Louder with Crowder - CIA Analyst: Are China & Russia Behind an Imminent Terrorist Attack on America?

00:00:00.000 He really tried to damage the United States and our national security and he is a traitor and he's lucky he's not in the United States because I would think he deserves a death penalty. 0.97

00:00:10.000 It's not even an OSINT war. 0.92

00:00:11.000 There's basically a war between the MI5 and the CIA. Over Hamza bin Laden, and the CIA is not being honest.

00:00:19.000 He's alive in the future in their dream world, a part of the caliphate. 0.99

00:00:22.000 That means they're going to take us over. 0.70

00:00:24.000 You know, they're going to change the way our government works, the way our system works, so we can become an Islamic society. 1.00

00:00:30.000 And people need to understand that is the goal.

00:00:32.000 The attackers are in country to include the suicide bombers, the suicide vests are in country, and the weapons are in country.

00:00:38.000 Just to maintain terrorists in the United States for that long, not get them caught or thwarted is complicated, it's expensive.

00:00:46.000 So we do believe still the intent is for the attack to occur in 2025.

00:00:50.000 And they are ready to do it and they're well trained.

00:00:52.000 There are pipelines up through Mexico.

00:00:54.000 So they're actually mostly run by China and Russia that Al-Qaeda is using through Mexico.

00:01:00.000 Sarah Adams is a former CIA intelligence analyst and targeter. 0.99

00:01:05.000 Senior advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi.

00:01:10.000 And co-author of the Know Thy Enemy series, which offers in-depth investigations into the infamous Benghazi, Abbey Gate, and October 7th terror attacks.

00:01:21.000 Now Sarah is issuing an entirely new warning, a warning of the most perilous security environment the world has seen since 9-11, an imminent attack on the United States homeland, and how America's enemies, ranging from terror groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban, to great powers like China and Russia are coordinating to bring it all to fruition.

00:01:41.000 The only question is, is anyone going to listen before it's too late?

00:01:46.000 Today we have Sarah Adams.

00:01:52.000 She needs no introduction.

00:01:54.000 But to get started, if you don't mind, I've become quite a fan of your X account recently.

00:01:59.000 And I want to read one of your recent posts because I think it really encompasses a lot that's going on that people might not be.

00:02:07.000 Fully aware of.

00:02:08.000 On your X, you posted, It's time for honesty.

00:02:38.000 Our current strategy ignores the real threat.

00:02:42.000 So with that in mind, I just want to start with one simple question.

00:02:46.000 Are Americans today secure?

00:02:51.000 Well, I mean, Americans aren't secure.

00:02:53.000 The main reason is obviously because of the open border policy, right?

00:02:57.000 And a lot of nefarious actors came in, not just terrorists.

00:03:01.000 So we are at our least secure point since 9-11, in my opinion.

00:03:06.000 Okay, then let me back that up a little bit and make it more specific.

00:03:10.000 Since January 20th and the inauguration of Donald Trump, do you feel that Americans are more secure or less secure, especially when you consider his cabinet picks like Hegseth at the DOD or Rubio at State, Ratcliffe for the CIA? Are these decisions that are going to put Americans in a better position, in your belief, or are we backsliding?

00:03:33.000 I think we're going to be in a better position because I think they're being a little more honest about the threats.

00:03:37.000 But as you can imagine, when you ignore something for four years, it's festered and now it's a much bigger problem.

00:03:43.000 So they can't fix everything quick enough.

00:03:47.000 And what are the biggest challenges that this administration is going to have to face?

00:03:51.000 What are the fixes that need to be made, kind of from ones they can do quickly to ones that are going to take more long-term strategic planning?

00:03:58.000 Yeah, I mean...

00:04:00.000 Quick fixes are tough, right?

00:04:02.000 I think the near-term issue is going to be a major terrorist attack, because as you can imagine, when that happens, it throws your whole agenda off.

00:04:11.000 So I think that needs to be a near-term focus.

00:04:14.000 Obviously, the biggest issue is the border, but that's a long-term, you know, that's going to take 30 years to fix at this point.

00:04:20.000 So we have a lot of issues going on, and then we still have our near-peer problems, right?

00:04:25.000 We have the Russia problem and the China problem that we have to deal with, but we've...

00:04:29.000 Done a bad job of dealing with all the threats simultaneously, right?

00:04:34.000 We're kind of like a dog chasing this toy and that toy and that toy, and we need a better strategy to counter all of it.

00:04:40.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:04:41.000 And you brought up a lot of different points that I definitely want to touch on throughout this interview, especially Russia, China, the border.

00:04:46.000 I think they all kind of sort of interlocated a certain position.

00:04:50.000 You can't really separate one from the other.

00:04:53.000 But on the note of the inauguration and obviously Trump taking over the Biden administration, I want to go back a few years to another sort of nexus in the Biden-Trump crossover, which would have been the Afghanistan withdrawal.

00:05:05.000 So I remember sitting there watching that on TV thinking, I don't really know what, but it feels like something's drastically changing here.

00:05:12.000 Sort of the same feeling that I have when I was watching 9-11 when I was a kid, although obviously viscerally it was a little bit different.

00:05:18.000 So there's a bunch of arguments over what actually happened and what the effects of that will be.

00:05:23.000 So from your expert, you know, sort of viewpoint, where does the fault lie in our failed withdrawal?

00:05:32.000 And given that we can all sort of agree that it was a failed withdrawal, how has that event changed the security outlook for everyday Americans?

00:05:42.000 Yeah, so there's multiple faults.

00:05:45.000 Obviously, we really shouldn't have done the Doha deal and made it solely with the Taliban and cut out the rest of the Afghan government.

00:05:51.000 But in the Doha deal, we had red lines, right?

00:05:54.000 And if Taliban crossed those red lines, the deal would be ended and we would keep troops in Afghanistan. 0.68

00:06:00.000 And even in the deal, it wasn't clear we would pull out a Bagram.

00:06:04.000 There was still going to be a number of troops that stayed in Bagram.

00:06:07.000 So the deal wasn't even followed to the T. The Biden administration quickly wanted to pull everyone out.

00:06:13.000 They set an arbitrary date of 9-11, and they didn't even start planning an actual withdrawal of people until August 15th.

00:06:21.000 So think about that.

00:06:21.000 They gave themselves less than a month to even do it.

00:06:25.000 The attack happened at Abbey Gate, and then they basically closed down within days, right?

00:06:30.000 The withdrawal, as you can imagine, shifted the balance of power to the enemy.

00:06:36.000 Now, in Afghanistan, it shifted the power to the enemy to the terrorists, but Russia saw this as weakness, right?

00:06:41.000 And it's why they thought now was an opportune time to do Ukraine. 0.87

00:06:45.000 And then the terrorists in general, especially Iran, saw this as a weakness, and that's why they pushed forward really strong using Hamas, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban to do the attacks in Israel in 2023, right? 0.52

00:06:58.000 Right.

00:06:58.000 So this has been a continued catalyst of failure.

00:07:01.000 And then we had the Syrian blitzkrieg, obviously, in November, another aftermath of the fall of Kabul.

00:07:08.000 So when I was reading some of your work, it continuously shocked me how interrelated all of these different groups were.

00:07:17.000 But I want to start with the Taliban because I remember when they took over, there was this false promise that they're going to normalize, they're going to institute, you know, reforms that make them more of a normal actor on the world stage.

00:07:29.000 And of course, we learned very quickly that that was all one big lie.

00:07:33.000 I think most of us realized that from the beginning.

00:07:35.000 But what was the goal or what was the realistic idea that the Taliban would normalize or was there ever one?

00:07:44.000 What has the Taliban done since they've actually taken power in Afghanistan?

00:07:48.000 Yeah, I mean, all that was shortsighted.

00:07:50.000 It was Taliban, in our government's opinion, was the most powerful entity in the country.

00:07:55.000 We want to get out.

00:07:56.000 We'll just hand the country to the Taliban. 0.98

00:07:59.000 They'll leave us alone, we'll leave them alone, and we can move on, right?

00:08:02.000 That was the belief.

00:08:03.000 Obviously, that's not true.

00:08:04.000 Now, what the Taliban then did, as we've talked about, so, you know, it fell in August of 2021. By November of 2021, they were already issuing passports to terrorists.

00:08:16.000 You could come on Thursday, be a terrorist from any group, and get passports.

00:08:20.000 November, they also met for the first time with Julani and started planning the Syrian blitzkrieg.

00:08:26.000 In March, the next March of 2022, is when they sat down and started planning the Hamas attacks with Iran, al-Qaeda, and Hamas, right? 0.92

00:08:35.000 It moved that quickly.

00:08:36.000 Within six months, they planned those two huge events, and look what happened when they actually went to fruition.

00:08:43.000 Right.

00:08:43.000 So you're telling me, and it's not just you making these claims very clearly, it's well understood.

00:08:50.000 That the Taliban is working with all these other groups, and clearly they're not going to be a normal actor on the world stage.

00:08:56.000 So why, from what I can tell, is so much American taxpayer money going to fund the Taliban?

00:09:02.000 And we know this because you can finally see some senators trying to do something, right?

00:09:06.000 Senator Sheehy in Tuberville proposed a bill to stop it, and the West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito also just recently introduced legislation that would stop American taxpayer funds from going to the Taliban.

00:09:19.000 And then going to other terrorist groups.

00:09:20.000 Why is this still happening?

00:09:23.000 You know, we do this everywhere, which is really unfortunate, right?

00:09:26.000 We throw money at a problem.

00:09:27.000 We even throw money at our enemy.

00:09:30.000 And with Afghanistan, there's two pots of money that are a problem.

00:09:34.000 We send humanitarian aid that we say is going to help the people who aren't being taken care of by the Taliban, but it's going to the Taliban. 0.98

00:09:40.000 And then we send counterterrorism dollars to the Taliban for this fake ISIS fight the CIA and the DoD have.

00:09:48.000 The Taliban, to them, is their key counterterrorism ally against ISIS. It's the biggest... 0.94

00:09:52.000 It's a joke.

00:09:53.000 ISIS has grown threefold in the last three years, but they're lying and saying it's their key ally.

00:09:58.000 So you're saying that the Taliban is funding groups like Al Qaeda and also Hamas, but then they're also claiming to help us on the counterterrorism fight with ISIS. Isn't it very well believable that some of that money that we're giving to the Taliban is ending up directly in ISIS's pockets as well?

00:10:17.000 It is.

00:10:17.000 We actually followed some of the money, and it went straight from the Ministry of Interior building in Kabul to ISIS training camps in Afghanistan.

00:10:27.000 And even our government is lying and saying there are no ISIS training camps anymore in Afghanistan.

00:10:32.000 They were closed down.

00:10:34.000 Actually, the biggest camp, it's really funny, do you remember when we dropped that big Moab, that huge bomb? 0.96

00:10:40.000 So they built a camp there, and it's an ISIS-Al Qaeda camp. 0.50

00:10:45.000 Taliban camp.

00:10:46.000 It's gigantic.

00:10:47.000 It's one of the biggest camps in Afghanistan.

00:10:50.000 Isis, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban in one camp?

00:10:53.000 They all share the same camp.

00:10:55.000 It's gigantic.

00:10:56.000 And then we have our government saying, oh yeah, they're fighting ISIS and there's no more ISIS in Afghanistan.

00:11:00.000 It's like this insane world we've now lived in when you can see these things on imagery.

00:11:05.000 Now, is this just the government dealing with sunk costs that, oh, we spent this much money, you know, furthering this delusion?

00:11:12.000 Or do they really believe that the Taliban is helping us in any way, shape, or form?

00:11:16.000 At first it was just to get out.

00:11:18.000 Now I do think we have had people, I think it's a counterintelligence problem, that have drank the juice and believed Taliban's intelligence, and they've now convinced policymakers, and there are people who will look at you straight in the face and say we're fighting ISKP with the Taliban, and they honestly believe it, which is scary.

00:11:37.000 Well, I would hope that we're going to see a little bit of a change with that with the new intelligence apparatus that's hopefully being formed, but...

00:11:43.000 I want to get to one specific group, and I know for people in your world, and after reading a lot of your work, I have so much more respect for Middle East intelligence gathering because just keeping the web of names straight seems like a full-time job.

00:11:59.000 But again and again, al-Qaeda comes up.

00:12:02.000 Al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda.

00:12:03.000 I think most Americans, when Osama bin Laden was killed by the SEALs, kind of stopped thinking about al-Qaeda at all.

00:12:10.000 So what is the current status of al-Qaeda and what are their goals considering their jihad or their views for America?

00:12:19.000 Yeah, well, it's not just that Americans stop thinking about al-Qaeda.

00:12:24.000 You know, there was actually a media push at the time from the administration.

00:12:28.000 To make us think, Al-Qaeda's done, Al-Qaeda's over, we defeated Al-Qaeda.

00:12:34.000 And that's what the administration was putting out, and that's what the press was putting out.

00:12:38.000 So, you know, like when Benghazi happened in 2012, for example, you know, soon after his death, about a year after, nobody was honest that was an Al-Qaeda attack.

00:12:47.000 So Al-Qaeda has been involved in all these things over the years.

00:12:51.000 They've been involved in some big attacks in Afghanistan, like they did an attack against, like, the Emirati diplomats there.

00:12:58.000 We'll never see Al-Qaeda's name on it, right?

00:13:00.000 So for like the last 10 plus years, our own government and our own media covered up Al-Qaeda's involvement.

00:13:06.000 So that's why Americans think Al-Qaeda's done because nobody's been giving them correct information.

00:13:11.000 It's almost like not their fault.

00:13:14.000 So is our government, or at least I guess government writ large, on purpose pulling the wool over the eyes of the American people?

00:13:22.000 Or like you said, is it just their intelligence gathering apparatus is so bad that they don't know what's going on?

00:13:27.000 Yeah, it's twofold, right?

00:13:29.000 They're lacking collection on al-Qaeda.

00:13:31.000 And instead of just being honest and saying we don't have a collection, they're just saying al-Qaeda is not doing anything.

00:13:36.000 And they want the counterterrorism fight to focus solely on ISIS. And so they say that's the only goal, that's the purpose, that's the enemy.

00:13:45.000 And they're not even being honest.

00:13:46.000 Then al-Qaeda and ISIS are working together, right?

00:13:49.000 So the enemy is...

00:13:50.000 Beating us on the narrative.

00:13:53.000 And then we're not actioning the enemy in the way we should or going after the senior leaders or terrorists we should.

00:14:00.000 Even like I told you, our operations right now against ISIS are in Syria.

00:14:05.000 But ISIS's central shura is based in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

00:14:09.000 They left Syria years ago, right? 0.53

00:14:11.000 So we're not even taking out the key leaders.

00:14:14.000 It's like cannon fodder.

00:14:16.000 Well, I'm glad that you used the term key leader because there seems to be another major disconnect between U.S. intelligence and, I guess, European intelligence and just kind of the OSINT community, which is, and again, so many things about your work blew my mind, but Hamza bin Laden.

00:14:33.000 I had not heard that in American mainstream media since the administration declared him dead during Trump's first term.

00:14:40.000 Yet, the British intelligence and the Mir are reporting that he's alive.

00:14:43.000 Your work is telling me he's alive.

00:14:45.000 And moreover, your work is telling me he was intricately involved in the planning for October 7th.

00:14:51.000 How can both of these things exist at the same time?

00:14:54.000 I'm so confused.

00:14:56.000 Yeah, as you pointed out, it's not even an OSINT war.

00:14:59.000 There's basically a war between the MI5 and the CIA. We tried to put it in the press for a year-plus in the U.S., and no one would touch it.

00:15:17.000 They said, no, we went to the CIA. They said, he's dead, we won't print it.

00:15:20.000 So the U.S. press was controlled and would only print it with CIA's approval, which is crazy.

00:15:27.000 So the British intelligence released it themselves.

00:15:29.000 So Hamza bin Laden is very much alive. 0.96

00:15:32.000 He actually, him and I, He and his brother Abdullah were leading a lot of the fight when Kabul fell.

00:15:39.000 People call that the Taliban fighting the Afghan government.

00:15:43.000 That was actually led a lot by al-Qaeda, and it was al-Qaeda taking down the Afghan government.

00:15:49.000 No one's been honest about that.

00:15:51.000 And then, yes, Hamza bin Laden was one of the key plotters of the Hamas attacks.

00:15:56.000 And he's the one that actually basically allowed the Hamas terrorists, a third of them, trained in Afghanistan for that attack.

00:16:04.000 And Hamas, I mean, Hamza oversaw it and his brother Abdullah is in charge of all the al-Qaeda training camps.

00:16:11.000 So he chose which training camps the Hamas terrorists would fight in.

00:16:15.000 So the bin Ladens are very involved in the Hamas attacks. 0.94

00:16:20.000 Yeah.

00:16:20.000 So if you search on Google right now, the first 10 results outside of that Mir article are Hamza bin Laden dead and they're years old.

00:16:28.000 So does the CIA have that much of a grip over the American media apparatus that they can control the narrative to that degree?

00:16:36.000 Yeah, they don't have just a control over the media apparatus.

00:16:39.000 If you go to other branches of the intelligence community, they'll say, we can't talk about Hamza, we get pushback from CIA. If you go to HIPC, same thing.

00:16:49.000 They say, we get pushback from CIA, not just on Hamza bin Laden, but on the fake ISKP operations with the Taliban.

00:16:55.000 So CIA has kind of a grip on these Afghan narratives and their information is wrong.

00:17:01.000 And they're collecting information from the Taliban.

00:17:03.000 They're putting it in classified channels and they're basically compromising our intelligence collection on terrorism.

00:17:09.000 And I keep saying it should be a whole counterintelligence investigation.

00:17:13.000 You know, if this was China or if this is Russia and we allowed this to happen, that's how it would be handled.

00:17:20.000 Why are we not handling that way when terrorists are compromising our collection?

00:17:25.000 Well, especially since we spent the last, you know, year and a half supporting Israel.

00:17:29.000 Well, to whatever degree you want to argue, we've supported Israel's fight against Hamas and Gaza.

00:17:33.000 I think that's debatable.

00:17:34.000 But it seems to me not debatable that we know Hamas did not plan this on their own.

00:17:38.000 They don't have the capabilities to do so.

00:17:40.000 We know the IRGC was involved.

00:17:41.000 That's always been out there.

00:17:42.000 And, you know, part of the mainstream narrative.

00:17:45.000 But when you look into it and the work that you've done makes it quite clear that there were other scrupulous actors involved, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda, the Taliban who were funding.

00:17:54.000 And then Al-Qaeda, who is apparently led by Osama bin Laden's son.

00:17:58.000 How does that escape the...

00:18:00.000 And forgive me if I'm feigning ignorance here, I don't know, but how does that escape the narrative in America that that is going on?

00:18:09.000 I think it's the fact that our government does control a lot of the narrative, right?

00:18:14.000 So if they're not giving this to media outlets, if they're not giving it to New York Times, they're not giving it to Washington Post, it's not going out.

00:18:20.000 When it doesn't go out on those large publications, it doesn't go out on the small local news as well, right?

00:18:26.000 So it's not proliferating down to everyday Americans.

00:18:29.000 So they don't know these things.

00:18:31.000 I mean, just if you talk about our money going into Afghanistan, some of that money we give to the Taliban actually gets brought over.

00:18:39.000 It's given to the IRGC, too.

00:18:41.000 Like, we're even funding the Iranian terrorists through Afghanistan, right? 0.87

00:18:46.000 And just nobody actually is paying any attention to where the money is going.

00:18:50.000 And Americans need to be more involved in where their taxpayer dollars are going.

00:18:55.000 Yeah, well, like I said, hopefully a couple of these bills that have been suggested actually make it through Congress and we can get something done about that because it seems ridiculous to me.

00:19:04.000 Backing up just a little bit, you obviously have made quite a name for yourself with your work on Benghazi.

00:19:08.000 That was fantastic.

00:19:09.000 Know Thy Enemy Benghazi was great. 1.00

00:19:11.000 But I also just finished reading, and I hope to bring it up here, because I recommend a lot of people to read the October 7th report that you worked on.

00:19:18.000 And it would take forever to kind of break that whole thing down.

00:19:22.000 But just for people that might not be aware, what role did the Taliban and al-Qaeda have along with the IRGC in actually planning that event?

00:19:31.000 Yeah, they decided to actually plan the event in Afghanistan because it was a safe haven. 0.96

00:19:36.000 They knew we gave up collection there, and the Taliban knew they controlled the information that went to the U.S. government, right?

00:19:42.000 So they knew they'd be safe planning it in Afghanistan.

00:19:45.000 So they did much of the planning there.

00:19:47.000 The initial meeting was there.

00:19:49.000 Kind of the second strategy meeting was there.

00:19:51.000 A lot of the planning actually was over Telegram.

00:19:54.000 The U.S. really should have intercepted that.

00:19:56.000 They didn't, right?

00:19:57.000 And then I told you a third of the attackers.

00:19:59.000 came to Afghanistan and trained.

00:20:01.000 Also, the Taliban provided weapons.

00:20:03.000 They shipped weapons from Barm Cha, kind of down in Helmand.

00:20:08.000 To Gaza in advance of the attacks, right? 0.88

00:20:10.000 So they were very integral.

00:20:13.000 And now what a lot of people don't understand is, so Israel has been fighting Hamas since that time, and they have killed a lot of Hamas members.

00:20:22.000 But instead of the five to six camps the Taliban allowed Hamas to use to prepare for the attacks, they opened it up to a dozen.

00:20:30.000 So now a dozen al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan train Hamas fighters.

00:20:34.000 So when you kill one in Israel, they train So they have now made more Hamas terrorists than were killed in Israel. 0.80

00:20:43.000 And because we're not bombing the camps, we're allowing Hamas to basically be reconstituted in Afghanistan. 0.78

00:20:51.000 So what is the interest of these groups to work together?

00:20:53.000 Because obviously, if you look at it from the outside, you have different sects of Islam involved.

00:20:57.000 You have different ideologies.

00:20:58.000 You have different worldviews.

00:21:00.000 What is the interest of a group like the Taliban or Al-Qaeda working with Hamas?

00:21:05.000 What do they get from this?

00:21:07.000 Yeah, well, this actually happened.

00:21:09.000 A lot of people don't know.

00:21:11.000 So Hamas and Al-Qaeda fought together at times in Syria, actually, and the Syrian government banned Hamas.

00:21:18.000 Al-Qaeda and Hamas actually also fought together in the second Libyan civil war.

00:21:24.000 That was 2014 to 2017. So it's just this wasn't reported out.

00:21:27.000 They were actually doing joint efforts together against the mutual enemy, Assad, and then, of course, General Haftar in Libya.

00:21:36.000 The big catalyst, though, is Hamza bin Laden.

00:21:38.000 His father wanted to bring all the groups together.

00:21:41.000 Hamza made it a goal and he's...

00:21:44.000 We've done a ton of negotiations, compromises, as you can imagine, to bring the groups together.

00:21:49.000 They brought them together under something.

00:21:51.000 It's got a lot of different names.

00:21:52.000 I call it the Islamic Army.

00:21:54.000 They call it the Army of Imam Mahdi.

00:21:57.000 But the goal is we work together, Sunni or Shia, doesn't matter, because our goal is to recreate the Islamic caliphates, right? 0.92

00:22:06.000 So the last one ended, you know, whatever it was, 70 years ago.

00:22:09.000 Now they want to bring the caliphates back.

00:22:11.000 Afghanistan was the start. 0.99

00:22:13.000 Syria was number two. 0.98

00:22:15.000 Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso are kind of like the next wave to create the caliphate. 0.96

00:22:24.000 So they have a joint goal now and they're all working together on that goal.

00:22:28.000 So this brings me to an interesting kind of crux in the road because if you talk to a lot of everyday Americans that you know they work at a car dealership or they're teaching school.

00:22:36.000 You'll tell them about this and they'll say, okay, but that's their business in the Middle East.

00:22:40.000 Let whatever happens, happens over there.

00:22:42.000 If we stay out of it, really the only reason they're mad at us is because we intervened and we bombed them and we're creating the terrorists.

00:22:47.000 Let's let them do their own thing.

00:22:49.000 Is that true?

00:22:50.000 Are we making ourselves enemies?

00:22:53.000 Or do they have kind of a larger ideology that really supersedes anything that we might do?

00:22:59.000 Yeah, I mean, if you go off the most basic thing they say, hey, if you get off Muslim lands, we'll leave you alone. 1.00

00:23:05.000 But that's actually not true.

00:23:06.000 The caliphate... 0.74

00:23:08.000 China exists, and the U.S. becomes a piece of the caliphate. 0.96

00:23:12.000 It's really interesting.

00:23:13.000 So the caliphate actually exists with China.

00:23:15.000 So China can have its empire and its world, and then there is the Islamic caliphate, but in the Islamic caliphate, the U.S. is a piece of the Islamic caliphate. 0.83

00:23:25.000 We don't leave the Middle East and they leave us alone. 1.00

00:23:29.000 They'll leave China alone, but we are going to become, you know, in the future, in their dream world, a part of the caliphate. 0.92

00:23:35.000 That means they're going to take us over. 0.70

00:23:38.000 They're going to change the way our government works, the way our system works, so we can become an Islamic society. 1.00

00:23:43.000 And people need to understand that is the goal.

00:23:46.000 So why is this Quranic teachings or is it something that's evolved?

00:23:50.000 How does China become exempt from this caliphate where America and I assume Europe fall squarely within the borders of that? 0.85

00:23:58.000 Yeah, I mean, obviously Spain is the biggest piece they want to retake as a caliphate once they finish off North Africa and they go up to Spain, right? 0.96

00:24:07.000 So Europe is a huge piece of it.

00:24:09.000 It's really the Western beliefs they want to...

00:24:14.000 So they think it's kind of the Western view of the world, right, who helped create Israel in all those issues, right?

00:24:22.000 If they don't get rid of the Western view and the Western belief that comes from the U.S. government, the British government, the Israeli government, they'll keep having that problem, right?

00:24:32.000 So they need to eliminate us.

00:24:34.000 They don't get those issues from China.

00:24:35.000 They don't view China in that same way.

00:24:38.000 They view them as someone they can coexist with in the future.

00:24:43.000 That reminds me of something that you mentioned a couple times before, is the historical lens that they view the West through is very interesting, because you pointed out that the October 7th date was chosen for a specific reason, and that has a lot to do with Western behavior in the Middle East or around Israel.

00:25:02.000 Could you just explain why October 7th was picked in the first place?

00:25:05.000 Yeah, so it was picked by Sireful Odell, who's basically the head of al-Qaeda's external operations right now, and he's also the mastermind of al-Qaeda's homeland attack in the U.S. that's coming up.

00:25:16.000 So he chose October 7th because that's the day at the time President Bush...

00:25:22.000 We called and made the announcement of the air bombing campaign in Afghanistan, and it was primarily in Kandahar, which was Al-Qaeda's stronghold, and that's when we basically carpet bombed Kandahar, and that day is very important to them, and so that is why they chose that date to get at us. 0.89

00:25:40.000 So a lot of Americans don't understand.

00:25:43.000 Like, the attacks in Israel were the dress rehearsal, and the dress rehearsal for the U.S. attack, right? 0.67

00:25:49.000 So they did the attack in Israel.

00:25:50.000 They're learning from it.

00:25:51.000 They're growing from it.

00:25:52.000 They're going to attack us, and it's going to be bigger and better in their mind than what they did in Israel. 0.99

00:25:59.000 So when I hear you say that, it brings kind of two emotions to me.

00:26:02.000 It brings confidence because we have someone, you know, on our side that knows this so well, but also the assurity with which you say the attack is going to happen is...

00:26:11.000 Quite frightening, to be honest with you.

00:26:14.000 What makes you so sure that this attack on the homeland from Islamic terrorists is going to happen? 1.00

00:26:25.000 So there's multiple reasons.

00:26:27.000 Number one, it's kind of what al-Qaeda says.

00:26:30.000 So al-Qaeda says the attackers got here.

00:26:32.000 The attack is across multiple cities, as you can imagine.

00:26:35.000 It's in multiple modes on transportation, using suicide bombers on airlines, etc.

00:26:41.000 Well, in all these years that they've been sending these attackers here since 2021, the U.S. has yet to catch one of these attackers, right?

00:26:49.000 So we haven't thwarted anything.

00:26:50.000 So let's say we even get 10 of the attackers, right?

00:26:53.000 Well, there's huge pieces of...

00:26:56.000 We're failing to disrupt, right?

00:26:58.000 So the attack is going to happen because we haven't thwarted it.

00:27:02.000 In the past, some of the big plots, like the big airliner plot in 2006, thanks to British intelligence, we thwarted that, right?

00:27:09.000 We don't have the intelligence collection anymore in Afghanistan or the ally to thwart these attacks over there. 0.84

00:27:15.000 So now we have to deal with them on U.S. soil. 1.00

00:27:17.000 So they planned the attack for 2025. They could shift it.

00:27:21.000 You've read our Israel report.

00:27:22.000 They shifted that a year.

00:27:23.000 So it could be 2025. They could wait.

00:27:26.000 But from what we know, the attackers are in country to include the suicide bombers, the suicide vests are in country, and the weapons are in country.

00:27:33.000 Just to maintain terrorists in the United States for that long, not get them caught or thwarted, is complicated.

00:27:39.000 It's expensive.

00:27:41.000 So we do believe still the intent is for the attack to occur in 2025, and they are ready to do it, and they're well-trained.

00:27:48.000 And would you say the number is, you think, that are here currently?

00:27:51.000 So there's different...

00:27:53.000 I mean, Al-Qaeda says they sent 1,000.

00:27:55.000 I think it could be slightly exaggerated, but as you know, it was 1,400 for the Hamas attacks.

00:28:00.000 So the number isn't off.

00:28:02.000 I care less about the exact number of attackers.

00:28:05.000 I do believe 10% is going to be suicide bombers, and I feel strongly. 0.75

00:28:09.000 So I think suicide bombers are between 75 and 100. I think that number is pretty accurate. 1.00

00:28:14.000 So I do think we just need to deal with the fact there's going to be an attack.

00:28:19.000 You know, I don't care if it's 200 terrorists or 400 terrorists, right?

00:28:22.000 Our community has never even had attacks where there's like more than five.

00:28:26.000 So it's going to be a whole different scenario we need to deal with.

00:28:30.000 And these teams did train in groups of five to seven.

00:28:33.000 So communities at the very least have to plan for an attack using five to seven terrorists.

00:28:39.000 Well, yeah, I guess if you look at places like Mumbai, it doesn't take an overwhelming amount of people to cause vast amounts of damage.

00:28:47.000 You see what happened with ISIS in Russia or Moscow, and you see in Mumbai, and you see places in Africa quite frequently. 0.53

00:28:53.000 And you think, okay, well, after 9-11, we kind of got a handle on this.

00:28:56.000 But then you remember, oh, like 10 years later, we had the Boston Marathon bombings.

00:29:00.000 Those were a little bit of a lone wolf, but still the same ideology.

00:29:02.000 So what is being done now that obviously people at higher levels are aware of this, and we have a new administration?

00:29:09.000 Is there anything going on to prepare and arm the public to better respond to what sounds like would be a tragedy?

00:29:17.000 Yeah, we haven't seen anything pushed down.

00:29:19.000 I mean, you know, it was publicly known, I went and talked to, like, Governor DeSantis.

00:29:23.000 I live in Florida.

00:29:24.000 And he wasn't giving anything from the federal government on terrorist threats at all.

00:29:29.000 So we've been trying to push ground up, as you can imagine.

00:29:33.000 Now, luckily, because there's this big initiative to deal with the border and to move people out of this country who shouldn't be here, we do hope some of the terrorists will get wrapped up in some of these kind of, like, ice raids, right?

00:29:45.000 But do they even know?

00:29:46.000 That these are the terrorists, right?

00:29:48.000 Because most of them aren't going to be on watch lists, right?

00:29:51.000 These are new attackers.

00:29:52.000 This will be their first big event, right?

00:29:55.000 So we do have to do a lot of educating, and we do have to get people involved in the community level, because it's going to be communities likely that help thwart this.

00:30:07.000 I guess in America, we don't have to deal with the direct effects of groups like al-Qaeda and the Taliban on a daily basis, but one that we do, you know, a newly minted terrorist group that we have to deal with is the cartel.

00:30:18.000 So do they have any role in funneling these terrorists over, funneling weapons over?

00:30:23.000 Is there a place in the puzzle for the cartel at this point?

00:30:26.000 Yeah, the interesting part is, so there are pipelines up through Mexico.

00:30:31.000 So they're actually mostly run by China and Russia that al-Qaeda is using through Mexico.

00:30:37.000 And then Surajideen Haqqani from the Taliban has one.

00:30:40.000 He runs with China, too.

00:30:41.000 And then it's China and Russia who make the relationships and have those long-standing kind of financial ties to the cartels.

00:30:51.000 So, you know, when we talk about all these threats, they really are all at the border, right?

00:30:55.000 The terrorists are working.

00:30:56.000 The cartels are working.

00:30:58.000 Russia and China are working.

00:30:59.000 It's kind of being ignored that this is being enabled by China and Russia.

00:31:04.000 And I think that piece of it is being lost.

00:31:07.000 So they're the connector between the terrorists and the cartels.

00:31:11.000 And it is good now to see the cartels being looked at as terrorist groups, but there's still not this come-togetherness of all these parties that people are understanding or working.

00:31:21.000 Think about it.

00:31:22.000 Someone works cartels.

00:31:23.000 Someone works terrorists.

00:31:24.000 I work terrorist groups together.

00:31:25.000 I'm Al Qaeda.

00:31:26.000 I'm ISIS. Someone works China. 1.00

00:31:28.000 Someone works Russia.

00:31:29.000 None of them all cross-collaborate.

00:31:31.000 So we don't have anyone tackling this problem the way it needs to be looked at.

00:31:36.000 Well, that's a good chance to get into the Russia and China discussion because this falls a little bit more in my background.

00:31:41.000 So our near-peer competitors, Russia, China, those are the two main ones.

00:31:46.000 I want to start with Russia, though.

00:31:48.000 So, again, another thing that I could not believe is you said The initial attack on October 7th was actually supposed to happen in 2022, but for a myriad of logistical reasons and deaths of key leadership, that was pushed off.

00:32:01.000 But Moscow was actually pushing Hamas to carry forward on October 7th, 2022. Why does Russia have such a vested interest in the Hamas attacks on Israel?

00:32:13.000 Well, the interesting part is when they decided to plan the Hamas attacks, it was March, right after Russia invaded Ukraine.

00:32:21.000 And the terrorists, especially Iran, said this is the time to do it because the U.S. is going to be focused on Ukraine with Russia. 0.74

00:32:28.000 At that time is when they reached out to Russia and said, hey, are you OK with this?

00:32:33.000 And they're like, go forth and conquer.

00:32:34.000 And they're like, OK, we're going to shoot for October.

00:32:36.000 And then, as you know, it started to get pushed.

00:32:38.000 Well, that's when Russia kind of circled back and like, hey. 0.73

00:32:41.000 My war in Ukraine didn't go as fast as I thought it would, right?

00:32:45.000 We're losing lots of bodies, etc.

00:32:47.000 And as you saw, they didn't just lose lots of bodies, they had problems with Wagner, and Wagner felt, hey, you're using us as cannon fodder, and there's almost like a moral injury between Wagner, the military in Russia, and then Progosian, and that was a disaster in the end.

00:33:03.000 So Russia then started pushing, no, no, no, do it in 2222, because it helps us.

00:33:09.000 So yeah, so Russia ended up getting more... 0.70

00:33:11.000 We're involved than when, yeah, you have our blessing, go forth and conquer.

00:33:14.000 Now, since Russia has gotten extremely involved within Afghanistan, they're fixing a lot of the equipment we left damaged or weren't working.

00:33:23.000 They got, like, the C-130s up and running again.

00:33:27.000 Al-Qaeda set up all these labs, like Summer Chemical.

00:33:32.000 Biological, there's pieces working on uranium, etc.

00:33:35.000 In these labs, there's Russian scientists, Chinese scientists, North Korean scientists, Pakistani scientists, and Iranian scientists.

00:33:43.000 So if we don't understand that all of our enemies are coming together within Afghanistan, we're missing the boat.

00:33:49.000 And they know they can because they know we gave up collection there.

00:33:52.000 So they know we're missing it.

00:33:54.000 Well, yeah, I read somewhere there was 97 to 98% of all intelligence gathering was lost after the pullout, which is insane.

00:34:01.000 And it seems like that has formed the perfect hotbed for all of our enemies to, you know, hang out like the group of doom and plot our demise, for lack of a better phrase.

00:34:11.000 Yeah, and that figure comes from the general running sitcom, right? 0.98

00:34:15.000 That's just not a number someone pulled out of their butt, right? 0.68

00:34:17.000 He saw and watched all the collection we lost. 0.98

00:34:21.000 So how does Russia work with or manipulate or be manipulated by these groups?

00:34:26.000 Because...

00:34:27.000 As recently as prior to this interview I checked, and the Taliban is still listed as a terrorist organization by the Russian government, yet the Russian government invites them to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum and is trying to legitimize them as a state actor.

00:34:44.000 So is this just all a charade?

00:34:48.000 How does Russia manipulate these groups?

00:34:51.000 Yeah, multiple pieces are at play here.

00:34:54.000 They actually are taking the Taliban off the list in Russia.

00:34:57.000 I don't know why it hasn't gone through yet, but Putin has announced it.

00:35:02.000 Numerous things.

00:35:03.000 They obviously want just the access in Afghanistan, as you can imagine.

00:35:08.000 The role Iran plays, Iran's very valuable to Russia, you know, besides being a big piece of its drone program for Ukraine, right?

00:35:16.000 So we focus on Afghanistan, but a big piece of this is the Russia-Iran relationship.

00:35:21.000 And then when the Moscow attacks happened, Russia got forced to work with the Taliban, like we do, to go after ISKP, right? 0.89

00:35:30.000 So that was then who they had to ally with, you know, in their mind to deal with the ISKP. Correct. 0.96

00:35:46.000 So, the Russians were fighting with everybody in Syria, I guess.

00:35:53.000 And then they're supporting the Taliban, who was supporting their enemies in Syria.

00:35:59.000 But now they're working with the Taliban to fight against ISIS to prevent attacks on their homeland.

00:36:04.000 So, forgive me if this web seems a little complicated.

00:36:08.000 Yeah.

00:36:08.000 And then when you talk about Syria, right, the Russians got pushed out of Syria.

00:36:13.000 They basically pick up their main base.

00:36:15.000 They move it to Libya.

00:36:17.000 And that's its own mess, right?

00:36:19.000 So, yeah, it's at some point the Russia terrorist relationship has to implode, just like the U.S. relationship with Taliban and Jelani and Syria has to implode.

00:36:33.000 Right.

00:36:34.000 Because these actors and these beliefs don't exist in the same world.

00:36:39.000 And now that Russia's down in Libya, where they fight al-Qaeda and ISIS from, everything's going to implode with all this reliance on these terrorist proxies. 0.59

00:36:51.000 Yeah, I mean, one would think so.

00:36:54.000 But I guess what they're just trying to do, right, is use whatever chess piece they can as part of their larger gambit against the United States, correct?

00:37:03.000 Yeah.

00:37:04.000 Terrorists have always been used short-term strategic gains by us, by Russia, by whomever is playing the game, Pakistan, India, whoever it is, right? 0.63

00:37:14.000 And it's a short term fix to their big problem.

00:37:18.000 But then no one deals with, obviously, the after fact of now you made that enemy or that terrorist group stronger, more legitimate.

00:37:26.000 You gave them advanced weaponry, et cetera.

00:37:29.000 Well, on that note, if the terrorists are kind of a chess piece for the Russians, then at least as far as I can tell and from everything that I know in my time in Asia, they're Russia is almost a chess piece for the Chinese because they are the big brother in the relationship now. 0.88

00:37:45.000 They have the purse strings.

00:37:46.000 They have the growing military.

00:37:48.000 They have the better economy.

00:37:50.000 I mean, I guess you could debate that on a couple fronts, but they're big brother now.

00:37:53.000 So where does China fit into all this?

00:37:56.000 Obviously, Afghanistan fell.

00:37:57.000 They occupied that vacuum.

00:37:59.000 What was that like?

00:37:59.000 What did they see in Afghanistan when we withdrew?

00:38:02.000 Well, the interesting part is China has always had the relationship, you know, with the Taliban.

00:38:08.000 And when we negotiated the Doha deal, we negotiated with a terrorist named Mullah Abdul Ghani Barader.

00:38:15.000 His goal, I mean, his role in the Taliban, he was number two. 0.99

00:38:18.000 He ran the operations.

00:38:21.000 The role he has that nobody's honest about is he was the Taliban's liaison to China.

00:38:26.000 So we made a peace deal with the Taliban's liaison to China.

00:38:31.000 So China didn't have to do anything to get in the door when the Taliban took over. 0.66

00:38:36.000 They have fostered this relationship since like 2008, 2009. It was well cemented, right?

00:38:43.000 So then they just moved in their supplies.

00:38:46.000 The funny part is China kept trying to get inside Afghanistan and the Afghan government.

00:38:50.000 We'll like bomb their equipment when they brought it in, you know, like keep pushing back.

00:38:54.000 And then when the Taliban came in, they rolled in, they took all the mines they wanted to take, etc.

00:39:00.000 They started doing a lot of things like getting the biometrics working for the Taliban so they could hunt down our allies, right?

00:39:07.000 Putting CCTV all over Kabul, right?

00:39:09.000 So a woman couldn't walk around. 1.00

00:39:11.000 So China leaned in and did all the things to the Taliban needed because China is really good at meeting your needs, right? 0.96

00:39:19.000 They don't care.

00:39:19.000 They don't care about human rights.

00:39:21.000 You know, they don't have that vested interest.

00:39:23.000 Like, you need to protect the women, right? 1.00

00:39:25.000 So they go in and they deliver what you want, and then they get what they want.

00:39:30.000 And obviously they have access to the uranium mines, the lithium mines, so many different things now in Afghanistan that we really never brought to the level it needed to be.

00:39:40.000 You know, Afghanistan could be a very wealthy country.

00:39:42.000 The U.S. didn't actually invest into those industries and really establish it, which is a very strange thing.

00:39:50.000 You know, a lot of money went into Afghanistan and it really went to corrupt entities and persons.

00:39:56.000 Yeah.

00:39:57.000 Yeah.

00:39:58.000 It doesn't seem like we had a very long-term strategic vision for why we were over there.

00:40:03.000 And it seems like China might be playing a little bit of a longer game.

00:40:06.000 And have at least kind of outflanked us on that position.

00:40:08.000 But how does Xinjiang and, like, China's activities in the Xinjiang region and Afghanistan, is there a relationship there?

00:40:16.000 Like, are you talking about, like, when they're dealing with their own terrorists?

00:40:19.000 Correct, yeah, because, I mean, ostensibly that's why all the repression in Xinjiang happened was because of domestic terror threats to Beijing.

00:40:26.000 But I just didn't know if the Afghanistan and Xinjiang, or if there even was a relationship there.

00:40:31.000 Yeah, there's actually not.

00:40:33.000 So even when China years ago, 15 plus years ago, created the relationship with the Taliban, it was only to collect, you know, on the Uyghurs and the terrorist threat of the Islamists in China. 0.58

00:40:45.000 So Taliban was never aligned with them.

00:40:48.000 The funny part is, though, Taliban is aligned with Al-Qaeda, and over the years, Taliban and Al-Qaeda have come together, and Al-Qaeda is very close to ETIN, the East Turkmenistan Islamic movement.

00:41:01.000 That's basically the main terrorist group China is fighting.

00:41:06.000 So the head of the group, yeah, the head of the group is, and you saw it in our paper, he's...

00:41:10.000 Based in Kabul.

00:41:11.000 He's in the safe house where one of the Hamas meetings was.

00:41:14.000 So there is now this constant fight between China, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.

00:41:21.000 Like, hey, you're fostering them in Afghanistan.

00:41:23.000 So the interesting part is the head of the Taliban went to Siraj Adin Haqqani, and he's like, you've got to fix this.

00:41:29.000 I'm so sick of the Chinese showing up once a month and complaining about this. 1.00

00:41:32.000 So what Siraj Adin Haqqani did was like, oh, fine, I'll tell E-Tim they have to go and be ready and support the Syrian blitzkrieg. 0.93

00:41:40.000 So the funny part is, that's why in Syria you're seeing all these, like, Uyghurs, and people are like, why are these guys in Syria? 1.00

00:41:46.000 It's because Siraj Adin's like, you've got to go to Syria and not be in Afghanistan for a bit so we don't have China complaining about us.

00:41:52.000 But that's why everyone's like, why is ETIM in Syria?

00:41:54.000 But that's why they were sent by Siraj Adin Haqqani.

00:41:57.000 So there's also all these little chess moves and games going on to appease China, just like they're appeasing our intelligence community by, like, fake killing some ISIS guys. 0.66

00:42:07.000 So I guess both sides are sort of getting what they want out of the relationship, at least in the short term.

00:42:13.000 Well, they think they're getting what they want, right?

00:42:16.000 China thinks the Taliban are pushing out ETIM, which they're not.

00:42:19.000 They're just like, go fight here for a month or two and come back to Afghanistan. 0.91

00:42:22.000 The U.S. thinks the Taliban's killing ISIS. They're killing random people and calling it ISIS. So ISIS is growing and we're not killing any of these people.

00:42:31.000 So we're really not getting what we want either.

00:42:33.000 We're actually helping grow ISIS. Oh, that's fun. 0.97

00:42:37.000 I'm glad that our tax dollars are being put to good use.

00:42:40.000 So on the China note, more specifically, the direct competition between China and the United States.

00:42:46.000 I want to ask you a question that might come off as controversial, but I guess I don't really think so.

00:42:50.000 But considering the hacks and the invasion of our critical infrastructure, like water plants and power plants, and the information campaigns online, economic subterfuge, IP theft.

00:43:01.000 Would it be fair to say that the United States and China are already at war in a sense?

00:43:07.000 We are.

00:43:08.000 We are at least in a position where everybody is doing like the left of left of launch for war, right?

00:43:15.000 So China's putting everything in place.

00:43:17.000 So taking, like you said, over parts of our power grid, land, ports.

00:43:22.000 So when we do go to war, they just shut it all down.

00:43:25.000 They shut the power down.

00:43:26.000 They shut the port down, right?

00:43:27.000 They take control of these things.

00:43:29.000 So our military can't even deploy, right?

00:43:31.000 So we're at this pre-war stage and we're like failing.

00:43:37.000 And we're kind of basically giving up territory to China, and it's not being viewed in that way, right?

00:43:43.000 Nobody's really taking it serious.

00:43:46.000 And it's getting to be dangerous.

00:43:47.000 I don't know if you saw it was like outside of Fort Bragg and those weird like Chechens or at the special operator's house. 1.00

00:43:54.000 Well, the really interesting thing I learned after the fact is they worked for a Chinese telecommunications company.

00:44:01.000 And when that was given to the U.S. government saying, you need to look into this, this is a big problem.

00:44:06.000 I don't really look at China's ownership of this, etc.

00:44:15.000 Stuff like that should be very concerning because now they're impacting our warfighter on U.S. soil.

00:44:22.000 What are they doing?

00:44:23.000 This is dangerous.

00:44:24.000 A lot of our warfighters are overseas.

00:44:28.000 There and your family is there and you're overseas and you don't know what's going on.

00:44:32.000 So I think there's a lot of things we need to start paying attention to what China is doing.

00:44:36.000 We don't exactly understand what they're all doing.

00:44:38.000 Well, yeah.

00:44:39.000 I mean, as far as the pressure or the terror that, you know, terror groups can bring to bear on the United States, and it is a huge deal.

00:44:47.000 Don't make no mistake about that.

00:44:49.000 What China could do, their capabilities and power and economic power are so far beyond anything that a terrorist group could do, and we seem to just be shoving our heads in the sand with it.

00:44:59.000 Well, we're just letting China do what they want, right? 0.97

00:45:02.000 China wants to slowly take us over over time and then make us like a piece of their kingdom, right? 0.98

00:45:07.000 And they are slowly doing it.

00:45:10.000 Sorry to interrupt you, but what drives me crazy is people are like, why is China our enemy?

00:45:14.000 You know, what have they ever done to us?

00:45:15.000 The PLA documents make very clear, and Xi Jinping's worldview, they say it over and over and over.

00:45:21.000 They want to dominate the region, and if they dominate the region, they dominate.

00:45:29.000 Yeah, I mean, and...

00:45:36.000 China does do a lot of influence operations, right?

00:45:40.000 Especially to our younger generation.

00:45:42.000 Sometimes if your enemy isn't pointing a gun at you, it's hard to view them that way.

00:45:48.000 I mean, I know I'm in the government and China stole my data all the time, right?

00:45:51.000 So I don't trust them at all. 1.00

00:45:52.000 It's like, you have my social security, I'm on the black web, you assholes. 1.00

00:45:56.000 But you know what I mean? 0.99

00:45:59.000 It's hard to get people to the influence side of things and to know there's different ways to fight war.

00:46:05.000 I mean, China's famous for fighting wars in these ways, but we're not. 0.97

00:46:09.000 We view war as, like, dropping the troops, right, bringing the heavy equipment, and not everybody views war that way.

00:46:16.000 No, gray zone tactics are a real thing, and pretty soon gray zone turns into a real conflict.

00:46:20.000 And if it does turn into a conflict, probably over, you know, a Taiwan invasion attempt, it feels like they've occupied so much of our information dissemination process that they could.

00:46:32.000 Well, like, for instance, TikTok, right? 0.96

00:46:34.000 You saw how TikTok turned and you saw how the younger generation could give a shit, for lack of a better phrase, about their data. 0.98

00:46:40.000 Sure, China take my data, but we know it's not about that. 0.97

00:46:43.000 And now with something like DeepSeek, I read that Pentagon employees were downloading DeepSeek and using it onto the computer for days before they were instructed not to.

00:46:51.000 Yeah, on their government computers.

00:46:55.000 Fire them, like today.

00:46:57.000 They have to be.

00:46:58.000 Like, that's got to...

00:47:00.000 I mean, I'm not calling for anybody's job because I don't know, but it seems like that would be a fireable offense.

00:47:04.000 No, that's 100% a fireable offense.

00:47:07.000 So if we go hot with China, how can they use this information manipulation to kind of, you know, win that war? 0.93

00:47:17.000 Well, remember, we have full recruitment centers in the United States, like in California, and they're in Chinese, right? 0.93

00:47:24.000 Like you go, and you go to the recruiter to get in the U.S. military, and it's fully in Chinese, right?

00:47:29.000 So it's so much beyond these apps, the control and influence.

00:47:35.000 We have the Chinese government running and controlling lots of our chambers of commerce, for example, right?

00:47:41.000 Different large landholding and investment firms, for example.

00:47:46.000 They know how to take in all this information and control it and influence you.

00:47:54.000 The app is just another benefit and bonus to them because they can pull you in in different ways and get you information and just even know how you think.

00:48:01.000 That's the greatest thing about artificial intelligence, right?

00:48:04.000 They get to learn from you when you're on these apps and saying things, and then they know how to target you and influence you.

00:48:11.000 Yeah, the thing that worries me, and tell me if this is unfounded, is if there, you know, there is an invasion of Taiwan and, you know, most in the military and strategic planning, international relations would agree that we do not want China to take over Taiwan.

00:48:26.000 But could they not use these influence operations to launch an invasion?

00:48:30.000 And by that time, they've already convinced most of younger Americans that they're actually not the bad guy.

00:48:35.000 They're actually the good guy.

00:48:37.000 And so, they prevent us from even helping because the public sentiment is so against it.

00:48:42.000 Yeah, because it's the whole imperialism thing, or, you know, the West shouldn't dictate what other countries do.

00:48:48.000 If they make you believe the Taiwanese want to be a part of China, especially as China's slowly trying to put people into their political system, and over time, eventually the politicians in Taiwan will likely be pro-Chinese, just because China's spending so much time and effort on it, right?

00:49:04.000 So, yeah, if you educate people saying, hey...

00:49:08.000 All these problems happen because of British influence or U.S. influence.

00:49:12.000 Then you do lose the support.

00:49:14.000 We're having a lot of this information problem, you know, in the Gaza region.

00:49:18.000 Right.

00:49:18.000 So it shows how easy and simple this is to do to influence people.

00:49:22.000 Well, yeah, I don't know if you've heard, but China is actually a bustling democracy with tall buildings that light up at night and everyone's having a great time there.

00:49:31.000 Yeah, it's odd because they're always tearing, like, blowing the buildings up because they made all these buildings and they ran out of money and the people in the country don't have the money.

00:49:40.000 Like, oh, we just have the full apartment buildings because we actually, our people aren't making the money to even occupy them.

00:49:45.000 I mean, there's so many things that people aren't understanding of what's really happening in China and life is difficult.

00:49:51.000 People will pay mortgage on a house for five years and the house will never be built and then all of a sudden they default and they're like, oh, sorry, I guess that money's gone now.

00:49:59.000 Yeah, it's an insane place and some insane things are happening over there.

00:50:04.000 I know Middle East is more your go-to zone, but would you say the likelihood of conflict with China, like real physical conflict, is something that America needs to be prepared for in the near future?

00:50:18.000 I think we need to be prepared for it because I feel we're actually pushing it a little more than China because I feel China's like, we can wait 100 years and slowly take this over and slowly influence it. 0.94

00:50:28.000 But then the U.S. war machine is pushing a little harder, like, oh, China's going over these red lines, China's doing this.

00:50:35.000 And the problem is China's advancing faster than us, right?

00:50:38.000 I mean, the hypersonic weapon test proved it.

00:50:41.000 And it's making our government very nervous and very scared.

00:50:44.000 And sometimes when that happens, they go on the off.

00:50:47.000 And so I do think we're pushing a little bit more of a war with China as our enemy, because we're like, it's going to happen anyway. 0.81

00:50:57.000 Let's do this to stop their innovation and stop their growth.

00:51:02.000 So we do have to watch.

00:51:04.000 Both sides are playing this in interesting ways.

00:51:06.000 And they're playing the same game, but differently.

00:51:08.000 And that's dangerous, too.

00:51:10.000 Yeah, the one thing that does worry me is just Xi Jinping's, you know, shelf life.

00:51:14.000 He is a human and will die, and it seems like he does have specific ambitions for his legacy, you know, to surpass Mao.

00:51:20.000 And just the headwinds that are going towards, like, Chinese development with their birth rates and their economics, it just, it seems like there's a powder keg. 0.99

00:51:28.000 And I don't want to predict what will happen, but I just, I would hope that our defense department and intelligence agencies are ready to handle whatever's coming, I hope.

00:51:37.000 Yeah, I hope.

00:51:38.000 I mean, they've had a hard problem competing with China in multiple places, right?

00:51:42.000 And China has won in Africa, in Latin America, etc.

00:51:46.000 So we do have to change the way we handle China no matter what the future holds.

00:51:51.000 If it's going to be war or if it just continues to be strategic confrontation, we have to do it better.

00:51:56.000 Yeah, and real quick, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it about, I don't know, 2012, 2014, didn't we basically lose all human asset collection abilities in China?

00:52:04.000 Didn't the CIA have like a huge...

00:52:06.000 There was a huge, like, it was like a leak.

00:52:10.000 It was tradecraft.

00:52:13.000 And it wasn't just the CIA. I believe DOD had a big tradecraft issue, too.

00:52:18.000 And China was able to identify undercover officers and some of their operations, too.

00:52:24.000 We have a hard problem with tradecraft.

00:52:27.000 Multiple reasons.

00:52:28.000 One, people go in an assumed name.

00:52:31.000 And that's almost impossible now, as you can imagine, with technology.

00:52:36.000 Even if I went in a fake name around the world now, people know me.

00:52:41.000 I've traveled personally to these locations, right, in my true name, etc.

00:52:45.000 And it's getting harder and harder to put people undercover, right?

00:52:50.000 So that is a difficult thing.

00:52:52.000 We're also grappling with, like, what's the future of undercover operations if you can't actually make a person undercover?

00:52:58.000 Yeah.

00:52:59.000 I do not envy, especially with the advances in artificial intelligence, to kind of weed those things out.

00:53:05.000 I don't know.

00:53:05.000 I feel like maybe good tradecraft is going to be more important than ever moving forward because there's some things that you just can't replace with stuff that's not on the ground.

00:53:14.000 And look, Israel has a masked guy.

00:53:18.000 A Hamas guy can wear a mask and you only see his eyes. 0.98

00:53:21.000 And Israel's identifying them.

00:53:23.000 So, you know, the technology is so much getting even beyond tradecraft that, yeah, we're going to have to find new ways to do things.

00:53:30.000 We're going to need some Mission Impossible masks here pretty soon.

00:53:33.000 Yes, that'd be awesome.

00:53:35.000 Okay, kind of the last thing I wanted to touch on, it's sort of taking an offshoot, but it's been dominating the discussion on Twitter recently, mostly because of... 0.92

00:53:47.000 I think he's a traitor.

00:53:57.000 I don't think we should ever let him back into the country. 1.00

00:53:59.000 And I think he is where he belongs in Russia. 0.92

00:54:02.000 And he landed where he belongs.

00:54:04.000 Now, a lot of people...

00:54:07.000 We only know Snowden from the movie, right?

00:54:10.000 And boy, the movie painted him in this great light, in this hero, in this person who's showing all this U.S. government corruption.

00:54:17.000 Now, the U.S. government has actual processes, right?

00:54:22.000 Snowden didn't try to go to any inspector general office, right?

00:54:25.000 He did not try to take...

00:54:26.000 Any path.

00:54:27.000 He just stole all the data, released whatever he felt like, and if people actually paid attention to what he released, he actually even told the terrorists in the tribal areas of Pakistan how we collect on them, ended our collection.

00:54:40.000 They all changed their tradecraft, right?

00:54:42.000 That is not a man who's trying to help everyday Americans not be spied on by their government, right? 0.77

00:54:48.000 He really tried to damage the United States and our national security, and he is a traitor, and he's lucky he's not in the United States. 0.99

00:54:56.000 Because I would think he deserves a death penalty. 0.99

00:54:59.000 Well, yeah.

00:54:59.000 And I didn't want to tip my hand on my opinion on this, but he sat with the South China Morning Post and basically revealed our data collection methods to them.

00:55:06.000 So I wouldn't say that's really a patriotic American thing to do, but, you know, I am just a simple man.

00:55:12.000 So I'll let the Internet decide.

00:55:15.000 Yeah.

00:55:17.000 Okay.

00:55:18.000 You've given us tons of time, but I want to give you the chance to leave on what do you think is the most important thing for just Yeah, I think really what we saw in North Carolina, you know, during, in the aftermath of the hurricane is such a good example of what you should expect, right?

00:55:49.000 Paralysis by our government, right?

00:55:51.000 Maybe a whole week before somebody gets to you, right?

00:55:54.000 I feel if we start emergency planning off of something like a crisis like that, you can be more prepared if something happens.

00:56:03.000 Now, the majority of Americans, even if a big attack happens in the United States, they're not going to be impacted directly by the attack.

00:56:09.000 But the telecommunications are going to go down.

00:56:11.000 There's going to be misinformation.

00:56:12.000 There's going to be fear, right?

00:56:14.000 Is it going to continue to happen?

00:56:15.000 There could even be potentially a period of martial law.

00:56:18.000 There's going to be a lot of confusion.

00:56:20.000 So the more resilient you can get now and prepare yourself, the better, right?

00:56:23.000 Family emergency plans, medical.

00:56:25.000 If you are in a situation and something happens, first responders are not coming anytime soon.

00:56:31.000 At least that's Al-Qaeda's goal, right? 1.00

00:56:33.000 So if you can be a force multiplier and save someone's life or give them care until they can get to something at a higher level, that's what you need to be doing for your community and your neighbors.

00:56:43.000 And you hope there's people that do it for your family if you're not in the area to help them.

00:56:47.000 I think we need to get to the community level and really become more resilient and prepared.

00:56:52.000 And then if other things happen, hurricanes happen, active shooters out of school happen, you're now 10 steps ahead.

00:56:58.000 Like, preparing has never hurt anybody.

00:57:01.000 Well, I think that's great advice.

00:57:02.000 And I really do.

00:57:03.000 Just the treasure trove of information and insight that you've given today, I really, really appreciate you taking the time with us.

00:57:10.000 Thanks.

00:57:10.000 Thanks for having me.

00:57:11.000 Yeah, thank you so much.

00:57:12.000 And hopefully we can work together in the future, too, and appreciate everything you do.

00:57:16.000 Perfect.

Louder with Crowder - February 07, 2025

CIA Analyst: Are China & Russia Behind an Imminent Terrorist Attack on America?

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript