Sarah Adams is a former CIA intelligence analyst and targeter. Senior advisor to the House Select Committee on Benghazi and co-author of the Know Thy Enemy series, which offers in-depth investigations into the infamous Benghazi, Benghazi, and October 7th terror attacks.
00:00:00.000He 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.
00:00:11.000There's basically a war between the MI5 and the CIA. Over Hamza bin Laden, and the CIA is not being honest.
00:00:19.000He's alive in the future in their dream world, a part of the caliphate.
00:00:22.000That means they're going to take us over.
00:00:24.000You know, they're going to change the way our government works, the way our system works, so we can become an Islamic society.
00:00:30.000And people need to understand that is the goal.
00:00:32.000The attackers are in country to include the suicide bombers, the suicide vests are in country, and the weapons are in country.
00:00:38.000Just to maintain terrorists in the United States for that long, not get them caught or thwarted is complicated, it's expensive.
00:00:46.000So we do believe still the intent is for the attack to occur in 2025.
00:00:50.000And they are ready to do it and they're well trained.
00:00:52.000There are pipelines up through Mexico.
00:00:54.000So they're actually mostly run by China and Russia that Al-Qaeda is using through Mexico.
00:01:00.000Sarah Adams is a former CIA intelligence analyst and targeter.
00:01:05.000Senior advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi.
00:01:10.000And co-author of the Know Thy Enemy series, which offers in-depth investigations into the infamous Benghazi, Abbey Gate, and October 7th terror attacks.
00:01:21.000Now 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.
00:01:41.000The only question is, is anyone going to listen before it's too late?
00:02:51.000Well, I mean, Americans aren't secure.
00:02:53.000The main reason is obviously because of the open border policy, right?
00:02:57.000And a lot of nefarious actors came in, not just terrorists.
00:03:01.000So we are at our least secure point since 9-11, in my opinion.
00:03:06.000Okay, then let me back that up a little bit and make it more specific.
00:03:10.000Since 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?
00:03:33.000I think we're going to be in a better position because I think they're being a little more honest about the threats.
00:03:37.000But as you can imagine, when you ignore something for four years, it's festered and now it's a much bigger problem.
00:03:43.000So they can't fix everything quick enough.
00:03:47.000And what are the biggest challenges that this administration is going to have to face?
00:03:51.000What 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?
00:04:02.000I 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.
00:04:11.000So I think that needs to be a near-term focus.
00:04:14.000Obviously, 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.
00:04:20.000So we have a lot of issues going on, and then we still have our near-peer problems, right?
00:04:25.000We have the Russia problem and the China problem that we have to deal with, but we've...
00:04:29.000Done a bad job of dealing with all the threats simultaneously, right?
00:04:34.000We'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.
00:04:41.000And you brought up a lot of different points that I definitely want to touch on throughout this interview, especially Russia, China, the border.
00:04:46.000I think they all kind of sort of interlocated a certain position.
00:04:50.000You can't really separate one from the other.
00:04:53.000But 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.
00:05:05.000So I remember sitting there watching that on TV thinking, I don't really know what, but it feels like something's drastically changing here.
00:05:12.000Sort 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.
00:05:18.000So there's a bunch of arguments over what actually happened and what the effects of that will be.
00:05:23.000So from your expert, you know, sort of viewpoint, where does the fault lie in our failed withdrawal?
00:05:32.000And 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?
00:06:21.000They gave themselves less than a month to even do it.
00:06:25.000The attack happened at Abbey Gate, and then they basically closed down within days, right?
00:06:30.000The withdrawal, as you can imagine, shifted the balance of power to the enemy.
00:06:36.000Now, in Afghanistan, it shifted the power to the enemy to the terrorists, but Russia saw this as weakness, right?
00:06:41.000And it's why they thought now was an opportune time to do Ukraine.
00:06:45.000And 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?
00:06:58.000So this has been a continued catalyst of failure.
00:07:01.000And then we had the Syrian blitzkrieg, obviously, in November, another aftermath of the fall of Kabul.
00:07:08.000So when I was reading some of your work, it continuously shocked me how interrelated all of these different groups were.
00:07:17.000But 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.
00:07:29.000And of course, we learned very quickly that that was all one big lie.
00:07:33.000I think most of us realized that from the beginning.
00:07:35.000But what was the goal or what was the realistic idea that the Taliban would normalize or was there ever one?
00:07:44.000What has the Taliban done since they've actually taken power in Afghanistan?
00:07:48.000Yeah, I mean, all that was shortsighted.
00:07:50.000It was Taliban, in our government's opinion, was the most powerful entity in the country.
00:08:04.000Now, 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.
00:08:16.000You could come on Thursday, be a terrorist from any group, and get passports.
00:08:20.000November, they also met for the first time with Julani and started planning the Syrian blitzkrieg.
00:08:26.000In March, the next March of 2022, is when they sat down and started planning the Hamas attacks with Iran, al-Qaeda, and Hamas, right?
00:08:43.000So you're telling me, and it's not just you making these claims very clearly, it's well understood.
00:08:50.000That the Taliban is working with all these other groups, and clearly they're not going to be a normal actor on the world stage.
00:08:56.000So why, from what I can tell, is so much American taxpayer money going to fund the Taliban?
00:09:02.000And we know this because you can finally see some senators trying to do something, right?
00:09:06.000Senator 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.
00:09:19.000And then going to other terrorist groups.
00:09:30.000And with Afghanistan, there's two pots of money that are a problem.
00:09:34.000We 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.
00:09:40.000And then we send counterterrorism dollars to the Taliban for this fake ISIS fight the CIA and the DoD have.
00:09:48.000The Taliban, to them, is their key counterterrorism ally against ISIS. It's the biggest...
00:09:53.000ISIS has grown threefold in the last three years, but they're lying and saying it's their key ally.
00:09:58.000So 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?
00:10:17.000We actually followed some of the money, and it went straight from the Ministry of Interior building in Kabul to ISIS training camps in Afghanistan.
00:10:27.000And even our government is lying and saying there are no ISIS training camps anymore in Afghanistan.
00:11:18.000Now 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.
00:11:37.000Well, 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...
00:11:43.000I 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.
00:11:59.000But again and again, al-Qaeda comes up.
00:12:03.000I think most Americans, when Osama bin Laden was killed by the SEALs, kind of stopped thinking about al-Qaeda at all.
00:12:10.000So what is the current status of al-Qaeda and what are their goals considering their jihad or their views for America?
00:12:19.000Yeah, well, it's not just that Americans stop thinking about al-Qaeda.
00:12:24.000You know, there was actually a media push at the time from the administration.
00:12:28.000To make us think, Al-Qaeda's done, Al-Qaeda's over, we defeated Al-Qaeda.
00:12:34.000And that's what the administration was putting out, and that's what the press was putting out.
00:12:38.000So, 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.
00:12:47.000So Al-Qaeda has been involved in all these things over the years.
00:12:51.000They've been involved in some big attacks in Afghanistan, like they did an attack against, like, the Emirati diplomats there.
00:12:58.000We'll never see Al-Qaeda's name on it, right?
00:13:00.000So for like the last 10 plus years, our own government and our own media covered up Al-Qaeda's involvement.
00:13:06.000So that's why Americans think Al-Qaeda's done because nobody's been giving them correct information.
00:13:29.000They're lacking collection on al-Qaeda.
00:13:31.000And instead of just being honest and saying we don't have a collection, they're just saying al-Qaeda is not doing anything.
00:13:36.000And 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.
00:14:16.000Well, 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.
00:14:33.000I had not heard that in American mainstream media since the administration declared him dead during Trump's first term.
00:14:40.000Yet, the British intelligence and the Mir are reporting that he's alive.
00:14:56.000Yeah, as you pointed out, it's not even an OSINT war.
00:14:59.000There'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.
00:15:17.000They said, no, we went to the CIA. They said, he's dead, we won't print it.
00:15:20.000So the U.S. press was controlled and would only print it with CIA's approval, which is crazy.
00:15:27.000So the British intelligence released it themselves.
00:15:29.000So Hamza bin Laden is very much alive.
00:15:32.000He actually, him and I, He and his brother Abdullah were leading a lot of the fight when Kabul fell.
00:15:39.000People call that the Taliban fighting the Afghan government.
00:15:43.000That was actually led a lot by al-Qaeda, and it was al-Qaeda taking down the Afghan government.
00:16:20.000So 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.
00:16:28.000So does the CIA have that much of a grip over the American media apparatus that they can control the narrative to that degree?
00:16:36.000Yeah, they don't have just a control over the media apparatus.
00:16:39.000If 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.
00:16:49.000They say, we get pushback from CIA, not just on Hamza bin Laden, but on the fake ISKP operations with the Taliban.
00:16:55.000So CIA has kind of a grip on these Afghan narratives and their information is wrong.
00:17:01.000And they're collecting information from the Taliban.
00:17:03.000They're putting it in classified channels and they're basically compromising our intelligence collection on terrorism.
00:17:09.000And I keep saying it should be a whole counterintelligence investigation.
00:17:13.000You know, if this was China or if this is Russia and we allowed this to happen, that's how it would be handled.
00:17:20.000Why are we not handling that way when terrorists are compromising our collection?
00:17:25.000Well, especially since we spent the last, you know, year and a half supporting Israel.
00:17:29.000Well, to whatever degree you want to argue, we've supported Israel's fight against Hamas and Gaza.
00:17:42.000And, you know, part of the mainstream narrative.
00:17:45.000But 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.
00:17:54.000And then Al-Qaeda, who is apparently led by Osama bin Laden's son.
00:18:00.000And 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?
00:18:09.000I think it's the fact that our government does control a lot of the narrative, right?
00:18:14.000So 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.
00:18:20.000When it doesn't go out on those large publications, it doesn't go out on the small local news as well, right?
00:18:26.000So it's not proliferating down to everyday Americans.
00:18:41.000Like, we're even funding the Iranian terrorists through Afghanistan, right?
00:18:46.000And just nobody actually is paying any attention to where the money is going.
00:18:50.000And Americans need to be more involved in where their taxpayer dollars are going.
00:18:55.000Yeah, 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.
00:19:04.000Backing up just a little bit, you obviously have made quite a name for yourself with your work on Benghazi.
00:19:11.000But 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.
00:19:18.000And it would take forever to kind of break that whole thing down.
00:19:22.000But 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?
00:19:31.000Yeah, they decided to actually plan the event in Afghanistan because it was a safe haven.
00:19:36.000They knew we gave up collection there, and the Taliban knew they controlled the information that went to the U.S. government, right?
00:19:42.000So they knew they'd be safe planning it in Afghanistan.
00:19:45.000So they did much of the planning there.
00:20:13.000And 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.
00:20:22.000But 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.
00:20:30.000So now a dozen al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan train Hamas fighters.
00:20:34.000So when you kill one in Israel, they train So they have now made more Hamas terrorists than were killed in Israel.
00:20:43.000And because we're not bombing the camps, we're allowing Hamas to basically be reconstituted in Afghanistan.
00:20:51.000So what is the interest of these groups to work together?
00:20:53.000Because obviously, if you look at it from the outside, you have different sects of Islam involved.
00:22:15.000Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso are kind of like the next wave to create the caliphate.
00:22:24.000So they have a joint goal now and they're all working together on that goal.
00:22:28.000So 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.
00:22:36.000You'll tell them about this and they'll say, okay, but that's their business in the Middle East.
00:22:40.000Let whatever happens, happens over there.
00:22:42.000If 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.
00:23:13.000So the caliphate actually exists with China.
00:23:15.000So 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.
00:23:25.000We don't leave the Middle East and they leave us alone.
00:23:29.000They'll leave China alone, but we are going to become, you know, in the future, in their dream world, a part of the caliphate.
00:23:35.000That means they're going to take us over.
00:23:38.000They're going to change the way our government works, the way our system works, so we can become an Islamic society.
00:23:43.000And people need to understand that is the goal.
00:23:46.000So why is this Quranic teachings or is it something that's evolved?
00:23:50.000How does China become exempt from this caliphate where America and I assume Europe fall squarely within the borders of that?
00:23:58.000Yeah, 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?
00:24:09.000It's really the Western beliefs they want to...
00:24:14.000So they think it's kind of the Western view of the world, right, who helped create Israel in all those issues, right?
00:24:22.000If 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?
00:24:34.000They don't get those issues from China.
00:24:35.000They don't view China in that same way.
00:24:38.000They view them as someone they can coexist with in the future.
00:24:43.000That 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.
00:25:02.000Could you just explain why October 7th was picked in the first place?
00:25:05.000Yeah, 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.
00:25:16.000So he chose October 7th because that's the day at the time President Bush...
00:25:22.000We 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.
00:25:40.000So a lot of Americans don't understand.
00:25:43.000Like, the attacks in Israel were the dress rehearsal, and the dress rehearsal for the U.S. attack, right?
00:25:52.000They're going to attack us, and it's going to be bigger and better in their mind than what they did in Israel.
00:25:59.000So when I hear you say that, it brings kind of two emotions to me.
00:26:02.000It 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...
00:26:11.000Quite frightening, to be honest with you.
00:26:14.000What makes you so sure that this attack on the homeland from Islamic terrorists is going to happen?
00:26:27.000Number one, it's kind of what al-Qaeda says.
00:26:30.000So al-Qaeda says the attackers got here.
00:26:32.000The attack is across multiple cities, as you can imagine.
00:26:35.000It's in multiple modes on transportation, using suicide bombers on airlines, etc.
00:26:41.000Well, 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?
00:27:26.000But 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.
00:27:33.000Just to maintain terrorists in the United States for that long, not get them caught or thwarted, is complicated.
00:29:24.000And he wasn't giving anything from the federal government on terrorist threats at all.
00:29:29.000So we've been trying to push ground up, as you can imagine.
00:29:33.000Now, 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?
00:29:52.000This will be their first big event, right?
00:29:55.000So 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.
00:30:07.000I 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.
00:30:18.000So do they have any role in funneling these terrorists over, funneling weapons over?
00:30:23.000Is there a place in the puzzle for the cartel at this point?
00:30:26.000Yeah, the interesting part is, so there are pipelines up through Mexico.
00:30:31.000So they're actually mostly run by China and Russia that al-Qaeda is using through Mexico.
00:30:37.000And then Surajideen Haqqani from the Taliban has one.
00:30:59.000It's kind of being ignored that this is being enabled by China and Russia.
00:31:04.000And I think that piece of it is being lost.
00:31:07.000So they're the connector between the terrorists and the cartels.
00:31:11.000And 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.
00:31:48.000So, 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.
00:32:01.000But 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?
00:32:13.000Well, the interesting part is when they decided to plan the Hamas attacks, it was March, right after Russia invaded Ukraine.
00:32:21.000And 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.
00:32:28.000At that time is when they reached out to Russia and said, hey, are you OK with this?
00:32:33.000And they're like, go forth and conquer.
00:32:34.000And they're like, OK, we're going to shoot for October.
00:32:36.000And then, as you know, it started to get pushed.
00:32:38.000Well, that's when Russia kind of circled back and like, hey.
00:32:41.000My war in Ukraine didn't go as fast as I thought it would, right?
00:32:47.000And 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.
00:33:03.000So Russia then started pushing, no, no, no, do it in 2222, because it helps us.
00:33:09.000So yeah, so Russia ended up getting more...
00:33:11.000We're involved than when, yeah, you have our blessing, go forth and conquer.
00:33:14.000Now, since Russia has gotten extremely involved within Afghanistan, they're fixing a lot of the equipment we left damaged or weren't working.
00:33:23.000They got, like, the C-130s up and running again.
00:33:27.000Al-Qaeda set up all these labs, like Summer Chemical.
00:33:32.000Biological, there's pieces working on uranium, etc.
00:33:35.000In these labs, there's Russian scientists, Chinese scientists, North Korean scientists, Pakistani scientists, and Iranian scientists.
00:33:43.000So if we don't understand that all of our enemies are coming together within Afghanistan, we're missing the boat.
00:33:49.000And they know they can because they know we gave up collection there.
00:33:54.000Well, yeah, I read somewhere there was 97 to 98% of all intelligence gathering was lost after the pullout, which is insane.
00:34:01.000And 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.
00:34:11.000Yeah, and that figure comes from the general running sitcom, right?
00:34:15.000That's just not a number someone pulled out of their butt, right?
00:34:17.000He saw and watched all the collection we lost.
00:34:21.000So how does Russia work with or manipulate or be manipulated by these groups?
00:34:27.000As 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.
00:36:19.000So, 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.
00:36:34.000Because these actors and these beliefs don't exist in the same world.
00:36:39.000And 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.
00:36:54.000But 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?
00:37:04.000Terrorists have always been used short-term strategic gains by us, by Russia, by whomever is playing the game, Pakistan, India, whoever it is, right?
00:37:14.000And it's a short term fix to their big problem.
00:37:18.000But then no one deals with, obviously, the after fact of now you made that enemy or that terrorist group stronger, more legitimate.
00:37:26.000You gave them advanced weaponry, et cetera.
00:37:29.000Well, 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.
00:39:21.000You know, they don't have that vested interest.
00:39:23.000Like, you need to protect the women, right?
00:39:25.000So they go in and they deliver what you want, and then they get what they want.
00:39:30.000And 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.
00:39:40.000You know, Afghanistan could be a very wealthy country.
00:39:42.000The U.S. didn't actually invest into those industries and really establish it, which is a very strange thing.
00:39:50.000You know, a lot of money went into Afghanistan and it really went to corrupt entities and persons.
00:39:58.000It doesn't seem like we had a very long-term strategic vision for why we were over there.
00:40:03.000And it seems like China might be playing a little bit of a longer game.
00:40:06.000And have at least kind of outflanked us on that position.
00:40:08.000But how does Xinjiang and, like, China's activities in the Xinjiang region and Afghanistan, is there a relationship there?
00:40:16.000Like, are you talking about, like, when they're dealing with their own terrorists?
00:40:19.000Correct, yeah, because, I mean, ostensibly that's why all the repression in Xinjiang happened was because of domestic terror threats to Beijing.
00:40:26.000But I just didn't know if the Afghanistan and Xinjiang, or if there even was a relationship there.
00:40:33.000So 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.
00:40:45.000So Taliban was never aligned with them.
00:40:48.000The 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.
00:41:01.000That's basically the main terrorist group China is fighting.
00:41:06.000So the head of the group, yeah, the head of the group is, and you saw it in our paper, he's...
00:41:11.000He's in the safe house where one of the Hamas meetings was.
00:41:14.000So there is now this constant fight between China, the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda.
00:41:21.000Like, hey, you're fostering them in Afghanistan.
00:41:23.000So the interesting part is the head of the Taliban went to Siraj Adin Haqqani, and he's like, you've got to fix this.
00:41:29.000I'm so sick of the Chinese showing up once a month and complaining about this.
00:41:32.000So 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.
00:41:40.000So 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?
00:41:46.000It'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.
00:41:52.000But that's why everyone's like, why is ETIM in Syria?
00:41:54.000But that's why they were sent by Siraj Adin Haqqani.
00:41:57.000So 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.
00:42:07.000So I guess both sides are sort of getting what they want out of the relationship, at least in the short term.
00:42:13.000Well, they think they're getting what they want, right?
00:42:16.000China thinks the Taliban are pushing out ETIM, which they're not.
00:42:19.000They're just like, go fight here for a month or two and come back to Afghanistan.
00:42:22.000The 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.
00:42:31.000So we're really not getting what we want either.
00:42:37.000I'm glad that our tax dollars are being put to good use.
00:42:40.000So on the China note, more specifically, the direct competition between China and the United States.
00:42:46.000I want to ask you a question that might come off as controversial, but I guess I don't really think so.
00:42:50.000But 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.
00:43:01.000Would it be fair to say that the United States and China are already at war in a sense?
00:44:49.000What 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.
00:44:59.000Well, we're just letting China do what they want, right?
00:45:02.000China wants to slowly take us over over time and then make us like a piece of their kingdom, right?
00:45:59.000It's hard to get people to the influence side of things and to know there's different ways to fight war.
00:46:05.000I mean, China's famous for fighting wars in these ways, but we're not.
00:46:09.000We view war as, like, dropping the troops, right, bringing the heavy equipment, and not everybody views war that way.
00:46:16.000No, gray zone tactics are a real thing, and pretty soon gray zone turns into a real conflict.
00:46:20.000And 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.
00:46:32.000Well, like, for instance, TikTok, right?
00:46:34.000You saw how TikTok turned and you saw how the younger generation could give a shit, for lack of a better phrase, about their data.
00:46:40.000Sure, China take my data, but we know it's not about that.
00:46:43.000And 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.
00:47:07.000So if we go hot with China, how can they use this information manipulation to kind of, you know, win that war?
00:47:17.000Well, remember, we have full recruitment centers in the United States, like in California, and they're in Chinese, right?
00:47:24.000Like you go, and you go to the recruiter to get in the U.S. military, and it's fully in Chinese, right?
00:47:29.000So it's so much beyond these apps, the control and influence.
00:47:35.000We have the Chinese government running and controlling lots of our chambers of commerce, for example, right?
00:47:41.000Different large landholding and investment firms, for example.
00:47:46.000They know how to take in all this information and control it and influence you.
00:47:54.000The 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.
00:48:01.000That's the greatest thing about artificial intelligence, right?
00:48:04.000They 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.
00:48:11.000Yeah, 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.
00:48:26.000But could they not use these influence operations to launch an invasion?
00:48:30.000And by that time, they've already convinced most of younger Americans that they're actually not the bad guy.
00:48:37.000And so, they prevent us from even helping because the public sentiment is so against it.
00:48:42.000Yeah, because it's the whole imperialism thing, or, you know, the West shouldn't dictate what other countries do.
00:48:48.000If 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?
00:49:04.000So, yeah, if you educate people saying, hey...
00:49:08.000All these problems happen because of British influence or U.S. influence.
00:49:18.000So it shows how easy and simple this is to do to influence people.
00:49:22.000Well, 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.
00:49:31.000Yeah, 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.
00:49:40.000Like, oh, we just have the full apartment buildings because we actually, our people aren't making the money to even occupy them.
00:49:45.000I mean, there's so many things that people aren't understanding of what's really happening in China and life is difficult.
00:49:51.000People 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.
00:49:59.000Yeah, it's an insane place and some insane things are happening over there.
00:50:04.000I 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?
00:50:18.000I 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.
00:50:28.000But then the U.S. war machine is pushing a little harder, like, oh, China's going over these red lines, China's doing this.
00:50:35.000And the problem is China's advancing faster than us, right?
00:50:38.000I mean, the hypersonic weapon test proved it.
00:50:41.000And it's making our government very nervous and very scared.
00:50:44.000And sometimes when that happens, they go on the off.
00:50:47.000And 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.
00:50:57.000Let's do this to stop their innovation and stop their growth.
00:51:10.000Yeah, the one thing that does worry me is just Xi Jinping's, you know, shelf life.
00:51:14.000He is a human and will die, and it seems like he does have specific ambitions for his legacy, you know, to surpass Mao.
00:51:20.000And 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.
00:51:28.000And 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.
00:51:38.000I mean, they've had a hard problem competing with China in multiple places, right?
00:51:42.000And China has won in Africa, in Latin America, etc.
00:51:46.000So we do have to change the way we handle China no matter what the future holds.
00:51:51.000If it's going to be war or if it just continues to be strategic confrontation, we have to do it better.
00:51:56.000Yeah, 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?
00:53:05.000I 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.
00:53:35.000Okay, 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...
00:54:27.000He 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.
00:54:40.000They all changed their tradecraft, right?
00:54:42.000That is not a man who's trying to help everyday Americans not be spied on by their government, right?
00:54:48.000He 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.
00:54:56.000Because I would think he deserves a death penalty.
00:54:59.000And 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.
00:55:06.000So I wouldn't say that's really a patriotic American thing to do, but, you know, I am just a simple man.
00:55:18.000You'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?
00:55:51.000Maybe a whole week before somebody gets to you, right?
00:55:54.000I feel if we start emergency planning off of something like a crisis like that, you can be more prepared if something happens.
00:56:03.000Now, 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.
00:56:09.000But the telecommunications are going to go down.
00:56:25.000If you are in a situation and something happens, first responders are not coming anytime soon.
00:56:31.000At least that's Al-Qaeda's goal, right?
00:56:33.000So 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.
00:56:43.000And you hope there's people that do it for your family if you're not in the area to help them.
00:56:47.000I think we need to get to the community level and really become more resilient and prepared.
00:56:52.000And then if other things happen, hurricanes happen, active shooters out of school happen, you're now 10 steps ahead.
00:56:58.000Like, preparing has never hurt anybody.