Episode 1652 Scott Adams: Let's Figure Out What is Going On in Ukraine, Great Clawback Update
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of Coffee with Scott Adams, the host talks about the history of vaccines and how they changed the course of human history, and why we should have done things differently in the past, and how we should do things now.
Transcript
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Oh, good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of your entire life.
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Hey, how would you like to enjoy the simultaneous sip?
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And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a gel, a stein, a canteen, a jug or a flask, a fizzle of any kind.
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It's the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
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And if you don't think this makes your life better, I feel sorry for you.
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If you take a history class in America, do you ever get two books with two different histories?
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Oh, and then here's the other book with the alternate history of the Civil War.
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But do you think that during the time of those events, there was only one interpretation?
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Do you think it's always been true that there are two completely separate interpretations of what's happening at the moment?
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And I'm wondering if the consensus of history is the only place that the two movies become one.
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In the case of COVID, everything, you know, happened kind of quickly and within a couple of years there.
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So we got to see, you know, weird things happen quickly.
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And one of the weird things was how quickly two complete interpretations of what was happening were living side by side.
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The weirdest one that's happening now is happening to the right.
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This will make you a little uncomfortable, I know.
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But there's a large group of people who are smart, influential, you know, engaged people who know a lot.
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Who are saying out loud that because we're doing things or the governments are loosening up and have some different opinions about how to handle the pandemic now.
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That that's what they should have done from the beginning.
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I want to see if anybody else is experiencing that movie.
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Who is experiencing the movie that because of the way we're acting now, loosening up with the pandemic, et cetera, that that's the way we should have acted in the beginning.
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You know, just letting everybody do whatever they wanted.
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So somebody says after the first two weeks, it didn't make sense.
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So there are enough yeses here to say, can we, without arguing who is right or wrong.
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Can we conclude that there are, that's a very different interpretation and pretty sticky too.
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Now, but at the same time that you believe that, you also understand that all of the variables are different, right?
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So if it's true that we should have always acted the same, that could be true.
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But it would be true that we should have acted the same no matter what the variables were.
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That that's actually, could be, could be a reasonable view.
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That whether millions of people were dying or not dying, you would sort of act the same.
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But, but, can you make the argument that the people who changed their opinion because all the variables changed
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are therefore irrational because they changed their opinion?
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Does it make sense to mock people for changing their view when all of the variables changed, like a lot?
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So at some point, we will, I guess, have one worldview.
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I think the one worldview will be, whether this is true or not, I think the consensus of history will be that vaccination worked.
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Again, I'm not saying it's true, because I don't want to argue any of that stuff right now.
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I'm just saying that I think history will say vaccinations worked.
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The side effects were minimal, and that it was a great victory of governments or something.
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And then probably something about Omicron finishing it off.
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But speaking of many worlds, do you have any idea what's happening in Ukraine?
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How many of you think you understand the Ukraine situation?
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Like, you know the basics that Putin has amassed an army, might go in there.
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And do you feel that your, let's say your mainstream media entities, do you think that they've explained to you what's going on?
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So I did a little bit of, you know, that thing that I say is ridiculous.
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I always mock doing your own research, because nobody's smart enough to know if they're looking at the right research.
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I can read a lot of stuff, but I don't know if it's true.
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So let me tell you some of the things that I've found without a, let's say, without much of an opinion about what's true.
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So the Ukraine story has at least two completely different movies.
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One movie is the one we get in the United States.
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And that movie is that Putin is an aggressive tyrant.
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He wants to control neighboring countries and control everything.
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And everything that you see Putin do is because he's sort of an expansionist dictator and wants to control everything.
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Would you say that's sort of what you're hearing?
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And that what we're trying to do is hold the line and make sure that Putin doesn't get any progress so that NATO looks like it's strong.
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Now, how many of you know that there's one narrative that the United States staged a coup in Ukraine in 2014, or was behind the coup, or revolution, depending on who you're talking to?
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And how many of you know that Ukraine went from more of a Russia puppet to more of an American puppet because of this mysterious coup?
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Basically, we took Ukraine from Putin, didn't we?
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Is there somebody who knows more about this stuff than I do who can validate the claim that the United States probably, probably took Ukraine from Putin's control?
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Now, I believe that's an unproven allegation, meaning that we don't know that the CIA or the U.S. was really behind it.
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But it sort of looks like a Hillary thing, doesn't it?
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So now we've got this highly corrupt government, but at least it's less pro-Putin, so that would look good.
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How many know that NATO wants to put a bunch of missiles in Ukraine?
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Did you know that we want to put missiles in Ukraine that's right on...
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Now, I think they're defensive missiles, but they don't have to be, right?
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But what do you think Russia should do about NATO having 12,000 troops on their border and 22 fighter jets sort of in that general region?
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That's just in the closest to the border of Russia, I guess.
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And so we've got this situation, and can you be sure you know which way would be in your benefit if it went?
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In other words, you watching this, do you know if you would be better off, or whatever country you're watching from,
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But I'll bet it's not bad for everybody, because no wars are.
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There's always somebody who gets rich in a war.
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And so one of the questions I'd ask myself that I haven't seen anybody deal with in the media
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is that would Russia be economically advantaged or disadvantaged if they conquered Ukraine militarily and tried to hold it?
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What's your common sense tell you, such as it is, that would Russia be better off or worse off for owning Ukraine again,
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To me, it looks really expensive, because I heard one analyst say that Russia might not even have the money to keep their army massed on the border for long.
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It's so expensive to move an army that just having 100,000 soldiers and all the support staff on the border in case they want to attack might be too expensive.
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So one of the strategies that the U.S. might be pursuing is to see how long we can make them wait.
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Because the longer they wait, the more bankrupt they go.
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So it should be to our advantage, even if we think they're definitely going to invade, to just delay it as long as possible, because it's so expensive.
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And I'll bet we're spending pennies on the dollar compared to them, because we're not putting much of an active defense in Ukraine.
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So when you hear Russia say, you know, it's almost like the U.S. is trying to create a fake reason for Russia to invade,
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you know, first you laugh that off, and then you say to yourself, well, we really don't know what's going on.
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Could it be that you could destroy Russia and Putin's influence by letting him take Ukraine?
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Don't you think that Ukraine could be a big enough problem to Putin that it would suck up all of his resources?
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How strong is the Russian army today when they have so much of their resources in one place?
00:12:07.360
So I don't understand how this entire chessboard works, but I'll give you a few more points of view from this.
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One point of view is that Russia is on a roll, and Putin's on a roll.
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Apparently, he recently effectively took over Belarus, which was more of an ambiguous situation.
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So it would look as if everything that Putin does, he's getting away with.
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What do you think Putin actually wants, and why don't we know?
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Do you think he's, do you think this is mostly defensive or mostly offensive?
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That Russia's only asset is energy and military.
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If we, if we could put offensive weapons in Ukraine, it would basically make their military almost useless.
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Because if you, if you had, you know, let's say nuclear missiles that could reach Moscow in 10 minutes,
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it wouldn't matter what kind of army Russia had.
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They would be completely vulnerable at any size.
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So we're looking to completely neuter the power of Russia as one of their two assets,
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and maybe neuter their second one, which is get rid of that pipeline.
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So if Russia attacks, that's probably going to give us reason to put more missiles wherever we can get them,
00:14:06.120
But it would give us a pretext to move more missiles in on his border.
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And, and then we could obviously put these sanctions on and get back in the energy business and get Putin out of it,
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So I have a feeling that the U.S. has a view that if Russia attacks,
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it would be the worst thing for Russia of all time.
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It would be walking right into a trap that we want, which is an economic trap.
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You don't want to walk into an economic trap when you think you're having an army,
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If Russia thinks this is a kinetic war, and the U.S. thinks it's an economic war,
00:15:02.260
Who's going to win if Russia thinks it's a real war and the U.S. thinks it's an economic trick?
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We're going to trick them into spending all their money and bankrupting themselves.
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Some of the things that Moscow is demanding, like, you know, reduction of forces on NATO,
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and, you know, not letting other countries in, and getting rid of missiles, and all that stuff.
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Wouldn't we ask for the same thing if Russia had assets in Cuba or Mexico or something?
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It's kind of weird that we don't see that as a reasonable thing to ask for.
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You know, I threw out this idea that was shot down quickly on Twitter,
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There should be something called a Switzerland option for any country that's in Ukraine's situation.
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Now, Switzerland is famously neutral, so it doesn't get attacked,
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but, as often people point out, it doesn't seem to have strategic value.
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It's a good place to park your illegal dictator money.
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So there are lots of reasons that Switzerland is not like any other place.
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So don't get too hung up on the Switzerland comparison.
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The only part of the comparison is, could you create new neutral countries
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But could you create, like, a neutral country that was never neutral before?
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I would create a process within the United Nations
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in which a country could, but maybe only with unanimous support.
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you know, this country is going to be nothing but trouble,
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so whoever controls it is going to put missiles there.
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And you get literally every country in the United Nations
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then every country in the world also has the responsibility
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to stop doing business with anybody who attacks it.
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Because at this point, you can't be shut off from all economics in the world
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So I would think that you could create a neutral country out of anything,
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no matter how vulnerable they are, no matter how strategic.
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as long as every country agreed to cut off the finance operations
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Don't know if it would work, but if you don't try, you never know.
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I saw a military expert say that if Russia attacks Ukraine,
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it would be signaled by a massive cyber attack.
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would the United States not learn how Russia does massive cyber attacks?
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And would that not be pretty useful for us to know?
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would it not be using modern equipment and modern techniques,
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which would be very revealing and useful for NATO to understand?
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Is it possible that we are luring Russia into a war
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I don't think anything is being done for one reason.
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I think things are done for a basket of reasons.
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in a way that we couldn't have seen in Syria, for example.
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Now, another possibility is that we think we could actually stop them if they attacked.
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Because we don't know what weapons Ukraine has, right?
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I don't think that we advertise the good stuff.
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I think we advertise the stuff that they would have known about anyway.
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But if Ukraine has some kind of amazing, let's say, small...
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But if they have some amazing capability with these small drones,
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that each one can, let's say, be a suicide attacker on a tank or something,
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it could be that we think we can give Russia a black nose sufficient
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that it would stall it forever for any future provocations.
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And I don't think that there's one set of view anywhere about this.
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I'm continuously wondering why the US and Russia have any conflict at all,
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so we always do things to them, and vice versa, forever.
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with people who understand Russia but not much else?
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What would happen if the CIA had a bunch of Russia experts,
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It's just a bunch of people trained in that area of espionage.
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have to do with staffing in both Russia's secret services and ours,
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and that they're simply staffed with a bunch of Russia fighters in one
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and that if you just did some employee reorganization,
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you know, maybe some forced retirements or something,
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Because it does seem to me that if you were a Russia expert,
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you would need to drum up some Russia problems, wouldn't you?
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so that you have the greatest career opportunity.
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So, it seems to me we've created a business model
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because they have a bunch of Russia experts on their staff,
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and they'll all get promotions if there's a Russia conflict.
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The weirdest thing about this is that the Russia Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
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are spreading a large-scale disinformation campaign
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about an allegedly impending Russian invasion of Ukraine,
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in order to divert attention from their own aggressive actions.
00:22:23.900
Do you think that Russia put 100,000 forces on the border
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with 100,000 forces amassed on the Ukraine border
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that are obviously offensive forces, or so we were told,
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are they really telling the world that they're there for no reason?
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Because nobody's suggesting we're attacking Russia.
00:23:01.860
How do you know they have 100,000 forces there?
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And why didn't somebody ask them that question?
00:23:08.740
You don't think we can get to the Russian foreign ministry guy
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Because I'd just love to see him deal with the question.
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What if he said, no, we don't have massive troops on the border?
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because it seems to be coming from multiple sources.
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Do you think that there are multiple news sources
00:24:09.440
No, I realize that there's satellite imagery, right?
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But doesn't everything that we know come from our military?
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If our news sources can see anything independently
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or are we just taking the word of our military?
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At this point, you can't trust anything, can you?
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I would have to think that it's too big of a claim to be false.
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or he was so tired he could just barely get into bed
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just because you didn't see a direct connection,