Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello voter Nomics listeners. Stephanie Flanders here, and it's that
Speaker 2: time of year where everyone has summer holiday plans, including
Speaker 2: the three hosts of this show. So to keep thinking simple,
Speaker 2: we thought it would be a good idea to offer
Speaker 2: up a voter Nomics summer reading list for the beach,
Speaker 2: the mountain, or the campaign trail, depending. We've each picked
Speaker 2: a non fiction book touching on politics and economics that
Speaker 2: we thought was worth reading right now. Some of them
Speaker 2: are fresh off the presses, some a little older, and
Speaker 2: even if you don't end up reading them, I hope
Speaker 2: you'll enjoy hearing us talk about them with the author.
Speaker 2: And for my summer reading selection, I'm speaking with Anne
Speaker 2: Applebaum about her newest book, Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators Who
Speaker 2: Want to Run the World, and as a columnist for
Speaker 2: The Atlantic and Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, author
Speaker 2: of many other books, including Goolag a History which won
Speaker 2: the Pulitzer Prize, and my recent favorite, the best selling
Speaker 2: Twilight of Democracy, The Failure of Politics and the Parting
Speaker 2: of Friends. As that title suggests, the strength of her
Speaker 2: writing for me, especially in recent years comes not only
Speaker 2: from her unique experience and expertise living and working in Poland,
Speaker 2: the UK, and the US, but the directly personal way
Speaker 2: she writes about the shift that has happened in the
Speaker 2: world since, roughly speaking, the fall of the Berlin Wall,
Speaker 2: as what initially appeared to many of us to be
Speaker 2: a great flourishing of liberal values and democracy in many
Speaker 2: parts of the world metastasized into well autocracy incorporated. And
Speaker 2: thanks so much for doing this opening question very broadly.
Speaker 2: Tell us what this book is about and why we
Speaker 2: should be reading it on the beach or anywhere else
Speaker 2: this summer.
Speaker 1: Yes, no, definitely you want to read it on the beach.
Speaker 1: So first of all, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: It's a great it's privilege to be talking to you.
Speaker 1: The book is the book is a little bit less
Speaker 1: personal than my previous book, although it does it was
Speaker 1: borne out of personal experiences. For many years, I've known
Speaker 1: people who are active in the Russian opposition, in the
Speaker 1: Iranian opposition, in the Venezuelan opposition, and over in recent
Speaker 1: years I've come to understand that much of what they
Speaker 1: do isn't working anymore, and even though they are popular,
Speaker 1: they would win, certainly the Venezuelan opposition would win a
Speaker 1: free election, and the Iranian opposition are fighting a very,
Speaker 1: very unpopular government. They are no longer fighting a single
Speaker 1: dictator in a single country. They're fighting a network of dictators.
Speaker 1: And the book describes this network. It's not an alliance,
Speaker 1: it's not an axis, and I don't think we're locked
Speaker 1: in a new Cold war with them. So there's deocratic
Speaker 1: Iran and bolivarian socialists Venezuela and nationalist Russia and communist
Speaker 1: China don't have similar goals, but they do all have
Speaker 1: similar enemies. And the enemy is us. The enemy is
Speaker 1: my friends, the democracy or the transparency, the anti corruption activists.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is that they see our ideas
Speaker 1: and I speak, are includes we in the democratic world.
Speaker 1: We have ideas that would challenge them. And this is
Speaker 1: the idea of transparency, of accountability, of the rule of law,
Speaker 1: of rights, of human rights, and all of these things
Speaker 1: are challenged to their particular form of dictatorship. And the
Speaker 1: book describes how that world came to be, and it
Speaker 1: describes the financial and the propaganda arms of those regimes,
Speaker 1: as well as some of the military and strategic arms
Speaker 1: it's a brief read. I don't know about beaches, but
Speaker 1: you can certainly read it on a plane or a train.
Speaker 1: It's meant to make you aware of how it works,
Speaker 1: and once you see it, I find that you can't
Speaker 1: unsee it. And I now almost every day I pick
Speaker 1: up a newspaper or your radio program, I think, ah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's at work again.
Speaker 2: There is something about the message of the book when
Speaker 2: you step back, and it is a great read, it's
Speaker 2: very easy read. It does open your eyes to a
Speaker 2: lot of things. But there's something about it that does
Speaker 2: go against the grain for say, skeptical journalists who've spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time trying to douse conspiracy theories or
Speaker 2: the idea that x or y sinister global organization is
Speaker 2: out to get us. Because although you explicitly say there
Speaker 2: isn't a single sort of James Bond Island where they're
Speaker 2: all sitting and plotting, you are basically claiming that there's
Speaker 2: these very disparate figures. President Madua of Venezuela, Prime Minister
Speaker 2: Maningagua and Zimbabwe, and Vladimir Putin are all working together
Speaker 2: at some level, united by this desire to defeat a
Speaker 2: certain set of values.
Speaker 1: I repeat, it is not a conspiracy. They don't coordinate
Speaker 1: their activity, but they do watch what one another does,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they help one another out. There is no question,
Speaker 1: for example, that the Venezuelan regime, which probably would have
Speaker 1: fallen a long time ago, which is has been you know,
Speaker 1: economically and politically disastrous for what was once the wealthiest
Speaker 1: country in South America, has been rescued by Russian armaments
Speaker 1: and weapons, by Chinese investment in Chinese surveillance technology, by
Speaker 1: Cuban secret policemen, and even with the help of the Iranians.
Speaker 1: You know, you think about Venezuela and Iran, these are
Speaker 1: countries that have really nothing to do with one another
Speaker 1: geopolitically or historically, or culturally or in any other way.
Speaker 1: But they are both countries that are subject to sanctions.
Speaker 1: They both produce oil, and they have found ways. Iran
Speaker 1: helps Venezuela and break sanctions, and Venezuela has offered visas
Speaker 1: and other kinds of help, for example, to Hesbala Act
Speaker 1: in Europe. So it's again, it's not a plot. It's
Speaker 1: just that they have they have things in common the
Speaker 1: way that we American and Britain have things in common
Speaker 1: in America and France and Germany have things in common,
Speaker 1: and they act to help one another out and to cooperate.
Speaker 1: But it's not it is None of it is a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: You can see it all on the surface. You do
Speaker 1: not have to have secret knowledge to interpret it. You
Speaker 1: don't need access to secret documents. Most of the stuff
Speaker 1: that connects them they say it in public, and what
Speaker 1: they do is visible.
Speaker 2: I think the power of the book actually is that
Speaker 2: you're is the journalism involved in tracing some of these
Speaker 2: examples and the way that these different regimes are sort
Speaker 2: of playing each other's songs. So I wonder if it's
Speaker 2: worth just giving us one of those examples to show
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the examples was, you know, the example
Speaker 1: of Venezuela and how it's been propped up by the
Speaker 1: other regimes. I mean, I suppose another example that I
Speaker 1: use in the book. I talk about the way in
Speaker 1: which their propaganda is again coordinated, makes it sound you know,
Speaker 1: too conspiratorial, but in which they echo and repeat one another.
Speaker 1: So the Chinese have made a huge investment, I mean
Speaker 1: tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions of dollars in TV,
Speaker 1: radio websites broadcasting in many, many languages all over the world.
Speaker 1: Some of it is Chinese state TV and media, some
Speaker 1: of it is content sharing arrangements with other organizations, all
Speaker 1: kinds of investments in Shinhwa, which is the Chinese news wire,
Speaker 1: is cheap or free in many countries, and some of that,
Speaker 1: for a long time has just been the way that
Speaker 1: that's just what the Chinese did to get out their
Speaker 1: messages about why you should trade with us, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them is even pretty boring. The Russians simultaneously
Speaker 1: created this whole system of fake websites. I mean, we
Speaker 1: got a little glimpse of that in the US twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen elections, and that has also been expanding its well
Speaker 1: beyond fake Facebook post. Now they create fake news organizations
Speaker 1: that look like they're Ecuadorian or Peruvian, but they're really
Speaker 1: designed in Moscow and so on. And these systems have
Speaker 1: been in creation for a while, and you can argue
Speaker 1: about how important they are, but what interested me was
Speaker 1: the way in which they were starting to say the
Speaker 1: same things, and others were as well. And so one
Speaker 1: of the story that I trace in the book is
Speaker 1: the story of the Ukrainian biolabs. I don't know how
Speaker 1: many of your listeners remember this, but at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of the Ukrainian War, the Russians made this claim
Speaker 1: that there were US biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine. And
Speaker 1: this is not true, and it was proven to be
Speaker 1: not true, and it was actually the UN Security Council
Speaker 1: declared that it wasn't true in multiple international organizations. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: you could find that conspiracy theory, I mean, that lie
Speaker 1: was all over Russian media, it was all over Chinese
Speaker 1: state media. It was therefore picked up by all kinds
Speaker 1: of African media. It was picked up by the US
Speaker 1: far right. So Tucker Carlson repeated it on he was
Speaker 1: then still a Fox News host. There were a couple
Speaker 1: of Internet figures who put it on Twitter or who
Speaker 1: put it elsewhere, who got an enormous echo, and it
Speaker 1: spread very widely. The rumor probably benefited from the recent
Speaker 1: memory of COVID. People are paranoid about viruses being created laboratories,
Speaker 1: and the Chinese were probably eager to promote it because
Speaker 1: it somehow absolved them of the accusation they had helped
Speaker 1: create COVID. In a laboratory. It was also designed to
Speaker 1: muddy the story of the Russian invasion. So the Russian
Speaker 1: invasion Ukraine was a very brutal colonial invasion. It was
Speaker 1: an imperial invasion of occupation. The occupied territories were treated brutally.
Speaker 1: Their concentration camps were set up, people were arrested, children
Speaker 1: were deported, and all that was somehow muddied by the
Speaker 1: idea that well, there are these US biolabs in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and that I'm not even quite sure I understand the
Speaker 1: logic of how that explains the war, but but it does.
Speaker 1: It makes it makes it, you know, less less crystal clear.
Speaker 1: And but the point was is that I found this
Speaker 1: conspiracy theory all over the place. Again. I found it
Speaker 1: in Venezuela. I found it in Africa. I found it
Speaker 1: in as I said, Chinese, Russian, you know, other other media. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think somebody there were people who sat in
Speaker 1: your room, is at right, We're now going to everyone's
Speaker 1: going to do this. It was just that people saw
Speaker 1: it coming out of Russia and they repeated it and
Speaker 1: used it. And that's an example now of how how
Speaker 1: the narrative spread and how they're copied and imitated it,
Speaker 1: and then then they and then create a kind of
Speaker 1: giant echo chamber where you can hear this story about
Speaker 1: biolabs from lots of different sources.
Speaker 2: You were saying at the start that you don't need
Speaker 2: to have a special conspiracy they because you can hear
Speaker 2: it and see it in what they say and what
Speaker 2: they're doing. But of course, I guess part of the
Speaker 2: point with campaigns like that is that you can you
Speaker 2: cannot realize how much an idea is being propagated around
Speaker 2: the world and through social media, because even that is
Speaker 2: so untransparent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you cannot know where ideas are coming from. And actually,
Speaker 1: the way that the Russians now often spread ideas or
Speaker 1: spread narratives is they'll sometimes post something on social media
Speaker 1: or in a video form, and then it will begin
Speaker 1: to be repeated, and then they'll take down the original posting.
Speaker 1: So sometimes they go to great efforts to hide that
Speaker 1: they are the originators of a particular idea or theory
Speaker 1: or or explanation or story. So, you know, they spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time thinking about it, they care about it,
Speaker 1: they put a lot of money into it. You know.
Speaker 1: Some of this actually, of course, is pretty cheap and
Speaker 1: it's hard to measure how much it matters or how
Speaker 1: much it works. But we did have in the last
Speaker 1: few months some evidence that it does. And so, for example,
Speaker 1: one conspiracy theory that went out on Russian media and
Speaker 1: Russian sort of Russian aligned media and social media in
Speaker 1: the last year was that Presidents Lensky had bought two yachts,
Speaker 1: and pictures of the yachts circulated online. And of course
Speaker 1: they were not his yachts, they belong to other people. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: the yacht story somehow filtered into the ecosystem, and during
Speaker 1: the debate on Ukraine aid in the US Senate, apparently
Speaker 1: some US senators brought up the yachts in their common
Speaker 1: you know, why should we help Ukraine when the money
Speaker 1: is going on yachts. I mean, this is completely false,
Speaker 1: not true. Nevertheless, it had infiltrated the conversation to such
Speaker 1: an extent that was part of the American political debate.
Speaker 1: So if you want evidence that these things matter, that
Speaker 1: was it.
Speaker 2: You have also a great example that's sort of almost comical,
Speaker 2: of a similar dynamic in the much smaller forum, where
Speaker 2: you have the story around for the Taiwanese why the
Speaker 2: Taiwanese people trapped in a Japanese typhoon had not been
Speaker 2: rescued when there had been a Chinese but coaches coming
Speaker 2: to rescue them. And then it turns out that all
Speaker 2: of that completely untrue. But then it had started this
Speaker 2: whole debate about why does the Taiwanese government not look
Speaker 2: after its poor stranded tourists. I thought, it's just such
Speaker 2: an ob thing.
Speaker 1: And what was important about that this was the story
Speaker 1: that was told to me in Taiwan. What was important
Speaker 1: about it is that it played into a larger narrative,
Speaker 1: so that Chinese want to convince the Taiwanese, and they
Speaker 1: spent they do a lot of information warfare and targeting
Speaker 1: in Taiwan. They want to convince the Taiwanese that their
Speaker 1: state is weak, that they don't have any friends, that
Speaker 1: they're incompetent, that democracy is is less efficient, less effective
Speaker 1: than dictatorship, and that little story about supposedly some Chinese
Speaker 1: buses rescuing Taiwanese tourists was designed to play into that bigger,
Speaker 1: larger meta narrative, and the story became so viral, pushed
Speaker 1: by both by actual Chinese people and by kind of
Speaker 1: pro Chinese media in Taiwan that there was a diplomat
Speaker 1: connected to the story who killed himself. I mean it
Speaker 1: led to a suicide because there was this outcry, why
Speaker 1: are why are we so incompetent? Why can't we rescue
Speaker 1: our tourists? So these are you know again, they seem
Speaker 1: like little things, but they're they're meant to be part
Speaker 1: of a larger narrative about the stability and success of dictatorship,
Speaker 1: about the division and degeneracy sometimes even the sexual generacy
Speaker 1: of democracies. And you know, they and it's kind of
Speaker 1: non stop. So they do it all the time. They
Speaker 1: frame stories and they tell them in a way that's
Speaker 1: designed to i mean disabilizes a wrong word because it
Speaker 1: sounds too active, but undermine people's sense of security and
Speaker 1: stability in the democratic world, whether it's Taiwan or Britain
Speaker 1: or the United States.
Speaker 2: You've got to know her long before I did, but
Speaker 2: Audrey Tang, the former Digital Minister in Taiwan, that was
Speaker 2: very much her. The point she was making is not
Speaker 2: just about the message, but also that it's about making
Speaker 2: people apathetic and not really believe in government. It doesn't
Speaker 2: have to be active. I want to move on later
Speaker 2: to how has this confronted what you've described, because that's
Speaker 2: an important bit of the book. But I guess we
Speaker 2: have to have a bit of a conversation about how
Speaker 2: Donald Trump fits into this, because it's definitely not a
Speaker 2: book about Donald Trump, but it certainly feels like it
Speaker 2: has a lot of residents for the US election campaign.
Speaker 1: I began to write it at a moment when I
Speaker 1: did not know that Donald Trump was going to be
Speaker 1: the Republican Party candidate, but I did have some aspects
Speaker 1: of trump Ism in my head. What Trump has in
Speaker 1: common with the autocratic world is his transactionalism. So these
Speaker 1: are regimes that, as I said, they're not knit together
Speaker 1: by ideology or values of any kind. Instead, they do
Speaker 1: deals with one another. And this is how Trump thinks.
Speaker 1: We saw it in his first term, when he was
Speaker 1: still surrounded by people who wanted to keep the US
Speaker 1: in NATO and wanted the US to remain a leader
Speaker 1: of the democratic world. I worry that in Trump's second
Speaker 1: term those people would be gone, and his natural instinct,
Speaker 1: which is to do deals with whoever wants to do
Speaker 1: deals with them for his personal benefit, maybe for the
Speaker 1: benefit of his friends in the business community, maybe for
Speaker 1: the benefit of his family, that that would be the
Speaker 1: purpose of his foreign policy would be to not for
Speaker 1: the benefit of Americans and certainly not for the benefit
Speaker 1: of the democratic world, but it would be for him personally.
Speaker 1: And so I was just talking to somebody this morning
Speaker 1: about what his China policy would be, and she was saying, well,
Speaker 1: it's very confusing because he says different things, right, Sometimes
Speaker 1: he sounds very hawkish. Sometimes he says how marvelous Chi
Speaker 1: Jinping is and how much he admires him. And you know,
Speaker 1: my answer to that is his policy will be whatever
Speaker 1: he decides is most beneficial for him. If he decides
Speaker 1: the China hawk thing works for him politically or in
Speaker 1: some other way, he'll do it. And if he thinks
Speaker 1: it's not going to work for him, he won't. And
Speaker 1: this course very hard for you know, a policy analysts
Speaker 1: and maybe even business people to understand when they hear that,
Speaker 1: because we're used to thinking of Western or American Rather,
Speaker 1: I don't try to use the word Western, American or
Speaker 1: European democratic politicians as acting somehow in the interest of
Speaker 1: a set of idea years or you know, certainly in
Speaker 1: the interest of their country or where they believe is
Speaker 1: to be the interest of their country, and he will
Speaker 1: not do that, and that is why he could be
Speaker 1: extremely dangerous, and the deals that he could make could
Speaker 1: be very well be detrimental to American interests and maybe
Speaker 1: even to the global interests of the democratic world.
Speaker 2: We had that conversation around the ambiguity on China, specifically
Speaker 2: with one of the people who might be as national
Speaker 2: security advisor at Elberte Colby last week, but also a
Speaker 2: while ago with Neil Ferguson, whose claim and he's not
Speaker 2: the only one, A lot of people like Neil who
Speaker 2: was sort of hoping to at least that there'll be
Speaker 2: a sort of clear course on foreign policy out of
Speaker 2: a Trump administration says, well, it will depend on who's
Speaker 2: in the room, and there'll be someone in the room
Speaker 2: who will be hawkish, because the Republicans are hawkish. I
Speaker 2: guess in that context, I wondered, we're speaking quite soon
Speaker 2: after the selection of J. D. Vance as Donald Trump's
Speaker 2: running mate. You know, what would the Confederation of strong
Speaker 2: man autocrats think about his selection as vice president? Do
Speaker 2: you think is he likely to tilt policy further in
Speaker 2: the that more autocratic direction in a second Trump administration.
Speaker 1: So funny if what concerns me about gd Vance is
Speaker 1: not stuff that he says, which seems to change depending
Speaker 1: on what the political mood is. What diserves me about
Speaker 1: him is the degree to which his candidacy was lobbied
Speaker 1: for by Elon Musk and David Sachs, who have very
Speaker 1: clear ideas at least about Russia and Ukraine. And so
Speaker 1: what I worry about is that Vance is there because
Speaker 1: you know, Trump was essentially selling the vice presidency. Mean,
Speaker 1: who's going to give me more for it? You know,
Speaker 1: what's the you know? And I don't know what exactly
Speaker 1: that means, but I'm not sure that his policies are
Speaker 1: as important as the group of business people whom he
Speaker 1: represents are or might be.
Speaker 2: As the name of the book suggests, you are focused
Speaker 2: on the financial corporate side of autocracy, Inc. And one
Speaker 2: of the distinctive things about them that you highlight is
Speaker 2: that they are working together to not just to stay
Speaker 2: in power, but they have been very financially motivated as well.
Speaker 2: What kind of challenge does that present to those who
Speaker 2: are trying to combat this or undermine these autocrats.
Speaker 1: One of the big differences between the autocrats of the
Speaker 1: current day and some of their predecessors in the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Is that these are individually, very very rich people. So
Speaker 1: either they are billionaires or their families or billionaires, they've
Speaker 1: enriched groups of people around them. That's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why they stay in power. It's one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why they want power. It's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why they why they hate the conversation about transparency and
Speaker 1: accountability and the rule of law so much, because the
Speaker 1: instinct that most people have about justice, you know that
Speaker 1: this is unfair. Why is our economy so opaque? You know?
Speaker 1: You know they need to push back again that all
Speaker 1: the time, because they need to protect their wealth and
Speaker 1: the wealth of of their inner circle. How did they
Speaker 1: obtain this wealth? I mean, that's a long story and
Speaker 1: I won't tell it all here, but partly it was
Speaker 1: by taking advantage of the loopholes in the Western financial system.
Speaker 1: So I essentially Putin came to power by stealing money
Speaker 1: from Russia, by laundering it in the West, and then
Speaker 1: by bringing it back in. And his story was pretty
Speaker 1: typical of a lot of people at that time in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, and he did so with the help
Speaker 1: of Western lawyers, bankers, partners, you know, all kinds of accountants,
Speaker 1: all kinds of people. And one of the great challenges
Speaker 1: for the democratic world is will we shut down that system?
Speaker 1: Can we stop enabling the theft of money from populations,
Speaker 1: whether it's in Africa or it's in Eurasia, Can we
Speaker 1: stop that happening? And can we draw a line both
Speaker 1: because it's good for those countries, but also because it's
Speaker 1: good for us, because the amount of dirty money washing
Speaker 1: around in our systems. I mean, some of in the
Speaker 1: US is a special case where politics have become insane
Speaker 1: and very driven by money. But even in European countries
Speaker 1: where it's not clear who has money and why, it's
Speaker 1: not clear who owns property in London, I mean, none
Speaker 1: of that is conducive to good governance or good public
Speaker 1: conversation or democracy. More broadly, you.
Speaker 2: Know, one thing that has kind of quote unquote saved
Speaker 2: the West from itself or I agree with you with
Speaker 2: West is awkward, but liberal democracy from itself in the
Speaker 2: past is the self interest of the commercial class. You know,
Speaker 2: at key points there was a recognition that democratic norms
Speaker 2: were needed to make capitalism work, even if those norms
Speaker 2: also constrained individual capitalists from doing everything they wanted to do.
Speaker 2: I guess the question back to you is that just
Speaker 2: doesn't seem there doesn't seem to be that rationale operating.
Speaker 2: There's something that's not working in the system. I mean,
Speaker 2: in an age of corporate social responsibility. We still have
Speaker 2: a lot of big businesses apparently not at all concerned
Speaker 2: about Donald Trump as a threat to US democracy, if
Speaker 2: that's what you think he is, and still continuing even
Speaker 2: to operate in Russia or countries allied with Russia, despite
Speaker 2: the sanctions that we've seen. It doesn't feel like the
Speaker 2: self interest of capitalists is quite moving in that direction
Speaker 2: as we have it seen in the past.
Speaker 1: So it depends what kind of company. These are often
Speaker 1: companies with global ambitions and sometimes bases who are hoping
Speaker 1: that a Trump administration will give them special access or
Speaker 1: special deals. So it's a little bit like in Britain's
Speaker 1: Russia or in Orbon's Hungary, where people who are close
Speaker 1: to power get special arrangements, you know, the foreign policies
Speaker 1: made in their interests, or even sometimes the domestic policy.
Speaker 1: And there's always been lots of influence of business on
Speaker 1: democratic governments. I'm not going to say otherwise, but where
Speaker 1: this is a scale of it is different. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it's going to be good for everybody else.
Speaker 1: I lived in Poland over the last ten years, and
Speaker 1: in Poland we had a kind of autocratic populist party
Speaker 1: that sought to capture the state and had business favorites,
Speaker 1: especially some of the state companies that they were using
Speaker 1: to reward their friends and so on. It was a
Speaker 1: disaster for normal companies. So companies that depend on the
Speaker 1: rule of law, that need a reliable judicial system, that
Speaker 1: need contracts to be recognized, that need the rules of
Speaker 1: the game to be clear and fair. You know, when
Speaker 1: there's a system that encourages favoritism, it's not corruption necessarily
Speaker 1: in the old fashioned sense. People aren't necessarily being given bribes.
Speaker 2: But transactionalism.
Speaker 1: Let you transactionalism at a very high level. This might
Speaker 1: be good for people who are on the inside, and
Speaker 1: it might be really bad for everyone else. And I'm
Speaker 1: actually surprised by the degree to which the US business
Speaker 1: community hasn't fully wrecked. I mean, I know some have,
Speaker 1: but the degree to which this could be very bad
Speaker 1: for a lot of people I'm not sure is understood yet.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about what we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: a transactional China policy. I mean, to a company that
Speaker 1: sells things in China or trades with China, I mean,
Speaker 1: you need a policy that's predictable, that you understand, that's
Speaker 1: based on, you know, some kind of some strategy that
Speaker 1: makes sense. And if you're if instead there's going to
Speaker 1: be a policy that depends on whoever Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: in the room with and whoever pays the most money
Speaker 1: to his political campaign or invests in some company that's
Speaker 1: close to him, then you're going to have a lot
Speaker 1: of trouble doing business. And having that kind of government
Speaker 1: you know, in the long run is bad for the economy.
Speaker 1: And you can look around the world at every single,
Speaker 1: every single instance of it, and we see that.
Speaker 2: Well, it's funny you should say that, because when we
Speaker 2: sat down we Bloomberg sat down with President Trump a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago, and he was quite explicit precisely this point.
Speaker 2: We said, well, surely the tariffs, it could be bad
Speaker 2: for a lot of American business. Anyone who has a
Speaker 2: problem with the tariffs, they should just come to me,
Speaker 2: Like Tim Cook took he to me. He's a smart businessman.
Speaker 2: He did a deal. Anyone can do a deal. And
Speaker 2: as you you know, as you suggest, of course if
Speaker 2: you're a small if you're a small business, that's not
Speaker 2: going to work. Just thinking more about how to confront
Speaker 2: this and some of the things in your book about that.
Speaker 2: You know, as you said when you were talking about Taiwan,
Speaker 2: there are these kind of central ideas being propagated by
Speaker 2: China and by the whole group in terms of the
Speaker 2: sort of information war, which is that democracy brings chaos,
Speaker 2: it doesn't deliver. To combat that, as Audrew Tanger told
Speaker 2: us in a previous episode, you need to prove otherwise
Speaker 2: that it does work. You know. President Biden is probably
Speaker 2: the Western leader that's taken that most to heart and
Speaker 2: has tried to operationalize that, making it work for people
Speaker 2: and bringing work back to the US and all that
Speaker 2: just doesn't seem to have worked.
Speaker 1: I mean, the part of Biden's problem is specific to him,
Speaker 1: which is that he was not good at selling what
Speaker 1: he had done or explain it to people. And some
Speaker 1: of that was I mean, maybe I don't know who
Speaker 1: to blame exactly for it. Some of it was that
Speaker 1: some of it may have been his age. He wasn't
Speaker 1: a convincing public speaker. His television appearances weren't convincing. I mean,
Speaker 1: to get across to millions of Americans through mass media,
Speaker 1: you need to have an outsized personality. I mean, whether
Speaker 1: it's Barack Obama or or Bill Clinton, you know, you
Speaker 1: need someone who can sell their message. And he was
Speaker 1: not good at doing that. And that's a part of
Speaker 1: the explanation. I mean, I'm sure you've had a million
Speaker 1: guests on who told you the other parts of the explanation,
Speaker 1: which is to do with the ways in which people
Speaker 1: still feel shut out of the housing market and they
Speaker 1: still there are piece parts of the economy that don't
Speaker 1: work for people. And of course the other piece of it,
Speaker 1: and this, I think is why he wanted to run
Speaker 1: for president again. Is that some of what he did,
Speaker 1: you know you don't see the impact yet. I mean,
Speaker 1: you created the chipsack, which is designed to create more
Speaker 1: high tech jobs in the United States when you pass it.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean the effects of passing the law are
Speaker 1: felt six months later. I mean they maybe felt four
Speaker 1: years later. And so some of what he does I
Speaker 1: think hasn't hasn't had an effect. Yet there are examples
Speaker 1: around the world that are that are also going to
Speaker 1: be relevant. I mean, so the British Labor Party just
Speaker 1: won an election basically arguing we're competent, we're going to
Speaker 1: manage things better. We have people who have experience in
Speaker 1: government and nobody economics, and we're going to fix things
Speaker 1: and their government and their legacy will rise or fall
Speaker 1: on whether people perceive that to be true. And of
Speaker 1: course perception is partly about what people really experience in
Speaker 1: their ordinary lives, and partly it's about how it's communicated.
Speaker 1: But I mean the test that the Kamala Harris campaign
Speaker 1: is also going to be partly about, you know, can
Speaker 1: she retell the Bidens story? Can she convince people that
Speaker 1: she can make things work? So's it's it's not that this,
Speaker 1: it's not that that's wrong. It's just that it you know,
Speaker 1: much depends on your execution and your and your explanation.
Speaker 2: There have been Biden's staff as over the last few
Speaker 2: years who've been exasperated that he wasn't giving more speeches
Speaker 2: about bridges, and I sort of felt like that probably
Speaker 2: wasn't It's probably not going to help that much to
Speaker 2: just be constantly talking about big infrastructure projects, but that
Speaker 2: was maybe part of it.
Speaker 1: The other election that I had the chance to observe
Speaker 1: recently was the Polish election in October, and you know,
Speaker 1: I have a declaration of mintance my husband as a
Speaker 1: Polish politician, although he wasn't a candidate. You know, how
Speaker 1: how did Donald Tusk, who's now the Prime minister, how
Speaker 1: to any campaigns? Campaigned by going around and around the
Speaker 1: country for six months and stopping in small towns, big towns,
Speaker 1: big city. I mean, he simply talked and met with
Speaker 1: people every single day. You know, it's a genuine grassroots
Speaker 1: campaign because he had to get around their problem, which
Speaker 1: was the capture of the state media by the ruling party.
Speaker 1: But you know, any any US or European politician has
Speaker 1: a similar problem. How do you break through to people
Speaker 1: and how do you link up with them, and how
Speaker 1: do you talk about the things they care about? I mean,
Speaker 1: you might have to spend a lot of time on
Speaker 1: the road, and that wasn't something that Biden could do.
Speaker 1: He didn't talk about the investments that were beginning. He
Speaker 1: didn't spend enough time on factory floors. I get it.
Speaker 1: He's the president of the United States, and he's busy,
Speaker 1: but but someone has to do.
Speaker 2: Some of this is not about economic outcomes though, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, and that's what also comes through in the book.
Speaker 2: The sort of information war that these leaders are waging,
Speaker 2: you know, has achieved is a sort of lack of
Speaker 2: identification with some of those democratic values, of feeling it
Speaker 2: doesn't resonate necessarily the idea of a rule based order,
Speaker 2: if that's what we're trying to defend, sort of democratic values,
Speaker 2: and people actually no longer see the value of it
Speaker 2: or even and particularly think the US is not a
Speaker 2: very good ambassador for it, having not necessarily respected people's
Speaker 2: sovereignty or always respected democracy. How does one get around that?
Speaker 1: I can't give you a kind of three sentence solution,
Speaker 1: but actually, know who's very good at this is the people.
Speaker 1: I began the conversation with the democracy activists of the
Speaker 1: autocratic world reminding people of what happens when you lose
Speaker 1: your rights and what it's like to live in a
Speaker 1: state where you don't have rule of law. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, in the US we're getting a little closer
Speaker 1: to that. I mean, you now have judges in the
Speaker 1: system who you know, people now talk about Trump judges
Speaker 1: and Obama judges, which is something you know, we used
Speaker 1: to hear in Poland. You know, did you what kind
Speaker 1: of judge you got in your case would affect the ruling?
Speaker 1: That's already the beginning of a slippery slope in the
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. And convincing people that this will
Speaker 1: affect their lives and it will begin to change what
Speaker 1: kind of choices they have is part of the argument.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is actually why again, just to use
Speaker 1: the Polish election as example, abortion turned out to be
Speaker 1: a big issue in Poland. Well, abortion was already illegal
Speaker 1: in Poland, but it was tightened further so that in effect,
Speaker 1: many doctors would not help women who were dying. They
Speaker 1: were they had problematic pregnancies. And two women died. And
Speaker 1: when people realize that a decision made by judges, you know,
Speaker 1: sitting in robes in some distant place, had led, after
Speaker 1: a series of events, to the deaths of these two women,
Speaker 1: that created a kind of outrage. If Harris or people
Speaker 1: around your are able to connect changes in the digital
Speaker 1: system to people on the ground, that's a way of explaining,
Speaker 1: you know, what it is that you lose when you
Speaker 1: lose rights when you lose the rule of law, it
Speaker 1: can begin to affect you personally. I mean, those words
Speaker 1: don't mean that much to people, you know, the you
Speaker 1: say judicial independence and it doesn't make people scream and
Speaker 1: yell and clap and cheer and run out on the streets.
Speaker 1: But when people begin to see the longer term effect
Speaker 1: of the loss of judicial independence, sometimes the mood changes.
Speaker 2: You've stolen my last question, which was to be ending
Speaker 2: on a moment of a sort of some hopefulness in
Speaker 2: that you are in Poland, a country that has succeeded
Speaker 2: in at least for the moment, turning a certain kind
Speaker 2: of tide against a more personal, more autocratic style of leadership.
Speaker 2: You've won that election, asked auto or at least those
Speaker 2: forces won the election. Donald Tusk is now Prime Minister again.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like that shows that, you know, we
Speaker 2: can do more, maybe than many people now think when
Speaker 2: they look at what the force is coaliesting in the
Speaker 2: US and elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, there is no law of history, There is
Speaker 1: no rule that says we have to decline or democracy
Speaker 1: will decline, or you know, the twenty first century is
Speaker 1: the century of autocracy and doesn't work like that. That's
Speaker 1: not who history works. You know, what happens tomorrow depends
Speaker 1: on the actions of a lot of people today, and
Speaker 1: there is always space for a cific engagement. There's space
Speaker 1: for people to involve themselves in the political lives of
Speaker 1: their countries if they care about the direction that they're going.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I've always believed that, and I think
Speaker 1: it's more true than ever.
Speaker 2: An Applebaum, thank you so much, Thank you thanks for
Speaker 2: listening to this week's some of Book's Photonomics from Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: This episode was hosted by me Stephanie Flanders. It was
Speaker 2: produced by Samma Sadi, with booking support from Chris Martlou,
Speaker 2: production support and sound design by Moses Ander. Brendan Francis
Speaker 2: Nenham is our executive producer and Sage Bowman is head
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg Podcast. With special thanks to Anne Applebaum. Please subscribe, rate,
Speaker 2: and review highly this show wherever you listen to it.