Only in America does half of every dollar spent on brand medicines go to entities that don't make

them. While PBMs and 340B hospitals drive up costs, America's biopharmaceutical companies are doing

what these middlemen don't, investing $500 billion in new infrastructure and manufacturing

here at home and helping patients buy medicines directly at lower prices. Tell

Washington to end middlemen markups and put American patients first. Visit phrmma.org

slash middlemen. I think we believe every infantryman in the United States Army will carry a drone

with them into battle. When you have a swarm of 1,000 drones coming at you,

a mere human brain can no longer keep up with that threat.

Hello, hello, and welcome to The Conversation. I'm Dasha Burns, Politico's White House

Bureau Chief, and every week on this show, I invite one of the most compelling and sometimes unexpected power players in Washington and beyond in for a chat to find out how they're navigating and shaping this incredible era of American politics.

And this week, there's a lot to talk about, but I want to zero in on the little topic of war and peace, which of course has been a major focus for the president.

Sources are telling me that the White House is planning to unveil a peace agreement that could end the war in Ukraine very soon.

But this comes as Russia has recently stepped up its missile and drone strikes against civilian targets while Ukraine and its allies are coming up with new ways to keep up.

And my guest this week just became the highest-level administration official to visit Kiev just days after our interview.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll made an unannounced trip there for high-level talks with Ukrainian officials, including President Zelensky, as news broke that a potential peace deal could be on the horizon.

Now, Driscoll is an Iraq war veteran and knows firsthand how the decisions made in the rooms of the Pentagon impact real soldiers on the ground.

He's made it his mission to transform the U.S. Army and the Pentagon from a, quote, calcified

bureaucracy to an institution that moves faster, spends less, and maybe looks more like the private

sector. I caught up with Driscoll at the Pentagon, where we talked about the future of warfare

and how he plans to transform the

army to keep up and why he thinks war drives innovation. A little later on the show, I'm joined by

Abby Phillip, the host of CNN Newsnight with Abby Philip, a Politico alum, and author of the new

...