The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Telegram and the Limits of Freedom of Speech on Social Media (Part II) || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Today we're looking at the importance of Telegram. No, we're not talking about the thing a telegraph sends. We're talking about the messaging platform created by Pavel Durov that's causing quite the stir as of late. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/telegram-and-the-limits-of-freedom-of-speech-on-social-media

Hey, everybody, Peter Zion here. It's tomorrow. I promise that we would talk about Telegram and social media regulation in the European space. Well, okay, first, what is telegram? Telegram is basically the Russian equivalent of something like Twitter or Facebook manager. The idea is that you can have a part of your account that is encrypted due to agree to send messages back and forth that no one else can follow. Now, when you have a system like this and you get extremist groups that start posting messages, whether that is a right-wing group in the United States or, say, ISIS in the Middle East, governments often lean on institutions like Facebook, like we chat and the rest, to basically give it up. It's like, you know, this is an issue of public safety.

You need to cooperate and share your information with us so we can do normal law enforcement-de-things and prevent terror attacks. Now, all of the platforms in the world cooperate with U.S. authorities on that topic except Telegram. Telegram does not participate in any assistance with any Western government whatsoever. And so you can imagine the quality of people who tend to use telegram. They're not the sort of people you're going to invite to a bat mitzvah. They do, of course, cooperate with Russians, Russian governments in order to keep domestic political opposition in Russia under control. But it was a Russian founded institution. So no big surprise there.

Now, the guy who founded this thing, Pavel Dhrov, left Russia a few years ago because the Russian government was getting a little bit too hot and heavy with leaning on him personally. So he's operated a place primarily from Dubai. but he also said citizenship in France. Well, the French have been after Duboff for quite some time. Because remember, the type of people who use telegram often are not very savory. So you get a lot of drug runners who use this to send money back and forth. You get a lot of child molesters who use it for child porn. So the French have had an open award for Pavel D'Rov for quite some time.

And he showed up in France. He flew on his personal jet, surrendered to authorities, was arrested on the spot. Now, if you are wanted by someone for trafficking in kiddie porn, you are usually aware that the government is after you. And if you're someone as wealthy as Darava is, billionaire, you're not going to just accidentally land your plane somewhere where you think you're going to get arrested. So he clearly knew what he was doing going in.

And he was released in less than 24 hours on bail. Can't leave the country. But that suggests to me that a deal was cut between the friend, mentioned Deroff, probably even before he left, and now they're just working out the fine print to the degree of cooperation. Now, a few things to keep in mind about Telegram. From a technological point of view, it's nothing special. Facebook and WeChat have significantly better encryption than anything that they have. And so, for example, while Telegram has not cooperated with Western institutions, most notably the NSA here in the United States, had a field day cracking their encryption to go after ISIS.

And that's one of the reasons why over the last several years ISIS has done so badly. They thought their encryption was foolproof and really most of their mails being read. And so if you're a subversive element anywhere in the United States, Delmasse, just keep in mind that the FBI is probably reading absolutely everything that you put out there. Now, back to the telegram. So the question now is, what is the deal? TBD, to be perfectly honest, and I've kind of put off doing this video because I really wanted to have an answer to that question. but I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is not so much drug runners or child molesters,

but it's the Russian military. Because while Telegram is hardly a very good platform for security, its lack of difficulty in use has meant that it has become the preferred method of communication for the Russian military within itself. You see, Russian private encryption may not be nearly as well as Western private encryption, but it's loads better and much more user-friendly than Russian government military encryption. So the Russians have had a problem in the Ukraine war that when they are doing some spotting for artillery, whoever's doing the spotting basically has to go into this ancient archaic system

to send time and task targets and coordinates and everything. And by the time that information is encrypted, uploaded, del-loaded, delivered, and then de-encrypted, it's irrelevant. And so they've just been using telegram to basically text directly to the artillery teams. Well, all that data is on telegram. All of the data for their ship to shore communications, even some air power issues are on. Oh, my God, it's so stupid. Anyway, so if Deraf is really deciding to cut a deal with the French intelligence ministries, well, this isn't potentially just a breakthrough for enforcement in terms of law enforcement.

This is potentially an intelligence breakthrough for strategic issues because the Russian military has been using it for almost everything. So we have been seeing Russian military bloggers and a not so small number of Russian government personnel in the foreign and defense ministries, basically losing their crap over the last couple of weeks as they're trying to figure out what it is that Deraf is going to give up. Publicly, nothing has been said. Publicly, Telegram is saying, this is a free speech issue. We have the right to kiddie porn. You can imagine how that while it's going over in France. Anyway, we will know before long just how this is going to go, because like I said, Deroff is already in France.

And France, France isn't like the United States when the French government and especially French intel personnel want something. They have two ways to do things where they have very little pushback from the civilian authorities. Number one, little things like torture in France. If you're foreign national, they're a little bit less chatty. about the details. Second, if you've ever been to the south of France, it's beautiful. And there's lots of villas there that could use an extra Russian billionaire. So whether Duroff is induced to cooperate or has chosen to cooperate, there is a tough road and there is an easy road in front of him. And the fact that he went to France willingly suggests that it's going to be the easy

road and someone is going to be having a great time around Nice in the not too distant future. and the Russian military is going to lose its primary method of communication and it's going to lose all of its archives to French intelligence. And the French were very good at using stuff like that.