Harry Litman [00:00:06] Welcome to Talking Feds, a roundtable that brings together prominent former federal officials and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of the day. I'm Harry Litman. Along with a number of momentous developments, the week brought visions of the near and medium future across a range of fields. The CDC issued new guidelines for COVID that confirmed many people's sense that we are definitively putting it behind us and returning to the light of normal life. At the same time, the notion of confining the virus fully to history receded for a number of reasons, including the intransigent resistance of 13 percent of the population to the vaccine. We are looking at months or more of risk minimization, not full return to pre-COVID life. After increasingly bitter backroom discussions, the Republican Party split cleanly along the seam of the Big Lie with the ouster of Liz Cheney for her refusal to credit the ridiculous idea that the election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump.
It means that going forward, at least to 2022, the big lie reigns supreme in the GOP. The New York Times broke a story detailing a broad — if partly comic — mission by conservative activists and dirty tricksters to trap Trump government officials in words of disloyalty to the leader while Trump was in office. It had the whiff of possible coordination with people inside the government, which would make it much more of a Watergate-style mega scandal. We'll see in the coming months if the story gets traction or fades away. Finally, the Colonial Pipeline is again functioning, but the successful cyber attack on a line that carries 45 percent of the fuel for the East Coast and gave rise to a ransom payout of $5 million in cryptocurrency may turn out to be the most harrowing glimpse of the future in some time. To break down this eventful and politically charged week, we have a stellar trio of incisive commentators.
They are: Juliette Kayyem, a national security analyst at CNN, the Belfour senior lecturer in international security at Harvard's Kennedy School, the CEO and co-founder of Grip Mobility, which is a tech company providing transparency in the ride sharing industry, and the author of three books. She's also a host on Talking Fed's podcast, Women at the Table and to our good fortune, a regular here on Talking Feds. Thanks very much, as always, Juliette, for being here.
Juliette Kayyem [00:02:57] I'm glad to be here.
Harry Litman [00:02:58] Max Boot, the Jean J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a global affairs analyst for CNN, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, where we were colleagues and the author of no fewer than six books unless I've gotten that wrong, Max. Thanks very much for returning to Talking Feds.
Max Boot [00:03:20] Great to be back.
Harry Litman [00:03:22] And for her first time here, Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for The New York Times magazine, senior research fellow at Yale Law School and co-host of the Slate podcast, which I highly recommend, Political Gabfest, and herself the author of two national bestsellers. Emily Bazelon, very pleased to welcome you to Talking Feds for the first time.
Emily Bazelon [00:03:45] Thanks so much for having me.
Harry Litman [00:03:47] All right. We have four fairly huge stories to break down, so get ready to gallop. Let's start with the new guidance the CDC issued Thursday and the general status of the virus, because we've been sailing along on a wave of pretty good news. Two hundred million are vaccinated, deaths are at their lowest point since April 2020, and that all stands, but we also seem to be on the cusp of a paradigm shift in the country's expectations about the virus. So on the one hand, the CDC said to the surprise actually of epidemiologists, vaccinated people don't have to wear masks in many settings and prosperity in the sense of normal life is just around the corner. On the other, though, the landscape around the corner may look a lot different from what we've been expecting for over a year. Juliette, I often say that you are better than anybody at seeing around corners, so let me start with you. What are we looking at in terms of an end game, and how is it different from what we've been talking about for a year or more?
Juliette Kayyem [00:04:57] So we are at an important point, and I think what the CDC did was significant. I think it exposes or underlines a couple of things that people should be prepared for. The first is the notion that the term 'follow the science' was a helpful guide I think is now finally exposed. I've been very critical of everyone just deferring to the doctors and the scientists. I think they perform a function, but they're not helpful in some regards about how to open up or how to live life or how do we balance competing interests, because we are and this is the second point, we're in the risk minimization stage. So the calculation that the CDC made, which I will say was surprising in its boldness, because the CDC has been late in not just helping us guide through the science, but helping us guide through the common sense. I think what the CDC actually did without saying so was states, localities and private sector, you can do what you want in terms of vaccine verification.
And honestly, folks, we're going to start to see a world in which the vaccinated are unburdened. In other words, think of it like a TSA line where you give your information before and you can get through earlier. The vaccinated can do more things, cruise ships, certain employment, certain games, certain concerts, Broadway is now talking about vaccination verification and things like that. And then there's going to be the burdened world, the one that has to stay in the long line. And what the CDC basically said was we want the unburdened, vaccinated world to have a good time, go out and party because we think that is going to lure the vaccine hesitant and those who haven't taken it yet. So that's sort of the I think that's where we are in the next couple of months, at least through October, November. We're going to see if this thing hits again in late 2021.
Harry Litman [00:06:44] Right, including in variants. So let me just follow up on that and serve it up for Emily and Max. I mean, you say that's where we are for a couple months, but why for a couple of months? You have 13 percent of the population resolutely against, people just not doing second shots. Leaving aside even that variants might come back, I had thought that the new paradigm is that maybe this idea of herd immunity is not going to be happening and we'll have, as you say, risk minimization, but not return to full on normalcy, even indefinitely. Is that wrong? Is it still a matter of return to as we were before, but it's just going to take longer?
Max Boot [00:07:28] I mean, I feel like I can — the only true expertize I have here is to speak about my own life, and I feel like my life is rapidly returning to normal because it's been over a month since I've been fully vaccinated. My partner has been fully vaccinated, our kids just got their first shots this week, and we've been doing stuff that we hadn't done in a year, like eating out in a restaurant. And I mean, we feel pretty good about it because the effectiveness of the vaccines is so high. So I feel like we are returning to normal, I think some of the concerns you raise are valid, and I think there are valid concerns about what happens if 13 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent of the population refuses to get vaccinated. I think it would be nice if a lot of knuckleheads in this country got their heads out of the sand and realized that they need to get vaccinated for their own sake and for other peoples. But even if the virus continues knocking around for years to come, I think the hope is that, like the great influenza epidemic, that you will still have outbreaks of flu, but they're not going to be as deadly and they're not going to be as paralyzing for society.
I suspect we'll be taking booster shots for COVID for quite a while to come, but my real concern at this point is less for the United States because I feel like we're pretty much on the same track as the UK and Israel, the two countries that have so far been world leaders in vaccination. So I think we're going to be opening up for business pretty fast. My concern is for countries like India, where you're seeing this epidemic continue to ravage the population and other developing countries because the rate of vaccination is so low in those places. And so now I think it's incumbent on us, both from a moral standpoint and from a realpolitik standpoint, to do everything we can and to step up our game to try to help vaccinate those places, because we really need the entire world to be safer from COVID so that it's not just the question of us getting back to normal, but the rest of the world as well.
Emily Bazelon [00:09:23] Yeah, I mean, it seems like there's a split screen now, our country and then the outbreaks around the world. And I keep flashing back to several months ago where public health folks were talking about not vaccinating everyone in wealthy countries until we had vaccinated highly at-risk populations in developing countries, and it's, that calculus is just totally out the window. We are vaccinating 12 year olds in the United States when we have super low rates in countries like India. There's nothing fair about that. I also don't see, you know, the world's wealthy countries acting in an urgent way to address it, right? So, I mean, I think the Biden administration's stance on waiving patent protections is helpful, but it's not going to get millions and tens of millions of doses where they're desperately needed right now, and I feel a lot of guilt about that. I also feel like to move back to the part of the screen that's our country and ourselves, if you're vaccinated, I mean, I share Max's view.
It feels safe to me and to my family, which has all been able to get the vaccine. I feel pretty optimistic that there are tens of millions of Americans who are going to come around, there are just a lot of people for whom it hasn't been convenient or easy. They hear about mild illness for a day or two, that's not easy to schedule around, especially if you don't have a job that's easy to take off, and you have a lot of family care responsibilities. So I think those rates are going to continue to rise, and the psychological shift is the one I think you're talking about, Max, of this going from being what feels like a very serious threat that is worth modifying all our behavior, to being much more like the flu, which to even compare COVID to the flu a few months ago was like a taboo denialist thing to say. And now we're supposed to move in that direction, the public health authorities are encouraging us to do that. And I will say at the same time, I think a lot of the public health messaging has been terrible.
Juliette Kayyem [00:11:21] Terrible.
Emily Bazelon [00:11:22] Just terrible, and this is something I sometimes turn to comfort to Juliette for, because I've been so frustrated by it. And I feel like there isn't sufficient acknowledgment, this is like actually a big change. And I mean, I'm all for removing masks, because if the CDC says we don't need them anymore, hallelujah. But I wasn't prepared for that in the slightest, and I'm like ready to go. So I really wonder about a lot of people, especially in blue cities and states that have been told to totally hunker down. Like, the red state folks are going to be way ahead. They already, in places I've gone in red states, they have been ready to be done with COVID, and that's going to be another kind of interesting kind of divide or correcting of a divide to watch.
Juliette Kayyem [00:12:07] Just to that point, this was guidance by the CDC, my state Massachusetts has not changed its guidance. And so we are still under a mask mandate. This is what I think they essentially did, they said, we're done holding the line. The science says it's OK we're done holding the line, which is fine. As I said, the scientists made us believe they had the answer, that was what was so frustrating, right? So every calculation about schools or whatever else, and you're like, you know what? We're just all trying to minimize risk here, don't give me this 'follow the science' thing, like I get it, right? But so we're still under a mask mandate, and I think the CDC was like, we're not going to hold the line anymore. But states, localities and private sector, if you want to start to have mask changes or vaccination so that there's proof of why someone's not wearing a mask, that's fine with us. And I think that's, I think that's where the world will be for a while.
Max Boot [00:12:56] My only concern with the CDC guidance is they're saying, you know, it's fine to be indoors in large settings without a mask if you're vaccinated, which I think is true. But it would be nice if facilities would require some proof of vaccination, right? Because this is just going to be an excuse for a lot of knuckleheads who don't want to wear masks in the first place and don't want to get vaccinated to take advantage of this. And the irony is, a lot of right-wingers are hyperventilating about vaccine passports. 'They're going to take away our freedom.' But I don't see anybody actually requiring vaccine passports. I wish they would.
Emily Bazelon [00:13:27] But now isn't there are a lot of pressure to produce that? Because like these businesses, what are the businesses going to do...
Harry Litman [00:13:32] Israel, Israel's doing it, right?
Emily Bazelon [00:13:34] Well, right. I mean, New York State is doing it. Like, I just I'm not sure what other choice there's going to be. Which is really interesting, because in the meantime, I mean if I was running a business, I don't know what I would do.
Harry Litman [00:13:45] I think both Max and Emily made this interesting point, because we can take the split screen in the world, but then there's another split screen in the country, and it does dovetail with the political schism in the country. If you use Juliette's image of the TSA lines, if you've been stuck in the other line, you're in an underclass almost. And we're looking at a kind of odd class system in a way. Of course, anybody can just get out of it by getting the vaccine, true enough. But if anyone's encountered the fervency of the anti-vaccine crowd, you'll know that this is just going to add to their general view that it's the whole liberal elite who put their nose down on them, you know, et cetera. So it oddly exacerbates along exactly the political fault lines that we've had to date. All right, let's talk about the big, and I would say portentous story in the political arena.
So the Republicans ousted Liz Cheney from party leadership based on her rejection of the big lie that Trump won the election and in her place have now substituted Elise Stefanik, who after the insurrection, she voted not to certify Pennsylvania's vote. She embraced the big lie, but it felt to me like, yeah, it was bubbling up, but then, boom, in a period of 48 hours, the top blew off, and it's a kind of civil war in the party. Could it have been avoided or was from the day Cheney stood up and told the truth, was this something that just had to happen?
Max Boot [00:15:27] I mean, I think that if Liz Cheney had been motivated by keeping her job, above all, she probably could have done it because the orthodoxy among the Republicans on Capitol Hill seems to be OK, we'll let you guys raise a brief protest about the January 6th insurrection, but then shut the hell up and get with the program, and start backing Trump and don't say anything more. So there was an amnesty for people who dared to stand up to Trump's attack on our democracy, but Liz Cheney, God bless her, to her credit, was not interested in taking advantage of that amnesty because she did something that is astonishingly rare in Washington, where she actually put her principles above her political aspirations.
And I mean, remember, she is somebody who was a Republican royalty, and she was somebody who was widely seen as being a future speaker of the House, maybe a future presidential candidate, and now none of that is going to happen. She just basically said she was willing to stand and fight on her principles. She was not going to go along with the Republican Party on the Big Lie, she was not going to stop calling out Trump as he assaults American democracy. And, of course, that was more than the House Republican caucus could bear, because their number one priority right now is to get along with Trump, because that's the way they preserve their own seats from primary challenges, and they think that's the way they juice turnout in 2022. So Liz Cheney did something very brave and I hope it will be significant, but I fear that it's not going to throw the Republican Party off of the authoritarian course upon which it has now embarked.
Emily Bazelon [00:17:03] I mean, when you think about this from the point of view of having any kind of broad mandate and attracting moderates and independents, it seems like the wrong move. But I think, Max, you're right, that's not the move. If you're thinking ahead to primaries, then Trump looms incredibly large in the minds and hearts, still, of your voters. And that has proved really powerful. I also think that these state based voting restrictions that are passing in Florida and Texas and Georgia, et cetera, Arizona's really quite bizarre recount factor into the conversation in that if you're going to go down that road, and they really are, the reason for it is this lie about a stolen election.
And there are lots of elements of those voting restriction laws that are problematic, but one of the most, at least to me, striking parts of them, is this idea of making it easier to overturn election results. Putting more of that power in the hands of the legislature or politically appointed people who would have more partizan leanings. And that's like the third rail of democracy for the United States, and because the Republicans have been so willing to go there in these states, it just feels like there is more momentum around loyalty to Trump and loyalty to this lie than I think I expected after January 6th.
Harry Litman [00:18:26] Juliette, you've made this point too, Max suggests everyone's in thrall to Trump or that simple calculation. But you've suggested and others have as well that there's actually more Machiavellian calculation at stake, and it is a kind of way to cloak a basic disenfranchisement policy that they would step away from Trump, but it's a little more insidious than that.
Juliette Kayyem [00:18:49] Yeah, I mean, I think, I think Emily and Max are absolutely right. I think, look, there's a there is the words, right, the 'stop the steal' and 'the election was stolen.' And then there's the actions that are related to that world, which is disenfranchisement. So those are, you know, as we say, connective tissue, right? But I think that there's a third piece of that that we don't talk about enough, and I hate to say this, but I think it's true now after this week, which is the threat of violence, or violence, being at the core of the GOP right now. And if you think about fighting, stop the deal, take it back, our country, replacement theory, all of it. They are not bad ideologies, they are ideologies that are fundamentally about utilizing violence to either protect your place because the other is taking it and the pie is limited, right?
So this is where I thought everyone going after Tucker Carlson were only going doing baby steps. But it's not that it's white supremacy, it's violent white supremacy, because that is actually the underpinning of the violence, justifiable violence. And I think that's true now for the party. They won't admit it, and it's something that's hard to admit. But you can't separate now, the January 6th, Cheney, the disenfranchisement from violence or the threat of violence, which is at the core, of course, all of these indictments and the rise of white supremacy, I don't think the Republican Party is fixable from that perspective, because once violence becomes a means for representative democracy, it no longer is representative democracy. So I'm all for a third party, but I'm not sure this one's fixable.
Max Boot [00:20:30] You know, I think this is kind of the culmination of this doomsday view that has taken hold in the Republican Party, which is that — and you heard this very clearly from Trump and the GOP last year, which is this notion that Democrats are going to destroy America, it's going to be Venezuela, it's going to be the Soviet Union. So we have any means possible are permitted in order to stop the destruction of our country. I mean, this is just crackpot batshit crazy views, but this has become the dominant Republican perspective. And democracy takes a very much a backseat to their concerns. At the root of it, I think it's really this racialized fear that we're going to become a majority minority country by the 2040's, and so the Republican constituency, which is overwhelmingly white, is going to lose power to a bunch of minorities. And so they're afraid of what that means in order to hold onto power.
They're willing to do anything, including not giving a hearing to Democratic Supreme Court nominees, but also, as Juliette says, even engaging in violence, in mob violence and I really — I'm really, really concerned right now about what happens in 2024, because can you imagine if a Democratic candidate, whether it's Biden or Harris or somebody wins by a fairly narrow margin and there are Republican majorities in both houses? The way things are going, there is no way in hell that the Republicans will recognize an electoral outcome that is unfavorable to them if there's any way they can vote the other way and also at the state level as well. And all these Republicans in 2020 who stood up to the big lie and counted the votes fairly, they are now being targeted for retaliation. Many of them are losing office, and the message is pretty clear. You have to fall into line and you have to put the Republican Party's needs above the imperatives of the Constitution or American democracy, otherwise you will be purged from the party. That is the message that is going out right now, and this is something without precedent in American history, that we now have one of the two major parties is increasingly authoritarian. That's a terrifying danger to the republic.
Harry Litman [00:22:30] Although, you know, as Emily said, it's funny because it's not holding on to power. It's basically holding on to primary wins, they're not getting primaried because it's dubious that this is really a way other than the apocalyptic scenario you just outlined, Max, for them to increase their power in the country.
Max Boot [00:22:50] Well, I think the plan is they're going to hold on to power in the country, not by appealing to a broader cross-section of the electorate, but simply by preventing Democratic voters from voting.
Emily Bazelon [00:22:59] I think that it's minority rule and that in contrast to the sort of scenarios of the Democrats turning the United States into Venezuela, the Democrats aren't even interested in D.C. statehood. Like any kind of structural reform that would actually help address the real danger of minority rule. Bans on extreme partizan gerrymandering, no. Although I did think it was interesting that Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who obviously is such a key vote, was talking about 50 state preclearance, which is a very jargony thing to say, but would basically bringing back the Justice Department in its civil rights role of having to preapprove changes to voting that used to apply mostly in the South and the idea of making that hold across the country, that actually probably would make a difference in making it easier for more people to vote.
Harry Litman [00:23:47] So I was going to have a sort of close out question of was this a fundamental error on McCarthys part? But it seems to me like you guys basically think, you know, sad as it may be, it is logical in pure power terms. Let me ask instead, Juliette and Emily, if you agree with Max's assessment that this is now the end of the political road and higher ambitions for Liz Cheney?
Juliette Kayyem [00:24:14] Here's how I see it. People say the Republicans, it's the Republican base. It's not fixable. So the Republican Party will — I mean, in the sense that there is going to be that 20 or 30 percent that is going to pick a Trump. It's going to be DeSantis, by the way. I mean, like I can tell you that now. And so the question is whether there's a third party and whether she and others like Max and others who have been leading the sort of our party is not this organized and this space. And then in which case you could see something coming out of it. I know we're all like, oh, my God, a third party, whatever. We have had other parties in this country that, you know, come and go, and maybe we're at one of those transformative stages that's aligned with the demographic changes that are happening in this country, which is we are going to be a majority non Caucasian U.S. citizen nation by the time our kids have kids. So maybe this is the time for that structural shift.
Emily Bazelon [00:25:09] On paper, you can see the support for it, because I think there are a lot of people who, for various reasons, find Democrats, some of them at least, alienating and are not super socially conservative, but think that economically conservative views are more identified with Republicans. And you could see a center, like that's the American center, the elusive American center that has a lot of power. I don't see how we get from here to there. We have evolved into this two party system. You would need so much money and some amazing person to lead the charge, right? Like we have not had a successful third party candidacy, I mean, I feel like probably the most successful person was Ross Perot. Am I forgetting someone? And that just shows...
Harry Litman [00:25:54] In the last hundred years. I think that's fair, but before then.
Emily Bazelon [00:25:57] Yeah, like it's really, really hard to pull that this actually off.
Harry Litman [00:26:01] In the 19th century there are a few examples, yeah. And parties did die then, but it is a different world.
Max Boot [00:26:06] I mean think the only way you get from here to there is the Republican Party has to suffer a lot more electoral devastation than they've experienced today.
Harry Litman [00:27:12] All right, let's tack now to infrastructure and cyber attacks. We had this week a minor piece of good news, which is that the colonial pipeline is operational again. But I don't know if you share it, one gets the impression, I do, that the country doesn't fully appreciate the implications of the successful attack on a pipeline that provides 45 percent of the East Coast's fuel. If this has been a physical military attack, it would be an existential threat to the country. So are people not fully appreciating what happened? And if they're not, why aren't they?
Juliette Kayyem [00:27:54] You know, like those people that go on Twitter and who are so annoying and they're like, 'we're not talking enough about X, Y and Z.' And you're like, that was almost me this week. I stopped myself...
Harry Litman [00:28:04] You're a thought leader Juliette!
Juliette Kayyem [00:28:05] I stopped myself like ten times...
Emily Bazelon [00:28:08] 'Move to my issue, I care about this!'
Juliette Kayyem [00:28:08] I'm that person right now, and I had to stop myself from tweeting that out because I thought, one, we were sort of missing the story, but also this was a big deal. Now, a week later, it may be that this was a sort of unintended consequences hack, like that it may be that the group did not intend to have Colonial take the entire system offline. But this is a huge deal, and the reason why is, Harry as you were saying, is in security we've conceptualized and divided up the way we think about things between cybersecurity and physical security. This is proof that that division does not make sense. And I don't know if I should believe Colonial or not, but there's a reason we don't quite understand why they took the system completely offline when they said that there was no operational impact.
So one suspects, and there's been some reporting on this by some news organizations that in fact, it did have an operational impact because — this is a term that we use, pumping blind, that likely what happened is they were pumping oil, they lost transparency of flow rate and pressure, and it may have been dangerous for a little, but because you don't want to pump oil into pipes. So that's the first thing, so some good takeaways are that division. The other, just from a homeland security perspective, we spend a lot of time in physical security thinking about things like what we call cascading losses. You don't want — how do you stop cascading losses? How do you failsafe systems? So in other words, there's damage because the bad thing is already happened, but less damage is better than more damage.
Harry Litman [00:29:47] Staunch to the flow, yeah.
Juliette Kayyem [00:29:50] Yeah, so I don't understand how their response plan was an on/off switch. I mean, do they have nothing in between turning like half of America offline or not, and thank God it wasn't winter. So that's a good lesson learned to me, that we have to figure out ways in which the system can be protected in ways that would allow it to flow, even if there was a disruption. Because, look, we did that after the big blackouts in the 1970s in New York and throughout the Eastern Seaboard. Those don't happen anymore, right? I mean, most blackouts that happen, say, in New York are eight or 12 or 16 blocks or some. Why is that? It is because we learn to essentially stop cascading losses. You essentially learn to protect the system from itself when there was a loss. And so we got to figure out how to do that in other industries, because it cannot be that our infrastructure, that the only response we have is an off switch.
Harry Litman [00:30:39] I don't think you're nearly panicky enough, actually. And I don't know who they are, who Darkside, were they, you know, like sophisticated room of Russians or were they like some pimply prodigies, but they paid ransom of five million dollars. And whatever advances we make, there are other advances to be made. I mean, this seems like a new science fiction world and a great business plan for some very smart people over there. OK, fine, we figure out what to do when it happens again, but holy cow, people from abroad lobbed this in, and this seems like a pretty big development in terms of risk going forward.
Max Boot [00:31:19] I come at this with a more kind of conventional defense analyst point of view, and I just note that we have a defense budget of more than $700 billion a year, and a lot of that can be negated very quickly if we lose the edge in cyber weapons. In fact, I just read, and I would recommend to your audience this new book called 2034 by retired Admiral James Stavridis and my friend and former Marine Eliot Ackerman, which is a — since you mentioned science fiction, I mean, this is a fictionalized war scenario in 2034 where we go to war with China and very quickly, not to give away the plot, what we very quickly discover is that our superiority in conventional weapons and with the aircraft carrier battle groups that have been the underpinning of American military strength for more than 70 years, all of that is very quickly negated because the Chinese have jumped out into the lead and have cyber weapons that we cannot match, and so if they can blind our military systems, then all we have is a bunch of useless metal junk.
We'll be sitting ducks for the kind of weapons that the Chinese are deploying. And so I think the problem is, it's just very hard to know to what extent is this a fictional or a real scenario, because all this competition which is going on in cyber warfare, is very much a behind the scenes kind of thing. And occasionally it flashes into the open, for example, when we use we and the Israelis use the Stuxnet virus to disable some of the Iranian nuclear program. Or now you have this hacker group called Darkside attacking the Colonial Pipeline, but you're not really seeing the full suite of capabilities that we have or the Chinese or Russians, some of the really sophisticated actors have because we are holding those back for a much larger conflict.
It's a little bit like World War II, where in the 1930s the Japanese and we were building aircraft carriers, but nobody really knew what their importance would be in a future conflict until the balloon actually goes up and the guns actually open up. And then you realize, hey, this whole navy that we built based on battleships, that's all just junk. You got to have aircraft carriers, and now I feel like we're at a similar point. I think we can all agree that cyber war is an incredibly important domai, but I just don't think anybody in the world really knows how our capabilities match up with anybody else's. And we really won't know unless, God forbid, that day comes when we actually have to go to war with them.
Emily Bazelon [00:33:43] Well, that seems like a much broader picture than I feel like I quite grasp. But I have just like kind of anti-expert question, which is that — so I will just admit, I did not understand that pipelines, which seemed to me like vital infrastructure, could be both privately owned and not subject to the same kind of cyber attack prevention regulations as electricity utilities. That was like news to me, although I got in big trouble for saying that in my house because my husband actually teaches an energy history class. But I made him go find me a picture of this pipeline. It's huge! How can it be like segregated off in some world in which, like the regulations that protect us against attacks on our electricity grid don't apply? And then separately from that, are those regulations even strong enough? Does that go more to the issues that you both are raising?
Harry Litman [00:34:37] How can it be also disabled by, I mean, we don't exactly know who, but people ten thousand miles away?
Juliette Kayyem [00:34:43] That's — I mean, look, the regulations often do cut to the physical aspects of it. Like to think of the nuclear industry, there is a lot of critical infrastructure that is heavily regulated, some more than others. But the problem is because it's next to this bifurcation between sort of industrial vulnerabilities, 'stuff,' and cyber vulnerabilities which exist in corporations that divide those dockets between a chief security officer and a chief information security officer, as if those weren't related, right? And how the Defense Department does it as well, so I agree with you. I mean, I think this is a wake up call and the new executive order does this a little bit, that Biden signed this week, of you just got to raise the floor a little bit on the cyber side, because it's not all about innovation, right? It's actually about vulnerability.
Harry Litman [00:35:32] On the science fiction side, so one thing to note, they paid ransom, which I was pretty struck by, and then in cryptocurrency, holy cow, welcome to the future. All right, let's take just a couple minutes to talk about the big story The New York Times broke. This is describing a ring of conservative activists, including members of notorious Project Veritas, and their busy and expensive campaign of dirty tricks to try to get at perceived disloyalty by members of the Trump administration. The principal target, H.R. McMaster, a little strange because Trump could just, and did, fire him as national security adviser, but also FBI agents, models with fake names and expensive apartments trying to compromise them, the kind of thing you think maybe Russians would do, but it was citizens. On the other hand, it hasn't been joined yet with anyone in the government. So I guess one question to everybody, which what are your instincts for whether this is going to get a lot bigger?
Max Boot [00:36:36] I don't know that it's going to get any bigger, I mean, my initial reaction is these guys thought that they were in a Jason Bourne movie, but they were actually in an episode of Get Smart. I mean, because, you know, this is just so moronic and clumsy.
Harry Litman [00:36:50] I said on Chris Hayes, it was half All the President's Men and half Borat, but yeah...
Max Boot [00:36:54] I think it was more Borat than All the President's Men, but I mean, this is kind of a reminder that this whole Trump administration paranoia about the deep state led these guys down some pretty scary directions. As we know, there is not actually any such thing as a deep state, but there is a shadow state which arose around the Trump administration, which included a lot of these right wing activists, like the folks in Project Veritas, and of course, it includes people like Sean Hannity and the crew at Fox News. It includes a lot of people, political action committees, major donors. This is a very right-wing, very destabilizing element, which is really willing to stoop to any level to get what they want politically. And from a policy standpoint, you had crazy people in the administration like Peter Navarro and Steven Miller, Steve Bannon at one point, and then they left, and then some of them left and became members of this kind of shadowy state, working up plots.
And of course, you had Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and many others and you had the tentacles of this thing connected all the way to Russian intelligence. This is just very bizarre and very scary. There actually was a conspiracy going on, and arguably it had a decisive impact on the 2016 election. It was attempted again in 2020, there are a lot of links to folks like Erik Prince, of course, whose sister was the secretary of education. So there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to get to the bottom of this, but it's just a reminder of the bullet that we dodged by a fairly narrow margin when Trump lost in 2020. I mean, can you imagine these conspiracy theorists and nut cases having close proximity to the Oval Office for another four years? Look at how much damage they did in the first four, imagine how much they could have done in the next four. And although we dodged the bullet, we could be in the line of fire again, because there's nothing to say that Trump himself or some Trump-kin won't win the presidency at some point in the future.
Emily Bazelon [00:38:53] Can we also just say in the Get Smart vein that Project Veritas, which is basically like a gonzo operation, is raising a ton of money. There are millions of dollars getting plowed into all of this. And, Max, while I think you're right, and it's important to take seriously the more nefarious aspects of this, there's also just the sense in which like, oh my God, like really? They were really doing this? It does not seem to have been terribly effective.
Max Boot [00:39:19] Let me get back to you on my shoe phone.
Juliette Kayyem [00:39:20] Yes, exactly.
Emily Bazelon [00:39:22] Oh, my God. Everyone is like a serious Get Smart fan, I'm so happy!
Harry Litman [00:39:25] Of course...
Max Boot [00:39:25] My favorite show, my favorite show.
Juliette Kayyem [00:39:29] That's so funny, because we were looking for old shows for the kids to watch, the teen boys, and they loved Monk. But I bet you Get Smart, I should introduce them to.
Harry Litman [00:39:40] All right, we have like a minute, 90 seconds or so for our final Five Words or Fewer feature, and the question actually picks up on what Max just said. It's from Christopher Jay who asks, 'will the 2024 Republican nominee for president be a Trumpist?' We all have to answer in five words or fewer, Emily, can I impose on you to go first?
Emily Bazelon [00:40:02] Yes.
Harry Litman [00:40:04] Yes, I can impose on you. So what's your answer?
Emily Bazelon [00:40:07] Yes!
Harry Litman [00:40:07] No, just kidding, Max?
Max Boot [00:40:10] Yes.
Juliette Kayyem [00:40:11] Oh, my God. OK, I have one that's four words or maybe it's five.
Harry Litman [00:40:15] I think you have eight words left over, if you borrow from them.
Juliette Kayyem [00:40:18] I'm going to pick the nominee, DeSantis is DeMan. Period. Mark my words.
Max Boot [00:40:23] I think I mean, I think he's got an excellent shot. But remember, if Trump wants to run again, there's nobody who will stand in his way.
Juliette Kayyem [00:40:29] That's true. But here's how the next horrible three years — so like, we're going to have, like, the good side of the next three years, just like Biden fixing things, and we have normal fights, like Max and I will start to actually disagree on things again, like that will be good. We'll be happy about that world, about normal things, right? And then, and then there's the alternative where New York seeks extradition of Trump in Florida. DeSantis denies it, Trump can't move anywhere, and DeSantis runs for president as the keeper of Trump. This is my, like literally I stay up late at night thinking 'I had a good run, but I don't know if I can survive that.'
Harry Litman [00:41:07] But now you can do the movie. You can get the movie rights. Alright, well my answer is, Too depressed to say anything.
That is all the time we have, thank you very much to Emily, Max and Juliette, and thank you very much, listeners, for tuning in to Talking Feds. If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts, and please take a moment to rate and review this podcast. You can follow us on Twitter, @TalkingFedsPod , to find out about future episodes and other Feds-related content. You can check us out on the web, talkingfeds.com , where we have a full episode transcripts. And you can look to see our latest offerings on Patreon, where we post discussions about special topics exclusively for supporters, such as the one with former civil rights prosecutor Alex Whiting on the Chauvin federal prosecution. Submit your questions to questions@talkingfeds.com , whether it's for Five Words or Fewer, or general questions about the inner-workings of the legal system for our Sidebar segments. Thanks for tuning in, and don't worry: as long as you need answers, the Feds will keep talking.
Talking Feds is produced by Jennifer Bassett and Rebecca Lowe Patton. Our editor is Justin Wright. David Lieberman and Rosie Dawn Griffin are our contributing writers. Additional research assistance by Abby Meyer. Production assistance by Matt McArdle. And our consulting producer is Andrea Carla Michaels. Our gratitude, as always, to the amazing Philip Glass, who graciously lets us use his music. Talking Feds is a production of Dalito, LLC. I'm Harry Litman, see you next time.
