“We were here and we can come back again,” with Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson

Washington keeps misreading the politics of foreign aid, and that misunderstanding is reshaping U.S. power. Rachel A. George of Stanford University breaks down why Americans are far less hostile to aid than politicians claim, what the Trump-era USAID shutdown actually changed, and why the real fight is over accountability, transparency, and strategy - not whether aid should exist at all.George explains how the collapse of USAID sent shockwaves through the global aid system, why the damage extended well beyond Washington, and how European donors responded by pulling back too. She also untangles what counts as "foreign aid" in the first place, from humanitarian assistance and global health programs to economic development, military aid, and concessional finance.

The gap between imagined and actual threats to elections is vast. Where the public is focused on hacking electronic voting machines, the actual threat, says Votebeat Editorial Director Jessica Huseman, is unlikely to change actual votes. Still, the challenges and threats are real, from the 100 suspicious letters sent to election offices this week to the everyday cybersecurity challenges facing local officials. To complicate things further, the second Trump administration has unwound the tremendous work done in the first Trump administration to create a federal capacity to protect elections. What remains are patriotic, local election workers committed to serving their communities and ensuring democracy works. Hosts Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson also discuss the viral claims about Ukrainian strikes on Russian data centers and the British Prime Minister’s recent remarks about Brexit.

This short solo episode from Mark Jacobson looks at how foreign influence operations have repeatedly targeted Black American voters, from robocalls in Maryland to Russian IRA social media accounts and AI-generated imagery in 2024. The core argument is that the goal is often not persuasion, but suppression, distrust, and disengagement from democratic participation. Jacobson connects those tactics to a broader warning for the 2026 midterms: even when the technology changes, the strategy stays the same. The real objective is to widen existing divisions and convince people that institutions and elections are not worth trusting.

Foreign election interference aims to weaken trust in democracy more than to change vote counts. New York Times reporter Dustin Volz takes us inside his recent reporting on U.S. intelligence tracking current foreign efforts to influence America’s election. The Russians are still sewing chaos; the Chinese are attacking down-ballot races, and the Iranians—locked in an intense fight with the United States—emerge as the wild card as we head into the mid-term elections. Hosts Jim Ludes and Mark Jacobson also look at the remarkable speech by UK Prime Minister Andy Burnhamm announcing the formation of a information defense agency.

This episode examines how generative AI, deepfakes, synthetic media, and AI-powered propaganda are reshaping elections, political warfare, and public trust. Jim Ludes, Mark Jacobson, and CNET reporter Caitlin Shadrawi discuss how bad actors use AI to create and spread convincing misinformation—and how people can verify what they see, hear, and believe. It works because it distills a complex topic into a clear, urgent takeaway: AI doesn’t just make fake content more believable—it can make real content harder to trust.