The Team House - Inside the GRU's Unit 29155 w/ former CIA Officer Doug London | EYES ON PODCAST

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

Today we were joined by former CIA Officer Doug London to talk about the article published by Insider and Bellingcat about the Russian operation to pay Taliban fighters $200k for every U.S. serviceman's death. We also dive a bit deeper into the GRU's Unit 29155, the unit responsible.Find Doug hereDoug's book "The Recruiter" https://www.amazon.com/Recruiter-Spying-Lost-American-Intelligence/dp/0306847302https://x.com/douglaslondon5?lang=enhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/douglas-london/Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseFind Andy Milburn here: ⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operationshttps://bsky.app/profile/andy-milburn.bsky.socialhttps://open.substack.com/pub/amilburn/p/journal-of-a-plague-year?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=emo6q&utm_medium=iosFind Mick Mulroy here: ⬇️https://fogbow.com/https://www.loboinstitute.org/https://x.com/MickMulroy?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthorhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-patrick-mulroy-31198b52/https://bsky.app/profile/mickmulroy.bsky.socialFind Jason Lyons here: ⬇️https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lyons-666873316?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_apphttps://bsky.app/profile/bgsilverback73.bsky.social#unit29155 #espionageBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes On. A very special guest today, Doug London, former CIA officer. Of course, we have Andy Miliburn, Jason Lyons. Mick Mulroy is in D.C. doing D.C. things. We're not supposed to talk about it. And Doug was a former guest of the team house. Great episode. Check that out if you have it. He's got the book, The Recruiter, Spying in the Lost Art of American Intelligence.

incredible book really great really like page turning uh really gives you a good uh glimpse at what goes into recruiting agents to spy against their countries um so doc thanks a lot for being here great thanks for having me boys how are you good great good right the big story yeah the big story was uh sometime last week middle of last week uh michael weiss and a couple other journalists from the insider. Roman de Brokadov and Christo Grosov came out with a pretty, pretty lengthy investigative piece about the Russian bounties on American soldiers that were, they were basically paying Taliban to kill American soldiers through Iran, obviously.

I mean, it's a huge article. I'll put the link in the description for the article, too, if you want to deep dive. that's why we have Doug here because Doug was quoted in it a bunch and Doug has extensive experience. So Doug, let's just crack into it. I don't even know if I have a question. I mean, just break it down. Yeah, sorry, I'm not a good journalist. Well, you know, I was a little snide.

I think I have to confess when Mike Wise reached out to talk to me about it because I was like, well, you know, I wrote about this in July of 2020. And he's like, what? And I was like, yeah, man. I wrote an op-ed actually for the New York. York Times because the Times had put out the initial story, right? Back then in 2020, talking about a bounty, all this kind of stuff. And I talked to the reporters who did it after they did their story. I was like, you know, in a way, you kind of undermine your own story with some of the wording

you used. But the bottom line was true that the Russians, specifically the GRU, were providing material aid and money with the specific goal of encouraging the Taliban to attack U.S. forces. And at the time when I wrote that thing, and this is, you know, God, it's going to be five years ago, right? That I took a lot of criticisms like, oh, it's politically motivated and what have you, and you're taking a shot at outgoing President Trump. And I was like, no, the thing about it was is that it was once again demonstration that the Russians will do whatever they can get away with against the United States and its interests, including lethal activity if there's no consequence. and there hadn't been any consequence of that. And at the time I wrote it, and again, as I talked to Michael, and I appreciate the way Michael depicted my comments,

I was like, you know, I think by calling it a bounty, you make it a little bit more like Hollywood-esque, like, you know, like posters or whatever like that, it was an incremental process, really, that the Russians had followed with a very clear goal of trying to push the United States out of Afghanistan, which is, you know, just too close to their next. of the woods given the Central Asian states that they still consider parts of Russia when you look at

how Putin thinks of the former Soviet republics, you know, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, down and on that little border area. And they had over time and over the course of my service in the region decided to push the envelope because they could and went from providing the Taliban very limited aid in small arms, basically just to keep their toe in the water, because they were still talking to the existing Kabul regime. But as they saw the fortunes turned their way, that's when they kind of jumped on and decided to pursue this program with the specific intent of bleeding U.S. forces. Boyce.

Yeah. So first of all, Doc, I know we've already introduced. you, but I think for the benefit of the audience, it's good to hear what you did, right? You headed Central Asia for the agency during what years? So from 2015 to 16, I was in a job, and again, I got to respect to parameters. The agency requires me to respect, where you could say I was a coordinator for military, of Special Operations Forces and our efforts to conduct lethal activity in the region. And that spanned pretty much globally, right?

And then in 2016, I became head of what the agency allows me to say was I was a CIA's chief of counterterrorism for South and Southwest Asia, and that included the war zones, Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran and the rest of South Asian countries with a real obvious focus on al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and the various partner groups. So my job was to be sort of that middleman providing support to the field and executing their operations, everything from foreign intelligence to collection to covert action activity and the lethal and kinetic aspects of it, as well as my link to the policymakers in terms of informing their understanding, decision-making and implementing their policy decisions during that time.

That's maybe a convoluted but sort of effective way of explaining what I do. And that overlapped, of course, this operation, which ran the Russian operation, G-R-U operation ran from 2015 to around 2020. And can you talk a little bit about the specific unit within the G-RU-29-155 and then what its role was here? Yeah, sometimes, and I don't need to be too oblique, but it's just, I have to be careful treading classified information that I'm aware of and what I can speak to that was referenced by Michael and Bell and Cat and such. So they specifically identified Unit 29155, which folks back here in the United States will

know them for their association with assassination efforts, sabotage activities around the world. They were the ones that tried to kill Scripple and his daughter in Salisbury, UK, back in 2018, with Novicek, a chemical weapon. They blew up plants in Bulgaria, Czech Republic. They tried to overthrow the government in the Balkans, Montenegro, during their time. And they've been tied to anomalous health incidents, the Havana Center. for better use of words. So they are sort of a special operations unit within GRU, which is Russian military intelligence.

And for context, and again, my overlap was I was in the chair, Chief of C.T. for the region from 16 to my retirement, at the very beginning of 2019. And I know in the article, they specify a couple of incidents, actual attacks, specific attack, one against Bagram, I believe, and there was a second, which they linked to 29155, and they link to the program.

As I was out to speak about it, and as we understood it at CIA, it's always been the GRU that was involved with supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. That was their responsibility. Their military intelligence, this was a military campaign going on, so that's their world.

And it's obvious, it's evident that they would then use 2915, which is a specialized unit, to conduct specific operational activities and goals, such as though that would be lethal, training, preparing, enabling Taliban and Taliban units to conduct that activity. So 29155 was little known, I think, to the public at least. Based at this time, I don't think they started really getting exposed until Bellingcat did its ex-Paze of first to Scripples, and then they went on to look back over time

and detected this unit's activities going back several years, at least to 2014 and the Little Green Men, if you would, a 29155 and the Wagner private military troops that were used to annex basically Crimea and operate in Ukraine's eastern now occupied areas. Because 2014 was kind of a catalyst, right, for GIU stepping up operations and based on Putin's perception of us countering him in Ukraine, of course, from our, you know, from our, you know, from our perspective on that, we didn't do enough to counter the Russians in Ukraine. And our partnership with Ukrainian intelligence services, in fact, our close partnership started after 2014, but nevertheless, for Putin 2014 and the United States' opposition in his eyes to the annexation of Crimea is

what kind of launched the GRU to step up its activities, right? Yeah, I think it's when they transitioned from using Spetsnows, which is their traditional special forces, you know, our sort of green, berets, seals, so calm, you know, the equivalent to where he dedicated the unit that was going to be much more forward-leaning in terms of what the Russians speak of as active measures. When they look at everything from political influence to sabotage, to assassinations, they call that active measures in their minds. We call it covert action because, you know, we have to do that in a way that's deniable to the U.S. government because it's essentially legal and it's grounds for war. I mean, if you think about it, we're being attacked,

literally having our forces being subject to lethal operations, that those are grounds for war. But I think the world has evolved so much into this hybrid warfare, multi-domain conflict that I'm sure a lot of your listeners are intrigued by and read about where it's all measures short of war, but still entirely lethal. And that's an interesting point, too, that perhaps we can talk about, you know, later after we talk through the, you know, the details of the program, but that seems to that acknowledgement that it is an act of war seems to lie behind perhaps. US administration's reluctance to call the Russians out.

You know, as you pointed out, it was Bellingat that did the legwork on this, right? And the acknowledgement, although there has been some acknowledgement from the administration, there's been no, I'm talking about both administrations. I'm talking about both, you know, Democrats and Republicans, acknowledgement, vague acknowledgement, but no, you know, no assertive statements such that, hey, the Russians have taken actions that have resulted in the loss of U.S. life, as indeed they did, right in Bagram and an attack, I know at least one that four Marines were killed. And yet we, because if we do acknowledge it, we acknowledge it, that it's an act of war, then the next question

is, what do we do about it? No, Andy, you've really hit the down on the head. And without sounding too geeky, from an Intel-esque kind of point of view, you know, folks have to understand that the intel community response to requirements, right? You know, we, you know, spying is fun. I was a spy for 34 years and I loved it, though I took it seriously. But you spy on things that there are policymakers, your decision makers want to know. So it's kind of interesting what we don't get asked to report on. And sometimes it's to your point. Well, if the decision makers become sort of confronted with evidence of something they've got to respond to, they may not want to hear. that because they don't want to have to respond to it. So to confront the administration with,

hey, the Russians are killing Americans. And that becomes, you know, a matter of public knowledge that, okay, not the details how we found out, but that the administration knows, then the government has an obligation or they're really in a pickle, so to speak, right? Because it looks like they're, you know, they're accused of everything from cowardliness to whatever. So your point is really spot on. They sometimes don't really want to know things. And I think, and without getting too political, you know, at the time, both administrations, whether it's a Trump administration or in its time or the Biden administration, they don't want to get in a war with Russia.

You know, Trump has his own relationship with Putin that he thinks is special and unique. And Biden believed he had enough problems going on internationally. And the last thing he wanted was, you know, to sort of be a catalyst for World War III. So I think from both administrations, it has been a reluctance to sometimes hear the news. And it's not just them. I mean, it's every administration going back. You know, I started out, you know, Ronald Reagan was president. If they're confronted with things like this, if they're confronted with, you know,

without having a choice that they've got to do something, sometimes their approach is not wanting to hear about it. And from my experience in this program with the GRU and what they were doing, at least at the time the Trump administration, they were being told about it, but they didn't really want to hear about it and they didn't want to deal with it for the reasons that you offer. Yeah, the specific case I was talking about just for the audience. It was actually three Marines were killed, three wounded in Bacrum in April of 2019, and CENTCOM under then General McKenzie made an official statement because Bellingcat, I forget if it was Bellingcat,

but there were reports at the time that, or no, the following year, that's right, in 2020, there were reports that this had been linked to the Russians, but McKenzie came out and said that they found no evidence to support such a link. I want to go back. In the article, too, no, no, in the article,

it also says, like, they kind of were like, hey, let's kind of pin this on Iran more than Russia, and, like, they're not really working together. So it was, it looked like there was a concerted effort, because, I mean, Iran's easier to beat up on than, like, superpower. Yeah, and we were

already doing that, right? I mean, the maximum pressure, you know, and the threat of using hostile military action was always present during that time. So I think politically it's served the interest to kind of skew it over to Iran. And certainly the Iranians were providing military aid to the Taliban at that time, and for very much the same reasons. And I don't want me to get off tangent here, so you all could bring me back if you want to. But, you know, the Iranians have no love for the Taliban. The Taliban killed Iranian officials in the 90s. in Harad. So there, you know, the Iranians are Shia and they're extreme Shia and the Taliban or Sunni and their extreme Sunni. So the Iranian motivation was very similar to the initial

Russian motivation, was let's just keep our feet warm in both camps because the Iranians were also seeing our counterparts in Afghanistan and had at least constructive relations. But they did not go into that design-specific campaign of, okay, we'll provide you aid specifically if you use it to encourage your folks to attack Americans. And just to understand contextually, you know, during the war, obviously the Taliban was attacking everybody in the coalition. But if you're a Taliban foot soldier, you might be a seasonal fighter. You're a farmer. You're a pine nut farmer, literally, but you fight it during the fighting season and stuff like that. And you're not getting paid much or you're getting paid enough. That's why you're doing it. And you've got to choose between

taking on the A&A, the Afghan National Army, or the A&P, the Afghan National Police, which are potent forces, but, you know, they're sort of limited, or you're going to attack Americans with AC130s and A10s and F-16s and Hymars. It's not a tough decision, right? It's like, okay, I think I'll take my chances with the A&A. So that's the real reason why the Taliban had to find a way to incentivize them. And that was my whole kind of issue, calling it a bounty, which I just, maybe because I'm an Intel guy, I don't like the language. It was specifically designed to get their fighters who are already fighting to take on the AC130s and the High Mars and what have you and our SOCOM forces instead of, you know,

a hit and run against the ANP or the ANA. Can you talk a little bit about how the operation was run? It was run out of Tajikistan, right, out of Dushan Bay, the Russian base there. around 2015, but can you talk a little bit about kind of the way it was set up and some of the lead characters involved? So I've got to be a little oblique on the details, right? And there's probably more details for your audience in your article. In fact, there are more details in the audience.

But you look at the geography and the Central Asian states that border Afghanistan in the north or Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The Russians have the largest presence and best relationship with Tajikistan. and Tajikistan has an infamous pass of supporting various Afghan rebel units, including the Northern Alliance, which we supported, obviously, in the 90s and used very much effectively to get rid of the Taliban after 9-11. Uzbekistan's relationships with the Russians are not quite as strong. They teetered back and forth in Turkmenistan has a lot of its own problems. So it's a place where the Russians have more influence, but Tajikistan is a user-friendly place.

you're bordering provinces like Badishkan and condues and such like that, which the government, the Afghan government held, but at great cost and not always successfully in the countryside, which is, again, where the Russians were able to take advantage of, you know, rat lines, pipelines, channels to be able to provide equipment and what have you. But, you know, they also have the luxury of meeting with Afghan Taliban in Tajikistan. It's an easy place for Afghans to travel to. There's a lot of, you know, confluence of ancestry and history. A lot of Afghans, like quarter of the Afghans, are Tajik's themselves.

So it's really easy for them. So the Russians didn't really have to venture into Afghanistan proper to go ahead and engage in these meetings, provide material aid. But they could conduct their meetings with the Taliban members. in Central Asia, specifically Tajik's son, for the most part, where the Tajik's were happy to allow it and look the other way, provide whatever material aid, money and such like that, and then the Afghans to whom they gave it could move it through their smuggling lines back into Afghanistan.

So, Doug, let me ask, going back to 29155, do we know what type of recruits that they pull or what they're personnel or like? Are they recruited specifically for their specialties, whether it's cyber or special operations, things like that? And also, do we know if they use foreign agents as well? So your first question, and without be marching our units, which are far superior obviously, but think about it as like selection for Delta, right, where it could be everything from, you know, Rangers or regular ground folks who have very, very positive records and track records who go through

a selection process. The GRU already has Spetsnazeg forces, you know, the military, Russian military, has Spetsnauz itself that it could draw from. So it's kind of similar. So it's sort of for them and elite unit. But like our operators with a lot of cross-chain, right? So they're also intel collectors, and they have various technical skills that allow them to do active measures, everything from cyber to political influence to assassination, to sabotage, and not just truly, you know, military combat operations. And here's what happened here.

29155 is essentially operating in an intel capacity, right? they were engaging, liaising, enabling, training, equipping, right? But not fighting. And they didn't really need to teach, you know, the Taliban how to fight as much as be that channel, right? So do they use foreigners? Yes, but it's agents, right? So they'll recruit, you know, Afghans or Syrians or what have you. And yes, the Russians writ large do use foreign or mercenary forces. We see this a lot in in Ukraine. We see them recruit a lot of simple Asians directly into their regular army, their traditional army. So they do have the potential, but again, think about the security clearance. Are they going to trust actually as a staffer, somebody in 29155 who's from

Turkmenistan or from Syria, or will they use them as an agent? So more often than not, they'll use them in an intel capacity as an agent and not actually as a staff member of 2955. if that makes sense. Yep, perfect. Thank you. Hey, guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member.

So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. but this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Teamhouse channel and podcast if you'd like to. And we really appreciate that. So go and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house.

So a highly sensitive operational one that has to go well and that has a high risk of compromise like the scruple operation in 2018, would be carried out directly by GIU agents. You know, they didn't try and recruit Brits or any other, any third national to do that. Yeah, I would just interject, Annie, because what they might do, though, as you all know, and I know you have a lot of folks,

service members who watch a program, listen to your program. Operations like these are usually in phases, right? You know, we're very focused on the end. You know, two guys come into Salisbury and try to kill Scripple, you know, and then the daughter. Operations like these generally have like casing phases, right, trying to determine patterns of life and activities and such like that. And they're often used with teams. So one team does not burn the other team, right? So you might have folks, which would include local agents.

And I don't believe this occurred in the case of Scripple. It might have occurred in some of the sabotage operations in Bulgaria. Gary, it absolutely did occur in Montenegro with the coup, right, where they were recruiting local assets to enable the ultimate active measure, whether it's going to be assassination, sabotage, or what have you. But certainly the lethal component, most often they want somebody they could trust holding the Novichick, right, or with the explosives. But I think we've seen in Germany some of the sabotage operations quite the opposite, where. they're basically enlisting even sometimes criminals, criminal organizations to try to find a better way to buffer themselves and insulate themselves, where they're not using their own folks because they know there's a good chance of getting caught.

And it's one thing for the Germans or the Poles to say, you know, we caught these, you know, Poles or Slavidians or whatever the nationality might be, or Germans, who set a fire or blew something up. and we believe they're tied to the Russians. Yeah, but you don't have the Russian there. So it does give them some insulation. You know, their tradecraft, and one thing I've always rebelled against, and I've worked a Russian target. I speak Russian. It was my first jobs.

It wasn't in Russia. It was chasing Russians outside of Russia, where it's a lot easier to recruit them. They're not 10 feet tall. And I think some of the success Bellingcat has had has been trade craft targets, where they've used like passports in series, which is just, I was like, are you kidding me? Why would you do that? People with records that were already out there, whether it was, you know, military careers or pictures

or whatever like that. So their tradecraft is not exceptional, which is why it seems to me they get discovered every time by the press, you know, separate from whatever, the CIA or M.I. or, you know, Intel services might know. I mean, they're added by the press because they leave a trail that's detectable. Another trail that was in the article was the gemstone company that they used to loan the money was like down the block from GRU's offices. It's like guys. Come on.

Yeah, right. Let's pick something somewhere else maybe. I don't know. So, you know, I think the Russians, they operate in volume is one of the things. You know, they're kind of a volume service. and they do a lot of stuff. And, you know, good operations are ones that are few and rare, and, you know, because you're trying to limit your footprint as well.

But in this case, as you're saying, the Jetson Place, I mean, what were they thinking? I mean, that's just like, you know, tradecraft 101. It was being expedient, right, and convenient over security that they were working toward. So, again, yeah, we've got to worry about the damage these groups could do because they do damage. They kill. They blow things up. I do believe they were involved in anomalous health incidents, Havana syndrome.

They're getting away with it, not because they're good at it, really good at it. They're getting away because of the political environment. And as a discussion that, you know, Andy's point about, well, you know, if you say, yeah, we know it was them, then you got to do something about it. And if you don't do something about it, there's no cost. There's no payment for the Russians. They go, okay, we'll just, you know, we'll just keep doing it. Yeah, amusing and amusing anecdote, to your point, Doug on Treycraft. The two guys, the two GRU agents involved in Screepal poisoning, Chepiga and Mishkin,

reportedly they bought a bag of cannabis and a prostitute in London, you know, before heading down to Salsbury, which is, you just can't imagine the agency doing that. Well, no. No, and I guess, you know, luckily the agency doesn't have to have like a separate class and go, okay, guys. Don't get a prostitute, you know, stay away. I mean, it should be kind of obvious, but I think that we see that again and again. One, you know, to the point of calling them out and then being committed to action, it's kind of interesting when you trace and administrations have changed in the UK.

but there remains on both sides of the political aisle there a resolve that Russia is the enemy that we don't always see here. And it may trace from 2018. But when you look, I mean, the UK is all in on support of Ukraine, both the Labour and the Conservative Party. There's no fudging the issue. Whereas here we see this very strange convergence on both the left and the right of people who are apologists

for the Russians. And, you know, as you commented, that that has affected, well, you didn't comment, but I'm reading between the lines that has affected both the intelligence agency's ability to do things and the military's ability to do things. But it's even undermined our own resolve, our recognition that we are at war with Russia. In Russia's eyes, we are already. we had been since 2014. And that I find disturbing. Yeah, I would, you know, my own, my own assessment is that's probably the biggest success that Russia intelligence has had because they very actively, that's been part of their active

measures to influence public opinion in the United States and globally, right? And they've been tremendously successful in the United States by over the years. And it certainly predates President Trump. So again, I'm trying, I don't want to make this political. It has always been their effort to influence public opinion. I mean, I'm a cold warrior, right? I served in the agency from 1984 to 2019. So I kind of span the Cold War and then, you know, war on terror and back into strategic competition again, right?

And I saw that always. It was always a persistent effort of the Russians to use opinion and influence. Covert influence is what we would call it to achieve strategic goals. So back in the 80s, it was, you know, something as limited as trying to keep American intermediate nuclear missiles out of Europe by making it look like the United States were the bad guys, the Russians were good guys, you don't need these missiles, you're not threatened by us, yada, yada, to where we saw in the teens in the United States and then, you know, 2016 and three day to 2016, this idea that, hey, we're not, we're not your enemy, right? And we're actually, you know, we're just minding our business. And we're the ones where the ones were the, the victim, were the ones who were under threat. And I think, and again, without looking too inward and studying the politics of the United States there, I think a lot of the U.S. political landscape became shaped by this victimization idea, and the Russians really tapped into it, and it just kind of aligned with a trend we saw that made the U.S. political landscape more divisive. The Russian

aim isn't to love Biden or Trump or whatever. The Russian aim is to weaken the United States. And a country sort of at war with itself becomes less of a threat externally. And that has been really, if I'm going to give the Russians credit, it's been masterful. They've done it with a plump. And arguably more dangerous. You know, their trade crime in that area is much better. And for the audience, there's a great, not great, but it was a very good Washington Post article that came out in June, I believe, that talks about funding Russian and actually Iranian funding for US news, or media outlets. And some of these are quite mainstream outlets. I mean, the gray zone is mentioned there, for instance. And so, again, it's not just the right that is susceptible to this.

The Gray Zone is quite far to the left by U.S. standards, headed by our old friend Max Blumenthal. And, you know, the Washington Post comes out and says that Iranian government, you know, paid thousands of dollars to Wyatt Reed, who is Washington-based editor for the Grey Zone. And Max Blumenthal, who's the site's founder, regularly appears on Russian TV and, you know, accepted a trip to Russia in a celebration,

in a celebration of RT, which is the Russian controlled network. And, you know, it was an event attended by Putin. And, you know, no one kind of, no one thinks through that, hey, this is an enemy of the United States. And yet mainstream media, and they hardly seem to shame by it, are fully being supported by it. And their output reflects that. Gray Zone has been a big, well, has been. an opponent of U.S. contributions to Ukraine, for instance. Well, I think it's really telling when you look at least at what's released publicly.

And, of course, Americans no longer trust institutions that release information anyway, whether it's a U.S. government agency or a news source that's not aligned with their own particular interest. They question it. But the Russians went from introducing false information and using bots to simply amplifying information that was already appearing from American politicians or journalists or whatever, making it easier to deny that they're up to no good anyway. Because if they're actually amplifying the same content and the same themes that Americans are,

then that makes a lot easier for them to hide in that noise with the protection of the very people they're targeting. That, to me, as a spy, that's really scary. I mean, you saw like the indictment on tenant media where they were being paid and there was a back and forth between a producer there and one of the guys, you know, paying them that was like, you should really do this type of video. I think it was the Tucker Carlson and the Russian supermarket thing, like really talk about this. And he's like, I might be too obvious. I'm paraphrasing clearly. And he's like, no, I think it's good.

He's like, all right, whatever. Because like they're getting paid like literally six figures of video. Yeah. You know, which is unheard of. Like even if you're a huge, if you're a huge podcast, maybe you make that kind of money. But for standalone videos, you are not making that kind of money. Yeah, but they didn't decide they wanted to question it, right? No, they were just cash in the checks.

They happened to take the money. And that's what foreign intel services are taking advantage of. Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of gotten into like the producing of the content, you know, rather than amplifying it and doing like that. They're actually like, I mean, but I guess that's the risk we run with having. free speech, free press, right? We can pretty much say anything we want. But I guess it's up to the reader or listener or viewer to discern it.

Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, we started talking about like podcast world. So I got interested. I got, you know. No, I'm cool. But I mean, just you've got to think about, okay, the CIA, when we do anything like that and we conduct our influence as well, right? We're very focused on, okay, what does the end user,

certificate look like, right? When you think about, oh, you know, U.S. arms, you can't sell to somebody unless you know who's actually at the end of that line. If that's the same thing, we want to make sure that where, like, our cover is going to hold up. Where the Iranians and the Russians, I mean, they, and even the Chinese, the Chinese talk about

a volume business. I mean, we've got TikTok now before the Supreme Court, and it is undebatable that Chinese intelligence uses TikTok to gauge, pulse, and then manipulate American opinion. I mean, and I know the various lawyers will make their cases and stuff, but it's just indisputable where it has been, for the most part, of the previously a bipartisan issue where, you know,

the Chinese are dangerous and TikTok is dangerous, and here's why. And we could actually, like, graph it out. And they, that's not really worried about their end user. I mean, they own TikTok, right? And they own anything Chinese, literally. a law in China where if you are a Chinese national business academic institution, you are legally required to work with the intel and security services. By law.

Me on my soapbox, sorry. Doug, from a kind of from a Russian policy perspective, is it fair to say that, you know, all these actions in Bulgaria, Montenegro, Chechia, and Afghanistan, though, are kind of sideshows what Putin really cares about is Ukraine. And, you know, this is kind of classic attempts to affect the outcome there. I mean, do you think that's fair to say, or is it? Because these activities all, you know, as we mentioned earlier, seem to have stepped up since 2014 and certainly have become, with the exception of Afghanistan,

But the ones in Europe have, the German sabotage, attempts at sabotage, for instance, have become perhaps, had stepped up, escalated in the last couple of years. You know, I think the way I look at it and the way I would encourage others is, you know, Putin doesn't do things tactically. He does things strategically. So you've got to step back a little bit. What is his overall goal? And he has one. Again, Putin was a KGB guy that came up in my day. did, right? He was out there in the 70s and the 80s as a KGB operative. As a KGB case officer. That was his

job. And there's various books, Catherine Belton, Daniela Riklova, have written that suggests, you know, Putin's main job when he was in Dresden, which was in Eastern. And again, I'm trying not to get too often tangent, so reel me back in if you need to, was to operate with, you know, active measures organizations, foreign terrorist organizations, for one thing, right? So he's looking at a world that he wants to return to, where was the Soviet Union as a legitimate world power and a bipolar kind of system of, in his mind, more or less equals, that's what he once again. Russia doesn't have the capability of it, not directly toe to toe. And that's why the active measures, that's why the intel, that's why the sabotage. So, you know, the Russians invaded Georgia

in 2008, six years before Ukraine. right, just to remind ourselves of that, because in his mind, the former Soviet republics are still part of greater Russia. He sees him that way, and ultimately he wants to restore that relationship, even if they're not physically parts of Russia, that they're basically vassals of Russia. So whether Chechnya or Dajestan or all these places, that's how he started, was the second Chechen War when he was first prime minister in 2000, right? Oh, you know, peace dividend, we're all good friends. No, that was never his inclination.

And I think we really hurt ourselves, the United States government, by thinking that was ever a possibility. Again, we're Americans. We tend to think with our hearts more than our minds sometimes when it comes to the world. But he's always been committed strategically to reestablishing Russian power as a superpower and conquering territory, even if it's not by having troops everywhere. by maintaining a spear of influence. He thinks in 70s terms. We don't even use these terms from our spears of influence. Nobody even talks about that that way.

But to understand Putin is to understand that is the way he thinks. So his job, I don't believe Putin necessarily wants to invade Western Europe. He wants to subjugate Western Europe. That's his aim. It's all very strategic. And he needs to exclude the United States as a threat and competitor to accomplish that. And he's done this through this. hybrid multi-domain approach as he himself has tried to get Russia healthier. And then,

and even if you're a, if you think Putin was doing it for the right reason, made a tragic mistake in Ukraine in the sense that his forces were not as good as he believed them to be. The resistance was far greater than he thought it would be. And that's a systemic failing of an intel service which tells their leader what they want to hear as opposed to telling their leaders, what's going on to make their decision, something I worry about back here, regardless of political party. Right. So his goals are strategic.

His goals, Ukraine is a part of the greater puzzle. And it's really reestablishing Russian power. He took a bruising hit in Syria, right, just recently. And that is, that is a serious element that, once again, Russia is projecting power in Africa. And in the Middle East, well, you know, they're, there, there. their PMC forces, their vaguers are getting their asses beat in Africa right now. And they are. I'm sorry, wrong language maybe.

And in Syria, they're gone, right? They bet on the wrong horse. So things are not all rosy, but strategically, he will persist. And the way to address, and again, just from my Russian background is it's not, you're not going to shame Putin. You're not going to show him logic. You're not going to show him even incentive. Oh, it's better. Sell your gas to the European.

you'll make money. It's about here's the cost of what you're trying to accomplish. And so long as there is a cost, and I believe we saw this in the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons. I fully believe Putin was prepared to use a topical nuclear weapon in the conflict with Ukraine. And I also fully believe that Director Burns of the CIA went to Turkey to see his counterpart, Rishkin, in the SDR, and said, here's exactly what's going to happen. And Putin's like, oops, okay, so we're going to pull back here.

Because that's the only reason that tenor changed. And the only reason is it was a price he knew he couldn't afford to pay. Which gets back to the fact that, you know, as he focuses perhaps more on these special activities in 2022, according to the article, the, you know, the GRU formed a department for special activities and 29155 was one of three units under that department of special activities and the the kind of the chain of command from the GRU I believe goes to the chief of the general staff but it's you know but it's really I mean there's no one doubts that it's Putin that is taking a direct interest and giving direct orders via that chain of command and yet you know

as we talked about here, in the West, we seem kind of powerless, have been powerless to counteract this. What would you like to see done from a policy perspective or, or let's not even talk policy perspective, the type of actions that might work in your opinion? I think that keeps you on safer ground, right? Yeah, I, you know, the U.S. clearly is not powerless. I think the U.S. worries about repercussions and consequences, which we touched on earlier. If we play in that same world, that same shadowy world, we're really good at it, and we have incredible tools. And we could do things through cyber, through influence, through active measures, if you want to use those terms, and even using deniable kinetic power, right, in a way that would be superior to what

the Russians or the Chinese for that matter could do. The problem with the United States policy in my mind, in my opinion only, is it tends to be very symmetrical, right? So if we get hit cyber, we want to complain about it or do something cyber, but overly. If we get hit in an attack, right, we, we rattle the chains, whatever, we're fighting an asymmetrical enemy symmetrically, and I just don't think that works. And I think we need to tap into our own asymmetric capabilities, which I would tell you from first-hand experience, is superior to what either the Russians or the Chinese and certainly the Iranians can bring to bear. But I think we're worried particularly of exposure. The Russians, Chinese, they don't care about exposure. They don't worry about their public. They don't worry about the

press. They don't worry about international opinion. We do. And legitimately so. We have to, because we are a democracy. And we're among the liberal democracies in the world to talk about values and doing things that are just by the law and stuff like that. So I think it's partial that word about escalation, right? Because the Russians, even if it's asymmetrical and shadowy, we want the Russians to know we did it. If we, you know, take down their stock market or, you know, suddenly billions of Russian dollars or rubles disappear or their pipelines start malfunctioning or what have you, in a way we want them to know. And who else would have done it but us, right? But at the same time, we're worried about, okay, will they then, you know, go overboard?

Will they then retaliate, you know, with a tackle nuclear missile or something else? And what happens when the post of the Times, you know, leaked this and how will we look? And what will the Brits say and the Germans say and such like that? So I think we worry a lot. And I understand that I'm not a politician. I was a spy, you know. But I can tell you at least from the mechanics of that world, these are things that would work to demonstrate consequences, you know, provide consequences, which would influence Russian, Chinese,

Iranian behavior. But there's a political cost to it. And one that I'm honestly, you know, I admit, I'm not well equipped to address. I wonder what the, if the, if the, those consequences would be amplified if one of them was caught within our borders operating. Yeah, I'd like to, I'd like to think so, but I think the Der Spieger and New York and, what was 60 Minutes, Exposé done on AHA, anomalous health institutes, did show activity within our borders, right? In a very compelling case, right? And do you believe it or don't believe it based on what's presented, but talked about a Russian who, you know, their investigation proved was Russian military intelligence, was GRU, who was caught, I think, in Texas, and his footprint aligned with what,

the victim certainly believes was an H.I attack in the United States. So I just don't know. I think, you know, Americans are so, you know, fused into what their belief system is and their process and which institutions they believe or don't believe. I don't know that exposés like that even within our borders are compelling, though necessary. And, you know, hopefully they do sort of, at least inform how people think about the issues. Yeah, and that makes sense because recently the story came out about the Wagner guy that was caught at the border with the passports and the money and everything. It just kind of was like a blip on the media's radar and then was gone. It's almost like it just didn't matter.

Look at all the lethal operations the Iranians have conducted or tried to conduct the United States. They're trying to blow up the Saudi ambassador at a restaurant I go to in Georgetown. And it's no question about it. They try to kidnap an American journalist in Brooklyn, D, just so let you know, close to your home, right? People are like, yeah, that's terrible. What a shame. The Russians tried to kill, and again, I have to put it this way deliberately. According to the press, there was a Russian intel defector in the United States that the Russians tried to kill using a Mexican academic, right?

And it was in the book Spies called Watson's book and then run in the press. and the press kind of vetted his story with their sources at FBI that, yeah, this was, you know, an assassination effort, casing, kinetic, and it was a Russian hand behind it, and people like, well, you know, yeah, who's playing today in the playoffs, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's priorities for folks? I think for it to get to a point where it's going to move things like the, like move the political, like meter up would be a mass casualty event. Yes, I agree. You know, that's like the only thing that would really spit up the American public to be like, who is this? Send everybody.

It's like 9-11. It was weeks ago, just weeks ago, that a couple of media outlets ran the story, which seems, you know, compelling that the Russians had put incendiary devices, sent them via U.S. carriers, what D.HL, I think it was, that did blow up, I think, in Germany and in the UK, right? And the police services in both countries, Germany and the UK went, yeah, this looked like it was a Russian intel operation. We saw a common said, yeah, this was casing, this was testing to see, you know, what it would take. They were mailed from Lithuanian, right? And how much reaction did that get? That's it. Ladies and gentlemen, that's an act of war.

Yeah. You know, that is literally by law, by the law of conflict, that's an act of war. and I didn't see a lot of enthusiasm about dealing with that one. It was barely reported. It barely reported. It was like, really? I would think that would be front page news. But you're right.

If that same DHS plane blows up over LaGuardia Airport and kills a bunch of Americans, you know, yeah, maybe then, but do we need to wait for that? Yeah. And even when that happens, I can't help thinking that there's going to be a sizable portion of the public and maybe even the administration, regardless of the administration, who are in denial. Yeah. Oh, it was Al-Qaeda.

It was Islamic State. Yeah. I mean, you know, we talked about it on this show that it's just incomprehensible, I think, regardless of which end of political spectrum you fall, that we are dragging our feet on aid to Ukraine. You know, here is a means to her. hurt our adversary. We're at war with them in many ways. There's no doubt about it that they are our adversary of the Russians. And here's a way to hurt them at a cost in dollars, not in lives, right? Not U.S. lives, at least. And yet we've been dragging our feet about that. And there's all

this talk about this is such a high price. On one side, on the other side, there's talk about fear, again, fear of escalation, which gets your point that actually, ironically, the fear of escalation is the one thing that will deter Putin. Nothing else. Not talk of, hey, wouldn't it be greater for the world order if we had a Russian reset and all this other stuff? It is simply, he's got to be told that his decisions, his actions will result in greater pain to him than, you know, not taking action. And that's the only way he can be to do it. Yeah, but there isn't that universal acceptance in the United States or even a majority of Americans who think Russia is our adversary. I was just going to say that. You know, and our nominee for Director of National Intelligence

has basically depicted her opinion that, you know, Russia was the victim of Ukraine and NATO. Assad was the victim, right? So I wish there was sort of universal acceptance of what I I believe are empirical truths. But today's environment, that is just not the case. There was even those, you know, I would guess those who have not served in Iraq and Afghanistan when the New York article came out defended Russia by saying, well, this is what we did to them in the 80s. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's like, yeah, totally different situation.

Why was Russia in Afghanistan? Why were we in Afghanistan? But they willfully ignore all that stuff and take and swallow the Russian propaganda line. no it's i mean again is it's it's distressing right that the russians have been that successful and the biggest reason is we need to look near the home of why they've been that successful you know we've we've sort of enabled them to be that way anybody jason this is awesome now that you depressed everybody. Yeah.

On that, on that, happy note, that you know, right? No, but I think, I,

your point is well taken, Doug, that certainly the United States has, I mean, no one, no one surpasses us when it comes to

our ability to strike back. It's just the question of having the political will to do so. Yeah. That is what is tripping us up. All we've done so far in terms of, at least publicly,

you know, and I'd like to think there's things that we're not doing publicly, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. We've only established offices whose jobs are to call out false information. State Department has one. I think, you know, DHS has one. The Bureau probably has one too. But that's, you know, one, I, okay, yeah, you got to do that.

But those offices need to have credibility. And there need to be teeth. And there's, there's no teeth. I saw Jim Hines, he's the ranking member on, Hipsy, the House Oversight Committee on Intelligence, right? And so he's got to know what's going on. Lord knows I was up on the Hill enough times telling these folks what we were doing. And he was even in a wishful thinking, yes, and we should and could be able to do more ourselves to punish China when they, you know, do salt typhoon and go into our telecom, which leads me to believe,

I guess we're not for all the reasons we've just discussed. That's scary. Yeah. We can't just let it go. Oh, I mean, even if we did hit back somehow, whether it's cyber or anything else on China or Russia, cyberly, like, will people really give a shit? At the end of American citizens, will they actually care at the end of the day? Especially if it's more of a covert, non-kinetic like, you know, people actually dying. But think about it, right? And here's what they're thinking about in the White House, regardless who's in the White House, Republican, Democrat, whatever like that. remember the pipeline, the guest pipeline that got taken down by ransomware, and that actually, I think, was grim.

I don't think that was tied to a state actor and such like that. People freaked out. Prices were going up, all that kind of stuff. So when you're at war, whether it's in the daylight or the shadows, you know, there's a price. You're going to take catch with these. It's going to be hits. So we'll take a few hits. I don't know that any White House is prepared for, you know, prices to spike or people to panic or

you know, people will do a run on the supermarkets because they think, oh, the supply chain for toilet paper is going to be interrupted again. So while they seem irritants and minor in terms of the overall cost in what we are getting in return, you know, saving lives, you know, keeping countries from being invaded, protecting our allies, that's probably part of the political calculus that the decision makers were thinking, you know, do I want that to happen on my watch? and then for people to blame me for it. And the Russians know that. And the Chinese know that. That's the thing. They get it. I guess it's easier when you're like an authoritative government, right?

Like you don't have to worry about political opponents. Yeah, you know, they don't have to worry about free speech or opinion or polls or any of that kind of stuff. You know, luckily they have other problems. Yeah. Doug, this is incredible. Check out Doug's book. Really good book. the recruiter. The link is in the description. The story we've been mentioning, the link will be

in the description as well, really well researched, incredible article about all the GRU's fuckery, for lack of a better word. That's the best term I could have thought of it. Yeah. Yeah. And where it goes from here, I mean, it's going to be interesting with the new administration. I mean, I hope Trump kind of lets our intel agencies a little bit off the chain where they can, at I don't know do something like going slash and tires just make their lives a little bit difficult with like because China's the infiltrating the telecoms is pretty gnarly like and they're just they're just in there like are we going to get them out like what's going to happen next it's going to be an interesting four years for sure uh boys any other thoughts

no all right I want to tell I want to tell I want to tell everybody to check out Doug's book again the recruiter the link is in the description of course Andy Milburn his book uh when the tempest gathers in the description any and all links to find Doug to find Jason to find Mick to find Andy the links will be in the description Patreon.com slash the team house if you want to help support the show you get no ads whatsoever and you get two two podcasts for the price of one can't beat that anywhere on the internet so guys this is awesome thank you Thank you very much.

Thanks, Doug. Got a great time.