The DSR Network

With two weeks to go until the election, an October Surprise seems to be emerging, as Trump was quoted saying, "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had." Kori Schake, Rosa Brooks, and Ed Luce join David Rothkopf to discuss all the major news leading up to the election, including what this news about North Korea assisting Russia really means and the history of Trump's fascination with Hitler.

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“Everyday is a three legged stool of fear, joy and self-loathing:” our favorite espionage author David McCloskey (Twitter: @mccloskeybooks) joins Marc to discuss his new book “The Seventh Floor” and the painful yet rewarding process of writing a best selling novel. Plus, CIA pranks, friendships forged in training, tradecraft that is (almost) real, and more on our favorite case officer, Artemis Proctor. And finally, woe to David’s Cleveland Indians.

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On the DSR Daily for Wednesday, we cover Russian disinformation efforts surrounding the election, Trump accusing the Labour Party of election interference, Bill Gates’s contribution to the Harris campaign, and more. 

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With two weeks to go, the presidential race couldn’t be closer. But if Kamala Harris is to win, how exactly would that happen?  Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein has a new piece in The Atlantic laying out what Harris’s path to victory looks like. The short version: She has to run up massive margins in cities and affluent suburbs, while limiting Trump’s gains among nonwhite and working class white voters. That may sound unsurprising. But the details on how this might unfold are complicated, fraught with uncertainties, and actually plausible, if very difficult. So we invited Brownstein on the show to demystify all of it.

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A Skynet-type AI apocalypse is on everyone’s mind, but what about the very real problems happening right now? Professor of Technology and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute Sandra Wachter joins David Rothkopf to share what issues with artificial intelligence we should focus on, and why now is the perfect time to take action. 

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On the DSR Daily for Tuesday, we discuss Antony Blinken heading back to the Middle East, a leaked US assessment of Israeli strike plans, Trump’s flip-flopping on election interference, and more. 

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The other day, Donald Trump playacted as a worker at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. But he ran into trouble, evading a question about whether he would support a minimum wage hike, producing scalding headlines. Which gets at a larger scam: Trump enjoys public approval on the economy, even though his agenda for working people is borderline nonexistent, whereas Harris has a detailed economic agenda for working and middle class people alike. We talked to HuffPost senior reporter Jonathan Cohn, author of a good new piece on the McDonald’s saga, who explains how this stunt captures the fraudulence of Trump’s economic plans—and the authenticity of Harris’s middle class biography. 

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On the DSR Daily for Monday, we cover ‘unprecedented interference’ in Moldova’s election and referendum, the House’s report on the Secret Service failures, Elon Musk’s new and probably illegal election giveaway, and more. 

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At a rally in Nevada, Barack Obama offered a blistering new warning: Trump’s vows to persecute the “enemy within” should be taken with deadly seriousness. Trump’s displays are deeply dangerous in someone who would be president with no guardrails left. Yet even now, a sizable subset of voters just doesn’t take his threats seriously. We talked to veteran analyst Michael Podhorzer, author of a good new piece warning that we’re “sleepwalking our way to fascism.” He explains how this election could come down to whether those voters grasp the threat Trump poses—exactly what Obama seemed to be saying—and criticizes the media for failing to sound the alarm. 

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Original air date: October 27, 2023

With Russia conducting an unprecedented nuclear strike drill, China significantly expanding its arsenal, and the US unveiling a new nuclear weapon, we might just be witnessing the beginnings of a modern nuclear arms race. Heather Williams and Jeffrey Lewis join Jon Wolfsthal and David Rothkopf to dissect the intricacies of the changing landscape of nuclear weapons.

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