Musk and Trump’s war on ‘Marxist’ foreign aid
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As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe?

Israel and Hamas have finally agreed to a ceasefire deal after months of delicate negotiations.

I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battlelines. It's Monday the 10th of February 2025. Now for more than 60 years the United States Agency for International Development was both a key American vehicle for overseas aid delivery and an instrument of American soft power. Buying goodwill and influence in ways that are difficult to quantify but that harder forms of power can struggle to deliver.

Well, that was the idea. Donald Trump decided early in his first term that it was no longer delivering on its mission. He ordered a suspension of foreign aid until each program could be reviewed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio assumed authority over the agency. And Elon Musk, the head of the Department for Government Efficiency, called it a viper's nest of radical left Marxists.

Not an apple with a worm in it, Mr Musk said. What we have is just a ball of worms. You've got to basically get rid of the whole thing. And so he has done. Today, only about two weeks later, around 300 of the 8,000 direct hires working for USAID remain in place. The agency's logo has been taken down from the Reagan building in Washington, D.C. Its functions have been folded into the State Department. Essentially, it has ceased to exist.

The knock-on effects around the world have been traumatic. Mine clearing operations in Southeast Asia have been suspended. Medical centers on the Thai-Burma border have turned away patients. The United Nations has warned that 20 million people living with HIV could be left without medicine. But what are the longer-term implications for American influence? Why on earth should the world assume that American taxpayers will bankroll everyone else's humanitarian crises?

And are Mr Trump, Rubio and Musk right to call time on the global development industry?

To understand the immediate impact of the aid suspension, I spoke to Sarah Kulabdara, who runs Legacies of War, a demining charity that works mostly in Southeast Asia, clearing up unexploded ordnance left over from the Vietnam War 60 years ago. Sarah, welcome to Battle Lines. Could you begin by just telling us a little bit about yourself and also Legacies of War itself?

So I grew up in southern Laos in the region called Jambasak near Wat Phu, which is a UNESCO heritage site. My father was a surgeon. So he actually worked on victims of UXO or unexploded ordnance and landmine accidents all across Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. One of these accidents actually happens with a classmate of mine. Her name was Laa.

And she was a five-year-old little girl just walking home from school. My father, in order to save her life, had to amputate her leg.

And this was a five-year-old little girl born decades after the war, and yet she was still a casualty of it. My family and I, because of the accident that I mentioned, as well as the looming dangers of the millions of bombs that still littered Laos, my parents made the very difficult decision to uproot the entire family, and we fled to the United States when I was only six years old.

So I couldn't turn away and I just really wanted to do something to help. So on Legacies of War's work, so we're an advocacy and educational organization. So we actually advocate for global humanitarian demining funds from the United States government.

We don't receive any of the funding from the U.S. government, but it instead goes to organizations that work in regions that are impacted by war. So here I am today just trying to fill this huge gap of the need for U.S. support of U.S. funding for unexplored bomb clearance, victims assistance, as well as explosive ordnance risk education to prevent accidents like the one that La experienced. Many of these

Bombs that are found in Laos are cluster munitions. So they're the size of a tennis ball. Sometimes they're colorful. Sometimes they have unique ridges. And children are just naturally drawn to objects that they never see in the environment. So, you know, the overwhelming majority globally are children, up to 50%.

And the UXOs that are still in Laos, that's mostly dating back to the war in the 60s and 70s. Is that right? Most of the world thinks about the, quote, Vietnam War. We at Legacies of War, we actually see that more as the U.S. war in Southeast Asia because that war didn't just cover Vietnam, but it also spilled over into Laos and Cambodia, two countries that the United States never declared war on, but yet dropped millions and millions of

bonds on these countries. You were saying when you're describing what you do kind of a conduit so you advocate for funds and the funds go to demining charities out in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia or other parts of the world or the Middle East or so on. So how has your funding been affected by the events of the past couple of weeks and the stop work order and the executive order on the freeze on foreign aid? Have you lost all your funding or a part or how have you been affected?

Yeah, so our partners have been told to stop all work, right? And that includes work like humanitarian deminding.

which is a huge setback for the sector. And I think what I really want the public to understand is that the funding for demining really do support U.S. national security, U.S. national interests, and the U.S. economy as well. When the United States provide funding for bomb clearance, victims assistance, risk education, it really, really...

unlock all the land that has been held captive by the dangers of unexplored ordinance or explosive remnants of war. By releasing that, we ultimately help our partner countries, countries that are receiving aid, not only protect their own people, but it really allowed them to build up their economy, right? Like lessening that codependency on aid dollars.

And when you look at it as a whole, the United States is the second largest trade nation, right? So ultimately, by helping other countries build up their economy, infrastructure and so on, we ultimately help our own interests as a world second leading trade partner.

Can I just, I want to follow up on that, but can I first just clarify that you are aware of demining programs that have stopped? So people were demining one day and they stopped the next day. Can you give us some examples of that?

So, you know, I've been receiving calls, WhatsApp messages from our partners in Southeast Asia that have been told they cannot continue until the suspension has been lifted. My team and I have been pushing members of Congress to really take back control of the purse, right? This is money that the United States Congress has already appropriated, but

But because of this review, all activities has been suspended, which means a demining partners cannot do any of their work. They can't even use, for example, the car that's funded by the United States to go to different sites. They just been told to stay home at this point. So everything is at a pause.

And while my team and I, we understand the need for review, we do believe that the United States government, in this case, Secretary Rubio, as well as the Trump administration, we beg them to understand that

while a review is something that they're entitled to do, could they allow work to still happen because this is vital, life-saving work while they're reviewing? Secretary Rubio did talk about having common sense waivers in place for kind of humanitarian stuff. I mean, have you applied for that waiver? Have you achieved a waiver? It sounds to me like landmine clearance does sound like quite a straightforward humanitarian thing.

Yeah, I agree with you, Roland. This is absolutely vital work. But unfortunately, while the waiver has already been submitted for demining activities, we have not yet heard back, you know. And we're constantly writing to members of Congress, as well as Secretary Rubio's team, just asking for this to be reviewed in a swift manner, right? Because deminers need to get back to their life-saving work. You've submitted an application for a waiver you haven't heard back.

Your programs are basically frozen. You noted to us an open letter signed by more than a dozen US ambassadors writing to Secretary Rubio, making the case for continued funding of demining. I wanted to get back to this idea you were saying of self-power, because that letter...

explicitly says, look, clearing of mines and UXOs is in the best interests of our country. Clearing the land of UXO, that's of course unexplored ordnance, allows the US to provide a highly visible demonstration of American support to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, countries in the region of immense strategic importance to the United States. The Trump administration has made a big thing of saying that aid's got to be

fully aligned with US foreign policy priorities. Do you accept that USAID humanitarian spending in general is always going to be in part a projection of American influence and American soft power? Yeah, you know, what I would say to that, Roland, is that US foreign aid

I don't consider it to be charity. I consider it to be strategic. You know, it is something that our government has set up as a way to uplift American interests. And in this case, it just happens to be also good. You know, it happens to be something that also helps save lives, right? Going back to the letter that is co-written and signed by 17 U.S. former ambassadors to Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam who have witnessed

how this has really helped the recipient countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. But just speaking to some of these ambassadors and just from my own experience,

These foreign aid actually benefits the United States a lot more, right? And I would not discount the line that you mentioned, right? Having highly visible, it demonstrates like U.S. support to countries like Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in a highly visible way. All the funding that goes towards demining, when you look at the deminers out in the field, there's a patch with our American flag on it. The car has a big American flag.

that is something that really is highly visible support, U.S. support for these nations, right? But it also allows us as a country and as the people who are

representing the United States through being employed by some of these demining organizations, for example, to not only show the goodwill from the American people, but it also allow us to really help these countries get to economic liberty, as well as, you know, share our other values like democracy and freedom. So, you know, for me, definitely within the parameters of

how Secretary Rubio has been saying so many times, right? Does this program make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous? And I would say in terms of the demining dollars, that absolutely fits into that. As an American, as a fellow taxpayer, I would say that foreign aid is...

only about 1% of our nation's budget. We get so much more in actually giving money towards foreign aid. It's pennies compared to dollars when you look at the cost of war that does not make us any safer. You know, something that I always want to highlight is the fact that the term foreign aid can be a little bit misleading for U.S. listeners who are asking, like, why should their taxpayer dollars be utilized for this? And I would say that

roughly, you know, at least 30% of it actually stays in the United States.

It's actually contributing to buying goods from small to medium-sized farmers in the Midwest. About $2 billion of that fund from USAID has been used to buy food commodities for displaced people who are hungry families fleeing crisis zones like Sudan or the DRC, for example. So it ultimately does help the American people. Just specifically on that question of how indispensable is it

Let me put it this way. I've been to Vietnam. I went on holiday there. I had a great time. I mean, its economy is booming. Yes, you might say it's developing and so on. But I mean, why can't the Vietnamese government pay for this? Vietnam has done an amazing job rebuilding its economy and expanding its trade all across the globe.

When you look back historically, Vietnam is one of the countries that have been receiving very generous aid from the United States. You also have to look at historical ties, specifically in this case, how we were able to get to where we are today in terms of U.S.

Vietnam relation is because the two countries work together on issues like demining and Asian orange remediation. Right. So to put it in its own category, it's war legacies issues.

So because of that, we've been able to do so much more. We've upgraded our partnership with Vietnam to strategic partnership, which is like the highest level partnership with the United States. Vietnam, an aid recipient, is now number six as a trading partner for the United States. We've come a long, long way because

we were able to partner with Vietnam through providing foreign aid. It seems to me that you're saying it's not a question of the Vietnamese can't afford to do this themselves. You're saying it's in America's interests to... Yeah, absolutely. It's in our own best interest. When you look at it, and not just in Southeast Asia, but other parts of the world, right? Left uncleared, these explosive remnants of war can get into the wrong hands of bad actors.

that can cause instability, that can ultimately get to our own borders and be of dangers to America. Sarah, thank you very much. After the break, a senior foreign correspondent for The Telegraph, Memphis Barker, asks whether Donald Trump has a point about the international aid industry.

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Welcome back. Landmine clearance, stopping children from losing legs, is obviously a humanitarian business. But as Sarah says, American humanitarian aid has always been tied to the projection of American influence. On the burning fault lines of today's global superpower confrontations, the business of soft power can quickly overlap with that of hard power. The direct struggle for influence between world superpowers.

And nowhere is that more acutely felt than in Ukraine, where, until Mr Trump issued his suspension order, USAID field teams were rescuing vulnerable people from the embattled city of Pokrovsk, supplying fuel, generators and overseeing repairs to key infrastructure. But they had also been funding multiple local media outlets, in more or less a direct challenge to Russia's information campaigns.

It's a part of USAID's work that's always drawn particular ire from critics. Russian state media says it's basically a project for regime change. US allies, however, see it as a critical contribution in the struggle between tyranny and democracy.

Our sister podcast, Ukraine the Latest, spoke to Anastasia Marushevskaya, the editor-in-chief of Ukraina International and co-founder of the Ukraine PR Army. Watching closely of what's happening in the United States in general and in regards of USAID,

There is a lot of propaganda, but there is also a question that you can see very often. Why do Americans need to pay for this? Why do American taxpayer money go to other countries to help other countries? And I've really been thinking about this question for a while, and I believe that

first mistake here is not just Americans. This is an entire Western world and democratic alliances that have chosen a strategy of deterrence to prevent global disasters and wars that will inevitably affect everyone, even them. And I believe that this is in essence the foundation of the post-World War II order. And the

This was done, first and foremost, to prevent crisis and to counter the influence of malign powers such as China, Iran, and Russia. And for me, what is weird is that these MAGA supporters somehow

They're celebrating the choice that is helping China, Russia, Iran and other countries. And for me, this is a very weird mix of ideas that they see. Also, what strikes me is not unethical.

understanding that America is great and powerful because more or less of three components of its economy, its military and its soft power and soft power. You said is one of the key to the soft power. And you cannot play with this idea. You cannot remove yourself from every country in the world and believe that you're going to stay the most powerful. You will not.

All of these just recently, a few days ago, Indonesia joined BRICS and they explained this decision because America removed funding and because America is not a reliable partner. And Indonesia, maybe not, or Americans may not be seen important, but Indonesia has over 200 million people and they now decided to join China instead of joining the United States.

So when we think about it, is America great again with this? Well, I don't think so. That was Anastasia Marushevskaya of Ukraina International speaking to Ukraine the latest. It's worth mentioning at this point that controversy over USAID did not come out of nowhere. There have long been tensions between USAID and the State Department and calls to bring the aid agency under State Department control or just shut it down altogether go back as far as the 1990s.

In 2020, the United Kingdom folded its own Department for International Development into the Foreign Office, largely as a result of similar tensions. But David Lammy, the British Foreign Secretary over the weekend, said that suspending funding without giving partners a heads up was a big strategic mistake. "We've spent years unravelling that strategic mistake," he said. "Development remains a very important soft power tool and in the absence of development, I'd be very worried that China and others would step into that gap."

So what is the role of aid in the world, in the humanitarian sphere and in the geopolitical competition? And how should governments, taxpayers and agencies find the right balance? I'm joined now by the senior foreign correspondent for The Telegraph, Memphis Barker, who's been reporting on this story for the past two weeks. Memphis, you've been reporting this whole saga of the, I suppose it's fair to call it the destruction of USAID over the past week or so. I mean, we've heard of

from people on two of the front lines that it works on, right? So we've talked to one person who's dealing with something really very humanitarian and straightforward, right? Clearing landmines and unexploded ordnance. And then we've spoken to someone over in Ukraine who I suppose you could say is more kind of right at the front line of the soft power, even hard power battle here. USAID has obviously played a massive role in both of those.

What is going to be the impact of this sudden disappearance in both those areas globally? I think it's going to be

Extremely drastic. I mean, you've had Zelensky in Ukraine was talking in one of his late-night addresses last week and saying he desperately needed the US government to provide him with a list of all the programmes that were going to be immediately cut short. Firewood, electricity, repairs to power stations, getting people out of their homes and going to battle the areas of the front line. All of that stuff's being funded immediately.

to an extremely large degree by USAID. Something like $25 billion uplift in 2022 and 2023. Just to Ukraine. Just to Ukraine. So USAID spends about $40 billion a year. So that money is sizable chunks of cash going to fund these really life-saving programs. And also, you know...

providing, as you say, that sort of soft power counterpoint to a Russian influence, a Russian aggression. And I think that the other side of the story that we hear a lot, lots of recently is the aid cuts across Africa. They're going to be catastrophic in health terms. You've had people in the middle of trials of novel drugs, novel therapies.

suddenly no longer able to access healthcare. Some of them, for example, have experimental RUDs and things like that. They have to go into the USAID's operations and try and get those removed. But the staff who are working on those programmes, some of them say, we're not even allowed to touch these people anymore because we've been ordered to stop work. So it's an extremely seismic

sweeping the developing world as we speak. And I think the reporting over the next couple of months is going to be fairly extraordinary on how that plays out. Not to mention the fairly shocking impact it's had on tens of thousands of USAID employees and the contractors they work with. Let's step back a little bit then in that case, because we've had quite a lot of reporting. You did a very good piece about the immediate impact, the humanitarian impact of this last week, actually.

But let's step back and think about the context of USAID. It came out of the Cold War. It is, I think, certainly, you know, when you're funding media outlets to kind of combat Russian influence, it's clearly an instrument of soft power and American foreign policy. And you can look at that in two ways. I suppose you could look at it as a...

a benign if you're a pro-American, pro-Western, a good thing and so on. Or you could be... I mean, Elon Musk, I've literally just been looking at his ex-feed. He screenshotted a headline talking about independent media having to shut down because of this. And he's written, Independent Le Mal...

On top, basically suggesting, you know, this is just an instrument of the state in a way. It's just an agency of propaganda. What do we think Donald Trump is trying to do here? Is he cutting off an instrument of American power in the world because he's not interested in projecting American power? Or is he simply moving to more emphasis on more direct power?

forms of power. Sharp economic coercion, the threat of economic coercion, the kind of barely veiled threat of physical coercion. It doesn't seem like Donald Trump and Elon Musk even kind of

buy into it at any extent the idea that soft power is effective. They say economic coercion, tariffs, threats of invasion, etc. I think they want to paint the entire operation of USAID as all stemming from the more kind of controversial slash ludicrous examples they highlight. You know, funding DEI initiatives in Serbian workplaces they've mentioned earlier.

a kind of Iraqi version of Sesame Street. And I think their view is that everything that USAID does stems from the same kind of woke principles that would arise from an institution which is broadly staffed by progressive people. Many of them would be privately Democrats. I think that the issue is that the defenders of USAID would say, or even the kind of friendly critics would say that USAID

You can reshape what it does. Really focus on that soft power projection. The army can't do everything. Threats of tariffs can't do everything. I can remember there's a great example from Andrew Natsios, who was the director of USAID under George Bush. He said, we wanted to get a military base built in Djibouti. We're having negotiations. The president says, look, we want a USAID program. You get the base built. They get livestock reform, you know, schools, things like that. Sounds exactly like the kind of transactional

foreign policy that Donald Trump and Elon Musk and so on say they want. Well, exactly. But if you shred the agency, which has the understanding of how those programs work, if you cut it open, you tear it apart, that expertise is going to fall by the waist and you're going to be left with these heavy punching bag style of tactics. And I think, you know, there are some very good arguments for how one might

the programmes that USAID runs. I mean, Paraguay, why there's not much strategic interest for the US in Paraguay. But people say, why don't you focus them on the countries where, in the Caucasus, where Russia is advancing? Why don't you focus them on the countries in the South Pacific where we're under threat from Chinese influence? If you were to get a kind of more hard strategic strategy

style of thought for how the USA should operate, perhaps you can tie it back into those kind of more Cold War-ish principles that Kennedy set it up with. And I think natural resources. China and Russia are investing heavily in countries with, you know, the minerals you need to run electric cars. They're getting shady contracts in these countries because they have much more direct contact, much more influence. If USAID was to be redirected largely to kind of...

I don't know, help countries, put a US presence in those countries. I think that even Republicans would be more favorable for that kind of thing. And a key example of that, I'd say, is Panama.

the heavy, we're going to go and bloody take it back, you know, come what may. Let's see what happens. But what that story is, is partly a story of USAID retrenching. So under Obama, Panama became a middle-income country. No longer has any USAID investment, no USAID involvement. It was formally reclassified as middle-income. Completely. Therefore doesn't qualify for American aid. China

comes into the vacuum. Got ports on either side of the waterway. Much more investment. Again, that is a national security threat, some would say. It's a key waterway. What if there's conflict with China? You're making the case that the retrenchment of USAID that opened the door to a Chinese advance that Donald Trump has expressed massive concern about. Exactly. And I think...

That is where you see an avenue for it being an effective tool of soft power. This subject has generated a lot of heat on both sides, and we've got this in feedback both to Battle Alliance and to our Siddhartha podcast, Ukraine, the latest, and a lot of people who are extremely angry about the suspension of aid. And then you've got more than one correspondent saying, look, I'm sick and tired of foreigners telling us how we should...

spend American taxpayers money, you know, while we're racking up a debt that only we are going to pay for. Haven't they got a point? I mean, if you look at the aid industry as a whole,

I think you could say that the case for a reform is pretty unanswerable. I think that even, you know, as we see these swinging changes made, many would say it's the kind of speed, pace, brutality of them, rather than the desire to see some reflection on the inner part of the aid industry. That's the problem there. Take Haiti, 2010 reconstruction, about $2 billion in USAID spending. Obviously, initially, immediate disaster relief moves into economic development. But those programmes...

They're basically unworkable. The country, people don't understand it well enough. They're sending in consultants, you know, American charity executives. In the end, they start trying to divert some of the structures of government back into private organisations, which is undermining the potential for the government to grow. And something like, you know, four out of eight major programmes never completed and huge sums of money we're talking about here. And I think that that kind of, some would say, hubris of the kind Western...

complex about we can go in, we can fix these things. I think that's been proven wrong again and again and again. And people like William Easley, a famous critic of AIDS, says, you know, in the end, what a lot of these programmes do is they end up

economically distorting countries. He gives the example of Mele Zenawi, the Ethiopian dictator, really, who USAID sort of inadvertently ends up propping up, you know, large amounts of food going in. He no longer has to worry about how to feed his population, can continue with the repression. So I think that's

These moments which might have seen a kind of reflection on the part of Western aid, quite often people say, well, it's not that responsive, it doesn't listen that much, and we keep trying to do things that don't redound to the bit in favour of our national security, but also don't end up delivering the kind of life-changing programmes that we'd like. I think there are categories here. PEPFAR, the USA programme countering HIV in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

very successful. And this is the one that UNAIDS put out a really alarming press release saying they're talking about projecting millions of deaths. That is the one. Another one is an anti-malaria initiative. Both of them very successful. Can I just ask you that? I mean, Marco Rubio was talking about we're going to have waivers for the stuff. I mean, have they made waivers for that? Well, it's like the issue is that people who are, you know, even people I spoke to, an article I wrote about the shutdown is

There are waivers supposedly in place but the system is a huge backlog. No one really knows who to talk to about how to get these waivers through because it's happened in the space of 72 hours. So they don't really know which button they press here and which program...

He's going to be turned off. You know, whether or not they've sorted that out and clarified that PEPFAR will continue, and I have no idea if they've made that decision yet, clearly all across the system you're having, you know, not to mention the fact that under the, they tried to let go almost every USAID staff member working abroad for the numbers was above 10,000 to something like, I can't remember. 300 is the figure I saw. Right, and in Africa you're looking at tens. How are they going to do it if they're doing the work of 50 people?

It's massive and it's dramatic and it definitely follows. It's very Elon Musk-y, really. I mean, he talks a lot about how he move fast, break things. That's how he does stuff. And he is moving fast. He is breaking things. I'm wondering whether Donald Trump and Elon Musk have a point. I think you've already touched on it in the sense that everybody's always known for a long time that there's issues with international development. Is the problem the pace of change?

Or is it maybe time to rethink the entire model of Western aid and humanitarian assistance? I mean, that's probably going to take you more than 72 hours, I'd say. I think that's what's happening now. But I also think the idea behind it, it's both the pace and the extremity, right? Because four days effectively are shut down.

That shutdown predicated apparently on we don't need this at all. And so the two things are sort of linked. It's not like Musk taking over Twitter and saying, I'm going to cull the workforce, I'm going to sharpen what it does, I'm going to sleep in the office, I'm going to get it done, and I'm going to turn this into a successful company. It's Musk saying, I'm going to buy Twitter and then I'm going to shut it down. I'm going to fire everyone, I'm going to close the doors. That's what's happening to USAID at the moment. I think the more kind of...

hawkish Republicans on USAID who are well aware of the issues you've just alluded to would say that imagine Musk did this, imagine he said I'm going to put my top doge brains they're all 25 year olds, I'm going to put all these coders on how could we make USAID a more effective tool aligned with the US's national security interests and then choose the programmes, develop the programmes that would go into the regions that go and do that and that is a possible, plausible thing to do. It is not

the way that this administration operates. This is move fast and break things, as you say. And it looks like USAID is going to be broken rather than reformed under those guiding principles that there's too much waste and there's too little that redounds to the overall national security interests of the US. Well, the question then is, is this administration actually interested in those interests? OK, so, you know, we

we start off with these interviews, he's kind of assuming that America has a national security interest in Southeast Asia, in Ukraine, in the Caucasus, in Africa. Is the implication of this that actually this administration has decided, no, America doesn't have

interests there and it's wasting money by pursuing all this over there. It feels like we're going to look to the end of our borders and we're kind of not too interested in the rising problems or the great power competition in foreign places. I think there's a very interesting article in Foreign Affairs basically saying the Chinese are looking at what's going on and they're saying fantastic you're

you know for us this is fantastic all our efforts to win influence to win support to build trade networks to get our view of the world

kind of rising up as they want to eventually overtake America's, this is now going to supercharge those efforts, is their view. And I feel like one of the things they were reportedly saying in Beijing is we don't even need to do anything at this point. You know, this is happening minus our own direct efforts. And, you know, they feel this will help them overtake America as the world's great superpower. Now, that would seem to me to be

a clear and present national security threat for America. Whether that view is entirely shared across the Trump administration, it feels like it was something that would certainly offend a great number of Americans and a great many Trump voters. Maybe they feel like those two things aren't linked. Maybe they feel like we can do it in other ways. We're going to live to see the consequences. Memphis Barker, thank you very much indeed. That's all for this week. We'll be back on Friday. That was Battlelands. Goodbye.

Thank you.

You can also get in touch directly by emailing battlelines at telegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. Battlelines is produced by Jolene Goffin. The executive producer is Louisa Wells.