Angry Planet - A Green Beret Cyber Ninja, The Avengers of Terrorism, and the Missile Defense Review

Episode Date: January 19, 2019

New voices and new topics. It’s War College 3.0. The music is staying the same, but some of the voices are changing. Former Green Beret and current cyber ninja, Derek Gannon comes on the show to co-host and journalist Kevin Knodell steps in to help produce.This week’s show is all about introductions, as we go on a long winded and bizarre discussion that covers everything from Derek’s obsession with Linux to African terror squads to Stuxnet to Missile Defense Review. You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. You're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines. Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I'm Matthew Galt, and I have some new voices to introduce you to. First up is Derek Gannon. Derek. How are you guys? How's everybody doing? And I've also got Kevin Nodell here with me. Kevin, how are you doing?

Doing all right? So as you guys know from last episode, Jason's Fields is gone, and the War College is going to be changing up a little bit. The first big change is that Derek and Kevin are going to be joining me. Derek is going to be a co-host. Kevin is going to be an associate producer and Voice of God in the background, helping us get guests, figure out what we need to talk about, and do quick Google searches in the background to fact-check us in the moment, hopefully.

But let's learn a little bit more about who the hell these people are. Derek, who are you? That is a very good question. I think a lot of people keep asking me that. Who are you? Hi, I'm Derek. I'm a 16-year Army veteran. It's finished my career out in the U.S. Army Special Forces.

I was a Green Beret with a FIS Special Forces Group. got out, worked in the medical field for a little bit, figured I really liked writing and wanted to continue to do that and kind of just started using my analytical skills and threat hunting skills that they teach you in special forces to just kind of see if I could pivot that to journalism. And it worked out for a while, and then, you know, it just, journalism is hard.

I like, you know, I like podcasting better and I moved on and then I decided to stupidly go back to college for a degree in information security and cybersecurity. So pretty much was a ground pounder for most of my life, and now I smack keyboards and pretend to be an internet tough guy for my twilight years. So that's pretty much me. I do focus a lot on the African region, the Syria region,

Middle East a little bit, and I've started to kind of really enjoy kind of a whole, hobby deep dive of Eastern Europe, like Poland, Latvia. The Russian influence is there. And then obviously my favorite, my favorite people of all people is China and their cyber their cyber warriors that they have going on.

So I've been kind of deep dive in that. That's right, because I always forget and you always remind me that you're something of a of a cyber maven. You run Linux on your laptop. Is that correct? I run

Well, I run Linux on everything But right now Got okay All right Matt I run Linux on everything I'm one of those Linux People that's like You should do Linux

But right now the funny thing is Everyone's gonna laugh at this Is that I'm running all of this Communication recording microphone Skype everything through a Windows 10 Virtual Machine So I don't know if I'm like a Linux elite Because I'm just like

You know it's just easier to run Some shit through Windows But yeah, I run Linux. I've been doing it for about five years. I took a course. Well, I got sent to a course when I was in Special Forces that kind of exposed me to the whole, like, Linux, cybersecurity, you know, backbox.

I'm an older guy, so it's like, you know, hacking was still magical back then. And they started to introduce that as a, you know, a tool in the toolbox, if you will, as an adjunct for intelligence collection and significant actions and just how to matriculate that data because even back in before I retired, we started realizing that that people were moving to the, to the, to the matrix, if you will. So we kind of needed to get ahead of that. And I just, I mean, I still went to weapon schools. You know, I was still a little cool guy,

like, look at me. Kevin, Kevin knows. Kevin's probably laughing in the background at me. He was like, yeah, you know, I had to have to do guys sunglasses. I had to have the, I had the guns, the painted guns and everything, but you know, secretly, I you know, secretly I was smacking keyboards and learning this stuff. And when I retired, I went to a veteran, a special

operations veteran own news site and I'll leave it at that. And I got introduced to a couple actual, legit, I don't know what you call them, just OGs of the Matrix that were like, hey, I see some aptitude and I got taken under the wings

of a couple of these these guys that work for the government doing this, you know, the National Security Agency to other places. And they're like, try this, try this, try this. And it just kind of fell down the rabbit hole with it. Because, you know,

one minute you're a direct action guy. I hate saying that sounds so bad. And the next minute, you know, you retire or you get out and you're just like, okay, there's an itch that still needs to be scratched. And I found that threat hunting on the web and using networking and social engineering and cybersecurity,

all that stuff kind of, you know, help me scratch that itch of target deck matriculation, hunting bad guys, you know, threat hunting, things like that. It just kind of kept the brain, you know, operational. Call of Duty can do only so much, right? You got to, you got to branch out and things like that. I like that you made the Call of Duty joke before I did because that is exactly where I was going.

It was almost like I sensed it coming because honestly you and I think I force you to talk about blackout and black ops four more than I think you want to. But yeah, that's mean a nutshell. So right now I'm in your neck, your old stomping ground, Matt, right now going to probably your same college finishing up. So I got accepted into a specific program for cyber security engineers. So like the five years I was mentored by these these two cyber ninjas, I'm kind of, I'm actually really happy because I'm not, I'm being challenged, but it's nothing that I haven't done yet. So it's just something new to do. It's something to keep, keep the brain working and still, you know, give back, I guess. I don't really know what that means anything.

And we just had Christmas, so that giving spirit, I don't know. So War College's new co-host is a Green Beret, former Green Beret Cyber Ninja. Kevin, what the hell are you? That's an excellent question. Well, I am a journalist. I mean, I don't know, you could introduce me a little bit. But I wanted you to talk about yourself.

You've got to learn to, you know, you have to learn to sell yourself. That's half of what being a journalist is, unfortunately. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I am a former contributing editor at war is boring.com, may it rest in peace. Currently, a contributor at Playboy magazine and anybody else who's willing to pay me for stories. I've covered the Middle East also as well. I think covering the Middle East is a bit of a short sell on what you were doing for us at Wars Boring when you were... Yeah, I was basically running field cover. for the anti-IS campaign supervising a very small team of journalists, though I have to stress

that I was not on the ground at the time. I was doing all of that remotely, which is an interesting look into our new digital media world, actually, in a lot of ways. And you've written some books? Yes, I am a graphic novelist. And some of you may remember Kevin and Derek have both been on the show before. Derek, I think you're talking, we talked to you about Africa once and Eric Prince once, right? Yeah. Yeah. With Robert Pelton, by the way, too.

That was actually a really interesting show. That was a good one. Yeah. That's definitely a good one. We ran that recently over the holidays. I saw it. I re-listen to it. I was like, God, I sound like an idiot.

But, I mean, he don't. Or if you do, you better, you better shape up because this is about to get real professional, real fast. It's supposed to get real. I mean, I'm known Kevin for, God, I think you were like one of the top, maybe first three journalists that were like, hey, you need to write. How did you two meet? Correct me if I'm wrong, Kev. Yeah. I was working with James Leporta, who now works at Newsweek.

Congrats, James. And I got connected with a Air Force Special Operations guy. and for the life of me I don't remember his name but he started this this site called Blue Force Tracker and I think I had I was Nolan Peterson right yeah that's the guy

Nolan Peterson yeah now he's in like the Ukraine doing doing some really in-depth stuff over there and I think somehow I got introduced to Kevin I think either you read something I had written no you were no other way around you found me on

Twitter running the Iraq coverage, what we were just talking about. Right. And then we ended up realizing that we're from the same hometown. So then that helped. Right. God, yeah. I think, and then I got it. And then I talked to David Axe and I came over and I wrote this big piece because

I had actively offline been tracking al-Shabaab. Like Al-Shabaab became my like white whale. Actually, it started with Moktar, Belmoktar, and Al-Moh-Britain. And then it just moved over to East Africa. Wait, wait, wait. back up tell the audience who those two people are oh well okay so sheh sheh i always threw that up uh mokhtar bell mokhtar was just like this ojee muhajadine from the the the CIA afghan training camps right he just was this oh g guy fighting the russians in afghanistan but he still was

a you know a solophist leaning kind of fella he's also he's he's they called him they call him the one eye or the marlborough man and the reason why they call him the one eye because he was screwing around in Afghanistan, I think in 82, literally juggling grenades. He was, that's, there's no bullshit. Like, he was training other Muge how to use grenades before they went into the Stinger thing. And he, I don't know how he pulled a pin.

I don't know what the hell he was doing. He was juggling grenades and one went off and he lost his eye. So after, like, after that, he became a pretty high muckety-muck in the, in, you know, the initial phases of al-Qaeda, which was, I think, was Islamic courts union, ICC or something like that. But he's Algerian.

He's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, getting trained by the CIA to do all of other stuff. Long story short, sorry, I know a lot about this guy. It's super weird. he moves back to Africa and he gets involved with the Islamic movement that was going on there and just became like a really high up guy and he was in a lot of stuff like the ones who bathe in blood

group he was the ringleader I don't know if you guys remember the Sahil the French Special Forces had to go into one of their nuclear their one of their mining They had a mining operation for, I think, eridium, not iridium, plutonium and other things like that. Like, some stuff that you could, like yellow cake type of shit. Like, they were mining it somewhere in the Sahara. And Mokhtar Belmachtar took his group of fighters and kidnapped and killed a bunch of people over there.

It was a pretty bad scene. And he just became a bigger guy, a bigger guy. Then he became like, you know, a head honcho. and he had movement of oneness was another you know group and then the United States came in

everybody remembers Arab Spring so you know Libya fell and Moktar had married into there was a tribe in Libya that Qaddafi absolutely loved was the Turegs

they were like a Bedouin nomadic tribe well he married into their I guess the Turoigs have royalty he Moktar married one of one of his six wives I think was a princess of the Tureg, some Tureg tribe. As soon as Libya fell, Mottar became like a de facto. He just collected these guys.

So he was a part of the weapons just leaving Libya. I mean, just he was a part of smuggling that. Because the reason why he was called the Marlboro Man is because he sold everything from humans to, to his favorite thing to do was to steal Marlboro cigarettes and sell those in the black market in Mali and Gal. So I started focusing on that guy because that's an HVT1 and it was just kind of scratching that itch. I was like, wow, I worked in Africa before. I knew these, he created a supergroup, right? Like the Avengers of Terrorism called Almore Boutin.

And they just kind of started fluttering around. And they've always been there. Now, he's supposedly the Department of Defense in Sencom says he's dead. He's been drone struck, I think, like four times. I used to call him Teflon jihadi because they're like, yeah, Mokhtag's dead, then you pop up, do some gangster shit, and then disappear again. But no one's heard from him about two years, so maybe he is dead. So that transitioned into where these guys were going.

And who were the biggest groups, terrorist organizations, because the Gwatt is the Gwatra, it's global war. The biggest group that I started kind of getting really into, almost romanticizing, which sounds horrible, was Haraka al-Shabaab, or the youth, or Al-Shaba, in Somalia, East Africa, which are in the news again for their Nairobi strike

that they just did. They just did a whole suicide attack at a hotel in Nairobi. Al-Shabaab is in East Africa, and they're more of a nationalistic terrorist organization who had people that started them like Shehrabbao, Godani

the core group of these guys were also guys that were trained in Afghanistan and they just came home like okay the Russian stuff is done they just came home and they still continue to be you know strict Sharia Salifist Muslims that old story

they just came home they just went home and that's the thing that I loved about I love about you know journalism as a whole and even I'm a part of this problem too is that the Twitter armchair natsecgers, National Security

you know, gurus, even to the general public is like, okay, these folks are defeated so they're gone. I think we think of wars as borders. Like, okay, World War II was a border thing. Well, this is an insurgency. So these are like water. They just, okay,

well, they just got their asses handed to them in Afghanistan or Afghanistan's over. They go home, they don't just, they don't stop fighting. They don't stop with their ideology. And so, like, Al-Shabaab became, like, a really interesting thing for me, especially in 2009 when they became ultra-popular, but around in the late

2000s, they pledged, you know, their fealty to bin Laden, because, you know, he was still alive still, and Zawariri and Al-Qaeda, and just became a massive terrorist

problem in East Africa. I mean, it's from all of Somalia, down into Kenya, you know, Tanzania, you know, they're everywhere. They've kind of, Ethiopia has a problem with them. It's just, it's in Somalia, from Blackhawk down to now has always had issues. It's, it's the quintessential failed state. And I'm not in the one of the Somalians that I know were probably going to be upset that I said that. But it is a textbook model of a failed nation state due to it's just, it's It's corrupt internal infrastructure and then just being forced with, you know, forced into issues of having had United Nations come in or NATO come in with peacekeepers.

And that just caused a whole other problems. And it's just, Al-Shabaab is actually is kind of being a little bit quiet right now. I mean, this is the biggest move that he'd done was the Nairobi operation. All of this to say that Derek knows exactly what he's talking about. Yeah, sorry. No, no, it's okay. No, it's great. It's like, you know, another one of my white whales.

You know, the issue, another thing, too, what I find extremely interesting is Maktara, or Muktar Rabal. Rabal was one of the founding members of al-Shabaab. And he turned himself in in 2017 to the Somali government. And, you know, he's been living pretty well, mainly because he didn't want to take the, the al-Shabaab ideal of jihad global.

He wanted to stay nationalistic. He wanted to have an African caliphate established in Somalia. And that is going directly against the core leadership of al-Shabaab right now. So they put a hit out on him. Al-Shabaab fights themselves a lot more than they fight, you know, AMSOM or, you know, the Somali federal government troops. Like, they go around and shwack each other a lot. So Rabao turned himself in.

He took about, I think, of his own loyal fighters from his tribe because it's all about tribes. And Al-Shabaab came and I guess attacked him in Southwest State in the southern portion of Somalia. And he turned himself into the Somali government. Fun fact, the dude's now running for vice president of Southwest State in Somalia and he's going to win. This guy's been killing Somalis since like 2002. And now he's a frontrunner for the VP position for Southwest State, which also, since we talked about Eric Prince earlier, Fun fact, fun fact,

Eric Prince's Chinese own Frontier Services Group has I think what $2.2 billion dollars invest in Southwest State? Well, yeah, I think we've discussed on the show before

that Eric Prince and China have been investing money all over Africa, right? Oh yeah. That's the thing is like we're not paying attention, and this is a huge critique and I don't give it, I don't care if it's bad. The United States has It's focused solely on kinetic GWAT operations when they have failed to pay attention to the economic, you know, warfare or, you know, shadow wars that you have going on.

China and Russia are doing that. I mean, Russia has a gross national product the size of Italy. We know that. It's just mainly run by mafia folks and just, you know, dictatorship type folks. I mean, that's my opinion. Yeah, but they figured out, they figured out really amazing. innovative ways to power project in the new world, though. Yeah, they do.

And what do they use? They use social media. They're very good at the ones and zeros of, you know, social engineering. I mean, this is active measures. Russia's very good at it. You know, they talk a huge game. They're very good at scare tactics. They play the long chess game.

China, China just stays quiet and buys stuff. I mean, they own 70% of Africa, of which the majority of the pressure. metals that we use, even in our laptops, computers, cell phones, everything. They come from Africa. Well, China owns a lot of these. They have the fingers on a lot of this stuff. And now they have their first overseas base. Overseas military base ever in China's history is in Africa.

It's in Djibouti. They're claiming they set that up to protect the international waterways from their oil terminals in and around like Tripoli and CERT and things like that. because, you know, I guess some terrorist organizations, actually it wasn't a terrorist organization. We don't know if it was, it was Somali pirates that actually hit their boats. And they said, okay, we're going to put a naval base along with about, I think they have like 250 soldiers, infantry style soldiers at that base. They're all, they also have, they've also sent, they have had their first overseas deployment of combat troops to Africa under the auspices of, you know, United Nations Peacekeepers down and I think in South Sudan, which is interesting because

South Sudan and the Blue Nile, they own a lot of that because that is the most oil-rich area in the region. Like Sudan and South Sudan, they're building terminals, they're building train stations. They're train tracks that go from South Sudan all the way to the southwest state of Somalia's new oil terminal that Frontier Services Group is building for the Chinese. So it's a pretty weird, interesting world. I mean, everybody, the United States missed it. You know, we were too busy focusing on the 10-year kinetic strike, you know, let's bomb it until it acquiesces type of thing.

And the other two superpowers that were like, okay, this is, we can't beat them militaristically, kinetically. Let's beat them economically. Well, let's cast our eye back a little bit more. Yeah, sorry. No, no, it's okay. You don't need to apologize. This is just, audience, this is a very loose episode. We're just talking about the kind of the stuff that we missed over the break,

getting everyone used to the new voices. We're going to be having some focused episodes coming up with guests where we're talking to people specifically about the Syrian withdrawal, as much as anyone knows anything that's going on with it. You know, what's going on in Afghanistan and some of the classic stuff where we go back and look at history. All that stuff is staying. But, you know, just right now, these are the new folks. And these are the knowledge base.

that they're bringing. I think it's important and I think it's good. And have you guys looked much, I know that it kind of was happening as we were getting on. Have you looked at the missile defense review that the Pentagon was talking about and publicizing kind of as we were about to jump on? Yeah, I'm really excited for Star Wars Part 2. It is. It is a lot like Star Wars, which was, you know, Reagan's proposed missile defense system from space. in the 80s. And that's kind of what we're looking at again, right? Yeah, just with more robots. More robots, we're talking about it in terms of what's cool in the 21st century. But, of course, lasers still seem to be very much part of it again.

It's not even, it's not even a really good script. It's like Star Wars, the original came out, everybody loved it. And then George Lucas is like, well, I just came out with special edition because we got new CGI. I mean, it's not a two. It's not a sequel. It's the same thing. they just added new shit to it. Like what Kevin said, robots, and the lasers are still there. I thought it was funny. It's basically the same old space defense platform,

but now we're going to have F-35 with some sort of interceptor built onto it, supposedly going to take down ICBMs as they're going up, and also drones with lasers doing the same thing. It should be a huge laser to, anyway. There's so many questions. I have so many questions,

and we just don't know. Matt, did you read, okay, did you see, I think you sent it to me, did you see Jerry Doyle's Twitter thread of this, right? Yes. Okay. He, he, that, okay, he breaks it down pretty, pretty, pretty distinctly because you have to have, okay, so ICBMs are traveling, what, 14,000, 6,000, excuse me, 6,000 milliseconds. It depends on, depends on when they're going up and when they're coming down. I know when they're coming down, I think it's about, it's like seven kilometers a minute or a second, rather. It's super fast.

And he's saying the only way you're going to, the most opportune time is to intercept these things is when they're climbing, is when they're going up, right? That's when they're supposedly, air quotes, slowest. But he's talking about that you need it, you need an inters. Okay, so we have interceptors. We've got the Thad system, the AGS system, the Patriot missile system. These aren't really designed to hit ICBMs, but the GMDs are, the ground. missile defense systems that are in like Greeley, in Alaska, and things like that.

These are, these are like local. These are only designed to protect, let's say, let's say Washington, right? They're like, okay, everyone else is going to get it. Because these things aren't designed it. They can't stop a full on thousands of nuclear warheads

from, let's let's say Russia, because we know Russia has a lot of nukes. Right? Also, those GMDs, those ground missile defense systems, there is the same size as a Trident 1. They're like a little brother of the Trident, or the intercontinental ballistic missile.

These things are huge. So what you're trying to say here is, Guy, and we know who we're talking about, Trump, is that you're going to put a 200 foot long plus, and I'm just being conservative here, missile on an F-35 and expect it to hit it.

You know, I would think, like I look, I did a quick search here, and I was like, you know, this is reminded me of the Jasm ER, the joint air strike missiles, extended range missile system that Trump bragged about. Do you guys remember the air strike in April after the Shea, Sartoon, Induma, the Syria, the chemical thing? Okay, yeah, well, he accidentally tweeted out like, you know, I'm going to paraphrase. You know, suck at Russia. We have nice, new and smarter bombs.

he just kind of let that cat out of the back that they used the ERXL the new less than hypersonic cruise missile that are in its nuclear and nuclear capability is ambiguous

like Ken we could probably put attack nuke on it but these things are designed to like do bullet to bullet right you're trying to hit a bullet with a bullet

missile defense interception and the way that Jerry was breaking it down and he was what are you going to put so basically you have to put a B1B Lanser within surface-to-air missile range

that's up there 24-7 now because our early warning systems aren't designed enough to get B-1Bs out of cutter. You're talking about kind of going back to the days of strategic air command where we've got jets and bombers in the air all the time right around the territories of our quote-unquote enemies, right?

Yeah. But this time it's F-35s. That's what I'm saying. They're calling F-35s in the new, the B-1B is not new, but the new start, the Lancers have been completely gutted in revamps, right? They're not nuclear capable. But this is why I'm saying it's like,

it's like this special edition of Star Wars, it's a redux. It's not a new script. They just added new and exciting things to look at. They have 35, the B1, the Jasm ER, the THAA missile system that we, that apparently, you know, that's the same thing. It's had limited, five to ten, limited capability of hitting things,

a ballistic missile, but it's really not sure. Like, the THad missile system was the, designed to take out, like the THAA, the GMD and the JASM ER concepts are all designed to really kind of design around the fact that it would have North Korea launches a nuclear missile. That'll be one, right? That's not an all-out mushroom cloud coming Russia attack, right? It's not what they're looking at. These are all designed around like rogue nation states that have nuclear weapons, right?

Right, because you would think in the event of somebody like Russia launching nukes, We're in a position where it's mutually assured destruction, right? It's just, if you're going to do a second strike, you're going to do everything. Yeah. So what would be even the point of these missile defense measures? Because you probably don't have enough to take down everything that they're going to send. I don't think they're defensive, but I think they're an offensive weapon. I mean, think of it.

No, I think you're right, too. No, I think you're right, too. And I think that that's one of the dangers of stuff like this is that it, it pushes a new nuclear, it plays into this new nuclear arms race thing. that Russia is also playing into you with the hypersonic warheads, right? Yeah, but are they doing that? Are they doing that, are they doing that to try to, to try to goose us the way that Reagan did in the 80s? By starting, I mean, it's almost like we're taking a playbook from Reagan.

We're like, hey, let's inadvertently start another arms race. I don't think the United States can, I don't think we have the capital to do that. I think China specifically has more than, China is, our economy is tied so closely to China that we're actually paying China, we would actually be paying China in the arms race. We would be giving them money to literally develop their own weapons systems.

Now, what I said about Russia, Russia's gross national product, legally, legal gross national product is but the size of Italy. I'm not saying they don't have technological advances. I think what Russia's really kind of focused on is the cyber realm, because if you can shut down SCADA systems,

which are, you know, systems, you know, online systems that control, I don't know, let's say the power grid or an on-off, the on-off switch for oil, you know, oil pumping or something like infrastructurally, SCADA systems run infrastructure, right? What's SCADA? Like, spell that out for us? You're going to have to cut this out.

I'm going to look it up. I always say SCADA. It's a SCADA systems. It's a supervisory control and data acquisition, computer system. It's basically like, you know, like the internet of things. Those things come to you like, hey, yeah, like, the Echo or these Amazon Echoes or Siri. I'm dumbing it down,

but these are giant systems that control the flow of power, oil. They're huge industrial computer systems that are dumb. They're not front-facing, what we call is headless, though they don't have like operating, like a user interface. These SCADA systems are designed specifically to do specific automated things. So, like, you know, you see, like, robots building cars.

Those are SCADA systems. Those are supervisory control and data acquisition. A computer system gathering, analyzing, just, you know, use real-time data, and then you're using it to, it's, they're basically just workers. They're worker systems. It's like, again, we're talking about robots. They have a specific function. Do you guys remember Stuxnet?

What happened in Iran? Absolutely. That was a SCADA attack. That was a SCADA system's attack where they were able to change the RPM of the centrifuges at a nuclear power plant. They were able to change the RPM because those things spin with an oblong rod, right? They're agitating. They're the centrifuge, right? If you change the RPM of those, just even by 0.2, 0.3 or even one, they will spin off axis.

those centrifuges, centrifuges, yeah, centrifuges, excuse me, not septrofuge. They will spin off axis and enough of that vibration will cavitate and it will basically destroy or worst case scenario caused something to explode. Like there's going to be a kinetic response to that. So that's like that's weaponized cyber operations. That's what I feel like Russia has really kind of started to focus on because honestly I don't believe that Russia can beat us in a head-to-head fight without using nukes. But yeah, no, I think you're right.

Like it's all, and this is interesting. And I think one of the future, one of the future kind of fronts in war, I know it's a cliche because we keep saying it over and over again at this point. But the cyber realm is really big and really important. And I don't think that America is adequately prepared for it at all. And I think Russia and China have been. Not at all. Not at, oh my God, thank you so much. Not at all.

We are awful at this. We are terror. We're, look, there's a small core. We all know where they're at, and they're very good at this. But the issue is, the issue is that there's an offensive and defensive cyber operations war. There's warfare going on, and people don't really, they're like, traditional warfare is someone choose a bullet. Someone dies. There's explosions.

There's everything else like that. But what I just explain with Stuxnet, that's, that is a digital attack that resulted in a kinetic, you know, end of what they were doing. That is, there, I mean, there's things that people, there's, there's, there's things out there that scare the shit out of me. Like, what happens with Russia or China? And this is worst case scenario. If they owned the entire U.S. power grid or grid in general, they could, in essence, do a cyber EMP. And we don't have anything that works. We have nothing that works.

And then you could just roll in and do whatever they need to do. Is the, is the American power grid really that interconnected? Uh, yeah, I think it is. I mean, I've read a lot. lot of art. I don't, I think we're so interconnected because it's the ease we're inherently lazy people. So I think, you know, it's very

interconnected. I believe that there's, there's been since Stuxman and some other incidences that's happening in the United States with like, you know, brownout, on unknown reasons of brownouts and especially in New York City and D.C. and things like that. I mean, there's a lot of things that are happening and people can

just dismiss it to some 300 pound fat hacker kid living in a mom's basement. I think that right there, that moniker that the Trump administration and a lot of other people agree with is holistically wrong. I mean, China has an entire island dedicated to cyber operations. An entire island that they actually built in the Hainan. You're talking about back up just a second. You're talking about attribution. You're saying that attribution's a little bit easier than people think it is. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, let's use the big word. Yeah. I think it's a lot easier than people think it is. I think

it is. I think I think that cybersecurity has been an issue since 2004 and it's been briefed to the Senate Armed Services Oversight Committee since then. It's been people just don't focus on it. If they don't understand it,

the threats that they're used to is this. The Star Wars II program. All of a sudden we've got some guy who just thinks that he's living in the 1980s and people are going to launch nuclear weapons. That's not what's going to happen. It's going to be a three, four, or five-pronged attack.

I mean, nuclear weapons is going to be the last resort, the last resort of anything. So missile defenses is just, I just think it's a boondoggle. Why are we not dumping the trillions of dollars if it's going to take to appease him with drone sharks with lasers on their heads to try to take out an ICBM traveling at 13 to 14,000 miles per hour on the entry? when we could possibly be in the cybersecurity realm and stop that launch through surreptitious means through cyber, through offense of a defensive cyber attacks, before it even leaves the ground. That's what China and Russia are doing.

Well, that would require us to have a robust foreign intelligence service, which I'm not sure we do right now, right? I don't think the fusion cells are working, to be honest with you. I really don't. What do you mean? I think the national security agency should be running the national security agency operation. I don't think that they should be having fusion cells with the Department of Defense because the Department of Defense feels left out on a lot of things.

I think the fusion cells, when they first got together, there was a growing, like a growing pains right after 9-11. And I think it kind of, I think it found it, I think it found its leveling point, it's homestasis. But now there's these new threats that you have a lot of intelligent people. at the Office of National Defense, you know, a national intelligence that are saying, look, here's a writing on the wall. It's just that we don't have, there's not one entity or one person that can say, okay, across the board on all levels of, you know, in U.S. intelligence services, this is what's, you know, priority. Here's your budget. You know, I think they try to do that.

And I'm specifically talking about, you know, intelligence operations through cyber operations, signals intelligence. And I think we've pushed hugely away from human intelligence. I mean, I think it's just become, we've become kind of lazy with the fact that, you know, we're in Afghanistan or we're in Iraq or Syria. I mean, I don't think we're looking past that. So, no, I don't, I agree with you. I don't think we have a robust U.S. intelligence apparatus. I think it's conflicted. It's like we've been focusing on the Forever War for so long that we've lost sight of any kind of long-term planning at all.

I don't think we can. I think we're, I think we've been reactionary, Matt, for about 17 years. I really do. Well, I think that's a really great and depressing place to end this introductory episode of War College, which is usually how we do. So some, some aspects of the show aren't going to change. But we will be back next week with a new episode, with a guest, where we're all going to be sitting and talking to them. And I hope you guys, I hope the audience comes along with us. I hope you like the new stuff.

And I hope you keep listening. Yeah, this will be a good time, I think. Yeah, this is going to be really good. That's this week's episode of War College. Thank you so much for listening. Back to regular business next week. we're going to be talking to some people about what the hell is going on in Syria. I think you guys are going to enjoy the show.

Derek's got a lot of experience. Kevin has a lot of knowledge. They're going to bring a little bit of a different voice to the show, but I'm excited. War College is me, Matthew Galt, and Derek, Derek Gannon. Of course, Kevin Nodell is the associate producer. We will be back next week. If you like the show, please like and subscribe. Leave us a review on iTunes.

and follow us on Facebook at facebook.com forward slash warcollege podcast on Twitter at war underscore college or on the web at warcollege.com. And we will see you next week.