TRIGGERnometry - Ex CIA Agent： Why Israel and Ukraine Can’t Win

00:00:00.000 Do you know who the lead negotiator is for the United States?

00:00:05.320 CIA Director Burns.

00:00:07.020 That is not a role for a career intelligence official,

00:00:10.020 somebody whose job is to lie and steal and cheat without getting caught.

00:00:14.600 They want to have the ability to deploy fucking airplanes and warships

00:00:18.520 into the Middle East, into friendly territory when we fight China.

00:00:22.180 That's what they want.

00:00:24.440 Zelensky could have reached basically the same outcome,

00:00:26.480 the same best outcome could have been reached within a few weeks.

00:00:30.000 Why do we think that Russia expansion means Russian tanks?

00:00:34.900 Why does that concept come to mind?

00:00:37.020 Because that's the narrative that the West has made.

00:00:39.180 No, it's because of history.

00:00:41.040 I mean, as a Russian, I can tell you, right,

00:00:42.720 every time Russia has a strong leader, it expands westwards and very often with war.

00:00:48.260 Andrew, awesome to have you on the show.

00:00:50.300 We were excited about it anyway, but then we started talking while we were waiting

00:00:53.680 and there's so much we can talk about.

00:00:55.620 Before we get into that, tell us a little bit about your career,

00:00:58.320 particularly CIA and other stuff where you've served abroad and all of that.

00:01:02.820 Yeah, I mean, I'm excited to be here, guys.

00:01:04.380 This is a conversation I've been looking forward to for a while.

00:01:07.120 But my name is Andrew Bustamante.

00:01:10.200 I started in rural Pennsylvania, a brown kid in rural Pennsylvania.

00:01:14.720 Ended up going to a military school because it was the best of all the bad options that I had.

00:01:19.160 And then from there, I actually got recruited into CIA,

00:01:23.580 had an awesome experience at CIA, living and working undercover, operating abroad.

00:01:28.340 I met my wife, who was also a CIA officer at the time.

00:01:31.460 And we ultimately ended up leaving CIA 2014, which was 10 years ago,

00:01:36.400 which is kind of mind-boggling, for family reasons.

00:01:38.720 Because, surprise, surprise, CIA is not a family-first organization.

00:01:44.060 And then when we left CIA, we kind of had to start all over again.

00:01:47.600 Because you feel like you're special at CIA,

00:01:52.140 but when you leave CIA, you don't get to take really any references home with you.

00:01:57.160 You don't get to take friends home with you because everybody remains undercover.

00:02:00.940 Everybody remains inside that organism that is undercover operations.

00:02:05.880 And you say you were recruited. Why and what does that look like?

00:02:11.140 You never get to know exactly why they're interested in you.

00:02:13.840 I have some theories.

00:02:15.700 One, I was recruited in 2007 as part of the tail end of the surge coming out of September 11th.

00:02:21.260 So if you recall, 9-11 happened in the United States in 2001.

00:02:24.620 Two years later, there was a giant commission that was completed,

00:02:28.280 a big investigation that was completed.

00:02:29.860 And one of the findings of that investigation was that the CIA of 2001,

00:02:35.880 was not equipped to handle the rising terrorist threat that was coming against the United States.

00:02:41.900 So they had to plus up people.

00:02:44.160 They had to plus up operations.

00:02:45.720 And one of the big things they pushed for was more diversity in their cadre.

00:02:51.360 Because prior to 2001, CIA was basically Ivy League white guys.

00:02:55.280 And it's going to be hard to place an Ivy League white guy in any kind of Arab community.

00:03:00.580 In a cave in Afghanistan, you're probably going to stand out.

00:03:03.020 Correct.

00:03:03.400 But an ambiguously brown, rural, Pennsylvanian kid has a better chance of being completely forgotten.

00:03:10.360 I mean, I was unknown all through high school, so I was really well trained.

00:03:12.640 That's so interesting.

00:03:15.720 So that was the moment they actually said, look, we need to infiltrate these particular organizations,

00:03:22.280 monitor them, and white guys ain't going to cut it.

00:03:25.240 I mean, you kind of go, all right, in that way, diversity might be a strength.

00:03:29.280 Yes, and that's what's so interesting.

00:03:31.040 CIA took a very practical approach to diversity, not a legislative approach.

00:03:35.900 Nobody tried to come in and place policies on the importance of having people of color

00:03:42.440 and people of different ages and people of different genders.

00:03:46.400 It was a very practical need.

00:03:48.380 You need, you can't send a male of any skin color to infiltrate a female Muslim society.

00:03:56.540 You can't.

00:03:57.180 You have to have females.

00:03:59.100 Even better if you have females who are also Muslim, who are also Arabic speakers,

00:04:03.140 who are familiar with the region.

00:04:04.360 You know, Yale puts out a lot of good quality people,

00:04:08.420 but it's hard to find that from an Ivy League university.

00:04:11.640 Sometimes you need to look somewhere else.

00:04:13.220 And even now, CIA is looking at people who don't even have formal degrees.

00:04:17.940 I mean, there's all sorts of opportunity that is pushed at what we call the pace of operations,

00:04:23.660 what's required to keep Americans safe, because that's the priority.

00:04:27.280 The priority for CIA is national security primacy.

00:04:31.360 Andrew, I feel it's really important before we really delve into the conversation.

00:04:35.540 There's people who, of course, are aware of the CIA, but there's people who might not

00:04:39.920 be aware of what exactly the CIA does.

00:04:42.880 And there's probably a whole lot of conspiracy as well.

00:04:45.880 That's probably.

00:04:46.320 Yeah, there's a lot of conspiracy that is molded in with that.

00:04:51.440 So let's just talk about what does the CIA do, and let's explode some myths, which people

00:04:56.940 will definitely listen to.

00:04:58.200 No, that's a great, that's a very fair point, right?

00:05:00.500 So CIA does what's known as human intelligence, or in our world, human.

00:05:04.660 Now, intelligence is a very broad, sweeping term, and there's multiple subcategories inside

00:05:10.520 that.

00:05:10.880 There's measurements intelligence, signals intelligence, imagery intelligence.

00:05:16.120 So there's multiple disciplines inside the intelligence field.

00:05:19.220 One of those disciplines is called human intelligence, which is the process of extracting secrets from

00:05:24.200 a human being rather than from a radio or from a picture or from something else, right?

00:05:28.900 So CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, has two purposes.

00:05:32.880 One is it's the primary human intelligence agency in the United States, but then second,

00:05:39.260 it is also the primary analytical resource that feeds the executive branch, which is really

00:05:44.900 just the executive office or the office of the president.

00:05:47.160 So all the intelligence agencies in the IC, intelligence community, all the intelligence

00:05:52.120 agencies feed their raw analysis to CIA, who creates a finished analytical product

00:05:57.480 called the president's daily brief that gets briefed to the president every day.

00:06:01.280 What about the operation side?

00:06:02.980 Because CIA isn't just about gathering intelligence, like CIA takes people out and stuff like that.

00:06:07.620 What about that side of it?

00:06:09.640 That's where part of the myth is, right?

00:06:11.220 So CIA has a paramilitary element, but it's a very small element, just like it has a cybersecurity

00:06:17.140 element.

00:06:17.800 That's another small element.

00:06:18.840 It has an offensive cyber element, a counterintelligence element.

00:06:23.820 These are all small elements inside CIA that are hyper-focused on human intelligence operations.

00:06:29.500 So if you can't get secrets from a terrorist, maybe the best thing to do is just neutralize

00:06:35.880 the terrorist.

00:06:36.860 In those moments...

00:06:37.660 That's a lovely use of language there, Andrew.

00:06:39.600 Neutralize.

00:06:41.080 In those moments, you need to have that capability.

00:06:43.400 And CIA, being an office that serves the president directly, it doesn't want to outsource that

00:06:49.380 to, say, DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency.

00:06:52.080 It doesn't want to give that task to the Marine Corps.

00:06:54.620 It wants to be able to do that in-house.

00:06:56.200 So it has what's known as a paramilitary capability.

00:06:58.960 Because there's a lot of people in places like where my mom's from in Venezuela, and they're

00:07:03.880 going, aye, aye, aye, the CIA, they destabilize, da-da-da-da-da-da.

00:07:07.400 Can I just say I'm very offended by that accent?

00:07:09.340 Yeah, that is actually how my mom speaks.

00:07:13.660 And that is very offensive.

00:07:15.540 But they say, you know, the CIA destabilize governments that are perceived to be the enemies

00:07:22.420 or not, or not even enemies, but don't act within the interests of the United States.

00:07:29.560 And then they help to depose them, put in their own regimes, et cetera, et cetera.

00:07:34.820 Is that actually true?

00:07:36.020 There is truth to that, but we have to look at CIA very much as a black and white pre-2001,

00:07:43.540 post-2001 organization.

00:07:45.820 And it's because when the Twin Towers fell on 9-11, there was really one organization to

00:07:51.040 blame, CIA.

00:07:53.020 And CIA takes that squarely on their shoulders.

00:07:55.420 They failed to do what they were supposed to do in conjunction with FBI, and that was

00:08:00.760 the finding of the 9-11 Commission.

00:08:02.080 So you can't have a failure like that on your record and not be forced to completely change.

00:08:09.780 So that's what happened with 9-11.

00:08:11.360 And many people don't realize that when you hear stories of 1990s, 1980s, 1970s CIA, you're

00:08:17.240 talking about an organization that had a few thousand people at most and didn't have any

00:08:23.860 oversight.

00:08:24.380 And those people were largely Ivy League white guys who were part of an old buddy network.

00:08:31.120 Post-2001, even further back after you look past 2003, 2004, when Congress became heavily

00:08:38.620 engaged in overseeing what the CIA did, now you have an organization that has multiple

00:08:44.320 thousands of just undercover officers and then tens of thousands of officers on top of

00:08:49.880 that, and an organization that has a whole different set of rules and obligations that

00:08:54.760 it has to abide by.

00:08:56.040 Many people say that the pre-2001 CIA was the more effective, more dangerous, more nimble

00:09:01.700 CIA.

00:09:02.300 And the CIA now is so heavily bureaucratized that it's been neutered in many ways.

00:09:08.080 And it just seems to get worse each year from the point of view of what CIA is capable of,

00:09:13.820 because now that we're so politically divided, it's a organization that was built to support

00:09:20.200 the president.

00:09:20.860 Well, the president switches extremes every four years right now, right?

00:09:26.040 And what does that mean for an organization?

00:09:28.180 How does that organization have continuity, success?

00:09:32.280 If you are part of the organization, how do you have any hopes for a career?

00:09:35.800 Now, the idea that CIA does not work in the best interest of the American people, that is

00:09:40.780 also something that people talk about.

00:09:42.220 That is patently false.

00:09:43.880 The CIA only works in the best interest of the American people.

00:09:47.540 It works so diligently in support of the American people that it really will do whatever it takes

00:09:54.040 to keep Americans safe, to keep America as the primary superpower, the singular superpower

00:10:01.120 in the world.

00:10:02.340 I mean, essentially, we put even the promise of democracy second to making sure that the

00:10:08.580 great American experiment is always the prime superpower.

00:10:12.940 Let me stress test that a little bit, because it brings us onto territory that I wanted to

00:10:16.860 cover anyway, which is, I don't think anyone actually would say that the CIA is not attempting

00:10:22.240 to serve the interest of the American people.

00:10:24.160 I think what people would say is the way that they see the interest of the American people

00:10:28.700 is not necessarily the way some American people see the interest of the American people.

00:10:32.480 And that's where I think the conversation comes in.

00:10:35.140 And one of the things I think that Francis is trying to raise, and it's interesting to

00:10:38.720 me, and this is a genuine question, I'm not imposing anything, is, for example, 9-11.

00:10:43.960 There are people who will say, well, I don't mean this in a moral sense, Americans, chickens

00:10:49.180 coming home to roost, and America deserved it.

00:10:51.880 But when you lay with dogs, you get fleas.

00:10:55.340 So when you support the Taliban and the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, it's not a surprise

00:11:01.140 that you've got some crazy guys with weapons and money and guns and whatever.

00:11:05.020 To what extent do you think, you know, CIA pursuing short-term objectives without necessarily

00:11:10.960 thinking on a 20-year schedule is where I think some of these issues come in, where it's

00:11:16.960 like it comes back to bite you in the ass, as we say in the UK?

00:11:20.520 No, and I think you've got a, it's an excellent point, for sure.

00:11:24.100 One of the things that we're, as a collective world, as a collective Western democratic world

00:11:31.400 specifically, one of the things that we're coming to discover now is that democracy has

00:11:35.640 its flaws.

00:11:36.660 And one of those flaws is the cycle of change.

00:11:41.060 So the United States, not the CIA, but the United States, has never been able to think

00:11:46.480 further than six or eight years in the future.

00:11:48.940 I mean, even when it comes to federal budgets, inside the United States, a long, one of the

00:11:55.420 longest federal budget is about five years.

00:11:58.060 Anything after five years is like, what's the point of even planning?

00:12:01.980 So most budgetary cycles are literally year to year.

00:12:05.380 Sometimes you have two-year money.

00:12:06.740 Sometimes you have three-year money.

00:12:08.080 And in rare occasions, you have five-year money.

00:12:10.500 That means we can't plan more than five years in the future as a federal government, let

00:12:17.100 alone dictate to a sub-agency like CIA a five-year objective.

00:12:21.080 So to your point, all of the American objectives are short-term objectives.

00:12:25.120 Wow.

00:12:25.780 Right?

00:12:26.180 That's scary to me, man.

00:12:27.400 The UK is not better off.

00:12:28.600 No.

00:12:28.860 No.

00:12:29.220 No, no, no.

00:12:29.620 Because, I mean, you guys have seen it with your prime minister, that the turnover is

00:12:34.120 incredible and unpredictable.

00:12:35.500 That's the person who's leading the country.

00:12:37.680 They're the ones that in many ways dictate who supports them on their staff.

00:12:42.400 How do you do that?

00:12:43.380 And the American people, just like the British citizens in the UK, we're in it for life.

00:12:49.400 I'm not going to ever be not American.

00:12:52.200 I may not live in the United States, but I'm not going to be not American.

00:12:56.740 I'm in it for the next, I mean, if I'm lucky, another four years, 50 years.

00:13:01.320 How can we only be making decisions two to three years in advance?

00:13:04.500 No, that's a totally fair point.

00:13:05.840 I've been saying this for a long time.

00:13:07.420 The one advantage authoritarian regimes have is the ability to plan on a 20, 30 years timescale.

00:13:12.200 Now, that has trade-offs, negatives too.

00:13:13.920 But what I'm asking is slightly different though, Andrew, which is the reason I think people

00:13:19.580 sometimes criticize CIA operations or decisions and stuff like that is they go, well, did you

00:13:24.940 not think that when you give these cave-dwelling Islamists weapons and money and whatever, that

00:13:30.480 that wouldn't just end in that moment when they defeat the Soviets, it actually will

00:13:36.000 create things down the line.

00:13:37.860 And you're messing with things perhaps that you don't understand well enough in a region

00:13:41.460 that's very old and very complicated.

00:13:44.160 And you're pushing buttons here that the results will show.

00:13:47.980 It's like, it's a completely different example, but we were talking about this other day.

00:13:51.740 Now, we've done interviews five years ago when we were completely different people.

00:13:55.300 We've changed over time that people now use against us to criticize us for something,

00:14:00.260 right?

00:14:00.840 I'm talking about that, but on a much bigger scale.

00:14:03.220 Absolutely.

00:14:03.500 And I would say that criticism is fair.

00:14:05.320 Yeah.

00:14:05.680 It's absolutely fair because you can see it play out in the headlines.

00:14:08.300 But the reality of it is that you don't know what the future holds.

00:14:12.420 There's this concept that we have in CIA called the cone of uncertainty.

00:14:15.440 And the cone of uncertainty is if you imagine like a party hat, like a birthday hat, those

00:14:21.080 cone conical hats, and you put it with a string that goes through it.

00:14:25.280 The string is the timeline.

00:14:26.980 And then the cone is here at the end.

00:14:29.280 You know exactly what happened in the past.

00:14:32.140 It's a very clear string of events.

00:14:34.660 And then there's this point where the string enters the conical hat.

00:14:37.460 Right there at that moment, you have high confidence of what the next moment, which is hidden inside

00:14:44.540 the cone, you have high confidence what that's going to look like.

00:14:47.120 But as you start looking further into the future, the cone of uncertainty gets bigger.

00:14:52.100 The string could completely change.

00:14:53.460 It could morph.

00:14:54.180 All sorts of unknowns could happen, right?

00:14:55.780 So when CIA or when U.S. policy or when any democracy makes a decision, they're looking

00:15:01.380 at that cone of uncertainty and they're looking forward seven days, 14 days, 30 days, 90 days,

00:15:06.940 a year, a presidential campaign cycle.

00:15:10.300 They're trying to find a reasonable period to look forward to so they can assess the likelihood

00:15:15.580 of what the future will look like.

00:15:17.140 But with every year that you have to look forward, the uncertainty gets more and more.

00:15:21.080 So it becomes a game of diminishing returns to start what if-ing.

00:15:27.020 Well, what if this and what if that?

00:15:28.400 You know what nobody was thinking about in 1988 when they were arming the Mujahideen?

00:15:33.260 Nobody was thinking, well, what if this group transforms into something called Al-Qaeda and

00:15:39.160 become Islamic extremists that somehow learn how to target the World Trade Center in the

00:15:46.700 United States in the financial capital of the world?

00:15:49.880 Nobody was thinking about that in 88.

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00:16:22.060 Well, that would be the criticism.

00:16:23.760 I guess that's what I'm trying to explore here, because I think the people who make that

00:16:27.920 criticism never think of the counterfactual, what would happen if we didn't give those

00:16:31.740 guys the guns.

00:16:32.360 And I think that's totally legitimate.

00:16:34.920 On the other hand, should the United States be running around the world giving guns to people

00:16:39.400 who are desperate to use them?

00:16:41.000 Now you're getting into, I think, a very interesting question.

00:16:44.560 Because when the United States makes their decisions, who do you think the primary concern

00:16:50.500 is with regard to blowback?

00:16:53.320 It's the United States.

00:16:54.680 How will this come back to bite us?

00:16:57.280 And what is our assessment on being able to counter whatever that threat is, known or

00:17:02.800 unknown, estimated, overestimated, or underestimated?

00:17:06.100 What is our likelihood of being able to combat that threat?

00:17:08.220 Versus what's not our problem, right?

00:17:12.220 If we arm a bunch of Taliban to fight Russia in the 80s, and they go rogue, and they transform

00:17:19.720 into some kind of extremist group that harasses Russia, or the UK, or France.

00:17:26.480 I mean, think about it.

00:17:27.240 Throughout the 80s and 90s, it wasn't the US, it wasn't the United States that Al-Qaeda

00:17:30.860 was targeting.

00:17:31.680 It was Paris.

00:17:33.080 It was London.

00:17:34.920 It was Turkey, right?

00:17:35.980 Thanks, mate.

00:17:36.340 But from an American point of view, when all you're focused on is American primacy, like,

00:17:42.440 I know we're friends, guys, but this is your mess.

00:17:44.780 But we'll come help you if you want to pay us, partner with us, or increase trade.

00:17:49.420 That's how American government officials think.

00:17:55.100 Because if we make a mess that somebody else has to clean up, guess what that means?

00:17:58.200 It means you're too busy cleaning up the mess to compete with us as a superpower.

00:18:01.920 And even better, if you're like the UAE, or the Saudis, or the Qataris, where you want

00:18:08.240 our weapons to clean up the mess that we made, that you now have to deal with.

00:18:13.020 Do you get what I'm saying?

00:18:13.880 Yes.

00:18:13.900 It's a capitalist market in politics, just as much as it is in economics.

00:18:17.840 And Andrew, how would the CIA change if someone like Trump came to power?

00:18:24.060 Because Trump is very much about withdrawing a little bit, not intervening, letting countries

00:18:30.420 essentially operate in a far more free way than someone like the Democrats and Biden.

00:18:37.520 Would that have a massive impact or not much at all?

00:18:42.040 Well, what I think is really interesting is that when we talk about a potential Trump

00:18:45.240 presidency, we have precedent to work from.

00:18:49.820 And we can never mistake a campaign promise with a presidential reality.

00:18:57.220 If Trump wins in 2024, there's a couple of things we can very likely expect.

00:19:03.600 We can expect a mass exodus from CIA.

00:19:06.540 More people will leave.

00:19:07.660 People have been leaving CIA in the highest numbers ever since his first presidency.

00:19:12.500 Why?

00:19:13.080 Because they have ideological differences with the president.

00:19:16.000 They don't want to gamble.

00:19:17.120 Young people, when I say young, I mean young careerists under the age of 35, they don't want

00:19:21.820 to gamble their 30-year government career on a White House that keeps flipping back and

00:19:27.600 forth between extremes.

00:19:28.780 They just don't want to do that.

00:19:29.900 Not when you can go to Google or Amazon and have a perfectly good 20-year career.

00:19:33.600 Right?

00:19:33.860 As a security expert or a threat assessor or who knows whatever else.

00:19:37.660 So there's more attrition than ever before coming out of CIA.

00:19:41.800 And not just CIA, but across the federal government.

00:19:44.920 So we know that Trump will, if he becomes president, we know that if he disagrees with

00:19:50.540 CIA, he'll just cut funding.

00:19:51.700 He'll stop using them.

00:19:52.520 Because he's already proven that he's happy to go to the commercial market to do what's

00:19:58.660 known as private intelligence.

00:20:00.040 Private intelligence was actually something that didn't really exist in the numbers that

00:20:04.040 it exists in now prior to 2016.

00:20:06.220 When Trump came into office and his own service, the CIA, spent all of its time and effort accusing

00:20:12.840 him of Russian collusion, he was just like, all right, guys, you're not hired.

00:20:17.140 I'm not going to work with you.

00:20:18.300 I'm picking a different plumber.

00:20:19.500 Why did they do that?

00:20:19.780 Andrew, why did they do that?

00:20:20.740 Because it's clearly not true, right?

00:20:22.940 I don't know that it's clearly not true.

00:20:24.400 It's very difficult to defend.

00:20:26.380 It's very difficult to prove.

00:20:28.280 And intelligence is not an art of proving things.

00:20:32.100 This is something that people don't understand.

00:20:33.860 Intelligence is an art of assessing what is unknown.

00:20:37.580 If something is known, it's a fact.

00:20:39.520 It's not intelligence.

00:20:41.080 Intelligence is always unknown.

00:20:43.580 It is a series of probabilities based on things that you don't know for sure.

00:20:48.060 When you have a fact, you turn it over to someone like FBI, law enforcement, right?

00:20:52.320 When you have a theory, it's intelligence.

00:20:55.140 So I think what happened with CIA was you had eight years of an Obama administration.

00:20:59.940 You had very deeply rooted careerists who were progressive, who were liberal politically.

00:21:05.820 And when Trump came into office, they didn't want to be part of some giant Russian operation.

00:21:12.120 There's still very much a cold war that goes on in the heads of people at CIA.

00:21:15.780 We don't want to lose to the Russians.

00:21:17.200 We don't want to lose to the Soviets.

00:21:19.180 I mean, we want to defeat them at all costs.

00:21:21.780 It's hard to break that mentality.

00:21:23.060 And the people who are in charge are people who have had a 20, 25, 30-year career, not

00:21:28.380 the people who are five years in, seven years in.

00:21:30.780 So if you had a 30-year career in 2016, that means that you started your career in the mid

00:21:36.560 to late 80s.

00:21:37.440 Can you be progressive and liberal and work for the CIA?

00:21:40.100 Aren't those two things mutually incompatible?

00:21:42.640 You would be shocked at what the construct is inside CIA.

00:21:46.220 There are lots of...

00:21:47.220 Because they hire so many young people, you have a lot of progressive ideas that come in

00:21:52.180 at the start.

00:21:53.640 Over time, those people, like most people, I would say, when you have real responsibility

00:21:59.300 or when you have real money, you start to vary away from your liberal roots and you start

00:22:04.020 to become more at least fiscally conservative, even if you still do believe in liberal causes.

00:22:10.300 So what happens is either liberals start at CIA and then become more center or center join

00:22:17.640 CIA and shifts more to the right or people that are fairly right join CIA and just love

00:22:23.440 life.

00:22:23.760 I really expected that to go somewhere else.

00:22:31.920 So let's say because the CIA have got a tough, tough job at the moment, the world is becoming

00:22:37.800 ever more unstable.

00:22:39.220 There's wars happening, proxy wars, etc.

00:22:42.220 So let's say what's happening with the Middle East.

00:22:44.420 What would the CIA's job be at the moment with the conflict that is happening with Israel and

00:22:51.240 I love this question because what CIA is doing, what we know they are doing from the headlines,

00:22:58.780 they should not fucking be doing.

00:23:01.260 Do you know who the lead negotiator is for the United States negotiating between Hamas and Israel?

00:23:07.380 CIA Director Burns.

00:23:09.740 Why is a CIA director, why is the head of the intelligence, the undercover covert intelligence

00:23:17.000 wing of the United States, why is he negotiating with what we accuse of, a terrorist group and

00:23:25.700 Israel's political party?

00:23:28.220 Why is he the interlocutor?

00:23:30.180 That's not a role for an intelligence officer.

00:23:33.120 That's a role for a diplomat.

00:23:34.920 That's a role for a statesman.

00:23:36.860 That is not a role for a career intelligence official, somebody whose job is to lie and steal

00:23:43.340 and cheat without getting caught.

00:23:45.580 It shows two things.

00:23:47.240 One, it shows how the United States views the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

00:23:53.080 It shows that the United States does not view it through a diplomatic lens.

00:23:57.580 Otherwise, they'd put a senior ambassador in there.

00:23:59.420 They'd put a statesman in there.

00:24:00.400 They'd put somebody from the president's cabinet in there.

00:24:02.620 You know where the diplomats are spending their time?

00:24:04.820 Saudi Arabia.

00:24:05.480 Because the United States knows that it has very real diplomatic needs in the Middle East

00:24:12.700 that it must maintain, and Israel's not one of those needs.

00:24:15.400 It knows that what Israel is, is a fucking mess that they created, that they exacerbated

00:24:21.460 early on, and that they need to clean up quietly.

00:24:23.740 And they're hoping that CIA Director Burns will help make that happen.

00:24:27.060 And what do you think is the agenda?

00:24:29.800 How does it get cleaned up, so to speak?

00:24:31.600 So, there is no good outcome.

00:24:35.760 There is no outcome that makes everybody happy.

00:24:37.760 But, CIA is not interested in making everybody happy.

00:24:40.140 The CIA is interested in making American primacy prevail.

00:24:44.320 So, what America wants is a two-party solution.

00:24:46.780 Or a two-state solution.

00:24:50.240 In what is currently known as the State of Israel.

00:24:52.600 That's what the United States wants.

00:24:53.580 They want a safe place for Palestinians.

00:24:55.680 They want a safe place for Israelis.

00:24:57.300 And then they want to be able to encourage relations between the Muslim and Arab world.

00:25:01.160 The Israeli world.

00:25:02.600 They want to increase trade.

00:25:04.060 They want to have the ability to deploy fucking airplanes and warships into the Middle East,

00:25:09.200 into friendly territory, when we fight China.

00:25:11.940 That's what they want.

00:25:13.220 That's what the United States cares about.

00:25:15.260 However they get there the fastest, that's what matters to them.

00:25:18.220 The reason that you have diplomats meeting in Saudi Arabia,

00:25:21.440 and spies meeting in Israel,

00:25:23.060 is because what you need to have,

00:25:24.880 is you need to have the Saudis and the Emiratis,

00:25:28.320 two of the leading groups in the Middle East,

00:25:30.980 accept Israel,

00:25:33.340 which requires Israel to accept Palestine.

00:25:37.160 That's the mess.

00:25:39.440 Interesting.

00:25:40.140 You think the United States is thinking five years beyond this point?

00:25:43.340 They're thinking two years beyond this point.

00:25:45.220 But to me that is,

00:25:46.560 look, and I accept it,

00:25:47.700 and as an analysis it makes sense.

00:25:50.160 I guess the question is,

00:25:51.340 how much of this is a cynical thing as well,

00:25:53.260 in that the UAE, Saudi Arabia,

00:25:55.980 have way more cash than Israel?

00:26:00.120 I understand what you're saying

00:26:01.920 when you ask how much of it is cynical, right?

00:26:03.920 Yeah.

00:26:04.360 It's not cynical if it's economic.

00:26:06.220 Cynical means that there's no real rational foundation for it.

00:26:09.820 The fact that there's real oil

00:26:13.100 in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia,

00:26:16.280 that's a very real issue.

00:26:17.840 The other thing to keep in mind is,

00:26:19.600 the United States is always trying to counter the Iranian threat.

00:26:21.800 Well, inside the Middle East,

00:26:25.280 Iran's primary enemy in the sphere of influence is Saudi Arabia.

00:26:30.280 So Saudi Arabia always wants to make sure

00:26:32.560 it contains the Iranian threat as well.

00:26:34.920 So you have Iran regionally

00:26:37.760 as a point of collaboration for the United States

00:26:42.600 and for Saudi Arabia and for UAE on top of that.

00:26:45.400 But then you have this Palestinian issue,

00:26:47.500 which is clearly a point of contention

00:26:48.900 and a long-time point of contention.

00:26:50.600 And as long as Hamas and Israel continue to be in conflict,

00:26:56.120 more specifically,

00:26:57.200 as long as Israel continues to kill Palestinians,

00:27:00.620 that's the real problem.

00:27:02.720 Nobody has a problem with Israel fighting Hamas.

00:27:05.680 What they have a problem with is Israel killing Palestinians

00:27:09.040 in the name of fighting Hamas.

00:27:11.520 So as long as that situation continues,

00:27:14.120 you have a UN that's turning against Israel.

00:27:17.980 You have the question of the International Criminal Court

00:27:21.000 pressing charges on Israel.

00:27:22.980 You have the United States,

00:27:24.480 who used to back Israel

00:27:26.540 and is now backing away from Israel.

00:27:29.360 The United States needs Israel

00:27:31.200 because Israel is one of the top three wealthiest countries

00:27:35.000 in the Asian subcontinent.

00:27:37.840 They have incredible trade and buying power

00:27:40.380 for our weapon systems,

00:27:41.580 our technology,

00:27:42.760 our security interests, right?

00:27:44.580 There's lots of reasons why the United States

00:27:46.480 wants and needs to continue being partnered with Israel,

00:27:49.480 but to do so in a way that distances them.

00:27:51.460 Let me ask you what is a horrible question,

00:27:53.920 but if we're talking about people

00:27:55.020 whose job it is to lie and steal

00:27:56.600 and do all of that for a living

00:27:57.900 and to do it well,

00:27:59.700 and it's purely about the interests of the United States,

00:28:02.460 why doesn't the United States

00:28:03.940 just let Israel destroy Gaza completely

00:28:06.760 and end this conflict forever?

00:28:09.460 There's a few reasons for that, right?

00:28:11.740 Reason number one is...

00:28:13.060 By the way, just for people watching,

00:28:14.100 I'm not advocating for that.

00:28:15.320 But if we're thinking with a cynical hat on,

00:28:18.200 that would be an approach

00:28:20.260 that people might look at it.

00:28:21.820 And you know what?

00:28:23.080 Again, I don't think that's a cynical hat.

00:28:25.540 We have a process at CIA

00:28:27.520 called the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, ACH,

00:28:30.960 the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses.

00:28:33.040 When you create competing hypotheses,

00:28:35.400 you basically start at the extremes.

00:28:37.560 So there are two extremes here.

00:28:39.420 Extreme number one,

00:28:40.800 just let Israel just kill everyone,

00:28:43.620 destroy everything,

00:28:45.000 start over from a clean slate.

00:28:46.500 However Netanyahu plays this thing out in his brain

00:28:49.120 when he's, you know, in his bathtub at night.

00:28:51.160 That's one option.

00:28:52.480 The other option is cut off all supports of Israel,

00:28:55.660 sweep in to support the Palestinians,

00:28:57.460 and bring every Muslim country along with you, right?

00:29:00.400 And just completely overthrow Israel.

00:29:02.680 Those are valid options on a spectrum of extremes.

00:29:07.740 So you can't just rule them out.

00:29:09.860 But when it comes to why we can't do that,

00:29:12.160 why the United States can't maintain its role

00:29:14.500 as the world's superpower by letting that happen?

00:29:17.980 You can't, we need the Middle East.

00:29:20.840 The United States needs the Middle East.

00:29:22.160 They need the oil from the Middle East.

00:29:23.440 They need the wealth from the Middle East.

00:29:24.640 The Middle East has become a financial hub

00:29:27.060 that competes with all the financial centers

00:29:29.020 in the United States.

00:29:29.860 So to ostracize Dubai and Riyadh and Abu Dhabi

00:29:33.800 is unacceptable.

00:29:35.040 Qatar, Bahrain,

00:29:36.180 the collegiate countries control so much wealth

00:29:39.600 and so much oil flow.

00:29:41.700 We would be shooting ourselves in the foot

00:29:44.120 like we did back in the 70s

00:29:45.720 if we try to ostracize

00:29:47.300 or minimize their priorities, their issues.

00:29:50.980 And we know that Palestine

00:29:52.520 is one of their top priorities.

00:29:54.360 Qatar, Saudi Arabia, all of them.

00:29:57.260 So we can't just let Israel

00:30:00.440 do whatever Israel wants to do

00:30:01.800 because to do that would cost us Jordan,

00:30:04.240 which is a huge strategic partner,

00:30:06.400 Muslim country in the region,

00:30:07.940 Saudi Arabia and UAE.

00:30:09.600 So how does this end?

00:30:12.460 Unfortunately, I think the way that this ends

00:30:14.300 is twofold.

00:30:16.240 So first, Netanyahu is not going to get what he wants.

00:30:20.100 He's not going to push out Hamas.

00:30:23.160 He's not going to push out the Palestinians.

00:30:25.400 Egypt is not going to accept that.

00:30:26.760 Jordan is not going to accept that.

00:30:28.120 There will be some sort of brokered ceasefire,

00:30:32.060 hopefully soon.

00:30:33.260 There will be a long-term truce that's created

00:30:37.660 and then there will continue to be a two-state solution.

00:30:40.040 No matter how much politicians in Israel don't want that,

00:30:44.260 that's what's going to happen.

00:30:45.900 That's what has to happen.

00:30:47.580 Through the eyes of everything that is democratic,

00:30:51.240 that's what must happen.

00:30:52.560 Where I'm hoping it will go is that countries in the West

00:30:57.680 and countries in the Gulf

00:30:59.320 will realize that the only way to keep this kind of violence

00:31:02.060 from continuing is to force Palestine and Israel

00:31:05.900 to have some sort of economic dependence on each other.

00:31:08.860 So whether that means you take the entire state of Israel

00:31:11.960 and literally cut it in half

00:31:13.300 instead of making it this weird, like, hodgepodge

00:31:16.640 of this part belongs to Palestine and this part...

00:31:21.080 Even if you talk to an Israeli,

00:31:22.700 none of it belongs to Palestine,

00:31:23.700 but they're allowed to live here

00:31:24.540 and they're allowed to live here and not in between.

00:31:27.280 I can see them literally cutting the entire state in half

00:31:29.700 and just enforcing that the two sides have to live together

00:31:33.480 and they have to have some sort of economic cooperation

00:31:35.900 because you need the economics

00:31:37.480 so that the Palestinians can become self-sufficient.

00:31:41.000 You've heard Biden talk about the right to self-determination.

00:31:46.140 For both the Israelis and the Palestinians,

00:31:48.460 you can't have self-determination

00:31:50.440 if you can't determine your own future.

00:31:53.640 And a big part of determining your own future

00:31:55.060 is having control of your own economy,

00:31:56.400 which the Palestinians have never had.

00:31:57.760 But the problem is, Andrew,

00:31:59.300 is we're kind of looking at it through this lens of,

00:32:02.340 you know, economics and whatever else.

00:32:05.200 And for the vast majority of governments,

00:32:06.920 I would say that makes sense.

00:32:09.280 But Hamas are extremists.

00:32:11.920 They do not want the state of Israel existing.

00:32:14.740 They're rabidly anti-Semitic.

00:32:16.340 So how can you negotiate with that type of government

00:32:20.500 who are Islamic fundamentalists?

00:32:23.520 I would argue that part of what you're repeating right now

00:32:27.660 is actually rhetoric and not fact, right?

00:32:30.140 So there is a fundamentalist element to Hamas,

00:32:34.400 but Hamas is also the legitimate elected government

00:32:37.680 in what was Gaza.

00:32:42.180 And even now in the West Bank,

00:32:44.140 you see an increasing rise of support for Hamas.

00:32:47.600 If you just look at the news,

00:32:50.460 October 8th, nobody trusted the numbers

00:32:52.780 that were coming out of Gaza

00:32:54.660 because they said that, you know,

00:32:57.520 tens of thousands of people were dying.

00:32:58.840 But this was reported by Hamas,

00:33:01.320 which is the currently recognized government of whatever, right?

00:33:04.500 They were always pulling out the idea

00:33:07.740 that Hamas was not a reliable source

00:33:09.180 because it was potentially a terrorist group.

00:33:11.700 Now you don't see any kind of verbiage like that.

00:33:14.880 Now you literally see Gaza officials say this,

00:33:18.260 Gaza officials say that.

00:33:19.200 Well, the fucking Gaza officials are the same Gaza officials

00:33:22.000 they were on October 8th.

00:33:23.100 So what's changed?

00:33:24.760 What's changed is the rhetoric from the West.

00:33:27.900 And now after seeing that,

00:33:30.140 well, maybe Palestinians and Hamas as a ruling body,

00:33:35.100 maybe they actually do have support on the ground.

00:33:37.520 And oh, by the way, Israel has a split decision

00:33:40.240 about whether or not they support Netanyahu

00:33:42.040 and what he's doing in Palestine.

00:33:44.720 So you've got a huge shift in public opinion

00:33:47.760 on both the Palestinian and the Israeli side.

00:33:50.360 So being able to just jump in and say,

00:33:52.860 well, Hamas is an extremist organization

00:33:55.060 isn't 100% accurate.

00:33:57.200 They still have legitimate grounds to be there

00:34:00.580 because they have been policing and forcing,

00:34:04.640 maintaining health, safety,

00:34:05.920 and the movement of humanitarian goods.

00:34:08.760 I guess my pushback to that would be

00:34:10.980 just because a government is legitimate

00:34:13.360 does not mean it's not extremist.

00:34:15.320 So for example, in Venezuela,

00:34:16.800 they elected Hugo Chavez.

00:34:17.840 And I think most people,

00:34:19.760 apart from the not-so people on the left,

00:34:22.320 would agree that Chavez was an extreme figure

00:34:25.520 and he had extreme policies.

00:34:27.620 Again, it's in the eyes of the beholder, right?

00:34:31.000 So what would you call China being ruled by the CCP?

00:34:36.680 Are they extremist in their commitment to communism?

00:34:40.260 What would you call the United States

00:34:41.780 in our commitment to capitalism?

00:34:43.180 There's, and, you know, we, the United States,

00:34:46.560 we are deemed a terrorist organization by the Iranians

00:34:49.400 because of our extreme fundamentalism, right?

00:34:52.800 What would you call a state

00:34:54.260 where there is no division between church and state?

00:34:57.700 Because that's Israel.

00:34:59.960 Nobody calls that an extremist state.

00:35:02.780 So it's all in the eyes of the beholder

00:35:05.120 and how you define that.

00:35:06.260 Now here in the West,

00:35:07.180 we have over-labeled terrorism.

00:35:09.860 We call everything terrorism.

00:35:11.700 We call it terrorism because inside the United States,

00:35:14.580 once you label something as a terrorist organization,

00:35:17.740 all the rules and all the oversight

00:35:19.900 are much, like, they're relieved.

00:35:22.660 They're reduced.

00:35:23.660 So now it's faster to send troops.

00:35:25.420 It's faster to make money, go that direction.

00:35:27.300 It's faster to cut off and seize assets.

00:35:29.740 Like, you can do anything

00:35:30.540 once you call somebody a terrorist organization.

00:35:32.340 And that's why you see this back and forth,

00:35:34.280 even in legislation,

00:35:37.460 about what they call a terrorist organization

00:35:39.920 versus a functioning terrorist group

00:35:41.620 versus et cetera, et cetera.

00:35:43.760 So that being the case,

00:35:46.040 what do we do with Iran?

00:35:47.520 Because Iran seems to be

00:35:49.120 the major problem in this area.

00:35:51.320 You have, I think it's fair to say,

00:35:53.200 an extremist government

00:35:54.300 who have been funding terrorist groups.

00:35:57.760 So what do you do?

00:35:58.800 Do you let them continue to fund them?

00:36:02.020 Do you apply political pressure?

00:36:04.500 Do you introduce sanctions?

00:36:06.680 What do you do with Iran?

00:36:09.320 The question is so much bigger than Iran.

00:36:11.080 So I'm going to answer your question

00:36:13.440 with a second question, right?

00:36:15.800 Where did Iran develop this methodology?

00:36:19.400 The methodology of funding Hezbollah,

00:36:22.020 funding Hamas, right?

00:36:23.740 Funding insurgent groups in Iraq,

00:36:26.100 while simultaneously also making itself

00:36:28.700 indispensable in the Middle East,

00:36:30.860 because Iran is the breadbasket

00:36:32.160 of the Middle East.

00:36:32.800 You sit in UAE,

00:36:33.860 you sit in Saudi Arabia,

00:36:35.180 the headlines say,

00:36:36.920 Iran is evil, Iran is evil,

00:36:38.140 Iran is evil.

00:36:38.840 The produce shelves all say,

00:36:41.480 grown in Iran.

00:36:43.040 The food that feeds Saudi Arabia

00:36:45.480 comes from Iran.

00:36:46.400 The food that feeds UAE

00:36:47.760 comes from Iran.

00:36:48.740 So if you want to talk about complexity,

00:36:51.900 how do you label somebody a villain

00:36:54.020 when they are the ones

00:36:55.060 providing your food?

00:36:56.280 It's like the American Civil War.

00:36:58.100 All the industry happened in the North,

00:36:59.600 all the agriculture came from the South.

00:37:01.760 So I say that because Iran is modeling

00:37:03.960 a methodology called proxy wars.

00:37:06.320 They're using revenue

00:37:07.600 to fund extremist guerrilla groups

00:37:10.460 to execute their will in foreign countries.

00:37:12.440 They learned that from us.

00:37:13.780 That's exactly how the United States

00:37:15.080 executed operations

00:37:15.900 all through the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

00:37:18.020 That's still how we execute operations.

00:37:19.980 Oh, by the way,

00:37:20.620 China's doing the same thing,

00:37:21.620 Russia's doing the same thing,

00:37:22.540 Saudi's doing the same thing.

00:37:23.380 That is the state of the world right now

00:37:26.360 is proxy conflict.

00:37:27.720 It's what happened in Libya.

00:37:28.780 It's what happened in Syria.

00:37:29.880 It's what happened,

00:37:30.560 it's still happening in Yemen.

00:37:32.040 It's what's happening in Ukraine.

00:37:33.360 And you can see how

00:37:34.520 the same elements are present right now

00:37:36.160 in the conflict between Hamas and Israel.

00:37:37.820 So this is what I was going to ask you

00:37:39.360 because I'm not an expert on these things,

00:37:42.660 but just as an outside observer,

00:37:44.040 it feels to me like we're at a point

00:37:47.180 when the West has spent so much time

00:37:49.620 signaling weakness and division

00:37:51.240 and distraction and all of this stuff

00:37:52.940 that people can see with their own eyes,

00:37:54.500 especially foreign people

00:37:55.640 to whom, you know,

00:37:57.000 53 genders isn't a thing

00:37:58.720 that they take for granted.

00:37:59.760 They go like,

00:38:00.160 what the fuck is this?

00:38:01.100 Yeah, yeah.

00:38:01.680 So, and when I see Russia

00:38:05.280 feeling more confident

00:38:07.220 to expand and to fight that conflict,

00:38:10.900 when I see Iran more empowered

00:38:14.060 to do things in the Middle East,

00:38:16.000 when I see China

00:38:17.400 talking more aggressively about Taiwan,

00:38:19.120 I see the king of the hill

00:38:21.660 is weakened,

00:38:23.160 everybody senses it,

00:38:24.780 and now they're all coming for us.

00:38:26.380 Is that a fair analysis?

00:38:27.640 I don't think it's an unfair analysis.

00:38:29.320 I do think it's a bit

00:38:30.140 of an oversimplification.

00:38:31.400 Yeah, sure.

00:38:32.000 Because when we say king on the hill,

00:38:33.940 like generally what we're talking about

00:38:35.760 or what people might imagine

00:38:37.120 is the president of the United States,

00:38:38.720 which isn't necessarily how I think

00:38:40.660 we should look at this situation.

00:38:42.760 I meant the United States.

00:38:44.520 I agree with that.

00:38:45.500 So the United States is

00:38:46.520 the leader of the free world.

00:38:49.380 At least that's what we've been known as

00:38:50.800 for however many decades.

00:38:52.700 The problem that we're really seeing here

00:38:55.080 is that the West

00:38:56.180 has been introducing concepts

00:38:58.600 for the last few decades

00:39:00.360 that we have all accepted

00:39:03.420 and labeled as democratic ideals,

00:39:06.300 as the path to a functioning,

00:39:09.640 healthy society,

00:39:11.100 something that makes us strong

00:39:12.680 by democratizing as much as possible, right?

00:39:16.200 Let's have more people who vote

00:39:18.540 and more candidates to vote for

00:39:20.800 and more frequent elections.

00:39:22.640 And that's democracy.

00:39:24.020 And that's going to be successful.

00:39:25.660 The truth is democracy

00:39:26.680 in the American terms

00:39:28.520 is an experiment.

00:39:30.500 It's only a few hundred years old.

00:39:32.460 It's never been proven out.

00:39:34.500 You know what's lasted

00:39:35.540 for thousands of years?

00:39:37.520 Authoritarianism, right?

00:39:38.960 I mean, look at the United Kingdom

00:39:40.580 has proven that monarchy

00:39:41.720 can last for centuries.

00:39:45.220 The United States is still an experiment, right?

00:39:47.440 We are still very much

00:39:48.680 in our middle school years.

00:39:50.160 And middle school wasn't very much fun for me.

00:39:51.660 I don't know what they call it.

00:39:52.540 I don't know what they call it in Europe.

00:39:54.260 But what I'm saying is that

00:39:55.980 what we're seeing is that

00:39:57.620 the United States

00:39:58.240 and this great democracy,

00:39:59.780 this great democratic experiment,

00:40:01.060 hasn't evolved

00:40:02.300 in the last 30 or 40 years.

00:40:04.740 If anything,

00:40:05.180 what it's done

00:40:06.160 is it's rooted itself

00:40:08.720 in idealism

00:40:10.400 that isn't actually healthy.

00:40:13.300 And now authoritarian regimes

00:40:15.260 are developing

00:40:16.560 and evolving faster,

00:40:18.200 growing faster.

00:40:18.940 You see more and more countries

00:40:19.820 ever than,

00:40:20.640 you see more countries

00:40:21.420 than ever before

00:40:21.940 opting for

00:40:23.300 authoritarian rulers,

00:40:25.800 strongman rulers,

00:40:27.100 or ultranationalist rulers.

00:40:29.480 Look at Germany.

00:40:30.120 Look at Italy.

00:40:30.960 Look at what President

00:40:31.980 Macron in France

00:40:35.240 just announced this week

00:40:36.860 that the Europe we know

00:40:38.840 could die.

00:40:39.940 It could go away.

00:40:42.340 We have to be clear

00:40:43.720 about the fact

00:40:44.460 that our Europe today

00:40:45.780 is mortal.

00:40:46.780 It could die.

00:40:50.080 It could die.

00:40:52.200 And that depends solely

00:40:53.280 on our choices.

00:40:54.920 It could die.

00:40:56.100 It could go away.

00:40:57.440 Meaning,

00:40:58.360 the idea of a democratic

00:40:59.900 continent

00:41:01.980 where multiple states

00:41:03.200 agree to work together

00:41:04.560 could go away

00:41:05.820 in favor of

00:41:06.720 multi-centered

00:41:08.560 nationalist nations,

00:41:09.640 which is exactly

00:41:10.720 what Trump represents,

00:41:11.820 exactly what Netanyahu represents.

00:41:14.260 And that's to,

00:41:15.680 and that's what

00:41:16.400 the primary threat

00:41:17.460 is in France

00:41:18.280 to win the elections

00:41:19.240 this year in France.

00:41:20.360 I guess what I'm getting at

00:41:22.040 is the broad,

00:41:23.100 I know you said

00:41:23.720 it's an obvious simplification.

00:41:24.740 I'm sure that's true.

00:41:25.960 The broader sense

00:41:27.140 of the West

00:41:28.680 is weakened

00:41:29.620 one way or another

00:41:30.420 for whatever reason

00:41:31.160 and other people

00:41:32.060 smell that

00:41:33.100 and they're using that

00:41:35.320 to their own advantage

00:41:36.680 as they should.

00:41:37.860 Is that what's happening?

00:41:38.940 I would say

00:41:39.700 I hesitate to use

00:41:41.880 the words weak

00:41:42.980 because I don't want to say

00:41:43.820 that the West weakened.

00:41:44.960 What I want to say

00:41:45.600 is that the West

00:41:46.340 hasn't evolved.

00:41:47.720 Right?

00:41:48.160 It's the difference

00:41:48.860 between

00:41:49.620 pitting a 22-year-old athlete

00:41:53.720 against a 42-year-old athlete.

00:41:55.980 Right?

00:41:57.380 The 22-year-old athlete

00:41:58.540 heals faster,

00:42:00.220 has more modern

00:42:01.420 training alternatives,

00:42:03.000 has, you know,

00:42:03.840 been in better gyms

00:42:06.000 with better coaches

00:42:06.820 with all optimized

00:42:08.700 modern society

00:42:09.440 for the last eight years.

00:42:10.820 The 42-year-old athlete

00:42:12.320 has had the same access

00:42:13.760 to those tools

00:42:14.540 but is dealing

00:42:15.460 with a 42-year-old body

00:42:16.940 and all the life changes,

00:42:18.860 the hormone changes

00:42:19.620 that come at 42,

00:42:20.500 the life changes,

00:42:21.200 the responsibilities,

00:42:22.000 et cetera, et cetera.

00:42:22.840 So you just,

00:42:23.620 nobody would think

00:42:24.240 about pitting a 42-year-old

00:42:25.300 against a 22-year-old

00:42:26.180 and betting on one

00:42:27.900 or the other

00:42:28.260 to win or lose

00:42:29.000 in a foot race.

00:42:30.160 Well, in the United States,

00:42:31.220 we've been focusing

00:42:32.240 on our 42-year-old athletes

00:42:33.520 instead of finding a way

00:42:35.080 to constantly reinvent ourselves

00:42:36.680 and bring up

00:42:37.720 our 22-year-old athletes,

00:42:38.900 which is why we're looking

00:42:39.720 at two presidential candidates

00:42:40.760 who are both fucking ancient.

00:42:42.820 How does that happen?

00:42:44.280 Right?

00:42:44.560 And how many people

00:42:45.460 in our House

00:42:45.940 and in our Senate

00:42:47.500 and in our Congress

00:42:48.980 are five,

00:42:51.280 four or five,

00:42:52.140 six term people?

00:42:53.100 Like, we are not

00:42:54.840 investing in our future.

00:42:55.740 We are and have always been

00:42:57.280 as the United States

00:42:57.880 a revolutionary group.

00:42:59.440 We still literally

00:43:00.700 pat ourselves on the back

00:43:01.780 for winning independence

00:43:02.500 from you fuckers.

00:43:03.920 Right?

00:43:05.020 And look at what we've done.

00:43:06.080 We talk about it,

00:43:07.280 but we don't actually

00:43:08.360 implement it.

00:43:10.000 And the rest of the world

00:43:11.200 is leaning into

00:43:12.900 their advantages

00:43:13.540 in authoritarian regimes

00:43:15.040 and autocracies.

00:43:16.460 I'm glad you mentioned that

00:43:18.520 because one of the things

00:43:20.040 that people talk about,

00:43:21.080 particularly in our space,

00:43:22.160 and I'd love to ask you

00:43:23.160 and I'd love to ask you

00:43:24.200 this question,

00:43:24.720 which is,

00:43:25.540 they talk about the threat

00:43:26.740 from China,

00:43:28.120 particularly when it comes

00:43:29.640 to Taiwan.

00:43:31.340 Do you see China

00:43:32.500 as this massive threat

00:43:33.940 to the West,

00:43:35.600 a massive threat

00:43:36.380 to stability?

00:43:38.440 Or do you think

00:43:39.340 we're overstating it

00:43:40.580 and we're creating

00:43:41.160 a bogeyman out of China?

00:43:42.980 No, I think China poses

00:43:44.100 the most real threat

00:43:45.000 that exists.

00:43:45.580 And that's not just me.

00:43:46.680 That's actual

00:43:47.460 written assessment

00:43:48.360 from across

00:43:49.400 the United States

00:43:50.760 military intelligence

00:43:52.700 community

00:43:53.180 and policy network,

00:43:54.320 right?

00:43:54.500 Everybody views China

00:43:56.000 in the United States.

00:43:56.740 Everybody views China

00:43:57.400 as the next great threat.

00:43:59.040 And it's a great threat

00:44:00.180 not necessarily

00:44:00.820 because of missiles

00:44:02.000 and guns

00:44:02.400 and aircraft carriers.

00:44:03.300 It's because

00:44:03.860 of its economic power.

00:44:05.880 In the United States,

00:44:07.040 we have enjoyed

00:44:08.180 being the prime

00:44:09.720 economic superpower

00:44:10.760 for decades.

00:44:12.880 Nobody's even close.

00:44:14.780 Meanwhile,

00:44:15.060 in the top five or so,

00:44:17.240 China has slowly been

00:44:18.680 climbing up the ladder.

00:44:20.380 Japan used to be

00:44:21.040 number two,

00:44:21.520 now China's number two,

00:44:22.460 right?

00:44:22.640 So if you can imagine,

00:44:24.240 the gap between

00:44:25.400 first place and second place

00:44:26.640 is getting smaller

00:44:27.760 every year.

00:44:29.000 Well,

00:44:29.780 whenever you're

00:44:30.680 the first place person

00:44:31.620 in a race

00:44:32.120 and second place

00:44:33.040 starts to catch up,

00:44:34.260 you start to psych yourself out.

00:44:36.280 You start to wonder,

00:44:37.420 can I keep this up?

00:44:38.920 And then the rest of the world

00:44:40.280 is watching

00:44:40.860 even more intently

00:44:42.020 because somebody might

00:44:43.560 be the new number one.

00:44:45.440 And that just gives them

00:44:46.440 more opportunity,

00:44:47.400 more advantage.

00:44:48.000 And even if,

00:44:48.700 even if at the end of the year,

00:44:49.700 at the end of the race,

00:44:50.560 you're still first place

00:44:51.460 and they're still second place,

00:44:52.380 but they got closer to winning,

00:44:54.400 they have more opportunities,

00:44:55.860 you have less opportunities.

00:44:57.000 They have more friends,

00:44:57.980 you have less friends,

00:44:59.380 right?

00:44:59.660 That's the,

00:45:00.140 the nature of competition.

00:45:02.940 The reason China's a threat

00:45:04.340 is because they're catching up

00:45:05.780 economically.

00:45:06.740 They're catching up

00:45:07.620 in terms of global influence.

00:45:09.020 Yes,

00:45:09.220 they're also catching up

00:45:10.020 militarily,

00:45:10.580 et cetera,

00:45:10.860 et cetera.

00:45:11.320 The Taiwan issue

00:45:12.500 is really just

00:45:14.100 an indicator

00:45:14.940 along the path

00:45:16.580 of how far ahead

00:45:19.480 the United States really is.

00:45:20.520 Because if China finds a way

00:45:21.980 to take Taiwan,

00:45:22.720 and I believe they will,

00:45:23.560 I believe they will find a way

00:45:24.720 to take Taiwan,

00:45:25.860 whether it be administratively,

00:45:27.200 militarily,

00:45:27.820 or,

00:45:28.020 or socially,

00:45:29.160 right?

00:45:29.320 In many ways,

00:45:30.020 they made their first move

00:45:31.020 in January of this year

00:45:32.020 because the,

00:45:33.260 the KMT,

00:45:34.860 like China Unification Group,

00:45:36.520 is who controls

00:45:38.060 their Congress.

00:45:39.480 Who controls

00:45:40.140 Taiwan's Congress.

00:45:41.480 After the elections.

00:45:42.780 Yeah.

00:45:43.020 All of that came about

00:45:43.880 as a result of a massive

00:45:44.860 influence campaign

00:45:45.640 from mainland China

00:45:46.500 that started,

00:45:47.040 that started well before October,

00:45:48.500 but was heavily reported

00:45:49.540 on in October.

00:45:50.400 So even though people

00:45:51.480 celebrated the fact

00:45:52.360 that it was a,

00:45:53.020 a pro-independence

00:45:55.240 president,

00:45:56.260 the whole fucking Congress

00:45:57.800 is pro-China.

00:45:59.820 Imagine,

00:46:00.880 like,

00:46:01.160 what does that tell you

00:46:01.700 about the country?

00:46:02.220 That country is split two.

00:46:03.960 Right?

00:46:04.520 The control

00:46:05.200 of the day-to-day legislation

00:46:06.880 wants unification.

00:46:08.680 The control

00:46:09.400 of the executive

00:46:10.300 wants pro-independence.

00:46:12.800 That doesn't sound

00:46:13.820 like a Taiwan

00:46:14.420 that has made up

00:46:15.220 its mind yet.

00:46:15.980 But in the West,

00:46:16.660 all we hear about

00:46:17.320 is the pro-independence

00:46:18.780 and,

00:46:19.000 and,

00:46:19.700 and Taiwan making

00:46:20.700 closer ties

00:46:21.340 to the United States.

00:46:22.320 The reason that we have

00:46:23.880 a CHIPS Act

00:46:24.660 in the United States,

00:46:25.620 the reason that we're

00:46:26.280 bringing chip production

00:46:27.260 domestic,

00:46:27.940 is because

00:46:28.420 we think that Taiwan's

00:46:30.760 going to remain independent?

00:46:32.140 No.

00:46:32.460 We're hedging our bets

00:46:33.300 against it.

00:46:34.140 And that's,

00:46:35.000 and the reason that Taiwan

00:46:36.260 is building more,

00:46:38.420 or TSMC is building

00:46:39.520 more plants

00:46:40.040 in other countries

00:46:40.680 is because they know.

00:46:42.100 It's just a matter of time.

00:46:44.220 Do you think

00:46:44.600 the American global empire

00:46:46.000 is overextended?

00:46:48.500 I don't know

00:46:49.240 that it's overextended

00:46:50.040 as much as I think

00:46:50.800 that it was a functioning,

00:46:52.080 successful model

00:46:52.820 that other people

00:46:53.480 are replicating.

00:46:54.640 Right?

00:46:55.540 And that's,

00:46:56.140 that is,

00:46:57.700 coming out of World War II,

00:46:59.740 the United States

00:47:00.320 had a few advantages.

00:47:01.100 One,

00:47:02.220 if you recall,

00:47:03.120 we were suffering

00:47:03.800 from a Great Depression,

00:47:05.140 an economic depression.

00:47:06.240 We were a poor,

00:47:07.140 broke country

00:47:07.860 in the 1930s.

00:47:09.960 Well,

00:47:10.560 what we discovered

00:47:11.780 is,

00:47:12.340 from World War II,

00:47:13.180 is that war

00:47:13.980 transforms your economy.

00:47:15.740 It makes everything

00:47:16.920 that was poor

00:47:17.980 and broke

00:47:18.520 and absent

00:47:19.380 be flush

00:47:21.040 and wealthy

00:47:21.520 and productive.

00:47:22.340 Same thing's

00:47:22.800 happening in Russia.

00:47:23.900 We've seized

00:47:24.880 Russian assets

00:47:25.720 and put international

00:47:26.900 sanctions on Russia,

00:47:27.780 and their country

00:47:29.180 grew 3.2%

00:47:30.100 in GDP this year.

00:47:31.500 The,

00:47:31.740 the currency

00:47:32.760 is stronger than ever.

00:47:33.800 The alliances

00:47:34.480 with China and India

00:47:35.420 are stronger than ever.

00:47:36.660 Vladimir Putin

00:47:37.340 looks stronger

00:47:38.360 than he's looked

00:47:38.740 in the last five

00:47:39.260 or seven years.

00:47:40.220 How did that happen?

00:47:41.340 Because wartime economies

00:47:42.940 are good things.

00:47:44.580 And we just

00:47:45.760 empowered Russia

00:47:46.700 the same way

00:47:47.600 that,

00:47:47.980 that Japan

00:47:48.820 empowered us

00:47:49.540 by attacking us

00:47:50.180 in Pearl Harbor

00:47:50.780 in World War II.

00:47:53.100 But the model

00:47:53.760 coming out of

00:47:54.180 World War II

00:47:54.540 that the United States

00:47:55.140 had was that

00:47:56.140 everybody else

00:47:56.520 was fucking bombed.

00:47:58.580 Like,

00:47:58.760 infrastructure was

00:47:59.800 destroyed.

00:48:01.060 The UK,

00:48:02.000 Poland,

00:48:02.900 all throughout Europe,

00:48:04.760 Japan,

00:48:05.660 everybody needed

00:48:06.280 to be rebuilt

00:48:07.060 and reinvented.

00:48:08.720 So the United States

00:48:09.500 came in and said,

00:48:10.260 hey,

00:48:10.600 we can rebuild,

00:48:12.600 reinvent,

00:48:13.080 and give you guys loans.

00:48:14.220 So we basically

00:48:15.440 forced ourselves,

00:48:16.360 we thrust our policies,

00:48:18.100 our ideology,

00:48:19.040 and our currency

00:48:19.960 across the globe

00:48:21.780 because everybody else

00:48:22.720 had been fighting a war

00:48:23.780 for an extra five years

00:48:24.940 longer than we had.

00:48:26.740 That model worked

00:48:27.880 really well

00:48:28.240 because it made

00:48:28.520 everybody dependent

00:48:29.460 on the United States

00:48:30.400 throughout the 40s

00:48:31.260 and 50s.

00:48:32.300 Well,

00:48:32.520 then come by the 80s,

00:48:34.200 other countries

00:48:34.700 started to realize

00:48:35.320 how this worked.

00:48:36.560 And they started

00:48:37.120 to lay their own foundation,

00:48:38.920 China being chief among them.

00:48:40.180 And then come 2001,

00:48:41.780 what does the United States do?

00:48:43.000 We launch this massive campaign

00:48:44.640 against terrorism,

00:48:46.180 focusing all of our efforts

00:48:47.360 and all of our energy

00:48:48.180 into the Middle East.

00:48:49.480 Guess who didn't fight

00:48:50.140 in the war on terror?

00:48:51.780 China.

00:48:52.680 They just continued

00:48:53.680 to build the same model

00:48:55.140 that they had learned

00:48:55.780 from us coming out

00:48:56.500 of World War II.

00:48:57.420 So they're not trying

00:48:59.100 to go to war

00:48:59.720 with the United States

00:49:00.580 because they know

00:49:01.500 from Chinese methodology,

00:49:03.260 Chinese strategic discipline,

00:49:05.280 it's all written

00:49:06.160 in the art of war.

00:49:07.680 You don't have to fight

00:49:08.840 and kill your opponent

00:49:09.800 if you can starve

00:49:10.980 your opponent,

00:49:11.820 if you can out-farm

00:49:12.940 your opponent,

00:49:13.580 if you can make

00:49:14.180 all of your opponent's friends

00:49:15.700 your friends

00:49:16.620 and isolate your opponent.

00:49:18.320 That's the same thing

00:49:19.080 as winning

00:49:19.420 without a single fire,

00:49:20.560 a shot being fired.

00:49:22.180 And that's why

00:49:23.100 the Chinese are investing

00:49:24.300 so much in working

00:49:25.280 in Africa

00:49:26.280 and different African countries

00:49:27.820 with the mining

00:49:28.580 and also in South America.

00:49:30.880 So they're trying

00:49:31.600 to get their fingers

00:49:32.820 in as many different parts

00:49:34.100 as possible

00:49:34.580 in order to enrich themselves.

00:49:35.920 Correct.

00:49:36.180 And it's working, right?

00:49:37.100 If you look at the BRICS,

00:49:38.560 the BRICS trading block,

00:49:39.560 it used to just be

00:49:40.160 the BRICS trading block

00:49:41.560 with four partners.

00:49:43.160 So just who are the partners,

00:49:44.560 just if people don't know?

00:49:45.580 Absolutely.

00:49:46.180 So BRICS started as BRIC,

00:49:49.500 Brazil, Russia, India, China

00:49:51.020 as a economic trading block.

00:49:53.060 South Africa joined

00:49:53.980 in I think 2010-ish.

00:49:55.820 That five-person group

00:49:57.080 has grown again

00:49:58.280 as of January this year

00:49:59.760 with four new countries.

00:50:02.100 Saudi Arabia,

00:50:03.580 I'm sorry,

00:50:04.280 not Saudi Arabia yet.

00:50:05.140 They're still undecided.

00:50:06.400 The UAE,

00:50:07.440 Ethiopia,

00:50:08.500 Argentina dropped out.

00:50:09.720 Uruguay, I think, joined.

00:50:13.840 And there's another country

00:50:14.720 that's escaping me.

00:50:15.820 So the BRICS is growing

00:50:17.240 in terms of volume and mass.

00:50:19.360 The leading country

00:50:20.480 in the BRICS organization

00:50:21.720 is China.

00:50:23.220 They control like 70%

00:50:24.840 of all the GDP

00:50:25.820 that is accounted for

00:50:26.980 in the BRICS.

00:50:27.520 Very similar to how

00:50:28.280 the United States

00:50:28.760 controls the vast majority

00:50:29.660 in the G7 countries.

00:50:31.240 So here you literally have

00:50:32.500 what is essentially

00:50:33.340 a democratic trading organization,

00:50:36.820 the G7,

00:50:37.300 and a less democratic,

00:50:41.540 I wouldn't say authoritarian,

00:50:43.120 but I would say

00:50:43.820 functioning pragmatist

00:50:46.340 trading block

00:50:47.080 that involves

00:50:48.320 everybody who's our enemy

00:50:49.600 plus a few people

00:50:50.660 who are actually our friends.

00:50:52.300 Right?

00:50:52.960 That economic disparity,

00:50:55.340 that investment

00:50:56.720 of effort and money

00:50:58.020 really goes to show you

00:50:59.860 what the world thinks

00:51:01.320 about where the future lies

00:51:02.780 in terms of economic power

00:51:04.080 and development.

00:51:05.880 We tell people,

00:51:07.300 you can't get our money

00:51:08.240 unless you play our way.

00:51:10.160 China says,

00:51:11.040 you can do trade with us

00:51:12.560 and we won't ever

00:51:13.400 get in your knickers

00:51:14.100 as long as you trade

00:51:15.240 in yuan.

00:51:16.340 Well, this is what

00:51:17.200 I was going to ask you.

00:51:18.180 Do you think,

00:51:18.880 you mentioned the word

00:51:19.580 idealism earlier,

00:51:21.760 and it definitely

00:51:22.640 seems this way to me.

00:51:24.040 Like,

00:51:24.700 the Western world

00:51:25.560 goes around lecturing

00:51:26.880 everybody about

00:51:27.720 how they're supposed

00:51:28.400 to do this

00:51:29.180 and do that

00:51:29.960 and you're supposed

00:51:30.660 to have this attitude

00:51:32.100 to LGBTQI.

00:51:33.900 Like,

00:51:34.420 we had the World Cup

00:51:35.280 in Qatar

00:51:35.740 and all we saw

00:51:36.520 on our TV screens

00:51:37.560 is like,

00:51:38.480 you know,

00:51:39.060 the human rights.

00:51:40.080 Like,

00:51:40.280 I'm not saying

00:51:40.680 those things don't matter.

00:51:42.040 I'm just saying

00:51:42.740 when you come

00:51:43.420 to other people's homes

00:51:44.340 and you start telling them

00:51:45.280 how to live their lives,

00:51:47.420 most people are not

00:51:48.400 going to react well to that.

00:51:49.640 So if you've got

00:51:50.300 someone else

00:51:50.960 who comes in

00:51:51.540 and says,

00:51:51.900 oh,

00:51:52.020 it's great doing business

00:51:52.900 with you,

00:51:53.240 I'm a big fan,

00:51:54.020 let's sit down

00:51:54.760 and have a cigar,

00:51:56.240 who are you going

00:51:56.900 to be friends with?

00:51:57.520 Right.

00:51:57.980 Exactly.

00:51:58.340 So do you think

00:51:59.420 our idealism,

00:52:01.040 the idea

00:52:03.180 that our world view

00:52:05.600 and our ideologies

00:52:06.620 takes primacy

00:52:08.100 over economics,

00:52:09.120 over military alliance,

00:52:10.100 over everything

00:52:10.800 is causing us

00:52:13.160 to lose friends

00:52:13.980 in the world?

00:52:14.680 In many ways,

00:52:15.580 our ideology

00:52:17.180 has caught,

00:52:17.700 our adherence

00:52:19.080 and forced ideology

00:52:21.040 on others

00:52:21.760 is causing us

00:52:22.980 to lose influence

00:52:23.900 in the world.

00:52:24.540 Absolutely.

00:52:25.660 You can't,

00:52:26.160 I mean,

00:52:26.500 just think about it

00:52:27.220 in terms of person

00:52:28.000 and a person.

00:52:28.640 You can't go

00:52:29.380 to your friend's house

00:52:30.460 and if you're Christian

00:52:32.000 and they're Muslim,

00:52:33.240 you can't come

00:52:33.780 to their house

00:52:34.460 and then tell them,

00:52:35.560 well,

00:52:35.720 you have to cook me

00:52:36.540 Christian food,

00:52:37.420 you have to put up crosses,

00:52:38.460 you have to do this,

00:52:39.120 you have to do all these things.

00:52:39.820 Where's my bacon sandwich?

00:52:41.140 Yeah.

00:52:41.480 In order to make me happy.

00:52:42.580 How dare you?

00:52:43.360 Right?

00:52:43.620 You can't do that.

00:52:44.380 Yeah.

00:52:44.640 If you intend

00:52:45.280 to keep them

00:52:45.800 as your friend.

00:52:46.440 Right.

00:52:47.040 Now,

00:52:47.520 when they're,

00:52:48.360 when they're dependent

00:52:49.540 on you

00:52:50.180 because you're

00:52:51.640 the landlord

00:52:52.260 and they pay you rent

00:52:54.000 and you're the one

00:52:55.280 that provides them

00:52:55.900 the groceries

00:52:56.360 and you're the one

00:52:56.940 that provides them

00:52:57.600 the heat

00:52:57.920 and you can turn off

00:52:58.600 their electricity

00:52:59.020 at a button press,

00:53:00.060 when you go to their house,

00:53:01.040 guess what they do?

00:53:01.640 They make you

00:53:02.020 some fucking bacon.

00:53:03.040 Right?

00:53:03.580 But that's...

00:53:04.100 They're going to be resentful.

00:53:05.560 They're going to be bitter.

00:53:06.620 They're going to hate you.

00:53:07.560 And when someone comes along

00:53:08.820 who's going to give them

00:53:09.740 the light and heat

00:53:10.700 and the groceries

00:53:11.380 without being forced

00:53:13.620 to make them bacon,

00:53:15.200 who are they going to pick?

00:53:16.100 Right.

00:53:16.380 And that's what we're

00:53:16.920 seeing right now.

00:53:17.600 We're seeing the world,

00:53:19.140 when I say the world,

00:53:20.280 we're seeing all

00:53:20.860 the developing countries

00:53:22.080 start to realize

00:53:23.560 they have options.

00:53:25.200 That option,

00:53:26.300 the fact that they even

00:53:27.100 have options

00:53:27.820 is exactly why

00:53:29.400 China is a threat.

00:53:30.820 Without China,

00:53:31.780 they would not have

00:53:32.600 options still.

00:53:33.920 Their only option

00:53:34.820 would be the United States.

00:53:36.120 That's how our whole

00:53:37.160 economy was built,

00:53:38.480 to make sure nobody else

00:53:39.620 had anybody else

00:53:40.760 they would ever choose.

00:53:42.080 Now, there's options.

00:53:43.700 And we are too busy

00:53:45.320 fighting over

00:53:46.360 who's going to be

00:53:46.740 the next president,

00:53:47.780 labeling genders,

00:53:48.740 changing the definition

00:53:50.900 of anti-Semitism

00:53:52.240 so that our college

00:53:53.460 and university students

00:53:54.460 can go to jail.

00:53:55.420 That's what we're doing.

00:53:57.760 That's not what the world

00:53:58.960 needs right now.

00:53:59.600 So that's what I'm hearing

00:54:00.820 out of what you're saying

00:54:02.360 is really the way

00:54:03.920 for the West to,

00:54:05.180 if we actually cared

00:54:06.180 about the values

00:54:06.900 of human rights

00:54:07.780 and all of that,

00:54:09.120 what we would do

00:54:09.860 is instead of lecturing

00:54:10.720 other people,

00:54:11.600 we would get our shit together

00:54:12.900 and make sure that

00:54:14.220 we were working

00:54:15.520 with other countries

00:54:16.520 in the world

00:54:17.120 in a way

00:54:17.700 that was respectful

00:54:18.960 of their cultures,

00:54:19.660 even if we disagree with them,

00:54:21.340 so that we have

00:54:22.140 more influence in the world

00:54:23.240 so that our values

00:54:24.660 remain the predominant values,

00:54:26.800 broadly speaking,

00:54:27.720 in the world.

00:54:28.560 Because, like,

00:54:29.820 every fucking time

00:54:30.640 a U.S. president

00:54:31.440 goes to any country,

00:54:32.760 it's always about,

00:54:33.800 is she going to ask them

00:54:34.840 about their human,

00:54:35.820 you know?

00:54:36.240 And it's like,

00:54:38.200 people don't take well

00:54:40.260 to being lectured

00:54:41.820 about how to run

00:54:42.580 their own household.

00:54:44.440 No one does.

00:54:45.520 So, how do we,

00:54:47.120 how do you see

00:54:48.220 a way for the West

00:54:49.380 to, like,

00:54:50.380 A, realize this

00:54:51.340 and B, start acting

00:54:52.660 in a way that is actually

00:54:53.860 coming back to the point

00:54:55.040 right at the beginning

00:54:55.760 in our own

00:54:57.060 fucking self-interest?

00:54:59.980 I don't think

00:55:00.760 that we have,

00:55:01.780 we've lost our opportunity

00:55:02.980 to change it quickly.

00:55:04.520 Right now,

00:55:05.180 we're at a position

00:55:05.640 where the only way

00:55:06.400 to turn this ship around

00:55:08.300 is to treat it

00:55:08.880 like an aircraft carrier.

00:55:09.880 We've got to turn it

00:55:10.600 slowly now.

00:55:12.780 And that's in part

00:55:13.900 because we've gambled

00:55:15.300 on the wrong horses

00:55:15.980 in multiple occasions.

00:55:17.160 We've made too many mistakes.

00:55:18.720 Think about our withdrawal

00:55:19.400 from Afghanistan.

00:55:20.460 Huge mistake.

00:55:21.640 Think about our,

00:55:22.280 our incredible support

00:55:23.180 for Ukraine out of the gates.

00:55:24.520 We, the American people,

00:55:26.140 according to the White House,

00:55:27.300 the American people believe

00:55:28.140 that the war in Ukraine

00:55:29.080 is a fight for democracy.

00:55:31.540 You can't change that overnight.

00:55:33.160 You can't suddenly change

00:55:34.380 your stance on,

00:55:35.500 well,

00:55:36.820 they're not democracy anymore.

00:55:38.520 You can't.

00:55:39.360 Even though there's

00:55:40.320 all the corruption

00:55:40.980 in Ukraine,

00:55:41.560 even though there's

00:55:41.880 all the valid points

00:55:43.340 that of mismanagement

00:55:45.400 in Ukraine,

00:55:46.200 of Ukraine partnering

00:55:47.140 with, you know,

00:55:48.260 some shady ass people

00:55:50.380 to fight against

00:55:51.800 the Russians, right?

00:55:53.120 Now that you've made

00:55:54.420 the narrative

00:55:55.300 that it's a fight

00:55:56.380 for democracy,

00:55:57.220 to turn that narrative

00:55:58.800 in a different direction

00:55:59.640 is going to take time.

00:56:00.480 Same thing is happening

00:56:01.080 in Israel.

00:56:01.980 To say that the,

00:56:02.880 that the Israelis

00:56:03.720 have the right

00:56:04.280 to take on Hamas

00:56:05.260 when there were

00:56:06.160 2,000 dead Israelis,

00:56:09.120 that was one thing.

00:56:10.140 It's very different now

00:56:11.360 with the same

00:56:12.620 2,000 dead Israelis

00:56:13.940 and 35,000 dead Palestinians.

00:56:16.700 The,

00:56:17.180 the world changes

00:56:18.220 and it's hard for us

00:56:19.180 to change our narrative.

00:56:20.600 So,

00:56:21.340 the way that we start

00:56:22.280 to work towards changing it,

00:56:23.480 in my opinion,

00:56:23.960 is to understand

00:56:24.540 that we need to basically

00:56:25.780 lick our wounds

00:56:26.480 for the next

00:56:27.000 two to four years,

00:56:28.680 get our shit straight,

00:56:29.920 actually play the game

00:56:30.980 that we try to portray

00:56:31.780 to other people,

00:56:33.020 and recognize

00:56:34.040 that we have to

00:56:35.180 become more pragmatic

00:56:36.160 and less ideological

00:56:37.300 about who we partner with.

00:56:39.620 President Biden

00:56:40.540 ran on a campaign promise

00:56:42.540 of bringing the pariah state

00:56:44.880 of Saudi Arabia

00:56:45.640 to justice.

00:56:48.420 Now,

00:56:49.180 he's in fucking

00:56:50.520 Saudi Arabia,

00:56:52.720 promising them

00:56:53.380 security guarantees

00:56:54.420 that the United States

00:56:55.700 will give Saudi Arabia

00:56:56.960 if they can help

00:56:58.060 broker a peace deal

00:56:59.700 between Hamas

00:57:00.600 and Israel.

00:57:01.760 How far from

00:57:03.060 our original goal

00:57:04.440 are we?

00:57:05.180 And all of that

00:57:06.000 started when Ukraine

00:57:07.000 was invaded by Russia.

00:57:08.440 He went,

00:57:09.020 he cut off Russian oil,

00:57:10.760 cut off sanctions

00:57:11.800 to Russia,

00:57:12.600 and then had to go

00:57:13.560 to the prince of Saudi

00:57:14.640 to say,

00:57:15.140 hey guys,

00:57:15.800 we need you to produce

00:57:17.000 more oil

00:57:17.520 but not charge more money.

00:57:19.300 Like,

00:57:20.120 to be fair,

00:57:20.600 he doesn't remember

00:57:21.160 what he said last week,

00:57:22.340 mate,

00:57:22.640 so that is going

00:57:24.140 to be a problem for him.

00:57:25.220 There's one thing

00:57:25.760 that I wanted to touch

00:57:26.540 on briefly

00:57:27.060 where you said

00:57:27.780 that Saudi Arabia

00:57:29.220 are,

00:57:30.460 you know,

00:57:31.440 undecided about

00:57:32.360 whether to join BRICS.

00:57:33.820 If Saudi join BRICS,

00:57:35.640 that's huge,

00:57:36.360 isn't it?

00:57:36.580 That changes the world

00:57:37.480 entirely.

00:57:38.320 It does.

00:57:38.640 It's really interesting

00:57:39.340 because if Saudi

00:57:40.320 joins BRICS,

00:57:41.080 so the Emiratis

00:57:42.320 did join BRICS

00:57:43.460 and that went

00:57:44.840 unnoticed

00:57:45.640 by most of the

00:57:46.460 Western world

00:57:47.060 except for the people

00:57:47.900 who were actually

00:57:48.500 watching economic

00:57:49.660 interests in the

00:57:50.680 Gulf states.

00:57:51.300 That's a big deal.

00:57:52.840 One of the BRICS members,

00:57:53.980 the new members,

00:57:54.400 is Iran.

00:57:55.060 That was the fifth

00:57:55.620 member I didn't remember,

00:57:56.780 right?

00:57:57.100 Iran is a member

00:57:57.900 of the BRICS

00:57:58.420 trading block.

00:57:59.180 So now the UAE

00:58:00.300 and Iran

00:58:01.500 are part of the

00:58:02.020 same trading block.

00:58:03.240 That means you can

00:58:03.700 be enemies

00:58:04.220 and in the same

00:58:05.280 trading block.

00:58:07.140 Saudi Arabia...

00:58:08.060 Because you have

00:58:08.480 a common enemy.

00:58:09.400 You have a common

00:58:09.980 enemy and a common

00:58:10.840 motivator, right?

00:58:12.160 Trade is your

00:58:12.600 common motivator.

00:58:13.800 Your common enemy

00:58:14.380 is the ideological

00:58:16.120 expansion of the West

00:58:17.540 that threatens

00:58:18.540 to force you

00:58:20.260 to change

00:58:20.660 your own ideology.

00:58:22.560 So you've got

00:58:23.320 multiple competing

00:58:24.320 priorities here.

00:58:25.300 But if Saudi Arabia

00:58:26.780 joins the BRICS,

00:58:27.500 then you're exactly

00:58:28.020 right.

00:58:28.260 What you basically

00:58:28.740 have now is a group

00:58:30.100 where the wealth

00:58:31.320 just exponentially

00:58:32.240 increased.

00:58:32.840 The GDP,

00:58:33.880 the total buying

00:58:34.580 power,

00:58:35.840 again, it's a game

00:58:37.020 of economics.

00:58:37.680 So now if BRICS

00:58:38.660 starts trading in

00:58:39.840 yuan or renminbi,

00:58:41.520 the Chinese currency,

00:58:42.400 instead of in U.S.

00:58:43.320 dollars,

00:58:44.720 all of those U.S.

00:58:45.700 dollars that those

00:58:46.480 13 countries possess

00:58:48.000 go into the

00:58:49.180 marketplace.

00:58:49.620 Well, what happens

00:58:50.040 when you have a flood

00:58:50.820 of new currency

00:58:51.520 into the marketplace?

00:58:52.340 The value of the

00:58:52.980 currency goes down.

00:58:54.460 Meanwhile, they're

00:58:55.180 going to buy up a

00:58:55.920 bunch of Chinese

00:58:56.640 renminbi.

00:58:57.060 Well, what happens

00:58:57.740 when you buy a bunch

00:58:58.640 of currency and

00:58:59.140 take it off the

00:58:59.600 market?

00:59:00.320 The value goes up.

00:59:01.640 So now you've got

00:59:02.060 to drop a further

00:59:03.180 declining U.S.

00:59:04.520 dollar, a rising

00:59:05.800 pressure on the

00:59:06.520 renminbi.

00:59:07.280 The currency alone

00:59:08.380 tells you what the

00:59:09.480 economics of the

00:59:10.260 countries will look

00:59:10.820 like.

00:59:11.920 That's why it's such

00:59:12.660 a big deal if Saudi

00:59:13.420 Arabia joins BRICS.

00:59:15.020 Can we talk about

00:59:15.760 Ukraine a little bit?

00:59:16.540 I was interested

00:59:16.980 because just so that

00:59:18.960 you know, in the

00:59:20.580 original days of the

00:59:21.720 conflict, I was very

00:59:22.960 supportive of us

00:59:23.780 supporting the

00:59:24.340 Ukrainians with a

00:59:25.680 view to them

00:59:26.240 getting the best

00:59:26.860 deal possible, which

00:59:28.620 was what was always

00:59:29.720 going to happen,

00:59:30.340 right?

00:59:30.660 There was never a

00:59:31.240 question of Ukraine

00:59:32.060 winning, as in like

00:59:33.380 the fucking Ukrainian

00:59:34.320 flag flying over the

00:59:35.320 Kremlin.

00:59:35.660 That was never going

00:59:36.640 to happen.

00:59:37.480 But I thought that

00:59:38.400 first of all, I'm

00:59:40.980 curious to hear your

00:59:41.680 thoughts on why it's

00:59:42.460 not democracy, but

00:59:43.280 also I did see that

00:59:45.260 as an attack on the

00:59:46.280 Western bloc for the

00:59:49.020 reasons we've already

00:59:49.680 discussed, right?

00:59:50.400 So first of all, let's

00:59:52.820 talk about the

00:59:53.260 democracy part of it.

00:59:55.460 What's your take on

00:59:56.980 that?

00:59:57.420 So prior to the

00:59:58.760 invasion of Ukraine,

01:00:00.220 Ukraine was seen as a

01:00:01.900 struggling or developing

01:00:03.200 democracy at best.

01:00:04.500 It had a score of 4 out

01:00:05.360 of 10 on multiple

01:00:06.660 human rights watch

01:00:08.620 indexes.

01:00:09.300 So it was not a

01:00:10.320 functioning democracy.

01:00:11.660 It wasn't.

01:00:12.240 It was a developing or

01:00:13.420 transformative democracy

01:00:14.640 because it was still

01:00:15.640 very much corrupt.

01:00:17.840 It was still embedded

01:00:18.840 with Russia.

01:00:19.520 It was still practicing

01:00:20.860 active political

01:00:23.060 oppression, et cetera,

01:00:26.320 et cetera.

01:00:26.580 It was not what we in

01:00:28.340 the West, what you in

01:00:30.040 the UK, what we in the

01:00:31.140 United States, what any

01:00:32.020 of our G7 countries, it's

01:00:33.520 not what any of us would

01:00:34.380 determine to be a

01:00:35.740 democracy.

01:00:36.660 It was just a country

01:00:37.700 that was still on the

01:00:38.500 cusp of whether or not

01:00:39.320 it would accept.

01:00:40.780 Well, it was moving in

01:00:41.940 that direction, I would

01:00:42.920 say, right?

01:00:43.420 And if you look at the

01:00:44.280 region, it's kind of the

01:00:46.220 standout in that region

01:00:47.380 in terms of moving

01:00:48.380 towards democracy.

01:00:49.440 What other countries

01:00:50.260 that are former Soviet

01:00:51.080 Union countries, other

01:00:52.340 than Latvia, Estonia,

01:00:53.060 Lithuania, the recent

01:00:54.100 joint, like, what other

01:00:56.620 countries in that region

01:00:57.500 were moving in that

01:00:58.920 direction?

01:00:59.500 So it's not about being

01:01:01.340 comparative to me.

01:01:02.940 It's about the narrative

01:01:03.700 that was presented to the

01:01:05.440 entire, not just

01:01:06.620 Americans, all English

01:01:08.580 speaking countries were

01:01:09.420 given a narrative.

01:01:10.420 And that narrative was,

01:01:12.000 this place is a

01:01:12.480 democracy and we have to

01:01:13.460 protect that democracy.

01:01:14.400 That was false.

01:01:15.260 It's like someone who's

01:01:17.140 moving towards graduating

01:01:18.380 college is not a college

01:01:20.040 graduate.

01:01:20.840 That's fair.

01:01:21.260 Totally fair.

01:01:22.200 What I think I'm saying is

01:01:24.200 part of the reason that

01:01:25.940 Ukraine finds itself in

01:01:27.780 conflict with Russia, and

01:01:29.080 I've seen this, I have lots

01:01:30.080 of family in Ukraine,

01:01:30.860 whatever it is, since

01:01:31.780 1991, Ukraine repeatedly

01:01:34.080 has made the conscious

01:01:35.080 choice to move in a more

01:01:36.280 westward direction.

01:01:37.320 Right.

01:01:37.480 And that's why it's partly

01:01:39.600 why it's being attacked.

01:01:41.240 So it may, you're probably

01:01:43.960 right to say it's not, you're

01:01:45.940 not probably right, you're

01:01:46.600 100% right, it's not a

01:01:47.720 democracy like the UK, the

01:01:48.900 United States, the oligarchs

01:01:50.260 have ridiculous amounts of

01:01:51.860 power in Ukraine, etc.

01:01:54.280 But the direction of travel

01:01:56.220 was westward, which is why

01:01:57.820 Russia is coming in to

01:01:59.360 prevent that.

01:02:00.180 Absolutely.

01:02:00.480 So I would argue we are, in

01:02:04.080 supporting Ukraine, we are

01:02:06.180 defending the democratic

01:02:08.040 movement of that country.

01:02:09.700 I wouldn't disagree with

01:02:10.440 that.

01:02:10.680 Yeah.

01:02:10.960 I wouldn't disagree with

01:02:11.620 that.

01:02:12.200 But is defending a democratic

01:02:13.620 movement enough to make the

01:02:15.760 kind of support that we saw

01:02:16.980 from NATO and from the

01:02:18.280 United States?

01:02:19.140 Well, NATO, the United States

01:02:20.140 is part of NATO.

01:02:21.200 I would say no.

01:02:22.300 The real reason that NATO and

01:02:24.120 the United States are involved

01:02:25.080 is not because anybody cares

01:02:27.020 about democracy in Ukraine.

01:02:29.000 That's probably true.

01:02:29.800 They all care about isolation

01:02:31.640 and degradation of Russia.

01:02:33.300 That, by definition, is a

01:02:34.400 proxy war, just like we were

01:02:35.440 talking about.

01:02:35.980 Or containment, we might

01:02:37.120 say.

01:02:37.460 Containment, yeah.

01:02:38.140 Not necessarily degradation.

01:02:39.140 It's not about wanting them

01:02:40.040 to be destroyed, but it's about

01:02:41.280 making sure they don't

01:02:42.160 continue expanding.

01:02:43.500 They weren't expanding

01:02:44.520 before, right?

01:02:46.340 Like they, Putin invaded,

01:02:48.700 according to the Russian

01:02:49.860 narrative, right, Putin

01:02:51.380 invaded Ukraine because of

01:02:54.020 many, many years worth of

01:02:56.520 warnings that NATO cannot

01:02:58.660 expand against the Russian

01:03:00.060 border.

01:03:00.820 We can't take a threat from

01:03:02.440 the West.

01:03:03.060 And that threat continued,

01:03:04.580 like you said, was moving in

01:03:05.840 that direction.

01:03:06.560 So he made, he made a

01:03:08.300 decisive action.

01:03:09.500 Yes.

01:03:10.560 Since that day, and even now

01:03:13.000 with Lord Cameron's

01:03:14.040 announcement just this week,

01:03:16.040 that he doesn't necessarily

01:03:18.440 prevent Ukraine from using

01:03:21.940 UK-based weaponry to bomb

01:03:24.420 inside Russia.

01:03:25.260 Like the United States has

01:03:26.240 made a hard line on this.

01:03:27.440 American weapons cannot be

01:03:28.540 used to attack inside

01:03:29.700 sovereign Russia.

01:03:31.280 The UK has never been very

01:03:32.900 express on this.

01:03:33.620 They're still not very

01:03:34.340 express on this.

01:03:35.140 But the general understood

01:03:36.460 agreement that was struck

01:03:37.900 yesterday between Lord

01:03:39.300 Cameron and Zelensky, or this

01:03:41.660 week between Cameron and

01:03:42.540 Zelensky, was that the

01:03:44.040 storm shadow missiles

01:03:44.800 specifically, I mean, if they

01:03:46.380 make their way into

01:03:47.180 sovereign Russia, that's okay,

01:03:50.100 right?

01:03:50.340 Why would the UK let weapon

01:03:53.100 systems in the UK be

01:03:55.140 attacked, go into

01:03:56.140 sovereign Russia?

01:03:57.200 Why doesn't the United

01:03:58.160 States want American-made

01:03:59.780 weapons to go into

01:04:00.600 sovereign Russia?

01:04:01.600 It's because the United

01:04:03.240 States does not want Russia

01:04:04.360 to believe they are being

01:04:05.580 intentionally degraded,

01:04:07.780 attacked, reduced from

01:04:09.960 outside.

01:04:10.400 If they want to have a wall

01:04:12.120 at Ukraine that we defend

01:04:13.500 the wall, that's one thing.

01:04:15.100 It's completely different to

01:04:16.000 go into and across the

01:04:17.260 border.

01:04:18.180 Zelensky's been attacking

01:04:19.000 across the border for over a

01:04:19.980 year.

01:04:21.280 If you can't keep your own

01:04:23.140 country safe, what is the

01:04:24.180 point of going into the

01:04:25.400 other country?

01:04:26.220 The only reason you attack

01:04:27.400 into the sovereign country on

01:04:28.400 the other side is essentially

01:04:29.240 to create and foment.

01:04:30.980 Well, in a war, you want to

01:04:32.460 degrade their manufacturing,

01:04:34.000 you want to degrade their

01:04:34.740 military facilities, their oil

01:04:36.400 storage.

01:04:37.100 Like, I don't know that

01:04:38.260 that's...

01:04:38.720 But come back to me to the

01:04:40.200 broader thing, which is the

01:04:41.800 Russian narrative.

01:04:43.660 And there are two things

01:04:45.160 about that.

01:04:45.640 One is the question people like

01:04:47.220 John Mayer Shimer and Tucker

01:04:48.940 Carlson and others never get

01:04:50.080 asked is the counterfactual.

01:04:51.960 If you're saying NATO

01:04:52.940 expansion is a problem, by the

01:04:54.360 way, clearly provocative to

01:04:55.520 Russia.

01:04:55.900 Like, I don't think you can't

01:04:57.200 dispute that.

01:04:58.320 Where would Russian tanks be if

01:04:59.640 we didn't have NATO, including

01:05:04.200 Latvia, Southern Lithuania?

01:05:05.280 I mean, Russia is always going to

01:05:06.160 want to control that area.

01:05:08.360 Russia has to control that area.

01:05:09.520 Correct.

01:05:09.720 So my argument is maybe the fact

01:05:15.180 that American military

01:05:16.440 corporations really are keen on

01:05:18.600 NATO expansion because it means

01:05:19.880 they get to retool Eastern

01:05:21.080 Bloc countries into Western

01:05:22.460 weaponry has been a bad thing

01:05:25.100 that we've allowed that to run

01:05:26.820 away the way that it has.

01:05:28.400 But if NATO wasn't in Eastern

01:05:30.180 Europe, Russia would control all

01:05:32.340 of the Eastern European Bloc, as

01:05:34.020 it always has done, as it always

01:05:35.400 has attempted to do.

01:05:36.460 When you say control, though,

01:05:37.940 are you talking about military

01:05:39.220 control, economic control or

01:05:40.580 something else?

01:05:40.960 Well, it totally depends.

01:05:42.100 Right.

01:05:42.320 It depends on whether Latvia,

01:05:43.980 Southern Lithuania want to go

01:05:45.000 back into the brotherhood of

01:05:46.400 Soviet peoples.

01:05:47.360 Who do you think controls

01:05:48.220 Europe now?

01:05:49.700 Well, depends which part of

01:05:51.760 Europe.

01:05:52.240 Right.

01:05:52.600 OK.

01:05:53.000 Who do you think controls NATO?

01:05:54.540 The United States.

01:05:56.200 Does anybody see that that is a

01:05:57.720 problem?

01:05:59.000 I'll tell you who does see that

01:06:00.140 Germany sees that as a problem

01:06:01.340 now.

01:06:02.700 France sees that as a problem

01:06:04.000 now.

01:06:04.840 Yeah.

01:06:05.180 They didn't see that as a

01:06:05.880 problem prior to Russia invading

01:06:07.260 Ukraine.

01:06:08.200 So the very thing that you're

01:06:09.540 talking about, this Russian

01:06:11.140 expansion that everyone is so

01:06:12.100 afraid of, the United States has

01:06:13.820 been doing it.

01:06:15.580 Why do we think that why do we

01:06:17.080 think that Russia expansion

01:06:18.900 means Russian tanks?

01:06:21.600 Why does that concept come to

01:06:23.340 mind?

01:06:23.520 Because that's the narrative that

01:06:24.720 the West has made.

01:06:25.820 No, it's because of history.

01:06:27.960 I mean, as a Russian, I can tell

01:06:29.320 you, right, every time Russia has a

01:06:30.860 strong leader, it expands westwards

01:06:32.560 and very often with war.

01:06:34.040 Okay.

01:06:34.760 Because the peoples of Eastern

01:06:36.420 Europe don't all want to be part of

01:06:38.420 the Russian bloc, I would say.

01:06:40.600 But in terms of the Russian

01:06:41.920 narrative, there's another part to

01:06:44.340 which is in 2014 for, I mean, there

01:06:46.720 are some economic interests, as I

01:06:47.960 think you'd agree, that Russia is

01:06:49.200 pursuing irrespective of NATO

01:06:51.200 expansion.

01:06:51.880 Russia wants wanted Crimea back

01:06:53.660 because it needs it back.

01:06:54.760 Okay.

01:06:54.920 It needs the port, it needs the

01:06:57.040 connection to that area to be able

01:06:59.300 to project power from the Black

01:07:00.660 Sea.

01:07:01.480 So a lot of the stuff that Putin

01:07:03.040 said, these aren't our troops in

01:07:04.380 2014, they were.

01:07:06.300 The Russian attitude to

01:07:09.620 communication is not, we're going to

01:07:12.040 say, you know, the exact truth

01:07:13.700 here.

01:07:14.360 Putin's said some things and then

01:07:16.140 they've turned out to be completely

01:07:17.440 untrue over and over.

01:07:18.300 Now, I'm not disputing that NATO

01:07:20.280 expansion is an aggravating factor.

01:07:22.120 I'm just saying, if we're being

01:07:23.680 super cynical about it, the United

01:07:25.480 States and Russia are competing for

01:07:27.280 influence in the region.

01:07:28.340 Right.

01:07:28.700 Right.

01:07:29.280 That's what's happening.

01:07:30.300 Therefore, it is in our interest to

01:07:32.180 support the party that we are

01:07:34.480 backing, effectively.

01:07:36.280 Yeah, I agree.

01:07:37.000 But at this point, I would say we

01:07:38.500 need to wrap up, actually, at this

01:07:40.100 point.

01:07:40.660 So it's funny.

01:07:41.220 So I would actually say the

01:07:43.600 opposite.

01:07:44.140 Okay.

01:07:44.620 Tell me why.

01:07:45.280 Because, so we're both agreeing, it

01:07:47.240 sounds like, that the United States

01:07:48.980 should be supporting Ukraine.

01:07:50.000 Yes.

01:07:50.880 Because it serves American

01:07:52.080 interests to support Ukraine.

01:07:53.100 Yes.

01:07:53.620 Right.

01:07:54.580 Thank you for clarifying that.

01:07:55.680 We're definitely on the same page

01:07:56.500 there.

01:07:56.620 Okay.

01:07:57.240 I don't know that, I don't know

01:07:59.080 that, that Russia will expand via

01:08:02.140 war forever.

01:08:03.540 I would imagine at some point,

01:08:04.920 they'll learn that there's a better

01:08:05.820 way.

01:08:06.320 And Putin is a strong man.

01:08:07.480 What he knows is conflict.

01:08:08.420 What he knows is war.

01:08:09.160 So.

01:08:09.580 And you talked about the impact of

01:08:11.000 the war economy as well, right?

01:08:12.360 And that, that is exactly why we

01:08:14.700 need to keep fighting in Ukraine.

01:08:15.700 Because if we stop fighting in

01:08:17.800 Ukraine, what we've just done is

01:08:20.140 we've created this fucking

01:08:22.020 juggernaut in Russia that's

01:08:24.120 dependent now.

01:08:25.260 Wow.

01:08:25.640 Okay.

01:08:25.960 On a military industrial complex

01:08:27.680 that continues to fight.

01:08:28.920 Okay.

01:08:29.160 That's really interesting.

01:08:29.860 I didn't expect you to say that.

01:08:31.300 So if we stop fighting in

01:08:32.460 Ukraine, that juggernaut's not

01:08:34.160 going to stop because to stop is

01:08:36.480 going to kill its own economy,

01:08:37.800 which is the one thing Russia

01:08:38.800 can't let happen right now because

01:08:40.200 it doesn't have the alliances from

01:08:42.340 the satellite states to create its

01:08:44.520 agricultural base and it's lost

01:08:47.840 assets to the West.

01:08:49.480 It's lost influence to the West.

01:08:51.280 It's heavily tied now to China and

01:08:53.940 Iran and India through the bricks.

01:08:55.500 Yeah.

01:08:55.860 It has basically become the world's

01:08:57.460 bad guy.

01:08:58.240 Yes.

01:08:59.120 If we just back out of Ukraine right

01:09:01.020 now, Ukraine is going to get

01:09:02.340 bulldozed and all the concerns that

01:09:04.540 Poland has and France has and

01:09:06.160 Germany has are going to come to

01:09:07.580 fruition.

01:09:08.020 Oh, sure.

01:09:08.260 I didn't mean back out.

01:09:09.920 I guess what I'm saying is from day

01:09:11.380 one, what I've said is the point of

01:09:13.260 supporting Ukraine is to help them

01:09:14.840 get the best deal.

01:09:15.920 And what I mean by the best deal is

01:09:17.480 look, let's be honest, right?

01:09:19.700 First of all, Crimea isn't coming

01:09:21.540 back to you, right?

01:09:22.880 The eastern regions.

01:09:24.300 Yes, there are some mineral

01:09:25.360 resources there and some of them are

01:09:26.780 potentially quite important.

01:09:28.580 Again, I don't think they're coming

01:09:30.220 back to you at the beginning of the

01:09:31.860 conflict.

01:09:32.220 They weren't coming back.

01:09:33.120 And frankly, most people in Ukraine

01:09:34.800 didn't really care about losing some

01:09:36.760 land in the east.

01:09:37.480 I I'm sorry.

01:09:38.620 I love that you're saying this.

01:09:40.140 I love that you're saying this because

01:09:41.700 two years ago, this exact conversation

01:09:45.620 would have been just totally.

01:09:47.820 Oh, no, brother.

01:09:48.500 I said this accused.

01:09:49.580 I said this a week after the conflict

01:09:51.440 started on the biggest TV show in the

01:09:53.000 UK.

01:09:53.440 So I said this.

01:09:54.460 So you and I were saying the same

01:09:55.700 thing because I was on Lex Friedman.

01:09:57.300 Right.

01:09:57.600 Within just a few weeks of the thing

01:09:58.820 starting saying the exact.

01:10:00.040 I love that we were saying the same

01:10:01.280 thing.

01:10:01.660 So here's what I think.

01:10:03.280 Here's what I think is the right

01:10:04.440 outcome, because I I'm not an American

01:10:06.540 citizen.

01:10:07.120 I'm not in the CIA.

01:10:07.940 I don't just care about the West.

01:10:09.320 I also care about people in Ukraine.

01:10:10.580 I have family there.

01:10:11.860 You know, it's and I have family in

01:10:13.460 Russia, too.

01:10:13.880 I don't want these two nations to be

01:10:15.340 fighting and killing each other.

01:10:16.260 Right.

01:10:16.760 But from what I see, and please tell

01:10:18.600 me your opinion, I'm just throwing

01:10:19.720 this out there for you to respond.

01:10:20.900 Right.

01:10:21.480 From day one, I said the reason we

01:10:23.740 support Ukraine is they get the best

01:10:25.320 deal.

01:10:25.540 What does that mean?

01:10:26.420 That means they at least they lose

01:10:28.040 the least amount of land for long

01:10:30.640 term security, not a piece of paper

01:10:32.480 with some words on it, actual

01:10:34.000 security.

01:10:35.100 So it's no to membership, which is

01:10:36.660 obviously very unlikely or like a

01:10:38.800 Korean type of scenario where

01:10:40.320 physically what happened in 2014

01:10:42.820 and then in 2022 can never happen

01:10:45.440 again.

01:10:46.120 That's that's the best outcome for

01:10:48.240 Ukraine.

01:10:48.860 That's why I'm saying now when

01:10:51.360 Ukraine is, let's be honest, losing.

01:10:54.460 Right.

01:10:55.400 The thing we need to do is help them

01:10:57.860 get the best deal, which means

01:10:59.700 long term security for whatever

01:11:01.020 they're going to have to give away.

01:11:02.400 Right.

01:11:02.740 What do you see out of what I'm

01:11:04.380 saying?

01:11:04.740 I see it as exactly right.

01:11:06.400 Like the best thing that Ukraine

01:11:07.940 has ever been able to hope for is

01:11:10.520 getting a good deal from a from a

01:11:13.580 truce or from a treaty.

01:11:14.920 Yeah.

01:11:15.820 Zelensky made so many mistakes in the

01:11:17.700 beginning talking about not just

01:11:19.740 restoring like like pre-Soviet invasion

01:11:22.540 Ukraine, but all the way back to like

01:11:24.660 97 or 96 era boundaries.

01:11:26.540 boundaries like you could clear you

01:11:28.640 could see he wasn't a statesman.

01:11:30.080 You could see that he was something

01:11:32.300 else right now that we've had to go

01:11:35.020 through the transformation now that

01:11:36.560 you've seen that now that the American

01:11:38.460 people and Europeans have seen the

01:11:40.500 truth slowly get peeled back about

01:11:42.640 what's happening in Ukraine between

01:11:43.900 Zelensky and everybody else.

01:11:45.000 Now that we've had all of this, I think

01:11:47.280 we can all agree that the best outcome

01:11:49.240 here is just Ukraine not being

01:11:52.380 completely taken over by Russia.

01:11:54.620 Yeah.

01:11:54.840 Not that Putin has ever said he wanted

01:11:56.560 to take Ukraine's sovereignty.

01:11:58.560 From the beginning he said he didn't

01:11:59.560 want to take Ukraine's sovereignty.

01:12:00.520 Now to your point, Putin is an expert

01:12:03.580 in information warfare.

01:12:04.680 Yes.

01:12:05.500 We talk about it being like

01:12:06.720 communication out of Russia.

01:12:07.800 It's nothing about what comes out of

01:12:10.400 Russia can be called communication.

01:12:12.280 It is all shaped narrative.

01:12:14.480 It is all informational warfare.

01:12:16.200 It's the same thing that's happening in

01:12:17.180 the West.

01:12:17.760 We just have free speech.

01:12:19.720 Yes.

01:12:20.460 Yeah.

01:12:21.320 Fun out.

01:12:21.820 Fun out.

01:12:22.380 But that free speech can still be

01:12:25.140 shaped with an overall messaging

01:12:27.720 and narrative that appeals to

01:12:29.520 Western ideals.

01:12:30.360 The same thing is happening out of

01:12:31.620 Russia.

01:12:32.180 So I agree that what we can

01:12:34.100 reasonably expect to see is

01:12:36.040 Ukraine not lose much more.

01:12:38.860 Everybody stop killing each other.

01:12:40.580 And then some sort of security

01:12:42.680 infrastructure put in place that

01:12:44.300 keeps what is remaining of Ukraine

01:12:45.860 Ukraine along with some sort of

01:12:48.040 support to a new fledgling government

01:12:50.720 that is going to rebuild Ukraine.

01:12:52.180 Because Zelensky can't stay.

01:12:53.440 That's going to be one of the things

01:12:54.520 that Putin guarantees.

01:12:55.520 France, I know I've been hogging the

01:12:56.560 mic for ages.

01:12:57.120 What is your criticism of Zelensky?

01:13:00.880 Because this is interesting to me, right?

01:13:03.800 I think here's what I would say.

01:13:05.580 He's obviously completely inexperienced in terms of government.

01:13:08.340 I thought that in the early days of the war, he was heroic in leading his people.

01:13:11.760 I really did.

01:13:12.360 What I have seen since, however, is he's firing the head of the army because he said some things

01:13:21.020 that needed to be said, frankly, in my opinion.

01:13:22.980 And look, the corruption side of Ukraine, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the region,

01:13:29.100 like every other country in the region.

01:13:30.500 Like, it's not an outlier.

01:13:32.180 The only reason Russia isn't quite as corrupt is the corruption has been nationalized.

01:13:36.940 Right.

01:13:37.120 And the oligarchs are now appointed by Putin instead of being their own men.

01:13:40.860 Right.

01:13:42.220 So what are the mistakes you feel that Zelensky has made in the way that he's

01:13:47.080 prosecuted in this conflict?

01:13:48.460 And by the way, like, everybody would make mistakes fighting the war, right?

01:13:52.160 Yeah, absolutely.

01:13:52.620 What's your analysis?

01:13:53.640 I mean, I think that what you've already summarized is 90% of the problem.

01:13:58.700 Okay.

01:13:59.040 Right.

01:13:59.400 But then on top of that, the idea that this war couldn't have been shut down in the first few weeks,

01:14:04.180 it absolutely could have been shut down in the first few weeks.

01:14:08.180 Essentially, the territory has only shifted 5% or 7% in either direction over the last two years.

01:14:14.380 Yes.

01:14:14.920 But for all the death, all the destruction,

01:14:17.560 all of that for somewhere between 2% and 5% of change is ridiculous.

01:14:22.380 Zelensky could have reached basically the same outcome, the same best outcome,

01:14:26.140 could have been reached within a few weeks.

01:14:27.760 The problem was the same heroic Zelensky that you're talking about

01:14:33.960 that was just a face.

01:14:35.460 That was an act.

01:14:36.180 That was a set.

01:14:37.500 That was something that was projected to the Western world because at the time,

01:14:41.540 he was being coached by Western powers, chief of which is the United States.

01:14:45.160 So when Putin presented an offer early on, every advisor on Zelensky's side,

01:14:52.120 American advisor, British advisor, NATO advisor, would have said you can't take that offer.

01:14:58.040 Zelensky wouldn't have had the experience himself to know what offer to take,

01:15:01.120 what's a good offer, what's a bad offer.

01:15:02.340 But what he did know how to do was rally the people, right?

01:15:07.680 So now two years later, who looks like the fool?

01:15:12.040 Zelensky.

01:15:13.060 But who was the one that was actually puppet mastering the whole thing?

01:15:17.040 NATO.

01:15:17.800 And we don't take any of the fall for that, right?

01:15:19.860 So that's, for me, when you talk about a statesman,

01:15:23.720 when you talk about a diplomat,

01:15:25.320 when you talk about a true representative of the people,

01:15:27.400 what you're really talking about is somebody who has the courage to stand up for what they believe is truly right for their people.

01:15:33.800 I totally respect your background and your family in Ukraine and in Russia.

01:15:37.700 Doesn't mean I'm right, by the way.

01:15:39.280 Yeah, but I still respect it.

01:15:40.480 The vast majority of the people that I've spoken to,

01:15:42.780 the Ukrainians that I've spoken to,

01:15:44.300 the Americans who have gone to Ukraine to support the conflict legally or illegally,

01:15:50.080 the vast majority of them that I talk to are like,

01:15:52.160 they are disappointed and discouraged by how Zelensky specifically handled this conflict from the beginning.

01:16:00.080 That I would dispute.

01:16:02.200 I don't know now.

01:16:03.300 Now, I think now the situation is changing and for the reasons that we've discussed.

01:16:07.800 In the first year of the conflict, he was seen universally as a hero in Ukraine.

01:16:13.780 The polling showed that, the people I speak to, you know, that's what I saw.

01:16:19.500 That's fine.

01:16:19.960 And I think that the first year is the first year.

01:16:22.580 Yeah.

01:16:22.980 Well, but that's when, see, this is what I was going to ask you,

01:16:25.580 because I feel like what ideally should have happened is when the Russians pulled back from Kiev,

01:16:32.740 when the Russians pulled back from Kherson,

01:16:34.760 when the Ukrainians liberated their area around Kharkiv,

01:16:38.480 when they were making all of these gains.

01:16:40.520 That's when the deal should have been done.

01:16:42.840 The problem is when you're winning.

01:16:45.300 Yep.

01:16:45.980 You don't, and the Western allies are sending you weapons and they're like,

01:16:50.500 why would you do a deal?

01:16:51.640 You're thinking, let's get back to, well, let's get back the Eastern regions.

01:16:55.620 Let's think about Crimea.

01:16:56.820 Let's go back to 1991 borders.

01:16:58.640 Do you think maybe that's why they didn't do a deal then?

01:17:03.000 It's just maybe like they were waiting to see the summer counteroffensive

01:17:08.060 that obviously failed and all of that.

01:17:10.440 So if you were, the first counteroffensive was wildly successful.

01:17:13.580 And that's the point, in my understanding,

01:17:15.400 that's the point in which you're saying we could have called it,

01:17:18.080 hey, let's come to the table right now.

01:17:20.040 Yeah.

01:17:20.300 We're winning.

01:17:21.100 Momentum's on our side.

01:17:22.160 Really, that's what we're talking about is just a shifting in momentum.

01:17:24.180 Yes.

01:17:24.840 All the amateurs out there are the ones that are talking about winning and losing.

01:17:28.920 Yeah.

01:17:29.620 It's really just a shift in momentum and a shift in advances, right?

01:17:32.900 But when you're talking about that shift in momentum as a time to negotiate,

01:17:36.320 that's one of those times.

01:17:37.640 I want to know what was happening in the back rooms.

01:17:40.440 Were the Western allies supporting Ukraine saying,

01:17:44.080 hey, you guys, this is a great time to come up with some sort of offer.

01:17:46.880 In fact, there were offers that were being brokered by China.

01:17:49.300 There were peace deals that were being brokered by China.

01:17:52.160 Turkey offered a peace deal in the same period of time.

01:17:54.440 They weren't taken.

01:17:55.880 Well, were they not taken because the administration under Zelensky was like,

01:18:01.340 we're going to go against what our advisors are recommending and we're going to keep pushing?

01:18:05.220 Or was that deal not taken because the advisors themselves said,

01:18:09.440 hey, guys, you're winning.

01:18:10.740 We're not slowing down our support.

01:18:12.480 Let's keep pushing.

01:18:14.620 I would venture to say that the advisors encouraged them to keep pushing.

01:18:19.360 I still believe to all of my training and all of my spidey senses, if that's what you want to call it,

01:18:26.620 this is a proxy conflict.

01:18:28.060 The United States is using this as an opportunity to degrade Russian capabilities in the long run.

01:18:33.980 Not just like make Russia lose influence.

01:18:36.980 They are literally stealing assets out of that belong to Russia that are currently being held in European and Western banks.

01:18:46.120 Sovereign assets.

01:18:46.900 They just passed legislation that means they can take and sell those assets and use them for their own.

01:18:52.120 They just stole money from Russia because of a disagreement over what Russia was doing in Ukraine.

01:18:59.600 That's having that kind of power, having that kind of benefit.

01:19:02.980 That's not because they're trying to protect NATO.

01:19:05.140 That's not because they're trying to enforce democracy.

01:19:06.540 They're trying to degrade a global power competitor, what's known as a GPC country.

01:19:11.280 That's the problem.

01:19:12.940 And Putin knows that.

01:19:14.440 And whoever comes after Putin, when that time comes, also knows that they're being degraded.

01:19:19.560 The weapon systems are being degraded.

01:19:21.440 Thousands of tanks are gone.

01:19:23.240 Rockets are gone.

01:19:24.040 Missiles are gone.

01:19:24.600 Troops are gone.

01:19:25.520 All of the influence, all of the regional damage, all of that is something that Russia is going to have to deal with for the next two decades,

01:19:33.820 just like Israel is going to have to deal with their decisions for the next decade to two decades.

01:19:37.860 This is strategic.

01:19:39.000 It gives the United States and Western allies that much more time to be first place in the race, and it neutralizes Russia.

01:19:48.460 That's, to me, what's really happening in Ukraine.

01:19:51.520 The focus on Ukraine is just a distraction.

01:19:54.120 I know to the Ukrainian people, it's everyday life.

01:19:57.380 But what is American interest in Ukraine?

01:20:00.620 How does any American, how is their life, how is their day impacted in any way by the outcome of Ukraine and Russia?

01:20:07.840 It's not.

01:20:09.700 So why are American dollars, why are American interests, why is so much American attention going into what's happening in Ukraine?

01:20:17.060 Because what we do have, what we do value is maintaining a dominance over Russia.

01:20:23.920 Andrew, it's been a wonderful interview.

01:20:26.520 Before we head over to locals where our supporters get to ask you questions, we're going to end the interview with the same question,

01:20:34.480 which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that we really should be?

01:20:39.200 It's a great question.

01:20:41.160 You know, the thing that keeps me up at night is not where we are now, and it's not where we're going in the next one to two years.

01:20:48.600 It's what will we look like in 10 years.

01:20:50.760 I have two young children.

01:20:52.100 I have an 11-year-old son and I have a 6-year-old daughter.

01:20:54.400 I'm curious, if not worried, about what will the Western world look like when my son is 20 years old, 21 years old, legally able to drink in the United States.

01:21:08.040 And when he's starting his young professional career, what will it look like for my daughter when she's 15, 16 years old?

01:21:15.060 It's so difficult to be able to even visualize what the world will look like then.

01:21:19.820 Will we be driven by democracy?

01:21:22.660 Will we be driven by autocracy?

01:21:24.420 Will the United States still be a superpower?

01:21:26.160 Will the United States be at parity with China?

01:21:29.380 Will my children have to learn Chinese in order to even have a career?

01:21:35.000 These are really interesting and difficult questions.

01:21:38.040 For me, and what I find is that most people are talking about right now, and not many people are talking about how to prepare for one of two or three outcomes that are high probability in about 10 years.

01:21:49.620 Ni hao.

01:21:51.260 Shish it.

01:21:54.020 It's been an absolute pleasure, guys.

01:21:55.740 Head on over to Locals, where we ask Andrew your questions.

01:22:00.200 Out of Francis and Constantine, who'd make the better spy?

01:22:03.800 This is the better spy.

01:22:05.720 How come?

01:22:06.180 Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise, is coming to Toronto.

01:22:13.460 The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more, featuring all the songs you love, including America, Forever in Blue Jeans, and Sweet Caroline.

01:22:22.720 Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here.

01:22:26.780 The Neil Diamond Musical, A Beautiful Noise.

01:22:29.440 April 28th through June 7th, 2026, the Princess of Wales Theatre.

01:22:34.440 Get tickets at Mirvish.com.

01:22:36.360 The Neil Diamond dating is here.

01:22:43.360 The Neil Diamondいます.

01:22:43.680 It's our title.

01:22:44.720 It's the Justice of Wales, and we're still talking about it behind this movie, in the world.

01:22:49.800 It shows you the stolen glory in your life.

01:22:52.540 We'll see you now.

01:22:53.740 It shows you the stolen glory in your life.

01:22:55.200 We'll see you next week per day anderen times, as it was monitored.

TRIGGERnometry - May 08, 2024

Ex CIA Agent： Why Israel and Ukraine Can’t Win - Andrew Bustamante

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