Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the United States without a functioning House of Representatives

as jockeying gets underway to replace Kevin McCarthy as Speaker,

while the temporary speaker, Patrick McHenry, displays partisan pettiness in his first act

to kick Nancy Pelosi and Stanley Hoyer out of their offices

in the Capitol. The University Distinguished Professor of Government and founder and former

director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University

in Washington, D.C. He's the author of numerous books and more than 80 articles and chapters

on Congress, interest groups and lobbying books and more than 80 articles and chapters on Congress,

interest groups and lobbying, and campaigns and elections, and he's the author of Rivals for

Power, Presidential Congressional Relations, and most recently campaigns and elections American

style. Then we'll examine the push to build AI-driven robotic weapons to confront China in a war that our hawks see as inevitable.

Joining us is William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute's responsible statecraft.

His books include Prophets of War, Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military Industrial Complex,

and we will discuss his article at Tom Dispatch.

AI goes to war.

Will the Pentagon's techno fantasies pave the way for war with China?

Then finally we investigate how lessons from the past can help us save our future on a planet,

facing a sixth extinction.

Joining us is Michael Mann, the Presidential Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Science,

Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania.

...