Locked In with Ian Bick - Wiretap Expert Reveals the Hidden World of Catching Criminals On Tape | Jon Molik

Episode Date: August 4, 2024

Dive into the intriguing world of wiretaps with a seasoned investigator as he exposes the secrets and techniques behind surveillance operations. Discover the surprising truth about how wiretaps work, the challenges investigators face, and hear the most hilarious and unexpected thing a criminal has ever said while being wiretapped. This eye-opening and entertaining account offers a unique glimpse into the life of a wiretap investigator and the moments that make the job unforgettable. Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Jon Molik: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCr7ziBRuJlt3XIug4wp4Z8Q/videos https://www.headlinesandhistory.com/ Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Wiretaps and Law Enforcement 00:05:45 - Joining the National Guard 00:11:45 - Activating the National Guard 00:17:30 - National Guard Presence in New York City 00:23:17 - Family Reunion Moments 00:29:07 - The Cuban Missile Crisis and its Impact 00:34:53 - The Challenges of Quarantine in the Military 00:41:00 - Undercover Work in Crime Investigation 00:46:45 - Frustrations of Law Enforcement Investigation 00:52:39 - Wiretapping and Surveillance Methods 00:58:26 - Listening to a Phone Call 01:04:16 - The Challenges of Phone Tapping in Law Enforcement 01:10:08 - The Challenges and Rewards of Investigative Work 01:16:13 - Talking about the Threat Environment 01:22:09 - The Strategic Vision of China 01:28:31 - Potential Threats and the Future of TikTok 01:34:30 - Random Kid Texts a Random Guy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wiretaps are the most intrusive capability that law enforcement has. And we don't get to just use wiretap ability willy-nilly, like wherever we want. We have to prove to both in New York State and with federal agencies that I had worked with, it works the same way on the Fed side, that you have to prove exhaustion, meaning you have to show the judge that you used every single means at your disposal outside of a wiretap to try to bring this case to an end before you get the ability to do that. So you have to prove exhaustion. And once you do that, then the judge can finally approve, hey, all right, I see that you've tried all the other things.

I see you've tried by busts. I see you've tried surveillance, but you can't get close to the house, whatever it is, right? Document all that. And then the judge can say, okay, I'm good for a wiretap. John, welcome to Lockton. Thank you for coming on the show today. We always love a good law enforcement officer and military story. And we've had quite a few on the show.

And we're excited for this episode today. Sure. Great. Thanks for having me. You grew up in New York? I did. Yeah, I was born in Buffalo. But when I was in elementary school, fifth grade, I think it was, we moved to the eastern side of New York.

So I live in upstate New York now in Saratoga. Okay. And that's a couple hours from where we are now. Yeah. So I drove out here today, two and a half, two and a half hours, decent traffic. Do you like driving? Yeah. Yeah, I love it.

I just get in the car, put on some tunes or a podcast, you know, some weird military podcast probably. And then, yeah, I love it. You like the military podcast? Oh, yeah. Yeah, no doubt. And I also, you know, doing what I do, I try to keep up on everything that's happening, you know, overseas in particular in foreign affairs and those things. So, and, you know, there are some really, really good, you know, detailed podcasts that are out there that give you the real close in, really perspective on what's happening, particular in some of these dynamic areas like Ukraine and Russia, for example. And then there's a lot of like the conspiracy ones, too, that can kind of take you down a rabbit hole.

Of course. Of course. It's funny because of, you know, some recent interviews that I've done, the one thing that they always want to go to is conspiracy stuff. And it doesn't matter if I'm talking about wiretaps or it doesn't matter if I'm talking about military stuff. They're like, all right. So everybody, the government's listening to everybody's phone all the time, right? And I'm like, no, it doesn't work that way. Okay, 9-11 was George Bush, right? No, no, that wasn't true either. Don't worry, we're a conspiracy-free podcast. Yeah, that's fine. But we can talk about it. It's fine. Some people do, I mean, they do profit off of telling wild conspiracies. Oh, of course. And it's just like people get hooked on that.

Like you come across some TikToks and stuff where it brings you down that rabbit hole of them. Yeah. And it is intriguing. And you can, you know, and they do just enough to make it sound plausible. And then they bring up some historical examples of when the government really did do some things they probably shouldn't have done. And they're like, see, but there's proof. And then, yeah. But.

Now, did you grow up in a big family, small family? No. So I would say average. You know, I have two brothers and one sister. my sister's from my dad's previous marriage. So pretty common. I wouldn't say there was anything out of the ordinary. You know, I did, it is my stepdad who adopted me.

So really he's my legal father. But I met him when I was, when he married my mom when I was seven. So he's really kind of been my real dad the whole time, you know. And other than that, I would say it's pretty average, you know, just an upstate New York kid. Two normal parents. I don't know if everyone would call them normal, but two normal parents and normal childhood, I would say. Did any of them have a law enforcement or military background?

So no law enforcement, but multiple family members on my, really both sides, actually, mom and dad's side were military. And it's the reason I chose military intelligence in particular when I started because on my dad's side, multiple family members were in the intel community. So when I was going through and looking at it, at what it was I wanted to do. They kind of pointed me in that direction. And that's also why I chose the Army is because they happen to be in the Army.

Obviously, you can choose between the multiple services. And it was funny, they had, I did have a Marine Corps recruiter at the house when I was younger. And I was getting ready to decide what I wanted to do. I didn't even know if I wanted to go active duty or if I wanted to go into the guard. And a Marine Corps active duty recruiter came to my house and we were sitting in the kitchen. And he was really good. I was like, oh, man, yeah, if I don't. join the Marines, I'm a loser, right? Like, I got to do this thing. And my dad walks in coming

home from work, and as soon as he walked in, he was like, out. You got to go. You're not joining the Marine Corps. I don't care what you do, but you're not doing that. So, not that there's anything wrong with the Marine Corps, but it's just different. So I chose the Army Guard way to go, and here I am. Was he hesitant about the Marines because of the dangerousness? I think so. Yeah. And it's just different. It's small. They're constant. going somewhere, right? They're constantly downrange, as we say. And this is before 9-11, so even then, you know, and it's just a different environment. It's smaller. So when I say it's smaller, there's, you know, there's less opportunity to go certain places, you know, and the Marines

are only located in certain places and they're always co-located with, or most of the time, co-located with the Navy. The Army's huge. There's plenty of potential to go really almost anywhere. And again, my family was in the Army, so I'm just more of a connection that way. Now, did you have any desire to, like, go to college, have a normal career, or was that straight military in your mind? No, so it's funny you asked because in the beginning, I didn't even want to join. The reason I did join the guard was because of college. So I wanted to go to school, but my parents had multiple kids to pay for her for school, and there just wasn't enough left, if you will, you know.

So my parents are like, if you want to not go into debt, then maybe just join the guard, do a couple of years, sign the contract. And in New York, there's a whole college tuition program where if you sign up for a certain amount of years, they'll pay for state tuition completely. So ironically, I did that and then just never finished college. until like last year. But anyways. So, yeah, so I didn't, I didn't want to do it. When I first joined, I would go to drill some of my one weekend a month stuff for years and just counting the days. I'm like, I just got to, you know, got to do my time. They'll pay for school and I'll get out of

here. But I eventually just fell in love with what I was doing. And 9-11 had a lot to do with that as well. You know, the towers fall. Things get serious, if you will, from a guard perspective. And guard units start going downrange and my division got called to deploy in 2004 to to spend a year, almost a year in Iraq in 2005. So we buckled down, got serious, or at least I did. And then after I was done, I just, I grew to love it. And I just said, you know, even no matter what I do with my civilian career, I'm at least going to stay in the guard and at least try to get my 20.

And 27 years later, I'm still here, yeah. Yeah, a lot of the veterans I talk to, they all say how 9-11 impacted them. Big time. To join or even if they were already in and thinking of getting out to stay in and do that, which is an, it's incredible and very respectable. Yeah. Yeah, that's, and my story is similar. I didn't join because of 9-11. I do have friends that did that clearly haven't been in as long as I have.

But, yeah, there's a mentality change there a little bit. And it would be a combination of really 9-11 and then my year in Iraq because then that is every day, you know, 14 hours a day or nine months straight, doing some real stuff and having an effect on soldiers. And it's, and I learned so much. And it's just an opportunity that not a lot of people get or at least not a lot of people take. And so I don't know how to say it other than I just kind of fell in love with it. So do you ever think about how your life would be different if you ended up going to college, if you were the other kid in your family that had college paid for? Yeah, no doubt.

I don't think I'd be here, which is that's the irony of it, is because, you know, I wanted to go to school because I wanted to go places and I wanted to get my degree to do this or do that. But I got off track and joined the guard and then 9-11 and Iraq and whatever, which then put me in the position to get into law enforcement. And I would have never been interested in law enforcement in what I was doing. doing if it wasn't for my job in the military. And then once I left law enforcement and then I'm in the position I'm in today working full time for the Army, I wouldn't have been doing that either, you know. So I don't know where I would be and what I would be doing. Who knows?

And I could be a, I don't know. But so I'm glad I did it. Yeah, you have a very interesting story in the sense where you leave the Army to go law enforcement, but then you go back. Most people leave and then their law enforcement and then retire. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And you have this incredible career and you're so, like, you look so young. I was expecting to see someone like that looked older. So that old crusty guy, right? Well, when you have that many years, I mean, saying, you know, you're almost 30 years in.

Yeah. And just the Army alone. Yeah. No, I appreciate it. Now, what's the biggest difference you think between Army versus military? What do you mean, Army versus? Well, like, when we hear the words like Army and then we hear military, that's the same thing. I mean, Marines. I know there's different like breakdowns of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when we say military, we're meaning all of the services. So Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and now the Space Force, which was just created.

Wait, we have a Space Force? Yeah, we do. We have a Space Force. Wow. And we should, really. I mean, all of the space stuff was done by the Air Force for years. And Congress and multiple presidents had thought, well, there's going to be a time when we really need to get into breaking the space domain, what we call it, away from the Air Force and giving it its own structure.

And so they decided to do that a couple of years ago. It's young, obviously, and it's growing, and they're trying to figure things out because it's so new. It's kind of like when the Air Force first came into existence after World War II, when they decided that it was only the Army when we were in World War II. We had the Army on the ground, and we had the Army Air Corps. But the air domain became so complicated. They said, we've got to do our own service, and it was the smart thing to do. And now we're doing the same thing with the Space Force. And so you have that and then that's broken down into like the Marines and then the Navy, the National Guard.

And how different is like the National Guard compared to the Army compared to the Marines? Yeah. So that's a good question. So both, well, the Army has three different ways you can serve. You can either serve what we call active duty. So that means you join the Army and that's your complete Army all. the time, right? You don't do anything else, and that's your full-time job. Then you have the Army Reserves, which are, is a, is a national service, but it's one week and a month, two weeks

out of the summer, but it's, but it's federalized, okay? And then there's the Army National Guard, which is the same thing in the sense that it's one week and a month, two weeks out of the summer, but it's a state service. State service 95% of the time, but the president can call up the National Guard to do what the active duty Army does. And that's why the National Guard ends up in Iraq or Afghanistan and Kuwait like I had. But if you're not doing those things overseas in support of the big army, we call it sometimes, then you're just back here doing state stuff, either training for the time when you'd have to go overseas and do your job or you're supporting the governor and whatever he or she has for your mission domestically, like helping with weather responses or

you know, stuff like that. So when we hear on the news, like the governor activates a National Guard, that's us. That's what when each individual per that state responds. Yep. So in the Guard, each governor is kind of the commander in chief, right? So the big army, the commander in chief is always the president. But in the state, the commander in chief is the governor until the president calls and says, I'm taking the National Guard to do this federal thing.

And then the president becomes commander in chief for us. And that's what we saw during 9-11. That's exactly right. So in my experience, you know, where 9-11 happens, I'm still here at home, I'm drilling one week and a month. We're thinking about what it is the National Guard. At least my National Guard unit might be involved in, but we're not called to do anything. So we're sticking around in the state. We did actually have some information come from Big Army that said, you know, we may send you to Kosovo because there was a mission going on in Kosovo at the time.

And there were plans to go into Afghanistan, obviously, and plans to go into Iraq. So the active duty army, you know, the units that you think of like the 101st Airborne or 802nd Airborne, you know, 10th Mountain Division, those big units, they got busy in Afghanistan and Iraq. So, you know, the president and Congress, DOD, they're thinking, we'll replace some of those active duty missions with National Guard. So we had the thought, oh, all right, maybe we're going to go to Kosovo. But plans changed and we ended up not going there. We ended up going to Iraq. So what happens is the president basically calls down, and I don't mean literally, but in the process, right, the president. president calls down to the state and says,

governor, I need to activate your National Guard unit, whatever unit it is to do this mission federally. And we'll give them back when they're done. And that's exactly what happened. So our governor at the time signed off on it. We go to Iraq, do all of our stuff. We come back and now we again belong to the governor. Now, can the governor authorize the National Guard to help cities with any like law

enforcement type things or no? No. So 99% of the time no, right? because it's baked into the Constitution and it should be, that law enforcement does law enforcement and does domestic stuff, and the military does stuff overseas. Now, it's easy or it's acceptable, rather, for National Guard units to do stuff to support citizens,

like responding to blizzards, like we do in Buffalo all the time, or hurricanes that come up, the East Coast, or whatever it is, right? Power outages. We can, we're in support of whatever the populace needs. That's not that big of a deal. But when you come into actually enforcing the law, the guard stays out of that. There are some very specific and unique cases that can occur, but the governor cannot order the guard to do that. That needs Secretary of Defense approval.

Literally, the SEC DEF has to say, okay, for this specific reason, you can take this National Guard unit and you can support law enforcement for this minute to do this specific thing. and then when that's over, it's immediately over. And it goes back to you're not allowed to do that anymore. So as a matter of fact, in my current job today, in my full-time Army job, one of my main responsibilities is ensuring that those two things don't cross. And there's a whole plan and a policy for that. It's called intelligence oversight. And it's there are literally programs across the country and audits and everything else

to make sure that the National Guard is not doing law enforcement work at all. And less, again, it's very specific and the SEC DEF says so. So recently there was an issue down in Texas, as a matter of fact, because we have National Guard soldiers from other states down in Texas supporting the border issue. And, you know, I'm not going to call anybody out, but there were some units that were down there trying to do what they thought was the right thing, supporting law enforcement with translation services. And because a lot of people come across the border don't speak English,

and we had some soldiers that spoke Spanish and other languages. And they didn't go through the right process. And so they started supporting, you know, the investigators and Border Patrol on the, on the border, doing stuff that they were doing. And they got jammed up pretty bad. So even, and they weren't arresting anybody. They weren't putting anybody in cuffs. They weren't running investigations. They were just really providing translation services.

And that's a no-no. So, I mean, it's very, very strict how we separate what the Guard does, what the military. Tires matter. They're the only part of your vehicle that touches the road. Tread confidently with new tires from Tire Rack. Whether you're looking for expert recommendations or know exactly what you want, Tire Rack makes it easy. Fast, free shipping, free road hazard protection,

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Oh, man. I don't know. You know that word on the time? You mean like a state of emergency? Yeah, but it's more like strict what they used to do back in the old and days. Then the governor, I think, has that power. Would that be where, like, the National Guard comes in? It can, but again, it wouldn't be in a law enforcement investigative status, right?

we wouldn't be developing probable cause to arrest people. It would be more like if the National Guard was called in, if there was chaos and riots, and they use the National Guard to protect physical infrastructure. So they stand in a line and they can have batons or something like that, right? And they're guarding a military armory or a military museum or something like that. That is within the realm of their, within their purview. They can do that legally. But again, they're not making arrests.

They're not telling anybody they're committing a crime. They're not, again, investigating anything. They're simply just acting as like a human wall and saying, you can't smash this building. That in the eyes of the law, that is, again, that's separate from what law enforcement would do. If anything were to happen, we have, so we have one mission currently right now. It's called the Joint Task Force Empire Shield. This is a National Guard mission down in New York City. It's been there ever since 9-11.

They are soldiers that are on, National Guard soldiers that are on duty every day, all day long. and they are a presence at some of the major transportation hubs in New York. So you'll see them sometimes. If you happen to travel in New York, you'll be at Penn Station, for example, and you'll see some Army soldiers, or you'll see some Air Force airmen standing in the corner. Sometimes they have weapons. Sometimes they don't. Or they'll be in the subways. That's within the right.

They're just there as a presence. They're just there to help. If somebody has a medical emergency, they can respond. And they can help if law enforcement asks them to do something. but again, it's very specific and it's just to protect law enforcement or protect property. So they can, you know, NYPD cop can say, hey, I need some help. I'm wrestling with somebody on the subway. A guard member can go over, help the police officer put that person in custody and then back off, right?

They're just, they're done with that. And again, it's just a safety thing. And they're normally heavily armed from what I've seen, the soldiers that I've seen walking around. They can be. Yep. Every state does things differently. this particular mission and task force Empire Shield, they are armed at times. And, you know, they're trained for that.

They go through very specific law enforcement style training, even though they're not law enforcement and they can't arrest anybody to do those things. But, you know, for the safety of the people, they have the same level, if not more, of training that your everyday law enforcement officer has, you know, so. Now, you're someone that's gone overseas to do multiple tours. Yeah. What's that transition like going overseas, then coming back? and then going back.

Yeah. It's a good question. It's a challenge because it's a different world, really. And that maybe seems obvious, but it doesn't really hit you until you're there. And then you spend so much time there, you almost become normalized. And that becomes normal, whatever it is that you're doing, right?

And when I was living literally sleeping and living in a palace when I was in Iraq and 05, that after two, three, three, four months of being there. You're like, okay, this is just kind of how life works. And we get up at this time and we, you know, we jump into bunkers when people shoot at us and it's 110 degrees outside and you live in a palace and that's just kind of life. And you don't have family to deal with. They're not with you. So you get those like normalcies built in. And then you go home and it's immediately, they want you to return to not doing those things. And it's hard to shut off all of the stuff you've been doing

for nine months and just go, well, listen, just, you know, go to Stewart's and just go to the store and just be normal. Stop, stop doing, stop thinking what it's like when you're downrange. And that's, that's a challenge. It's really hard. And what about for people that don't have families that are going overseas, how hard is it to maintain like your life over here, like an apartment, bills, everything? Does that just stop or are you able to maintain that? That's a good question. So usually you have a lot of friends or you have, you know, you rely on your parents. Usually the people that don't have a support system like that, you'd say like a spouse and children and stuff, they're usually younger. So they will have parents or they'll have friends. And you can set up certain requests with banks

and your mortgage company and stuff and you give them a set of your orders that says, hey, listen, I'm going away for a year. So can we put this on hold and put that on hold? And I've got to create a new process to pay my car payment because I don't know if I'm going to be able to get to, first of all, I can't travel anywhere because I'm literally overseas. But I don't know if I can get to this bank account or get to the internet at the this time. And there are laws baked in where, you know, organizations, companies back here in the U.S. have to have to work with soldiers that are deployed and make sure that everything is as smooth as possible. And in the Army, the National Guard, they all have systems in place, too, that know

this is a problem or a challenge, at least, and they try to ensure that soldiers have all the support systems that they need in order to not run into that problem. So you've probably seen it heavily evolved since from when you first started, just from a technological standpoint. Oh, yeah. I mean, the way that soldiers operate downrange administratively, just getting yourself there, dealing with companies at home, coming home, it's all so much more advanced and so much more efficient than it was six months after 9-11, right? I mean, you're still just trying to figure everything out. The last time the military had been anywhere for longer than just a few months in Desert Storm was Vietnam.

So it's, the military kind of had to relearn a little bit what it was like to be in this process and fix all the things that were broken. And it's, but it's much better, much better today. Yeah, even like you look at movies that were in the early 2000s that had to do with, you know, the military and war, you can look at like their internet capabilities with FaceTiming someone and communicating with your loved ones

is so different than like current movies now. Is it like how it's depicted in current everyday movies now? Yeah. So, you know, when I was in 2005, we had phone cards and there were phone banks. So you had to find the right place on post wherever you were and then stand in line and wait for your time to make a phone call and you had to pay whatever it was to the phone card company. And then obviously technology advances.

So now, depending on where you are, if you're at a big base, right, I was in Kandahar in Afghanistan. That's a big location. there's Wi-Fi all over the place, and I had my iPhone, and, you know, you could FaceTime and whatever you needed to do. Now, that's not to say that there's Wi-Fi in the middle of, you know, a firefighter, obviously, right? Soldiers are doing other things. But if you're at a centralized location, you've got access to a lot of stuff. And so it does make things a lot easier.

As a matter of fact, when I left in April of 12 to go to Afghanistan, I left three days after my daughter was born. So it was – that was hard. But it was great because I did have FaceTime at the time. So even though I didn't, I wasn't here for the nine months, the first nine months of her life, I was able to see her, you know, at least once a week. And the best way I could interact with her on FaceTime is it's not a lot, but it's enough. And it's a lot more than say what World War II soldiers dealt with writing letters or, you know, Vietnam folks, either writing letters or making a quick phone call. Have you ever talked to your daughter about that time you were gone? Does she remember that or comprehend that at all?

She doesn't remember it. You know, she's way too young for that. But she doesn't let me get away with reminding me that that did happen, you know, and that daddy wasn't here for the, you know, when I was a baby or whatever. And again, she doesn't remember it. But it is interesting, though, because she will say to me more than my son will, my son's older, she will say to me things like, did you say you were going away again? did you say wait how long are you going to be gone like she has like an anxiety about it like a

stress about it that my son just doesn't and i don't know what where that comes from because again she there's no way she could have known she was only six months old you know but somehow when i go away now it really bothers her more than it does you know my son it bothers my son but it's just in different ways you know you know it's interesting how similar your experiences to some of these guys and women that go to prison. Sure. Because they both have this impact on your immediate family and friends in your life. Life just kind of pauses.

Right. In your position, you have a little time to prepare for it. And in a prisoner's position, not every time you do get time to prepare. You normally sometimes your bonds revoked and you're sent away right away. Did you have a period of time to prepare when you found out you're going overseas? Yeah. So, you know, the Army is pretty good at that. So, yes, I would say when we did, I would say we had about 18 months to prepare for Iraq, probably 18 months to two years for Afghanistan.

And then it was about two, two and a half years when we went to Kuwait. So, yeah, there's plenty of time to get your head right, you know. Oh, they can be that much of a heads up. Yeah, because the Army has a plan. And it has a very strategic plan of what they want to accomplish and which units are going to rotate where. and what they're going to do. Now, that can all go out the window of something very dramatic happens, right, when if Russia invades Ukraine, you know, and if that was us, say somebody was invading us, now they're going to throw all that stuff out the window. But in this kind of what we would call

steady state operations where everybody knows kind of where we are in the world, then the army has the army and not only just the Army, but the Department of Defense has a really good plan of saying, okay, this is, this is which Navy ships we're going to put here and the Air Force folks are going be here in the Army and we'll back that all up so everybody has a has an idea of where they're going and when they're coming home and that kind of stuff. What's the likelihood of an invasion like we see in Ukraine happening in the United States? Is that possible? Yeah, as close to zero as possible. I mean, we're just very lucky to be surrounded by two oceans.

It's one of the things that made the United States so prosperous in the 20th century. We just don't have to think about those type of things like Ukraine does. And if they did want, so first of all, you'd have to get in a, you'd have to get in a, and bring your entire Navy and get all of your military stuff on top of your boats and then bring your boats all the way here. And that's a challenge because the United States is the largest and most powerful Navy that's ever existed in the world. So good luck that, doing that.

And then even if you did somehow find your way over here and you were able to take a bunch of your equipment and put it on land, you got to get through Mexico or Canada. And it just so happens both of those are our allies. So we're kind of lucky in that way. Now, if you study history, I would never say never, because you just never know. But, you know, Europe is such a different landscape, right? I mean, they're constantly worrying about what can happen next. I mean, these European countries, for example, Sweden just decided to break neutrality that they've had for 200 years.

They were neutral during the Nazi invasions during Hitler's time when he made it all the way to France. they're worried about what just happened with Putin in Ukraine because they're right there and they don't have the advantage of two oceans on both sides. So it's actually, in talking to some of my European counterparts, it's a real challenge to live in that type of an environment. And people that live in the U.S., Canada, they have no idea. Because it's not something that would ever cross their mind. I'm like, I live in the U.S.

I was like, who's coming here? Yeah. Yeah. So it's like less stressful. I didn't even think of it that way. And you would see it coming from a mile away by boat. Of course. And by air, they wouldn't stand a chance because they would just get shot down before they even made it into the airspace.

Yeah. I mean, geography plays a significant role in today's, even in today's combat. You can see it in Ukraine and Russia. And sometimes it's a huge advantage. And the U.S. has a huge advantage in that way. Now what about that from nuclear attacks? Is that possible? What's a percentage on that?

Sure. Yeah, there's ballistic missile capabilities out there where some country like China or Russia could shoot at the United States. Iran could shoot at it, even though Iran doesn't have nukes now. But, and, you know, it leaves the atmosphere and it flies and it makes its way here. But it takes a long time. And the long time is relative, right? But there's enough time for the United States to defend itself against anybody that would decide to shoot missiles like that at the U.S. And that's why, you know, President Kennedy had such a concern in 62 with the Cuban Missile crisis because the Russians were trying to put nuclear capabilities.

missiles right in Cuba for that specific reason because it would take much less time, obviously, to shoot from Cuba into, say, Florida than it would from Moscow or wherever else they're going to shoot from Europe across that vast space. The technology was also so much more different back then. Yes, yep, very different. But either way, geography still matters. So, I mean, their militaries are developing these hypersonic missiles that can go very quick and make it to where they need to go in minutes.

but still, you're still, the United States is still on the other side of the world, you know. And so until somebody develops this like massive, powerful laser that somebody can press a button, right, some silly thing in, and again, in Moscow or in Beijing, and make it to the United States in mere seconds, until that's invented, being located where we are is a huge benefit. Why do you think in school they focus so much on the Cuban missile crisis and not some of, compared to other history facts? I mean, I feel like we spent so much time on that. Yeah. I think for a couple of reasons. One, you know, that's the middle of the Cold War. And the Cold War is, was scary to a lot of people because the Soviet Union was, quote, unquote, just as powerful as the United States.

And the fear of nuclear war was such that we were, we were, at least when I was a kid, I remember in third grade having to hide underneath desks when we were going through practice runs. It's almost similar to way kids have to go through school shooting training. right now where they go through and shut the door and do all these things. We did the same thing. And in 1985, when we would jump under the desk and try to protect ourselves from whatever this nuclear conflict was going to be, because at that point, we thought it was real. It could be very real. And so I think there's a connection to that reality in 62, where they were potentially going to put nuclear weapons that were just a few minutes away from the U.S. and that a lot of people could die. And so I think that that's why. There's a realism there.

And that carries over to present day where a lot of individuals in this country are the people that build the underground bunkers and they're very obsessed that there's going to be some type of catastrophe like that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a prepper myself, but I do, you know, it's not completely illogical, right? I mean, I was downrange during COVID. But, you know, talking to my wife and talking to family members, I knew how crazy it was when we couldn't get access to toilet paper just because we had, you know, shipping issues because of COVID. So imagine adding that kind of chaos on top of some military conflict or something that some people just want to kind of prepare for. Yeah.

What was a pandemic like overseas? That sucked. You know, it sucked just like being here, I would assume. You know, when we got there, we got there just in the beginning of March and how I can't remember specifically. but two or three days after we got there, they shut everything down. So March of 2020. And so when I say they shut everything down, like they shut the PX down so you couldn't go by your little toiletries and stuff.

And they shut down all the third country, what we call third country national, so people that come on post to do cleaning and things like that. And they weren't allowed to go anywhere. We couldn't go off post. Couldn't do anything. I mean, we're just completely locked down. And sometimes it got bad enough where they even shut the Chowall down. So they would make us, you know, this is Kuwait, right?

So this is a hellscape of unbelievable. But so you'd go get your food and then you'd sit outside because they wouldn't let you in the chow because there's so many Joe's in there. And now we're all sitting outside in 110 degree weather eating this food out of like styrofoam paper, right? And then and then they all got mad because they realized, well, now there's like trash all over the place because soldiers weren't being smart and weren't throwing everything away. And they're like, well, this is equally as much of a disaster.

And I'm like, you probably should have thought about that. So let us back in the chow hall, you know. So they did. But then we had this weird seating and the masks and the whole thing. So you guys were wearing masks? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we had to wait.

We would get in trouble if we didn't have them on. You know, we'd have like the MPs would come around and make sure that you had your masks on. And we weren't even allowed to gather outside. The only thing that you could do was run and you could run on your own. You couldn't run with anybody else. This is for a certain amount of time. And as a leader, this was really challenging because, you know, I had a lot of younger soldiers who were, you know, it cooped up, if you will.

You know, and we, in our intel world, we work in a closed room without windows and all those type of things. And that's a challenge in and of itself to do that 12 hours a day. But now there's no release. The Joe's when the soldiers, when they leave, they can't go to the gym.

The gym's closed. You can't do anything but run on your own. And so, you know, keeping morale up and stuff was a challenge. But anyways, they literally had MPs walking around base and like watching for soldiers that they weren't standing too close to each other. They weren't like trying to sneak in a softball game.

You know, it was crazy. How many individuals do you say we're getting sick and how fast did it happen? I wouldn't say it was anything different than here. You know, especially once they shut the base off, meaning there was no, we weren't leaving and going downtown. And then, you know, the locals weren't coming back and seeing us. So, you know, we got sick like anybody else. And, you know, they would quarantine us. and I remember one funny story where there was a sergeant major.

So we had soldiers had responsibilities to take Chow to people who did test positive for COVID or came in contact with somebody with COVID because back in the early days, if you came in contact, you were just as sick as anybody else, right? That's how the assumption went. So they would take these soldiers and they'd put them in these barracks in the middle and nowhere and they would force them to stay there. You couldn't leave. You couldn't leave that little room.

You couldn't even go to Chow. So our soldiers had, and others, but some of my soldiers had the job of, like, carrying the child out to them three times a day so they couldn't leave. And I remember one of the soldiers coming back and saying, I just dropped dinner off to a Sergeant Major who's been in that room for 14 days. And he just came in contact again and they told him that he's got to stay for another 14 days. And he was like going, he was losing his mind. Ready or not, summer is coming. And Wayfair's Memorial Day clearance is on. Now. Right now through May 25th, get up to 70% off everything home at Wayfair. Plus, score amazing

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their friendly guides can help point you in the right direction. Find what you love and love what you find. Only at Total Wine and More. Curbside pickup and delivery available in most areas. Visit totalwine.com to learn more. Spirits not sold in Virginia, North Carolina. Drink responsibly, B-21. Losing his wine. Yeah. I'm like that poor guy. I remember everyone at work would love to get and I hit with like that contact because then they get to go home and get paid for that. It was like a free for all of everyone getting paid leaves to do that just by saying you were in contact. Yep. Yep. Now, did you see a decrease in like enemy moves or whatever they were doing overseas? because of COVID and the pandemic.

Like I know crime decreased in some areas because of the pandemic. Sure, yeah. I would say in the beginning, yes. But, you know, the mission we had over there was really strategic. So it was like we were kind of looking at big picture stuff. We weren't dealing with like the enemy right in our face.

It was hard to kind of gather. Actually, one of the things we did was try to track COVID numbers of the countries that we were responsible for paying attention to, at least. And I wouldn't say it was really anything different than what we did. We did have some assessments that we presented to our leadership about some of the smaller groups that we were watching very closely. And we wanted to see if their behavior would change because of it. And we didn't get that response.

We didn't get any change. And I think part of that had to do with we weren't just getting enough information. Right. So just being in intelligence doesn't mean we know everything all the time. And sometimes, especially when you're dealing with the parts of the world that are a challenge, say like southern Saudi Arabia, where there's not a lot of government and not a lot of anything. And so you just don't get a lot of information coming out. So we didn't see much of a change. For example, in this in particular group, but again, I think a lot of that has to do with we just didn't know.

Yeah. What was your motivation for shifting towards law enforcement and kind of putting the army on pause? Yeah, so it's weird because I had a unique bridge between the two. So when I got back from Iraq in 2006, I became a full-time Army soldier doing criminal analyst work for the DEA out in my region, so in upstate New York's. There's something called the Counter Drug Program that's specific for National Guard. and it is it allows national guard soldiers airmen and equipment to support law enforcement not conducting arrests or any of those things but supporting them in an administrative way or with an intelligence capability and again it's just supporting what they do and the counter drug program and remember i told you earlier is there's very specific things in specific times and you have to have sex death approval to do it and that that program is one of them right so So what I did was I sat in the DEA office and helped do analysis work on international drug crime stuff, right? And it was really interesting because it's very similar to what we do on the military side, but we're doing it obviously here state side.

And I really started to enjoy that. And I did that for a couple of years. And then a position opened up locally with the New York State Attorney General's office. and they were looking for an actual sworn investigator that wasn't a retired cop. They were looking to bring in some younger folks, put him through the academy and have him for a career as opposed to some police officer that was, you know, was on the job for 25 years somewhere. And then now he's going to do another 10 with the EGs and then go off to pasture, right? So I applied thinking that what I really enjoyed, I really enjoyed doing that DEA stuff for a couple of years. So I said, you know what?

I could take a break from the full-time Army thing, and let's take a shot. Let's see if I can get into this what was called the Organized Crime Task Force with the AG's office. And applied. I hired me right there on the spot, put me through the academy, and I did that for 14 years. Is it common for attorney generals to have their own investigators? Oh, yeah. Every attorney general, every state's attorney's general has a investigator somehow, right, investigative team somewhere. obviously the bigger states have more.

I've dealt with other Attorney General's offices across the U.S. in much smaller states that don't really have teams of investigators. And they work through local DA's offices or they work through local PDs. And they may have some investigators for protection of the attorney general, him or herself or something. But New York happens to be a big state. So we have a lot of investigators and we do lots of different things. So there's the organized crime task force, which does narcotics, gangs, guns, stuff, which is what I did. And then there's Medicaid fraud, and they work together with their federal Medicaid fraud investigators.

And there's auto fraud. So they're always chasing people stealing cars and white collar crime stuff. You know, so we have a pretty large investigative team broken up into multiple smaller teams, at least in New York's Attorney General's office. Do you have the same authority as the state police? Is it on the same level? It's the same thing. 100% the same thing. except that we're just focused.

And so, you know, like a road trooper might pull you over. And that trooper's job is to do whatever that trooper needs to do in that moment. It could be speeding. It could be narcotics. It could be domestic whatever. Whatever it is, you know, the state troopers are dealing with a whole slew of crimes. And the AGs, these teams are built specifically to look at one facet of crime. And so I never wrote a ticket in my career.

I did 14 years, never pulled a car over for a traffic violation. You know, never wore a uniform. And so, you know, never did a dewee. So, but because my job was to conduct wiretaps, sit behind, listen into phones and find these gangs that are bringing in kilos into Albany or shooting each other and whatever it was. So that was my job.

And are you armed? Do you go out with a gun? Oh, yeah, yeah. Badge, everything. Yep. Yeah, just like a everyday police officer. You wouldn't know me any differently from, you know, an undercover detective with the state police.

Everything is exactly the same. I wore a t-shirt and baseball hat to work and had my little undercover car with my little tinted windows and my sirens and lights and yeah. Is it a large team or is it kind of small and kept close-knit? Yeah, so it's pretty small actually.

At least that's the way it works in New York. So we had four or five-ish investigators in Albany. Then there's some in Syracuse, some in Buffalo. And now I'm just talking about the organized crime guy. I'm not talking about the other one. So, and there was a, there was a pretty big team down in White Plains so that would focus on New York City. But the, the give and take with that, we didn't have a lot of bodies, but we had all the tools. So we were, like I said, a wiretap unit, which requires a lot of money and a lot of equipment and a lot of technical services in order to get that stuff done.

And it's very, very expensive. Most local PDs, even county PDs, they don't have the money for that in their budget. So we don't have the people, but we have the stuff. So, and the reason we call it a task force is that whenever we do an investigation, we bring the toys, we bring a couple of investigators who have been doing this stuff forever, and we bring the prosecutorial power from the AG's office, those prosecutors. And then you, when we get together working with, say, the Albany Police Department or the Troy Police Department, whoever we're working with, they bring the bodies. And so it's them with us and we collaborate on this one investigation and do what we're going to do. Now, are you guys handpicking your cases or are they given given to you? and you have to take them.

How does that work? No, we usually have our, we've got a choice, right? So oftentimes what will happen is there's cases start from the bottom up most of the time, meaning, you know, maybe a local PD is buying, you know, doing buys into somebody. They're buying $50 dollars worth of crack or something like that. And they get some information that maybe this person's connected to somebody else, who's connected to somebody else and they all are ultimately. But there's something unique about it.

And maybe they know that this organization, this guy's part of a large organization that's maybe moving guns and stuff. So they're not, the local PD at the time doesn't want to take the route of just a buy bust, right? Like buy the, by 50 grams or 50 bucks to crack off the guy three times and then just arrest him and throw him in jail for a little while. They want to develop whatever that information is for a greater organization. So they may say, all right, let's go over to the AGs. Let's go over to OCTF and see if we can turn this thing into a wire and see if, you know, the wire. or it'll take us and get us whatever we need to get.

So we would sit down with the team that presented us the opportunity. We would sit down with the prosecutors. You know, the bosses would come in and we'd all hash it out and go, hey, is this something we think we can get somewhere? Can we really pull down a large organization? Do we have enough CIs? Whatever it is. And we either say go or no go.

And we're just like, oh, we don't have the time or, you know, this kind of looks like a dead end or, oh, my God, this looks great. Yeah, we'll take it. And then we'll, then we run with it. How many guys have you seen where you've turned down a case ended up being like a large-scale organization and they got away with it for a little bit because of pure luck because you guys didn't have the manpower to take it on? Yeah, that happens. I mean, it happens. Sometimes other organizations will pick it up, right?

Like somebody from a local PD will come and say, hey, let's sit down with OCTF. OCTF doesn't have the time. So maybe they'll run down to the federal building and talk to the DEA guys and maybe the DEA picks it up and it comes out to be a great case. or maybe they can't do it either, right? And then we're just working on whatever we're working and we see target number one, whoever we thought it was, and he's out there doing his thing. And we're like, okay, well, time will come, you know.

And in my experience for the time that I was there, if you keep doing it, you're eventually going to get caught, right? Unless you're really, really good, you know. I think everyone gets caught. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of reasons for that. but you usually get it. Look at that serial killer from Long Island.

I was reading about him last night, and he had, he's been doing it since the 90s, and he thought he was in the clear. Right. He hasn't been active in years. Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, they found the bodies. Yep. And now with DNA and everything, I just feel like anyone, you know, if you do a crime,

you're going to get caught. Yeah, it's, yeah. I mean, I think that that is the case, especially if you not only just commit a single act, But if you're involved in continuing to do that same thing. Like if you're obviously, if you're a narcotics, you're just going to continue to sell. So eventually you're going to run into the wrong person who's going to tell on you. Or you're just going to get in the wrong place at the wrong time. You're going to have too many beers one night and you're going to drive home and a local patrol officer is going to pull you over.

And that's the way in or whatever. Yeah, I mean, for like a perfect crime, you really need to have a victimless crime, which is almost near impossible. but it always stems from one person complaining. Yeah, absolutely. And starting the investigation. Yep. Now, when you guys would turn down a case and not take one on, how often do you see like the investigators that bring it to you,

take it personally or, you know, feel, if any type of way. Because sometimes we see in TV and movies, that lead investigator feels like they have a big fish. They bring it to the person and it gets turned down. Yeah, I would say, you know, that can happen potentially. I don't say that I've had really any experience where somebody got mad about it. We're like, oh, screw you guys, you know, but there's certainly a frustration. You know, I've seen guys come in and really think this is my guy, right?

Or, you know, let's say definitely had an experience what a patrol officer has been working the same streets for the last five years. And he's been looking at this one knucklehead who he knows is, you know, running that corner. And he finally, you know, he's not an investigator himself, but being. being a patrol officer, he's gathering a bunch of information and intelligence and he's just watching and watching. And eventually he comes across something that happens. He's like, that's it. I know I can take this case. It's good. And then he'll come into OCTF and we'll be like, ha, we just don't have the time. And he'll be mad. Right. But not mad at us, just mad in general, that like he couldn't get to where he wanted to go, you know.

It happens. It does. It does. But that guy is going to get it eventually, you know. So walk us through a wiretop now. When you take on a case, the case is yours, what's the first steps and what actually happens. Yeah. So the first thing legally you have to do, well, so let me, let me make sure that I make something pretty clear here. So wiretaps are the most intrusive capability that law enforcement has. So, and we don't get to just use wiretap ability willy-nilly, like wherever we want,

right? We have to prove to both in New York State and with federal agencies that I had worked with, it works the same way on the Fed side, that you have to prove exhaustion, meaning you have to show the judge that you used every single means at your disposal outside of a wiretap to try to bring this case to an end before you get the, before you get the ability to do that. So, or get the authority to do the wiretap. So, so you have to prove exhaustion. And once you do that, then the judge can finally approve, hey, all right, I see that you've tried all the other things. you've tried buy busts. I see you've tried surveillance, but you can't get close to the house,

whatever it is, right? Document all that. And then the judge can say, okay, I'm good for a wiretap. But that's the general authority. But the specific authority is you have to prove that that person is using a device to commit crimes in some way. So most of the time, that's a cell phone, but you can do it with email or other things. But you've got to be able to prove it. So we can't just say, for example, let's say we were out to do a buy bust or we're just buying into somebody and we can't say to the judge, hey, I saw him use his phone and then 10 minutes later the source showed up, dropped off an ounce and then left, right? And then we bought that ounce from the guy.

That's not enough. You got to prove that he actually used the device to commit that crime. So when CI's or UCs, they'll make phone calls to the individual. They'll do the phone. they'll do the deal over the phone, we'll record it, and then there's the proof, right? Well, then we'll purchase the drugs, we'll bring the jugs back. So now, again, if I'm just speaking about narcotics, right, they, I've got the drugs and I've got the phone call.

And you'll do that multiple times. You won't just do it once. New York State law, you could potentially just use that one act. We don't like to do that. And it often doesn't happen that way, but potentially you could. But anyways, we would go multiple times. And so we would do another buy, we'd do another buy. We would do all of our exhaustion and say, we can't do it.

do this another way, then we present to the judge, listen, he's clearly using his phone, he or she's using their phone, here's all the drugs that we bought because of this phone device. And we have no idea where it's coming from because I'm not wiretapping their phones. I have no idea who this person's calling to get their drugs. And so, you know, if that's enough probable cause in that moment, then the judge will sign off on it, and there we go. And then what happens? Do you have to contact the phone company or how hard is it to do the actual physical wiretap? It's actually, well, So we have technical investigators that have the knowledge and expertise to set up the software and the hardware that we need. It's really just a bunch of computers and a bunch of servers.

And we present the phone company with an order, which is an order from the judge. So we get an order from the judge that says you're legally allowed to eavesdrop. That's the legal term is eavesdrop on this person's phone. And then they send an order. The judge sends a concurrent order to the phone company and says, you will provide ABCD&E and information to this conduit, right, to this investigator, through this IP address or whatever it is, for 30 days. And if I send you another order, we'll do another order.

But at least for right now, 30 days, you'll give them all this stuff. And then we literally make a digital connection between our system and the phone company. And so whatever's coming through the phone company, they just copy off to us. Now, is it a myth that like back in the day you could hear like a clicking sound or something if your phone was being wiretapped? Yeah, so it's not a myth because, you know, back in the day we had landlines. And so they were literally wires that run on the ground or wires that run in telephone poles or something.

And so, you know, the old school way, we would have to go out to literally the box at the end of the road and you'd put another wire on top of that, hence the name wiretap. You'd put an additional wire on top of the one that already exists. And then you would, you know, you'd kind of just steal, if you will, or just take off the data that's coming off that one wire and reroute it back to your office. We don't have to do that anymore because of all the data and the content goes through the cell phone company. And even the cell phone companies are the ones that run the landlines now, right? So landlines really aren't landlines in the way that they used to be. They're all digital. So we don't have to go to the box. So we don't have to go to the box. So we don't have to go to the box. So if a criminal was using a landline, it wouldn't make any difference now. You wouldn't have to go to the box. And in some shows and movies, they see you physically going into the phone. the phone and like popping off the ear thing. That's all. No.

Okay. I mean, I guess if there was some reason for us to want to put us another listening device inside of a phone, I don't, there may be reasons why you'd want to do that. So I can see maybe law enforcement getting their hand on that phone and literally putting something inside of it. But there's no need to do that in terms of your everyday cell phone stuff. They can just give it to us. Are you tapping separate than planting listening devices somewhere? Yep. So that's a different division?

No, we would do the same thing. That's part of what we would do. We would bring our tech unit to help us with the actual placement, right? If we were doing maybe GPS is on a car, or we were doing cameras, or we were doing listening devices in an apartment. But that's a whole separate, that's a whole separate affidavit and a whole separate signing off by the judge, right? You've got to get a separate warrant.

You get a warrant for this phone. You're going to get a separate warrant for this GPS device. You get a separate warrant for this camera. If you want to put the camera somewhere, that's not in the public. And then you get a separate warrant if you want to put listening devices somewhere. And you have to present to the judge probable cause in every single manner, every single time. You can't just say to the judge, this is a bad guy. And so like everything that he does, we want access to because, you know, it's likely he's using all of these devices to do his thing.

It doesn't work that way. You got to prove it in every time. So it's still effective for individuals to keep dumping burner phones? Yeah. I mean, sure, yes. Because I was wondering, I was talking about this with someone the other day. It's like, why even have a burner phone in this day and age where they can trace where you bought it from and what the number is so easily? But it's got to be hard to wiretap if they're consistently dumping the numbers.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm not going to spend all the time talking about all the waste that we have. But yeah, yeah, no, of course. It would be smart if you had a burner and you used it for a few days and then dropped it and used another one. Sure, that might be smart. It doesn't alleviate you, right? There are tactics and techniques that law enforcement uses in order to mitigate that for us. So it's not a way to beat the game, if you will, but if you want to make things harder, sure.

What do you think is like the funniest thing you've heard on a wiretap, like something fun and entertaining? Oh, man, I've got so many. All right, I'll give you, I'll give you one of the better ones. So every, you have to be able to re-up. You have to prove, meaning re-up with the judge, get a new warrant every 30 days. You have to prove to the judge that you got your initial wiretap warrant. And then you get access for 30 days. Within those 30 days, that person really was committing crimes on the phone.

and here's all the things that they did. You take that back to the judge and you get a re-up for another 30 days, right? And you have to keep doing it. You can't just wiretap anybody's phone forever. It doesn't work that way. So I come into the plant one day. This is on my first case that I was the lead.

Snowing out is nasty. And this is the day we have to go to the judge. So we're getting ready to what we call pop all the tapes a lot. Like pull everything out of the system, sign them like they are evidence. And then go to the judge, present all the findings. have and see if he'll let us listen for another 30A. So we have to what we call go down on the phones for a couple hours while we do this process. And so I came in and I had to leave what we call the plant.

This is what we call when we wiretab and called the plant. So I'd come to the plant and I had to leave it like 11, let's say, because I had to be to the judge by one or something. And so I'm in the plan at 9 and 8 or 9 o'clock and I'm like, all right, I got a little time. There's nobody in the plant but me. And the tech guy who was going to help me do the tapes. So I'm like, you know what, I'm going to jump on and see if our target is doing anything on the phone right now. And I'll just see. I got a little time.

So I log into the system and the phone's already live, which means that we've obviously been collecting it. But if you're not listening live, you're not allowed to listen to the content. So the system will tell you that this person is on their device, but it's just a little line with their phone number. You can't listen to it. You have to be there. Let me say that differently. It wasn't recording, right? You can't, the system is not allowed to record anybody's information unless it's being listened to live by an investigator.

That's part of the law. And so the system knows that the phone's live, but we don't know what the heck is going on to, going on until I click on it. So I see the phones live. I click on it. Now, this person happens to be an unknown male. We knew he was selling, I've seen him. He came up from New York City and was selling to one of our guys up in Albany. But we had yet to identify him.

I knew he lived in the Bronx. but we didn't spend a lot of time on surveillance for this guy because we had a bunch of other people up here in Albany. So we knew what he was doing. I've been listening to his phone for over a month, but I just don't know who he is. And so in New York, you can actually arrest or at least you can indict an unknown person. So I can present to a grand jury all the things this person did. I may not know their name, but it's clear this person is a person and they're doing all these things. So we were in the position where we might have to indict this unknown male.

and then keep working to try to identify who they were. And sometimes bosses don't want to do that. So if you get to the end of a case and you don't know, then oftentimes they're just like, listen, we're not putting the time in. It's just the guy's going to get away with it, right? Potentially this could have happened with this guy.

So anyways, calls live. I click on it. And I notice that it's an outgoing phone call. So he's making a call. And I can see the phone number that he called. And it's a 1-800 number. I have no idea what it is. So I type it into Google really quick, and it's the customer service line for Pepperidge Farms, right?

Customer service, it's 10 o'clock in the morning in the middle of a snowstorm. This dude wants to talk to Pepperidge Farms. Now, when I click on the phone live, it's the waiting sound. So it's just music. So I click on it, listen, and I'm like, all right, so this guy is listening to the Pepperidge Farm waiting music. So a couple of minutes. I stay on the phone. Now, normally, you know, we only have certain types of phone calls.

and I can discuss it, but only certain types of phone calls that we can listen to. I can't just listen to every single phone call everybody makes, even if I know that they're using the phone illegally, right? But in this instance, because I didn't know who he was, I was going to stay on this phone call, listen to this music, wait, and I would articulate to the judge the reason that I did that was because I really needed to identify who he was. And I was crossing my fingers that maybe he would give up some nugget of information

in this phone call. It's a long shot, but who knows? Anyways, a couple minutes go by the customer service rep answers the phone. Hi, this is so-and-so from Pepperidge Farms. Why are you calling today? Now, this dude starts talking, and I've been listening to him enough phone calls in my life that he's baked out of his skull, all right? He's just early morning.

I'm like, dude, this dude's high. Okay. And he asks her why Pepperidge Farm doesn't put peanuts in their brownies anymore. And the lady's like, wait a minute, come again. What did you say? And he's like, I've been buying these brownies forever. You don't put the peanuts in the brownies anymore. And she's like, oh, I'm sorry, sir.

I didn't even know. I didn't even know he did that. What can I do to help you? And he's like, but I need to talk to somebody about why they don't put the penis. And she's like, okay, I don't know how I can handle this. But let me take down your information if you don't mind. And I'm like, no, he's not going to do it. He's not doing it.

but he did it. She's like, can I have your first and last name? He's like, absolutely. So and so, so and so. And I'm like, oh my God, what? Address, phone number, the whole nine. Gives her everything. And she's like, I'm going to send out a package of whatever it is, whatever it is.

And so that was it. Clearly, I know who the guy is. So now I take the information and put it into a bunch of databases. I then I get his picture. I figure out his driver's license. And I'm like, yep, that's the dude that I saw down in the Bronx. That's who he is. So this dude makes a phone call to Pepperidge Farms.

I have no idea who he is and bought himself 12 years in prison because of it. Wait, so a case like him, he was probably using a burner phone. He was. So how did you get that number? That was just from someone else's phone that you were probably tapping? So we were up on a dude's phone in Albany, and he was buying from this dude down in New York City. So we got the phone number because he made the connection. So we could legally articulate to the judge, this is the source, right?

And so we went to the judge and asked to listen to the source's phone, even though we didn't know who the source was. And I guess the first step would have been to check who that line is registered to and when it comes up unknown. Of course, yeah. So we subpoena the phone company and we say, hey, whose phone is this? And oftentimes it comes back nothing or some people are funny and they put like Spider-Man or some crazy names in there.

But I'm like, all right, so we don't know who he is. That's incredible. Yeah, so we have to do some works or balance, whatever. And we just couldn't figure out who he was in that moment. Now, how hard is it with Apple and iPhones for tapping? What do you mean? Like I heard something. Like there was litigation years ago that you couldn't get into an Apple phone. Is that possible?

So that's different. It's not so much from the wiretap perspective because that, all of that goes through the phone company. It has nothing to do with the device in and of itself, right? So the judge has ordered the phone company to provide everything that goes through its cell towers and its system, regardless of what phone it's talking to. The problem with Apple was that they had, and I remember this incident, it was the San Bernardino shooting. and they had an Apple iPhone at the scene and it was locked so they didn't have the passcode. And Apple doesn't keep the passcode for the device in its servers. So it doesn't know what your passcode is for the phone. And so the FBI couldn't get into the device because they didn't know and the defendant wouldn't tell them. So they tried to, and this is actually interesting you asked because this is something we talked about a lot in the wiretap world is they, the FBI tried.

to force through the legal system Apple to tell them what the code was. But since Apple couldn't do it, they tried to force Apple to write code that would unlock the device. And Apple had admitted that they could do that. They could force their engineers to write code that would eventually give you a backdoor into that phone. But they refused to do it. And they said it's against our customer policy. We're not writing software that doesn't exist just because you want to get to. into this one phone at this one time. So, and they won in the court. And court said, you can't, regardless of the legal authority that the federal government has, you can't legally make a company do something that doesn't exist. And so they didn't have to get into, the, Apple wasn't forced to give the information to the FBI. Now, the FBI eventually got into the phone and they used a different technique and they contacted some other people that they know in their world. And we moved on. So there are ways to get into a phone. You know, there's ways.

There are techniques. There are certain things that people can do. Yeah, because when I got arrested, I gave up my passcode. Yeah. They asked for it. But then I also bring it up because when a phone gets busted in prison, the prison officials send it out to the FBI and the Justice Department. And they have ways to break into those phones.

Normally, if it's an iPhone, it takes a while. But for Android, they come back very quickly. Like you see the guys get hauled off within a week or two because they find photos or phone numbers on it. Well, so the difference being is that Android is obviously it's owned by Google and it has multiple different companies that it works with, right? You have different Samsung and all these different hardware companies. They run the same software, just different versions of it on all of their different phones.

Apple is just one hardware and one software company working at the same time. So they have more control over how they're, software operates. So it's more challenging to get around whatever Apple is trying to do. But now, if you were to ask an Apple engineer to come in here right now and ask them if the FBI can get into the iPhone 15, he would say no. Right. There's no way we've got this thing and blah. And I've been out of the game, if you will, for a couple of years now. So I can't speak to the most recent devices and all the things that are happening out there right now. I have no idea. But there were times when Apple did not think that law enforcement could get into the phone

and they could. Now, do you have to physically go to court during like a trial to coincide with the wiretap or can that be entered in on its own? Yeah, so it's after the wire's over. So you do your investigation, you go up on a couple of phones and you do whatever you're going to do, right? And then you go into a grand jury and you present all of the probable cause that you have to get the grand jury warrants for all the individuals search warrants, whatever it is you're going to do. And then we all go out usually on one big day. It's called take down day. And we go out and we arrest all 40, whatever it is, right, anywhere from 10 to 100 people. And we grab as many as we can. And we all bring them in for arraignment. And then they get their defense attorney and they do whatever

they're going to plead or whatever. And some of them go to trial and some of them plead. And it all depends. So you're going out in the field yourself. Oh, yeah, all the time. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, plenty of times you'd go into the plant in the morning right and I'd pop in sit down and I've been there 10 minutes and then some guy picks up the phone and says you know I'm meeting some knucklehead at this corner or whatever and I'd run back out of the plant jumping my car and go do surveillance and just watch whatever they were doing. No when you have a job like that with young kids do you ever think like I don't want to keep doing this and putting myself in danger? Yeah I mean it's not something you really think about. I don't know I just I never really thought about it. I thought about it more now when I'm off the job than I did when I was on the job. I don't know if it's just a mentality you have while you're doing it.

You know, there's like a, you know, just like a fearless kind of factor almost, you know. But I will say that there are a couple of people that I dealt with in my colleagues we dealt with over the years that I wouldn't want to see again. I'll put it that way. that I just wouldn't. And I'll be happy if they have no idea where I am and what I'm doing. Now, being here doesn't help that, I guess. But hopefully they just forget. Yeah, they would have to know which case you were working on and all that.

I mean, what, I mean, they know me. I arrested them. So they'll know who I am. No, but do you, when you enter a wiretap into trial records, does the person that physically did the tapping and listening have to be there to present it? Sometimes. So not every time. What you like to do is you want to use the case lead usually.

So on my last case, for example, before I left or when I left and came over to the Army full time, I went in and I played all of the calls to the grand jury. So thousands of phone calls, even though I wasn't the one that listened to every single phone call. Live, for example. They have to be listened to live by an investigator by a sworn investigator who's actually on the case. You can't even just use any cop off the street. They have to be part of the case and they have to be signed into the case, if you will. They have to be presented a bunch of training and information from the prosecutors about how to run a wiretap. So one of those people has to listen to the call live.

As an affiant, I can go in and listen to that call afterwards and I can listen to it 100 times if I want. So in order for me to testify to the phone call in court, I have to have listened to it at least. once, twice, sometimes three times, right? To say to the jury, I may not have heard it live, but I've heard it three times afterwards. And here's all the calls I took live. Here's all the calls that were taken by other cops, but I listened to. You can't go in and testify to the call if you never listen to it. That you can't do.

It's like being saying you're a witness to a crime and saying, well, that would be hearsay, right? You can't say, well, my buddy told me that guy shot the guy over there. They can't specifically in New York State. That's hearsay. You can't do it. Does it ever get nervous presenting to a jury and being up? there and on that? I did it.

It was nervous. I was nervous in the beginning because I was younger and I hadn't done it before. But I kind of, I looked at it as a challenge towards the end, right? And when I say towards the end, I mean towards the end of my career where I looked forward to a trial and like I watched enough defense attorneys come after cops on the stand and try to break them down and get them to say something that they didn't, whatever, whatever it was. And I don't know. I don't know if it's like my briefing experience in the military

when I spent a lot of years briefing generals and ensuring that you just have to say the right thing all the time. You don't screw up in front of a general, right? It just doesn't work that way. So I looked at it in that same way. Like I'm going on the stand. There's zero screwing up. And I'm going to, I'm going into like a mental battle with this defense attorney.

And I'm going to see what it is he or she's going to try to do. And I'm trying to see it before they even say it, you know. Do you miss that? That part of the job? Yeah, absolutely. It feels like very more exciting and... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's rewarding too because in the military side of the house, everything is separated.

And what I mean by that is like there's the intel guys and then there's the operators and there's the pilots and then there's the people that do all the collection with the drones and everybody has their own very specific job in the military and there's a lot of us. And in investigations as an investigator or a detective, you're all of them. those things, right? Like, I'm the surveillance guy. I'm the phone guy. I'm all the responsibilities that you would have. You get to do all of them. And so I get to be there at the beginning of the case when the PD comes in and says, we're buying into this dude and let's start a wire. And then we do a wire for a year. And then I get to be the one that goes out and puts cuffs on the guy or gal or whatever it is at the end. It can get rewarding, you know, they just don't get to do that in the intelligence field. Why do you ultimately decide to leave?

the job that I was offered was a job that I never thought I would get on the Army side of the house. And not that I ever thought I wouldn't be capable, but I just didn't think it would ever be offered. There's just a lot of other people that I thought were in line, I guess, even if you can say. And it just wasn't something I thought I'd reach. And so in 2021, one of the senior commanders in New York, The job became open and he asked me to apply and thought I'd be a good fit. And I went through the whole process and I was hired. So when I went through the process and I applied and was presented the opportunity,

it just, it was the right time for me. It was good for my family. And again, like I said, it was a job I never thought I'd be offered. And so I took the, I took a shot. And I don't, I don't regret it. I love doing what I'm doing now. I don't, I wear a uniform every day. I don't get to wear, you know, Buffalo Bills hats and all the things I like to do

and sitting in cars doing surveillance and all the fun things that you get to do sometimes. But, so there's parts of it that I absolutely miss. And funny stories like Pepperidge Farms and police officers getting into cars and driving coke up the highway during snowstorms and have no idea that it's in the car. and it's just out and on and on. But you don't have those stories now, when I'm doing what I'm doing, but it was a good move at the right time.

How long do you think you'll continue doing this line of work? That's a good question. I think, I don't know, I'll probably do 35, I would say, years, so I'm at 27 right now. That's kind of like a target day I've put in my mind. Did the wife okay it? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yes, household six, we call it.

Yeah, she's good with it. that she's actually been amazing. So it's oftentimes, especially during deployment, that spouses have a, have a greater challenge than even the service members do. And so there's no way, either when I was on the job or one doing the military stuff that I do, if being married, if your spouse isn't supportive, then it's just not going to work. It just doesn't.

And the only reason I've been able to do this is because my spouse is, because my spouse's completely supportive and amazing so. I mean, that's in every relationship. You need someone that's supportive, no matter what the job is. If they don't support your dreams or your job or whatever it is you're doing in life, it's not going to work.

Yeah, no doubt. Now, you also got into podcasting. Looking to start 2026 with an unforgettable getaway? Fiji Airway sale is on now. Fly non-stop round trip to Fiji from just 748. Or enjoy a sunny Fiji stopover on your way to Australia with round-trip fair starting from 839. As a One World Alliance member, an American Airlines Advantage program partner, your miles go further across the South Pacific.

Book now at Fiji Airways.com or contact your local travel agent. Conditions apply. Very recently, and you have your own podcast. If you want to tell people about that and plug that in. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. So, yeah, I have a podcast called Headlines in History. And I've been doing it for just a few months now. I want to say almost four months now.

And that kind of came out of a unique. idea that we had when we were in Kuwait my last deployment, some of the Intel soldiers and I decided to present an idea to the bosses that instead of writing up all of these Intel summaries that we would write up and present to them every day, that we would present them a classified podcast, that we would record whatever we were going to write and present all of our assessments and literally doing it in a conversation and then give it to the bosses. And I talked to a couple of other officers and I'm like, there's no way the general is going to go for that. But he did. And he's like, you know what?

Yeah, all right. That's a cool idea. Okay, let's do that. You know, so six days out of the week, we would do our little write-ups, and the soldiers would do their assessments and stuff, and we'd give it to them in paper form. And then on Sunday, we would record like a half an hour, 45-minute discussion that I would lead with them about whatever topic we were talking about. And the boss would literally listen to it in his headphones, and we recorded it on our classified systems and stuff. And it was fun.

It was the first and only classified podcast in the entire Army. me at the time. And I don't even know if they have one anymore, you know. So I just had a lot of fun doing that. And so I decided, I always kind of kept that in mind and decided that maybe I would want to do the same thing, you know, in an unclassified environment now today. And so I did. So I started doing it a few months ago. And I focus on foreign affairs and military conflict stuff. But I also talk about cop stuff. I do interviews with people that want to talk about wires and those type of things. But mostly I worry about or focus on foreign affairs and conflict and what the histories are, though, are of those things. So I'm trying to fit in a place where, you know, some people who

watch the evening news are like, they'll get their three minutes on whatever's happening in Gaza, right? Or there's the people that want to read 15 books on Gaza because they want to be an expert because they're that history nerd, right? But there's a space where there's people there are like, I watched the three-minute news, but I want to know a little bit more. Like, what is it that's really going on, right? So a couple of weeks ago, Iran shot 300 munitions, 150 drones and 150 missiles at Gaza, or at Israel, rather.

And it was the first time they had ever done that from their homeland, so from within their borders, changed the landscape of the Middle East. So that was on the news. And so there's people that are like, oh, I want to know kind of why that is the stuff, but I don't want to read a book about it. I'm not a history person in that way, but somebody tell me a little more. And so that's where I'm fitting in is, you know, I'll bring up a topic during the week that may be like that topic I just mentioned. And I'll talk about it for 45 minutes to an hour and talk about the history of it, why Iran is even interested in shooting at

Israel other than what happened just in that day. And just enough for somebody to listen to in the car and kind of feel like, oh, man, I kind of get in this thing a little bit. So that's where I am. Do you like doing it? Is it like a good, like hobby, passionate about it? Yeah, yeah, I would say so. It's fun. And it's the world I live in every day. So part of my job, I have multiple responsibilities in my current job. But part of it is to remain on top of the threat environment for the bosses for the entire state. And I remain the senior advisor for the boss in terms of threat. So I got to be up on it. And not only on an unclassified level, on a classified level as well, but clearly we keep. that stuff at work but but it's enough I do enough reading and I'm in enough meetings and and and all those things to to just be dealing with it that so it's easy enough for me to just talk about it when I'm out of work right just on the news level but do you have to train your mind to compartmentalize like the

classified versus unclassified yes because I don't want to go to jail yeah so is that hard to do yeah I wouldn't say it's easy but I would say I'm, you know, you kind of have to do it in your everyday life anyways. It wouldn't even really matter if I was doing a podcast or not, right? Because you go home at night and people ask questions about what things are like. If you're in intelligence, people are just going to already ask you like, oh, hey, what's going on with Ukraine? Hey, what's going on with Gaza, right?

They just kind of, it's like when you come off police office, you come across a police officer, you're like, hey, what's it like doing? So every day, I have to compartmentalize and can only tell the family certain things and only tell my friends certain things. and it's just part of the responsibility of doing this job. So you know you just make it a priority, I guess is what I'm saying. And so you just stay on the caution side, you know. Calculated thinking.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, people were asking me specifically in the last couple weeks about the helicopter crash. The Iranian president died in a helicopter crash. And that was very recent. And I had just been doing work on that world. and, you know, that's just a conversation I wasn't going to get involved in in the last couple of weeks, you know, because there was just so much going on and so many things I was reading and doing and all these things. So I'm like, you know what?

This is not the time because I don't know what I would have said or not would have said. You know what I mean? Yeah, sometimes it's better to just shut it down. I'm like, hey, let's talk about something else. Yeah. You probably have interesting holiday dinners when everyone's coming over and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, oh, yeah.

Yeah, it's fun. And I enjoy it. I really do. You know, people want to ask about Ukraine on the side of the street. I'm like, all right, let's talk about it, you know. Yeah. And then there's all the, there's the conspiracy theory folks, too, that are, you know, I know Israel shot down that helicopter they had to have or, you know, everybody's listening to my phone. I know they are.

The FBI's listening to me right now, you know. No, they're not. But, okay. I mean, that's a real kind of fear in America, though. People do, especially people that have gone through that before, that have been wired. tap before that have actually been involved with that and they get out. It could be kind of nerve-wracking. Yeah, I can see if you were in that space, right, and you were kind of apprehensive.

And sure, I mean, I guess I can understand that. What I would say is that, you know, law enforcement has limited resources and are certainly not interested in listening to everybody's phone call every day. We don't even do that kind of stuff when we go to war, right? So, like, the government is not collecting the entirety of Russia's phone system every day because we, even though we might legally have the right to do that because it's a completely different country. We don't have the resources at a time or the money. So last question for you. What do you think about TikTok then, given your position, what you've done?

Yeah, good question. I'm not on it. And I understand what the. why people want to use it. It's a, it's an effective platform and it works. Got it. But I don't use it. My kids don't use it. And nobody that I work with uses it. And that's just that. It's not, China doesn't have private companies in the same way that we do. And anything that is a quote unquote private company that's associated with the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, is, directly connected to the government. There is nothing that happens in China that is not connected to the government in some way. And it's not part of the government's purpose in some way. So TikTok is not just making money because it wants to make money like Facebook and YouTube. TikTok may make money, but it makes money because the Chinese Communist Party wants it to make money. And it doesn't have it being TikTok or its parent company really bite dance. That's the problem. It's not so much TikTok. It's bite dance, who, by the way, also owns Capcut, is they have mandates that they have to stick with in order for them to operate as a quote-unquote company in China. And so, you know, you may see the CEO or the president of TikTok testifying in front of Congress and say, I'm from Singapore and I don't give anything to the Chinese party.

I don't, we don't send any data from TikTok to the Chinese comedy party. Well, then the question is, well, does bite dance your private company? Well, there's no answer to that one. Yeah. Because they are. So, and the other thing I often get asked is, okay, but even if all of that stuff is true, like China is quote unquote taking all my information, what do I care, right? Like, I'm not doing anything.

I'm just dancing in the street, taking tech out of videos. Yeah, what do I care? What's the big deal, right? On an individual basis, I can understand that logic, right? Like, I'm not committing any crimes. I don't do anything crazy. like who cares what China knows. The problem is China has a strategic vision

for what it's trying to account. The Chinese government has a strategic vision for what is trying to accomplish. And they are, when it comes to the United States in particular, they are preparing for the possible eventuality that we go to war over Taiwan. That is not an opinion.

That's a fact. Now, it's not a fact that we will go to war over Taiwan. We don't know. But it's a fact that they're preparing for that. possibility. And there's no part of the existence, the society of the United States that China's not willing to interfere with in order to prepare for that. So when the, when FBI director Ray came out a couple of weeks ago and said, we found dormant malware in shipping cranes in Maryland that

China had placed there, and they did all their forensics, China had placed there five years ago, just waiting for the day that some coding knucklehead over in Beijing can press a button and now has control over the shipping containers and that specific port in Maryland. Why would they ever need to do that? Well, because if they ever went to war

with the United States, they would want to be able to affect our sustainment ability to supply our troops overseas and supply the Navy if we're outside of Taiwan. And we do that out of our ports, right? So TikTok is just part of that. It's not only a platform where they could potentially influence the American public through the platform, which is a whole other aspect, but they now have the location of all of the phones that have ever touched the TikTok backbone.

If you look in the terms of service, that every single device that connects to your home router is now in the per view. of the servers in TikTok back in China. So when your friends come over and they log into the Wi-Fi at your house, now China has that person's information, their operating system number, their Mac IDs, their IMSI, M-E-I's, MZ numbers.

They have all of that. And it's just going back into a big data system. And so you could imagine what a foreign adversary would want to do with the data of every single device that's ever touched its server, every router that's ever touched its server, every iPad, every Mac, whatever it is, and what they could potentially do with that.

Now, again, in the day-to-day, I'm just videotaping myself outside. You don't think about those kind of things. But that's the stuff that's happening. I'll give you a political example, too, a balanced political answer. So a couple of months ago, before Congress had decided to have put on the floor the potential to remove or force TikTok to sell, Right, in order for them to continue in the United States, which happened, I think it's two months ago now or something. In order for a bill to hit the floor, you got to go through committee first. And so what they did was they brought 25 Republicans and 25 Democrats in, and they were going to vote as to whether the bill to force TikTok to sell should even go to the floor.

But before they asked the 25, this is in the House, not in the Senate in the House, the 25 and 25, they showed them a classified briefing. So they brought him into the SCIF, what they called on the SCIF, showed him what they showed him, and they said, okay, go out now and vote. Every single one of those 50 people decided to put the bill on the floor to force TikTok to sell. Now, they can't tell you why, clearly, because they went into a classified briefing. But in an environment like the United States today where we can't agree on anything, when you get 25 House members that are Republicans and Democrats that all agree 100 percent, this has got to go to the floor, there's something that's happening, right? Now, the difference between that and like a meta, which gets your data too is it's staying with someone that lives in the U.S. that's the owner. So they don't look at that as a threat. Correct.

Is that what the difference is? Yep. So, you know, people, again, will say things like, well, Facebook. Facebook takes or meta takes as much data. Google takes all the same data that TikTok does. First, they don't. So if you read the terms of service between TikTok, meta, and Google, just as the big companies, right? The terms of service are different.

Read them yourself. But for argument's sake, let's say that it was true and that Facebook wants to know all the devices that are connecting to your router and all those things. The purpose of those two companies to exist is to make money. There's no argument there, right? And so Google wants you to be on your phone. Facebook wants you to be on your phone. They want you to be searching, doing all the things that you would do on your phone.

So your phone would always, their priority would be to keep the phone working, keep it in your hands and keep you doing all the things you want to do on your phone. That's not going to be the same thing for TikTok. So is it, do you think that, you know, giving a hypothetical, the day that we potentially go to war with China, that China wants everybody to just stay on their phone to buy more ads and make more money, that's not the purpose of that. So could China, of particular, could they potentially remove access to your phone if they had enough information about it?

Could they potentially send malware into home routers in the United States? Like they put routers inside of shipping containers, cranes on the port of Maryland? Could they do that? Potentially? Sure, they could. So would they want to do that if we're at war? Of course they would. So is meta and Google going to do that?

No. They just want to make more money. No, do you think it comes down to one of those things where you were talking about wiretaps where you have to exhaust all remedies? Like there can't be any other remedy besides banning the app completely. Because I'm looking at it from like my perspective is like TikTok changed my life. Of course. Everything I have now is because of TikTok.

That was my starter base. it brought me so much of an audience that these other sites didn't do and I make money from TikTok. So from a creator standpoint, and I feel like a lot of the people in my position feel the same way if there's some type of remedy to kind of meet in the middle. Yeah, which I would advocate for, right? And I totally understand the value of the company. You know, it's almost ironic in a way because China, the CCP did a pretty good job doing what they wanted to do. They created a company that they wanted to gather as much data as they could,

and they did because the company became so popular and so many people used it that it worked, right? I guess is the best way to say it. So, and again, I advocate for finding a way to allow people to still use the platform and succeed and do great things like yourself. and I'm not desirous of removing TikTok, you know, for no other reason just to do it, right? But I do care about the American people and I do care about what foreign adversaries are trying to do. And I can't separate those two things. And so I actually think Congress did a pretty good job of coming up with a plan that said, okay, prove that you're not doing these things by just selling the company.

and forcing all of the servers to not be inside of China or not have any connection to China, sever yourself from ByteDance and maybe base all of your servers in Germany and Britain and France where we have better relationships. We can make the assumption we're not going to go to war with. And you can continue to operate in the United States and everybody can continue to use it and it's all good.

Well, the problem is it's not going to happen because this is just my opinion. We'll see what happens, right? I can't predict the future, but my guess is, is not going to happen. TikTok is going to fight it, and they're going to say, this is unconstitutional. I have a First Amendment right, which that's not even true. No one's blocking anybody's First Amendment right to speak. There are plenty of platforms that you can speak on.

It's just they're saying you can't use a specific platform. It's like saying in the Second Amendment world, it's like saying, well, you can't block my ability to have a tank. Yes, I can't have a gun, but I'm not telling you you can't have a tank. It's kind of the same way with TikTok. telling you you can't be online. I'm just telling you you can't use this one because people are using it for bad reasons, right? But China's not going to give up a fight. So they're going to use the First Amendment argument. They're going to put it through the courts and whatever. And again, it's not because they're looking to make any money off of it, even though that's a side hustle in a sense.

It's because they want access to all the information. And the problem is for them in this moment, again, from a foreign affairs perspective, is if we don't go, if China loses access to bite dance and the data that goes through there. And today, let's say, and we go to war in three years. Well, now all the data is old. Everybody's got new phones. Everybody's bought new routers.

And they can't, they don't have the live, real data that they have now to do something with if they wanted to do something with it. So they're not going to give it up. They're just not going to. So what does that mean for TikTok in the US?

I don't know. Yeah, I wonder what the final outcome's going to be. Yeah. It's going to be interesting. but I can, you know, I'm not speaking with any special information. I'm just, you know, based on my opinion, but I think with what we know about TikTok that the national security concerns are probably going to outweigh the financial and economic benefit that people have here.

And will the government step into maybe help in some way, like give loans so they can find other platforms because they want maybe i don't know i mean i'm not an expert in that well it's also this is very fixable is facebook and meta just have to adjust their pay because they've it was so high when they first started to compete with ticot and it just flattened yeah so maybe that'll help if say ticot closes down more ad revenue can be spent on meta they can up creators pay sure because it's not like it doesn't exist right what's on ticot especially those with large platforms will it be harder if you're just starting out absolutely but the people that already have huge platforms usually have something on these other ones that they can post content it's just a question of will

meta step up and pay the creators more a livable wage yeah yeah that's what it comes down to i hear you i agree you but uh john thank you so much man today was an incredible conversation uh shout out to white george for introducing us so random i got to say across the country yeah but for him to connect with someone like you and then connect to me, it's crazy the power of social media. Yeah. And like I said, when I first came in here today, he reached out to me. I was online doing something. And he's like, hey, my name's George. Let's talk. And I was like, okay, hey, George, I'm John. And we talked. And he's like, bro, you got to meet Ian. You got to meet him. And I'm like, okay. He's like, here's his cell phone number. Well, first of all, he showed me your channel. And I was like, oh, wow, he's doing killer stuff. That's great. You know, he's big. He's

doing these things. He's like, no, no, here's his cell phone number. Talk to him. I'm like, bro, do you're going to give me a cell phone number. phone number. He's got stuff going on. He's got this random kid texting a random guy. But I did. I texted you and you got back and you were so pleasant and said, yeah, come on in. Let's do some talking. And here we are. So. Yeah, so cool. And hopefully this helps grow your audience on yours. Yeah, I appreciate it. Absolutely.