Chatter: Private Equity and National Security with Brendan Ballou
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2023
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Private equity firms rank among the largest employers in the United States and invest many billions of dollars in a wide variety of industries. Yet the public understanding of how private equity works and its impact on myriad areas of American life, including national security, remains limited.
Brendan Ballou is trying to change that. A federal prosecutor who works in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, he has written a new book, Plunder: Private Equity's Plan To Pillage America. David Priess spoke at length with him about his previous work in the Justice Department's National Security Division, his current role working antitrust issues, the origins of his interest in private equity, the business model of private equity, its effect on industries from mortgages to nursing homes, private equity's link to the SolarWinds hack, foreign involvement in private equity, the impact of private equity on U.S. competitiveness, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The book Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It by Louis Brandeis
The book Plunder: Private Equity's Plan To Pillage America by Brendan Ballou
The movie This Is Spinal Tap
The book Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free by Jed Rakoff
The movie Alien
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:55.6 | $1 billion of jobs and investment being brought to the UK's industrial towns. |
| 1:01.0 | If you're feeling impacted by eco-anxiety, aionnext have created a range of resources |
| 1:06.7 | such as green noise soundscapes. |
| 1:09.1 | Just search Power Up for Change in your podcasting app. |
| 1:14.3 | Welcome to Chatter, I'm David Treas. |
| 1:22.4 | This week, Federal Prosecutor and Author Brendan Ballou on Private Equity and National Security. |
| 1:30.9 | Private equity is a term that I think we've all heard, but if we're being honest, and |
| 1:35.6 | I need to say this about myself, I didn't know what private equity was until I got pretty |
| 1:39.8 | far into this project. |
| 1:43.3 | SolarWinds had extremely lack security standards, whether it was having a publicly available |
| 1:48.7 | password that I believe was literally SolarWinds 1, 2, 3. |
| 1:52.6 | Not a great look. |
| 1:53.6 | It seems that SolarWinds, despite being incredibly important for our national security, was not |
| 1:58.1 | taking its own security terribly seriously. |
| 2:03.2 | These are, in many ways, our leading financial institutions, but they aren't regulated in |
| 2:07.1 | the same way. |
| 2:08.1 | I would encourage the same level of scrutiny of private equity firms and their holdings |
... |
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