The President's Daily Brief - June 23rd, 2022. India Is Purchasing a Massive Amount of Russian Oil, and Trying to Hide It. Russia Is Targeting the US in Cyber Attacks.

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

It’s June 23rd. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ First up, the War of Attrition between Russia and Ukraine got a big jolt this week from an unlikely place: India. We’re going to talk about what Government in New Delhi is doing that will prop up Moscow and why that makes Ukraine more financially dependent on you. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. You probably saw the headlines yesterday that interest rates are going up and a recession is possible. But there’s one thing that you might not have heard, and it’s about credit cards. We’ll discuss. Finally, a report out yesterday from Microsoft that confirms Moscow is targeting American energy plants with cyber attacks. We’ll talk about what Microsoft found and how that fits with my warnings to you. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's June 23rd. 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. The brief you're about to hear is in the same spirit of the actual President's Daily Brief, which is a top secret summary of the most critical events in the past 24 hours, all delivered to the President each day by the nation's spymasters. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I am your spy and this is your brief. Here's what we're going to be talking about this morning. First up, the War of a Tristan. between Russia and Ukraine got a big jolt this week from a very unlikely place. That's India. We're going to talk about what the government in New Delhi is doing that will prop up Moscow

and why that makes Ukraine more financially dependent on you. As always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put these two on your radar. You probably saw the headlines yesterday that interest rates are going up and a recession is possible. But there's one thing that you might not have heard, and it's about credit cards. We'll discuss. Finally, a report out yesterday from Microsoft that confirms Moscow is targeting American energy plants with cyber attacks. We'll talk about what Microsoft found and how that fits with my warnings to you. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer?

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First up this morning on the PDB, as you all know, there is a war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine, and has been for a few months now. Now, that is a battle between two nations where neither side has a real knockout punch. So they're going to stay locked in a grudge match until one basically wears down the other. Well, that battle got a big jolt this week from a very unlikely place, and that is India. So while that country has officially declared itself neutral in the war, they're actually doing something to to help Moscow. And that means that someone else is going to have to help Kiev, and that someone is you. So let's dive into the details this morning to figure out exactly what's going on. Earlier this week, oil industry executives in New Delhi quietly admitted that the Indian

government has given them a direct order to buy huge volumes of Russian oil. The reason is actually pretty simple. India doesn't produce enough of its own oil, enough of its own energy, to meet domestic demand. And like much of the world, it's having a really hard time keeping gas and diesel prices low. And that's a very big deal in a country with 1.3 billion people, give or take, about 10% of whom live in poverty. And so these Indian oil executives are answering the call of their government, and they're slurping up a whole bunch of Russia's discounted oil. To understand exactly what we're talking about and how much, consider this. In February, just before the war, India was buying about 30,000 barrels of Russian oil a day, but now it's one million barrels a day.

So Indian officials are obviously sensitive to the optics here, as you probably would expect. And they have said, quote, we don't send people out there saying, go buy Russian oil. We're just sending people out there and saying go buy oil. That, by the way, it was from India's foreign minister earlier this month, A little bit of a cheeky response there, but nevertheless. They are also playing some cat and mouse games here to avoid detection. And there are some Indian tankers that are actually shutting off their tracking devices and then parking themselves in different places around the world,

mostly near the Mediterranean Sea. And then Russian tankers pull up alongside them. They empty or swap out the cargo and then they all go about their merry way. For what it's worth, the Biden administration knows that all of this is happening. And in fact, they previously begged New Delhi not to do this, not to profit from the Ukraine war with cheap Russian oil because Europe and America are the ones who are actually paying the price. That message was actually delivered by someone named Amos Hochstein.

He's actually Biden's energy guru. And obviously, it didn't matter because New Delhi isn't going to play ball. So headline here, we've got India filling up Russia's pocketbooks, all kinds of cash flowing into Moscow. and that in turn is allowing Putin to keep his war engine going very strong. In fact, in the last few months, Moscow has actually increased the salaries of their contract soldiers to around $4,000 a month. And that's actually a pretty big jump and pay for them. Plus, they're now getting bonuses for destroying certain numbers of planes or tanks.

So you add all of this up together. So India's purchases, plus the brief that I gave you on China dramatically increasing their purchase, this is two? Well, you've got a very clear pattern, don't you? Russia is going to have more than enough money, at least for a good number of months, to keep up their part of the war of attrition. The question is, well, Kiev. So if I were briefing the president of the White House this morning, the message would be pretty simple. The longer that this war goes on, the higher the price will be paid by American taxpayers. And that's because India is propping up Moscow. China is too. In fact, there are a lot of countries around the world who are buying Russia's oil, both openly and secretly.

And that means that we are on the hook to prop up Ukraine in response, all to keep that war of attrition even to the tune of about $100 billion a year based on our past spend rates. And that's just not sustainable, namely because we are issuing debt to pay for all of that. We're putting it on America's credit card. Plus, it's just not fair. Europe either can't or won't pay for what they should, despite this conflict being in their backyard. I briefed you on that previously.

Meanwhile, the longer that this war drags on, the more it'll wreck Europe's economy, and they're a trillion-dollar trade partner of ours. And perhaps most importantly, the longer that this war goes on, well, the greater the chances that we're going to end up in a direct confrontation with Russia, brought on by some accidental downing of a plane or a purposeful sinking of a ship.

So, frankly, in my view, my counsel is that we have two choices. Either we walk away now, we cut our losses and we force Europe to deal with this, or we find ways to compel Vladimir Putin and Volodymere Zelensky to show up at the negotiating table and end this thing. Because in a war of attrition, it's not just Moscow or Kiev, that's going to lose. It'll be America's taxpayers, too. Coming up, a closer look at what's on my radar. I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botoxia autobotcholinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with

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The reasons for this likely recession are several, but a big one is the Federal Reserve's commitment to increasing interest rates. They did that earlier this month, as you know, and they're likely going to do it again next month. And they're doing that because when interest rates go up, economic activity tends to go down, and along with it, inflation.

In other words, they're going to throw some sand in the gears of our economic engine to slow it down because it's overheating. So, yes, in order to crush inflation, they're going to crush part of our economy along with it. Obviously, that is a very controversial approach, and it's part of the reason why the Federal Reserve has so many critics. You can and should dive into that topic, by the way, exploring exactly who the Federal Reserve is. But for the purposes of this brief, I want to focus on two other things that were mentioned in the conversation between the Fed chairman and lawmakers who were all talking yesterday. First, the chairman said that the war in Ukraine is not responsible for inflation, which is

correct, but it contradicts Joe Biden, who said just Sunday that the biggest driver of inflation in this country is Putin's war in Ukraine, the Putin price hike, in other words. Well, the Fed chairman swatted down that suggestion, didn't he? I suppose we might call it fake news now. but second, there was also a conversation about credit cards. There were a record 537 million credit card accounts in America during the first quarter of this year, and that's a jump of 31 million accounts over the past year. And my goodness, we are all using those cards. In April, Americans were carrying credit card balances of $1.1 trillion.

And that number is expected to go up. although how much and for how long economists aren't really sure. It's possible that people could pull back from spending, giving the prices or inflation, are still both raging. So we should ask then, what, if anything, can we do about this credit card crunch? Is there anything that we might do in terms of policy to help Americans who are clearly charging their way through this crisis? Well, one of the ways is, of course, capping credit card interest rates, which will go up every single time that the Fed raises their rates. And we discussed that idea before on the PDB.

There are some pros and cons to doing that. But there's also another way, and that is lowering or capping late fee charges. You see, banks charge up to $30 the first time that a customer is late, and then $41 for each additional late payment. That's according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Well, all told, credit card issuers collect about $12 billion, dollars in late fees each year. Again, there are different reasons to support or oppose this idea of capping late fees,

but the Biden administration said yesterday that it is going to spend the next couple of months studying this idea and then perhaps proposing new rule changes that will reduce those late fees. But if any changes come from this study, it won't be any time soon. Probably not until next year, in fact, at the earliest, because of a bunch of different bureaucratic reasons, but if any changes come from that studying of the idea, it won't be any time soon, probably not until next year at the earliest because of assorted bureaucratic rule processes. So the best piece of advice, frankly, as always, is pay down those cards if you can, because there is absolutely no reprieve on the horizon. Finally this morning, we have more evidence

to support the FBI's investigation into whether or not. Russia used a cyber attack to blow up that LNG facility in Texas that I briefed you on yesterday. So here's why. Microsoft released a report that Russian government hackers have conducted hundreds of cyber operations all around the world since they started their invasion in Ukraine. And no other country got more attention than the United States. We were attacked with greater frequency by Moscow than any other nation that they targeted. Microsoft said that these hacks went after thinking.

tanks, government agencies, and here it is, energy companies. The low-end assessment was that Moscow was successful in attacks about 29% of the time, and emphasize these are just the attacks that Microsoft caught. There are many more that go undetected or unattributed to anyone, to any government, which is sort of the point when you're dealing with cyber attacks. Regardless, this underlines the cyber threat that Russia poses in this war of attrition. not just to Ukraine, but to us, and maybe that LNG plant in Texas. No matter what, I will continue to watch for developments, because this is a really big story. 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. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari.

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