“The Ukrainians and the Russians are creating the only two modern armed forces in the world. And this is a problem for everybody else, which I don't think everybody else is necessarily recognizing. The Ukrainians innovate, the Russians copy, and pretty much everything Ukrainians do, the Russians can do a few months later, but at scale.”

Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. I'm glad you noticed that the EU has done more, has done more than any individual state, I would say. And the EU has consistently recognized the threat that Russia poses. It's a good point because when you talk about bureaucracy, everybody associates the EU with bureaucracy, and that's a kind of sort of American propaganda point, which we can't get our minds around or through. But when it comes to helping Ukraine, they've been very un-bureaucratic. And it's been us, the Americans, who have been either bureaucratic or we've just shown kind of ill will.

I feel as if I get two streams of news around the actual situation at the front, who's winning, who's losing, or this kind of grinding standoff in some periods, it feels like. And the traditional media, I think, has a, I don't want to say a biased for Ukraine, but I feel when I watch traditional media, I think, okay, Ukraine, just asymmetry, drones, technically advanced. Russia is now no longer able to mobilize. It's in deficit in terms of the number of soldiers taken off the field through death or injury, and it's unable to now raise as many conscripts as they're losing. You see Moscow on fire. And then I go online and I go on TikTok or threads, and I feel I see what doesn't feel more balanced, but some news that's a little bit more Russia is increasing attacks, having more impact. And it would be, you could argue Ukraine has obviously had some tremendous victories, but winning might be a little bit strong. Can you attempt to give us a sense of how over the last 12 months the balance of victory or defeat on the battlefield has shifted?

It's so funny. I mean, Professor Snyder, obviously, I always like to kind of pause the podcast when I hear something I haven't heard that I think is really striking and insightful. And I just hadn't contemplated that this war is, you know, we talk about what it's how Ukraine could be this new center of innovation and has this unbelievable army that's teaching the world about the power of the word asymmetry and is punching so far above its weight class. We've never seen anything like that. But little attention is given to the fact that we're also, via this war, upscaling Russia, making it a more lethal fighting force. Hadn't thought of that. So Lincoln said you can't win a war without public support and you can't lose a war with one. And it feels from an outsider standpoint that the Ukrainian army has the support and Zelensky has the support of the Ukrainian people. What's less clear is whether Putin and the fighting force there has the support of the Russian people. Can you speak to that?

So I think the way the Russians have been trying to run the war is as a consumer war, which is a kind of concept I think which should be pretty familiar to Americans. It's not, we're supposed to win. It's not supposed to touch us. We're supposed to enjoy like the daily media coverage of the victories, but it's not supposed to affect our daily lives. And that was largely true for Russia for the first four, four and a half years. It's much less true now, as you've noticed, because Ukraine is able to hit now with long-range drones targets which do affect Russians' daily life. That's one thing which has changed. Another thing which has changed is that, and again, you've already mentioned this, Russia probably now has to mobilize as opposed to just using contract soldiers. And that probably, it's hard to predict, but that probably will have some kind of negative social effect for Putin because the people who are going to the front up until now, they have signed a contract. Like they're getting paid by Russian standards a lot of money. Whereas once you start drafting people, then you're in a different dynamic. I think a different political dynamic as well. So I think Russia is keen to end this war by spring, partly for that reason, that I don't think they believe they can count politically on the mobilized soldiers and the families of mobilized soldiers in the same way.

So if I were to, I'm going to put forward a thesis, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree at least with part of it, or maybe not. But if I look at the biggest hotspots of the biggest risk to the world, to world peace, to something turning into what feels like World War III, I'll put AI on that list. I don't believe that's true, but according to some very smart people who spent four months at Anthropic, there's a 10% extinction event, which sounds like expected death of 800 million, which I think is worth at least investigating. Two, is this war, you know, Europe is being invaded again. And then I would argue probably the biggest risk is that China invades Taiwan and the West literally doesn't know what to do, does something, and it escalates. And that Ukraine or the probability that China decides to take the risk of a hot war goes down is inversely correlated to success, Ukraine's success on the battlefield. You just got to think that the CCP is looking at this war and thinking if this small technically sophisticated army, which the Taiwanese defense forces would be in spades, then maybe we should recalculate the likelihood of victory here and rethink and not attempt an invasion of Taiwan. So my thesis is that any small victory by Ukraine against Russia decreases the likelihood of a CCP attempting a hot war and invasion of Taiwan. Your thoughts?