The President's Daily Brief - August 19th, 2022. Big Five Update: Military Equipment Left in Afghanistan. China Strengthens Ties in the South Pacific. European Energy Crisis.

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

It’s August 19th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ Welcome to a special edition of the PDB this morning: another Big Five Update this week. Five critical updates on stories we’ve covered previously that are shaping America — and the world. First, the US Department of Defense left behind a lot of military equipment in Afghanistan. How much? I’ve got new numbers. Second, our Battle for the South Pacific got a little harder yesterday. China inked a big deal with a very small island. I’ll explain. Third, the situation in Cuba is leading more people to flee to America. I’ve got an update. Fourth, a drought in China spells trouble for the green energy revolution in America. I’ll share that connection. Finally, some good news out of Europe on their energy crisis, and people like you deserve some thanks. I’ll explain shortly. As always, there’s one last thing before I let you go. A question today from Gretchen in Waterloo, Iowa about how the CIA taught me to face tough problems in life. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's August 19th. You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. Welcome to a special edition of the PDB this morning. Another big five update this week. Five critical updates on stories we've covered previously that are shaping America and the world.

First, the U.S. Department of Defense left behind a lot of military equipment in Afghanistan. But how much? Well, I've got some new numbers. Second, our battle for the South Pacific got a little harder yesterday. China inked a big deal with a very small island, I'll explain. Third, the situation in Cuba is leading more people to flee to America. I've got an update. Fourth, a drought in China spells trouble for the Green Energy Revolution in America.

I'll share that connection. Finally, some good news out of Europe on their energy crisis, and people like you deserve some thanks. I'll explain shortly. As always, there's one last thing before I let you go. A question today from Gretchen in Waterloo, Iowa about how the CIA taught me to face tough problems in life. But first, let's get started with our Big Five update. One year ago this week, America retreated from Afghanistan.

And as we withdrew, the Biden administration made the choice to leave a whole bunch of military equipment behind. Now, this morning, we are getting a much clearer picture of what that was exactly. So the grand total, it turns out, is $7.12 billion worth of stuff. That's according to an inspector general for the Department of Defense who released that top line number earlier this week. And it gives us a snapshot of what the Taliban now has to work with. So of the $7.12 billion that we left behind, a little over $4 billion consists of tactical ground vehicles like Humvees and something called an MRAB.

We also left behind about a billion dollars worth of military aircraft and a related 300 million in aircraft munitions. There's also another number that you should know, and it's a mouthful, 316,260. That's the number of small arms now sitting with the Taliban or on the black market. And that includes sniper rifles, machine guns, and grenade launchers. So those 316,000 plus weapons that we left behind, they are. are valued at $511 million. As this report came out this week, journalists have asked the White House repeatedly for comment, but they've said nothing.

But perhaps we should keep in mind that on August 16th of last year, Joe Biden told the nation, quote, I do not regret my decision to end America's fight in Afghanistan, end quote, but perhaps he regrets the $7.12 billion that we left behind. Final note here, some of those 316,000 small arms can now be purchased in markets throughout the capital city of Kabul and in neighboring Pakistan. We have reporting that these weapons are being used in fights between rival Afghan tribes and by criminal gangs throughout the region. We expect the fallout from that to last decades. Your second update this morning, some bad news, unfortunately, in the war for the South Pacific. Now, if you recall, this topic has been the focus of a series of different briefs on who will retain influence over key South Pacific island nations.

Will it be the United States or China? Because both are competing for allies. But if China wins, it could spell big trouble for America in the event that we have an actual war with China. It'll help them reach all the way to Hawaii, God forbid. Well, of all the island nations that the U.S. and China have been courting, there's one that has been a particular concern for well, us these past few months, and that's the Solomon Islands. Now, while back, they signed a security agreement with China, and Beijing now trains their police, plus they get some port access for ships to refuel.

Well, unfortunately, there's been a new development in the Solomon's, and it's not a good one for us. The Solomon Islands have announced that they will borrow $95.5 million from a state-owned Chinese bank to fund what they are calling a broadband infrastructure project. Now, this project will include 161 telecommunications towers built with Chinese technology provided by a company called Huawei and installed by a construction outfit called China Harbor Engineering Company. If the name Huawei sounds familiar, there's a reason. They have been banned by the U.S., the United Kingdom, and a bunch of others because their equipment is well known to allow Chinese spies to easily access and monitor any data that crosses that equipment. So once these towers are built in the Solomon's, as early as next year, the government says, but probably closer to three years, well, at that point, Beijing will have effective control over the country's entire communication systems. And now there are ways to deal with this, of course, diplomacy is the preferable option, but our president may want to consider other, well, creative options after speaking with some of my former colleagues.

They will have some good ideas, I promise. Finally, before we take a break, earlier this week, I briefed you on the record number of illegal migrants crossing over our southern border. We are on track to break two million people this year, and that is the highest number ever. We're getting some details on those numbers this morning, exactly who some of these folks might be. There's one group in particular that caught my eye, and it confirms my fears about how the crisis in Cuba could affect this country. So immigration officials stopped at more than 175,000 Cuban migrants on our border since October. And that is a record number of people from Cuba, easily eclipsing the number who arrived during the last big migration crises

in 1980 and 1992. The overwhelming majority of these Cuban migrants are single adults with some smaller numbers of families. Now, it's important to remember some history here. During that 1980 crisis, then dictator Fidel Castro purposely released people from mental, hospitals and prisons dumping them in the United States. I'm not hearing that same thing in this case, but I am absolutely watching for it. Regardless, you should expect to see these numbers increase perhaps dramatically over the coming months. And that's because of that recent fire at the Matanzas Fuel Depot that we've talked about before. But to recap, there was a lightning strike that hit a fuel tank and it burnt down some of the infrastructure at the port and it burnt up a lot of the fuel that fires

the power plants, and that in turn has caused tremendous blackouts, if food and medicine are spoiling, and people are becoming desperate. On a related note, the Cuban government announced that the Venezuelan government is sending crews to help rebuild that fuel depot, but even if that were to happen, it would take a very long time for the depot to become fully operational. Regardless, I'll keep you posted. With that, we are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I've got two more updates for you,

this special edition of the President's Daily Brief. Welcome back to the PDB and our Big Five update. I've got two more critical pieces of news for you this morning. First, earlier this week, I briefed you on Joe Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act, which is really a slimmed-down version of his previous climate change bill. Now, as you will recall, most of the funding for that bill, around $370 billion, will go towards the renewable energy industry that Biden and his supporters hope will replace the oil and gas industry. Well, over the past couple of months, I've shared challenges with you about how that renewable transition will likely go. So, for instance, offshore energy wind projects lack the ships and the crews to install them. The solar panels,

meanwhile, are made with very dangerous materials that can leach into groundwater if you are not very careful. Plus, many of those panels are actually produced by slave labor in Western China. But one thing that we haven't talked a lot about is batteries. And those batteries are very critical in helping to capture and distribute that renewable energy when, for example, the sun isn't out. You capture that energy during the day and the battery keeps an even flow at night. Well, the problem with batteries is that as of this moment, China is the world's leading battery producer.

They also control a lot of the world's mines for things like lithium that's needed to make batteries. There are a lot of national security concerns and implications from all that, but now we have another wrinkle to add to our concerns, and that is Mother Nature. China is in the midst of a very severe drought in the Sichuan province, which is home to the manufacturing plants that create lithium compounds for batteries and polysilicon that's used in the production of solar panels. Well, the drought and the related heat wave have dried up the reservoirs and the stretches of rivers that, of course, create the hydropower to power.

all the manufacturing plants. And that has led to power outages and work stoppages at all those different locations. Again, plants that are the foundation for Joe Biden's renewable energy plans. Let me give you an example. The contemporary Amperix technology company, it's in fact the world's top battery maker who produces lots of their products in Sichuan. They have shut down production throughout the weekend, probably into next week. And other batteries in that same area are reporting exactly the same. So for what it's worth, it's not just renewable energy companies that are affected. 70% of the steel mills in that area have shut down too or started rationing production. There's also an aluminum smelter that decided to shut down for at least two weeks as well.

So all in all, this will either make batteries more difficult to come by or make batteries much more expensive to purchase, or frankly both. Regardless, it will have a chilling effect on Biden's solar farms, and electric vehicles. I'll keep you posted. Finally this morning, some good news on the natural gas wars in Europe, and you deserve some thanks for it. So to refresh our memories on this, Russia has cut off Europe from most of its natural gas supplies. And without that gas, their power plants go offline, their companies shut down, and the economy of one of our greatest trade partners is thrown into crisis. Well, over the past couple of months, Europe has been in a desperate

scramble to find alternative sources for their natural gas. First to, of course, keep the lights on, but also to fill up their natural gas tanks before winter arrives. And that's because, well, winter is when people really want that natural gas, demand skyrockets. Well, energy analysts have been very skeptical that the entirety of Europe could fill up all their tanks in time. But one country is actually managing, and it's a really important one. Germany announced a few days back that it had hit its national goal of its tanks being 75% full. And not only that, they actually hit it two weeks ahead of time. So the next goal is 85% full by October 1st and 95% full on November 1st. So this begs a question though, doesn't it? Where are they getting this new supply? And that is where you come in.

The American oil and gas industry has been exporting record amounts of our liquefied natural gas to Europe, Germany most especially. Now, that has cut our supply here at home and pushed up our prices, but based on this data, it's allowing Europe to possibly save itself before winter. In other words, you and countless other Americans are paying the price of higher electricity bills and, for my farmers, higher fertilizer bills, all to keep Europe afloat because of the fallout from the war in Ukraine. Now, we should probably debate whether or not that's a good thing, whether that's acceptable. You know, America sacrificing so much for Europe. But in the meantime, somebody should say something to you. You know, thank you for what you're doing. Now, I don't know that anyone in Europe

will do that, but at least now you know that you deserve a thanks. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the PDB, ladies and gentlemen. I've got one more thing for you before I let you go. A question today from Gretchen in Waterloo, Iowa. Dear Brian, did the CIA teach you any tricks about how to solve really tough problems. I'm wondering if you can tell us. Well, Gretchen, the answer is yes, but it's probably not in the way that you expect. So let me tell you a story. Years ago, I was posted abroad in a very, very poor country. And I was driving home from work when on the side of the road, I saw a group of men and their dog. As I got closer, I saw that the dog wasn't a dog at all. It was a man.

his arms and his legs had been amputated and he wrapped the stumps of what was left in towels and then he placed those stumps in coffee cans that he had rounded the bottoms on and that's how he got around he got around on all fours using coffee cans as his limbs and i will never forget that gretchen as long as i live that image is burned into my mind because it was horrifying and yet there he was moving along in life with his friends. Now, I would see him later around town still with his buddies living his life. So flash forward from that moment six years, and I was in a bad accident. I was in a wheelchair for a while, had a little bit of a head injury, unfortunately, busted up my legs.

And after many years of hospital visits and doctor's offices, my surgeon one day said, Brian, I think that we need to talk about amputation. And that is a very tough thing to hear. While deciding what to do, I thought a lot about that man that I had seen on the side of the road. And I thought a lot about what you're asking, Gretchen, about having problems and how to solve them. Now, the CIA had taught me a lot about preventing problems, you know, by being detail-oriented, planning things out in advance, practicing your plan and how it could go wrong and then what you would do. the CIA also taught me about what to do when your plan goes belly up for instance let's say you are

surrounded by bad guys and you need to devise a plan to get away quickly the CIA taught me about that so in other words Gretchen they taught me about operational problems but not the life problems I experienced as I operated such as you know whether or not to amputate your leg but serving as a CIA officer and living life in all kinds of places abroad, I learned how to sort through my problems and decide how much energy to give each. Specifically, I learned that life tends to give us two kinds or two sets of problems. They're what I call big P problems, you know, capital P problems and little P problems. So big P problems are those that you can't control. There's nothing that you can do to fix it. Something like, you know, pancreas.

cancer. You know, you get that diagnosis and there's just not a lot you can do, no matter how hard you try. And then there are little P problems. Now, they're still hard, maybe expensive, totally exhausting, but they are still within your control to fix. So Gretchen, how do we discern between Big P and Little P problems? Well, what that man taught me, that man on the side of the road with coffee cans for arms and legs? Well, most everything in life is kind of a little P problem. I mean, think about it. That man had every reason to call his lot in life a big P problem and just give up. But he grabbed some coffee cans, he wrapped up what was left of his legs and his arms, and he made do. He chose to make it a little P problem. So that's what I

know, Gretchen, not what the CIA taught me necessarily, but rather what I learned along the way. And that is, sometimes solving problems is just deciding that it's not much of a problem at all. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show, reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American. It's from John chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Good day.

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