Tim Mak moved to Ukraine in 2022, a day before war broke out. Tim, a former US investigative correspondent, decided to stay and start up his own reporting at Counter Offensive. He now reports from Kyiv.
“People didn’t connect with my coverage of war crimes — they connected with the dogs I saw in the street. So I built a publication that leads with people, not just news.”
On the podcast, Tim discusses the day-to-day life in war-torn Kyiv, focusing on the chronic stress rather than immediate physical danger residents face. He recounts his critical role in documenting human stories from the war front and shares his personal journey, having moved to Ukraine right as the war began. We touch on the operational challenges and ethical considerations in war reporting, the importance of human interest stories, and how new technology like AI affects journalism.
“We misunderstand the cost of war because we’ve lived in peace for so long. But if we go back — which is far more common in human history — the devastation will be immense.”
Tim talks about the broader geopolitical implications of the conflict and his hopes for the future of independent journalism.
Summary contents, transcript and podcast links below. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to pods. Video above or on YouTube.
Contents
00:25 Life in Kiev During Wartime
03:10 Tim's Arrival and Early Experiences in Ukraine
04:57 Launching The Counter Offensive
05:24 Human Interest Stories and Subscriber Growth
09:50 Challenges and Ethics in War Reporting
14:14 The Power of Individual Narratives
25:42 Independent Journalism and Future Prospects
34:55 Geopolitical Reflections and Ukraine's Needs
44:34 Final Thoughts and Advice
Transcript (AI assisted so mistakes are possible)
Ben: Hey everyone. I'm super excited to be speaking to Tim Mak. Tim is in Kyiv in Ukraine. He left his role in the US as an investigative res correspondent and started the counter Offensive, and this essentially is a war correspondence, open notebook reporting live from Kyiv on the human stories from the front.
Tim, welcome.
Tim: Thanks so much for having me
Ben: Tell me, what is a day in the life of Kyiv today? What does that feel like?
Tim: It's an interesting question. I think when friends and relatives envision what I'm doing in Kyiv, they think I must be dodging mortar shells on the way to the bakery to grab a loaf of bread or something like that.
But the kind of average. Life in Ukraine and the cost of it during wartime are a little less physically violent and a lot more chronically stressful, right? And so what I mean by that is the real kind of physiological and mental strain comes from not knowing whether you'll be safe over and over and over again.
Until you leave the country, if you get the chance to leave the country, it's the strain of anticipating the next raid, anticipating the next round of gunfire, anticipating the next explosion or drone kamikaze, drone bombing, missile attack, and so on. And that's the real strain. We know that, for example sleep deprivation can be considered on par with torture when done in a long term, on a long term basis, has been used as a tool to torture in warfare.
I wouldn't say it's as acute or or as as deliberately used in this fashion, but it is the effect of living in a war zone long term is never really feeling safe, never really getting a good night's sleep, and that really drags out. And it's, I don't say this to put it spotlight on me in particular because this is millions of people all across the country that are experiencing a very similar phenomenon.
Ben: Sure. So it's tilts towards a slow drip water torture than a kind of acute, or there's more of a series of acute, which makes it feel really chronic,
Tim: there are acute experiences, obviously for those who are at the very sites of the attack. But keeping a city about the size of Chicago, if there are several dozen attacks, as devastating as they are, they may maim and kill people, but the chances of you being in the particular spot where these these explosions occur are not extremely high. O obviously it's life changing and for some wor life ending and terribly traumatic for the people acutely, specifically at the places where these missiles and drones explode.
But just by the law of of num of large numbers, it's very unlikely to it's very unlikely to hit you in particular. It's the strain of it, the, it's the not knowing, it's the uncertainty.
Ben: That makes a lot of sense on that front. You landed in the Ukraine just as the war was starting. What was going through your mind just before an Intuit and I guess that kind of changed Yeah.
Your outlook on the World, on Life,
Tim: I got tapped to come to Kyiv. I was working for a major American News at the time as an investigative correspondent, and I got tapped to come to Kyiv because of my military background. I used to be a US Army medic and, i, I got sent to Ukraine in case of war might break out.
You may remember in 2020, late 2021, early 2022 that the that the Biden administration had been very public about what it expected to be an invasion of Ukraine. But but they had also said that it would happen in mid-February. So by, by the time the invasion actually occurred, there was a lot of skepticism that it would ever occur.
So I arrived as it happens the night the invasion began just a few hours before the bombing first started. And I remember getting a call at 3:00 AM from my editor saying, you better get downstairs. Something is happening. And I was just so beset by jet lag and confusion that I did the only thing you'd really ever do when you wake up, which is I remember walking into the bathroom and beginning to brush my teeth and looking at the mirror and thinking what is happening?
I remember just brushing my teeth and thinking what is going on? And that's how my Ukraine experience started. I thought that I would be in. Ukraine for two weeks. And now I've been in Ukraine for, about almost three and a half years now. And so it totally changed the course of my life in ways that I didn't expect.
After covering Ukraine for a year for this American media company I I left and I started my own company called The Counter Offensive, which as you mentioned, covers human interest stories of the war, and then. Nine months ago, we launched a second publication called counter Offensive Pro, which covers Ukrainian Defense Technology and Regulation.
So two very different publications taking two very different aspects to reporting and writing about the war.
Ben: And on the human interest story, which I guess is the kind of more person in the street, consumer orientated one. I think I saw you're up to definitely over a hundred thousand subscribers.
Now obviously there's a free and a paid sort of version, how has that gone and how's that accelerated
Tim: 152,000 and change, but who is counting? How's that going? It's interesting it's been a real struggle. I didn't ever get into this thinking that it would be a business, that it would be successful that would, it would have any longevity.
I launched it thinking it might be a side gig that I would do as I freelance for other, major American publications. But it took off, I think because it featured a kind of war correspondence or foreign correspondence that was a lot more personable, was a lot more intimate and included all the sorts of things that typical, quote unquote serious journalism or mainstream journalism would've left in that reporter's notebooks.
That there was a, that for me. There was a real intent to pull back the curtain and I'll take a step back. During the first year of the war while I was covering covering Ukraine for NPR, what I found I. I would tweet out all sorts of things that I saw, even dogs that I saw on the street and how they were being treated.
And with apologies to all the serious journalism I did about war crimes. About about the battlefield, about the siege of Kyiv. People seem to connect with the human characters and the vignettes and the people who illustrated the news stories more than the news stories itself.
And so that was the whole concept that I brought to the counter offensive, is that we're not gonna tell you the news. IE what happened and leave it there. We're gonna introduce you to someone who went through. Through the news and by learning about this person, by, by profiling this person, you're gonna read this and learn the news itself.
That the human side gets elevated and the who, what, when gets put in a secondary position. And it's been really interesting to see it. Now we're the number one we're the number one substack in the international category.
Ben: That's amazing. From the feedback you were getting via social medias and the like, and what made you decide to stay in Ukraine? Jack it all in, stable or as stable as any kind of journalist job might be in, in the us I. Stay in Ukraine, report this way, change your life. Was, were there other elements which went this is reporting on this human interest story is I'm in the right place at the right time, if not me, who or what went through to say, okay, this is it for the foreseeable future, I'm here.
Tim: I think the answer is a lot less heroic than that. I think. I think it's a lot of it had to do with. What I wanted to do with my life and the trajectory of my life. And I remember after the first year of the war, or close to the end of the first year of the war, was wrapping up. And I I I moved to Los Angeles, which is something that I had said I wanted to do for a long time.
I loved to surf and I I love the beach. And I remember sitting there. And being able to surf as much as I want or sit on the beach as much as I like, and just being miserable, reading about all these things happening in Ukraine, knowing that my colleagues and friends were out there and me not being anywhere near it and not being done with telling the story and feeling like I had other ways to to bring attention to what was happening and.
So I thought, this is about the time in my career. I was 30 35 or 36 at the time and and take a big risk. And if it all fails, I can go surfing for nine months. That seemed like not the worst plan. And that's what we ended up doing.
Ben: Wow., I guess there's always that option to just break free and go surfing.
What are surfing is relatively cheap, which makes it a perfect hobby for employed. What are the stories that have stayed with you? 'cause as you note you've covered so many in and many individual narratives, you track down this. Anti-aircraft missile brigade. I think it's the Russian 53rd, which was pretty notorious.
You covered a jazz club in Odessa, which decided to stay open. Syrian doctors who've come to Ukraine and could go on and on. But I'd be interested in any of the stories either of now or those which have stayed with you or you'd wanna comment on.
Tim: I think the one that that I'll never forget is this 10 month odyssey that I had trying to illustrate the difficulties to solve war crimes during this war.
So I basically, there have been tens of thousands at the time, there were tens of thousands. Now we're well into the six figures. Many thousands of war crimes that have been committed since the invasion began. So many. So that there's a real question I think, about whether or not these crimes will ever be properly investigated, adjudicated and the perpetrators brought to justice.
And what I wanted to do was see if. On my own, I could solve a war crime, highlight a single incident of injustice and see if we could find the perpetrator as an exercise for demonstrating how difficult and solving all of these war crimes could be. So we ended up focusing on, someone named Alexander Brazos, who was someone who was killed in the very early stages of the invasion. And when we first heard about it, we didn't know who killed him. We didn't know when he was killed. We didn't even know his name. All we knew was that he had been killed on the side of the road in a very small village, two and a half, three hours outside of Kyiv.
And no, no one even knew his full name. We started from the beginning and we tracked down his name, his family. We figured out what he was doing. We figured out where he was going, where he was driving. On that fateful day, we figured out the Russian units that happened to be in the area at the time.
We narrowed down the various commanders that were in charge of that unit and ultimately were able to present something of, of a kind of theory of the case about how all of these events occurred. And this took 10, this took 10 months for a single case, and there are tens of thousands, over a hundred thousand now cases.
And so this exhaustive effort that needed to be taken just to address one particular. Issue of injustice has always stuck with me. The thing is, I'm a former a former medic and an EMT, and so I don't really get that shaken up when it comes to images of blood, gore medical trauma, that sort of thing.
The thing that has always stuck with me is the grieving people who. Who carry their kind of liquid sadness around with them. And as they tell their stories, they pour a little bit into your cup as well. And I've never really shaken the emotional impact of meeting the family, understanding their story, trying to do a little bit to.
Shift the thing forward and understanding how much of that grief and sadness has proliferated to millions of people across this country as a result of war. It really put home the costs of invasion of violence of, of these state sponsored. Attacks that occur on a regular daily basis in Ukraine.
Ben: It was a really moving piece where you can see a lens of the whole through the individual story. Any listeners wanna look it up? I think there was the, it was the village near Nova Bassen, wasn't it? That's the piece. That's the piece you are referring to. Yeah. And with that, I have this thought on your focus on human stories.
It seems to me your. Almost making an argument that these individual narratives might matter more than the frontline maps, or there are, obviously the big agencies are doing the frontline map stuff and you get that and that's, important mix, but that these individual narratives are underrepresented.
They get lost. They will be lost. There is no way with hundreds of thousands of crimes that even as. Significant. Probably only ever, probably no small percentage will ever really come to light or get prosecuted. And yet people want to hear, or we maybe need to make, need to hear those type of stories.
I'm interested in your, that sort of theory of change, I guess on the power of the individual narrative and how maybe we are now set up for a time to do that. There's. Adjacently citizen journalism, I guess is a little bit, okay, you've got kind of social media, but this ability to actually report on the ground if you want to do the startup costs from doing that is possible and you've shown that.
So I'm interested in that. So it's the path of individual narrative, but mixed with the kind of technology and platform and ability to actually showcase that now.
Tim: I think those there, there are a couple separate but obviously as you point out related questions, so let me take them one by one.
It was obvious to me even two years ago. It was obvious really to most people. I think that as time went on the news of the, and the shock of the war in Ukraine would pass on, and that people would, I. Tire of daily reports in which they were told, oh, the frontline has moved from this village you haven't heard of to another village that you've never heard of.
But human beings are storytelling creatures. What we wanna hear is that interesting. I. Yarn not a yarn, an interesting story, an interesting narrative. One that touches us, that moves us, that interests us, that saddens us or makes us a little bit smarter or wiser. And mostly that comes through stories about people and being able to introduce you to characters.
Thousands of of miles away. Much of our audience, the vast majority of our audience is outside of Ukraine. 86% of our readers are Americans, Canadians, or in the uk. Introducing you to someone. Giving you a reason to care about them or relate to them in some way, seeing yourself in their shoes and creating this connection of empathy is a much more compelling way to bring people into a story than saying on Thursday afternoon, the frontline move from X Village to Y Village.
And that was always my approach. I think we're a very. Character led news organization. We introduce you, a person that went through this thing by learning about that person. You learn about the news rather than the other way around.
Ben: But your analysis is also through that lens quite deep and insightful and brings through.
Nuance I mean something adjacent. For instance, your recent piece on how Zelensky uniform changed to go and meet Trump. I think in the mass media outlets, there was a line or two on it. People would notice it, but you have a whole explanation for what this really means, and we know actually that fashion and these statements and symbols are extremely powerful.
When people meet, it's weird that today the global power symbol of important men is wearing a suit and tie actually, whether you are the Chinese leader, the Russian leader, the American leader, you, you have. Honed in on a suit and tie. And so the fact that Zelensky has a black T-shirt thing is that, but you provide that analysis.
You put it in the context and things, and I know that's not the character led one, but that's the sort of analysis that seems to me that comes through and, is enabled by independent journalism to do that. It would probably be a bit odd for the front page of the FT to have. A thousand words on fashion.
Although actually I think maybe that's what should
Tim: I think the ft would devote 2000 words on this, but it would run like a week later or something like that. Like I wouldn't put that it past the ft a at all to do something about, zelensky chic and the new power outfit being much more casual and, during wartime, because I've observed that in Ukraine, by the way, which is a separate point, but it's a good, it's a good point, right? I was first made aware that Zelensky had shown up in a suit on social media, and I thought that's interesting. And I shared it with my team and we started making all sorts of jokes in our kind of WhatsApp group chat.
And the next thing I think is like. Why don't we, why don't we run something on this? It's super interesting. It gives you a window into into both cultural differences and diplomatic power and how that's expressed through fashion. It's this exact sort of thing that you are, as you point out, you're free to do when you are not.
When you like, like I'm sure it could be done for C Nnn, but it's just, it's not it's not what they would focus on. The CNN would lead its coverage with the NATO summit, the diplomatic implications the statements and speeches deals made. But we have the freedom to take a totally different look at it and explain what what zelensky.
Decision to wear what that means for the state of us Ukrainian relations. And not in a petty or trivial way because I think it's not petty or trivial but in an interesting way that kind of chose how diplomacy and geopolitics is evolving.
Ben: And I wanna pick up on the story I mentioned earlier as well of the jazz club.
Odessa, because that's another theme through your work of the struggles of normalcy in a time of war and chronic stress. There's other things around I was reading the stories on the dog and the things, but I was really interested in this jazz club in Odessa. But just the sense of how.
How do you try and be normal with a sense of chronic stress over you? What are your reflections on normalcy or not?
Tim: What do you mean?
Ben: In terms of how you see Ukraine trying to be normal and what those efforts look like and how you, I guess how you feel being normal or not, or, maybe you wanna reflect on the jazz club.
Tim: Like when people ask me what it's like in Ukraine the easiest ways for me to try to describe it is it's that you have to try to get used to it. That you have to find some sense of normalcy in your life. And the easiest analogy I can make is the way that we all adapted after the COVID pandemic is that first, the first.
Period of time was super alarming and isolating and confusing and anxiety raising. But over a period of time, over a period of months and even years, people just got used to putting on a mask and people just got used to fewer public events that it just became interwoven with our daily lives.
And in the same way. Jazz doesn't stop. Pa I live near a basketball court. Basketball games don't stop. People continue to date. They continue to be passionate about the things that they were passionate about before the war. But in the context of. The ever present threat of violence?
People change the nature of their lives, whether they have to move their they're internally displaced or persons or refugees abroad. There's a ton of dynamics. But one of the things that keeps us grounded and connected to other people who are not in a wartime situation is the normal things that we try to do.
To grasp onto to feel like there's still some hope for the future. That there's still some way for us to return to entire normalcy.
Ben: In fact, you might date more fiercely in a time of war. I think that's perhaps a trope with it. I wonder, do you ever have to come across around, I suppose I would put this in the ethics of war reporting and how those ethics, have changed over time with.
Social media with misinformation, with the ability to also, people to take photos and post it. And that I guess I always saw that through the original lens of war reporting, particularly through photography, where photographers really had to in the olden days say do we take a picture of this?
And if we have taken a picture of this, does it really get reported? And then that's exploded. And I'd be interested if you and your team have had to think about that in times of the type of stories that you wanna cover or how you cover them. And is that still a changing landscape in the face, of social media and disinformation?
Tim: I think it's absolutely a factor, particularly in the age of both social media and in the age of, of camera phones, right? That you can capture things all the time, many times without asking for permission. And the appropriateness of using that information, whether in text or in photos is questionable.
I'll give you one example. We've had a lot of debates among me and the reporters on my team about whether to use photos of grieving mothers at funerals. Is it appropriate in such an intimate and and it's a revealing moment of course, but it's also, a very private moment for some and the opinions on that run the whole spectrum.
Some families encourage the posting of such photos. Other families really object to it. Some families. Approve of it, but then reject the captions or some wording. All of this is grounded in grief and so understanding the appropriateness, and there's no easy answer by the way. There's no easy answer at all.
There's a question of whether we should include, we're doing a story right now about about the Ukrainians whose job it is to prepare children for burial. The question is, should we post? Photos of of dead children. Even if they were professionally done and with permission.
These are all difficult questions. To which there are no easy, and these are the kinds of questions, by the way, I'd expect it to be had in any professional newsroom. But it is I'm afraid not one of those things where I can give you a easy up or down, but these are the kinds of ethical conversations we're trying to have all the time.
Ben: I'm glad you are having them and that you echo that other news organizations are having them. I think there's a suspicion sometimes amongst the general public that perhaps our organizations have let slip slightly on how they think about reporting and the even though there's some resource there.
I'd be interested in what you think your biggest challenges are as an independent. War reporting body, is it funding access, safety and that type of thing. And I guess this intersects with one of our threads as well, is. How good a place do you think independent journalism is in, have platforms like Substack and things enabled this to flourish or Actually with the squeeze that we've had in all across media, people don't get newspapers the same anymore.
And you could talk about local news has gone down. I know this isn't really local news, it's a different niche. It was that, although you've got little other niches coming up as well, so I'm interested in what you think about that both. From the lens of an independent war reporter, but then also what it just means for independent journalism.
Tim: Yeah, I think the there are a lot of great news concepts that existed 15 years ago that if Substack had been around these publications would still exist, right? There, there was and the I think the concept now for creating sustainable media operation is to provide exclusive information that people are interested in paying for.
And thinking of this as the primary lens through which you think about, should I open a publication if it's meant to be? A sustainable and break even to profitable organization is do I have exclusive information that is unique from everything else that is out there and that and would people be willing to pay for that information?
And if so then maybe it's a good idea. Or at least it's the, it's got the markings of the beginning of a of a good idea. You and I talked a little bit when we. When we saw each other in London about about the future of AI and what this means for writing and information gathering in general and, the key the key role I think for for reporters in in a kind of large language model world is information extraction and presentation. With a huge emphasis on the extraction part is are we asking questions other people aren't asking and delivering answers that other people aren't getting.
And if you're not doing those things, it's gonna be hard. Sta Substack you already see due to its success is becoming both very popular, but also very very heavy. And there's going to be some moment, I don't know. Whether we're at it, whether it will be some moment in the future at which it, it will hit its kind of apex inability to support writers.
And at that point people will have to make hard decisions about who, who to support and who not to support. And, I think it's absolutely gonna come down to uniqueness to creativity and to having exclusivity over information that you alone will have that is valuable to the people who are paying for it or interested in paying for it.
Ben: Yeah, I think, I guess if you chart this. You had the days of blogger, you had the days of WordPress, and they peaked with them. And I can see Substack doing that. And it's interesting this idea of, is it a unique information? Is it a unique view? Would people pay for it? I have a few thousand on my personal substack.
It's definitely unique and it's definitely interesting. I'm never gonna ask people to pay for it because there's no way I can switch on the last bit. It's oh, this is interesting. Spend the thoughts for free. I'm not sure I'd pay a. A pound for them or a dollar. But yeah, there is that. I think it goes into the ecosystem.
I'm interested in what your own writing process is like, or I guess you can also take it from the editorial writing process of the team and on. Counter offensive, but you could also take it as an individual level. When you're doing investigative work, do you write in notebooks? I guess you've got long form and shorter form as well in long form investigation and things.
But are right by hand, put it into computer. You like writing in the morning. There's obviously no good there's no consensus way of doing that, but I'm interested on personal view and then the editorial view is. This long form you're trying to hunt down these personal stories, things which capture your mind, like a case or an animal or a scene.
And then these slightly longer things you must discuss it in team and then you decide to go. So I'm just interested in how that whole process works for you guys. I.
Tim: Let me start by answering a question you asked earlier, what are some of the main challenges of being an independent journalist?
And one thing that I didn't realize was that I was starting a business. I thought I was getting into it to I. To do some journal to do journalism. But what I ultimately accidentally did was I launched a new startup in a war zone. And and what I'm sure you know is that when you launch a startup, you are in charge of marketing and the big legal questions and the accounting.
If you have time, you get to be involved in the core actions of whatever business that you're in, right? You are you're dealing with the landlord for the office space, and you're sweeping the floors and you are, I. You, you are in charge of every little detail because of the size of the team.
And you don't realize when you work for a large company just how much stuff is taken care of for you without you, you're noticing it. And so that, that is a huge challenge. That is a huge challenge that if you become an independent writer, you are suddenly responsible for it. Every part of the production process.
And there are lots of parts of the production process you have taken for granted. You didn't realize were being taken care of for you by people unseen and unknown. So that's part of the answer to the question, but, to answer your most recent question, I think so we have a team of about eight people right now, and we meet in Kyiv for editorial meetings on a regular basis.
And we'll just shoot ideas back and forth and try to decide what stories interest us, which stories should be put on hold. It's a kind of back and forth of this is something that, that I'm pitching, sharpen this, drop that it's a really dynamic. It's a really dynamic phenomenon that most news organizations are have in some way, shape or form.
Ben: And ultimately you say go no though, or someone does.
Tim: Yeah. Basically I'll, so we have some left the role of an editor. And I'll have a final say, but we also have someone whose role it is to vibe check. So we have someone who we call the vibes editor who basically makes sure I.
That the idea is good enough to pitch that the resulting story has the key elements of human interest and narrative and and kind of strategic importance. And then and then it eventually makes both the idea, firstly and then the final copy makes its way to me eventually.
But to answer your question, one thing that I explained to. Our mostly young reporters is that there used to be a day where you would record your interviews on this. There was even analog, but I, by the time I started reporting in 2009, it was mostly digital. This digital device separate from your phone, and then in order to get the quotes and information off of it, whether it was 15 minute interview or one hour, you would have to listen to the entire interview over.
As long as it took, and then manually write out every quote and actually oftentimes double checking these quotes for accuracy. An hour long interview would often take two or two and a hours to transcribe, and this is the way you would, this is the way you would produce journalism. That it was not at all glamor and black tie outings.
It was mostly listening to your tape over and over again to make sure that it's right. Nowadays we just use AI and we double check it, and we click on a bunch of spots on the screen and it's reverts back to the, to that place. We make sure that the transcript is correct. We pull out we pull out the things that interest us.
We leave the things that don't, we double check the things that interest us or we'll use, we leave out what we don't. And the process is extremely streamlined as compared to what we used to do. And, I think we're a lot better for it. Let's, lets you focus a lot more on the creativity element, getting new stories, finding interesting characters, and a lot less on the mechanics of and the logistics of putting a story together
Ben:
Upload on the sub stack and just press go. So there's also less, you don't have to do newspaper, rollers and all of this type of stuff. I don't know how old….
Tim: You think I am Dld, Ben, but I never had to do newspaper. I got into journalism in 2009, which was well into the, my first jaw was at a vlog.
So it was always, it was it was always. It was always that way for
Ben: me. Yeah. I last kind of few questions. I would thought we'd do perhaps just touch a little bit on crystal ball gazing. Maybe just taking the whole of. Geopolitics from your point of view, I guess this is a cluster of questions, which I think, what do the people of Ukraine need and where that might go?
And I guess if you talk about today, with the end of June you have more wars going on, obviously you've got the Middle East. The US under Trump is still being the us You've still got China, Russia and all of that. And I saw somewhere, it's slightly hard to count, but if you look at geopolitical conflicts, I.
They're at an all time high on a kind of 10, 20 year view. They may be slightly lower than a hundred years ago, depending on where you do that. I was also looking at somewhere that the small conflicts, I say small, but they seem probably pretty large to people there in Africa kind of considered civil wars and the like are also at all time highs and those type of things.
And there is a perception that the world has become. More fragile, a little bit more splintered. And you have got a kind of deglobalization effect at least versus the last five years, maybe not, versus the last 20. I'd be interesting on what your vibe take is, and if you have any particular views on what is needed what we could do with needing, and then what is maybe the thread of where we're likely to end up.
Tim: A lot of, let me take your questions in order. So what does Ukraine need in the near term? Two things, people and air defense. One of the one of the great advantages that Russia has in the, in, in strategically is that how much bigger it is, how many more resources it has, and how many more people it can draw from in order to engage in this war of aggression.
And Ukraine is desperately suffering for people. Is that and it's hard to judge anyone for not wanting to die or risk their lives. It's a real, it's a real challenge right now. Ukraine is trying to deal with that in some part by technology. But ultimately you need people.
And Ukraine has had there are all sorts of domestic politics involved in why, for example, the conscription age is at 25 and not at a lower age. But that's one thing that Ukraine needs is more people. Another thing is Russia has, is now producing 500 drones per day that can attack Ukrainian cities.
It can produce many more, missiles that will be launched at Ukrainian Cities. Cities. What it needs is methods to shoot purely defensive weaponry to shoot down these drones and shoot down these missiles before they kill innocent civilians on the ground. That's a technology that Europe and the United States has.
But a lot of Europe. And many officials in the United States have been reluctant to provide that kind of those stocks of weaponry to Ukraine. And that leads to the broader question, which is I think the the war in Iran and other conflicts is they're, they seem to be proliferating around the globe.
They're making countries wonder maybe I need to keep. Additional stocks for myself should things go really bad. All of which is bad news for Ukraine as it fights an ex existential war. And I think that's what Putin is fundamentally counting on is that people get distracted or otherwise worried about other things and and leaves Ukraine.
To fight on its own, which will be a very costly thing for Ukraine. I don't think ultimately Russia will succeed, but Ukraine's defiance will come at much higher cost if it's not supported by its allies. And the world getting a lot more dangerous. I think. I think it's obvious that it is it is becoming more dangerous.
I think that, Amer that America pulling back from World Affairs as it is trying to do now with some limited, with only limited success is is a net negative for the world. I think that American leadership led to a much safer world than a world without American leadership. And that the rising.
Polls of Russian power, Chinese power those are very dangerous things for all of us. And some confrontation between these polls is gonna be very is likely to be very, violent and unpleasant and traumatic for millions, if not billions of people. I think we can all see in slow motion the world is becoming a more dangerous place.
There are of course things that we can do to pull back from this, but I don't see us working really in that direction. I'm hoping. I'm hoping that Ukraine can serve it as an example, both technologically and economically and politically as to how, as to what you need to do to survive and retain your sovereignty.
I hope that people are learning lessons from what's happening here. But I'm worried that they're not taking seriously enough the risks and they're not getting prepared fast enough. I don't. I don't say any of this to say that that global conflict is at all inevitable, but I see us going down a very dark path.
Ben: Let me ask a question on the kind of ups and downs. What, if anything, gives you hope or sparks of hope? And on the other side, is there a risk or a factor that you are seeing, which you think is really being. Underestimated or misunderstood by people at large.
Tim: I fundamentally believe that the same country that elected Barack Obama is the country that elected Donald Trump. We're speaking today on the 10 year anniversary of a very famous speech that Barack Obama gave in Charleston after a white supremacist, walked into a black church and shot a number of people during a Bible study.
And I rewatched that speech today. Because it was the 10 year anniversary and it popped up in my feed. And and I realized that there are some deeply unifying forces in America and across the free world. And it's not so far removed from us to, to find those things that unite us against tyranny and authoritarianism.
I think we, you and I have both grown up in relatively peaceful times and the people we grew up with may have. Not realized what a blessing it is to live in peace and to live in a time of relative economic prosperity and innovation. If we go back the other way which has been far more prevalent in the history of human affairs, it's gonna be devastating and destructive and and terrible for us all.
But we don't have we don't, many of us do not have a living memory of these these kinds of events. And I do think. There are ways for us to impress upon others, and my project is one very small sliver of trying to bring you into what it's like to deal with war. And what I hope is not only for people to support Ukraine, but also to understand these are the consequences that have come on a personal level, not just the war moved from this village.
To that village. I want you to understand the village. I want you to understand people who were in the village. I want you to understand the culture that was destroyed and the lives ruined as a result of that, in hopes that it not only spurs you to some action with regards to the present situation in Ukraine, but also understanding the cost of war so that we don't head down this dark path.
Ben: That seems very clear to me. We misunderstand the cost of war because we've lived in peace for so long, but actually there's. Perhaps you can make the argument that in the free world we have more in common with what one another than our differences. Even that, although it might not seem like that, I would ask maybe for the final couple of questions I.
Anything you wanna reflect on in terms of current projects? Obviously this seems to be all consuming, but there might be other kind of seedling, current projects you want to mention and maybe current projects into the future. Where might you be in a few years? In 10 years, or maybe even next year as perhaps, or you can think about?
Yeah. Anything you wanna talk about? I hope I'm surfing. I hope I'm spending a little bit more time surfing. Yeah. On current computer projects. I'm I really hope that I can devote more times. There's no surfing in Ukraine, otherwise I'd never leave. But on a more on a more serious level, we're expanding our coverage into into u both Ukrainian defense technology and European Defense Technology.
Tim: What we've done is create a trade publication here in Key called Counter Offensive Pro, and we cover. The latest battlefield concepts, the regulatory environment for western investors and defense companies and allied governments. And so we do very technical in the weeds reporting on on cutting edge.
Technology from the front lines. What we're planning to do is bring this concept to the rest of Europe with a focus on Brussels and national capitals to help understand the huge generational problem and and promise of European re armament as it spends. Hundreds of billions of dollars trying to make itself too resilient to invade in the future.
And that is a real challenge and a part where, you know a project which I hope to be of some very small use in providing some information that will make that process a little bit more efficient by doing journalism and reporting on the tech and on the regulation, that's something that I hope to launch soon.
Ben: Excellent. And final thoughts. This is the open last question is do you have any thoughts or advice for people listening? This could be advice for people who might want do a startup or a career or journalism or might be thoughts or advice to politicians of the world or anyone about what they should think or do or any form of life advice.
Any final thoughts from you?
Tim: I guess I just but I try to chat with young journalists and folks, especially if they reach out and ask for some time and that they're frequently asking for advice. And lately I've been thinking a lot about what what AI will mean for for the field of journalism.
We talked, we touched on it very briefly, and. For people in these sort of white collar jobs. I think the kind of key question career wise is what can I do that AI can't do now or very likely in the future? And I've been spending a lot of time thinking I. What can I provide? What kind of value can I provide?
How does my career look in a career where, I've been very pride. I've had a lot of pride for the way I write, the way I put together sentences and paragraphs that's going to diminish over time. The uniqueness of that or the value of that. So what's the point of having a reporter around what's the point of having a.
News publication around what can I provide that no one else can that, that adds value to people's lives. That is gonna be a big question for, not only writers, but accountants and paralegals and all sorts of other research types or p people who did work that is now easily replicable by by large language models.
That's something that I've been thinking a lot about and encouraging others to get well ahead of now before they're forced to think about it.
Ben: That seems like excellent advice. Think about the things that you can do that no one else can, or perhaps that you can do and you can do easier and that everyone else might find really hard including the ai.
So with that, Tim, thank you very much.