Valuetainment - Former CIA Agent Reveals China’s Cold War with The West

00:00:00.000 Part of what China's engaged in is information warfare, that it gets out to all those nations,

00:00:04.640 whether it's in Latin America or Africa or anywhere else, where the Chinese regime has

00:00:08.120 been very busy trying to basically put a variety of nations into debt through their Belt and Road

00:00:13.220 program. How calculating and strategic do you think China is right now compared to U.S.?

00:00:17.840 They'll invest decades of time and effort into one potential asset. We don't understand how

00:00:24.080 ruthless and how focused they are on their own best interests. You heard the whole story about

00:00:29.460 that we're pulling out of Afghanistan and here's what we're doing. It's been a waste of time for

00:00:32.760 20 years because of 9-11. Why have we stayed there? Where do you stand with that? We can't stay there

00:00:37.540 forever. We need to understand that when we leave, the Taliban will take over again. Jihadism turns

00:00:42.880 their attention to China. Chinese are going to respond in a very brutal way and they're not going

00:00:46.300 to care what the world thinks about that. Can another 9-11 happen with the way we're set up

00:00:50.220 today? There's always some element of a terrorist group out there trying to come up with a new

00:00:53.880 scenario that will beat the defenses that you've currently got in place. We have gotten better at

00:00:57.820 not being reactive. We just have to think, okay, well, what do we do if there's a next event?

00:01:07.660 So, you know, I enjoy interviewing former CIA agents, but today is a special one. Michael Baker

00:01:13.000 is a former CIA covert operations officer, president of Diligence LLC, a global intelligence firm, and the

00:01:19.340 host of Black Files Declassified on the Science Channel. With that being said, Mike, thank you for being a

00:01:24.880 guest on Valuetainment. Sure, of course, man. Thank you very much. So, what made you become a

00:01:29.340 CIA agent? I mean, did you wake up and say, you know what, I want to go be a CIA agent? How did

00:01:33.160 that happen for you? Yeah, I was recruited as a toddler. I couldn't have been more than four or

00:01:40.760 five. No, you know what, I think... I would actually believe you. They start very early.

00:01:45.460 Yeah. Actually, you know what, I actually, long story short, but my daughter was actually one of

00:01:53.200 the first kids that went into the nursery that's located there at Langley. I was back from overseas

00:01:59.500 just for a brief period of time, needed a place for my fantastic daughter when she was very young

00:02:05.620 to be. And I'll be damned if they hadn't built while I was away, they built a child care facility.

00:02:12.200 And I used to joke about it. I used to say, that's a great place to spot and recruit, you know, new

00:02:16.060 candidates. But it's, you know, to answer your question, I don't know. I kind of, I ended up

00:02:24.340 backing into it a little bit. It wasn't something I had planned on. Terminology-wise, you're an officer

00:02:31.960 as opposed to an agent. You know, that an agent would be FBI, law enforcement, that sort of thing.

00:02:38.000 Typically, if you're in operations in the CIA, then you're an officer as opposed to referring

00:02:44.120 to it as an agent.

00:02:45.820 So do you just go apply to get the job or is there a recruitment process to it?

00:02:50.500 There, it depends. Nowadays, it's a lot different. When I was younger and, you know,

00:02:57.940 it was more of a recruitment process. So, you know, there was sort of a spotting effort that was

00:03:02.820 involved. I kind of came across the radar, I think, of some folks. And it was a happy set of

00:03:08.360 circumstances that came about. And I think they were willing to overlook my dismal GPA from my

00:03:16.740 university days. And they looked past that and saw maybe I had some potential in some other areas. And

00:03:23.080 so it worked out well in that regard. But nowadays, look, it's, I don't want to say it's like any other

00:03:30.000 job application, but they've got an internet site, you know, you can apply online. It's much more

00:03:36.380 open than it ever used to be. And I think that's a good thing, right? Because, you know, they need to

00:03:41.040 get out there and look for the best and the brightest. By the way, it wasn't me, but they...

00:03:46.820 So what'd you do before CIA? What job did you have before CIA?

00:03:49.700 You know, I was headed down the path. I thought I was going to be, this is going to sound remarkable,

00:03:57.080 but I thought I was going to be a broadcast journalist. And I had focused on, I'd lived all

00:04:03.560 my life overseas, basically. As a kid, I came to the US for last year, high school. And so,

00:04:11.600 yeah, I thought I did, you know, the usual political science, you know, international

00:04:18.240 relations, national security issues in college. I thought that's where, you know, I was going to go

00:04:23.480 and mixed it up with some journalism and thought that seemed like a pretty good path. And, you know,

00:04:29.820 obviously, I took a left turn somewhere.

00:04:32.120 You know, when you think about CIA, maybe movies have done this to us. And I've asked this,

00:04:36.100 you know, from other CIA agents, you think about the profile of a CIA agent, you know,

00:04:42.540 foster kid, you know, that doesn't have any attachments to anybody, you know, doesn't,

00:04:47.600 maybe isn't married, doesn't have kids, parents' relationship wasn't the best, you know.

00:04:53.220 Are those criterias that they take into account today, or maybe back in your day? Or is that just

00:04:59.400 fictional, what we see and read in movies and books?

00:05:02.820 Yeah, no, that's a good question. You know, frankly, it's a little bit fictional.

00:05:06.100 What do they want? They want, they want well-adjusted, stable individuals, confident,

00:05:14.620 some self-discipline, common sense, you know, they're looking for kind of exactly what you

00:05:21.140 would think, right? Because you're given a great deal of responsibility, depending on, again, look,

00:05:24.240 the agency is made up of a lot of different career paths, right? There's a lot of different

00:05:28.440 requirements in there. And so it's a very diverse range of capabilities and skill sets,

00:05:35.400 everything from finance experts to scientists, engineers. And then you've got, you know, people

00:05:42.600 like me. So it's, it's an interesting organization, because it's a lot more, it's a lot more diverse,

00:05:50.740 both in terms of skill sets required, and also just the people than the movies ever make it out to be.

00:05:56.960 So you were there for 17 years. What are some of the craziest assignments you had that you can

00:06:03.140 actually tell us about?

00:06:05.460 Yeah, well, that's, that, that is the problem. You've just kind of, your caveat at the end there

00:06:09.720 is, is sort of the, the restriction. Look, I, I've got a very good relationship with the organization,

00:06:14.440 in part, because, you know, I keep my yap shut about sort of the important things. And one of

00:06:22.000 those is kind of getting too specific. I will say that I was in operations, and I touched on everything

00:06:29.580 from, you know, counterterrorism to counter narcotics during the drug wars to, you know, sort of insurgency

00:06:36.180 operations. And there's, there's, there's, in the operations side of the agency, there is always an

00:06:48.080 opportunity to walk away from something at the end of the day, and think to yourself, you know,

00:06:53.640 nobody else is doing this. Nobody else right now on this planet is engaged in this sort of activity.

00:06:59.860 And, and, and that is what kind of keeps you fired up. Because, you know, those moments can be

00:07:04.880 separated by pretty great distances, you know, you could spend six weeks sitting in a safe house

00:07:09.940 somewhere waiting for something to touch off. And then you've got a moment of something really

00:07:16.200 interesting from an operational perspective. And then, you know, you go back to filling out

00:07:19.660 paperwork to explain how you lost some gear, and, you know, you know, your expenses. And,

00:07:25.140 you know, it's so it is, it's, if they actually made a feature film about what really goes on,

00:07:31.000 I think it wouldn't necessarily be as exciting as a Jason Bourne adventure.

00:07:34.880 It wouldn't be. Yeah. So, you know, I've had, I've had a Nick McKinley on, where he did some work

00:07:40.340 in the past. I've had Jonah Mendez on, who was the former chief disguise officer who had,

00:07:45.900 you know, the head disguise of, I think, President Bush or somebody else that he should be open.

00:07:52.340 It was believable. I had Peranto on. I had Jane Wolsey on. I had Shabbat from Mossad on it just,

00:07:58.780 you know, there's a lot of folks from different spaces that that I've had on and I've interviewed

00:08:02.860 with. Jonah Mendez said it best. I said, what makes for a great agent? She said, somebody who's

00:08:09.440 extremely driven, extremely charismatic, extremely curious, extremely competitive, but doesn't need

00:08:16.400 to celebrate his victories. I thought it was such a unique way of describing a great agent. Would you

00:08:22.760 say that sounds pretty right on what a great agent would be? Yeah. Her and her husband, Tony,

00:08:28.740 who's passed on, great, great people. And she's super smart. And I think she kind of nailed it

00:08:38.540 there. Yeah. I mean, look, you're not doing it for the money. You're not doing it for the salary.

00:08:42.480 What is the salary, Bob? What is the salary? I don't know. It's in line with the government

00:08:48.060 services, you know, the GS pay scale. So, which is amazing, right? If you think about it.

00:08:53.740 Um, look, when I started out and I started out at a very interesting time and sort of agency

00:09:00.320 operations, um, I believe I was making $17,500 a year. Now, when I look back on that and I think

00:09:10.680 about what we were happy to do for $17,500 a year. Yeah. You're not doing it for the salary. You're

00:09:17.240 not doing it for the pay. You're not doing it for, yeah, you're not doing it for anybody patting you

00:09:21.180 on the back. Um, what year was it when you were making $17,500? Oh shit. That was, uh, that was

00:09:27.240 the early eighties. Right. I got started. I was in for almost 20 years. And, uh, so, you know, that's,

00:09:34.260 uh, you know, but, but you're happy to do it. Right. Because they honestly make you feel by the time

00:09:40.060 you finish up all the training, depending on what you're going to be doing, uh, you know, I was ready

00:09:46.440 to walk in front of a bus for, you know, the director and, and, uh, the president. So, um,

00:09:52.160 but you do, uh, if you're doing it for the right reasons, it's not because you're looking to, uh,

00:09:59.920 you know, get that constant reassurement or constant pat on the back, right? You're clearly aware that

00:10:04.960 you're doing it for something bigger than that. And that's honestly, God, that's, those are the folks

00:10:11.460 that I always worked with and ran across and met and dealt with, whether they were my, my, uh,

00:10:16.880 superiors or, or, you know, colleagues. I mean, to do CIA, the job of a CIA agent is one of the

00:10:25.000 requirements for them to help you become a CIA investigate to see if you love America.

00:10:30.300 Is there gotta be a, like a certain level of patriotism to be an agent or not really?

00:10:35.260 Uh, I would hope so. I would, I would like to think that's the case. And I would like to think

00:10:41.080 that that shines out. Look, it's, um, part of it, part of it is, is a bit of a self-selecting

00:10:48.660 process, right? Um, you know, if you're applying to the agency, then theoretically, um, you know,

00:10:55.480 you're, you're, you're kind of already in that camp, right? Unless there's, there's something

00:11:00.420 else going on that's, that's somewhat unusual. So yeah, I think patriotism is an important part

00:11:05.720 of it. You have, and again, I, I was one of those people who, uh, never really, I, you know,

00:11:13.080 I never imagined myself to have all the information that the, the, uh, the head shed or the top floor,

00:11:18.440 you know, seven floor hazard. And, uh, and so I never was one of those people that would sit around

00:11:24.160 and question, uh, tasking or, you know, uh, operational assignments. And, and, uh, I think

00:11:31.700 that's a useful thing because you don't have all the detail and you don't have all the information.

00:11:35.560 You're a tiny little part of the, of the machine when you're out in the field working, whether it's

00:11:40.600 in paramilitary operations or it's in, in, you know, uh, narcotics, carnal narcotics or terrorism

00:11:46.840 operations. You're just a small piece of the action, right? And all that you're doing is getting

00:11:53.940 put in the same pot as information coming from a variety of other sources or, or, uh, you know, and,

00:12:00.260 and, and then people that are paid to make those decisions, take all that and figure it out. But

00:12:06.440 I, you know, so maybe I approached it from a fairly simple perspective. I don't know.

00:12:12.100 When you got in, were you somebody who did love America? Were you, this is the greatest country

00:12:15.860 of all time. Did you come from that mindset? Oh yeah. Yeah. Look, I, you know, I, I, uh, to this day,

00:12:22.720 I, you know, this, this is, I've spent a lot of my time in very difficult and, and, uh, unusual and

00:12:31.080 challenging environments. And I've seen a lot of, uh, bullshit, but, um, yeah, this is, this is a

00:12:39.120 unique country. And when you say that though, nowadays people, you know, some folks will roll

00:12:44.020 their eyes and, you know, they think, Oh yeah, what, what, what a load of horse shit. But I, I've been

00:12:49.220 in some very strange places where people will talk to you, or if you have an opportunity because

00:12:55.360 of what you're doing, you have an opportunity to talk to people. Folks may not believe it here,

00:13:01.380 but overseas in a lot of different parts of the world where there's no opportunity,

00:13:06.280 people still believe that if you come here to the U S and you work, you can accomplish just about

00:13:13.140 anything. And it's that opportunity, right? The, the, the potential for opportunity, the potential

00:13:19.100 for equality of opportunity that is part of the magic of this country. I'm, I'm, I'm a little

00:13:25.300 concerned that we're sort of losing that here at home, um, for whatever reason, but yeah, it still

00:13:31.440 exists overseas. Yeah. It's, uh, I mean, it's what brought us here. You know, I grew up in Iran and,

00:13:38.180 uh, the fantasy was every time somebody would get the green card to come to the States,

00:13:42.280 it was a big party. Everybody would celebrate and you go into us, you know, we, we'd watch

00:13:46.560 Rocky four a hundred times. We'd watch gremlins and we'd fast fantasize. I don't care if there

00:13:52.760 is a gremlin, just put me in America. I'll figure out a way to deal with these ghosts. You know,

00:13:57.760 I'll be a ghostbuster if I have to, I just want to go to America. It was a, uh, a dream of all of

00:14:02.560 ours to come over here to America. But did you see the recent recruitment video of CIA? I don't

00:14:07.500 know if you caught that or not. Have you had a chance to see it? Yeah, I did. I did.

00:14:11.140 What do you think about it? Um, well, there's a lot, there's a lot to, uh, to discuss there.

00:14:19.160 A, I think it's right. I think it's a good idea for the agency to try to shine a small light

00:14:27.720 on the, the work of the agency and the Intel community in general. Uh, and I know that's

00:14:33.420 what they've been trying to do over the past couple of years. Um, and I think that's, that's

00:14:39.740 good, um, to the degree that they, they can, and that it doesn't, uh, impact, you know, sources

00:14:45.420 and methods and all the rest of it. And that's not something they would do. The ad itself, um,

00:14:51.360 I think they probably could have field tested it a little bit better. And, and, and by that,

00:14:56.360 what I mean is it's a, it's, it's a much more diverse work environment than people give it

00:15:02.720 credit for. It's not, it's not perfect, but then again, no institution or business or community

00:15:09.120 in America is right. And they, uh, and they realize that and they're always trying to improve,

00:15:15.940 but I think what they should have done is taken some of those folks who don't have cover issues.

00:15:21.520 Meaning if you're, if you have cover, you're not going to get in one of these ads, um, and,

00:15:26.940 and have various folks within the agency talking about the challenges and the excitement and the

00:15:34.700 benefits and the career paths available, right? Rather than talking about one individual walking

00:15:40.400 around and saying, look, I I'm not, I'm not ticking boxes, but then they proceed to take a bunch of

00:15:45.600 boxes. Um, or they talk about it as if it's me, me, me. And almost in the, by the time they finish,

00:15:51.520 it's almost like what people been assailing you up, people been, you know, claiming all these

00:15:56.620 things that you say you're not like, you, you, you didn't earn this. You did. Of course she earned

00:16:00.460 it. She's there, right. The agency doesn't, you know, that's so. Let me just play the first 30

00:16:06.200 seconds. If the audience hasn't seen it, just for them to get a glimpse of it, because they're

00:16:09.220 probably saying what, what commercial are we talking about? Yeah. Good point. I'm just going to

00:16:12.300 play the first 30 seconds. When I was 17, I quoted Zora Neale Hurston's, how it feels to be

00:16:19.140 colored me in my college application essay. The line that spoke to me stated simply,

00:16:24.420 I am not tragically colored. There is no sorrow damned up in my soul nor lurking behind my eyes.

00:16:30.180 I do not mind at all. At 17, I had no idea what life would bring, but Zora's sentiment

00:16:35.880 articulated so beautifully how I felt as a daughter of immigrants then and now. Nothing about me was or

00:16:42.320 is tragic. I am perfectly made. I can wax eloquent on complex legal issues in English while also

00:16:50.380 belting Guayaquil. I still wouldn't think this is a CIA commercial. No. I'm still curious what

00:16:55.960 commercial is. Crying toddler with the other. I'm a woman of color. I am a mom. I am a cisgender.

00:17:02.740 Still don't know. I did not sneak into CIA. Now I know. Now you know. Is not the result of a fluke

00:17:09.540 or slip through the cracks? I earned my way in and I earned my way up the ranks of this organization.

00:17:16.020 I am educated, qualified, and competent. And sometimes I struggle. I struggle feeling like

00:17:21.260 I could do more, be more to my two sons. And I struggle leaving the office when I feel there's

00:17:26.740 so much more to do. I used to struggle with imposter syndrome, but at 36, I...

00:17:32.520 Is this a challenge the CIA is having where they have to make a video like this to show that

00:17:37.360 they're diverse and inclusive? No, I think this is just a... This is just emblematic of

00:17:44.260 the times that we currently live in, right? I mean, I think that... I think they're doing

00:17:48.740 the same thing that, you know, in a way that Coca-Cola did by, you know, chastising MLB or,

00:17:56.340 you know, the All-Star Game or... I just think it's sort of a knee-jerk reaction in a way,

00:18:03.060 you know, and again, not denigrating. Look, she's, you know, full marks to her. She's, you know,

00:18:08.040 she's in there and she's working. And so she's clearly smart, capable, all those things, right?

00:18:15.580 It just sounds like from the ad that, like, I don't think anybody's walking around saying she's

00:18:19.680 occupying space she's not supposed to or, you know, claiming all those things. It just sounds...

00:18:24.640 It sounds very defensive. And it also sounds a little bit too me-ist, right? Rather than this is a

00:18:30.440 team, this is an organization that works together. Like, and when it works together and in the right

00:18:35.920 fashion, it is an amazing thing of beauty from an operational perspective. It almost looks like

00:18:43.200 the complete opposite of what Jonah Mendes talked about. Jonah Mendes talked about when you do a...

00:18:49.280 When you become a CIA agent, it's about being ambitious, driven, competitive, smart, intellectual,

00:18:53.140 charismatic, all this stuff. But you don't need the recognition versus here. It's more like,

00:18:57.340 look at me. It's about me. Look how great... Again, I thought maybe they're doing this because

00:19:02.440 there's some internal challenges going on with the CIA where, you know, not enough Latinas,

00:19:08.220 not enough women, not enough African-Americans. But I would assume that in the CIA, you almost have to

00:19:13.780 recruit folks from different nationalities and ethnicities because if you're going into different

00:19:18.800 markets, you need to kind of blend in. I remember one time my dad comes up to me and we have someone

00:19:23.900 in our family that used to be part of the MI6. And eventually we found out years later. And it's

00:19:29.180 funny because that person took the same morale as you. Journalistic, you know, they went through

00:19:33.840 the media route and then boom, they got picked up. Sometimes that's pretty common. My dad says,

00:19:38.180 hey, you can tell me. You can tell me. I said, what's that, dad? Tell me. It's okay. I know. I

00:19:43.280 already know at this point. I said, dad, honestly, I swear to God, I have no clue what you're talking

00:19:46.180 about. He says, how long have you been with the CIA? I said, you think I'm with the CIA? He says,

00:19:50.080 how long have you been with the CIA? Kim, wink if you are. I said, dad, I'm not part of the CIA.

00:19:53.060 Wink if you are.

00:19:54.760 It took him five years to think that his son's part of it. I'm like, I'm telling you, I'm not

00:19:59.000 part of the CIA. Till today, I think he still has a little bit of a skepticism whether I am or not.

00:20:04.600 But anyways, I see this here. I say, I don't know. I don't know if the ad is,

00:20:09.620 hey, by the way, has CIA always done commercials or no? Have they done commercials?

00:20:13.660 No, no, no. It's, I mean, it's not the first one they've done. And, you know, again,

00:20:17.260 they've got a Twitter page and, and, you know, and I get why they're doing it, right? I just,

00:20:21.600 again, I just think it's the wrong path, the wrong marketing message, right? Have, you know,

00:20:27.620 she could have simply by talking about if she, if she had been the same individual and she had just

00:20:33.360 been walking through the hallways talking about the, the challenges, the benefits of working for

00:20:38.560 the agency, right? You're already sending a message by having her deliver that, but you're talking

00:20:44.940 about an organizational effort and a team effort and all those things. So I think the interesting

00:20:49.540 thing about this, this particular ad is, look, they've pissed off both sides, right? They pissed

00:20:53.900 off all the people who are tired of the, of the wokeism and think that it's, it's the wrong path

00:20:58.500 to take and it's dividing people. And it's also pissed off, interestingly, all those cats that dig

00:21:03.700 talking about wokeism, you know, and that are all woke themselves. And because now what they're

00:21:08.640 complaining about, what they're pissed off about is that the CIA has, in their minds, usurped their

00:21:13.320 language, right? Taking their language of wokeism and used it for their own benefit. So somehow

00:21:17.380 that's wrong. So both sides are, are irritated by this. Uh, you know, you could argue that people

00:21:23.260 are talking about it. Uh, and if that's your metric, you know, for success and hey, fine, but it's the

00:21:28.820 CIA, not Pepsi Cola. So I don't think that should be the metric. Yeah. Again, if they're trying to

00:21:35.400 target a certain audience, that's what this commercial got, but it didn't get, instead of doing a little

00:21:41.880 bit more inclusive, it would have been better to, uh, have everyone being there. But again,

00:21:46.520 behind closed doors, you don't really know what's taking place. So let me get into my questions. I

00:21:49.560 got a bunch of different topics I want to go through with you that I'm so curious about.

00:21:53.380 One of them is this, here's a question, black classify black files, declassified on science

00:21:58.560 channel. It's a show that you've been running. Can you give the audience if they haven't seen an

00:22:02.260 episode, what's the show about? Yeah, it's, uh, the first season sitting, uh, available on

00:22:07.100 discovery plus it's a discovery science channel, uh, production. We're just getting ready in two

00:22:12.060 weeks. We go out and, um, start filming the second season. And the idea behind the show originally

00:22:18.500 was that, um, in a sense, in a very simple way, it was sort of follow the money. If you want to

00:22:25.240 understand interesting operations, uh, within the U S government, if you want to understand,

00:22:29.740 um, clandestine, uh, services, activities, uh, special forces operations, whatever it may be,

00:22:36.080 uh, latest research and development in warfare, uh, weapons technology. Then one of the, uh,

00:22:42.980 best ways you could start to identify all that is by following the money, looking at the budgets

00:22:47.100 because money has to be spent. So it has to sit somewhere in some budget somehow.

00:22:52.220 So that was the basic premise of it. And then it sort of branched out from there to start looking at

00:22:57.180 a variety of, of interesting, uh, military and Intel community and government operations and

00:23:02.440 activities and organizations and people and, um, combine all that with some of the latest

00:23:08.140 technology that's being developed, uh, for some of those, uh, activities and, and just see what

00:23:13.860 we can see. So we travel around the country and, and, uh, you know, it's a great opportunity. I,

00:23:18.000 you know, I love meeting people and, and, and, and seeing things that otherwise I wouldn't see

00:23:21.720 having a chance to do things that otherwise I wouldn't have a chance to do. And, and it's,

00:23:25.500 it's so anyway, I I'm subjective, but I think it's the finest show made for television.

00:23:31.140 I love, I love how humble you are about it. But you know, so episode number one,

00:23:36.480 the secrets of space force, number two, American UFOs, number three, to catch an alien. Number

00:23:42.700 four, how to stop an assassination. Number five, episode five, iron man, army six rise of the

00:23:49.500 night stalkers, right? All the very, very interesting episodes, but here's a question

00:23:55.560 for you. So I'll sit down, buddy of mine was Delta. We were in the army to get at Fort Campbell,

00:24:01.300 Kentucky, and I leave, I go into business. He goes and becomes a Delta force and does great for

00:24:06.480 himself. And I said, so what do you know? What'd you do? All this stuff. You know, there's only 800

00:24:12.680 of us and you know, we're the same level as Navy SEAL team six and there's everybody else,

00:24:16.880 but it's us too. And all this stuff goes great. Who's above you. We're report to this. Who's

00:24:21.440 above them. We report to them. Okay. So you look at FBI, you look at CIA, look at DEA, you look at

00:24:26.800 LAPD, any kind of PD, you look at the government, you look at military, you look at politicians.

00:24:32.540 Who is the ultimate puppet master? And what I mean by the ultimate puppet master, because I even think

00:24:39.180 about it. Oh, when you become a president, you have the key, you know, you have the key to the

00:24:44.040 nuclear, whatever. I'm like, I don't believe that the president is the ultimate decision maker.

00:24:50.820 There's gotta be some people who know stuff that nobody else knows that they know stuff. And they

00:24:58.400 don't even tell the president. I have a very hard time believing that you're going to tell a hundred

00:25:03.400 percent of the Intel, all the darkest secrets of a nation of the world that we know about the mistakes

00:25:09.300 that we have the skeletons in the closet, which is probably a ton of them. I don't know if one

00:25:15.140 president that's going to be there for four years or eight years, you'd fully trust. So who is the

00:25:19.840 ultimate power at the top? Well, it's, it's actually, it's kind of divided if you're thinking

00:25:26.980 about in terms of who's got all the information. So nobody really has all the information and nobody

00:25:33.920 really wants all the information when it comes to, um, a military element or, uh, an intelligence

00:25:41.020 community activity, whatever it may be, because it's just, it's too much. You're not going to

00:25:45.520 burden your right. You're not going to burden the president with all that detail. Uh, you know,

00:25:50.660 so typically a president, if you're looking, you know, like the bin Laden, right, you present options

00:25:55.700 right here or the three options and you present sort of a high level analysis as to why they have been

00:26:02.500 selected as scenarios that he should now have to choose from. And, you know, all that includes

00:26:08.300 risk versus gain calculations and all the rest of it. But in terms of just, you know, specifics,

00:26:14.260 um, you know, there's no one repository. There's no one book of secrets that exists that has

00:26:20.200 everything. And there's no one, you know, as George Bush used to say, no one decider, right? I mean,

00:26:25.880 there is in the sense that the president will, you know, give a yay or nay on something perhaps,

00:26:29.800 but it's not as if he's doing that because he has read into everything. Nobody could, nobody could

00:26:35.100 get through that. Yeah. But there's like, I, I, I, I don't know. I just wonder, you know,

00:26:43.460 how much, how much, uh, time out of your free time that you have, did you ever commit to studying

00:26:49.240 secret societies? Did you ever get into the secret society stuff or not really? Uh, you know what?

00:26:54.760 Not, not, not really. Um, you know, of course, that's exactly what you would say if you were

00:27:00.540 a member of a secret society. You're qualified. You're fully qualified. Yeah.

00:27:05.780 I don't know. Yeah, but I'm not, you know what? It's interesting because, um, I've had these

00:27:11.380 conversations before, um, and people never believe me. I, I, but I'll say I'm not typically

00:27:18.500 a conspiracy theorist, right? And, and black files and classified that discovery show is not about

00:27:24.260 conspiracies necessarily. It touches on certain ones, but not really. And the reason I'm not is

00:27:30.020 because I spent a lot of time kind of behind the curtain, you know, watching, you know, I guess how

00:27:36.420 the sausage is made to mix my metaphors. And, and, uh, uh, what I came away with is oftentimes life is

00:27:45.360 exactly as simple as it appears to be. And that may be some sort of, um, mechanism for dealing with

00:27:52.000 life, uh, that I've developed, but I, I always look at things and I, and I tell my folks all the time.

00:27:57.120 I tell my kids this, I tell the people that work for me and, and, you know, that you never really have

00:28:02.720 very many options on the decision tree, right? Whether you're out in the middle of nowhere and

00:28:06.700 you've got an operation going on and now you've got to figure out what to happen because it's all

00:28:09.680 headed South. And, you know, oddly enough, your plan A and B didn't work. Um, so you never really

00:28:15.280 have a lot of options. I just always, you know, there's very few conspiracies or, you know, uh,

00:28:22.340 ideas that I've, I've seen that, you know, I walked away from and thought, yeah, maybe there is

00:28:28.520 something to that. So, so the secret society thing I've never, I guess it just never really

00:28:34.680 caught my, my attention too much. Cause I don't really believe there's a cabal out there who's

00:28:39.640 directing traffic for the entire world. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like, uh, uh, the whole story

00:28:45.380 about where the Koch brothers are talking to each other. So which president do you want me to get you

00:28:50.260 for your birthday this year? You know, let's go fund this one. And then, you know, on the complete

00:28:54.700 opposite side is like, well, look at the stuff that Soros is doing and setting up the bricks

00:28:59.020 for protesters. And, you know, oh my gosh, it's Soros behind everything. And he's funding,

00:29:03.900 he's protesting, he's funding that. One part is for a person to be naive and just say,

00:29:09.060 I don't know if that's taking place or not. You did a C-SPAN interview years ago and you said,

00:29:13.280 nothing is black and white. You said, you talk about when you're in many countries, your choices

00:29:17.040 aren't between good and evil. Oftentimes your choices between evil and less evil, right?

00:29:24.140 Right. So that the evil and less evil as citizens who go about their lives, you're like,

00:29:31.020 I just got to go pay the bills. I got to make some money. I got kids. I'm going to try to make

00:29:34.580 this practice here. Hopefully I can make it to the game. I hope my son plays and his coach lets him

00:29:39.660 in and church, man, he's trying to really push to raise money for this new building. I hope he

00:29:44.020 doesn't come and want to meet with us to give 10%. I've been doing 2%. You know, marriage, we've been

00:29:48.940 having a lot of fights. My mom is sick. My dad is sick. My brother's going through issues. My friend

00:29:53.560 and I got into a fight. So I'm just trying to figure this whole thing. I don't really have

00:29:57.560 time to think what Koch brothers and Soros is doing. Then you have the weird community.

00:30:03.800 The weird community is the why community that can't stop asking the flipping question, which

00:30:10.700 is why, why, why? You would hope that would stop when you're six, seven, eight years old

00:30:15.460 as a kid. You cannot keep asking that why question at 40 years old, right? You cannot

00:30:21.460 tell me like there is not some people behind closed doors of power that are making a lot

00:30:28.580 of these decisions. Because if I sit there and I think about, okay, let's go a different

00:30:32.240 angle instead of the secret society. Let's talk China.

00:30:35.760 Okay. Okay. If, if, if we were, uh, uh, the, uh, if America was a human being and China

00:30:44.240 was a human being, there are two people, you know, America's two years old, China's 20

00:30:49.100 years old. Okay. If America was, uh, you know, 10 years old, America is a hundred years old.

00:30:55.940 If America is five years old, China's 50 years old, you know where I'm going with this.

00:30:59.380 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so America, we're very confident. We're very confident,

00:31:02.840 you know, freedom of speech, freedom of this, freedom of that. But China is also extremely,

00:31:08.020 you know, quiet, calculating, strategic, long-term thinking. They know because of experience of

00:31:16.180 having seen their former rulers and leaders, all the flipping mistakes they've made because

00:31:20.360 they got a few thousand years of case studies, right? They have access to their own case studies,

00:31:25.180 right? And when you have all these case studies, I don't care what university you go to.

00:31:28.880 It's personal. We read about it. We know about it. We know our flaws. Okay.

00:31:33.540 So they know the games they're playing. I guess I'll let you tell us a little bit on

00:31:39.740 what, how, how calculating and strategic you think China is right now compared to us?

00:31:47.000 Well, I don't think there are any, it's not that they're any smarter. Um, it's just that they've

00:31:52.040 got a longer view, right? And, and it kind of comes down to what you're talking about in terms of just,

00:31:56.780 you know, we've got the brashness and confidence of youth, meaning we're a young country.

00:32:00.620 Um, they, you know, have walked a very long road, you know, throughout their history.

00:32:06.520 They tend to have a much, much longer, uh, view and that brings patience, um, and sometimes brings

00:32:15.180 more attention to detail. So that gives them an advantage to some degree and that we're always

00:32:22.220 kind of chasing whatever object is out there and it's shiny. And, and, you know, we seem to have a hard

00:32:26.480 time focusing on more than one or two things at a time, but, um, yeah, it's, it's that I would,

00:32:32.960 I would say that is probably the biggest difference between us, not just from a, an intelligence or

00:32:39.600 a operational perspective, but that is also important. They'll invest a decades of time

00:32:45.780 and effort into one potential asset. Um, and, you know, all without any payoff for perhaps 20 or 25

00:32:54.360 years. And then suddenly that asset who, you know, actually works for the Chinese Intel ends up at

00:33:03.320 Raytheon or, or Motorola or, you know, the skunk works or wherever it may be. So that, that I think is,

00:33:10.780 is an advantage they have. I don't think we're going to be able to, you know, develop suddenly

00:33:16.360 a longer view, you know, from our perspective. It's an advantage they have, um, um, as far as,

00:33:25.400 uh, uh, uh, being united, even though our country's name is United and, you know, we are the United States

00:33:32.360 of America and China, we don't have a clue what's going on over there because you can never tell the

00:33:38.280 debates they're having internally amongst their politicians, because that's never public. That's

00:33:41.820 private to them. It's their business. They don't think it's our business to know what's going on

00:33:45.980 over there. So we're like the husband and wife where our, uh, we're U S is more like keeping up

00:33:51.180 the Kardashians and China is more like a very private show that only they know about everything

00:33:57.100 we do is publicized, right? We know everything the world knows our problems, our drama, everything.

00:34:02.260 Yeah. We have a short attention span and we have a, a tendency here in the States to

00:34:08.240 you know, think, I don't want to make this sound too simplistic, but we do, uh, tend to in this

00:34:17.540 country, um, think the best, right. Of other nations for the most part, right. We, or maybe

00:34:24.380 it's not even that maybe it's just that we imagine that we're all in the same boat together somehow

00:34:29.420 and we mirror our values or the way that we see ourselves or would like to see ourselves

00:34:35.360 onto other nations. Right. So that hampers our negotiations. Sometimes when you're talking

00:34:40.840 about a country like China or Russia, um, you know, the Iranian regime, North Koreans, because

00:34:46.740 we, you know, we, we don't sometimes seem to understand how ruthless they are and how, uh,

00:34:56.120 singularly focused they are on their own best interests.

00:34:59.740 Well, we're not, we're the complete opposite. So who can be bought more? Is, is U S more

00:35:06.060 for sale or is China more for sale?

00:35:08.700 Well, I think we're more easily distracted, uh, in terms of,

00:35:12.040 yeah, I think that, I mean, it's a, it's a very interesting question. It's phrased very interestingly.

00:35:21.000 Um, you know, I think the problem with, with, uh, with the way that we approach China is that

00:35:28.500 look, the past four years, um, and I, you know, didn't have a dog in the hunt in the, in the past,

00:35:34.480 you know, presidential thing. I, you know, I like, I like Republican policies. I don't necessarily

00:35:39.300 need to like the person who's leading them. Right. Um, but I think we had a, a relatively

00:35:46.820 honest, open discussion about China for the first time in quite some time, right? Some of the actions

00:35:53.560 that were done, some of the things that were said, um, I think it actually put the Chinese regime on

00:35:59.700 their back foot. They weren't expecting sort of that behavior because for decades, we've always

00:36:04.760 approached China in the same way and always expect the same sort of result, but somehow they're going

00:36:08.920 to gravitate towards a more democratic society. That's horseshit. You know, as long as Xi's in charge,

00:36:14.000 Xi has set himself up much like, much like Putin, but Putin's going to be president until he dies.

00:36:19.960 Right. And Xi has pretty much done the same thing. And he has completely locked down the security

00:36:25.140 services. Uh, he squashed any hope of any pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, uh, the,

00:36:31.840 the genocide with the Uyghurs. And yet we continue sometimes to act as if, you know, I, you know,

00:36:37.540 these are people that we can understand and work with and we've got aligned interests and,

00:36:41.260 you know, maybe once in a generation, our interests actually align.

00:36:46.420 Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, is, uh, you, you see so much, so much of the world

00:36:51.360 relying on this one country, China, whether it's manufacturing, whether it's chips,

00:36:59.140 we learned during COVID, we kind of need these guys for pharmaceuticals. You saw what happened with

00:37:04.260 India, 400,000 people a day getting COVID and the officials of China send a tweet essentially on

00:37:12.000 their web on a, on their own Twitter website called Weibo, making fun of, uh, India, what

00:37:18.020 they're going through versus how, look at us. We took a, you know, uh, a rocket launcher and these

00:37:23.980 guys are blowing up over there. And then they took it down because they got heat from their own

00:37:27.720 people that called out the officials in China. And, uh, now India desperately needs 1.2 billion

00:37:34.460 vaccines. And who's the only place in the world that can get their 1.2 billion vaccines and all

00:37:41.000 the Intel, all the negotiations, the trade secrets that they picked up. Is it too late? Meaning

00:37:46.560 yesterday, I think 60 minutes was done. What a few days ago with Anthony Belkin, uh, uh, I'm pronouncing

00:37:51.860 his wrong name wrong. Blinken. The lady asked the question saying by 2028, the China's poised to be

00:37:59.400 a bigger GDP than us, right? Is it, is it already, are we at the point of no return where China is

00:38:05.380 going to be the largest empire in the world? And it's going to be very hard to compete against those

00:38:08.740 guys. Well, that's the narrative that they push. And, and, and part of what China's engaged in is

00:38:14.660 sort of information warfare, right? So, so they've been beating that drum that look, it's inevitable.

00:38:20.080 China's heading towards the top of the food chain. Um, you know, the U S as a nation in decline,

00:38:26.380 those things are talking points that the, uh, that the Chinese propaganda machine has been

00:38:33.260 pushing out for some time. And they're very good at it. They're very effective at it. We talk about

00:38:37.060 Russian disinformation all the time, but the, you know, the Chinese have far more resource,

00:38:40.820 um, than, uh, than the Russians do. And they've been very aggressive and active in trying to

00:38:46.080 make sure that not just that message gets out here in the U S but that it gets out to all those

00:38:51.040 nations, whether it's in Latin America or Africa, anywhere else where the Chinese regime has been

00:38:55.420 very busy, uh, trying to, uh, you know, basically put a variety of nations into debt through their

00:39:02.040 belt and road program, uh, lock up as much of the, you know, rare earth mineral commodities as

00:39:07.160 possible. And, and, and other, and, and look, they've got their first overseas port now, you know,

00:39:12.260 sitting in, in, uh, Djibouti in Africa. And, um, that's not by accident. That's by design,

00:39:20.860 they are pushing out their military aggressiveness in a concerning way, a very concerning way. There

00:39:26.580 seem to be kind of accelerating their timetable, uh, internally when it comes to their thought

00:39:32.060 process towards Taiwan. Um, so is it, is it inevitable? Uh, no, not by any means. They've got

00:39:40.260 a lot of problems. They've got internally, there's a lot more protest that goes on internally in China

00:39:44.600 than we're aware of. Um, you know, there is corruption that exists within that, that, uh,

00:39:50.240 that, uh, government that, you know, can at any time cause one of their people to topple. Right.

00:39:56.480 So, you know, it's a very, it's in a way it's a, it's, it's a relatively frail system. And that's why

00:40:02.160 Xi has been so busy trying to lock it down, you know, for his own purposes and, and, uh, ensure his,

00:40:08.820 his longevity. You believe that you, you believe it's a frail empire where, well, no, what I mean

00:40:14.600 is, I mean, parts of the, parts of the way the organization, and look, I mean, frankly, I, you

00:40:18.900 know, I, maybe I'm just stupid and old school and, and, you know, I, but, um, you know, socialism,

00:40:25.980 communism, you know, they, you, China has been around a long time. Communism has not right.

00:40:33.720 Communist China has not been around a long time. So when we think of China, you don't,

00:40:38.140 you don't think, well, this system has been around forever. No, it hasn't. So what I'm

00:40:42.420 saying is there's a frailty built into communism and socialism that eventually I believe, uh,

00:40:49.240 outs itself, right. Comes out and, and, and then, you know, we see the decline in whatever

00:40:53.940 nation it happens to be. So, uh, that's what I'm talking about. I mean, they, you know,

00:40:59.960 it may not happen, you know, next year, obviously, or the next decade or in our lifetime, but yeah,

00:41:05.780 I don't hold any water and thinking somehow that China is inevitably the next powerhouse.

00:41:10.640 Yeah. Who, who do you think is afraid of their government more? Is U S population,

00:41:15.520 you know, more afraid of their government or is, is China citizens more afraid of their government?

00:41:22.300 Well, I don't know if it's a fear, uh, you know, the U S population is more skeptical of their

00:41:28.180 government. Um, it's, um, it's clearly a much more open society. Um, and questioning government

00:41:35.140 is kind of part of the fabric of, of America, you know, and being skeptical about your leadership

00:41:40.500 and, and, you know, we've got that ability and that right. Thank God, uh, China, that's not the

00:41:45.940 case, right. They struggled to just get any details about what's going on and in, uh, within their

00:41:51.340 government, um, or actual news that's related to any internal domestic events or issues. So, um,

00:41:58.180 I think, um, the Uyghurs certainly fear the Chinese regime, uh, and the, you know, elements of pro

00:42:06.100 democracy in Hong Kong that used to exist and are no longer in existence because they've all been

00:42:11.500 banged up and thrown in jail for the most part. Um, they certainly fear the Chinese regime.

00:42:17.140 It goes back to what you were saying earlier, though. A lot of the population there is just

00:42:21.240 trying to put food on the table, right. And, you know, they're still, we're, we're, we're a little

00:42:28.200 bit softer, right. We don't have to go out and collect water and food every day for the most part.

00:42:32.280 So, um, you know, we have that luxury of questioning everything.

00:42:38.140 How, uh, by the way, that's a great comparison of, you know, skeptical Americans versus, you know,

00:42:43.200 a little more afraid about the government, what the government could do to them. And I think it's

00:42:46.960 even the most wealthiest man in China, Jack Ma's afraid, because look at them. Hey,

00:42:51.620 they started their series of trying to break the company apart. Hey, you can't do this. You're

00:42:56.500 thinking you're too powerful. You're the speech you made. You should have never taken a shot at the

00:43:00.680 government. Shame on you. Look how much money you've made because of the government. If it wasn't

00:43:04.740 for the Chinese government, you wouldn't be as rich as you are. So that's that part. How, how much,

00:43:10.040 how deep is the U S as far as how infiltrated are we with our CIA agents in the Chinese government?

00:43:19.140 Oh, are we getting Intel? Um, you know what, I, I, it's going to sound like I'm being coy. I hope so.

00:43:27.740 Um, uh, you know, I'm sure we are, whether it's through our own assets or through, you know,

00:43:31.940 liaison work, uh, with other countries. Um, you know, that's kind of gets down to a little bit

00:43:38.700 too close to the bone to sources and methods, but look, uh, people here in the States better hope

00:43:44.980 that we are good at it and that we are active because the Chinese, uh, regime, the Chinese

00:43:50.720 Intel service within the PLA in particular is very aggressive, very, and not just here,

00:43:57.080 but with all our allies and they are busy hoovering up every piece of information that they get their

00:44:01.520 hands on, on a daily basis, whether that's through cyberspace or through old fashioned human

00:44:05.800 sources, you know, they have an enormously aggressive, uh, you know, effort underway around

00:44:11.620 the globe. So yeah, we have to do everything we possibly can to counter that.

00:44:16.880 What, what is, uh, okay. So what, what concerns you the most about them? Is it,

00:44:21.760 you know, long-term, I mean, you know, I lived in Dallas for five years. So when I left Dallas,

00:44:27.060 the moment I left Dallas, two weeks later, the storm hit and this was just, you know, 12 weeks ago,

00:44:31.900 13 weeks ago, we had to shut down our office. Pipes were blowing up. One of my C-suite executives

00:44:37.600 bedroom, master bedroom upstairs, living room down here. They were out visiting grandma.

00:44:45.020 The bed fell to first of all, because the pipe blew up. I mean, it's just ridiculous.

00:44:51.040 It's like a cartoon. And it was happening everywhere. One day, two days, three days,

00:44:56.080 five days, seven days. We had an event going at Gaylord and I'm doing a conference call with

00:45:00.560 Gaylord with my executives at Gaylord. We're expecting 2000 people there. They're in the

00:45:04.560 hotel and lights are off. They have beanies on and four sweaters on because the heater doesn't

00:45:09.480 work at Gaylord and Gaylord is a well-known hotel. Yeah. So, you know, what if that becomes a formula

00:45:15.940 for somebody who's a little bit more divisive in the, in Asia, a country called China saying,

00:45:21.760 wow, what a great, uh, what if we could do that to us for eight weeks? What if we could do that to us

00:45:26.100 for, you know, four months? What if we do bio warfare? What if we do cyber? What if we do?

00:45:32.860 Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's already in their playbook. Yeah. It's, that's already in their

00:45:37.220 playbook. They've already figured that out in terms of, you know, what the, the, a, a major

00:45:41.960 conflict could look like. And, uh, and, you know, if you get all the, you know, Pentagon and military

00:45:48.380 intel community leaders in DC and put them in a conference room and, you know, ask them all what

00:45:53.340 they spend most of their time worrying about at night, it would be, uh, you know, an attack on

00:45:58.100 the infrastructure here in the U S right. That's, that's right up there at the top of the list.

00:46:03.120 So that's, and that's something that happens every day, whether it's the Russians or the Chinese or

00:46:09.420 any other nation that's got the resources, they're out there probing and mapping, uh, our infrastructure.

00:46:14.100 And that's everything from the power grids to understanding how our, our, our water treatment

00:46:18.880 facilities work, our transportation routes and hubs, uh, the banking system. And, and, and they're

00:46:25.100 not doing it because they're just curious. They're doing it because they're drawing up or

00:46:29.800 have drawn up, um, scenarios for how that next major conflict, if it, you know, God forbid should

00:46:36.220 happen is going to occur. And it's not going to look anything like what, you know, we were

00:46:41.680 used to from the past. And, and you're absolutely right. You look at, you know, look at a place

00:46:46.980 like Austin when they went during that storm, people were losing their minds. Right. And

00:46:51.100 it was, you know, three days of power. Look, I used to live in Connecticut and, you know,

00:46:55.860 apparently when you live in Connecticut, you have to sign some contract that says you're

00:46:59.300 going to lose power, you know, at least 10 times a winter, uh, for days on end. It's just

00:47:04.520 all the utilities are above ground. And so a power outage for, for five or six or seven

00:47:09.200 days was just a standard practice. And if you had the wherewithal, you'd buy a generator

00:47:13.480 and, and, you know, uh, so that's, that's not really a hardship, but if you multiply that

00:47:22.000 by six or seven or eight or nine or 10 weeks and they shut down the East or West or Texas

00:47:27.820 power grids, uh, what happens? Well, you, you lose power. Suddenly things start to shut

00:47:34.000 down. You don't get food, you know, delivered to, uh, the stores because transportation is

00:47:40.240 shut down because now you're not moving fuel around. Uh, you can't get cash out. You know,

00:47:44.380 there's no cash in your, in your, in your ATM. Uh, and there's a pharmaceuticals, your medicines.

00:47:51.360 So that, you know, that's, that's a real problem. And our power grid is an example for

00:47:57.280 infrastructure was never designed or built to withstand a terrorist attack or certainly

00:48:01.360 a cyber attack. But, you know, so when, when the current administration, when the Biden

00:48:06.220 administration talks about dumping money into infrastructure, hell yeah, I'm all about,

00:48:12.300 you know, if that means, if that means improving our, our, our actual infrastructure, our, our

00:48:17.780 power grids, our, our water treatment facilities, all the things that, that we really do rely

00:48:22.260 on that's infrastructure. If you put the money into that and your roads and bridges, right?

00:48:27.880 Great. Right. But let's not do what we always do, which is kind of lose sight of the

00:48:32.100 important shit because we want to make everybody happy by talking about the feel good stuff. Right.

00:48:38.080 And let's focus on what we really need to focus on from a security perspective first,

00:48:42.240 shore all that up. And, you know, maybe we have a couple of dollars left over by the time we spend

00:48:48.320 all that money to, uh, do other things. I don't know what, that's why I'm not in charge.

00:48:55.140 That's why I'm not in charge. Yeah. So who, who concerns you more, China or Russia,

00:49:00.140 or maybe they concern you in a different way? Yeah, they concern you, they concern you a

00:49:05.120 different way. Yeah. That's, that's, you can't, again, it kind of goes to what we were talking

00:49:09.060 about a little bit before in terms of multitasking, you know, we, and look, the military, the intel

00:49:12.880 community, the staff, the really smart, sharp, uh, individuals, everybody knows that we can multitask

00:49:20.400 in that regard. Uh, oftentimes when I say we can't, I'm referring to politicians, uh, but,

00:49:26.120 uh, China has far more resource than Russia does. Russia's got, you know, basically the equivalent

00:49:33.560 of maybe the fifth largest GDP in, in, in the EU. Um, and when oil heads South, right, uh, in terms

00:49:41.120 of pricing, they really suck and win. And that's typically when you see Putin getting a little

00:49:45.520 bit more aggressive, looking for some sort of external, you know, enemy or target to get the

00:49:49.700 people focused on, uh, which is another reason why we should be energy independent because every

00:49:55.520 time we're not, every time we say, we're going to do something like shut down the Keystone pipeline,

00:49:59.440 and we're going to focus only on green energy. Guess what? Well, just like people are seeing right

00:50:03.900 now, your, your price of gas goes up. And when the price of gas goes up that, you know, without a

00:50:10.660 doubt benefits Putin. So if you're, you know, if you're in favor of, of, uh, of, of helping out

00:50:17.580 Putin, great, you know, let's not be energy independent, but anyway, so that those two,

00:50:22.260 those two nations, their threats are somewhat different. They all want the same thing, which

00:50:27.060 is to push us off the top of the food heap and ascend. Uh, it's just that China has, you

00:50:34.960 know, far more resource than Russia does. Who, who's third, by the way, if you, if you were

00:50:40.180 to say China and Russia, let's just say they're at the top. Who's third? Who's fourth? Who do you

00:50:44.080 look at as a third? Is Turkey third? Is, uh, you mean in terms of, uh, threat, like who

00:50:48.880 would be, we need to, we need to have our eyes on. Yeah. I mean, I think typically if

00:50:55.300 you ask anybody, uh, in, in Washington, uh, in the intel community of the military, they'll,

00:51:00.660 they'll, they'll say it's China, Russia, Iran, North Korea have, and they've occupied those

00:51:06.100 top four spots. They sometimes they rotate or switch positions, but that's been the case

00:51:10.880 for, you know, two, three, four decades, you know, three decades maybe. So that doesn't

00:51:16.340 change much. And then you've got up there on the top of the threats. You've also got,

00:51:20.500 again, got this infrastructure issue. Um, and you know, terrorism is, you know, in there

00:51:25.560 somewhere, but not, you know, even during the heyday of ISIS, was it up at the top as an

00:51:30.300 existential threat now? So it's, but it is, uh, it is remarkable how those threats have

00:51:37.380 remained somewhat constant for a number of years now. So, so you, you, you heard, you

00:51:43.760 know, the whole story about they were pulling out of Afghanistan and here's what we're doing.

00:51:47.200 It's been a waste of time for 20 years because of nine 11, why have we stayed there? And then,

00:51:51.200 I mean, to, to hear Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton come out and be on the same page about

00:51:56.040 the fact that, Hey, this is going to be problematic. If you do, you're going to face some backlash.

00:51:59.520 If you do this, where do you stand with that? Yeah. Um, well, look, we do operational

00:52:07.980 missions. We do tactical missions really, really well. You know, this year in the military and,

00:52:13.340 and Tora Bora is a good example. We do, we, we do things very, very well from a tactical

00:52:19.460 perspective. We don't necessarily, uh, nation build in, uh, that part of the world very well

00:52:28.760 at all. Uh, because in part, you know, the, the, the local buyers don't know what we're selling.

00:52:35.400 Right. And so my feeling has always been about Afghanistan is that, look, we, we did a great job

00:52:43.100 in Tora Bora. That was, that was a, that was a hell of an op, right? Bin Laden got out, but that

00:52:48.760 wasn't necessarily, we weren't, that wasn't the priority target was getting them. It, it was taken

00:52:53.840 down the Taliban. Now we should have explained at that time. Okay. If you do this again,

00:52:58.520 meaning if you allow your country to be used as a training base, you know, to attack the West,

00:53:05.320 whether it's us or our allies, we're going to come back in here and do this again, because we do it

00:53:09.320 very well. And so we'll come in here and kick your ass every time we need to. And that to me would

00:53:16.520 have made more sense to trying to improve the literacy rate or, or try to sell them on some sort

00:53:22.200 of pseudo federal democratic government concept in an environment where we know from recent history,

00:53:31.560 from looking at the example of the Soviets occupying Afghanistan, that we had the same exact problems

00:53:37.880 that they had when they were trying to exit, right? They were trying to get, they were trying to,

00:53:41.200 okay, maybe we got to retreat to the urban centers. We can't hold the countryside. You know,

00:53:44.340 how do we leave a government in place that, you know, will continue with our agenda once we're out,

00:53:49.780 you know, that all the problems that they were facing are the problems we are facing.

00:53:54.400 We tended to mirror our values. We tended to think, well, you know, it'll be different because

00:53:58.580 we're, it's America and it's, you know, democracy and it's freedom. And, you know, they don't know.

00:54:04.740 I don't know. So I think what we, we just need to be pragmatic. We need to understand that when we

00:54:10.300 leave, the Taliban will take over again. They will take over again. Oh yeah. The Taliban will be in

00:54:15.500 charge. So once we leave, the Taliban will be in charge. And if we can't live with that, well then,

00:54:22.440 okay, then we, we shouldn't leave. But I guess my point is we can't stay there forever. And is it

00:54:29.700 time to have a hard assessment as to whether this is, you know, one of our key priorities from a

00:54:36.260 national security perspective? So I just, I'm not one of those people that says we need to leave,

00:54:41.020 you know, five or 10,000 troops there. Um, I think we just, at this stage of the game,

00:54:48.500 um, as long as we can accept the fact that the Taliban is going to be back in charge.

00:54:54.180 Crazy question for you. Do you think China wants us to leave?

00:54:58.400 China wants us to be bogged down. China wants us to, to devote resources in there. Just like Russia

00:55:03.600 does. Russia was tickled pink when we started, you know, in there and because they knew, I think,

00:55:07.960 what was going to happen. And so China, if it causes us heartburn, if it causes us to expend

00:55:15.540 resources, if it damages our brand worldwide, then China's all in favor of it. I don't think they

00:55:22.620 necessarily want us to leave, uh, because then they'll come rushing in and fill a vacuum. Um,

00:55:28.740 I don't think anybody, at least in the rest of our lifetime, is going to look at the Soviet

00:55:33.880 experience and our experience and think to themselves, you know, maybe we can do it next time better.

00:55:37.960 My concern is, I think China may be sitting there saying, look, America, why don't you

00:55:41.820 waste your resources to stay in Afghanistan? Because as long as you're there, the Taliban

00:55:46.180 is not going to be waking up because if they do, and they find out what we're doing to Muslims

00:55:50.020 here in China, they may come after us before they come after you. At least you're not going out there,

00:55:54.300 you know, doing to Muslims what we're doing out here. You know, the story about what China is doing

00:55:58.240 to Muslims.

00:55:58.880 Well, the difference they've got is that the regime, the China regime doesn't have to respond to anybody.

00:56:03.760 They don't care. Right. And they understand that. I think they, look, they, they get that. They,

00:56:09.180 they've already essentially gotten, they've gotten away with what they've been doing to the Uyghurs.

00:56:13.280 You know, we've, we've gotten upset. We've, we've issued some memos, but in reality, we haven't done

00:56:18.000 shit about what China is doing to the Uyghurs. And so if they have to deal with an insurgency or if,

00:56:24.760 if the Taliban or, or elements of, of jihadism turns their attention to China,

00:56:30.340 Chinese are going to respond in a, in a very brutal way. And they're not going to care what

00:56:34.020 the world thinks about that.

00:56:35.700 So you, so you don't think China cares about what the Taliban are going to do to them?

00:56:41.000 I think they're prepared to deal with it in a way that we're not.

00:56:44.420 And how would they deal with it? I mean, if you were to use your creative imagination,

00:56:48.300 how would they deal with it?

00:56:49.260 Well, I mean, I think there would be, there would not be concern over, over casualties.

00:56:54.440 There would not be, you know, sort of that, that concern over how this looks to the world.

00:57:00.740 They, again, it's not, that's not their calculation, right? If it's in their best interests,

00:57:06.660 they'll deal with it and they'll, you know, clean up whatever mess is left afterwards,

00:57:12.400 but they're not going to sit around and wring their hands and have, you know,

00:57:16.020 remorse over it because the world thinks less of them.

00:57:18.140 Yeah, but I'm curious to know what they would do. Like, would you, would you see them saying,

00:57:23.540 okay, let us attack you directly. Here's what we're going to do to you.

00:57:27.820 How would they go about, you know, responding to the Taliban? That's what I'm curious about.

00:57:34.620 It would depend on what that would look like, right? I mean, it's, it's, the Taliban's not

00:57:38.580 going to, what are they going to do? They're not, they're not mounting an invasion.

00:57:42.240 Um, so, you know, it would be, what is it? Is it, is it, uh, you know, efforts to, uh, engage in

00:57:49.720 terrorist activity on, on, uh, you know, within China? Sure. Could be. And if that's the case,

00:57:55.540 and that's, you know, I suspect that would be where it would, would lie. Then, like I said,

00:58:00.160 the Chinese would, would, would, uh, my, my feeling is the regime would, would not agonize over a brutal

00:58:06.560 response. And that would not mean that they're going to invade, you know, Afghanistan. Um,

00:58:12.060 because again, they don't view that in their own best interest. I, so I don't know. It's all

00:58:15.840 speculation. I'm just saying that, that, uh, from our perspective, um, we've been in Afghanistan a

00:58:22.020 long time. They're not picking up what putting down, you know, it's, it's a bit like Libya. Do you

00:58:28.420 think we're going to create some sort of pseudo democratic stronghold in Libya? So, you know,

00:58:34.500 I think it's time to assess in a much more, um, direct manner, what's in our best national

00:58:43.160 security interests. I think we can maintain sufficient insight into what's going on within

00:58:48.120 Afghanistan without having a large troop presence there. And I think that would then allow us to,

00:58:53.860 uh, drop back in if we need to. And again, in a tactical sense, um, so, but to, to think that

00:59:01.860 somehow the Taliban will be part of a peacemaking deal and share government, uh, once we're gone

00:59:08.260 is, is ridiculous.

00:59:12.460 What's crazy. I had known Chomsky on yesterday and I'm sure, you know, who known Chomsky is. I'm,

00:59:17.500 you know, we probably don't agree with a lot of things he says, but there's one thing that he did

00:59:22.140 say is he said something that made me think in his book, who rules the world. Okay. So in the book,

00:59:27.980 he talks about how America was so fascinated with the, in the hunt of Ben Laden, right? This was a

00:59:34.040 20 year hunt. Let's go find this Ben Laden guy, right? 15 years, whatever the time, like 15 years,

00:59:38.420 right? We're going to go catch him. We're going to get him. And he says, Ben Laden won the war.

00:59:44.320 And what do you mean Ben Laden won? He says, because America spent 3.2 to $4 trillion to kill one man.

00:59:52.760 So Ben Laden's vision was to help bankrupt America or get him to spend more of their money.

00:59:58.480 Guess what? He won. You mean to tell me one person's life is worth $3.2 trillion. So it kind

01:00:04.640 of makes me think on what you're saying is, you know, uh, America seems to be the country that wants

01:00:13.300 to get in the business. Everybody's war fight breaks. Hey guys, guys, guys, guys, listen, I'm here.

01:00:18.140 You guys don't need to fight, you know? Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey, like we're trying to be that,

01:00:21.220 but sometimes when you do that, some people want to fight. Some people want to have differences.

01:00:26.540 Some people want to have their disputes scored away and you're not allowing them to do it. Then

01:00:30.920 you become the enemy because essentially two people turn against you and they're like, wait,

01:00:34.900 get out of our business. You know, why are you minding so much of our business? I think sometimes

01:00:39.140 America does that, but the Taliban, I think that like what you said, you said is America, it's not

01:00:44.640 about whether we should get out or not. It's about if you do, the Taliban is going to come up. If they do

01:00:49.600 take over the location, are you okay with the repercussions of what could happen? What are

01:00:53.820 the potential repercussions? Could a potential another 9-11 happen? If another 9-11 happens,

01:00:59.460 are we prepared to prevent it from happening? Do we have the right controls in place?

01:01:05.000 How much is that worth? Have we spent time in infrastructure and that? I don't know,

01:01:09.400 but then the question becomes, are we ready for that? If that does take place,

01:01:13.460 can another 9-11 happen with the way we're set up today?

01:01:18.920 Well, sure. You know, there's always some element of a terrorist group out there trying

01:01:24.520 to come up with a new scenario that will beat the defenses that you've currently got in place.

01:01:28.660 We have gotten better at not being reactive, right? Remember when truck bombs were the rage,

01:01:34.380 and so suddenly the answer was bollards, you know, put up lots of perimeter bollards outside of

01:01:39.460 government buildings and embassies, and that'll sort the problem out. And that was reacting to

01:01:45.040 the threat that had already occurred, rather than thinking, what else could happen? We've gotten

01:01:49.180 better at gaming out what else could happen. And so it's a different time. But, you know,

01:01:56.820 the problem is you can't, you know, you lose if you just let one get by, right? You always,

01:02:03.620 you know, just one slip, and you kind of lost that effort. You know, you got to be right all the time

01:02:10.500 in counterterrorism. So it's a tough, it's a good question. I just happen to think that we've got the

01:02:19.380 ability when it comes to Afghanistan to obtain sufficient intel and understanding as to what's

01:02:28.720 going on without maintaining 5 to 10 or 15,000 troops in country indefinitely. Because at that

01:02:36.740 point, you're not doing really anything. You're just, you're afraid to leave. You're afraid to build

01:02:41.840 up. And it's, I'm not quite sure who benefits from a situation like that. But it's, you know,

01:02:51.960 it's hard to imagine that it's been, it's been that long that we've been there.

01:02:56.920 3.2 to $4 trillion. That's a lot of money.

01:03:00.300 And he's right. That's what, you know, Bin Laden talked about that, you know, rather famously,

01:03:03.740 and he was very open about it. You know, he is part of his war against America was on the economic

01:03:10.880 front. And so, you know,

01:03:14.140 You tell me whose life in the history of the world, you know, garnered the tensions of $4 trillion

01:03:23.060 of one country's, you know, resources. That's, that's, that's impact right there, you know?

01:03:30.480 Yeah. No, it wasn't. It's, it kind of, you know, was it important to, to, to bag him? Well,

01:03:37.480 yes. Did it become an outsized focus? You can't underestimate the importance of it. But

01:03:50.620 yeah, I mean, I guess at the end of the day, you know, he was, you know, he succeeded in that regard,

01:03:58.480 right? In terms of the, from the financial cost of his actions to the U S. So.

01:04:03.880 I never understood why we killed the guy. I mean, you go to his place, no one's there. He's by

01:04:08.540 himself. Why do you kill him? Why don't you get them? And if we spend all this money, let's try to

01:04:13.180 get intel out of him. Let's bring him back and see what we can do with him. I mean, we brought,

01:04:17.260 how much do we learn from what Saddam did? Remember when Saddam was going to court and defending

01:04:22.440 himself and everybody could kind of see how he's selling himself and trying to win the, the citizens

01:04:28.440 of Iraq over. And some people are saying he's full of shit. I don't believe anything he's saying,

01:04:32.120 but some people are like, well, I kind of understand. Look at the man sympathize with

01:04:35.600 them. But no matter what we got smarter as a, as a world to know what the guys mode. I just didn't

01:04:41.340 understand why we have to take them out. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, in the moment,

01:04:45.160 if you're faced with someone who's got a weapon and they, if you're ready to shoot, you're going to,

01:04:49.620 you're not, you know, you're not going to hear all sorts of things about, well, you know,

01:04:54.060 whether it's a law enforcement mother should fire a warning shot or they should aim for the leg or

01:04:58.380 something. Okay. Well, first of all, you have never been in a gunfight. I agree.

01:05:02.120 I'm not, I'm not, I'm not doing that. I'm just saying, but I mean, I think it's, and then it's

01:05:06.520 also, um, you know, just from an operational perspective, I suspect Bin Laden actually by

01:05:14.240 that point in his time, he had very little in his head of interest, you know? So I don't know what

01:05:22.160 it would have accomplished. It would have been a, a, a real dog and pony show of a, of a, of a trial.

01:05:28.420 And, and, you know, there would have been some people saying he needs to be properly tried and,

01:05:32.880 and, you know, and so look, the guy, the guy got what he deserved. Um, there is no doubt that it,

01:05:40.800 it, it, at, at enormous cost. Um, but you know, I think now to, to your point, we just have to

01:05:47.940 think, okay, well, what, what do we do if there's a next event like that, of that magnitude? And are

01:05:56.160 we prepared for it? Do we respond properly? Um, you know, my, my speculation is yes, we would.

01:06:04.020 Like this country reacts very well at times to diversity, even now when we all seem to be very

01:06:08.320 divided, um, an outside event, you know, uh, the U S seems to come together at times like it never,

01:06:17.000 ever does in other, you know, times. So. Hope you're right. Hope you go in that direction. By

01:06:22.680 the way, are we still, would you still put us as the best, uh, intelligence agency in the world? I

01:06:26.700 mean, I know historically it's been the top three CIA, you know, Mossad and you got, uh, MI6 and now

01:06:33.800 you got the, the, the Chinese, uh, intelligence agency, uh, you know, what do they call it? The

01:06:39.000 ministry of a state, uh, security of China, you know, who, who do you think has got the most

01:06:45.580 well-trained prepared anticipation type of a group of people that are ready for anything to happen?

01:06:52.060 We do. Yeah. The CIA, uh, Hey, look, Hey, you saw the ad. We started out the show with the ad. Come

01:06:57.560 on. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Not to, not to denigrate the ad, but anyway. Uh, but yeah,

01:07:03.860 no, the agency and I'm subjective. It's exactly what people would expect me to say, but, uh, you know,

01:07:10.000 the CIA, in my opinion, anyway, is still at the, at the top of the heap there. Um, you know, it's not

01:07:16.540 that not to say the Chinese don't throw an enormous amount of resource at their Intel operations. They

01:07:20.720 do. And they've also got certain advantages in the sense that they've got, they locked down their

01:07:24.960 domestic, you know, population like no other. Right. And they can get those people to work on

01:07:29.740 their behalf. Um, and to, so it's, you know, they've got, it's, it's like the old Russian days

01:07:35.460 during the, uh, KGB days, you know, everybody out on the street, every Russian out on the street

01:07:39.760 was, you know, co-opted a sense to be a surveillance in a way for, you know, the KGB because they had

01:07:46.120 no other choice. Um, but yeah, the CIA is in terms of resource capabilities, personnel, uh, reach

01:07:53.000 is, uh, as far as I'm concerned is at the top of the heap. I don't know. Uh, I, I, I, I,

01:08:03.460 I, I, I, you know, power to you being diplomatic and your, your commercial for your peers to see

01:08:09.900 and say, Mike's on our side, you know, but, but I, you know, what's crazy. You know, how I think

01:08:15.200 about it. I asked this from everybody. I asked, uh, Shabbat, he's like, Oh, it's this. I asked,

01:08:19.600 uh, Woolsey, even for the two years he was in, I think he was in under Clinton. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,

01:08:25.540 it's CIA. And I, I'll ask different folks, but I think it's not MI6. I don't think it's CIA. I don't

01:08:32.460 think it's, uh, Mossad. I think it's China right now because, you know, and, and, and here's what

01:08:38.700 I mean by China. Look, who is right now doing the job of espionage better than anybody else? I mean,

01:08:44.020 you, you think about what is espionage, right? Let me, how many people are bought today? I don't know.

01:08:52.120 You had world health organization being more aligned with China. You got political people

01:08:59.380 in office that you have lineage to China, you know, and China is willing to spend the kind of

01:09:04.360 money to buy people up in different ways. And we'll give you this seed. And there's so many

01:09:08.820 creative ways. Oh, your kid needs something. Don't worry about it. Oh, your, this person needs this.

01:09:13.160 Don't worry. You need to go into a Harvard. Let us buy a building in Harvard for a hundred million

01:09:17.620 dollars. They owe us a bunch of buildings. So a bunch of favors. So I don't know if anybody's doing a

01:09:23.060 better job. It's, it's almost, this is, this is almost how I see it. You go to a club, you see

01:09:29.480 girls and you see the one guy that's extremely, uh, uh, you know, good looking. So it's kind of

01:09:35.440 like, uh, so the girls are attracted to him because of his looks. You're like, okay, that's MI6 good

01:09:39.520 looking group. You know, then you got, uh, uh, you know, uh, one that maybe they're known for being

01:09:45.980 great and bad. And so you have to know his reputation. That's Mossad. Let's just say, you know,

01:09:50.420 Oh, you, you know, this guy's going to, that should be the agency. What are we good at board

01:09:57.080 games? What are you going to get around to the agency? Then you got, wow, look at this guy here,

01:10:02.660 man. You know, he's, he's so good with words and, you know, great, uh, very proud. And, you know,

01:10:08.080 the kind of person I want to bring to my family and introduce them, say that CIA, right? U S

01:10:12.260 but then there's the one that just says, look, I have one intention with you. I want to take you

01:10:17.700 home tonight. And that's it. That's China. They're shameless. China is so shameless with

01:10:22.580 their game where all the other agencies are almost a little bit more, you know, uh, careful

01:10:28.940 in their ways of doing things a little bit more, you know, where they're just kind of like, no,

01:10:34.340 we are dark and this is what our intentions are. And we're going to take care of you. And we're

01:10:38.180 shameless about it. And I swear to God, if you screw with us, your life is going to be held

01:10:42.420 because we know your daughter, your distance that I visualize them being that way. Again,

01:10:48.100 I may be wrong. I'm just the regular guy here, but, uh, I think quietly, everybody's talking about

01:10:54.540 MI6, Mossad and CIA. I think China's like, you guys can go get all the recognition, all the websites

01:11:00.380 on who you are. But I think we're kicking all your asses combined together. Well, I mean, there's no

01:11:04.040 doubt that, I mean, there's nobody's underestimating, uh, Chinese intel by any means, anybody who's in

01:11:09.380 the game. And by the way, it's good just to know that the CIA now we're known for our,

01:11:13.460 you know, sweet personality. Um, Hey, what the hell? Yeah. We're the ones who you want to take

01:11:21.140 home to mom. You take an agency officer. Do you disagree? Do you disagree that we're not the

01:11:28.340 sweetest? Like, look at the ad we just made. I know, but I mean, but that's not, that's that,

01:11:33.080 you know, that's a, that's a public facing side of it. I've seen, I've seen, again, I've worked

01:11:36.820 behind the curtain and, you know, we don't, uh, we, you know, the job gets done, you know,

01:11:42.840 when it needs to. Uh, but I think nobody's underestimating, uh, Chinese intel for sure.

01:11:48.640 Um, and part of it is, you know, uh, professional pride in terms of when you ask who's the best,

01:11:53.640 obviously, you know, but I, I wouldn't expect you to say anything else. You, you ask any play,

01:11:58.560 they ask Kobe, who's the greatest of all time. He says, I'm first, I wouldn't expect anything else,

01:12:03.480 but that's, that's part of the debate. No, I'm right. I only ask because I think some are willing

01:12:08.280 to get way more dirty than you guys are. Well, look, you face the Chinese intel service and the

01:12:15.080 Russians, uh, and a variety of others, uh, don't face the same restrictions and people don't believe

01:12:21.580 that. I mean, the, the, the sort of the, the progressive side, the, the far left, all those

01:12:24.780 people who actually believe everything they see in a feature film or reading a beach book, you know,

01:12:29.260 they won't believe it, but there's an enormous checks and balances placed on the agency. Right.

01:12:33.800 And it's a, it's the most transparent, frankly, intel service in the world. So is that a detriment?

01:12:39.080 Well, sure it is. When you're talking about, you know, uh, operational, um, effectiveness maybe,

01:12:46.240 uh, because you have to, you have to work within those checks and balances and those restrictions

01:12:50.660 and the legalities that exist. The Chinese don't have to do that. So I take your point in that regard,

01:12:55.520 but, you know, um, you know, with creativity and, and, uh, you know, I, I don't know, I just, I,

01:13:02.960 you can overcome that, I guess is what I'm saying.

01:13:11.940 Again, I have to respect your experience and, and just tell you that you've seen things I haven't

01:13:17.160 seen and I hope you're right. I hope you're right. But your opponent can, is, is willing to go to very,

01:13:23.660 very ugly places that I think America is willing to, cause like, you know, you fight somebody,

01:13:28.960 right. And you fight this guy, you're like, okay, there's a knife there. You're not ready to stab the

01:13:34.900 guy. Okay. You want to beat the hell out of them and just, you know, let you say, but the other guy's

01:13:41.500 willing to take the knife. You're not going to kick this guy's ass no matter how big you are,

01:13:44.360 he's going to stab you. Right. So then you're like, I'm willing to stab the guy, but the other guy is

01:13:49.120 willing to, you know, take out his gun. Okay. Then look, I don't mind taking out my gun.

01:13:53.660 Okay. But then the other guy's willing to go after your family. Oh, draw their line. I'm not

01:13:56.840 going, but there is somebody that's willing to go to levels that you're not willing to go to.

01:14:02.060 Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, never, never, never reach for a knife if you've already got a

01:14:06.200 gun. So yeah, don't make that mistake. But no, it's, you know what it is. And, and that is something

01:14:15.100 that's used against us, right. By whether it's China or any other nation that doesn't have our best

01:14:21.260 interests at heart, uh, is our, our openness, um, sort of our, our mentality, uh, our, you know,

01:14:29.600 again, and, and, and people sometimes scoff, but you know, our desire to do the right thing. Look,

01:14:33.660 we engage in a lot of activities overseas as a nation for the right reason, because we genuinely

01:14:38.860 sort of want to do the right thing. Do we make mistakes? Sure we do. And then we try to course

01:14:43.300 correct and all those things, but yeah, other nations, just like terrorist organizations,

01:14:47.240 they use our openness and our freedoms against us, right? No, no secret there. Um, but you know,

01:14:54.080 I would much rather having spent bulk of my life overseas, I would much rather live in an

01:14:58.260 environment like this than, you know, whatever China's selling. I, I, I don't disagree. Don't,

01:15:04.040 don't, don't take my messaging as that at all. I, I believe America's the greatest country in the

01:15:09.720 world. That's not where I'm going to the place where I'm going is look, things are getting darker

01:15:14.200 and China's making it very clear that they don't care to negotiate on your terms. The only way they

01:15:21.240 negotiate is on their terms. No American negotiate. The only person that's ever pushed these guys,

01:15:27.280 that's pissed them off is one guy. And it was the most hated guy in America and the history of

01:15:31.700 America in a four year period to the point where anybody was willing to do anything for this guy

01:15:36.180 to not get elected on the opposite side. And the person that got elected is probably the least

01:15:40.580 qualified, not quality, maybe the not least qualified because his resume in the world of

01:15:44.920 politics, 43 years, the least aspirational excitement, 20 people would show up to makes

01:15:50.540 no sense. And I don't even think Kamala Harris today. I don't know if she, maybe she did a press

01:15:55.280 conference or two, but I don't, don't recall her doing anything there. So I, I, I don't know when

01:16:01.120 I think about that, I've interviewed mobsters, Sammy Debo Gravano, you know, Michael Francis,

01:16:05.080 all these different names that maybe you've heard about Phil Leonetti from Philadelphia.

01:16:08.460 Yeah. The mop system was what, Hey, you got a liquor store here, Joey. I do. Who's bothering

01:16:15.100 you? Well, such and such moving forward. Tell them I'm on you. You tell them Sammy's over here.

01:16:20.540 Really? Yes. Guy comes to try to bully Joey. Hey, Joey, give me your money. I'm not giving you

01:16:26.420 shit. What'd you say? You want me to call Sammy? Oh, you, you call Sammy? Yeah. No, no, no, no,

01:16:32.280 no, no, no. Listen, Joe, I got no problem with you. No, to me again, I'm not saying that's the

01:16:38.400 direction to go, but what I am saying is I almost expect, you know, the movie, uh, what was the movie

01:16:46.780 with, uh, Tom Cruise where you can't handle the truth with, uh, yeah, it was, uh, up on the wall

01:16:53.500 in Guantanamo. Yeah. A few good men, right. Where, where the guy said, you can't handle the truth.

01:16:59.440 Right. And the movie, he goes because of code red, let's set aside code red, forget about code red,

01:17:06.860 but I do think the job of CIA or Delta or Navy seal team six, or some of this, what you guys have

01:17:14.800 to do. I do believe 99% of America cannot handle the truth. I believe that. Yeah. Yeah. Most,

01:17:22.960 most folks really don't want to know how the sausage is made. You know, it's just not something

01:17:27.380 they want to get involved in. And, and like you said at the very beginning, it's not something they

01:17:31.600 have time for, right? Everybody's worried about rightly so, you know, taking care of their family,

01:17:36.140 doing all those things. People want national security. They want to feel protected, you know? And

01:17:40.560 so, you know, look, I guess all I would say is, um, within the confines of, of, of how,

01:17:51.500 uh, you know, we operate as a military and Intel community. Um, I still maintain, we are the best

01:18:00.540 out there. We're the most effective, efficient group out there. Uh, that doesn't undermine the

01:18:05.960 seriousness or the challenges from an organization like, you know, the Chinese ministry. So, um,

01:18:13.580 but it does, uh, yeah, that, that does present problems, right? The, and I think the problem that

01:18:22.300 we're facing right now is exactly what you said with Biden and Harris is, is, you know, are they up to the

01:18:26.800 task? Are they up to the task of standing up against China and, and dealing with them in a way that,

01:18:32.960 you know, um, they'll take seriously. And I don't know the answer to that question.

01:18:38.580 I, I, I don't either, but you know, yesterday when I'm, uh, talking to Noam Chomsky, here's a guy

01:18:44.560 that's been a professor at MIT for 60 plus years, right? That's a long time. And I asked him, I said,

01:18:51.140 do you love America? He says, how do you love a country? You can't love a country. I love my kids.

01:18:57.200 I love my family, but you can't love a country. What do you mean to love a country? I said, I can

01:19:02.700 say I love America. He says, I don't understand the concept of loving a country, right? I asked you

01:19:08.340 the question at the beginning is one of the priorities to be a CIA agent, to have the love

01:19:13.080 of the country. You know, they say love of the game clause, like, you know, Michael Jordan and

01:19:16.660 his contract, that's something with the bulls called the love of the game clause. Like you can never

01:19:19.800 let me stop me from playing a small little pickup game in New York. You can't stop me because

01:19:24.980 that's the love of the game clause in all of his contracts. It concerns me if the CIA agents

01:19:29.960 that they get in today, some of them actually don't like the ideas America was founded on

01:19:34.380 that scares the hell out of me because that's where you're not protecting the values that

01:19:40.120 you value that America was founded on. You're willing to fight for the values that maybe your

01:19:46.000 mom, your dad, a professor at UC Berkeley sold you on that. You've been convinced that's

01:19:50.940 the way to go. And other countries are a little bit more loyal to the values that that country

01:19:55.940 sold them on. I hope I'm wrong. I hope our agents are more loyal to what America was founded

01:20:01.040 on. But again, who am I? I'm just the guy.

01:20:04.020 Well, but I think you're right. I think you're onto something. I think if you, if all you do

01:20:07.360 is hire for the individual and the show that you are hiring, you know, all the various elements

01:20:12.540 of society out there and those people, you know, that you hire, you know, aren't coming to the

01:20:18.400 table because of, you know, love of the team, love of the values, love of the ideas, the ideals,

01:20:24.540 then yeah, then eventually you're going to have a problem because you're going to have a group of

01:20:27.740 individuals. And look, I don't care. You could have a conference room full of, you know, of diversity

01:20:33.780 and all you've got is, you know, maybe you've got a conference room with diverse idiots. You could

01:20:37.320 have a homogenous conference room and you've got to have a conference room full of homogenous

01:20:40.360 idiots, right? It doesn't matter. You hire the smartest, the most competent, the most capable

01:20:44.600 skill sets you've got, and it doesn't matter what they look like. Right. And so that to me seems

01:20:50.960 like it shouldn't be that hard to understand. But no, I disagree with Noam. I love America. I love

01:20:57.780 the ideals. I love the ideas. I love the values. And, you know, some people will say, well, you know,

01:21:03.860 you know, your ideas are wrong or whatever. I don't care. Right. I, you know, I'm,

01:21:08.920 I don't see, I don't see any contradiction in saying you love America and, and you want it to

01:21:14.700 be as best as it can be. Look, I, I, I don't, I, I don't care what anybody thinks or believes or

01:21:21.760 looks like or wants to be right. I don't need to celebrate your ideas. You don't need to celebrate

01:21:28.040 mine. Just get on with it. Be a good, honest, decent person, be kind to people and be a productive

01:21:35.480 member of society, but, you know, get that fuck out of my wheelhouse. Right. I don't, I, I don't

01:21:42.120 need, you know, to, all I care about is the character in the, in the content of your, of your,

01:21:48.240 you know, self as a human. I thought we were honestly there. And that's one of the few times

01:21:53.620 I've been disappointed in, in, in the recent past is when I realized that we weren't there anymore.

01:21:58.840 And then we're back to focusing on, you know, slicing and dicing up the population and the end

01:22:03.780 of, you know, people would, it doesn't make any sense to me. And I thought we were past it.

01:22:09.000 We're on the same page. I, I, again, I saw the commercial yesterday. I'm like, wait,

01:22:14.240 what is this? Is this Walmart trying to say they're inclusive? No, no, it's not Walmart. That's CIA.

01:22:19.340 Yeah. I thought it's a Walmart commercial. I thought it was Walmart or an Amazon commercial

01:22:23.400 that we hire everybody. It's my background, all this stuff. Anyways, Mike, I've had a blast with

01:22:27.920 you having you on. Appreciate your time. Appreciate your insight. No, thank you, man. I've really

01:22:31.940 enjoyed it. I hope I wasn't too long winded. No, I, I, if I didn't have an appointment here

01:22:37.160 right now, I would have stayed with you long. I really enjoy talking to you to hear your point

01:22:40.680 of view on how things are. And I salute you for being a patriot and defending your country and

01:22:47.140 standing up for what your country's values and principles are. Thank you, man. I appreciate that

01:22:51.960 very much. And hopefully we'll get a chance to do this again, somewhere down the road.

01:22:55.160 I definitely, hopefully next time I'm going to be face to face. Take care, buddy. Thank you.

01:22:57.920 Take care, man. Bye-bye.

01:22:59.920 After watching this video, do you like China anymore? Do you trust them? Do you want to

01:23:03.080 go there? Do you want to go maybe there for vacation? Do you want to be in business with

01:23:06.520 them? I'm curious. Comment below if you enjoyed this interview. I got two other videos I want

01:23:10.300 you to watch. One is with the chief disguise officer, Jonah Mendez. Her job as a CIA agent,

01:23:15.580 I think 28 years, was to go out there and help you have a disguise where people cannot tell

01:23:19.600 who you are. You're kind of changing your look. And the other one is Nick McKinley, who was

01:23:23.720 the modern day Jack Ryan. If you've seen the movie Jack Ryan, it's based on his life. If you haven't

01:23:29.040 seen it, click over here. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - May 27, 2021

Former CIA Agent Reveals China’s Cold War with The West

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