WW3 Threat Assessment: "Trump Bombing Iran Just Increased Nuclear War Threat" The Terrifying Reality

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“What does the United States think it's going to gain from decapitating the Iranian leaders?”

Well, that's kind of obvious based on what the president has said. It's that... On what the president has said. I'm just saying based on what the president says. You can't trust anything that you're hearing right now.

I can't trust anything that you're reading right now. Okay. Two to multiple. I mean, that's a charm. It's not paranoid.

That is absolutely. It is absolutely. It's just that everything is misinformation. Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon. So it's not a nuclear threat.

You speak a different nuclear language than I do. This regime is at its lowest lowest point. Why not strike it now? I mean, I can give lots of reasons why you wouldn't strike it. What are all these things?

What are you concerned about? What are you concerned about?

“And what are the unintended consequences that you're for seeing?”

There is a domino effect that happens with every decision that he has since mixed. So... Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. 69% of you have listened to the show frequently haven't yet hit the follow button. And that follow button is very smart because it means you won't miss the best episodes.

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Thank you so, so, so, so much.

Benjamin, Annie, Andrew, first and foremost, thank you for being here today.

I have to start with the question that's been on my mind. As somebody that doesn't know a huge amount about geopolitics, which is, what the hell is going on? And I say that, because that's exactly what I mean. What is going on? And what context do I need to understand this sort of historical context of the actions we're seeing in Iran with this wall right now? Benjamin, I know you've

“got a personal connection to Iran because your family fled Iran, I believe.”

Yeah, I was two years old when we left in March of 1979, a few months after the Shah had left, and just after how many had arrived. What is the Shah and what is a mani? Yeah, so, the Shah, the former monarch of Iran, the path of Eid dynasty, which came into power in the 1930s, deposing a previous dynasty that had been around for a couple hundred years.

And his father brought in that dynasty and then it was eventually, he was deposed by the British and the Americans who felt he was getting too close to the Nazis during World War II, concerned about supply routes for the Nazis, oil, and his son was installed on the throne at a very young age, you believe, 18 or 19. And he ruled Iran from that period, 1941, 1942, and that time all the way through 79.

A great ally of the United States over time, eventually. And it was deposed, where it was over throne on a revolution, and by Khomeini, who is a senior

cleric who had been a thorn in the Shah's side since the '60s, was exiled first to Turkey

then Iraq, then ultimately to France, right outside Paris, actually, from there he basically led the revolution that led to the Shah's removal, upstair in 79. And how was the wrong different when the Shah was in power versus when Hamani was in power? That depends on who you ask. It was a constitutional monarchy, the Shah had powers that exceeded beyond what we think

of constitutional monarch he has today, like in Great Britain. He was, he ruled with an iron fist when he needed to, he was an authoritarian, but he also was one that was rapidly modernizing Iranian society, wanted to make it more like the West, using Iran's immense oil resources and wealth to really accelerate development, building of social institutions, healthcare, literacy, modernization, all of those things.

That was his focus, make it run more like the West. And in that sense, he succeeded, but it came at the expense oftentimes of civil liberties for many people. It came at the expense of freedom for those who wanted to essentially practice religion Islam, Islam in their own way.

The Shah was not hostile to religion, but he, his policies were inconsistent with where the traditional religious Iranians wanted to go, and it sort of created a skism in society. And you also had a wealth gap, an income disparity, immense wealth port into the country, but it didn't trickle its way downward into the sort of the village and rural poor.

And that led to sort of this populist backlash of wanting something that was more democratic,

more accountable, more like the West, ironically. And that sort of was the beginning of where that cycle led. And so how did Hamini take power of Iran? He led a movement, a mass populist movement, not a religious one, but it meant to go across multiple socioeconomic and political divides, and unified the opposition under this idea

of removing the monarchy, removing dependence on the West. He specifically said, the United States was to large part to blame for Iran being in the state that it was for people not having the things they needed to live, the freedoms, the liberties. He blamed the Shah's use of the secret police and torture methods on the United States

and on Israel, who he claimed, you know, taught the secret police, how to do these things,

there was a complicated sort of history to that, and he basically promised them salvation

from what he portrayed as a puppet tyrant of the United States. And the masses bought into this, but both the left and the right, the right consisted of the black, the Islamists. So you had the red, which were sort of the Marxist socialist followers, you had the black, and then you had sort of that middle in between, and they all coalesced around this

one charismatic, religious figure, a stear man, one who didn't really have a lot of luxuries himself, let a simple life, but was consistent with his opposition to what he saw tyranny and despotism, and people bought into it. And the Americans didn't like this.

“The Americans didn't know what to make of it, and there was a failure, and I think Andrew”

can talk about this as well, a failure by the State Department, the CIA, and the 70s, to see where the threat was, they saw the threat coming from the Soviet Union. They were still afraid of Soviet encroachment in the Middle East, particularly through Iran. Their concerns were, with the Marxist, the Communist parties, they did not carefully look at the black.

They didn't look at the Islamists, they didn't see them as a threat until it was too late. The Shah himself blocked, or really didn't give the CIA full access to Iran. There was limited information that was coming out. He relied on his own intelligence, which fed him information he wanted to hear, which is that everything is going great.

The countries doing well, the people love you, they're all happy, until the discontent and the protests became, they reached a threshold, and it was too late to do anything about it. Yeah, the United States was kind of at their peak period of meddling and foreign governments at the time.

I'm kind of in a strange way that we've come full circle, this idea of controlling an entire country by controlling the figurehead of the country.

“That's where we were in the late 70s at the kind of brink of the Cold War, right?”

Nobody knew that the Berlin Wall was going to fall, we were all concerned with the spread of communism. Nobody was paying attention to the Islamist threat, nobody was paying attention to really any other kind of threat at all, it was very much the unfettered uncontrolled, unsupervised CIA running around with no oversight and with very deep pockets.

I'm not changed at some point. I changed in 2001 when Al-Qaeda successfully carried out the 9/11 attacks in New York and all of a sudden the threat that we had all been ignoring was on our doorstep and had grown so wealthy and had spread so vast across the world that Islamic extremism became almost overnight a household term.

Now there's still a difference between Al-Qaeda Islamic CIA extremism and what is practiced in the Shia faith and with the outcomes that the Shia militants are trying to pursue in support of Iran but it's hard to differentiate that in the United States where we don't understand the difference between Sunni and Shia. And what you think this war is really about?

“Very interesting what you both said and I think what I would add to that which very much”

speaks to today is that the CIA in fact had many ups and downs over the decades from its creation right after World War II until this moment in time and then on 9/11. And so it's been like an accordion experience of power being taken away from the CIA

and then being grabbed back because the CIA has always historically been the president's

hidden hand. It has been the way in which the White House can execute executive power without having to follow the laws of war that the military does. So military is a code called Title 10, CIA is a code called Title 50. And while that may sound a bit wonkish it is important to understand because Title 50 essentially

as Andrew can speak to gives the president authority under classified presidential directive to change any rule he wants that suits him for an operation at hand which gets us precisely

So as far as I understand that was the sharp, the sort of rule leader who was in power,

“he was overthrown in the late 1970s by Hamani, Hamani galvanized people to believe in”

his way and he's been in power ever since. It gets complicated because how many with an O was the original leader of the revolution and was later replaced by Hamani on A and that's the Supreme Leader and this speaks to the revolutionary nature of Iran which has been taking place since 1979. In the news today people hear the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and it's so important to understand

that word revolution because and you can speak to this better than any of us but Iran has been holding on to this idea that or rather the regime has that we are the revolutionary force against America.

That is why the chant is always death to America.

The wound of 19 of pre-1975, the wound of America meddling and having the shahs it's puppet is as inflamed or was as inflamed two days ago as it was the day after the revolution in 1979.

“I think that's probably important context we missed which is the U.S. got involved in the”

shah and how he governed Iran. It's a fascinating period in 1951 so basically under the Iranian constitution the shah the king has the authority to select the prime minister with the consent of parliament, the consent party is really nominal and so most of that deck who is a senior member of parliament and also a member of the previous royal dynasty is disdainably related this elderly statesman

who the shah out of sort of courtesy after having gone through a successive list of prime ministers says okay I'm going to appoint him prime minister so he wasn't democratically elected he was elected to parliament but from there the shah selected him to be prime minister what's that deck nationalize the oil company the angle American oil company which was owned primarily by the British this angered the British who in turn blockaded Iran's

ports and basically shut down its oil industry and creating a national crisis and

most that deck was sort of amassing additional powers within himself for himself basically overstepping the authority that he had even though he had the support of a good deal of the public as it became obvious that this was a bad move especially on the eyes of Iran's international trading partners and it was causing Iran to be isolated there was push back towards him and then he was removed the British had wanted MI6 had wanted to overthrow

him basically get removed and they try to recruit the United States to help President Truman refused to engage in this earlier Eisenhower comes in is more receptive under CIA director Alan Dullis to actually engage in this called Operation TPA Jax led by Cremit Roosevelt who is the CIA agent officer tasked with this and then the Americans and the British basically help ferment a crowd that is a part of the movement that removes

“most that deck now whether it's a common I think misconception that the US CIA was behind”

it the British had a bigger role in in this the Americans were more of the junior partner but they became sort of the public face of it but most that deck was not this overwhelming popular democratically elected figure either the history is more complicated and regardless there have been many prime minister there were many prime ministers after him and so he was known as a nationalist because he believed that Iran's oil should be nationalized and not

really beholden to British interests and that created a lot of resentment and an amosity but that began the US Iranian relationship really solidified when the Shah returned he didn't

leave really he just sort of took himself out of the country for a bit but he never stepped down

and while this was all being resolved then he comes back and then the US Iranian relationship continues all the way through 79 so the UK and the US have been meddling in Iran for a long time and kind of you know exerting their will the UK since the 19th century by far the UK has been the dominant colonial force in modern Iranian history and they lose that power in this sort of 1980s early 1980s because the Hamani comes in the British lose that power with the

fall of pretty much the fall of the empire in the 1940s after World War II and the United States in 79 exactly and then since then the UK and the US haven't been able to sort of exert control in their will over Iran and it's zero zero zero there's not even an embassy there because of course they took our embassy or they took over the embassy I mean it's been and it's been like ground zero of nothing for the CIA's power for any American power really for any western power

we call it a black box yeah it's a rogue nation it's a black box of information a rogue nation is a is one of a handful of countries around the world that follow no international norms North Korea is a rogue nation Belarus is a rogue nation Cuba is a rogue nation Venezuela was a

society and in Iran's case it also became this black box where it did not allow foreigners in

“especially now westerners it closed down its embassy the traditional methods for collecting”

intelligence were very difficult and geographically it's so far away and so far outside of the sphere of influence for the United States that in terms of intelligence and military prioritization it just fell to the bottom of the list and yet look exactly where it is it's right in the

middle of these and to Benjamin's point oil oil oil oil it's always about oil there's always a

component of oil and there are so many other oil options in that region besides Iran right Saudi Arabia UAE Bahrain Qatar if they've they've got the United States could partner with other Arab countries to get what they wanted without having to deal with Iran so explain to me in simple terms why Trump right now has decided that this is the best time to attack Iran and want to start with

“UNG what's your point of view on that the full picture of what is motivations I think the question that”

you just asked is the most precious question that we will talk about today why why now why is it being

communicated the way it's being communicated why was it executed the way it was executed so why is now

the very the best of all times I frankly don't think it is I think that's the narrative that's being communicated to the world and to the public what Donald Trump did in attacking Iran goes against what the ODE and I report assessed for the the most likely threats against the United States and her 2000 in the ODE and I's 2005 threat assessment it goes against the Department of Wars 2020 six national defense strategy and it goes against the White House's national security strategy

these massive doctrinal annual assessments for how the United States will protect national security

the attack against Iran goes contrary to all three of those in terms of priority and action so why

now why the way that we've done it I can't answer it in any kind of logical way what's the non-legical answer it's a distraction it's international pressure with Israel it's a cheap win after a series of losses it's a last ditch effort before he understands he that Donald Trump and his party will lose control of the House in the midterms this year I have a little bit of a different take shall I

“I believe the current administration is led as a completely top-down situation in other words”

like sole presidential authority this current president is very enraptured with power and with prowess with effectiveness and on the heels of Maduro and maybe even the cartel leader in Mexico I believe that the current president saw a moment of intense weakness that had been building no doubt and in warring in general when when looking at it theoretically like someone like myself the decapitation strike is the ultimate strike it's literally like it sounds when you can it

comes from cut off the head of the snake and that is exactly what just happened why why why did he do that well I cannot tell you why but I can tell you what what we all know that this happened so if you reverse engineer what happened I think it become there's only one conclusion which is that I would think the current president said wanted to do this and was waiting till he had the intelligent the good and the intelligence part of it is beyond remarkable like how

they how the CIA and NSA and you know probably the CIA and NGA all of these intelligence agencies of which there are many not just the CIA were able to get that information to the president and that exact moment and make that strike and decapatate the leadership that has been in power since 1979 when they talk about the motives here trouble often site nuclear weapons as the motive saying he didn't want it around to get nuclear weapons is that what's going on here in your point of view

the 2025 national threat assessment that was produced by the ODI and I in March so less than a year old specifically says that Iran was unlikely to pursue the development of nuclear and Richmond or nuclear weapons that was the assessment of the the ODI and that instead their primary concern was that Iran was going to focus resources into the research of biological and chemical weapons so the fact that in March of 2025 the ODI and I the assessment of all intelligence agencies said

we dropped bunker busters and foreign foredo further obliterating their nuclear enrichment capability

“and obliterating their program we have two documents that say they're not developing it we have another”

series of attacks that says it's obliterated and yet we're still saying that we need to attack Iran because of WMD we've heard that story before we've heard that WMD is a just the concern of WMD is a just cause for war and that was when we invaded Iraq in 1992 so what do you think the real motivation there is that for is it's very similar to what Annie is saying that we have a current administration that is president down it's fascinating if you read the official documentation because

when you read the Department of Wars national security strategy what you hear more than any other word is Donald Trump our president Donald Trump is leading America through our president Donald Trump

the great Donald Trump like the it's incredible when you hear the speeches that come out of

Marco Rubio's mouth or Pete Hexess mouth what do you hear more than any other term you hear the

“name of the president usually you hear we or the government or this administration it's not”

around a personality so it's a very interesting situation because if there's so much of a person at stake here and everybody surrounding the office of the president is only there because they are respecting kissing the ring of the personality in the center and I'm going to add to that further just for a moment if I may because on that point the button on that is that if I watch the president the current president's speeches to sort of you know discern things and you can

often see get your answer right there and then one of the speeches either this morning or yesterday he mentioned that the Iotola tried to kill him and it's to me it's like oh that's the tit for tat you know again top down or you could say schoolboy sandbox I say that is the mother of two boys you know this human behavior that is way outside the norm of you know intelligence reports and assessments and these long monographs that may or may not actually be effective I mean

you know the biggest surprises of the past 40 years the Berlin wall falling and 9/11 were completely unseen by any intelligence reports so there is an argument that those intelligence reports are as good as a coin toss so I want to come to that point because the very fact that we have an Islamic Republic is a direct result of the failure of American intelligence to see that threat as early as 1976-77 a failure to inform then president Carter to do the necessary take the necessary

steps to support the Shah and to neutralize that threat so the United States track record in Iran for the last 40 years or 50 years is abysmal when it comes to intelligence and when it comes to statecraft and so there's that legacy number one number two October 7 2023 the homostatack against Israel changed the dynamic entirely that attack surprised Israeli intelligence surprise americans has surprised almost anybody watching nobody thought Hamas was going to do that when they did it

and the means in which they did it so all of a sudden that forced a recalibration recalculation of what's it stake what could happen if we wait for an imminent threat to we see actually the sign outside the door it's too late so from the president's perspective to answer your original

“question why now why do this I believe the October 7th attack and it's not the best of Israel”

necessarily it's the idea that Iran we know finances Hamas subsidizes Hamas trains Hamas equips Hamas provides logistical support of on many levels so that Hamas can be what it was and hezbollah also so you have these destabilizing non-state groups in the Middle East wreaking havoc destabilize it causing chaos you're the United States you're also dealing with a nuclear threshold state so Iran may or may not have a nuclear weapons program but they exceeded the 20% enrichment that they were

allowed to do under the non-nuclear non-proliferation treaty they they violated i.e. a safeguard they they lied so you take all of this together this is a regime that can't be trusted the chance death to America which is more than Saddam Hussein ever did and is funding groups that had a risk that up until 9/11 Iran was behind more acts of terror that cost American lives in any other state or non-state group in the world 9/11 changed that but up until that the marine barracks

bombing in the 1980s terrorists attacks throughout Europe South America US embassy absolutely the USS coal right so this is it we've we've been at war from the president's perspective with

Iran since they took our hostages for which they've never atoned for they've never been held to

account for so if you take that calculus and then now we're in a post october 7th world with a nuclear threshold state what happened that changed was last year's six day a 12-day war in

if there's an opportunity to finally address this 47-year-old conflict this was the window to do it

that is why i believe rightly or wrongly the president took the action when he did

“that doesn't make it the best window and that's what we're being told is it was the last”

best window i don't think it was the last best but it was a window or at least green from their perspective it was it was a window you've got everyone weekend you've got the the regime less popular than it's ever been i mean we saw the protests in January that led to the you know the blood bath that you know upwards of 30,000 people killed on January 8th and 9th this was you know this this regime is at its lowest lowest point both in terms of domestic

credibility and soft power and ability to to use proxies to carry out its will why not strike

it now would be logic i mean i can give lots of reasons why you wouldn't strike it it's it's

it's violating international law it sets a dangerous precedent it creates instability there are Americans dead and maraudees dead uh Saudis dead for what for for for something that was already on the precipice of dying itself it's been dying for 40 years why not let it run its course because because what more damage is it going to do what more october 7th can we see arguably less than anything that's already been done so it's like taking action on it's like putting down

the dead dog after it's done all of its ditch well you i don't think that you could say to the families of the 30,000 some people who were murdered by the regime just earlier you know in January

“that is a dead dog i don't i think they would disagree that's it's their country it's their people”

it's their it's their decision it's their right to self determination i'm not saying it's correct what was done i'm i'm i'm just simply telling saying the facts of that which i agree with you know unilatery that the weekend situation was perceived by this administration as the moment to strike agree and what is done is done agreed and so i think what's more interesting to me is you know observing how america is dealing with this i mean we are in our own crisis america our own

serious crisis and there are crises around the world particularly in this area and without having a crystal ball none of us know and i think that what will happen in the next two weeks will be profoundly telling interestingly people will say this was a good move or this will was a bad move which in and of itself is a bizarre theater because your point is correct you've got you know america taking action in a place that's not it's not it's that's a sovereign country yes

and to your point you've got you know decades of a menace that is now off the table i would agree with that exactly we don't know yes and and the worst part is that in the lead up to this Iran's relationship with the with Russia and china and and other countries that are successfully

“countering america and influence worldwide had grown closer than ever before i think they're fair”

weather friends that just turn on them in a second it's what are you concerned about on tree so so there's

a number of things here so first of all with the removal of maduro and venezuelo which happened less than sixty days ago and now the killing the assassination of a of a lead the decapitation of the regime which was the same thing you did here when you rendered maduro right it's a decapitation of the regime that's different i'm i would say if you're going to you know extract someone you haven't killed them so that's not decapitation that's basically swapping out the CEO this is completely

reforming the company i agree with that because because they were different countries they operated in different ways but when you attack the leadership um when you attack the head of state that is protected under international law because because when you do that you open the gates for everyone of course what is it what is it the heart of your concern because it sounds like you're saying that this wasn't the right time to do this and and so what are the unintended consequences that you're

for seeing so there is a domino effect that happens with every decision that united states makes and now that we have essentially taken this military action against a sovereign country it opens the door for all sorts of other countries to just unilaterally choose when they're going to take action against another sovereign independent we have created more opportunity for more rogue nations which is a greater abandonment of an international community which destabilizes our

global trade our economics our sense of personal security the americans are less secure now than they were four days ago they're targeted now more than they were four days ago and if we if we are coming to the conclusion that we need to make things worse before we can make things better that's a conversation I guess we can have the debate we can have but with with the crisis that we have here at home with the concerns that exist with the stated process here we have an economic crisis

the United States I would just say it's tribal warfare here at home I mean I watch it and it's just very very very very dangerous keep going no no it's just now we have just exacerbated that even more and we've exacerbated that more with an ally in the Middle East that just got done carrying out one of the most destructive attacks in history against Gaza you brought up something you talk about sovereignty with regards to the January 8th the violence committed against the protesters

you said that that basically it's their own people self-determination how how does the international

community deal with acts of state violence against its own people that's so we have a word for that and it's called interest state conflicts okay conflict inside of a state a civil war right the international community has no responsibility for stepping into a civil war so that was this is a great point this is the debate that the that the four ally powers had at the end of World War II when they were convening the Nuremberg trials you had this idea that we don't have laws

to account for how a country or state treats people within its own sovereign borders the idea is that Germany could do what Germany did within Germany proper forget about occupied Germany within its own borders it could mistreat anybody because that was German law and the push was that that's not the world we want to live in anymore we want to live in a world where basically nations cannot do that to people and that's where the basis of the Nuremberg tribunals came and that's where

we got international law of war crimes crimes of aggression genocide so on and so forth so the idea is that just because Iran is sovereign we sit back and allow them to do that it wasn't a civil war because one side was fighting with with knives machetes assault rifles the other side had spoons wouldn't you know I mean that kind of thing right it was so lopsided it was such an abuse and a asymmetric battle under the Clinton administration we chose to not be part of the international

criminal court we pulled ourselves out of the very same conclusion that you're talking about yeah but Nuremberg was not but there's also the ICJ there's a UN framework that's independent from the ICC and the wrong treaty so all I'm saying is we do have international law that addresses what nations can do to their own people and we violated international law by by run by attacking ahead of state so what what is the there's no continuity there's no consistency we choose to do

what we choose to do we choose to support what we choose to support and we choose to abandon what we choose to abandon and how how do you make sense in a world like that how do you predict the future how do you manage even raising a family how do you know where you can travel how do you

“decide on investments how do you you can't that is a great point and I think that's the that's”

a you know that's a point to be made here that there's an absence of the enforcement of law internationally and its victors justice and the dominant will essentially exercise whatever will they want the law be damned do you think this is part of Trump's what his motivations are linked his personal legacy and I say this a lot because I think sometimes you got to kind of follow the incentive structure especially if the president that can't be reelected who has

talked a lot about wanting to win the Nobel Peace Prize although he's probably never said it directly

and you can it almost looks like a Trump that's thinking about his legacy ahead of time and once legacy is going to be determined by like the wars you you start the people you take out the Venezuela situation the economies seem to be really important to him do you think this is he's motivated more so by his legacy than say someone else I do believe that we are in a position where this is the first president we've ever had and I would love to be wrong please disagree with

“me on this but I think this is the first president we've ever had that's more focused on personal”

legacy than professional or political legacy I think he's thinking about Donald Trump and the name Trump and the Trump fortune and the Trump future more than he's thinking about the image of him on children's bookmarks as a as a present of the United States for the rest of the existence of the United States I hope I'm wrong but I don't feel like he's motivated by country by service he is supposed to be it's not country over part or part of a country it's brand over country the

Trump brand I would agree with that yeah I've never had a president talking about my take Greenland

might might go to Venezuela he he fancy himself a deal maker he wants an Nobel Peace Prize he prouds himself on the number of wars that he's he's he's he's I'm ended conflicts that he solved I think ideally he would have wanted Iran to end up with a diplomatic solution he came with terms I don't think war was a preferred option I think even much happier if there was an agreement that you know allowed everything to kind of stay in place Iran would abide by nuclear restrictions

missile restrictions proxy restrictions and then a Trump casino gets built in you know the turnaround that would have made him happy because yeah that is about the personal that is about the brand that it's also he sees that it's benefiting the United States benefiting the US's global

“partners in the region so but I think a lot of this is personally driven I would agree I also find”

it quite fascinating that our Prime Minister in the UK kissed armour is not being asked about any

now it seems like the US is kind of acting as a lone force in the world and it's funny because you

know which kissed armour come out after the attacks have happened and he clearly had no idea it was going to happen same in Venezuela once upon a time you would have briefed us. The President

“did go to the Prime Minister about I think using Diego Garcia and other bases and was turned down”

if I'm not mistaken right that so there was some awareness that something was being planned and the Prime Minister said that the UK government would have no part in any of that. What's going on here what's the macro picture of in terms of the declining world order that we wants new where we

had where it wasn't just United States running around doing whatever they liked and other people might

be briefed or asked. I mean I'm interested in looking at outcome you know and then kind of looking backwards at how we got there and I'm also very interested in how divided America is because I really do see it as the greatest weakness so you can show strength in what just happened but if you are extremely vulnerable at home then and I'm not talking necessarily about hezbolleterist cells

“being you know activated which may or may not happen I'm just talking about the the clash of political”

parties in the United States and to that end I often look at the past and like so we're talking about you mentioned you know being friendly and having our allies in art and I can't help but look at the reaction of the opposing party right now at this action for better for worse but bringing up the Iraq war and talking about how we got our allies involved we went to Congress and I as a historian can't help but think but wait a minute the Iraq war was

built on faulty intelligence the Iraq war led us into a 20 year absolute misery with so many people in this area killed and so many more problems metastasizing as a result and so to to be selective about what works and what what doesn't work is to me as dangerous as a situation as we are in now and I know that's a little bit scurting away from you know giving you an answer as to why what was done was done or whether it's a good idea or bad idea it just simply is very

interesting to me because I can't help but see you know being a subject matter expert on the history of the CIA in particular I see these actions where it is presidential authority driven

“since the end of World War II and to me that's what this action looks like so we're in the new”

era where we are in which I find interesting is where the president of the United States can essentially take what would historically be a covert action operation you wouldn't even know about it that would be the idea instead announcing it as a military program so he's merging the legal authorities of title 10 in title 50 and of course the average person in the United States doesn't like oh wait a minute he's merging those authorities because what is a thought what are the title 10

and title 50 well title 10 is the military must follow certain laws of war okay and title 50 says if the president decides it is a national security threat he can use the CIA's paramilitary that is an actual military force they sheep dip tier one operators over from the military and take the patches off their shoulders put them in non-military clothes and send them out to do military type work so he's using the military how he wants to use them

yes and that's right as the commander in chief as the chief executive of the United States the DOD or the now the DOW and CIA fall under the executive branch they don't fall into

the legislative branch they don't fall under the judicial branch so the president has and always has

had the ability to take these types of actions and write executive orders what's so different here is that while we're talking about CIA and CIA being used by the president in his exercise of authority what we're all not talking about what we're missing is that CIA has been gutted this is the same president that went to war with CIA in his first term CIA has gone through massive attrition since then they were defunded under his first presidency

so director act left is the least used to director the least reference director you never hear about him is he to head of the CIA and and what I am concerned about is that the CIA

it's gotten marginalized more it went to it's been treated hostily by the by the US president

“and the CIA that I had started hearing rumors about in the early 2020s 65% of the intelligence”

that they were producing was coming from foreign allies what I would also say is that every CIA sadly you know has nostalgia for the former CIA if you look at history and believes that their CIA was better than the current CIA that's just the nature not saying it was better works I'm just saying the intelligence that the CIA is using now I would argue that we keep talking about CIA and you keep seeing CIA in the headlines and it's actually not but hey not but hey not

ODE and I didn't or at least according to show we say the New York Times which must have come from the White House CIA provided the intelligence exactly so there you go fake I don't think

that's real here's what you think why do you think why do you think why is the central

intelligence agency which is by design it means that every other intelligence that comes from every other agency inside the DOD inside of the National Security Infrastructure has to come through CIA only CIA produces the final product of the president so therefore everything is CIA and CIA contain and CIA is the one that's in charge of maintaining foreign relationships with foreign intelligence services so when Israel has an intelligence report that they share with the US president

it goes through the CIA so every all credit and all blame always goes to CIA that doesn't mean CIA actually had the intelligence themselves so what could you think have the intelligence and why does this matter the number one most informed country in the world on the goings on in Iran is Israel tell me if I'm wrong no I would agree with that there's no way the United States would have

been able to launch against Iran without close coordination and incredible intelligence support

from Israel and I'm going to do so why does it why does it matter because it means that Israel could be directing the activities of the US military by the intelligence they select to give to the president so I wouldn't take that step yeah I don't think Israel has a monopoly on intelligence provided we know that MI6 has also historically been very active and very capable probably more so than CIA has been in a large part because the British government has a embassy has

diplomatic ties has trade economic ties with Iran and it's and the Islamic regime has seen the UK as a effective sort of pipeline or conduit to the United States and has used that in the past

“sometimes you know to to better effect than before but I think that there's a I think there's”

sources of intelligence that the United States gets and Israel is influential but I don't think it is the sole influencer or the one that pushes it over the edge one or the other that wasn't saying that they're the sole but but when it came to Iran and I think we're saying the same thing they are they don't have the monopoly but they have the they're the biggest game in town exactly when it comes to understand what's happening in Iran I mean I'm going to disagree because I think that

it could look at past situations where the United States attempted to do a decapitation strike and then have a regime change you can look at Iraq we tried to kill Saddam Hussein failed and then a disaster blows up Libya tried to kill Kadafi fails a disaster blows up Iran tries to kill the regime or take to capitate the regime and succeeds so are you saying that you believe that's because in the other situations the intelligence was coming

from the CIA who didn't have such great intelligence and in this situation the intelligence was coming from Israel who did no I'm saying that that a big piece of the opportunity of Iran is tied to the opportunity that was presented to us by our allies in the region and all the it's just Israel Saudi Arabia wants to see the end of Iran UAE wants to see the end of Iran Jordan wants to see the end of Iran there's multiple allies in the region that want to see the end of Iran but when

it came to who had the longest most reliable human intelligence source network inside Iran I don't think anybody came even close to comparing with with Israel and you're saying that was used selectively meaning because all intelligence that shared with an ally is selective of course

“I have 10 pieces do I give all 10 pieces to my ally do I give just the three pieces that I think will”

move them off the X right that they have to have those 20 individuals tagged to do their fine fix and finishing period and of story it couldn't have happened without it and I believe that

ins to know that I can't imagine how Israel knew that more than the United States I just I that's mine that's where I'm just to give you a very quick example right you're 100% right the people have to be tagged when you tag a cell phone let's just say we're talking about cell phones cell phones give you a geo a geo location every cell phone signal sends a geo tag but only on the service network that controls that phone United States doesn't have access to most of the

service providers in the Middle East so you already have to have someone to interlock huge the Middle Eastern service provider with the West and then on top of that you then have to be able to identify that that's selector that cell phone belongs to that person again if you think

that the United States is so powerful it has every cell phone of every person around the country

“around the world there I think there's biometric tagging that is not necessarily electronic”

based so you're saying that I appreciate your point of view the point is that Iran according to every prioritized list that we have is on the low end of our priorities rush as above them China's above them the cartels across Mexico are above them so somehow we had such refined intelligence on what's your conclusion here Andrew because I feel like there's a second half of your point that's missing like a conclusion that you're pointing towards but not saying isn't it just the

lowest of the hanging fruits of all the ones you mentioned also correct it doesn't so what I'm saying is I it doesn't make sense that we would take this action unless we are really just acting on the behest of our allies for some other kind of gain a personal gain for the Trump brand if you will some sort of uh hegemony that the United States is desperately grasping for because we realize that we don't have that power and influence anymore and as a result of these actions and

actions like what we took in Venezuela we have now empowered and validated some of the worst regimes

in the world that we've always held accountable for taking the same kind of actions that we take

“and who you concerned about as it relates to other regimes China Russia this Russia I believe that a”

big part of the reason that that Zelensky hasn't been assassinated by Russia is because that would be crossing a red line that would at would infuriate Europe and the United States because you don't attack world leaders we just gave them permission to do so the same thing in Taiwan we can accept now China has free reign to just assassinate one person in Taiwan and then that's just them we're not even talking about Pakistan and India we're not talking about any of the border

disputes that are happening anywhere else across Asia or warlords in Africa we just validated these these illegal inhumane extra judicial processes all over the world so unlike these other world leaders how many was his philosophy his entire ideology is built on death to America among death to other things you don't have other world leaders you don't have the president of Taiwan saying death China you don't have Zelensky even saying death to Russia he might want Putin dead

“but he's not sort of he doesn't want the demise of the entire Russian Republic so I think this is”

where homine stands apart where it is it is a movement which became a system of government predicated on the demise and the destruction of of the United States what's interesting you counter that yeah we're interesting with the term stands apart is I was imagining therefore a spectrum and the minute it becomes a spectrum it becomes somewhat subjective so you know one might say

well we think they wanted to hurt us whereas before in my head when I grew up I always used to see

these wars and go why that they just they know it the guy lives like I don't know that sounds like a simpler movement but they know where he is why did they just take him out and it was always it always felt to me that that was off the table in what you can't just assassinate a leader because you don't like them or you're having a sort of geopolitical disagreement and it's actually only in the last sort of year or two that I thought okay maybe it is free rain to just fly in and snatch

them out of bed with their wife which is what happened in Venezuela and then seeing this that you can just drop a bum on the wherever they are it does kind of make you you know one that maybe this is now on the table I've never really seen that in my lifetime I mean I know there was some things that went on in Libya and in Iraq and so on but to snatch a prime minister out of bed with his wife and fly him over and with photos of I go wow this is this is a new type of geopolitical

action so what the what our Secretary of State is calling the golden era of the United States the old world is gone like these are that this is the narrative coming out and being spread by the representation of the free world France they're the Macron just this morning stated that to be free you must be feared this is the world that we're creating death to America

pitally dank country says death to America guess how afraid I am of that zero and guess how

“afraid multiple people who have led the United States have been afraid of that they they're not”

you can say it all you want doesn't matter and when you do when you do carry out an attack right against the USS coal for every one attack that's successful 25 of them are thwarted

that's the that's the benefit of being the most powerful military in the world you don't have to

worry about everybody who chance in the streets how many people disown their kids because they say I hate you when they're teenagers you don't you're like give it time they'll grow up they'll be fine they've got to go through their ship before they realize what it's like to be grown-ups that's what we say about our children the other you can say the same thing about a country that just came to power in 1979 they're less than 100 years old what did what do they know about how to

actually be a country what do we know we're only 250 years old I mean it's hard it's hard to swallow that like you know it's okay if you have like a horrible you know murderous brutal regime making women run around in her jobs and ruining entire thousands of years old's persons civilization

“you've been to this part of the world I have not been that's what that's normal life there that's”

what do you think is happening in the in the hermit kingdom in North Korea I mean shoot look Afghanistan we left Afghanistan and knew that that's what exactly what the Taliban was going to do right but so what's happening here is not North since 79 is not normal but but just to go back

to one step for a second who do we know launch the missiles that killed the supreme leader and all the

other in the hierarchy the I think the credit is going to the United States no no no no the credit is going to Israel so so so Israel is the one that if essentially push the button pull the trigger what have you the United States of I didn't exactly in the United States then does this Israel have the prerogative to take out a head of state that was essentially the only nation state might I remind you that came out in support of the October 7 attacks was only run not even North Korea

I came out and said anything no one else did how many absolutely said this was you're not only that October 8 he directed has brought to join the war therefore it's a fair it's a fair it's a great question is he a combatant yeah if I if I can if I stayed better if it rises funds

motivates endorses and basically encourages and shoves out the door your attacker do you that

“never write to go after them that's I think that's maybe that's the $10,000 question here”

okay because because if you are will if you're willing to see the the leader of every country as in as a combatant they are the heads of the military the president is the the commander in chief of the military if they are combatant they are illegal targets so if they're illegal target wires it against international law to attack head of state and even more what's the acceptable collateral damage because Israel is notorious for assassinations around the world it's what makes

them so difficult for other people to ally with because we don't support assassinations and most assassinations are not legal combatants their scientists that's a civilian their experts that's a civilian their heads of industry that's a civilian and their generals but not in a hot conflict that makes them a non-combat and the space is you're talking about the line between civilian and someone who works for the government or is on a government funded weapons program or something of that

nature those those lines are blurred in the middle east we know that those are blurred every way it's a civilian works for a company that's hired by the US military is that person a combatant okay but it but those distinctions are are are far more subtle in the Middle East and especially when you're a scientist working for a state nuclear program that you're being forced to work for because you're one of the few sciences that can do it I don't know are they forced

to work for I mean there are there are defectors there are those who who opt and then there are those who double down and become religious cheerleaders supporting what the government's doing I mean the point I'm making is that you saying it doesn't give you the international under international all the right to take out ahead of state what if it was self defense that's not what it was I have a counter narrative here just to throw it out and kind of switch up the the discussion here you know

this administration is very interested in in social media and for that reason I am too and I look at I saw a me that was going around immediately after this decapitation event so quickly in fact it made me wonder like who pushed that out that quickly and it's a white sheet of paper with all the months of the year of 2026 and January there's a picture of Maduro February there's a picture of the Mexican quartet leader March one day off there's a picture of the Supreme Leader of Iran

and then there's a question mark in the other months and it made me think and sort of wonder speculate

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“why does the US care about Cuba what's the context they're what what does the US want with Cuba?”

well Cuba's 90 miles off the coast of Florida for starters so geographically it's very dangerous Cuba was where the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles there you know almost bringing the United States to the brink of nuclear war during the Kennedy administration it's one of the only countries in the western hemisphere that does not fall under the United States's fear of influence I actually saw this yesterday the human government is talking with us they're in a big deal of

droplets you know they have no money they have no anything right now but they're talking with us and maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba exactly so Trump says that maybe we'll have a friendly takeover of Cuba and he said that two days ago so Cuba's next and then North Korea they wouldn't North Korea have nuclear weapons they don't they are so yes they do I was wondering that actually does getting to a point we have nuclear weapons kind of mean the

“US will leave you alone absolutely I think that part of all of this is the sort of elephant in”

the room is that you cannot you know the United States will not let anyone else join the nuclear nine North Korea was the last example of that mistake during the Clinton administration being told by the leader of North Korea oh no no we're not going to have a nuclear program and then him not you know deciding by sort of committee and all his sage advisors and following and talking to Congress and all that we're not going to attack North Korea that would be unacceptable

that was the Democratic President Clinton's position and as a result North Korea developed nuclear weapons and now has nuclear weapons and the nuclear weapons systems to strike the United States and has demonstrated you know a desire if provoked or actually has said if provoked it would do so and so you know that was not going to happen with Iran certainly not on this watch and probably not on any watch is there a bit of an unspoken rule geographically where if you

get to nuclear weapons you can do whatever the hell you want and it's the ultimate deterrence absolutely you can't mess with somebody who has a nuclear weapon and you and you what and you don't what my friends was asking me this morning where how the situation with Iran getting nuclear weapons is any different from the situation with North Korea having nuclear weapons or is it the same

will happen with it but having you know an ash correct me on this pronunciation you know the idea that the shea idea that that this sort of apocalyptic end is not necessarily a bad thing oh the arrival of the Matthew and and and that'll thing right sort of creating the conditions for that's about there's a there's kind of a a undergirding the Islamic regimes thinking is this idea and that's very dangerous to the idea that we don't want to have a nuclear war

though that regime is not suicidal I will sort of state that how many was was prepared to die for his cause but he was not suicidal in the sense that he would go out and sort of you know if you could I don't think start a nuclear war that he knew is his country is gonna get destroyed

“fighting that is I think you know one distinction and I'm not saying North Korea is suicidal but”

definitely what remains of the government there is not is not suicidal I don't think there is ideological die hards as we saw in the founding fathers of which homine was the last one so that changes a little bit now that he's dead you know there's the philosopher Erica for he's sort of wrote that great causes start his movements then they become businesses then they become rackets okay so homini movement that started the seventies that was the movement it became a business

a enterprise of which the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps profited immensely till it became a

racket and now we're at the racket phase of it and the only one really left are the racketeering leaders you know and and because the the spiritual leaders are now gone what happens next I think is sort of you know when I want very much an unknown territory with that Andrew to that point of nuclear weapons if Iran had already violated many of the things that said around nuclear weapons and

“then I think they'd have enriched uranium to 60 percent roughly they would have theoretically”

continued to go because they know that if you want the US and other people in the region stay away from you you've got to get nuclear weapons and once you get back to that point then you no one's gonna mess with you so I think the assumption is that no one will mess with you with nuclear weapons I don't think that that is going to be the assumption for much longer I think that that Iran recognized that if it could get a path to a deployable nuclear capability whether it's a

rocket or whether it's a missile or even if it's a truck with a nuclear trunk they had options

60 percent enrichment they have I mean that's a dirty bomb they have options there I mean

with just nuclear waste they have options to cause real damage but enriched military grade sustainable kind of permanent state nuclear capabilities a much higher level of enrichment than that and that's arguably what they have in North Korea their deployability their capability for actually putting on a rocket and having the rocket hit where it's supposed to hit and not blow up on the launch pad is a little bit different and for that reason I think we have to take seriously

the fact that if the United States wanted to demonstrate their power against the nuclear capable country they could do it against North Korea there's also this concept that our current military doctrine under hexeth has applied that no other president has ever applied I know other Department of Defense Department of War has applied and that's this idea called burden sharing according to the Department of War their doctrine now is a doctrine of burden sharing which means

they will force the burden of a national security interest on an American allies an example is they go into Iran with a small naval force they bomb Iran knowing very well that Iran is going to spread the pain across our allies in the Middle East to the United States Department of War that is us that is our allies sharing the burden if they want to be our allies they have to do this same thing is happening with Ukraine and with Russia

“if you want if Europe if you want to counter Russia you must share the burden with the United States”

it also gives the United States now cart blanche to go anywhere it wants with a limited force stir up a hornet's nest and then let everybody else pay the price well in terms of the Middle East it certainly was an effective move because you know all of these six countries that Iran has now bought you know attacked in the past 48 hours are now very angry with Iran so the burden sharing has gone from kind of like this is a fight that you were not into this is a fight we are

I don't think that anybody has taken any offensive actions against Iran except but they're not happy they weren't happy before oh they but the the statements they put out are

some of the strongest that we've seen I mean we've never even seen any we've never seen the golf

states put out what they've basically you know condemning Iran and holding it responsible it it's now any pretense that there was a rapprochement there was some sort of a coming together is now shattered and that's a setback for whatever's left of the Islamic Republic the the

look at all the oil collegiate countries can't make their own food Iran makes their food so

“they've always had this weird relationship where they disagree with them politically they disagree”

with them religiously they disagree with them militarily but they're still allies because of food the United States has sanctions all over Russia except in one area space we still cooperate with Russia it's a carve out because we don't want to lose their access to the space program do you think we're closer to nuclear will now because of this action 100% so you think this is the move just close to that 100% and and I've got there's proof of that all over the headlines

today because France is deploying air launch nuclear warheads air launched nuclear warheads that

means small warheads that fit on the ends of airplane rockets they're deploying them all over Europe

that means France is now taking its nuclear arsenal and spreading it across its European allies the more nuclear proliferation the more risk of that that's just something to do with the

“Ukraine and it has nothing to do with the rent what yeah that has nothing to do with the right it happened two days after”

it has it the threat of nuclear war comes from the conflict in my opinion comes from the conflict in a rate from the war in Ukraine and comes from Russia because you have an actual superpower president who has threatened the use of nuclear weapons Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon so it's it's not a nuclear threat you speak a different nuclear language and I do it Russia is launching

intercontinental ballistic missiles a can't be intercepted it's got the arrestnik what the hell

is it going to be afraid of a warhead on the tip of an airplane it's not that's a tactical nuke that's a battlefield my point is that we the deployment of a nuclear weapon is nuclear war the deployment of a nuclear weapon if you're talking about hang on mutually assured destruction are you talking about the use of a nuclear weapon are you talking about putting a warhead on a aircraft no that's that's been technology for a long time using it in the battles it's not being

using the battlefield I agree with you a thousand percent you didn't think it's been you think it is being used no I'm saying it's being deployed is that getting us closer to nuclear war yes yes but but it's not but it's not because of Iran it has nothing to do with Iran and what are you talking about being deployed because and you're talking about France maneuvering where it's weaponry is that's the definition of a deployment that is well then we're talking about it I'm talking about nuclear

use I mean the United States deployed its nuclear forces all the time by President Trump saying I'm moving our submarines which is just talked because they're moving anyways it's it's the same as it's threatening when Putin says I'm moving at my nuclear or when he tests you know Norway by popping up right off side outside of their shores those are maneuvers that are very dangerous I I absolutely agree any but in this particular case has the even from a Russian perspective has this war in Iran

increase the probability that a Putin would use in my opinion absolutely not no in my opinion no in my opinion what it does to Putin is it makes him say wow this president is unpredictable and to some to an authoritarian person like Putin that's a match for him not someone for him to walk on

“and I think that I'm not saying that's a great way for world diplomacy whatsoever it's not”

diplomacy it's just you know it's just strong arming one another but but we are not I do not feel at all that this situation makes us closer to a nuclear threat whatsoever I agree I think it's a combination of Ukraine and China's military exercises and action in the South China Sea and the whole sort of what you know what we're not seeing there's this argument the China's watching what's going on with the U.S. and Iran here we are depleting our interceptors our munitions China's meanwhile

stockpiling you know its resources and is it this is put us at a disadvantage if and when the date comes we're trying to decide to take proactive aggressive action vis-à-vis Taiwan that's something to think about and I think that then I'm worried about the risk of nuclear war in that instance I don't think Iran by itself and a vacuum is moving the needle on that sort of nuclear risk meter to your point what this is a boon for is the defense contractor world is the

military industrial complex because for example part of or why Iran is so weak is because they've used up so many ballistic missiles in their conflict with Israel I read today the interceptor to missile ratio something like 25 to one that the interceptors needed to to catch these ballistic

yes and and these drones are relatively cheaply made these shahad drones that they're using so you know there is that aspect of it too that Iran can just fire like a madman all these sort of expendable munitions and meanwhile we're spending three four five ten times as much to intercept them

yes although you do see in any kind of conflict like this you always see new weapons on the battle

“and and that's what happened now and America actually has been copying the shahad drones”

these cheap we call them the Lucas these cheap systems that can just go in and you know cause havoc without precision and we deployed them so I think this was I think this was a long time sorry to interrupt you see no is well I think this is one of the big questions that a lot of people are asking which is how long can Iran fight for in this war and what does that fight look like that here in these jars you have I think it's the relative amount of soldiers that

each country has obviously soldiers are just goes back to what Obama said about horses and bayonets they're one form of combat but I was quite surprised at how big Iran's military is relative to

even the US but other countries in the region I think they have the biggest military in the region

is that correct so we have to separate between the IRGC and the national army they serve two different functions what are those two things the IRGC which anybody up earlier so the I stands for

“Islamic revolutionary guard corps not Iranian what does that mean it's protecting the Islamic revolution”

it is an ideological army that sits outside of the main structures of power accountable only to the supreme leader the national army really goes through the office of the presidency and others and you know even though the springer has a saying it but the army's job is to protect Iran's borders the IRGC's job is to protect the revolution and the ideology and the proxies and everything else that we have come to know about Iran so if we look at the if we look at those if we look at

what's in the jar we have to separate what the national army which is only it's job is to defend the borders versus the ideological army I'm curious what that would look like if we took out the national army and are left with the ideological force Iran have the largest stockpile in the Middle East of missiles drones and air defences possessing thousands of ballistic cruise missiles and kamikazi drones this is their primary offensive strength and they have quite a significant defense

budget as well but I guess the question I'm trying to get out is like how long can they fight for and how does that fight look over time because I know they shot with these 400 and hundreds of ballistic missiles over the weekend yeah Israel claims it in the in the in the July in the June or over last year it it eliminated about half of Iran what it believes Iran stockpiles but also

batteries launchers basically capability so if you whatever it was let's say they have half of that

left I've seen a statistic saying that really they can't go at this rate Iran for more than two to three weeks before they're completely depleted well there's also an interesting move that the United States does well we didn't kill the supreme leader what we did do was send our B2s to take out missile underground missile systems which Iran has which are the aircrafts right no they're underground they actually call them missiles

yeah they came from the United States and this is a considerable considerable damage because the two ways in which these are sort of rogue nations whether it's North Korea Iran work their missiles is they have them on what are called road mobile launchers so that they cannot be tracked and targeted or they bury them deeply underground and one of the only things

“that can take out those deeply buried missile sites is a B2 and that's what the United States”

said so how do you think this plays out over the coming weeks and months because at some point yet they might run out of missiles but that doesn't necessarily mean the wars over I'm presuming that the US don't want to throw soldiers on the ground in Iran either so what how does this play out and how long and that's one of the major strategic areas that we made in attacking Iran they have the benefit of time not us they can choose how to react when to react in what way to

react we don't know if they have a dirty bomb that they're finishing up in some underground bunker right now they're just going to sit there and wait until American boots on the ground show up the fact that you guys think that that current nuclear deployments have nothing to do with what's going on Iran it's I want to respect that opinion but to me it shows just a lack of military experience and actual strategic intent to kill like when you look at how military and intelligence

operators are trained to think we are trained to think through a lens of maximum damage Iran is thinking through the same window right now and they're watching what we just did in Afghanistan don't forget we killed Osama bin Laden who was an ideological figure head about Kaita in 2011 and didn't leave Afghanistan until 2022 when we were when we gave up that's another eleven years of war

Komenia's different but how different I don't know yet and what are we going to do the new leadership in Iran what's it going to be is it going to be a leadership that that Calthouse to the United States that Calthouse who is Israel's going to be another shadow government like the shop and we're going to play somebody else and they run and people are going to love it or we're leaving a vacuum that China and Russia are going to step into and now we're going to

see a strengthened Iran that's strengthened by our largest adversaries in the world this is the reality of what we've got to figure out because because the whether they launch all their rockets in the next two weeks that doesn't mean that's the end of the fight for all we know it's going to come back and bite us in six months when some has below sell lights in New York on fire we don't know but when it happens arguably it's going to be justified two hundred point Iran can wage a

war of attrition it's harder a war of attrition is basically low level warfare think of like

death by a thousand cuts right i'll just keep poking at you enough to eventually where you down destabilize you weaken you whereas what you can do is massive retaliation and these big sort of you know theatrical strikes war of attrition is basically grinding for the long haul and wearing you down this is something that to his point Iran is capable of doing and is

“probably willing to do and sees is the only way that it can survive this is the war of attrition”

the war it's it's it's whatever remnant is left it's how Russia has survived so long it's war of attrition but like i'm like who's the late do you need leader or is it just lots of different pockets of people time will tell and you know hell's below sort of sells around the world will tell us what happens but i think another way of looking at it i saw a former member of the national security council commenting that like yes sells could be activated

in america or they could just fade away and this is where i don't have a crystal ball and i'm just observing what's happening but i do think that the that all of this hangs on the razor's edge of public opinion because you know we time will tell whether or not this regime falls whether what you're saying if it's either or but i don't i don't think that we i don't think that we can know i do we've been here before to some degree many times we've been in time

what is the lesson from history that everyone seems to have forgotten that we are shitty

“learners of history that's what the lesson to your point of you know who the leadership would be”

something else that that philosopher are quoted eric offer had said that you know mass movements they don't need a god but they do need a devil so to that effect the leader doesn't matter as

much as having an enemy does that is the so so basically so one is we united states or the

western world is framed as the enemy that is enough to keep a war of attrition going absent any figure head or charismatic leader and he was a religious figure versus just a political figure he's a religious figure but you're pointing was the racketeer at the end yeah i mean he was running so i mean effectively and everyone in most people i think yeah that's all it thousands of people have gathered in public squares in Toronto openly weep and mourn his death roughly 20% of the population are

staunch ideological supporters of him yeah 20% of the nation yeah yeah and it's interesting because you one can imagine that that 20% might grow especially if the the plumbing months make their lives worse in some way the experience i don't know poverty or whatever else and and then you know

“friends died because of this war it doesn't take long for narrative to turn and so that's what”

everyone's been warning about the you strike around this was the warning last June you strike around you're going to get rally around the flag the people that are secularists now are going to turn and they're going to start supporting the regime and we're going to set back the cause

of let's say freedom or democracy it didn't happen it turns out that basically the people in

Iran blamed the regime for their own for the misery that was that was put upon them and so i think that 20% will get even smaller as a result not just of this it would have gotten smaller anyway as a result of this i think it'll get even smaller still because their salvation is not at the end you know of a of a of a turbine or a robe it basically comes with liberty and freedom that this government this regime won't give them and so that is i think evident now to the 80% of Iranians

all of whom of that mean that you know 80% of the population is born after 79 they don't know the old regime all they know is this one and what they know is they don't like it they don't like living under it and they want anything other than what this is you feel differently i i think that that's an overly idealistic way of thinking about it we failed to convert Iraq when we took out Saddam Hussein we failed to convert Afghanistan when we took out the Taliban when it's not Iraq and

Afghanistan though it is not i'm not saying it's the same i'm saying that when you when you change a government from the top down that doesn't do anything for the people no one's changing it there's no nation building we're not going in to do it in Iraq so not what's going to build it so what's going to build it what's going to change it the people the people that have been slaves for basically the last what 40 50 years the people who have had no education the people who have been marginalized

highly i mean it's it's one of the most educated populist is a little world and i have and and they are

“very the the people that are not regime supporters are very western thinking i mean we see this we see”

this in in the culture they produce the media they produce when they go and they speak around the

world so the populist is there the capabilities there the will is there all they need is basically

not to be you know not to be facing the barrel of a gear about to find out if that's true and that is what that is what we are all writing on right now is whether this is intellectual minority in a poverty stricken economically defunct country is going to even fucking stay there or whether they're going to take their brains and their success and their opportunities somewhere else the the diaspora and everything we're hearing says they are the people are we cannot wait to help rebuild the country

you trust what you're hearing what is family is there so he's probably maybe he's being embarrassed the worst of the people that you have a personal relationship with they're the least objective people that you can talk to so who are there 80% of the population who do you talk to exactly who do you trust you can't trust anything that you're hearing right now you can't trust anything that you're reading right now the information landscape is too tumultive that's who do you

know that's the truth somebody right it's not paranoid it's not how many it is it's totally paranoid to suggest that everything is misinformation one would believe at least I certainly believe that I have a faculty up here to be able to take information and try and discern what might be information and what isn't and then also be willing to stand corrected that's a very important part of it and that goes back to my tribal problem is once you have a horse in the race

“and you become convinced and I am hearing a little convincedness from you that you know then I believe”

you lose your ability to be able to go oh wow maybe I was wrong maybe this and again I'm not condoning what the administration did whatsoever I'm just listening to Benjamin and saying that is to my eye a much better source I'm journalist I'm going to listen to what people on the ground are saying they're certainly family members because their opinion is going to be legitimately you know heart felt and not propaganda again we speak a completely different language

when you talk to me about opinion heart felt and family and belief none of those are objective

no those are basically into born on those things by the way I agree yeah and and that that doesn't

make it objectively correct it was a rebellion that ended up in the Iran that we just saw fall apart that was a revolution that was a rebellion and you wait is your skepticism come from what's it rooted in because you did spend almost a decade isn't undercover spy for the United

“States in the CIA where where is the skepticism coming from why shouldn't we believe people in the”

ground who are saying what they're saying I've seen this stuff firsthand I've been trained and how the stuff works I've had to deploy this in in pursuit of American goals and ambitions in the past and and what's you're saying isn't inaccurate as to how people react people we just trust the opinion of the people that we trust the opinion of the people we trust more the trust the opinion of others only because it's our opinion that they're trustworthy at all so who do you trust to get your

information from I want to take my information from as as far opposite sources as possible and then see where the information confirms itself where it correlates because if you if you see anti American people saying the same thing as anti Iranian people where their messages are the same has corroboration the number of dead leaders as an example just that's a corroborative point because you're hearing both the Iranian state media say that and pro U.S. Western forces talk about

what if it's your point of black box and you can't get information from the sources you used to getting well that's that's exactly right it is a black box so if we know it's a black box we have to question every source that comes out every piece of information that comes out what we're seeing a lot of right now with Iran is called circular reporting it's one single source of information that comes out that gets multiplied over and over again we're seeing it happen in the White House

too because the White House has kicked out so many journalistic legacy media outlets so now one story gets multiplied over and over again and we're seeing stuff that's there. I have to say something I am I am a little bit skeptical about what is true I'm like the furthest from ever being in conspiracy theorist but a little bit skeptical about what's true because I did a post about this subject and I also spent 15 years in social media so our whole business was building

scaling huge social media audiences and what I received in my DMs was like I've never seen

before about what I've heard people talking about bots for decades and most of the time that they're actually wrong it's something else going on with the algorithm or maybe something they don't like they sort of they call it a bot I received thousands and thousands

go on the page and you look at their posting history they engage men you look at certain patterns which we've built tools before to kind of spot some of these accounts I'm real and I said to my friends

“I think what they're like I posted about this issue and then I had thousands and thousands and thousands”

of these accounts DM me encouraging me to post more about certain things first time in my life ever I got oh that was definitely up it was so easy influence operation just so whatever these bots pushing you to post it on I'm conscious whether I should say or not because I don't want

to infer by doing so you're I'm like inferring that a particular but I'm just saying I've never felt

what I experienced that and I have but I mean every this trailer will come out we'll see loads of bots we have systems but this was in my DMs it was encouraging someone like me who has a big platform to push a certain narrative and that the 30 reason I noticed is because of the sheer volume and then the narrative was almost identical and I think well 1,700 different accounts of all we're asking me to do the same so you have final control over the edit of this yeah so

there's no if you don't if you don't want what you say to get edit to get aired then it'll get cut but one way or the other whatever you say like I want you to say what you saw because if the narrative was anti-iron then you were attacked by western forces western bots attacking a known westerner if you were if you were propped up by pro-ironian cyber bots then now you're talking about a cyber capacity a cyber capability and Iran that nobody's talking about so one way or the

other maybe I'll lie or someone else or whatever it might be I don't know but I just it made what it's my point was that it's made me skeptical about my own information chamber and I'll be honest before I realized what was going on very persuasive very persuasive you were persuaded because before you realised in my things to you and then they're encouraging you to continue to

to push a certain narrative and it just took me a second of pause and thought actually maybe

wouldn't that be a perfect strategy in these moments to get people who have big platforms to just bump on their DMs and tell them that you know like why aren't you standing up for us and please use your voice to to speak on this particular issue and I thought actually maybe I need my

“information from somewhere else well I think the point that you're making which is very important”

it has to do with you know mimetics or popularity in other words what we don't know the outcome of the situation yet we don't know if the Hezbollah sleeper cells will be activated are they waiting to see whether what they do will be welcomed or will be demonized and I think that there's a profound influence in social media and that isn't true in this administration and previous administrations about the rise of pushing public opinion I mean that to your point that's what you worked on

at the agency or at least saw happen the fact is I'm glad that you're seeing it for yourself you can't trust what you see first of all if you're a single language person you only see what's in your language you don't see what's in a different language and then we all have an echo chamber around us and the the the fact that we have so much technology just amplifies our echo chamber or our algorithm sees what we see it sees what we like it sees what we pause longer on than something else

and it gives us more of that and people become very wealthy and very successful understanding the behavior that people prefer and you give people more of what they already prefer and then it makes them happier and they don't even realize they're sitting inside of an echo chamber so for all of these reasons I don't trust the information I see I don't trust information unless multiple sources of conflicting values and conflicting priorities and conflicting goals

where they say the same thing I'll give that more credence and if you can't get those sources because information you can't have a conclusion so you can have a living assessment but you can't have a conclusion operate if you're a foreign policy decision maker if you're a president if you're

“a national security advisor you have to give advice and consent you have to figure out something”

you can't say I have a lack of evidence or I have a lack of opinion or a lack of information and therefore because I can't cooperate or verify there's no vend diagram of overlapping views that's when you have you have to use time as a tool you have to use time to to be the tool that

you use to collect more information if you if you give up time you give up one of your most important

tools which is what we're giving up with this attack we're giving up time so that we can potentially just fit a calendar January February March like that's why what what did we actually gain what how did the United States actually tangibly benefits from what just happened in Iran if in the United States how did we if in four months from that before the midterm elections there is new leadership in Iran entirely new if there is regime change in other words if there is by the

president's own metrics victory okay will you change your tune on this the school of what did we

so of course if for all we know the president's decision is going to work out but for all we know

it's going to get worse for all we know won't be four months it'll be four years right of of of a of a drought in poverty stricken in Iranians dying civilians dying because they can't find food in what the 79 revolution took two years to happen really began late 77 and then you had a sort of rain of terror almost like the you know thermatorian robes Pierre period in early Iranian in the early eighties where it took really four or five years for all the dust to settle but

so the question is you want where my results right it's only not what what what are we gaining what do we even think we're gonna gain what this what does the United States think it's going to gain from from decapitating the Iranian leaders that's kind of obvious based on what the president

has said it's that on what the president has said I'm just saying based on what the president says I'm

not but if you ask what the point was according to the president because he's the one who authorized the operation it was putting an end to Iran's nuclear program and regime change I mean based on off of what the president said the nuclear program was obliterated in June of last year but there's that kind of a reconstitute it's they're looking to rebuild these usually they're satellite footage of this why are you why are you disregarding previous narratives to adopt the current narrative

because if I've learned nothing from 79 is that the previous narratives were wrong the assessments were wrong so I don't trust the assessments either but their satellite imagery that shows oh there's reconstruction happening it as for hunt or in the tons or wherever we can see trucks maybe we can see

buildings coming up right no no no it's impossible to say it's impossible to practically say

no no no Iran didn't want a nuclear weapon they just wanted to have electric power I mean nuclear

“power you know that's that's not that's not really not plausible assessment that's what the OD and I”

put into their official reports you claim that they're going beyond 20% enrichment then why are they doing and they don't anymore than 20% so why so and it's Iraq it was Iraq it is Iraq it's and we're talking about Tulsi Gabbard as a head of DNA which is exactly exactly which is a great point and they're a Trump insurance well you have not heard from us are you are we not Tulsi Gabbard has been a lot of things in her career yeah but do you do you think there was any risk of Iran developing

you read uranium to the point that they could use it as a nuclear weapon because if you look at the timeline here of course um which I'll throw up on screen which is just a screenshot by 2021 there are dangerous threshold around begins in reaching uranium to 60% purity which is a short technical step away from the 90% needed for a weapon and by 2023 to 2025 we were told that they were theoretically weeks away from being able to create a weapon which is when Trump decided to attack you think that's

false we only know what we're being told and what we're being told isn't even consistent between what's publicly being released by our own government and what we're being told in mainstream media but everything you think is the un- this clearly you have a certain kind of behavior isn't false is it false is it false I don't know I don't know if it's well just look at North Korea

“if you want to know if it's false I mean I interviewed Bill Perry the Secretary of Defense who went”

there and got the guarantee and the promise from the dear leader there was no chance they were going to develop a nuclear weapon fingers crossed behind the back thermonuclear weapon and look where we are now and so I think it would be foolhardy for this administration or any former administration to think that Iran wasn't doing the same thing and that's every incentive to do it if I were you right I would absolutely you know absolutely build one because look what it did for

North Korea we're getting lost in the wrong question I'm not trying to say that Iran wasn't creating nuclear weapons I'm saying that the official stance of the ODI and I was that it was not the official sense they want to see now we're getting now we're getting now we're getting closer to the same point right why would the president say something different than what the ODI and I is saying to the public that is a failure in narrative control so there's an inconsistency there and that's

the question we agree on that we absolutely agree on that yeah so what you think is actually going on I asked you this at the top but clearly you're pointing at some some sort of ulterior motive

“so I think what's happening here is that we are seeing an administration that”

doesn't actually know how to govern and they're they're trying to find a way to grapple back some sense of success in the face of overwhelming contributing failures economic failures out alliance failures power struggles all over the world we are we are seeing a transition to a strong man multi-polar world when we've ever lived in a unipolar world what's a strong man multi-polar world it's what she was just talking about with Putin and Russia right when you act in strong

authoritarian ways and people respect your authoritarian behaviors by giving you safety and

that's not cooperative that creates conflict that creates more opportunities for conflict less

“opportunities for communication less shared common interest which is a pathway to more what we call”

interstate war which is conflict between states because they're not communicating they're not sharing they're not even reliant on each other therefore it's easier for war to break out I have a sort of pessimistic thought here which is an alternative to that what was you know what was happened what is happening in Iran right now which is what would happen what could happen and what might happen in the United States and to your point that where you said this administration doesn't

know how to govern I would separate from that whether that's true or not I would say this administration thinks very futuristically about surveillance systems and systems of control and you can see that with ice and with Homeland Security and my concern would be that red teaming or round tabling all the different possible blowback well what if we have hezbollah sleeper cells you know set off the dirty mom in the United States or do something that that is in the eyes of some a perfect

opportunity to create more of a surveillance state in the United States to use biometric surveillance

“platforms ISR against United States citizens because it's the only way to control people and to”

really know where the bad guys are and that is a concern so you could you could be a bit more explicitly

clear that so you're saying that well that you in other words biote sort of I always just look at things

because I consider weapon systems a lot and understand where we have come from you know nuclear weapons or the weapons of the past surveillance systems or the weapons of the present and drones what's the weapon systems of the future I mean there's a serious motivation you can just look at what happened with anthropic and open AI and the defense department the day before all of this went down. So you're saying they're using this as a way to introduce surveillance mechanisms potentially

on United States and I'm I'm not saying that per se I'm saying one hypothetical scenario that I can see is red teaming a bad outcome is not necessarily a bad outcome like if there were a problem in the United States as a result of this we could counter that with legitimate reasons for more surveillance systems do you think people sit around and say that I know they do really I mean I don't think you can ever forget that the Department of Homeland Security which by the way was

like the big issue in the United States you know just a couple of weeks ago ice dhs department of Homeland Security for those of the younger generation did not exist before 9/11 it was an absolute by product of America being attacked. So you're thinking that this Iranian situation could give them cover to track and surveil U.S. citizens more it would create a justification. I would change the word from cover to opportunity because I do think that's the way the systems work inside the

“executive branch and I think that there is a always an extremely powerful hidden hand that”

has to do with weapons developers and this sets us up for a false dichotomy it's basically

you could have security or liberty you can't have both. So which one do you want? You're biting your tongue in there a little bit. No he's 100% right and the the consternation that I'm feeling about this whole situation is really tied to the fact that we had a chance to not exacerbate the security situation of our planet by just not attacking Iran we could have not exacerbated the security conflict for every other country only Iran was struggling with their

own decision about what they were going to do with themselves. Now we have put dozens of countries at risk active current risk near term risk there are people dead today that would not have been dead had we not sent bombs into Iran there's been property damage there market damage there are life height like livelihoods are being damaged there are 30,000 dead today who wouldn't have been dead

if we'd done this in 1980 you're never going to hear me say that I really care that much about

an Iranian life compared to an American life that's just not how I roll this is my priority this is my citizenship I don't know if I graduate that by the way I totally and it's not that my loyalty is elsewhere but I'm saying you're not saying there are people that are dead you're talking about the four americans you're talking about Arab citizens like the various cities of the four americans but also the Arab cities right and if we want it like when we start counting death

toll we start to lose sight of the fact that we all have to live in a prioritized world it's

died in Gaza right there's a lie a life is a life practically speaking a life is equal a life is a

life it's a tragedy lose any human beings but you still have to prioritize that on top of another so can we interchange them with the four potential lives that were lost as results of the Austin shooting that happened yesterday sure an American life that's lost is an American life this loss and the priority should be on protecting American life including protect Americans from themselves absolutely that's one thing that we're not resourcing right now because our resources are

“going somewhere else which is my point about I think you know the real place to look at this is”

is surveillance in the United States surveillance in the United States is is 100% a guaranteed future mass surveillance has already happened it will it will just get exacerbated expanded and legalized it's already there it's just the government has to buy their data from your apple phone they can't just pull it on their own I think it's probably worth introducing the anthropic piece here just because some people wouldn't have context um in July 2025 inthropic who are a big AI company one of the

biggest in the world the most exciting world and one of the most advanced in the world signed a 200

million dollar deal to build AI tools for US national security in February 2026 which was last month

the Pentagon demanded anthropics AI be available for all military purposes but anthropic refused to allow autonomous weapons or mass surveillance of American citizens this dispute started after the US military used Claude um in its raid to capture Claude is a tool made by anthropic and AI tool made by anthropic they used Claude in a raid to capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in January which anthropics had violated its terms of use the defense secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to cancel

the contract and brand anthropic a supply chain risk unless it dropped its safety restrictions and stopped telling the US how to use anthropics AI and that started a big conversation which is raising raging online around mass surveillance which is one of the things anthropics said it didn't want

“America using with its AI. I mean I think it's a convenient narrative to position one giant AI”

company as somehow moral because it went up against the defense department and another one not because it didn't because like you said in there anthropic was part and parcel to the Maduro raid so I don't I don't believe that corporations certainly AI corporations you know are sitting around with the violin for American surveillance. I just don't I mean American sort of general well-being of the artistic. No of course not and I think that narrative is

dangerous. There was a research piece done by King's College in London where they ran simulations on Cold War Star War Games using 'Catch Beauty' Claude and Gemini which are three AI tools each played the leader of a nuclear arms superpower and in every single simulation at least one of the AI models escalated the crisis by threatening to use nuclear weapons Claude which is owned by anthropic recommended nuclear strikes in 64% of games which was the highest rate among

all three of those AI models but stopped short of advocating for a four strategic nuclear exchange when nuclear war. -Bingo. -Wasn't that the plot of the movie "Word Game of the Tades"? -Bingo I mean that's sky net and so these are major concerns. Many of our former generals who were heads of you know cyber and NSA are on the boards of these companies. I've had conversations with the number of them about this. I think smart people are and and and learned people are on are aware of

like this is a absolute cliffhanger precipice. -They will do. -Just making myself a delicious coffee. -From the freezer? -From the freezer. You're not head about frontier. -No. -Oh my gosh. This is going to change in life. -I invested in this company called Commitair last year and then I wanted the sponsors of this podcast because they've taken a pretty

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head to the diary.com to inquire and our team will be in touch. What is your most likely scenario that would lead to a nuclear war? Like because you wrote the book on this stuff that you know you're the person that everybody thinks of when we think about the scenario that nuclear war could break out

of all the potential routes there. Which one do you think is the most likely? I do think that

North Korea is very dangerous. I think Putin is, I would have told you five years ago that Putin would you know he's an former intelligence officer. He's familiar with history. He knows better and now I have a change opinion about that. I think it's very dangerous and I think that he you know his use of the Oreshnick was sort of like a like that that was a ballistic missile that is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. There wasn't a nuclear warhead in it. He did

notify the State Department prior to the launch of that you know 30 minutes prior but that's like incredibly dangerous. So everything is dangerous any nuclear armed nation that that you know threatens nuclear weapons is dangerous. But AI is its own extraordinary level of danger and the

article that you wrote speaks to that. Now my understanding is currently everybody knows that you

know air quotes and then when you learn when I learned about the Department of War and

“thropic AI laid at night battle over using AI and the systems I was surprised. Why?”

Because I thought there was more restraint on that and what I see in this administrative government. Yes. And to see sort of the the same bravado that we do agree on is coming out of this administration about exerting power, about just being able to do a take-appetation strike effectively using AI. I I go wow that is not what I expected. The interesting thing we trumped generally is that he has a reputation of saying and doing things that at one point we would have

all gone oh my god but we've almost become so used to these things that there's almost a desensitization to some degree. Shattering of norms they call it right. He also contradicts himself and that's not even a quote I mean he's spoken on the record about how I mean I think he put out a video in 2011 might be wrong in the day like attacking Obama for you know and saying that he was going to attack on him in 2013. But there's there's a tweet that he posted saying attacking Iran is

showing that you fail the negotiations and you know something for that assertion. So here we are talking about how important it is to change your mind maybe if you're not the maybe not if you're the

“president of the United States. I think the slippery slope is so gradual that sometimes you don't see”

where you're heading towards and in terms of sort of military action and the use of AI and all these things and autonomous weapons it we feel like we're going down a slippery slope in a way that I haven't felt for the other 33 years of my life as it relates to geopolitics and more and also generally when you think about some of the actions that and speeches at Davos where the US leaders were saying to the Europeans listen you guys are weak now and we it was sounded to me saying like you guys are

weak get your shit together figure out your energy situation we don't need you anymore listen we're not going to quit we're going to run this now and this whole idea of special relationship blah blah blah it seems to have gone out the window. So you've got an emboldened United States military and leadership who seem to be able to do what the fuck they want if you don't let us use your rare how we wish we'll smash your company we'll take away that tangible in contract and we'll

cut you off from the rest of the supply chain and we get used to it you know we hear that I don't get all that's crazy that and then we kind of get decent ties to Gannas humans do but the direction of travel is something's sometimes what you want to look at um yeah versus just this sort of static state of where we are that's the concern I think you have hit the nail in the head with that I agree I think you've got I think you've got a much clearer picture than most Steve on what's going

on here the United States it has to pursue AI far more aggressively than what what the what the CEOs of these companies want I actually do believe there's quite a bit of altruism in the CEOs and the founders of these AI's they didn't create these AI's so they could be warmongers they created these AI's for some techy beautiful vision of some utopian future that's like things Zuckerberg didn't create Facebook for to to cause teens to feel bad about themselves or created

consequences yeah so regardless of what the United States opinion is about AI it also has to very

“realistically look at how China is developing AI and China is already 10 X more aggressive than”

the United States is and if they crack the code on certain types of AI like like artificial general intelligence or recursive recursive self-improvement if it breaks the code on these first it's an exponential head start over the United States and all of their AI everything that we have some sort of reticence about using automated autonomous weapons master aliens China's already using so then the number one strategic priority consistently in all documentation is China

so the United States has to aggressively pursue AI I understand that mindset it is absolutely ludicrous to think that one day an AI helps us take that leader of Venezuela and in the next day we claim it's a supply chain risk that's just that's the kind of lunacy that we live in every day but but my bottom line concern here is that the United States used to be the leader of the free world we're not a leader of the world at all we're adopting more autocratic behaviors because we're

seeing other countries succeed with autocratic behaviors and we're abandoning Europe which is the only place left trying to say that democracy still counts like we are we are not leading anymore we are mimicking we are reacting we are petulents but we are not leading I'm still thinking about your doom is a scenario with a deathbed Vladimir Putin but he might do is that like rate of stick is it realistic you know it's like from hell's heart I stab at thee I mean it it I don't know

what's realistic anymore again these norms that are shattered these restraints these these guardrails that we think you know a leader wouldn't do this or someone wouldn't do that I'm beginning to question all of it too I don't know anymore what what someone is or isn't capable of and

“I think humans have a discomfort with cognitive dissonance where you know holding two opposing”

viewpoints at once we've gotten I think we're sat at an evolutionary over over time and our politicians are the worst yet or our leaders are the worst at it yet and so that's a cause

from turn for me I always think what is someone got to lose and what have they got to gain and

if you've got a couple of days left of your life or couple of days left in office and you I don't know Trump's going to be like 83 by the time he gets out of office was something yeah why does he care if he pushes a button and does whatever at which point you know and in the same with Putin at some point he's going to be old and he's going to have a couple of you know couple of weeks left in his life and he's going to be reflecting on his legacy and he's got nothing to lose Trump's got nothing

to lose with there's no second term well wait I watched in the other day taking great admiration to the fact that Zelensky can't be they can't be elections in Ukraine because there's a war going on

“and I think he cracked a joke saying that he would kind of like that but if there was a US war going on”

then there wouldn't be elections and it sounded like a joke but a lot of things have sounded like jokes before that he said so what is your um what do you think happens next and also I I want to get your take on you know we've got this map here which shows where Iran can strike

with their missiles I've got friends in Dubai never in my life did I think bombs would be dropping

on Dubai or any strikes were drones would be happening in Dubai and one of my best friends was in the basement in a bunker the two nights ago because of what's going on that whole region has been hit the Dubai Apple has been hit Saudi Arabia has been hit um Bahrain's been hit what does this do to Qatar has been hit what does this do to the region and why are Iran hitting these places so this is part of the burden-sharing strategy that the United States

military doctrine isn't put in place and I think to a certain extent all of the region already knew they were on Iran's radar they they've all had this weird hostile collaborative relationship with Iran out of necessity because Iran is the breadbasket of the Middle East so they've known

that there's always the risk but I don't think ever took that that particular risk

seriously why Iran around doing it yeah why do they care about messing up Dubai or making people into buy sky they are lowering the pain threshold the deputy foreign minister said we can't strike Americans in America we can maybe strike Americans at their bases in these Arab states and we can also strike the states that are that are hosting Americans American civilians American military American contractors you name it they're all complicit it's flashing out

because what happens is if you make it miserable for everybody then United States is pressured to bring this to an end okay so they can run have to lose to back to your sort of doomsday scenario they're about to be destroyed anyway what do they have to lose they're going to take everyone down with them because only if that threat is real will the United States say okay you know what we're going to pause and see if we can get back to diplomacy and in my work if the Arab states you know

United States you have to stop what you're doing so we could see a lot of the conflict actually

“taking place in some of these neighboring countries terrorist attacks etc it's working it's working”

it's causing pain to these sort of peripheral countries that are not central to this conflict and what what the United States has done arguably right yeah and one of the unintended well maybe intended consequences is if I turn on the news in the UK right now the narrative is that this region Dubai all of these places Abu Dhabi it's all unsafe and what that means is they're showing that sky news are going up to families and Dubai and going how are you feeling and they're

going I'm stuck I just want to get home and this region have spent a lot of money building their reputation over the last few decades their tourist economy and this is going to even if the

war was to stop today they'll be a big cohort of people that she's not together on holiday and she's

not to go and relocate there and that will reverberate um one could argue that it's actually in you know this narrative that the Middle East is unsafe one could argue that that's actually in the interest of the UK and it's going to drive down the price of real estate yeah yeah and drive

“up our tax receipts because we have a lot of I think it's the biggest place that UK tax pay is”

have gone to and millionaires have gone to is this region so did you have any thoughts on that now you're not I don't think you're wrong I think that there's a whether or not I don't believe that Western countries want to see death and destruction in the Middle East I don't believe that I do think that when they plan for blowback they account for that and they try to make the best

opportunity out of the blowback that they already expect and that does make sense but at the end of

the day Iran has to do something to react and it knows that it can't just send all of its rockets at the fleet that's off the coast of Iran because the fleet that's off the coast of Iran is going to be able to intercept most of those rockets so if they want some kind of effective response the most effective response they can have is to share the pain and create some sort of international resistance against what the United States has done how long do you think this goes on for

“energy if you had to guess if I had to guess I would say that there's going to be an active hot”

conflict with Iran that lasts a few weeks hot conflict meaning every day we wake up and we see new rockets being launched and new new attacks new new air-sorties being launched but but the actual reverberations of this from Hezbollah from Hamas from the Houthis from whatever loyal stance and still exist in Iran we could see that for years there there's no guarantee that Iran's going to bounce back from this in a better place I hope it will but hope is not the same

thing as reality hope is just hope I hope that it will but in the vacuum we could see the biggest adversaries to the United States flood in and support Iran like the biggest adversaries in the world flood in and support Afghanistan we might see that we have even less influence over the region in the future than we do now is there's some an issue of the destruction this is causing to what's going on in Ukraine and in other parts of the world where there was already conflict and there was

already turmoil like are people now not going to pay attention to your cranes that gives Putin some cover to be more aggressive there and it absolutely emboldens every authoritarian ruler out there because now they're it's been it's validating to them that they're not actually doing anything wrong if the president of the United States can do it then certainly the Putin can do it and Xi Jinping can do it and and any warlord Africa can do it it's certainly it's allowed or on the flip

side it's showing that if you act outside of international norms that the United States president will not hesitate to decapitate your entire leadership which is something maybe we didn't think was conceivable a couple weeks ago is there's that inverse message is it conceivable that both might occur yeah yes both can actually be absolutely sounds to me like that might be the most likely outcome that you probably going to go one of either ways you know China might say

now's a good time to get Taiwan because I mean I mean objectively speaking people are distracted and it's a perfect time it's a perfect time for someone to try to assassinate but then Cuba might say it you know like we're gonna behave exactly look what happens if we look what do you think honey on this subject of what happens next I mean I'm to that end I would say how fascinating is it that what happened with Maduro in January still shocks me 150 paramilitary or military

and intelligence officers go in grab the sovereign leader and his wife in a heavily fortified military base take out his you know guardsmen who are actually Cuban I mean there's just so many things to unpack and what I just said about what just happened and yet that's just old news that and that to me is more interesting than what might happen in the future not because I'll I can I can try and wrap my head around the past but I can't predict the future but I am

hindsight is is 2020 it will makes how around unfolds you know maybe we'll get the band back together in five months and have a discussion and we'll all be wrong I don't know separate question but do you think Trump's gonna leave office I mean the constitution says he is do you think he will the constitution says he is do you think he will I don't have a crystal ball do you think he'll leave office I do you think he'll leave all you do you do I have more confidence

after last weeks um learning resources to bring court opinion that we saw two justices who Trump

appointed who basically defied a policy that was the signature of his of his second term you know

his campaign his his tariffs and saying that you don't have that power I was emboldened I would have been more pessimistic but after seeing that I it gave me a little bit more hope that that there is still sort of guard rails and separation of powers is still a thing which you think happens next

“in the region I'm with Andrew I think three to four weeks is the timeline I see for the actual”

kinetic war and then after that um everyone of these Iranian leaders whoever's left whoever steps in and fills a role of a whether it's a military junta that takes over whether it's a symbolic supreme leader these are all marked men they're all going to be targeted for assassination there's no by Israel by primarily that pretty much anybody that considers them enemies even maybe now some of the Arab states for that matter at the end of the day it doesn't pay to be a political or

religious figure in Iran so at this point I think what we're going to see in the months to come is a slow fracturing of that support and I it's not surprised if we start seeing defections from the IRGC and people just like we saw during 1979 saying you know what it's not worth it there's there's no there's no long term gain here because this religion has lost any credibility domestically there's none left zero and it's losing credibility in the region it violated an unspoken agreement

with its Arab neighbors that they don't directly fight each other in this way and it's allies so caught allies have abandoned it it has nothing left so when you have nothing left what is certified for

“that's why but that's going to take a few months up to a year to play out what is the most”

important thing that we should have talked about that we didn't talk about you as it relates

to all of this stuff we talked about today I think for me what I'm always what I always come back to

is what is the future for the average American what does it look like for us I'm not sure how this plays out I'm not sure that we improved the state of the average American very much in the last few days I don't know that we will see much improvement in the next few weeks I don't know that we will see much improvement in the next few years because of what actions we took in Iran but I do confirm I agree with with the other two have said like the United States administration has shown

it's powerful in Venezuela it's powerful in Iran Cuba's already being more than whispered about as the next transition in government how how much chaos are we going to see to the existing world establishment before Trump then leaves office and somebody else has to come in and pick up

the mess and I've always been concerned not about Donald Trump but about who comes after Donald

Trump why because if Donald Trump paves the way for this authoritarian type of shift and if he has support through his final days in office then whoever comes next will have even more legitimacy to come in with a strong hand from the beginning and potentially a world where only authoritarian actions work and that just continues to take us down a road of pain I've been talking about this for the

“better part of three years that I believe the United's I believe the world and especially the United”

States is is coming into one of its darkest decades ever this is the world that we live in now a world where it's not unipolar a world of AI technologies we can predict of conflict that we can't anticipate of mass surveillance of of of the breaking of international norms this is the world we are coming into now it's the world that our children are going to be developed in it's the world that one day they will have to create their own future and and our grandchildren will inherit whatever's

left of it after that it's it's sad to me to see that this is where we are and unless we take some sort of responsibility for our own future we will keep following this authoritarian trend but isn't this better than the past I would say no a unipolar world where the United States is the Supreme Power as an American that is a better world but at least you won't die of disentery out in the wilderness right yeah I mean that's kind of what people say right they say well

babies aren't dying anymore in a childbirth and you know people as people are struggling with poverty so so it's a better depends on what metric you're measuring I guess but on on that point of the transition after Trump leaves would it be worse if a weak leader came in

powers are still going to be there Biden didn't strike me as the the scariest guy in the world the the toughest guy in the world didn't strike him as the toughest guy in the world so if another figure like Biden came into power after Trump once with that war raging over there and with you know

“China um thinking about Taiwan etc is that not even more dangerous I think there's a difference between a”

strong leader and a strong arm a strong leader can chart a path keep a vision make hard decisions balance priorities keep people focused where a strong arm is out to win and Donald Trump his entire career he's been the man who's out to win again I don't think this is a Trump issue I don't think this is a Trump problem I don't think Donald Trump is some villain of the world I just think Donald Trump is the manifestation of how most Americans felt at the time that they

elected him which was like we want to win and now we're realizing that two years after the second time that we wanted to win there are other secondary consequences that we hadn't considered and that's why so many of the kind of groups that supported Donald Trump have changed flavor about him it's wise approval rating is so low because he's found a way to ostracize so many of the groups that used to support him because they didn't realize that he was more complex than what they originally

thought back in that November 9th Annie most important thing we should have talked about I didn't

I'm going to pick up on Andrew's thought about a strong leader versus a strong arm because it's so important to think about moving forward and is that even possible you know yes we absolutely cannot have a weak leader I mean look what happened with Putin moving into Ukraine taking you train

“just attacking Ukraine and I I think that you know who wants to be president there's also this idea”

of you you know you look at the records of how people say come into office how they how they campaign saying what they are I'm going to get rid of these dangerous nuclear policies I'm going they have all kinds of optimistic ideas about things and then something happens in that first briefing something

none of us know it's so mysterious and they never talk about and then their policies and they're

they're perspective deeply changes and I think people move from an idea that they can be a strong leader to the idea that they have to be a strong arm and I think that's that's deeply depressing to me and I am an eternal optimist so I want to see that change presumably like being made aware of the real threats that they face that the US faces and suddenly what was I know theoretical becomes very real perhaps and so the I who loves narrative the question is what is that narrative and

“anything that is kept absolutely secret I want to know about and I no one knows that answer no”

president has ever spoken of it so what is that narrative what are they told it's definitely not aliens it's a conversation for another time Benjamin here right here time one so I've been working on a simulation a work game that looks at something that's become up in the news now what happens if

we don't need China to invade Taiwan we need China to just blockade and completely cut off 90 percent

of the chips and microprocessors and all the things we need in this AI age into the West what the hell do we do under that scenario we don't have the infrastructure the capacity the resources to bring everything back online that we need to to fabricate and make these chips um we talked about China a bit but I'm really worried about this what happens here is so because we realize so much on the island um and we don't need it invaded we just needed blockade it kind of so what

we see in the streets of Hormuz happening right now 20 percent of the world's oil oh back in increased production it'll take a few weeks to bring it offline stabilize the markets we don't have that luxury here not when it comes to the very things the powers and next generation of warfare and diplomacy and you can act about it I don't think the average person realizes how much the West relies on that little island 90 percent of our our at least

here in the United States 90 percent as I understand it that comes from from that one island the chips that are in our electrical devices hmm why don't they just move it over here they're trying not they're trying right six years yeah six years to get it cleared it's very environmentally damaging the infrastructure takes time the expertise isn't here all the IP that's on that island comes from the United States but the actual factories have been there and will be

there I guess there'll be a big labor cost impact as well absolutely regulations all kinds of things we have to work our way around and figure out how and then you know training the workers to be able to fabricate them due to as efficiently yield um you know results that are there high enough

because I mean so many things can go wrong if we lose the capacity to power the devices that we need

what advice would you guys give us my last question of promise what advice would you give to the average person you know because we've talked theoretically about geopolitics and the average person side at home can't do a lot about that but if you were to give advice to the average person who's thinking about their family about their future about their work what would you say we are not helpless it's not out of our control but we do have to assert our control there's a midterm election

that could effectively cause I effectively block the decisions that the president can make unilaterally if if we exercise our rights to vote we create either a blue Senate or a blue house of representatives arguably we have demonstrated our ability to exercise our rights to vote

“and taking back some semblance of control in our country but unfortunately I think people don't”

like waiting they don't like taking seven months before they can take an action they want to do something right now and and we live in a country in a democratic process where we get a chance to exercise our power every two years so we have to actually show up and exercise that power what are you doing for your and your family we're leaving the United States why because the United States is not going in the direction that I believe is the most conducive to the kind of citizen that I want to build in my

children I don't want my children to grow up in a country that is either afraid or angry I don't want my children to grow up in a country that's constantly compromising its own democratic principles I don't want to raise my kids in a country that puts capitalism before all other things I want my children to grow up is global citizens to recognize that we're all interconnected to value every human life I wasn't given the privilege I was the perfect candidate to sit here and tell you that American

lives are more valuable than everybody else that's not what I want to pass to my children I want my children to look at lives around the world as valuable independent individual blessings and I can try to teach them that but that's not the message that they get so what are you going to go that's for me to know and Costa Rica absolutely read as much as you can across the broadest spectrum that you can find and have conversations about what you think you know and what you want

to know with as many people as you can across the broadest spectrum you can and don't be afraid

“to have a little bit of friction like we had here today that's the way it works and that's how”

the mind stays fluid and flexible and you can always realize that you're wrong. Amen I think

that's increasingly important in an age of misinformation disinformation is to be able to have conversations like we had today where you have an opinion but you're open-minded to listen and something that I think is increasingly important but increasingly rare even as a podcast that you're kind of forced to fit somewhere you're pushed to be on the right or pushed to be on the left or pushed to believe this or pushed to believe that and it takes

especially in the modern world of algorithms and you everyday it takes some restraint and thoughtfulness to try and remain open so I love that message and I hope for our audience that listening I hope that that's what they do as well like even if they don't like you guys be having the show or they have a different opinion I hope you can at least bring yourself to listen and fight the cognitive dissonance which is very natural in human instincts to hear them out and to allow

those ideas to clash with your own to arrive at your own conclusions. Benjamin. I'm going to echo

“a lot of what Annie said. Stay curious. I think podcasts like yours and I think others do a great”

job of exposing people to different things that didn't think of so continue to feed that curiosity and cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable but it is a good thing because it forces us to think of opinions that we wouldn't otherwise and I try to teach my students the power of empathy which basically means you don't have to like the other side you can hate the other side

but just see the world as they see it for a moment before you do so I think empathy is critical.

Why do we find more of your work, Benjamin? I mean for me it's I'm building out ways to build a fine more of it but on socials and on Instagram I try to post this often as I can and I give talks when I can't. Do you have the rest of the book here? Not yet. I'm designing a simulation platform that's sort of my work project but it's not available to the masses yet. Annie? Where books are sold? I mean you've got a lot of them but you've right fantastic books.

Any particular one you would like people to read? Start at the beginning. Okay. I'm going to start at the end. Any anthology. I'll link them all below in the description to people can find them. And Andrew you can find me at everydayspy.com the business that I own. You can find me everywhere as my name, Andrew Booster-Mante and yeah.

best seller wasn't it? Yes yeah it was and this is I mean we talked about this in my last episode

“but I took a long time to get this book declassified I believe and get permission from the CIA”

to release it and it's a fascinating story of uncovering a mole within the CIA which is fascinating.

So thank you again all of you for getting together and demystifying a lot of this stuff and

“it's helped me to build my own perspective on what's going on in the world and um I uh I hope we”

can have you all back again soon once we figure out what actually happens so thank you so much I appreciate

you love. Now there's a new Knowsbury that's not the christlich-narch kerses smacked.

“But now there's a lot of time to get together and get together and get together and get together.”

Now there's a lot of time to get together and get together and get together and get together. We'll see you in the next episode.