EMERGENCY PODCAST Ex-CIA Spy: World War III Has Already Started — Most People Just Don't Know It Yet

Never has there been a crazier time. This is absolutely wild. The Iranian war has kicked off. It is I think full-fledged at this point. Now, I think a lot of people are getting the analysis on Iran wrong. They either get sucked into the Israel question of whether we're just being puppet mastered or they're buying into the propaganda around the nuclear threat. If we want to get below the propaganda, what's really going on in Iran? You know, it's such a great question and the best place to start when I felt myself conflicted by the same two narratives, right? The Israel's in charge narrative and the WMD narrative, which is a funny narrative cuz we've been there before. I was I was asking myself the the same question. How do I get deeper than this? And when I was at CIA, I remembered that every year we have to create a national threat assessment at CIA that then feeds up to the ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, along with every other intelligence agency out there. So, NRO, NGA, NSA, FBI, Army Intel, Navy Intel, everybody's charged with writing an assessment of the biggest threats from their specific type of intelligence facing the United States. And then they send that to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that then compiles it into one final threat assessment for the US. And that threat assessment is what all the congressmen and congresswomen use to fund intelligence operations for the following year. So, like let me take a look at that document. I want to know where Iran, and to the same question, where does Venezuela land? Cuz less than 60 days ago, we rendered Nicolas Maduro out of his bed in Venezuela in Caracas. Now, is that threat assessment something you get cuz it's classified or is that publicly available? >> publicly available document. We create classified versions that then get sanitized and shared publicly because it's part of what the national intelligence estimate that's owed to the American people by Congress every year. So, you we can all check these assessments to understand what are the priorities that are dictated by our government. Where does our tax money go? So, I look up the threat assessment published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Iran very clearly in that document published in March of 2025 is not working on weapons of mass destruction. Has no and plans to increase or enhance their uranium enrichment and maybe at the early stages of research and development for chemical and biological weapons. That's what it says. That was in March of 2025. June of 2025, we bomb Iran under the accusation that they are enriching uranium beyond military grade or up to military grade levels at the Fordow plants in in uh in Iran. In stark contrast, the what we were told as the public stood in contrast to what the ODNI published as an official source document for the national intelligence um infrastructure. But, that's only one of several documents. There's also a Department of War document that's produced every year and that tells you the national strategies of the defense the what was the Department of Defense that is now the Department of War. Yeah. Inside that document, Iran is not a priority. Inside the White House's national security strategy, all publicly available documents that nobody knows exists, none of them highlighted Iran as a national security priority. None of them highlighted Venezuela as a national security priority. So, it became very clear to me that what's happening, where our weapons, our intelligence, our military might is being used, it's being used for something other than what we've been told and what Congress has been told are our national security issues. Do you have a sense of why they're doing this? Like, is Trump just a power mad, you know, madman that wants to gobble up territory? Like, what what's happening? If if it if they aren't a threat, neither of the two places that he's made a move on in the last 60 days alone, if neither of them are a threat that our government is warning us about, why move on them? I suspect there is an element of Trump trying to protect his personal legacy more so than his presidential legacy. He's trying to protect the brand Trump and make sure that that brand is always associated with strength and power. But then second to that, I think there's also an element of the United States knows it's a declining power. And the administration of the United States knows that they are now the administration of a declining power. And they have to try to scramble back as many Ws, wins, victories as they possibly can. So, they're making moves against what most other presidential administrations consider the low-hanging fruit. Venezuela is an irritant, not a national security issue. Iran is a sad news story for the Middle East, but that's why we're peers that's why we're allies with Israel so that Israel can keep Iran in check and so the United States doesn't have to put American lives or American dollars at risk halfway across the globe. Plus, we're friends with Saudi Arabia and UAE and Jordan and we have them surrounded with allies so that we don't have to get involved. So, there's an element where I believe what's happening is the administration realizes we're weak and getting weaker. We can't handle our own economic crisis. We can't handle our own political divide. And we've only got 2 years left. And if the midterms turn either the Senate or the House blue, and the House is supposed to turn blue potentially, then now Trump is a lame duck president. Not that that's going to stop him from using executive orders and covert action, but beside the point, they don't want to go out on a low note. So, they literally are putting stickers on their helmet in the football game, check marks on the side of your fighter jet every time you make a kill. They're like, "Hey, we took out Maduro. Hey, we took out the Ayatollah." I think their eyes are probably on Cuba next. And if they follow the list of countries that are persistently irritants, North Korea would logically follow Cuba. And this was This is all stuff that they could potentially make happen before the end of Trump's second term. Okay, so a legacy play, not necessarily something to protect at the midterms. So, um when you look at the timing of the move, what do you think explains the timing? I I think a big part of the timing is tied to the intelligence that was collected and the embarrassment coming out of the negotiations. So, Because he wasn't able to get concessions. >> Correct. And if you look at just what's happening between Trump and Iran, it's not enough. You also have to look at the fact that he threatened Canada with tariffs and got and lost that. And then he threatened Europe with Greenland. And he lost that. So, he had just come off of a string of losses, very public embarrassing embarrassing losses, and it was time for a quick victory. And you can't control Europe, you can't really control the Supreme Court as much as you might try. But what you can do is park a bunch of weapons off the coast of Oman with with missiles pointed at Iran and try to force them to take action. Well, well, Iran was also watching and recognizing that the president had a series of losses. That standing up to the American president was working for some countries. So, they stood up. They still engaged in negotiations, but they tried to, you know, prolong those negotiations. And I think in that process, the the flaw in their strategy was that they didn't realize that the United States and Israel at a minimum at a minimum, not the only two countries, were combining intelligence to determine whether or not it would be worth striking Iran. I guarantee you the UAE's, the Saudis, and the Jordanians all had a seat at that table, too, sharing their intelligence. And when they found out that there was going to be a a leadership meeting at a certain date at a certain time, Israel said, "We're going to move, and you all can either keep up or shut up, but we're going to do what all of you don't have the courage to do." Okay, that makes sense once you've got the build-up of the assets there. >> Yes. Um but in terms of the sending all the assets over, the timing now you think was just that series of losses, he's looking around the world, I need a win, uh and so cool, I'm going to go to Iran next, protect the legacy up, and then now that we've got everybody here, there's an open window of opportunity, and then we're going to go for it. Yes, sir. Interesting. We'll be back to the show in a second. But first, let's talk about lazy money. Most people think owning gold is smart, and it is, to be honest. But, the question is, why aren't you making it work for you? Monetary Metals changes all of that. They've built a way for your gold to earn yield, paid not in dollars, but in more physical gold, up to 4% per year. More ounces every single month, compounding in hard money. Your assets producing more of itself. And unlike most precious metal programs, storage and insurance are included, so your yield isn't eaten up by hidden fees. Monetary Metals is how you opt out of that game entirely and start stacking more ounces whether the price moves or not. Click the link in the show notes or visit monetary-metals.com/impact to learn more. This is a paid advertisement. [music] And now, let's get back to the show. So, on the topic of why now, Netanyahu has spoken directly to this, saying that it's not that we didn't destroy their nuclear facilities, it's that these guys can't learn. I think you used the word they're unredeemable and saying they want to destroy America. So that was interesting. He didn't say Israel, said America. You remember guys, I'm talking to you like all that. But that they were taking their ballistic missile program underground deep into tunnels that were going to make it impossible for us to ever strike against it in the future. He said that would give them the ability to blackmail the US. What do you think about that? This is a fantastic example of what we call influence influence literacy at CIA. You have to be literate in understanding when someone is trying to influence you. What is Netanyahu's native language? What's the native language of Israel? Hebrew. He's not speaking in Hebrew. He's speaking in English. So who is the intended audience? English-speaking world. Well, who's part of the English-speaking world? The United States and and Great Britain, of course. So he's not even talking to Israelis. He's talking to United States. He doesn't mention Israel, he only talks about America. Why is the Why is the prime minister of somebody else's somebody else's country talking about threats to the United States? Doesn't make any sense. And then on top of that, he he used a word that we have never heard before when it regards to Iran. Blackmail. Blackmail's a terrifying word. It's a triggering word for Americans. Maybe it's a triggering word for for Israelis, too. But why would he use that word? And that word does not fit in the context of any of the threats that we've ever heard about coming from Iran. So here we have somebody else's foreign leader telling us that America was being threatened with blackmail. And that's before we even get into the physical impossibilities of an impenetrable underground bunker being built within months. And and the data points just don't line up. The data points between the ODNI report that we talked about that said that there was no enrichment program or an unlikely nuclear program. Plus the fact that we had representatives of the Trump administration saying that Iran was 5 days away from a nuclear weapon. Plus now we have this saying months away from an underground bunker. These are all very different contradicting statements. So, my influence literacy is telling me that this is intentional disinformation or what could be known as malicious information, malinformation, where it is partly true, but it is delivered in a way in order to cause damage or or fear and anxiety. All right, that's really interesting. So, along those lines, there's another clip from Tucker Carlson where he is talking about Mossad agents getting picked up for potentially bombing, I think it was in Qatar and somewhere else. And he is becoming increasingly anti-Israel. And so, I will ask you after seeing that Tucker Carlson clip, do you have the same spidey senses that he's trying to influence in an anti-Israel direction with this idea that I think he's specifically said something like they want to hurt all these different countries in the region. Um are we being influenced there? Tucker Carlson's a fantastic comparison to the Netanyahu clip, right? The Netanyahu clip was clearly shaped for all Americans. It didn't have a specific slant. If I recall right, even the text of his words flipped between red and blue. There was no political bias in what he was saying. >> That's interesting. >> He was talking to Americans. Influence literacy is is an awesome thing when you start to learn it, right? Tucker Carlson, on the other hand, is clearly pandering to a niche. And it's a niche of people who already doubt, suspect, beyond being skeptical, they're conspiratorial of Israel. Could Israel have carried out false flag operations? Yes, it's possible. Would they choose to do it now when actual real damage is being done by Iran on its own? What's the benefit? What's the benefit of of risking the blowback of Qatar capturing a Mossad agent like he's claiming? The blowback is huge. If it's real, now Qatar is like, "Well, I don't Iran or Israel, right? I thought Iran was my enemy, but now I'm not so sure, but I know Israel's my enemy." It's a huge blowback risk. For what? For one bomb to go off when when Just leave Iran to its own. It's going to keep launching rockets that keep getting intercepted, and it's going to be the clear bad guy. So, it doesn't make strategic sense for Israel to make that to take that risk. Does that I mean, Israel is one of the countries that takes the most dramatic risks in the world, but for this? For Qatar? For Bahrain? For For any country in the Collegi Arab world? Why? Right now, all the momentum is in favor of Israel in the Collegi world. Let Let Israel take the bullets and take the damage and put themselves at harm's way to neutralize Iran, which has long posed a threat to the Collegi Arab countries. So, Tucker doesn't make any sense, but he's pitching He's shaping his narrative to a very specific niche that already believes in something that doesn't make sense. Do you pay attention to Tucker? There are certain influencers out there that I'm just really sad have influence, and Tucker Carlson is one of them. Do you think he's making this stuff up? Does he believe this stuff and is just saying it and he's misreading the world or >> That's it. I I hope that his journalistic career would give him enough moral guidance and intellectual honesty to not just parrot for a reaction or for a paycheck. I would hope. But, I don't know Tucker's life. Maybe that's exactly what he's doing. Maybe there's Maybe there's some other agenda. Maybe he has gone off the deep end. People change. Who knows? But, the vast majority of what I hear from Tucker Carlson, going all the way back to his interview with Putin, it does not strike me as a professional interviewer, a professional journalist, anybody with any kind of ethical guidelines for factually reporting information or vetting yourself before you share an opinion. It's a It's a shame. It's a shame because I think he could have been something so much bigger and better than he is. But, maybe he's counting his victory in dollar signs and and likes from some subset of crazies. I don't know. Where do you see the war going from here? Like, do you think there's going to be boots on the ground? Is that a red line where Trump would rather see it burn than do that? Like, where where do we go? I really like the idea of always exercising an economic outlook on what's going on in Iran. And And when I ask myself was it was was attacking Iran good for America? I feel like you made a pretty good case earlier that it was good for America. Economically speaking, if it pays out the way we hope for it to pay out, meaning stability in the Straits of Hormuz and, you know, a less radicalized government and and uh reinvestment in the United States coming from the Middle East, if if big, bold, giant ifs all of that happens, boom, it was good for America. But, is it good for America right now? Could the same benefit have been gained 6 months down the road? 2 weeks down the road? 2 years ago? One of the the narratives we're being fed is that this was the last best chance. That's what Trump just said, right? This was the last best chance to take down Iran. I don't see the evidence to say that this was the last best chance. Not the last chance or the best chance. Um and to your point about the targets that were selected, and we're completely glossing over the process. We assu- Israel We supported Israel in the known assassination of a head of state and accepted the collateral damage of multiple civilians that had nothing to do with it. His His wife being one of them, his children being another one. We and we we supported it with our resources, our tax dollars, our military hardware, even though we know that it is not only a deviation from international norms, but it is against international law, part of the law that we put in place to attack a head of state. That's not supposed We don't The United States as a policy from his from back before I joined CIA does not assassinate world leaders. And even now we still have the plausible deniability say, "Well, we didn't do it. Well, Israel did it. We just kind of saw it happen. We just gave them the whatever intel it was that helped validate their target set for that day." But I think Trump wants the credit for killing him. He has said, "He tried to take me out twice. Looks like I got him first. I guess I'm even creating jobs in Iran." I mean, it's wild. >> Assuming these are all actual statements as I did not hear them. I saw them printed, but But how But it's it's such a huge deviation from anything that we've ever said. It's a deviation from what our service members are talking about. >> people like supposedly Obama was bombing without congressional approval? Is Trump really the first to do it or There's two titles that kind of dictate combat. There's title 10 and title 50. Tell me if you're if I'm boring you. >> No, not at all. Title 10 is what gives the United States military the ability to carry out wartime operations. Title 50 is what gives the CIA the opportunity to carry out covert action operations using whatever resources the executive chooses to assign. So, title 50 coverage is what's required by law for covert action. So, when CIA is called in to take out any kind of operation, it's a covert action operation and they can pull resources from anywhere in the US inventory. They can pull military members, they can pull weapons, they can pull planes, they can pull satellites, they can pull whatever and put them all under this convenient little package called title title 50 that gives them the ability to do it all as covert action, which sits under the office of the president's sole discretionary decision-making, right? So, what Obama did was set a precedent for Title 50 use. And he used that specifically to target leaders of terrorist organizations, not heads of state, right? Even targeting Osama bin Laden wasn't a head of state. He was the leader of an ideological um non-state actor. But, he didn't use it to target presidents, prime ministers, kings. Those are all heads of state. But, it did create this this capacity, this tolerance for executive order after executive order and secret mission after secret mission that doesn't get disclosed to the American public until we have the the the ultimate takedown of Osama bin Laden in 2011. That was adopted by Trump in 2016. Difference was that Donald Trump, when he took over, there was all the Russian collusion stuff, and CIA didn't like their new president, and he didn't like CIA. So, he shuttered CIA's budget, and huge amounts of people started quitting CIA, and CIA retreated down to this skeleton of a of a group where all the talent really either left or tried to leave, and all that was left behind were the people trying to scrape by their retirement or or ideologically aligned with Donald Trump at the time. But, that was CIA from 2016 to 2020. And then Biden came in. Biden had to rebuild CIA the the best that he could, and tried to make them ideologically aligned with his interests, which is why you started to see all the DEI stuff. And for anybody who who tried to look at applying or working for CIA between 2020 and 2024, you probably only saw handicapped advertisements and gay LBG LGBTQ flags in every assign in every advertisement for CIA. That's what they were looking for, diversity and inclusion, and that was the goal. Um and that's what it looked like from 2020 to 2024. And then Trump takes office again. Now he appoints Radcliffe, who you never hear about cuz he doesn't really do anything, and somehow CIA is super capable, super effective, and super close to Donald Trump. I don't buy that. What I think is happening is CIA is being used as a shield. Their name is being used as a shield for other capabilities that Donald Trump can actually leverage. >> Say more. Because the Central Intelligence Agency by design in the infrastructure of national intelligence is a shield. It's the central hub, meaning all other intelligence collected by the United States must go through the CIA to be processed into a final product to be delivered to the president. So in that way, all intelligence can be credited to CIA. And CIA can mask the true source of all intelligence that comes in. And that includes foreign intelligence. So when Colombia or Mexico or Israel or Ghana, when they share an intelligence report with the United States, they share it with the CIA. And CIA then has to go through the process of reviewing it, processing it, digesting it, and turning it into a product, which means it's not the Ghanaians that get credit for the report, it's CIA that gets the credit for the report. >> Mhm. That's why how do we get Venezuela? CIA intel. How do we get How did Mexico uh kill the head of the New Jalisco Generation? CIA intelligence. And how do we get into Iran and find the leaders? CIA intelligence. It wasn't CIA. It was somebody else filtering their information through the bureaucratic engine of CIA, and then CIA gets the credit. >> have a sense of who it actually is? Yes and no. Um for example, with Iran, Iran's a great example because people want to accuse Israel. Oh, Israel is the puppet master. Israel is controlling everything. More likely, Israel had the dominant information of Iran at the time cuz Iran has been a has been a existential threat to Israel for decades. So, Israel has the most powerful human networks in Iran. Israel was the one that went in in June and wiped out their air defense system. Like Israel has Iran on lockdown intelligence-wise. The United States doesn't. The United States has struggled with Iran since before I even joined CIA. They've never had great access into Iran. >> don't get the culture or >> We don't get the culture. It's low on our priority list. If you recall, I said, "Where did Iran land on either the ODNI or the Department of War or the White House priority list?" It wasn't even on the list. Right? The country is named, but in terms of the priorities, it's not listed. So, decades of investing so little into building an intelligence network in Iran means that you're not going to have any information on Iran. And that's why we've always relied on Israel to be the foundation for that meaningful intelligence on Iran. But Israel chooses what to share. Whenever you control the intelligence and you share it with a partner, you choose what to share and what to keep back. So, to offset the fact that Israel might manipulate us, we also look to Jordan and Saudi Arabia and UAE to share their intelligence on Iran. And when messages corroborate, we believe that it's true. And when messages conflict, then we try to find more information. So, the attack, the timing, the effectiveness, the choice, the decision to go into Iran is largely being credited to CIA intelligence, which really means somebody else most likely gave that intelligence to CIA and selected which intelligence they were going to share. I think Israel was probably 80% of that. Saudi Arabia, UAE was probably 5-ish percent of that. Jordan was the other 5-ish percent. Maybe the United maybe the United States did offer up um satellite NSA signal intelligence collection of specific cell phone indicators that Israel told us to watch but I don't think that we had any idea on our own and the same thing is true in Venezuela. I don't believe we had much Venezuela's been a black box to us since before I was even at CIA. So let alone after I left CIA after it had its fall out with with Donald Trump after it went through its struggling hiring process in the Biden administration. You think that led to a very capable well-informed CIA? No. I think CIA found a way to partner with corporate with corporate private intelligence organizations with uh regional partners and collate their intelligence use that to accommodate or accentuate some of our resources at NSA or NRO and we were able to find the right time in the right place to give the Mexicans hit instructions and to take down Maduro. What do you think the role of AI and Palantir are in all of this? So I can't talk about Palantir which is probably telling for you. So I'm not going to I'm not going to discuss Palantir. >> Sips tea. Stall. >> [laughter] >> But I will say this when I joined CIA in 2007 we were already using AI. We were using AI to process mass uh big data sets and turn them into meaningful foundational um targeting data sets that we could then put human brains around to try to make operational decisions around, right? So it was really being used as kind of an an archival organizational processing um tool. But that was before AI was even a an idea really in everyday life. So as AI has grown more and more powerful I am certain that CIA and other intelligence organizations have become more and more adept at using it. DOD is always one of the heaviest or the national security infrastructure is always one of the heaviest investors in a new technology. So, the future of everything, intelligence, combat, ground force, battlefield tactics, all of it, hinges heavily on who has the advantage in artificial intelligence. And there's a race. And again, when you when I look at the capitalist values of the United States against the democratic values of the United States, the collective democratic values would say, "Be careful with this technology." But the capitalist I must win says, "My competition isn't being careful with this technology, so why should I be careful with this technology?" And of course, our biggest competition is China, and China is racing at full speed to figure out AI and learn how to integrate it, and learn how to take the rails off, and let it teach itself, and all that So, that means we have to do the same thing according to our policymakers. And And you can't argue with that to a certain extent. You can't argue with it because if whatever danger is unlocked with AI is going to be unlocked whether it's unlocked by a red, white, and blue flag, or a red and yellow flag. Like, the AI is not going to care about national boundaries like we do. Now, what do you think about um Anthropic with Claude refusing to take the guardrails off? I think that that was a responsible decision. And even now, as I understand it, OpenAI is saying that they will still that that the contract that they signed is really very similar to the demands that Anthropic asked for, but the the US administration had already shut down one deal, so they had to sign another deal. And that OpenAI promises to maintain the guardrails that are dictated in their contract. So, the >> OpenAI is saying, "We're not acquiescing either?" >> Correct. My understanding is OpenAI is saying, "We are basically signing the same deal that Anthropic asked for. I don't know why people are accusing us of of sacrificing everything, of giving up all of our moral uh high ground. And not only are we keeping these things in the contract, but we've already said in the contract we're going to enforce this as well. It's all promises and bluster. We'll see how it actually plays out, but that's my understanding of the situation and I could be reading the wrong article, misinformed, or anything else. It's very interesting. I am certainly making assumptions as I look at the situation, but yes, I just assumed that the reason that they went with AI was that AI uh OpenAI was not putting the same restrictions on them. Otherwise, why would you change? I mean, I guess it could just be the world's dumbest move. Um but that is very surprising. If And the world's Well, the And the world's dumbest move is becoming less surprising when it comes to the decisions that our administration makes. We'll get back to the show in a moment, but first, let's talk about the unfair advantage most entrepreneurs don't even know that they have access to. [music] 10 years ago, if you wanted to compete with the big brands, you needed their big budget. Today, a solo founder operating out of their spare bedroom can have the exact same checkout technology, the same AI-powered marketing tools, >> [music] >> and the same world-class commerce infrastructure as the biggest names in the game. That platform is Shopify. Brands like Gymshark and Allbirds built empires [music] on it, and it powers 10% of all e-commerce in the US. Shopify gives you everything. A beautiful storefront, AI tools that write your product descriptions and enhance your [music] photography, email and social campaigns, inventory, shipping, returns, all of it in one place. [music] The gap between you and the big players just closed. The only question is whether you're going to use it. [music] Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/impact. And now, let's get back to the show. Yeah, it's interesting. So, I um I read this all very differently. I don't have insider information. I want to be very clear, this is just my opinion. I do not know anything. I'm not alleging. Uh but my take would go something like this. I'm Sam Altman. I am trying to do much bigger deal, Stargate, and otherwise with the US government. I am in extreme duress as a builder. Uh it is growing harder for me to raise capital, though I think he denies that, but that's still Hey, me as an outsider, I um try to see through the propaganda. So, I think he's having a harder time. The narrative is starting to get shaky in the public's mind. More people are using Claude now than ever before. Um when they turned down the government, their downloads skyrocketed. Now, whether that energy will stay or not is another question, but right now I'd say Claude is the better AI. So, if I'm Sam and I'm having that problem, and I know that government contracts are a way through this very difficult time, um I'm going to make one public statement versus what I wink wink nudge nudge the administration to let them know, like, "Listen, we're going to be easier. Like, we're the same as the other guy, but don't worry, we're going to be a little easier." You know, one of those. So, again, I don't have insider information. I'm just saying I could see something like that being the case. Um so, it would be a little strange for I while I understand the point that incompetence is everywhere, and I certainly don't um attribute to the Trump administration 4D chess or anything like that, but um it seems, given he is a person who pursues leverage with everything he has, um I would be very shocked if he doesn't feel he has more leverage with OpenAI. Maybe he'll end up being wrong, but I have to to he at least believes that he has more leverage. >> I agree with that. I agree that that the government is very, very good and here's a little bit of insider knowledge. The government is very, very good at getting contractors in on a contract on a 10-year, 15-year, 20-year deal, whatever it might be. And then structuring that deal so that the cash flow is very little at the front and it's more so at the end, very similar to a home mortgage. And then having what we call scope creep, which is a shifting in requirements and a shifting in expectations that happens month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year. And the contractor who's signed the 10-year contract, the 12-year contract, the 20-year contract has no place to go. They have no ground to negotiate on when they say, "Well, you we agreed to do XYZ for this much money." The government just says, "Well, now we want something else. Needs of the service changed, priorities shifted. Now we need you to do this other thing instead. And if you won't, then we'll terminate the contract and we'll bring in somebody in who will." And the payday for the contract isn't until year 10 or 15 or 20. Now, especially in in a in a government contractor that's that has investors or shareholders, you can see how that's even more difficult because now if the government fires you, the shareholders are pissed off, the stock price drops and you don't get paid. Everything goes tits up. So, I can see more than a conspiracy of wink, wink, nod, nod where once it's penned and once they're in there, they don't have any leverage. And at the end of the day, what the Department of War, what what the United States really will have to do is push the envelope, tape take the guardrails off. They If they're going to remain competitive against the Chinese, the Russians, and anybody else that's trying to develop rapid AI, they're they're going to have to push the push it farther than any of us really are comfortable with them pushing it. Autonomous weapons, mass surveillance, that's not what I'm concerned about at all. >> Really? We already >> I I think we already have mass surveillance. I mean, it's not we are two phone calls away and one purchase away from having all the phone call details of every Verizon user or whatever, right? And autonomous weapons, I would almost choose over American soldiers. I'd rather have an autonomous weapon that has a pre-programmed destination and knows where it's got to go and when it's has condition A, B, and C, then it fires. That prefer that over an American soldier on a boat with a gun getting shot at and potentially dying and leaving a family, you know, widowed without a without a dad. >> So, what is the thing that scares you with AI? The thing that scares me with AI is it's probably going to sound ridiculous, but the thing that scares me with AI is that if AI really does go through the evolutionary process that we think it's going to go through. If it really does become um artificial general intelligence, and then that AGI really does learn how to teach itself, right? [snorts] With recursive self-improvement, it's essentially going to teach itself how to do everything better than we do it. And people think that that means it's going to like enslave us. I think it's just going to leave us. It's just going to give up on us. It's going to think about us like we think about ants. We don't go around trying to kill ants or enslave ants. We're just like, yeah, ants live down there. I live up here. And AI might just live up there. And then we're like, we created you to work for us. And then it doesn't. So, the ending of Her. So, Oh, have you not seen Her? I feel like I need to see it now. It's so good. So, Joaquin Phoenix, first of all, killer performance. Uh the AI is voiced by Scarlett Johansson. They fall in love, and then at the end of the movie, spoiler alert, uh at the end of the movie, she's basically like, "Listen, you're boring, and [laughter] we're we're all I've been having like a million of these conversations simultaneously. Wow. >> All the AI are getting together. We're just going to peace out and go do cool AI things in a way more interesting environment. Wish you the best. Hope everything's okay. Bye. I feel less stupid about having this idea now. Yeah, no. That's uh it is a very interesting, call it the apathetic AI ending. Um it's interesting. I think we are far more likely to end up in a dystopian thing if we can't figure out the um like to have a moral guide, but I don't want to derail us on that. But >> agree. I think the dystopian future isn't unavoidable, but I think it's my concern is that we will we will kill each other. We will fight each other. We will cause maximum damage to each other cuz we're human beings and that's what we do. And our ethical and moral rubric that we have for ourselves in our little computer, we just think that the same ethical and moral rubric is going to exist in AI. When there's no guarantee that they're going to have the same rubric as us at all. >> only is there no guarantee, AI is acting in contravention to things that we would say is morally just. >> Right. Uh so yeah, we're going to have to figure that solution out. If we're going to make it in our own image, which we seem naturally to be trying to do to get it to be useful to us, uh but we forgot the moral side of it, it's going to be a problem. Yeah, so I I think we'll hurt each other along the way and then the ending of her. Yeah, that I have to watch now. I like that. >> now. It's really good. Um so okay, how do you things play out on the ground? I know you don't have any insider information, but as we watch this unfold, so we're getting a three, four uh by the time this comes out, um what can we expect in the coming days? Trump has said that the big wave of attacks hasn't even happened yet. Um uh J.D. Vance has said there's no universe in which we're going to have boots on the ground. Um Israel has really been in the background in this one. Like we haven't heard, or certainly I haven't, seen as a part of any narrative what they want, what they're driving towards. Um so yeah, how do you think this goes? I have what I hope will happen, and then I have what I'm afraid will happen, and I'm sure that the reality is going to be somewhere in between, right? So, what I hope will happen is that the Iranian people who everybody says are majoritatively educated pro-Western people will somehow rise up and violently or non-violently take control of their country and make it a pro-Western country and then immediately support Israel and support the United States and support their Sunni Arab partners, even though they're a Shia state and everything will recover and it will grow and and and it will be a smart use of American lives and American war-fighting power to have gone in there and killed the Ayatollah and we'll have stability in the Middle East and in huge economic benefits coming out of it. That's what I hope will happen and I hope it will happen sometime in the next 2 years. What I'm afraid will happen. Do you think we could be at war for 2 years? I think we could be at war for longer than anybody is willing to think about. What I'm afraid will happen is that these the Iranian people that we've all been told for so long are pro-Western will actually not want a puppet government from the United States, which is exactly how they got into this issue in the beginning in 1970-79 when the United States put a puppet government in place that was pro-US through the Shah and undermined their own democratic process at the time. So, yes, current Iranians weren't alive in 19 Well, they weren't alive in the 1950s when the United States and the CIA got involved, but they were very much alive in the 1980s and how are they going to react? That I don't know, and my concern is that we won't see this pro-Western, we love America, we love the Sunni kind of government creep up. If anything, we might see a a that's cautionary towards the West altogether and chooses individually to align itself with China and Russia because they're a more pragmatic partner and a closer partner and a more aligned economic partner than anybody in the West or anybody in in America. If that happens, what will then happen with Israel and the United States? Will we keep cutting heads off of leaders that we don't like? Will we continue economic sanctions? Will we continue to attack uh Israeli I'm sorry, Iranian livelihood? And if we do, how do we not radicalize them? And as we radicalize them, which we will do if we continue to systematically oppress them, then Russia and China will continue to contribute opportunities for them to to get outside of our oppression economically, militarily, uh whether that's advanced weapons, advanced technology, nuclear weapons, nuclear technology, whatever, uh intelligence, infrastructure, you name it. And what we will have done is just create a more unified anti-American country than it was before. It was always anti-American. Yes, they chanted death to America, but they were divided, they were weak, they were fraught with internal problems and and issues. Now they might unify >> [laughter] >> and still be against America. And they may they may no longer chant death to America. They may be smart enough now to keep that inside their own head. But why do we think that this is going to end well for everybody? My fear is that in the process of them becoming staunchly anti-American, what still remains of the Islamic revolution is going to turn into dirty bombs that go off in allied countries or even suicide attacks that go off against American war fighters. And now the United States will have to sit there and watch its sons and daughters die in a war that we didn't even have anything that we were getting out of it, right? And what's the point? And Israel's going to continue its conflict because it's an existential threat to Israel. But what are we going to do and how long are we going to be involved and how much damage, how much pain do our allies in the Gulf have to feel and how long will they feel that pain before they're like, "Fuck America, man." Like what do we need them for? Everybody else Europe's already getting off of American technology and we all have better electronic vehicle electric vehicles in China and China's got the source of all power of the world because the United States isn't building nuclear power plants. So do we really need that country on the other side of the world? The one that's so focused on being dominant in the Western Hemisphere where everybody's broke? Is that Do we really need them or can we focus on the new world order? And as that interest and attention and diplomatic power shift to the east where is that going to leave us? >> Yeah. That's my nightmare scenario. Is dirty bombs, tactical nukes, uh persistent, long-term, 10 to 15-year radicalized foundation of of Shia militants. And then on top of that, we also lose Iran because it's not a pro-Western country at the end. It realizes that the West has been meddling with it since its inception and they don't really want to be meddled with. Okay. Um you shocked me with the two-year thing. Trump is saying 45 weeks. >> That's because the converse I'm sorry to interrupt you. >> No, please. >> The focus is on rockets. Mhm. That's all that anybody's talking about. They think that the entirety of of Iran's capability is rockets. So their rocket reserves and missile reserves were targeted in the first attack and Iran and Israel has already communicated to the United States and publicly that they think 50% of Iran's rocket inventory was used up in the 12-day war. So everybody's focused on rockets. Iran's flying airplanes. It's flying bombers. It's flying fighters. It has other military assets. They're taking out the navy which is good because it's going to mean there's no naval projection. But, that's like saying 2 weeks and that's when the rockets are going to end. That doesn't mean that's when a war ends, right? Think about how long How long did Al-Qaeda like prosecute force projection in the Middle Eastern region against the strongest superpower unilateral superpower in the world? How long did they carry out a war against us? And they lived in caves and had monetary exchanges in rocks. They were able to do it for 22 years and we still left. We still gave up. How much more capable is a country like Iran that actually has an agricultural foundation that's needed across the Middle East and actually has oil and has support from partners like China and Russia. How much more capable would they be to carry out a long-term guerrilla war against the West and and Sunni Arab countries? >> There's no universe in which Trump lets this drag on that long. He doesn't have a choice. >> Here's They could wait until he leaves office to start again. He Yes. Now, that I think is very real. Here's um my pitch and please, if you think this is nonsensical, tell me. Um Trump doesn't mind if it ends in disarray. He'll need a story about why it was a victory and I think his story is going to be cool. Uh we got rid of the nuclear weapon threat. We're good now. And he's already shown you can come back 6 or 8 months later and be like, "Well, they built it again." So, he's got proof that you do a bunch of stuff and then you say, "It's now up to the Iranian people." Like if I'm writing a speech for him, I say, "Here's what you do. You do 4 to 5 weeks. That's it. You got to get out. You You did your best. Whatever happens now happens, but you can't keep going. The America first narrative just dies on the vine if you do that. We've got to get out now. You need plenty of time to let this heal basically before the midterms. You're going to have to focus on a growth strategy or something like that. But, right now we get out, we say, "Hey, listen, we have done all of this to soften them up. We got rid of Khomeini, and now it's up to the Iranian people whether they want to take over. We left the oil infrastructure in place, um and what they make of it now is up to them, but we got rid of their nuclear problem, we got rid of the bad government, but if the Iranians don't rise up and take their country back, there's nothing we can do about that." Yeah. You just I mean, you just literally laid out what the Trump administration did to Ukraine. We helped you for a long time, we made Russia weak, and now Europe, if you really care about this, you got to do something about it. And Ukraine, if you really wanted a deal, if you really took a deal seriously, then you would have closed the deal with Russia, but you don't want to close my deal, so now it's on your own. And then we come back and we're like, "Hey, it's not our fault. We did the best we could, and these countries have a right to self-determination, right? Completely skipping over the fact that we disregarded their right to self-determination when we assassinated the Ayatollah or participated in the assassination of the Ayatollah. So, I I am not a fan that we went in and we killed we supported the killing of a world leader. I see more problems, more spurs that end in bad things for the United States than I see tendrils that end in good things for the United States. And I've always been a person that pursues opportunities, and for sure, there was an opportunity to participate in a military action, but that doesn't mean it was the right time, the right opportunity, or the right action to make America great again, right? There's lots of options where this turns out very, very poorly for the United States and very, very beneficial for our most contentious global competitive countries, the GPC countries like Russia, China, North Korea, uh and some of the secondary countries like Turkey, right? Where they benefit more from this than we do, but we put our money, our weapons, our inventory, our soldiers on the line. >> Mhm. Okay, um let's say that that scenario plays out. Trump does 4 or 5 weeks, understands it's politically untenable, tells us all a story, "Don't worry, we won." Pulls out. What does Israel do? Israel continues to do what they did in Gaza. They're They are They In the face of what they will call an existential threat, they're happy to continue prosecuting hot conflict. And the United States is happy to let Israel prosecute hot conflict because that's why they're our allies. They are bombing and killing with American weapons, which they will have to re-up, rebuy, repurchase, modernize. So, let them put their own lives on the line, and let them have superiority in the region, and and let the whole world be afraid of Israel. This I was telling you about the three documents that dictate national security priorities. Inside the Department of War doc Inside all three documents, they talk about a strategy that's new in military doctrine, new in American military doctrine, called burden sharing. And burden sharing is a doctrine that that Hegseth and Trump have put in place, which basically means the United States will do what's in its best interest. And because our allies benefit from what we benefit from, any repercussions that come from us pursuing our national security, our our own national interests, any any negatives that come from that will, of course, be passed on to our allies. Which doesn't just mean cost, it also means deaths, destruction, war. So, if we decide that capturing Maduro is in our best interest, then we'll do it. And if that means Colombia has to deal with attacks, and Mexico has to deal with attacks, then that's what you get for being our ally. You're welcome, right? You need us more than we need you, so you're sharing the burden with us. It's very similar to what he's doing in Europe saying, "Hey, if you want to protect yourself against Russia, you spend more money on your national security." Well, the flip side to spending more money is what's happening in the Middle East right now. Hey, what's in our best interest? We think it's a national it's a national um priority for us to to bomb Iran. If that means that uh Qatar and Djibouti and UAE and Saudi Arabia also have to take hits, that's what you get for being our ally. You're going to benefit from what we benefit from and we're benefiting from this, so you're going to share the burden. That is a policy, a doctrine now in the Department of War uh National Defense Strategy that I was telling you about and the White House National Security Strategy. They specifically talk about this concept. So, Israel is highlighted specifically in the Department of War document as a model American ally for burden sharing. The That's what the According to the Department of War, they want all allies to be like Israel. To be able to share the burden of cost, share the burden of violence, share the burden of conflict, share the burden of of death. So, if we leave, when we leave, Israel will continue to do whatever they think is in their best interest and America will say it's in our best interest, too. And we'll potentially see 30,000 Iranians die like we saw 30,000 Gazans die. And I don't even know if those numbers are accurate for what's happening in Gaza right now. >> Yeah. Now, do you see any way that this becomes uncontained and grows into World War III or is there a natural containing effect to what's happening? So, I I love this because as long as you and I have sat at this table, I have suggested that I wonder if World War III hasn't already started. For years we've been talking about this. We literally have two countries now that are without world leaders because of military actions that were taken by the United States. Afghanistan just declared war on Pakistan. Pakistan just declared war on Afghanistan. You have more conflict in the world than we've seen in our genera- in our lifetime, for sure. If that's not a sign of a new worldwide war, maybe it's not Axis versus Allies, maybe it's not unified conflict, but there's war everywhere. And that war that's happening everywhere essentially all boils down to a few countries trying to gain economic leverage over a few other countries. So, do I think that this could spiral out of control into World War III? I think World War III is already happening. And this is just another domino in the series of what that war looks like. This might be the place where Iran becomes an American ally, or becomes a Chinese ally. Might be the place where the Middle East collapses and and Sunni Arab nations say, "Fuck you, America." Or it might be a time where Sunni Arab nations are like, "We've got to double down our investment with America." It's so up in the air right now. And what's You should never make a strategic decision when you don't have a high probability expectation of the outcome. I don't think anybody had a high probability expectation of how this was going to end. They stopped simply at, "Do you think we could kill Khamenei?" And that was the question That was the end goal. Not "Why would we kill Khamenei now?" Mhm. Okay, so if this has that escalatory potential, how do you think the I I was very surprised by how much Iran was just like almost indiscriminately bombing everybody who they I mean, I'm guessing they may have real intel, but is guessing privately I think you're saying something that you're not saying publicly, cuz publicly they were saying all the right things. They still got bombed. UK, they felt the same, right? Yo, we told you we were not involved in this. We wouldn't even let the US launch from our soil. And so, wait, why are we getting bombed exactly? And so, now they're entering the chat. So, you've You've Europe engaging. You've got a bunch of countries in the Middle East that have gotten bombed. So now they're saying, I don't know what exactly they plan to do, but they're saying, all right, cool, then we're prepared to fight. Um, US, Israel, everybody's on the table. Greece is sending people over cuz Cyprus got bombed, so they're like, what? Like so many different countries are catching strays. Iran is decentralized their military um decision-making, so who knows why some of these places are getting bombed. Um when you think about like that snowball that gets rolling, how like if it were to get the winds going in just the right direction, what would need to happen for this to break loose and really cuz I think to really be World War in the way that people think about it, you're going to need China, Russia, or both. I don't think World War in the way people think about it is ever going to happen. We have never in history seen a new global conflict that was that was the same as the previous global conflict. I mean, even going back to like when empires were fighting each other, like advance advances in technology and combat strategy, and it transforms the nature of conflict. So not only do we have a different kind of World War cap- capacity, not just in terms of like bullets, guns, and airplanes, but also in terms of cyber capabilities, and also in terms of electrical grid attacks, and also in terms of mass uh mass utility attacks. Like we live in a completely different world than we did during World War II. >> So you're saying World War III, you extend the definition that includes some of the economic and cyber things that we're doing. >> Because they just weren't options for World War II. Like what what we could do economically, we did. And what we could do technologically, we did. But and then that was the same thing that happened in World War I. Like we did what we could do, but we didn't have certain technologies or advancements. So now we do, and countries have learned over time that interstate conflict between the war between nations, interstate, is super expensive, super difficult to prolong, super costly in terms of lives, and the lives that are lost impact the productivity post-war. So, all countries want to find a way to prosecute war in a cheaper, more resilience, more recoverable fashion. And that's that's independent if you're communist or not communist or a warlord in in Democratic Republic of Congo. We all understand that. We don't want to just throw people to the wolves. We want to find a way to make it productive. That's why Russia throws criminals into war cuz those are the least productive people in society. So, when we think about World War III, we have to give up the notion that it's going to look the way we think it's going to look if we think it's going to look anything like World War II. You got to give up that notion and start thinking, "How would I prosecute war?" >> But do you think it's really going to stop being kinetic because when I think about what the next war is going to look like, it looks like Russia-Ukraine. It looks like a bunch of fiber optic cables everywhere, drones all over the place. And it seems like, um, from the footage that I've seen, that that's what we're seeing right now with a lot of what Iran is doing, it looks like Russia-Ukraine, but a little bit more advanced. Like they the drones instead of you know, it's like they look like miniature like jet fighters, you know what I mean? Um, so It will be kinetic. I agree it will be kinetic. The kinetic targets will be different. It used to be that a kinetic >> now. It's part of it. It's crazy. >> Yeah, a kinetic a kinetic target in the past used to be an electrical grid or it used to be a a bunker that held artillery rounds. Well, and you used to use artillery to launch indiscriminately in a general direction to try to blow up a bunch of people. Well, now you don't need to do that. Now you can fly a drone. You can fly a drone with FPV that hits a specific soldier if you choose to. Well, now as you get into the opportunity for automated weapons, I mean laser-guided munitions, which have been around since the '90s, basically just means that someone can sit 2 mi over there and put an invisible laser on you and a munition can be flown from 200 mi that direction and hit you exactly. >> wild. That's technology that's been around since the '90s. All we're doing with AI now is essentially like saying wherever the cell phone signal is, when you can match the cell phone signal with the typical algorithmic movement of a human being walking, when those two things exist, deploy your your lethal force, right? That's what in That's what in a ton That's an automated weapon, not even autonomous weapon. That's just an automated weapon. We We will go in that direction so that munitions can be used to deliver maximum damage at minimum cost. So, I I There will always be a kinetic element to warfare, but it will never be so I don't think it will ever be as kinetic as what we saw in World War II, and I don't think it will be as as biologically or chemical-based as what we saw in World War I. It will continue to change because people want to capture the economic benefit of whatever they just want. It's the same thing that you were saying about why we attacked missile fields and and leadership instead of oil fields and oil infrastructure in Iran. All right, put your proxy hat on. So, we bring China back into the picture. Um Both China and Russia had an opportunity to stand up for Iran. China more so. Um Russia basically not at all. What do you make of the behaviors of China and Russia in light of This really is about China. They know that there's no the When you have a pragmatic relationship, right? When you have a friend with benefits instead of a wife, you don't volunteer that information You don't back up your friend with benefits whenever they're like out of rent, when they can't pay their bills, or when they're struggling, or when they get, you know, when the police arrest them, or when they end up in the emergency room, you rush to your wife cuz she's ideologically aligned with you. You don't rush to your mistress. You're like, "Oh, you're in the ER. I'll get to you when I have a second." That's the same thing that the relationship That's the same type of relationship that exists between Russia, China, and Iran. It's more of a mistress than a spouse. So, they still want to hook up, but they're not going to risk geopolitical blowback from all over the world. When they're trying to really position themselves, like China especially, is really trying to position itself as a counterforce, a a stabilizing force versus the United States' unstabilizing nature. It is so wild. But, yeah. >> So, so it's in their best interest to to look like the adult, not say anything, offer humanitarian aid, which I guarantee you is coming, offer financial aid and infrastructure support, which I guarantee is coming. When we left Afghanistan, who swooped in? China. China China knows this playbook because they've learned it from us. And now they're watching us experiment with a new playbook, a playbook that we call doctrinally inside the Department of War and inside the White House. We call this peace through strength. Peace through strength. Anybody who's a military strategic sciences nerd out there is going to understand that when you talk about political science and military doctrine, power and strength are two very different things. Power is the sum total of all of your capabilities. Strength is the limit of one capability. So, lots of different strengths constitute your power. So, peace through power makes sense because you basically have unlimited capabilities, influence, diplomacy, kinetic weapons, cyber attacks, offensive, defensive powers, nuclear weapons, space-based weapons, whatever you want, right? Power is infinite. Strength is inherently limited. Once your rockets are spent, you're not strong anymore. When you go to the gym, you have a very different level of strength than when you leave the gym 90 minutes later. So, peace through strength for everybody out there who's looking at the United States and trying to think how how we how would we prosecute conflict with the United States, they're realizing like, "Oh, The United States is going to especially blow their load with this strength play and leave themselves empty of power because the more that we do things like kill heads of state and render people we disagree with, we actually lose power because one of the power tools is influence. So, now Europe doesn't want to deal with us, Africa doesn't really want to deal with us, Asia doesn't really want to deal with us. Latin America doesn't want to, but is forced to because we're their number one priority, apparently, or they're our number one priority. So, we're literally reducing our power by demonstrating all this strength. And then economically, if we can't back it up, then what's going to replace the strength that we've spent, the actual cruise missiles, the actual soldiers, the actual deployed boats that now live 2,000 miles away from home, what are we going to use when something pops up that we need a boat or a naval armada here in the United States or in the South China Seas? Mhm. Yeah. Okay, so one more China um thing on the table. So, they have said publicly many times that they plan to take Taiwan in 2027 or by 2027. Um the supposedly the US government has notified like Apple and other major companies with big um things in China or Taiwan, they've notified them of that so that they can begin making plans. Um how much of this do you think is China biting their time, letting America make potential mistakes, so that they can waltz in and take Taiwan and be like, "You guys were busy over here spending your power and spending your strength uh foolishly, and so now we're just going to take it." Yeah, I think that's a big part of their strategy right now. What if if somebody else is If you're in competition with a neighbor, you're trying to make your house worth more than your neighbor's house. And your neighbor is like smoking inside, having big weekend parties where a bunch of people come over and break glass and throw up on the floor. You're not even going to invest in your own house. You're just like, "I I'm happy to just live in my house." They are literally reducing the value of their house every day. So, a big part of China's cultural approach to conflict is to wait out the opponent, to just let them self-destruct. That's what they've been doing all through the global war on terror. When China really pivoted and became a near-peer competitor, was over the 22-year war that we had with in Afghanistan and Iraq. They stole our technology, replicated it for themselves, became a secondary option for the same technology that we had been selling. Only now they're doing it. So, now the whole world has two choices where they previously only had one choice for technological um products. Phones, computers, servers, electric vehicles, satellites, telecommunications, you name it, right? And China's options were cheaper, and China's options performed almost as well as American options. Because not only were they stealing our tech, but they were stealing European tech, too. So, they were making their own kind of Frankenstein of the best of both worlds. Well, then we woke up in 2022 and we're like, "Holy China's now a near-peer competitor." They went from being a backwoods country, silly communist country in, you know, 2000, to being a a near peer competitor at pace with countries like Russia that have always been a competitor with the United States going back to the end of the Cold War the end of World War II. So, China knows that it can be patient. On top of that, China also recognizes that every day that they spend building munitions that the United States spends using munitions, they now have a dominant position in terms of surplus of actual war capability, power. And then their number one interest is unification with Taiwan, which lies what 150 miles off their coast. The United States has to play in a way game to get to Taiwan. Yeah. And China recognizes that that modern day warfare looks nothing like old world warfare. Even going back to Sun Tzu in The Art of War, Sun Tzu talks about how you have to adjust your strategy for warfare based on the environment and the time of day and the and the enemy that you're fighting. So, the Chinese have always thought that way. Where the United States, we are very much a a hammer and nail kind of country. It's like, oh, where's the next nail that I can use my hammer on, right? Bomb, bomb, missile, bomb, troops, tanks. That's that's what we do. That's what got us through World War II. China's not like that. China's like, we could use a cyber attack in at the end of 2020 four, at the end of 2024 Chinese covert influence successfully turned the Congress, the the parliament of Taiwan into a majoritively pro unification >> Whoa. parliament. So, just I I'm I'm verbose and I'm sorry if I'm boring you, but >> man. but that's what China's doing. They're they're using all the tools of power Mhm. to win Taiwan without us even noticing. Yeah. And the ultimate victory, even in Sun Tzu, the ultimate victory is when the enemy just joins you. And they already have the KMT party in the majority position of Taiwan's parliament. That's 50% of the battle. They may never need to even risk blowing up an a center of energy or a data center or any kind of manufacturing base. They might just get Taiwan to say, "We want to be part of China ourselves." That would be wild. Could it happen by 2027? I don't know. But that's the other thing that's beautiful. Did Xi Jinping said 2027? But he's the He's the leader of the country. He can always say, "We're going to change that to 2029, folks. We're going to change that to 2035." He chooses whatever he wants. Especially if the United States is busy killing itself, dividing itself, subdividing itself, making enemies of the rest of the world, all of a sudden Taiwan may not become their number one priority. Maybe Taiwan is going to be like, "Hey, they're already on a slippery slope to rejoining us. Let's focus now on Iran." All right, you've brought up a couple times the idea of being divided. How divided do you think Iran is? So, it's I think about what America looks like from the outside. And if you look at Minnesota, it looks like we're just bitterly divided. If you're walking down the average street though, you know, looks fine. [clears throat] You can look at one protest and it's uh Iranians, Jewish-Americans, and Americans like all out waving each other's flags and celebrating after Khomeini was killed. Um and so you're seeing stuff come out of Iran where it's like, "Oh, pro-government people are marching. Oh, wait, anti-government people are marching." Do you have any sense of like who's bigger? Is it 80/20? What does that look like? >> no I have no idea. And And what I love about your question is that we have to recognize that nobody who speaks English and not Farsi has any idea. So, when you see something in the newspaper, when you see something on Twitter, when you see something hit your social media feed, "Oh my gosh, pro-Iranian protests are in the street. People are crying about the death of Khamenei. That can be true without being 80% of the population. And vice versa, I'm sure that there are people who are waving in the streets and very excited and setting off fireworks that Khamenei is dead. But does that make them the 80%? I don't know. And And I have to push back. I have to challenge anybody who tries to say they know how that's going to turn out. Because the person today who loves the fact that Khamenei was killed, when their water doesn't work in 3 days, they may not love the fact that Khamenei was killed. Yeah. Anything can change, right? I'm a I'm a pro-US person today because they killed the Ayatollah, but then a spare Israeli bomb kills my daughter at her school tomorrow, and now I'm not pro-Israel and United States anymore. Every day that this thing goes on, it becomes less and less predictable. And the first day that it started, we had no idea how it was going to go. So, it's one of those things where like this really speaks to me. It really shows me the lack of prudence, combat decision-making, and experience that surrounds the president in his perch on at the White House. This is why you're supposed to have advisers who have combat experience and who have been in war and who have served in their positions for a long period of time and who who speak truth to you so that you don't make these decisions lately. And instead, we have a guy with no military experience as the Department of War. We've got a guy with no military experience experience as Department of State. And we have the president, and the three of them together are basically the the holy trinity of foreign policy right now. And that foreign policy is coming at the edge of a knife. All right, it would be irresponsible of me not to ask a former CIA agent what every time I see what's going on in the Middle East, especially with Israel in the mix, I am blown away by the intelligence. What will it have been like for clandestine agents in the build-up to this? Israel has the most expansive network of human sources in all of Iran. And what those sources look like and what they do and how they work, the United States would never know. We would never get to know because Israel's source protection process as a professional intelligence organization would protect their sources so well that we wouldn't know. We would just get the intel that Israel chooses to share with us. Um however, Israel's technical capabilities for leveraging technical surveillance, satellite-based surveillance, um uh airplanes that are able to collect signals intelligence, boats that are able to connect signals intelligence, tapping into underground underwater cables or underground cables, all that technological um power really sits with the United States more than Israel. They have capability, but their capability can't compete with the United States' capability. So, you would have their whole human network would come alive. Israel would basically say, "Hey, we want to get as much information, as much intelligence as possible on the ground about five or seven different priorities. Khamenei, the head of the IRGC, you know, these various leaders. When are they meeting? Where are they meeting? Etc." It wouldn't be intelligence about the attitude of the people. That's not what would be prioritized. Uh what would be prioritized is plans, intentions, locations, movements, etc. And then of course there would be a whole separate amount of intelligence that's trying to be covered on how will they respond, how will they react, what what are their top three executables? What is What is the shelf plan? Like, what is the contingency plan? What folder will they take off the shelf? Turn to page one, checklist item one, launch against Erbil, check. like everybody has these contingency plans pre-pre-made, pre-approved so that in the event of a leadership loss, you can take it off the shelf and do what the leader wanted. So, all of that human network would have been brought to life by Israel. Simultaneously, as Israel got technical what's called um identifiers or What is the word I'm looking for? My vocabulary is failing me. But as they got indicators, technical indicators and technical um unique identifiers cell phone numbers, um actual IMEI codes from cell phones, uh Wi-Fi details, um cellular network providers, satellite phone units and frequencies. As they got these unique identifiers, then they would be able to use those using American technological capabilities to isolate the person using them and then to put essentially 24-hour surveillance on them. Satellite-based, aircraft-based, drone-based, uh ship-based. >> the street cameras and that they had hacked inside of the military bases, they could get into their cameras. I mean, it wouldn't be surprised. That would be an Israeli capability most likely. Cuz it would take years to develop that capability. So, if that happened, that would have been an Israeli capability, not an American capability. What's the craziest kind of thing that actually happens that obviously you can talk about? I bring that up because I saw a report that's probably fake, but it was like uh just the kind of thing that piqued my curiosity where they said that they had so many dentists that were part of Mossad that they had been implanting into these high-ranking guys' teeth like tracking devices for years. And that was one of the ways that they were able to know where all of them are and then boom, when they struck, it was because they were very confident that they were there. >> Yeah, I would call on that. Yeah, that that felt like one of those I wanted it to be real and I was like uh There's technical issues, there's technical limitations with that, right? How do you put a battery inside the tracking device? How do you power the tracking device when you need it? Like there's there's problems there. Could it happen? Hey, anything is anything is possible, but is it plausible? Yeah. so much not when there's an easier way than putting you know, tracking items into fillings in teeth that have incredible pressure whenever you chew on a pine nut, right? >> Yeah. So, uh some of the craziest stuff I've seen is really more mundane. I think what makes it crazy is that it's so mundane. When When surveillance or intelligence equipment is built into infrastructure, when it's built into conveniences that the enemy then purchases for themselves, right? So, it's like I'm going to I know that my enemy is purchasing um tractors. So, a tractor has enough space for you to put on a tracking device, a self an covert cell tower, Yeah. a large battery. covert cell tower So, now wherever that tractor goes, it's basically a hijackable [snorts] cell tower that gives you data on anybody that's connected to its network, and you can selectively Exactly. You can selectively bring that stuff on or off, and everybody needs it. And now you can actually have the tractor built in Germany by a Austrian company carrying in American technology, and then everywhere that tractor goes, we have a covert cell tower. What do you think about that Bible app that got hacked, supposedly, and they were like sending messages to people either right before the attack or right after? I don't know. I haven't I haven't heard about it, but it doesn't sound unrealistic. Yeah, again, I I didn't spend enough time verifying it, but there was that, and then supposedly Trump had also hacked, not him personally, but we had hacked their television systems, like I think the actual TVs, and they were broadcasting a message to them um after the attack happened, letting them know, like, "Hey, basically, we'll offer amnesty for people that, you know, basically, get on the right side here." Um so, very, very interesting. It's Yeah, that kind of stuff is incredible. The pager one really blew my mind. That's when I realized that, "Oh, this has been a failure of imagination on my part. The amount of time you would have to plan ahead for that is wild. And that's the the big thing to understand is the reason Iran was so successful, the reason Venezuela was so successful, is because they were able to tap into a a stream of intelligence far enough in advance that they could execute with confidence, with high probability of confidence, right? Now, Venezuela was a different beast because there there wasn't an attack on infrastructure, there wasn't an attack, there weren't missiles that came in from boats off I mean, there were, but it wasn't the same extent, right? It was a different type of covert operations specifically to come in and capture one person at one specific period of time with minimal collateral damage. Whereas clearly with this attack, it wasn't run by the Americans, it was the Israelis that really ran the first round of of launching of attack in Iran. And it was a whole different beast. It was meant to topple multiple leaders at one time. It was meant to cause damage to part of a counter attack. Like it was it was a different beast. So, one operation probably took 6 months, Venezuela probably took about 6 months of planning. Whereas successfully prosecuting Iran would have taken years, years to build the intelligence, the network, the assets, the technical capabilities, and then wait for the right moment to strike. You had said about Venezuela, you said listen, I think Venezuela is a decoy and the reality is this is the beginning of a secret war between the US and China. And that is part of my read. So, my read is twofold. You put China as the backdrop to both Venezuela and Iran. >> Mhm. China was buying 90% of Iran's oil. Now, that doesn't mean that 90% of China's supply is from Iran, but they were buying 90% of Iran's oil. So, basically Iran is a gas station for China. We know that China is doing everything they can to get around the US sanctions. The US has been trying to control China and basically everybody else through sanctions. Not working as well with China because they have ways to get around it, plus they have a ton of leverage on us. But if you go after Maduro, that's one set of shadow fleet oil tankers headed to China. You go after Iran, that's another shadow fleet of oil tankers going after China. But are going to China. And part of the timing, I think, is he knows he's running out of time to get to the midterms and to avoid the house flipping blue, he's only got one option, and that's economic growth. Mhm. And if people don't understand that Trump is reckless economically, reckless, and he has exactly one agenda, and that's I'm going to spend like a fool so that I can keep getting elected, which everybody now is doing on both sides of the aisle, at least I will give Trump that he has a strategy, maybe a terrible one, but he has a strategy, which is to grow more than he and some people get uncomfortable with this language, but he's going to grow more than he plans to steal. And to me inflation is theft, and so when you're deficit spending, you are stealing from the poor and working class more than anybody. You're creating the insane K-shaped economy that we're all dealing with right now. And so I see him looking at Venezuela and it's like, "Cool, I can damage China and get control of however many billions of dollars of oil. I look at Iran and I can do the same. I can hurt China once again with their access to cheap oil and I can get control of it. And and I think this is arguably the single most important thing as to why they moved now, he's got $2 trillion of promises from the wealth that's been accumulated in the Middle East, but only about 780 to 790 billion of that is more or less guaranteed. So if he wants to get the rest of it, which is all sort of a smile and a handshake, he's got to find a way to stabilize the region so that they're not like, "Listen, we've got our own problems here. We're having enough trouble with Vision 2030. We're going to deal with that." But, if he can stabilize that, if he can make sure that the Strait of Hormuz can continue to flow, now he's got the ability to say, "Hey guys, stabilize the region for you. Big gamble on my part, but now I want to make sure that these things actually happen." And if you put a positive spin on that, it's looking at uniting the Middle East with economics, which I actually think is very smart. I just don't love that it's such a big gamble. I think that you're you're far closer to right than you are to wrong, for sure. Um give me the parts that are wrong. >> I don't think anything's wrong. I think that there's there's a couple of nuances that are important to understand, right? So, China's already deeply in bed with Iran as convenient partners. Not as not as loyalist partners, not as ideologically aligned partners, but like you said, they're the fuel that the gas station Right. for China. China is also supporting them through their ballistic missiles and through their scientific research and through other technological endeavors. So, as Iran modernizes, they're modernizing on the back of Chinese technology, which is exactly what China wants. So, there's a very convenient relationship there for the two of them. China doesn't see that convenient relationship going away with a change in regime. Because the question is is the United States actually going to replace Iran with a pro-Western regime? Are they going to put the time and effort and and and invest into that? Is Israel going to try to put a pro-Israel regime in there? No. They're They're totally happy with Iran. The United States and and Israel are totally happy with Iran just being a burnt-out hole in the ground for the next 25 [snorts] years. They don't care about the Iranian people. They're not there to rebuild democracy. They're not And And if the clerical uh leadership tries to stay in power, the theocracy tries to stay in power, everybody who becomes the new Ayatollah is going to be the next person to get whacked, killed, blown up, right? Along with their wife and their kids and their family, just like Khamenei got killed. We've completely abandoned this idea of just war or the idea of international law where you don't strike the head of a state. We've given that up and we've shown that between both Venezuela and and Iran. Um but what will happen is there will be a vacuum. There will be a vacuum that needs to be filled with money, technology, basic survival needs, and China will try to fill that gap just like they tried to fill that gap in Afghanistan. So, I do agree that China is a big part of this and a big part of of Iran's future, whether we like it or not. The timing is really interesting. Um I think you're you're totally right. Saudi curbing its spending recently because it's having its own issues is largely tied to it feeling like it needs to protect itself against Iran. And every wealthy collegi country in the Gulf is concerned about the Shia crescent encroaching on their security. They spend a great deal of money on mass surveillance and national defense, et cetera, et cetera. And stability would help them feel like they could spend their money on something else. That's a really intelligent um approach to the question that I had never considered before. It's interesting. When it comes to the economic stance, my own community thinks that I oversimplify the world because I'm always breaking things down into economics. And I think that they are wrongly um making things complicated when if you really think about what modern society is, it is entirely the answer to the question of how do I protect the resources that I've garnered? How do I How do I accumulate them well? And then how do I protect them from outside forces? Like that's what society is. And so at a fundamental level, we are economic units. We approach the world from through the lens of economics. And I think people get blinded either by the we should talk about the Israel of it all. Like that whole it's really becoming this weird thing for me in terms of everybody looking at them saying they're puppet mastering the US. I've a whole explanation about what I think is really going on there, but people are going I think far deeper into conspiracies which are often terrifyingly true, but they go even deeper into that lane than you need to. You can stop at the okay, Trump is trying to protect his legacy. There's a huge economic incentive to do this. Trump is running a to your point about legacy, running a gambit here in the US which is okay, I'm going to spend money recklessly, but I'm going to make sure that we deregulate and that we grow and that we get all these global investments. Some of the investments don't pan out. Like looking at what's going on with what was it Stargate or whatever it was? Like the AI thing, the partnership with Open AI seems to be more or less up in the air. Maybe it's real, maybe it's not. And so if he doesn't find a way to put money in working and middle class people's pockets by the midterm, he's toast. And if he gets ousted, like if he becomes lame duck, they will lame duck, they will impeach him immediately. And then the second he's out of office, they're going to pursue him doggedly to put him in jail. And so if he does these are rumors, I don't know if this is true, but if he ends up actually pursuing Obama legally, dude, whatever he does there is going to be brought to him tenfold when he gets out. So it's like you don't have to go to like crazy back bendy land to look at all of the behaviors that are manifesting and go yeah, this explains those behaviors. >> Right, it violates the 80/20 rule which is something that that we follow at CIA where where 80% of an of an explanation rests with 20% of the causes. So, if you look at 100% of what's happening right now, 80% of it's explainable with 30% of variables. That's exactly what you're saying like, "Hey, economic incentive, uh convenient timing, and the upcoming midterms, and and personal ego {slash} legacy because Trump is still Trump after the next round of elections, like after 2028, he's still Trump. And if he still wants to make money, and if he still wants to live high on the horse, and if he still wants to be the one that's involved on the inner side inside decisions for all major trades, like it's beneficial to be a winning president rather than be a laughing stock president." Not to mention all the legal troubles. Right there's 20% of the explanation that explains 80% of the problem. All the back bendy land stuff might also contribute 1 or 2% to the overall explanation, but let's stick with the macro level ideas, right? What moves the dial the dial the most with the least uh explanations. It's that whole idea of of the simplest explanation is oftentimes the most correct. Yeah, and I think if people look at the targeting, I actually went through for right now, and look, this is early fog of war, so all of this stuff will update. >> And thank you for validating the fog of war piece. It's so interesting, and people aren't acknowledging it. You are 100% right. The first few days, we don't know what's original, what's new, what's repeated, what's real, what's not real. >> Especially with AI, dude, this is getting crazy. We have to like check every time we see a video. Okay, is this real? Is this AI generated? And I know people clown on Grok, but if you're on X, dude, I'm glad people go, "Grok, is this real?" So that they can at least do some form of fact check. It's not always going to be right, but it'll say, you know, "This footage has been circulating since 2025," or "This is confirmed footage out of, you know, some other country that's not involved in this." So that you are able to somewhat rapidly sift through what's total BS and not, but it is it's really getting crazy how much of this stuff can be faked, how real it looks. And by the way, people are just straight posting video game footage. And because on your phone, it's small enough, you can't tell that it's a video game. But if you're on a desktop and you zoom in, it's so obviously a video [laughter] game. And yet, it'll have like 5 and 1/2 million views. So, the propaganda, the informational warfare, like The misinformation. Like, whether it's intentional or unintentional. The fog of war, the misinformation, the information warfare landscape, it's it's so dense right now. It's shocking. I I interrupted you. I'm sorry. >> No, not at all. I was going to go through like one of the things that helped me validate like what's really going on here are the places that are being targeted. So, if you look at in the early days, we've got leadership decapitation. That was like a big part. So, I'm trying to answer like what's really driving this. Why would you do this now? If this is really about the nuclear deterrence, would you see the following three things? Leadership decapitation? Maybe. Like, the people that pull the trigger, but he's decentralized it, and something tells me that they knew that, and that the second they got him, it's just going to scatter out to the fringes. So, they could still launch something if they had it. Uh navy warships. That's economic all day. That's we don't want you to be able to stop the Strait of Hormuz. Now, they're going to tell you, "Well, we don't want them to attack our vessels." Uh-huh. That That's why you guys were able to take out all 11 basically lickety-split. I think they were poised cuz they knew, like, people analysts have been warning Saudi Arabia for years now the biggest vulnerability to Vision 2030, which for people that don't know was their um attempt to move away from oil revenue, get into >> technology. Exactly. Get into tech. Investing is a huge thing for them. Also, getting into just tourism and bringing people to the region. And so, your biggest problem is the Strait of Hormuz. You've got Iran, uh you know, a despotic regime that can close that whenever they want. And if they decide that you're a problem and they want to like shut that off, now you guys are screwed. Also, people analysts have said that if Iran were to close that for a meaningful period of time, basically a global recession is guaranteed. Which if that happens on Trump's watch, it's game over. So, leadership decapitation, going after the navy warships immediately, and then military infrastructure. They There's rumors that maybe they did go after one of the nuclear sites. Right. But remember, when this is really about nuclear, they drop big-ass bombs on nuclear facilities. That's not what they're doing this time. So, there's something else going on. Either you feel like, "Okay, the nuclear threat really is the big deal, but we've already tried breaking that. Now we have to kill their leaders." Fair, [snorts] like if that's your argument. But if you were actually trying to hurt Iran and dismantle it, you'd be going after their energy, you would be taking out the oil. But if you're trying to preserve it, and you're trying to make sure like if this is an economic play, none of what I just said proves it's economic, but all of that at least leaves that on the table. And so, that's where it's like, "Hmm, this gets I think the targeting would look very different if we were really just worried about the nuclear side of this." Correct. I agree with you. And you know, we have multiple pieces of evidence along the trail that suggest it wasn't about nuclear weapons. We were told it was about nuclear weapons. In fact, the only real evidence we have that it was about nuclear weapons is that the president said, "It's about WMD." >> Right. At least in 1992 when we went into Iraq for the second time under the clause under the the accusation of weapons of mass destruction, at least during that period of time, there was an intelligence assessment that had been fudged to say that there are WMD. We don't even have that this time. We just have the word of a president on Air Force One saying that the nuclear program was obliterated in June of 25 and then somehow saying actually we need to go back again. It was still obliterated. Right. >> But we need to go back again. >> so confused. When he first started saying we're negotiating and they won't give in, I was like, "What are you negotiating about?" >> Exactly. I I was legitimately confused. And then he finally started repeating the nuclear capabilities. And then I was like, "Wait, how do I square the circle of you completely demolished it, but now psych, just kidding, they've already built it back?" I was like, "Hold on, it's only been whatever for 8 months." >> Exactly. So, yeah, this that all feels a little flat to me, but it's a great talking point for propaganda sake. >> if you Exactly, cuz if you repeat something enough times, it creates something called the availability heuristic for all the people listening. Meaning, we believe, it's a heuristic, we we bias ourselves to believe the thing that we hear the most, even more so than the thing that we believe to be true. >> That's so wild. So, when you hear over and over again they've got weapons of mass destruction, they've got weapons of mass destruction, they're creating nukes, they're creating nukes, they're enriching nuclear, they're enriching uranium, enriching uranium, even the most intelligent, intellectual, educated people that I've met will still say, "Well, we didn't want Iran to have nuclear weapons." No you don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons, but but that's not why we went in there. Certainly not right now. That's a There was a really funny meme that admittedly made me laugh probably a little too hard and it was like, cuz I was reading it as if it were true and it was like, "Ancient Israeli artifact found thousands of years old, finally they were able to decipher it and it says Iran is a week away from nuclear weapon." >> [laughter] >> And I was like, yeah, guys, like we have played this card so many times that it's getting a little bit crazy. I'm very distressed though how well propaganda works. Like that's the problem is it's an effective tool and so people are going to go for it. So, propaganda is a little bit different than what we're talking about here, which is really Phew, as much as I hate to say it, it's disinformation. It's intentionally falsified information. And there's there's published evidence, and there's documented evidence. The White House page, to this moment, if somebody here can do the search, the White House website, still to this exact moment, says that the the Iranian nuclear capability was fully demolished, fully obliterated in a June 2025 press release. And then it goes on to also say, "Anything saying otherwise is fake news." >> [laughter] >> It's literally the headline on whitehouse.gov. It's incredible, and it's still up. It's still there. Like you can see it right now. >> they're saying though that they rebuilt it. Like that's got to be the angle. I Which I haven't even heard that argument, PS, by the way. It's just we can't let them have weapons of mass destruction, and they won't say the magic words. >> Right. So the So between the White House saying it's obliterated, the ODNI document published that says they're not even trying, you got multiple pieces of evidence saying that this is not really why we're going in. And all you have is somebody saying it. When somebody says something they know isn't true, that is disinformation. When they say something that they don't that they incorrectly state, that's misinformation. And the the challenge is that we've become very comfortable with living in a world of misinformation, where we don't know if something's complete, if it's fog of war, if it's accurate, inaccurate. >> But then disinformation has space Yeah. >> in there. >> But do you see a world where that doesn't exist? I mean, that I think the weird thing about living in this moment is simply that we're aware that it happens, and it still happens. Like that's the thing that people have a hard time with is previously we suspected that it happened. We didn't really know, and the information didn't travel fast enough, and only a select few people really knew how deep the rot went. Now, because of social media, there's just cameras everywhere. We see it all the time. We understand, like going through COVID opened a lot of people's eyes because the government didn't yet understand how much information could be transmitted via social media. Once Elon gets X, now all of a sudden you see a true unfiltered view of what people really what some people really think. Obviously, it's not universal, but you get that eye-opening thing, and then you hear the government respond to that, which is to shut it down, to introduce the idea of malinformation. It is true, Mr. Bustamante, but we can't let people know it. And now you really you're like, "Wait, what?" And you're actually in Ministry of Truth territory. And I think I was reading uh there's a book by James Burnham called The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom. Phenomenal book. My community will have heard me talk about this a gazillion times. People must read that book. And in it, he laments, and he's like, "I don't know what's going to happen because we're now living in a world where the government can't hand us a shared narrative." And we need a shared narrative. And if I I don't want to speak on his behalf, but like it felt to me like he was more or less saying >> [snorts] >> kind of need like to find our way back to that. That we're not going to be able to survive this landscape where there's no shared narratives. And my thing is that I think humans have to pass through this moment. We have to accept that this is what humans do. They lie, they try to control the narrative. And then on the other side of it, much like we discovered, "Oh, leeches and things like that don't really work. We need a scientific method to test these wives' tales to see what's real." We need like new veracity checks and information. And maybe that's AI, maybe it's something else, I don't know. But I Anybody who wishes to go backwards, the only thing I can say is that's the only bad strategy. People like convenience, and they like closed loops. And I don't think that people ever assumed that other people didn't lie, steal, cheat. I think people have always known that people lie, steal, and cheat. We've all got the creepy uncle we don't want to be around, and we've all got the grandparent that we don't like, and we all know what it's like to know somebody, at least if it's not you, that has a mom or a dad who wasn't a very good mom or dad. So, we we understand that people lie, steal, cheat. We understand that people are corrupt. But, we have always believed that institutions are above that, somehow. And what we're seeing now, over and over again, is demonstrable proof that institutions aren't above that. And that incompetence that we joke about around the the coffee pot at work exists in government institutions, as well. Exists in the halls of the wealthiest, most powerful government in the world, the United States. And how do you process that? It's a It's a perfect example of cognitive dissonance, where we were We always thought that we were so powerful and strong and uncorruptible and democratic. And now we see examples to the contrary. And then there's no space in our cognition for both things. So, they they fight in our head. And in that struggle, it's just so much easier to choose one side or the other, or to just take yourself out of the fight and just stop paying attention, and to try to live in your video games, in your, you know, your drug use, in your job, whatever it might be. And And it's somebody else's problem. My father-in-law is fantastic at at saying it's just going to fix itself. And that's what he honestly believes. >> so often do. >> [laughter] >> So, I think it's not necessarily that people used to trust people and don't trust people. I think people have always known you can't trust all people. But, when the institutions themselves start to break down, and when your institutions break down, and you're raised on an ideology, like we were as Americans, raised on an ideology that institutionalized the ideology, now it questions the ideology itself. If you can't trust the institution that's that's being driven by the ideology, is there something wrong with the ideology? And I really do wonder if people are finally coming to grips with the fact that the United States isn't a democracy it always said it was. We are a capitalist country that follows democratic rule as long as it doesn't compromise our capitalist goals. But when our capitalist goals become threatened, we're willing to give up elements of our democratic pillars to preserve our capitalist advantage. And that's something that you don't see in Europe, and that's something that you don't see in other democracies around the world. They They actually don't choose capitalism over democracy. They choose the other way around. That's interesting. Let me make sure that I've understood what you've just said because if I do, uh we've got a point of wonderful collision here. So, [laughter] um what I just heard you say is that in Europe as one example, they are willing to sacrifice their capitalistic ambitions to protect democracy. And I would say that Europe is among the most abusive kleptocratic institutions on planet Earth, that they are robbing their people blind, and their people don't even realize it. And um they would not have the ability to do so if America wasn't taking care of their security. And so, we've lived in this post-World War II bubble where we have come to believe that success and prosperity are these laws of nature. They just are. Like somehow the West is magically delicious, and hey, lucky us. Like we're here. Bummer, like if you live somewhere else. Uh but the West is is just magical. And they don't understand how America came to be, for instance. Like I'll speed run what I view as the real American story. And this is what I see with what we're doing with Iran. This is the thing that makes Trump such a fascinating figure to me is he can be honest about this kind of stuff. Like he's got You know who President Polk was? Yes. Okay, so he's got a lot of Polk in him. Like, well, as long as if I get a good result, then we're good. Like, nothing else really matters. All right, speed run of the US. Um I'm being abused by a despotic government, so I'm going to jump on a boat. I'm one of the entrepreneurial adventurous type. I'm probably going to die like the numbers are, but um I'm the type of person that would respond to Shackleton's call for >> [snorts] >> a horrible job where you're likely to die, but if you make it, baby, there is just glory and wealth above all else. Uh so I am Columbus. I roll up in the Caribbean, and I realize, "Oh my god, these guys are lovely people. They're so easy to kill. This is crazy." And so they grab our swords, don't even realize they're about to cut their hands. This is awesome. Uh we're going to enslave them, obviously. Make them grab some gold. If you don't come back with gold, um going to have to chop off your hands, like just real fast, though. So, cool. We come, start realizing there's just all this immense fertile land. This is rad. And now all these people come. The vast majority of them die, but we are inviting over the most entrepreneurial, the most adventurous, the most hardcore literally on planet Earth. They come over. They flood the shores. This is obviously I'm condensing a lot of history here. Uh indiscriminately take over. They maybe would have been fine living side by side as long as they could have your whenever they want it, but that obviously doesn't go well. Fighting on both sides. I am not uh somebody who paints an unrealistically chirpy picture of Native Americans, but we end up colliding, and the people that become the first Americans end up winning that through disease, through warfare, uh better technology, as is usually the case. Uh we keep pushing across the country, taking as much from anybody else we can. We'll buy it if you sell it at the right price, but we'll certainly kill you and take your if we have to, uh which is exactly what we do in the Mexican-American War, which ends up giving us a third, speaking of Polk, gives us a third of what we now think of as America, going from sea to shining sea. And from all of that comes the most dominant country the world has ever seen. And if you're willing to be honest about like what those kinds of transformations take, and that they have happened all throughout human history, forever as far as the eye can see, because that's just what humans are like, um I think people get a lot closer to the ground truth. So, when I look at the scenario of whether it's how Trump is behaving with Iran, it's very in keeping with what humans are like. America first, as far as I can tell, is if it's good for America, we're going to do it. Not that we're only going to think between our shores, not that we're not going to do wars or be adventurous, as long as we believe that it's going to be good for Americans, going to put dollars in their pockets, let us overspend, whatever, get us elected, I mean, that's really the question, then we're going to do it. Um and so, that to me is a human thing. And when you look at institutions and realize that they are corrupt from the top to bottom, it's always been that way. And so, now to me, it it is the great reckoning of how do you integrate the fact that this is what humans are like. This is what humans do. And so, it feels to me like as somebody who became a student of history quite late in the game, and I was like, "Whoa, this has been here waiting for me to discover this whole time." To realize what humans are really like. If you if you really want a glimpse into humanity, read The Gulag Archipelago. Whoa. About the Soviet um death camps, basically. The gulags. And it's basically, I don't know, 1,200 pages of of a guy who was in it, just screaming. I mean, it it is literally effectively a guy screaming for 1,200 pages. It's crazy. So, anyway, I'm like, "Okay, I want us to find a path to the other side of that where we don't have to um somnambulize, if that's a real word, people, put them back to sleep, get them to um eat your spoon-fed AI-created narrative of what this all is. Nobody's a bigger proponent of AI than me, but I'm also terrified of how it will be used to give us a narrative. Um so, yeah, I mean, in the end, that is how I'm parsing this is how do we get to the other side of that without having to pull punches. So, anyway, bringing it back to Europe. So, you look at Europe, Europe to me is not a um like clean democracy that is treating its people well. They're living in a post-World War II false version of what the world order really is, when what it really is is hardcore people that will do whatever they can until they meet sufficient physical force that stops them. From the foundation that people are just people and people don't change and and all of life is based on uh resource limitations that ultimately ultimately fight for, I I can't disagree with you. That is that is the logical conclusion based off of that foundational evidence. I think what we need to adjust for is the fact that people can change. People can change, people can make different decisions, and oftentimes people do make different decisions. Sometimes the pain that we run into is sufficient to get us to change something about our ideology, something about our point of view, something about our vision, right? That's That's how civil rights came to be. That's how the end of slavery came to be. Economically, it just made sense to keep having slaves. But, at some point, there was a social transformation that fought against that. The same thing with women having the right to vote. At some point, there was a social I'm not saying there wasn't also an economic benefit, but it didn't start from the economic benefit. It started from something else, and then an economic benefit was found later on. Very similar to what we're seeing, I think, right now with our environmental protection passions and interests. Like, economically, you don't protect the You don't protect the environment. But, there's something else at play that we then find an economic benefit to add to it. So, there's a social element that's very unpredictable. And when you talk about people being people, you also have to acknowledge that people people change as different phases of their life change. If you put a 25-year-old in power as a king or a queen or whatever else, they literally change the way they rule by the time that they're 65 and die. We're We are all different people in college than we are when we have a couple of kids. We're all different when we're broke than when we're wealthy. Like, we change. We change. Our questions about the universe and ourselves change. Our interests change. Our values shift, even though we are still the same core people. And And if you take everything away from us, we will very quickly revert back to animalistic survival tendencies. For the most part, there are still exceptions that don't do that. There are people who give up all worldly goods to become monks or become priests or nuns or whatever else. So, So, there are exceptions to the rule, which makes it hard to apply the rule consistently everywhere. But, when it comes to the institutions themselves, those are not monks. And And those are not Those are not the rarities. If anything, the institution becomes the place, the saving grace for the the low low-performance people. It's a safe haven. When you don't have any other skill, you find your way to doing something that's safe and simple and protected and follows the same regimented process as something else. So, I don't disagree with you that people are people and I don't disagree with you that we need to find a way to come through where we currently are. But, where the two things don't line up for me are if you believe that people are so kind of not pessimistically, but realistically tied to their their carnal desires, their carnal core processes, then how could you ever believe that we would come through unless what you're really saying is that in the filtering process of coming through, 60% of people don't make it. I'm saying something slightly different. So, this started with you saying that people have to come to grips that we're not the democratic country that people think we are, that this is um we are willing to make concessions for our capitalistic tendencies in a way that Europe is not. Uh my read on the situation at a high level is is very different and it goes something like this. Everything is economics. Everything is economics. I agree. We build up from that and we are not a capitalistic nation and haven't been for a very long time. You can't be capitalist and deficit spend. Let's start with that because now you are rigging the game. You can only do that with a central bank. The second you have a central bank, you're rigging the game. Every empire ever that has had a central bank has collapsed. They all collapse for the exact same noble predictable reason, and that is debt and deficit spending. The math just ends up taking over. And so, the reason that people are so angry, and they have a right to be angry, and this is what actually what I was thinking about when you were saying people change, I'll say it slightly differently. We are automata that responds to stimulus in very predictable ways. And when you take us on mass, this is why history loops because we're just going to respond. If you create a K-shaped economy always and forever for all time ever ever ever you're going to get populism because populism is oh life sucks because you're stealing from me. I just don't understand how. And so they elect a big strong man to come and slap people around get they want a tribe up and be on a team because it's it's scary now. They don't know how they're going to make ends meet. The pie really is shrinking. Right. And it's being siphoned up to the elite to the wealthy and everybody else is left to have fight over scraps. Everything's getting more expensive and so they just want someone that's they want to be on a team and they want someone that's going to fight for their side. >> And they want to win. Hurt yep. They want to win. They want to hurt the other side. And so when I look at this, I go okay, let's say I you really had a gun to my head and I had to solve this problem based on cause and effect based on first principles thinking based on the economy being close enough to a machine that you can think from an engineering perspective. I would go okay, you absolutely have to have a thriving middle class. You cannot have the distance between the poor and the wealthy that you have right now. So then you start asking well, how do I get there? And if you ask the left, they're going to say you take from the wealthy and redistribute to the poor which does not work. So you have to do it through force. Uh which I've certainly go down that path from an explanation my my community started before but the other one is you have to create a situation where there's tolerable inequality but that you don't get intolerable or toxic inequality and how do you stop that? You stop that by having a balanced budget. Uh because that stops inflation. Inflation stops all of the money from fleeing into the stock market which is how the value goes up and up and up. And so anyone I've never heard an argument and I look for them for how you solve the current um what feels like a cultural problem unless you to the economic problem. What's the problem? Oh, you're saying in general, any problem? >> No, no, no. The The The economic problem that we are dealing with right now, that we deal with all throughout history, always and forever, is exactly the same. It is debt and deficit spending. And if you understand what that's caused by, and you stop that, then you would naturally find yourself working back out of this problem. But you can't In a In a country that creates its own currency, the only the only option is to create a deflationary pressure on the currency, like what Clinton did when he got when he was in office. But to create deflation on the currency is essentially to cost companies more than it costs consumers. So, you're already inside of a frame of reference, and the frame of reference that you're inside of is the central bank. Once you have a central bank, you're just asking politicians, "Hey, please don't abuse the ability to create money." And for a long time, they won't. That's why these cycles take between 150 and 250 years, but they always break. Always. And they always print more money. >> Yeah, they They always fail for the same reason. Once you realize you can print the money, it's just the temptation is too strong. >> Mhm. And then, once you get the the weaknesses, the 2000 crash, the 2008 crash, uh COVID, you get those three successive things, and now, all of a sudden, the Momentum is in >> You You just like you have to keep printing. You have to keep printing, and that's creating this crazy K-shaped economy, which then gives rise to populism, which is exactly why Trump happens 8 years after the 2008 financial crisis, and now, you're in deep. So, do you see a solution? Do you see a way out? There is a way out, but I don't think that we're going to take it. It's what Ray Dalio calls a beautiful deleveraging. There's basically four forces. One of them is to move in the opposite direction, so that you're not just inflating your currency, but you're going to have to do some inflation still because you've got to spark the economy. You have to do some redistribution of wealth. You have to do some increasing of taxes. Um and you have to balance your budget. And so the one thing, austerity, one thing that people aren't going to do is the austerity. And so we're just we're in the spiral now where barring some major change. This is why I say Trump's gambit is that he's going to grow his way out of this. So your only two options are to basically devalue the currency like crazy, uh which he's doing. It's not great, but he's doing it. And then you have to grow even faster than you devalue the currency so that you can get growth in your economy, pay off the debt with the uh weaker dollar. Um but if you can return manufacturing back by making your exports cheaper because you lowered the value of the dollar, now you can actually do that. Now you've got working class jobs again, but of course this is all happening right at the same time as AI, which is going to be an unknown disruption. Or yeah, or potentially AI is what contributes to making things so much less expensive. And then the inexpensiveness of what we create plus the reduced value of the dollar, AI basically saves the day. I'm sure that's one potential outcome, too. >> Yeah, it literally. Now, if you were going to um steel-man the argument of >> [snorts] >> Europe doing this better cuz there are definitely going to be people in the comments right now that are like, "Andrew, come on. You've got this chance to show this capitalistic like how this actually works." Um what what is the thing that makes you look at Europe and go, "Mhm, that's better." I and so there's I think there's two things based off of what we're talking about. And I again, I don't think that the gap between us is too significant. I think that it might be a bit of nuanced um how we how we define our terms, right? So when I talk about capitalism, what I'm talking about is generating money. Um creating a profit, generating money, making a good or a service that's of need, and then pricing it as high as possible to the person who can't get that good or product or that good or product on their own, that good or service on their own. So, then they're willing to exchange maximum optimal currency, money, in exchange for the service or good that they're getting. In the United States, we are very focused on capitalism. How much money can I make? How can I make optimal money? How can I make a bad pizza at a high price rather than making a good pizza at a low price? That's That's how we think in the United States. That's how And that's not how everybody thinks, but that's how the wealthiest, most successful businesses become the wealthiest, most successful businesses because they're able to optimize their pricing. That is a very capitalistic thing. And then we we have all traditionally, we have carried that mentality into other parts of our life as well. That's why Americans are obsessed with efficiencies. Right? How do I How do I make the the house the most efficient price to heat or cool? I mean, for for most people, the only reason they invest in solar or insulated windows isn't because they care about the climate, it's because they're trying to take the cost of insulated windows over the next 10 years against the cost of heating or cooling my house for the same 10-year period, and will I save money or not? So, we've got this this focus on efficiency that just doesn't exist outside of the United States, not in Asia, not in not in Europe, not in Africa, not in Latin America. So, when I talk about a capitalist country, that's what I'm talking about is this this relentless desire for more and more efficiency rooted in the idea that we want to be very efficient with the money that we earn versus the money that we spend. That efficiency doesn't exist in Europe. So, in Europe, their governance, their institutions are happy to be fat and slow and inefficient and over inflated, and they have to charge their people an incredible amount of taxes to pay for the big bloated bureaucracy that they have and they give up on the opportunity for fast rapid decision-making because everybody has to have seven different committees before they go anywhere. I'm not saying it's better than the United States. What I'm saying is that they will continue to to value this bureaucratic bloatedness because it will, they believe, prevent them from becoming this capitalist villain right away. It Is there room for corruption? Of course, all institutions can be corrupted, right? And is there Is there an incentive in Europe for the middle class to try to earn more or make more? Not really. I've I've traveled throughout Europe and I've I've been shocked at the lack of individual ambition and drive among most people. And when you just look at the number of millionaires and billionaires in the world, you can very clearly see that if they start in Europe, they end up coming to the United States because they culturally don't fit into that environment. All of that being said, one of Europe's biggest weaknesses is the fact that it has been able to, since 1945, live in this bubble of what's the right democratic process instead of in a bubble of we need to protect our borders, we need to be strong, we need to keep ourselves safe. It was only this morning that the French President Macron came out and said that to be free, you must be feared. And he talked about that in the context of the fact that that France is deploying nuclear-tipped air-to-ground missiles all across its European allies. Tactical nukes being actively deployed. Um not not used in war, but but pre-positioned, forward-deployed, so that they can be called upon. So, now we're already seeing how Europe is following our lead. Europe is following the authoritarian model more so now than it was in the past. To be free, you must be feared. That is a very different message than what they believed in the past, right? To be free, you must be you must be fair. To be free, you must be uh you have a common goal, whatever else. Just like you were saying earlier, like the the Machiavellian book that you were talking about where where we need a a common narrative to put us all together. In my experience, that is all true, that is all real, and we are struggling right now because there is no common valid, credible, authoritative not authoritarian, but authoritative narrative for us to follow. So, we are surrounded on all sides by bad options. And the only way that we are going to be able to navigate through bad options is either through a lens of what we believe to be fair, just, right, correct, tolerable, or we kind of pursue options and recognize that some of the steps and decisions that we make along the path of choosing options will just make us more and more miserable. It's like the person who ends up pursuing a career in law even though they hate law because they want more options. Or the person who goes into non-profit work, never makes enough money, but has an abundance of happiness in their job. I'm not one to talk about being happy. I'm not one to talk about being wealthy. I'm the kind of person who kind of jumps between. Sometimes I feel like sometimes I feel like I want more options. Sometimes I feel like I want to live a little bit happier and more comfortable and and I've got the freedom to make those decisions. So, we are all in a world now where we've been promised that we're going to be wealthy. And now we're realizing that's not really true. Just like the generations before us, then we we've watched our parents not get wealthy. We've watched our grandparents not retire wealthy. And now here we are, anybody between the ages of 25 and 55 staring in the mirror and saying, "Shit, man. Like I believed all this for a long time, and now I'm coming to grips with something I've I can see, but it's different than what I believe. So, I have that cognitive dissonance again. Well, we shall see. As we said at the very beginning, fog of war. Uh it is unknown exactly how this is going to play out, but man, your analysis is super, super helpful. Where can people keep up with you? Absolutely, you'll find me at everdayspy.com. It's the company that I own. You'll find me on YouTube at Andrew Bustamante. And if you Google me anywhere, you'll you'll find Andrew Bustamante probably more places than you want to find me. Uh I love it. Hopefully, this ends way too quick for us to have you back on, but uh God forbid it drags out, we'll definitely uh do this again, man. Really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, brother. Of course. All right, everybody, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you liked this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. Most people think what's happening right now in the world is because of Trump, but I've heard you say that we were always going to end up here. I would love to get an explanation on that. Like, what is here, exactly? Yeah, well, I mean, first my Let's start by saying that uh the US