The Pete Quiñones Show - The Cold War Series w/ Thomas777 - 3/3

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

5 Hours and 35 MinutesPG-13Here are episodes 11 through the Livestream Q&A of the Cold War series with Thomas777.The 'Cold War' Pt. 11 - Nixon, Detente, and Their Inevitable End w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War' Pt. 12 - Able Archer and Operation R.Y.A.N. - w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War' Pt. 13 - The Downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007- w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War' Pt. 14 - The 'Red Square' Flight of Mathias Rust - w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War' Pt. 15 - The Berlin Wall Comes Down - w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War' Pt. 16 - The Q&A Finale - w/ Thomas777Thomas' SubstackThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cagnonez show, part 11 of the Cold War series. How are you doing, Thomas?

I'm doing very well, man. Thank you for, that you were hosting me as always. Today, an aspect of the later Cold War that has become neglected by a lot of historians. There's one guy in particular, his name's Mark Ambinder. it's kind of hard to put his politics on the map on some on some mistakes some kind of neoconish

something kind of like paleo-liberal even kind of like Walter Mondale type liberal he's become something of a presidential historian he wrote a book called the Brink which was about um which is about the abe it's about half it's about like the able archer

war scare and the rest is kind of about nuclear command of control and the final phase of the Cold War and, you know, the deeper parodies they're in and kind of how this informed policy. And it's really fascinating book. But he's about the only guy I can think of who's written a dedicated book about like the post-de-taunt pre-peristrika Cold War, which I don't really understand because that's tremendously

important. A lot of the technologies we take for granted just in day-to-day life, you know, telecom stuff. it literally like came out of that epoch I mean this stuff was in people's contemplation you know in a research and development capacity for decades before to head but

the perfection of those things you know I mean including the internet you know the survival command and control platform I mean the stuff all came out of like late Cold War you know strategic planning and

the degree to which the potentiality of and preparation for a general nuclear war kind of shaped American life in ways prosaic and profound that really can't be overstated. You know, I've people under about 45, they don't remember that.

And even some people who are older, it didn't like impact them in their daily life in concrete terms. So they think I'm overstating it, but I'm not. And if you look at the structure of the U.S. government, you know, as I'm always coming back to this point, it's quite literally like structured to wage the Cold War and not much else. And the strategic nuclear dimension of that obviously became preeminent, owning the technological and existential realities. But, you know, what I'm getting at is that this is not just some kind of like esoteric, like peculiar point of interest. these people who, you know, right, and it's big, it's big now to write about the deep state in varying capacities. You know, I guess because William Crystal or whatever, like, you know, in guys of that kind of ilk who write for those kinds of publications, because, you know, they, since they've started, like, bainting the term in, like, the last, like, five, ten years, now it's, like, okay to do so.

So, you know, people write about these things, you know, in a very kind of contemporary way. It's like, okay, if you want to understand the deep state, you've got to understand the late Cold War. You know, it's that, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's why these things exist. Um, I mean, they, some, some aspects are, are emphasized more than others. And, you know, some can attract budgetary report more than others, you know, in the post-bler epoch, obviously. And like, there's been cosmetic changes to a lot of these things, but that's just what they are. They're cosmetic changes. You know, they, they came out of, um,

they came out of the Cold War and specifically they came out of the strategic nuclear paradigm that you know the regime was structured to wage

what's anyway post Vietnam I'm of the belief from you know 73 to to to 83 to 83

approximately. Grenada was a big moral victory in addition to being tactically significant in ways that I think most people don't really consider. I don't want to get into that yet, but the point being, let's say 73 to 82, perhaps, I'm not the belief America was actively losing the Cold War, militarily.

Politically, no, in terms of values, if you will, and legitimacy, no. But that didn't really matter because the battle in the Cold War was the battle for hearts and minds. After the 1950s, I mean, realistically, with the exception of Germany,

which was owing to unfortunate accident of geography and geostrategic reality, you know, they had to fight a way to deal with the Soviet Union and the communists. but nobody in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s

was like, you know what, we want to Marxist-Leninist state. We want to live like people doing the East Block. Like nobody thought that way. Okay. And nobody in the developed world in North Asia thought that way. People who did think that way were in sub-Saharan

Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, you know, and in the global south. This was still very much an animating principle, okay? And it could be foreseen pretty easily. It's like, okay, it doesn't matter if, you know, in the world in 1983, you know, it was clear to everybody and, you know, kind of in the free, in the developed free world that these Stalinist states just generated a lot of misery, created economies, a shortage, you know, didn't deliver on these promises of, of Tulleric utopia, and, you know, plenty. and really we're just kind of, you know, miserable places to live. That didn't matter.

Like, it was foreseeable that, you know, America could become this kind of garrison state, literally surrounded by a third world, you know, including, you know, including Mexico and Latin America, that basically was solidly in the Soviet camp, was animated by a revolutionary impulse towards Marxist Leninism. And, you know, the United States basically, you know, like meaningful interdependence as, you know, economic or otherwise would just be cut off, okay? And the only meaningful currency would be, you know, the ability to protect military power.

But again, you know, if the global South and similarly situated developing states were, pretty much all in the Soviet camp, you know, the ability to, the ability to project hard power would have been profoundly compromised too. So it was foreseeable, again, you know, like that's, that's kind of like what Millais was getting out the Red Dawn scenario. Like, yeah, it was silly to, you know, to envision, you know, Spetsnaz, parachuting into Colorado Springs and shooting up the local high school. But the political map that he kind of envisioned, like, like an intro where it's like, you know, West Germany becomes, you know, West Germany withdraws from NATO because it's green and soap them.

Government, you know, decides to like just go all in with the Soviet Union. NATO falls apart. The global south goes all in with Ivan, you know, so that you have like America kind of standing alone, you know, with a couple remaining states like the UK and Australia that, you know, really are kind of, you know, not meaningful powers in their own right. And, you know, it's a red world with America. America is kind of this, it is literally this like garrison, okay?

I mean, that was the real risk by the late Cold War post-Vietnam. It wasn't that, it didn't matter that, you know, Marxist Leninism had lost in like, you know, the marketplace of ideas or whatever, you know, people who still bandy Thomas Payne or whatever

and claim that, you know, through, like, the process of reason and, like, meaningful discourse, we all, like, arrive with truth. Like, that doesn't mean anything. in the world of power of politics. And it certainly didn't mean anything amissed, you know, what a,

amidst, you know, what in most delicate times people refer to to as the colored revolt, you know, within the developing world. You know, I mean, this was very, this very much could have become reality. And a Soviet Union, a Warsaw pact, that basically could

plunder, you know, the collective capital resources of, you know, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, it could pretty much stagger on indefinitely. You know, I mean, it doesn't matter if, you know, the value added in absolute terms to their economy is nil.

It wouldn't matter if, you know, they were experiencing, you know, like 1.2% growth annually. You know, they could, they could certainly, the Soviets were certainly good at manufacturing guns and they could, and they could, They could poach enough proverbial butter as they needed to if, you know, they had access to the world as their kind of proverbial orchard as it were. So there's important to keep in mind, okay? You catch them in the corner of your eye.

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was the author of detente. I mean, Brezhnev obviously had to be receptive to that. But it really, this really was a, America was kind of determining the course of the conflict paradigm

in the developing world because the Truman Doctrine was what carried the day. And, you know, Nixon, the Nixon Doctrine superseded the Truman Doctrine. You know, the Nixon Doctrine, which was, announced formally as as

as America transferred authority for the defense of the Republic of Vietnam to Saigon. Nixon declared that in no uncertain terms, America's not going to take direct action

to intervene in states where the internal situation precludes those states from resisting communist subversion from within or without. you know, on their own terms. So that gave, I think, I mean, that was just practical, number one. I mean, there wasn't the political will, you know,

to waive another Vietnam War in sub-Saharan Africa or even in Latin America, you know, in 1973. But also, it kind of provided an opening to get the Soviets to the table without further compromising American credibility, you know, in some kind of pitiable way. It didn't appear to be, it didn't appear to be America like folding the flag and quitting the Cold War. You even have some hawks interpreted it that way. And the Soviets, what's important is the Soviets didn't interpret it that way. But the real lynchpin of the time,

was the Salt Treaty, strategic arms limitation talks. I'm not going to bore everybody with the minutia of it. The important details are that it limited not just nuclear forces in being and the destructive power of existing platforms as regards like how many warheads and what kind of throw weight and megatonage could be packed on to those pre-existing platforms but it also limited it also limited countermeasures

you know deployment as well as purportedly development of countermeasures the idea being that you know emergent deeper parodies you know including things like decoys you know including things

you know like interceptor missiles you know and including um including then next generation early warning systems if this kind of tech could be frozen

or if not frozen agreed upon to not be deployed that this would build in some kind of additional stability which I think is incredibly fatuous but that's a different issue

in any event this was in May 1972 by 1976, a few things that happened to undermine this burgeoning detente regime, which ultimately was unceremoniously ended in 1979, for one reason in particular we'll get into in a minute. But a couple of things happened subsequent to salt. First and foremost, there was the 90th, 73 war. On October 6th,

973, as people know, Syria and Egypt preemptively assaulted Israel. The Arab armies, particularly the Syrian army, performed better than anticipated, frankly. This Israel had a real problem

on its hands in tactical terms. Israel responded by marrying nuclear warheads to their Jericho. missile platforms in part to, you know, try and terrify the error of them to submission, in part as a ploy to force a reluctant Nixon administration to reprovision and resupply them because the Israelis were desperately running short on munitions and everything else they needed. The ploy worked on the Nixon tapes and hear Nixon and Kissinger and Nixon lamenting,

you know, I'm not going to repeat the language because that would probably upset the YouTube sensors if this ends up on YouTube but you know Nixon was not happy at the state of affairs the Soviets responded by deploying

service warfare frigates and amphibious assault craft the Port of Alexandria and this was not publicized at the time but the White House knew those service warfare frigates were carrying nuclear weapons

as the IDF surrounded the Egyptian 3rd Army Bresniv contacted the White House and said that if the Egyptian army were surrounded and destroyed the Egyptian 3rd Army were surrounded and destroyed and if the IDF continued to Cairo the Soviets were going to deploy and intervene directly to save Egypt

Nixon responded by ordering DefCon 3 alerts status the first time there'd been such a raise an alert status since Cuba in 62 um this was really

this was profoundly serious alert status wasn't what it is like after the Cold War and like post 9-11 it wasn't this like meaningless thing it had actual it had actual significance and um it in material in concrete terms

it changed the status of forces okay um it indicated real readiness to wage war is what i mean okay um at defcon three uh during the cold war it meant that uh strategic nuclear bomber forces were on alert status such that in 15 minutes they could be scrambled and deployed uh it meant it meant missileiers um in their silos order to strap in to like their command chairs and prepare for um incoming ICBM assault. You know, so, I mean, it was very, very serious. The Soviets responded in kind.

The Soviet defense minister at the time was Gretschko, who was soon to be replaced. He asked the Kremlin for 70,000 troops to be mobilized and deployed in proximity to the battle space, which didn't happen, obviously, why that didn't happen is not entirely clear. Did Brezhnev put the brakes on that? Deliverently.

Did the Soviet general staff decide to wait and see? It's not clear to me. According to a guy named Andre Danielevich, who was a colonel general or its equivalent, I guess that'd be a three-star, I think, and the NATO current on, like, military guys in the comments, correct me if him wrong, and I'm not a military, but his testimony in the 90s that he gave to the Wilson Foundation

and some of those NGOs types, I think, is instructive, and I think it's credible. What he said was, he said that the 1970s, the 1970s crisis exposed real weaknesses in the Soviet command and control system and its ability to respond to crisis in the moment. and that the Soviet Union wasn't really capable. He said the Soviet Union couldn't incrementally mobilize in that way. There was a binary kind of alert structure.

Like either you were at war or you were not. And when you were at war, either the nuclear trigger was cocked and ready or there was no chance of that happening. So basically, and interestingly, because, you know, during the Tsarist era um one of the issues that um one of the issues that uh holveg was dealing with in germany and you know the lead up to the great war is that once like the czar is a mobilization um um protocol was was triggered like very little could stop it you know and uh to put the brakes on it would mean that you know the the russian empire returned to a state of uh you know of peace time vulnerability

So I think that's interesting, okay, not just for trivial reasons, but at any event, the inability, the inflexibility and the lack of a, you know, the lack of a nuanced alert structure was something that gave the Soviet general staff pause. And I mean, the Soviet general staff, it was modeled very much on like, you know, the old German general staff. and you know as was the american as was and is the american joint she's a staff so i mean these danielovitch uh was a powerful man and he also he was um you catch them in the corner of your eye distinctive by design they move you even before you drive the new cooper plug-in hybrid range for mentor leon and terramar now with flexible pcp finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers.

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Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. He was kind of the statistics and research man on the Soviet general staff. So what he did in 1976, and this was not accidental.

1976 is generally agreed upon some historians and some defense intelligence types posited in 1974, 74, 75 a handful as late in 1977. This was when the Soviets truly achieved strategic parity

in terms of their nuclear forces in being. This is when the point at which, inarguably, the Warsaw Pact could fight a nuclear war against NATO, and or the United States, you know, jointly or severally,

on terms of parity as regards forces in being. They were always disadvantaged as regarded, you know, the strategic nuclear forces until then, you know, despite, you know, what the Pentagon claimed, you know, in the run-up to the 1960 election, in spite of what, you know, subsequent administrations alleged about, you know, force levels. This was the moment at which the strategic balance became, you know, one of a true parity.

But what Danielovich did was he oversaw the first computer analysis scientifically structured, quantitative simulation of a general nuclear war. Okay. Coding all available inputs, you know, and the Soviet general staff was pretty uncorrupted by ideology. You know, this was not, you know, some kind of cheerleading exercise so that they could, you know, deliver, you know, some kind of hackneyed official statement, you know,

to the general secretary and say, like, you know, see, comrade, we can defeat the imperialist. There was nothing like that. It was very legit. And what Danielovich's conclusions were, was that under best conditions in a general nuclear war, the Soviet military would be utterly powerless if the USSR was hit with a splendid first strike.

They have no ability to retaliate effectively. Even if early warning did perform adequately, and the Soviets were able to retaliate, at least 80 million Soviet citizens would be dead. And God knows how many more in Warsaw Pact, allied estates who were also targeted in varying capacities. In the aftermath, it'd be virtually impossible for the Soviet military to rebuild and reconstitute

critical infrastructure, because over three quarters a heavy industry would have been just outright annihilated. And finally, Europe would be reduced to a wasteland.

Like even if you reject the kind of Carl Sagan, doomsday, you know, hypothesis of nuclear winter and all that kind of thing, there's no way Europe could survive

a general nuclear war. You know, I mean, you're talking about, literally the death of Europe. And obviously that, you know, had profound implications for the Soviet Union as well. You know. So what this led to was a couple of things.

The way to really understand, the way to really understand why the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in owes to what I just described in terms of real anxieties about their ability to fight a nuclear war and survive. Not even win, just survive, okay? Now, I know nobody likes the Russians these days, and I guess most people don't really like the Russians anyway. I'm not trying to be bigoted or mean.

I mean, that's a fact. Okay. However anyone feels about Russia, whoever anybody felt about the, Soviet Union. Russia, the Soviet Union, in the 20th century, they lost more people at war than

all other states combined. Okay. You know, between 1940, 1945, like one in seven of their population was, like, died by war attrition. Okay? Or of starvation, or in, you know, a bombing rate,

or in some way approximately caused by a I mean, to say this was impactful on their collective psyche, I mean, doesn't even begin to describe, you know, the degree to which this informed policy. But beyond that, by, by 1979, you know, we're under conditions of true strategic clarity, I mean, potentially, we're talking about the window of decision making in event of a general war of minutes, you know, minutes, you know, like five or ten minutes. Or in best case scenario, you know, 15 or 20 minutes.

And, you know, we're dealing with weapon systems and we're dealing with, you know, levels of social organizations at scale. wherein human decision makers are increasingly being sidelined. You know, that was reality. Okay. Like this idea that just, oh, well, if we have sensible men, you know, at the controls, you know, cooler heads will just prevail. And, you know, it's unthinkable that some general nuclear war would happen. That was not the case at all.

You can find yourself at war before even realize what's happening. and in the case of nuclear war again we're talking about being forced to render decisions within minutes you know if you've been realized you've been hit you know I mean there's that too

the possibility of decapitation raises a whole new possibility or set of possibilities you know if the enemy can potentially eventually achieve a splendid decapitation strike, then the issue becomes like, well, you know, how do I identify imminent indicators of attack before there's even, you know, before there's even

like a mobilization or before like early warning, you know, is even, is even activated, you know. So these are not things that human minds can adequately interpret, identify, interpret, contemplate and respond to. So we're talking about incredibly dangerous conditions. Okay. Now, I missed all of this. The Soviet Union, and to their credit, to the credit of the general staff,

I mean, as they indicated a moment ago, they were kind of the best of that system. Them and probably some of the KGB, I mean, that's where I drop off came from. That's where Mr. Putin, you know, rows of the ranks as well. After this 1976 war game exercise,

the Soviets realized that they had to try and find a way to develop a flexible response whereby they had the capability to fight and win a nuclear war or at least you know, respond to any nuclear assault with a devastating counter strike in the form of a survivable deterrent.

But they realized that they had to, basically the Soviet Union, by way of a frankly progressive minded general staff, they tried to implement their own revolution in military affairs. Okay. And this is significant to the final phase of the Cold War. but what remained paramount was uh you know was uh the ability of you know um the ability to survive a smudded for a strike or to deter it with you know a survivable um a survivable deterrent so another uh another Soviet military type who offered his testimony um you know in the aftermath of 1991 was a guy named Alexander Leikovsky, a major general.

Likovsky was present pretty much when, you know, the inner Politburo, if we can call it that way, convened to discuss the invasion of Afghanistan that's documented. So his testimony at least, you know, I see no reason to think he's not a credible. of a witness but it's documented that he was present when he stated he was present so you know um he's as much of uh from him we get as much of an insider's perspective on the decision-making process as we're going to get you catch them in the corner of your eye distinctive by design they move you even before you drive the new cooper plug-in hybrid range For Mentor, Leon and Terramar.

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On December 8th, 1979, there was a meeting. held in Brezhnev's private office. You know, Brezhnev was the general secretary at the time still, you know, and he would be until his death in 1982, but he was increasingly, you know, suffering dementia and all matter of health problems. I believe, as I said before, that Andropov, Gromiko, who was the foreign minister, and Ustinov, who was then Secretary of Defense, and he was this big war hero. like when you think of those guns

of Red Army generals it got like rows and rows and medals you know and look like they're you know they got they got like a visage that looks like it's cart out of granite or something like Ustinov was

was kind of one of those guys but um the issue at hand was the present situation in Afghanistan um and a drop up and Ustanov in particular were gravely concerned about it and what like

Kovsky says is he said that the way on drop-off and Adropo was in which he was holding court and wasn't Brezhiv. And drop-off said that, look, the efforts undertaken by the U.S. intelligence apparatus, you know, central intelligence, DIA, you know,

elements of the State Department that are in fact intelligence, you know, oriented. He said that their big plan is to beef up Turkey, you know, concede to the turps, you know, within reason, whatever they want in Central Asia,

so long as the Turks are willing to play ball with a NATO war plan. And ultimately, he said that the goal, the Turkish goal is to bring Sunni Muslims on the southern Soviet frontier, like into their penumbra or orbit. And the U.S. ambition is to encourage that sentiment, you know, by whatever means possible. Now, the reason for this was, among other things, by 1979, Soviet war planners realized that if America was going to launch a preemptive assault

to the Soviet Union, it was going to basically force the Soviet Union to fight a two-front nuclear war. If you can think a nuclear war is having fronts. But the point is, they were going to assault from the Pacific as well as from the West, okay? They're going to do that for a few reasons. reasons. World War III would have been decided by naval weapons platforms and eventually by those like an orbital space. But by 979, Asia would have been key for reasons that we can get into at some point. But it's kind of too, there to, you know, to vote with the rest of this episode to that and nothing else. But the big Soviet concern also was that, Soviet command and control to fight a nuclear war was based in Moscow and it was based in Kazakhstan, where Star City is.

You know, there's Space Center to this day that still were Russian spacecraft or launched from. The big concern was that Pershing missiles deployed, you know, in proximity to Kazakhstan, would be targeted at Star City. and, you know, again, like, if we can, I mean, it's an imperfect descriptor, but at event of a two-front nuclear assault in the Soviet Union, it would be blinded and then it would be decapitated, and that would be the end of it. So, why the concern in Afghanistan? Well, Amin, who was a communist, he was this revolutionary firebrain, and they had to be a communist. Afghanistan, you know, who'd become who'd become the president.

And he was a dedicated Marxist-Leninist or the kind of peculiarities of or one of the kind of peculiarities of the culture there, which I can't speak to in any kind of, you know, meaningful capacity, but just generally. And this is what Lakowski stated. You know, Amin fell back a lot on kind of appeals to Islamic pithism and couching Marxist-Leninist kind of gobbledygook in those terms.

The Kremlin had a hard time, kind of discerning those signals. They thought that Amin was likely going to kind of court, like, an Islamist coalition around like a nominally Marxist-Leninist government, and then was going to pivot to the West through Turkey and become this client regime of the sort that America always wanted Iran to kind of become and was going to welcome

forces to be based there, including things like pursing two missile platforms. And in the end drop-off, Usenov, Grameco view, like this was the checkmate scenario in the Cold War. And secondarily, a lot of people don't know this. Afghanistan actually has fairly

substantial uranium deposits. Pakistan was literally at war at the time intermittently with the Soviet ally India, who was their hedge against China, which in turn, you know,

Mr. Kissinger and some of his successors and the Chinese courted Pakistan and started giving them everything they needed to wage war with India. you know, so what I'm getting at is that this was, this was not Andropov being crazy or this was not just Soviet paranoia. Like this actually was very forward-thinking strategic logic. And they were 100% wrong about, I mean, he had no intention of doing that.

He wasn't what he appeared to be, which was a basically doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist, accounting, like kind of the peculiar cultural nuances of his country. But unfortunately, what we've decided was at the conclusion of this meeting, like Oskys said he was kind of sitting there thinking that this was just kind of like a typical like intelligence briefing. But Andropov just kind of like looked at, you know, at every man in the room and said, well, you know, our plan is going to be this. You know, we've got to remove, I mean,

you know, by way of special action, which everybody understood that, you know, he's going to be whacked. He's going to be replaced with Carmel, who was the Soviet Union's preferred, for whatever reason the KGB said that

this is the man and we can rely, you know, it was just some kind of Cypher. I don't know anything about the man beyond that. But, you know, he, I believe, he, until 1986, so for most of the Soviet War in Afghanistan, like, he was at the helm. And Dropov said, in order to preserve, you know, he anticipated, you know, some kind of smooth transition to power, but, you know, just in case, you know, he said, we got a plan for the contingency of civil unrest and deploy at least

some contingent of forces on the ground there. And this was put to Usenov put this to Oskarkov who was chief of the general staff. And he was

outraged. And Usenov said, well, to be on the safe side, don't worry, we're going to deploy 75 to 80,000. thousand troops in theater and O'Garikov said that's not going to be able to stabilize

a situation and this isn't a conventional military problem anyway and uh apparently Usenov said are you saying you know comrade are you suggesting that you were to teach the poet girl and reading between the lines

Ogarcov realized that if he continued on this path of you know conscientious resistance he would be disappeared if not physically which was very possible you know he he would have found himself uh you know unpersoned in some uh in some basic capacity um the uh this tells you too about the divide between again the military leadership and uh the true kind of vanguard, which was of the Communist Party, I mean,

which was in drop off by that point Grameco and Oostanov. And this was a totally unofficial meeting of hand-picked

officialdom. You know, this didn't go to the Supreme Soviet. This didn't go to some, you know, officially convened subcommittee of the Politburo. There wasn't even any record of it other than the notes of the meeting that I just referenced.

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apparently the notes of this meeting were in his safe. Every Stoviet General Secretary had a personal safe, and when he died, it was opened. Which seems strange, almost like mafia-like, in my opinion. I'm not being corny. I mean, like, quite literally. When, like, when Brezhnev died, I think he had like $10,000 in American cash, which at that time was a lot of money. He had, he had, like,

he had like some Cheva's Regal or some kind of, like, mid-shelf, like, brand of American liquor and, like, a bunch of personal effects. And drop-up had a whole lot of, he had a whole lot of fairly sensitive stuff, including apparently the notes from this meeting, which was the only documentation that had even occurred, which is crazy because the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was brazen. The Soviet Union, in some ways, it didn't respect convention in the international system,

you know, stuff like the downing of flight, 07 and other things, but they were obsessed with their own internal protocol. Like, this is something just, like, wasn't done. Like, you can tell, in my opinion, the Soviet Union was in trouble at this point that they were doing things this way. This wasn't this ordinary... I mean, the Soviet was secretive and paranoid,

but, like, not... This isn't how they did things. You know, and when... When even within the inner party, literally, you've got that kind of, like, mistrust. So you're resorting to this kind of ad hoc decision-making, you know, with... kind of like a mafia coterie of officialdom, you know, who are loyal to like the de facto decision

maker on war and peace questions. Like that's, that's a very, very bad situation. I mean, just in terms of the potential for, you know, the potential for, you know, uh, uh, um, catastrophic decision making, but also means a, it means the proverbial center cannot hold. And I'm actually someone who thinks pretty highly even drop off, within the bounded rationality of, you know, rather the like the amoral you know

discussion within an amoral a purely a moral discussion of power politics I think Andropa was probably the best man that's just been produced

other than Stalin um and purely you know power political terms but um this uh this is how

this is what underlay the decision to go to war and um Afghanistan. It was not, you know, to fight Islamic fundamentalism. Like, Islamic consciousness definitely was an aspect. It was a part of the constellation of factors, but not in the way, like, people think about it.

It wasn't because, like, Osama Bin Laden was radicalizing people or something, or because the CIA created Bin Laden or whatever kind of stupid stuff people say. It very, very much absolutely had to do with critical judgment-related. to the um you know uh relating to the nuclear paradigm you know and and the need of the soviets to protect at all costs um key command of control infrastructure in asia um in order to survive uh uh a bowl from the blue assault and preserve um a survivable deterrent and i think that's fascinating i mean not just because i you know i don't think it's just because i have a strong interest in the topic. I mean, this is, um, it goes to show you how, um, during the Cold War,

you know, um, warfare within very, within very secondary theaters, every peripheral theaters had, you know, profound significance, um, in a way that, you know, before a sense, like, just wouldn't, like is not emergent within, you know, um, ordinary, uh, security paradigms. Let me ask you about, let me get, get a subject in here. It's probably too much right now to talk about maybe for a subsequent episode. Are you going to talk anything at all about what the Carter White House had to do with possibly? You know, there's that famous line of we're going to give them, we're going to give Russia their Vietnam by pushing them into the Afghanistan conflict. that arrived somewhat later

like as Carter was going out movie Charlie Wilson's war I think it's kind of lame and it makes Wilson himself look like this great it makes them look like this big like playboy and this like great guy as well as like this kind of strategic genius to realize that

you know there was a soft vulnerability as it were in Afghanistan when it became clear of the Afghans we're going to fight and the seizure of the grand mosque by extremists in Saudi Arabia, including a lot of guys who ended up joining bin Laden himself, that the Iranian revolution, ironically,

because I mean, you know, the first true Islamic Republic, revolutionary Islamic Republic was like a Shia republic that very much inspired Salafi, Mujahideen types these things kind of coalesced and you know guys from far and wide started streaming into Afghanistan

to fight the communists and I don't think people really saw that coming when that became clear it was around like Carter was on his way out Reagan was on his way in and

the Reagan doctrine When, you know, for the minute Reagan took the oath of office, it was clear that, you know, the Team B, Cotery had won out. And the Reagan doctrine was like, we're going to fight Ivan pretty much reveries insinuated. And we're going to give the people under arms. We're fighting the Reds, anything they need. What Carter did, what I'm going to get to momentarily, Carter deserves a lot of credit. Carter totally changed the command of control structure and brought it back within constitutional parameters, as well as just putting an end of the kind of garbage that had made America vulnerable

in strategic nuclear terms. you know Carter said that like you know this centering debate around you know mutually assured destruction which never was doing anything more than a talking point anyway that's over with you know we're gonna I'll I mean I'll get into that now

like it was the issue was this okay by the time Carter took office Carter realized very quickly a few things were afoot first of all strategic air command had just decided by that point that in the event of a general nuclear war, the president and all civilian decision makers are just going to be dead within minutes.

So why bother, you know, really, like, advising the president about nuclear war decision making anyway? Because strategic air command from the looking glass, AWACs aircraft, we're just going to, like, fight the war, you know, from that command post, and, oh, well, it sucks the president's dead, but that's just the way it is. Carter said, that's not acceptable. Okay. first of all, the President of the United States is the President of the United States.

You know, he's the sole national representative of the people of the American people. Secondly, Article 2 confers upon the President, you know, the Power of Commander-in-Chief. It doesn't confer that upon Strategic Air Command, or like General Curtis LeMay or General Thomas Powers or General Whoever. Okay? That's patently unconstitutional. finally what the hell are we doing just saying like

we're just going to like throw our hands up and accept that the government is going to die immediately in event of war like it's not that's not how you prepare to fight and win a war so what Carter did was and these measures weren't perfected and implemented until about 8586 but

a list of a designated national command authorities what's called national command authorities there were people from the president on down, you know, all the way down, like 40 people total. You know, if like one man and they're almost always the men is dead, the next one will take up a command and control authority. This was pre-cell phone and pre-GPS.

So all these people, they were issued ID cards that, you know, where they were given a cipher that, uh, upon being contacted, you know, by SACNORAD, an event of war, you know, they'd be able to reply to a challenge with, like, the correct, you know, like, the cipher code or whatever. But the National Command authorities are the people who would direct nuclear war, like an event that the president and his cabinet are dead. And, like, on down the line, okay? Designated safe houses, somewhere on military bases, some were purposed structures. that were designed and built for this purpose, that they could be shuttle due to survive the initial assault.

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The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. They were to report in to a sack norad every day as to what they're, you know, as to their goings, coming some goings. When they left town, you know, they had to report like every six hours or something. I mean, this is a revolutionary system. Okay. Carter also, that was President. He was directed 58.

PD 59, Carter said that, you know, he reiterated that America will never, you know, will never utilize a nuclear first strike in order to resolve a national security exigency. However, if America finds itself in a nuclear, war, and this is in the language of PD-59, America will fight to win a nuclear war, and it will

develop and maintain forces in being to fight and win a nuclear war against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. And they represented a, that represents, this was the end of the detain, okay? This is America saying that, you know, if God forbid we go to war with Warsaw Pact, you know, and there's escalation to general nuclear war. like America is going to treat nuclear war like it does any other conflict modality. America is going to fight to winning nuclear war. That's also one of the reasons why continuity of government is important. If there's nobody to negotiate the end of the war, that's not reasonable.

So the idea is, you know, civilian control as intended and demanded by the Constitution. is going to be guaranteed, you know, through these continuity of government measures. We're going to spare no expense in maintaining a survivable deterrent. And our strategic doctrine is going to be an event of war. We're going to fight and win. We're going to fight to win a nuclear war. National Command authorities are going to seek to end hostilities as quickly as possible. if that is possible

but there's nowhere this hoarshit of you know like we will not fight a nuclear war and these weapons can never be used it's like you know you threaten us a nuclear weapon and you employ those weapons you know we're in a wage total nuclear war against you in kind

and drop off who is becoming more powerful you know pretty much every day in the final months of the Brezhna regime the way he interpreted that, and you could say this is the most punitive possible way,

but just in realist terms, if your enemy suddenly and kind of jarringly adopts a different strategic posture, that tends to be a war indicator. I mean, not of imminent attack or something, but that's pretty much exactly what the German Reich did, what the Kaiser Reich did, I mean, I'm not saying, oh, like, the Germans are bad.

I'm saying that in the Russian experience, when their primary adversary does this, it means that something is afoot, you know, and that something usually is that, you know, the executive of the adversarial power is preparing the population to mobilize for war, or at least he's doing what he has to do in order to concentrate warfighting authority in his office, that he has that option in order to use as, you know, as leverage against the Russians. And there is some truth to that. I'm not going to lie.

And that's not good or bad. I mean, that's just statecraft. But arguably, this caused an escalation and tensions. But again, I mean, the Soviet Union had just gone into Afghanistan. You know, I mean, it's not. And, you know, one of the problems with these treaties however well intentioned they were like salt and salt too which was the cabas was put on that by the invasion of

Afghanistan by the way and then later the start treaties I mean even if you I think on principle on principle I have a problem with that kind of uh with those kinds of agreements um because it goes bargaining away your preparedness and ability to survive is not legitimate I realized the Cold War was unusual conditions but i mean even even if you think that those that sort of thing is the most well-intention you know mechanism for preserving the peace you can't somehow like stop technology you know and i mean the issue with deeper parodies is that yeah a lot of this stuff you catch them in the corner of your eye distinctive by design they move you even before you drive the new cooper plug-in hybrid range for Mentor, Leon and Terramar.

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huge savings, we'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value. That made nuclear weapons more accurate, more deadly, more powerful was because guys of Los Alamos or, you know, guys that in Kazakhstan and USSR, you know, we're like developing, you know, weapons purpose tech to do that. But other stuff, like command and control tech, a lot of that stuff just, it emerges.

It's emergent, you know, due to all kinds of endeavors, you know, some profit-driven, some not, some military purpose, some not. I mean, you can't just say, like, we're not going to know things that we come to know because we've got to, like, keep weapons from becoming even more dangerous. you know so that and that's really that's really what sdi was about and i think we're coming up on about an hour um we'll get into that stuff next time as well as um abel archer and grenada and all that fun stuff and like i said before i can't remember if we were recording already or not but a lot of the fellows they want us to talk about stuff especially like uh especially a lot of like the english guys and french dudes because you know a lot of europeans like fought nangola and stuff and it's just like a cool conflict.

We should do a dedicated episode about stuff like the Dominican Republic about you know like Latin America and the contra war and about like Angola. I don't do that like a dedicated episode if that's cool. I mean it's your show. I don't want to tell you like this is what you should do. Yeah, sounds great.

Yeah. Thanks, man. I really enjoyed this. Yeah. Blugs. Yeah, for the time be you can find me on Twitter. I don't know how long it will last. at Rio underscore Thomas 777. I relaunched a telegram channel. Just look for Thomas 777 or 3-7 Mafia.

You will find it. I'm going to be more active on there on the regular starting this weekend. I've got too much shit going on right this minute, but join the channel. I'm going to try and get it popping again. You're finding a substack. That's what a podcast is. real Thomas 777.

dot subsect.com. I am launching my YouTube channel. I know there's been like many, many delays. Things are coming together. I got an incredible editor. I've got a lot of people helping me because frankly I don't know about video production at all.

I promise it's coming imminently, hopefully by next week, but it's coming. So that's, and that's Thomas TV on YouTube. But for Thomas TV, the first T is a 7, you will find it. That's all I got. All right, until the next time.

Appreciate it, Thomas. Thank you, Pete. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekina show. I've been waiting for this one, part 12, the Cold War series. What's happening, Thomas? Hi, how are you? Thanks, as always, for hosting me.

It's a great pleasure and a great honor and a privilege. Legit, thank you very much. Oh, no problem. I'm glad you're feeling better. And, yeah, let's get down to it. Yes, sir. I want to talk about the strategic. paradigm in Reagan's first term because that's essential to understand really the final phase of the Cold War and the reason why a resolution was truly forced.

You know, we'll get into Gorbachev. Like next episode, when I get back from this weekend trip, we'll deal kind of more with the Soviet side, you know, just conceptually, but also just in terms of, you know, the factual record. because I realize we haven't dedicated a lot of attention to that yet. But, you know, the degree to which human decision makers were becoming less and less significant within the strategic arms race. And I mean, we're fighting in general. If you're talking about, you know, kind of the zenith of nuclear war technology as it was. you know 1981

that can't be overstated and this idea that you know just cooler heads could prevail

you know to invoke Curtis LeMay's kind of aphorism that's not really possible when you're talking

about you know certain um certain technological variables as well as certain

you know as well as organization at scale of hundreds of millions of people, quite literally. You know, it's not, you can't, even if you're a chief executive or a general who's got a great deal of, of authority, you know, intrinsic, not just to his mandate, but, you know, in terms of, you know, key decision makers subservient to him being willing to execute his orders basically without hesitation. It's just not possible. Okay. It's, that's not the way. It's not the way. It's not the way. that's not the way human systems work. And that calls for certain remedies when we're talking about something like nuclear war planning, where quite literally decisions need to be rendered in minutes.

But even where that not a necessary kind of remedial measure to apply and aim to research and perfect an ongoing way. It was understood that, you know, the way man related to technology was becoming kind of the key question, not just in terms of fighting future wars, but, you know, in terms of production modalities, in terms of how, you know, people at scale perceive information and, you know, develop political sensibilities, which totally changed with the advent of television, you know, and the ability to broadcast, you know, over and across thousands and thousands of miles,

you know, and quite literally turned the world into one place in terms of, you know, the concepts being, you know, asserted. And early on, kind of the earliest game theorist, I mean, he was a game theorist among many other things, but kind of the first public intellectual who really sort of articulated this in like a very kind of concrete form was a guy named Norbert, Norbert Weiner. He published a book called Cybernetics or Control and Communication and the Animal and the Machine. That sounds very strange, animal's kind of science fiction-like, but Wyner was a constantly serious. person he wasn't some crank um and he coined the term cybernetics um and uh within

liner's vernacular a cybernetics would literally refer to self-regulating mechanisms of all kinds he cited the earliest examples of you know servo mechanisms you know be them hydraulic electric or mechanical um that were error sensitive and their feedback you know even like something like a roman aqueduct you know in in a primitive way not primitive in terms of its construction but primitive in terms of you know the applied technology utilized um you know was was it was an example of you know error sensitive machine learning okay um now when you add humans into the equation i need a human operator at at least you know in a at least to initiate machine processes you've got to take care um you know, to structure how that relationship ensues and how it's sustained throughout the duration of processes.

Okay. There's got to be mutual intelligibility, you know, between what the human mind is telling the machine to do. And the human mind has to be not only comfortable, like literally physically carnable with the machine that it's operating, but it's also got to be sensitive to, you know, the feedback emergent from the machine. Okay. One of the reasons why, and Winer was sensitive to this, there was such a revolt of the laboring cast, when there truly was a laboring cast, you know, working on an assembly line of any kind, whether it was a slaughterhouse or whether it was, you know, a, or whether it was a textile mill. in the early 20th century, it was incredibly unpleasant. It was difficult.

It was physically painful. There was not a good coupling that had been achieved between the human operator and the machine. You know, the human felt overwhelmed by the machine or the machine was forcing a pace of work, you know, that the human couldn't keep up with without significant pain or sometimes at all. you know these machines often were dangerous and even when functioning as intended you know they they harm people you know and that's not that that's going to do a couple of things i mean it's going to do more than a couple of things but first and foremost it's going to create certain inefficiencies and showpoints um and it's also going to hurt people which itself is not good i mean i think we're going to agree on that but also it's going to really going to sour the human operators view of the machine, you know, and even if only sub-causal, even if even a very duty-bound or conscientious person or a true believer, you know, particularly somebody in a military role who... You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you. Even before you drive. The new Cooper plug-in hybrid range. For Mentor, Leon, and Teramar. Now with flexible PCP

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Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading is Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. You know, topics that rule they're in, you know, if this machine causes them pain or difficulty or frightens them or, you know, know, they're always worried that they're going to be somehow harmed or mean by it, that that's going to compromise their ability to interface and function as intended. So what Weiner did was he said, look, you know, these machines need to be accessible, you know, the ability to initiate and program them in a rudimentary way as intended, you know, at the critical

moment required, you know, it's got to be, you're talking about like, you're talking about being user-friendly, okay? I mean, nobody used those terms then, but that's what he was talking about. And he also said that, you know, one of the ways not just to kind of guarantee, you know, an appropriate coupling that's both safe and efficient to the human operator, but that also, you know, is going to, you know, create a kind of punctuated advance and our ability to develop, you know, machines that truly learn, you know, through error-sensitive feedback is, you know, it's like, we've got to start structuring machines,

like we were a human nervous system. Okay, not literally and say like, you know, okay, this is the way the brain is structured. You know, I've got to make my, I've got to tweak my Babbage device to look more like that brain, obviously. But, you know, it couldn't be something totally alien. And, you know, to what, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, like the human brain is just an incredibly complicated, highly evolved, like, feedback mechanism. The purposes we're talking about, okay? I mean, it's a lot more than that. But, you know, so making machine thinking or machine learning at that, you know, as it was understood at that time, as human-like as possible in rudimentary terms.

Okay, that that wasn't just a way of, you know, kind of guaranteeing, you know, maximum efficiency, you know, in terms of the interface of the human or like the animal in liner's terminology with the machine. But it also, you said this is the path that kind of, you know, greater. development in terms of, you know, or in terms of design engineering. Okay. And I think I think it goes out saying he's right about that. If you, if you cut like the brass tax with guys like Steve Jobs were talking about, you know, I'm not a computer guy or a tech guy at all, but I've read a lot about jobs because for better or worse, he was a very significant person.

And when he talks about design optics and aesthetics, you can tell he's doing it like the way like a guy who's not an engineer, but is more an engineer than he is, like, some artist or, like, you know, kind of eccentric, like architect. I know I tried to convey the image of the latter, but he was the former. And I guarantee that he said, I guarantee that as a young man, he definitely read cybernetics. And if he didn't, you know, like the stuff he was reading was so insinuated with that kind of ethos, like everybody would describe it, that he very much took that on as his own. Okay. And also just, I mean, Winer didn't just make it. Winer didn't just make these things up.

I mean, there's an intrinsic, there's like an intrinsic existential reality to these things he was positing. You know, it's just, that's the way machines work. That's the way humans think and feel. That's the way they interface in very basic terms. And cybernetics and the partial it's therein, that was really the earliest,

that was really the earliest discussion of, you know, automated navigation, analog computing in the way that we understand it, or understood it in the later 20th century, which was the forbearer of IT as we know it. This is the first time people talked about AI in an applied capacity. It led to neuroscientific modeling. And most importantly, Viner Reiner was always,

it was always emphasizing the importance of communication. and communication regime and also like physical structure like across distance that was integrated that was reliable and most importantly that was survivable okay and as most importantly not just as a general proposition but in the case of nuclear war i mean that's everything you know um so these are things that understand we're talking about nuclear war we're talking about the cold war paradigm and especially in the uh in the final uh in the final in the final phase of the Cold War um the Cold War conflict paradigm okay it um these things can't be overstated and it like the desires of of human decision makers you know particularly those you know in public roles it really was not up to them like the course of of events um in terms of crisis resolution or, you know, the deterioration of remedial strategies, you know, in the general war. But the, it's very clear, too, you know, both, it's even people who, even people who write pretty good histories of the late Cold War, like the guy, what's his,

yeah mark ambinder sorry i was having a senior moment um ambinder he he deemphasizes the degree to which kind of like the the trajectory of american policy very much had a nuclear vector and what i mean by that is that you know uh a u s uh global policy and in not just in hard power of terms but but it just in general terms it really orbited around you know america's nuclear capability its ability to wield that's a credible threat, you know, the response of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union, as well as China. I mean, despite the fact that China by that point had been courted quite successfully as a strategic ally. This was the variable or set of variables that everything revolved around between the superpowers, okay?

So, I mean, there's that, too. even just the existence of these capabilities and the continuing emergence and new technologies to perfect the effectiveness of these things that it dictated the course of policy between the superpowers it doesn't matter what anybody's rhetoric was it doesn't matter what anybody's intentions were or how much they may very well have been committed to peace you know i don't i don't doubt that um you know some of the things brezhnev said before he lost his marbles and you know about the soviet union must avoid you know a general nuclear world all costs i'm sure that he meant that i'm sure reagan like corny and kind of made for

sound by television and some of the things he said in the matter may have been i i think he earnestly believed those things but moving on um the way the soviet union responded to this emergent strategic landscape was uh very interesting um in 1981 the Soviets launched the biggest peacetime, dedicated peacetime intelligence operation in its entire history, which says a lot because the Soviet Union, for the duration of its existence, really was mobilized for war in a way that even America in the 1980s, which was very much on a war footing would view as extreme. and drop off who uh in 1981 was uh was still a uh a year away from uh you know um ascending the role of general secretary as i've said before i believe i believe he himself

grameko and usenov were very much kind of the stric factor the kind of the kind of too shadow government but he was the eminence behind the kgb really for the duration of his of his life okay um and on strategic matters, all in sundry, I can tell you that in 1981, you know, Andropo was the key decision maker and those in this immediate orbit. What, um, what, with this, this intelligence operation was called Project Rion or Ryan, literally RYAM. It's an acronym, um, that, uh, for a Russian language phrase, which translates to, nuclear missile attack or nuclear missile assault or something in that order. I'm not going to try to pronounce it and butcher it and embarrass myself.

But the entire purpose of Rayon or Rion was this. And drop off addressed key members of the Politburo as well as the general staff. And he said, look, you know, we're losing the Cold War on key fronts. you know, political and technological, um, that very much nullify or, are the advantages we do have. And, um, one of those fronts was, um, in, in computing. I think there was, there was less than a thousand computers in, uh, the Soviet Union in 1981. I mean, you give you an idea, you know, which is bizarre. What do you think about it? That the Soviet Union, they, they, they'd logged far more man hours in, in spaceflight than the United States had. And, uh, you know, they were, they were cringing out

these chess masters who, you know, were schooled in a formal, the kind of formal logic that that in America, like, really built, you know, like the, you know, the kind of like really, like, analog computing industry. But that's it, that warrants its dedicated episode, like, how, um, uh, the, uh, like how, how computing in the Soviet Union really was, it really was sabotaged, or like interseen rivalries within the design bureaus, you know, and you can't create a high-tech economy, you know, based on a central plan. I mean, I mean, you can't, you can't base a traditional manufacturing economy on a central plan, but particularly you're talking about high-tech and IT. I mean, it's, you know, there's just no, there's just no chance that it's going to

produce what's required um you know in order to meet the meet meet the needs of uh of um you know of nuclear war uh command of control planning but with what they did have um what uh what what uh what project rion aimed to do was to anticipate um a bolt from the blue nuclear strike um by using uh the computing technology they did have alongside human analysts to monitor indifely to identify monitor, codable indicators, you know, from the United States and NATO, and determine when these indicators could be relied upon that, you know, to, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, was, you know, was a foot. such that with the technologies of the day, apparently with submarine launched ballistic missile platforms,

as well as intermediate range missiles, which, you know, if deployed in theater by NATO, would reach their targets, you know, within five or ten minutes. You know, we're talking about it's not, you know, early warning is not enough. I mean, no matter how sensitive it is, no matter of impossible to spoof it is. You know, like before there's any, before there's any commanding and troll, indicator in America in 1981, you know, that strategic air command, you know, is going to scramble its heavy bombers, you know, that the Minuteman missiles are about to emerge in their silos.

Like, you've got to be able to identify the variables before there's any actual, you know, command and control indicator, which, I mean, it says a dawning proposition, I mean, doesn't, is almost comically inadequate. But it also, I mean, it creates every dangerous circumstance. If you've got to be able to identify evident assault indicators, you know, um, based upon,

you know, uh, based upon apparently benign, um, um, events and human behaviors at scale, um, that could very,

very easily be misread. I mean, this goes beyond fog of work on the stuff. But it also, it raises a difficult question. You know, it's like, okay, let's say, let's say that there could let's say um let's say attack indicators

you know codable attack indicators um could in fact be reliably identified um and that there was a machine that uh you know could pretty reliably evaluate these things and could

I'm stillifying this for the sake of counterfactual you know spit out a probability ratio of uh whether likelihood is that you know these indicators mean you know an attack is imminent um if there's a 10 percent probability you know if you preempt it with your own attack if it's anything over 50 percent if it's 1 percent like you see what i mean like it um where you're you're running into um a kind of paradigm where increasingly like the winner um is going to be the one who just preempts an absolute

terms and when he's confident that, you know, he can at least survive a retaliatory strike, just perverse incentives to attack even when not under imminent threat if you follow me. Well, this wasn't anything new at the time. I mean, Ellsberg talks in his books about how, you know, the department he was in in the late 50s and early 60s, they were wargaming this. They had already come up with the concept of the nuclear sponge by that point. I'll tell you what's changed on parity. It wasn't until

1975 that there was true nuclear parity between NATO and Warsaw pact. That's why these guys like LeMay and even Thomas Powers who gets kind of, Thomas Powers was actually the model for Jack D. Ripper and Strange Love. It wasn't LeMay, but

LeMay was kind of similarly lampooned and lambasted. Their whole notion was that if, you know, eventually, you know, a general nuclear war is imminent with the Soviet Union, we've got to go to war now. If you wait 10 years, there's going to be nuclear parity. We can't win that. You know, now, yeah, we'll take 50 million dead, but we'll survive. They won't. Plus, there was, one of the reasons why the salt talks kind of became obsolescent. It wasn't just that, you know, this Soviet invasion of Afghanistan meant that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan meant that

state department and as well as Congress no longer had any interest in you know pursuing a follow-up kind of regime until much later we'll talk about that later but like deeper parodies um you know multiple warheads you know being slammed onto uh existing pre-existing platforms you know creating like these these massive throw weights you know and create like reduced circular error probable um you know the perfection of penetration aids and decoys you know the ability to spoof enemy early warning um and the emergence of AI you know like the uh the movie war games is actually a great film and it's a smart film i mean some stuff in it's corny because it's Hollywood and it's you know a movie that was aimed at like teenagers but some of it's actually very smart and uh the

opening uh like the opening sequence where um you know they're running this command post exercise you know and one of the misleaders won't turn his key that was part of the issue but then in the movie um like the civilian advisor i think it's supposed to be thomas schelling he says like look like why we we can't we can't wait until you know it's clear iven's going to assault you know we got to know he's going to assault him before he does you know which he was it was like gallows humor but it's also not entirely inactuals I mean, that's what was changing things. Plus the, you know, like I said, the, in nuclear war, if you're underd being able to identify that an attack is underway, characterize the nature of that attack, then determine a response based on surviving forces or probable surviving forces, and then giving the order to retaliate.

in 1960 you probably had about an hour to do that okay in 1981 you had 10 minutes to do that you know arguably you had five minutes like by the time the soviet union fell apart its basic its basic assault strategy um was going to be um it always parked uh uh two typhoon class submarines within striking range of the eastern United States. Okay. The idea was that they were going to launch a volley of a submarine-launched ballistic missiles. At the press trajectory, that would airburst over the entire East Coast and, you know, create an EMP blackout. Then follow up with a massive volley and basically like annihilate the eastern United States.

States. And, you know, if they could do that fast enough and assuming their systems went off without, you know, a glitch or whatever, they had a reasonable probability of winning a nuclear war, if it was truly like a bolt from the blue attack. You know, stuff like this wasn't possible in Ellsberg's day. He was foreseeing that it would be at some point, even if he couldn't foresee the exact platforms. But by 1981, there was parity as regards forces in being. And arguably, the Soviet Union had the edge. Like I said, in terms of data

that since the wall came down, it's been verified. It's not just, it wasn't just like missile gap nonsense. You know, the kind that people were banning the 1960 election, the, you know, create just kind of

to insiduate this idea that, you know, there was a gap in American, in a, in an American um in an

American defense um capabilities you know visa v the Warsaw Pact that's what that's what changed and

plus the you know the I mean that's the problem that anything else designed to preserve the um it was designed to preserve stability you know whether you're talking about like you know

the strategic arms limitation talks you know whether you're talking about these arms reduction agreements you know you can't you can't just freeze technology in situ you know it's like any of you even if you were even if you limit the number of platforms those platforms become more efficient but become more effective you know uh the killing technology will become more and more catastrophically utile you know things like this um and uh plus to the uh orbital space you know becoming the key kind of emergent battle

theater was changing things too because you know you launch um like the outer space treaty you know technically banned orbital bombardment platforms that didn't mean anything and also the space shuttle obviously was uh what was a was an orbital bombardment delivery mechanism i mean it was it was it was it was other things too but you know that that's that was first and foremost its role it wasn't It was going to take, you know, civilian school teachers into space to do experiments on goldfish and zero gravity or something. But these are the things that were kind of destabilizing what had been, I mean, the paradigm was never truly stable. That's why what people say, but it was becoming unmanageable, like, owing to these variables. this really reached the zenith in 1983

you know there was the there's the able archer command post exercise in 9 November 7th and um that was really that was really the way to look at that too I mean for those that don't know there's this biannual exercise called reforger which was short military short end for return of forces to Germany it was this

it was this mass military exercise wherein the forces in being in Germany and there was about 300,000 U.S. troops that are backed up by a contingent of about 200,000 other NATO elements

contributions by other naval elements I mean but the Reforger exercise was an event of a general war in Europe with Warsaw Pact, how rapidly can we reinforce those forces in being deployed to Europe before they're totally overrun by Warsaw Pact? So, I mean, it was actually important. It wasn't just a make-work, fake work thing.

I mean, actually, on the logistics side and the command and control side, this actually was important operationally. And it also demonstrated political will to the Warsaw Pact. of quarters what abel arch ready three was was um uh concomitant with reforger it was a command post nuclear war simulation and um it included even the civilian uh chief executives you know like margaret thatcher like went to her um uh you know went went to like the designated you know uh um fallout shelter you know the helmet coal

with similarly like disappeared from sight I mean when you consider Project Rion when you consider you know the kinds of deep parodies

that were causing real alarm on both sides of the Cold War this seems incredibly risky you know because what you're doing is this command post exercise

and you know the Russians have been attacked many times under the auspices of you know peaceful military exercises by their enemies so there's that but then also pretty much every indicator of an imminent bolt from the blue nuclear

assault was emergent in the able archer exercise okay now now on the one hand yeah if you're if you're gonna

plan a nuclear war to win it you've got to run those kinds of exercises okay and they've got to be as real as possible and also if you want true data on how fast you know the warsaw pact you know um then in existence at that moment you know how fast they would respond um you know uh to being spoofed you know that that's how you corral your data about you know what the response time how fast it's going to be and what steps it's going to entail in a real war situation so yeah I mean, there's a deep internal logic to that. But it also, there's a very good chance that, you know, your enemy will perceive this as, you know, indicators of an actual attack.

And you could find yourself in a general nuclear war very, very easily. That it's both instructive as to, you know, not how tense things were between, you know, actors. but also it shows you the degree to which, you know, like we were talking about a minute ago, the degree to which, you know, conditions of absolute peace, you know, could become conditions at general nuclear war, I mean, rapidly, you know, there wasn't this kind of like, you know, scaled escalation over, you know, over days or weeks or even hours, you know. The second aspect of this was Reagan, you know, kind of prompted by people like Casper Weinberger and a lot of the Team B types. Reagan had an idea, he greenlit the deployment of the person to intermediate range ballistic missile platform to Europe, to the Bundes Republic,

Italy to the Netherlands some of the UK I believe but I don't think they ever arrived this would have this would have given NATO a profound edge in theater nuclear weapons and so deployed they could reach Moscow within minutes

okay this really terrified Soviet war planners and for good reason And there's a nuance here too that I can't remember we raise it for or not, but ironically, owing to a, you know, politics, NATO was very forward deployed. Like literally the way it was deployed in West Germany in the Netherlands and all throughout the continent, it was not deployed at all in depth. And specifically in Germany, looking at a map of NATO deployment. deployments, U.S. Benelux, British forces were in offensive deployment. Okay, like they can't be

denied. So if you're a ring, now, some of that had to do with, you know, there's a way kind of placating, you know, people like the Greens who literally didn't want, you know, like, NATO forces to be seen, you know, and it was a way of kind of mitigating the kind of basic hostility over the fact that Germany quite literally was occupied. There was all kinds of kinds of things. but it was also, you know, the understanding was if Warsaw, if in one Warsaw Pact moves, you know, like what difference does it make? We can deploy in depth all we want. They're going to break through, you know. But from the Soviet side, it's like, okay, we've got NATO and kind of permanent offensive deployment. Now they're deploying, now they're deploying these Pershing two platforms, which are not only not super hard and they're totally vulnerable.

I mean, there's not such thing as a truly defensive nuclear weapon, but the only way you can use a person. perishing system platform is if you're on the attack. You know, like, it's, because it's, it's not a survivable platform, you know, so the Soviets weren't being crazy or weren't crying wolf or something. And even, um, even, um, Robert Gates admitted this kind of later in his memoirs. Um, you know, the, he said, you know, and, um, anybody who understands these things, understands what the other cases, these indicators were, uh, you know, anybody looking at this on the Warsaw Pax side would have said, you know, these people are basically preparing a wage in nuclear blitzkrieg, you know, and there was some truth to that, frankly. Kind of the genius of Reagan, if you want to give him props for something, and I'm not any kind of huge, like, Reagan fan in history.

but uh what uh what uh what um what ragan's uh state department did was they said well you know we'll remove uh we'll remove the pershing twos from europe you know if all uh if all theater-based nuclear weapons you know native orsau pact if we agree to like remove all of them you know but that's that's the price essentially of um of um of of dismantling the system. And, I mean, too, in defense of Reagan admin, the impetus for the deployment of these platforms, it was because they're a hell of a good way

if you're going to wage no longer a nuclear war to do it. But also, the Soviet Union, they'd massed SS19s. Those are one of those, does one of those, physically huge missile systems you know that were based on trucks but it's got brilliant in its simplicity because there was a mobile launch vehicles

they had the stories would move them around every day like literally so it's like the one like the one from the movie spies like us yeah exactly exactly yeah that's so I saw that movie I saw that in the theater with my mom and his little kid

that's hilarious but it's actually an awesome movie but yeah the uh but um the soviet idea was uh they were threatening europe with annihilation with these deployments and they were doing it to basically decouple uh europe's uh national security policy in the respective natal states from that of america basically saying like look like you know if uh if you avail yourselves to uh to nato um and the united state you know the united states you know the you know, the United States is nuclear deterrent. You know, we consider you to be a fair target,

and we're going to continue to target Western Europe as long as that indoors. I mean, it was, and, you know, deployment of the person, too, was a way of rooking that, that, that ambition. So it's more complicated than just Reagan being, you know, some kind of, it's some kind of hawkish,

some kind of reckless hawk. um and it's it's not just a matter of uh you know pentagon types and in defense intelligence types saying well let's spoof let's spoof ivan you know to the brink and see what he does i mean there wasn't aspect of that too but it is um it is uh it is slightly more complicated um i'm more than slightly but it um i got a pause when it's debriefing my water i'm really dried out is that okay um go ahead yeah thank you people and yeah the i mean on the one hand i i mean on the one hand i obviously and I mean this isn't really material for disgusting. I mean obviously my sympathies in history are what you know Yaquis were and I I realize this is very much a way of

holding Europe hostage quite literally to the Cold War but at the same time I mean it within the bound of rationality of that Europe was afforded um made more secure because again Reagan's ultimatum was a nuclear free Europe and that was accomplished you know ultimately I mean it it it

wasn't until well into Reagan's second term and after you know the kind of concord it accounts with Gorbachev but all these things were a process and you know like I said next episode we'll get into the view from the Soviet side quite literally but there had to um the crisis

the crisis cycle is becoming more and more critical and if you look at it in um you know the uh the the korean war the chinese intervention in the korean war um really that that very well could have led to a general nuclear war or a um in 53 uh 952 952 in 1963 in wisconsin in cuba 973 you know um in the mid-east war 1983 with uh you know able archer forger and the emergent um you know uh deep parodies that you know gave rise and drop-offs um project rean like this would becoming unsustainable and more and more dangerous basically every decade you know like i had the cold war endured into the you know another 20 years there probably would have been a a nuclear war by the late 1990s.

Like, I firmly believe that. You know, and Gorbachev gets kind of a bad rap. I mean, he was residing over a structural crisis that I think is basically unprecedented in the modern era. Okay, the Soviet

empire constituted like a one of the planet. Okay, like a... And every... The world was literally divided such that, you know, half the world was essentially, you know, the Soviet system was insinuated into it through kind of, I mean, I mean, interdependence. And when you're talking about, you know, emergence of a planetist plan economy is different than, you know, globalism.

We know, but, you know, about half the planet was reliant in some way, you know, occasional grain deliveries, you know, or, or strictly, you know, military hardware to wage, you know, some ongoing, you know, some ongoing, um, uh, localized conflict, you know, about half the planet was reliant on the Soviet Union. Just as, you know, the competing blocs were lying on the United States and Europe. I mean, this was, I, in the preceding 500 years, there's nothing comparable to that except, you know, the, except that the fall of the Western Roman Empire. And even that wasn't like as punctuated. I mean, the Soviet Union fell apart, like, in months. You know, I mean, in that, the fact that there was. wasn't there was violence people have forgotten that now but i mean you know they're actually

a learned guy but the you know they're um and you got to look at uh you know you got to look at stuff uh you know not just you know in like cheshire and dachistan but also like you know the bulk of wars as direct i mean remote as they were in relative terms from the soviet union i mean you got to look at those things as is as approximately caused you know by the the punctuated shock of soviet collapse but point being that um it uh this was getting the conflict diet was getting it was getting it was going impossible to control and gorbachev realized that the sovietn needed a way out of the cold war okay and and drop off because in drop off was the consummate realist uh and drop off realized you know what has to contemplate

is the way out of the cold war to you know wage a preemptive nuclear war against the united States. And I mean, I mean, America was thinking that too, you know, and vice versa, you know, is this the way, is this the way out of the Cold War? But, I mean, to say that, to say that this was dangerous, um, brinksmanship, it doesn't even scratch the service. It's much ridiculous these days. And people like, you know, this is the world Ukraine. This is like, this is the most dangerous time ever in world history. It's like, the fuck is the mayor with you. I mean, it's literally insane that people think that way. You know, like the single issue, basically, in every presidential election for 40 years was, you know, do we have a survival nuclear deterrent?

You know, and is the man of the law that's going to keep us alive, you know, because there's, there's like a very real possibility that, you know, we might become the mega dead when World War III happens. You know, I mean, that's, I guess people under, like, 45 or so, like, can't even conceptualize that. but it's um i'm sure i sound like a contagorous old guy but be as it may this also this goes to show you um how um how um how uh how uh how critical these these these wars in the periphery were um in the 1980s and something you know we'll get into this in the next episode um

but you know the the uh the battle for central america you know uh Nicaragua becoming a prox, literally a proxy regime of the DDR, the Soviet Union. You know, the, the, the proxy word in Chile, you know, which led to, you know, Penesche removing, you know, the Soviets client in Alende, you know, the war in El Salvador. I mean, the Soviets are trying to rectify the strategic imbalance by carving out a communist a block uh on the continent that would have changed everything you know i mean and it's the soviet union was doing some things right i mean like i said before i think from 1973 until about 1982 the soviet union was winning the cold war in military terms in political sociological technological

terms they were losing and in pure military terms um they were racking up victory after victory after victory, you know, like in Africa, in Latin America, in East Asia, like, you know, the, this is not, um, a good thing. I mean, however you, whoever you fell on, um, I'm talking about, you know, people who are saying, I'm talking about crazies like Peter Arnett and like the, the, uh, the kind of, the kind of crazy Karen is, you know, calling for nuclear disarmament. And I'm talking about people are actually sensible, whether, whether you love Reagan or not, or whether you or whether you, you know, were particularly on board with the kind of cold or enterprise, you know, this was not, for the front of the Soviet Union kind of, you know, like we talked about in previous episodes, you know, kind of becoming like the only true superpower because the third world is, you know, basically signed on with, you know, with Marxist Leninism. So America's this kind of like, this kind of like fortress, garish state. I missed a hostile world of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of tin pot. dictators and

kind of crazy Che Guevaryotypes. Like that would not have been a good thing, man. Can I ask you something before we go? Yeah. So I What is NATO today? I mean, what?

I mean, it's not NATO. So what the hell is it? I mean, it's the alibi. America invokes for unilateral aggression. But I mean, there's something even if that's your notion

like NATO those kinds of alliances are obsolete anyway and it's like I said before like you know so America is carrying out terrorist acts against its allies

in Germany like even before that it's like Turkey is Turkey is the only probably the only like combat capable like other like NATO member and like America is periodically

at war with them like by proxy so it's like is America obligated to attack itself because it's like its ally turkey has been attacked and like incident to the NATO charter. It's like an express condition. I mean, that's one thing that's like goofy. This was made in the 90s. Like Kissinger said that in the late 90s.

I met Kissinger in 1999. And to his credit, you know, he was one of the few voices who really was coming out against Clinton's war on Serbia. And the Kissinger made that point even back then. He's like, what, like, what, like, so, so, so like, NATO is like to provide a, nuclear umbrella of defense against like, you know, the great power of Slobodan Milosevic. Like, I mean, it doesn't, like, that's not, even if, even if you needed some kind of, like, in name only, you know, sort of, um, it's sort of, you know, force, uh, structuring alliance,

you know, to allow America kind of like deploy, to deploy whoever wanted, uh, willy-nilly. Like, it, it doesn't make sense to, like, try to maintain the NATO fiction. like it just doesn't make sense on its face if you're going to try and do that I mean that's why the shang cooperation organization is actually a pretty forward-looking alliance in all kinds of ways you know and it it's it's got a military aspect it's got an aspect of economic independence you know it accounts to the kind of the fluid nature of the current strategic landscape

like Russia didn't say like well Warsaw Pact still exists yeah you know this is Warsaw Pact you know any you know any uh any any any uh if any foreign troops, like, set foot in Kazakhstan, we're going to wage nuclear war on you. Like, I mean, that doesn't, you know, it's like even like a principle of law, too, again, aside from the kind of absurdity that, in bad faith, the country's NATO, any contract and a treaty at the end of the day is just a permissive contract, the express conditions of it have to be rational, you know, and there is not. And it's like, okay, an attack on Hungary against freedom is an attack on the United States. Like, America is obligated to go to war with itself because it's attacking Turkey, which is its ally. Like, it doesn't, you know, I mean, it's something I'm being, I'm being a jigoff and deliberately obtuse, and I kind of am.

But, yeah, it doesn't, it's, it doesn't make any sense. And this, but part of it, too, is just kind of the foolishness of the bureaucrat, like this idea that, you know, neighbors exist for its own sake, because it's, the point of it is to just exist. And, like, it's just, it's just an awesome thing for reasons nobody can articulate. You know, uh, it, like, it doesn't, it's like, well, but they have reasoning. It's like, okay, well, does that mean that, like, the America should abide, like, the trust conditions, like the Yalta, because, like, that's how America and the Soviet Union won World War II. Like, I mean, should, should Austria start invoking, like, countries, you know,

entering into the Hapsburg Empire like I don't, it doesn't make any sense. It's a clumsy way of preserving the fiction that this is that this is some kind of like, you know, that there's some sort of like common defense architecture and not just unilateral aggression.

That's, I mean, that's, that's you know, the short answer. Well, yeah. And I know you got to get that. Yeah. This is really good. But I know you got to get out of town, so do some plugs. And yeah, do it. Yeah, thank you, Pete.

You can currently find me on Burbap, Twitter. That is at Real underscore number 7, H-O-B-S-7777. You can find me on Substack at RealThomas-777. sub sac.com check out the chat on there because I'm active there. I'm back on Tgram. Just search out my name and you'll find

the channel. Yeah. I'm going out of town the next few days. I get back on Sunday and then Monday I'm going to start shooting dedicated content for the channel at long last.

So that's what I'm going to be working on. And I will drop that imminently when I get back. But for the next two days, I'm not going to be like real active content-wise. If you got to get a hold of me just so be patient until Sunday, please. That's all I got. Appreciate it, Thomas. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Pete, very much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cagnonez Show. What's going on, Thomas? How are you doing? I'm doing well. I'm getting terrorized by Twitter again. I mean, after nothing. I just wanted to put people on notice about that because when it happens, like, people seem to get upset.

I mean, I appreciate that. I appreciate people that care enough about my content that they get upset if I think it's going away. But what happened, I realized what happened, periodically I complains are lobbied against my account by the Office of the Protection of the Constitution in the Bundes Republic. I mean, you think they, I realize that's like a make work. you know, Orwellian bureaucracy. But you think there are better things to do than harass a kind of creator in America.

But they've done that before. Every time they do it, Twitter finds some arbitrary reason or no reason at all to suspend me or ban me. They claim that I'm banned for a week. I mean, I'm trying to disengage in Twitter as much as possible anyway, you know. But I know a lot of people that's kind of still like

where they try to find me and stuff. but um if i'm not back on twitter in a week i mean just like hit us up on substack or on tgram and i launched uh the channel promo so that people know that you know by april first i'll have uploaded the first episode you know and i i i owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to my guy Rake, who, you know, he's just incredible with what he can do with, you know, video editing and things like that. And he and I are are going to, are going to bear down on on filming next week. So, I mean, don't, if we're, if, if we are, if we are, if we are, if we are, if we are, if we are, if we are, if we are, like, permanently kicked off Burbap again. Like, like, it doesn't matter.

It's happened like nine times. So, so. So. But that's, that's that. I just wanted to, I just, I just wanted to like get people put people on notice. about that, but yeah. Well, one of these days, what we should do is we should go over that intro video and just have you detail, like, where every, I mean, I saw some video drone in there, and I saw a couple, yeah, I saw a couple other things just to, like, highlight.

And yeah, he just asked me, yeah, I mean, he's like a movie guy, too. He's like, I mean, he's one of us, you know, like, not just in terms of politics, but, you know, like, he's like a culture guy and, like, an optics guy, and he's into, like, style and stuff in movies. And it's one of the reasons we became like good friends. But he basically asked me like what kind of movies where I, he's like, I know the kind of shit you're into, but he's like, give me like, have it as in your favorite movies. It's like I did. And like, all those them are in there. And there's like a bunch of other just like crazy stuff. But it, it's, yeah, it's really incredible. Man, I'm not, I'm not just like, I'm not just like stroking myself because,

you know, it's like my content. It's like really freaking cool. But, uh, yeah, you know, I'm very, very lucky to have him on board, man. And he'll be in front of the camera sometimes, too. And, like, I think people appreciate that because he's, uh, he's, he's, he's a really funny dude. And, uh, you know, um, yeah, you'll, so you'll, you'll, you people get to meet him and, and kind of see what he's about. But yeah, I, I, the response to everyone has been overwhelmingly positive and I really

appreciate that. And I believe it'll be worth the wait, not because like, I'm so great or anything, but I think I've got a sense of what people want to. see and hear about and I'm really, really dedicating kind of like all my time and energy to, you know, providing that in a quality capacity. So, yeah, I think it'll be

very good, man. Well, yeah, and typing myself. And, you know, all we have to do is make sure that people also subscribe to the Odyssey channel because I think we all know that the YouTube channel is probably not going to last. Well, they're going to, yeah, I mean, it's there's going to be like copyright strikes all fucking day,

but also, I certainly figure out what I'm doing. I mean, they're going to cancel it. But I mean, that's fine. I'm basically going to saturate every platform I can. You know, everybody's like, you got to get on cozy. It's like, well, I don't, I don't know Nick Fuentes. I mean, I, like, like, like, I, like, I've never, I've never spoken to the dude even by, like, text or something. I'm not going to, like, presume, like, he wants my shit on his freaking platform. I'll ask him, you know, I mean, but it's, I'm not going to, I'm not going to just, like, assume, like, oh, of course he wants my shit on his, on his, you know, platform.

but even if we don't fuck with Cozy, you know, there's plenty of other platforms we can utilize that are friendly or at least neutral. It'll be fine. And you can upload video direct, or you can shoot directly on substack or you can upload directly

pretty much unless you're trying to upload like an entire freaking movie link thing. I mean, it's like I, all those fails. I mean, I'd, yeah, I'd be like just, you know, uploading my stuff to Odyssey and substance. I mean, we're going to say a lot more than this, but it'll be, I realize I'm going to get gained from YouTube.

The reason I dropped it there is so that people can find us and know about it. But yeah, it'll be all right, man. I streamed to YouTube yesterday in the middle of the afternoon. And as soon as it ended, I immediately deleted the video. Because, I mean, I just knew what some of the stuff, some of the stuff that we said in it was just like, it was, it's what I've gotten strikes for before. I mean, I'm done.

Does this one dude, I don't want to drop. his names. I don't want, he seems like an apolitical guy, and I don't I don't want, I don't want to, like, people start terrorizing him, like, uh, he's like this, he's this kind of like crazy, like, uh, like, like, like horror and cult movie guy.

Like, he gets strikes constantly over just like, like, total bullshit. Like, literally like, it seems like, and he's constantly apologizing with subs. He's got over, like, 20,000 subscribers. Because, like, it's just constantly getting yanked, and it's, it's, um, you know, uh, I mean, for the, the most dubious

a reason. It's like my point being, I mean, yeah, we're absolutely going to get terrorized like you are, but that's, that doesn't matter. The whole point is you know, like I do have a YouTube channel right now that people kind of like YouTube's kind of like their first go to for stuff.

But it'll be fine, man. I mean, I built the substack basically with no social media presence because as soon as I launched it, I was like the first time got permanent from Twitter. I didn't get back on Twitter about nine months. You know, I didn't have an Instagram then. Like, I got on Tgram, you know, after about six months, but it'll, I mean, it'll be fine. Um, you know, people,

people are loyal and they follow us and we've got, we got a good, you know, community of people who know how to, you know, kind of remain in contact. Yeah. Yeah, I've started, I've started streaming when I do my streams to Odyssey and Rumble and, um, immediately uploads a bit, shoot, you know, the dark side of the internet and yeah. No, exactly. Exactly. So I don't even know. What, what do you want to talk about today? Today, last time we covered, you know, Able Archer and, you know, the kind of command and control concerns relating to the deep parodies emergent post-de-ton. Because that, that's kind of the key, that kind of nexus of events and causes, that's kind of the key juncture of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, you know, final Cold War tensions that approach true crisis dimensions.

But there's a context to how and why that happened. And I want to get into that today. Like, what happened did they taunt? We're going to go a little bit backwards. Okay. And as we mentioned, Abel Archer happened in October, 1983. There was immediate precursors to that. that dramatically exacerbated tensions

and really kind of created in, you know, it kind of generated a zeitgeist of not war fever, but what it seemed unthinkable in the few years before suddenly became very possible again. And there was very much an atmosphere of terror. I mean, you remember that actually a little older than me. I was a little kid, and my mom was singularly terrified about an earlier war, okay? I mean, a lot of people were. And my mom always, I don't want to

drop some highly personal weird thing. My mom was kind of like apocalyptic in her thinking, quite literally, and this didn't help any. And obviously my dad was re-insinuated into the Cold War, so it was strange. But everybody, I mean, it was like, everybody in the country was like that. I mean, to some degree or another, you know, and I can't emphasize that enough to younger people. and even as a little kid, obviously I couldn't, it was a few more years before I could fully understand what this was about, but you fully, even as a small boy,

I fully grasp that, you know, this was monumentally terrifying. Now, honestly, like, if I'd been, like, a guy pushing 50 in 1983, I frankly, like, wouldn't really care. I mean, it's not, that's not some fucking edge lord shit. Like, legit, I mean, you just, like, learn, like, You just like learn to, you come to terms with things and, you know, the kind of frailty of life and things don't seem scary anymore.

But, yeah, as like a kid or like a young person, like it was, it was kind of awful. But in any event, let's dive into it. What preceded Able Archer by several months was the destruction of Korean Airlines flight, 007. What was KAL Flight OO7? KAL Flight OO7, it was a Korean Airlines flight, obviously, from New York City. Yeah, from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, which in those days was the common flight pattern. You know, South Korea was a key kind of Cold War proxy client state. But, you know, this was not the South Korea of the 2000s, you know, the ninth largest economy in the world or something, you know.

Other than in kind of political and military terms, the Rojordogne was kind of a backwater. So on these flights to Korea, there tended to be a lot of heavy personages from the national security establishment, the diplomatic corps, you know, these kinds of these kinds of, you know, communities. and KAL 007 was no exception. What befell KAL Flight O.O.7? Well, KALO7 straight into Soviet airspace. At about the same time, we're talking within a couple of hours of an American aerial reconnaissance mission. During the late Cold War, America was constantly spoofing Soviet early warning. or buzzing it, you know, to see kind of what would cause it to light up proverbially

and to kind of gauge what their, you know, what their protocol was. You know, literally the order of operations, you know, when, when hostile aircraft breached their airspace, possibly incident to a nuclear attack. And unfortunately, for the passengers and crew of KLO7, A Boeing 747, even at visual range, looks almost identical to an AWACS aircraft. Okay. And in those days still, for certain deployment of certain weapons platforms, you would advance deploy a what's called a MASSINT, M-A-M-S-I-N-T,

aircraft in order to acquire targets in order to discern, you know, what air defenses were present, as well as to interpret, detect and interpret, you know, any electronic signaling, which could then be, you know, deciphered or interpreted to paint a picture of what the state of enemy command and control was within the target area, you know, theater-wide. and this was also a particular concern because as we discussed in the last episode American nuclear war planning by 1982 83 essentially involved forcing Warsaw Pact to fight a two-front nuclear war if we can even think of nuclear combat as having fronts

assaulting the Soviet Union hard in the Pacific knocking out their command of control in Central Asia, you know, and then saturating them with, you know, with heavy bombers and naval-based weapons platforms would potentially, you know, would potentially accomplish a splendid first strike in a bowl from the blue scenario. Or in a job, in a general,

general war scenario, you know, that would be the way America would escalate anyway. So this had all the telltale signs of something potentially very, very dangerous. In the eyes of, you know, the Soviet Union and their people interpreting breaches of their airspace. So the flight was intercepted by a Sukoy 15 interceptor. It was destroyed. Everybody died, of course. This was a huge international incident. It was almost comparable to 9-11, not in terms of the attrition and the lives lost,

but it was incredibly shocking to people. on board the aircraft was Larry McDonald, the U.S. Congressman who also was the chairman of the John Birch Society. Yep. And one of the... He was Ron Paul's

like mentor in Congress. Yep, and confidant. And he was the last true Southern, he was the last true Dixiecrat. McDonald was viewed as, you know, these like Mother Jones types who he was like the man they loved to hate. And these, um, these uh um

conservative caucus types he was kind of like their their their night in shining armor and um you know knock out knockdown drag out you know congressional battles but he was a he was a democrat um he ran as a democrat for the you know for the entirety of his career and he was really the last true like right wing democrat but he you know again not only was he a bircher but he was you know chairman of the birch society and he'd only been nominated to that position a few months before he died um

he uh you know again he was one of the founders of the western goals institute uh which the uh the british conservative monday club was very much affiliated with them as was the world anti-communist league um you know people who know the history of these cold war packs of the right um well these will be familiar organizational names but um you know uh it's a jesse has he has Elms initially was supposed to be on that flight. I mean, this was a big deal, okay? I mean, not just because, you know, you had these public, you had McDonald and you had some other personages who weren't elected officials, but, you know, were very much

insinuated into, in the, in the Bellway policy corridors. But, you know, it was, there was something almost kind of like cinematic about it in all the worst ways. You know, here's this guy's like a lifelong anti-communist. You know, he's been saying his entire professional life, the Soviet Union is dangerous. It only understands force, this only currency. It can, you know, employ in order to assert its, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, of, six 747, you know, that's unceremoniously blown out of the sky by, you know, Soviet warbird.

It, uh, it really, really, really upset people. And, uh, the Soviets in typical fashion, um, you know, went into kind of, you know, went into kind of garrison mode, uh, and started claiming that, first they claimed that this didn't happen at all, you know, then they claimed that was a deliberate provocation. and the United States wanted this to happen, you know, so that, you know, they could, um, so that they could, uh, you know, provoke a war. Um, and that that kind of rhetoric itself. I mean, that, that was grossly irresponsible. I mean, it, this is very, very bad. Um, the, uh, in the, the United States, in turn, Reagan's people said that the Soviet Union was obstructing search and rescue operations, which they probably were, you know, I mean, it got, it got very,

very ugly um and uh this was uh this was um a couple months prior um there had been uh regan's uh evil evil empire um march 8th 1983 just uh almost exactly 40 years ago as of a couple days ago and I don't know if people it was not a long speech and it hit really really hard you can find it obviously on YouTube or at least you used to be able to I don't know I would assume it's still there but you know um in some there was there was some of the normal you know kind of state of the union type policy stuff but the core of it was um you know Reagan essentially stealing people for the possibility of nuclear war. And I know that, you know, at the time, and then for decades subsequent,

it's being kind of a favorite of people on the left. Mind you, I'm not some great Reagan apologists, as I think people know. But it's because, I got to say that this was, in fact, a great speech, and it wasn't corny or misplaced. And, I mean, people are always accusing Reagan of being this kind of moron. with his head in the clouds who was always invoking stuff like Star Wars. Like, you know, it's really kind of, it was Ted Kennedy who coined the actual phrase Star Wars

to describe SDI, which itself is moronic. But calling the Soviet Union the evil empire, it wasn't just a corny floating signifier. The actual relevant text is what Reagan said, and I quote, let us pray for the salvation of all those

who live in that totalitarian darkness. pray they will cross over the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they're the focus of evil in the modern world. So in your discussions of nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride,

the temptation of blithely declaring itself above it all and label both sides equally at fault. To ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding, and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. That sounds like a war speech, okay? I'm not saying that that was misplaced. I think that was entirely appropriate.

Within the bound of rationality of the Cold War, a very, very strong statement had to be made. And drop off took that to mean that Reagan is planning to sue for war. And it's understanding. in context why he would think that. Okay. And plus, I think, there's just a damn good speech, okay? That's not foe, it's not that kind of cringe,

soaring language that these, these kind of, these beltway types are, are prone to invoke these days. I mean, it was, it didn't, it didn't seem a hokey at the time, you know, and, um, and, um, it was, uh, it was, there, there was genuine, um, there was a genuine strategic paradigm shift. under way that's profoundly destabilizing okay i mean i i i i said frankly the evil empire speech is

better than any speech kennedy ever made okay just an objective terms and again i'm not any kind of i'm not any kind of ragan lover or something but that that can't be denied it's kind of incredible to me that they'll be those like middling speeches by like churchill we're just kind of drunk and like mumbling about you know like we won't ever surrender you know or like martin luther king with this kind of just these kind of like nonsense latitudes you know people hold this out as like just this kind of an incredible example of of um of of modern oratory it's like really man like the evil empire speech is kind of is this is his peak okay i mean um not just going to the not just not just going to the you know profanity of the language but the context in which it was delivered

at least I think so, like I said. I'm sure people just claim that that's, you know, that's, you know, love for Reagan or something. But again, is it generally accepted that Anthony Dolan wrote it? I believe so. I mean, that's, Reagan was not, Reagan could shoot from the hip and speak very well. I mean, that's why he was, you know,

dubbed the great communicator. But Reagan did not write a lot of his own, you know, long form speeches. I believe I can't somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that the 76 Republican

Convention, that was Reagan's other really famous speech. I believe he wrote most of that. And that was remarkable because generally Reagan didn't. That's why you know the Bitburg speech, Buchanan wrote that. And it wasn't just Nancy Reagan used

as an excuse to throw pattern to the bus. But a Buchanan actually wrote that speech. Like it, and that was, you know, in Reagan zero, it wasn't yet at the point where, you know, just, it was part of the chorus for, you know, presidents and candidates for the White House, you know, just to rely on, you know, people to write their copy for them. I mean, some people did. Some people didn't. But, yeah, Reagan generally didn't. I remember the, the Bitburg controversy is. like it was yesterday.

Yeah, I mean, that's, we'll get into that on the next episode as we kind of approach Pirastrika and stuff, but that, that was entirely appropriate and how anyone, I mean, first all, I, I got nothing but esteem for the Woff and SS, obviously, I mean, those guys were heroes, but, um, even if you completely reject that take, it was entirely appropriate to Reagan's said. He said these, he said these men were, were victims of the war, too. And I don't, I don't see how they could be construed as controversy. and Helmut Cole essentially insisted that, you know, the word that, the German word that be acknowledged. Like if anything, if people wanted to throw mud on somebody for purported, you know, fascist sympathies,

like Cole would kind of be the guy to hang that on. But I think it was, among other things, it was an excuse to sort of excise you can from the Reagan, from Reagan's inner circle. Nancy was in some ways Like Priscilla was to Elvis You know And the way she just decided That she like hated some guy

Or hated some guy's wife Who was part of the Memphis Mafia So he had to go Like Nancy did that too Like not There's a certain kind of woman who does that I'm not trying to trash females at all But I mean everybody knows that's true

And Nancy Reagan was a very strange bird Like she really was In all kinds of ways I'm frankly surprised It's I mean that's a whole other question It's strange that she was, I mean, she was Reagan's second wife, you know, once he picked her up well after he had kind of decided he wanted a political career of some sort. It's very strange.

But that's my read on it. And, yeah, obviously, you know, like we talked about, it wasn't nearly as extreme because Reagan truly did have a pretty remarkable mandate for a post-war president. But there was, there wasn't, there was a kind of Reagan derangement syndrome. You remember that. Like, if it rains on Sunday, it's because of Reagan. Like, if your cornflakes don't taste good, it's because of Reagan. Like, everything that happened in the world is like some work by Reagan. Like, yeah, so that, I mean, that was part of it.

But, but yeah, the, regardless, like I said, I mean, even people who, you know, Warren are cynical about the Cold War, even people who don't particularly, even people think Reagan was just some kind of, like, glorified pitchman. I mean, that, that was a great speech. and, you know, I don't think it was gratuitous. But, again, it did, it did sound like a war speech. And Dropov and, you know, Ustinov, Grimiko, Chernenko, I mean, all these guys who constituted, you know, the inner, inner party.

I mean, they'd all lived through the war with the German Reich. I mean, to say they were sensitive to these indicators, it doesn't even begin to kind of scratch the surface of, you know, the kind of depth of their fears of these things. But that's, um, this is, what's important too to keep in mind is, as to why this, this,

you know, 1979 to 84 or 85 was so dangerous. You know, like, what happened? You know, like, what, what happened to detente, what killed it? What, what constituted detente in brass tax terms, in terms of policy of,

you know, the East Block. and, you know, the West slash NATO. And what kind of treaty, if not law, because, I mean, we can never really talk about treaties as binding law. It can never be anything but permissive. But particularly during the Cold War, it was kind of more like a statement of good faith than anything. But it did, you know, it did have, it did have moral force, okay?

really what kind of constituted detain with rubber met the road one of its big kind of um aims and for a for a limited time we're going to get into why this was problematic as it was constituted one of its big ambitions was the kind of take off the possibility of war in europe take that off the table you know as we talked about there was basically two issues in strategic terms you know there's obviously america and the soviet union you come to for real blows in any number of theaters, although the primary diet was Europe. But the Soviet Union vis-a-vis Europe, I mean, that was an open-ended question. I mean, where did Europe stand?

The several constituent elements in NATO, like, where did they stand individually? And so far as they did have, you know, a cognizable, you know, discrete policy, independent of the NATO structure, you know, what was their relationship to the Soviet Union in pure geostrategic terms. I mean, this had this had tremendous significance politically not just for, you know, global

stability or the potential of a crisis diads, but also it was understood by everybody. I mean, even a conventional war in Europe with, you know, modern combined arms, it would have been utterly devastating.

You know, I mean, there would have been the end of Europe, quite literally. you know, it would not have survived, you know, or if it did, it would have been some sort of, you know, it would not have been, it would not have been Europe as we know it anymore, okay? This kind of brought quite literally every European state exempting Albania, which is always, you know, which was under the, which, which was under the, which, was under the rule of Inver Hawksa, you know, and they had all their little bunkers. Everybody knows like with the Hawksa bunkers. Well, like Albania was protesting, like, anything relating to a detente treaty making because they claimed that they supported the people's Republic of China

because they were the true, like, Marxist-Leninist vanguard. But other than that, every member state in NATO and the Warsaw Pact, plus Norway plus you know um plus uh Spain which I don't think

was a NATO yet because it was 73 they uh signed on for what came to be called the conference on security and cooperation in Europe which was going to be in 1973 to 1975 um it was held in Helsinki Finland the final phase of it which came to be called the Helsinki Accor

or the Helsinki Declaration between July 30th and August 1st, I'm 75. Now, this followed two years of negotiations of this kind of tortured process, wherein, again, 35 participating states plus the United States and Canada. Did I disconnect from a minute? No, you're good. Okay, I'm sorry, for some reason, the freaking, um, You're by my video kicked out. Okay, the Helsinki Declaration, it constituted the 35 participating states.

You know, all the member states in NATO and Warsaw Pact, you know, plus Sweden, plus Norway, plus Spain, the United States plus Canada. What it came with this, what this declaration came to constitute was it was supposed to be basically, you know, a kind of quasi bill of rights that was understood to be, you know, kind of like represent the fundamental rights of man, de jure, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. You know, it was a sovereign equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty of all, you know, constituent states of NATO-Morsop Act, refraining from the threat of use of force to advance policy initiatives, other than defensively, which I realize that's kind of meaningless in existential terms, but it has political currency in these kinds of situations.

You know, a recognition of the territorial integrity of states as existed then, you know, with the, you know, the post-war boundaries that have been drawn. The peaceful settlement and disputes, not intervention in hostile terms and, you know, the affairs of the constituent states by their NATO or Warsaw Pact. And a basic, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. and this was a big one, including freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. Okay. Now, Presidinev made a very big deal about this, okay? And this was before he was, you know, really compromised in terms of his mental faculties. And so did Eric Hanuker, okay, because Hanuker especially, because he used, Jeremy,

always been struggling for legitimacy. You know, they weren't even recognized as, as a state until the 70s by, you know, a majority of this planet. but the worst up pact or the Iron Curtin rather the States by the Iron Curt and the Constitution of the Soviet sphere of influence they were always going to they're always clawing for respectability which you know in the Cold War context was essential because this really was a battle of zeitgeist and which system and which superpower would become the world system. You know, this wasn't just cosmetic or something, and it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't just these kind of career statesmen, you know, wanting a feather in their cap, you know,

so they could like look at, you know, their proverbial trophy case and, like, admire their own, you know, great career or whatever. This had, like, actual impact. That's important to keep in mind. But what really kind of opened the door to this, what really made this possible, what really made detont possible was the situation, um, between the two germany's and specifically the sentencing of villi brand who is villi brand villain villain was this crazy uh kind of 68 or socialist and he was middle-aged by that epoch you know he was of the war generation but he'd been the governor he's been the governing mayor of west berlin and berlin to this day remains like you know an independent polity like all the

several german states or prefectures are but during the close World War, it had special status. Or, like, you know, when the Inter-German Borders and Tags, it had special status. You know, because it was a quasi-protectorate of, you know, the, of America, France, and the UK. It was situated completely within, you know, the territory, the DDR. So the mayor of Westboro, the governing Mayor of West Berlin, he had an unusual clout, okay? um brand was the chairman of the social

democratic party of 64 to 87 and most significantly and to understand his kind of contribution to history as it were accidental or not or uh you know um literally like accidental or not

like you know what he kind of what he kind of fumbled into he was the Chancellor of the Bundes Republic from 96-9 to 75 um he was this big uh You know, he was this big liberal reformer. He really compromised the Bundesfehr's combat capability, which was a big deal because the

Bundesphere was the spear point of NATO. In the first decades after the day of defeat, they really were like a crack military force. And they had to be because their opt for was, you know, the National Volks Army. This should all be very clear. You know, there was a slew of other, you know, kind of. a brand um brand's apologists and supporters were as pointing the fact that

you know the um the number of germans made the poverty line you know like fell from you know 2.9 percent to like you know something totally marginal but entrepreneurial activity also dropped down to zero you know I mean it was a typical kind of it was it's the typical kind of like socialist stagnation writ large

you know but hey you know and the cope for those that defend such things are we got this great education system and now nobody's poor anymore. I mean, everybody, this is a very common, this was a common occurrence, you know, when, when social Democrats or Greens later on, you know, gained majoritarian status than any of these, you know, in any of these

West European states. But more importantly, Brad's big thing was Ostpolitik. He wanted a true, like, reconciliation with East Germany, okay? And towards that end, 7097, he reestablished diplomatic relations with Romania. He entered into a trade agreement with Czechoslovakia. You know, he restored formal relations with Yugoslavia. This was set back in August 68 when, you know, with the Kremlin's invasion of Czechoslovakia. But, you know, he condemned, Brandt formally condemned the invasion.

But, you know, he basically renegotiated the ruling coalition, you know, with the free Democrats. and, you know, who moved back to continued reproachment with the Warsaw Pact, and that was, that was kind of his way of finessing, you know, what could have been a a career running crisis into a way of staying alive. But it,

this reached, it's kind of zina than 69, when he agreed to meet, uh, he agreed to meet with Willie Stoff, who was East German premier, who was, you know, in this kind of, Byzantine DDR system, technically the head of state, contra, you know, the head of government,

you know, who was, you know, the general secretary of the SCD, which by then was Hanukkah, but he agreed to meet with Hanuker too. And so he basically, in one fells stroke, he basically, you know, gave the DDR the legitimacy that it had been attempting to capture really, from inception. And this understandably, this really really outraged not just people who had family behind the wall,

but also people who had real concerns about the fact that the Soviet Union in Warsaw Pact had genuine momentum then in military terms. And frankly, in political terms in the third world like we talked about you know like it appeared that brant was was uh was selling europe out uh to the shalinis in a real way um owing either to malice or any malice or naivete it didn't matter

um and this in my opinion was kind of the zenith of uh a worse off act power politically because what had always been the way worsela pact wins is a demilitarized germany you know I mean, this was the subject of the Stala note, as we got into many moons ago. This is what the Soviets always wanted, okay? And it looked like they were going to get it, albeit in some gradual capacity. What brought this down is fascinating. Willie Brant's or Billy Brands top aide, you know, his and the Social Democrat Party, like, second. Terry was a guy named

Gunter Guillam. Okay. And Guillaume was a connected to the hip to Billy Brandt. He was this kind of he was this kind of he was this kind of shifty looking guy, frankly.

You know, always wear dark glasses. He was always dressed impeccably, but you know, he truly was ubiquitous. Like when Brandt went on vacation, you know, Giann like went with Brandt and his family too. Like they were that close and it was believed that basically

Brandt was a womanizer you know he he liked pussy too much he was at drunk like Brandy Ville was his you know kind of nickname friends and foes alike called him that he relied on Guillaume you know to kind of like hold it together

okay well in 1974 at April 24th Giam gets arrested because Guillaume was a Stasi officer and he had been for his whole life. He was quite literally deployed to the Bundes Republic to get close to anybody he could

and he got close to Billy Brandt and he quite literally made Brandt a chancellor. I mean, like think about that. Like, think about what a coup that is. And Guillaume was able to steal the eyes only

above top secret NATO nuclear war plan from the Chancellor's safe and he was able to deliver it to East Berlin and from that point forward it was never clear like what the Stasi knew and like how long they had known

you know and this was this owed to Marcus Wolf who was you know kind of the it was kind of the genius of the ministry for state security he was the

he was the he was the chief of the foreign intelligence directorate or the main directorate for reconnaissance and uh guillam was his like like the mole that

became guillam this was his this was his operation you know from inception to conclusion and uh wolf made the point that Guillem's arrest and exposure um this is very

really kind of what killed the ambition of Warsaw Pact and everything they'd accomplished. Because after that, the Bundes Republic became basically a police state. You know, like they, a couple years subsequent, the Bader Meinhoff faction, you know, the Red Army faction, you know, in 977, that was the German autumn,

as it was called. You know, they kidnapped and murdered a number of, you know, of highly, of highly situated personages, you know, industrialists, conservative politicians, people of this nature, you know, the, it, this is really what facilitated the assentancy of a man like Helmut Cole or the chancellorship. And this is when Westchester, this is when the Bundes Republic, like, rejoined the Cold War in earnest, you know, and then all bets were off. And it also, there was something just profoundly sinister about this. I'm not saying that in like a corny way, but, you know, the intelligence game, for whatever reason, the Russian, the Soviets and now the Russians are very, very good at it.

They were always way, way better at it than NATO for whatever reason. And this was a testament to that. You know, about 10 years after the Guillaume affair, Hans Tej, you know, who was the chief of the counterintelligence directorate. of West German intelligence. He just literally defected to East Germany. Okay, I mean, there's nothing... There weren't any people going the other way of that standard. I mean, yeah, there's people...

There's people like, you know, Suvorov. You know, not the Suverov, but, you know, the guy who's pen name was Victor Suverov. You know, there's mid-level Soviet officers. There's even a couple of generals. But nothing like this, you know. and that's that there's entire

value was written on why that was but the point is it this kind of killed anybody's idea you know even kind of the most stalwart you know kind of soge them like East Block apologists I mean they realized that like the communist truly were just aiming to subvert the Buddhist Republic

render it defenseless you know penetrated by any means necessary you know and and um and thereby, you know, remove Europe from the American defense umbrella for all time. Okay. I don't want to get into an argument about what the implications of that are in like world historical terms.

People know my opinion, but that's not important. We're talking with the bounded rationality of the Cold War and in its epoch, how people view these things vis-a-vis d'etat and the hell stinky of course and everything else. So you look at that situation And then, you know, like we talked about last episode The assault in Afghanistan You know, the emergence of deep parodies You know, and the Soviets attempt to

To remedy that You know, by by deploying even more weapons platforms The massive throwaway in the European theater You know, and Reagan's way of returning to serve was the deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons to the Buddhist Republic, to Italy, to the Netherlands, and other key theaters. And that's basically how, I mean, you can see kind of like a perfect storm of causality

leading to the um leading to the status of tensions you know by 1983 um I don't think that there's um I don't think that there's a comparable

um um sort of crisis cycle in the Cold War um I mean there was like I said there was 973 you know where the Soviets actually um

they they deployed nuclear weapons, you know, to the Middle Eastern Theater in anticipation of a general assault in support of their Egyptian ally. 1962, obviously, you know, the world, the United States and the Soviet were very close to nuclear war, but that was well before nuclear parity had been achieved. So it, yeah, okay, I mean, I realized it sounds like it being flippant, but America took up 20 million dead, it still would have won. I mean, there would have been no more Soviet Union, you know,

that's got different implications, you know, and it's not, it's not so much that, you know, 19802 to 84, it's not so much that, you know, it was this punctuated moment like 73 when, uh, um, America reached DefCon 3 or like 62, when the question was, you know, are the stories just going to, you know,

just going to run the blockade? it was just kind of ongoing it was just kind of it was just kind of like never-ending state of elevated tension where it seemed that at any moment you know a general crisis

could deteriorate into nuclear war before anybody even knew it was happening owing a large part too to the state of you know weapons development then and command of and control technology which essentially neutralized early warning

that's what's important to consider, I believe, because I do get asked by people like, well, why was this so dangerous? There wasn't some moment like in the Cuban missile crisis. So there wasn't some ultimatum issued. You know, like when the Soviets declared that, you know, if the Israelis annihilated, you know, the Egyptian army and then Marsha and Cairo that, you know,

the Soviets would intervene. And then if met, you know, by comparable American forces, that they'd resort to nuclear weapons in order to prevent their own people from being surrounded and destroyed similarly. But that's kind of what I got for today, because I don't want to,

the Gorbitross of Sentency and kind of what ended this strategic paradigm is significant. And the role of Matthias Rust, the roust, you know, the kid who flew his who flew his prop,

lane into red square. That's a fascinating story, and it's got huge significance for the kind of internal for Kremlin intrigues that, you know, led to a real policy shift. By the fact that it costs many, many Stalinist hardliners and key roles, their jobs. But I, that, I think we should say that for next episode, because again, I want to deal with, you know, the end of the end drop of Chernikl era and the ascendancy at Gorbachev next episode. So I think that's all I got today. Let me ask you this.

The shooting down of 007, there had to have been close calls before. There had to have been planes that flew into airspace. Why was it that one? Not to put on a tinfoil hat and everything. And like you said, that flight would always have someone on it of security. But why do you think it was just at that time? It was just that was the perfect storm time. That was the perfect storm time.

It's not clear why, because, you know, even in those days, there was, you could recover audio from, from, from, from Rex, like the black box, I guess. The Soviets tried to hail this plane. And like I said, a 747, apparently, I'm not like an aviation guy. Like, I like warbirds. I think they're cool. but I don't know anything about the, you know, particulars on it. Apparently at 747, like I said,

looks basically just like an AWACs of the era, like even at visual range. So the Soviets are like, you know, why, why, we're not just being spoofed. This is, you know, this isn't, this is an early, they're trying to detect our early warning and how much it's lit up. They tried to hail the pilot

on, you know, whatever the, you know, international emergency frequency is, and it was dead silence. This Sukoy got on his tail and made clear that, like, it was, you know, at attack range, you know, and it still didn't deviate from its course. You know, the pilot who took it down,

obviously, you know, he was forced to lie by the Kremlin and stuff. You know, sometime in the 2000s, you know, he testified to this British filmmaker about everything that happened. And he's like, yeah, you know, he's like, when I got the order to the fire, I didn't hesitate. And he's like, I didn't think it was, he's like, I didn't think we were going to, he's like, I didn't think it was, you know, a precursor to an attack. But he's like, it didn't make sense what it was doing. You know, he's like, I thought something wasn't right here. what some of these FAA types, some of these like investigator types and guys who know aviation claim or like what they think.

I mean, we take for granted that it's a hell of a lot easier. I mean, in aviation and anywhere else these days to identify your true position. In those days, it wasn't. The consensus is that these Korean pilots were worried. wildly off course. They had no idea they were in Soviet airspace at all. So like when a Sue who got on their tail,

Ivan does, their idea with the notion of probably Ivan does crazy things all the time. You know, it wouldn't even have occurred to them, like, we're going to get blown out of the sky. Plus, yeah, the fact it was a perfect storm of concrete tensions,

you know, owing to the global situation. situation. But it's weird. And it's weird that McDonald was just having to be on that plane, you know, and it's like, and then too, like a lot of bircher types and stuff and not, and, and other just like right wing guys, not even like bircher cranks were like, obviously the Soviets are just doing this because they can and they hated McDonald anyway, so they just killed him. And I mean, honestly, I can see why people want to thought that because it's weird, you know, and, um, I mean, the Cold War was weird, you know, and it's, uh, and plus the, they,

the Soviets did grimy shit. shit. I mean, they, you know, in the same epoch, you know, they, it's clear now, like, they, they, they retain some freaking, you know, this turt to try and murder the Pope. Like, you know, they, uh, the, uh, these popular front for liberation of Palestine guys were going berserk, you know, they were the guys who blew up the disco tech in West Berlin. Like, those were, those guys were like in the, in the employee of the Stasi and Operation Control of KGB was over the Stasi. It's like they, you know, obviously it's a different thing that, you know, is it blow a civilian airline around the sky with with a warbird but it you know the soviet union was

behaving it was behaving very much like a a lawless actor you know but that wasn't top down right mean with the premier of that they were going to yeah i mean this is just what happens when it was what i said it was yeah but i got understood what my point was i could see why people who weren't crazy you could think that you know this was this was just the soviets being brutes i mean that but yeah I mean it was there was there was not like a deeper there's not deeper lore there

but yeah McDonald was a and I mean it's sad McDonald died I mean I don't I'm not a fan of the birth society but there's some good guys in there like that is now and McDonald was probably he was only last congressman it was actually worth shit he was a good dude

you know I mean it I missed the days when there was like Democrats who weren't just like not like shit bags and perverts but they actually were like dude to represent their constituents and

McDonald's a guy who did that and arguably I mean he died for him. He wouldn't have been on that stupid plane going to South Korea like if he wasn't acting as official capacity. I mean, you know, in the Cold War, I mean, politicians now, they're like, they're like total deviance and losers because like no man has got anything going on in his life like goes into politics. But the Cold War was different, you know.

You had, you had like real guys and you had people who had something to offer who went into public life, you know, like McDonald. You know, I mean, it's, and it's a tragedy, you know, and as we're, you know, those other 269 people on board, you know, and there was, like I said, it was mostly official types and business people, but, you know, there was still, there was a couple dozen women and kids. I mean, the thing was fucking awful. But, yeah, yeah.

Well, plugs and we're out of here. yeah like again too like i'm being terrorized by burbap so like please don't pay it any mind um i i guess like in a week i'll be back on there but i'm trying to phase it out um as we kind of transition to the channel but i mean in the interim i mean you can find me a tgram uh you can find me on substack real thomas seven seven seven seven seven seven dot substack.com um my youtube channel is thomas tv the the trailer uh The promo is up for the channel, the intro rather. I'm in the process of recording the first episode. As I hope people gleaned from the intro that my dear friend and bro, Ray, created for us, I wanted this to be very high quality. I'm not just like throwing shit out there, you know, so it takes time to produce it. I'm piecemeal getting the equipment I need to do this in a more extra.

expeditious capacity, but like, please bear with me. I promise by April 1st, we will have like actual episodes. But that's, that's my, that's my job as of today. All right, man. I appreciate it. Until the next step. Yeah, thank you, Pete. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekino show.

Thomas, how are you doing? I'm all right. Thanks for hosting me. Yeah, man. So last time we talked, talked about Yaki. and talked about Spangler, and it's time to get back to the Cold War series, episode 14. What do you got for us today? Yeah, we left off with Abel Archer and the Andropov era.

I mean, to me, the Andropa Avera was properly from, you know, about 1964 until he died. I mean, like I said, I think he was like the kind of eminence behind the facade of Soviet power that, you know, when Brezhnev was at the helm. That's not to say Brezhnev was some kind of cipher. I mean, Brezhnev became elderly, he was no longer, you know, I mean, he was no longer mentally competent the last few years of his life. But Brezhnev was a serious personage. You know, I mean, there's a reason why he replaced Crucciv, you know, like he was writing the ship. He was writing the ship after the, you know, the kind of disaster that was Crucif in power political terms. You know, and Brezhnev was, in a lot of ways, he was kind of a true Stalinist, you know.

I mean, but the true, I mean, a state, it's at the scale of the Soviet Union, you know, even accounting for the fact that, you know, the Russian, the Russian political error, it sends a contrary power in one man, even in times of peace, like in a way that seems peculiar in the West. I'm not even saying that punitively. I mean, it's just like an objective account of things. But, you know, the Soviet Union that it's zenith, it just was not the scale and complexity. I mean, empirically, we'd consider, you know, the way that Marxist-Lennon estates were organized, where they're, you know, we're central planning, you know, truly was the order of the day, you know, not. I mean, that's what policy was. That's, that's what the production schema was. It wasn't, you know, something that they aimed to realize.

I mean, that's how they, they truly had, you know, an economy that, you know, had abolished the price mechanism and was managed by, you know, thousands upon thousands upon millions of inputs. So, I mean, no, what I'm getting at is that no, no matter how much of a brilliant, you know, personage, Brezhnev would have, might or might not have been. Like, no single man could have managed that. So, I made the point that kind of the, the trifectual. of Soviet power was really Andropov Grameko and Ustinov Dimitri Ustinov, the field marshal.

And you know, particularly I'm as a war in peace and drop off was kind of the final authority. And, you know, the decision to go to war in Afghanistan was very much in drop off decision. And I think we got into that. And the the decline of that trifecta, I mean, most frankly, I mean, Andropov died and then Usenov died shortly after. I mean, that's really what allowed Glasnost and Peristrike as policy to become developing involved the way it did.

However, you know, Gorbachev was Andropov's protege. And that's the reason why he truly was Andropov's successor. know this idea that gorbachev's like this kind of crazy liberal or that he was like this kind of yeltsin like buffoon who who was just kind of like drunk uh on the the prospect of uh you know of of kind of like slash and burn capitalism that's not true at all um we'll get into the next episode which will probably kind of like close to the end of our series as to like why you know why why the soviet union went down in flames the way it did but it wasn't because gorbachev wanted to just like burn the structure down or like pull the plug.

But when a drop-off died, his immediate successor was Constantine Chernanco, you know, who was kind of like his dottering fool in the eyes of the world. I mean, by that point, he was totally senile. But the reason why that this kind of placeholder was insinuated into the general secretariat was because there was a real battle within the Kremlin as to which way the Soviet Union was going to go. not even it wasn't nobody foresaw in the early 80s that you know the east block was just going to come apart like nobody um you know like we talked about before there's people like kennin and people like yaki himself you know the soviet union as it existed you know in the 1950s and during into the 21st century but even they didn't see the whole system just like dissolving you know um like the way it did so the people were suspicious of gorbachev it wasn't because the thought like, you know, he's going to, he's going to sell the party down the river or something.

It was because, you know, you had these discrete personages who, you know, to whom kind of like the up-and-coming commissars had, had like, had like individual loyalty to, you know, and Gorbachev, despite the fact that he'd been in drop-offs guy, I mean, it, uh, that carried a lot of clout, but it wasn't, it wasn't enough, um, you know, to just, to just hand him the reins in like an absolute capacity without you know any kind of um without any without without without without anything being finessed beforehand and like you know promises being made and you know and got a certain uh ceremonies being stood upon as it were but chernanenko was not in his youth he actually the guy was kind of like a pure commissar i mean he obviously he served you know he

served in the red army you know during the you know the russ Soviets and the russians today called the great patriotic war he spent his entire career at propaganda of and as an ideological cadre. You know, like I said, the guy was like a pure commissar. You know, it's just like what he did. You know, and he, um, he was very much an intermediary, like, with a defense establishment, even though he didn't, like, spend a career in uniform, like, and they trusted him and they liked him. You know, so this guy, you can see where the Soviet Union, the fact that they took, you know,

William Odom, who we'll talk about a little bit later in this episode, you know, an American general. and probably the preeminent authority on nuclear warfare. I'd say Thomas Schelling on the civilian side would be entitled to that moniker, but as far as a general officer goes, it was Odom. And William Odom, he was kind of the one, you know, he was kind of the one like, you know, combat experience general officer who was saying in the wake of Able Archer that, like, look, the Soviet Union is serious.

Like, they're not, they're not pretending to be on high alert. Like, they actually are. You know, and they actually are in a war footing. And, like, the more you, the more you spoof them, you know, the more paranoid you make them. And the more likely it is that, you know,

a real war is going to develop before we even realize what's underway. But, um, um, Odom You know He He was right

And The Soviet Union Being that it was Very much on a war footing And kind of the entire vector of policy Had Had like a strategic nuclear axis Sharonenko

If you're going to go to war Chernanko is a guy who you'd kind of want In the general secretariat Yeah, by that point he was doddering and senile But the fact is the guy had tremendous esteem from the military, from the uniformed cadres to the design bureaus, you know, to the men who wore suits every day to work, but who were like the kind of military industrial complex as representatives in the public bureau.

Like Cherneco was like a guy like none of them would have like disagreed on. And on the party side, you know, the guy had been basically chief ideologists like when he was young and had his brains. So it didn't matter that Chernangelo was. himself was totally out of it because obviously like his protégés where people were very much were viewed as carrying out like his

will and legacy and if it was going to come down to like a general war with NATO um he's kind of a man you'd want there you would not want to hand the reins to Gorbachev even if you thought he was a great prodigy because uh you know I mean he was in his 50s

he wasn't like young in absolute terms but he was like a Sprats like in the Soviet system like he was literally like the youngest man like in the Politburo. But beyond that, much as he'd shadowed And Drapao's final year, when he was bedridden, basically, Gorvichov would literally stand in for him. That's different than being

the actual decision maker, particularly general secretary and a system like the Soviet Union. So considering the international situation, it wasn't just internal politics and egos and kind of literally Byzantine you know, intrigues that led to

Chernanenko getting installed as general secretary. There's like an internal logic to it. Like weird as the Soviet system was and kind of strange to us as the Russian system is. But as Gorbachev succeeded

Chernenko who died in office, just like interoperopov did and just like Brezhnev did. You know, and that hurt the Soviet Union in in terms of their optics in a basic way. In 82, like Brezhnev, you know, dies, like a year and 10 months later, like And Dropov dies.

And then literally 13 months later, like, Cheranggo dies. It's like, you know, the world's, one of the world's, you know, one of the world's only two superpowers, you know, the mighty Soviet Union. It's like they've got these dottering old men like one after the other, like, who just literally keep dying. That's not a good look, you know. And especially contra Reagan, who, I mean, these days, Reagan wouldn't seem like purely elderly, but in those days, people talk a lot of shit.

Like, you know, Reagan's just this old man, even though it was only about 70, which was old. I mean, in 1980. But Reagan, the guy had, like, an absurd amount of energy, you know, like almost Trump tried to capture some of that. And Trump is a high energy guy, particularly for a guy who's like pushing 80. But with Reagan, it, like, was not at all in an affectation. So you've got like Reagan, who's, you know, Reagan's always got a smile on his face, why he's got perfect hair. you know the guy's like sharp as a fucking tack and you know he's got a sense of humor to rival like he's got he's got a dry humor to rival johnny carson you got like him and then you got like literally dottering shaking bresinev was like you know dropping dead a week later you know you have to placement it's like even worse and like he's you know he's dead within um you know within less than two years like it it indicated like a real a real structural problem but that's why um that's why there's so much uncertainty around gorbachev because like I said, he was the youngest man in the Politburo.

His main rival was a guy named Grigori Romanov, who was very much a hawk on strategic matters. He staunchly opposed any kind of compromise or intermediate nuclear forces in Europe. as we talked about last episode, that's what prompted the Pershing 2 deployment was, you know, that was the primary, like, theater-based nuclear weapons platform for the U.S. Army and deployed in the Bundes Republic or in Italy or in the Benelux countries. That's at the cavitation range of Moscow. And the impetus for that was a Soviet deployment of SS19s and SS20s, obviously the intention of Soviets would to decouple European strategic policy from Americas.

You know, like, if you threaten Europe in nuclear annihilation and tell them, like, look, in a general war, we're going to target you simultaneously to the United States. and as long as they're in NATO, like, there's no way out of this. That changed things. And I believe that's one of the things that really put the Green Party on the map. Okay, like environmental stuff or like social justice stuff, as we think of it today, that was incidental. Like, the reason people fly out of the Green Party is because Germans are genuinely terrified of Germany being the designated, like, nuclear battle theater of World War III.

And, like, I don't follow them for that. Okay, I'm not anything I'd say about the Green Party, but it's easy to be able to say now, like, oh, those guys are all just like faggots. It's like, okay, man. But like I, you know, some guy in the Buddhist Republic in 1980, like, he wasn't just being a faggot. If he's like, you know, I don't like it. I don't want to be the designated, like, I don't know my house being like a designated,

you know, like nuclear battlefield between Ivan and America. Like, you know, it's not, we can't really conceptualize what that was like. And I mean, it's also, you know, West Germany was like, like a rough state. People have no idea. People have no idea what it was like there. I mean, my parents lived there for three years. was born there. You know, my dad had to go through Checkpoint Charlie. Yeah. I mean, it was he said it the closest definition to dystopian that there ever was. Well, yeah,

it's like William Odom, I'm speaking to him as well as some of these line officers. And like, even my dad, it was never like deployed there. But I mean, he was in the Bundes Republic and he was at the Inter-German border many times, you know, like in that era. And he's like, it was like, it was like, it was like like a real war. It's like this, it wasn't like so he's like the, he's like the National Vokes Army and these like Soviet grunts. They weren't like loafing around playing cars. Like these guys were like treating it like they were at war. And I mean, so is like the Bundeswehr and so is like the U.S. Army.

But it's, there's not like a joke or something where it's, you know, like it. I think people imagine almost like an old cartoon where there's like, where there's a, there's like the fox and he's like trying to like get the chickens. And there's like the sheep dog. And they like they had clocked. He's like, hey Carl, like they say him. You know, and then they kind of like pretend to go through the motions. I mean, I'm sure there are, like, hostile borders like that, but, like,

inter-german border, like, it was not the case. I mean, like, yeah, I mean, yeah. But it, um, so, you know, but be it as it may, like, Reagan's, um, Reagan's, uh, like, Reagan's big kind of first, like, foreign policy coup in, like, diplomatic terms was, was getting to the Soviets at the table of, on the INF treaty. And the way he did it was he said, like, look,

you know, we'll take the pershings out and we'll take any comparable and like successor systems like off the table. Like what basically is like we can either have a nuclear free Europe or like we're going to be shoving these theater-based weapons up your ass and decapitation range like in perpetuity. And the school of conventional diplomacy like that's not the right way to do things because it's like very free bit. but when you're talking about when you're talking about strategic nuclear conditions of parity or when you're talking about kind of the strange if you're talking about the stakes like the Soviets

had in this, that actually was like a brilliant move. And Reagan deserves like mad credit for that. But there was a lot of resistance within the Soviet military establishment, especially from people like Usenov, to this

happening. So obviously Gorbachev did, you know, like, succeed at Cherenico and Romanov, one of his first, one of his first, one of Gorbachev's first acts, the general secretary was like sideline Romanov. He didn't, he didn't like punish the guy, but he basically like retired him like, you know, with, with, in Gentile kind of powerlessness. Okay. So, but what Gorichov still had was, and then, and then, and then Usenov died almost immediately after. Okay. Usenov died, I believe at the very start of 1980. It was late 84 or 85. But within the military itself, like Gorrachov had a tremendous amount of opposition. And they had clout. I mean, in America, like the military during the Cold War

had a huge cloud, but it was like nothing compared to the Soviet Union. Like, the defense establishment, even now in the Russian Federation, they, I'm not saying this like punitively or like the way that like Neo-Cons say it, like it's some bad thing. It's just the reality. Like the trajectory, and I mean, Russia also was like

existential threats that they face as a country that most states don't. But like the trajectory, the course of policy is set, um, by the defense industry in a way that it's not, uh, in a way that it's not,

um, you know, in a state like, like, in like America or like the UK, even during the Cold War. But what changed that, what kind of allowed Gorbachev to,

essentially purge any kind of hostile general officers is really fascinating. And the immediate cat to that was the flight of a kid, like literally a kid named Mattias Rust, or Roost. He was a German kid. And he took a Cessna. He didn't have many flight hours. He only had about 50 or 60, like hours of flight time. He rented a Cessna, F172P, which is like, you know, like a Cessna like prop plane. Okay. And what he did was he ripped out a bunch of the interior, you're like including all, but like the pilot seat. And he replaced him with auxiliary fuel tanks.

And what he did was, he tested out kind of his chops on long flights. He flew to the Faroe Islands. He went to Iceland. From Iceland, he flew to Bergen. And ultimately, he did this because his idea was to fly to the Soviet Union, which seems totally insane, and it was. But what he, what his note, he claimed he did it as like an emissary of peace. and to build like a proverbial bridge between the Bundes Republic and Moscow, which is actually

pretty profound. I'll get to that. And kind of how this was actually videotaped by a British tourist who was on the ground in Moscow. That's why, like, everybody saw it. There's a little kid. I remember this was, like, a very, like, awesome event. You know, it was, like, it was wild. But Matthias Roost, he leaves from Helsinki, Finland.

And he breached the Soviet airspace with the intention to reach Moscow. now how did he do this okay we're talking about kind of a reverse a splendidly kind of like reverse situation of what happened with k l007 okay which was you know shot down as it was misidentified rousse was flying this little plant this little prop plane that looks at visual range

and what's exactly like a yacol of 12 which it was used all over the soviet union for various purposes um you know like in the in the in the Siberian wilderness they used them because you know kind of like Alaska like that's your basic uh means of travel in there like on the open step like surveyors and like naturalists would like use them you know um like party members that use them just kind of like shuttle around so like the sudden appearance of like the sessna like it wouldn't really throw alarms um in conventional in a conventional situation but moscow was known to have like the tough toughest air defenses in the world. Like, it's telling, like, during linebag or two, you know, when downtown Hanoi was hit,

the kind of final massive strategic air operation against Hanoi, like downtown Hanoi was considered to be the most fortified city in the world, like the hardest target in the world other than Moscow. And like, nothing, and the Soviets very much cultivated this. Not just the image, but, you know, Moscow was supposed to be like the hardest of all targets. So the fact that this kid could fly his aircraft into Moscow, and he crossed like several designated air defense, you know, checkpoints.

And apparently at first there was a rookie ground control crew. and when they sent the signal out for an IFF, you know, identification friend or foe um, Rousse was like switched off is, his communication equipment and like went dark. And, um,

not knowing what the proper code was to send out, like over the airwaves for like what the status of the aircraft was. Um, these guys, these Russians on the ground, like, drop the code for like friendly instead of like unknown, like possibly hostile. Like,

so then like, uh, when he, breached like the next kind of a you know the next kind of um the hurdle verbally speaking um you know he he'd already been like identified as like as like a friendly aircraft and then like as he as he approached like moscow like moscow air defense like it's like you know they they saw look to be like a yakow level like on the gate at the at the gates of moscow like they didn't even think twice about it was not it's not a war plane and if it's here in the first place

Obviously, it's okay. I mean, so it's this weird kind of like failure, you know, like I said, it's kind of like the splendid reverse of what happened with the KLF, like, 007. But at the same time, again, too, like under normal kind of peacetime conditions, this wouldn't really be an issue. But this had a horrible effect on, I'm like the prestige of the Soviet military. and what Gorbachev did was it gave him essentially the mandate to clear out basically like anybody in uniform

that he did not like and that's exactly what he did. The officer corps of the Soviet military was just completely freaking like smashed. Roost himself, he literally landed in Red Square and the footage is crazy because this guy just like lands. Like he landed on a bridge

adjacent to Red Square in the middle of the afternoon. He gets down any like waves and he says you know like i'm german you know i'm from west germany and people like you know like what the fuck and he said he landed he said originally thought about landing in the kremlin but he said that then he realized if he did that like he'd be arrested by kGB or fs or um gr u and uh the other kremen just denied that like it happened you know so he's like at least i mean he he'd have no idea of knowing that you know there'd be this like this this this british tourist like a video camera camcorder but at least it's

be like eyewitnesses, it'd be like, hey, I saw this dude land. He, like, this happened. You know, you can't just say it didn't. But he, um, Roost was, uh, you know, like, like two hours later, like he was arrested. Um, you, let me ask you a question because there's something, somebody might ask this question.

Yeah. Everybody gets the idea that the, the Soviet Union was this place that was actually absolutely locked down. No one went in and out. And you just said, that immediately the first person who confronts him as a British tourist. What was the tourism situation as far as Soviet Union went? I mean, the Soviet Union actually, I can't remember the name of it, but until from the 1950s

until literally 1990, the Kremlin published this magazine, it was called something like Moscow life. And I used to see it at the newsstand sometimes and like flipped through it when I was like a little kid. Because, and that was, that was like the Kremlin. It was them like showcasing like, why that's. the Soviet Union is good, but also like it was supposed to draw like tourists. And there's a lot of stuff you couldn't see and a lot of

place you couldn't go and like you'd be followed. You know, like at least casually. You know, because like everybody was. It was like a foreign, there was like an entire KGB director to like keep an eye on like foreign visitors. But I mean, yeah, you could you could visit the Soviet Union as long as there's nothing, as long as there was nothing about your background that

flagged you. Like the real, these were the Soviet Union is that was hard to leave. It wasn't hard to go eastward. Like basically, like, throughout the eastern block, you could basically go wherever you wanted. But, you know,

a citizen of the Soviet Union, he was not going to be able to visit America. He was not going to be able to visit the UK. He might be able to visit the Buddhist Republic if he's, like, a trusted person in relative terms. But that was kind of the issue. And it, especially during the 6th,

there was a lot of guys um like i remember and this was kind of dumb at the time like i i really despise bill clinton but like russian limbo was i remember when bill clinton was running in 92 russian was like he visited the soviet union as a college student it's like okay but like a lot of guys did like that was our cruise is big thing like hey if you want to we you know we're an open book you know we want american college students to come see how good the soviet union is and they in turn set some of their exchange students but these guys were all dudes with like party you know their fathers were party men. There's no way these guys are just going to be like, fuck you, I'm defecting.

You know, I like it. I mean, yeah, Bill Clinton's a total shitbag, but the point is, if you were, if you were like going to Harvard or like Yale or like Stanford in like 1965, there's like a good chance you would have like visited the Soviet Union because like they cultivated that. Some of that started to change, you know, kind of like post-a-taunt,

like a Soviet Union started to look more and more like scary to people, frankly. And I mean, in the, I know a lot of guys who are like five and ten years older than me, like when I was a little kid who'd like visited East Germany and been like, oh, it's crazy. But like nobody really wanted to go to the Soie Union, frankly. Like I mean, whether it's like ignorant or not, whatever. But, you know, by like 1980, you know, it was kind of like,

why the, you know, that place is fucked. You know, like, I don't want to go there. But, and like, and again, I think that's kind of twisted, frankly. I would have loved to go to the Soe Union. Like, because it would have been pretty awesome. Like, not, not, not. cool to live there, but like to see, you know, like it. But that was kind of the deal.

And it, um, and it's also, um, and it like, depending on like the, you know, but yeah, the, uh, the, uh, it was basically, uh, you know, the Soviet Union, like, welcome tourism in its own kind of way and, you know, but the fact is, you know, the, the kind of splendid absence of like Soviet citizens here in America, like, that was exactly why. But it's like, nobody had any money. It's like, let's say, like, let's say I'm like, you know, or I've, in the U.S.S.R. in 1980.

Like even if I was educated and at skills, I've got like no money. And even if like somehow it's a miracle I got, you know, like a visa from the Kremlin, like I'm going to like land in Chicago or Philly or like L.A. and just be like, hey, I've got zero money. I don't really speak English, but like give me a job. Like that's not, I mean, especially in them days too. Like stuff just didn't work that way. So yeah.

But it, um, it, um, but the Soviet. too like even with even with some in the show of the americans which in some ways is hokey but in some ways it's really dope the guy and like his wife who one of my favorite it's one of my favorite shows of all yeah the lady who like stanton is his wife you know like they when they show like what he went through like as like a kgb like deep cover operative they're basically making sure like he wouldn't defect you know and like just become like enamored with the american way of life and that actually is like legit like the guys the kgb and the gru at a lesser agree had a lot of sleep

rages on the ground like those people in that show and they basically vetted them to be like you're not going to go crazy when you know you realize you can like you know you can kind of like get stuff in America you can't hear because it's like not you're either like you're in a seat and you're

totally down for the party or you've just been kind of like you know like it's the kind of the you know the kind of um fascination and such things hold over you has kind of been like right out of you were like smashed out of you but yeah it's uh the it's um do you ever wonder if they did you ever wonder if they sent any of those over here like um towards the end of the so

you and then they're just still here and they're just like they never went home and they're just no there's a guy like that the little yeah this one guy uh the soviet union had one and drop off speech during the able archer era it was kind of like it's kind of like you had dropped a version of the secret speech. He addressed the Politburo and he said like, look, he's like, we're, he's like in military terms, you know, in key theaters, we're doing well,

but he's like we were losing the Cold War. You know, he's like, you know, he's like our text house industry is, like, compared to Japan is, like, primitive as hell. You know, he's like our agriculture. He's like, we're literally dependent up from America and, you know, in a bad harvest.

You know, he's like, we've got less than like a thousand, you know, like, computers in America like a computer as a kid's toy. He was just like going down the list, okay? That so the Soviet Union, one of the things they did was they sent a lot of mathematicians and like guys with formal

logic knowledge or guys who'd like bed in Western Europe like in a formal capacity as like an operative. They sent them to America to get jobs like in nascent like IT firms. And one of the guys who did that you know, he was like posing as like as like a West German or like Polish descent or something

he got a job with like this IT for him in New York in like 1981 and he'd do like dead drops and New York subway and stuff and then he said that like the last basically after a while he just like stopped reporting you know and then like he said that like a guy came to his apartment and just told him like

you know like he's like I know what you're doing and he's like you know he's like basically like you should probably commit suicide or at some point like you're going to be killed you know because you're like a loose end. So the guy said that like he's like what should I do? He's like you thought about like mocking up like

paperwork to say he like died of AIDS or something because that's something like the AIDS thing was huge. He thought about like trying to like, you know, he thought about like just openly defecting you know, but he's like that. He's like he didn't have any con he's like I'm a deep cover agent they're probably, I mean he's like they're not going to be happy about this. You know, it's like, oh hey, I've been spying

on you the past decade but hey can I defect? Because now like things went left foot. So he basically said he's like you know like by that time he had like a wife with like no deal like what's real identity was i mean it's kind of like a tragic story but he said he's just like what the fuck am i going to do so like i just kept going to work i just kind of like kept waiting for it and then i turned the tv and like the berlin walls coming down you know and like so yeah like this there was there was a the guy got like a write-off i think and actually the new yorker or something

like back in like the 90s i'll see if i can find it and like um so you can like post a link but it's but yeah there there definitely were guys like that and um in the reverse too um There was, uh, Jens Carney, uh, he defect, he, he, he defected the other way to the DDR. And, um, like, nobody ever knew what happened to him. Like, it was presumed he defected, but he just, like, disappeared. Um, he was an Air Force guy. Um, you know, he was, he was, um, he had knowledge of like, of, he was, he was a cryptographer, okay. But, uh, Jen's Carney, like, if the wall comes down, he hides out, like, pretending to be, like, a Dutchman or something. I think that was, or Dane, his cover story was that he was a Dane.

And then finally, some like Bundesfare or like U.S. Army, like, MP types, like, who the fuck is this guy? You know, just when they were kind of like going down the rolls, like, who actually is in the DDR? And they're like, that's this freaking, that's this guy, like, you know, a decade back just like, you know, went over, uh, what went over the wall, like the other way, you know, as a freaking defector. And he got, he got courts marshaled. He got jammed up for like seven years or something. I mean, which I think is kind of fucked up. I mean, it's like, what's the cold ores always? over unless you killed somebody or unless you truly did something horrible like like passing eyes only

nuclear secrets they should have just like let it go but you know the the the penning doesn't seem inclined to like let things go like that and the guy wasn't uniform when he defected so i mean it's it's like okay but yeah there are there are some very weird stories about that but yeah i mean it does beg the question like how many these guys were they like just nobody knew about and they just like kept low key and like you know went about their life um yeah probably more than people think because I mean, I made the point before, and a guy named John Collar, he wrote a really good history of the Shastasi.

You know, kind of the one way that, like, the worst up pact, like, consistently beat NATO was, like, with their espionage. You know, like, it wasn't even close. Like, it, uh, and yeah, they put a tremendous emphasis on human intelligence in a way that, you know, like, we didn't. And so, yeah, I

speculate it was, like, more of these guys than people think, you know, or thought. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic. Yeah. but um metaius rust back i mean he what happened became a him is rather tragic he

he was sentenced to four years at hard labor but he was actually never sent to a labor camp he was housed in isolation in moscow and ultimately he was released and then formally pardoned by grameco when the intermediate nuclear forces treaty was about to be signed as like a

a jettric goodwill and he claimed he wasn't mistreated and i believe he wasn't beaten or anything but there was something was like damaged about him and he later went to prison in Germany because he had a job in some hospital and there was some girl that

he had like an unrequited crush on and he straight up just like stabbed her and he had this guy like no history of like violence I mean what I'm getting at the Soviet Union destroyed him like psychically like whatever they did to him and you better believe that they didn't just treat of like some kid pulling a prank

I mean the you know they like I said I'm not anti-Russian at all or anything but There's a long history of guys who were political prisoners of the Soviet Union, and they somehow came back, like, damn it, just or, like, not right.

You know what I mean? I speculate the same thing happened to him. And after that incident, apparently, he never got in trouble again, but he, you know, he seems to have had kind of like a sad life after that. And, you know, like I said, as a little kid, and then later, as somebody who spends and spends a lot of time in the Cold War, I think roast in some ways what he did was really heroic.

I mean, it was naive. I mean, he's lucky he wasn't unceremoniously, you know, blown out of the sky by a mig driver or something. But, you know, I believe he was idealistic in the way that kind of last Cold War generation of Germans was.

And I think he really was like, look, like, I don't want to be a casualty of World War III as a countervalue, you know, as countervalue ashes in the wind. And, you know, I've got love and respect to the Russian people. And, you know, like, we should, you know, we should, you know, we should find a way out of this paradigm that's going to destroy us all. I found it really profound as like an 11, 12 year old kid. You know, I mean, maybe it's because I was a little kid.

But, I mean, Tane, there was, like, something there. And he wasn't just, like, some crazy dude. Like, I mean, he literally, like, learned to fly, like, for this purpose. You know, I mean, it's, you had it in mind that it could make it. And frankly, I think it did, man. know like it um you know i guess i mean you remember it was a big deal but the um that but that i mean obviously the what it shows you too all like discrete events that nobody is intending to have these reverberations like literally like if roost hadn't done that i can easily see uh i can easily

see like you know the us enough loyalists who were still in uniform is like saying like look like gorbachev is he's compromising our ability you know to defend in depth and you know, he's, we cannot allow the INAF treaty to be put the paper, like, and some kind of like, um, quasi-military regime in the Soviet Union, you know, like, either like relegating Gorbachev to the role of Cypher or just like outright getting rid of him. I mean, it's not like they weren't capable of that. It like literally like what Russ did that, that allowed Gorbachev to, to, to sideline and sandbag, like, all of his enemies.

And I mean, from then on, it really was his show until like, you know, until the challenge from Yeltsin was emergence. But that's what we should cover the next episode. And that's an incredibly complicated, like, people who didn't, weren't alive then, but also even people who are pretty serious students of the Soviet Union. The intrigues between Gorvichoff and Yeltsin and what Bush and Bay, Baker actually wanted, like, Bush and Baker didn't want the Soviet Union to cease to exist. Like, they wanted it to endure as it's kind of like, as it's kind of like federated, like,

authoritarian structure that had totally abolished, like, the party. But that was totally disarmed and was kind of like, you know, accountable United States as like junior partner and like ruling the planet. It was basically they wanted to like recreate like the New Deal or concept, like how the world be run. And like the T&D types who not only hated the Soviet Union, but literally wanted to see like torn apart

like Yeltsin was their guy. And that's like what's key to understanding this here. And that's why people have mixed feelings about Yeltsin, I think. But it's and then of course like the kind of variable to spoof things was that

you know, all the nationalities like all went crazy. You know and that's, and that bears on too. like what the it shows you too like when uh you know like what what what what what these fools they call the chicken kievs speech for or bush 41 went to ukrain is like look like don't like like you're going to be committing national suicide if you decide you're going to like fight the russians don't do it which of course is like absolutely true so that's like a deal like

you know bush was a pussy like how dare you like not back ukrain independence like what exactly the ukrainians what exactly the ukrainians got out of losing like a quarter million people on their country rag or like awesome things like ensuing from this i mean It's not, like, whether you love hate or a neutral on Ukraine, like, the idea that, like, Ukraine, like, provoking a general war with Moscow was, like, this good thing or, like, this, like, base thing. Like, it's, it's literally insane. But the, but I, in my, before it being clear, like, what America and its NGO affiliates and what have you were doing in Ukraine, if you're going to tell, if you told me, like, 20 years ago, like, yeah, like, you know, in 20 years, like, where will, like, the Russian army, like, be engaged? I'd be, like, in the Baltic. Like, I'd see, like, some kind of, like, really bloody, you know, like, asymmetrical conflict of them, like, in the Baltic.

Like, that's what I thought would happen, honestly. I, uh, it frankly surprised me that, like, the Ukrainians were so incredibly rash. But, but that's, um, that's, um, the fact that that must, that, the fact that Washington and, uh, kind of like the post-Ragan foreign policy. team. They wanted both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to endure. Like, you know, they, this kind of policy of, you know,

let's try and detonate like every federated structure that exists. Then we can kind of like finesse them into, into like these like fake client regimes. That's like very much like a post-Bush kind of thing. I'm not saying Bush 41 had like these great ideas. I think he was the last serious president. But I'm not saying like his kind of

his kind of vision of like a neo like new deal was like some kind of like good thing but there's like an internal logic to it that like makes sense and is like sustainable in a way that like the competing perspective like was not and is not but I um I don't want to uh I don't I don't want to deep dive into that yet because that that that's going to take like an hour or an hour and a half so but that's uh that's basically all I got for today is I want to go ahead let's let's talk let's talk a little bit about the 80s because um yeah of course I remember it And it was a weird, weird time. It was...

Big time. It's scary. Okay, so like New York was one of the... I mean, murder, murder, murder. I assume... There were 2,000 homicides a year. Like, that's wartime attrition. Yeah.

I'm sure Chicago, I'm sure south side of Chicago was the same way at the time. And... But yet, yeah. Yeah. But yet you had a great amount of abundance. You had a lot of people getting rich. a lot of people getting wealthy. And then you still had this like nuclear shadow that was always overhead.

It was like a time when people were really, a lot of people were really having fun, but there was always this cloud hanging over. Lots of people don't understand either. I try to explain to the people. My earliest memories were being like afraid of the Soviet Union. You know what I mean? I lived literally three miles from Glenview Naval, air station, which was like a priority counterboard target.

Like we would have just, there was no chance we would have survived. You know, and it, and I mean, especially because like my dad was like insinuated into like, you know, like the policy planning establishment. I mean, I realized like the Cold War was like talked about in my house more than other people's. Like everybody was like that. And like when those stupid emergency broadcasting system test had come on, like my mom would jump and like everybody would. you know because it's like then people don't they don't understand that

it's why I get pissed off when people talk about like the COVID garbage even like a 9-11 you know it's like there's nothing comparable like what would have been like a general Warsaw pact like nuclear assault in the United States like MAD is bullshit like Carl SIG is nuclear winner is bullshit but it would have changed like life as everybody knows it you know there would have been a hundred million people dead huge swathes the country would have been like unlivable the survivors would all migrated towards the equator

So you're basically going to have this like, it'd be kind of like a giant wild west with a poisoned environment that was like America, like no shit. And like just the fact that it'd be like, again, it'd be like world transform. You can't kill tens of millions of people within hours and not like have everything change. You know, and the fact that this was always a possibility and especially as human decision makers became increasingly sidelined,

you know, it began to clear like this could happen without even anybody intending to just because the trajectory of variables of such. that like it has to happen according to the you know the indicators um yeah it was uh it was it was like night and day and i i think that some of the some of the like the murder rate becoming totally lit for like a whole generation and people that's like acting kind of crazy like i think part of that i think part of it was people like well there might this might not exist tomorrow you know so like why not i mean it made people more balzy definitely but it was also like uh you know there's um there was an aspect of like, you know, the apocalypse is like imminent.

So like who gives a fuck? And the, uh, yeah, it was weird, man. And like, and the immediate adjambat is weird. You know, like I. Well, yeah, then I was going to bring that up, man. The 90s is like, so the Soviet Union falls apart officially. And then all of a sudden, New York City gets cleaned up. You know, like the home, the crime rate drops.

Homeless people are being bust out. 42nd Street is bought up by Disney, basically. It's like, it's a real weird correlation that shit like that happened. Well, yeah, that's one of the reason I'm, I mean, it's one of the reason I'm very much like a Hegelian. Well, it's also the reason why, like, the early 90s were, like, anarchy, you know, and then suddenly should stabilize and just, like, became, like, normal again, like, to your point, around, like, 96, like, 95, 96. But, like, that movie kids, you know, because I'm more, I was born in 76, so I'm, you know, I'm like, I'm like a 90s dude more than an 80s

I grew up in the 80s, but I was like a teen in like the 90s and like, people think kids are just like, oh, it's just like pornographic and gross. I'm like, yeah, it's both those things, but it's also like, on the street in 1993, that's like what shit was like. And like anywhere you went, like everybody had a chip on his shoulder. Like every idiot and his brother was like gang banging

for like no reason. It's not like now we're just like hoodoo to do it because like they sell drugs. It's like every idiot was like, yeah, I like rep this like nonsense gang and oh like I got, I got, I got, I got like a gun I pack with me for like no reason just because I'm like a fucked up asshole. Like that literally was like the way shit was.

And like, uh, you know, it and like, like all there was like, yeah, man, there's this like, like the races like fucking hated each other and like it's, you know,

yeah, and it's like, so like that movie, yeah, it's like, maybe like Larry Clark, I think he's the dude who made that movie. It's like maybe that dude is a pervert and like a sick fuck.

But like what he was like portraying was not like in his mind. Like that shit. shit was real and I was a teenager in that epoch it was like that. You know, like, uh, and I mean, this particularly made an impact on me, like, psychologically because it's like I,

you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, despite what people think, man, despite the fact like I've had like, you know, I had like a heavy fucking drug problem and shit. I'm a pretty like square like fucking white dude, man. Like, I'm not into, like, I'm not into like, fucking savage shit. And like, that stuff like bothered me, like, as a

kid. It's like, it seemed like, where people like lost a fucking, mind like totally you know and like a yeah um but yeah no that's that's i mean again man that's why there's something too like zeitgeist it's not just like the random aggregation of like pop cultural like symbols and and people's kind of like uh you know the discrete experiences and aggregate like you know of the youthful generation and kind of like what what they associate with the times that they're growing up in like it's a real thing there really is like a spirit of the age and yeah like why why was like every for like 30 years everybody was

going totally insane and then suddenly like the nuclear specter like disappears and then like you know there's like three or four years of total chaos and then like suddenly like everything's like normal again you know yeah and like and 42nd street goes from being this like looking like a nice circle of hell to be in like Disneyland like literally like yeah you can't just say like oh well that's because people got tired of prime or something it's like it's like it's not i'm not saying you got to believe in god okay fine you get god out of the equation but there is like some kind of like invisible hand Like, even if it's just, like, human decisions in aggregate, developing some kind of harmonious, like, you know,

intent or, like, vector, you can't tell me that's just, like, random shit that happens for no reason. You know, yeah, definitely. All right, man. Plug, whatever you got. Yeah, man. I'm still, like, I dropped on my Tgram the other day. You're going to find me on Tgram.

I think people really know my know. I'm trying to get stuff done in earnest and just why I can, like, shoot for my channel and it did it get a capacity. but I haven't got to swamped with, like, content work and other stuff lately. But I promise, that's why I haven't been real active with stuff, but I promise that is changing. You can still find me on Twitter. I don't know, I can be nuked there at any time.

And also, as we get into the summertime, I'm going to, like, disengage there and just kind of, like, fuck with my own website and my channel. But you can find me there for now at, like, real underscore number seven, H-M-A-S-777. My primary home is Substack, RealThomas-777.substack.com. And my channel is Thomas TV on YouTube. We're going to saturate when I start uploading fresh shit there on like Odyssey and stuff. But for right now, like, if you join the channel on YouTube, like, you'll be hip to it, you know, when, like, new stuff is uploaded there. And, like, when we kind of, you know, migrate to other places.

But that's all I got. And thanks for hosting me, as always. This has been great. appreciate it. Thank you, Thomas. Yeah, man. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. We're almost done with this, aren't we, Thomas? The Cold War series?

Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, no, indeed. It's been quite a journey. And we've gotten really, really positive feedback, which is great. Not, you know, because I need things to prop up my ego or something. But there's a, you know, everybody, at least even people who, aren't particularly plugged into revisionist history, you know, they have an interest in World War II

because it's just you know, the kind of symbology of it and kind of the narrative of it is all around everybody. Like the Cold War, like people under, people under about 40, they don't, I think that's changing

somewhat. Like, actually, like, cornea as it sounds, like, one of the Call of Duty games was like special collapse Cold War. I never played it, but I thought that that was dope that some of these game developer types, you know, they were trying to, like,

plug people into the history of, of the era, like, with, you know, those kinds of Sims. But, you know, the,

if you want to, like, literally, if you want to understand everything that's happening in power political terms today, like, you've got to understand

of the Cold War result, you know, and it's, I think it's particularly, if you identify as right wing, it's particularly impactful in terms of, you know,

where we are, conceptually. And before we went live, like, you know, you're talking about, you mentioned Paul Gottfried. Well, yeah, I mean, it's hard as hell to find now, which I think is very deliberate, but Godfrey gave a talk. I think it was at, um,

I think it was at, uh, the H.L. Minkin Club. I don't even know if that's still a thing, but, uh, and his talk was called how the left won the Cold War. And it was really fascinating. And, uh, um, you know, and, and, and again, that's why, even if one is even if one's not um ideologically situated in the same kind of camp that i um

you know vis-a-vis the cold war and and francis yaki and and that kind of hegelian view of things um you know it's it's fun of me if you want to understand why blood is being shed in in ukraine and on the russian frontier today like you've got to understand what what developed between 949, 1989, particularly how it resolved. So the fact we've gotten, like, mad feedback is very inspiring. I feel like we're actually doing something constructive. Yeah, I think we get more feedback on this one than we did on World War II. Yeah, yeah, and I'm very excited about that.

And yeah, moving forward, your idea to cover the Spanish War is great. And I'm really looking forward to that, too. but yeah we can um what i wanted to get into today a bit and forgive me if this talk is a little bit it seems a little bit scattershot there's a lot of discrete causes to what caused what what you know caused the inter german border to literally just come apart you know november 91989 some of those causes were laid you know around 1980 81 when martial law was declared in poland and the Soviet response to that or more probably the lack of a Soviet response to that.

Part of that was kind of the bizarre nature of the DDR government. The East German government was not at all organic. It, you know, East Germany itself, it was literally a fake state. Like there's no, it's not even like the case of like North Korea where like Northern Korea is like culturally different than South Korea.

In some ways, you know, they got a history of being, you know, a divided kingdom. Like East Germany was literally the border was where the red army just arbitrarily stopped. You know what I mean?

So it's you have this complete, you have this like rump state that, you know, isn't precedent in terms of its in terms of geographic situated in this. And people forget too that, you know, the guys who became the DDR government, there were some genuine like pipe hitters

like Eric Milka who literally wasted a cop in Vimar. and then he ran to Moscow because, you know, he was a KPD street fighter. And then, and the NKVD trusted him, you know, and, you know, he kind of became their man. Speaking of Spain, Eric Mielke, kind of became their man in Spain. He was like a commissar, you know, like fighting on the Republican side. Guys like Eric Hanuker, he somehow escaped execution despite being, you know, a pretty high-level functionary um or cadre in the kbd organization but he was in prison um you know by uh for the duration of

the war um and some people think that he was a double agent and then he was like he'd fed intel to the gestapo on the SD which i don't it's possible and then there was Walter Ubrecht who was kind of this dower intellectual you know kind of humorless uh you know cold a cold old-hearted kind of functionary of the most cliched or stereotypical sort he was another guy who spent you know time in exile like after

after um the national socialist revolution so like all these guys were they were this cadre element that was at odds literally with their fatherland like whether you're in any faiths or not the point is like these are the guys who really get odds with Germany like their own you know cultural Mill Lou They spent the warriors

Either literally like Fighting with the Red Army Or in exile in Moscow And then You know When the dust settled in 1945 They were literally just like insinuated into This role

It's like okay you know Like you're now like the cadre of the German Democratic Republic You know these and who people like Who the hell are these guys? You know it's not the only way they the only mandate they had was you know proceeded from

the barrel of of Soviet guns and over time a kind of party state apparatus did develop in the DDR particularly like the National Volks Army which was officer and NCO heavy compared to a NATO army and that was very deliberate because he had a bunch of military

careerists who's you know fortunes were inextricably tethered to the survival and prosperity if we can call it that of the regime you know in any any government that indoors for decades no matter how kind of contrived or unpopular it is

you know if people are going to become just habituated to do it and you know people's fortunes are going to become bound up with it in various ways so I mean that did happen but it was about the most artificial of artificial states which is one of the things one of the reasons i'm always kind of tongue in cheek saying you know like east germany he was

best germany you know the ddr the reason why they did the national volks army you know their uniforms looked like vermouth uniforms they maintain some very end of the prussian drill and the parade ground you know they a lot of their their kind of mythology they drew upon like florian guy or in the peasants war you know they they kept a lot of like you know they kept a lot of like you know they They got a lot of the optics and kind of at least superficial trappings of the Prussian statehood, which was really the first kind of like modern welfare state. You know, that's not, they can't be denied. But the point is, the DDR is kind of kind of like, they're kind of like hyper aware of like their tenuous claim to the mantle of power.

And them kind of insinuating themselves into this role ironically and somewhat perversely. But if you're a heck alien, this makes perfect sense, they're kind of insinuating themselves as like the guardian of like what remained of like you know the like authentic german culture um that's really interesting um and that i think i think people responded to that too in some basic way that's why in like the decades after the wall came down um i think east germans themselves like astrology you know it's like a play on like nostalgia um you know they that's that's you know kind of a media term that's bandied you know you know about people who grew up in the east who uh you know who still pined for like products you can't find anymore and kind of like what way life was in that era and you know i made the point too like frau merkle it's not an accident that she came up through the dDR you know um and interestingly there's a law i'd say any any german politician you know who uh who who who was a citizen at dDR it's literally against the law

to talk about their past like in East Germany so it was a criminal offense and when Frow Merkel was the Chancellor to talk about her background a lot of people allege that she was a Stasi asset which is possible she was a young pioneer

so I mean she her folks were like communist party people or so the social there was no communist party in the DDR is the socialist unity party but it uh but the point being I mean it wasn't she wasn't just you know she wasn't like an apolitical you know like her family was at least like regime loyal um and so far as party membership but that merracles concord with with mr putin you know and uh the uh the the uh the gas prom

deal which which led to the noratrine pipeline all all these things like owed like the cold war okay and like the old like you know what the dDR was and what the energy German border represented in like power political and you know in in his story of graphical terms you know it this stuff isn't just you know it's not it's not just like trivia about you know a strategic paradigm that's no longer extant but you know last uh last episode we got into you know the kind of thaw the Gorbachev thaw that um was made possible in large part by Mattias Roost's flight But before that, you know, we talked about, we talked about the NATO dual track strategy,

which ultimately led the intermediate nuclear forces treaty and why this was a big deal. The Soviet Union during drop-off had been very aggressively trying to decouple, you know, Europe from the United States in terms of a strategic doctrine. and its willingness to wage nuclear war against Warsaw Pact. And the way they did this was, you know, with the deployment of SS19, SS20 ICBM and theater ballistic missile platforms in Europe, as well as the deployment of the backfire bomber, which was a maritime nuclear bomber. superficially it had

things in common with the with the B1 but it was purposed essentially to to nuke the the Royal Navy and then like open up the the Greenland

Iceland, the UK gap which the Soviet Navy had to shoot in order to break out of you know the North Atlantic into the open ocean in order to you know effectively wage

war against the United States. But the, um, the, um, when, uh, I made the point that Reagan's, uh, dual track strategy, which was, the Reagan administration offered to remove all theater nuclear weapons platforms from Europe, you know, um, ground-launch cruise missiles, as well as intermediate range ballistic missiles like the Persian too if the Soviets would abide the same, okay? If the Soviets wouldn't abide the same,

all bets were off, NATO was going to continue to deploy theater nuclear forces. Now, arguably, this led the Soviets to say, well, we've got nothing to lose, and that's why they went all in in Afghanistan. You can even go a step further and say,

like, as we got into, that this caused terrible anxieties about the possibility of a decapitation strike on, you know, on Moscow. And, you know, we talked about how the real impetus for intervention in Afghanistan was, was proximity to Kazakhstan, which was as important to Soviet nuclear command of control as was Moscow. But as, as it may, what was going on during this era as kind of the Soviet Union was hardening, its stance in power political terms.

There was odd things happening between the two Germany's. We talked about the Helsinki Accords. You know, that was when the Warsaw Pact, you know, it, all the signatories declared that, you know, they'd honored democratic processes.

You know, people would not be discriminated against based on, you know, political affiliation, sect, nationality. I mean, basically, it was basically the Helsinki Accords could not coexist with the Brezhne doctrine, which is what the Soviet Union relied upon with their intervention in Czechoslovakia in 68. You know, this caused a problem because on the one hand, the Warsaw Pact was desperate for, you know, like legitimacy and credibility in the world stage.

On the other hand, the only thing holding the structure together, particularly after the son of Soviet split, was armed force. You know, the only thing making the Soviet Union a superpower was the fact that it had, you know, the world's mightiest military apparatus. The only thing holding a strategic alliance together, which it depended upon, you know, in order to achieve any strategic depth, you know, was the fact that if any of the satellite states try to throw off the shackles of one party rule, you know, they, the Soviet Union would directly intervene in order to defend socialism, you know, or defend the development and survival of socialism,

um, within its sphere of influence. So this was probably, this was, this was very much tested in 1980, 81. That's when Poland came under martial law. Um,

Poland was an interesting case because, um, the, uh, one of the reasons why Carter courted Brzynski, you know, as a key part of his Zignyubrigensky is a key figure in his national security staff was uh like Poland seemed to be the kind of the kind of um it seemed to be the kind of um it seemed to be the kind of like the natural place to try and you know create a wedge in Warsaw Pact you know um if uh if it wasn't organic to the DDR it was totally

alien to Poland. You know, Poland was basically, it was still a largely in the aftermath of the war, it was still largely backwards. I'm not saying that to be punitive or mean, but it was. It was still a largely backwards country. People were staunchly Catholic. They had a strong hatred of the Russians,

you know, like ethnic grounds. So communism really kind of had to succeed in Poland, okay, if for any kind of legitimacy to accrue, not just to the regime situated there, you know, it's a Warsaw Pag generally.

And towards that end, Poland was the recipient of a lot of subsidies, which in turn, they used a build-up infrastructure, including one of the, what was at the time, like one of the world's most advanced, like commuter rail stations.

Like the, like, the, like, Warsaw Central Station, like, it's still, like, it's something like an architectural marble. And at the time, it was like, wow, this is this is remarkable. But that, like, those kinds of public works projects or something like the communists, like, seem to do pretty well at. But as it may, like, one of the things the polls did with these subsidies is they set about to create,

like, a fairly diversified, like, manufacturing sector. And, you know, the idea was that, you know, they could build up equity and, you know, create something of, like, an export economy, however, like, regionally limited, you know. and and, you know, and then, you know, and then become eligible for, you know, like long-term developmental loans and things and, you know, basically become like a, some kind of like modern country, or at least, like, on a par with, like, East Germany, you know, if not, you know, if not the West. But, um, this obviously didn't work. And, uh, you know, the polls found, like half the poll of GDP as of 79, I think was, was, was, was debt. Um, and, uh, and, uh, the polls they were dealing with genuine shortages things like things like there was ration cards handed out for like meat

and eggs and sugar like nobody could get tobacco like cigarettes that actually were being used as currency by 1981 I mean this is like prison like it's literally insane and one of the big one of the big problems in terms of rendering the legitimacy

crisis was uh Polish Polish workers were being saddled with you know like increasing demands in order to shore up again, too. Poland was still gambling on this idea that, you know, they could create like a viable manufacturing sector like fit for export. It's like Polish workers were being sad to look like more and more and more hours,

you know, for like diminishing returns and they couldn't even get like the base to consumer necessities of life, you know, like cigarettes like sugar. I mean, in a socialist state, I mean, this is preposterous, you know. so that was basically the impetus for solidarity and you can't you can't take a labor union in a communist state who are like hey we're you know we are the proletariat and you know we're not we're having our surplus labor literally robbed of us

you can't like take those people out and shoot them okay I mean like you could like a bunch of Catholics or a bunch of a bunch of fascists or a bunch of you know people protesting the party I mean so this is a very tricky situation The way was resolved in Poland was Gerald Zelski became

a general secretary and he was a tragic figure there's this kind of visage of him as this sinister guy he was a Polish military officer he always wore these dark sunglasses the reason why is because he was of lesser noble birth

and when he was a teenager when Poland was invaded by the Red Army he has old family got sent to a Goulag and he became his eyes were destroyed by the glare of the sun off the snow in the labor camp he was in

so he couldn't stand light so like he'd wear sunglasses all the time and I mean it tells you something too like this guy who was literally a kid who was like destroyed by the Goulag system like physically in some way and mentally like he became this kind of like this kind of military talent

in these blocks like it there's something kind of like Shakespearean about that but it's also it tells you something about the way like poland was brutalized by by communism it's like you know there there was there wasn't no there weren't there wasn't there wasn't the equivalent of of like the ddr cadre in poland you know for them to kind of insinuate as as the ruling uh cast you know they they took this guy it was literally you know somebody destroyed by the gulag you know like uh and yeah i just find that fascinating but so poland stands alone as the only, it was the only East Black satellite state that was under the direct rule of a military man.

And it was literally under martial law. Now, as this developed first under Carter, then under Reagan's first term, it raised an interesting question. Because according to the, if Poland wanted to open revolt, the Brezhnev doctrine dictated that, you know, the Soviet army would invade, you know, to preserve the regime. and drop off, you can tell it was react with anxiety that this is what was going to happen. That's something that's clear from, you know, the notes of, you know, meetings of not just of the prosodyum, but of, you know, like, the kind of inner, inner poet, girl, like, de facto, like, you know, the cadre that made the decision to assault Afghanistan, like we talked about the other week. but simultaneous to this going on, East and West Germany were engaged in this kind of delicate minuet of reproach. And Eric Hanuker, you know, Stalwart, as he was, as a Marxist Leninist,

he'd always pined for, you know, for East Germany to be recognized as a truly sovereign state. with a somewhat independent foreign policy. And it was bizarre because on the one hand, on the one hand, the DDR, they were viewed as kind of too Stalinist, like even prior to Gorbachev, but they were simultaneously viewed as being too cozy and friendly with West Germany. I mean, there's something bizarre about that. But in 1987, Hanukkahar finally,

got permission for a state visit to the Bundes Republic. And he'd been trying to accomplish this, he'd been trying to accomplish this for, for, for, for like a decade. And initially in, in 1984, when he first put it to the Soviet Politburo and the foreign ministry, Chernanko said, you know, make a mistake, you know, that this is not a,

visit aimed at reproachment it's to establish lines of demarcation which is like a typically like Soviet answer it's like both like obnoxious and obtuse and hostile but also doesn't really make any sense and like but uh so there's

this weird arrangement where Hanuker goes to visit the Bundes Republic and uh the uh they flew like the DDR flag but they flew the DDR flag slightly lower than like the Bundes Republic flag and like uh

They'd, uh, the, uh, he, like, like a band greeted him, like a military band, like, when he disembarked, you know, in Bond, but like, nobody would salute him as he would, like, ahead of state. It was like this goofy, like half measure. And there's this really striking photograph, because, like, Helmut Cole, who, uh, he had Merkel, whatever their respective faults, and there were many. I mean, they, they were the, really the only post-war German chancellors who did anything really to restore German sovereignty. in various capacities. Cole was a, like, a huge man. He was, like, this huge, like, bear-looking guy, you know, like, this kind of, like, big Bavarian, kind of like a Hermann-Garring type, you know, like, big, loud dude, you know, like, and just, like, a huge person.

And, like, Hanuker, Hanukkah was kind of, like, this creepy, like, nerdy eye, you know, like, kind of how you, like, imagine, like, you know, the kind of communist from central casting, this kind of, like, this kind of, like, professorial dickhead who, like, nobody likes. there's this photo like you know

like huge like helmet coal he's got like a big grin in his face there's this like pissed off with him like Hanuker and like an East Block suit who's like you know five five and like it's like he's like being dwarfed by like you know it was like kind of like you know metaphor that seemed really

resident I thought that as like a little kid and then just the other week when I came across it in in this book in the 1989 revolutions and like wow that's really striking. I wasn't sure if it was just like Mandela effect, me like remembering it as being more

like profound than that. But the, um, what ultimately happened, um, you know, the convergence of all these things, um, it became, it became at some point unthinkable, even notwithstanding

for the, the intrigues of, of, uh, of, uh, you know, within, within the Kremlin that allowed Gorbachev to kind of rook his enemies and and, and, and, and, and, sideline any true, you know, um, hardliners,

aim to sabotage a peristrike on policy terms. It, it at some point became unthinkable for the Soviet army to deploy, you know, in Poland or in, you know, East Germany if it came to that and, um,

and do what they've done in, in Hungary in 56 and in, um, Czechoslovakia in 68. Um, you know what I mean? Zytegeist is a real thing, man. I mean, like, I think people who take historical revisionism seriously, I don't think any of them would disagree with that. But even if you're not, you know, trying to kind of hegelian interpretations of these things,

the pressure of, you know, like world moral consensus, that's a real, that is a real thing. It's not just something that, like, end of history, liberals bandy about. and what was possible in 1968 or 978 or even 1981 was no longer possible by like 1986, 1986, 1987. I mean, it just

wasn't thinkable. That's why when people pose the question as the you know, well, why wasn't there a Tianmen Square moment? It's like, well, consider it like this.

What actually happened at the inter-German border in the moment it was happening, a lot of people didn't even fully realize what the precipitating catalysts were. In April

of 89, really the first chink in the iron curtain, like the physical structure of the hardened border was the Hungarian government finally shut off the electric fences that saturated

the Austria-Hungarian border. The guard towers remained. They were still manned. But there literally was an electric fence like running the perimeter. You know, it, you know, I mean,

and by May, the border guards, there was this big deal. The border guards in Hungary, like, met with their like, Austrian counterparts and began dismantling, like, sections of

the barrier, you know, and, like, the Austin's obviously invited, you know, like Western news crews and stuff. And, uh, this is the first kind of indication that, you know, the, um, like, Warsaw Pact could no longer exist as it,

as it had, you know, for decades. Um, taking its cue from that the Hungarian communist and I know that Hungarians Mayegers are really great people

and they're really proud people and they were actually at the forefront of anti-communist resistance and I'm not praising the communist regime there at all but to their credit Hungary's foreign minister Horn

uh realized that that, you know, travel restrictions had to be lifted, even if his motives were cynical and that, you know, he, he was operating with an eye to preserve the party state apparatus. The point is that, you know, the, it was, it was the Hungarian regime that really first, you know, kind of gave weight, you know, and they, they had a long, um, they had a long history post 56 of compromise. I, I, again, I'm not saying because they were good men or something or, or, principle. I think a lot of it owed to, you know, the existential reality that in Hungary especially,

they wouldn't have survived if they hadn't made certain concessions. But people forget that, you know, the Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian border is really where, you know, the kind of thaw began. And what's fascinating, too, at least I think so, because I've got kind of a fascination a fascination with a Habsburg in Vienna, as I think some people know who follow my content. During the summer season, and there was always a lot of East German tourists

in Hungary, and 1989 was no exception. Because, you know, Hungary is a beautiful place, I'm sure. It has such a reputation. But, you know, if you were East German, Hungary is one of the places you could visit, you know, like on vacation. and um the uh an idea which was hatched by

Otto von Habsburg who was the last he was the last crown prince of the Haftsor Empire you know um he he uh he said uh let's invite

uh let's invite our German friends to a picnic um on the uh Austro-Hungarian border and of course you know like there were these these east german you know tourists swarm to the border which was that opened up so they could you know travel to austria and then from there you know

they could get you know to the bundus republic and um this totally neutralized uh you know the inner german border and its ability to plug the proverbial sieve that you know had led to their hemorrhaging of population um and from that point on uh And unless the East Germans were truly willing to open fire on their own people. And I can't think of anybody who would have been willing to take responsibility for that. You know, nothing short of that would have changed things. And like I said, even before Gorbachev, I think it was already unfortunate. off.

The when I I think it was already unthinkable you know again like a hard line as a

the adrop of Chironinco regimes were I think it was kind of the same regime as I've indicated for reasons I've indicated before

it was clear even by then that you know the president of doctrine was dead for practical purposes and it the Soviet Union

was a superpower like people forget that sometimes you're not talking about Saddam's Iraq you're not talking about you know you're not you're not talking about North Korea you're not you know anywhere you weren't talking about you weren't even talking about a place like

two Jemada's Croatia like which I think was a great regime and my point is you know this thing the Soviet Union still was accountable in some basic way you know as a superpower I mean they they um their territory

spanned one sixth of the planet and the sphere of influence was you know in territorial terms exceeded even that of the United States I mean outside of you know the Soviet Empire proper but

what what I think is key with respect to the how the Cold War ended is what was happening in Washington and how Bush 41 and James Baker proceeded. That's the only thing that facilitated Gorbachev's, like the realization of his and Edward Shvednardza. I always butcher the pronunciation of that name.

He was the foreign minister who succeeded Grameco, later became president of Georgia. But in foreign policy terms, Shevardnadze was, he was really kind of the go-between in some ways, between the Kremlin and the U.S. foreign policy establishment. And as we talked about Team B and the kind of hold they had over the trajectory of policy in the Reagan administration, they'd been somewhat sidelined by the. Bush 41 administration. Cheney was kind of their man who remained in proximity to the sovereign level of power.

But Baker and Bush, as I've discussed before, their vision was not the Soviet Union being dismantled, quite the contrary. They, at least wanted the Soviet Union to endure until total disarmament was realized. you know, total nuclear disarmament and almost total, you know, reduction of conventional forces in being.

And moving forward, even from that, I believe... Can I answer our purpose? Yeah, no, please do. Would that be coming from the same faction that today is, you know, responsible for wanting to topple Putin? That was the T. Those guys are the legacy of, team B. And in some

place, they're very sane people. Because, like, Bush and Baker, their idea was like, okay, they basically wanted to, like, re-institute what had been kind of like the New Deal idea, like the New Deal Concord, of like the world ruled by the United States, the Soviet Union, or like

something like Commonwealth of Independent States, like succeeding it as like junior partner. Cheney was on record as literally saying, like, fuck them. I mean, the Soviet Union, they lost. you know, let's detonate it. Let's basically detonate, like, all the republics, you know, the nationalities. You know, let's tear the Soviet apart.

Let's like loot what we can, keep Russia permanently down. You know, let's surround it basically. You know, we'll turn Ukraine into like a garrison state. We'll turn Georgia into a garrison state. You know, and basically, you know, keep our, basically, you know, Morgan Fow playing in Russia. Okay. those are the guys who won out

from Clinton administration onward. I mean, Clinton was a complete buffoon in foreign policy. Like, he literally was. It was just like a fucking buffoon. He was basically a guy. He was basically a Machiavillian on the order of LBJ, like, in terms of his politicking. He was like a matchable politician. Like, whether you think that's like lawable or not, kind of depends on your

perspective. But he had like zero interest nor understanding of foreign policy, like none. so basically it was like available the highest bidder you know and that's why everything all the goodwill like achieved by Bush Baker Concord was just like was just like you know

nuked like proverbially um subsequently and then you know the uh the uh the assault on Serbia you know which was devoid of strategic logic other than basically just to say like we're gonna like we're gonna break Ivan's face to get him out of the Balkans like

like why would you even do that? But, I mean, it's some, you know, that, those the two, that's, that's what's underway today. That's why these, like, neocon types and, like, they're kind of a sentence. They still, at this day, like, Rake Bush 41 over the close, for very belief of the chicken Kiev speech. So, like, how dare he, like, in modern, the Ukrainian is not to waive some, like, suicide, suicidal war against Moscow for no reason. I mean, like, it's, but that's, yeah, I mean, that's, PMS understand me too. Like, I'm not saying, obviously, anybody who's not a freaking idiot should realize that I'm not advocating, like,

some kind of like new deal or vision of the world, like 2.0. But what Bush and Baker accomplished was truly masterful, the Gulf War Coalition is unprecedented. You know, and the fact that basically, like, Bush 41, like at the whole world, like, like, fricking in the palm of his hand. Like, that's crazy. You know, and he, um, uh, he'd courted the Arab world in a way that, um, was with an eye toward genuinely, like, normalizing, you know, the Middle East and kind of defanging the Zionist lobby.

Like, that's not as, again, I'm not saying Bush 41 was like, our guy, like, at all. But he represented something very different than the neocons and very different from, like, even, you know, even most, like, rhinotypes, you know, like that. And same thing with Baker. Like, these guys were, like, the old, you want to know, like, the old Protestant establishment the last time they were, like, at the helm, like, that was it, okay? So, and frankly, like, in some basic way, like, those guys are, like, my team, like, even though, like, class divides us, like, it, I'm, I'm still gonna sit here and, like, out and out, like, trash them because, frankly, like, their vision was, like, far better than anybody else is, like, post-war. Like, now I was saying the fact, you know, the war shouldn't have happened. but that's um that's what i want to get into next week and um the gulf war uh the gulf war is like an

addendum to the cold war like it really is and like to the even you know uh black horse regiment armored cavalry you know who patrolled the fold a gap like they fought like at 73 easting that's where there was McGregor like he was a black horse regiment like there's all kinds of and plus too i mean it's that's where you got to see the you know um the post-revolution and military affairs like U.S. Army, which I believe was like the U.S. Army at Zenith. Like that can be argued.

You know, fight against like Warsaw Pact weapons platforms. And the political climate globally, like, it's something that like has never been seen before and will never be duplicated. You know, and that's and that that was so it's not just

I, it's not just an addendum because it was post November 989, but pre you know, pre, uh, pre, uh, dissolution of the,

of the, of the USSR. Like, you, you've got to really understand that is kind of, not just the zenith of American power, in absolute terms, but also kind of,

like the realization of like the Bush Baker kind of a, vision of, a, of, of, of, of, globalism,

rather, like, um, which was, you know, burned to the ground. within half a decade by by by the foods like Clinton and um you know people who would uh you know would would place uh their petty you know kind of ancestral hatreds over a over a meaningful um you know

historical development but yeah that's what all i got for today man well let me ask you this before we go i mean i was watching i was watching it on tv on november 9th wasn't anything that, you know, I expected then. We didn't have the internet. We couldn't keep up. Oh, I watched on CNN. Yeah. And so how did that happen?

Because you can go on YouTube now and you can watch. There's videos of seeing people pouring over the border. Ladies like, you know, screaming at East German officer saying, just let me go. Let me go. Well, what happened at the East German border was, um, The, as the situation in Hungary, kind of became, like, more and more unmanageable, you know, with, like, East Germans just, you know, hopping over to Austria. And then to, you know, and then to the West German embassy and then, like, onward, you know, to the Buddhist Republic. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, well, first of all, Eric Hanaker, Hanukher, because there was, you know, a lot of these protests.

that were underway in the DDR, we're demanding that Hanuker resign, among other things. Hanuker steps down. The Volkscomer appoints Egon Crenz, who was like the heir apparent anyway. He was the guy who was like being groomed, like, as, you know, successor. Crenz ordered the Interior Ministry to draft regulations that were less, that were less oppressive and less Byzantine

that would allow people exit visas which it was totally arbitrary and capricious like who would be a grand one and who wouldn't be like it didn't make any sense but the

credulous Gerald Gerhard Gerhard Lauer who was among other things, the Volkspolitya chief, who were responsible for, you know, border checkpoint security,

among other things. Here to order the Interior Ministry, you know, to draft some kind of workable, you know, like visa application system that in their, what they were hoping was that people who were political unreliables, they could basically just like send them away to West Berlin, you know, with good riddons, but, you know, they could, uh, find some way, you know,

to grant visas to people that appeared like nominally, like, democratic, but, you know, would, there'd still be incentives to them to, like, remain and, you know, not, not defect, basically. Um, generally that would be, you know, to not, like, to only, like, give, afford, like, one member of a family, like a visa, you know, stuff like that. But the way this was, communicated was you had people already massing at the checkpoints you know

in anticipation of like what the new like law would be like waiting the announcement and uh you had louder um and uh these interior ministry officials you know who are being bombarded with

with questions not just from like DDR state media but all from like Western television and radio reps. And finally, uh, the spokesman, uh, for the interior ministry,

he read aloud, uh, the statement from the Volkscom or about the status of the new law, which was that private travel restriction was now permitted. And it's not clear if this was a broken memo or like, you know, uh, teleplex or whatever, or, uh, if it was just poorly drafted.

But, then a reporter said can you repeat that? Does that mean that there's no longer any travel restrictions and when does this go into effect? And this spokesman said, well, I believe it goes into effect

immediately. And then the people in the checkpoints that started charging the border. Now, nobody was willing to open fire on these people. So the border cops overwhelmed. After a while, they just like

threw open the gate. You know, because it's like, what are they going to do? It's like, they were they going to get stampeded. They're either going to be a riot or there's going to be a riot or, you know, the Shazzi was going to deploy, like, you know, the internal security troops and start, you know, like, killing people. And like, none of these guys wanted any part of that. I mean, if not for ethical objections,

because they didn't want to be held responsible. So it was basically just like the momentum of, of, you know, the will to, kind of make this happen. You know, like corny as it sounds, like people power. If you can give me you're sounding like a

frigging hippie or something. But that's basically what went down. And then 40 days later, Romania decided that it was Romania is kind of horrifying, man. Like not the country. Romania is freaking awesome. It's fascinating. But Chusescu was the one

man um the one of the final warsaw pact summits romania's fascinating because chussecu he played both sides of the aisle he got kennedy to take romania off uh the target list for strategic nuclear weapons and uh he basically drew down the romanian army to like nothing but like an internal like a means of internal oppression. For practical purposes, he quit Warsaw Pact. Okay. You know, it was not, despite being this kind of arched Stalinist,

he was not particularly cozy with the Kremlin, but he, during the fight, October 89, at the final Warsaw Pact summit, where internal security was obviously on everybody's mind, he said, like, we've got to do with the Chinese comrades did a Tianman. And even Honecker apparently looked at him, was like, what the hell's a man with you?

Like, at least don't say that out loud. would like, you know, like it's, but yeah, the, we'll get into that too, because that's fascinating. And it's, it's the outlier, yeah, I mean, for all kinds of reasons, but yeah, the, the, uh, the,

and then, and then Mr. Mrs. Chuchescu, I saw that, I was in my aunt's house in Ventura that Christmas, and I, seeing the Chuchescus get, get blown away, like, on TV. I mean, this is, this is, like, young people don't understand.

This is, like, you know, consumer internet was basically, where you can see video was like 10 years away, 15 years away. Like, this was like, that's freaking crazy. And it's, it shook me up as like a young teen that he killed his wife too. Because it was like, I mean, she was a terrible

person. She was an old lady. They just like wasted her. Like, I remember like one of the guards, they were leading leading them to, you know, to, uh, to the courtyard to be shot. Like the one guard like, what does his hand of his, she said, who's elbow? And she was like,

shakes it off like that. I mean, she was like a hard lady, but it's like the point of she was like an old woman. I mean, it's like, that kind of shocked me as a kid, man. But, but yeah, we'll, uh, well, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll cover, uh, we'll cover that. We'll cover golf war and Bush Baker, um, in a final episode. We'll get into like Borwich offers Yelton, too. Um, and so, yeah, we, we might go a little bit longer next time or that's okay with you, but, yeah, I think that'll be great. All right. Plugs.

Yeah. I mean, for the time being, I'm still on Twitter. So, seek me out there. It's Thomas number 7, H-O-M-A-S-777. It's official underscore Thomas 777. My primary home right now is Substack. Real Thomas-777.subsec.com. I'm back on Instagram. I have, I got to go out of town end of April,

but May, first week in May, I promise the channel is we're shooting dedicated content. Like my crime partner and my erstwhile editor who is a prince of the realm, I swear. Like, he's the reason why all this stuff gets done because I'm freaking illiterate with that stuff. But I, we're cranking out like fire shit, like I promise. But I am, like, he and I, we're like a two-man freaking operation. I mean, it's a lot of work. And I'm not being a martyr. I'm an incredibly lucky person.

But that coupled with these manuscripts I'm trying to finish, coupled with keeping up with all those other shit. I mean, it's a freaking lot of work, man. But it's coming. I promise, man. Yeah, that's what I got. Yep, appreciate it. Until the next time.

Yeah, thank you, Pete. All right. I want to welcome everyone to the Q&A wrap-up show for the Cold War series with Thomas 777. How you doing, Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks. And yeah, thanks for accommodating this format. Like I said, it just seems to make sense. And I know that a lot of the subscribers have been eager to, you know, ask questions and stuff and kind of get a more discussion-based format going. So, yeah, that's great, man. Can I start with a question from me? Yeah, of course. All right, cool. We talked about this in the Yaki Spengler.

episode I did, but a lot of people who have just started hearing about Yaqui, hear that Yaqui was after World War II and especially, you know, from after 1950-ish, he took the side of the Soviet Union over America. Can you explain why he would do that? I mean, in geostrategic terms, it's the perennial principle that the only way that Europe is truly going to be an autonomous actor. The only way it's going to be able to compete as a superpower, as if some sort of concord is accomplished with Russia. You know, some people suggest this...

A McKinder's World Island, I bother this. I mean, it isn't, it isn't. It's not so much a geography as destiny. calculus it has to do with power potential not just of material resources but you know of mentioned material

as you know the Germans used to refer to you know human population is not just in terms of their biology but in terms of their capacity to bear culture and things like that Europe as this kind of rump peninsula you know

forever on an enemy foot with Russia, artificially instigated and maintained by the United States, is never, even if the United States withdrew its forces in being from Europe, but that status quo remained, Europe would never ever be able to, you know, emerge again as a true power political actor of any significance in hard power terms. I mean, obviously, in economic terms and cultural terms, Europe is always you know the center of the world

okay in many respects so there's that part of it secondly Yaqui not incorrectly he identified what the Cold War is basically an in-house controversy

in ideological terms you know it was the New Dealer alliance with Moscow wasn't just a sort of alliance of convenience because Europe was in and the Third Reich was just so evil Like on his face, that doesn't make any sense. You know, what this was is it was competing viewpoints of a global socialist order.

You know, one being the New Dealer perspective, the other being the Marxist-Lenin's perspective, colluding in order to annihilate fascism and any competing iteration of political order that would, you know, come to dominate the 20th century and all centuries subsequent. went. So, you know, one was not superior to the other. You know, it's not like America represented the West, contrary, you know, the alien Soviet Union or the socialist Soviet Union. And America, in a lot of ways, the more deciduous because it had an ability to insinuate itself into European cultural life, you know, amidst the occupation regime, I mean, in a way that the Soviets just were not able to. And finally, there was just a difference, there was a divergence of intent.

The Soviet Union wasn't trying to socially engineer, you know, white Europe out of existence. You know, I mean, yeah, Mercer's Leninism was a horrible system. It was brutal. It persecuted people. It was hostile religion. It was, it persecuted people who were deemed politically unreliable. It was anti-human. I'm not acquitting that at all. But again, it didn't aim to tear out the root of cultural life and carry out a programmatic genocide, quite literally, you know, by annihilating European culture at the root. And that's exactly what America aimed to do.

And in more concrete terms and more crude terms, not crude in terms of, you know, disreputable or something, but just in kind of more. basic terms. Also, you know, Yaki pointed to the Prague trials, the Prague trial relating to what came to be known as the doctor's plot. You know, where these 12, these 12 medical people were

tried for treason and conspiring against, you know, the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia, and 11 of 12 of these people were Jews. Okay, a lot of them were involved with Zionism. You know, they, it was obviously the Warsaw what was to become the Warsaw Pact

the East Block. It was obviously them purging, you know, the Jewish element from their leadership cast. And they weren't doing it on some quote-unquote racial basis or something on sectarian basis. And their alibi was, well, you know, it's incidental that these people are Jewish, you know,

we can't abide this kind of counter-revolutionary treasonous activity. You know, it doesn't matter if, you know, it it hurts people's feelings that, you know, there's certain, certain ethnic groups are concentrated with the ranks of these undesirable elements, you know, we're going to realize, you know, justice no matter what. But it was obviously, you know, a deliberate effort to purge Jewish

influences from the ranks of the, of the cadres in the eastern block. So if your notion is that, you know, as Yaqui's was, you know, that Europe has to be liberated from enemy influences, if it's going to survive, let alone thrive. And if your idea is that, you know, the traditional enemy of the West is, you know, is the Jewish diaspora. And that diaspora is their world of social existence is the progenitor of, you know, the most, the ideological tendency is most inimical to Western survival. And finally, again, if you view Europe's path to salvation and parol political terms as, you know, a concord with Moscow, I mean, all those things, you know, all the roads lead to Moscow, if you'll allow the metaphor.

I mean, that was Yaqui's perspective. You know, the, and that's basically shouldn't be controversial. I mean, the reason why the Soviet Union was dangerous, the reason why it was insidious, wasn't because it was going around doing the kinds of things that, like, the American government does today. You know, it's not, it wasn't trying to, it wasn't going around declaring that, like, gender doesn't exist or that, you know, you, everybody needs to breed, you know, everybody needs to breed into, like, one kind of, like, non-race. And, you know, you know, all, all kind of historical existences need to be eradicated, you know, so that's some kind of, like, equity can. be achieved or like nobody has a historical memory so we're all the same like that would never

occur to the soviet union okay um that doesn't make them good guys but it makes them far far less dangerous to uh you know racial survival and and and kind of human culture in in any in any form than um that america wasn't is you know and i i emphasize the people that what what the american regime does today this isn't something of like recent vintage it's not like it's not like the u.s. government was like doing good things or wasn't insane until like 1990 or something or until like 2016 like they've always been i mean the new deal regime from inception it was totally insane it had totally insane ideas it it was always sexually perverted it always it always wanted to eradicate people's understanding of themselves as as cultural um um you know

as culturally situated like it it literally plotted to genocide Europe and you know and drafted up entire treaties I don't even like the sexual habits of Germans and how we can work

utilize this to undermine their potential to breed I mean like this really really sick stuff you know and I mean some people can't accept that I mean whatever okay if people have some like vestigial attachment to America like as a government I I don't care

but they're they're not people i have any common cause with and i think they're incredibly diluted if they insist on retaining that sensibility while also insisting that they're somehow right manner opposed what is going on yeah it's when somebody will bring up like um you'll talk about el duchay and somebody will post the picture of him hanging upside down and this person is like somebody who's like pro-america pro you know would would seemingly be on our side i remind them that the people who did that to him are the people who are ruling over you today they're the they're the same people and you're you're just basically cheering on the people who well yeah yeah it wasn't a bunch of guys it wasn't like a bunch of like good old southern guys who were like we don't like musilini

because he's a socialist and he's not keen to the second amendment like they were like yeah they were like out and out communist and not just out now communists but you know, of the kind of, the kind of Adorno and Gramsie type who were, you know, very much, quote, cultural merciffs. I find that to be a troubling term. I don't like it, but just for the sake of coherence, you know, that's, that's like the vernacular. But, yeah, I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't understand how, I mean, like, it's like even, even if, even if you've got no affinity for, you know, kind of like European ideological tendencies, or even if, you know, you don't like national. socialism or fascism. If you don't like any of this stuff,

like why would you celebrate this destruction? Like, why would you celebrate, like, Europe being literally annihilated by by communists and by these, like, crazy New Dealers who want to, like, eradicate the concept of race from this planet and, and view, like, man, as some kind of, like, instrumentality to serve,

like, good government. I mean, that's completely perverted. But, like I said, I think it's, there really is, like, a bourgeois. kind of fixation not like really an obsession of like respectability and

there is people they want to like purge them people people are like ambitious in the wrong ways they want to like purge their own minds of like unclean thoughts and and and and and and not hating fascism is an unclean thought

so they try and cope by saying like yeah like I hate the regime but you know I hate you know of Hitler even more and and that's the worst thing ever like I mean I don't know I think I'm somewhat empathetic in terms that I'm pretty good at putting myself in the position of other people. I mean, just in like practical terms. I mean, that's there's a heavily psychological aspect to political life. And so I'm not saying I've got like great insights or something, but I have thought about this a lot.

And I believe what I just indicated is like the source of a lot of that foolishness. I got another question that was submitted. Before I do that, if anybody is watching on YouTube and they want to go up to the pinned comment, that connects you to entropy and you can do super chats there. All right. Someone asked, you mentioned a couple times, but didn't get into it. Can you do a quick overview of the Red Army faction? Yeah, the Red Army faction or the Bader Meinhof gang. they were kind of unique because they were emergent in

like in 1968 I mean a lot of things happened of a revolutionary nature including splintering within the socialist camp you know that's when we talk about cultural Marxism that's really what kind of a Euro-communist and socially radical element kind of split off from Orthodox Marxist Leninism well that Bader Meinhauf faction they kind of had one foot in both with camps. And as it turned out, they were very much a client actor of the Stasi, the Eastern Ministry for State Security. And they were very much kind of like the brainchild of Marcus

Wolf, who was an incredibly dangerous individual. And he was the best intelligence man that Warsaw Pact had, in my opinion. He was the best intelligence man and the best intelligence organization, probably fielded by anybody in the Cold War. But the Bader Mine Off faction, their notion was to basically render the Bundes Republic ungovernable through terrorist activity. You know, just in kind of conventional, the kind of conventional terms that Nazi actors under arms,

especially during the Cold War, like going to the unique paradigm they're in, like, for seated. But they also, that was, during the period when uh you know billy brant was uh was seeking genuine reconciliation with east germany um and uh the idea was uh it was it was it was it was very layered okay because on the one hand uh on the one hand the idea was very simply like strike a blow against you know like america and uh and uh and the buddhistva um and uh and sympathetic forces you know within uh the federal Republic. But secondly, it also gave people like Brandt like an alibi like see, these are extremists. You know, we have, we're nothing like them. You know, we want a rapprochment with the

DDR and the Soviet Union for peace. So this kind of thing will no longer be happening, like, which is really kind of brilliant. But they, um, they were very effective. And they, uh, they had, um, they had substantial contacts with a popular front for the liberation of Palestine, general command um they uh i think they probably were uh i think they probably had contacts with the provisional ira although some people's them that's debatable and i don't want to i don't want to start some sort of argument with people who have those kinds of sympathies but um that was basically the red army faction and they folded their flag like officially in 1990 i mean which which goes to show and people acted like this was strange at the time but i mean the epoch it it it it it it

it should have made sense that it's like, well, I mean, these, this isn't some fake organization. I mean, they did have grassroots support, especially among, you know, the student population and younger people. But they very much were, like at operational terms, they were very much like an organ of the Stasi. And Horst Mallor, interestingly, he wasn't a direct action element within the Badr-Mindhoff gang. But he was a lawyer who was a lawyer who was. work closely with them. He ended up going to prison for, quote, Holocaust denial and, quote,

promoting racial hatred, you know, a few years back. And because, like, immediately after the wall came down, like, he took up with the NPD, you know, which is the legacy party of the socialist party. So, I mean, there you go. And, like,

people, like, there's Spiegel, which says incredibly stupid things with alarming regularity. They were, like, see this man's insane. He was a communist and now he's anti-Semitic. But it's like anybody with like a fucking brain like, it's like we just like explicated about

you know, why a pro-Soviet disposition is what any like, you know, quote-unquote neo-fascist would basically, you know, be disposed to. I mean, that's and I, that's I mean, that, that, it's just like a case and point. I mean, it shouldn't surprise

anybody, but I, they were interesting, they were an interesting case and an interesting element. within the Cold War, but that's a good film about him called the Bottermov Complex. I highly recommend it. It's got Bruno Gans in it. Bruno Gans. He's the guy who played

Adolf Hitler and the Uter Gang. All right. Musio Savola, over here, $5 super chat. What does Thomas think of Stalin's war by McMeekin? Have you read it? Yeah. It's a shockful of

data and that data is well sourced. other than that it's typical court history that was written in deliberate hostile dialogue

with Suvorov and Yakim Hoffman and it came out at the same time as Hoffman's book memory serves you know it's just the implication

obvious that somehow the Soviet Union created the world's first like truly modern like warfare state it created like the mightiest war machine the world has ever seen arguably will ever see yet this was exclusively for peaceful purposes or for no reason

you know when the germans attacked for no reason because they're evil i mean that's i mean that i maybe it's just me becoming cantanker as an old but i think it's just me becoming a more rigorous and discriminating historical writer and researcher um anybody who accepts that conceptual narrative is it taints the entire rest of their research, even if they're faxed and their data, like the raw data is good and worthwhile. So there's nothing wrong on citing those kinds of sources.

And I'm sure people who dislike me or dislike the kinds of things I write will turn around and say, like, well, you know, you're abolishing the fact value distinction in your own way and, you know, you're reducing history to polemic. No, I'm not, but you don't have to be like pro-fascist

or anything to accept that the Soviet Union was what I just said. was the first fully realized warfare state that was totally mobilized for war. It was animated by a doctrine of revolutionary warfare and exporting revolution. And it was the single most powerful military actor on the world stage on the eve of Barbarossa. And this is the only way to understand the Second World War. That was the catalyst.

You know, and as any military type will tell us, you. Capabilities, let alone forces in being, are never benign. They only have one purpose, that is to wage war. And the capability to wage war

equates to power in its most distilled sense. And power is the currency of politics. It's the only currency of politics. Everything else is addressing. So I state that

is more as to such a degree as the Soviet Union was not only is it never truly benign, it is actually the precise opposite. So J.M.R. Cowboy asked, was that the same Red Army, Rangles, White Army, fought against her a different one? What? We're talking about the Red Army faction? That's what I'll wait and see. But I'm going to take a question. I'll take a question off of, off of Twitter from under your, your post. He said, someone would like to hear mention of a james

Gregor brought up in faces of janus the possibility that instead of Gorbachev the USSR would end up with a version of what basically could be called Russian fascism yeah I don't accept that and Russia's conceptual poll stars are totally different that's why I try to explain to people when Moscow talks about

you know when when Moscow calls its enemies Nazis I mean, first of all, Ukrainians are idiots. So, I mean, they'll run around, like, slaughtering Slavs on the Order of some, like, crazy Jew and claim they're doing it, like, for the white race or something because they're fucking crazy and they're morons. But beyond that, the Russians lost 30 million people fighting the Third Reich. So, like, they call people Nazis and fascists as, like, a stand-in for enemy. It's not because, like, they're pink-haired fat girls who are into, like, lesbian. It's not because they're, it's not, it's not because they're like a bunch of crazy Jewish people.

It's not, it's not because, you know, they, they listen to Dead Kennedy's records. Like, it makes conceptual sense. The way, a kind of nationalist authoritarian Russia, that would definitely be possible. But it wouldn't, it wouldn't look like, it wouldn't look like Mussolini's Italy did, you know, transpose the 21st century. And it wouldn't even look like, it wouldn't even look like the, you know, the Syrian bath rule in Syria. Like, it'd be, like, weirdly Russian.

Its optics would, even if only superficially, be very much bound up with Orthodox Christianity. The military would have disproportionate clout, you know, more than, like, you know, the political cast, which would kind of, like, neutralize any, like, truly political projects of an ongoing

nature, you know, like, it'd be, it'd be kind of like, it'd be kind of like 10 miles wide and like one inch thick, okay? It's not to say it'd be like a weak state, but I'm talking in terms of like an ideological catalyst, there's like, wouldn't be much there. Okay, I think Russia is frankly, I think when Putin goes, either because he dies or, or he actually finds a successor that you're not, Russia can live with, that's probably what you're going to have. Okay, but it's not, It's not going to be, it's not going to be fascistic in any meaningful way. And it's not, it's not going to be some weird, like, Eurasianism like Alexander Dugan, like, fantasizes about. Like, that just not, that would have no currency, you know, and, um, and if there's something like they had to take off the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, like the stands to be kind of cloak wheel and, like, dumb about it.

Like, they'd have to be looking to Moscow for their cues, like, culturally, politically and strategically. and they're like not doing that at all. You know, like, Eurasianism doesn't have any legs. You know, like, it's like something cool that Russians like to talk about and that it says a thought experiment. It's certainly like not impossible,

but that the Eurasian moment was the Soviet Union. Okay. And like, it's gone. It's not ever coming back. Here's another question from Twitter. How brutal was Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe? It always seemed to me that Stalin's crimes from the post-war era get brushed over by mainstream historians.

no that's a great question and yeah i saw that on my timeline earlier this morning and it's stuck in my mind um the true true soviet brutality true communist brutality in the soviet union as well as in the states that emulated the soviet union reached zenith in the revolutionary phase uh the soviet union exterminated around 10 million people before a shot was fired in the second world war. You know, these were political unreliables. These were ethnic groups that the regime didn't like. You know, these were people who

as Kevin McDonald exhaustively researched and pointed out in his paper, Stalin's willing executioners, which was very cleverly returning a certain goldhagen. You know, when you, something like 70% of the NKVD, like, direct action element was Jewish during like the

height of the revolutionary phase. And these people just like suddenly accounts with like people they didn't like, whether they were Kulaks, whether they were like, you know, Belarusians, whether, you know, there were people who, you know, a lot of radicalized, very, very vicious, you know, Jewish people underarms didn't like. I mean, this was, um, what, it was, it was neither, it was neither truly organized, nor was it truly scattershot, but that's, that's really where the bodies got stacked off. And there really was, there truly was, as Robert conquest documented, you know, a Soviet death camp system. I'm not being colloquial or using,

you know, hysterical language or something. The really brutal aspects, programmatic aspects after the day of defeat in 1945, the, the American authorities were just as bad. You know, they, they starved out millions of. Germans was endemic and if not encouraged, you know, like just tolerated more than tacitly. You know, the Morgan's out plan in a sense very much was implemented,

although not realized to its full extent as an invasion going to a strategic situation. But I'd say back to your question and the kind of four corners of it, the forest population transfers, the literal ethnic cleansing

of millions of German people from lands that they had occupied, in some cases, for a thousand years. That was very much something Washington encouraged in some ways participated in the planning of directly, but operationally, it was the Soviet army and police who made that happen. My opinion is that's the most kind of the most, like, that's the strongest example of, like, naked brutality. And I mean, people will come back and say like, well, you know, the the Germans were ethnically cleansing, you know, the Soviet Union. And they were, but it was a race war, okay? And there's a difference between that sort of activity underway, terrible as it is, isn't into a total war, and, you know, just perpetuating a programmatic campaign of ethnic violence

after cessation of hostilities. You know, there's, I, I don't really think that the latter can be justified, um, in any absolute sense. And it's, it's not, it's, it's, what about is, um, oh, but the Germans did bad things as in any place. And also finally, and I know nobody asked, but I'm going to want to see what I don't take anyway, you know, if you're a man of the West, um, and if you're pro-white, um, and if you want your race to survive, Even if the Third Reich was literally the most evil regime that ever existed, you don't, you don't cheer on the ethnic cleansing of your own people. I mean, this is, this is brass tax stuff, you know, and one doesn't need to be, so it's sort of died in the old Machiavellian to understand aside from that, that, you know, politics, power politics does take place somewhere beyond, beyond good and evil.

If you'll allow the overused, you know, kind of reference. So we've got a question here. What was the deal with the Rosenbergs? You said you'd talk about them in one episode but never got around to it. Oh, I totally forgot about that. Yeah. No, we can, I've thought about having like just a dedicated like atomic age episode, you know like beginning with um the proliferation of the bomb in nineteen forty nine forty nine you know going

through the the early cold war and um the new look and you know kind of when when every everybody in the national security apparatus had like you know atomic weapons on the brain like through you know they tauts and then finally s tis i the roosbergs are basically what they appeared to be. I think I certainly don't, they certainly should have been executed. I think

at least Julius Rosenberg, I think Ethel Rosenberg wasn't, like I'm not saying she was just like a stupid woman or something. There's plenty of women who, particularly in radical politics, were very smart and very dangerous. I think Ethel Rosenberg was not one of those. I think she was kind of a long for the ride.

Okay, that doesn't excuse her whole liability. but Julius Rosenberg he was kind of like an orthodox like Jewish radical not Orthodox Jewish I mean like an Orthodox radical who was Jewish but he I think I think in some ways

though his from what from his own testimony just to his own intimate it's not under oath or anything I believe his notion was somewhat like that of Chris Boyce the guy who's the subject of the falcon and the snowman although Boyce obviously is a far more

sympathetic character. I believe aside from Rosenberg's own kind of socialist leanings, he believed that in order for stability to reign, you know, the burgeoning kind of bi-polar system and prevent the onset of another round

of just massive, you know, interstate violence, there would have to be, you know, a true balance of forces between the superpowers. And that can only be achieved if if Moscow had the bomb. You know, and again, like I said,

he didn't say this an open court or something, or, you know, he didn't raise this to the judge, you know, in the hopes that he'd be spared the gallows. These are the kinds of things he said to, like, his friends, you know, like reading between the lines. That was, why the Rosenbergs became these kinds,

why the Rosenbergs became these people who were held out by the usual suspects that see this horrible anti-Semitic lynching of these people. That's incredibly weird because they're about the least sympathetic defendants I can think of. Um, but that's, there's like not really anything there. I mean, it's like Leo Frank. Like, Leo Frank

was, uh, Leo Frank was a child molester and a murderer, but like, you're supposed to feel bad that he got lynched. Because apparently it was like terrible that this guy who like victimized little kids got lynched. I don't, I don't quite understand that, but it's, something uh it goes to sort of kind of like moral bankruptcy of the other people who

who come to the defense of these of these personages in history like i'm not i'm not saying that lynching is good in the case of frank i mean i i believe in due process in a real sense but i also don't feel bad if how molesters and people will harm children get killed okay and anybody who makes it out like this is some terrible you know terrible instance of uh of of a rough justice I mean, and I'm not comparing selling nuclear secrets I'm wasting kids at all. Like, they have nothing at all in common, okay? And I can easily see myself like paying nuclear secrets, not to Ivan, but, you know, and the last man is going to sit here and act like fucking prissy about such things.

But, you know, if there's, in the modern era, there's really no clearer case of high treason than what the Rosenberg did. And what the Rosenberg did, except. maybe for the Cambridge Five, it just concerns the sheer kind of like gravity of, of their ongoing espionage. But yeah, there you go. I realized that was long-winded, but the short answer is like there's nothing there. It's exactly what it appears to be. You're supposed to feel bad for Jewish communists for some reason because, you know, any, any time they face consequences, it's because of mean anti-Semitism or something. I just want to remind people that in the

pinned comment in the chat there you can do super chats over on entropy but let's get another question from Twitter in one episode you mentioned the Marine Corps and Air Force were able to adapt to Vietnam but not the Army can you elaborate sure that's a great question the Air Force was interesting and it was very dynamic in that era we'll start the Air Force first okay um they became an independent service branch people like Billy Mitchell even before you know, the Second World War a lot pushed for that because

there was an understanding that, you know, Army thinking had become kind of stagnant, okay? And also, it just, the Army was not particularly carcable with, with, with new technology. They just weren't. That's not a political take that's a fact.

But it's also, too, it was like the science of aviation, and particularly military aviation, it was something everybody was learning by doing. You know, like when Curtis LeMay for started flying, and you know in the inner warriors

uh that's when pilots were still like flying by like visual sight of like you know terrestrial land features and things you know and trying to match it up to like a paper map okay now the air force obviously by uh by the time via by the time the real escalation got underway in vietnam in 65 um the uh there was um you know the air force uh they'd been their bread and butter was strategic air command and that also is what they owed not just their lobbying power to but uh also their kind of preeminent position in um in the uh in the kind of american defense establishment structure

able to pretty rapidly repurpose to a conventional role, but a conventional role that was difficult to realize. You know, these Arklight bombers, these B-52s, those were purpose, those were purpose to attack with nuclear weapons, okay, in a strategic capacity. switching them to a conventional, repurposing them to a conventional role. You know, in a conflict like Vietnam, where frankly until, you know, 972, you didn't even really have like true combined armed set piece battles

where they can really kind of shine. The fact that they were able to, you know, kind of wreak so much havoc on the ability of the North Vietnamese not just reconstitute forces, but, you know, to sustain infrastructure, not just commanding control, but, you know, any and all kind of basic infrastructure relating to the war effort. That's pretty remarkable. And it's also the, it was more naval aviators, but some Air Force aviators, too. They got engaged over the battle space tactically, and Vietnamese pilots are pretty good.

and there obviously were Soviet pilots like flying sordies too. That's a bright dog fighting back. You know, that's the whole reason why, you know, Taggall Air Command, like, you know, got a boom. And that's why in the naval side, like, you know, top gun got created in the first place.

That's what I meant about the Air Force. And in the Marine Corps, the Marines, they were used to doing more with less just because of the nature of their missions and deployments. You know, the small wars manual was written by, you know, officers and NCOs who'd been fighting in Nicaragua, like in the 20s and things. The Marines better understood how to, like, you know, the need for, you know, kind of like in the field diplomacy with indigenous elements, like stuff like that. And the U.S. Army, you know, after World War II, it was just like singularly obsessed with firepower. you know and um like look what they did in vietnam it's like uh you know let's let's show up as heavy as

possible let's have guys wearing fatigues that we'd have them wearing in the inter german border you know like carrying around like rations and metal cans you know uh and toting like 60 pounds worth of gear on their back and like 110 degree tropical heat like that's not i mean that that's the whole thing's absurd like army special forces totally shine you know but that's but this was before like Socom was like, was like bros with like goofy beards and sleeve hats who like think that they're the police or something. Like this was when

like these guys were like genuine weirdos who were like kind of like their own branch of the military. And they were really they were really up on some progressive and dynamic like tactical doctrines. Um, that's what I meant. And I think

that the 1960s army was actually pretty squared away. Okay. They were very, very well suited to fight. Warsaw Pets. But they were not, they just lacked like operational flexibility in a way that was needed. But it's just, I mean,

the U.S. Army, the U.S. Army had a hell of a time in the Far East. One of the reasons I like the way, the thin red line. Like, nobody likes that movie, but I think it's a dope movie. That is like I love Terrence Malik. But it's about the U.S. Army in the Pacific. And like, nobody thinks about that. And, you know, it's all about the Marines and the Navy.

And, I mean, which, then that's where like a lot of naval and marine war legends were made but the us are in the pacific was fubar and like uh like in all kinds of ways not just because it was viewed as the secondary theater but it's just because like the army was fucked up like fighting in asia you know like and they were it's they they they they were not like at the command level i'm not talking about you know the guys in the field like doing you know not talking with the actual infantry men who were game as fuck but like the guys making operational decisions it's like they didn't it like didn't compute that, you know, this was not, we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not fighting Verdun or

Bella Wood, you know, just against the, against the Japs, you know, it's not all the same. You know, that's what I meant, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a military, man. So, I mean, look at me, obviously, okay, but I, I'm sure that military types will say, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I, I, I mean, whatever, okay, I mean, that's, that's my position. I think I can back it up. So over here on YouTube, Viva Christo Rey, he has a comment and then a question, says, I saw B1 Lancer flying low over Chicago the other day, thought red dawn was happening, but it was just opening, it was just opening day for the Cubs.

No, they're, they're, that, that aircraft, as you know, I mean, that was meant, that was, that was, that was, that was meant to go in low, going fast, and strike super hard targets in the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. It was a bad bitch. And the B2 was the B2 it's immediate successor. It was a B1 on steroids with stealth

capability. Yeah, it's a fascinating aircraft. And Ivan's answer to that was the backfire, or what NATO called the backfire. It was, its actual name is the Tupil of something. But yeah,

no, that's, you see you see some you see some cool aircraft over Chicago again so his question was why was the Soviet Union and company so hostile to Freemasonry and why was this sentiment

shared with their right Hegelian enemies? I'm not an expert on Freemasonry at all what I do know about it is that people on the right always hated Freemasonry and like in America

freemasonry like is nothing. I know some people in the conference are going to be like, oh, bullshit. Like they wrote everything or whatever. Like, I, I can maybe like have it as in like fraternal organizations that have way more clout than is now than the Freemasons in America. Like the masons are actually viewed as kind of like lower, boogie kind of trashy stuff here by a lot of people. They are. I'm just telling you what I'm not saying, I think that. I'm telling you that's the way like a lot of fucking people look at it, especially like social register types back when they had clout. in Europe is a totally different story

the uh the freemasons reviewed by uh by um by the third rike as like rosa crucian types you know they're like these fifth columnists who are you know they're degenerate they're they're they're neither loyal to race nor king nor country nor tin you know they're they're they're they're basically uh they're basically like a bourgeois fraternal society that's intrinsically subversive, you know, and that is, you know, these people, these people can't be relied upon because their only loyalty is to, is this kind of like an odd set of beliefs, which in reality often is nothing deeper than, I kind of cover for, you know, ambitious social climbers to pretend as if there's, you know, some kind of deeper ethos to their, you know, to their covetousness of station and things. okay in terms of the russians i don't have a good understanding of russian culture at all um i don't read or speak russian i uh i think i've got a good understanding of their political heritage

and how their decision-making process in war and peace terms plays out but i i cannot tell you like what the russian take is on freemasonry or like why the ivan's like viewed them as insidious like why why why the germans viewed them that way um and this proceeded like the you know the the National Social Revolution, but why the Third Reich in particular viewed them as like an undesirable element,

like that's why. There was a dedicated, there was a dedicated police creeple department or directorate dedicated to like spying on freemasons. And like I think in some capacity like it endured after the war, like if memory serves

like when when the West German when the Bundes Republic like national police were restructured and like that's when like GSG9 became this like badass special ops force like I think I remember reading something like they were still

like spying on Freemasons and fucking with them and they made a bunch of people mad like oh this is like you know nox use of redox like how dare you like but yeah I don't have any insight of that man like you'd have to talk to the Russian fellas and our circles or some of the European guys

where was the other one of the other questions was can you give your opinion of Yuri Besmanoff I don't really have one because I haven't I haven't like read enough of his stuff like what what what specifically like his take on Peristrikeer in Glass Nost or like his character or what it's there's a famous video in 1982 83 where he he used to talking about how it was the Soviets who subverted the subverted the

um yep the institutions and everything that basically everything yeah yeah he's one of those guys who he the guys who yeah the peristrike of deception like the guys the same guys were to that like cite him a lot

I don't the Soviet Union was basically what it appeared to be man from from from especially from impression of onward. Like, Cruciff was kind of a wild card in, like,

policy terms. I don't mean like an ideological terms, but it, I mean, like the subversion, since it was coming from Moscow, it, uh, in the, in the, in the, in

the, when the labor movement was, uh, was truly a national phenomenon with, with political cloud and manufacturing economy. The terrestrial manufacturing, like national economics was the order of the day. You know, really until 1960 they're about, yeah, you better believe that you better believe the common term and later common form. They were totally insinuated into that.

You know, and there was major unions that were shot through with like Soviet influence. Okay. Got a last gas bat was like the Welsh minor strike. So like the Kremlin was pouring a bunch of money into those efforts, okay? but that's the reason why, and again, I view it as a very imperfect signifier for all kinds of reasons, but I understand why people invoke cultural Marxism. Traditional Marxism does not emphasize culture. Everything is superstructure.

It's all labor. It's all production. It's all capital. You know, it's all how people's conceptual horizons and social behavior and class and caste and caste structuring. like derives from labor and production to schema. You know, so like if you asked, like even the most radical kind of like traditional Marxist Leninist in 1950, if you like asked him about stuff like homosexuality or like feminism or like about race relations, he just like tell you like none of that is important.

Like these are bourgeois fixations or concerns and, you know, only the alienation of, you know, not just the not just the exploited proletariat, but you know, the people who probably profit from it. You know, they exist also in debate circumstances and, you know, not, not being, not being invested in actual, like, you know, power processes of production as humans need to be, you know, to live, you know, psychologically healthy lives. You know, they're drawing upon, you know, these, these kind of super structural, meaningless, like, ephemera, like the surrounds like human life. These are these things don't matter. Like, that's literally what their take would be. Like, they'd have no, they'd have no interest. They'd either have no interest.

and these kinds of culture concepts that we are so familiar with, or they'd say, you know, that's just not important. You know, okay, maybe it's interesting. Maybe it's useful. Maybe it can be exploited to some discreet purpose, but it's just not important. You know, that's the key difference. So when these bircher types would talk into the 80s about how, like, everything bad that happens is coming from Moscow.

I mean, that was like a fucked up perspective for all kinds of reasons. And it is like, I mean, not sensible and pregnant reasons and obvious ones. But that's also just like not what like Sovietism was about. You know, it just wasn't. Talk a little bit about, talk a little more about Latin America and how, why was the Marxism of Moscow? Why was the way Moscow ran things so attractive to so many in Latin America? I mean, because the whole Marxist-Leninist, particularly Latinist.

You read Lenin's imperialism. The process that he describes, like in today's terms, the legacy of Marxism is global systems theory. You know, like Emmanuel Wallerstein kind of stuff. off. Okay, even after Marxist-Leninism kind of lost its animating power and kind of context in much of the world,

it's still, especially kind of some of its successor iterations captured sort of the fascination of Latin Americans, because it very much was contextual there. Okay, like Latin America

was and is kind of this hyper-exploited primitive, economic economic backwater, you know, that's like resource rich in terms of things like agricultural commodities. And not really owing to any kind of conspiracy, but going definitely to kind of structural design, it remains mired in this kind of primitiveness. You know, only to the kind of odd racial dynamics, there's like this incredibly sharp cast distinction. You know, like there's like pretty much every kind of cliche that, you know, from the Leninist, specifically the

letting this kind of playbook of history that's described that describes capitalism in punitive terms you know is like very is like plainly evident in Latin America okay and again not not for conspiratorial reasons but for you know the peculiar kind of somewhat tragic

heritage of the region that's why it's um and it's interesting you raise that um I was reading the Wilson Center which I think is kind of abominable in a lot of ways but their archives are very useful and very interesting.

When Bush and Skowcroft, Bush 41 obviously, and Baker and Helmut Coal, you know, we're negotiating with Gorbacheoff, particularly as regarded, specifically it was regarding the start treaty, but generally, you know, the kind of extencies related to ending the Cold War, something that Cole and Bush and Skowcroft also to Gorbara, I was like, look, however we leave this, you know, assuming that, you know, we can come to terms on nuclear weapons, assuming we can come to terms on, you know, a basically complete drawdown and forces in being in Europe. You know, he's like, we need your guarantee that your satellites in Latin America are going to stop exporting revolution. You know, and obviously they couch this in like the language of diplomacy and in the language of American propaganda, you know, like subverting the democracies in Latin America. But this is very much on their mind, which is fascinating. and this makes sense. But that's why. But there's also, I mean, like, Latin peoples are,

they're, they're political romantics, man. You know, I'm not saying that, like, to make fun of them in a negative way, like, quite the contrary. It's like, it makes them, like, effective partisans, you know? So you're going to, you're going to be able to get,

you're going to be able to get a bunch of Cubano or a bunch of Argentines or a bunch of Salvadorians. You're going to be able to get them to kind of export the revolution in a way that you wouldn't, a bunch of North Koreans, okay? I mean, let's be honest. I mean, it's like all those things. It's like historical.

It's anthropological. It's cultural. It's, dare I say racial. I mean, that's why. Well, you had mentioned before we started going live that there were a couple of things you might want to comment on yourself. Is there anything you wanted to get out there? I just, yeah.

I want to, and we'll deal with this. more in a dedicated capacity in a more current events discussion, but I, the degree to which the, what people like Bush, 41, Skowcroft,

Baker, Nixon himself, and, I mean, made a mistake, like Nixon played a key role in ending the Cold War. Like, the vision that they had for world order, um, obviously, you know, I don't agree with that vision, but there was something noble about it. And,

something both pragmatic and developed about it. The degree to which this was just utterly sabotaged, deliberately thrown in the trash, so that you know, we could have you know, we can have

this kind of free-for-all in these states like Ukraine and they can be turned against Russia as these kind of like suicide torpedoes, you know, with the ultimate purpose in mind, of, you know, ultimately deteriorating Russia's ability to defend itself from such attacks, the point that, you know, it, Russia can be stripped of its natural wealth and looted.

I mean, that's incredibly grotesque, man. Like, everything about how, what developed subsequent, you know, the Bush-Baker regime is just grotesque. That's the only word for it. And it really is, it's, it literally is criminal. You know, and that should, that's why I get so offended when these idiots, like wave these like Ukrainian flags. Like what they're cheering on, like you're,

you're cheering on destruction and mass homicide literally for no reason. You know, for the profit of a handful of incredibly evil people. You know, like there's the fact that anybody can look at that is like some good thing or that that's like preferable to like what was accomplished in

1990. It's just unconscionable. Okay. And I realize it's important of ignorance because these people don't know anything, but it doesn't make it any less disgusting. You know, and I, I behoove people. I want to do a dedicated Gulf War episode because that, that's a, that's a natural kind of like bookend to the Cold War, not just like in linear terms, but like in conceptual ones. And that, I want people to understand why I defend Bush 41 a lot. I don't defend Bush 41 because I like, I like these fucking Yale assholes or because, like, I have something in common with social register types.

I get tired of that too. I don't like when people call me like a quote was. It's like look at me. Like don't be fucking basic. Do I look like a wasp to you? Like if I wanted to be a wasp, which I don't. Like I would never ever be allowed like in their envires. Okay.

Like the fact, you know, yeah, there is like some sort of like tribal commonality between people like me and the bushes. But I mean, I'm not going to, I'm not going to out you right now. But your last name is like Norman Dynasty. No, I mean, that's true. But I've got some people in my lineage who are like incredibly, like, prestigious, but we're also like unbelievably fucking trashy. Same. Same.

Same. But like my point is like if I showed up that, if I showed like kinds of places that like the bushes hang around, like, even if I was like flush of the money, like, I'd be like showing that door. Like even if I was like, you know, like, even if I was, you know, like, even if I like got a haircut and was like behaving myself. I guess that's kind of my point. But aside from all of that, like,

you know, we we don't need to agree with, you know, the kind of conceptual perspective of like Nixon or Bush 41, but these guys were motivated by good intentions, you know, at least as much as intentions can be good, like in power political

matter. I'd even if they weren't. I mean, like, let's say, let's play devil's advocate and say, well, there's nothing good about this in like moral terms. But it was it was incredibly ambitious and it was you know it was world transforming in a way that is laudable and on for it, you know, the the kind of impact on list of things like that I think is is it represents like a good and in some terms and the the fact that that was immediately succeeded by these like, you know, by by these conceptual literates and just you know like like literal like bandits. You know, just like, just like bandits, mafiosi, like, you know, just kind of like the lowest of the low, like, uh, what kind of human carry on animals. Um, eaters of the dead, literally. I mean, that, that's unconscionable. And that's, um, and also, it also, I mean, it forces a question as to what, you know, what, what, I mean, you know, people, people fought and died waging the Cold War. I'm not talking, I'm not talking with these fools in Washington.

like regular guys, you know, and this was in the time when you got a draft card and you got forced to do it. You know, we didn't have like this dickhead police department for an army, you know, like it was you know, like what, basically like all the sacrifices that those guys made,

you know, and they were a bunch of white Christian guys mostly that was essentially like completely fucking neutralized among everything else by this kind of like, you know, a Semitic crusade, against, you know, Byzantium.

But yeah, no, so yeah, this was really great, man. I hope everybody. We got one, we got a late, what? We got a late question if you're okay with that. Yeah. It's from William S over on entropy. Yeah. Would NATO, would NATO have been able to hold West Germany in a seven days to the Rhine scenario?

No, I don't think so. No, definitely not. And that's what, that was, that raises an interesting point. A game to that scenario, like many, many times, with a couple, with a couple different game platforms that I think are basically, the variables they chose to code and when they coded them are basically accurate. No, the only thing, that was William Odom's big concern, because the only thing that would have stopped that onslaught is theater nuclear weapons.

Okay. And to hold, to hold, to hold Warsaw-Pag armor in, say, 1985 in the North German plane and the fold of gap, you know, if you're going to start, you know, you have to start hitting them with grunge, and pershing twos. Okay. And what would the Soviets do? You know, would they,

like, would they escalate? I mean, to countervalue with salt? I mean, I don't know. But even if they didn't, it's like,

okay, well, now, now the Bundes Republic is, is a nuclear battlefield. You know, I mean,

that's, and that's somewhat pure. But I don't, um, no, I don't think, uh, I don't think,

um, no, I, The Warsaw Pact would have reached, would have reached the Rhine in five to seven days and nothing could have stopped them. The idea was, NATO war planning was late in the game.

I'm talking like kind of the final iteration of, of NATO wargaming, was that the American, British and, and Benelux tankers. Like the British and the Benelux guys, they were responsible for the North German plane, like American,

like black horses at the fold of gap, basically. The idea was that if they could hold Warsaw Pact for 72 hours, NATO could be rapidly reinforced and presumably like stage a counter-offensive that, you know, under best of circumstances,

would have been able to hold the enemy at the north, at the inter-German border. But it's a fascinating question. I highly recommend Russell Stofley's stuff on NATO. And he gained a lot of this stuff with a bunch of former Mermacht officers. It's really freaking cool. But yeah, that's a great question, man. I mean, I love that kind of stuff.

Yeah, Robert in the comments, says seven days they would have been in Rotterdam and Antwerpon. No, 100%. They would have been chilling on the Riviera, like whistling in Europe. All right, man. Do your plugs, and we'll end this. We really, I know everyone appreciate this. We got 126 people watching on a last minute,

unannounced stream. So, no, I, yeah, again, sorry, man. Like, I was feeling promulums and I got, I feel a lot better now. I just feel crummy since I got back from Lynchburg. And I should have announced, like, checked with you if you want to do this sooner. But I'm stoked that people were happy with this kind of change in format. It seemed appropriate. But you can find me on Substack at Real Thomas 777.com.

Probably most of the people who tune in regularly know that. The channel is on track. I've been apologizing. we've been kind of inert lately because I've been I've needed time to get bagged to people because I was feeling really shitty but every like we're on track for like production and stuff and um a bunch of um a bunch of people have been donating to like help exploit the process like we're just awesome and I mean like I said I include the caveat like if we raise zero dollars that is totally fine like nobody should feel obligated to you know to um to the to donate you know a hundred cash just for the sake like expediting like condemn production like there's something's important in this world that we too there's something's not so important like our content is not one of those more important things but like a bunch of people have donated and that that's like that's like this is dope but don't anyone ever feel obligated man like 100% like I'm not just being like gracious but um we're still on burbap I'm gonna disengage as

the summer goes on um but right now that's right drop a lot of stuff just kind of like housekeeping stuff as well as like you know notifying people people we're doing it's real all caps r e a L underscore number seven HMAS 7777 I'm still on Tgram I'm gonna up my Tgram game and get more active there especially as I kind of like slide back from verbat I'm on Instagram I'm on TikTok and I know TikTok is like fucking retarded but um like a lady friend of mine like uh she uh she had the idea that like I can make some funny TikTok videos and I'm gonna start like experimenting with that some and see only it takes them to like

nuke me for like you know any number of things but yeah that's where we're at right now man and um oh and on June 9th unlike

some fucking people who will go and named who like organize like really gay events where gay things go on and they like charge people like fucking half a stack to like go hear about gay stuff like once a year or so like I see if people like convene in Shytown

to hang out and like last year we went to see craft work and it was fucking awesome. Like this year we're going to go see the murder junkies at Reggie's in the South Loop. If you can scrounge you up like $15 and get here like you can go, it's like 15 bucks to that door. But a lot of people

are excited about that from what I'm leaning from the feedback. So that's June 9th. If you want to go like save the date and like I said last year we had a lot of fun man and we'll hang out and stuff too like before and after the show. But that, yeah, that's all I got, man, for my plugs. All right, man.

I'm going to stop the recording now and then YouTube afterwards. So thanks a lot. Until the next time. Yeah, thank you, man. I want to thank everyone on YouTube who showed up to at the last minute. I mean, this was more than we expected at the last minute. And thank you for the couple people who dropped super chats. I really appreciate that, especially since YouTube is basically.

taking away all my monetization and everything so no that's that's yeah they're they're freaking vultures man but no this this was great man again thanks um thanks for um abiding the kind of change in format yeah just like i said a lot of people i mean not just lately but like since we started um the series they they wanted like a q-na kind of format so i figured that it would this would be like a good time for it so yeah this was this was great man