Pompcast: Trump rallies Congress

0:28The Economist it's increasingly violent. Our correspondent meets the Attorney General, who's trying to turn its fortunes around. And it seems pretty intuitive that artificial intelligence would be good at beating human games. But because AIs can play through a matchup so many times so quickly, it turns out they're also great at helping game developers hone their creations.

1:01First up, though.

1:11Another week, another deluge of headlines from the White House. On Monday, Donald Trump announced a pause in military aid to Ukraine after his Oval Office spat with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Yesterday morning, tariffs as high as 25 % were imposed on goods entering America from Mexico and Canada The United States launched a trade war against Canada Their closest partner and ally, their closest friend Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau retaliated in kind This is a very dumb thing to do And imposed retaliatory tariffs Amid all this, last night Trump addressed Congress for the first time since his term began.

1:56Is it really only six weeks ago? To my fellow citizens, America is back.

2:07Donald Trump's speech was more like a campaign rally than the sorts of speeches that his predecessors have given in the same forum. John Priddo is The Economist's US editor and host of our Checks and Balance podcast. Normally, what happens is the president's policy shop and communications department and all the cabinet secretaries get together and they vie to get their own policy announcements in the State of the Union or the joint address to Congress. This wasn't really that. There weren't new policy announcements in it, it was much more like a campaign speech. Presumably in this campaign speech type address, he had quite a lot to say to his domestic audience, though.

2:54He did, and he began with a good deal of self-congratulation. We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started. He talked about how for the first time in modern history, more Americans believe that the country's headed in the right direction than the wrong direction and said there'd been a 27-point swing. It will not surprise you to know, Rosie, that this is not in fact correct. Those are numbers for Republican voters. If you look at Republicans, they now say that the country's headed in the right direction.

3:34They didn't say that before Donald Trump was elected. Democrats have moved in the opposite direction, it's still the case that overall, Americans are by a large majority dissatisfied with the way the country is headed. Poll after poll shows that. And Donald Trump also pulled out a list of all-time great American presidents where he was supposedly placed number one and George Washington number two. And he was pretty happy about that. And in true campaign style, he claimed credit for anything good that was happening in America and blamed his predecessor for anything that was still going wrong. Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control.

4:15The egg price is out of control. And of course, Trump has been making waves in foreign policy. What did he have to say on that? He has. He talked about tariffs, again, outlined an economic approach to tariffs, which is completely at odds with where the Republican Party was pre-Donald Trump and at odds of where the Democratic Party is. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again, and it's happening, and it will happen rather quickly. Tariffs, in his view, are a way to get other countries to pay America tribute. He talked about how America had been taken for a ride by the rest of the world, and he was putting a stop to that.

4:58So it's quite a bit on tariffs, and this, of course, comes in the context of him doing this dance at the beginning of his presidency, where he threatened tariffs. They didn't come in or were suspended. But just earlier this week, he did put fresh tariffs, very high tariffs on Canada and Mexico and increased the tariff rate on imports into America from China. And those, if they stay, are likely to have a pretty big effect on American consumers and on the car making industry in particular. But there wasn't much sense of that in the speech. certainly no trepidation on Donald Trump's part. He was very excited for the tariffs.

5:38And then I think the other noteworthy foreign policy part of the speech was when he talked about Vladimir Zelensky and Ukraine. And what did he say on that? We talked on the show yesterday about Trump saying that he would pause military aid to Ukraine. And of course, yesterday, Zelensky was saying he would negotiate and be happy to come to the table. Well, on Ukraine, Donald Trump spent some time criticizing his predecessor Joe Biden, saying that he gave too much military aid to Ukraine with no strings attached. The United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine's defense with no security, with no anything.

6:24He criticized his European, I was going to say allies, but it doesn't quite feel like That's the right word at the moment. In any case, he criticized the Europeans for not doing enough. He used some numbers there which weren't accurate. In fact, European countries have given Ukraine about$140 billion in military and financial aid, and America has given$120 billion, so Europeans slightly ahead there. But those weren't the figures Donald Trump used. On Monday, you had our deputy editor, Edward Carr, on the show talking about what Zelensky needed to do after the disastrous Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump and J.D.

7:02Vance. Zelensky has wisely followed Ed's advice. He sent a letter yesterday to the White House saying that he was enthusiastic about a peace deal, that he was ready to sign the minerals deal that Donald Trump has proposed. You'll recall that Donald Trump has this, to my mind, slightly eccentric theory of how to bring peace to Ukraine, which involves doing a deal over minerals that then puts American companies in Ukraine. And then Vladimir Putin would be too scared to attack Ukraine again because he would risk attacking Americans or damaging American property. And that would incur Donald Trump's wrath.

7:43So that's his theory. I think most people who follow this think that this is a pretty thin theory. But Donald Trump is the president. Vladimir Zelensky has to ingratiate himself with him and crucially has to get America to lift this pause in military aid to Ukraine, because without that, Ukraine could really start suffering. And what's the Democrat response been to this? They've been pretty quiet in the last few weeks. They have been quiet. They don't have much influence in Washington at the moment. They are out of power and they won't be back in power until 2026 at the minimum when there is a midterm election.

8:29And what's happening at the moment within the Democratic Party is they are trying to work out how to oppose Donald Trump, which parts of his agenda are unpopular and which parts aren't. That's not completely clear yet because it's worth underlining, Rosie, that Donald Trump's approval rating is just about in positive territory still. That wasn't the case in his first term. He's a bit more popular than he was last time around and that makes him a harder target for Democrats. But there's this argument going on within the party between the moderate wing, which thinks the answer is to ditch unpopular policies and move to the center, and the progressive wing, which broadly thinks that the problem the party's had is it hasn't been bold enough in opposing Donald Trump.

9:11And it needs to double down on, in particular, some left-wing economic proposals. Now, the party chose Alyssa Slotkin, who's a moderate Democratic senator from Michigan, to give the rebuttal. And it was interesting to see the things that she picked. She singled out Trump's tariffs for criticism. His tariffs on allies like Canada will raise prices on energy, lumber and cars and start a trade war that will hurt manufacturing and farmers. And Eliza Slotkin also made a big deal of Donald Trump undermining support for Vladimir Zelensky and compared that move unfavorably with what Ronald Reagan might have done.

9:55As a Cold War kid, I'm thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War. Now that is the sort of criticism that many, many people within the Republican Senate caucus would also make of Donald Trump in private. So John, what's your takeaway from all of this? What can we now expect from Trump's America? I think we can expect a continuation of what he's been doing so far and a continuation of the view of America and American power and America's place in the world that Donald Trump outlined in his inaugural address. Then we put him dressed up as William McKinley on the cover, imperialist president from the late 19th century who loved tariffs.

10:39Donald Trump will continue with the Department of Government Efficiency, Doge, and he's going to continue pushing pretty hard and talking a lot about the popular parts of his agenda. And those include anti-DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. They include being anti-affirmative action. They include a fairly ferocious approach to immigration enforcement. It's worth pointing out, Rosie, these things are popular and they are in large part the reason why he won a second term. And so as far as the democratic response goes, they need to reckon with those things really seriously. and of course after Donald Trump was very nearly assassinated in Butler, Pennsylvania last year he has a newfound sense of his own destiny.

11:31I believe that my life was saved that day in Butler for a very good reason. I was saved by God to make America great again. I believe that. Donald Trump is governing as he campaigned. He's doing what he said he would do and I think we should all expect that to continue over the next four years. And you'll be discussing what the Democrats should or are doing in this week's Checks and Balance, is that right? That's right, Rosie, and that episode will be out on Friday. We'll look forward to it. Great to talk to you, John. Thank you so much. Thanks.

12:18Diana Salazar The National Guard of the United States The National Guard of the United States The National Guard of the United States The National Guard of the United States The National Guard of the United States Good afternoon, Ana. I'm Diana Salazar, General General of Ecuador At the moment.

12:39So I met Diana Salazar at her office, which is protected by a squad of soldiers armed with machine guns and shielded by bulletproof vests. And she kind of glided into the meeting, totally unruffled, despite receiving constant security threats. Ana Lankes is our Brazil bureau chief. Just days before I met with her, for example, her security retinue had intercepted a motorcycle that was tracking her whereabouts. And that motorcycle was driven by someone linked to a drug lord that she is investigating.

13:18and that kind of news has become par for the course for this woman. She is probably Latin America's most hunted prosecutor, and I would say one of its bravest women.

13:35So tell us exactly who Diana Salazar is. Diana Salazar has been Ecuador's attorney general for the last six years. I was quite struck when I met her because she's very confident, though soft-spoken, and she's very unusual for several reasons in Ecuador. So she's Ecuador's youngest ever attorney general. She's the first career prosecutor on the job. And she's a black woman, which is a rarity in Ecuador's halls of power. Her term as attorney general has coincided with spectacular violence in Ecuador. It's really declined into hell. It's become mainland Latin America's most violent country. And her investigations into links between corrupt politicians, judges, police officers and drug traffickers will basically dictate whether Ecuador can reverse its horrific decline or not.

14:24But there are many people who want to undo her efforts, including those seeking power in the next presidential election in April.

14:36She doesn't waste any time on small talk. We basically got right down to business. And she told me what she's been up to.

14:47She said that the investigations that she's led in recent years have revealed how Ecuador's institutions have become infiltrated by organized crime. Anna, before we get to the investigations and corruption, just explain to me why violence in Ecuador has increased so much. It's because drug trafficking groups are fighting to control very lucrative routes to a big port in Ecuador that ships cocaine to Europe. And the state, which has become weakened in the past few years, is really struggling to contain organized crime. And that has allowed different drug trafficking groups to buy off people in the state, to buy off judges, to buy off police.

15:29Next month, Ecuadorians head to the polls to decide between the current president, Daniel Novoa, who's only been in power for about a year and a bit, and Luisa Gonzalez, a lawyer and close ally of former president Rafael Correa, who is now living in exile. And the results of those elections will basically determine whether Salazar's investigations continue or not. So, Anna, what exactly is Salazar investigating that the results of the elections could affect? So Salazar's investigations have focused on links between drug traffickers, politicians, judges and police officers. They've ensnared many actors, but they've particularly hit the party of Rafael Correa, the former president.

16:13I'll start from the beginning. In 2022, a drug financier called Leandro Norero was killed in a prison massacre. And when prosecutors took his phones, they basically found a lot more than they bargained for. What the phones showed in encrypted text messages was that Norero had paid off police to tamper with evidence. He'd paid off judges to release drug traffickers. He paid off lots of people. and the text messages strongly suggested that his confidants had paid a judge hundreds of thousands of dollars to release somebody called Jorge Glass, who was Rafael Correa's former vice president, and he was serving time in jail for corruption.

16:57In the messages, Norero says that he hoped a little favor would be repaid if Glass became president. Correa denies all of this, But Salazar and her team say that the phones gave Ecuadorian society the kind of first glimpse of what was happening, about the links between politicians, police officers, judges, and drug traffickers. The phone from Norero, which is like when we had the first screen of what was happening in society. And many more glimpses would follow. So how deep does this go? Have others been implicated? So the corruption is deep and it extends to lots of different parts of the government and lots of different parties.

17:46I want to be clear that it's not just Rafael Correa's party that is implicated. Since 2023, Salazar and her team have pressed charges against 76 people, of whom 44 have already been sentenced to jail. And two dozen of those admitted to their guilt and ratted out their co-conspirators. So they got reduced sentences. The trials are ongoing, but Correa has not been very helpful. He has warned of raids before Salazar's team carried them out. And it's probably because the investigations are reaching his close allies. So that sounds like a pretty blatant attempt to undermine the justice system. I interviewed Rafael Correa last year, and he basically called Salazar a puppet for different businessmen.

18:33And said that her investigations were politically motivated. He's currently living in Belgium, where he was granted political asylum in 2022. But he's living there because he's avoiding an eight-year prison sentence in Ecuador for corruption.

18:50He says he's being politically persecuted and says that Diana Salazar is corrupt and that she was put there to protect right-wing politicians and go after Corea's party. and he also noted that homicides were among the lowest in the region when he was in office between 2007 and 2017. He's got a point hasn't he? Ecuador's gone from being the most peaceful to the most dangerous country in Latin America since he left office. That's true but I think his justification is a little bit incomplete. After Correa left office his successors massively cut prison budgets and eliminated the justice ministry amid a big austerity push because Correale left a huge debt.

19:30But beyond that, there are more important factors. European demand for cocaine has massively increased. Production of cocaine in Colombia has doubled since 2014. And then the most important thing that affects Ecuador is that it used to just be a transit country where the FARC, a former Colombian guerrilla group would ship cocaine through Ecuador with the help of the Sinaloa cartel and get those drugs to Europe and to the U.S. What happened in 2016? This huge vacuum opened up. These lucrative drug groups were not controlled anymore by a monopoly. And so local gangs started fighting over them. So Korea didn't have to deal with this stuff.

20:12And some of the things he did while in office didn't help. If Salazar's investigations were completely baseless, it would seem unnecessary to me to expend so much energy on defaming her. But that's exactly what Korean allies have been doing. Ana, how will these investigations affect the election? I think it's the other way around. I think the elections will affect whether the investigations continue or not. In my interview with Salazar, she put it this way.

20:43I would say that we are not facing a narco-estado or it is a total discomposition. Yes, we have a problem, but we have started to act on it. The investigations are meant to prevent Ecuador from becoming a full-blown narco-state, which she says it is not yet. And one of the reasons is because these investigations are happening. And I worry that that could all be reversed. So at stake in these elections, they're not just, you know, one president or another. or fiscal policy or this, that or the other. It's really the future of Ecuador and whether it can stop its decline into becoming a full-blown narco state.

21:23Anna, thank you so much for talking to me. Thanks for having me, Rosie.

21:39I haven't played much chess at all since I was a kid and I was never very good at it. But because the producers of this show like to give me opportunities to embarrass myself, I'm going to get back into it by playing someone who's regarded perhaps the best player that's ever been, Magnus Carlsen, in the form of an online bot.

22:00Aha, we are already facing off. Also, there's some Magnus chat here. I'm the 16th undisputed world chess champion. I didn't realize there was going to be Magnus talking smack here. Don't like how this is going to go. He says you can always restart this game if you need. I don't need your charity, Magnus. Going to bring the bishop out and threaten his knight further. Maybe next time you'll get to the middle game with a better position, says Magnus. How do I get out of this? I think I'm a couple of moves from stuffed. I got my rook. I'm really... it's just hopeless. That took a little longer than it might have, but still does not feel like I've covered myself in glory.

22:44And for the chess superfans out there, you can see how that played out in excruciating detail in the show notes. Board games have set rules, objective win conditions. They are simple models of reality that you can obsessively perfect your approach to and ultimately declare you're the best in the world at. Alex Hearn writes about artificial intelligence for The Economist. But while AI researchers have been focused on being the best in the world at board games, fewer have turned their mind to being the best in the world at making board games. Which is where AI is now headed? A startup spun off from Queen Mary University of London called Tabletop R &D is offering its services to board game designers using its own AI system to playtest hundreds of thousands of hours of a new board game before it's even been released to let its designer know what pitfalls players will fall into if they really get their hands on it.

23:41Those pitfalls can be things like a game that in rare situations never ends because the end needs to be triggered but no player will win when they trigger it so they don't and it just plays in a loop forever. It could be a situation where the first player has a strong but unclear advantage meaning that it's always just a little less fun to play in positions two, three, or four. Or it could just be an oversight that means that for hours on end, players don't actually have many options. Each time it comes around to your turn, there's only one legal move, you make the legal move, you pass to the next person, and sure, you kill 90 minutes, but you don't really have any fun doing it.

24:17Discovering those problems with human playtesters is possible. It just takes a long time, it's quite expensive, and or you need lots of friends to do it. Putting an AI system won't currently replace humans in that, but it can let you find these objective problems with your game before you then turn to the humans, before you try and find ineffable fun, you can find very effable failures. So tell me why that application of AI is different from the one where you just tried it to get it to beat the world's best chess players, Go players. For one thing, the goal is different. Winning a game perhaps entails understanding it, but it doesn't need you to understand why it's fun.

24:54AlphaGo doesn't really care whether it's an exciting opponent to play against or just a mechanical steamroller. It cares whether it wins. This approach isn't trying to develop a system that can beat every other player. And in fact, that would be unhelpful. You don't always want a game to be laser targeted at the best players only. You want an eight-year-old and an 80-year-old to have fun playing each other, right? But more than just understanding whether or not you're making a fun board game, There's also the simple fact that it's really very expensive to make a world-beating system like Deep Blue in the 90s or AlphaGo 10 years ago.

25:27What you want with this is to be able to offer your service to board game designers who do not have multi-million dollar research budgets. For that, you need to focus on simplicity. You need to have, as Tabletop R &D does, a system that can be repurposed to play any board game under the sun, or at least any board game that can be simulated by a digital computer and doesn't have wonderfully subjective rules like the player who last sung a song goes first. Well, I mean, that's the point is how do you turn? I'm imagining a board game with some pieces and some cards and some 19 sided dice or whatever it is.

25:58How do you turn that into an AI, a computable thing? Firstly, if you've made a 19 sided dice, the field medal is for you. You mostly just digitize it. Most board games, particularly those at the enthusiast end, are actually quite mechanistic. The pieces, the dice, the cards feel nice. They make it fun to play. They give it a tactility, but they are representations of the rule space in the physical world. And if you digitize that rule space, you end up with something that for human players doesn't feel as nice to play, but is, at least when it comes to the rules, the victory conditions, effectively the same thing.

26:30But coming at it from the deep blue AlphaGo kind of point of view, why does a potentially world-beating AI road-testing a new game really represent the way I would play a new game? It doesn't. The good news is you don't need to have a potentially world-beating AI. Almost all AI systems can be made smarter or dumber just by changing the amount of thinking time you give them. And this system is no different. The particular approach that the researchers use means that you take your AI model that's playing the game and you just flick a switch and change the thinking time. If you let the system think for eight seconds a turn, it's going to be up there with some of the best human players.

27:04Although, if you put it on chess and give it eight seconds to think, it's still not going to do very well at all. But you can dial that switch right down. you can give it half a second, you can give it a tenth of a second. If there are a mix of skill around the table, generally you have two goals for that, right? You want the best player to win, because if the best player doesn't win handily most of the time, then you've got a game of chance, which is fun, but not the sort of thing most designers want. But you also generally don't want them to just steamroll. There's a place for games that are pure skill, that have no opportunity for a weaker player to ever get a look in, but perhaps you want some element of chance, you want the ability for upsets, because that's the spice of board gaming.

27:42Alex, thanks very much for your time. Thanks for having me.

27:58That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch at podcasts at economist.com. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thank you.