Camp Gagnon - America’s Cartel Crisis (Mass Graves, Corrupt Borders, and a $49 Billion Empire)

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

🚨Make Sure To Rate Us 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟MASS GRAVES. CARTELS. NARCOS…Cappy breaks it down for us. Chris Cappelluto, better known as Chris Cappy, former National Guard, Iraq War Veteran and geopolitical analyst joins us to explain America's role in cartel crime and other interesting topics! WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️☢️⚠️ Make sure to follow Chris’s new channel @ChrisCappy⁩ Shoutout to our sponsors: Zippix, Morgan & Morgan, and BluechewDitch the cigarettes, ditch the vapes and get some nicotine infused toothpicks at https://zippixtoothpicks.com/ today. Get 10% off your first order by using the code GAGNON at checkout.👕🧢 GET YOUR CAMP DRIP HERE: https://campgoods.co/🏕️ Get Today In History Email Here (Free): https://camp.beehiiv.com/🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets Here: https://markgagnonlive.comTIMESTAMP: 0:00 Intro1:05 America’s Relationship With Cartels Today9:11 How Do Cartels Operate?11:59 Drug Routes In America + Cartels Crossing The Border 23:28 Cartels Mass Graves25:33 The Cartel’s $49 Billion Industry + Corruption At The Border41:28 The Tren de Aragua Gang49:03 How To Decide Who The Boss Is vs The  Puppet51:59 America’s Role In Cartel Crime56:48 China’s Mass Incarcerations To Solve Drug Problem + Foreign Countries Funding Drugs1:02:14 Will The Mexican President Side With Trump?

I would not go to Mexico and try to, like, report from anywhere about the cartel issue, because I would just, I would get killed. I'd get Columbia necktied, have my tongue out my ass. Yeah. Like, they don't walk around. This is Chris Cappy, former National Guard, Iraq War veteran, and geopolitical analyst. And today, he's going to be explaining everything that's actually going on with Trump's war on the cartels. He'll break down how the Mexican cartels are using our interstate system for,

organized crime. If the cartels are actually invading America, kind of like the news headlines we saw in Colorado with cartels taken over. And he will explain what a war and drone strike operation on the cartels in Mexico would actually look like. This episode is absolutely fascinating. It breaks my brain trying to think about what a war on the actual cartel would look like. But hey, Trump said he's interested, so we will see what happens. And Chris Capi is here to explain all the details. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Chris Kathy. How are you, sir? Hello, sir. Good to be here.

Same outfits, same day. Different topic. I've seen with a new administration what America has been doing in Central America, specifically. The CIA has officially declared war on the cartels, is the headlines that I've been seeing on X. And on the one hand, I'm like, you know, cartels are, you know, committing atrocities in Central America and causing a lot of people to live. in fear. I know many people that have, you know, worked with cartels that grew up in cartel areas that describe the feeling of being, you know, surrounded by the Sinaloa's or the, you know, Saitas or whatever other cartel group and being like, yeah, my whole life was traumatizing. I had uncles that would go, you know, missing one day and never see them again. So I'm like, okay,

maybe it's good that we're kind of putting pressure on them. That's, I like that. Then on the other hand, I'm like, are we stepping into something that we're not prepared for? And are we, you know, creating some type of agitation in a region so close to us that can potentially, you know, backfire. So I'm like kind of cautiously optimistic. But I'm curious in your work and your analysis, which I've seen on task and purpose that I'm now going to see on a Cappy Army. That's right. What do you make of the situation with the cartels in Mexico and the U.S. aggression on the issue? So what's happening on the border right now is an insane, just like radical shift. in posture and what we've seen over the past decade.

So, yeah, the CIA is targeting the cartels. The way I look at it is it's really, you say you're concerned, right? Like, is it going to be a situation where we're bogged down in this quagmire and it's like Iraq, Afghanistan, 2.0 and we just get in this never-ending war that we see no progress in for just eternity or is it going to be a situation where like you said, these cartels, we can agree, are pieces of shit? Like, are we going to attack them and show them finally that we mean business? And that might be a good thing.

And I think it's going to depend a ton on how it plays out. And we're starting to see the indicators of the direction that it's going. But anyone who tells you that they know for certain, I think is full of shit. right now, we don't know for sure what avenue they're going to go. And if I had to guess, they probably don't know for sure either because it's going to depend on a lot of variables. But what we can look at is the steps that they've already taken. People get bogged down and like Trump might do this, Trump might do that. Yeah. Okay. But what are, what are they already done? And what are they heading towards? And what are the, what are the concerns of those different directions,

right? I think that's a more clear way of looking at what we're seeing. Here are the big highlights of what has happened so far. Factually, we cannot argue it. It's happened. So on day one, Trump signs all these executive orders, the highlights of which that have to do with the border, southern border, is that emergency, state of emergency declared. Okay, what does that mean? A ton of funding is going to go to the border. Also, a ton of troops are going to go to the border and resources. Okay, what kind of troops? Well, let's look at that. In the past, what we saw was, you know, a lot of National Guard soldiers. I was in the National Guard. Great troops. They're on the border. Now what we're seeing is like 10th Mountain Division being sent,

a bunch of Marines being sent. Tenth Mountain. Those are your like frontline troops. Those are your not that before they weren't, but what I'm saying is these are a lot of, it's a show of force that is definitely greater than before. These guys have, it's a signal, an indicator of what is to come. Marines that are being sent, sounds like those are frontline guys. Most of them actually,

of the 500 so far, have been combat engineers. They're going to go plus up the fortifications. They're going to put C wire down. They're going to put defensive fortifications. They're flying in with Osprey helicopters that it's just this big show of force. and it's a sign, it's a signal.

This is just what's happening. Next, after that, in that state of emergency, I believe it's in that executive order, there is a request to the Department of Defense to within 90 days make a recommendation to the president of whether or not he should invoke the Insurrection Act. So from the Posse Comitatus Act, believe I'm saying that correctly, the end of the story is the U.S. military is not allowed to pull triggers on the cartel. They're not allowed to shoot at, you know, unless they're shot at. They're not allowed to go after.

They're not allowed to arrest any cartel or migrant members. The U.S. military's job currently legally, they can't be involved in those kind of operations. But if the Insurrection Act is eventually put into place, that could potentially give them that power to pull those triggers. So that's what we're looking at in the next month. Are they going to recommend that to the president? He just recently we saw did the Alien Enemies Act, which basically revokes the right of these, what the Trump administration is saying are like Trende, Aragua, these different organizations that have been designated as foreign terror organizations within the United States and Mexico. gives him the right to deport them without them having legal repercussion to it. So where do you send them?

We don't have space in our prisons. You send them to a mega jail in El Salvador and possibly to Gitmo now that they have no legal recourse. So these are the things that are happening that we cannot dispute are happening. we can dispute whether it'll end up going in a good direction or bad direction. Are we going to see missile strikes against cartels in Mexico? There's drones, CIA drones flying over Mexican territory. There's missile guided missile destroyers in the Gulf of America or Gulf of Mexico, whatever you'd prefer to be. So even the geography names are changing.

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I'm very proud of this hour. I'm really excited to share it with you guys, and it would mean the world if everyone could come on out. And what do you wear to a show on the road? That's a great question. You can go to campgo. That's right. We got merch.

We got camp merch. We got hats, hood. these t-shirts. A lot of stuff is out of stock. Things have been selling like hot cakes, but we're going to be restocking everything in all the sizes. So you can go there right now. Get all the merch, get all the coolest clothing in the podcast game. We're going to be updating that site regularly. And if you come out to a show, I'd love to see you sporting some of the threads that we got up online. I'll see you guys there. Let's get back to the show. Yeah, I'm curious. Could you take me just through like a little bit of backstory? Not too much,

but just kind of get me up to speed with like the nature of cartels in Mexico. If anyone's sort of unfamiliar with like how they kind of operate, what kind of weapons and weapons systems they possess and more or less what their business is. Yeah. The cartels have increased their arsenal to a point where they're indistinguishable from like a paramilitary force. And you could make the argument that they, the reason you could argue that their foreign terrorist organization is because, yeah, maybe they don't have a political goal insofar

as their main goal is making Buku Bucks, but they're political in the sense that they control the, they administer areas. So you go through an area that might be a checkpoint. And so whether they want to be political or not, you could argue that they are just by the virtue of the fact that they administer and govern some areas with the goal and goal being making money. And they have their fingers in, there's hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs in Mexico depend on the cartel. And they're very good at making themselves absolutely vital to a lot of people in Mexico's way of life. When you look at the polls of Mexico, a lot of times 40, 45 percent of people in Mexico would love to work in partnership with America to destroy the cartels. And, and, and,

And it's a by with and through strategy. So not like unilateral American military action against them, but working with our Mexican partners. So the cartels, you've got a bunch of different cartels in Mexico. It's not like one organization like the Taliban. And it's just the Taliban. No, I've spoken to a couple of special forces, former Green Berets, who have explained the situation way better than I can. and they have outlined why this is a more difficult counterinsurgency mission potentially

than like going into Afghanistan or Iraq because it's this fractured group and these different groups, these different cartel groups are at war with each other. But if we push them, they might maybe have a truce, work with each other. It's a mess of different factions that control different parts of the border. And the question is, what's the right way to get rid of them? Is it we stop demand in America, or is it that we put the violence on them? Yeah, it poses an interesting question because I'm speaking with a few different people that have both worked with, you know, Mexican Federales, you know, basically on the side of the Mexican

government, the Mexican police, and people that have worked with cartels. there are many different factions that are constantly at war with each other for control of territory and trade routes and, you know, like basically access to drugs or weapons or whatever it is that they're trying to traffic. And by getting rid of one,

you basically create a power vacuum where then the other ones can take over and then by monopolizing that power, they actually get more powerful and more strong. So there's almost like kind of an incentive to keep many different factions that are easier to cabosh and easier to control, but by, you know, taking out

their competitors, now you can have one that has, you know, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, that then they can buy greater weapons, you know, illegally and then pose a greater threat. But then there's the question of by having a common unifying enemy, you know, the, you could imagine all these different cartels saying, hey, if America is going to dry up our business, we can put aside our differences come together to then fight the Americans. You're talking about the retaliation that we might face that I think America. Americans, we get stoked on like, oh, we're going to, we're going to fuck the cartel up and they're not going to even know what hit them. We also, I think, need to also think about what the retaliation from the cartel is going to be and just be, like, prepared for those type of actions.

I mean, maybe we are ready to stomach that and we're down to do that. Great. But let's be prepared for targeted assassinations. Let's be prepared for drone strikes within American territory. Let's be prepared for, we know that the cartel has. permeated through. I'm going to pull up something that I think you're going to find to be a little bit eye-opening. There's a map of the highly trafficked drug routes that I sent you. Okay. Have you seen this before? I've never seen this. Let's look at where we are. So we're in a HIDTA. This is what the DEA, the drug enforcement agency, considers to be like one of the highly drug trafficked areas in the United States. States. And what we're looking at here is the corridors through which the cartel moves their drugs. And they run on our highway systems. Right. And America has some of the best highway

systems for, you know, it's, it's, it's for moving goods and it's designed basically for what they're leveraging. Moving goods, moving material. We have this amazing interstate system that has made, this is why you hear everyone say that like every state is a. border state now because you got look up in Montana all the way up north in Montana the the drug cartels from Latin America are moving and sure like we could take our share of the accountability and responsibility there's demand and it's awful and especially in some poor communities no matter what the ethnicity if it there's Native American populations in Montana they're suffering from the drugs they're being moved up

there. There's poor white communities, poor, any ethnicity you can name are, are hurting for the fact that what they're doing is, I think it's interstate, what is that in Texas? Starts in Texas. Can you zoom in a little bit? Can you zoom in a little bit? 45, 20 go down. Okay, so 35. So Interstate 35, what I was looking at, there's police reports of you've got basically these like tactical SWAT teams that are getting into firefights with cartel members on this interstate who are trying to get their drugs up to Montana from Texas through, you know, Mexico.

And the reason they're doing that is because if you can get fentanyl, you can get your drugs up to Montana, you, you're, your product is going to sell for such a premium. And they're making a killing on that profit margin. If you look up Montana cartel, yeah, Montana cartels should probably bring it up. Interesting. So this one even from NBC, Mexican drug cartels are targeting America's, quote, last best place. The Great Plains is just a beautiful part of the United States. Just like sprawling.

A lot of nuclear weapons are actually low. out there are silos that we launched new from. So the cartel is making, they've been making inroads here for years. And it's tough because you got the jurisdiction, different jurisdictions of, um, you got your, your local agencies, then you got like your state agencies and they're all trying to coordinate. And what they're looking at is this map that we're looking at that I had only just recently learned about through one of my, my great researchers, Diego Asituno, who brought this to my attention. And when I, saw this, I was like, holy crap, let's look at New York area that we're in.

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So they're trafficking drugs right through here. And how are they getting these trucks through the border? It's not trucks. They're using like just regular vehicles and cars. Okay. So they have coyotes or whatever their system is. They'll say, you know, maybe it's a U.S. citizen that's also working with a cartel, maybe Mexican code, you know, dual citizen.

There's tunnels as well. There's long, deep, tunnels that they've dug under border cities that are, you know, straddling the border. And they, and there, I can't bring up the article probably right now, but they're, they're getting as a firefights. They're getting, they're put, when you pull over a cartel member on the highway, they're not going to be taken prisoner. Yeah.

They're getting sent to an El Salvador prison. Who knows that. Which they should be sent to. Right. Maybe. Yeah. So they're pulling triggers. Wow.

And this guy, this cop, this story that I read, he took a bullet straight to the bulletproof vest. It fortunately he survived and he just Merck just destroyed the cartel member, killed him. But then what they're left with is a vehicle filled with drugs that they're trying to get up north. Wow. So the way I look at it is like these cartel guys are trying to run the gauntlet. they're basically trying to just bat at a hell

get up north and get to where they can drop off the drugs and to the distribution centers this when I saw this it visually put it kind of made things I'm a map guy that's my tism

I got my Riz I got my Riz a little bit of Riz but I got a lot of Tiz and maps make things clearer to me Yeah. And, like, puts it into context sort of, like, at the higher level. Oh, you're, I mean, have you read Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall? Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. All time. And then, uh, I put that in the back of my, uh, studio for a long time. And then there goes through each area and the geopolitics of it. Yeah. And how you're like sort of, um, predestined. Yeah, those are the cards you're dealt. Your geography are the cards.

And then how you play it is, you know, the government is the player. And, uh, you know, the everything. makes so much more sense when you're like, you know, even like the Ukrainian-Russia conflict that we spoke about, once you look at like the geography, you're like, oh, I get why these sides are behaving because they have different cards and they're trying to play their hand the best they can. And when you see this, you go, okay, I see what's happening. And I think that the border situation, the border conversation is so like politically volatile because there's a ton of different things that are getting conflated all at once. Where it's like, okay, you have, you know, a Mexican migrant that comes

over with his family and he's got two young daughters and he's, you know, working at a restaurant or maybe he's working on a tomato field in Florida and he's been here for 10 years and, you know, they're part of the community. And most Americans are like, all right, you know, the guy's making a living. He's helping the people out. And maybe he doesn't have all the specific paperwork, but, you know, he's low on the list of illegal migrants that we need to be worried about. And then you have stuff like this where it's like violent cartel members, trafficking drugs to go, you know, ostensibly to annihilate communities kind of by their own volition because, you know, they're poor and destitute and looking for some type of escape, which I can, you know, sympathize with. But simultaneously,

they're getting it through these criminal means. And that, I think everyone can be on board with, like, hey, we got to stop this. And unfortunately, they're both kind of being lumped into this large mass that's difficult to parse. So just looking at this topic specifically, it seems like the first, you know, course of action is, hey, let's sure up the border and stop violent cartel members, which I can imagine is probably a small minority of the people coming over, but it is a very important problem to address. So I can see why Trump's administration is like, hey, let's stop this part specifically. Now, for the cartel guys coming over, I'm curious, they're probably finding new ways to get

drugs over now that things are kind of become more contested. Like, I've seen even, like, the submarine footage. Like, that was a few years ago. But I'm sure they're probably ramping that up and trying to get more creative. Are they trying to come through Canada? Like, what else are they doing? What you're talking about is the ports of entry. And so they try to use narco subs, which are these, if you type in narco sub, you could see them.

There's these little, like, they barely go under the water and they'll carry, there's this crazy, sick video of the Coast Guard boarding team, just knocking on the door and being like, Get the fuck out. Yeah. And arresting these guys. I mean, like you said, there, you have to, I think you made an important distinction. There are people who are trying to escape the violence. They had their father. They had their mother, brother killed.

There's 120,000 people going missing each year in Mexico. 120,000? Yes. Wow. Just disappeared. Don't know, you know, just disappeared by the cartel. There's mass graves that they're finding now throughout Mexico. Can you talk about that?

Just recently they found a, I think it was at a school or a ranch, sorry, it was at a ranch. And they found all this clothing. And then they found the bones. And they'll routinely find trucks on the side of the road, just filled with dead bodies decomposing. And so I, yeah, I went to the front line of Ukraine and I reported from there. I can tell you I would not go to Mexico. and try to like report from from from anywhere about the cartel issue because I would just I would get killed I get Columbia necktied my tongue out my ass yeah they don't fuck around and you don't

know who to trust in Ukraine I went there you know this this is this team that team it's awful but there's uniforms right yeah it's like it's a different conflict and there I think I would pretty quickly get disappeared. Yeah. I mean, even the Mexican police, some people refer to them as the fifth power, right? When there's a big clearing operation, when the Mexican Marines go in and they just, because they'll destroy the cartel, they go in and they put cartel bodies in the ground. What they do, the first thing they do is they go and they disarm the police because they don't trust the local police. And there's a huge problem of corruption on both sides of the border with the cartel.

worse probably than worrying about like Russian sympathizers in Ukraine. So yeah, it's like a problem that it's like a cancer that has metastasized. Is that? Am I a doctor? Sounds right. Yeah. And not to mention the amount of money. Like it's difficult to really contextualize how much money these fucking guys have.

I think it's $15 billion that some of the estimates are for the revenue that they drive, the cartels. and it's mind-boggling and I mean, wow. Yeah, between. I mean, this high end on here is saying potentially $49 billion. I mean, that's the GDP of some countries. Like, that is remarkable. I mean, yeah, it's difficult to really, like, I think that's an important distinction to also put on this.

If people aren't aware, obviously this is across many different cartels, but ostensibly there are some individual cartels that are, making billions of dollars in REV every year. And with that, you can pay off local police, you can pay off politicians. I mean, there was a Mexican president recently that was in office for like a couple months and then was found hanging from a bridge. Like, the access that these guys have because of their insane wealth is sort of unparalleled. And I wonder how they even keep, you know, American Border Patrol immune from that type of corruption. They don't. There's, I looked into it. There, you know, in the last 10 years, many times fold more.

prosecutions of border patrol agents as well as local judges on the border. Wow. Yeah, all kinds of corruption in America as well. Way worse in Mexico. But you could see why, so the best possible, the best of all possible worlds is that the United States and Mexico partner together. They work together with each other to destroy the cartels, right? The biggest hang up to that is corruption. I mean, you could say whichever side, but like, corruption is what prevents that because how do you partner with somebody if you do not trust them. And so, well, we've seen U.S. Special Forces are now, we're trying to do some trust-building exercises. They sent Green Berets to Mexico recently to train with the Mexican soldiers.

And the big story was like that they're going there to fight the cartels or something. No, it's not that. What I think was fascinating about that is how public it was, a big of a, you know, they made in the press about it. And also that it's a huge intelligence sharing opportunity. Because when you get human, you get people on the ground, people were way more likely to share information with each other when we're with each other than for me to tell my commander or who tells his commander, who tells the Americans.

Now, like, you and me, let's get together, let's train. And you tell me, like, what's really going on down here? huge opportunity for intelligence sharing. Also, the Americans are flying. If you look up, the fascinating thing about this, the MQ9 Reaper drones over Mexican territory, the New York Times released this story. I feel like nobody really read this.

Insane story. CIA expands secret drone flies over Mexico. So the New York Times spoke to CIA operatives, which to me that essentially, the New York Times has done this at the time. ton where they're basically the stenographers for the CIA. They're telling you exactly what the CIA wants you to know. And they get the exclusive.

The CIA gets to tell you really what this article reads to me like. They're not talking to us. They're talking to the cartel. They're telling the cartel, we're watching you. What are the highlights from the article? What stuck out to you? So what's different than before is that we're flying actual tons of U.S. unmanned drones over Mexican territory, which is not, we were not doing that. That's considered breaking their sovereignty.

There is good evidence to suggest maybe Mexico okayed it. We don't know. Maybe not. Maybe totally not. But there's reasonably maybe they did. You're trying to create strategic ambiguity with your adversary. So they don't know how close. is America working with Mexico?

Are they aligned on this? Is U.S. doing this unilaterally? What we don't know that for sure. We know for sure is that the CIA wants the cartel to know that they're watching them. And what that does is that forces the cartel or it could make the cartel change their operations. And when you change your operations, it's easier to get intelligence on them. Right. That's interesting.

And what incentive would like the Mexican president or like the Mexican government at large have for not okaying some type of joint partnership at the U.S. to stop the cartels. Though all the communications from the Mexican, the new, she's brand new, Shane Bomb. She is just recently the president and her incentive for not cooperating would be because you don't want to appear like you're not, your sovereignty is not being respected. If I'm Mexico's president, you cannot appear. appear like the United States is unilaterally doing flying drones over your territory, doing the hell they want. Right.

And then furthermore, you know, inevitably there's going to be, you know, I guess innocent civilians or like quasi-innocent that could be caught up in some type of, you know, skirmish with the United States. So basically the Mexican government is saying, hey, I'm not going to give some other country permission to go to war against our citizens. Yeah. Or if the America escalates or even shuts off the board. and hurts the cartel's revenue, who are they going to take that out on?

Yeah, exactly. What happens within their own country? Can they stoke some type of civil war? There's already a cartel-on-cartel war that was exploding right before Trump got elected because the United States helped arresting one of the cartel leaders for the whole while. I believe it's the holosco cartel. If I get that wrong, one of the major cartel leaders was arrested by the DEA and it was a betrayal by another cartel. He says it was betrayal by another cartel leader. So there's this huge cartel and cartel war. And the way I'm looking at it is there's a lot that is being,

it's like a maximum pressure campaign against the cartels by America. Get these cartels to fight each other. Start flying drone missions. What are the drone missions for? It's building an op picture. It's building an operational picture. Or, you need, if you're going to strike them, which we don't know if America is going to do cruise missile that route or not. But if you're going to, you need to build a picture of just the mundane routine of like, okay, you know, Carl gets up at five in the morning.

He goes to his cartel drug facility at six in the morning. He's there until eight goes home. The handoff happens at this. Like you need to know all of that finite minutia. You need to build that picture out before you do any strikes. Or even to give the Mexican authorities the information they need to do the strikes. Yeah. I mean, it's just like so, you have to be so tactical with something like this.

Like it's almost in many ways way more complicated than any of their conflict that's happening globally, I guess, to an extent because the lines are so blurred. It's like, you know, you're sending. if you were to actually do like a strike, it's like, okay, what is the fallout from that? Are you going to send troops and deploy them into Mexico? Like, it's just creating a powder keg. And then how do the Mexican cartels retaliate? Like, they're not going to operate like a traditional military force.

And I wonder if there's even ways you could do it, like, more, like, to be as clever as possible. Like, I wonder if you could... My suspicion is, like, with organized crime and the incentive being only money, it's a little bit easier to chip away at that, right? Like a national identity or fighting for a cause, it's hard to get someone to turn over, you know, their own countrymen.

But I think you've seen this with, you know, American gangs, you know, whether Italian or, you know, even like Mexican gangs in America or black gangs, if you're able to get like the leader, you can kind of get them to sell out the rest of the group. Everyone has this whole thing of like, oh, no one snitches, you know, we have honor. But typically with these crime organizations, it's a little bit easier to chip away at that sort of enamel. So I'm curious if they could do a sense. similar thing with the cartels here. Or if it would have to be.

You're talking about cutting off the head of the snake? To an extent, yeah. I actually do not think that you can probably cut off the head of the snake with cartels, unfortunately. I think we did learn a lot of lessons from the fighting an insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan. You kill one of them, like someone potentially worse pops up. You get them to dime on their friend.

they're going to be replaced by someone who's possibly worse. It creates more violence trying to cut off the head of the snake is an argument. Like, yeah, sure, there's also a reality where you could just annihilate them. Like ISIS, where we had a partner force on the ground that we worked closely with and we destroyed ISIS. That's one use case, if you want to call it that. If you want to like corporatize or say, let's ISIS them. Sure. Maybe that'll work.

Or maybe it turns into a bog down insurgency. Something I think that is interesting is if you pull up the map of the U.S. Strategic Commands, Norcom, PACCOM, Southcom, perfect. So have you ever seen this before? No. These are, the U.S. military breaks down their different area of operations into different commands. You never hear about Northcom. A lot, you might have heard or remember hearing about sentcom.

You hear like, oh, sentcom says that they did a strike against the Houthis. Right. They just hit Yemen. They sentcom released on Twitter or X a bunch of video of F18. taking off of aircraft carriers and striking the Hussis or the Northcom or sentcom. Sentcom is like Middle East. You hear about them all the time. Afri-com.

You hear about them occasionally. EU-com. U.S. EU-com is like that whole area of A.O of like Russia, Europe. U.S. PACCOM is the area of responsibility of like anything having to do with Taiwan. Taiwan, China. So it's a way of like breaking down different area of responsibility. What we're talking about right now is a command that, like, you have not heard about

this command since I don't know how long. You've not heard, you've not read a press release from U.S. Northcom that frequently since, you know, maybe the war in Mexico in the 1800s. Sure. Was it the 1800s? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

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and it's always led by an Air Force general. And it's because what frequently sent com often led by Marine generals and army generals, because it's often ground wars. U.S. Northcom almost going back 20, 30 years from the creation of this concept, has been Air Force and Naval Air Force generals. Air Force generals and naval admirals. And it's because this is potentially going to be air strikes, a lot of them, and potentially strikes from submarines and destroyers.

So looking at this, I think, puts into perspective the area of operations that we're talking about, the way the military looks at it. Yeah, that's really interesting. And so I'm curious, is there a domestic? situation, and we kind of alluded to this a little bit, but I know, like, you know, around election time, there was a lot of conversation about, you know, cartels infiltrating American cities. And this has been, you know, like, oh, there's a, you know, an apartment complex in Colorado that's overrun with cartels. And I think they were even saying they're Venezuelan,

perhaps. I can't remember exactly. Is that overblown? Like, what is the nature of that? Is that strategic? Or is that just sort of like how things played out? Like, what can you tell me about that? You're talking about Trenda, Aragua. Perhaps. which is the Venezuelan gang that so when Venezuela, recently Venezuela collapsed in a big way. Their currency, huge inflation, their government, just the economic situation in Venezuela has not been awesome. And Venezuela is one of those like far left socialist countries in Latin America

that has a history of support for. from Soviet Union. They, in Venezuela, very difficult times that they're faced with. Trende Aragua started up as it was actually supposed to be a railway project that was run by the government. It was going to be this big railway that they were going to build, ended up not happening. So the crew that was supposed to build that, this is the lore for them. So the crew that was supposed to build that rail network ended up turning to

crime instead and trend de iraagua literally means i think like train something so they ended up going into mega prisons train from iraqwa right the city that it happened in so they ended up getting sent to mega prisons where it's not the kind of prisons that you see here in america these prisons are run by the gangs it's basically like the state saying you're not our problem you go police yourselves in this big dorm that you run. And so they had their own tunnel network in and out. The leaders of Trenda Arago could come and go kind of as they pleased. And it was this, they ended up sending the National Guard in Venezuela to try to crack down on it.

And they found like RPGs, explosives, hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition and weapons. They had their own pool. They had their own bar And like it was like a resort for them that they ran But you know They also were out of sight out of mind And what happened was They started being

Finding their way leaving Venezuela To they escaped a lot of there was a big prison break And a lot of them escaped to the United States And they set up They started How do you differentiate yourself as a business, any business. You have to find a way, differentiate yourself. The way they did it was by using means of violence that a lot of other organizations were not

willing to do. I'm talking like killing former police officers from Venezuela in the United States, um, bodying people and bagging them and leaving those bags of body parts to be found. They used shocking types of violence to make a name for themselves and carve out a territory, turf. And one of the things that they did in Venezuela that they brought, like a best practice

of theirs that they brought over was charging rent on people. So when they go and move into a community, they started, this is the reports that I saw. They started charging rent on, you know, extortion on people in this

project, not project, but apartment complex. And that's the Aurora, Colorado story that you're talking about, where you see Trenda, Ragua moving in to a city. And there is disputes about how much did they actually run that apartment complex

and how much was it just sensationalizing or politicizing the story. I, from what I looked at think that they're a very small minority that is extremely violent. And more, what do you say, like overt than maybe we've seen in the past. But they still, their numbers might not be as big, but that doesn't mean that it's something we want to just ignore. Right.

Now, part of me feels like in America, you know, we have a little bit more, you know, I guess rule of law compared to many other countries in the world. Like we have a very robust and sophisticated, you know, police presence that doing these types of violent acts would draw so much attention and so much heat. You know, it's antithetical, like you said, to many other gang operations in the United States, which is don't hit civilians, only do what we have to do, try not to get detected because we don't want to blow up our whole spot. These guys were sort of out front with everything. And did that just bring a ton of attention to them? Did they just get clipped and all of them got arrested? Like, what?

What happens with that? That's their M.O is that they'll go and let's say there's an abandoned, a lot of times what you'll find them at is abandoned hotels. They'll go and set up shop and they, they like their M.O. is to take over. We saw this in Texas. There was, I think about 100 Trenda, Ragua gang members were arrested in Texas for setting up shop basically in some formerly shut down. hotel, yeah, the gateway hotel, exactly. Wow. So just not disputable, like it's happening. But to your point, it's like how much is it really a epidemic? They everywhere, no, but where they are, it's weird. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I guess it's epidemic if you're living in the area that's being extorted, right? You're like, hey, this is a mass.

massive issue, why are we not doing something about this? And then if you're someplace where, you know, they don't have a presence, you're like, ah, it's crazy. It's overblunt. So to say that it's in every city is probably an over-exaggeration, but to say that, you know, this is something that's normally we should permit is definitely an understatement? Yeah, I guess I don't know, I think it's a little bit easy for me, at least, to kind of lump in like all central and South American gangs. Is it fair to say that these Venezueling gangs are operating in conjunction with these Mexican cartels? Are they operating completely on their own? My understanding is that, they're trying to carve out their territory. It's a competition between a lot of these gangs. And I know where I grew up in on Long Island, all the time you'd hear about MS-13. Right. And that was the big gang that you just knew they're around. And there were rumors about like, oh, so-and-so is in MS-13. And they're the only way to get let in is you have to kill someone.

and these gangs flourish off of that sort of mystique around them, that they're so brutal or they're so violent that they're untouchable. Yeah. It's also difficult to really nail that in what it means to be a cartel member. And I think from an American perspective, we can be like, oh, if you work with the cartels, you're a cartel member, like, put them under the prison, like, you know, throw them away. But there are many people, like, you see it in America that grow up in crime-ridden areas,

that one, don't really have a ton of a choice. Like, it's either, like, join us or die. And then, two, there's also, like, different levels of connection where it's like, hey, I worked for a guy that was connected to a cartel and I just, I was a lookout. Or, you know, I would drive a car or I would do stuff, but I wasn't really violent. And maybe they're, you know, exaggerating

or maybe, you know, I guess, understating their stories. But with this case specifically, how can the United States parse, you know, who's the bosses, who's doing violence, who are like the, I forget what they call the hitmen, the, uh, the Sicarios. The Sicarios. And then who's like a low level teenage kid that's like kind of wrapped up in some bad

stuff because that's his circumstance and is, you know, making some extra cash being a lookout? Because in El Salvador it didn't really seem like they cared, right? Like they just, everyone in prison and they dropped their crime rate. But then obviously there's going to be some overstep. But I'm curious in Mexico if there's been a conversation about how to deal with that issue. What you're talking about is a huge part of that. dilemma because especially in Mexico it's just you see there's I forget how many people but there are I think they said over 100,000 people that work for the cartels like in some capacity

and if you're just a poor person living in Mexico and you go and you work at a drug facility like do you deserve a two million dollar cruise missile fired at your drug. drug facility to, to, like, blow you up. Um, and also they put these drug facilities purposefully within residential areas. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Like, they're not going to just set up a drug processing lab, like in the middle of nowhere. They're going to put it in a residential area. And if you blow up that building, you're blowing up several buildings around it potentially or killing, there's going to be collateral damage. So, and that's a strategic decision. So, yeah, they've inextricably linked themselves to the local population,

which is a tactic that they've done back to the 80s, Pablo Escobar, and decoupling that and deciding where to draw the line between who is a hardcore Sicario, hipman, and who is, and, you know, somebody who has been roped into a life that, almost out of necessity, like, I feel terrible for those people.

And it's part of the reason why I feel like American military violence and action has its limitations in this fight. Yeah, I'm curious what America's responsibility in all this is. Like my CIA, you know, corruption knowledge is escaping me slightly. But didn't the United States help traffic and like work with cartels, like the fast and the furious operation? Okay. But way back in the day. So there's controversial action. best we can get into. I think the most concrete thing we can get into is just nobody disputes this,

which is that it's, I believe, 60 to 80 percent of weapons that the cartel uses, the firearms, come from America. It's traffic from America. The United States does not dispute this. Mexico reminds us of this every time we say that the drugs are coming from Mexico. Like, the first thing they say is, well, all of the arms are coming from America. And only recently what we saw is, and this is to the Trump administration's credit, they said that they, not that, not putting any kind of judgment value on that. I'm just saying that like the Trump administration has agreed with the Mexican administration to try to cut down on the amount of weapons that are trafficked through the other side of the border. Because there's plenty of anecdotally what we hear is that in the past, a lot of times, it's easy to get from America to Mexico. but it's more difficult the other way around.

Now they're starting to crack down on like, show me your passport. What are you doing here? Let's search your car because they don't want those weapons coming in from Mexico. So that, you know, that I think is the most concrete thing that we want to talk about responsibility from the United States is to me. You know how like some relationships are codependent? Sure.

And not healthy. Yeah. To the amount that Mexico and the United States have like an unhealthy relationship, I think Mexico's sending us drugs. We're sending them weapons. Yeah. And it's like, there's got to be a win-win here. It's got to be a WW where like we stop sending, we stop those weapons from getting to them and they stop the drugs, drugs from getting to us. Yeah.

Like, can we not, can we, guys, can we work this out? Can we be allies? Can we be partners and find that win-win? Now, is it American gangs or American crime organizations that are getting the weapons down there? Like, I imagine that, you know, the cartel would probably pay double, right? And you can get weapons fairly easily in the United States and then getting them down there. If you're an American, you know, in crime, there's a ton to be gained in that regard. Or is it, like, Mexican gang cells in the United States that are getting the weapons down or both? It's both.

Yeah, there's Mexican cartels that are trafficking in weapons. There's also the United States. There's money to be made. There's underground, what do you call it? Like tunnels that they're trafficking these weapons through. It's hundreds of thousands of weapons, sometimes automatic weapons. You see 50 caliber, you see the cartel using, there's a video on, if you type in Twitter, 50 caliber, Barrett, Mexican cartel.

Like, they're firing 50 caliber. at aircraft, straight up in the sky, and they're taking video of it, and just, like, overtly posting it on the internet. Oh, that's it, that's it, the first one. Oh, what is this? I'm pretty sure it should play into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so describe what we're seeing here. This dude has, he's firing, put his 50-cowl Barrett machine gun on, because the recoil from that is like a horse kicking you in the in the shoulder. So what he's doing is firing at a commercial airplane. What? And I'm almost positive, but they've had bullets go through. Like, imagine you're flying to Florida or something and like just you're like flunk and a bullet goes through the cabin fuselage. What?

Like they're, because they're aiming at airplanes that are trying to land in, I believe it's mechurchase. Mexico City. Sorry if I get that wrong. But this was during a major battle where they were trying to capture one of the El Chapo's family members. Oh, wow. Correctly. But it was like you're getting, you keep getting these warnings and how many red flags you want to see that, I mean, they took over the whole city that day. Mm-hmm. And I don't know that they got that 50 Cal from America, but they're getting it from somewhere. and a lot of them are coming from America. And yeah, what a cluster fuck. I mean, is it possible that they're getting funding weapons

from our foreign adversaries? Is it possible that you have like a China, potentially a Russia of saying, hey, let's get money in there to then cause issues for the Americans? Dude, you want to know what I find fascinating about the China connection? And so what I love to do a lot of times is connect history to what's happening currently.

And I don't know if you're familiar with in China, they had a major opium crisis. You had the opium wars for, you know, how did China go from having, I think it was 60% of their male population between 20 and 40 addicted to opium to today they have no drug problem. We have a drug problem. They have no drug problem. You know, how were they able to do that? Mass incarceration. Mass incarceration and mass killing. Wow.

When a problem gets so bad, the people will give their government the authority to do whatever it takes. They will beg to be controlled. Yeah. The people will beg you to do what it takes. They will scream and applaud for authoritarianism. Yeah. And you can almost not blame them. because the drug problem in China was so bad and ruining so many lives and just destroying their economy that they went nuclear option.

Yeah. And they destroyed people. You want to talk about freedoms and liberal order like. Yeah, out the window. Yeah. And like almost can you blame them? And then also look at us today. And it's like, could you blame us for crying out and saying just do it? Yeah. I mean, the El Salvador thing is a great example. the one hand, it's like, hey, there's probably a mass infringement on freedom and human rights here, but also the country is the highest murder rate in the world and then immediately goes to, like, I mean, like one of the safest countries in the world within a span of a few months. It's like, yeah. And you broke a lot of eggs doing it. Yeah, of course. And there are innocent people sitting in jail cells right now.

I'm assuming there are hundreds of purely, like they had nothing to do it. They had an uncle or maybe a relative that was involved and they didn't even know. And now they were wrapped up sitting in a prison cell. And that's terrible. But you look at the dire state of a nation, you say. So during the opium, after the opium wars, when 60% or whatever 70% of China's population addicted to opium, what they did was they just started incarcerating and killing people who were addicted. And if you were like a repeat offender, you're fucked. Like they did not play games.

The Mao just went in and you talk about in China. the cultural revolution, the amount of, everyone says, like, millions of people were killed. Like, this is what they did. Mm-hmm. This is how they stop their drug problem. And so you talk about foreign adversaries funding our drug problem. Who is it? It's funny because it's like, it's not funny.

It's fucking awful. China, it almost feels like they're trying to turn the tables and be like, okay, Britain, they, they had a, I feel like they had an opium problem before Britain anyway. But Britain certainly put the pedal to the mess. on it, sent them a lot of opium in the 1800s. It feels like now China's sending a ton of fentanyl to the United States precursors. It almost feels like a, like a middle finger. Like you did this to us. Now we're going to send fentanyl to you.

The United States absolutely needs to do something to stop it. But like the thing that I find fascinating about the whole story is, yeah, China's sending precursors. they're working with the cartels. It's part of the reason why the United States use that that as a justification to say that they're a foreign terrorist organization because they're working with a foreign government. Alien Enemies Act was put into place because they're claiming that it's an invasion by Venezuela and by whether you agree with it or not. These are just I'm talking about justifications better given. Yeah. I'm curious how it plays out.

Do you think that, you know, in the event that there's some type of like actual. artillery strikes on, you know, drug facilities, you know, heads of cartels. Do you think that that could happen? Would that be like, would that happen in this administration or is that somebody way down the road? I think the best way to look at it is the steps that will happen before that happens. So I think before that happens, what you see is the United States try very hard to either pressure or just work, work by with and through the Mexican authorities, Mexican Federal Police, Mexican National Guard, Mexican Marines, special forces, they're going to try to work with them. I think if the U.S. government feels like they don't get the response they want, then we would be more likely to potentially see a unilateral

strike, whether that happens or not. But that's like, okay, A, B, and C would need to happen before what you're talking about, which is some kind of just like missile strike against the cartels. Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious if the Mexican president gets on board. And I'm curious how that could look and if they would want to do it with Trump specifically, given the volatility of his administration and sort of his rhetoric, if that they would, if they would capitulate. I guess it just depends on how bad the problem is.

And I wouldn't even necessarily frame it as capitulation and more like. So the Mexican president, Shane Bob, probably can't get up there and just say, we're going balls to the wall on the cartel because then you're telling the enemy what you're doing. Yeah. Or she probably also can't get up there and say, like, I'm not going to strike the cartel. We don't know exactly. Maybe it's her plan to go hard against the cartels. We don't, I think, no. Hmm.

Yeah, it's very, very fascinating. There's indicators. is you could look back at like, so she's inheriting, you know, the same administration she was on, aligned with the policies of the former, the former Mexican president, Orbador, who, um, had perpetuated the, basically the game plan of like hugs, not bullets, which was, you know, that's a counterinsurgency strategy. So is Shane bomb, like, doing the same as her predecessor? or is she taking a different? These are things that will play out. Interesting. Yeah, I'm very, very curious. I mean, it's interesting to see specifically on the border,

shoring up those things, which I think most Americans generally are kind of on board. It's like, hey, let's kind of just stop the violence at the border. There's this, I always look at it like there's a, I think, what is a sane position, what most Americans feel, which is we, I love, fellow Mexican people who have immigrated here and made an amazing life

and worked super hard and built a family and worked really hard on that to get that and earn that and people, I think, in America, respect that. And then there's also

the same position of like there's 100,000 Americans killed by fentanyl and we need to do something about this. I think Mexican people also feel the same way. Yeah, I don't know if we need to be sending ice into like a restaurant in Bushwick to, you know, arrest a line cook, you know what I mean? But, you know, could we put reinforcements in funding to stopping violent cartel members from trafficking people,

drugs, weapons into the United States? People are having a more, what I would call, like, nuanced approach now. Well, you, I remember 10, 15 years ago, you also, you all the time would hear people say just like open borders is the only same thing and you're a racist if you don't think that yeah now the conversation is more i think realistic where it's like there's good immigration and then there's bad drug cartels yeah well chris capy i appreciate you thank you so much for breaking this down um if you want to see more cartel content or more geopolitical analysis from you where could they find that could go and subscribe to capi Army on YouTube, Chris Cappy on YouTube, a new brand new channel, no longer at the old Diggs.

You could find me there. Also, Cappy Army on Instagram and Twitter. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, of course, as this unfolds this topic and many other conflicts around the world, I always enjoy speaking with you. And yeah, let's do it again. If you've made it to the end of this episode, you are clearly someone who understands that beneath every historical event lies a deeper truth waiting to be uncovered.

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