E71: Russia/Ukraine deep dive: escalation, risk factors, financial fallout, exit ramps and more

Dude, Sax, I love that look. Look at that shirt. Look at that, man. Is it too noisy for a podcast? No, you look very relatable. You're like an American man, just like at home doing stuff. Is he trying to go full Tucker on us? It is a really, really horrendous shirt that you're wearing.

That is a horrible... I mean, that was the same shirt Tucker was wearing last week. Oh my God, Sax is going to be so appealing to middle America right now. He's like... Absolutely. Look, he's going for the everyman. Yeah, he's an everyman. He doesn't have a blazer on. He's trying to get the purple pills.

Are you going to go chop wood with Tucker? Yeah. I may not be a man of the people, but I do try to be a man for the people. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All In Podcast. It's obviously been an intense week, and there is a topic.

There's really only one topic to talk about this week, and that's the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. With me to break all this down, I'm going to take it from a couple of different angles. The Iranian man, David Sax, with his power flannel on today. He's going to go chop some wood after this, trying to appeal to the everyman.

Power flannel. It's a power flannel. It's a power flannel. I think that was gifted by Tucker. And the sultan of science, hot off the... How do you know it's flannel instead of cashmere? How do you know it didn't come from one of Chamath's little... Chamath would never wear that shirt.

If you sent that shirt to Chamath, he'd burn it. That would go right in his pizza oven. I wouldn't burn it, but I would wipe my butt with it. Here we go, folks. And hot off the launch of the Kana beverage printer replicator, the sultan of science himself, David Freeburg, and back from a little holiday, the dictator himself, Chamath Palihapitiya, with...

With a Jedi robe. Tell us about the Jedi robe that you elected for this week, Darth Palpitiya. Well, this is... Darth Palpatine Hapitiya. Well, I mean, this is... Look, this is... Yes, it is cashmere. We're running out of time. I have to wear through the rest of my few garments, my new garments, before it's springtime.

And then I have to go to the, you know, the linen and the cotton. Got it. So you're enjoying the final days of cashmere. Well, I do. I did find some baby cashmere. Light, thin. You know, you can wear them probably until April, maybe even May. So we have that going for us.

All right. Well, there you go. And is there a specific date that you shift over to the linens? To be honest with you, I have a team I consult with. Got it. The team's working on that. They're working on that. They're working on a recommendation. All right. So we can still laugh.

It's kind of hard to talk about other topics when a war has broken out. I don't know if I have to go too deep into recapping what's happening because it is a static situation. But there's been massive fallout from the war, both economically, lives lost, and it's escalated pretty dramatically.

We had a pretty crazy moment last night. We're taping this on Friday. March 4th, last night, a nuclear facility, the largest one in Europe, was involved in a firefight. It seems to have been secured and the Russians have taken control of it. But there are a lot of people in the war.

So I don't know if I have to go too deep into recapping what's happening. But there were people bombing it. Where to begin here? I think maybe, Sax, you can start us off with a little bit of your assessment of the situation as it stands in week two. Yeah.

I mean, when we broke up last week, this war was just breaking out and we were still talking about ways that we might defuse it. Obviously, that was too late. And I think everybody, probably Putin first and foremost, thought this would be a cakewalk. And it has turned out not to be.

The resistance by the Ukrainians has been fierce. And it's been sort of galvanized by their leader, Zelenskyy. You know, at the very beginning of the hostilities, he made the decision to stay and fight. He had that video that came out with his cabinet standing behind him. That galvanized all the people of Ukraine to stand behind them.

And then the West now wants to stand behind the whole country of Ukraine. So it's really been, you know, amazing leadership by Zelenskyy. And, you know, it's too bad in a way we didn't have that kind of leadership among all of them. Yeah. Yeah. Our allies in, say, Afghanistan, you know, we had this guy, Ghani, who got in the first helicopter out of there when the trouble started.

So, you know, his leadership has been strong and admirable. And it's basically galvanized the West. And I think that Putin, I think, must have underestimated the level of resistance he would face and also the unity of the West in terms of sanctioning him and providing support for the Ukrainians.

All that being said, I think we're now at a very dangerous, sort of, crossroads because the situation is very volatile. And you've got so much variance in the outcomes that can occur now. I think you're seeing people prognosticate everything from, you know, Kyiv gets turned to rubble in the next week and the Russians basically power through and win, to this turns into a long term insurgency, to, you know, there's going to be some sort of uprising in Moscow and, you know, regime change there.

And I think because of that, you know, the Russian government is going to be able to, you know, because the variance is so high, because all the sort of, you know, because the two sides are playing for all the marbles, so to speak, and you've even got, I think, intemperate and insane remarks by Lindsey Graham, basically calling for, you know, calling for Putin's ouster, you know, which I think is going to give...

I mean, that quote, just to pause there. Yeah, it's going to give the Kremlin, I think, a propaganda tool, but for rallying people internally. But the point is just where it seems like we're playing for all the marbles. Right now. And I think that's a very dangerous place to be.

And I'm seeing, you know, insane rhetoric and commentary by people trying to push us into war. And so just the other day, you know, one of the one of the things I tweeted about is one of the craziest things you hear is we're already in World War Three. Well, you know, Kasparov said this.

I mean, he's kind of a known to be a little bit of a hothead. But you also had Fiona Hill, who's supposed to be a Russia expert from the State Department, who frequently is the go to source for CNN. And other publications also saying we're already in World War Three.

Well, no, we're not. I mean, if we were in World War Three, you'd see the mushroom clouds assuming you were still alive and not vaporized. So it is incredibly reckless for people to be saying things like this. And there is just, you know, this drumbeat of war that is being pushed by cable news and by the Twitter sphere.

And just today, thankfully, this morning, NATO announced that it would not be imposing a no fly zone over Ukraine. Why is that important? Explain that. Well, because because there's all these people who are saying, well, we shouldn't send boots on the ground to Ukraine. We don't need to get militarily involved.

But let's let's do a no fly zone to basically help the Ukrainians. The how do you enforce that? What a no fly zone means is that you're going to shoot down Russian planes. Yes, that's what it means. You are going to war. It may not be boots on the ground.

It's boots in the sky. So had we done that, had we given in to the emotional appeals and I think we all feel the tug on our heartstrings. And had we given into that, we would be potentially in a shooting war with Russia. And that would be the most serious we're already in, I think, the most serious foreign policy situation in my lifetime.

And, you know, I'm almost half a century old. So, you know, it's it's very dangerous. And, you know, I've been saying for the last month on this podcast, I've been actually advocating for the cause of not getting militarily involved. And a month ago, it seemed like an argument I didn't need to make.

But now it really does. Because both sides are sort of this is there's almost a unanimity in Washington that we need to continue escalating the situation. Sacks. My concern is less about the Washington intent to put boots on the ground or boots in the sky. And I'm much more concerned about NATO allies.

There's 30 member nations in NATO. And if any one of them does something stupid, if there's any one of them does something stupid, they're going to be in trouble. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem.

And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem. And I think that's the real problem.

E71: Russia/Ukraine deep dive: escalation, risk factors, financial fallout, exit ramps and more

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