War in Gaza, Ukraine & Space, plus Biden vs. Trump with David Ignatius
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Hi, everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Today, I'm talking to David Ignatius. He's a foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Post, a regular guest on Morning Joe, the author of 12 novels, and my old boss. He is the one that got me writing about technology. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, David. I'm sure a lot of technology people aren't so happy about that. In any case, David has been covering the Middle East and CIA for almost four decades.

He's one of the most prominent national security writers in the country and an expert voice on the Middle East and the war in Ukraine. I'm going to talk to him about his new book, Phantom Orbit, the war in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, and the upcoming election back home. I should mention David is my wife's coworker. Amanda is a senior assignment editor at The Washington Post. She does not edit David, though.

Although I'd like to see that, honestly. Our expert question for today's episode comes from Jen Psaki, host of Inside with Jen Psaki on MSNBC and a former White House press secretary for the Biden administration. It is on.

David, welcome to my podcast. It's great to be with you and your podcast. Thank you. You know, for people who don't know, David was a great boss, but he really did, as I attribute in my book, Burn Book, to sending me covering the internet. Correct, David? Take it, pal. So it is correct. You were a fabulous local business reporter. It was part of the Washington Post that wasn't all that glamorous or cool, but you began covering internet.

the greatest local business feud that we'd had in years among members of the Half family, and you just killed it. You knocked it out of the park. And then we had this new business industry really starting up, AOL.

uh, out near Dulles airport and you were covering it. We need somebody good to cover it. And you just kind of ate it up and it became your beat. Yeah, I did. I think it's because I was the young person at the time. You were the young person. Yeah. You could, this internet thing, uh, you sort of got it. Yeah. You got it better than anybody around. So,

So you helped put that company on the map, on their pathway to fantastic success, the merger with Time. You were covering them. You were just all over it. So yeah, I'd say I helped you get started. The reason I'm asking this is because you were sort of on the track to run the post. You were running the business section. Now you have a whole different career. I did. So I was in management then. I did...

I had the ambition, overambition, to try to be the editor of the paper, and I certainly tried. And, you know, I always say you're lucky in life the things that you don't get because I have loved being a columnist. I've loved the freedom to write novels and write my journalism. Had I become editor of the Post, you know, we all dreamed in that generation of being Ben Bradley. I couldn't have been Ben Bradley for starters.

And I wouldn't have had the life that I've had. And I just know I wouldn't be happy today. Yeah, you did want that. I remember that at the time. We used to always joke around pulling your chariot to greater glory. But it was a different time. But that was what people... My chariot broke. Yeah, yeah. In any case, let's talk about this shift. I want to talk about this book in particular, Phantom Orbit. You've been writing columns for The Post, but you made this shift into fiction, which was...

Different people did different things. They did these sort of big opuses on people you cover. A lot of post columnists do that. But you shifted into fiction. Talk to me about why you did that. I was covering the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal, which is where I began my reporting career. And I ran across the best story I ever had to this day.

that the CIA had recruited the chief of intelligence for the PLO, which was then the leading terrorist group as an American asset and had run him for 10 years.

when the Israelis assassinated him. And I learned about this as I was heading for Beirut. Somebody who'd worked in the Carter White House said to me, "You know, the Israelis just killed our man in the PLO." I said, "What? My God." And so I spent two years working on that story. The case officer who ran that case came to the American Embassy in Beirut in 1983. I was in the embassy about a half hour before

Biggest car bomb of that era exploded at the embassy, killing everybody in the CIA station, including this man. So everybody in the agency knew about this amazing operation. It was dead. And people began talking to me because I've been working for two years knocking on doors. So I ended up having all this stuff that journalists just don't hear anymore.

And I knew the only thing I could do, I'd already written a story on the front page of the paper, was to try to write a novel. So I tried to teach myself, got rejected by everybody, but it ended up getting published in 1987. And because it told this amazing true story, it became...

Almost like a text, dozens of CIA officers have said to me, "Well, when I went to training at the farm," which is where they do their training, "They gave me a copy of your book, Agents of Innocence." I said, "Well, this is what operations is about." So it was a weird beginning to my career. So you were using stuff that you were hearing. Stuff that real—so through my fiction, I've now written 12 novels.

So things that I find interesting in my journalism and want to unpack and tell in a rich way that they really happen, I put into my fiction. And this book is the latest. I got fascinated with satellite warfare. How much of it is stuff that you can't incorporate into reporting?

So sometimes I do make them columns in the Washington Post, and then there's a dimension that is, I don't know enough to write it as fact, but I know enough to make it plausible fiction. So this book opens with a Russian who thinks that he has discovered...

a Russian-Chinese technique for, as he calls it, the kill switch for turning off GPS satellites, which would, as all your listeners understand, would have a crippling effect. You couldn't use your cell phone, you couldn't travel, commerce wouldn't work. And so he feels he has to share this secret with the CIA. So I'd gotten interested in threats to GPS in my journalism. I knew they were real. And then I just began to think, well, what if...

somebody got serious about disabling this. And then I began thinking about the Chinese and the Chinese now are the principal adversary for the United States in space. How did they begin? Back when they had nothing,

what would they have been doing? And that's, again, that's part of how the book starts. But why is this so critical? Why was this the thing you wanted to put in? That they had put in essentially a sleeper cell, not a person, but a sleeper software that would disable them. Talk about, because right now the satellite race is one of the more interesting races that people aren't paying as much attention to. It includes people like Elon Musk and many others with Starlink and low-orbit satellites that are girding the globe.

It's something people don't pay attention to. - I'll tell you how I dialed in on that. I've made four trips to Ukraine since the war started, and each time I go, I often go with people who were in high-tech businesses to help the Ukrainians.

It became more and more obvious to me that this is the first space war, that Ukraine simply could not operate against this Russian invasion without the Starlink satellites that are now in orbit, in low-Earth orbit, that provide broadband connectivity to Ukrainian commanders at the front. They couldn't connect without this technology.

So that was the first part of it. Then I realized that in, in, in their intelligence analysis and targeting, the Ukrainians were using commercial satellites, Maxar, Planet Labs, uh,

uh capella you know there are dozens of companies now that have commercial satellites that offer things that only there used to be the most exquisite secrets of intelligence agencies so you can get synthetic aperture radar commercially you can get thermal imaging therm uh commercial you can get uh sigint voices sometimes uh commercially you buy this stuff you can dial it down i've sat with ukrainian commanders and looked at their command screen

you know, a particular area of Ukraine and they say, "We've got four satellites covering this over the next 24 hours. We need eight. We need..." And then they buy it. They purchase it off the market. Russians look at this and they have nothing like this. So, at the center of your book, Ivan Volkov, a Russian scientist, contacts the CIA. Vladimir Putin would obviously consider Ivan a traitor, although he is very patriotic.

Talk a little bit about the idea of what this is. I've had lots of interviews with people talking about important infrastructure in the United States being subject to Chinese, you know, this kill switch idea, and how exposed we are to those, the software attacks from others. Let me mention two aspects that I focus on in the book. The book opens with Volkov in Moscow.

concluding that there is this Russia-China kill switch that can effectively turn off GPS and the geolocation systems on which we depend. So he thinks, I have to share this with the United States. It's too dangerous. Right, even though he's a loyal Russian. He's a loyal Russian. He's not a traitor. He's not a defector. He's just a responsible person. So he sends a message saying,

There's actually a technical name for it, a virtual walk-in. Once upon a time, people would walk into an embassy. Now they can't. So if you go to the CIA website, you'll see very explicit directions for somebody who wants to share information. The U.S. tells them exactly how to do it. So he follows that. The opening lines of the book, the quotes from the CIA website are verbatim. That's what it says. So he sends a message.

saying, you know, your world is about to be turned upside down. North will go to south. Everything will freeze. And nobody answers. And that's one of the puzzles in the book as you work through the book that continues to be the case. So why? Why is that? Why isn't anybody answering him? And I don't want to give away the central theme of the book, but, you know, that's the first thing. Second thing that I talk about in the book is

Again, I think basically true. After that opening scene, we dial back to Volkov's education, which began in China. He couldn't pay his tuition at Moscow State University, so he was at Tsinghua University, great Chinese university, so they give him a scholarship. At that time, because he's brilliant, you know, scientist, he is drawn into what he soon sees are Chinese efforts

To penetrate the supply chain for satellite systems, the Chinese at that time don't have anything in space. It's 1995, they got nothing. They have one cheap little satellite that spins around the globe playing East is Red. That's all it can do, right? And he realizes that the Chinese want to build the little things

in satellite systems, the ground antennas that receive and beam signals, the routers and switchers that feed those ground stations, just the little things that make up the big systems that they want to get inside them so they'll have access so they can begin to turn off little parts of the system

because they know satellites are going to be the future of weapons and the economy. So I think that did happen. The Chinese around that time did begin thinking, how can we get inside these systems? By 2007, China is a space power. China tests its first anti-satellite weapon in 2007. Americans are astounded. They just didn't see this coming.

Why wouldn't they see it coming? Why wouldn't China?

You know, they had space people, but they weren't focused on this as a military threat. It snuck up on us. One of the things that happened in the Trump administration that I think was absolutely right, Trump's, you know, over the objections of the chiefs of staff,

created a U.S. Space Force saying, we need a dedicated force that thinks only about space. And I think that was right. Yeah, I interviewed the head of it. I didn't make fun of it like other people did. I thought it was critical, especially around satellite security. I think it was. It's good that you didn't make, that was the sort of the meme was how ridiculous these people are. And then they're not ridiculous. Well, it was a patch.

They have goofy uniforms. That's true. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. It was the patch. But getting to this idea of the vulnerabilities, not just within defense, but in this case, obviously, satellites power everything commercially and for consumers. Our phones are made in China, especially iPhones. Parts are made there. Talk a little bit about this because –

You have Russian character, American character, Chinese, all these nationalistic ideas, but they mesh at the same time because we're so interdependent.

And at the same time, we are in a cyber war with China, I think, very clearly is where it's headed. Russia is sort of a side player in this and sort of a thuggish one at that. Talk a little bit about the sort of more global situation because your book does cover this. It talks about satellites, but it's a broader conflict we have going. So, you know, I have come to think that where we used to think of war as an on-off switch, it's really a rheostat.

You dial it up from zero to 10, and usually it's most times about two. So constantly, certainly in the cyber realm, countries are jabbing each other, they're testing each other's systems, they're planting software that could be turned on if there was ever a crisis, they're preparing the future battlefields, same thing's happening in space. The Chinese are testing weapons in space now,

that are astounding, that could have devastating effects if we ever came to war with China. For example, the Chinese have a very subtle satellite that in geocentric orbit, you know, way up there where the GPS satellites are, can identify

a target rendezvous, and in space, rendezvous is not a simple thing. It's not like driving your car and then getting there. You know, it takes many passes to get in the right orbit. So it's a much more complex battle space, and it took the U.S. a long time to really get its mind around how serious our adversaries were about challenging us. We're doing that now. In space. On Earth, we've shown to be quite vulnerable. Are

Are we prepared as a country to understand the landscape that we're operating in and the vulnerabilities that we have? So that's one of the biggest things the Space Force, this newly created part of the military, is doing is figuring out exactly what's up there, launching close observation satellites that can be little spies in space and can cruise around and look at things and what is it and what can it do

So there's much more of that domain awareness, situation awareness. I believe we're beginning to develop attack systems of our own, but that is so classified. I've done reporting on national security now for four years. I've never seen anything as classified as this stuff.

I mean, it's just, you know, it's all in the black, as they say. Senior defense official once said to me, what worries him is that you can't deter in the black, that our adversaries don't know what we've got.

And you have to be able to make them know if you try to do X, we could do Y. But we never talk about Y because, you know, it's just so compartmentalized. Okay. Talk about researching the book and the acknowledgments you thank a lot of people, including Alex Karp, the co-founder of Palantir, who's deploying a lot of this sort of video game-like stuff.

to Ukraine and other places. Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus and Andral Industries, another fast-forward defense company, I guess. Dmitry Alperovitch, co-founder of CrowdStrike and a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council, who I just interviewed also. You talk to them, and then one person conspicuously missing from the acknowledgments is Elon Musk. So I'd love to know your discussions with him, and did you talk to Elon about this? Because he's sort of a dead center of this. Yeah.

I tried so hard. I used the dead center of it. I can remember going to a conference and running along behind him the way journalists do and saying, "Elon, Elon, I want to talk to you." "What do you want to talk about?" "I want to talk about space." It kind of looks at me like, "What?"

I want to talk about it. What about space? Well, you know, satellites and I don't know. And I finally, in desperation, as he walked away with a look of total contempt, I said, I know Walter Isaacson. He was his biographer. It was so pathetic. Here's David. Don't say Kara Swisher. Pathetic, pathetic. Yeah, well, I just said, I know Kara Swisher. No, no. He would have stopped and turned around. But so I wasn't able to get to Elon Musk. There is a lot of Starlink stuff.

technology in the book. I think Starlink and SpaceX are really extraordinary companies. What they've done in low Earth orbit is transformative. So I'm, you know, a lot of other things about Elon Musk, I don't know, but...

But that company, I'm very positive about. Right. And one of the stories is the enormous power that certain people can hold over it. What were the kind of advice when you're talking to people like Karp or Lucky or Alperovitch?

So in my journalism, some extent this comes through in the novel too, but in my journalism, the question that I've asked is this. What happens if one day Elon Musk decides, I'm sick of this forever war in Ukraine. I've had it. You know, I got to sell cars and Teslas in China. I got to build Teslas in China. I don't want to do this anymore.

and takes his marbles and walks away from the board, leaving people who depended on him high and dry. What happens then? You could go down the list of all the brilliant entrepreneurs who are now in this mix of public and private, helping the United States, making the United States strong. They're individuals that they can walk with. So I think

It's an interesting puzzle. This is our secret advantage. China and Russia can't possibly compete. They just don't have a tech ecosystem like we do. But the condition of our tech ecosystem is people are free to do what they want. And I think the government has tried to find ways to get...

assurance from musk that he will stay the course with ukraine as he has a contract now with the pentagon not simply with the ukrainians to try to try to keep them locked in but i think this this question of the power that entrepreneurs now have in national security you know for good or ill for you know some people would say a lot of google engineers who think um it's poisonous for

for our company to be as involved as it is in targeting soldiers from other countries. That's wrong. We shouldn't be in that business. But Google's crossed that line. Project Maven is rolling forward. But there's a larger question, I think, which is, you know, what if these entrepreneurs decide they're going to run their own foreign policy? They're going to decide who they want to help. And if that intersects with the United States, fine. If it doesn't, so what? Right.

So how does the government look at that? Because we're also still dependent on SpaceX, on a private, because we've cut back so badly in our space program. Is that a real liability for our country? No, I think it's the greatest asset we've got. It gives us an advantage that the Russians and Chinese can't. So here's a demonstration of just how much it worries the Russians.

You will have noticed, your listeners will have noticed, that back in February, Congressman Mike Turner, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, said, whoa, there's a huge Russian national security threat. I want the whole House briefed. And it turned out that threat was a Russian plan to explode a nuclear weapon in low-Earth orbit. It would obliterate Musk's satellites and satellites that Amazon's planning on 1,000, the company called One World is God, and you name it.

Why? Because Russia has no other good way, no other way, it's not a good way, no other way to stop this total dominance of low Earth orbit with all the systems I was describing. In every one of Elon Musk's satellites, there are modular pods that could take other things that don't have anything to do with Starlink.

Have we tried to put any of these little modular doodads? Well, you know, nobody knows. The Russians certainly don't know. So they decided the only thing they could do is blow the whole thing up and create a debris field in Lower Thorogood that would last a generation. It's crazy. What a crazy idea. But it illustrates that they have, there's nothing else they could do. They have no other way to defeat this. We'll be back in a minute.

Hey, Kariswisher listeners. Sue Bird here. I'm Megan Rapinoe. Women's sports are reaching new heights these days, and there's so much to talk about. So Megan and I are launching a podcast where we're going to deep dive into all things sports, and then some. We're calling it...

a touch more. Because women's sports is everything. Pop culture, economics, politics, you name it. And there's no better folks than us to talk about what happens on the court or on the field and everywhere else too. And we'll have a whole bunch of friends on the show to help us break things down. We're talking athletes, actors, comedians, maybe even our moms. That'll be a fun episode.

Whether it's breaking down the biggest games or discussing the latest headlines, we'll be bringing a touch more insight into the world of sports and beyond. Follow A Touch More wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday.

What is up, people of the internet? I'm Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, and I just wanted to quickly tell you about my podcast, Waveform. So after making tech reviews on YouTube for over a decade, I've had the chance to check out some real groundbreaking tech and some real dud products. And so on Waveform, along with my co-hosts, Andrew Manganielli and David Amell, we capture our immediate reactions to new technology that's coming out every week,

from smartphones to EVs, and even AI finding its way into everything. We've got you covered. And you also get a bit of a sneak peek into what it's like working at a YouTube channel closing in on 20 million subscribers. So if you want to stay up to date with the latest tech and internet news and culture and all sorts of stuff like that, you can find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you listen. See you over there. Okay. So speaking of crazy,

Let's move on to domestic politics for a bit. Last September, you got a lot of attention and a lot of it negative, some of it positive for a column that President Biden shouldn't run for reelection. Looking back on it today, especially given some of President Trump's clear cognitive problems and

snoozing in court. He's also sleepy. I guess he's Don Snorleone and Biden is Sleepy Joe. But looking back on it, how do you feel about that piece? Because, you know, it was sort of an, I call them, it must be said column, you know, but it had a lot of impact, even though people had been talking about his age. I'd love you to reflect on that. And then given what's some of the reporting on Trump, which has similar, has a similar vibe to it.

So that was a hard column to write because I think many of the things that Joe Biden is doing in domestic and foreign policy are really excellent. They're the things that the country needs. Through last summer, any time I was with a group of friends, the first topic of conversation would be Joe Biden's age, just people talking, talking, talking, but nobody was writing about it.

And I just realized by the end of the summer that we were running out of time to think about this by we. I mean, people who don't want Donald Trump to be reelected president. And so it was the kind of thing that I should write as a column. I usually am, you know, I'm a fairly careful person. I don't detonate big things.

repasts at people. So I think that was one reason this column had a lot of effect. People were saying, "David Ignatius wrote that?" So it did say that President Biden should consider, you know, something like 70% of Democrats believe he's too old to run, to serve another full term. There's an overwhelming feeling in the country that that's so.

I also feel that Kamala Harris, who the country just isn't confident would make a good successor, people don't have a good feeling about her, that she similarly should reflect, is this right? Is this right for the country? Am I being selfish? And the Kamala period, the White House was furious. They really felt, how could David have written this?

But I wouldn't know the answer. In answer to your question, no, I wouldn't change it. In the end, they made a decision. Biden made a decision. I'm the only one who can beat Trump. I'm the man. You know, his wife, I'm told, strenuously argued that he should stay in the race. Kamala Harris obviously hasn't budged. Would you write a follow column about Trump's cognitive issues?

You know, I've written about Trump and the danger Trump poses repeatedly. My sense, to be honest, is that the great danger with Trump isn't his cognitive issues. He's just a malign, narcissistic person. He's a person who's irresponsible in many ways. His age and the signs of age are the least of it. But people are writing this. I'm not like people are making that point. I don't think that's the...

the reason that people should not vote for Donald Trump because he falls asleep in a courtroom. If that's true, I don't know if that's true or not. There are other reasons that are much more powerful. But to answer your question, I wouldn't not write the column about Biden. He thought about it. You would not take it back? I wouldn't, no.

Okay. So a new poll has Trump leading five battleground states, although Trump polls are problematic at best. We're six months out from the election, which is a very long time. So talk about now. I know you write columns every week and we're going to get to Gaza and Ukraine at the end. But what point do they have to rethink strategy and try something new? And who do you think, when you reflect back on it, would have made a better candidate running against Trump right now?

So I think the first thing to say is that a better candidate would be somebody who, you know, physically, intellectually, emotionally represents change. You know, I think one feeling the country has is these two old guys, you know, it's sort of both of them. Like, are we doing this again? America's changing so fast. Young people feel increasingly alienated from politics.

And I just wish that Democrats could serve something more interesting. I know so many young Democratic legislators that I respect. I think Karen Bass is a really good mayor of Los Angeles. I think there are many members of Congress. I mentioned some I especially respect. Alyssa Slotkin from Michigan, Jason Crow from Colorado,

Oh goodness, Michael Bennett in the Senate. Mark Warner is an outstanding senator. Amy Klobuchar I'd see as president in a heartbeat. But these are people who just are Pete Buttigieg has been a very good cabinet secretary. So I think that our country is in trouble. We have to face up to that.

The president that we need is somebody who can speak across party labels and get a unified purpose and sense of the danger to the country, and then unite the country and move forward.

That's just—and we need it. All right. Then let me ask you, what about the Republicans? They show no signs of not backing their candidate, who is also older and also the same song over and over again. And it's getting increasingly disturbing, actually, some of it, the most recent speech. So, you know, Trump's hold on the Republican Party is cult-like. It's hard to explain.

It is, the cult seems to be limited to 30% or so who are the sort of hardcore MAGA wing, and you're not going to convince them that Trump isn't the guy, but

You can beat 30% with the right candidate pretty easily. And so I think one of the problems that Biden has is he's sort of caught between this desire to be the person who can reach out to independent voters, mainstream voters.

know moderate republicans that's sort of the guy he is the guy in the center and the energy in the party which is on the left and so he's trying this odd straddle and it doesn't often it doesn't work very well he's in both and neither at once um you know i'm i i think uh the person who put the country back together has got to be somebody who speaks to everybody

So what is the strategy since we are where we are? This is not going to change. So the strategy, I would say, you know,

If Joe Biden asked me, he never would, I'd say you need much more powerful surrogates. You need people who will explain the things that your administration can do in a way that you can't in a dynamic way. And they should be young. They should be people from Hollywood. They should be people from...

You know, all the worlds that excite us, people from technology, people who are world changers. They should go to Kara Swisher and say, Kara, you care about your country. You know, you got to put a – take off your microphones and go, you know. So, you know, 100 people like that who – because the country is at risk. And, you know, I think they're –

in politics who'd be great surrogates. But Biden, the idea that Biden is going to suddenly find a new gear and people go, oh my God, I thought he was old, but no, he's so young and dynamic. That's not going to happen. So I do think that Kamala Harris is

you know, for whatever reason has failed to get traction with the country. Why is that? What can she do about it? If she can't fix that, she shouldn't be. She shouldn't be the Democratic vice presidential nominee. She shouldn't be. So that's where you're looking. So I'm looking. That's one of the things. I mean, you know, I was just with Karen Bass last week, and I was thinking...

She's always been the person I wish had been chosen as vice president. I was thinking, she's really a good mayor. She's really a good candidate. You know, where is she? So anyway, I think the time is running out. All right, it didn't work with Biden. Now I'm going to go after him.

They're going to love you at the White House, David. They hate me. They do. I know that for a fact. So looking at Trump's trials, what are his vulnerabilities from your perspective? His vulnerabilities, biggest vulnerability is that he acts, sometimes acts completely nuts.

in a way that's visible to people. He just goes off on a jag and you can just see it, you watch it. So I've heard people at the top of the Biden campaign who you might think people would be happy to have him in court, you know, dozing off, Don Snorleone, all that stuff.

But in fact, they want him out on the campaign trail where he'll be making mistakes and saying crazy things and giving interviews at a time where he suggests he's going to monitor pregnant women to make sure that they don't get an abortion. I mean, just completely crazy stuff. And I think that's...

The other thing that Biden's top pollsters say is that, oddly, among many people who voted for Biden last time, there is not a certainty that Trump will run again. Once they become convinced he really is running, this isn't just a show, he's going to be president again, that there'll be more motivation, I think.

I don't know if that's true. But as I said, surrogates I think right now are the key to making this a more energetic campaign. All right. So another thing that's happening, RFK Jr. and his brainworm are averaging around 10% in the polls. Is it mostly a reflection of voter dissatisfaction with both candidates and maybe the whole political system you referenced, especially with young people, or actual support?

And who should be losing sleep over RFK? Steve Bannon reportedly helped convince him to run, but it's not entirely clear he hurts Biden any more than Trump. How do you look at this? I'd be surprised if RFK took more than 10%, 12%, and if that 10%, 12% wasn't pretty evenly drawn from the two groups.

So I think it's likely to be a wash. I think there's a lot of self-destructive energy in RFK Jr. The problem, what Democrats need to think about is one reason that people are paying attention to RFK Jr. is he speaks the language of idealism in his own weird way quite powerfully.

he you know he there are echoes of his father that are just as clear as a bell to me and you know biden needs to find a way to do that better but as i said earlier that's not really going to happen so other people who are going to speak for this cause and go door-to-door and just speak with the passion i think

I think, you know, millions of Americans feel in their hearts. Somehow they have to mobilize that. So you recently wrote that America is on a downward slope that could be fatal. What will save us is a broad commitment starting with elites to work for the common good and national revival. Do we really need to count on elites to save us? We should count on everybody. You know, I think you can't minimize...

the role of elites in shaping opinion. I mean, what are elites? Elites are Kara Swisher, they're David Ignatius, they're people in the media. We don't think of ourselves being all that elite, I hope. But I was thinking when I wrote that about Harvard University, which I attended, which I think is just broken. It's so sad to see Harvard and these other elite universities with so much anti-Semitic

rhetoric being spewed, so much confusion about what free speech is. So I was thinking of, when I think about the elites mobilizing for the civic good, I think about our great universities filled with people from all over.

you know, thinking, making the country better is part of our mission. What I, in that column, wrote about countries that were heading toward decline that reversed it, and some moments when that happened. I mean, America after the Gilded Age was a mess. It was corrupt. Its political institutions were rotting. There were, you know, terrible people at the top of government and business. And along came Teddy Roosevelt, this kind of, you know, hearty, goofy guy,

And he was a rich guy from New York, Republican. And he created a movement, a progressive movement that systematically began reforming different aspects of American life. And you could argue, you know, he saved our country, got it back on course. So we need something like that. We'll be back in a minute.

You mentioned Gaza a lot. So let's get to that because you write about it a lot. And you do – one of the things I have to say that I give you great credit for, compared to a lot of columnists, you actually do reporting. I can't stand columnists who don't do reporting. And I just can't. And you go there and you've made a lot of trips, for example, to both Ukraine and Gaza. So let's finish up talking about those things. But we're going to start with our expert question. This one comes from someone you'll recognize. Okay.

Hi, David. It's Jen Psaki, the former White House press secretary and now host of a show on MSNBC and a big listener of this podcast. My question for you is about the impact of whatever Netanyahu and the Israeli military does next. I mean, there's no question there's a ton of political pressure, of course, internally on them. And their objective, they state, is to root out Hamas.

But can they actually do that? I mean, if they level RAFA, it feels like there's a huge impact on that, not just morally and on the lives of people there, but also on anger in the region. And just from your sources in the intelligence community, not just in the United States and around the world, what are the risks and what would the impact be?

So this is all something I know many people are trying to weigh, but it's also been overshadowed in some ways by the political discussion here. Also an important one, but I'm curious about the impact on the ground. So great question, inevitably from Jen. So to me, the biggest mistake that Netanyahu has made is he's been fighting a war for seven months now without thinking about anything.

how it ends in a more stable Gaza that's not just a crazy place. I mean, he is creating, as I've written a bunch of times, he's creating Somalia on his borders. He's creating an utterly lawless, destroyed place for bandits and thugs.

One problem for getting humanitarian aid into the desperately suffering Palestinian people is when you drive the truck in, a guy with a gun shows up and tries to rip it off because there's no security.

The security force for a future Gaza that will make Israel more secure, as much as it will make Palestinians more secure, needs to be built now. From the first day of the war, Bibi needed to think, Netanyahu needed to think, where am I going? What am I going to build toward? The answer is actually pretty obvious. The Palestinian Authority has a security force trained by the CIA. We have a three-star general who's responsible for overseeing their training. That could be amped up.

Right now, you should be working with them to build a new security force. And they haven't. Why? Because Bibi hates the Palestinian Authority. He thinks it's the enemy. Well, also the PA is led by a deeply unpopular 88-year-old. He's a jerk, but the point is...

The US has been thinking, how do you create a different PA that's not corrupt, that has good leaders, that has good training, that has discipline, that has metrics to measure performance since before this began, but certainly since October 7th, and nobody in Israel wants to hear about it. And we're now at the point where that mistake is demonstrably obvious. When Israel thinks it's clear to place

Like Gaza City, it hasn't. There's still people there. But does Abbas have any legitimacy in Gaza or in the West Bank? No, he doesn't. How do you then do that? So, fortunately...

the united states has arab allies that feel about all this stuff pretty much the way we do they don't like hamas they hate them hamas is illegal in pretty much every arab country they have no use for hamas they think that um the head of the pa has been ripping them off has been stealing saudi money stealing uae money they're sick of them they want something different and they'll work with us to help build those those there are so many smart young kids in you know

Yeah, in the Palestinian territories. I meet him all the time. I spent a week in the West Bank. I just, I can't tell you how many people are there ready to be part of something sane. And the Israelis just don't seem to see it. I don't get it. But we're just, we're on a road to...

Unending difficulty for Israel in Gaza and the West Bank. The West Bank, you know, I mean, count on it. The West Bank will blow eventually. And then what do you do? So as of this recording on Monday, May 13th, on Sunday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, quote, we cannot, will not support an Operation Rafah, a major military operation in the absence of a credible plan to protect.

protect civilians and they, Israel, still haven't delivered. The U.S. has halted shipment of bombs and are threatening to withhold more, but we're still supplying Israel with offensive weapons. So far, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reacted defiantly, saying Israel would stand alone if necessary.

Is there a meaningful follow through on his threat to reduce military aid to Israel? Because up until now, Biden has embraced Netanyahu literally and figuratively. And Netanyahu has returned the favor by showing none of the restraint Biden has repeatedly asked for. Talk a little bit about this relationship and what are his options? Because there's also political problems here by being Joe essentially down the middle, trying his best to modulate between Netanyahu.

So the reason you have to be careful by cutting off all military support for Israel is that Hezbollah in Lebanon stands poised to attack Israel, has already attacked the northern part of Israel in a way that would be absolutely devastating. And I think the United States does have an obligation to Israel, which is our ally, which is a democracy, to make sure they're not vulnerable to threats from Hezbollah, from Iran. So a total weapons cutoff I don't think is a good idea.

I think Biden is trying to thread the needle, find a way to bring pressure without totally alienating Israeli sentiment.

Israel needs a new prime minister. Netanyahu is not popular. Netanyahu is seen as having, in some ways, been derelict in the months before October 7. Israel is ready for a new leader. The United States should help Israelis. There's some people in the War Cabinet in particular who are ready to take responsibility.

And I think that's appropriate. We in the world have so much at risk. You know, Israelis have to decide in the end who they want, but all the polls suggest they don't want Netanyahu. He is just, he is clinging to power with ever, ever greater costs. But does this help him, Biden putting pressure on him? Probably. Probably, probably you can play that short term to his advantage. The

It's such a weird situation, Cara, because on the other side of this war, if Israel can find a way to de-escalate, stabilize Gaza, the thing that Israel has dreamed of since it was created, which is acceptance by the Arab world, there is a de facto military alliance between Israel and all the Arab states against Iran. Those countries are ready to help

rebuild the West Bank and Gaza. They're ready to train the people who will provide security without threatening Israel. They just need some help. They need Bibi to say, yeah, okay, I get it. A demilitarized Palestinian state's not going to threaten. Okay, we'll support that. And the minute he does that, he begins to unlock doors to a future that I think

It's so much better for Israel. My Israeli friends, it drives them nuts that Bibi won't do this. So what did they do? IDF is fighting in northern Gaza and advancing on Rafah. Netanyahu is claiming the needs of full-scale invasion of Rafah and so are others to eliminate Hamas, as they vowed to do.

Whether they can actually limit Hamas is an open question. Where does this go if they can't get rid of him and he keeps doing this? So it goes like it's going now. I mean, it's been seven months. It could be another X number of months. And you have this mess gets worse and worse. And at some point, you know, it escalates and it does become a regional war. So Israel, I think, is right in saying Hamas should never run Gaza again. Yeah.

but that doesn't mean you're going to kill every Hamas fighter that you're going to, you know, that takes time and it takes, you know, sort of careful strategic long-term planning. It's not convulsive. It doesn't have to be done next week, but it does, it has to be done, but it doesn't have to be done next week. Let me give you a very simple explanation of why

Biden and Blinken are right when they say, be careful about Rafa. So I was in Gaza. I was in Gaza City. So I watched, I was there the first day Israelis let correspondents come in. I watched as thousands of Palestinians walked out of Gaza City,

south, because, you know, Israeli bombs had devastated. You couldn't see a building that hadn't been shattered. Walked south towards Rafah, towards what they were told would be safety. And by the thousands, and it's over a million people now, a million and a half people walked that way south.

thinking they would have security. And now they're about to blow the hell out of RAFA. And the United States is saying, you can't do that. You cannot. These people are so desperate. Some of them are close to starving. You can't just march them somewhere else without clear planning about where they're going to go and how you're going to take care of them. You can't do it

And I think that's right. I think that's, it's not just morally right, that should be enough, but it's also strategically right. You're not going to win the war if you just push people around like they're pieces on a chessboard. It's not going to work.

So what do you see the solution as? I see the solution, I can describe it pretty simply. So you need better leadership in Israel that thinks more strategically about the long run. You need to think about the security force in Gaza and eventually the West Bank that can provide security in a reliable way working with the Israelis.

It won't have heavy weapons that can threaten Israel, but that can keep order in Gaza City and Rafah. And you need to have a pathway toward a Palestinian state so people feel that there is something at the end of this that's better, that's worth being part of.

I've done a lot of reporting about what people in Gaza think about Hamas. They're ruthless, they rip stuff off, they steal you, start a pharmacy and they basically steal your stuff and demand a tax. So I think Palestinians are ready for something different and there is a pathway forward. It's not pie in the sky, it's just it needs systematic action

You know, IDF-type general, you know, some new prime minister who's got those chops to say, this is what we're going to do. This is going to be more secure at the end. Let's get started. Let's get on with it. And your feelings of how positive that's going to be is what? Feeling of how whether it'll work? You know, whether it'll work, I'd say it's, you know, 7 out of 10. It's not 10 out of 10. My feeling about whether what they're doing now will work would be 3 out of 10.

So last question, I'm just going to very quickly shift over to Ukraine, which is sort of feels similar in a weird way. What's happening there? President Biden recently signed a bill that would send $61 billion of aid to Ukraine. You've been there too. You said it might allow Ukraine to mount a counteroffensive next year. It looks like Russia just is beating them down just with numbers and everything else. So I'd just love to get your thoughts in covering this right now. What do you, how do you look at it right now after having covering it for a long time?

So this year's task for the Ukrainians, as they tell me, is to hang on. The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, real character, scariest guy I think I've ever met, said that he is expecting a Russian offensive around now. He was talking June, but it's May, in precisely the areas that we're seeing, trying to capitalize on this moment between Ukraine

American aid shipments. And the Russians will try that. The Ukrainian lines may pull back a little bit. I don't think that the Ukrainian lines will collapse in a way that would make the big cities vulnerable. They may lose Kharkiv. That would be unfortunate, but not the end of the world.

The Russians want to consolidate the east. They still don't have those two provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, but they're close to having them. And then the weapons begin to arrive. And again, I don't think Ukraine should try again this year for counter-offensive to drive Russia out the way they did last year.

I think they should consolidate their lines, hold, protect their people. I mean, just say, you know, the blood that's been spilled in Ukraine breaks your heart. They need a breathing period. They need to recover. They need to think how to get through the next winter and Russian missile attacks. And then come to a negotiated solution. And then, well, and then no, and then fight, and then really begin to bang on Russia the next year, and then from a position of strength.

You've written that, yeah. Then they can negotiate a settlement that I think would be in their interest that they would want to accept. Right now, Russia has no interest in negotiating, and they're so weak that any deal they made would be terrible. So they have to wait to get to a settlement. This is unfortunately one of those situations, Cara, where all you can do for now is fight and hope to hold your ground.

You're not going to win this year, but you can hold on and just believe that next year you'll be in a better place.

All right, my very last question, I know you have to go, is where are you looking elsewhere from a foreign perspective? Your next book, I know, is on Russian intelligence invasion into the United States. It's actually operatives on the ground, but I'm actually going to write a novel before that about U.S.-Chinese intelligence wars. So the Chinese did something that people don't really understand, which is that

Ten years ago, they ripped apart the networks that the United States had built of agents in China and one by one killed them. They killed about 40 people. And we really don't have much left in terms of human sources in China. So the question of how they did that

And how we might begin to push back is the subject of the next novel that I'm writing. It was serialized, a short version was serialized in the Post last summer, but I'm going to try to finish that up in the next year. And if you were to point to one foreign international situation that hasn't gotten enough attention, what would it be? Or what would be the one you are paying most attention to, beyond Ukraine, beyond Israel, even though they're huge issues?

So, you know, I do think about China a lot. China could decide tomorrow to attack Taiwan. Taiwan's ability to resist, despite all the things we say, is pretty limited. I think the Taiwanese might well, looking at Ukraine, say, we don't want our country to be obliterated, so make a deal. We need to think carefully about how we'd respond to that.

We need to think about what I write about in this novel. We need to think about space war. We need to think about somebody saying, "We can cripple the United States if we act now against what they have in space." And think, as my characters in my book do, what will we do about that?

Anything happy? Is there anything good in this international world? Yeah. So, it was just Mother's Day. I was with two of my daughters and three of my grandchildren. And so, you know, that's, you know, I mean, yeah, there are great things in the world. All right. Well, mothers will save everything. Good God. Well, then I'm...

I better get going. Anyway, I really appreciate it. I know you have to go, David. Thank you so much for making me write about AOL. It's such a pleasure. It is such a pleasure. Thank you for sending me to Vienna. Was it Vienna? No, was it? Vienna? Not Vienna. On my tombstone, it's going to say, he assigned Kara Swisher to cover the internet.

He sent Kara Swisher to Tyson's Corner, Virginia, and the rest is fucking history. Anyway, thank you so much. You were a great editor. You really were. You really were. Very good for especially a young reporter like myself, and I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.

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