Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Let's build on the conversation. He's ten years younger without
Speaker 2: a tie. Amastok Staying the former Senior Advisor for Energy
Speaker 2: and Investment and must welcome to the program.
Speaker 3: Thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2: Good to see you're seeing happy. We can get into
Speaker 2: that a little bit later. This came from Javier Blasts
Speaker 2: just in the last week. Can I have read the pace?
Speaker 2: What Ukraine has is scorched earth. What it doesn't have
Speaker 2: is read. Surprisingly, many people, not least US President Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: seem convinced the country has a rich mineral endowment. It's
Speaker 2: a folly. What's your view on all of this?
Speaker 4: Well, first, I think Javier has done a lot of
Speaker 4: research into this rare earths. I've never seen any evidence
Speaker 4: of rare earths in Ukraine. There probably are critical minerals
Speaker 4: which are different from rare earths in Ukraine, but not
Speaker 4: at a stage where they've been identified and there's been
Speaker 4: any exploration drilling, not in any of the commercial quantities
Speaker 4: that you are aware of. There may be, and there are,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm sure there's some data there behind some
Speaker 4: of this that suggested there is, but to get from
Speaker 4: a green field from a discovery to a production can
Speaker 4: take many, many years. It's not a This is not
Speaker 4: expanding existing deposits.
Speaker 3: So I think this is.
Speaker 4: A worthwhile conversation to have with Ukraine about how to develop.
Speaker 3: Their mineral resources.
Speaker 4: We should talk about how to redevelop their gas resources,
Speaker 4: how to develop their green power resources. Ukraine I believe
Speaker 4: can be a major supplier of power to Europe. Critical
Speaker 4: minerals I think is going to be regardless of how
Speaker 4: this turns out, is going to be many years away
Speaker 4: when it.
Speaker 5: Comes to all these commodities. Wasn't a discussion like this
Speaker 5: on the table when you were working in government under Biden.
Speaker 4: This has been under the discussion since I was working
Speaker 4: government in Obama administration, so this has been many, many years.
Speaker 4: We've always wanted to see Ukraine develop its resources because
Speaker 4: that will give them economic boost, that will allow them
Speaker 4: to be more independent from Russia and to grow their economy.
Speaker 4: The corruption was the issue, right, but the resources were there.
Speaker 4: The issue is we shouldn't be taking the revenue from it.
Speaker 4: We should want them to have the revenue so that
Speaker 4: they can invest in the country, so that the Ukrainians
Speaker 4: across Europe that had to flee can come back and
Speaker 4: they can rebuild a country, a military security apparatus and
Speaker 4: a future for their people.
Speaker 5: You mentioned corruption, so I'm reminded of an opinion piece
Speaker 5: you wrote in twenty twenty when you left the supervisory
Speaker 5: board of NAFTA Gas. So you've done a lot of
Speaker 5: work in Ukraine when it comes to this sector. Do
Speaker 5: you think the corruption has gotten better since then? Tackling
Speaker 5: the corruption not really.
Speaker 4: I think there's a lot of corruption predates Zelenski. It
Speaker 4: was a corrupt society before the Maydan Revolution. The idea
Speaker 4: was let's make it better. I think it did get better,
Speaker 4: and then some of those efforts stalled. There's been a
Speaker 4: tradition government when there's a little bit of stress to
Speaker 4: go and use that moment to rob the kitty from
Speaker 4: state owned enterprises. That's a problem that sort of ebbs
Speaker 4: and flows. I think it continues with the state control
Speaker 4: and during the war. It's hard to criticize during a
Speaker 4: war when you're having your city's bombed regularly, how you.
Speaker 3: Don't do that. So there's a lot of temptation there.
Speaker 4: But I think it's a systemic issue that the international
Speaker 4: community should tackle.
Speaker 1: Just ignoring some of the more heated rhetoric around the
Speaker 1: Ukraine Russian War because of the lack of accountability of
Speaker 1: where funding is going. Do you think that there is
Speaker 1: validity in pushing back unjust how much the US and
Speaker 1: even European nations are contributing to the Ukrainians in this
Speaker 1: Ukraine Russian War.
Speaker 3: You guys separate a couple of things.
Speaker 4: One is, we need to support Ukraine because another country invaded.
Speaker 3: You can argue whether or not the.
Speaker 4: Words that Zelenski used before the invasion were smart or not.
Speaker 3: Was it good or bad?
Speaker 4: Nothing gives you the right to invade another country because
Speaker 4: you don't like what the leader said. Can't You just
Speaker 4: can't do that. So they invaded another country and we
Speaker 4: should support it. And they invaded Georgia in two thousand
Speaker 4: and eight, and if we didn't intervene, they would control
Speaker 4: all of Georgia today and Ukraine. So you got to
Speaker 4: stop that then, I think one hundred percent. And we
Speaker 4: talked about this already in the Biden administration. There's a
Speaker 4: lot of concern about where's this money going and who's
Speaker 4: in control of it, And this came up in many
Speaker 4: conversations with Zelenski with his peap.
Speaker 3: Top people about our concerns.
Speaker 4: So what you should do is tighten the controls on
Speaker 4: the money and put the oversight in place so that
Speaker 4: you know where the money is going. But you can't
Speaker 4: do it while also saying, well, because of that, we're
Speaker 4: going to allow the Russians to take a whole bunch
Speaker 4: of territory and win the war. So it's a really
Speaker 4: tough balance. But you know, government's hard.
Speaker 1: When you left the government, where was the Ukrainian situation
Speaker 1: in terms of how much territory Russia had taken and
Speaker 1: this sense of the balance of power at a time
Speaker 1: where it seemed like Russia was making some inroads.
Speaker 4: So Russia was making some inroads, but largely the confident
Speaker 4: had been frozen for a long time. Where Russia makes
Speaker 4: a little bit of inroads, then Ukraine makes some inroads
Speaker 4: somewhere else. On a netnet basis, Russia was making more
Speaker 4: inroads than he was losing, but it wasn't massive amounts.
Speaker 3: Of territory, so it was largely frozen.
Speaker 4: But that was in order to get to a negotiation.
Speaker 4: I agree with the Drum administration that enough is enough.
Speaker 4: Let's get to a negotiation. I think you have to
Speaker 4: force both sides to come to the table, and you
Speaker 4: got to force some tough choices by both sides.
Speaker 3: Need to make some tough choices.
Speaker 4: Freezing the ward place and saying, okay, we're done, let's
Speaker 4: call this a border is really tough because hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of people have been killed to do what just
Speaker 4: to allow for the parts of the country to go away?
Speaker 4: And then what is there a disarmed Russia on the
Speaker 4: other side, I don't think so. So they invade again
Speaker 4: in two years, in four year. So you have to
Speaker 4: create a negotiation that has both sides at the table,
Speaker 4: that allows for some kind of resolution that both sides
Speaker 4: don't like, but that.
Speaker 3: Ends the war.
Speaker 2: Some people might the argument that the current president, President
Speaker 2: Trump is attempting to shock the Europeans into action. Can
Speaker 2: you walk us through your experience with the European allies?
Speaker 2: How frustrating was that?
Speaker 4: I think for us, For the United States, it's always
Speaker 4: a bit frustrating. I think we like to go a
Speaker 4: little bit faster and we want to do things more
Speaker 4: aggressively when it comes to areas of conflict and negotiations.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, on the economic policy we tend
Speaker 4: to go a little bit slower in the environmental issues.
Speaker 4: We were as a green pro green administration, were frustrated
Speaker 4: by how far sometimes the Europeans would go without thinking
Speaker 4: through the consequences of where they were going, and then
Speaker 4: they would suffer the consequences which affects us and they
Speaker 4: create high water marks that we then have to deal
Speaker 4: with our constituencies of why didn't you're dealing with the
Speaker 4: Europeans and it's a bad and so we say, well,
Speaker 4: wait two to five years, you'll see why we're not
Speaker 4: dealing what the Europeans are doing. So I think there's
Speaker 4: always been frustrations there. We tried to do trade policy
Speaker 4: with Europe in the Obama administration, the Biden administration, the
Speaker 4: Trump administration, now the again very frustrating, very difficult to
Speaker 4: do it. So it's built into the system. But at
Speaker 4: the end of the day, these are our allies and
Speaker 4: we have to recognize that the argument with them is
Speaker 4: our This is the argument inside the family versus the
Speaker 4: arguments with others which is outside the family.
Speaker 5: But don't almost sometimes need to maybe shake them up.
Speaker 5: You were part of the Obama administration telling Germany not
Speaker 5: to go ahead with Nordstream too.
Speaker 4: Yet they did it, yes, and if they didn't do it,
Speaker 4: large parts of why their declining economy is now would
Speaker 4: have been avoided. They bought in to the argument of
Speaker 4: your heroin dealer, the first hit is free, and after
Speaker 4: that you pay a big price, and some of that.
Speaker 4: I went to Journey before the Ukraine War five months
Speaker 4: before and said, something's wrong. You're you're in trouble, and
Speaker 4: they insisted that they weren't. When the Russians were playing
Speaker 4: a game of filling their storage in the winter from
Speaker 4: their own storage instead of from Russia, I said, how
Speaker 4: is it possible your pipeline's empty but your storage is filling.
Speaker 5: What took the Europeans so long to see the intelligence
Speaker 5: that the Biden administration was seeing, and that Jake Sullivan
Speaker 5: was openly telling the press from the podium.
Speaker 3: We shared all the intelligence.
Speaker 4: I think sometimes they had the exact same intelligence we
Speaker 4: had on the invasions. We knew, we were saying the
Speaker 4: invasions coming on this day, on this week, on this day,
Speaker 4: at this hour.
Speaker 3: They refused to see it. No, this is just an exercise.
Speaker 4: I think sometimes being the neighbor, you kind of can't
Speaker 4: see us being an ocean away, we see it with
Speaker 4: clearer eyes. We've missed plenty of intelligence, so I don't
Speaker 4: want to you know, we've we had nine to eleven
Speaker 4: that people were training inside the United States and we
Speaker 4: didn't see it. So I think they were just too
Speaker 4: close to the Russians and always making the excuses for him,
Speaker 4: and that was the problem with and others that were
Speaker 4: making the excuses.
Speaker 3: No, he doesn't mean it, and.
Speaker 4: I think we have to learn a lot of lessons,
Speaker 4: and Europe has to learn more lessons, but I think
Speaker 4: they have learned a lesson. They don't want this war
Speaker 4: to end this way because they're worried that this war
Speaker 4: it doesn't end here. In five years from now he
Speaker 4: invades another country.
Speaker 2: I wanted to finish on this because we could talk
Speaker 2: to you all day. I mentioned this a couple of times,
Speaker 2: and I was half joking but semi serious. Of course,
Speaker 2: ten years younger without the tie. I've said this a
Speaker 2: few times. There are some really really smart, intelligent people
Speaker 2: that work inside our administrations here in the United States.
Speaker 2: We spoke to one last week secretly best some of
Speaker 2: the Treasury. I worry more and more as years passed
Speaker 2: by that those kind of people want to go into
Speaker 2: US government. I consider you part of that. The lead
Speaker 2: sing another at am I really talented, intelligent individuals. You
Speaker 2: might disagree with them on their politics, but when it
Speaker 2: comes to policy, they've thought things through. Do you worry
Speaker 2: about that too.
Speaker 4: I think it's getting harder and harder to come into government.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously, the hours are terrible. The stress is
Speaker 4: why your family time is terrible. I've seen so much
Speaker 4: damage to people's families just by making the choice, especially
Speaker 4: if you're at the White House.
Speaker 3: Or at senior levels in the government.
Speaker 4: And the problem is if you're not already wealthy, it's
Speaker 4: becoming even harder because the income is relatively lower and
Speaker 4: I get it, it's higher than the average American salary,
Speaker 4: but it is lower relative to what the earning potential
Speaker 4: is for the people that are in those jobs. And
Speaker 4: the stress on it and the amount that it costs
Speaker 4: you to manage your life the government doesn't pay for.
Speaker 3: And the scrutiny.
Speaker 4: I mean, I have protesters outside my house yelling that
Speaker 4: I'm accusing me of genocide, going after my daughter and
Speaker 4: putting her on Instagram, my thirteen year old that comes
Speaker 4: with the job and it's not like the Secret Service.
Speaker 3: Was there to help me or the cops. I mean
Speaker 3: they're just standing there watching.
Speaker 4: So what you get, the blowback that you get and
Speaker 4: is in to manage your life is really really difficult.
Speaker 4: The process for confirmation by the Senate is out of control, and.
Speaker 3: For relatively low level positions.
Speaker 4: So to come and be an assistant secretary in some
Speaker 4: random agency, you are now supposed to hire lawyers and
Speaker 4: accountants and to do a forensics auditing of your life,
Speaker 4: of your personal life, of your financial life.
Speaker 3: I mean it's too much.
Speaker 4: And so I worry that outside of it being you know,
Speaker 4: I made a lot of money, so I'm going to
Speaker 4: go into government and play with that for a little bit.
Speaker 4: And that happens at both parties. I worry that that
Speaker 4: it gets harder and harder to get good people to
Speaker 4: come in.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people share that worry. Almost
Speaker 2: as good to see you, to see hipee. We'll catch
Speaker 2: up again soon, Amaso stain there. They form a Senior
Speaker 2: Advisor for Energy and Investment to President Biden.