Nine months after the US seizure of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has largely slipped from the headlines. Oil production in the country is steadily rising, however, and talks over a political transition are inching forward under the government of Delcy Rodríguez. The stakes could hardly be higher: Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves. But is this oil-driven recovery actually reaching ordinary Venezuelans? Can the country's politics hold together if a true democratic transition remains on a distant horizon? And can Washington use its leverage to build a lasting partnership, or will it miscalculate, pressing for terms that Venezuelans find unacceptable?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Richard Sanders, Senior Fellow for the Western Hemisphere at the Center for the National Interest. Sanders is a former member of the Senior Foreign Service. He served as Foreign Policy Advisor to the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Mark A. Milley from 2016-18. Prior to that, he served as Chargé d'Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, from 2013-14 and as Deputy Chief of Mission from 2014-16. Earlier assignments include service in Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, and Spain.

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A cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover last year cost the British economy £2 billion. Had a Russian drone bombed a British oil refinery at a fraction of that damage, NATO would have invoked Article 5. But because a cyber attack isn't kinetic, it doesn't count. That gap between how much damage hostile states can do and what states are prepared to call an "act of war" is now the cheapest, fastest exploit in so-called "hybrid" warfare, and the hackers conducting these attacks are often teenagers. What happens when hostile states can recruit the world's most capable hackers faster than western democracies? And why are democracies moving so slowly to recognize and deploy ethical hacking?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Fergus Hay, the CEO and Co-Founder of The Hacking Games, a platform that is reshaping the future of cyber talent by redirecting teens from cybercrime to deploying their skills in ethical hacking. Hay is also Director of the Defence and Security Forum and one of the architects of The Resilience Imperative (non-profit) focused on rebuilding the UK's national security infrastructure.

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In late August, President Trump sent the US-Saudi 123 agreement for civil nuclear cooperation to Congress, beginning a 90-day legislative countdown after which the deal enters into force. The deal — signed by US Energy Secretary Chris Wright in July — establishes a framework for American companies to sell nuclear technology to Riyadh. In the process, Saudi capital would help finance America's own nuclear buildout, including the domestic enrichment capacity needed to wean US dependence on Russian fuel. But the agreement arrives at a fraught moment. As the war with Iran drags on, America’s Gulf partners are growing increasingly uncertain about Washington’s commitment and capabilities in the region. Is nuclear cooperation with Saudi Arabia in the national interest? Should Washington condition the deal on Saudi normalization with Israel, as Trump suggests? And does the agreement make nuclear weapons proliferation more likely?

In this episode, Paul Saunders makes the case that the agreement is worth having on both commercial and strategic grounds. Saunders is the president of the Center for the National Interest and an expert with more than three decades of experience in foreign policy. He previously served in the George W. Bush Administration from 2003 to 2005 as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs.

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Over four years into Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western intelligence agencies have begun issuing public warnings about the threat of a Russian escalation against NATO before the end of the decade. With Washington seeking to reduce its conventional forces on the continent and weapon delivery timelines slipping beyond 2030, these intelligence assessments have raised urgent and uncomfortable questions: what does Europe still need from the US, and what capabilities can it now do on its own? Are Europe's militaries in worse shape than they believe, or better? And what will it actually take to deter Russia?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Joshua Huminski, Senior Vice President for National Security and Intelligence at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress (CSPC). Huminski is also the Director of the Mike Rogers Center for Intelligence & Global Affairs at CSPC, founded by former House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers. He is revising his first book manuscript, tentatively titled "Continental Drift: Trump and the Crises of European Defense," which is slated for publication in spring of 2027.

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The era of corporate activism is fading. On most issues, this shift toward political neutrality is welcome, but not when the issue is China. Virtually every major global firm now carries dependencies on both Washington and Beijing, and in a genuine crisis, both governments will move to leverage those dependencies to their own advantage. Companies that imagine neutrality will preserve their independence will find there is no sideline to stand on. Which sectors are most exposed to U.S.-China competition? Is foreign ownership of U.S. companies something we can live with, or is it a problem Washington should address? And can regulation ever move fast enough to keep pace with the competition it is meant to manage?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Isaac Stone Fish, the CEO and founder of Strategy Risks. Formerly a Beijing correspondent for Newsweek, Stone Fish spent seven years living in China. He is the author of a recent piece in The National Interest, "Companies May Become Neutral on US-China Competition Again. That's a Bad Thing."

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For years, American labs held an uncontested lead in artificial intelligence. That is no longer obviously true: Chinese open-weight models have closed much of the gap, and by some measures have pulled ahead. The stakes are not merely commercial. Whoever leads sets the terms for what the world runs on, who gets access to it, and what is built into the models themselves, including (in the Chinese case) political censorship and reported evidence that these systems may hand certain users deliberately weakened code. Yet American firms are adopting them anyway, sometimes for cost, sometimes because our own models are constrained from doing the work. So what would losing this race actually cost us? Why are American companies turning to Chinese models to defend their own infrastructure? And can Washington regulate a technology that outpaces the law faster than the ink can dry?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Jamil Jaffer, the founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University. Jaffer also serves as a venture partner with Paladin Capital Group and is a contributing editor at The National Interest. He has previously served on multiple Congressional committees and as a White House counsel during the George W. Bush administration.

Editor's note: This episode was recorded before OpenAI's July 21 statement on the Hugging Face security incident discussed by our guest, which attributes the intrusion to OpenAI's own models running with cyber safeguards disabled for internal evaluation. Listeners can find that statement here.

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Since April, Ukraine has dramatically escalated its drone campaign against Russia's oil refineries, knocking out a substantial share of the country's refining capacity and triggering gasoline shortages from Crimea to central Russia. What was once a nuisance for Moscow has become something closer to a full-blown fuel crisis. Yet the strikes' effects are uneven: ordinary Russian motorists are feeling real pain at the pump, even as the diesel-fueled Russian military and the Kremlin's oil revenues remain largely insulated. Can Ukraine's campaign translate civilian inconvenience into genuine economic or political pressure on Moscow? How far can Russia stretch its coping mechanisms? And after a decade of underinvestment, sanctions, and now physical damage, what future awaits Russia's oil industry once the war ends?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. He has twenty-five years of experience in the oil and gas industry as an economist, manager, executive, and consultant, including Royal Dutch Shell and IHS CERA. Until February 2022, he served as head of strategy and innovations at Gazprom Neft.

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After decades defined by survival and preservation, the U.S. nuclear industry has entered a new era of growth. Bolstered by a 2025 presidential executive order and bipartisan acts of Congress, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is undergoing its most comprehensive transformation in fifty years. The stakes are considerable: surging electricity demand from AI and industrial growth has made nuclear power essential not only to America's energy security but to its national security, even as China has brought nearly sixty reactors online in the time the United States has only built three. How does a safety regulator reinvent how it works without compromising what it protects? What will it take for America to deploy nuclear at scale and to lead the world in doing so again? And how does the NRC's role reach beyond domestic plants to shape whether U.S. allies buy American reactors or someone else's?

In this episode, Paul Saunders speaks with Ho K. Nieh, Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Chairman Nieh was previously VP of Regulatory Affairs at Southern Nuclear and, prior to that, served for more than twenty years as an NRC staff member. While at the NRC, Chairman Nieh served as Director of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, where he was responsible for reactor safety licensing and oversight programs for operating and new reactors.

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