ISIS Terror in Australia  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Global Antisemitism Turned Deadly** - The Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre targeted Jewish civilians and reflected rising antisemitism in Australia since October 7. - Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes stress this violence is terrorism and must be universally condemned regardless of grievances about Israel. Transcript: Tommy Vietor Gathered at bondi beach in Sydney, Australia. It's one of the most popular tourist sites in the entire country. They were celebrating the holiday when these two gunmen opened fire. The shooting went on for like 10 full minutes. Look, the video is horrifying. At least 15 people are dead. Dozens more are wounded. The victims include a 10 year old girl and an 87 year old Holocaust survivor. The police killed one of the shooters. The other now in the hospital. These terrorists were a father and a son. I just can't imagine one to do that. Yeah, it's fucking dark. It's real dark. Sajid and Navid Akram. Here's some of what we know about them and their motives at this point. So the police found two homemade ISIS flags in their car along with some homemade IEDs. They reportedly took a trip to the Philippines last month from November 1st to November 28th. There's some reports that say that they were there to undergo what was described as military-style training. The southern part of the Philippines has longstanding Islamic extremism problems that we'll talk about, including an ISIS presence. We'll get to that in a minute. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that the two were, quote, motivated by Islamic State ideology and that in 2019, the younger of the two was on the radar screen of Australia's Intelligence community because of his association with a self-proclaimed Islamic State commander who is currently in prison, I think was sentenced in 2021. Albanese also said there is not evidence that the two are part of a larger cell, a terror cell. But I did also just want to quickly highlight some stories of incredible heroism from this attack. So there's this now famous video of this unarmed fruit vendor named Ahmed Al-Amed who tackled and disarmed one of the shooters before being shot himself. I just saw an interview where he said he saw that the shooter was walking towards about 30 people lying on the ground and he just had to go and do something. He's a Muslim man originally from Syria, and Albanese visited him in the hospital. One lifeguard named Jackson Doolin ran 1.5 kilometers from a neighboring beach with his defibrillator to help people as the attack was still ongoing. There's this now iconic photo of this dude just hauling ass barefoot with his gear towards the gunfire. And then Ben, I also read a story about this couple that got separated from their three-year daughter when the shooting started. And then they finally found her underneath a stranger who was shielding a little girl with her own body to protect her and had been shot in the process. So just, you know, the two worst people in the world combined with this amazing heroism. So this shooting comes after a spike in anti-Semitic incidents in Australia since the October 7th terrorist attack. That includes arson attacks on a synagogue, one on a kosher restaurant. There's an organization that has been tallying these up and says the number of anti-Semitic incidents quadrupled in that period. Australia's last mass shooting of this scale was in 1996. After that horrible incident, they passed a bunch of gun control laws. Prime Minister Albanese has pledged to pass even more gun control measures in the wake of this shooting. So we're going to get into Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's response in a minute, and we'll talk more about this detail about the Philippines. But just want to start with your general reaction. It's ([Time 0:07:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1c8fd82c-01b5-4ab9-90d1-6b68ba10062a)) - **Heroism Amid The Bondi Massacre** - Ahmed Al-Amed, an unarmed fruit vendor from Syria, tackled and disarmed a shooter before being shot himself. - A lifeguard ran 1.5 km barefoot with a defibrillator to help victims while the attack was still ongoing. Transcript: Tommy Vietor So there's this now famous video of this unarmed fruit vendor named Ahmed Al-Amed who tackled and disarmed one of the shooters before being shot himself. I just saw an interview where he said he saw that the shooter was walking towards about 30 people lying on the ground and he just had to go and do something. He's a Muslim man originally from Syria, and Albanese visited him in the hospital. One lifeguard named Jackson Doolin ran 1.5 kilometers from a neighboring beach with his defibrillator to help people as the attack was still ongoing. There's this now iconic photo of this dude just hauling ass barefoot with his gear towards the gunfire. And then Ben, I also read a story about this couple that got separated from their three-year daughter when the shooting started. And then they finally found her underneath a stranger who was shielding a little girl with her own body to protect her and had been shot in the process. ([Time 0:09:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f7601317-a37a-4eae-b253-e3eca6364450)) - **Political Blame Distorts Tragedy** - Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Australia's recognition of a Palestinian state for the massacre, a claim Tommy and Ben call cynical and baseless. - They argue such politicization distracts from mourning victims and wrongly equates support for Palestinian rights with enabling terrorism. Transcript: Tommy Vietor So let's hear what Netanyahu had to say and then Prime Minister Albanese's response and then we can talk about it. Ben Rhodes Australia a letter in which I gave him warning that the Australian government's policy was promoting and encouraging anti-Semitism in Australia. Fuel on the anti-Semitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorism. Tommy Vietor It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets. Do you accept any link between that recognition and the massacre in Bondi? No, I don't. Zanny Minton Beddoes And overwhelmingly, most of the world recognises a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East. Tommy Vietor Netanyahu can't even say Albanese's name right. The Netanyahu's diaspora minister also blamed the Australian government, a bunch of horrible stuff. So, Ben, just a few thoughts here. First of all, I can't overstate how sad I find those comments from Netanyahu, how infuriating I find those comments from Netanyahu. We don't have a complete picture of who these terrorists are, their motives, their associations. Clearly this was an act of terror designed to target the Jewish community in Australia and designed to terrorize Jews all around the world. But I find the suggestion that these terrorists were motivated by Australia recognizing a Palestinian state to be just beyond absurd. I mean, again, if these guys are ISIS inspired, if they trained with ISIS, I'm pretty sure they're not like two state solution guys, you know? And if Australia's intelligence agencies were watching the younger one in 2019, then clearly his radicalism predates October 7th and predates the Australian decision to recognize Palestine that happened back in September of this year. And like, and also just stepping back a bit here, like what Albanese was getting at there is anyone who supports a two state solution believes in the creation of a Palestinian state. Is Netanyahu going to claim that all of us who believe in a two state solution are fomenting violence in some way because we have a shared goal, right? Yes, he is. Ben Rhodes Yeah. Tommy Vietor I mean, it feels that way, right? And like what I find, I, so upsetting is this should be a moment where we're just like mourning the loss of these lives. We're showing solidarity for Australians, for Jewish people around the world who are just scared and who are horrified by the attack. His own political project. ([Time 0:14:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c1221fe8-dab3-4306-a4ce-e54746e4fcea)) - **Philippines As Extremist Training Ground** - The Philippines' southern region has persistent Islamist extremist networks that previously pledged allegiance to ISIS and hosted intense combat. - Ben Rhodes warns that training or links there would show ISIS ideology's regional resilience and merits vigilance, not overreaction. Transcript: Tommy Vietor So we don't know for sure what these guys did there, but they were there for a long time and they were there for a month. And you and I are old enough to remember that the Philippines has been a hotbed for terrorism, including Islamic extremism for a while. So there was the first Bali bombing in 2002 that killed like 200 people, including 88 Australians. And then there were several more like high profile bombings after that, both in Bali and Jakarta and other places in Indonesia as well. And so some of these attacks were from Islamic extremist groups. So I'm conflating here, like attacks in sort of Southeast Asia generally. But like some of these attacks were, you know, Islamic extremist groups like Jemma Islamiyah. They were also nationalist insurgent groups, like the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And there's like a communist element of extremists. And over time, a lot of these groups morphed, and they kind of swore loyalty to ISIS in 2014 or 2015. And then in 2017, the government in the Philippines started taking the threat very seriously after this ISIS-linked group, or a couple of groups, took over a major city with a population Of about 200,000 people. They launched this, like, very intensive military campaign. It was months of brutal urban combat. And there was also the Philippines government created this program to, like, allow fighters a path out of extremism that wasn't death. It was, like counseling, training, assistance. Like they had former pro ISIS prisoners go into prisons, talk to current pro ISIS prisoners, like try to talk them out of their allegiance. There was an interesting mix of like military pressure and reintegration programs. So clearly ISIS was never fully eradicated in, you know, the Philippines or in the region more broadly. I think that the Philippines was seen as a successful approach. And now I wonder, like, was that wrong? Will there be a bunch of pressure from Australia and the United States and others to take more action? Like, I don't know. What do you make of this piece of it? Ben Rhodes I think it's concerning. And you're right that there's kind of this long history there where after 9-11, there was like some deployment of kind of US special forces to advise and support the Philippines in kind Of going after Islamic militants in Southern Philippines. Then in the late Obama years, when ISIS was kind of taking over the kind of vanguard of global terrorism, you had this kind of blend of extremists who'd kind of been active in the terrorism Business, all of a sudden wanting to declare a caliphate in the Southern Philippines. And what's complicated about it is this part of the Southern Philippines, there's a separatist movement because they resent kind of being a part of a majority Christian country. They want to govern themselves. They kind of blended with this idea that we're going to establish a caliphate. And so that's what was kind of stomped out by the military in the Philippines with U.S. And other support. And what this kind of shows is kind of the resilience of that ideology in that part of the world that is spanned from Malaysia to the Southern Philippines and Indonesia. And the fact that these guys went there for a month, I mean, look, we don't know that much about these guys. I don't think you go there for like tourism for a month. Yeah, they do this. Clearly something happened while they were there. The fact that they had these kind of homemade ISIS flags on them is kind of a trademark of what we used to see from ISIS. And so I think what's concerning about this is, you know, the ISIS problem has been kind of under the rug for a while. Does the combination of what happened in Gaza in the Middle East and kind of the sense of maybe, you know, priorities have shifted and people aren't kind of watching this threat as much, Is this kind of regenerating? ([Time 0:20:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9ffc0afa-2c7d-46be-a0d5-00e781866697)) - **Don't Mask Regime Change As Law Enforcement** - Ben Rhodes and Tommy Vietor warn the US actions around Venezuela amount to a covert regime-change campaign. - Avoid escalatory tactics; pursue transparent multilateral strategies rather than unilateral seizures and strikes that risk wider conflict. Transcript: Tommy Vietor So on Tuesday, December 16th, the Pentagon announced the military had hit three more boats in the eastern Pacific, murdering eight people. These are boats that they allege are filled with drugs and drug dealers. The Pentagon released a new snuff film about these strikes. Also I should note that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth still refuses to show members of Congress the unedited double tap strike on the first one of these boats that we talked about Last week. So the U.S. Military Southern command is ramping up firepower and sending more assets to the Caribbean, including F-35 stealth jet fighters, the EA 18G Growler electronic warfare planes. So things you probably don't need to take out a speedboat. Yeah. I mean, certainly an F-35 could bomb a speedboat, but you do not need that. Last week, the US seized an oil tanker in the Caribbean that was carrying 2 million barrels of crude worth about $80 million from Venezuela's state-owned oil company. The ship was sailing under the flag of Guyana, but Guyana has no official record of it. And the boat had manipulated its transponder to appear to be hundreds of miles away. So this tanker is known as the Skipper currently. It had previously been sanctioned by, not the Skipper, by the Treasury Department when it was sailing under a different name and has transported oil from Iran to Syria and then to China. It still seems unclear where the ship was headed because its official destination was Cuba, but the boat transferred like 50,000 barrels of oil to another ship before it was seized. And then that ship went to Cuba and the skipper was going to Asia. So who knows? The Cuban government called the seizure an act of piracy and maritime terrorism. The Cuban government has long exchanged doctors and intelligence sort of assets and know-how for, and personnel for access to Venezuelan oil, much of which, as the Guardian has reported In some detail, they turn around and resell to China, an estimated like 80% of Venezuelan oil ends up in China. So the New York Times laid out the administration's legal rationale for the seizure of this boat. It was one, they got a warrant because of the ship's record of transporting Iranian oil and two, that it was sailing under a false flag. Trump was asked what happens with the oil now. He said, well, we keep it, I guess. So maybe he'll donate it to the library like the Qatari jet. Ben Rhodes Maybe he'll sell it to China. Oh, that's a good idea. Yeah, why not? Like the chips he's selling. Tommy Vietor Have Jared just fly over with it. So Ben, there's some good reporting in the Times over the weekend that dug into how Secretary of State Marco Rubio views toppling Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro as the key to taking Down the Cuban government. We've discussed that on this show before. In 2019, Rubio said weakening Cuba would be a welcome byproduct of regime change in Venezuela. And quote, anything that's bad for a communist dictatorship is something I support, quote, like straight out of the Cold War era. Rubio's parents immigrated to Florida three years before Fidel Castro came to power. So this is personal for him and he came on Miami politics. So Ben, like just stepping back, it is very hard for me not to find the Iraq war echoes kind of deafening at this point. Like the administration says they are targeting fentanyl in Venezuela. But in Trump literally just declared that fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction, but fentanyl doesn't come out of Venezuela. Venezuela doesn't produce fentanyl. And clearly the administration is more focused on oil. And then again, like Bush said, the like taking out Saddam Hussein was a response to 9-11. Rubio seems to think taking out Nicolas Maduro is the way to take out the Cuban government. Like the whole thing is just, it makes me feel insane. Ben Rhodes The thing that is so frustrating about this is they are constantly claiming authorities and reasons for what they're doing that don't make any sense if you stack them up. Okay. So if you just take the tanker, um, look, we had a guest on this podcast recently who talked about the massive shadow fleets that are out there. Like this is not uncommon, right? We do not routinely detain those tankers under those authorities. They land special forces on these tanker, like dangerous operation. Oh yeah. Including ones that sell Russian oil or Iranian oil or Venezuelan oil. And so what is so frustrating about this is what we're seeing before our eyes is a regime change operation, but they won't say it. The boats are about narco trafficking. The tanker is about, you know, illicitly selling oil. Like they don't say it's about weakening Maduro, but that's clearly what it's about. And this is where, in the first instance, this is just like a policy built on a pyramid of dishonesty. The second thing that has all the hallmarks of past stupid regime change wars, from Iraq to all the way back to some of the justifications for going to Vietnam, is there's always the kind Of manufacturing of a threat that is kind of wildly overstated. Because let's start with Cuba, actually, because clearly there's some design that they have that there's like a reverse domino theory here that Maduro will fall. Cuba, you may not like the Cuban government. Just please explain to me what national security threat this completely impoverished island. It's crazy. The United States, like I'm not suggesting everybody to like the Cuban government. I'm suggesting like they pose no threat to us. Like the worst one you could trump up that Rubio used to talk about is like there's Russian and Chinese. Chinese spy bases. They have like listening posts there or something. You know, like, well, I don't think most Americans think you like go to war in Venezuela to get rid of like the listening posts in Cuba. And even Venezuela, again, like bad things that that government does, like I think worse things in the Cuban government. Right. Because it but but what is that he cannot describe to Americans like any threat that rises anywhere near the need to go to war there. And and so he wraps it up in drugs. He wraps it up in migration, all of his other boogeymen. Right. Or just like repeating communist a bunch of times as if like, are we compelled to go to war? We're going to go to war with Vietnam next. They're communist. Tommy Vietor And just to back up your first two points, like about the lies, about the intention. Again, Susie Wiles in this interview said about Trump, he wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me say that he will. So clearly it's a regime change operation. It's not about the drugs. And then about the drugs, she says, the president says 25,000, meaning 25,000 lives are saved per boat you blow up. She goes, I don't know what the number is, but he views those as lives saved, not people killed. So even she won't back up this ludicrous statistic. Ben Rhodes Yeah, there's no lives saved. And I wonder about these so-called smart people. I mean, I'm just referring to National Archivist Rubio or who. But like, Maduro is going to, quote, cry uncle because some boats are getting blown. Like, this is what's so weird about this strategy. I mean, I know they're squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. But like at a certain point, you know, you're engaged in a regime change operation that is happening now. They're just using different tactics and they're going to get increased. You know, what we're seeing is an escalation ramp, people. Like it starts with boats. Then it's tankers. Like then there'll be something ([Time 0:26:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9166d0c6-6a96-4568-a85c-55f1f0784fdf)) - **Why US Troops Still Operate In Syria** - About 1,000 U.S. troops remain in Syria conducting counter-ISIS missions, guarding prisons, and advising local forces. - Rhodes and Vietor question the long-term rationale and urge a regional solution rather than perpetual US deployments. Transcript: Tommy Vietor All right, let's switch gears in the Middle East. So on Saturday, two U.S. Soldiers and an American civilian interpreter were killed in an ambush in central Syria. So the two soldiers were ID'd as Sergeant William Howard and Sergeant Edgar Torres Tovar of the Iowa National Guard. And their interpreter was ID'd by his family as Ayad Sakat. The three other members of the Iowa National Guard were also wounded. So the U.S. Greetings Syrian officials say the attacker was a member of the Syrian security forces who tragically was apparently about to be fired literally the next day because he was like revetted And had extremist views. But then he did this horrible thing. And this shooter is believed to have been a former ISIS member who joined the Syrian security forces after Assad was toppled. Trump has vowed to retaliate. We have no idea what that means yet. So the U.S. Writ large has about a thousand troops still in Syria. That's down from 2000 earlier this year. The mission includes counter ISIS work, in particular working with Kurdish forces to take out ISIS cells or protect these prisons that are holding both thousands of ISIS fighters In northeast Syria. And then there are also these camps filled with the families of these ISIS fighters who are just being held in basically like indefinite detention in hell. I'm sure there are also like missions we don't know about that are focused on Iran. So these U.S. Troops were shot when they were guarding a meeting between the U.S. And Syrian security officials about more cooperation. Obviously, this incident will make that harder. On Tuesday, Trump was asked about the incident and what the hell U.S. Troops are still doing in Syria. Here are some of his comments. Do you still have confidence in the Syrian president? I do. Ben Rhodes I mean, this had nothing to do with him. This is a part of Syria that they really don't have much control over. And it was a surprise. He feels very badly about it. He's working on it. He's a strong man. And no, this had nothing to do with the Syrian government. This had to do this had to do with ISIS. As a response, they'll be hit hard. Why do we have troops in Syria? Because we're trying to make sure that there's going to be and remain peace in the Middle East, and Syria is a big part of it. You know, we have legitimate peace in the Middle East, first time in 3,000 years. Tommy Vietor Good question. Not the best answer I've heard. Ben Rhodes Do we have peace for the first time in 3,000 years? Tommy Vietor I believe the White House was just leaking to Barack Reveed at Axios about how mad they were. Ben Rhodes Yahoo again breaking the ceasefire yeah scolded him um first of all uh you see this and you are like i mean i know you you're passionate for iowa um why were these like why these guys over There? Why are National Guard troops? I felt so bad for them, obviously, and for their families to begin with, just any loss of life. But also just like, why is the Iowa National Guard in Syria? I have no idea. Trump said he was going to end these forever wars. These troops have been there way past any rational mission. When's the last time we had a conversation with Americans about what, imagine if you polled Americans, should we have like remote outposts with National Guard troops in Syria? Or do we have? I'm sure. Overwhelming answer would be like, no, what the fuck are we doing there? And you're right. I don't know what we're doing there because part of what they do, and there's been good reporting on this, is creative accounting, right? So there's a set number of troops that are there, the National Guard people. But then they rotate like Delta Force guys through there, and they don't stay for the full like six-month deployment. So it's not counted. So it's kind of off-books deployments of special forces. And the Delta guys sometimes aren't even wearing uniforms, right? So I don't know what we're doing in Eastern Syria. And by the way, we shouldn't be, if someone says, well, what about these people in prisons? Well, we shouldn't be the solution. Like the US, having a thousand guys, like 500 guys with some special operators or whatever it is, it should not be the solution. Like there should be a regional solution to this, right? Turkey is a huge provider of security for Syria. The Gulf Arabs want to kick in some money. Trump's getting rid of the sanctions. Let's build some other architecture to deal with this. I would like to see al-Shara work more with the Kurds. That's been a source of some tension, obviously. By the way, side note, hard for al-Shara to go after the extremists when the Israelis have destroyed his entire military. I mean, do you remember that that happened? That's the thing that happened, like bombing again and again and again and just kind of, you know, taking out military hardware. Like Syria needs enough military capability to govern its own territory. And so the solution needs to be how do we build up the Syrian state, not like where can we have like some outposts with some guys? Tommy Vietor Yeah. I mean, look, the SDF says the ISIS has staged 117 attacks in Syria through August, which is more than all of 2024. So that's a bad trend line. We obviously don't want to like rug pull. The Kurds would never recommend that. ([Time 0:48:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f4de4f73-3606-4b88-a2f1-622079f2dbba)) - **Hong Kong's Press Freedom Is Crushed** - Jimmy Lai's conviction under Hong Kong's national security law symbolizes the end of one-country-two-systems and independent press freedom. - Ben Rhodes argues free press is crucial for public safety and accountability, citing a deadly building fire investigation as an example. Transcript: Tommy Vietor Unfortunately, it's a terrible update because on Monday, pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to publish seditious publications and two Counts of conspiracy to foreign collusion. That's per The Guardian. The verdict was delivered by a panel of three judges and no jury. This happened under the national security law that Beijing rammed through upon Hong Kong in 2020 after the protests there. So Jimmy Lai was actually arrested in August of 2020. He's basically been in and out of prison ever since on various like bullshit charges, often in solitary confinement. Lai founded the popular pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily back in the mid 90s and has been a longtime critic of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1994, he wrote a column himself telling China's then prime minister to, quote, drop dead. This is after Tiananmen Square. So, ballsy guy. He's now 78 years old. And depending on his prison sentence, he could die in prison. Back in the campaign in October of 2024, Trump stooge Hugh Hewitt asked Donald Trump whether, if elected, he'd get Jimmy Lai out of prison. Trump said, 100%, I'll get him out. He'll be easy to get out. But when reporters checked back in on the case after the verdict earlier this week, Trump would only say, quote, I feel so badly. I spoke to President Xi about it and I asked to consider his release. So sure sounds like he went from this will be easy to like me. I'm sure he was really like up in arms. I'm sure Hugh will go hard at him, but doesn't seem like Trump wants to expend much political capital here. Also, you know, Jimmy Lai is a British citizen. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also called for his release. But again, Trump and Starmer are both going to Beijing next year. So I think time will tell where like human rights issues or Hong Kong rank on their to do list. ([Time 0:56:09](https://share.snipd.com/snip/58f4b7b4-3385-4250-96df-61bacfb9f251)) - **Push Back On Broad Social-Media Vetting** - The proposed ESTA social-media checks will deter visitors and harm academic, cultural, and democratic exchanges. - Reject overbroad social-media harvesting and demand narrow, targeted vetting to preserve travel and free expression. Transcript: Tommy Vietor So the administration announced that some visitors to the United States may have to provide a bunch of new personal information to qualify for a program that allows you to visit the U.S. For up to 90 days without a visa. That data would include five years worth of phone numbers, email addresses, close family names and birthdates, residences, and access to your social media posts for the last five Years. This would apply to visitors from 42 countries, including the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Israel, a bunch of European countries, Qatar. This is under a program called the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, or ESTA. Right now, you just fill out an application with basic identifying information, like your passport, birthday, criminal record. I love filling those things out, by the way. And it's like, have you ever been a part of a terrorist organization or accused of sedition? No. Anyway, but- If you ever tried to overthrow the U.S. Government, which Trump- Absolutely did. Would have trouble answering, yeah. Can't pass an SF-86. So this would be a very dramatic change for just visitors, right? Like, we've seen the State Department require social media, so-called social media vetting for like student visas, certain work visas, like H-1B visas. But this would be a major imposition to someone who is traveling to the U.S. To, like, go to a soccer game, go to the World Cup, go to the Olympics. Ben, what's your sense of the impact of this change? And, like, also, who does this vetting? Like, who has the time to go through five years of social media posts for every visitor? Ben Rhodes There's so much that concerns me about this. I wanted to talk about it. Like just the quick and dirty on this is number one, this is going to be absolutely debilitating to a lot of people coming here. I have tons of friends in, let's just pick one country, in the UK. I have a lot of friends in the UK, a lot of friends in London. Every single one of them, I would bet, has social media posts from the last five years that are highly critical of Donald Trump. Every single one of them will think twice about coming here and might just choose not to come here, or maybe they'll get nagged in whatever that process is. I can't imagine the impact this is going to have. It is just going to sort out all the people that, you know, I would like to see, you know, like I feel this personally because I, but it's already affecting, you know, the ability to have Like, you know, we hear some really depressing time. You know, I go to all these like democracy convenings. We can't have them in the U.S. Anymore because people from these countries can't come here because they're either on the travel ban list or they're people on social media, they're democracy activists. God, that's dark. So just think of that. We're just closed for business. By the way, Trump is having... Let's watch the tourism numbers. That's a huge economic hit to some American communities too. So this has an economic dimension and political dimension. Tommy Vietor Meanwhile, they're rolling out the red carpet to the AFD, the right-wing Nazi party. Oh yeah, the Nazis are welcome here. Ben Rhodes We just like sorting out the good people and letting in the not the white the africaners and the afd are fucking you know getting like celebrated right and then to your question i like There's a at some point we should have a longer palantir conversation on this podcast because it's like oh who's gonna go through that well fucking palantir is gonna go through it you Know like they'll like with ai i mean i don't know like okay to be clear you know lawyers or whatever like i I don't know. I'm saying hypothetically. Tommy Vietor Probably a big data AI. Ben Rhodes Big data, like Palantir sorts big data to, you know, find patterns, et cetera, et cetera. That kind of technology, I imagine, whether it's Palantir or someone else, with AI, you can sort. If you say, like, we want to look for patterns in their social media that are critical of Trump or that, or say negative things about America, like you don't need a person reading it. You just need AI software that can basically do that. So suddenly this becomes, shit becomes real, you know, in terms of your ability to sort who comes in and who doesn't. Tommy Vietor We should just say, this is not like set policy yet. It's still in the comment period. So there's time to stop it, but it seems like, you know, there's time to stop it. Ben Rhodes So please come while you can. Tommy Vietor But also like it says in some of the reporting that having no social media presence could be viewed as a like a strike against you, which is crazy. Like, oh, you deleted all your or maybe you just don't like Instagram. But now there's just all these idiotic ways. We're just going to keep people out of the country and it's going to harm tourism and just be generally stupid. ([Time 1:01:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/799f88fd-47d3-4db5-9afe-d01f44fd5b2b)) - **Populist Right Is Reshaping Europe** - Populist-right parties are fracturing traditional center-left/right dominance across Europe, reaching high-20s poll numbers. - Zanny Minton Beddoes sees plausible near-term routes for them to gain power in countries like France and the UK. Transcript: Ben Rhodes And they have a world ahead issue that looks at some of the trends and issues to watch for in 2026, which is almost upon us. So for our last interview of 2025, we wanted to sit down with the economist editor-in Zannie Mitten-Bettos. Zannie, welcome to Pod Save the World. Zanny Minton Beddoes Thank you for having me. Ben Rhodes So I want to start in Europe, where you all have kept a close eye and country after country on the rise of far-right parties. Obviously, you're in the UK, where Nigel Farage is leading in opinion polls. We have the national rally on top of polls in France, the AFD surging in Germany, and a US government that in its recent national security strategy talked about cultivating resistance In Europe. And by that, they meant supporting essentially far-right parties. I wanted to ask you what you think the ceiling is for the far-right, because it used to be for a long time, the idea was, well, maybe they're a threat to gain power in kind of smaller countries Like Hungary. And maybe the national rally in France could be an irritant, but it was hard to imagine them governing. But now I think you see a possibility, at least, of major, large European powers being governed by the far right. What do you think the ceiling is? Zanny Minton Beddoes We've had a little bit of a debate about nomenclature, but I think that there is a group of parties which are what we're now calling the populist right and in which I would include Reform UK or indeed, you know, Georgia Maloney's party, which are sort of, you know, not the traditional centre-right party, but within the mainstream. Because I think there are also then far right actors. And we've used the term far right to mean even more extreme than that. And I would, but if you kind of talk about the populist right broadly, and by that, you know, include Reform UK, include the RN, Bardella and Marine Le Pen in France, include the AFD, although It has some fairly unsavory elements to it in Germany. I think we're seeing them now, know, in the high 20s in many of these countries in the polls. And what we're seeing, Ben, is it's part of a broader fragmentation of the electorate in Europe. I mean, the kind of caricature of post-war European politics is that in most countries or many, certainly in the big economies, you had a powerful center left grouping and you had a powerful Center right grouping. And that is now fractured. So in the UK, you know, traditionally the Conservative and the Labour Party, you now have the Greens, you have the Liberal Democrats, you have Reform UK, and you have the Tories, and You have Labour. So you have a fracturing. And in that fracturing, the populist right is in the ascendant in all of Europe's three biggest economies. I think it is highly likely to be in power in France by sort of late 2020s. I think that you could see next year another parliamentary election. You could perfectly well see a Prime Minister Jordan Bardella. But certainly in 2027, Marine Le Pen, if she can stand, or Jordan Bardella has a very strong chance in the presidential election. ([Time 1:15:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/51032c72-ab8c-4978-b0c5-f206d40a5c3f)) - **AI's Boom Demands Guardrails And Planning** - AI investment shows bubble-like market exuberance but also promises transformative societal change over decades. - Zanny expects potential accidents or shocks to force international guardrails and stresses planning for labor-market disruption now. Transcript: Ben Rhodes And people should check out just the very regular coverage that kind of gives you a window into where things are going with AI. But part of what I sense in traveling and talking to people is, you know, in the US, we're kind of all in, in part because it's literally the thing, the only thing, juicing our economy, Probably overjuicing it, right? I mean, the AI bubble is very evident to people now here. The Chinese are all in, and they have been for some time. The Gulf Arabs are too, because they have plenty of money and want to be at the vanguard of this. And I kind of sense everywhere else this balance between, well, I need this technology. And it's going to, as diffusion goes forward and AI applications come online, I think we're going to see next year and more and more parts of the world, AI being adopted for different Uses. And yet at the same time, this fear that where is this all going? What is this technology actually going to be used for? And is there going to be a bubble maybe in America that kind of drags the world into some other kind of maybe not a great recession, but, you know, something that could be economically Painful? What is your sense between the kind of AI, and I'm not even really getting into the, you know, will the AI, you know, turn against us scenarios, that's another conversation we can have. But what is your sense about the balance between AI pessimism and optimism as we head into next year? Zanny Minton Beddoes So I look, I share your view that if you look at financial markets, there is incredible bubbliness around this. And I'm, you know, who knows when and how big a correction, but it seems to me at some point there will be a fairly substantial correction. As there has been in every, you know, big tech period of technological innovation, look at the railway boom. I mean, you had huge financial bubbles around that. And, know, that will burst at some point. I'm not sure I share your view that it will drag the world economy into some kind of, you know, massive global recession. I think that actually, the way much of this stuff has been financed, and the, you know, strength of the banks and so forth, and indeed, frankly, the resilience of economies, it's quite Hard. We haven't had a proper coordinated global recession apart from the short one around the pandemic since the global financial crisis. And the way we've kind of insured ourselves against that is just by running huge budget deficits, which is storing up its own set of long-term problems. So at least in the short term, I'm not so worried about kind of global economic collapse. But I do think there'll be some kind of bubble bursting and some kind of shakeout. I think that may well happen at the same time as the labor market consequences of rapid AI adoption and diffusion, as you say, with more and more companies adopting it more evident. And I also think it will happen at the same time as the, you know, the clamor from the pessimists of concern grows, grows louder. And all of this is, is happening at a time, I don't think we can divorce it from the geopolitical tensions, because the kind of, you know, the argument made in the United States for we've Got to go hell for leather, that it's absolutely imperative that the US is ahead in this game because this is going to define the power terms of the 21st century and we have to be the winners. And there's a similar kind of rhetoric in China. And I think that this race dynamic between companies and between the two superpowers is leading to a, you know, a kind of no holds barred rush of innovation. And what I think is quite possible is that at some point, and who knows whether it's next year or the year after, but at some point, I've used this analogy before, but that we have some equivalent Of an AI three mile island. And by that, I mean, some kind of accident, something goes wrong, hopefully, it's not catastrophic and too awful, but it's big enough that it shocks everyone to think, oh my goodness, We actually do need to put some internationally agreed guardrails around this. And I kind of hope that happens, you know, sooner rather than later. I'm actually very optimistic that, I mean, this is a technology that will have huge benefits potentially, and also some very scary consequences. And I'm definitely on the kind of net optimistic side. I think it's going to completely transform, frankly, what it means to be human, the way we live, the way we work, what kind of societies we have on a two, three decade trajectory. In the short term, it hasn't actually made that much difference to most people's lives other than playing with Jack GPT or if your coder is using Claude. But over the next few years, it really is going to make a very big impact. And I think that will be a kind of profoundly disconcerting moment. ([Time 1:35:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/15c03ad4-1c43-4d99-befa-8c293072644e))