TRIGGERnometry - Ex CIA Agent： The Real War is Just Beginning

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00:00:30.000 I don't think they've played their ace card at all.

00:00:33.760 What is their ace card?

00:00:34.600 That's what we're all waiting to see. I also don't think Iran has played their ace card.

00:00:38.560 I think that they both are retaining options that might be too frightening for any of us to even consider right now.

00:00:44.980 Honestly, I think Trump did this because he was looking for a victory.

00:00:47.840 I think Trump was looking for a political victory in a landscape of recent failures.

00:00:53.120 I believe World War III is already happening because I believe World War III is a proxy war.

00:00:58.920 It is a proxy conflict.

00:01:00.740 I think most people are not understanding the evolution of war.

00:01:04.760 How does the next five years look like?

00:01:06.400 S***.

00:01:09.880 The world was shocked when Israel and America attacked Iran.

00:01:13.460 Do you know who wasn't shocked?

00:01:14.940 The people who watched Trigonometry.

00:01:16.840 So you think they're going to attack Iran?

00:01:19.060 Yes.

00:01:20.080 Yes, it's a question of when.

00:01:21.800 This side of the US election or after the US election?

00:01:24.520 How close are the Iranians to getting a nuclear weapon?

00:01:28.480 It's more a matter of months than years.

00:01:31.360 Months?

00:01:32.180 We are months away.

00:01:34.100 Unless something can be said or done that interrupts their obvious march towards it.

00:01:44.560 Iran is a very powerful and big country.

00:01:47.500 How does this end?

00:01:48.900 If you think that the head of the snake is Iran and you really can't solve this problem of the endless war, you have to have America on the side.

00:01:58.300 No question about that.

00:01:59.520 The United States needs Israel because Israel is one of the top three wealthiest countries in the Asian subcontinent.

00:02:06.900 They have incredible trade and buying power for our weapons systems, our technology, our security interests, right?

00:02:13.920 There's lots of reasons why the United States wants and needs to continue being partnered with Israel.

00:02:18.560 The final profit emerges once there is, once justice and equality has been achieved in the world.

00:02:26.960 And the thing that achieves this justice is that the last drop of blood of Israel falls.

00:02:35.080 So the end of Israel brings back the final profit.

00:02:38.680 So they need to destroy Israel.

00:02:40.900 They need to destroy Israel.

00:02:42.180 Do you want to know what's happening and why?

00:02:44.400 Subscribe to Trigonometry today.

00:02:49.140 Andrew Bustamante, welcome back to the show.

00:02:52.520 Timing has worked out perfectly given everything that's been going on in the world.

00:02:56.080 With your CIA and combat background, just delighted to have you here.

00:03:01.480 Talk to us about what's been happening over the last week.

00:03:04.480 What do you see and what hasn't been talked about?

00:03:07.700 You know, the primary thing I think that we're all seeing in the last seven-ish days worth of headlines is the conflict between Israel and Iran.

00:03:14.420 And we all know the kind of dance steps here.

00:03:18.220 Israel launched airstrikes.

00:03:19.720 Iran launched rockets.

00:03:21.660 Israel continued with weakening air defenses, attacking nuclear sites, brought in the United States, asking the United States for help with a very specific piece of ordinance,

00:03:30.700 a bunker buster that was strong enough to go into some of the most secure nuclear facilities,

00:03:34.540 to which Donald Trump ultimately said yes and then ran a very successful bombing raid and then called for a ceasefire between both Iran and Israel.

00:03:42.120 So those kind of major steps are things that we all understand.

00:03:47.720 I think one of the things that people aren't really recognizing or aren't considering is the fact that both Israel and the United States took preemptive action on Iran.

00:03:59.120 Iran had not taken any kind of aggression or aggressive actions to cause those initial preemptive strikes.

00:04:04.960 And the United States has a pretty strict no-first-strike policy.

00:04:10.160 We don't make the first strike.

00:04:11.700 We try to give countries an opportunity to reach diplomatic ends before we go and execute with our military,

00:04:19.240 understanding that we have the world's most sophisticated, you know, most well-funded military out there.

00:04:25.260 So it was very, very different, very unique in terms of how this whole thing played out.

00:04:29.860 And the Israeli-Iranian conflict appears to be new to people, even though we've been watching Israel systematically degrade Iran ever since the October 7th attacks that came from Hamas.

00:04:42.600 So you can really start to see the lack of understanding, the lack of familiarity people have with how Iran executes its conflict and how justified Israel is in taking the actions that they're taking.

00:04:56.060 Well, that has been fascinating because Francis and I by no means consider ourselves experts, but because of the people we've had on the show, yourself included,

00:05:04.760 like we've had people, we actually put a video out basically showing off and saying, we told you so,

00:05:08.700 because we had people predicting this was going to happen for months and months ahead of time.

00:05:13.860 But you're right.

00:05:14.600 I think the media narrative is so reactive.

00:05:16.860 People are, oh, this thing happened.

00:05:18.160 And then suddenly people are, oh, why did it happen?

00:05:20.340 But the question I wanted to ask you is, first of all, you mentioned that this action was unique.

00:05:27.640 And the question obviously then is, why do you think President Trump made the decision to go in with the bunker busters on that preemptive basis?

00:05:35.320 Because would I be right in saying that it would also be your opinion that while Iran was enriching uranium way beyond civilian use,

00:05:42.740 they did not have like a nuclear bomb with the thing attached on a rocket launcher ready to go, right?

00:05:48.320 Exactly right.

00:05:48.940 And that's the thing that, that's some of the nuance that in my opinion, isn't very nuanced.

00:05:53.440 That's pretty fucking significant, right?

00:05:55.900 There's a difference between having uranium enriched to 90% versus having uranium weaponized for detonation on the end of a delivery vehicle that can be launched anywhere worldwide, right?

00:06:08.640 I mean, we saw this when Russia launched an ICBM, a non-nuclear tipped ICBM in a counter-strike against Ukraine.

00:06:15.080 An intercontinental ballistic missile, a missile that can launch itself into the stratosphere and then deliver a payload from space is a terrifying weapon without a nuclear warhead.

00:06:25.540 But it's, it's years away from, from out of reach for Iran to be able to create both the weapons grade uranium and the delivery vehicle that can't be intercepted.

00:06:38.020 Is that really years away?

00:06:39.340 Because it takes, so right now there are zero ICBMs in the Iranian inventory.

00:06:44.260 They have medium range ballistic missiles.

00:06:45.880 Right.

00:06:46.040 Those are the same missiles.

00:06:46.480 So that's enough to nuke Israel, right?

00:06:48.400 If they had a nuclear warhead ready to go.

00:06:50.740 And if Israel didn't intercept the missile.

00:06:53.080 But ballistic missiles are notoriously difficult to intercept, are they not?

00:06:56.160 I mean, except for the fact that they've been, they've been getting shot down by both U.S. and, and Israeli forces now at a rate of 80% or more.

00:07:03.720 So not notoriously difficult.

00:07:05.460 There's always room for them to get through, right?

00:07:06.940 But now if you think about it, a barrage of 100 missiles.

00:07:09.600 We've been seeing barrages of missiles anywhere from 30 to 120 from Iran at any given time, of which two to five get through.

00:07:18.500 Well, if that two to five happens to be nuclear tipped, then yes, you've got a problem.

00:07:23.580 Right.

00:07:23.900 But the odds are they're not going to be.

00:07:26.120 The odds are that they would launch one in a battery of 50 or so others, of which the majority would be intercepted.

00:07:32.460 So now you're playing a probability game.

00:07:33.640 You can see why Israel wouldn't want to take that chance, right?

00:07:36.620 It makes total sense that Israel wants to take zero chances with a threat that is hell-bent on their eradication.

00:07:43.640 Right.

00:07:43.980 So come back to my question about why you think Trump did this.

00:07:46.560 I mean, honestly, I think Trump did this because he was looking for a victory.

00:07:50.060 I think Trump was looking for a political victory in a landscape of recent failures that were mounting when his entire political campaign, his whole political promise was on being the person who would end Israel, Hamas, the person who would end Ukraine, Russia, the person who would kind of bring back American jobs through tariffs.

00:08:10.640 And just systematically, he was losing and losing and losing.

00:08:13.120 He needed a victory.

00:08:13.680 I think Netanyahu understood that, too.

00:08:16.360 And he gave him kind of an open plate to say, hey, we took out the air defenses.

00:08:22.000 We shut down their air force.

00:08:24.120 We have air superiority.

00:08:25.120 All you have to do is fly in a bunch of high-tech stealth bombers and drop a couple of bombs.

00:08:28.780 That is so interesting that you make that point because I had a debate with Dave Smith on the Piers Morgan show.

00:08:34.520 And I kind of said, you know, they were like, well, how do you think this is going to play?

00:08:37.220 I was like, well, Americans love winning and they love bombing shit.

00:08:39.960 So, like, this has the potential, if it goes the right way, to be a huge political win for President Trump.

00:08:45.900 And that's all it is.

00:08:46.980 Really?

00:08:47.400 That's all it is.

00:08:48.000 I mean, the narrative coming out of the United States right now is completely backwards and upside down.

00:08:55.600 Trump has created a cabinet of people who are loyal to Trump.

00:08:58.460 So they're not going to disagree with him.

00:09:00.060 You saw that with Tulsi Gabbard when she said on the first committee that Iran was not close to making a nuclear weapon.

00:09:07.400 And then a week later, she completely changed her stance.

00:09:09.780 Right?

00:09:09.860 That's the team that Trump has built, is this team of people that will do what he says he wants them to do.

00:09:14.580 They're protecting their reputation more than anything else.

00:09:17.040 There's a very clear theorem when you go to a war college, when you go to an army war college or an air war college,

00:09:24.520 and there's these competing ideas of limited war versus total war.

00:09:28.400 If I'm taking you down a road that you've heard before, please interrupt.

00:09:30.940 No, carry on.

00:09:32.160 We have learned, the United States has learned all the way back through Vietnam and Korea

00:09:37.400 that limited war doesn't work.

00:09:40.120 You don't win a limited war.

00:09:41.920 And a limited war is a war with limited objectives.

00:09:45.120 You can only really win a total war.

00:09:48.560 And a total war means you are fully committed to destroying your enemy and resetting their capability.

00:09:55.280 That's what World War II was.

00:09:56.480 That's what Israel is launching against Iran in many ways.

00:09:58.880 They want a total war.

00:10:00.980 Right?

00:10:01.300 There's some limitations that make that difficult for them.

00:10:03.120 What Trump did by sending in B-2 bombers to destroy three major well-known, you know, Iranian enrichment sites was a limited war move.

00:10:11.960 There is no strategic long-term benefit that comes from that,

00:10:17.140 especially now that what we're seeing in headlines now is that the enriched uranium was possibly moved out of that location before the attack came.

00:10:24.760 That's a perfect example of the problem with limited war.

00:10:27.120 Andrew, there'll be people saying, well, hang on a second, I take your point, but what Trump was doing was an actual show of strength to the Iranians to say, look, get in line, get behind the table, or this is going to happen again.

00:10:39.180 I don't disagree that it was an attempted show of strength, but instead I think all he really did was make the Ayatollah look stronger.

00:10:46.860 I think America's move into Iran made it look like we have fancier technology, and even with our better weapons, and even with our better missiles, and even with the full fighting force of Israel and the United States,

00:10:58.680 Iran still has the capability to enrich uranium, they still have enriched uranium, and now more than ever, they have justifiable cause to go to their friends, North Korea, Russia, China,

00:11:11.440 and get the additional weaponry and the additional technology they need to put that combustible warhead on a delivery vehicle.

00:11:20.860 But Russia have been actually pretty non-committal when it's come to this.

00:11:26.040 I mean, let's be honest. So we've got Putin, he's got his hands full with Ukraine.

00:11:31.880 You look at Xi, I mean, they've condemned it, but there's nothing else that's really come from the Chinese.

00:11:37.400 Do they really care about this? They've got their eyes on Taiwan, surely.

00:11:41.980 So I think what we're seeing is the public side of diplomacy, not the actual side of diplomacy.

00:11:48.600 You've heard of the bat phones and the backroom deals and the phone calls that don't get recorded.

00:11:53.480 I mean, those are very important things.

00:11:57.480 And having Putin and Xi Jinping not say outwardly that they support Iran does not mean that they do not support Iran in some other way.

00:12:05.440 Iran is the breadbasket of the Middle East, and that's something that often gets overlooked.

00:12:11.360 Without Iran, Saudi Arabia doesn't eat.

00:12:13.760 Without Iran, UAE doesn't have fresh vegetables.

00:12:15.580 Even though they have a hostile stance against the policy of the formal government, they still have a carve-out for trade.

00:12:22.200 Just like the United States still has a carve-out for Russia, right?

00:12:25.260 Even though we have all these sanctions on Russia, and even though we claim that Russia is evil, and we don't support them,

00:12:31.460 and we want the rest of the world not to support them, we still have carve-outs because we still want Russian cosmonauts,

00:12:36.420 and we still want their help in space.

00:12:37.680 So there's all these policy carve-outs, and the same thing exists in the Middle East.

00:12:41.900 Inside those carve-outs, that's where Iran really has the most leverage.

00:12:46.120 So if Iran makes a backroom deal with China and says,

00:12:48.580 Hey, we're going to keep producing agriculture, but we want you to buy it,

00:12:52.740 and then we'll shut off trade to the Middle East.

00:12:54.700 So we'll make them starve.

00:12:56.240 We'll make them pay more money for their basic needs and food,

00:12:59.220 because they're going to have to import that shit from the United States,

00:13:02.000 since Ukraine can't feed them either, right?

00:13:04.480 So there's still options on the table for Iran to cause a lot of pain in its sphere of influence.

00:13:09.980 Because there's a lot of people talking about regime change,

00:13:14.040 and this is the first step in regime change.

00:13:16.940 Obviously, Israel wants regime change.

00:13:19.520 It's not, how can I put it, optimal to have your neighbor calling you a cancer

00:13:23.220 and saying you should be wiped off the face of the earth.

00:13:26.000 But what's the appetite for regime change?

00:13:28.740 Because although the Ayatollah is who he is, there's always a risk.

00:13:33.980 Number one, you're going to get someone far worse.

00:13:36.540 And number two, what could actually happen is in the case of Iraq when it descends into civil war.

00:13:41.400 Correct.

00:13:41.920 And these are lessons that the United States has learned,

00:13:45.320 which is another reason why this bombing into Iran was such a faux pas

00:13:49.780 when it comes to strategic military intention,

00:13:52.720 which is probably what happens when you don't have professionals at the helm in the cabinet, right?

00:13:57.500 When the United States has learned that regime change at the force of an external enemy

00:14:08.500 oftentimes doesn't result in a democratic leader being elected.

00:14:13.180 It results in the next strongest or even stronger kind of hawkish leader being elected.

00:14:19.060 And that's true in transnational threats like terrorist groups or cartels,

00:14:24.340 and it's true in governments as well.

00:14:26.180 So if the Ayatollah were to fall,

00:14:29.160 there's a good chance whoever comes in his place is going to be worse, to your point.

00:14:33.600 If the Ayatollah falls and the whole country descends into civil war,

00:14:37.280 a la Syria, a la Libya,

00:14:39.260 now we've just lost a very important element to the survival of the Middle East

00:14:43.280 because the entire country is going to descend into something worse.

00:14:46.200 I think the other thing that's important to note is that there's a difference between what

00:14:49.460 the West is telling the West about Iran versus what it actually looks like in Iran.

00:14:55.080 Most Iranians don't really like being under a theocracy,

00:14:59.060 but they would for sure like it worse to be under an Israeli shadow government

00:15:04.120 or an Israeli puppet government, right?

00:15:06.980 Remember when all the stories came out after Russia invaded Ukraine

00:15:09.440 and it didn't work very quickly and then everybody was like,

00:15:11.220 oh, Putin.

00:15:12.340 Putin's gonna...

00:15:13.420 There's gonna be regime change in Russia.

00:15:14.680 No, there's only dumb people saying that with all respect.

00:15:17.140 But it was all over the headlines, right?

00:15:20.020 We may be in the same place right now, right?

00:15:22.420 Where the headlines are saying one thing,

00:15:24.160 vocalized by dumb people because it's a very clickable headline.

00:15:27.280 I remember when Putin had brain cancer.

00:15:28.980 Remember that too?

00:15:30.460 I mean, all this shit came out

00:15:32.020 because there's so much appetite to just say something

00:15:35.440 instead of admit how little we really know.

00:15:38.600 Well, speaking of that,

00:15:40.120 you mentioned the fact that these strikes may not have been as effective

00:15:44.940 as people have been claiming.

00:15:46.880 And Caroline Levitt, the White House press secretary,

00:15:50.280 she came out commenting on the story,

00:15:53.020 I think it was published by CNN and the New York Times,

00:15:55.660 suggesting that the strikes didn't fully eliminate

00:15:57.900 Iran's nuclear enrichment program.

00:15:59.560 And she simultaneously said two things that can't be true at once,

00:16:02.760 which is she said,

00:16:03.460 these are leaks and the person who leaked them is evil

00:16:07.180 and also it's bullshit by a journalist who's not telling the truth.

00:16:10.820 And you're going, well, it's either a leak or it's bullshit.

00:16:14.020 Or, yes, it's not real.

00:16:14.920 So you keep mentioning that you don't think they were effective.

00:16:20.020 What are you saying and why?

00:16:22.700 So there's a couple of things.

00:16:23.960 I'm seeing the same thing you're saying.

00:16:25.100 So here's, I am coming to an assessment

00:16:27.900 based off of what I'm seeing in open source, right?

00:16:31.060 That's the terminology I would use at CIA is

00:16:33.240 I'm reaching an assessment based on open source knowledge

00:16:36.740 that's available to us at the time.

00:16:38.140 You have formal statements coming from the US federal government

00:16:41.100 that don't make sense and are contradictory, right?

00:16:43.820 You have totally obliterated targets

00:16:46.580 and then also people saying that there are leaks

00:16:49.060 and then the leaks are saying something

00:16:50.640 that's different than an obliterated target

00:16:52.000 and then you have this idea that

00:16:53.440 maybe they're not leaks at all,

00:16:54.560 they're just totally fabricated, right?

00:16:56.000 Total fabrications.

00:16:57.280 You can't make sense out of those

00:16:59.480 different streams of information.

00:17:01.780 So somewhere in there is something true,

00:17:04.340 but most of what you're seeing

00:17:05.660 is something that's kind of covered up.

00:17:07.600 And then at the same time,

00:17:09.220 there's long been known reports in public databases

00:17:13.420 that Iran doesn't keep their highly enriched uranium

00:17:17.280 at the same facility where they keep the centrifuges

00:17:20.140 because they've learned this is fairly common

00:17:23.820 when it comes to creating any inventory.

00:17:25.660 Once your inventory is built,

00:17:27.000 you relocate the inventory into a deeper bunker,

00:17:30.240 someplace that's more secure,

00:17:31.480 someplace that's more secret.

00:17:32.760 So even if we assume

00:17:34.540 that the White House is telling us the truth,

00:17:37.460 which it has no incentive to do,

00:17:38.780 even if we assume that the White House

00:17:40.540 is telling us the truth,

00:17:41.800 that all three locations were totally eliminated,

00:17:45.660 all centrifuges are down,

00:17:47.420 they have no capacity to enrich uranium any further,

00:17:50.800 then all of their previously 60% enriched uranium

00:17:53.620 from the last three years, two years,

00:17:56.280 that has been moved,

00:17:58.000 has been moved to another location

00:17:59.240 that we didn't bomb,

00:18:00.820 unless we bombed a secret location

00:18:02.820 that nobody is talking about.

00:18:04.000 Well, here's the question I have over that,

00:18:07.520 which is, I mean, Mossad seems to,

00:18:10.140 like every second Iranian seems to work for Mossad

00:18:12.480 at this point,

00:18:13.080 like they're deep in there.

00:18:13.980 Is that a fair assessment?

00:18:14.900 Absolutely.

00:18:15.680 So wouldn't they know if that had happened?

00:18:17.600 This is part of why I think that Israel

00:18:20.860 is playing a very smart game here.

00:18:22.600 Okay.

00:18:23.060 Because Israel chose a conflict against Iran,

00:18:27.480 which is basically the only country in the world

00:18:29.800 that Israel could choose to execute first strike on

00:18:33.800 and have almost full support,

00:18:37.140 even though it wouldn't be stated support,

00:18:39.220 from all of the members of the collegiate Arab states,

00:18:43.980 as well as all the Western states.

00:18:45.880 Flesh that out a little bit, Andrew,

00:18:47.180 because most people think that,

00:18:48.540 oh, like, you know, the Middle East,

00:18:49.800 all the Muslims hate Israel.

00:18:51.040 It's a little bit more complicated.

00:18:52.120 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:52.940 So essentially you have two,

00:18:55.100 if you take away everybody in the world,

00:18:58.020 except for oil countries,

00:18:59.080 just erase them from your mind for a second,

00:19:01.460 and you have two competing spheres of influence,

00:19:03.300 you have Iran, which represents Shia Islam

00:19:06.500 and is an oil country,

00:19:08.080 and then you have Saudi Arabia,

00:19:10.640 which represents Sunni Islam

00:19:11.840 and is an oil-rich country.

00:19:14.260 Outside of the rest of the world,

00:19:16.040 these two countries have been in conflict for decades.

00:19:20.260 Regional conflict, ideological conflict,

00:19:23.900 geographical military conflict.

00:19:26.140 Saudi Arabia's number one enemy is Iran.

00:19:28.760 Iran's number one enemy is Saudi Arabia.

00:19:30.280 Now when you layer in everything else,

00:19:33.260 then you see the larger landscape.

00:19:35.060 We're all just kind of,

00:19:36.200 we're side dishes to their main course, right?

00:19:38.820 So the United States talks a big game about Iran,

00:19:41.620 but Iran doesn't sit around

00:19:42.500 talking a big game about the United States.

00:19:43.860 Iran sits around making a big deal out of Saudi Arabia

00:19:45.860 because they're trying to build

00:19:46.860 what's known as the Shia Crescent.

00:19:48.220 They're trying to bring back Shia Islam

00:19:50.660 as a major religion,

00:19:52.780 as a major power player,

00:19:54.280 a theological, political power player

00:19:57.000 in their region.

00:19:58.600 That's the main goal of Iran.

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00:21:02.980 So I keep interrupting you,

00:21:04.440 but come back with me.

00:21:05.740 So Israel made a good decision,

00:21:08.760 played it smart,

00:21:09.640 because they attacked the one country

00:21:11.040 that's A, been going at them

00:21:12.280 through these proxies, right?

00:21:13.380 Right.

00:21:13.740 And also that's hated

00:21:15.080 by all its neighbors, basically.

00:21:16.440 Correct, because

00:21:17.120 everybody wants to see Iran weakened.

00:21:20.400 Saudi Arabia wants to see Iran weakened.

00:21:22.180 Bahrain wants to see Iran weakened.

00:21:23.740 UAE wants to see Iran weakened.

00:21:25.160 Israel wants to see Iran weakened.

00:21:26.520 All of NATO wants to see Iran weakened.

00:21:28.200 The United States wants to see the United States.

00:21:29.680 So it wants to see Iran weakened.

00:21:31.000 So by attacking Iran,

00:21:32.800 they had the implicit support

00:21:35.500 of pretty much every wealthy country in the world.

00:21:38.840 And every country in the world understood

00:21:40.460 they didn't have to say shit.

00:21:42.540 They didn't have to acknowledge or condone it.

00:21:44.700 And even if they did condone it,

00:21:46.040 they could condone it in such a way

00:21:47.660 that wasn't actually going to limit Israel's efforts

00:21:50.740 to reduce that country's capability.

00:21:53.440 And why did Israel do this?

00:21:55.820 I mean, my estimation

00:21:58.680 is that Netanyahu has realized

00:22:01.680 he is in a position

00:22:02.680 to have kind of a once-in-a-generation

00:22:05.380 tactical opportunity

00:22:07.820 to take an existential threat to Israel

00:22:11.440 and bring it to its knees.

00:22:14.400 He was able to,

00:22:16.020 when Hamas attacked on October 7th,

00:22:19.060 he had an opportunity to bring down Hamas

00:22:21.580 in a big way.

00:22:22.920 And it worked.

00:22:24.660 They've done a ton of damage

00:22:26.540 outside of their target,

00:22:28.160 but they have damaged their targets significantly,

00:22:30.520 especially Hamas leadership.

00:22:31.920 So now Hamas basically can't mount

00:22:33.440 an effective campaign anymore.

00:22:35.240 They might still exist,

00:22:36.560 but their capability for conflict

00:22:38.320 has been reduced.

00:22:39.200 And then they moved on to Hezbollah.

00:22:40.420 And they did the same thing in Hezbollah.

00:22:42.120 And then they saw the fall of Syria.

00:22:43.500 And then they were able to take

00:22:44.480 some opportunity to grow in Syria.

00:22:45.980 So, I mean, opportunity is presenting itself

00:22:48.400 as conflict expands.

00:22:49.740 If you're in Netanyahu's shoes

00:22:51.180 and you have the slightest modicum

00:22:54.140 of hope to kind of secure

00:22:56.760 the future of your country

00:22:57.980 for your children, for your wife,

00:22:59.860 for any reason,

00:23:01.160 you're going to see this as,

00:23:02.260 here's an opportunity, I got to take it.

00:23:03.320 Here's an opportunity, I got to take it.

00:23:04.480 Iran was just the next logical opportunity

00:23:06.420 to be able to go in there

00:23:07.720 and even just damage their Iranian capability

00:23:12.080 to enrich uranium.

00:23:12.880 That's a significant win.

00:23:14.380 And let's also not forget,

00:23:16.240 when all of the conflict ends,

00:23:18.300 Netanyahu's going to have a shit day in Israel

00:23:20.320 because that's when he has to face

00:23:21.900 the criminal charges

00:23:23.020 that have been looming over him

00:23:24.240 for the last seven years.

00:23:26.000 And it's going to be much nicer

00:23:27.360 to sit on that stand

00:23:28.420 when everybody who's watching you

00:23:30.460 knows that you've dismantled Hamas,

00:23:33.480 dismantled Hezbollah,

00:23:34.900 brought back security to Israel

00:23:36.460 and degraded the uranium enrichment

00:23:38.620 capability of Iran.

00:23:39.940 It's going to feel much better

00:23:41.000 to get judgment on that day

00:23:43.480 when justice is served,

00:23:44.820 knowing that the people

00:23:45.840 are probably going to go lenient on you.

00:23:47.940 So how serious are these charges?

00:23:49.660 Because this is something

00:23:50.960 that I've been told again and again.

00:23:52.860 What is Netanyahu looking at

00:23:54.760 in terms of these legal cases?

00:23:56.880 I mean, that's a place

00:23:58.620 where I don't have a deep knowledge,

00:24:00.320 for sure,

00:24:00.800 because I don't understand Israeli law.

00:24:02.580 I don't know how,

00:24:04.840 because Israel isn't a country

00:24:06.280 that separates church and state.

00:24:07.980 So very similar to Iran

00:24:10.160 that doesn't separate church and state.

00:24:11.720 It's very unpredictable.

00:24:13.960 On paper, there's corruption charges.

00:24:16.820 On paper, there's charges of nepotism.

00:24:19.600 There's charges of,

00:24:20.300 I think it's embezzlement.

00:24:21.760 So there's some criminal activity

00:24:24.400 that's associated with Netanyahu,

00:24:26.020 but how the criminal courts

00:24:26.920 or how the court system

00:24:27.800 is going to handle that,

00:24:28.840 I don't know.

00:24:29.600 Very similar to what Donald Trump

00:24:31.140 is facing in the United States.

00:24:32.100 Maybe, I mean,

00:24:33.260 he's tried and convicted in a state,

00:24:35.840 but not at a federal level.

00:24:37.860 And that conviction at a state level

00:24:39.360 didn't prevent him

00:24:40.280 from becoming president.

00:24:41.240 So it's the justice system

00:24:43.240 as a separate arm of government

00:24:44.920 is outside of my knowledge base.

00:24:47.280 Completely fair.

00:24:48.360 You've said something

00:24:49.080 very interesting

00:24:49.900 where you say

00:24:50.600 Israel has been tactically sound,

00:24:53.720 but strategically flawed

00:24:55.500 in the way

00:24:56.320 that it's pursued these wars.

00:24:58.000 What do you mean by that, Andrew?

00:24:59.160 I would argue that

00:25:00.620 what happened in Israel

00:25:02.020 or what happened in Iran

00:25:03.060 was the right thing

00:25:05.080 at the wrong time.

00:25:07.800 The opportunity to degrade

00:25:09.740 their enrichment facility

00:25:11.440 was one opportunity,

00:25:14.040 but that's not going to destroy

00:25:15.840 the nuclear capability

00:25:16.780 as we've talked about.

00:25:17.600 The enriched uranium

00:25:18.640 still exists.

00:25:19.920 The weaponization of what...

00:25:21.920 You seem very certain

00:25:23.300 about this, Andrew.

00:25:24.120 Because we've been talking

00:25:24.880 about it for years.

00:25:25.600 For years there have been reports

00:25:27.080 that Ferdot and Natanzi,

00:25:29.740 these sites that enrich the uranium

00:25:31.240 do not hold the uranium.

00:25:33.320 The uranium is moved

00:25:34.280 to different, more secure...

00:25:35.580 I'm just trying to get this logically,

00:25:36.940 but if Mossad knows

00:25:37.900 where all this shit is,

00:25:38.700 because they must do, right?

00:25:39.900 If.

00:25:40.680 But they must do.

00:25:42.000 So I would...

00:25:42.820 I mean, they're taking people out

00:25:43.920 in the palace, right?

00:25:46.660 They must know.

00:25:47.780 So here's where it gets uncomfortable.

00:25:50.280 Okay.

00:25:51.080 Let's assume that they do know,

00:25:52.380 because I believe

00:25:52.780 it's a safe assumption,

00:25:53.500 that they know

00:25:54.780 that the target package

00:25:57.200 they gave the United States

00:25:58.700 wasn't good enough.

00:26:00.420 They know it.

00:26:01.380 Now that's fucking uncomfortable, right?

00:26:03.100 Mm-hmm.

00:26:03.660 So they just...

00:26:04.600 They essentially

00:26:05.280 would have baited

00:26:06.680 the United States

00:26:07.740 to come in

00:26:08.800 and get a political win

00:26:09.800 that has no really

00:26:11.160 military strategic value.

00:26:12.780 For what purpose?

00:26:15.500 Why would they do that?

00:26:16.980 If not just to get

00:26:18.920 the United States

00:26:19.600 involved in a conflict

00:26:20.580 that otherwise

00:26:21.300 the United States

00:26:21.920 wouldn't have been involved in.

00:26:22.940 Because they're still

00:26:24.400 going to have to take

00:26:24.960 independent action

00:26:25.680 against whatever

00:26:26.440 stockpiles do exist.

00:26:27.600 And now they have

00:26:28.100 the opportunity

00:26:28.540 to essentially

00:26:29.060 take that action covertly.

00:26:32.360 There's a difference

00:26:33.100 between overt conflict

00:26:34.060 and covert conflict.

00:26:35.080 Overt conflict,

00:26:35.780 you have to brag about.

00:26:36.560 Everybody sees

00:26:37.160 there's psychological

00:26:37.760 warfare benefits, right?

00:26:39.280 Well, now that the United States

00:26:40.160 has basically said,

00:26:40.800 hey, this thing is done.

00:26:41.580 There's a ceasefire.

00:26:42.440 It's over.

00:26:43.560 Now if Iran...

00:26:44.680 Now if Hezbollah...

00:26:46.480 Ugh.

00:26:47.220 If Israel goes in...

00:26:48.360 Too many bad guys.

00:26:49.240 If Israel goes in

00:26:50.960 and eradicates,

00:26:52.200 like, has a...

00:26:53.100 Sabotages one of these bunkers,

00:26:54.540 these secret sites.

00:26:55.500 Or if they go in

00:26:56.340 and they somehow

00:26:57.020 find some way

00:26:58.140 to destroy

00:26:58.800 or dispose of the uranium

00:26:59.980 or even steal the uranium.

00:27:01.420 Now they don't have

00:27:02.600 to tell anybody

00:27:03.220 and neither does Iran.

00:27:04.980 And that's something

00:27:05.580 that can actually be done

00:27:06.340 fully covert

00:27:06.980 because it's in neither

00:27:07.900 party's best interest

00:27:08.980 to make it public.

00:27:10.060 If you recall

00:27:10.900 when Netanyahu

00:27:12.460 brought to the table

00:27:13.220 the idea of,

00:27:13.840 hey, the United States

00:27:14.360 can drop these bunker busters,

00:27:15.680 he also said,

00:27:17.040 if you don't,

00:27:18.760 we have other options.

00:27:19.880 Well, they still have

00:27:20.820 those other options.

00:27:22.140 So what were those

00:27:23.420 other options

00:27:23.860 they were talking about?

00:27:24.500 It was never defined.

00:27:25.620 Were there other options

00:27:26.720 even about these two sites?

00:27:28.900 Are there other options

00:27:30.020 still going to be exercised

00:27:31.100 even after the bunker busters

00:27:32.180 happened, right?

00:27:33.520 It was coded language,

00:27:35.400 but to your point,

00:27:36.080 I think what we've learned

00:27:37.340 with the exploding pagers

00:27:38.720 and what we've learned

00:27:39.520 with drones being launched

00:27:40.900 inside Iranian borders

00:27:41.860 is that Mossad's capability

00:27:44.060 is one that we don't fully understand

00:27:46.520 and can be quite significant.

00:27:48.880 Do you think that they've

00:27:49.660 kind of played their ace card

00:27:51.100 too early then?

00:27:52.820 I don't think they've played

00:27:53.960 their ace card at all.

00:27:55.180 What is their ace card?

00:27:55.920 I don't, that's,

00:27:56.720 that's what we're all

00:27:57.400 waiting to see.

00:27:58.060 I also don't think Iran

00:27:59.140 has played their ace card.

00:28:00.580 I think that they both

00:28:01.480 are retaining options

00:28:02.460 that, that might be too

00:28:04.260 frightening for any of us

00:28:05.180 to even consider right now,

00:28:06.380 right?

00:28:07.340 For all we know,

00:28:08.140 there's a dirty bomb

00:28:08.840 on a truck somewhere.

00:28:10.020 For all we know,

00:28:10.980 there's, there's,

00:28:12.240 it's already been delivered.

00:28:13.520 For all we know,

00:28:14.140 North Korea isn't holding

00:28:15.860 the uranium on Iran's behalf,

00:28:18.260 right?

00:28:18.600 We don't have any idea

00:28:19.680 just how nasty

00:28:20.380 this whole thing gets.

00:28:21.620 But what we do know

00:28:23.040 is that the United States'

00:28:24.040 actions have created

00:28:27.060 a sizable narrative

00:28:30.820 that Iran is always

00:28:33.740 going to be pushed down

00:28:35.260 and pushed back by the West.

00:28:36.600 And that was something

00:28:37.500 that I think with the election

00:28:39.120 of, what's their new president?

00:28:41.740 And Peza, help me out,

00:28:44.440 the new Iranian president.

00:28:45.900 It's a crazy name.

00:28:47.200 Yeah.

00:28:47.560 Peza Koshin or something

00:28:48.300 like that.

00:28:48.660 But with his relatively

00:28:51.920 democratic election,

00:28:54.120 there was a chance for Iran

00:28:55.480 to kind of turn on its own.

00:28:56.980 Well, now there's no,

00:28:58.400 there's no incentive

00:28:59.160 for them to do that.

00:29:00.040 Now they can once again

00:29:00.980 kind of say that

00:29:01.580 they're going to be

00:29:02.160 subjected to Big Brother.

00:29:03.620 So the narrative

00:29:05.800 around the Ayatollah

00:29:07.280 and I mean,

00:29:08.600 he has doesn't help himself

00:29:09.780 to be honest with Shohei say

00:29:11.240 his robust choice of language,

00:29:13.260 particularly when it comes

00:29:13.960 to Israel,

00:29:14.560 is that this guy

00:29:15.720 is an Islamic fundamentalist.

00:29:17.540 He's fundamentally unstable.

00:29:19.460 The regime is unstable.

00:29:21.320 These are the type of people

00:29:22.720 who would launch a dirty bomb,

00:29:24.500 who would send a nuke

00:29:25.720 into Israel.

00:29:27.660 We've interviewed

00:29:28.580 Glenn Greenwald on the show

00:29:30.180 and he's been saying,

00:29:31.500 and his argument is,

00:29:32.900 we say this about every regime.

00:29:34.480 We say this about every regime.

00:29:35.260 Whether it's Iraq,

00:29:36.720 whether it's about Syria,

00:29:37.900 blah, blah, blah.

00:29:38.660 These are standards.

00:29:40.120 I don't think anyone said

00:29:40.900 Saddam was an Islamic fundamentalist.

00:29:42.360 No, no, no.

00:29:43.080 No, no, not Islamic fundamentalist.

00:29:44.580 I'm not disagreeing with you.

00:29:45.480 I disagree with Andrew, actually.

00:29:46.600 But yeah.

00:29:47.220 Yeah.

00:29:47.740 So I guess my question is,

00:29:49.920 how much of this is propaganda

00:29:51.900 and how much of this

00:29:53.700 is actually accurate?

00:29:55.800 I don't want to call it propaganda

00:29:57.020 because propaganda

00:29:57.740 has a very specific term, right?

00:29:59.140 Propaganda has a purpose

00:30:00.300 and that purpose is to

00:30:01.820 intentionally shape

00:30:03.520 the interpretation of information

00:30:05.520 for a population.

00:30:06.920 I do think that we are in the middle

00:30:08.180 of an information warfare landscape

00:30:09.800 and that that information landscape

00:30:13.260 continues to evolve

00:30:14.640 because different people,

00:30:16.480 different parties

00:30:16.960 have different interests.

00:30:18.360 Yes, you have one country

00:30:20.200 and the other country

00:30:20.800 who are trying to shape

00:30:21.640 a narrative in their favor,

00:30:22.840 but then you also have

00:30:23.780 third countries

00:30:24.500 who are trying to wreak chaos

00:30:26.280 or capitalize on some conversation

00:30:29.100 or some topic

00:30:29.740 for their own best interest.

00:30:30.840 And then you have

00:30:31.280 for-profit media

00:30:32.840 that's layered in there as well.

00:30:33.940 So the information landscape

00:30:35.180 is an absolute nightmare.

00:30:38.160 But then when it comes to politics,

00:30:40.120 especially in the United States,

00:30:41.300 what we've seen since the 1970s

00:30:42.940 is that politicians

00:30:44.540 have found

00:30:47.060 that the American voting base

00:30:49.740 is frankly not very intelligent.

00:30:52.260 So they have to deliver messages simply.

00:30:55.840 And then in the work

00:30:57.220 to deliver those simple messages,

00:30:58.600 they've also discovered

00:30:59.440 that they can basically say

00:31:00.860 any fucking thing they want.

00:31:02.220 And if they say it enough times,

00:31:04.120 their voting base

00:31:04.900 will start to parrot

00:31:05.660 the message that they hear.

00:31:06.820 That has nothing to do

00:31:08.060 with human intelligence.

00:31:09.060 That has everything to do

00:31:09.700 with human behavior, right?

00:31:10.640 It's a cognitive bias.

00:31:11.620 The thing that you hear the most

00:31:13.140 becomes the thing

00:31:13.720 that you start to believe.

00:31:15.100 So what we see coming out of

00:31:17.880 our senior leadership

00:31:20.100 in the United States,

00:31:20.780 what most countries see

00:31:21.540 coming out of their senior leadership

00:31:22.560 is less the truth

00:31:24.860 and more the party line

00:31:27.980 that they want the people to believe.

00:31:30.040 Not because they're trying

00:31:31.200 to create propaganda,

00:31:32.140 but because that's just

00:31:33.020 what they're trying to do.

00:31:34.060 So to your point about

00:31:35.200 every regime

00:31:37.800 kind of having this

00:31:39.500 whatever cloak and dagger

00:31:43.000 violent agenda,

00:31:44.660 whatever it might be,

00:31:46.020 we say that a lot

00:31:47.040 because it's a very simple message.

00:31:49.320 My concern is that

00:31:50.400 what I have seen

00:31:51.240 at CIA

00:31:52.360 is that what we read

00:31:54.220 in our classified traffic

00:31:55.260 is not what the American people

00:31:56.700 are told.

00:31:57.680 What we read

00:31:58.460 in our classified traffic

00:31:59.340 is not what news journalists

00:32:00.560 put out there.

00:32:01.780 Sometimes it's just

00:32:02.780 two or three days ahead

00:32:03.980 of what the news cycle

00:32:04.740 talks about.

00:32:05.320 Sometimes it's completely different

00:32:06.400 than what the news cycle

00:32:07.080 talks about.

00:32:08.180 Sometimes it's a complete

00:32:09.960 and intentional fabrication

00:32:11.200 because the narrative

00:32:12.800 that's coming from

00:32:13.740 from policymakers

00:32:14.820 has to be different

00:32:16.180 than the truth

00:32:16.840 because to tell the truth

00:32:18.300 to the American people

00:32:19.080 would be to tell the truth

00:32:20.040 to all of your adversaries

00:32:21.120 as well, right?

00:32:23.060 So I get it.

00:32:23.880 I get why secrets

00:32:24.580 are important.

00:32:25.840 But the idea

00:32:28.000 that Iran

00:32:30.500 could launch

00:32:31.260 a nuclear device

00:32:32.600 against Israel

00:32:33.360 to obliterate Israel,

00:32:34.600 that's not a real threat.

00:32:36.660 Why aren't we talking

00:32:37.300 about the actual real threat?

00:32:38.660 The actual real threat

00:32:39.480 would be something like

00:32:40.240 a suitcase nuke

00:32:41.700 that's smuggled

00:32:43.220 through maybe even Turkey

00:32:45.980 that's dropped in Tel Aviv

00:32:48.040 even remotely detonated

00:32:49.080 from, who knows, Jordan.

00:32:50.980 Well, this is, I think,

00:32:52.460 what Francis is getting at.

00:32:53.380 I don't think Francis

00:32:54.120 was suggesting

00:32:54.780 that this is a regime

00:32:56.140 that is in the position

00:32:57.040 to launch a nuclear-tipped

00:32:59.200 ballistic missile.

00:33:00.120 What he's getting at

00:33:01.100 with you is,

00:33:01.960 do you think this is

00:33:02.880 the sort of regime

00:33:03.800 that if it were

00:33:05.200 in a position

00:33:05.840 to attack Israel

00:33:06.900 with a nuclear weapon

00:33:07.940 of any kind

00:33:08.620 or a dirty bomb

00:33:09.440 or something,

00:33:10.220 that because of

00:33:11.060 their ideology,

00:33:12.180 they would be willing

00:33:13.740 to do so?

00:33:14.340 I don't believe so.

00:33:15.260 Because?

00:33:15.760 Because nuclear deterrence

00:33:17.320 is another topic

00:33:18.120 that's studied

00:33:18.580 in a war college, right?

00:33:20.100 Most countries

00:33:20.860 want a nuclear weapon

00:33:21.940 not to use it,

00:33:23.320 but to prevent

00:33:24.060 other people

00:33:24.820 from encroaching

00:33:25.580 onto their own sovereignty.

00:33:26.840 Right.

00:33:27.220 If Iran had

00:33:28.240 a nuclear capability,

00:33:30.120 everybody would have

00:33:30.940 thought twice

00:33:31.660 about running

00:33:33.060 a preemptive campaign.

00:33:34.200 Sure.

00:33:34.520 Right?

00:33:34.980 North Korea

00:33:35.720 has never had

00:33:37.080 a preemptive campaign

00:33:38.180 launched against them

00:33:39.120 since they've possessed

00:33:40.240 nuclear weapons.

00:33:41.360 And they can't even

00:33:42.020 deliver their nuclear weapons.

00:33:43.580 Right?

00:33:43.740 So we've already seen

00:33:45.320 how this kind of principle

00:33:46.360 runs true.

00:33:47.560 There are multiple

00:33:48.200 countries in the world.

00:33:48.920 There's only nine countries

00:33:49.780 that are indigenously capable

00:33:51.760 of creating nuclear weapons.

00:33:53.140 But there are 14 countries

00:33:55.620 that actually have

00:33:56.520 nuclear weapons

00:33:57.080 on their soil

00:33:57.720 because nuclear-capable countries

00:33:59.820 have given nuclear weapons

00:34:00.960 to not-nuclear-capable countries

00:34:03.040 in order to prevent

00:34:04.100 against any of these

00:34:04.820 kind of first strike

00:34:05.760 or preemptive strike efforts.

00:34:07.280 It's called a nuclear hedge

00:34:08.620 or a nuclear deterrent.

00:34:09.960 When someone has

00:34:11.080 a big gun,

00:34:12.460 a big bomb

00:34:13.200 that they can use

00:34:13.760 against you,

00:34:14.200 it makes you think twice

00:34:15.000 before you run,

00:34:16.360 before you violate

00:34:17.180 their sovereignty.

00:34:18.320 Right.

00:34:18.700 But, um...

00:34:19.640 So why would the Ayatollah

00:34:20.980 choose to launch

00:34:22.540 a nuclear weapon?

00:34:23.360 A nuclear weapon

00:34:24.040 is not going to

00:34:25.620 destroy Israel.

00:34:26.940 A nuclear weapon

00:34:27.500 is going to do

00:34:27.880 massive damage,

00:34:29.000 but it's not actually

00:34:30.060 going to eradicate

00:34:30.940 the institution

00:34:31.700 of the Israeli government.

00:34:33.120 It's not actually

00:34:33.800 going to eradicate

00:34:34.700 the Jewish people.

00:34:36.020 So nuclear weapons

00:34:36.780 are big, scary things,

00:34:38.000 but they're still

00:34:38.660 just weapons.

00:34:40.080 So in order for

00:34:41.040 the Ayatollah

00:34:42.020 or for the Iranian regime

00:34:42.980 to actually carry out

00:34:44.140 on their promise

00:34:44.960 of making

00:34:46.560 the Jewish faith

00:34:48.160 and the state of Israel

00:34:48.960 extinct,

00:34:50.000 they would need

00:34:50.440 more than

00:34:51.000 five nuclear weapons.

00:34:52.700 It would be

00:34:53.200 a very difficult task.

00:34:54.240 It's something

00:34:54.560 that's going to require

00:34:55.320 both military

00:34:56.700 and ideological

00:34:57.680 efforts concerted.

00:35:00.020 The reason I was

00:35:00.920 going to just

00:35:01.500 push you on there

00:35:02.560 is twofold.

00:35:03.420 Number one,

00:35:04.040 as you said yourself,

00:35:04.900 we should be concerned

00:35:05.880 about a suitcase

00:35:06.800 with a nuclear device,

00:35:08.080 but that sounds to me

00:35:09.480 like exactly

00:35:10.180 what I'm saying,

00:35:10.860 which is these people

00:35:11.900 might be willing

00:35:12.520 to do that, right?

00:35:13.560 So, but the timing

00:35:15.740 is different.

00:35:16.520 Before a preemptive strike,

00:35:18.460 I don't think

00:35:19.920 they were willing

00:35:20.340 to do it

00:35:20.740 because what's the benefit?

00:35:22.320 They have very little

00:35:23.100 to gain

00:35:23.640 and much more to lose.

00:35:25.220 So you don't think

00:35:25.820 they want to destroy Israel?

00:35:27.560 I think that their

00:35:28.240 stated claim

00:35:28.880 is to destroy Israel,

00:35:29.740 but the way

00:35:30.820 to destroy Israel

00:35:31.500 is not with

00:35:32.400 a nuclear bomb.

00:35:33.880 The way to destroy Israel

00:35:34.800 is going to be,

00:35:35.460 it has to be ideological,

00:35:36.880 it has to be fundamental,

00:35:37.760 it will involve

00:35:39.260 violence as well,

00:35:40.400 but it's got to be

00:35:41.280 more complicated than that.

00:35:43.120 It's got to be

00:35:43.560 more refined,

00:35:45.960 more sophisticated

00:35:46.460 than just an explosion

00:35:47.600 in Tel Aviv.

00:35:48.460 Do you think

00:35:49.160 part of the way

00:35:50.200 that you destroy Israel

00:35:51.440 is essentially

00:35:52.340 you win the propaganda war?

00:35:54.200 So you see

00:35:54.820 what's happening

00:35:55.540 with Gaza

00:35:56.260 where people

00:35:57.440 are horrified

00:35:58.780 by the images

00:35:59.960 that are coming out of there

00:36:00.920 and quite rightly so,

00:36:02.320 it's war,

00:36:02.900 it's awful,

00:36:03.420 children are dying,

00:36:04.720 et cetera, et cetera.

00:36:05.580 Do you think

00:36:06.540 that's how they win?

00:36:07.900 By turning

00:36:08.560 an entire generation

00:36:09.960 of kids and people

00:36:11.620 against the idea of Israel?

00:36:13.820 That is an important

00:36:15.120 piece of it,

00:36:16.240 right?

00:36:16.500 Because if you make

00:36:18.040 your target

00:36:19.120 into a victim,

00:36:21.380 you don't win

00:36:22.120 because the victim

00:36:23.840 becomes the hero,

00:36:25.640 right?

00:36:25.780 It becomes the one

00:36:26.380 that gets all the support,

00:36:27.180 it becomes the underdog,

00:36:28.140 it becomes the counterbalance.

00:36:29.940 So when we hear

00:36:31.960 this rhetoric

00:36:32.640 from politicians

00:36:33.860 about obliteration

00:36:35.740 and destruction

00:36:36.300 and regime change,

00:36:38.900 we have to understand

00:36:39.940 that just because

00:36:41.300 you change

00:36:41.760 the Ayatollah

00:36:43.520 or the president

00:36:44.220 or the prime minister,

00:36:46.040 it doesn't actually,

00:36:47.220 unless it changes

00:36:47.960 the fundamental makeup

00:36:49.220 of the country,

00:36:50.020 you don't really have

00:36:50.620 a regime change at all.

00:36:51.700 You just have

00:36:52.020 a person change.

00:36:53.320 You have a position turnover,

00:36:54.820 right?

00:36:55.860 It's the same way

00:36:56.760 when it comes to

00:36:57.820 Iran's very nebulous

00:36:59.780 promise to destroy Israel,

00:37:01.200 which, what does that

00:37:02.500 even mean?

00:37:02.980 I think we all,

00:37:03.720 those of us who are

00:37:04.580 not Iranian

00:37:05.100 and those of us

00:37:05.680 who are not Israeli,

00:37:07.220 I think we come up

00:37:08.160 with one image

00:37:08.760 that's different

00:37:09.580 than what Israelis

00:37:10.400 come up with,

00:37:11.200 that's different

00:37:11.820 than what non-Israeli

00:37:13.320 Jews come up with,

00:37:14.560 that's completely

00:37:15.120 different than

00:37:15.780 non-theocratized

00:37:17.660 Iranians,

00:37:18.600 which is of course

00:37:19.100 different than

00:37:19.500 the Ayatollah.

00:37:20.280 It's not clearly defined.

00:37:22.880 But, again,

00:37:24.360 speaking through a lens

00:37:25.400 of like a professional

00:37:26.560 combatant,

00:37:29.020 you can't win a war

00:37:31.100 just by destroying

00:37:32.200 the target.

00:37:33.280 You have to change

00:37:34.280 the mindset somehow,

00:37:36.060 whether you do that

00:37:37.100 by winning hearts

00:37:38.700 and minds

00:37:39.040 or whether you do that

00:37:39.640 by just depressing

00:37:40.980 their hopes and dreams

00:37:41.980 of anything better.

00:37:43.000 Because Israel

00:37:44.840 is in a really

00:37:46.280 tough position

00:37:47.300 because they're

00:37:48.980 fighting a war

00:37:49.680 on all fronts,

00:37:50.880 they're losing

00:37:51.740 the propaganda war

00:37:52.680 in Gaza.

00:37:54.940 Can you actually

00:37:56.220 get rid of Hamas?

00:37:57.360 Because the more

00:37:58.400 people you kill,

00:37:59.320 the more people

00:38:00.160 you radicalize.

00:38:01.220 Right.

00:38:01.660 The thing that's

00:38:03.540 happening just

00:38:04.480 under the carpet

00:38:06.600 that no one's

00:38:07.180 talking about

00:38:07.600 is all Israel's

00:38:08.520 doing is radicalizing

00:38:09.700 the next generation

00:38:10.680 of Islamic

00:38:12.620 fundamentalists.

00:38:13.720 It's radicalizing

00:38:14.900 the children

00:38:15.460 who are watching

00:38:16.320 their parents

00:38:17.160 and uncles

00:38:17.660 die at the hands

00:38:19.400 of bombs, right?

00:38:20.580 They're radicalizing

00:38:21.800 the next generation

00:38:22.460 of Hezbollah.

00:38:23.060 They're radicalizing

00:38:23.840 the next generation

00:38:24.780 of Iraqi militia.

00:38:25.840 They're radicalizing

00:38:26.560 the next generation

00:38:27.260 of Iranians

00:38:27.940 who aren't going

00:38:29.680 to trust that

00:38:30.400 Israel is a democracy,

00:38:31.700 that Israel is out

00:38:32.420 for peace.

00:38:33.140 And it's fascinating.

00:38:34.480 You talk to many

00:38:35.740 Israeli business owners

00:38:37.720 and Israeli politicians

00:38:38.480 and they will talk

00:38:39.400 about peace to your face

00:38:40.800 all the time.

00:38:41.900 But the actions

00:38:42.840 that they carry out

00:38:43.560 are very different.

00:38:45.140 Well, what does that

00:38:46.020 do to the observer?

00:38:47.160 When the observer

00:38:47.660 sees you spouting

00:38:48.720 peace from your mouth

00:38:49.600 and waging war

00:38:50.440 with your hands,

00:38:51.380 what do we always say?

00:38:52.380 We always say actions

00:38:53.120 speak louder than words.

00:38:55.000 So the truth is

00:38:57.540 even if Israel

00:38:58.900 does enjoy

00:38:59.780 5, 7, 12 years

00:39:01.740 of relative safety

00:39:02.880 and peace,

00:39:03.740 then a whole new

00:39:05.560 generation of radicalized

00:39:06.960 Islamists

00:39:07.700 will be of age

00:39:09.320 to execute

00:39:10.600 whatever they need

00:39:11.100 to execute

00:39:11.540 if they believe

00:39:12.180 they need to execute

00:39:12.700 anything at all.

00:39:13.580 And how are they

00:39:14.320 going to do that?

00:39:15.200 Now you also lose

00:39:16.200 the opportunity

00:39:16.600 to know how

00:39:17.180 it's going to be carried out.

00:39:18.220 Think about the destruction

00:39:19.020 of ISIS, right?

00:39:20.340 ISIS was an organized,

00:39:22.640 regionally

00:39:23.320 kind of located threat.

00:39:26.000 It was eradicated

00:39:27.840 and then it just transformed.

00:39:29.700 It transformed into

00:39:30.300 lone wolf people

00:39:31.140 who were radicalized

00:39:33.700 over the internet.

00:39:34.540 And now you have

00:39:35.000 lone wolf ISIS operators

00:39:36.540 all over the world

00:39:37.240 just showing up

00:39:37.900 and stabbing some people,

00:39:38.900 blowing some things up,

00:39:39.860 shooting other people.

00:39:40.960 They're still there.

00:39:41.840 ISIS still exists

00:39:42.960 because the ideology

00:39:44.380 still exists.

00:39:45.200 And you can't claim

00:39:46.840 that you have victory

00:39:47.480 over something

00:39:48.080 when the ideology

00:39:49.100 still persists.

00:39:50.200 But is it realistic

00:39:53.260 to think that

00:39:54.040 you could

00:39:54.600 get rid of

00:39:56.100 the ideology

00:39:56.760 behind ISIS?

00:39:57.720 I mean,

00:39:57.840 it's been around

00:39:58.280 for a long time

00:39:59.080 the idea of Islamism.

00:40:00.320 How do you deal

00:40:01.540 with that anyway?

00:40:02.420 I mean,

00:40:02.760 this is the same argument

00:40:03.660 that we have

00:40:03.980 with Nazism

00:40:04.620 and the same argument

00:40:05.240 that we have

00:40:05.480 with communism

00:40:05.980 and the same argument

00:40:06.660 that we have

00:40:06.980 with even some

00:40:08.840 of the really obscure

00:40:10.140 religions that are

00:40:10.800 out there, right?

00:40:12.020 Is it even realistic

00:40:12.840 to think that you're

00:40:13.480 going to eradicate

00:40:14.840 an ideology?

00:40:15.720 Yeah.

00:40:15.900 In many ways,

00:40:17.600 Nazism has been reduced

00:40:20.340 so significantly

00:40:21.560 that it's not considered

00:40:22.520 a transnational threat,

00:40:24.000 right?

00:40:25.500 If it can be done

00:40:27.760 with something

00:40:28.500 that was once

00:40:29.340 so organized

00:40:30.200 that it waged

00:40:31.220 a successful campaign

00:40:32.500 across Europe,

00:40:33.600 right,

00:40:34.040 then it can be done

00:40:34.620 with anything.

00:40:35.520 But how we go about

00:40:37.960 fighting that battle,

00:40:39.500 World War II

00:40:39.940 was not a limited war.

00:40:41.720 World War II

00:40:42.440 was a total war.

00:40:43.840 Well,

00:40:43.980 this is what I often

00:40:44.600 think about

00:40:45.080 because I don't think

00:40:46.240 anyone could see

00:40:47.320 the scenes coming

00:40:48.020 out of Gaza

00:40:48.600 and not be

00:40:49.040 absolutely horrified,

00:40:49.940 especially if you're

00:40:50.500 a parent and you're

00:40:51.100 just watching,

00:40:51.680 you know,

00:40:51.880 it's awful.

00:40:53.040 But I just think

00:40:54.180 what would have

00:40:54.840 happened if we had

00:40:55.680 smartphones in 1944,

00:40:57.660 1945?

00:40:59.020 Well,

00:40:59.260 I think the world

00:41:00.860 would turn pretty

00:41:01.420 quickly against the

00:41:02.140 Allies if it was

00:41:02.880 watching from the

00:41:03.560 outside.

00:41:04.140 Yeah,

00:41:04.820 it happened in

00:41:05.240 Vietnam too.

00:41:06.000 And that was just

00:41:06.700 news journalists.

00:41:07.700 Right.

00:41:08.560 So that's the thing.

00:41:10.080 So I see exactly

00:41:12.200 what you're saying,

00:41:13.180 but on the other hand,

00:41:13.740 I also think,

00:41:14.360 well,

00:41:14.500 maybe this is a

00:41:16.580 terrible option,

00:41:17.320 but the best Israel

00:41:18.080 has,

00:41:18.460 which is you like

00:41:18.960 secure your country

00:41:20.280 for a while,

00:41:20.840 and then you just

00:41:21.400 have to deal with

00:41:21.960 this 10 years from

00:41:22.820 now again.

00:41:23.380 But that's really

00:41:24.800 what has been

00:41:25.380 happening in Israel

00:41:26.000 since its very

00:41:26.580 creation,

00:41:27.100 basically,

00:41:27.520 isn't it?

00:41:27.940 Right.

00:41:28.160 This is why I say

00:41:28.780 it was the right

00:41:29.260 thing at the wrong

00:41:29.780 time.

00:41:30.380 Israel has no way

00:41:31.400 of executing a

00:41:32.360 land-based assault

00:41:33.500 against Iran.

00:41:34.440 Right.

00:41:34.880 If it wants

00:41:35.660 what's known as

00:41:36.840 an interstate war,

00:41:38.160 interstate war means

00:41:38.900 one state invades

00:41:40.240 the sovereignty of

00:41:40.920 another state,

00:41:41.740 if they really want

00:41:42.540 regime change and

00:41:43.320 they really want

00:41:43.860 to eradicate the

00:41:44.760 threat of the

00:41:46.560 theocracy of Iran,

00:41:48.260 they need to have

00:41:49.040 a total war with

00:41:50.580 Iran.

00:41:51.160 That's what they

00:41:52.040 need to do.

00:41:52.440 If they want to

00:41:52.940 eradicate it quickly,

00:41:54.240 if they want to

00:41:54.880 kind of hope and

00:41:56.340 dream that just like

00:41:57.520 we're hoping and

00:41:58.020 dreaming that Putin is

00:41:58.660 going to get uprooted

00:41:59.200 from within by the

00:41:59.860 oligarchs, if they

00:42:00.520 want to hope and

00:42:01.000 dream that the

00:42:01.360 Ayatollah is going

00:42:01.820 to somehow lose

00:42:02.940 favor, they can.

00:42:04.460 We can all kind of

00:42:05.280 twiddle our thuns and

00:42:06.200 hope for the best in

00:42:07.220 Iran and use sanctions

00:42:08.700 and diplomatic methods

00:42:09.560 that, you know,

00:42:10.660 have been proven

00:42:11.500 over time not to be

00:42:12.500 as effective as we

00:42:13.060 think they are.

00:42:13.860 But if they really

00:42:14.960 want that change,

00:42:15.800 they would have to

00:42:16.320 wage a land war.

00:42:17.300 Well, they don't

00:42:17.600 have the capacity to

00:42:18.400 land.

00:42:18.840 Like you said,

00:42:19.500 they're fighting on

00:42:20.000 three sides, plus

00:42:20.780 there's other

00:42:21.480 countries between

00:42:22.760 them and Iran.

00:42:23.940 You can't win a

00:42:26.040 conflict with

00:42:27.300 technology alone.

00:42:28.460 You can't just bomb

00:42:29.660 your way to success.

00:42:30.540 That whole idea of

00:42:31.140 bombing people back

00:42:31.800 to the Stone Age,

00:42:32.840 yes, you can do

00:42:33.880 significant damage with

00:42:34.960 air superiority, but as

00:42:37.400 part of the damage

00:42:38.560 that you do, you

00:42:39.380 are fundamentally

00:42:40.580 altering multiple

00:42:42.320 generations of who

00:42:43.240 people will see as

00:42:43.960 victims and who

00:42:44.660 people will see as

00:42:45.240 the enemy in the

00:42:46.480 years to come,

00:42:47.420 right?

00:42:47.580 And that's exactly

00:42:48.180 what's happening in

00:42:48.900 Iran right now.

00:42:49.920 But I'm just

00:42:50.320 thinking, like, from

00:42:51.380 a military perspective,

00:42:53.100 if your choices are

00:42:54.280 what Israel has,

00:42:55.340 wouldn't, like, the

00:42:56.180 best option be kind

00:42:57.280 of what they're doing

00:42:57.800 now, which is you

00:42:58.320 defang your enemy and

00:42:59.440 you just make sure

00:43:00.340 that they can't attack

00:43:01.280 you in the way that

00:43:01.900 they could prior to

00:43:02.600 that?

00:43:02.960 That is not what I

00:43:03.880 think is the best.

00:43:04.700 Well, what is the

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00:44:18.140 And now, back to the

00:44:19.460 show.

00:44:20.620 I believe Israel has

00:44:22.040 the capability to

00:44:23.860 wreak destruction on

00:44:27.980 the cyber elements of

00:44:31.600 how Iran carries out

00:44:33.500 military communications

00:44:34.880 and nuclear

00:44:36.580 enrichment.

00:44:38.280 If they were to

00:44:39.240 target and destroy

00:44:40.340 those databases,

00:44:41.720 target and destroy

00:44:42.520 that infrastructure

00:44:43.500 with a Trojan horse,

00:44:45.140 with sabotage, with

00:44:46.460 human penetration,

00:44:47.480 whatever it might be,

00:44:48.520 that would do just as

00:44:49.700 much damage as bombs,

00:44:52.040 right?

00:44:52.460 Because now you'd

00:44:53.000 have to essentially

00:44:53.540 replace entire mainframes.

00:44:54.840 You could then attack

00:44:55.760 the supply chain to

00:44:56.560 make sure that they

00:44:56.980 don't get those

00:44:57.480 mainframes simultaneously

00:44:58.500 to doing other

00:44:59.180 covert action that

00:44:59.920 might deplete the

00:45:00.680 Iranian supply.

00:45:01.680 All of that without

00:45:03.040 the population even

00:45:05.620 knowing it was

00:45:06.060 happening, right?

00:45:07.480 Then you don't have

00:45:07.960 the collateral.

00:45:08.760 You don't have the

00:45:09.360 collateral.

00:45:09.660 You don't have the

00:45:09.900 collateral damage.

00:45:10.540 You don't run the

00:45:11.100 risk of what we're

00:45:11.580 seeing right now in

00:45:12.700 Gaza, where nobody

00:45:14.960 likes Hamas.

00:45:16.980 Somehow the narrative

00:45:18.100 has tied Hamas and

00:45:20.800 Palestinians together.

00:45:22.320 So now there are

00:45:23.160 places where if you

00:45:23.860 talk about Palestine,

00:45:24.840 people think you're

00:45:25.320 supporting Hamas,

00:45:26.460 right?

00:45:26.720 Like this nasty web

00:45:28.320 of inaccuracy.

00:45:31.240 The same kind of

00:45:32.080 thing could happen in

00:45:32.900 Iran right now.

00:45:33.780 People could mistake

00:45:35.060 what is theocracy

00:45:36.540 versus what is

00:45:37.240 Iranian, and then

00:45:38.460 there could be

00:45:39.180 support for Iran

00:45:40.380 for being a victim

00:45:42.040 because everybody

00:45:43.140 wants to vote for

00:45:43.720 the underdog.

00:45:44.360 So there's a better

00:45:45.340 way, a different way

00:45:46.380 of going about it.

00:45:47.100 Now it would have

00:45:47.440 been slower, or it

00:45:49.020 could have been slower.

00:45:50.040 It may not have ever

00:45:51.160 needed the United

00:45:51.800 States, but now what

00:45:53.720 has happened is

00:45:54.680 Netanyahu has gained

00:45:55.660 a favor, like we

00:45:57.320 said, across the

00:45:57.900 Middle East and

00:45:58.340 with the West, and

00:46:00.020 America looks strong,

00:46:02.060 and Netanyahu and

00:46:02.920 Trump are on the

00:46:03.700 same page again.

00:46:04.320 Like there were

00:46:04.700 multiple political

00:46:05.920 victories that aren't

00:46:08.000 necessarily serving the

00:46:09.900 long-term interest of

00:46:10.660 Israel.

00:46:11.340 It's such a good

00:46:12.820 point because one of

00:46:14.180 the problems, and we

00:46:14.820 always talk about this

00:46:15.540 on the show, is one

00:46:16.300 of the flaws with

00:46:17.980 democracy because of

00:46:19.620 the election cycle is

00:46:20.720 it breaches short-term

00:46:21.820 thinking amongst

00:46:23.380 politicians, leaders,

00:46:24.460 whatever else.

00:46:25.660 And I do think there

00:46:27.120 might be a time with,

00:46:28.200 let's say, 30 years

00:46:29.040 down the line when

00:46:29.780 this younger generation

00:46:30.920 like the Gen Zs or

00:46:32.100 like the Millennials,

00:46:33.660 they get into power,

00:46:36.300 and as president of the

00:46:39.300 US and other countries,

00:46:41.660 they will no longer see

00:46:43.020 Israel as an ally.

00:46:44.740 They will see them as an

00:46:46.140 aggressor.

00:46:46.800 They will see them in a

00:46:47.840 negative light.

00:46:48.940 And the moment that

00:46:49.780 happens, particularly if

00:46:50.780 it's the United States,

00:46:52.100 that really does put

00:46:53.320 Israel in a very

00:46:54.320 vulnerable position.

00:46:55.200 I would argue that

00:46:56.240 that's already

00:46:56.780 happening now.

00:46:57.960 There are many

00:46:58.520 Americans that don't

00:46:59.360 see Israel as an

00:47:01.080 ally.

00:47:01.500 They don't see Israel

00:47:02.120 as a peer.

00:47:02.720 They don't see Israel

00:47:03.460 as a democracy at

00:47:05.060 all.

00:47:05.380 They see Israel as

00:47:06.640 this mutation of

00:47:08.920 promises and actions

00:47:10.080 that don't align, and

00:47:11.780 they see it as

00:47:12.240 abusive, and they see

00:47:13.320 it as manipulative, and

00:47:14.420 again, they don't see

00:47:17.020 the distinction between

00:47:18.300 Netanyahu's government,

00:47:20.160 the Israeli government,

00:47:21.200 and Judaism.

00:47:21.780 There are three very

00:47:23.160 different pillars here

00:47:24.220 at work, but the

00:47:25.620 average American, I

00:47:26.660 would argue, doesn't

00:47:27.320 really see those

00:47:28.140 distinct nuances.

00:47:29.760 And that's because

00:47:30.280 Israel is just one of

00:47:32.320 many things that the

00:47:33.620 average American is

00:47:34.300 focused on, right?

00:47:36.440 Absolutely.

00:47:37.200 And I think that what's

00:47:38.300 interesting in this as

00:47:39.300 well is a role of

00:47:40.280 Mossad, because when

00:47:43.140 people talk about

00:47:44.140 Mossad, there's

00:47:45.100 obviously a lot of

00:47:45.840 conspiracy,

00:47:46.720 understandably so,

00:47:47.860 when it comes to

00:47:48.480 secret services,

00:47:49.320 because they're

00:47:50.180 secret, and when

00:47:51.060 things are opaque,

00:47:52.680 that's where you see

00:47:53.580 conspiracy.

00:47:54.880 But there seems to be

00:47:55.900 more conspiracy around

00:47:57.220 Mossad than possibly

00:47:58.380 even the CIA or MI6.

00:48:02.220 Yeah, I would agree

00:48:02.780 with that, and I think

00:48:03.600 a big part of that is,

00:48:04.980 well, twofold.

00:48:06.200 One, of all the secret

00:48:07.940 organizations that do

00:48:09.360 public acts, Mossad is

00:48:12.140 at the top of the list.

00:48:13.360 What MI6 does, they

00:48:14.760 don't make public.

00:48:15.680 What CIA does, they

00:48:16.880 don't make public.

00:48:17.980 Other people make it

00:48:19.040 public, and CIA may

00:48:19.860 comment on it, but they

00:48:20.700 don't release footage of

00:48:22.200 their incredible feats of

00:48:23.960 courageousness or whatever

00:48:25.580 else.

00:48:25.800 Mossad does that, because

00:48:26.900 Mossad understands there's a

00:48:27.840 psychological warfare

00:48:28.640 element to being able to

00:48:30.880 claim, hey, those pagers

00:48:32.160 were us, and hey, here's

00:48:33.300 footage of us launching

00:48:34.160 drones inside Iran.

00:48:35.080 They understand that

00:48:35.780 there's an information

00:48:37.420 warfare value there.

00:48:40.060 So Mossad is willing to

00:48:41.300 do things publicly that

00:48:43.200 other people won't take

00:48:44.420 public credit for.

00:48:45.620 And then on top of that,

00:48:46.680 Mossad is very good about

00:48:48.860 cultivating this idea that

00:48:50.080 they are the best.

00:48:51.820 But then something like

00:48:52.920 October 7th happens.

00:48:54.780 And everybody wonders,

00:48:55.940 how could this organization

00:48:58.520 that's supposed to be so

00:48:59.600 great fucking drop the

00:49:01.480 ball on that?

00:49:02.040 That's kind of a big

00:49:02.960 thing.

00:49:03.280 And then if you recall in

00:49:04.400 the weeks after October

00:49:05.200 7th, that's when it

00:49:05.960 started coming out.

00:49:06.580 Like, there were actual

00:49:07.260 reports, and there were

00:49:08.180 videos of drills that

00:49:09.800 Hamas was running.

00:49:10.880 Like, it wasn't new

00:49:12.260 information.

00:49:12.760 So how did this happen?

00:49:15.160 And that makes Mossad

00:49:16.200 look bad.

00:49:16.940 It makes Shin Bet look

00:49:17.840 bad.

00:49:18.200 It makes IDF look bad.

00:49:19.200 It makes all the major

00:49:19.920 players in Israel look

00:49:21.280 mildly incompetent at

00:49:23.440 worst, or fully

00:49:25.500 incompetent at worst, and

00:49:27.060 bureaucratic and convoluted

00:49:29.920 at best.

00:49:31.160 But it calls into question

00:49:32.520 what is their true

00:49:33.340 capability, which then

00:49:34.880 makes it that much more

00:49:36.140 important to run these,

00:49:37.800 again, another run of

00:49:39.020 daring, high-risk scenarios

00:49:40.760 scenarios like we saw

00:49:42.040 with pagers and like we

00:49:43.340 saw with drones.

00:49:44.360 I would actually argue

00:49:45.280 that that's not the

00:49:46.720 worst-case scenario.

00:49:47.740 What is the worst-case

00:49:48.660 scenario is what I saw.

00:49:50.620 And people actually kind

00:49:52.440 of respected going,

00:49:53.900 you know what?

00:49:55.280 They let it happen.

00:49:57.480 Because there are so

00:49:59.180 many conspiracies around

00:50:00.720 Mossad, and they've built

00:50:02.540 this kind of mystique

00:50:03.420 about themselves.

00:50:04.040 They've got their own

00:50:04.780 martial art.

00:50:05.500 Do you know what I

00:50:05.860 mean?

00:50:06.020 Yeah.

00:50:06.520 I mean, what a publicity

00:50:08.860 tool that is.

00:50:09.800 It's like, you see, I

00:50:10.740 don't have a martial

00:50:11.420 art, but, you know,

00:50:12.920 Mossad does.

00:50:14.100 So if they're so good,

00:50:16.140 if they're so powerful,

00:50:18.340 if their tentacles are

00:50:19.600 everywhere, how could

00:50:21.380 they let October 7th

00:50:22.460 happen?

00:50:23.020 It must have been on

00:50:24.080 purpose.

00:50:24.700 Fair.

00:50:25.620 Yeah, that's fair.

00:50:26.320 That is the true worst-case

00:50:27.820 scenario, is that they

00:50:29.860 intentionally let harm come

00:50:30.880 to their own people.

00:50:32.180 I, as a national security

00:50:33.780 professional, can't

00:50:34.600 pallet that.

00:50:35.200 I can't conceptually even

00:50:40.420 give that any sort of

00:50:42.260 gravity.

00:50:42.880 Because it's so, it's so

00:50:45.460 antithetical to what goes

00:50:47.520 into committing your life to

00:50:49.640 the service of national

00:50:50.660 security.

00:50:51.180 Letting your own people get

00:50:52.540 hurt.

00:50:54.080 You can't imagine that.

00:50:54.880 I can't, I mean, I can

00:50:56.160 imagine it for somebody

00:50:58.680 else.

00:50:59.140 Like, if you were, it has

00:51:00.560 to happen, because there are

00:51:01.640 Americans who go turncoat on

00:51:03.280 their own country as well.

00:51:04.820 Right?

00:51:06.300 It's just, it's so difficult.

00:51:08.140 The cognitive dissonance

00:51:08.960 for me in being able to say

00:51:10.300 that systematically Mossad

00:51:11.700 would have let something like

00:51:12.880 that happen just to create

00:51:14.260 a series of events in which

00:51:16.460 they could orchestrate a

00:51:18.880 large-scale attack on Hamas,

00:51:20.020 it doesn't make sense.

00:51:20.840 It doesn't make sense to me

00:51:21.680 because if they wanted to

00:51:22.720 launch a large-scale attack

00:51:23.900 on Hamas, they just could

00:51:24.640 have at any time.

00:51:25.980 They could have trumped up

00:51:27.280 some sort of imminent threat,

00:51:28.500 just like we saw in Iran.

00:51:30.260 Right?

00:51:31.040 Hamas is imminently planning

00:51:32.640 on attacking Israel.

00:51:33.740 Hear the videos of their

00:51:34.780 routines, drills, etc.

00:51:35.740 Let's go and start a war.

00:51:36.980 No, it never made sense to me,

00:51:38.180 not least because we see

00:51:39.160 the security services in

00:51:40.580 every country fail every

00:51:41.660 now and again, and that's

00:51:42.560 one big 9-11, you know,

00:51:44.520 big terrorist attacks here

00:51:46.120 in Britain.

00:51:47.720 But Francis is right in that

00:51:49.660 you do see a lot of people

00:51:50.940 who kind of went full retard

00:51:54.620 over that, you know,

00:51:56.060 thinking that.

00:51:56.780 So, the question, I guess,

00:52:00.520 is, based on what you're

00:52:03.200 saying, my sense is you think

00:52:05.300 this has actually been really

00:52:06.860 bad for the security of the

00:52:08.080 region, the entire events of

00:52:09.840 the last week.

00:52:11.260 So, I think that what I'm,

00:52:14.460 the conclusion that I would

00:52:15.380 make is that we have given

00:52:16.700 Iran more power than it had

00:52:20.400 before we ever started this,

00:52:22.300 and that's the problem.

00:52:23.300 Two weeks ago, four weeks

00:52:26.080 ago, there was, there was a

00:52:28.860 stable relationship between

00:52:29.960 the collegiate states and

00:52:30.820 Iran.

00:52:31.620 There was a resounding success

00:52:35.200 against the proxy players

00:52:37.180 fighting Israel.

00:52:39.000 There was decreasing attention

00:52:41.460 on Israel and what's

00:52:44.040 happening in Gaza.

00:52:45.240 The narrative had switched to

00:52:47.660 tariffs, the narrative had

00:52:48.820 switched to, you know, other,

00:52:50.840 other areas other than war.

00:52:53.300 Which meant that there was

00:52:56.200 some reason to believe that

00:52:57.620 there was going to be overall

00:52:59.180 stability in the same kind of

00:53:00.820 direction.

00:53:01.880 But now, in the best interest

00:53:03.680 of a few political points,

00:53:05.960 political points for Israel,

00:53:07.120 political points for the

00:53:07.760 United States, we have created

00:53:09.680 a more unstable scenario that

00:53:13.080 arguably gives Iran the ability

00:53:15.880 to take actions that are

00:53:17.860 justified.

00:53:18.920 Whereas before, if they would

00:53:20.040 have taken any actions against

00:53:21.360 the Middle East, against Saudi

00:53:23.340 Arabia, against UAE, against

00:53:24.840 Israel, against the United

00:53:26.060 States, it would have been

00:53:27.040 first strike.

00:53:27.640 It would have been preemptive.

00:53:28.880 If they were to choose to shut

00:53:31.020 the Hormuz Straits, if they would

00:53:32.640 have chose to cut off supplies to

00:53:35.080 the Khaliji states, if they would

00:53:36.220 have chose to launch more

00:53:37.160 rockets, it would have been them

00:53:39.500 being aggressors.

00:53:40.280 It would have been them stepping

00:53:42.020 outside of line.

00:53:42.640 Now, we have to wonder, what will

00:53:46.540 they do, and when will they do

00:53:48.040 it, and when they do it, what are

00:53:51.020 we all going to say in the world?

00:53:51.980 Are we going to say, oh, this was

00:53:53.160 unjustified, or are we going to

00:53:54.280 say this was in response to the

00:53:57.040 bombing of these nuclear sites?

00:53:59.320 Well, let me present you an

00:54:00.520 alternative argument, because

00:54:01.420 obviously I wouldn't argue with

00:54:02.580 you about your opinion about

00:54:03.920 intelligence or all of that, but

00:54:05.220 from a media perspective and

00:54:07.020 political perspective, the way it

00:54:09.060 looks to me is kind of the

00:54:10.580 opposite of what you said in some

00:54:11.720 ways, whereby Israel was losing

00:54:15.300 more and more and more support

00:54:16.860 from across the board because of

00:54:18.240 what's happening in Gaza, and now

00:54:20.220 they look like the guys who dealt

00:54:22.520 with the threat of nuclear Iran.

00:54:24.480 President Trump, as you say, gets a

00:54:26.000 political victory.

00:54:27.440 He secured the ceasefire almost

00:54:28.980 immediately, which is holding, as we

00:54:30.640 sit here anyway, and so now you

00:54:33.820 might argue Iran has been defanged

00:54:36.580 somewhat, maybe not in a nuclear

00:54:39.440 way, but it doesn't have the air

00:54:41.320 defense systems that it had.

00:54:42.600 It's used a lot of its ballistic

00:54:44.100 missiles and had others destroyed,

00:54:46.160 right?

00:54:47.040 Now you could, other countries are

00:54:48.620 talking about joining the Abraham

00:54:49.860 Accords that weren't already on the

00:54:51.280 list, right?

00:54:52.300 So could this not be actually the

00:54:54.460 beginning of everybody in the

00:54:56.440 Middle East getting on board with

00:54:57.900 the fact that Israel exists, Iran

00:54:59.560 gets ostracized, and if they start

00:55:02.340 doing other stuff that's on the

00:55:03.560 nuclear end of things, they're going

00:55:04.980 to get bombed again, basically.

00:55:06.460 I mean, it could be that.

00:55:07.800 I agree.

00:55:08.240 It could be that.

00:55:09.660 I would argue that probability-wise,

00:55:12.700 that's a good question.

00:55:14.680 What is the most probable outcome?

00:55:16.560 I don't know that we have enough

00:55:17.500 information to really set

00:55:18.620 probabilities yet.

00:55:20.800 I also, my concern isn't with the

00:55:23.940 near-term benefits.

00:55:26.160 I think that there are near-term

00:55:27.520 benefits.

00:55:27.840 I think you did a good job outlining

00:55:28.940 those near-term benefits.

00:55:29.880 I'm just saying I don't believe that

00:55:31.200 the near-term benefits are going to

00:55:32.720 outweigh the long-term risks, because

00:55:35.620 now there are phone calls and

00:55:38.020 conversations happening between Iran

00:55:39.680 and all of its closest partners, and

00:55:42.280 the whole world now feels justified in

00:55:44.280 preemptive strikes.

00:55:45.500 So China is now feeling that much more

00:55:48.000 confident in preemptively striking

00:55:49.160 Taiwan.

00:55:50.180 And Russia looks like they were doing

00:55:52.960 the faddish thing when they

00:55:54.160 preemptively struck Ukraine.

00:55:56.220 Now there's a precedent that Western

00:55:59.840 democracies, the leading country in the

00:56:01.380 world, is willing to attack a sovereign

00:56:02.840 nation across borders for no reason

00:56:04.740 other than WMD, which we've done

00:56:07.640 before.

00:56:08.200 Right.

00:56:08.480 Iraq fucked this whole thing up.

00:56:09.840 Yeah.

00:56:10.300 You can just tell, right?

00:56:12.060 Like, that's when the West really went,

00:56:14.520 lost a lot of its moral credibility.

00:56:16.200 Correct.

00:56:16.980 Because the thing is, threats will

00:56:19.560 exist that do need to be dealt with,

00:56:21.280 but when you cry wolf a lot, then when

00:56:24.540 the real thing happens, no one believes

00:56:26.580 you.

00:56:26.940 Right.

00:56:27.600 And the circumstances for this

00:56:29.160 particular crying of wolf are rough.

00:56:32.120 You have the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, saying

00:56:35.020 that they are not close to creating a

00:56:36.840 weapon.

00:56:37.380 And then you see the president tweeting

00:56:40.140 the opposite.

00:56:41.280 If I can still call it tweeting, I don't

00:56:42.860 even know.

00:56:43.560 And then you see the DNI changing her

00:56:45.660 tone.

00:56:46.220 Well, she did say in her original

00:56:47.720 testimony that they are enriching

00:56:49.400 uranium to like 60 percent.

00:56:51.020 Right.

00:56:51.220 And this is maybe you can unpack this

00:56:52.640 for us, because that's always been

00:56:53.780 there of contention for me, because

00:56:55.320 I'm like, look, you say these people

00:56:58.040 are rational and et cetera.

00:57:00.500 But I'm like, well, they are like, you

00:57:02.960 know, they're very wedded to their

00:57:05.720 religious ideology.

00:57:06.540 Let's put it as diplomatically as

00:57:08.000 that.

00:57:08.700 They keep saying they're going to

00:57:10.120 destroy Israel and they are enriching

00:57:12.700 uranium way beyond what civilian

00:57:14.900 purposes would need.

00:57:16.740 If and this is kind of part of I

00:57:18.800 remember reading a study about why

00:57:20.360 fights between kids happen, because

00:57:21.920 everyone perceives the punch they

00:57:23.920 receive as being harder and the one

00:57:26.400 that they throw as being not as

00:57:27.900 hard.

00:57:28.200 Right.

00:57:28.500 So I'm sure there's a lot of

00:57:30.120 misperception happening.

00:57:31.060 But if I'm sitting in the position

00:57:32.820 in the chair of Benjamin Netanyahu,

00:57:34.340 I'm going, these guys hate us.

00:57:37.240 They want our country destroyed.

00:57:38.880 They funded terrorists who are

00:57:40.580 destroying our country as best they

00:57:42.020 can.

00:57:42.620 And they're enriching uranium way

00:57:44.280 beyond what's needed for civilian

00:57:45.560 purposes.

00:57:46.340 I have an opportunity here to take

00:57:48.140 that shit out.

00:57:49.280 I'm going to do it.

00:57:50.560 Do you see what I mean?

00:57:51.580 I see what you mean.

00:57:52.260 So why include America?

00:57:54.080 Because if they have the capability

00:57:55.540 and have other means, then why do

00:57:56.400 I include America at all?

00:57:57.180 Well, my view externally was

00:57:59.060 always like, this is Israel's war

00:58:00.380 and they should handle it.

00:58:01.480 And I imagine dropping the

00:58:03.840 bunker busters was not the only

00:58:05.140 way they could have got to those

00:58:06.180 facilities, as you say.

00:58:07.300 And you know way more about this

00:58:08.440 than I do.

00:58:08.960 Right.

00:58:10.140 But as you say, my sense, see,

00:58:12.380 I think there's been this narrative

00:58:13.800 that like Israel is is like

00:58:15.980 manipulating the American

00:58:18.120 government.

00:58:18.880 I'm pretty sure that's not how it

00:58:20.220 works, because American government

00:58:21.160 is the most powerful force in the

00:58:22.660 world.

00:58:22.900 Right.

00:58:23.480 I think, yeah, that I wouldn't.

00:58:25.500 Donald Trump did this because

00:58:27.600 Donald Trump wanted to do this.

00:58:29.060 Bingo.

00:58:29.420 Right.

00:58:29.800 So it's not him being manipulated

00:58:31.400 by Benjamin Netanyahu.

00:58:32.900 Correct.

00:58:33.360 I think not.

00:58:34.220 I think Netanyahu understood that

00:58:36.320 when you put dog food in a bowl of

00:58:39.200 a hungry dog, the dog's going to eat

00:58:41.380 the dog food.

00:58:42.280 So that's basically what he did.

00:58:43.960 And he was like, hey, what we can

00:58:46.340 do as Israel is eradicate their air

00:58:48.240 defenses.

00:58:48.820 And what we can do as Israel is

00:58:50.240 share our incredible intelligence

00:58:52.040 about what, where, when, why, and

00:58:54.140 how.

00:58:54.820 And we can give that to somebody

00:58:56.340 who has the capability to do what

00:58:58.200 we can't do or has the capability

00:59:00.860 to do something visually, a visual

00:59:03.320 spectacle that we can't carry out.

00:59:05.560 And then that still gives us options

00:59:07.060 to do all the other cool shit that

00:59:08.100 we're know that we're ready to do.

00:59:09.500 Right.

00:59:09.820 I think he set up the window.

00:59:11.940 He rolled out the red carpet.

00:59:13.680 He timed it at a moment when he knew

00:59:15.900 that the dog was hungry.

00:59:17.580 And he was like, here you go.

00:59:19.160 But he had a plan for in case

00:59:21.040 Donald Trump said no.

00:59:22.200 I'd imagine so.

00:59:22.760 He had a plan for in case somebody

00:59:24.260 in the United States was like, this

00:59:25.320 is not, this is not our fight to

00:59:26.820 have.

00:59:27.300 Right.

00:59:27.940 But that's not how it played out.

00:59:29.440 So instead, the way it played out,

00:59:30.620 just like you said, works out

00:59:32.920 politically as a big victory for

00:59:34.720 everybody.

00:59:35.820 And do you think that the other

00:59:39.960 Gulf countries are kind of on board

00:59:41.760 with what's happened?

00:59:42.860 I don't know that they're on board

00:59:44.240 with what's happened.

00:59:44.940 I think that they're on board with

00:59:46.200 a depleted Iran.

00:59:47.440 It's just like NATO.

00:59:48.500 Everybody wants to see a depleted

00:59:50.060 Russia.

00:59:50.920 But that doesn't necessarily mean

00:59:52.160 they like the idea that we only

00:59:54.160 support Ukraine a little bit and

00:59:55.680 that we hold back in other areas.

00:59:57.560 Right.

00:59:57.720 Like there's, this is why I make the

00:59:59.700 claim that I believe World War

01:00:00.760 Three is already happening.

01:00:02.360 Because I believe World War Three is

01:00:04.360 a proxy war.

01:00:05.760 It is a proxy conflict.

01:00:07.640 So wealthy external states are

01:00:10.100 funding internal conflicts in

01:00:12.800 poorer countries that really don't

01:00:14.200 have a say.

01:00:14.580 But that's more like the Cold War,

01:00:15.640 isn't it?

01:00:16.040 Because that's what happened all

01:00:16.940 through the Cold War.

01:00:17.700 We kept having, you know,

01:00:19.180 the North Koreans fight the

01:00:20.340 South Koreans and all of the,

01:00:22.080 and that Africans fighting each

01:00:23.860 other because the communists

01:00:24.820 founded these guys and the

01:00:26.080 Americans founded.

01:00:27.500 Why do you call it World War Three?

01:00:29.580 So partly because what you saw in

01:00:32.860 the Cold War was still mainly

01:00:35.020 focused around this question of

01:00:36.520 communism and the spread of

01:00:37.400 communism.

01:00:38.440 North Korea, South Korea was its own

01:00:40.520 war, right?

01:00:41.360 It was the Korean War.

01:00:42.300 Yeah, but like Soviet, sorry to interrupt,

01:00:45.500 but Soviet pilots were flying the

01:00:46.920 planes on one side and the Americans

01:00:48.300 were fighting on the other side.

01:00:49.640 Right.

01:00:50.040 So you still had, that's still resources

01:00:52.660 from those countries fighting in a

01:00:55.400 third location.

01:00:56.320 Yeah, exactly.

01:00:57.380 So true proxy conflict is when an

01:00:59.540 internal conflict is already present

01:01:01.340 and external parties contribute to the

01:01:04.340 internal conflict without committing

01:01:06.400 their own resources, without committing

01:01:08.340 their own troops, without committing

01:01:10.420 their own weapons of destruction,

01:01:13.560 right?

01:01:14.020 So they, they can make money off it.

01:01:16.120 Intro, intra-state war, the opposite

01:01:18.060 of inter-state war, intra-state war is

01:01:19.760 very profitable, right?

01:01:21.340 It, it boosts economies because you're

01:01:23.600 selling weapons, you're signing loans,

01:01:25.500 you're getting first rights on the

01:01:27.040 rebuilding of destroyed provinces once

01:01:29.460 there, once the war ends.

01:01:30.760 So the warlords that we saw all through

01:01:32.840 Africa and the internal conflict that

01:01:34.780 we saw with like the FARC in Latin

01:01:36.020 America, like those were different

01:01:38.120 because those were rebel groups that

01:01:39.820 were trying to find some sort of

01:01:41.140 independence or tribal unity or

01:01:43.420 something along those lines, right?

01:01:44.460 But when you start to actually look at

01:01:46.000 what happened in Syria and what

01:01:47.560 happened in Yemen and what happened

01:01:49.880 in Libya, you have major civil wars

01:01:52.740 happening where one side is pro-West,

01:01:56.240 one side is not pro-West, pro-democracy,

01:01:59.040 not pro-democracy, if you will, or

01:02:00.440 however you want to look at it, more

01:02:01.540 corrupt, less corrupt, however you want

01:02:03.100 to kind of cut it up.

01:02:04.960 And then at the same time you're

01:02:06.340 seeing Afghanistan and Iraq playing

01:02:07.900 out during the global war on terror,

01:02:10.160 which in many ways is the same kind

01:02:12.580 of conflict.

01:02:13.180 The United States couldn't support

01:02:14.740 conflict in five countries at once,

01:02:16.720 especially not when it was losing

01:02:18.320 ground in Afghanistan and Iraq.

01:02:20.240 So how do you continue to push

01:02:23.300 foreign policy that's in the best

01:02:24.800 interest of the United States?

01:02:26.180 You support proxy.

01:02:28.100 And Iran learned this whole proxy

01:02:30.700 move back in like the 70s and 80s.

01:02:33.180 So they've been doing this for a long

01:02:34.480 time. We've been studying how they've

01:02:35.800 been launching proxy conflict for a

01:02:37.560 long time.

01:02:38.300 China was watching us lose the global

01:02:40.420 war on terror and watching Iran carry

01:02:42.520 out proxy conflict.

01:02:43.360 And they were kind of mimicking us in

01:02:44.860 the same way while also paralleling our

01:02:46.820 humanitarian efforts with their Belt and

01:02:48.960 Road Initiative that matched kind of

01:02:50.440 our various humanitarian efforts as

01:02:54.960 well.

01:02:55.100 So this big kind of chessboard of people

01:02:58.980 experimenting with different techniques

01:03:00.600 ultimately ended when we pulled out of

01:03:03.080 Afghanistan and Iraq, but we still

01:03:04.700 continued to support these proxy conflicts.

01:03:06.880 We poured the lend-lease agreements,

01:03:09.320 weapons training, business interests into

01:03:12.460 Ukraine.

01:03:13.480 We chose to start to actually use direct

01:03:17.620 military intervention against the Houthis to

01:03:19.540 support commercial trade because of more

01:03:21.940 than anything what the United States is trying

01:03:23.100 to do is create an economy.

01:03:25.820 I would argue the United States is trying

01:03:27.140 to create a wartime economy without

01:03:29.240 actually committing troops to go to war

01:03:30.980 because a war in the United States can

01:03:33.280 become very unpopular, but a wartime

01:03:35.200 economy in the United States is very

01:03:36.960 popular.

01:03:37.540 Well, that's why I say it sounds more like

01:03:39.080 a cold war to me than, than, than what,

01:03:41.380 because maybe it's just a terminology

01:03:43.200 thing, Andrew, clarify for me.

01:03:45.500 But like when I think of World War III, I

01:03:47.400 think like Russia and China directly

01:03:50.360 fighting with America.

01:03:51.580 Right. I think that's what most people

01:03:53.020 think of.

01:03:53.520 Yeah.

01:03:53.860 I don't know why people think that.

01:03:55.000 I don't know why you think that.

01:03:56.300 World War I looks different than World War

01:03:58.080 II.

01:03:59.200 And there was less time between those

01:04:01.120 than there is between World War II and

01:04:02.540 today.

01:04:02.960 And if you look at all the conflicts.

01:04:04.040 They were different technologically.

01:04:05.460 Correct.

01:04:05.940 And strategically.

01:04:07.260 Look at World War I to World War II to

01:04:08.920 Vietnam, to Korea, to Vietnam, to the

01:04:11.160 global war on terror to today.

01:04:12.360 You can see an evolution of strategy, an

01:04:15.540 evolution of technology, an evolution of

01:04:17.680 warfare.

01:04:18.220 No, no.

01:04:18.480 That I agree with.

01:04:19.500 But what I'm, maybe I'm just being

01:04:20.840 pedantic, but it's probably worth

01:04:22.760 exploring.

01:04:23.260 What I'm saying is World War I,

01:04:25.160 technologically very different, of

01:04:26.500 course, to World War II.

01:04:27.440 But ultimately, it's about major powers

01:04:29.820 coming physically together on land, on

01:04:32.840 the sea, and in World War II.

01:04:34.680 With weapons of mass destruction.

01:04:36.000 With weapons of mass destruction.

01:04:37.160 But they're fighting each other.

01:04:38.660 Correct.

01:04:39.000 Right?

01:04:39.960 Interstate.

01:04:40.580 Yeah.

01:04:41.020 World War I, World War II.

01:04:42.340 Yes.

01:04:42.920 World War II had only one use of weapons

01:04:47.640 of mass destruction, and it was a

01:04:48.920 completely new weapon at the end that

01:04:51.520 was used essentially to deter any ongoing

01:04:53.020 attack.

01:04:53.460 But the conflict before that was a battle

01:04:55.760 of technology.

01:04:56.680 Right.

01:04:57.160 But my point is, you've got these major

01:04:59.780 powers, the great powers of the world,

01:05:01.400 coming together and fighting each other

01:05:02.960 effectively physically for global

01:05:05.340 dominance.

01:05:06.080 Whereas the Cold War is those powers now

01:05:08.740 in a nuclear world realizing, actually, we can't

01:05:10.800 fight each other because the world will end.

01:05:12.660 So we are going to fund this proxy here,

01:05:14.880 we're going to fund that proxy here, and

01:05:16.380 those proxies coming together.

01:05:17.660 So wouldn't what we're doing now be more

01:05:20.580 like Cold War II as opposed to World War

01:05:23.280 III?

01:05:25.000 Maybe it is pedantic.

01:05:26.140 I would say, again, the Cold War was a

01:05:28.940 war of ideology.

01:05:30.960 It was, there were some skirmishes, right?

01:05:34.320 But there was, unless I am misunderstanding

01:05:37.200 history, right?

01:05:37.940 There weren't multiple simultaneous civil

01:05:41.940 wars that were being funded for long-term

01:05:44.720 conflict by large power brokers.

01:05:47.260 But isn't that exactly what, like, Korea,

01:05:49.580 Vietnam, a lot of the conflicts in Africa...

01:05:51.920 Those are separate wars, right?

01:05:53.320 Korea was separate, Vietnam was separate.

01:05:54.140 But they were proxy wars.

01:05:55.540 They were proxy wars, basically.

01:05:57.660 American troops were actually committed to

01:05:59.300 Vietnam.

01:05:59.960 That's different.

01:06:00.860 That's very true.

01:06:01.360 Right?

01:06:01.620 American troops were committed to Korea,

01:06:03.600 too.

01:06:04.700 Yeah.

01:06:05.120 I see what you mean.

01:06:09.060 Well, I think what happened...

01:06:10.240 But I think you're making my point for me,

01:06:11.680 which is, this is more like the Cold War.

01:06:14.820 Again, whether you want to see it, the

01:06:18.180 similarities, or whether you want to see it

01:06:19.520 as the next evolution, right?

01:06:21.020 They could be kissing cousins for all

01:06:22.240 intents and purposes.

01:06:23.180 But the main thing that I'm pulling from is

01:06:25.800 that when I went through war college, we

01:06:28.740 learned a very important lesson about the

01:06:31.620 cost of war.

01:06:32.700 The cost of war is significantly higher in

01:06:35.920 limited war than in total war, right?

01:06:38.780 The cost of war, because the cost of war is,

01:06:41.140 yes, dollars today, and yes, lives today,

01:06:43.980 but it's also future dollars, investment

01:06:47.220 dollars, opportunity cost, and the opportunity

01:06:50.560 cost that comes from lives lost today, right?

01:06:53.440 So the cost of limited war is higher than the

01:06:57.520 cost of total war, because in the cost of

01:06:59.380 total war, total war creates a ton of value.

01:07:02.060 It creates an economic engine, it creates an

01:07:04.680 ideology, it creates a, like, that's why we

01:07:06.720 essentially launched a total war against

01:07:08.480 terror, because we had learned this lesson

01:07:10.640 that limited war is more expensive than total

01:07:13.680 war when it comes to, essentially, profit

01:07:15.600 margin.

01:07:16.620 But interstate total war is the most expensive

01:07:21.500 type, because interstate total war now, we're

01:07:24.200 invading another country.

01:07:25.580 Right.

01:07:26.240 You're all in, right?

01:07:28.100 Like, you're either all in, because if you lose,

01:07:30.900 they're coming in, and they're taking everything

01:07:32.360 from you.

01:07:32.920 It's like a lawsuit.

01:07:33.900 There's a suit and a countersuit.

01:07:35.420 So we, the United States, try to avoid interstate total

01:07:39.440 war.

01:07:39.520 Well, this is all I'm saying.

01:07:39.640 Sorry if I'm taking loads of time, Francis, and

01:07:41.480 also being, sorry if I'm being anal about it.

01:07:44.060 The only reason I am being anal about it is, like,

01:07:46.480 in the media now, every fucking YouTube channel now

01:07:49.520 is like, World War III, World War III.

01:07:51.000 Like, I think when we had Matthew Saeed on last

01:07:52.680 week, it was like, well, at that point, nobody really

01:07:54.640 knew where it was going to go, right?

01:07:56.040 But the way it's, I think when you say World War

01:07:59.020 III, what most people imagine is, like, a guy in

01:08:02.780 Russia going, launch the nuclear missile, you know?

01:08:05.280 And I don't think that's what's happening, right?

01:08:07.180 I agree.

01:08:07.680 That's not what's happening.

01:08:08.520 And I also agree that that is what most people think

01:08:10.740 of when they think of World War III.

01:08:11.880 But that's why I'm saying I think most people are not

01:08:14.060 understanding the evolution of war.

01:08:16.020 Okay.

01:08:16.420 Right?

01:08:16.640 Your child is going to grow into an adult that is

01:08:20.060 like you, but not you.

01:08:21.760 Yeah.

01:08:22.260 Right?

01:08:22.580 But they're still going to grow.

01:08:23.440 So they will still be the next, the next Constantine.

01:08:26.720 So you think, I guess what you are saying is, we're

01:08:28.480 the beginning of something that's going to expand, that's

01:08:30.680 going to get more intense, and conflict in the world is

01:08:32.920 going to grow.

01:08:33.280 That's what you're saying.

01:08:33.980 And this is what conflict is going to look like.

01:08:35.960 Like, like what we're seeing now.

01:08:38.080 Right?

01:08:38.260 That's why for the last...

01:08:39.320 It's kind of better than World War II, right?

01:08:40.520 I would argue that the, that for the United States and

01:08:44.580 for, for Western, for wealthy Western countries, we

01:08:49.980 should feel safer about our future moving forward.

01:08:53.100 But if you're not a wealthy Western country, you're

01:08:55.280 fucked because you're a playground.

01:08:57.920 Africa's a playground.

01:08:59.120 Latin America's a playground.

01:09:00.140 Central America's a playground.

01:09:01.480 Right?

01:09:01.740 The Caucasus is a playground.

01:09:03.120 The Middle East is a playground.

01:09:04.220 Because big powers are going to play on your turf.

01:09:07.820 And at the time when you are the most vulnerable.

01:09:11.760 The United States got to have our revolution when there was

01:09:15.160 only one other major power.

01:09:17.220 Right?

01:09:17.440 And, and China got to have their revolution when there was

01:09:21.360 really nobody interested in their revolution.

01:09:24.040 Like we've, the countries that have been able to find their

01:09:27.380 current footing and become major power players had the ability

01:09:31.700 to do that without too much inter, uh, interjection from other

01:09:35.980 people.

01:09:36.260 Right?

01:09:36.620 It took a long time for France and Spain to support the rebels in the

01:09:39.640 United States.

01:09:40.660 That's not the case anymore.

01:09:42.120 Now it's wire transfers and cryptocurrency and weapons being

01:09:46.060 rerouted.

01:09:46.980 And like now, as soon as something nasty cooks up in Uruguay, or now

01:09:51.500 that as soon as something nasty cooks up in Armenia or Azerbaijan, the

01:09:55.000 whole world can be like, whoop, here's resources to fund whatever you're

01:09:58.760 doing.

01:09:59.040 As long as at the end of the day, you give us this or you give us that.

01:10:02.000 So that's super interesting.

01:10:04.640 I guess my question is America's debt is ratcheting up.

01:10:09.640 It created a bust up between Elon and Trump.

01:10:13.180 Um, and you, you, I look at America and I go, how long can you keep funding

01:10:18.660 this?

01:10:19.580 Because isn't China playing the smart game in a way of kind of not getting

01:10:24.480 involved and thereby watching the events play out and also as well, saving a

01:10:31.460 ton of cash?

01:10:33.120 Yes.

01:10:34.520 I do believe China is playing a very smart game.

01:10:37.440 And I do believe that China's smart game is going to continue to yield dividends

01:10:42.640 in the near future.

01:10:43.380 And that's not just me.

01:10:44.240 That's multiple economists, right?

01:10:46.500 You can demonstrably see their price parity going up.

01:10:50.400 You can demonstrably see their GDP growing up, their influence growing.

01:10:53.060 They have their own domestic issues, of course, like all countries do.

01:10:55.720 But they're not adding to the plate, uh, challenges like we seem to add with, with, uh, being

01:11:03.740 involved in conflicts that may or may not be our own.

01:11:06.340 However, what the United States has that China doesn't have is the United States is the number

01:11:09.980 one weapons exporter in the world.

01:11:12.460 Our large part of our economy is tied to the military industrial complex.

01:11:15.860 When we build weapons for stockpile, we don't realize the revenue from those weapons.

01:11:23.260 When we generate weapons for sale, for active use in another war zone, we immediately recognize

01:11:29.740 that profit margin, that revenue.

01:11:31.940 So we, it's better to be creating than producing something that other people are actively using

01:11:36.420 because then you can produce more and sell more and whatever else.

01:11:39.360 And debt is really something that exists on paper more than anything else.

01:11:42.940 So you can take credits and you can take loans and you can, you can make debt look like it's

01:11:47.360 going away, right?

01:11:48.060 That's what Doge did.

01:11:49.300 So there's lots of ways that you can work with debt.

01:11:51.680 I am, I am fairly convinced Donald Trump understands that what he needs in the United States

01:11:58.840 is a wartime economy because a wartime economy is our number one industry with our highest margins

01:12:05.460 where we have, we have not only the dominance of manufacturing, because if you, if you supply,

01:12:10.360 if you control supply, you essentially control demand and you can for sure control revenue.

01:12:16.240 If we control the supply to the best weapons in the world, then we just keep selling them.

01:12:20.520 We sell them to Taiwan.

01:12:21.480 We sell them to Israel.

01:12:22.400 We sell them to Saudi Arabia.

01:12:23.440 We sell them to UAE.

01:12:24.760 And the only way that people are buying fucking weapons is if they feel threatened or if they're

01:12:29.060 actively engaged in a conflict.

01:12:30.420 So it's in our best interest to encourage ongoing conflict because that guarantees us that we're

01:12:35.080 going to keep selling our shit.

01:12:36.320 Number two biggest weapon exporter in the world is Russia.

01:12:38.700 Russia, our weapons are far more technologically advanced than Russia.

01:12:42.020 And as Russian weapons are being used in the field against American weapons being used in

01:12:45.740 the field, we get all the benefit of the R&D to see how those weapons are actually being

01:12:49.760 carried out.

01:12:50.560 The fact that Ukraine has innovated their way to a whole new world of drone development,

01:12:56.840 that funding in large part came from the West.

01:12:58.880 That IP is going to belong to the West or at least be shared with the West.

01:13:01.800 So now we're going to have that head start in developing all new drone technology for warfare

01:13:05.740 and combat in the future.

01:13:06.620 Because it's really interesting and people, I don't think, understand this, but the Chinese

01:13:11.740 influence in South America, particularly a lot in Venezuela, it's everywhere.

01:13:17.280 They've completely bedded in.

01:13:19.480 And if you think about that from a geopolitical viewpoint, it's not that far from Venezuela

01:13:25.600 to Florida.

01:13:26.600 It's a three and a half hour flight.

01:13:28.740 And Iran are embedded in there as well.

01:13:30.740 So that's got to be really worrying for the Americans.

01:13:32.820 I think the challenge with the Chinese is kind of twofold.

01:13:37.860 First, yes, the Chinese have done a good job of infiltrating across geography.

01:13:44.900 They are engaged with humanitarian efforts.

01:13:48.160 They're engaged in trade efforts.

01:13:49.460 And they present themselves as the pragmatic alternative to the United States.

01:13:53.380 Because the unfortunate truth is if you're going to play with the United States, you have

01:13:57.560 to adopt American ideology.

01:13:59.520 And that worked for a long time.

01:14:01.500 China has made it so that if you want to play with China, you can still believe in whatever

01:14:04.700 the fuck you want to believe in.

01:14:05.860 As long as you have currency and we have currency and you've got supply and we've got supply,

01:14:09.360 like we'll switch, we'll trade.

01:14:10.500 We're not going to police what you do in the bedroom or in the boardroom.

01:14:14.440 We're just going to have a nice, fair trade of goods.

01:14:19.120 The United States is like, we'll have a trade of goods, but you have to follow our ideology.

01:14:22.760 Three trans people on your board.

01:14:24.480 Yeah, exactly, right?

01:14:25.800 So you have to do it with our ideology.

01:14:27.500 So now there's lots of countries in the world that are asking themselves, do I want to keep

01:14:31.700 dancing the American dance to get the deal?

01:14:34.720 Or do I want to just do it with China?

01:14:37.440 Understanding that Chinese goods are not to the quality of U.S. goods, that Chinese deals

01:14:42.940 are always kind of tricky, right?

01:14:46.280 Like U.S. deals are at least policed many times by American laws.

01:14:49.960 Chinese laws can change in a whim.

01:14:51.780 So the world is deciding what to do about that.

01:14:54.600 So one problem with China is that we still don't know how people are going to react.

01:14:59.040 Are our allies going to become fully dependent on China?

01:15:01.960 Are our allies going to partially diversify their goods with China?

01:15:05.440 How's all that going to work?

01:15:06.760 And then the second part of that is America's relationship with China is also unpredictable.

01:15:10.960 Is China cooperating with the United States only because it has to?

01:15:14.900 And as soon as it finds that it has the leverage to muscle its way around, it's going to stop

01:15:19.980 cooperating with the United States?

01:15:21.040 It's going to be less pragmatic?

01:15:22.440 We don't know.

01:15:23.340 And China's been around a long time.

01:15:25.580 And their mentality, both politically and individually, their mentality about the long game, like the

01:15:32.500 truly long game, longer than any Westerner can really think of, their mentality is one

01:15:36.600 that we can't wrap our mind around.

01:15:38.560 Like, we want to win now, this election cycle, before the midterms.

01:15:43.120 That's a two-year window.

01:15:44.580 They're like, we'll win in 75 years.

01:15:48.120 A win is a win.

01:15:49.520 Yeah.

01:15:49.980 And that's so interesting because when you look at everything that's happening in the

01:15:55.040 Middle East, China not getting involved, they must be strategizing, particularly when

01:15:59.740 it comes to Taiwan.

01:16:00.580 I would, I mean, it makes no sense to believe that China is not involved.

01:16:06.600 It makes every, it makes complete logical sense that China is involved with Iran on some

01:16:12.720 level, sharing intel, sharing insights.

01:16:17.320 Weren't there a bunch of planes that flew from China to Iran and then disappeared off the

01:16:21.180 radar right before they hit Iran?

01:16:22.740 Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised.

01:16:23.820 Right before the strike time?

01:16:24.800 I wouldn't be surprised and I don't know the answer, but we've seen this multiple times,

01:16:28.100 even with the, even with the Assad family fleeing from Syria.

01:16:31.740 Like, allies come in and help.

01:16:34.160 So to think that China's not involved at all, I think would be, would be naive.

01:16:38.680 It's just how they're involved, the public doesn't quite know yet.

01:16:42.560 But I absolutely believe that, that what China's getting from all of this is they're, they're

01:16:46.940 learning how Americans do business now.

01:16:50.580 What do we do when Russia invades Ukraine?

01:16:53.060 What do we do when Israel launches an air assault against Iran?

01:16:57.100 What do we do in a humanitarian crisis?

01:16:59.240 If anything, they've even learned our playbook now about how we would launch a secret bombing

01:17:03.620 run, right?

01:17:04.560 They watched us send some planes in one direction and other planes in a different direction.

01:17:08.940 They watched us launch Tomahawk missiles from an underground submarine.

01:17:11.480 And the United States, I think, intended to be like, look how strong and powerful we are,

01:17:15.380 not also realizing that what they're also showing is here's our process.

01:17:18.580 Yeah, see, that's why I have to say, I was thinking that, I don't want to be wise after

01:17:22.100 the fact, but I watched the press briefing that I think the Pentagon did with Pete Hegseth.

01:17:28.160 And they were like, so yeah, we sent a decoy here.

01:17:30.320 And I was like, what the fuck are you doing?

01:17:31.320 What are you doing?

01:17:31.940 Shut the fuck up.

01:17:32.920 What are you doing?

01:17:34.460 It just goes to show that it's not professionals in the cabinet.

01:17:38.260 Professionals in the cabinet.

01:17:38.920 No, but that was a general doing that, saying that.

01:17:41.180 And very likely, that's what he was told to say.

01:17:43.760 He was told to brief something along those lines.

01:17:45.500 Yeah, like, like, explain to the American people how he did this.

01:17:48.300 And I promise you, at some place he was like, sir, this is, this is methods.

01:17:52.520 And methods and sources are strictly classified.

01:17:55.060 No, no, this is, this is going to be fine.

01:17:56.720 Go ahead.

01:17:57.360 Yeah, that made no sense to me.

01:17:58.740 Please talk about it so that I can send it on signal to my friends.

01:18:00.740 Yeah, like, that, that, that, that didn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

01:18:04.500 And I've never seen a press brief like that, a press brief that explained the tactics and

01:18:07.980 techniques behind something.

01:18:08.680 That was fucking weird.

01:18:09.340 Yeah, it was at midnight Friday into Saturday morning, a large B2 strike package comprised

01:18:15.300 of bombers launched from the continental United States as part of a plan to maintain tactical

01:18:20.920 surprise.

01:18:21.800 Part of the package proceeded to the West and into the Pacific as a decoy, a deception effort

01:18:28.260 known only to an extremely small number of planners and key leaders here in Washington

01:18:34.780 and in Tampa.

01:18:36.400 The main strike package comprised of seven B2 spirit bombers, each with two crew members

01:18:42.040 proceeded quietly to the East with minimal communications.

01:18:47.260 So you think they're just doing that for political reasons to try and like show off and show that

01:18:52.920 we're capable and show that we know what we're talking about.

01:18:54.500 That's not like Trump, is it?

01:18:55.220 But focusing on Trump a little bit, his, the narrative has always been in the media.

01:19:02.800 His unpredictability is a strength because if you can't predict an opponent, you're going

01:19:08.040 to be more wary of them because you don't know what they're going to do.

01:19:11.260 On a geopolitical level, is that actually true or is he just a massive liability?

01:19:16.440 Yeah, and, you know, it's, I would, I would argue the opposite is, is true about Trump.

01:19:21.720 He is actually very predictable.

01:19:23.260 It's just, you have to ask yourself a different question.

01:19:27.060 Don't ask yourself what's good for America, ask yourself what's good for Trump.

01:19:29.720 If you ask yourself what benefits Trump in any given scenario, you'll kind of, you'll

01:19:36.180 be closer to the right answer than if you ask yourself, well, what's, what's in America's

01:19:39.660 best interest?

01:19:40.960 Because Trump's best interests are consistently the ones that went out.

01:19:44.360 How does he save face?

01:19:45.420 How does he look strong?

01:19:46.340 How does he win his base over whatever it might be, right?

01:19:49.440 How does he gain leverage?

01:19:50.780 How does he make the other side look bad?

01:19:53.840 How does he come up with the best tweets?

01:19:55.460 Whatever it might be, you can, you can get closer to the truth if you understand that,

01:19:58.820 that Trump is predictable in thinking what's best for Trump.

01:20:01.620 And I understand that the majority of Americans voted for Trump and that he was a duly elected

01:20:08.640 president.

01:20:09.460 And that is the position that he sits in.

01:20:11.360 And I want to respect the office of the president.

01:20:13.560 It's a shitty place to be.

01:20:14.880 It's a hard job.

01:20:17.260 But Trump was running to become president when he knew it was only a four-year term.

01:20:21.880 He was running to become president when he knew that there were presidential benefits

01:20:25.360 and perks that were going to come that would counteract his legal issues.

01:20:28.960 He was running for president at a time when, when the country was largely dissatisfied with

01:20:34.120 the previous president.

01:20:35.860 So there were certain benefits and certain opportunities that he had.

01:20:39.160 Who did they benefit?

01:20:40.680 Him.

01:20:41.740 Doesn't benefit the American people to have a one-term president.

01:20:44.740 It benefits the American people to have a president that has the opportunity to run for

01:20:48.160 multiple terms, to make eight years worth of impact, not four years worth of impact.

01:20:51.960 So you can see in multiple different ways, the rise of what I'm calling, well, I'm not really

01:20:57.000 calling it, other people have called it this, but I can see the rise of the celebrity

01:21:03.140 president, right?

01:21:04.540 Barack Obama was a celebrity and a president.

01:21:07.780 Luckily, he still had some statesmanship in him, right?

01:21:10.920 Then we had Trump come up, pure celebrity, no chops at all for politics.

01:21:16.180 And then we had Biden kind of come back as a weird sort of rebound boyfriend, kind of

01:21:22.680 still riding Obama's celebrity.

01:21:25.320 And now Trump's back again.

01:21:27.280 It's Oprah next.

01:21:28.400 Who is next?

01:21:29.540 And are they going to be qualified to do what statesmen do?

01:21:33.300 And statesmen consider the long-term impact, multi-generational benefits of their state.

01:21:37.780 Yeah, because you saw in Trump in that clip, which everybody's seen when, I mean, viral

01:21:42.060 isn't the word, you know, talking about Iran and Israel and then going, they don't know

01:21:46.660 what the fuck they're doing.

01:21:47.840 And then what was interesting is he went in harder on Israel than he did in Iran.

01:21:52.880 I think that was us seeing that he himself also knows his predictability is being read

01:22:01.620 by true statesmen.

01:22:02.980 Netanyahu is a statesman.

01:22:04.380 Netanyahu, Putin is a statesman, right?

01:22:06.980 Xi Jinping is a statesman.

01:22:08.200 These are people who understand and are invested in the long-term interest of their state.

01:22:11.960 And they're also autocratic in many ways, and they're also authoritarian in some ways,

01:22:17.160 more so with Putin and Xi than with Netanyahu.

01:22:19.820 But these are individuals who understand there is an entire nation that can benefit or be harmed

01:22:26.860 by the decisions that they make.

01:22:28.160 So they can play this, and they have a circle of professionals around them

01:22:32.140 who are informing their decisions.

01:22:34.960 Trump doesn't have that.

01:22:36.220 He doesn't have that vision, and he also doesn't have that team of people

01:22:40.120 who are hell-bent on the mission of advancing our state.

01:22:45.880 They might be Marco Rubio's hell-bent on the vision of becoming a future president, right?

01:22:50.180 Pete Hegseth is hell-bent on the idea of not fucking up a second time.

01:22:53.060 But they're not really focused on how do we make America the strongest country in the world

01:22:57.940 for another five decades.

01:23:00.040 Do you think he's out of his depth?

01:23:01.860 I would say that he is in a position where he is not...

01:23:06.340 He could...

01:23:06.980 I think he can do the job.

01:23:08.780 But with the team that he has, he's made the job a whole hell of a lot harder.

01:23:13.500 You know, it's interesting you say that, because we have met some of the people,

01:23:17.140 not at the very top, but around, who are very professional, who are very patriotic,

01:23:21.840 who are very dedicated.

01:23:23.540 But then I, you know, I've never met Steve Wyckoff,

01:23:26.520 but then I see him being appointed as America's chief negotiator.

01:23:30.380 And then he comes out, and the stuff he said about Ukraine, I'm going like,

01:23:33.960 mate, you don't know what...

01:23:34.840 You genuinely don't know what you're talking about.

01:23:36.420 And it's kind of worrying.

01:23:38.240 Do you think that's one of the reasons Trump hasn't yet delivered on Ukraine,

01:23:42.720 that lack of professional advice and kind of having the right people in the right place?

01:23:47.240 Or is there other reasons?

01:23:48.020 Well, I also think that this is Putin outmaneuvering Trump.

01:23:52.340 That's what I think, too.

01:23:53.240 And remember, like, Putin is an experienced KGB operator.

01:23:58.180 He's an experienced strongman operator.

01:24:01.500 He can read Trump.

01:24:04.420 He can read the ego, and he can read the need for victory, and he can play that shell game.

01:24:10.960 That's, I think, in large part, a show of how unprepared Zelensky is compared to Putin

01:24:16.880 for what to expect with Trump, right?

01:24:18.560 Both Musk and Zelensky expected that Donald Trump would follow through on his promise.

01:24:24.280 Why would you ever expect Donald Trump to follow through on a promise, right?

01:24:28.180 Donald Trump has his entire career made promises to get people to fall in line to not follow

01:24:34.840 through on the promise.

01:24:35.800 You know, that's such a good point, because, you know, I'm much happier that Trump's president

01:24:40.200 than the alternative that we had, genuinely.

01:24:42.840 And like I say, there are some people around him that I really like and respect.

01:24:45.780 We've had our friend Seb Gorka on the show, for example.

01:24:48.120 That's what he is.

01:24:48.720 He's a patriot.

01:24:49.340 He wants America to be great, right?

01:24:51.000 But I did meet someone in New York who used to do business with Donald Trump, and he said,

01:24:54.860 I said, what was he like?

01:24:55.860 And he's like, the only thing you need to know about him is if he owes you a million dollars,

01:24:58.940 he calls you the day or at least due to pay, and he says, I've got $200,000 for you.

01:25:02.680 Take it or leave it.

01:25:03.700 So whatever you think about, whether that's good or bad or right or wrong or whatever, that

01:25:08.600 is who the man is.

01:25:10.000 So your point is, it's interesting you with your CIA background basically going, stop thinking

01:25:15.040 about this from a kind of feelings or morality, that's what he is, and you've got to understand

01:25:21.700 that.

01:25:22.180 And there are smart people in the world who understand it, and there are less smart people

01:25:26.740 in the world who don't understand it.

01:25:28.620 Yeah, there's the people who act on rational probabilities, and there's the people who operate

01:25:35.500 on irrational hopes and beliefs.

01:25:37.500 Right.

01:25:37.740 And we live in an era right now where you've got to be doubling down on rational probabilities.

01:25:42.800 That's so interesting.

01:25:43.760 You can be wrong, and that's okay.

01:25:45.760 Yeah.

01:25:45.980 If you gamble enough times in the way that is rational and statistically impactful, you're

01:25:54.380 going to have more success than the person who's just constantly duped by believing what

01:25:58.940 they read or believing what they hear or believing what they see.

01:26:01.080 Or believing what they want to believe.

01:26:02.300 Or even worse, believing what they want to believe in a vacuum.

01:26:04.660 Right.

01:26:05.480 That's so interesting.

01:26:07.120 And that was the thing with Steve Witkoff that really struck me, because I'm going,

01:26:11.300 I know that the people who are sitting across the table from him, they're like Russian guys

01:26:15.960 who've been studying this shit for 30 years, and they've been trained from the age of 18

01:26:20.820 to understand all these things.

01:26:22.460 And you've got a guy who may be super talented, he may be great at everything, but he doesn't

01:26:27.600 understand the subject matter well enough.

01:26:30.420 And that's kind of worrying to me.

01:26:31.940 So at CIA, we would often participate in giving briefings to staffers, Senate staffers and

01:26:41.300 congressional staffers.

01:26:42.320 And we would brief them on something.

01:26:45.020 And I don't know if you know what a staffer looks like in Washington, D.C.

01:26:47.540 They're about 25 years old.

01:26:48.420 Holy shit.

01:26:49.280 Yeah.

01:26:49.560 Right?

01:26:50.120 And they're all dressed to impress the opposite sex.

01:26:53.420 Yeah.

01:26:53.760 They're very smart.

01:26:54.560 Very smart.

01:26:55.280 But they're 25 years old.

01:26:56.440 And it takes an army of them to brief one congressperson.

01:26:59.660 So we, CIA, brief the staffer, the team of staffers.

01:27:05.320 They all take their separate notes, and then they compile those notes to give a boiled

01:27:09.680 down briefing to their representative.

01:27:12.160 And then that representative takes that series of notes to their subcommittee, and it goes

01:27:16.920 on and on.

01:27:17.240 So whatever we give has been watered down five times before it actually gets to a policymaker.

01:27:23.460 And that's how the process worked when it was still like a policy of professional statesmen

01:27:30.400 that earned their position through a voting process by an informed public.

01:27:34.800 Now what we have is a celebrity effort where celebrity wins you more power than actual informed

01:27:44.560 performance.

01:27:45.760 And then in addition to that, you surround yourself by people who have no experience in

01:27:50.120 the facility of the secretary office that they're in, and then they're shaping the information

01:27:54.560 they get.

01:27:55.500 Right?

01:27:55.840 Like it completely turns the whole thing upside down.

01:27:58.900 And that's assuming CIA is still briefing staffers, and the staffers are still being selected

01:28:03.860 based off of their qualifications, and the whole process is still working.

01:28:06.320 If CIA itself is gutted, or if CIA itself no longer feels the need to even try, it feels

01:28:11.480 like they're wasting their time, those meetings right now might look, they might just look

01:28:14.440 like donuts and coffee and flirting across the table.

01:28:17.460 All right.

01:28:18.180 So how does the next five years look like?

01:28:20.720 Shit.

01:28:23.080 I know I like this man.

01:28:25.400 If anybody's expecting...

01:28:26.360 He spent three days in Britain, he's already fully British.

01:28:29.060 Yeah.

01:28:29.160 If anybody's expecting the next five years to be good, I don't know why you would think

01:28:36.020 that, right?

01:28:36.560 So what do you...

01:28:37.580 Flesh it out for us.

01:28:38.600 So Israel and Iran is not over, not by a long stretch.

01:28:42.040 The conflict either goes covert, and there's more covert action between the two, or it continues

01:28:49.280 to fester as on and off overt activity, right?

01:28:52.200 But Israel needs to stay embroiled in conflict.

01:28:56.920 Donald Trump is benefited by Israel being embroiled in conflict.

01:29:00.100 And the only way Israel is going to win back the support of collegiate Arabs who are staunchly

01:29:05.540 in support of Palestine, the only way Israel builds back that relationship is by continuing

01:29:12.020 to have conflict with Iran or ending their conflict in Gaza.

01:29:16.680 Which one are they going to choose of the two of those, right?

01:29:19.200 They're not going to stop their conflict in Gaza just to win back the support of collegiate

01:29:24.140 Arabs in the Arab world.

01:29:25.080 I mean, they've got to stop at some point.

01:29:26.500 They've got to stop at some point, but...

01:29:28.040 There's not going to be that many buildings left in Gaza.

01:29:30.240 Well, it also...

01:29:31.260 The end goal was never defined.

01:29:33.820 No.

01:29:34.360 So how do we know...

01:29:35.980 They've got to stop at some point.

01:29:37.320 This would be a great time to stop because what they've done is they've kind of distracted

01:29:41.420 the world from the horror that's happening there and get to look like the good guys.

01:29:46.280 This would be like exactly the time to stop.

01:29:47.980 Except when they stop, there's more bad news after that.

01:29:50.540 Because now it's actually counting the bodies and seeing the true devastation.

01:29:55.700 But they've got to stop at some point.

01:29:56.740 They have to stop at some point.

01:29:57.620 I don't disagree with you.

01:29:58.660 But what I'm saying is right now they have a choice.

01:30:01.400 Do we win back favor with the Arab community by helping Gazans or by continuing to put pressure

01:30:09.800 on Iran?

01:30:10.300 It's way easier to win that support by putting pressure on Iran.

01:30:12.240 But here's what I...

01:30:13.940 And again, it's just me testing your argument.

01:30:16.200 But the problem is that President Trump has been very successful with his base by claiming

01:30:22.320 a quick, rapid victory.

01:30:25.080 And then there's a ceasefire, which is, I believe, why he was so pissed off when the

01:30:28.760 ceasefire was immediately violated.

01:30:30.420 If this goes into anything that looks remotely where, like, the people on his right can go

01:30:37.480 forever war, forever war, that's a very bad look for him.

01:30:40.420 So isn't he going to apply a lot of pressure to Netanyahu to kind of calm down?

01:30:44.100 This is, again, this is the Ukraine-Russia argument.

01:30:47.040 Donald Trump understands that sitting on his pedestal, he can say, I need the two of you

01:30:54.160 to get along.

01:30:55.360 And when the two of you don't get along, he can say, you guys aren't listening.

01:30:59.280 I'm no longer part of this.

01:31:00.640 That's exactly what he did in Ukraine and Russia.

01:31:03.380 So he can come in, he can say, I need Iran and Israel, you two need to stop this.

01:31:08.220 I've done my part to end this.

01:31:10.580 Now you two just need to be adults.

01:31:12.340 And then when they don't, he's like, not my problem anymore.

01:31:15.080 But I'm going to keep selling weapons to Israel.

01:31:17.680 Right?

01:31:18.140 And that what Donald Trump's base doesn't want is for America to be in a war.

01:31:22.980 They love it when America flies a bunch of bombs and like, especially after a big army

01:31:27.800 parade and hey, and the pictures look great.

01:31:30.440 Right?

01:31:30.880 You got all these stealth bombers flying in formation on the map, which is not how they

01:31:34.420 actually fly in a combat situation.

01:31:36.500 But it looks great.

01:31:38.440 That's what his base wants.

01:31:39.860 His base wants like, oh, we're in the headlines again and Trump's in the headlines again.

01:31:43.280 America's strong.

01:31:44.200 They just don't want American troops involved.

01:31:45.720 They don't want American troops dying.

01:31:47.000 If a B-2 would have been shot down, that would have been a bad day.

01:31:49.840 Right?

01:31:50.000 If a plane wouldn't have come back, that would have been a bad day.

01:31:52.160 If we would have missed the target, that would have been a bad day.

01:31:54.960 It's why it's so humiliating when DIA comes out and says, we actually weren't as successful

01:32:00.260 as we thought we were.

01:32:01.200 And then Trump's like, DIA doesn't know what they're talking about.

01:32:04.120 They're the defense intelligence agency.

01:32:05.760 They know exactly what they're talking about.

01:32:07.000 And their job is to tell you the truth, Mr. President.

01:32:09.560 Well, before we ask you the final question, you've got a book coming out in September.

01:32:13.460 We're both super forward, super looking, super, I don't know what's going on.

01:32:17.920 We're looking forward to reading it.

01:32:19.300 Tell everybody a little bit about it and where they can get it.

01:32:21.400 Yeah, absolutely.

01:32:22.100 So my book is Shadow Cell.

01:32:23.440 It's my operational CIA memoir from my time at CIA.

01:32:26.680 It's been four years in the making because CIA tried to block it from publication.

01:32:31.560 So one of the things that we have in the US that you don't have here in the UK is First

01:32:35.120 Amendment rights.

01:32:36.100 So our First Amendment right protects American agents from being able to talk about our operations

01:32:41.480 as long as we don't go into classified information.

01:32:44.840 So CIA deemed my operational history and my wife's operational history, my wife is the

01:32:50.300 co-author for the book, also a CIA officer, a former covert officer.

01:32:54.080 CIA tried to block it because it said that the entirety of our operational history was classified.

01:32:58.360 We worked with them to try to show them that that wasn't necessarily the case.

01:33:03.620 And after three years of what was continually being more hostile collaboration, we just decided

01:33:09.860 to retain an attorney and threaten to sue.

01:33:12.460 And if we would have sued, then it would have taken the entire book project into the public

01:33:16.320 justice domain.

01:33:17.560 And they didn't want to do that.

01:33:18.580 So instead, they allowed us to publish our story.

01:33:21.220 So Shadow Cell, our CIA memoir, talks about things that nobody's ever heard spoken about

01:33:26.100 before.

01:33:26.460 We talk about modern tradecraft.

01:33:28.060 We talk about terror tactics that CIA pulled from terrorist elements and that we adopted

01:33:32.980 to new operations.

01:33:34.240 It talks about a mole in CIA that's never been disclosed.

01:33:36.880 And it's all within the last 12 years.

01:33:39.120 So it's one of the most modern CIA memoirs ever written.

01:33:42.500 Looking forward to it, man.

01:33:43.780 Sounds awesome.

01:33:44.620 Thanks, guys.

01:33:46.000 Final question is always the same.

01:33:47.700 What's the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be?

01:33:51.560 Before Andrew answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure you click

01:33:55.080 the link in the description.

01:33:56.680 Head over to our substack where you'll see this.

01:33:59.680 Is it true that the CIA and intelligence community in general is actively trying to undermine

01:34:04.700 Trump's presidency?

01:34:06.640 What exactly is the West and mainly the US doing to figure out exactly how close Iran was

01:34:11.760 to getting a bomb?

01:34:12.840 How do your Air Force pilots safely and reliably fly missions like this, which have a 30

01:34:17.540 plus hour's duration?

01:34:19.080 I think that the biggest conversation topic should really be Europe, and nobody's really

01:34:24.500 talking about Europe.

01:34:25.920 It's across Europe that I see the next 10 years of democracy really being tested.

01:34:32.320 As parliaments are dissolved and prime ministers and presidents are voted in and not voted in,

01:34:38.360 as Europe struggles with breaking away from the United States in terms of building their own

01:34:45.980 strength and power base in a future NATO or in a future union altogether, I really think that

01:34:52.200 the future of democracy is going to be defined here in Europe more so than in the United States,

01:34:55.900 and yet people don't talk about Europe.

01:34:58.200 Tell me more about that.

01:34:59.080 What do you mean exactly, the future of democracy?

01:35:00.780 So consider what happened in Germany, where the chancellor wasn't immediately ratified.

01:35:06.700 How does that happen?

01:35:08.180 How does a country vote for a chancellor, and then the officiating body doesn't go in line

01:35:16.960 with the people they're supposed to be representing?

01:35:18.820 Wait, I didn't follow this.

01:35:20.040 I must have missed this, genuinely.

01:35:21.440 So what was it, four months ago?

01:35:23.800 Four months ago, I think it was.

01:35:24.740 The new chancellor was supposed to be sworn in, but the representatives didn't vote to

01:35:32.060 a majority to actually swear in his role as chancellor.

01:35:35.500 So they had to go to a re-vote.

01:35:37.560 Do you recall this, Francis?

01:35:39.080 So this is Germany, one of the strongest economies and strongest democracies in Europe, right?

01:35:45.540 The same thing happened in France, right?

01:35:47.880 Macron dissolves parliament.

01:35:49.020 And then you have people in Portugal, and you have Romania, you have Hungary, you have

01:35:55.540 these other states as well, where the politicians aren't identifying themselves based off of

01:36:00.840 their political stance.

01:36:01.960 They're marrying their political stance to being pro-Trump or anti-Trump.

01:36:05.320 You're also seeing it in Canada, and you're seeing it in Australia as well.

01:36:08.040 So the celebrity activities in the United States are becoming like a topic of policy for European

01:36:18.700 leaders to get voted or not, or get voted out.

01:36:21.660 That's not democracy.

01:36:22.880 Democracy, again, statesmanship should be about the state.

01:36:25.340 And there are some countries that are making it about the state, like Spain, refusing to

01:36:29.680 meet the minimum payment that's been forced on them by NATO, saying we'll commit 2.5% of

01:36:34.480 our GDP or of our GDP to military spending, but not the 5% that's been assigned to us.

01:36:38.900 So states are starting to determine what's best for them in a way that's unique.

01:36:44.880 But again, I don't think people are talking about this.

01:36:46.660 There wasn't, I mean, the whole German chancellor thing was back page news at best.

01:36:51.680 And it's there if you look at it.

01:36:54.440 And if you watch the unsteady kind of evolution of Europe, I don't think Europe is headed in

01:37:01.700 a downward spiral, but I do think it's realizing it's been led by the United States, and it

01:37:07.640 no longer wants to be led by the United States, but who the fuck's going to lead it?

01:37:11.300 And what does that mean for a European Union or a European or a union at all?

01:37:18.120 Andrew, thanks very much for coming on.

01:37:19.880 Head on over to Substack where Andrew's going to answer your questions.

01:37:23.180 And talk about how shit Britain is.

01:37:24.780 How do we capitalize on this opportunity that some describe not only as historic, but biblical,

01:37:31.740 he says, to reshape Iran and not blow it a la Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan?

01:37:36.760 Oof, what a great question.

01:37:38.100 We'll see you next time.

TRIGGERnometry - June 27, 2025

Ex CIA Agent： The Real War is Just Beginning - Andrew Bustamante

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