Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. This week, we’re bringing you a special episode on US National Security featuring John Carlin and Jeremy Bash. John Carlin is the former Acting Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He previously served as the top national security official at the US Department of Justice, and as chief of staff to then FBI director Robert Mueller. Jeremy Bash has spent over a decade in government, occupying various high-level national security positions, including chief of staff at the CIA and Defense Department under President Barack Obama. They discussed President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees for national security roles, the newly created Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, and US foreign policy. Here is their conversation.

John Carlin:

Jeremy, it’s great to see you again. And one question for you to start it off is how did you end up involved in the national security space?

Jeremy Bash:

Hey, John, great to be with you. I was thinking after this election that the very first presidential election I worked on was in the year 2000 when Al Gore, also vice president at the time, ran for president, and I was the foreign policy and defense policy issue staffer for that campaign. I was living down in Nashville, Tennessee. Now of course, that’s where the campaign was headquartered, but he was vice president and so he had a full team at the NSC at the White House. And so I was just the junior staffer working in the campaign headquarters.

Interestingly, on election night, as everybody will recall, we all went out to Veterans Plaza for a victory celebration or what we anticipate would be a victory celebration. And then we got news that there were some irregularities in the vote counting and the balloting in Florida. And somebody said to me, “Hey, Jeremy, didn’t you go to law school?” And I said, “I did, but I never practiced law a day in my life. I clerked for a federal judge for one year and I’m a policy staffer on the campaign.” They said, “That’s good enough for us.” So they said, “Go down to Florida. Pack your bags for three days. We think this will get ironed out in a couple of days.” And that was a very optimistic assessment because the Florida recount was actually 36 days. Slept on the floor, ate out of vending machines, and was the young associate in the law firm that went on behalf of Al Gore up to the Florida State Supreme Court twice and then the US Supreme Court twice.

And John, I’ll just note that after we lost in the Supreme Court 5-4 in mid-December of that year, and I had to come back and try to figure out what I wanted to do with my career. I did end up deciding to practice law at O’Melveny with Ron Klain and with Warren Christopher who had been the former Secretary of State and the chairman of the recount for Al Gore. And I remember there was also at that time a lot of partisan bitterness. There was a lot of overhang. “Oh my God, how are we going to recover from this?” We were very worried about the George W. Bush presidency.

But then of course, as you know and from the time that you and I worked together, then of course when 9/11 happened, I really wanted to get back into the national security world and I wanted to try to figure out a way to contribute. We were all attacked. We were all Americans. We were all at war together. And some of the partisan overhang from the 2000 election really dissipated and it was time to come together as a country.

John Carlin:

How did you end up doing policy? What did you think policy was when you decided to do policy?

Jeremy Bash:

Well, after I’d been practicing law for a couple of years, I’m working on things like congressional investigations. And working at a big firm, so we were doing some of the defense work. We were working for some of the Enron executives and even some of the executives associated with the prosecution of Martha Stewart and ImClone and some of the other matters that were pending in the oversight agenda before Congress.

I always liked working with members of Congress and really saw during the Bush era the importance of checks and balances. And so I applied for and got a job as the minority general counsel on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence working for Congresswoman Jane Harmon. This is at a time, John, as you’ll recall, when intelligence issues were really dominating many of the headlines. So we had, first of all, we had the Iraq WMD intelligence and the intelligence that led us into war. We had the issue of the missed intelligence for 9/11 and the 9/11 commission was working and trying to formulate recommendations for how the intelligence community would be reorganized under potentially a Director of National Intelligence later was established under ERPA under the law that created that structure. We also had new intelligence functions being sprung up in the Department of Homeland Security, which was also new.

And then we had a couple of intelligence, quote-unquote, scandals. We had the CIA Detention Rendition and Interrogation Program. We had also the NSA Surveillance Program that triggered a lot of concerns about FISA and FISA reform. And so intelligence was all over the press and all over the policy agenda. And that’s really what I poured myself into, trying to understand those issues, trying to work on those issues, trying to fashion in the case of FISA reform, bipartisan responses, legislative responses. But Congress played an enormously important role. And just again, thinking about this current election cycle that we’ve just come through, I think Congress is going to have to play a very important role in checks and balances. And I think the next generation, John, of counsels, chief counsels minority, majority, general counsels for the oversight committees, are going to have their hands full.

John Carlin:

So you talked a little bit about, and it’s good to bring it back, we look at the sweep of the last 25 years, but this moment where the country was really divided, at the time seemed unprecedented, controversy over the results of an election, and then an attack by a foreign adversary brings the country together and you have this unity. But then as you’re talking about the intelligence reforms, et cetera, that took place, we break from that moment of unity and there ends up being strong divides over whether the actions we took in response to September 11th were the right actions. And you talked a little bit about when you were on the Hill, in the intel committee at least, and in that world there was still a spirit of bipartisanship or that we were trying to work together even though the country was increasingly debating the wisdom of some of the responses.

And jumping to today we’re in, we’re watching another transition take place. Are there lessons you think that we can learn from that experience that’ll be applicable now? Boy, it seems like the world geopolitically, it always seems complex. Like after September 11th and the Al-Qaeda threat, people thought that might be a war we were still fighting against Al-Qaeda. You were there famously in the situation room when Bin Laden was targeted and killed. I think there was a thought that that was going to usher in a less complicated time. And now here we are, geopolitically anyway, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China’s increasing expansionist aggression, what’s going on right now in the Middle East, it seems in some ways more complicated than ever. What lessons do you take?

Jeremy Bash:

Yeah, for sure. And at every moment in the last interval of time for American history and American politics, there have been people who have proclaimed the end of history, and this is a watershed moment and we’re an inflection point. And certainly the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War was a very important moment, but it was, as you noted, short-lived. We then were facing the threat of terrorist organizations that had successfully attacked us on our homeland. And we then commenced these two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And when Bin Laden was killed on May 1st, 2011, I think there were some who thought, “Okay, this era is winding down.”

And to some extent it began to, and of course the departure from Iraq in 2011 and then ultimately the departure from Afghanistan in 2021, I think, were critical moments. But as you said, the world we face now is in some ways more complex and requires American global leadership. And I say that because of course, one of the big issues that was discussed on the campaign trail this past year, and I think we’re going to be watching closely during the transition in the first months of the Trump presidency, is to what degree will America change its role as a global leader, a global builder of alliances, a global deployer of deterrence. And there’s been a lot of questions raised about whether or not the United States would continue in that role.

I just have to say, I think the crises, if you look at the Indo-Pacific, if you look at the Middle East, if you look at Ukraine and Europe, really cry out for and require American global leadership, the world is not going to solve these problems on its own. These problems don’t solve themselves on their own. And only with American global leadership, I think, can we hope to protect our interests and our values, which is of course the main objective of US foreign policy. So we are living in, it’s cliche to say unprecedented times, but certainly the threats, the challenges, the complexities facing this incoming administration are unlike anything we’ve seen in our history.

John Carlin:

Famously, the tagline of the incoming administration is Make America Great Again. You’re talking about American leadership on the world stage. And maybe we could take a tour a little bit around some of the likely trouble spots going in, but isn’t part of making America great again having America lead? And if so, where do you expect the administration to lead? People say it’s isolationist and maybe we could tick through, and there’s definitely been that strain when you think about Ukraine and Russia. But when you talk about China and Iran, it seems like quite an interventionist approach. How do you see it?

Jeremy Bash:

Actually, I’m not sure about that. And let’s go through this. So I do think that there is a strand in MAGA that is neo-isolationist that believes that America should pull up the drawbridge and lessen its interdependence with the world. And look, to some degree there are major historical trends where globalization is on the downswing and geopolitics is on the rise. And more nationalism is presenting itself in the politics in a lot of Western democracies. And I certainly think that a big feature of MAGA is nationalism and in some ways neo-nationalism.

And I just say that because although of course there’s an important role for a political instinct that says we’re going to have to focus on the United States and focus on our economy and focus on building manufacturing and focus on our own, what happens in our own shores, that in some respects in a globalized world can be, I think, short-sighted because as I said, there are numerous hot spots around the world and the security dynamics in those hot spots manifestly impact America’s security. And if you try to pull up the drawbridge in a globalized world, I think you’re going to find that the security is, it’s just a mirage and it actually doesn’t present security.

John Carlin:

Isn’t there some continuity there? Wasn’t President Biden and his team also focusing on American manufacturing, so-called industrial policy, in other words, a role for the government in making sure that certain industries thrive here at home.

Jeremy Bash:

Yes, but I think importantly, it was paired with a big focus on alliance building. And so if you look at, for example, our approach to Europe, we expanded NATO under the Biden administration by two countries. We strengthened NATO. We fortified our support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. If you look at the Indo-Pacific, we strengthened our defense relationships with Japan, with South Korea, and with Australia, including through a new multilateral technology and naval power initiative called AUKUS between the United States, Australia, and the UK to build nuclear-powered submarines and other key capabilities. And so the Alliance infrastructure was the core pillar of Biden’s farm policy. So there was a domestic renewal component in terms of CHIPS Act and IRA and infrastructure, which was badly needed after the Trump administration and after years of neglect on a bipartisan basis prior to that.

But it was always paired with this idea that America should be a global leader. And so I would call it, John, actually, what we’ve seen in the last four years, alliance industrial strategy, meaning we’re going to have other allies and partners around the world who can help us with developing supply chain resilience, developing cybersecurity policies, developing an approach to AI, developing approach to defense weapons production and procurement, industrial base resilience. And we can’t do this without our allies and partners, and we wouldn’t want to shoulder all the responsibility for global security by ourselves. And so having really capable allies and partners, I think, was key to the Biden approach.

Now, this of course raises the question is how will Donald Trump approach these alliances? And I think you started by saying maybe there’s an isolationist approach in Europe, but maybe not so in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific. I’m not sure. So I do think certainly in Europe, Trump has said he wants to end the war within 24 hours, which I think unfortunately means withdrawing support for Ukraine. We can come back to that because I think that would be very devastating to not just Ukraine, but also to our European allies. And there’s deep concern in Europe about this approach.

But I also wonder about the Indo-Pacific because Trump has been a big skeptic of our relationships with Korea. He threatened to pull out of the US-Korea free trade agreement, South Korea. He’s shown that he wants to have a bromance with North Korea, which of course is very unsettling to our allies and the Republic of Korea and South Korea. He has, I think, made comments about Taiwan that suggests that maybe the United States under his leadership wouldn’t defend Taiwan. And of course, a key national security issue that’s dominated decision-making over the last four years is how to fortify and strengthen Taiwan under the bipartisan Taiwan Relations Act, making Taiwan a, quote-unquote, porcupine by giving it defense capabilities, making it difficult to invade or swallow by mainland China.

And we’ve done other things, including, as I said, strengthen our relationships with Australia and Japan, and Trump has been no friend of those relationships. He’s publicly dissed our relationship with Australia. He’s made his political name really in the eighties talking about how he didn’t think a strong US-Japan relationship was in America’s national security interests. And just I think all the talk that you’ve seen from JD Vance and from others about how other Republicans or Democrats are warmongers, suggesting that American military power, American military deployment is somehow inappropriate or wrong or against America’s national security interests. I think when you add it all up, John, is I do think our allies have reason to be worried. And I think the question remains about whether or not the United States will be a global power, diplomatic power, military power, intelligence power, and even an economic power because I don’t believe you can be a global economic power without these other elements of national power.

John Carlin:

Is the alliance industrial strategy, are you coining that phrase? Is that a different-

Jeremy Bash:

I’m coining that phrase. Look, I think obviously elements of it have been present elsewhere, but I think it’s an important component of a broader national security approach.

Preet Bharara:

Stay tuned. There’s more coming up after this.

John Carlin:

So let’s get concrete. There’s some of the broader statements that the incoming president has made, and then there’s his picks for the incoming transition. You served at the innermost sanctum of both the CIA and the Department of Defense. We have name nominees in both those positions. We also have a incoming National Security Advisor and a Secretary of State nominee in Rubio. It seems like with some of these picks that I think they would share your view on the importance of alliances in defense of Taiwan when it comes to China in particular and then in the Middle East, working with Israel and other Middle East partners in opposition to Iran. Does that temper your concern? Do you see some of these? How do you evaluate these picks in the context of this overall potential shift from alliances to isolationism?

Jeremy Bash:

Yeah. Well, let’s go through this. So I certainly think that Senator Rubio as the nominee for the State Department is more in the mold of a traditional Republican internationalist, a hawk, if you will. Now, he’s catered a little bit more to the MAGA rhetoric on Ukraine recently, but I think overall he’s tough on China, he is tough on Iran, he’s tough on North Korea, and he’s tough on Russia, which are the four main adversaries in the United States, and he is supportive of democracies.

And so I think, look, from my perspective, again, I might have differences with Marco Rubio or Senator Rubio on a number of issues, but I think he’s going to be overall a competent and capable steward of American foreign policy in carrying out that element of what the Republican Party has stood for. And I do think we’re likely to see some clashes between him and President Trump on the Taiwan issue and maybe on the Ukraine issue. So I don’t know how that’s going to play out. But if I were a senator, I think I’d probably vote to confirm Marco Rubio.

I would say Mike Waltz, the National Security Advisor, obviously not up for Senate confirmation, but I put in the same bucket, meaning tough, hawkish, believes in American global leadership. And in fact, I saw recently that he said that he had a meeting with Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, and they largely see the adversary landscape the same way and they see the threats to the United States the same way.

I think John Radcliffe, who’s going to be the nominee for CIA, he served as DNI before. When he was first nominated, there were concerns about whether he was up for the job. He actually withdrew his name and then resubmitted it, and he served in that role and I think by and large did a good job. And I don’t know him well, but the people who I trust who do know him say that he’s going to be a serious leader of the agency.

And I think the key there, again, for that job and the job of DNI is that you’re not a policymaker. You’re there to lead an organization and you’re there to help the analysts at the agency ensure that their analysis is presented to policymakers in an unvarnished, unbiased way. And so a big part of that job as CIA director and DNI is to go to those principles meetings at the White House National Security Council and in the Oval Office and say to the president, “Mr. President, here’s what our analysis says about a particular issue.”

There were some concerns, John, in the first Trump administration that Trump really didn’t want to hear any analysis from the CIA about Russia. They couldn’t present their views about what Vladimir Putin was planning because they were worried about offending Donald Trump or worrying him. And so the White House let it be known to the intelligence community, “Hey, let’s tamp down any of this anti-Russia talk.” And I think that’s deeply concerning. And I think at this moment in particular when Russia feels emboldened and they are on the move in Ukraine, we’re going to need the John Ratcliffes and whoever is the DNI, whether it’s Tulsi Gabbard or somebody else, to be able to present to the president unvarnished, unbiased, straight talk about what’s happening with respect to Vladimir Putin in Russia.

John Carlin:

Let me pause you there because you put a caveat in with Tulsi Gabbard that you didn’t when talking about other potential incoming. Her public views seem very different than some of his other nominees. How would you describe her versus the hawks when you’re talking about ideological views and what do you think of her as the appointment for the Director of National Intelligence?

Jeremy Bash:

I think Tulsi Gabbard is a very odd and frankly very troubling pick. And I think senators are going to have to really dig into not just her record and not just what she’s done and what she’s said in the past, but also what her current views are. And they’re going to really have to question her pretty aggressively about how she views certain issues.

So two things, I think, to think about with respect to the job of DNI, Director of National Intelligence. One is, again, you are not a policymaker, so your job isn’t to drive policy forward on Ukraine or on Syria or on Iran or on North Korea or in China. Your job is to present the facts and just the facts, meaning present the analysis of the community, and also to leave the community so that it can conduct intelligence operations, collect, analyze important information that’s relevant for national security decision-making. If she has this kind of policy lens that’s way out of step with the rest of the administration or the rest of the Republican Party or even the rest of mainstream national security thought because she somehow thinks that Bashar Assad in Syria is a good guy and she wants to cozy up to him or talk to him, boy, number one is it’s a very odd and out-of-step, out-of-sync, and in some ways concerning policy approach.

But second is that’s not her job. Her job isn’t going to be to advance policy. Her job is going to be to faithfully report the facts that the intelligence community provides. And if they learn something or they analyze something, she can’t put some spin on the ball. And I think if she starts to do that or if she has an inclination to do that, and hopefully this’ll be illuminated in the questioning from the senators, then she’s not the right person for this job. She might get some important job elsewhere in the administration. She might find a good job outside the administration on a think tank or writing or espousing her views, but the job of DNI is not a job to have wacky policy views.

So I’m concerned about this one, John, not to mention the fact that the intelligence community, as you know because you worked at the FBI, can get pretty technical and is a professional cadre of experts. And you need someone who understands a little bit about the way the community is organized, understands the mission, responsibilities, capabilities of big organizations like the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial Intelligence Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and even the intelligence committee components at the Treasury Department. All the throughout the federal agencies, there are 18 different intelligence community components, and she’s got to be a consensus builder and a leader. And I just don’t see things in her background that to me says, “Wow, she’s a great pick for this.”

John Carlin:

With some history on that, rolling back, I remember talking to you and when you were working for Director Panetta, and it was early after the creation of the Director of National Intelligence and there was a lot of work to be done to figure out the CIA which had had the function of coordinating the elements of the intelligence community prior to the creation of the Director of National Intelligence. There was a lot of thought, and I’ll characterize it as bureaucratic knife fighting over what the role of that new position should or shouldn’t be.

And it seems maybe you talk a little bit about that time because I hear it in the way you’re raising concerns about her for this position, which is I think as a result of that tussling, the idea was the Director of National Intelligence should really focus on budget organizational issues that otherwise weren’t being attended to with the different elements. And to your point, ensuring there was a coordinated view where there might be consensus among some, but there’d also be objections in making sure that that full picture was put in an objective way in front of the policymakers in contrast to a view where it had its own point of view or was directing operations or other issues.

Jeremy Bash:

And John, in recounting some of the history of the establishment of the DNI and how it’s played out, it’s making me think maybe this is all actually part of the Trump team’s plan to really downgrade the DNI and to really make it a less important player. Of course, over the last 20 years since the job has existed, the DNI has been a pretty important player. They’ve sat at that table in the White House situation room, they’ve sat with presidents, they’ve sat with national security advisors, and they’ve led off every meeting and every discussion by saying, “This is the intelligence picture. This is what we know and this is what we can continue to analyze and collect on.” And maybe the view is that the DNI either has grown too big in terms of becoming a large bureaucracy or it’s just duplicative because it’s not actually doing collection itself, and maybe they want to just downgrade the whole thing. And so they put a lightweight in there. I think that is entirely plausible.

I don’t know if they’ve thought this entirely through because it’s not going to be easy just to take away the functions of the DNI. Over time, the DNI has created a number of offices, teams, intelligence managers that are responsible for different components of our intelligence collection management and analysis. And the real role of the DNI is to coordinate the community, coordinate collection, coordinate analysis, and to oversee the entire community.

And if you don’t have somebody who understands how intelligence is collected and understands how these operations are conducted, how these capabilities are fielded, and then ultimately how analysis trade craft has evolved so that we have a better sense of what we can say in our analytic judgments. As we started the conversation off by referencing some of these trade craft improvements really were necessitated after the Iraq WMD failure, and you need a DNI in there who understands that history and understands that evolution and can faithfully recite to the president what the analytic line of the community is. So I could argue for a smaller DNI, I could argue that the bureaucracy has grown, but I’m worried that we’re not even there yet, John. We’re going to be focusing on whether or not the DNI is going to even be a responsible member of the national security team.

John Carlin:

Let me pull on that thread a little bit more because you also had experience, you moved over from CIA to the Department of Defense. And I remember from conversations with sometimes I would call you there to be blunt, and because that is such an overwhelmingly complicated bureaucracy as is. There’d be some important hostage or other matter, and we would just ask you to reach in from the Secretary’s office and fix it because it was lost somewhere in the bowels of the bureaucracy. I remember talking with you then about initiatives that the Secretary had and the difficulty of implementing them because of the complexity.

We have now a Department of Government Efficiency set up that’s talked about changing the government procurement process when it comes to defense. They’ve talked about streamlining jobs. And there’s two threads to this, one that links I think both to defense and CIA, which is this idea of using the levers of power to go after your enemies. That’s one concern that people have had and it’s been one part of the rhetoric. But there’s a second that’s really about reducing size, increasing efficiency, streamlining bureaucracy. And how interrelated are those? Which parts do you think are positive and may have ultimately good effects, and which are you worried about?

Jeremy Bash:

It’s a great question, John, and here’s what I’d say is moving from CIA to DOD, Leon Panetta used to say it was like moving from the corner hardware store to Home Depot. And CIA felt more like a family. And when I was chief of staff, I think in the same way that when you were chief of staff at FBI, it felt very operational. I’d sit with the director of CIA in his morning meetings and we would hear about intelligence operations that were unfolding, and he was making decisions all day every day about kinetic operations, about covert action operations, about liaison activities and about intelligence collection efforts, and basically the business of espionage, the business of stealing the secrets of our adversaries.

And I was in those discussions as you referenced. I was in the discussions about the Bin Laden operation. I went to the rehearsals that the SEALs conducted for that mission, and I felt it was like a really operational role at the top of a pretty small tight-knit organization. Break, break, you get to DOD and it’s a completely different feel. You have a department of 3 million people, 1.4 million in active duty and 800,000 in their reserves and guard, and 800,000 civilians obviously globally deployed. And you’ve got these massive institutions within the institution. You’ve got the department of the Army, department of the Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, department of the Air Force, which now includes the Space Force. And you’ve got an entire office of the Secretary of Defense, this is the Home Depot point, that has 3,500 people and a budget of $4 billion. That’s just the office of the Secretary. So I was chief of staff of the office. So I’m supposed to try to lead an office of 3,500 people with a 4 billion budget. It’s really impossible to comprehend.

John Carlin:

By the way, just for those playing at home. I think the FBI at the time, I think the office of the director was maybe eight people, if you don’t count the security detail. But go on. Not that we weren’t a little jealous of your budget.

Jeremy Bash:

So you get to this point about DOGE and efficiency, and this is really important to talk about. So when Panetta came in as Secretary, I remember Bob Gates who was his predecessor, said, “Leon, the job as secretary is really twofold. It’s Secretary of War and it’s Secretary of the Pentagon,” meaning Secretary of War is the job where you sit with the president and you advise the president in the chain of command about military operations, military activities, and the issues of war and peace. Should we launch military action to accomplish some objective? That’s a phenomenally important job that requires really pristine judgment. And when the senators question the current nominee, I think they have to ask a lot of questions about war and peace.

The second job, which in some ways is even harder, is the job of Secretary of the Pentagon where you’re responsible for managing this massive organization that I just described. And here, you have a lot of support to do that. You’ve got a deputy secretary, you’ve got a chief of staff, you’ve got certainly a number of senior military leaders including the joint chiefs. But this is such a massive organization that when Bob Gates, he’s Leon Panetta’s predecessor, tried to reduce duplication, tried to look for efficiencies, he got rid of joint forces command, he got rid of the business transformation office, he got rid of one element or that element, the overall savings to the Departmental Budget was minuscule. So I used to say to the Secretary we’ve got to call it at the time a $700 billion budget for the Department of Defense, and our budget in our office is $4 billion. So even if we whacked our entire office back by half, which would be massive layoffs and you’d spill so much political capital trying to get it done, we’d save $2 billion.

It’s like I think of a triangle or a pyramid, we’d be lopping off the very tip of the pyramid and it just doesn’t really make sense from you spend so much time and so much energy trying to do that and you’re not going to get much in return. So DOGE, DOGE has said they want to cut government spending by $2 trillion, and I’m pretty skeptical that they’re going to be able to do that unless they decide that they want to eliminate certain entitlement programs or certain major mission areas. So if they wanted to eliminate elements of Social Security, like for example employing means testing for Social Security, they could do that, same thing for Medicare. But half all federal spending are these entitlement programs. If you look at the discretionary budget, the non entitlement programs, defense is an enormous part of that. So are things like the VA and veterans benefits. Do they want to cut veterans benefits? Do they want to cut our defense spending?

Yeah, they might want to reshape some of our defense spending, maybe drive it less into traditional platforms and more into AI or more into new technologies. And I’d be all for that, but I don’t think they’re going to get the spending cuts that they really desire because again, the Department of Defense, people aren’t sitting around making tanks or making airplanes or making pencils or making bullets. That’s all provided by the private sector under contracting rules. And the private sector makes every single thing for the Pentagon. The Pentagon doesn’t make even a bullet. It buys everything. And so it’s not an issue of head count in the Department of Defense. That’s the long pole in the tent. The long pole in the tent are spending, is spending by the Department of Defense on modernization, on capabilities, on technology.

John Carlin:

Well, they are saying on that that the way we spend is broken. That’s one of their key initiatives.

Jeremy Bash:

It’s 100% broken. And I think what they would actually would happen if they were to fix it would be we would spend more and accelerate spending. We wouldn’t spend less, or we would spend differently even. And I think they would even can see we should spend differently. But I don’t see them saving $100 billion from the defense budget. And even if they did take out $100 billion of the defense budget, I don’t see how that gets them $2 trillion in savings. It just doesn’t add up. So I think on the spending, the absolute spending side, it doesn’t add up.

Now, I also heard some commentary today that I thought was really smart about this, which is what is efficiency? Efficiency is getting the same output for less money. I don’t think they’re going to be able to do that. I think they could decide that they want to save by getting rid of certain missions so they could take out force structure. They could say, “We don’t think the army needs to be 500,000 people. We think it could be 300,000 soldiers.” They could say, “We don’t want to have a Space Force,” but I think that would be problematic with Donald Trump. They could say, “We don’t want to have a cyber command.” They could say, “We don’t want to have southern command.” There are things that they could say we don’t want to have, but that would require taking out a lot of force structure and a lot of capability. And I think that would be highly problematic because unless you could figure out how we’re going to meet our national security objectives and get this with less money, I think it’s difficult to envision.

John Carlin:

What do you think about the current nominee and his ability to impose greater efficiency using your definition based on his background?

Jeremy Bash:

Well, Bob Gates was, in my view, the ultimate person to drive efficiency inside a government agency because he had worked in government during his career and he was ruthless about saying, “I’m sentimental about no program and I’m willing to cut things if we think it’s falls under the line of things that we have to do.” And he, again, spilled a lot of political blood to try to get this done and spent a lot of political capital to try to get it done. And he achieved some things.

I think the current nominee, he’s a talk show host and he sells, I see on Instagram, soap and coffee and ammo. I don’t see anything in his background that would indicate to me that he would understand how to manage the Pentagon bureaucracy. And I think it’s really important because again, this job is two jobs. It’s Secretary of War and Secretary of the Pentagon, and I don’t see what in his background would allow him to do this.

I think there’s some other things that he has said that I also am concerned about that we should turn to them, particularly about women in combat and the way he wants to deal with the generals. They’ve said they want to create a warrior board, John, a warrior board of, I guess, retired three and four-stars to review the performance of all the current three and four-star generals. And this is, again, I think highly problematic because it suggests that all the generals have to pass some purity test, some political test with the White House. The president already has the ability to name and nominate three and four-stars. In fact, every one of those senior positions goes through the White House.

So it’s not like a president doesn’t have the ability to shape the military leadership in a way that they want, but convening this outside board essentially to create these star chamber trials of military officers, I think, just sends a very dangerous signal. And I know it’s causing concern within the ranks. I know a lot of senior DOD officials who have served their entire career defending our country, defending our country in combat, and they’re going to leave and they’re going to depart. And I think we’re going to have morale issues and I think we’re going to have massive attrition issues. And I think that’s not a great way to come in and manage the Pentagon, especially when you need these people to do some of the things that you want to do globally in terms of the mission but also in terms of these internal changes.

John Carlin:

One of the arguments against such a change has been that it would increase the ability of the chief executive to order either the military or with similar reforms at the CIA or FBI against perceived political enemies, the enemy within. And how concerned should we be about that given the structures that are already in place?

Jeremy Bash:

Again, like I worked with these career professionals inside our government agencies, and I have to say this idea of a deep state or an enemy within is just nothing like I’ve ever seen or experienced. It’s not accurate, John. The people who devote their careers to professional lives, to defending our country, whether in uniform, the diplomatic corps and the intelligence community, were in law enforcement, they’re not political. They’re not partisan. They’re patriots and they devote their lives. In some respects, they risk their lives. And in some moments, they even give their lives to defend our ideals, our values, and our interests. And I think this idea that there’s some deep state hidden government that’s working against the American people, it’s just a total misrepresentation, I think a dangerous misrepresentation of what the professionals and these departments and agencies do. So that’s I think point one.

Point two is I don’t think you’re going to get these people to sign up for some political witch hunt, some internal witch hunt against, quote- unquote, an enemy within. The people I know at CIA, the people I know in the Department of Defense, they’re not going to play those games. They’re not going to be loyal to just a regime or a person. They take a loyalty oath to the Constitution of the United States. When they come into office, they swear allegiance to one thing and one thing only, which is the Constitution, the rule of law. And they are not going to engage in some political witch hunt on behalf of this president or any president, just not who they are.

Now, some people say, “Oh my God, they’re not going to listen to the president. They’re going to be recalcitrant. They’re going to be obstinate and they’re going to work against, and this is a coup.” And no, it’s not. It’s actually the way our system works. The way our system works is you’ve got a president elected by the people. You’ve got political appointees. You’ve got civilian control of the military. You’ve got politically-accounted leaders at CIA and the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. But then you’ve got professionals, career people who are immune or supposed to be immune from political pressure who carry out the sacred duties of defending interests and our values.

And I know these people, John. You know these people. They’re patriots. Like I said, they’re not partisan political actors, and I think it’s a very dangerous suggestion and a very dangerous policy to try to convert them into those people or to try to fire them or place them with political people or in some ways to try to engage in this witch hunt internally.

John Carlin:

Yeah. One misunderstanding I’ve talked about before. This is true of the FBI workforce and field offices and abroad. This is true at the Justice Department, with the administration of the Bureau of Prisons, the different law enforcement agencies, the DA, the Marshal service, the prosecutors who are located in US attorney’s offices. The majority of the workforces at these agencies are not in Washington DC. I say that because one of the proposed reforms has been to move folks out of Washington. Not saying that that couldn’t occur. You couldn’t look at efficiencies there, and they have occurred in the past, but I also I think there’s a misunderstanding of where these workforces are and who’s in them.

Jeremy Bash:

100%. John, one of the things about DOGE is for some reason, the DOGE leadership, they’re obsessed with head count. They’re obsessed with, again, let’s reduce head count and that’s the way to save money. And again, you can reduce some head count, but a lot of these people are working all across the country. And so you need, and you would need it anyway, members of Congress, senators and representatives to agree to take down the VA Hospital or a VA building in somebody’s congressional district, the Social Security Administration building in somebody’s congressional district or in their state. You would need agreement from the members of Congress to take out joint base San Antonio in San Antonio, Texas, which is one of the largest joint bases in the Department of Defense. You would need Mitch McConnell’s agreement to take out Fort Campbell in Kentucky or to reduce the head count there. You would need John Cornyn and Ted Cruz’s agreement to reduce the size of Fort Hood in Texas.

Just imagine DOGE coming and saying, “We would like to whack back all of these people and all of these capabilities and close these runways and close these training facilities and close these cyber ranges and close these ammunition regions.” Good luck. Good luck trying to get members of Congress, senators who are constantly trying to add capability to their districts, to their states, to try to actually reduce it. I guess maybe the only value that DOGE can provide is maybe giving some of these folks political cover because if they did it, they’d have the cover of the Trump administration. But I don’t think that gets you very far, and I want to see how that plays out.

But you’re right, John, most of the people we’re talking about don’t work in Washington. They’re operationally forward deployed. And even a place like CIA, so much of the workforce is globally deployed. And you’ve got also FBI agents all over the world, legal attache roles. The idea that this is all inside the belt by Washington bureaucrats, again, just is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way our government is structured.

John Carlin:

I want to end on a positive note. So what are three things where you think there could be improvements or you’ve seen signs that there may be either continuity or changes in a way that you think will be helpful? I know one area we’ve talked and thought a lot about dating back really to the initial excitement around what was then called Twitter and democracy blooming through the world to watching it be used by the Islamic state for ends that were never the intent of those that created it. Now we’re on this cusp of an evolution with artificial intelligence. Give me three things that you think there could be positive change.

Jeremy Bash:

One, I think would be to unleash the dynamism of the AI era. And I do think that there are a lot of people around the new team that understand the potential of AI and the fact that the US should be and has to be a global leader in AI. And if we don’t promote our national champions, promote the companies that are really innovating here, I’m talking about the companies not only that build the chips, but build the data centers and then build the models that it will be powering this new age of AI, if we don’t support them, stand by them and actually champion them, then I think we are going to risk losing our edge. And I think this administration, it’s a little hard to tell exactly how they’re going to play it, but I think they will be inclined to support American AI leadership.

Second, I would say in the realm of space with someone like Musk who understands space so well, there are obviously countervailing views and countervailing considerations, but you got to say Elon Musk has pioneered space launch and he has pioneered also communications infrastructure and space. And I think space is an incredibly important domain for the United States to lead. Again, we don’t want to cede it to China. And I would build on that by saying we need to strengthen our space resilience. We need to have cybersecurity in space. We need to have more innovation, more players, more players in the launch space, more players in the on-orbit space. And I think if this administration can continue to invest in both military and civilian space capabilities, that will be a net benefit.

And third, I’ll just mention the Middle East because one of the signature achievements of the Trump administration during the first term was the Abraham Accords, and I want to give credit where credit is due. That was a very important development for-

John Carlin:

Could you describe a little bit what the Abraham Accords were?

Jeremy Bash:

Sure. The Abraham Accords was a normalization and peace agreement between Israel and several Arab countries led by the United Arab Emirates, which is a key partner of the United States. Bahrain was involved as well, Morocco. But the UAE really led the way in normalizing its relationship with Israel. And I think this dynamic, which the Biden administration was working to build on by trying to fortify a normalization and security agreement between the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, which will I think be the ultimate prize because Saudi Arabia plays such an important role in the Gulf and in the Arab world and in the Islamic world more generally, I think it’s possible that the Trump administration could achieve this, build on the momentum that was built.

And in some ways, that momentum was came to a screeching halt on October 7th when Hamas launched its attack on Israel. And then October 8th when Hezbollah launched its attack on Israel. And then obviously this past year when Iran launched its attacks on Israel in April and in October of ballistic missiles. I think the Trump administration could pick up the ball of the Abraham Accords, try to build the relationship with Saudi Arabia into a bona fide security alliance. And I think that could really be transformative of the Middle East, and it’ll be, I think, the most important way that Iran could be dealt in important blow.

And Iran has been dealt many blows. It has three pillars to its national security policy. One is its surrogates and proxies, and Hezbollah has been nearly decimated by Israeli operations. The second is his ballistic missiles and the United States, Israel and our coalition partners have shown that we can defend against Iranian ballistic missile attacks. And the third leg of the stool has been their nuclear program, and I think there’s going to have to be a reckoning on their nuclear program. I don’t exactly know how the Trump administration is going to deal with this, but I believe that by building our coalition in the Middle East with allies and partners with Israel, with these Gulf Arab countries, that’s the ultimate way that we’re going to be able to ensure the security interests of the United States and our partners.

John Carlin:

Jeremy, thanks. Thanks very much for the conversation today. There’s a lot to watch as we see the transition occur, including whether your alliance-based policy will survive. Really appreciate your thoughts and insights today and the work you’ve done throughout the years to try to make America safer. Thank you.

Jeremy Bash:

Thank you, John.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me @PreetBharara with a #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at (669) 247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producers are Noa Azulai and Jake Kaplan. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, stay tuned.