Welcome to The Lost of Beta Show for Political Eclectics. I'm Robbie Gupta. And in a little bit,

we're going to hear from the journalist Patrick McGee, who wrote this book called Apple in China.

And no hyperbole here. This is one of the most important books to come out in a long time.

And one of my favorite interviews we've done. And it's all about the history of Apple as a company, but really

its supply chain and its entanglements with China. And you will learn a lot in that interview.

Patrick is awesome. He's super knowledgeable. And the book is honestly like a true contribution to

my understanding of the world. Like my, you know, my little world where I'm dependent like you

are probably on Apple products, but really just like geopolitics and economics and corporations.

So stick around for that. But obviously we've got a lot going on in the world and I'm going to

empty my notebook. Let's start with this Iran situation. This is a serious, serious situation. So obviously, you know, when we talk about things like the Musk Trump fight and we're like reading tweets and talking about erratic behavior and all that, like I mentioned then that was serious. It could have serious implications on all kinds of areas of American policy. But this Iran situation, honestly,

like even in the next 24 hours, next few hours, could escalate beyond something we haven't

seen in a long time. And let me give you a rough timeline of what we know right now,

of U.S. involvement in what Israel has been doing in Iran. And so what we know so far

is that earlier this year, Trump sent a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran, basically saying,

let's make a deal. And if we can't make a deal, bad stuff is going to happen. And we don't know

the exact wording of this letter as of this recording,

but we do know from reporting that Trump has, he loves this letter and has been reading it to

people who visit him. And so he wrote this letter basically saying, let's make a deal. Now,

people like us from the Obama administration, like me, worked in foreign policy and the Obama administration,

and, you know, I don't want to overstate my involvement in the Iran negotiations, but I was at the

UN during the early days over things like negotiations, over sanctions on Iran, and a lot of people

I know are involved in the Iran deal during the Obama administration. A lot of us were like,

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