Danny Jones Podcast - #323 - Man Who Survived 16 Wars Explains the Battlefield in Ukraine | Scott Anderson

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Watch every episode ad-free & uncensored on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dannyjones Scott Anderson is a writer, novelist, non-fiction author, and war correspondent. He has authored non-fiction books including Lawrence in Arabia, The Man Who Tried to Save the World, and War Zones. His newest book, 'King of Kings: The Iranian Revolution' is available now. SPONSORS https://whiterabbitenergy.com/?ref=DJP - Use code DJP for 20% off EPISODE LINKS Scott's new book: https://a.co/d/0A9kGwt FOLLOW DANNY JONES https://www.instagram.com/dannyjones https://twitter.com/jonesdanny OUTLINE 00:00 - Chechnya: the world's most terrifying war 07:21 - What's happening in Ukraine right now 14:19 - America's mistake in bombing Iran 22:10 - Is America the "bad guy"? 27:50 - Why sanctions don't work 35:44 - What is Russia's motive for war? 41:59 - Likelihood of nuclear war 53:26 - How technology is making war more savage 01:03:30 - The "industrial revolution" of war 01:10:47 - Drugs on the battlefield 01:14:50 - How CIA participates in the battlefield 01:20:10 - The CIA, the Shah & Khomeini 01:30:29 - How Russia & China feel about Iran today 01:36:20 - China vs. Taiwan 01:44:16 - Georgia's surveillance state 01:47:43 - The Israel & Iran proxy war 01:57:22 - Trump's war on the Epstein files Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You've been covering, I'm reporting on hot wars. Yep. Your whole life. How many wars have you been embedded in reporting? 16, I believe. 16. I think 16 at this point. Out of all the wars you've been in, what was the most dangerous one?

Chechnya. Chechnya. Chechnya. Chechnya. Chechnie was horrifying. I went, it was 1995. There was two of those, right? There was two.

I was there in the first one. And I went for the, it was the first or second story I did for the New York Times Magazine. And I went to try to find out what had happened with a rather prominent American disaster relief expert who had, he had been to 50 war zones. And he had gone to Chechnya and he had called Chechnya the scariest place he'd ever been. He went back and within 24 hours of him going back, he disappeared. He vanished. So I went to try to find out what had happened to him, which, It was kind of foolhardy.

And it was really, really terrifying. The one way I described how kind of terrifying it was, I was only there for three weeks. But we were camping out and burnt out buildings. I didn't shower for three weeks. I got back to Moscow. And I took my first shower in three weeks. I looked in the mirror afterwards. And I had this little shock of white hair.

It was much more impressive when I was young. because that was all the white hair I had. I'd never had a white hair before or and for years afterwards. It came up in three weeks. Just horrifying. It's if I've never felt in any other war zone quite that any, any horrible thing could happen any moment. And that was that was Chechen, from on both sides.

The Chechen rebels and the Russian army. Chechnya is tiny. Tiny, yeah. It's, um. Isn't it like smaller than New Jersey? I think so. Yeah. is like the size of Connecticut or something.

Oh, wow. Yeah. But both sides just absolutely brutal. And it was a really savage war. So what is the history of the conflict between Chechnya and Russia? So Chechnya sits on the northern slopes of the Caucasus mountains. And they're Muslim. They're darker complexed. They're darker skinned than most ethnic Russians.

They've all... So the Tsar had a, going back to the 1860s, Tolstoy actually fought in Chechnya, under the Tsars trying to control the Chechens. They've always had a reputation of being incredibly tough, gangsters. The Chechen mafia really kind of controlled a lot of the organized crime in the Soviet Union. And Russians have always been simultaneously terrified of them and hate them. They've always been treated as second-class citizens, as a lot of the kind of smaller ethnic groups in Russia have been, the Asian groups, the Muslim groups. So when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Chechens thought this was their moment to finally get their independence.

And so the Soviet Union, they'd already lost all the republics, the other 14 republics, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. And so when Chechnya was trying to break away, this was the first internal rot. of Russia itself. And that's when the Russians decided to put a stop to it. And it was a really vicious war. Wow. Yeah. So the second time they went to war was when Putin had just gotten to power and they did a false flag on the apartment building. That's right. That's right. And yeah. So I actually wrote an article for GQ magazine about the false flag operation of the apartment bombings. And I had another gentleman in here a couple of years ago who was a big reporter during that time over there. His name's David Satter. Oh, yes. I know David Satter. Okay. Yeah. Great guy.

Yeah. So he's so you know about the the false flag operation. And it's been a while. I'm a little, I'm a little rusty on the whole story. But from what I can recall is, uh, they did an investigation and they found out it was actual FSB agents that were there planning the bombs, right? That's right. Yeah. Basically, Putin had just, so Chechnya had de facto independence at that point. It was right around 2000. Putin came in as the first, is Yeltsin's fifth prime minister or something in a year. And right away, these apartment buildings, whole apartment buildings in Moscow started blowing up and collapsed, panaking and killing dozens, scores of people. Putin was a former FSB, KGBB Asian. And it was, it was, it was. What never made any sense, I'm sure David Sattern explain this to you, is what never made any sense is so it was immediately blamed on the Chechens.

And that provoked the second Chechen war. Putin goes in. He flattens Chechnya. He rides the, this is a rallying around the flag moment for Russia. He becomes the savior of Russia and he never looks back. What never made any sense, though, was why the Chechens would have done these apartment bodies. Right. They had independence.

They had everything they wanted. why would they do this? So that's the thing that never made any sense. And the more you kind of delved into it as I did, as David Satter did, it became very clear that it was an FSB operation. And what was Putin's goal with that? Was he just trying to bring back the Soviet Union? Yeah, I think he was, I think he first saw this as what he could use to bring the country

around him to establish his own power. And it worked. It worked within a very short time. Yeltsin, who was the president, was out of the picture. And Putin had absolute control. And it was very popular in Russia because he was able to crush the Chechens in a way that Yeltsin hadn't been able to. And frankly, he's still very popular for that and for other things he has done. Putin?

Putin. Yeah. Yeah, I find it super difficult to find, any sort of difficult to find figure out just using the media what's going on with the Russia-Ukraine thing right? Because there's so many different

lines of thought and there's so many different narratives and there's so much propaganda on so many sides revolving these wars, all these wars that are happening all over the world. And everyone's got a dog in the fight and everyone wants to promote some sort of idea on it or

you know whatever if it supports their political beliefs or supports their ideology or the religion or whatever it is so like it's interesting hearing for someone like you who's like spent a lot of time on the ground doing this stuff and uh especially before the rise of like social media right and you know all of this information overload we're dealing with right now right how do you how do you view like the evolution of all of this stuff and like the the propaganda that lives around and surrounds these wars. Yeah. No, it's a great question.

It has fundamentally changed the way war is covered because, you know, this is not an original thought, but people tend now with social media and with the Internet to just go to those sites that reconfirm what they already believe. The Russians are very sophisticated at running false propaganda of what not only what happens in Ukraine, but what's happening in in Russia itself and throughout Eastern Europe. I feel it's become much more difficult to get your voice heard because there's just so many different outlets. There's so much silos of information now. It's also become much more dangerous to do the kind of work I've done in the past because people know where you are

all the time. I've known journalists who, who were targeted. to be killed just by people following their cell phone. So it's become much more, I think it's just become much more dangerous. There's not the funding to do this sort of, you know, in the past, when I was covering a war, I would go and spend a month on the ground. And, you know, I was on somebody's dime, usually the New York Times magazine. And it's with the collapse of magazines and kind of traditional media, it's more and more difficult. to be supported to do that kind of work.

I have a friend, I've told this story at nauseam, so if you've already heard me say this, I'm sorry. I have a really good friend who was on the podcast before. His name's Jack Murphy, and he wrote a piece on the Ukraine-Russia War about a year and a half ago. Have you heard of it? Have you heard of him?

Yes, I've heard of him, but I don't know the piece. He's got the Team House podcast. And he was working on a story basically about how a CIA used a NATO ally, intelligence service to conduct sabotage operations inside Russia. And he had over a dozen sources in the intelligence community inside the U.S. to do this article. And he was working with one of the, he didn't name the actual publication, but it was like one of the top three or four publications in the U.S.

He worked on it for about a year, maybe more than a year with an editor at this publication. And by the time they were ready to publish it and like press go and release it, I think this was around December, the December after the war started maybe. Right. Um, they said, the editor at the magazine said, okay, we got to call up the deputy director and get his sign off on the, on the article or whatever. He's like, okay, great. So they got him on three way. And he said, no, we categorically deny all this, um, all of this thing, everything that is in here. Um, and you're actually putting lives at risk by putting this out there. And he said, okay, we'll add that to the bottom of the article that you guys said this. He's like, and then he hangs up. And then he's

like, all right, let's do it. And she goes, no, they have an off the record agreement with the CIA, with this collocation has an off the record agreement with CIA. So if they say this, we don't, we don't publish the article. So it wasted a year of his life. And he published it, published it on his own. But hearing stories like that really make me wonder. Yeah. So it's, so there's some empirical evidence when you look at Ukraine. I have not been to Ukraine yet. I'm probably going to be going in a few months, but, you know, this war has been going on for over two years. And at a typical war zone, you would have had dozens of foreign correspondents dead or wounded by now, considering the kind of war it is. But in Ukraine, going in on the Ukrainian side, you cannot,

you are shepherded around by the Ukrainian government. You cannot travel anywhere as a foreign journalist without permission from the Ukrainian government. Now, why is that? Do they really care that much about the safety of foreign journalists. The theory of most journalists is that they're highly controlled because they don't want to see who is actually on the ground in the front lines helping them. The probability or the theory being that they're American and British troops in the front lines helping the Ukrainians fight the Russians. And that's why journalists are kept in very close quarantine there. I've never seen anything like it in a war zone where, I mean, literally you have to have permission, written permission to go anywhere and they keep track.

Really? Yeah. So the supposition is that's because of the other actors that are in the battlefield. Ukraine, for nothing else, has been a wonderful lab school for weaponry for the West. I mean, you know, drone warfare has now utterly changed the face of modern war. And so the Pentagon, the CIA, the S-A-S, they've been able to try out all their toys. And it's been sort of a great gift to them. Hey, guys, if you're not already subscribed, please hammer the subscribe button below and hit the like button on the video. Back to the show.

I saw something this morning saying that as Trump just like released this news, new thing about giving them a bunch of more weapons or whatever. Right. Somebody told him, I forget who it was. Somebody in the Defense Department basically said, we don't have enough weapons to give them. Like, we're running really low. Right.

Right. So they're doing some sort of pause or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to the, I mean, what is remarkable? And, you know, I've thought about this a lot, not just in relation to Ukraine, but in relation to September 11th into a lot of things is what. the modern world has created over and over again are these sort of David and Goliath situations.

All the security now that's the security state that's been built up since September 11th, people seem to forget that those guys did with accomplished what they did with box cutters, with $2 box cutters. It was not sophisticated stuff. And the same way in Ukraine, they're blowing up, you know, multi-million dollar tanks with $400 drones. And in some cases, not even like losing that $400 drone. They could actually program now to drop its load and then to come back.

So there's this very disproportionate thing. With conventional weapons, with defense weapons, maybe the Americans are running low on them. But time and again, the Ukrainians have done this very low-tech thing that nobody saw coming and have been able to at least hold their own with it. Yeah. It's interesting to see how it all plays out. and as well with everything going on in Iran. Yeah. The Iran thing, this 12-day war that just happened,

it seems like it was, we got out of there so quick because they were threatening to do something with that little straight there. They were threatening to mine it or something like that, and we were terrified that they were going to do that. Do you know the ins and outs of how that works? Yeah, it's the Straits of Hormuz. It's the little choke point.

at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. I believe it's about 15, 16 miles wide. And all the tankers from Saudi Arabia, from Iraq, from Iran, they all have to go through there. I actually have a different theory of that, of what happened in Iran with the Americans' bombing and nuclear sites. My next book, by the way, it's coming out, is about the Iranian revolution. So I've been really kind of focused on Iran-Lay. King of Kings is that was called. Yeah.

This is coming on in a few weeks. But I've talked to a few people inside Iran who were since the American bombing. People who are on the opposition to the regime. And what almost all of them have said was that this is the greatest gift, the American bombing, the nuclear sites. This is the greatest gift to the regime that they've ever had because now they can tar all the opposition. with, oh, if you're against us, then you're lackeys of the Americans. So it plays right into the regime's hands. And so one of the kind of conspiracy theories, and Iranians love conspiracy theory.

Oh, do they really? Oh, gosh. Yeah, they have conspiracy theories about everything. I know, what is the sentiment of Iranians towards America? Because I know a lot of them are actually like Israel, which is shocking. Right. Well, there's always been a large Iranian Jewish community that was never kicked out. It's still there.

a lot of the prominent Iranian Jews left when the Shah was overthrown. They're like in Los Angeles and stuff now. But they, yeah, they just love conspiracy theories. Well, and also the Shah was always very close to Israel. And part of that, they're not Arabs, Iranians. They see themselves as a part from the Arab world. And they're also Shia Muslims, which is different from the Sunni Muslims that kind of control all the other movies. So they've always seen themselves as a part.

They actually get offended if people think that they're Arabs. They're very proud of the fact that they're not. So there is this kind of natural affinity that they've often had with Israel. So the conspiracy theory is that, or one of the conspiracy theories, is that the regime actually, you know, they had a chance to kind of cut a deal with Israel when Israel was just Israel was bombing them. And they were asked to come to the negotiating table and they resisted. And then the Americans bomb the nuclear sites. And the conspiracy theory is that that's exactly what they wanted to happen. They knew that they were never going to be able to develop a nuclear weapon.

They would never, they'll never be able to get away with it with the West. Who knew? The regime, the Iranian regime. So we'll sacrifice our nuclear program. But in return now we have, once again, we have America bombing us, killing civilians. And that's a way to rally the country around the flag, which has happened. and to gut our domestic opposition because now we can say, oh, you're in bed with, you're in bed with the Americans, you're supporters of the people who attacked our own country.

So the Iranian opposition people I've talked to in the last two weeks, they're really despondent over what happened. And they feel that it set the move against the regime back at least five, ten years. Did you see that interview that the president of Iran did with Tucker Carlson? No, it didn't. I was probably in Turkey when it was like a 30-minute interview. And it seemed like his sentiment was like, I don't want to fight. Right. You know, it seemed like we don't harbor.

Like, of course, you know, our slogan is death to America, but, you know, everyone needs a slogan. We don't want to fight you guys. Right. You know, and Yahu's been trying to get you guys to bomb us since the early 90s. Right. Right. I think that's, I think it's true. And I've never, I've never bought into this idea that the Iranians could develop a nuclear weapon and somehow launch it against Israel or against anybody. I know I was embedded with the Israeli army. I know the kind of spy imagery they have of drones and satellites. The Americans have it too. The minute, the instant, you know, a missile was pushed out into a launch pad in Iran, it would be blown up. The idea that they can somehow bring it out, you know, set it up, launch it and somehow it hit Israel is just a fantasy. They wouldn't even be able to get it off the ground.

They wouldn't even be able to get it off the ground. Wow. They wouldn't even be able to get it to the lunch pad. It would just as it was coming out of the tunnel. No, it would be instantaneous. Not just drones. I'm sure there's satellites. Right, right.

Yeah. There's constant satellites and drones. I'll, you know, I'll tell you, I was in, as with the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force. This was 20 years ago in Gaza. And I was in one of their command centers, and they had drones then looking down to Gaza. I distinctly remember them focusing on a guy who was reading a newspaper on a bench. And they said, so we can tell he's reading a newspaper. The American drones can read the newspaper.

And that was 20 years ago. So, you know, the idea that anything can happen in places like Iran without the, them absolutely knowing is absurd. And I also read that Israel actually published. I think the Israeli government came out recently and said that 60% of their uranium survived the bombings. Right. Right.

So what? I mean, I was hearing everything all over the news saying that this was the most successful bombing campaign ever. Right. Right. But 60% survived. Now what? Yeah.

I mean, who knows? Who knows? What were you doing in Israel 20 years ago with the IDF? I was reporting. It was actually at a time when, you know, this was even before they, this was in, God, it was more than 20 years ago. It was 2002. And it was even before the whole term of embed had come along. And I, I and my photographer I've always worked with were we wanted to go on a mission with the IDF into the West Bank.

And so despite, and we got clearance to do it. And just by chance, while we were there, there was a huge suicide bombing that killed about 24 people. And so the Israelis did this big offensive into the West Bank. So we, Apollo Pellegrine and I were embedded with this forward kind of commando group and the Israeli army. How do you go about doing that, like getting there and getting them to just bring you in? Sure. Yeah, it's like just kind of persistence, you know. It's, the one thing I remember about that trip in particular is that we got with this commando group and the head of it said, okay, you know, you got to, here's two uniforms for you.

And I said, man, I'm a journalist. I can't wear an army uniform. And he goes, okay, well, wherever we go, there's a dusted done curfew. And we do all our operations at night. And so if you're not in uniform, we're probably going to shoot you. And I went, okay, I'll put on the uniform. Sold, baby. Yeah.

So it seems like all sorts of countries are doing everything they can right now to distance themselves from the United States. You know, with our foreign policies, with like the tariffs and the sanctions and all the wars and stuff like this. it doesn't seem like it you know it's sometimes it's hard to when you're an American and you haven't been to all the places you've been to to give yourself a perspective on what it really means to be an American right like you don't really know that until you've been to some of these places and had that perspective and I've been thinking more and more in the recent months you know like is it possible we are the bad guys We are too huge swaths of the world now. Certainly we are in the Middle East in the Arab world. I think there's a lot of animosity in throughout Latin America because of the immigration policy, which seems to have kind of a racialist component to it. What I think is kind of remarkable, and I think this is, if not of resentment, it's a mystification in Europe.

of in one area after another, it's almost like America's unilaterally disarming. We're losing our edge in science because of cuts. We're losing our edge in technology. This idea that we're going back to coal when, you know, at a time when the world's getting hotter, it seems like by the minute. Even from an economic standpoint, it's, you know, it's obvious that the countries that are going to be at the head of whatever green revolution. comes, you know, against climate change, they're going to make out like bandits economically.

And, you know, the countries that have, don't have the means or the willingness to try to, you know, foster this, this technology, you're going to be left out in the cold. And it just seems we, I mean, I sense this over and over with Europeans I talk to. It's like, why is America just, you know, and everything you can think of, biomedical research, you know, green technology, scientific research, you know, education, you know, higher, graduate school education that, you know, limiting people coming. It's just, it's a bizarre thing that I don't know that anyone would have predicted what's going to happen. It's going to be interesting what happened, say, you know, this next year with, you know, America has the best kind of graduate school programs in STEM research in the world. and everybody in China and Europe, you know, the best in the brightest all want to come to MIT

or Cal Poly Stanford. Those numbers are going to be way down next year of applications from foreign students because they don't know if, you know, okay, may I get in this year? What happens? Am I going to get kicked out the year following? So, I mean, I think that so much damage

has already been done to this. So, you know, in some places, yeah, to your question, And we are seen as the bad guy. And other parts of the world, I think they just are mystified by what's happening. And, you know, an isolationism seems to be setting in that's just self-defeating. Yeah. No, there, I mean, it's not black and white when it comes to foreign policy.

Like, I don't want us to be, like, interventionists as we have then since Bush and probably before that. Like, you know, I don't see myself just the same way Jews in Israel don't see themselves as part of Netanyahu. Most of them are against Netanyahu and his government. I don't see, I don't want to be associated with Dick Cheney and George Bush anymore than those people want to be associated with Netanyahu and some of the stuff he's doing. But on the other hand, like, I don't think it's right to be a complete isolationist either. I think you have to be practical with things. But when I say, like, you know when i say like other countries are kind of like seeing us as the unreasonable ones you know

know when when we are doing intervening in all these wars stoking all all of these conflicts around the world and at the same time like as you were just explaining about like some of the domestic stuff that's happening you have people being deported for for protesting this other country in the middle east israel and they also seem to control a majority of our of our congress leaders. Yeah. So like it's it's hard to be optimistic about the direction the country's going. And then like with like the bricks and the things like this and like with putting the sanctions on Russia.

And people realizing like, oh, maybe these sanctions aren't, you know, maybe we don't want to be under the thumb of America. Maybe we should start this BRICS alliance, you know, and start to diversify our way ourselves. off of this American imperialism idea. Right. I don't know. It seems like there's a shift happening. It's definitely not, you know, it's not a unipolar America world anymore. No.

And it seems like the pendulum is swinging strongly in the other direction. No, I think that's right. I think it's very much swinging in the other direction. And the other thing about, you mentioned sanctions. sanctions very rarely work. What sanctions do is, especially in a dictatorship, which it's almost by America almost always uses only against dictatorships. It just consolidates power in the hands of the dictator.

It gives them even more control over the society. If you sanction food, if you sanction weaponry, if you sanctioned medicine, that just, that just then gives the dictator life and death control over the population. Secret police never go hungry. Armies never go hungry. It's the poor people. So sanctions are just, I've always felt it's just a cheap and easy way of making it look like you're doing something, but in fact, just empower who you're against. Castro has kept in power in Cuba for 50 years by sanctions. If he wouldn't have lasted a decade, if not for American sanctions. American sanctions gave Castro absolute control over that island. Interesting. And it was the best thing that ever happened to him.

You know, I'm sure every day he was like, you know, got down, well, he probably didn't pray, but he was so thankful that American sanctions. Do you think we knew about this or have learned anything from this? No, no, because I don't think we've learned anything because it's, again, it's a way to look like you're doing something without committing troops on the ground, without going to war. And both Democrat and Republican presidents have done it all the time. Clinton did it with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. You know, people were dying in Saddam Hussein's Iraq because they didn't have insulin, the diabetics and stuff because of the American embargo.

So who just gave Saddam Hussein, again, life and. death control over his people. It hardly ever works. It's mushrooms with me, Maddie Matheson. You know what's better than thinking about dinner too hard? Not. Stop that. And just choose mushrooms. Five minutes. Done. Dinner's that easy and you feel like a genius. It's not magic. It's mushrooms. Stop stressing at mushroomcouncil.com. If you love diving into culture and comedy, like on Danny Jones podcast, playoff hockey is right up your rally. NHL on T&T has the best coverage, making every game feel intense and unpredictable. Playoff hockey is a different level, overtime, big hits, and no one coasts.

The studio crew, with Paul Bissonette cracking jokes and Wayne Gretzky breaking things down, makes it even more fun to watch. Every shift matters, and the personalities keep things lively. Watch the Stanley Cup playoffs on TNT, TBS, True TV, and HBO Max. Yeah, the idea of soft power. You know, it's being used in many ways with tariffs and then the sanctions. And I think they just recently announced they're going to double sanction Russia somehow. Right. They already have Russia sanction.

Now they're going to sanction the people to trade with them, I think. Right, right. Somehow that's going to work. I don't know. Is that going to strengthen the Bricks Alliance? No. What it's going to do is going to make the 20 to 50 oligarchs around Putin is that much richer. I mean, that's what I think's going to happen.

Where do you see this Russia conflict going with Ukraine? Do you think it's going to freeze? Do you think they're going to win? It seems like they're winning pretty hard right now. It does. It seems like the Russians are winning. You know, I remember when Trump was elected the first time, this group of psychologists did a profile of Trump. And one thing they all seem to sort of agree on was that he has such a personalized approach

to power that if under his watch, say, September 11th happened, that he would see it as a personal attack on him. He wouldn't see so much as an attack on the country, but because everything is about him. Yeah. So similarly, extrapolating that to what's happening now in Russia. Now, Putin's kind of shamed him. You know, he had this idea that he could, that he understood Putin and Putin would. that they were kind of buddies or whatever.

And I think Putin has kind of played him for a fool over and over again about Ukraine. And now he's finally gotten his back up. He's going to ramp up, you know, arm shipments to Ukraine. He's going to put the sanctions in place. My suspicion will be that Putin is going to play for time. The one wildcard in the whole Russia-Ukraine thing is because Putin is a dictator, and because he controls information into his own country, he always has the prerogative of declaring victory and going home, right?

He can say, okay, mission accomplished, we're out of here. If the Americans are smart, they will set up a situation where he's able to do that. I don't see it happening with more sanctions, though. an off ramp a month into the war. Right. Literally in March. Right. They were, I think it was Natali Bennett, was hosting a, some sort of a negotiation with Trump and Zelensky. Right. And Putin was trying to negotiate an end to this war. Right. And I think it was the Biden administration who basically said, no, we're not going to, we're not going to let this happen. Right. It's, yeah. So what is his goal? What are his goals? Like, why? Why? Why would Putin be wanting to negotiate an end to the war?

one month into it. Right. Well, they weren't, they weren't accomplishing what they had set out to do. Because I think, I think Ukraine had just won like a strategic battle or something. Right. And that happened. And we had them on their heels. Right. And one of the top generals in the U.S. military was like publicly stating like, this is what needs to happen. Now is the time. Right. That's right. No, it's right. It was probably about, yeah, it's probably about two months in when they, they failed to take Kiev and they were getting pushed back. And what Putin had been trying to do up until then, classic Russian tactic is you use your conscripts. You lose the grunts. You use the grunts. They were not their Russia's best soldiers. They were using prisoners yet though, were they? They were not

using prisoners at that point. But the frontline troops were from Asian Russia and they were conscripts. So in the Russian military mindset, both groups of people who are very expendable. But the problem is they're not, they were not very well trained and they were getting their asses kicked. And so that all kind of changed. What is not going to happen is you cannot get a Ukrainian president, Zelensky, or anybody else, to agree to the loss of Crimea and the loss of the eastern provinces. That's what's going to be the de facto situation on the ground. They're not going to get them back. But you can never ask them to formally cede it to Russia. So, I mean, and I remember when Zelensky was meeting with Trump in the office, they were saying that this is the deal you have to kind of realize you're never getting it.

He just can't, you know, but the reality on, yeah, but the reality on the ground is they've lost. What are they going to do if they don't have our help? Well, that's true. Then the whole, yeah. No, it's, yeah. But he, I don't think he could ever, ever manage to formally cede that. You know, it could be in dispute. kind of like the way Germany

during the Cold War was divided. We never recognized the annexation of East Germany, but it was a fact. And so he kind of lived with it. Right. Yeah, that's like me telling John Jones that I'm not going to let him punch me in the face.

Right. He's going to punch me in the face if he wants to. That's right. I'm not going to let John Jones take my lunch from me. Yeah, that's right. I have no choice, really. Right.

Unless I have like 10 Mike Tyson's behind me, like helping me. Right. That's right. Yeah. But if Mike, Tyson's tell me like, hey, give him half your sandwich. Right.

Yeah. And we'll be done. I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. Right. But he'll, if you just, he can take half your sandwich and you just said, you know, you're saying, you know, I'm not giving you permission to take half this. Right, right, right. Just no, I'm not happy about this.

That's right. And also, like, in the beginning of the war, I think, I think Putin only had a couple hundred thousand troops, maybe less than 200,000 troops, right? That's right. Yeah. To invade, to invade Ukraine, which is. he would at least you would think he would need in the millions right right if he actually wanted to do something serious right and and since then he did he did the july 12th 2021 essay right where he talks about how he was you know ashamed by the breakup of the soviet union yeah and uh you know basically he thought that like the dombas region and crimea you know needed to be a part of greater russia right ukraine needed to let russia be like an official language. It was a long essay. Yeah, yeah. And the sentiment of the essay was not that we want to

make Ukraine part of the Soviet Union, essentially. Right. Although he did, he said again and again that he is never, right, that's no NATO. Right. That's no NATO and that Ukraine is not, is not really a real country. Right. And he said that over and over again. Yeah. But the tool he's used over and over again, and he's done it in the Baltic countries, is this idea that the ethnic Russians are being discriminated against, and we're going in in order to protect the ethnic Russians. And that was the idea with Luhansk and Donetsk and Crimea. It's a very, it's a,

having seen the Russian army in Chechnya, I think it's probably gotten somewhat better on the ground now. I mean, more professional. But the first days of, the first months of Ukraine, reminded me very much of Chechnya and that it's a it's a really disorganized army. Generals could care less about the welfare or the livelihood of their soldiers. I remember and I remember when I was in Chechnya in Grozny, the Russians did this, the Grosene of the capital of Chechnya.

The Russians did this crazy thing of just doing a headlong march into Grosny. and being slaughtered. Something like 600 Russian troops were killed in about 45 minutes. And the next day, the Chechens offered them a ceasefire, temporary ceasefire, so they could come and collect the bodies that were all over the streets of Grozny. And the Russians just said no. And it was really interesting to me that this came up again and again with the Chechen rebels that I talked with. is that it's we are fighting an enemy that doesn't even care about getting back the bodies of their own dead soldiers.

And so these bodies were left in the streets to be eaten by dogs. And that's what happened. And that's been happening in Ukraine also. And I've heard this again and again. It's like how, you know, what kind of army, the American army will suffer casualties. It will lose people to recover the bodies of dead soldiers. And they've done that all through history. But to not even care about collecting the bodies of your own debt is just something that's quite bizarre.

But it is they're brutal. I mean, I've never seen an army quite like it. I would compare the Russian army. And again, I'm talking about the army I've seen, which were not the elite units. But I would compare the Russian army that I've seen in action to sort of a militia. a guerrilla group you'd find in sub-Saharan Africa, you know. Yeah. It's hard to, it's hard.

It's hard to get a grip on, on what it's really like, you know, being, especially, I've never been to Russia. I've spent, I've spent a little time in Europe, but not enough to know anything about, like, the type of trauma those people have been through. And, you know, even Russia, they've been through, what, Napoleon, World War II. I mean, I'm missing a lot, but they've been through countless atrocities. atrocities, right? And have their population's been starved and decimated.

Yeah. So I just, it's, I can't put myself in the shoes of those people, you know, and I wish I could. It's, it's if I actually, on a personal level, as much as I'm bad-mouthing the Russians, I actually like them on a personal level. I think one of the keys to understand about Russia and the Russian psyche is that they're evil. They're caught between East and West. Right. They are European wannabes. And if you look at their leaders through history, they've wanted to be a part of Europe.

They've considered, they've had leaders who kind of consider themselves Europeans. But there's something from the East. And so there are this strange kind of hybrid people, a hybrid culture. And I think that there's a deep sea. inferiority complex as a result in among Russians. Didn't Putin ask Clinton to be if he would be able to join NATO? Yeah. Apparently it's yeah, apparently it was that's right. Was it was I'm trying to remember was it Clinton? I think it might have been Clinton. Steve, maybe you can confirm

this for us. Yeah. But yeah, no, it seems just like there's so like it seems like Ukraine, specifically has been in just like this tug of war contest between the between Russia and the west right you know going back as you know since World War two after World War two the Cold War and um you know it seems to me like a reasonable middle ground there would just to leave Ukraine at it be leave Ukraine out of NATO right yeah leave a buffer right that's right that's right Putin says he discussed Russia's possible NATO membership of Bill Clinton that's what it was look that. Wow, look at Putin. He looks like skinny there. Yeah, he does. He does. It's before his face and Clinton looks 50 years younger. At least. Maybe 100 years younger. It's funny. What are your

thoughts on the possibility of another nuclear war between these two states? Do you think it's likely that that nukes ever get used again on this globe? I think it's really likely they're used again, but I don't believe between Russia and America and China. I mean, I think if it happens, it's likely to be one of the second-tier countries that they're kind of off the radar, like Pakistan or India. There's nine nuclear-nuclear-armed countries. That's right. Israel, France, I think South Africa. Oh, no, South Africa gave them up.

They gave them up. Yeah. India, Pakistan. North Korea. North Korea, China, America, Russia. What's the knife? Do we, you said Israel?

Yeah. Here we go. United States, China. Oh, UK. Oh, that's right. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I would... We only have 5,000 nuclear warheads? Yeah, we gave so many up during the salt tanks. That's incredible because we had like upwards of 20,000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, a great thing to see.

The fact that we've been able to reduce the, the nuclear stockpile that much and convince Russia to do the same thing. Right. Right. Well, on record, right? Yeah, on record. Well, I mean, technically Israel's not even supposed to have nukes, right? But they do. Right.

That's right. Yeah. Actually, it's funny. On this topic, a great story that has never been told, I don't think ever will be told. is that one of the great successes of the Clinton administration was the roundup of the rogue nukes following the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were dozens. It's an amazing story.

And I don't think it will ever be written, but there was, you know, CIA, NSA, the Brits, MI6 were in there. And they were literally going up and, you know, buying nuclear warheads for people. And it's incredible because so much was missing. I saw an amazing documentary about this about some Russian dude who was like slinging submarines to drug dealers. And they were sitting in a, there's a great, I forget the name of it. Steve, you should probably try to find this documentary. But there's a scene when they're in Russia and this big Russian dudes in the sauna with these with these drug dealers, these like cartel guys. And he's like, guys want a nuke?

He's trying to like throw in a nuke to spice up the submarine deal. Yeah, no, it's amazing that they managed to corral that. Yeah. Yeah, the idea of just like the nuclear deterrence, the idea that all these nations in the world just have a gun pointed at each other's heads. It's a circle of nations and everyone's got a gun pointed at the other guy's head. I know. And that we haven't launched anything. Yeah.

It's fascinating. And then, like, I had a guy on here the other day who was, he's a naval guy who was like a Navy submarine commander. And he was explaining to me. how all these submarines, there's thousands and thousands of nuclear submarines littered throughout the oceans at all times. Right. Like from every nation that are even circling our coasts, both sides of our coasts. Yeah. And each one of these subs have like dozens and dozens of mirved ICBMs on them.

Yeah. No, it's, if you think about it too much, it's pretty terrifying. It really is. Just worldenders. Yeah. There's just these things that are circulating the oceans and probably in space that just are, are, could end the world in a matter of seconds. Yeah.

Yeah. Minutes. I think it's like, I think it's like 30 minutes if a, if a new, an ICBM was launched from Pyongyang to take 30 minutes for to hit Washington, D.C. Wow. 30 minutes. Yeah. Can you imagine the amount of decisions that have to be made in 30 minutes?

Yeah. I mean, again, going back to when we were talking about the before, I mean, I got to believe, and maybe it's just wishful thinking that with, you know, spy satellites and drone, drone technology that you see this stuff coming. Submarine, you know, nuclear submarines, maybe not that. But, you know, on the ground at least, I got to believe that you could see this stuff before it was ever launched. Yeah, I think the satellites, like the Sibbers system that we have can detect, it can detect the rocket blast, the burners, the burners on the rockets, like the second they launch. Right.

So, like, as soon as the rocket launches, we have satellite systems that know that it launches. And we also have interceptor missiles. We have like 44 of them, I think, and they only have 40% accuracy. Oh, yeah. I heard about that. Yeah. So, like, that's like shooting a bullet out of the sky, right? Right.

Shooting a warhead out of the sky with another bullet, with another rocket, which is crazy. Yeah, what could possibly go wrong? Right. But, like, I think one of the biggest, I agree with you. I don't think one of the major nation states would do this. I don't think that, you know, Russia, China, or the U.S., or even if Iran had a nuke, I don't think they're suicidal. Right.

Because the second you do that, you know it's all out nuclear war. You know you're dead. And that's why Russia, I think, and the U.S., we both have the dead man switches. Oh, yeah. You know, so if, like, if everyone dies in Russia and a nuke, or like, if 20 nukes hit Russia and, like, takes out everybody, there's, like, a switch. There's sensors that go off that unleashed every single nuke they have back to America. Wow. So even if they're all dead, America's done for.

But my biggest fear is that like a rogue sort of a cartel or like a rogue military gets their hands on something like this and sets it off. And then like it gets attributed to the wrong people or no one knows like where to attribute it to. Like like even if like imagine if a nuke ended up on like a on like a train or somewhere got shuttled to like the middle of Ukraine. Ukraine and maybe it came from Russia, maybe it came from somewhere else. That's what it was. Operation Odessa. That's the documentary I was telling you about. And like it maybe it's like a small tactical news or a suitcase nuke or something like this. And like it was just like a faction of a military or like ISIS or something like this and then detonated it. Right. And now all of a sudden the world's on fire freaking out like a nuke went off. Where do we how do we know who did this? Do we have to retaliate? And that's that's what I'm scared of the most. I'll tell you something else that somebody told me years ago in the military that it was actually

this was right when I just came back from Chechnya I was talking to this military guy there was so much H.E.U. Highly enriched uranium that was still missing and what he was worried about was somebody just getting

a tin of H.E.U. Just a powder attaching it to a helium balloon sending it up, say, 2,000 feet over Manhattan, and then having an ultimatur bomb that just blows up the balloon. I mean, this is not even a nuke. Like a dirty bomb. It's a dirty bomb.

And then that uranium just spreads over the city. And within, you're not going to wipe out millions, but you're going to kill thousands. And it'll just be, there's no way to stop it because it's undetectable. Again, it's that low, you know, low, it's box cutters. It's this low-tech thing that there's nothing to to prevent it from happening. Yeah.

Or even like drug cartels, you know, like cartel wars. Like imagine the Sinolaa cartel or one of these cartels got their hands on a nuke somehow and they freaking blew it up in Mexico or somewhere else, you know? I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight.

Yeah, no, it's definitely a terrifying thought, man. And I don't know where it goes. but like this uh i heard this story the other day and i think annie jacobson was telling the story about how like the countries with the nuclear bombs are the ones that america doesn't fuck with like look at new look at north korea right kim jong ill uh made that agreement with i think it was clinton clinton tried to get him to stop his nuclear program yeah and he shook his hand but he had his fingers crossed behind his back because they did the nukes they they started their nuclear program and now they have like, I think it's 80.

Yeah. They have 80 ICBMs, nuclear warheads. And because of that, Kim Jong-un is probably going to die of natural death in his bed at night. Yep. That's right. That's right. So why wouldn't Iran want to nuke now? They probably want a nuke now more than ever.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Probably do. Probably do. Yeah. And it's, no, you're right. I mean, it's an amazing kind of, it increases the longevity of your regime.

if you have it. Right. And the idea that North Korea has it is really pretty terrifying. I mean, I find more terrifying than Iran has it or, oh, yeah. Pakistan or anything. I mean, he, you know, that's,

that's just a crazy, crazy regime. Crazy. Yeah, totally unhinged. Yeah. But I know, I would hope they're not suicidal. Right. Because, you know, again, like the scary thing about them launching a nuke is,

obviously we would know, this second it gets launched. And again, we have 30 minutes, according to Anna Jacobson's new book, Nuclear War. to get from Pyongyang to DC. And within that 30 minutes, so many decisions have to get made by the president who has the ultimate control. And he, like, walks around with the Denny's menu.

Right. And the nuclear football, which is like scenario one, scenario two, scenario three, scenario four. And each one of those scenarios has, like, this key code or whatever or encryption code that you give to, like, strategic command. Right. And then they have to, you know, go through all these processes. and then like turn the keys to do it. Right. And like then you have to get on the phone with Russia because you have to shoot those

nukes back. So within that 30 minutes to get here, right? So there's like 12 minutes before we have to release our minute men missiles. Huh. Because they're stationary. And we have to imagine like it's use it or lose it with those. Like those are going to be destroyed if we wait 30 minutes, right? Because they could potentially target those to try to like take us, take out, you know, castrate us.

So within 12 minutes, we have to say, okay, are we going to launch back? Let's get on the phone with Russia. Let's let them know that these missiles have to overfly Russia to get to Pyongyang or to get to North Korea. Right. When's the last time that the president was able to get Putin on the phone in less than 10 minutes? You know what I don't think, I don't know, but I don't think it's been, I don't think it's ever happened. Right. So, and then they're going to see nukes flying over Russia.

They're going to probably launch nukes. And before you know it, it's just the end of the world, a nuclear winner. Yeah. This guy, Andrew Bustamante, is this former CIA officer. He was in the Air Force, then he went to the CIA. He worked in the nuclear command with the Air Force. And he said in his training, he said if a nuke ever goes off like anywhere near you on American soil, he's like, if the one thing you're going to want to do is run towards the mushroom cloud

because the death will be a lot quicker. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Going back to like war and media and propaganda and all this stuff. And especially with like the evolution of war. Like now it's more drone stuff. More AI is being used. Biological weapons.

These kinds of things. There's like so many more. And not only that, but like these guys are wearing gopros out in the battlefield. That's right. And like killing each other. Yeah. And then executing people, they're prisoners.

And then like broadcasting. that on Reddit or whatever these like chat apps are like it's just hard to imagine where where this goes and how that actually changes war do you think it's possible that the idea you can broadcast this stuff live is going to change things when it comes to being able to like maybe analyze it somehow maybe exploit it somehow especially when you it's uploaded instant instantaneously versus back in the 80s and 90s, I'm sure it took weeks to get stuff published, right? Sure. Do you think that's going to, what kind of effect do you think like modern media is going to have on these conflicts? Well, I think increasingly technology is out of, you know,

mainstream media's hands, right? As you talk about like GoPro and, you know, that's just somebody he can he can film himself executing a prisoner and within a few minutes, it's online. What I've seen over my career is that being a journalist, being a war reporter, has just become steadily more dangerous as war has become more savage. People who commit war crimes don't want witnesses. And I think war increasingly, it's all about war crimes. I'll give an example. In Central America in the mid-1980s, those were vicious wars, the death squads and

El Salvador and Guatemala. But foreign journalists could, by taping their cars, would say, with black tape saying TV or Prince, press, they could actually cross between enemy lines. They could cross over. When the wars in Bosnia, in Yugoslavia, former Yugoslavia started in Bosnia and Croatia, foreign journalists tried to do the same thing. And they're actually being targeted. And so in just less than 10 years, everything had changed. Now you put TV on your car and you're being targeted. So what, you know, I talked briefly about Chechnya. Chechnya was, I've been in a lot of situations in war zones where I'm stopped at a checkpoint

or roadblock. I walk up to a group of gunmen and I don't know who they are. They don't know who I am. And there'll be an argument and that argument is about whether to kill you or not. Chechnya was the first place I was at where I, there were several times where I saw that argument going on in a language I didn't speak. And it sounds like maybe a semantic difference, but it's actually a huge difference. The argument is whether there's any reason to let you live. The default position is they're going to kill you.

So it's, and that was what was so terrifying in Chechnya. I and my photographer got into a number of situations, actually twice with the Russians, twice with the Chechens, where we thought for sure we were going to be executed. And this was in a three-week period. So because war has gotten so vicious, you don't want a journalist showing up and photographing what you're doing or filming what you're doing. So in that way, it's become much more dangerous. It would seem, though, like these people would want more attention from journalists. Sometimes. Sometimes they do.

I would say, in general, government soldiers don't want you to because, you know, if they have any sort of code of conduct in war, they don't want you. They don't want you to be seeing them executing prisoners or shooting civilians and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's not a job I would want to do. I can tell you that. Yeah. You know, and I've also heard stories of this one guy who used to be a war reporter for Vice,

and he was explaining how he was in Afghanistan in the middle of like a firefight. And he was filming this firefight, and he was like right in the middle of it. And he was like, this weird thing takes over where like you're so focused on getting that shot. And you're trying to get the perfect shot. And you know you're in like a life or death situation. Right. And all the fear just dissipates. and you're and you just go into this weird little bubble silo of a world where where

you're not afraid the bolts are zipping by your head but you're getting the fucking best shot that's going to make your career uh-huh and then like mean like you wake up like the ringing goes away and you wake up and like what the fuck are you doing get out of here whatever right yeah i think that's i think it's true often in in a combat situation there's there's kind of a air of unreality about it. And I mean, I remember the first time I was in a firefighter around shooting was in Beirut in 1983. I was a kid.

And it was almost like I was inside a movie. That's what it felt like. Later, when I was a little smarter and stuff, it didn't feel like that anymore. But the first time I saw it, it was like, wow, this is a lot like a war movie. but it's not it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's pretty it's pretty different um you know talking about the the difficulty of uh this job now the other thing that's very different now is uh and this is not danger but i most places i've gone i do not go in as a journalist i just get a normal visa and go in and try to stay under the radar because that's the kind of journalism

I do. I go to a place. I stay for a long time. I'm usually trying to interview just, you know, individuals. I'm going to a village and building a story around that. Interviewing civilians? Yeah. Often or I'll be with, you know, a, you know, a rebel group or an army group, but the idea is to kind of stay under the radar of the government. And that's increasingly difficult to do. And governments will just, you know, there's a lot of governments out there. I'll use example of Egypt. I did a, in Egypt, you have to, if you're a journalist, you have to get a pressed visa to go in. If you don't, the secret police are going to stop you within 10 minutes of, if you go outside of the touristic zones, not 10 minutes, 10 seconds. If you start photographing

or talking to Egyptians outside of the main tourist zones, the secret police will be on you in a flash, and then you'll get kicked out of the country. They're going to kill you. They're going to kick you out of the country. So I did a story that was quite hostile to the, to the dictatorship in Egypt now. I'll never get a journalist visa to go back to Egypt. They would never get one. And there's probably a few countries like that. I've never been able to get into Saudi Arabia. I've always wanted to go. Really? Yeah, well, give me a visa. Why do you think that is? I might be able to go now as a tourist because now they're kind of, the royal family is doing this whole thing of, you know, they want to become this like tourist destination.

But for journalists, you know, it's, it's an oligarchy. It's all ruled by one family. And they don't, yeah, they don't, traditionally they've never wanted like journalists to go in there. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, the rules of war has always been something that's so perplexing to me, right? Yeah. Like, you're allowed to shoot and kill people, blow people up from like 8 a.m. to 9.m. to

9 p.m. But like the idea of like sneaking into a another the enemy soldier's tent and cutting his throat at night is like a war crime. Right. Right. You know, I never really understood that. And dropping napalm on a village is that's fine. Right. Yeah, it's it's it's there's a lot of like inconsistencies to the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, I always thought that like, you know, when it comes to war, I think that it's better. I think the idea of like, the problem is the veil of secrecy, but like covert,

covert operations and sending out assassins to take out leaders, right? To slip into their bedrooms at night and cut their throats. It's, you don't have the collateral damage. You don't kill innocent people. You don't have to carpet bomb villages.

Right. Right. You can take out these. And the guys that are doing that, they want to do that. These are the guys that are lining up in front of the CIA's deputy director's office

saying send me now like the Billy Waws of the world. Right, right. And then you don't have to deal with these kids who are like, you know, don't really know what they want to do with their life.

Should you go to college? Should I join the Coast Guard? Should I join the Marines? Whatever? And they just like, maybe they have some sort of influence in their life that's pushing them in this direction to do military

and they end up going there and they're like, their world is just fucking blown and blown out in front of their eyes. They come back. and they're dealing with those trauma and this PTSD when they, you know, it probably wasn't

the best idea for them to go out and do that stuff, right? That's right. That's right. So, yeah, it's a, it's kind of like a, it's a weird moral thing to say, like, I think it's better to go cut throats, cut people's throats at night, but like, you know, what's worse, right? Innocent people dying? I don't think so. I mean, I think that is worse.

And again, it kind of goes to the thing about drones. I mean, now, with most people in the world, you could program a drone to go over and shoot somebody in the head. So, you know, very few people are safe from that. I mean, the president and a few other people, but not the rest of us.

Yeah, the problem with having the covert assassins and the covert ops stuff is they're shrouded and a veil of secrecy. Right. So now you're giving the Pentagon or the CIA, basically like a get out of jail free card to do anything they want around the world. That's right.

And what does a veil of invisible, a cloak of invisibility do? Does it promote better behavior or worse behavior? Usually worse. Yeah, on both a national level, out of personal level. Right, right. It's true, yeah. That's so crazy. And, you know, now that you have like, God, like this Palantir stuff where they're doing these,

we just watched a commercial the other day about how they're doing these drone swarms. Oh, yeah. And they have these, it's like called spreadsheet warfare, apparently, where they have like really cheap drones and they can have thousands of them and they can go swarm a battleship. Right. And like basically destroy all the capabilities of the battleship. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

You can't stop them all. Yeah. And, you know, a lot of them can become autonomous too where like, I don't know if the drone swarms can do this, but like certain drones if they get disconnected. Like the idea is to make them to where they're not dependent on a remote operator, right? So if they get hit by one of these guns, these, what are those guns called where you shoot the drones and they fall out of the sky because you're like blasting the signal. Oh, yeah. Jammers. The jammers, yeah, the signal jammers.

So, like, they're not affected by signal jammers because the AI basically gives them an objective of what they have to do. Oh, yeah. This is the military commercial. Yeah. Oh, wow. How crazy is that? It looks like a video game. Yeah, it does.

It looks like Starlings. Yep. Wow. So, yeah, it seems like I would guess with the way technology and AI is evolving and the way Palantir is exploding right now, I imagine like the next 10 years are going to be crazy with the evolution of warfare. Yeah. And we're probably not going to hear. as much about it, I would imagine. There's not going to be like, whoa.

That was crazy thunder. Yeah, it is. There's not going to be planes dropping missiles as much anymore. It's going to be much more of this like covert style AI autonomous warfare. Yeah. No, I think we're at a new watershed moment when it comes to weaponry, like the machine gun was, you know, in World War I. Right. A machine gun and barbed wire

You know, utterly changed the face of war And we're clearly at another moment like that. Yeah, DARPA DARPA had, they created it, was it the M16 during the Vietnam War? Yeah. Yeah, and some of the stuff that they were working on back then was like 20 years ahead of its time.

Yeah. Like some of this, I heard that they were working on stuff like Neurlink in the 90s. Wow. They were trying to work on brain ships to create super soldiers to where they would not fatigue They would not get hungry.

And they wouldn't feel pain. I mean, isn't the story that that's what the Nazis used, right? They used some version of that in World War II. The guys, when they went into during the invasion of Russia, they were all like whacked out on. Oh, they were on Perbatin. Yeah, yeah. Meth. And I know that in, like in Syria, everyone was taking this drug called Captagon.

Captagon is like another version of that. Yeah. That they're actually, the Russians are using captagons. Yeah, they are. Yeah. And there is allegedly a lot of folks, there's a, of movement of people who are trying to get Ibogaine to the Ukrainian troops. Huh. Huh.

Which is a psychedelic. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. Which apparently is being used to, I think it could be used for two reasons. I think one of the main reasons they're using the Ibogaine in Ukraine is to like get them through some of the trauma. Oh.

And to get them back out in the battlefield. Like process this trauma and get back out there. Huh. Ukrainian military is this is the intercept. Ukraine military is experimenting with psychedelic drug. I would gain to treat traumatic. Oh yeah. And TBIs.

Wow. Huh. So and another thing that DARPA just funded the University of North Carolina to figure out how to take the psychedelic trip out of, I think it's either Ibegame or psilocybin. But they're basically trying to figure out how to use psychedelics for soldiers without having the psychedelic experience. Right. Right.

So they can use that to treat stuff like this, like TBIs or PTSD. Right. Yeah. I know they're doing clinical trials with MDMA for PTSD and stuff. Oh, I've heard it works great as well as Ibigame. Yeah. But one of the things I also think they're using it for, which is not reported on as much, is to optimize soldiers on the battlefield.

Huh. Because when you take psychedelics, it can increase things like visual acuity. Your hearing gets better. Wow. Edge detection gets better. Wow. It does something to the brain.

And there's, there's lots of like famous athletes that have famously used psilocybin and stuff. Huh. During sports like MMA fighters and basketball players, I think. So, yeah. is what is this? Oh yeah, this is a story about removing the hallucinations from psychedelics.

So yeah, this is all, this is all, oh, okay, this is what, so DARPA, the solution, according to DARPA is to develop up, down, down, down, right there, develop new drugs that work on the same neurochemical channels as LSD, MDNA, and psilocybin, but won't create visual auditory or otherwise delusional hallucinations. Yeah, you don't want them all like hugging and singing kumbaya. Like, why are we here? We need to leave. War is bad.

We need to keep fighting. Yeah. It's crazy, man. I don't know what to think of all this. I don't know what to think of all the, just like the companies like DARPA and, and Palantir that are also, Palantir is like a new AI.

And they just got like $800 billion or $800 million a couple weeks ago from the Pentagon. Wow. You know, all that money that's going into this stuff for defense is wild. It really is crazy stuff. I imagine like all that, you know, the trillions of dollars that have gone missing from the Pentagon budget have probably gone to like covert. Yeah, could be. Weapons stuff like this, you know.

Like I wonder what they have that we don't know about. Have you ever seen drugs on the battlefield? Drugs? Yeah, being used on the battlefield. Yeah. And again, in Chechnya with the Russians. I mean, they were, they were on the Capagon. They were on Captagon.

They were on heroin. I'll tell you crazy. I mean, and this kind of illustrates just how insane Chechnya was. I was with a Chechen unit, rebel unit, and kind of on this elevated farm road near the front lines. And the Russian helicopter gunships were blowing up this, just wiping out this town, village about two miles away. Using what they call Puff the Magic Dragon. It's this grid of bullets that go to, it's the size of a soccer field. Anything like larger than a worm in a size of a soccer field just like it disappears.

They're just using this against this village. And there was a line of trees, you know, tree line in a field. And then on the other side of that was this farmhouse. And I saw a couple of guys on the tree line, you know, armed. And I asked the commander, I did, you know, something new. I said, oh, how long do you keep your guys out there before you rotate them? And he goes, oh, those aren't my guys. Those are Russian soldiers. And we're completely visible on this thing. And it turns out that the farmhouse I was saying that was maybe 200 yards away

was a Russian base. The guys were, the Russian soldiers in the fire line were waiting to come over to sell their weapons to the rebels. And they didn't know who I was. So they're waiting for me to leave. and they were going to come over and they were going to sell their weapons to the to the Chechens for heroin or vodka. And the Chechens were going to use those weapons to try to kill them that night. And this was happening all over Chechia. So you had this bizarre situation of a village two miles out ways getting wiped out. And here Russians are selling their weapons to the rebels that they're then going to use to kill them. The way you could usually tell in Chechnya what was a Russian checkpoint or a rebel checkpoint was that,

they both were wearing Russian army uniforms, but the rebels had the better uniforms. They had the ones that were coming right out of the crates because all the best stuff was being sold to the rebels by the Russian soldiers. It was just insane. It was just insane. There's kind of a mad max quality of the whole place. I'll tell you, it's kind of a not a funny story. I mean, it's a, well, within the context of Cheshire was kind of funny. There was a really notorious Russian firebase that was on the main road.

And they're killing people there all the time. And just leaving the bodies and the ditches and stuff. And a Washington Post reporter came through. And a guy named Lee Hochstetter, and they pulled him out of his car. And they were about, they put him in the ditch. They were about to shoot him. And his last thought was, they're all just up like Rambo. They have red bandanas on.

They do the bullets around the thing. So his last words that he thought was, he said the guy was about to shoot him in Russian, I'm personal friends with Sylvester Stallone. So the guy went, pulled him out of the ditch, and he had to go into the firebase. And for the next day and a half, had to make up Sylvester Stallone's stories to keep them occupied until they all sort of passed out from, you know, like drug-induced comas and stuff. And he was able to leave. Holy shit. Is that amazing?

I mean, it's kind of funny. It's kind of, but you imagine those are your last words on Earth. A personal friend, Sylvester Stallone, let me live. Hold on. Put down your weapons. Crazy. Oh, man. That really is crazy.

Yeah. Hold that thought. I can take a leak real quick. Yeah. We'll be right back. In all of your reporting that you've done all over the world, how much interaction have you had with sort of like covert intelligence operations happening? Right.

Because I know you've talked a lot about this stuff in your books. Right. But like how much on the ground interaction have you had with this stuff, if any? You know, virtually none. I think the primary places where you would have seen that, or you could have crossed paths were in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early days of the American invasions. I've tended, where I've tended to go, it's really kind of off the radar of places.

And what I've found is kind of the, is, I mean, I've certainly been cross paths with CIA officers in the field and stuff, but what I've found increasingly is that they're kind of clueless as to what's happening. And I'll give an example. I was in Darfur in West. in Western Sudan during the Civil War there in 2004,05. And I came back to Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, and I wanted to get an interview with the deputy chief of mission,

the DCM of the American Embassy, who usually is the DCM who knows more about what's happening in the country than the ambassador often. Getting into the American Embassy in Khartoum at that time was, It was like getting into Fort Knox. The entire building was encased in bomb-proof chicken wire, heavy metal. Five, six layers of security had to go through, body scans, and then met with the DCM and a couple of guys in there who I assumed were CIA. And instead of me interviewing them, they interviewed me about what was going on. And I really felt that, I mean, if they were playing dumb, they were really, really good actors.

And I think the point to this is that, okay, so what you have now, increasing in American footprint abroad is you have these, you know, say, special force units operating in Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever. But elsewhere, they're so quarantined off that. it's almost a question of why they're there in the first place. American embassies now all around the world are like fortresses. It's almost impossible to get into them. In Sudan, everybody lived on that compound. And if they ever left the compound, if the ambassador was going to go meet the president or whatever, they went in an armored convoys.

So what happens again and again is, so Sudan is, you know, rated at the time was rated to, you know, a terrorist populated country. So the embassy people and even the CIA would not leave the compound. So what are they doing there? And so I find over and over again that the American government knows less and less of what's happening around the world. I mean, I was in Oslo, Norway, for the Nobel Peace Prize about 10 years ago. And the American embassy in Norway is like a fortress.

I mean, obviously they have more freedom of movement they do in Sudan. But, you know, this whole idea of that you have to be so safe that you can't venture out is. So why are people even there? I mean, that's what I found over and over again. Yeah. Well, I think it's the people. The people are there like the analysis people, right? Right.

The analysts. Right. Yeah. There's probably a lot of guys that are on the ground embedded maybe in the other. side. Could be. Yeah, could be. In different places. They're probably not going to be in like actual war zones. Right. In most places like, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure we have a lot of foreign agents that are embedded in our intelligence community and here in the U.S. that are like trying to spy on things that are being, you know, analysis and, uh, intelligence that's coming in in the U.S.

side, like at Langley or whatever. Right. And I'm sure we have people, you know, in other foreign countries. Yeah. Like, possibly Russia. Oh, sure. That are doing the same exact thing. But I heard, I recently, I had an intelligence officer, a former intelligence officer in here the other day, John Kariaku.

And he was saying that the U.S. probably has a few hundred Mossade undeclared agents or officers in the U.S., undeclared, meaning they haven't let anybody know. They're basically like spying. And he says, beyond a shadow of the doubt, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the U.S. has zero undeclared CIA officers in Israel. I'm sure that's true. I'm absolutely sure. You know, it's funny.

It's, this is, in my book, it's coming about the Iranian Revolution, it, this was so the CIA in Iran under the Shah, Shaw was one of America's most important foreign allies outside of Europe, probably the most important foreign allies outside of Europe, probably the most important foreign foreign. outside of Europe in the 1970s. The CIA had a huge station in Tehran, the capital. The only thing the station did there was to spy on Russia, to figure out what the Soviet Union was doing in Iran or along that, along the Iran's northern frontier. They did no domestic intelligence at all. The only source of their information what was happening internally in Iran was the Shah's secret police,

Savak, it was a great name for an intelligence agency. They would give the Americans like what they thought was going on. And because Savak was loyal to the Shah, everything they told the CIA was just good news about, you know, how everybody loved the Shah.

They never did any domestic intelligence at all. And so had no clue of what was coming when the revolution started. An amazing statistic I found was, well, not a statistic, but an anecdote is, so one thing that I told Khomeini was doing to stir up the masses in Iran, he was giving these sermons and smuggling them into Iran on tape cassettes. And so people are listing these tape cassettes everywhere. finally somebody in the CIA thought you know we should get a we should get a copy of these tape cassettes and find out what's going on it's like what's he saying to what's he saying to the people so they went out the CIA went out to the bazaar and bought a bunch of these tape cassettes but none of them spoke farcey and they they of course they had you know local workers for him they never bothered to transcribe the tapes so when a year later when the after because the revolution was over. The American embassy is overrun. Everyone's taken hostage. The students who came into the embassy opened up all these drawers and found all these tape cassettes

from Khomeini that had never been listened to. And Hulmini was very direct in what he was saying, you know, we need to overthrow the Shah, we need to get rid of the Americans. Israel is the great Satan. America is also the great Satan. And the Americans had no clue this was going on. Wow. just phenomenal. So, so this, but the idea that the CIA was just not doing any domestic intelligence at all. Anyway, to go to your point about in Israel, I'm sure that's absolutely true. I'm sure we have nobody in Israel on a, you know, a deep cover basis in CIA.

Yeah. Yeah. Your intelligence has to be, if you're living over there, if your country is in that part of the world, your foreign intelligence and your domestic intelligence has to be top-notch. That's right. Right, because everything's an existential threat when you're over there. That's right. We're surrounded by two massive oceans. Like, we don't, right, that's right.

We're kind of comfortable. We're fat and happy over here. That's right. Yeah. Explain me. So that, when that happened, when Humaney overthrew the Shaw, right. We had no idea. We had no idea this was bubbling up behind the scenes when we should have.

That's right. I mean, it was, the Shaw was becoming increasingly unpopular for probably the three, four, five, years prior to the revolution. When the revolution started, I mean, to the Carter administration's defense, the world had never seen a counter-revolution before, a revolution that was not progressive ideas or, you know, communism or, but, you know, a revolution about, let's go back to the 14th century. Right. Right.

You know, that had never happened before. Plus, the students in the streets, all the demonstrations you saw, these were guys in bell bottoms, jean jackets, long hair. They look like, they look like American college students. So really, American college students want to go back to the 14th century? Why was that? Well, because there were a lot of different factions to, you know, so many different groups were opposed to the Shaw.

So it was kind of this umbrella of opposition that happened. And Khomeini and the fundamentalists basically were able to take over. The idea at first was, okay, here's this spiritual leader who he can serve as our kind of symbolic head. But, you know, Iran was the most college-educated country in the Middle East. You know, women had not worn the veil for 50 years. But I think, so I think there was this collective idea as like, okay, Hohmani, is he's the symbol. And so we have everybody from communists to real conservatives, fundamentalists, but he will, you know, he's this old guy in exile, but he's what's the rallying cry for the people.

But in fact, Khomeini was very, very clever, and he managed to kind of take over, take over the revolution. One interesting thing about the American reaction was once they realized, once Carter, and people around him realized that there was a really good chance that Shaw's going to be overthrown and Khomeini was, seemed to be kind of in charge of things. You got to remember the Cold War is still going on. So even Carter, despite his liberalism and this idea of a new foreign policy approach, they were still very obsessed with the Soviet Union.

So the first thought was during the Cold War, everything was a zero-sum game, right? If we lose, it means the Soviets have won and vice versa. So at first, when the Shah looked, he was in trouble, the administration started to panic. But also what they thought is what, well, Homania is like a right-wing fundamentalist. He's certainly not a communist. So maybe it's not so bad if he comes to power because, you know, he's certainly not going to hand over the country to the Soviets. So there was this kind of acceptance in the late days of the revolution that, okay, okay, you know, the Shah, you know, our relations may, you know, drop back a little bit, but at least it's not.

can become a communist state. And so there's this acceptance even before Khomeiti took over that, yeah, not such a bad thing. It's kind of remarkable now in looking in hindsight and very quickly afterwards that, you know, what kind of warped thinking that was. But at the time, it was like they were really focused on the Soviet Union. And Soviets had no idea what was happening there either. And it played no role in the revolution. And a lot to do with a big part of the uprising was that a majority of the population detested the United States for installing the show in the first place, right? That's right. That's right. What made the revolution so volatile was it was, it was both this

religious fundamentalism, which had kind of been percolating up in many religions in the mid-70s throughout the world. It was the rise of the Christian fundamentalist movement in the states. In Israel, the Jewish settlers in the West Bank. But in really, so. there was this kind of resurgence of religious revealing throughout the world so there was that but there is also this

you'd almost call it an anti-colonial kind of the last anti-colonial revolution the Shah was so identified with the United States and he was so seen as the lackey of the United States that it played so it was a double whammy and

the more the Shaw kind of the Shaw was so clueless that even while the revolution was going on, he was appealing to the Carter administration, hey, come out and say how much you support me, you know, say that I'm, you know, I'm, I'm your guy. Right. It was like the worst possible thing that the Americans could have done. Right.

And he just didn't get it. And I think probably that was the biggest, the biggest thing that overthrew him, that led to us overthrow him. Yeah. This war this this this conflict between Iran and Israel over the last year has been like you have it's been strange because you have you have the government and the like the traditional media painting Israel as this these just like unhinged maniacs right but it seems like every single thing they do is very strategic thought out and rational like warning giving giving warnings before they're sending strikes. right or whatever right and they're like they're they seem to be very calculated in their retaliations to all of the bombardments they've been getting from Israel and the US right no that's right and I think that um yeah I mean and what you know after the Americans bombed or the last big bombing by the Israelis they did this very oh it was after the American bombing they did this just completely pro forma bombardment of American base in Qatar I think or maybe it was Kuwait but but But it's just complete, you know, theater. And they gave him a warning.

And they gave him a warning ahead of time. So they, and I'm sure that the Iranian people don't know that they gave him a warning. Right. But I mean, they probably called them up, like, look, we got to do this or else we're going to look like. Yes, exactly right. Yeah, I think that's exactly what happened. Get everyone out. Right.

Right. Nobody was hurt. Right. I think they hit a latrine or something. Yeah, I think that they didn't want to mess with them. But as I was saying earlier, I do think that there's a strong argument we made that they welcome the attack by the Americans because now they can tarnish their opposition by now their American lackeys, right? So if you stand in opposition to what the Iranian government's doing, then you're in bed with the Americans. And I think that might be what they really care about at this point is keeping your hold on power.

And what do you think, like, what is Russia and China's relationship with them now? Because I don't, I don't remember seeing any sort of rhetoric coming out of China or Russia in support for them during this whole conflict. There was maybe one really benign statement from Russia, I think. Yeah, yeah. But other than that, nothing. It's very strange. I mean, China, I, yeah, I don't think I, I don't think I saw anything from China. And Russia, you're right.

It was very, very tepid. And they get all their oil from Iran, right? They get a lot of their oil. A lot of it. Yeah. And they were getting a lot of the drones from Iran. Yes. Right.

Iran. The game Russia has played recently is really a hard one to figure out because not just with Iran, but they were backing Syria. They were backing Assad in Syria. And they just kind of let Syria, let Assad collapse. They did nothing to help him. Isn't he in Moscow now? He's in Moscow, yeah. I think soon to have to fall out a window, because he's not of any use anymore. So I think he's headed for an accident. But why did they just let him, you know, fall like that and not try to rescue him? Was it some sort of idea that they thought, or was there a deal that's like, okay, we lose Syria, we don't come to Iran's aid. In return, you let us.

do what we want to do in Ukraine. I mean, some people have that theory. It is odd to me that Putin just stood by and watched Assad fall because Syria was, you know, in the Arab world, it was, they had a Navy base there. Strange. I don't know, I don't know what that was about. Yeah. This global chessboard is. Yeah.

It's a very strange one, though. Very complicated. Yeah. Especially when it gets into. to Syria and Turkey and all that stuff. And it starts to get into there and like all the relationships and the trade partnerships and all this stuff. It gets so confusing. It's really weird.

It's it's really Tsar. Yeah. What is like what is the relationship between like ISIS and the Taliban when it comes to Syria? So ISIS is now. isolated in a few kind of spots in eastern Syria and maybe a few little enclaves in Western Iraq. But then they also have an offshoot now in Afghanistan. They, they, they are targeting Taliban because they're not extreme enough. They, ISIS is. Isis is? Yeah. Yeah. Taliban just passed a law that a woman is not allowed to speak

in public. Oh, wow. Literally. They're not allowed to speak in public. But they're, you know, to ISIS, like, yeah, that's the start. Yeah.

Yeah, so they've targeted the Taliban. So definitely not any, it doesn't seem to be any kind of connection between the two of them other than fighting each other. Yeah, and there were some reports that were coming out a couple months ago about how we have been

giving the Taliban like, tens and tens of millions of dollars every single week for something. I don't know what it's for, but Steve, I don't know if you can find anything on this, like if it's still relevant, but we were basically shipping cash to the Taliban every single week. And people, you know, a lot of people were kind of like getting pissed off about this. But then I saw a report saying how what, you know, one of the strategic reasons we, might have been doing this was to like break

some sort of supply chain with the Taliban and China. Oh. Huh. Oh my gosh. What is this? Is that it? I don't know.

What does it say? This is May, March, May of 22nd. Since the Biden administration disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the United States government has provided over 2.8 billion

to address the humanitarian crisis, created by the Taliban takeover. Last year, I requested that Seagar report to... They found that at least 10.9 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars has been provided to the Taliban in an unacceptable... It is unacceptable for any U.S. funding

to benefit the Taliban. The Biden administration must take immediate... I don't know if this is what it was. This was something more about, like, we were sending it every single week to them for something. Wait, what is that on the say? East Asia and... Pacific. Oh, no, this is something different.

But yeah, no, I thought there was some sort of, some sort of, like channel thing. A channel, like a, like the Taliban was somehow, like, has something to do with supplying food to China or something like this. And that might have been why, why we were giving the Taliban, or, no, no, no, I'm sorry. It was somebody else was supplying, it was a, a route, like a food route to China that they were paying the Taliban to, like, sabotage

it or something. Or, like, to try to destroy. destroy it. Yeah. Similar article. Yeah, I don't know. I can't read that Steve. It's way too small and it's too much. Yeah.

So, yeah, I don't know what that was, but like, they haven't really, we've kind of forgotten about them recently. Right. Yeah. I know. It's completely off the radar now. Yeah. Yeah.

There's too much other stuff going on. But the other part of the world that's interesting that we haven't talked about is the whole China, Taiwan. Right. Situation. Right. And how much attention do you pay to that? You know, ironically enough, I actually spent six years of my childhood in Taiwan.

Really? Yeah. In the 1960s. And what I remember back then was, well, it was during the time of the Shankaj Sheck, and there was this constant drumbeat that his regime in Taiwan were going to go back and take over the mainland. You know, didn't happen. I have to believe that the Chinese, you know, the Chinese are very, it's a cliche to say. They're just very smart and they think long term.

And I think that they, you know, just like they got Hong Kong back, they played it, they played a long game. And, you know, they promised democracy in Hong Kong. It's going to be the special enclave and everything. And now they've just chipped away at, you know, at, you know, at. at the democratic rights in Hong Kong. I think there's all kinds of economic ties between Taiwan and mainland China. People go back and forth.

So I think it's just going to be this slow absorption. I don't think it's going to come to... Kinetic? Yeah. And I think also what I was starting to say is I think that what the Chinese watching what the problems Russia has had in Ukraine has probably had an effect

with any kind of idea of a military. adventure against Taiwan because Taiwan is far better defensively equipped than Ukraine was. And I mean, I think that Chinese would not get their ass kick, maybe, but they would suffer a lot in taking over Taiwan militarily. Well, they have the parliament now, right? I think China does. Yeah. They lost the presidency, but the parliament is very pro-China. Right.

So the president can't get anything done there. Right. Right. But yeah, I just think that I just think that the Chinese especially just play the long game. And Americans are notorious for not playing a long game. So you just kind of wait things out.

Yeah, I don't, yeah, it's funny, I've never done any reporting. I've wanted to in Asia. Have you ever been to China? I have. You have? I have. What year? It was about 12 years ago. Okay.

went to do a kind of a weird travel piece on the Chinese built this train to Lhasa in Tibet all the way from Beijing and cutting across the permafrost of the Tibetan plateau. The idea that it was going to melt and it was all going to fall apart. But anyway, so I went for National Geographic to take this train and spend some time in Tibet. One thing I remember really distinctly, I got to lie. I got to Lhasa, and I hadn't taken a computer with me. So I got to go to an internet cafe, which was everywhere. And I was just writing to friends back in the state saying, oh, you know, I've gotten to Tibet. And every time I started to type Tibet, the computer would crash. And it turned out that Tibet is a banned word in mainland China. You cannot. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just every time I

I try to type it, the computer would shut down. And at that time, I'm sure now it's, you know, it's moved on technology. But at that time, there was supposed to be a half million Chinese just monitoring the Internet in China, you know, like what everybody was doing. And it, yeah, so. They didn't have the Wii chat back then when you were there. I don't believe. No, they didn't. They didn't.

And, yeah, and Tibet was very militarized. You saw an army everywhere. But Tibet was fascinating. It was really pretty incredible. I just had a lady on recently who was from China. And she was explaining to me, she has a great YouTube channel where she kind of like goes deep into like all the different things that China is doing all the time. Like the history of China and what's like to live there and her family's still there. And she was explaining to me like you're not allowed to be religious or like participate in any sort of like religious faith unless you devout your loyal.

to the Supreme Leader first. Wow. That has to be your primary, like, worship. Like, he has to be number one, and then your God can be number two. Wow. But, like, they really frown upon, like, organized religion there. Like, it's just, it's, the CCP is above all. Yeah.

That is God. And I think it's become much more repressive under Xi Jinping than when I was there. I think I was still there just kind of during the last days of liberalization, kind of. But I think it's really gotten clamped down since then. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny seeing like that, like how they run that country with that, you know, it's a total surveillance state. Yeah. Oh, totally.

With AI and surveillance cameras everywhere, they have their banking and their social media and their communication is all tethered to one app, one centralized app that the government can monitor at all times. Right. They can turn off your money in certain parts of the world, a certain parts of the country. Right. Where they want you to stay and only let it work in a part where they want you to be. you know, it's terrifying. Yeah. And, you know, if you look at, you know, some of the stuff that's happening now in the United States, you could make the case that that's where we're headed.

Yeah. When you like with the everything that has been going on with Elon sucking all the info out of like the HHS, the IRS, and all this stuff with Doge. And then him partnering with Palantir AI. Yeah. And if you combine all that stuff with AI, you could easily create some sort of. of like a digital control grid. Sure. And now they just pass that that genius act where they want to bring in stable coins.

So if you want to, you want to throw in the kitchen sink, put the cherry on top. You just bring in stable coins. And now you get people on this digital currency. And you have, you know, giving Palantir $800 million every six months for their AI. Right. And, you know, who knows what the hell they're doing. I know the CIA is using Palantir. I don't know what, I don't know if they're, I don't know, I know they use it overseas.

right for war stuff i don't know anything about what they're doing here with palantir but i i bet it's not nothing right right um but you know the other thing which makes me skeptical about that like it on paper like the technology is heading in the same direction that like the technology surveillance uh in china it seems to be like we're heading in that direction but the weird thing about it is like peter teal is super religious now. You know, like he's doing this, this, he's promoting Christianity in Silicon Valley and trying to get people in Silicon Valley to map everything they're doing and, and make their purpose

about God and about Jesus. You know what I mean? Right. Which is, which is very interesting. I'm really curious. I'm really curious, you know, what his, what his ideas are behind that and like what, you know, the guy who, who is the CEO of Palantir, and is like one of the richest dudes in the world. who is getting billions of dollars from the military industrial complex is, you know, a gay Christian billionaire.

Who's trying to map Christianity on this stuff. That's so strange. Have you seen any of this? No. No. It's been in the report of the New York Times. Recently, I just wrote an article. Well, I've been out of the country lately. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it's funny when you talk about like facial recognition stuff, I was just a in Georgia, the country. And the government is gradually turning into a dictatorship and it's going into Russia's pocket. Is Georgia, sorry to interrupt you. No. Is Georgia the country that has the leader who's getting paid by the U.S.? No. I watched an Oliver Stone documentary. Uh-huh. I wonder who. And it was in the documentary where the leader of Georgia was making, like, he was basically making more than the governor of Connecticut. It might have been the previous president. Maybe the previous was very pro-American.

And he was getting paid by the U.S. I believe that's a few hundred thousand dollars a month or something. It does not surprise me at all. Okay. And that guy's now in prison. Oh, is he really? Yeah. So it's becoming more and more sort of in Moscow's pocket.

And so there's daily demonstrations in front of the parliament that have been going on for eight months, nine months. Okay. But what recently happened is that they put up facial. recognition cameras all in front of the in front of parliament and so the government is using so the people are wearing masks now to try to hide their faces and stuff but with the cameras they're able to even with you're the bottom of your face covered I guess they can tell who you are wow so they're not arresting them they're sending them through the mail these massive fines that no we're wearing a mask yeah yeah for for wearing a mask in public which is also illegal and for I don't know obstructing

traffic or whatever by being in front of parliament. So this is just a really subtle way that they again, it's kind of the Chinese model of how you destroy your opposition. You don't have to arrest them. You don't have to shoot them. You just, you just club them over the head and, you know, find them. And it was, it's, it was about $2,000 that people are being fined on, on this. And which is more than the person makes in four months. Who is the leader of Georgia right now? This guy named, well, it's a billionaire. Reclusive billionaire, he's the real power behind the throne, a guy named Ivanovili and Budzina Ivanovili. But he has got some figurehead president standing in front of him, but he's this multi-billionaire, made his fortune in Moscow.

He's apparently worth about $8 billion, which is more than, I think, George's GDP in six months. But this kind of reclusive guy who raises flamingos, or peacocks, peacocks on his private estates. He's got, yeah, it's a weird. And you were saying that they're more in favor with Russia? He's kind of steering the country more and more into Russia's pocket. Yeah. And they've also, in Georgia, with their banks, they've used, that's one cutaway that Putin and the oligarchs have in Russia. They've been funneling money through Georgia

to keep it away from the sanctions. Oh, interesting. What are we going to do about that? We have to figure that out. I know. We've got to get in there. Great country, by the way. Yeah, I imagine.

Some of the documentaries I've seen, look, the landscapes look. It's gorgeous. Amazing. Gorgeous, yeah, and great food. Wow. So we're in this tug of war between

Israel, United States, and going back to Iran. This is basically a proxy war, right? Yeah. So it's Israel is the one who really wants to fight Iran. They're the ones that really want to take out Iran.

Right. They want to do regime change or expand, make that part of greater Israel. I don't know exactly what that is. And we want to sell them weapons to do it or give them money to do it. It's a little bit different. It's a different proxy war than like Russia, Ukraine.

Right. Right. Because we're the ones that want Russia neutralized more than I would say Ukraine does. Right. But in this situation, it's like, it seems like Israel really wants them neutralized more than we do. Right. Do you get the same sense? Yeah.

I mean, I think there's a couple of things going on. I think that Netanyahu, who understood right after the October 7th attacks by Hamas. Which seems like it was a false flag. Not a false flag, but it seems like he kind of let that happen. Oh, it was just a massive screw-up by the Israeli intelligence. Because he was funneling money to them forever, right? Tons of money.

No, that's right. I mean, he created, Israel created Hamas as a counterweight. And it was really under Netanyahu's administration as a counterweight. as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat's group, because he wanted to polarize the argument, right, where the Palestinian authority, which is corrupt and ineffectual and everything, but we're willing to make an accommodation with Israel. Netanyahu very clearly wanted the extremist to take over because then there's no, there's no room for dialogue, right? So, yes, tons of money went to Hamas from Israel.

They created Hamas to a large degree. What also happened with October 7th is that through sheer arrogance on the Israelis part, they were caught with their pants down. You know, they've never – in having spent time with the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces, they've never had any respect for the Palestinians as fighters. They've always kind of thought of them as monkeys, frankly. So they were completely situated to be caught out. And they were. And quite brilliantly what Hamas did. Nothing, you know, the border, the Israelis had all the super-sophisticated intelligence.

Hamas never used phones to send messages back and forth. Everything was on pieces of paper. Word of mouth. And again, going back to the, it's the, it's the, it's the. ox cutter way of war, right? You go low tech, so low tech that you're under the radar. It was such a fuck up by the Israeli army under Netanyahu's watch that October 7th happened. That, you know, you go back to that time and, you know, people were predicting that, you know,

I was going to be out of office in two to three weeks. And what he's realized is the longer he keeps the war going, the war front. Do you think it's impossible he had intelligence that they were planning this and decided to ignore it for an excuse to start the war? I think it's possible that they had intelligence and didn't act on it because they thought, again, I mean, my personal feeling is that the sheer arrogance of the Israelis, the hubris they have in looking at the Palestinians, if they got warnings, they just didn't take them seriously. They thought these clowns can't really pull anything off. That would be my thing. But I think he knows that Netanyahu knows it as long as he keeps this thing going, the war and just expanding it into Lebanon, into Syria, into Iran. The minute all that stops, then the questions start.

And I think he's out. So he's just going to keep it going. Iran It's funny he's been here three times since January. I know. It's amazing. And then that embarrassing thing where he shows Trump he's nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. And of course, Trump just hated out.

This is the fucking Twilight Zone. I know. And it really is. It really is. So, yeah, I think that, you know, he just needs to keep the balls spinning, the plate spinning or whatever. Yeah. You know, and as soon as it stops, he's, he's, he's in trouble. For, for a country that has probably the most sophisticated intelligence apparatus in the world.

Right. And some of the most advanced weaponry and technology. I mean, they're like a little Silicon Valley in the Middle East. Right. It's astonishing to me how bad their PR has been over this whole, this whole thing, you know, because it's like, wow. just the sentiment of folks in the U.S. about this whole conflict. Right.

Has been astonishing to watch. Right. Right. To see, like, you know, not just the way our government has been, you know, putting in these, you know, the governor of Florida, DeSantis. He went to Israel to sign a affirmative action law for Florida. Wow. To where you can't talk, you can't talk negatively about Jewish people. or else it's a felony.

You know? I mean, this is like the same, the last 10 years or the last however many years it's been with Trump during this first administration of like, fuck your feelings, all these snowflakes stuff like this. Right. Now you have the opposite side, Ron DeSantis, going and signing these affirmative action laws in Florida saying, no, you can't talk any, you know, say anything negative about Israel in Florida. So amazing. Like, what is happening? I know. And people are calling it out.

And there's like a huge uprising like on places like X and YouTube and everywhere. and I don't know how much of this is like bot campaigns or how much of this is Iranian bot campaign farms like doing this and how much of it's real or fake. But it seems like it's genuine. It seems like a lot of people, a lot of the pundits, a lot of the big, even like the people that were promoting Trump during his present, during his campaign this time. Right. Some of the biggest people who are promoting him. Some of the biggest pundits are like slamming on the brakes saying, whoa, what the fuck? This is not what we signed up for.

This is not what we voted for. Right. And they're really, they're like calling out the hypocrisy with this stuff. Like, like, why, like, how the hell are, are, are, is a, we are giving them billions of dollars every, of taxpayer dollars. Right. Every single year. Why won't, uh, we let them, why can't we get them to, uh, make their lobby a foreign agent, register as a foreign agent lobby?

And, um, Like, why can't we get them to stop blackmailing our politicians? Right. Like, there's so many things here. I know. And it's both parties. You know, it's both the Democrats and Republicans. It is.

Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. It's a uniparty. Yeah. No, it's astonishing. And there's two cults on each side. You got Maga on one side and you got like the far left on the other side and they're just like fighting just so everyone right under the radar can get their stuff done.

Yeah. It's astonishing. No. And it's, you know, the idea that they've killed it, they've killed at least 60,000 people in Gaza. And that's 3% of the population. And if that was America, that's 9 million people. They're dead at least. And the vast majority of them civilians.

And the reason, you know, there's not been a Western journalist in Gaza because they'd be killed. They'd be targeted and killed by the IDF. And all the coverage you've seen out of inside Gaza has been by Arab or Palestinian journalists. and they've killed, the IDF has killed, at least 130 journalists. 75% of the journalists killed around the world last year were killed in Gaza by the, by the Israeli army. Wow. And again, that's a statistic. From what countries?

Again, mostly for Palestinians. Okay. Because anybody coming in from outside, they've killed a few Al Jazeera people there. But no, no Western journalists has gotten into Gaza because they know it's a death sentence. I know it's a death sentence. And then you have the finance. minister who's bragging about like not letting one crumb of food get into Gaza and let alone. As soon as soon as food gets there, you have like women and children and families running to

get the food and the idea of people shooting them in the streets. No, it's, it's a, I mean, if this was, look, I'm, I'm, I, my, my ex-wife was Jewish. I'm, I'm not anti-Semitic, but I am. It has nothing to do with being Jewish. I know. It really doesn't, but, but again, I almost feel like you have to say that as a defense. It's disgusting because these people use. that as a freaking argument. Yeah. Like, it's a, it's so, it's so dumb, it makes my brain hurt. Yeah. And if there's

any other country in the world, any other country, this would be, I mean, imagine, I mean, the Russians have been bad enough in Ukraine, but imagine if they had been doing this in Ukraine. Right. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's really pretty amazing. Yeah. I don't know how it's going to change, man. I don't know. I've really lost a lot of hope over the past couple weeks. with everything that's been happening in our country. Yeah. No, I know. And how we've been, you know, he's like, I don't understand how Trump's rolling over on these Epstein files like this. I mean, I kind of do know.

I hope it's not true. But I mean, the writing's on the wall. There's no. There's, I mean, there's more photos and videos of him hanging out with Epstein than anyone. Right. And it's like, again, like, you have people just want to like use Epstein as their political football. Oh, it's the Democrats are lobbying to get him, get him, uh, the files were. least so or to, that Democrats are getting lobbying to get the files suppressed so they're not

made public to be files. And now that those guys, Dan Bonino and Cash Patel are in power. Right. They're, they've done a 180. Right. The Epstein files do not exist. He killed himself. Right.

But like, I mean, there's, I don't think, I don't think they're going to let him get away with it. I mean, I think there's going to be a long burn on this thing. I don't think this, I don't think they can change the subject. Well, the funny thing is Donald Trump, he's, if there's one thing he knows how to do, it's he knows how to read the room. And he knows how to take the public's temperature on what their feelings are on certain topics and adjust his messaging accordingly. With this, it's like he's blind. He's like, doesn't, doesn't see it.

Right. Like you can't, I mean, it seems like now, though, he's finally said something recently. He's like, okay, we're going to release something. Oh, really? I think I saw that this morning. Now he's kind of like, changed his stance. Like, okay, like, it's overwhelming. everyone's turning on me.

I got to do something. Right. But I mean, it's like, what are, even like, the other thing is like, what are the Epstein files, right? Like, the black book's been out for what, 10 years? Right. Right. Like, we all've seen all the addresses he has.

Right. He's got, you know, he's got like 12 phone numbers for RFK. He's got a handful of them for Trump and Clinton. All these people. Right. They're all implicated in this stuff. The question is, not the files. Where's the hard drive?

Right. And the hard drive, I think, is probably sitting in Tel Aviv. Huh. Wow. Like, why else we're? Trump be doing all this stuff. Right. Yeah. That's interesting. If Epstein was, I mean, the consensus seems to be that Epstein was an Israeli access agent, right? Huh. You know, with his connection to Robert Maxwell being Julian Maxwell's father. He was Mossad. He was murdered right after that

came out, fell off, fell off his yacht while he was taking a pee. Um, you know, getting his money from Leslie Wexner. Right. He, uh, who Barack was at his house every day, you know, people think that that was probably his handler. Wow. There's an overwhelming amount of evidence connecting him to Israeli intelligence. Yeah, and I just don't think this goes away. I mean, Trump, you know, trumpeted this for so long, you know, the whole and, and come back to Biden. Have you seen the Michael Wolf podcast, a documentary or a podcast, where he's interviewing

Epstein and he says, Epstein literally says it's on, on audio recording. He's like, yeah, Donald Trump was my best friend for 10 years. Wow. well so you know all these other everyone else has had contact with i mean you know a lot of this stuff was probably innocent too you know sure he's inviting people out to his island doing these fundraisers and inviting all these tech people and people like stephen hawking whatever like if all these other brilliant people and billionaires are going there of course i want to go rub shoulders with them it can't be anything bad about that right right um so it may be different in trump's case

we'll probably never find out it probably is different in trump's case i've i mean we'll probably never know. Right. But if you can read the writing on the wall, it doesn't look good for him. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. And what happens if the Democrats take control of Congress in midterms? Can't they, well, can they force the release of Epstein-Files?

I don't know. When are the midterms? November of 26. Oh, okay. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not hopeful. I mean, I am hopeful, but I'm not getting my hopes up because I'm just have a feeling they're going to be let down.

Yeah, you're probably right. But thanks for doing this, man. I really appreciate you coming here to talk to me. Yeah. Tell us about your new book and where people can find your stuff. All right. Well, thanks. And thanks so much for having me on, Danny.

I really appreciate it. Yeah, a new book is called King of Kings, published by Doubleday coming out August 5th or 6th. and it's about the Iranian Revolution. And what I took a very intimate look at it. And kind of the idea is to kind of explore the central mysteries of the Iranian Revolution because it's it's such a strange. I feel like the dice could be thrown a thousand times with the Iron Revolution. And it would never come up the same way it played last time. And there's kind of like mysteries to it of like why did that.

the Shah take so long to realize he was in trouble? Why did the Americans take so long to realize it? And I also am fascinated by the figure of Khomeini. It's like, was he an accident of history? Was he happen to be in the right place and the right time to take over? Or was he actually very calculating and cunning? And at least on, I feel like I've kind of arrived at answers to all On that last one, clearly Hohmani was cunning and calculating. His whole life kind of speaks of it. So, yeah, I spent four or five years on it. I interviewed the Shah's widow.

I wasn't able to go into Iran, but I talked to a lot of people in Iran, had access to the recently declassified documents that show what was going on in the American government. But I'm taking – it's a very kind of intimate look. I chose about five or six people to kind of tell the story. And they're really kind of the last people alive, like the Shaw's widow, a National Security Council guy who was in the room with Carter when all this stuff was going on, a guy who was very close to the Shaw. It's a former Peace Corps volunteer who worked for the U.S. Embassy there and kind of saw what was happening

and tried to give a warning and was not only not listened to but reprimanded for saying anything that the shop was in trouble. So yeah, so that's a book. Other than that, I mainly write in articles for the New York Times Magazine.

Got a couple of articles coming out with them hopefully in the near future. Fantastic, man. I'll make sure I link all this stuff below. And thanks again for your time. I really enjoyed this. Thank you. My pleasure.

What's this, Steve? Oh, this is King of Kings. Oh, sweet. We'll link it below. Okay. Pre-order. Comes out in August, right? Comes out early August.

Perfect. Yeah. All right. All right, man. Thanks again. Hey, thank you. Good night, everybody. The Education Equation with Jeremy Singer is the new podcast exploring real research, real results, and real strategies

that improve student outcomes. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Visit the education equation.org.