The world is falling apart, and we're here to talk about it. Joe and Mike talk about the recent events in Ukraine and Russia, and what it means for the future of the world, and whether or not we should be worried about the potential for thermonuclear war. Joe also talks about his daughter turning 28, and how she must be thinking, "What the fuck is going on? Where's our grown-ups going? Where are they? Where is our infrastructure?" And Mike talks about what's going on in the world and why it's a good thing we're not going to end up in a world where we don't know what we're going to do with all the information we're getting from the world's most incompetent idiots. And we talk about how we're all going to die soon, and why that's good, because it's good for business. It's not good, but it's not bad, and it's also good for us. Enjoy! -Joe and Mike -The Joe Rogan Experience is a podcast by day, and by night, all day, by night. Check it out! The Joe Rogans Experience! -The Podcast by Night, All Day, All Night, by Night. -All Day, by Day, By Night, all Day. -Joe Rogan Podcast by Night! - The Experience by Night by Day - All Day All Day by Night by Day All Day and All Day By Night by Night - By Night All Day & All Day - By Day and Night, By Day by Day and Evening by Night By Day & Evening By Night and All By Night By Night - What's Good For Me? This Is It's Not Good? - What Are We Fucking Good For Us? by Me And I Don't Know What We're Gonna Do By Me And All Day? And I'll Tell You What We Can Do by Me Doin' By Me & How We're Working On It And How We'll Do It? By Me and I'll Think About It And I Can't Have It And Then I'll Talk About It by Me & I'll Say It And See It And You Can Do It And Think It And Hear It And All By Me Say It In A Positive Or Not By Me, And I Will Say It & I Will Think It & Others Like It And Others Say It?
00:00:57.00028. And I thought, after I hung up, she was talking about it, and she was kind of basically saying, what the fuck, right?
00:01:03.000And so people that age, if you think about those, the folks in that age group, she was born, you know, she was old enough to understand 9-11, right, in a sense, from a child's perspective.
00:01:13.000And then through the Iraq or Afghanistan, you know, bullshit, that whole time with the war on terrorism, a couple of recessions, right?
00:02:05.000Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there, isn't there, in that statement.
00:02:08.000The Putin thing scares the shit out of me, though, because he's, you know, when it comes to warlords, he's a legitimate warlord who is in charge of...
00:02:21.000I didn't know that they had more nukes than us.
00:02:24.000I mean, I guess it's kind of a moot point, right?
00:02:27.000Because everybody's got enough to kill everybody.
00:02:57.000So there was a tremendous amount of speculation leading up to, what the fuck is going on?
00:03:02.000Which, in a sense, points to how lacking the intelligence is on Putin, on plans and intentions, right?
00:03:09.000And that's a heavy lift, right, to come up with that sort of intel, because ideally you're going to want a human source.
00:03:17.000You know, you can gather intelligence from a variety of sources, but you really want human access, people who can tell you, you know what, I had a meeting with him, and boy, I tell you what, he was pissed off, or this is what he said, or this is how he looked.
00:03:33.000Without that, without knowing what plans and intentions are, or being able to gather intel on, say, the command staff, Everybody was kind of speculating.
00:04:08.000And so I think that was optimistic thinking, hoping that, you know, the guy's not going to lose his shit and go all the way through the country.
00:04:15.000And in part, because again, if you look at what he did in Chechnya, if you look at what he did helping Assad in Syria, if you look at what he did annexing Crimea, if you look at Georgia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, every step of the way, he's been following in his mind this stated desire that he's made very public over the years.
00:04:36.000To rebuild his sphere of influence, right?
00:04:38.000So, in part, you could argue we kind of missed the obvious, right?
00:04:43.000We didn't see the obvious in front of us because we were all kind of hoping and mirroring our values onto Putin, who doesn't deserve to have our values mirrored onto him, because we're thinking maybe he just wants a little bit.
00:04:55.000Maybe he's just trying to make a point.
00:04:57.000Maybe he just wants them to sign a charter saying they won't be part of NATO. So anyway, my point being twofold, I guess.
00:05:58.000Increasingly small circle of close advisors and of people that he counts on and trusts.
00:06:05.000And part of that may be, you know, the fact that that was accelerated through the two-year pandemic where he decidedly was shutting himself off because he was, you know, paranoid like a lot of people were about COVID. Do you remember when there was a guy who suicide drove into Putin's car and Putin wasn't in it?
00:07:18.000And so maybe that had something to do with it.
00:07:19.000But anyway, point being is it's tough to...
00:07:23.000When you've got a small potential well of targets you can go after, when you're talking about recruiting somebody who's got access to a high-priority target, that's probably one of the heaviest lifts we've got.
00:07:35.000How does someone get access to a driver?
00:07:53.000The movies and beach books and everything will have you believe that the best way to hook somebody to recruit somebody is blackmail or a honey trap or something.
00:08:03.000Usually, you're working on something else.
00:08:06.000You're not necessarily working on the ideology, but you don't want to start from a negative basis, right?
00:08:11.000Because even in normal terms, in the best of circumstances, when somebody's recruited to spy on their country, to spy on their organization, whatever it may be, A clock starts ticking, you know, because things start to decay,
00:08:40.000And if you start from a negative perspective, if you've got someone cooperating with you because they're blackmailing, they're under the gun here, and they hate you and they hate what they're doing, that's not what you're looking for.
00:08:50.000You're looking for a more, and it sounds weird, but you're looking for a more positive approach.
00:09:43.000So then you find out who's got access to the information, who might be accessible, why might they be minded to talk to you, can you create a scenario where you can get next to them, and then you're looking for points of leverage.
00:09:56.000That doesn't necessarily mean you're looking to find a negative.
00:09:59.000You're looking for something that drives them.
00:10:02.000Are their kids the most important thing to them, right?
00:10:05.000Do they have a kid who, you know, needs medical attention?
00:10:08.000Do they have a kid who they desperately want to send away to college, but they don't have the money?
00:10:13.000You know, so you're looking for something like that, that may, again, it sounds strange because you're talking about recruiting somebody for espionage, but it's a positive rather than a negative.
00:10:23.000And that creates then a longer shelf life in a sense for that asset, if that makes sense.
00:10:29.000It does make sense, but I would imagine that when you're dealing with someone like, say, Kim Jong-un or Putin or some dictator, they have to be prepared for things like this, right?
00:10:43.000So they probably are very cautious on who gets into their inner circle.
00:10:48.000Yeah, and that's a counterintelligence issue, right?
00:10:51.000So every government out there, they're worried about that very thing, right?
00:10:58.000And so, I mean, look, Putin, he was a KGB officer for 15 years, right?
00:11:06.000Now, interestingly, going back to Putin, he served in East Germany, I think, for about half a dozen years.
00:11:14.000Never really had any exposure to the West.
00:11:16.000So that's also something, when you're talking about trying to assess his mindset, understand where he's coming from, part of it is, look, if he had been exposed to the West in a much bigger way, maybe he served in New York, you know, or he served in wherever, you know, London,
00:11:41.000You got to tick that box and put that in there when you're doing an assessment of his personality and trying to – because that's part of understanding why he's doing what he's doing.
00:11:48.000You don't think he understands how we think?
00:11:52.000Well, fundamentally, I mean, look, if you live in an environment, right?
00:11:58.000If you go to China, you live in wherever, Shenzhen or Shanghai or Beijing, and you're there for a few years, you're going to understand the culture, the mindset much better than somebody who's never lived there and is just sitting in Washington in a think tank talking about what the Chinese regime may do next.
00:12:44.000You had intel officers like Putin, KGB, GRU officers who saw their world collapsing around them because At the time, before the Soviet Union collapsed, they were living the good life, right?
00:12:57.000They were the elite in a sense, right?
00:13:12.000Well, we were out there busy, right, working over whatever targets we might have access to, trying to see if Maybe they think, you know, maybe there's another option here.
00:14:07.000I mean, that situation in Chechnya, when they went in there, right?
00:14:11.000And I mean, that was, yeah, I have to argue, the other side was different as well.
00:14:17.000Some of the Chechen separatists were, and some of the shit that they were pulling.
00:14:21.000But at the same time, he didn't care whether he was killing civilians or, you know, separatists and, you know, members of their militia and military.
00:16:06.000So they went in and the assumption was, and now again, this is where our intel is lacking, was he given bad intel or was he given intel and he just chose to ignore it?
00:16:17.000But it appears as if what he believed and what the top military commanders, some of whom have also been let go, Or possibly reassigned.
00:16:28.000I don't think that's a good thing in Russia.
00:16:30.000Is that they were going to get in there, maybe within 48 hours.
00:16:36.000They were going to have control of Kyiv.
00:16:37.000They would be welcomed by the population in Ukraine.
00:16:41.000And they would be able to establish a puppet regime, a new government.
00:16:46.000I mean, they moved the previous president that was Russian-backed.
00:16:53.000In preparation, it appeared, to move him down to take over the government, which is, in a sense, batshit crazy because he was kicked out during the last revolution by the people.
00:18:04.000What scares me is, I mean, I think there are objective journalists that work for the Washington Post and the New York Times, and there's real solid journalists out there.
00:18:12.000But I don't necessarily know if you're getting all the information.
00:18:44.000The New York Post had that story that was banned from Twitter, which was just outright crazy, that one of the oldest newspapers in the country Yeah, I don't think anybody's going to go back and apologize to them.
00:18:57.000But there's a dynamic here that, I mean, I love this topic in a sense, not so much because of, you know, whatever the fuck Hunter was up to, but in part because now when you look at the liberal Dems and the progressives, it doesn't matter to them.
00:19:13.000If you read some of the narrative that is out there now, the social media in the past day or so, ever since the New York Times came out with this, They're just dismissive of it.
00:19:23.000And they don't care or they're willing to overlook it, which is the same thing they accuse the right of doing.
00:19:31.000Both sides, we've talked about this before, but both sides are just so fucked up.
00:19:39.000Which does leave you with the question of, well, where do we go with that?
00:19:43.000But the Russia-Ukraine situation has created an interesting dynamic in D.C. where you've got sort of this weird bipartisan support for, you know, let's give them the MIGs, you know, let's push back, and you think...
00:19:55.000But from what I understand, there was an American billionaire, some guy who actually has a MiG.
00:20:01.000He's an astronaut, and see if we can find the story.
00:20:04.000And he was like, MIGs are technologically inferior to what Russia currently has.
00:20:10.000And if we sent MIGs over there, they would just get shot down.
00:20:13.000It would be a massive moral victory for Russia.
00:20:32.000An American who owns a MiG-29 isn't sure the fighter jets would help Ukraine much.
00:20:36.000A billionaire astronaut who helped train US fighter pilots loves his high-performance Soviet jet but thinks it's no match for Russia's newer planes.
00:20:44.000First of all, that's when you know you're a baller, when you've got your own fucking fighter jet.
00:21:00.000It's about these guys that are smuggling cocaine into America, and they buy a submarine from the former Soviet Union.
00:21:10.000And while they're buying a submarine, the guy asks them if they want nukes to go with the submarine.
00:21:17.000Just an aside, Operation Odessa is outstanding.
00:21:21.000I tell you what, we could get into a whole different rabbit hole there talking about the Grey Arms Market, because we worked at Grey Arms Market for a while.
00:23:07.000In fact, when we strapped in and were taxiing, I was talking to the pilot and he says, yeah, he says, okay, so if things go sideways here and we're up there, what you have to do is you have to You have to use both hands to pull your canopy back.
00:23:49.000Or that you can come out, because there's no space in there, so you're going to be stuck anyway, no matter how successful he is at rolling that thing.
00:23:55.000If you don't turn it upside down, you can't get out.
00:23:58.000Think about that thing, how fast it moves.
00:24:01.000You're going to be trying to climb out of that canopy.
00:24:03.000It was one of those things where I thought to myself, if something had gone wrong, basically my insurance policy would have been not valid.
00:24:12.000Who has the most advanced fighter jets today?
00:24:19.000People are going to say, well, of course you're going to say it's the US. I think they, in terms of technology, it's moving very quickly because what's developing fast is material science, right?
00:24:29.000And so material science has been developing because the holy grail of all of this is speed, right?
00:24:36.000And speed can defeat a lot of things, including air defense systems.
00:24:40.000So, you know, I would argue, from everything I've seen, the U.S., I mean, China is right there, in part because they're very good at stealing whatever we're developing.
00:24:53.000But in terms of development of new materials, and that's going to allow for that breakthrough eventually, probably not in our lifetime, but of manned hypersonic flight, which is going to be insane.
00:25:05.000How does China steal technology like that?
00:25:08.000Do they find someone who's working on the technology and bribe them?
00:25:13.000Yes, they go through a variety of ways.
00:25:15.000So one way that seems very unobtrusive and logical is they have people out attending all the various academic events, conferences, and so they do that.
00:25:29.000They'll hoover up whatever they can in that regard.
00:25:40.000That comes into their institutions here in the U.S. from China.
00:25:43.000One way they do it is they put students here, right?
00:25:47.000And, you know, people are going to say, oh, my God, that sounds xenophobic or whatever.
00:25:51.000No, but a portion of students, you know, come to the States are cooperative assets or working on behalf of, because sometimes, you know, that's just what they're going to have to do with the PLA. Well, if they want to go back to China, right?
00:26:07.000You know, you can have someone show up here, go to undergrad, go to grad, end up working in Raytheon or wherever over a period of 30, 40 years, right, essentially as an asset of Chinese intel, gathering information all along the way,
00:28:23.000I mean, if this is the game you're playing, right?
00:28:25.000If the game you're playing is everybody's cheating, it seems like it's part of the strategy that you have to employ if you want to be successful.
00:28:34.000Yeah, I would say it's much more difficult for us.
00:28:41.000So if you think about it, our ability to have, say, a student, if we're going to go that route, apply to a university in China, that's a much more rigorous process,
00:28:59.000They start from the perspective of, there's something wrong here.
00:29:03.000Why is this person applying to our university?
00:29:05.000So immediately they're flagged as a potential counterintelligence issue.
00:29:09.000Whereas we have, I don't even know at this point, maybe 300,000 more Chinese students here in various academic institutions going to school, probably more than that.
00:29:20.000Like when you have 300,000, do we have enough federal agents to go, hey, let's make sure this guy isn't stealing information and sending it back to the CCP? No, but every day, literally every day, the FBI, as an example, is opening up a new case on a Chinese intelligence issue here in the States.
00:29:38.000So they're stretched thin on a lot of fronts, including terrorism fronts, international and domestic.
00:29:45.000But the Chinese issue in counterintelligence, every single day they're opening up a new case, at least one.
00:29:50.000I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about this.
00:29:53.000I was saying, you know, what's kind of fucked is that what we do in America is every four years we have an election where it's a popularity contest for the most important job in the country.
00:30:05.000And so if you got the most important job in the country, every four years someone's new at it.
00:30:13.000Imagine if you had to do any other job, whether it's brain surgery or whatever the fuck it is, building cars, and you've never done it before.
00:30:30.000I guess it is a good thing, but when you look at what they're able to do in China, and this is not me advocating for totalitarian control by the government, but what I'm saying is it is a massive advantage that they have in that they don't have that restriction.
00:30:48.000They get to be really good at their job and they understand it deeply.
00:30:52.000So, like, one of the things that, you know, the tinfoil hat brigade likes to talk about is the deep state, right?
00:30:57.000They always like to talk about the deep state.
00:31:00.000And what I was saying is, like, what if we didn't have a deep state?
00:31:04.000Do you know how fucked we would be if we didn't have career politicians and career intelligence agencies and people who are there for long periods of time that actually do understand it?
00:31:55.000But it's a massive disadvantage, isn't it, though?
00:32:00.000This is not me saying this like advocating for any different system.
00:32:04.000But what I'm saying is that if you just look at the structure of our government, the way we do elect a new leader every four years, every four years someone is new.
00:32:15.000They start from scratch, which is crazy.
00:32:18.000Yeah, I think what saves the system is what you...
00:32:22.000Point it out, which is you've got career personnel, right?
00:32:27.000And they really do run the country, basically.
00:33:40.000I'm a huge believer in term limits, and it's never going to happen, but I'm a big believer in it.
00:33:47.000And it's just that you look at the current leadership— I don't know.
00:33:54.000I mean, how do you look at Schumer, at Mitch McConnell, at Pelosi, at President Biden, and you think, we got octogenarians running our country.
00:34:29.000I mean, who wants to put themselves through that?
00:34:31.000Yeah, who wants to put themselves through that?
00:34:32.000And then on top of that, who wants to deal with all of the infighting and all the politics that are involved once you get into a position?
00:34:42.000What scares me is the idea that intelligence agencies would side with one party or one candidate or the other and not side with the greater good of the United States.
00:34:54.000Because then there could be a situation where information is withheld or information is not necessarily distributed evenly to Republicans or Democrats, depending upon what the party favors or what the agency favors.
00:35:14.000The intel community has got to be apolitical, and you've got to work at it, right?
00:35:21.000I mean, you've got to be very careful.
00:35:24.000And now, look, the director is appointed, right?
00:35:28.000And then approved through Congress, and...
00:35:33.000You know, so you have to—there's a process in place.
00:35:35.000You've got to be able to evaluate, look at people, and make a decision, okay, are they—you know, but for the most part, again, I would say—I would argue, and people would expect that, but I would argue that, you know, for the most part, the agency has done a— Good job of being apolitical through the years.
00:35:52.000Now, that doesn't mean mistakes haven't been made through the years.
00:36:13.000When a guy like Trump gets into office and then openly disparages intelligence agencies and openly disparages whether it's the FBI or the CIA or whoever he's in some sort of a personal feud with,
00:36:40.000And there was a lot of talk during, you know, Trump's time in office, you know, that morale was sinking at the agency because he was, you know, kicking him in the ass on occasion, right?
00:37:26.000From, you know, all the machinations or the back and forth.
00:37:30.000Now, once you collect that intel, right?
00:37:32.000If you're out in the field and you pull that intel and you throw it into the mix, right?
00:37:36.000You send it back or whatever, and once it leaves that building and it gets into that washing machine of Washington where there's lots of different, you know, people editing and looking at it before it ends up in, you know, in some briefing somewhere in the National Security Council, yeah, there's an editing process that goes on there.
00:37:51.000That's where a lot of the spin, a lot of the, you know, the agenda can be built in.
00:37:57.000Well, I mean, you've got a lot of hands touching, you know, raw intelligence is one thing, right?
00:38:01.000You find somebody out in the field and they said, yeah, this is what Putin means because I was sitting in a meeting with him and two of the command staff and this is what he said.
00:38:13.000You don't put your spin on it, right, as a person that's collecting.
00:38:17.000And that goes back, but now that's going to get looked at by the guys writing the reports up and doing the analysis and assessment of this.
00:38:26.000They're putting it together with other intel, maybe they're collecting from other sources, right?
00:38:32.000Then, you've got, so the more hands that are touching that, you know, once it gets back to Washington, the more potential for editing, right?
00:38:41.000And for analysis and opinion, you know, might get in there.
00:38:47.000But it's the raw intelligence that really matters.
00:38:50.000And Sometimes I feel like we should have a more direct line from the actual raw intelligence, if you can protect sources and methods, direct to the end user, you know, to try to keep that editing process to a minimum.
00:39:01.000Otherwise, you're playing a game of telephone, too, right?
00:39:05.000It's not so much telephone where, you know, you get the...
00:39:07.000I guess we used to say Chinese whispers.
00:39:18.000But anyway, the idea of being, it's like that party game where you whisper something to someone, they whisper it along to someone.
00:39:23.000It's not quite like that because they're kind of, it's more like it gets blended in, right?
00:39:30.000And then that blending process with other sources of information and then just the natural inclination of people who are writing up reports or passing it from one office to another is To say, well, I think this is kind of what it means, or this is the most important part here.
00:40:13.000Most people, you know, they just know that we find out certain things about a certain terrorist cell or, you know, what have you is happening in other parts of the world.
00:40:23.000And we really don't know the process of how the intelligence gets to the people that make the decisions.
00:40:28.000I think what would surprise people, too, is how imperfect that intelligence can be sometimes.
00:40:57.000And Scooter, the oldest one, came to me and says, I found this funny fucking thread in some, you know, Reddit or something like that, where there's this whole bunch talking about the boys and what their names are.
00:41:13.000And so, I actually wrote down some of them.
00:41:50.000And the last one, the youngest one, Muggsy, he's adopted the new name McFuckstick because he thinks that's funnier than anything except for Fuckknuckle.
00:43:15.000I am of the opinion that people should be able to express themselves.
00:43:19.000But you gotta realize, like, if you gave me a Twitter account when I was 15 years old, and you let me tweet at Mike Baker, I'm gonna say some fucking horrible shit to you, dude.
00:43:29.000If I was, like, a 15-year-old kid, and they let them have their fucking phones in class, right?
00:43:37.000So if the teacher's not paying attention, and I'm bored out of my mind, because I don't give a shit about math, And I'm sitting there in my class, I'm going to just tweet at Mike Baker.
00:43:44.000And if Mike Baker bites, and people do bite, you know, they bite, oh, what did you say, you son of a bitch?
00:43:56.000You got a trout on the line right there.
00:43:59.000Yeah, well, people love to just make up a completely fake story and see if that makes it into the news.
00:44:06.000There's been a whole thing where A hundred people, at least, have texted me and sent me emails and contacted friends because they heard Trump was coming on my podcast.
00:44:18.000And the source of it is a fake Trump account on Twitter that said, it's Trump's face and it's a fake account that said, I'm going on the Joe Rogan podcast soon.
00:44:29.000And I think it came out of the fact that Trump was on the Nelk Boys podcast and then YouTube removed that podcast and They pulled the podcast, which is one of the craziest things you could do because then everyone's going to talk about how YouTube removed that podcast.
00:47:48.000But it's just the idea that one person can have that much influence is disturbing to a lot of folks who would like these giant corporations that are controlled by the pharmaceutical companies and whoever the fuck else is paying their advertising to decide what can and can be talked about and not be said or not discussed and what's misinformation and what's real information.
00:49:08.000And these woke kids who think because they scream the loudest and they pull fire alarms and they stop discussions and they stifle debates, they think that they have more control than they really do.
00:49:21.000What they do in that is they set a precedent, and that precedent is you can stifle information that makes you uncomfortable.
00:49:27.000You can stifle discussions where people have points of view that you don't agree with.
00:49:32.000And you think you're right, so you think you should be able to stop those points of view.
00:49:41.000It's a dangerous precedent to set because then when more power is acquired by whoever, whether it's social media companies or the government or whoever the fuck it is, they get to establish a narrative and that narrative might not be honest.
00:50:09.000I don't know if you know who he is, but he's a musician who personally himself has He's taken more than 200 Klansmen and neo-Nazis and got them to completely abandon their ideology and hand him their robes.
00:50:28.000He's this really interesting guy because he's He's a brilliant musician, but through his music and doing these concerts and shows he's done, he ran into a Klansman back in the day and had a conversation with this guy,
00:51:09.000He was on last week and he was on with Bill Ottman who is the CEO of Minds.
00:51:15.000Minds is a decentralized social media company that does not believe in censorship.
00:51:21.000They stop threats and doxing and things along those lines, but they believe that the only way to really sort out what's right and what's wrong is to let people communicate.
00:51:33.000And Daryl has the fucking patience of a saint.
00:51:40.000He's affected people personally through his own intelligence and his own ability to stay calm and communicate with people who have ridiculous ideas and give them better ideas.
00:51:50.000And through these conversations, he's got them to change their minds.
00:51:54.000Well, and then think about the multiplying effect of that, right?
00:51:56.000Maybe, you know, people say, wow, a couple hundred people.
00:51:58.000All the people those folks know then, right?
00:52:00.000They can impact their families, their behavior, their actions, and impact their friends.
00:52:05.000Then come on here and then establish that and have these conversations on here which reach millions and millions of people and they hear about it.
00:52:13.000And then they find out these conversations that this guy's had with these people and it makes them think.
00:52:18.000You can't just stifle communication and think that...
00:52:23.000There's dangerous thoughts out there and we have to stop them.
00:52:46.000Well, I'm not sure how we walk the dog back from where we are right now.
00:52:51.000I did see an article—I don't remember where the hell it was, and it was just the other day—that was written, I think it was an op-ed piece, that basically argued that part of the problem— It started out by saying, why are our young folks so susceptible to disinformation?
00:53:08.000Well, the problem was what they were saying was they're susceptible to disinformation from one side, right?
00:53:15.000It was written by a progressive author, and as it turns out, their argument was, we spent too much time on STEM, on science and technology, English, math, and not enough on...
00:53:25.000Philosophy and critical thinking in teaching kids that so that we should be teaching more of that and the problem with stem is that it teaches you know finite answers or definitive answers and Doesn't teach critical thinking.
00:53:38.000I read the whole thing and I was critical theory not critical thinking yeah, yes critical thinking allows you to look at all sorts of different subjects and different you know Different facts and and what's what are the variables and what are the influences and what's going on here?
00:53:55.000It lets you just try to look at things critically.
00:53:58.000Critical theory, a lot of it is like progressive ideology.
00:54:04.000They have a dogma, and when you have a dogma, it's not much different than religion in a lot of ways, where you don't want anybody to have an opposing perspective that challenges the dogma.
00:54:57.000I mean, we've gotten to this point where it became a religion almost.
00:55:00.000Well, John Abramson is a guy that I had on the podcast that really opened my eyes to how these things work in terms of pharmaceutical companies.
00:55:10.000And one of the things that he said is that when studies are done, that the scientists that are conducting the studies do not have access to the raw data.
00:55:20.000They have access to the interpretation of the data that's provided to them by the pharmaceutical companies.
00:56:17.000And then, because I remember their stock, I took a look at their stock to see what it was doing shortly after that statement, and it went up.
00:57:15.000It's an anti-inflammation drug that wasn't any better than non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like Advil and ibuprofen.
00:57:23.000And Abramson was part of the team that was prosecuting this.
00:57:29.000It was part of the team that was in court about this.
00:57:31.000And they showed that they knew that this was going to cause these events.
00:57:36.000And somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000 to 60,000 Americans died because of their interpretation of what this stuff was versus the reality of what this stuff was.
00:57:48.000And one of them was a buddy of mine who got a fucking stroke because he had knee problems.
00:57:53.000When you think about the pharmaceutical industry, they go out.
00:57:55.000I mean, there's a whole chain of then the sales reps going out to the doctors, you know, and introducing these new therapeutics and saying, here, this is a great opportunity, you know.
00:58:05.000And, yeah, I don't profess to understand that...
00:58:08.000Well, my wife's mom's a nurse, and so I found out about this years ago where she was explaining how the doctors would, the pharmaceutical reps, rather, would take the doctors and the nurses out for these expensive dinners.
00:58:20.000And they're not allowed to bribe you, but they get real close.
00:58:23.000So it's like what you were talking about with what you do to an asset.
00:59:51.000The only way we find out all these things, whether it's information about pharmaceutical drug companies or information about the influence of foreign bodies on students, you have to fucking talk about things.
01:00:08.000And the only way you find out if someone's full of shit or if someone's lying or someone's withholding information is to let people talk and let people sort things through.
01:00:32.000Amazing about a free society and you can't decide that there's certain ugly aspects of this society that you think should be suppressed because when you do that then people can decide your aspect of society is ugly, your perspective is ugly.
01:00:47.000If we get a fucking hardcore Putin type leader running this country and they start cracking down on legitimate journalists that are exposing corruption Then you get into dangerous circumstances.
01:00:57.000And this is the problem that I had with the New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop being suppressed.
01:01:07.000I didn't vote for any Republican ever in my life.
01:01:10.000But you're looking at something that's real information and you're hiding it from people because you don't like the result that you think is going to come out of that information.
01:01:18.000That's not how we're supposed to be doing things.
01:01:24.000I think it's why there's so much dissatisfaction.
01:01:27.000You know, there's so much distrust because I think people are starting to realize, right?
01:01:32.000Regardless, again, where they are in the spectrum, both sides have an equal ability to think, I don't think I'm seeing or hearing or being told accurate information here.
01:01:43.000I mean, Putin, look, shit, if you talk about Biden and his age or you talk about any presidential term and the fact that we roll it over, you look at the opposite side of it, Putin got into power and 99, right?
01:02:15.000And now he's been in office running that country, literally, since 99. And they've changed the rules of the game.
01:02:25.000He actually, if his health stays and he's, whatever, 69, 70, 69, he can be in office until 2036. Well, he has access to the cutting-edge technology and science and medical advances.
01:02:42.000That guy can be healthy as fuck for a long time.
01:02:46.000We live in a different world now, you know?
01:02:49.000And I can say this from personal experience, being a 54-year-old guy.
01:02:52.000When I was a kid, 54-year-old men were dead.
01:02:59.000But what you can do with your body is so different if you have access to hyperbaric chambers and human growth hormone and testosterone replacement and NMN and NAD and all these different things that lengthen telomeres and improve your biological age.
01:03:17.000I mean there's a whole science behind this now.
01:03:19.000What's the lifespan now in America, US male?
01:03:23.000Well, it still sucks because we drink too much and we smoke too much as I put down my straw.
01:03:27.000And we eat garbage food and there's a vast majority of us are sedentary and are overweight.
01:03:35.000We've talked about this on the podcast ad nauseam, but it's a real problem.
01:03:42.000The metabolic health of the average American is piss poor, and it's because most people, first of all, they're stressed out, they work too much, they don't have a lot of time, and they also haven't made it a priority to take care of their physical health.
01:03:55.000But if you were a guy like Putin, and you had boundless resources, I mean, by all accounts, that guy is worth an astounding amount of money.
01:04:05.000Possibly the wealthiest Russian alive, possibly, even more so than Than some of his buddies who have spent a number of years now making him the richest person.
01:04:14.000I was going to talk to you about that.
01:04:16.000So what is this whole deal with the oligarchs?
01:04:19.000And what do you think is the strategy behind that?
01:04:21.000Because all these guys are trying to hide their yachts and some of them have had their yachts taken away from them.
01:04:27.000First of all, where do those yachts go and who gets access to them now?
01:05:05.000Yeah, I'm thinking Macron is on board, one of those yachts, having a time of his life.
01:05:10.000But this is, I mean, you touched on a really important part of what the hell is happening right now is because one of the reasons, Putin just made these comments the other day, right?
01:05:19.000He came out and he talked about, you know, the people that aren't real Russians, they're scum, they're traitors.
01:05:24.000What really set him off, because sometimes it's a little simpler than we imagine, kind of going back to what we talked about before, we kind of overlook the obvious in terms of why he acts the way he does.
01:05:34.000Part of this is, when he came into power, nobody really gave him any thought, right?
01:05:41.000And he'd been like a deputy mayor in Leningrad, and he showed up, he proved himself fairly capable, got himself tight with Yeltsin, I was appointed as head of the FSB, you know, the old KGB, the Domestic Service.
01:05:56.000FSB is the new version of the KGB? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:05:59.000And so he sort of found himself in this position, rising to the top.
01:06:05.000And one of the first things he did, which surprised a lot of people, was he reigned in the oligarchs, supposedly, right?
01:06:11.000He called them all together and he says, you know, fuck you.
01:06:24.000And, you know, there's really been, other than Hortokovsky, there's been really nobody that's gotten out of line over all these years.
01:06:31.000Now, one of the things the oligarchs didn't exchange was, you know, help essentially hide, manage money on his behalf.
01:06:38.000And now what's happened recently since the Ukrainian invasion...
01:06:42.000An invasion of Ukraine is that some of these guys, Mikhail Friedman, Avin, who else, Abramovich, they've come out and they haven't criticized Putin directly,
01:06:58.000but they've criticized the war, said, no, we shouldn't be doing this.
01:09:00.000It's impacting the Russian people in a big way.
01:09:03.000He's fucking over the Russian population.
01:09:05.000He's creating this situation where he's isolating the country and he's really putting them as sort of the He's almost creating a situation, and I'm going off on a bit of a tangent here, with China,
01:09:20.000where China's going to start looking at Russia the same way they look at North Korea, which is, oh, for fuck's sake, we've got to take care of these people now, right?
01:10:36.000And so this understanding of the relationship between he and Xi, I think Xi's looking at this and going, this is a great opportunity for us right now.
01:10:45.000Now, if it gets uglier in Ukraine, If things really, really get ugly, then I think you're going to see some daylight between Xi's going to look and go, okay, politically, economically, it's now in our interests to create some space there.
01:11:00.000They're not going to change their situation with Russia because we threaten them with sanctions.
01:11:06.000This whole thing that the Biden administration is doing right now where they're talking about, well, we've threatened them with secondary sanctions if they supply military hardware to Russia.
01:11:18.000I think that's a complete misread of how you should be dealing with Xi and the regime right now.
01:11:46.000The intel service's job would be to be providing as good intel, as well-sourced intel as possible on what the Chinese regime's thinking, right?
01:11:58.000And then they would use that the administration would factor that in when they're thinking about a strategy and how to deal with Xi.
01:12:05.000So who ultimately would make those decisions, though?
01:12:10.000The White House would make the decision, and then it would be...
01:12:12.000Typically, when we're talking about China, you would see it mostly through Antony Blinken and the State Department, right?
01:12:20.000But, you know, Blinken's getting out there and publicly berating China and threatening sanctions.
01:12:25.000Again, I'm not saying we don't talk to them privately and explain how, you know, our view is and what we want them to understand from our perspective.
01:12:41.000But, yeah, the problem with President Biden is, you know, I don't know that when he says something, It never really seems to be said with much conviction, right?
01:12:54.000And so, and his actions in the past, I mean, look, you know, if we're talking just about Putin here, Putin knows Biden's team, you know, to some degree, because he's seen Biden, he's seen some of these cats on Biden's team during the Obama administration,
01:13:11.000And so if you think about when Putin's been really aggressive, it was During the Obama administration and now.
01:13:17.000So he feels he knows what he's dealing with.
01:13:20.000And you have to assume the Chinese do the same assessment.
01:13:23.000But I guess my point being is that Xi is doing a daily risk gain calculation in terms of their relationship with Russia.
01:13:32.000And they're saying, okay, is it still in our best interest?
01:13:35.000And as soon as it's not, from Xi's perspective, in China's self-interest to maintain You know, sort of this notion of closer ties with Russia, then he'll back off.
01:13:46.000And, you know, again, I think he views it right now as an opportunity.
01:13:51.000And always, if it's an opportunity to kind of poke at us, he'll take it.
01:13:56.000I have this screenshot that someone sent me of the way the people on the left were talking about the Ukraine situation before the war.
01:14:16.000But this is one of the things that's so weird, is that they were very disparaging Of Ukraine, and they were talking about the massive corruption of Ukraine and how horrible it was over there.
01:14:31.000And now, all of a sudden, they're looking at it like they're heroes.
01:14:48.000A new Europe Ukrainian president rule becomes increasingly corrupt and authoritarian.
01:14:53.000Ukrainian President Zelenskyy deepens alliance with the far right.
01:14:57.000And this is one of the things that we're hearing from people on both sides, that they have a Nazi problem over there, that there's a lot of Nazis involved in Ukraine.
01:15:06.000And there was something that I saw on Facebook, where Facebook allowed...
01:15:12.000This is what's so confusing about what they call the fog of war.
01:15:15.000It's not necessarily really the fog of war.
01:15:18.000It's the fog of the distribution of information.
01:15:20.000Is that we're supposed to just completely take a hard right turn or a veer away, a hard angle away from the narrative that was being pushed just a couple of years ago.
01:15:32.000And we're supposed to ignore all this stuff now.
01:15:34.000And I don't know what's right and what's wrong.
01:15:37.000Because there was something about Facebook.
01:15:55.000You know, the Ukraine's had a serious, significant corruption problem over the years.
01:16:00.000They got a really interesting history.
01:16:02.000People should spend time reading the history of Ukraine and understanding what the troubles have been just recently even with corruption, trying to get that under control.
01:16:12.000And it can also be true that, all right, in terms of- Even so.
01:16:39.000Or another good example is the fact that we're working with Putin's government in our ongoing negotiations with Iran, because the current administration, the Biden administration, is so keen to rejuvenate that 2015 Iran deal.
01:16:55.000And so we're actually, while we're doing all this, while we're calling him a war criminal, And we're providing, you know, we just provide another aid package full of AT4s and javelins and stingers and helmets.
01:17:18.000what we're referring to now as a war criminal as our liaison with the Iranians to try to strike a deal with the Iranians or to get them back on board and into this deal and people look at that and rightly so are thinking what the fuck but it's it's how it's always worked right you you know it's it's a very pragmatic approach i suppose in one in one sense and you know you can't you can't say okay i'm going to be I'm going to be the leader of the free world and only do things
01:17:49.000Only do things if they're morally the high ground.
01:17:52.000I'm never going to deal with people who are reprehensible at times.
01:17:59.000One of the things that's happening now is because of social media and because there's so much access to information is that all this stuff is brutally transparent.
01:18:10.000That, like, the United States is contacting Saudi Arabia and trying to broker some sort of a deal.
01:18:18.000Now we're hearing that Saudi Arabia is considering using the Chinese currency instead of American dollars for their oil, which scares the shit out of people.
01:18:29.000And the fact that, I mean, I don't know if it's true, but that Saudi Arabia is not taking Biden's calls.
01:18:36.000No, that was one of those things that flew out there.
01:18:40.000Yeah, I don't think there's any basis to that.
01:18:42.000There was some talk about, oh my god, the UAE and Saudis are saying, we're not taking your calls anymore.
01:18:46.000Yeah, I saw it because there was a Trevor Noah sketch, or a little monologue thing where he was doing, where he was saying that this would never happen if Trump was the president, they would take his calls.
01:18:59.000Like, you can't just not take his calls.
01:22:16.000Because one of the things that I was seeing was that Putin was mocking the idea that the gas prices in America have anything to do with the crisis in Ukraine.
01:22:28.000And he was saying that the United States only gets 3% of its oil from Russia.
01:22:34.000And the idea that we're responsible, he was saying Russia, that this was responsible for the increase in the price of gas and the destabilization of inflation.
01:22:53.000In part, no, I mean, recent price increases or fluctuation in both the price of oil and what you're paying at the pump, you can attribute to sort of the chaos and the instability that took place once the invasion started, right?
01:23:05.000Once it became clear that this was about to kick off ever since.
01:23:17.000They're looking at everything that goes on in the world.
01:23:21.000So China, as an example, look, they've locked down, right?
01:23:25.000They're starting to open up Shenzhen in a little bit, but they got millions of people now under new lockdowns because of COVID. It's the Omicron, Omicron, Omicron.
01:23:37.000And so that can impact, because now suddenly what happens?
01:23:40.000The people are looking to go, the Chinese economy is going to slow down, and in fact it has.
01:23:43.000They came out and said, you know, our numbers, our expected growth is actually going to be slower than it's been in decades.
01:23:52.000So I think they'll look at that and go, okay, that's got to be factored into how we're going to price, you know, crude or petroleum products.
01:24:00.000And so Or they look at the Iran deal, the Iran negotiations, and they think, oh, you know, price came down below $100 a barrel in part because it looked like people were making noises like we're going to get a deal with Iran, that was going to open up the spigot,
01:24:15.000and so we're going to be able to replace the amount of oil that's going to be missing from the market because of the sanctions on Russia.
01:24:21.000So the traders globally look at everything that's taking place in the world, and they set the prices, right?
01:24:30.000It's not the oil companies thinking, here, we're going to set the price of crude.
01:24:36.000That's why it's such a fallacy when somebody in Washington, D.C. comes out and goes, they're profiteering.
01:26:48.000You know, okay, they're going to start shutting production down.
01:26:50.000They're not going to invest in new opportunities.
01:26:53.000And so, yeah, that's going to have an impact.
01:26:56.000And I think what the Biden administration did that was incorrect was the simple Thought that energy in today's world equals national security.
01:27:07.000It is a top national security priority, right?
01:27:12.000And so therefore, if you think energy is a critical national security concern in this world, therefore, it's not unreasonable to think we should do everything possible to achieve or get as close as possible to achieve energy independence.
01:28:50.000Whoever develops the next best, smallest battery is going to win.
01:28:53.000So, you know, it shouldn't be that hard to assume, but the problem is we send people to Washington who then just throw shit on the wall, right, because it seems like a popular thing to say, right?
01:29:06.000And so next thing you know, we're talking about, yeah, let's do a windfall tax.
01:29:22.000And the problem is some of these people that are up in Washington, D.C. aren't old enough to remember.
01:29:25.000But in the 70s, right, they had price controls on gas.
01:29:30.000Which we also had long lines for gas and we had all sorts of problems in terms of gas and the resulting, it didn't do any good in terms of lowering prices long term.
01:29:40.000And then they finally released that and they finally said, okay, take all the price controls off and prices started to come down because, again, it's a supply-demand, it's a marketplace.
01:30:16.000I mean, that was one of the things that when the Biden administration came in, a lot of people that are environmentally conscious were very happy because they were talking about the Green New Deal, they were talking about doing things for the environment, preparing for the future of this country, for the future of the children,
01:30:32.000and not leaving a poisoned, polluted world because a bunch of people were greedy.
01:30:37.000But what you're saying is that, correct me if I'm wrong, it's much more complicated than that in that our reliance on oil is kind of absolute.
01:30:48.000We have a certain amount of reliance on oil.
01:30:50.000You can't just erase that immediately.
01:32:41.000When oil is down at 30, 35 bucks a barrel, because of his dependence on oil and gas, petroleum products as a revenue, when it's like that, you know, so in our minds, we should have been thinking,
01:32:56.000okay, again, from a geopolitical standpoint, What do we have to do to ensure our national security, the security of our allies, everything else?
01:33:37.000We talked about intel and sort of lack of intel.
01:33:40.000Intel estimates are anywhere from Yeah, a couple thousand to 10,000, right?
01:33:46.000Which that gap, anytime you look at a gap like that in intel assessments, whether it's that or whether it's how far are the Iranians away from breakout in terms of creating a weapon, you know, and it says, well, a month away or 12 months away.
01:34:01.000Your intel sources, really solid intel, are lacking, and you need to tighten that up.
01:34:07.000Russian troops killed, some estimates are hovering around 7,000 or so, but you've got to take that with a grain of salt because the intel's not really there.
01:34:23.000He committed about 200,000 troops to this invasion.
01:34:29.000And if he's lost 7,000 to 10,000 already, including a handful of top commanders, right?
01:34:37.000So he's had generals killed in the field, right?
01:34:40.000I mean, that's an astounding thing if you think just about that alone.
01:34:43.000He's had, I think, at this point, four commanding officers, general staff, killed in the field.
01:34:51.000And what that would imply is that they're putting themselves into positions where they can get, you know, whacked out in the field Because things aren't working properly, right?
01:35:02.000They shouldn't be out, you know, at the front of some convoy where some sniper is going to be able to take them out.
01:35:06.000They should have much better command and control systems in place.
01:35:11.000But clearly, they've had all sorts of problems here.
01:35:13.000And that's just one, again, one of those small indications of some of the difficulties that they've been experiencing.
01:35:20.000Is this because people aren't willing to be straight with Putin because they fear the consequences?
01:35:28.000Or is this just that they didn't know how fiercely the Ukrainian people would fight?
01:35:37.000Yeah, I think at the 30,000 foot level, their risk threat assessments were way off.
01:35:46.000Which is astounding because you think about the ability for the Russians The intel service and the military to have assets or information on, you know, what's going on in Ukraine.
01:35:58.000I mean, it's the long history, the ties between the two, and their ability to place assets in there over the years and to understand, you know, what's going on.
01:36:06.000And you would have assumed that they would have had recon.
01:36:12.000In Ukraine, you know, for months leading up to this, telling them about defensive strategies about, you know, the buildup in the Ukraine, what are they going to be facing?
01:36:44.000Again, it's speculation because the only person that really knows what Putin's thinking is Putin.
01:36:51.000So when you see these videos, and I've seen quite a few of them, it's hard to know what's real because there was one video that was being touted as evidence that turned out to be footage from a video game.
01:37:08.000I mean, this is a problem with the world we're living in today, right?
01:37:12.000There's so much chaos in terms of like accurate information.
01:37:17.000But there's these videos of Russian convoys, and there's these essentially—they're using guerrilla tactics.
01:37:24.000They're hiding behind buildings and shooting these grenade launchers and missiles at these tanks as they roll by and blowing them up and killing these Russians.
01:37:37.000One of the things that has emerged from this, if you're just looking at the battle spaces— You know, tanks may not be a thing anymore, right?
01:38:27.000That's what one of the key elements that got them out of Afghanistan was, you know, the ability for the Mujahideen to shoot their, you know, platforms out of the sky.
01:38:38.000And so they certainly should have understood what that meant.
01:39:32.000And so people start, and that, to go to your point, you know, we were covering it two years ago, or Ukraine was covered in an entirely different way.
01:39:39.000But now, because of the way that people get their information, the speed, and that creates this emotion.
01:39:48.000What do you think Putin thought was going to happen?
01:39:50.000I mean, when you're driving these tanks down many, many miles on a straight road where everybody knows where they're coming from, everybody knows where they're going.
01:40:00.000Why do these generals or whoever's in charge of making these military plans, why do they think that that was a viable option to just drive these convoys of military vehicles and personnel carriers And fuel tanks,
01:41:12.000You would have imagined that the planning, and I think that's one of the reasons why you're starting to see, again, if we can believe a lot of the anecdotal evidence, why you're seeing this starting to bubble up a little bit through the command structure and through the elite.
01:41:26.000And we have to hope that continues, because ultimately, you know, what's going to get them to back off is...
01:41:32.000Unless there's some miraculous peace deal because he finally says, fuck it, we're not going to win, is sort of the Russian population, the elites, and the military command basically finally just saying, enough's enough.
01:41:53.000Probably not going to get there anytime soon, but one of the things we should be doing is just driving information into the Russian population, giving them the visuals, not propaganda.
01:42:04.000All we got to do is show them what's happening.
01:42:39.000Did you see that video of this woman who is standing in the middle of the square and she holds up this small sign and then immediately the cops grab her and shove her into a van?
01:42:49.000Yeah, there's a number of incidents like that.
01:42:52.000It's remarkable in terms of the speed with which they show up on scene and they know they're going to get arrested.
01:43:05.000He's worried about that massive population thinking, oh, fuck this.
01:43:11.000With Putin, he wants everyone to believe that he's doing this because he's trying to protect the Russian people and he's trying to protect Russian sovereignty.
01:43:21.000And so there was this thought, well, oh my god, we did this.
01:43:24.000We created this problem because we were enticing Ukraine into, you know, democracy.
01:43:31.000The only thing that was a threat was a threat directly to Putin's power.
01:43:35.000That's all it was, was having a successful democracy in Ukraine, you know, and incrementally, slowly getting past the corruption issues and becoming more and more of a successful democracy.
01:43:46.000That poses a threat to Putin's control, his own control in the situation.
01:43:51.000And he doesn't, that's, you know, so when he talks about a sphere of influence, it's in part, you know, yes, in his mind, he's thinking about the Soviet Union, and I'm keeping NATO at bay.
01:44:00.000But really, what he's thinking about is I don't want fucking successful democracies on my on my Western flank.
01:44:05.000Is it that but it is is it also that if Ukraine joins NATO, then NATO can park their weapons in Ukraine?
01:44:34.000Yeah, but underneath the whatever public discourse may have been taking place and the idea that Ukraine was becoming more of a democracy and they were tamping down to corruption and maybe eventually they get to...
01:44:46.000NATO countries, you know, being very pragmatic, we're looking at it and going, yeah, Ukraine is different.
01:45:00.000Because the history of Ukraine with Russia.
01:45:03.000And so there's a tacit understanding that that's not going to end well.
01:45:07.000You know, we don't want to put Ukraine in a position to bring them into NATO. So again, you know, who am I? I'm not running the world, but I would argue that that wasn't going to happen.
01:45:16.000And, you know, but, you know, again, I think with Putin, it was simply, this presents a challenge to my authority.
01:45:28.000And fuck it, I want to be president until 2036. So you think it's just entirely because if Ukraine succeeds as a democracy and if it becomes less and less corrupt and the democracy becomes more and more established, that somehow or another could trickle into Russia?
01:45:44.000Yeah, and there was also little to zero chance that we were going to place key strategic weaponry inside Ukraine.
01:45:54.000That idea is also because People look at it from a certain perspective, which is, yeah, that might be a bridge too far.
01:46:04.000In the previous world, before this invasion, they would have looked at that as, that's too escalatory.
01:46:09.000That's taking things a bridge too far.
01:46:45.000So one of the things that I read recently was that Putin had established a certain amount of parameters that need to be in place for them to pull out of Ukraine.
01:46:58.000One of them was that they agreed to not join NATO. That was something that had been expressed.
01:47:05.000Do you think that's because now that he's invaded Ukraine that the NATO countries might look at it as an opportunity to try to have Ukraine join NATO now and that's where this narrative is coming from?
01:47:19.000No, I think it's just he wants it in writing, for whatever that's worth, I guess, nowadays.
01:47:24.000But I think he wants it, because look, it's in their constitution about the opportunity to join NATO. He wants that removed, and he wants it clear in any potential agreement that they're not going to.
01:47:35.000I think that's the easiest ask that you can put on the table for Zelensky, right?
01:47:40.000The hard one is the demilitarization of Ukraine, right?
01:47:44.000Yeah, and I think that can be met by agreeing not to deploy certain weapon systems into Ukraine, right?
01:47:54.000It's not going to mean that dismantling of Ukrainian army, I don't think that they would ever get to that point.
01:48:22.000But I think we have to be Realistic about this.
01:48:28.000And so, as distasteful as it is, Zelensky's going to have to give up certain things.
01:48:34.000Putin's certainly, you know, going to have to be willing to figure out, okay, I got to figure out how to draw a line here and then, you know, get out.
01:48:41.000But that's a big lift now because he's upset a lot of people.
01:48:46.000It's not like we can just lift all these sanctions as soon as they come to the table with a ceasefire, right?
01:48:52.000And so there's going to be a period of time where Russia is going to basically be a pariah out there in the global community.
01:48:59.000And we got to be careful and pragmatic in how we deal with Putin in that regard.
01:49:06.000Because again, we got to think about what's in our best national security interest.
01:49:09.000What's in the best national security interest of Europe?
01:49:11.000And there's always a tendency, sort of like the Versailles Treaty, to really fuck over the offending party.
01:49:18.000And I think the reality is we're going to have to be saying, okay, well, it doesn't seem right, but okay, Putin officially gets Crimea and maybe officially gets the Donbass region.
01:49:30.000You know, he's had troops and proxy troops in there for a long time now.
01:49:58.000We don't want him to get to that point.
01:50:00.000Now, the motivation of the Russian troops, one of the things that's got to be very strange for them is that just a few decades ago, Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, and now they're going to war with an urban area where it used to be their countrymen.
01:50:21.000So when they see the losses, we don't know what the losses are in the Russian army, but how do they boost their morale?
01:50:31.000How do they get them excited about it?
01:50:33.000Because it seems like if we were going to go to war with Canada, right, and we decided we're going to invade Toronto and- We should invade Montreal first.
01:50:59.000Something along those lines, something crazy where there, just a few decades ago, were our countrymen.
01:51:05.000That's got to be a very strange ask for these Russian soldiers.
01:51:11.000And there's a lot of stories that have come out about, you know, statements from some of the captured Russian soldiers talking about how they didn't even realize they were doing anything other than a training exercise, a long-term training exercise on the border, and then, you know, the tanks start rolling in.
01:51:26.000So, yeah, again, it's one of those things in terms of intel.
01:51:34.000We have to piece together everything we can and make a determination about that.
01:51:37.000There's a lot of talk right now because it's a good narrative to say that the Russian military is collapsing because these soldiers, they're young, they're disheartened, they're walking away.
01:52:40.000It's always more complex than what we hear.
01:52:42.000It's always more complex than the headlines or the stories.
01:52:47.000And it's all this interconnectivity and the reason why the countries, the reason why people are doing what they're doing, it's fascinating shit.
01:52:56.000It is fascinating shit, but one of the things that fascinates me about the oligarchs is why are they going after those guys?
01:53:07.000Are they going after those guys because they have influence over Putin and that the more those guys get their money taken away and their assets taken away and get their bank accounts seized, That this will somehow or another make these incredibly wealthy people less supportive of Putin?
01:53:29.000Well, it's the idea being that the more uncomfortable they are, the more it hurts them, the more likely they are to pressure Putin into changing his strategy, his thought process, coming to the table, doing some sort of ceasefire.
01:53:45.000So I think that is a big part of it, right?
01:55:27.000I mean, you pointed out it's a major goat rope, right, if we do something along those lines.
01:55:31.000And the chance for direct conflict is massively increased.
01:55:36.000And Even if it's just, you know, it doesn't matter whether it's NATO or whether it's us, we're all in the same, you know, shitstorm then at that point, theoretically, right?
01:55:46.000And maybe Putin, one of his calculations is, I don't know, you know what, you know, is NATO really going to push?
01:57:30.000It looked like old ladies, like a house coat.
01:57:35.000That were outside this apartment building that were blown apart, and these people were screaming and crying, and the dust was in the air, and they'd just been hit by missiles.
01:57:44.000They've literally rebelized Mariupol, which is strategically as important from the Russian military's perspective.
01:57:56.000You hear the politicians talking, well, is it a war crime?
01:58:02.000We're going to have to gather evidence and we're going to have to take it to the international court and we're going to have to decide when everybody can see it, like you just said.
01:58:58.000So we sometimes process things the way that we do, right?
01:59:02.000We process things through our lens and as, you know, okay, here in America, it's Americans and through our values and, you know, people always say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:59:27.000I'm not particularly optimistic that Putin's going to look at all this and go, okay, I'm going to back off.
01:59:32.000I do worry that what his thought is at this stage of the game is I've gone this far.
01:59:37.000It doesn't mean he's going to use tactical nukes or he's going to, you know, thermobaric weapons or, you know, which, again, he's used and, you know, I don't think he's going to have a serious problem with that.
01:59:47.000But there's talk about chemical weapons and...
01:59:52.000At what point do we if he goes that far?
01:59:58.000I mean, imagine him using chemical weapons on the people of Kyiv because he just can't break that nut.
02:00:07.000Does he think NATO at that point is going to step in?
02:00:10.000Well, are you going to get 30 countries all in agreement to use military force at that point in defense of people who aren't in a NATO country?
02:00:19.000So again, that's why I think one of Putin's efforts here has been to try to identify weaknesses within that alliance and see if he can play on that as well.
02:00:26.000Do you think the time is on his side or against him in that regard?
02:02:25.000And that's why I say, you know, does he realistically, does his command staff, do they realistically believe that – and going back to your question before and your point before, which is, okay, so what was he thinking?
02:02:39.000What did he think was going to happen?
02:02:41.000Again, I think the assessments were so far off base, but they honestly believed they were going to get much more support from the Ukrainian people than they imagined.
02:02:49.000They thought the Ukrainian people were going to support a military invasion.
02:02:54.000I mean, again, in part because they thought, well, they'll be far more docile than they are because there is some history there, obviously, and there's a lot of mix, right?
02:03:03.000A lot of family with family in Russia, a lot of Russians with family in Ukraine.
02:03:09.000I think they just imagined somehow that it was going to blend.
02:03:12.000And that's just a failure of intelligence gathering and understanding, you know, risk versus gain.
02:03:18.000And I think, so that was a real problem.
02:03:21.000And they assumed that, you know, okay, we'll be into Kyiv.
02:04:26.000And I think there was a sense with Zelensky that, look, it wasn't going to happen Because there wasn't a Russian-backed sort of puppet regime or a regime in place that was supportive of Russia.
02:04:44.000And so that had a lot to do with it as well.
02:04:46.000The current government under Zelensky is not inclined and hasn't been inclined.
02:04:51.000And they don't view themselves as controlled by the Russians.
02:04:54.000In fact, Zelensky was put in place because for the very reason that they were going to...
02:04:58.000You know, advance the ball with the West and, you know, create more of a relationship there.
02:05:04.000That's why they threw out the last president.
02:05:05.000Because they didn't like the fact that they were getting closer and closer to Russia.
02:05:09.000And the last president was, you said they were waiting to reinstate this guy?
02:05:15.000Well, that was a possibility because there was, you know, intel that he'd moved to Minsk, right?
02:05:20.000So he was going to be sitting in Belarus waiting.
02:05:22.000And then once they got to Kiev, they just, you know, he shows up.
02:05:27.000And somehow, you know, if that was the case, and that was who they were going to pick, I mean, it does seem insane that you're going to install the previous guy who was thrown out.
02:05:36.000But, you know, again, if you think that their assessments were so bad, maybe that was the case.
02:05:48.000It literally was a massive Uprising from people.
02:05:54.000It started as street protests over a handful of things.
02:05:59.000Corruption, ties to Russia, increasing ties to Russia.
02:06:06.000Efforts by that regime at the time to back away from the West.
02:06:14.000It was kind of a remarkable series of events, but it was a popular uprising, which is remarkable, right, in a sense.
02:06:22.000And that's what you would like to think possibly could happen in Russia, where people are saying, you know what, we don't want to return to the breadlines here.
02:06:30.000We don't want to be isolated like this.
02:06:34.000You know, we didn't think that's the way Russia was going.
02:06:36.000But Ukraine didn't have an established ruler like Putin, who's been in there since 99. Like, how would anyone, outside of an assassination, how would anyone take over?
02:06:49.000I mean, so he must be terrified of assassinations, or extremely paranoid at this point.
02:07:03.000I think Sergei Skripal, I think Litvinenko, I think Navalny, I think they'd all think it's more than alleged, but they, yeah, he's never had a problem with reaching out and terminating political opponents wherever they happen to be, right?
02:07:17.000And the favored method has always been poison, right?
02:07:28.000Yeah, I think he's increasingly isolated, which causes problems for us because you do have to then figure out, okay, you know, what information is he getting?
02:07:37.000How good is the information he's getting?
02:07:38.000And is he making decisions based on sound intelligence and information?
02:07:42.000Is he getting, you know, somewhat paranoid?
02:07:45.000And there's been some reporting that, you know, he's fired a lot of his staff and brought in— Who the fuck does he bring in?
02:08:08.000Supposedly, according to some reports.
02:08:10.000He's got people tasting his food now before he eats it.
02:08:13.000So that kind of gives you an indication.
02:08:15.000But you look at this rally he just held.
02:08:16.000It was one of the largest football stadium they've got.
02:08:19.000And you look at it, and if you didn't know better, it's an old Soviet-style rally, or it looks like sort of something North Korea would put on.
02:09:23.000And this took place, I think it was close to Iran, the eight-year anniversary of the annexation of Crimea.
02:09:33.000Look, but this does look, it looks exactly like what you would expect Soviet propaganda to look like, you know, or again, something coming out with Kim Jong-un in North Korea.
02:09:55.000And it tells you, in a sense, again, putting all these little things into a bucket to try to assess his mindset, it tells you, why did he feel the need to do this?
02:10:05.000And how many of these people are actually out there To support it, how many were instructed in their apartment block, you know what, you're going to show up at the stadium, we're going to have a rally, we expect you to be there.
02:10:17.000Yeah, like, what do you say when they say that?
02:10:19.000Well, they already know, I mean, most people there, because word does get around, I think they're aware that thousands of protesters have been arrested and aren't doing well just yet, but I think they understand that.
02:10:30.000So that was inside, so is this picture of the stadium the outside?
02:10:35.000Is that a bunch of people that are trying to get in?
02:10:38.000Yeah, I think those are just people who have gathered or have been invited to also attend.
02:10:45.000It says they cut away from him mid-sentence.
02:10:49.000And they went to some nationalistic songs.
02:10:52.000That's got to be disrespectful, though, isn't it?
02:11:17.000We'd like to imagine, because we imagine what we would do, we'd like to imagine, or would hopefully do, we imagine that the Russian people will get out there and say, no, this isn't right, but there's a lack of information.
02:11:28.000So I think we need to, one of the things that we should be doing, hopefully we are, is trying to pump accurate information into the Russian population.
02:11:37.000They might not be even understanding what's going on in the rest of the world.
02:11:41.000There's a lot of folks and there's, again, it's, you know, stories of, you know, you talk to people in the Ukraine and they've got relatives in Russia and the relatives in Russia are going, well, we're just, we're trying to beat back the neo-Nazis who are killing Russians in the eastern part of the country.
02:11:54.000You think, oh, okay, that's your story?
02:11:57.000But that's what's being fed on national TV or a state-run TV. And so in the old Cold War days, we had Voice of America, right?
02:12:04.000I think we need sort of a Voice of America on steroids delivered very quickly so that we're getting accurate information so that they can kind of see what...
02:12:14.000Again, we don't need to do propaganda.
02:12:16.000All you got to do is show what the fuck's happening and what they're doing and at least give them that opportunity to see what is going on.
02:12:24.000You know, easier said than done, but it's an important part of this exercise.
02:12:28.000It's a traditional covert action campaign, right?
02:12:31.000Just like we tried to do in the Cold War, you know, to let them know what the hell is happening in the rest of the world.
02:12:39.000I mean, if the internet is down and all they have access to is state-run television, they've got to be suspicious if the internet is down, right?
02:12:46.000I mean, that's one of the things that I've heard from friends that are Russian, is that Russians don't trust anything the politicians say or anything the news media says anyway.
02:12:56.000They have a dismissal of anything that's like the standard narrative.
02:13:01.000They're worried about happening in America.
02:13:05.000People say when they talk about the misinformation that like when CNN lies about stuff and when they withhold information, they worry that we're going to eventually develop this same sort of nonchalant attitude about our mainstream media.
02:13:33.000And in part, it's because, you know, every outlet now spends more time on opinion pieces and opinion, you know, journalism than just reporting the facts, right?
02:13:42.000Just, you know, someone should dump some money into a network that does nothing but, like the old CNN. They're doing that, supposedly.
02:13:53.000And so the new owners of CNN apparently want to re-establish objective journalism on CNN, which is wise, because first of all, there's a market for it.
02:14:27.000And that would be a great thing if that's the case and CNN is actually able to do that.
02:14:31.000I mean, you remember when they spent a lot of money on field bureaus and you knew that, okay, I'm going to turn on CNN because I'm going to get the news.
02:14:57.000It's one of the things that people have a problem with also with social media is that independent news sources are being stifled while these corporate news sources are being promoted.
02:15:10.000I mean I get calls from various outlets, network outlets, and they'll say, hey, can you do – because you come on like Wednesday or whatever time.
02:15:50.000And so there's a number of times now where you just have to say, no, I can't do it.
02:15:53.000I'm not available because it's not advancing the ball.
02:15:57.000And it's kind of, in fact, it's feeding the beast here, right?
02:15:59.000It's just like, all I'm going to do is sit there and listen to somebody yell at me and then I'm supposed to yell at them and nobody learns, you know, anything.
02:16:06.000Well here we are, we're two hours plus into this, and there's been no commercials, right?
02:16:13.000And when you realize that, when you're going on one of these other shows, they're so handicapped by the format that they exist in, where they have an hour to do the show, and in between segments you're gonna have to pause your commercial, You have to interrupt the conversation.
02:16:30.000You have to come back and pick up and usually you've got a whole new subject when you come back.
02:16:34.000So you get a cursory examination of each individual topic and it's all based on having people argue.
02:16:51.000It's so stupid, especially when you're dealing with something that's as complex as any sort of international action like what we're handling now.
02:16:59.000Yeah, well, if you're talking about, I mean, Syria was a good example.
02:17:02.000They did a lot during when ISIS was raging and rampaging.
02:17:06.000And so they say, okay, we've got about three and a half minutes.
02:17:09.000Okay, so you've got about three and a half minutes to talk about a very complex situation.
02:17:13.000And then you figure you've really only got about a minute and 20 seconds because you know the anchor.
02:17:19.000Their question is going to last a minute.
02:17:29.000There's never a short one-sentence question.
02:17:32.000I feel like there's going to come a time in the future where those shows just don't exist anymore.
02:17:37.000Because they're so limited in the way they can cover complex subjects.
02:17:43.000If people want to get information, I mean, if you want to get sound bites, that's one thing.
02:17:47.000But sound bites, I think they're just so inadequate when it comes to something complex.
02:17:52.000Well, it works in part because, I mean, again, this is not rocket science, but I think it works in part because people love to have their opinions affirmed or reaffirmed.
02:18:05.000If I can tune into a station and I think a certain way, I don't really want to know what the fuck's going on.
02:18:11.000I just want someone to tell me I'm right.
02:18:13.000So that's where, and again, it doesn't matter whether you're right or left.
02:18:35.000And then, yeah, I don't need to dive into, well, okay, well, you tell me how I'm supposed to think about that, or have six people come on in different boxes on the screen and kind of yell at each other for 20 seconds each, and then I'm supposed to make sense of it.
02:18:51.000And there's short attention span, and you try to talk to kids.
02:18:55.000I mean, I try to talk to the boys all the time about what's going on now, as an example, in Russia, because I want them to understand, right?
02:19:01.000And I just want them to understand how complex things are, you know, and not to just go to school, and they'll hear some kid parrot something that their parents said, And they'll come back and they'll repeat it and I'll say, well, why do you think that is?
02:19:19.000I'm going to talk about one of my kids.
02:19:20.000My daughter, when she was in university, she got out of university and we were talking about it shortly after her graduation and one of the things she talked about was...
02:19:28.000You know, I spent like, you know, four years, thank God it was only four years, four years not really saying anything in classes where there would be, you know, a conversation because she's sort of a centrist, right?
02:19:42.000So she's not hard left and, I mean, she's kind of, she's nicely balanced, right?
02:19:47.000I mean, I think she's turned out to be a real smart person, but she just wouldn't open her mouth in conversations in the classroom Because if she had a dissenting opinion, she didn't want to get into it.
02:20:27.000I had a conversation with someone the other day and she was like, I would be down with Republicans if they would just drop all the gay shit.
02:20:36.000She was like, all that gay stuff, leave those fucking gay people alone.
02:20:41.000It's one of the dumbest aspects of hardcore conservatives that they deny gay rights.
02:20:50.000And I go, I think you're probably not alone.
02:20:53.000I think there's probably a lot of people that feel that way.
02:20:55.000There's a lot of people that are In the center, whether it's from left-wing issues or right-wing issues.
02:21:02.000With left-wing issues, maybe it's trans women in sports, or maybe it's gender confirmation.
02:21:08.000Like this don't-say-gay thing in Florida.
02:21:19.000What it is is ages, it's first through third grade, they're saying you're not supposed to talk about sexual orientation, Gender orientation or sexual proclivity or what you're interested in.
02:21:33.000They said you should just teach math and science and history to little kids.
02:21:37.000Yeah, just let the toddlers be toddlers and then you can start ramping up your instruction.
02:22:02.000Are they trying to indoctrinate the child to any particular point of view, whether it's pro-transgender or anti-transgender or anti-gay or pro-gay?
02:22:11.000They shouldn't have any say at all when you're talking to a seven-year-old kid.
02:22:18.000I mean, I feel like that is the job of the parents.
02:22:22.000And you hope the parents are doing it.
02:22:24.000When kids get older and they develop feelings for either the same sex or opposite sex or they feel like they're in the wrong body, then these conversations should be had by qualified people that can discuss this from a nuanced perspective and understand what the psychology of a young person who's trying to figure out who they are in the world is.
02:22:46.000But the idea that this is, don't say gay, because you're saying that ages, first grade to third grade, that you shouldn't be bringing up these subjects to them.
02:22:57.000I think a lot of people are saying, no, I just don't want you grooming my kids for whatever your ideology is, whether it's a right-wing ideology or a left-wing ideology.
02:23:06.000I want you to teach them fucking science.
02:23:14.000That we, as parents, I think, you know, that's what you expected, right?
02:23:17.000I think one of the things the pandemic did was it kind of showed, because you had to homeschool all of a sudden, we had a nation full of homeschoolers working with their schools, local schools, then they started to realize, wait a minute, their assignment is what?
02:23:36.000One of the funny things about, you know, conservatives I've always found is that, you know, they talk about freedom and, you know, small government.
02:23:42.000A lot of times, you know, government just got to get out of the way.
02:23:44.000And then at the same time, they want to, like, you know, orchestrate what goes on in the bedroom.
02:23:48.000And you think, how about you just stay out of all that shit?
02:24:51.000But first of all, it's not your business to indoctrinate a child into your ideology.
02:24:57.000And I think there's many teachers that feel like that is their business and that part of their job is not just to teach a child about important things, about science and math, but they feel like it's to prepare a child for what they think is a better world,
02:25:15.000whether it's a more conservative world or it's a more progressive world.
02:25:19.000I think there's a lot of people that have a real issue with that.
02:25:21.000Well, it's the difference between teaching a kid how to think and what to think.
02:26:09.000But I do think, going back to kind of where we are in the world today, I worry that You know, collectively, NATO, the U.S., maybe we're suffering as a result of not consistently sending our best and brightest into leadership positions.
02:26:33.000You see the way people get attacked and brutalized on the campaign trail.
02:26:38.000It's like, Jesus Christ, who wants to subject themselves to that?
02:26:41.000Not only that, but there's also such a disingenuous quality to it.
02:26:44.000The very people that are attacking you and calling you the worst piece of shit that's ever lived, then they'll join up with you and be your vice president and go, hey, it was just politics.
02:27:15.000And also, it kills people's trust in what these people have to say because I can't believe you now because you already admitted that you lie.
02:27:24.000Yeah, and I think that's a big problem that the president's having right now is sort of the credibility issue.
02:27:28.000And I mean, who knows where this is going to go?
02:27:29.000I don't want to dive into politics necessarily, but you look at the midterms coming up, and you look at the presidential election in 2024, and I'm not particularly optimistic regardless of where it goes, how it turns out,
02:27:45.000Because We got the same cast of characters for the most part, and we just keep shuffling them around until they get old enough to pass away.
02:27:59.000And I think a lot of these people that have great ideas, once they get into the system, they get compromised.
02:28:04.000And then they realize, once they're in the system, like, oh my god, like, this is, what a fucking mess this is.
02:28:10.000Well, think about being a congressperson, right?
02:28:11.000It's a member of congress, and every two years, right?
02:28:14.000So, you get in, and six months into it, you're being asked to raise money for some of your fellow congressmen, congresswomen, congresspeople.
02:28:21.000And then you gotta worry about your own coffers to get yourself re-elected every two fucking years.
02:28:41.000Yeah, and you do get a lot of people who are like, I was head of the Young Democrats Club, or I was head of the Young Republicans Club, and now I'm going to be a state legislator, and then I'm going to run for Congress, and it becomes this career thing that goes on, which, again, coming back to term limits, but then it comes back to what you said, which is,
02:28:57.000well, if you keep rotating this, you know, and you've only got people in office for a certain period of time, yeah, it's...
02:29:04.000Yeah, but then what's the alternative to that?
02:29:24.000Well, they changed it from four-year terms to six-year terms, and now it's written basically so that he literally can stay until 2036. So that's, again, new math, but I should have spent more time on STEM. So another 14 years, and he'll be 75,
02:30:26.000Well, the way that ends well is if both sides give up enough, right?
02:30:32.000And Putin, now think about this, Putin then has to essentially retreat, move all his personnel, all that hard work, out of the country.
02:30:44.000You gotta think about what a process that is, right?
02:30:47.000And what that's gonna look like and what Putin imagines that to look like.
02:30:50.000So he's gonna have to gain some real concessions here from Zelensky in order to, in his mind, I suspect, justify that withdrawal.
02:30:58.000But I don't think Again, of course, I always be wrong, but I don't think that he sees a long-term occupation of Ukraine as an endgame here, because it just appears that he's just hell-bent on busting it,
02:31:16.000and maybe he thinks at that point, if he breaks the will so badly, that he'll walk away We're good to go.
02:31:46.000Yeah, and there is that talk that says, well, if he feels backed into a corner, then he'll launch the tactical nukes, or he'll use chemical weapons, and then the question becomes, what do we do?
02:32:15.000Take troops, go into that country and fight on the ground against, or we're going to launch our own nuke in response when we haven't been attacked.
02:32:26.000And then he nukes Chicago or Seattle or Jesus Christ.
02:32:29.000I mean, look, the response time nowadays, I mean, in the old days it was, I don't want to say it was easier, but it was in a sense.
02:32:35.000The attack time, Calculation was a lot different.
02:32:39.000In the old days, the Cold War, beginning of the Cold War, whatever, a Soviet bomber takes, you know, five hours to get into, you know, position for U.S. airspace.
02:32:52.000And then with missile technology, it eventually made its way down to about 15 minutes less with a sub-launched missile.
02:33:01.000And So suddenly your attack time, you know, to consider a response, a retaliatory response was down to, you know, minutes rather than hours and hours.
02:33:10.000And now with the development of hypersonics, right, you're talking about no time whatsoever.
02:33:16.000You're talking about weapons that can completely evade current existing air defense systems.
02:33:24.000Mutual assured destruction was in part based on this idea of a retaliatory response.
02:33:30.000So I can go in and I'll have time to respond to your attack.
02:33:41.000And so now maybe there's not enough time for it.
02:33:43.000So it takes that off the table, which is a frightening thought, which is why the development of hypersonics is so important, and we talked about that before.
02:34:45.000In the 80s, late 70s, 80s, they established a weapons system that didn't need any humans, right, to launch the nuclear missiles because they thought to themselves, all right, response time is getting to be a problem.
02:34:59.000So they developed a weapons system that if the Soviet leadership is wiped out...
02:35:07.000The system will essentially go out there, look for that leadership.
02:35:10.000If it's not there, it will, on its own, send signals to launch the remaining available surviving missiles that are out there.
02:35:20.000And so it was called the dead hand system, perimeter or whatever.
02:35:25.000But again, that's another important thing to think about when you're talking about Putin's mindset and where he comes from and sort of the development of military strategy and how you act.
02:35:37.000So, yeah, and that's one of the reasons why the Biden administration, rightly so, is so concerned about escalating to a point where we're getting dangerously close to something that we thought was pretty much off the table for all these decades, right?
02:35:53.000And so, rightly so, you have to be careful.
02:35:56.000Again, people are quick to criticize whatever administration's in power, but I think you have to It has to be more of a conversation than that.
02:36:03.000You can't just say, I disagree with them because they're in the other party or whatever.
02:36:06.000And the question is, if someone's willing to kill a few thousand people, I mean, how many people have died in Ukraine?
02:36:58.000He thinks the way to stop the bleeding and keep this from escalating to a point where he loses 100,000 troops is to just drop a nuke.
02:37:06.000And then we have to figure out what happens next.
02:37:11.000Like, imagine a world in 2022, which is so nuts to think that a nuclear bomb could be detonated By a superpower like Russia just to say, hey, I'll do this.
02:37:40.000Because we always kind of placed it on, okay, rational actors out there.
02:37:43.000I mean, there's always the outlier, okay, what a rogue state gets it or a terrorist group gets one.
02:37:47.000But we always had it in the back of our minds that it was rational actors and so therefore this is how it won't play out because people will be rational.
02:37:56.000Yeah, and now we're faced with this question again and the question is, you know, if that happens, if he fires a tactical nuke, Because he's decided, again, he's just going to break it.
02:38:09.000He's having a hard time encircling Kyiv.
02:38:12.000He's not, you know, making the headway he wants to.
02:38:15.000He feels as if he either wins or he's out of power and he does this.
02:38:27.000If China goes after Taiwan, says we're taking Taiwan, Do we think that the US is going to get into a shooting match with China to save Taiwan?
02:39:43.000With hypersonics, it doesn't really matter because of the speed with which they're moving and the ability to evade air defense systems because they're moving in an unpredictable pattern.
02:39:53.000Ballistic missiles kind of go up, they come down, you can plot the trajectory and you know how to intercept.
02:40:11.000And again, we've talked about it before, but that's why it's so important, I think, for people to pay attention to, you know, who's doing what?
02:40:18.000Where are these developments coming from?
02:40:20.000Where are people spending their money on weapon systems?
02:41:09.000Any nation that's got the ability, they every day are testing our systems and they've been drawing up maps and understanding the weaknesses and the access points and they've been doing it for years and they've got playbooks in place already.
02:41:21.000So if it were to head south that way and suddenly we're in this goat rope, then they just turn to their playbook, they open up to page one and they've already got it mapped out because that's what they've been doing.
02:41:32.000They've been testing our systems for a long time.
02:41:35.000And, yeah, our power grid goes down and it shuts everything down, you know, fuel, transport, access to cash, food, health care.
02:41:45.000It's a, yeah, I mean, you can imagine the message.
02:41:48.000I mean, people are inconvenienced when, you know, a winter storm causes a power outage for two days, right?
02:41:53.000It's like, oh my God, are we going to survive?
02:41:57.000There's an article I read yesterday about Oliver Stone sitting down with Putin and watching Dr. Strangelove.
02:42:07.000And it's all about, I mean, I don't think Putin had ever seen the film, and that film is all about a bunch of generals who think it's a good idea, and they talk about it, these very preposterous ways of starting these nuclear bombs.
02:42:30.000And by the way, Oliver Stone, when he was on, was saying that this film, Dr. Strangelove, was based on real live conversations, exaggerated, but real live conversations that generals had had during the Cold War about launching a first strike nuclear attack on China or Russia because they're worried about them eventually doing it to us.
02:42:56.000And Putin says it indeed makes us think, despite the fact that everything you see on screen is make-believe, he foresaw some issues even from a technical point of view.
02:43:05.000I mean, things that make me think about real threats that exist.
02:43:10.000This is Putin watching Dr. Strangelove talking to Oliver Stone About, you know, this satirical movie from, I suppose, like 1960-something, right?
02:43:23.000Yeah, no, it's old Slim Pickens riding the bomb down, yeah, at the end.
02:43:29.000It was based on, there were, I mean, the conversations that took place seem surreal when they start talking about accepted casualty numbers during the Cold War.
02:43:37.000They're talking about, you know, if you have to launch a retaliatory strike, okay, what, you know...
02:45:11.000It was like we felt like we were all in it together.
02:45:15.000And we don't feel like that right now.
02:45:18.000Now we're separated by ideology and left versus right and blue versus red and who controls this and the midterms are coming up and we have to drop some restrictions and people are going to vote the wrong way and all this craziness that has us divided.
02:46:18.000And that's why, for a brief moment, it was like, oh, we're all Americans.
02:46:22.000We all have to support the government and make sure that we're doing the right thing in terms of Russia and Ukraine.
02:46:27.000And that only lasted for a couple of days.
02:46:29.000And then it's all like, ah, you know, Biden screwed up, or, you know, they're not doing their part.
02:46:34.000So the Republican, you know, they talked a good game up in Washington, D.C. for a couple of days about how, well, we are all coming together, and this is something that we all have to be worried about.
02:47:51.000Again, we don't want a nuclear war with Russia, but we do need to be aware of what it means.
02:47:56.000What are the long-term ramifications if Putin is successful and just we accept the fact that he now holds Ukraine and then he decides...
02:48:05.000Okay, well, maybe Moldova's next, because I'm kind of pissed off about Moldova, and they're making noises now about possibly, and he's already got a sort of a Russian-backed part of Moldova, right?
02:48:17.000So you could see him securing Ukraine, and then looking at Moldova and saying, well, half the population's already in my camp.
02:49:02.000I might have mentioned this to you last time, but with a woman whose sister was one of the subjects up in Canada of a doctor who was being funded through MKUltra and what she went through, completely broke her as a person, ruined the family,
02:49:17.000you can imagine, over a period of time.
02:49:22.000This poor woman was in an institution being essentially experimented on by, you know, what was essentially supposedly Canada's leading, you know, psychiatrist.
02:49:32.000And some of their funding was coming from the MKUltra project all those years ago.
02:49:38.000And sitting down with this woman, who is this lady's younger sister, and she's now obviously much older and It was just heartbreaking because it really brought it home.
02:49:49.000I mean, sometimes you can look at these things and they go, wow, that's fucked up.
02:49:53.000But to see a person that actually was affected by it.