The Joe Rogan Experience - #1327 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: July 30, 2019

Mike Baker is a former CIA covert operations officer. Currently he is the president of Diligence LLC, a global intelligence and security firm.

Boom, boom, boom. What's happening, brother? How you doing, man? What's cracking? It's good to be back. Good to be back. Good to see you. This place is always amazing.

It's like a little, it's a bit of an amusement park almost now. Yeah. With stuff to see and the gym equipment and everything. I keep thinking I should just bring my gear over and work out before the show or after the show, but- Get loose. I don't want to embarrass myself, so. You wouldn't embarrass yourself.

I'm not going to watch. You want to watch your workout? He would. Jamie's that kind of guy. Yeah, I've seen him give me side eye. He would give you side eye. But, no, thank you. Yeah, it's all good.

Everything's good. I've been traveling a lot. We just talked before we started about Idaho. I haven't had a chance to get back there. But, yeah, all good, all good. So you're around for a television show? Is that what you're doing? Yeah, there's several meetings going on here

But we just finished Filming a show A reality show For, can I say the network? They're kind of hinky Until we get closer to the air date Which is October But it's for the Discovery Network

And it's going to be a great show that I'm hosting why do they not want you to say their name well you know what that's what I always thought I always thought free publicity

is a good thing but they're very tight on the marketing protocols and so they want to make sure they've got it all buttoned up and I get that right they spend you know

a lot of money on these things fucking control freaks yeah and so anyway but it's going to be a great show we spent the past three or four months

Filming it around the country Really good production team And the stories are fantastic It's basically looking at I guess I'm talking about it I'm not supposed to But we're looking at Military government organizations

That are typically in the shadows We're not releasing any sources and methods. We're not disclosing any classified secrets. We're talking about elements and units, operational activity, events that before now have pretty much been in the shadows, and some incredible people. That's one of the best parts about this thing. It's been going out there and meeting some of these guys that are doing some of this high-speed shit, and it's pretty amazing. When they do release things, like long, long after, like I was reading something,

I forget what the case was about, but it was something about how the files won't be released under the Freedom of Information Act until 2080. How do you... Yeah, I know. How do they make that distinction? That was a thing with the Kennedy assassination, right? And sometimes they roll it over and it's not even then, right? So sometimes they extend that.

Other times they don't. And so some information comes to light periodically. And so this does look at – this show will be looking at some historic but a lot of current things that are going on and where the money goes, right? What are we spending our money on when it comes to this high-speed operations that the Special Forces and others are involved in? So it'll be very good. I was lucky to be able to work with, again, some really great people on the production side, but just also going out there and meeting some of these cats.

The shit that they do, even after being around a while, as I have, it just amazes me. Well, it's got to be constantly accelerating, too, right? They're constantly coming up with new and spectacular things that nobody knows about until they employ them. Right. And sometimes that shit stays on the shelf, right? It was like the running joke at the agency at the CIA was, you know, we have a fantastic S&T group, a science and technology group. And they're the ones responsible, like Q from Bond, right? They're the ones responsible for developing all the gear, responding to specific operational requirements.

How are we going to do this particular thing? Well, let's develop a piece of kit that's going to allow us to do it. But the running joke is always that, you know, they'll develop it and they'll show it to you before an operation. But then they'll put it back on the shelf because they don't want that shit getting out there right and people finding out that they've got it so they'll give you like a a 20 year old piece of kit to use instead and you'll be walking around with like a phone the size of a brick um knowing that they've got something high speed on the shelf well that's what everybody always thinks like when you talk to the average joe on the street about technology and the government there was like dude the stuff they have that they probably don't tell us about how much of that is

real yeah um it's it's pretty real have you seen some stuff that made you go holy shit yeah they can do that yes really yeah and how much can you tell us um well you know what one thing that they're doing and and there's this is actually something I wanted to talk about today, because it's going to affect everybody. It's not just something that is going to affect people in the military or else in the intelligence community. But one of the things that they've been working on is, imagine you've got to rock up on a target. But before you do that, before you get the customers on site and you're going to hopefully obtain some high-value targets there at that location, before you do that, you've got to – Why are you talking like euphemisms? Oh, I'm sorry. Before you're going to nuke people. Yeah, before you're going to go in there. You're going to blow terrorists into another dimension.

Well, sometimes you know – okay, actually, I was going to say sometimes you want to actually capture them and get their intelligence. We've gone past that, right? Because the years where we were getting our ass kicked for holding on to people in detention facilities, you know what that did? That pretty much convinced everybody that was involved in this to just whack them, right? Because then you don't have to deal with the aftermath. You don't have to worry about, are you going to get in trouble for interrogating somebody? Right, exactly. So that actually increased the lethality of operations. You started painting targets and just blowing the shit out of there rather than trying to

grab the target and get their intel. That's a problem because then the pipeline dries up for the intel. But anyway, so imagine you got this site. The first thing you got to do is determine if your target's there, right? And it's not like that, you know, the Tom Clancy movies where, you know, you're looking through walls and all this shit. It's, you know, that technology, night vision devices and that ability in low light conditions to monitor and to identify specific individuals has always been a problem.

They've made great strides on it to the point now where in no light conditions, right, with the right stack database, with the right information in that database, meaning the right amount of information about individuals, right? You're constantly populating this database with new faces or with new photographs of individuals that you're going after. With enough of that to sift through, they're getting to the point now with no light conditions that they can identify positively the targets in that room or the targets in that facility or in that building, whatever it might be. And that's pretty incredible. I read that they can identify people by their heart rate. Well, not just their heart rate, but I mean other bio data, right? But they can literally, with video somehow or another, they can zoom in on you with some scanner and recognize that this is a

particular individual because their heart rate yeah this is there was an article that was written about it and i know that there's a company do you know what hex is hecs it's um it's a company that's been used uh pretty extensively by scuba diving community and now by the hunting community as well because it blocks the electrical signal, HECS. It blocks the electrical signal that your body gives off. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think they're doing work with the military as well to develop suits that will somehow or another stop someone from being able to recognize your particular heart rate. Right, and there's a lot of work on what they call sort of the universal soldier.

Yeah, there it is. Pentagon has a laser that can identify people from a distance by their heartbeat. By their heartbeat. Fucking laser. It helps if you have other data points, right? But this is all part of, to some degree, what they refer to as the universal soldier, right? The fighter of tomorrow. Jean-Claude Van Damme, remember that shit? part of, to some degree, what they refer to as the universal soldier. The fighter of tomorrow. Jean-Claude Van Damme.

That's right. Who doesn't remember Jean-Claude? He's doing chip commercials now. Is he? Sure. You haven't seen him at Doritos or whatever. It is true. The splits. Props. I don't know when that becomes

useful though, really. The splits? The splits. I mean, I've never actually felt that that was something I needed to accomplish in any given moment from an operational perspective. If you're doing karate movies where you have to do the splits, it's very important. It's true. So the universal soldier thing where you're, you know, it's an exoskeleton. It's a soft suit.

It's all the data that you can acquire for that warfighter. How do you create the perfect environment on that individual as he's moving through an environment to, you know, be a more efficient, effective, lethal fighter? And, you know, things like that, identifying target, whether it's with a laser, whether it's with low light or no light conditions where you can, as you're rocking up on the target, you can do that. All these things, you know, the ability to carry more gear, right, hump it another extra, you know, 10 kilometers, whatever it might be. It's pretty incredible what they're doing. And it's a joint. It's not just the military. They're working with, you know, companies like HACS or they're working with the commercial sector and academics, too.

But anyway, I don't know. I'd disappear and down a rabbit hole. The idea of this universal soldier thing. Have you been paying attention to this Elon Musk Neuralink thing that he's coming out with? thing that he's coming out with where they're going to somehow or another insert fibers into your brain and then have a Bluetooth-enabled device that you wear that's going to allow you to somehow or another interface with data at a much higher bandwidth. I don't know what the fuck any of those words mean I just said. But that was good, though.

It sounded like you understood it. That's my trick. Repeat words. Yeah. There comes a point, if you're talking about, I mean, that's going into a different area. That's going into civilian applications. But I think the military application would be great for that, too. Everyone could synchronize data.

You could give them navigation in their head. Like if there's some sort of augmented reality where you could literally see the targets in front of you like they if you had a map say like the if the pentagon really does have this laser beam they can identify specific individuals and you have a map of a building that's in your head and they can identify the very location absolute perfect location of each individual person in that room and you could see that as you're running into this building you're seeing like a 3d grid in front of you and you know i mean you could shoot them right through a fucking wall right and there's but there's there does become a problem then there becomes a problem of information overload and when you get into that situation right everything starts to close down a little

bit right and and so you've got to start pushing some of that away. And now what you end up doing is you get the off-site command center relaying some of that information as needed. But that guy that's about to breach that door, he doesn't want a lot of data points anymore. Now, having said that, knowing where the hostiles are on the other side of that door, that is key information. That's not rocket science. But there's a lot that's going on. There's also the ability to monitor health of the individual soldiers that are out there through the gear that they would then be wearing. It's an incredible effort that has been going on. And so to answer your point, a long rambling answer, yeah, I've seen some things that are pretty amazing. You can't talk about though. No, no. Some of this shit actually we'll get into with the new show that's coming up sometime in fall.

I don't have a release date. And again, I'm prescribed from talking about it, so I won't do that because I pay attention. So some of the things that you saw, you'll be able to talk about. Yes. So how does the government do that? They just decide, well, listen, it's not a bad thing if you tell people about this. I think that's right. Yeah.

Well, I think there's an element of some of it's not what you would refer to as classified. It's just not readily available public information, and it's not out there in the domain because people aren't aware of it or searching for it. Some of it is – I think you're right. Some of it is, look, the military wants to say at times, look what we're able to do. We're doing this, and oftentimes it's because it's in a sort of a private-public cooperation. And so that encourages other companies with innovative technologies to step forward and get involved in some of this. And I guess that opens up all sorts of other, you know, some people are out there saying,

well, they shouldn't be working with the military. Well, you know, fuck that. Well, that's a question that I had. out there saying, well, they shouldn't be working with the military. Well, fuck that. Well, that's a question that I had. This brings me to a point that I think is kind of important, where people always talk about the military budget and how high the military budget is. And we need to take some of that money and put it in other places.

And maybe some of that military money is not being used for the best good of the human race, or maybe, maybe some of it but in order to be able to develop stuff that keeps people safer in order to develop all the stuff that you're talking about that could potentially save the lives of soldiers and and even innocent civilians because you're going to be able to target the correct people. All this stuff seems pretty critical, right? Right. And it's also, there's an upside if you want to get more realistic about the whole thing to developing advanced technology. You can be more surgical, right?

The drone capability is an example. It gives you a much better understanding of your target. You can avoid the collateral damage, the deaths of civilians on site through the use of proper technology. And that creates that environment. And so it's a good thing. And again, I mean, look, you know, the CIA, their S&T group over the years, the shit that they've developed for operational purposes that then made its way into the commercial sector and benefited people.

Like what? Battery technology. Anybody walking around with a pacemaker or a defibrillator, you know, in part can thank the agency because what were they doing? They were working, they continue to work on battery technology, shrinking those batteries as a power source. What? Initially, operational purposes so you could, you know, put a transmitter out some site,

you know, and, you know, so what are you doing? You're eavesdropping on a hostile target or, you know and and um you know so what are you doing you're eavesdropping on a on a hostile target or you know gathering intelligence but then that that effort all that work that was done then that later on benefits um the general public a drone technology same thing right i mean the agency was front and center on developing drone capability now what are you doing you're doing that to to you know for environmental concerns, for mining. I'm a little concerned about drone technology. My old house that I used to live at, this motherfucker that lived down the street from me

used to hover a drone over my house and film. I know he's looking at me. What are you doing? You watch me swimming, you fucking weirdo? Did you ever go over and talk to him? No. No. Should have sent a drone over his house.

Yeah. I was thinking of shooting it down, but it's hard to aim up. No, you can nowadays. With a bow and arrow. Yeah. You're like. Oh, that'd be a hell of a shot. If you have a good bow, like, see, the way you calculate accuracy with archery is you

have a range finder, and that range finder has built-in adjustments for angle. There's angle compensation for up or for down. But I don't know if it has it for straight up in the air. Because you've got to think the way you're judging how much an arrow is going to drop over the course of the flight. Right. Same with a bullet.

Yeah. Right. But with a bullet, obviously, there's less compensation because it's much faster. But there's a video that's hilarious of this guy got tired of this block party in Brazil. So he loaded up a drone filled with fireworks and he hovered it over the block party and started launching bottle rockets down on these guys that are making too much noise. That's excellent, though. I mean, if you think about it, that sounds like something one of my boys would do.

Right. And I'm sure they'll be listening to this at some point, so they're going to do this. Scooter, Sluggo, and Muggsy. When you have a kid named Sluggo or Muggsy or Scooter, guaranteed they're going to do something like that. They're going to do something like that, yeah. Did you think of that when you were naming your kids? I didn't, no, it didn't occur to me Although I wanted to give them

Eugene or something Eugene? I wanted to give them flat tops Every summer I have the same discussion with my wife Who's the world's greatest person I wanted to give them flat tops And she always says, look, with Scooter Slugger Mugsy You give them a flat top as well

Then that's it They're in a database Exactly They're going somewhere But It's You know The best way to take down a drone

Is Is just blanket it Jam it And drop it How do you do that? Well It's like You know

It's like the old days Of jamming a radio signal Basically right You're interrupting You're blanketing it You're interrupting The data communication from the controller to the drone. And like the drone that was taken down in the Iranian drone that we took down. I think it was the USS Boxer was involved in that out there in the Strait.

That's how they do it. They don't fire a missile at it anymore. You know, it's much more effective. They just shoot something at it that disrupts the signal. Right. Yeah. It's essentially, again, not to oversimplify, it's just jamming. But is that jamming technology available to civilians?

If not, to know that? To really, really smart civilians, I guess. It could be. Yeah. Really smart civilians would probably be able to figure that stuff out. Know anybody? Let's work on that. I'm looking. I'm going to find that stuff out. Jamie? You know anybody? Let's work on that. I'm looking.

I'm going to find something real quick. Jamie could probably figure it out. So, yeah, Scooter was just out at West Point. He wants to go to West Point when he's old enough. And so he went out there for a lacrosse program. And I'd forgotten. Have you been to West Point? No.

You got to go. I know it's a ways away from here. It's not a day trip. But it's a beautiful campus. i'd forgotten about that obviously it's got is that where jody foster was in silence of the lambs was she west point i don't know that didn't sound right i don't think so the drone kill gun wow that's That's crazy. Mark III. Yes, of course. The Mark III. Lightweight compact drone countermeasure. Drone gun 3000.

Jamie, order me one of those immediately on Amazon, please. Yeah. That would have taken care of this guy. Yeah, but the problem is it's not as satisfying as a bow and arrow. Yes. That's a good point. That's a good point. So one of the things I wanted I don't know how we

It's not a smooth segue But we were talking a bit about Technology Technology Is Particularly with the 2020 election coming up Is this idea of deep fakes Yes

Fantastic stuff And The technology to create this Nowadays To create a deep fake, which essentially just means you're doctoring a photo or video and making it do what you want it to do to try to convince people of whatever it is. Technology is advancing, and it's stunning what can be done.

Do you know who Kyle Dunnigan is? Kyle Dunnigan? I should know. I should know. Hilarious stand-up comedian, but he shines in doing deep fakes. And he's working with this other guy. I think the guy's called Dr. Fakenstein or The Fakening. Is it The Fakening? Yeah, two separate guys, but yeah.

Yeah, one of those guys. But go to his Instagram and see the new one that he did with Elon Musk. He was doing them really kind of crudely with like face... Face swap or face... Yeah, it's like a little filter that you get from Snapchat or something like that or Instagram, but now he's moved from that to doing this really high-end stuff. Go to the Elon Musk one. Look at this.

Play this. Dr. Fakenstein did this. Yeah, okay. At Tesla Labs, which is pretty cool. It's pretty cool, but we had a little snafu, and it looks like time is slowing down and will eventually start going backwards at an increasing rate.

So pretty soon you will become a baby again and be sucked back into your mother's vagina. Okay, now pause. Now go to another Kyle Donegan video so he can tell what Kyle really looks like. That's him to the right of that. This is what he really looks like, which is fucking madness. Yeah.

The guy's hilarious, by the way. He's an awesome guy, too. And he's got a great Instagram page, but his Instagram page is mostly him, like the gold boom. So the gold boom one, click on that, because that's a normal one. This is one he did with the filters without Dr. Fakenstein. Look at this. See how it's kind of creepy fake?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But play that. EllenDigenosaurus seems friendly, but don't get too close to her. She'll bite your fucking head off. Just ask the Porsche Raptor. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And that's Ray Liotta. Ray Liotta's always smoking.

Yeah. Although he gave it up, remember? But in the videos, he's always smoking. But look, it's bad enough that it's extra hilarious because it's bad. But the new one that he did with Elon Musk is not bad. It's too good. It's not bad. Look at the Caitlyn Jenner one.

Go to that Caitlyn Jenner one on the far right. That's fucking genius. Click on this one. Carefully, Kylie. I have something serious to tell you. Yeah? When you had your surgery years ago, I buried your old face in a pet cemetery by accident,

and I'm sorry to say it's back. Yum, yum. Oh, there it is. Get down, Kylie. Okay. See, but it is. Get down, Kylie. Okay. See, but those are my favorites. He has the Kardashians. That's the only way they talk.

They just say, yum, yum. And then he knows what they're saying, sort of like Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy. Oh, God. I don't know how I miss these things. I'm clearly watching the wrong shit on the internet. Well, you're a former CIA guy. I should know this stuff. You're doing important things.

You don't have time for Kyle Duncan. Well, but what you just showed, I mean, people look at that and they go, okay. But you're right. The Elon Musk thing is getting closer to the bone. That one's creepy. That could be a real guy. But you could have someone like that say, give me a million dollars or i'll blow your house up or just come on yeah and imagine if he gave uh you know some off-the-cuff uh financial data on

on tesla you know talked about as if he'd just come out of a shareholder call and now he was releasing some information i mean think about what that means to the all of a sudden the stock price of a company if that happens but um the quality is is so far beyond even that now that can be done by, and we're talking mostly state actors like Russia. And so the problem we're facing now is it's not just, everybody's kind of aware of the sort of the Twitterverse or whatever, Twitter and the trolls that exist on there and the bots and all of that. But it's the video, the ability to do the video.

They released one. One was done not too long ago with Nancy Pelosi. And all it did was slow down her speech just slightly, but just enough to make it sound as if she was slurring her words. Maybe she'd had a couple of drinks. And that thing was blasted all over social media. And people to this day still think and they still talk about it. Like know she's kind of losing it a little bit right and i like her more by the way if she did that yeah i think she might make a little more sense um get a little lightened

up lady yeah you're worth a hundred million dollars and no one knows why you should be out there partying i'm sure it was all oh so legit yeah she earned that hundred million dollars for sure there's definitely no shenanigans no legal shenanigans no there's nothing like that Oh, so legit. Yeah. She earned that $100 million. For sure. There's definitely no shenanigans, no legal shenanigans. No, there's nothing like that happening up on Capitol Hill. But so this is a – it's something that people should watch. It's something that people should read up on a little bit, look at it, because the technology is advancing so quickly that the effort to combat it, the effort to detect it – and there's some companies out there, and certainly the government is working to do that. DARPA and some others are working.

But the effort to try to identify doctored videos, particularly when you're talking about elections, campaigns, it's going to be an increasing problem that we're not really discussing that much. Congress is paying a little bit of attention to it right now, but it's really problematic. And there's things that you used to be able to look for, right? Lighting and noise and just sort of the movements of the face, what they call micro-heartbeats and all the little things. Is the subject in the little things, is the subject in the video blinking, for instance. When you doctor it, sometimes the blinking wouldn't be there, and that was a tell. But the people involved in all of this and creating these deep fakes are working at such

a pace that they're getting ahead of that. So, I mean, it's fascinating. So anyway, they're coming up with ways to try to counter it. But I guess the biggest point is, it sounds like a public service announcement, is people need to be aware of it. And they need to be smart about, of course, they won't be. Everybody goes to the internet, and they lose their minds, and they believe whatever it is that they read that agrees with their opinion. And there's no bothering of checking, you know, whether anything is actually legit anymore or not. But that would be my one piece of advice.

Going into 2020, starting now, pay attention. Don't believe anything you see until you prove it. And that's part of the problem, too. We stop believing anything we see. Right. But if I was a skeptical person, if I was a conspiracy-minded individual, I'd say, But you're not. This guy who used to work for the CIA is telling us not to believe the news. Wait, I see what you're saying.

What I'm saying is you're setting us up. Okay, well, it's time for me to go. Look at that. Wouldn't a normal skeptical person want to think, like, why is he telling us that? I guess I'm saying it wrong, because you're right. I don't mean to say, I don't mean to imply. I guess what I'm saying is wrong because you're right. I don't mean to say, I don't mean to imply, I guess what I'm saying is trust but verify, right? When you're looking at video of a candidate or you're looking at anything really on the Internet now, just be aware of the capabilities.

Maybe that's a better way of putting all of this because you're right. Part of the problem and one of the things that Russia does and others who are involved in this whole propaganda effort, one of the things they do want to do is undermine our confidence, obviously, in media. So by me saying, don't believe what you see, I'm kind of feeding into that. So you're right. I shouldn't go that route. Be aware of what the capabilities are. Pay attention. Everybody should just be a little bit smarter about what they're doing. That's all I'm saying. And also, what we're looking at now is so much more powerful than what we had three or four years ago.

I mean, three or four years ago, this technology was not available for the consumer, but now it is. Well, there was – I mean, you think about it – not to get too deep, but if you think about the photography, how long has photography been around? There have been efforts to manipulate photography, right? Sure. So altering photographs has been around almost as long as the medium itself. You go to Photoshop, that kind of put it all in the hands of the consumer. What you were talking about, FaceSwap, the new Face app to age people. Yeah.

All these things make it easier for whoever's got a smartphone to try to do this. But what you really – and that's a problem as well. But one of the things that you really have to worry about is, again, sort of the state actors, like a Russia. Well, Russia was behind the FaceSwap thing. Well, yeah, and that's a good point. The Face app thing. Right. There are Russian companies that are pushing this technology out there.

And what are they doing? Every time you do that, it's recording data about you. Well, not only that, you have to give your name and your email to get that application. And then they have a photo of your face that correlates with your name and your email. So what they've done is they've gathered up more than 150 million emails and faces. Yeah. Right. That's what they're about. Google's the same thing. They're mining data. Well, Russia managed to do that with 150 million people in a very, very short amount of time just by making something cute. Oh, let's see what I look like when I'm 100. Right. Now, what do you think they're doing with that data? They're slicing and dicing this, trying to understand the American electorate.

Right. They're not going to stop doing what they did. And they've been doing this forever. We talked about this before. They've been doing this since 1940s. Right. Busy trying to keep the U.S. out of World War II before they broke up with the Nazis. It was a serious breakup. But when they were still aligned, they were busy paying off journalists and buying trade unions and all the rest of it. So they're never going to stop what they do because it's worked for them and it's just kind of in their DNA. But isn't that also what the united states does as well and there's got to be some sort of counterintelligence stuff that we do

that is sort of shading well i don't know about shady but yeah yeah justifiably shady how about that i like that okay that's a good term yeah of course there is and people always do that people you know when i when i'm talking about if i if i'm given a talk about uh chinese government's constant theft of intellectual property um somebody inevitably will come up afterwards and they will kind of roll their eyes and go, well, we do it. It's not like it's just them. The U.S. is guilty of it too. Well, you damn well better hope we are, right? Because if we backed off and said, you know what, just for the sake of being a righteous individual, we're not going to do any of this shit.

just for the sake of being a righteous individual, we're not going to do any of this shit. You would have to be either willfully ignorant and naive or just fucking stupid to think that Russia, China, these other actors out there are going to stop also. And we're all going to hold hands and unicorns are going to be flying out of our ass. It's not going to happen. So, yeah, I mean, I guess the answer to that is always the same,

which is, yeah, you better hope we do it, and we better hope we do it well. Yeah, but people are nervous about that, right? Like, this is my point about the military budget like if you just cut the military entirely well we're all going to start speaking chinese because some shit's going to go down like you can't just cut the military budget you just you can't i mean just cut it out one no no military at all we're going to focus on ourselves yeah well good fucking luck with that that doesn't work. So the question is, like, how much money should you spend on the military?

How much money should you spend on counterintelligence? How much money should you spend on propaganda? I mean, there should be some money spent on propaganda overseas, right? Right. Because we're trying to manipulate them the way they're trying to manipulate us. The idea, though, is that we're America. We're nice. We're the good guys. We're doing it the right way, supposedly. Yeah. Well though, is that we're America. We're nice. We're the good guys. We're doing it

the right way, supposedly. That's what we'd like to believe. There is that. And you know what? Honestly, I'll be honest with you. I've always... Maybe I'm naive or whatever, but that was always my thought process. When we're out there in the operational world and you think, you know what? Okay, we're doing this, but we're doing it

for the right reason. And people laugh at that or whatever, but... This is my phone so you gotta look at that see that flag that long wave that's how i when i open up my phone the flag waves at me yeah i got a flag behind me i'm 100 pro america i got i opened up my phone we like to think you know what i got i got i got nothing i got nothing i got an old phone. Is that some sort of like hack-free iPhone from the 60s? This is actually a wind-up phone. I'm surprised you don't have a flip phone. Yeah.

I do have a flip phone. Oh, there you go. And you know what? I've got a collection of phones going all the way back to the cinder block phone. Remember that one? I bet you have phones with Saudi Arabian numbers on them and shit and letters. I assumed everybody does. But, yeah, I think this is –

Do they give you phones that are, like, hack-proof? Or do they tell you there's phones that you can't use? Well, yeah. You certainly know that, you know, from an operational perspective, you know, phones are not a good idea. Now, the problem is they're ubiquitous and everybody uses them and it you know it's made life very easy well it's also you made life a little bit less secure obviously i know a guy uh that is a let's just say done some very unusual journalism and uh he still has a phone you can take the batteries out because he said there's

some places where you go where they will not let you in the room if you have a phone. And so the workaround is he has an older Samsung phone where you can pop the back off and remove the battery. And that's the only way. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know,

I would still argue there's workarounds on that one. I would imagine. Yeah, but that's why when you go into a government facility, you know, they go to skiff. You know, you got to leave your phones outside. Yeah, in a lead box, right? Right. So you don't carry your phones in, you know, unless you're, what was her name that was doing that?

Walking into, like a- Oh, the fucking chick from The Apprentice. Yeah, that's- Omarosa. That's right. How hilarious is that? By the way, I know her. I did Fear Factor with her.

Oh, okay. She was on Fear Factor. She told me I was drunk because I was making fun of her. She's like, you're drunk. I'm like, no, I'm not drunk. I'm just making fun of you. Yeah, why wouldn't you?

But she's an unusual person. The fact that she thought it was okay to do what is basically treasonous. She was recording these conversations inside the White House and then releasing them to the press. How is she not in jail? How does that work? Yeah, I'm not quite sure.

I didn't quite understand how you get around that, right? Because you've got obligations, you've signed paperwork, you do all these things to say, I'm going to do the right thing. And if you run foul of that, then you're supposed to suffer the consequences. And occasionally it seems like people aren't. I had a guest. Want to know what I think? What?

I think she saw some shit and they pulled her aside and they said, listen, Omarosa, I know that you're some sort of a social climber or whatever you're trying to do here. But listen, what you did will literally get you locked in jail for the rest of your life. So how about this? How about you just shut your pie hole and we'll just let this slide? Yeah, I don't know that she's – I don't think anybody would – I mean, from a intelligence perspective, she'd be one of the last people you would trust to actually keep her mouth shut over any period of time. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, that's a tough one. But that was – that's also part of the issue of leaks, as an example, right? It's the issue of choices that you make for your cabinet as well, right? Well, that's true. Yeah. Or the close circle around you. And that's, you know, again, you can argue. I mean, I don't want to get into a political discussion.

Trump is an unusual character. No, thanks. Certainly. I know. Wow. Wow, that's going to be headlines. How about that fellow that's from england that looks like the yeah boris johnson yeah the british trump i was just there last week when uh when he went over to buckingham palace and and you know uh was uh asked by the queen to form the new government

and he accepted and so you know he's he's an interesting character he went to eaton he went to oxford um he's uh he's proven himself to be extremely adept at getting elected. And most importantly, he looks like Trump's baby brother. Yeah. He looks like his fucked up brother. Like Trump's dad went over to England and banged some waitress and bam. Next thing you know, look at the two of them together. Get the fuck out of here.

A buddy of mine sent me this one. Bam. Next thing you know, look at the two of them together. Get the fuck out of here. A buddy of mine sent me this one. It's a South Park one. It's him with a bike helmet on. That's the best side-by-side I've seen so far. That's good, but this one's better. This one's better. Oh, yeah. I mean, it literally looks like a young Trump cousin or a brother or something like that. But he's promised they're out as far as Brexit goes by Halloween, by 31 October.

They're done. So they're done with the whole European Union. Well, that's what they're saying. Basically, now what they're concerned about, of course, is it's a hard exit, right? No deal. But he's saying it doesn't matter. If that's the case, then that's what we've got to do. And there's a lot of people. It's interesting. The dynamic is a little bit like here in the U.S., right? No deal. But he's saying it doesn't matter. If that's the case, then that's what we've got to do. And there's a lot of people, it's interesting, the dynamic is a little bit like here in the US,

right? If you're in the Northeast Corridor, Washington, New York, whatever, Boston, or you're out here on the West Coast, you tend to view the world differently than everything else, the rest of the mass of the country, right? Which is why people lost their minds and they thought, you know, how could Trump possibly get elected? The UK is a little bit like that. That Brexit vote came around and everybody in London was convinced that, you know, it's going to be 95%,

you know, we're not leaving. And so when it came time and they voted to leave in 2016, the people in London lost their minds. They couldn't believe it. And they still to this day think everybody else is just an idiot, right? So there's similarities there, which there, which is, I think, why in part Trump feels sort of that this kinship with Boris Johnson. But yeah, so he's Boris Johnson has said, that's it. We're out of here. You know, maybe we can get a deal if we can't. Doesn't matter. We're still leaving. And it'll be interesting to see what happens. But, you know, he's not he's not unpopular. What's the argument for them leaving? What's the pro-Brexit argument? Do you really want to have your country, your sovereign nation,

run by a bunch of faceless technocrats living in Brussels who have really zero interest in your sovereign nation? That's at the heart of it. It's not an economic decision. People always make that problem with Brexit. They always say, well, well from an economic perspective this is not a good thing well the the deal at heart isn't an economic concern it's uh it's the issue of of sovereignty it's the issue of being run again by brussels and and sort of this morass of regulations that they've imposed um the inability for the UK to make their own decisions about trade. And so there's a good argument in that regard. Is it going to be a financial problem for them? It's not going to be a disaster like some people throw out there and say,

oh my God, the UK is going down the toilet fast. That won't happen, but there'll be an upheaval if they leave without a deal. But they'll adjust because people want to do deals, right? They want to do trade. It's not like Germany and France, which are the only two partners in the EU that really matter. How dare you? I know. I can't believe I just said that.

What's the staying in the European Union argument? Show everybody you're not racist? Yeah, globalism. We're all working together, and isn't this a wonderful thing? And look at all the benefits of it. Free movement. That free movement didn't really work that well from France and Germany's perspective.

They don't like to talk about that anymore. Free movement is basically what we enjoy in the United States, though, isn't it? I mean, if you look at the united states in relative size in comparison to europe we're basically commensurate right yeah in terms of the contiguous united states exactly size of it yeah yeah and then we all speak the same language but i'm talking about i'm talking about immigration policies i'm not talking about movement within the eu no no i understand but i mean even in immigration right Like the size of these countries in comparison to the size of states. Like Texas is basically bigger than a lot of fucking European nations, right?

Yeah, yeah. It is that argument, sort of the immigration argument, much like some of the other arguments, comes down from the UK's perspective on don't tell us what to do. And, you know, maybe there's still an element of, look, we, you know, we were an empire that controlled most of the planet for a while, you know, we'd like to, you know, have a little bit more say in what we're doing. So there's an independent streak. The problem is from EU's perspective is if they do leave and it's not a disaster, then other countries are going to line up, right? And Italy maybe would be the next one.

So it'll be interesting to see what happens. But yeah, Bojo, as they call him, is an interesting cat, not unlike our president. Well, in this country, we don't pay attention to other countries. So when we see that guy, like, who's that guy? This new guy? Where did he come from? Is this real? It's like a new character on a show that you don't watch. Right. What season did he come from? Is this real? It's like a new character On a show that you don't watch

Right You know What season did he come in? Better Call Saul Season 4 Like who the fuck is that guy? That's the new bad guy I didn't watch

I haven't been watching I just I finished re-watching I do that Instead of watching new shows I end up re-watching shows That I really liked That I've watched before

And it's been a while So I re-watched the first season Of Breaking Bad again God damn a good show Holy shit That was so well done God damn while, so I re-watched the first season of Breaking Bad again. Goddamn, a good show. Holy shit, that was so well done. Yeah, and just that first season, if that's all people watch and they haven't seen it before, it's so good. Yeah. But, yeah, and then I just binge-watched the first season of The Sopranos again.

That's a great show. That was the first show that really, in my mind, it created the first real anti-hero that everybody actually appreciated on television everybody loved Tony Soprano he's a fucking murderer constantly cheated on his wife strangled his best friend he's like oh I'd like him yeah he's I'd like he's an interesting cat yeah well it was that dynamic with his mother right that was that's what the hook was and that certainly that first season was just that that was fascinating to people and still you know still is speaking of deep fakes remember when they tried to bring the mom back after she died? Like the shitty CGI?

Yeah. That's what shows you, like, 2005 CGI. It was goddamn terrible. Yeah. Well, if you think about when Photoshop was out in, what, the early 90s, I guess. Late 80s, early 90s. Early 90s. Think about where we've come since then.

Again, not to go back into sort of this whole thing with deep fakes, but it is when people talk about Russia collusion and they talk about we kind of lost our way, right? And everybody's kind of guilty of it, whether it's Mueller and his investigative team or whether it's Congress or whether it's just the general public. We all kind of lost our way over the past couple of years, imagining somehow that the big story here was Trump's collusion, right? Well, that was a political dodge, right? That was a shell game that was being played on us. It was, the big story is, what did Russia specifically do, right? What exactly did they do? How did they do it? How successful were they? Show us some case studies of specific examples. That's what an investigative team should have been doing for two years. And then deliver that information and keep throwing it out at the public and keep talking to the public about it. I guarantee you, the GRU and others,

the FSU and the intel services in Russia, they're happy that we didn't do that, right? Because, again, they've been advancing. They've been improving their capabilities. They're going to do it again. So I guess that's why I keep beating on this is that I don't think we really focused our attention where we needed to because we all get lost in this political bullshit. Well, I feel like this is the most easily manipulated we've ever been as a as a culture like i think it's so easy to spin these narratives and to get people upset about anything right and i feel like a lot of these are test cases like they're trying to

see like what happens when we spin up this story how How outraged do they get at that story? Well, look at this. Look at the issue of racism. Look at – I mean that thing gets thrown out there now to the point where it's – I hate to say it, but it's almost losing its meaning in a sense, right? They just keep hammering away. Anybody they disagree with, and I'm talking about the hard left, the progressives, you're a racist, right? It's not possible that you could possibly disagree on policy, right? Like the whatever, the squad, you know, AOC and her compadres. I don't give a shit about, you know, where they're from.

I care about the fact that their policies, from my perspective, other people I'm sure love them, you know, are screwed up. What's screwed up about their policies? Well, I'm not a democratic socialist right so um i i have a problem with everything from you look at the the green new deal right and this idea that we're going to roll this out and fuck the economic impact you know or i i don't i don't even thought about the economic impact i think what they're doing is they're playing to their base, and they're doing it successfully. And people hear about it, and everybody wants to be righteous.

Everybody wants to think, sure, if I care about the environment, yeah, let's get rid of emissions. That'll be a great idea. And whether it's that or open borders and the idea that somehow we're – do I think we're running concentration camps down south? No, I don't think that's fucked up that we would. That's the terminology that we would have, right, for detainment centers. And you know what? You want to make it better? Well, great.

Let's actually do what your job is. Let's make some changes to the immigration rules and to asylum laws. Let's make some changes to the immigration rules and to asylum laws. Let's put some more money down there and make conditions a little bit better. There's things that we could – in terms of concrete steps, but we don't seem to want to do that. We seem to want to just throw shit around at each other. But the open borders thing is worrisome. There's a guy named John Norris who was just on my friend Steve Rinell's podcast.

It's called the Meat Eater Podcast. And he's a warden. He's a game warden. And one of the things that they had to deal with somewhere along the line was they had to become enforcers for illegal drug marijuana growing these establishments in public lands, in national parks. So these guys that were supposed to be just catching people with too many trout on their stringer are now being forced to stop illegal grow-ups, and it's all cartel members. And what he's saying is that 80 to 90 percent of all of the marijuana that gets sold illegally in this country, in the Midwest and all the different places where it's illegal, is coming out of these grow ups. And a lot of it is tainted with dangerous pesticides because these guys are trying to they're actually using poisons to keep animals from eating the marijuana. So these kids that are who have the fuck is buying it?

They're buying this pot from these illegal places. No one's testing this stuff. You don't know what the fuck you're getting. And you very well could be smoking pot that's poisoning you. Yeah, there's a guy that I know, a really good guy. He's a huge landowner here in California to the point where you can spend all day on an ATV and still not, you know, get to the end of one of his plots of land. I don't know if you call it a plot of land. And anyway, he's had those incidents, right?

He's had where it's such a massive piece of property that a small element from a cartel will set up a grow spot there and they'll camouflage it. It's very well done. They bring in the piping for the water because a pot uses a huge amount of water. This guy was talking about water that they brought in. They had a pipe that went for three miles. These kids carried it in on their back. Yeah, that's what these guys do.

And then eventually, you've got to go in there and bust it up. But it's people that stumble across it that are just out there doing their regular ranching job. And it is fascinating. Look, I don't know. I feel like we should take those guys and reprogram them. You get a guy who's willing to carry 100 pounds of piping on his back and walk eight miles into the backwoods, that's a fucking industrious individual. You've got to lure him away from the cartel with a better deal. If that guy worked for a competing corporation he'd be like look i

like the way you do business right give him a job on the ranch you know give him a job found this guy and he was working for verizon they'd be like hey come on over here man you're fucking putting in the time this guy's carrying three miles of hose on his back that's work that's that's what we call work yeah so use that use use your power for good not evil that's what i tell my boys it's hard though because evil's fun i think it's uh in the short term it could be more lucrative yeah from their perspective there is that and they have a record and probably murderers all right so maybe we're not talking about somebody you're going to hire as a landscaper there you're home but um but your point is open borders is not a good idea open border is not a good idea. Open borders is not a good idea. There's a lot of bad people that are getting in already.

And it's not a stretch. This is not – if anybody imagines this to be a stretch or is going to take offense at this, every nation maintains borders. Every nation maintains some element of immigration controls and borders protection. and borders protection. The idea that we shouldn't or that we should somehow feel exceptionally bad about it is I don't quite understand that mentality. Well, we should feel bad when we see someone who's just a poor mother

who's trying to come over to America to get a better job because she's stuck in Guatemala and it sucks over there and there's no opportunity whatsoever for her to excel. That's a different animal than someone who is a member of some fucking terrible cartel gang that comes over. The question is, how do we differentiate and how do we make it so that that woman who's a mom can come over here? How do we make it so it's legal? That's the real question.

But that's not what they're addressing, right? How many decades now have we heard about immigration controls and immigration process and regulations and policy and then nothing ever gets done and so maybe and again i think one of the things that's interesting about trump um is as as strange as as it is the environment i mean maybe the fact that he is disruptive and sometimes doesn't seem to give a shit, maybe that's a good thing because it gets us talking and gets us talking in areas that we haven't before and in ways that we haven't before. So maybe that results in something, maybe like the Chinese, the public's just going

to wait for him to go and then we'll get back to business as usual. That may happen. But even business as usual, the concern is like, how do you differentiate between someone who's coming in illegally because they want a better life versus someone who's coming in illegally because they're literally going to commit murder and sell fentanyl and deal incredible harm to whatever community they wind up in, and they're a member of MS-13, and they're going to – there's both things that are going on at the same time. And you're a heartless person if you don't want that lady with a child from Guatemala to come over here and do better. And she's probably going to work as hard, if not harder, than any good old-fashioned red-blooded American that's over here trying to make their way through this world.

And why should we be able to have this opportunity when they can't? One of the beautiful things about America, right, is that if you're a poor person and you live in Baltimore, you can get your shit together and get out and you can move to maybe silicon valley you can move somewhere where there's more prosperity there's more opportunity and you can get something are there poor people in baltimore i heard there are okay i heard there's um i'm gonna pay attention some sort of uh there's a word what is the word he used infestation infestation of rats infestation yeah you can't use infestation

when you're talking about certain neighborhoods. People get mad. Even though he said infested with crime and rats, he's still, you're racist. Doesn't matter.

The key here is, and it's a democratic talking point, right? I mean, this is a strategy and that's fine. Both parties use different strategies.

You know, but the Dems have obviously decided in this period of time because it's so intense, there was clearly discussions within wherever, the DNC or elsewhere, that this is our policy. We are going to push this. And you just keep hammering that word, racist, racist, racist, no matter what. And it's going to stick.

And it does. Yes. Because you get hit by that hammer and you're staring into the light. You don't know how to respond. Sure. by that hammer and you kind of you're staring into the light you don't know how to respond sure right so and you think oh my god i'm not a racist but then you know you're like senator you're still beating your wife and so it's it's one of those things you can't you can't answer um but i think it's bullshit because it's like calling everybody a nazi it's you know it loses its its its importance and its meaning and and you know um anyway it's it's a strange, strange time. But I think you can do both. You can take care of that woman with the kid or kids. And you can also, you know, look at the issue of

border security, right? And enhance your ability to understand who's coming across the border. It costs money and it requires effort requires effort but you can do you can do both i don't i think you can do both but i think the real big picture the real big picture like if you had to look at the solution objectively the real problem is mexico has like real economic situations that we don't have here in america they're they're far worse off in a lot of the areas and as is guatemala as is Guatemala, as is El Salvador. Neighboring countries are economically devastated. Until they are not, until they come up, and until they experience prosperity,

you're always going to have people that are committing crime because they want to try to get by, and you're always going to have people that are going to want to try to get to America because it's a place where there's more opportunity. That's the real issue. The real issue is that it's so much better over here. Right, and that makes sense, and you get the same thing with immigration and movement of people over in Europe coming up from wherever. Which is the Brexit argument, right? Which is the Brexit argument in part.

I mean it's not just based around immigration, but it's more control of your own nation's security and destiny, et cetera. of your own nation's security and destiny, et cetera. But I think that that's, you could argue that national security from a U.S. perspective would warrant improving your ability to impact nations like Guatemala, El Salvador, wherever, and working with Mexico to not just improve sort of the security, the liaison that goes on and improving that, but you're right. I mean, working conditions, criminal or crime and instability, that's in our national security. I know people get very upset. They say, why should we give countries money?

Well, in part, you're right. I mean, sometimes you give them money and it just goes down some shithole. And I'm not talking about the country. I'm just talking literally. It goes into a hole and it never comes back. It's in corruption and they absorb it at the highest levels of government. Yeah. And so there's no controls over how that money is spent.

There's no metrics to say whether it's spent wisely at the end of the day. But I would argue that, yeah, I agree. I mean, it's in our national security interest when we're talking about border security, immigration, to view that as sort of the top line issue. Why are they on the move, right? Well, like you said, they're on the move because they want a better life because where they're at ain't good. How do you work with them? And that's, you know, that's, I think people sometimes look at that and think, well, that's

pushing a rock up a hill. It's never going to happen. And so maybe they just stop, right? But we've ignored Latin America, Central America, South America for decades, right? Which is how we ended up in part with Chavez and Maduro to follow and some of the horseshit that went on down there because we ignored it. We didn't give it the resources. We didn't give it the attention. We didn't treat it seriously as a national security concern.

We were all focused on wherever, improving relations in Southeast Asia or elsewhere. So, yeah, we need to refocus. And I think ultimately, do we see it immediately? No. But I think you're right. So anyway, it's, you know. I think for people that are really concerned. This is like a foreign policy hour.

It is. Yeah. With at least one dude who doesn't know jack shit about foreign policy. That would be me. That'd be a good show, though. Yeah, maybe. But I really think, in the interest of national security, legalizing marijuana federally would stop the profitability of these gang members, because you'd be able to have legal marijuana.

You wouldn't have to be able to... You wouldn't need to buy it in these other places. You'd be able to grow it yourself, and the price would drop through the fucking floor and it would be not profitable for these guys to haul three miles of pipe on their back and into the back country and use someone else's land to make these grow ops and one of the reasons why they're doing this particularly in california i found out is that when marijuana became legal in california these illegal grow ops became a misdemeanor rather than a felony so they they do them over here instead of doing it in ohio or somewhere else

where it's illegal they do and also it's you know you could basically grow year-round here i was going to say from a logistical point of view but if they just made it legal federally just cut the shit we're all grown-ups yeah and there's a tremendous number of issues related to the fact that you know the state and the federal laws don't match up. Right. And from a law enforcement perspective, it's a nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare.

Yeah, I agree. What will happen is I don't imagine that it makes the cartel activity any different. That sucking sound that is the revenues from weed leaving their accounts will be replaced by something else. For sure. Or get into the weed business. Yeah. Well replaced by something else. For sure. Or get into the weed business. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, although.

These pharmaceutical companies that are fighting against it as well as these prison guard unions, which is really crazy, that's the darkest one to me. The pharmaceutical companies, look, I get it. They're just creeps that are looking at their bottom line. Every business wants to constantly have new growth every year. They want to constantly be making more money. I get it. It's like this universal eternal growth model that they operate under.

But the prison guard unions, when you find out that they lobby against the legalization of marijuana, is so insane. What does that – I didn't know. They just want more people in jail so that they have jobs. That's the idea behind it. It's the most un-american thing possible you want more people in jail so that you could have a job looking over those people you basically it's it's sickening yeah that's that's a new one to me i hadn't i had no idea the the guard unions yeah yeah yeah well private prisons in a nutshell are pretty fucking private yeah private prisons is is something that you know, and there have been, I mean,

again, with this current administration, you know, there's been some prison reform issues that have been making their way through, right? They've been actually focused on it to some degree. Maybe they, you know. Thanks to Kim Kardashian. Yeah. How crazy is that? Who we were just looking at.

Yeah. She's a fucking champion. Yeah. She's a champion of people that are wrongly incarcerated. She really is. I want to show you something. I'm like. Shout want to show you something. Shout out to Kim K.

I'm like a crazy grandpa that clips newspaper articles out. But in preparation for the show, I know most people think I do no preparation whatsoever. I know. You're one of those guys. I still do, too. I love the newspaper. I do as well. Thank you.

Look at this. College has offered degree and courses in the pot business. Ah, good move. Yeah. So this is really interesting They teach podcasting too now Did you know that? Colleges are teaching podcasting I know two people that have gone back to school for that

For podcasting? No, no, for For pot? For growing pot Really? Yeah, yeah It's crazy University of Maryland and Cornell

That's the two that this article talks about Well, the biggest sponsorship that the UFC has ever gotten, ever Is this Aurora company canada that grows weed cbd and marijuana they have football fields filled with weed and you know the highest possible standards the best quality no pesticides herbicides no bullshit yeah super pure and the cbd which is fantastic for everybody's health and i just i'm back when I first started working for the UFC, there were people that worked for the organization that didn't like it that I smoked pot. They're like,

why is he smoking pot? What is he doing? But now they work for the pot company. Yeah. Well, I mean, I will tell you this as apropos of nothing. I've gotten calls, a couple of calls from people in the industry who are saying, and the only reason They're calling me

Is they're saying Can you hook me up with Joe It's like we hang out together All the time of course Right Because we're always We're always hanging out In the pool together

Joe and I But so I said No look dude That's not my That's not my job What do they want What do they want from me You know what

I think they just want to Pitch you on business They want to bring some spooks In here And fucking case the joint That's what they want to do No they're people in the pot business CIA

No they're people in the pot business Oh the pot business I thought you meant CIA No the CIA That's a great word Spooks Spooks You got to be careful

Using that word though Because people think you're racist Yeah That was a racist term in the 70s For black folks I worked on a show For in the UK An espionage drama show

That ran for 8 or 9 seasons And it was called In the UK It was called Spage drama show. They ran for eight or nine seasons. And it was called, in the UK, it was called Spooks. It was about their intel operation. And it ran for a long time. But then they sold it. They brought it over here to the States. And I think it was on some channel. But they had to change the name.

They changed it to MI5, which is the name for the domestic security service. Because they were worried about the term. But CIA Spooks has always been around. I mean, it's a fucking- It's always been around. The idea is that there's sneaky people that are doing creepy shit. There is no creepy shit being done. You say whatever you need to say.

Go ahead. I'm here to tell you right now, and you can write this down. I'm going to write it down. Write it down. Nothing creepy. There is no creepy shit going on. Speaking of creepy, creepy shit going on. What's going on with Iran caught a bunch of people that they are claiming are CIA informants and they may execute them?

Yeah. Yeah, they've done this before. They've made this claim before. And look, Iran is, A, a couple of parts of this. That's one of the heaviest lifts in the business has been intel collection on Iran over the the years i'm not talking about just recently but over the years it's been it's been very difficult um they are extremely buttoned up over there and they have uh an incredible level of control over their population uh and then which is you know at some point you would think well maybe the population is going to object to this, but it hasn't happened yet. So part of it is they came out with this – I think 17 individuals that they claim were cooperating with the CIA in some fashion or another. And they claimed that they were fairly high-level individuals.

IFA, I don't believe anything that comes out of their mouths. I don't believe them at all. I think they've got a long, long track record of lying about a variety of things. And so, you know, why would they come out with this? You know, perhaps they're cracking down and it doesn't hurt to come out. And if you're going after some of these individuals anyway, why not? Put the paintbrush on them that they're working for the CIA, and that will appease some of the population there.

So I don't know. Again, I'm not buying it. It has been a difficult intel task, and collecting intelligence on their efforts with their ballistic missiles, their nuke program as well, has always been problematic. But again, they've done this before where they've talked about how we've wrapped up a CIA spying network and it's kind of horseshit. But it's just their propaganda. Well, yeah. Inside ways. Yeah.

That would be my take on it. I don't know. I mean I'm not internal. I'm not inside. And so is it possible? Sure. We've had networks wrapped up before by other countries. Cuba, the Cuban Intel Service years ago, which was completely built by the Russians, by the way, by the old KGB. They owned and operated the Cuban Intel Service for a long time, still do.

They at one point wrapped up pretty much everybody we had on island and elsewhere. How many people did we have over there? Three. No, we had – I don't remember the numbers, but it was a few. Yeah, let's just say it was not good. And they had done a very good, it was from a counterintelligence perspective,

it was a pretty impressive effort. So it's happened. Russia's, you know, done the same when we've, usually when with Russia, usually when we've got a traitor or a mole somebody like Robert Hanson Jim Nicholson I've never seen that show, The Americans

from what I understand it's a good show it was a show based on the idea that at one point in time there was a Russian family that had come over here and infiltrated and became American citizens and seemed like Joe and Mary next door, but really they were Russian spies.

You don't have an aunt and uncle named Joe and Mary. It's weird that you would say that. I literally had an aunt and uncle named Joe and Mary. Maybe I've done some intel on you, buddy. Look at that. Time to go. There was a story. The reason the Americans was created was written, as do a lot of things do, based on some smart writer who sees an opportunity because he reads a newspaper article.

Right. Years back, 2011, I think it was, we had a sleeper cell that we wrapped up in Jersey. Remember, there was- Yeah, that's where this takes place. Right. And there was that one, the hot one, remember? Oh, that's right. Yeah.

The hot bra. The hot- Banging everybody and getting information. The hot Russian bra. Bring them over. And then you look at it and you think? Oh, that's right. Yeah. The hot bra that's banging everybody and getting information. The hot Russian bra. And so- Bring them over. And then you look at her and you think, man, that hat. It's nothing hot.

Well, I mean, we could- I think she's- I'm forgetting what her name was. If you're a fat dude that's watering your lawn and- She walks over. She's next door. Yeah. Got high heels on. Yeah. I don't see what she looks like.

Wearing nothing, but that's her. Oh, she's hot, bro. You don't think she's hot? Not so much. There's something about her look. I don Not so much There's something about her look What are you into There's something about her nose The configuration of her nose

No She's hot man You don't think that lady looks hot Not there No that's not a good picture That's not a good picture But the mugshot one Up there

And she's not even wearing any makeup No that's true Come on man You doll her up Yeah put a little East European blue eyeliner on her She'd be If that chick catches you With a couple of jack Daniels in you, you've got trouble.

I like how she walks across when you're mowing the lawn. You're right. So she and a bunch of other people lived in Jersey in the suburbs. And their whole reason for being was just to spot people. These were not the heads of the organization. So their job is spot people, live there, be, you know, social, meet people that might be of interest. Maybe it turns out that somebody in the PTA where your kids go to school, maybe somebody's working for Raytheon or they're working for some, you know, interesting company. So that's what they do?

So that's their job. Their job was basically to spot. And then you've got other people in that chain of events who are a little bit higher up the food chain who then assess, right? And we'll look at that person and go, yeah, maybe there's something there. This person works for whatever company. And, you know, it doesn't matter what the company is, by the way. It could be Qualcomm. It could be, you know, think of one that – because the application could be Corning.

It could be anything. I mean, there's all sorts of companies out there that have applications that may be of interest from an Intel perspective for a hostile state. So then, you know, they do a little assessment and maybe they come away and go, yeah, yeah, that person's interesting job. Let's develop a little relationship there. Now, maybe one of those individuals will work on that relationship or maybe somebody else will come in, you know, within this group and they'll develop a relationship. And then, you know, maybe they'll task the person.

So maybe say the guy works at a tech company and you're going to think, okay, I want to see if this person has any weaknesses. How can I leverage anything here? And so what you'll say is, my kid is doing this school paper and it's on something and I can't, they're just not getting

in it or they're not doing the research or whatever. Do you have anything? And you're not asking for anything classified. You're just saying, look, you work in a tech company. Don't you have something that would be of interest? My kid's got to write this stupid paper. And you're not looking for anything of Intel value. You're looking to see whether they'll accommodate you.

Will they actually come back and go, yeah, well, you know what? We got this, and it's kind of interesting, and it's this research paper that's been out in the press for a long time. But, yeah, it's interesting. Hey, you know, hands it over. Well, now maybe you got something, right? Now you got something that you can see that they responded to a little task. And then so you set the hook a little bit, and then you just keep on working on that. So in the meantime, they're calling back to the KGB and saying,

we have a guy who works at Lithium. Right. He knows information. And they say it just like that, with that very accent. And they keep jobs and everything, so they work, they go to work every day. Maybe they go to work, maybe they don't. Maybe they're a spouse, a stay-at-home spouse. Well, what do they do?

They hang out with other stay-at-home spouses and create friendships because of kids. And the next thing you know, you're all having dinners with each other. Well, if you're like that Russian broad, she's banging everybody, right? Is that what they do? No, you wouldn't do that. That would be a very disruptive thing to do in that community, right? Isn't that the premise of The Americans? I haven't seen the show, but I think the hot one bangs people.

I watched about half an hour of the first episode. Did you get angry? No, I just sit there and I'm a very hard person to watch shows like that with, and so my wife was like, I just can't. No, you can't sit here. Oh, because it's like Intel. I'm going like, eh, nonsense. But it was good.

From what I understand, it was a good show. With a show where people play pool. No. People can't really play pool. I'm like, fuck it. Yeah, yeah. I was just in the UK, and boy, I tell you what. I turn on the TV, and there's a snooker match on. Yeah, snooker. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. Yeah, yeah. I was just in the UK, and boy, I tell you what. I turn on the TV, and there's a snooker match on.

I'm in there. Snooker, I'm in there, right? I'll just sit and watch snooker. It's huge over there. Oh, my God. But it's also one of those things where either you can sit and watch it, like golf, or you can't. And I just haven't for some reason.

I've got some defect that allows me to sit and watch a billiard match. Have you ever played snooker? It's tough. It's hard. We have a pool table at home that the boys have become pretty damn good at, which is a skill, a life skill. But yeah, billiards is

a snooker. Snooker is way harder. It's way harder. They excel in American pool. I don't think any American player has ever gone over there and excelled in snooker. I don't think so. I don't believe so. Yeah, yeah.

That'd be something for looking up. I know guys have tried, but I don't think anybody's succeeded. But there's been a ton of guys from England that have come over here, and they do very well on the American pool tour. Yeah, but you know what we do better on is bowling. We do. We kick the shit out of them when you know what we do better on is bowling we do we kick the shit out of them when it comes to bowling yeah but that's an american thing well yeah there you go do they bowl come over here and bowl no i don't think so i don't know i don't think so i don't think of this but it's been that migration this way uniquely stupid sport yeah and

they get really mad when i say that i get all these texts you fucking ignorant no i'm not you're rolling a ball at these things you have to pick them back up again. Have you ever bowled sober? I don't think I've ever bowled sober. Yeah, I bowl with my kids. I'm always sober. My kids love bowling. Yeah.

And they put up the little bumper thing so it doesn't go in the gutter, so you're cheating. Yeah. So you can just basically whip that fucking thing down there 100 miles an hour. That's what I do. My thrill is to hear the loudest smash bowl. So you leave the bumper up when you bowl. Yeah. Fuck yeah

If it's up for them It's up for me I'm just gonna Yeah you're not gonna Give them an edge No Yeah you know Don't let them win

Do you let your kids Dance on the floor Do you let your kids win Yes All the time Yeah All the time But I did get a hamstring injury

Because I didn't let my kid Beat me in a race How old She's 11 Okay I was running I knew something was going on I'm like who cares

Push through She's not winning My fucking hamstring's hurting My middle boy Sluggo Plays basketball That's all he wants to do Day and night

And he's a bit like Sort of like the Rain man of basketball too In terms of facts Figures Characters He can go back to Jerry West And he'll tell you about

Bill Russell's career And everything But he loves basketball Does he want to play professionally? Yes he'll tell you about Bill Russell's career and everything, but he loves basketball. Does he want to play professionally? Yes, he does. Really? How tall are you? It doesn't look like it, but in a deep fake video, I look about 6'10".

What are you, like 6'1"? 6'1", not quite 6'1". You're going to have to get that kid on growth hormone. Yeah, well, he already is. He is. Shoot him up with some stuff. Stretch him out. Put it in his burgers.

Hang him up by his ankles. But that's all he does. He plays and he just constantly, and all he wants to do is play. And so he got to the point where, you know, for a long time, we'd go out, we got a court at home, and I'd play. And I kind of let him, you know. And then it gets to the point where I can't really beat him. I've got height on him, right? Right.

But his handles Are extremely good Now And so And I'm not the fastest kid On the block anymore And so It's gotten to the point now Where he's legitimately

Beat me A handful of times And it's very embarrassing Because he Doesn't really have An edit button So he He just rubs that shit in

Right And it's like It's like It's like the Lion King When Scar wants to take over Right And he's just like That was pretty good Wasn't the lion king reference it's a good reference yeah so anyway you gotta let him do that though it's an exercise for you and patience so when he's talking

shit that's how i look at it my kids talk shit if they beat me i just go okay go ahead talk your shit yeah and that's like you can't can't let it be personal no no you gotta treat it like almost like an internet heckler yeah my kids are allowed to hit me full blast so my kids take martial arts and i let them not the oldest one the oldest one's 22 she'll fuck me up yeah yeah but the uh the young ones i let them tee off on me they they're allowed to full blast leg kick me they can hurt me yeah they'll hurt you yeah but i want them to be able to feel what it feels like to actually hit a person. Because when you're sparring in martial arts class, you're not allowed to hit people full blast. You just kind of touch them.

So I let them just fucking slam shins into my thighs. And I teach them how to turn it over and really dig that bone into the soft spark. But that's good. That's actually really good. It fucking hurts sometimes, though. But that's good. That's actually really good. It fucking hurts sometimes, though. But it's good when you hurt them. We have the same problem with my boys because they're fairly competitive and they're aggressive. And, you know, I keep telling them, I said, look, getting punched in the face isn't good.

And, you know, until you actually do, well, you know, they've gotten into some, I was going to say, fisticuffs. I don't know if you can say that. You okay? You're allowed to say fisticuffs. I guess't know if you can say that. You okay? You're allowed to say fisticuffs. I guess fisticuffs. Jamie's over there dying. Yeah.

What happened, Jamie? We're continuing to talk over there, and he's- He's dying. Yeah. He has a hard time with water. But yeah, it's hard to teach your kids what that's like, right? And at some point, maybe they go through that. The youngest one broke his nose, courtesy of the oldest one.

So Muggsy got his nose broke in a contest with the oldest one, Scooter. And he found out that's no fun. The thing is, though, that kid's going to be the tough one. It's always the youngest ones. You see it in the UFC. When there's older brothers and younger brothers, the older brothers generally pick on the younger brothers, and the younger brothers, once they reach adulthood,

almost always can fuck up the older brothers. It's really weird. Yeah. I took a lot of beatings when I was younger because I'm the youngest of four boys. That makes sense. And so, yeah. But it's good stuff. And, oh, my God, it's constant entertainment.

All right? I mean, you know what it's like with kids. There's always something. And I'm sure right now people are going, oh, my God, he's going to start talking about his kids again at length. And I'm not going to do that. Because the kids' names are so cartoonish. Yeah, I know. That's part of the reason why they get mad.

Yeah, as they are. But anyway, so what were we talking about? Russians. Yeah, look at it. I'm like Uncle Joe here I've cut out some shit to talk about Deep fakes We talked about that

Okay Okay what else do we have? I wrote down some notes too My god I was prepared for this thing You are prepared I've never been prepared for your show before And you know what? Why did you decide to get prepared this time?

You know why? Because Because you've got You've got some really Great Guests? Well no Not really but Viewers know why because because you've got you've got some really uh great uh uh guests uh well no not really but viewers uh listeners i mean i was trying to the people that follow this show um i find to be uh really fascinating i get a lot of of uh feedback and i feel like you know i yeah i

should pay attention i should i should prepare a prepare a little bit because there's a lot of interest, right, in some of these things that we talk about. And, you know, so, well, sometimes I go out and I wing it, you know, and to be fair on news segments, I just make shit up. No, I don't. I don't do that. I know you wanted to talk about Huawei. Huawei. Huawei. Huawei.

don't do that uh i know you wanted to talk about huawei huawei huawei which i think is a really fascinating subject to me um and a lot of people that are tech inclined because they are at the tip of the spear when it comes to technological innovation in the cell phone space and i know that they're doing that with in regards to modems and a bunch of other things as well but it appears at least and a lot of companies are exclusively using their 5g modems as 5g rolls out oh yeah yeah but it appears they they are involved in some serious shenanigans and they have deep roots with the chinese government they do they claim they don't they claim look we're independent we would never do whatever the chinese authorities say think about that sentence think about a company with the global reach of huawei of that importance to the Chinese state

and think about them saying, trying to say with a straight face, we wouldn't do things that the Chinese government might ask us to do. What a lot of shit. If you were a real Chinese company and you said that and you meant it, they would shut you down. Yeah, exactly. They'd be like, you won't? Yeah, you would not be in business for that long

or there would be a change in the senior management of the business. And Huawei's been caught out. They've been caught out in Europe to the degree where at a certain point you think Germany and others that are deeply involved with Huawei now in terms of the 5G infrastructure, where they've just made this decision. Look, it's financially better for us to work with Huawei, and we can set aside the security risks. They literally made that decision. Yeah, I was reading an article about that very recently, that they've just decided to have some sort of a risk-to-reward conversation, and the risk is worth the reward. Right, right.

conversation and the risk is worth the reward. Right, right. And so, you know, that's their calculation from a U.S. perspective because we are, you know, look, there's two, essentially two superpowers now, right? I mean, China's, you know, advancing and we're not the lone superpower on the stage anymore. And so we are the number one target. And, you know, our calculation has to be different. So we've been going at it, and I think it's been pretty well covered. It didn't used to be covered very well, but it's been pretty well covered over the past couple of months. And now what's happening is we've been in these trade negotiations with China, and I think, unfortunately, I think the current administration, the Trump administration, is going to blink.

And I think because Huawei is such a huge issue for the Chinese, and the idea that we would prevent our companies from selling into or purchasing from or dealing with, and that we would have sanctions on other countries that do, they view that as such a threat to their own interests and their own future that Huawei is front and center with any trade deal. So they're looking. They're not doing any trade deal unless we make concessions on Huawei. And I have a feeling the Trump administration is going to make those concessions because from a political perspective, they want a trade deal. Right.

And so far, they've actually said to Google that Google is going to stop using the Android operating system for the Chinese phones, for Huawei's phones at least. They're going to not let them license out the – so Huawei's actually been at least rumored to be in production of their own operating system, which would mean they would have to have their own not just operating system, but they'd have to have their own ecosystem. So they'd have to have an app store. They'd have to have all the jazz that we have today. When you, if you sign up for, you buy an Android phone, you have access to the Google Play market, which is this huge resource of applications. And as soon as you take that away, you've got to kind of rebuild that whole thing from scratch. Right, right. Well, Huawei doesn't lack anything in resources.

You know, they'll be fine you know because it's the state will provide and ensure that they have the resources they need they also you know we're the outlier here right i mean we've been working with new zealand and canada and and you know the uk to some degree but the uk has been you know they've been kind of pushing back a little bit on this idea that we're going to isolate huawei i don't think that's going to happen so they're using hu Huawei devices? To some degree, yes. They've been slower to adopt and kind of mesh their

infrastructure with Huawei's gear. For people who don't know what we're talking about, could you please just lay out what's the concern? What do they think that Huawei's doing? Huawei is essentially the way to put this would So Huawei is essentially – what's it did?

The way to put this would be imagine a communications network that spans the globe. And Huawei builds and provides gear and certainly going into 5G. They're a leading provider. And financially, they can offer countries much better deals than other providers. But they are an intricate part of that communications web. So if you imagine that Huawei is a state-sponsored entity, and will respond to Chinese authorities' requests for information or intelligence that's passing through this communications web around the globe,

our business communications, our military communications, intelligence communications that all kind of go through at some point this interconnected system, that's the problem because they're essentially building backdoors into that system that allow them to suck communications out of that network and use it for their own purposes. It's a great intelligence tool, right? So if you think about it in a way, basically, it's an advancement on the idea that you are wiretapping somebody or you know you've you've created ability to intercept some communications right they link themselves with the eu well what happens we've got military communications right with the eu our military talks to the

eu military and and and we've got nato concerns and everything so if if there's an element in that infrastructure that touches in and has a door that opens to some Huawei gear, right? Then the danger here is, and they've had back doors discovered in the past, and then Huawei puts their hands up and go, oh, well, we didn't know that was there. We'll correct it. And then it turns out they don't correct it. And then, you know, oh, sorry about that. They honestly don't give a shit. When I say how aggressive they are in terms of sucking up information, I can't overstate it, right?

And so that's why it's a problem for us is because, you know, if we convince Australia and, you know, the Five Eyes nations, New Zealanders, and others not to work with Huawei and then say Canada, you know, which is willing to do a deal. Well, we've got seamless communications infrastructure with Canada. So all of a sudden, the fact that they're doing business with Huawei, but we're not, we're still at risk, we're still in jeopardy, because that information is still flowing to some degree where it's accessible to Huawei, and their ability to get at. So I, you know, again, I know, and I know people listen to that, and they go, why is that of any concern?

Well, it's a concern because it used to be in the old days it was us and the Russians, Soviet Union. Russia's, you know, they got the GDP of a small EU nation. China is on the march. They view themselves in a certain fashion. That's why they're pushing out in the South China Sea. They've been building up their military. They've been doing deals all over the world for rare earth minerals, to labor deals, access to naval ports. It doesn't matter what it is. They've been busy doing that because they view themselves at the top of the food chain. Now, I guess we could say, well, okay, fine. Maybe it's their turn or something. But that's not how I view the world, right? I mean, we can either be on top or we can be sucking wind.

And so it goes back to that one of those early questions you asked is how much do we spend on defense? How much do we spend on intel? How much do we spend on whatever it may be? And I think the answer is that's where intelligence comes in. You have to know what the hostile nation is doing. You have to know what the competitor is doing. It's like in business. And you have to spend enough to stay ahead of that, right?

Even if it's a small amount, you've got to stay ahead. And it behooves us not to fall behind. That's never a good thing. I know we don't always do things right. But as a nation, the world is much better off with us sort of at the – and this is going to sound wrong to a lot of people. They're going to think, oh, my God, that's terrible. But with us at the top, we're more altruistic.

Maybe that is – I don't know if that's the word or not. But I think – It's a good word. Yeah. So anyway, so that's my view. A lot of people say bullshit, but everyone's got different experiences. Well, is there a way to detect, like when they release, say if they release a Huawei phone, which is really interesting that just a few years ago, Huawei was not even a major player by any stretch of the imagination.

Now it's the number two cell phone provider in the world past Apple, which is incredible when you consider the fact that they barely have a foothold in the American market. Very few people buy their phones. And if they do buy their phones, they buy unlocked phones from overseas. It's really kind of crazy. But is there a way where they could detect whether or not there is a backdoor in these phones? Or is it something where they could develop it to the point where you really would have no idea? No, we stay pretty well.

You know, yeah, it's a good question. But I would say that as long as we continue what we're doing in terms of counterintelligence and tech advances and efforts in cyberspace and elsewhere, and certainly in communications hardware, to stay ahead of potential hostile activity, I think we're okay. We're good at detecting problems. We're good at identifying weaknesses in these systems. The problem is, again, it's a global community. We can't isolate ourselves in terms of communications infrastructure. It just doesn't work.

So it's like a chain and a weak link. Yeah, see? I gave you that analogy. That's pretty good. Yeah, thank you. I made that up. You are the weakest link. You are.

Goodbye. So, yeah, I mean, anyway, but that's Huawei. And I do think that the interesting part will be what does the administration do in their desire to get a trade deal? Are they willing to blink on this? Because they put their foot down, right? And now, because we're so dysfunctional here in the States from a political perspective, now you've got people like Chuck Schumer going, well know trump better not blink on this this is important so suddenly chuck schumer is a hawk on you know protecting us from from you know chinese espionage right i mean but simply because you know he sees there's a political opening here you know if trump backtracks on huawei now hey good from the democrat perspective

they can use that to bang on him you know and so it's all it all comes down to politics but but this is something that people didn't even understand was an issue like nationally this is something no one was even aware of until a few months ago and when i started reading about it one of the first things that i was reading about was you know i'm kind of a technology nerd and so i was fascinated by some of their newest phones which were really far advanced to what you're getting offered in the United States. Yeah.

And a lot of that ability to create in record time comes from theft of intellectual property. Yeah. And that's how they, over the years, again, that was a collective decision by the authorities there that this is how we're going to advance, right? They looked and they'd make a calculation that says we can't afford to wait decades while we do our own research and development you know well let's let's just take it and huawei is not the only chinese phone manufacturer there's quite a few different ones over there but they're the only one that seems to be banned what's that other one zombie what there There's quite a few. There are, but Huawei has been, because of their size and their connection to the government,

and because of the resources that the government's been willing to provide to them, the advantage that they have, and the speed with which they were able to kind of embed themselves into other nations' telecommunications infrastructure. That's why they're so important. But the general – yeah. Are there other companies? Well, of course, yeah. I mean there's a variety of companies we should be worried about from that perspective.

And it's not – look, to be fair, I spent some time on China because it's just – they're the number one state-sponsored perpetrator of theft of intellectual property. But there's other countries involved in it. They copy entire cities, which is really insane. Have you seen that? They have a fake Paris over there? Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well, they've got – you go some of these places – and look, Chinese history culture is fantastic, right?

And I've been over there in times, and I've just marveled at how interesting the people are, how friendly they are. I mean, look, there's a lot of wonderful things about China, but I'm just saying the authorities, right, the government policy of no rule of law, of no protection when it comes to intellectual property, all these things in there, aggressiveness and stealing information. That's the problem. But China as a country is a fascinating place. So that was – I don't know why I said that. That's just my – It is a fascinating place. So that was, I don't know why I said that. That's just my... It is a fascinating place.

It's very, very, very, very, very old, which is something that we don't totally understand. That was like five varies. Well, you think about, like, when you look at the history of China, it's really, it's amazing. Yeah. It goes back so far. When you look at this country, it's a couple of hundred years and that's it. Oh, I know.

We come across a house that's a hundred years old and someone slaps a historic thing on there and you can't, suddenly you look at this country, it's a couple of hundred years, and that's it. Oh, I know. We come across a house that's 100 years old, and someone slaps a historic thing on there, and suddenly you can't do anything to it. We've faced that in the past. Well, I know a guy who's got a house that was built in the 20s, and they have a historic thing on it. The 1920s. Soon it'll be the architecture of the 60s that we want to protect.

Yeah, probably. Plastic over couches. Remember that? Oh, that was a good thing, right? And nobody wanted to sit on those in the summer. So what do you think is going to happen? Do you really think that the government's going to cave and they're going to give in to Huawei? I think so because I think they definitely want a trade deal in some capacity.

And China's not going to blink on this, right? They'll figure out how to kind of bear the burden of the tariffs and and make things work on you know for them so much gets built over there too i mean all the apple stuff's getting built over there now and there was just a recent story uh where tim cook was trying to get trump to back down off of some tariffs because you know they're going to have a 25 tariff on some apple products that they're building in China. Yeah. Yeah. And it's the idea that, look, it's not the idea that you can, yeah. Huawei revenue jumps 23% despite US crackdown. Yeah. Because, look, overseas, their phones are gigantic.

They figured out, you know, Samsung made a huge disastrous mistake with their Galaxy Fold. I don't know if you know, but they have the foldable phone. Well, they have the foldable phone well they have a mate x that apparently is way better than the galaxy fold it's a better design and it's viable it works yeah samsung's an incredible company and it's it's you got an amazing history of innovation and technology but but you're right they have had a couple of they've had a couple of missteps the fold wasn't the only one that they had a misstep on note seven that blow up right

that's a problem right when you get you've got a phone that explodes, that's not necessarily what you want in a communications device. What, Jamie? What do you point that at? The Huawei Mate X is not as good as said. What it says, the design changed just a few weeks before the release.

Well, what's wrong with it? It hasn't even come out yet. They just decided to change the, I don't know. Yeah, but it doesn't mean it's not better. Why are you saying it means it's not better? The people that have tried it have said it's better. He's just saying it's last-minute tweaks have been made to the device ahead of the anticipated release in September. An additional sensor appears to have been added to the phone's camera module.

That's to find out where you live. Exactly. I mean, that doesn't mean it's not better, Jamie. No, it's not out yet. So how would anybody know? The people that have reviewed it. There's people that have reviewed it. All the tech sites have reviewed it. But then they just changed it. You just don't mean it's not better, Jamie. No, it's not out yet. So how would anybody know? The people that have reviewed it. There's people that have reviewed it. All the tech sites have reviewed it.

But then they just changed it. You just don't like it. Yeah, well, they just tweaked the sensor. You're just talking shit over there, buddy. Why don't you go back to coughing on water? Are you anti-Hawaii or is that what it is? No, no. What is your problem?

They did use the Leica name, too. I licensed it for their camera. I don't think that they're using like leica cameras it's like a i've used it i used it at ces like three years ago i thought they used leica cameras for the the pro or whatever it is they use the name but i don't believe that it's it's not i mean it might be a leica sensor but it's like a very it's a microchip it's compared to the the one i have in this camera that's very expensive. It's not the best thing at all. A camera, but I mean,

I think they use Leica lenses, right? Or Leica something. Good God. Can we get to the bottom of this? When I was there, that's what I was super interested in. And I was trying to tell, I was like, what are they using about this name?

There's a photographer I follow that was promoting it. And I was like, it just seems like they're using the name is all. I couldn't tell that it was a better photo. I couldn't tell. They don't even have authorization. They're just using the name. But that's all I couldn't tell at all. But you don't know they're using the name is all. I couldn't tell that it was a better photo. I couldn't tell. They don't even have authorization. They just use the name.

But that's all I couldn't tell at all. But you don't know they're not, right? Again, that's what I'm just saying. I couldn't tell. But as a photographer, all you're using is the name. This isn't a better photo. It doesn't have the value of the Leica name. That's what I was getting at.

They have some pretty spectacular cameras, though, Jamie. I mean, they had the very best ever night vision camera not night vision but night sight like the ability to take photographs at night and it looks like pull up uh huawei night photograph examples because google pixel 3 is the second best one but the best one is supposedly the huawei one that zoom came out a couple months ago people were saying that that was bullshit. What is that? It was like it had a super Zoom technology lens that someone was zooming in real far.

It's like there's no way that that's real. But who said it's no way that that's real? Photographers. Photographers. Reviewers. People that are using this stuff and said that's not real. But they weren't using this, though. One thing has been proven.

One thing has been proven that Huawei has taken been proven, that Huawei has taken some photographs and said they were taken on a Huawei phone, and they were actually taken on a very high-end camera. Also, Huawei posted some stuff on Instagram from iPhones. Yeah, they got caught a couple times doing that, which is also quite hilarious. But, yeah, it's a sneaky business. And if that's how they're going to do it, they're going to get in through the back door and get information through phones and modems.

And it may not be something that they worry about now in terms of access. I mean, people say, well, why do they want the access now? They just want to know that they can. I mean, imagine a conflict in the future where they have that ability, right, either to real-time monitor communications through this network that they've been able to build trap doors into, you know, or to impact the flow of communication more aggressively, more proactively to do things. You know, it's like mapping out our infrastructure, right? The testing, the probing that goes on of our electrical grid is an example. I mean, that's just planning for the future. In the event that something bad is going to happen, if there's going to be a conflict, you know, they want to know, as do we.

I mean, again, to your point that, you know, hopefully we're doing the same stuff. Right. So, yeah. Right. So, yeah. It's something else interesting when you're talking about China, though, is – and you think about, okay, what should we be watching? We touched on Russia a little bit. It's the alliance between – possible alliance between Russia and China.

And it's an interesting dynamic. Traditionally, Russia and China haven't been together. There have always been some areas of concern, you know, distrust. But there are signs, there are things happening that appear as if China and Russia have made a strategic decision to align themselves closer. And that would be because they've made that determination that somehow it's in their best interests of, you know, and not necessarily that it's going to be that way for any long period of time, but right now in the current environment, you see Russia acting as if what they want is a stronger alliance, military alliance and political alliance, economic alliance with China.

And it's an interesting dynamic that we need to be watching. We need to be aware of. And part of that is, you know, people, again, it's this idea that, you know, there was this Russia-Trump collusion. And thinking, okay, well, that's good, except our relations with Russia have been this bad in a long time. So maybe it's all a very clever mind game that they're playing because they're closely aligned, but I don't think so. So we've actually laid on more significant sanctions on Russia. We've attacked them from an energy perspective in terms of our ability to create our independence, particularly from natural gas. That has damaged Russia's abilities. So I think there's reasons why they're gravitating towards China right now. But this idea that somehow Trump is super friendly and is a useful idiot of Putin, it doesn't play out when you look at the reality of the relationship between the two countries. That whole Russian collusion thing is a very confusing narrative because on one hand you have the Democrats who are saying without doubt there's Russian collusion

and then the other side you have the Republicans that say the Mueller report essentially exonerated Trump from being a part of any sort of Russian collusion. I don't think either one is totally accurate. I think there's a lot of weird gray in both narratives. I think the Democrat narrative is easier to understand. It just makes sense from their perspective. That's how we won. Why wouldn't we push that? To this day, they're just still amazed that they lost.

And so there must be some grander reason why, because clearly we couldn't lose to this guy. And it was also a talking point, much less, let's hit everybody with the racist hammer. It's a talking point. grander reason why because we just clearly we couldn't lose to this guy right and so and and it was also a talking point much less you know let's hit everybody with the racist hammer it's a talking point and it's worked for them over you know at least the first couple of years um on the on the on the republican side um look the russians knew what they were doing right they were fucking with the election on several different levels, right? It wasn't just trolling through the internet. It wasn't, you know, just placing stories that they could. It wasn't just trying to foment, you know,

divisiveness and discontent. It was also doing these little dangle things, you know, where they're, you know, they're looking to see, are they going to bite? What are they going to do? You know, I mean, you think about that Christopher Steele dossier. That was a piece of shit. I mean, if we saw that in the commercial side of things, you know, I've got a business in global intelligence and research and security.

That thing was just, there was nothing. It was shot full of holes, right? And so you think, well, somebody should have asked, tell me about your sources, you know? Why are your sources talking? What was, you know, you've got to, anytime you've got a piece of intelligence right you've got to do a few basic things you know where to come from can you explain to people what the steele dossier was all about yeah it was basically just look they were going after opposition research political opposition research right so uh christopher steele who was a you know a paid

uh hired consultant used to be with british intelligence not you know not a james bond type um but you know a decent enough by by all accounts, a decent enough guy. But he entered the world of private sector information gathering, right? And I've got a company that's what we do all around the world. And you can't relax your standards just because you're now in the commercial sector, right? When you get a piece of information, you need to test that piece of information. And one of the first things you need to do is understand what's the sourcing for it and why did they have access? You know, how credible are they? What's their track record? And why, by the way, are they providing this information?

And how did it eventually, you know, make its way to this report? And those are the sort of simple things that whether you're a corporation that's gathering intelligence about a market that you may enter with an investment, or whether you're still in the business and you're an intel officer and you're talking to a source that works in some foreign ministry somewhere, you got to be able to stress test the intelligence. And shit wasn't done. people liked what they saw they saw negative information about the the candidate and just run with that shit right and the more times you it's like it's like the old wmd reporting that came out of the early days in iraq the more you repeat it even if it's one source and that source is a piece of shit what you repeated people

are going to buy it right so russian collusion russian collusion you just keep repeating that and that's going to happen at some point it'll happen but um anyway so but it seems like russia definitely likes to disrupt our democracy absolutely and what's the benefit of that well a part of it is um in in the old days it was sort of a struggle for supremacy in the world, right? I mean, that's kind of at its core. That's what it was, right? And their ability to chip away in faith in democratic institutions was at the core of a lot of the crap that they pulled. And it still is. I mean, so that's all the – when you're talking about a propaganda effort like the screwing with the last election, what's their goal? Well, their goal isn't necessarily – do they care whether one candidate or another wins?

Well, maybe they do, right? But you'd be hard-pressed to argue that they were working against Hillary Clinton who had said, you know, we want to have a reset and have a new relationship with Russia and work with them. I mean, maybe they looked at Trump and thought, yeah, that's the guy we want to have a reset and, you know, and have a new relationship with Russia and work with them. I mean, maybe they looked at Trump and thought, yeah, that's the guy we want to work with. But over that, the more important issue was in just chipping away at Americans' belief in democratic institutions. Get us all so that we question the credibility of a democracy. And that's been the fundamental belief for propaganda efforts within the old KGB and now the FSU.

So it's as simple as that in a way. And it worked. I mean, look at this. We've spent years now just bitching at each other and yelling and screaming and complaining and we bought into it

because we all, like we talked about before, we all, you know, we're easily duped. And I don't know how you get around that. I don't know how we walk that back. Maybe we don't, but I think it's an informed public that helps to battle this. But we haven't, we lost sight of what was important here. And so I think the public needs, it's their responsibility.

You like this? Yeah. You like where you live? Then you got to make an effort to try to keep it. And part of that is being an informed public and understanding what hostile elements may be out there without being paranoid. But just understand why they're doing things in the way that the world operates. And you'll always have that group of people that don't buy into any of that bullshit and think it's all just we should all be holding hands. Yeah, that's a fun one.

That's a fun narrative. It's a good narrative. It's a happy narrative, right? When you've talked to people that have seen terrible things that take place all around the world, that narrative is hard to swallow. When you read about these gang members that are coming in and growing pot and fucking shooting at people, Like when you read about these gang members that are coming in and growing pot and fucking shooting at people. And they've got these high-level task force just to deal with these cartel members that are growing weed.

Right. And this is just our neighbor. And that's just one part of what they're doing. Right? That's just human trafficking and everything else that they get involved in, extortion. And fentanyl, which is probably the scariest thing. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it.

And that's what you have to worry about. If you push them out of the market because you legalize everything, which I assume that's kind of the direction we're going, then do they fill that gap, again, from a revenue perspective with fentanyl or something else, whatever the next choice is? How do you stop the infiltration? How do you stop the gang members from coming in here? I mean, how do you do that other than eliminating them, other than having some sort of a tactical operation? Well, that seems like the only operation that would make any sense in my mind.

Yeah. Well, it's like jihadism. You can't kill your way out of it, right? It doesn't mean you shouldn't make a good faith effort. But for the drug control, for the narcotics, counter-narcotics, part of it is what we talked about also about working with the other governments. We've had some success in doing that where you work with the Mexican authorities, you work with Colombians or out in Southeast Asia to try to push back on the heroin trade.

And so you work through them to some degree. But that's tough, right? There's so much corruption out there. Yeah, there's so much corruption. And that's the problem. And it's unsatisfying because you don't see an immediate return sometimes. And it's also sometimes seems like it's just a big bottomless pit where you're tossing money and effort and resources. But it's something that has to be done.

It doesn't mean you shouldn't still do it. But it is. I mean, corruption in a place like Mexico, right, where the people just don't have any faith in the institutions because they've lived in this system for so long where all the officials in their minds anyway are corrupt. The police are corrupt. The federales are corrupt. You know, the Marines down in Mexico are probably the most trusted institution because they're not viewed in the same vein. They're not viewed as corrupt. Only the Marines? Well, yeah, pretty much. I mean, which it's odd, but that's a large organization and they've been able to kind of stay above the fray to some degree, which is interesting. I have no idea. But it's been the perception, and for the most part, it's true. When you work down there, often enough, you do get that impression. But it's how do you get rid of that endemic corruption in that society and turn that public perception around, you know, because that will impact. But I mean,

look what happened in previous administration when they they seriously went after cartel members. Remember that spree of violence that they kicked off? It was in part because the Mexican authorities were going after cartels in a more serious manner. Right. They previous to that, they were managing the problem. So they said, OK, look, let's manage down the violence. Everybody and we'll let you keep doing your business. It's going to happen. So you guys do your business, but just, you know, let's keep sort of public order, you know, as something that we want to demonstrate that we're capable of. And when they went after the cartels in a more serious manner, that's when that real harsh spree of violence kicked off. And, you know, there was more headroom.

So these, you know, these various members were, you know, they were combating each other, and they were going after the public. They understood that they had to basically wear down the public, which is what happened. The public said – after a while, they said, fuck it. We can't deal with this. The violence is too much. It's awful. And so government eventually went back to managing the problem. Drug trade didn't go away, of course.

They just went back to the old ways of doing things. But the violence was just so intense. The public eventually just said, we can't, no. And I think the cartels knew that. They understood that, right? And so they were willing to do it. Well, the most ridiculous aspect was that Fast and the Furious deal, where they were literally selling drugs to the cartels so they could track them and those drugs were used to eventually kill some u.s officers right right yeah i mean it was yeah yeah i said i said drugs yeah i did say drugs yeah yeah i'm conflating things yeah those guns that they used they did kill officers right yeah there was there was a an officer in particular was that was killed and and the Fast and Furious, anytime you talk about as part of an intelligence collection effort or a law enforcement effort that you're going to supply the hostile element with weapons or whatever it may be, it's probably going to go sideways.

But that seems like a great way to cover the fact that you were selling guns. I mean, if I was really skeptical, I would say, well, what are you going to do? We're going to sell them guns. How the fuck are you going to sell them guns? Well, we're going to say that it's an intelligence gathering thing and we're going to sell them guns. Yeah.

I mean, if you're really cynical, which a lot of people are. A lot of people are, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it was a fucked up operation. There's no doubt about it. guns yeah well you're really cynical which a lot of people are a lot of people are yeah yeah yeah no i mean i think it was it was a fucked up operation there's no doubt about it and i'm not a fan of you know it's it's sort of like the same in the gray arms marketing you know sort of on a global basis when you talk about you know like you know because again what are you looking to do you're looking to create movement track you know movement of of gear or money or resources or personnel or whatever there's ways you can do that without creating potential

for a complete goat rope, and unfortunately, Fast and Furious did that. Well, it had to be a goat rope. You're giving people the ability to kill people. Yeah. You're giving them guns. Yeah. Do they have chips on the guns?

How are they even tracking these goddamn guns? Yeah. Sources and methods shit, but it's – going back to Mexico and how do you resolve that? Because that impacts, again, that impacts us. It impacts our national security, right? Yes. And so – Well, they're literally connected to us.

Yeah. We're so concerned with Afghanistan and Iraq. They're nowhere near us, and we've got this thing connected to us that's literally filling this country with illegal drugs. They sell meth. They sell fentanyl. Yeah. Afghanistan.

Fuck, they're coming up on another election, presidential election in mid, I think mid-September. Are you going to run? You know, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it. I'm moving the family over there. You could do it. You could be the king of Afghanistan. Yeah.

I could, me and Boris Johnson johnson and trump would get together but uh yeah no they've had an increase in bombings you know taliban stepping it back up and i mean we don't think about it nobody wants to think about that shit anymore you think about how many years you know we've been digging in and and it always comes back to the same thing the taliban man what do we think was going happen? They got no place else to go. Right. It's so difficult to track them down, right, the mountains. And they will just wait it out, right?

And so they're back again. They're increasing bombings. They want to take over again. And it's just – so you're right in a sense. Did we take our eye off the ball? Yeah, we did, yeah. And were there other issues that we should have been more focused on? Yeah, yeah, sure.

But, you know, then you're conflicted because you think of all those people that fought and died over there and the effort that other people that came back and, you know, with horrible wounds and the trauma of all of that. And, you know, I feel somewhat conflicted because then you talk about, you know, you don't want to minimize their – what they did, right, for the country. But you also have an obligation, I think, to look at policy and what did we do and what was the purpose of it? What was the point of that exercise? And I don't think we still to this day know, right? I mean, what, are we going to create some pseudo-state federal government there that's going to be a bastion of democracy?

And it's not going to happen. So anyway, I don't want to disappear down the Afghanistan rabbit hole. But we'd like to think that we could turn that into another America. That's what we'd like to think. When we think about nation building, we think that we can go in there

and establish democracy and these people are going to be better and they're going to be able to go to school and it's going to change the whole environment. Yeah, I guess, and that is true. And we talked about Iraq that way. If we just make Iraq a bastion of democracy, then maybe it'll help to turn the tide in the Middle East,

and suddenly everyone will have more of a respect for individual liberties and rights and all the rest of that. How'd that work out? You know, I'm still looking into it. I'll come back again, and I'll give you my report. I think it's going to be negative. I think a million people have died. it's yeah it's that's not good right that's that's typically never good when you get you get to those numbers it's a large number yeah um but again look i mean the shit that we don't want to talk about look we don't talk about

syria right nobody wants to talk about syria and then and and you know asad you know his butcher he's still in charge. Why is he in charge? Well, because Russia propped him up. Why did Russia prop him up along with Iran? There's a nasty piece of work there as an axis goes. Well, you know, Russia had no intention of letting Assad go. We should have been able to figure that one out, right? But we didn't, and in part because we have these impulses that say, well, we're going to do better. And because we're going to create this ability for people to, you know, create their own democracy. So, yeah. So anyway, we we Syria is, again, one of those places that nobody really wants to discuss or talk about.

And we've got we've got attention deficit disorder. Nobody talks about North Korea anymore. Remember, we're all going to get blown up by Kim Jong-un. Yeah. Eh, let's move on. Well, there's pictures of Trump shaking his hand, so we're buddies now. We're good. We're homies. Yeah, we're all good.

We're all good. Yeah, I mean, the last article I read about North Korea was about how did Kim Jong-un get his Mercedes, since there's some sort of a boycott or embargo. Yeah. Well, and that's another part of it is although we have been – we've been more successful. I will say this. We've been more successful than in the past, and part of that is a technology issue. We've gotten better at imposing and enforcing sanctions than we used to be,

and part of that is because our abilities to understand the movement of money, tracking transactions, is better than it used to be. So the sanctions, as an example, we put on Iran. This is the most difficult time that this regime has faced in Iran since the fall of the Shah. regime has faced in Iran since the fall of the Shah. And it's because we've gotten better at looking at Russia, China in particular, that traditionally always kind of circumvented the sanctions. We're better at enforcing that. And we're better at working with the EU and pressuring them, right? I mean, so that's a good thing. But I don't know where that's going. I mean, Iran is kind of flailing about a little bit. They seized a tanker, a British tanker.

They actually seized a couple, but they're holding on to one in response to – they were trying to ship a bunch of oil over to Syria against sanctions that exist. So they had a tanker that was taking two million barrels or whatever of oil over to Syria, So they had a tanker that was taking two million barrels or whatever of oil over to Syria and the British in the territorial waters of Gibraltar intercepted that ship. That was the beginning of July. And in response, the Iranians have done a number of things. But the most recent thing that they've done was they seized a British flag tanker and they're still holding the crew. And that's sort of an example of their, I don't want to say they're desperate, right? Because they've got an ability, I think,

to withstand and their control over the population is so strong. But it's an example, I think, to some degree of them flailing a bit and trying to figure out what are they going to do? What's their next move? And I know people say, well, we shouldn't have gotten out of the deal and we shouldn't have this issue anyway because it's Trump's fault for getting out of the deal. But again, I don't have a lot of confidence in them sticking to the terms and agreements of any deal because they've never done in the past. There's always been that effort and they've always broken the agreement. So I don't know why suddenly they would change their tune. If we can keep the sanctions on hard enough and force them to the table, the only thing they care about is staying in power. If they think they're going to lose that grip on power, they'll come to the table and they'll make a better deal. And

that deal would include us being able to access their military facilities and for inspections. We had no access to any other military sites in that country because we didn't make it a condition of the deal. So we basically said, sure, we want verification that you're following the agreements. They said, well, fuck you. These are the places that we agree to let you look at. I don't want to oversimplify, but that was the terms of the deal. And so any deal that we do with them in the future needs to to be able to say No, we want 100% verification Because as John Kerry said

That's what you want You want to be able to verify So when we heard about it What we're hearing in the news From the people that are opposed to the deal Is that Trump broke this deal And he was foolhardy to do so That Obama had put in place this deal

And that Trump had broke it And it sort of leaves us in this terrible quagmire Right But what you're saying is That the deal was terrible and that it didn't really give us access to understand exactly what their nuclear program was, what their military program was. So it wasn't a good deal.

It wasn't wise to keep it. If the way that you judge the value of a deal, and this is what the previous administration, the Obama administration, did, was to talk about how it's important that we verify and we've got verification. Well, yeah, you've got verification of the sites that the Iranians agreed to let us look at. And so, yeah, it was a deal. Was it a good deal? No.

They wanted this. They wanted to sign this deal and the Iranians knew it. And so, yeah, I think that that justified saying, no, we're going to redraw this. And even the EU, which has been clinging to the old agreement, even the EU says, well, yeah, we could improve it. We could make it better. But there's no, if you just keep things as they were, there's no incentive for the Iranian regime to make any concessions or improve it. So the point being is we're trying to force them back to the negotiating table. And again, given that their self-interest is to stay in power and remain in charge,

then with the economy and the condition that it's in currently, if it gets much worse and they feel as if they're losing a grip on the population, then I suspect they will come. They're not going to lash out. Iran doesn't want a – nobody wants a military conflict. We don't want it. They don't want it.

Can they close the Strait of Hormuz, you know, where, you know, depending on who you're talking to, a fifth of the world's oil passes through? Yeah, they could close it temporarily or cause some friction, but they don't have the ability to shut it down for any real period of time. We've just got too much in terms of leverage over there and our assets. And so, yeah, who knows? But I'm one of those people that says, we shouldn't have done that deal until we got it right. And just saying that we got a deal for the sake of it because you had partial verification doesn't give you anything. We've had partial deal for the sake of it because you had partial verification. It doesn't give you anything. We've had partial verification of their programs for decades, and they just keep advancing their program.

So do you think this criticism of backing out of the deal that you're hearing from Democrats is basically just a criticism of Trump, just an opportunity to – Yeah, everything is a criticism. I think everything is a criticism of Trump. Is that a problem? Because Trump is such a polemic figure, because he's – so many people just hate him, that any opportunity to have some sort of political talking point against him sort of confuses what the actual issue is itself. Yeah. I mean, I think it's no doubt he's, yeah, I think what happens is both sides, we lose in this one, because the Democrats just sort of blindly, you know, accuse him of everything's bad, right? And no matter what he's doing, no matter what policy is, it's all bad, right? And so, so that's not where you want to be. And on the Republican side, you know,

you tend to think that that's the case and so you know you don't have an honest um intelligent discussion about policy the landscape right and so you again you're sitting in in trenches throwing hand grenades each other it's like world war one right and nobody's going to get out and venture into no man's land in the center and nobody's living in the center anymore. So I just think everybody, it's a disservice to everybody. But, yes, I think most things that have come out of Capitol Hill right now is based on, you know, look, here's an example. My daughter went, she just got out of grad school.

And she's done a number of internships. She's worked over in Asia. She's been in China on internships. And she's a smart kid. I'm subjective. Smart kid. But she went for a job up in Capitol Hill. And it was not a direct hire meeting. The office had to go through the other offices to get approval to hire an individual to fill this position. to fill this position. And because the House is controlled by Democrats now, she was, everybody looked and said, yeah, she's a top candidate. We want to offer the job. Well, what happened was they submitted her details that we want to hire this person to this office within Capitol Hill, controlled by the Democrats now, because it's a House majority. And they came back and said no because you know why?

Because she did an internship in the current administration. So a young person wanting to work in D.C. in policy and security studies and elsewhere, doing a variety of internships around the globe, does an internship at the White House. Normally you would think that's a good thing, right? So they said, no, because she did this internship at the White House, we're not going to approve the hiring. And then it turns – well, she did an internship in Bill de Blasio's office too, right? And so they said that.

And the response was, well, we don't like him either, which I think was – that actually provided some humor, right, to the whole situation. But it shows you – I mean, that's a little tiny thing and it's a personal issue. But it shows you Washington, D.C. is possibly the most dysfunctional location in all of North America. That's terrible. Yeah, and it's not the way it should be. We should be able to have policy discussions.

We should be able to make decisions. You may not like Trump. You may not have way it should be. We should be able to have policy discussions. We should be able to make decisions. You may not like Trump. You may not have liked the previous president. But, you know, again, we've got to stop this bullshit where everybody's a racist. Everybody's a sexist. Everybody's a – it's not the way this country is supposed to work. And people – you can't even get away from, okay, who's at fault? Everybody's at fault.

The right and the left are all guilty of creating this divisiveness. What is the cure to outrage culture? I mean, how do you get past this? That's the real question, right? I mean, what is the – I don't see a map. And I was going to ask you this about foreign policy because as a guy who has been involved in the CIA for as long as you have and has seen all the inner workings of government and all the conflict. And do you ever feel like you just were just running up a 70 degree sand dune that you're

never going to get to the top of? You know what I mean? It just seems like it never ends. I mean, you're just basically trying to like, oh, there's another hole in the dike. Let me put my finger in this one. Oh, water's coming out of this one. Let me get my finger in this one. And it water's coming out of this one. Let me get my finger in this one. And it never ends.

Yeah. Running up the sand dune, that's a good analogy. That's what it seems like. It's like a million-mile-high sand dune. Yeah. Like this. Look, D.C. has always been divisive. Politics have always created division.

The press has always been biased in one way or another. These things aren't new. And we always tend to think it's the worst we've ever seen. Look, the Civil War was pretty bad. That was pretty divisive. So when you have a politician like I think it was Joe Biden, right, that said that the president is the most racist president we've ever had, and you think, well, I don't know.

We've had presidents that owned slaves, bro. Exactly, 12 presidents owned slaves. I think that might have been a problem but you know so so and and or the race relations are the worst they've ever been and you think yeah how about the 60s that was pretty bad right and in the civil war and i think so every every time is good yeah i know and and but i guess my point being is that you know you can you can fall into that trap where you think it's as bad as it's ever been. I think it's fair to say that it is more polarizing now than in recent times. And how do we walk it back? How do we dial it down a little bit? And how do we actually focus on what's important for the general population? There's a lot of big issues we should be solving, right? I mean, but look at the insanity of when we talk about healthcare, right? It's like, oh, it's got to be all this or it's got to be all that. Nobody's over in the middle saying, well, you know, you could take a little bit of this and that. And again, how do you walk that back? It's way above my pay grade. I hunker down in Idaho and I go fishing and I don't think about it. Well, that's a good way to do it, but I don't

see any solution that anybody has that makes any sense. And that's one of the things that terrifies me. And I don't want to just step away. I don't want to be that guy that moves to fucking – Idaho. I wasn't going to say Idaho. I was going to say Alberta. Oh, there you go.

Alberta. I was going to go further north. Saskatoon. Yeah. Edmonton. New Zealand, maybe. Go to New Zealand. Oh, yeah.

I love Edmonton. Yeah. But, I mean, it's like – What are we doing in Edmonton? UFC. Oh,. Great people. Oh, yeah. I love Edmonton. Yeah. But, I mean, it's like... What are we doing in Edmonton? UFC. Oh, okay. And a show. Oh, you did?

River Creek Casino. Yeah, it's... I just feel like there's no real general solution, nor is there a map of a potential solution. And if we get a Democrat in the white house it's not gonna end do you remember when obama was in office they were mad that he wore a gray suit or a tan suit it's a tan suit they're making fun of his suit what the fuck do you care yeah this is this is all you care about it's like this polarization the fox news versus msnvc polarization yeah that doesn't help anybody and it's fuck it's so bananas that if you have a podcast like mine

and I have a left wing person on I'm a sellout if I have a right wing person on I'm a Nazi and it just goes back and forth you can't even talk to people anymore which is no

it comes down to you can't have policy differences anymore it's got to be some personal animus that you've got towards that other individual which is again is horseshit. You can have policy differences with people. And that doesn't make you a bad person. It doesn't make you, you know, sure, there's other races. Of course, there are frigging races out there, right? But we've lost the meaning of the term when you just start hurling that around at anybody you disagree with, right?

Or when people say, well, if you like Trump, you're a racist, right? Well, congratulations. You're probably driving those people to definitely vote for him in 2020. That is absolutely a fact. That's one thing that I completely agree with you on, that I think that this idea that everybody who supports trump is racist it makes those people so angry that they just want to go okay i'm gonna well you're obviously nuts i can't i can't be on your side you people are crazy you want to open up the borders and you want to take all the money from the everybody that's a hard-working american give it to all the poor people and fuck you and

it's like the arguments just get so confused yeah i, and I don't know where it's – I mean, if you think about who might win, I don't think Joe Biden's going to last. I think they're going to eat him alive. He's not going to make it. It's going to be, I think, Bernie and Kamala Harris and Tulsi Gabbard. Those are the only ones that make – Tulsi makes sense to me. She's a veteran, congresswoman for six years. She seems incredibly honest, and her morals and her ethics are on point.

I like her. She's my favorite. But if the left is going to have someone, they're going to have to be able to deal with Trump's insults. They're going to be able to debate him, and that's where they all fall apart because they're trying to use that old model of politics. And he's not doing that. He's a showman. And I think what's happening is the people that count in the primary, that's a completely different bag, right, than what goes on in the general.

And I think the people that are in the primary right now, all those people are going to be voting in the primary. They're watching these debates, as an example, or they're just watching the daily Twitter feed from these people, the candidates, and they're thinking, can I see this person debating Trump, right? And so not only are the policies that these candidates are spouting are moving further and further to the left, which is going to make it harder when the general election comes to shift to the center, they're not going to be able to do it, right? That center is now shifted further to the left, which is going to make it harder when the general election comes to shift to the center. They're not going to be able to do it, right? That center is now shifted further to the left if they even make the effort to get back

there. But you're getting sort of like the worst instincts coming out from these candidates because they think, well, I got to show that I can throw a firebomb here because they're looking at me as, can I debate Trump, right? And so you're going to get somebody who's not. So I don't think Tulsi Gabbard is going to make it because I think they're going to make that calculation. I think that you're probably going to look in there. You're going to end up with Harris or maybe Warren. Warren's not going to make it. Yeah, I don't know. That Native American thing is going to sink. touted her in some of their literature when they were talking about their diversity efforts over the years. There's actually documents where Harvard was saying, you know, and we hired, you know,

first Native American, you know, professor. And you're thinking- Here's a statistic. I'm 200 times more African than she is Native American. How about that? I'm basically African. Are you? Yeah.

I didn't know that. 1.6%. 1.6%? Yeah. From where? I don't know. Africa? Well, you know- 23 and me. I didn't know that. 1.6%. 1.6%? Yeah. From where? I don't know. Africa? Well, you know.

23 and me. That's a big place. It's a whole continent. Yeah, it's a whole continent. Someone from that continent fucked one of my ancestors. What if you find out it's South Africa, though? Then it's not quite as interesting. Well, that's Dutch, right?

You get Dutch genes. Yeah, boar. Boar. Yeah, I haven't done that. You know, my daughter did it, and I have not done that. I actually had a conversation the other day about this whole thing, about the desire to know your ancestry and everything. And my dad came over, never talked about his background, never talked about his family. He's a CIA dad.

Yeah, there you go. He knows how to keep his mouth shut. And so he never demonstrated that interest right and so therefore i don't think i've ever been i've never just been that focused on it um everything was in there that i knew was in there mostly italian a little bit of irish but some weird shit like one percent asian i thought that was odd too any scottish no it's always a lot of Scottish floating around out there. Like the fuck? Yeah. We're kilts.

That's right. They get out. They get out and about. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know where it's all going, but I do think that Warren could be viewed. I don't like her. Trouble crusher.

I don't like her, but I think the base looks at her and thinks, yeah, she could be a firebrand. How could they after that whole Native American thing? She built her career on a lie. They don't care. But the base doesn't care. America does care. That's the problem. America cares.

You can't look past that the same way you couldn't look past Hillary being a liar. Hillary tried to say that her name came from Edmund Hillary, the guy who climbed Mount Everest. Meanwhile, he climbed Mount Everest three years after she was born. But you know what? He was still quite the character before. Yes. So, you know, they were still throwing that name around. That's maybe.

Yeah. More than three years, isn't it? Yeah. After she was born. It might have been seven years. Yeah. But you think it won't be. I don't think it'll be Bernie.

I don't think, you know. Why not? Come on. Democratic socialism? Well, I tell you, it'll be Bernie. I don't think, you know. Why not? Come on. Democratic socialism. Well, I tell you, someone should go up to Vermont and look around Vermont and see what kind of job Bernie's done in Vermont. Well, how about Pete Buttigieg? Buttigieg. Buttigieg.

They fucking hate him in his own city. Buttigieg. Mayor Pete, they're pissed at him in South Bend. He could form a ticket with de Blasio. That'd be a powerful mayoral ticket right there. There's no one person that stands out. There's no one person that stands out. There's no one person that stands out as someone who's going to win. Everyone is like, ooh, could this person make it?

Could that person make it? And then there's people that want to challenge Trump, which is hilarious. Well, I think there's going to be – we're going to lose a lot of these folks after this next round of debates, which I guess tonight, tomorrow night. Is it? I think there's a – it's not an A and a B card, but there's two nights of debates because there's so many of them. There's bouts. There's bouts. Did you see the Pacquiao fight?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Fucking great, man. He still got it. 40 years old, drops Thurman in the first round. I know. Thurman's a beast too, man.

That's crazy. That was a great moment, and then it was an interesting fight, and I thought, I wasn't quite sure at the end where it was going to go. But I liked, I've watched Pacquiao over the years. And it's kind of that typical, you know, you get older and you're kind of rooting for the old guy. He's incredible. At 40 years old, he is the oldest man to ever capture the welterweight title. And particularly when you consider those lighter weight classes.

Like Foreman won the heavyweight title at 46, which was crazy. But Pacquiao winning the welterweight title at 40 is fucking bananas. Looking their ass off. I mean, it was a good, good fight. I really enjoyed that. That was the first time I really watched a fight that I really enjoyed, right, beginning to end. And I was with some folks who were not for Pacquiao, and I kept looking. I'm thinking, how do you not like – he's the old guy.

He's been doing this forever. He's a senator. Yeah. Think about that. That's crazy. He was going back to work on the budget issues in the Philippines after the fight. That's crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. I think he made 10 million on that, I think. Yeah. Yeah, he did. Yeah. Good for him.

Yeah. Yeah. Good for Keith Thurman too, he made two and a half. Did he? Got some cheddar now, Keith. Holler at your boy. I love it.

Mayweather was in the audience. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that would be fantastic. I mean, now's the. I love it. Mayweather was in the audience. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that would be fantastic. I mean, now's the time to do it if Mayweather really wants to do it. But Mayweather might watch that fight and go, yeah. Because the first time they fought, Pacquiao had a blown out shoulder. And a lot of people were angry.

There was actually even talk of a class action lawsuit against Pacquiao after the fight because people had bet on him. And he knew his shoulder was fucked up. He'd heard it in training. I think he got a cortisone shot and said, I'm just going to try to fight on. And then he wound up getting shoulder surgery. And then from then on, after rehab, looks fantastic. That's really interesting though, the concept of could you push through a class action lawsuit with an athlete who is in that position, right? I mean, is in that position right i mean yeah where does that go i mean then if you're playing hurt i mean you're in the nfl and you're

playing hurt right um do you have any obligation no i mean i mean it's interesting well ufc fighters fight hurt all the time i know for a fact guys fight with blown out acls and torn hamstrings and they just listen they get to that point they think i think i can still win and some of them still win kamaro usman won the title with a broken foot he broke his foot in training and he he was literally on crutches the week of the fight and then the guy gets to the fight and he's such a fucking animal and so tough that he fought like there was nothing wrong with him and then afterwards revealed that he had broken his foot it's fucking bananas the mental toughness that you have to have to be able to do that for a living and then you and when you lose to somebody with a broken foot yeah that's and yeah yeah yeah it was dominated yeah dominated tyron woodley which is even crazier but then woodley went into that fight

injured as well i mean it's just the nature of the beast if your job is to hurt people and break their bodies you're gonna have to practice breaking nature of the beast. If your job is to hurt people and break their bodies, you're going to have to practice breaking bodies along the way, and you're going to have to practice it with people that are trying to break your body, and occasionally they succeed. Yeah. Yeah. Rough business. You've got to come.

Come to an event. Actually, I would like to do that. There's one in Anaheim in a couple of weeks. You should come to that one. It's a big one. Daniel Cormier is fighting Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title. In a couple of weeks? Yep. Nate Diaz is fighting Anthony Pettis. That's a big one. Daniel Cormier is fighting Stipe Miocic for the heavyweight title. In a couple of weeks? Yep.

Nate Diaz is fighting Anthony Pettis. That's a crazy fight. And Paulo Costa is fighting Yoel Romero. It's two, or three rather, epic fights.

I'm just praying that no one gets injured. In the name of Jesus. Yeah, you know what? I'd bring Scooter. Scooter likes... Bring Scooter. Yeah, he likes that.

Come on down, man. Set it up. You know what? I'll follow up on that.oter likes it. Bring Scooter. Yeah, he likes that. Come on down, man. Set it up. You know what? I'll follow up on that. I will do that. All right, and tell me when your show comes out so I can let the people know. Maybe you can come back on again whenever it actually happens. If you wouldn't mind, once they give me the go-ahead, because apparently I'm prescribed

from talking about it, but when they give me the go-ahead, you won't be able to get to shut up. All right. Or just keep talking. We'll do that. Thank you, Joe. We'll do that. Thank you, sir.

Thank you, man. Good times. All right. Bye, everybody. We'll do that. Thank you, sir. Thank you, man. Good times.

All right. Bye, everybody. Fun times, man. That was a good one. Yeah, thank you, man.