What's Next for the Russia-Ukraine War — with Dr. Fiona Hill

24:02You listed China in the same group as Iran and North Korea in terms of their support of Russia. And my impression, it might be the wrong impression, is that China wants to stay on good terms mostly with everybody. And they're being polite, maybe even supportive of Russia, but don't want to alienate the rest of the world. And haven't gone. I mean, China, my sense is if China weighed in kind of feet first behind Russia in this conflict, it would be really, really meaningful. Describe or give us some nuance to what you meant by the Chinese support of Russia in this conflict. Yeah, I did say that it wasn't the same as North Korea and Iran in terms of supplying weapons.

24:45And frankly, there was other countries like India that have been sending, you know, kind of weapons to Russia because they have also very tight relationships with Russia on the arms sales side. India traditionally got all of its weapons from the Soviet Union and also from Russia. But India hasn't rhetorically come out in support of Russia in the way that China has. President Xi and President Putin have very close personal relationships. You can't basically underscore enough about how close that personal relationship is. They have the same rough birth date, the same outlook on the world. They've met each other more times than any other set of leaders.

25:25And if you recall, just before Russia's launch of its invasion of Ukraine, there was the meeting on the sidelines of the Beijing Olympics, between the Winter Olympics, that is, between Putin and Xi, in which they declared basically a strategic bilateral relationship, a partnership without limits. Now, the Chinese have been quick to try to point out that they didn't realize that Putin was essentially going to move into Ukraine quite so soon afterwards. I think there's a lot of regret that, you know, a bit of buyer's remorse there that they made this statement. And then that was so soon on the heels of this invasion.

26:03Of course, if it had turned out differently, it was indeed a special military operation, not this largest land war in Europe since World War II. You know, China might have felt a little bit more sanguine about this. But nonetheless, all the way through, the Chinese have made it very clear to Ukrainians and others that they do not want to see Russia lose. Now, ironically, China was also the largest investor in Ukraine as a single country before the war. They have no beef with Ukraine. They've made that very clear to the Ukrainians. They've also said this to the Europeans. They see this as a proxy war against the United States.

26:34And so they don't want to see Russia lose. Now, the interesting factor is that the United States is pulling out of this. Trump has also recognized this. He said that, you know, he never wanted to be part of this. They've recently started to say this. Now, the United States was never actually embarking on a proxy war against Russia. Like Europeans, they were trying to basically help Ukraine defend itself, which Ukraine has every right to under the terms of the UN Charter. And of course, it's very similar to Kuwait, you know, back in the day and to other countries that have been invaded by a much larger neighbor.

27:07But for China, basically the failure of Putin to prevail in this war in Ukraine would be very symbolic then of a mistake that would have been made by Xi in backing Putin as his horse in this race. And so the Chinese have been saying to the Europeans, and I was at the Munich Security Conference in February, through the infamous J.D. Vance speech there, but where the Europeans were hearing from the Chinese, a lot of pleasure, frankly, about the rift between Europe and the United States. And China is saying to Europe, look, there was nothing personal in our support of Russia here. I'm sure you understand our position.

27:46And we're going to be there for you when this war ends. We're going to help in terms of construction and investment. you know you there's been a great deal of desire on the chinese part to pull away european countries from the united states but i think they've got a fundamental misreading of the situation in fact they're aiding and abetting this major war in europe and in world war ii china was on the other side of the ledger right i mean china was part of the allied powers of course that was in its war with japan after all the japanese invasions of china but this time for the first time in history China is on the wrong side from the European perspective of a major land war in Europe.

28:23And again, even if it isn't to the same extent as North Korea and Iran, China has been putting all of its focus on making sure that Putin and Russia are propped up and that they don't fail in this endeavor. And really, what is this endeavor? It's to slice and dice Ukraine and to dominate Europe. So loosely, kind of a crude overview, which is that the world is bifurcating and it's sort of the U.S. and Europe and some of democracies globally, whether it's Japan or Australia. And then there's Russia, Iran, North Korea, and to a certain extent, China, and there's some nuance there. But just as the swing voter is the most important voter in the U.S., that small group of people that swing elections one way or the other, it feels as if the new swing voters in terms of size of economy and playing both sides a little bit are India and the kingdom.

29:20And it sounds like you're saying India, if you had to tilt them towards one side, it's towards Russia. One, I just want to confirm that that thesis is correct. And two, I'm curious what the kingdom's role in all of this is. I think that's a great observation, Scott. And I'd just like to be a little clearer about India. I don't think they're really tilted towards Russia in so much as that was the original relationship. India and the Soviet Union, you know, had this very close relationship for decades. And India was, of course, always unaligned. And India just doesn't want to choose sides. And of course, you know, where there's an option for, you know, expanding some of the relationships, some of the arms sales, I mean, the US didn't kind of come through, you know, particularly quickly on offering an alternative.

30:02And remember, of course, that India always feels itself in a standoff, also with Pakistan, but very importantly, with China, we've had a real hot conflict on the border between China and India in the Himalayas that's a hot dispute all the time where you know soldiers have died on the Indian side and India's always been wanting to try to see if it could indeed pull Russia away from China I think India's kind of given up on that idea but it never quite basically gives up the ghost but understands it has to keep this relationship with Russia India also wants to have a relationship with the United States.

30:38It also, just to underscore, has deep interests in Europe, especially in the other kingdom, the United Kingdom, where you've got a kind of a reversal of the old colonial relationship. India is a major investor in India. There are, of course, very prominent Anglo-Indian populations, most notably Rishi Sunak, former UK Prime Minister. India has been heavily invested in steel and manufacturing. India is also heavily invested in global education, has been building universities and all kinds of relationships with UK and other educational sectors. So India is complex. India doesn't want to have to choose.

31:17It wants to basically chart its own course, which fits back to the old role in the unaligned movement. But as you know, you're saying they're very much a swing voter and a lot of complexity there. In terms of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I think it's absolutely fascinating that the role that they're likely to play. I've had a number of conversations with them in other settings as well. It's not just about Russia. It's not just about what's happening with Iran in the region. It's not just about the United States either. You've got to remember that also the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom have very close relationships, lots of investment by the Saudis in the UK.

31:55And as the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund diversifies its activity, you know, in many respects, they're going to be the financiers of lots of global projects. I kept thinking as I was kind of listening to some of the things that the Saudis were saying, it's almost like the Rothschilds of another century in terms of being the bankers, you know, to the world, not just to Europe and the crown heads of Europe with the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund. They're heavily thinking about what does Saudi Arabia become and what do they do beyond oil and gas. So there's a lot to look into there. But beyond that, there's Brazil, there's South Africa.

32:31I mean, Turkey is a kind of swing voter in the European and, you know, kind of broader Middle Eastern perspective. We've seen Israel, you know, driving its own future and not being aligned with the United States on every front by any stretch of the imagination. So look, I think we've got a world here where there's a lot of other powers, regional powers, and some with global impact, who do not want to have to make a choice here. They don't want to be caught between the Russia or the United States, and anyway, the United States seems to be coming over to the Russian perspective. And they certainly don't want to be a part of a world in which the United States, China, and perhaps Russia are carving things up for themselves.

33:09And within that, I mean, Europe gets back to where you started with. Europe itself, in its various different connotations of EU, European members of NATO, if they start to, set up their own sub-NATO regional alliances, could all play swing roles in all of these issues. So this is not a world dominated just by great powers in the old 18th, 19th, or 20th century. The 21st century is a much more complex and messy place. So you've worked on Russia policy across three different administrations, Bush, Obama, and Trump. So I want to ask a more basic question, and that is, it is difficult for a lot of us to understand the endgame here and the strategy behind what Trump's approach to Ukraine.

33:59It feels as if he started the negotiation with Russia by folding. Like, OK, you can have everything. Now let's start the negotiation. And from someone such as myself, who I think has a bias against Trump, it feels to me like Putin has agreed to buy billions of dollars of Trump coin and that in exchange, they've decided they're going to have two spheres of influence between two autocrats and carve up the world for their own financial benefit. steal man a more logical explanation of the current complexion of Trump as it relates to Ukraine? In sum, what are they thinking? What is the end game? Well, look, this isn't about America, Scott, let's be frank.

34:42And, you know, if I really kind of think about it, I mean, you cover this a lot on your podcast. It's the kind of thing that I also look at, this whole de-industrialization of the United States. I wrote a book a few years ago about this in the United States, Russia, and, you know, UK context. There's a whole host of issues that have been decades in the making that need to be addressed. And this isn't one way of doing them, you know, basically a convergence between Russia and the United States. It's a convergence of autocratic thinking, to be honest. I mean, we're talking about the very top of our economic pyramid here.

35:15And it's really driven in a large part by Trump and his own worldview, and I'll get to that in a second, but also by people like Elon Musk. I mean, Musk has a vested interest, I mentioned this earlier, in basically engaging directly with Russia. I think he's been a big driver of this as well. In parts, it's for Starlink and for the relay stations, the terrestrial relay stations. He needs to have global coverage. Russia is the largest territory in the world, you know, along with China and then, you know, Iran, as well as the United States, Canada, all these giant countries. You know, he needs to have those within his frame for his business to succeed and look at SpaceX it developed using you know the first rocketry and all of the systems developed first in the Soviet Union Russia the first inventor of the rocket ship was a Russian scientist an autodidact very similar to Musk frankly you know back at the period before the Russian revolution so the Soviet Union and Russia have been the pioneers in space and as I said there's now discussions going on about how to work for Musk with the Russian Space Agency, the Russian Atomic Agency, you know, etc, etc.

36:24So there's that. And then there's also this great desire that Trump has had since the 1980s of doing business with the Soviet Union and with Russia on a whole host of different fronts from his family perspective. And that's definitely out there. And you mentioned cryptocurrency and all the other kinds of issues that are out there on the table. So that's a major part of this. Of course it is. And it's autocrat to autocrat, oligarch to oligarch, you know, very similar sort of setup here. It's got nothing to do with Americans, particularly given back, as we said before, about the paucity of the trade relationship between Russia and the United States in the past.

36:56But it could be very significant in this few set of areas. But the other thing is, and Trump is genuine about this, He is extraordinarily concerned about the risk of World War III, nuclear Armageddon, and the real risks that are still prevalent in the tense relationship between the United States and Russia as it comes to nuclear weapons. next year is the end, the formal end of New START, the Brahms regulation treaty that was first put into play in 2010. The Biden administration extended it, but it expires now in 2026. This is the year that you would have to negotiate something. And Trump always has a fixation on nuclear weapons.

37:42I think he's a nuclear zero guy. I've talked about this in other settings. He would like to see basically a process in which he works with Putin to lead towards a major arms reduction. So the Super Trump Arms Regulation Treaty for a New Start. He wanted to do that in Trump 1.0, but it all got lost in the whole mix of the Mueller reports and investigations and all of the drama about Russian interference in the 2016 and 2017 election and first part of Trump's presidency. He could never get to that stage. The Helsinki infamous meeting between Trump and Putin was supposed to start those strategic nuclear discussions.

38:21That was basically the whole frame for those meetings in Helsinki, just as Gorbachev and Reagan and Reagan and H.W. Bush had met in places like Helsinki and Reykjavik and Geneva in the past. Trump has said multiple times that he wants to get back to this, and he wants to get Ukraine out of the way. He basically believes, when he said to Zelensky in the Oval Office, when you're gambling with World War III, that the real risk from his perspective, if it's Ukraine dragging everybody into a conflict when he actually wants to get this gone off the page, he doesn't like the slaughter of people either.

38:55He's genuine about that. He really just doesn't understand that for Putin, this is a price he's willing to bear. And for Ukraine, obviously, it's a fight for their survival. So of course, you know, they've been engaged in this horrible fight. But for Trump, this is just incomprehensible. He wants it gone and he wants to sit down with Putin on nuclear weapons. The problem with this thinking, of course, is that Ukraine was once a nuclear power. It was part of the Soviet Union and it inherited, along with Belarus and Kazakhstan, a strategic nuclear arsenal. Admittedly, it didn't inherit the command and control aspects of this, but it did have the weapons.

39:27It had leverage. And in 1990s, we pushed the United States and the UK as another nuclear power, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, to return those weapons or send those weapons. It wasn't really turning them because they were on their soil to Russia for dismantling. So after that, we gave promises and assurances to Ukraine and Belarus and Kazakhstan that nothing bad would happen to them. The UK signed that along with the United States and Russia. And only the UK has taken that seriously, those assurances and guarantees. And what this means is that Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons. And what happened?

40:01It got trashed. Similar thing happened to Mama Gaddafi in Libya. He was persuaded to give up nuclear weapons. And what happened? He got shot in a pipe, basically, you know, kidnapped and taken in by his rebels and his whole system collapsed. So this is a signal to the rest of the world, to the Indias, the Pakistans, the South Africans, the Israels, all of the countries like Iran and North Korea that have been thinking about or pursuing nuclear weapons, the Japans, the South Koreans, Taiwan, and other European players that if you don't have a nuclear weapon and you don't have a guarantee by a nuclear power, you're in big trouble.

40:38That's the lesson of this. And what's more likely to happen than Trump being able to sit down with Putin and then perhaps later with Xi and he's already made approaches to obviously North Korea in his previous administration and now again to Iran for nuclear talks is that you're going to end up instead of disarmament, but with more proliferation because the message is that the United States doesn't live up to its guarantees and its promises. And why should the United States then be trusted as the nuclear guarantor for all of these other countries that fall under it by treaty alliances, or the likelihood that they could turn to the United States when they're under duress?

41:17So this is a huge problem. It's one of the key issues that is underappreciated about Trump. He's serious about this. And I think to his credit, He's serious about wanting to stop, as he puts it, the sense of slaughter of young men at the front. But he's not really fully appreciating the dynamic. Putin doesn't care about all this death and destruction. And also, why now would Putin give up the nuclear arsenal? Because for Russia, that's the ultimate guarantor and guarantee of its prowess on the battlefield, its ability to force Ukraine to capitulate, and also its ability to deter Europe, the United States, and all these other countries.

41:55And Putin has lowered the threshold for at least rhetorically talking about using nuclear weapons because he threatened basically to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukrainians when he was losing on the battlefield in 2022. So this is a really intensely difficult situation. And although I think Trump is very sincere, I don't think he's fully grasping the implications of some of the things that he's done and said. How do you think this plays out? Many of us are just befuddled trying to figure out the incentive structure here, trying to figure out geopolitically if Europe steps up, the resolve of Russia, whether the U.S.

42:31is in, out, in, out regarding funding, intelligence, sanctions. And if you were trying to do scenario planning here, maybe it's unfair to limit you to one outcome. What do you think are the most likely scenarios for how this plays out through the rest of 25 and into 26? Well, it is difficult because we're not talking really about the United States. Let's be frank. We're talking about one guy and a group of people around him. I mean, that is, you know, kind of unprecedented. We're talking about Trump. Because I think for Putin, and sometimes I mix the two up myself, you know, because there's a very similar outlook and often sometimes game plan.

43:12And also in terms of the unchecked nature of their power. But there's a couple of very specific differences between the two, which are very important in thinking about how this plays out. First of all, Putin's been in power for 25 years. And the people around him, the people who've been around him for decades, they know their stuff they have a proper plan basically putin wants to dominate again the the regions uh that were formerly part of the russian empire formerly part of the soviet union one way or another doesn't mean he's going to send in tanks you know here there and everywhere but he wants the veto on what they do what they say where they go uh and he certainly doesn't want them to have any other options and he's absolutely hell-bent you know on basically preventing the Europeans from getting their act together as well.

43:57There's all these acts of sabotage, and I said, and psychological operations and interference going on there all the time as well. Now, Trump also doesn't want Europe to get their act together, but for all kinds of different reasons. I mean, actually, Trump and Putin both don't want to see NATO continue. Trump thinks it's because Europe rips him off or rips the US off. And he's not wrong that Europe should have been doing a heck of a lot more for a lot longer time about its own security. And they should have got this message decades ago, not even just when Obama made the points in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea, but there's been every conceivable US administration going back to the 1960s and to Kennedy.

44:36There's been actually saying to Europe, come on, come on, you know, get going. This is not just all reliance on the US time. And that's beyond obviously the strategic nuclear umbrella, but in terms of building up and taking up more responsibility for their security. Now, of course, Europe thought after 1989, this is great, peace dividend, we can just kind of move on and do other things. But, you know, that message has still been coming through loud and clear. So actually, Trump now is basically saying the Europeans are right, you're on your own. That's catnip for Putin. That's fantastic. You know, the fact that Trump's basically saying we're not going to give Article 5 guarantees to Europe unless it's Article 5%, they have to be paying 5 % of their GDP, you know, and otherwise, you know, we might not even contemplate supporting them under extreme circumstance.

45:22That's another thing that Putin's been looking for. So, I mean, basically what I'm trying to say here is what is more likely to be is that the United States is going to be supporting the Russian position because there's so many things that, you know, Trump actually also sees eye to eye with Putin on. But we're going to end up in an extraordinarily messy situation. That's really what I foresee. I foresee a part of my crystal ball. It's very cloudy. There's all kinds of things going on all over the place. And in part, that comes down to the other big difference between Trump and Putin, as Trump is a totally one-man show.

45:56He's destroying the state. He's not acting with Congress and with the Senate, unless they're like rubber stamps, which actually for Putin also, the Russian doom of the Russian parliament is also a rubber stamp. But Putin operates within the state. He's a creature of the deep state. He's not dismantling the Russian state. That was already dismantled, you know, under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin from the Soviet and Russian times. You know, the Russians have moved on beyond that. He works through his state negotiators, Lavrov, the foreign minister, you know, for example, his advisors, Ushakov, as well as through oligarchs and business people.

46:32They all work for him. And they're all one very tight team. For Trump, he doesn't really pay any attention to any of the people around him. He uses them as emissaries and envoys, but he doesn't do his homework. They can't actually advise him on anything. They just kind of come back. God knows what kind of conversations they have. Do they have notes? Do they fully understand what they've heard? And that makes Trump very unpredictable. So I think if Putin's looking at his own crystal ball, he also can't say where this is going to go. He's going to have to be constantly on the ball, not just the crystal ball, but on the other ball, trying to kind of figure out how we can push Trump in his direction.

47:06And so things will change very dramatically if others push back, if the Europeans push back, for example, or if any part of the US firmament pushes back as well, if Congress suddenly realise that they're a co-equal branch of governments and have their own powers, or if the Senate do. So there's all kinds of different constraints there. And in Trump 1.0, Putin was very frustrated because he thought that Trump would already do a lot of the things he's already doing now, but there were all kinds of constraints. So unfortunately, what I foresee here is a mess. I could actually see that there could be a truce, there could be a ceasefire, but then it's when all of these other externalities, all of these other independent variables come into play.

47:50So I fear that we're going to be in this very messy situation for some time, but gets back to what you said again. There could be a more positive outcome if the Europeans move very quickly to get their act together. And there are signs of that, but they've got to have the political will. And they've also got to realise that they can't depend on the United States and that they also have to kind of come up with some kind of solution there. So, I mean, maybe we should revert back onto this, you know, in a kind of a few weeks also to see where we are, because the situation is incredibly fluid. We'll be right back.

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50:48We're back with more from Dr. Fiona Hill. So I want to transition. transition. You're the chancellor of Durham University, one of the UK's top institutions. And I would just love to get, but you're also very familiar with the US. And the US does a small number of things really, really well. We're great with technology and software. We're great at media. We make the best weapons in the world. And I would argue that on a balanced scorecard, we dominate higher education, which isn't to say there aren't other pockets of outstanding higher ed, including in the UK. But as the leader of a UK higher ed institution, how would you compare and contrast higher education in the UK versus the US?

51:29And what can we learn from each other? Well, there's a lot of interesting lessons there. And I know, Scott, that you pay a lot of attention to this. So I actually also am on the board of overseers of Harvard. I was elected to that just a couple of years ago. And of course, I came to the United States, as many people did, to study. I came in 1989 and I came because there was much more opportunity in the US system. I had a full scholarship from Harvard. You know, my father was a coal miner. There was, you know, no real opportunities for education for his generation. And, you know, my generation was lucky that, you know, I had a reasonably good level of elementary schooling.

52:05My secondary school wasn't great, but there was this opportunity for scholarships. I went to university in the UK St. Andrews, basically funded by my local education authority. But the real step up, as you're basically hinting at here, was when I came to Harvard, I was blown away by the resources. And of course, I studied history and Russian and all the things that I'm using today. And there was that aspect also, the founding of the Russian Research Centre, other regional studies centres, the massive investment in language study history. I studied with Richard Pipes, one of the greatest figures in Russian history, for example, is one of his last graduate students.

52:44All of that was greatly admired around the world, as well as all of the scientific research, biosciences that has been started off by the US. Of course, that was one of the secrets of the United States success after World War II, was this massive investment in education and in research. And the difference with the UK, which is the closest proximate to the United States is it's all the public sector. So the role that I have at Durham as the chancellor is more as an ambassador. I have a non-fiduciary role at the institution. The 140 plus UK universities are almost all basically publicly funded by the government, which of course has all kinds of constraints on this because it's very difficult for them to build up the kind of private endowment and investments that you see in the US.

53:31Only a few universities have managed to do that. oxford and cambridge most notably to some degreest andrews where i was a undergraduate and also durham but you know these are really small in comparison and they are very dependent uh also on student fees which are capped and you know also you know kind of on international students and they don't have the research capacity that the um u.s does and there's one thing that i think most people in the united states are completely unaware of is that the united kingdom through its UK research and innovation funds and Germany and many other countries invest heavily in US higher education.

54:10They're also for the big universities like Harvard are on bond markets and on the international markets as investment opportunities and all of this is going to take an enormous hit. You know some of this freezing of grants and you know funding that we've already seen through NIH etc there's also matching funding from germany from the uk and you know from other countries huge investments in the u.s higher education also students you know all of this movement now to expel students on visas and green card holders you know irrespective of you know the circumstances around this is going to have a huge chilling effect the cutting of nih grants the cutting of usaid you know the federal funding looking what's just happened to johns hopkins you know for example 800 million of money that's gone from uscd that was on global public health i mean again these are all areas that other countries were heavily invested in so i actually think that you know what's happening right now is the killing of the golden goose because another thing that i know from the us and the uk perspective is that universities are anchor institutions in their regions and it's not just private um ivy league universities that are key in the united states is obviously the public and land-grant universities, which were set up in the 1860s to the 1890s.

55:30Other intermediate universities, community colleges, they all have a huge impact in terms of the revenue that they generate and in terms of the jobs and employment. In the UK context, for example, in the northeast of England, which is one of the poorest regions in Europe, let alone in the UK, 2.2 billion annually is generated just by the cluster of universities there, including Durham, which is the largest of the research universities. You know, in terms of the United Kingdom writ large, you know, there's something almost at 800 ,000 jobs and literally tens of billions in the hundreds of billions of revenue every year.

56:07And of course, you scale that up even larger. You think about Massachusetts, Boston, all of the economies of these regions, Research Triangle in North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, and Carnegie Mellon driving change in those cities. It's not just in the coast. It's in the old industrial heartlands where change has been driven by universities. University of Idaho, the University of Nebraska, all of these universities are taking huge hits. This is going to have enormous ripple effects across the entire country. So I can't resist. I didn't realize you're on the board of overseers of Harvard.

56:45So my sense is that there's just a different zeitgeist in higher ed, or one of the differences is that people in the UK think of universities as sort of a public good, and they don't feel the same obligation or gratification or ego boost by giving money back to the university. I just pulled up that the endowment at Durham is£110 million or about$140 million. Is that accurate? That's about right, yeah. And I've actually, you know, given money myself to the university out of my recent book, you know, for the small stipends and bursaries for students. It's just not the same scale that it is here in the U.S., including for the public and land-grant universities.

57:29There's a big state university where people tend to give money as well. High schools, the whole education sector. But where I was headed with it was Harvard, I believe, has a$53 billion endowment, and it lets in 1 ,500 people a year. And in the U.S., I believe that higher ed, that we're basically the enforcers of the caste system, that we create artificial scarcity despite having the resources to dramatically increase our freshman seats such that we can feel better about ourselves and the value of the degree goes up for the incumbents at the cost of the entrance and society real large. Do you think there's an issue with a place like Harvard with$53 billion endowment letting in 1 ,500 kids a year, do you think the accusation that it's a hedge fund with offering classes and not really a public servant, do you think there's some truth to that accusation?

58:22Well, I think that's an issue that the university is addressing. I mean, it's one of the reasons that I ended up, you know, honestly on the board of overseers. There's kind of like this view on the outside, you know, that this is some kind of weird start chamber set up, but there's a lot of people from all kinds of diverse backgrounds there. And I came there as first generation. I mean, my father left school at 14, went down a coal mine. My mother became a nurse, but also left school at 16. You know, so basically I came from a family with absolutely no means whatsoever, nothing, no savings. And basically I got to Harvard on a scholarship.

58:54I was immediately struck, you know, by many of the things that you're talking about there. I've given money back, you know, for scholarships for people like, you know, myself and at the board. and there's been a lot more discussion and there's been a lot more discussion going on at the university over the last several decades because they've got people like Raj Chetty and others kind of pushing out and research this. A man named Anthony Jackson Education School making these same kinds of cases. The university has been discussing this in their admissions for some time now. Many of the people who have come to prominence were first generation.

59:28And in fact, the university just this week announced basically an expansion of its financial aid to students coming from families would be prospective students who are in those lowest brackets. But it has to do more in terms of expanding its access. And there's all kinds of discussions about this going on about different platforms. I think the argument could be, well, this could have been done a lot more quickly. And Harvard and other major universities like it have to actually show leadership. So there's absolutely, there needs to be this kind of debate about higher education. But I think the solution to it is not destroying it.

1:00:03And in fact, it's really getting universities like the Ivy Leagues, those with the big endowments, to work across the entire education sector, not just higher ed, with trade schools, with community colleges, with the public land grants and state-level universities. So while you're coming up with these kinds of ideas, I think what we have to really kind of push the educational sector, and I keep saying the educational sector because I think it has to be high schools, it has to be libraries and all the other you know kind of parts of all this is to kind of find ways of working together i was just at a conference in houston a week ago of all the associations that deal in international education so this is language instruction study abroad you know and this is not just the elite universities i mean i was a kid you know from again from a mining community uh the british um underwrote study abroad this is a you know mind expanding uh opportunity and a life uh changing opportunity for people.

1:00:58So I'm, you know, look, I'm in agreement that there's something needs to be done and something quite drastic. We can't just talk about this for another decade. We're in the crisis now. Dr. Fiona Hill is a senior fellow at Brookings, chancellor of Durham University, and a former U.S. National Security Council official specializing in Russian and European affairs. Dr. Hill gained national recognition for her testimony during the 2019 Trump impeachment inquiry. She's also a bestselling author and leading expert on geopolitics. Dr. Hill very much enjoyed this conversation and hope and trust that we'll have you on again.

1:01:31Really, really, I love how sort of just sober and calm in the way you deliver or try to break down or distill what are very complex issues. Really appreciate your time. No, thank you so much, Scott.

1:01:57Algebra of happiness. What makes a great day for you? For a long time for me, that was if I worked out. If I work out any given day, I feel like, okay, that was at least a reasonable to good day. That I exercised, I feel more mentally set. I'm sort of, I always had body dysmorphia. I always feel kind of weak and skinny. So working out makes me feel better about myself. It's good for me mentally. I associate a lot of good things with working out. So any day I worked out was a good day. That has changed for me. And that is now my new sort of go-to around this is a good day is if I can FaceTime with my oldest son who's at boarding school during the week and I can have some time with my youngest.

1:02:37I usually lay in bed with him just before he falls asleep and we just kind of chat for 10 or 12 minutes. If I can do those two things, then it was a good day. They make me feel like a good dad. It's very cathartic for me. I feel grounded. I like to know that they're doing all right and they are doing all right. But when I don't see them or speak to them every day, my brain goes crazy. Are there something gone wrong? Are they all right? My, you know, communication, this is sort of a corporate lesson. Communication is with the listener. When you don't communicate with your employees regularly, they will start communicating with themselves and coming up with all sorts of crazy, batshit ideas or conspiracies for what's actually happening at the firm.

1:03:15You need to communicate consistently. And I find if I'm not around my sons a lot and I'm not communicating with them a lot that I start getting anxious about things. So what I want you to do or what I would suggest you do is the following. First, find out what is that one thing that every day makes it a good day for you? Is it going to church? Is it working out? Just be cognizant of it. And also, also, it's not a bad idea to say what one person in my life that I love immensely and know I know loves me immensely. Does it make sense to check in every day, whether it's a text message, a FaceTime, or just to speak to them?

1:03:47And does that give you comfort every day? What makes a great day for you? This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Chalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prop G Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.

1:04:24I'm good now. I don't know if it's the edibles I'm eating or the Xanax I had on the plane to get over the jet lag. Daddy, daddy's even angrier than usual.