Anne Applebaum
Appearances
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Most countries don't have elections that are run as we run ours in the United States. So we have a kind of Las Vegas. Anybody can put as much money as they want into the campaign. Anonymously, you can pay political action committees to use your money in various ways. You can do Internet advertising that's not tracked. Anything goes. Other countries have rules. They have rules on campaign finance.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
They're allowed to have rules on how much money you can spend. My husband ran an election campaign to the European Parliament, and his spending limit was 30,000 euros, which is about $30,000. If you put that in the context of the billion-dollar U.S. campaigns, you can see that there's a big difference. One of the things that social media, U.S.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
social media enables is it enables people to get around those rules. European countries are worried that social media algorithms are designed to promote extremes as they do in the United States.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
that the algorithms will promote parties of the extreme right, or in some cases of the extreme left, to the disadvantage of parties in the center, of parties that want consensus, and also of parties that want to stay inside the European Union and that have historically wanted to be aligned with the United States against Russia.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So yes, there is a widespread fear now that social media companies will be used specifically to manipulate and interfere in European conversations States.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
The Digital Services Act was designed to create greater transparency. So, for example, to force X or to force Facebook to reveal to users how it uses their information, how it uses their data, how it uses their algorithms so that it affects what they see. It's not designed to censor. There wouldn't be a ministry of information that decides what can and can't be shown.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
But there would be more information provided to users. The social media companies in the United States very much resent any kind of European regulation. And this includes antitrust regulation, which has also affected Microsoft and Google and other companies. And X appears to be particularly worried about the Digital Services Act changing regulation.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
what it's able to do in Europe and changing the political role that Musk seems to want to play inside elections in Europe. One of the things that Europeans believe is that the reason for the intervention is to promote anti-European parties who will work against the EU and who will therefore prevent this regulation.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It certainly looks like that's what's happening. There isn't really another plausible explanation for why so many of them have begun to support anti-European political parties. Also, it's true that some of them have said it. Mark Zuckerberg, in some statements he made a month or two ago, said that we need to avoid any kind of regulation whatsoever. J.D.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Vance said before Christmas in an interview that, you know, Europeans, if they're going to regulate our tech companies, then maybe we shouldn't offer them security through NATO, which, by the way, that quotation has been much repeated and much discussed in Europe over the last couple of months.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I think it's very important to understand that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is not primarily interested in efficiency. If it were, it wouldn't have encouraged mass resignations in the civil service, nor is it primarily interested in transparency or accountability or better government. If it were interested in those things, it wouldn't be firing random people.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So comments made by both from the tech world and from the current administration have led Europeans to believe that this is an important motivation for the Trump administration.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It's not clear to me yet that Trump is aligning himself with Putin. It's clear that he has agreed to many of Putin's explanations of and theories about the war in Ukraine. So he does use some of Putin's language when he talks about the war. He seems to be influenced by Russian propaganda and by Russia's characterization of the war.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
He may also be influenced by Vance or by Musk or by others around him who have convinced him that Europe, like other American allies like Canada, are somehow ripping off the United States, that the U.S. is somehow a victim of Europe. And I would say those are more important than any kind of alignment.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I mean, the other thing that's important to understand about President Trump, and I think he wouldn't deny this and nor would anybody else around him, is that he's also capable of changing his mind very quickly. So that's another new characteristic of U.S. foreign policy, that it's unpredictable, but unpredictable in a very profound way.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I mean, he could be on one side today and on another side tomorrow. It's very, very difficult for anybody to plan a strategy around that.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
The poster child, the country that many people speak about and refer to, is Hungary. And Hungary is a very important country for Americans to understand because Hungary is a country that elected democratically a leader, Viktor Orban, who then initially, mostly legally...
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
slowly eliminated many of the checks and balances, many of the institutions of Hungarian democracy, making it impossible for him to lose an election. So he culled the Hungarian civil service by changing labor laws, replacing professional civil servants with members of his party. He changed the nature of the Hungarian courts.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Over a period of time, he captured Hungarian media, both through putting pressure, financial pressure on independent media, empowering oligarchs and people around him, businessmen who were close to him, to buy or take over Hungarian media and then transform their nature. Of course, Hungarian state media, he took over.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And slowly over time, he also repeatedly changed the Constitution, which enabled him to change the way elections are run. And he continually made small alterations that were designed to make sure he couldn't lose. And this model, the Orban model, is one that has been admired, spoken of positively by many people around Donald Trump. And of course, it has admirers in Europe as well.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Right now, we have a Slovak government which is seeking to go down a similar road. And we had in the past, between 2015 and 2023, a Polish government that also, again, whose leaders openly admired Orban. They talked about building Budapest and Warsaw and sought really to take a similar path.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It wouldn't be searching for to get control of data for unclear purposes. It wouldn't be dissolving whole departments. What DOGE is interested in is something that I've seen happen in other countries. What it's doing is altering the nature and values of the American federal civil service.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
The Trump administration has absolutely taken actions from the Orban playbook. We know, for example, Project 2025, which was a kind of blueprint written by the think tank, the Heritage Foundation, for some of what's happening now for the takeover of institutions of the state. We know that was heavily influenced by Hungarians. We know that Viktor Orban frequently met Trump during the campaign.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Some of his advisors and ministers have also met with people in the Trump administration around it. Tucker Carlson has extensive long relations with the Hungarian government and has spoken in Budapest. And he's an influential figure in the Trump administration too. So yeah, we know that Hungary is a kind of model for many people.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I mean, I would draw your attention to one way in which Hungary is a model. Hungary has also put an enormous amount of pressure on universities, cutting their budgets, forcing them to eliminate certain kinds of programs. I think anything with the word gender in it had to be eliminated.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Gender studies or women's studies had to be taken out of Hungarian curriculums if you wanted to have any state money. And right now, many U.S. universities are afraid that that same kind of pressure will be applied on them, too. So you can see that many things that were done in Hungary can and will be imitated in the United States.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
One of the strange thing is, is there was I didn't know what he's talking about. I mean, there is no woke movement in Hungary. I mean, I was wondering about that. No, no, no. He he borrowed the American culture war and used it in Hungary as a as a way of attacking his enemies. It was one of the things that he did that Hungarians found very strange, but seems to have worked.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
You know, he also ran an anti-immigrant campaign. even though Hungary has very, very few immigrants. So the immigrants were mostly fictitious. I mean, at least in the United States, we have real immigrants. And so there's a real problem, and you can talk about realistically how to solve it. In Hungary, it was mostly fiction. But he used that language.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And one of the reasons he did it, I think, was to create an international coalition around himself. He spent a lot of time and invested a lot of money in bringing foreign conservatives from Britain, from the United States, from other countries to Budapest. He created a special specific think tank called the Danube Institute, which was designed to do exactly that.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
He spent a lot of time projecting Hungarian ideas into other places. And one of his ideas for how he would stay in power, in other words, although he'd broken many rules and although he was in violation of EU standards of judicial independence, one of the ways he thought he would stay in power was by finding allies outside of Hungary.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And he found many inside the United States, but also in some other European countries.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
What Trump and people around him have been calling for for a long time is a new kind of politics in America and a new kind of government. And now what we see is them carrying out that desire.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Sure. It's a two-way project. I mean, I think it's also important maybe at this point to stress that the project of destroying your democracy as an elected leader is something that you don't have to be right-wing in order to do. So this is more or less the same kind of playbook that Hugo Chavez used in Venezuela. Right. He also famously sacked civil servants.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
There was a moment when he sacked 19,000 employees of the Venezuelan state oil company and replaced them with loyalists who wound up destroying the company. He also attacked judges, media, and so on. The playbook is neither right-wing nor left-wing. It's a playbook about undermining democracy, and it's one that is most often carried out by democratically elected leaders.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
But these are democratically elected leaders who characterize themselves or describe themselves as as deserving of no opposition. So I am the true Hungarian or I am the only real American. I speak for the people and you only speak for elites and foreigners or I speak for. real people, real Americans, and my opponents are radical left lunatics or vermin. But it's a known playbook.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It's unfolded in many other countries. I could name Turkey. I could name India. You can point around the world and find a large number of them. Nowadays, most democracies fail through these kinds of tactics and not through coup d'etat. We have our imagination of a coup or regime change is that There are tanks and violence and, you know, somebody shoots up the chandelier in the presidential palace.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Actually, nowadays, that's not how democracies fail. They fail through attacks on institutions coming from within.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So in Poland, we had exactly this kind of attempted illiberal takeover of the state. And it was partly successful. The destruction of the civil service happened. The politicization of a part of the judiciary happened. The ruling party was never able to completely undermine or destroy the opposition. And also, one of the effects of it being in power for eight years was that it became very corrupt.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So one of the things that happens when you eliminate journalists and you know, corrupt the judges and make it hard for people to understand what the government is doing is that people naturally start trying to steal. And that happened in Poland on a large scale, and people began to see it.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And that offered an opening, if you will, for the political opposition, which had been in a kind of disarray after the After the initial victory of this, it's called the Law and Justice Party. And they took advantage of anger about corruption and anger about economic failure and began to build a new coalition. I think maybe it's a couple of things worth saying about Poland. One is that.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
the autocratic ruling party was defeated at an election because of a broad coalition. There were three parties, center-left, center-right, and liberal. And it also won because of a huge effort to mobilize. They mobilized enormous numbers of young people to vote, women.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I mean, there's another aspect, which is that Poland had the previous party passed an unusually harsh abortion law, abortion having been illegal in Poland for a long time. But One that meant that even women who had medical issues with birth were forced to give birth and some of them began to die. So that became a major political issue as well. but they were able to mobilize people.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Poland had not destroyed its electoral system. In other words, the election was fair in the sense that the people counting the votes were counting them fairly. I mean, it was unfair in other ways, but there was enough mobilization, there was enough anger, and there was a clear enough narrative that allowed pretty disparate parties to come together and defeat at the polls.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It did happen in Poland. I think actually the change in the United States is more dramatic from a civil service that's loyal to the Constitution and to the country and to the rule of law front into a civil service that's loyal to a single person or political party. You know, in Poland, we didn't have those kinds of civil service traditions that went back 100 years. So it wasn't as dramatic.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
But yes, there were... people who had to make decisions about whether to stay, whether to protest. Many people were fired. They lost their jobs. One of the long-term effects is that there are a lot of weaknesses in Polish government. But yeah, when you have a change like that from one kind of system to another, that will leave people loyal to the old system with pretty dramatic choices.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So before Teddy Roosevelt, we had something called the spoils system or patronage. And by the way, it's something that most countries have, I would guess, on the planet. And that meant that all civil servants were hired and fired according to who was the president.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It meant that the civil service was often people's cousins or people's sister-in-law or party loyalists who needed jobs and who could be given them, at least for the time being. The point of working for the government was not to prevent Americans from being poisoned by air pollution or to make sure that children got vaccines.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
The point of working for the government was to get a salary and be loyal to whichever president or whichever political movement was had put you there. Patronage systems are famously corrupt because, again, the people who are in those jobs are only in them because they're being paid.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And they're also famously inefficient because the point is that people are hired not for their expertise or their skills, but they're hired for their political loyalties. Teddy Roosevelt was one of many, although he was a leading voice in the 19th century, of arguing that this system was bad for America and that it should end.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And so the idea that the civil service should be a meritocracy, that in some cases there should be exams or standards that determine who gets hired and who gets promoted— This all dates from that era, kind of the civil service reform movement. And we're so used to it in America that we don't even notice it. We just assume that's what civil servants are and that's what they do.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
But of course, you can end this system just as you began it, and you could end the legal protections that civil servants enjoy, and you could undermine or destroy their ethos, as I said, this ethos of neutrality and patriotism and loyalty to the rule of law.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Some of the tactics that have already been used against the civil service, so these abrupt, very harsh cuts in federal funding, that's already happened. So the National Institutes for Health, the NIH, already made very big cuts in funding of biomedical research, which a handful of big research universities noticed immediately.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
orders to alter or remove so-called DEI programs or anything that mentions gender or diversity or minorities from campuses are already beginning to filter down. I believe it was the National Science Foundation that has produced a list of suspect words to look for in grant applications and project applications that would cause red flags. And the words are words like diversity and women.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So anybody who's studying something that could be construed as anything to do with diversity or minorities, that these kinds of projects could be stopped. And of course, university presidents and administrators, including some that I've spoken to, are afraid that this could go farther.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
In other words, that federal funding could be used as a tool to alter the shape of university departments or tell universities what they can and can't teach. And as I said a little bit earlier, this is something that has been done in other places. This is what happened in Hungary. happen in the United States.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
The Trump administration is seeking to redefine what American basic values are, what we think is good and bad and whose voices are heard and whose voices are suppressed.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And they have decided that the groups who backed January the 6th, and this includes some on the far right and white supremacists and so on, and people who would not be offended by you saying that's what they are, are now proud members of the Trump coalition. And people who have promoted diversity are not.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And so I think they're seeking to redefine our values and redefine what it means to be, you know, a central part of the American project.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
My concerns about the press aren't at the moment really personal. My real concern is about big media companies, television companies whose owners have other interests. And this is one of the ways in which media in other illiberal democracies, you know, or in other declining democracies have been affected.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So if you have somebody who owns a large television station, but who's also interested in investing in something else for which he needs a government license, then you could see him needing to genuflect to the ruling party or to the leader.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I mean, we already have an example of that, which is Jeff Bezos, who's the owner of The Washington Post, who has seems to be making some decisions or his newspaper is making some decisions that accommodate the Trump administration.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Bezos has many other interests in cloud computing, in space travel, all kinds of things, for all of which he would need, in some cases, government cooperation or funding. And so his he's He may also, in addition to that, have feel ideologically aligned with the Trump administration that I don't know and can't speak to. But clearly he has mixed motives.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And there are other media owners of whom you could say the same. And that, in a way, is the most dangerous thing, because, you know, one journalist can be replaced or can be brave or, you know, there are many have all kinds of options. But It's when the companies begin to censor themselves or begin to change the way they show the news because of their owners' other interests.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I do think it's a kind of test, yes. And very often these tests are trivial. The test is whether you can make a news organization change one of its policies. And if you can make it change that policy, then maybe you can make it change other policies. Also, all the other news organizations will be watching to see what AP does, and they will understand from AP's decision how much freedom they have.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So it's about creating a kind of chilling atmosphere, about making journalists think twice and making media owners think twice about decisions that they make and the language that they use. So yes, it's an attempt to chill the atmosphere.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Funny enough, what was important about Vance's speech was actually that he did not speak about NATO. So it's very important to understand the context. He was talking to a large room filled with defense ministers, four-star generals, ex-security analysts, people who care about things like the fiber optic cables that lie under the Baltic Sea that Russian ships have recently been cutting.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Oh, there are so many. You know, the world is so full of brave people and brave reporters, brave activists, people who try to tell the truth in Russia, people who have been active for women's rights in Iran. You know, the kinds of threats that we face as Americans are pretty trivial compared to the brutality that people have faced in in full dictatorships.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
You know, in my life, I've met so many very, very brave people in so many different kinds of countries. I'm pretty confident that Americans will be just as brave. And so maybe that's the flip side of this story is that, you know, we've been talking about people who will be cowed or people who will be scared. I mean, there are going to be a lot of people who are brave and who will fight.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
want to tell the truth and continue to expose lies and continue to write just freely about the government the way they've written freely about all governments, you know, Joe Biden's government or Barack Obama's government. I'm pretty confident there'll be plenty of Americans who will do that.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
These are people who have real world serious concerns. They think about war and peace. They think about the possibility of Russia invading their countries. Vance got up in that room in front of those people who were expecting him to talk, to address those concerns, and instead changed the subject to culture wars.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And he gave a whole speech, which was almost something that a Russian propagandist could have given, sort of describing incidents and situations, some of which I know and I know were mischaracterized or exaggerated, designed to show that European democracies aren't really democratic.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And speaking as a representative of the movement that brought us January the 6th and an attempt to overthrow US election, implying that he was more democratic and his movement was more democratic. And two aspects of this were offensive. One was the fact that he didn't address any of the real security issues.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And of course, the second, that he implied that the people he was speaking to were not Democrats. The import of his speech was to support the alliance for Germany. This is a political party called the AfD, which Germany is in the middle of very intense elections. Actually, the election is on February the 23rd, so very soon.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
The AFD is a far-right party, some of whose members have expressed nostalgia or nuanced admiration for aspects of Nazi Germany. It's also a party that has been notably pro-Russian and anti-American in the past, and that he was expressing support for them was perceived by many of the Germans in the room as an insult.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Yes. But to be clear, the far right party has access to television. Its leader has been on television debates. It's on the ballot. Isn't it number two in the polls? It's number two in the polls. I mean, stipulate there are a number of parties in Germany. So it looks at the moment around 20 percent. But it is absolutely accessible. You can vote for it.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
The idea that it's somehow repressed is a figment of J.D. Vance's imagination. Right. So here's J.D.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It was an insult. He was telling Europeans that he doesn't respect their voting systems, but also he was playing with language. Again, he represents the political movement that sought to overturn an election. So this is a political movement that cares about the people and the voters only when they win.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Nevertheless, he was accusing Europeans of somehow not caring about their own voters when their political systems are in many cases more democratic and more grassroots based than ours. These are most of most European countries have multiple political parties. People have more choice in elections. You know, they're smaller countries.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
People have more direct impact on their national governments when they vote. So the idea that J.D. Vance was somehow implying that America is more democratic was insulting. And it was it was understood that way. And as I said, it was also in a speech where he was expected to talk about European security armies and the war in Ukraine, none of which he mentioned, or if so, only glancingly.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I think in the context, it could be interpreted as a threat. I'm remembering that a few days earlier, the American Secretary of Defense had said that Europe will need to begin looking elsewhere for security, had implied that there might not be ongoing security guarantees for Europe and had implied that the United States might be withdrawing troops from Europe.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So yes, in that context, it felt to many people in the room like a threat.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Let me describe to you a conversation I had with a German member of parliament who I've known for some time. I met him at Munich. I had actually seen him at Munich the year before, and he reminded me that a year ago he said to me, I'm really worried that Europe will now be confronting three autocracies, China, Russia, and the United States.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And this year, he said to me, I said that last year, and this year I can see it coming true. Obviously, the United States is not an autocracy. It's not Russia. It's not China. But the United States is now an adversarial power. It's a country that is not interested in using the alliances that it has built over the last 70 years, 80 years.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It is not interested in creating relationships of mutual benefit. It thinks much more like a colonial or an imperial power. It speaks about annexing land and territory. It's a power that Europeans now understand, and I think this weekend really brought that home, is not a friend. And I think that's a really big shift. But this weekend was really an earthquake.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
Everybody understood this is a different kind of America. It's a different kind of American administration. It's not one that we've seen or dealt with before, and we need new attitudes.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I don't think anyone expects the U.S. to pull out of NATO because that would create a kind of drama that I don't think President Trump wants. But I think it's important that people understand that NATO is psychological as much as it is an alliance. NATO is a system of deterrence. It's an agreement that, based on the famous Article 5 of the NATO Treaty,
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
It's an agreement that if one country is attacked, then all the other countries in the alliance are obliged to consider coming to its defense. Once nobody believes anymore in that promise, then even if NATO still exists as an institution and even if it still has troops on the ground, its value as a deterrent does become more limited.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So I think the fear is that the United States will begin to say and do things that convince Russia that the deterrent is no longer valid. And that simply means they're vulnerable.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
So to be clear, Europeans do have armies. Europeans have contributed half of all the aid that has gone to Ukraine since the war has begun. many Europeans have invested heavily in their armies and in their militaries over the last three years since the war started. It's not as if they have nothing.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
But the way NATO is constructed, the way many European military systems are constructed, it is with the idea that the U.S. leads. And that's, of course, been of tremendous advantage to the U.S. It means that Europeans buy American military equipment. It means they defer to the United States on all kinds of decisions.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And the United States is the main decider in all kinds of security and economic and other contexts. If the United States pulls out rapidly or the American deterrent disappears rapidly, then it's not clear that Europe is immediately prepared to defend itself. But there was a meeting in Paris on Monday
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
That was the beginning of what I think will be a conversation about how Europe is going to respond in this new situation.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
I think up until now, President Zelensky has been seeking to flatter Trump. Actually, the idea that Ukraine would sell some rare earth minerals to the United States was his idea. He came up with it last autumn. I think this weekend was a kind of break. in which he is beginning to feel that the tactics that worked in the first Trump administration don't work now.
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
And he's beginning to speak more to Europeans. He's also made it clear that any kind of ceasefire in Ukraine requires two sides. I mean, you need both sides to declare peace. It can't be one way. I think he's also wants to make it clear that a situation which Ukraine stops fighting, but has no guarantee that the Russians won't invade again next week or next month or next year,
Fresh Air
How Regime Change Happens In America
isn't really a piece. And he's been making that very clear over the last few days.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
you know, those guys have a moral choice, right? Stay there and help Musk steal data, right? Effectively or whatever it is, you know, whatever, or, you know, just computer system and make sure it doesn't harm people. And that's a, you know, that's the kind of choice that people make in occupied countries, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I'm going to work for the occupation force, even though I don't agree with it because I'm going to try and protect people. And maybe from the inside I can, I can do useful. That's like a known choice from, from,
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
you know, authoritarian or occupation regimes, or you make the choice to be a dissident and protest, in which case you lose influence, you know, or you conform completely and you say, here, Fred, take the codes and do whatever you want. Those are, you know, you're right there. I, you know, I left out the option of staying in, but that's a
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Still, I mean, that's a choice from, I don't know if you know who I mean by the writer Czesław Miłosz, but he was a Polish writer and novelist. He won the Nobel Prize at some point or another. And he wrote a famous book that was published in the 1950s called Captive Minds. The book was partly about these exact choices. And he was somebody who you know, fought in the resistance against the Nazis.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And then after the war, for a while, he worked for the Polish Communist Foreign Service. I think he was even in the embassy in Washington. And then eventually he quit and broke with the regime. And he wrote this famous book describing these different kinds of choices.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And what he seems to have done is taken a group of some apparently even very young engineers into government offices and started demanding and downloading data. Let's put it this way. If, you know, the Chinese government were to be doing this by hacking, this would be considered a major cyber warfare attack.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And this is a book that, you know, felt like the first time I read it, I don't know, 20 years ago, like a piece of ancient history describing these, you know, But these are now these kinds of moral choices will now come back for American civil servants.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
You know, as you say, you stay in and you try to make sure people aren't harmed and therefore be somehow tarnished by the fact that you've helped the new regime or you quit in a principled way and just get out or you just conform.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I agree. Yeah. I agree. No, no, it's much more complicated. And that's why, actually, I don't think there's a formula I can give you. You know, should you stay or should you go or should you collaborate? Because it will depend on what you see happening and whether you can be useful and stop it or whether, you know, your presence is justifying something that is illegal.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
There is no precedent for giving that kind of information or that kind of access to a private citizen, even if the president says it's okay. And so we're already in a realm where we're in an extra legal situation. You can talk about Russian oligarchs and their ability to shape policy. In Russia, you had this phenomenon of
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
A piece of the authoritarian playbook is absolutely control of the media and control of the public conversation, establishing the terms of debate, arguing that Elon Musk is bravely doing the work of trimming the federal budget, and that he's a brilliant mind finally focused on government waste, changing the narrative about what he's doing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I mean, there's an extra element of it as well, which is the way in which And you saw the original version of this was in the old Twitter files debate, which is also another thing that Musk does, and he's been doing it in the last couple of days. And it's another thing I'm worried about is taking information that he finds selectively and spinning it into justification for what he does.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And you saw this. I still don't know the veracity of this or exactly what it was, but they found some... chunk of money that seemed to be going to the Lutheran Church. And it turns out that the Lutheran Church runs old people's homes in South Dakota and other places.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Yeah, the way the federal government works is it often, you know, some outsourcing is done to private companies, but outsourcing is also done to NGOs because the Lutherans Faith-based organizations are sometimes better at running these kinds of services.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Yep. So but but Musk found this and he decided it was a scandal. Mike Flynn was tweeting about it anyway. And then suddenly there's discussion of the Lutherans being evil on Twitter. And then all the like blue blue tick supporters chiming in and talking about, oh, we found a scam to do with the Lutherans. You know, who are these Lutherans? You know, what are Lutherans?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
You know, so what Musk also now has and this is a again, this is a power that I don't I can't think of anymore. I can't think of any exact parallel of being able to weaponize data and bits of information that he finds and turn them into Twitter talking points.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
What he's just done to USAID, which is one of the most important sources of American soft power, it feeds millions of poor people in Africa, it provides vaccines for children all over the world. And, you know, he's now described it as evil.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
He will probably be selectively finding things that it does that it can be made to sound outrageous or strange, you know, and the fact that he has that power on top of the fact that he's, he's now has access to this huge trove of data gives us an extra twist.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
wealthy people who were both members of the government and the owners of significant companies. So they were making the government decisions that affected their companies. And that's clearly the case with Musk as well. So he is a very important government contractor. His companies get subsidies. He also does work on behalf of the Pentagon. So clearly he's now able to make policy concerning his own
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
No, I mean, so we are openly destroying one of the agencies and institutions through which a lot of the world knows us. There's a lot of, you know, vague talk about how the U.S. is competing with China and Africa for influence, for example, or in Latin America. And actually, I wrote a book about it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
My book, Autocracy Inc., is about the ways in which the autocratic world is seeking to have economic and cultural and propaganda influence all over the world, and they're competing directly with us. us, the US, plus our allies, or maybe our former allies, as it might turn out. But one of the ways in which we compete is that we have, you know, ways of reaching people that they don't.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And one of them is through our, I mean, just focus on USAID health services alone. You know, we provide a lot of health services to the very, very poorest people on the planet. We're known for that, you know, in a lot of the world, that's what the US stands for. It's an important bulwark against Chinese influence campaigns and Russian influence campaigns and so on.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
So by destroying that, we are destroying one of our most important assets. We're destroying one of the things we're known for. I mean, there's another aspect of the USAID thing that's really important. Another thing the USAID has got more involved in over the last 20 years is democracy promotion. So it's not just vaccines. It's also support for civic organizations, sometimes for independent media.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And this has been a Republican and Democrat, you know, have supported this. This is not- IRI was involved, like the International Republican- So IRI is not part of USAID. I'm not sure actually.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I'll explain. I'll get to that in a second. So You know, there's something called the National Endowment for Democracy, which I used to be on the board of, under which is IRI, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute. They do a lot of direct democracy funding, too. And Musk has also been tweeting about them and how bad they are.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
USAID, in addition, also does some of the same kind of stuff. It may be that we now have, and this, I just don't know whether, I don't know whether Trump himself knows about this or who exactly is. It may be that we're not going to do that anymore. You know, we don't stand for democracy anymore. And so we won't promote democracy anymore. And so all the institutions and organizations
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
that have been doing that in many cases very successfully. A lot of what IRI and NDI do is just to do with direct relations with other political parties around the world. It's, you know, it's like a second tier level of foreign policy. I mean, some of it isn't even just about funding.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
It's about like, you know, the IRI would have relationships with conservative parties in Europe and NDI would have relationships with center left parties. And, you know, there are a lot of other things that those organizations do that have been really, really important in maintaining the role of the U.S. as the leader of a broad democratic alliance.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
his own companies. He can look at the contracts given to his competitors. He can find out information about that. So there is a kind of Russian precedent for that kind of influence. But the broader idea that there's a single person with no status who's been given access to the whole U.S.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
None of it is very expensive by the standards of the U.S. budget. These are very small amounts of money. You know, USAID is less than 1% and the democracy promotion activities must be, I don't know off the top of my head, I can't give you a statistic, but some very, very, very small fraction of that. So it's some very tiny, tiny thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And IRI, I should say the big, you know, McCain was one of the leaders of IRI. You know, lots of prominent Republican senators have been involved in it for for a long time. And so if we're cutting off that, you know, we're not doing that anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
and we don't stand for democracy, democracy is not part of our foreign policy, it's not part of who we are or how we're identified, then a lot of what the U.S. has stood for positively internationally will disappear or go away. And it's hard for me to quantify the harm to Americans from that. I realize it's kind of three levels removed from what ordinary people think.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
But again, people talk a lot about this competition with Russia and China for influence, for This is essentially ceding to the authoritarian world and saying, we're not going to fight that battle anymore. You guys take over. I mean, there is, whether we want there to be one or not, okay, there is a battle of ideas in the world.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And between broadly the ideas of democracy, and let's not even use the word democracy, use the word the rule of law, use the word checks and balances, use the expression transparency and accountability.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Freedom, freedom, another good word, yep. So freedom, you know, all those things are on one ledger. And then there's another group of countries who are pushing a different set of ideas, you know, that autocracies are stable and safe and democracies are degenerate. And they stand for a different set of ideas. And those ideas are clashing everywhere.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I mean, in Africa and Asia and every European country and inside the United States as well. You know, again, if the United States is now ceding and saying, we're not having this argument anymore. We don't care who wins, you know, then we are allowing the rise of Chinese influence everywhere on the planet.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And that will sooner or later have economic and other kinds of implications for Americans and for American companies. You know, I know it's several levels away from most people's realization, but it is a It would be a profound change, you know, a revolutionary change in the way the U.S. is. A lot of people don't like the U.S. already, you know, stipulate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And a lot of people always thought, you know, we talk about all that stuff, but it's bullshit. We don't believe it. So there would be all those people would then say, right, we told you so. Americans never, never believed any of that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
But the people who were for whom we were a source of hope and inspiration or, you know, a leader for whom we were playing a leadership role are going to be devastated and disappointed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
government payment system and the personnel management system and maybe the property ownership system as well, I can't think of anything. So we're in a world of extra legality. So we are beyond the law. He is operating in a completely lawless realm. He is not under control or under control is the wrong word. He's outside of the rule of law.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And the Chinese are also willing to subsidize these foreign projects in a way that, you know, the U.S. government has never done before. You know, a lot of their companies are quasi-state, quasi-private companies, you know, and they're sort of state capitalism. And so they'll be funding that in a way that we don't. And that also gives them an advantage.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
There's another tangible and tangible aspect of this, which is that the source of American power and influence for the last 80 years has been our allies and our alliances. You know, the fact that we have, you know, America plus Europe is that's the actual superpower. You know, people talk about the unipolar moment. It wasn't ever just the U S by itself, you know, having all this influence.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
It was the U S plus Europe, really the developed world, the US plus the richest countries in the world, plus Europe, plus the Asian democracies, plus Japan and South Korea and Australia, that group of countries which were able to act together to set the trade rules according to what, in a way that was beneficial, that could set the rules of international law or influence them so that
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
so that we had fewer wars. This was where the power of the United States lay, was in its ability to have these values-based alliances. Russia doesn't have them. China doesn't have them. The fact that we had them is what, for a long time, made us different. If we're just giving that up, we don't care anymore. Democracy is not part of who we are.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And anyway, we're going to do tariffs on Canada and Mexico. That's another story. You know, I don't know if you want to go down that road or not.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And then to look at precedence for that, I mean, you know, I don't want to go there because it always, you know, it's always the end of the conversation. But then you have to look at Nazi Germany or you have to look at. dictatorships where single people took the law into their hands.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
So I don't think I can emphasize enough how worried Europeans are about Musk, but also the broader problem that he represents of US social media companies changing the nature of politics in Europe. In a way, this article was a little bit inspired by the last conversation we had, which so much I no longer remember when that was.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And you used an expression that I realized was the right one, which is, you know, U.S. elections are kind of Las Vegas, right? Anyone can spend as much money as they want. You can do it anonymously. You can give out million-dollar checks to people in Pennsylvania anonymously. You know, there's no rules, right? It's just a free-for-all. Okay, most European countries don't work like that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Like, there are laws about funding and about transparency and about political advertising. Some of those countries have hate speech laws that they take very seriously, and they're related to their own history. You know, Germany has hate speech laws because they would like to prevent the Nazi party from rising to power again. You know, so they have these laws, and they're sovereign countries, right?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
They're allowed to have laws. And hate speech laws, remember, protect the speech rights of people who have been doxxed or harassed as well. So it's not that they don't have free speech. Of course they do. In some ways, it's more free than ours because people aren't scared to speak out. But nevertheless, they have laws. So the question is, if U.S.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
social media companies are still compatible with those laws, if you're able to pay secretly for advertising on Instagram or on X or on YouTube in ways that are not transparent, And if you're able to defy the laws of your country going around them using the social media companies, then are you still able to set the rules of your own elections? Like, do you get to have your own elections?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And increasingly, I think Europeans fear that they don't. Twitter and Facebook and, you know, and these other companies are setting the, you know, American companies based in Silicon Valley who do not have our interests at heart. and who don't care about social cohesion in France or about the rule of law in Germany. They are setting the rules for our national debate and that's unfair.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And of course, it doesn't feel like that to most people, because it's just something happening inside some Washington buildings, you know, and it's not yet affecting ordinary Americans, but it could. And we can, I'm happy to spin it out a little bit about what else, what other damage could be.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
The Musk thing has added a special twist to it because we now have the leader of one of the social media companies Literally intervening in the German election, seeking to promote the far right party, holding an online event with the leader of that party, appearing at one of their rallies and saying Germans shouldn't worry so much about the Holocaust anymore.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I mean, he didn't use those exact words, but more or less saying time for Germans to forget about history. I mean, this is a this is such a huge violation of the spirit of fairness, given that, you You know, that's way beyond the reach of any single German newspaper. I mean, even the biggest, largest ones. And so, you know, the question is, is that fair? And so they do have some tools to regulate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And I wrote about this in the piece. And there's a thing called the Digital Services Act, which could be applied to X and to other forms of social media. And the main goal of them, let me make it clear, is not censoring them, but is forcing them to be more transparent. So you could say we need some insight into the algorithm. We want to know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
We want data on what is promoted and what is not promoted. We want users to have access to that data because free speech is also about, you know, knowledge and having access to information. If you're going to be an informed citizen, you should know why is the algorithm giving you X or Y.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Right. There's another discussion and I don't know enough about where it is going and I'm not privy to any information.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
insider conversation but there is a discussion about what if you just banned algorithms altogether like why do we need algorithms why can't people just follow who they want you know on social media and you know they see who they follow and you know and so on and which is by the way how blue sky works so there are it's not impossible to have a form of social media that works like that it's how facebook originally worked
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And that's how Facebook originally worked. So that is also a possibility. So anyway, they're looking at, there is a commission inside the EU, which is looking at doing, which is looking at all these questions. And now the question is, do they still have enough sovereignty left to be able to impose those laws, their own laws?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
If they do it, will there be a huge pushback from the Trump administration? J.D. Vance made a comment in an interview a couple of months ago, something along the lines of, you know, if they regulate us, then why should we protect them? You know, sort of vaguely threatening and saying, you know, we'll pull out of NATO or something like that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
No one really knows what the status of those comments are. Is this what Trump thinks? Is this just a thing that Vance said to be prerogative? And again, we're back to the question of what is Musk's status when he supports the AFD, the German far right? Is he speaking on behalf of Trump? Is he a member of the US administration? Is that the US supporting the AFD or not?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
So there is gonna be a big looming question in Europe over the next few weeks and months over whether how to regulate these platforms And if so, can they do it? Are they willing to defy the Trump administration, whether it's Vance or Musk or Trump himself, and do it? I mean, I have an instinct that Trump himself probably doesn't really care.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I mean, maybe somebody could frame the problem to him in a way that he would, but it may be others who decide. So we're also, again, partly because of this extra legal situation where nobody really understands what is Musk's role. Does he speak for Trump? Does he speak for himself? that people are genuinely confused by it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Everywhere I go, and last week I was in Germany, I was also in Brussels, and everywhere I go, it's the one thing people want to talk about, and they want an explanation of it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
It was very amusing. You know, it looks like Canada and Mexico won. You know, Justin Trudeau said, well, look, we're investing, I can't remember, one point some billion dollars into borders. It turns out he announced that two months ago. But Trump said, oh, great. You know, then I'll lift the tariffs or anyway, postpone them for a month.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Yeah, I mean, it makes me wonder whether, you know, the hard thing for people also to understand outside of the U.S. and also maybe inside the U.S. is like, what is real and what's performative? Like, was this big bluster about huge tariffs, was that some kind of game for the base?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Also, I mean, I think some of the damage is already permanent. I mean, the Canadians, like maybe we're going to get over this and there won't be 25% tariffs, but we have now, you know, awoken the, you know, the sleeping nationalism of Canada.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
But, you know, there's like buy Canadian signs now all over Canadian shops and, you know, lots of premiers, you know, they're sort of regional governors are banning U.S. products and saying we won't do deals with U.S. companies. So, you know, I think there will be real effects. And I think this is going to – people will remember this for a long time. I mean, so there's a –
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Even if it was just a performance and it was just like to look really tough and then withdraw 24 hours later, even if I don't maybe it won't turn out like that. But even so, there will be damage. And even so, there's going to be damage in Europe as well. You know, the U.S. is now like the U.S. has been the most predictable factor in world politics for 50 years. You know, Republican, Democrat.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I mean, sometimes they did weird things or they said things people didn't like or whatever. But now it's just a complete black hole. Like, do we trust them? Do we not trust them? Are they on our side? Are they our enemies? You know, do they wish us well? Are they trying to undermine us? Really, people just don't know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
You would have to ask whether it's possible to share intelligence with the United States, yes.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
There are very elaborate relationships that we have with other countries, especially the so-called Five Eyes, you know, these group of countries who work closely together, especially with the UK. Maybe people have trust, you know, relationships of trust at lower levels that will continue.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I really I don't want to be overwhelmed, you know, sweeping, say something that I don't have justification for. But yeah, when you talk to her, you would want to be careful.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
So I did know about that. I mean, I knew that the Ukrainians had proposed that. I don't know the exact, to be fair, I don't know the exact terms. I don't know exactly what we're talking about, but I know they were looking for something transactional that they could offer Trump. I mean, obviously arguing to Trump on the basis of values or
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
you know, human rights wasn't going to work and they were looking for something else and they have this. And from their point of view, I understand it completely. And I would do the same if I were the president of Ukraine, you know, so I understand how that looks in practice. I mean, what we, we let American companies mine things in Ukraine and just turn the other
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
don't look while they do it i don't know exactly how that works or what a deal like that looks like i mean it's hard even to figure out how you would contractually organize it i mean what we're just giving rights away to the u.s government or we're giving them to friends of trump or who are we giving them to i don't know but yeah folks in ukraine more optimistic that they might be open than maybe they had been to continued support or still pretty dire
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
hard to describe. I mean, I think people are, you know, there's a combination of fatalism, like, you know, whatever happens, we're not stopping fighting. And I actually know a lot of people who are involved in very forward-looking projects there, who are building drone factories, who are creating new forms of warfare. I mean, there's a
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
There's a piece of the Ukrainian story that never seems to get told. I periodically try to tell it, but, you know, they are really at the cutting edge of what is modern warfare. They're inventing new stuff all the time. And so there's a piece of the story that's actually very they're still very optimistic, like they still think they're. you know, they're gaining in various ways.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Then there's, you know, at another level, there's another part of the army and part of the security apparatus who's worried they just don't have enough people and they're losing territory and they'll do whatever it takes to get U.S. help. But it's not really a question of, you know, optimism or pessimism.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I mean, they're going to keep fighting, you know, and they will do what they can to get the equipment and weapons that they need. And they will they will make whatever deal is required.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I had a very dark view of what was going to happen. And it was so dark that I didn't want to share it that much in public. I mean, some of the details have surprised me. Like, I know I did not expect Elon Musk to take a group of 19-year-old engineers and download the U.S. government's data.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Like, I didn't see that exact form of... I did expect this kind of assault on the system, and I did expect the Republican Party not to resist it. So in that sense, I'm not surprised. I was prepared for this kind of thing to happen. I'm even surprised that other people are surprised.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
No, we're certainly I mean, certainly we're we're now in the realm of extra legality. It's clear that we have an illiberal leadership, which who are seeking to undermine the very basis of American democracy. They're trying to change the rules and the way that institutions work. They're using Musk as a kind of... But it's not just Musk.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
It's also these guys from Heritage who are also talking about threatening and harassing civil servants and federal public servants. So it's not just him. He's just the sort of unexpected piece of the story. I do think they are going to continue trying to capture the civil service. They will try to capture the courts, put people in the courts who are not just...
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
not conservative in the old sense, not like, I don't know, constitutionalists, but actually much more radical. That's what I would expect, that we get really radical judges who are there to do Trump's bidding, not to respect the Constitution in a conservative way. I think that's very possible. And I also think the, you said it already, the attempts to
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
control and dictate and use different kinds of levers of influence over the media and over public conversation, that that's going to get much worse as well. So in that sense, we're already, it's not just Orban, by the way. I mean, this is what Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela. I think it's important for people to understand this is neither a right-wing nor a left-wing assault.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
It's an illiberal assault on the state. It's an anti and ultimately anti-democratic and anti-constitutional. And I expect it to continue until somebody finds a way to stop it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
That's, as I say, I'm unable to think of a precedent in U.S. history. Maybe there's some historian who knows the American history in the 19th century better who can come up with something. But they are now creating sort of on top of and outside of the legal system, a kind of alternate legality. And the very idea... that a U.S.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
attorney would talk about investigating someone for criticizing the government also leads us into a new realm. There's another piece of this. I mean, I do want to talk about the people who are resisting Musk because I think that's interesting and important. And those are Americans who are facing choices of a kind I don't think Americans are used to facing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I mean, you're used to facing them in Russia or China or other countries that are being taken, where there's a hostile regime and you have to make moral choices in your job. But there's another aspect to this, which is Musk is also trying to conceal the names of the people who are working with him, who seem to be some recent high school graduates and college students.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And they were revealed in a Wired article that as well as in, I saw a couple of people, others revealing them, discussing them online. And Musk is trying to shut that down. So not only does he want full access to U.S. government data, he wants secrecy about it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
People working inside The U.S. government at USAID or GSA or, you know, the Office of Personnel Management, whichever those offices are, you know, they're going to have to face choices and their choices. And some of them have faced them already this weekend and some have even paid prices for it. You know, do you follow the laws that exist?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
For example, do you hand over classified data to people who don't have security clearances or who don't have legitimate reason to want it? Because when you give someone classified data, it's not just that you're their status. They also have to have a reason why they need it. If you say, no, I won't do that, and then you're fired...
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
that then creates a kind of cascading psychological effect on everybody else who works at that agency. So then will other people be willing to say, no, I won't break the law for you, or no, I won't break the rules for you, knowing that the price is that they're fired. So it's not only that they're
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
overcoming people, it's also that they're scaring people and they're using tactics of intimidation, you know, as you say, threatening people and with their jobs and so on. I mean, again, I just can't stress enough. I mean, there is no legal basis for what Musk is doing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And the fact that the Trump administration has agreed to make it possible in this outside of the law new way means that we're already in a different phase of U.S. government.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
First of all, I wrote a piece that was published in 2020 about complicity and why people conform and do things they know are wrong. And that was based on a lot of reading and experience, but also one of the key moments in understanding that whole topic for me happened when I went to see a woman who was a former East German dissident. Then later on, she was head of the Stasi archive.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
She's called Marion Berkler. I went to see her in East Germany and I thought I was going to see her to talk to her about conformity and complicity. You know, why do people go along with things they know are bad? You know, tell me about what percentage of people went along with it. I asked a question, something like that. And she looked at me like I was, she said, what do you mean? What percentage?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
She says, everybody went along with it. She said sooner or later, you know, if you wanted to keep your job and you wanted your kids to go to university and you wanted your wife to get her health care, you had to go along with it. I mean, once the system is constructed in a way that there are no options, you know, 99 percent of people will conform.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And she said the real question to ask is, why is anybody a dissident? You know, because the dissidents, you know, in that system anyway, they paid a pretty big price, right? You lost your job and maybe they didn't kill you by the by the 1970s, you know, but they lost your job. You were sort of an outcast, you know, so not everybody can afford to make that effort.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And, you know, here we're talking about the U.S. Right now, we're not talking about Americans as a whole. We're talking about U.S. government officials. So, again, we're talking about a narrow group and the stakes aren't quite that extreme, you know, but people are going to be faced very soon with the choice of either you stay in your job and you conform to the new rules or you're fired.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And it may differ from institution to institution. I mean, I haven't explored this yet, but I saw some reporting yesterday about people at the FBI saying they're going to continue to stay in their jobs and insist on the law. Yeah, it's interesting.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
I don't know either. I mean, I don't have a sense of what the rules are there. But, you know, I think JVL is right to advise people to stay in their jobs. But we all need to take into consideration the possibility that they won't be able to stay in their jobs.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And that anybody who insists on following the law, or even following the rules of common sense, I mean, for example, they've banned use of the expressions diversity and equality, for example, you know, in any form, and some of it looks pretty nonsensical, like, would depend on the government department. But I mean, are you not allowed to measure diversity?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Are you not allowed to, you know, what about climate diversity? I mean, it's a word that gets used in many contexts. So
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Right, right. And so, you know, some of that, you know, so resisting some of that will just be common sense. You know, how do we not talk? We can't use the word justice. What about justice?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
justice of the peace what about court justice so so there's some absurdity there too but we may pretty soon get to the point where people who say no i insist on using the word justice you know or no i insist that it's legitimate to investigate for example the effect of different medication on different different populations and because this is affecting the world of science as well
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
So I'm not sure there is an exact parallel that we've seen anywhere else. What Musk has just done, as you've said, is he's a private citizen. They've given him some kind of quasi-government status. He's a government advisor, but he doesn't have a confirmed position. He's not part of any congressionally confirmed office or department. He himself is obviously not confirmed by anybody.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
You know, there's some legitimate reasons to look at how medication X affects men and women, for example, you know, and you would call that gender, right? So if the word gender is banned, then maybe you can't conduct that investigation anymore. But it may be that people who insist on common sense language and who insist on following the law and the ethics of their organizations are fired. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
And so then we're in another world where the only people who can work for the federal government or who can successfully win an application for a National Science Foundation grant or whatever, I mean, I don't want to exaggerate too much, are people who've already agreed to conform. And this is how you establish the rules of conformism. And usually conformism is...
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
Like you don't need to threaten people with the gulag, you know, or a concentration camp. I mean, you just say either you conform to this or you lose your job or either, you know, or you lose your benefits or something. And for most people, that's too much. I mean, especially again, we're talking about a small population of federal government workers who can find other jobs. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Outside the Rule of Law
They can go and work in the private sector or they can. do something else. But that then means that the federal government is going to select for people who are willing to go along with these either absurd or illegal rules.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Having overcome the fact that he assaulted the Constitution, broke the law multiple times, you know, whichever piece of it bothers you the most, he stole documents, you know, he was a corrupt businessman, all those things we now know. And yet he's been reelected anyway. People are going to say, right, this guy has...
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
So Voice of America is one of a group of U.S.-funded foreign news services. There's RFERL, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty. There's a There's Cuban radio. There's an Arab language radio. There's a group of, I mean, they're called radios, but they're not really radios anymore. They're media properties.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
There's Radio Free Asia, which has, I think, it used to be at least the most Uyghur language broadcasting of any outlet outside of China. They play a really important role, and they could play a more important role in countering Russian and Chinese propaganda and outside of the United States. So there is an enormous effort to shape narratives and conversations in Africa that the Chinese invest in.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
They've actually invested billions and billions of dollars. I mean, they're way more money than we spend on Radio Free Europe and all those media properties put together. The Russians have a huge investment in information campaigns of different kinds in Europe and Asia, elsewhere.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
One of the few tools that we have is Voice of America and those other properties, which are designed at least to put a... It's not so much... They're not meant to be American propaganda. I mean, I'm sure sometimes that's what they are, but mainly they're designed to be... Outlets that build trust because they report things that are true.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
They're meant to contradict the Russian and Chinese messaging. You know, they're meant to build a different set of arguments, you know, mostly, as I said, in third countries. I mean, they're most important in places where the U.S. and the democratic world are competing directly with the authoritarian world in narratives and in arguments.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
The idea that Carrie Lake would be the head of Voice of America is absurd on many levels. I mean, she's... She has no journalism experience. She has no public diplomacy experience. She's a liar.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
All right. Okay. Well, she hasn't run, as far as I know, she hasn't run a large international media institution. And of course, she's a liar. I mean, she's somebody who supported a false narrative about multiple elections, actually, you know, Trump's elections, her own elections. And actually, her anti-election sort of campaigns or her election denial campaigns in Arizona.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
had a big effect, I think, on the culture of Arizona. I mean, I did a podcast last summer and we interviewed an Arizona election official whose life was essentially ruined. I mean, he was just a guy who said, you know, Trump didn't win the election and he was harassed and doxxed and his family was attacked and, you know, the...
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
You can imagine what people go through if you're a Maricopa County election official and you live in a world in which Carrie Lake dominates. So the idea that she would be somehow the spokesman for American values around the world and, you know, fighting Chinese authoritarian propaganda in Africa is ludicrous. I mean, on top of that, on top of that, last year, the Senate confirmed that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
a board of, there's an institution that governs all of these media properties. And there's a board. I know it's half Democrat, half Republican by law.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It's three and three. And there's a, I think the Secretary of State is the fourth vote on it. The Senate confirmed that board. And actually that board is what decides who will be the next leader of these various institutions. VOA has a current leader.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It's somebody who was just appointed a few months ago, Mike Abramowitz, who used to be the leader of Freedom House, which is one of our, it's like a Cold War era democracy promotion organization that also did most of its work outside of the United States. So he's not by any means some kind of left wing or progressive figure. He's just somebody who's worked on democracy issues for a long time. So
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It's not exactly magical powers, but he has some kind of staying ability that I didn't account for the first time. And, you know, I better get along with him or else I'm in trouble. And that's actually, I mean, it's not unique to the United States. You can see it in other places.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
So that board would have to agree that Carrie Lake will replace him and we'll see what it does.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
OK, for clarity, I don't speak for my husband, who's the Polish foreign minister. I don't represent him or, you know, or the great nation of Poland, you know, in any way. But I mean, I think what Ruda was saying is something that's that's becoming increasingly clear, which is that the Russian economy is now increasingly a war economy.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It's built around and for the purpose of producing weapons, which is making it look a lot more like the Soviet economy, actually, from the 1970s, which is an interesting statement. interesting parallel and also shows where it could end up.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
But at the moment, they're building this weapons producing economy and they're putting all their best technology and their best researchers and engineers and so on are all pushing in that direction. That's what they're doing now. And that means that for Putin to somehow reverse course or stop the war has a lot more consequences than people think.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
You know, so what would happen to all that enormous investment? They would just stop it? I mean, I don't think so. You know, what would happen to the hundreds of thousands of armed soldiers who are now in the field? Would Putin just bring them home and then they would go back to regular life? Is that something that's going to be good for him or... healthy for Russia?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I mean, I think what Ruta was saying, the NATO Secretary General, was that naivete about the ease with which you could get a deal or negotiate with Russia is unwarranted. I'm really worried because I hear both in Europe and in the US and in Ukraine, actually, a lot of people who do seem to believe that there's, because Trump has said he wants a negotiation, that there will be one.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I mean, I am happy to be proven wrong. There is no one who will be happier to hear that there's a real negotiation happening and that the war would end. It's been a misery for so many of my friends. It's a huge political and economic problem for everybody else in Europe. I really want the war to be over. Ukrainians have made clear that they will negotiate, and they've made that clear in public.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
The person who broke the law and yet comes back to power, people are, I don't know if it's more afraid is really the right word, but they're more willing to say, right, you know, we give up. This is the kind of regime that we have. We better learn to live with it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
They've also made it clear in more specific ways in private. They would be happy to do some kind of deal. Of course, they're not going to give up their sovereignty and they're not going to allow the Russians to replace the current government with a pro-Russian government. There is right now, as we're speaking, no indication that the Russians want to negotiate at all.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Again, maybe I'm gonna be proven wrong, but they haven't said they wanted to. Whenever Putin is asked about it, he's repeated his goals for Ukraine, which include the removal of the government and its replacement with someone he approves of.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Sometimes the goal is Russia occupies and incorporates Eastern Ukraine, creates a little fake state in the middle of Ukraine and gives Western Ukraine supposedly, I mean, this is what they say, not what anybody would want, to be divided up by other countries. So it's a recipe for the destruction of Ukraine. That's what Putin has said. He's never offered a vision of an alternative.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
He's built his economy around war and the need to continue war. His power base also might depend on him continuing the war. He now has around him people who are dedicated to and are profiting from because this is an oligarchic corrupt economy and are profiting from the continuation of the war and the construction of and the building of more weapons.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
So what Rudy was saying was that this is not a problem that has an instant or easy or short term solution. You know, once you are a leader whose power inside the country and who has all kinds of people dependent on you to continue fighting, it becomes very hard to stop for a lot of reasons. And so that's that was a warning.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I also have mixed views. It's a very, it's a complicated story. I mean, basically what happened is that one of the candidates whose name barely figured in polling and who wasn't seen much on mainstream television and wasn't taking part in this sort of the debates of the, of the leading candidates turned out to have been conducting a campaign on Tik TOK.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
that somebody was funding, you know, I think it's more than a million dollars, which goes a long way on TikTok. And there were influencers being paid to support him. And there were, there was some kind of network of bots or accounts that were, were activated on his behalf. And so there was a, there was this whole huge campaign on TikTok, which was under Romanian election law, illegal, you know, so
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
So he broke the law or someone broke the law on his behalf in order to campaign on TikTok. I mean, it's maybe worth saying just a couple sentences about him. I'm writing something about him that will appear soonish. He's called Callan Georgescu, and he is someone who is both simultaneously speaks for warmly and favorably of the old Romanian far right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
This is the people who carried out the Holocaust in Romania, the Romanian fascists from the wartime era. And at the same time, he has a very weird spiritual, mystical health issue. anti-vax kind of... Oh, great.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Exactly. I mean, genuinely exactly. He's like, and he's a huge fan of RFK Jr. and talks about him. And there's a video of him where he goes swimming in a
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
pond in the winter appearing to suffer no back you know it's snowing outside there's a voiceover where he says i don't need vaccines i just have my faith and my belief and i'm you know and i'm kept safe by god or something like that that's not an exact quote that's a paraphrase you know but so that it's that kind of combination of stuff you know it's appealing to the people who are skeptical of medicine plus the people oh he has a thing about water as well that
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Water is mystical, and we have a special connection to water, and carbonated water is like pollution. And when you drink carbonated water, I don't know if it's literally or metaphorically, it's like you're ingesting nanochips that will change your brain or something like that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Yes, right. So anyway, that's who he is. He's also very pro-Russian and very anti-war. And he and his wife, who's also a health kind of mystic healer kind of person, have this whole thing about peace. We need peace. We mustn't, you know, contributing weapons to the war, you know, just continues the war.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And of course, the truth is that if they're, if Romania and the rest of Europe stopped contributing wars to Ukraine, then Ukraine would fall Russia would be on their border. And actually, it would cost Romania more. It would be more difficult to stay secure. And the price of weapons would be higher. So anyway, it's a lie on many levels.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Anyway, this is the guy who wound up with 22% and in a field with many candidates in it. He came first. There was supposed to be a runoff between him and the second best candidate. And the Romanian High Court, kind of constitutional court, annulled the election on the grounds that electoral rules had been broken.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
In addition, they found 85,000 supposedly separate evidence of different kinds of Russian cyber attacks on the campaign and on election infrastructure as well. There have been a lot of weird stories in Romania in the last couple of weeks connected to it. There was a group of armed people arrested. There were some odd links between Georgescu and some Moldovans have been found and so on.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I mean, I can't speak to whether any of that is true or how it's related. The deep question here is whether Romania gets to decide what its electoral laws are. Like, does Romania have the right to... decide how what its electoral funding laws are or does tick tock decide you know does bite dance the owner the chinese owners of tick tock do they decide
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I mean, there are other countries that are facing a version of that question, too. I mean, you can you can create laws about I mean, Germany has laws about hate speech, you know, that other countries have laws about electoral campaigning and what kind of how much you can spend and what you can do. And, you know, we here in America have no electoral laws anymore, really.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And we have a free for all and you can spend whatever you want. And we're used to that and we think it's OK. But like I think other countries are allowed to have different rules, you know. But are any of those rules enforceable in a world where actually the campaign is conducted on platforms that are owned by ByteDance or by Elon Musk or by Mark Zuckerberg?
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And right now, the Romanian court made this decision that we still get to decide. And of course, there are a lot of people who think that's unfair and they robbed this guy of his chance to be And actually the number two, the woman who came in second, she's angry as well. And lots of other people feel that this is the wrong way to fight the far right. And maybe they're right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
But it's a pretty fundamental question. And it's going to come up in a lot of election campaigns. We have a German election in a few weeks where there will absolutely be a huge Russian role. There are other elections coming. And in each one of those, we will now face this problem. And by the way, it's not just a Russian role now. It's also an American role.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
One of the mistakes that people are making is imagining that giving the state more power or giving the executive more power, including effectively power without control or the ability to bend the law, that that will somehow be good for business. This is a very seductive argument that I think actually a lot of the people around him do believe.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
or, I don't know, American of South African origin role. You know, Twitter is now also is not merely a platform that, you know, lets you decide what you want to see. Twitter also has an ideology that it pushes and promotes. And so should countries accept that as well? And I think this is going to be, you know, over the next year, a lot of different places are going to grapple with this problem.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I don't have a good answer either. And, you know, of course the decision to nullify the election has horrible repercussions and maybe it's going to result in a surge of support for the far right. I don't, you know, I don't know. I mean, it, it might.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It's very difficult. I mean, I think Twitter is going to be a problem for a lot of European countries, depending on how it's used. I mean, Musk has explicitly threatened the leaders of other countries. He threatened Trudeau. He's threatened, you know, Irish leaders. Twitter is thought to have played a role in some riots in the UK, you know, a few months ago.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
If Twitter becomes a, you know, not a neutral platform where we can all have a debate, you a platform with a clear political agenda, then it's going to become a difficult problem also for, you know, for a lot of countries and not because it's Russian influence, but because it's American far right influence. And I don't know how people are going to deal with it. Maybe, you know, maybe.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
They'll discount it or ignore it or we'll all decide that it's free speech and end that. Again, there are countries who have different rules from the United States, you know, who have a different way of conducting elections and political debate. And those are their rules and they created them. And the question is whether or not they get to keep them or not.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And maybe the answer is no, I don't know.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
So, I mean, you've all know, we all know by now what happened in Syria. What happened was that the Russians withdrew their support from the regime. They were fighting their war in Ukraine. They ran out of stuff and equipment and men and they took it away. You know, the Israeli attack on Hezbollah damaged the main Iranian, you know, form of support for the regime as well.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I mean, you know, Musk, Thiel, but maybe also Bezos and Zuckerberg, I don't know. They think that this kind of power that now seems to be different from the first time where, as I said, he has this support in a particular part of the business community. They think it'll be good for them. They could be right in the short term.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And then suddenly it turned out that the regime was not only was it bankrupt, but it was unable to protect its people. So here's to me what was the most interesting thing about the fall of Assad was that when the rebel movement came into Aleppo, they took it not after this bloody, bitter battle in which lots and lots of people died. They basically walked in.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And then once they walked into Aleppo, then they walked into a bunch of other cities and villages, and then they basically walked into Damascus. And that is, to me, is really interesting because it means that the army, the police, the security apparatus, you know, the people who worked for Assad suddenly lost their belief that he would protect them. Right.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And all of these people, everybody who's in the army or in the police or wherever, they all also live in this country that has been ruled by this unbelievably brutal system for a long time. And they all have cousins and friends and relatives and acquaintances who were in prison or who were tortured or who are refugees because everybody just everybody does in a state like that.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
They're loyal to the regime because the regime pays them, presumably, or because it gives them some kind of access to goods. That's how it works, for example, in Venezuela or in Cuba, but also because it protects them from the wrath of their fellow citizens. And once they... lose that. Once the regime appears weak, then it was a collapse.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Then they just all melted into the woodwork and they took off their uniforms and walked away. It's a really interesting model because we tend to think about these systems as eternal and they can't be stopped and they're so brutal that their violence controls everything.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
But again, remembering the subject that we started with, which is that the long-term effect of brutality and centralization and oligarchy control is poverty. You know, and that eventually it destroys any culture of entrepreneurship or business or investment. Those regimes can once people lose faith in them, then they can they can go quite closely. I mean, a really interesting country to watch.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I have this weird web of connections that I make in my head that is maybe peculiar to me. But like when I saw Syria, I started thinking about Venezuela. Yeah. On the other side of the planet, I realize not really similar culturally or any other way, but it's also a country where the regime is still there because of the army and the police.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
continuing to work for it, even though there's a lot of evidence that the army and the police are very uncomfortable with the system and sympathize a lot with the population. And it's another place where you could see maybe some kind of rapid change. All of these apparently stable regimes have some very fundamental, you know, profound flaws. And that includes Russia too, of course.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I mean, obviously, Bezos is reckoning that all the things he wants to do, go to space or go to Mars or wherever, those things will be facilitated by a Trump administration that will loosen regulations or give him subsidies. I mean, Trump has been known to do that before.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
First of all, I don't find that he fits very easily into any kind of paradigm, you know, like autocrats versus Democrats or whatever you want to look at. There are two things about him that are true. Well, there are a lot of things about him that are true, but at least two things are true at once. One, that he is, he intends to rule Israel forever if he can.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
He intends to undermine Israeli democracy if he can. He was trying to do it before the Hamas attack. He was stopped by one of the most massive and well-organized protests that have taken place in any democracy. And he's trying to use the war now to achieve those same things, as far as I can see from a distance. I haven't been to Israel or worked on Israel in the last year.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
But at the same time, Israel is right about Iran. And this is something, you know, Israel, it's not Netanyahu. It's like... The army, which, by the way, is mostly the army and the tech community in Israel were the biggest supporters of the democracy movement.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
They've all been right that Iran is the source of an enormous amount of disruption and pain and tragedy in the Middle East through its various proxies. You know, including supporting Assad. And so Israel as a nation is right to try and damage them. So, you know, you have to hold those two things in your head at the same time.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I think there's a third thing that really worries me about Israel, which is that the attacks on Gaza and to a lesser extent Lebanon, the attacks on civilians... Some of which may have been accidental, but a lot of which seem not to have been, are contributing to the general feeling of lawlessness that you can do anything you want.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
You know, the Russians are allowed to kill as many Ukrainians as they want, and maybe the Chinese will be able to kill as many Uyghurs as they want. and nobody's willing to stop them. And so Israel, the war is doing a lot of damage to any idea of international law, of protection for civilians during wartime.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I would lay those three things on the table and I would say, I think it's too early to judge, but Israel has done both good by destroying Hezbollah and a huge amount of damage by the horrific and unnecessary deaths of thousands of people. But they've also done an enormous amount of damage, both to their own country and to the region and really to the world. So that's where I am.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
The mistake that they make is that in the longer term, and I don't know, life is so accelerated right now that longer term could come faster than it used to, almost always these kinds of regimes are really bad for business. And if you look around the world, you can see it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Assad was really happy news. Let's end by celebrating the exit of Assad and the release of people from prison. Come on. I mean, that was great news. It was fun.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Hungary, which is the state that so many on the far right now admire as a model, is now, depending on how you count, either the second or third poorest country in Europe. putting all the power in the hands of a few favorite oligarchs, making the political system dependent on the whim of the leader, bending rules and undermining the rule of law actually made Hungary a terrible place to invest.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Fine. Thanks for having me back.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It made it profoundly corrupt, all kinds of stories there. And I can see the same thing happening in the United States. I mean, if you have a fundamental undermining of our sense that the relationship between the you will have a different attitude to investment and to business and so on. I mean, I can't tell you exactly how it will play out, but it's dangerous.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
The US works because we have, I mean, it's a lot narrower than it used to be, but some kind of culture of trust. People believe that contracts will be enforced. They think that courts are neutral. And if you've broken the law, you're in trouble. And if you haven't, you'll be vindicated. When people begin to lose that sense,
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It has a profoundly undermining effect on business and the economy as well. It's just that it'll take some time for people to see it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I think that is what they think. Interesting ancien or old, as we say in English, is a word you could also apply to Donald Trump.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
Right. I mean, he's, of course, a product of the United States of America and its educational system and its financial system and so on and on. So it's not like he represents something new, but that's a separate question. Yeah, I do think that there are now – there is a part of the media, there is a part of the business community, there is a part of –
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
whatever you call it, the online world that now believes we will transition to something different. And I think they do mean some kind of techno-oligarchic regime where ordinary people have less influence on politics. Peter Thiel has been talking for years about how giving women the vote was a mistake and the poor being allowed to have influence on politics has negative implications for the state.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And I think the reason I was talking about Trump being old is they think that they will control him and they will hasten the transition to that regime. I mean, this is not some kind of made-up dystopian nightmare. I mean, this is what they've been saying. You know, this is what Thiel has been saying. This is what Curtis Yarvin has been saying. This is what others have been saying.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
So, you know, why shouldn't we believe them when that's what they say? What exactly that means and how it works, you know, In practice, I don't know. I mean, we still do have a legal system. We still have a Congress. We still have courts. Most judges, federal judges, are not partisan in the sense that they will vote for a different kind of regime.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
I mean, some of them are conservative and some of them are or more progressive or whatever word you want to use, but they have different interpretations of the constitution, but they still operate out of those interpretations. They still think the constitution matters. I mean, there are a couple exceptions in Florida and elsewhere, but most of them do. And so, you know, there will be a lot of,
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
systemic resistance or systemic hurdles that you will have to overcome before you can establish a system whereby some version of Musk and Thiel or whoever, whichever puppet they back, whether it's Trump or Vance, are actually controlling the country and have more ability to make decisions and more power than anybody else. But it's clearly what they want.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
You know, it's clearly the direction they're hoping to go in.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
One more word on that. I mean, once the people understand that the country is run in effect by unelected billionaires, then whatever anti-elite sentiments they have will be directed at those unelected billionaires. You can see that happen in other countries, too.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
So the idea of U.S. foreign policy is that U.S. foreign policy should one way or another benefit the United States of America. It should be good for American prosperity, security. It should be good for international security, which is you know, in a more distanced way, but it's still good for us.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
The idea that American foreign policy would be conducted to benefit the Trump family isn't something that we've had in America before. We could probably find some examples of corruption in foreign policy and people who made decisions that were good for business partners or something like that, but I don't think we've ever had a version of it that's so blatant and so open.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
The idea that the Trump children would be openly seeking to benefit from their father's decisions, the idea that relationships between the United States and whether it's Saudi Arabia or Turkey or India or anywhere else would be shaped in order to benefit a particular investment. This level of corruption is brand new. It's not something we've had before.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
It's also, once again, something that, you know, the effects of it are going to be felt immediately by ordinary Americans. This is maybe another maybe this is another piece of bad news, which is that people, you know, you saw a version of this happen in Poland. You know, when the when the government begins to do things that are in violation of the rule of law of the Constitution,
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
but they don't seem to affect ordinary people and people don't see it or feel it themselves, there isn't necessarily the reaction and the outrage that you would expect. And that's what I think you were getting from Chris Murphy. He was saying, why is this normalized? And the answer is that most people don't care.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
And we are going to discover in a really big way, I think, that most people don't care about this stuff. And that will be an unhappy discovery. But yeah, it's new. It's different. It's a different level of corruption.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
By the way, I think that's also part of what there's a deliberate aspect to what's happening now.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
You know how almost every day there's some shocking piece of news, you know, some other totally inappropriate person has been appointed to a job or nominated for a job or it's Carrie Lake or it's yet another relative or somebody else's father-in-law, you know, or son-in-law has been appointed to a job. I think that's probably deliberate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
One of the things that's happening is that this is the second time that Trump has won. And when you look at the pattern, whether it's Hugo Chavez or whether it's Viktor Orban, it's a loss and then a return that changes the politics.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
You distract people, you put an enormous amount of news on the table, and you keep it going all the time. And that's a way of kind of dominating and running the media. And that's also not unique to the Trump family and the Trump cronies and people around him. I mean, it's a That's also a known tactic. You know, you just keep going.
The Bulwark Podcast
Anne Applebaum: Planning for a Techno-Oligarchic Regime
You know, every day there's another shocking thing that people have to absorb. And it's been also directed at different groups. So there's the national security people are upset about one set of appointments and health people are upset about RFK Jr. And, you know, you keep everybody divided and angry. And that's a tactic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
tanks in Europe. You know, so the U.S. withdrew enormous forces from Europe. The Europeans reduced their armies. NATO almost began to dissolve. I mean, if you look at kind of the late 90s, early 2000s, a lot of conversations. You can go back and read the op-eds. People are saying, do we still need NATO and so on. But it existed as a kind of shell, just in case.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The return of NATO spending and the return of expansion of NATO, because Sweden and Finland have recently joined NATO, is happening because of the perception of Russian threat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So as the Russians began to change their posture, as the Russians began to express an interest in aggression, in invading other countries, invading Ukraine, they invaded Georgia, they threatened Estonia, they've threatened everybody, they've threatened the British, they've threatened the Germans.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
As they began to do that in a more regular and a more believable way, everybody began to say, right, we need to think once again about self-defense. And of course, the invasion of Ukraine was a triggering point where people saw that Putin was prepared for a very large scale war. He was prepared for civilian atrocities, for the destruction of infrastructure, all of those things.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And that meant that NATO needed to refresh its defenses again. And that process is continuing, actually. I mean, the European countries are now almost all spending more than 2%. Some of them are higher than that. Poland, where I live part of the time, is over 4% of its, I'm talking about percentages of GDP, on the military. And in a way, it's very sad.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
That's money that people aren't spending on health care or, I don't know, building nice parks and cities. are a lot of things that you sacrifice for doing that, but that's all happening because of this perception of threat. So NATO has been an institution that was interested in keeping the rules. I mean, NATO was very Europe-focused.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The idea of NATO was that it was part of a set of European institutions that would preserve borders in Europe, that would prevent the repeat of a large-scale war of the kind that everybody suffered from in the 1940s. It has never been an institution designed to project power into Russia or or anywhere else.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And you're saying it sounds like you're saying the NATO expanded after he invaded Ukraine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Ukraine was not a member of NATO, and nor was it on the path to be a member of NATO. And I have to say, even had Ukraine been a member of NATO, maybe the invasion wouldn't have happened. So one of the reasons the invasion happened was because Ukraine was a country that was in limbo. It didn't have... any real military guarantees.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It did have actually, there had been security guarantees signed in the 1990s, this famous Budapest memorandum signed by the U.S. and the U.K. and Russia that guaranteed Ukraine's borders and Ukrainian sovereignty. But that obviously was abandoned by Russia in 2014 with the first invasion of Crimea. Ukraine was not provoking Russia. Ukraine was not seeking to invade Russia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Nobody was invading Russia. Nobody was seeking to provoke Russia. I mean, NATO was a defensive alliance. Ukraine was without protection. And that may have been the mistake.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It's a common refrain among people who are repeating Russian propaganda.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
let me go a little bit farther back in history, you know, in that case. As early as the 1990s, Russia, which had become independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union, already in 1993-94 had begun to make threatening language threatening gestures towards some of its neighbors.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And there's a famous speech that's given by the president of Estonia in 1994, in which he was given in Hamburg, and he spoke about how happy Estonia was to be a member of Europe again, and he talked about architecture and so on. He also talked about the reemergence of a threat from Russia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
In other words, he was already then hearing language from Russia threatening Estonian sovereignty, questioning whether Estonia was really an independent nation or not. And there's a famous thing that happened at that speech. Again, it was in Hamburg. There was somebody in the room who was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg who walked out of the speech. And of course, the deputy mayor of St.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Petersburg, it was Putin at that time. So the language of threat that began coming from Russia towards former Russian colonies and towards former Soviet states begins already in the 90s. In 2003, four and five, there began to be other kinds of threats. There's a big cyber attack on Estonia at that time. There is a record of Russia threatening its neighbors that goes back 20 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And so all of those neighbors, the reason NATO expanded following the Cold War was because those countries felt under direct threat and they were not wrong. So if you look at the history, it goes the other way around. So people were clamoring to join NATO. Why did Poland want to join NATO? Why did Romania want to join NATO? Why did Lithuania want to join NATO?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They wanted to join NATO because they were already felt under threat from Russia. So in that same period of time, there were gestures made to Russia. There was a NATO-Russian partnership that was created. Russia was invited to join the G7, which for a while was the G8. Russia was invited to a whole series of other institutions.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
There was an idea that Russia and Russia was, of course, part of the WTO. But there was an idea that Russia would be wrapped into a series of institutions and would through trade and through interaction would eventually cease to be hostile, you know, and then maybe, you know, down the road, there was even talk of Russia eventually being in NATO.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
That now seems crazy, but that was a moment of high optimism in the 90s and 2000s when that felt possible. And so the question that you have to ask is why didn't it happen? And why did the Russians reject that path? And why were their neighbors so frightened of them? The U.S. was not the power that wanted to expand NATO. It was coming from those states. They wanted protection.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They wanted to be part of Western clubs. They wanted to integrate with Europe. And they were afraid of Russia. And they've been afraid of Russia since the 90s. So people who don't know the history of NATO expansion and who don't understand the sequence of events and why it happened... are accepting a Russian narrative about why it happened.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It did not happen because those states were aggressive towards Russia. It happened because they were afraid of Russia. The other thing you need to know is that until 2014, there were no U.S. troops and very few NATO facilities of any kind in Eastern Europe. There was no expansion. There was no movement of troops into Poland.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, none of that happened until the invasion of Crimea, which really scared people for the first time. And people said, right, the Russians are serious. They could really invade and we need to be protected. Even then, a lot of it was pretty superficial. Even up until 2022, when the second full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, there was still pretty scarce NATO facilities in Eastern Europe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, that is now beginning to change. I mean, you've now had a big military buildup in several of the eastern states, including Poland. but also others. But that is coming because people are afraid of Russia. They are afraid of being invaded. They're afraid of their own cities being destroyed. Some are under economic pressure from Russia.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Some of the other tactics that I describe in the book, I mean, there's big Russian propaganda campaigns all over Europe. There's a Russian sabotage campaign in Europe now. There have been arson attacks and bombs. So people are now perceived that Russia is looking for ways to put political and economic and eventually maybe military pressure on Russia. Europe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And so Europeans are gearing up to defend themselves. Is it what people wanted? It is not. You know, is it popular in every country? It is not. Do Europeans want to pay for armies? No, they don't. Nobody wants to pay for an army. As I said, they want to pay for health care and parks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
But this is coming from a really profound shift in Russia that's taking place over the last 20 years and unprecedented levels of Russian aggression.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So there isn't a peace plan in Ukraine.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
There is no peace plan. So this is one of this very weird phenomenon, which might even be described as experts talking to themselves. This war will be over when the Russians no longer believe they can win. In other words, the war will end when the Russians can't fight anymore or don't want to fight anymore.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And so far at this moment, as we're speaking, you know, in February 2025, I don't see any evidence that the Russians want to stop fighting. Everybody who says there's a peace plan and that includes there was a fake one that was going around recently. I mean, there have been several. That's probably the one I saw. Everyone who thinks there's a peace plan, they're speaking to other people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They're not speaking to Putin himself. Maybe this could change, you know, in the coming days and weeks. But right now, I haven't seen evidence that Putin has changed his goal. So Putin's goal is to destroy all of Ukraine, to put a pro-Russian government in Kiev and to remove Ukrainian sovereignty. That's why he's fighting the war. That is his goal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
He has not verbally or in any other way given up that goal. So the issue with creating a ceasefire is not persuading Ukraine to have a ceasefire. The Ukrainians would have a ceasefire and we could put pressure on them to have a ceasefire. But to have a ceasefire, you need two countries. Both sides have to stop fighting. And as of right this second, I don't see that Russia's ready to stop fighting.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So I am a little mystified by what everybody thinks is the plan, because right now there isn't one.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
If we were to get to a ceasefire for whatever reason, Putin wants a break or something, then we are in another, wherever they draw the line, then we would be in another danger zone, which is that a ceasefire that did not emerge from Putin deciding that he couldn't win the war would be in danger of falling apart, you know, one month or two years down the line when Putin decides to renew the war.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
No. And also nuance is a problem for a lot of people. But for me, there's actually there's a strange thing where I begin my career writing books about Soviet communism. And so I'm a hero to some people on the right. And now I'm very frequently described as left wing by people on the right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So the war is really only over when the Russians acknowledge that Ukraine is an independent state and that it deserves its own sovereignty. And then we end the war. And then we can argue about where the border will be. Whatever happens over the next few months when you hear this discussed, just remember that the question is not where the line is drawn or, you know, how we do peacekeeping.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The question is, have the Russians given up on their most important goal. And so are they stopping because they need a pause? They're losing an extraordinary number of people right now. I mean, just thousands and thousands of people every month.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And it's something like I saw a statistic actually just today where the proportion of Russians dying to Ukrainians dying is either one to seven or one to 10, depending on whose numbers you're using. So they're throwing fantastic numbers of people and they're dying. And I've also seen recently the Ukrainians keep track of how many objects they hit. They have a video, you know, prove it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
There are sort of video tracking of what they did. And the Ukrainians are hitting every month, again, thousands of Russian pieces of equipment, radar, troops. I mean, they are hitting enormous numbers of people and goods. So the Russians are losing an enormous number of people and equipment, and they won't be able to keep it up indefinitely.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And what they are hoping is that support from Ukraine will somehow disappear or dissolve. That's what they were hoping they would get from the election. They may still get it. I don't know. We're not at that stage yet. We don't have a resolution. But at some point they will give up. But if that hasn't happened, then the war isn't over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Whereas I feel that over the 20 years that have passed, I don't feel that my fundamental positions have changed at all. I mean, I've changed my opinions about some things, but I have the same general attitude to the world that I had. And that made me right wing 20 years ago and left wing now. So whatever.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Yeah, that's correct. I mean, they've restructured their economy, which is now focused on producing military equipment. Of course, that has traps, as we know from American history and from the history of other countries. If you're spending an enormous amount of money to produce military equipment, I It's a kind of dead end product. I mean, it only has one use. It goes to the war.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It's blown up and that's it. And there's a limit to how long Russia will be able to simply pump the money it earns from oil and gas into tanks and guns and maintain the rest of the economy and maintain some level of prosperity for people. And this is actually how the Soviet Union fell apart. So this is a story that we know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Eventually, they spent such a high proportion of money on the military that they impoverished their people. And that's more complicated than that. But that eventually led to the end of the system. So it's not something they can do indefinitely.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And some real Americans who... For sure. Actually Americans.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So this is because the language of democracy, which is language that quite a lot of Americans also now disparage, the language of the rule of law, the language of, you know, independent courts, transparency, accountability, this language is the thing that threatens them the most. What is Putin most afraid of? What's the movement he worries about the most?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
What he worries about the most is what he saw happen in Ukraine in 2014, which was a mass uprising that was focused on anti-corruption. So young people saying, we don't want corrupt leaders anymore. We want the rule of law. That was actually what that moment was about. This is the 2014 Maidan, so-called Maidan revolution.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
That language and those movements is the one thing that threatens them ideologically. And the same is true in China. What was the biggest threat to Chinese stability in the last several years? It was the Hong Kong democracy movement, which also used that language. The Chinese actually... came to this conclusion a long time ago.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Very evocative. And the document famously describes a set of perils to the Chinese Communist Party. What are the things that are most dangerous to the Chinese Communist Party? And number one was Western constitutional democracy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So the idea of Western constitutions, the idea that people should have choice, the idea that people should have rights, the idea that there should be a legal system that's separate from the will of the Chinese Communist Party. this is the thing that the Chinese Communist Party decided was most threatening to their form of government. There is actually a war of ideas going on. We may not know it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
We might not care about it. We don't probably wake up in the morning, most of us thinking about the Chinese Communist Party. But at least some people in the Chinese Communist Party, they wake up every morning thinking about us because they perceive us as a threat to them. And that's why they've gone to extraordinary lengths. They've
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Look, I can do this. I can invade Ukraine. I can bomb civilians. I can kidnap children. He's kidnapped 20,000 children, taken them from occupied Ukraine to Russia. I can torture people. I can defy the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, all kinds of institutional language on human rights. I can do all of this, and you can't stop me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
produce huge propaganda campaigns, as you've noted, designed to smear the West, smear democracy, smear Americans. They've looked for allies in the Western world, political parties, political leaders, propagandists, newspaper columnists who will join them in this smearing of and attacking of the West and of American and European democracy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The Chinese have invested hundreds of millions, if not more, in propaganda. networks of television, radio, newspaper, media all over Africa, Latin America. They use those networks partly to put out this language that criticizes, roughly speaking, our values. This is something they consider to be extremely important. It's one of the sources of their feelings of competitiveness with us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They think that their systems are incompatible with ours. As I said, we don't think about it much. And there was a period in the 90s and 2000s when I think we hoped that we would all eventually be compatible. We could trade on the basis of win-win for everybody. If everybody's making money, then why not keep going? And that was, I think, also, to be fair, that was what they believed at the time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, you can find Chinese and Russian writers and politicians in that period saying exactly the same thing. But for a variety of reasons, this idea has fallen apart and they don't believe that anymore. They believe that they are in a war of ideas against us and they need to win.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It's not. I mean, we not all of us, but some democratic world politicians understand both the economic challenge and the ideological threat that comes from the autocratic world. And they have invested also in democracy. seeking to fight their ideas and to fight their language and to fight the autocratic narrative. This is a pretty sophisticated battle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So there is something like an autocratic narrative that the autocratic world has been building for a long time. And you'll recognize it. It's the idea that autocracies are stable and safe. And democracies are weak and divided and autocracies defend traditional values and democracies are degenerate. And they've worked on that and they've built it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And there are people in the democratic world who have tried to fight back by arguing that democracy is better and so on. I don't think we're as engaged. We haven't invested the kind of money we are right now. As we're having this conversation, we're beginning to dismantle some of the institutions that have been used to fight that battle.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
USAID, for example, the American aid agency that's being dismantled this week was one of them. So maybe we're not going to continue fighting it. But yeah, we have been fighting it for a long time. And I think we should have been doing it more.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Yep, that was the idea.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ,,,,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Yeah, this was actually one of the original insights that led me to write the book. I spent a lot of years writing about the Soviet bloc and Soviet history. And back in the 20th century, there was a thing called the Soviet bloc, and they shared an ideology and they had similar principles, at least in theory. They even had similar symbols on their flags and so on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
What we now have in the world is an alliance, but it's not really an alliance. It's really a network of of autocratic states who don't have ideology in common, who are left-wing and right-wing. Some of them are one-man regimes. Some of them are run by single ruling parties.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Yeah. So what the Chinese have is a system of monitoring the Internet. People talk about the Great Firewall of China like it's a thing, but it's actually many different things. It's listening on social media forums. It's control of social media forums. The banning of particular words. So the word Tiananmen is banned. And the Chinese have ways around it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, they look for substitute words that everybody knows means Tiananmen, Tiananmen being, of course, the name of the protest in 1989 that was eventually shot down. There's even a funny story about people started, instead of referring to Xi Jinping, the leader of China, directly, somebody decided that he looked like Winnie the Pooh. And so they would talk about Winnie the Pooh.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And then eventually that got banned because people were talking about Winnie the Pooh. And really, they were talking about Xi Jinping's The Chinese are always finding ways around this, but the state spends a lot of time censoring, monitoring. They don't cut everything because they want to know what people think, actually. They're interested in knowing this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
But they've also begun to be able to attach that online surveillance to real-world surveillance. So... Street cameras, being able to monitor transportation that people use. So they're looking at a person or a group of people. They can track them across time, you know, through different places. Where are they going? Who did they meet? How much money do they spend?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
What kinds of things are they buying? The place in China where this has become most extreme and where they seem to be experimenting the most with really trying to understand what people are doing is Xinjiang. This is where the Uyghur population lives. This is a Muslim minority in China that's very heavily repressed. There's DNA testing they do of people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So that's another way in which they keep track of people. They keep track of people's electricity usage because if someone has high use of electricity, then maybe someone is secretly staying in their house. They begin to use all kinds of utilities, transport, credit cards, whatever information they have on people, they can unify it and they can examine what people are doing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They include communist China, nationalist Russia, theocratic Iran, Bolivarian socialist Venezuela, North Korea, Belarus, Zimbabwe. I mean, these are countries that don't have a single set of ideas. They do have some things in common.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It's pretty clear that the point over time is to understand, is to look for political dissent before it happens. So if they find a group of people who seem to be having intense conversations and are using a lot of electricity and are meeting offline somewhere, then maybe you've identified a political cell or a meeting. And the same thing online. You can trace the development of ideas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And of course, once you have AI, a lot of this becomes much easier. You can trace how ideas spread, who's using them, who are the nodes of transport, who are the influencers that people are listening to in terms of politics. And of course, a lot of those capabilities we also have in theory. I mean, the tech world has them. U.S. tech companies have them in theory.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, they haven't necessarily been used in practice. But one of the fears that Americans should have is that eventually they could if they worked sufficiently together with the government or they collaborated, that it's not impossible to imagine how you could do that. And the other point about the Chinese surveillance systems is that they are selling those systems.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They sell them to other dictatorships. So apparently nobody else has managed to use them with the sophistication that the Chinese have. But I don't know, if you're the government of Zimbabwe, maybe you'd like the capability to follow people around in Harare and know where they are at any given moment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The systems of street cameras have been purchased by a lot of countries, sometimes with benign intent. You know, if you have street cameras, you prevent crime. And the UK has a lot of street cameras. So it's not necessarily to be used for political tracking, but it could be with the wrong kind of government or a lot of ill will.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I think, although this is so often talked about as these are Chinese capabilities, I think it's important to remember that once the technology exists, it could be used by others.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
All of them are regimes who seek to rule without checks and balances, without legitimate democratic opposition, without any real opposition, without independent courts, without the rule of law. So they're countries that are run, it's called rule by law, meaning the law is what the regime says it is at any given moment. It doesn't have any separate status.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Yeah. What if he wasn't a dangerous armed robber?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
What if he was a political dissident? Or what if he was someone in Washington wanted to get back at or wanted revenge against? Then you're already in quite a different world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Many times.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It's funny. I haven't seen it in a while, but I imagine the technology now will seem incredibly primitive.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
That's right. There were tags in his shoes or something or his coat, maybe. That's right. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
These are political murders and they want everyone to know they're political murders. They don't, for reasons of delicacy, they don't want to shoot them in the face, but they want other people to be afraid. So, you know, actually for a long time in Putin's Russia, there weren't a lot of political murders. There wasn't that much political violence. Instead, there was kind of targeted violence.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So they would pick on one journalist, you know, or one activist. And that person would be bumped off. The idea was that if you kill one person, if you kill Anna Politkovskaya, she was a famous journalist, then you scare everybody else. So other journalists become afraid to do the kinds of things that she was doing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
With the war in Ukraine, there is more opposition and more unrest, and especially in the Russian elite. This is mostly not happened to people in the provinces. And so there's a greater need to tighten up on internal dissent. And so it's been happening to bankers, business people, high-ranking bureaucrats, people who are inside the system will suddenly fall out a window.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
There have been some falling down stairs as well, even weirder ones, and a bunch of poisonings. And those are not just to get rid of the person. It's also to scare the other people because they are afraid of internal dissent and people being anti-war. That makes sense.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
That particular murder might have been an accident. I mean, it seems that the people who had the poison and were carrying it around London and leaving traces in hotel rooms and so on, they may not have known what it was. I mean, so that might have been stupidity. But you are right that very often they do things in a way that are designed to be followed.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, so, for example, when Alexei Navalny was poisoned the second time, it was going to be clear that it was them. It was a poison that only the FSB had and Yeah, they want it to be known who's done it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They try to rule without independent media or conversation. And That links them. They're also linked by a kind of set of opportunistic interests. They have financial interests in common. Quasi-state, quasi-private companies in one country invest in the quasi-state, quasi-private companies of another. That brings them together.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So there was something appealing to people who want simple answers. And also, I think, let's be fair. There are injustices in capitalism. There are huge gaps between the rich and the poor. There are people who don't have equal opportunities because of where and how they were born and the kinds of families they grew up in. And injustice is always something that rankles people and bothers them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And the idea that there could be a perfectly just state in which everyone has the same rights and in which there aren't very rich people, you know, and very poor people, I think is theoretically appealing. I've spent a lot of my life reading about people who were communists, and many of them were in very bad faith. They were just people who wanted power or they were sadists.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
But there were some people who, in good faith, believed that you could create if you designed it from the beginning rather than just accepting the ebb and flow of history that created capitalism and some companies. And instead of just accepting that, you could start from scratch. You could design a system and you could make it fair. And I think that had a deep appeal to a lot of people.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Of course, again, the problem was that in practice, imposing a system on people, imposing an economic system and imposing a political system was a disaster from the beginning. I mean, there isn't actually an example of any state that seriously tried it that succeeded. And they failed from the beginning. I mean, the Soviet Union's, the 1920s were a disaster. The 1930s were a bloodbath.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
In the 1940s, World War II basically saved Stalin, you know, because they won the war, partly thanks to the help of the United States. They were able to somehow rescue the idea of communism for a bit longer. But I mean, one of the reasons they kept having these cycles of violence, and this is true in Eastern Europe as well,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
was because they never were able to do what they said they were going to do. They kept saying, this is the perfect system. We're going to have prosperity for everybody. We're going to defeat the United States in the sense of we're going to have a better system than them. And it never happened. And because it never happened, they kept having to look for scapegoats. So Why are we all still poor?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Why are we poorer now than we were in Tsarist Russia? You know, why is the system failing? And so, oh, well, the answer is that there are saboteurs and there are traitors and there are Trotskyites who are trying to undermine us. And therefore, we need to find them and arrest them and put them in the gulag. That cycle happened, you know, repeatedly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And then there would be a thaw and they would let people out because that wasn't working. And then there would be another wave of arrests. That happens in every one of these countries because the ideal that they had could never be reached. Also, communism was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, what makes people work hard, the ideas of ambition.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Once you eliminate ownership, for example, nobody can own their own house. Okay, well, if you don't own your house, then why should you keep it up? Why should you paint it? If somebody else owns it, why should you invest in it? And the same is true of a company. If you're working for a company... And you're not going to ever make any more money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And, you know, your time isn't going to produce anything good for you. Then maybe you only pretend to work. Maybe you don't really work. And one of the things the communist system was always doing was inventing incentives. OK, so people don't really want to work.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So let's have a worker competition and let's have posters on the wall and whoever digs the most coal gets a prize, you know, because they couldn't. motivate people in any other way. And so they created these fake motivational systems. It was fundamentally incompatible with human nature. And as I said, from day one, it began with violence. It needed violence to maintain itself all the way through.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They sell one another surveillance technology, other kinds of technology. The Chinese sell actually surveillance technology to a lot of these countries. They also... see one another as allies in a kind of ill-defined global struggle that most of us aren't even aware of. In other words, they will come to one another's rescue. So you mentioned Venezuela.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And eventually it collapsed because the people who were running it, even they didn't believe in it. And that became clear by the 1980s.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
That takes a long time. You'll be glad to know.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Usually it takes a long time. So in Poland, we had a sort of would-be autocratic populist political party in power. They had eight years in power and they didn't complete control, you know, and so they lost an election eventually.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Even though it was an unfair election, even though they captured part of the legal system in the courts, even though they had taken over state media and so on, you know, nevertheless, it was still possible to defeat them. In Venezuela, Chavez was very popular when he was first elected. And he was legitimately elected, democratically elected leader. He was very popular. He appealed to the poor.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
He did a lot of things, especially at the moment when oil prices were high, when he could give away a lot of money and other things to poor Venezuelans. Even as he was destroying the independent institutions of the state, even as he was wrecking the civil service, for example, Venezuela had a state oil industry.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
He fired, I think it's like 19 or 20,000 people from it and replaced them with loyalists. That was the beginning of the end of their oil industry. even as all that was happening, I've seen some statistics that say even kind of 10 years into that process, many Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy, even as the institutions of their democracy were dying.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
It really only became crystal clear when people understood that it was impossible to elect anyone else. And we've had several attempts of the Venezuelan opposition to elect someone else, including a recent one last fall, in which the opposition won and nevertheless were not allowed to take power. And now it's clear that Venezuela is a dictatorship, but that took well over a decade, 20 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
But the main point is that very often as this is happening, there are many people who voted and were not voting for authoritarianism or autocracy or anything like that. In fact, I would say most people didn't think that's what they were voting for. So I'm not saying that that happened. The decline of the institutions won't bother them until at a later stage when we see the impact.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So as you begin to lose your independent civil service, your government declines and the capacity of the government to do things gets worse. This I saw in Poland. Once the civil service is selected for loyalty to the leader and not because they know how to identify and stop water pollution, then you begin to have a lot of water pollution. The state begins to decline and that can take a long time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
There will be many moments when a decline can be stopped, but it is something that all Americans should pay attention to. I mean, let's go back to the very beginning of this conversation. You know, what is an autocracy? An autocracy is a state where no checks and balances, where there's no parliament, there's no Congress to compete for power.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
where the media is controlled, where the courts are politicized, where there's a lot of secrecy, where there's no transparency, where there's no accountability for people in power. You should recognize those things as warning signs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The decline of the institutions of the state and of the government will have, sooner or later, will have effects on people's prosperity, on their way of life, and on the kinds of governments that we could have in the future. So I would take it very seriously.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So Venezuela is a country that is a failed state. It was the wealthiest country in South America. It's now the poorest. It produces more, depending on how you calculate, more refugees than Ukraine, even though it's not at war. Its economy has collapsed. It has no legitimacy. The regime just lost an election and the opposition proved that they lost an election.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Be engaged. Join your local political party. Pay attention to the most basic, the most local elections wherever you live, in whatever city or county or state. Remember that democracy is a gift. You inherited it from the people who invented it in generations past. People who live in Russia, people who live in Venezuela envy you because you get to choose who your county commissioner is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So take that responsibility seriously. It's not even only about politics. Be in your neighborhood association, you know, be part of your community, be engaged in local life at whatever level you can be. democracies succeed when they are based on active citizens. Active citizens have to be involved. The more active you are and the more different kinds of people you meet, the less polarized we are.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
When you're meeting people who disagree with you on a daily basis, when you're able to talk to them in a reasonable way, when you're all talking about real issues like where to build the bridge or which road to repair first, you know, Then you're not off in the world of mythology and celebrity politics that the extremists want you to be in.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, remember, we also talked about mythology and the power of the online world and how it can sometimes be more powerful than the real world. You know, try to live in the real world and base your politics on what you see. not some threat that's been described to you on TV, you know, but actually look at your neighbors, look at your neighborhood, look how you live.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Try to fix those things and live in the real world as much as you can.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Thank you. No, there are no silly questions, you know, only silly answers, I guess.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They had the papers and the documents and the data to prove it. Nevertheless, Maduro, who's now the dictator, stays in power. How does he do that? One of the most important ways is that he has military support from Russia. He has investment from China. He has help with his security services from Cuba. He has, and as he said, he has this weird relationship with Iran.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Why do left-wing socialist Venezuela and Islamic Republic of Iran work together? Well, they're both oil states. They're both under sanctions. They help one another evade sanctions. The Venezuelans have lent visas, we think, to Iran. Hezbollah activists so that they can travel freely. They see themselves as united essentially against us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And by us, I mean very broadly the democratic world, the world where, at least in theory, we believe in the rule of law and accountability and transparency. And they help one another stay in power working against us. And they see the ideas that we represent as their biggest threat. So
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
the language of accountability, the language of rights, the language of justice, all that language, which is, of course, in dispute in every country on the planet, but all that language is what they see. It's the language of their own oppositions. It's the language of the Venezuelan opposition. The Russian opposition used the language of anti-corruption.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The Iranian opposition, the women's movement in Iran uses the language of rights. They see that language as their biggest threat to their form of And that's the fundamental thing that they have in common.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Yeah, this is exactly the metaphor that I wanted. You know, it's as if there were a conglomerate of companies and each one of them had their own business model, but they cooperate where it suits them. You know, so where a moment of trade suits them or where they see a common interest or something that they can do together, they work together.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Yeah, I mean, BRICS doesn't overlap exactly with Autocracy, Inc. Let me complicate that further. So there are the real autocratic states. There's also a large group of states in the middle. And here I would put India. I would put the Emirates. I would put Turkey, who are their illiberal states. Some of them still have elections. Some of them have some freedoms, some of which are more hybrid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
They're willing to work both with the democratic world and the autocratic world. Of course, many democracies work with the autocratic world, too. So it's not the Cold War. It's not as if there's a Berlin Wall and there are good guys on one side and there are bad guys on the other and there are clear lines between them.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And BRICS includes, you know, just by including Brazil, by including India, by including South Africa, those are states that are hybrid. I mean, actually, Brazil is a democracy. Those are states with a different set of interests from Russia and China and Iran.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
You've just hit on a really, really important point about alliances. One of the things that makes the United States different from other large superpowers on the planet is that we have had for many decades these values-based alliances. that are based on long-term relationships, trading relationships, cultural relationships, military ties, but also personal ties.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
The U.S., Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, these are countries that have worked together in ways that are deeper than mere opportunism. And they've understood those relationships for a long time as being kind of win-win relationships. They're not zero-sum. It's not like one person wins, one person loses. And you're right. Unlike the relationships of the autocratic world,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
they're not merely opportunistic. They're not simply to achieve, you know, a business deal. You know, they're meant to be long term and they're meant to last a long time. And they are, of course, right now under threat.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
This is right. So, yes, the Soviet Union did seek to appear to be an international law abiding state. And it took seriously criticisms of the Soviet Union at the U.N. This is actually before both of our time. But there's a famous scene at the U.N., you know, many decades ago when Khrushchev, who was then the leader of the Soviet Union, famously was supposed to have banged his shoe on the table.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
OK. And the reason why he, which, by the way, it's not clear whether it really happened, but it's one of those things that's too good to check. But supposedly banged his shoe on the table. And the reason he did it was because another delegate, if memory serves, it was from someone from the Philippines, but I could be wrong, had accused him of violating the rights of people in Central Europe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And that's outrageous. You know, we would never do that, you know. So what he was objecting to was a criticism of the Soviet Union was depriving of people of rights. So you are right that what we're seeing now, this began with Russia actually, is a group of states who no longer even pretend that they are conforming to international law.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
In fact, one of the primary reasons, I believe, for the Russian invasion of Ukraine three years ago, and we're almost at the anniversary, Three years ago was because, I mean, obviously it was part of the reason was Putin wants a new Russian empire. Part of the reason was he wanted to show that he would crush democracy in Ukraine to discourage any Russians from wanting to take that route.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
But he also wanted to say, look, I can do this. I can invade Ukraine. I can bomb civilians. I can kidnap children. He's kidnapped 20,000 children, taken them from occupied Ukraine to Russia. I can torture people. I can defy the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, all kinds of institutional language on human rights. I can do all of this and you can't stop me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
So what he's trying to show is that he doesn't care about any of these documents, any of these laws or rules or norms from the 20th century and from the early part of the 21st century. And they are seeking really to create a different kind of world. And Putin uses this word multipolarity, which actually, I mean, just on the face of it is a neutral word.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
I mean, multipolarity means that there are lots of nations who have power. And that's obviously true. I mean, so multipolarity exists. I mean, it's real. But he's using it in a very specific way. He's talking about multipolarity replacing what he calls hegemony. And by hegemony, he means a world in which
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Those kinds of laws and language, the language of rights, the language of borders, the language of the rule of law is abolished in favor of essentially a world in which very big countries get to decide what they want and little countries don't have sovereignty. And if Russia wants to invade Ukraine, Russia gets to do that and nobody can stop them. That's the world they're seeking to create.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
And those are the institutions they want to destroy. And of course, it's very dangerous because, you know, there have been many, I don't want to claim that the last 70 or 80 years have been perfect by any means, but the fact that the U.S., Europe, so many other countries have been able to invest so much in welfare, in scientific research.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
in increasing prosperity of their nations as opposed to spending 20 or 30 or 40% of their national budgets on the military. This has been the blessing of the post-war world. This is one of the reasons we've had so much prosperity. If we return to a world in which might makes right and everybody needs a huge army, then we're going to be living on a very different kind of planet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
But that is what the Russians want. And increasingly, it seems that it may even be what the Chinese want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1117: Anne Applebaum | Inside The Fortune 500 of Modern Dictatorships
Sure. NATO is a defensive alliance. It was created to react to attacks on its members. That has been its role since it was created decades ago. NATO doesn't invade other countries. NATO doesn't have plans to do so, and it doesn't talk about doing so. NATO actually, after the end of the Cold War, reduced its military spending dramatically. And there was one moment in which there were no U.S.
Up First from NPR
BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
And that's a message that is heard not just in every European capital, but in every allied capital around the planet as a sign that the U.S. is changing.
Up First from NPR
BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
It has so many implications that they're almost hard to think through. There are economic implications. You know, what happens to our trade relationships with Europe and with Asia? What about the U.S. companies that have enjoyed special favor in those markets? You know, U.S. defense companies, but also U.S.
Up First from NPR
BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
nuclear power companies, other kinds of big utility companies that have been welcomed by those countries because as a way of expressing their fealty to the United States. What happens to a series of trade agreements that have created easy and regular trade between all around the world? What happens to All kinds of treaties on, not just treaties on commerce, but treaties on the laws of war.
Up First from NPR
BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
All these things that have governed U.S. behavior and allied behavior all over the world for 80 years now disappear.
Up First from NPR
BONUS: America's Shifting Alliances
Trump is saying, I don't care anymore about alliances. I'm not interested in your opinions. I'm going to do a deal with this dictator over your head.