The Team House - Iran War, Israeli Spying, and the ODNI Shakeup | EYES ON GEOPOLITICS

Episode Date: June 8, 2026

Mick Mulroy and Jonathan Hackett break down the latest on the Iran war, including the stalled ceasefire talks, the Strait of Hormuz crisis, Israel and Hezbollah, sanctions, and whether the U.S. air campaign has created more strategic problems than it solved. They also dig into Israeli spying concerns, the ODNI shakeup after Tulsi Gabbard’s exit, and how Russia and Iran are using gaming platforms, crypto, cyber, AI, and new tech to reshape modern intelligence work.GhostBed ⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/teamFOR 10% off! Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSubscribe to our newsletter!!!!https://teamhousepodcast.kit.com/joinJack's news outlet:⬇️https://thehighside.substack.com/Find Jon Hackett here:⬇️Jon's Twitter:https://x.com/jonathanhackettJon's LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettJon's books:https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0C5L659N5?ccs_id=e11a2062-f8d3-498e-bfd7-7d2f3869caf6Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejonathanhackettTwitter: https://x.com/jonathanhackettCheck 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/Whitefish security summit ⬇️https://whitefishsecuritysummit.comFind Marc P here:https://x.com/MpolymerFind 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 Audio00:00 — Start / Eyes On crew checks in and the Iran war remains in a holding pattern01:22 — Iran ceasefire talks, the Strait of Hormuz, and what the U.S. can’t give away04:39 — Iran’s survival mode, internet access, China, Russia, and waiting out the U.S.07:29 — Israel, Hezbollah, Lebanon, and why no side may actually want the same deal08:45 — The blockade, Iranian capital flight, and why sanctions may hit the people more than the regime12:16 — Was the Iran air campaign a strategic mistake?16:24 — Why America keeps winning battles but losing wars21:15 — Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and the consequences of bad policy objectives24:59 — Ceasefire rumors, weak negotiations, and Iran’s experienced diplomatic team30:27 — Could covert action and unconventional warfare bring regime change in Iran?37:14 — DIA raises concern over Israeli spying on the U.S.46:16 — Tulsi Gabbard out, ODNI shakeup, and whether intelligence could be politicized55:46 — Russia and Iran recruiting teenagers through gaming platforms and crypto58:00 — Cyber, AI, quantum computing, and the future of intelligence work01:07:38 — Whitefish Security Summit, Patreon, and closing thoughtsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

There are many examples, but there are three big examples of Israel doing either espionage or actions like this against the U.S. that were publicized that are significant and should lead into this to understand like this is not a new thing. The first one is the Liberty incident, June 8, 1967, when Israel bombed a U.S. destroyer and killed over 100 Americans and did this using signals intelligence intercepts of the vessel. And so that's a very important, like, early stage before we were really close friends. Then the way Israel got access to its nuclear program was by stealing through industrial espionage, U.S. nuclear information and material out of the United States to Israel. That's another very big, important one. And the third most recent one is John Pollard, the U.S. person who spied for Israel. And I think it was five years ago. I was in Jordan at the time.

He was repatriated back to Israel and given Israeli citizenship in this big fanfare. So, I mean, this is not like a new thing. Again, like they're looking at us as an asset, not just. just financially, but also relationally and also informationally. There are things to gain from that relationship that sometimes the U.S. just won't give it. So they're going to take it. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics.

I'm here with John Hackett and Mick Mulroy Marines. Unfortunately, no, I'm joking. I'm joking. John's got his shirt on, his Mar-Soc shirt on. Representing. Best logo, I would say, in the military. It's Mar-Soc-Worn. Good for D-Day because that was, you know, the Pacific.

theater that's where this came from yep um a lot happening as usual kind of like i wouldn't say a holding pattern but it's the same kind of nonsense we've been trading we've been bombing certain areas in iran and ramsman shooting missiles and drones at kuwait um it's kind of been an ongoing thing the straight of her moose is still relatively shut i think more and more boats have gone through but it's still not the same as what it used what it was you know february February 27th. So much stuff happening. I mean, you know, Tulsi Gabbard out as ODNI.

New NBC News report talking about, you know, the DIA elevating the level of, I guess, the level of alert about Israel spying on the U.S. It's just a ton of stuff happening. Let's start off with Iran. Mick, what are you tracking this week? Where are we at? Yeah. So I think you're something.

up the stemmede. So, normally a ceasefire is all about negotiations. That's the point of a

ceasefire. If you were just going to stop fighting, it's just the end of the war. But we

can't end the war because they still have the strait. They didn't have the straight when we started.

They do now. So we can't give up the block aid until they give up the strait.

And that's just to get us into negotiations on a new nuclear. So what I would say the U.S. can't do, we cannot give them money for reopening the street. That would be a defeat. Period. We're now paying the country to open up an international waterway. I do think it would be fair for us to end the blockade if they open. So that's about where I would say we can go.

And then when we get into a new nuclear agreement, it has to be more restricted than the one that President Trump elected to get out of 2018. Or people are going to be what was all this? It has to. And now, I think, face it, I think I already know what Jonathan's going to say. They're more likely to go toward getting a nuclear weapon than before they were for the war. So they are going to try to get in it. So it means we have to do everything we can to prevent them from doing that.

And that means anytime, anywhere, inspections, dismantling of the program, returning the turning, sending the H.E.U. out to either get degraded and sent back in or just out. If we can't get there, then the sanctions, all the sanctions, and maybe more sanctions need to be implemented. Frozen assets need to remain just that frozen and any other economic pressure we could put on. But then again, there's a big carrot that could come with that for them. I mean, it's not just all sticks for them. If they agree to what I described, to return of the H.U dismantling the program, no enrichment, then sanction release has to come. There has to be something for it, right? And so, and even frozen assets. But that's going to come then.

Until then, what are we going to do? Because it really just doesn't look like Iran wants negotiating to me at all. In addition to saying, I don't want to negotiate, which is kind of clear. But also, they're saying you have to stop the war in Lebanon. We can get into that. And then at the same time, they say, we fully support Hezbollah and Hezbollah refuses to join the siegefire. Like, how the hell are we going to stop the war in Lebanon if Hezbollah keeps attacking Israel? Like, we can't.

It's not going to happen. So it's almost like they want to create an impossible scenario and just sit what they have. This is a good, I think, time to turn over to Jonathan. Like, what is the Iranian regime's headspace right now? What do they think is working for them, not working for them, and kind of, I know you're just speculating. Where do you think they want to go? Well, they're definitely in survival mode now more than ever. they've been turning the internet back on, which is an interesting domestic decision,

because it means that their risk calculus, at least domestically, has changed versus how it was over the past 60-plus days. So that means they think that things domestically are getting more under control. Now, that could also be because they see themselves in a better position internationally, against vis-to be the United States. Knowing the power they have over the Straits of Formuz, they probably feel emboldened, which makes sense, because now the greatest superpower on the planet is forced to come to a negotiating table over protracts. negotiated negotiations that appear to be going in Iran's favor. So it does make sense that there's that domestic international kind of change going on with the way that Iran is seeing the world.

Additionally, China has not backed off of supporting Iran economically and in other ways as well. That's another reason to be emboldened. Russia, of course, is not. And the European Union is kind of getting more and more divided from the United States also. So Iran is looking at the world, that state actors and seeing divisions rather than unity, which makes it a little bit easier for them to feel that they're safer now. And the longer they can keep this going through November, which we've been saying over the past few months, that this is a goal of the regime, is to keep this situation a stalemate or a conflict until November elections in the United States. They do not want a peace deal now because that would be bad for them, come the U.S. elections. They want discord in the United

States against the current government, both in Congress and elsewhere, to try to disrupt the interest that the people now making decisions have against Iran. On the side of that, as you were mentioning, Mick, the Lebanon issue is very important because the U.S. entered bilateral negotiations with Iran, but it was a war with at least three parties. Of course, there were more parties than that, but there were three main parties. Only two of those parties are negotiating right now, and the third party seems to be at odds with both of their end goals.

They have different end goals, but neither of those goals are goals that Israel wants. And I think that leads a lot to why things are heating up so much in Lebanon and they weren't before. Because you remember when the war first started and we were talking about this, you know, why aren't the Houthis getting up? Why aren't that, why isn't Hesbola reacting more? Even back in June last year, during the first round of strikes, Hasbola didn't react the way that many expected they would being, you know, totally activated and starting another front opening up. They did to some degree, but they didn't as much as we thought they might if, you know, the doctrine was supposed to go the way it was. and now it's getting hotter, and the question is, is it all Hezbollah getting hotter, or is it Israel forcing Hezbollah to react to destroy the output of these negotiations that the U.S. and Iran both are trying to work toward?

And I think it probably is some more truth to the latter of that, where there's a spoiler outcome that Israel's looking for. So then you might have the only party of the three that wants an actual settlement is us. Right? Yes. So Iran doesn't. So they're fully fine telling the Hezbollah, hey, keep lobbing missiles and rockets into northern Israel. Israel doesn't want to see it. So they're like, bring it on.

We're just going to keep going deeper into Lebanon. And it makes our position the more tenuous. Because the two sides that we are going up against, not we're not going against Israel, But the two other sides of this don't want the strategic outcome that we want, it appears. Is that what you're basically saying? Yeah, and also, too, I mentioned Iranian domestic politics and American domestic politics. Israel's domestic politics are very important as well. And we know that all politics are local.

And there's a lot of division inside the Israeli government and with the Israeli people about not just the way the war is being executed, but how are domestic politics being executed inside of Israel? And I think that this has been a common theme coming up as military. action crescendos outside of Israel, it tends to be correlated to also domestic political issues, where there's some distraction from domestic political issues with war as a way to distract. It also has its legitimate purpose, but it is exploited at the same time for domestic consumption. So when will the blockade have... Will it change their perspective over time, or is it just they can endure it?

I think right now we haven't seen changes in behavior that could happen that would make this negated. And what I mean is we have the Caspian Sea. There's a north-south sea route for oil and gas shipment out of Iran that can go straight to Russia, which is very important to consider and that Iran has not stepped up. They do have a little bit of stuff going through the Caspian, but it's not the way that it could be. Also, on the other side of it, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain are all in discussions about an alternative pathway. besides Fujera and besides Yanbu to move oil and gas out of the peninsula to the Arabian Sea or into the Med, which are two other routes that could actually change the way that this blockade is valued not only by Iran, but also by Gulf partners who are currently pressuring the West

in the United States in particular to stop the hostility so that they can get back to production. So if that changes somehow, this is going to change both sides in different ways how they're calculating what is the blockade doing? Is it valuable? Should it continue? And what is Iran willing to do to remove the blockade? If Iran is able to export over Caspian and also overland, if there are overland routes that they're able to negotiate, perhaps with Turkey, for example, or Azerbaijan, which is their arch enemy currently because Israel supports Azerbaijan. But if there are political calculations that can be manipulated or changed, this would change how the blockade affects Iran. And it's important that we realize that over the past 10 years, especially since 2017, when we exited the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran dramatically began, increasing capital flight out of the country. That means elites and those associated with the

government base move dollars and other foreign denominated currencies like euros and pounds out of Iran's central bank and the Iranian banking system to Europe and to Hong Kong banks and Dubai as well. Because they anticipated something like this might happen in the future. So like for example, last year, $36 billion of U.S. dollars exited Iran out of regime-linked accounts to Europe. That's a huge amount of capital flight, and they're doing that to insulate themselves against exactly this type of blockade. So although the Iranian people will certainly see problems with food shortages, gas shortages, Q lines, all these issues, which they are seeing now, the regime is not really feeling these impacts the way that we might expect them to with a blockade.

Because if we think, like, oh, their oil sales, you know, they're not able to do it the way they were before. Well, they're actually still selling oil to China. China's still paying. The money is not going to Iran. It's going to banks and. in Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Hamburg, London, Paris, and Moscow. And also to certain banking systems in the Cayman Islands, which is a UK dependency, which is not governed normally like other parts of the United Kingdom, which is a big problem for the UK. So Iran is functioning as if it wasn't blockaded at the government level.

From the regime, which is the only thing that we have to put pressure on because they don't care about the plight of the Iranian people. Like, they made that clear. And also because of the dual purpose where, well, you're right. And actually hurting the people, the way that this blockade and sanctions hurt people in an authoritarian government, actually helps the regime because it actually offloads some of the repression that the regime would already be doing anyway. Yeah. Right. Damn it.

So how does the U.S. come out of this? We don't. We don't. But we, I mean, I want to be, I want us to be successful. It gets more and more complicated every day. I mean, we can all admit that the bombings on February 28th, and this is just, state military operations were a fucking mistake. The thing is that you've got to look ex post, ex ante, so there's like before the fact,

after the fact. So before February 28th, there's a strong argument that we shouldn't have started a military action. But then in February 28th, we did start a military action. So then looking forward, okay, we've started the military action. What then do we do? What is then the best outcome? We can't go back and change time and not, and like un invade or unattack.

So now we need to look at, okay, now that we've begun this, what is the best way to actually decisively end this? And I hate to say, it's probably. with a military operation that's not just an air campaign. I don't want boots in the ground in Iran, but from a rational actor perspective, like, how do you actually stop this? It's probably a combination of military economic and diplomatic means applied all three of them at a very high level, not just one military one with a trailing diplomacy behind it. It needs to be a very strong, three-pronged grand strategic approach against this problem. Otherwise, it's not going to be.

It's either not going to be solved. It will be new problems that spread out, or you'll have this stalemate that actually has higher costs to us than to any other actor that's playing. And like you were mentioning, Mick, we're probably going to return to a pre-2015 situation where Iran has actually gained more than ever lost at our expense. I mean, we had to deal with the ballistic missile program because it's somewhat of a shield for the nuclear. I mean, hindsight's 50-50, right? 2020. We could have degraded their ballistic missile program during the 12-day war.

We could have simply done a very temporary, starting on February 28th, restricted, limited strike on the ballistic missile facility, and it might not have spurred taking over the straight, right? Because they didn't take over the straight when we did the 12-day war and we did midnight hammer, right? But we just kept going and going and going. And it was like, are we getting any benefit of this by other than expending all our precision-guided munitions? Damn it. But like you said, it's water on the bridge. We are where we are now.

And all the Intel reports say that we haven't degraded much. That's the other question I'd ask. Like, I have to believe that we would have known from the Intel how. effective our airstrikes would have been on these missile cities. I kind of believe we did, right? Because it has to do with the type of granite. That's why they built them there. And we know the penetration level of our army. It just seems like we would, if all we were going to do is hit the entry points, like that doesn't really deal with the ballistic missile issue. Because as we already seen from that, what, CNN report, out of the 69 entry points,

points, exit points that we hit, they've removed and reopened 50 of them already with dump trucks and tractors. So what was the plan, well, like, you'd have to ask, what was a plan from the military perspective on degrading the ballistic missile? Was it literally just to hit the entry exit points? Because that's not. I wonder, maybe the idea initially, before this all happened and it kind of played out was if we strike them hard enough, they'll want to negotiate. And we don't have to worry about what happens after the digout period, because there won't be a digout period. Because we would have bombed them into submission and they'd be at the table. I think that probably was more likely what was expected.

It wasn't that, oh, the regime is just not going to stop. And I think we can see this evidence in the straits where we have known since 1980 that if the straits are put in it at risk, this will happen. This is not a surprise to any human being that's been in the government. And I think we just thought, like, oh, the war would be over before that became an issue. Who thought that, though? Like, the Santcom and DIA and CIA thought that? Well, definitely not the intel community because the Intel community significantly has communicated this for a long time. Right, okay.

The Intel community was clear that they weren't going to see a regime change. Right, okay. Based on air strikes. So it was like the... That's why I'm focused on the ballistic missiles. Like, I think that's a valid military objective, but you've got to be able to actually meet the objective. That's the problem. Like, we have the strongest military in the world and we keep, for lack of a better term,

losing freaking wars. I think the problem is the policy people. And I'm not just being like, you know, obviously I'm a product of military. But we clearly, even, I think Iran, I go on with Iranians all the time on foreign media. They even acknowledge like, hey, nobody can beat the U.S. military. Like, that's, it's in a category by itself. But it's the policy and strategic decision making that make. you know, quote unquote, winning wars, not what America's doing now, which is a really bad

thing to have the capacity that we have and not make. I mean, the only war that they talk about is like being successful. It's like Desert Storm, right? The war that lasted 100 hours. Why? Because they say like clear, attainable military objectives. And when they met it, it was done. We were also the good guys, you know, Iraq and made a quake.

We were the good guy on Afghanistan. Afghanistan for sure I agree with that Iraq absolutely not Iraq too was not I would say that was a disaster questionable reason why we went to Iraq sure yeah right and frankly like just to go back through history like Iraq the Iraq War II is what created the vacuum for Iran to you know run roughshot more or less over the region right do you mean the Iraq do you mean the Iraq war when you say Iraq yeah in 2003 the Iraq you know overthrowing Saddam who was a shitty guy obviously I'm I agree. But, you know, if you look at the 30,000-foot view, you know, that left a huge vacuum that Iran was happening. It points back to what we're talking about. The coalition provisional authority that actually was set up to run Iraq after 2003 was led by non-military practitioners. It was led by political appointees who had some experience, but they were not experts that informing governments. Sure. And it's similar to what we're talking about now, where people sitting there at the table in the NSC and hire are not experts in what they're making decisions

on, which they don't have to be. Sure. But that means there needs to be advice that's in a working functional NSC process where this information is finding its way up to that table, and they are sufficiently convinced by the evidence that this might not be the wisest outcome. But instead, people are up there without that input or ignoring that input somehow and just kind of going off in a direction fueled by policy alone, rather than evidence and analysis and really hard questions that should be asked at that level.

And this isn't a partisan statement. This has been every administration. Yeah. going back to Vietnam. That somehow we have the, you know, there's a famous quote for Vietnam where army colonels like telling the Vietnamese colonel, hey, we beat you in every major military battle that we had. And the Vietnamese colonel says that is both true and irrelevant, right? So it's like we have to get to a point where our decision makers, again, either side of the aisle, are as capable.

as our military and intelligence services. Because we clearly, and we certainly spend the resources to get there, have the best, most effective military and intelligence of the national security and diplomacy, the most effective, I think. So if you take, you know, all of it, like how is it were not making better decisions? It's because our goals are unattainable. But also it's like the WizKids problem from Vietnam, when Kennedy brought in the WISKits from industry,

from manufacturing and things around the United States to be on the NSC. These guys were very good systems-oriented industrial thinkers. They were very good at where they came from. And that's where we got the body count concept from. That's where we got the type of numbers-based BDA that we use today that also we used in Vietnam. Because these Wiz kids, these mathematicians, were looking at it as a numbers issue, as a mathematical problem to solve. And there was not the kind of human and social element that's very long-term and indoors way beyond that BDA and beyond that strike. you know, like the Minab's school strike, for example, at the outside of the conflict.

You can measure the number of bodies and you can measure the strike and you can measure the bombs and all this. But what about the social impacts, political impacts and international impacts that that single strike has? And I think that there isn't that type of measurement that's making its way into the decision-making process currently, it seems. Your mattress is one of those things you don't think about until it's too late, until you're waking up with aches and pains and realizing you've been sleeping on a problem for years. Today's sponsor, Ghostbed, is here to change that. And with the summer coming, there's one more thing worth thinking about. Sleeping hot. If you ever woken up in the middle of the night, overheated and uncomfortable, you know how much it wrecks your sleep.

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Go get some. I love Ghostbid. That's Ghostbid.com slash team and use the code Team, T-E-A-M, for an extra 10% off-site-wide. Thank you guys for supporting the show, and thanks Ghostbed for support. the show love you bye yeah i mean didn't they say that was the same problem with afghanistan too it was like 20 20 wars one year at a time you know what i mean every whenever you're cycling out it's like we did great work you know we brought it from red to green or whatever that the metric is or whatever you know and it probably brief swell in a powerpoint but the reality on the ground is

absolute nonsense you know it's not not reflective of that look at food had done something more similar to my whole doctrine, whatever it was called, where we went into Afghanistan simply to remove the Taliban, gave them a chance to select somebody. We joined the rest of the international community in helping Afghanistan get back set up, but we're not spending trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer dollars to restart a country, or not even restart, to start a country, right? Like if we would have just had, and then we kept a residual force, you know, H.S. So the thing was, I remember when, I, I mean, how different would that have been? Right?

Yeah. Afghanistan. So I read what's Bob Woodward's book about Obama when he first came in and they were trying to figure out what to do with Afghanistan. And there was a big debate. You know, some of the brass wanted, you know, quarter million troops to like actually go on and do the counterinsurgency and stabilize. And there was another faction saying it was counterterrorism, you know, a couple, you

know, 20,000 special ops contractors and stuff go do the counterterrorism. And they came up with like this middle ground. they bumped it up 100,000 that was not enough for do. I don't think coin would ever work unless you have a couple hundred years. But it was like some half-pregnant fucking idea. And as an American citizen, you know, 2011 happened. We smoked bin Laden. We should have cut bait right there.

Done. Because we could have been in that CT mode since topple and still found bin Laden. Yeah. Right. Totally. Absolutely. Yeah, I agree. You know, and so...

But he's in Pakistan anyway. It's not like... Yeah. That's also the other big thing, right? Yeah. You're fighting against another quote-unquote ally that we give money to, like military support to, and they're fucking harboring the fucking number one terrorist in the world, among others.

Like, Hani Network, you know, take your fucking pick. Well, the Taliban headquarters was in Balochistan that we used to collect against them all the time when I was over there. I mean, you almost incentive... Even if it wasn't like an ideological thing, you almost incentivize... him to keep him. Like you're paying me this much money to find him, but this money, you know, like every year you pay this problem to keep going. Yeah, we need this to keep going. The money train's coming in. Yeah, I mean, it was incredible, like, just like the obvious, if you're a layman

and you just look at this for like 30 minutes, you see where the problems are, whether it's Afghanistan with Pakistan or Iraq with, you know, the majority Shia population, huge Shia country next door in Iran. Like, it's pretty obvious, like, where the hangups are. And particularly now, today, it's like, Strait of Hermuz, I knew what the Strait of Hormuz was when I was, like, like, 17 in an idiot. Like, had no, you know, that when we were building up for Iraq,

there was some talk about Iran, and, like, straight-over moves came up as, like, a talking point as, like, that being shut down. And back then, we weren't, you know, self-sufficient in terms of, in terms of natural, you know, gas and, natural gas. So that would have hit us so much harder than it has now. It's just like, it's just as obvious fucking things that like a normal person, even if you're just paying attention for a little bit,

could see why our policymakers can't fucking see that to me is incredible. Because it's not even politically advantageous. What's going on now in Iran is not good for Trump and the administration of the Republicans for the midterms at all. So it's just nuts to me. well, we didn't get much progress on Iran. What's next? Yeah, yeah.

We'll keep trying, man. Yeah. I'm for Team America, man. I want us to figure out a way to make this good for us, but we're going to have to keep working on that. Another, just quick question, like two weeks ago, there was all this talk over the weekend that there was going to be a ceasefire, right? An extension of the 60 days. And how it was like right there, right at the one yard line, there was going to be an announcement in a couple, like, the next day. and it seems like both sides are completely on the other end of this thing.

It didn't seem like we were even close to that. So do you guys think was that like bullshit just being propagated by the Trump administration? I think there's a lot of hope on the U.S. side that that would be true. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that a lot of the negotiation personnel we have are unskilled negotiators at international negotiations, not business negotiations, but actual government negotiation. And I think there's a lot of idealism in those types of approaches that they might be taking. On the other side of the table, you have an Iranian regime that is expert at this exact type of negotiation. And it's not just generally, but the actual named individuals that are at the table right now were the same guys that were at the table in 2015 and other times that have been happening in back channels. They are really good at this.

They know what our pressure points are. They know how long we can wait on different positions. They know our fallback positions. Like if you've ever seen a document where we're going into a negotiation, we'll have our named positions. And in the second column, we have our fallback positions. And we have other things listed there. So like already ahead of time, we know that like, okay, we can go weak on this point. They already know all those points.

They're very good at manipulating those points. And we on the other side, I think are a little too idealistic approaching this negotiation, not realizing the other side has everything to lose and everything to gain at the same time. So they have way more stake in hitting those levers that they're so good at hitting. whereas on our side, we don't even realize the levers are there at all. It might be that the mediators are overplaying it. It might be that we're just trying, like Jonathan's saying, like we're just trying to put a rosy picture on it.

But now it's not having the effect, right? Might as well just not characterize the negotiations until we actually have a breakthrough. Because I don't think anybody listens. Because as soon as we say, hey, it's going great. And Ron goes, no, it's not. Right? And then it's like, okay, well, then don't say anything because it's not having, even if it's a tactic, it's clearly not going to work anymore.

And every time you use it, it waters it down. Right. Yeah. They enjoy coming right out going, we didn't agree to that. That's not true. We're not even talking, right? So it's just, it's not an effective way to negotiate. I think it needs to go behind the scenes and let the bring in.

Hammer it out. Careerists. They're a careerist. I don't think in terms of, you know, political ideology, but there are careerists that are clearly in line with their objectives. And the way careerists works is they're in line with whatever the president's objectives is, because that's the point, right? But they have expertise.

They know the whole nuclear issue, right? they know how to do diplomacy. They've studied Iran for decades. Jonathan, right? Like, there's people like that that are fully capable of getting in there and doing what the president wants with knowledge of how to do it. And if he wants to keep his son-in-law doing it, okay, send all these people with him. Yeah, put up, but you could put a seat for him in the corner so you can say he was there or whatever.

I'll be derogatory, John. I'll be derogatory. I'll be there. There's experts. I mean, that's why, you know, we have careers in diplomacy and careers in intelligence, military, all this. Yeah, we could even prep talking points, and that's what we would do in the past is deliver the talking points to that principle. The principal digest those, you know, on the way to the meeting, then sits at the table and says them. And then, you know, afterward we talk about that.

And it's just this process that continues. But it looks like him the whole time. Sure. Yeah, that's fine. Like, you know, the optics of it. Right. Like, if you put me in that situation and you're like, D, go negotiate. with the Iranians.

I'm getting all the fucking nerds I can. John, you're included to tell me what's going on and do most of the fucking talk. Like, I would be crazy to think that I'm able to just sit there and be able to like two or three points, close a straight over moves,

give us the highly enriched uranium, we'll release some money. That's it. Deal. Like, there's no way, it doesn't work like that. You know? It's not real life. So, I mean, even I know that.

And I can barely read. guys like I know what I would have to do that so it's just it's just amazing to me a couple days ago I had a stink sticking with Iran for one second like a couple days ago I had a former special forces uh Mike Taylor you know he's infamous obviously he's a he's actually a friend of the show he's actually a great guy and he was all about like regime changing Iran and how to do it um and he his theory was you know get special forces get some Marsaq guys get some more suck guys get J-Socket, CIA, armed Kurds, armed people that are actually in Iran and go after it with like UW, right?

And that'll destabilize the regime enough to over to get it gone. I want to know your opinions on that because like you guys are obviously practitioners in this. So, Mickey can go first because I know you've done some spooky stuff. I mean, well, I'll start with this. It probably would have had a better chance than they trying to do regime shames from the air. Right? But one of the, well, the first things we would have needed to do is make it actually covert and clandestine. So let's not talk about it, right? Because when it's clearly an outside activity, it has much less of an impact on the ground. Because the only way to actually make it successful is maybe you start with the like lighting the fuse, but it's got to be organic.

You got to get the rest of, you got to get you basically in order to do it. You got to get the Army, the regular Iranian Army to start coming over to that side. So I think it's plausible, plausible, certainly not guaranteed, but I'm, you know, I'm not only a practitioner. I believe that we should have a continuous, robust, covert program. And yes, all those units could be, but it need to be under a covert program. Like, they have to be detailed stuff. We can't have, you know, guys that look like me and Jonathan running around, you know, over there, at least that are obvious. And then you'd have to have just as much of a influence, practically the influence side of it need to lead it.

Like the activity side, the sabotage, the, you know, guerrilla warfare, it has a part to play. But you have to create the motivation that would lead to it spreading and becoming. coming its own thing, like real. It could be generated, and I think it would be real, because we already saw a major protest at all. I'd be promise, right? So I don't disagree, but it's going to be hard to do now. And now we have arguments of Israel saying,

if only we would have armed the Kurds and the Trump administration said no, and like, you don't talk about covert programs like this if you want them to actually work. And you certainly don't talk about the element you were going to use. I mean, think about it. Like if you're Kurdish right now and Iran, like, holy crap, this is the worst case scenario. They said they were going to use it.

We said we were going to do it, and now it didn't happen. Right? So who you think the regime is going to go after? One guess. Right? So I do think there is ways to do it, but we have to do it actually clandestinely, covertly. It needs to be led by influence operations or political type.

And it would have had, I don't know if we can get there now. I don't know. It's kind of hard to see how we can start that. Maybe there's... I think operationally, it's very realistic to be able to arm, train, equip, monitor, evaluate, and so on, these irregular forces. We can do that. We're very good at doing that, not only the paramilitary side, but also the soft side. The challenge is one level higher, and that is that this group of Kurds and this other group of Kurds are not the same Kurds. They don't have the same political objectives. They do hate the regime. They have that in common. But if you're going to do a UW campaign on conventional warfare, you have to not just have the fighters.

You also need underground networks, other structural elements, you need logistics and other integrated elements that are non-combat elements, including communications and governance. You can't create separate pods of those and hope them all to unify organically. So, for example, if you have Baluchis in the Southeast who are Sunni and they are opposed to the regime for their own reasons, and you want to train them to be a force, that's great. Then you've got this group of Aziris in the northwest who are Shia Turks, who do not agree with the regime either. They are not the same. And the problem there is, like, you can't just expect them to just plug in their logistics with each other and plug in their other infrastructure together and also accept the ruler or leader of one group over the other.

So you're going to have that as the real challenge of unity and structural components across these elements. So we could certainly man-train equip irregular forces. We've done it a lot. It's unifying and integrating those forces in a way that's actually sustainable after shots are finished being fired. Because there will be that violent moment when they do seize control if this does happen. But then what happens after that? You know, if you don't have a unified governance and you don't have integrated logistics, you're going to have separate armed groups and disagree with each other about things who no longer have a common enemy.

now looking at each other and saying, okay, here's the real war. And then at the end of that, there has to be a off-ramp for the regime. And what I mean by that is, look, I don't care if they all got killed. I'm not, you know, a fan of the Iranian regime. But they'll hold on to the end if there's no alternative. You give, okay, go go live somewhere else, live in a high-rise apartment, blah, blah, blah. You get that and you can take money with you. It's not good.

It's not good. But this is a covert program, but it would give them an option to get out of the country. You see what I mean? If you say, hey, if you leave the country, we're going to track you down and kill you like a dog. I don't know where that expression comes from because I really don't like it. Kill you.

They'll hang into the end. So you'll lose more of your fighters. You'll lose more innocent civilians, etc. You have to build the pressure. You have to have people that know all how this will. all work together and you have to give them an op-ram. You have to be able to leave or you're going to hold on to the end and they can make this last years and years and years if they want to. It actually makes a great example of that is Bashar al-Assad. For a very long time, there was no

off-ramp for the Assad family. Until very recently, there was one clandestinely provided. His family is in Moscow. They're protected. We are not going after them. The different government came in, which was a Turkish desired outcome that happened. And now there's a Turkey-aligned power in that country instead of, you know, an Assad family dictatorship in the country. That's what I'm talking about. That allowed it to happen. Anyway, Dee, we figured that.

Yeah. No, that was brilliant. Yeah, that was amazing. Thanks for that. All right, next bit of news. I want to get this right. Our great ally. Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S.

The highest level sources say. It's from NBC News. I want to say yesterday. The counterintelligence threat level was raised by the DIA in recent weeks after growing concerns that Israeli espionage had become more aggressive than usual. Thoughts and comments, guys. Like we talked about before, I come from the CIA. So for me to be outraged by espionage would be a bit.

hypocritical, so I'm not outraged. I think, you know, countries spy on their friends. That's true. The closer friends, obviously, we don't, and they don't. I'm thinking like five eyes, right? But I can see from Israeli's point, and this is, number one, they denied it, of course. So let's be fair to them. They said it's not true. I don't know that it is true because what's, what spy agency or country would confirm that. You don't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But I'm just saying, to be fair, they denied it. And I don't know that it's, it is true. But we're kind of going on a hypothetical. So if I was them, I would want to know at least the strategic level decision making where it might be going.

I would. Because you've already said, we already had it. The first conversation, we have three parties. And none of our objectives are there are lining up. Even our ally, our partner here in Israel. Doesn't mean Israel bad. At least I'm a support of Israel. Just because they don't agree with us, doesn't mean that, you know, that means you know, bad or anything like that. Now, when it gets to critical level, so that's the highest, you got to take notice because we don't want people to know what our decisions are, whether it's Israel or France or any other country. We want to be able to preserve our decision space, so we don't want them to be ahead of us. so we're going to have to protect themselves. If it is true, we definitely have to protect yourself. It's also, I think if you talk to people in the intelligence community, they go, yep, this isn't a surprise that they are trying to collect information. It doesn't mean to try to do anything nefarious other than, you know, obviously collect the information.

Question, Mick, you worked at the CIA. Is there any truth to the claim that early on, I think maybe in the late 90s, the U.S. used to meet Israeli Musad guys at the CIA and the CIA would and they would give gifts you know like hey nice to see you and the gifts always had like microphones and shit inside it was it true that they started moving the meetings now after that off-site

from Langley as far as you know I'm not familiar with that there is I mean I don't want to get into details but there's there's places to meet visiting services in the agency that's, that's separated. And that's not just for them. It's for everybody.

It's in the place. And I don't know that I've never heard that the massage, and I could be wrong. Never heard that the Mossad was treated differently as far as hate it was. Good jump in as a CIA professional. So I did counterintelligence for 15 years and we worked in a way where I think I've said this before that in the intelligence community, there are no friends, there are only interests. And it's true.

Every single state is out there for itself. even the United States. And if you remember back a few years ago, when the Intercept published the Snowden records, and it was revealed that the U.S. was monitoring Angela Merkel's cell phone, and there was this big hoo-ha about it. And like you said, Mick, in the intelligence world, everyone said, so what? This is normal. This is what happens. This is intelligence. And the point of intelligence is not just kinetic action or malign action or harm. It's at the strategic level, like strategic collection, like top-tier intelligence collection, is to reduce uncertainty, informed decision makers and reduce strategic surprise. Those are the three big things. And it's,

every state has that interest. I'm not defending Israel. I'm just saying this is the way it is. And we shouldn't be surprised. It's surprising, I think, to the average person because they're like, oh my God, like, that's so intrusive in my privacy. Wait to you see what everybody else is doing. You would be shocked. Sure. I also think to the regular person, it's wild and shocking because we're force-fed pretty consistently that Israel is one of our best allies, number one, you know, there was talk about the IDF and the Pentagon and the military, our military, integrating somehow. And you hear stuff like that as a layman and you're like, how are they a fucking real deal ally? Because you're telling me like, sure, maybe the Brits, you know, they have an embassy here.

Maybe they have some sources and stuff like that. But they're not actively trying to penetrate our networks or like, let's be real. I mean. They try to collect their information in their own life. Absolutely. I totally agree with you. I'm not saying they don't. And that's fair.

The Brits are five-eye, right? So that's a different status. Yeah, but we have this special relationship with Israel, dude. Come on. Yeah. Well, they have a special relationship with all. We have treated allies all-NATO, right? We have five-eyes, which are like a special group in themselves.

And they all try to collect information. I mean, like the five-eyes, they try to do it through a liaison. But, you know, they actually train intelligence officer. How to get information from the agency. not in a clandestine way, just like how to butter them up and, you know, get them drinks. And it's all the liaison thing. We're supposed to do it. We're supposed to do it.

Right. But the other thing about this is the U.S. intelligence, no, not just the agency, but the whole system is by far the most robust in the war. Like by far. Like we doth the other country's collection abilities. So people want to collect from us because we have the information. You see what I mean? So it's not just, you know, and we use terms like you wouldn't spy on your friend, I would hope, like your actual friend. So we're calling them friends and they're, but Jonathan laid it out perfectly.

Like we have interests. We, we, and this isn't harming them necessarily, but it is, it is done by not just our friends, but the U.S. Yeah. I could mention. There's three examples of Israel. There are many examples, but there are three big examples of Israel doing either espionage or actions like this against the U.S. that were publicized that are significant and should lead into this to understand like this is not a new thing. The first one is the Liberty incident, June 8, 1967, when Israel bombed a U.S. destroyer and killed over 100 Americans and did this using signals intelligence intercepts of the vessel. And so, like, that's a very important, like, early stage before we.

We were really close friends. Then the way Israel got access to its nuclear program was by stealing through industrial espionage, U.S. nuclear information and material out of the United States to Israel. That's another very big, important one. And the third most recent one is John Pollard, the U.S. person who spied for Israel. And I think it was five years ago. I was in Jordan at the time. He was repatriated back to Israel and given Israeli citizenship in this like big fanfare. Nine cars showed up, dude.

Yeah. So, I mean, this is not like a new thing. Again, like they're looking at us as an asset, not just financially, but also relationally and also informationally. There are things to gain from that relationship that sometimes the U.S. just won't give it, so they're going to take it. Because especially Israel, their perspective in the Middle East is that they're surrounded by enemies. They've said this to themselves. Like, there are enemies on all sides. We are always in danger.

That's why their adult population is a militarized population through the preserve system where mandatory military service exists for almost everybody except the Orthodox. So there's this feeling that they're always in danger. And so they're thinking, like, how do we, like you were saying, Mick, how do we gain access to that information to reduce our uncertainty about these adversaries? Well, the U.S. has a lot of it. We need to access it. And if they're not willing to give it to us, we're going to take it.

And I think this is probably their way of thinking about this problem. Not defending it, but this is just kind of like what's going on. Sure. Yeah. Is it, though? Like, do we need to give them a fucking green light on everything? A pass on everything? I don't think so.

If they're real allies. Elevating the threat level is not giving them a pass. It's actually flagging the fact that we're concerned about something. Yeah, but does anything happen? Like, you know, you mentioned the three main, you know, publicized failures. The stuff that's underneath the surface that we haven't heard of, like, you know, it's probably dwarfs what we have heard of. And that's just being. But there's other countries are doing the same thing.

Yeah, but they're not like our, they're not fed to us in the media as being our greatest ally in the Middle East. Like, they're just not. Like the relationship's different. Remember the Saudis did that with Jamal Khashoggi. Absolutely. They chopped his ass up. Israeli device and his phone through a Canadian device and found him and killed him. They used Pegasus on him on that?

Yeah, exactly. That's how it was publicized because it wasn't his phone. It was his friend's phone who was in Canada. And the friend's phone was the one that actually gave the location data of his phone. It's a very interesting way it worked. And he didn't actually have to interact with the device at all. Wow. All right.

Moving on to ODI&I, big shake. up Tulsi Gabbard was, I guess she resigned, but there's talk that she was fired. She's actually leaving June 30th, though. And the new guy, I keep Pulte, is that his last, how you pronounce his last name, who was heading up, you know, the agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage agency, which is kind of incredible, that he would make the jump to ODNI. There was some talk out of the Trump administration, President Trump said himself, it would be a temporary thing.

I don't know. Take that for what it's worth. Where are you guys at? And there is worry because Pulte did use the information from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help indict Letitia James and bring up stuff about Adam Schiff. I don't know if the indicted Schiff. I don't remember about for mortgage fraud and things like that. So there is a worry that they're going to politicize the ODNI, even more than it already is,

and start going after enemies of the administration. So make where are you at with this? So a little history, I know you guys know it, but for those don't. And after 9-11, they reviewed the intelligence failure that led to that. The CIA director used to be dual-hatted. He ran. He said, we haven't had it. Well, there we have that issue.

So he or she, now that we had Gina Haspel, and hopefully more, did they ran the agency, and they oversaw the intelligence community. And that was deemed to be too much for one individual. So they created the DNI. And it started as a person. And I believe it was actually down in the NSC, like out of office and the NSA, to function as an overseer

and then the synthesizer of information that goes to the president. Right? Because, you know, you've got signals intelligence. You got, you know, NSA, you got all sorts of, a different intelligence capabilities. So the daily briefing for the president would go through the ODNI's office. It would be a person. And maybe, you know, he has a staff.

Staff. Yeah. A person. And now if you go to DNI, they've got giant buildings full of people, right? So I want to be fair to everybody on this because there's plenty of the intelligence community going, well, it does need to be downsides. It's just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. and now you've got a giant bureaucracy whose only job it is is to oversee all these other giant

bureaucracies. So, and I don't, I've been out for a while, so I don't know if that's adjusted. And there's, I'm sure there's a lot of value added, but I would say that of my peers for sure, if you pulled them, they, they would say, yeah, we need to downsides the DNA. It's just, it just keeps growing and growing like every bureaucracy in the United States. It's like exist to exist and get bigger. if you're not getting bigger, you're getting near. So there's probably some accuracy to that.

I would only say, if you're going to make it smaller, don't make the intelligence community large more, push them back to their organizations. Like, push them back to NSA, push them back to CIA, push them back to DIA, because we still need the robust intelligence collection. We just might not need that many people sitting at the top. And it's not even at the top.

Like, they don't have an operational control. They don't run covert action to do any of that stuff. So that's the first part. The second part is statutorily, there's requirements for somebody to be in that position. And of course, it starts with experience and intelligence and national security. So it could be like an admiral of general, former CIA director or what have you. But most people would rather be CIA director to be frank. Right. Yeah, yeah.

But you have to, or like you could have been a person who was in the agency, right? This person doesn't even, I mean, it's not an opinion. He doesn't have any experience. So he's unqualified. So, and every, it's not a partisan thing. I think everybody can just see that and say, this person's unqualified. So I think he has a 0% chance of being confirmed if or else they're going against a very statutory requirements that Congress put in place.

So he'll go in there. If he's going in there to cut, I hope it's not. That's why I think it needs to be, even if your purpose is to go in there and cut the DNI, you have to know the intelligence community. Because, again, my position is if you're going to cut the actual DNA, push them back to the actual working components of the intelligence community. Which is fire them. One, because a lot of them are there, not even because, you know,

you're screwing a lot of people's lives, but you also want to maintain the capacity of the intelligence community. It's interesting. As a director of national intelligence, I can see how that would make sense if it was like how like the NSA work, like the National Security Advisor kind of works, right?

Like not it being like this massive overbloded bureaucracy that has buildings with like probably, you know, 500 or 1,000 people working in it. But like an office, with like a dedicated staff, maybe a deputy and like whatever, staff members, that's it. And like they help you filter out, you know, get the information and aggregate it in the right way for a president to understand.

That I understand. Like that I could see the benefit. But like you said, making it this big bloated thing is kind of feels counterproductive a little bit. Well, it's supposed to be like the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, who's the global force integrator. It's supposed to be the global intelligence integrator. And when you look at the chairman, like, yes, the CJCS is pretty bloated. You know, any bureaucracy is probably bigger than it should be.

It's nowhere near as big as the DNI. That's wild. Like exponentially increased, especially after 9-11, especially after Patriot Act and other things like this. But it was really like an echo of the 1987 Goldwater-Nichols Act, which before that, there was not a chairman in the way that the chairman is now. Before that, each combatant commander kind of led his little fiefdom. And that's not the way it is now. And that was the goal with the DNI, too, is to make, there's this one individual up top who can kind of see all the pieces moving and move them in the direction that they're supposed to go, which is to execute national security policy all the way down through to those entities. And instead, it's become just another component of the intel community that's just kind of higher up.

That's at least how it functions at the desk. And you've got 18 intelligence components in the United States. 18. That's crazy. That's a lot. especially when you look at the DIA and the NSA, how big they are. The NSA, like, campus in Fort Meade, it's like 30,000 people there every day working. It's a huge place. Not to mention around the globe with other intelligence components. But I think also something you're getting to, D, was this guy who used Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac information

for the purpose that was not intended for, which was to go after political opponents. And I think there's the concern that when he gets in the DNI and has access to certain intelligence streams, he'll use those to help go after political opponents. And although he could do that, I would just always look at the statutory and executive authority position of what tools do we have in place to protect against that? One of them is Executive Order 12-3, which is intelligence oversight that every one of us in the intelligence community has learned about and repeated. And that was designed because the church committee back in the 1970s said, we need to stop going after U.S. persons unless there's an actual reason to do so. and there have been some other laws passed since then to help further solidify and protect that. The thing is, he could try to use this, but I think he would actually have more success in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac doing it,

because there are not protections in those entities that exist in the intelligence community. Because as we know, the FBI is the only counterintelligence, domestic counterintelligence entity in the United States. Everyone else is looking outward. They sometimes look inward if there's a reason in the nexus, but that's not their primary purpose. I think it would be actually harder for him, even though we'd have more information. it would be harder for him to actually successfully go after a person from that position versus the mortgage industry, which is kind of interesting to observe. It's understandable. Yeah, that makes sense, you know.

Yeah, it's interesting times, man. I just looked it up. It's got 38 years old. It's like, bro, get lost. I need a nice gray beard guy who's been, like Mick. I need somebody who's been in there for 20 fucking years. But I would pick Mick as my DCI. I'd make you director.

I'd rein your ass in, though. And your ground branch boys, I'd rein you guys in a little bit, but I'd have you as director. Guy becomes director. I could see some people having a bit of an issue with that. They should. We're very immature and restrictive.

That's his. All right. Anything else? Oh, yeah, we have the other one that you sent over. John, you want to just run into it, Tommy? Yeah, you give me a good run down. Yes, it was interesting because, so there was an article we were all talking about, which was basically Russia and Iran are recruiting teenagers through gaming platforms and social media

to do a lot of various tasks in Europe, the United States and Israel in denied areas for them, but they can't actually operate in the real world the way that they want to. So they're creatively using this, but it's actually kind of interesting because you go back to the early 2000s. China, the MSS, Ministry of State Security, was doing this. as well in World of Warcraft. People have probably forgotten this, but I was at NSA during this time. And it was a pretty fascinating penetration of the gaming platforms back then that China successfully recruited people and paid people because you could use currencies in the game that had intrinsic value to those who used it. You didn't actually have to move dollars to the financial system,

which is very fascinating. That was over 20 years ago. And it's kind of getting restarted again because the denied area problem is again getting worse. There's active armed conflict, so there's more scrutiny on physical access in those countries, especially Israel, Europe, and the United States. And so the SVR and GRU on the Russian side and the Vajah, which is the Ministry of Intelligence on the Iran side, are both using this. Russia started doing it first with Ukrainian targets and actually, you know, causing some harm in Ukraine through these gaming platforms, basically paying guys cryptocurrency to go do stuff in Ukraine through video games and then doing it in Europe as well. And then perhaps most interesting to the Iran conflict,

Iran's actually been able to recruit Israeli teenagers to go do battle damage assessment after Iranian strikes in Israel in the past two months to tell the Iranian weaponiers how good their strikes were, which as we've talked about on the show before, on the U.S. side, we've really struggled to get battle damage assessment inside of Iran to know how effective have these ballistic missile launch destruction events been, how many forces are destroyed. It's very hard to know that without troops in the ground. Iran knows that too, and they actually were able to get in there through video games to go pay people, in one case, over $1,000 in cryptocurrency, to go take photos of a military base after it was struck.

This is a teenager. And they've been able to do this quite a bit. And it's pretty fascinating to kind of see it in action. And also, like, it's so recent. It's not like an old case study. This is something happening right now. As society evolves, so does Intel, man. Like, there's, I've been out for, you know, long since 2017.

But I can only imagine what's going on in the. the cyber world and all this stuff. AIs come in quantum computing. I mean, it's going to make it very challenging once quantum computing comes online to be able to keep secrets, right? It's going to be very challenging to be able to operate around the world

when you're not in your right persona, right? Because of all the biomass. That's already an issue, right? So there's all, but then we evolve. We adapt. I mean, that's part of the, intelligence world is being intelligent and actually evolving and adapting better than your adversaries. So I hope, and I'm certain that we are integrating all this stuff to our

migration, which is why it's also. Yeah. Mick, Mick, would you get rid of the DNI? I would use them. I would use, I think, I mean, it was a, I haven't heard of anybody say it, but what Jonathan said was a great idea. View it like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It's a global integrator, which means it's, it's kind of. find, right? We don't need to, I mean, it could be probably better just to be in an office in the NSD, right? It's big enough, right? And then you, it's like a goldfish, man. It's not going to get that much bigger, if you, if you put it in, right? I think there is a, I definitely think there is a purpose for it. And I also, again, not to beat the drum too much, I wouldn't fire the people

that are currently working at the TNI. I would repurpose them to go into the rest of the intelligence community because we need the capacity. I just don't think we need it all in a bureaucracy that's managing 18, which are fairly capable of managing themselves, but we need an integrator. So I think the analogy that Jonathan used is a good one. And yes, the chairman's office is Scott and Baker, but it's still confined. It's still inside of the, it still does the integration. And it's very effective. It's a very, it's a good example of what we want to have you. We just keep it restrained. And a lot of the bloat is from analytical components, not operational components,

because usually these offices, whatever office it is, has their own analysts that are ingesting a lot of intelligence from the other 17 components, if they're from component one, the other 17. They have to make their daily reports. They have to do their roll-ups. They have to do their analytic products. And all these products, products, products that are really replicated, 17 times on the same piece of information every day. And if we could collapse those somehow or think more strategically about how that

intelligence not only is analyzed but disseminated to them in the first place so that there's an easier way for if you're at NSA, it's easier for you to see the CIA version of that product based on your compartments so that you're not replicating the exact same analysis that that other component did. And a lot of times you have different calibers of individuals at different desks at different times. So someone's analytic product might suck. frankly or it might be stellar but the stellar one might be lower down the food chain the shitty one might be higher up it's the shitty one that makes it and then that's the one that gets

used as the base and the thing is reverse as well there might be some rock star way up top but that never gets down to the other component at the service let's say at the Marine Corps's MCIA at Quantico they're not going to see that they don't even have the same system to be on it to read it the first place so I think it's a it's a systems problem that could be flattened somehow on the analytic side. Because operationally, like, a case officer is doing exactly what they were designed to do and exactly the place they're supposed to be doing it under the exact framework that all the other case officers, depending on where they've been produced and work at. They're kind of well integrated already. It's really that long tail of back office work that needs to be looked at and

fixed. Quick question. Is Intel gained from like NSA or CIA looked at as better than other agencies? 100%, I would say. From my level in the military, yeah. Like, if you get a Marine Corps produced Intel report versus the CIA report, you're like, all right, get that Marine Corps report out of here. Yeah, if we're talking apples and apples and oranges. Yeah. I think it meant like between SIGA and he meant, but there's, there's a hierarchy there. And it's, it's what you'd expect. Even like when I was, I was a reports officer at a higher level, like high output, I did like 6,000 reports that I processed. We would look at, down at who the reporter number was. And if that guy was a reporter from SOCOM, we actually put it at a lower

level because we knew that their training was less. So we trusted the document less because of where it came from, not because of who wrote it by name. We named another name. And if it came from another component that was near, that was adjacent to SOCOM, we'd look at it with more priority and more time and more effort. And we'd do phone calls back to them to ask questions and stuff before we reject the reports, you know, we'd be trying to, like, work with them with it. Whereas the Socom guy, we'd be like, it sucks, reject it. I saw that happen a lot because they're not, they're not trained to be report writers. They're operators. You know, they haven't extra duty. Yeah, the higher the standards. They have an extra duty. That's just, they don't, they don't want to

be writing those reports. They want to go back out of the wire and go continue doing what they were doing. They don't want to have to come back and write this thing out. And it reflects. And then the, then the reputation proceeds it that, well, it's coming from that reporting component, then not, you I'm not going to trust it as much. Or I'm maybe going to put more scrutiny on it because it came from there, which is not fair. But that is, to your point, you know, across the components, there is this issue sometimes. Like I can see, like, you're processing so much intel, like, you know, it's going to have to be triaged, right? Like, or what about, like, the geospatial agency?

Like, that's got to be treated as, like, this is pretty legit, right? Because they're getting most of their stuff. It's different. It's different information. You know, you've got measurement and signature intelligence. you have geo-intelligence, you have human intelligence. Not only that, you have clandescently collected versus overtly collected. There's a lot of different purposes for that intelligence, origins, and endpoints.

And I think geo-int is looked at as geo-int. So then within geo-int, you'd ask the question of, was this an NGA product or was this from some other entity? I don't think you would look at it the way that you're probably getting to. Instead, it's like, this is a discipline versus a different discipline. Like human is a discipline versus SIGINT is a discipline. We're not looking at them like, well, I'll take the SIGM. in over the human. Like, no, no, I want both. I need both. You know, same with the geo-int. Like, I need that geo-int, like, layer on this, on this output. Works together. Wild.

Hopefully, there's an old DNI that could fucking handle it. Um, fingers crossed, guys, because this guy ain't it. I'm available. I love one of these big jobs because I feel like I'd make so much money after the fact. Like, give me one of these big jobs, you know? I can handle it. Isn't Secretary of the Army also, like, 38 years old? Is he that young? I can't raise I think he is pretty young Wow okay Well he's the one that people want to see Ascend to the secretary

I have no Driscoll yes exactly I have no qualms with a guy being you know no Late 30s or something like that Getting a big job at all It's just like I wish they had a little bit of Driscoll I sure does have Experience but like this guy Pulte

And if I want my house built I'll fucking call him up he could build me a house That's sick Driscoll's not 39 years old, sorry, not 38. Yeah, that's pretty young. Secretary of the Army. Yeah, that's young. He was a general?

No, you can't, you don't have to have to have a second. Yeah, I was going to say 39, like, was he in a fast track? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think he went to law school with the vice president. Yeah, he went to Yale same year, 2013, I believe. He was Army Ranger. He was Army Ranger.

He was also, he also done a policy position before. I think he was there when I was there when I was there. Yeah, I think I don't remember what it was, but I think he did serve previously. You would hope so if he's a secretary of the army now. I think he was a DASD. Correct me if I probably shouldn't speculate. Be it recorded.

I think he had a policy position before in First Administration. So I think he has his experience. And he's, you know, I know pretty well like that. Senior Army. Secretary of the Army, though, to jump from that's I mean, yeah. What was

Jim Webb was the youngest secretary of the Navy, right? That's right. Similar type person. By the way, you should read his book, born fighting,

Irish and America. Excellent. You knew I had. He was a Marine. He was a Marine. And you know who his cousin was? David Hackler. Oh, really?

That's the one that wrote the article that made the Navy CNO kill himself because he was wearing a combat at war he didn't earn. Yeah. It's too bad. I mean, he shouldn't have done it. He shouldn't take it out of the stream. Hackworth was the most decorated soldier, I believe, in Vietnam.

He lived literally about, I don't know, less than a half a mile from my house. That's where he... Didn't he have like 15 Purple Hearts or something like that? Yeah, man. He was something else. And his cousin was something else. So Webb was a... He was Navy's cross recipient in Vietnam, right?

Yeah, and then he went on to be a senator, his sons were served. He was the youngest Secretary of Navy for Reagan. Just saying. There's also another great book called The Ranch Shadow Weapons by Jonathan Hackett. And you guys should go check that out. Yeah. Also, do us a favor if you're in the Whitefish area next year in February, right? End of February.

Yes, February 24th, 26. You can go to the Whitefish Security Summit. That link is in the description as well. you have a ton of intelligence professionals, meeting and chatting, doing panels, and you're being beautiful whitefish. All the other links are in the description as well. Mix got a great podcast, a new one, Pub and the Porch,

Applied Stoicism, great pod. Check that out. Any information you guys want about any of the guys on this show, the links are in the description. Also, patreon.com slash the teamhouse, help support the show. You get eyes on and team house episode. ad-free and early. And you can also watch the team house episodes live as we shoot them.

Guys, anything else before you get out of here? I'd say on young people serving, the Constitution was written by a bunch of 20-year-olds. So keep that in mind. That's true. Good point. 20-year-old revolutionaries. Yeah.

And slave. And slave. To highlight that point, I mean, I don't think the problem right now in the United States is that people are too young serving. No, that's for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right.

Just look at Congress. And I don't know Secretary Driscoll, so I'm not just going to touting them. Yeah. I think I did meet him, but whatever. You get my point. So you're endorsing Bill Pulte as OD&I. Is that what you're doing?

Well, statutorily, it doesn't fit the point. What a lawyer answer. It's all right. I respect it. It takes it away from an opinion to just a, It's a fact. Yeah. All right, boys.

Thank you. Cool. Hey, guys. I want to take a moment to tell you about the Team House podcast newsletter. If you go and subscribe, it's totally free. And what it will do is aggregate all of our data, all of our content that we put out, the things that are on the team house, on our geopolitics podcast, eyes on, things that I write journalistically with Sean Naylor on the high side, anything else that we,

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