Overreach: Episode 33

This week on Alternate Shots, John Ellis and Richard Haass assess a world in which overreach has become policy. They begin with Iran, where the United States and Tehran appear to be acting against their own interests: bombing, retaliation, threats to the Strait of Hormuz, and a memorandum of understanding that solved too little and conceded too much. Haass argues the next step should be a ceasefire, renewed nuclear diplomacy, and a more serious effort to reopen the strait. They then turn to a possible U.S.-Saudi nuclear arrangement, the absence of process in American foreign policy, Mayor Mamdani’s performative politics, a brutal Fox poll for Trump, AI systems moving faster than governance, and, finally, Cam Young, the Open, and the World Cup.

Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass

News Items on Substack

Home and Away on Substack

Produced by Dale Eisinger 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome back to Alternate Shots. I'm John Ellis. I'm the founder and editor of two Substack newsletters. One is called News Items. The other is called Political News Items. You can find them both at news-items.com. I'm Richard Haas.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

I am a uh regular reader of all that Mr. Ellis produces, but I'm also, in my spare time, the author of a newsletter on Substack called Home and Away, which, as you might figure out, is about things both domestic and international.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Before we begin, I should say that anyone who's listening to this should go to Google immediately and type in Richard Haas Home and Away Substack and sign up. It's still free, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:48

Some might say it's the perfect market, but yes, it's still free. I decided that uh had the luxury at this stage of my life and trying to uh increase subscription, and uh I could sell lemonade if I needed to raise some some extra funds.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

So everybody wants to know what you're thinking about developments in Iran, which is to say, in about three or four people uh emailed me and said, what does Richard think about about what's going on in Iran? I am very interested to know what you think about Iran. We've had a change in the U.S. force posture, obviously. We've had 12 days of quote retaliatory bombing. Uh we could go on at some length, but uh what is what's going on? What's your take on this?

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Well, first I like your deficient definition of everyone, three or four people. Plus, you would make it five. So that's uh five.

SPEAKER_00 1:38

It's a big number.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

I'm overwhelmed by the the interest, the demand for what it is I have to say. My ego, it's good, my ego's intact. John, I I don't have a lot or really anything good to say right now. The principal dynamic is between the United States and Iran. Israel's sort of been pushed off to the side to some extent. Things have unraveled from a few weeks or a month ago. The ceasefire is no longer, as you correctly say, there's uh increasing exchanges. The U.S. is attacking Iranian quote-unquote military sites, but also industrial sites and some infrastructure. Iran is attacking U.S. bases in the region. A few service members have died. There are also through the Houthis now attacking in the Red Sea. Some ships, but not a whole lot of ships, are getting through the uh strait, and Iran is attacking parts of the energy and water infrastructure of neighboring countries. So we're seeing escalation, both geographically, but also in terms of uh target. I don't see how either side's interests are served by this. I would have thought the United States wants the strait open. Markets, I think, would agree with me. Ultimately, we want to have a limit on Iran's nuclear program best achieved through negotiations. We're not in a position, I've been arguing this for weeks now, to force a military confrontation or escalation. We can't defend any of the neighbors, and we haven't yet minimized the role of the straits. I don't understand why we would want to bring matters to a head here and now. I also don't understand Iranian policy. Why are they, you know, shooting at uh tankers simply because they're using this or that channel? They got everything they wanted, and probably more in the MOU, the right to charge tolls after uh 60 days had uh happened. Uh also Iran, its economy is still in terrible shape, and it needs to rebuild the country. And I would have thought the regime wants to consolidate. It's still a new regime in some ways. So I don't understand uh the logic of either side. I've got today coming out uh an issue of home and away, and the word I use to describe both sides is overreach. I think both sides now are trying to accomplish too much against their own interests and also against the experience of the last few months. Why Donald Trump thinks that more bombing of Iran is gonna get regime change or capitulation or is not gonna trigger retaliation, I do not understand. And why Iran thinks it's gonna get more than it currently has in terms of the what it had in terms of the strait or economic benefits, I don't understand. So retaliation or revenge is not a serious strategy, as yeah, simply for either side. So I actually think both countries are acting contrary to their own interests, and what I'd what I'd hope is one side or the other, more likely the United States, would simply say would make a big push for a ceasefire. Right. And to essentially reopen the strait under terms both sides could live with. We wouldn't implement uh, I won't go into the details, but there's aspects of the MOU I wouldn't implement. But I would essentially get a ceasefire, get negotiations on the nuclear issue under underway, get the and get the strait open. It's not perfect, but it would be a step in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Aaron Powell I do think the Iranians uh you know just won't take yes for an answer, right? I mean the MOU was, let's say, lopsided in their favor. And so given, as you point out, given the economy and given the you know just the need to rebuild and re-arm and so on and so forth, you would take yes for an answer, but their answer is no. We're gonna tell the Hooties to shut down another passageway for oil to go through. It seems insane.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

I mean, you've uh it could be because you you've got some truly radical elements and there's no centralized command and control. It could be they're simply fueled by revenge. It could be that you have elements that are rogue in Iran. Part of their decentralization has been to make it hard to totally render them impotent. But the problem there is that you have rogue elements that might be uh acting revenge is a powerful fuel, particularly in Iranian culture. Also, what you don't have is a clearly uh authoritative figure. That the parallel that comes to mind, John, you and I are both unfortunately old enough to remember, is 1988, after close to a decade of the Iran-Iraq war. And it was actually this month, it was July 88, Ayatollah Khomeini gave his famous interview where he said, uh, I have reversed my policy. I will accept a ceasefire resolution with the hated Saddam Hussein, hated Iraq. This is like drinking poison, but I will do it in order to preserve my country and the revolution. So we, in a sense, we need an Iranian figure who could do that now. I'm not sure one exists. The Karanaya Tola doesn't have standing, hasn't been seen really or heard from. And again, it's, you know, I just wish one person on the U.S. side had ever thought, hey, if we ever need to think about war termination, we need someone we can negotiate with. That thought seems not to have entered anyone's head on the U.S. side. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

One thing I wanted to ask you about, maybe you've heard this from diplomatic sources or other people that you know in the region, but we read these reports over and over again that Iranian uh force or missiles, drones, whatever, have hit U.S. military installations in this or that Middle Eastern country. There's a story today that uh the targeting of uh Iranian drones or missiles on CIA offices or whatever was very precise that the Russians probably helped them do the targeting, hit this CIA agent you know agency outpost in I'm making this up, Oman, and bingo, they had the coordinates and they hit it. Aaron Powell Why are we not getting reports about the damage to U.S. property, U.S. assets, U.S. headquarters uh throughout the Middle East if if the Iranians are bombing us or bombing those assets over and over and over again?

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Aaron Ross Powell A couple of thoughts. The reason I think we're not getting accurate reports is the administration wants to obscure the real cost of the war. If things are going swimmingly, you don't spend time talking about how your bases are getting attacked and your service members are are getting injured or killed. I also think it interesting that this Russian possibility that they have provided targeting to the Iranians, it sounds plausible to me. I obviously don't have independent evidence. You know, my my satellites are down. They're in the shop. And Elon has cut me off. But it sounds plausible, and it could be a bit of pushback because of what the intelligence were providing Ukraine. The Russians might be saying, look, if you're gonna do things that allow Ukraine to kill Russians, we're gonna do things that allow Iran to kill uh Americans. So it sounds plausible. I don't, though, again, see anyone in the administration criticizing Russia, particularly. It's all of a piece with the speech of about a week ago when the president talked about foreign interference that didn't exist, as best I can tell, in the 2020 election. And instead of picking on Russia, that clearly tried to do things, he picked on China. So yet again, we seem to be giving the uh our friends in Moscow uh a free pass. And again, uh I don't I don't quite get it.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

Aaron Ross Powell We have to talk about the nuke deal with the Sauds that had always been tethered to Saudi Arabia recognizing Israel uh within the context of the Abraham Accord, I think that's accurate. And yet not so. The deal was apparently not signed but agreed to yesterday. What are we to make of that? I mean, is that a smart thing that Trump has done or the administration has done? Is that is that a risky obviously introducing more nuclear, quote, capability, end quote, is probably not a good idea. But what's your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Aaron Ross Powell It's a really interesting thing from a couple of levels. One is, and as you just suggested, after the news story came out that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had agreed to an arrangement, quite a quite generous one, much more generous than the one that the United States entered into with the United Arab Emirates years ago, which is a problem, but that would give the Saudis uh enrichment capabilities and put certain limits on the inspections they would have to uh accept. So it's not nearly as stringent as to deal with the UAE. The president then posted subsequently, like 24 hours after the story came out, that this was all contingent on the Saudis signing up to the Abraham Accords and establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Well, they're not gonna do it so long as Israel's doing what it's doing and Gaza and the West Bank and to some extent Lebanon, which two things suggest to me. Somebody got to the president and complained about the deal and said, hey, you've got to link it to this. And it also suggests to me this administration doesn't have anything that remotely looks like an interagency process. The idea that you would put something like this forward, and we'll get to the merits of it in a second, without thinking about the UAEing angle or the Israeli angle or whatever. And then after it's out there, people push back, and then you start amending it before the ink is even dry, which isn't clearly going to tick off the Saudis, and they're gonna say, this no way. This is just yet another example about how ad hoc foreign policy is a really dangerous pastime. In terms of the substance of the agreement, a lot it would depend upon the details in terms of enrichment and inspection. You know, I think the president's motivated by the commercial aspect, good for Westinghouse and others. I think he's motivated possibly by wanting to keep the Russians on the uh Chinese, for all I know, even the North Koreans or somebody, but certainly the Russians and the Chinese out of Saudi Arabia. There may be a strategic reason, which I don't see people talking about, which is if you don't want Saudi Arabia to simply pick up the phone and dial 1-800 Islamabad and get it from the Pakistanis, this might be something that would uh be useful. But in the context of this war, in the context of uncertain American protection, yeah, I think it puts another log or two on the fire of moving the world in the direction of more countries having nuclear weapons. So again, this, you know, Saudi Arabia hasn't passed that point. But if this were to go ahead, and it's a big if, it would get them closer to that point. And also I expect the Iranians will read this and say, okay, that's another reason we should have a nuclear weapon. I expect others in the region will say, geez, if Iran wants one and the Saudis are going to get halfway there, well then the Turks or the UAE or the Egyptians or who knows who else might rev up their engines in this area, whatever the specifics of this agreement, and we haven't seen them yet. I just think it does add to this momentum in the region, which is uh it's an unfortunate momentum. Uh the Middle East, shall we say, is sufficiently turbulent without the overlay of nuclear weapons. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Just a historical fact, uh, if it is indeed a fact, but I always thought the arrangement between the Saudi Arabians and the Pakistanis was that Sauds underwrote the development of the Pakistani nuclear program with the understanding that if the Sauds needed a nuclear weapon, Pakistan would provide it. Is that not true?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Aaron Powell I don't know the details, but they've always had a close strategic relationship. They it got closer over the last year. Years ago, they got these uh medium-range missiles, what were they called? CSS-2s, I think they were called, if my what's left of my memory serves me right. Uh so yeah, I, you know, Saudi Arabia, I assume there's a bit of a connection there, shall we say. And when Pakistan was always seen as the country with the quote-unquote, you know, Islamic bomb, there was uh a widespread view that Saudi financing was was was part of it, and there would be some implicit or explicit quid pro-quote. So I've just always assumed that a push came to shove, for example, if Iran emerged one afternoon with one or more nuclear weapons, that the Saudis would reach out to the Pakistanis and the Pakistanis would give them, quote unquote, something to equalize it.

SPEAKER_00 14:09

I wanted to ask you, there's a report today in news items that uh Mayor Mundani has put out a warrant for your arrest. Is that true?

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yet again, a performative move by a mayor who seems, you know, he does videos against wealthy people like Ken Griffin, and he just reinforces the flow of people to Nashville and I don't know, Austin and Miami and what have you, and not just people, but also jobs. Then he does this kind of theatrical thing about going after BB Netanyaho, knowing full well the U.S. is not a party to the International Criminal Court. Can I just say that the mayor of New York has more, should have more than enough to do dealing with the city of New York? Last I checked, this budget has grown far faster than any rate of inflation. Last I checked, services have not improved in any way commensurate with the uh increase in the size of the budget. New York spends more per pupil than any other city in the country, probably the world, uh, on education. And test scores do not, shall we say, justify the uh expenditure. You don't have to walk or look very far before you see a kind of epidemic of uh homelessness. You got real problems with housing. I got a long list, and by the way, some of those problems are going to be exacerbated by rent control. So I I know, you know, I know someone as gifted politically as Mayor Mamdani wants to have a permanent campaign, but at some point I think it would behoove him to govern. Just saying, John.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

So you deny that he's uh issued.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Well, after what I just said, it's I probably made it true.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

I think, I think, uh, I think they're looking for you as we speak. Um but apparently you're getting on a plane. So you'll you'll be able to skip down.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

There we go.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Uh so our friends at Fox News, Fox News channel, uh way back in the day, uh Roger Hills asked me uh to hire a polster for Fox News, and we hired Jimmy Carter's pollster, John Gorman. Uh and John Gorman was there for quite a while and then he got sick. And so uh they replaced John Gorman with uh Darren Shaw from uh who had uh polled for George W. Bush and a guy named Chris Anderson, who's a Democratic Party pollster, and they do a first-rate high-quality poll which pisses Trump off every single time it's released. And lo and behold, uh they released a new one last night, which is probably the worst poll you can imagine if you were hoping for a good midterm election result and you were on the Trump administration side of the fence. Did you get a chance to read it, or should I just tell you what aftermath will come?

SPEAKER_01 17:06

I am all ears, my friend.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

So what happens in in the cases like this is that the Fox News Channel puts out a poll at 6 o'clock and it goes on their uh Brett Bear newscast. And, you know, everybody in the Trump White House tries to keep the president from finding out about it, but of course he does.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

And uh and he has to put it out on MSNBC.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

And he goes completely crazy and he calls Rupert, who may or may not take the call. But if he does take the call, Rupert says to him, I'll I'll take care of it. And then Rupert calls a fellow uh who we will not name at Fox News Channel and says, you know, you're gonna hear from the White House, they're really angry, and so on and so forth, and uh don't worry about it. And uh so then time passes, all is forgotten until the next Fox News Channel poll. Um so that's that's uh that's gonna be in about a month, I think, and we can uh reprise this part of the conversation uh then. Finally, I wanted to ask you about if you saw the story about OpenAI's program, its new model, I should say, going rogue and and getting into the hugging face site. Uh what'd you make of that?

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Aaron Ross Powell It's like an AI-related shoe to mixed metaphors drops every day, and it just reinforces my sense, and I don't claim it, you know, any vast expertise here, John. You're you're more fluent than I am, that the technology is just outpacing any ability of individual governments or societies, not to mention collective governments, to deal with it. We're now, you know, I don't know how long recursive or self-improving AI has been about, but if it it's probably under a year in a version that kind of looks like the current one. I just think, if anything, the gap between what AI can do and our ability to cope successfully with it and steer it or head some things off, that gap is growing. And the idea that it could be used to undo a lot of uh critical infrastructure. And we're not that far away from this. What's interesting to me is people talk about it as though this is long distant future. Some of this is now, or it could be in weeks or months. And uh I just don't get the sense that uh we're even close to being ready for it.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

There's a guy named Mustafa Suleiman who worked at DeepMind and he's now head of AI for Microsoft. And he was interviewed by Trevor Noah the other day, and I was cruising around trying to figure out about this open AI thing going rogue, and I came across this interview, and he said as follows he highlights four capabilities that together in an AI system would trigger extreme caution and regulatory action. And those four things are recursive self-improvement, which is essentially code writing itself, setting its own goals, the again, the model deciding what it wants to do, acting autonomously, not getting any permission, and accruing its own resources. In the case of OpenAI getting into hugging phase, all four of those uh criteria are met. Um so your point about it not being far away is uh two things, John.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

One is uh thank God though, there's not a fifth measure, which is the ability to launch its own podcast. Because then we this might no longer be the world's fastest growing podcast. And I I I I would worry about that.

SPEAKER_00 20:42

I'm just uh I just I don't think we have to worry about that yet.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Yet the other is that um any gap between the US and China here seems to be small and, if you will, evaporating. That the Chinese seem to be quite nimble and in many cases are coming up with relatively inexpensive ways of doing stuff that took us a little bit more time and money. So the idea that we're gonna have advantages that are going to uh persist for some time seems to me increasingly unlikely.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah, I actually have a theory that uh big AI, quote unquote, is going to have to be regarded as too big to fail because you have this enormous build-out, obviously funded by enormous debt. And in order to, you know, get the revenue going to finance that debt, uh, you're gonna need a lot of corporate customers. And if you and I are the head of Home and Away Inc., and we're looking at the cost of OpenAI's model as opposed to the cost of China's deep seek model, uh, we're gonna choose the deep seek model because it's so much you know less uh costly. Some of the world may feel the same. Same way. And and indeed that's what's happening. I mean, more and more businesses. I think two-thirds of uh U.S. businesses are now using some Chinese model just because A, it's almost as good, if not as good, and B, it's really it's much, much less expensive. So anyway, we can get to that another time. We have to get to the big story, which is our our good friend David Young's son, Cameron Young, put on one of the great final round performances that that you and I have seen in some time. Yeah. And he arrived at the 18th hole basically with with a chance, uh, good chance to make a playoff and maybe win outright. But he made a bogey, and uh Ryan Fox News Fox birdied the 18th hole inexplicably. I mean, 19 times out of 20 he'd be par or bogey, but this particular time he birdied to win the tournament. How crushed were you when that putt went in? Well full disclosure. Certainly not crushed.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Full disclosure. Look, we all root for Tam Young, aka the legend of Sleepy Hollow. We all root for uh he shot, by the way, a 29 on the front. 28? 28 wasn't close to 24. I mean, this is this is crazy. He chose a bad hole to have his only bogey of the day. But at the beginning of the round, if you had said, what do you shoot a 64 or something on the final day? 64, yeah. Um you would, and you think he ended up nine under, you would have guessed that was close to good enough. And then Mr. I only require eight seconds from the time I set it get next to the ball before I hit it, Fox, who is other than Cam Young now, my favorite golfer simply because of his pace of play. Uh, and by the way, anyone listening to this who plays golf, there's no excuse to take half a minute or 45 seconds with 16 practice swings and you know, waggling this and you know, checking that, like Patrick Cantley or others. Just get up there and hit the goddamn ball. And this guy did a pretty good job of it. So uh I kind of like, yeah, I kind of like him. I'd never heard of him before, full dish, my other full disclosure. But um, but it was hard to root against him. And he was just so unassuming, and he, you know, and I know I kind of like he and Cam Young. What they have in common is they're both kind of low personalities. Uh they're capable, and but they're uh the the pilot light burns low in terms of uh the personality, they're not exactly like Rory or Tiger or some of these guys. And uh, but I I admire them. Uh it's kind of nice to see different folks winning a major. It's just sad for E. Cam Young, he's now been a bridesmaid several times. He's probably emerged as close to the after Scheffler. He might be the second most consistent American golfer now.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

If you look back from the Ryder Cup through today, he is just really and he has and he's won a couple of tournaments. He has just hasn't won one of the majors, and now he's gonna have to wait till next year to get uh to get another shot at it.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah, it's the second time, by the way, that he's finished second in the open championship. Uh the first time is at St. Andrews, and next year is at St. Andrews. Uh so uh we're hoping that uh why did they uh that will be the why is the open no longer the British Open?

SPEAKER_01 25:28

What happened? I missed that story. What what was the O It's like Prince, like the the Open formerly known as British. How did that happen?

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Well, because it's not just the British Open. It's the Open, meaning it's global. The open is global, it's bigger, it's more important.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

But they're not gonna play it in Cape Verde despite their showing at the World Cup. It's it's still, you know, it the home team is still Brits.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Uh no, no. The open championship is the big one. The others are lesser. It's in the name, Richard. It's in the name. It's a branding exercise. Okay. Speaking of favorite people, who is your favorite person from uh from the World Cup?

SPEAKER_01 26:20

I know who's not my favorite person. Any of the officials. I hate, I gotta tell you, I hate virtually every game the officials take over the match. And it's either a red card or it's not, and then you gotta play a man down, or you'd say it's a penalty kick or it's not. I find, you know, all sports I understand are affected by the referee or official. Football, as they call it, uh, I find it's just way too decisive too often. So I just gotta tell you, that leaves me really, really uncomfortable. I ended up really disliking the Argentine team. Uh I think they never should have made the finals, and then they behave. The word that comes to mind is like louts. They were just as ungenerous, unsportsmanlike, and just dirty players, by the way. Dirty players. Both in uh how they uh committed fouls and then simulated them on their own side. Uh, but you asked for my favorite. Well, it's it's hard lot not to love the guy, uh Harley from Norway. What a great player, and just kind of and also he didn't throw his teammate under the bus. I forget his name, who should have done instead of instead of you know taking it himself, he should have passed it. And he they could have gone up to nothing uh against England. And he was said, look, we got here together, we're teams, we're out there to have fun, you know. Who knows what anybody else would have done in that situation? It was so generous. I mean, again, it was really it was a if you were a parent or a coach, you could do a lot worse than point to him and say, This is how you act when you're on a team, and this is a really healthy approach to a sport. There's a lot, there was a lot of you know, you if you were going to write a book about him, it would be the joy of football. And it was nice to nice to sing.

SPEAKER_00 28:05

Yeah, he was my favorite. Uh my favorite team was Kate Faraday, which uh held us Spaniards to a draw in the early going, maybe the single greatest performance by a country of 500 people in the World Cup or 500,000 people in the World Cup.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

I think Kirk Happena. Kate Faraday is the king of the World Cup.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Another issue. By the way, can we one one geopolitical question about the World Cup? The other thing I don't get is China. China. China is so political in its emphasis on sports and how it's used the Olympics and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

And the non-presence, if you will, in the World Cup and all that, I find I find odd. I can't imagine why there wouldn't be some massive state project second only to AI or to increasing the nuclear arsenal to make China competitive in in football. And I don't I don't get it.

SPEAKER_00 29:00

Well, it's also incredibly humiliating, right? I mean, it's a country of more than a billion people, and they didn't make the cut, and Japan and Korea did.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Like what's going on here? So let's just say Cape Verde is per capita the best football country in the world, and China, and China's the worst. And I think that's kind of interesting. We need a new index, John. I think with news items, I think we've got to introduce the football or some we have to come up with some per capita index with sports. I don't know. I'm gonna think about it.

SPEAKER_00 29:32

So we're at the we're at the mark here, so we're gonna let it go. But we do want to let our listeners know that it's Richard's birthday uh next week. And so happy birthday to you, Richard.

SPEAKER_01 29:44

Thank you, John. I know I'm impressed with your sources.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Uh I have very, very good sources.

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Uh I've reached the stage where uh I'm not sure whether you you broadcast them or you uh you hide them. But uh much to be thankful for. Plus, the good news, I should say the greatest birthday present ever is uh we've got a new grandson. And he's uh he's uh uh a healthy boy, about three weeks old and uh three and a half weeks old, and it's uh that is uh that's as good as it gets.

SPEAKER_00 30:17

There you go. All right. Until next time, thank you all for listening, and thanks as always to our producer, the great Dale Eisinger. We will see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

Take care, gentlemen.