The President's Daily Brief - May 2nd, 2022. Your Grocery Bill Will Keep Inflating. Russian Spy... Dolphins?

Episode Date: May 2, 2022

It’s May 2nd. 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, Oil Wars. The kind you put in your mouth — specifically, sunflower and palm oil. Prices are going up for both, and so too is your grocery bill. Your second brief, Swimming lessons in Nicaragua - illegals to learn how to better cross the Rio Grande River and into the United States. We’ll talk about why this happening. As always, I’m keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Russia is using spy dolphins in its war against Ukraine. We’re going to talk about that, and when the CIA tried to do something similar. It did not go well. 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 2nd. 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 for 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, oil wars. No, not the kind you put in your car, the kind you put in. your body, specifically sunflower and palm oil. Prices are going up for both, and so too will your grocery bill. I'll explain why. Your second brief swimming lessons in Nicaragua, not for fun, but for would-be illegals to learn how to better cross the Rio Grande River and into the United States. We'll talk about why this is happening. As always, I'm keeping an eye out for developing stories.

Put this one on your radar. Russia is using spy dolphins in its war against Ukraine. We're going to talk about that and when the CIA tried to do something similar. It did not go well. All up next on the President's Daily Brief. Your first piece of intel this morning, oil wars. By now, we all know that prices for gas and oil have skyrocketed. In fact, the average price of diesel fuel was $5.16 on Friday, more than a dollar higher than gasoline. But there's another oil that we need to talk about this morning, and it's the kind that you have in your kitchen and your pantry. And it matters because your food bill is about to get much, much higher. Last week, the country of Indonesia put a complete stop to the exportation of palm oil from its farms. This is a really big deal for a couple of reasons.

First, you have to understand that palm oil isn't everything that you can imagine. If you buy packaged foods like Oreos, let's say, it's got palm oil in it. In fact, half of these kinds of food products do. It's also a key element of foaming agents that you put in soaps and shampoos and detergents. It's what makes it bubbly. And lastly, cosmetics. About 70%, 70% of all U.S. cosmetic products use some palm oil-based ingredients. And all that palm oil largely comes from one place, Indonesia. In fact, well over half of the global supply comes from that one country. And they're blocking exports because of a domestic shortage, where people use it to cook with. Indonesia is very serious about this ban. They've deployed their Navy.

to stop illegal shipments, and in fact they seized two tankers last week full of crude palm oil. That's meant that consumer product companies from around the world are scrambling to find substitutes. Now, they would consider sunflower oil, but there's a problem. Ukraine and Russia account for 75% of the world's sunflower oil, and for obvious reasons, shipments have been delayed. So all this leads to three things that you need to know. First, retailers are clamping down on the sale of these raw oils for cooking. In Europe, some stores are limiting buyers to one bottle. That's true in Iceland. The UK and elsewhere are limiting sales to three bottles. Now, some are forecasting that these same restrictions might happen here in the U.S. too. Second, food producers are switching from

palm oil to others like rapeseed and soy oil. That means the texture and the taste of processed packaged food might not be the same that you come to know and expect. So if you sense a difference of some kind, you're not going bonkers. Your taste buds are picking up on the perils of global trade. And finally, another bit of unwelcome news, all of this means your food bill is going to go up. Because once you lack the supply of both sunflower and palm oil, you increase demand for other oils like soy and coconut. And that means prices go up for those too. The consumer company Unilever, which owns brands like Dove and Helmonds, Klondike, Lieber 2000, the prices on all of those things are going up another 8% the company announced last week in no small part because of these oil wars. By the way, if this news is frustrating and it is, it's frankly nothing compared to what other places in the

world are going to have to deal with because of these shortages. India and Pakistan, for instance, rely heavily on palm oil for their basic cooking needs, mostly because it's so cheap, and now they're scrambling for alternatives, but there are none. That's especially bad news because people in these countries already spend a lot of their annual income on food. In Pakistan, food makes up 50% of a person's annual budget. In India, it's about 25%. Compare that to the U.S. where we spend about 10% of our personal budgets on food, although that's going up. Europe is a bit higher about 13 to 15%. So the bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that inflation is going to get worse before it gets better. And not just for us, but for a whole bunch of people abroad too. This

have major national security implications as very poor people and very poor places like Pakistan and India are likely to run out of ways to feed themselves on a low budget. And as we all know, desperate people do desperate things to survive. Your second brief this morning, the border wars, we all know that the U.S. is being swamped with illegal immigrants, record numbers each month, including groups of terrorists. Mexican authorities are seeing it too. Within a four-day period last week, they arrested 6,000 people, which is a remarkable number for their immigration agency. We also learned something else last week. A man in Nicaragua is giving free swimming lessons to would-be illegals to help them swim across the Rio Grande River and into the United States.

Mr. Mario Orozco is offering free swimming lessons to adults in his hometown of Esteele. He got the motivation after one of his friends sadly drowned in the Rio Grande. And his friend, by the way, was trying to make the dangerous journey so he could find find a better paying job. Now, Mr. Orozco takes great pride in his swimming program. He uses a local pool, and he has volunteers come in to help create waves to simulate the currents of the Rio Grande. Now, almost all of those getting free swimming lessons are people who intend to cross illegally to get better paying jobs. None of those interviewed expressed concern about crime or political persecution in Nicaragua. They just wanted better paying jobs. Now, if you were the

president this morning, here's why I would explain that this story, is worth your attention. For starters, look, the United States has a border problem. Yes, the walls and fences have too many gaps. We have too few border agents earning too little of a salary, and we have too few sensors and observation drones to alert the agents to illegal crossers. But fundamentally, we have an incentive problem.

Now, Mr. Orozco is happy to teach people how to break our laws because he knows that once they get into the United States, they're going to get a lot of free stuff that they don't get in Nicaragua. Agua. One of the things that they first get when they cross over is a free cell phone. The Biden administration has confirmed that it gives free smartphones to illegal crossers so that they can check in with immigration authorities. Next, they get free medical care. Any person who goes to an emergency room in this country cannot be denied care regardless of one's ability to pay. Now, that's not a system that's just being abused by illegal immigrants, but they're unquestionably a part

of that very expensive problem. Indeed, studies consistent show that illegal immigrants tend to use emergency departments as their primary source of care, rather than go out and pay a primary care doctor. And that costs at least $2 billion a year in emergency treatment. And that, by the way, does not include an additional $1.2 billion for expenses in delivering babies, who, of course, become U.S. citizens the moment they're born in our hospitals. Now, there's also the issue of free education. U.S. law says that all kids must have free access to elementary schools and junior highs and high schools. And then once there, these kids can also get access to free breakfasts and lunch. The list of free stuff goes on and on to include housing in some

cases, but there's one area of particular concern, and that is the ability to vote. Now, illegal immigrants are not supposed to vote per U.S. law, but some local jurisdictions are actually allowing non-citizens to vote in local elections. New York City, for instance, allows it. So do 14 smaller U.S. U.S. jurisdictions, namely and mostly, in Maryland. Now, there are two issues here. First, even if they don't vote, they count in the census, and that counts towards how many representatives a particular state gets, and how much power a state has in the electoral college, which in turn elects the president. There's also a second concern that if there's no voter ID required, there's an incentive for illegal immigrants to vote, either by malintent or just by confusion. After all, if someone can vote

in municipal elections, why not logically in other elections, too, they might wonder. But for a moment, let's put aside the politics of all of this. Let's get back to Mr. Orozco, because he understands the incentive structures of this moment. If you leave Nicaragua for the United States, you're virtually guaranteed to leave poverty and scarcity for relative wealth and abundance. You just have to get over the Rio Grande River. But imagine if there was no free stuff for you waiting. no phones, no food, no medical care, no schooling, the incentives would be gone. And obviously, many people would stop coming. And then if we had effective walls and fences and enough border agents, the illegals that did come

would be immediately deported right back to their home country. In other words, the risks of the dangerous journey north simply wouldn't be worth the gain because there would be no gain. So if America is serious about border security, then our solutions can't just be about better fences and walls or more agents and ground sensors. Yes, we need all of those things, but we have to fix the incentives that make people come. Because until we do, there will always be a steady demand, not just for the human traffickers that move people, but for swimming lessons, too. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination

for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater Stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. As always, I'm watching a few other stories this morning. Put this one on your radar, dolphin wars. Yes, lovable Labradors of the sea are being put to military use in Ukraine. Satellite imagery confirms that Russia is using specially trained dolphins to defend a critical naval base off of Crimea in the Black Sea. There are at least two dolphin pens. Multiple imagery analysts have confirmed this.

The pens were removed there in February, by the way, around the time that Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. The exact use of the dolphins is a bit of mystery, but there are three informed guesses. First, they may be used for killing human divers, likely U.S. or Ukrainian special forces who try to infiltrate the harbor and sabotage Russian warships. The idea is that he's specially trained dolphin would kill the diver directly. Second, the dolphins might be sounding an alarm once they see these divers and then surface to their Russian handlers, much like a dog might. Finally, they might be trying to detect underwater mines. Dolphins can be trained to find them, and here's the bonus, avoid setting them off. The U.S. does this, actually. In fact, there's a unit of

dolphins that operates out of San Diego and has since the 1950s. The dolphins have been used at least since the war in Vietnam, and they played a role in Iraq. too. Now, I can confirm that lots of countries use animals in their military and espionage work. I can't share details, unfortunately, but it does mean that some animals get caught up in spy hunting dragnets. Not long ago, Iranian counterintelligence officers arrested 14 squirrels, saying that they had been caught wearing Western spy gear. Meanwhile, Egyptian police once took a stork into custody because it was fitted with an odd tag. It turns out it was a geolocator being used by French scientists to track the bird's migration, or so authorities in Paris claimed.

Now, I would be remiss if I did not mention Operation Acoustic Hitty. No joke here. During the Cold War, my CIA colleagues tried to turn cats into portable, non-alerting listening devices. So here was the somewhat grotesque idea. A surgeon would implant a tiny microphone into a cat's ear and a radio transmitter at the base of its skull. There would also be an antenna, built into the cat's fur. The hope is that the kitty could be trained to sit near foreign officials and not attract attention and thus transmit private conversations. Now, during the first test of the very first spy cat, CIA officers drove the acoustic kitty to a park and tried to get it to sit next to two men sitting on a bench. Instead, the cat bounded into a nearby street where it was

promptly turned into a kitty pancake by a speeding taxi cab. That ended that particular operation, obviously. And while I'm more of a dog guy, I do hope that the cat continues to rest in peace. Meanwhile, prayers up for the poor dolphins. Let's see if history offers them a different outcome than the acoustic kitty. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your morning brief. One quick point of clarification from last week, I was speaking on the war in Ukraine, specifically the issue of escalation and the parallels between our involvement in Ukraine and the early stages of our efforts in Vietnam. I talked about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and mentioned the sinking of the USS Maddox. I should have said that the ship was fired upon, not sunk. A savvy listener in Newport Beach,

California heard my mistake and wrote a very gracious note. Well done, sir, and thank you. If you have feedback, good, bad or ugly, send me an email. It is, as you know, PDB at thefirsttv.com. Again, that's PDB, as in the president's daily brief, at the first TV.com. By the way, you'll get an automated reply at first, and then I'll respond separately as soon as I can. Sometimes the same day, but sometimes a few days later. But I read them no matter what. And that, my friends, brings us to the end, for today.

And as always, we conclude the PDB by 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.