Episode Details
Back to EpisodesA Successful Failed Summit: Episode 39
Description
This week on Alternate Shots, John Ellis and Richard Haass look ahead to the Trump-Xi summit and ask whether, in this instance, an uneventful meeting would be preferable to a consequential one. Haass worries not about failure, but about the wrong kind of success: a commercial deal purchased at the expense of Taiwan, American allies, or U.S. leverage on Russia and Iran. From there, they turn to AI, where the United States and China dominate the field but lack the trust, process, and perhaps urgency required to build meaningful guardrails. They also assess the Houthis’ expanding role in the Red Sea, the widening maritime crisis, Saudi Arabia’s diminishing options, and America’s munitions shortfall, which points to a deeper conceptual failure in U.S. defense planning. Finally: press access, a possible blue wave, the Giants, and the Jets.
Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass