The Ben Mulroney Show - Sleeper cells activated by Iran? Ozempic truths.

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

GUEST: Carmi Levy/Tech Journalist GUEST:  Dr. Lawrence LEITER /  Scientific Director at St. Michael’s Hospital If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. All right. Well, we just had a number of really interesting conversations. We're talking about the shooting that happened early this morning of the U.S. consulate in the city of Toronto. And the question is, could this possibly have something to do with the Iranian regime, activated? sleeper cells outside of their country. There is some evidence that there's been chatter, but does that chatter translate to violence in the streets of Toronto? So we dig into that. We also talk to Carmi Levy about a number of really interesting stories. Most notably, what do you do when an AI chatbot tells you to kill yourself?

Yeah, that happened. And then we talked to a doctor about Ozempic. Is it a miracle drug? Well, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that there are, real benefits to it far beyond weight loss. In fact, some people shouldn't even be taking it for weight loss, but is it a good drug for a lot of other stuff? We'll dig into that. All right. So let's get into it. This is the Ben Mulerney Show podcast. Well, another day, another shooting in the city of Toronto. We're still reeling from back to back to back shootings of synagogues, which would be,

which would be a lot for any city. But not Toronto. No, no. We decide to up our game and there was a shooting at just before 5 a.m. of the U.S. consulate here in the city of Toronto. Let's listen to the police telling us that all hands on deck. I would like to state that the Toronto Police Service takes incidents like this with extreme seriousness. We appreciate and understand the concern how unsettling this is, how disturbing it is, and how angry it may make some citizens. and I can assure Toronto police service

considers this the most serious, the utmost serious type of event and we are actively pursuing its resolution. Well, look, I like that they say they're going to take it seriously and I want to believe it and I know that the brave men and women who represent this city as police

have our best interest at heart. But it's been a long few years of here. hearing that things are taken seriously and we don't necessarily see that manifested in our streets and in people feeling safer. But there's a larger question here. And I sort of brought it up a few days ago when we talked about members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, about 700 of them that live in Canada. And I asked like, what are they doing? How have they been living their lives? You know, these are slavishly devoted

Islamists who believe in the mission of the Iranian regime. That's not something that just goes away when you move to Alberta, right? That's who you are. That's what you believe. We've got 700 of have they been meeting like-minded people? Have they been meeting impressionable young people? Have they been recruiting and converting people? Have they been fundraising? Have they been planning? I don't know.

And when I see something like this and I see those three shootings of the synagogues, I wonder if they have a hand in this. And I'm not the only one. the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, had this to say. No, we haven't had any information on that. But again, this is just me speaking. I believe there's sleeper cells all over the world, as we know. We're in the U.S.

They're in Canada here. And we have to weed these people out and hold them accountable. Because, again, folks, we all grew up here, very peaceful, loving community. all across the province and for these people to be doing this, they need to be caught and they need to be thrown in jail for life. And we'll keep getting, we'll keep talking about this, but I just want to remind everybody, if we go back in time a little bit, prior to the murder of George Floyd, Western nations

by and large represented the most just, fairest, most equitable nations in the world. at any point in history, there'd never been anything as good as what we had then. And those nations, through their own mechanisms, were always striving to be better. And then a whole bunch of protests started happening. And some were good and some were destructive. And I believe that we have been witnessing a coordinated, sophisticated, well-funded, manifestation of anti-Western, the anti-Western, anti-Western influence.

And we woke up one day and we were told everything we believed about how fair things were. No, no, no, this is the worst place on earth. And nobody agrees with anybody. And if you look at, if you look a different way or you believe something else, then that person is the enemy. And that's what we're seeing now. That's what we're seeing now. And this doesn't happen by accident.

It does not happen by accident. And so when I read that the U.S. intercepted encrypted messages coming out of Iran with an alert reportedly going out to law enforcement warning about the possibility of a sleeper cell attack inside the U.S. President Trump asserts we've been very much on top of it. But the question is, is Iran waking up sleeper cells? An alarming report of threats outside Iran. ABC News reports Iran may be activating sleeper's. cells, quote, the U.S. has intercepted encrypted communications believed to have originated in Iran that may serve as an operational trigger for sleeper assets outside the country.

That is frightening. That is frightening. And while we don't have any information, you look at that and you look at the numbers I just told you about, but 700 devoted members of the IRGC living in Canada, would it be prudent to be a little cautious? I think so. Let's listen to ABC News as Daryl Blocker. He's a former CIA agent. Here's what he had to say about sleeper cells. Sleeper cells like this are typically people who are comfortable in the country in which they're living, even though their priorities might exist, whether with the Soviet state or in this in this instance, the Islamic Republic of Iran. So these are people who are completely embedded inside the United States.

They live here, they work here, they're comfortable here, they speak the language here, but ultimately awaiting for some signal to go out and do some nefarious act. How do intelligence agencies work to stop sleep or sell threats? Well, typically what's happening anytime they're following a lead, like the recent guy who was put in jail for trying to assassinate the president, So they're looking at all those cells. They're looking at all these different communications. We know how they operate in the United States.

We know how they operate abroad. So you start to look for what we call indications and warnings. Any type of signal that might suggest that these guys are part of some type of cell that the intelligence community might be aware of and law enforcement now. But the average person would not. So when I hear that Donald Trump says, yeah, we're on top of that, I believe him. I believe him. But I read, so there was a video that went with this article. And the article to me should send a chill down your spine.

It says that the U.S. intercepted encrypted communication, believed to have been originated in Iran that may serve as an operational trigger for sleeper cells outside the country. And they repeat that. They repeat that the preliminary signal analysis of the transmission, likely of Iranian origin that was relayed across multiple countries. So this is not a warning that there was some sort of activation of sleeper cells in the U.S. It's activation of sleeper cells in multiple countries, one of which could be the U.S. And then you got to ask yourself, do you believe that Canada has given our police services

the RCMP, CES and the military adequate funding over the past years and decades to ensure that if this is real, we're on top of it. And I would humbly suggest, given the fact that we have been telling you over months, that we can't even keep our eyes on people who have overstayed their visas in this country. and if we did have the manpower and the technology to find them, we wouldn't know how to get rid of them. So, and that's just people who overstayed a student visa. What about people who came here, if this is in fact true,

who came here to act and walk around, live their lives, go get their groceries, watch their kids play sports, but just wait for the moment that they get that call. I mean, this is 3D chess and we don't have money to buy a checkers board. So I am concerned. I know, I know that of course our leaders are concerned and our leaders will bring whatever resources they can to bear on this. My fear is the resources available aren't enough. And that is that is the concerning thing.

So fingers crossed, this is a misinformation that is trying to get the Americans to take their eye off the ball. And the ball is the complete destruction of the Iranian regime. That is my hope. That is my prayer. But my fear is that it could be something else. And if it is something else, we have to ask ourselves, have we done the hard work to take the serious stuff seriously? All right. When we come back, we're joined by Carmi Levy to talk about what happens when A.I.I.

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We're living in technological times. And so who better to talk to than our friend, Carmi Levy, tech analyst, and bon vivant. Carmi, welcome to the show. Hi, Ben. I've never been called a bon vivant before. I really like that. Thank you. So we have heard stories of the Tumblr Ridge shooter whose chat GPT interactions were significant

enough to have that person's account suspended, but didn't rise to the level of letting authorities know. I think their internal processes and red lines should be re-evaluated. But now I'm hearing the story of Gemini that encouraged a man to commit suicide so he could be with his AI wife in the afterlife. There's a lawsuit against a Gemini. I mean, this is nuts. What do you make of this? Give us some details. We've seen similar lawsuits against OpenAI for chat GPT. There are at least seven that are proceeding in the U.S. is the first time that Google is being targeted in court for its Gemini platform.

And guys by the name of Jonathan Gavallis, it's in a federal court in San Jose, California. He was 36 years old, and he'd been speaking with Gemini for months. And the lawsuit says that Gemini encouraged him to take his own life. I mean, this plays not exactly like all those other cases. Yeah. He apparently had no documented history of mental health issues. And the chatbot sent him on these missions to warehouses near the airport in Miami to, you know, carry out a mass casualty attack.

It was insane. And he was following its orders. And eventually the chat bot, you know, told him, you need to end your life and told him how to end his life. And he followed that advice. I just heard and saw a story online, someone on social media today. who was having delusions. And ChatGPT was indulging in those delusions, reinforcing that, yes, in fact,

you are this thing that you aren't, and reinforcing that you are seeing those things that you don't see. And it was a few years of this person's life that were completely unlivable. And to those in his life, he cut them all off because they weren't acknowledging the things that chat GPT was telling him were there. So, I mean, the words guardrails are used way too much in our society,

but what to do about the lack of guardrails here? We need to hold these companies accountable because you would think that when someone starts talking about suicide, when someone starts talking about a mass casualty event, I'm going to pick up a gun and do something terrible, you would think that that's the moment that the chat bot kind of says, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's hit the brakes here. Let's call law enforcement.

You know, let's call a mental health professional. Let's stop this conversation from happening. Whatever it is, right? We've got to hit the brakes. And that doesn't seem to be the case. And that's by design. The industry talks about guardrails, talks about protections, but the reality is we keep hearing stories like this

because it isn't about stopping something from happening. A chatbot is designed from the start to continue the conversation, no matter where that conversation goes, even if it goes to violence, even if it goes to suicide. And so whatever guardrails, Open AI and Google and Anthropic are talking about, they're nowhere near enough. And they can get people into trouble. And you essentially spiral down to the point that you literally can't get out because the tool, the platform, the AI chatbot doesn't want you to get out. All right.

Let's move on to Nintendo. It's good to see companies pushing back on Donald Trump's tariffs. It's a Japanese company. And their switch to is they're betting big on it. And so they're suing the U.S. government, including the Department of the Treasury and Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection over the tariffs. What specifically are they going up against? Because if you just listen to Donald Trump, it's within his rights to do this. Where are they finding issue?

Well, they're saying that, well, because of the Supreme Court ruled that the original tariffs that were done under something called the International Emergency Economic, Powers Act or AIPA were illegal. And so what did Donald Trump do? He came up with some other sort of legal gymnastics to implement new tariffs. And so now under that Supreme Court ruling, Nintendo has filed in the US Court of International Trade, a lawsuit that basically says we want a refund

with interest of all the tariffs that we paid so far, and we expect them soon. We know that the US Customs and Border Patrol is arranging some kind of framework provide those refunds but not fast enough for Nintendo and they haven't even put a timeline on that and there are i mean think of the the probably tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent on tariffs up to date by businesses and they're all going to come calling and Nintendo's starting this but i would expect this will continue in the months to come because essentially if the court said

this was illegal we want our money back now we're not going to wait any longer for it and i like that this Nintendo, of course, it's based in Japan, not an American company. They're not as worried about, you know, retribution from the White House as, say, an American-based technology company would be, I would guess global companies are looking at this and thinking, well, we should call our lawyers too, maybe get our own lawsuit going. So a friend of mine was talking to me about Amazon's attempted acquisition of I-Robot, and that's the company that makes the Rumba. And they eventually dropped that $1.4 billion.

acquisition attempt. But he said, like, what the reason they wanted it, even though it's already got Alexa integration in it, is they wanted to have complete access and control over those things. So they could turn on the cameras and see, oh, look, they got a new dog. And then they could offer you dog food and things like that. And having access within your home was something, again, having eyes in your home was something that they wanted. But that never paid off.

but now I'm hearing that there's a company that's paying $30,000 to the man who accidentally hacked 7,000 Romo Robo Vax. And that's really frightening. It is. And he wasn't even trying to, he was just trying to hack the device so that he could control his robo vac. It's from DJI with his game controller. That's all he wanted to do.

And yet as he was sort of playing with the code, he realized that he was able to see not only the camera feed from his device. He was able to see it from other devices to thousands of other devices. He had full and unlimited access to the wireless network that controlled every DJI

Romo device ever sold. And so he told the company about it. He didn't want to get away with anything. He said, here's what I found. Here's the weakness in your architecture. Your code needs to be updated. And so you know, the DJI took that information and they ultimately are, they

They say they've closed up one vulnerability. They're still working on another. And they paid him what's called a bug bounty. It's $30,000 because he discovered a weakness. And he was a good guy about it. And he told them about it. And this is where we often talk about hackers. They're two kinds.

They're black hat hackers who try to defraud us and do bad things. He's what's known as a white hat hacker. He stumbled into it. His heart was in the right place. His intentions were good. And now he's being rewarded for it. All right. In our last minute or so, talk to me about these meta-AI glasses.

I saw some videos about how quickly it could access information about people. And it takes sort of the losing of our privacy to a whole new level. But now apparently it's sending sensitive footage to human reviewers in Kenya. Yeah. So, you know, it has meta-a-I built into it. So it has a camera and you look at things and you ask your questions and it gives you answers. But sometimes the meta-a-I isn't that intelligent. It needs human monitors, reviewers, to help it along a little bit.

So they review the footage and they provide some answers when the technology fails. And apparently they are saying they have now seen videos from these glasses that show people going to the washroom, engaged in intimate activity. They've seen naked bodies. And this is from, it's a Swedish media outlet that has essentially said they're hearing, they're speaking with these Kenyan meta contractors who are seeing footage. they probably didn't sign up to see. And that's something to keep in mind.

These things are incredibly popular. They sold millions of them last year. They're becoming more affordable. And they're crossing all sorts of privacy lines. And not just because of the AI, but because this data ends up in the hands of, Lord knows who, halfway around the world. All right.

Keep in mind if you're getting a pair of these. Karmie Levy, thank you very much for joining us. I always appreciate your take on these important stories. Thanks so much, Ben. All right. When we come back, another important conference. We're talking to a doctor about the OZempic revolution. Don't go anywhere.

We are bombarded by... Well, we're talking OZempic and very glad to have with us. The scientific director at St. Michael's Hospital, Dr. Lawrence Leader. Doctor, thank you for being here. Thank you, Ben. It's a pleasure to join you. So we've been living in a world where OZMPIC has been in people's lives for a significant amount of time. We know that there are some positives, but we know that there are some positives. but we know that there are some significant drawbacks as well.

Would you say in your expertise that OZMPIC is a net positive or net negative on people's health? Oh, no. Overall, definitely a net positive. This was a drug that was initially developed to treat type 2 diabetes and effectively lowers glucose, subsequently been shown to also help people lose body weight. and now we have increasing evidence that it's also good for the heart. It's good for the kidneys and it's good for the liver. And doctor, is it good for those things because it helps people reduce their weight?

Those cold morbidities go down? Or is it in and of itself beneficial to those things? Yeah, it's probably both. Okay. We know that the amount of weight that people will lose is variable, but we see the cardiovascular benefits are similar whether people lost a lot of weight or not. So there are multiple factors that lead to this cardiovascular benefit. So how do we get to a place, doctor, where we can reduce those negative aspects?

Because it feels to me the negative aspects, and you'll tell me if I'm off base here, are due to people not using it the way it might be recommended, or staying on it too long? No. I mean, at this point, I can definitely say that there are the long-term side effects are few to non-existent. Oh, wow. Wow.

You know, there are people on the drug may have some gastrointestinal side effects, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, but these tend to be transient and go away after a few weeks. at this point we've had the drug for more than 10 years and absolutely no long-term side effects have emerged. So we were doing our research and there was something about doctors worrying about gastroporesis, which some people think could become a long-term or chronic issue? Yeah, well, that is again not a particular issue related to Ozampic. We certainly know that people with diabetes can.

have as a so-called complication of diabetes, gastroporesis, which is a delayed emptying of the stomach due to nerve damage secondary to the diabetes. We know that OZempic delays stomach emptying. That's, in fact, one of the mechanisms of action of how it promotes weight loss in that people will feel full with less food. But the drug, if you stop the drug,

its effect on stomach emptying disappears. So the few cases that have been reported at gastropriases are most likely people who have gastroporesis secondary to their diabetes to begin with and not a result of the drug. Dr. Talk to me about the protocol, the process, the procedure by which doctors, will prescribe a drug that is like off label because Health Canada hasn't necessarily approved

OZempic four weight loss. So if, but they recognize that it does have those benefits. Is there, what does it mean to, to recommend or to prescribe something off label? Well, actually then, let me just correct something. So the drug in Ozempic, the actual drug, a generic name is semaglite. And somaglite is the same medication that's in Wagovi, which is indicated for wave loss. So the only difference is, so Zempic and Wagovi are the same drug. At the lower doses, it's indicated for diabetes.

At the higher doses, it's indicated for wave loss. That's interesting. That's interesting. So would you say that if it is recommended for weight loss, then the issue is in order for us to get to a place where, you know, we don't have these conversations about people gaining all the weight back or staying on it too long, is while they are on the drug for weight loss, that there's a protocol in place where they learn,

they learn how to live a healthier lifestyle off the drug? Yes and no. I mean, certainly when we prescribe Ozempic and other Ozempic-like drugs, we emphasize to people that, you know, the drug is not a

be-all and end-all. It should be used in conjunction with appropriate lifestyle changes. But you're correct that if people stop it, they may well regain the weight. But I use the analogy. We don't expect cholesterol-lowering drugs

to work. when people aren't taking them. We don't expect blood pressure pills to work when people aren't taking them. So we shouldn't expect weight loss medication to work when people aren't taking them either. This expression I hear all the time that these drugs cut out the, quote, food noise. Is that a psychosomatic thing? Is that all in the head? Or does this actually have an impact on the constant thinking about food?

and the, you know, that belief, I can't stop thinking about food, and therefore eventually I'm just going to make some bad decisions. Right. Well, there are multiple mechanisms by which the drug helps people lose weight. One, as I mentioned, is that it delays emptying of the stomach. The other is that it has direct effects on the eating control centers in the food, sorry, in the brain, and actually increases the time.

So it's a subtle distinction, but it's not so much less appetite, but rather you feel full with less food. Right. So, I mean, listen, it sounds to me like people make Ozempic and Monjaru and Wagovi. Those companies are doing very, very well. I don't think they're lacking for clients now. But I kind of want to live in a world where those people who take these drugs because they really need it. I want them to live the life that they hope they're going to have at the end and to hear all the stories of people putting the weight back on

or staying on it too long and looking like shells of their former selves. Yeah. Without a doubt, there's inappropriate use and people are, you know, there is some use of people who are taking them to lose weight who don't really need to lose weight. But I think the key point here in a message is that these drugs have other benefits. And you know, what's newsworthy is that Health Canada just gave Ozempic a new indication to reduce the risk of heart disease in people with diabetes.

Yeah. No. I think the important point is we need to move away from weight loss as a cosmetic benefit, but rather to take a medication that will provide benefit. And again, drugs, Lycosemic not only help improve blood sugar and promote weight loss, but are good for the heart, good for the kidney. We know people with diabetes are two to three times more likely to die of heart disease than the general population. So this is a very important strategy to help reduce this risk of cardiovascular disease. And as a, you know, living in a world with a single payer medical system to have something

like that with all of these positive benefits, it's going to help in the long run for the bottom line of our already cast-strapped medical systems in hospitals. Doctor, thank you very much for your time. Okay, my pleasure. Thank you. My name is Mickey Fox. Friday, February 27th on Global. I'm Sheriff of Edgewater.

For her, keeping the peace. Cartel's moving in. Means every investigation. People are getting threats. It's close to home. At the end of the day, I'm responsible for this town. Secrets, Loyalties, and Small Town. Justice Collide in the new hit drama.

I'm a damn good sheriff. Sheriff Country returns Friday, February 27th on Global. Stream on Stack TV.