(‘Alternate Shots’, Episode #39. Co-hosted by Richard Haass and John Ellis. Produced by Dale Eisinger. Recorded, 18 September 2026. If you prefer, you can listen to this episode (and all previous episodes) by clicking on these hyperlinks: Apple, Amazon, and Spotify. We’re on a number of other podcast platforms as well. And YouTube!)
This week on America’s fastest-growing podcast, Alternate Shots, Richard Haass and I preview the upcoming Trump-Xi summit and ask whether, in this instance, a quiet meeting would be preferable to a consequential one. Richard worries not about failure, but about the wrong kind of success: a commercial deal purchased at the expense of Taiwan, American allies, or U.S. leverage on Russia and Iran. From there, we turn to developments in AI, where the United States and China dominate the field but lack the trust, process, and perhaps urgency required to build meaningful guardrails. We also discuss the Houthis’ expanding role in the Red Sea, the widening maritime crisis, Saudi Arabia’s diminishing options, and America’s munitions shortfall, which points to a deeper conceptual failure in U.S. defense planning.
Two stunning statistics. This from The Atlantic Council:
Independent estimates cited by the Kyiv Post indicate that Ukraine will manufacture between five and six million drones in 2026.
This from The New York Times:
About 500 companies manufacture drones in the United States, producing fewer than 100,000 a year, according to Ryan Carver, communications manager for the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, a nonprofit organization of industry professionals.
Unfortunately, the podcast ends with a discussion of the New York Giants’ surprising defeat of the Dallas Cowboys.
Sorry.