Podcast

Hi, this is Christy from Back to the Bar. You've probably heard about GLP1 weight loss medications and the side effects that can come with jumping in too fast. That's why I love Noom. Makes getting started easy. Their microdose GLP1 program begins with a smaller dose and gradually scales up based.

On how your body reacts.

The Noom GLP1 microdose program starts at $99 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your microdose GLP1 journey today at noom.com that's n o o m.com Noom micro changes big results average weight loss.

8 pounds in first month meds and personalization based on clinical need and not available to all individuals. Medications are not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy or quality. Pricing based on first month only hey.

Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile' unlimited wireless for $15 a month.

Now you don't even need to wrap it.

Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com.

The Economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from hello, I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Nigerian politics is a nasty place for women. Our correspondent says that's apparent in the details of a sexual harassment scandal that'll be litigated in a parliamentary hearing today. And there's one behavior that employees find more annoying than any other, having their ideas stolen. But our columnist says there are plenty of reasons to forgive thieving colleagues or to wait for the theft to backfire. First up, Ten days ago, America carried out the largest airstrikes on Yemen since President Trump took office. Again, the targets were radar and drone systems used by Houthi rebels, an Iran backed militia that's been threatening trade routes in the red Sea since 2023. You know who wasn't surprised by the strikes? Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine. You know why? Because he had been added to a group on the encrypted messaging app Signal, in which everybody who's anybody in America's security establishment was plotting out the attacks and you know, who claimed not to know a damn thing about it.

You're saying that they had what they.

Were using signal to coordinate on sensitive materials.

And having to do with what? Having to do with what? What were they talking about?

With the Houthis.

The Houthis? You mean the attack on the Houthis? Well, it couldn't have been very effective because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that. I don't know anything about it. You're telling me about it for the first time any.

It all adds up to a really genuinely breathtaking lapse in security, whether or not the President knew, you know, the kind of lapse that could derail a Clinton campaign. And journalists the world over are having a field day with the revelations.

Every journalist looking at this story is thinking, why didn't they add me? Because this is an incredible scoop.

Shashank Joshi is our defense editor.

And then the second thought is, my God, this is just an extraordinary data breach. This is astonishing incompetence, astonishingly bad handling of classified information, and very revealing about the inner workings of the Trump administration.

Okay, so let's go through how this came to pass.

So it begins on March 11th. Jeffrey Goldberg, he's the editor in chief of the Atlantic magazine. He gets a request on Signal, which is for those who don't use it. This is an encrypted messaging app. It's a little bit like iMessage or WhatsApp. It's often viewed by people in defense and national security circles as being a little bit more secure than those other apps. And he gets a connection request from someone who appears to be Mike Waltz, who is the National Security Advisor of the United States, the nsa. Two days later, things take an even stranger turn when Goldberg is added to a discussion group called the Houthi PC Small Group. Now, I need to break that down a bit, Jason. The Houthis are the armed group in Yemen that's been attacking shipping. And PC means the Principals Committee, which is kind of the group of senior officials who make decisions in the US Government. So this looks like it's a group that's created to coordinate upcoming military action against the Houthi militia in yemen. There are 18 members. They appear to include J.D. vance, the vice President Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary, many, many more as well. What then follows is an incredible series of messages deliberating over whether the United States should bomb Yemen. And then Ultimately, Pete Hegseth tests the war plans themselves. Incredibly detailed messages about the weapons that will be used, the target. So he ends up knowing about this strike two hours before the rest of the world. And this ends up being a quite remarkable leak of very sensitive information.

And so in those messages, beyond the detailed military plans, what do you see?

There's lots. It's, in a way, the sort of chat you might have with your friends, Jason, except presumably, you're not discussing the bombing of Yemen. It's laden with emojis. There's a great moment where, you know, there's prayer emojis after the strikes occur. There's one with flexed muscles and American flags and fire. It's a sort of very colloquial, casual conversation. Jeffrey Goldberg has been pretty responsible. He's redacted the most sensitive information in these chats. He's, for example, not told us the names of serving CIA officers. He's not told us details of the weapons, the targets. But what you see is that the way this administration talks about Europe in public is the way they talk about it in private. They do not. Not like Europeans. You have JD Vance saying, I hate bailing Europe out again. Pete Hegseth says, I fully share your loathing of European freeloading. It's pathetic. Stephen Miller, who's a White House official, basically says, how do we bill the Europeans for this operation? How do we bomb Yemen without consulting them and then send them an invoice for it? The concern they have is that reopening the Red Sea, which the Houthis are disrupting, would benefit Europe and Egypt more than it would benefit America. So they somehow want to know, why are we doing this? Why is America doing this? It gives you a hint of that opposition to kind of military entanglement abroad, particularly from JD Vance. This really shows you that contempt for Europe that we see in public. That's exactly what they think in private as well.

And insofar as we haven't learned anything new about the stance of the administration on Europe, how serious is this breach really?

I think it's a pretty serious breach. Look, officials in many countries use SIGNAL to talk to journalists and others and to talk to each other. It's not unconscionable that Mike Waltz was using Signal. It's not unconscionable. He has Jeffrey Goldberg in his contact book. You know, officials talk to journalists. Great shock. I think there's two mistakes here. One of them is Mike Waltz adding a journalist to this internal chat. But the much, much more serious breach is the use of this unclassified system. You know, it's an encrypted app, but it's operating on an unclassified, unsecure pH to discuss highly classified system. That's a breach of American law. It's a breach of the law. It's what the Republicans were very angry at Hillary Clinton about back in 2016. And by the way, one of the particularly concerning things here is that Steve Witkoff, who is really the point man on Russia, Ukraine talks, appears to have been in Moscow at the time that some of these messages were being sent to him. That raises the question of whether his phone, with these conversations, with that chat and perhaps many other sensitive chats on Russia, Ukraine related issues, were on a phone that were accessible to Russian intelligence services. I think there will be real questions asked about this. You know, last week I spoke on the intelligence about the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. I said allies would be wondering whether the Trump administration is capable of keeping secrets safe. This is not the kind of thing that will fill them with confidence on.

That front, but will there be any accountability is the question. This is an administration that can deny and deflect and delay ad nauseam. Do you think heads will roll?

Well, you're right, it denies. It deflects. Pete Hegseth's claim that he wasn't texting war plans appears to be a lie. I think that Mike Waltz is in real trouble. Let's remember here, Waltz is more of an orthodox Republican. You know, he's not a Make America Great Again super Trumpy guy in the way that J.D. vance is, in the way that Steve Witkoff is. And so I think Waltz was already probably on slightly shakier ground. He is also the man who is supposed to be coordinating these meetings. That's what the national security advisor does. I think that the White House will be very angry at him. Hegseth has also made a serious breach here, but Hegseth is more of a Trumpy guy. And you can see the way he's come out fighting is the way that Trump probably likes. So I have a feeling that Waltz could get in more trouble for this. The National Security Council says there's a review underway to find out how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. I don't think we need the FBI for that, Jason. I think we can see how it happened. Mike Waltz did it. But the funny thing I thought is that they're also insisting that this exchange was a, quote, a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. All I'll say is that anyone familiar with the multi decade history of American foreign policy deliberations has probably never seen a flexing bicep, an American flag, a fire emoji in the great historical record when discussing American wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Korea. Let's remember that this comes days after Steve Witkoff gave an interview to Tucker Carlson, a pro Trump journalist, in which he exhibited breathtaking ignorance about the most basic elements of his brief in negotiating with Russia. He couldn't name two of the five occupied regions that Russia claims, despite being apparently quite enthusiastic to give them away. I think that events like this will compound the sense that this is an administration that just lacks a basic sense of coherent foreign policy process. And that should be a concern to Congress, it should be a concern to Americans, and it will be a concern to allies.

Shishong, thank you very much for your time as always.

Thanks Jason. I'll see you in the Economist Signal Chat.

Foreign hi, this is Christy from Back to the Bar. You've probably heard about GLP1 weight loss medications and the side effects that can come with jumping in too fast. That's why I love Noom makes getting started easy. Their microdose GLP1 program begins with a smaller dose and gradually scales up based.

On how your body reacts.

The Noom GLP1 microdose program starts at $99 and is delivered to your door in seven days. Start your microdose GLP1 journey today at noom.com that's n o o m.com Noom micro changes big results average weight loss.

8 pounds in first month meds and personalization based on clinical need and not available to all individuals. Medications are not reviewed by FDA for safety, efficacy or quality. Pricing based on first month only.

When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe, Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products and sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.comretail all lowercase go to shopify.comretail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.comretail.

My first trial into politics was in the year 2019 under the platform of the Social Democratic Party.

In 2019, Natasha Akbati Udoha unsuccessfully ran for governor of Nigeria's middle belt state, Kogi.

It was a very tough journey. It was laced with violence, violence in all forms. The physical attacks. My person, my constituents, my followers who were killed. The houses were burnt down, they were beaten up. Every time we went out to campaign, we were beaten up. We were shot at.

She lost that election, but undeterred, she decided to run for the Senate.

Ore Ogunbiye is our Africa correspondent.

The day before that vote in 2023, she faced yet another obstacle.

Now, all the roads, the five roads, they were cut, should I say gullies, were made out of them.

Five major roads to her constituency were dug out so that election materials couldn't get to them. And it took her six months before she was finally sworn in as senator because she had to appeal for rejected ballots to be included in the vote. Throughout her entire journey into politics, she's faced violence, verbal abuse, cyberbullying, and more.

It seems to be the regular norm here, especially when you're a woman.

Her story is a reflection of the harsh conditions that women face in Nigerian politics.

And Ori, before we get into that sort of bigger political picture, how have things gone for Senator Ahboti Udoha since she's been sworn in?

Well, they're not going too well at the moment. Most recently, she struggled to get bills passed and was told to sit in a remote corner of the chamber where she'd basically be out of public view for seven months.

I have not been able to raise my motions, contribute to debates, or take second readings of my numerous bills that the Senate president had silenced me on the floor of the Senate for the past seven months.

Senator Akbuti claims that the reason she's being singled out like this is retaliation by Godwell Agbabio, the Senate president, for rejecting his sexual advances. So after refusing to sit where she was told, she formally accused him, the Senate president, of sexual harassment. The ethics committee got together and hastily recommended that she be suspended. And the Senate president did exactly that on March 6, suspending her for six months, withdrawing all her security. He said she's not allowed anywhere near the national assembly or her office. Basically, these are some of the harshest conditions that we've ever seen regarding a senator's suspension. Now, the Senate president, Khozulak Babio, denies sexually harassing her, and he says that Senator Akbati's suspension is actually unrelated to her complaint against him, that she was suspended for gross misconduct. And there's an initial court hearing which is slated for today.

And coming back to that broader political picture, you were hinting at. This is perhaps not so surprising in Nigerian politics. Or is it?

Unfortunately, it's not. Women are very, very underrepresented in Nigeria's politics. It has one of the lowest shares of female representation in government in the world. No Nigerian state has ever elected a female governor. No major party has put a woman on a presidential ticket. Of the 360 members in the Lower House, only 17 are women. Senator Akwoti Udohan is one of only four women in the entire senate. And the few women who do then make it to politics often find themselves silenced, which is part of what is getting senator potty so riled up. She was laughed at when she presented her sexual harassment petition in the senate. There's been comments about her outfits. Some people suggested that her husband should apologize on her behalf for making a scene during the suspension ruling. Her mic was turned off before she could even defend herself.

And what's behind this? What is it that is causing this disrespect of women in politics?

I think the reasons are mostly cultural. Ultimately, Nigeria is still a deeply patriarchal society, and a lot of people find and still find the idea of women being in such powerful positions just a little irksome. And politics is just another area of life where we see that women are infantilized all the time. Senator akbati keeps being referred to by her first name. She's being called a girl, a troublesome girl. And this is why it's near impossible for women without powerful backers. So whether that's husbands or bosses to break into politics because they're sometimes treated as proxies for men. And it's because these attitudes are so widespread that senator boti's case is resonating with so many people. There are parallels that can be drawn with Nigerian women across society who are just trying to be good at their jobs.

And you say there's an initial court hearing today about her suspension. How do you think that's gonna go?

It's a tough question. I don't think it's looking good. If the court case goes her way, she could return to her seat. But it's going to be a very long fight because everything takes ages to go through Nigeria's courts, which means that there might not even be a ruling before her suspension is over. But also, all the suspensions that have ever been overturned through the courts before have only been of men and of men with powerful backers. She doesn't even have that much support within the senate, let alone beyond it. And even among the few other female senators who are in the House. Their responses have ranged from weak to outright disappointing. So not only is she a woman, but she's politically unpopular and from an opposition party. In fact, the party that she beat to get this seat, the one that she had to fight for her victory against, is already trying to look for ways to kick her out. So the Electoral Commission has actually received a petition to recall her from her seat. So it's not impossible that she gets her seat back, that she finds a way to overcome this. But a lot is riding on the presumed independence of the judiciary.

Ora, it's always a pleasure. Thanks for your time.

Thanks for having me. Jason.

I don't want to talk about the specific things that my colleagues do that annoy me because I think they can hear me right now. So instead, let's talk about something we can all agree is infuriating. Someone stealing your ideas and getting credit for them. It's an innate kind of fury. Psychologists say that children as young as five disapprove of this kind of plagiarism. Wait till they get jobs.

The concept of credit stealing, I think, is pretty familiar to anyone who's been in the workplace.

Andrew Palmer, no relation, writes Bartleby, our column on work and management.

You come up with what you think is a brilliant wheeze. Someone else who you've just told that to, then repeats it as if it was their own and doesn't give you the credit. And it is, according to most surveys, the single most annoying habit that people encounter. If something is really annoying and happens a lot, what are the reasons to try and remain calm? So, just as a coping mechanism, are there arguments to think that actually this isn't terrible, malevolent? And I think there are.

Okay, go on. When someone nicks my idea, why do I not fly off the handle?

So reason one would be that the person who's claiming credit doesn't necessarily realize that they're doing it. There is a phenomenon called cryptonisia, which is basically this idea of inadvertent plagiarism. And you can see this being tested in various studies where a group of people get into a room, they're asked to come up with ideas to solve a particular problem. And then a little later, later there's another session where they're asked to recall the ideas that they came up with, but only their own, and also to come up with some new ideas to solve the same problem. And people routinely appropriate ideas of other people. They think they were their own ideas. And also when they come up with Supposedly new ideas. They're actually building on things that were in the previous session.

And that's supposed to calm me down? Oh, they probably didn't mean to nick my idea, so I should probably be cool about it.

I think it should calm you down, Jason, because if it's not deliberate, if it's not malevolent, then you're probably doing it yourself. You should remain calm.

Okay, I recognize that I have some role to play here, but give me more coping mechanisms.

So another one would be that innovation, the idea of coming up with new things is itself kind of a copying mechanism, that new ideas are not that new, that they recombine things that have already been thought of. And also that people are often working towards the same solution to a problem at the same time they're doing so independently. That's the idea of convergent innovation. And you can see that in various fields. But there's a very nice new book called like, which is about the history of the like button, popularized by Facebook back in 2009. But this book, which is by Martin Reeves and Bob Goodson, actually traces out how lots and lots of different companies for many years before that Facebook moment were basically trying to solve the same problem. Like, how do you have a very short, sharp signal from a peer that you like a piece of content and that story and others like? It basically suggests that if you do think of something as your own idea, actually others are likely to have had it too, at roughly the same time. And it's probably building on other ideas, too.

You see the same sort of thing in science, ideas popping up in various places at about the same time. So I understand that. But what about the part where somebody nevertheless gets credit for it? That's the really annoying part of this.

It is annoying, and some people do, but they may not be getting as much credit as you fear. So hopefully people are able to see who's responsible for things, to see through someone who is relentlessly taking credit for other people's ideas. But also it can backfire. If you take credit for something, it might be giving a different kind of signal off from the one that you intend. So there's one study that suggests that managers who both brag a little and give credit do better. That that's a good strategy, only ever boasting doesn' work for you. There's another which looks at how being proud of something, like really overtly proud of something, is actually a kind of negative signal. It suggests you've hit a ceiling, you've exceeded your performance, and there therefore is a worry that, oh, okay, we've maxed out here. So being slightly modest, being undemonstrative about doing well can play quite well as well.

Implicit in all of that, I suppose, is that some sort of justice is served then people who go around as braggarts then don't get the credit. Perhaps we think they do. They're a reason to remain calm. Credit stealing then is I mean by that in that casting, no big deal.

Yeah, I'm not going that far. I'm basically trying to give some reasons why it may not be always malevolent, why it may not always pay off for the credit stealer. But there are bound to be instances where someone who's doing that a lot and is doing so deliberately and is doing so with a degree of self knowledge is not behaving well and is probably therefore aggregating or appropriating credit in a way that they shouldn't.

Andrew, thanks very much for your time. I'm really glad I had the idea that we should speak.

Thank you, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

When you think of skyrocketing brands like Aloe, Allbirds or Skims, it's easy to credit their success to great products, sleek branding and brilliant marketing. But here's the overlooked secret. The real magic lies in the engine behind the scenes, the business powering their business. For millions of brands, that engine is Shopify, making selling seamless for them and shopping effortless for us. Upgrade your business and get the same checkout Alo Yoga uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com retail, all lowercase go to shopify.com retail to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com retail.