The Truth of the Matter

Latest Episodes:

Mark Penn Polls and the Future of News Apr 07, 2025

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Stagwell CEO and longtime pollster/strategist talks about his latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll findings plus a discussion about the future of news.

South Korea’s Quiet Crisis and Trade with the U.S. Apr 04, 2025

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CSIS’ Victor Cha joins the podcast to discuss South Korea’s “Quiet Crisis” of leadership and the vacuum in wake of President Yoon’s impeachment, plus, the impact of President Trump’s tariffs while the ROK seeks to elect its next leader over the next two months.

Reciprocal Tariff Reactions Apr 03, 2025

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In this special crossover episode with CSIS podcast, The Trade Guys, Bill Reinsch and Andrew give their first takes on the April 2 tariff announcements from the White House.

Brief: Trump's Tariff Plan Apr 03, 2025

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CSIS’s Navin Girishankar joins the podcast to discuss the new world order President Trump has created with his latest tariff announcement.

Drones and AI on the Ukrainian Battlefield Apr 02, 2025

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"Ukraine is sort of a laboratory for what the future of warfare across the planet could look like." The war in Ukraine has caused rapid military innovation since Russia's invasion over three years ago, from military-commercial integration to collaboration with the civil sector to the production of cheap, small attritable drones. But most of all, Ukraine's military is at the forefront of waging AI-enabled autonomous warfare.

Kateryna Bondar, fellow in the CSIS Wadhwani AI Center, recently published a new report on Ukraine's rapidly evolving capabilities in autonomous aerial systems. She joins the podcast to discuss how Ukraine is using AI-driven unmanned systems to reduce direct warfighter involvement while enhancing combat effectiveness.

Read the new report: https://www.csis.org/analysis/ukraines-future-vision-and-current-capabilities-waging-ai-enabled-autonomous-warfare

Brief: What to Expect from Tariffs Mar 31, 2025

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In this special episode of The Truth of the Matter, Andrew is joined by CSIS's Philip Luck, director of the CSIS Economics Program and Scholl Chair in International Business, to discuss the new tariffs set to take effect on April 2 and their impact on Americans and the global economy.

China Cracks Down on Journalism Mar 27, 2025

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“If you’re a reporter in Beijing right now, you have to assume that the Chinese government knows every source you’re meeting with, that they know every interview you’re going to do.” When Jane Perlez worked as the New York Times bureau chief in Beijing, she supervised 15 journalists. Now, the Times has only two journalists permanently based in China—and only 20 American journalists remain in the country. Jane Perlez, who spent 7 years reporting in China for the Times and is now the host of “Face-Off: The U.S. vs China,” joins the podcast to discuss the journalism climate in China right now and how the U.S.-China political-economic relationship has evolved since COVID and President Trump’s re-election.

Hidden Depths: Water as a Resource and a Weapon Mar 25, 2025

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Water is essential to global society, for everything from drinking and growing food to producing energy and cultural practices. 40 percent of the world’s workforce works in sectors that rely on water, and water counts for $58 trillion in global economic output each year.

But while the industrialized world can take water access for granted, water resources around the world are increasingly under stress. Billions of people lack access to safely managed sanitation systems and drinking water, and as this critical resource grows increasingly scarce, it is becoming a trigger for, weapon in, and casualty of global conflicts.

CSIS’s David Michel, senior fellow for water security in the CSIS Global Food and Water Security Program, joins the podcast to discuss global water conflict and the risks that water security poses to U.S. geopolitical and economic interests.

Listen to Hidden Depths, a new podcast from the CSIS Global Food and Water Security Program, here: https://www.csis.org/podcasts/hidden-depths

Russia's Shadow War Against the West Mar 21, 2025

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Russia poses several types of threats to Western powers. In the conventional sphere, the invasion of Ukraine is a direct threat to European countries. But below the threshold of conventional war, Russia's military intelligence directorate is also carrying out "active measures," an irregular warfare campaign of sabotage and subversion against Western countries that includes the use of explosive and incendiary devices, cyberattacks, and the use of blunt or edged instruments to damage critical infrastructure like undersea cables.

The CSIS Defense and Security Department compiled a database of these attacks to analyze Russia's ongoing "shadow war" against the West. CSIS's Seth Jones, president of the CSIS Defense and Security Department, joins the podcast to discuss their findings.

Read the full analysis by Seth Jones here: https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-shadow-war-against-west

Trump’s Muscular Middle East Policy Mar 19, 2025

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Former CIA Middle East expert Norman Roule joins the podcast to discuss President Trump’s muscular approach to the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza.

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