Eli Clifton - Senior Advisor & Investigative Journalist | Responsible Statecraft

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I first got interested in investigative journalism as a product of being a news junkie. I thought journalism sounded like a fascinating line of work to be in and I was fortunate enough to get to intern and later work for a small wire service based in out of their DC bureau called Interpress Service. Part of my job there was to cover think tanks which sounds incredibly boring and wonky and I guess aspects of it are. The thing that maybe I was bored at a lot of these events and I started to look around and see that you know the buildings that these think tanks were and were really nice and they had a lot of expensive catered food and they seem to be paying a lot of their employees a lot of money and they had the names of billionaires and major fortune 500 corporations on plaques and naming their conference centers after companies and individuals with a lot of resources and I started to wonder how is what's the economics of all this how is this all put together and I quickly learned that that's not a question you're really supposed to ask you're just sort of supposed to swim in that you know in that golden trough or whatever it is and enjoy the the perks and not ask too many questions about how all of this is put together and maybe even whose interests are being represented. If you can just describe describe what a think tank is people don't quite understand that concept because people may not have ever experienced this before or really understood how this world works. So one interesting thing about think tanks that people always assume is first of all that there is a definition and that there is such a legal thing as a think tank there is no such thing as the legal entity of a think tank but a lot of research institutions in Washington DC and elsewhere usually in capitals around the world are independent entities that conduct policy research and to be clear the audience the intended audience for this research is really generally not the general public it's policy makers and that's not a bad thing it's a good thing I work at a think tank now I'm I'm I will defend that but it's not academic research you're doing it because you're trying to criminal with policy solutions for policy makers to implement so it's a it's a way that one tries to inject ideas and policies into the policy making process. Okay no that makes sense okay so sorry I didn't interrupt your story I just wanted to understand what that was and yeah the more I started looking at it and I was you know reporting on foreign policy and I could very clearly see that a number of institutions in Washington DC where I was were you know I had a very outsized influence in the foreign policy debate they seem to be generating a lot of the analysis and policy proposals and within a peer before congress as witnesses that we're clearly being implemented it is as policy and I started to report more and more on who was funding these entities and who was trying to shape the foreign policy debate and I think the thing that I always come back to with the foreign policy debate is that you know people think of it as very exotic you know that foreign policy is maybe above normal politics in some ways you know politics ends at the water day just nothing very complex and the more I looked at the more I was realizing you know it's not that it's not different than any other contested policy space at least in American politics and probably in contested politics anywhere in the world you know that there's interests there's private interests there's public interest there's foreign interests and they're all competing the only difference is that we don't talk about it we don't talk about it the same way we pretend that this is somehow just a very fair and pure competition of ideas and that everybody wants the same outcome and if you walked into a room where you had people let's say abortion or same-sex marriage or environmental protection of people who are on opposite ends of the debate and said hey guys I assume you all want the same outcome they would laugh at you of course yes of course yes so in disingenuous place to start the discussion right you guys want different out it's okay right that's all right yeah exactly that's how that's how works so I guess the whole point is you know you're you hope that the policy decisions are that are implemented are done by somebody that represents you and represents your country and you feel that they're you know they're they they've reached a level in their aptitude that they can make those smart decisions and you I think everybody understands that there's going to be money that are funding up opposing ideas constantly you just hope that there's enough money funding both sides and then you come to an educated idea after the data and exactly exactly and I think part of that is is to you know and again in other policy spaces I think we talk about it very openly that there's dark money there's influences people want different outcomes um we we have a pretty good conversation about that and foreign policy I don't think that we do um and I think it's really you know it's it's harmful to to to the United States and probably to other countries as well that we are having you know a more honest conversation about the fact that this is a debate that has people want different outcomes and some of those interests are um you know serving a very narrow group of people or even other countries um and you know that's okay but we should at least be having a conversation about it and that's what that's sort of prompted your career path that's why you started to focus on some of these so some of these foreign policy focus think tanks so you have on both sides people putting money into try and what are they trying to solve for like a it obviously foreign policy is immense and massive so there must be some topics that are uh probably more prevalent than others or is it just there's a think tank for literally every conversation every different problem that's being trying to solve the the the US wants to have a hand in at least influencing some way well you know I think that the diversity of think tanks and of ideas inside the beltway for you know to narrow the scope a little bit it's far more limited than um most people would think um and and and and this kind of goes back to merit area of interest in my area for reporting that you know there really is something called the so-called blob which is what uh Benjamin Rhodes referred to as the um you know sort of the foreign policy establishment and excuse me it's it's politicians it's but it's a lot of people who are these analysts at think tanks and they sort of police what are the acceptable uh uh policy lines to take what are the acceptable objectives that we're trying to pursue and the more closely what I look at it the more I I've seen and I've written about this extensively that it's also kind of the same set of funders throughout you know the weapons companies are major funders of uh of think tanks that work on foreign policy so are uh a small set of foreign countries uh the United United Arab Emirates Taiwan Norway Japan are some of the big foreign funders of think tanks and they don't just fund one think tank um they don't just fund uh progressive or liberal think tanks and cons or conservative think tank they'll want to fund across the spectrum and I don't think it's that big of a coincidence then that you don't see an enormous array of of policy ideas coming out little lone policies that make question the US relationship with let's say uh autocratic countries like the United Arab Emirates or question serious questioning of um the size of the defense budget or about whether we need certain weapon systems that are incredibly expensive um those are the types of conversations that it seems like the conversation around that is very constrained interesting so it's it's almost like if you have certain entities that fund both sides then then you're never going to have a discussion around a certain policy that could actually negatively impact uh that entity but you're going to have seemingly an un seemingly like a perceived unbiased view or unbiased donations towards think tanks because it seems like well we're we're funding uh progressive uh liberal and conservative and republican ideas so how can you say that we've ever been biased exactly because they're funding both sides okay I love wrapping my hand around this because this isn't that new to me so I'm like there's all complete layman in this interesting quality here that you know is you know in journalism or in academia there's kind of some rudimentary concepts of uh uh conflict of interest avoidance um yeah but your comments and stuff like you know let's say one of your funders may stand to benefit from the work that you're doing or the argument you're making you would proactively disclose that and you know academic journals talk about doing it journal newspapers talk about this it doesn't mean you can't publish it doesn't mean you can't make that argument um that's not what it doesn't even mean that there's anything in corrupt going on it just means that to protect yourself you proactively say hey you know there's this financial link over here and that's usually considered very positive but also a common sense thing it basically doesn't exist in Washington uh and I've looked very closely at it and sort of in the foreign policy realm you know regularly you'll see think tanks publishing materials that are beneficial to let's say one of their foreign government funders that's urging closer relations between the united states and that country it doesn't mean it's a bad argument it doesn't mean it's wrong but there is something deeply flawed with a uh you know a set of standards that that seem to say that you don't need to disclose a potential conflict of interest like that and that obviously extends in a major way to the weapons companies that are funding or a lot of the foreign policy research in Washington and and and can't believe like I'm just thinking through like the reason why this would be why you protect yourself is because if that if this ever came to light then obviously your argument or your or your policy is discredited immediately but you're saying the issue is that there's not enough conversation so this stuff doesn't really come exactly exactly yeah your your couple steps ahead of me there yeah that the fact is the conversations are there the scrutiny isn't there and as a result some simple standards that you think that are really really you know rudimentary and that people get their heads around in academia or in journalism just don't exist they get thrown out the window you know I asked a major think tank without naming names here um I have a couple times ask them because I've seen them doing things that are beneficial to their funders and I've said do you guys have a conflict of interest policy they said yeah absolutely and I said well can I see it and I said yeah sure we'll send it over and they send it over and it's a really good in-depth policy dictating how to avoid conflicts of interest between outside work and work being done for the think tank by employees of the think tank but it never crossed their minds that there could be a potential conflict of interest between the funders of the think tank and the work that they're producing I mean it's kind of amazing that they were several steps ahead and they hadn't even thought about a more rudimentary one so this is this is your passion this is what you've gotten so when you start to when you start to go into this world um where do you decide to spend your time what what drives you to look at one thing versus another and also how do you immerse yourself in this world so that you can investigate on something that seems to be just that seems to have no discussion around it well I think that that's that's a large part of it and having frankly a lot of people who who who help flag these things to me you know and say hey there's something interesting going on here because I don't I don't pretend to be an expert let's say on you know the the debate over the how or if there should be an end to the Korean War but um you know people have have have assisted me in being like hey there's something going on here there seems to be you know a flood of money um that is pushing you know in a certain direction and no one's talking about it and I am amazed by how often that happens you know normally if there was no a massive sort of dark money for lack of a better term campaign towards a contested policy issue there would be uh you know some questions and other investigative journalists would would dig into it and I think in foreign policy um again it's sort of seen as a elite it's seen as also maybe not something that it's expected that that every day people are supposed to be paying attention to or engaged with and I think just a lot more flies under the radar for lack of a better term and as an investigative journalist I did the the crudest way of putting it but I think it is also true is that it is a very target rich environment because there's not that many people covering it with a high degree of scrutiny and as a result people by acting incredibly brazen ways um yeah yeah um so what did you that makes it's unfortunate it's not right but it's it's not unexpected I guess really no one's looking at it it's exactly it's it's there's a push pull to this you know when there's more scrutiny I think people generally behave better um when there's less scrutiny they don't have to think about it's not even that they go out there saying I want to be I want to do things unethically but you just don't have to put a lot of thought they don't give it a second thought yeah they don't give it that's they don't give it a second thought at worst they do purposely act unethically and knowingly but yeah that's sort of the that's sort of the gamut of of it unscrupanized and heavily financed um arena like that's so as you okay so as you go into this um this particular story what was the what was the the the point that sort of pushed you or the information or the lack for better word I'm not a journalist so the tip that pointed you in this direction to start to look more into this yeah well I think the thing that there was sort of the first step to be there was definitely a first step here which is that I had colleagues that were flagging that there was this really expensive ad campaign or what appeared to be very expensive involving you know video billboards and times square and newspaper advertisements attacking well I mean the creative president Moon Jae-in and the members of the US Congress who had been trying to excuse me in the case of president Moon he'd been you know talking about what end of Korean war may look like in the case of the US Congress it was some very specific legislation HR3446 and I think it was resolution another one 826 which were pretty innocuous pieces of legislation that's what really jumped out um this this was proposed legislation that would have like one of them would have essentially asked the the State Department to explore what what a kind of war situation might look like you know explore you know what diplomatic engagement with North Korea in pursuit of a binding peace agreement is what the language that it used would would look like yeah that that's all sort of explore that something that it's a 70 year war why are we not pursuing on it makes a pretty good sense there's 30,000 Americans still deployed in South Korea mostly to the DMZ why not pursue that the other legislation was even more innocuous it was I think it was called the Divided Family Reunification Act and it just essentially said the United States government should prioritize efforts to to to to to to for there to be meetings between I guess Korean Americans and and and their family members in North Korea potentially just over video you know via zoom or something stuff that I can't imagine really finding this to be at all offensive um and as I looked at this story I was like well yeah for who who would possibly put in Times Square billboards about this um is someone who's pretty passionate somebody very passionate this big old topic yeah um and what is this and and and and then the next two steps really um maybe really think I was not there or something here which was seeing that well for starters it was um there were sort of two sponsors of this one was called the One Korea Network which I had never heard of before and I went and looked and they have this website and it's just chock full of conspiracy theories um a lot of them attacking sort of leftists in South Korea but also being very very very pro-Trump attacking people in the left of the United States and and promoting election conspiracy theories both in South Korea and in the United States um and the other co-sponsor was something called KC PAC which was the Korean conservative political action conference which was an offshoot of a very well-known uh conservative group here in the United States called the consists called CPAC the conservative political action conference uh which holds an annual conference in Washington it was like well why is there a Korean version of this um and then the more I sort of dug into this the more it became clear that you know all of this came back to one woman who had founded both one Korean network and I think it was the chair of both one Korean network and of um KC PAC and her name was Annie MH Chan she was a very very wealthy woman living in Honolulu who had sold bought and sold very expensive properties in Hawaii as well as in California and she and her then husband back in California had over the past several decades being in and out of various technology related businesses and it clearly accumulated you know a fortune that runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars and okay that's interesting but I was like clearly that you know she must not maybe she just wrote it in the background here still still not having a war like I'm sure there's like a thread that runs between all this but it still doesn't make sense to me why um because you know you said KC PAC and CPAC and and right wing and and somebody's associated with conspiracy theories it still doesn't make sense to me and you'll get to that I'm just sure in a second how this all ties back to like North Korea South Korea and bills that really don't do anything negative for anyone like it's all net positive like I don't understand why somebody on the right or the left would be against zoom calls with family members and it doesn't make sense right well well first I'll give you the most sort of innocent innocuous explanation which is I actually think that she genuinely believes this stuff uh you know I've seen a letter that she wrote to Donald Trump um I've seen things she signed on to reports she's signed on to that you know she very much believes that there is a vast conspiracy involving uh uh Chinese and North Korean agents inside the United States and in South Korea who are perpetrating acts of election fraud to uh fundamentally undermine both South Korea and the United States so they can be overrun by by the Chinese and the North Koreans um which I mean I I guess ones entitled to hold that view I don't think there's a lot of evidence to support it um the thing that things get a little more concerning when um I started to look at some of her business interests and she was involved in something called IP3 international which was a uh civilian nuclear firm based here in the United States that was uh involved a few years ago in a rather sketchy to try to export a sensitive civilian nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia it was blocked it was a scandal Mike Flynn was involved um and they had pivoted since then towards trying to uh build up a business continuing to export civilian nuclear technology but justifying the proliferation of these small reactors on the basis that if they're that in a world with great power competition where the United States is challenged by China and Russia that uh energy is going to be a component of this competition and the only way to compete is to uh approve the export of these sensitive technologies to Europe into the Middle East uh technologies which incidentally South Korea has quite a bit of as well and they were going to do this in partnership with South Korean um uh nuclear power firms so there is a profit dimension to what she was doing or at least it appears that way where she was saying you know the South the Chinese are coming to get us the North Koreans are coming to get us um and at one level it's you know if this is purely philanthropic or interests and she's funding these and news outlet that's publishing you know basically fake news just outlandish conspiracy theories about the elections um she's publishing reports alongside really conspiracy theory oriented organizations in Washington that we're talking about election fraud in the in the 2020 election that again are totally baseless um and in the other on over here then she's engaged in being involved in a company that says it's going to profit effectively from great power competition in the world so it sort of is like the ugly underside of when people talk about great power competition when people talk about um you know uh uh approving the export of nuclear technologies for that purpose you know you don't get there without making people afraid you don't maybe you don't get there organically to have that type of a hostile relationship between countries maybe it needs a little bit of a nut it's funny though and that's where I see you what she was doing and I think it's kind of sinister it is it is sinister and and I'm just curious why it feels like there's a need to do this because I don't think the average American has a positive view of North Korea anyways I don't think that I don't think but I feel like this is actually instigating fear in an incorrect way like I feel like the actual things that she's campaigning against those have nothing to do with North Korea and their policies and I feel like North Korea really doesn't have any uh ability to significantly impact the US in any meaningful way at all but I mean like nobody looks at North Korea and is like oh that's a you know that's a place that I'd want to go on a trip right like no they haven't really done a lot of great stuff for them for themselves but still to do that is just hurting it's it's it's instigating fear it's creating fear it's hurting people that those bills are actually trying to help which are the people that are actually living in North Korea that are not the bad guys in North Korea they're just the families that are there trying to live their life right well I mean I think in a sense the uphill battle that she is fighting is even harder than what you just portrayed now I agree most Americans don't don't wake up and and say you know wow I'm really concerned that the North Koreans are coming to get me or I believe that North Korea and the Chinese are subverting our elections true yeah um but I think the problem that maybe she is up against and I think a lot of people who are concerned about you know the talk about wanting to sort of fan the flames again of these of these conflicts are that the public is actually shifting away from being sympathetic to those views so maybe there's a need to overcompensate and and and I I would sort of look back at polling data that shows you know 70 percent of South Koreans you know have basically said they agreed with President Moon's proposal to end the Korean War and Americans are also you know pretty tired of of the endless wars that have defined the past the past in two decades you know nearly nearly two-thirds of Americans who are under 30 you know believe the US should respond to China's rise by decreasing US troop presence in Asia which is and that number is growing of Americans who who feel that way and you know over and a growing number of Americans also think United States should make greater effort to engage in diplomacy in as a leading component of US foreign policy so I think that there's a that people like her and people who not just stand up potentially profit from great power competition but genuinely probably believe that these countries are hell bent on destroying not just the United States but apparently South Korea as well must look at that data must look at the trends look at the fact that you know look in the last presidential election candidates like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders both of whom are very critical of you know the endless wars that have been waged by the United States see which will but either those candidates you know they both were consistent with that messaging I think they see that and it probably concerns them a great deal what I think where I think things kind of go off the rails is that maybe they feel that the situation is getting so that they are losing control of the narrative to such a degree that it necessitates some really extreme frankly absurd types of messaging and outright lives a quick break from this podcast to recommend another 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whether or not that's valid or not but I think you have to uncover like the truth in that particular fear so for example like in some parts of the world I'm sure countries don't love the US but other parts I'm sure the cut it's not as bad as we think it is but when you do things like this I feel like it polarizes people it does exactly it again like exactly what you said it it removes people's ability to think for themselves critically because the facts are so absurd and it removes proper understanding of foreign policy because the foreign policy that's presented is so abstract and absurd and polarizing that you feel like that you have to go all the way to one end of the spectrum or the other and that's where you have to sit where the truth is probably like somewhere more in the middle somewhere more moderate like I'm sure like I like again I said this before I don't think North Korea like loves the US but I don't think I don't think China's relationship is as bad as definitely as North Korea is definitely not but I do believe that by having these types of campaigns not only is it serving like a very selfish a selfish initiative but also it removes people's ability to think for themselves well and critically and that's the worst thing about it it basically dumps down the it dumps down the message to extreme opposites exactly and you're dumbing it down in a way that's it's so and I think you just hit the nail on the head here it's it's centered on a feature horrible you know that where you look at what one Korean network in KC pack and you know sort of the network of Annie Chan was producing it's telling people basically that their political identity their cultural identity their national identity is all under threat which is not true and it's coming from the Chinese and the North Koreans and the only solution is to back you know basically you know right-wing nationalists in in both countries and to oppose even the most innocuous attempts at diplomacy and that's pretty concerning you know that that that that those are some dangerous threads that she's pulling and I think that you know again I go back to the election conspiracy stuff that's really disturbing to see that you know she was pushing and one Korean network and and other folks in her network were pushing theories about the election in South Korea that was before the US election in 2020 and that the those conspiracy theories were ones that were later present in the United States and I think it's you know we think that a lot of it you know it's United States we you know we kind of think in the insular way sometimes when we think that these you know crazy conspiracy theories about Chinese vote tampering are you know entirely something produced by and for Americans for the American election and that that's where it came out of and instead you see that no some of this was actually going on in South Korea earlier you know a lot of these theories didn't just come out of nowhere I'm not saying that you know that that they were you know the same people running them in both countries but it was absolutely in South Korea before the United States some of those theories and she was a very vocal person who was amplifying them and and I think that you know it may explain to some degree the role with which you know those those became so prevalent here to give an example Trump's rally in Tulsa in which in I guess it was maybe June of 2020 got a lot of attention because Korean K-pop fans and and teen users of TikTok bottle the tickets it was really funny the Trump campaign thought that they were like going to have overflow exactly after lockdowns from the pandemic and and they were like you know they they had like overflow capacity in the parking lot because they had like sold out three times over on the arena on the tickets and and then like nobody showed up because of these K-pop and and and teens K-pop fans and teens on TikTok bottle the tickets was hilarious and you know even within the Trump campaign there was you know there's emails leaked out where they were talking about everyone knows what happened after the fact at least except this woman who was publishing you know in this letter she wrote a Donald Trump she was claiming that the that actually this was the work of you know of of of North Korean and Chinese intelligence um you mean that type of a mindset like really really out of touch really she's applying that prism to everything that she's seen and that's and like very very much out of touch with reality but also very wealthy and that's dangerous that's very dangerous absolutely and you know this yeah exactly so well I mean so she has these crazy views that's fine you know there's no shortage of people that probably hold these views unfortunately however this is somebody who put you know around a million dollars probably now over a million dollars into this effort and that's where it starts to get a little bit scary that you know how can this person who can bring these types of resources to bear be essentially a ghost largely unknown um you know welcomed onto the board of this Virginia very close to Washington DC based nuclear power company that has former diplomats uh former senior military officials on it involved in it yeah that this is kind of disturbing that you can see how the combination of money some kind of radical views and frankly people just not paying a lot of attention uh to who's funding these things and what they're saying could let someone like that really move in a lot of different circles and starts to seriously influence the policy debate so so we understand the issue and we understand uh what what she did and and and some of the reasons is to is to why she did it um but what's what's the solution like what like you're you're one journalist and as much as you can pick one story at a time and one person to focus on at a time that's a lot of work for one person so how do we actually move the needle on this stuff how do we create more exposure how do we hold people accountable so that this doesn't this doesn't poison the minds of people and doesn't create that fear god knows we've had enough of it in the past three years we don't need anymore so what do we do well you know i think part of it is exposing ourselves to these stories reading them uh and recognizing that for every one of these stories that that we do discover and hear about there's probably a dozen more um i think it's the idea and i think people are becoming a tune to the fact that dark money is actively involved in shaping the US political debate um and i would hope that as we do that it starts to make it something that sort of gatekeepers as it were at major institutions as well as in media start to uh pay attention to and so i guess there's that there's that answer which is that i hope we're facing a cultural shift here and i think that you know for the most part people skepticism about the role of money in politics has has really been helpful um in in that respect that when i write a story like this i'm not just starting from scratch explaining how you know money people with moneyed interests may want to influence the political system in a ways that are beneficial to them and actually detrimental to the majority of americans um or in this case people in south korea as well so i think there is that quality that the more we see these stories the more they get reported the the more we start to look at this with a critical eye but i think there's another dimension here and this is something that i've i've started to to to engage with more i wrote a report last year about this which is that you know we do need to have some ethical standards in the institutions in Washington dc that oftentimes shape the foreign policy debate um and the policy debate more broadly because most think tanks don't just do foreign policy um and that's that as we were going back to earlier that think tanks really need to to implement certain fundamental transparency standards which means showing who your funders are would be on major one uh and and i will say that there has been really good does a really good trend with that which is that i'd say in the past 10 years the vast majority of think tanks in Washington especially the big ones are disclosing their funding and that's a huge huge huge positive development to be as i was saying earlier they don't have their legal status is that they are a 501c3 which is a non-profit that has no obligation to disclose their funders so they need to voluntarily do it and they are um second i would like to see them actually comply with the foreign agent registration act which to in sort of broad terms is a law we have in the United States which which says that you know if you're acting as the agent of a foreign principle um you need to disclose that and what does that what does that mean exactly because that because because in this particular case that wasn't the case she's resident of Hawaii of so she's not even uh a foreign agent in her case it is in her case it wouldn't have mattered but in terms of the foreign policy debate more broadly it goes on it's pretty prevalent you know that we have think tanks that are taking foreign money and they produce content that is designed to influence policy and often that is um you know part of conditional grants given to them by foreign governments and uh and they basically have refused to file to disclose that under the foreign agent registration act so it's also complying with the law what i think help a lot with the with with with with how the debate is conducted and and finally and i think this does kind of go back to somebody like Annie Chan the idea of a conflict of interest is something that um most people understand and Annie Chan has a big one which is that she was a board member of a company that stood to benefit financially and it talked about how it would benefit from great power competition as she called as they call it um with with Russia and China and the work that she was actively involved in producing at one Korean network and KC PAC was pretty explicitly about furthering that agenda you know pushing out crazy conspiracy theories about the role of China pushing out the idea that even the nuclear power was part of a solution to that uh to that competition and would give the United States an advantage so that's actually stuff that they published at one Korean network while never disclosing that the chair of this organization uh in this news outlet um had potentially uh an opportunity to profit from that argument and those policies and policies that would come from it and i think that starting to have an open conversation about conflict of interest is probably the most important thing we can do and it's something that um uh folks again inform policy about a nathema too and i think in other policy areas there's a little more awareness of it and i think that this is just a glaring example of somebody who stood to make a lot of money potentially from uh bringing out some of the worst uh policies that we could come up with uh prolonging a war that a lot of Americans think we need to end and then a lot of people in South Korea uh would like to see uh come to an end as well i mean endless war in on the Korean peninsula is really not in uh very many people's um uh interest maybe maybe for Andy Chan and her business associates it was and and maybe just help me understand like i probably should have asked this a bit earlier but when you say that she puts up a billboard and time square and she spends about a million dollars even that seems inconsequential in the grand scheme of things like can you change an entire country's perspective on a particular thing with a a a million dollar budget because i i know how much it would cost to reach that many people repeatedly to actually influence so it doesn't need to be a lot more than that or is it significant in the foreign policy debate it's significant uh a lot of and i think this is a great example actually of why it's significant because a lot of the time that we're talking about when you think about the budgets that are required to move policy generally we're talking about policy areas where there's a lot of attention on it where it's already in the media where it's already top of mind for a lot of Americans um and where there are uh very well-defined um uh parties pushing on both sides so there is a that's a very expensive competition to be involved in uh you know the most expensive example would be American presidential elections where you know a billion dollars is you know kind of where the budget is headed towards for some of these campaigns uh it's incredibly costly partially because it's contested and i think in this example it's a good example of where you know these were advertisements that were targeting specific members of congress doing so uh to try to reach out i think to korean americans and get them to call their members of congress how many korean american members of congress call any given member on a day with a specific policy ask about a piece of legislation involving uh video calls with uh to know not many not many not many you don't need to mobilize a lot of people uh if you could make some noise if you can scare some people if you can mobilize them you're going to be moving them to press on a member of congress where foreign policy is definitely not their top priority because most of it i don't think there's a single congressional race that is determined by foreign policy um so this is this is this is not generally a top issue for a member of congress it's not generally a top issue for a voter and if you can get in there and apply a little bit of pressure and make people a little bit uncomfortable there is definitely a possibility that you can have outsized impact so i think one of the reasons that relatively small sums of money can make a big difference in foreign policy is that while objectively the stakes are high it's matters of war and peace often um the number of actors are limited the target audience is limited the number of people paying attention is limited and all of that could mean that the total cost don't have to be that high so that's that's even scarier to be honest it is scarier exactly it makes it just a rip for people like Annie Chan and people who have pretty radical views on foreign policy to say hey you know what maybe there's a number of different policy areas that i have an interest in i know i want to make the biggest bank for my buck that i can foreign policy might be where it's at has there been any has she been held accountable for anything since your story has been published has there been any action taken at all she's been removed she's been been she appears to have been removed from the board of the nuclear company she they they've deleted her photo name and profile from their website okay well that's something they're not responding to me when i've asked about what happened um one of the one of the points in the article that i thought was interesting just to provide a little bit of context about how big this issue is you mentioned uh Chan appears to be borrowing borrowing from a well-worn playbook in her efforts to inject money into the US political system to generate personal profits while also influencing influencing a lead opinion to steer foreign policy and militaristic direction east Asia how often does stuff like this happen for people that aren't aware it happens often and it happens at the um the upper echelons of political funding um i think the best example that i point to is uh excuse me is um the late uh sheldon adelson who was the top the top funder of the republican party he was so for many election cycles um and the coverage of his giving to to again i'm gonna bring my media criticism here of his political giving was people that there were every single election cycle he he and his wife Miriam who is going to continue to give apparently at a high level in the republican party um and the two of them to be clear were the biggest funders have not just the presidential racist but also congressional racists for the republican party and there would always be these speculations about why do they give their money and these they would say well you know hey they have interest in the gaming industry you know they have one of the biggest casino firms united states and and and Macau and you know well maybe they care about gaming regulation it's a possibility another speculation was that maybe they did it because they they wanted to get the estate tax lowered so they could pass on more money to their children which is a possibility all totally fair speculations for people somebody who was worth you know tens of billions of dollars but we never talked about or at least the mainstream media never really gave too much credence to the fact that he had actually been pretty clear about why he gave the money which was foreign policy um and it was about you know maintaining uh US support not just for Israel but for Israel's you know right wing liquid party in some pretty radical respects Sheldon Adelson talked about that he thought that the US negotiating position with Iran should be to drop a nuclear weapon on on in the Iranian desert as he put it and tell them that the second one is going to fall on Tehran if they don't give up their nuclear program um these are people who went on to lobby for the for the release of Jonathan Pollard convicted spy um that the US intelligence agencies had been very adamant should not be released and certainly his the terms of his parole when he was let out of prison shouldn't let him leave the country um and the Adelson's actively you know we're very open about the fact they were lobbying for his for his release and for his parole to be lifted so he could leave the United States he was spied for Israel and they flew him on one of their private planes to Israel in the last days of the Trump administration um so they did these things openly you know they talked about it new gingrich who is a recipient of their money said you know their top issue is foreign policy and it's it's about you know maintaining US support for Israel so I think it happens at the top levels of the party and we saw during the Iran nuclear deal debate in 2015 that you know the Republican party fell in line effectively with where Sheldon Adelson was uh because he funded every single one of their campaigns um and we saw it in the presidential election in 2016 when Donald Trump after saying initially that he was not going to take Sheldon Adelson's money and that he was really thought the United States should be a neutral arbiter in the Israeli Palestinian conflict and his main complaint about the Iran nuclear deal was that uh Iran wasn't buying too many air bus planes and not enough Boeing planes uh turned around and said you know after he won the nomination and he needed to shuttle out Sheldon Adelson's money he reversed course on all of that ended up abrogating from the nuclear deal uh very much in Adelson's encouragement so to go back to sort of where I concluded with that story about you know that this is a time this is this is a this is a strategy that has been utilized a great deal um and I I think it happens at the top level of the political process again because there's not a lot of scrutiny about it people don't pay as much attention as they should before policy and money talks it works it really works and I think people like Sheldon Adelson and to maybe you know and more limited model for looking somebody like Annie Chan they know what they're doing and they know that we see these sums of money and say how could you shift U.S. foreign policy with it and they would say well because because that's quite easily yeah um yeah and again you look at Sheldon Adelson I think he shapes the Republican Party it shapes shaped because he died last year but he shaped the Republican Party's foreign policy platform quite effectively and people openly it's not a secret that he did this um to to to wrap this up because I want to go into some rapid fire just to close it out just to pull it from your insights but with with your work and and what you've done over your career and some of the things you've exposed and and investigated what did you what do you hope will sort of like what do you hope you will accomplish or you will be able to accomplish in your career what do you want your legacy to be when people speak about your work in a hundred years from now what do you want them to say I want to it's not a um it's not the sexy answer but there is no sexy answer do you answer whatever you want it to be that's important I want to normalize the foreign policy debate okay I think it should be normal I think we should uh it's okay if it's partisan it's okay if people have different views it's okay if people want different outcomes but let's stop pretending that it's something else let's stop pretending that the adults are in the room and they all want the same outcome and they're all pulling in the same direction and and the differences are really just differences of how we're gonna execute on this it's not a matter of wanting different outcomes it's unhealthy uh it gets you bad policy I think it tends to steer the United States towards uh not questioning the mistakes that it's made in the past and frankly I think it leads toward the United States being involved in endless wars if you're not willing to question the policies you've pursued no it's very smart so I think normalizing that debate broadening it so you can bring in more voices getting rid of some of the gatekeepers on it um and acknowledging that hey there's money to interest here there's foreign interests here there's people who who who want conflict because it happens to be good for their bottom line you know the weapons firms do not want peace any chance does not want peace she is very clear she's involved in a business that wants a great power competition I don't think you should outlaw that but people should know it but I think we should be able to at least at least we should know what we should talk about it you know and not pretend that this is a very clean space that's somehow different than other dimensions of uh uh the US political debate uh people want to connect with you where should they go all the social website all that stuff social Eli Clifton on Twitter uh check me out there I publish a responsible statecraft org which is the publication of the Quincy Institute which I was involved in founding I'm very proud of it it's an awesome think tank that tries to promote policies that will uh have the United States engaging with the rest of the rest with the rest of the world with vigorous diplomacy instead of with endless war um and uh I like to think that we're part of normalizing that political amazing okay good all right it's a couple of rabbit farted closes out so vigorous challenge yeah yeah perfect um biggest challenge you've overcome in your own personal life what was it had you overcome it what you learned from it that's a good one uh the biggest challenge um writing things that I thought were meaningful that nobody found interesting I think that's actually the biggest challenge in my work and I think that made me want to just give up on it sometimes is when you think you have something meaningful to say and you think you've done some interesting research and um and it's just not something that others see as meaningful and I I know that's sort of a broad thing it's not a creative though any creator but it's the biggest challenge as a journalist is like you know when you feel like you're just banging your head against a wall how do you how do you keep going like what drives you where do you find that motivation to write the next one it's the hope that the next one will will redeem that you know it's that hope that that you know it's being a gambler to some degree right it's that you want that dopamine hit and it's well maybe I missed um maybe I didn't tell the story the right way maybe maybe there was nothing I could do and I just picked the wrong story to tell um but it's it's the it's the it's the wanting to redeem oneself from the stories that that didn't that didn't hit if you had to choose one person obviously there's been many pick one person who's had a major impact on your career on your life who was it what did they teach you oh one person um I mean I would have to give credit to to to Jim Loeb who uh you know was the first person to give me an opportunity to do journalism he was the bureau chief in Washington DC at Interpress Service and he encouraged me to go to those think tanks and not just start writing up the reports and the press releases verbatim and start to dig into who was behind this who was paying for it who was financing it uh if you had to recommend a book or a podcast something that's impacted your life um book or a podcast um I would say for I would I'm far more drawn I mean I listen to variety podcasts but I do think the books have you know a timeless element to them um so I guess there's a few that that really do um jump out at me dark money is is it just an incredible one what's it about just a people know that it's it's about the role of dark money by by vain mayor um and she digs into the uh networks that have funded the American political debate in ways that um that the shape policy outcomes that affect everyday Americans um and I think it's uh I think it's very very powerful other books that that I've really that that have done so much for I think shaping my world view would be king leopold's ghost which is amazing the story of the Belgian Congo again at how decisions made a continental way can impact the lives of so many people um on the other side of the world um and and finally I would I would point to to to Steve Cole's uh books the uh ghost wars the binladens um which offered degree of um of detail and storytelling about about the endless wars especially in Afghanistan but also al-Qaeda and the global war on terror um in a way that I can't recommend highly enough you know that just you you feel like you're you feel like you're there for for events that are occurring you feel like you get to understand the ins and outs of the binladen family and about al-Qaeda and about the u.s. war in Afghanistan uh in ways that I think of more people had um had understood at that level we probably wouldn't have engaged in in two decades of of endless wars and failed nation building very good um if you could tell your 20-year-old self one thing what would it be piss more people off it's fun and i love that the most part it it pays it pays dividends um you know the journalism that that gets you those angry phone calls the number of times you get told you'll never work in this town again are are all are all badges on her and i love those phone calls and last but i've learned to love those phone calls i've learned to love those phone calls i think i think i think when you expose people or when you when you bring things to let you have to have tough skin it's not easy it's not easy at all yeah yeah and i and i used to actually despite the fact that i love the research and i love exposing things i used to dread those calls and those emails and um and now to the opposite now i look forward to them uh in last question what is success mean to you success to me means getting to do what one loves you know you only you only have one life and um i'm i'm very very fortunate that uh i've gotten to do things that i find meaningful and that i really enjoy uh and i think that's a privilege uh that probably most people don't don't get to have uh and you know every day that i'm doing what i'm doing i'm just incredibly grateful that i get to do it uh i think a lot of times in journalism you know it's uh there's not a lot of jobs out there and every time i see somebody that's good at it get the opportunity i always you know right that that email but you know hey you know congratulations but you know also just you know just remember this is this is incredible you know most most people don't get to do this i agree uh and it's it's pretty cool when you get to