Bully Pulpit (January 30, 2025)

Welcome to Home & Away. I am sending this edition one day early, both because I will be traveling tomorrow and because there is already too much to cover in what has been a packed week. To name just some of the items, there was President Trump’s (later rescinded) decision to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans, his legally questionable firing of more than a dozen inspectors general and a number of career prosecutors, the withdrawal of security details from several prominent officials (including the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) who served in the previous Trump administration, a proposed buyout of millions of federal employees with seemingly no congressionally approved funding for such payouts, a new CIA assessment—albeit a low-confidence one—that COVID-19 likely emerged from a lab in China rather than a wet market, the confirmations of several new cabinet members and hearings for several would-be members, the sentencing of former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez to eleven years following his conviction on charges of corruption and bribery, the tragic collision of a commercial airliner and an army helicopter over Washington, continued hostage-for-prisoner exchanges in the Middle East, and the welcome news of increasingly contained fires in California thanks in part to some much-needed rain there. That all said, and I could say more given Donald Trump’s seemingly non-stop desire to assert his primacy, I want to start with the emergence of DeepSeek, what some have dubbed AI’s Sputnik Moment.

Deep

DeepSeek, as I expect many readers now know, is a Chinese AI startup that has produced a number of entrants in the open-source, large language model AI race. It is thus a competitor to ChatGPT and other U.S.-based models. DeepSeek appears to have demonstrated that less (be it measured in the number of advanced chips, development costs and time, or associated energy and water usage) may be more.

One additional note. The quality of DeepSeek’s models, the reasoning and logic train as it works its way through a question, is breathtaking. Don’t take my word for it: check out this post from Stony Brook economics Professor Stephanie Kelton, in which she details how DeepSeek responded to her request that it create a model to show the projected impact on Canada’s GDP should the United States impose a 25% tariff on all Canadian exports to this country.

Having said all of that, a few disclaimers may be in order. First, as many have pointed out on social media, DeepSeek cannot answer questions that China’s Communist Party deems sensitive: Ask it about the Tiananmen Square massacre, or to criticize Xi Jinping, or even something as simple as naming the president of Taiwan, and it won’t provide a response. Many have also pointed out the holes in its public origin story; the company likely spent far more than it claims to develop this model. It may be using chips and other technologies that it acquired illegally, and OpenAI is investigating whether DeepSeek violated its intellectual property. Finally, I would advise against using it, as its terms explicitly state that it collects all of the queries that you input and stores this data in China.

I expect we will soon see other entrants that offer AI products that are both cheaper and better than the models that have thus far dominated the space. Some consequences? First, DeepSeek demonstrates that the AI race remains fluid and the United States does not have an insurmountable advantage. No amount of export controls will succeed here. Nor is the answer to build large, top-down, government-sponsored efforts. Think Starbucks, not Manhattan Project. Also doomed to fail are attempts to rein in AI. The arms control metaphor is totally misleading in this case as AI is developing in too many places too quickly and cheaply. Elaborate regulatory regimes such as those favored by the EU are also likely to fail given the pace of change. What is certain is that AI will not just proliferate but infiltrate virtually every domain of life.

Transfer

The still new U.S. president stirred up something of a hornet’s nest when he suggested over the weekend, and then doubled down on Monday, that it would be best to “clean out” Gaza, sending its some 1.5 million Palestinian residents to live in either Jordan or Egypt. When questioned, he suggested that the resettlement could be temporary or permanent while rebuilding of some sort in Gaza went ahead. Not surprisingly, the idea was roundly rejected by Palestinians, as this would ignore rather than satisfy their aspirations for a country of their own, as well as by Jordan and Egypt, who view such a prospect with alarm as an influx of Palestinian refugees could potentially destabilize their societies. And to state the obvious, it is not what the Saudis had in mind when they expressed a need for Israel to address the Palestinian issue if the Kingdom was to go ahead and normalize relations with the Jewish state.

Still, the comments were applauded by the Israeli right, which has long advocated population transfers and the annexation of parts of Gaza and the entire West Bank, or what they call Judea and Samaria. Indeed, there is a real risk that such talk by the U.S. president will further fuel their movement, which is already enjoying a boost in the wake of the Trump administration’s January 20 decision to remove sanctions against Israeli settlers involved in violence against Palestinians and/or their property. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, the Israeli prime minister has to say about this when he arrives in Washington in a few days.

I find myself wondering where this idea originated. It is as far from mainstream as you can get. While it is possible that Trump the real estate developer came up with it on his own, it could also be that someone in his orbit suggested it to him. After all, his son-in-law remarked on Gaza’s potential for waterfront property development as early as last spring. Or maybe someone from the Israeli right surfaced it. What is certain is that the notion was not vetted by any rigorous policy process. We are well beyond the transition, but there remains a transition-like quality to the new administration, which is operating at a pace so frantic that not just Democrats are having trouble keeping up. The new administration seems to be having difficulty keeping up with itself.

District of Columbia vs Colombia

The weekend saw a war of words with Colombia. As best I can reconstruct, the United States has been deporting undocumented Colombian nationals back to their country of origin for some time, including during the Joe Biden administration. What was different this week was that it was done “without respect” in the eyes of the Colombian president, who cited the use of military planes and personnel, and that, in some cases, those being deported were shackled or kept on airplanes without functioning air conditioning, as was the case for a group of Brazilian deportees. In response, Colombia’s president refused to allow several of the planes to land. President Trump then threatened steep tariffs, which he promised to double by the end of the week, against Colombian exports coming to the United States. Colombia initially threatened to respond in kind but then backed off after realizing it was in no position to sustain a trade war with the United States given its dependence on certain imports from the U.S. (like corn) and the fact that more than a quarter of its exports, such as coffee and flowers, come here.

I know that many will portray this as a victory for the administration’s get-tough immigration policy and for the utility of tariffs. It is also possible (although I do not know for certain) that Colombia was singled out to demonstrate the willingness and ability of the 47^th president to impose tariffs to affect the behavior of others. But there are costs to the United States all the same. Now, countries will come to think twice before allowing themselves to become so dependent on the goodwill of the United States that it makes them vulnerable. In the security sphere, this will lead others to find new partners, become more self-sufficient, or cozy up to threatening neighbors. U.S. influence would decline under any of these scenarios. China, which is already making inroads in Latin America, may well come to enjoy new economic and strategic opportunities as governments there seek to diversify their trade and investment portfolios. And if tariffs were put into place and weakened a country such as Colombia or Mexico, they could make these countries more vulnerable to drug cartels and terrorist groups, hardly an outcome that would be in the U.S. interest, especially for an administration concerned with curbing illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl into this country.

Frozen Aid

Then there is the pause introduced on foreign aid, directed by one of the administration’s initial executive orders. The EO takes a dark view of existing foreign aid: “The United States foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values. They serve to destabilize world peace by promoting ideas in foreign countries that are directly inverse to harmonious and stable relations internal to and among countries.” Motivating this negative perception of aid may be a desire to save money, or punish those who don’t vote with us in the UN, or stop support for specific programs promoting policies the new administration objects to. Or all of the above. Or none of the above.

The order goes on to impose a 90-day pause in all aid programs, which currently total some $70 billion a year. There are a few exceptions to the current pause—including military aid to Israel, Egypt, and Ukraine, and now certain carveouts for Kurdish soldiers guarding ISIS detention centers in Syria—but almost all of the $40 billion or so in development aid and some of the military aid appears to be affected.

It is not at all clear why any of this is necessary. The administration could carry out a review of all its aid programs without pausing them and then revise or cancel those it finds fault with. The across-the-board pause will cause widespread hardship and potentially losses of life as it affects many health-related programs. PEPFAR, the HIV/AIDS treatment program that has saved an estimated 25 million lives over the past two decades, was issued a waiver that will allow it to continue to provide lifesaving medicines and medical services, but its future remains in doubt. The aid pause will again present opportunities for China to step in and fill the vacuum we’ve left behind. Plus, the pause could come back to bite Americans more directly if diseases break out that find their way back to this country, something recent history demonstrates can all too easily happen. I know there is a palpable desire to signal as often as possible there is a new sheriff in town, but I hope sooner rather than later someone reminds the 47^th president that he has four years to build a legacy, and that mistakes made in the first four weeks can and will work against that.

As always, some links to click on. And feel free to share Home & Away.

---

Richard Haass in the news

Monday, January 27: Andrea Mitchell Reports (President Trump Works to Remake U.S. Foreign Policy)

Tuesday, January 28: Gruppo Esponenti Italiani (Richard Haass Details “Decentralized” Future of AI)

Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens