The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s largest emergency supply of crude oil. In huge underground salt caverns along the Gulf of Mexico, the American federal government can store up to 714 million barrels, more than what the country uses in one month. Historically, the SPR has been tapped at the discretion of the president when natural disasters or crises cause the price of oil for consumers to spike.

But when Russia invaded Ukraine and oil prices went haywire, Arnab Datta and Skanda Amarnath proposed a novel idea: what if the SPR wasn’t just used as a stockpile of a commodity? If it used its ability to acquire oil strategically, could it support American industry and calm oil markets? Today, we talked to both of them.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Introduction

(00:40) How do oil markets work?

(02:25) How has the SPR been used historically?

(07:42) Why oil investment kept dropping

(16:53) Arnab and Skanda's big idea

(20:55) Convincing the Biden administration

(23:45) "Fixed-price forward contracts"

(34:54) Isn't the SPR too small to shape oil markets?

(42:10) The SPR pilot buy fails

(51:09) A more aggressive approach

(58:01) Keeping the political coalition together

(01:02:26) The importance of elite media

(01:09:43) Did the SPR "beat OPEC"?

(01:12:52) Lessons for policy advocates

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In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a major stroke. The president, a widower, was kept in solitude by his second wife and a tight ring of advisers. For months, senior executive branch and legislative officials could not see the president. The White House claimed the president would shortly return to full health, and that he suffered only from “nervous exhaustion.” His wife managed the flow of information to him, sharing certain memos and concealing others.

We spoke to John Milton Cooper Jr., a historian who has been called "the world's greatest authority on Woodrow Wilson." Cooper is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his Woodrow Wilson: A Biography was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

(00:00) Introduction

(00:21) How did Wilson's stroke come about?

(6:54) The stroke and its immediate coverup

(14:08) Psychological changes in President Wilson

(18:43) The media coverup

(20:31) Wilson and Congress

(23:53) Edith Wilson's role

(32:04) The Vice President and constitutional questions

(37:52) Wilson's advisers

(41:38) The Democratic Party

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In April and May 1979, between 66 and 300 people died from anthrax in the Russian city of Sverdlovsk, now called Yekaterinburg. The Soviet authorities seized doctors’ records and quickly rolled out an explanation: the deaths were an accident caused by contaminated meat.

But American intelligence agencies suspected a more nefarious explanation: the Soviets were secretly developing biological weapons.

Last week, we interviewed Matthew Meselson about his key role in convincing Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon to ban biological weapons research in the early 1970s. After the Sverdlovsk incident, Meselson was brought in by the CIA to help assess the potential explanations. For more than a decade, he led scientific investigations into the incident. In 1992, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the truth finally came out: the Sverdlovsk incident was a bioweapons lab leak, the most deadly confirmed lab leak in history.

Meselson’s paper confirming the lab leak is an epidemiological classic. For the first time on Statecraft, we’ve doubled up on a guest: the 94-year-old Meselson is back for round two.

[00:00] The CIA recruits Meselson

[5:38] Attempts to travel to Sverdlovsk

[9:11] Meselson travels to Moscow

[14:15] An invitation to Sverdlovsk

[25:27] On-the-ground investigation

[34:25] Who knew what, and when did they know it?

[40:16] Who is developing chemical weapons today?

[45:34] How closely does the Sverdlovsk lab leak parallel incidents in Wuhan?

[50:31] Why the Soviets couldn't find their own research facilities

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

In 1969, President Nixon announced the end of all American offensive biological weapons programs, and renounced the first use of chemical weapons. But it wasn’t until several months later that Nixon confirmed that the U.S. would end all military research into toxins, which can be created either in nature or in the lab.

Nixon chose to end that toxin research because of one man, our interviewee today. Dr. Matthew Meselson is well-known in biology for his Meselson-Stahl experiment, which demonstrated that DNA replicates semiconservatively, and has won myriad awards for his academic work. But his consulting work for federal agencies at several crucial moments in Cold War history may be Dr. Meselson’s greatest professional contribution.

Dr. Meselson is 94 years old. He graciously agreed to a conversation with Statecraft about one of those moments. The first part of our conversation is published below.

What You’ll Learn: How do you convince a president in one memo? How did Hungarian lunch ladies help lead to Nixon banning toxins for military use? Why did the Joint Chiefs of Staff want to develop anthrax? Why was Nixon reading Michael Crichton?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Most Americans have never heard of the Domestic Policy Council. What is it, and why does it matter? Today, we interviewed Cecilia Muñoz, former Director of the Domestic Policy Council under President Obama.

We cover: Why did the Biden presidential transition differ sharply from the Obama transition? How do you stop bureaucrats from slow-walking policies they dislike? What decisions never make their way up to the president?

Subscribe at www.statecraft.pub to get a new interview every week.

Also, if you like Statecraft, give us a rating or subscribe.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Today's interviewee, Professor Chris Snyder, is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Institute for Progress (IFP). He teaches economics at Dartmouth College, where he specializes in industrial organization and microeconomic theory. He is also a research associate at the NBER, treasurer of the Industrial Organization Society, and a faculty director for the University of Chicago's Market Shaping Accelerator. 

Chris played a pivotal role in the advance market commitment, or “AMC,” for the pneumococcal vaccine, which saved close to a million lives. 

What you’ll learn:

How did the U.S. and Russia end up in the same funding coalition? Why didn’t we design an AMC for malaria? How do you place a market value on future innovations? Why would cancer and Alzheimer’s be poor candidates for an AMC?

Subscribe at www.statecraft.pub to get one new interview in your inbox each week.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Today, we talked to Laura Thomas, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer and Chief of Base in Afghanistan. She has served over 17 years in national security and leadership roles. We discuss:

00:00 How a CIA station operates

8:46 What kind of intelligence failure was October 7th?

24:39 Why did intelligence agencies predict Kabul would fall quickly to the Taliban?

30: 09 The holes in how CIA teaches tradecraft

Read the transcript at https://www.statecraft.pub/p/how-to-run-a-cia-base-in-afghanistan

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, hundreds of tons of nuclear materials were suddenly unsecured. The new, fragile Russian government had no ability or desire to claim facilities in formerly Soviet states, and it could no longer pay nuclear plant workers. Operatives from rogue states offered cash to purchase uranium and higher nuclear physicists.

Today we talked to Andy Weber, one of the American operatives who helped lock down dangerous nuclear material from Kazakhstan to Georgia to Moldova.

What You’ll Learn

• How did the US secure dangerous nuclear materials?

  
  



• Why didn’t the Department of Energy want the US to acquire them?

  
  



• Why shouldn’t you bring bourbon to Soviet functionaries?

  
  

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub

Twenty years ago, the U.S. launched the largest, most successful global health initiative to ever address a single disease. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is credited with saving at least 20 million lives. New York Times columnist Nick Kristof recently called PEPFAR “the single best policy of any president in my lifetime.”

By early 2002, HIV/AIDS was devastating sub-Saharan Africa. Josh Bolten, then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, assembled a team to investigate how a U.S.-led fund could help stop the epidemic. The team included our guest today, Dr. Mark Dybul.

Dybul later served as the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, leading PEPFAR from 2006 until the end of the Bush administration. Dybul was the Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria from 2013-2017.

(00:00) Introduction

(14:49) Trials in the field

(31:00) Political coverage

(37:17) Fights within the U.S. government

(43:22) The president steps in

(51:39) Involving Congress

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub