The Team House - CIA Already Drone Striking Inside Venezuela | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

In this episode, the hosts discuss the recent drone strike in Venezuela, the implications of U.S. military actions, and the ongoing drug trade involving Hezbollah. They explore the potential future of Venezuela post-Maduro, the role of international relations, and the strategic interests of the U.S. in the region, particularly regarding oil resources. The conversation highlights the complexities of U.S. foreign policy and the challenges of stabilizing Venezuela amidst corruption and economic turmoil.Grab JT's books here:https://www.amazon.com/stores/J.T.-Patten/author/B00I3SPP10?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=Uh5dK&content-id=amzn1.sym.7e190e19-9f6f-4df8-807a-5a7608594741&pd_rd_wg=OF5kv&pd_rd_r=e0673b97-1d69-437a-bd71-cb37ede4f8db&ref=ap_rdr&shoppingPortalEnabled=truehttps://woolfhouse.com/GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off! Get The High Side here:https://thehighside.substack.com/Grab Jack's book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History"https://a.co/d/eRxKBleSupport the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our new newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinNew merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.comCheck out Mick's new podcast here:⬇️Apple Podcasts:https://podcasts.apple.com/at/podcast/pub-and-porch-applied-stoicism/id1836955475Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/1k3QPmkAMwnGJxMLDwUSSd?si=n6piIu8XRcag1Z0K43A3bQYoutube:https://www.youtube.com/@UCd0Hq6QFk8CoTu5j-VU0Ong Find Mick Mulroy here: Fogbow ⬇️https://fogbow.com/Lobo Institute ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/Twitter ⬇️https://x.com/mickmulroy?s=21&t=-Ze3F_Ix2vlJ18KFvORTCALinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/Bluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialMick’s publications ⬇️https://www.loboinstitute.org/publications/publications-of-michael-mick-patrick-mulroy/Find Andy Milburn here: Twitter ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023Substack ⬇️https://amilburn.substack.com/Andy’s book ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-OperationsBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: LinkedIn ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?uBluesky ⬇️https://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start02:58 The Implications of Drone Strikes06:00 Understanding the Drug Trafficking Narrative08:48 Military Buildup and Its Consequences12:00 The Future of Venezuela Post-Maduro14:53 The Role of Oil in Geopolitical Strategies17:53 The Complexity of Regional Politics20:46 Conclusion and Reflections on U.S. Foreign Policy28:28 Understanding U.S. Involvement in Venezuela31:26 The Complexity of Military Interventions34:17 The Role of Hezbollah and Criminal Networks38:30 Sanctions and Their Effectiveness41:53 China's Influence in Venezuela43:50 Speculating on Future Developments47:05 JT Patten's Literary VenturesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Aizond Geopolitics. I'm joined today with J.T. Patton and Jack Murphy, our dear leader. Hope everyone had a great Christmas and is excited for New Year's. This one's going to be about Venezuela and what's going down there. I mean, we just found out, you know, it just was confirmed and posted yesterday that there was a drone strike. I wouldn't say it was a port exactly. It was just like a place where, like, they basically load and unload drugs.

supposedly no casualties. It happened, I think, like a week or so ago. President Trump mentioned it, like, kind of ambiguously in an interview, and then, you know, journalists started doing their jobs and stuff like that. And we got it confirmed yesterday that it was a drone strike on land in Venezuela.

So that's a little bit of a change to what we've been seeing with, like, you know, massive military, build up and the strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific and stuff like that. So J.T., how you doing? What's your take on all this? Good. Thanks for having me.

Of course. I think a lot of it's a little bit of a joke. You know, not necessarily a joke for those that are getting smoked. But we're definitely ramping up activity there in Venezuela in and around. but I'm not so sure that the narrative still fits everything. I don't think, you know, I don't think much has changed since about 2010 when I was covering this. I think even some, I read something the other day there was an interview by Marshall Billingsley, who's dealing with the Treasury right now.

I remember in like 2010, Marshall had my report, actually. I'm not knocking him, because I'm sure that Marshall doesn't usually do the collection of Intel and the analysis of it, but he's got a lot of people that give it to him. But I think that, you know, whether it's the drug cartels, whether it's the Hezbollah narrative, I think it's a little bit overstated and largely, you know, focused for regime change and maybe even more so on natural resources, such as, you know, the oil. And so just kind of remarks out the gate to kind of show where it's kind of where I stand. Doesn't that seem to contradict? Well, certainly some of the statements that our DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, has made. But, I mean, even more so beyond that, it feels like some sort of flashback, getting into a regime change war based on false pretenses.

Didn't we play this out about 20 years ago? Yeah, and we don't usually do a real good job of regime change. Regime change, I mean, if we're talking about, here's the narrative. We want to get rid of cartels in and around the area. We want to get rid of Hezbollah's influence. We want to get rid of the corruption and crime. All of those things happen when you disrupt the government, change your regime without having a full plan of what you're looking to do. This is more of a depose the tyrant and seize the oil fields and gather those around.

And what happens is then you've got this vacuum for the disruption of everything that's going on over there. And it incites anything that may be there into more of a problem. Plus, we're talking about securing borders. You're going to send a whole bunch of Venezuelans. then after that, out into the world, and increasing a lot of those efforts. So, yeah, I think they don't have such a great plan. And I'd be curious, I mean, with the Tulsa Gabbert, you know, where are they getting the Intel? The U.S. hasn't had a lot of operations.

I mean, I'm not speaking out of turn here, but it's been an unprovasive environment. Okay, if you look at the five eyes of who's actually been in Venezuela and able to operate, conduct Intel operations. Canada, until I think the last 10 years, and the UK right now, has allowed to, is allowed to have an embassy there. We have not for years. So you've got, you've got any, interestingly, just to interrupt, I'm sorry, J.T. Yeah. Because I heard this from a friend of mine working down there. We do maintain embassy grounds in Venezuela, but it's not an official embassy. It's not opened, but it's maintained. And they're keeping it maintained. because if things change, we could be coming back.

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, it's, the UK definitely has the ability, you know, from traditional means of espionage and even just being there, having the most resources. And I think it was November, they said after, you know, Trump was saying that, you know, it's drugs, we got a lot of trafficking networks and stuff. Once that was there, they're like, we're out.

We're not sharing anymore. tell with you because essentially that whole premise of what we were going to do was going to really kind of jack things up for them as well. I want to talk about this latest air strike that Dee was mentioning. We seem to have found out in the news in the last 24 hours that the drone strike on this whatever embarkation facility in Venezuela was done under Title 50 covert action authorities by the CIA, which is a new thing. The other strikes that have been done in the Caribbean, the Pacific supposedly against drug boats have been done by the Department of Defense.

I think heavily, you know, heavy showing from J.SOC actually. But this is the first one that has been done under CIA authorities. So I didn't, I should have taken a look at the map of where that is beforehand, before I came on. But let's break this down. Maybe 1% of drug running in the world is coming from Venezuela. Okay, about 1%. And that's just the trafficking aspect of it.

So you've got 90% of drug trafficking in and around that area. That's not coming from that specific region. It's all going west Pacific. It's going east Pacific. Very little is in the eastern Caribbean. I think when you look at that as a trafficking hub, there used to be a statistic. I mean, I had it in a report, I don't know, years back. I think it was 12% of cocaine trafficking proceeds were going to Hezbollah in around Venezuela.

Okay, so if you're taking about 1% of that, of that drug trafficking, even, you know, just holistically going out of that area, and then you're taking a small percentage of that, it's really not that profitable, whereas Bala and a lot of those individuals in there. So as a drug trafficking hub and where this is launching from, I mean, it's, it's, I don't, I don't see it as a massive, massive threat. So why that? You know, I don't know. Especially if it's where I think it is, if it's in the, I think it was like the, I think it's pronounced like YU or something area,

but that is where they had a little bit more of the Muslim population of ex-Lebanese. You know, that's an area where if you're starting to poke around there and starting to do some strikes, I mean, that is, I mean, if you're worried about increasing the capability of Hezbollah, I think ideologically, probably just inciting a little bit more of that area. Do you know more about where specifically that was and what the auspices of that strike was, given, I think, the boat strikes and everything that was happening? Not a whole lot has come out. I don't know where.

Have we gotten any location on that or anything, D? From the CNN article, there wasn't anything specific in there. terms of where it was. I'm just looking, doubling back. You knew something was up because Trump was being so vague about it when he talked about this strike, because if it was a DOD strike, they'd just say it was DOD. And then this one is kind of like, I'm not going to say who did it. There was a DOD strike.

They would have had video on it or would have been on social media. Strike on a dock where U.S. Fish believes Trend, Roo-Wa, was there, where they were restoring Okay. I mean, let's also put this into perspective that friend Arruga and the the other little cartel that they're worried about. I mean, it pales in comparison to anything that Mexican cartels do. Now, a lot of those areas, and this is, I think, kind of interesting, too, this is where I'd be like totally on board. We're just fucking with Iran because around those whole areas are a lot of oil refineries and shipping points for Iranian oil production and transfers. I mean, Iran and Venezuela were founding members of OPEC in 1960, I guess it was.

So Iran has had a massive presence in and around that area, especially around the oil refineries and production. So if you're also looking at a lot of the major ports over there, it's, could also have like kind of a dual capability of just kind of, hey, you know, we're saying this under the auspices of drugs, but we can fuck with your oil and oil shipments at any point in time. I mean, for me, if you've got a strategic purpose and if you're united with a bunch of other countries in that, I think that's pretty cool. You know, just to jack with them a little bit.

Maybe there's some type of disruption that, you know, I'm not privy to. but I think what's going on here I don't know I think it's a little bit of a stretch as you suggestive Jack So what happens now I mean we've had you know a huge buildup of military

naval assets in the Caribbean for going on a couple months now You've seen different like numbers to like 15% 20% of the Navy and stuff Seems like they keep taking stuff from Indo-Pacom Which you know I thought that was our focus now that the GWAT was over. What happens now?

I mean, is it just a holding pattern? Is it to apply pressure on Maduro to get out of Venezuela? There were some chat about talks that they were having with Maduro and stuff, but he was asking for like him and like 100 people of his to be able to like get out, him to have amnesty and all that or immunity. What do we look? Is this just like a big bluff?

Because it seems like it may be. I don't know. And I don't, again, I don't want to talk. height like a conspiracy theory and not trying to go against our own, you know, politics right now of saying, you know, they're completely off the wall because they like, they may be, may have agenda that I don't know about. So let's take historically, you know, during this escalation period of what things have been said over the last year. Okay, one, we want to take over Greenland because they've got resources. We want to invade Canada and because they've got resources. And,

because they've got resources. And again, I know it's just kind of hyperbole. But then you kind of, but if you are thinking of expanding, where can you get a bunch of resources fast? And everybody else is turning you down. Who can you fuck with that really nobody's going to fuck back with? Venezuela. You know, they've got a lot of reserves. So Russia's not going to do much.

They don't really have a military presence in it around that area to protect. What's Iran going to do? they're not going to do a whole lot either. Most other people are not going to get into a conflict with it because they do recognize. I mean, it's a corrupt area. Don't get me wrong. I mean, there's massive amounts of corruption. It's a massive hub for money laundering and always has.

So I think it is a little bit of a wag the dog just to be able to get some of those resources under our control and do it in such a way that it's not going to disrupt a whole lot. Now, one of the things that I saw the other day was continue to talk about Margarita Island as being a, you know, this massive Hezbollah training camp area. And this is kind of the beehive. Yeah, a bit of bullshit. Because you've had, you've got three main clans that were like Lebanese expats in and around those areas. And then they control a lot of the trade. In many cases, they are involved with some.

of the corruption, a lot more trade-based money laundering. That's a lot more profitable. I mean, instead of running a boat full of drugs out into the Caribbean, you'd rather take a shipment of ladies panties that you are invoicing for $20 that you got for $1, and you're getting that profitability to launder money and get paid for the laundering. Years ago, and this is going back into, again, about 2010, and we were supporting DOD some spec ops capabilities. We're looking at Margarita Island. And at the time, I don't know if you remember the name Oraman, who was an ISIS-involved individual. He had disappeared from Iraq, was in Syria. I think he ended up being killed in like 2011 in Pakistan.

He was also with a guy named Majube, who is a Venezuelan businessman. So we had a source that captured a picture of Margarita Island. Of him getting it on board, there was a picture of some passports. We had the capability to say that he was there, and it was widely refuted throughout the community. There's no way that he would be there. Why the hell would he be? Well, if you take a look at that island and that family that owns it, the clan of Nazaredin, well, there was a guy Ghazi Naziridin who was Venezuelan, Lebanese born.

He was the diplomat in Syria at the time. So there's a lot of people being flown back and forth through that, through the airlines to Venezuela. And I think the rhetoric was, well, if he's there, then they're planning on Hezbollah tax. into the U.S. stuff, you know, via ISIS and that bullshit. What ended up happening, if you think about that area, they are known for passport forgery and allowing dual identification for Hezbollah

and a number of other groups, whoever's willing to pay. So essentially, you're targeting this island, which is supposed to be this big training camp. And if you look at it, I mean, it's probably like going out to, you know, Sarasota. there isn't that much that's not how has Belmont trains anyway and it's pretty much just

money laundering the fact that you've got a sanctuary and you're able to get a whole bunch of IDs and I think that kind of plays in too I mean it's like you know it's not so hard that you couldn't do surveillance and see that there's nothing going there isn't like a

battalion of guys doing fucking chin ups and stuff no yeah right well I think that's you know I think that's some of the narrative that we get caught up into. And that narrative has persisted for decades now. You know, people project an ISIS guerrilla model onto Hezbollah. The media definitely simplifies presence into training camps.

I mean, if you're talking about real Hezbollah operatives training there, they're training around Western tourists that are there and in the damn casinos, understanding the businesses. I mean, that's where anybody, if they were doing any training, you'd be getting that type of training. I think the intelligence assessments a lot of times conflate facilitation with training. And I think the criminal and, you know, in this case,

maybe political interests definitely benefit by some of that exaggeration. So, I mean, it's, you know, you're dealing with networks. you're not dealing with terrain in the situation. Yeah, I've heard over the years some interesting stories about Central America, like Panama comes to mind. And this was a ways back where they were getting tips that there were Al-Qaeda guys coming through Panama. And, of course, that sends up some red flags.

When they looked at it, though, they were using it as a vacation spot. Maybe they were doing some, like, light fundraising, but they weren't using it to play in external operations, interestingly enough. Well, Panama is like a massive hub for money laundering and stuff like that. Yeah. I think that in most of those cases, you don't need a state to be operating from. You just need a place where you have permission to be. And someplace that's going to cover up where you are.

And that's not going to, you know, it's going to give you some financial Ophan capacity. You're going to get some political protection. You may have some ideological alignment in some of those small communities there. And it's going to give you the freedom of movement. I think what's also kind of interesting when they always try to link a lot of the Lebanese in and around those areas, a lot of those people were Maronite Christians. So you probably have maybe 10% of those Lebanese out there that are even Muslim. Shea is. But, But yet they're all operating together in these networks. Why? Because they're just making money. They're not looking to, you know, bomb something, you know, and send in a whole bunch of armies. These guys are facilitators. And many of them are very high ranking, ranking not in like Kizbollah membership, but in the political scheme.

So when you think about deposing a government and they're talking about Maduro having maybe 100 people, I mean, these are people that have access to a lot of the monies, a lot of the times. a lot of the trades and a lot of the businesses. I think what we find is kind of interesting is to see which one of those we allow, because as of about 10 years ago, 15 years ago, some of those people had some massive force farms in Kentucky, massive mansions in Florida. They had political connections to our own people.

So, you know, I think it'll be interesting to see who they go after and who they don't because there's a lot of Venezuelan money tied into the U.S. and into some of the fundraising of political campaigns because they're just part of that fabric. They don't live in Venezuela necessarily, and they've got massive yachts that are going back and forth. So it'll be interesting to see how it aligns, which political party maybe they've donated to to

to see who you go after and who you don't. You make them sound like Russian oil oligarchs. You know, in a lot of ways they are. just that they're hanging out in Miami. Well, I guess they both are. They probably have some common interest. But, you know, they're involved in the, in equestrian sale of horses, to the millions. I mean, these are high rollers that are interacting with people. So it would be very embarrassing. I think at the time when we're looking at Kadivi, Parmuto, which is like the bond trading and stuff, it's kind of nebulous. You know, you jacking up bonds and making some mass.

of profits of it. These people were making tens of hundreds of millions of dollars in some cases and spending it in the U.S. And so it gives you a lot of ability to elbow rub and have, you know, guys like, you know, P. Diddy on the yachts and stuff like that. If you're in the market for a new mattress, you've probably seen all the brands out there vying for your attention. Big names, splashy ads, all promising the same thing.

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you guys if you're in the if you're in the market for mattresses or pillows or bedding check out ghostbed you can go to ghostbed dot com slash house and get 25% off right now love you and love those bed. Thanks guys. Let's say, you know, somehow, some way Maduro is thrown out, whether it's like his own military or, you know, we help in any way we can. And let's say he's gone. What does it look like in terms of what comes next? Does, uh, what's her, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maria Machado, right? Does she come in on a white horse and his crown fucking president and everything is beautiful and it's a beautiful western democracy where capitalism flows and and all boats are lifted and is it like this beautiful story that we keep telling ourselves it's it's it's going to take

more than the u.s and her putting something like this together and right now i don't know that we seek that same type of allyship to do what's necessary i mean you're talking about to change a regime and get rid of the corruption. I could take five, seven years as a minimum with a full commitment to that area of what you're actually going to do on the humanitarian standpoint, to deal with the financial reserves.

The biggest thing that you're going to need to do there is stabilize the oil and refinery petro industry there. I mean, that is massive commerce, and you've got a lot of corruption there. So if you're going to snip off, Iran's involved. involvement, maybe Russian involvement, some China involvement. You've got to be able to have experts that come in there and actually know that business. And I don't know that we necessarily

prop ourselves up to put in experts to those areas that we'll be able to solve. So I would say the likelihood is that we probably don't have as much interest in reforming the country as we might seizing some of the assets and then kind of backing off and letting somebody else. Super interesting because back in 2002, 2003, you know, we never really talked about Iraqi oil as a thing that we wanted, right, or wanted at least the control of. And now it just seems like, no, yeah, we want the oil. We want the resources. And that's why we're doing this.

Yeah, I mean, you'd have to, what conversations would we be having with Colombia? What conversations are we having with Brazil with the general Caribbean about what restabilization looks like and nation building was like? You're going to have, you've got no shared customs databases they're set up. You've got, you know, no maritime patrol cooperation set up. So I think if you're looking at filling vacuums or how to prevent something that's filling vacuum, bypassing sanctions, getting paid, you know, I think what you're hearing is actual. Let's get that and let them figure out their own country. You know, put somebody in there, say it's just.

and then they can handle themselves. And I think that's pretty much the rhetoric that we normally hear from this administration is that's really not our problem. But this was our. So we'll get this back. I mean, they owe us for all the sanctions that they've evaded. So we come up with the math of refineries. I've said this before, Scott. And I mean, I don't know what your opinion is, but I really feel like this stuff with Venezuela, also us like starting through.

fights with like, you know, Denmark over Greenland and things like this. It feels like we have done the math on bigger problems, real problems, China, Iran, Russia. And we've concluded, well, America really can't do too much there. If we do, it'll have a tremendous amount of blood and treasure will have to be spent. And so we're like going after like the low hanging fruit, like beating up on, you know, our allies sometimes or just people who are a pain in the ass like. Maduro as a kind of like compensation of like, look, I did something. Yeah, I mean, we're kind of the lunchroom dick. You know, let's shake down the weak people.

The ones that we're okay with are just like, you're an asshole. I'm just not going to deal with you right now. You know, you piss off somebody here, you piss off somebody there. You don't care about the ramifications. I just think that we would be, I guess it's okay to watch. with a big stick, but be aware of who else you're pissing off and what those ramifications are. I don't have a problem if it was in our strategic interest to seize oil fields, claim territory. I mean, okay, if that's what we want to do and that's what we want to be, but you can't do it in isolation

and you can't do it without those second and third order effect, understandings of what that's going to happen. I don't know that we necessarily consider those second and third order of us. I mean, just as something as simple as, you know, it's holiday season. I'm just sitting on my couch half the time. I should be writing, but I'm looking at TikToks and looking at Instagram stuff. And I'm seeing how many of these distilleries are closing up and affected because of what happened with Canada. and how Canada, you know, because of the tariffs, it took this out. Okay, now you've got the same thing happening with some farmers.

You're looking at a lot of different things where you're spinning the rhetoric of what it's going to do, but the actual how it's going to impact things ends up being much worse in most cases. And I think that that, you know, Venezuela is just yet another example. Okay, you know, we're going to blow up a boat. Yes, I mean, sure, there's going to be some rules of engagement that's done. Yeah, not my problem. I'm not going to harp on that because it's written in law, what you can and you can't do. But you're talking about maybe, you know, three, five, hundred people right there.

But what is that, what are you really trying to achieve? And you're spinning this as a major problem. But yet anybody should be reading to understand that that's not a massive problem. If you really want to address that drug problem, it's got to be someplace else. If you're really looking at it from the international lens of saying, you know guys we've tried we've tried to sanction venezuela we've tried to sanction iran they haven't done anything what we're going to do we're going to take an oil vessel because that's due to us okay we all agreed that we could sanction this that's what we're going to do we're going to take this

i think that makes a lot more sense on the world stage then holy shit we got fentanyl coming into our country and so we're going to blow up a bunch of these boats kill a bunch of these people we're going to have some air strikes on their main one because it's a problem. Everybody else but us realizes that that's not a massive problem. Yeah. I think we've done a really tough job in the media and everywhere else, the people that know what they're talking about, basically trying to explain what the fuck it is we're doing there.

And frankly, like John Q Public, me being one of them, I don't give a fine fuck we're going. is not in Venezuela. Going to be honest. Right? Like, does that going to help my freedom or my pocket, my pocketbook or my bottom line?

No. You know, and if you really even look at it, it's like, yeah, there's no fentanyl coming in from Venezuela. Most of the precursors come from China. It's like, and most of it comes in the bulk

of the drugs that come in here from Mexico. So are we saying we're going to do this to Mexico too? Is that the move? Like, no, we're not going to do that shit. Like, so it just seems like this like

this just side quest for what reason I have no fucking clue and like you look at the new national security strategy you know focusing more on like the region and Central and South America and our hemisphere and it's like you said JT it's like more like yeah we're gonna bully around the people we know we can bully without there even being any issue whatsoever

because you see we're kind of backing away from like our traditional allies with Europe. There's a clear enemy in Europe, and that's Russia. And we're just letting them do whatever they want. And it's just like, yeah, let's just bully the people we could bully. You know, like that's easy. It's not going to be that much of bandwidth taken up. And we could post videos on social media of us being the dominant U.S. military that's stopping the drug trade.

the 8% of the drugs that come from Venezuela without anything really fucking changing. Yeah. I think I would respect a lot more if, again, we said these are the reasons that we're doing this. And by deposing their leader, we have the international back. But this is what we're communicating to the press is we recognize in the short term that area is going to have an increase in violent crime. We know they're going to have an increase in smug. We know there's going to be an increase in drug transit. We know there's going to be more money laundering. We know that there's going to be more immigrants coming to the U.S. and those areas. There's going to be a fragmentation

of armed groups and an opportunistic cartel expansion. But this is our plan on how to deal with this. And I think that makes a lot more sense, especially if you are going to say, yeah, we're going to send a bunch of troops also down there. My friend was remarking about, you know, in 1989 when we went and took over Panama, there was Operation Just Cause, and he was joking that this time it's going to be called Operation Just Because. I don't know. I don't know who's doing, you know, the planning.

I don't know who's doing some of the understanding of stabilization and you know, how you're going to deal with entrenchment of criminal governance that might persist in there. I mean, those are the type of things that, you know, usually if you're going to disrupt something, you should have a good plan. Do they? I don't know. I will have to ask to see something may have changed very recently, but up until very recently, when I've asked people in the special operations community, they say that they have contingency plans, you know, that are on the books, you know, you know, collecting dust, like they do for many things, but they're like, no one's actively planning for Venezuela. Like, that's not a thing we're doing. Unless they're all BSing me,

there isn't like a planning cell that's like trying to put something together right now. No, and it's, I mean, look, it's not sexy work. That's how I got, that's how I got involved with covering Venezuela decades ago now. Because at the time, I was, When they were looking for Osama bin Laden, I was assigned to looking for him, not physically being there in Iran. And that's how I understood all of the banyads and kind of mapping out on the social structures. That then took me to Hezbollah, and I got an understanding of that. So when somebody said when we got a tasking of a few different areas and somebody's like, who understands Venezuela and what is going to focus on that, you kind of look around the room and nobody's raising.

their hand because they didn't understand it. Who Bob gives care about Venezuela? So I'm like, well, if everybody's going to be fighting for these other things, I'm going to raise my hand because I actually know that Iran's going to be involved. So let's see what we can dig around. So I knew nothing about it. And then, you know, two years later, I knew everything you never wanted to know about Venezuela, Hezbollah, Iran, and all the cartels kind of coming together and then the banking things. But just because there are links, does that mean that they're strong links? And there are, you know, bigger fish out there, which again, kind of goes to the whole idea of why people don't care about Venezuela. And if you dealt with Sox South, if you dealt with Socom, if you dealt with J-Soc, if you dealt with J-Soc, if dealt with the agencies, I mean, they didn't care that much.

And again, because you didn't have that much ability to operate, we didn't have that much intel. So even if we have something on the shelf, that is so going to change, especially when you're dealing with what Venezuela actually is, which is logistics and a financial platform. That changes vastly. And so if we're thinking about Venezuela having weak institution, militarized corruption, the illicit gold economy, the shadow trade that goes into the sanctions and the various routes, those things all have to be considerations.

And every time that they're disrupted, they change. So you have to have intel on those. And you have to have current intel so that you can fix your books. Who's got that? The UK. Are they sharing it with us? No. So where are we getting that intel?

We don't have it. It's interesting that like this sort of like Hezbollah nexus in this part of the world has been like a hobby horse of General Flynn going all the way back to his DIA days. It's just interesting that this sort of thought process is still sort of haunting us. At least when I've talked to people, they've said, we've looked and looked and looked, but we can't find this Hezbollah threat to America emanating from South America. No. And, I mean, look, let's church here a little bit.

You had a migration wave that happened in the early 1900s from Lebanon to Venezuela. Okay. Then you had another wave that came around in 1950s and 70s. I won't say they didn't assimilate, but they went to their pockets. You know, that's how immigration went. You had pockets. And again, these are Maronite Christians predominantly. And then in the 50s and 70s, you had yet another way.

A lot of those cases, you're demonizing people because they have some different beliefs, different cultural beliefs. And I think that as they started assimilating into the communities, into politics, into commerce, their status rose. They became the haves versus the have-nots or the have-nots. And the have-losses, but it was very easy to, I think, demonize them in many ways and say, you got all these fucking Arabs running around. What does Arabs translate to you, Muslims. Okay, but they did, they cast it in the reciprocal of it not being like 10% of the population being Muslim. It made it like 90%, which was the Christians to demonize that and create that. Yes, there are Hezbollah rows. Yes, there are family ties. But it's more like

old Italian mafia where it just you had, you had networks of these families to do better for the diaspora that was first and foremost in many of these. these families, Lebanese first. Okay, and you've got to make your money. And you've got to, because there's so much corruption in that area, you've got to tighten it so that you keep, dash it, so that you keep everything together. And you keep that money insular.

And you keep the power, continue to go. And you keep, you know, mixing with other tribes, other, or clans, other families and things like that. So I think that a lot of, anybody that used to have something, doesn't have it now is going to talk about somebody in a bad light if you can get them out of there and or demonize them. And so whether it's Flynn, who again, I really used to respect him on the Intel site. And I thought that he gave some of that rigor to the intelligence analysis that was going. But I don't think, I think that as much as often as the case, especially in the operations community, you can have, you know, the book readers

passing up the intel as much as you might have. But if someone's like, eh, my gut's telling me no, okay, your guts telling you. So, and my gut's going to tell me how we rebuild this,

you know, and that's a problem is we're dealing with too many guts and hunches and thoughts versus, you know, the actual research to understand how that all fits together. Chalabi part two. Right? I mean, Jack, you and I, years ago, I think we're talking about confessions of an economic hitman.

Oh, yeah. Awesome book. Because that is how old school espionage. And if you're really going to break down a nation and rebuild it or just, you know, let it get fucked up and then let somebody else come in and power vacuum. That's how you do it. But you've got to have it with like real economists, real social scientists, political experts. I mean, that's how you create these vacuums or that's how you disrupt something and then put it into your own pocket. But you do it with international law.

You do it with banking law. You do it with organized structures that you don't disrupt things, which pisses off other countries. That's how you can do it on this life. That's all we could do it with Venezuela still. But you don't do it this way. Isn't that kind of what we have been doing with Venezuela over the last, like, since Hugo Chavez, you know, like sanctions and, you know, they don't know. have a ton of the economic, like, latitude really, right, with sanctions and stuff like that. Like, we are trying to limit their economy and doing a pretty good job, I would say, on it.

Well, I think a lot of times sanctions are used as a hammer. And I don't think that they're used as so much of a guide. And I think sometimes you take that, the low-hanging fruit, which are often, you know, high-up people, and you'll target them and you'll say, okay, we're sanctioning you, but not understanding the layers underneath them that allows them to evade the sanctions. And in many cases, I think we do know that. So the sanctions that we put on don't necessarily have teeth

or you would be doing it in a different way, targeting different groups, truly disrupting things. You wouldn't allow funds to exist. I mean, let's, again, I know that most of your people aren't going to give a shit about, listening to banking operations here, but banking money transfers between institutions can be stopped with sanctions. And there's a lot that you allow to go on in from Venezuela because that money goes into different people's pockets that you want to keep. So you really don't put a hard

sanction. It's, it's kind of a soft sanction where it's like, yeah, we're labeling you and maybe you can't go to Switzerland and get open up a bank account, you know, under your true name. but you can you can still have your your finances facilitated 95%. So no, I don't think that we've done a real good job of really harnessing them and then putting the squeeze on. And a lot of times to do that, you have to have international consensus with other people to do it. You can't do it on your own because all of a sudden they're like, well, fuck the U.S. They said I can't do it, but I can do it. it with the rest of the world.

Yeah. You think China would have an issue with what we're doing? I mean, because, you know, even the tank, one of the tankers that we snatched was Chinese oil. All right. I don't know. And what, like, how deep China is involved with Venezuela. Can you give us, like, a little bit of insight on that? No.

Um, not because I don't want to. I don't know, I don't know that much about China and how they are. I, I understand some of the tie-ins between countries. but I don't know politically, psychologically, how they react and what levers that they pull. I just don't know enough about them. My gut without being informed by information and knowledge is they probably have different ways around things, also because I do believe in many cases they're probably smarter and more well equipped to operate on different levels. and dimensions of things,

then we probably give them credit for. Or the people that understand it and give credit, maybe it doesn't go up. So I don't know. I guess my gut, again, just talking out of my ass would be they're probably looking, if this is stopped, they'll probably figure out another way around it.

But I don't know what type of pressure they really put it on us. Or they fuck us in another way and we're just too stupid to realize it. So what happens next? I want some speculation. Speculation. What's your gut tell you? I think that we would continue some of the bullying for maybe the next six months, maybe a few more strikes. I would say if the international community pushes back on us hard in such a way that they also almost sanction us.

or create some economic levers to punish us for some of these things, I think we'll continue doing it. But I think if they wanted to slow us, I think we would back down if it was something really impactful. Things that the news coverage would glom onto and that the general public would glom on to and say, we're now getting screwed because of us, cut it out. if we can get some justification, and I would, if we really want it for the purposes of Iranian disruption, I think we got to go back to our old friends. I think we got to work with Canada.

I think we got to work with the UK and understand what those impacts are. And I think we need to stop talking about the stupid narco ship. Okay, if we really talk about it from a standpoint of corruption, international trade that's being disrupted, instability. I think those are legitimate things that other people would rally around. I mean, the UK was not disputing corruption, you know, the financial crime, sanction breaking. I mean, those are things that they would rally behind. I mean, if we did decide, you know, we're open to other people. I could see that. I don't see anybody else in the community getting involved. Like Iran, you know, what are they going to really do. I don't see China or Russia really doing much of anything. I think that if they're really

looking to seize this and claim this, they can't. I think if they do do seize oil fields and they do start doing, I think it's going to be more of a robbery than anything else because I do not believe they have the people to put into place to fix the refineries, to fix that business. I mean, right now, it's some old antiquated systems. We've got better technology than Iran for a lot of this. If we went in there with a business purpose together with the UK and said, hey, you guys have this problem. Because of sanctions, we're going to get involved, but we're going to bring a new technology. We're going to allow you to have more jobs. We're going to expand this. Yes, we want a part of it, but we're going to help your community. I think that would be a whole lot better. And oh, by the way,

we gave you a new president. And she's on board too. I think if that happened, I do think Maduro's probably in the next year you're going to leave. I don't think it's going to be forceful. I think we'll negotiate that where he goes,

I don't know. But I think he would get his cronies. I'm sorry? Cuba, that's where he's going. Yeah, and Cuba could be next for us too.

Yeah, so I was going to say Cuba's on the list, bro. So it may be a short... It does care about Cuba, though. So does China. Yeah.

I don't think we can poke that one. But I don't know. one's kind of fun. I had, you know, I've got this series of these military thrillers, and some years back, I had written about Venezuela, written about the Hezbollah thing and the Iran stuff. And so it's kind of fun to see this kind of come into fruition where it's like, okay, some of the things we talked about are now coming to light, because I tried to pick something that was a little bit less, you know, overdone. And the agency and DOD didn't have much problem with what I had, especially with a lot of the stuff I had. about Margarita Island just being bullshit and stuff. None of that was redacted. So that also kind of gives me an idea on half that

stuff that they don't know, don't care about. So the things that we're glomming onto now saying, it's so secret, we just can't even share any of this shit. Bullshit. Why was I able to write a book about it? Yeah, JT. I mean, you've written a whole series of really good

novels. Anything you want to announce to folks out there about the future? You know, your big thing is the TFO series, right? The protagonist is what, Drake? Yeah, Drake Wolf. Yeah, um, yeah, he, A-SOT, um, guy

moved into, uh, TFO, uh, intelligent sport activity, but, you know, old name TFO. No, I've been slow because honestly, I guess it's because I write some, or so much of these, like, kind of ascetic things that most people don't know about, don't care about that they're probably, like, I don't really want to buy their book. So I'm still trying to continue the series. I think it's fun because I don't think a lot of folks know much about those things.

I think now with technology the way it is and understanding surveillance and how we do things and disrupting it, I think it's pretty cool. I just haven't gotten traction. So you kind of look at it and think, well, I can write more books, but am I doing it myself? Yes, I can, but I can also be doing more fun things like scuba diving and fishing with my money than just putting more books out there. that nobody's really looking to buy. So I don't think I've got more than about 10,000 typical readers on it. But if there was the interest, yeah, I would definitely continue it. I think that I have now been out of the cleared space for enough time

where I think the agency and DOD is getting to be a lot easier on me. And a lot of the stuff that I just don't know, so it truly is fiction. And so that's coming out. But I still am an Intel guy at heart so I can research the shit out of it and create something that is feasible, plausible. And I think it was like that. They used to ding me for analytical inferences. But now that I've had more time out, it's easier to be able to put those things together. So I'd love to continue the series.

I've been writing on one called Send Me. And I think that could be kind of interesting when it comes out. But we'll see. But yeah, definitely helps if folks read more and buy more, I can write more. Where can people go to find your books? Amazon, door stops. And I think you pretty much get them in audio, print, and digital. I've got the horror series out, folks that like New Orleans, I had to take a little break for a while when they weren't as happy with me.

doing some things. I created another like Alzheimer's book, Alzheimer's horror, psychological horror that was kind of got to this Nordic spin this year called the Weaver's Web. But I think he was putting a pin on that one and getting back into a little bit more of the opposite and tell things. You're also our black market giraffe dealer. Yeah, you're the originator.

Yeah. Dude, I so wish that Grange would have said something about that. I would, I should have asked them. beneath him. I was like, I forgot that it was recorded, and so I was like pinging. I'm like, when I saw it, I'm like, dude, ask him about the giraffes. Yeah, yeah, we had some good times. Yeah, so JT, how much is a baby giraffe going for back then?

I don't remember. I always have to look back. But I think they were getting in the thousands. So, I mean, for those that don't know about this, I had come, I had done a financial crime investigation of this company and, and Grange had sent me out there. This was when we were in the commercial business and then after a while, courts pointed Grange to take over

the court rulings. And we kind of ran in, you know, kind of ran that company for a little bit. It was a guy named Dr. Brown. And so if you look under Houston and Dr. Brown and some things, that's where, you know, the guy had like a

compound animals. And when his estate was going down, I mean, he was complicit in a lot of things that they found too. And so we're trying to save the company where a lot of people were actually working. There were some really good things happening. And that's where it involved selling off of some wild animals. And not as, you know, meat. They were trying to do good things.

But we also ran into the Russians and drugs and guns and all kinds of fun stuff. So cool little gig for about a year. It's wild. Guys, check out JT's books. I'll have links in the description as well and your website to Wolfhouse.com that link will be in the description there as well

check them out. It's a great book series. Also, if you want to know more about JT, he did a Team House episode it's got to be now four or five years ago. Yeah, I'll throw a link there down in the description as well.

This was awesome. Jack, you got anything to add Jack, of course. The high side. He's a high. You know, highfalutin writer, journalist and stuff like that. He's got a new book coming out in June. Very exciting. I'll put a link to the description down in the, I'll put a link down in the description

for the high side and for the new book that's coming out. So check them out there. And do us a favor. Support the show. You can get both eyes on geopolitics and the team house, ad free and early by going to patreon.com slash the team house. Thank you. Guys, a pleasure.

Thank you. Let's do this again. I'll be here. Take care. Thanks, guys. Hey, guys. I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Aiz On podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Team House and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know what you're going to get.

So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have the greatest hits of that week. It's really good. Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com.com slash join. You go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go. And that'll be it.

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