Energy expert Francisco Monaldi joins Emily and Geoff to discuss the U.S. government’s unusual oil deal in Venezuela. They get into the decades of missteps and corruption that have hampered Venezuela’s oil sector, the deep seated institutional changes that would be needed to bring production back to historical levels, and why you probably shouldn’t assume the contract the U.S. government just signed will actually last 100 years, as it says on paper. Francisco J. Monaldi is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Latin American Energy Policy and director of the Latin America Energy Program at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Francisco Monaldi, Baker Institute for Public Policy The White House, Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Historic Oil Agreement to Secure American Energy Dominance and Drive Venezuela’s Economic Recovery, August 31, 2026 Francisco Monaldi, “Without Institutional Change, Venezuela’s Oil Bonanza Remains Unviable,” Americas Quarterly, January 26, 2026 Francisco Monaldi, Igor Hernandez, and Jose La Rosa, “The collapse of the Venezuelan oil industry: The role of above-ground risks limiting foreign investment,” Resources Policy Francisco Monaldi, “The Cyclical Phenomenon of Resource Nationalism in Latin America,” Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics Romulo Betancourt, Venezuela's oil

James Crabtree joins the podcast to discuss the new CNAS report he co-authored with Emily, Whither the Coalition? Assessing the Prospects of a Diverse Sanctions Coalition in Defense of Taiwan. Geoff, Emily, and James discuss the prospects of India, Singapore, and Germany joining the United States in a possible future Taiwan contingency scenario, including the political and economic constraints each country would weigh in making such a decision. James Crabtree is an Adjunct Senior Fellow in the CNAS Energy, Economics, and Security Program and a London-based geopolitical analyst and author with extensive experience working in Asia. Emily Kilcrease and James Crabtree, Whither the Coalition: Assessing the Prospects of a Diverse Sanctions Coalition in Defense of Taiwan, CNAS, August 18, 2026 Matthew Mingey, Laura Gormley, and Logan Wright, Avoiding entanglement: G20 responses in a Taiwan crisis, The Atlantic Council and The Rhodium Group, November 12, 2024 Howard Shatz et al., Economic Deterrence in a China Contingency, RAND, November 6, 2025 James Crabtree, The Billionaire Raj: A Journey Through India’s New Gilded Age James Crabtree, The Perimeter: America's Struggle for Primacy in the Pacific Sadanand Dhume, The Unpredictable Rise and Uncertain Future of Modern India