The President's Daily Brief - May 18th, 2022. North Korean Super Hackers. US Intel Community Failures in Ukraine. Student Loan Forgiveness?

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

It’s May 18th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. I’m your host and former CIA Officer Bryan Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. First up, North Korea is sending out the troops this morning. But not the ones you’d expect. We’re talking cyber warriors. We’ll discuss the latest and why you should care. Your second brief, The US intelligence community is admitting that it botched key predictions in both Ukraine and Afghanistan over the past year. We’re going to talk about what happened and why it’s so important. And as always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Joe Biden wants to forgive student loans, but a new survey shows that students don’t actually need it. I’ll explain. 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 May 18th. 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, North Korea is sending out the troops this morning, but not the ones you'd expect. We're talking cyber warriors. We'll discuss the latest and why you should care. Your second brief, the U.S. intelligence community is admitting that it botched key predictions in both Ukraine and Afghanistan over the past year.

We're going to talk about what happened and why it's so important. And as always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Joe Biden wants to forgive student loans, but a new survey shows that students. students don't actually need it. I'm going to explain. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Your first piece of intel, North Korea is sending out its cyber troops this morning. That was the word issued by the U.S. State Department and the Treasury and FBI. The fear is that companies from around the world might accidentally hire one of these cyber hackers because

they're actually pretending to be Japanese or South Korean. And if an American company hires one of those cyber thieves, even accidentally, that would be a violation of you. U.S. sanctions against North Korea, and business owners could end up in a whole bunch of hot water. So let me give you some background to this news, and then let's talk about why we should care. So North Korea is the most sanctioned country in the entire planet, all because they have a rogue nuclear and ballistic missile program. Now, those sanctions basically tell the world that nobody can trade with them, and that's been true for 20-plus years. They've basically been sealed off from the world. So because of all those sanctions, they've had to become very very important.

creative at finding ways to make money. And one of those ways was basically to sell its people into slavery. They made secret deals with greedy logging companies and mine operators and construction outfits all over the world, basically swapping human labor for cash. And it was pretty big business for a while. There were anywhere from 50 to 100,000 North Korean laborers spread throughout the world doing this terrible work, mostly actually in China, a little bit in Russia, and it brought in over $500 million annually. But over the past 10 years, the world has started to clamp down on that slave labor. And so the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, well, he started sending a different kind of slave labor abroad, computer hackers. These are people who have been trained in North Korea

and are legitimate IT professionals. They earnestly know a lot about computers and programming. Well, then the government ships them all around the world, mostly to China, a little bit to Russia, and occasionally places like Africa. So once they get there, they land jobs and do legitimate work for legitimate companies. But sometimes these computer workers have a side job. Well, they're cyber hackers, and they are very good. Here's a case in point. Last month, a North Korean hacking group stole more than $600 million in cryptocurrency,

and that's on top of the $400 million that they stole last year. Most of the cyber attacks are actually targeted at crypto companies. These are investment firms or exchanges where you can buy or sell crypto. But what's interesting is last month's attack was actually connected to a video game. But no matter where they get it, the point is that they make a lot of money on this. Over the past 10 years, they've made over $2 billion in hacks. And all of that money goes to support the regime and their weapons of mass destruction program. Weapons, by the way, that are appointed at our troops,

in South Korea, and even the United States itself. Because, yes, in fact, North Korea is believed to have a missile that can reach the continental United States. So that takes us to our first big question. Why should you care about this brief? Well, as you probably know, North Korea doesn't particularly like America, and as I've just said, they've got nuclear weapons that can hit us. So every American should care that the North Koreans are finding ways to make money that in turn

keeps the WMD program very much alive. But more practically speaking, if you own a company this morning that hires remote IT workers, especially ones that claim to be Japanese or South Korean, well, you should probably double check exactly it is who you've hired, because you wouldn't want to be the person who accidentally supported the North Korean nuclear program. But the bigger issue here is actually about China. And that's because, as I mentioned earlier in the brief, many of these North Korean cyber warriors go into China and then set up their hacking enterprises there.

Well, Beijing knows that this is happening. We've told them. The Europeans have told them. But as always, China either says it's fake news, that's smear, made up by the West to humiliate them, or the Chinese promised to investigate, but then never actually do. The reason that they stick their heads in the sand about this is that North Korea is a very important ally to China. A few different reasons for that, but the big one is because of coal. You see, North Korea provides China a massive amount of coal each year, and that coal, in turn,

fuels the power plants that power the Chinese economy. So China will actually put up with a fair amount of North Korean shenanigans, like this cyber stuff, just because they want that coal. Okay, so here's the bottom line. There are lots of reasons to be concerned about this news of North Korean cyber soldiers, especially since these hackers are supporting the North Korean nuclear program. And we should obviously use whatever means we have to stop them, to include special operations based out of the CIA and NSA.

But really, the important takeaway is that this is yet another example of China being awful. They know exactly what's happening, and they're not doing anything about it. And they won't, no matter how many times we ask. But after this brief, you know why. And so should America's president, because if we ever get someone in the White House who finally cuts off China from our economy, they can add this brief to the list of reasons for why it was high time that we finally did. Your second brief, the U.S. intelligence community is in the hot seat this morning.

They've admitted that they missed two key predictions for what would happen in Afghanistan and more recently in Ukraine. So let's review those failures. So first, the intelligence community believed that the government of Afghanistan would hold off the Taliban for at least a year. you probably recall that. Well, it turned out to be wildly wrong. Koppel fell within a couple of weeks of Taliban attacks. And then there was Ukraine, just from a couple months ago. The intel community widely believed that Kiev or Kiv would fall to Russian forces within

three days. Well, that obviously didn't happen. The country is still standing. And that was true even before we started sending them all those weapons. So those are two really big misses. And for a group of 18 agencies that make up the intel community, agencies that get $100 billion a year or so, we should be getting a very different result. So if you were president this morning, I'd be briefing you on two key questions. First, why were those predictions so wrong? And second, how do we fix it? So let's tackle the first question. But to do so, we have to have a little bit of background about the intel community. You see, America's intel operators do their best work in my view

when we count things, like the numbers of troops or the range of a missile and so forth. The intel community is also really good at explaining the movement of the things that they just counted, like a battalion moving from one place to another and then what that means. In other words, the intel community is pretty good at what's called tactical and operational intelligence. But they're less good, or at least less consistent, at forecasting what certain leaders or generals will or won't do. In other words, their plans and intentions for guiding a nation. That's often called strategic intelligence. And to be fair, it's really hard to get that right every time. As a former CIA guy, I can tell you that's absolutely true. But there's one

area of focus that the intel community just doesn't do well across the board. And that's to accurately predict the will to fight. So let me explain that. Let's say that I count all the troops, and I exactly how the leaders and generals intend to use those troops, like when and where. But how do I know if those troops will actually fight? And if they do, how effective will they be? Is morale high, for instance? All of that is absolutely critical to offer up a good assessment, an accurate prediction. And that's why we had the intel failure in both Ukraine and Afghanistan. We underestimated the will to fight of the Ukrainians to kick the Russians in the hind quarter. Meanwhile, we overestimated the will of Afghan fighters to fight back against the Taliban.

But here's something intriguing. There's actually one group in the IC or intelligence community that actually got it right, certainly in Ukraine. It's unfortunately just that nobody listened to them. And that was the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. While it's technically a part of the intelligence community, they don't recruit spies or operate satellites. They're mostly analysts who, review reports from diplomats or consider public information and newspapers and TV, and oftentimes they'll conduct polls to get a sense of what average citizens feel. And it's that last bit,

the polling of people, that appears to explain why the State Department keeps getting it right. For instance, in Ukraine, they looked at polling throughout the fall last year that showed that Ukrainians across the board were not interested in Russian rule, and that they were willing to die to stop it? In other words, they tapped into the people's will to fight. And that understanding led them to be the one group that said Russia wouldn't take Ukraine in just a few days. What's interesting here is that the State Department's group is pretty small, with a tiny staff and a really minisual budget as certainly compared to the monster agencies like the CIA and the Pentagon. But what's clear is that this little engine that could is punching way above its weight. And that's true,

not just in the past year, but over the past 20 years. For instance, they were the only agency within the intel community that said Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction back in 2002. So all of this information is now with Congress. And those folks are demanding this morning that intel community leaders conduct a review of these various failures and find ways to fix them. And so that leaves you and I with this.

Why should you care about this problem of intel failures? and is there a way that you can help make sure that things get fixed? All right, let's first remember that it's your tax dollars at stake here. As I mentioned at the top of the brief, the budget for the intel community is somewhere between $60 and $100 billion. The exact amount is classified, obviously, but we know it's a lot of money, and you deserve better performance for that money.

Second, and this one's important, presidents of this country decide whether or not to go to war based on the Intel community's assessments. And if those assessments are wrong, like they were in Iraq back in 2002, well, then you might end up spending trillions of dollars and kill an untold number of people because the spies and analysts got it wrong. And that's what we could see in Ukraine. Because if you recall, I briefed you on a bill in the House of Representatives,

and it would give Joe Biden the authority to declare war against Russia if he determined that Moscow had used chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against the Ukrainians. Well, obviously, Joe isn't going to make the call on his own. He's going to be calling up the intel community and he will want an assessment. And if they get it wrong, just like they did in Iraq and Afghanistan and once already in Ukraine a couple months ago, then we're looking at a potential world war, a nuclear holocaust. And that means that we have to make sure that the intel community fixes itself, even if they don't want to. And there's a way that you and I can do it. There are two committees, one in the House and one in the Senate,

that provide oversight of the intel community. It's they who have leverage. So if you were so moved, I want you to go to the website, intelligence.senate.gov. Find your senator, or if your state isn't listed, then contact the chair. It's going to be Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. Or contact the vice chair, who is Senator Mark or Rubio of Florida, one Democrat and one Republican. The House has an oversight committee as well, which I mentioned, and it can be found at Intelligence.house.gov. Use that same process to find your rep or one of the two chairs.

In this case, it's Adam Schiff of California or Mike Turner of Iowa, again, Democrat, Republican. So I really hope that you contact these folks, because there's simply way too much money and way too many lives at stake. And that includes the lives of America's kids, maybe your kids. And any of them could be shipped off to war in Europe if the spies and the analysts get it wrong again in Ukraine. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination

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And as always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Joe Biden and his Democrat Party have promised student debt relief for millions of borrowers. We've all been reading about that. And in fact, I've briefed you previously. But a new survey out from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia is showing that the vast majority of borrowers don't actually need forgiveness. They just conducted a survey of over 13,000.

borrowers. And they found that 70% of these people can manage to resume their payments, payments that have been put on hold since the beginning of the pandemic. Now, this survey by the Fed was conducted from January through April of this year, which suggests that even with inflation running rampant, the vast majority of borrowers can still make their payments. The point, ladies and gentlemen, is that 70% of these former students do not need loan forgiveness. Now, would they like to have it? or they would. I mean, after all, probably who wouldn't? But the point is, they don't need it. Now, perhaps we can have a national conversation about the remaining 30% of borrowers who told the Fed that they are likely to default if they have to make payments again. And look, that's fair to

discuss. But the key here is that the overwhelming majority of former students just don't need forgiveness. Now, for what it's worth, most observers think that there's probably a political calculus going on behind the scenes on this issue. As most of us know, we have elections coming up in November. And Joe Biden and his Democrats need young people to vote for their party. But right now, Joe Biden is very unpopular with this group. His approval numbers are down to 41% amongst voters age 18 to 29. And if those numbers hold, Democrats are going to be in big electoral trouble. So let's see what Biden does here. But now we all know the truth. because we all have the data.

70% of borrowers don't really need Joe Biden's help. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. A quick note of welcome to the many folks who just recently joined us here on the President's Daily Brief. We are working very hard to spread the word and pretty much every day we have more listeners than the day before.

So welcome and thank you for subscribing. And to everybody else who's been around for a while, thank you as well. You keep coming back and you keep telling people too to listen in. And I am sure glad you do. And so with that, my friends, 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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