The Joe Rogan Experience - #1713 - Mike Baker

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

Mike Baker is a former CIA covert operations officer and current CEO of Portman Square Group, a global intelligence firm. He's also the host of "Black Files Declassified" on Discovery’s Science Channel.

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night! All day! Hey, bro. Hello, Mike. What's happening, buddy? Hey, you know what?

We turn to you. We turn to you to find out what's happening. Whenever shit gets completely sideways, it's time to bring in Mike Baker for some sort of analysis. That sounds very Sunday morning news talk show. Great. Well, thanks, Chris Wallace, for having me. Tell me what the fuck is going on.

This place is falling apart. Who's running the show? What's happening? Well, first of all, I want to thank you for my antibody test. I'm psyched about that. You don't need that wacky booster. No, no. I got a picture of it and everything. So you must have been exposed. You've been vaccinated, but then

you probably got exposed to COVID somewhere along the line recently. You said you had a day where you kind of run down? I had a day where I was a little bit run down. But I got the second of the vaccines shots was at the end of February. So that's what, seven months. Yeah, it's a long time. Yeah, it's a long time. And those little lines on the, not that I understand it, I'm talking like I understand what I just looked at, but the lines on the antibody test results looked pretty damn good. Pretty stiff, yeah, stiff line there.

Very virile. Looked good. Yeah. So I think, and I've been traveling like a son of a bitch, right, over the past three or four months. There's no way I haven't been exposed. And I got the boys, right, going to school. They're coming home, you know, and it's not like they didn't bring back every germ, you know, ever invented before the pandemic. Right. So they're doing the same thing with COVID.

So I'd have to assume at some point, yeah, I got exposed. My kid got a regular cold recently. Oh, my God. Did they still do that? I didn't know they were exposed. My kid got a regular cold recently. Oh, my God. Did they still do that? I didn't know they were still around. She got a regular cold. I was like, this is crazy. I know.

It's like, and it's, there's so many things that are fucked up about this, but people have forgotten that every year, maybe you go out and you get your flu shot. It didn't mean you weren't going to come down with the flu that season. It just would be maybe a little bit better, right? Yes. But now. But this COVID thing a little bit better, right? Yes. But now- But this COVID thing was sold in a different way.

Yes. It was not sold that you're going to get COVID, but it won't be that bad. Like Fauci was literally on TV saying you won't get it and you won't spread it to anybody. Right. Both those things are patently false. Well, now we got President Biden wearing a mask yesterday, getting a booster. Do you think he got a booster?? You think that was a real booster? You mentioned that before before we started talking and I hadn't thought about it before. But you know what? I when I watched it on TV, when I watched him getting his shot, his mask on, all I could think of was this is performance art. So the next step of performance art would be like not giving them the booster, but just giving them a shot.

I think if they were going to give him a booster shot, the last thing they would do is give it to him live on television. What if he dies? What if he blacks out? What if he gets hit and faints? Because people have had very bad reactions in the moment for whatever reason. Right. I think they still tell you. They give you the shot, and then they'll say, stick around the moment for whatever reason. Right, right. No, they still, I think they still tell you, you know, they give you the shot and then they'll say, stick around for 10 or 15 minutes.

They want to make sure you don't, you know, fall down. Yeah. So, no, I agree because every other step of the way with any president, they're so careful. Yes. So careful about the messaging, the optics, the security issues related to it. It would be not unheard of. Let's put it that way. Unless Kamala Harris talked him into it.

She's like, go ahead, take it. Take a double. Give him a double. I don't know. I don't think she wants the job anymore. You don't think so? No, no. She seems quite quiet.

She's been very quiet. Weird, right? I think, I'm not sure. She may have left the country. There was that fucking whole border thing. Like, oh, she's going to address the border. And now you look at it, you're like, what is going on down there? Apparently she took care of it.

It's under control. They brought Haiti to the border. That's the crazy thing is how many Haitian folks are trying to get in. Yeah. How did that happen? I thought it was just Mexicans. Well, and if you look at the map, it's not a logical migration, right? If you look at a map, you've got Florida, which would seem to be, I don't know, maybe a natural point of landing.

Certainly closer. Yes. And then you've got this diversion over to Texas. But look, I mean, we've been seeing this happen for a while. I mean, I think it was Panama said, look, this time last year they were processing maybe 300 people coming in. And now they're up to like 30,000 a day coming in. Yeah, mostly Africans and Haitians. Into Panama?

Into Panama, yeah. 30,000 a day? Which is sort of the leading edge, right? These are the indicators that say we're going to have an issue, right? Because they're not going to Panama to stay in Panama. They're not going to Mexico to stay in Mexico, right? These are the indicators that say we're going to have an issue, right? Because they're not going to Panama to stay in Panama. They're not going to Mexico to stay in Mexico, right? So it's a waypoint. And, you know, I get the idea. Everybody's looking for a better life. People want to get the hell out of some place that they don't see any future. You know, used to be that if you were seeking asylum, you'd go to the next safe harbor, right? And that would be your point of, you know, kind of where you're going,

and I'm looking for asylum. But now it's, you can pass through any country and then get to America and claim asylum, even though you've been going through a variety of other countries to get here. So I'm not sure how the definition changed at some point. But no, I think to get back to the original point, I think VP get back to the original point, I think VP Harris, she's done a fine job with the border. What the fuck is going on where he was saying that they're going to punish the guys who are on horses because they're strapping these Haitian immigrants?

Did he not even watch that? No. I mean, that's a crazy thing to say because isn't that defamatory? It is, you know, on planet Earth it is. Because they did not hit those guys with straps. Like he was pretending that they were whipping these guys. That's not true.

No, it's not true. They use what are called split reins. It's a simple thing. I've been riding horses since I was a little kid. And what we're getting now is we're getting policy made by people in Washington, D.C. who have no idea what a horse looks like, right? And they saw this picture. They leapt to a conclusion. The optic, you know, from their perspective was awful, right? And okay, yeah, you look at that and you go, okay put it in context my thought when i see

that picture is i want to know what happened immediately before and what happened after but let me say something real quick it's impossible for him to be whipping him because he's grabbing him right look at his arm yeah no and that's also that is his arm right yeah and that's also a rain that's part of the race it's a rain but it's very clear that his hand is grabbing him and his other hand is up there. There's no hand to whip him. Right. It doesn't exist. But that doesn't matter.

That's not fact. You know that. Facts don't matter in Washington anymore. Facts don't matter anywhere. I just can't imagine that they don't matter when you're the actual president. It's one thing if you're CNN and you're just full of shit, but this is just the president of the United States saying that someone would be held accountable for strapping these people.

That's just a lie. They're taking the horses away from the border patrol. That's how stupid the world is now. Based on that, because the optic in their mind, again, it's not the reality it's it's the the narrative now that they can they can glom on to uh they can now make decisions such as taking away one of the most effective tools you know with the border patrol in that part of of the country is the horse right and now they're going to take it away. So you've got Jen Psaki up in Washington, D.C.,

proclaiming these things as if she's been an equestrian all her life and she understands exactly what she's talking about. What did she say? Well, that's exactly what she said, taking away the horses from the Border Patrol. Because of the optics that came from that? Oh, she didn't say because of the optic,

but she said because... It's too effective? Well. Oh, she didn't say because of the optic, but she said because. It's too effective? Well, no, they don't care. Again, it's not tied to any logical reason. That's the part that's so bizarre. It's not tied to because this happened, we're doing X. It's just because of this photo, literally. And now the media has walked the dog back a little bit, and they've said, okay, yeah, we get it.

Those are reins. That's not a whip, and so we understand. We shouldn't be chasing people. Split reins is that instead of a loop that goes from one side of the horse's mouth to the other, there's two separate strings. Exactly. Yeah. And so... Or pieces of leather or whatever it is. The reins are split.

Right. Exactly what it says. And so that's... Again, I keep going back to that one point, which is it doesn't really matter what the facts are anymore. As an example, today was – now I'm kind of bouncing around a little bit, but today was hearings up on the Hill. The Senate Armed Services Committee was holding hearings. So who did they have?

They had Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. They had CENTCOM Commander General McKenzie, great guy. They had the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley. So they all, to the last one, said, yes, we were advising the president that, you know, our advice is to maintain a small troop presence, minimum of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. And our belief was not that it would collapse as quickly as it did, but that it would collapse if you took those advisors, those troops out, that it would collapse maybe by fall, this fall. And yet you've got the president saying, I don't recall being told any of that. And that's OK now because nobody's questioning it. Nobody's saying, well, hold on.

How about some pushback? How about saying, what do you mean you don't recall? This is one of the most important decisions you've made or will be making. And you don't recall whether your senior top military advisors were telling you that in their advice, keep the troops in there for a period of time. And he's saying, I don't remember. And there's really no serious pushback. This whole hearing, if anybody wants to know what Washington, D.C. is like and how that city runs, I'd recommend maybe on Thursday watching some more of these hearings on the Afghanistan process. Because it's just on one hand, it's very depressing.

It's just a shit show. You've got the senators on the Armed Services Committee who have been there, who have been privy to all sorts of intelligence over the past few years, right? Now, sitting in a hearing to understand what happened, what went wrong with the Afghan withdrawal, and they're all acting as if, you know, they could be surprised by this. withdrawal. And they're all acting as if, you know, they could be surprised by this. When these politicians have been sitting up at Capitol Hill, being briefed on this shit, having the opportunity to ask questions, doing all the things they should be doing.

But now because it's all theater, now they get to sit in a hearing in front of some of the senior military commanders and act as if they're a little bit surprised by all of this. And oh my God, how did it happen? How can we prevent it from happening again? Senator Gene Sheehan actually asked that. I think it was of Milley saying, well, how do we prevent this from happening again? Are you fucking kidding me? Happening again? Yeah. That's your question? Jesus Christ. Anyway, I tell you what, it's been a fascinating period of time. Let me ask you this. So the president has the ability to say whatever the, you know, like, so if someone advises him to leave 2,500 troops, he has the ability to say, I don't think so. No troops. Yes, yes, he does.

So he can take all that advice. And the military leaders are saying, look, we provided this advice. Right. That's a strange thing, right? That one man has the ability to make all these decisions. I mean, obviously this is what the president is, right? He's the commander in chief. But that one man has the ability to make these economic decisions, these decisions about healthcare, these decisions about taxes, these decisions about the military, these decisions about the future of the troops. I mean, there's even this discussion that they're throwing around about making it so troops that won't get vaccinated, they get dishonorably discharged.

Have you seen that? No. That's a new one on me. A discussion. Find out if that's true. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I don't even know if they can do that.

But there was a soldier, and she had made a video, and she is releasing this video explaining what's happening, that they're going to get discharged if they refuse to get vaccinated. I can't believe they would dishonorably discharge them. That would be a real fucking shock if that's what they were doing. See if that's true. It might have been exaggerated in an article for the headline, but I think that they're planning on doing something along those lines. Well, look, I think it does surprise people sometimes when they see the extent,

and if they were watching these hearings and understanding the information flow about Afghanistan look there was a lot of talk right and in the aftermath of this withdrawal clown show that you know what what happened who was advising who how did we miss certain pieces of intelligence and there's a lot to figure out there. But the idea that the president would sit there in his office with all these senior advisors around, and they would say, sir, here are your options, because that's always basically what they're doing. And theoretically, they are supposed to be strong enough to argue their point as strongly as possible, right? They're not there to just go along. So they all come in,

they say, we think you should be keeping troops in there. And the president then steps away. And now Milley, McKenzie, others, they all said that Biden listened very seriously to them. But there was a political decision here, right? That political decision was, we're getting the hell out. Now, the interesting thing is, is that Biden, he kind of wants to have it both ways, right? He wants to take credit for being brave and saying, we're getting the hell out, right? But then he also wants to blame the previous administration for the reason why he had to be getting the hell out, right? So he wants to blame the Doha agreement that Trump signed in February of 2020. And what was that?

Well, that was when the Trump administration made a deal with the Taliban in February of 2020, and basically it had conditions within that. And General Milley and McKenzie talked about those conditions, I think, today in their hearings, actually. There were seven conditions placed on the Taliban for this agreement to go forward. And there was a May withdrawal date. Now, the administration, the previous administration, people don't want to hear this shit, right, because they're so entrenched in their own camp. So people who are on the hard left, they're not going to want to hear the fact that the Doha Agreement was based on conditions, right? But the most senior military commanders today

reaffirmed that, yes, there were seven conditions for that agreement to follow through, for us to follow through. We had eight conditions for the U.S. And now, during the course of the discussions and the negotiations, and this whole agreement was based on a power sharing. The idea was we want to create an opportunity for the Taliban and the Afghan government. We want them all to come together and create a power sharing agreement. Well, you know, on one hand, you could argue and say that's never going to happen. Sounds crazy. Yeah, it sounds crazy.

But that's where they were. And you could also argue, and again, you know, because people are so entrenched, no one's want to give any credit to whether they want to give credit to Biden or they want to give credit to Trump or any Republican president or Democrat president. You know, the Trump administration did kind of broker the hard, heavy lift of saying we're getting the hell out. Right. There had been talk around the edges and previous administrations about how long would it be there, right? But the German administration did finally actually say, fuck it, let's get a negotiation, let's go and let's set a time to get the fuck out

after 20 years. Right or wrong. So they put that on the table. They set the table for that hardline withdrawal. But the Taliban never met those conditions. The only thing they did was not attack U.S. troops directly. But as Taliban never met those conditions. The only thing they did was not attack U.S. troops directly. But as Milley and McKenzie said today, they never met any of the other

conditions. So it had been explained to the Taliban that if that was the case and you don't meet these conditions, we're not going to leave in May. We're going to just keep pushing the withdrawal date further to the right. So why was the decision made to withdraw then? Well, look, in part, I think because I think everybody got behind the idea that we can't stay there forever because I think everybody understood that it just wasn't happening. They weren't buying what we were selling. They never have, right? And you don't want to be completely fatalistic all the time, but with Afghanistan, it's not a bad frame of reference to remember all the other times that things like this have failed. And so the idea that somehow we were going to build a stable pseudo-democratic government in Afghanistan

was always flawed. And there was never really any evidence to show that that was going to happen. And it was propped up. And I think nobody really wanted to tell the truth in positions of leadership, whether it was military or government or intel community. And so I think there was general agreement that, yeah, we got to get the fuck out. And then it came down to, well, how do we do that, right? And we faced some of the same problems that the old Soviets faced, getting the hell out of Afghanistan. But I think with this case, you know, part of it was we had pulled advisors off the Afghan units, you know, two, three years ago, right? That had been a process. So the withdrawal process had been going on for a number of years, you know, over the past decade or so,

you know, in a sense, right? We'd be drawing back, pulling out some resource, pulling out troops, lowering the troop numbers, putting more responsibility on contractors. And once you take the advisors out of the Afghan units, right, in a sense, you don't have really eyes and ears right inside the Afghan military. So you can have, you know, President Ghani or, you know, some bullshit Afghan commander just telling you whatever you want to hear. But you didn't have a lot of folks at ground level working with the troops saying, all right, this shit's not going to hold, right? Particularly after the Doha agreement, right? Once I think that the Doha agreement was made, I think the writing's on the wall and even the Afghan military could see it, right? And they could read it and they could say, okay, this shit's not going to happen. We're not going to

keep getting money. We're not going to keep getting advisors. And we're not going to happen. We're not going to keep getting money. We're not going to keep getting advisors. And we're not going to get the air support that is really the only thing that keeps us in power. So, you know, at some point, over a period of a few years, we were degrading our own ability to actually understand just how bad it was getting, right? And so so then it became a logistical exercise you got to move personnel and you got to move material out of the country and that's where you could argue it all kind of went sideways well they left behind how much shit a lot of shit a lot of shit crazy shit right no we left we left yes yeah hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars as a conservative estimate. Why? That's a conservative estimate. Well, because, partly because you could argue that

some of the material was decommissioned. Some of the heavier platforms were made non-functioning. Okay, fine. I don't know, to answer the question, I don't know why the military wouldn't have moved more of the gear, the light gear out there. In other words, the night vision devices, the weaponry, right? The small arms, ammunition.

Why not spend three or four months getting that gear the hell out? You don't have the troops that require them. So now you've got all this shit stored. Now the thought could have been that this is for the Afghan military. They're going to hold. But here's the thing, the interesting point that came out from General Milley and General McKenzie during these hearings is that they claim, they're stating, and I have no reason not to believe them, they're stating that the general consensus by the fall of 2020

was that without the troops in there, once you take the U.S. troops out and the money, then the government's going to collapse probably by fall of this year. And it took like three hours. Yeah, it took 11 days. Now, in a classic piece of Washington speak, I think it was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in answering a question said, no, we never saw any assessment that said that the government would collapse in 11 days. He's very specific, right? He's not saying in short order.

He's just saying 11. I didn't see one for 11 days. We had one for like two weeks. So that's just the shit that happens on the side. So they assumed the Afghan army eventually was not going to fight the Taliban. Yes. So what they're saying is we all, and look, the intel community, we've been talking about that for years. We knew all you had to do was study the Soviet papers during their time, their occupation in Afghanistan, to understand how we were likely going to replay that scenario. And we did.

So you could argue that what should have happened was years ago. We should have looked around and thought thought this is a bullshit exercise. It doesn't mean that the – and I think the military today, the senior commanders today and during this week, I think you'll see them make a huge effort to say first and foremost, the veterans and everyone who fought there and all the hardship, it wasn't in vain. I think they're going to focus on that. And they're going to say, because for two decades, we haven't been attacked on our home soil. And in a narrow definition, yes, that's why we went in. And then it kind of got blown up into this idea that we were going to create this bastion of democracy in Afghanistan. But it's been widely known forever that Afghanistan is insane.

Like, it's impossible to manage. Yeah. The Soviets couldn't handle it. You know, the whole area is incredibly mountainous. Like, it's very remote. It consists of these little clans that are run by warlords. is incredibly mountainous. Like, it's very remote. It consists of these little clans that are run by warlords. Like, it's not...

Like, Kabul is essentially the only real city, right? Yeah. Are there other cities there that are real cities? There are, but there are... They're still run like little fiefdoms. Fiefdom is a good word. I know, right? I like how you pulled that out.

Write that down. Write that one down. Fiefdom. Well, no, I can't because I don't that you pulled that out. Write that down. Write that one down. Fiefdom. Well, no, I can't because I don't know how to spell it. It's like something from The Hobbit. What is a fiefdom? Do you know what a fiefdom is, Jamie? I think.

Let me see what the spelling on a fiefdom. While we're at... F-E-E-F. While we're talking to you, did you find anything out about the dishonorable discharge thing? Yeah, so I had to dig through it. I found, starting like with this, it says the White, so I had to dig through it. I found, starting with this, it says the White House opposes a provision banning it. Oh, so they oppose a provision banning dishonorable discharge,

so they keep it open, so it's possible. Yeah, again, it hasn't happened yet, and then digging through themilitary.com, I think, was the best, this one, yeah. So here's a good explanation, I think. Troops who refuse to be inoculated may not be Nessa's may not necessarily face dishonorable discharge or even Separation according to Kirby, but I don't like that word may not necessarily. I don't like that phrasing Yeah, that's that's that's definitely Washington phrase

You know the Pentagon has repeatedly stopped short of saying it will boot troops for refusing the shot. Commanders will have a range of options that stop short of punishment under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Kirby said. The services will also allow

religious exemptions to the vaccine. But that's a weird one. We couldn't, like, everybody say I got a religious exemption? Look at this. Actually, there's a really

good quote down here. When an individual declines to take a mandatory vaccine, they will be given an opportunity to talk to both their medical providers as well as their own chain of command. Yeah, you know how excited they're going to be to go and talk to their own chain of command so that they can fully understand the decision they are making. That sounds like going in and

talking to a high-value target. I want you to fully understand the decision you're making right here. Go. Yeah. Yeah, that's – look, boy, talk about a pivot, but we'll go from Afghanistan to the COVID thing. Yeah, I just wondered while we were talking to Jamie, I just wanted to clear it up. Yeah, no, that's – but there's a fiefdom. Oh, fiefdom. Oh, wait a second. Look, see? Hmm.

I'm going to put that down. An organization or department over which one dominant person or group exercises control the Duke's fiefdom Had been greatly expanded as a reward for his dutiful military service on behalf of the king as it should have been He should have been because he was a fine fine lad so the point is that Afghanistan is You can't really control it. It's incredibly rugged terrain. You're not going to get vehicles in there, right? It's mostly mountainous areas, unless you're flying helicopters. If you don't have air support, and that's really why this fell down. And the idea, there's been a lot of talk about why did we close Bagram? Why did they close the air base

before they'd finished this whole process, right? So I guess one of the things is this is very layered. And again, as with just about everything else that goes on in the world today, because everybody's got like an attention deficit disorder, nobody takes the time to look at all the various layers, right? So this fell down, as you said before, it fell into teams, right? So you're either pro-Biden or you're not, right? You're either pro-vaccine or you're not. And that's not the case, right? There's all sorts of ground in between those two positions. And so I think with Bagram, the idea was, in a sense, that wasn't there necessarily because that's some Bagram air base is like 30 miles away from the U.S. embassy in Kabul. And so would that have been an effective departure point for all the people we were looking to move out during the withdrawal?

Okay. You could argue it would be helpful, right? But it wasn't right there. And that's our point. Well, Hamid Karzai Airport was right there. It was much more immediate. We need to secure that. And by the way, if we're going to keep Bagram open, we needed, you know, upwards of 5,000 or 6,000 troops to secure it. But it all comes back to this idea that, you know, the agreement with the Taliban, because both sides are using it, right, in sort of an effort to cover their own ass.

So the Democrats are using it because, well, we were boxed in. We had no choice. Look, Trump made a bad deal, right? And so we had to go with it, right? Because if we didn't go with it, the Taliban would start attacking us again. Well, yeah, no shit, right? But there you go. And the Republicans are using it by saying there were conditions built into the agreement, and you didn't have to honor the agreement. Now, that would have meant we would have had to probably put more troops in to secure the people that we already had there, the advisors that were there. So it's a morass. And over top of all that is this general feeling I think that most people had that it was time to

leave. So again, it's the process of leaving. It wasn't the decision to leave. It was the process of how you executed that. And Bagram was kind of a central point in that because if you could maintain air cover for the Afghan military, right, during the point when you're withdrawing, you can prevent the Taliban from doing what they did, which was that immediate, you know, overrun of the country. They couldn't do it with our air support, without our air support, I mean. So the questions that someone would have on the outside is, when this happened, did this strengthen the Taliban? And did it strengthen not just their military position, because they have all these new weapons and everything, but did it also strengthen morale? Because they now force the Americans out and beat them and then punished all of the allies that worked with the Americans, which is devastating because you got to think now people are going to be way more reluctant to cooperate with Americans and help them in a similar situation because we kind of abandoned all those people that were translators, all those people that there was a lot that got left behind, right?

Yeah, there were. Some got rescued. Yeah, they're claiming, I think, look, what's happening is they're trying to say, look, the withdrawal process was a huge success. And I think what they said, yeah, oh, yeah. Well, President Biden said this was an extraordinary success, the whole process. Now, I think strategically, you could argue that it's not a success. You know, from a logistical operation, did they lift a lot of people out of the country in a short order of time? Yes. But was it chaotic? Absolutely.

Did things happen that shouldn't have had to happen? Yes. So I think it's really hard to define this as a success. But, you know, in their position, they got to spin it the best they can. But if you think about what you were just saying, in a small sense, it's tough enough. If I'm in Afghanistan and I'm trying to develop sources inside the country while I'm there that can tell me about Taliban movement. Taliban movement, right? So I'm trying to convince some tribal elder somewhere, for whatever reason, maybe his kid was killed by the Taliban, right? Maybe the Taliban, you know, took his underage daughter into marriage. Maybe they denied him medical care, whatever. You're always looking for, it doesn't matter whether it's this case or whether you're recruiting anybody, you're always looking for a point of weakness, right? In a sense, it sounds wrong, but you're looking for leverage. And so I'm trying to convince this person to work with me and provide

me with intelligence. Well, now that's counter to his best interest in a sense, right? Because he's probably going to think, okay, well, if I get found out, I'm getting whacked. So it's not going to end well for me. Now, imagine trying to do that now when you don't have a presence on the ground. You still need that insight. You still need those people reporting to you. But now you've just gotten off the X and left some people there, and you've bugged out. And they look at this and go, well, what the hell is now is my incentive for helping the Americans, providing them. And this feeds into – I'm jumping all over the fucking place.

This feeds into this talk now that's become the favorite phrase in Washington of over the horizon capability, which means conducting operations from a distance because you don't have resources within that area of operations. you don't have resources within that area of operations. So you're over the horizon, but you're going to dip in occasionally whenever you need to and carry out some type of operation. And so, yeah, to answer your question, it makes it very, very difficult. Morale was already not good. Once the Doha Agreement, I think, was signed, and again, look, I think the Doha Agreement, somebody had to finally memorialize the idea that we were getting the fuck out of Afghanistan, right? Right. And so they did. Is it a good thing that we got out of Afghanistan?

In a very pragmatic sense, yes. Yeah. Because I don't know what the hell we were doing there. I mean, the idea was, fine, we go in initially and we punish those who were responsible for 9-11. And we tell them, don't let this happen again. And then we should have gotten the hell out, right? And avoided the last 20 years because we'd had a recent case study with the Russians. We knew from what the Russians did there, you know, how it could end and how it likely could end. And yet we thought,

because, you know, there's always hubris involved, we thought we're going to do better. Look, the Taliban had no place to go when the Russians were there, right? So they're just going to wait it out. It's like Vietnam. The Viet Cong had nowhere to go. They're going to wait, right? They know we're rolling troops out there on a six or eight or 12-month deployment. They're going to go home, and they want to get home. These people have no place to go. Taliban, again, same thing this time around. So I don't know why anybody should be surprised about the overall result. But yes, I do think it was time to go. I think it was time to go quite some time ago.

That was very poetic. But anyway, yeah, it's just nobody spoke the truth in Washington about the situation in Afghanistan because nobody wanted to hear it, right? And they felt that it wasn't politically a good move. And so nobody wanted to stand up because they're all so fucking worried about their jobs and say, this is my opinion, so what it's worth, and say the tough things about the situation there. Either because they felt like if I say something negative about what we're doing in Afghanistan, it's disrespecting the troops, which it's not, right? Or, you know, I'll probably get drummed out of my, you know, nice political position, right? So, yeah, that's... And when you watch hearings that take place in Washington, D.C., the whole thing is about just finding somebody to

blame other than your own self or your party. And it seems like no one's going to get blamed. No one's going to get blamed. No. No. That would mean that there would be accountability. And I don't think... I don't know when that happened last in Washington, D.C. So how do you think they could have pulled out and made it less of a clusterfuck?

Well, I think they have to, look, they pulled the advisors out. There were two parts to this, right? There's the, whatever they call it, the retrograde, right? And drawing down the troops, right? And the troops that we had there, right? The 2,500 were basically to train, advise, and assist. That's

very, very important, right, for the presence. It almost becomes, at that troop level, almost becomes an optic. But that's still important to boost the ability of the Afghan military to hold their shit together. And this 2,500 was the one that they had advised that they leave behind. Yeah. What was the total amount of troops that were there before we pulled out? It was coming down. It was before, I think before the inauguration, we were probably in the 5,000 to 4,000 range. We had probably 3,000 or so paramilitary troops there from the agency. We probably had, I don't know how many contractors, a few thousand more contractors. So it was a significant, at that point, it was a significant presence, but it was a significant drawdown from even a couple of years ago, right? So again, the drawdown had been happening, right?

And if you look at... And so you had the retrograde of the military operation, and then you had this evacuation, right, or this withdrawal of all the, you know, diplomatic personnel, other Americans there, the SIVs, all of those people. And that you could consider as sort of a separate operation. And that's the withdrawal part of the whole thing that took place that seemed so chaotic and was, right? But the military also, you know, look, the military is very good at planning a variety of scenarios, right? So, it's not like they didn't think there's a chance this whole thing goes to shit, right? And so, they pre-positioned troops. They had a lot of, you know, air assets available, right? But again, at a certain point, you could think of it in terms of a UPS operation,

right? In this case, you're moving people and you're moving stuff, right? And I just think that we completely botched the job of understanding how shitty the government and military capability was there, right? And that's, that, you know, is down to bad intelligence. It's down to political maneuvering in Washington and just a desire to get the hell out and maybe ignoring assessments. Because whether you're saying your assessment is, as General McKenzie and General Miller are saying, is that, you know, by the end of 2020, General Miller are saying, is that by the end of 2020, they were basically saying, advising the president and his team that things could fall to shit in a matter of months, right? Or whether you're saying things could fall to shit in a

matter of a couple of weeks, you have to plan for the worst case scenario. That's your job. So their default position should have been, this thing's going to collapse in a couple hours. And they didn't do that. And I'm not quite sure why, but I don't suspect we're ever going to get full transparency on this because, again, it's not the way Washington works. Do you get concerned when you see all this sort of woke ideology making its way into the military? I know you've seen these. Oh, yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I got a lot of calls about the CIA recruitment video.

Yeah, what the fuck was that? Explain that to me. Video yeah, what the fuck was that? Explain that yeah, that was Like somebody Somebody decided that the right messaging for trying to improve recruitment ability For the agency and mind you the agency isn't lacking in candidates. We have a lot of people applying for the agency

but at some point someone thought the right message was to just go all out on the, whatever you want to call it, the woke issue and the inclusion. And so they had an individual who basically spent her time talking while she said she didn't want to be identified in such a manner or in such a manner that she then proceeded to identify herself in these various, you know, categories. Right. And I just think somebody should have test marketed that message inside the agency first before they decided to run with it because they got, you know, they took a lot of heat, you know, and people just thought it was ridiculous. But I get what they're doing. You know, you have to have, from an operational perspective, you know, set aside all the woke issues and the desire to be inclusive and everything, just from an operational perspective, set aside all the woke issues and the desire to

be inclusive and everything, just from an operational perspective. You want an Intel service that is remarkably diverse because you're operating all over the world. And you don't want everybody to have the same mindset and the same ideas and sitting around a table dealing with a potential problem because they're all going to throw the same idea at it right right so you want a variety of of personalities and backgrounds and everything but i just think that they you know they could have test marketed that one a little better but it's not just about the agency too there was there was another one that was uh who was the person that was put in charge of like there was a someone who was put in charge of like there was a Someone who was put in charge of inclusiveness and diversity in the military right? Yeah, isn't there? Yeah, and people like hey, what the fuck is this about you're this is all woke talk

when woke talk Invades the military like well, yeah, well, yeah me is like well-intentioned people that have bought into a cult. That's what a lot of it is. You know, it's like well-intentioned. Like, if you look at that, like, we should celebrate all of our differences, and we should have people that feel comfortable in all walks of life, whether it's gay, straight, bi, trans, black, white, Mexican, Asian, everyone should be included and it should be a meritocracy based on your performance and you should look

at all these factors that make this United States a wonderful place with all these different kinds of human beings and we should celebrate that. But it's not just that. It's highlighting that to the point of that being the primary concern the primary concern being inclusiveness and diversity and highlighting these various minority groups yeah highlighting them to the point where you're thinking about that more you're thinking about anything else operational effectiveness or capability experience, actual qualities.

And you've seen that in corporations are running into this problem where they have to have a certain amount of people, regardless of their qualifications, that fit these certain criterias. And people are going, well, this is not good for our overall bottom line. This is not good for the machine that we're running. What you're doing is you're doing something that's good for your optics right but you could perhaps hire someone who is lesser qualified but has these very specific characteristics that you think will appeal to the woke crowd the problem with that is the woke crowd is never satisfied oh no they will keep pushing left

to the end of time until we're in a communist shithole. They're not going to stop. I think some people miss that sometimes. You're never, ever, ever, no matter who you are and what your thought process is and what you believe, you're never going to be righteous enough

for the mob. You're never pure enough for the mob. Thank you. And that is absolutely true. 100%. Yeah. And I think everybody, no matter where you are in that political spectrum and what your beliefs are, you might want to keep that in mind. Yeah, because it's not, they're not really, you know, the whole idea is that this is the, they're about kindness and consideration. That's horseshit. They're about control and they're, they're using kindness and consideration, inclusiveness, all these things as talking points to allow them to exercise control this is an ideology it's a cult it really is it's a weird one it's a weird one because it's

sort of embedded itself in our universities and then now it's made its way into corporations and when i see it in the military i get very fucking concerned because my my concern is how do we know that this shit isn't? Manipulated and put into there by foreign Governments by foreign intelligence agencies. I'm sure you've seen that video from did you ever see the video from the KGB? There was a guy from the KGB in the 1980s. It was talking about the plan to destroy America Have you seen that video? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. It's a wild video. Should we play it? Yeah. Do you know the video, Jamie? If it's still up and running. Play a little bit of this. This is KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov's warning to America. Let's listen to some of this....before about ideological subversion. That is a phrase that I'm afraid some Americans don't fully understand.

When the Soviets used the phrase ideological subversion, what do they mean by it? Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate, overt, and open. You can see it with your own eyes. All you have to do, all American mass media has to do, is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes, and they can see it. There's no mystery. There's nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage intelligence gathering looks more romantic. It sells more deodorants through the advertising, probably. That's why Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond type of thrillers. But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion and opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion or active measures,

in the language of the KGB, or psychological warfare. or psychological warfare what it basically means is to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves their families their community and their country it's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided in four basic stages. The first one being demoralization. It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years which requires to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism,

American patriotism. The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the 60s, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, educational system. You are stuck with them. You cannot get rid of them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern.

You cannot change their mind. Even if you expose them to authentic information... ...even if you prove that white is white and black is black... ...you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words, these people, the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To get rid of society of these people, you need another 20 or 15 years to educate a new generation of patriotically minded and common sense people who would be acting in favor and in the interests of the United States society. And yet these people who have been programmed and, as you say, in place and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet concept, these are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?

Most of them, yes. Simply because the psychological shock, when they will see in future what the beautiful society of equality and social justice means in practice, obviously they will revolt. They will be very unhappy, frustrated people. And the Marxist-Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. Obviously, they will join the links of dissenters, dissidents.

Unlike in present United States, there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist-Leninist America. Here you can get popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy rich like Jane Fonda for being dissident, for criticizing your Pentagon. In future, these people will be simply squashed like cockroaches. Nobody is going to pay them nothing. We're seeing this happen right now. I mean, this goes on. this is a 13-minute video the title of it is KGB defector Yuri bezmenov warning to America you should watch it. It's on YouTube It's fucking wild and it's so accurate. It is exactly what's happening This guy was talking about it in the 1980s. When was it? In the 1990s. 29 years ago.

2013, so. Yeah, but that's when it was posted. I don't believe it's from that. I believe it's from the 1980s. Can you scroll down and see if it says? It didn't say. I was looking. Maybe in the comments.

Desmonov. I'm trying to think of. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. See, it says 29 years ago he said it. So, yeah, what is that? What's 29 years ago? I mean, it doesn't matter. He could be talking in –

82? 82 if it's – or 84. 84. Yeah, I think it's 84. He could be talking in the 1950s. But it says 29 years ago from 2013. Yeah, 84. 85.

85. Okay, so imagine how accurate that is. Imagine that this guy – first of all, he's talking about social justice back then. That was a term that really didn't make its way into the vernacular of the American public until about 10, 15 years ago. I mean, when you really started hearing social justice as a common term, like when was that? Well, that was even more recent than 10 or 15 years ago. Probably, right? For most people, yeah. Let's just say 10. Yeah. Common term like when was that but that was even more recent than than 10 or 15 years ago probably right people Yeah, let's say just say 10. Yeah, so this is like we've resisted as long as we can

But we're fucked, you know, I was watching this video on my favorite Twitter channel libs of tik-tok Because it is insane some of these fucking kids that are coming up through these universities that are saying these buzzwords and talking points as if they make sense, and they're talking about the destruction of the American civilization, like the destruction of the American country, that it needs to happen in order for people to be fair and free. And I'm like, and replace with what? Yeah. And I'm like, and replace with what? This is the thing. It's like you have these shallow-minded, very narrow perspectives of what they would like to accomplish with no view whatsoever of what the future looks like. Whereas this guy, this KGB defector, is talking about this very long game that the KGB was playing with the United States. Yeah. And they don't, you know, they're not the only ones,

right? The Chinese intel services is actually much more patient than the Russians even. But what he's talking about, what Besmanov's talking about in terms of active measures, you know, we might call, in the US, we might call covert action campaign. It really is. Now, he's lowballing the amount of resource they spend on actual Intel operations and other things. But he's making a very important point, which is from their perspective, you get more bang for your buck from the active measures campaigns. And we've been doing, you know, look, every Intel service that's worth its weight is in a, doing the same thing. You could argue that- How do we do it? What are we doing with China? Voice of America as an example, right? Fast and the Furious 9, is that what they're doing with

that? Oh Soviet Union. But we've... Look, what he's saying there all those years ago, all you have to do is look at the way that the misinformation campaigns have been going, that the Russians have been working on during the past six years, five years, right? Where, in part, one of the things they're doing is, to your earlier point, they're using sort of our woke culture, right? And they're turning it into

a wedge, right? And so they understand that if you can create chaos or ratchet up the pressure, whether it's racism or sort of the divide between the right and the left, whatever it may be, that's their advantage. And so that's what they do. They start out by saying, how do we influence public opinion? And just like a marketing firm, they do all of the things that you would think. They study, they do all the analysis of how do you shift an audience even five or six degrees to one side or the other of

an argument, right? And then you multiply that unlike a marketing campaign, which is looking to get returns for its shareholders over the course of the next year or the next couple of quarters because they want to sell more Coke or whatever they're doing. As you pointed out, they're talking about 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, right? So that in part makes it even more effective. It's nothing new. The Russians have been doing this. They were doing it during World War II, right? And so it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, but people don't see it when it's

right in front of them, right? They just read their Twitter feed or they read something on YouTube or they read something on Instagram and they take it at face value and it just inflames them a little bit further, right? And it confirms, you know, what they, because look, this thing says it. Nobody does the research. Nobody wants to go two or three or four steps

to figure out how did this thing originate? Where's this from, right? Who's saying this? And- Are we being manipulated? We're being manipulated. Absolutely. And again, it's not just the Russians. The Chinese are engaged in the same game. They understand if you can create dissent within the US, and everything that was being done in the last election was designed to create distrust of the election system, whether it's from the right or the left, right? Ultimately,

do they give a fuck who wins? Not really. They just want to create the chaos and the distrust of the system. And that is important from their end game. That's what they're really striving for. It's not, it's, you know, so, and we don't, again, we don't see it because it's staring us in the face and we can't get our noses out of our phones and we believe whatever is put in front of us and everybody gets further and further siloed into their own opinion and then you got nothing. It's also there's so much emphasis put on boogeyman, right? The boogeyman of Donald Trump. He's the boogeyman. He's bad.

This is what the problem is. And ignore it like the Clinton- russia collusion story right i don't know if you've been paying attention to russell brand yeah russell brand this is a crazy thing because russell brand who i love dearly i think he's awesome he's but he was this comedic actor and stand-up comedian and now he's become one of the most trusted journalists yeah in some weird way right like he's a guy like when he talks about stuff he's got his notes right he's very informed He's become one of the most trusted journalists in some weird way. Right? Like he's a guy, like when he talks about stuff, he's got his notes.

He's very informed. And he's discussing like what Clinton was saying that Trump was doing, they were actually doing. They were actually colluding with Russia. Like it's actually a real thing. Yeah. And nobody wants to revisit. with Russia. It's actually a real thing. Yeah, and nobody wants to revisit I mean, nobody has an interest in

revisiting anything because it doesn't, again, it doesn't verify their narrative. Nobody wants to go back and say, we might have made a mistake and so we don't want to and yes, you're right. People don't explain it well and so it becomes too complicated and I think, shit, I got to cook dinner or I got to do it. I'm not going to bother. I just want to read this top line, you know, two or three sentences

and then that's my opinion. Yeah, it's like, yeah, but Russell Brandt, good point. It's like, what's his name? Jeff Skunk Baxter from the Doobie Brothers has become like a noted military, you know, technology authority. Is he really? Yeah, he's been up on Capitol Hill. From the Doobie Brothers? From the Doobie Brothers, yeah.

I think I'm pretty sure I got my guy right. Been up on the Hill testifying about weapons and military development. Where did he get educated on this? I don't know. I don't know. Michael McDonald, maybe. I'm not sure. Maybe he was like a CIA plant all the time.

That's like one of the big theories about a lot of the stuff that happened during the 1960s, right? Because wasn't Jim Morrison's dad in the agency? of the big theories about a lot of the stuff that happened during the 1960s, right? Yeah. Because wasn't Jim Morrison's dad in the agency? I don't know about Jim Morrison. Stuart Copeland from the police, his dad was. Yeah? Yeah. I think it was like Jim Morrison's dad was some sort of intelligence operative.

Is that correct? Jim Morrison might have been as well. operative is that correct the Morrison my pen as well yeah according to that his father was the rear admiral in charge during the Gulf of Tonkin oh oh well well that's about as fuckery as fuckery gets right so now we figured out the Vietnam War yeah yeah oh god no but, but the Besmanoff thing, I think I'm glad you pulled that up because that is something that people should watch and take away something from because it does talk about the idea of manipulation. But again, what's going to happen is people who have a certain mindset are going to look at that and go, oh, that's bullshit. I mean, if they're on the hard left or they believe that Marxism is the way to go, you're not going to ever change their mind. Just like somebody on the hard, hard right is not going to change their mind.

And so once again, you're left with a dwindling center. But speaking of weapons technology, the U.S. just tested a hypersonic weapon, and that's something to keep an eye on when people are thinking, where's all the money going? Next, I mean, it's really the top priority for the U.S. It's the top priority for Russia. It's the top priority for China. So anyway, the U.S. just the other day successfully tested a new, there you go, a new air-breathing hypersonic weapon. Mach 5 hypersonic missile. What does Mach 5 mean? That's about Mach 5.

Five times the speed of sound. It's about 3,800 and a change in terms of miles per hour. 3,800 some odd miles per hour. Five times the speed of sound. Yeah. Jesus. I know. And the whole idea is when people say, well, why is hypersonics?

Why is that important? It's because whoever develops this capability first on the planet basically has defeated all air defense systems, which in the past were always designed for ballistic missiles. missiles. And so it moves at such a rate that you've removed the reaction time. And it also can move in such an unpredictable fashion. A ballistic missile goes up and it comes down, and it's all in a certain pattern. And you can predict that. Do you see the numbers there? Yeah. A mile a second. Yeah. So you can imagine that coming. And you imagine having no time to react because you don't even know where it's coming from. And so basically that's why hypersonic weapons and the ability to counter them is really the top technology priority for the U.S.

And it's where a lot of, a lot of, we're talking about where money goes. It's where a lot of money goes. And because the Russians and the Chinese are busy, busy, busy trying to develop this, because whoever does it, again, it renders existing air defense systems useless which brings me to UFOs tell me what you know well because if I may I think there's some shit going down there is some shit going down and it's actually really interesting and this would be a perfect time for me to plug the second season of my science channel discovery network series black files declassified science channel black files Perfect time for me to plug the second season of my Science Channel Discovery Network series, Black Files Declassified.

Science Channel, Black Files Declassified, hosted by Mike Baker. Look at that handsome bastard. Look at that. Look at you. I now run a global intelligence and security firm. My experiences have given me unique insight and access to a secretive world. Each year, the U.S. government hides over 60 billion dollars in a black budget. Hidden away. Unseen. Unexplained. Holy smokes look at that. Look look look at the light.

Holy shit. The money funds classified programs, projects, operations, and tech developments. And each of these activities is a black file. Now, travel with me as we open up the black files. What you learn will change the way you think about our past and our future. Look at that. That looks very exciting, Mike. Everybody should be watching. They should. It's coming to you in the new year.

Are you going to tell people what's going on with UFOs? What was the thing with the red lights that shot up there? It's a drone swarm. It's a drone swarm. Let's just keep watching it. Put it on a continuous loop for the next hour. That drone swarm right there? Yeah, it's a drone swarm. How big are those drones?

They look tiny. They are tiny, and that's part of the... That's real? That's not like CGI? No, that's real. Show it again, John. There were 100 of those there. Oh, look at that.

Get that look on his face. So they just rise up. There's about 100 of those. They're all... What they're doing at that point is they're programmed. They're computer controlled. They're all what they're doing at that point is they're programmed, they're computer controlled. They're all going to a designated altitude and then they'll take off and they can fly in whatever pattern you end up putting them into. And these are weaponized drones?

Are they like armed? Those are not. Those are displaying abilities. Yeah, they could be surveillance drones. But you can weaponize them. And that's part of the concern in terms of where the battlefield could take us in the future. And, I mean, think about a drone swarm coming in on a high-level event, for instance, right? The ability to stop 100, 200 drones that are maneuvering.

Now, the goal, ultimately, is to get those to think on their own, right? So you'll have like a queen bee out there controlling a whole pack of these things. And with artificial intelligence, they can make decisions on the fly, right? They're not quite there yet, but they are to the point where you can program a swarm of these things to do a variety of tasks. And if you weaponize them, again, you can see where the problem lies in trying to stop that. And if you're responsible for security of a high-level target or individual or event. So it's a fascinating field. And the idea that, I mean, think about if you're in, pick a place.

We're not in Afghanistan anymore, apparently. We talked about that, I think. Serbia. If you're in Serbia or you're in Kabul or you're in Mogadishu or whatever, and you've got boots on the ground, but limited boots on the ground, the ability to throw out a drone swarm to do the recon of a facility, and depending on what those capabilities are and whether they've got FLIR or whatever they may be operating on to gather intelligence about what's ahead.

I mean, it gives you a tremendous advantage just from the recon, the surveillance point of view, much less that, you know, not even talking about the weaponized. And these small, they're very small. So what's the range in these things and what powers them? You know, that's where I look. What do I look like, a drone engineer? But it seems like a question that I would ask if I was hosting a television show. And I did.

And they didn't tell you? No, they did. You can get, depending on the size of the drone, you can get distances that would be not extensive. Right now you're not talking about a drone produced by Northrop or Boeing that's going to be up in the air for three days. You're talking about something that's going downrange maybe a couple of miles, right? And is up and active for maybe on a battery charge, maybe anywhere to 20 minutes, 30 minutes. But think about that Queen Bee up there. They can then go and get recharged, right?

You don't have to come back to wherever you're staging. Then get recharged in the air? Yeah, yeah. So you can come back, and you don't have to come back to the staging site. So it's like a refueling tanker. So what does it look like, this thing, the mothership that they fly to? Yeah, it's basically a mothership, yeah.

And they fly to and just stick onto it or something like that? Yeah, it's just a larger drone with more juice, more capability. And so it charges up. And, again, the goal for all of this is to ultimately get to artificial intelligence capability, right? to ultimately get to artificial intelligence capability, right? Whether they can get there any time in the near future is problematic. But the big question is who gets there first, right? Who gets there first.

And that's the case with just about everything nowadays, whether it's space and worrying about – space has already been weaponized. The idea of space in the 60s was it's a community of nations and we're all going to live together. That's bullshit, right? We're already up there worried about The idea of space in the 60s was it's a community of nations and we're all going to live together. That's bullshit. We're already up there worried about how do you take out the satellites or how do you approach a satellite covertly to maybe gather intel from a Chinese satellite that's up there or the Chinese going after one of our satellites. Space is weaponized at this point. Space is weaponized at this point. So, yes, everything that goes on is, in a sense, based on the competition.

Now, I'm not letting you off the hook with UFOs, but I want to get to this. While we're talking about China and artificial intelligence, Sagar from Breaking Points put up a video recently where he was talking about there was an AI company that sold 50% or 51% to China. And they, that China immediately repurposed the entire company and sort of kicked them out and renamed it. It's called something different. They have no recourse. And they now hold all of the artificial intelligence that this company had. This company thought they were going to work with them and make a bunch of money. And China just sort of took it over. Yeah. Because they had like a 51% control of it.

And now they're fucked because they changed the name of it. They're calling it Chinese technology. Sager did a way better job of explaining it than I can. Let's see if we can find that. But that's what's happened to a variety of companies that always seem to think that they can do business with the Chinese regime and come out on top. They get greedy, right? They think of all these billions of dollars they're going to make from this deal, and they start thinking about ski chalets and driving a Ferrari. And the next thing you know, they're, yeah no it's true and and and so whether it's

a pharmaceutical company thinking they're going to go over and somehow protect their R&D but build a facility over there yeah and suddenly you know or it's a software company that loses all their you know their coding it's it's always the same result it's amazing that they don't know that or that they're willing to listen to what the Chinese are selling them on the subject. Like, yeah, we love you. We're going to work with you. And then, boom, they just change the name, completely repurpose all the technology, say it's Chinese technology.

When Saga was explaining it, it's a stunning story. Have you found it yet? And it happens a lot more often and in some very pedestrian companies and sectors. But it's just emblematic of the Chinese understand and have understood for generations the lure of their market to the West. Everybody's wanted to get into that market, right? Whether insurance business or energy or pharmaceuticals or whatever it may be. Oh my God, I want to get, I got to get into that market. And they've understood that. And so they manipulate that. They use that as leverage and they never give a shit about sort of the end result where

you get screwed, right? It doesn't matter to them, right? Because they win in the end. where you get screwed right doesn't matter to them right because they win at the end in the end and just as with this case they end up with the with the technology or with the everything i guess that's it yes yes this is it give me some volume and play the place from the beginning this is pretty fucking all right sager what are you looking at well some of you may recall that in the video announcing crystal and i were going independent, I mentioned one of the reasons we wanted to do so was so we didn't just have to chase views, but so we could focus on more substantive issues that belie the news cycle and our economy. I specifically pointed to semiconductors. As you all know, one of my personal obsessions.

Because they are the electronic backbone of the new economy. He who controls semiconductors controls the future. Not quite true yet, but it will be in my opinion. And that's what I wanna take you on a tour of today. What are the most brazen views yet into the corporate battles of the future and a development which has immense implications for the future.

They're calling it the semiconductor heist of the century. It's dramatic, I know. But once you learn the details, you'll be as outraged and as afraid as I am. So the company in question is known as ARM. They are widely regarded as the most important semiconductor intellectual property firm. Their IP is in cars, it's in Amazon, cell phones, AI, everything. Pretty much everything. Intel, Semi Analysis, they point towards clearly an important company, right? Now, as we have learned with the car shortage, the PS5 shortage, and more,

the entire U.S. economy can grind to a halt without these things. Now, prior to 2016, ARM was a British-controlled company, but corporations are going to corporation. And in 2016, it was acquired by a Japanese firm, SoftBank. You probably know SoftBank from their storied roles in the drama behind WeWork and Uber, pouring Saudi cash into the startups to create the veneer of success, and eventually having the bottom fell out of both. Now, SoftBank's plan to make ARM even more money is the same thing that they did with Uber. They wanted them to enter the Chinese market. So in their infinite wisdom, they created a joint venture.

It was called ARM Holdings. And they sold 51% to Chinese investors for $775 million. That, per Semi analysis, is a paltry sum. But it highlights what it means to do business in China. There's no such thing as independent business there. All Western businesses have to have Chinese partners. They are controlled at the behest of the Chinese state. And this is where things get really crazy. The Chinese branch of ARM, it holds much of ARM's intellectual property

and designs for the next decade. Well, it's basically been stolen now by the Chinese with zero recourse. I'm really serious. The details are crazy, and they highlight exactly why letting our most valuable technology go to China in the first place and why business entanglements there are untenable in the long run. In 2020, ARM and a bunch of investors found that the head of their China operation was using his control of the company to attract investments to his other firm. So, by vote of seven to one at the board level, they decided to boot him. There's just one problem. That CEO's name is on the Chinese license.

So despite the fact that the company wants him gone, Alan Wu, he's not going anywhere because he controls the license. So instead, under Chinese law, he's in control. He fired executives who didn't side with him. He now has security that has kept representatives from his parent company out of the building. And now he's just taking it over. So this culminated this week when ARM China just held an event where they declared their independence. They have a new name.

Now they say they are China's largest CPU IP supplier. That is now independently operated as as a Chinese owned company. Now, critically, the technology that they preview and claim is their own, but really is just the IP and resources of its old company is now being used to deploy billions of cameras across China to fulfill their dream of a fully integrated technological surveillance state. Social credit scores everywhere. Everywhere you go is tracked, your travel is restricted, and the state knows everything about everyone all the way down to the DNA level.

So that's it. It's over. They control the company now. As semiconductor people are referring to it, it really is the heist of the century. So, we should just first of all shout out to Crystal and Sagar from Breaking Points. It's one of the best fucking shows.

Oh, you got cigars. Look at you. You come with gifts. Literally one of the best shows that you can watch on the news and get an independent, real, objective perspective because they're honest and not controlled by anybody. And they cover stories like this that you're just not getting from anywhere else. And that, to me, is a terrifying story. And he's absolutely right.

And although the thing that he showed there, which was the one in five North American companies, you know, claim that they had IP stolen the past year is so fucking low.

Is it really? It's, and it said like seven out of 23 companies, I think it just said, further down that point said, seven out of 23 companies said they'd had IP stolen over the past decade. Again, it's ridiculous. Here's the honest guy's truth.

If you take a company over there and you build facilities, you are giving up intellectual property. Maybe not all of it, but they're going to take what they can get their hands on. And so that number, when it says one out of five, should probably be five out of five. It should be 23 out of 23. And we do this all the time. We underestimate the numbers. And I just, I don't know what it is about this lack of desire to call them out for what they do. And part of it is, I get it if you're running a business and you've got facilities over there, you've got personnel, you've got investment over there. Okay, fine. I get it. I get why you're being somewhat cautious. But the reality is that until we start really being serious with them, and even then, I'm going to stop right there because nothing's going to change their behavior.

The Chinese regime is what it is. And certainly under Xi, who has strengthened his position immensely over the past few years, they're not changing. So how do they allow them to do business like this? How is there no sort of oversight? Such a critical aspect of technology, right? These semiconductors, this is a huge issue. And for the Chinese to have control of this intellectual property that was developed over here simply because somebody underestimated their ability to commit fuckery.

How does that so simple... I mean, that seems like such a simple takeover that they did that. Yeah. In part, you get... Part, there's bad advice. In part, there's greed. Right? I mean, it's, oh my God, we get $770 million. There's no due diligence. There's poor due diligence. That bad advice and part this greed. Right. I mean, it's, you know, oh, my God, we get seven hundred seventy million. There's no due diligence. There's poor due diligence. That's a big part of it.

I know that's a lot of money. Yeah, but it's not a lot of money. If you're talking about the whole world and control of the semiconductor market and the control that they're going to be able to have using their surveillance state and their social credit score and how that's going to impact China. state and their social credit score and how that's going to impact China. No, it's not. And you're absolutely right. It's not a lot of money. But in the scheme of things, people get excited. We're going to make this deal. This thing's going to get done. Like you said, we're all going to get our new boats and our ski chalet, and it's going to be fantastic. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I've seen, you know, I've got a company that does, you know, one of the things we do is a lot of due diligence.

And with China, I've seen a lot of bad due diligence done over the years. We'll get reports saying, well, this is what we got two years ago. You know, what can we learn now about the company and its principles? And you have to really dig. When you're talking about looking at a potential investment or personnel there, whatever it may be, you got to just keep digging because the first batch of information you see is usually not correct or it's obfuscated or there's a second set of books somewhere or a third set of books. And people

are keen to get an investment done, right? Usually when you're talking about an investment, the overall goal is to make it happen. It's not to find a reason to shelve it, right? So that part of it makes sense, I guess, in a way. I don't know. It does make sense in a way, but do we have the way that China can do this and the way that China can take over a business simply by investing in it and pretending to be in partnership with them. But then do they, everything they do is connected completely to the Chinese communist party,

right? So there's really, you're just doing business with the Chinese communist party. You're pretending that you're doing business with another corporation. Yes. And some entities there are more state-owned than others, right? Really? It varies? Yeah, but that's a nuanced variation, right? So you have levels, I guess you could say, of Chinese state interest in a particular business or a sector. And so – but ultimately, no.

You never have complete control in a commercial sense. So at some point, the Chinese state is always going to have the ability to override any business decision that's being made. But to some degree, you have different levels of interest, again, based on what that interest, particularly technology, AI, anything in engineering, that's going to be of more interest than sort of straight up manufacturing. It seems to me, and this is a horrible thing to say, but there's an advantage that they have that's almost unstoppable in being connected to the government that we just simply don't have and they can take advantage of the fact that people are greedy right and people do look at this and go hey this is a great score for us here we're going to make 500 and whatever

million dollars let's get on board yeah like wouldn't it be this is where it's going to sound fucked up wouldn't it be advantageous is where it's going to sound fucked up, wouldn't it be advantageous for us to have a similar relationship with corporations when these corporations want to make deals with other countries? Again, I'm not advocating that the government get involved in corporations, but what I'm saying is they're at a huge disadvantage if the Chinese Communist Party is always involved in deals and in all the corporations and they're inexorably connected to these corporations. If we're not, and you let some knuckleheads who are thinking about getting that house

in Tahoe, and they are thinking about getting a private jet, and they're thinking about all that money and not the ramifications on the global market, the ramifications on the surveillance state, how it's going to impact. They're allowing this intellectual property to get taken away from them. Yeah, you're talking about, is it a level playing field for countries coming in, companies coming in from other places? And the answer is honestly, no, it's a completely unlevel playing field in China. And they don't really try to hide that fact. Right. Unlike some places. I mean, look, you can go to to other countries, France or wherever you may go. And you could argue that because the government views part of their responsibility as bolstering their commercial sector, right? And, you know, okay, you can argue, you know, the US, everybody wants, every country wants their commercial,

you know, industries to do well. But France or a variety of other countries around the globe, they have sort of a much more connected line between government, intel services, other parts of their government to promote and protect and help bolster their commercial businesses, right? So you get an Airbus situation like in France. And that is not necessarily uncommon. Here in the US, we have a firewall built up so that the idea is we don't want to, if you gather Intel, that could benefit a company in a particular sector. Well, you don't provide that to the company because that gives them an advantage over other businesses and that's counter to the idea of a free market system. Right. So, and I know people listening to God, oh, that's bullshit. But it's the way it actually works, right? And it's very frustrating to some folks in the intel community and within the government that we always are at a disadvantage oftentimes

in doing business, in pitching for business overseas, whether it's licensing, whether it's in the energy business, whatever it may be. And China being the primary example of a place where you walk in and you should understand immediately that you're at a disadvantage when you're dealing with the Chinese system, the Chinese regime. It's just the way they put it together and their theft of intellectual property, their economic espionage, everything is designed to get them to the top of the food chain. That's all. That's their rightful place as far as the regime's concerned. Everything. Yeah. And that's where they're going. I mean, honest to God, if we're not careful, if we're not... And you could argue the horse has left the barn because... That's what I'm worried about.

Yeah. And you're right to be worried because we're not talking about something... People imagine that because the previous administration under Trump, because they banged on about China, you know, over the past four years, that somehow it's a new problem. And, you know, we've talked about this before. It's not. It's been going on for generations. But it seemed like Trump was unusually cautious about it and highlighting it in a way that other administrations hadn't highlighted it. Yeah, I think that's, yeah, definitely. We talked about it more during the previous administration and in more realistic terms, in terms of the Chinese looking to hose us in a variety of markets and places and ways that they were doing it

and highlighting the idea of theft of intellectual property. It was a much more straightforward conversation. And I think that's a very good thing. I'd like to think that the current administration under President Biden is going to continue with that. But again, do I think that sanctions or do I think that a hard line is going to impact the regime enough to change their ways? And suddenly they're going to, I mean, like under President Obama, the idea was, well, we've talked with them. They're not going to engage in theft of intellectual property. They're not going to engage in cyber shenanigans. Well, that didn't work out. So I don't know that there's anything that's going to alter their view because in their mind, it's a strategic decision. It's how they're getting to the top

of the food chain. And it seems like at this point in time, this is what scares me, that one of the only ways we may be able to keep up is to implement the same sort of strategy that they're doing. That's what scares me, that the government here gets intertwined with corporations, that a social credit score here gets employed, that we start doing some of the same things that they're doing in order to keep up. Yeah. Is that real? I don't think, well, never say never, but at least for the time being, it really runs counter. Again, you can only base it on what you've seen in your own experiences. And when I talk about this firewall that exists between the government and the commercial sector in terms of

promoting and helping and advising and providing support, it exists, right? And I don't know that we're... It's probably not going to change, you know, regardless of what administration comes in. It just seems like it's ingrained in the system at this point. And it always means we're going to be at a disadvantage. It always means that we're, to some degree, in a variety of places around the world operating on an unlevel playing field. But that's fine. We just got to work harder. I mean, that's just my opinion for what that's worth. We got to work harder.

What does that mean, though? That sounds like a platitude. You know, that sounds like sort of a- It does sound like a platitude. You know? We got to work harder. Okay. We'll fix that. Well, it just means our-

Go elbow grease. Our technology has to be better. Our product has to be better. What we're selling has to be better. What our intelligence that we collect as a company, right? I mean, look, companies spend a great... I know this because we work for a lot of companies. We mean your security firm. My firm, yeah. It's an Intel security operation, Portman Square Group. Look at that. I just promoted it. So Portman Square Group is a business that's been doing this for a long time.

I changed the name some time ago when I bought the company back from the previous investors. We work with a lot of companies that have very good, very capable in-house resources to gather information related to risk and operational awareness on the ground and maybe they're going to build a new facility somewhere. So they spend a lot of time trying to get that right and trying to understand. But I will say this also, when they've got a potential investment coming or the opportunity to get into a market or whatever, the tendency again is always to make it happen. It's not a happy day when you present information that says, this is a bad investment, you shouldn't do this, or this is shaky, or here's

the problems you're going to deal with. Because there's a lot of people who are invested in making something happen and growing the business or doing something. And so occasionally, the companies that do really well overseas are the ones that approach it very pragmatically and say, yeah, you know, if this looks bad, then we're going to pivot and we're going to find something else that looks better. And they don't ignore it. But a lot of companies tend to ignore sometimes good advice. And that gets them into a situation where then they got to, at the end of the day, reverse engineer and figure out how they got fucked. the end of the day reverse engineer and figure out how they got fucked but yeah um the social credit score thing freaks me the fuck out because i see vaccine passports and the these type of deals as being a step towards this idea um the idea that you have to keep something whether it's

an app on your phone that you need at all times. That freaks me out. And there was a discussion recently that was in Yahoo News, I believe I saw it, where they were talking about how your browsing history may affect your credit. That your credit is not just going to be,, you know, have you paid your bills? How much money do you make? You know, what is your history in terms of loans? But look at this. Credit scores may soon be based on your web history.

Is that a good thing? First of all, Ethan Rotberg, no. No, that's not a good thing. But let's read this because it's kind of fucking crazy lenders could soon be using data from your browsing search and purchase history your digital footprint to create a more accurate credit score according to the international monetary fund researchers the working paper shows that combining your credit score and your digital footprint further improves loan default predictions. This scares the fuck out of me. And how exactly would

this data be collected and used as part of your credit report? Survey says artificial intelligence and machine learning. The IMF isn't the only group to ponder such futuristic notions. A 2018 study from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management also looked at lenders using personal online data in tandem with traditional data from credit bureaus. So what does your online behavior really say about you? Their findings show that digital footprint allows some unscorable customers to gain access to credit. See, there's the carrot. unscorable customers to gain access to credit. See, there's the carrot. Oh, you can have access to credit while customers with a low to medium credit score

can either gain or lose access to credit depending upon their digital footprint. But I like how they said that. You can either gain or lose. Probably don't lose. Don't worry about the losing part. Pay no attention. Pay no attention.

Yeah, depending on your digital footprint. So people are going to give up their fucking browsing history in hopes that they're going to get more money. Now, how many people are going to be willing to do it? What if they show definitively that if you give up your browsing history, you'll get X amount of points, more credit, period. People are just going to fucking do it. They've already done it, right? I mean, yeah. Yeah, but this way they'll do it openly.

And I think this moves you one more step closer to a social credit score system, which I'm fucking terrified of. Yeah, well, there's, in a variety of areas, look, fraud control. Take fraud control as a sort of a data aggregator. The amount of information that a company that's focused on assessing whether your transaction, right? You walk into a place, you're going to buy a pair of sneakers, right? You put your card in the machine. It takes whatever, like four seconds, whatever, for it to come up and say approved. In that four seconds, there is hundreds of points of information being reviewed instantaneously about whether this is a potential fraud transaction or not.

So it's already happening. transaction or not. So it's already happening. And they're looking at the algorithms that are used are all based on, in a sense, and it's artificial intelligence to some degree, on machine learning of transactional awareness and of where this card was before over the past six months and how many times it's been used and what type of purchases it's been made. six months and how many times it's been used and what type of purchases it's been made. And so you think about all that information already out there, already being used. And A, it's a little bit scary from the sense of hacking and the ability to access millions and millions of people's information because now it's all being held in a variety of silos. But then you also think about it being used, again, advancing it one or two steps and using it for this type

of purpose. And I think people have gotten so blasé about their information. And in part, it's because, well, I love the fact that I don't have to use cash, you know, and so I don't care. Or part of it is, you know, I've got my details out there on so many different shopping sites and it doesn't matter. So they're all so used to it, all been so conditioned to it that I don't know that a lot of people are going to be scared by the next step. I don't think they're going to be scared by this at all. care about this at all. Again, like I said, as long as it allows you to get access to more credit, which generally speaking, if they could just give you a little more credit and have access to your browsing history, you're going to do it. A lot of people are going to do it. Most people are going to do it. Like Mike, your home, you wanted to get credit. Looks like

you can get this house if you let us look at your browser, or you can get that house if you don't. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. People are going to do it. If they find out you're going to get $200,000 in a loan or $100,000 in a loan, depending upon whether or not you allow us to have access to your browsing history, how many people are going to say yes?

They're probably going to try to clean up their fucking computer. They're going to be unsophisticated, take all the porn down. They're going to go, Mike, you look at eight hours of porn a day. This is kind of crazy. Don't knock a man's hobby. Don't knock a man's hobby. But you know what I'm saying? It's like there's so many people that are going to be willing to give up that data.

The same way, one of the things that I heard argued about Facebook, which is really fascinating, they were saying that Facebook treats you like you're a customer, but in fact, you're the product. And you are providing them with data that they then sell. And there's a big difference between you being a customer and being a product, because you're treated like you're a customer, but you're actually a product. And we've all just sort of accepted that and we've given up this data. So we've given up this commodity that we didn't even know was valuable at the time. And now it's become literally one of the most valuable things in the world. You have these companies like Google and Facebook that have enormous amounts of money,

entirely based on the fact that they have access to your data. Well, and also you've got a lot of companies out there that, for whatever reason, can't get investment, can't get credit, can't get, you know. And so, you know, are they going to say, no, I'm not going to give up what they already assume they're doing anyway, for the most part. Most people understand that they've given up a lot of information in the commercial world. Again, I know that the bogeyman is always like NSA. NSA is collecting information on you. But that's not the point of this exercise. It's the commercial side of things, because it is monetized and there

is a revenue stream. That's where you're giving up all your information. But I think most companies, most individuals, I agree with you. If they think that there's a potential upside, they don't care because they're already doing it or their minds are already doing it. Or somehow they can write off the security risks or the concerns that might be there or the privacy rights that, frankly, most people have assumed have long gone. So, you know, again, I think, you know, from my perspective, I've never, because I spent so much time within the government, I've never been one who's worried about, you know, big government collecting huge amounts of data on me, right? I mean, for the most part, they can't organize panic in a doomed submarine. So, and i think that it's the it's the

googles and it's the amazons and it's the others who have been busy for for years and years just just figuring out how do we how do we make money off of you right well that's what's interesting right with the argument has always been that uh private companies are better at a lot of things because there's profit involved yeah yeah versus the the government. And we're seeing this with like SpaceX, right? Like Elon Musk, because it's not funded by the government like NASA is, they're able to do incredible things. And they have kind of like free reign to figure out the right ways to do things. And they have enormous resources because of all the money involved.

Right, right. sources because of all the money involved. Right, right. I think, yeah, having, you know, because I'm so shameless about this, but having now almost got to the finish of filming the second season for that Black Files Declassified, one of the things that we do is we do look a lot at the intersection of government and the commercial sector in terms of development of whether it's technologies for weapons development or whatever it may be. And there is an enormously healthy, robust partnership between the government and a variety of sectors out there, in part because I think there is this understanding that at some point you've got to take this idea, and it's got to be germinated in the commercial side. That's where it's really going to come to fruition, right?

You've got, you know, in certain parts of like DARPA and some parts of the government, you've got incredibly smart people. But ultimately, you've got to get it into the commercial side to get it developed. It's like that hypersonic weapon. That was built by Raytheon, right? And, you know, DARPA came out with the announcement, and DARPA's heavily involved, but it's the Raytheon engineers,

and they're not doing it because they're mostly worried about who's going to be at the top of the food chain. They're doing it because there's a revenue stream that they understand is very, very important for their next 10 or 20 years of growth. And so they want those contracts, and so they're going to do every fucking thing possible to be successful at it. So I don't know where I was going with that.

Which brings me back to UFOs. Oh, I knew we were going back to UFOs. When you see all of these announcements, I mean, I'm sure you know more than I do, and I'm not asking you to say things you're not supposed to say but when you see these announcements like when the Pentagon talks openly about UFOs when you see it in the New York Times that 2017 article where they're talking to people like highly respected people like Commander David Fravor and all these people that have had these encounters with unexplainable technology. When you see this being discussed, do you think that some of this is just obfuscating?

Some of this is just like covering up for the fact that we have some super advanced technology that we're not letting be public? And you can say, oh, well, we don't even know what's going on. This could be UFOs. I don't believe, whenever I see these public announcements about technology that we don't understand, that it's coming from alien worlds, that to me, I always go, why would they tell us that? What is the reason for all of this transparency all of a sudden? And how much of this is bullshit?

How much of this is just covering up that there's some insane technology that they have a handle on? And this brings me to this... What is that? Was it a CIA document, the UFO document? Do you know what I'm discussing, Jamie? Where they were talking about the technology and there was some sort of a patent on the same type of technology that is potentially being utilized by these unexplainable crafts. Where they're using some sort of magnetic-based propulsion system. What is behind the U.S. Navy's UFO fusion energy patent?

This is what it is. So it's, oh, motherfuckers with their pop-ups. Blocked. Blocked. Sons of bitches. So if you scroll down, so there's some sort of a patent. Yeah, PICE. Yeah.

You know what that is? So tell me. Plasma-controlled fusion device. They filed a patent for this plasma-controlled fusion device in 2019, and it says it's either a giant breakthrough or mad science. According to the patent application, the miniature

device could contain and sustain fusion reactions capable of generating power in the gigawatt, one billion watts to terawatt, one billion watts to terawatt, one trillion watts range or more. A large coal plant or a mid-sized nuclear power reactor by comparison produces energy in the one to two gigawatt range, which is insane. So you're talking about something that can produce the amount of power that a fucking coal plant or a mid-sized nuclear power reactor can make. Yeah. Now, the interesting thing about this is, and we actually featured this in an episode of Black Files Declassified, second season coming in the new year.

Thank you very much. And Dr. Peiss, the government did investigate his ideas, his patents. From what we've seen of the paperwork that's been released and declassified, you could draw the conclusion, although it's not complete, that there was nothing to it after they examined his theories, his ideas about how to generate this level of energy in a small contained device. And they came out and said, we don't think there's anything there. It appears as if at that point, funding for research into what he had proposed stopped. But I would say- I like that word, but. had proposed stopped. But I would say... I like that word, but.

Yeah. But one thing that we seem to be learning is that it's a rare day when funding is allocated to something and then stopped, right? Usually that money then is shifted or the program morphs or the idea or the theory or the testing moves into some other area. wrap that up because it became known, and then morph it into a different essentially black file, a black budget, or whatever you want to call it, and continue looking into this type of energy production, right? But if you follow the trail of available paperwork and the people that we've talked to, you get to a point where they say, no, there was nothing there, and so we stopped researching. We stopped funding that research. My experience has always been that nobody then says, okay, you can have your money back, right? Right. Or they're looking to, like with some of our past stealth aircraft, they just shut it down, but they move the whole thing into something completely different so that it's now classified and hidden

it's yeah can I just show you the language go to that second tab that you opened up please Jamie on that subject look at the language that they use at the top of this space time modification weapon.

What the fuck does that mean? Space time modification? This is- See that, if you scroll back to the top. Navy spent three years and considerable sums of money testing the space effect, which yes, we've proven. It may have transferred the program to another agency. That's the part, right?

You just said it. You nailed it. Look at that anyway and they're saying that this is no bigger than the size of an suv that could potentially have the same amount of power as a nuclear reactor which is just fucking insane because a lot of the sightings one of the things about some of the more interesting sightings over the past particularly over military facilities or by, whether it's Fravor or other military aviators, is, again, the lack of propulsion, right? Yes. Well, so we didn't see anything. We got no heat signature. We saw no evidence of engines. There was nothing to indicate how this thing would be moving. And so that becomes a big part of

the question. But to go back to your original question, it is one of the most fascinating parts about this right now is why the Pentagon decided to sort of set the table with opening up about AATIP as an example. Right. And saying, okay, we're going to talk about this. Look, they had the advanced, what was it, aerospace weapons systems application programs, right, which kind of preceded AATIP. And the idea, I think, that the military, at some point recently, they decided it's better for us to talk about this in a sort of an operationally logical fashion. So I think they approached it from saying, well, look, of course we have an office like AATIP, right? You know, Lou Elizondo and a bunch of others have already been talking about it. So it came out, and I think the military thought probably the

best way for us to explain it is just simply by saying, well, of course we're going to be looking at unidentified or aerial phenomena that we can't explain. That's a national security issue. And it is. It makes sense, right? So you have an office that would go out there and if you spot something, you know, particularly if it's an air sensitive facility, then yeah, of course you want to know what the fuck it is, right? So you get a sighting and, you know, is it a way for them to set the table so that it just kind of shuts everybody up and they go, okay, I get it. Thank you for talking to us about it, right? Or is it a way for them to say, here's a logical explanation. Now we don't have to talk about the technologies that we've been developing or where that others have been developing. Yeah, I don't know, but I think it makes sense. I'm impressed that the Pentagon would take this route, but I'm curious as to how far they'll go.

So what we're hoping to do is sit down with them and say, okay, why exactly? Because no one's really asked them, why are you talking about this now? And if they have asked them, I suspect the answer will just be, well, we're just explaining why AATIP existed. Now, something like this, let's assume that this program is legitimate. It's a big assumption. Let's just assume for the sake of this conversation. How many people are involved? How many people know about the capabilities of this particular weapon slash propulsion

system that they're working on right now? Yeah, well, they're all signed to- Death warrants. Death warrants. Keep your fucking mouth shut, bitch. So we'll never, never know. But typically any of these programs is pretty close hold, whether it's coming out of the skunk works

or whether it's wherever it may be. You're not talking about a lot of people, but it's an engineering exercise. So you're not talking about a lot of people, but it's an engineering exercise. So you're talking about a range of backgrounds and experiences and people. And it's, you know, it's I guess if we had. Two things, if if we were holding, it's going to sound strange, but if we were holding aliens at Area 51 as an example, I firmly believe there's no way we could have kept that secret for any period of time. Why do you say that? Well, because it's human nature.

But that's Bob Lazar then, right? Yeah. Because he didn't keep it secret. It's just – but I think also in a shorter period of time – I mean I'm talking going back decades and decades. So ever since Area 51 became ground zero for some of the thoughts and ideas about aliens. If you're talking about the past handful of years and you're developing new technologies, new propulsion system, whatever it may be, do I think that the government can keep that secret over a relatively short period of time? Yes. Right. So I don't know where I'm going with that other than I suspect that what's happened is that we – oh, show a team. Here it goes. It says the document also shows that a team of at least 10 technicians and engineers were assigned to design and test an experimental demonstrator,

and that testing was being conducted as recently as September of 2019. So this is my question. When you have these unexplained things like what Commander David Fravor sees off the coast of San Diego, off the coast of San Diego. What is the potential that that is the United States government testing some of this insane technology that they're trying to keep under wraps? And then when they release some sort of a statement like this, what would be the purpose of even releasing the statement? Well, I think there were so many questions,

and it had gotten out there and had been in the press and had been enough stories about it that I think in part, I don't want to say damage control, but I think they were just trying to get ahead of it a little bit. So they say we tried, but it wasn't successful. So we abandoned the program. Sorry, it's over. But then this article highlights exactly what you said, that they probably moved it to another agency, which means it's probably continuing this cycle of development. There is no way they stop researching or working in a sort of a feverish pace to develop this type of technology, this ability. Because there's a potential for it. Because there's a potential for it and because it's so important.

And again, it comes back to the idea of competition. Because there's a potential for it and because it's so important, right? And again, it comes back to the idea of competition, right? We know the Russians and the Chinese are doing everything they can, right, to develop new propulsion systems, new material science issues related to hypersonics. And, you know, can you get a manned hypersonic aircraft? Not, you know, probably not in our lifetime, frankly, because of the speed we're talking about and the impact on the materials that we've got. on the materials that we've got. But there's no way that we're not, just because they shelve one file, one research project, doesn't mean they're not moving into something else, or they're not taking an aspect of it and saying, okay, this could work. And so, yes,

could what Fravor have seen been something that we were testing and developing? You know, part of me says, well, look, if that's the case, they wouldn't have been doing sorties close enough. They would have found a more remote location. Unless they wanted it to be discovered. Yeah. And there is some of that that's out there in terms of what do we release to the outside world, meaning countries that are not aligned with our interests. And so there's something to that. That gets them worried. That gets the Chinese thinking, well, what exactly do they have, right?

Right. So, yeah, I just think that it's the Fravor thing. We've talked about it before. We keep coming back. And it is really one of the few sightings that you look at and you go i don't know this thing you know there's not an explanation for yet there's and there's not a you can't write it off right and i mean it was above 60 000 feet above sea level and it got down to 50 feet in less than a second yeah and he just and he's just such a and he wasn't the only one he's not the only one that had eyes on target.

Right. And so it's such a credible sighting that it does create, and if that's the case, then, look, you can't, you know, anybody who says absolutely, you know, there's not phenomena out there that we can't explain, I don't understand how you hold that point of view, right? We don't know, right? Not only that, if it's an individual occurrence, if it's one thing that occurs in one place, how do you know whether or not this happened? Just because it's not repeating all

over the country like, you know, the sighting of bald eagles or something. Just because it's not something that you can go out and absolutely prove to be true. Like when something happens, a unique occurrence, it's very difficult to say whether a unique occurrence actually took place. Well, we know from- Unless there's real evidence, and there's video of this fucking thing.

Yeah, and we know from, exactly, and we know from other, you know, materials from OSAP and also from the successor operation, the AATIP office within the Pentagon. And again, that's a point. They talk about, well, AATIP, we stopped that a few years back. Really? Do you think that they've stopped investigating aerial phenomena that they can't explain right off the bat? I mean, it's ridiculous to think that. So there's an element somewhere under a different acronym that's doing the same thing. And so what have they seen? And there's been multiple sightings. And again, one of the more interesting things about the sightings is that they're over a number of times over sensitive facilities, sensitive installations. And so

that leads you to wonder, okay, is that because they're home-based there, whatever the technology is, whatever platform we're testing, whatever it may be? Or is that because it's, you know, from a different nation that's out there trying to figure out? Or what is it, right? Right. Or if you want to get crazy, is it from another planet? Is it from another planet? Right. And so, you know, although if they're coming out here and they're looking, they've got to be thinking, oh, fuck this.

We'll just keep moving on. Except for entertainment value. There's nothing to see here. Maybe they're worried that we're going to do something really fucked up. I mean, when you have countries that have so many nuclear weapons that we could kill everyone on the planet multiple times over and literally turn this whole thing into a glowing ball. everyone on the planet multiple times over and literally turn this whole thing into a glowing ball. Maybe if I was from another planet, I'd be like, let's just keep a close eye

on these crazy fucks. Yeah, yeah. Let's keep a close eye. We have basically these creatures that are going from tribal warfare to nuclear technology to fusion reactors that are the size of an SUV, capable of producing gigawatts.

In short order. Yeah. One of my favorite little, I don't know what you call it, a little tidbit of information is you think about the Wright brothers. Yeah. And then you think about 50 years later, we're landing on the moon. It's pretty crazy. It's absolutely crazy.

If you think about that condensed period of time going from, I think we can get this thing made out of paper and twigs to fly, and then we're landing on the fucking moon. And to go even crazier than that, the technology involved in that is nothing compared to this little thing that you've got sitting in front of you that sits in your pocket. So they went from a whole room full of gigantic supercomputers in the 1960s to something that's way more powerful, that just sits in your pocket, that now the new one has a terabyte of storage.

Yeah, my 10-year-old boy, Muggsy, picks up and it's like a part of his body, right? There's no fear of technology, right? It's completely intuitive. And they know how to change things. No, I'll show you, Dad. Yeah. And they're in the settings. Oh, my God.

Yeah. My kids, all three of them, Scooter, Sluggo, and Muggsy, they understand. It didn't take them very long to understand that from a technology point of view, they're far advanced compared to me. Yeah, they're locked into it, right? Yeah. It's like learning a language. They say it's the best time. When you're a kid, you learn a language.

You can learn a second language very easily. When you're old like us, it's a grind. By the way, this is phenomenal cigars. It's very good, right? Very good. And that other one's a Partaga Series D4, which is just outstanding. Did you have to go to Cuba to get these? I might have.

Can I confirm or deny? I can't either. Either one. Yeah. So anyway, but the- But this whole subject, to me, it's like I could buy it on surface level, which I love to do, and say, oh my God, the government's coming clear because they want us to know because they can't stop this and this is such a big issue.

But one of the more confusing things about it and one thing that kind of confirmed my suspicions about this time that we're living in where there's this overwhelming amount of information that something just gets lost in the news cycle and then a new thing comes out and you just forget because there's so much we can't keep up that they release this information and no one seems to give a shit. I mean, obviously it came out in the middle of the pandemic. So everybody's kind of fucked anyway. But it's it seems to me that they would not have any real motivation to tell us the truth about this stuff.

So when they're talking about this stuff, I'm always wondering if they're preparing us for the implementation of some technology that they've been developing that they can now say they don't have control over and they could use it to their advantage. The fact that we might be willing to believe that it is from another world or another dimension because they've already said, well, there are real things that are out there that we can't explain. Yeah. There are real things that are out there that we can't explain. Yeah. I mean, I think one part of this is just the pace of development. We talked about it a little bit just now, but the pace of development within weapons technology and artificial intelligence, right? That's a whole separate issue in terms of, like you said before, right? If aliens fly by and they look and they go, well, these guys are pretty fucked up and they're capable of blowing this whole planet up here, short order.

If you layer on top of that our old traditional nuclear systems, I don't know where I'm going with this, and then you put onto that sort of the ability to remove the human from the equation, right? So that your defense systems aren't, for whatever reason, aren't attached to a human, right, that, you know, what is that? And the Soviets did it, right, with that old dead hand project that they had. You know, and the idea, now the U.S. says, no, we're never going to go that route. You know, we're never going to, you know, make our security systems based on no human involvement. But again, not sure where I was going with that other than I find it fascinating that

we seem to think that's a remote possibility and the idea that technology might outpace our ability to control it is interesting. Not saying that robots are going to take over. But artificial intelligence could one day become sentient. I mean, that's the real concern that people like Elon have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that one day we're going to flip the switch on something that we can't turn back. Yeah, there's a number of people that feel that way.

There's another people on the other side of it that say, no, that's never going to happen. I don't buy those people at all. Yeah, I mean, because again, you don't know what you don't know, right? So you don't know where this is going. No, I mean I because again you don't know what you don't know right? So you know where this is going no one saw this coming No one saw this phone, but the thing that freaks me the most out is that no one saw the internet coming You know even in science fiction like if you go back to like the old Star Trek episodes and Captain Kirk They didn't even they thought they were gonna have a walkie-talkie Kirk out. You know

It's like yeah, so many things you can't't predict in terms of the flip communicator thing. Yeah. No, no screen, no FaceTime. There's, there's, there's so many things you can't predict when it comes to, uh, innovation and technology and the expansion of these ideas that branch off into these sort of unpredictable ways when the new piece of technology whether it's this space-time manipulation thing that they're talking about or you know anything that gets designed that no one saw coming and is a complete game changer like the internet has been if that happens with artificial intelligence and they can one day develop something some something ex machina like or even weirder, something that's like literally controlling society, like artificial intelligence.

Well, and again, if you think about the intersection of how these things develop, by the way, I think they, I don't know who created the Dick Tracy cartoon, but they remember they had the old wrist watch that you could actually see people on there. You know people thought that was crazy? Yeah. Remember? I thought I was gonna get a personal jet pack. You're talking to your on there. Don't people thought that was crazy? Yeah. Remember? I thought I was going to get a personal jet pack.

You're talking to your phone. Right? I was supposed to get my fucking personal jet pack. Yeah, where's the jet packs? Pissing me off. Yeah, they still haven't figured that out. But if you think about the, you put artificial intelligence in there, and then going to something like this hypersonic weapons development, where you've reduced the reaction time almost

down to zero, right? And that's one of those, so you've kind of got these things, You've got people say, well, never take the human out of it. And then you've got this worry about, well, but we're reducing the reaction time beyond the point where humans can react. So maybe we've got to have this artificial intelligence capability to drive most of the reaction time. So you can see how this whole thing could compress into a real shit show. Especially if you're dealing with companies that have been compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, which we know that was the deal with Huawei, which we've talked about many times before. They had installed these sort of third-party systems where third-party access was available to routers and a lot of their technology. And it's one of the reasons why they stopped allowing

Huawei to sell their phones in the United States. Right. Right. I mean, it's again, you just, you're putting a backdoor access point into whatever it is that you're selling. So if that happens with artificial intelligence that actually is controlling our defense systems, and then there's hypersonic weapons that these artificial intelligence programs are supposed to be able to detect, but they've been compromised because we bought Chinese technology. Right. I mean, you've dropped the reaction time down to almost nothing. It's unpredictable. So now you're thinking, okay, well, a human can't look at the data on this incoming object

and process it fast enough, so we've got to get the machines in there. And then it's a short step. Again, I don't want to be one of, who knows where it's going, but I'm just thinking it's silly to say that it's not a problem. Right. That's what I'm saying. Who knows where it's going, but it is silly to say that if you just think about where this all goes as it expands, as this technology expands, it doesn't necessarily go to a place where it's controllable and if we decide that the only way to have this stuff Really truly be competitive with the rest of the world is to give it a certain amount of autonomy and allow it to make decisions Well who's then we're we're really fucked I mean that's what bothers me The only way I see this

Getting out Is if and this scares me maybe even more Is that we integrate with technology And I kind of think that's where we're going And when Elon starts talking about He's recently saying that he's going to stream Music in your head Have you seen that Jamie

He's saying that through Neuralink You're going to be able to stream music into your head So like you seen that, Jamie? He's saying that through Neuralink, you're going to be able to stream music into your head. You'll be able to be playing music just like you'd have AirPods on, but no one will know. And you're sitting there at work just bebopping along. To me, that doesn't seem like a strange thought. Again, because of the pace

of... Everything's exponential. The pace of tech development. And so I... Again, it's the pace of everything's exponential at the pace of tech development. And so, yeah, again, it's what do I know? I'm not a rocket scientist. Do you pay attention to security when it comes to like your phones and like Pegasus and stuff like that? Yeah. Do you scan your phones? We do.

I try to. And I'll tell you why. It's not because I'm engaged in national security issues anymore. In part, my concern over security is because I got kids, right? So I'm just worried about it as a parent. And so part of the driver for why I'm always kind of focused on data protection or protecting yourself or your identity, whatever it may be, it's just because it's apparent, right? I mean, so to me, that makes sense. From a business perspective, you would be surprised at how lax a lot of systems are, whether it's in the commercial side or government. I mean, shit, look, it wasn't that long ago, right, that we had, what was it, four years ago,

that we had the release on the WikiLeaks of Vault 7, right? All the hacking tools that got pulled out from the CIA and released, of them released on on WikiLeaks though which is a whole different story yeah we're gonna talk about that about how there may have been conversations with intelligence agencies and Trump allegedly this is a problem when I see that released like that you know those kind of car I'm like who who's, who's benefiting from releasing this, that they were thinking about whacking Julian Assange. And do you, do you buy into that? What do you think? Yeah, I think that, I think it, I think it's a, I think elements of the, of the story that's what we're talking about, a story that was on, I think Yahoo News actually

broke it, but it's only been in the past day and a half or two days or whatever that, the idea was that during the previous administration or the Trump administration, particularly because Mike Pompeo, who at this particular point in time was the CIA director, was so incensed over WikiLeaks releasing some of the Vault 7 information about CIA hacking. And a lot of other people in the agency were also likewise very upset about it. But according to the story anyway, there was talk within the Trump administration over, can we kidnap Assange, who, I mean, at the time he'd been in the Ecuadorian embassy taking refuge there in London for whatever, five years.

And he was only on like the second floor, right? When you go to that balcony, you're like, Jesus Christ, he's right there. There he is. Yeah. You can just get a tall guy to grab him. A really, a really tall guy. Yeah. And, you know, we don't hire a lot of them because they stand out at the agency.

But so he's there. And the idea was that there was conversations, discussions, and some planning scenarios developed about how can we kidnap Assange. And then according to the story, there's also some talk about, well, could we assassinate him? I mean, where could this thing go? If anybody had walked in, if I had been in a position of responsibility at the agency and someone had walked in and said, yeah, we need to draw up some scenarios for the White House over how we can either kidnap or, and, or assassinate Assange. I say, get the fuck out of my office, right? Go get back to work. I would like to think that you would say that. I would have said that. I mean, you can't, it's an insane, it's an insane story. I realized that,

you know, uh, it doesn't condone, uh, the, uh, cause you know where I stand on people like Manning or Snowden. I think it's a treasonous act. I think I get why people are very supportive of them for releasing – or for stealing the information and releasing it. I get that. But I'm not on that side. That doesn't give you justification to say you're going to go into a sovereign nation's embassy in another sovereign nation in the UK and render an Australian citizen. I mean, it's insane. Can I challenge you on the Snowden thing? Yeah.

Because if Snowden released something that showed that the NSA was involved in something that's unconstitutional and completely illegal, doesn't he have a certain amount of responsibility as a patriot to release that information to the general public and allow them to see that the government, which is really just a bunch of people, is doing something that is completely illegal and monitoring people in a way that they had no idea was taking place, meaning that all of their phone calls, all of their emails, everything was being stored, and it could potentially be leveraged against them if they were inconvenient. Yeah. No, I get—I'm not going to say no. I get that. I understand it. I can't, from my position, get myself there to say that it get that i understand it i can't from my position right um get myself there to say that it was a patriotic act what i think would have been the right approach was for him to

go and i know that people say i couldn't it couldn't happen i think releasing that information within the the uh intel committees uh figuring out a way to get that information through a whistleblower chain pushing it and and and doing everything possible to get that information through a whistleblower chain Pushing it and and and doing everything possible to do that and getting it out. Is that important? Yes, I get that But I can't just you know again We have to base our on our experiences and you know based on what I've done over there I can't get myself to the point of saying what he did was a patriotic act, but I understand I Understand the point of view entirely. And in a theoretical sense, yes, I get it.

I just can't get myself there. I understand what you're saying because of your position and that you work for the agency for so long, but you're not dealing with the CIA at this point, right? You're dealing with the NSA. I know. It's a different organization, but they were doing something that is completely illegal. Yeah.

The United States- Oh, you get no argument from me on that. Right. So what do you... How does one stop that from happening or make the public aware? Because I don't know how much has changed because they, you know,

WikiLeaks and Assange, he's still like being held for something that... I can't even understand why he's being held. right now he's in a london prison right but it doesn't make sense like the the charge the original charge was like surprise sex or some kind of sexual thing where he was that was dropped i think that was that was dropped he's being held based on like a 2012 warrant in the UK. And I think that – and this is – again, this is part of the problem. I mean this story that came out about Pompeo pushing for options in terms of could we kidnap him, could we – Could we kidnap him?

Could we, you know, whatever. Look, the Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, has been working on, you know, trying to figure out how do we get him, you know, extradited back to the States. But here's the question, why? Like, hasn't the damage been done? Hasn't he really,

is it to punish anybody else that might consider being a whistleblower in the future and to send a message? Like, why would they want to, if the guy has already essentially released all those documents, why would they be so concerned with what he has to say now? Well, yeah, there were a couple of aspects of where the U.S. government was going after him.

One was that he was actually working to help, remember, Manning, now Chelsea Manning, to facilitate. So it wasn't just a receptacle. It wasn't just receiving documents, but was helping Manning to try to facilitate the theft of classified material. So is that espionage? Yeah. And then they also layered on some espionage act for actually publishing classified information. That's, I think, probably a weaker position than actually trying to work with someone to facilitate the theft of intellectual property. That's not a journalistic role right there.

But publishing, you could argue, okay, that's a journalistic role. So which person would have done the more egregious crime in terms of the position of the intelligence agencies? Would it be Manning or would it be Assange? Because Assange is still locked up. Manning is now free. Yeah, I know. And it's – this is – that's been this whole discussion, whether you're talking about Manning, Assange, Snowden, the whole, throw it all into this bucket and it's very emotive. I'm conflicted in the sense that on the Snowden issue, I agree again, yeah, what NSA was doing, it-

And they were lying about it. It needed to be brought to light. It needed to be brought to light, but I just think it should have been brought in a different fashion. What Manning did was- But there's no repercussions. What Manning did was theft of documents. What Assange did, and the way that the agency was viewing Assange in a sense was that he was not facilitating but being like an arm of or being used by, to some degree, as an example, Russian Intel services to do harm to the US. You could argue the...

But the story itself is insane. And again, I go back to the same thing. It makes no sense how logical, reasonable people could sit around... I get it that they were pissed off about in the aftermath of the Vault 7 information disclosures and the embarrassment that that caused and just the trouble that it caused and the release of that sensitive information. But that doesn't then mean you should sit and have operational meetings about kidnapping him. You know right across the water the Department of Justice is busy trying to do their thing and if they can do their thing legally great right if they can't then okay then they couldn't you know

you think they're punishing him do you think like but by by continuing to imprison him and by not releasing him and by not dropping this case and and even if this discussion was true about killing him. Right. Like, is it to send a message to other people? Yeah, I think the idea was at some point, again, you go, part of this, I think, needs to be explored further. Hopefully other outlets will pick up the Yahoo News story. I think it deserves more investigation.

But part of it is at a certain point, moving from the Obama administration to – because you have to remember all the various sort of parts here. You have the Democratic email releases, right? In 2016. And that was viewed as a Russian operation. And WikiLeaks was in concert. Rightly so or no? Do you think that was, in fact, coordinated? Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, we go back to, you know, Yuri's comments about, you know, active measures and sure. Do you think that this was in coordination with Trump? Do you think that Trump had some sort of direct or was it more advantageous for the Russians to have Trump in the position as president?

Like why do you think they would work with WikiLeaks to release the Clinton emails? Because it caused us trouble. It caused chaos. It caused chaos. It caused further distrust in the system, caused further splintering of our population. So it was very effective if you think about how much we've been divided since 2016. Yeah. And again, when you showed that great clip of Yuri talking about this and you realizing

it was whatever, 40 years ago, they're still doing it and they're still finding it to be successful. And they're finding the technology that exists out there, these phones that we just talked about and the social media outlets, they're finding all of that to help. I mean, that's a great thing. In the old days, if you wanted to do a covert action campaign, you got to hire some journalists, you had to develop a network of newspaper journalists, right? Find people that could plant articles that you would skew it a certain way to influence the population in that country so that they would say, oh, yeah, you know what? The dictator does suck. But you had to cobble together.

It was a heavy lift. And now it's fucking so much easier, right? And now it's fucking so much easier, right? Because you got all these social media outlets. You can do it sitting in Moscow and you can influence millions of people. And that was unheard of even 25 years ago. And I find them sometimes, man. I'm like, I'll sometimes find a story and then I'll see a really aggressive or odd take.

And then I'll go to that person's Twitter page and I'll see, what is this? And you look at it like, I don't think this is a real person. You go and they're just reposting all these stories about either the Republicans or the Democrats with occasional commentary attached to that and very aggressive viewpoints. But the human being behind it just seems non-existent. And then you see the amount of followers they have. It's usually very minimal. And there's usually some sort of a generic photo that identifies them in their Twitter profile. And you're like, wow, knowing what I know about the Internet Research Agency and knowing that there's probably multiple different similar organizations in a lot of these other countries that oppose us.

Like how many of these fucking things are out there because they know that there's hundreds of thousands of fake accounts that are being utilized by Foreign government. It's nothing more than a marketing campaign. I want the population to drink more Pepsi, right? I'm going to figure out how to make that happen. What drives that that right? I'm going to figure out how to make that happen. What drives that sector? What drives the demographics that I'm interested in? It's no different than trying to figure out how to increase your viewership of a show or whatever it may be. And when you put the state-sponsored resources behind it, it's an immensely powerful thing. And again, the technology has made it so much easier. So the idea that we're being manipulated, and again, it happens in a variety of different

ways. People are going to say, well, I don't care about the Russians. I care about Amazon trying to manipulate me or whatever. And they're doing it too. Right? I mean, how many times you search for something. I searched for something on my phone and then I spent two days getting unsolicited pop-ups saying, oh, by the way, we got another whatever, MGB for sale over here.

Right. I took delivery finally of that fucking 1965 MGB Roadster. Does that have a wooden frame? No, no. Some of them did, right? The older ones? Oh, the old ones, yeah. But this one, this one's 65.

My uncle used to have one on a wooden frame. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. That'd be a tough ride. But so these pop-up ads show up and it's just like, there, there you go. Yeah. And so I think- They know what you're looking for. They know what you're looking for. But the idea that the Russians would look at our society today and go, yeah, it's so easy to divide and conquer. And they're just, that's what they're doing. Whether they're playing black against white, they're playing rich against poor, they're playing, it doesn't matter what the subject is. They know it doesn't take much to increase that chaos. And ultimately, to some degree, that's all they want to do and

We got lost in the idea that it was because they wanted Trump to win or they wanted, you know Clinton to win or they want it whatever That's not their point. Their point is to create chaos Yeah, and to create dissent and to make sure that we are even further divided right and bring down the system eventually We know that sounds old-school and very Cold War ish, but it's still there Well, if you look at the result, it seems like they're being very effective. Yeah. I mean, we've never been more divided. Absolutely. Yeah. Do you ever have any sort of suspicions at all that potentially COVID-19 could have been purposely released?

Because I mean, you have to take it into consideration, right? You do. It's like everything else. It's like planning for the withdrawal from Afghanistan. You've got to figure out what's the worst case scenario, and you've got to create something around it. I'm not saying that it happened, but it's one of those things where you've got to go, okay, this is something that you can't completely ignore the possibility of it.

One of the things we covered on my sci-fi show way back in the day was this idea of a bioweapon, about using some sort of a manipulated virus that gets out into the general population and wrecks havoc. Obviously, this one was worldwide, but it's not like it was targeted in one specific area. But in getting something that does go worldwide, look at the amount, the authoritarian response just in Australia. Australia has turned into a fucking prison colony. And then here's one where the Second Amendment advocates step up and say, hey, this is why we have the Second Amendment. advocates step up and say, hey, this is why we have the Second Amendment. Like, you could always say that the Second Amendment is supposed to apply to protection of yourself and a well-armed militia. It has nothing to do with, you know, some guy being able to have 150 fucking ARs in

his bedroom and this is crazy and it's overreach or it's being abused, rather. But Australia has no guns. The general population, there's a few people that have rifles for hunting, but there's nothing like we have here in America, and they are being overrun. Cops are pulling people over for simply being outside their homes, and they're throwing them to the ground like thugs. You're seeing these protests where they're literally pepper spraying old ladies in the face

it's crazy how much they've been divided and what scares the shit out of me is i've got to think that any foreign entity any any foreign government that sees what's possible in australia would like to see that happen in America. Well, yeah. Nothing's more divisive. Nothing divides a population more than seeing this place that was like always a great place to visit. People were so friendly and now it's a fucking police state. Like how does this deteriorate so quickly?

I spent part of my childhood there. I didn't come to the States until my last year of high school, right? And I was in Australia. What's it like for you watching? I'm stunned by their reaction, first of all, to imposing the regulations, the requirements, the protocols that they've got in place. And I'm also kind of stunned at the Australian population's willingness to allow it to happen in a sense. Well, they're rejecting it now. Yeah. It took a while, though. It took a while because this has been going on for a while.

I think they were hosting. Melbourne is the most locked down city in the world. Which is crazy. And the amount of deaths they've had is so minimal. Yeah. It's so small. It's like Florida on a weekend for the entire pandemic. I'm not kidding.

No, it's true. It really is like that. Yeah. So I'm shocked by the way that it's taking place. I never would have picked Australia as a place where they would have tried enacting this. It's a bit of a proving ground though, isn't it? It seems that way. although, you know, you could argue a former penal colony, maybe it's, you know, reverting the type. So, but I think that, you know, look, I have no doubt in my mind that this thing, you know, originated in the lab. No doubt. There is no doubt. I mean, we're talking about that as the likely scenario back in January of 2020. Right. And then people started, you know, it's a conspiracy. And they said it because it was Trump, right? And that's, which is insane. But so much of what's happened over the past few

years has been insane because it's just automatically, if it emanated from the previous administration, it was bullshit, whether it was or not, right? Some of it was bullshit, but whether it was or not, it didn't matter. And So facts didn't matter. But I have no doubt that – do I think it was deliberate? No. Do I think the Wuhan lab had dealings with the Chinese PLA with the military? Absolutely. Were they conducting some research on the military's behalf? I have no doubt about that either.

But do I think that it was designed and released deliberately? No. I'd probably draw the line at that point. But look, we don't know what we don't know because the Chinese are being so fucking non-transparent about this. And that's the problem. We just had that last Intel assessment, came out in late August of this year. And, you know, I've never seen anything as an assessment that tells you less, right? But at least they're honest

because they come out and go, well, you know, it's still inconclusive as to whether it originated in the lab because that Chinese won't cooperate, right? And our intel is so poor there, you know, we just don't have the sources. And you're talking about a very heavy lift in terms of getting intel

on something this specific, this narrow out of an environment like China that, yeah, unless we have some way to either steal that information or somehow magically get their cooperation and they open up the books and tell us what the fuck happened, we're not going to know. But isn't it so interesting how the division in this country is so clear between left and right that left is defending Fauci and they're essentially ignoring all this information that he and the NIH funded that EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn funded what Rand Paul and many others believe you could describe as gain-of-function research. They even refer to it in the same way in emails that were released, and Fauci lied in front of Congress when he was being questioned about this. It's pretty clear, right?

Yeah. I think, again, it's all based on where you sit. But if you try to assess this thing objectively, if you can, if it's possible to take the politics out of it, and you simply just look at what facts have been established, then you can certainly make the argument that Fauci lied about the extent to which he was aware of what was going on and then the extent to which there was an effort to try to cover for the Wuhan lab and create a different don't know. It could have been still natural causes and maybe didn't come out of the lab. And that defies logic if you just simply look at pattern of behavior and evidence that exists currently,

much less what hopefully will come out from better intel sources. And then new evidence about the three people that worked at the lab that turned out to be sick with illnesses that resemble 100% COVID-19 infection. Yeah. I just think it's like everything else. Going back full circle to what we started talking about, which was the Afghanistan withdrawal. If you were to read the transcripts from the first part of the hearings with the Armed Services Committee and the chairman, Reid, Democrat senator, he has the right to make the opening statement. Then he asked the first questions and he frames the whole thing from the very beginning in a partisan way, simply by trying to essentially say, any shit that happened here is not Biden's

fault. It's because of the previous administration agreeing to this Doha agreement. And that's how he frames it. He doesn't start this hearing, this investigative hearing, by saying, we've brought these experts who have spent each four decades in the military and were intimately involved in what was going on in Afghanistan. We brought them here to hear from them. He starts it out by framing the way that he would like this to go. This is how it fucking works there in Washington, right? Because we allow these people to stay in office forever, right?

Nobody wants to make a brave decision because they're all worried about getting elected again. And so he starts that out. Then he asks questions when he has the opportunity to start out by asking questions, and it's all about the Doha agreement, and don't you think that this was the problem, and this was, it's just bullshit. Everything that goes on in Washington

is either about not creating transparency or finding someone else to blame. And that's, you know, again, for what it's worth, I think it's in part because of fucking term limits, or the lack of. That's just me. Well, that seems to be a real problem for sure. Yeah.

But the China thing I think is, in my mind, there's no doubt it's the lab. But I also have no doubt we're probably not going to get clarification of that because there's no upside for the Chinese to cooperate. It's like everything else they do. They don't feel like they need to. So it's too difficult to get like a definitive statement or a definitive like timeline of exactly what happened and how it happened and this is the cause. Unless you can get, you know, your hands on one of the researchers that was inside the lab and is somehow willing to provide you with that intel. I mean, that's an enormous lift, right? It's like trying to get intel on the Iranian nuclear program with that intel, I mean, that's an enormous lift, right?

It's like trying to get intel on the Iranian nuclear program or anything else. I mean, there's certain targets that have always been difficult. And in part, it's because you have a small pool of people who have access to information that you need to know or you want to know. And then you have very limited ability to get to those people. So again, they scrubbed whatever information may be available from open source. That's not available. And so I have a feeling that we're never going to get to the bottom of it necessarily, again, unless we get really lucky with a particular intel source. But there's no upside for the Chinese to say, you know what, now let's be open and transparent. Why would they?

It seems like the pandemic was particularly effective at dividing Americans. And obviously what's happening in Australia and France and quite a few other places where there are these massive protests. But you don't see the same in Russia and you don't see the same in China. Like what about those countries? I mean, it seems like whatever strategy they have, if there really is some sort of a government funded strategy to try to increase the division amongst the left and the right and just people in general in America and distrust in the system. This pandemic has turbocharged it for America, but maybe not so much for our enemies. Well, yeah, in part, that plays to our open society, right? Our access to

information, right? And, you know, you look at a place like China where access to information is, you know, fairly limited. Severely curated, yeah. And you look at a place like Russia where, you know, people make jokes all the time about the Russian population's ability to suffer. And it's true, right?

You know, it's pretty impressive. But I think with the U.S., I just think that they look at it and, yes, it's just another, I guess, to carry on from the point before about the active measures and the idea of driving wedges in. you know, if I was sitting in the Russia desk, you know, for active measures at the FSB, and I was sitting there and I thought to myself, now what can we do? Now what topic should we pursue? Now what area can we pull on to further create this dissension and this lack of unity? And ah, the pandemic, right? So it's just another topic, just like racism, right? Or, you know, fraudulent election or whatever it might be. It's just another target you can put on the table and go, now, how do we do this? Oh, okay. Look, you know, what we need to do is look at this war between, you know, anti-vaxxers and pro-vaxxers, right? Let's do

something there. You know, let's focus on some misinformation there to drive that wedge in further. So for them, it's just another opportunity. And it's naive to think that they wouldn't take advantage of it. And it is. It's striking how we've politicized the idea of the vaccine. I don't know. Look, I got vaccinated, but I don't give a fuck. Everybody do what you're going to do. I can't get can't get you know, I can't get bent around the axle over, you know, oh, my God, you're not going to who the fuck. It's your decision. It's your choice.

I have no idea what anybody's thinking about that. You just do it. Fine. Right. I mean, to me, that part of it. And yet, you know, people are out there yielding their self-righteous swords of justice, you know, talking about, you know, you've got to get vaccinated and the anxiety over the whole thing. That's one of the real problems with social media, right, is that this self-righteous virtue signaling sort of behavior is encouraged. sort of behavior is encouraged.

It's encouraged because people pile on, you get reinforcement, you know, like, yeah, people reinforce your, your decision to post something aggressive. They,

they're with you on it and they're rewarded for this with likes and clicks. Yeah. Look at that. I got a thousand new followers. Exactly. It's fantastic. And you, you see that sometimes you'll see like some of my favorite people on Twitter are like the,

the people who claim like, oh, I used to be a Republican, but now I just see. And they become some of the most woke people. Right. And you know that they're just every day they're posting some bullshit. Right. And it's just simply so they can get that feedback. Yes. Get that dopamine hit.

Get that dopamine hit. Right. Yeah. I mean, the opposite is true, too. People who used to be on the left and they gotpilled, and now they're all in on this. Yeah, yeah. But the other thing is, like, you can't ignore all these issues either. So it's like, where do you go for sanity?

Because, like, when someone says the election's a fraud, and you go, oh, Jesus, do I pay attention to this? And then you see all these things, like Maricopa County just found 17,000 duplicate ballots. Like, what does that mean? Is that an accident or is that election fraud? If that's election fraud, there's evidence of election fraud? 17,000 is a lot. 17,000 is oftentimes enough to win a district or a county, right? Right, but the only way it works is if then you can say, okay, and you've got an impartial media that is out there saying,

well, that's an interesting story, so I'll pursue that. Exactly. You don't have that anymore. You have completely biased media either for the left or for the right. And so much so that they're ignoring stories and even censoring them, stories that turn out to be accurate, like the lab leak hypothesis, right? For the longest time, if you tried to put that on Facebook, they would ban it and they would ban you. Now it's widely accepted that that's the primary theory. But nobody goes back and- And lets those people back on and says, sorry, we fucked you.

Right. Or you don't have any sort of intrepid investigative journalists going, okay, well, let's really dig into this now. Let's take a look because, you know, maybe I spent, you know, six months, you know, shitting on the story. I'm certainly not going to do a reversal. So I think without a – and people talk about that all the time, the objective media. And they talk about how it used to be objective. Well, it never really was. It was more objective. It was more or they just – they made the effort to appear objective.

Right. Right, even though they may not have been. They suppressed their own personal – and that at some point went away. And now, like everything else, we're conditioned and we don't think it odd that you can open an entire New York Times article with nothing but anonymous sources, right? And you don't have to justify what it is that you're saying. That's crazy. It's crazy. But I don't think, you know, you can't walk that dog back. But again, going back to this idea of influencing the't think you know, you can't walk that dog back. But again going back to this idea of influencing the public

You know whether you're trying to get him to buy cigarettes or whether you're the Russians and you're trying to create more dissension You know the only defense really comes down to the individual and the end of each person taking a little bit of fucking Responsibility and saying I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna curate my information a little bit better I'm gonna pay a little bit more attention responsibility and saying, I'm going to, I'm going to curate my information a little bit better. I'm going to pay a little bit more attention to what the fuck I'm reading or hearing. I'm going to push back and question regardless of whether it goes against, you know, my point of view or not. Right. I mean, I've got, I got some really dear friends who are completely on the opposite side on,

on certain issues, but I love getting together with them. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, we'll have, you know, great, uh, Yeah. And we'll have great conversations. And sometimes we'll – is it argumentative? No. But at the end of the day, then we finish up and we have drinks. We have dinner.

We hang out. We talk to – about kids. That's very rare. Yeah. It's very rare today because people decided that the other side is the enemy. And this is this wedge that you've brought up. It's been so effectively utilized, whether it's by design, which obviously we think it is a little bit, but also just by through human nature, whenever you're in a time of great stress, like now,

people, they find comfort in groups and they also like to gang up on people that don't agree with their ideology. And my concern is what you're saying about curating your own information. I've been telling people to try to do that as much as possible. I try to do that as much as possible, but I don't think the majority of people are on board with that. I think the majority of people, they will go to MSNBC. They will get the news that aligns with their ideology. They'll go to Fox. They'll get the news that aligns with their ideology. They'll go to Fox. They'll get the news that aligns with their ideology. And then they'll point fingers at the other side of the fence and goes, these motherfuckers are ruining America. Well, it's because they see it. Again,

I guess I was really disappointed. I keep going back to the same Armed Services Committee hearing because I was really disappointed. I was expecting something more. I don't know why, committee hearing because I was really disappointed. I was expecting something more. Right. I don't know why, but it was just, it was so partisan, right? So the left was busy trying to figure out how to blame the previous administration and the right was simply, you know, banging on, you know, the Republican senators were simply banging on about, we left people behind and not, nobody was taking the opportunity of having, you know, these senior commanders in front of them, you know, to ask impartial, objective questions and actually try to get.

They were all trying to make their own fucking point, which is always going to happen, which, again, I don't know why I was surprised, but it's it's inevitable. And every issue, you know, including the pandemic, is framed in that in that that way. And how do you how do you walk this back, right? I mean, I've got, I know people that have become completely alienated from, you know, others, friends of theirs, because of their opposing views on the pandemic. And, you know, they all want the same thing. They want to be safe and healthy, and they want their kids to be safe and healthy. They all want the same thing. They want to be safe and healthy, and they want their kids to be safe and healthy.

Great. You choose to do this. You choose – But people are so goddamn tribal. They've always been so tribal. It's a part of our DNA. Yeah. It's so difficult for people to abandon those ideas and to reach across the aisle with earnestness and try to be kind to the other side and have a balanced, civilized

conversation. It's not encouraged anymore. What's encouraged is calling people out. Tax the rich. Yeah. That kind of shit. Yeah. Yeah.

What's encouraged is people with radical ideas that attack the other side, that attack the opposing ideology, and then a bunch of people get on board with it and start retweeting it and then the other side gets even more furious and people dig their heels in the sand well once you get this involved right once you go public right and you and you tweet something right right then that's when you know everything goes sideways and and you've got another but a goat rope because that's when you get that piling on effect, right? And then people can, oh my God, look, I got my own community here and I just got 50 more

likes for my fucking post and I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, but I'm going to lambast whoever this person is and that person may not even be a person. And that's it. So it all comes back to- Right, that's part of the problem. Yeah. And so anyway, for what it's worth, read multiple sources of information and investigate what the fuck you're reading. Mike, where does this all go?

If you had to, like, I don't want a rosy, rose-colored glasses view of the world. You're not going to get it from me. I know. But I mean, where does this go? If you see how bad things have been divided since 2016, what happens by 2026? I mean, where do you see us? Yeah, I don't think, unless the internet shuts down and we all get back to some sort of other type of community based communication, I don't think it's going to become less divisive. So that's sort of the starting point.

We've hardened our positions because of a variety of reasons, right? So I know people who are on the left who genuinely believe that anybody who doesn't think like them is stupid, right? And they need to be educated and they need to be helped or brought along. And I know people on the right who think the same way about the left, right? And you're not going to fix that, right? There's not going to be something that comes along unless aliens manifest themselves and then we've all got a common enemy, you're not going to fix this divide that exists. So what does that mean? Maybe it means we develop some other political opportunities, right? So we get a third party that's legitimate, right? That actually can play a role in the political process.

Can you envision anybody allowing that to happen? No. Because the powers that be on the left and the right are so entrenched, right? Yeah, and that's where I know I bang on about this every now and then when we're talking, but that's why I keep going on about fucking term limits. I watched some hearings the other day on a different subject, and I look at these people and I realize that these guys have been up on there doing these political jobs as senators or congresspeople and

they've been there for 35 or 40 years. And you think, what the fuck are we doing? And they're not that impressive as people anyway. And they've got a certain character flow anyway because they went into politics. That's my opinion. Right. Mine as well. Yeah. So, you're right. That was a theoretical concept of throwing out a third or fourth party, but I think that would be very helpful in not healing, but in mitigating some of the problems from the device. I just think that the powers that be will do everything they can to keep that from happening, especially a third party that doesn't have all the trappings that the first two parties do. Like the deeply entwined roots of the Democratic and the Republican parties. The Democrats, they're not giving up what they have.

And anybody that comes along that's reasonable, that's a third part. You know, there was a, Brett Weinstein had an idea for, he called it Unity 2020. And he was going to reach across the aisle and say like, take a qualified candidate from the left and a qualified candidate from the right and bring them together as a third alternative. But popular figures like Dan Crenshaw and Tulsi Gabbard. Those were the two most likely candidates they were talking about. Twitter removed their profile. They banned them. I mean, it makes no fucking sense.

They said they were using bots. There was no evidence they were using bots. They reviewed it. They confirmed their initial suspicions, they said, and wouldn't reinstate the thing. But their position was they were so worried that Trump was going to win

and that all resources that could perhaps take votes away from the Democrats and Joe Biden needed to be stopped. And so this idea could potentially take people

that would have voted for Biden because they were opposed to Trump and now instead they're going to vote for Tulsi Gabbard and Dan Crenshaw. This is going to fuck things up for the Democrats. Right. Which, I mean, they always make that argument, whether it's Ralph Nader or Ross Perot or whomever. Ross Perot actually did do that. That's why the argument is kind of interesting. Yeah. But it's also fascinating because then you dip into that whole concept of the big tech and their impact on the same thing that we were talking about with Yuri, right? Right.

I mean, it's not as if Twitter is not involved in active measures, right, in their own way. Well, the Hunter Biden story. Right. Yeah. Which is crazy. Yeah. Literally leading up to the election, there's some real interesting evidence of potential corruption. If he's telling the truth in these emails,

he's saying that his father got 50% of all the stuff he got. I have to kick 50% up to the big guy. This is what he's saying, which is, that is corruption, right? That is core. And where do I think that is? I think that that's Hunter Biden just blowing smoke, trying to get more money for himself. And so he's doing what a lot of people do in DC. Bullshitting. Well, exactly. So there's no real evidence that he did get that money. himself. And so he's just, he's doing what a lot of people do in DC. Do I think? Bullshitting. Well, exactly. And so there's no real evidence that he did get that money.

Right. It could be just bullshit. Right. Well, what I mean is, do I think Joe Biden sat around and go, yes, I'll case is okay.

So, and I'll take 50%. No, I think Hunter Biden's just, you know, it's, it's, it's got some character flaws and I think he's out there just. Wait a minute.

Yeah. You think Hunter Biden has character flaws? Although he's a hell of an artist. Have you seen it? Fucking artwork's going for big money. It's fantastic. $75,000 or $80,000. If he sells at the prices that they talk about at this exhibition that he's going to be doing-

If I was a dude who did a lot of coke and I had a bunch of money, I might be interested in a Biden in my house. Yeah. That's Hunter Biden. That fucking guy. Well, apparently, they've hung some of it in the White House. What? Yeah.

Come on. Well, this is a story that came out,'ve hung some of it in the White House. What? Yeah. Come on. Well, this is a story that came out, was that some of the stuff that he's done is going to be marketed now as having hung in the White House. Oh my God. Which, that's a little sketchy from an ethics perspective. That's a lot sketchy. What does it look like? Can we see a Hunter Biden painting?

Yes. I would like to see some of his work. I don't know whether it's abstract or whether it's- I don't know anything about it. Some of the $75,000. I'm not a fan of modern art to begin with. I think a lot of it is shit. Yeah.

Some of it's really interesting. Don't get me wrong, but there's a lot of it. We were talking about this couple that's getting divorced in Manhattan. Real estate developer. He's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he has a $600 million art collection. So we put up this one painting that's worth somewhere between $40 and $60 million, and it looks like dog shit. Holy shit.

It looks like something you and I could easily do. Oh, God. It's just splatters. Nonsense. I'm old enough that I was in when they opened the Sydney Opera House because I was living in Australia. I remember we took a trip over to Sydney to see the opera house and we were walking through and I was just a little kid and we walked through and there's a big Jackson Pollock there. And I

looked at the Jackson Pollock and I looked at my dad and the tour guide was standing there and I said, I could do that shit. I remember my dad still told that story until he died. Is that a painting? Oh. It's mixed media. Mixed media. So there is paint and photo.

So it's photograph and then paint and then... That's not terrible. That's not terrible. Let me see some of his other shit. That right there is... Let me tell you right now, that's not terrible either. It said... Maybe cocaine's really good for your creativity. Some of it's hanging in his

mom's office, so technically it's in the White House. It looks a little paint-by-number-ish there. I don't know. Let me go back to that. I could see that being in the gallery somewhere. That is not terrible. Oh, I could definitely see it, given what else sells out there. Yeah. And that's the scheme of things. We've lowered the... Should I get

Hunter Biden for the studio? Oh, if you could get a Hunter Biden. Are they hard to get? Look at that one right there. I think if you're willing to pay enough money. Is Hunter Biden's art any good? What's he doing? Is he doing a line off of that? Oh, he's blowing the paint.

Yeah, he's blowing through it. So it's like a reverse. Oh, some splatter paint. Dude, his art's not bad. I have to be honest. Hi, I'm on cocaine. And he looks happy. Look at him.

He looks happy. Doesn't he look happy? Boy, he's clean now. I shouldn't say he's on cocaine anymore. Hunter Biden snaps at critics of art dealings. Fuck them, he says. Wow. Wow, yeah.

That art is not bad. I'm telling you, I'm a little shocked. I'm saying this, but I'm just being honest. I don't know if you can get a Biden. I bet I could get a Biden. I'm an NFT. No. No with the NFTs.

Do you think they're hard to get? I think he's having an exhibit here soon. I'm not NFT No No with the NFTs Do you think they're hard to get? I think he's having an exhibit here soon I'm not paying 75 grand He wouldn't come on the podcast It's set up to 500k When he was releasing his book They touted him at 500k Oh my god They could probably resell it

Because then it hung in your studio here. That's got to put a premium on it. $502? Yeah. Oh my God. His works are being offered for as much as $500,000 a piece. They're hoping someone will buy it. His art dealer said he would follow ethics guidelines that the Biden administration helped to develop.

Wow. Yeah, there's a push by, I forget who it is in the House Ethics Committee, that says, look, we need to know who's buying his art so that we, it's not just a bunch of Chinese dealers looking to gain some influence. Yeah, but the gallery in Soho says it will not disclose the identity of buyers

or details of the sales. Interesting. My God. Well, imagine if that was Donald Trump Jr. I bet they would if that was Donald Trump Jr. I bet they would divulge all of that information. I bet they would dox those people. They would find out who's involved. They would go deep on that.

They're giving them a free pass. I don't think Don Jr.'s artwork would be that good. How the fuck do you know? I thought Hunter's was going to suck. I did, actually. Not bad. Yeah. No, I've changed my opinion. I'm going to talk to my wonderful wife and see whether we can-

See if you can scrape up a half a mil. Yeah, put a half mil. I know we were going to buy a house, but maybe- Fuck it. Maybe just get a painting that- Yeah, just get a hunter. Nice splattered paint all over. I'll just show it to my boys and say, that's your college fund right there.

I got to say, it's not bad. It's not bad stuff. It's not bad, but would it sell for $500,000? Probably not. No, not bad, but would it sell for $500,000? Probably not. No, not if it was somebody else. And I think that's the question. But what do I know? What do I know?

What do I know? Mike, tell everybody about your show one more time. All right. Let's bring this bad boy home. This is a good one, but I feel bad about it. I feel like the future is fucked. I really do. In all our conversations, this one seems the most disturbing in terms of the implications for the future.

No, you're right. I always try to end on a happy note, and I don't know that I did. Well, we did with Hunter Biden because we agreed that it's better than we thought. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's pretty good. Like I said, I wanted to have him on the podcast. And he said no?

Well, they reached out initially. They touted him as a guest, and then somewhere along the line, I reached out back, and I said, yeah, let's try to get him on. And then they passed. So they might have just thrown a bunch of shit out there in terms of invitations, and then they said, oh, Brogan's probably going to ask you crazy shit and talk about coke and hookers. That was the White House saying no.

I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure. That was the messaging crew in the White House saying absolutely not. Meanwhile, it would have probably been a great conversation. I'm not interested in making the guy feel bad. If I had him on, I would just – I don't fault the guy for having a drug problem. I've had a lot of people on here that have had drug problems.

And oddly enough, he's not the first person to take advantage of a family name in trying to further business. I wouldn't even be interested in that. I would just want to know, what is it like to be the son of Joe Biden? Like, what is it like to get off of cocaine? What is it like to, you know, to have your whole life exposed to the world in the way he did? And he, what did he write a book recently? Is that what he did? Yeah. Yeah, he did. I don't know whether it's sold or not. I haven't heard a peep about that book. Yeah, but I think it's, well, he's been more focused on the visual art. Art's half a million bucks a painting, man.

I would be pushing that shit out. I'd be on Adderall right now in a gallery going, what next? I'd be crapping out one canvas after another. So anyway, so the show, yeah, Black Files Declassified. I don't know whether we want to run that trailer again. No, we can't do that. No, we can't do that. Can't do that to people.

But it's coming up. We've been filming the second season traveling all over the country and around the world. When will it be released? In the new year. We don't have a launch date yet,

but after the holidays. And the old episodes are available online. Streaming, I believe, on Discovery Plus still. This is a big science channel program on the Discovery Network. And, yeah, it's been a hell of a lot of fun, man. Mike, always a pleasure.

Appreciate you, sir. Thank you very much for being here. Next time I'm going to be a lot more optimistic. No, no, no. I like it like this. Give me the truth. All right, man. Thank you, everybody.

Bye.