Hiroshima 2023

Jeffrey Lewis 0:05

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron Stein 0:22

I'm Aaron Stein, chief content officer at War on the Rocks and your podcast partner. Hey, man, how's it going? Hey, I am well. How are you, sir? Good. You just got back from Hiroshima. You've I think this is the quest to the 1K Club on Star Alliance. I think you've made it.

Jeffrey 0:41

I would have made it, except the sons of bitches did not record my travel to Oslo.

Aaron 0:49

They got it on the way back.

Jeffrey 0:51

So I'm a little bit short, but I think with one more international trip, I will get there. Yeah, four trips to Asia this year. Three trips to Japan, one trip to Singapore. Looking like there's going to be at least one more trip to Asia in my life and one more trip to Europe. So it's a busy, busy, busy, busy, busy year.

Aaron 1:12

Doing a lot of track two dialogue. I was about to say, you're on the track two circuit, which I think is good because you have some interesting insights from the world of the namesake of this podcast, Arms Control, from international participants.

Jeffrey 1:28

Yeah, I participate now in a lot of these track two dialogues. And I am starting to notice that it's the same themes over and over and over again with the Russians and the Chinese and then sort of with everybody else who is an audience for the relationship between the United States and Russia and the United States and China.

And The themes that I've been seeing at all these meetings in the past reoccurred again in Hiroshima. So I thought it was a great kind of opportunity to temperature take the broad geopolitical environment in which we find ourselves, which is, you know, like pretty shitty for arms control.

Aaron 2:03

I was about to say, is there anything more nuanced than it's really bad? You know... It's bad.

Jeffrey 2:11

Yeah, well, I mean, so no, I guess at some fundamental level, if you're only casually interested in this, you know, the answer is it's crappy and there's not going to be any arms control anytime soon. But I do think that there is a kind of... Emerging workaround, right? So there is some diplomacy that's happening. And I think people don't necessarily understand why the US government is doing certain things it's doing, and why the Russians and the Chinese are interacting in certain ways.

And so there's actually I'd say there's a fair amount of talking that's happening. It's just, I think it's pretty widely misunderstood. And that's one thing that came through in the Hiroshima meeting, is when we started to talk about different statements that had been released about disarmament or arms control, it seemed to me that international audiences in particular did not really understand what was going on.

And so that's kind of what I want to talk about. The specific example actually is we're in Hiroshima and the G7 this year was in Hiroshima and the G7 negotiated a statement on nuclear disarmament. It's lengthy. It's very lengthy. And the organizers naturally wanted to start with the Hiroshima vision on nuclear disarmament agreed by the G7. And not surprisingly, the Russians and the Chinese were really not into this.

And it was kind of interesting to me because it was, I think it's clear what the US government was doing. I think it is clear what US allies and partners were doing. I think it is clear why the Russians and the Chinese hate it. But none of that was clear, I would say, to third parties, to people from other countries.

It all seemed, I think, a bit mysterious to them. And so that's a good example of the kind of thing I want to unpack.

Aaron 4:05

Well, I have two thoughts on that. One is that the statement was quite overt in basically separating three versus two. So it was lauding the US, the UK, and France for being transparent, and the other two for not. And the other question I had for you is do you think it kind of flew over people's heads because of the broader context in the war in Ukraine and that arms control is bad or that the things that they were referencing in there – I mean there were many – were sort of like niche esoteric arms control stuff that is not widely known or both?

Jeffrey 4:36

You know – I think it flew over people's heads, not because of the war in Ukraine, but because people have this distressing tendency to just take things at face value. I find even really sophisticated observers Often do not read between the lines. And so I would say that the people in this meeting who wanted to start with the G7 statement immediately approached it as a sincere good faith effort by the G7 to recommit themselves to the goal of nuclear disarmament, which it is like not in any way, shape or form.

It's very overt.

Aaron 5:16

Do you really have to read between the lines of what they were doing?

Jeffrey 5:20

Well, let's. I was about to say we should read it. Well, if you read the document, I think the politics of it are very straightforward, and this is what I think they are. Yes, it is true that prime minister Kishida in Japan, who is from Hiroshima by the way, went to a fancy restaurant. That is the place he took Rishi Sunak, the, the, the UK PM.

It was spectacular. It's a, it turns out the, the Kishida's were like real rich and they he grew up in Tokyo, but they had a place in Hiroshima and this restaurant like overlooks like the pond where he used to go catch carp. Lovely dinner. Kishida, who is from Hiroshima in that sense, had a political issue, which is he needed some verbiage on nuclear disarmament to assuage the pretty sizable portion of the Japanese public that's anti-nuclear for understandable reasons. Oppenheimer just came out, right? That's right. He, he needed to be seen as doing something. Yet one of the most interesting things I was told in this meeting, by the way, is that there is an amazing aversion to showing Oppenheimer in, in Japan.

Aaron 6:31

I would imagine the moralizing that Oppenheimer was going through captured on film. I have not seen it. It's not exactly well received in Japan. It hits different. I think it's the way I should go. Sorry, I've led you on a tangent.

Jeffrey 6:43

No, no, no. I mean, this podcast is nothing but tangents. That's my daughter, by the way.

Aaron 6:51

We're going to have to roll with it. She's there.

Jeffrey 6:53

So for listeners, I've asked her three times not to stand outside my door and scream every time she very sweetly says, yes, daddy, and then proceeds to just stand outside my door and scream. She's going to pick my nursing home when I'm older, and so there's really only so much leverage I have in this situation. The last thing I need is for me to be in this nursing home and for her to be like, do you smell that?

And I'm going to be like, yeah, that smells like piss. And she's going to be like, yeah, you remember that time you told me to shut up?

Aaron 7:21

This is summer podcasting, and listeners know that we have junior fellows, although mine are at camp today. Anyway, so...

Jeffrey 7:31

Kishida had a political problem, and it scratched that itch. But the United States, the UK, and France are not interested in nuclear disarmament, right? The nuclear disarmament movement— This most recent era, it, you know, ended with the TPNW, right? The TPNW represented the point at which all the Obama rhetoric about nuclear disarmament ceased being something that the big powers did.

And, you know, the TPNW is now the avenue for that. And it's appealing to a very, you know, specific type of country. And there is just no, I think, serious discussion of disarmament among the big powers. And so now instead what we have is a question of whose fault is that? And it's very clear to me that the G7 offered an opportunity, as you said, for three to gang up on two.

And by the way, I think the three should have ganged up on the two. It's not like I think that the US and France and UK are wrong. But at the same time, it's pretty, it's, I think, pretty deliberate. And that's why you see such a focus on things like FMCT and calls for transparency and It's really about arguing that the people who are to blame for the collapse of the vision of nuclear disarmament are the Russians and the Chinese.

And so not surprisingly, the Russians and the Chinese in the meeting were like, you know, this is like not the place to start our group statement.

Aaron 9:09

I mean, in a way. I mean, I don't want to give any credit to the Russians. I mean, it's their intelligista who are having like, I guess, overt and very loud discussions about how to use nuclear weapons against NATO countries. But to your point about reading between the lines and about workarounds to arms control, you can see, you know, I think this ties into other elements of the Biden administration.

Why you would want to isolate the Russians, why you would want to get allied support, because if arms control is momentarily comatose, you need others to help you with those workarounds.

Jeffrey 9:46

Right. And I have long made this argument, I think, particularly in a European context, but I think it's also true to some extent in Japan. We have to sustain support for the transatlantic alliance and for our alliances in general. And part of that task is what we would call assurance, assuring our allies that we will be there to defend them.

But part of it is also what Michael Howard called reassurance. And I might have—do I have that backwards? I can't remember. Is it assurance and reassurance? We'll fix it if I get it wrong, I guess. Scott can just splice me up saying it. But that second task is making sure that allies and partners know that you're not the one driving conflict.

Of course. You're not the crazy man driving the car. And so if we imagine, like, how do we sustain support for the alliance in Germany— Part of that is convincing center-left voters that it's not the United States that's driving conflict, right? It's persuading those voters that it's really the Russians. And so I don't think there's anything particularly untoward about engaging in diplomatic activities to make sure that the Russians and the Chinese take their fair share of blame.

That's a fundamental alliance-building task. No, completely. At the same time, it's a shitty place to start a joint statement involving a bunch of Russians and Chinese.

Aaron 11:14

Well, in that sense, I do understand because... I mean, I wasn't there, but there's usually only a handful of folks from each country. And so you're oftentimes the academics or the people who are close to government are meant to answer for the entirety of their government policy. And so they're often just basically putting them on the defensive from the beginning is probably not the best way to start off panel one right after the coffee and probably stale or probably not stale, but close to stale pastries.

Jeffrey 11:48

No, no, no. It was, you know, it was, I have to say, the food at the hotel was quite lovely. My favorite moment is I, for the first coffee break, I went and I was like, there's no tea. How can we be in Japan and there's no tea? That's right. You're a tea drinker. And I, I was like, huh.

And I kind of, you know, like whatever, I poured myself a cup of coffee and I, I walked away next break. There was tea. It was like, I don't, I don't, I don't know if the I don't know if the pastries were mic'd for sound, but well but yeah, it was, it was, it was definitely, it was not the way to begin, but what really struck me about that conversation was For all of the people in the room who were not russian chinese or maybe really closely following u.s policy they genuinely took the statement in the way that kishida had intended it as a solution to his political problem by getting the g7 to recommit and we really did certainly and i i spent a fair amount of time doing this i had to sort of Surface, you know, the like, well, I mean, don't you think it's weird that the U.S. is talking about the CTBT given that we haven't ratified the CTBT and it like calls out the Russians for potentially violating the moratoria?

And it's like, well, you know, there's a reason this is structured in this way. And again, the U.S. government should have done that. That's what good diplomats do. But I found that, yeah, we really had to sort of spell it out. So I think it was an effective bit of diplomacy in that it wasn't quite as ham-handed as one might have thought.

Aaron 13:31

Well... I'm curious. I know I'm sure it was under Chatham House rules, but I'm curious what... There is only one rule, Aaron. There's only one rule. I am curious what the Russians in particular were saying in this meeting.

Jeffrey 13:45

I mean, I would just say that the Russian participant was a... Vigorous advocate of the Russian perspective on things. Although more in the mold of Peskov than some of the, like, fire breathers, right? So, you know, the Russian position, which I think has a great deal of truth in it, is that a lot of the... Nuclear threats that have been attributed to Putin, he didn't make.

Now, we've talked about this on the podcast. You know, I think Putin often does this quite deliberately, like when he orders special mode of combat duty for the strategic forces on live TV, he knows that's going to be interpreted as a nuclear threat. And then they can fan out and be like, no, no, it's just extra people in a combat center.

You know, why are you overreacting to what Putin said? Yeah, you're the crazy person. Right. I mean, I think that Putin makes a lot of non-threats that he knows will get interpreted as threats so that he can proceed to sort of engage in this kind of smug gaslighting. But at the same time, as subject matter experts, we have to recognize that not all of these threats were as explicit.

So we kind of went back and forth. I would say that the The Russian and the Chinese participants were constructive. It's just that we don't have anything to f***ing talk about at the moment.

Aaron 15:21

Well, that's sort of the thing is like you can make nice statements. I'm sure people mingled at the five o'clock happy hour, which usually happens at these things, usually with white wine or red wine. Although in Japan, maybe they did sake. I don't know.

Jeffrey 15:36

Oh, we had some lovely sake at that restaurant I was telling you about.

Aaron 15:39

I mean, I've been involved in enough of these things. The idea is to get a little loose so you get past the opening statements. Yeah.

Jeffrey 15:47

So the sake had these little gold foil flowers in the bottom and, you know, you basically had to get to the end of the sake to get the gold flowers. And, you know, the goal was to like give people gold flowers.

Aaron 15:57

So much, much sake was consumed. That's good. I mean, because if you're going to have to like sit there and endure, no offense, the Chinese position for like the 400th time, you need a little lubrication.

Jeffrey 16:09

Yeah, you know, I think we all, you know, dinner was mercifully short on policy. Because the meeting was long enough.

Aaron 16:20

I am being a little flippant. I do think those workarounds are important. I think one aspect of it is to issue the statement, like you saw the G7, to say that the three sort of responsible nuclear powers, in quotes, are not driving the clown car. Right? That's A. But B is on the real work of arms control.

Jake Sullivan, we didn't talk about this, you know, set out, I think, if you can read the speech closely enough, how they envision the Biden administration envisions managing this new nuclear tension we have with the Russians and the Chinese built up at the same time.

Jeffrey 16:57

Yeah, so that's the other thing that I found really interesting is that While the US, Russian, and Chinese participants were aware of where dialogue is occurring, which is in the P5 context, and where we ended up suggesting that we move our emphasis away from the G7 statement to the P5 statement, which excludes the Japanese and so is undesirable to them for that reason.

But I think that the degree to which the balance of conversation has shifted to the P5 dialogue is not really understood by people. So yeah, we don't have a bilateral arms control process with the Russians anymore. We certainly didn't bring the Chinese in. But the one place they are still talking is is in the P5. And, you know, those conversations are civil.

I'm not sure they're productive, but they're civil. And it was in that context that explaining the Sullivan speech, I think, was was pretty important to a lot of people.

Aaron 17:57

Yeah, I'm just pulling up here on my computer. I mean, the two words that he mentioned, I think we flagged were guardrails. For managing the interplay between non-nuclear strategic capabilities and nuclear deterrence, and then working to establish new guardrails, especially in space and cyberspace, and compartmentalizing the relationship, which they talk about a lot with China in particular.

Jeffrey 18:23

Yeah, so I think, you know, to me the two big things I took away from that speech were the focus that Sullivan made on compartmentalization, which I think is a very explicit statement that we do have interests in preventing this relationship from getting completely out of control. In particular, we have an interest in In controlling nuclear escalation, which is real.

I mean, you and I have written an article arguing that nuclear deterrence is actually functioning over Ukraine. It is. And so we would like that to continue to function.

Aaron 19:04

I think we both enjoy living.

Jeffrey 19:08

As you have noted, does Vladimir Putin, who adores stewardesses. He does.

Aaron 19:12

And so I think it's working. I think it's working and we'd like it to keep working, even if it's unpleasant.

Jeffrey 19:19

And that does then raise really interesting questions about who linked what, you know, because I think that in the end, it's the Russians are throwing a temper tantrum and they have started linking everything. And so calling for compartmentalization is, Is a little bit pointing the finger at them. At the same time, I think early on, particularly at the beginning of the Biden administration, there was, I think, a fair amount of linkage that the U.S. was putting on some of these issues.

And so it's good to me that the U.S. is moving off that and saying like, OK, you know. Without saying who did what, we should compartmentalize. My hope is that the Russians and the Chinese will reciprocate. Because, you know, like we're about to run a giant arms race with the two of them. And like, we should probably do that in a safe way, which, you know, gets us to guardrails.

Aaron 20:13

Before we get to guardrails, I had a question. How much, and maybe this came up at the meeting, how much did some of the Russian nuclear crazy, because some of the stuff that has been written has been crazy, do you think impacted this? So in the way that Putin engages in that smug gaslighting, do you think it pushed the U.S. to go towards compartmentalization?

Or is it just a natural outcome of the largest land war since World War II in Europe? Yeah.

Jeffrey 20:34

You know, I don't know. I was in Singapore when Sullivan delivered the speech, and I had no, you know, I was surrounded by U.S. officials walking around, but I had no inkling that the speech was coming until it was publicly announced. So I don't have any insight. People were pretty closed-mouthed about it. You know, partly I think that Speech was driven by some language he put in about how we have these twin competition situation where we are you know, like we do have an interesting question of like do we need a force that is as big as the two of them combined.

Aaron 21:13

Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 21:14

I mean... And, you know, like, we actually talked about this in Hiroshima, where there are a lot of Americans who are like, yeah, we should do that, sort of not understanding that, like, yeah, but then they'll each build up to the same size, and then we'll have to build twice as many again, and then they'll each build up, you know, that's literally how an arms race happens.

Aaron 21:29

Yeah.

Jeffrey 21:31

And I think I had heard U.S. officials in In more informal contexts say, well, you know, we don't really know what the answer is, but it's not gonna be A plus B. I think Colin Call at one point had said that. Getting Jake Sullivan to say, we're not gonna, whatever we do, it's not gonna be adding the two of them, was I think a big deal, and my guess is fundamentally why they were delivering that speech.

But then, yeah, I think there is a sense—I mean, I don't know, but every time I talk to people from Washington, I think there is a sense that things have gotten out of control. And so it would not surprise me if that's where the talk about guardrails came from.

Aaron 22:14

Although, you know, the other piece of it is—

Jeffrey 22:16

It's important that the U.S., again, is the one making reasonable proposals, right? So there is, I think, a diplomatic or reassurance context to this where if we're going to show up in the P5 dialogue, we can't show up and be like, well, we don't want to talk about this. We have to show up with constructive ideas. And Sullivan's speech has several, right?

So Sullivan has the proposal, for example, for a P5 missile launch notification regime.

Aaron 22:44

Fundamentally a good idea.

Jeffrey 22:46

Small potatoes, but fundamentally good idea. And, you know, like when you're starving, small potatoes are something. And a whole bunch of topics to discuss, one of which I find really interesting, which is can we commit to keeping humans in the loop for nuclear command and control? Because the Russians have some crazy ideas about this.

Aaron 23:16

Well, I mean, they've always had a couple of crazy ideas about ultimate authority and how to use nuclear weapons in the event of decapitation.

Jeffrey 23:26

Yeah, I mean, I think the Russians have a really profound sense, which, by the way, I don't think is untrue. Like, machines are better at a lot of tasks than people. And I think the Russians especially have a sense that machines are better at a lot of tasks than their people.

Aaron 23:44

I mean, I'm not going to touch that. Maybe, I don't know.

Jeffrey 23:48

I'm saying that's their sense, right? So they really like automation. And my concern is, I think that's actually true. I think machines are better at most things than people. Like, machines are better at driving cars. The problem is that machines are really good when you correctly specify things. The context in which discrete actions must be taken. And that's fundamentally a human task is conceiving of like, how will a crisis play out and what indicators will cause you to make this decision?

And like, that's where the system gets so complex that we, even as human beings, struggle. And so I think from a, I don't know if it's from an American perspective, because I've met the tech bros and they're of the same mindset, but for the rest of us, The idea of an international crisis is not something that you feel like in advance you can fully and correctly specify so that a machine could carry out directions in a way that you would look back on with pride.

Aaron 24:51

I mean, completely. I mean, I'm not going to plug War on the Rocks, but I will. We published a lot on this, you know, about the dangers of non-humans in the loop.

Jeffrey 25:01

I had an absolutely wild conversation at one of these effective altruism conferences with somebody who was like, you know, just like you are now totally comfortable giving over directions to Google Maps. Future world leaders are going to like look at their AI advisor, not in the way that you look at like the AI advisor in Civ, you know, who just says nonsense, but they're going to genuinely believe what the algorithm tells them.

And he was like, I think it'll lead to better decision making outcomes.

Aaron 25:32

And I'm like, I just don't like this. No, I mean, especially because, again, the scenarios in which you play out nuclear war games with just that games, because as we like, as we go back, the Vladimir Putin corollary, you want to spend more time with the Aeroflot stewardesses rather than spending it six feet under.

Jeffrey 25:51

Yeah. Well, so I think that one of the reasons this is such an interesting and fruitful discussion, and now this is getting a little bit beyond what we talked about at Hiroshima, although, you know, again, it goes back to this idea of there are things that are still worth talking about. We all agree that we want a human in the loop.

But what the AI advisor scenario indicates is you can have people in the loop and their participation can be meaningless because they're ideologically committed to following the algorithm or they're cut off from the outside world and they only have access to sensor data. And so you can imagine a situation where there are humans in the loop, but they're just meat puppets.

Aaron 26:30

Yeah. No, I mean, completely. I'm curious, though, when they talk about this guardrails, is this an acknowledgment of what we think the Russian position is on arms control, which is sort of like sort light, you know, with no more verification. And so you don't really have arms control anymore, but you sort of have these non-binding agreements that everybody just goes along with.

Jeffrey 26:56

I think it is a recognition that arms control is not something that is going to happen anytime soon. I'm not sure if that's driven by a sense that the Russians and the Chinese won't do it. Or if it's driven by a sense that Republicans won't ratify it. Or if it's driven by a sense that the president doesn't want to invest the political capital in doing something like a congressional executive agreement.

You know, like I don't I don't I genuinely don't know. And it probably for different people is different things. Right. I mean, there are probably people who would fight the good fight on the Hill, but are like, well, but, you know, the Russians won't agree. And there are probably people who think like, oh, you know, we could probably reach an agreement with the Russians, but I don't want to stick my head in the blender with with congressional Republicans.

Right. So I think the way you see that, and this is something I've noticed in a lot of official statements recently, Sullivan calls out what he calls risk reduction measures. And if you look at the State Department's website, it used to be that risk reduction referred to a very specific activity with the Russians. We had these risk reduction centers.

Now it's become a catch-all term, and I think it means strategic stability measures short of arms control.

Aaron 28:12

Which, again, I think makes sense.

Jeffrey 28:17

Oh, yeah. This is not, you know, I think all of the things that are outlined in the Sullivan speech, whether it's the stuff in the P5 context, which is like the missile launch notification regime, the discussions about doctrine, command and control, all that stuff, or whether it's the stuff in the multilateral side where they talk about the KEASAT testing ban.

Yeah. All of those things are not arms control. And they are like, each makes, I think, a meaningful contribution to letting us live long enough that we might someday see the day where we get arms control again. So yeah, good for them for being practical and, you know. But it's funny because when, you know, in the dialogue we had in Hiroshima, you know, the sense was that the G7 statement wasn't very bold and didn't have a lot of vision in it.

And was really pretty small and not very adventurous and very disappointing and kind of a letdown. And it's like, well... It's a, an effort to pin the blame on the Russians and the Chinese. And B, it's not like a very propitious time for adventurous proposals. So like, I, you know, keep it vanilla, you know, like, I don't know.

I've said this a million times on the podcast, but we live in an era in which we have the TPNW and we have NATO and And the TPNW advocates believed that they could convince Finland and Sweden to join the TPNW. And not only did they fail to do that, those countries joined NATO for the promise of extended nuclear deterrence.

Aaron 30:05

That's the bargain. Read the room. I always make that joke. Read the room. I'm not going to go into it, but I always make that joke. When you sign up for NATO, you're signing up for American security guarantees, and that's guaranteed by one thing. Yeah. And it's not that complicated.

Jeffrey 30:23

So like, I mean, that's whatever. It's the moment we live in. You know, the Russians are engaged in a war of aggression and that's raging in the heart of Central Europe. And. That aggression is being contained by interlocking mutual deterrence. So it just is not at the moment a very feasible time to discuss what would a world without nuclear weapons look like?

Well, like, well, I, you know, you know, like it would probably involve direct U.S. military involvement in Ukraine, I would think, as well as significant escalation.

Aaron 31:03

I mean, it wouldn't look like today, but I think we're stuck with today for a while. Can I ask you one last question? I'm curious. Because people talk in the abstract about U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan. Did that come up at all without mentioning the fact that we both have nuclear weapons? People like to fantasize about the big war.

Did that come up at all?

Jeffrey 31:22

No, I think it didn't because... The Chinese position publicly is that they're not going to invade anytime soon. You know, I mean, that the, the, the people who say they're going to invade tend to be Americans, right? Who say that what's happening in Ukraine is a warning about what might happen in Taiwan. And just, you know, the American participants, I think, you know, aren't by and large of that view.

You know my my my view tends to be That you know, this would be a really big lift for the PLA because it's a giant amphibious operation and You know, I think we just got a master class on the importance of managing logistical challenges in large-scale invasions, so I You know, I think Maybe it's a myopia, but certainly no one in our meeting felt that Ukraine was likely, what Russia did in Ukraine is likely to manifest itself as China doing the same thing in Taiwan.

That could be a myopia on our part.

Aaron 32:33

I was just curious. All right, well, I think we covered it all. Anything else you wanted to hit? I mean, the food was lovely, as always. My third trip to Japan this year? I've never... I think we've talked about this. I may be able to go in November, but I'm not sure. And I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm hoping I can. If not, I will make it out there eventually.

Jeffrey 32:53

Let me strongly suggest that you say yes. Give yourself a couple extra days. It's a fun, fun, fun, fun country.

Aaron 33:05

I'm editing a whole bunch of Japanese... Officers at the moment over at War on the Rocks because they're really grappling with what it means to have long-range precision strike, and it's really interesting to read them in real time. So I'm curious to get over there, but we'll see. I've gone off tangent. I've gone down the rabbit hole. I've done what we always do. Jeffrey, thanks for joining your own podcast or our podcast. Yeah, I, you know, it's it's been a pleasure for how many years now? Nine. We should find the individual if I get a 10th anniversary.

Jeffrey 33:34

Going to have to have a big, big birthday celebration.

Aaron 33:36

Yeah. Yeah. Probably in our basements. Okay. With that, thanks everybody for listening. Head on over to patreon.com slash ACW podcast if you want to support this podcast. And you get to join the Slack channel, which is the coolest place in the world doing things that nobody can even dream of. Sign up to find out what I'm talking about.

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