Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has long sought to avoid taking a position on Russia’s war in Ukraine. On the eve of the Russian invasion, 165 Florida National Guard members were stationed on a training mission in Ukraine. They were evacuated in February 2022 to continue their mission in neighboring countries. When they returned to Florida in August, DeSantis did not greet them. He has not praised, or even acknowledged, their work in any public statement.

DeSantis did find time, however, to admonish Ukrainian officials in October for not showing enough gratitude to new Twitter owner Elon Musk. (Musk returned the favor by endorsing DeSantis for president.) On tour this month to promote his new book, DeSantis has clumsily evaded questions about the Russian invasion. When a reporter for The Times of London pressed the governor, DeSantis scolded him: “Perhaps you should cover some other ground? I think I’ve said enough.”

Even his allies found this medley of past hawkishness and present evasiveness worrying—especially because he was on record, in 2014 and 2015, urging the Obama administration to send both “defensive and offensive” weapons to Ukraine after the Russian annexation of Crimea. So last night, DeSantis delivered a more definitive answer on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show.

DeSantis’s statement on Ukraine was everything that Russian President Vladimir Putin and his admirers could have wished for from a presumptive candidate for president. The governor began by listing America’s “vital interests” in a way that explicitly excluded NATO and the defense of Europe. He accepted the present Russian line that Putin’s occupation of Ukraine is a mere “territorial dispute.” He endorsed “peace” as the objective without regard to the terms of that peace, another pro-Russian talking point. He conceded the Russian argument that American aid to Ukraine amounts to direct involvement in the conflict. He endorsed and propagated the fantasy—routinely advanced by pro-Putin guests on Fox talk shows—that the Biden administration is somehow plotting “regime change” in Moscow. He denounced as futile the economic embargo against Russia—and baselessly insinuated that Ukraine is squandering U.S. financial assistance. He ended by flirting with the idea of U.S. military operations against Mexico, an idea that originated on the extreme right but has migrated toward the Republican mainstream.

[Elliot Ackerman: The arsenal of democracy is reopening for business]

A careful reader of DeSantis’s statement will find that it was composed to provide him with some lawyerly escape hatches from his anti-Ukraine positions. For example, it ruled out F-16s specifically rather than warplanes in general. But those loopholes matter less than the statement’s context. After months of running and hiding, DeSantis at last produced a detailed position on Ukraine—at the summons of a Fox talking head.

There’s a scene in the TV drama Succession in which the media mogul Logan Roy tests would-be candidates for the Republican presidential nomination by ordering them to bring him a Coke. The man who eventually gets the nod is the one who didn’t even wait to be asked—he arrived at the sit-down with Logan’s Coke already in hand. That’s the candidate DeSantis is showing himself to be.

DeSantis is a machine engineered to win the Republican presidential nomination. The hardware is a lightly updated version of donor-pleasing mechanics from the Paul Ryan era. The software is newer. DeSantis operates on the latest culture-war code: against vaccinations, against the diversity industry, against gay-themed books in school libraries. The packaging is even more up-to-the-minute. Older models—Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush—made some effort to appeal to moderates and independents. None of that from DeSantis. He refuses to even speak to media platforms not owned by Rupert Murdoch. His message to the rest of America is more of the finger-pointing disdain he showed last year for high-school students who wore masks when he visited a college.

The problem that Republicans confront with this newly engineered machine is this: Have they built themselves a one-stage rocket—one that achieves liftoff but never reaches escape velocity? The DeSantis trajectory to the next Republican National Convention is fast and smooth. He raised nearly $10 million in February—a single month. That’s on top of the more than $90 million remaining from the $200 million he raised for his reelection campaign as governor. His allies talk of raising $200 million more by this time next year, and there is no reason to doubt they will reach their target. DeSantis has been going up in the polls, too. According to Quinnipiac, Donald Trump’s lead over DeSantis in a four-way race between them, Mike Pence, and Nikki Haley has shriveled to just two points.

[Read: The martyr at CPAC]

After that midpoint, however, the DeSantis flight path begins to look underpowered.

Florida Republicans will soon pass—and DeSantis pledged he would sign—a law banning abortion after six weeks. That bill is opposed by 57 percent of those surveyed even inside Florida. Another poll found that 75 percent of Floridians oppose the ban. It also showed that 77 percent oppose permitless concealed carry, which DeSantis supports, and that 61 percent disapprove of his call to ban the teaching of critical race theory as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion policies on college campuses. As the political strategist Simon Rosenberg noted: “Imagine how these play outside FL.”

But even this understates the DeSantis design flaw.

More dangerous than the unpopular positions DeSantis holds are the popular positions he does not hold. What is DeSantis’s view on health care? He doesn’t seem to have one. President Joe Biden has delivered cheap insulin to U.S. users. Good idea or not? Silence from DeSantis. There’s no DeSantis jobs policy; he hardly speaks about inflation. Homelessness? The environment? Nothing. Even on crime, DeSantis must avoid specifics, because specifics might remind his audience that Florida’s homicide numbers are worse than New York’s or California’s.

DeSantis just doesn’t seem to care much about what most voters care about. And voters in turn do not care much about what DeSantis cares most about.

[Yascha Mounk: How to save academic freedom from Ron DeSantis]

Last fall, DeSantis tried a stunt to influence the midterm elections: At considerable taxpayer expense, he flew asylum seekers to Martha’s Vineyard. The ploy enraged liberals on Twitter. It delighted the Fox audience. Nobody else, however, seemed especially interested. As one strategist said to Politico: “It’s mostly college-educated white women that are going to decide this thing. Republicans win on pocketbook issues with them, not busing migrants across the country.”

A new CNN poll finds that 59 percent of Republicans care most that their candidate agrees with them on the issues; only 41 percent care most about beating Biden. DeSantis has absorbed that wish and is answering it. Last night, in his statement on Ukraine, DeSantis delivered another demonstration of this nomination-or-bust strategy.

DeSantis will be a candidate of the Republican base, for the Republican base. Like Trump, he delights in displaying his lack of regard for everyone else. Trump, however, is driven by his psychopathologies and cannot emotionally cope with disagreement. DeSantis is a rational actor and is following what somebody has convinced him is a sound strategy. It looks like this:

Woo the Fox audience and win the Republican nomination. ?? Become president.

Written out like that, you can see the missing piece. DeSantis is surely intelligent and disciplined enough to see it too. But the programming installed in him prevents him from acting on what he sees. His approach to winning the nomination will put the general election beyond his grasp. He must hope that some external catastrophe will defeat his Democratic opponent for him—a recession, maybe—because DeSantis is choosing a path that cannot get him to his goal.

Superpower competition is almost always characterized as a danger to global peace and prosperity. But occasionally, geopolitical rivalry can prod great powers to do some good. On Friday, Iran and Saudi Arabia, long at odds with each other, announced that they would resume diplomatic relations in a deal brokered by China. Whether the agreement has truly advanced the cause of peace, or placed it further out of reach, remains unclear.

The surprise agreement has major implications for Washington’s efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear program and for its already strained relations with Riyadh. Yet the most important and long-lasting impact of the deal could be China’s role in it. Making a rare diplomatic foray far from home, Beijing brought the two Middle Eastern adversaries to a deal. The world should expect more such initiatives. The Iran-Saudi pact could be the start of a trend in Chinese foreign policy, in which Beijing pursues more active diplomacy in regions where it has wielded limited power.

That could prove highly beneficial. Beijing holds tremendous economic and political influence with many countries worldwide, which its leaders could use to nudge nations to settle disputes and reduce tensions. (China is the largest trading partner of both Iran and Saudi Arabia.) Diplomats in the U.S. and Europe have been hoping that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, would take advantage of his special relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin to pressure him to end the war in Ukraine.

Yet China’s Iran-Saudi deal cannot be understood outside the country’s widening competition with the U.S. The deal is part of an intensified campaign by Beijing to undermine American power and remake the global order.

[Read: What limits any U.S. alliance with India over China]

That campaign portrays the U.S. as a nation obsessed with war and its world order as unjust, unstable, and unable to solve the world’s pressing problems. A report issued by the Chinese government in February paints the U.S. as a domineering warmonger and highlights “the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.” By contrast, China, according to its own propaganda, is a nation of peace that has better solutions for the world’s iniquities and challenges, ones rooted in Chinese wisdom and formulated by Xi, that master philosopher. Those ideas are enshrined in the Global Security Initiative that Xi inaugurated last year, which stresses the paramount importance of state sovereignty and calls for noninterference in countries’ domestic affairs and an end to “bloc confrontation.” According to a recent Chinese-government statement, the initiative aims to “encourage joint international efforts to bring more stability and certainty to a volatile and changing era.”

What better way for China to prove the superiority of its program than to seek peace? On the anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing announced a “peace plan” for the conflict. The statement was nothing of the sort, because it lacked anything resembling a road map for a settlement. But its purpose was more likely a headline-grabbing advertisement for Beijing’s ideas for a reformed global order. Its 12 points borrow liberally from the earlier security initiative. How hard Beijing intends to push its plan is unclear. The Wall Street Journal reports that Xi hopes to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky after a visit to Moscow later this month, suggesting that the Chinese leader may try to play a more direct role as a mediator.

Washington was cold toward China’s peace proposal, but that response suited Beijing just fine. It offered an opportunity for Beijing’s diplomats to claim that they wish for peace while the U.S. perpetuates war. In a briefing earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang said, “There seems to be ‘an invisible hand’ pushing for the protraction and escalation of the conflict and using the Ukraine crisis to serve [a] certain geopolitical agenda.”  

Beijing is sure to cast the Iran-Saudi pact in a similar light. An official communiqué from the three parties to the pact opens not with any statement about its primary signatories, but with praise for Xi, whose “noble initiative” and “support for developing good neighborly relations” are credited for bringing the two Middle East antagonists together. The declaration also promotes key Chinese diplomatic ideas, including an “affirmation of the respect for the sovereignty of states and the non-interference in internal affairs of states.”

[Read: How China is using Vladimir Putin]

The Global Times, a news outlet run by the Chinese Communist Party, promptly paraphrased a senior Chinese diplomat as noting that the talks were “a successful application of the Global Security Initiative” and that China “will carry on being a constructive player in promoting the proper handling of global heated issues.” The report went on to warn that “some external countries”—likely a reference to the U.S.—“may not want to see such positive improvements in the Middle East” and called on the region “to continue to seek dialogue and negotiations.”  

Two lessons emerge for U.S. policy makers. First, the Iran-Saudi deal shows how much Chinese influence has grown in parts of the world that the U.S. has traditionally dominated. Tuvia Gering, a researcher at the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation Israel-China Policy Center at the Tel Aviv–based Institute for National Security Studies, wrote in a recent paper that “even though China currently lacks the capacity and will to replace the United States’ long-established integrated deterrence and alliance networks” in the Middle East, “real power is steadily catching up to the willpower to undercut U.S. hegemony, posing challenges to the United States … approach and to its regional allies and partners.”  

Second, as that influence expands, China could reorganize the geopolitical map of the world. Countries that have historically been wary of Washington may gravitate toward the U.S.; India is a prime example. But others that have been aligned with Washington may tilt in the opposite direction as their interests and economic relationships change. Beijing’s self-promotion as a purveyor of peace doesn’t square with the huge buildup of its armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal; its aggressive military action in the South China Sea; and its intimidation of Taiwan. But the Chinese narrative could appeal to some nations, especially other authoritarian states or those that wish to confound the Americans. Apparently, that may include the supposed U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, which has upset Washington’s plans in the Middle East with its China-backed turnaround on Tehran.

[Read: Blinken: I understand why Zelensky is demanding that the U.S. ‘Do even more and do it even faster’]

In certain respects, the very different nature of Chinese foreign affairs could give Beijing an advantage as a peacemaker. That is certainly true for the Iran-Saudi pact. Although Washington can be queasy about interacting with illiberal regimes, such as Iran’s, that is not so for Beijing, which prides itself on treating all types of governments equally. Beijing’s relations with Tehran have been growing warmer, as Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to China in February demonstrated. That gave Beijing the opportunity to pull off a peace pact that the U.S. most likely could not.

Yet those same relationships raise serious questions about what kind of “peaceful” new world order Beijing is striving to build. With its closer ties to Russia and Iran, as well as its long-standing support of North Korea, China is a major patron of the world’s three most destabilizing states. The Iran-Saudi deal aside, there have been few indications that Beijing intends to use its influence to rein in these countries’ most dangerous designs. Until it does, China’s new order will be anything but peaceful.

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here.

Last Friday, California regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank—a prominent lender for start-ups and venture-capital firms—marking the largest American bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis. Two days later, the cryptocurrency-focused, New York–based Signature Bank was also seized by regulators. What happens next for the U.S. economy remains to be seen. But what is becoming apparent is that the promise of Silicon Valley is beginning to lose its luster.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

The next stage of COVID is starting now. Why Republicans are blaming the bank collapse on wokeness The age of American naval dominance is over.

A House of Cards

The story of Silicon Valley Bank coincides with the rise of the start-up—and possibly with its fall, at least insofar as the start-up has existed in the 21st-century public imagination.

Founded in 1983, the bank targeted a particular cohort of borrowers—“start-ups, technology firms, and wealthy individuals,” as my colleague Annie Lowrey puts it. By lending to a number of start-ups whose ventures found success, SVB became one of the 20 largest banks in the country. But in the longer term, the bank became vulnerable to its own lack of diversification.

Annie writes:

SVB’s clientele is heavily concentrated in the tech industry, which boomed during the pandemic. That led to a dramatic increase in SVB’s books … Normally, banks take such deposits and lend them out, charging borrowers different interest rates depending on their creditworthiness. But relatively few firms and individuals were seeking such bank loans in the Bay Area at the time, because the whole ecosystem was so flush with cash.

What happened next? “SVB parked the money in perfectly safe government-issued or government-backed long-term securities … [and] failed to hedge against the risk that those bonds might lose value as interest rates went up,” Annie explains. And thanks to Federal Reserve interest hikes aimed at curbing inflation, this “is exactly what happened.” When a sizable share of account holders wanted to withdraw their funds from the bank, SVB was forced to sell its bonds at a loss to come up with the cash. The scheme didn’t pan out.

Yesterday evening, the Treasury Department announced that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will tap its deposit-insurance fund to repay account holders at both SVB and Signature Bank, in New York. Account holders will not, in other words, be left in the lurch—nor will taxpayers have to foot the bill for their banking misfortunes.

But, as the writer Will Gottsegen points out in The Atlantic, even if tech has “probably averted a mass start-up wipeout,” the fiasco has revealed the cracks in the industry—or, perhaps, made those liabilities all the more difficult to ignore. Gottsegen writes:

It wasn’t so long ago that a job in Big Tech was among the most secure, lucrative, perk-filled options for ambitious young strivers. The past year has revealed instability, as tech giants have shed more than 100,000 jobs. But the bank collapse is applying pressure across all corners of the industry, suggesting that tech is far from being an indomitable force; very little about it feels as certain as it did even a few years ago. Silicon Valley may still see itself as the ultimate expression of American business, a factory of world-changing innovation, but in 2023, it just looks like a house of cards.

Silicon Valley isn’t over. But, as Gottsegen sees it, the collapse of SVB has dampened the “frisson of possibility” that lured untold aspiring tech entrepreneurs and investors into the fray:

The panic from venture capitalists around the bank’s fall reveals that there’s little recourse when these sorts of failures occur. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, proposed that investors just start sending out money, no questions asked. “Today is a good day to offer emergency cash to your startups that need it for payroll or whatever. no docs, no terms, just send money,” reads a tweet from midday Friday. Here was the head of the industry’s hottest company, rumored to have a $29 billion valuation, soberly proposing handouts as a way of preventing further contagion. Silicon Valley’s overlords were once so certain of their superiority and independence that some actually rallied behind a proposal to secede from the continental United States; is the message now that we’re all in this together?

Whatever the message, SVB’s woes lay bare a tech industry as fragile as any other. Ideas, innovation, and even hefty sums of VC cash aren’t fail-safe. The mirage, it seems, has dissolved.

Related:

Silicon Valley was unstoppable. Now it’s just a house of cards. Silicon Valley Bank’s failure is now everyone’s problem

Today’s News

President Joe Biden announced that managers at SVB, and any other banking institutions seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, will be replaced. A powerful storm system is expected to bring heavy rain, snow, and strong winds to states across the Northeast beginning tonight and continuing into Wednesday morning. Chinese President Xi Jinping plans to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow as early as next week, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal report.

Evening Read

(Kevin Winter / Getty)

The Most Surprising Performance of the Oscars

By Spencer Kornhaber

All storytelling requires artifice, but last night’s Academy Awards highlighted that movies tend to involve more industrial processing than American cheese. The Best Picture nominees included far-from-realistic spectacles portraying CGI blue people, dimension-hopping laundromat owners, and Tom Cruise flying at Mach 10. The mega-studios Disney and Warner Bros. enjoyed infomercial-like tributes, reminders that Hollywood is a business. Jimmy Kimmel, the ceremony’s host, kept forcing jokes about last year’s infamous slap and the so-called crisis team that was on hand this year to prevent a repeat.

But the best pageantry still makes space for unpredictability—and last night, another artistic medium, music, helped greatly in that effort. Take, for example, the composer M. M. Keeravani. He delivered an acceptance speech for Best Original Song—for “Naatu Naatu” from the Indian blockbuster RRR—that was, itself, a song. “There was only one wish on my mind,” Keeravani crooned to the tune of The Carpenters’s “Top of the World,” inspiring laughter in the audience. “RRR has to win / pride of every Indian / and must put me on the top of the world!”

Read the full article.

More From The Atlantic

The Supreme Court just keeps deciding it should be even more powerful. David Frum: The Iraq War reconsidered

Culture Break

(Allyson Riggs / A24)

Read. I Have Some Questions for You, a new novel by Rebecca Makkai that probes the line between justice and revenge.

Watch. Everything Everywhere All at Once, the “mind-bending journey” that won seven awards at last night’s Oscars ceremony (and prompted two of the evening’s most affecting speeches).

Play our daily crossword.

P.S.

Before Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk, there was Leland Stanford. In 1876, Stanford bought a 650-acre farm in California’s Santa Clara County, where he applied industrial methods to horse breeding. He named the area after a tall nearby tree: Palo Alto.

Stanford’s story is recounted in Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, a new history of Silicon Valley by the journalist Malcolm Harris. You can read an excerpt in The Atlantic here.

— Kelli

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