Camp Gagnon - Trumps WW3 Strategy & Epstein’s Israel Connection | Chris Cappy

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Chris Cappy joins us today to discuss what’s happening in Iran, break down Operation Epic Fury, Epstein’s Israel connection, and other interesting topics... WELCOME TO CAMP! 🏕️Shoutout to our sponsors: Cheers, BlueChew and Morgan & MorganUse Code ‘CAMP’ For 20% OFF When You Visit https://cheershealth.com👕🧢 Shop CAMP Merch: https://camp-rd.com/collections/ufo🎟️ 🎫 Comedy Tour Tickets: https://markgagnonlive.com🎩👽 Daily Dose Of History:https://www.dailytodayinhistory.com0:00 Intro1:42 What’s Happening In Iran?4:59 Operation Epic Fury + Iran Oppression15:02 Preparation For China29:15 Current American Mindset37:57 Creating a Power Vacuum + Greenland52:25 Venezuela’s New Leader59:46 American Interest In Foreign Countries1:03:31 Iran’s Perspective of America1:11:56 The Paradigm of War1:17:09 Epstein’s Israel Connection1:35:32 Epstein Files Coverup1:41:15 U.S. Troops In Kuwait1:43:54 The Big Picture1:53:45 Propaganda Being Fed to America

On Saturday, February 28, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated military strike against Iran that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and dozens of top Iranian commanders. This is a move that's now shaking the world and pushing us even closer to World War III. And to make sense of what's really happening, I invited Chris Kappi into the tent. Kappi is a geopolitical YouTuber, a journalist, and former U.S. military, and he's been tracking these developments very closely. And today, he answers the big questions. Why are we fighting this conflict now?

And whose war is it really? America's, Israel's are both. And he discusses why this operation was so effective. We even discussed how the Epstein files may have even predicted this attack on Iran. And we even go through Epstein's role as an arms dealer. And he even shares how removing Iran's leader, Maduro and Mensho, the cartel leader, are all connected in preparing the United States for a bigger war against China. This episode was really interesting to me.

And to be honest with you, I hate that America is involved in another conflict to the Middle East. And this is another conflict that the American. American people largely don't want in order to take out a regime that doesn't seem like it's a massive threat to us right now. But Cappy shared a perspective on how this could affect the bigger game. And he shows me the larger 40 chessboard of what's going on with all the global conflicts and how this actually sets us up for a bigger war against China and how it positions us for a conflict against Russia. And he really shares both sides of how this could work really well and how this could be a total disaster. So if you're interested in geopolitics, Cappy is the man. And he

breaks it all down and tries to explain both sides as well as he can. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. Chris Cappy, how are you? Hey, Mark. Good to be here. Thank you so much for joining me, man. I really appreciate it, especially on short notice. This weekend, we saw some pretty wild scenes, a pretty significant military operation just went on in Iran. Basically as like a, you know, a joint effort through the United States and Israel, as well as many other proxies kind of like slowly kind of entering into this conflict. So could you just break down to the audience? What happened this weekend? And I guess what I want to get to is are we currently entering into World War III? Right. It's a historic military operation, one of the biggest air sorties in all of history.

And it's kind of the culmination of disagreements that have been happening in that region. It's a proxy war turned an actual direct war at this point, where, for the last 30, 40 years, we've been coy about it. We've been playing around on the edges and killing each other in ways that I would say are you could plausibly deny it. You could say, oh, we're not really doing that. When I was in Iraq, when I deployed to Iraq, all the time, we found Iranian agents, Iranian-backed fighters who were trained and equipped by Iran. Those were the main element in our A.O. that was fighting us. But, you know, they, you know, they could always say, no, it wasn't really us.

So, and then the United States as well, and Israel has been killing Iranians on this, killing their nuclear scientists. So this has all been happening on the periphery for many years, and it's coming to a head now. And there's a lot of reasons for that, but I think that's kind of the starting point, is that we're seeing a, the bubble, what was once bubbling under the surface has now risen to the top. I see. Now, for people that don't know, right now, the geopolitical layout of the region.

You have Iran, kind of with some, you know, friendliness with Russia as like kind of as client state. China, obviously, having a direct connection, a few other, you know, countries in the region. And then on the other side, you have America, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and, you know, obviously, NATO, Europe, things like that. Could you just kind of explain with a little bit more detail? Who are the players right now? And what does it seem like the position jockeying kind of is? Like what is the board? The main players are Saudi Arabia and Iran have been in this proxy conflict for years since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

They've been at odds and they have economic reasons for that. There's competition in the oil industry between them. We now have Iraq as well, which is sort of on the United States side. and there's Israel who's, of course, been at odds with Iran since the revolution. And before that, funny enough, they were actually allies. But since then, there's been tension where Iran is, they feel like they're standing up to Western influence. From Iran's point of view, they feel like, hey, we don't want to be a client state of America. We don't want to be just their puppet government.

So that's how the Ayatollah had viewed it. And so that's the main conflict that we're looking at. Right. Now, on Saturday, what exactly happened? America flew in with, you know, a bunch of air power and within a matter of minutes took out basically all the heads of state. How does that happen? Insane decapitation strike. 200 fighter jets from America, another 200 from Israel.

Israel was able to exploit the fact that Syria fell, Assad. fell recently, so that opened up an air corridor easier for them. There's no air defense to shoot them down over Syria, so they could just fly their jets through that air corridor, midair refuel over there, drop bombs over Tehran all day long. And what they did was, so Iran didn't expect the United States and Israel to strike during the day. And historically, we've always done our operations spooky style at night where we could be all stealthy. But they took, basically, Iran's air defense had been so degraded and so knocked out over the past two years. that it got to a point where Israel and U.S. assessed, like, we could do this during the day

in broad daylight. And Iran and about a number of their other top leaders met at a compound the morning of the 28th. And they met to have a military strategic meeting and the U.S. and Israel bombed it to hell and killed the Ayatollah. And that was the start of the strikes, was this big decapitation hit, similar to how a year or two ago when Israel did a similar knocking out of the top leadership in Iran. And then they started bombing strategic sites. They're hitting the main weapon that Iran has. They have no air force. They have not big tank brigades. There's not going to be a ground war here. The main weapon they have is ballistic missile launchers. So over the past, It's two years, Israel and the U.S.

knocked out about two-thirds of their missile launchers. So they had 480 of these, basically their giant trucks that just show up and these TELs shoot the missile out. And now they only have about 100. And now that number is even lower. And those are hard to replace. So this is the operation had kind of a couple of main objectives. One of them is let's knock out their capabilities to fire these ballistic missiles that can reach us. Let's knock out the warehouses where these missiles are stored and let's hit some of

the nuclear sites and set them back. Interesting. And it seems like within, you know, a very short order. I think the official timing was like four days that this entire operation will be. And maybe that's extended a little bit. It seems like this is going extremely fast. I would say that is the idea for them. You listen to all the communications from the top leadership in America, they don't want this to be an extended operation that last months. That's what everyone's saying. This might be weeks-long campaign, but the idea is to go in, go in hard, going fast, and then get out.

Now, is this surprising to you? No, I don't think I found this surprising at all. I think this is exactly what you expect from the United States. When you looked at their target list, the air-tasking order that they put out for what they're going to hit, what the U.S.'s game plan, I think in the beginning, was to knock out the Thrala headquarters, which is the state apparatus in Iran that is responsible for suppressing the people. So the whole goal is, okay, we'll go in, we'll knock out their leadership, we'll knock out the big headquarters that are responsible for suppressing the protests and the

people, and then we'll give them the opportunity to rise up. We'll give them the opportunity to take over the government, overthrow the government for us, essentially. When you look at all regime change operations in the Middle East or anywhere, really. It's very difficult to do it without there being some kind of something on the ground. Boots on the ground, factions that are armed. In Libya, there were armed factions that could overthrow and find Gaddafi and kill him under the bridge. Like a rebel force, basically.

Right. But you don't really have that in Iran because they're so, they've, over the decades, they've built this really impressive system of oppression. And so I think it's very difficult to have a regime change. by the people if they're unarmed. It's very difficult. No matter, you know, we're yet to see whether or not air power can do that today. I think air power has its limits.

But that, that I think was their game plan. Let's give them this window of opportunity to rise up and over the other government. So what is this oppression system? Like, how exactly does it work? If you want, you could pull up. There's this document that this think tank put out on the Thrala headquarters. and they outline every single there's called, it's cool, everyone knows of the IRGC, right? You've heard of the IRA, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It's like they're hardcore Iranian military, the real hardliners. So the, but what people don't hear about as often is the besiegy militia, which is about 100 to 300,000 strong force inside of Iran, which is responsible for suppressing the people. If you were in the Besee militia, you would get a text that morning. Like, hey, you got to show up to your street corner. You got to go put down the riot. You know, kill them if got to. But so that's the, they're like this part-time militia force. They would literally just send agents out to protest and be like, break up the protests.

Oh, and they know their spot ahead. So you know where you're going. If you're in the Bisi militia, you get the text from your commander. You're like, yeah, I'm going to. So they destroyed it. Yeah. So you get that. You go to your street corner and your whole job is to stop any mobility of the protesters to put it on lockdown and to keep the regime in power.

Because I think the stated goals for Iran right now, for them to walk out of this and claim victory, all they need to do is stay in power. That's the conditions for victory for Iran. So they don't need to shoot down 600 fighter jets. They don't need to blow up every American base in the region. They need to stay in power. And if the Islamic Republic is able to stay in control, then at the end of this, they will claim some kind of victory. Interesting. Now, it seems like they took out all these heads of state.

You know, they took down the Ayatollah, like the Iatollah's daughter, the Iatollah's grandkid, all in one place. Why is this guy that is the single most, you know, high value target for all these? these different nations, just like hanging out with his family all together all the same time. Hubris, he didn't think we were going to attack during the day. I don't think he expected that to happen. He probably also didn't think that we'd be able to reach him in his bunker, but we have different weapon systems, bunker busters that are able to reach out and touch people in far away places. So it was a little bit of, I think, arrogance.

Interesting. And also, sorry. No, please. There was CIA intelligence on him. his location. So he, he probably assumed we didn't know where he was, but there were reports that have come out since then that the CIA got a fix on his location. The pattern of life is what they call it. And they were able to map out, you know, what type of Cheerios he had that morning and then where he was going to next. And they saw the opportunity and they took it. Wow. I saw a theory.

This is completely unsubstantiated. Let me, let me preface that on Twitter X, as they call it, that the, I think it was, I don't know if it was U.S. intelligence or Israeli intelligence, but that there was dentists that were doing dental work on high-ranking Iranian military officials and placing trackers in their molars as a means of assessing where they are. This is completely unsubstantiate. I saw this. I'm curious if you've seen this or if you have any comment on something like that. One of the things that I love about the intelligence community is, so rumors like that, whether they're true or not, are very useful for them because how paranoid are you going to be? You can't even go get your teeth clean without worrying about the CIA. Right. Like you see the CIA everywhere.

You're worried about it. And those type of rumors, but that could very well be true. It could be the case. Or it could also be just a way for them to feel like they're not safe ever. That's such an interesting point. It's either true. Okay, so yeah, this is claims from March 1st that Mossad agents disguises doctors and dentists, planted nanotrackers. and the verification is that there's no confirmation from U.S. or Israeli sources.

So it's possible that, I mean, sensational rumors about Mossad, ingenuity have circulated in the past. So it's possible that it is true, but it's also possible that this information was maybe put out by an intelligence agency to basically fill the minds of their opponents to basically say like, oh, we know where we go to say. And a lot of times they could have put it out or someone else puts it out and they're not going to do. deny it. Why would they deny it? Also, it's the same is true with with a lot of coups that happen that are credited to the CIA. Some of them are true. Some of them are awful stuff that our government has done. And then some of it is way overblown. The CIA is not capable of doing that, but they're not going to want what reason, what interest would they have in claiming that they can't do that, that they're not that powerful? They want you to

think that they're that all knowing, all seeing powerful. But really, this is the same CIA that got the Iraq war wrong. This is the same CIA that couldn't keep our allies in Afghanistan in power. Afghanistan was toppled by the Taliban within days after we left. Right. Same CIA that assessed that Ukraine would fall in three days. Like, they are capable of a lot of insane stuff, but then there's also their limits. Right. Well, I'm curious if you can help me kind of distill my feelings about everything that's happened. Like, I'm not a big regime change guy. Like, I've just, by looking at the pattern of history of all these coups that America's

backed, either directly or indirectly through, like, proxy coups, it seems like it always ends up in a disaster. Like, I can't really think of one that, like, worked out really, really well. I mean, like, even the overthrow of Muhammad Mosadegh in 53 kind of creates the conditions for this to happen. So, like, that one's kind of a failure. I mean, like, coups through Honduras. and Guatemala and I mean like Gaddafi and Saddam like there's just all these regime changes that

either blow up in America's face or just create terrible conditions for humanity around the world. I mean a million Iraqis die trying to get Saddam. So I'm like I don't really love it. With that being said though, I look at the you know the countries in the region in just the GCC in general and also just the nature of the regime in Iran. And I'm like, this is obviously bad. Like, they're obviously oppressing their people. Like, this is obviously a group of, you know, radical authoritarian

that have co-opted Islam to basically oppress this entire country of 90 million people, which is bad. And I have so many Persian friends in America that are like, yeah, what's going on over there is terrible? Like, this country should be liberated. And they're causing trouble in the region. They're sponsoring terror for not only Israel, which obviously is, you know, unpopular. People don't really care about, you know, that as much. But they're, you know, causing issues for the UAE. They're causing issues for Saudi Arabia and they're causing

issues for America indirectly through, you know, controlling oil passage and all that stuff. So I feel weird about it. Like, it almost feels like, like a vigilante, like, killed a file in the streets. You know what I mean? We're like, all right, you took out a bad guy, but you shouldn't be just like killing people without authorization, you know, et cetera. So I feel mixed about it. So I'm curious if you're going to help me distill my feelings about what's going on. Intervention always is double-edged sword. Anytime you either do or do not use military intervention, there's going to be consequences.

Some of them are going to be good. Some of them are bad. I'm not going to sit here and, like, defend every military intervention that America has been involved in or every coup that we've supported. I think that at the same time, there are, when our enemies and adversaries lose, a lot of times very beneficial for American interests. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the United States spread democracy throughout Europe, I think there's a strong argument that it's been in our interest.

And in the Middle East, a lot of the interventions we've done there have been a complete disaster and have not been good for American interests and have ruined some of our standing around the world. So when you look at the Iraqi, when we toppled their government, A million people killed the Arab Spring that came out of that, those coups. It was a disaster for a long time. This military intervention, this attempt to overthrow the regime, America's goals are to either put, the thing I like about this intervention, if I'm going to say what I like about it, is that we're not trying to spread democracy. We're not trying to occupy the country.

it's they're trying to kill any leadership that isn't willing to cooperate and comply with the United States government. It's more of a realistic attempt. So they kind of don't care who's in power if it's a dictatorship, if it's a terrible, awful authoritarian leader, as long as they're willing to comply with the United States as far as not building a nuclear weapon, not attacking allies in the region. So if the U.S. is able to meet those goals, so just from a pragmatic outside point of view, I'll say what I think the U.S. is doing, which is they're trying to get their ducks in a row for a future conflict with China. So when you look at this intervention and in Venezuela as well, what do you say? It took us months to build up combat power there, right? Got to move all the ships, move all the weapons.

systems, imagine if there was a world war. We wouldn't be able to be everywhere. We've learned that. It took, you have to move air defense systems into the region and it takes months and we can, we only really have enough resources to fight in one theater at a time. We used to think that we could fight in two, three theaters at the same time and, and that would be fine. But modern weapons systems are so finite, missile systems are so exquisite and expensive that you can't be fighting against Russia in Europe, you can't also be in the Middle East and then also fight against China. It's just from a strategic game theory way of looking at it. The U.S. National Defense Strategy in 2026 is, hey, I'm looking at this, the way the cards are on the

table, the way the chess board is. And I'm recognizing that I have limitations and I need to prioritize. So by taking Iran off the threat list, then we will not be tied down in the Middle East. China could not coordinate with Iran to tie America down in the Middle East while they invade Taiwan because the U.S. could not do it. We can't do it. And the same is true for you. When you look at just the steps that the U.S. government is taking, it's all focused on, hey, Europe, you need to pay your share of the defense burden. We can't send half our military to Europe to help you defend against Russia. You have to step up and invest in your defense. Why are they? And they're, the U.S. government is so focused on that that they're willing to alienate all of their allies in Europe to do it. They're willing to be like, use every bit of leverage that they have on them and threaten to walk away from Ukraine and let Ukraine fall,

they're willing to threaten everything because they feel that it's the only option that if Europe doesn't step up, we're screwed anyway. Because when you look at the assessments from the CIA, from the national, from all of the defense agencies, they're all saying the same thing. They put out something called the overbatch brief, which is a classified report that assessed that the United States would be screwed in the event of war with China.

And that our aircraft carriers would get hit by ballistic missiles, that all of our aircraft in that region would get hit by China's ballistic missiles when they're on the ground. And from that assessment, well, okay, if you believe that, if you're in the U.S. government and you have intelligence that China's going to move on Taiwan in the next two years, what do you do? You have one option. Make it so that you will not face threats in the Middle East, make it so that you will not face threats in Europe so that everything you have can be in the Pacific. That's interesting. So there's a lot of people that are listening to saying Iran's not a threat to America. They're not posing a direct threat to us. This is just us fighting a war. for Israel. This is what people on, you know, Twitter will say. So the way you're framing it seems to

say like, well, it's doing a bunch of things at once. And in a way, Iran is a threat to America in the sense that it's going to deplete our troops in the event that China is able to build an alliance there. Am I understanding that right? Correct. Yes. And what I would say is I'm all for, I believe Israel has way too much influence on American politics. I think that that, that can be true. And I think it can also be true that it's an oversimplification to say that everything that the United States has done in the region has been for Israel's benefit. It's a reduction of a very complicated situation. We, we so, you cannot argue that we have other interests in the Middle East. Controlling the energy there is probably our biggest interest,

Israel aside. And to the degree that, Israel and the United States have shared interests and Israel helps the United States in those goals, then, yeah, we're aligned. A lot of things we're not aligned on. I don't have to like what they're doing to the Palestinians to recognize that the Middle East is more than Israel and that, yeah, regime change in Iran is what Netanyahu wants. But it's also what the United States wants. When you just look at it in a just, okay, if we control the energy, In Iran, then between Venezuela and Iran, that's 20% of the oil that China's getting at a huge discount that they're getting because of this oil sanctioned. So they're getting really cheap oil to fuel their economy. And what we did was we swooped in and we said, okay, no, you're not.

We're going to get that oil and we're going to control that oil from Venezuela. And Cuba's going to fall also. And we're also going to control the energy in the Middle East so that, and this doesn't mean that China will not be able to get energy from other sources. They'll get cheap energy from Russia. But it won't, it's not as easy as that a one-to-one replacement. So it puts pressure on China. And what I think happened, my read of it, you might recall when the U.S. and China were in trade, a trade war. And China. basically went used a nuclear option and they said well you're not getting any rare earth elements we're cutting off your supply of rare earth elements so everything that we need to make cars to make all these weapons systems you're not getting that i don't think the united states thought that they were going to go that's the ball's the wall option that's the no there is no turning back option when they did that i cannot describe how that is playing their entire hand they're they're they're they're

That's their leverage and they're using all of it. And when was that roughly? That was earlier this year in the trade negotiations. And then Trump and the U.S. government, we ended up coming to an agreement that was, I think, in China's favor. China used their monopoly on rare earth elements to get a favorable trade deal. So the United States, I think, after seeing that, said, well, we need to have our own leverage on China. And one of the ways to do that, cut off their shadow oil tanker fleet that Iran and Venezuela have been using. So to even the playing field a little bit more.

Because that, they really have us by the balls with the rare earth elements. China is responsible for producing something like 80% of them. So I think like how things in the Middle East are coming to a head quickly, I think, things globally are coming to a head. You're seeing people use their maximum leverage like that. So, so yeah, that's, that's how I would describe why intervention in Iran is an American interest. I'm not defending it or saying it's right. Right. Just giving the perspective of what they're thinking. Right. This is the calculation that the people in charge are probably running through their heads, probably with additional information or even other motives that we don't even know. I mean,

this article that Chris just pulled up says early 2026 U.S. and China are engaged in tense negotiations of a rare earth following in October 25 restriction on minerals like gallium and germanium a truce was established and then the U.S. is aggressively pursuing alliances including an $8.5 billion deal with Australia and Southeast Asia. Okay, so yeah, this was happening earlier this year that they were basically, they said, hey, we'll just pull this whole thing. And I guess for the average person, they see this and they're like, all right, you know, some people trade, da-da-da-da. This is basically an economic nuke. Yes.

And the fact that America saw this from China was like, oh, so it's like that. Like, it's a different level of intensity that the average person probably missed. That's really interesting. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I just want to state the obvious. You're not going to hire a chiropractor to do brain surgery. And if you're going to go fight in the octagon, you wouldn't hire a guy that watches a lot of UFC. And if you have a personal injury case, you're not going to just like high.

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Like, oh, this is just Israel war. It's like, yeah, it does benefit Israel, obviously. But it also benefits other allies in the region. It benefits America for, you know, oil and economic reasons, or at least it could. It benefits the United States as far as, like, clearing a front that we don't have to fight in a future conflict. All right, those seems like pretty good reasons. You know, we've gone to war for less. So now my question is, what are the potential downsides?

How could this blow up in our face? And what are the pitfalls that America needs to avoid in the coming, you know, days and months? Playing 4D chess can always blow up in your face like that. Trying to play grand strategy in this way can, and every intervention has its share of blowback. I think we were just talking about before the podcast that we were saying, So one of the things I empathize with is that giving foreign money to just every country with U.S. aid, like, what are we doing? Why are we giving out billions of dollars to all these different countries? Why are we doing all these interventions that cost, you know, giving billions of dollars of weapons to Ukraine, for instance? I get that. I'm sympathetic with that. And I think we are very sort of clued into that as a Americans of where we're getting sort of the short end of the stick. But we have to remember that other countries are also doing this. Iran's Quds force, they armed all these proxy militias

in the Middle East. And there was blowback from that. Just like how the CIA has gone in armed groups in Syria and all over the world. And there's been blowback from it, right? There was blowback from Iran's attempt to go and destabilize Israel with the October 7th attacks. And they're facing blowback from that. I think the downsides of intervention in the Middle East will be what type of blowback is going to come from this. If Iran, let's say, were to fall and collapse into chaos and there was civil war, that could be very bad.

That could not be an American interests. So I think that's one of the big risks. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I guess you just kind of have to like see, you know, it just seems like a big gamble. It's one of those things where like if it pays off really well, then it's like, oh, wow, this administration is genius. And if it blows up and it's like, oh, this is literally the dumbest move you could have ever done. Absolutely. And that's why I would say from whether they're thinking is right or wrong, they're thinking is that this is, they don't have a choice. They have to do this and they have to do this now during this window of opportunity when Iran is its weakest, weakest to try to topple. it so they don't they just take that off the board they don't have to worry about it anymore don't have to get tied up in the middle east i mean syria fell then as well fell and if and if iran were to fall or be enough of a of a rump state chaotic mess that it can't coordinate an attack that's what america is hoping for right from the american perspective yeah if we put in like a pliable U.S. friendly leader in position.

That's great. But also if there's just chaos and bloodshed, we don't care. Like that is what the American sort of empire is thinking. That makes sense. What has blown my mind is how we've gone over the last 10 years. I remember when I grew up, we pretended to have like morals. We pretended to be ethical. We're going to go into Iraq and we're,

and maybe to so much of a fault that it like tied us down in these forever wars because we were so fixated on this idea that we were better than everybody and that we weren't there for oil. It was like, you ever just, you're so wrong about something, you're like, you triple down on it? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do that all the time. I think that's what we were like, we're not assholes. Look, we're going to rebuild it.

We're going to help them. No, just say like we took Maduro for his oil. Right. We did it for the money. We want the oil. and we're going to take it and it's ours now. And also like, fuck you. That, to me, blows my mind that only in, you know, the last 10, 15 years we've got,

we are now just saying the quiet part out loud. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, from the, like, there might be people listening this that are a little bit younger and they might not remember like 2002, 2003. There was this entire media push that was basically saying, hey, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. We have a global war on tail. and we need to liberate the Iraqi people.

It was like a three-tiered thing. It's like we need to stop terrorism, help these people, and get rid of these nukes. And it was like a great sort of like hearts and minds mission. Like this was beautiful. And we go in there. And after, you know, five years or whatever, it's like, well, we can't leave because the Iraqis aren't free. And we didn't find the weapons of mass destruction because they weren't on.

And there's still terrorism. So we need to be here. And so we get bogged down because of the ideology. Whereas if we just said to everyone like, hey, we got to go in for, you know, for some oil and for some regime change. But the difference is that we had to have a congressional vote. With these, we're not doing a congressional vote. You know, I actually, I'm curious if it's the congressional vote as much as have cultural, has culture just shifted to the point now because of, because of Twitter and because of social media, that people are tired of this sort of, I don't know what you would call it. all that just like just bolt, you know, we're maybe more media savvy.

Right. We can, we, we, we know when we're getting fed a line of bullshit. We've lost our. You could not say that today. Yeah. You could not say like, it's, we're going into Venezuela and taking Maduro because he, he's against LGBTQ. Like, everyone would be like, shut the, shut up.

No. Yeah. You know, we're going in there for the oil. And that, I think it resonates with, especially the people that are even younger than me, maybe 10 years younger, I think that that, you hear that and you can at least respect that, all right, at least their talent, that's the truth. Yeah. Yeah, we've lost our youthful innocence. I think part of it probably has to do with some of that type of language and rhetoric was true in like the Cold War, maybe or more, maybe it was more, at least effective speaking that way.

And also in World War II, it was a very easy narrative of we're the good guys and we're fighting against evil. So we try to take that same narrative of like, we're the good guys and we're fighting against the evil to the Iraq war. And it feels really out of place suddenly. Yeah. Feels weird. It doesn't fit. I think media really blew it up. Like I think the fact that we have social media that is relatively, you know, free and, you know, non-state sponsored that you just get competing narratives and people are a little bit less, you know, less easily bullshitted.

And we're able to, you have, you know, if you talk. to a 20-year-old kid about how they feel about the American Empire, they have a pretty, like, real politic approach where they're like, yeah, you know, we, you know, topple some regimes, but, like, my life is better here, and, you know, it's good, but it's also bad. And, like, it's kind of a sort of a real, like, just astute, kind of honest look at the empire, whereas I think in previous generations, there was the sales pitch because media was easier to control. It's like, no, we are the most, you know, moral empire, not even an empire. We're just a very moral country.

We're the good guys. We are the, you know, the monopolar sort of, you know, champions of democracy around the world. And that, I think, is just done. And I think the guys at the top were like, hey, the jig is up. The jig is up. Like, we just got to be honest with these people or else they're going to continue to rebel. Yeah. Yeah, the jig was definitely up.

And it's funny because when I was younger in Iraq and I'm like, we're not an empire. We talk. But now I'm like, we're totally. We're an empire. And we're playing the Empire game. And I think right now what we're seeing is we're trying, we're no longer, you know, minsing words about it. We're no, we're now actually trying to play the Empire game. And we're trying to play it to win because the stakes now are China has become so powerful and so big that if we don't play the Empire game and we're not honest about how we're playing it, we'll lose it.

We'll lose it to China. And I think one of the ways you were talking about how. How could this blow up? Another way it could blow up is that this in some way benefits and strengthens China, North Korea, and Russia, that these interventions in some way end up benefiting them. And maybe the oil prices rise, they stay high, and that means far more revenue for Russia, for instance, and their ability to wage war in Europe. That could be a knockoff effect that we don't, that we're not considering.

Maybe these interventions that we're doing right now, in some way, very much. benefit Russia and China. That's something that I could see happening and really that would be a no good day. Right. I mean, that's my two biggest concerns is that one, the power vacuum that's created in Iran just gets filled by something worse and either directly worse or indirectly worse, like, you know, some type of oppressive dictator that's friendly with America that just like, you know, kills the people of Iran and like oppress them at an even higher rate. And America doesn't really care because we're getting what we want from it, I would see that as a, you know, a general, you know, uncalculated side effect to humanity. I'm sure it helps America, but it's just bad

for people of Earth. So I'm like, that would be bad. If there's a civil war that results in, you know, millions of people dying, that would also be bad, even if it's in America's interest, of course. And if there's some type of, like, way more radical dictator that takes over, that isn't friendly with America and just takes that power vacuum and is even worse, then that's obviously worse. So I'm a little bit concerned with that. And then additionally, with Iran kind of moved off the table, you have Russia as a massive, you know, energy producer and China, a country that needs energy.

And Iran now pulled off the map. And Russia becoming increasingly more energy, you know, independent, as well as being sanctioned across the board, they really only have one place to put their oil. And China has only one place to really buy it from. So now that pairing becomes so strong that we've created a super monster by like this happens with cartels in Mexico, right? Like you take out one cartel and the other cartels just get stronger. So instead of having like 50 small cartels that are kind of individually pretty weak by taking them out one by one, one cartel just takes over the whole thing and becomes so powerful that it becomes a real formidable threat. And that power vacuum creates actually a bigger issue.

And yeah, that would be my probably the, I think the biggest concern that I don't know why the calculation is going the way it is. One of the ways that we won the last Cold War, if we assume we're sort of in another one, one of the ways we won it was by sort of allying with China against the Soviet Union. During the 1980s and 90s, we became very close with China and we worked against the Soviets. And that was one of the ways that we were able to beat and end up outlasting the Soviet Union. And so you're right, are we creating this unholy alliance between Russia and China and North Korea that is going to be sort of the mirror image of how we won the Cold War is now we're setting herself up to lose? Because people would argue we should be doing everything we can to ally with Russia right now against China.

and I understand that perspective. So yeah, like are there going to be second and third order effects that are going to really bite us in the ass in the future? I'm concerned about that as well. When you talk about taking Iran off the table, let's say, I think what we're seeing right now is the United States also trying to take the cartels off the table. because just recently we saw the U.S. is putting an enormous pressure on Mexico to take care of that problem. And you could say it's because of fentanyl and fattenol has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans terrible. I think it's a little bit more than just drugs. I think it's a strategic concern at this point because the U.S., we don't really do anything until a problem becomes a strategic level problem.

And, okay, you talk about we need to decouple from China right now. How do we do that? We need to shore up our interior supply chain, our interior supply lines, which is between Canada, United States, and Mexico, where our greatest allies and trade partners are. And you can't re-industrialize and rebuild our industrial base, these things that we feel like we need to do to decouple from the just even, just the possibility of war with China, you need to have your shit on lock at home. You cannot fight China if you've got a armed insurgency on your southern border who takes a cut of 15% of everything that goes across the border.

All these car parts that are going from us, you know, between us and Mexico. If you've everything, everything, they skimmed 15% off the top. And you cannot let that shit go on. You cannot abide that if you're trying to shore up your interior supplies. If you're trying to decouple and not be reliant on China in the event, even in the event that there were war. Right. So you need a Mexico to be shored up. You need to be able to produce everything that you need militarily within our nation and the allied nations.

That includes rare earths. That to me seems like the obvious reason why Greenland is such a, you know, enticing prospect because it has. a ton of rare earth deposits. Is that the single biggest reason why you think Greenland is within Trump's sites? Greenland,

I think it was a big mistake to the rhetoric that they were using about we need to take it. We already have a military base there. Greenland has always been very strategically important to the United States. I don't know what we,

you know, we basically already have carte blanche in Greenland and what we want to do. So I don't, I don't fully see what the whole push was to get even more from it other than maybe to try to get Europe to capitulate in some way and show bend the knee to our demands. I don't get it. It seems like at this point that they've worked out an agreement that they're happy with. Greenland, to me, has never been as big of a concern just because it's already in our sphere, you know, it's already on lock, essentially. but the the the the it's important for missile defense it's important for the the sea lines of

communication that are opening up through the Arctic as the as the some of the ice melts there it's it's going to be an even more important transit route through there so I understand it's it's strategic importance um I don't think it it needs to be a part of the US in order for us to to to have what we need there yeah that makes sense yeah that's that's kind of the way I felt about it. I was like, I can't imagine that America is not just doing whatever they want with Greenland. You know what I mean?

Like, shout out to Denmark, but like America's just going to call up Denmark and be like, hey, we need some more. And okay, we have to pay them a fee. Like,

sure. What is money? Like, it'll just give it to them. Like, to me, it just seemed like, it's,

my assessment would probably be like Trump just being like, oh, just take it. Like him just kind of being like, it would be sick to like add some more land for like my legacy. And we get it even cheaper. So sure. Like,

That's probably like what I would assume, but again, I don't know. I agree. I feel like it was a little bit of that. And they floated some different ideas. Like, I think they were at one point ready to give every citizen like 100 grand or something like that. And they were kind of just floating idea. Like, hey, would you guys take this? And they were still, they're saying, no.

We don't want that. I would have taken it. It's kind of like, yeah, it's basically just become like a Mr. B's video. Yeah. It's like, last one to leave Greenland gets a million dollars. Whoa, that's pretty cool. So I guess looking at the Iran conflict in a vacuum, it looks a little bit different than when you look at the sort of grander picture of what Trump and his administration has sort of been doing geopolitically. Because I guess this, I guess, would fall into the greater pattern of like Trump's sort of geopolitical kind of play.

Like this doesn't feel as, it doesn't feel as random when now looking in retrospect at everything else he's done. Yeah, I think it fits into a bigger play and whether or not it works out and goes the way that they wanted to. I think that that's well up for debate and we won't know for a while. I think guys like Soleimini was playing his own bigger picture. This guy was going around setting up all those proxy networks for Iran. And just like how it's funny because a lot of the people in Iran, there's a specific chant that they say. I can't remember it now, but it's basically like stop funding foreign wars. Right.

Something that you would think you would hear here. Right. But the people in Iran are tired of their money being spent on Hamas and Hezbollah. You know, like they're done with that shit just as much as I think a lot of Americans are. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Protesters within Iran have increasingly used the chance such as not for Gaza, not for Lebanon. I give my life for Iran to criticize the Islamic Republic's funding.

oxy wars in the region. So you have like an Iran-first movement. Yeah, that's exactly how to describe it. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's really interesting. I'm curious if you have any perspective on this because it's hard to really get to read because every Persian or Iranian I talk to in America obviously left. And many of them left around the time of the revolution because they didn't like the regime. So all the people that I meet in America are very pro toppling the regime. And they're like, this is great. This is amazing. I love Donald Trump for getting rid of this guy. This is so good. But then you have people in the country, and it's harder to get a read about what they actually feel.

So if you had to guess, do you feel like the people in the regime are happy that it's toppled? Are they sort of, you know, cautiously optimistic waiting to see what takes its place? Or are they mad because they love the Iatola? If you're talking about people in the regime, they are probably upset because they benefit from that power structure. I'm talking about the citizens. The citizens, my last time I checked was it's something like 20% are hard-longed. supporters of the theocracy. And I think 80% of the population, and we could double check these numbers, but I think 80% of

people want the government to be, you know, switched. Because imagine how much they would benefit. If you look at pre-Iran, their GDP was much higher. They were doing much better. If a pro-Western leader were put into power there, those sanctions go away. they become 10 times more wealthy of a country, is that messed up, that they have to ally with the United States in order for that to happen? That's messed up.

And that's one of the ways that the regime stays in power is they point out that that's messed up, that American influence, that America basically controls everything. Here's what I'll say. What we're witnessing right now and what we've been witnessing and why the world feels so dangerous and crazy in the past 10 years is because the world order is falling apart. And there's the haves and the have-nots. There's the people who benefit from the world order, America, and our allies, we benefit from it. We get to sort of do whatever the fuck we want.

And we can, if you do something we don't like, we'll sanction you to the point where you can't afford medicine. Like, we will, horrible things will do. And we'll get our way. So, of course, we want the world order to stay the same. We don't want Russia to invade Ukraine and to challenge our authority, which would then we can, we'd just like make the dollar not the reserve currency. We, we, we, we, we, a hundred percent want the world order to stay the same. We want the institutions that govern much of the world, like the UN and that have, these institutions have dictated life since the end of World War II. we want to keep that the same and we'll do anything to keep it the same and we're even willing to

spend enormous treasure on keeping it the same because it benefits us so much we will protect the waterways and the sea lines of communication we'll spend billions on that while china sits back and benefits from it because we benefit so much from the world order but there's these other countries who do not benefit from them from it and they feel like it's so unfair that they're willing to at this is their moment they feel to break the world order and to make a new one that's more beneficial for them that's what i think russia was trying to do in ukraine i think that's why china wants to invade Taiwan and then move from there because they feel like they're surrounded by us and contained by us and that their prosperity is there's basically like a governor pin on

There's that we are keeping them down. That's how they feel. That's what I think on a bigger picture is happening right now. Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it also explains why these heads are being taken out. So Maduro, for example, seems unrelated to Iran, but it fits in a bigger picture of geopolitical strategy that if you're able to take out Maduro, all of a sudden you shore up this,

you know, same hemispheric threat, this, you know, this hostile Venezuelan leader that ostensibly wants America to suffer and is allied with Russia. I mean, is that a fair, it's kind of like broad strokes assessment? That's one of Russia's client states is now gone. And what we're doing there in the Caribbean is taking over all those shadow oil tankers, the shadow fleet that funds Russia's war, funds Russia. It's all, what we're seeing is this maximum pressure against the other block, the adversaries, the ones that feel like they're getting the short end of the stick. We are now

putting maximum pressure on them. Now it seems like in Venezuela, now Maduro's VP basically just takes over. Nancy or Darcy Rodriguez, I think. Yes. So that to me just seems like, all right, like the number two just took over and it's going to be the same thing. No, no, she's being compliant. She's working with the United States. And that's all, that's the thing what I mean about throwing out this idea of like we need to replace Maduro with, with like, a really super sweet like Mr. Rogers type. No, we don't give a shit who's there as long as they do business with us. As long as they agree to not have Russian and Chinese influence there, as long as they

open up their oil industry to American investment. That's all we care about. And that's what Rodriguez is doing. Right. So this, I guess, is the strategy. You have this insane show of force. You pull up to Venezuela. You capture their leader in the span of an evening.

put him on a plane and now he's going to face a trial in America. And then the VP is like, all right, well, I'll take over. And then you look at him and go, all right, you saw what just happened, right? Well, on top of that, people would, so I think that there's a good argument that happened that way. If you want to get conspiratorial, some people think that she was in on it, that she was one of the people that was like, let's give this guy up. We'll work with you, Americans. And that's part of the reason why we saw not limited resistance. And most of the resistance was from a very hardline Cuban intelligence agents that fired on us at the base and a couple of other units that fired on us.

But largely, and we have incredible military capabilities. I just, I do think that there is an argument to be made that maybe some forces were told to stand down. And it's possible you could make the argument that Rodriguez, it was a coup in a way. Interesting. And she had the most to gain, it seems like. Which, again, isn't inherently, you know, an indicator of guilt, but it does, you know, it does point a finger or two. Yep. And it was one of the things that we looked at before we did the Iran strikes. We went in and we were like, is there anyone that's going to be similar? That's going to be someone that can take power inside of Iran and we'll do business with us.

And what do you think? From what I've heard they're saying that they killed a lot of the people that they were looking at, that the strikes were more effective. than they thought they were, and they killed a bunch of the people that they were going to try to reach out to. Right. Like, I saw, like, a former, like, prime minister or something like that that hasn't been in power for, you know, a decade or something, was also killed. And do you think that was, like, a casualty and, like, collateral with the strikes, or do you think that was targeted where it's like, oh, this guy's not going to be friendly and he has technically a claim to the throne, so we got to get him out to. I think it was collateral. I think that they didn't expect the decapitation strike to cut that much of the hands. head off, but I don't think they are losing sleep over it. They're going to look for someone

else to do business with. The big billion dollar question is, will they find somebody? Do you think, I mean, who would you guess? Do you think they'll put Pahlavi back in? So that's the thing. I think there was a figure that was similar to Pallavi in Venezuela, you might recall. I forget her name now, but like she was the rightful one that won the election in Venezuela. Right. And she won the Peace Prize. Yes, right.

And everyone thought, like, they'll put her in power because she's very pro-U-S. And she'll do it. But there's a problem of legitimacy. Don't want it to, first, it just wouldn't work organically. People would think they'd be like, this is a puppet government. This is just a stooge for America. You can't lead a country, can't have the political will of the people if you look like you're just an installed leader.

It becomes a problem. We saw it in Iraq, for instance. I mean, this has existed in every society throughout history. Yeah. Like, you take out a guy and it's like, well, who technically has the divine right? Like, who has God anointed to take over the throne? Going all the way back to ancient Egypt. Like, we need the person that is the actual correct heir.

And it's like a weird sort of internal human sort of judgment about where power is supposed to lie. And this is another great example. where it's like, all right, this girl technically won, but if our guy gets kidnapped and then America puts this woman in, it's not really fair. This is not what's supposed to happen.

So we'll put the person that has a secession. We have an innate understanding, right? Just as humans, we have an innate understanding of that. That's not fair. That's not credible. Yeah. You know, that doesn't pass the smell test. Yeah.

But Rodriguez, she comes into power. All right, that's a straight line of continuation. So I think that was one of the, the things that was maybe one of the only lessons we might have learned from the global war on terror was like you actually can't force it right yeah you put stephen johnson in charge of uh you know venezuela to venusuel who the hell is this guy yeah if rubio is suddenly down there tomorrow in charge of venezuela it's it's just not going to work right um and the same is true for iran it might be somebody that and syria for instance syria is run by somebody who when i was over in iraq

he was in a prison for trying to kill us. But now he's meeting with General Petraeus in Washington, D.C. And it's like it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, there are no enemies. There are, there's no permanent allies. There are only interests. Right. I think there's maybe the Kissinger quote, but that, that's the long and short of it. Right.

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They're obviously we're not 100% aligned, but he is way more playing ball than Assad was. And one of the big things that still needs to be worked out in the whole region is the Kurdish population and what happens with them and what they get or don't get. That's still in flux and they're trying to resolve that. But this guy was shooting at us, trying to kill us. And now he's coming to Washington, D.C., and meeting with us and we're talking. And we're pulling our troops out of Syria now. We might just have some very small contingent inside the actual capital of Damascus. And so it's a totally different story.

The whole playing field is totally different now from just a few years ago. I joke that like this is the neocons wet dream like Dick Cheney would be you know overjoyed if he saw that Syria, Iran and that these were all toppling and Iraq and it's all seeming to go in American interests. Yeah, yeah. They pulled it off. It's like borderline like oh, well, they did ultimately get what they want through all these different administrations, left and right, whatever, they ultimately achieved the foreign policy goal of alignment with America. Yeah, it's an interesting question. I guess it really comes down to like, do you believe in, I guess it is in a way like, yeah, this is the American interest if it works. If it doesn't work,

then obviously it's a nightmare. But you could make a very legitimate argument. Like, yeah, all of these things are done for the American interest in that you don't need to have a whole story or a whole playbook. You just need to go in with a show of force, topple the regime, and tell the next person that takes over to say, hey, you saw what happened, play, play ball. Like, you're going to do what we want. It's kind of like some mafia shit. It is. Yeah, it's very, it's if I think the only way it makes sense is if you think there's going to be war between the U.S. and China or the possibility of it. If that's what they're shoring up against, then it tracks. otherwise it's very risky and it could blow up for many years our past interventions did blow up

so yeah they took the long road to get where they're trying to go and we don't know if they'll get there what is the current status of afghanistan as far as this sort of chessboard because it seems like taliban's taken over that seems like an issue for us and that obviously everything that has happened there historically has been like you know a quagmire but the current standing of the government that's in power. Does that pose a threat to us in the event that a conflict with China arises? No, the big thing that they were the strategic aspect of Afghanistan was Bogram Air Base. I would argue that there's about maybe like 10, 12 really super strategic airbases around the world that are lynchpins and control a lot of waterways that you can project power from these airbases. Bagram is one of them because it's about, I forget, it's like, Trump was talking about this, like 500 miles from where China's nuclear silos are and their nuclear weapons production is from Bagram Air Base, very accessible.

But outside of that airbase and being able to use it or not, the Taliban, I don't see them being much of a threat or a problem. Hmm. That's so interesting. So we have these, this attack on Iran. They immediately start attacking American proxies and bases in these proxies in Dubai is kind of the most infamous one. We saw footage of, you know, like what seems like residential parts of Dubai getting struck. I think Saudi Arabia bases there also got struck. I think three U.S. service members were killed thus far. That number might have changed. So this is kind of Iran's horizontal escalation where, okay, you attack us, now we're going to respond in kind, basically to put pressure on the proxies to get you guys to stop. Is that more or less what's happening? If I'm Iran, what I try to do is I try to destabilize thing. Now it's at four confirmed U.S. service members have been killed and five injured as far as I know. And I think about a little over 500 Iranians have been killed in the war so far. And if I'm Iran, what I want to do is I'm aiming at all of the international airports in the region because those are what will cause the greatest economic problem.

And this is what they're doing. They're targeting luxury hotels. They're targeting international airports. These are things that will shut down foreign investment in these countries. and make it more risky to invest in these countries and make it their goal is put so much, make it so difficult to align with the United States that you just kind of go, oh, I'm out. I'm out. Like, this is going to be too much of a hit economically if this keeps happening. So they're shutting, they say that they've shut down the straight of Hormuz, which is where, believe, 20% of the

world's entire oil comes through from Saudi Arabia, Iran. And, I mean, really, it was going to be shut down anyway because there's a regional war going on. Like, who's going to be trying to go through there when there's missiles going everywhere? Yeah. But that's shut down. That's why you see the oil market spike. So Iran, you notice they haven't shot down any U.S. fighter jets, and that might change tomorrow. Maybe they do. But they don't have the capability. They have no air force. So they can't fight back by attacking conventional air power. But what they can do is, you know, is that they can't fight back. is an asymmetric battle, which is put pressure economically on all these Arab states in the region

to the point where everybody wants, they just beg for a ceasefire, basically. And then the regime stays in power and they're able to claim a victory. They get what they want. That makes a lot of sense. So yeah, if Iran is basically able to cause so much panic in the neighborhood, which is ultimately why Saudi and UAE,

you know, one of the main reasons they want the regime to be changed in the first place is that they're causing so much, you know, so many issues and funding so much local terror region that they're like hey these guys are causing a problem for us we're trying to make money we're trying to get foreign investment and this radical regime is making that difficult in our neighborhood so can you guys get rid of them and in the attempt to get rid of them if they make it so hot on the block all of a sudden UAE is going to be like hey Trump just chill can we just do this in like six months because we're going to bleed out exactly yeah exactly but america must have predicted this

like the UAE must have known that hey in the event this happens they're coming for us. Right before I got here, I think the news broke that Iran sent ballistic missiles at the oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. And so that's what we're talking about here. They're trying to put that squeeze on them. And like you said, yeah, that's their fundamental problem, which is that you got the Houthis who have been firing missiles at Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure for years now. And they would argue, Saudi Arabia would argue, that the theocracy in Iran is not a rational player entirely. That, yeah, they're rational.

They're not like, they're going to nuke Israel tomorrow for religious purposes. But that a lot of their funding of these proxies and their fight is religiously motivated and not necessarily a pragmatic. This is not, hey, let's do business and get rich in the Middle East with our oil. It's we hate, let's say, we hate Jews. So we're going to arm these proxy groups to fight them. Now, I will say Iran's argument would be that they are rational and that they hate the way the Palestinian people are being treated. And that's why they're arming those groups to protect the Palestinian people.

So those are sort of the two arguments there. Iran would probably say Israel is an illegitimate state that America put them there because they want to have control in the region, that this is actually really just American influence in the region, meddling with our affairs. and they're always doing this to us. And if we don't get rid of Israel, then America's always going to have a foothold and we're never going to really be autonomous. Which is why they call themselves the axis of resistance. They see everything is modeled around.

We're resisting. We're resisting the greatest power in the world who, who, how do you say it? They are taking advantage of their position of power and that they're really exploiting and abusing. Yeah. Right. That would be their perspective.

Right. Yeah, I mean, again, like, I think it's helpful to think and, like, really try to steal man the other side because I think it gives a more full picture to how these games are played and what the calculations are. It's really, it's too easy to just say, well, they're a terrorist regime and they're, you know, they're just all motivated entirely. They're animated by these crazy religious Islamic beliefs. There might be a part of that, yeah.

but also they, I think, legitimately feel like America is, you know, bullying them and trying to get them to do whatever we want. And they're going to stand up to that. Right. So it's it's too easy to, I wish we could get away with it by just saying like they're the, they're evil, they're the bad guys. But let's be real here. Like, we're in a competition. And if you're in a competition, I say you should play to win it. Right.

And I guess this is ultimately where like the, you know, foreign policy perspective comes in, where it's like, what should we do really comes down to like kind of what can we do. And like if you look at Saddam with the bath party, it's the same exact thing. Like the entire bath party, the sort of like pan Arab alliance came out of a time where all these Arab states, Iraq namely was like America is just absolutely pillaging us. Like they're just meddling with all of our stuff. They're taking all of our oil. Like what they're doing is completely unfil. to us as a nation, to us as Arabs, to us as Muslims. Like, we need to get rid of this foreign influence.

And it was extremely popular. And so people rallied around and Saddam got a ton of power and was able to control this massive country under this pretense. And I'll bet if you were Iraqi in the 80s, you'd probably be like, he's got a good point. Like, he absolutely, da-da-da, like, this makes a lot of sense. And if you're American, then obviously you're like, oh, these guys are crazy. What's going on? They're trying to kill us.

They hate us because we're free. and as an American you basically have to choose like do we want to do what's best for America to win the game and that means potentially crushing anyone that goes against us or do we want to like play the right fair and moral way which is like creating global peace all the boats rise and everyone plays nice and I mean maybe I'm being overly simplistic but no it's 100 100% right like he wouldn't have come to if it if it wasn't partly true that America was doing that he wouldn't have gotten that power because I think underneath it all, there has to be some truth to it. And he had truth to it. And you're asking a very important question, which is like, should we be altruistic and be ethical or should we just do what's right for us? And the real mind fuck is at the end of the day, sometimes doing awful evil things can actually forego worse things.

So the obvious example is dropping the nuke on Japan. Did that save a million Japanese lives in the future because we were going to invade Japan anyway? It's philosophical questions like that that are hard to parse out.

Here's what I'll say about how Iran made their big play, which was with October 7th, what I think they were hoping would happen from that was that Israel would essentially fall because they were hoping to open up a five front war. They thought that by launching October 7th, it would then, then Hezbollah would also fight Israel and that the Hamas would fight them and maybe proxy groups from other countries would put pressure and Egypt would go

against Israel and and they be, Israel be fighting a five front war and they would be annihilated or so messed up by it that no one would want to invest in Israel and no one would want to to live in Israel because they depend on that stuff so much. So that was their big play and it didn't play out like they were hoping. And that's the danger of trying to make a big strategic play like that. I think it backfired and Israel has now wiped those those groups out. And so my point with that is that if we're not playing to win someone else will,

and then at the end of the day, is it better that America is the top dog on top making the rule, the unfair rules, or would we want China be on top making the unfair rules? And what would that world look like? that that ultimately is the question to me, I think. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting political question because, like, my knee jerk is like, hey, I want the president to go through Congress.

I want the, you know, people and the government to vote on behalf of what the American people want and to ultimately do the bidding of the people and that we don't need to be meddling in all these foreign wars and doing all this, you know, intervention that eventually blows up in our face. We allocate all this money when we have real problems at home.

and da-da-da-da-da. Like, that's my feeling. And then, you know, I'm like, I would hope that that would work, but I don't know if we've really ever seen that. Like America, since World War II has never just, like, stayed at home and worked on our problems. We've always been in some other type of, you know, military theater. So it's difficult to say if that's the best thing. That's my knee-jerk. That's, like, what emotionally I would want. I think as we get closer and closer to possible conflict with China, we'll see our government become more and more authoritarian in a way and more and more dictatorship in a way, I would think, because I think it's going to be more and more difficult to compete with them.

Because China, they don't have to go through, we don't have to vote on anything with Congress. If they want to invade Taiwan, they'll do it. Right. Because Xi Jinping says to do it. So how do you compete with a power that has that ultimate say all the time? I mean, you see he's purged all of his generals recently. to have complete control. You see, we're doing something similar.

We've, you could say, purged a bunch of our generals. We've gotten rid of a lot, even from like lower leadership on up, we've gotten rid of a bunch of military leadership that didn't agree with this vision of the future that the new administration has. I think we're seeing this in a lot of countries where they're sort of like in Russia, they got rid of a bunch of leadership right before 2014, right, when they went into, to Ukraine, this is what countries are doing. They're like, if you're not on board with what we're doing here, goodbye. Right.

Yeah, there's no, like, let's get a second opinion and talk this out. It's like what I say goes, and we got to move fast and we got to be absolute because the other guys are doing the same thing. It's an interesting paradigm. World War II is similar. Like, how FDR was in power for like 130 years in World War II? Like, you know, we became almost like a dictatorship. And we were able to step back from it and undo a lot of that.

But like during these type of times, I think, of global power competition, it trends that way. Yeah. I wonder if Trump tries to use this to get a third term. Well, that is not out of the question. I wouldn't be beyond him, I don't think, and I don't think it would be that surprising if it happened. Right. Yeah, it's such a tricky thing in your brain because, like, there's what you think should happen, but then there's the real politic.

You know what I mean? Like, in my mind, I'm like, yeah, everyone, like animals shouldn't die. We should all be vegan. But then I'm like, well, people need to eat food. You know what I mean? It's like this sort of like these competing ideas that exist in your brain where you're like, there is something that is of like a higher moral standard that I can submit is probably the right thing. But then there's the functional reality of living in a world with scarce resources that everyone wants.

that you have to be ruthless. I truly, on a personal basis, I don't know. I don't know what the answer should be. I don't envy politicians, yeah, because I don't know, I don't know either. It's a paradox a lot of times. Oh, this is a... Yeah, yeah, this is a link that Chrysososch has pulled up. He says, Epstein suggested that if Trump felt cornered, he might bomb Iran to spark a crisis and boost his popularity.

Now, these emails came from... 2018. I'm curious if you've seen these before. No, I haven't. So assuming these are legitimate, it says here that a total diversion, but the right is on to him, everyone here surprised and happy about it. Nobody quite understand why he did it, including myself, completely opposite of what I was told in the White House.

What is he up to spoke with New Syria, UN envoy, who used to work for me, Russians very good and kind. And it goes on to say, everyone here is surprised. Oh, no, keep going down. You guys need to understand he is psychotic and would not blink twice in encouraging an attack on us so he can leap to the country's defense mindset. If I go down, I'm taking everyone with. Interesting. Cornering a rat, never a good idea.

And that seems like it came from Epstein himself, cornering a rat, never a good idea. One of the things I don't understand about the idea of getting into a war with Iran being popular for any president, I maybe his, maybe his, approval ratings have gone up, I would assume that they have not. Right. I don't think it's not popular. It's not popular. Yeah.

No, I think it's something like 80% of Americans don't want to be at war with Iran. It's very unpopular. And I can understand why. We're tired of wars in the Middle East. 2018, when Epstein's writing this, it might have been a different

proposition. It might have been different then, and maybe it would have been more popular. Epstein and these files I'm sure you've been tracking them. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely wild.

Yeah. And definitely lays credence to the idea that there was a blackmail operation, you know, and it certainly gave a bunch of fuel to people who are like, we're doing all this because of Israel. Right. You know, because it, uh, it didn't help that at all. Yeah. What did you see from the email releases that indicated that potentially Epstein is intelligence, or anything relating to this current conflict account we're seeing now?

He's a new type of intelligence that I didn't know about before this. He wasn't privy to. Like, he's not a agent. He's not an officer of intelligence. He's this super assess. He's a super fixer. He's 100%. It's not even a question anymore if he was involved in intelligence.

Like, we know he was involved in intelligence. The question is, for who's best? benefit, like, was he work, he wasn't working for them. But I think he, here's what I think the evidence shows is that he was running a blackmail operation. I think partly so that it would insulate him from any consequences of what he was doing. He's, we know, you know, he's, he wants to be able to get away with not just the stuff he's doing with underage girls, but also all of his illicit dealings, all of his illegal. financial work that he's involved in. And by being a value to intelligence services, you protect yourself.

And this isn't a conspiracy theory. I like to stick to just like what we know. We know that in the past, people who have ties to the CIA and to Mossad, they get away with everything. Whitey Bulger, for instance, was an FBI asset. And he, yeah, we didn't prosecute him. I think, I think Epstein was a different tier. a different level of that. But it's why he, just look at the evidence. It's why he got away with what he got

away with for so long. He was of, of great benefit to the intelligence agencies. We know he was involved in arms deals with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, and, and with Israel. So it, people's minds can go from there and you go into conspiratorial land from there. But that was my read on it, was that he was a super intelligence asset for not just, we're learning that not just one agency, but multiple intelligence agencies. And I think he's an emerging factor that came out of after World War II, we needed ways to do things in the shadows. Like, we needed ways to move money around to arm proxy groups in in a deniable way. Before that, we would just, if we wanted to arm a group, we'd do it out in the open. In World War II, you just send land lease. You send the money and

assets to Soviet Union, you don't got to hide it. But once there was nuclear weapons and once you had to fund proxy wars by saying, like, oh, no, we're not arming the fighters in Afghanistan stand against the Soviets, you need these murky, completely without morals, people like Epstein who move that money around. You need deniability. Yes. If you're funding a rebel group against the USSR, Russia will be like, oh, you're fighting us. Now it's a war.

The Cold War's off and we're going to nuke you. So now we need a gray zone operator to give money to, to then give the money, you know, to this rebel group. And then if Russia finds out, we'll be like, oh, we can't believe this guy did this. This guy is a rogue American. We got to get rid of them. And then they cut them loose and that's what it is. And for incurring that type of risk, these people get very wealthy.

Yes. And this is the covert world of arm stealing. Yes. Is that they sort of act as like these sort of middlemen between America and our budget and these proxy groups that we want to fund. And it seems like, I mean, Epstein was connected. I mean, his relationship with Adnan Khashoggi, a notorious arms dealer would at least lend some type of credence to this. And Adnan Khashoggi, as we know, was involved in the Iran-Contra. situation, basically arming the Contras in Nicaragua through this deal with giving weapons to Iran

and we're able to basically go around like, what is it, the Bowles Act that said, like, we couldn't fund these groups in Central America. Yeah. So when you do things in the shadows like that, then you got to, what happens in the darkness is almost worse than we could have imagined. Right. It creates a space for evils that we were like, that's not even possible. It makes a island where the most unimaginable, horrible things can happen because governments needed this dark shadowy thing.

So he emerged out of that, out of that necessity. And you can go back as far as Douglas Lease, if you're familiar with. It was like his mentor who he was a well-known British arms dealer. And he got connected with Epstein through Epstein's. girlfriend at the time right after he left Bear Stearns in New York City meets the lease family. And Douglas Lease is the first one that teaches him how to hide money from these arms deals, how to set up offshore accounts. And the first arms deal that he was involved in was the Al Yamama arms deal with Saudi Arabia,

which was the biggest arms deal between Britain and Saudi Arabia in history. It's still, I think, going on or just ended recently. like $40 billion worth of fighter jets from Britain to Saudi Arabia. And Epstein's passport, he had a fake or he had a, he had a second passport under a different name that it appears like the time stamps that it was used lines up with deals from that arms deal. And the reason he, they needed someone like him was because for that arms deal to go through, there needed to be all. these bribes and things that are culturally a norm with the Saudi Arabian royal family. So Epstein helps with that. And then after that, yeah, he gets linked up to Khashoggi through Douglas Lees.

And it's awful, but I think he's a product of the Cold War. He's a product of these things needing to be done off the books. And anytime you have stuff done off the books, there's corruption and criminality and and underage girls and black market, honey pot, blackmail schemes. Right. Yeah. It's an interesting observation because it makes sense to everyone.

People that are willing to tolerate this amount of risk and willing to deal in this dirty of a world probably have terrible predilections. They're probably bad people. Like, if you're going to basically offer someone money to, like, be a hitman, for example, like let's say you wanted to kill someone, you know, you hired a hitman. Odds are that guy also does other terrible things. You're not going to get a perfectly upstanding citizen that pays his taxes all the time that's also willing to go kill someone for 20 grand.

It's like you're some weird shit. Yeah, you're going to get a weird dude. And the odds of him having like some type of weird sexual behavior, having some type of other nefarious criminal element being into drugs. Yeah, probably. Because people that operate in these shadows are, they have a, different assessment of risk and they behave in weird ways. And no morality.

No morality, no, nothing boxing them in and their behaviors. And so here's what I'll say about how he ended was I think that anytime, a lot of times, anytime these assets outlive their usefulness, what happens to them? Yeah, they go. They get God. Yeah. They go. And a lot of times they fall off a yacht.

Yeah. Or they fall on a window. Yeah. Windows is a classic. Love the window. That's my favorite personally. I take that over poisoning. But like it just, we know that that happened.

That's not a conspiracy. Like, we know that that, you can give a dozen different examples of who that's happened to. And I think Epstein outlived his, because like, let's assume he was this Cold War thing that we needed during that time. I think we've moved into a different error now. And we no longer, things are not done in the shadows like that anymore. Yeah. Like when we're arming Ukraine against Russia, how do we do it? We do it out in the open.

We send that the weapons, not through like some shadowy network. We send it through Poland, through the U.S. Army. And Russia has armed proxy groups against us in the Vietnam War. And they did it in a plausible, deniable way, too, in a dark way. Now when they arm groups against us, when our adversaries have proxy wars against us, it's out in the open. And I think the reason why it's out. out in the open. Something's changed since the Cold War, which is that social media, the internet, like,

it's all, you cannot hide it anymore. Satellite imagery, satellites change the game entirely. You can't hide moving weapon. We could never do what we did in Afghanistan where we armed the fighters in Africa, militia in Afghanistan against the Soviets. We just, we could not do that in a covert way today. We would do it overtly. Right.

And we wouldn't need a guy like Epstein today. Right. And you don't need guys like Epstein today. Digital surveillance. Right. So he outlived his usefulness. And he made the block way too hot. Like he got sloppy.

He became a liability. He became a massive liability. And yeah, he got jammed up. And the blackmail thing got way too out of hand. And they were like, yeah, we got to just get rid of him. And if you look at the day he got arrested, he dies like 33 days later or something like that. Like it was within the month, basically. Whether he killed.

or he's still alive in Israel today, like whatever the case may be, or he was killed in his jail cell. Yeah. To me, it doesn't matter. It's not the big question. It's just that, like, he's gone. They, they disappeared him.

Yeah, they don't care what happens to him. I think they probably killed him. I think they killed him. Or they gave him the means. Right. But it's almost not important. The bigger point is that he's, they arrested him.

And the only reason, arrested him in the first place is because he outlived his usefulness. And we don't need guys like that anymore today. Right. Yeah, I think that's an astute observation. And furthermore, I think when people say like, oh, Epstein was obviously Mossad and he was only Mossad and da-da-da-da-da, I think it's oversimplifying the point. Again, in my personal estimation, he was probably working with Mossad because he was kind of working with everyone. Like, he was working with CIA. He's probably working with MI6. He was just kind of like working with whoever wanted him because he's an arms dealer and was kind of doing whatever he could do. And if he's going to, he'll take money from

whomever. And that's the way it seems to me. And I think putting too heavy of an influence or too heavy of, I think, a focus of being like he was only massat, I think maybe misses it a little bit. And that there's a lot of people implicated in working with a reprehensible human being to achieve their, you know, great market means. Is that, what do you think of? Yeah. Yeah. I think that the the emails bear that out, which is that he had ties to Soviet intelligence, sorry, Russian intelligence. Right. He's messaging with FSB and emailing them being like, hey, what do you think of this? Right. And dealing with like a blackmail issue with the Russian. Right. There's a prostitute that's blackmail like some businessman. Like, what do we do about her? She lives here. Yeah. And they get a whole dossier on her. They're like, she's not connected. Here's what you say. And they basically threaten her. But yeah, he's.

He had ties to all these different agencies. And I think that it is too narrow to just say it was just Mossad because he was this thing that we didn't know existed yet. So we're still trying to wrap our brains around it, which is like he's this guy that all of them, all of the intelligence agencies used in a way. They all used him as an ends to a mean. and we didn't really know that that type of Bond villain was like a thing. Yeah.

You know, we still don't, I think, have the words to articulate what he was. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah. I mean, you just seems kind of like a do-it-all fixer for anyone that's willing to pay.

That's the way it seems to me. Yep. And that's like, even like the Les Wexner thing, I think he's probably also implicated in a way in terms of like, I mean, potentially, you know, a organized sex trafficking ring. I'd think. I don't know. He's not indicted as a co-conspirator. But I think he's probably

implicated in a probably a moving money around in a nefarious way type way. You know what I mean? Like giving Epstein all this power of attorney, the control of his entire state, hundreds of millions of dollars, probably to move money from someplace to another. Maybe that's from his personal coffers to Israel, perhaps, from his coffers to avoid taxes, perhaps. But some type of criminality is being done and Epstein's a guy that's willing to facilitate it. He's also perfect for removing yourself from liability. Like if you want to remove yourself from an action, you do it through this guy who's kind of a nobody, came out of nowhere and has no ties.

You just use him as the way. So then maybe if he gets caught hiding commission bribe money from an arms deal and Epstein gets caught, that's not on you. He's doing these things for other people. taking on ultimately to be the fall guy. And that's what I think he was. He took, he fell and how many people have been arrested in America other than him. Right.

He took the fall. Yeah. What the, like how, how, I don't know how we let that go. Yeah. I think it's because we're too comfy. Every life is, you know, everyone's like, all right, I got a TV for 100 bucks. You know, I mean, I got free cable, you know, I got my friends Netflix. Well, I'm really going to go on the streets.

Come on. Right. Yeah. I think we're too comfy. That's the ultimately the way I see it. But I think as wealth inequality probably increases and people feel more and more pinched and a little bit more economically destitute,

I think the conditions might show up for something like that for some type of like, you know, tangible rebellion where people actually go out in the streets and they're like, fuck this. They got close enough that they released those files. Right. Because I think it was only the pressure from the people that got them released in the first place.

And now we're all reading them and we're like, oh my God, it's worse than we thought. What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I just got a cheat code that I want to tell you guys, all right? I am at an age of my life where, unfortunately, a normal night out has consequences. Like, not even crazy drinking, like, just a couple of drinks.

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I don't, I mean, he, like, is he, what is he going to not get reelected because of it? I don't quite buy that it's related at all. I could, I could draw ties between us moving on El Mancho, the cartel in, in Mexico, but being related with the move on Iran. But the Epstein files, I don't know what Trump, how, maybe I'm not seeing it, but like maybe if he was running for reelection or something, but to him, I don't think it makes a difference. Right. Yeah, I mean, I was telling you about Professor Jiang, predictive history. And he predicted a lot of what was going to happen to a pretty accurate degree, I would say, on a personal assessment. I mean, two and a half, two years ago.

And again, this is before the Epstein files were ever released or that really came into the fray in the same degree as it was. And he basically was able to calculate this just kind of like game theory. He's like all of our allies in the region want it. It, you know, it benefits Trump in a way to like, you know, help cement him potentially to run for a third term, create chaos and, you know, domestically that he's able to then come in as like a savior. And, you know, obviously Israel wants it. He's like, there's a lot of, you know, economically it's advantageous. He's like, there's enough alignment with American interests that this is probably going to happen. He said this years ago.

And so that, again, kind of gives me some perspective where I'm like, it seems like the Epstein file thing was convenient that this happened around the same time. They're like, yeah, you know, we have this issue. Let's do this. Maybe it happens six months earlier because, you know, the timing worked and it also covered up this thing. But I don't know if it was like, oh, no, this Epstein thing is going to destroy us right now. We need to cover this up because I think they're going to get away with it anyway, unfortunately. That's the other thing. Yeah, it'd be one thing if it seemed like it was going to topple or have a big impact,

but no one's being arrested in the U.S. Other than people are stepping down. A lot of CEOs have had to step down and resign. But, yeah, I don't think they're connected. I have listened to some of his courses before. He has a perspective. I would say like how I have a pretty pro-American perspective. I would say he has a pro-CCP perspective, which it sits on America a lot.

Yeah. And, you know, respect to him because I don't have, I wouldn't have respect for someone in China who's like working against their country. You know, like how I don't think anyone should expect a former soldier in the United States to like shit all over my country. God bless him. He has a perspective that. and a worldview against, yeah, probably against U.S. interests. Yeah, but I'm trying to think as far as like the timing of this. There's another thing people have talked about where this,

this operation is supposed to last four days, started on Saturday morning, and it's supposed to end on Purim, which is a Jewish holiday, where that I think symbolizes, again, I'm not a religion expert here, but I think it more or less kind of symbolizes this ancient, battle where the ancient Israelites defeated like, you know, 70,000 Persians troops or something like that in some type of, you know, ancient battle. And that's what the holiday signifies. And people are suggesting that, like, this actual real world geopolitical conflict is now lining up with, you know, religious, kind of, you know, eschatological sort of predictive models. And it seems like there's a, there's an interesting overlap between, like, actual real world operations and, like,

religious end time philosophy. I'm curious if you've seen that. So I don't even think you need to go off of, you know, it's on the anniversary of this battle. I don't even think you need to go that far to see that connection because this is in a way, I mean, I joke about this all the time. This is like, what is this, the ninth crusade?

Like, this is a continuation of a battle in some ways that has been going on for thousands of years. It's, we don't even need to necessarily look at what coincidence it might be because because I look at it. I'm like the attack probably was dictated based on when they had an opening to hit the leadership when they were like, okay, they're all in one place. Let's hit them. It could be that there was some, that they did it purposefully on a date that does happen. But I mean, Israel and and the holy lands in the Middle East, people have been fighting over these four thousands of years.

Yeah, literally. And so, yeah, I think it's just a fact. Hmm, interesting. That there's, but I guess do you think they're directly lining up? They're like, hey, let's go this week versus this week because it lines up and there's some type of symbolic element. It's possible. It's possible. Countries do that for sure. I would just have to, I don't know enough about it.

I'd have to look at whether there are enough of these battles that this could almost happen on any day. And you could say that because there's so many historical battles. Or it could be that they chose the date because of that. I haven't looked into enough. Right. What's happening in Kuwait where you have these F-15s falling out of the sky? So it's funny that, well, I guess it's not so funny.

That's terrible. But everyone's okay. So we can say it's from the top. Because they all survived. The pilots all survived. Which is crazy. You see a dude gets shot out of the sky. Land, like his plane crash lands, he ejects.

And then, like, a bunch of local Kuwaitis walk up and they thought they're Iranian. Yeah. And they're like, what's up? These got like a bat. And he's like, no, I'm American. They're like, oh, get in this truck. And they put him in the trunk of like an SUV. So the official word is that they were shot down by Kuwaiti air defense, Patriot Systems.

Some people might argue that maybe they were shot down by Iranian systems. I think it's unlikely because to be over, that's Ali al-Asalim, where I've been, actually. That's where I went before I deployed into Iraq. I was there for two weeks at Ali-Aselim in Kuwait. And, you know, Iranian air defense would likely not reach that far. But so a lot of times, they thought they were targeting Shahed drones. And they targeted, they hit these F-15s instead with Patriots. It sounds like.

And it sounds like all the pilots were okay. But this is the kind of thing, the risk that you take when you undergo an operation like this is going to be friendly fire incidents even to this day. If we assume that it was a friendly fire incident. I mean, this footage is wild. Crazy. My dude's post up in the trunk. But you think it was friendly fire? The reason I think that was because you can geolocate and know that this happened in Kuwait.

and the range of Iranian air defense is such that I don't know how their missiles would reach Kuwait near Ali al-Salim where they were hit. Right. Yeah. Now, it makes sense. It just seems like a massive F up. Yeah. So here's what happened when you're coordinating with seven different or, you know, a bunch of different languages and you got Kuwaiti air defense and they're doing one thing and you got American air defense and they're. doing another miscommunicate from being in the military miscommunication is very easy

to happen yeah yeah that makes sense and you're in an environment where you're getting people are dying and getting shot by shahed drones and by missiles and if if you wait five seconds too long after the radar picks up something moving towards you and you don't fire then you've just got you and everyone you know killed right so you have to make a split second decision right That's interesting. Now, I guess, zooming out all the way, we've touched on this a little bit, but I guess to really paint the picture, these operations that happen to Venezuela are not really against Venezuela. It is to control American hegemony. And specifically, it's kind of a move against Russia.

And this move against Iran is a move against Iran, but it's really a move against China. And I guess when the question comes up, like, you know, are we entering into Iran? World War III? What would be your answer to that, looking at the big picture? I think that the, it almost doesn't matter what I think. I'll say what the U.S. government thinks. I believe that the U.S. government thinks that we're nearing World War III. And when you say we're in World War III right now, there's so much that's still up in the air where it could go anyway. Maybe we deter World War III from happening by getting our ducks in a row, by getting Venezuela to be their energy is now under our control.

And we've cleaned up the cartels in Mexico, let's say. And we've locked down the Middle East and our allies in Europe know that we're serious. And they're investing billions into their own defense. And this diverts and deters war World War III from happening ever. Maybe we or maybe we buy 15 extra years before it happens. I would argue that, I mean, we know that U.S. officials have been going around the Pacific to their allies and saying, you need to invest more. You need to invest more in your defense. The guy who wrote the national security document, the NDS, the 2026, these papers were just put out, he has a Twitter account and he tweets. I don't think he has a lot of followers, but he wrote the national security, the grand strategy for America. He, he wrote the national security, the grand strategy for America. wrote mainly authored it and he's out he's tweeting what our plan is which is to get allies in the pacific to invest more in their defense so are we in war war three like i'd say it's more like

a cold war right now before it and that the united states is preparing for a worst case scenario because china is now nearing a point where for the last 20 years they didn't have the capabilities to invade Taiwan. They just couldn't if they wanted to. But now they're very close to, well, if they wanted to, not only could they do it, but they might succeed. Now, I've heard from Gigi Ping that that plan was like 2027, maybe 2028 to invade Taiwan. Do you think this action in Iran speeds up that timeline? That's a good question.

Is it going to speed it up or is it going to slow it down? Or is it not going to make a difference on the timeline? it's going to happen one way or another. I hear a lot of times I see people tweeting and saying, well, because we captured Maduro and because we bombed Iran, like this will justify. Now, China will use that as a justification for invading Taiwan. And that is such a naive way, I believe, of looking at the world.

Like, China is going to invade or not invade Taiwan. Whether China wants, it'll be their decision whether they do that or not. It's not really, it's not going to make a difference. It's not like, oh, well, America bombed Iran. We're going to invade Taiwan. No, they're going to do it or they're not. Right. One way or another.

We're giving ourselves too much credit, too much, like we have complete agency over what China does and doesn't do. It's like nearly a billion people there and they're going to do what they think is best for their country at the end of the day. So I don't know. if this speeds up the timeline or slows it down. But I think that this best, you know, in science, when you look at, like, why does something happen? You look at what's the best explanation for it?

I think this is the theory that best explains what we're seeing right now. Yeah. Do you think this war in Ukraine and America's funding of Ukraine, you know, through weapons and basically supplying them with munitions, was effective? at depleting the Russian forces in the event that there's another global war that Russia now, you know, has exhausted itself on this Ukrainian front? I think that what would likely happen would be Russia would try to invade in the Baltic states. So they would try to attack countries like Estonia where they're most weakest. Because, yeah, Russia does not have the ability to take over all of Europe or invade Europe. But they could invade Estonia and their force strength would outnumber NATO troops in that one part of the front.

Because the front line in Europe is very different than it was in the Cold War where it was just about, I think, 400 miles between the Soviets and the Western powers that had to be defended. Now you're talking about an over 1,000 mile long, very porous, open, essentially border that. that Russia could attack anywhere on that. And they don't need to have total and complete ability to invade all the way to France or something. They just need to be able to fracture the alliance by doing some kind of action against Estonia. And so has the war depleted them? In some ways, it hasn't because in some ways they've gotten stronger in terms of they are investing way more in their military. They now have 700,000 soldiers inside of Ukraine, whereas at the start of the war, it was like two, they've, they've transformed their military.

They're not winning yet, but they're, they've, they have been fighting for many years and perfecting their tactics and they're getting better at it. I don't, I don't know how that will, I don't know how that'll shake out in a scenario of World War III. Yeah, it just seems like I wonder if that was a broader calculation from, you know, the American administrations, you know, through, you know, basically since 2014. So here's what I'll say about that. Part of why we armed Ukraine is because we took away Ukraine's nuclear weapons in the 1990s. And there was this kind of like tacit agreement that, hey, we'll help you to the best of our, like, whatever we can kind of muster and do, we'll do it. It's not like a security agreement, but we'll help you out. Get rid of your nukes. And that's sort of what we've done. Right.

Like, we're not, they're not our ally, they're not head on. Like, we don't have any full partnership with them. They're not part of NATO. But we've sort of like, hey, we'll help you survive because that's kind of like what we did. And when you look at what the United States has done since the 1960s, we've stopped nuclear proliferation, not just with our enemies, but with our enemies. but with our allies too. Like, Taiwan got very close to building a nuclear bomb in the 1960s, and who stopped them? We did.

The CIA got information that they were building it secretly, and we said, stop. Listen, we've, hey, don't tell anybody, but like, we got your back, all right? You stop building this bomb, and we'll take care of you. We'll guarantee your security, but don't tell anyone because China will get very upset. Right. same with South Korea. South Korea was building a nuclear bomb secretly. We found out.

We put pressure on them economically. We said we'll get those troops that are stopping North Korea from invading. We're out of here if you build that nuclear bomb. Chill, chill, chill, bro. We got your security. Stop building the bomb. So I think when people see we have 800 bases around the world. and why are we sending weapons to these countries?

Why do we have bases all over the Pacific? Like, part of the reason is because we're tied up in these agreements from post-World War II where we've tacitly said, don't build nuclear weapons to guarantee that China won't invade, and we will have your back. Okay? We'll guarantee the security. And now people are looking at it and they're like, the U.S. is this evil country that is, has bases everywhere, completely forgetting all of these

strategic partnerships that we've built there over the years and these obligations that we have. And yeah, it's in our interests, of course, but there's a lot more to it. No, that's a good way to put it. That makes a lot of sense. And again, I think it's helpful for people to say, you know, you can disagree with it. You can think that, hey, we should reallocate that money to domestic issues in America. But at the very least, you should understand. What I'm saying is, yes, exactly. Like, if the U.S. wasn't there, it's not that it would be some beautiful utopia situation.

I think there would just be more nuclear weapons. Right. Which inevitably, I think is bad. You know what I mean? Like a different type. I think both situations suck and it's like a different type of bad. Yeah. Yeah.

But that is, again, the real politic of geopolitics. is like, what are you, what evil do you want? You know? A lot of times, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're choosing the least bad scenario. Yeah, exactly. What do you feel like Americans, broadly speaking, as far as, like, propaganda goes, are they getting fed in America that you think they should be, you know, weary of?

Is there some type of messaging that's coming through either from foreign agents or from our own politicians that are muddying the waters that, you know, if you could advise people to kind of be aware of, what would it be? I think there are very effective propaganda lines that really what our adversaries are very good at is understanding what is good at dividing us. I think one of the, if I was to try to defeat the United States, what I would do is just double down on divisions within our country because we have so many ethnicities here and so many different religions that what in some way, can be a strength is also very easy to exploit as a weakness. So I would say that when you're watching out for propaganda, easily we know for a fact one of the things that our adversaries do is play on. And again, there's some truth to it is the divisions that we have ethnically

here. And it's a very, these, these narratives are very powerful because there's some truth to it always or sometimes a lot of truth to it. And that's what I'm seeing right now is we see it around the country with the ice operations that are happening is that our adversaries are exploiting that. Yeah. The division within our country. That's how I feel. Like, anytime there's some type of messaging that's like, hey, we need, like, this group

of Americans is bad, whether it's Somalis, black people. Jews, any type of like ethnic or like cultural delineator, I'm like, oh, you're missing it. Like you're doing the bidding of our adversaries for them that they want nothing more than for us to be at each other's throats trying to, you know, kill each other. That's what they ultimately want. And anytime I see it, I'm like, oh, man, I think like you're either you came up with this organically and it's being pumped by some type of foreign regime, like that wouldn't be shocking to me to have someone in America being like, hey, we got to get these people out of here,

insert whatever group. And I could see Russia or China pumping money into that person to basically prop them up to help proliferate this measure that leads to infighting within America. So, yes, 100%. And we know what you said is true because, yeah, if you remember the Russians were giving millions of dollars to some conservative creators. Yeah. And I, so the internet thing is you don't even need to like it's not that Russia's telling one of these conservative creators, hey, change your mind about it. It's just that they know that that creator is already believes that. And that's the best type of influence to buy is the type that's genuine. And they genuinely believe that. And they might not even be wrong about what they genuinely believe.

But Russia, for instance, in that instance, believed that it was worth investing in not just that line. They also invest in hard left propaganda that is effective for them as well. They just want to create division in ways. Yeah, I think we're going through a period right now where a big question is just like, who is American? What does it mean to be American? Ultimately, what benefits should Americans get? Yeah. And how do we decide how we treat fairly? Yeah. So, and these are legit questions, and we should be asking these questions, but I don't think that this, like, you know, heart blanche kind of sweeping thing of like, these people are the problem. I think, again, just misses the point. Like, I just, I don't think ever in history that's ever been the right move. Like, whether you take, like, you know, World War II or Edie Amin and Uganda or, like, you know, China with the Uighurs, like, take any group. And any time there's some type of, like, ethnic push to say, like, this group. is the problem. It almost always is wrong. I can't really even think of one case where it's like, oh, yeah, no, this was, the Tigrayan should have been starved in Ethiopia. I'm like, you know what I mean?

Like, it never is the right move. So all that to say, like, I think that the most American thing that you can do is call for unity, like amongst the American people. I recognize that we are like a diverse country of many different types of ethnicities and religions. And that's just the way that it is. Like, you're not going to change that. Like, because of the way of it, our empire set up like yeah we annexed hawaii there are a ton of asian and japanese and native hawaians that all of a sudden became american overnight and you can't tell them that they're not american america's built from a lot of west african black people that came through the slave trade that were here and became american you're like you're not going to change that we got a 150

200 000 mexicans in the mexican american american war that became american overnight they're american like you can't stop that so to me it's like it just is what it is there's going to be downfalls with like the intense diversity both ethnically nationally and ideologically that we have in America but you have to embrace it because the other option is we collapse upon ourselves right like to me that's the only that's the only way that it can be yeah yeah because if you're going to you know how how would you collapse the American Empire you're not going to likely not going to beat us militarily likely not going to invade our country at the very least you can't just can't so what do you what do you do you do

you exploit the divisions within our country, exploit our freedom of speech, definitely. Because, again, this is like it's one of our greatest strengths is freedom of speech, but it's also one of our greatest weaknesses that they can exploit that. That's what I'm doing if I'm China and Russia is, you know, because we kind of can't do that in Russia and China. We can't run those kind of sci ops or campaigns because they just fucking crush anyone who tries to go against the government. They don't, their systems, you can't exploit them in that way. In other way, sure.

But that's what I'm looking out for here. Yeah, I think that's a good thing that people should be generally aware of. And that's why I like what you do. Because I think on your channel, I think you give like a very clear, you know, concise explanation of events that are going on. And obviously you have your bias as an American and someone that served in our military. know you love our country, which I would hope the vast majority of people that live in our country feel the same way. Maybe they disagree on things that happen politically or domestically or, you know,

even foreign affairs, which that is their, you know, God-given right to disagree. But I would just hope that they believe in the American ideal enough that it's something worth fighting for. And I think you and your perspective and your channel just give a good, reasonable approach to how you can feel about, you know, events that are happening geopolitically. And also just like really nuanced military understanding that I think the average person is not going to get access to. Like if you really want to understand like how these operations go, like I just go to your channel and, you know, try to digest the information as well as possible. So I appreciate you making them in. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a blast.

This has been, this has been very informative. I feel like I've, I've, yeah, here it is, Chris Cappy, Cappy Army. And yeah, I mean, what are the most recent ones? You got an Iran episode, cartel episode. an Epstein episode. I mean, that seems like all the shit that my audience would love. All the people here at the campsite,

I mean, if they're not already tuning in, I'm sure they will. I'm curious, is there anything that we missed or anything that you think people should be aware of as we're sort of, you know, coming away from this conflict that's still extremely new. We're deeply in the fog of war.

You know, is there anything else that you're considering? No, I think we went over everything that has been on, I'm glad I got to get this off my chest. because a lot of times I do. I try to keep the channel very, I don't give my point of view as clearly. So, yeah, I'm glad I had an opportunity to kind of speak. Amazing.

Well, thank you so much, brother. You're welcome any time. And as these things inevitably will develop, I'd love to chat more. Yeah, definitely. Thanks, Chris. Thanks for having me. What's up, people?

We're going to take a break real quick because this episode is sponsored by me. Yes, Camp R&D. That is the merch. That is the threads that we'd be wearing around here at the campsite. and we got all sorts of cool stuff. My buddy Zach just cooked up a sick UFO collection. You can go check it out there at Camp R&D.

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You tell me. What do we give them? 12% all right we're doing 12% off should we go more hey it's your world I'm just living in it let's round up

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