#AIS: Antonio Garcia Martinez & Glenn Greenwald debate Ukraine, moderated by David Sacks

The moderator introduces the segment as a debate between two writers who sit on slightly different sides of the question of US involvement in Ukraine. He describes one as the author of the bestselling book Chaos Monkeys, who writes a Substack called pull request and hosts a show, and the other as a returning guest from the day before, also a Substack writer with a show.

His own framing is that there is little public debate on the topic, much like earlier wars. He argues that the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars were popular when the US entered them and unpopular by the time they ended. He says he is not prejudging Ukraine as one of those cases and sees important differences, but wants more discussion. The format is five-minute opening statements followed by back and forth.

The first speaker pushes back on the moderator's Iraq comparison and says he went to see Ukraine himself, unlike many independent voices who commented from afar. He says he found American media discourse about Ukraine skewed, and that it smelled like nonsense to him. He spent time in early March on the Polish border and in western Ukraine, which he says is no more dangerous than walking across San Francisco these days, and wrote two Substack posts about what he saw.

His first point is the refugee crisis. By his figures, 10 million Ukrainians, a quarter of the country, are displaced, and about six million have left in two months. At the Medyka crossing he describes men barred from leaving because they must fight, and women with children, a rolling bag and a cat in a carrier, crossing again and again. He says Poles have received millions of people but are under enormous strain, with train stations and warehouses in eastern Poland and western Ukraine serving as refugee camps.

His second point is what he calls total war. He recounts walking against the flow of people, carrying a Starlink terminal and body armor, because cars cannot cross. In Lviv, he says, everything moved either east, as men, weapons and trucks, or west, as women, children and refugees. His interpreter, driver and a hacker he interviewed who was knocking Russian websites offline each ended statements with "we will win".

From this he concludes that US discourse underrated Ukrainian resolve and zeal for their own nationalist project. He admits it was early, with the Belarusian role unclear, but says he did not see how Russia could win. His comparison is that Ukraine is the size of Texas with a population of 40 million, and Russia sending 200,000 soldiers is like trying to control California. These are his own estimates and impressions from a limited trip.

He closes by arguing that American discourse tends to project domestic political neuroses or Iraq onto the war rather than the facts on the ground: devastated cities, refugees and a level of total war the Western world has not seen since World War 2. That, he says, is the reality he hopes to debate. The moderator then thanks him.