anybody remembers that movie, but like, let's try to get the US and China into a war. Like that might be interesting for the AI to observe, you know, humanity or something. So these risks are very real. And... And that comes back to the Xi Jinping thing. I think it's very important for us occasionally to do the thought exercise of what would be happening if we had competent leadership. Because what I think would be happening is we would not be in a war with Iran. Like I said, we would not be in a trade war. And this entire UN General Assembly would be dominated by concerns around artificial intelligence. And you would have a US-Chinese summit that is setting up, you know, and I know people say, well, the Chinese, they may not want to negotiate this either. We fucking have to negotiate on this. And you'd be setting up working groups and all these different aspects of AI and the guardrails needed and the communication necessary to avoid misunderstandings or cyber attacks that can cascade. And that bilateral summit would, I think, probably inform some broader UN-type process where other countries are able to participate in a discussion about guardrails. And it is just very striking that... That's not happening. At the same time that more and more people are figuring out, wait a second, we're not really ready for these technologies to be unleashed on the world. Speaker 5 (21:28) Yeah, Trump mentioned artificial intelligence during his UN General Assembly speech on Tuesday. Let's watch that excerpt because it's sort of telling. Speaker 1 (21:37) The United States also totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence being spoken of so much now. Here and after officially called super intelligence changing the name and that the use of the word artificial makes Intelligence fake it makes it sound fake and it is not fake. It's actually Amazing. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports From this point forward all of United States documents and hopefully the world's will be changed to use the much more accurate term super as opposed to artificial. So it's super intelligence. Speaker 5 (22:24) So he's worried about the branding for AI and at the same time, not in any ways. He's actually refusing to regulate it or put a sort of global framework in place to protect us from the downsides of it. So that's great. Speaker 3 (22:37) Can you imagine being in that room and being a representative of some country that is not developing these crazy models that could kill us all? And you've got... Donald